Whether we want to admit it or not - sometimes, we lose at videogames, it's an inevitable part of doing something challenging and naturally, gamers everywhere want to avoid this happening as much as possible. Why? Because failure and defeat aren't much fun... or are they?
Contrary to popular belief, The Architect is genuinely awful at videogames and has seen their fair share of ruined colonies, terrifying monsters and doomed dungeon runs, but despite it all, some great games manage to make this experience entertaining and enriching without compromising their challenge - how can they pull this off? Well, it's all to do with rethinking the consequences of our failure and coming to terms with the fact that WE might be the reason why failure sometimes isn't fun.
Dungeons and Dragons has been around for years, and in its many years of influence, D&D has inspired a countless number of videogames. Experience points, a bunch of classic monsters, dungeons, and yes, even dragons as videogame staples can ultimately be traced back to the venerable king of roleplaying games - but there's one idea D&D popularized that doesn't get anywhere near enough credit. And that, is classes.
Yep, everything from warlocks to warriors ultimately draw influence from a couple of very clever ideas the creators of D&D had way back in the 1970s - but why are classes so influential? In an attempt to find out why, The Architect has donned a sword, staff, bow and a whole host of other cliche articles of classy clothing in an effort to find out once and for all why both developers and players love classes as a mechanic so damn much.
Well Well Well, look who we’ve got here, it’s a patron stumbling unawares into this, the architect address oh how foolish you must feel. - you’ve been trapped, you’ve been tricked! Now you’re going to have to listen to a few minutes of me talking about the videos that have come out recently and maybe whatever other stuff I can think of.
First of all, one thing I’ve seen people ask about is my selection criteria when it comes to picking my little shoutouts of cool internet people at the end of each video and lemme tell you I just don’t have a good answer for that beyond the fact that I literally just have a giant notepad document full of names and ideas and what they do that I add to whenever I see something cool. It’s that simple!
I think generally there’s a balance to strike between picking people who are sufficiently small that most people watching my channel won’t have heard of them, but also people that I can guarantee are, y’know, worth the recommendation. I could recommend massive people everyone’s already heard of or tiny people who’ve made like, one video that maybe shows promise but ultimately I think it’s important to look for people who have been languishing in relative obscurity for a while and deserve the boost rather than people just starting out and who may very well be able to make it on their own or have already made it. The whole highlighting thing is basically about correcting an injustice on youtube’s part - the platform is historically terrible at pointing people towards good content and I’m ninety percent sure my dumb backside only got to the position I’m in right now because of dumb luck. So, I guess me saying hey, here’s a cool internet thing at the end of every vid is sort of like me doing youtube’s job for them. Great.
Next is the video Why We Love Hostile Worlds which is a terrible goddamn title that I came up with last second and I hate -b ut the rest of the video I think is pretty good! This is another case of me playing a series of games that I sort of looked for the overlap in and the one thing that stray and rainworld both have in common is a really interesting approach to their world design and also cats. Also cats.
Yeah, I’m not really sure why I did the whole cats thing I think I could’ve maybe done without that - I just thought it was kind of funny - although on reflection trying to cram an architect of games silly acronym into the constraint of cats whilst also wanting to talk about the three main game sin a particular order was… it was too much - I had to do a LOT of gymnastics on that one.
I think the main takeaway here besides the fact that the video did very well is that I think I should spend more time talking about games I have mixed feelings about rather than games I either like or hate because both stray and rainworld are two games that are alternatingly brilliant and a bit rubbish and I think that’s because they take some pretty interesting risks here and there that give you a lot to talk about. Stray is a… very simplistic game and its focus on just sort of… being a cat is both the lynchpin of the entire game AND the reason why it’s pretty boring once the gimmick has worn off. Same with rainworld, damn if that game isn’t a work of uncompromising design vision but also it’s real god damn frustrating at times and not in a way that reveals anything new about the world or yourself or creates some interesting gameplay, sometimes the game or the controls just decides to muder you and there’s nothing you can do about it - but would rainworld be the same game if it made those concessions in the player’s favor? I don’t know - that’s a topic for another video I guess.
There’s this video out there in the ether that I’ve kind of almost made like three times now about various movement systems and how they affect games and I can never quite seem to make it work. One became the ancient terrible mario video I did back in the day, another is the celeste one from early in 2020 and this is sort of attempt three. I can never quite articulate how our relationship and the ways we interact with the physicality of a space affects the way we play, but I think I got CLOSE here, not quite on the mark but it’s a subject area I find very interesting for reasons that aren’t… entirely clear.
The second video I’d like to talk about is Why the hell are there so many fishing minigames. That’s an interesting title that is a little bit different from my usual format but I think it went down pretty well. One thing that I realised when finishing up with this video is that i’ve recently noticed that in my thumbnails I usually get a much better result if I make sort of an ensemble piece rather than a single game focus in the image, yknow? So here there’s me and a bunch of characters from the game I talk about sitting on a bench, in the previous vid there’s a lot of references to other games - you know. I think the same rule basically applies as titles where specificity actually isn’t what people respond to and my perspective has been completely warped by the success of the longing video which was framed around a single game so i’ve been trying to replicate its branding even though that wasn’t the reason why everyone liked it so much.
As for the actual content of the video, I’m simultaneously amazed and sort of disappointed that this video is 20 mins long. Because good god it is hard to make what are essentially boring chores interesting to watch but I think I managed to talk about the subject of diversions in an interesting way and put enough spinny graphics on screen. Normally stuff like this starts off with me thinking about a broader theme and then finding a more specific question to pin things on but this time I actually started with the fundamental question of why fishing minigames are more fun as side content and sort of expanded out from there, that’s why the back half feels a little ancillary and the ending in particular is a bit wishy washy but I think the fundamentals of the video as well as the more scientific explanation is pretty good. There’s been some debate on whether I was right to use habituation or not and I’ll be honest it doesn’t 100% describe what happens with games getting boring but I think it’s mostly there.
Beyond that, I genuinely don’t know why this video did well, I was dreading it being a complete flop because let’s be honest it’s pretty boring subject matter, but I think whilst the question itself isn’t that interesting fishing minigames and other diversions like the chao garden really struck a chord with people and they seem to be much more beloved than I expected. Personally I’m a horrible stress addict so I hate all those relaxing diversions but a lot of people seem to love them so… go figure I guess good for me.
Well that’s all the stuff I can think of, I think that’s it! Bye!
No matter which genre of game you play, no matter which era of the medium is your favorite, one thing is inescapable - inevitable, and that is... fishing minigames. From RPGs to Rogelikes to MMOs, fishing minigames are in just about everything, and as much as we enjoy them, no-one really seems to know... why?
Well, that's where The Architect comes in. After conspiring with outer gods, raising a clutch of horrible monster creatures and seducing the entirety of an isolated farming town, they've figured out why fishing seems to be everywhere and why we love it so much: Fishing is just one part of an invisible gaming safety net that helps preserve the fun of our favorite games for longer - the question is how they manage to pull it off?
There are few better feelings in games than being able to immerse ourselves in unfamiliar and hostile videogaming worlds, but quite often - they fail to deliver on their promise of presenting us with environments that challenge and surprise us at every turn... why?
Well, it's hard to feel like a videogame environment is indifferent to your presence and filled with unknown mysteries when we already recognize the patterns and tropes used to construct them - so how can we get around this problem? The architect has braved multiple apocalypses, lands shrouded in spoiler warnings, and even vast subterranean cities to figure out this problem once and for all... and why the solution seems to involve cats?
