 I found EFAP way back when I saw Mola's Soma review and Wolf threw an impromptu stream. The way the story goes is we were just hanging out and we were gonna stream it and Rags' stream wasn't working, so I did it. We did a video from Downward Thrust and Jared. Then the following week he released that video and I was like, wouldn't it be fun if we responded to it live? And then the rest is history. It's impossible to watch movies wrong when you're watching movies wrong. This is supposed to happen to space with. The giant alien Cousin is one of my favorite editions. There's no reason not to find Brian like him. You're right, Bill! I'm gonna have to beat off pretty hard after this. Can I join you? Four more employees. My name is not Brian. The last Jedi is a sexy fool. What? A rooty-tootie cowboy-tootie massive faggot. You get to look the dead. The grave is absolutely a weirdo. I'll be Thanos. I would love my adopted child as well as my biological child. If you're going to find female characters and it's meant for children, this is bad. That's the hit, Yoda. Lightning's books. Me hide, cheek sent me hide. Me hide, cheek sent me hide. Everyone knows what a fucking Y-Wing is. You listen, Jenny, what's that? Cromwell's a big bro. The 3PO game robot. Put your lips, let's just go ride a bit. We call virtual headsets what they are. They're privileged, go on, Cousins. One... ...four... ...two... He jets out across celestial proportions. That dizzy little go-go-go. I can't listen to you. You can't listen to Cousins. He's fucking dead. Say what? Jeb Bridges, Jeb Conner, Jeb Portstein, Jeb Goldbloom, Jeb With a Hut, Jeb FK, Jeb Jeb Abram, Jeb Snow, Jeb Shapiro, Jeb Trump, Jeb XT, Jeb Summer Been Locked, Jeb Sucked. Here's a McMuff. How do you beat this? You're closet and homosexual. Real cause of all of your problems? You don't want to fuck cook's cares. According to Wikipedia, a hat is a head covering. Well, what do you mean a cane is a clothing? With debate and golf, this is what you fucking did. Men walking in medieval warfare. What up, my Ewok? I think y'all sound like juice. Juice. Louis Vuitton's sex slave. His horse is visited the gate. Is this guy supposed to be Alfred? Doesn't really have a vision, but cool. Hey, guys, move right here. Bullard rags. I would be if they like anything. Where's Hitler's body? It's in a pocket. He leans into a course on the job. Joe is around the eager ladder. I heard that you love minorities. I do. The one that will never be good. What the fuck? Are you okay? Here comes Alu and George with the ball. In the door. I knew that. TFA part four. Mark my words in August 2021. Pretend that it's what you want. Come on, boys. How do Jedi's roll create? If they can't love, can't love. Come, yum. It says Wilfred Brimley's 5-8. It also has the brackets alive. We really all could have been fucking dized. It's time to let the children play. I am a girl. Gonna keep him married to Harry Potter. An adventure about jewelry. Don't go costs. Oh, thank you. Does it hurt? They mow it just before you go live. I'm just gonna go for a piss. Whoa, we're a quarter-portion there. Whoa, bring me that droid there. Literally every death that happens is Joe's fault. Joe is not the fucking beloved character. No. My channel was growing. But I was so unhappy to the point where I would, like, not be able to sleep. This platform can help people. It can hurt them. And it can aid in the sickening technology addiction and social media at the end of the road for the right person, even if it's just one person. You can help someone. A wave of cum. That feels so fucking good in my town. Fucking smart to make me find people with disabilities. Donald Trump sold my summer by Halloween. My ability to enjoy life itself. Opinions don't kill terrorists. When life gives you lemons, you tell life to fuck right time. Fuck all of you. I have lost all respect for you, all of you. Your critiques are more. The bottom of the squash. You think life is worse to give you a hand job. Duh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. You agree with your friendship, smash and sweep with one of my friends, Brent. I'm curious to see what Hitler would say about this equal trilogy. Man, how come your internet face is all fucked up? I'll take our loss and learn to slide. White is better than anything that involves anything other than white. Buller is literally Welsh. That should be all you need to know about him to prove his points. He's a manian. Gamorean. You are incredible. Is Hitler a bad villain because he lost the war? I'm not watching a 12-hour review of that. The death of creativity. I'm a 33-year-old straight white man. You're 33? He's one of those people who's been here because of him. He's one of those people who's been here because of him. He's one of those people who's been here because of him. Yes or no? You guys know limit? Timing protects your timing, yeah. I don't think it's weird that some man called his mother by her first name. What did you want him to say? My mom comes in peace of course. Radishing the fuck absolute herd of a bill. I'm pleasant. Time watching a bill that I have sitting through. He's fucking awesome. I live. Wrongliness plus alienation. Bust fear plus the fair plus self-worth. E-fap spreads their cider to range my syndrome. Robbing and death. A witch practices witchcraft. A wizard practices wizard. Grab, grab. I don't believe in that. It didn't work for you. That's totally cool. That evil bitch stole my life from me. Bulbul's on the edge of a cliff. What's everyone's opinion on the condom? Bulgurcher. I don't really take much issue with any feather-chan or hands. I assume that he was walking out like in a war or something. Bungalow shit too good to function, but not a rape. It's a machine-cream-created thing. I never wonder why things are smaller the further they get away. My mom isn't here to cook the chicken for me. Do what am I supposed to do? One big futuristic sand picture allegory of the Vietnam War. We have enemies. They're so un-mongost. They're basically an alien race. It's sparse your mouth. Some have the ding. Some have the ding. It's a bloody word. It's a lotion. What the heck is going on? Where is it going? Yeah, you guys go one at a time. Noom, awake. Believe, believe in him. Believe, believe. Believe in Noom. Believe, believe. Noom won't work if you don't believe. There is no depression. There is no... Get my tuna casserole. The vision. This is the Chad Father I wish to engage in mini balls. You could cut pretty much anything with a cake. My own assets? Train to Hasan. All aboard the Nuggets. You don't need to always use... Dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Or the... Doop, doop, doop, doop, doop. I only see this loads of conch for but a brief moment or two. Anyway, long too long. Longing for it is great. No, it's a trungos. I am trunga. Chicky grubber. They can't like be able to meet by and the fact that they cooperate the way that they do seems a bit convenient. Well, that's what I told them. To me, both of them to hell is the right decision. Nothing else left to talk about. What does take pride in your work, me? You can know the fuck! Unless he instantly... What you say to me, I don't suck for penis and no queer. I'm gonna throw my crawfish in in the bucket, too. Apologize to Wanda for all the evil he caused her. No, because Tony runs away from his problems. He did run away. She just can't... Did the residents have such a bad experience? Wanda entertained them with magic shows. They celebrated Halloween, thought it was unemployed before all this, and Wanda gave him a job. My teleriver invited to a movie that is essentially born with J-Lonbo. The world's greatest multiverses. Most horrific turbo trunks. Oh, jeez. Oh, God, please bring up again! Your clothes never wear as well the next day. Your head never falls in quite the same way. Our institutions are crumbling. Nobody trusts nobody anymore. This is the story of a girl who cried a river and drowned the whole world. But she just looked upset in photographs. That's what we love to do when she smiles. Looks like I've got a number nine. Two, number six, and number seven for the extra dip. I think McGregor's a fine actor. Obi-Wan was a terrible character. In the moment, Obi-Wan silently equips his lightsaber. Seagulls would have been broke at the time. Jelly, jelly, jelly, jelly. What's the volume of like a standard bathtub? And how much hot cream do you have? I think the volume of a standard bathtub is silent. Shut up, rags. I want to fill you with hot cream. They put two assist gold and blood flying everywhere. They went over the top to just have it literally in your face. It wasn't literally in her face. Oh, sorry, guys, rags! No, that's mona-moo. It will mona-moo. It will mona-moo. Mills, watch this video. Trish, my buddy. Oh, God, the rags. We're not all look the same, rags. Why did I call you a rags? I'm rags. All right, with that, thank you all very much for hanging out with us. The kind messages, the kind donations, and the kind insights here and there. Back and forth. Thank you all so much for watching. You sleep well now. Good night, everyone. Bye-bye. Good farm. You guys have a fantastic day. I had to unmute. There we go, hello. I had to unmute, too. Oh, my God. Isn't that video intense? Amazing. That was actually very intense. That was a very fun journey down memory lane. The first thought I had was like, holy fuck, how long did that take to make Jesus Christ? Also that, yeah. That was legitimately impressive. Not just the going through every episode. It's also like the making it all musical. You know, manipulating all the sounds to be of the tones you need to match it. By Rainbow Soap, who's the, actually, well, you know, I'll cover that better when we actually, we're gonna watch those videos live as well. But feels to me, which probably just be like, hello, everybody, 200 episodes. Can you believe this? I never planned for this. Yeah, I don't know what to say. Four years. All I know now is that if anyone ever asked you, what is EFAP, you could show them that video. Yeah. It's like when we get to episode 1,000, it is gonna be like someone makes a compilation from one to 1,000. So the intro is 24 hours. 24 hours straight. Yeah, you have to time down to a chair. I'll tell you about EFAP. We'll be like, wow, that was a really good video. Eventually it'll have to be like one word from every episode and it'll make up a whole 10 hour thing. Ooh, like a sentence. Hmm. Or a big paragraph at that point. My God, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Well, you know, why not just get going straight away, right? Like what else is there, you know? What is this podcast? We've talked about stuff. It's gonna be here for a while. Probably. That's for the best, I imagine. Gotta get plenty of things talked about and plenty of people gotta get in, right? We're gonna start out in all those crazy fellas, but I'm trying to think of like, first year was, privileged goggles was year two, right? Cause there's always a gym sterling video. Second, first year was. Are you talking about the gym sterling videos we cover every year? Yeah, we only ever do it on the anniversary. I don't know why that happened, it just did. I remember privileged goggles was what I really wanted to see cause it was like one of my favorites of all time. It's like, when, what, what will be next? Who knows, you know? In the vast mysterious roulette that is, that's probably gonna be what happens. Yeah, so we got, for those who don't know how this format works, oh boy. So three, three videos, three streams, that will be on average eight hours each. But, you know, it depends if we go over a bit, that usually ends up happening. And we're gonna try and get different people in here as the time goes on, if that's all right with everyone. Well, yeah. Oh! Ew. Before we began the stream, but yeah, I guess that sounds all right. I could have discussed it with us, but, yes. Hi, Matt, how you doing? I'm doing all righty, how are you guys? We're doing great, did you see that intro? I'm great, now I've seen it a second, I've seen it a second time now cause I watched it yesterday actually. And it's very good, I love it. It's freaking nuts, man. I think it's big nuts. I think that a big nut. Knicking frets. Thanks for a very celebratory opening, so what will be us watching videos with people about opinions on things. Some of the most exciting, explosive content you can ever imagine. Yeah, baby. Yeah, you know, all kinds of different things are probably going to happen. That's my overall point. How long have you got, Mel? You gonna stay up for the full, probably like 26 hours? I have until I wanna go to bed. Wow. And then I wake back up and then I'm back again. You're a creature of habit, this whole sleeping thing. I've heard you've been doing it for a while. I don't tell anyone, but I'm doing it like every day actually. Well, the German sleeps, e-fap. Yeah, I'm crazy, I'm crazy like that. But yeah, no, I'm gonna be chilling. I have nothing to do. I did all my things. I had some barbecue today at my dad's place because he had the birthdays this week. So naturally I'm gonna go give him a visit and stuff. And now I'm just free, I'm just chilling. Just tell him I can't come to your birthday dad, I'm e-fapping. And then you just hang out and don't explain. Yeah, it's like your birthday isn't even today. Like it was like a couple of days ago. You could have done it then. I mean really it was like 50, 60 years ago, so. Yeah, so I don't even know what the fuck you're doing dad. So just leave me alone. I told you to stop calling me by the way. Just like, one of the people that are on the way, I said the message saying, yeah, join whatever you want. The response was, I'm free if you want people, someone to join. Just like, I mean. How long will this go on? When will the cycle end? It's all good, yes, jump in. But anyway, I mean, I'm just gonna get us going. You know, people will join as time progresses. We got, we got, this is one that I've wanted to cover for some time. Here's a watch together link. That would probably be a good start to, wouldn't it? Oh, and ironically, this will be one of our shortest intros. How long do we usually do intros for? An hour? Yeah. But for the anniversary ones, I always find it's like, oh, we best get covering things soon. One video will take us the whole anniversary and people will be like, wow. Remember the Grace Randolph one? My God. Oh yeah, that took us 12 days. She's like the multiverse of madness of movie reviewers. Yeah, well, we might just have another Grace Randolph video on the way. Who knows? Yay. But yeah, I was gonna say, have hope, have confidence. I'm sure it's gonna be exciting. Alrighty, I'm gonna go ahead and guess that the aspect ratio isn't gonna be correct or rather, what else? Cause they always change it between, when I go offline between weeks on a, that's it. Oh, Jesus. How did that happen, right? Now, let us see. It's a difficult subject. He yelled at me. Oh, you know what? That looks like it. So that wasn't just hyper loud for me then. You guys gotta turn it down and lower the default. You never know what they're gonna do to hear these videos. Yeah, yeah, they come at you so fast. Angry. So yelly. Yeah, it has changed the way that I almost didn't notice, but I noticed it. But yeah, like I said, there's another video I actually wanna cover, but we can only do it once per year, okay? Let's see how the rules work, I suppose, with the billing. But this one. This one's a classic. Very strict and rigid. Strigid rule system. Rigid. Yeah. There's a classic conversation about video game difficulty, which I think you've had some interest in thinking about that recently. Have you not, Mr. Fringy? Yeah. In some ways. It's what I'm thinking about, yeah. Perhaps this will elucidate or ameliorate such discussions. I will say, yeah. Who can possibly- Well, that's the fancy words. I'm what's called a professional debater. I know all of the things. Debater? Oh, hello, Theo. Hello, hello. Welcome. I mean, how are you? We're doing some coverage, as you do. Gonna be looking at the classic discussion. I don't even know if we've covered it properly. I don't even know if we have yet. We probably have, but you know, how difficult should video games be? And I wonder what game will come up in this discussion. Who knows? Oh, no. Oh, no. What could it be? I mean, Theo is here, so. Hmm. What? I look forward to the day where no one can ever- What game could it be? Gonna skip us past the intro, because I don't even know if that's copyrighted yet. Oh, how very exciting. Oh, he still looks relatively normal. I don't know that hat. Hello, Skellington Boglin. Today's your birthday. What's that? You're very excited about your birthday. Look, I don't know when the video starts, so we're just gonna have to list to some boggling stuff, all right? What's this? He's quite a boggling collection. He's got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. He'll be boggling. And then he's got the ones at the bottom. Boggling's the one. Then he's got the one he's taken out of the- The one he's using as a prop. It's ruined now. It's out of the box. The value's been tarnished. Yeah, yeah. They lose value significantly. Yeah, once a boggling is unboxed, there's few things worse than an unboxed boggling. Gonna say, yeah. One of the standards. We've had that going on EFAT for a while. We've all known this. I've got a gift for you. Any gym-quisition topic today will be of your choosing. What's that? You think that's brilliant? That's quite a sound it makes. That is a really strange sound. I don't know if the boggling really had time to say all of those words. There's different language. They can speak like whole paragraphs and sentences. Yeah. Like the boggling hours from Star Trek. There you go. Do we have my first Star Trek reference ever because I've been watching Star Trek. Oh my God. What was the reference? I missed it. Yeah, the boggling talks like the buying hours from Star Trek. Whoa, it smells like a dude now. Yeah. How does it feel to get in-depth and knowledgeable about lore that isn't wrestling? And now Jim Sterling is gone by now. What's got an idea for one already? Well, tell me, just for you, what gym-quisition will we do today? Oh. Whether or not Sekiro should have an easy mode. Every time. Every fucking time. Well, yeah. But to be fair, I can't actually remember what the opinions are in this video. So it could be stuff we agree with. I don't actually know. Let's find out. Oh, it won't be. Right now, yeah. Jim likes his easy mode talk. Oh, God. Sekiro doesn't need an easy mode. Oh. Sekiro doesn't need an easy mode either. Ah. Ah. See? Ah. Indeed, it's time to talk about difficulty in games again as yet another challenging video that you've ever told you to. You can't do that. We don't have to have this conversation. We've never had to have this conversation. Promsoft, we put out a game. I didn't want to make this video. Promsoft, we put out a game. A bunch of people can't complete it. And then this happens. It's like, shouldn't they make the mode where you just press forward with? Oh, God. It's kind of. Just the old victory. And they can get hyperbolic and be like, this is exclusionary to a like discriminatory degree. And it's like, whoa, I was just making a video game. Jeez. Game has released to the uproar of a conversation that has only gotten more egregiously toxic over the years. Well, have you contributed to that, Jim? I never made any talk with yours. Yeah. Fucking what talk? What? Conversations don't get toxic on this point. You brought in the Barglings to this conversation just to be fair. But they were not a part of this discourse until you decided it had to be that way. You broke them out of jail. Dark Souls to Cuphead. Lately, any video game that's marketed on its challenge, and let's not forget, it's mostly marketing to blame for all this bullshit. We get into a. I don't know about that. These games are tough for a lot of people. I guess weird gets around. Yeah, it is tough. I wouldn't call that marketing, like people talking about it. It's funny to say that it's marketing, as though it wasn't a meme that many, like, game journalism websites would compare games that have nothing to do. Do people compare Crash Bandicoot to Dark Souls? Yeah, there was an era where there's pretty good ones. It's a discourse issue, not a marketing issue. Yeah, when is FromSoft going to make Dark Soul Cart? Dark Soul Cart. We're still waiting on Bloodborne Cart. Yeah, we're still waiting on that. Bro, it could just be the FromSoft Cart. It even has all of the characters. Yeah, it has all of them. Yeah, it's like, you know what to do. All of the characters, they all go cart. And then they're racing on these crazy courses, you know? Like, you could have a, what's it called? Anolondo. You could have an Anolondo course. All the levels, all the cool levels that you love now in racing cart form. Also, the game is all time. And of course, I don't know a single individual who wouldn't play the shit. Yeah, I think that'd be great. I'd play that. Sounds fun. Mm-hmm. Massive debate over whether games should have easy modes, whether accessibility options matter, or whether... I'm going to... Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Those are two different things. Well, yeah, exactly. I'm going to play Accessibility and Difficulty. This video, Jim, will constantly confuse to the point of dishonestness the concepts of accessibility and difficulty. I know he has done it in the future, in this year, in Dark Souls year of 2022 or whatever. Oh, for Elden Ring. Yeah, for Elden Ring. I know he's already done that. How, however, could it be that I know that? I was willing to be charitable. I thought he was distinguishing them because he understood that they were different. Well, here's the thing. Sometimes he probably does, and sometimes he forgets that they're different. And he melds them together if he wants to make people who want... For instance, you always get the thing where people say they don't want an easy mode or that game should be difficult and they get lambasted for not wanting any accessibility. Maybe it's fair to say there will be at least one or two blurry lines when it comes to very specific ideas about whether or not something relates to accessibility or difficulty. But I would assume it's pretty clear as to the difference, but I suppose we'll find out. They are related, they're related, but different. The difficulty. I've had the argument made to me that some disabilities can be things like people's cognitive reaction time. So doing things like making an easy mode in which the enemies are slower is an accessibility feature in the same way that a high contrast color mode would be. I don't personally agree with that, but that's the case I've had made. My gut instinct is to say that no soul's game or any soul's adjacent game even approaches anywhere, even near needing anything like that. Because these games are difficult, make no mistake, but they are not that difficult once you actually understand what they are asking of you and what you have to do. How do you lead us here? Yeah, he's quick-man. I guess it's a matter of when you think about difficulty, you've got difficulty in the sense that it's hard to wrap your head around how to do it, like how to engage with it versus maybe more, I guess, normal difficulty, which is just you need a certain level of dexterity to do it. Like you just need to be able to get the buttons fast enough and quick enough at the right time. And Dark Souls, I would say just quickly, Dark Souls requires nothing of you on that front in terms of competence with dexterity. It requires nothing from you. Secondary kind of does. Secondary kind of does. Well, because in secondary... The parry timing is extremely generous. It is generous, but you do have to move your finger pretty fast in order to especially fight some of the, you know, the sort of robed samurai enemies who like, they don't wear armor or anything like that. They just have those attacks that are kind of a one, two, three, like really fast thing. I could see people having trouble with that if they have mobility issues in their fingers, for example. Sure, sure. That doesn't mean there's no other way to fight those enemies though. So it's like, well, at a certain point. I just noticed here that the subtitle or the tagline for this article is the difference between what you quote unquote earn and what you're owed. That is very interesting. What you're owed? I wonder. Well, because it says, when is exclusion a valid design choice? Something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm sure it has nothing to do with any type of video that I might be working on is our video games by virtue of being necessarily interactive. They're also necessarily exclusionary and that because they're interactive, it's conceivably important. Well, I think the answer is yes, but I'm still not sure, like 100% is a game necessarily exclusionary because you have to play it to progress. I mean, that goes into the concept of what a challenge even is. I guess I'm going even more fundamental than that. Let's say it's even a walking simulator where all you need to do is walk forward. You don't have to sell any puzzles. You don't need to engage in comp. Well, I haven't played that. That's the example that I usually go to. No failed states, but you still have to walk forward. It's like, there's conceivably one person who can't figure that out for some reason. So conceivably, it's impossible to complete compared to once a movie starts, it plays. You can get up and leave. You can fall asleep, but like the film will play to the end. Sure, you don't have the whole experience, but like there's nothing that can prevent you from seeing it through to the end, essentially, compared to a video game where you- Yeah, it might be asked for inaction on your part, as opposed to the action of getting up and walking away. Video games are an active activity like books are. I guess books are kind of interesting because again, the book is complete and they're for you to read. And even if you can't understand what you're reading, I guess you can still read it, but it'd be more so comparable to games, I guess, than like any other medium because it demands something of you other than, I guess, having your eyes on the screen and even then with like a film, you don't have to, you don't want to, right? What's interesting about that is the injecting and accessibility options in relation to books. It's like, well, you just have to get the words to the person's brain. So Braille would be if they're blind or translation, if they don't have the language. Like these will be considered accessibility of a book, you know? An easy mode for a book where it's like, ah, the prose is simpler. I don't think people would be fair to that. Yeah, and that's it, right? Like if they release the version of the book, like let's just say Lord of the Rings, but it's like really simplified language and it's only, let's say, 10 pages and the words are all really big and thick. You're like, oh. It could be part of a series, yeah. You could call it prose for noobs. And then, I guess you might have- You might have a book as an audio book? Nah, I think that's accessibility, surely. Like if you're blind, you can listen to books, but it doesn't change the contents of the book. Maybe that's the difference between difficulty and accessibility is what are the changes to the actual material? Finally, I actually would concede the listening to, let's say Game of Thrones versus reading it is a different experience. But I don't know, I think it's like negligible in terms of the idea of one is better than the other. A lot of people say the reading it is better than listening to someone describe it, but some people might argue the reverse because you get voices and characters sometimes. A little subjective, isn't it what you prefer, right? Instead of saying it's totally subjective, I would rather just highlight what are the prose and cons of either side, if such a thing could be agreed upon. I think there are some things. It's somewhat adjacent, but it's worth saying that a lot of the time when people listen to audiobooks, it's while they're doing something else. You know, so the full focus isn't on the thing. Rue. That's why for fiction, I've almost entirely switched to audiobooks just because I can't justify setting the hours aside to just read a fantasy novel, but if I'm doing other stuff, I can listen to Brandon Sanderson or whatever. I guess that's, I wonder if that's indicative of like a problem with society now that people feel like they can't just set aside an hour or like two or three hours to read a book that's always going to be multitasking going on. Like I don't want to do a gospel play or a game. We say this as though people aren't doing that with everything anyway. People are watching films and TV on their computers while they'll be second-stream stuff most of the time. That's one of the time, yeah. The cinema, at least, that means you got 100% focus, so it still exists. 100% focus on the majesty of thought, love, and thunder. Yeah. Yeah. Pure cinema. I loved watching that movie in cinema. That was very fun. Oh, don't worry. I'm pretty sure we'll have a lot of hours about Marvel in this, in the center of history. The games are trying to squeak in at the beginning, like talk about us. We exist. Hey, remember us? Game should be an exclusive only to those with a natural skill or those who, as they say, get good. Way back in 2016, the opposite root cause led to the exact same discourse. Back then, the uproar was over games already having very easy modes. Wait, so this is Star Fox Zero. Star Fox Zero has bad controls. Like that. I don't know if people are defending the difficulty. That game just has bad controls. That's interesting, isn't it? I think that's probably one of the worst problems you could have in a video game is when the controls themselves are bad. Fighting a player. Or you have to, yeah, conagling with these weird buttons. Well, cause for people who don't know, Star Fox Zero's gimmick was that it used the Wii U gamepad as like a second screen. But that was the primary target. That's it. Yeah, it was the primary targeting. So like if you looked at the TV, you couldn't aim properly because the aiming was calibrated to the screen on the gamepad rather than the screen. It was an interesting idea that never should have made it past like on that stage. Sorry, Platinum Games. They should have tested this and realized it was terrible and never sold it. Well, I think it was, I might be wrong, but I think it was Miyamoto thought that the idea was cool. And Miyamoto often has a lot of interesting perspectives like in terms of Miyamoto thinking outside of the box has created a lot of good stuff, but occasionally you end up with, yeah, that kind of problem with Star Fox Zero where it's just like the idea was so dominant that it just overshadowed like a lot of the fundamental problems that existed with this control scheme. Yeah, it was Platinum who developed it based on Miyamoto's idea. And they seem to get, you get kind of a look at the draw with Platinum as if they're given a project that they can just knock out of the park like near automata or Metal Gear Rising Revengeance and then they get things like Star Fox Zero. And it's like, oh, okay, we'll try. You make me think though about like how, let's say theoretically that a game has shitty hit boxes all throughout to the point of them being really, really bad. Like imagine I was putting like a Dark Souls game that would be really bad. A whole game? Yeah, like a whole fucking game. And then someone is like, you know, God, this game is so hard. I wish there were an easy mode where the hit boxes weren't shit. Also like misunderstanding that it's not even difficult. That's just shitty design. Yeah, that's just bad. You gotta like make sure you draw a line, I guess, and how this works. Notably, Star Fox Zero boasting a zero difficulty mode in which the player couldn't die. A mode that toddlers could play if they want to. No. Okay, interesting. Yeah, fuck kids, no. If you make a game for kids, go nuts. It's just like, if the other idea of like, you better make sure you pack a game in with a mode that children, you're like, I'm right. Okay. Five year old nephew does not need to play Sekiro. Or gamer's trademark didn't like this at all. For reasons I still don't quite understand. I mean, the big argument for me is how dishonest do you have to be? As long as you didn't force the developers to do it, I guess I don't give a shit. Like they can put it in if they really want to. But, uh... Well, I mean, honestly, the problem with a developer if they want to add like an easy mode, kind of where I'm at at this point is kind of up to the developer, really, if they want to do it or not. Yeah. What I'm getting at when I say force isn't like a company saying, you have to do it, we won't fund it. I'm talking about like social pressures, like you're a bad person, if you don't put it in easy mode. It's like calm the fuck down. Yeah, yeah. Because that's obviously eventually they'll buckle if they get enough people saying they're bad people for not doing it. And it's like gray. Also, I think it's important that the core game is still the same if you play like on normal, I guess, that it still have their mode. Where they intended it, how they wanted it to be played. That's a kind of consideration is that implementing another difficult emote, that takes development time. Maybe not that much. Yeah, exactly. It takes development time. And that's part of the reason why I don't like that the conversation ignores just the legitimate choice of, nah, we want to do this and we own it. We want to have a hard game. We want our game to be hard. Do people want your Souls games to be even more unfinished? Like, come on. And we've all been there as well. Because you know, like the idea with a lot of people who were saying like, there should be an easy mode. You just like, do you ever find yourself looking at someone playing a game and going, oh my God, they're so bad at this. Not that, oh, maybe this could have been built better for them to accommodate. Like, you never, I've had it on streams where I'll be like looking around for something. I'm like, where is the thing? And then there's like, it's right on the floor, literally in front of you with a big bright thing on it. And you just not see it. And I'm like, oh shit. Yeah, I got it. Fine, don't worry about it. I got it. Yeah. And if someone said like, no, no more, we need a prompt, we need a character to come on screen and go, hey, you missed it. It's right there. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm never going to do it for everyone else now. It often works badly the other way around as well when they put in hard modes and just like, now all the enemies take 17 hours to kill. And also you have no ammo. And also now you realize how broken this one mechanic is and you will never use any other one again by a pregnant. And yeah, you can reveal problems with the core as well. Like if it's a poorly made difficulty, harder difficulty, it goes both ways. Since it was an optional mode that wouldn't affect them in the slightest, if they played on literally any other difficult day, I guess that's kind of the problem. Whereas it might affect your experience on other modes because of just, yeah, I guess you could appeal to that being a problem of, well, they screwed up. They could have put as much effort into the difficulty compared to some other aspects of the game. We just pretend for a second we're in a world where, you know, Elden Ring released with no ashes. The Stuporopee, like little friendos you can summon. And then they were pressured and they put in an easy mode where those existed. It's like that's different. But if it was that they realized when developing it, oh man, we need to make a way for this to be a lot easier because a lot of people are complaining about that every time we put out a game. Let's put in this new mechanic will embed it into the actual, like I say, storyline, game line, whatever you want to call it. People will end up with it. And then you get a shit ton of players. Like we talked about this on our coverage, but I didn't know those were hyper OP until it was essentially too late. And I'd already played a play through with them being OP. And so like it's like, oh, if I had, if I, because in a sense, in that scenario, the world where there was an easy mode and a hard mode or regular mode, you could even say, I can pick it. But when they try and integrate it in a very like reasonable way, it can actually end up making it worse for a lot of other players. And I, you know, I don't want to be too dramatic. It's not like I can't, I can just do another play through without touching them or whatever. Without summoning it. But there's only the first, you can only play the Souls game for the first time once. I cherish those experiences, you know. And those, those, those Ashes, they were called Ashes, right? I forgot. Spirit Ashes, yeah. Spirit Ashes, yeah. They could be really fun. Like I like them the most when I had to plan around them. It's like, okay, this guy can take X amount of hits if I do well myself. I had that when I was fighting Melania because I was super squishy with my mage. And I was like, okay, if I can make the Ash go like for this phase and then I have the Ash in the second phase and then maybe can tank a couple of hits and then I have to fight myself and it's still gonna be challenging. Like that was fun as shit. But then other times you're like, oh, the Ash can just kill the enemy themselves. I'm just gonna sit here and throw some rocks for a minute and then it's over. It's like, oh. The solution I always think would work best to balance those in a way that at least the player can be told, hey, these are kind of a crutch and sort of an easy thing is just have an achievement at the end of the game for beat the game with no Spirit Ash summons. If you need help, you can summon, you know, frame them in a way that, yeah. I find it really bizarre because that's already what they did with summons. You know? Yes, if you're terrible and need help, then you could always, to the point of... Solaire just says that to you. If you ever want to cooperate with someone or you need assistance, then, you know, hit up a summon sign. I guess in Jim's defense here, Sekiro has no summoning of any kind. It's sort of the most straight up action game that they've made because it's one character class. It's more like a Ninja Gaiden game than a Souls game, really. Because funnily enough, the summons then became the go to defense the H Bomba guy had when Dark Souls II becomes too absurd for a solo player. He's just like, just summon people. I don't know, fuck you. Do you have friends? Like, that mechanic, you know? It's almost like you're treating the mechanic as though it's a part of the full main line. Everyone should be doing it sort of approach, which to me just says you don't know much about the Dark Souls community and discussions about how to approach the games. Because it's always felt weird when I go into videos that treat as though googling is just a part of the experience of playing a Dark Souls game. It's like, oh, that's like a sinful thing to do to me, he can't do that. He'll spoil everything. You gotta figure some stuff out, right? It's the classic thing, right? Take away people's genuine sense of exploration and discovery, like come on. Yeah, but just the thing of, I feel like this is the thing that all gamers are supposed to have at baseline. You spawn, you see a little character, you see the environment, you press all the buttons. What do they all do? That's like the step one of learning how to play the game. But I wonder if you need a tool tip at this point for that. Just like, you should experiment maybe. You press all the buttons there. Your keyboard gives you many different button options to press to make your character do a wide variety of things. Wow. Press them randomly to discover what they do. I hate games. Famously yelled one commenter. I hate how Nintendo has a toddler option. It wouldn't be a Jim Sterling video if we didn't characterize the opposition of the argument. And the most good faith wave possible. And all their new games, something like SFZ will only be bought by hardcore fans. Not that it mattered in the end, Star Fox Zero was shit. And even if it wasn't, it doesn't matter now, does it? Well, then why'd you bring it up? Yeah, if it doesn't matter anymore. It doesn't matter. Why do you do this, Jim? You're supposed to be professional. It's 2019 and no one gives a shit about the... It's Slippy a boy or a girl? Slippy's a boy. Okay. I would, yeah. Slippy's a frog, but that wasn't a question. I know, he's a boy or a girl. Wait, hold on. Are there any girls on the Star Fox team? No. Crystal. There are other characters, but they're not part of the core roster. Wow, exclusionary. This is just what Jim's talking about. I think it was Star Fox 2 introduced new characters, but that game only got officially released with the SMES, like, what was it called? The emulator thing. What's SMES? SMES. Oh, I thought you said SMES. No, it was released with the... It was like the... SNES mini? Yeah, that's right. It's literally the SNES mini. I mean, Slippy is a frog, so I guess if he's in a same-sex environment, never mind. Well, no, no, what do you mean? Well, you know, he can switch and they can, you know... No, no, no, I can just, like, swap. Oh, how did it work in Jurassic Park? How did it work in the fantasy book? Hey, they based on some stuff that's real, baby. I know, I know, I know, baby. Like, Slippy is a bipedal, like, alien frog in a video game world with talking foxes and... Oh, so his frogness just isn't relevant to real-life frogs. I don't remember what the frog attributes are. That's all. They're chemicals in Star Fox water. The Star Fox water and the corn area water. Yeah, the corn area turned the space frogs gay. Did you hear what was said, though? It's just like, oh, this is from, like, ages ago, so it doesn't even matter. It's just like, well, I brought it up. Yeah, you brought it up. Exactly. If the comments, like, info doesn't matter at all, just, like, choose a different one. Don't bring it up. That's all I was saying. It wouldn't be a Jim Sterling video if he didn't try to characterize the opposition a certain way. Well, there was a whole series. Even at first point or not. That was made just to read comments while characterizing them. That was basically it. Just a comment something. I can't remember. It's an aristocrat. That's the joke. Where it's all, like, snobby commenters and how right they are about everything. Comment top. Well, he doesn't have to play a character to be snobby. I hate that character so much. Everyone does. He's just came back. Yeah. Any game that was released before 2019, because the conversation keeps happening and it keeps not mattering in the long term. Well, why the fuck are you making videos out of it? He's been saying this for every fucking year. It feels like he makes a video about this. And every time he says, it doesn't matter. Why are we talking about this? And he keeps making videos on it. You can't have it both ways. I guess we just keep farming it content. Kind of. Because it matters to that at least. It's time for my biannual difficulty video game discussion video where I talk about it. It doesn't matter. Nothing we're going to change. Why am I doing it? If it doesn't matter and it's so easy to nail it, why are these some of the longest gym-quisition videos? 27 minutes. Well, it took so long to just say the answer. What is the answer, Jim? Tell me. Games they bloody enjoy. Are people really incapable of any sort of difficulty? Asks one superior gamer. So what if a player strives? He probably is superior. Someone mad at three-year-olds. Like, the thing is- How did he get superior? There's totally value in the fact that when you first try, you fail. Like the concept. You'd be like, well, no, it's too hard now. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no. You're supposed to figure out what you did wrong and then do it again. But learning. I doubt any of us were very good at video games at three-years-old. Maybe with the exception of Rags. That was pretty good. Rags would have been good. I was e-sporting back then. It was a great time. Isn't that a- it's a dog-ears thing though, right? Because you would have been like 21. No? No, it was just good at racing. It was just for me. Completely incapable of video games. I came out of mom with a joystick in my hand. Ready to go. Multi-plug. It just goes into any console. Point me to the noobs. People left and right. They asked, okay, what's your gamer tag? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't even know my actual name. You're telling me what does it say on your screen that you were just fragged by? It's the only way they'll get good. So what if a player struggles? Fair question. Here's a follow-up question. So what if a player doesn't struggle? So what if a player does? All right, now, next video. Did it. That's kind of funny because that's also an interesting subject. If, let's pretend, we're in a universe where all games were pretty damn easy, just everyone was completing them with real ease. And this is one game that comes out and we all have a bit of challenge on it. Just a little bit. We're all like, oh, that was a little bit tougher. We die a couple of times. That was kind of interesting. You know, because other games, I just breeze through them. I think- I was talking to Theo about this the other day. My problem with Maria before any particular move or damage levels or anything in Bloodborne is I wish he had more health. And what is that if not me saying I want it to be more difficult? It's like, why? It's like, well, because then I'll feel better when I beat her. How do you solve a problem like Maria is often proportional? And it's funny that he's like, not a problem if you struggle. It's also not a problem if you beat them. He's like, well, it can be in both extremes, right? Yeah. If a game is- We had that in Elmring a lot. We're like, man, this boss seems to be cool, but I beat him in like 30 seconds. That's weird. Yeah, and we can share stories of our experiences and be like, oh, I beat Rycard first time almost by accident. Then someone else is like, I was stuck on him for fucking 10 streams. And you're like, oh, why? It's like, well, because we bet we went to different places at different times. And at least different experiences. The way we play like the Soulsborne thing is like, oh, we're going to go explore everything. And in the case of Elmring, you can go anywhere. And then did you struggle at a different place? And then you go to the place where the game says you have to go next and quotations because the game doesn't really tell you where to go. And then it's like, oh, I just beat this guy like instantly because I'm super fucking strong already. Yeah. So I guess what I'm saying is that we certainly don't want them too easy, don't want them too hard, understandable. So there's so much to talk about. It's like, oh, this is boring conversation. It's solved. No cares. I'm really frustrated by how contextless this is because I feel like it's very obvious to say that it depends on the game. Not every game has to be giga hard. Not every game has to be giga easy. Well, it's the a wide variety. You're getting quieter. I was going to say, I've boosted you again. I took you down and put you back up. Yeah, I've got you at 140 yet. I took my volume down because people were saying I was loud. Oh, don't worry. I'll store that on my end. I keep an eye on what. OK, yeah, because then you fuck it up for everyone else. No, I'm sorry. All right, I forgive you. Discord is a difficult game. It does not have an easy mode. I was going to say, by the way, it's such a cop out because one of the most easiest and common answers to any question is, well, it depends. Yeah, that's it. It's like, OK. The one thing that depends. It depends on the credit roll. What does it depend on? Tell us, give us the answers. Seriously, so what are you really going to get mad at a baby for playing a game on its baby setting? Does that ID? I don't think that's what they're mad at babies. Does he honestly think that these people are addressing children like that? Yeah, well, no, here he doesn't remember when he started early in this video and he said, I don't even know what they want, even though this is a discussion he's been having for years now and will continue to have for years to come. And he still is not able to understand what the opposing side wants. This is the problem. It's the thing, right? He's not listening to the other side. He doesn't listen. He talks and he doesn't talk to. He talks at the Elden Ring developers. They see everyone's everyone's on a grand old time, except that three year old. They're just struggling. They're struggling on that first boss. And so like, maybe if we make like a you die 20 times and you become invincible, I could do it, which, by the way, I think is like a Mario thing. And so they pop that into elder rig. And then someone who's like desperately trying to do it and failing over and over again, the game said, have you guys ever had this sort of a favorite experiences or the game says, you seem to be having trouble? Would you like to do this? And reduce it? You're like, shut the fuck up. I am trying. It's not a fucking war. I kept doing that. It's the most condescending shit. And the best thing to say to me a bunch. And I was like, oh, God, no, I'm never going to put on the sentinel armor. Please stop offering it to me. I don't know what that that shit was so fucking annoying. The sentinel armor just go away. It was a part of when the game makes that it doesn't even say anything, but it changes the game to make things more difficult. Like it makes less enemies appear or something like that. You're like, no, no, no, I want to keep trying until I beat. I really want to actually beat this like it's supposed to. Don't change it. You can be like Chad infamous when if you're playing really well or normally be like, hey, you want to pump it up to hard? Yeah, that's better. That's better. What if I asked you but it also asked you when you did like a platforming segment and that's obviously a it's the kill when you fall down. Seems like you're having trouble. Like, yeah, no, I'm trying to figure out this platforming. The easy mode is not going to help me with that. I'm still going to die in one go. They put they put little trampolines all around the world so that you go back up. Yeah, interesting mode. We are here again in the modern world. Does that matter today to you? Does that say your teeth on edge knowing that if your point was that they wouldn't they shouldn't care about a little baby whether or not they complete it. Why would you say like, does that matter to you in the modern world as if fucking medieval times that was a concern? Like also funny because you know how it's just like. You could just do the opposite. Why do you care that they care? And then we just go on this endless route forever. Why do you care about anything? Exactly. Some people played Star Fox Zero and didn't die. If it does, why? I'll ask you again what I asked in 2016 as I'm still after all this time, no closer to understanding exactly why. See, and that's a you problem. If you can't figure out your problem. Why anybody has issues with difficulty. And he's also still using Star Fox Zero as his metric. It's like, why? Why are you still talking about how people will react to? You see, Mark, there was this one comment that mentioned it about that game that he went and found. Allegedly, there's one comment. Yeah, we didn't even get to see it at its original form. It was just like you copied it. I would have. Yeah, I would have just copied the comment and showed it because because here's the thing with Jim is I don't necessarily trust him. Yeah, his his primary argument, though, seems to be see no one cared that the Star Fox game that no one cared about had an easy mode. Now, let's talk about games people do care about. Exactly. Well, Sekiro is going to come up, I'm assuming, at some point. People are mouth over their shit outside of selfish, elitist, gatekeeping reasons. Boom, there it is. Yeah, it can't be anything else. It's so harmful. Also, about to take completely optional mode that you never have to experience. So the game isn't something you have to experience. So there, I could flip it and tell you to fuck off. And that's not necessarily the problem. Like it's not always optional. That's the problem. A lot of games will incorporate a lot of this stuff. We just like one of our Elven Ring has kind of done it. And it was unfortunate in some ways. There wasn't like more telegraph that this they may as someone will be like, that's exaggerating. But I think it's true that those things are basically like, would you like to play on an easier mode? And it's like, yes, for some people, which, you know, it's one thing. But then the other aspect is that when they are making something that everyone is like, I love this something you're making. And then they make it for a wider audience. It becomes diluted and they change a lot of different things to make it for is a different thing now. And he's like, oh, but I wanted the other thing. I think that's valid. That I think that's the problem that we're seeing in the discussion here is that it's ignoring. Sure, if we talk about just different modes, that's one thing. But what happens when an awareness of appealing to a broader audience seeps into the core design where you start thinking about designing, you know, the world in a certain way or designing the enemies or the combat system in a certain way, just because you're thinking about accessibility or not accessibility, like difficulty more so, like it can seep into more than just modes. I guess that would be where the concern would arise from. Is your post might have an easier time and not get good at the game on its default mode? So what? Why are you worried about what others think so long as they're having fun with the same game? Oh, is that I appreciate their own experience. I suppose your answer is built in. You're like, why do you care if they're having more fun? It's like, well, it's at the cost of other things, namely fun someone else's. Yeah, like you're not talking about a mod that you can just unofficially apply to the game to suit it to your taste better after it's already been made. You're talking about them making decisions to design the game around multiple difficulties. If like in the case of from software, they they are pretty famous and their audience gives them money and keeps their business going by making single difficulty mode games that are difficult. I mean, then just you believe that people who are playing on easier difficulties are depreciating the value they're going to get out of their own experience with the game. That's the steelman of what where these kind of people are coming from. And do you honestly believe that they are literally just angry that three year olds are having fun? You really think that's the case. You can't be anything else. Like, come on. You're making fun of them for like as though that's their position. But it's like nobody cares about three year olds having fun. It's the same person that and the insane aren't less talking about. So yeah. Isn't that what the why is the fun of someone who's bad at video games more valuable than the fun of someone who's good at them? Well, I suppose Jim probably be like, no, nobody's having less fun rags. Clearly, that's not the case. Someone's having less fun because all these things come from somewhere. If this is the fact that this is a discussion that we're having, clearly someone is being affected by this. Exactly. I'm going to be the hyper elitist and say that the people who are playing on the easier difficulty are the ones who are having less fun than affecting me. They are having less fun. Yeah, well, I don't necessarily disagree because I remember one of my favorite experiences in Dark Souls was when I finally be on Steam and Smo. I was like, yes, this is the bet. Same with the orphan of costs. And Maria, I remember being so fucking satisfied. If I'd if they all had, let's call it a quarter of their health, I mean, I would have had some fun. I know I know not everyone plays games the way I do, which is why it's important that, you know, there's a wide variety of different levels of difficulty in different kinds of game. But when I play something and I just kind of blunder my way through what it's presenting without thinking about it too much, that's pretty hollow. Yeah, because I think you're good. I'm having with Final Fantasy 7 remake right now. There is a lot of just, hey, walk forward until very simple battle happens going on in that game. It's very pretty. It's fun to look at, but man, little dull. And I think that we need to like because a lot of people just be like, oh, my God, grow up. People can make their own choices with what they want in the video games. It's like that is absolutely true. However, why don't we develop that a little bit more and say if they had a waypoint that was directional, sorry, optional in in Dark Souls? I think most of the Dark Souls community would be like, fuck me, a waypoint. Oh, and you'd be like, what's wrong with a waypoint? And you can choose to have it on or off. And it's like, oh, that just. Yeah, you can have it if you want. It's just like, Jesus Christ. But then if you just go further than that, right, you start knocking off all the other pathways. So there's basically just one, which is funny because a lot of people would say that about Dark Souls 3 as is, even though, like, we're not talking about, you know, you know what I mean? Like, it's you could make it so that one could build their entire experience from the get go. Like, imagine games were like that. You you spawn and then you just take a bunch of boxes or leave them blank for assistance. I was like, isn't this the best because now we can all choose our own experiences? But I mean, what do you guys think about that? Does that sound like, you know, sense? It's like not trying new foods because you know what you like, which isn't the best approach with the experience. The thing with that is, especially at the start of the game, decisions like that are completely contextless. I don't know what exactly I want out of the game. And I don't know exactly what I'm going to get out of it with each button press, even if it tells me explicitly because I just don't know what it means. And you don't know where the safest path is. I mean, I guess here's something that's worth. What if the developers don't want you to curate your experience? What if the developers want you to play it their way? Like, is that invaluable? Well, that's what I was going to get at. The thing they want to show the people to go for or a certain well, I guess they were able to use. I'd want to expand it beyond difficulty because I think what you do that, I think that this crowd would be too resistant. Let's say you're making a game. I like it because I think it's a good example. You're making a stealth game. Combat isn't viable. It's just not. You can try, but you'll always lose because they want you to play a stealth game. Is that wrong? Or should you be allowed to play it in whatever way you want? Like, should every option be viable? Yeah, I'd say that is designed to appeal to a certain I feel like that's the dev at that point, instead of saying, yeah, that's no, you have to make it viable for me to do whatever I want. Because it's just not possible for every game or every developer. It's very important to mention at this point that you play specific games. When I boot up Elden Ring, I'm booting up Elden Ring, play Elden Ring for what Elden Ring has in it. I'm not playing some generic blob of a game. I'm not going there to, you know, place my own desired experiences onto the game and there to draw an experience out of what the game presents. So games having their own sense of vision and direction from the developers is very important to making sure there's a wide variety of different kinds of experience on offer. Yeah, there's a reason that genres exist. Because I think you can see it's like, oh, this is a puzzle game. This is an FPS. This is this and this. Yeah, a lot of them are like framed into their genre via their difficulty related to the mechanics as well as just the mechanics themselves. Some games are, all right, go for it. I was going to say that a game can focus on different aspects of the genre. I was like, I kind of mentioned Plaketail. I saw someone in the chat mentioned it as well. Plaketail is a game where like Amicia has who's the protagonist has this little sling and she's basically trying to sneak around giant like French Inquisition dudes in this like fictional 14th century. So you can knock someone out if you catch them off guard. But if you get caught, you can't just sling everyone to death as they're charging you like you're going to die. And that like adds to the atmosphere of the game because you're supposed to feel like a sort of helpless 15 year old girl who just happens to be OK with one weapon and is sneaky. So what you brought up there. Difficulties can be very important for properly realising a world like that. Yeah, it's important to dark souls. That's cutting to the I guess a core point that is often neglected in these types of videos. What if it is the artistic vision of the developer to achieve a certain vibe and they design their gameplay and difficulty in support of that? Is that invalid or wrong? If it means that it is, to some extent, exclusionary? Let's take a really easy example of a game that's trying to be, you know, a hardcore survival sim kind of thing where, you know, once you have big resource scarcity and stuff and struggling to survive, but it's really easy to attain, you know, an indepletable surplus that the games, the games tone its atmosphere at everything it was going for, the fantasy it was trying to present. It's just gone to achieve what it was trying to do anymore because it's not hard enough. True to those in chat who are saying that it doesn't make sense. Everything Mark was saying, because, of course, any 14-year-old girl could beat up a French soldier. But in his defense, it is a French 14-year-old girl. So it's going to bounce us out just to be clear. And she's a ginger. So I mean, there's that. Oh, no, you're about being entertained, getting the money. That's what was that Pokemon? I mean, you said it's Quagmire. I was like, wait, Quag-sire, right? Not Quagmire. I think that's the first, like, is it Wobby? Because there's Wobba Fett, the other one, right? I thought Wobba Fett was the evolution. That's, I thought that was, isn't it Quag-sire? I only know Wobba Fett from the memes. Or maybe it's Wobba Fett. Well, no, because Wobba Fett is one, but then there's the evolution before, which I think is that one. A Boba Fett? Quag-sire, I'm pretty sure it's Quag-sire. I'm trying to figure it out. I'm all about Quagmire. That's strange that Quag-sire comes before Quagmire. Or unless, help me out, Pokemon fans. Because sire is like a father. Oh, people are saying Woopa. Is his name actually Woopa? Wooper? That's like one of your flume names. Yeah, Woopa's my favorite now. But let me look at that. Let me look at a Wooper Pokemon. Oh, Wooper. He's got the little antennas coming out of his head. I'm gonna back up. I'll show you. I'll show you, Wooper. That's Wooper. So the guy on screen is, oh, that's Wooper. Oh, that Wooper turns into Wobba Fett, is it? Wooper, he turns into Quag-sire, I think. Oh. I think that's... Got a tag. Quag-sire. So what I'm thinking about is these are different species of Pokemon. Quag-sire and Wobba Fett have nothing in common except that they're adorable blue fellows. All righty. Look at Quag-sire. Look at how happy he is. He doesn't have any relation to Squirtle. Quag-sire looks great. Look at him, though. He's such a happy critter. Look at him. I'll post it here. Look at him. Look at him. Oh. He's so happy. Like, hello, I'm going to battle you to the death. No, he's not. No, we're the ones that force them to do that. It's horrible. I'm your friend. I'm gonna help you clean up the house and I'm gonna help you cook dinner and then maybe we could go out and we could do shopping. That's what's kind of fun, actually. Yeah, Quag-sire looks great. He was such a fun guy to have. Getting your money's worth. If some find that entertainment and value in a mode where the... Imagine going to the Pokemon world and you discover all these wonderful creatures like Wooper and Quag-sire and they're all happy and everything. Then everyone's like, yeah, we make them fight. Until they do what? Yeah, we got arenas and everything. We have moves involved poison and like scratching and binding. I don't even know why they constrict you. I mean, we're fine to fight once again. Yeah, they're just knocked out. We don't want them to die. It's an endless cycle. Like, oh, what's that move that you're using there? It's like Hyper Beam. Like, what? Oh. I remember that game. I always said fight, we meant fight. They have two powers and shoot each other in fire. Yeah, when the Gyarados or the Onyx, when it body slams the little caterpillar, he's just knocked out. He's fine. He's fine. Don't worry about it. We'll do this all in tomorrow. It's fine, it's no worries. He never gets to escape this eternal torment that is his existence. They do feel a ton of pain, but they don't get injured. So, yeah, it's fine. Pain makes them stronger. They level up. They're crying, but they're fully healed. Yeah, the mental damage, you know, that's something. Yeah, yeah, it's fine. He gets experience. He'll level up one day. This is all for him. He just doesn't know it now. This is for his good. Isn't that what games are primarily about? Being entertained, getting your money's worth. No. If some find that entertainment and value in a mode where they can't die. Well, okay, Jim, what about two people? Right, just one, one. One of them is like, oh man, do I love a challenge? The other one's like, oh man, do I not love a challenge? So now what are we supposed to do? What are we catered for? What does it really fucking matter? Especially in this industry where it's getting harder and harder to find. What does it not matter then, I guess? Like, what does it matter? I don't still manage to die. All of these arguments totally reflect back, like all the time. Exactly, I was about to say that. People don't, when people say that why can't you just let people have fun thing, they never think about it. They don't think about applying that to anything else. I'm so glad you just mentioned that. Whoever was playing as our nabbit just died. They fell into a bottomless pit. So even this accessibility, easy. Stop saying it. So even this easy mode is still viably, you can fail. So maybe that's gonna kill by enemies, it seems. Yeah, maybe that's not good enough. Maybe we need to make it so all the platforms have like little step stools of like every gap has a platform. Fall deaths are not an in common occurrence in a Mario game. And everyone's had that friend that's like, that they do that, that they're like, fuck, this game is so shit. You're like, yeah, the game is shit. Mm-hmm. If only you didn't design it with these pits that you don't fall into. Boy, the pits, man. That should be fair. That pit does come out of nowhere and it does sneak up on you. