Відео

If you watched this video and think there's no need to play this game because of the contents of this video, I implore you to reconsider. My 2 favorite characters, Knower and Father, get basically 0 screentime here, and you are missing out on so so so so so much of this wonderful game. Thats not a knock on this video, i thought it was excellent, just felt the need to make this comment.

Hang on, I need to clip a few parts of this for MY therapist.

Thank you for this video. I enjoed my time with P3 dearly this year and P5 has been one of my favorite games ive played, but sexualization of female characters and homophobia have been a big stain on the series. The persona games tackle heavy themes in their stories so well with deep lovable characters, and i hope their storytelling can mature to remove these stains as well. I, too, hope for a Persona 6 that exists without caveats.

I just finished the game last night after slowly working at it over the year. This was such a lovely examination of the story and themes of the game and you pulled a lot from the game that i either missed or needed to rethink. Thank you for making this video. Hekki grace.

I don't think this game truly hit me until that final decision. That was the moment I knew this game would go down as one of the best stories in a game. In a game where your choices don't literally change the course of the game, but rather force the player to put themselves in the mind of the characters or to think for themselves, having it all build to the final choice was incredible.

“Potent recipe for a deep distaste of failure!” Not quite a direct quote but YUPPPP. It’s wild how deep those can hit. Gotta comment now because I am loving this and there’s so much to appreciate here!

Matt this video is really something special. Thanks for making it and sharing it with us. I don't know if I'll ever play Citizen Sleeper but the conversations surrounding it are fascinating

I hated every character by the end of the game, even Father. It reminds me of Wuthering Heights; while I recognize the absolute level of the achievement of the writing and the construction of this game, I just did NOT like it at all. (I will say I think the crazy maze layout of the main navigable space was probably not worth it even if it it reinforces some of the game's ideas). Just for anyone else out there looking at the gushing and thinking they might enjoy it: If you are the kind of person who needs likable characters in your game, you're not going to find anyone all that likable, especially not by the end.

Thank you so much for this video, Matt. My wife is queer and I’m always looking for ways to understand how her queerness informs her experience (outside of simply asking, again). Your discussion about queer failure, particularly how it can be warped by heteronormative perceptions, put words to something I have been trying to grasp for a long time. Also Lem and Mina forever there is no other ending ❤

Flow State is always full of so much insight, and I really felt the need to praise how much you speak about your own experiences and how the subjects you talk about relate to those experiences and the communities you participate in. Also I really got teared up over the story about your grandma. But, the fact that you have found a happy stable relationship with someone you love is wonderful. Hopefully this comment helps satiate the engagement gods watching this video perform lol

This was really well researched! I think you found an elegant synthesis of your sources’ positions. Great to hear from Gareth.

Just found this channel thanks to this video appearing in my timeline, its was REALLY interesting. Im also trying to make a game where failure is an important step in the gameplay and narrative but im afraid of people taking it the wrong way (and also add time management, and a lot of people are not open to time constraints, but i think its an important variable of how to mold the experience of the game im making). I cliked the video just for that and I think i got some really great help from it. I didnt know about Citizen Sleeper and its seems pretty interesting so i will also take a look into it. Once i finished the video i thought this was gonna be one those 100k subs channels with a lot of view on the video, but sadly i dont see thats the case, gonna substibe and watch more of your older videos and see what more video you add in your future :D EDIT Seems i have Citizen Sleeper thanks to humble monthly! Gonna try it then :D

Citizen Sleeper is currently on sale on Steam for $5.99 until December 19! (I just bought it thanks to this video.)

Thank you for making this video Matt! As both a fan of citizen sleeper and your thoughts on games this video was a treat to watch :)

I thought this was just going to be an interview with Gareth but you weaved together some really interesting topics to think about. Thanks.

Matt, this was beautifully made, and so thoughtful.

Failure is how we learn

Helping more people see this video 😉

Always so impressed with your writing and especially how you can weave this vulnerability into your story to enhance it and bring people further in. A sincere pleasure to have listened to this <3

Fantastic work as always, can’t wait for citizen sleeper 2!