Hi! just a quick update ahead of the new video which is currently uploading that I'm adding a new patreon tier at $8! (Several people have told me to charge more than 10 but I want to do right by you lot so screw 'em). It's basically a middle ground between $5 and $10, whilst also serving as an overflow for the latter. You still get all the bonuses of the $5 tier, just with a bit extra if you want to pay a bit more (thx btw xxx)
Basically, it entitles you to be entered into a random draw for a custom shoutout of 50 words or less to be said at the end of a vid - I thought it was just a fun little thing to do in addition to the usual nonsense I cram the back half of the videos full of.
I've not *entirely* figured out the system, but my current plan is to have a google form for all $8 patrons to submit their shoutout, from which I will randomly draw - in the event it gets backlogged I'll do a special end of year video where I clear them all out, so people feel like they got their moneysworth.
Maybe this will work, maybe it won't - who knows! I'll set up the link to the form now.
Well hi there! Welcome to the architect address, a special series of videos just for you patrons where I natter on for a few minutes about the latest video to grace your youtube sub feeds, as well as whatever other topics I feel like talking about. On that topic, I was wondering about introducing a new patreon tier sort of in addition to the $10 one or between five and ten because the ten dollar tier has been, amazingly filled up and I want to do something extra. I’d love to hear your ideas for this because I’m sort of stumped. My best theory is something like pay to get entered into a random shoutout pool? So at the end of every video I’d pick one quick patreon shoutout and just say that. But it might not scale well because it’s random and if it was a queue I might not go through them fast enough and it is only a one time thing? I’m not sure how it’d work out so please give me some suggestions!
Also, I’ve seen a few people recently both in the youtube comments and patreon messages asking me how I come up with topics for videos and I’ve got to tell you, I wish there was a satisfying answer to that question.
So, essentially, my big ideas document is full of individual statements or observations that I make whenever I find myself asking a question about a game, like oh why are a bunch of different crafting systems in games the same kind of boring? Or what’s happening when you go oooooohhhh…! when playing a puzzle game? Or why aren’t the EMMI in metroid dread scary? Anything that inspires some sort of emotional reaction or question goes on the list, so that often means that a given video ends up encompassing several of these little ideas or thoughts.
I think rather than my videos being explanations on a given topic or tutorials on how to make games they’re just sort of me rambling about what does and doesn’t work within a given concept or way of looking at games, so I think often the hardest part of the writing process for me is figuring out what it is I actually want to talk about. I’ll have all these little ideas and observations that share a vague conceptual or vibesey link but no way to string them together with something concrete. Actually, the channel’s biggest video, the longing one was the best example of this, I played a bunch of different games I wanted to talk about and it took me about a week of writing what felt like 3 different scripts to go “Oh! They’re all about time! That’s a cool unifying concept!” and the video evolved from there.
Speaking of which, the first video I’m talking about today, How To Solve An Impossible Problem evolved from a very tiny moment when I was explaining anno to a friend. I told them all about how the game works, about all the production chains, but when they asked what the goal was, how you win, I didn’t really have a satisfying answer for them because winning in anno isn’t really the point - it’s just a big abstract goal that contextualises the real meat of the game.
That impossible to describe… *thing* at the centre of the best problem solving games is something that I don’t quite think I managed to skewer in this video because I can’t escape the feeling that problem solving is more of a perspective than a specific genre. Like, sure some games are clearly designed around it as the primary source of fun but as speedrunning and challenge playthroughs prove, even the simplest of games can be drilled into to extract an abstract impossible problem. Maybe there’s a whole video on speedrunning but that requires a LOT of practice and I don’t think I could really comment on the practice without giving it a go myself at least once and speedrunning doesn’t really appeal to me very much because practising that much sounds… boring. So maybe that’s one for the backburner.
Performance wise honestly this one didn’t do great but given the subject matter I can hardly blame people. My biggest conflict in putting this one together was how to make boring menu driven problem solving games REMOTELY interesting to watch and let me tell you it was a challenge. If you actually pay attention I get a lot of mileage out of footage of spaceships landing and buildings being built and just classic AoG visual puns because there is just so much staring at nothing that goes on in problem solving games and I want to give you all something fun to look at. My saving grace in that regard was teardown, I was originally going to talk about something completely different in the segment where I mention that game and it’s so much more interesting than the fuckin spreadsheet simulator idle games I was thinking of talking about.
The other video that came out recently, how “bad” balance can be a good thing, was a little bit controversial and kind of not for the reasons I was expecting. Honestly I take a few swings at some beloved games here but people are much more focused on the semantics of my use of “overpowered” and that’s interesting because I’ve always thought of overpowered meaning simply the most most powerful thing or, a thing where the level of it’s power is above everything else, or dare I say, over. Other people on the other hand seem to restrict it exclusively to a derogatory context and whilst they’re not wrong per se, it’s certainly not how I see the word and hopefully the video proves that. If I’d known this, I’d have put a little clarifying “hey here’s what I think overpowered means and that’s the framework I’m operating from” mention but hey even the people calling me wrong agree with what I say, just not the words I used so it’s hard to be too broken up about it.
Besides that *small* kerfuffle I think one thing I really would’ve liked to talk about and didn’t was some more dota stuff because I love that game and I don’t talk about it very much because it’s very complicated and also doesn’t look very nice for just a few seconds there’s a lot going on. Anyway I think DOTA’s items have just the same sort of approach to balance as the heroes, loads of them have obscenely powerful, gamechanging effects like just immunity to spells or invisibility or letting you jump around the map, but they’re all very cleverly balanced by the fact that heroes are powerful by default, and very crucially, by the fact that you can only have six items at a time - which is an invisible cornerstone of DOTA’s balance that is also super important.
In general, I’m not sure how much of the video i’d change, it got a fair bit of criticism but equally it seems to have done well and most of the people upset by my terrible knowledge of street fighter also seem to have enjoyed the video so who knows, there’s actually a weird incentive to bait out angry comments because they’re great for engagement metrics but I can assure you I didn’t do that and won’t going forwards, that’s a slippery slope.
Right before I incriminate myself any further, I’ll bid you all adieu! See you around, bye!
Balance in videogames is a tricky thing, no-one can ever seem to get it quite right. From AAA studios to tiny indie games, you'll always find someone complaining about a game's balance, and in particular, about how something is probably overpowered. It's a tale as old as time! But are overpowered strategies really as bad as we've been led to believe?
The Architect doesn't think so - sure, something being overpowered can suck, but by fiddling with the power levels of various ingame options, developers can also spice up their games in several really interesting ways that we don't tend to talk about, all it's going to take to prove it is braving some of gaming's most overpowered obstacles ever.
Sim City is one of the most important videogames ever made, but Will Wright's magnum opus isn't revolutionary because it made architecture fun, but in how it created an entirely new kind of videogame: the problem solver. Problem Solving videogames are a unique collection of titles that rely not on the developer to author specific obstacles, but on the player to interact with a set of meticulously-balanced variables and rules and in the process create a series of challenges that are totally unique.
The Architect has been trying their hand at alchemy, logistics, speed running and even... whatever that word is for planning out what buildings look like in an effort to figure out the root of this particular problem - and they've come to a startling conclusion. Some of the best problems in videogaming are, in fact, designed to be unsolvable.
Wait, who let you in here, I was supposed to be doing the Architect Address! Eugh! Typical. Well, seeing as you’re here, you may as well listen to me ramble on for a few minutes about the latest videos I’ve put out and what’s going on with the channel lately. It’s the least you can do.