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Some games that aren't trying to fuck you over, psychologically manipulating people into spending more money. Okay. All right. Calm the fuck down. I feel like I've missed something. I disagree with the premise of being, oh, in a landscape where it's just so hard to find good games. I'm like, fuck off. Damned capitalism. Calm down. Look, there's good games everywhere. It's the fucking golden age of games. Fuck it. You got so many good options. You can't focus on the bad ones and say, oh, the good games got no. There's a smorgasbord of good games. Just don't buy AAA games for the most part. You can spend more than ever. And the amulet is a working better than ever. So, you know. You can spend the next year playing nothing but free to play games that are good even. Like there's a lot of good free games that you can play for free out now. Getting a PC and playing just the free for free. That was like viable back in like 2010. Like I remember being like, sweet. They got access to all these ones when I first got into proper PC gaming from console gaming. Like with the intention of making it my primary. I was like, oh, let's play some games. Like, you know, I think I played League more than anything else just because, yeah, it's pretty versatile game and it's completely free. That's a little back once in a while. That's silly little game. I still played it once in a while. How does the drink carry on? How does the conversation of difficulty in video games apply to multiplayer games? I have no clue how you can. Complicatedly. They have. They have what? Well, I can fight in games. Maybe like an example of that. There's a lot of discourse in the fighting game communities of games having prohibitively high execution barriers for new players to get into them. Oh, yeah. But then having people off the surface. I don't play them much so I can't say either way. Well, I think the last fighting game I tried was Tekken 7, I think. And I was like, okay, I'm just gonna fuck around for a little bit. I was like, okay, now I'm gonna see what are the combos. And then I saw all the combinations that are available. I was like, as soon as I remember the first two inputs, there's like 17 more. I was like, you know what? I think I'm just gonna not play these anymore because I just can't be bothered to learn all these combos. Tekken or Virtua Fighter combos are a full-time job if you want to learn them. I feel like they got harder and harder as time went on. It gets really bad if you arrive at the game late. It gets really bad if you arrive at the game late because all of the people who didn't really care for it or all of the new people have moved on and the only people left playing are the elite. Yeah. I remember one time playing Mortal Kombat online. I was like, I don't know what this is. Absolutely boring. I was like, I think I'm just not gonna play online. Yeah, you get juggled. Because this is the thing. Difficulty balancing within multiplayer would just be skill floor and skill ceiling, right? If everybody only has to press A and a laser fires and then you win, it's just like, well, this game's not gonna be very interesting to anybody, is it? Because that's it. Then you have a game that's like incredibly high skill ceiling to the point where you have no chance ever if someone knows what they're doing or whatever. So that'll be how they balance it at that point. And plenty of multipliers get ruined by going in either direction. Then it goes to hacking, destroys all old games. Oh, yeah. I was a team fortress to have this problem at the moment or had the problem. Titanfall 2 got kind of wrecked by, I think it was like DDoS attacks happening on their servers. It was really messed up. But there is like a mod that called the Nostar Launcher you can use that actually fixes it. Didn't the community do that? So they actually get some attention by the devs, like, hey, we have some issues here. Can you help us? That was kind of the rumor. I don't remember all the specifics about it. Respawn made a bunch of videos on it. And the crux of it, though, was that it was people that were attacking Titanfall 2 and Apex, preferably so that, wow, God, what's the, or Respawn? Respawn would actually start paying attention to the problems in those games and fixing it. But it was eventually fixed by some community modders who made this Nostar Launcher that you can get as a mod for TF2, Titanfall 2, not team fortress. Oh, by the way, Duxos 3 servers are back online after 271 days or something. Yeah, damn. Yeah. And now the other games are supposed to follow soon, apparently, so that's, that was kind of interesting how long that took. I'm really interested in front of technical standpoint what the fuck happened there. Hey, what's here? Hey, what's going on? Hello, hello. What are you doing? We haven't seen you since Elden Ring, that was it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. Hey, good. Everyone that was on it. Yeah, I think it's Sekiro actually. Sekiro, yeah. He's hardly talked about Sekiro at all. He's going to get there, I'm sure of it. It's going to happen. Well, if you want to just use that link for Tia, you can join us in this adventure. The Watchtogether. It has above the Pokemans. Scroll up, you idiot. I'm scrolling. We need to make Discord more accessible. Need a little character to say. Just use the scroll bar, right there. Maybe for Tia just needs to get good at Discord, and that's it. Yeah. Now we're still ripping into our new guest. Precious blue man. Grindy are making games less fun, all to squeeze extra cash out of people who have already bought the damn game. OK, this is just all completely unrelated. So whatever, games can be really predatory and annoying. Cool videos on that. You're complaining that some character is stronger than they should be in some narrative, in some movie. And you're like, you know, an environment where they're making terrible movies. We should be thankful that this character is. And you're like, what are you doing? I think he's trying to frame it as if games are primarily designed to be super difficult to force you to buy DLC that makes it easier. But that's not a super common thing. I mean, I suppose it happens. I don't think I've seen a single game with that strategy. Usually it's they're really grindy. And then, you know, you want to buy things to reduce the grind. Devil May Cry 5, I think you could buy. No, not at all. Oh, what was the thing? No, no, but there was something you could buy that was like a revive thing that you could even buy. Those micro transactions in the game, they are worthless. Oh, OK. Fair enough. They are worthless. I don't know what to put them in. Because I recently booted up Devil May Cry 5 again. And I got like, I don't know, six of those revive things for free, and I don't even know why. Maybe to get you hooked on them. It's it's weird. It feels like a corporate lizard walked in and just, you know, said, you know, this micro transaction thing is cool. Put some in, but just non-committally. It's really weird because, like I said, they're completely worthless. I don't know why I would ever buy any of those. Capcom in general is very not good at implementing micro transactions for the most part. Maybe the corporate people said, you got to put micro transactions in, and the devs were like, OK, didn't tell us how they didn't want to write in the game. Also, I watched this is like three second clip after I joined, and I don't like this guy. I just heard his voice like. And yes, and also you have a bit of Jim Stiller before, right? Jim Stiller has been around forever. I don't know. I don't I don't watch that much. Wow. You want my videos for tier about Dr. Universe, Multiverse? Not yet. I've been gigabit. It's like halfway through that before I had to come on here. Yeah, his name is. I haven't even stopped yet. I've just been busy and now I have to do this. Wow. Yeah. This poopy stream, 200 comes in a row or something. That's a lot of comes. That is a lot of comes. That's a lot of comes. And that's a lot of work. It's a lot of comes from me. Yeah, you see, Chad agrees with me. Wow. Three second judgment and everyone is like, yeah, you're right. I guess he's like sort of like the British movie Bob of video games, video game, Jim. Yeah, kind of, yeah. Oh, movie Bob, he just he has his thing, which is getting really mad at the triple A, you know, blah, blah, blah, microtransactions, blah, blah, blah, which, yeah, fair enough. But yeah, every time he steps outside of that, he says microtransactions are bad. He gets that one right and doesn't let you forget about that. By the way, everybody was like, I predicted it. I called this out really early. It's like, yeah, sure. Fine. Really fucking matter, especially be fair, though. The second it happened, I still remember it being dead space three. That was the one was like, oh, no, no, take it back. They're like, hey, there look like you need some more scrap if you want to buy a little bit of protocol is going to be good. Give me a kind of details. You're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's only after I have you guys seen the the game play of Kalista protocol. Yeah, I haven't seen that yet. I had a friend who gave me the pretty good. I hope it is because I'm excited. I'm a big space fan. I'm really looking forward to the remake because so far it's looking really damn good. Between that Kalista protocol and Atomic Heart got a gameplay that looked pretty neat and me. Yes, it had a release date. I've had it on my Steam wish list for like four years. I wasn't aware of the game at all. I thought for the first time it's like, that looks that's pretty cool. It's really it came out like and got revealed years ago. And then I guess it was in like weird development territory. Got a publisher and now it's finally going to be like a thing. So I hope that's really good because that looks super cool and bio-shocky. But yeah, yeah, Lies of Pea looks Russian nuclear bio shock. I mean, yes, the name is funny. Yes, we will be we'll be hoping you and I both to stream that. Stream of Scorn stream Kalista protocol. It's born. Yeah, plenty of fun. No, no, no, stop, stop. Jim specifically said that it's really difficult to find. I guess technically they're not out yet, but they are difficult to find because they're not out. It's like, damn it. Yes, fair. Actually, in this industry, where it's getting harder and harder to find fun games that are just fun games that aren't trying to fuck you over. Isn't that your fault? I'm sorry, that's a lie. That's a fucking lie. There's a lot of very fun games that don't fuck. I refused 2019. Try 19. Yeah. My 2019 game of the year. Anybody who's job it is, it will make her try five, I tell you. It robbed it. Anyone who's job it is to play video games is not in a position of saying every single one I play is a horrible predatory mess, like, no, that means you have horrifically bad taste. I'll tell why it's came out 2019, you fuckface. Whoa. Excellent game. To be fair, I still haven't played that, though. I do have an old steam deck. I honestly have it with me everywhere. I have the best recommendation. Honestly, that's a really good recommendation to to receive. Play it immediately or I'll hurt you. Yeah, yeah. What else came out? Untitled Goose game, people love that game. That's just a fun game where you fuck around. Metro Exodus on Steam, if you preordered it or on Epic, if you didn't. Let's the most came out. But that's that's actually that can be a bit tough, not not just fun. But that is a very good game as well. Well, yeah, we are looking for games that are because the just like are so difficult to find games that are predatory. It's like, no, you're looking for games that are predatory. That's your job. Yeah, like part of your job is reporting on the predatory practices. So you're kind of like biased in favor of finding them and being aware of them. And they'll make it because like your circles and stuff. Meanwhile, there's going to be people who are just playing every game and reviewing them, and they're probably much more chill. They're probably like, yeah, this year wasn't so bad. There's some pretty good ones, pretty bad ones. That's probably the regular take every exit. We've talked before, but games seem to be in a better position than. Well, better than TV and movies, at least I would say so. And that's not even to say that like movies are in some awful, awful place. They're not great. But the main what we usually talk about is like all of Disney's stuff doing real bad. Yeah. Which is where I see him came out 2019. I heard very good things about that. I still know what it's about, but I heard it's really fantastic. So yeah, I could go on and on. There's so many games I've probably forgot. I'm just looking for like random lists right now. And I've already seen it was an insane year for games. Really good games. Slay the Spire, that's still getting updates to this day. I'm pretty sure. I like Slay the Spire a lot. They've wrapped it now. They're done with it. Yeah, Slay the Spire is great. I've dumped so many hours into it. Especially when you get the crazy runs. I wish I was streaming out of a run with a poison dude where just like after turn one, everything was already dead just because of all the combos and reductions of price. I was just like, this is fun on the burn. But hey, Slay the Spire sounds like something from the gamer, comma, Sutra. And here. Psychological people into spending more money, making games grindier, making games less fun, all to squeeze extra cash out of people who have already bought the damn game. The game industry itself is worth M. I feel like this is all. This is really great. Well, I feel like it's a baggage that has to do with the conversation. I think what I'm finding really odd is it's it seems to be conflating. Well, a lot of what is making the games successful in terms of their monetization model is through difficulty. Not really. A lot of the model is just getting people like a lot of the model, especially when you look at like multiplayer games, is creating like an ecosystem that puts a lot of pressure on you to buy into the system so that you can continue to be part of the community and engaged in like what is happening right now, where this is the cool skin that everybody wants to have. And this is like the signal of status in the game. And then, of course, the next battle pass comes out and there'll be a new signal of status. And I mean, in single play games, I'm not sure how many examples I can think of off the top of my head in recent years, where they were arbitrarily harder just to milk you for money for microtransactions. What exactly would we be citing here? And if you have any examples, it would be good if they weren't like you didn't have Nintendo footage on screen because Nintendo doesn't really do a bad one to target for this. But maybe the visuals aren't supposed to be for that. You know, they're what's being shown here is the easy mode for one of the Mario games. This is not one of the mobile ones either. Like they have Super Mario Run and Mario Kart, whatever it's called on mobile. And those apparently have really predatory microtransactions. But I I feel like that's not Nintendo's bread and butter. But the thing is, is that it's never difficulty. It's just progression. You just make it take longer to unlock everything. It's not that you need a requisite skill level to do it. You just need time that most people don't have, generally. Yeah. Yeah. They think it's incredibly grindy. Yeah. So I wouldn't make an appeal to it wouldn't be an appeal. Yeah, I don't follow it. I'm not sure what you'd be appealing to. It goes for saying it feels a little bit disingenuous, too, because if you took people saying, like, I want it more difficult. When are they ever referring to like a want of you could fight Goliath and he's got all these mechanics or you can fight him 10 times in a row before the door unlocks. You're like, well, that that's not that's not what anyone. Nobody wants that. And it's like, yeah, grinding. And it's like, nobody's referring to that when they say more difficult. Nobody. Also, Jim, dear Jim, what if what if spending money on microtransactions gives me more fun? Why are you trying to take that away from me? Oh, wow. Yes, even that's when Jim would be like, you don't understand drags. Like I think that Jim would appeal like you're being manipulated. And it's like, that's interesting that we can sort of talk about people's mental states and what they're missing out on in terms of their approach. So when you say, like, I can legitimate. Well, I was just going to say, does it not reflect with, like, if you make everything easy mode is just press A over and over again and you'll get through all of Dark Souls. It's like, could I not appeal to them, maybe being they they think that's what they want, but they don't want it. Could I say that? Or is that going too far of across the line? I would just legitimately say there are games that I like and I think are good games. They have microtransactions. I pay for them. It makes me it lets me have more fun. I enjoy the game more and I'm not being manipulated. You know, it's games exist, too. So I've always said they're killing floor. I think the game was pretty good price for what it is. And then I was happy to buy extra bits in microtransactions for it. I don't think we've ever had like a full podcast talking about the nature of microtransactions, but like I don't consider them one hundred and ten percent evil. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's always a matter of how you implement them. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I think they can be good. They can be bad. Yeah. What's the entry price for the game? What what cost for each transaction? Are you looking at versus what you get for it? Like there's there's a lot to talk about. It's not just all bad for good. Yeah. What happened was I was about to ruin it for everything in a good way, I guess, by being like five. What was it seven hundred pound to get accelerationism? It was one lock beta earlier to pay like seven hundred dollars. Some stupid shit. Oh, yeah. It was the price of things and also the fact that you got very distinct objective combat advantages by buying like what? Like star cards, I think they were called. That just made your ships turn faster and shoot better and do more all sorts of. Blaster now does five hundred percent damage. What battlefront two signal was the battlefront two signal the end of game changing microtransactions because now it's all cosmetic, which I don't know if everyone they ruin it for everybody, but they've also kicked off a trend that I dislike greatly. And I think I've seen now with Call of Duty Warzone just seems to be like this hodge podge of different styles. Very, very exciting deal. And absolutely no consideration for like continuity or anything at all. Like it's it's it's it's just shit thrown to the wall because the only goal is to get a fortnight. Well, yeah, exactly. Because I mean, Fortnight's the model. You've got everything in there. We love Fortnight. Wait, wait, you didn't buy the the ninja skin when you played Fortnight. Don't you love the blue hair? I'm pretty sure that because I remember I played that game when it first came out like the Battle Royale mode. But how many years ago was that like four years ago? Imagine if I played it again, it would be indistinguishable to me. I played not indistinguishable, unrecognizable. I played like the alpha or beta for the original game that it was supposed to be, which is like a building zombie defense game. Yeah, I was like, oh, and I ever played it again. This is neat. And then apparently I heard that it got resurrected ironically as it has a PUBG clone. And now it's the most popular game in existence. Well, well, well, if it isn't, John. John plays his master chief in Fortnight. He knows about video games. If you follow that, watch the other link and join us with your seminal chat about difficulty in video games. On my call, yeah, difficult subject. That's the name of the video. That's the title of the. You bastard. I totally stole the idea. Yeah. Predatorious. I heard you guys were talking about microtransactions and shit. I agree, it's not always that bad. But I remember like when I first loaded up Halo Reach and whenever you had like a new there was like a new DLC map that you didn't have. There'd be like a big gold star next to it. And I was just like, oh, no, this is ugly. And it's like yellow right against like the blue traditional interface of like Halo. And it's just like so like visually distracting and it takes advantage of people's like OCD, I guess, to just like want to get rid of that big ugly star. It's like, oh, I'll just buy it like I don't like stuff like that where it like deliberately clashes with the the, you know, the visual style of it to like annoy you. It's like having that constant notification thingy on your phone or whatever. Like if there's a notification, you just want to click it to get rid of it. Even yeah, like actually do whatever that notification says. They actually do this in mobile games these days, where it is like, oh, wait, that's something like a pop up thing. And you click on it, it's like, hey, here's your here's your sale. It's like, fuck off. And then it doesn't go away. Here's a banner that's taking up the last 10% of your screen and you can pay five dollars to get rid of it. I mean, South Park did the thing where it was a stand was playing a mobile game. And as he was laying in bed, the phone would just buzz off. It's like, hey, buddy, you've got new friends. Get like, hey, buddy, you want to come back to play the game? Canadian microtransaction. But and then and then they gave him free like, oh, you've got 1000 free Canada coin. And then you start playing and then he spends like a million dollars. So I don't I don't mind it if there's like a separate dedicated page, maybe somewhere just labeled store and you go there. And if you want to get something, you can remember when write the whole situation with the beta costing a bazillion dollars that pride and accomplishment thing. It's still mean to this day. I promise you live and well. I'm pretty sure it's like the most disliked comment in the history of red. It is as far as I know. Oh, fucking stupid. Whoever said that must feel so old forever. That was also the event that gave us the term surprise mechanics as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that was isn't that when they were there was like a legal thing. And then they they tried it as a defense in a in a legal sense to explain why they're not gambling. Yeah, it's not gambling. It's a surprise mechanic. Jesus, I'm working way too hard to make games less fun. The last thing we all need to do as a collective is make games less fun for each other. I don't want to get the whole fucking point is that people are finding it less fun to have games that are more accessible for other people. OK, here's a question. If it's baffling, I care about this person's experience. Why do you care that I care about their experience? How am I depleting their fun? Well, they can't play the game and you beat it because it's so hard. I just wonder about the idea of practicing and getting better is something that he maligns and mocks. If we're actually going to go literally can be it. We're going utilitarian on this shit. If I said to Jim, making it easier will allow all 11 to play the game. But 10 people will now find it a lot less fun. But one person will find it more fun. Now what do we do? Do we like this is what I mean about conflating the accessibility and difficulty in the satisfaction of defeating challenge. These are all just been thrown up into one big tornado and then being like shut up all of you. Everyone's having fun. It's like you're not even listening to anybody. Yeah, if you can always transpose the challenge down to your specific level, when have you ever actually accomplished anything? Because did what you do was pick the right settings for you? Or did you actually complete something that was out of your comfort zone? And how would you ever know if you're constantly just trying to hone in the difficulties to specifically what you can manage? Just poisoning the well of the discussion with this. Oh, Jim, Jim doesn't like it when people poison the well, guys. Asking for an easy way in a Japanese made game is the director front of Japanese culture. We're overcoming extreme challenges the way of life. Why do you hate their culture? This person isn't real. I was about to say like this is they're doing the same thing Jim is doing now. They're like hyper. They've run it off into this direction. This absurd, instead of just being like, hey, some of us like challenge, right? Well, why are you putting him on the screen? Come on. Does Jim believe in cultural appropriation? He's an insufferable lefty. Does he think that cultural appropriation is like a thing that exists and it's real? Probably if he does, then there might be from his perspective, a valid argument in saying that if you want a game developer from a certain culture to remove elements of that culture from their game, which might include difficulty elements, then that you are appropriating the culture of someone else. That's probably not appropriate. And that's just being a dick to their culture, right? Just ignoring their culture or ruining their culture or something like that. Something along those lines. The anger over easier modes that already exist seems to run counter to a very popular argument against an easy mode in Dark Souls or Cuphead or Sekiro. It would betray the developers. What's interesting, too, is that all these games that he mentions are generally very beloved and revered and respected. You know, the Dark Souls games, Cuphead, a lot of difficult games have a sort of kind of reverence to them. There's this respect that comes from, you know, discussions on these games and in beating them in particular is a very respectable thing. And these seem to be the games that unless unless someone randomly fucking talks about Star Fox Zero for the first time ever, these seem to be the games that people talk about. So these are really good ones. Stirling does think that the creator's vision is like not a legitimate point then. Well, because, yeah, I was going to say this is a different bullet in the gun. As far as I'm concerned, this is never more than what they are. Well, it seems like it's about to be mocked, the sentiment. Well, we'll see again. But yeah, this is totally valid to me. You should not. It's the same thing as writing. You should not force the writer or the developer to make the game you want that of whatever their intention is as the artist. Their thing could be shit, but I don't know you should force them to do something you want. That seems fucked. Well, I don't have to create a game that appeals to everybody. And in fact, I mean, trying to do that is quite difficult. Well, you end up with something that's shit, usually. That's like the whole it's when they say everyone likes it, but nobody loves it. Well, I guess it's it's it's complex. You look at something like Mario. I'd say that's a game that broadly appeals to a lot of people. But but again, that's not everybody. And I'm more so going to like an extreme of literally every single player you try and like it gets stamped down into like a sludge. Because even with Mario, plenty of people are like, yeah. Well, I think Theo said it earlier and I agree. I think that I think that there's a lot that you can do in video games that that isn't achievable if the overall goal of everybody is to make games and appeal to everybody. I think that certain mechanics just aren't going to emerge unless we have games that are appealing to niche interests or niche play styles or audiences. Yeah, I don't think it's. I think I would have a lot of potential in a medium. I a shudder to think of all of the games that I adore that are niche games and what they would become if they were made more generally acceptable. Well, to be fair, I think Theo, you believe the elder ring what we get. Yeah, elder rig is the end result of that process. Yeah, but it depends on the mechanic, though, right? Because like on on paper, a mechanic can seem a certain way. Like a lot of MMOs have like stuff you need to farm, like reputation or whatever, like certain currencies, which on paper might sound like, yeah, this will be a bit tedious, but it will be rewarding in the end. But then when you actually put in the game, and quality assurance or the community tested out, then it either turns out to be way more tedious than they thought it would be. And the community hates it and like people literally stop playing over it. Or it's the opposite than everyone just like browse through the content and does it like in a day or so. Like some things you have to have tested, even though it like sounds good on paper. Yeah, there's there's a reality of like when they release demon souls, for example, if they could then go back two years after two years of being out and do it again, they'd likely change a shit ton from how people reacted to their choices, which arguably is the same for everything that's made, I guess. No, I love all those souls games. But like I talked about this before, I'm terrible at all of them. But I would never campaign for like like an easy mode in that game just because because I think there there is something to the difficulty that's part of that game's intense atmosphere that it has. It feels dangerous because and it's it's not even just hard for the sake of hard. Like it's or not like it's not cheaply designed difficulty. Like they they're really carefully planted out and there's a way to beat everything. And like you respect those developers for putting that effort in. And yeah, I just alerted that difficulty has that, you know, video game danger has. Yeah. And it and it colors a lot of my video game experiences over the years, you know, the idea of. But in plus, a lot of it has to do with familiarity. Resident Evil 4 is a game that I've I like to think I've damn near mastered, I've played it so much. I love that game to death. But the first times I went and played it, it was the first emirated game I ever bought. GameStop let me buy it when I was 17. Oh, you want to be a fake hat? I had a friend of mine and I was on his shoulders and we got a big coat and we walked in and I said, I said, I would like a Resident Evil 4, please. And I am 21. Yes, but you guys have to be 21 to buy emirated games in the state. No, that was my no, that was the lie in my joke. Oh, OK, because I thought 17 was the age. I was like, I don't know, you're just there. You go. Earthbound hero, that's danger. That's that's that's meta danger. Nobody else picked up on me, say it a fake beard and a fake hat. What is my fake hat? A fake hat looks like a fake hat. Yeah, a fake hat. There you go. Wait a second, you you put on this hat. It's fake. This hat's not real. That's not real. You just take it off. To have a sausage or something. It's like, well, it's pretty fucking funny. Are you two seventeen year olds in a trench coat? No, no. Ten feet tall. No, a two twenty one year old. It's just two voices saying no, like one after another. Yeah. Yeah. Shut up. This hat is right off. It's not even real at the bottom. Sneezing, so you flew up into the ceiling. So would you say, because I was I was saying, you know, resident evil for when I first played it a few times, it was like legitimately difficult, but I like that about it. It was a game that had like, oh, it's on the pedestal of difficult games. And it's there if I want to play it. And I did a lot. But what if people can't play games because they're too scary? Is that a kind of difficulty to overcome? I'm glad you brought that up, Braggs, because I was thinking if the perspective is, let's say you made a game and the difficulty, like John said, is in service of an intense atmosphere. If that isn't valid, why would the art style be valid? Couldn't you shouldn't there be like an option to make everything super colorful and bright if it's like if you don't super high contrast. So I guess we're pushing how much should a player be allowed to change their experience? How much should they be allowed to do that themselves? Yeah. And how far should it extend? Should it extend to the graphic? Should it extend to the writing? Should it extend to the characters? How spooky it is? I feel like this game is really scary. I can't play this game because of how scary it is and how, you know, I'm just I'm just a chicken or I'm I'm I get scared of it. So I can't play it. They need to remove these elements from the game to make it more accessible to me. Yeah, I imagine. And I tell you, I feel like the first bracket is dev's intentions. And then if we want to delve deeper, we'll try and find out, like, if we can figure out some, you know, I'm trying to go further than depends, but it is kind of a depend situation on on all these different details in every form and part of the execution. Because again, I want to come back to the whole the mainstreamifying of from softwares games that they've gone over time. Also, you know, a fucking fantastic example of this is in a slightly connected way is what happened. No, tell me. Amnesia. Who? Oh, you can. Oh, no. We got so much because it's name. The artists were like, we're going to make something we think is great. Damn, what? Everyone says they desperately want when that didn't work out. They were like, all right, fine, we'll give you what you want. And it was horrible. Like they went with what they thought would be successful. And then it was sludge, like the worst kind. Was so bad was shit. Fuck rebirth. Yes, I hate that. It's making me want to play. What was it being another French woman? Ah, I got rebirth and a humble bundle one. So I feel like I got to play it just to see what you guys mean. I mean, I have an extra copy because of humble bundle and I'm upset. Mock mock dark descent and soma before. Yes. OK, good. OK. Yeah. To give you an idea, the devs completely fallen apart to the point where they they've made the worst jumpscare mechanic in the history of horror games, like the most cheap we're just all in that way. Wait, wait, wait. So that's my point. Surprise mechanics. Well, so we were like intensely fucking complaining about them. Every player is. Well, I've seen like this, like one or two reviews are like, oh, it's kind of interesting that these jumpscare you once per 10 seconds. Infinitely, that's kind of interesting. Oh, I like Star Fox Zero. The devs eventually dampened that shit from what I know. But at first they said, oh, they're not jumpscares. They fear flashes. Yeah, they call them fear flashes. Flashes are different. I remember the most embarrassing thing I've heard someone say about their game. Yeah, own your shit that can down the road. Now, I guess it was technically the second patch for that game because the first patch of Amnesia rebirth included the exe file. But the second update for that game, the first proper update, they toned down the fear flashes. How do you make that first install? The game didn't have an exe file. No, it was. It was an oversight. Yeah, well, yeah, that's all right. But I'm sorry, how do you how do you have a whole team of devs that are familiar with video games that play test a game with that shit in it? And they like, well, yeah, this is ready to go. People will love that. Yep. So it's like a beating. It's like a beating afterwards. Like, Frank, did you that you put out like a post about those those jumpscares? Like, did you tell the gamers they were wrong again? No, it's no problem. It's like, oh, what's your right? I just told them it's not we called the fear flashes. It's like, you did you did fucking what? That's fucking brilliant, Frank. I'm so good. It changes everything. Frank, you'll promote. I don't might. Frank, why did why didn't we guys call them something else? If you call them something else, they're not that thing anymore. They're not possible. It was a scare jumps. Yeah, jumpscares. Is it possible it was a 4D chess move just that they would never have to make another amnesia game and they could just do new stuff like so. If they put out a miracle after it, sure, fine. I need this alone in a dark game like right now because it has the writer of so yes, Michael Hedberg, yes. Oh, OK. And I'm just like, where have you come back and never leave? You've been doing like you've been fucking around in need for speed. We need you back in survival horror. What have you been doing? Guys, they're surprise mechanics. No, stop it. You're upsetting me. I like the idea that you tell them as a play test, like, oh, my game got bugged out. There's like a fucking jumpscare that was like locked in and just kept repeating over and over. And they're just lucky, like, uh. Isn't that fucking scary, though? They sustained flash. You say that's a bug. You're like, yeah, that's a bug, right? You're like, sure, I'll go for that for our next game. Why don't you take the day off? You're a Frank. Yeah, they talk to the devs. They're like, maybe we shouldn't make it once per one second. Ten seconds is probably the way to go. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, fix it. Popular argument against an easy mode in Dark Souls or Cuphead or Sekiro, it would betray the developer's artistic vision. From software, very careful. Do you think that's an interesting argument? Well, yeah, that's what we're here for now, is to figure out what the nobody. He said it in a silly voice. Everyone else is wrong. It makes me hate him because, I mean, this man is the reason video games will never, like, go anywhere. Yeah, we get less unique than these ones. Artistic vision in a video game. Yeah, because they're all hunting to become more viable when it's like, no, just be great. And I know that sounds pretty disgusting. I hate it. I can't tell if he's arguing against that justification or if he's just doing the Jim Sterling poison the well thing and just trying to say that we're using that as an excuse. But really, we just want to keep out the people who are bad. Mahler would never want to take away the artistic vision of Multiverse of Madness. No, but there wasn't one. They did. Genuinely, as much as I think Michael Waldron is a terrible writer, he didn't really get to write a lot by the looks of things. We probably didn't even see what his best work is there. We probably saw one of his worst possible works, but I'm not confident he's going to be making miracles. I just, from how he described the fact that he was like, he's like he like happily describes the fact that the script was thrown out. And then day one, he's working on the script for a film. They are filming like he's like, woo, this is like, dude, that's terrible, absolutely terrible. You get commissioned to write a script that they're building the sets for right now. But what do you mean? Oh, no. Don't you build a space that takes place in an alley? We got an alley set. Could you do that for us, Michael? Yeah, then you do. And then they're like, throw that out, Michael. We're doing something different. No, no, no, the alleys are last year. We built a zoo. I mean, we didn't go to a zoo. We built a zoo. We did a writer scene that takes place in a zoo. What animals are in the zoo? Like, we don't know, Michael. We don't know yet. We're still getting the animal. We got a giraffe and three zebras and a cockatoo. That might be. Write a scene that has a giraffe, three zebras and a cockatoo. There might be some badges. Are there badges in zoos? Is that something? We've got to throw some badges in there. Michael, we bought badges. You got to write a scene with badges in it. Put the badges in the beginning. That's what they say first. Oh, God, the badges died. We need you to write out the badges. Michael, they all died. It was a disease. Don't forget it. We'll tell the guys in the Disney CGI dungeon to CGI out the badges. Michael, you didn't throw the badges away, did you? We can CGI in the badges easily, but we'll be fine. We found a vet. He resuscitated the badges. Write the badges back into the scene. You know, Michael, we don't need. We're just going to CGI the whole zoo. It's fine. Don't you worry about it. We'll CGI the dialogue. Bill, that's what they'll do next. Can we just CGI a script? Like, I guess technically, if you write it on a word document, it's CGI. Oh, my. They'll, like, have the actors standing on their marks and then CGI their lips moving like that Wamba AI program. Michael Waldron, what was it like to write? Maldives and Madness. And he's just like, um, yeah, yeah, it was electric. The badges. Developers, artistic vision from software had a very careful game balance in mind when it designed Sekiro and therefore we cannot argue with them ever on the. That's not the you can argue argument. That's like, I don't like the way you did a thing, but that doesn't mean you could then go, excuse me, change it for me. How dare you? I wish for you to do this now. Ah, this is going to be annoying to listen to. Why did it work or why did it not work? You know what game reviews are? Otherwise, they'd all be the same because everyone would do this. Yeah. With them ever on the modes they do or don't choose to have in their games. That's how criticism apparently works. But sure, whatever, it's about artistic integrity. It's about respecting what the developers want. But if you decide that it's going to be wrong, why are you saying that? It's dismissing the whole concept of a person choosing to put things. It's like, I want to see Iron Man in the next model, the veg is like he's dead, though. You have to respect it. Like, no, put him in. I want him. But the next movie is called Flumpy Man. Not Iron Man. It's really funny that Jim talks about your games this way. Oh, yeah, this is the wackiest fucking game. Imagine, imagine this worked. Like, we all played the new fucking Mario Kart and all of us are like, I want Waluigi to be the main character. Why do we say that? Oh, I know, that's one of the references. It's a mainstream request. But they don't capitulate. They don't give you a year of Waluigi, OK? So no longer you get mad constantly screaming at AAA devs and then he says this. Yeah. You want games to be sludge, but with no microtransactions? Is that? I guess so, yeah. Is what? But if you decide that's going to be your argument, you can no longer get mad when developers do add easy modes because, you know, respecting the developers. OK, when do we when do we get upset that a developer releases a game with an easy mode? This is the thing. This is oftentimes an IP argument. Like, if you release a brand new thing and it's just like there's an easy mode in it, none of us are going to be able to complain with any conception of not having played. But when when you're like, ah, Dark Souls is well known for this particular experience and you're paying them for that experience to get it again. They're like, it's different this time. You're like, oh, like, how is that not easy to understand? Like, it's the most simplest shit. Your fund gets reduced so that other people's fund might increase. Like, how have you determined, yes, but their increase is better than your decrease? Like, oh, OK. And also, we value that increase more. Like, it's just the fun that someone has from an easy mode is worth more than the fund someone has from the difficulty of the game. His vision and all that. Respecting creative vision seems to also go against the popularity of mods. So you can't. No. That's not an idea. Those were not the same. Popularity of what did he say? Mods. No one installs Macho Man, Randy Savage as dragons in Skyrim and says, you know what? Fuck the dragon in Skyrim. I can't believe they fucking put dragons in Skyrim. It needs to be Macho Man, Randy Savage. And no one that installs that mod would win the game. Who the fuck said they were respecting the original vision by playing the game with Rat Macho Man, Randy Savage, Dragon? No one. They know what they're doing. They know that. Yeah, James. We're not saying this game needs to be changed for me. They're saying, oh, I can install this mod. It'll be fun little time. And that's OK. I want to change this game for me. Nor do I have a problem with anyone installing a invincibility mod into a From Software game if that's what they want to do. My issue is with them saying, From Software, you need to put an invincibility mode in this game for me. Yes. Exactly. It's the same thing as if they said that. I actually do have a problem. I don't want to mod Macho Man, Randy Savage, Dragon. I'm not installing it. I want them to make the next game to just simply have that in it. And if they don't, it's bad. It'll be like, that's retarded. If you want to mod it so the game is easier, your friends might judge you. But I mean, I guess you can do that. It's just that this is kind of where we're at. Like, it's the difference between forcing the developers to do it through like social pressure versus mods. Why would you even bring mods into the conversation? Community altering the game. I almost think like, would this whole thing not be an issue if all consoles had as easy access to mods as PCs? Like, if you could just say, OK, I'm on PlayStation and I don't want to fight millennia and be able to die. So I'm going to mod it so that I'm invincible. Like, if that could happen, would these people still complain about not having easy mods in-game? Yeah. Also, James does remind me, apparently, Jim defends the artistic vision of the last of us too. Yeah, that. I think it's as simple as the artistic vision is relevant when it comes to, I guess, what you would, what you would in a very shallow way describe as more overtly artistic, you know, like gameplay is an artistic vision. Yeah, exactly. When it comes to artistic vision, right, when they go, this enemy has 100 health, he could have had 50, but we've made it 100, which is harder. You don't go like, that's in congruent with something else. Meanwhile, last of us two, the majority of our issues with that game where it's inconsistencies. And what I mean by that is when you say it's their artistic vision to say that, you know, this is the scenario X, but it's also not X. Like, that doesn't even, that's just you have two visions that compete with each other now. So what am I supposed to, how is that in any way? You know, changing an enemy's health to be easier to kill in a later vision of the game isn't incongruent with the previous one. Not even necessarily incongruent with the game itself is a different enemy, but like, these are two very, very different arguments. What I'm trying to say is that when we say Joel's out of character and someone says that's their vision, they're like, well, no, because their vision is built on another one of their vision, which is incongruent with this vision. What do you, what do you say? This happened with Wonder Woman. And like I told you, some people were like, no, that's Patty Jenkins's vision versus Zack's vision. They're not incongruent, they're different visions. Like they're part of the same continuity. You can't do that. Close to being on the same team. You don't get the benefits of being a sequel or part of the same continuity, while also discarding all of the responsibilities and obligations that come with that. People love the have your cake and eat it shit where it's like, I want to benefit from their work. I also don't want to have to respect it at all. And I guess we're seeing an example here where the argument is I want, the artistic integrity of your narrative is unassailable, but the artistic integrity of your gameplay and design decisions is non-existent. Kind of baffling. I'm not sure what the interest is in talking about video games if you don't really care about any arguments pertaining to the merits of the design of a game, including its difficulty, bizarre. Modding a game to improve its UI, add new features and content, sometimes change the entire visual style of a game is not only common, but has been aggressively fought for over the years. Developers who disallow modding are often maligned, and Bethesda was justly raked over the coals when it attempted to capitalize on modding and turn it into a glorified microtransaction system. Why are we comparing why are these good decisions made by the developers? Because, yeah. This is a totally completely different discussion about what you're telling developers they need to be doing, as opposed to modding, which is on an individual basis, if you want to do something, you can change an experience for yourself in a certain way. Well, it's external for the game, in a sense. It's entirely separate from the developer's intentions or goals. Yeah, by installing a mod, you are choosing to add the person who coded the mod's vision into the developer's vision, knowing that it might alter it to the point that it's unrecognizable. And if you want to make that decision, cool, but, I mean, it's not the actual game. And besides, modding makes the game more fun for me, so it's... Yeah, well, it's okay. In many cases, it does. What is me modding my game due to Rags' game? You know what I mean? The whole point of this conversation is when the developers are forced to do a thing that affects everyone's game, as opposed to individuals. It's such a weird thing to bring up. I think it's disregarding the concept of a difficulty mode being balanced for that would affect how other difficulty modes are balanced for. It's pretending that is just not a factor. It's also framed with an idea of respecting original vision, means mod's inherently disrespect vision, which isn't necessarily true, by the way. I think it's as simple as changing something in a game. In his mind, if you change something in a game, then it's just all the same. If you take the DS fix that came out immediately after Dark Souls was splattered onto PC, it's like if you said that doesn't respect the original vision, I'd be like, I mean... First off, I don't agree with that, because fixing bugs is, if anything, helping to realize that vision more. Exactly. Because I highly doubt that those bugs are parts of the vision. They get in the way of the vision. The difficulty of many games, and they've existed before without much ischug. In fact, in one of the many, many threads about Dark Souls difficulty out there, mods were used as an argument against an official easier mode. For people wanting an easy mode, it's very easy to download modded save files for demon souls and Dark Souls that make the game really easy. Well, you can imagine what happened when a mod came out to make the latest from-game easier. After someone used a mod that slowed second... I feel fine. I feel fine. You know what? I do remember that article actually. You just want to pat his head and say, good for you. It not only means... But if you were so fine, no shame, that you had to write an article justifying this decision. Yeah, it doesn't feel insecure at all. Yeah, somehow I don't believe he's totally fine. The first thing everyone would want to do is just be like, okay, so can we make sure there is absolutely no sense of scale here and that no matter what, you're okay with this? Like, has there been any challenge in a video game you've ever valued and then seeing someone download a mod that cancels it out, would you be always okay with that just because of the feels? Like, is that really where we're at? There's just no example of this that's valid at all. Like, it seems a little bit unusual. I assume all of us... You know, like, there's some of your favorite multiplayer mode online memories. I've talked about it on e-fab before. One of them was I had a 5v1 on Gears of War II. And I won. It was a... I won't say blood drive, I think it was on. And it was one of the most intense and fun things I've ever done in my entire life for video games. And if it was... If it was like, ah, yeah, but you downloaded a microtransit, whatever got you, you know, the super laser and you just killed them all instantly, I wouldn't remember that. You're like, oh, yes, yeah. So what I'm trying to say is that's a feels argument for me. It seems like a feels argument from you, too. So who's right? Yeah, I don't know. Also, sorry if my mic's cutting out. Hopefully it isn't on you guys' end, at least. I can hear you. No, how do I? Sound fine to me. Sound good to me. Hopefully it's not too bad for the OBS people. I'll try and... I'm moving it around a little bit. All right. Fucking fix your shit, goddamnit. Up to Harry. Sekiro Dale to make combat less brutal people became furious. The guy's best Sekiro with cheats works at PC Gamer. This is what a casual cuck looks like. True. Well, let's try this one. Yeah, I agree, yeah. I mean, he is an FBI Cuck detective. He knows what the fuck he's talking about. I feel like it's kind of awkward when you're working like in a gaming... Wait, what was it? PC Gamer? Mm-hmm. If you're a games gamer. I gotta respect the FBI. Can I volunteer to pay more taxes now? Oh my gosh. I didn't know we had a Cuck detective branch on the FBI. Get them. Get them all. Round up the cuck. Cuck's Space Force one. Put them in cuck camps. Gotta get rid of the cuck attitude, OK? Don't fuck them, but the good people they're attached to. That's just what they want. By the way, they want us... point being. Yeah, there is a cultural aspect of a bunch of people talking about how much fun they had defeating some of the Dark Souls, that if there was one guy there who was dead every year to be to have one HP, the rest of them would be like, oh, good. You're not having the same conversation. Like he walks up to your friend group. Hello, fellow gamers. Yeah. I, too, beat the boss in Sekiro. The, you know, I installed cheats and you know what? I feel fine. And he just walks up to you and tells you this. And just they're like, oh, you're not one of us. Yeah, you're instantly the least cool person in that conversation. Absolutely. It is a really easy question, right? OK. Don't enjoy a challenge. You're not looking for a challenge. Why'd you buy Sekiro? Yeah, because everyone's talking about it and I want to be a part of the conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, at some point, OK, sometimes it happens. You buy the thing. You buy things like, you know, you know, you buy things that you don't like and then you just like, oh, well, that sucks. I bought Mass Effect Andromeda and couldn't wait to get out of that conversation. I was just like, no, no, three hours. I'm done. I'm not playing anymore. This this sucks. And another way. That's the car who wrote that shitty article about beating Sekiro with cheats, soy boy with a disgusting neck bit. I like why are you highlighting all of these fucking shads? I like he's like he's highlighted them like, look how awful and embarrassing these are. It's really funny. It's like, I don't know what to say. Like, oh, I remember this. And of course, there was that other response to the Sekiro mod, the one that became, well, memed overnight, one so arrogant, it could only be read by an aristocrat, a literal aristocrat. Oh, fuck. Sorry, folks. Here we go. You cheated not only the game, but yourself. You didn't grow. You didn't improve. You took a shortcut and gained. Experienced a hollow victory. Nothing was a risk, which is weird. When I if you were to isolate this quote as just text and present it to me, and I'm like, huh, yeah, I suppose so. If there's no risk involved and you didn't gain anything, there was no challenge you overcome. Then it is a hollow victory. Like, it isn't even a lie. This is like something I'd hear Socrates saying. It's totally like it's tone policing, really, because the point is kind of true. It's just delivered away. There's really kind of pretentious, just kind of just a little bit, just a little bit. It's mainly the approach the guy took, unfortunately. But like, you know, this