I follow your video essay playlist. It’s been a great source of entertainment for me. That’s how I found this video. Thanks Jacob for doing that, I know you don’t have to.
"There are more important things than living." I remember hearing that this quote existed, and looking up the interview to figure out if more of the speech gave better context. I'm glad you showed that context. Great video as always
@@chriss780 you... know it's the lockdowns that caused the explosion in wealth for the already wealthy right? They convinced us all to stay at home and be spoonfed by amazon and "essential businesses" while any business too small to have a lobbyist argue it's case was shut down and destroyed "for our own good". We watched the politicians all breaking their own rules but for some reason everyone defends the rules they made. They aren't scared but they sure want us to be. You could slip and fall in the bathroom. Will you pee the bed to avoid that risk? What he said is completely reasonable, everything is a war of risk vs reward, why are we all pretending that lockdowns and isolation doesn't also come with a cost of human lives?
@@Alkerae The lockdowns didn't work not because they were an overreaction, those in power simply put American lives under their donors. We could've gotten through it just fine (like NZ, Taiwan, etc) if our representatives gave a damn when handling the covid relief bills but that's completely out of our hands. Our stimulus checks were *nothing* compared to countries more democratic than ours as most of the spending went towards bailing out banks and cushioning corporations. At least advocate for some actual accountability before you start blaming the people for working with what they've got.
"Our world might have fewer kaijus, or giant robots, or underground cities with digital skyboxes. But often enough, our skies are just as red." Wow. That...that gave me chills. Thank you for such a cool video! I'll have to check out this game.
"Nothing ... can stop the kaiju, or the gunfire, or the encroaching end of times, but we *can* sell you a way to ignore the problem a little bit better!" The depressing thing is that outside of the people actively trying to make things worse, this is the prevailing attitude. I could actually see a marketer today saying this in earnest as a positive thing and that really messes me up.
This is a sentiment that I have heard from a number of local businesses when they get push back from left leaning groups about one thing or another, they just say "I can't fix those problems, I'm just trying to help people get through their day", "relax and forget their problems" or "live a more comfortable life" or other things like that.
As someone who played a good chunk of this game knowing it was saying something but not able to fully comprehend, thank you for spelling it out. That understanding has elevated the game for me and while I wish I didn't have to be spoon fed, I think this was an excellent summary of the themes and larger picture. I hope the developer would agree and don't want to assume anything however.
I think a good lesson to be learned from this is if you like a game, it's a good idea to search additional info about it and the person who made it. I don't think Errant Signal "got" the message because he's smarter than us, rather it's because he read about Naphtali Faulkner's experience and all the issues that inspired this game.
I love the subtle build up of the reality of the war situation At first is all "Yeah let's get those aliens, Semper Fi, Hoora Hoora" And then you realize the death toll only increases and the disaster gets closer and closer It almost has this horror feel to it, like a denail till the truth moment, realizing not only how much you were lied to but how unprepared you were to deal with the truth
One thing to note about the name "red sky generation" is that during the Australian Bushfires, the sky in NZ turned red/orange from the smoke. So I think there is definitely an extra layer there about massive disasters we have no involvement in that we are helpless to stop that affect us anyway. It is also very weird to see a game set in the town I grew up in. I never thought I'd see Tauranga in a video game.
I was surfing on the sandbar off Ngunguru estuary In January 2020, the sky was ochre and the sun was a dull white circle the size of a twenty cent coin. Friends from other parts of the country were posting pics of orange clouds over the Auckland CBD, of the southern glaciers stained piss-yellow by the smoke. Now is the time of monsters etc etc.
If we frame it around the age of the protagonist and his friends, Gen Alpha (kids born after 2010) almost certainly are. That is to say young adults who have only known apocalypse, strife and hopelessness. They'll be in their 20s when the shit starts really hitting the fan in the 2030s -- mass migration, power grid failures, swathes of earth becoming uninhabitable and weather that will make 2021 feel like a stroll down a sunny Caribbean beach. The 2030s will probably be the decade where modern life as we know it grinds to a halt. They're already reaching ages where they can start internalizing and understanding what's happening. Imagine being an 11-year-old whose worldviews have been informed by things like Donald Trump's election, COVID, a neoliberal shell game economy in precipitous freefall and weekly "once a century" natural disasters. Us millenials and zoomers are already disillusioned and nihilistic hedonists. Alpha is gonna show us how to really party under a red sky.
@@nathanb9565 The end of the world will not come. We are already right in the midst of it. The worst is yet to come as you point out. Sitting in a car with a driver unwilling to let go of the gas pedal, the guy in the front seat claiming there is no wall in front of us and a disillusioned child next to me is fucking depressing.
Forgive me if I misunderstood, but like, aren't we? The red sky is a literal yearly fixture now, for me at least. We aren't the last generation, but we're the Umarangi generation
Szymborska’s poem “The Beginning and the End” writes so effectively about the ways that hegemonic narrative will avoid looking at the roots of conflict and suffering in the context of war.
"Umurangi Generation is one of the most resonant games to the time we're living in that I've ever played." Here's hoping that someday it doesn't resonate at all, Chris. I really don't want to be the last generation.
@@Silverizaelhello. 2 years later here. Billionaires took over social media and want to go to mars instead of fight climate change. The pandemic’s over. Fascism is still winning over tons of people for some reason. I can’t say it’s gotten much better.