This video better contain some Bo Ruberg...! EDIT: Heck yeah. And they are also publishing a book in early 2025!

just found you. I think i’ll stay ❤

Only tangentially related but figured it's worth bringing up since Citizen Sleeper is TTRPG-inspired. I'm currently running a biweekly game of DnD for a small group of close friends. I've always been of the mind that generally, if I'm setting up a combat-focused challenge, it should be tough enough that it feels rewarding to complete/bypass, but also easy enough to not make the players feel like I've just set them up for failure. Since we've been playing this game for years, we all have a lot of experience with its combat and character building rules, so I've historically tried to make my encounters on the harder side. But recently, we had a bad experience in which the players all died due to a dungeon with a very tough boss fight that I had gotten from a supplement. It was the worst session I've ever run in my 5 years of being a game master because the players clearly felt extremely shitty and frustrated. They told me they felt like there was no way they could have won, despite many others online describing how they found the boss fight perfectly winnable with some strategic thinking. That led me to run a session in which I deliberately stuck closer to the average difficulty recommendations. The players had absolutely no trouble with anything and there was no risk of anyone hitting 0 HP at any point. And it was the best session we'd played in a very long time! We were laughing and having some very fun roleplay moments the entire time. Normally the players would agree with me when I say that the possibility of failure has to exist in order for the game to feel meaningful. But I'm not sure if they *actually* believe that. The possibility of failure means exactly that - you might fail sometimes. But when it actually happens in a game of DnD? It hits so much harder than it would in a videogame that lets you quickly load an earlier checkpoint/save file. Better for the players to win instead of failing, because if they fail, it's possible that they failed because of factors beyond their control. It's, as you said in the conclusion, a power fantasy. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that my players think they value the possibility of failure, but they actually value the ILLUSION of the possibility of failure. (Though don't get me wrong, I'm sure if every session becomes a cake walk like that one, they would get sick of it eventually.)

Good stuff! Love to see games studies in the UA-cam space. I've only been diving into the field myself for the least couple years on a casual level, but it's been very rewarding. I've not read much Juul, but I kind of bounce of the idea of games needing failure, or even the illusion of its possibility. People love to set absurd records with their digital football players against incompetent AI. I find combat in most games to be aesthetic. I crank that difficulty down in a Bethesda game to the very bottom level. I've spent like 200 hours in The Old Republic treating it as single-player RPG where combat isn't what I'm there for even if it's the majority of the experience. I do find failure as narrative splintering a really interesting idea though. I mean, not shocking given my love for Bioware. They've obviously been doing such for decades. Supermassive is another big one who builds failure not just as a possibility but a major draw given the horror genre they work within. Earlier this year I played a truly fantastic on-going twine RPG, Wayfarer, that just might have given me the strongest sense of guilt over a non-failure state failure.

Thank you to Gareth for being a part of this video! They announced yesterday that Citizen Sleeper 2 launches on January 31st, 2025. I can't wait!

The voice acting in this game is the most ambitious and authentic I have ever heard. I've watched several playthroughs and on many occasions, when looking away from the screen, I couldn't tell if it was the game talking or the person playing it. It genuinely sounds like real people talking and not putting on any kinds of performance or trying to play the roles of characters. Also, Watcher's cries of agony during the interrogation made me feel sick to my stomach, that was harrowing. And Fixer's singing... Holy moly

The explanation of the cards and the reason for them with that explanation from Jake Solomon that I'd never heard before, about putting the randomness before rather than after, completely sold me on that system itself. Certain games really need to start costing less to make. Especially clearly riskier games like this. I mean, obviously you're gonna lose the graphics snobs if the graphics aren't insane or even on par with what they are in this game, but I feel like going for graphics more like PS3 to early PS4 and instead maybe making it more stylized, and saving a few bucks maybe could have helped the game. If the game was getting a sequel, I'd probably be in more of a hurry to buy the game.

Incredible video game and incredible essay. Thank you for sharing, hekki allmo

Its weird you didn't mention Jade Cocoon 1, and 2 where you can also combine monsters, with studio Ghibli doing the animation style, I always thought it was dumb that you couldn't combine monsters in pokemon like you can in the Jade cocoon games. Plus I find regular Pokemon to look a bit cheap, and bland tbh.