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of several weird traditions that I do on the channel where I don’t really know why I do them or where they came from. For example , every single episode I will, without fail, only use music from games I mention and this often leads to some kind of weird audio choices, lots of extra busywork finding good tracks and on more than one occasion… me including a game in the video specifically so I could use its music. Same goes with the weird dressup I do every video - I’m bad a drawing in case you couldn’t tell and I’m not really sure why I started the trend.
On one hand, these weird things are time consuming and arguably take away from the quality of the video - I certainly don’t like the way the various outfits I draw end up looking a lot of the time, but equally - they’re kind of part of the unique flair of the channel so maybe that offsets the lack of… err… quality. Like, sure I could use the same lo-fi video essay beats as everyone else and cut to me talking in front of a camera to explain things, but I think the fact that I play music from the games, get all in character and have (what I think of) sort of a unique vibe fits the more holistic, enthusiast style I’m going for with the videos better than something more generic.
I dunno, I think broadly the channel’s visual presentation and production values have always been, to put it bluntly, absolute dogshit but it’s also not something I care about too much so i’d rather be weird with it, you know?
Anyway, the first video I’d like to talk about is How Nostalgia is Holding us Back, which is a bit of a clickbaity ass topic but I think it’s fine. In case you couldn’t tell, I initially went in wanting to make a sort of video wrapping up all the games that had tried to surpass pokemon but the more of them I played, the more I found they were just… Lacking that special something. It’s crazy because on one hand they make objective improvements over pokemon, but equally they also seem to not have the texture that people actually like about the games. Sure, making pokemon but more difficult feels like a slamdunk common sense move but I think a lot of people have come to enjoy pokemon because it’s easy, and let’s be honest the battle system can’t really support highly strategic play because of how over centralised it is around type matchups - at least when we’re talking singleplayer, competitive pokemon is fairly deep.
I think this focus on nostalgia is kind of part of a pattern of audiences not really knowing what they want. By taking only the high points of a piece of media and then spreading them out over the entirety of something new, not only do you miss out on interesting nuances, you also end up with a vastly more simplistic final product. I think this general principle also applies to stuff like balance problems as well, I can’t stop thinking about how, overwatch, gwent and games like them start out as these really interesting fresh takes on a format with lots of interesting idiosyncrasies, but because people *claim* they want perfect balance in much the same way they claim they want replications of the past, the games gradually become more and more boring, losing the individual, flawed character that made them fun to begin with.
I’ll be honest there’s probably a whole different video on that, the whole wider cultural perception of games is an angle I’ve not quite delved into on the channel before so who knows. I’d really like to do a similar vid on spoiler culture or the psychology behind review scores but I think I’ll leave them for a later date. Overall this video did a bit worse than I was expecting - I kind of thought pokemon would be a crowdpleaser but I guess I don’t really cover handheld stuff all that much on the channel so who knows. Something to keep in mind.
As for the next video, that one did much better! And I have no idea why! Not only is it a fairly niche writing theory one but it also came at a heavy delay, so no idea what’s going on there. As for the reasons why this video was late, honestly, I’d love to claim I got sick or was busy with other stuff but I just bit off more than I could chew with this one, it’s SUCH a complex topic with so many pitfalls to dance around. You’ll note that I don’t really give any spoiler warnings for newer or more popular games in the video because I felt like if I really went all in with that stuff, then the entier video would be wall to wall spoilers and associated warnings, which is compounded by the fact that explaining why endings don’t work in any depth takes ages because you have to essentially recap the whole plot and the way it can branch.
Even then, there’s just a lot to talk about between the development side of things which I have no firsthand experience with, and trying to break down some fairly complex philosophical and literary theory stuff which means that I basically skip over a bunch of stuff. It was… a nightmare to put together. In the original draft that ending segment with all the weird anti-endings like with citizen sleeper or how fish is made - that was the length of an entire video right there, same with just me talking about mass effect, it was like 6 or 7 pages.
Honestly, I’m kind of impressed I managed to chop the thing down as much as I did, but I feel like the quality suffered as a result, a lot of the gameplay footage isn’t great - what’s left of my script sort of jumps around and stretches itself into segues that don’t quite make sense a lot. Am I sort of spoiling the magic by revealing that the only reason I talk about true endings at all is that it’s the least insane way of explaining how the choice to not make a choice can actually be a choice in of itself - which is a concept you can’t approach head on because it’s insanity but equally I feel like you kind of need to be able to get your head around to understand why citizen sleeper’s endings in particular work.
Yeah this video is one I honestly may dissect a bit more at a later date because… kind of a lot went wrong with it! who’d have thought I’d do two length record breaking videos sequentially, crazy. Anyway, I am COMMITTING to a shorter video this time around so let’s hope that I can stick to it. With that said I’ll bid you all adieu - bye!
Sorry this one's up so late, friends! I'll go into it more in the Architect Address in a few days!
Videogames are unique for a lot of reasons, but what makes them stand out amongst every other form of media is the simple fact that they can end in a variety of ways. From choosing who lives and who dies, the fate of the world, to simply what colour a big pretty ending explosion is - alternate endings are one of the great videogaming ideas...
So why are they so often kind of rubbish?
The Architect has scouted multiple timelines, delved into the farthest reaches of the universe and poked around in the still-smoking craters left by controversial videogames to figure out the answer - games with multiple endings are great, but not for the reasons we think... and it's this misconception that's dragging down a whole load of otherwise great games.
Everyone loves engaging in a bit of nostalgia - it's a way to enjoy the things we love from an entirely new perspective, adding some extra layers to our existing cherished childhood memories - from Mario to Pokemon to Dark Souls, everyone has something they're nostalgic about... but is that a good thing?
After a lot of soul searching, and a few trips into alternate pasts and futures - The Architect has discovered an unsettling truth - that nostalgia might not be the universal good we often think it is, and in fact, our obsession over our own flawed memories might be ruining our present day fun...
Hello everyone and welcome to the Architect Address, that extra special patrons only thing where I talk about some of the recent videos that have come out and what’s going on with the channel lately.
Before we get to the videos, I want to chat about length - and no, not that length you perv, video length! I’ve put out *exclusively* long videos so far this year and I think that’s why there’s not been as many of them. It’s weird - I almost always go into a topic with the intent of doing a nice short simple script about a single topic but goddam if they don’t invariably balloon into something more complicated by the end.
I think it’s my tendency to go a lot more big picture and abstract than many other people in the same gig, not to generalize too much, but many other gaming video essayists like to drill down on a particular game or mechanic, or even just a single moment in a game, that sort of detail focused approach has never really interested me that much. I like zooming out and looking at the rules and patterns that govern a whole bunch of different games, and sort of developing a holistic understanding from there. I think it’s great and gives the channel a nice bit of a theme but it does tend to pad out the old word count because I invariably will come up with a cool talking point that’s sort of tangentially related to the spotlight game and want to include it because it’s interesting, not necessarily because it’s on topic.
That’s kind of why I started doing the director’s cuts - in terms of raw unedited material, my video scripts are probably almost twice as long as the final edited down version and that’s mostly because they’re just bursting at the seams with these “oh and now that i mention it,” style interludes where I just go off on a tangent about a cool thing an interesting game does well/badly. I’m unsure, part of me wishes I could, err, pick a slightly more concrete and specific topic for my videos but I always get stuck when I do that. I dunno. Do you guys like the earlier videos where I’m more focused and have a more concrete argument or do you like weird sort of abstract architect stuff. I guess the channel’s most popular video ever is me just going, fuck it I’m going to talk about time for 20 minutes so probably the latter.