I actually very recently played this game for my channel after hearing a review for Nitro rad. You noticed a number of things that I didn't, like the fact that it takes place entirely Underground where is the main game takes place entirely on the surface. The fact that they have artificial skys down there completely threw me off. One thing that someone pointed out to me is that Maxine, is very likely related to the main character. You can find a picture of her hanging out with all of your friends, the Penguin and the main character whose face you finally seeing the last level. They look very similar and even if they aren't related, she was clearly part of their friend group. The buyer for the photos is a newspaper but I didn't find any place that tells you this in game, only through information released by the developer on Wikipedia.
Yesss, I was really hoping you'd tackle this game at some point. This essay was fantastic, and I'm definitely giving Faulkner's presentation another watch soon after this.
it might be worth noting that there's a lot of american flags in that game for aotearoa, especially underground and how this relates to people like peter thiel and gabe newell, wealthy american men, have already stated buying citizenship with the intention of sheltering here. hell gabe newell has been here for the entire pandemic.
Campster: "an indie game that most people probably haven't heard of" Me, out of touch with reality: I mean it won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at IGF, it's a big deal The Comments: "thank you so much for introducing this game to me!"
@@Crispman_777 It's short for Independent Games Festival. Like most things it has a page on wiki if you want the details, but it's pretty much what it sounds like when it isn't just initials. And no, I didn't know what it stood for either until I looked it up from the initials, the word "winner" and the title of the game. CheesecakeMilitia may be overrating how big a deal it is outside of indie gaming circles, or we may just be out of the loop. I'm sure either of us could come up with other plausible meanings for that abbreviation - the Internet Governance Forum springs to mind, and google seems to think the primary meaning involves something called insulin-like growth factors.
This is probably the only game I'd ever want adapted into a movie. Not because it would deliver its story better on movie form, it definitely wouldn't, but because more people need to see this shit and it's just a more accessible medium.
Maybe one of the most underappreciated channels in this whole platform. Always happy to watch your videos. They make me feel artistically seen. You have a beautiful brain.
This is an amazing video about an amazing game, I'm still taking it in after watching it. I'm gen Z, 20 years old at this point. I'm not old enough to remember a pre-9/11 America, this streak of surveillance, militarism, and nationalism are all I've ever known. It breaks my heart to realize that our Red Sky Generation is probably already alive, people who won't know anything but a world being destroyed and governments pretending there's no solution.
My dude. Rough... but take heart we gotta fix things. I'm a few years older than yourself, but I'll be here for as long as I can trying to make change. Hang in there.
While it isn't to the same extent, and has less emphasis on photography, I think INFRA also manages to handle the concept of "photographing the ways capitalism is failing society" pretty well.
Hey Chris first of all dope to see more people talk about a game set in Aotearoa New Zealand, I haven't had the time to properly sit with this game so I'm saving your video for a later date but I just wanna say if you didn't realize this video is perfectly timed with Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Māori language week) and that's just rad as hell
I think this is the best video you've had to date, and in a series of amazing videos that's saying a lot. You've also highlighted a game and an artist that deserves all the credit he has gotten and then some.
There's something really sad about companies capitalizing on disasters as they get worse and worse. Because when all is said and done, all the money in the world won't matter when the system collapses. It's just like how it's more profitable to sell a treatment then the cure. Who cares about solving the problem, if the problem is making me money, right?
I realize I'm over a year out from this video, and coming back to it, but... I gotta say I'm kinda glad I did. I remember hearing the basic premise and hopping out to play it for myself. And, in hindsight I kinda have something of a story that I'm not sure how *I* feel about. I remember doing my first playthrough on stream because... well, streamer and I wanted something that related to my real life hobbies but also wouldn't last multiple streams. I went in to it with very little context, and even as I kinda pieced the narrative together, I admit a lot of the neoliberal critique kinda went over my head. And then I got to the last segment of the main game. It was... a surreal feeling not having the camera immediately available as I kinda just explored the area leading up to that framing of the kaiju perched on a pillar as ethereal people watched, and remember thinking that the visual effect on the people was visually more interesting in that moment, and when the game asked me to take that last picture, I turned my camera not on the kaiju... but the ghosts. I didn't think much of anything about it at the time, I didn't realize that's how the game was going to transition into credits, and I closed out the stream with some small talk and put the game down. But... ever since there was this weird nagging feeling that something was... missing. So I started going back to the reviews and whatnot that I'd seen recommending the game and watched them to full, and noticed people were by and large ending their playthroughs on pictures of the kaiju. I told myself that maybe there was something to my picture of the ghosts, focusing on the human element rather than the destructive, while... somehow managing to not revisit this video until now. ...Now I have to wonder if I was just...on some level conditioned to not look at the cause. I admit, in the last year or so I've really struggled with thinking much about politics and the like because every time I do it ends on this nihilistic feedback loop that has put me in some... very dark moods, let's say. I don't know if I'm part of the problem - I do all I can to exercise my all too limited political power for good, but keep asking "Is that enough?" I don't... know where I'm going with this, and considering I'm on my fourth paragraph in a youtube comment, I may need to just... stop and try to get some sleep, but... god Umurangi Generation is still something very **VERY** present in my thoughts, well over a year later. ...Think I might have to get the dlc and do a replay on stream when I can.
This is my first time watching Day-of-Release and I must say - thanks for doing what you do, brother! I spent an entire day last week binging your videos while I was feeling down, and they really hit the spot. Quality and intellectual original content. Nothing quite like it!