is a real thing. If someone flew to the top of Everest and like a hypersafe, hypotechnological thing that said, I climbed Everest, don't you know? I was like, yeah, no, not really. No, I feel like the guy who did it without legs and it granted his legs didn't get tired. But still, the guy who did it without legs, he could see when he gets to the top of that mountain. I think his victory is a bit more meaningful than yours. Yeah, I yeah, someone in chat said it. It's saying saying something in a funny voice doesn't make it false. That's true. But unfortunately, I think a lot of people think that he's going to milk this for all it's worth because it's it's like, look, that's all laugh at the guy saying that difficulty matters when it's like you took one of the memed ones, you're not really taking the argument. But he doesn't know what these people even want. Well, yeah, he said that himself. And nothing was gained. It's sad that you don't know the difference. Royston, Royston, I just roasted me a soy boy, casual neck beard. He doesn't know the value of hard work. Now feed me. What do you say? I just wanted to add I can't find the aristocrat is rich because he was given money, not because here and end to skits. No more skits in videos, please. No, I'm pro nostalgia critic skits. That's it is mainly because they're fascinating. Like that is fascinating. I love those skits. I want to I want to put them in a museum. That's another tradition. I want to load it on to our Odyssey probe and send it into space. We've almost got a tradition of covering nostalgia critic every 31st as well of Halloween, October. So maybe we'll cover it again. Suit it up to dangling from your head. Thank you. He's not right there in mind. This was a mod for personal use, not a demand for an easy amount to be added to the just sitting there like, man, this is fascinating to go on. I think the bear wasn't very convinced that bear was watching that skit and was like, yep, the humans really have it better. I don't know these people think that the people using this mod are variants. What do you say that they're making the game easier on themselves in a way that's making it less fun. I'm just like, this is so easy. People think that using this mod by using it, you're ruining your own experience with the right, the which is something I think nobody wants to talk about because it only would have happened with your choice. And everyone is more so generally speaking in favor of everyone making their own choices. But it's like, sure. But if someone says, I don't want to eat this really well, like executed steak without my big fucking bucket of tomato sauce on it. And it's like, oh, maybe, oh, yeah, OK. I guess maybe an example of video games would be, yeah. Well, hey, this is applicable to me, right? I beat Dark Souls 3 in like 13, 14 hours. And all I heard from people was you missed a lot of the game. You missed out on a lot of the experience. Yeah, like they want you to have more of an experience. They're like sad that you didn't get to see it all in that first playthrough or they're like, oh, you didn't play the game right. I guess it's just the sentiment of, damn, you kind of robbed yourself of an experience that I think you would have thought was cool if you were just giving it more time. You know, in the same way that if someone says, I beat Metroid by looking up all the guides, it's like, damn, man, like you missed out on like a lot of what the fun is in this game. I beat this game by looking up all the solutions on this thing. There's no digging for the good faith in any of this by Jim, because ultimately, if you watch people streaming, let's take, for example, metal streaming, something where he's trying to defeat a good old bloodbomb boss of some kind. Yes, we will make fun of and meme every time he dies. But the second he gets close to that health bug on a zero, he fucking does a clutch dodge and hits them with something that kills them. Everyone in chat is very happy. Why is that? Do you think at moment? Because that means that Val did all the things that everyone else has had to do back when they first did it. And now we can all share in that experience. Meanwhile, when you have a guy who's like, this is too hard. I'm turning on the cheats like, oh, wow. Well, dude, nice name. Yeah, who the fuck? And then they beat it. And they're like, right, everybody. Proper mods folder. Like, imagine you having a breakdown discussion of how difficult a boss is like out of the four people, one of them being with cheats. The other three will be like, can you, you don't really, you can't really speak on this. You don't even talk because you won't understand what's going on. Yeah, you just be like, I just went face on him. I just kept hitting over and over again. And I just won. It's like, yeah, but you didn't find a health I got. Because in the first try, I'm sure you had a lot of fun because I will forever remember when I first fought orphan of cause and people don't know, be a bit longer. Remember that nine hour stream where tried over and over for nine hours, only orphaned of cause. When are you going to beat him? And I don't know. All right, that was a meme. And then I finally beat the guys like, fuck, yeah, that was awesome. And then I did my play through New Game Plus one. And then I beat the guy first try on my the second on my New Game Plus. And I was like, fuck, man, I remember all those moves. And I absolutely did not. But I didn't know that it was pretty clutch. But it was a very good time because I learned the thing had all the experiences. And then it just took over to the New Game Plus as well. And was, yeah, it's just just a great experience to have. And you definitely do wrap yourself from those experiences. If you just turn up some cheats. Yeah, like what if we only get with the argument, but it's fun. So it's fine. It's like, well, then we don't need to talk about this, really. So I don't know why we're even doing this. Like, what if you could just like turn on the time of ten? Nice to find out of it as far as I'm concerned. You do ten times as much damage. You have ten times as much health. And you beat him the pull after that. Like, you would never have remembered that fight ever, like two years later. You would just be like, oh, wait, he... Because now I can just go back and I see a certain attack. And I was like, oh, I need to go just below him and just do this. Because I had those experiences for hours. That's still super satisfying. The main things I remember from Elden Ring now are Godskin, Apostle, Malekith, and Malania, I guess. Yeah, yeah. I've mostly forgotten even the ones I fucking hated because my brain doesn't really want to latch on to that stuff, which is an ironic statement coming from me, considering like everything that fueled me to make my DS2 videos is how much I fucking hated everything in that game. That's an example of like, the bosses are really difficult, but when you beat them, you don't go, yes, you sco. Yeah. I think fuck that is over. Finally. You're like fading and dying on the planes. You're like, ah. Whatever, yeah. Someone solved their own problem. It was simply someone using modifications to make the game more personally enjoyable. You know, the thing that mods have existed to do since mods fucking began. I love that he's just not got the state of mind to be able to understand that he doesn't get it. The fun you pulled out in any way, shape, or form by any other. There's just no concept of it. Like, nope, don't know what you're talking about. See, there's no distinction between an aftermarket mod and a development feature. Demand, essentially. That's a very good image, by the way. The helicopter hat is questionable as to whether or not it's real. Is that a ride? Who's the dude in Below You? He looks kind of creepy. But this time, it was unacceptable. And it was unacceptable for no good reason. Because even if you think an easier mode in a game causes harm somehow, the writer who used the mod only quote-unquote harmed themselves. That's the point. I'm watching self-harm right now. That's literally the point. It's literally exactly the point. When someone says like, ah, it's worth seeing this in the cinema because of the experience and you go, no, I fucking don't want that experience. I want to experience it with my way, which is going to be on this mobile phone upside down. And you're like, okay, you can do that. I'm just saying. It's like, who's mom's really just- You guys haven't really seen the departed. You haven't really seen the departed until you've watched it with the Mortal Kombat soundtrack plan, trust me. In this case, making a game they bought more finely tuned to their own sense of fun, which I can't even pretend to find upsetting. You will get mad if a difficulty option already exists. They get mad if some people are put off when a game doesn't have an easy mode. They get mad if you don't just go and mod to game yourself. I don't know, man. Like generally speaking, everyone gets mad at everything. I don't know. Yeah, sure, fine. You'll find someone- Different people have different nuances to different things. Jim is the expert at finding the person that doesn't like the thing and you can put it in his video. Yeah, but seriously, we just don't see these people. That's fine though. I'm sure they exist. They get mad if you do just go and mod the game yourself. It's almost as if the argument evolves so that nobody can win. No, it's not about modding the game yourself. It's about installing your Cutshit BS FBI division mods that just remove all challenge from the game. Yes, I know it's your preference and guess what? Sometimes people's preferences fucking suck and I'll criticize you for it. That's what we all do. Can we stop pretending that? That's what we all do and people just want to hack like, oh no, shut the fuck up. That's what you do. That's what you made your job doing. Well, I think people do occasionally either forget or deliberately sort of ignore that people do often have like a perspective on the choices that people make even though there is a recognition that they are their own choices. And in this case, it's, yeah, you can choose to like make the game this way. But I think you're missing out. I think you're making a mistake. Can we be honest about this? If Jim struggled on a game for a while and loved talking about that very difficulty choice and then some other friend was talking to him and he was like, yeah, but I had a machine gun mod where it just killed everything. The whole conversation dies. It's like, well, we didn't have the same experience at all, we mean. That's not fun. It takes it away. He's like, oh shit. And then that person's like, I had the same as you. This is so easy to understand. I don't know why we're pretending like it's absurd. Yeah. It plays extremely good at optimizing the fun out of their own experiences by trying to finely tune them because they just tell for something really convenient that's easy to get into and easy to interact with. It takes away anything special about what it was, but it's really convenient. Yeah. I was thinking about using chess as an example, like a non video game. Example of a game. And I find it difficult. There's a lot of moves, but that fact opens up this huge array of possibilities of gaining the upper hand over your opponent. And it's like, if you were to come along and say, oh, chess is too hard. I don't want to play this. And it's like, well, yeah, go play checkers then. Well, and you know what Jim's response is? Okay, fine. If you found it too hard and your dad was like, okay, we'll play it so that all the pieces only do what a pawn can do to make it nice and simple. It's like, that should be okay. And it's like, I mean, no, it's not, that's not okay. You're not playing chess anymore. That's it. Chess is our game. At that point. This is an example for that. Yeah. It's like, I don't like the rules of chess. It's like, well, this is the game. These are the rules. Take it or leave it. And in the case of Sekiro, it's like the amount of health, the enemies have and how much damage they deal to you. Those are part of that game's rule set. So it's just like. I think chess is a, so one of the problems I have with the discussion about difficulty in video games is that I think that the arguments in favor of all games should have an easy mode tend to forget that video games are pretty different and easy mode. Devil May Cry is very different than an easy mode for Mario because they are fundamentally different games with different challenges that they present you with. One game could just have the enemies have more health or your weapons do less damage. That's one of the same thing. You take more damage when you get hit. Maybe they have like more forgiving powery times or something in a game like these are all options that you could implement that pretty easily reduce difficulty. What are you doing a game like Crash Bandicoot, which is built around very rigid platforming challenges where you just need to clear the jump. That's it. You need to be able to add more platforms. So that's kind of the problem is once we start talking about adding more platforms or whatever, how far, how much is enough? How much should the challenge be reduced? How much should it be allowed to be reduced? And is that line to the point where you can just completely curtail every challenge? There are no bottomless pits. There are no enemies that can kill you. It's impossible to fail, but just not running forward and completing the level. And at that point, have we not stripped the game of all of its like merits from a gameplay design standpoint anyway? What is there to say about it? If that's something that can be done? The difficulty is not something that can just be easily, difficulty settings rather are not something that can just be easily mapped onto every type of game and pretending that that's the case to me seems either dishonest or like indicative of a really shallow perspective on what video games are. Yeah. Yep. A number of getting good, which is fine so long as the process of getting good is actually fine for the player. If the game isn't enjoyable until after you've gotten good then people probably ain't going to give it a chance. What does enjoyment mean though? What do we mean when we say enjoyment? Because let me tell you, I was not enjoying losing to often of costs like in the seventh hour. That was not enjoyable in the broad, I guess, what you would conventional sense. But if I had beaten him instead of not finishing that game, I probably would have been really thrilled. And a lot of what would have made me thrilled was the pain, the difficulty of getting there. When you say that a player is enjoying a game or not enjoying a game, it feels a little bit, sometimes the enjoyment comes from the times that you weren't having as much fun when it was getting into the crowd. The enjoyment isn't just you going woo-hoo and smiling at the screen. The learning process is its own fun. This is a bit of a shooting man. Getting better. Overcoming adversity don't have to be fun. They don't have to be fun at the expense of everything else. Gaging is often what I'll say instead of fun. Fun is generally regarded as a certain, a very certain particular sensation, but being engaged in something and wanting to focus on it and feeling the desire to improve at it. It's different than fun. It's a kind of enjoyment, but it's different. Horror games. If someone said I wasn't having fun playing Amnesia, I was terrified. Is that a bad thing? Like no? Right. I distinctly remember Total Biscuit. I remember it was one of his like top 10 games list. And one of the games that he had as like a special mention was Spec Ops The Line. He said this game is not fun. Like this is not a game I would describe as being fun, but it was a valuable like experience. It was an experience that I considered be worthwhile, but it wasn't fun. The mechanics and encounter design in Spec Ops The Line are arguably bad. They're not very good at all, but the story is mediocre. I would say mediocre. But that is appealing to us that like fun is a word that describes certain things. It doesn't describe this game, but it doesn't mean that this game is bad or not worthwhile. It offers something that isn't. The game is being fun. Fun is just, I think fun is a word that is generally applicable, but there are these exceptions in terms of games that provide something. Like is papers please a fun game? Like is that a game that would be described as a fun experience, you know? But it's a valuable experience. It offers something really worthwhile, but only video games can provide. There's a lot of examples like that. And so yeah, maybe the word fun is kind of like, generally when we talk about video games, fun is applicable. But you know, there's a different more all-encompassing description of what a video game can offer. That means that sometimes you have experiences that aren't so fun, whether that be because of the subject matter of the game or I guess in this case, a difficult experience that starts getting maybe even frustrating. And then you finally overcome it and that catharsis is like unparalleled in terms of, you know, what any other medium of entertainment can offer. I think the enjoyment that you take from a video game can depend on like the mood that you're in in the moment as well. Like recently I finished the Kirby game on Switch, Forgotten Land. And even on the games, what the game calls wild mode, which is like hard mode, I guess, I found that quite easy. But I enjoyed that in that moment. Like it was a very breezy play through and that's when I wanted, at that moment, I just kind of wanted to zone out and not have to think too much. I wasn't in the mood at that point to play something like Dark Souls, where I would get easily frustrated. Like in that situation, I wouldn't get enjoyment playing Dark Souls, but there's other days where absolutely I'll play Dark Souls and even if I died a billion times with a boss, that's okay. Because I'm kind of in the zone for that kind of experience right now, you know. Thus we arrive at the Chad centrist take, which is, you know what, there is room in this world for games that are trying deliberately to be easy like Kirby and Forgotten Land. And there's room in games that are deliberately trying to be challenging like Bloodborne. There's room in the world for both of these games. Well, here's another funny thing about that. And they can be satisfying for different reasons. Timon's going to talk to us about humor. Yeah. Got me there. No, because... Fuck, not at all. I lost my train of thought. Oh, right. Games to chill out and just zone out and play that. Actually, Dark Souls falls under that category for me. Really? I've been so many streams. I'm just going to boot up Dark Souls 3 and just fuck around because I'm so knowledgeable with the game at some point. And sure, it's still just going to be annoyed at some things because sometimes you guys get stunned locked by random enemies. But that's just a game I can just chill out to when I stream it and just talk to Chad or something. Getting killed by enemies. Sorry, go ahead. Maybe rewarding is a more generally a good term. Like, rewarding and engaging. Like, you have the engagement because it's rewarding. Because is it fun for me to micromanage the efficiency of pawns in Rimworld or wants them to die to some terrible tragedy? No, it's not fun. But going through that is a rewarding thing to do. Like, it's satisfying for me to do certain things in games, especially ones that are colony builders or efficiency simulators or whatever they are. You're not just getting a... You're not getting a thrill a minute. You're just, you're trying to... It's like a factorial sort of thing. Yeah. Don't you love it when you get killed by a manhanting manhunting pack of chihuahuas? I was like, yeah. I got a chihuahua on my lap right now. I guess... Maybe the reason why I don't think fun is the right word to describe it is because I think fun can often describe moments and moment experiences rather than a longer term. Fun is fleeting. Yeah. Like, I'm playing Dark Souls 2, but I still want to kill myself after I did it. Well, for instance, if you're playing like Sim City, I guess, or City Skyline, like, is it moments and moment fun like building a road or like putting the infrastructure in place to support this particular block or zoning it? It's like... Especially if it feels like work sometimes. Yeah, that's... I guess that's what I'm getting at. On a moment-to-moment basis, maybe not, but the totality of that experience where the little building blocks lead to something really cool, and then you get that moment of catharsis when you zoom out and you look at this city that you built running really well. Yeah. And it's just like, damn, that's nice. This is what my work has given me. This is the fruit of my labor that I get to look at now. It's very hindlinian in a sense. Right. And what happens if the game's like, well, I'm not finding it fun laying down these roads. It's like, well, there's a button that just lays out a perfect grid with everything in place to be perfectly optimized. It's like, oh, damn. Like, that just, you know... Do you saw us? Something like that happened to me when I was playing the... I've told us before the Jurassic World Evolution, I think, game where you're like, World One, you've got just an average park that's not doing so great, trying to make it better, so cool. And then by the time you get to the end of the game, you've got to deal with this really small park that's been destroyed by a tornado. It's the worst weather conditions. And you've got like two T-Rexes running ramp and very little money. Like, holy fuck. Can you figure... And it's like, you do all that and I was like really quick... It's like, no, this is a bad investment. And then the final reward of like unlocking everything is like, now you've unlocked the free play mode with this giant open landscape infinite money. Go nuts. And I was like... Eh... Like... I don't... Hmm. Interesting. Like, whatever... What goes on? It became kind of boring to do that mode. I was like, nah, I'm all right. I'd rather... Yeah, challenges are necessarily limitations. And it's, you know, it's fun to fuck around, of course. My odds will vary from person to person, but there is that element of if I can just do whatever I want without any cost or anything whatsoever, then it's not really... Not necessarily something rewarding to it. I might not enjoy doing it. The two types of Minecraft players. Something given has no value. Yeah. I'll really enjoy both of those types of things just depending on the day, the mood that I'm in. And the idea that the threat of failure doesn't play a role in enjoying a video game is ridiculous to me. Especially with horror games, you know? I love horror games, playing them in the middle of the night, like in the dark with headphones on with the volume cranked up on a high-difficulty mode, like Dead Space, for example. I was doing that recently. That is fucking awesome. The threat of losing, the threat of loss. I mean, some of the most fucking intense gaming moments that I've ever had are in DayZ when I'm wandering around and I hear another player's footsteps and I've got all this stuff on me and I've gone on this big trip and I'm like, oh, fuck. I could die and lose everything and it gives this insane, like hands trembling and you're just focused on the screen. There's nothing else in the universe apart from you and this game that you're playing and it's just this intense experience. And if I knew, it was just like, oh, don't worry, it's fine. There's no challenge. There's no threat of loss. There's no losing state. There's no nothing. Then those experiences, they just would not exist. Yeah. There's definitely a line for me where it would become too much. Like if a game has like a hard core mode, for example, where you can't save and if you die, you go all the way back to the beginning. I wouldn't, personally, that's not for me. Everyone's own, you know, everyone out. There's people out there who fucking adore that experience and there's people who don't. And so this is why this video is strange to me. Where it's just like, it's treated enjoyment as though it's this clear, obvious, everyone is better off when this is happening. It's like, oh, okay. Also, I had an enjoyment. Especially with the direction taken in it, which is enjoyment is best dictated by the terms of each player, which I don't believe is even remotely true. I think given the chance, every single player will ruin their experience in one way or another. I think actually, I meant to bring that up with the Dark Souls waypoints. If you had the option in Dark Souls to just turn on a waypoint to tell you where the next place to go was, it would be very hard to resist turning that on. For shit tons of people. If you found yourself kind of lost. But just exploring that environment and trying to find your own way is so satisfying once you find the elevator that links back to Firelink Shrine. It's like, oh, sweet. But if I followed a waypoint that said unlock elevator in Firelink, cool. That's what I mean. You're highlighting exactly where all of this attitude comes from. If I was watching one of my like closest friends play Dark Souls the first time and then he was like, oh, I added this mod that gives me a waypoint that takes me to the next, oh, the elevator takes me right back to the thingy. I'd be like, wow. That just fucked yourself from enjoying it. Yeah. Annihilate at that moment. It's funny to me. It would actually be comedic if you put waypoints in something like Dark Souls. I think so. That would get a big laugh out of me. Isn't that such an interesting type of difficulty in a way? Like finding your way around the world? Yeah, it forces you to study the environment and gives you the shape of the land and landmarks are giving you clues as to where to go. That's a really interesting way of... It's the attaining mastery of a Dark Souls 1's world. Man, that's so satisfying. Yeah, Dark Souls 1. Everything links up out again for me. It's me. Forever Desperate. They'll do it again. But Dark Souls 2, nope. Dark Souls 3, nope. Elder Rig, nope. I guess. The closest they ever came was Bloodborne. Yeah, Bloodborne was okay. It wasn't quite as good as... Bloodborne did okay. In reference to the way of the map, because Yharnam was pretty good. Yeah, I was about to say it's the back half of Bloodborne that gets more segmented. Anytime I watch a friend play through Dark Souls for the first time, and I watch them get closer and closer to Shortcut, I'm like, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god. Exactly. They're going to be real happy in a second. I get excited for them. It's insane. And if they miss it by an edge, and they walk into a classroom, I did it twice on Elder Ring 2 where I would just walk across a bonfire or a grace or whatever, not even realizing, like, oh god, I could really use a bonfire right now. Everyone in chat is just like... You keep walking by the Shortcut gate. Just unlock it. By the way, There's a lot of stuff right behind the illusory wall that everyone misses, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's different. I got a notification that said... It makes it a lot easier if you have that one though. There's a Twitter one on my phone. I saw this. I'm getting criticism for the Dark Strange video, which totally makes sense. Somebody said... I'll forget it. No, not that one. Somebody said five hours and 50 minutes. Jesus, get a job. That shit's ridiculous. We're literally in the film. If a film is two hours, you only have two hours to talk about all of its problems. Because as we know... What a stupid fucking rule, yeah. The person has said this is fucking retarded. But as if we don't live in a world where fixing shit takes longer than breaking it. What did they imagine my job is? Like, hello? Yeah. I was cruising through cinema Roberto's Twitter thread on it and it was hilarious. I actually really enjoyed reading through it. It could be 10 hours long. It just depends how much detail you want to go into everything. And that's worthwhile. They get at me to the point where if someone just made a 10-hour video and they're talking just about somebody's shoe, I should be like, fine. Do whatever you want. Go nuts. That's a good thing. This guy's bio. He-Him writer, byline, CBR, polygon, hand-to-hand. Weird sentiment out there where it's like, oh, if you do X amount of time, you just ramble and get redundant. It's like, why? Why are you thinking that? Because I don't think you watched a video when you said that. See, now my people wrote books. I don't know what you mean. You know? I don't know what you mean. You're making that up. It takes a long while to explain. Like, James has said, I do construction. I know how long it takes to fix shit. I do like the whole, like, it took you how long to build this house and you're holding a grenade? Like, let's see how long it takes for me to... I'm gonna try to do something else to it. It's like, oh, no. It's actually fun for the player. If the game isn't enjoyable until after you've gotten good, then people probably ain't gonna give it a chance. Not true at all? I don't... That's not how it works. Also, that's fine. How many people... That's totally fine, by the way, as an experience. If you're like, this is too difficult for me, I'm not interested. That's fine. Yeah, it's fine. Explains that can play something else. The popularity of the Dark Souls series, yes. Nobody's playing Dark Souls. But if you look at Elden Ring, some of the people picked up their first Soulsborne game with Elden Ring. And there was a lot of people like, oh, that's too hard for me. I don't mind. But there were probably more, if not the exact amount of people, they're like, oh, this is great. I understand it now. That's good shit. Because it's all the journey and getting good. Getting good is a really good experience. As much as it's memed, getting good at those games is fucking awesome. People who mock get good. It's like, oh, you're mocking the concept of getting good. I don't have to listen to anything you say. I know it's just being dumb, but it's not the process. It's not after you've got good, you start to have fun. It is the process of getting good that people enjoy. Yeah, exactly. He keeps saying after, but that's not the thing. After you've got the good. That's not the main point of enjoyment. That is also fun. Me replaying the game and shitting on the boss that I've played for hours, it's still fun to me, but the biggest fun is the first playthrough. Nothing beats the first playthrough of a Souls game. Holy shit. After that, you can go ahead and try different things. How many players of Dark Souls 3 did you do when it came out? It's like a million. I remember, I was like, this time I'm going to use this weapon. This time, this weapon. What are you doing? I did the same with Bloodborne. Yeah. God, I wish all those playthroughs would be around still. I'm still mad at the Dark Souls 2 playthroughs that we did back in the day. At least those were worthwhile. They got into a video. I'm sad that we didn't archive both things back then again. One of my favorite lines. I want my favorite lines. My archiving YouTube. I wish I would have started my archive channel way, way earlier. Man, it's so much good shit lost to time. I've had it asked millions of times for Forteer and Matt's playthroughs. You guys just clips in those series. Gold, yeah. I was going to say, my favorite line that Forteer has ever said that I've heard was, come on, game. Do you remember when Val, you're running around some area, but like seven fucking phantom sport, you're just like, fuck off. Like, why is this? I still remember the square, man. The square is just like the chemical. Oh, my God. To the square. Oh, shit. There's too many to the square. It's so funny. That's like a fucking phrase. The cube. A 20 minute section of compiling all of the shit AI and doxels do, which takes forever. To the square. The fucking like the Frank role playing. Oh, my God. What was I going to say? Yeah. Get into the whole, to simplify it out to you get good, then you have fun is ignoring the very real experience that I think a lot of us have had where you go. They go left, dodge, right, dodge, up, dodge. Ah, fucked up the last bit. Okay, I can do this. I can do this next try. Like that on its own wouldn't be categorized as not having fun. It's like, no, no, I kind of am actually, because I know I'm getting there. I'm going to make it. I got this. You know, that feeling where you like having so much fun when I can see my improvements. Yeah. When I can see myself getting better and better inch by inch. Like this attack was constantly catching me. Now it's not. Well, this attack was, you know, causing me problems because I never expected it. Now it's not to move to a different kind of game. But I'm assuming somebody here can share this experience. A good old guitar hero. When you're losing and losing and losing, you lose. And then you come back to that solo for the next try. And you can see your rock meter and it's like teetering in red. And you're like, come on, come on, come on. You're going to stop power to get through it. Fuck it. It's like the idea that Jim's like, yeah, but you only had fun once you beat this. No, shut up. You know, it's way more interesting than that. How this all went. Oh, that was just the payoff. That doesn't mean nothing happened along the way. Exactly. Playing through a guitar hero or a rock band game on medium is okay. If you don't really know what you're doing, but like the real enjoyment in that games comes from like, okay, I can play this song on hard. Cool. Wait. I can get it on expert. Oh my God. I can get it on expert and hardly miss any notes. Now I can play this harder song. Yeah. Like it's, it's fun. It's hard buttons now. Yeah. I'm going to use all five fingers. The thing is also like that's where the, the good souls bosses and the bad souls bosses differ a lot. Right. Right. When you go against the bad souls boss and you're having issues and you're on the boss for hours and hours. When you beat that boss, like, like metal said before, like you won't have the fuck. Yeah, you will kind of have like, Oh, fucking finally get this shit out of my way. Like it will be more of a relief than a enjoyment. But when you have a good boss and you're like, Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Okay. I'm ready next time. Next time I fucking got him. Okay. It's more of an excitement and then when you finally get him, it's like, you did it like in a happy way. Whereas a bad boss will be like a frustration, like a relief from a frustration. That's where it was always so masterful getting good was fun. It already gives players many options to deal with the game's challenges while maintaining a certain level of challenge itself. You can level up, you can call in help from co-op players. You can try a massive variety of weapons and armor and all of its valid. All of it can work giving players tons of. I mean, I was about to say, I wouldn't know that I categorize this necessarily is what is getting good. Like the idea is like you figured out summoning is possible. You're getting good. It's like, that's a different kind of thing. Yeah. That's just like, I recognize that a mechanic is in this game. Yeah, exactly. I wouldn't class that. That's a car. That doesn't make you a better driver because you saw a car. Yeah, summoning is a bit of an outlier. I would say though that finding your play style is a form of getting good. Like understanding what you are good at utilizing in that game and then building your character around that I think is a pretty cool experience also. Yeah. I would personally say it's more so a matter of finding out what the things you have are good at versus particular enemies. For example, figuring out with this vihander you can just pancake a bitch and that makes most basic enemy encounters really easy. It's also extremely satisfying. As a best boy. Like finding out you have a tool. You can trade with people. Finding out you have a tool doesn't mean that you've gotten better. That's just like, you've acquired a new fact. It's like, if I go against Melania 100 times and I die at, you know, second stage 50% every time and then I summon something. Did I just get a lot better? No. I just added another tool. I didn't get better because I could beat Melania on the first try with the summon, right? Yeah, in the same vein. You're still upgrading vitality or something. It's not getting better. It's getting stronger. Yeah. Arguably it's making things easier is what it is. Kind of, yeah. I think for me, though, like when I first kind of got into the Dark Souls games and really found my niche or it was after I played Bloodborne actually and I think I realized that for me dodging was kind of the better way to go about playing so instead of making a night build the way I'd done when I'd first tried Dark Souls I made a thief and kind of fell in love with the series. So I mean Dark Souls 2 not withstanding but, you know, I find I would always just build my characters to be like light, very roll heavy, high stamina and that that was more fun for me personally just because it kind of suited the way I like to play video games more than, you know, sword and boarding it. But I don't know, I would argue that that is getting better by saying, okay, I've noticed that I suit this play style more than the one I was previously attempting that people told me was really powerful but it was like, eh, I can't really make this work very well. So, you know, a lot of variety. The Vengeance. And if people want a tougher time they can run around in just their underpants hitting things with a broken sword. All that said, it's clear from software has a very strong vision with any game. Just want to point out that's not always a tougher time sometimes it's actually an easier time because you get more iframes. Yeah. Oh, I didn't necessarily say it was harder or easier to begin I just thought it suits my play style better. Yeah. And even with so many options Dark Souls and the more streamlined Bloodborne have one set difficulty level across the board and that's fine. We have to accept that designing games this way comes with a risk of turning otherwise interested customers away but it's fine. Sekiro is even more strict about the way it's to be played. There is only really one way to approach it one way to maintain an advantage in combat. It's focused heavily on parrying and countering enemy attacks while maintaining a steady rhythm between defense and the seizure of opportunities. It's a specific game with a precise goal and a heavy emphasis on pretty much a seizure of opportunities would be if you went into an epileptic fit during charades. All in all of this is fine. Sekiro is a critical and commercial success sold fucking what, 2 million already? I really wouldn't want to base this on how success working is anyway. You can have games that are amazingly made that didn't get anywhere so let's not. Brilliant. It's an incredibly well made game that succeeds in its core philosophy. It doesn't need an easy mode at all and if From Software believes adding one will pollute its philosophy then great. Good for them. Seriously. From shouldn't feel forced to add an easy mode. I'm already with this. They believe it would violate their vision. I totally respect that. But I also respect that you, the player, paid $60 for a video game and can do whatever the hell you want with it. No. I shouldn't be able to cheat if I put a video game. It's not a DVD. You can't just fast forward doing easier part of the game. You are not entitled to cheat because you did. I feel so weird to me the idea that I'm going to put cheats on this difficult game. Because I bought it? Hello? Hello? Yep, he was. Theo. Theo died it. You lagged at that. He's fucking dead. Theo, are you alive? It's okay, sometimes you die. It's okay. Sometimes people die. Sometimes people die. Sometimes people die. Theo. Theo dies twice. Connection is fleamed. Oh, damn. Well, but, yeah, the... I mean, it's necessarily... That's sort of what makes video games interesting is that when you buy a movie, you're like, okay, I'm going to get everything that this movie has to offer me in terms of content, right? And I can extract different amounts of things from that based on who I am as a person. But a video game, you buy that game. I'm like, no. You've purchased a series of challenges, essentially, that you have to overcome to get to more challenges or more rewards. It's what makes some sort of special in a way. You bought this video game, but you're not just owed through purchase, through money, all of the content in that game. You have to play through it, get to it. There's a different game for each person. Like, if I watch a scary movie, or say I don't... Like, I watch a kid's movie, and then I'm angry at the film that it's not a scary film. But I bought it. It should be a scary film, because I want to watch a scary film. Like, you can't... Like, that's not an argument. This is a weird argument to be presenting. Like, I'm owed victory. Like, on one hand, say, yeah, so this is the objective of the creator in making this piece of art, but because you paid for it, you should be able to change it. Odd. Bizarre. I wonder how he feels about Jigsaw. What about a painting? Like, what if you bought the Mona Lisa? It's like, yeah, I should feel free to just draw, like, some... Just stick figures on it. This needs a mustache. I bought it. It's like, oh, you're ruining it. Like, you're ruining it. Mona Lisa needs your makeup. She needs a makeover! Oh, I guess property rights, you know? Yours to do with whatever you want. Wouldn't recommend it. I knew that painting was missing something. Also, hey, Duma. Hey, Dune. Hey, Dune. Hey, Dune, man. We're... We're talking about video games. Ew. French. They exist, too. You don't just have to talk about politics. God! Imagine talking about politics on the Internet. I know. That sounds terrible. How about those politics? Oh, wow. I love politics. Oh, wow. Sure enough. Well, there we go. Well, as long as we're not talking Canadian politics, I'm safe. Here we go. Time for politics. I was elected on Dark Souls 2. What's the deal with all these politics? I was given a copy of Witcher 3 by Poland. You? Or it was Witcher 2, actually, damn it. Hey, $60 for a video game and can do whatever the hell you want with it. It's not in From's artistic vision that Dark Souls should say thanks, Obama, when you die. But people modded that shit into the game in droves anyway. It's not in From's artistic vision that you glitch the game out and walk through the air to skip and break gameplay sequences. But speedrunners do it to rightly earned applause. It's not in From's artistic vision that their games be played at a slower speed, but, oh well, people have done it. Can't put the... Expoiding bugs and glitches for speedrunning is a thing. So, therefore... And there are speedrunners who... There's speedrun communities who do, like, no glitch speedrunning. That's kind of its own thing. Those are often more popular. Yeah. Sometimes they're more popular. Certainly far more enjoyable for me to watch. Yeah, I... I'd never like the idea of, like, oh, I'm gonna just play a completely different game that's, like, skipping everything with glitches. I don't know. It's fun to watch. It's not fun to do. Just stare at this tile in 4 p.m. on a Tuesday and then turn yourself at 16 degrees and then press these sequence of four buttons at once. You can actually skip to the last level. It's like, okay. Go to the console UI and change the date to... It's fun to watch. It's not super fun to do. It's fun to watch once for five minutes. Then you're like, oh, okay. What's the thing? We play the game? We wouldn't resist the idea that there's gonna be fun in it. We'd keep trying to angle it and be like, what fun is lost? Hello. If you don't want to play it anyway, that's intentional or... There's never the... I don't know why. You can't infer the other sides of the argument with what this relates to. Fucking doing anything you want to... It's actually a game. I mean, I wonder if... I said I wanted to read a book every odd page and then every even page if everyone would fervently argue the same thing. It's like, yeah, it's your choice. That's how you have fun. Like, yeah, but... I think you might have more fun if you read it in continuity. Yeah, that's fine. The intended sequence. It's always what's being said and I don't understand why this is so hard. It's their experience. It's got nothing to do with how you personally approach and enjoy games. And again, I need to bring this back to something that's actually important. You know, the game... Stop trying to do that. It's not worth it. Yeah, you don't have to bring it back to anything. Just stay on topic. You will be on topic anyway, but just the fact that, like, you see everything I've talked about so far has been unimportant. That's why I talked about it. You're like, sure. Game industry itself is working so hard to stop us having fun in games to make more fucking money. We need to not be policing how other people have fun. Oh, because some publishers have used microtransactions, then shut the fuck up. Yeah, what about the people who fucking love Microtrans? Exactly. I mean, honestly, though, like... I guess he's not wrong saying that you bought the game. You should be able to do whatever you want with it because you can mod it. Like, nobody's stopping you from modding it, right? Yeah, you can't cheat. That's not the point, though. It's when someone says, like, Dark Souls. Ooh, interesting new game. I had a friend who did this, by the way. They got stuck in the first, like, five minutes. They immediately pulled up Google, and it was like, no, no, no, no, no. Please stop. Please. It's like, hey, I can do whatever I want with my game. You're trying to stop me from having fun. It's like, that... We're trying to guide you. I'm not trying to rob you. I only want to... Trying to help you. Help you. And yeah, and if Jim were in the room being like, wow, Mola, let him Google. I'd be like, no. You want to get one chance? No. Sometimes you have to do things on your own. Sometimes you have to go on a journey. I don't expect a journey, even. Just reminds me every time of Edge Bomber Guy where he's setting those videos, like, I'm just going to tell my friends where to go because there's only one way to do it anyway. It's like, no, don't do that. Getting lost is a critical part of the fun of those games. DS2, you've beaten so many different ways. In DS1, there's only one way. What are you talking about? That's not false. Some people tell me things like that all the time. Go this way, go this way. He's like, no, no, just let me... Oh, chat are the worst for that when you stream games. Like, when you usually go this way. No. No, no. I'm not even looking at you. The thing you're looking for is here. Just like, fuck off. I don't want... Yeah, let me play. Let me play the game. Let me play the game. Exactly. There's nothing more beautiful than just going nuts in the game as it was made. Go ahead. It's what nature intended, honestly. God wants you to do it that way. That is what God wanted. One of us will be having fun anymore. Have you seen the Elder Scrolls Blades? Have you fucking seen it? Hey guys, remember Elder Scrolls Blades? I don't even know what this is. That was their mobile game. Yeah, when this game came out, it got talked out a bit. Yeah, so oddly enough, a couple days ago, I was just with a bunch of friends and we were watching videos and talking about stuff. And then I... Because I just remember Elder Scrolls Blades being a thing. And I told them, hey, do you guys remember Elder Scrolls Blades? Because we were talking about mobile games. And no one in that conversation knew that there was an Elder Scroll... There's a Skyrim on mobile, basically. And no one knew that. Everyone forget. It went down the memory hole of just things that definitely happened, but no one remembers. Elder Scrolls Blades exist. Don't you swipe on the screen to swing the sword? I think there's blocking and something like that. I remember getting announced at E3 or whatever it was and people still didn't know what it was when it came out. It got the... What was it called? The Diablo Immortal? I don't know what it said. The Diablo Immortal. Oh yeah. The Diablo Immortal. You guys have mobile phones? Oh yeah. That guy was vindicated. He was vindicated the moment he said it. He was vindicated the moment he said it. By the room that he was in as he said it. Actually, I've got a little sticker on one of my hard drives. That's the Out of Seasons April Fool's Guy joke, but it's drawn like one punch man doing the okay. You guys don't have fans? Yeah, fuck him. Why are we talking about this? Stop. We treat this as though we can't just go fuck him. That was shit. He's gonna be like, yeah, but it's the revision, right? I'll be like, well, yeah, sure. The revision was frustrating. I don't have to partake in someone's vision by not buying the product. I don't have to download it. Six of us to open a fucking loot box. That's what they want to turn games into. So have fun with Sekiro. Have fun with Dark Souls. Have fun with any game you can get your fucking hands on. It's completely blending up shit. It doesn't belong together. I'm sorry. It's all it is. Enjoy it, cherish it, and stop attacking others over having fun. No. No, what if I have fun telling you people to fuck off and stay away from my video games? That's fun to me. It's fun for Mahler. I don't know if it's fun. For him to make a six-hour video on a Doctor Madness movie. And no one who says this is willing to... It doesn't beat the Hitler argument. Hitler had fun killing Jews. Why are you trying to ruin his experience and his fun? It doesn't pass the Hitler test. It doesn't pass any test. It's stupid. The whole reason people are saying this is because their fun is being... It's that core argument. It's like you're annoyed that a three-year-old's having fun. You obviously don't even begin to understand what's happening here. The argument is so easy, but it's missed every time. There's two sides to it. That you have fun. It's fun to cheat. Your fun is being diminished because of games putting in easy modes that take developer time in order to put into the game. But then you also believe that their fun is deep being diminished by their choice to play the game on a lower difficulty or to mod it to be invincible or whatever. It's so easy so I don't understand what's hard about this. Just having fun while you still can. Stop painting the landscape as this barren experience with no fun games. Quit doing that. There's only days of good video gaming left. There's so many games, dude. There's so many good games. This is the perspective of someone who just doesn't play games, who only gets gaming news from a few places that are doom and gloom about video games. They don't actually go out to stores and to steam and to wherever and buy and play games as they constantly are coming out over and over and over. It's like someone from the outside looking in. It's also never been easier to play old games. We know Jim plays plenty of games. Lots of reviews going on. But I think there's a selection bias and awareness of the shittier practices, the shittier companies, and keeping an eye on all of them. And then you get to the point of being like, wait, this is just all. That could easily happen to us doing marble coverage. We could be like, all movies are terrible. And it's like, no, no, no. We know that they're not. We know there's plenty of other places to grab them from, so we usually try and caveat that it's from this place that they suck, which is what's happening here. This is a particular place you're talking about. Triple fucking A microtransaction laden, predatory mobile games. That's not everything. That's a very specific selection. Everything everywhere all at once came out at around the same time as Multiverse of Madness. It wasn't even the only Multiverse movie out at that time. Exactly. I don't know why I turned into a ghost at the end. Is that a picture of him as a baby? Okay, it's time to say that thing I said in 2016. The same thing I said in 2013 before then, because apparently this conversation blows up roughly every three years. So let's end that. Do you have anything to do with that? I don't know when they made the video on it. You made the video. And clearly, if you're talking about, I don't know, man. I just... Ah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know, man. I just... Ah. What productive anything are you lending to this discussion? Because I feel like it's virtually none. Thing that gets people mad again. If, from software, decided to add an easy mode to Dark Souls, I wouldn't give a speck of dry jizz and I don't know how anyone else could either. Every time I say... You definitely would. Okay, yeah. You've shown us that. Once again, you make a video about it. There's three years, so... If there was an easy mode in Dark Souls 4, then saying I beat Dark Souls 4 instantly comes with a follow-up question. What difficulty? It was an easy mode, right? Imagine being a commenter, talking about that subject and being proud of the fact that you don't understand the opposition's argument. Especially when you've been talking about it for years and years and even years to come, you're still talking about it. He's like, you're a fucking channel in your video. You're not a slave to anything. You could make videos about what everyone would make videos about. Don't do this whole, ugh, I didn't want to make this video. I was like, well, don't fucking do it. The pity train has moved on. It has departed from this station. It has left. It's gone off the rails. I think it's in China, no. Oh, no. Pity does not align with party values. Yay, fun. Hello, everybody. Is Moller gone or what? I don't know. Yeah, it was quiet for a moment. Moller. Very, very scared. Moller, no, not on the anniversary. No. What am I, the only one that can press play? Oh, there you are. I was automatically misquoted as saying I want an easy mode in Dark Souls. I've been misquoted on this since around 2013, most of the bloody decade. And the thing is, I don't even want an easy mode because I don't care enough about whether one's in there or not. I don't give a shit. Yes, you do. I'm not asking for. It's okay to care. I don't know why people do this. They're like, as if, oh, I don't care. They're like, no, no, you do. You're talking about it. You made a video that you can't just shit though. I guess some people can, but it takes effort and time. And you dressed up in that fucking outfit and everything. You care. It's okay to care. Somebody else doesn't win because you admitted that you care about a discussion you're having. That's the main part of this. It's okay to care about it. All right. You'll be fine. Yeah. You're going to make it. He just wanted to dress up. You don't care about things. Don't make 27 minute long videos on a subject. Yeah. I'm definitely not. And that's fine. It's totally fine. It's not cool. Yeah. This whole I don't care about it. Yeah, it's weird. I'm just an easygoing drifter. Blowing through the breeze. Marding an easy mode in Dark Souls. I wouldn't use an easy mode in Dark Souls. And that is exactly why I don't care whether one's in there. You too. Well, not because I wouldn't use it anyway. It wouldn't affect me at all. And people say. Yeah. Well, as Theo has mentioned, development time takes away from some resources. It will. It is. There is finite time in the world. Finite manpower, finite resources. If you're dedicating development to an easy mode, you are spending time on that to be detriment of some other aspect of the game. As I said, I think it's fair enough to assume that that's what Spirit Ashes were. They were added to be like, we need to add more things in here to help, like, you know, help players. Easy mode without an easy mode. And that is arguably more intrusive because lots of players who are like veterans would be like, oh, cool new mechanic. I'll use it. And then it's like, you best not use it because you fucking not going to play the game anymore. In a way, easy mode is at least in its own section, like divorced from the other elements of the game in a way. The difficulty with any new feature or item or mechanic that you introduce into any video game is that they don't exist in a vacuum. They are one part of a whole and they interconnect and interact with other parts of the game. Something you add that is, oh, well, you don't have to use it. It's like, well, you say that, but like the fact that it exists may well have influenced how you've designed this game. And in fact, it almost certainly will have. It's kind of hard to have an element in a game that could be taken out and changed as nothing. And just to repeat it, because I'm serious about this, grabbing these items, if it would just called easy mode and that's where they're available, that's one thing. But when they're just in the world and you don't even know how good or bad they are, that's arguably worse damage. And there's a lot of them. Yeah. And how do you, until you use it, you know, what it does? Yeah. I had two players where people gave me shit for my build because it was like, oh, now you're using this overpowered build. I was like, what? This is just stuff I started using. Yeah. Exactly. How could you know until you discover that it's overpowered at which point some amount of your game has been diminished? Well, and also how powerful do I have to get until I decide that I'm too powerful and it's not the game that is being too easy, right? Exactly. Well, what's the difference between a smart build and a broken build? Yeah. What's the difference between an auto mechanic and a broken? Well, I'll just use an MMO. Just say like, oh, this class, the specialization is extremely potent and extremely easy low effort to use. And I will tell you from experience that if you have like an MMO or something like, an MMO is a perfect example. Let's say that, I don't know, maybe you made a particular class. Let's call it mechanist. And it's very, very powerful and it has an incredibly easy rotation. It does a lot of damage. It comes with a big old bot mech that does a lot of the work for you. It just so happens that if this theoretically existed, you would see a lot of these goddamn things everywhere in the game and it doesn't make me angry. It's fine. But if you have these kinds of things, this easy mode class, this easy mode specialization, then you start to see them all over the place and you might have to start to fix your balancing in order to adjust that. Oh, look, there's one. Not that I'm actually doing anything like this, but. Somebody in chat has mentioned the meta, which is something that I think is worth going into. When you think about a from soft game like Dark Souls, there is definitely a meta surrounding that game that people find very valuable, which is the shared experience. Exactly. What is said about a game where any person that you talk to, if they say, yeah, I've done this, I've beaten this boss, then you know that they went up against the same experience that you had, that you have a shared experience that you can talk about. And you might have approached it far differently from each other. But ultimately, how much has that diminished? If it's like, yeah, but I've been on easy mode though. Not to the extreme, but the Everest thing. It's like, I climbed it. You climbed it too. And you look at the guy and maybe he's like out of shape and you're like, damn, dude, really? And then he's like, yeah. And then in your head, you're like, you climbed it. You didn't use the helicopter. I saw the top, whatever. I used a telescope account. Because when I was playing through Elden Ring, I picked up the summon and I started using them. And then I found one of the really good ones. I started noticing that I wasn't struggling as much on bosses. And that kind of rang a bell for me that maybe this bell thing is kind of, or this summon is kind of, maybe a little bit too strong. I came to one of the main story bosses and I killed him in two tries, I think. And I remember after seeing him dying and it started to play cutscene and all kinds of stuff, I was just like, that didn't really feel good. After that, I stopped using the bell for the rest of the game because I felt like I was cheating. Because I felt like I was robbing myself of that challenge to overcome feeling that we always try to impose on others by not having them Google and stuff. I felt like I was doing that to myself. So I stopped using the bell at that point. I don't know if that counts as the break point when something is broken that we spoke of before or mentioned before. It's like the porn thing. You can't necessarily define it, but when you see it. Yeah, it just felt off. As someone who's played a lot of forms of games, I'm not supposed to beat an end game. Well, it's not really an end game, but kind of end game boss by just spamming buttons. There's an angle as well, I would argue. This sounds like it's getting way too specific, but I think it's reasonable. Say you beat that boss and someone's in the call with you and you're like, do you have fun? Yeah, and then a week later you look back and you're like, not really. What does that mean? It could be like a fleeting fun versus a more meaningful I'll forever remember it being incredibly fun to play Dark Souls for the first time. What's the difference between those? Maybe it's an English language thing, but just saying they're both fun but lacking, isn't it? No. Well, how would it work? Answer that one, genius. And I won't answer that one because I don't care whether one's in there or not. You really like pulling up the don't care. Yeah, you might ask this one specific question to me that I put in my video, but my answer to that question would be that I do not care. Yeah, I see. Not my problem to solve. Anyway, let me elaborate. It's not from software's problem to solve. They don't want to put one in, but if they did, I'm sure they'd figure out a solution because they're from software. I wouldn't describe from software's approach with everything as elegant. Yeah. They're better game designers than me or you. The only reason my difference toward an easy mode has been categorized as me demanding one is this ridiculous, farcical, us versus their mentality where you're either for it or against it. And you know, not everything has to be a nice... I mean, well, I mean, you might be, I certainly believe that you have an us versus them mentality, but I don't necessarily think that all agreements that I have with people need to devolve to that level of tribalism. But maybe you just do that and you project that into other people? Perhaps. Ideological war. You've got your saccharote. You love your saccharote. Enjoy it. Don't make yourself miserable by worrying about how other people are enjoying the game. I've been staring at this particular comment and I just don't get it. Unpopular opinion, but Sekiro having an easy mode would detract from the experience. After being beaten to a pulp for the 30th time by a boss, we'd all be tempted by the easier fight, just knowing that's an option would stop us chipping away improving over hours, days, and weeks. How is that? How do you understand what they're saying? That is true. Please make fun of this comment. It's my biggest problem with most of... We can't understand it. Lots of modern AAA games letting you change the difficulty back and forth whenever you want and not tying achievements or trophies to difficulty. We went over this a little bit earlier when the game was like, don't you want to make it easier? You're like, give the fuck out of here. Go away. I know you're... I will set the difficulty lower if I ever fucking just give up. Do you know I've never... That's giving up. Giving up isn't quitting. Giving up is setting it to a lower difficulty. I've never interpreted those kinds of messages in games as genuine like, hmm, maybe I will. I always interpret them as the game making fun of me. Mocking. Real funny game. How fucking... I'm going to prove you wrong. There, I'm going to do the opposite of what you want. It looks like you're having a hard time over here. It's never taking it that way. Having a tough time there, buddy. Little fucking... Paperclip. You okay there? You pussy? Being a little bit cocky. I don't know if your mommy raised a bitch. It's like, don't talk to me like that. Video game, I... I don't appreciate this. I'm trying, okay? It looks like you're sucking balls. Easy mode with detract from the experience because after a boss has beaten you to a pulp 30 times, we'd all be, and that's what it says, we'd all be tempted by the easier fight. That's probably damn close to reality. That's literally never happened to me. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. If you can knock a fight down a difficulty level that is really frustrating you, there is a point in your frustration where you will break. It's not even that. It's just being tempted. Yeah, it's just a temptation. Are you saying that you never after the 30th time just sat back and just thought, man, what if I just bump it down? Dude, I totally... It's a lusperia type elitist, man, and it's happened to me. Exactly, exactly. You don't do it, it's more virtuous. Maria needed more health. There are plenty of bosses I fought in Dark Souls where I got them down to 99% of the health down and I'd be like, if this boss were designed with 90% of the health it had, which I think would be fair, I would have won by now. What is that thought? If not, maybe it should have that kind of health. Maybe if there was something that was like that would reduce his health. No way you've never had this thought. Fuck off. The thing is being tempted and doing it are two different things, right? Me struggling on a boss in Endgame and being tempted to summon because I know that trivializes the fight is not the same as me actually pressing the summon button. What we often end up doing as veteran players is we'll go, I'll do it. I'm not going to let it beat the boss. I'm just going to see how easy it is. That's all. I literally did that a couple of times and then I spit out just because I didn't want to beat the boss that way. Caving to that temptation is probably the worst possible route because you're probably someone who appreciates getting a challenge out of what you're doing but you've also not actually surpassed the challenge you were going for and you can't really go back now. So you're fucked. I had to ruin my first Elden Ring playthrough at the very end. I figured out that I could use the whore frost stomp at the God skin duo. Dude, get in the Bleed weapons and the Blood Slash move. One thing about Bleed? Bleed does not work on the two final bosses right again or the Elden Beast. Nothing. No effect for Bleed. I think I already have. Teesh on the Elden Beast. What the fuck? It's not fair. Projectile alone would make that fight a lot easier. Getting to the boss is the hardest part. What do you guys think about summoning other players multiplayer to help you with a boss? Do you consider that detrimentally nerfing the experience? Yeah. I believe it will negatively affect your experience but it's the easy mode that the games have go off if you want to. It's the easiest way to design with that in mind. You summon another player and we're going to have to add something to compensate for that. It's the easiest way to add more health but their AIs just cannot handle multiple two targets. I think that's the best argument against it is that when you look at how these bosses fight when you put another person in the room they just can't deal with it and doubling their health doesn't account for it. Nor would quadripling it really because you can take advantage of them so hard because their moves are all directed at one person. Sometimes you get a 360 move and you can take on all the one person typically speaking and it would be really complicated to design the whole game so that they're ready for one and multiple interactions. I would recommend if someone was really tempted and thought it was really fun save that for another playthrough maybe try and do it so well. You can do that first or second I suppose but I'm just saying I'm very familiar with summoning I wouldn't recommend it necessarily as soon as you have any trouble. It's not a bad way to get new players into the genre though she's never played a souls game before she would probably never play one alone even to this day but she had a bunch of fun summoning me and having us fight bosses and stuff. But I wouldn't necessarily say that's in any world the ideal way to play it if you want the souls experience. And I'm not very good at video games so I don't know what a real hardcore gamer would struggle with there and I know for a fact that I'm... Inherent in the question was struggle that's the hypothetical when you are struggling you will do it and he's like I don't know what the struggle is there. A temptation is essentially a struggle not tempted in that way because Capcom does that thing where it offers to lower the difficulty for you again I find that that's so insulting when they do it it's less when there's modes and it's a different experience it's like a robot telling me I suck and it's coming up on their preference not yours it's slightly different I die one too many times in a particular place and every time that's happened to me because I'm not very good at video games I take the attitude of fuck you Capcom fuck you don't you take pity on me I think this way therefore I know how all people will think we agree on this but absolutely not only admit that we've been in the situation of like tempted to bring down the difficulty but of course people would people in general come on absolutely everyone would probably be tempted in a certain amount absolutely would existence of a lower difficulty setting detract from devil may cry 5 for you if it did get good at handling different difficulty levels in a game get on my level scruuuuuh what was that well okay it was a game of dank as fuck that's what it was if someone does well with the difficulty of a game it probably is because they really really really struggle at the normal mode so if they bump it down to easy mode they'll probably struggle at it still still if that I why would you get that up you just made that up you just made that up for your video and then you said it I could have just said what were you when people are struggling at they lower it it's probably too significant of a drop and so now they find it too easy I could have just said that yeah we have a plan some easy mode yeah it could be anything easy some easy modes are helps I don't even know what I looked at it on screen it said we call this balance like that's not balance like what do you have for difficulty modes the idea that one of those is guaranteed to fit your abilities like I doubt it one of the there's gonna be one that's too hard or too easy all the time it's very rare you get one that fits you what does it even mean for a difficulty to fit your abilities like perfectly like in a balanced way do you lose only two times before winning is that what it means to be balanced yeah like I was just thinking the messaging of that you know whenever you get a prompt it says do you want to lower the difficulty it's it's as if they think that dying multiple times is abnormal an abnormal occurrence like if you die three to like like you maybe die 10 20 times in a row like that's part of it if like you set a high a relatively high difficulty right it's like if you die more than a few times that's like weird like hmm that's why I always found it weird that people count their deaths against souls bosses sometimes where people can tell me I beat this boss and I died like eight times because I die a lot dude bosses I die a lot straight girls did have a death counter on her streams yeah a lot of people do it and like that's that's just fun Z's I don't care you know but like when people tell me that it's like a point of pride or whatever because usually I take me beating a fight in a low number of tries as a sign the fight isn't very good which is what my that was the lesson I took from Morgan which was in fact wrong it was just game balance fucking me over happen less skilled than you right playing it on the easy mode words give them an equivalent experience if that mode's been finally tuned and developed correctly easy modes are pretty logical I guess just like if it's done right you will be happy you're like oh yes it is good if it's good doing things good is up to new of course the standard hard normal and easy settings have been a part of video games for decades with nary a complaint and these days ways of adjusting difficulty and challenge have become an art form in and of themselves you why did you so why did you show an accessibility screen when you were talking about the first thing I read when he was talking about difficulties subtitle just a little hero like wait what big some topics see I told you he'll do this he will dishonestly make these edits and make these statements that purposefully confuses and mixes up accessibility and difficulty because that's just I don't know I guess this is the person he fucking is he's done this years afterwards the only one that I think is option to skip puzzles that's like the only one privilege goggles no privilege goggles is a great video puzzles justing difficulty and challenge have become an art form in and of themselves among the most impressive is Celeste a game most of us agree is very good indeed on its default settings Celeste offers plenty of resistance to players attempting to conquer it and collect everything but you can tweak almost any aspect of said resistance if you're struggling you can extend your ability to air dash you can slow the game down remove stamina penalties or even just become invincible like SFZ zero difficulty mode as a brand new IPs you're not gonna find people arguing against you on it this is all new but even still yeah they'll when you say shit Celeste they're still gonna want to know what you mean when you say that's really interesting because Celeste is it's pretty hard actually I didn't even know that those options were there and I really like the game and part of why I like it so much was because it was challenging and I thought that it being challenging was actually really in service of its theme as well and this is kind of what you'd want to ask Jim right you'd be like so if people are going in with invincibility mode on or whatever and they've like a grand wizard came down from space and said I know for a fact that had you told them not to do that they would have had more fun what do you think hmm like yeah well the ability to choose is more important than directing them in a way you think that they would have more fun I don't know if it's like this tangent I have a question that's rearing its ugly head which is you guys have any particular opinion on games having difficulty modes at all as to whether or not that's a good thing I think that if it's not in mind it's usually okay I generally will I definitely like harder modes so that I can challenge myself further especially as I begin to master a game but I still want to feel challenged by it and prove to myself that I've mastered mechanics and improved which is a lot of times something that you just need a harder mode in order to really do once you hit the normal limits I think on the game because some games harder means you have less health enemy has more health and that to me is just kind of dull like that that's like instead of dying in two hits you die in one hits like I didn't really get any better like I didn't like the challenge wasn't really me having to adapt in a way I just you know don't take hits for it I you know I'm gonna take an extremely firm stance I am very very very very pro having harder difficulty modes yeah I definitely agree like the experience that I want would not be desirable for most people and it just if they didn't have a lot of different modes then what I want out of a game would just wouldn't exist I was like they would make games enormous nearly as much if they didn't have a hard mode whether it's rim world or vermin tide or anything like what keeps me playing those games is that I know I could I could go to higher difficulties keep making the challenges more difficult and when I hit the max difficulty possible you know do mess do my best to really really excel and get better become familiar I kind of like it when you can unlock higher difficulties like resume before just has normal mode like that's all you can pick right on a new game yeah and then you beat it once and they get professional mode and you're like hell yeah dude that was a lot of fun and I welcome a challenge on this game so building the games a little bit in mine instead of just go and throw on a mode with everyone's got double health done yeah fuck that if you're gonna make a higher difficulty please go with class glass cannons instead of spongy tanky enemies it's just fucking annoying yeah to well on something because I've noticed I guess to restart that yeah I just asked because I've noticed a trend of players picking difficulty modes that are not conducive to the kind of experience they want because of I want to say like social pressures but their own perceptions of what's going on in a different way like a person thinking I'm not very good at video games and then picking an easy mode when that's you know they are well within the a well within the ability to handle a normal and so that compromise especially normal modes that are generally quite manageable and yeah of course I consider myself pretty good at video games but still I feel like a lot of normal modes are like you can definitely do it don't be afraid just play now I like to generally start games playing normal because I figure that's that that's sort of the I think it's sort of a default sort of this is the experience we're presenting to people and I kind of want to get that because I know I can always bump it up I could be wrong but I suspect like hard mode in games is like the devs normal mode you know and like and then they they are hard mode for like absolutely for the release the devs do I agree yeah because sometimes with devs I'm like I because I just think I know like I'm way better at some games than the devs are there's I just know it I have the time to devote to it I've been able to devote time to it I've really been into the game it's like people who know the writing of a story better than the writer might know just because the writers are forgotten or anything it's like yeah they made it but some people do there are people who know like Game of Thrones lore to insane degrees or whatever it is and they probably know it more than the people who wrote it because they've just devoted themselves to really remembering and catalyzing categorizing everything so I could absolutely say that's why it frustrates me when I play a game and I ask like do the devs not fucking play their own game why did they put this in this is nuts this is insane this is so underpowered or so broken and it's so obviously done that way do they not play their own game everyone could see this but then you also have difficulties like in Borderlands for example Borderlands 2 comes to mind where the enemies just start off with a way higher level than the weapons you would have at a normal play from the beginning where they basically want you to play the normal difficulties before so you have actually the actually the weaponry to tackle those enemies in general because if you would go with like Ultimate Vault Hunter mode mode as your first play through you probably have a really hard time the upload style difficulty well a lot of games require you to have a familiarity with enemy behavior and mechanics and the synergy of abilities and things like that in order to do well like you just have to learn how the game works yeah even if your options for what to do in the game isn't necessarily high if it's not a super mechanic rich game or if it's not like you don't have a huge move set for a character and stuff you just have to know how what you do interacts with the things in the world are to just understand a game that actually has a good like difficulty slider if you will I mean probably more than this but like MMOs like I'm thinking of World of Warcraft specifically like when you do a raid you can do the raid on normal heroic or mythic difficulty which is basically easy medium and hard um but so and between those difficulties the boss does have more health and doesn't do more damage but it also adds abilities per tier so like the boss does new things that are also more difficult than the previous tier so like it adds difficulty in in the sense of like it's more challenging on a mechanical level yeah world's also being more challenging on a like damage level yeah that way destiny's raids are similar in that respect yeah that's probably one of the better ways to do it because upping the difficulty shouldn't just be numbers I think upping the difficulty should make the the a either the AI smarter somehow but I think that's pretty hard to do or just like make them do something else like flick on the switch that makes their third attack doable or something like I don't know something that just like changes the place a little bit that to to make it more challenging yeah I think killing floor two is generally my go-to example for how difficulty it doesn't just make enemies you know do more damage or whatever but they move faster there are different assortments of enemies they will have they will just flat out do different moves that they don't do on uh lower difficulties there is a lot of you know there's thought that goes into like oh I'm at this level that means that this enemy will use this attack that he just flat out doesn't have on lower difficulties can't be a little to be a firm and tied dad's um friendly fire which like really changes things it's like oh man now I gotta I gotta not be too doesn't friendly fire is extremely weakly minuscule and that came it changes the thing it's one of my complaints about the game what about on like the higher difficulties I remember that they like can if you use a part some some stuff like if you're if you're not to get into deep vermin tide discussion as well I should turn vermin tide but like yeah when you get to a certain level technically friendly fire is added but it's just so tiny that it's just not like it doesn't even matter and even you have to get up to cataclysm and then you have to hit friendlies with certain kinds of attacks to even do appreciable kinds of friendly fire um and I just remember one time I was getting nuked by a sienna I was like oh my god and this is really weak to the point where as a sienna main I just don't even worry about friendly fire and cataclysm because it was like it just doesn't matter it just so little I'm doing you I'm helping you out by making this area of effect attack where you are because I'm preventing the enemies from hitting you that do just just way more damage potentially more damage than I would that fair enough however the point does it is correct yeah the fact that at a certain difficulty friendly fire becomes a thing is that is a good thing to do that is a it is a good way to increase difficulty by saying really makes you think a lot more about positioning because it doesn't just say you have to play better it says you now have a responsibility to other players that you didn't have before the best uh higher difficulty mode I've seen is in fury if anyone's played that it has a fury at difficulty which is new game plus and it changes and no stats about either you or the enemy uh no damage values no health numbers it just makes their wind uh opening slightly smaller and also changes their patterns to be more complex oh cool yeah I think it was professional mode on Resident Evil 4 is essentially playing the game at it it removes the difficulty um adaptive difficulty so you're always playing on the highest difficulty that the game has and it never lowers uh when it comes normal mode do that normal mode has adaptive difficulty but it can go up and down and move around professional is you're always playing at the hardest difficulty so you always get the last amount the least amount of ammo the enemies do the most amount of damage all right and it won't lower that's cool very it is actually really cool because sometimes when I start a new game and I like I want to challenge myself and do a zone like can I do this zone you know like getting you know without taking hits or with only doing certain things and you try it a few times and you lose the game will make the game easier and you can't it's like no no don't do that don't do that I want it so I have to reload the game so that I can do that section over again but that's uh not generally something that players encounter right the time for its non-condescending approach to difficulty it was a game that admitted quite acceptingly hey not everyone can play the game in its default settings here's a way to tailor it to your liking and then yes they can tailor it through your liking by becoming invincible I don't want I'm tired of this putting down of the average player the average player can beat Celeste on its basic difficulty yeah no but they can do it no stop the moment you say I probably can't do this you've given up and you can't do it so congratulations I guess and that is where you fail pretty much and itself isn't a new thing early silent hill games offered their own rudimentary adjustable difficulty allowing players to raise and lower the challenge of combat and puzzles is too separate there is there is no amount of this other game dot that that will convince me so just don't even bother just arguing principally that's why it's all kind of bunk all right miss but easy puzzles or breeze past enemies while giving your brain a workout and none of this has been controversial it does only seem to be certain games where this discussion about difficulty and games where everyone's discussion on the experience of defeating the challenge is prominent what a coincidence and which which side of this argument is the one complaining games that weirdly feature prominently in popular culture so people don't want to miss out easy modes causes people to what are you suggesting that if everyone had complained about Silent Hill or Celeste that then they'd be right I guess like is it people complained that games were generally too easy I don't even like it's okay to remove all the easy modes or what I don't mean more documents don't really they seem like they're totally unrelated because he's he's suggesting it's like if this is true then where are they for this that and the other and it's like so if they were there you'd be like aha this must be real does Jim's script or is this just stream of consciousness this is this is just bad most most people that we cover any fact it's script they're just bad they're bad what we're just fist draft yeah I guess first draft basically is stream of consciousness kind you can just retake lines clutch their balls and gasp in horror games that a certain group of people have decided are there and there's a long something to go jealously like the ground or snake boy no fuck this gate keep the fuck out of the things you like because we've seen what happens when you don't I'm funny like people who difficulty they're like smoud sitting up there gold why can't you you couldn't possibly interpret it in any kind of positive way it has to be negative it can't in any way you're sitting on your pile of gold they want you they want you to experience the big highs you cancel them out if you cheat yeah and I'm not saying it's all cheating you know the words that you understand what I'm saying they don't want you to ruin yourself when I tell people like whether it's family members or friends like to go on the crazy roller coaster it's not because I'm it's because I want them to experience this kind of experience that I absolutely adore and I want them to feel that for themselves I want to encourage them to know don't be afraid do it it's a it's a crazy sensation that you'll probably never really get in your life otherwise it's pile of gold and fuck that when I like a game I want people to know about it like I want people to know about sticks and bones which is the funniest fucking game I've played in years for 10 bucks it's super super short so it's a very hard to recommend games but it's the deadly premonition of zero budget steam games now am I just looking for an excuse is that good or bad I don't know what is the trap even say you deadly premonitions a game that you got to kind of sell people on a little harder than that because it's not for everybody sorry I'm just what is this device I assume this is something that you can attach to the loops on your shoes to pull your shoes up without having to bend down in order to do so no it's a shoe horn isn't it no no this is different from a shoe horn it's just a shoe horn with an extended grip yeah yeah I think it's a loop not a yeah that's what it looks like to me too what's the loop for just a no I don't think it's a loop I think it might just be the it's like a shiny spatula okay that's what confused me I thought the shiny bit was the background and I thought it was a loop yeah oh okay all right that is an I assume this is for old people not I would presume so but again this would be if this is meant to be comparable to video games this would be accessibility right like this would be the features to make it yes so it's white some shoes fit kind of tight old people have trouble putting on shoes not because they're stupid or untalented it's because they're old and their body doesn't work so they need some mechanical assistance in doing that yeah use to walk with me don't be born in a plug for a game I really enjoyed yes I am primarily because it's an obscure game and also a game I mean positive right so I only have one foot oh my god putting on shoes is easier for you you have half the shoes to put on no I gotta put on a whole leg oh my god well we're talking about the shoes I didn't say I had the same issue I like there's two conversations going on yeah I don't know what's happening hey metal how are you doing I'm good you know oh it's you want in now I know it's easier for you to put a shoe on because you can put the shoe on your fake foot before you put the foot on that's even easier mom yeah that's true but I still put the leg on yeah yeah but that's different than putting on the shoe it's harder I can tell you for sure because I still put shoes on my human foot it's easier to do that my human foot hey the other one's a robot man so I'm actually you know I never want to learn what shoe hoarding means that's incredible oh wait that was the revelation you were having really oh my god no one knows what shoe hoarding is yeah is this like confirmation for all the ethno painters that say that that you guys never touch grass like you guys never come to go outside hey I knew what a shoe horn was I'm legitimately surprised I never heard of a shoe horn and now I understand why it's called shoe he thought it was a musical instrument did people look confused as to whether or not calling this like a bided moment or a you're a zumba like it's not me and non-Australian here who's never heard of boomerang I guess I guess if especially if you're our age you don't really encounter shoe horns maybe at your grandma's house or whatever you see this weird I know about it because I've seen my relatives use it so I just yeah yeah I don't know how I learned about them I've just always I've owned a shoe horn since I moved like away like I was 18 when I moved from my my parents and I I got a shoe horn like the first few things I bought yeah if your shoe fits tight like you know I'm like a strict way it's a very useful tool yeah or if you know you you have a foot in which you can't point the toe at all it's easier to get a shoe on if you have a shoe horn sometimes like whenever a shoe doesn't fit while I just force my foot like into the shoe wait why don't you just why do you not just keep the shoe on your fake foot even when sometimes I have to switch shoes what about I'm going from like my job at the army clinic where I'm wearing combat boots to the gym I gotta switch switch shoes not just always have the uh your work shoe on your fake foot so you only have to change half the shoes in your life but because I can't get into the gym with the the work shoe on and your running shoe on that well I mean I could probably make a fuss about it and make them let me because they feel bad for no you're crippled but well when when you're running when you're running and you do it with your but does the kind of shoe on your robot foot does that make a difference or is it just running is a bit of a special case because I have a whole a whole dedicated leg for running that is like the the the spine of it has its own like sole of the shoe but I do still need to wear a running shoe on my left foot well my legs are really generalist I suppose I don't have any specific I don't have a standard package kind of I got the default settings I used to have that my legs complete set the rags don't you you need two pairs or do you just have shoes on your front legs and your hind legs are just bare I generally don't need them but if you're gonna go out just if it's really really hot you might have to buy it so that you don't burn your you know at that point just don't go out be the one with shoes um I'm not sure like I guess you definitely you definitely want them on your you want them on your ears yeah you know how there's front wheel and rear wheel drives like what would it be for like a dog which which legs would be considered the uh the driving leg front leg dog driving legs you would probably I don't know I guess I've never thought about it because I just you just do it you know I you don't really give it I know in cars rear wheel drive is you know a thing but it's not uh what is it it's both I'm assuming that it's the rear legs give the power and the front legs do the steering all right is it not pretty similar to a car in that respect in that case that'd be front front leg well rear wheel drive that it it's not that it means that the it turns the back wheels it only it only drives the rear wheels so even though you're steering with the front that kind of the engine's in the back in it or not in the back but it turns those back wheels instead of I guess all of them I'm not exactly sure I don't know much about cars I don't know much about automobile powertrain distribution systems honestly for rotational for wheel drive not my area for wheel drive the motor is turning all the wheels right but then if it's just I think so I'm the right otherwise the motor is turning two wheels the steering because my car is a rear wheel drive four four wheel driver all wheel drive is when the power of the engine is going to all four wheels yeah okay it doesn't affect the steering though there are I think there's like rally vehicles and things like that they can turn the rear wheels in the opposite direction to make it turn tighter but I don't think that's very common yeah you're not gonna you're never gonna really need that in your daily life it's it's more things to break on your car all right then rag v8 or v6 no no no it's not a v8 or v6 it's a turbo v4 which you might think oh that's weak sauce but when your car weighs as little as mine you could get you could fucking zip all right because it would get about 100 views if I did it in its own video but the point is when I love a game I want everyone else to love it too that's the ideal world for me what if it's very different what if it's very different reasons because of difficulty settings oh yeah I disagree I don't want everyone to love the things I love necessarily yeah everyone to stay away from the things I love because I know that's that's the grouchy old man mentality I have these days which is just stay away from my shit stay away from my shit if this is why we're always skeptical when when everyone praises a thing it's like what is it though what is what is it offering if everyone likes it like gotta be something very very generic at that point right or approachable but you know that's just an indication it can be anything it's just that if there was a video game that everyone enjoyed and everyone agreed had fair and interesting challenge I'd be blown away like no but before you're playing Tetris yeah I suppose it's one of the reasons I enjoy the souls games is because it's distinguished by its difficulty because it serves to it lends to that game's oppressive atmosphere and it stands out from the most games nowadays which have accessibility settings out the ass they definitely um like the difficulty complements the world for sure yeah one at least the difficulty is just you know you're not some big cool guy and you know some raggedy thing with a broken sword that is a realistic threat to you it's part of how the game becomes grounded yes for all the horrible shit I like is widely accepted if we lived in that sort of glorious world my dates wouldn't hurriedly leave the house and drive screeching off into the night when I say sit right there I'm gonna put puppet master on I guess I just don't understand to never will understand the mindset that says I'm enjoying it's not hard to understand the mindset it isn't hard I'm just waiting for exactly at the end of it to just be like I don't care though throw that on too well yeah another reminder yeah I don't want others to enjoy it you are a hipster making games accessible making games enjoyable for a variety of people that should be seen overall as a net positive sure speaking to you why why would you say that and also show any of us where we said that we don't want people to enjoy it we just don't want them to change it so that they're not enjoying the thing that they're trying to enjoy anyways because it's a different thing now I just want to replay that full sentence again all right because I says I'm enjoying this game I don't want others to enjoy it you are a hipster making games accessible making games enjoyable for a variety of people that should be seen overall as a net positive surely so you would agree that like films like transformers are a great thing in terms of making films that are more broadly appealing to a wider demographic by comparison to films which cater to more niche audiences yeah so take a film like uh moon and then someone's like you should make it more like transformers uh surely that's how we got to more people it's more fun for more people I mean look it made more money right so it's this is not an argument that would ever be applied like any other form of art I think this is a great argument to go all the way back to the beginning this is where it's the conversation starts and you go ah so let's dig in you know we'll use that as our baseline but this seems to be near the conclusion for some reason like it's like oh this is what we've reached yeah okay really hypothetical if an easy mode led to Sekiro selling another million copies then why is that our metric for success I don't know sell selling copies why is Jim Sterling my friend man exactly the amount of revenue generated surely it's a good thing that they have uh ultimate team I mean that makes a billion dollars like every year that's yeah people love that they have so much fun with it and that makes more people buy the game and spend more time in the game and have more fun that's a good thing right yeah that's healthy for the industry it's making too much money it's not good I'm I mean if cutting half the game out as DLC it ends up getting the game more money and then more people see it and play it because of its success like maybe that's a good thing hell how many times has that happened and we just don't know about it oh yeah any game that isn't some mismanaged cynically produced a live service trash oh so we so we exclude that then okay it's very simple just don't do it when it's trash you're like right okay it's as possible via almost any means I mean provided they're good games in the first place a game like set right so more caveats yeah it feels it feels like we've now realized like oh wait it's about more than that a lot more jimmy johnson's anything with an engine games don't have to be designed to appeal to everybody that's true yeah it's generally good for both the audience and the game if they do have a varied appeal they don't have to appeal no especially in a landscape where there are so many different games that you could there's some there's games out there for everybody to say that games need to appeal to as many people as possible no would they be better if there were more jokes in godfather i think it would make it better who appealed to more people to more wouldn't be better if there were some straight romance options in dream daddy yes like you know wouldn't it be like how do you apply this to mature games it's like well they should talk to us you are the dream daddy yeah or the violence or gore or anything you know that's kind of like cutting them off from a from everybody you don't i don't know why would you think that you wouldn't say this about movies you wouldn't say this about tv shows or books why the games get treated this way yeah imagine imagine going to a bar game yeah it needs more jokes and it needs more random holes in the ground with like a bad boss at the end of them or something yeah what is the horse quip it was lacking like and pop music around pop music everywhere if you went to a to a bar right he sat down and all of the drinks in that bar just had that they had broad general appeal all of the drinks but there was no real like identity to any of them you know that i i couldn't go down and have that drink that i really like because they're all just sort of designed to be mostly appealing to most people like yeah like this you go into the bar and there's this huge one tap and it's just says alcohol you're like what is that you're like that's your alcohol you can have some it's your alcohol and you taste it you're like well this is i don't see how do anyone would really object to this i suppose but most people probably think this is fine what else do you have i like that's like alcohol and grape juice we have do you have any more drink so it's like no but i can we have more taps with this same drink like would you like very healthy bar landscape that we have now would you like food and you like what food have you got food food food and you these gray cubes and you eat them and you're like that's um okay you should go get our food it's it's really generally appealing to a lot of people people really like the great cubes they come back with a lot of positive feedback i don't know to anybody but if there's a way without compromising the game to appeal without compromising the game oh good luck to that why is that important jim yeah to a few extra people a more diverse so why did you mark generally just the idea that people vision of the creators you wrote it that's generally good like what hang on you are making such a broad statement i don't even know what you're making yeah it's for the game success secro did wait now it's about the game success as well that's not we're talking about what's good not what makes the most money why do you keep doing this keep flipping back and forth i mean if you don't account for all the people who die hurricanes are actually good for you you know they they bring awareness it's like wait what amazingly well would it have done better if more people felt they could play it probably yes because in general the more people are better means so the more people will access it some hardcore gamers tm don't like that idea whenever i've argued in why why can't you why can't someone be a hardcore gamer i consider myself a hardcore gamer no tm no mocking is like a lot of people but you don't think they're not hardcore soccer fans and hardcore parasailers and hardcore deep ocean fishermen probably he would never mock them he would never mock these other things people who are super passionate and spend a lot of time on particular hobbies i guess we're gonna find a name that isn't considered cringe like you know the veteran gamers we like nope too cringe like right uh it's all too cringe professional gamer too cringe like yeah it's it's residue from the whole gamers are dead articles wave around you know that thing that happened that is constantly being referenced by the same people in gyms camp but uh yeah they don't like the g word gamers are dead so they're more passionate than ever it seems and more numerous than ever and they keep talking about this thing i don't care about youtube channel is about also in the past i've been shouted down for court demanding that games appeal to quote unquote everybody so i mean you've just said that it's better yes when you say this scenario is better than this scenario you're pushing for the better one surely why wouldn't you are you indifferent to the world being a better place yeah that's that's where him not caring comes back dude i don't care should be in in the next april should be on his tombstone i don't care he doesn't care he died as he did but i don't care that's your epitaph just i don't care you should exclude shouldn't be as accessible should shut people down the game isn't for them they argue yes for people who know the value of hard work no okay stop okay see this is the kind of bullshit that he does like quit not everything that i like is for you and not everything you like is for me that's fine that's how i want it to be and that's how you want it to be even if you are loath to admit it don't conflate that with oh because i like this the people who don't like it don't appreciate hard fucking work like don't do this you disingenuous fuck because they played a video game a lot and got good at it well the phrase get good used to be a joke the humor has been sucked out of it by people who took it seriously let's be honest you should take it seriously you should strive to improve and get better it's not a joke it's a fucking lifestyle do it live it love it learn it it's it's obviously said in a way that you could be like you kidding right and you're like yes and no like yeah sure i'm kidding kind of but it is not the most serious way to say something that you should take serious there are some complaints and criticisms that can only be responded to was like you just have to you need to get better you gotta get better give me some mechanics hbomb like i said the thing he hates about dark souls is whenever you try and heal the enemies will punish you like he's not even talking about reacting to healing he's literally just talking about the act of trying to heal in the middle of a fight how do you respond to that other than like oh you need to get better at the game like yeah position when i'm ready to heal it's that's just how it works positioning yourself and choosing your moment so that you can safely heal it that's a mechanic boss different for every enemy stop moving i need to heal if someone said like oh my god you should get good but for real you're like well yeah yeah yeah that's what life is life is about you getting good like that since when when did this become controversial is because it was because a gamer said it and you hate gamers so now it's just not a thing we do anymore i just want to clarify there are times like say for example there's a glitch and you fall through the floor and dying like what the fuck that's all goes well you gotta get good yeah like you gotta avoid that it's like no the game needs to get designed better if it's a clipping issue not everything is a skill issue a lot of things are though a lot of things are understanding is often a skill issue oh is why if which is why if you're gonna critique or review a game you should be good at it you should be great at it even it'd be worth why you should certainly be familiar with it and often you familiar i got a great by becoming familiar with it it's the reason why that cuphead video was so funny because yeah it's like a hashy any perspective you share on that game is worthless because we are just like sorry like the way that you play it and the way that most people play it is so different that any observations you have are just not valuable like that's what i just want to see you say that two of it to his fate your perspective is worthless in the field that you have chosen to make your career is worth this valuable to people who also struggle with the tutorial but in the in the sense that like we can all value from a bad example in a way like yeah sure good job but that's probably not the kind of person you want to strive to be efs in the chat for dean takahashi gc he's like i don't know because it always pops up with him every once in a while it happened with doom eternal when he was doing the playthrough of that game and he was just fucking shit at that game he strikes me as the kind of like you know you go through a field you let's say you work at a i don't know a mine and you get in at the ground floor so to speak and you go into the mine and you mine and you learn what all the rocks do and you learn how to save the canary and you know all the little things that you do and for years and years you mine and you you know you get your pickaxe and you sing your dwarf songs and everything and then eventually one day you make it up to be a big you know big shot guy you're the manager you move up and then you then you work in the office now and you're doing logistic stuff and you forget what it's like to mine that goes on long enough that you just can't quite you know it's just an old experience and you can't remember how to mine so when you do your videos on mining you go down and you're like oh i'm actually shit at mining i've been in the office for too long that might be dean takahashi which in a way gives him an excuse for being terrible but maybe that's him or it's possible that he's just really shit at games but video game journalists don't often not apparently play games of doing so she's playing me do a maternal oh it's bad maybe it's the concept of thinking of your job as i'm a writer so all i need in order to do it is this word processor in front of me i don't need to go anywhere else i don't need to do any other things i just need to type 1500 words kind of that's what a lot of these articles feel like i don't know i've covered them on dog bites and i read them and i hear them when people talking about start wars and stuff for people talking about games and it just feels like content they shout out in an hour when they wrote this article and there's nothing of value there's yeah there's no passion it's just you know fuck the fans you're bad don't take it it's like you didn't like how many you didn't you just don't you don't have any sort of talent you're just you're just squeezing this shit out and putting it on a website you're lucky for you that you just you're just one of those people that you should feel so so so grateful that you were born in the 21st century it is a neat century i am turbo tired so i'm gonna go and head to bed goodbye is it a so entry because the irony of people angry at the idea of those who want games made for them is that they too want games made for them and only them not every games made for you these people argue while at the same time wanting a game made i thought you just said that they only say this about a specific type of game like sakura or dark souls i thought you highlighted that this thing weren't said about silent hill two i was just thinking i've ever heard it at least in the media this only seems to be an issue with from software games and it's just like this is one developer like trying to do something unique like just let them do their thing like do they have to be like every other fucking company it's just because they're in now they are the popular they're the popular thing in the zeitgeist so you know metro dread was getting it a bit too people and they eventually did add an easy mode and and they're a good developer they've banked a lot of good will a tremendous amount of good will with the fact that the games like the way they play is so responsive and rewarding and challenging i mean a lot of the people who get these games they appreciate that about it so i feel like the minority are the people complaining about the difficulty issue the only people i hear complaining about it are like these people it's the only ones i've ever heard complain about it it's always some polygon writer or just some fucking jim sterling type about it even though they don't care that that's the only people i hear complaining about it yeah still noise because with the exclusion of Sekiro these games are like to use inflammatory language that i can't think of better phrasing for their baby's first difficult game they are really not that hard with the exception of Sekiro Sekiro is a lot harder you know i don't want to be too weird about this but let's be honest gaming is still pretty new and we're a part of a generation that watched it go mainstream um yeah oh so there's this awkward element of like we're all very familiar with way more than some guy who was paid to like and he's like video game okay yeah sure what do i um and he tries to review it like a movie or something we're all awkwardly looking at him like why doesn't he know how to jump what the fuck what is happening and yeah i don't know is this this weird disconnect that happens there them and if you do do that you don't ever get to complain about games not selling as well as you want them to because when was that a part of the conversation exactly when was there this like portion of oh you know what sometimes i might complain about that well yeah like if you if there's something that you think has some real marrow it's a really great game that is achieving something that you think uh or to be rewarded including a difficult experience and it doesn't sell well that's still lame yeah i absolutely complain about titanfall 2 not selling as well as quite frankly it should why would you say this that your only options are either you need to be willing for a game to compromise and what it wants to be or what the developers want it to be to appeal to the broadest audience possible and therefore it sells well or you can have your artistic integrity and it doesn't sell well and you're not allowed to complain about any of the outcomes well i'll tell you fringy the reason is because there's only there's only one thing that determines how well a game sells and that's how difficult it is apparently even though there are literally no other factors copies slightly a lot more than um than horizon forbidden west elden ring sold more than fucking anything in the universe that game yes that was an incredible result 10 million sold copies well i'll tell you i'm i'm looking at it we don't have a good male shut the fuck up yeah i'm sorry god damn by the end of june 2022 it had sold 16.6 million yeah there you go now let me look up horizon like i don't think i try out a lot is that for a long time i'd check the steam concurrent players for elden ring and dark souls 3 and dark elden rings current playing currently playing one would consistently be higher than dark souls 3's all time peak which is crazy looks like yeah they're not it's absolutely insane how popular elden ring is yeah looks like they haven't released the sales for forbidden west which is always a good sign that's always a good sign somebody's been already cagey lately they just recently said that last was two had 10 million across like two years everything really well it's just really interesting though because ghosts of susheema they were very quick to talk about how well that game sold because it sold well it didn't like this applies to everything didn't disney say like they gave the numbers for loki but then when miss marvel came out they were just like well it's numbers this is especially in the video game industry if they tell you how many copies they have sold then it means that they're happy with those results if they've told you how they shipped or if they tell you how much it cumulatively made in conjunction with like console sales that means that they're not particularly happy with those results and if they don't tell you at all it means that they're very unhappy with the results yeah these numbers get put out by these companies to benefit the companies didn't they keep ragging on uh about last of us two's like opening sales like they kept referencing i thought i thought they kept focusing yeah like they weren't they wouldn't address like either refunds or the crash in price for this game because nobody liked yeah it was one of those those turnovers was really low like month per month for that game they talked about the ships not the sales exactly i'm like there was a big they did their best there's a big trend of people taking pictures of like 500 copies on the rack at a best buy and like that too it's like oh okay a lot of these are just sitting in stores not being sold yeah you hear about that game and then you're like fuck i don't want to play through that buy your own well some people do okay and that's fine i guess some people do mission you don't want outsiders playing your games so if pio he's this is you okay yeah i don't you know what i i this kind of happened with uh well i will point being yeah i kind of don't like i want people to try it i want people to try the game but i don't want them to just be like i don't want this game to appeal to everyone i really don't i don't i like it for what it is that's why i want to have the experiences that are available to you you don't want it to change into something that you dislike that's totally yeah and i feel like jim will be a part of the group of people that would probably back scorsese's comments about cinema in industry but what do you think that if we would do as best faith as possible i could go with like oh yes you've got all these gangster movies that are really like deep and have very important thematic and character like interactions stuff but they're all they can be a bit dry or they can be a bit this that and the other it's like let's make them better by making them more like marvel movies it's like you never fucking agree and if they started to do that would you be like oh well oh it's sold more so yeah i don't know like it feels like we're not keeping consistent across the it really does feel like games for some reason doesn't get the same approach as a lot of other things do you don't really want them to be as successful as they could potentially be i'm making about weirdly the how much money i wanted to make yeah hey you just want to order the game to yourself and if you do that that probably won't be many of them made what are you talking about five devil may cry bro you can't show dead space three dead space three was the product of trying to appeal to a broader audience and it didn't kill the franchise yeah it's just saying because the game isn't even bad by any stretch it's just like it's not what dead space yes it is dead space is a different thing now let's see what it's going has to say about dead space just so easy those five devil may cries like well and the one that they tried to make to a reboot we talked about dragon age dragon age origins is a niche game a lot of people understandably will not like that game it's tough it's difficult you have it has like mechanics and you have to think and combat is tactical and and then dragon age two comes out and again it's not a bad game by any stretch it's just like it's clearly not dragon age origins it's been super at all generalized and so it's fantasy mass effect different um great and then they made another one in a way mass effects revived this this sort of that that reputation hit i think because the style that mass effect was going with just works better for that kind of more sort of movie presentation type game whereas dragon age not being a crpg and all of a sudden becoming a cinematic action game with some rpg elements just i don't know felt to me a little weird i can't put my finger on the line something cool happens we have the button that you press and something cool happens whenever you press it um it was certainly more flashy better animated it's it certainly was cooler in that sense um but i could not tell you why mass effect one became mass effect two and people were super into it and they loved it and mass effect two is revered i can't tell you why that worked and dragon age origins became dragon age two and that just was clearly instantly met with a lot of derision i'm sure there's a reason of course i just don't know what that reason is off the top of my head now i think it's because the the writing for mass effect two stayed so good yeah and people were really really keen on the characters but they just didn't quite they didn't connect with the dragon age two characters the way that they did with the dragon age origins characters and dragon age it dragon age lost a lot of flexibility too like there there was a lot you could do in origins that that it just kind of felt like a lot of your choices and yeah dragon age two were like yeah you can kind of origins was a little bit like it's far from an open world game it was quite shoe horny but dragon age two felt even more so dragon age origins was able to hide itself not in a dishonest way but it didn't feel like it was it's kind of like a pokemon game right when you especially the early pokemon games you could just get you just download a look at a jpeg of the entirety of the world and it's not really that big at all and you look at it you're kind of shocked at how small it is yeah dragon age two was all in the pretty right pretty much the last three time periods i want to say it's been a long time since i played it but you go to the same locations a lot in dragon age two you really get set fatigue in that game but you don't in mass effect too because you go to a lot of different places and i think that's probably one of the reasons and there's all the planets you can just mine on that sort of give you the illusion of the galaxy being even bigger than the places that you can explore sort of i don't think that fooled a lot of people but now because the mass effect one which is my favorite of the trilogy the trilogy of the three games you can go down and explore them i mean the war war no it's not the three but there there was it was really fucking cool to even though the mako driving was let's just call it skill based gameplay it was it was fun to just land on planets and then find things and roam around and get to pirate outposts i get why people might not have liked that but i i did like it it didn't make the universe feel kind of big and i did like it's very rpg miss hello mr critical how'd you do hola it's a pleasure to be here hello we're having a sozo conversation about difficulty in video games gatekeeping ip's the mainstream infecting genre i don't know lots of things money okay it's all going on i'm gonna scroll down a little chat you'll find a little watch together link and you join us we're nearing the end of this video it doesn't care by the way all right of course i'm waiting for that again yeah spoiler alert jim doesn't