Anyway, videos. The first one is all about open worlds that are ever so slightly closed, and why that’s good. As is to be expected because it’s cynically themed around Elden Ring, this one did pretty well. Honestly there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to open worlds and my thoughts on them but I think the most interesting thing is something that I saw outlined in the comments in various forms and I wasn’t quite able to put into words until now, and it’s the idea that some open worlds are designed like theme parks, and others are designed like adventures.
Basically, the way I see it is that a theme park style open world is all about just having a big wide area that doesn’t provide you with any inherent challenge in of itself or tie together cohesively, but it is just sort of full of lots of cool things to do. I think the biggest examples of this are Bethesda inhouse RPGs or GTA. In those games you’re incredibly empowered basically from the outset and you sort of get to wander around having fun your way. On the flipside, more adventurey games have a much higher degree of obstruction and gating in their world design the player actually needs to work to overcome, and there’s much more of an interrelation between the various locations, like in Fallout new vegas, or Outer Wilds - which, yes, is an open world game. So in an adventurey open world it’s less about the individual locations or theme park rides and more about your quest to master the world’s complexities and challenges.
I think the two games I really spotlight, that being breath of the wild and elden ring are sort of in the middle ground, there’s a lot of freedom in both games from the outset, and you’re fairly empowered to go wherever you want, but there’s a fair degree of authorship and direction in the level design that pushes you into having a fun adventure at the same time as you’re wandering around stumbling onto cool quests. Honestly, on that note - it was an absolute nightmare writing about elden ring because I was paranoid about spoilers, there’s so much I’d WANT to talk about when it comes to that game’s world design, specifically how it drastically changes towards the lategame, but I am, alas forbidden, at least until a few months have passed.
Next up is the latest video, why Tunic Hides its Tutorial, proof positive of my theory that namedropping specific games is baaaad for the viewcount. Interesting. The video did okay but it’s a shame not as many people are watching it as the elden ring one because Tunic is genuinely fantastic, it’s a zelda ripoff that slowly metamorphoses into a Fez successor and it is glorious, seriously it’s so good and I wish I could spoil why. But I can’t… so I won’t
This video was originally completely different it was going to be about Nostalgia and how Tunic’s real greatest idea is how it evokes that classic feeling of being a kid and having no idea how videogames work or even how to play this one - I can’t overstate how awesome it is that the game leaves you pretty much completely to your own devices but still gives you ALMOST everything you need to succeed.
There are a few moments where people have seemed to get stuck on unintuitive stuff though as well as one major bit of unnecessary hidden information which is that Tunic has an accessibility mode, and even goes so far as to say it’s totally fine for you to use it… but that page is hidden three quarters of the way through the game and encoded in the game’s weird language which sort of screams… what’s the point? Y’know?
Actually, in general this video was sort of cobbled together from a lot of scraps of topics that didn’t quite make it or I’m putting on the backburner, I really want to talk about lovecraftian games and the uncanny at some point and Golden Light is fantastic at evoking those sorts of feelings because, well, it’s insane and there’s a video on making a good Nemesis style character like the Emmi or Mr X that I could never quiiiite get to work which is a shame.
But then I think that the videos nature of pulling in a lot of disparate ideas from lots of places kind of fits Tunic’s whole deal - it’s this very videogamey videogame that’s just as much a greatest hits collection of a lot of other games as it is its own thing - would not recommend it for casual players even if they like, say, zelda, because it assumes so much knowledge. Maybe that’s another topic, sort of the cultural underpinning of ideas that goes unacknowledged in game design, like how you can spot, say, an area you’re supposed to come back to later easily in a metroidvania because of the iconography used and general shape of the area, but someone less familiar might think they’re missing something.
Right, I should probably stop brainstorming video ideas and just get to actually writing one yeah? Okay I’ll see you all around on the next video, hope this was at least slightly interesting!
Over the last decade, videogames have gotten much better at communication. After so many years, we've finally got comprehensive tutorials, clear user interfaces and well-paced difficulty curves that never leave you overwhelmed or confused - but have videogames lost something in this transition to easy-to-play accessibility? The Architect thinks so.
After stumbling their way through forests, caverns and ancient ruins, The Architect has uncovered scraps of an ancient manual, containing a hidden secret within: Sometimes, hiding information from the player, and making learning itself part of a game's challenge, can make eventual mastery all that more satisfying. Luckily for us, Tunic is here to show us how this nearly-forgotten technique is done.
You Saw:
Tunic - 2022 Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu - 2018 Gears Tactics - 2020 Shadow of War - 2017 Metroid Dread - 2021 Deathloop - 2021 Heaven's Vault - 2019 Psychonauts - 2005 Death Stranding - 2019 Street Fighter 5 - 2016 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 2017 Metroid Prime - 2002 Hollow Knight - 2017 Steamworld Dig 2 Elden Ring - 2022 Golden Light - 2022 Bug Fables - 2019 Monster Hunter Rise - 2018 Monster Hunter World - 2021 Fez - 2012 XCOM: Enemy Unknown - 2012 BABA is YOU - 2019 The Witness - 2016 Antichamber - 2013 Super Metroid - 1994 Super Mario Bros - 1985 XCOM 2 - 2016 Portal 2 - 2011 Far Cry 4 - 2014 Half Life Alyx - 2020 Knightfall - 2022 Dark Souls - 2012 Journey - 2017 Minecraft - 2011 Satisfactory - Early Access
Open World games have been in a bit of a rut for years now, ever since Far Cry 3 set the tone for the genre more than a decade ago, every single open world game has been held prisoner by a single feature: Towers. The bane of exploration-lovers everywhere. Or are they?
The Architect has seen a fair share of towers, and they're starting to doubt whether towers really are at fault for bad open worlds after all - hell, even Elden Ring has them, and that game has a great world! After saddling up and exploring the worlds of Hyrule, The Mojave and now the Lands Between, finally the secret of good world design is within grasp... It's just inside this innocent looking chest, I swear...
Hi everyone! It’s me, back with another Architect Address, that thingamabob where I talk about some of the videos that have been released recently, what’s going on with the channel and all that good stuff. After the bumper extra special architect address last time I’ll try and make this one a bit quicker but we do have two interesting videos to discuss so who knows.
First up is THE BIG DISCO ELYSIUM VIDEO ooooooh sweet mama this video is a longun, it’s by far the video I’ve put the most time and effort into and it nearly destroyed me, but god damn I refused to let it beat me and it’s finally out. Seriously, I know I touch on it in the video but the whole journey of me gradually coming back to the video and getting a bit further each time dovetailing into my overall reading of the game is not a coincidence and I think it lends my take a bit of a unique vibe.
As for what I actually ended up putting out, I sort of have mixed feelings on it which I suppose is to be expected but I think I did spend a little bit too long laying backstory groundwork and explaining the surprisingly convoluted mechanics of the mystery, particularly with the running back and forth with Klaasje section. I think if I didn’t structure the video chronologically I could’ve quite comfortably got it down to maybe 45 minutes. However, I think there is some benefit in approaching these big videos within the context of how you actually play them, and drawing a consistent narrative line from start to end so maybe it was for the best.