♥ the inclusion of Freeplay talks here. It's such an incredibly under utilised resource especially given some of the amazing talks they've had recently
Good video, but did you check out Faulkner's interview with Super Bunny Hop? Thing's like 3 hours and is fantastic. He also contextualizes the costs at the end of the game as in some ways it's own victory, as you are forcing these assholes to bleed themselves out and waste an inordinate amount of resources to inevitably lose. If you haven't, check that interview.
Oof, that concept of a spiteful "victory" doesn't sit well with me. Maybe I'm still too much of an optimist to believe that's all we can aspire to, or to even believe that would be a satisfying thing to aspire to even under the right circumstances. Or maybe it's the fact that so many in the far right seem to take that spite victory narrative to heart... It's something to think about, at the very least.
(18:48) I feel it’s worth noting that the anti-fraternization poster explicitly states to “not ruin your *sorority* [social group for women, presumably group of women pilots in this case] with a fling”, with a poster literally begging the viewer to make babies right next to it. Encouraging heteronormativity, even during the apocalypse (probably in a desperate bid to make up for the massive amount of people dying, as so often lgbt+ ppl and other minorities are thrown under the bus whenever ppl in power feel concerned over population/birthrates, rather than dealing with the current and pressing issues everyone is dealing with at that moment). Also is anyone else getting vague Gunbuster vibes from their leotard-like pilot uniforms (plus the red headband wrapped around that pilot’s head, just like Noriko, the protagonist of Gunbuster)? A reference to it can also be drawing attention to that idea since Gunbuster is also a mech anime about humans fighting apocalyptic kaiju that just so happens to have some sapphic subtext. Edit: No, being against heteronormativity doesn’t mean ‘straight bad’, it means ‘i think it’s wrong that society pressures people to view heterosexuality as the default and any sexual orientation outside of that as being abnormal, as this view readily evolves into homophobia and makes it all the more difficult for LGBT+ people to accept themselves but also please do research because it’s a larger and more complex concept than one dumbass whose wasting their time on the comment section of a youtube video (me) to properly and thoroughly discuss’. No, not all comments or criticisms in the way heterosexuality is portrayed or framed within media, society, and so on is anti-straight, I promise it isn’t an attack on you. That is, except in this case. Personally, I am openly heterophobic. You all make me sick and are a danger to children. Despite that I hope you all heal from your unnatural lifestyle
I mean that final bit of the DLC with all the costs of the UN deployment was ripped straight from the final episode of gunbuster, just in a different context.
Hurts to know that despite the awards this game is winning and all the positive press it gets, the people who would most appreciate/benefit playing it don't even know it exists. I mean for gods sake it literally sells itself as "Pokémon Snap w/ Godzilla", why isn't this a household name?!
Because Pokémon Snap + anything sounds like a bad game to a lot of people, photography games would probably do a lot better if they could manage to distance themselves in peoples minds from things like Pokémon Snap.
@@CatWithAHat2HD I am not saying I am lashing out, I am saying my anger is justified and gives me strength. In the current state of the world, anger is the only rational reaction. Please don't patronize me, I know what acting in a blinding rage looks and feels like. This is not that.
Amazing video, really on par with some of your best. When you talked about being against racism "in theory" I immediately thought of that section of Inside, and the clip you put after made me feel so understood. It's nice to know you're thinking about it too. Again, incredible video
That last few moments of this video is just so goddamn good. This video is a masterpiece. I'm glad you covered this game, this game really deserves all the credit it gets
While Beyond Good and Evil's photography wasn't it's core game loop, it's co-existence with the core plot of of a government cover-up does seem to fit with what you were talking about here.
This is my favourite game that I can't recommend because I much rather play something that gives me a little hope than a mirror of my reality and desperately grasping at straws. Fucking amazing.
I lived in regional NSW during the black summer fire season - it's unreal to see a game that captures the feeling of being stuck in a disaster and surrounded by shallow, corporate responses and poor government leadership. Great analysis mate.
I played this game a while ago after it released but I didn't get around to play the DLC, that last part with the protest kind of hit close home to me really. In my life I have seen more cops trying to shoot and beat the shit out of my friends and me that actually protecting or helping people. I'll get around to play it now. Great vid al always.
Gods I feel this so hard. I feel like we have watched record fire after fire for nearly the last 10 years now each worse than the last, now we have a plague with the promise of more on the way it feels like the world is ending and yet everyday we have to go to work and every month pay the rent it feels deceptively oppressively normal. This cant last forever and when it breaks what then?
Thanks for making this video. It was really nice to hear someone articulate a lot of things and I’ve been feeling about the world. Guess I’ll have to give the game a go.
God I fucking feel everything that went into this game. What a beautiful expression of what is wrong in the world. This hits on a lot of the emotions I feel in the day to day living in America. It feels like companies, government organizations, etc are all deluding the populace day in and day out. To call out this mass hysteria and delusion leaves one ostracized until what they were talking about becomes so obvious no one can ignore. It's why I've started spending more time in the woods. I'm enjoying something which seems primordial, unaffected by the decay of our society. In all honesty it's one of the only things that brings me calm, the notion that even when we destroy ourselves there will still be the verdant clearings long after we cease to exist.
Wew good game, cool to see people making stuff about it. ThorHighHeels is an awesome musician and content creator! ALSO YOU CAN EXPAND THE POSTCARDS?! PS: Maxine best girl, change my mind. You can't, I won't let you.