care the next time a publisher cancels a series because it's sold below expectations you don't get to be pissed off do you show the game but yeah this is the rebelle that we get like magnetizing your own foot right now to be clear dead space was a very specific experience people fucking loved it they released a second one that i think stayed pretty strong to the original this is a couple changes a bit more action oriented sure then the third one it was like whoa you've you've been influenced by current trends haven't you and the reason why the reason why they did that is because dead space too despite being a success by pretty much any reasonable standard and everyone well enough to justify the cost and so dead space three had to appeal to a broader audience and in doing so it appealed to a smaller audience because a lot of people who were formally interested didn't show up they didn't buy it you're showing a game that tried to be more accessible and died like appealing for a broader audience and died because of it it was also i believe in the era where andrew wilson was the ceo of ea and he his mandate to every team was basically how can you guys turn your property into feefall ultimate team and they're like they go to um no not motive someone doing the remake uh redwoods no not redwoods shit what's the name of the dead space studio sorry they were redwood but they were redwood yeah they changed a visceral this man no existent yeah and they're like i guess we can sell weapons like it just did not work there's so much about it but like i just remember because the opening sequence you're like in a in a sci-fi city right and you're just waking up and then they they tell you yeah yeah no three was our moon you're on the moon and then some guys bust in and just put yeah and i remember the double take when it's like you have your machine gun type weapon there's several chest high walls in the middle of this like series of roads and you've got your enemies and like and i was like is this gears of war the fuck is going on yeah it was a whole thick of dead spaces you don't kill the enemies by just blasting them with bullets you need to disassemble them exactly around the environment used to throw at them like stasis and whatnot but they changed it to appeal to a broader audience and it failed i think around that time co-op gameplay was a major trail yeah and ea in particular was really really trying to push that because they put out that game army of two i think that was around the air of resident evil five as well yeah exactly five yeah it was really cool to have a survival horror experience where you had to co-op with someone it's like yeah there's nothing as horror like you know being with your mate and having a laugh the whole time yeah exactly i mean in the case of dead space where isolation is so key to that uh that franchise and then all of a sudden forcing co-op into it it really didn't fit imagine there's another sandwich running around it's like and i just want to make sure because people are gonna fucking straw man it's not impossible there are games that are built like what's that one that people really like fan phasmagorum something fan oh phasmaphobia phasmaphobia phasmaphobia that's the one yeah um if you're gonna have two players like it's gonna have to be like they have to be super vulnerable yeah like to make horror work to make uh like fear work in a situation like that because otherwise like yeah you've got nothing to work with yeah i don't think you're gonna escape the meta of there's another person playing with you that you're talking with that exists outside of the game and that is instantly just it's so hard to get sucked into the game in the same way if you're chatting with people i think if you were alone right like being alone and nobody has you back yeah that's one of the key elements it's especially for dead space it's why i was going to say resident evil i think got away with it a lot a lot more cleanly than dead space did because resident evil 4 was pretty straddling the line of being an action movie at that point like it was a much more shooter and i thought five worked well enough i didn't like the on rails anything close to an action movie honestly resident evil 4 no i mean like i don't know it's still scary but you're doing a lot of fighting in it it's not well action in the sense of your the i guess in the sense that if you there's a lot of combat in it the whole like the over the shoulder camera just opened up they opened up a lot of combat options and obviously the game wanted to take advantage of that because it was like the first time a resident evil game could do that kind of thing and it was great at the time it was a real innovative you know way of engaging with resident evil but it doesn't really lend itself so much to like survival horror and the sense of like you know slow paced kind of creepy isolation definitely disagree look the big disconnect here is probably the fact that you drink your correct me if i'm wrong but you're you were very familiar with resident evil's format before 4 came out and then you were like yes this is a big change and so when you think of survival horror and reference to resident evil you're thinking of the format for one two and three versus four four changed it to be a much more action oriented people consider resident evil 4 as a death for resident evil as a franchise by the way i i think so but then you go back to like the remake of resident evil 2 where it's like okay that proved that you can still keep that classic formula of survival horror with the over the shoulder like 3d environments it does work it's just like it's all about the pacing of the game and how much action you want to throw in how much combat you want to put in versus just exploration and an atmosphere i think and that's actually why i always thought that dead space was a really good post resident evil 4 game that it took that from camera style and even actually added the ability to move wall shooting in a limited way at least in the original dead space and made it it toned down there tuned it closer to horror and made that work and have it still be scary because of the atmosphere with that atmosphere would be the thing that helps as well just like dead space as a concept is pretty innately scary i think yeah which is why making it more action it was like dude dead space was fucking terrifying when i first played it oh yeah yeah in the greatest of ways and i want to be clear i was scared by resident evil 4 when i first played it a lot of people saying it's not scary it's like don't joseph anison oh the first time you see the last plot it's a spooky game absolutely um it became more camp and honestly i've got such mixed feelings about re4 because like there's there's moments of genuine brilliance like the the first time you you you fight the ganados in the village it's like that's brilliant like they're swarming yeah they're everywhere like you're running for your life awesome stuff the regenerators are still like the scariest yeah they're pretty cool yeah but then you know you're walking around these enormous like um you know gothic castles and you're fighting like suits of armor that have been possessed by the the last plot of yeah i think it really gets close to like campy i don't even know if we've i've talked to you about this rags i feel like it's something we probably should have talked about before but like it was always an awareness that i found really odd because i started with resident evil 4 for resident evil that's where i started and so when i when people tell me like resident evil 4 fucked the franchise because they went a completely different direction and now it's all over the place resident evil in terms of what game you expect next is the fps which is all not re4's fault well so the funny thing for me was like resident evil 5 was 4 but diluted and worse resident evil 6 was the crystallization of destroying that that branch if you will i was like fuck it's all it's all worthless now when other people are like no it was destroyed back at 4 and it's like oh okay i think they have a very yeah the idea it wasn't destroyed like it was almost just it's uh they learned the long sorry they learned the wrong lessons from re4 whereas like you know it was it was that fluid kind of fast paced gameplay and they're like oh brilliant we just need more of that we need more enemies we need more action we need more combat and more kind of linear environments to facilitate that it's like no that's that's not what made the game work and it was always a war that popularized the co-op in that type of game too if i was the best selling resident evil as far as i know it's funny because that's basically the approach that was taken to resident evil 3 back in the day on ps1 like they saw resident evil 2 how well it did and then it's like 3 needs more action you start off with a machine gun there's more zombies everywhere you know more you're in the city you're outside it's more destruction it's a dodge but the idea that you're gonna make an action game with like 2d pre-rendered environment i know it's amazing looking back on it that's i'm under taken that's on amosha who was the probably the the end state of that there's a scene that always sticks with me it's like when you're fighting the nemesis right at the very end you shoot it with a rail gun and like it gets blown across the room and like i don't know if it was the same for everyone but like the frame rate drops to like 10 frames per second because like you engine just groaning trying to move that many polygons around i think you've reached the limits of what the ps1 can do for you my friends yeah i was just checking it looks i don't just go into scroll here resident evil 5 sold 13.4 million copies well good but i actually we've talked about before i've enjoyed resident evil 5 every time i oh it's it's fun to play yeah it's a fun game to this for those who don't know there's a full playthrough of it on mula with me and rags we hate it the last red field is honestly i feel that is most jacked cheval more to hunch them boulders boys yeah one of the if you play president evil one like the very original one and then thought like it's gonna end up this yeah like chris redfield fighting albert wesker it seems like you can segment them into like trilogies in terms of style now like the first three are their own thing four or six or over the show were sorry did you guys any ever play the the revelations games yep yeah i didn't i actually i only played the first one actually not the second i really like the second one i i was gonna say i've i've got a real soft spot for the second one i think it's uh it tries to balance that you know that new like over the shoulder combat heavy gameplay but like pairs it back quite a bit and brings in a bit more survival elements to it like i'm most quite scarce you've got to be quite tactical about how you do things and there's there's kind of like attempts to like give you a bit of like scary horror and suspense and i kind of like that game as a little self-contained resident evil that was a little bit more restrained than some of the stuff we'd had before then yeah and the riot mode in that game is really fun i think it's called riot mode okay but who has played resident evil survivor on the ps1 nope i've played that i just watched a video on it and it i still have my original copy well did you guys play the mobile game resident evil blades many of them mate the next time a publisher cancels a series because it's sold below expectations you don't get to be pissed off i do because i don't oh it's uh it's echoing on drinker by the way but yeah uh just we've said already it's just fucking wonderful that jim has managed to turn one of the most famous examples of a game going mainstream and stopping into it's your fault if you want games to be exclusive to just me just before i move a dead space too didn't meet expectations for sales because of non no it's marketing budget and the game production budget because you look at the second game compared to the first it is clearly a more expensive game and it just didn't sell enough to justify the the cost of it correct me if i'm wrong but we usually i mean this is what i remember my take being but it's been so long since i played them now i'm assuming i don't know if i would change but uh the dead space too mechanically is smoother and more like yes like very noticeably yeah yeah but dead space one had the benefit of just i felt like it had the better experience for the horror specifically yes yes it's almost like a isn't it but of course a little bit shock has to be the same the same thing going on yeah kind of yeah i'd put bio shock twos atmosphere up there with the first bio shock i think they did a great job replicating rapture a second time but i guess bio shock two on the steam deck it's actually holds up quite well and you just stream it the first bio shock holds up really well well it's got that style you know i'm fucking a game i love it's kind of cool we've been talking about these games resident evil four bio shock dark souls like these are three of our favorite all-time games this is like oh this is fun yeah absolutely those games are they they they have aged like a fine wine the atmosphere always say about movies as well it's like damn we didn't realize how good we had it but get gooders don't get to that sort of discussion is how would you say not for you why why do you think that do you think every person who says you should get better at dark souls thinks that every game needs to have dark souls difficulty because i don't think they do i don't think anyone does because that shit would be exhausting yeah oh yeah and saying get good also isn't saying quit exactly it doesn't yeah you're right if they said don't play the game they'd say don't play the game but they don't they say you need to practice you need to get better sorry i've seen yeah i've seen these discussions so many times like not so much with dark souls because i wasn't so much into that but like with elden ring um yeah very much along those lines of like it's it's insanely hard i'm really pissed off i don't want to play this anymore and then people are just like look this is why like these games are meant to be challenging like if you if you don't want that if you don't want the kind of frustration of having to retry something multiple times like yeah it's probably not for you but like if you want to do it you're gonna have to put the effort in and get better at it yeah that's that's not bad that's not a bad thing to say to a person and like i think didn't as say like he was gonna quit and then he got emboldened because he didn't like the idea that it was like monsters he couldn't kill and then he ended up fucking playing the shit out of the game i am i yeah i think uh i've been on a similar emotional journey i think that sounds like a nujikata or something like that and then he started building more like a samurai with bleeding he's like oh this game rocks i'm not quitting this game after all it's just it is one of those things where it's like you get out of it what you put into it and it's like you have to put in the effort and like ultimately it'll become you know easier it'll become more rewarding and it opens up a lot more possibilities for you and yeah it's you get a sense of accomplishment when you progress through it um that you don't get with other games which kind of hold your hand and just like they're basically like interactive cutscenes essentially you know like different games for different people i suppose like you know i'm all in favor of games like this challenging as fuck diluting your game the argument that people that jim like jim would make is that well you've still got normal mode you can just play that and then easy modes there and people can play easy mode and then they can enjoy that but the temptation i think would be too great like if you lose a couple times on normal mode to just go to the easy mode i think a lot of very realistic problems you know what pisses me off the most in games where it's like you die a few times and the game itself yeah i like that that's just proof that's a uniquely understood thing just like yeah that everyone gets it well i'm more than capable of humiliating myself i don't need your help thank you very much game i have chat right there that's telling me i'm shit every time it's fine yes and what i like what i like about the souls games is that the game wants you to go into that game with a certain mindset of like caution and it's a type of game that actually encourages you to walk like a lot of games don't really do that it's everybody just runs everywhere like if if dark souls this any souls game had an easier mode i would be tempted to just run around be like oh whatever it doesn't matter i'll just fuck around but like because it's as hard as it is and it's all working simpatico with like the the dark atmosphere like the big you know foreboding castles and you know lightning or whatever if the environment has that it's like you're thinking oh shit i gotta be careful here like that's part of the experience and getting your ass kicked is thematically relevant that's that's basically what the game asks of you isn't much other than you know get off the methamphetamine and calm the fuck down manage that and you will realize that pretty much everything you're staring down is extremely beatable yeah it's good how would you say not for you diluting your game to cynically chase every conceivable demographic just makes a game watered down shit so how come you're using this image now i recognize that then hey so i'm a little bit yeah i'm a little bit yeah who's the we then play a little longer i guess i'm a little like we were you diluting your game to cynically chase every conceivable demographic just makes a game watered down shit adding some features that bring new audiences you motherfucker you you conflate in the two you can play it he did it again he did it again with this image this is a second time everyone knows rags of beer yeah you're cheating that's just here it's i can't i can't do it guys we said dead space three is like the best example of what he's advocating for that he says no it's okay to have accessibility options as if that's what people hated about dead space three or something like this damn color blind mode you ruin it every game is same football dead space three is such a savable game it's not even a bad game it's just you didn't oh it's not there also i see jay how you're doing hello hello gamers whoa oh you said the g word oh my god hello gamers hello i'm here and i'm ready to get canceled let's do this boys we found the right group since it's been a while now in the i don't want everyone to scroll enough constantly i will repost that watch together links so it's easier people to access there you go so nice we're currently no worries on the top i'm already in because i'm a smart i'm a smart boy let us well since we're getting close to the end this because i'm looking forward to the video after this it's thematically related it'll be funny is in to join your existing one however he's basically good business part of the reason they triple i industry is in such a slump that i got really angry at that bit i got is it in a slump well this was made in 20 was this 19 i think this video 19 i don't hasn't the industry been making more money year on year which is the metric that seems to be really relevant the gaming industry probably in 2020 and 2021 probably would have made a shit ton of money i would have thought so yeah you've got a cap of audience literally people inside yeah i think it's the hundred billion dollar industry now yeah it's the best thing in the world to happen at animal crossing well it's why this shit happens there's so much buddy to be animal crossing easy easy mode though do you see the problem though he's like simultaneously advocating that like you know it's that they can make more money if they appeal to more people and then there was like and look at dead space three that's what happens when you do like what i'm so lost dead space three is an example for both sides of a dichotomous proposition which is interesting to see in a video yeah this is on industry part of the reason they're triple i industry i love this movie by the way the the scrooge mcduck it's great oh it's a classic christmas carol one yeah christmas carol yeah that's good ending really scared me i wanted to enjoy it yeah how do those glasses stay on the beat it doesn't make any sense that is true yeah not anatomically possible i'm writing a big one right it does suck six hour video on the scene oh it makes it doesn't make me pick you up on this one mama yeah he will mr crutch mcduck is so greedy he creates a gravitational pull that keeps the glasses i just want you to know that all scottish people are like him by the way you fucking hate parton with money oh sorry bill isn't my bed such a slump is that it designs games to appeal only to people who already buy their games that's why fuse turned out shit focus tested wank that it was and this is really so we kept talking that's what our main argument's been throughout all this really is like we don't want it to be focus tested sludge that gets ruins the original intentions of the ip and the experience everyone's hunting when they follow the ip and then he's like using all these examples like oh we don't want this you're like wait hang on who's team you on again what's happening what have you been 10 minutes ago in your video what's happening this is why rather than find ways to expand their audience publishes you one of the thing that's interesting too is that this whole expanding your audience is that the gaming audience is just always expanding because there are more people being born more people becoming part of the industry so chasing a you don't have to necessarily change a game in order to get a broader audience i mean a lot of its marketing a lot of it's just finding how to get those people to discover the game in the first place i mean it's where dead space two didn't sell well enough for the budget and so dead space three was their attempted solution to that instead of scaling things down and yeah reconsidering market strategies and things they were just like no we're going to keep the super high budget action but we're just going to dial it up even further and make it more generic in that aspect i was going to ask about this right i know this is a slight tangent and i don't want to derail from this video so i'll make it quick but um yeah one of the things that i posited in recent years is like because they're much like with um movies and tv's and stuff like there's such a massive choice now um games designers it almost feels like they have to like signpost everything for the players and make it as easy as possible like generally speaking because if they don't players will just get frustrated and pissed off and just like move on to a different game instead the slightest sort of endurance will get them yeah is that what influences game design at this point like because you know 20 30 years ago like you invested the money in a game and there wasn't a huge amount of new releases every month who's from so you would kind of put the time and effort into just mastering the game like even if there was frustrations there but like now is it just a different gaming environment is it like this is the game i bought this month this is my monthly or bi-weekly game that i bought i i'm gonna stick with it and it is just like if it gets too frustrating if i'm held up for too long am i just gonna say fuck it i just don't care about this anymore i'm gonna move on to something else and so it has to be like made easy enough that you always move on to the next objective you always know where you need to go and you can always like reload as quickly as possible if you get an aspect that most people who quit games probably quit them very early in their playthrough or their their playtime i bet of all the people who quit a game most quit within the first hour or two hours like exponentially more people quit i was gonna say the developers fancy themselves storytellers too they also just want you to get through their whole story so it's like oh we want to make sure you eat it so let's make sure it's 10 hours and super easy plays the best one i couldn't i think the best one i can liken it to is like because it's like the longest running series i can think of is something like Tomb Raider where the the new games that i've played were very much like you've got a waypoint that you follow that literally tracks you to exactly where you need to go at all times and like once you get there it's pretty obvious what you need to do like the game is literally like holding your hand um whereas you compare that to the older titles it was like you were very much just left to figure things out you know by yourself there was no particular direction about where you needed to go it was kind of up to you and i just think you know is that that philosophy now just gone because people aren't willing to put that time in to figure things out i think it comes a lot from pretty much the majority of i guess triple a games at this point being really embarrassed or frustrated by the fact that they have to be games yes yeah you're right they've felt like over the last decade there's been this sort of um it was it was kind of like coincides with the push for more cinematic games and um a lot of uh it's felt at the time a lot of press heralding these games as i mean damn bioshock infinite it seemed like an era when when a lot of people were embarrassed about making video games or being interested in talking about video games that needed to be like a push towards more cinematic games as a broadly appealing experience yeah ignoring the fact that the game couldn't wait in art forever since the beginning of time and that bioshock infinite and last of us one were within a month of each other i think or a couple they were quite close yeah that was definitely the year that seemed to kick it off and also ignoring the fact that making games that way as art is directly going against what makes games compelling as an art form and that they are the only ones that have direct interaction i like my games gamey yeah soma doesn't work as a film it doesn't get to do what it was doing as well as a film um i think soma would make a hell whereas you you think about all right go for it i think that a lot of the quandaries it poses to you would not be as strong yeah it wouldn't be as good i think i still think you make a really good feeling yeah i agree that we would be watching someone do the things instead of doing the things and i think that game is a unique way of making you do the things it's very very good i completely agree with you but if we're talking less so about the meaning of it and more so about the i i think is a great fucking idea of what they have for a story to be told as well like the movie i envision would be everything up to where the player wakes up to make a movie out of that i guess yeah to rephrase yeah it being a game it has access to you in a way that a film doesn't rather than soma wouldn't work as a film yeah it's all the adaptation stuff right like if bioshock were adapted it's not going to be one to one with what the game is in fact we might want to see the fall of raptures as opposed to what the game is i would love to have seen what gore verbinski's bioshock would have been oh we got a gb show right well got the netflix one to look forward to yeah i'm less i'm less excited about that the guy the guy would be fresh off doing the ring and then demanding that he get funding for an r-rated bioshock movie and i think if i forget who it was i think it was universal was like now it's too expensive you got to make a pg-13 and then he bailed who's monetization to squeeze more money out of a stagnant audience pool yes i have officially tied the easy mode debate back to microtransactions that's why i'm so fucking good at this job i don't just respect to the lack of an easy mode in sekuro i am impressed by its boldness the same way i was impressed to that near automata doesn't reveal the true scope of its narrative until you've beaten it twice doing that is a huge risk in an industry where making as much money as possible is the only goal of mainstream publishers that's fucking at your hotel using monetary gain in order to make some of these arguments i was just i'm not sure who's pointing that even assists i don't even know like i'm just like okay what sekuro's done is admirable but even with that in mind if sekuro had an easy mode i just wouldn't care yes i would that's what this video was again in fact you've espoused that it is better that it is undeniably better if games try to appeal to a broader audience yeah because his goal is that the most amount of people have fun and i'm telling you don't care over and over and over and over again the more you say it doesn't make it more convincing as far as you wouldn't use it any man who must say i don't care clearly care yes as time would say he really does seem to be going against himself now in this video this is yeah this portion is strange yeah how this gets snuck in why should anyone anyway see you for this discussion in another three years i guess but you don't care i thought you don't care you're already planning on caring into the future but you don't care now fuck you anyway i realized there's a measure of irony in me emphasizing how little i care oh you don't say you know that there's irony you kept it in the video this level this is the part where you see this is the part you realize it and you go oh shit i have to rewrite that other section because that's really fucking ironic or it's just like fuck it i'll just put it on the end that i'm self away so it doesn't count as a criticism yeah it's okay if it's self aware it's fine about the debate while doing a 20 minute video that shows i care on some level and i do i do care on some level what are you so you're just lying what's the point of all that it's literally stream of consciousness yeah like whatever this part is into his head at any one moment is we just say it i don't care about easy modes in games i don't much care for the cyclical discussion about difficulties you've made multiple videos i don't care about the cyclical discussion makes one plan to make more videos yeah i'm excited yeah that you plan on making more of these videos on this topic this year yes rev just has for the show sonic the hedgehog doesn't care about what's on that computer screen take cues from sonic the hedgehog don't lie ignore it be like so i don't care in as far as you find it frustrating which means you do care you're missing language jim language this is not the wrong words using the wrong words it's a cycle it goes on and on but very much like the game industry is he really quiet all of a sudden but what the fuck yeah so as you can see i had an outro a closing statement all the record it was happening and it was talking about how reductive it is talking over himself from software games in terms of only difficulty but right at the last minute i was compelled to say something else something that few hardcore gamers if they've gotten this far will find blasphemous insulting and i'm quite certain when i say this a certain subgroup of hardcore gamers will take it out of context forever fuck me what do you what's the point you know instead of just i got a minute i need a minute for this i fucking hate this with video what he did was he recorded something and then that was a okay i guess and then later afterwards he decided what he said needed to be changed or amended potentially and so instead of changing it he put in this section about why would you do this incorporating the past material when it was over bullshit and so it just like recorded himself saying complete nonsense and used the like just faded out the audio we need it we need a lip reader here to see what he was actually saying in that original video i'll be awesome just i'm checking my watch i want the point already you know as soon as he's saying you just highlight again the fucking i get made fun of this all the time right like nobody added to your scripts nobody's doing anything for your pacing why would you as rye kind of put it out you took the time to record that whole segment and then you realized in post man what a stupid segment i'll let it play to then talk over it as it fades away to talk about how i shouldn't have made that section and instead made this one instead of just doing the section yeah what is the point of all this yeah is it because he thought wow that that was really fucking good material i went i don't want that to go to waste except for the part where i literally can't even play the part that i said i think that's exactly what it is yeah it's a bit of a narcissist just like i think i was wrong here but the material is so good i gotta keep it or like i still stand by it but i have to do so like it's almost it's so noncommittal i think it's simpler than that i think it's just that he had the live action footage of himself didn't want to get all dressed up in his little suit and corset top hat again so he's like okay so i'll just have the video of the original conclusion i made playing but then i'll fade it out and do kind of an artistic zoom into a space skybox and then do the actual conclusion voiceover that way i don't have to get dressed right yeah it's gonna be blasphemous to i don't know me apparently just you know just tell me to each other so they can get off on what a not-real game where i am so here goes i don't play video games to be challenged not technically not on a mechanical you will die honestly so if someone said like what is the fundamental for you when it comes to video games that's going to be one of the first thoughts i'll have yes maybe the first to experience some kind of a challenge either by the game or the game presents me with a way to impose challenges upon myself with a set of rules if you don't want to challenge just watch a movie or watch a let's play otherwise what a weird yeah oh also hi cap i hello hey man hi cap cap why do you like video games yeah i i like that i can play games on my phone when i'm bored and but why do you play video games i'm just happy to be here he found that question challenge very well there's a link to the watch together if you want to join is there an easy mode for that question there's an easy mode for you the truth i suppose this is the two times speed well so yeah by the way don't play games for challenge why are you gonna play little hope go enjoy that fucking game oh my god in play disco elizia my guess that game's not challenging little hope oh wait that was the dark pictures one right your mom got out of games and just challenged though it's the experience of playing it sometimes you just want a power fantasy also like playing god of like playing god of war three on easy mode and just fucking everything up yeah that's why i said like that would be one of my first thoughts but certainly doesn't encompass all the reasons i play video games i understand that like a but to to open with like i don't play games for the challenge it's like really wiping that out people do so i can tell you one thing for sure people in large part play souls games for the challenge yeah and he's been saying this whole video that he does play the souls games and he he doesn't want easy modes in them so i do you just really like the way the graphics look in that game i'm not willing to make any like huge criticism of this one i just i just wonder why he plays souls games if he's not particularly after a challenge it makes inherent to the medium to me like there needs to be at least a tiny tiny bit of a challenge which is still a challenge so i hope jim answers his own question of why exactly he's playing these games i don't know what else is getting out of it can't really enlighten us it's not that the souls games are just challenged but challenge is a large part of what they are even if they're not the most challenging things in the universe yeah so and that that's certainly how they exist in the discourse i don't know if you guys are familiar with the mainstream discourse around souls games but their reputation is the hard games where you learn the patterns that's that's what they are to people i play them for the story liar genuinely what someone says i'm like i have trouble believing you i would you know sure i would also concede that probably people would like to enjoy the story but like most of them are like i'll wait until someone makes a video yeah i understand yeah i mean i play tribal hunter for the plot a plot that's why i play it i don't know what that is yeah i was like last that's fine i play mario for the plot yeah level challenging games can be fun of course but they're usually fun for many other reasons not just because they're challenging i've been playing video games since this is just the laziest i was gonna say what what what even the point down here gonna be lazy editing it's nothing else to know at least in brief what reasons yeah well commodore 64 cassettes were still sold in w h smith hell w h smith was still a thing is it still a thing i'm into the uk and ages anyway i played it is it is still a thing you're googling real quick find out it is still a thing yeah con the commodore canada is now in the door on the nes why not but it wasn't until the late 90s came along and the uk got final fantasy seven and uh not all that long after we got met i don't know what's happened again with it this is why like you can edit but like it's you have to do it well like this video but it's not good yeah i think this is uh this is voiceover so it's not like he's doing this off the cuff presumably he's got a script but it's like where is this i don't know and this is an attempt an attempt at a weird like tim and eric type thing of just like oh look at how random this is that i'm doing with this edit i think what he did was he sat down at his computer and he was finalizing this and he was editing it and putting it together and as he was doing that he listened to himself saying that thing earlier realized at this point that maybe that would ruffle feathers or do something that he didn't like so all of this this that he's doing is being done with vegas open in a way and he wasn't planning on doing it and so i think this part is off the cuff that he's doing now he sat down at his computer to edit to edit visually everything caught something he didn't like that he said earlier and instead of going back and changing it or getting back in the outfit he was and it doesn't even it's not even full outfit he just he didn't have he didn't even put a pants on or anything but he was like no i'll just do i'll just fix it right here and i'm not even gonna get up i mean he's got like he's got another three minutes so maybe he can tie all this together into some like like cohesive argument but like i'm struggling so far like he just seems to be meandering between different like perspectives on this how do you make a short video and then the answer to appreciate that hey video games can have something to say video games can have intricate stories with lots of different plot threads right and lots of different things and that's why i truly love games can have something to say immediately defaults to stories fuck off fuck off they're they are games they can say something to you through the game part of the game very true yeah oh i'm fucking damn it games because they can be so many things i play final fantasy seven for the story i played metal gear solid for the wild characters and the you want to make a point i'm still wondering one of the things that makes metal gear the original metal gear good is the ways in which it uses gameplay to tell its story in some ways that are kind of unconventional it had pretty revolutionary stealth mechanics for its time i was about to say i'm not even like a metal gear solid player person but i'm like man so when there's not a crazy character on the screen you're just like what fucking around waiting for the next crazy character to show up but you get things like autocon when you're in the prison cell giving you a bottle of ketchup and then you can figure out that you can use the bottle of ketchup to fake that you've killed yourself so that the guard comes in and then you can escape that way it doesn't just show you that in a cinematic it lets you figure that out and play it you know it's not it's not just that there's a cool story there's more to it interesting anti-war things i play silent hill for the dread atmosphere a play saint's row to be immersed in an open world of constant it's funny because we brought this up about all these different ips right what if they're sequels they then were like oh we dread an atmosphere we want to reduce that a bit we want people to be a little bit less freaked out by two dreads for a larger audience yeah and you can do that with any of these aspects the average human is afraid of atmosphere and dread so we have an ending of an ip basically and then when sterling says well that's publish a mandate the developer said no that's how no we want to do that nobody told us to do that he actually told us to keep it the same way and we disagreed now what do you do developers never get any blame it's always a publisher to catch the blame red dead redemption two for the impressive writing and the amazing vocal performances and chelina's not playing the way but red dead redemption three have like a lot of stuff between all that it does feel exactly it's like the metal gear solid thing i'm gonna be honest if i said i played like about the game but like why would that be the first thing you go for that's where it's so weird to be like our gta fucking love gta five oh yeah great great it's mainly the voice acting i'm in it for though draw through all of this gameplay in order to get to the things i really wanted that's how sometimes how it feels like you are pushing through the gameplay to get to the stuff of real substance when for a lot of people the gameplay is the substance games is so fucking embarrassed of their gameplay like they don't want to be associated with they don't want to put any effort into it none of them care at all about actually realizing the fantasy they're presenting through the gameplay because the gameplay is just the inconvenient vehicle through which the story is to be delivered and we can't make it too inconvenient or rather than a really annoying you know like rather than the means by which the story is conveyed you can do so many really cool things because the player has direct interaction with the events going on they're a participant rather than an audience member sounds exhausting just tell me how i need to feel no please see what james got to say before he blinks out of existence interesting more fun but challenge on its own isn't all that compelling to me it's you sure about that and who cares i don't believe videos are fucking challenge who cares play souls games i don't believe you i don't but like who okay i don't even know what if i just made the exact same video and said you know our vocal performances on the road just aren't that compelling to me yeah what's there exactly to have on the point that you're trying to make here i don't understand yeah what's the point of games won't have difficulty if you don't care about difficulty i don't even believe that really but like given that you've spoken about it for 30 minutes like people who say they don't care about like whole generations of arcade gamers played games like pac-man or over fucking space invaders they didn't play them the story you know they played them for the challenge there was something deeply compelling about that yeah so when i when i hear him talk about all of this stuff here i remember earlier when he said i wouldn't be tempted for an easier mode for a boss that i couldn't beat and i i wouldn't do all these things and then i hear him right now saying oh i don't even play games for challenge is like i just i didn't believe you before but now i really don't believe you my degree of disbelief has increased yeah agree silly i play games at all gatekeep what video games can and cannot be enjoyed what video no i don't i don't think they do i don't think that anyone's gatekeeping what games can and cannot be enjoyed people don't take this game that is enjoyed by all of us for this reason and i and then dilute it into something else so that people who didn't play the game before will now play the game once again it's kind of like some people and those people often seem unhappy they seem like they don't okay like oh who hurt you who hurt you you know you just these people are unhappy they're angry they do this with all this like with efab right like when people post any of it they're just like man they must not have lives at all to spend one day talking to their friends all day that must be so like per week you know that must be you must have not have lives like what are you talking about not even you believe that that's true why are you saying that yeah you're like well they say i get to try to degrade you that's all they just try to make you look like a these people are just unhappy imagine imagine caring about something i was like even my next time i'm meeting up with friends like i can only stay for an hour otherwise people think i don't have a life i'm sorry we'll just bring a pot of grass with you so you can touch that while talking to him and you should be right yeah video games i know when i like things i enjoy sharing them i think that one coach in the top of the show said it best i hate games and i'm not saying you hate games if you like challenge and you play games primarily to be challenged but there are lots of other valid reasons to get into and enjoy and love games who you talk to who you talking to games that aren't about then don't fuck off then no one is saying that narrative games need much more difficult modes or we won't ever play them do you remember um place of five on print steamroll the map how do you remember how many posts about the batman where someone said you know i couldn't enjoy they just wouldn't even near enough jokes in it like legit there was a tweet with someone saying that and it was just like what the fuck marvel has poisoned you like you can't it's like what it's too dour there wasn't enough jokes like go watch a funny movie then fuck yeah people were saying that about dune as well i remember yes i think so dune did a lot of jokes yeah and i was walking out of the theater i heard yeah the action scenes were okay i guess but it wasn't as good as a marvel movie and i was like me that's become the benchmark now uh pain your pain but um how many people do you think play the souls games own like only for the challenge and not for everything else like the atmosphere and other aspects of the gameplay like like in elder ring the exploration and the reward you get for kind of going oh there's a cave i mean you know roughly like how many people do you think play it just for the challenge i would probably say it's a majority because of the reputation the games have is it worth saying people i think the majority play it primarily for the challenge because i certainly do but i'm still there for the other bits and bobs i like the the only is a strong word environments the music the uh all the little tids the bits about the environment and in terms of you can learn about what happened in this world even just like the vocal performance there's little bits and bobs that are all flying around in terms of me enjoying it but yeah i'm mainly there because you pick it up along the way like as you seek out that challenge you're just going to absorb the things around you anyway the main excitement and anticipation i get is when i look i'm walking down a corridor and i'm seeing a big room ahead of me and i'm like who i'm for a boss let's hope it's a good one if you don't respect those reasons you probably don't like games very much because some people truly do talk as if challenge is the only thing that makes a game yeah you've nailed it the people who say this don't like games very much because they're about more than just challenge you've nailed it that's it because they're about gameplay the people who play games for gameplay they don't really enjoy games that much fuck off you know fuck you personally he's now concluded that like the people who care so much about challenging games don't care about the story don't care about characters don't care about i don't know any other element that can be in why would you why things sort of difficulty might have a lot to do with and also things that are just there with the difficulty as if the store as if you it's like i get you could only care about one thing you can only have one reason for doing a thing worth while so much so that if there is an alternative way to enjoy a game they get offended and they'll call you a cuck and tell you that you're playing this is Jim Skerling this is just how can i mischaracterize the other side as much as possible while also making shit arguments myself he seems really insecure for some reason i'm upset by the fact that someone called him they called me a cuck because i told them i played games for the wacky characters they called me a cuck because he came out and said that he lets his wife have sex with other people oh i mean but that doesn't make any sense he would wait a second you wouldn't want to have sex with Jim Skerling that's another my sense i play red dead redemption two for the voice acting ah sounds like a cuck thing to say what are you playing for the character off closed off kept away from the quote unquote masses and all i'm here might as well address what some people are doing where they're finding players who are physically let me tell you what other people are doing i'm an expert in other people's minds and behavior and now Jim's going to stand up for us cripples through Sekiro failing tonight of course that there's a reason why stories like that become big hits become become major headlines and why people playing duxels with a guitar hero controller so but there's a difference between saying i like this game for its story mostly and saying i don't play video games for the challenge generally those are two different things because there are games that i don't really care about the gameplay at all but i adore the atmosphere and the acting and the all that sort of thing but that's not generally the reason why i play video games i guess um does does distilling play stuff like tetris or chess or any number of games that have no other story mostly for the vocal performance of the tetris i'm convinced he plays many games at all because that list he gave off was just like you you go into google and you type good video games yeah it's a bit generic isn't it it's um it's like when something what are your favorite films oh you know like uh the godfather uh okay yeah Jurassic Park but if someone said like anthropoid i'd be like oh wow yeah exactly exactly and it's the same with video games what are your favorite games the lost of us okay buyer shark all right ocarina of time ocarina of time all right all right my favorite game is i guess yeah dragon age origins that'd be like oh okay you played that and you didn't like it oh that's good that reaction tells me a soul's game like that i'm like oh wow your favorite games dark souls 3 huh whoa calm down mister when someone lists a bunch of generic good games on their list of like favorite games like has has been done here it's interesting is all true yeah pretty significant news well i mean i think it's fine for an ordinary person to enjoy those sort of of course no and so yeah okay my favorite game read their redemption but like we've if we're talking about somebody who is i guess a video game's journalist or somebody who's played games for like 20 odd years and stuff you'd think it that the taste would be a bit more refined yeah i mean i feel fairly confident in saying that people who have actually played a lot of video games their favorites aren't the ones that everyone knows about well because usually they'll have some well they're a good variety video games yeah variety because when i could say that again you played yeah i've played games for a long time some have stuck with me they're not games you might necessarily know about just because i've just tried a lot of games and not every game is a mainstream game and they're not all necessarily the same genre of game maybe well and it's also sort of statements like i've always found it really odd when people talk about like uh i guess the types of stories and characters that you see in video games because most video games don't have characters at all and like when you went so much of your conversation about storytelling whatever in video games or i guess um like you know what types of playable characters there are when people bring up um video games always seems indicative of do you do you think that like the only video games that exist are the ones that sony makes like third person action adventure games with stealth elements um yeah i don't know these sort of statements are really i guess telling in terms of where the focus is for you and the types of games that you play and what you're interested in tell these sorts of people that's something like darkest dungeon exists and they just lose their minds like whoa really awesome right game yeah it's like what do you guys think of darkest dungeon two i haven't played it yet it's not played it yet i'm waiting for the actual release yeah i figured out i figured out i was wondering if anyone from what i've seen instead what there's a darkest dungeon two it's not because it's crazy and that they quote unquote don't need easy modes or whatever it's because those players are exceptionally talented that's why their big headline grabbing news stories because they're exceptional and that works no i just don't think you you don't have to be really an exceptionally talented gamer i think i think you are so the point that's being made is um you know how like you see those articles where somebody beat dark souls three but they have some disability that you would presume would make it impossible for them and then they managed to do it yeah like they don't have an arm or they have some mental disability or their friends or something it's just some some some uh set of uh yeah like i guess uh that you wouldn't expect them to beat it and i think the point that's being made here is uh yeah but why would you how like these are exceptions they're exceptions to what would generally be the case which is that a lot of people are precluded from playing these types of games i think that's the point that's being ramped up to i would assume so that spins off from exception for a reason it's not a good faith argument it makes you look like oh good faith jim snarling here ignores the fact that accessibility options exist in video games for me yeah again we already want accessibility is a different argument it's not saying it's rebindable controls are a feature of accessibility yes in a sense or different controllers i don't know that you're gonna find anybody who's like it harms the experience of playing dark souls that you can rebind your keys if someone's like you can complete it with a banana but that's not the way you should do it it's like well i mean i guess if you can only access a banana like yeah that doesn't sound like a very appealing way to play the game microsoft's released a uh that was a good pun uh microsoft released a uh a controller they they had some sort of controller that was adaptive controller yeah that's the one that's highly customizable and very much designed for players with disabilities i know literally nobody dislikes that exactly yeah who was upset about that nobody even satan is like yeah yes yeah yeah that's fair many different reasons easy mode being one such accessibility option oh my god there you go we're disabled people to say the end i would say that's the conclusion yeah i would say that's the conclusion of the videos if you're against easy mode you're against accessibility options which means you're against people smuggle it means you're ableist and you hang yeah yeah or you said that it's great that they did that that they created a game that but you've also said that it's exclusionary are you saying wait your options are good you're saying jim is taking both sides of a position the different times depending on his but contradictory the perspective is contradictory well hold on a minute listen he doesn't argue that he doesn't he doesn't make arguments for the challenge okay he does it for the characters in the voice acting fairly anyway it's only supposed to be a minute sterling is a tough talking street sure who tells it like it has gone down he doesn't so much he canceled his own part of the video to record over it like to say hey i came up with a different thing now shut up so i was hoping he would eventually disappear but he kind of stopped i find it hilarious we're still on this graphic yeah it's just lazy what this is like that's all it was yeah we're almost there everyone z-mode being one such accessibility option anyway this bit was only supposed to be a minute long so i'm gonna wrap it up so instead of rerecording it or you know what instead of saying this this is what i'm saying is he's saying here that this bit was only supposed to be a minute i've hit that predetermined time limit and even though there's something i might need to say to further my point i've already i reached the minute limit which is more important so i'm gonna end it here yeah and people say that i ramble in my videos talking to rags about this like this is what rambly turned on the microphone just started speaking and then threw it in that is yes literally i don't do that with my videos trust me this was not the original plan yeah it's been it's been uh grabbed today by some people yes yes i well i mean i've upset a lot of people with existing today well maybe if you did your videos finally they wouldn't be so upset yeah moller edit your video you talk about a movie for a long a length that is above my arbitrary limit they did it which is the viral need to make your videos more accessible the viral we heal the length of your videos is if that's some kind of own like oh look at this guy made a long video it's like i can only talk about things for four minutes but dude every time everyone's in their audiences say like oh well but i like h bomb a guy's long videos and he's like well no that's different he's making points that yeah that's fine that's not the long at all it's how good or bad the video just say you think i'm shit yeah just say you think i make bad points stop saying i'm long that's not your issue or even better eat of movie bub's twitter long or even better and they'll never do this but maybe actually just bring up any point that i said in my video and why it's wrong well i don't have to see something to criticize it you see i don't know it's long oh but i'm not going to watch the whole thing it's like dude just watch like 10 minutes just one argument just just one just just skip to anywhere pick out an argument that he makes and then just go with that and if you can't find one then well then there you go i guess you couldn't find one if you do better than 90% of anyone else i didn't know you don't have to probably respond into other people who's like call him out what is fucking and yeah like his argument seems to rest on like well how can you be criticizing things like the consistency of the magic and the powers and abilities of these characters because it's just a dumb you know like fantasy world where anything can happen it's like okay that that's not really a valid maybe movie movie bub just watches he doesn't watch movies for the story he watches it so he can take four screen caps of wide shots and post them on twitter watch that he's maybe watching it for the vocal performance okay i thought you were gonna say that it gives him to something he doesn't want to do while he's eating that works for the chicken gary's replies like yeah well that isn't even eating in the mountain do i gotta have something to do while he's talking lindsay else oh no lindsay do you like chicken do you like chicken lindsay if you don't like mountain do you like to do look guys it was a normal amount of mcdonald's for an average size i'm willing to switch to diet mountain do for you it was for real what was it like lindsay you have to choose the mountain do or me four large fries four large pokes or something yeah that's i'm like two i'm like 40 chicken nuggets yeah i know i tried it oh you and i know you tried it i streamed us it's all there how'd you get metal how remind us of how far you got i i've forgotten how far did you get uh i did not finish the fries and i had two drinks left and a burger i think and i felt very bad this is good timing actually because i had this you know or read it out rags i would love oh this oh this i love this tweet okay okay a windgut this is movie bob he tweeted a wind gust just hit the house so hard almost 100 empty snotacans stacked neatly in a window frame fell all over the god damn kitchen floor frowny face and then phil uh phil uh says yeah why do you have 100 empty soda cans stacked in your house to which bob replies because i have because i have very little storage space and it's a place to keep cans sparkling water by the way not actual soda until first off i don't believe you they're full of soda right we know the second life like store the material just put it back yeah don't put them in a bin or a bag stack them up in a window sill with a