I think if I could’ve changed one thing about how I put the video together I would’ve had more space for just voiced dialogue and a focus on actual quotes but that would’ve made the video even longer. I can’t really speak to the viewing experience as the person who made the damn thing but I’m very conscious of the idea that Disco Elysium is conveyed almost entirely though text and it’s got to be very difficult to pay attention to what I’m saying AND read the text I’m explaining at the same time. I think I do a decent job of making the video fairly listenable, because I know that’s how a lot of people take in that content but equally… it’s not exactly a visually stimulating video no matter what I could do.
Surprisingly, despite my doubts, this video has received almost universally positive feedback which is very nice to see, and more people even watched it than I expected to. Err, sorry to say it though for all the people asking for more videos like this and that this one is their Favorite, I ain’t doing another one for a little while because good god this took it out of me. Wow.
The other video I released recently was a little thing called “is it possible to make feeling weak fun?” and err, yeah I think the elephant in the room on this one - and the reason why it feels a little disjointed in places is because I originally was going to talk about some kind of serious games with actual real-world themes like This War of Mine which it turned out were going to be in poor taste to make light of and say are fun when a country is getting invaded and civilians are actually getting killed. Yeah. That’s why I sort of awkwardly segue between various topics and there seems to be some stuff missing from the video.
Before even that though, the entire video was originally going to be about games as work I guess you’d call it? Games that aren’t really out to create a fantastic escapist experience but to simulate some sort of job, complete with all the bits that make jobs boring, but also satisfying. That’s why there’s so much talk on Death stranding and Viscera cleanup detail, because they’re sort of the core of the video - even if they’re not quite as obviously about feeling weak as the likes of, say, Sifu.
Speaking of, I think I lavished Sifu with quite a bit of praise in this video which I’m not sure is entirely deserved. It’s… an okay game buut it certainly isn’t going to dethrone the likes of a soulsborne game anytime soon. Besides the intended frustration that comes from its core mechanics, it’s just very very hard to read the combat and doging/blocking feels really bad. I think it’s an interesting example of a game that’s *actually* too hard, instead of just being sort of unapproachable like a souls game or a platinum brawler.
I dunno, it’s a game I have complex feelings on that I might come back to at some point, but it sure as hell FEELS very difficult and unfair in a way that other games that are technically more difficult don’t - it’s an interesting psychological thing that’s clearly kind of intended but might be a bit of an overreach.
In performance news, this one did unaccountably… well? I’m like 90% sure that this is a result of the fact that I cynically namedropped Elden ring juuust a little bit but also it seems to be having good feedback in general. I’m not sure why because to me it seems like a very fragmented video that basically talks about a lot of things I’ve already mentioned but hell if people are liking it then people are liking it! I’m not going to complain!
Well, that’s all that I can think of when it comes to conversation topics so I think i’ll leave it there as a bit of a short one - it’s totally not because I want to get back to playing a certain videogame - I think you can probably tell which one. Bye!
Power fantasies are almost ubiquitous in games, from the absolute most casual experiences out there to the hardest of the hardcore - videogames LOVE making us feel strong and powerful, and why wouldn't they? Feeling powerful is loads of fun!
However, a feeling of strength and control isn't all games have to offer, and in our obsession with power fantasies, some equally good kinds of games can sometimes get swept under the rug. After a lifetime's worth of training in the martial, bureaucratic and logistical arts The Architect is ready to tell you how being weak is just as fun as being strong - even if it's in an unconventional way.
Disco Elysium is a weird game - that much is obvious. It's got high minded philosophical commentary sharing space with childish jokes, it mocks just about every political worldview ruthlessly, and it veers drunkenly between bleak musings on the state of post-capitalist reality and joyous moments of pure fun.
It's no wonder that many people, The Architect included, have tried and failed over and over again to figure out what, if anything, Disco Elysium is actually about. Until now. Against the advice of the many voices in their head, The Architect has ventured into the wild pale yonder of Elysium and lived to tell the tale, specifically, a tale about how failure... is just the beginning.
Hello Patrons! This is just a small update to say that the next video I release might not be out when you'd expect (which would normally be about now), I'm finally getting off my backside and writing up another huge narrative breakdown video in the vein of the Undertale and Nier Automata ones - this time about the fantastic game Disco Elysium.
That means that whilst you might have to wait a little while longer, you're going to get what I assume will be an hour or more of video for your troubles - I'm already six thousand words in and I expect that to double by the time I'm done. I hope it'll be done by the end of the month and if not, early February - so there's not too much longer to wait!
Watch this space and thanks for continuing to support the channel - I wouldn't be able to do weird experimental video topics like this one without the security that your donations provide!
(I am painfully aware I said I'd start doing more frequent videos and changing the titles to not focus on single games - what can I say, I'm an agent of chaos)
Hello one and all and welcome to a very special 2021 wrapup Architect address, it’s time for me to go over the massive glut of videos I hammered out towards the end of the year as well as discuss the last twelve months in general to organize my thoughts about them and where I want the channel to go in future.
First up is How VideoGames Make the Ultimate Sacrifice - now, this video is entirely the product of Inscryption coming out and me wanting to make a video about it but I think besides that I managed to talk about some quite interesting stuff. Putting the terrible fallout 3 ending in the context of how good sacrifices are supposed to be written, talking about the fable 2 ending controversy and getting an excuse to play Unsighted, which is very very good were all products of talking about Inscryption’s central mechanic and I think it’s very worthwhile.
I think there’s a lot more to be said about how negative intentionality can be used to make games and why there are some unique challenges around making players feel bad whilst also creating an experience they want to play. That’s kind of the problem with almost all of the games I covered and why Bethesda took the cop-out they did - sacrificing stuff feels bad, so it’s not going to gel particularly well with an empowering gameplay experience. Luckily more niche games like LISA are there to pick up the slack, but it’d be nice to see a AAA game do this and really commit, in spite of the inevitable backlash. All in all it was a pretty good video that did fairly well as a result!
Next was why Master Chief can only use two guns. Now, this is an interesting video because the halo framing really only materialised at the veeerry last second of the writing process. I’ve always wanted to do a video about toolsets and the way they work but it’s such an abstract concept that I really struggled to actually write about it in a way that was comprehensible to people who weren’t me. In an act of frustration, I decided to just play a bit of Halo 1 which I’d always meant to get around to, only to discover that it was the missing link between what I wanted to talk about and comprehensibility.
Now the history of Halo as a franchise is super interesting and I cut a bunch of guff about that out because it’s not really relevant but it’s shocking how much of a coincidence the now fairly ubiquitous two-weapon system was. Halo was originally going to be an RTS, then it was going to be a traditional style PC shooter, it even has the staple ten weapons for number keys 1 through 0 and it was a last second microsoft byout that caused them to pull an emergency pivot to a totally different approach. That’s also the reason why the levels are so big and the AI is so good for the time, weird right?
Anyway, the video did middling to eh and I think that’s because people seem to like it when the title of the video is more generic and subject focused, like roguelikes or sacrifice or whatever, rather than being about a specific game. More on that later but it’s an interesting trend I’ve noticed - I really struggled coming up with a title for this video and it shows, oh boy!
The next video up is the one on roguelikes, which is sort of a spiritual sequel/followup to my short games video from earlier last year. I always felt a little bit bad implying that long games are bad or waste your time because that’s simply not true, I play long games and games without definite endings all the time and it’s exactly their length that makes them so compelling. Also it was nice to address the longstanding roguelike issue with certain meta progression roguelikes ruining the fun of otherwise competent games and pointing out that it’s all rogue legacy’s fault.
