Q&A Session #1 -- ANSWERS January 2017

MisterCaption heavily recommended OneShot as well. I think it's a good candidate for a short video. It might already be on my list actually. He raved about it so I'm really curious if I'll like it. And yeah this was about 30k words, haha. It was kind of cathartic in a way. It's been a long time since I did some long retrospective-type writing. Glad you liked my answer your question! It was one of the tougher ones.

Wow, what a write up. I haven’t finished yet, but I’m getting through your answers slowly. Thanks for taking the time and putting forth this kind of effort. However, I’d like to see you make the Q&A questions 1 question each. You’ve already explained that these Q&A’s take time away from making videos, so there’s that. If you continue to be as thorough in answering questions, one answer would be satisfying for me. Plus, 3 questions each month, eventually the quality of the questions would decrease and duplicate questions will increase. Just 1 question would mitigate that. I also think this patron reward tier is only going to get bigger. You may find yourself having too many questions once you start putting up more videos and getting new patrons. In answer to your responses: I also agree that the jump from 2D to 3D is something not experienced by many other art forms. I think a lot of that comes from reliance on the player/audience. I started to read your The Last Guardian review, but when I realized you were going to break my heart I decided to wait until the video. Sad face. I never thought of video games as being stuck under a broad term. I always figured genres were the next subcategory, but video games just fell under all games. Card games, sports games, etc. I see all games as art, as they have rules and elicit human emotion/response like other arts. I can’t really support my argument though. Can’t wait for the short videos. You asked what would we want to see. If you get a lot of requests for a game, I think you should do it. For sure Firewatch, since I’d like to see what you have to say about the story. I’d like to see videos on games you have a lot to say about. I don’t know what a Joseph Anderson video on Enter The Gungeon would be. I mean, how much can you say about dodge rolling? I dunno. I’ve only played 18 hours though. I have yet to see you analyze an indie game. Another comment recommended OneShot. I also highly recommend that game. It isn’t very long either. Unique game. I’d like to see your take on Hitman (you could do the first episode, which is generally regarded as one of the best stages anyway). I realize this is a long shot, but I’d like to see you review Gravity Rush 2. So many people love that game, it was even getting 9’s when it released, but I just have such a hard time seeing that kind of praise. I know you have more AAA games reviews than you know what do with. I read your response to someone else about Bloodborne. I have to say I’m also surprised those videos didn’t get more views. Unfortunately I also think they were some of your weaker videos. Bloodborne is the game you’ve reviewed that I’ve put the most hours into (140). I’d need to watch it a couple more times, but what I remember is that you sounded pretty negative on the game. I also wanted you to go into more detail about each individual level, like you were with Yharnam and the DLC Staircase level. I wouldn’t mind a Bloodborne revisited video in the months leading to Bloodborne 2 (Can’t imagine there won’t be one). However I’m not really sure what you would add that wasn’t covered in the previous videos. Keep up the good work!

I read your reply.

Would you recommend the Wii U version? Or is the 3DS one that much better?

That's the second sort of message I've got saying that this week. It's really cool to hear that the videos can help with that sort of thing. And thanks for the congrats. Should be any day now.

I'm slow to respond to messages and email but I get to it eventually. I figured this should be way more in-depth to justify its place as a pledge reward and I wanted to see if people would like replies that are this long. So far so good I think. Gungeon is great but it's a Furi-style, mechanically heavy game. There's a decent chunk of randomness that may dictate how well you do at the beginning too--or how long it takes you to master some of the combat. The games gets easier the more you play in a number of ways. I'd definitely recommend watching some Let's Plays on Youtube before buying it. I know NorthernLion played it a bunch and that'll give you a good idea of whether it's for you. Watching him play Nuclear Throne actually convinced me *not* to get it, even though I love Gungeon so much.

Great! I think it turned out well too. There was a bit of trouble at first with the format but I pasted it on my wordpress blog first and then copied it here. Fixed it all. Someone on twitter suggested it and saved me. I'm really happy you liked the answers to your questions. They were a fantastic way to start it off--I think about books just as much as I think about games so it was fun to speak about them for a bit. Thank you for asking those questions.

Pretty good for an accident! I think something to do with my initials might be a good middle ground between symbol and something more specific to the channel. I see people refer to me as JA on reddit already too.

I read the whole thing

GiantPurplePen15

Holy moly was that a huge read! Goes to show that you do know your way with words. That was... 30k+ words? Dear gods, brings me right back to my Fallout: Equestria days. And of course, the way you answered my question was just perfect, A+ would throw money at again. Also, I'm gonna drop this here cause I feel like it: if you feel like experimenting around with small games and discovering something new in them, I can heartily reccommend OneShot. I understand you don't want a game spoiled/explained to you, so I'll just leave the explanation why here below without any pretense of it being read, written in increasing order of spoiler-ish-ing-ity. It's one of those pure adventure games, like a point-n-click but keyboard only; it's short-ish and it's not a masterpiece by any means (its main selling point is a devilishly adorable protagonist, and what the game does to make it so) but it goes meta in fairly interesting ways, and the real cincher is the basic premise of it (anticipated in the title, even), which left me more deeply touched come the end of the game than how many, more profound games before attempted to. I believe integrating the concept of saving and actually being able to play as parts of the gameplay was popularized by Undertale for the most part, and OneShot contains but one natural evolution of the idea. Still, it's fairly striking how such a small change, when played around, can bear powerful results. But again, if you're to choose between this and Undertale, then by all means educate yourself properly and go play Undertale.

Riccardo Broccoletti

Thank you for the extensive answering. I'm not a patron (yet, cause I'm unemployed as of now and by no mean able to get myself a credit card), but your answer expressed interest on playing Monster Hunter, but stopped short because it haven't clicked on you, yet. I would like to confirm that this is always the case with Monster Hunter. It's perhaps the most gameplay-oriented game in the past decade where the developers emphasized on its mechanics. There's barely any indepth video on the evolution of its mechanic, let alone the evolution of the series throughout the year (I'm thinking of starting one, though since my voice suck ass I'll probably just write it). Anyway, thanks for all the video so far.

Joe, thank you so much for doing this. Your work is fantastic, and I can say that I would not have gotten through many a day without your videos on in the background this past year (longggg recovery time after a workplace injury). I can't wait to see whatever you produce next! Congratulations on the new baby!

Stephen De Witte

Holy shit this is the most extensive A in a Q&A I've ever seen. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all our questions and mine specifically. I think I will definitely give Enter the Gungeon a try. I had only glanced at it on the steam store once and wrote it off because the aesthetic seemed off, but if you're recommendation holds water I'm sure I'd love it. If youtube comments are to be believed it's best I go into it without watching your video anyway since you're sure to get everything wrong about it /s. Thanks again, I'm definitely looking forward to the next Q&A. I hope you're looking forward to answering a bunch of the same questions again after people forget what they asked you in this one.

Stephen Slas

Joseph, thank you so much for doing this. I'm still working through this, but I enjoyed reading your responses to every question. Of course I thought your responses to my questions were the best, but that's just me. It's clear that you put a lot of hard work and you care about your channel and I hope to see your channel grow more and more each day. P.S. From my end, everything seemed perfect the way you formatted it and went about answering questions.

For what it's worth, my 'symbol' was a complete accident. I was making a diagram for the Jak 2 video, and figured it'd be kind of funny and easily visually understood if I put big ears on an oval to represent Jak. Once I put the circle around it, it just seemed as good as anything else for a logo, since it was a vaguely human silhouette shape (points for originality there >_>). My advice - don't overthink it.