Umarangi generation has become one of my fave game ever. All the little personal stories about the protagonists and their friends, the medium ones about corporations and the big ones about goverments and the end of the world mix so organically. It feels true and real, it made me cry several times not even from just sadness but "emotional weight"
The most sobering thing I've seen was my new boss telling me that he didn't give a damn if Biden or Trump was worse--he was just happy that he wasn't seeing it on Twitter all the time. And I understand. I really do. I hate it, but I also understand it.
@@Strideo1 neoliberalism is just distilled classical liberalism its abstract focus on negative INDIVIDUAL rights is key to the regime of private property and the maintenance of class privilege, if you say you protect "freedom or rights" the question is "right to what?" they always mean whenever they reference "human rights" the rights of capitol to expand unimpeded and the rights of the rich to oppresses us without restriction thats the only right they care about "free speech" to them means the right of billionaires to own the airwaves and control what we see, there conception of it couldn't care less about protesters having their skulls cracked or activists being arrested by police
I'm glad I didn't just go out and buy it before the spoilers. Before hand it sounded like THPS3 but with urban photography, which sounds great. I probably would have been overly bummed out if I played this without knowing what I was getting into. I have yet to experience more of the red sky then the moon or the red sunsets from wild fires.But this entire month there has been a haze half of the days we have sun. It looks like a cloudy day, but the light coming in through the windows is orange, not white. I feel weird about it, as the warmer light and cooler shadows when I first saw them reminded me of theater. Now that this has been happening for the past 5 to 6 years, it is a reminder of of how a friend of mine has asthma, making an aqi above 75 dangerous, about how the pharmacist that gave me my last flu shot had to abandon her home and still come to work the next day, that we don't minimize smoke by doing controlled burns in most of the Oregon and Washington area despite wildfire being common before smoky the bear and European farming practices made the fires worse, that a problem with clear and obvious solutions of burning less or no oil is being treated like something impossible. I wish it could be whimsical again, like it was the first time I saw it, but now it is haze floating above us threatening to drop, reminding me of a problem I can't make a difference in solving on my own. I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, which has the largest park inside of city limits, Forest park. It will burn in my lifetime, but I don't know when. And it scares me how close so many people live to the forest, and how little control so many in the city have on the 100ft from their home that is important to stop your house from burning.
Umurangi has been on my "I will pick this up someday" list for a while, and this has pushed it a lot closer to the front of the line. Especially with Tali's comments around Neoliberalism as a force overwhelmingly focused on selling you good vibes, I'm struck by the sort of implicit self- and/or player-loathing of the speedrun-for-more-loot mechanic. Like... would you like to breezily zip past everything going on in the game in the name of cool swag that will do nothing to materially change the world or your impact on it? I don't get a sense of whether this is a sort of "We are all complicit in modern consumption" versus "Yeah you morons eat this shit up", but I also wonder if it isn't a little combination of both.
Hey, so showing up 9 months late. yeah I know. But no, unless you're either lucky or looking up a guide some of the objectives are usually going to take you long enough you will have to experience the level to find them.
The choice of a colonial organism as the end of the world was also very good. It is the right level of on-the-nose allegory for the rest of the game, the end of the world is ultimately the work of colonies. It also works well for Sci-fi. A singular jellyfish blown up to the size of a skyscraper might beggar belief, but this Kaiju is not a single organism. It's millions of organisms working in tandem, a city all in its own right, sweeping our blighted facsimiles from this earth.
Seeing that news footage absolutely broke me. That was...two years ago...yet it simultaneously feels like last month & ten years ago at the same time. I'm just so, so tired.
God this rules, Chris (the video, not the end of the world. That's not as good.)
Oh hey it's you
Oh hey Jacob.
You rule
Thank for ur videos Mr. Geller :3
I follow your video essay playlist. It’s been a great source of entertainment for me. That’s how I found this video. Thanks Jacob for doing that, I know you don’t have to.
I am here because you brought me here Jacob
CELEBRITY GUEST DJ TARIQ
There he is
Hey man - love your crap. Keep it up!
The high heels themselves.
WATCH HIS VIDEOS!!!!!
My boy Thor! ya rock dude.
YESSIR
The furry rantsona at 20:36 frustratingly bashing anyone who dares to speak of a problem was perfect to the point it physically hurt.
Thank you for pointing out the "Reasonablist Giraffe".
Shoutout to ThorHighHeels for being an excellent composer + top tier UA-camr
What? He did the soundtrack for this?
@@deathdoor Yup
"There are more important things than living." I remember hearing that this quote existed, and looking up the interview to figure out if more of the speech gave better context. I'm glad you showed that context.
Great video as always
I'd call it an example of our politicians at work, but that piece of human garbage isn't one of *my* politicians, thankfully.
i love his answer to what that thing is, is "a few rich people gaining an ungodly amount of wealth
@@chriss780 you... know it's the lockdowns that caused the explosion in wealth for the already wealthy right? They convinced us all to stay at home and be spoonfed by amazon and "essential businesses" while any business too small to have a lobbyist argue it's case was shut down and destroyed "for our own good". We watched the politicians all breaking their own rules but for some reason everyone defends the rules they made. They aren't scared but they sure want us to be.
You could slip and fall in the bathroom. Will you pee the bed to avoid that risk? What he said is completely reasonable, everything is a war of risk vs reward, why are we all pretending that lockdowns and isolation doesn't also come with a cost of human lives?