All this and the fact you don’t fight WITH the beasts, you fight AS the beasts

No way that first clip is an immediate spoiler ;-; tho it's my bad the game is already quite old

Red to Blue, excellent video and really happy I found it. Hekki ALLMO

I saw all the gameplay and thought that it wasn't gonna be for me, once I got it though, I loved it.

Soundtrack and art style reminiscent of FTL ah the good old days

Literally my favorite game

I agree. This is a great evolution to the battle, catch genre

The word "Capitalism" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your review. I loved this game, but the critiques seem to be aimed at something much deeper than free trade in an open market.

You could run a game in the exact same style set in the xmen universe. Imagine the main character develops their powers over the game

According to Rumors, Apple is building a game store with improvements to game center. Hopefully this will help with discoverability and maybe have some sales similar to steam.

whats the name of the song that starts at 56:26?

5:48 shin megami tensei released in 1992, pokemon red and blue in 1996

Played through this, and never had a game just left me with the feeling of emptiness and fulfillment. No words could describe this game. Its a GREAT game with a story that can be interpreted many ways. I love it. Will do another play through soon. Not to mention the music is just perfect for the setting.

Midnight suns is a good game, enjoyable but it is somewhat niche. It takes a certain kind of players to enjoy the banter between the heroes, the specific type of dialogue and hte kind of superhero life the game describes. In my personal view, this more than anything else is why the game is not more popular than it was/is.

Damn, I agree with almost all your points. I had a similar experience with P3 except I was the person who got recommended the game. [Spoilers for Persona 3 below] My friend recommended this Persona 3 FES to me, claiming it to be his "favourite game of all time" But then I got to the Yakushima Beach Episode, and the trans joke just blindsided me. Even as a person not part of the LGBTQ+ community, I felt really uncomfortable. I spoke to him about it the next day, and he felt quite guilty about that. Anyway if you thought the instances of bigotry in P3R and P5R were bad, P4 is even worse about it [Slight Spoilers for Persona 4] There's a character whose entire joke is that she's fat and nothing else. And unlike the Moon arcana in P3, she doesn't even have a social link to humanize her. She's also depicted as being weirdly horny and flirtatious. There's also a character who is heavily implied to be bisexual and one of your teammates acts incredibly bigoted towards him in one scene, while you don't get the option to call him out. And then there's the Naoto discourse which is just a goddamn minefield

dude! try Coromon!

18:18 Could also be a critique of capitalist instances generating entertainment (like Hollywood, private TV companies etc.) often produce capitalist-critical media, while that is there main source of maintaining those systems. Like (a recent, certainly not the best, example): Disney producing a new Alien Movie with is stuffed with so much "in your face" critique, it's so ironic and somehow disturbing thinking of it coming from Disney.

Thanks for the shout out, great video! :)

I dont know if you are a Sonic fan, but i do recommend Sonic Generations. But i do have to clarify this: the controls/physics of Class Sonic arent the greatest. There are other Sonic games I can recommend, like Sonic Colors(if you dont mind playing forced padding. Im referring to Acts 3 to 6 of every world.) I also choose Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 and Knuckles(or Sonic 3, and Sonic and Knuckles) Sonic Mania is also a good one! However... i dont knoe if you should play this one before, or after Sonic 2 or Sonic 3K. I also choose Sonic Advance 1, even if i dont think its as good as all of the games i mentioned previously. Finally, Shadow Generations(from Sonic X Shadow Generations) i think that its a pretty good game! (However, this also has forced padding. You have to clear all of the missions in to unlock the bosses/final boss. However, the mission arent that bad.) I dont know if the remaster of Sonic Gens on Sonic x Shadow Gens is worse. Anyways, this should be it! (Games like Sonic 1 and CD should be played after playing at least Sonic 2 and Sonic3K.)

Speaking about that skimpy outfit... there is also versions for Mitsuru and Fuuka (i think it was called the Battle Panties. Well, ik that it was called that in FES and Portable)

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