Now, the weird thing about this video is that despite how long it is, the turnaround was very very quick indeed - at least compared to my usual output. It’s some reused ideas from a director’s cut as well as a lot of footage from games that I was basically playing anyway. The only real bespoke footage I had to grab / research I had to do was on sea of thieves because it’d been a while since I played that game and it is… exactly as boring as I remember. I was originally going to talk a bit more about it but my longer thoughts came across as a bit mean. It’s a surprisingly niche game in of that there’s literally nothing on an extrinsic level and the game is all about the social hangout and being pirates together intrinsic stuff.
And finally, was the 2021 wrapup video which all in all, I think turned out pretty well. I think this year there were surprisingly few sort of… actiony games I wanted to recommend? There’s quite a few artsy reading or walking around games on the list and that bothers me a little bit - but not enough that I really want to change any of the recommendations. One major absence from this year’s list that I feel like was on a lot of other people’s end of year recommendations was It Takes Two and honestly, I just don’t really get it. Don’t get me wrong it’s gorgeous and incredibly creative but it just feels so incredibly throwaway, none of it ever really means anything or evolves in any way - and the writing is just awful, genuinely the worst written game I played this year and I finished Deathloop.
Anyway, one major rule I’m considering changing is loosening what kinds of games I can recommend at the end of the year - it felt weird to leave off some stuff that was DLC or is essentially finished but is still in early access. Echoes of the eye is the big one but there are a couple of games I really enjoyed that are arbitrarily in early access that I had to leave off, I guess I can just include them later but there’s always the chance I will just forget. Something to think about I suppose.
On the subject of thinking about things, how about my more general thoughts for the year.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s been interesting to see which videos did well. Obviously last year was totally skewed by a single video ostensibly focused on a single game, but this year it seems my best performing stuff, the holy trinity one, crafting systems and roguelikes have been about RPGs and have been more general. In fact, the worst performing vids on the channel this year have been ones where I’ve put a single game front and center, the resident evil 8, before your eyes and psychonauts 2 ones all did fairly badly which I think is interesting. I think I’m definitely going to shoot for more topic-first branding in future because that seems to be what people want even if I’m not actually going to change the content of the videos at all.
I think the most noteworthy statistic though is that I’ve just not made that many videos in comparison to previous years - just 16 in total, which is roughly one and a third a month and two fewer than 2020. I think that they’ve generally been longer and more indepth but that doesn’t really excuse just how long it’s taken to get them out, and that’s contributed to the channel’s slower growth this year. It is however worth mentioning that the patreon has seen incredibly consistent growth this year even if things have been a little slower on the channel side, so thank you ever so much for turning up and sticking around.
I think aiming for two a month like I did way back in the day when I was just starting out it a bit too ambitious because I put waaay less effort into things back then, but equally I do a lot of fucking around and pointless work that never ends up making it into a video so I ought to try and cut down on that and just get to the point where I’m actually writing the script much faster.
The one final thing I was thinking about is the patreon rewards, I’ve juggled them around now and again and I think replacing some boring reviews with the director’s cut was a really positive change back when I did it, and I was thinking about whether to add something else on the higher end? The credits readout is iconic and isn’t going anywhere but I was just thinking that if people want to give me more money, is there anything I could offer that doesn’t get more and more time consuming the way the read out credits does. There’s a reason I capped that thing at fifty, even if I never thought we’d reach it.
Once again, thank you ever so much for your support - hope this bumper length Architect Address was worth it and if you don’t mind I’m going to get to work on the next video… which might be a special one… ooooooOhh!
(Hi pals! this video has been uploading since yesterday evening and it's only just finished because my internet sucks AND youtube is having issues. Given the time-sensitive nature of the video and the holiday sale deals within, I'm going to put this one up at the usual time today - don't worry though, I've got a bumper-sized Architect Address in the pipeline to make up for this shoddy upload!)
It's the end of another year in videogaming and oh what a year it's been - regardless of how well your 2021 has gone, there's one thing we can agree on, that there's been a bunch of great videogames in the last 12 months.
Unfortunately, that also means that some otherwise great games have been overshadowed by bigger titles. Luckily, The Architect has spent the last 365 days rummaging through every last videogame released this year and has come up with a definitive list not of the best games of the year, but of the games you should've played... but probably didn't - as well as where best to buy them during the holiday sales. Buckle up! There's some real gems in here.
You Saw:
Dyson Sphere Program (Early Access) New Pokemon Snap (2021) Hitman 3 (2021) Resident Evil 8 (2021) Outer Wilds (2019) It Takes Two (2021) Everhood (2021) Chicory - A Colorful Tale (2021) - Of The Killer series (2021) Slipways (2021) Silicon Dreams (2021) Blade Runner Mundaun (2021) The Forgotten City (2021) Genesis Noir (2021) Loop Hero (2021) Spookware (2021) Unpacking (2021) Unsighted (2021) Webbed (2021) Nerts (2021) Escape Simulator (2021) Cruelty Squad (2021) Sable (2021) GTA Trilogy Remastered (2021) Balan Wonderworld (2021) Ball in a Cup Game (Early Access) Before Your Eyes (2021) Wildermyth (2021) Inscryption (2021)
You probably already know this, but video games are LONG - we pour hour after hour into not just our favorite videogames, but also ones we don't even like that much - and there is no better example of the sheer compulsive, time-sucking power of games than Roguelikes. Ever since their inception at the dawn of interactive entertainment, rogue and its spawn have demanded millions of hours of our collective time... but how?
The Architect has plundered basements, raided ancient castles and delved into realms of anime as yet undreamed of to fiind out what it is about roguelikes, and by extension all videogames that is so damn compelling... that is unless they get distracted with another Isaac run.
How does Mario remain so infamously creative, without ever having to tell you how its new ideas work? Why do platinum games make your dodge move so powerful? And how does Halo create interesting strategic decisions by taking your guns away? the answer is a little-known and abstract concept called Toolsets.
A videogame's toolset is the culmination of all of your abilities and all of your strategic options, and the way each component fits together can have a huge yet invisible impact on the way you play - and there is no better example of the power of a good toolset than Halo. By restricting players to just two weapons at a time, Halo didn't just use a toolset to shape the way you play, but to put players in charge and let them decide their own strategies, a decision that inadvertently changed the course of videogame history, as The Architect is about to find out...
I'm back from a teeny tiny break with a new video! Hopefully the next one will be out a little sooner!!
Sacrifice as a concept has been a part of human culture since the very beginning - and as the concept has evolved and changed, it's taken on a variety of forms: Personal, emotional, financial... as well as a few rather more grizzly varieties. But through our culture's long relationship with sacrifice, they've always been seen as emotional, dramatic and memorable moments that define a story... so why can't the same be said for videogames?
Despite getting a lot of mileage out of the aesthetic of sacrifice, very few videogames have managed to create ones as satisfying as the literary and cinematic greats. Videogame sacrifices almost always end up as unsatisfying, arbitrary distractions that feel bad to engage with - but why? The Architect is going to find out, even if it means venturing into spooky woodland cabins, more than one type of dystopic future and the worst, most poorly thought out bowels of the Fallout universe.
You Saw:
Fallout 3 - 2008
Left 4 Dead 2 -2009
XCOM: UFO Defence - 1997
Xenoblade 2 - 2017
Teardown - Early Access
The Iron Giant - 1999
Romeo And Juliet - 2013
Star Wars: Return of the Jedi -1983
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker - 2019
Dark Devotion - 2018
The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - seemingly every year lmao
Well howdy there, welcome to the architect Address, an occasional video where I tell you all about what’s happened recently, talk about stuff to do with the channel and generally shoot the breeze. Dunno why I’m using cowboy lingo there but I’m just going to roll with it.