@@Alkerae The lockdowns didn't work not because they were an overreaction, those in power simply put American lives under their donors. We could've gotten through it just fine (like NZ, Taiwan, etc) if our representatives gave a damn when handling the covid relief bills but that's completely out of our hands. Our stimulus checks were *nothing* compared to countries more democratic than ours as most of the spending went towards bailing out banks and cushioning corporations. At least advocate for some actual accountability before you start blaming the people for working with what they've got.
"Our world might have fewer kaijus, or giant robots, or underground cities with digital skyboxes. But often enough, our skies are just as red."
Wow. That...that gave me chills. Thank you for such a cool video! I'll have to check out this game.
"Nothing ... can stop the kaiju, or the gunfire, or the encroaching end of times, but we *can* sell you a way to ignore the problem a little bit better!"
The depressing thing is that outside of the people actively trying to make things worse, this is the prevailing attitude. I could actually see a marketer today saying this in earnest as a positive thing and that really messes me up.
This is a sentiment that I have heard from a number of local businesses when they get push back from left leaning groups about one thing or another, they just say "I can't fix those problems, I'm just trying to help people get through their day", "relax and forget their problems" or "live a more comfortable life" or other things like that.
I wouldn't be surprised if that actually happened in an area that is facing a lot of police action or gang violence.
As someone who played a good chunk of this game knowing it was saying something but not able to fully comprehend, thank you for spelling it out. That understanding has elevated the game for me and while I wish I didn't have to be spoon fed, I think this was an excellent summary of the themes and larger picture. I hope the developer would agree and don't want to assume anything however.
I think a good lesson to be learned from this is if you like a game, it's a good idea to search additional info about it and the person who made it. I don't think Errant Signal "got" the message because he's smarter than us, rather it's because he read about Naphtali Faulkner's experience and all the issues that inspired this game.
I love the subtle build up of the reality of the war situation
At first is all "Yeah let's get those aliens, Semper Fi, Hoora Hoora"
And then you realize the death toll only increases and the disaster gets closer and closer
It almost has this horror feel to it, like a denail till the truth moment, realizing not only how much you were lied to but how unprepared you were to deal with the truth
You can actually find both halves of the locket in that level. :(
I just found them and my heart fucking broke
One thing to note about the name "red sky generation" is that during the Australian Bushfires, the sky in NZ turned red/orange from the smoke. So I think there is definitely an extra layer there about massive disasters we have no involvement in that we are helpless to stop that affect us anyway.
It is also very weird to see a game set in the town I grew up in. I never thought I'd see Tauranga in a video game.
It's even cooler to see Overseas UA-camrs as awesome as Campster tackling a game from Aotearoa!
I was surfing on the sandbar off Ngunguru estuary In January 2020, the sky was ochre and the sun was a dull white circle the size of a twenty cent coin. Friends from other parts of the country were posting pics of orange clouds over the Auckland CBD, of the southern glaciers stained piss-yellow by the smoke. Now is the time of monsters etc etc.
My boy ThorHighHeels did some baller music to a baller game
As The Grand Archpriest of The Church of the Algorithm, I bless this video with a comment.
Why haven't I played this yet? I wanted a game about being a photojournalist since I played Beyond Good & Evil.
As an acolyte of the church I'm here to assist by replying to this comment to give the illusion of additional discourse
Variables be random
GLORY UNTO THE ALGORITHM
Here praying we are not the Umarangi Generation
If we frame it around the age of the protagonist and his friends, Gen Alpha (kids born after 2010) almost certainly are. That is to say young adults who have only known apocalypse, strife and hopelessness. They'll be in their 20s when the shit starts really hitting the fan in the 2030s -- mass migration, power grid failures, swathes of earth becoming uninhabitable and weather that will make 2021 feel like a stroll down a sunny Caribbean beach. The 2030s will probably be the decade where modern life as we know it grinds to a halt. They're already reaching ages where they can start internalizing and understanding what's happening. Imagine being an 11-year-old whose worldviews have been informed by things like Donald Trump's election, COVID, a neoliberal shell game economy in precipitous freefall and weekly "once a century" natural disasters. Us millenials and zoomers are already disillusioned and nihilistic hedonists. Alpha is gonna show us how to really party under a red sky.
@@nathanb9565 The end of the world will not come. We are already right in the midst of it. The worst is yet to come as you point out. Sitting in a car with a driver unwilling to let go of the gas pedal, the guy in the front seat claiming there is no wall in front of us and a disillusioned child next to me is fucking depressing.
Forgive me if I misunderstood, but like, aren't we? The red sky is a literal yearly fixture now, for me at least.
We aren't the last generation, but we're the Umarangi generation
Jebus this is a good video. You do an amazing job discussing how this game works and why it's so chillingly effective, even while being so chill
Szymborska’s poem “The Beginning and the End” writes so effectively about the ways that hegemonic narrative will avoid looking at the roots of conflict and suffering in the context of war.
Thanks for the recommendation!
"Don't start from the good old days, start from the bad new ones" - Bertholt Brecht
Feels like an older classic episode of Errant Signal
"Umurangi Generation is one of the most resonant games to the time we're living in that I've ever played."
Here's hoping that someday it doesn't resonate at all, Chris. I really don't want to be the last generation.
How's that going, by the way, 5 months later?