breeze coming through it that's we know he lives in a basement apartment there's so little storage space for all of his cans that locked the light coming into your house like that why'd you stack them up in this little window he likes less light coming into this cave probably stacks in front blackout curtains anyways you know just if you have you purchased 100 cans every week everything between his recycling comes by every week the date it will be will vary right because in america you don't do the thing where like people do does anybody have the thing where like you can just get your cans and you can recycle them for like five cents you get five cents per you do that that is a thing at the brim in though yeah so most people do is every house has a um has a special bin and it will be for recycling so you'll put all your recyclable materials in the bin and then you'll bring that out to the curb on recycling day and so there's people with the truck who come by they collect all the bins and then you do that once a week which means that in a week's time he has accumulated so many cans that he cannot store them without stacking them by an open window i don't know what that stack looks like as well like is it a castle of some sort that he can go into and like romp around in like this is my i like a little man that's like awfully soda cans when you consider that soda cans are essentially collapsible using your foot and they store really easily it it no one has no storage space for cans if you crunch soda cans up you can probably fit many many dozens of cans in just a grocery bag because i know he buys groceries so yeah well here in in in germanheim we we have deposited on all these cans and stuff so i should have to bring them back to the store so we get 25 cents bag 25 and it's eight cents on on on glass bottles can money so i cannot crush them but i know how bags work so beautiful german engineering right there and i have big bottles of water set even cans most of the time so those to take even more space still two bags and you're Gucci i'm not saying 5.5 so i was gonna say to set that up right chat do you remember once before the time i was talking about how some people don't know what decimals are so you got five hours and 50 minutes with how hours and minutes work that is not 5.5 hours or like he's converting the hours into minutes it's just like well you know that how decimals work Robert but it's okay 5.5 hours would be five and a half hours yeah it's also 550 and decimals what 5.87 it's something like that yeah also the sentiment is really amusing when you remember that i think a peak there were like 12 000 people watching that video while it was premiering well yeah no it's unnecessarily like come after me sure but why are you going after the people who helped edit it what what what the fuck nobody worked on every interesting it's like okay i had a really hard time not just tweeting below like go fuck yourself absolute piece of garbage exactly like what a fucking piece of shit just go i almost said something i was just like i don't want to interact with you it was clutch as fuck uh getting the video out that exact moment yeah you seriously have no idea how much of a matchstick operation it was in terms of getting it all to line up but uh yeah i'd never would have made it without the additional four editors that helped the fuck out of me like it's it's baffling you'd be like what the video isn't interesting what do you mean oh sorry yeah uh like i did i forgot the video is just me rambling rambling i remember more you made the video long to help you in the algorithm even though uploading big videos every like six months is very much not good for the algorithm yeah it's so funny for us to hear it because like freeing rags and other people i talk to semi-regularly like they're all aware that is not the intention at all in this production i don't want it to be a particular length i just want to get my points out and i will tell them like yeah oh shit man this is gonna be two hours long and then i'm like it ballooned it's three it's like and i will tell you man when you stop caring about like trying to make the youtube appropriate algorithm matching videos and you could just you could just say if it's long it's long and that's how i want it it's just a weight off your shoulders it really is you've got all of these weird arbitrary restrictions that you're placing on yourself that are getting in the way of the creative process but remember this isn't creative either this is the video if it's what you know yeah if it's the kind of video you want to make and you feel satisfied when it's done and you're glad when it's done and it's got everything you want to be in there you do not care if it isn't great for the algorithm so much more rewarding to make what you actually want to make that's for sure yeah when you sound like someone just randomly saying to my friends that is fucking not interesting or i don't know it's a hard time not to swear but just saying that all the time it's just just fuck you you don't even know who you're talking about um so j put a comment saying so it begins and then he put a comment on that saying um you know i don't even know these people but someone told me they like make fun of me on a podcast and stuff then the fuck you um the unsolicited lie dude i love it it's just so funny like j wasn't even looking for retribution or explanation j's one of the people who was insulted by this fucking tweet j's just having fun but my mom is just like oh i would you know i i don't mean i'm just they just mean though it's like every time with the unsolicited lie with it has information that wasn't like nobody asked so why i mean we have why do you feel that he knows who we are it's just think it's that lie who who was it it was it was it was a someone i forget who it was multiple people have done this in our in our journey as efap where they pretend not to know who we are when they've referenced us i think what you're mixing up with hassan was the opposite hassan knew nothing about efap and he immediately said dog shit yeah i think the first thing was um oh efap they like covered you or something and then he said fuck efap i'm not watching their dog shit content and that's all was like every friend of course is good sorry every friend of painting is good that he was like every kind of painting like i don't know what was what he didn't know he just immediately kicked yeah it was like it was like he was a zebra and something just walked past the immediate box and kicks in the face there is this animalistic quality to him like he's just barely learning that you could like rub sticks together and live in caves you know there's um there was a couple of things i don't like everything that happened but um go go let me know about this one so someone said you know hello to move bomb they seem good faith they're like genuinely interested in the answer i made a video praising godzilla king of the monsters that's two hours long because a it doesn't get enough praise and b uh there's that much at more to like about it does the length of the video invalidate the praise and then bob said not if you're not annoying i made that miss a special place in the new world order gulag for people who annoy movie bomb are fewer all right all right i want to play i want to play a short clip of mawler's voice and a short clip of movie bob's voice to a woman at the other side of the planet who doesn't know who any of you are and see which one she finds sexier i like how the woman needs to be on the other side of the planet to not know well i mean yeah i guess for you i bring you further away they wouldn't know it i mean i'm in canada i'm on the other side of the planet that was a really weird way the other side of the planet from from wales is the ocean i think yeah through the door at later i was just talking generally using hemispheres or something canada was not on the office of hemispheres okay like a different universe what's the left and right hat is there a do we have a left right yeah there isn't there isn't east and west in hemisphere yeah yeah get fucked bob would choose to like pick a fight with you or people like this it's not like you disagree with them politically or anything like that like you've never expressed any opinions of any kind like that it's just literally you make long videos and that just makes him inherently angry it makes a lot of people because this is the reality whenever these tweets arise that are just shitting on more for like making these videos if he wasn't effective they wouldn't make them like if he wasn't convincing or compelling to a lot of people nobody would feel like they need to push back that's the reality the videos are strong they're compelling and they get a lot of attention that's the reason why people get really mad about it the worst thing that you could do is be successful and make more long videos even longer like these tweets like oh yeah more as a loser if like nobody watched to nobody cared that every video had a hundred percent dislike ratio this just never happened yeah the reason that they keep coming is just because yeah the the whole like low level of artistry low level of effort rambling no editor like this is then just long for the sake of it it's like this is just the worst kind of shit and it's like why aren't you anyone else doing this like like pumping it out why isn't everybody why isn't it all over the place if this is so fucking easy to do like they treat it as though it's like this like oh you can crap that out a fucking afternoon it's in front of my webcam for 10 minutes and sort of talk about a movie that i just saw five minutes ago and that that's what that's real artistry it's so much easier to just do the like it's so much easier to not do it this way what is the advantage in spending months to spend like six hours talking about a movie that came out three months four months five months ago an exhaustive detail compared to like getting it out straight away you know some people here will know like i've been advised against it by youtubers like you probably shouldn't do it that way you should do it this way to maxima and it's just like that's okay i understand and i i know it's good advice but it's just ironic that i suffer the whole like you'll just try to appeal the algorithms like do you know anything about the algorithm obviously i'm not yeah i don't i don't give a shit about the algorithm because like i i suspect that it's changing all the time so like what's the point in adhering to something that could like be different the next day you know it's like just make the stuff you want to make and put it out and you know there'll be an audience for it if people like it you know what's like treating the algorithm like a bench full dawn you know people i compared it to some monster locked away somewhere that you got to sacrifice an animal it's the black goo in the basement and yeah by the way that shit was creepy we must appease the algorithm that comment from bob j responded to it saying um okay like just because it's bizarre and then uh uh james asked wait do you watch j's content then like because why would you responded to j specifically and bob said just clarifying i was replying to j about the post in the image not aiming to say anything critical of their work like i don't think he knows that j helped edit the video because uh it's just so it regarding that tweet about your video maller when they say no one involved in this are they referring to the editors well so this is the only one that speaks in the video right so this is the weird thing about it most of my videos are solo like i mostly take care of all of itself this is the first ever video that i've had four other people work on with me and for some reason he chose this one as the one to be like everyone involved in this is uninteresting yeah why i don't know i don't know how you'd watch the video and assume other people were involved you know yeah this is what i'm saying it's weird that they didn't watch the video yeah of course so i didn't watch it none of these people actually watch the videos they criticize no talk about they just they just see the thumbnail and video length and then just well they get offended when you ask i have everything i need yeah they're like why the fuck would i spend my time watching it it's like but you're talking about like we legitimately we're not even asking you watch the whole thing we understand that watching a six-hour video is just not reasonable i couldn't even watch it yeah we're crazy of course you watch a little bit you just take a little peek you can pause it and youtube will remember where you were in the video yeah long man mad posts was posted uh just like it would have been right after it was processed after it was premiered so they were just waiting they knew it was happening they were just like can't wait to get those fucking points on the internet i can't wait to get that dopamine hit yeah oh i'm going to make it just like forty seven likes on twitter.com yeah they refresh twitter all day checking the replies yeah one thousand oh wait it didn't even get a thousand likes that's all right i shouldn't have said anything at all if i don't get liked that's the most important thing i recently put out a bunch of videos talking about the first season of halo which i didn't like and i split mine up into separate ones but altogether it's about about the same almost five hours and uh that was after i whittled down all my you know talking points like just as concisely as i could but there was just a lot to go over and a lot to go into a lot of detail to elaborate on and it's just this arbitrary idea of bringing the the length of the original material into into it it's totally arbitrary but people pulling all these rules out of their ass like oh it's got to be this length otherwise you're long winded like youtube is the ultimate like forum for making things as as long as they need to be like you're not you're not trying to be into like theater showings or anything like if if it's really long fine people can tackle it in chunks like you can go away do something else come back to it like a day later and watch some more of it yeah this idea where it's like well i hit play i'm locked in now there's a lot to be said for people who make really long videos like this rather than splitting up into like half hour chunks and making like a lot more money from it like because they're all separate videos and they're all got revenue streams for themselves it's like yeah you put it all together into one to make a seamless like viewing experience for the the audience like that's pretty commendable but it's like no it's it's long so it must be bad it's like oh fuck off i am i know i saw people like discussing because in the thread like people agreeing how bad i am and then they were talking extensively back and forth about how i never talk about the substance or the themes and i was like i felt gaslit reading it i was like i have whole sections about the what are you talking about they didn't watch it that's they didn't get to that point like it's going to be like the ultimate like fuck off kind of statement where it's like yeah it doesn't really get into the deep themes or the deep ideas of the movies like this thanks i can six hours about it a whole section dedicated to themes well there was a might have heard you say my themes once and then extrapolated that you don't believe in the concept of the theme i had that reputation for a while i don't know where it came from i was critical of tlj's themes i didn't say themes don't exist or that i hate it i don't know where this came from it's like i've i've been quite a fast because if you criticize mechanics that means you can't care about themes well when i criticize the shitty hitboxes and ds2 i didn't mean i hate hitboxes i feel like these people just don't have they don't they don't have a lot of cpu power in their noggin so they can only like do one task at a time or else they'll just freeze and so if you're criticizing anything other than themes well you don't care about themes yeah all righty i like i was gonna say quick mr drinker do you need to drop out sir have some so i do i'll drop out i'll make some space for other people to jump in so um is there a chance of perhaps maybe catching you on the other end of this insane adventure because obviously we're doing this for a while right i'm gonna be yeah i'm about doing stuff tomorrow morning so um might be tricky but still will we yes yeah but we'll be going till like 7 p.m. tomorrow so if uh yeah it's a pretty decent window so um yeah if i if i've got an hour or two free i will message you and try and jump in sweet great easy wait thank you so much for joining us my pleasure guys good luck this dream my we're nearly done with the video yeah let's see maybe we'll end this video there's a video let's finish off this quickly quickly just rip off the band we're almost there for me all that shit oh that was great well yeah we did it congratulations the moral of the story is if you're gonna think highly of yourself you should be good yeah good advice yeah well uh all right so that was a kind of video the next one because i'm not wasting any time here okay which i've been writing uh oh my god god this is because this is the thing you get so many kinds of videos and there wasn't a there was a production assistant on this video uh director well what manual manual i suppose well i mean the person doing the assistance would have been the assistant is that an art director well i'm yeah no i'm right actually yeah of course i was supposed to introduce this video right it's thumbnail and title actually yes well so the thumbnail says dark souls sucks and here's why and the title is the title is dark souls retrospective dark souls sucks and here's why so you might be thinking like why are we covering a video there's probably like multiple hours long why are we doing that it's like i haven't even played dark souls so yeah exactly why why would we cover this video well i just caught it randomly i don't know where this is from but i i checked it out i was like oh my god this video is fantastic so i'll start her up dark souls wait oh whoa whoa do you know who this guy is oh i know who this guy hit oh it's so hold on you might just be careful with this one this guy is called asa thorn and he's a bit of a lol cow so what he does is he makes these really rambly like videos that suck and then people will respond to them making reply videos and stuff he has actually sued quite a few people for making reply videos to him uh he files a lot of yes there's a few youtube channels uh there was a big one i can't remember who it was but he yes he did a whole thing about yes i'm being sued by this guy he files a bunch of frivolous lawsuits uh to basically because he's a salty little bitch and he used to work as like a law clerk so he thinks he knows the ins and outs of the law sit alpha that's it um oh he lost that lawsuit okay but yes this guy is white notorious for suing people who criticize him so the video is so funny just be careful with this one yeah that is all i'll say is be careful all right only saying this video is awful but like just you might want to think if it's worth it is correct no i'm i we can't be you can't let people who do frivolous bullshit on the internet because they're lol cows did not like that's not gonna we can't let that give him power over us it's nonsense yeah but at the same time do you remember like when uh uh h3 went through back when h3 wasn't the worst thing ever um everything to do with uh their complication i think he eventually said my boss the the journey of fighting back for so fucking long uh was like a huge detriment but um i mean yeah because if you like guys you joke but like what if he actually did fire a whole bunch of strikes or whatever or did some crazy shit you know you never know with some crazy people this guy is definitely crazy which is a shame because the video is hilariously awful but it's awful yeah well because we got plenty of other videos to cover yeah i mean that i mean it i i mean i don't think he's probably never won any of these frivolous cases and stuff that he even want to no they're all no they're all frivolous suits they get thrown out but like it's a pain in the arse to deal with i mean i so we're not covering his video also yeah well the whole idea of like you'll give people an idea that that's how you can stop them from covering you's like i don't think we have that to worry about this sounds like a very specific and strange person um yeah which we we actually don't cover a couple of people for that very reason yeah i recommend watching what you say about him because i have a friend uh chrytosis he actually was on one of the lawsuits this guy's pretty pretty nuts he did lose a couple suits but yeah it's might be might want to avoid it just for just for now at least yeah like i said this we lose nothing trust me i've got like a bazillion things we'll be fine as much of a lot as much of a lot of how he is he's he's pretty weird like i would love to see you tear apart this video but i'm not sure it's worth it for you what a shame but uh look at my list like it's like a candy store i feel like such a Debbie downer now that's all right well i mean warning's a warning uh that's valid that you brought it up it's just such yes it's such a shame the number is what he's doing the whole thing is bullshit yeah no it sounds like it and it and the whole reason they do it i don't even think is necessarily because they definitely expect to win it oftentimes it can be just to tie everything up um tangle everything up yeah i'm not criticizing it's to well it's not going to do much for his reputation is it seems like yeah he's a fully negative reputation everyone yeah this person does not care about the reputation yeah i don't know if they ever got approved by her the judge was threatening this person with um marking them as a vexatious litigant which which kind of means what it sounds like it but i don't know if they he is he is a vexatious litigant yes oh yes yeah okay yes he is he i don't think he's been formally declared one but that is what he is i know they threatened to i don't know if it was formally declared all righty then so this one is getting since i'm staying on theme here okay this one was passed around quite a bit actually uh i don't know if you guys have heard of this video at all but a couple people in our community wanted us to cover it as well the called the curse of video game criticism must wonder what this may or may not be about whether or not we'll agree whatever the points they'll suck very this guy he's really prominently displaying the the sonic what what game is that heroes is that a good one or a bad one well it should it's just sonic adventure two with a multiplayer mode added basically um i i wonder why it's so prominent more than you know the other games like it's special to him i suppose in some way a lot of people like sonic adventure two right that's often yeah people's favorite i like it it's jenki but it's got a charm to it that i like do you love this story though uh i kind of do yeah it's silly but uh i don't know i kind of get a kick out of it yeah all right let's find out what this is all about i'm so busy criticizing every video game i come into contact with that i can't just enjoy things anymore ah the curse of being incredibly intelligent and funny in 2001 sega released a little game for the dreamcast called sonic adventure two i was three years old at the time so i didn't play it but when adventure two battle released a year later my child brain was slowly gaining true consciousness to the point where one of my first memories ever is when my friend's little sister spilled coke all over my game cube you don't understand we were playing two player emerald hunt i was to call my friend was and i'm gonna they're not gonna feel get on with that at least appreciate the editing i think you covered a guy recently in the last couple e-faps at least appreciate the editing actually showing what they're talking about that's nice yeah that's nice i do feel slightly bad i just have no patience for this sort of thing anymore i can't listen he spilled he got his controller spilled on when he was a kid by his sister if you miss me with the lengthy preamble please wasn't it like yesterday that we watched a video that was really bad for that you know that's probably why yeah i lost patients recently especially who's this is you just want people to make points i understand the map was aquatic mine and while i don't remember how the match was going i was probably winning because i'm just uh awesome needless to say sonic adventure 2 solidified itself as one of my favorite games of all time i listened to the music for years on end and looked back on it fondly as i grew up but then in 2016 i made a mistake as a fledgling youtuber looking to diversify my content i decided i hope this isn't gonna be six minutes of fucking boohoo woe is may i criticize something on the internet and people push back on it i really hope this isn't that video i don't know what i'm wearing for exactly i just know that this caused a ruckus of discussions about things and it's called a video of a curse of video game criticism so i i have a feeling this won't work out tim's of us being happy with whatever it said here it's already been so clever and funny i'm sure we'll be fine silly review and quickly discovered that many segments of the game were not as fun as i remembered that or i probably never made it to canon's core as a five-year-old because i sucked at video games i rescind my sting friends that you were gaming about beating my friend at emerald hunt before the incident despite all the two you need to go back and change that good for you just to clarify the story is like i went back to review it and i found it was much worse than i remembered done it oh i know the feeling it almost sounds like things to be uh yeah i guess i went back to review it and i realized that i actually didn't play the game when i was a kid but that could be one i played one multiplayer mode with my brother and i remember winning it at being awesome and it was all a fever dream and i've been calling it my favorite game ever since oh by the way i was so distracted i thought hello indigo gaming welcome back hello it's just so it's like a big we're in a big bar you know people are just coming in and out it's it's very why indigo why not any of the other colors they're fine colors it's actually a really it's the curse of like picking off i i literally decided on a channel name like off the cuff and i kind of regret it but it's stupid but literally the only reason i picked indigo was that when i played doom 2 deathmatch way back in the day i like the color wait because right now you want india rive that's not really that arbitrary or is it yeah not arbitrary but like i probably could have a little bit but yeah i like the way that story ended yeah and indigo yeah i like the color in that doom game and uh yeah there you go i remember my first color for my my halo combat evolved character on the xbox i chose cobalt that was me too yeah yeah that's a that's a fun word it's a fun it's a fun color name yeah alt it's very it's got a lot of it seems like a gravitas for a color you know cobalt like crimson i think a tool company there's a tool company called cobalt or maybe i'm thinking of de walt i don't know de walt is definitely a tool company i came up i came up with my cringe alias digital fear almost 15 years ago because i was in a hurry to get started on return to castle wolfenstein because i just bought xbox live i got hooked up i was like fuck i just want to make up a name and get started playing this and then that ended up being my identity for like a lot of my life i should have put more thought into it yeah i took like probably 30 minutes i got xbox live probably about um like four years into xbox the life cycle and it took probably took me like a half an hour to come up with a unique title i didn't have five numbers at the end i think i made like a parody one once i called him um sniper fire phantom glass look out that's a lot of characters yeah that was the point i think i put like xx x333 or something on either side xx nanoscopes that were off 66 or something like that love sonic adventure 2 but why well it's about the experience now i don't bring all this up to make an isolated point about the power of nostalgia but to instead talk about a larger phenomenon within the gaming sphere and how it's impacted both the way i view games as a self-proclaimed video essay writer along with the gaming community at large i'm not trying to say that i hate talking about games or that it is a music right it's like let me begin talking about doxels now i'm not saying i hate doxels but so we're like whoa why am i saying i prefer a whip over mayonnaise some of you might be thinking that we're gonna dispel that to rest right now this thing i've put in your head for you just tell me what you think along with the gaming community at large i'm not trying to say that i hate talking about games or that criticism is inherently a negative thing i don't think anybody would have no good don't you accuse me of hating criticism in general like i didn't even i don't even know what your point is yet like yeah he's writing this so i need to preemptively make sure that we nip that in the bud right away he's doing that speech pattern that kind of bugs me too it's like i'm making a video and i start off high and then i go low like low and then when i end the sentence there's an upward inflection then like in the sentence and when i start a new sentence i go low and then i go high like this like it's that over low and then high again well you know guys i was gonna tweet about how we're making fun of his voice i make fun of everybody's voices including my own come on it's only totally fair criticism yeah we make fun of apparently a negative thing i think it's fun trying to sort of turn it into my job i like criticizing manipulative practices and mechanics i think could be improved while gushing about the things i love but when i play games nowadays i'm so often looking at them with a subconscious lens of how they could be incorporated into a video all right that's a huge problem but okay yeah yeah all right with you now if you're a full-time youtuber who makes youtube videos about games that's a good habit i could understand how that may affect your you want to go back to when you could just enjoy things without thinking about how you could contentify them i suppose but i doubt that's the only point you're gonna be making or what i could say about them in an interesting analytical sense pokemon was one of my favorite things in the world growing up i think for everyone and then everyone realized what the look at some it's it's uh charizard yeah this may be me being i guess elitist in another sense but if you're going out looking for interesting things to say you've already lost yeah what can i say that's interesting you say if you don't make a video if you have anything to say oh god what are you making a video he has things to say he's telling us stuff about him yeah aren't you searching for a topic rather than the topic arising yeah you don't make a video on the premise of i will now go and find things to talk about this thing no you probably started from somewhere right yeah i guess if it's a review like if it's like okay this is a game that just came out i got a code for it i need to play it come up with something good to say about it and make a video well to give you an idea not if you're an essayist like if you're just making videos about topics that interest you give you an idea one i said around like april to either bring all rags that uh i doubt i'll be making any kind of video on like multi-visit madness yes it's gonna make no sense because it's like crazy nonsense shit but like you know i just can't see myself wanting to make a video on that and then i when i came out of the cinema i was like fuck actually have a lot to say about goldmine and material here and you want that uh sorry rags go ahead i think with some people it's like i there's a difference between i have interesting things to say so i'll be a video essayist and i'm a video essayist i need to come up with interesting things to say yeah it's almost treating it like it's a job that he was given and stands to lose if he doesn't just put out product when it's like no i think you're kind of self-employed man you don't have to do but it's really unfortunate when it gets to that point uh you don't want to get to that point because when the when it sort of because you manage to turn your hobby into a monetize it sort of but then it becomes a thing that you're like ugh it's following me around everywhere yeah you don't want that to happen but it's what you want to do is uh get stuck in some sort of genre that you can't stand i think that it didn't happen like joji the the pink guy the guy did all those memes i think he kind of started hating the content he put out yeah filthy frank yeah i think that happened to him he also had a bunch of health issues and stuff and he wanted to focus more on music i think yeah i think he's actually like hurting his throat too doing the voice and stuff like that one example music is pretty old power tone yeah no absolutely that's like one thing i had a hard time with when the video starts out with just like random anecdotes and doesn't like you can kind of get into your anecdotes but i think a video should probably start out with roughly your kind of your mission statement or your thesis fairly loaded because if you just get into random anecdotes it takes like i'll just like skip it like i'm watching a uh an introductory ad or something like okay what are you guys talking about i had that problem with h bomber guy he does that a lot in his videos he just kind of rambles a bit and then finally stumbles into his topic like it's it's nothing personal but i just don't give a fuck about your sister spilling some soda on a game cube a controller when you were a kid i just don't care like i said after a bad experience i've just lost patience with this kind of anyone who tells you they care is lying i am more than happy with them for a little bit of fluff in there let them let them have it you know i just hope the video is good show standards for fluff need to be higher put them in an interesting analytical sense pokemon was one of my favorite things in the world growing up but it's become a series i'm so hyper critical of these days that i look at people that enjoyed legends arceus and i'm like how is that one is cold that's what it's pronounced i was i think it is arceus is it is arceus that's that's what x-ray girl calls it and i think um i mean you have to agree so yeah well i mean that's true she's the pokemon expert in the family i i've never really played a pokemon game uh i can click there's sound it says arceus on the on the little google thingy yeah google says arceus maybe one of the two i think i've just always heard arceus and arceus oh i always thought it was arceus yeah oh british say differently british say arceus i keep hearing arceus i can imagine that there's a reason why that's the case that's so weird arceus arceus arceus arceus so we we've got three tomato tomato you know well in this case tomato tomato tomato it looks like the it looks like according to there's a pokemon book that was released that has uh i guess it's canonical that is arceus now okay it is arc arc e okay yes it's canonically it's arceus because they they released a book on it well there you go gave it yeah it had a how to pronounce it how to say it in the book arceus that's a fucked up looking pokemon let me let me give you a picture of this preacher the fuck's going on here let's call it a thing around it pokemon yeah it's got a weird head just call this one breath of the pokemon breath of the pokemon as there's a lot of influence definitely from that game but all right i felt bad i felt bad my wife played through the whole game and then she was having a hard time so i just beat the final boss for her so i feel i beat the game totally but i didn't play it probably i don't know it's probably probably it's arceus and i'm like playing pokemon how how did you how do you do that what i am trying to say though is that it doesn't matter how many times i play through sonic adventure 2 and rediscover how rage inducing half the levels are it doesn't matter that i called it objectively bad in one of my old videos and it doesn't matter now what happens what does matter what yeah please why doesn't that matter i i i am kind of getting to that point where i really want you to like say something the topic yeah i'm sure we're on the cusp i'm sure we're nearly there we're almost there he will make a point he's doing a little meme is we're almost there what i'm trying to tell both you dear viewer and myself if he'd listen is that it's okay for childlike wonder and dumbfounded happiness to win on occasion that's it that was all that's what that was leading up to it's basically let people enjoy things childlike enjoyment of a thing from nostalgia whatever fucking reason does not get cancelled out by a thing being poorly designed those two can exist at the same time also like he didn't have to make a video on sonic adventure if you feel like if he was that adamant like i'd rather just not take this away from anybody well i guess i think it sucks whatever i get that people like it i guess in retrospect he's decided that that was a mistake that the approach that he took maybe with criticizing it is like wait but why couldn't i just indulge my personal feelings about this game it's like well i mean you could do that that doesn't really preclude anything though in terms of criticism yeah it looks like we'll be going back to basics with this one in terms of like so why do we even do uh breakdowns of like empirically or verifiable mechanics slash things that are present in the story or the game why do we do it and it's like well it's information and then it compares on standard like that's why maybe the question that needs to be asked at this point when you say this is so what is your goal when you like critique something what is the objective of your uh piece of criticism are you just saying it for the sake of it or is there something you're trying to push for is there like a landscape that you would prefer to see more games that are a certain type of way or is it just because you like to talk about it is that it well that i think that is the case a lot of the time like people either like to hear their own voice or they want to be heard and it's just like my rambling is good enough for a video are you implying that this guy likes to hear his own voice as well to say you can joke something because it's cool or because it has a boss yeah no fucking way dude wow is it cool i can like things this is a video yeah i'm aware of that because you criticize sonic convention too that you can't also like it yeah you can talk about what what is good and what is bad about one game if you have mixed feelings on it there's no rule like they don't they don't have to compete with each other they can inform you of something when you're like i like this even though i recognize it fails to do all the things i believe games should do what does that mean it's like and then if you go well i really remember playing this a lot when i was a kid and it reminds me of those times like here you go yeah all right that yeah all right man i got you yeah you've you've completed that the analysis is complete you can feel satisfaction and understanding yourself a bit better and you get you asked the question and provided the answer we can now move on with all of our lives the mystery has been settled i'm still hung up on his point about like you know contrary to popular opinion i actually do like talking about video games like it makes me think of like imagine if you uh saw an episode of the talking dead where it's like you know contrary to popular opinion i actually like talking about the walking dead show you know it's weird but you know i do yeah well there's a lot of like like assumptions of what people are thinking and feeling about things right now i'm just sort of sitting here blank like what no i don't know what is it tell me what you think yeah where you're right behind on a big lizard you don't need to write a college thesis for your own feeling who said you did okay that feels like what this video is it's like you can't jump in front of a train you don't have to it's like yeah i know oh man why does everybody feel like they're so interesting for having come up with this right so read what is on screen have you ever played a game before well i have i played a few actually and i think that sonic adventure 2 might be the objectively best one ever made and how can i determine that well through a scientific process i've developed called the definitely not subjective method it's like wow you're clever on you like nobody's ever come up with this before so in his original video on sonic adventure 2 none of the criticisms that he had were objective things that could be improved if he were to like give them constructive feedback perhaps that'll be the point it's all just now i just thought it was stupid why am i two options of this or joseph anderson i have to get dry man who is bad or i get just meandering nothing where are you maddy mitosis come back just keep making your game that'll be cool yeah i'm a bit confused with this so far because i thought maybe i misheard but i thought he had said in a previous video that he said it was his favorite game and he wanted to amend that but then i think more recently he just said that in a past video he said he didn't like it he wanted to amend that i'm not really sure so what i gathered from the first one was one yeah what i've now gathered from this narrative is the you have this guy who enjoyed playing games the kid woohoo and that informed him a desire to sort of analyze them and it became a job and then he went back to sonic adventure 2 and he was like oh no like this is one of my favorite things of all time but critic brain says is bad and then he had a fundamental euphoric moment of fuck the critic brain that's not better than enjoying it for any reason i think that's the revelation of this video you couldn't there is no metric that's better than any other one fuck it like okay yeah it's weird that that is presented as like a profound realization when it's really dull and boring on so this is the really big problem for e-fab we get this all the time everyone wants to tell us this when it's like oh we knew all of this stuff we got here when we knew this like this is where we would have started the most things just mean as much as anything else it's like a really popular and understood worldview i don't know why like did you not know how old are you and then they're like oh i'm 17 you're like oh fuck sorry i'll just i'll go you go have fun with life it kind of reminds me of a sterling jim sterling's take on the whole objective criticism thing when he did a while back where he just like he tried to admit uh you know he obviously straw manning the idea of an objective review and he was like well this is a game it can be played by up to four people it has controls it has graphics and just like the very just a really stupid sort of take on that and i think i know he's talking about it's the one where he's ukulele right where he's like this game was made by these people this game has these colors in it i'm being objective laugh my ass off and it's like yeah uh that cool and good oh well it's just gonna say quickly the court that causes problems when um they've set themselves that the metric means anything that's like verifiable within the thing it's like cool so what is verifiable let's just say for example iron man he's there right it's like yes his name is tony stock right yes he likes alcohol can we say that like yes he is a bit sarcastic and be a bit mean to people yes he cares about people though he wouldn't want anyone to die right yes and they're like what's your point and then we show him killing someone it's like oh so uh is this a problem is this an incongruence objectively they're like uh oh wait fuck and you can do this with loads of aspects of design and basically any craft uh you have to extend out their logic go to work with them for it i tried to explain this when i was debating fucking destiny on adam and sitius show let them set the all the parameters and then just start digging away at different things for what it applies to jim sterling had the exact same problem he's like this only goes as far as saying who made it and what colors are there and what shapes are in it it's like feels like i could take that a bit further but all right yeah i mean there's always going to be a certain human reaction and sort of subjective element to it you know i haven't watched your new video on uh dr madness is right put it but uh the i'm sure you'll have his name i'm sure you have moments where you're like at this scene i really kind of felt it his you know his acting was good i mean how do you measure his acting in a in an objective value can't really you can just some people might react to it positively some people might react differently but you can say okay well in scene nine of dr strange he said blah and now in this movie in scene 42 he said something completely contradictory was he lying or was it just bad script writing things like that yeah make a lot but a nice mixture of the two uh is good and and you can kind of the the subjective stuff is is even more powerful if you ground it in objective facts that lead up to that it's like you know because of this this scene this scene this conflict that was established previously you know this moment hits way harder because there's actually for foreshadowing behind it um yeah to be fair i have no idea where exactly we're going but it just feels like we've set the groundwork for that it feels like we're going nowhere i disagree rags i think that's exactly where they're going and i've based on what they've said already so fuck you we could be going anywhere we could be going nowhere need to write a college thesis for your own feelings to be justified and the college well so there's another thing they always say that it's like you just want your feelings to be justified so like so that can you can make that sound almost like petty and insecure from one framing but then if we reverse it and build it from the ground up of i'd like to do some introspection and write about why i feel the way i do about certain things like certain stimulus certain uh things that go back and forth in life and when i discover like ah the reason i was so angry here when i attacked this creature that did nothing and then he attacked me and missed but it still hit me because my expectation was that the hitbox would line up with the model box and ultimately like when it comes to you know and you explain all of that and then they're like you're trying to justify your little feelings aren't you you're like i guess so uh i'm hung up on you don't need to write a thesis says i the self-proclaimed proclaimed video essay writer well but this is their epiphany ring the epiphany is that they don't need to do any of this writer what is this then i was i was assuming this is the video to say well it's called the curse of video criticism so i'm assuming what is this if not you writing something to validate your feelings yes this is what you're doing this is what anybody does when they write any opinion down ever shocking little shockingly little introspection i notice in the videos we cover i wonder to whom precisely that uh criticism is directed you know who could it be could it be the developers maybe who can it be developers in general someone else has written doesn't invalidate your own feelings sonic adventure two is so stylized and cheesy and funny and stupid okay and sometimes fun that it's one of my favorite games of all time even though the pish posh writer in me is getting upset such an interesting like view to have of yourself yeah because if i were like having loads of fun with a particular scene in some superhero movie or whatever and then um i noticed like in the corner of my house and i was like oh shit that shouldn't make sense because i was like oh i don't immediately go like shut up critic brain you're cringe i'm having fun but i also don't go shut up feeling brain you're cringe too you it's like no they're they're friends they're fine yeah they're okay yeah they're just chilling out critic brain is like oh shit that doesn't make sense does it and heart brain for lack of a better time like is is like la la la oh yeah whatever um this is funny that's right does this person have a second channel where they tackle like a very different topic like like politics or something like that because it almost kind of feels like his whole point is yeah doing anything about video games is stupid because it's beneath me yeah but you know i do it because it's my job but it's just kind of like when i kind of get sorry god those are just like chill out with the like the the anger toward you're just being critical it's okay yeah remember resident in late like oh that was fun to play it was fucking garbage yeah the part of my the part of me that really enjoyed the movie bullet train and the part of me that understood that it's very very stupid they get along they're friends yeah well it's um it almost because because yeah there's two parts there's the part that is just how you feel about everything but the part where you're trying to be more critical is probably the part that has to do more so with the craft how was everything achieved how was the game design written um could it have been made better or what are the things that actually work because of course you know i guess if you want to say criticism is strictly negative but that seems a bit limiting because like there's also things that you can extract that are positive from it too they're not like pardon me it's not one or the other yeah but it doesn't be presented that way i love this point because i was thinking this exact thing because i and i kind of get where this guy is coming from i think and why he felt motivated motivated to make this video because like i like the sonic adventure games as well for some reason because i know that they they are indefensibly jenki like the point where it's like did they even play test this what the fuck were they thinking but it has this accumulate the both games have this accumulative effect on me where i'm just kind of charmed by them and i enjoy playing through them even though there are parts that are objectively garbage and like i'm perfectly willing to admit like yeah that part sucks this part sucks this was poorly designed like anytime you get to a loop to loop in a sonic adventure game it's fucking trash and let's like you just hold forward and hope for the best and hope that it doesn't glitch out and put you through like the floor into a kill zone and then you have to restart from a last checkpoint um but uh it's i find it so interesting that i like them anyway despite how yeah um badly designed they are this and it's okay to think roller coaster element yeah yeah i don't know the whole story behind this video but what i kind of get is almost a an attempt to do the whole uh angry joe thing just a bit more high brow where you know joe angry joe is like his immediate reaction is like oh man game of throne season eight best season ever so-and-so uh you know low key 10 out of 10 and then when people say actually it sucks he's like well actually you know uh are you trying to validate my experiences everything that i feel is totally justified and it's fine and i like it and it's okay that it's terrible and bad because you can like things and then and then you kind of like quietly backpedals a little bit to to sound a bit more reasonable so that his audience isn't tearing him apart but in this case um i don't know who this creator is but in this case it seems like they're trying to sort of intellectualize that concept where it's like well actually so-and-so because you know nostalgia and i haven't played this game for a long time so i didn't realize it was actually bad but i still like it it's still great but if i were to objectively write a review i'd have to say that everything was objectively perfect and amazing and here and explain nothing about it and i don't know it just seems like a kind of like a an indie hipster and tell a more high brow way of doing the same thing it's like i'm sorry you think that you've gathered such a shitty audience i mean that must feel really bad that you feel the need to say these things but i don't have that issue yeah you just say well yeah i know it's not the perfect game but i like it it's fun it's pretty simple actually i don't i never liked that the whole we have to go to like i'm not saying it's perfect as if that's ever something that was thought that you were saying but people say it all the time when you criticize something i'm not saying it's perfect but i like it as if you can only like perfect things yeah yeah stay mad you'll i don't want to judge this video too early but it does seem like that the what where he's going with this i'm not liking the vibes well there's there's some deep side part of me that does like this game so maybe i should just disregard the critic side of it and he is looking at it it's like one of the other i can't they coexist and yeah but this it's not just that it's the vibe of like the critic guy is this pompous annoyance like oh no yeah like you've arrived upon you're enlightened now that you figured out something that was pretty obvious which is you know you can feel things that aren't reflective of uh i guess what a more critical i would um conclude that's not like a big brain take yeah the real intel acutals didn't feel the need to give this out into the universe as if they've discovered you know something incredible in grand no the real the real intel acutals teach talk themselves into liking blade runner that's what the the real uh i hope i wonder how many watch stories it'll take that it's one favorite games of all time even though the pish posh rider in me is getting upset yeah stay mad you'll get your chance when if there's a pish posh rider inside of me then he needs to leave and we need to have a need to have a discussion about i will hire the pope to exercise this demon from my soul inside view there are two pish posh critics the main reason i'm making this video is because i feel like the issue extends beyond just myself or game reviewers and writers in general you know what they say everybody's a critic wait who says that oh it's fucking zack whether it's people looking to argue on the internet or give their detailed review on steve one of lines from zack in the league of legends oh okay but um okay this has gotten slightly more interesting saying this expands into everyone else around the internet all right what is our kind of voice i kind of like what he did there like telling his own narration to shut up i don't know i just thought it was a little creative he was telling the pish posh rider inside of him to shut up which is yeah i appreciate that it's it's likeable that it just reminds me of channel awesome i've heard of that i'm so it's amazing channel awesome awesome in the name you know channel awesome is the most appropriately named youtube channel that has ever existed there so that's not uh ego raptor is it like no no no it's awesome and all that okay so like chat will be able to help me out probably because it's but a bunch of you would have been there too metal was there it was uh nostalgia critic failis was someone i watched oh yeah okay um this is movie bob it's like a whole network of creators including nostalgia critic right yeah in front of that all of them it without fucking fail i don't know why i don't know if it was mandated by dug or some shit but every one of them had to have personas and they had to cut to them all over the play they had to run a narrative it usually had to reflect the film that they were covering and they always i think that i think that was mandated i think they were told that they had to be similar to dog walker in order to be on channel awesome yeah yeah i don't know if it was all dog or if it was microsoft as well but yeah that was from the top down like everybody was basically told oh you're not you're not overreacting you're not moving your arms enough you're not being as wacky and kind of yeah like act like a 40 year old playing an 18 year old and ironically yes it was like you had to be like animated characters because this plays well and it gets people interested in stuff i'm pretty sure it's a quote from dug you wanted to be like a cartoon but in real life in the end in the end they basically just created like oh i was about to say he was in the end he is that makes that makes a lot of sense it does it totally does himself yeah like judge doom from uh from uh brought to rabbit i think to clarify though ego raptor was game grumps uh right yeah yes well for a yeah well i was just gonna say god it's so weird we're awesome game gross they uh angry joe was was from that from uh oh yeah angry joe he was blistered thumbs right that was like a yeah right let's go back that sounds like a uh a kajima creation artist joe blistered thumbs became to punish joe however before we proceed so we'd mentioned angry joe someone just linked me uh angry joe show put out a video called people are pissed we didn't hate she-hulk episode one so well i'll just i guess i'll just leave it here that's for that to be a thing we will we'll be able to cover some of the things he said about she-hulk and now i first read the story how did angry joe like it wow he likes all kinds of fucking garbage he had he was a horrific media reviewer i like his game stuff i i guess his game stuff is fine but holy fuck when he talks about these shows he's worthless very um impulse based you could say i suppose he's very impulse and non-critical his initial reaction means a lot to him yeah oh it's fucking Zach whether it's people looking to argue on the internet or give their detailed review on steam or make another bizarro concept video essay there's a lot of people looking to share their opinions this might be the pettiest thing i've ever been upset about but i absolutely despise this copy and paste checkbox template that so many people use to review yeah i don't like it either it's shit stop doing it um yeah someone said the gameplay in hellblade was very good look i love hell but the gameplay and that was all the things to serve a visible gameplay it was fine yeah i didn't that's a game that i did not play for the chance of waiting out of curiosity just for all of you would you prefer to have no information on the game or a view of this kind um i uh oh i almost might say no information from some random just to check just a checkpoint list what i'm getting at here is like it sounds like everybody's very against these kinds of reviews but are you more so against the sort of abilities of the person writing it or the format in general uh probably more the former i don't think a lot of people can accurately review the game based on this kind of check boxy thing i would i would rather them just make a paragraph with their thoughts in it because i think that might actually have some information included in it yeah i i agree like a i don't know if you ever had to basically figure out if uh an amazon product is just crap or it's got a bunch of astro church reviews whatever but what i do is i go i go into the reviews i go into the one stars and see if i can find a pattern if there's multiple people saying the same thing i'm like hmm this might be an issue like that that's that's kind of reading between the words and kind of seeing like oh well this the hinge broke in a month oh i was using it's great until you know a year later but like yeah i much rather get people to write it because otherwise you couldn't get just you know astro church reviews or you know bought farms just posting five stars and you have no no idea if it's any good or not but if you actually had to read the reviews and you find out that it's actually just a bot-generated let lump a garbage and if you have someone who just writes like just a paragraph or half a paragraph's worth of info it might just be about one issue that they found and i could use that in conjunction with a lot of other reviews as i'm scrolling by and that's just like a data point on oh this person said this about the the the balance or the the the the way that how well it runs and the performance or some sort of bug or issue and even that's if that's all i get from that review then that's something i can consider or it's just like these i just i get such little value out of it that i kind of just i would i just skip over them they don't mean anything to me i'm not sure i'm convinced because i've never ever even seen these before i didn't know they existed i don't know this is a thing but in concept i'm also if someone told me like do you know that this is how people are reviewing things on steam now i'd be like i see it here in there and then well is it whether or not it's true i'm just saying so theoretically what do i believe about that i'm just like i don't really know i guess like i can get a better screenshot of this is the one where okay so if i was reading if i saw this about a new game gameplay very good graphics beautiful audio amazing i'm not like could what would i find this more valuable if it were a sentence saying i thought the gameplay was very good the