Anyway, the first thing I wanted to ramble on about before we get to discussing the videos is the idea of working for youtube, which I think is a side of the content creation business which most people don’t know much about. Essentially, youtube is this unknowable, capricious god who doesn’t care about you but will occasionally just ruin your day seemingly at random. Over the last couple of days, for example, I’ve been fighting with them just randomly flagging a video as having sexual content when it didn’t have any - and you’d think that this would be a simple problem to resolve - some algorithm somewhere made a mistake, that’s all, but because Youtube is such a massive company even little tiny requests take an age and a lot of kicking and screaming to go through the system. It’s eventually gotten fixed and the ads are back up but I’ll still probably have no idea what actually happened or went wrong.
Basically all of youtube’s inner workings are mostly completely opaque, sometimes the algorithm likes short videos, sometimes it likes really long ones, it’s all magic and superstition really so I guess i’m just going to try and keep making stuff people like and hope youtube and its mighty algorithm leave me alone
As for the actual videos, the first one I want to talk about is How Storytelling Saved Psychonauts. Now, I absolutely love Psychonauts, I think it’s right in that sweet spot between being a scrappy underdog and having some genuine talent behind it, in spite of how objectively broken it is. Now, I don’t know if I’ve got a lower jank tolerance than everyone else but apparently a lot of people don’t think psychonauts 1 is unfinished? Which is weird because it’s kind of all over the place in a lot of places, in particular the back half of the game - psychonauts 2 is a much better put together game though, and it was actually very encouraging to see people have totally different favorite levels to me because that means the game is much more even quality wise where one definitely isn’t.
The video as a whole is another one in a long series of videos where I wax pretentious about storytelling and arcs and communicating ideas to the player and all that nonsense and they almost never do well. You’d think I’d learn my lesson but I just really like the storytelling side of games and getting to chat about some of my favorite environmental storytelling in half life 2 and bioshock was a bit of a treat. I noticed when writing that there’s this weird period in, like, the mid 2000s where there were a bunch of games with great environmental stuff and I’m not sure why? It might be a coincidence but a lot of the good examples I point to were released within like 5 years of eachother, it’s weird.
Anyway, psychonauts is a fairly niche game all things considered and the premise isn’t that grabby so the vid didn’t do too well but I’m happy with how it turned out, play psychonauts if you haven’t already it’s probably one of the best platformers ever in spite of the fact that it’s a terrible platformer… yeah.
Anyway…
The other video released recently was Finding True Freedom In Videogames, although I always mentally referred to it as Finding your own fun which is a much catchier title and that’s why I put it on the thumbnail. This one was kind of a bastard to write because the concept of player freedom is such an abstract topic that simply by virtue of existing also sucks in a bunch of philosophical stuff about free will and authorial intent that’s kind of irrelevant and also crucial to properly understanding the problems with this sort of idea.
So, basically, the original draft of this would’ve been like 14 pages and it was horrible and unwieldy and bleh, so I had to cut a lot out which was totally the right move. I actually didn’t end up talking about Sable all that much in the video even though it was the game that inspired the whole thing. I think the reason why that’s the case is because explaining too much about sable would’ve just been me spoiling the game’s best moments and also probably would’ve strayed into me complaining about some of the bits I don’t like about it such as how horrendously buggy the game is.
There’s one more thing about this video I’d like to talk about and that’s the fact that I made a little booboo in saying yugioh had four copies of a card max in decks instead of 3 which wouldn’t have been that bad if I didn’t follow it up by saying that Yu Gi Oh sucks. Now, whilst I stand by not liking Yugioh, I think it’s badly balance and that it’s been mismanaged on a big picture perspective I think I was a bit harsh here - I sort of added that section back in last second, didn't double check things and ended up looking like a dickhead.
It’s an interesting paranoia that all youtubers have that you can’t change videos once they’re up, so they kind of have to be perfect, or at least good enough because taking it down and reuploading is a sure fire way to get the algorithm to hate you. Which is to say, if you play yu gi oh… I’m sorry, for more than one reason.
Right before I upset anyone else I’ll call it there, thanks for baring with me and if you don’t mind I’m going to go back to playing inscription because it’s amazing, see ya!
Is there anything better in videogames than that feeling of total freedom? Where you can go wherever you like, do whatever you want and become whoever you want to be - probably not. However, as much as the gaming community loves to feel like they're finding their own fun, the reality is a little more complicated.
See, when playing a game, we're never truly making our own decisions, and game designers must strike a constant balance between letting the player off the leash and making sure that their freedom actually means something. After a long trek through the desert and across the world, The Architect has managed to discover how the best, most liberating games of all manage to pull this trick off, and surprisingly, it's often by restricting players that the most empowering games work so well.
You Saw: Outer Wilds - 2019 Final Fantasy 14 - 2010 Animal Crossing New Horizons - 2020 The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - 2017 Starcraft 2 - 2010 The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - 2011 The Legend of Zelda - 1986 Planescape Torment - 1999 Divinity: Original Sin 2 - 2017 Passpartout: The Starving Artist - 2017 Monster Hunter: World - 2018 Minecraft - 2011 Half Life: Alyx - 2020 Genshin Impact - 2020 Prey - 2017 Far Cry 5 - 2018 Grand Theft Auto 5 - 2013 Destiny 2 - 2017 Borderlands 3 - 2019 Cyberpunk 2077 - 2077 am i rite??? (it was 2020 in case you forgot) The Stanley Parable - 2013 Deltarune Chapter 1 - 2018 Mass Effect 3 - 2012 Psychonauts 2 - 2021 Deathloop - 2021 Undertale - 2015 Sable - 2021 TOEM - 2021 Before Your Eyes - 2021 Accounting Plus - 2018 Art Sqool - 2019 Umurangi Generation - 2020 No Man's Sky - 2016 Gears Tactics - 2020 X-COM: UFO Defence - 1994 XCOM - 2012 XCOM 2 - 2016 Offworld Trading Company - 2016 Dota 2 - 2013 Magic Arena - 2018 Yu Gi Oh: Legacy of The Duelists - 2020 Teardown - Not Out Yet Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - 2016 Dishonored - 2012 Hitman 3 - 2021 Dishonored 2 - 2017 Disco Elysium - 2019 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 2019 Dark Souls 3 - 2016 Telltale Game of thrones - 2014 Mario Maker - 2015 Pokemon Ultra Moon - 2017 Warcraft 3 Remastered - 2020 Legion TD 2 - 2021
The history of Psychonauts is an interesting one, it went from promising project, to embarrassing failure, to fan-fave cult classic before having a glorious return fifteen years later. What caused Psychonauts to fail, and why did people fall in love with it anyway?
The answer, as The Architect has just found out, is a little technique called Environmental Storytelling, a way to communicating complete narratives, not through words, but through nothing but level design. How is it possible to do that? Well, as it turns out, things are a little more complicated than putting some graffiti on the wall and calling it a day...
Look what we have here, if it isn’t an Architect Address moseying on into town. Hello! In case you aren’t aware, the architect address is a thing I do every now and again to sum up the last couple of videos I’ve released, my retrospective thoughts on how they did and some unstructured rambling about the state of the channel and the patreon.