@@Silverizaelhello. 2 years later here. Billionaires took over social media and want to go to mars instead of fight climate change. The pandemic’s over. Fascism is still winning over tons of people for some reason. I can’t say it’s gotten much better.
I actually very recently played this game for my channel after hearing a review for Nitro rad. You noticed a number of things that I didn't, like the fact that it takes place entirely Underground where is the main game takes place entirely on the surface. The fact that they have artificial skys down there completely threw me off. One thing that someone pointed out to me is that Maxine, is very likely related to the main character. You can find a picture of her hanging out with all of your friends, the Penguin and the main character whose face you finally seeing the last level. They look very similar and even if they aren't related, she was clearly part of their friend group. The buyer for the photos is a newspaper but I didn't find any place that tells you this in game, only through information released by the developer on Wikipedia.
Yesss, I was really hoping you'd tackle this game at some point. This essay was fantastic, and I'm definitely giving Faulkner's presentation another watch soon after this.
As an Australian with asthma, who lived through the bushfires last year, this resonates so hard. Both the game and the analysis. Thank you.
it might be worth noting that there's a lot of american flags in that game for aotearoa, especially underground and how this relates to people like peter thiel and gabe newell, wealthy american men, have already stated buying citizenship with the intention of sheltering here. hell gabe newell has been here for the entire pandemic.
also shout out to YRN
Campster: "an indie game that most people probably haven't heard of"
Me, out of touch with reality: I mean it won the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at IGF, it's a big deal
The Comments: "thank you so much for introducing this game to me!"
I don't even know what IGF is
@@Crispman_777 It's short for Independent Games Festival. Like most things it has a page on wiki if you want the details, but it's pretty much what it sounds like when it isn't just initials. And no, I didn't know what it stood for either until I looked it up from the initials, the word "winner" and the title of the game. CheesecakeMilitia may be overrating how big a deal it is outside of indie gaming circles, or we may just be out of the loop. I'm sure either of us could come up with other plausible meanings for that abbreviation - the Internet Governance Forum springs to mind, and google seems to think the primary meaning involves something called insulin-like growth factors.
It won the who at the what, now
> Video game awards
> Big deal
Choose one
@@richmcgee434 It was CheesecakeMilitia realising that it's not normal to know the things they know.
This is probably the only game I'd ever want adapted into a movie. Not because it would deliver its story better on movie form, it definitely wouldn't, but because more people need to see this shit and it's just a more accessible medium.
Maybe one of the most underappreciated channels in this whole platform. Always happy to watch your videos. They make me feel artistically seen. You have a beautiful brain.
Oof.
We all want the Roddenberry but we are getting the Ridley Scott.
This is an amazing video about an amazing game, I'm still taking it in after watching it. I'm gen Z, 20 years old at this point. I'm not old enough to remember a pre-9/11 America, this streak of surveillance, militarism, and nationalism are all I've ever known. It breaks my heart to realize that our Red Sky Generation is probably already alive, people who won't know anything but a world being destroyed and governments pretending there's no solution.
My dude. Rough... but take heart we gotta fix things. I'm a few years older than yourself, but I'll be here for as long as I can trying to make change. Hang in there.
While it isn't to the same extent, and has less emphasis on photography, I think INFRA also manages to handle the concept of "photographing the ways capitalism is failing society" pretty well.
Hey Chris first of all dope to see more people talk about a game set in Aotearoa New Zealand, I haven't had the time to properly sit with this game so I'm saving your video for a later date but I just wanna say if you didn't realize this video is perfectly timed with Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori (Māori language week) and that's just rad as hell
Have I already watched SuperBunnyhop's video on this? Yes.
Do I totally wanna hear more about this cool game. You bet.
This is the best video you've made yet, massive props
This looks legitimately fascinating. Thanks for spotlighting this game
I think this is the best video you've had to date, and in a series of amazing videos that's saying a lot. You've also highlighted a game and an artist that deserves all the credit he has gotten and then some.
There's something really sad about companies capitalizing on disasters as they get worse and worse. Because when all is said and done, all the money in the world won't matter when the system collapses. It's just like how it's more profitable to sell a treatment then the cure. Who cares about solving the problem, if the problem is making me money, right?
I have shared this to all my friends. I love this analysis and I love this game.
I realize I'm over a year out from this video, and coming back to it, but... I gotta say I'm kinda glad I did. I remember hearing the basic premise and hopping out to play it for myself. And, in hindsight I kinda have something of a story that I'm not sure how *I* feel about. I remember doing my first playthrough on stream because... well, streamer and I wanted something that related to my real life hobbies but also wouldn't last multiple streams. I went in to it with very little context, and even as I kinda pieced the narrative together, I admit a lot of the neoliberal critique kinda went over my head. And then I got to the last segment of the main game.
It was... a surreal feeling not having the camera immediately available as I kinda just explored the area leading up to that framing of the kaiju perched on a pillar as ethereal people watched, and remember thinking that the visual effect on the people was visually more interesting in that moment, and when the game asked me to take that last picture, I turned my camera not on the kaiju... but the ghosts. I didn't think much of anything about it at the time, I didn't realize that's how the game was going to transition into credits, and I closed out the stream with some small talk and put the game down. But... ever since there was this weird nagging feeling that something was... missing. So I started going back to the reviews and whatnot that I'd seen recommending the game and watched them to full, and noticed people were by and large ending their playthroughs on pictures of the kaiju. I told myself that maybe there was something to my picture of the ghosts, focusing on the human element rather than the destructive, while... somehow managing to not revisit this video until now.