graphics were absolutely beautiful and the audio was amazing full stop you know like if it was yeah i don't uh surely we can consume it in the similar fringy what do you think about that i consider those similar like i think i i'd consider those two things very similar yeah i think a lot of times when people write steam reviews they're just like one or two things about the game then then they write it down because i'm trying to figure out what it's more specific look at this format so gameplay very good it's like that's not helpful yeah so yeah yeah i'm assuming that it's more so that it's just not enough like we would take issue with these if it's just the information it's too broad and diluted right right and if you're gonna go that broad and diluted i think don't waste my time just give me a thumbs up or thumbs down so this is all of the work they put into like the broad strokes of these things i'd rather they just gave me a couple sentences about something they hate or really like yeah funnily enough because this isn't going to be the only review i read anybody the reason i don't know about any of this probably is because what i rely on is the uh current like new reviews and overall reviews and um if they're overwhelmingly positive i'm pretty much guaranteed a good game we thought about this before but like the sort of metric on steam of the aggregate review is like the best of any aggregate reviews ever they seem so fucking consistent yeah it's um if a game gets an overwhelmingly positive you probably gonna like it whereas if a film gets like a overwhelming positive yeah yeah it doesn't mean anything and so what's funny about that is the top critics though guys if i saw the overwhelming positive i'd garner more value out of that than seeing several reviews that say gameplay very good graphics masterpiece audio amazing like i'm with you on that i just um what did we have before this format came out a bunch of people writing out paragraphs that oftentimes were as about as vacuous as this no offense to random steam reviewers i i think i noticed when i when i scroll through steam reviews even people who just have a little just they just put a couple sentences down they were compelled to do that because of some issue they found in the game or there's something in particular they really like and because if you're gonna review a game i would never just copy paste some format and check boxes i feel like if that's not the most not really super informed or passionate people might tend to do that instead they want to write out in their words what their issue or specific praise is i want to make sure people understand i am not saying it is 100 reliable i'm just saying it's pretty reliable compared to how unreliable every other aggregate is because someone said r e eight it's overwhelmingly positive it's like well funnily enough as metal mentioned i had fun playing that game and i completely i know i understand perfectly why it's given a well oh yes like i don't feel lied to with knowing that it's got overwhelmingly positive meanwhile with something like multi-verse madness i'm like did people really write this high did they even know what was happening come on like who are the multiple friends who have it in their top five marvel movies and like will it now you have five less friends will it be will they keep it after another five come out i wonder i don't know but some of them are going like i don't really like marvel movies but i love sam ray me and that that's the one that confuses me the most because i'm like that's almost specifically why i hate the movie as much as i do because sam ray me's involvement well just because i think it seems to me like someone skinned a sam ray me film and then puppeted it around in a pg-13 disney film and that bothers me is the sam ray i don't feel like it's wearing its skin other than like there are little like he's got some bits on it like some of his wearing his hat fake hat yeah that's a fake sam ray me hat yeah pick off that fake real hat not even comes right off speaking of fake hat i saw um abraham lincoln's actual hat that he was wearing when he was when he went to ford's theater and got fucking killed wow that's a real hat that's his fate he should have kept it on i must have metal in them don't they like it actually probably deflect the bolt a little bit maybe no probably not no probably whatsoever i imagine well some of them say well interesting enough i might have been already out of fashion but there was you know the mad hatter that's based on uh people putting i think was it led they used to put lead in mercury or lead one of the two some safe metal yeah yeah perfectly safe metal that would actually drive them crazy over time so that's where that comes from i was gonna it matters to hatter yeah exactly i know it was cool it was fashioned at one point for people to wear like metal skull caps for some level of protection but they would they would dress it up and have a hat specifically over it but i think that's a total that's a different time when people had to actually feel like they should be concerned about having some level of head protection in their daily lives which generally we don't have to worry about now thank goodness yeah i was gonna mention it was a sort of format i kind of stumbled into and i didn't really realize what i was doing until a commenter kind of identified but i did a couple i don't really do many like straight-up reviews anymore but i did a couple review series where i would just kind of pick a games out of a specific sort of theme or genre and all the reviews were positive like they're all recommendations so the entire review is basically caveats so i would say i like this game i think you might like it too if you like games like blah you appreciate mechanics like blah you enjoyed similar games such as blah or and you don't mind the occasional you know turn-based action or this or that or the other like basically the whole review was you know a thumbs up essentially like a steam review but i would just go over the caveats of what what you may or may not like about the about the game i guess that's what all reviews are but specifically highlighting hey if you don't like games do law but like a like a one paragraph uh caveat or like a you know an asterisk basically on the videos like i love it but if you don't like turn-based games you probably won't dig this like that would be way more useful than graphics awesome and and yeah if if every steam review was just three things i like three things i dislike and everyone it's everyone just did that it would be insanely helpful because the patterns would become very apparent very much or if every steam review was just one thing that you really like and why and one thing you really hate and why that would probably be even better especially because you take reviews as a group boy that would be helpful yeah and you get to see what that person holds in high value for that game like i i swear to god i think jim sterling reviewed full out four positively because you could have multiple partners and that was like his the best thing about the game to him all right i'm not even joking this might be the pettiest thing i've ever been upset about but i absolutely despise this copy and paste checkbox template that so many people use to review games on steam this strange attempt at organized objectivity entirely removes the explanation okay organized objectivity what why would that having a consistent standard well so okay to clarify when someone says graphics very good you like why can't that just mean they like them a lot why does that have to i'm i'm a little bit lost organized objectivity i don't fucking get it man i think he's referring to the concept of having a standard like a like a checklist so i'll scientific to him yeah i feel like he think he sees it as a bit too cookie cutter like i i see it just as like green text you know what i mean where it's like super point form graphics this you know gameplay that and i don't necessarily object to that but it's but it's i prefer ultimately like a little bit of elaboration where it's just like yeah this is what i think this is my brief experience of it it feels to me that it's just like wrong target almost like organized object like like why we you could have an organized objective paragraph that talks about things in detail yeah i don't know what about audio good is like objective to you know what i mean like why is he labeling at that it's yeah it's a weird label yeah organized objectivity entirely removes the explanation or context that would make dark souls difficulty or watching paint dry gameplay make a hint of sense so i'm so fucking lost i'm absolutely lost yeah i'm a little bit it seems like the point being made with the checklist is where there's no argument supporting it so it's worthless it's like sure but how does that spin off to anybody trying to i guess for lack of a better description like separate their emotional response and try to go through this clinically as possible like all the only criticism here is you didn't substantiate anything which is fair um it's also just a like a steam review i don't know it's not a dissertation it's just like i didn't like this oh yeah you see enough of those you go oh then maybe this part isn't good i think also this kind of steam review where it's just like oh graphics good or whatever those tend to not be upvoted very much in terms of like most helpful reviews so when you go on a steam you know page and you look at the reviews it's usually the most helpful to come up first right these kind of reviews don't really get that much traffic so i don't really think they're that important i would i would go out and say i don't really see those views at those reviews and much anymore because no okay can i rewind like 10 seconds i'll tell you exactly what he did he went to one you stream one steam user and look through all the reviews this particular steam user does that type of review every single time because i noticed every single game he'd scroll past he sees he saw different games and for every game he'd have the same format or review so he found one person who did it this way but i don't necessarily think it's a an epidemic problem i hardly see those and and uh to your point i think that the most helpful ones are the ones that people upvote and actually say specific things like yeah this is kind of like civilization but with with starships or whatever maybe the guy who does that checklist format is actually the pish posh writer inside oh no oh no oh i had a question about that is the pish posh writer inside me uh a book on criticism or a porno a pish posh writer like he writes a porno that's very high class no no no the the pish posh writer inside me is that the title of a porno like he's writing oh the title of a porno oh okay sounds like a chuck tingle novel oh no oh no what's going on sorry just to confirm what you were saying indigo the guy filtered uh the results to be only reviews from that one user who was using that template across multiple games and then made it seem like it everybody was doing that is that is that what you said sorry if i'm getting it wrong i would say i've seen them every once you see them every once in a while but they're not prevalent you just notice them every once in a while because people are not gonna they're just gonna just here's some of my light thoughts on my review yes we do a playback speed i just wanted to show uh how the screen looks like uh if you go to a user on steam and look at the reviews it looks like one user right um can we do playback speed on on this or do you say playback speed what do you mean means like a half speed yeah yeah yeah um set up out but i absolutely despise this yeah that's just the same user these are all different games yeah the same user oh that doesn't really that's uh yeah wait difficulty how come the middle option is easy to learn hard to master and wait hate this guy's review not specifically just call him out fuck it like this asshole you don't do that yes one steam review this don't do that it's is a plot on the video game criticism world i got a bone to pick with this asshole this is one son of a big box is to review games on steam this strange attempt at organized objectivity entirely removes the explanation or context that would make dark souls difficulty or watching paint dry gameplay make a hint of sense it tells me thanks for the random clip of you dying in dark souls still i'm still kind of baffled by that statement i just don't like the context this checklist it doesn't tell you much but the average steam reviewer also doesn't tell you much this is kind of my issue with this whole idea like uh trying to rip into this for being like there's lack of information there it's like well yeah that's the format i think they knew that when they were writing it i just it just looks like it's quick i guess it uh you know like to be critical it's being treated as though this is an approach people now have to games like well no that's just that guy's quick review why yeah if anything if anything we're better off now than ever for billions of reviews that go into all kinds of depth like you'll be fine there's someone out there who will get you the thing you need be it a one minute review of a game five minute ten minute hour you'll get them they're out there i mean that guy does steam reviews where he has a little template and he he enjoys filling them in for the games he plays if you follow him you get that level of information as much as i harp on these people a five minute video from a person whose opinions you generally align with or trust saying this game is good i recommend it easy that's that's fine that'll do how can we how come whenever you're getting on to someone you call it harping on someone because a harp is a gentle pleasant thing like if someone harps at me you ever try to carry on well harpy is different that right but but a harp is if someone was too harp at me i'd be like oh so like it's almost like you're serenading what i'm saying instead of i think it's because harps tend to go on you know go on for a long time resident a while and the slow instruments like they vibrate a lot their tones last one guy at the party won't stop playing the fucking harp i was like oh there's god damn harp again he did he brought like playing a piano while holding the sustained panacea you need to talk to jim about his harp not no not now it's just some time don't look at him don't look at him don't look at him don't look at him don't look at the harp just don't don't ask him about his harp that's what he wants you to do that's why he's carrying around a harp on a cart uh so interesting somebody said in chat that uh how come you're like not acknowledging that the hit he just took against dark souls i have no idea if that was what was happening there that sentence is bizarre to me okay it was bizarre yeah he said i think i got what he was trying to say he said that the criticisms this has dark souls difficulty and the gameplay is like watching paint dry make no sense and i mean the paint dry one it's an obvious expression that people use for boring so just saying the game in this game is boring makes no sense so he's saying dark souls difficulty is really engaging and so if you describe it that way and it turns out it's boring is that what he's doing no no i he says that all because it was examples from the checklist right that like difficulty one of the options was dark souls and he's like so that option makes no sense i'm like well i don't know like a lot of game journalists do compare video game difficulty to dark souls and i think if like it's a thumbs up for difficulty it's like yeah it's hard okay sure well i get that that's what you're trying to say you shouldn't call something dark souls difficulty just because it's difficult all right i'm well yeah it's really well designed difficulty i'm listening to it again i'm doing my best to understand the sentence now okay here we go games on steam this strange attempt at organized objectivity entirely removes the explanation or context that would make dark souls difficulty or watching paint dry gameplay make a hint of sense and like my argument is that yeah they could be more clear that they they do make a bit of sense like i get what they're trying to say with it if you're if you're like a normie gamer who just use a template to review a game and you said yeah it has dark souls gameplay and it's also kind of like watching paint dry i'd be like okay so the guy thinks it's hard and boring i have seen templates like these that have on the difficulty the most difficult difficulty option just says dark souls it's kind of a it's kind of a thing's been around for a while like i remember before dark souls was people's cultural test point for difficulty people used to talk about nes hard like if you play the old nes games like like uh yeah battle toads or ninja guidance those games were fucking hard and people would always use those as like a reference point like oh yeah this is this game's nes hard you're gonna you're gonna have a rough time with it ninja guidance hard but doable i think battle toads i think there are parts that are just legit bullshit yeah yeah i've seen several interpretations of his point in chat i'm trying to keep up because he's a skilled communicator i think it's basically i think what he's trying to say is um if someone is just saying oh it's difficulty is dark souls and its gameplay is watching paint dry that obviously there was a shorthand for hard and boring i think what he's saying is that there there should be more to it than that and just saying that on its own is not enough information so it's not enough against dark souls i don't think it's enough against dark souls the fact that the fact that that was a 50 50 interpretation people chat makes me think this line could be better but i will say i think that what you said is what he meant to say but not exactly what he said i think what he said is that it downright doesn't make sense didn't he say it doesn't make sense i think it's not good but it doesn't make sense maybe that is what he actually maybe that is what he's trying to say well i think what your what your framing of it was the more charitable and better um way of saying what i what i think he just said there is that when you say oh the difficulty is dark souls that doesn't make sense whereas what i would say is no that's just nothing i can't use that information it's barely anything other than it's hard i guess but it's there wasn't a lack of sense there's just a lack of anything in that like what am i meant to do with that as a statement it's i guess it's just the problem of uh saying a lot meeting very little um i always go to ahoy what i think you guys have covered him on on this on this channel before ahoy like will can suck well basically break down an entire paragraph into like one sentence he'll just every word is so meaningful in his scripts generally when he's talking about whether video games or you know technology or the amiga or anything like that he's able to condense a lot of useful information into very few words whereas generally even for shorter form content like this video i don't think is very long they'll just go on and on about something and you really could probably break it down into a few paragraphs of actual data yeah just like mawler's videos got them oh here we go 10 000 likes what aren't i clever it tells me to nothing about how the person actually felt right nor is there any interesting evaluation of what the game might be trying to convey i mean it's a very i mean what are you expecting that that is what it is steam user review man but not just a steam user review it's a very specific format of a steam user review from one account like yes it's it's designed not to give you very in-depth feelings of the person's thoughts and feelings of god it's not a thematic definition of what the game's going forward analysis like that why he's framing it as though that's a very common way to review games that everyone's now on board with like we've lost the soul of analysis like what are you talking about no even every once in a while i'm affirming my review critique distinction where review is just a description of your experience with it and a recommendation based on that whereas critique is more analytical in nature these people down in the steam reviews they're reviewing to try and recommend the game yeah it's product recommendation necessarily there for substantive describing the product more than anything else still not a fan of right splitting those words that way i feel like there's so much more broad that you could have all kinds of crossovers he's done the perfect scapegoat like really the the video title could be i really don't like the stream reviews by gary template that could be the scene that could be the entire review it's like this this guy don't like him that's fucking boss that dude yeah gary's a dick you know just the whole template family they're just like this yeah brother was a dick like i know they got it sister was a dick don't ask graphics i play games that could probably run on my 2007 ipod okay so when they say the graphics okay or not that doesn't mean the game is good or not does it yeah also you don't have to care you just the component part and you don't have to care there's any reviewer the any reviewer who talks about the graphics are you this upset that they talked about graphics and their review i would expect someone to mention the graphics and their review what he just said to me is not quite as stupid but as like on the level of being like music good why would i care i'm deaf yeah i say what you mean yeah you don't care about it but it's that review wasn't specifically written for you it's fine that you don't care if the graphics are good or not that's still information touch what the fuck is a graphic gameplay i'm not gonna start i mean i'm sorry one oh there's your problem you don't actually know what you look at what the graphics are hang on is he it's me did we jump ahead to assuming a better point was made and the worst one got made i don't know what the game might be trying to convey graphics i play games that could probably run on my 2007 ipod touch what the fuck is a graphic game are we saying that like he doesn't know what a graphic is because he doesn't play games that all not all the games he plays have good graphics so he's like i don't even know what a graphic is is that the joke you know what this normie with a checklist probably means by graphics good he doesn't care how good the graphics are because good games don't have to have is that i thought that was yeah i think that's probably the point is like oh not every game has to have good graphics therefore why are you rating a game based on graphics stupid arguments because we i'd like to know how good the graphics are anyway it matters a lot to people i actually have a very specific i have a very specific example i just moved and i was talking to one of the movers uh that i hired for a couple hours and we're talking about games it's like oh i noticed you have a tattoo for elder scrolls right on it's like yeah love skyrim it's like are you looking forward to the next game yeah graphics are gonna be awesome that's like the entire thing you had to say about it it's like okay that's all that matters to him yeah it's plus if a game has bad graphics so that if everyone consistently says a game has bad graphics that's that's something worth like taking into consideration especially because that could mean things don't load properly oh yeah um there are there's clashes in the visual style it just looks horrendous suffered from very they had very very good art design but horrible graphical bugs yeah what i find that strange about this coming format is the fact that it's clearly become a i'm gonna highlight one and then tell you why this stuff isn't lacking i don't know depth or information when you i feel like you've already made that point but your first one was that you don't care about it not that it lacked information we're not off to a great start of proving what's wrong with this format which i think we all agreed it lacks information lacks depth lacks detail lacks context so i don't know but like i'm curious what the knockback for the rest of them will be like gameplay again i would happily just can see it's like yeah i don't know what any of these words really mean that's the problem and also i bet the person who's making these reviews would agree that they're not in depth yes gameplay i'm not even gonna start with that one audio okay so what um what's the point of this video yeah i thought aren't you isn't that your job okay that little list that he had there that's like a joke right that's not like a standard that's used is it i assume it is and it's just gameplay or both options on there like yeah well i was the last two the last two are redundant because watch paint dry instead also means don't yeah i thought the video creator like maybe this list himself as a gag i think he did yeah this looks like a google form or something okay like i don't think this is anything that actually is official like i remember back in the day this should be pretty standard like remember a game spot i don't know if igm did it but game spot would have like your graphics music uh or maybe the bring it over to sound your graphics sound gameplay and like maybe multiplayer and then have like various different kind of stat points and then the magazine game pro the game had famously had fun factor is one of its criteria yeah it's a stupid system but they tried to itemize it it's like yeah this game looks awful it you know it doesn't it's nothing to look at doesn't sound great but hey the gameplay is fun or maybe it's actually a middling game but it has an amazing soundtrack i mean i think the halo fans in this call could could tell you how much impact a really good soundtrack how much that enhances the game already like if it's a decent game with an amazing soundtrack it can make a lot more enjoyable but things that uh totally it really matters to who you're talking to like i i try to convince my friend you know yeah vr is really cool you can see the depth you can do that something that and then i forget that he actually is blind in one eye and so can't see the depth factor that's like a big that's like a big uh down point on vr because that's like half of the experience so but yeah i think it kind of probably this sort of form format review which i honestly don't see very often probably was inspired by that sort of like yeah the game pro uh nintendo power pc gamer what have you sort of you know we're going to itemize this these stats and these numbers to make them look more official and organized aspect to it like on the eyes it's very it looks very structured and good for just visually the way that it looks yeah it seems to give them to it's a style like visual style even it also tends to like give a little bit more gravitas like oh we've done this whole scoring system and so this is our official number based on our scoring system when in reality it's an arbitrary number you could pick a seven or eight doesn't really have any objective standard to it you just happen to give it that higher number because you liked it yeah um by the way the whole like gameplay very good down to just down i mean i'm assuming we're all here we can reasonably assume this is supposed to just mean one to six and how did it score out of six and that's that's all you're supposed to really because again like being like what do these words even mean and it's like well he was going to choose words to go here um and when you've got only one or two or three words to choose from whatever it's like yeah you probably not going to be able to do much better than this the limitation of the format i just i think that the premise is bugging me about all of this is the idea that we're all doing this with games now or something it's like no i'm not even gonna start with that one audio okay does that mean music or sound design or balancing what's funny about that that's the guy who made the template what's funny about that is you can dig further than those you just said to like all of them are gonna have subcategories as well or audience yeah sign me up for the grandma games like who it's meant for maybe so that's not a good at genre to be fair being like intended audience kids teens adults that's a useful piece of information yeah that's actually useful that's like what a rating is on a video game that you've had basically your entire life this is wait why is grandma that oh that's a horny has a cranny back and she's on the bottom not near the kids version well also like in like the nintendo wee era there were a lot of like old folks home so just had video game consoles that the old people would play and i'm certain there were some games that were better for old people to play than others i just i i i i didn't know that we're now we've gotten so overzealous about all of this we're throwing out like audience intent like why would we throw that out trading yeah this is essentially a i'm a little wasn't something that he said earlier in the video oh i don't need to write a whole dissertation on why i think a game is good or bad but now the criticism is that there's nothing here to latch on to so like what are we doing do you want to know why he liked it or to justify why he liked it no he was originally shitting on like the notion of spending a lot of time writing up a big script explaining like objectively why something is good or bad that was something that he didn't like but now these are objective enough they're not accurate in well i mean i i don't he would he just said that there's nothing maybe he wouldn't say it that way i don't there's a there's a golden lock zone i don't understand what he's trying to make which one do you want or what do you want what does this have to do with your original point well i also like the gold zone that he wants is for you to tell an anecdote about how you played it as a kid man your sister or coke into the machine that's what he wants that's yeah sign me up for the grandma games difficulty dark souls is unironically in our own grind hey i called it i mentioned it earlier it's a real thing see it's been confirmed hashtag vindicated grinding yeah i really don't like that really hard just means dark souls well now he's very specifically arguing against this template but like a lot of people hate grinding in games i was saying like yeah telling telling people that the game is grindy is valuable information well imagine legitimately is uh is the game an rpg and someone goes rpg that's not why would you even care not all games are rpg's like well yeah i was asking if it was like don't even get me started on gameplay which is yeah is this the is this based on the template from that uh gary template guy or i'm trying to figure out he is acting as if these are not his he's a he's saying that these aren't his i guess this is just one that he found i think he's been a straw man this whole time i thought he's okay so treating it as that's embarrassing if this is i think this is real yeah i was gonna say i'm hoping it's real because the fact is like this isn't a very good response to this like you could have just said it was shallow but instead you're going way too far ironically an option let's say like why would you talk about whether or not there's a grind some games don't even have grind it's like do you see the option nothing that's the option yeah like this is legitimately useful in if games had this i could this is information that i could actually use if almost every option i see for a game is like the top three options i'm like okay there's not really much grinding in this game that's good i was going to say so if i was playing this game the first time it ticked only if you care about leaderboards and ranks like oh okay sweet then if it said like you'll need a second life for the grinding in this shit it's like oh all right well we're playing a different game then exactly this isn't actually one to site for being worthless and grinding isn't even a concept in so many video games then it's the top option like yeah the no grinding would be yeah like molly said well here's another thing you can it's a template you can just remove things that not do not apply to that game or you can just fucking filter us you don't read jesus yeah if you see it just skip over it and read the other seven that's all yeah there's a scroll on your mouse it's super helpful any video some of these reviews i don't care for so what do we think first about this um no story no story some law average good lovely i like the mildly interested i think this could be somewhat useful i just like that some law i guess like place it like the low end uh the dox i like this i like this better fine because there's at least a rank an identifiable rank to this it's like yeah like like no from top to bottom yeah no story some law average it's like bad okay good like you can tell like there's actually differentiation between well i agree the story that has a lot of story but is bad i was about to say this conflates to at the same time it goes from whether or not the story is there to story being there is a good whether it's good you know it's like wait hang on yeah because also a story being good it will replace your life that's weird i have nowhere to put the telltale games that's a fantastic point i'd rather have no story than a bad story like a game that will just not shut up but has terrible writing is the worst yeah yeah yeah the problem with this one is you need like the presence of a still like amount of how focus the game story gameplay ratio maybe and then you need quality of writing or something like that if you're gonna split these story okay but like how would a single checkbox warn me that before your eyes could throw hands it's not gonna what not gonna what yeah supposed to is that a specific character in a game like okay so we need to reset the limitations of the fight which yeah yeah why was the format made it's like to be as in-depth as possible it's like no it's not tell you something as quickly as i know do i need to know what this wolf men's intentions are in order to enjoy the game before i play it man wakes up in the morning looks at his fucking door and gets super angry because it's a door oh no it's only a door really mad that it is what it is you lied to me you said you need an audio door it's just a regular you're a fake door real doors have mr. tummness behind them yeah it doesn't open you kind of you kind of can it's kind of conflexible that he said before because before based on this template he's using he had like a you know kids teenagers adults grandma who's like into porn i guess but like wouldn't wouldn't the idea of like more of an adult themed game you would expect the story to be more mature and have more graphic violence and things like that like that even based on this stupid template that he's plucked from somewhere it kind of does cover that he does cover the idea that this guy with i guess he said he threw hands i'm not playing this game so i don't know what he's talking about this guy didn't mention what game it was i don't know no idea this next one this could be useful if it was hours one to five five to ten ten to fifteen fifteen to twenty twenty plus if it was that would be this is unfortunately short could mean anything average i don't know exactly like i can interpret what type of game short average long it could be like zero to ten ten to twenty thirty it could be but i don't know um yes average for call of duty campaign is not the same as average for a japanese role-playing game yeah i was just thinking that like what the fuck is average these days that's so that's the problem with this one how does he really know does he nail the problem with this one time oh boy the hour i think i'm a moment session is another topic for another video right is it he didn't nail it i think he did another video listen listen in case anyone missed it just i just won't play it again yeah i feel like i laid out the best argument against it this was single checkbox warned me that before your eyes could throw hands game time oh boy the hour count obsession is another topic for another video yeah like you you screwed up you screwed up um the reason why you haven't a lot of people value the game time knowledge and we went i'm pretty sure we've talked about this only five before people have chat have said this some people do not have the time for uh what you they're not in a position in life where they're just like i'll just play anything for any amount of time and hope the experience enough isn't it they're like no i need information i need this thing to take this this amount of time this level of story this kind of engagement i got work to do i got a lifetime lead family to look after i need this shit to be delivered on time this is why like the same thing with movies right just like that's a two hour guarantee i'm in and out hopefully i go for a good one with games it's like yeah uh how long does it take to beat this thing i'd like to get it done within the week uh or with data and it's like it's elden ring it's like oh you you might not be able to and if this guy's bursting going you shouldn't care about the length it should be about how good the game is it's like yeah that's great how long is the game yeah right i found what i think he based this video off of i linked it in the chat it's uh i had to dig pretty deep i had to do game review form template dark souls and it was like the 20th result or something and all of it it's got some of the same verbiage it's even got the kids teens adults grandma and dark souls as as a difficulty level and even has uh you know long enough for a cup of coffee short average long to infinity and beyond so i think he basically took that you know chopped out each each question section and then put it into his video format with all like the purple you know pretty background or whatever and but this is hardly the gold standard of review this is just some random it's it's uh something something that github.io just something some dude made it's nothing official cherry-picked thing oh no yeah i just realized well yeah the obvious the most common argument so if a new game is coming let's say god of war ragnarok's on his way out and then me and metal are told like i can tell you the game time if you want to know and we go no i don't care about gaming hours i only care about the quality of the game i'll be like well no i'd like to know that it's like are we are we looking at like 30 plus 50 plus 80 plus like it would be nice to know that because yeah i'm hoping it's not a fucking 10 hour game that that would be a surprise and kind of lame disappointing yeah and and more and more as as people get older and get busier and have kids or whatever they actually shorter condensed experience has become more attractive to people who don't have 500 hours to put into an RPG and so it's actually quite an important thing everyone being obsessed with lengths like it's perfectly reasonable to want to know the length of the game that's fine well sorry this is the impression i get a lot of the time when i've noticed people bring up oh the obsession with length it's usually to criticize people who focus more on games that are longer and get upset when they see a game that's got a shorter length it was mentioned you know if you once you get older and your life gets busy you want games that are shorter and everybody recognizes that is totally valid conversely there's the person who's like i have in my budget enough money to buy one game per year you know what i think that one guy might have good reason to be interested in finding out if a game is really long yep and then for them games are really but that guy's treated like an asshole a lot of the time like oh wow long yep yeah imagine wanting more content price oh wow count obsession is another topic oh whoa whoa what just happened price oh wait i want to see the god damn it i want to judge it quick yeah another topic for another video pause right so we yeah we will judge it before he does price it's free worth the price okay this isn't if it's on sale if you have some spare money left what is that what is it i don't know for all assessment i would like to believe i have spare money left so i can buy a game so i think that's lucky for you you have to do it i think it means if you have money left while buying other games during the sale i don't know this this is a weird one because they clearly want to ask the question is it worth the money and it's like so first one it's free therefore it's up to you i guess because it's gonna do the price so the second one worth the price i get a price full price i guess this will be the problem i guess it must be about full price well because he said if it's on sale it's like well what about it for the regular price drops you're not helping me just say full price sale like half price i think we should assume what is a price on a sale or remake of a game you've already sold twice well just give me monetary value 60 bucks 40 bucks 20 bucks you know you don't incorporate the incorporation of humor in these where the idea is to be brief but then it's like oh we've got to make it funny also then you have to like decipher like what is your mean like it just gets in the way of it sir i interrupted you rag sorry i this one's because worth the if it's on if you should get it when it's on sale that means it's now worth the price so it checks two boxes right yeah oddly and also they could actually check three because if you have some spare money left it's on sale which makes it worth the price it is now three of the six options it's free it's worth the price too so but isn't the price because if they're going for price tiers then you know the stop fucking calling me but there is a like this my phone went off for the third time and like i'll call you again thank you what's your number one i'm number one the price you know like when when you're looking at it the price doesn't need to be in the review anyway so this has to be for something else other than just telling me what the price is and if it's worth the price then you'd have to this yeah this is an odd one this is weird well so it's very confusing exactly what they mean but i think if i was being as best-faced as possible it's it goes free full price sale price uh only if you really have money to spare no and you're seriously burning your money with this one like that's seen that's the best way i could interpret it it's not yeah probably let's see what they say price oh boy the hour count obsession is another topic for another video bugs wait what wait what oh he fucked up wait what happened that we played this obsession is another topic for another video price oh boy the hour wait i i think is the point supposed to be that price is based on our account almost like with while no no way would he be serious is i just wanted to show more no i think he copied and paste part of this video i've seen that happen before is that the point though so i think i think he's trying to say that when people talk about whether or not it's worth the price they're talking about the hour count i believe sure no i think some people say that but i don't understand how or why either either he's like well because obviously the response i would have to that is like well no because we can have very very short games that are really fucking potent and cheaper well yeah exactly yeah so so i don't this is either a mistake or he's trying to say like tongue-in-cheek you're obsessed you need to calm down it's not at the price is it the exact is it the exact same clip or they just similar yeah it's the same the scores the same yeah it's gotta be an error unless unless he's doing some sort of like fourth wall sort of grand hog day repeating himself thing i don't think that's the case he hasn't been that clever so far i think this is just not clever anything to say all right there also isn't a time to clarify gameplay inside our wild arts either fucked it up or his point is pretty worthless one of those two not a good selection quick video bugs all right try filling out what the fuck oh this one this one gets a pass session hang on it and i guess all of the options in the template are valid on this one sorry it didn't play on my end i have to play it again is another topic for another video price oh boy the hour count obsession is another topic for another video wait bugs all right you can have that one i could try filling out this template to the best okay wait so buggy bugs is okay to talk about yeah he's fine with the one that one gets a pass you fucked up because the whole point you were trying to make which i thought i thought you were trying to make was that it was really shallow and that it was really like not that useful which you can definitely argue especially with the bugs part what it says there are some bugs there are no bugs there are a lot of bugs yeah but yeah what the bugs yeah you can't start the game that's what i'm saying like what you can't just that's one in fact we might have been most critical of that one but he's like oh that's a pass like what i would say that there's like you could probably have multiple categories of bugs you could have sort of like immersion breaking you know nothing too bad a lot of just weird kind of funny glitches that don't really ruin the game but kind of break you out of the out of the moment stability you know crashes but also you can get performance is this game gonna be running on you know the cry engine 10 and so you need a a supercomputer from nasa to be able to run it or is it is it pretty easy to run like there's a there's a whole i don't know there's another category for that but that's a that's a whole other ballgame of just you know actual performance issues and then hard locks soft locks all sorts of stuff yeah because when it says minor bugs does that mean not many or low impact yeah like minor bugs and can get annoying really blur together to me that's bugs only about children you know children but anyway you know a deep prop galactic there's a lot of minor bugs in that one well there's loads of bugs in mario sunshine but like it works but like you know wait why why is one of the things are survivor the walls i don't even understand that one i guess that is a lot of bugs i would just simplify it to like cosmetic versus like interfering with gameplay like uh you know when you go to blight town in dark souls for example and those fucking flies come at you and then it drops the frame rate to like five but but then like cyberpunk where objects get like duplicated and they hover in midair it's just like whatever it doesn't interfere with the game it's just looks stupid like those are like the two primary categories well no this got a pass john all right you can have that one i could try filling out this template to the best of my ability hesitating on my complex thoughts involving each cat oh my god i feel bad for the template maker at this point the guy is like why why are you ripping me apart when this thing is meant to be read in like 10 seconds that's all it's for gory is the chow garden a grinding mechanic or i could just write my own review for sonic chow i don't know what garden a grinding mechanic it's like an area in smaller size too yeah the yeah i'm sorry i'm sure it's a fair question in terms of how does grinding exist but that's the format is not capable of dealing with that you are correct i don't know i already found the solution he can just make essays on youtube yeah there you go if only someone had thought of that before if only there were thousands of these things like adventure says sometimes this game feels like walking over broken glass while getting my eardrums ruptured by a smoke alarm but other times you go fast and it's kind of fun and that makes more sense well yeah but yeah you could do otherwise there was nothing stopping you from doing that yeah why does not you don't have to follow any template in a steam review to be fair you can do whatever you want if we're gonna be as mean to that format as we're gonna be consistently mean okay so sometimes the game feels what does sometimes mean how often is that and you're talking about bugs when you say walking over broken glass are you talking about mechanics that aren't working is the game functioning or do you just hate it what is it what are you saying people who like walking on broken glass or getting their eardrums ruptured by a smoke alarm so the sound is bad yeah is the sound is it you're saying it's been poorly mixed you're saying the songs are poorly written or is it too just it's just loud it's just really fucking loud or constant yeah oh boy we could have a conversation about games feeling like walking over broken girl glass for hours fast for another video and then you go that's kind of fun i'm just so all you said is i don't like i'd like parts of it so how is it more useful because you said broken glass and the eardrums ruptured by smoke alarm you see you had fun it evokes thoughts and imagery in your head which means it's better than the boring objective one that said there are bugs instead of broken glass they said the gameplay was bad and instead of eardrums rupturing what they said the audio was bad yeah the audio was bad that's virtually the same thing in my mind i don't see this what i mean how is that better tell me explain to me more flowery i think that makes more than watching paint dry be more you said it makes more sense how does it make more no it doesn't make more sense communicate less information because you haven't told me anything about when how like you haven't told me anything what's the ratio how often am i going to be having fast fun versus big glass well we can we can take this route remember when he criticized the sound option for not talking about what do you mean sound effects do you mean the music do you mean the the cues for things and then he makes this which doesn't describe any of those things as well and he says it's better he's like well no you didn't right you didn't do those things you had the kit you specifically you made a specific complaint about the format and then in your quote-unquote fix you didn't have that fix in the format that you criticized kind of his own point kind of it's hard to atomize what he's talking about here i wish he'd use a template to review the review for no those are bad for sense i think i've become so engrossed with the world of game writing and video essays because there's so much about your problem right there individual's experience with a game especially once you understand the kinds of media they're typically interested in dunkey mentions this in his video about game critics understanding the don't even fucking dunkey don't person behind the review is important if someone like me you know when you don't need to know who's behind the review when they give you like proof in context yeah and they do i don't know yeah i don't know barfield man 369 on steam but if he makes a really good review on a game then i'm like all right this this is interesting unless what he's probably not just flat out lying to me so right or if they're just talking about their experiences with the game are they backing it up by saying i had a lot of fun in this segment because this is this mechanic is designed very well and here's why here's why it's engaging here's how i think it could have been done maybe a little better like you can go into depth you don't have to just be like yeah this is my experience so watch my video like okay got anything else a little bit beyond to me because like right like you're in your review of Fallout 76 right it's like we don't just go on your word that you didn't have fun with it because it is bad and i don't like it it's like walking across crushed glass damn it instead we're kind of like well sure but can you show me any any of that and then you're like yeah look this is a glitch look at this happening oh look at this look at this look at this look at this look at this and we're all just like oh shit yeah kind of the point with my videos i'm like dr straight's chose to do this that's fucking dumb moving on just like in case you didn't understand instead of just be just saying like oh i just i just don't like it like we're doing we're doing the thing where it's like isn't it so much better to speak from the heart from a person you understand and their experiences are led before going oh the audio isn't at a particular bit right oh this is a stupid robot like he's he's kind of priming it to be like don't even think about what the reasons for my opinions are just watch my videos and listen to me because you like me well yeah then you can just make video essays like diary entries and it's fine this is more like a diarrhea entry oh god if you were to say i so far i do not have any confidence in this person being a good video game reviewer so far and if this is your professional career then i maybe my i should be expecting a little bit more all right rags are you saying that this review or this video is pepto abysmal yeah that was really good i would have saved it for when like medication was involved so it's a bit more topical but i like that pepto abysmal i like that that's good that's good that one's going to grow on me enjoy the wild actually sorry i took a while to actually try because i was kind of thinking so well it's abysmal sounds like abysmal so the point that this guy is making i agree that knowing what the person is reviewing its preferences are is helpful in that if you know that somebody doesn't like a certain genre of games and then they review a game from that genre it's like well their advice may not be any anything that they say might not be that useful to me because i like that genre the good thing about trying to substantiate all of your arguments with references to what is in the game or in the film or in the tv show is that the more effectively you can do that the less somebody needs to know about what your personal preferences are they can just rely on the arguments that you put forth and if they're convincing to them then that's it so the goal of just trying to be more uh i guess empirical is that you can create something that's going to just be broadly useful to anybody rather than people who specifically align with you or people who know exactly what you think about any number of different games or films or tv shows um not yeah if metal played through ragnarok and i said metal uh you know review for me give me a give me a spoiler list spoiler free rather blurb of what what's like he starts going it felt like a summer breeze you lay down after a long war it felt like the birds singing felt like felt like a lot of the weight on my shoulders were lifted like the fuck you sounds exactly like me yeah you know like that's that's a good point fringy sometimes uh somebody reviewers consistency is more important than what they think about something specifically you know it's like they hated this thing but i know what they hate and what they like traditionally so like or when they know that i'm probably gonna like or hate this thing yeah based on that yeah i add to fringy's point i i find two different types of reviews really really useful for myself one is from somebody i've followed for years and i know exactly what they like and don't like like if i ever get a review pop up from a cg or from skill up i i know that they have a certain type of type of game like skill likes kind of action rpg's with a lot of mechanics a lot of depth a lot of progression so i know if he likes a game i'll probably like that type of game because i i do type like that type of game but i can understand when he doesn't quite jive of the game if it doesn't quite have the mechanical depth that he's into secondly the other type of review is like you said somebody who kind of puts something in a frame of reference like a great a great steam review would be splitgate i have played halo for 20 years this is like halo meets portal love it okay cool that sounds like fun i'll buy it right so if you don't if you don't know if you don't have a long history with that creator and know what they their particular likes and dislikes and have a track record of the kind of games that they liked and disliked you know a simple frame of reference you know a sort of brief introduction to the kind of things you like or the kind of things you play that's so much more useful than you know a bullet list of graphics goods sound bad for sure yeah hate open worlds or if dunkey himself says he likes an rpg everyone goes holy shit what's going on with that game video games can be such personal journeys that simple number scales and quote on quote objective reviews often fail to convey the i just it's like you lost your understanding of what value can be gained from people being quote on quote objective about sound design or mechanics in any way shape or form like why are you now being like i'm in i'm enlightened i've realized people can describe personal experiences they had with video game why wasn't this why didn't you have this factory default how do you not know this yeah this should be an idea that you just sort of come in to understand naturally very quickly in this environment you're not you're not clever why y'all realizing that they researched they researched uh sorry sorry go ahead there you go no i was just saying the what have you fucking go they be smirched sanic how you can't research manic i was gonna say your job mr video essayist man is to tie back the feelings about your experience and why you felt what you did two things about the game thing yeah then make a point about the thing and how it exists otherwise all you're saying is i like it yeah i liked it i didn't like it because of personal reasons that i can't share with you meaningfully the best thing review can be as accurate well yeah i mean how do we how do we address like if you watch a review where someone says you know unshartered for was a great game i really like the part where crash bandicoot oh fuck no he's in that game i really like the part as much as he is went to haven city and ran around in haven city like i really like that part and so someone looks at you it's like oh that didn't happen in that game it's like well are you what does it mean to be wrong about something that you say about a video game which is entirely possible i really like the open world mechanics of um super mario 3d land you know like i really like the open world in that game or um it was really cool how uh in mortal combat that that first person shooter segment in mortal combat 11 was like really engaging as a bold choice no opinion the wrong subverted my expectations probably the toughest review is the review where you have to you have to convince somebody the value of a game without actually detailing it for reasons that if you were to detail the good parts of the game you would ruin the game for somebody case and point if anybody's ever watched a total biscuit while he was still around he reviewed what became quickly became his favorite game of all time brothers a tale of two sons but he could not discuss what made the game so great which was really really tricky but he tiptoed around it well enough that you got an inkling of what to expect right but didn't spoil what made the game so special to him which i think is quite a quite a useful skill and very difficult to do but yeah you have to kind of you have to do that dance where you're not ruining the get persons experienced by showing too much kind of like a preview or like a trailer to a movie you have to kind of do that dance where you hint at what you can expect without actually showing or telling it an explicit detail there's individual take your personal feelings shine through and i often wonder if the current state of criticism impacts the way the average person interacts with each new game with the way just because it affects the way that you do it doesn't mean it affects everybody well even if it did so what if the general discussion breaking things down changes how people consume media that just seems like a natural thing that's gonna happen there's no way to stop something yeah it's that it's that worse and also and when i listen to a reviewer i want them to talk about what's in the game because then i could listen to those things and say oh i like that or that sounds neat to me not him to say if he liked it or not this isn't a review for the reviewer on what we're getting i hear is like oh no what if people start not going to the game for the experience instead just searching for things that are good about its design or some there's some weird thing like that instead of just take it you know that sonic example instead of just taking it for what it is and enjoying it instead some people will now be encouraged thanks to all these reviews to treat a game as though it's very mechanical very down to it and so you don't get those experiences like that's not happening and you know it yeah you're not gonna give me a really crap game and just like convince me emotionally that i need to appreciate the blah blah strip flowery bullshit no i would go as far as saying we're pretty hyper analytical someone might have thought that from the last 200 episodes of the show that we've had but no um that doesn't change the fact that if i'm watching some shitty movie even but it's like funny or just stupid can't be fun like whatever i could just enjoy i don't care like that's totally fine and if someone went wow have you ruined yourself by now by breaking movies down for how they don't and do make sense like no i'm human i'm fine i'll survive yeah yeah