On that note, hello new arrivals - there’s been quite a few of you lately and I’m not entirely sure why - I think maybe a part of it is down to a new thing I’ve started adding to my ending spiel about how patreon is a much better way to support the channel compared to ad revenue - maybe it’s a coincidence but I noticed a bit of an uptick when I started including that. Either way, welcome newbies.
I’ve been having a bit of a think more generally about the patreon stuff, particularly at the top end because I don’t quite feel like the ol’ ten and five dollar people are getting their moneysworth but if people like just getting their names read out then I guess I can’t complain. I came up with the patreon rewards basically on a whim three years ago so I’m not sure if they’re actually good - let me know I guess? I’m up for changing them but if you do enjoy just getting random bullshit then I guess I’ll leave them alone.
Oh, before I forget- I’ve time traveled to add this in. I forgot some five dollar people in the last video because my internet was down and I couldn’t update the master list so here’s a special limited edition thank you to the following people: Ben Pace, Pet Pumpkin, Riley Peters, Ryan Mcadams sorry I forgot you, you’ll be in the list for the next video!
Anyway, what about the videos that came out recently? The first one is called the Ugliest Game I’ve Ever Played in a bit of a break from the usual titling format and it’s entirely based around the premise that I played cruelty squad, hated it, then played it a little bit more and loved it.
I’m one of those people who loves the masochistic exercise of watching bad movies or playing bad games and trying to find some interesting angle or shred of fun in them that makes the experience worthwhile and I think more people could stand to get in that habit. If we fill our lives with only worthy 10/10 universally acclaimed art, then chances are we’re actually going to get a very shallow appreciation for what the spectrum of culture can offer us.
Cruelty squad might be, on every objective level confusing and bad but it remains a worthwhile experience if only for the fact that it can help us appreciate the games we do love even more. I do think that sentiment isn’t the whole picture though, by virtue of their ugliness, ugly games can also do weird things and take interesting risks that other games simply can’t. I’ve been playing through the original psychonauts recently as two has just come out and that game controls like crap, has horrible offputting character design and is just… *weird* but out of that comes this utterly unique feeling psychedelic drug trip of a game that’s almost designed to make you feel disoriented. If double fine played it safe then psychonauts might’ve been less of an abject financial failure, but it wouldn’t be remembered as a diamond in the rough either.
Overall the video did… okay, I guess? I think it’s mostly due to the fact that everyone and their mum was making a cruelty squad video at the time so mine sort of got lost in the churn a little bit - either way I think it’s a worthwhile topic and it came out okay all things considered.
The other video is a little thing I like to call Building Better Crafting Systems and the first thing I need to address is the potential title that is crafting better crafting systems. A lot of people brought it up but I actually don’t think it sounds very good with the repeated word and no alliteration so I went with what I have.
As far as the actual video goes, this one was pretty tough to put together on the editing front because in case you weren’t aware crafting is mostly just boring user interfaces which aren’t particularly nice to look at, seriously I had to use a bunch of unrelated B-roll in this video which I don’t normally like doing because otherwise there would be a lot of dull staring at menus which viewers may or may not be able to even comprehend.
The writing process was pretty interesting too, this is one of a small handful of videos that’s actually inspired by other video essays - crafting systems and how they’re bad is a fairly common topic and whilst basically everyone gets the reasons why right, I feel like the conclusion they often come to is that crafting shouldn’t be used at all or doesn’t belong in certain kinds of games which I feel like couldn’t be further from the truth.
If you ask me, crafting mechanics are incredibly versatile and can work just about anywhere, developers just need to be able to implement them in a way that enhances, rather than detracts from the primary arc of the game. In a scrapped segment that didn’t even make the director’s cut, I talked about how crafting is kind of like a loop de loop within a larger dramatic journey for the player. It offers a change of pace, it breaks things up and provides a different kind of excitement whilst still fundamentally being a part of the same overarching structure.
Honestly I think my favorite crafting system I tried has to be Final Fantasy 14, that game is really good at having zero trash items - anything that drops from monsters or found in the world is used in a crafting recipe somewhere - that really helps the things you create and collect feel meaningful and makes the ingame economy much more robust - pretty much all the crafting specs require a bunch of stuff from the other crafters so you’re constantly having to wheel and deal to make things or put in the work of leveling them all up yourself.
Performance wise this one inexplicably did very well, I thought it’d be pretty boring but I guess when minecraft, final fantasy 14 and a lot of other big trending games all happen to pop up in the same video it’s guaranteed to do okay.
Right that’s me done if you’ve got any questions you’d like me to answer feel free to drop them in the comments - I don’t think I’ve said that in a while but it’s a thing and I will see you all iiiin the next video!
NOTE: I've been having a little bit of trouble with my internet lately so I wasn't able to update my list of supporters, I'll have it fixed for the next video and I'll do a shoutout in the upcoming Architect Address but just to show I've not forgotten!:
A special $5 thank you to: Ben Pace
Pet Pumpkin
Riley Peters
Ryan Mcadams
Crafting systems are one of the most popular mechanics in all of videogaming, appearing in everything from open world games to shooters to MMOs, and if there's one thing that most crafting systems have in common it's the fact that they... sort of suck.Whether they're boring or time consuming or overly simplistic, there are a lot of potential problems that can plague crafting systems, and to make matters worse - a lot of the bad ones look just like the good ones.
So, what’s the solution?
Well, after some tinkering, salvaging and refining, The Architect has come up with a three-step formula to fixing every crafting system, focusing not on their mechanics, or their balance, but the way they affect their parent games - it makes sense in context, trust me.
What does it mean for something to be ugly? Is it when something is repulsive, when it offends your senses, or is it when something is just plain bad? Beyond that, is there any situation where ugly games can actually be good?
The Architect thinks so. They've torn and screamed their way through the fleshpunk dystopia and come out the other side with profane visions relating to the truth of ugly games. They aren't good - but they *are* interesting, and by playing them, we can learn more about the games we love and see videogames as a whole in a new, uglier, light - it's a good thing I promise.
You Saw: Cruelty Squad - 2021 Death Stranding - 2019 Bird Museum - 2020 Art Squool - 2020 Nier Automata - 2017 Mario 64 - 1996 Bennet Foddy's Getting over it - 2017 Super Mario Bros - 1985 Super Mario World 3D - 2013 New Super Mario Bros. U - 2012 Super Mario Galaxy 2 - 2012 A Hat In Time - 2017 The Hex - 2017 Super Mario Odyssey - 2017 The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth - 2014 Resident Evil - 1996 Resident Evil 2 Remake - 2019 Resident Evil 6 - 2012 Jazzpunk - 2014 The Stanley Parable - 2013 Furi - 2016 Jedi: Fallen Order - 2019 Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn - 2013 I Wanna Be The Guy - 2007 Sonic The Hedgehog (2006) - hmm i wonder XCOM 2 - 2016 Dark Souls 3 - 2016 Demon Souls Remake - 2020 Dark Souls - 2012 Bloodborne - 2015 Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 2019 Dark Souls 2 - 2014 Knock-Knock - 2013 Pathologic 2 - 2019 The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim - 2011 Goat Simulator - 2014 Surgeon Sim - 2013 Octodad: Dadliest Catch - 2014 Street Fighter 2: Turbo - 1992 Street Fighter 5 - 2016 Lego Builder's Journey - 2019 Journey - 2012 Horizon: Zero Dawn - 2017 Mario Tennis Aces - 2018 God of War - 2018 The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D - 2011 Deadly Premonition - 2010 It Takes 2 - 2021 Earth Defence Force 4.1 - 2016 Minecraft - 2011