...Now I have to wonder if I was just...on some level conditioned to not look at the cause. I admit, in the last year or so I've really struggled with thinking much about politics and the like because every time I do it ends on this nihilistic feedback loop that has put me in some... very dark moods, let's say. I don't know if I'm part of the problem - I do all I can to exercise my all too limited political power for good, but keep asking "Is that enough?"
I don't... know where I'm going with this, and considering I'm on my fourth paragraph in a youtube comment, I may need to just... stop and try to get some sleep, but... god Umurangi Generation is still something very **VERY** present in my thoughts, well over a year later. ...Think I might have to get the dlc and do a replay on stream when I can.
This is my first time watching Day-of-Release and I must say - thanks for doing what you do, brother! I spent an entire day last week binging your videos while I was feeling down, and they really hit the spot. Quality and intellectual original content. Nothing quite like it!
♥ the inclusion of Freeplay talks here. It's such an incredibly under utilised resource especially given some of the amazing talks they've had recently
Good video, but did you check out Faulkner's interview with Super Bunny Hop? Thing's like 3 hours and is fantastic. He also contextualizes the costs at the end of the game as in some ways it's own victory, as you are forcing these assholes to bleed themselves out and waste an inordinate amount of resources to inevitably lose. If you haven't, check that interview.
Oof, that concept of a spiteful "victory" doesn't sit well with me. Maybe I'm still too much of an optimist to believe that's all we can aspire to, or to even believe that would be a satisfying thing to aspire to even under the right circumstances. Or maybe it's the fact that so many in the far right seem to take that spite victory narrative to heart... It's something to think about, at the very least.
Ohhhh damn so happy you covered this! I love this game, it's so damn good on so many levels!
yeah I said damn twice.
This is one of your best videos, I think. Really, really excellent work.
(18:48) I feel it’s worth noting that the anti-fraternization poster explicitly states to “not ruin your *sorority* [social group for women, presumably group of women pilots in this case] with a fling”, with a poster literally begging the viewer to make babies right next to it.
Encouraging heteronormativity, even during the apocalypse (probably in a desperate bid to make up for the massive amount of people dying, as so often lgbt+ ppl and other minorities are thrown under the bus whenever ppl in power feel concerned over population/birthrates, rather than dealing with the current and pressing issues everyone is dealing with at that moment).
Also is anyone else getting vague Gunbuster vibes from their leotard-like pilot uniforms (plus the red headband wrapped around that pilot’s head, just like Noriko, the protagonist of Gunbuster)? A reference to it can also be drawing attention to that idea since Gunbuster is also a mech anime about humans fighting apocalyptic kaiju that just so happens to have some sapphic subtext.
Edit: No, being against heteronormativity doesn’t mean ‘straight bad’, it means ‘i think it’s wrong that society pressures people to view heterosexuality as the default and any sexual orientation outside of that as being abnormal, as this view readily evolves into homophobia and makes it all the more difficult for LGBT+ people to accept themselves but also please do research because it’s a larger and more complex concept than one dumbass whose wasting their time on the comment section of a youtube video (me) to properly and thoroughly discuss’. No, not all comments or criticisms in the way heterosexuality is portrayed or framed within media, society, and so on is anti-straight, I promise it isn’t an attack on you.
That is, except in this case. Personally, I am openly heterophobic. You all make me sick and are a danger to children. Despite that I hope you all heal from your unnatural lifestyle
I mean that final bit of the DLC with all the costs of the UN deployment was ripped straight from the final episode of gunbuster, just in a different context.
Imagine thinking "straight bad, non-straight good".
@@thebigdawgj this isn't "thinking 'straight bad, non-straight good'", it's reasoning "they want us to think non-straight bad", no more, no less.
@@Elvalley
That's not how the post reads.
@@thebigdawgj at the very least point me to the part where it implies "straight bad", because I'm not seeing it.
Never heard of it till now. Thanks for the recommendation.
Hurts to know that despite the awards this game is winning and all the positive press it gets, the people who would most appreciate/benefit playing it don't even know it exists.
I mean for gods sake it literally sells itself as "Pokémon Snap w/ Godzilla", why isn't this a household name?!
Because Pokémon Snap + anything sounds like a bad game to a lot of people, photography games would probably do a lot better if they could manage to distance themselves in peoples minds from things like Pokémon Snap.
I am 21, soon to be 22 years old. Every day of my life, I get more angry
As someone wiser than I once said, “if you ain’t angry, you ain’t paying attention.”
@@CatWithAHat2HD no
@@CatWithAHat2HD I am not saying I am lashing out, I am saying my anger is justified and gives me strength. In the current state of the world, anger is the only rational reaction. Please don't patronize me, I know what acting in a blinding rage looks and feels like. This is not that.
I really appreciate your videos for introducing me to so many unique indie games. I'll be checking this one out
Dang, this was an awesome analysis
Amazing video, really on par with some of your best. When you talked about being against racism "in theory" I immediately thought of that section of Inside, and the clip you put after made me feel so understood. It's nice to know you're thinking about it too. Again, incredible video
Thank you for making this video. Never knew about this game, but it encapsulates so much of how I feel right now.
That last few moments of this video is just so goddamn good. This video is a masterpiece. I'm glad you covered this game, this game really deserves all the credit it gets
While Beyond Good and Evil's photography wasn't it's core game loop, it's co-existence with the core plot of of a government cover-up does seem to fit with what you were talking about here.