i pity you if it does exactly i'm sorry if it does i don't know how that happened i wish you better maybe you should yeah that's a moment where you go how how come this ruined me and is it really me being ruined that's another thing if you start consuming media differently you are out here saying that's worse it's like you sure if they start like treating everything as though it's uh to be broken down mechanically for design to appreciate and criticize where necessary as opposed to simply taking it for what it is you're gonna really walk up to that person say you're consuming media incorrectly um especially when they'll probably have a lot more to say about that media than you will if you're gonna go like i really enjoyed it because it felt like a summer's breeze versus them being like that's the personal way that they want to express their feelings about that you know that's meaningful to them guys you're just watching movies wrong this is what i'm confused about it's like these are just two modes talking about how it made you feel versus what you saw and understood to be there and whether or not you think that's well executed like these are just two things people do let's see why we're chastising one of them reviews are structured it feels like people are searching for talking points to critique that's you you admit to that yeah that's not everybody i maybe level that you know the typical video essays to just you know they just kick out a video every very regular interval and it's it's you know like 10 minutes at surface level but actually honestly i don't really care about those people so i watched she-hulk and i was like why the hell was this so fucking awful i have lots to fucking say and i was just like yep we're talking about this and even meanwhile i watched house the dragon i was like well that was like double the length of she-hulk and i don't have a lot to say about this and that's fine both results are fine back of the box creation controversial takes on character writing or incessant comparisons to other well-known titles there's something to be said for establishing your own format as a reviewer but i just don't think the traditional story graphics gameplay difficulty 8.127 out of 10 is an engaging format to describe the complex multimedia experiences we call video games yeah that's not what it does no no part in those reviews does it say like this defines how you will feel when playing it i mean technically it does in the terms of sensory thing but what i'm saying is that you will not they can't tell you what your experience will be emotionally but they never pretend to do you think the people making those just sit there for hours carefully cultivating the perfect checklist review as if it's something incredibly meaningful i mean have you guys ever watched a video that said like here are the graphics the this good they comparable to this thing and then you're like tell me how they made you feel this is hello grito i just realized no how did it make you feel though those graphics you know what's great about this too is i was going to say a cg is a lot of reviews are really good at breaking things into categories they make reviews for themselves not for other people there's that i was also going to go as far as saying some of them don't know how to express themselves that way some of them would be like i don't know i felt good and it's like tell me more it i don't i felt very good sometimes yeah it's like tell me more explain to me what it felt like can you describe it like and you're just like fuck you i don't care about to tell you how it made me feel leave me alone give me info so i could see if maybe it will make me feel a certain way tell me if it felt like a summer's breeze i have to know make me have fun i think he just said uh like incessant comparison to other titles and it's like yeah what the fuck is wrong with that compare games to other games like he's saying it as if like when will it end oh the big humanity when when will we stop judging things based on everything else we've experienced why would you judge the last of us two against the last of us one you goblin why would you do that why would you talk about the shooting mechanics in other third-person shooters that feel better or stealth mechanics and games that are designed better than last of us two yeah like comparisons are demonstrative and are an important part of analysis in that they're relatable and they like if you tell me the movement you know how i know the anchor points to better ones here yeah do you like the movement and titanfall too then you're like da da da da da do you like shooting in battlefield then you'll like the shooting in da da da when someone says like the inventory system in the new resneval game which other resneval game is it like it's like oh it's like this one you go okay instead of that he's like wow how incessant of you it's almost like this guy just doesn't like shorthand like i i don't know who created this form but how many times in on steam did you play a game you're like just you just finish a game it's like hey would you want to do you want to recommend this game it's like yeah this game's good click click the thumbs up button it's like okay write a review i'm like i don't really want to right now i'll do it later and you close out of the window it's almost like that form which i don't think is very widely used at all i don't see very many of those posts anymore but that form is basically just okay shorthand graphics good gameplay good good got it copy and paste you're done you don't have to write a whole thesis on it and submit it to your professor even his example of what a better review would be was also incredibly shorthand and not very descriptive or useful didn't contain a lot of information it was just a bit more writerly get to explain your format and also this stuff which again doesn't really matter all that much unless somebody has a long track record it's like okay i liked sonic you know sonic one and two for the genesis didn't really care for you know the dreamcast sonic debut but i liked sonic adventure so and so or whatever and that would give you somewhat of a kind of interesting uh introspective into what they like like for example if you knew the resident evil games i played versus the resident evil games that rags played you'd probably know that i would have a different outlook on the games because i played some of the earlier ones before i played for and i didn't play some of the later ones or something like that so i may have a i may be more lenient toward the sort of uh can't see around the corner fixed camera resident evil games versus the you know four five six plus so that that's useful but again that shorthand like he's kind of arguing against shorthand and just explaining why a game has value or comparisons of the game more likely to stay around a corner with a fixed camera than over the shoulder i mean it depends on the on the camera angle sometimes they're really really tight sometimes they're really not helpful yeah someone asked if i use that format to recommend somers like i wouldn't use that format just i wouldn't use that format yeah i would have to be pretty apathetic on a game to use that format to the point where i wouldn't put in the effort of finding the format like copying it and put it into review and then picking checking the boxes similarly though i wouldn't do a five minute or ten minute review on soma probably i would be like the second i start talking about that game i'm going to want to make it a very long video it's not going to be short but however if you want to be like well if you just recommend it i just like oh i just say i recommend it go play it right now did you did you do a video on that or no i did a video comparing it to amnesia the doctor sent in which i basically just praise the fuck out of soma and amnesia the doctor sent i love them both they're working on an amnesia rebirth praise now paired to relaying one's own experience to the viewer in a unique and interesting way but don't even get me started on trying to actually share those not quality online i can just people totally fine with you sharing your experiences like that if that's your oh boy if you made a video this might be shit at it no they're not didn't you see the gun pointed to his head didn't you see the gun look okay so if if you made a video and your editors also i like that we've got this image because i i now i know exactly what's fucking telling oh and that's why everyone who hates the last of us part two is just a bigot if you spend your whole video on the last of us two talking about how much it meant to you because you've gone through something similar something like that and then all the comments are like yeah but was it any good well the gameplay of the graph is with the where's the review if you were like well fuck all of you guys i was just trying to review it my own way it's like they probably i mean at this point yeah like you if you always done it this way or if you not because it's kind of weird if all your comment section was like fuck your personal stories like no usually people are just like whatever you expect to have on that channel i'm assuming maybe maybe they switched it up randomly and their people like what the fuck i think that if we have nefab episode with me rags and free we're only reviewing things in the form of relating it to personal experience and how i made us feel everyone in chat would be like um okay but like was it any good yeah i was like but how does this help me as the person that this review is being read by exactly that's this but you know maybe i'm jumping the gun on that let's see let's see what happens next just say the last of us two and if you're vaguely tapped into gaming culture you probably know what i'm talking about but if you don't uh don't look it up or anything oh well then that's not fucking helpful like to be happy your your example your your example that you're using is literally by your words only going to be understood by the people who already know so the people who don't know who you should be communicating to the most fuck them don't even look it up i'm a little bit confused i thought the and it was gonna be suggesting that i would in like a 16 minute video he'd actually say something but i'm sure we're getting mistaken well we wasted a lot of time because he he went on this whole tangent about how he hates that specific yeah format but but his real point the real curse of video game criticism is critic brain and so the format isn't really relevant it's like the part that he doesn't like is when you analyze things based on you know gameplay and mechanics and things like that he wants you to just write say how you feel if i said really matter the format if i said the thing meant a lot to me and then i get people saying like give us actual information idiot he's like wow that's so unfortunate that's the reality we're in now that's the that's the industry that's the culture and that's the point this video wants to make i think i just gonna it's because random people on the internet probably just don't give a fuck about your personal experience they came here for information you are correct this is the obvious fucking thing when you want to get do you want to know whether or not you should buy this game or whether or not it's any good just from a point of view of knowing more about this thing that people are talking about you'll like when you ramble on about your childhood it's like that's great man i'm not here for that i'm sorry yeah well the other thing is i'm sure a lot of people reviewed The Last of Us 2 in a way where they mostly talked about how they made how it made them feel like in that it made them angry and frustrated and all that sort of stuff like not every person who is critical of The Last of Us 2 was very like autistic and robotic about their criticisms you know what i mean it's just he doesn't seem to like that anyone was negative about the game at all yeah well i was expecting one of those generic sort of lines like if anyone says anything positive about The Last of Two they get shat on like all right fine whatever up or anything completely unrelated what's it like to be happy internet discourse has become so volatile over the years that to like a game well if you play The Last of Us 2 you won't have any fucking clue so i don't even know oh what it's like to be happy i don't even actually yeah i don't know what that's actually i really like this game and a bunch of people tell me that it's not a very good game and that doesn't make me feel very good i said well i think even people who like that game would agree it's pretty fucking miserable yeah that shit's like it's like a miserable miserable game i want to feel miserable for the reason the game wants me to feel miserable not because a bunch of people are telling me that i don't have good taste aren't you happy that you're miserable game exactly why you like it and explain it in a way that sounds like you're a lifeless wikipedia article no you know what it's actually people way prefer wikipedia but yeah you think massive doses of wikipedia article and people we fucking prefer if you can deliver like nuts and bolts information but in a way that's not monotonous they don't want monotonous like this the tip people people don't tune into that but you could get away with it if you have like a particular style and approach like would one call yms monotonous uh sometimes but i don't what i'm trying to say is only when he doesn't care about the thing he's reviewing but no i don't even mean it is necessarily like a criticism i'm talking about like a style of speaking tone and voice yeah i would say he's been on this as in terms of like style yeah because um what i'm trying to say is there's a difference between like i thought this was okay because i went versus like the way that yms what i'm quote performed slash voice acts he's like got a very i find him engaging i like listening to him talk i'm yeah yeah he's got tons of highs and lows yeah he's definitely not monotonous presentation he does have a little bit of an interesting i mean i have a two or i don't always go up and down with my voice but yeah presentation has lots of like you know anger and then upset and then a little bit more subtle and then you know disappointment and anger and like expression hi i'm lana wasowski the content matters a lot too like his lying king video is great oh yeah like yeah yeah point is like saying people like people just want you to read out a fucking wikipedia page of all the the things about like how the game works or just like come on man that's what people say your reviews are they do yeah i guess there you go it's true then i guess people are apparently watching the doctor strange video i don't know what's wrong with them they must not have touched cross breaks what's funny though it's like you could you could totally watch a yms breakdown of a of a movie a mall or breakdown of a movie a er breakdown of a movie and i don't he doesn't really do movies but like a uh internet historian breakdown and they all have very very different styles with all sorts of weird expressions and cutaways and and gimmicks but but in the end like none of them would sound like a wikipedia article they couldn't they all have their own you know takeaways and yeah just like uh i don't i don't remember who said that but it's a whole uh wisowski thing it's like we're we're a white yeah i am your baby we are all baby i would love to go to wikipedia one day and just have an er script up there where i just i wasn't expecting to see one i just searched mad max fury road and that's the other thing as if anybody does that you know as if there's any fucking reviewer who does that the whole point is to format bullet points into a script sound like a human being like nobody fucking does it like a robot come on course has become so volatile over the years that to like a game you have to know exactly why you like it and we prefer you'd be good at your job yes i i would like if you're a game reviewer yes yeah if you're a game reviewer it would be nice if you know why you like something in fact i would almost say that that's like mandatory to be a reviewer if you want to ramble on why are you doing this if you want to ramble on about how you feel about a thing please title accordingly like i ramble about a sonic adventure two for the you know what fucking told bisky was a legend for that i talk about this thing for this long oh yeah all incredible one take yeah he was incredible he i mean what this guy is telling us is that basically you just tell people that you like it you don't even have to know why just tell him you fucking like it that's enough i assume he's saying right he wants to explain why he likes it to the point of saying it was fun i liked it it enjoyed it it was really great i just really had fun it was so awesome i had fun you don't want any scrutiny like you want to just be able to put it out yeah that too well he doesn't want the scrutiny of i want to know why you liked it that relates to something verifiable in the game why are you making a video and putting on the internet yeah i would just like responding to challenges with just well fuck you i liked it that's why i mean i would go so far as i say the difference between a critic and a consumer not not the consumer but just a consumer of content would be anybody can tell you whether they liked something or not but only a well spoken well reasoned with arguments and knowledge and and specific critiques could you actually say why you liked it or how why what made it a good piece of content or what made it and explained it in a way that makes sense to someone who doesn't know anything about the content yeah you know anybody can watch star wars and say i just don't like on solo speaking of er i've never played a life is strange game but i i absolutely love his life is strange video i feel like i have a great sense with that the first episode or whatever season of that game is and i think it's hilarious and don't need to know anymore it's pretty much explained it in a way that sounds like you're a lifeless wikipedia article lest you be told that your opinion is indeed subjective this landscape of constant all they mean by that there's only one way to talk when when seeing the blades of grass rolled through the hills that reminded me of my childhood it's just like that doesn't work for me because i fucking grew up in a cave so literally what i grew up in play those cave all right i don't see what's so vicious about this because what about the shadows of the grass that is a dissatisfied okay and then the conversation and that's all that is you're right yeah when someone says however there are shit tons of bugs don't buy this piece of shit they don't go well i grew up in a cave so i don't know what bugs are like i can't help me i grew up in a cave the bugs that i had were horrific monstrosities from another world arguing leads people to become very defensive of their favorite titles because there will always be others that get a kick out of acting high and mighty for not liking sake i mean what is that the only reason they're saying that they don't like that game why are you so fucking insecure i was about to say they are the ones that are defensive huh it's video reeks of insecurity i want to say what is the point of this video fundamentally what is the core point that you're trying to hit at let me jump in between i'm struggling following along my impression is let me vomit out my feelings and call it a review yeah because we run through the list the list was um man it's pretty like lame doing those like objective reviews here's a checklist that doesn't tell me anything man video games are like really personal to me and i should be able to express how i feel about that without you criticizing me we're jumping all over the place yeah i think what is the core point you're trying to make because in the beginning it was like oh this is the whole critic brain thing so you watch something and then it's like oh i see all these inconsistencies and that's really annoying yeah okay maybe this is the thing but then yeah checklist yeah i just i'm i don't know but if it is your job which pays your bills to be perceptive of those type of things and then make videos about it that's just what you do man exactly what do you offer from this if if not a more refined more precise more well researched perspective what is the difference between what you're doing and hell what anybody on steam reviews like on this right thing is doing a template what's the difference between you and him yeah really what is the difference and every single time with these kind of people if you're able to actually talk to them you could find something that they don't like and they'd have some very strong opinions about that and why it's not good for society like you ask this person about hatred or manhunt or something like that i'm sure you can get some strong some strong opinions on some game that they don't approve of and they don't think is is good for the industry or good for people to play but how is that any different from us saying hey i didn't like the sequel to last of us and i think everything was pretty terrible and it's no good bad for the industry the same idea regular game goes that missed the english lesson about not writing i think at the beginning of every sentence and i mean of course i'm guilty well so that's that's interesting that you would think that the only way is an opinion writer as i think i think indicates that you're giving a subjective thought well i what i'm getting at is like you think the only way that you can convey that something is an opinion is i think i hate this shit like that there's no other way to signpost that this is an opinion that feel what i realized by four years of effort has been wasted nope and as if putting that that changes whether or not what you're saying bears on the game or on your personal like inclinations just to some degree i've become incapable of not taking a jab at and also just to be clear he it would be more i would i feel like i'd be more likely to find i think i think i think i think in front of his review than someone who's saying the grass has shadows and these are the mechanics and this is what happens and it takes about this long to beat and and it's full of objective statements but impact in almost every video i've made this year however i do think there's a difference between analytical criticism and emotionally charged statements made to piss off fans of any given series okay you know what i guess i technically i'm sorry what i'm saying are you about to say this is okay though let me i want to know i'm tired of opinions being presented as objective even when they so is that the point of this video is that i'm tired of people pretending like their own personal subjective human in a universe point of view is somehow reflective of an absolute truth like okay fine just say that no is he saying that he often takes cracks at people who play genshin impact in his videos or that he doesn't appreciate when other people take i don't know he does in his videos is what he's saying oh he's saying that's okay because he's not saying it's objective or official you also hit throw in that thing earlier about the elitism sort of and trying to make your opinion better than someone else they always do this they are always like whenever someone says they're trying to be objective they're just trying to make themselves feel better than other people that's their only god so i'm pretty sure that's the angle one in reality yeah the the whole thing you're trying to do hopefully if you're being good faith when you're trying to be objective is that you're not allowing your personal biases to fuck up the analysis you're saying this is what is here this is bad according to this standard i don't know i never understood this fucking vile response to like yeah get out of here with you trying to be objective you fuck you thinking you can accurately convey details about reality be gone we don't want any of if um if if to just bridge the gap i suppose if if you're watching a review and somebody lays out the framework that they're going to be following and they basically say this is the framework i'm going to be judging the game by and then they proceed to judge it by that framework if you're not interested in that you can leave not watch the video you don't have to and it's fine but if you engage with it and you know that that's the framework then hell like if you hear something you disagree with you can try and figure out how that fits into your framework like it's fine it's totally fine like it's not it's not a big deal like if you know the different metrics to review games to you how is there's any more or less legitimate than yours or if you notice dissonance in their template and how it's applied to that game point point that out make that your criticism of the video be okay you're trying to apply this template to this aspect of this game and i don't think that works that's a valid thought too mm-hmm i i don't like the idea like you know positive objectivity is fine but if you're being negatively objective it's like toxic although they do that if you say something positive about a game that's if you say something positive about any sort of piece of media that's great if you say something negative wow opinionated asshole piece of shit yeah why are you trying to ruin what about the feelings of the developers and the hours that they put into it so i'm not really talking about that really hard on it yeah no doubt opinions a real objective review would be incredibly boring and not at all and would probably do this water in the game i am so if he said it would be awful come sorry yep everyone this would be a game you will have incredibly boring and not at all helpful and not at all wow that sounds pretty uh i'm gonna be honest with you when i say like ooh thul next thul movie who's in it and then fringy says uh well chris hamsworth um it's only enough chris pratt isn't it and it's like oh so blah blah blah is gonna be in it and then someone goes ringy that was an objective statement about the information of the thing that is not useful there's a city like what what no that is what are you fuck that's like some of the most useful information is when it's stuff that's absolutely verifiable which i assume is what we're kind of talking about here because if you're gonna go into the meme of being like lol the link is in the game i guess that's objective this game is an rpg i guess that's object it's like how is this not useful information yeah yeah and would probably go something like this okay sonic adventure 2 is a platforming game already useful already that is already useful it's a platforming i know what kind of game it is like don't like more useful than saying it feels like exactly everyone makes this mistake when they're being critical of this they just like i'll see you're showing footage that makes it look like a snowboarding game jesus christ yeah it's true but i already know if i don't like platformers fucking i'm about exactly the sega dreamcast where you play as sonic and friends it has 3d multiple characters plays cuts in between levels yeah and even has a story going in you kind of like 2d sonic game this would be useful information you can't even parody it well because you know when you were writing this oh god there's so much more i could say while being quote-unquote objective yeah that would make it sound like i have to i have to go for all the least possible useful bits of information i can imagine and he's still having trouble because define in the gameplay is useful it's pretty funny because he says you play as sonic and friends oh so they're a multiple playable character exactly he said they're a cut scene it's like oh okay all right that was a story there's some narrative i guess to hone in on the playable so sonic hat you could describe without stating anything about how you feel about it sonic has x attributes knuckles has you know y attributes taos has z attributes and somebody can look at that and go huh i don't think i'm very interested in playing a game where the character has x attributes just doesn't appeal to me personally and so already you've provided them with something useful i think and remember you have to start with this like this is a platforming game that was released on the dreamcast where you play a sonic what do you think about that build on top of that sure like you can go back and forth on that but you still need to be referring to what is in the game yeah this is your base upon which everything gets built what is it it's also a sequel and you can you can find out a lot about how what which things were carried over from the original based on some basic details about it like for example if they said there is not multiple playable characters in this game you only play as sonic that would actually be really appealing to a lot of people that's really like the other characters you play it as in sonic adventure but imagine what they released in a garden as a galaxy game and it's like you can only play a star lord it's like fuck that's and he's like that's not useful it's like of course it's fucking useful yeah very useful and that every time you have to do this parody you've got to do it in the most you could just be like sonic adventure two is like released for the dreamcast on 2001 you play a sonic you know you can yeah yeah i mean there are reviews that would do this and it'd be fine you can still put it more personality you know and like i think it actually sounds like the intro to real reviews they heard on like IGN and game trailers and stuff like yeah honestly like it's good information to do like so one is a single player game has approximately 12 hours of gameplay etc a pretty sure Matthew McCartney is every single review with that like this was a game that was released for this platform in this year and it is yes pretty sure it does that every time so wait a summer it's useful what has just happened in the video imo is that he had a he had a big well he went over it he went over to it with like a little bottle of poison he unscrewed the lid he was about to pour it in he just fucking drank the poison what are you doing but okay he's like accidentally steelmaning his position saying things is it fun he asks like what that's the that isn't the whole idea that how fun it is is going to be different for everyone exactly like how useful is that me how useful is it tell me i'm not a critic without telling me i'm not a critic it's fucking amazing because if if the reviews said that this is all it said the game is fun you pick up and play and it's not fun you're like oh shit so you like you you like okay never trust you again thank you it's like the movement feels good or the game is challenging the movement feels good great so fucking useful or the game is challenging to whom we need it in reference to something else the second you go oh well it's no more difficult than this other game it's like wow comparing it to another game didn't he like tear apart that whole dark souls easy medium dark souls whatever like that's basically the same idea so it's actually kind of less valuable than that it's challenging we've learned less than what he said in the fucking parody review what is this jing or the music is awesome the music is awesome if you were objective man you might describe what style of music it is and then someone could go oh i'm likely to think that you could describe how often it plays how long the songs are what genre of music they are how well composed they what were they composed with instrument like what the fuck instead you say it's awesome oh yeah this is terrible because he actually says this almost this exact line in his fake script earlier in the video he's saying the music is amazing it's the best soundtrack of all time or whatever so he's mocking the thing that he the straw man script yeah yeah he did he said that exact thing basically jeez opinion game review you've ever read or watched has included someone's opinion no matter how said opinion was presented when it comes to discussing games in any meaning of course whatever just let him have it yeah yeah most likely just let him have it we'll move on capacity very few people are interested in actual objectivity for many games things that are considered to be fact are often just the loudest opinions that have solid oh god so this is this is the signer right so it's an opg i say this is an opg like turn-based japanese that's just the loudest opinion bringing that's just your opinion there's a quieter opinion saying it's a first person shooter they're they're fucking wrong they're entire website websites based around subjective facts around video games one of the most useful websites i ever go to is co-optimus their entire purpose is to say hey is this game actually co-op and is the co-op online how many players is it offline do you need separate controllers do you need special peripherals is it is it full co-op or is it a special mode whereas you only a select experience for co-op and the rest is a single player only it's all just like fact-based but it's so if you're looking for a co-op game that can be a handy resource yeah it's super useful because you otherwise you have to peer through like tons and tons of marketing crap which doesn't always tell you that oh it's actually online co-op and it's only non-story mode with five levels and you wouldn't know that unless you had a resource like co-optimus so like there's some there's tons of useful objective facts around games that people actually hunt for silly i've never heard of that website that sounds so useful though because i just look for that exact type of information then it's foggy most of the time you know yeah super foggy yeah as in quarter black air we're very upset with the way monster hunter world handles co-op yeah oh god that's so hard to actually play with anybody yeah yeah one of the judges wrote two plus two equals four is the loudest opinion true right over time bias and subjectivity are integral in recommending a video game or dissuading others from playing it but in the same vein opinion pieces generally don't exist for the purpose of tearing down any opposing views out of the fact that i'm not sure about what this is so boring would be very valuable to compare a shimigami tense a game to a persona game for a lot of people what is the point that somebody is going for and espousing a certain perspective if they don't want to convince more people to hold that perspective contrary to other perspectives that exist in the world or even just to make sure they're informed like you could because they show two games that shimigami tense five and persona five that are both technically in the same series but smt is a lot a lot more serious a lot kind of more heavy-handed not not as much fun not as not as much like crazy music and like funny characters so telling people yeah or comparing the two games are like hey this takes place in the same universe but it might not really be your thing if the things you go to persona for the wacky teenager high school stories you know so like i don't know like even him saying that comparing two games is unhelpful like he's kind of contradicting that by the games he's choosing to show i thought smt was persona and it was like a japanese persona was a spin-off of smt oh okay got you it would be like final fantasy tactics or something like right thousands and thousands of comments i've received there's one that's planted itself in the back of my mind like a little parasite since i read it three years ago it was on a video i made about why mario odyssey is one of my favorite games and it said may i interrupt you real quick and tell you you're wrong the game looked beautiful and charm i don't know how you survive someone telling you you're wrong i think you had a great soundtrack but it was a youtube comment section my dude like come on he's never let it go in the three years since we short had a horrible skill curve super generic level design a lot of boring boss fights and it pretty much only existed out of filler content watch the review from joseph anderson and tell me you oh my god i hope you survived i don't know what else to say to this loves a video game and go yeah this person is clearly in the dark playing the video game is nothing compared to someone can change your mind with a review that is possible and it's not evil all right calm down it's fine yeah watching a video about it oh my god what a weird thing to do right because everyone talks about this like why would i watch a six hour review of a film when i can watch the film three times and come up with my own opinion it's like what the fuck does that because your opinion might be shit it's this why do you share your perspective on the internet like why do you do it what is the goal is it just to be listened to or do you want people to adopt like what is your goal with this particular video if not to convince people to think like you yeah sorry isn't this a fucking mario game where he's fighting a fucking dragon mario game fine fucking dragon he's actually just fighting bowser but with a lot of lsd whoa bowser really is that's like the moon dragon guy right and odyssey i i'm thinking like if this guy isn't trying to change your mind then i can only assume that means his perspective isn't that valuable in which case i'm not interested anyway don't you think they should be a zoom out and be like wait i'm trying to change people's minds with this very video oh i'm such a fucking moron but i i don't know that most people who express their opinions in this way aren't trying to persuade people that's like the number one goal of i'd say so yeah yeah yeah why are you sharing it if you don't care what other people think you just write it down and pin it on your wall or something or burn it like right i don't do this like well come out of my head dude several people uh with multiple some matters i saw us in the discord there was some people were saying and in the comments when it was getting ready to premiere they were like i actually really like this film but i'm curious what more are like found it's just like yeah you can have that because that could be the reason you want to check it out you just want to see what things do and did not make sense so you kind of as we've learned with this video there is nothing to be gained from hearing what somebody else has to say because any insights that they could have you must have had because you also played the game and or watched the film and all my god yeah yeah so like there's nothing new to be learned from somebody else's perspective which by the way is amazing we've talked about it before but like i thought get out was awesome and then i watched the other video on it and i was like uh not awesome okay i just like if you do really like something and you find out someone hated it don't you kind of want to know why yeah yeah and sometimes you end up really disagreeing with their opinion and every so often it turns you around it's like oh yeah actually it's almost like that's the whole point of all of this you could actually have the effectives and trying to reach some understanding yeah you could even argue that any statement is persuasive with the intent is persuasion to to persuade somebody to your way of thinking like even just like a trivial thing like i watched one time i saw it on my feed i watched an entire video dedicated to the mandibles on predator's face between all the movies and how it's changed over the years yeah how they start out with like you know physical little props a little like robot mandibles and then it got weirder and weirder to the point where like it got big sort of like this sort of stretched out like leathery thing and and how it changed over over the over the years until eventually didn't even look at anything like the original predator mandibles i'm like oh i never really noticed that before but now that i noticed it it does look kind of bad in the later films weird and and it was just it was persuasive it had facts it had examples it had visuals i was like oh i didn't realize that before that's cool yeah and the funniest part joseph anderson has a fantastic video called subject no hey what a throwback that's like ifa 20 or something 16 yo i remember this one i wonder what a classic like when natric will williams recommended movie bob he's he's referencing this video in a positive way that right and i gather about your reaction this is a video that is like dumb there's various dude to give you an idea the reason joseph made that video was all the backlash he got from uh his retarded opinions and lots of different things he was like oh shit okay well you know what stop telling me that i'm sometimes subjective and sometimes objective all of it subjective that's pretty much how the video is i am only here because of how dumb that video is yeah i have never heard of him yeah other ronnie freddy who doesn't know we looked at the comment section we read one out and then we realized that the person who wrote it was theo and they were in our chat at the time i think oh oh shit yeah now he gets to tell us that dark souls isn't that hard 12 times a string it's not i'm telling you it's top eating a piece of media with someone might open your eyes to hidden meanings or flaws you didn't previously notice right finding a one million that's no such thing yeah no such thing as a flaw you're right yeah no such thing as a flaw it's all about how you feel remember when you're trying to use it as some sort of mind changing weapon isn't really a productive oh my god that's not what they were telling you to watch that they specifically meant they were going to change your mind by open your eyes up to flaws that's what they were talking about partaking yeah however with so many posts and think pieces and five hour video essays and steam reviews and comment threads it can be hard to die without a bunch of disjointed expectations the overwhelming unceasing barrage of content can drastically affect the pieces of media you i'm sorry you can't pause the different videos very well sorry why yes reviews affects people's opinion you actually don't need to watch any of these things it's all optional who choose to spend your valuable time on or cause you to stress and reconsider stress we're confident in enjoying and i can definitely say i suffer from this to a pretty extreme degree even if i'm a pre-existent fan of a franchise or just excited for a new game a single negative comment is enough to plant that seed of doubt oh no start hyperanalyzing as i play it's gotten so bad that i try to watch or read as little as possible about a game until i'm completely done with it that's fine you can do that i think that's what you should do yeah it's like you solved your own problem so why are you making this video i know that living in a bubble is this video is never for us no no no this was not meant for us for us to see but we apparently he thinks reviews are also not for the person reading the review it's just a need of vomit my personal feelings usually the best choice and there's a whole other discussion to be had about spoilers and secrets but for now avoiding most opinions until i've formed an opinion of my own goes a long way in helping me enjoy a game more naturally helping to enjoy it more naturally how do you pick which games you play that is one of the most loaded statements it's just like what way we'll hang on what do you mean so like i go ahead no i'm just going to say he's saying that he avoids any and all comments or opinions about games before he plays them so he's basically telling you be like me don't read watch reviews he's basically telling people not to watch his content right because he does reviews a lot of times i like to go into things completely cold in terms of i know nothing about it yeah but i want to know what like especially after i see it i want to know what people think i want to hear what people have to say i want to see a review on it i want to see if we align or we if we differ one element if it is no you're not insane when someone goes like i hate it juba jume jume and you're like yeah same same i can hate it into dick i think i feel like rather just rather than just ruling out all kind of review videos this comes down to like hurt feelings where the yes hugely you know full video very upset that someone said in a comment don't say anything if you don't have anything positive to say basically and if you have anything negative to say you're being really critical and you're not you know there's a video on the channel called open world games or a mess oh god that sounds like a very um definitive statement about current open world games i best not a lot of the criticism seems to be waypoints and stuff i best not watch that till i play all open world games wouldn't want to destroy my natural enjoyment well it's kind of the problem is that this perspective is something like the perspective espoused in this video is one that people really struggle to maintain consistently um it's kind of like when people say uh there's no such thing as like an objective review it's like that sounds pretty objective like how it's like you know how how do you how do you contradict yourself so like i don't i don't know what you have to appreciate i mean i guess it's um at the end of the day the reality is you put your opinions out there because you do want to persuade people that of course you do that's why you put it on the internet for people to watch um there are things that you consider to be good or bad by some sort of metric um and you're willing to share them with people uh and and you're totally fine with with doing it to games that you consider to be bad and then of course in the opposite direction for things you consider to be good that's totally fine let's chill it's okay it's not that scary chronic frontiers with a mindset of a lobotomized toddler so i can be excited for two seconds before the harsh reality helps me cry myself to sleep at night you have sonic people you like sonic too much you might just have issues you already said that you like sonic too much i just need to zoom zoom for the voice acting oh yeah same just play a game and have fun i already do play games and have fun just turn your brain off and then i talk about them and when the shit i tell you it's shit and it's still kind of fun it's shut up i don't i don't need this video to tell me like you need to stop being so critical just enjoy it it's like i do shut up i can do both at the same time just turn your brain off like i can do it when i play bloons tower defense sure okay we're a regular single play experience what the fucking what that's what you can't relax for a regular game a regular game as opposed to a like bloons tower defense oh my god i'm just grasping at straws here yes i don't even know how to end this video yet i'm just going to go wait are you just you don't even know how it ends yet i'm still in five minutes i didn't want to make this video guys wait what is happening he's playing metal right i mean yeah it's a good game war to fight i hope you guys like angry face like metal gear rising revenge it's probably the video game ever made i will never give it a score and i hesitate to even attempt to compare it to platinum's because you enjoyed it so much it has a lot of experience you never want to nail it down with any kind of definitive mechanical definition of anything that's going on in the game even though it be very interesting to compare metal gear rising to the other games that if a game is giving you such a crazy awesome unique experience you never want to touch it with a single critical eyes you wouldn't want to damage any of that that's one direction to go the direction i go is fuck i really want to apply a critical eye to this to figure out why it gave me that experience why what is the mechanical nature of this that causes that kind of experience doesn't give you like religious vibes like don't even question it do not apply any sort of criticism so what i find interesting is um that you espouse the perspective that there's no way that you can qualify like any perspective that you that you have in a way that is going to be like universally or broadly applicable yet you're kind of scared by the notion of somebody turning a critical eye to something that's like how how can you be scared it's all everything everything is everything that it can ever be all at once like it it can never be good or bad or flawed in any way or like it can't because everything is anything to anybody based on what they personally feel so what are you afraid of the reason why you're scared is because you know that there are things that somebody could say about even this game which i really like there's a great make not feel as good about it there's a great irony in the fact that he's like opposed to putting in any kind of a box being sealed and labeled with whatever it actually but he's put it in shroding his box we don't even know what it is other titles because who fucking cares we're most you're scared of what will happen to your perspective on that game so you tell us what i would say games operate at maybe 60 to 80 percent for a runtime of 10 to 30 hours metal gear rising functions similar to the former CEO fosco when they tried to change the price of a hot dog if you let up on the gas even once i will fucking kill you i might have finished the whole thing in six hours but i don't give a damn about the hour count oh i don't care that you don't care review because it's so fucking stupid and awesome i wasn't thinking about whether or not the block mechanic was too generous or if so why not metal gear rising has got problems identifying those problems would have made for a better game like the inventory the weapon select thing pretty bad yeah it's like a fourth menu to filter through it show you have fun like i can you can simultaneously say this game is awesome as fucking i really like it but also like the inventory system could be tweaked a bit maybe if there was a little bit more variation to the weapons that would have maybe is overpowered the power is overpowered exactly brain was being physically pummeled by the pure adrenaline running through my game with ridin every time he crashed so here's another one there's only two animations what i'm trying to get at here just like i did with sonic yeah but he was having fun for me so wait he's saying what he's actually trying to get at venture two is that metal gear rising was all about the experience a steam checklist about graphics or sound effects or every game is about the experience i thought i thought we were talking about everything the big dissertation about everything you consume for entertainment is about what are you suggesting that we never talk about anything mechanical ever again anymore because it's only about the experience what is wrong with you everything is about the experience the experience everything is an experience every game that you play is an experience what i mean about the whole like it's like a level one epiphany it's like where are you catch up with reality we all know this move on reach the second epiphany we realize it's important to have both i want to like challenge this guy to be like dude you and me we're each writing two thousand words on metal gear rising revengeance we're just gonna read him and see how it goes every second of action could never have explained the feeling of playing revenge except for the one that you absolutely can't do what he's doing right now for that one's pretty good maybe what i'm saying here is that there's a part of games that none of us can entirely analyze or review it's hot when we feel things individually you goddamn right because that's what we feel individually yeah why would you even bring it up how they make us feel oh god i along with my other video essay colleagues in crime do what we can to tell stories and share personal experiences about our favorite games but the idea that criticism reviews and internet discourse can scare people away from things they might have enjoyed no scare you away is kind of unfortunate microtransactions manipulation industry standards crunch culture and false promises are an entirely different can of worms but if people like something even though i agree that is an entirely different kind of word yeah i don't think they're wrong that's not how opinions work just because i have a couple hundred thousand subscribers and know how to apply transition presets to a sans serif font doesn't mean i have the slightest fucking clue what i'm talking about agreed ever i know i've been bouncing around a ton of abstract ideas here but i'll try to sum it up abstract ideas you're bouncing around abstract yeah you have no idea what you're talking about because you had the one level one epiphany you gotta wait a few decades and you'll get there don't worry my first week on youtube plus the way i can at the end of the day it's okay to like things that other people think are my god how old are you no one has ever disagreed with this video we've ever watched okay literally it's so long for what it's like i said it's like i said this video is literally just let people enjoy things that's it yeah and it comes to the fact that someone on a video is let me enjoy things all because of yourselves i did not know this all because you played mario odyssey enjoyed it that someone said no you're wrong that's that's what all of this came from it's been stewing on that for years keep on enjoying that game that your friends don't or that a big youtuber said is the worst thing ever because i'm not for a great title they just don't know how to have fun after spending two full months logging a hundred hours sorry your audio game big despite is to make a point about manipulative game design or something stupid like that anyway i hope you enjoyed this video no it's a bit different style from what i've been making lately so let me know if you'd like to see more stuff like this no or if it even no this was shit if you'd like to see it didn't make any sense at all no this was awful it took you 13 minutes to not say what you said at the end i don't think you're awesome hey guess what people have different opinions and that's cool like yeah thanks very possible and if you want to be even more and then if you would like to give me money to keep doing this all right that's it we're done maybe that loss would have been worth the risk actually i don't know we did it we got it excellent in the bag gosh we're just so gosh darn good at this and what i don't even know what the curse of video game criticism is now that's the name i don't know what the curse is you can't enjoy things because you're being critical of it i guess oh that's what he was saying he was saying oh i can't enjoy games because my critic brain is always on so i'm always looking for for flaws and trying to evaluate things for us don't be critical of being the person video game criticism is critical criticism yes that's a fair game criticism is that this guy is standard fair got him it was difficult to watch very difficult to watch however it makes me so upset with bringing up that uh that that's we're gonna call it there uh for good ol episode one part one of this 24-hour nightmare uh i mean happy times but i'm sure it's worth mentioning that we're not gonna leave you like all on your own alone tid scarified tid and scarified yeah how about that mission posh scarify me captain that was such a mode of my brain was like is that the right one i was like no that's completely wrong just got a brute force but um yeah it's worth mentioning last time we did this anniversary stream you guys you know we go for a little half hour break so that we can gather boobs and drinks and do everything that we need to do maybe there's something available for you folks while you wait in about six minutes from now oh what could it be you guys said they'd never be more bat womans would they they're all gone they're all gone for no can it be yes it can be oh so i guess you know i'll give them a few minutes to you need to you need to go over there now guys see that one on moolah you gotta go jump in there quick while we recalibrate gosh there's so many more things we gotta do i don't know that was i was genuinely a dense eight and a half hours of e-fab like wow that was yeah we covered two videos exactly to be fair that was a grand total of i want to say like 45 minutes i think yeah that's fairly impressive that's some hardcore shit but um you know past us will take care of you while future us to do a different present us i should say funnily enough uh battle ranks ring when was this even recorded i don't know i did well still in the can i hadn't thought um but probably you're in a half ago what i do know is i'm pretty sure this is black mask's first episode it's season two oh that's when he pops up the origin yeah we are that far behind me go um yeah uh hey we've really appreciate your uh your interactions with us there chat obviously super chats have been coming in i think the plan as it stands may vary will be that we'll do uh she-hulk episode and then super chats for this episode for the next e-fab episode after the anniversary if that made any sense at all 201 and hurt and scarified and when we return for part two of this stream we will likely have a whole different set of people that's at least part of the goal um and yeah plenty more shit to do i'm wondering when we may or may not fit in garlic phone i don't even know you know because lots of things i'd like who knows but yeah who can really say uh still another four minutes oh one few do we have to make up four minutes of time i guess we do we have to talk yeah i could just stop who three minutes who we're going to be you could put on the you could put on the panty uh sniffing reviewer video and then cut it just before he sniffs them did voxels show you guys that video i do not know what's that video what is this it's a guy it's a guy who does like unboxing panty reviews in his bathroom while his wife's asleep in the other room he's been like removed from youtube it's one of the grossest fucking things i've ever seen you mean the greatest no he bought no he gets women to like wear panties and then he buys them off off them and then he's like yeah i'm going to take this and he does like the hey guys how you doing you know the soft asmr whisper voice oh my and he's filming himself in the mirror and he's like oh yeah it's nice nice moist juicy pussy oh my god genuinely it's one of the most disgusting things i've ever seen they're they're not used they're pre-owned i'm already subscribed that's this man have a patreon i just if you like what i'm doing you can support me on patreon what's the number that that patreon could get to that he could come clean to his wife yeah he's expected to be like horrified but she's like how much are you making it's like 20 000 dollars a month honey can i keep sniffing your panties or what and here's the great thing honey you have to do nothing yeah you just gotta pretend you don't know because that's part of my thing um oh just i mean it's relatively close enough right is it is it because i was going to wait until it does the annoying horrible loud music oh yeah chat will be fine for two minutes they'll be fine i don't i don't know if they will now what if they all fall over i mean james can help them up he's here modding right that's true and we'll aim to have the next one running around about the time this one is ending of course that makes the most sense because ultimately the more little gaps there are in between the less time me and rags and fring get to have before going no more time there is before we can sleep again as we go this is you know the first eight and this eight and a half hours actually this one is yeah i think it went by pretty good for me i'm i'm feeling pretty good i'm fine for now it's usually the second round that starts to be like hey you've been up for a while and you've got a brain so busy enough to do don't it's 60 seconds all right we can we can wait for that fine anyone want to talk about the weather or something it's been hot outside uh i don't think it's coming inside anytime soon uh well if your movie bob the weather comes inside blows over your hands i just got back from last Vegas it was pretty hot there that's such a great sort of you wanted to talk about a thing and you realized in the thing you revealed something stupid and embarrassing and you're like oh fuck you should notice that when you're typing out hundreds of hands well the problem is when the wind blows your hundreds exactly he thought it was a normal event yeah like this is just so that everyone goes you guys have like hundreds of cans by the window that you stack right yeah no he didn't even ask that he just assumed that was the lives of other people well where do you guys keep your soda cans well here's the thing would be bob we don't have a hundred fucking soda cans every week i like i changed the story to like oh it's actually not soda it's yeah yeah yeah yeah is the window always or yeah like it even fucking matters if you have a hundred cans on your fucking window you have an addiction genuine psa because the wind got in so i'm guessing the window was open at the time but if he has a hundred cans in front of it how do you open that window without knocking them over before the window out would open maybe it's outside to open it yes it slides up he only needs one little space for his hand to fit so i mean fuck he doesn't close that window genuine psa mute the thing when it comes on it's gonna hit you otherwise oh dude everybody okay it's up all right goodbye everybody