![[WRITE-IN] Firelink Episode #73](https://img5.xaiju.com/storage/12/om/ic/d38796-019e8dff-8361-754a-a3cb-fe4be669b0cd.jpg)
[WRITE-IN] Firelink Episode #73
Added 2025-06-26 18:04:06 +0000 UTCHey all! Today's podcast is going to be all about the deluge of good new games that've hit over the past few days -- Death Stranding 2, Rematch, Persona 5: The Phantom X, and Ruffy and the Riverside.
Send in your thoughts/questions on those games, or whatever the hell else you might want us to chat about, and we'll pull some of them to read on the show.
Submissions close at 5pm CT on Thursday, June 26th.
Comments
I don't have a ton of thoughts about competitive multiplayer stuff (I prefer co-op if I'm playing with other people), but I do appreciate that more single player games are adding accessibility options that let players experience the story with much less friction. Another Crab's Treasure is one of my favorite examples, giving you a gun that can one-shot any enemy in the game, including bosses. I do like the feeling of gaining mastery in a challenging game, but that experience isn't for everyone. I'm an advocate of "find your own fun" in games -- there's very little to be gained trying to enjoy the experience based on how other people tell you you're supposed to be playing. As far as other art forms with sliding scales of experiences, I think live theater can often have pretty big differences depending on casting, direction, stage design, etc. You could have a show where the cast is having an off night and it doesn't hit as well, and another when their family is in the audience and they're working extra hard to put on a good performance. There's something special and ephemeral about seeing live theater, knowing that even if you saw the same show again, it wouldn't be exactly the same experience. I think some games are like that too, where your first experience with it can't be perfectly replicated.
TooManySpreadsheets
2025-06-27 16:43:07 +0000 UTCCan I play DS2 without playing DS1? I can’t imagine it would be less confusing…
Noah
2025-06-26 22:05:16 +0000 UTC(tl;dr below) Lately I've been thinking about how weird it is that much of gaming is a competitive art form - a type of art where one competes against either other people or oneself. PVP or self-improvement. Do you have any thoughts on the subject, topical or not? This comes from a personal discovery made last week when I finally accepted that I don’t actually suck at games. I’ve been calling myself shit for over a decade, mostly because I’m terrible at online shooters and mobas. This epiphany happened when I accepted that I just don't care about competing against other players. Sure I might momentarily be sucked into a gnarly game of say Marvel Rivals, but really, honestly, I don't give a flipping de_dust2 about the metas, three-click-combos, or what settings I should be playing on to increase my chances of winning. I have been playing video games for over 25 years. Even when I play competitive online games, I just vibe. Some of them just happen to have good characters, lore, mechanics or loops. Some of them are surprisingly immersive and deep on a personal level. I would much rather, if only for a moment, do something kinda cool as Loki in Rivals and feel like Loki the character, than know what type of crosshair works best *with* him. And I kinda think that's okay… Even though my current teammates and the people discussed in the Folding Ideas video "Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft" might disagree with me. And in no way am I saying my way is better. Really, each to their own. I even recognize it might be a chicken-or-egg situation where maybe I don’t like competing BECAUSE I’m not very good at PvP. Maybe it's my cope? So-o-o, I was just wondering if you have any thoughts on the subject and if you can come up with any other forms of art where there's such a fundamental difference in how it is enjoyed, experienced, shared or practiced. Is gaming the biggest entertainment industry in the world because it's actually a thousand different forms of art and sports and general entertainment lumped together? What word is used to describe something bigger than a medium? tl;dr - Isn’t it weird that gaming is essentially an art form in which people compete? Isn’t it weird that gaming is a hobby where the sliding scale of experience is: Completely immersed in my vampire dating sim <----------------> Making excel sheets about crosshairs to improve my kdr. And whatever people in EVE are doing right now.
Tom Saxman
2025-06-26 21:34:21 +0000 UTC