This is my favourite game that I can't recommend because I much rather play something that gives me a little hope than a mirror of my reality and desperately grasping at straws. Fucking amazing.
Probably your best review yet and given your amazing bulk of work I don’t say that lightly. Just outstanding stuff.
Thank you for covering this game. I would not have found out about it otherwise.
Incredible video man, thanks for making it and putting this game on my radar. Also shoutout to GMTK who had this on his reading list for this month!
I lived in regional NSW during the black summer fire season - it's unreal to see a game that captures the feeling of being stuck in a disaster and surrounded by shallow, corporate responses and poor government leadership. Great analysis mate.
I played this game a while ago after it released but I didn't get around to play the DLC, that last part with the protest kind of hit close home to me really. In my life I have seen more cops trying to shoot and beat the shit out of my friends and me that actually protecting or helping people. I'll get around to play it now.
Great vid al always.
Once again you've put me on to a really cool game I had never even heard of. Thanks Chris :)
Picked a hell of a time to watch one of your older videos...
This is the third video I have seen on this game and every person I see approaches it differently. I like that a lot.
Chris, this is really well done. Tragic, but really well done. Thank you.
It’s been 10 years? Holy shit! Time flys at the end of civilization
I kinda missed this video since YT didn't recommend it. Only happened to look at your channel by accident. Happy I saw this eventually.
Gods I feel this so hard. I feel like we have watched record fire after fire for nearly the last 10 years now each worse than the last, now we have a plague with the promise of more on the way it feels like the world is ending and yet everyday we have to go to work and every month pay the rent it feels deceptively oppressively normal. This cant last forever and when it breaks what then?
I was literally checking 15 minutes ago if you had any new videos and then UA-cam gave me a pop-up for this one. You must be psychic.
A great essay on a great game. Thank you for kinda sorta giving me a way to share the experience with my non-game-playing friends.
Show this to anyone who says games aren't art.
Thanks for making this video. It was really nice to hear someone articulate a lot of things and I’ve been feeling about the world. Guess I’ll have to give the game a go.
i've never commented before, but i had to tell you that this is a fan-freaking-tastic video. thank you!
The best video essay about this game I've seen.
Thanks. I have more of an understanding now, why "science will fix global warming" always sounded terrible and besides the point.
God I fucking feel everything that went into this game. What a beautiful expression of what is wrong in the world.
This hits on a lot of the emotions I feel in the day to day living in America. It feels like companies, government organizations, etc are all deluding the populace day in and day out. To call out this mass hysteria and delusion leaves one ostracized until what they were talking about becomes so obvious no one can ignore.
It's why I've started spending more time in the woods. I'm enjoying something which seems primordial, unaffected by the decay of our society. In all honesty it's one of the only things that brings me calm, the notion that even when we destroy ourselves there will still be the verdant clearings long after we cease to exist.
Fantastic. FANTASTIC video. One of the best video games I played this year. Its a shame the switch port runs so bad.
Wew good game, cool to see people making stuff about it. ThorHighHeels is an awesome musician and content creator! ALSO YOU CAN EXPAND THE POSTCARDS?!
PS: Maxine best girl, change my mind. You can't, I won't let you.
Bro you got more Dutch angles than Battlefield Earth.
Fuck this got me
15:08 Damn, shots FIRED. XD
This is so brilliant. I hope to make something as poignant one day
I got one and a half minute in and then decided I had to play this for myself.
Umarangi generation has become one of my fave game ever. All the little personal stories about the protagonists and their friends, the medium ones about corporations and the big ones about goverments and the end of the world mix so organically. It feels true and real, it made me cry several times not even from just sadness but "emotional weight"
This was a really good video...Kind of sad, but that's just reality for you
The most sobering thing I've seen was my new boss telling me that he didn't give a damn if Biden or Trump was worse--he was just happy that he wasn't seeing it on Twitter all the time.
And I understand. I really do. I hate it, but I also understand it.
Brilliant video, Chris, thank you so much!
"It's a game about how neoliberalism handles disasters"
... Oh no
Can we just go back to classical liberalism now? Neoliberalism seems to have forgotten about classical liberalism's focus on civil liberties.
@@Strideo1 Don't you get it? The freer the markets, the freer* the people.
@@Strideo1 neoliberalism is just distilled classical liberalism
its abstract focus on negative INDIVIDUAL rights is key to the regime of private property and the maintenance of class privilege,
if you say you protect "freedom or rights"
the question is "right to what?"
they always mean whenever they reference "human rights" the rights of capitol to expand unimpeded and the rights of the rich to oppresses us without restriction
thats the only right they care about
"free speech" to them means the right of billionaires to own the airwaves and control what we see, there conception of it couldn't care less about protesters having their skulls cracked or activists being arrested by police
@@dedale2610 correction, freer™
I will share this video. I expect that no one in my circles will watch it, but this whole... "vibe"... I feel it is something I must share.
Excellent video. I have a ton of respect for this game and I think you really did it justice.
Ashes rain, capitalism reigns
I'm glad I didn't just go out and buy it before the spoilers. Before hand it sounded like THPS3 but with urban photography, which sounds great. I probably would have been overly bummed out if I played this without knowing what I was getting into.
I have yet to experience more of the red sky then the moon or the red sunsets from wild fires.But this entire month there has been a haze half of the days we have sun. It looks like a cloudy day, but the light coming in through the windows is orange, not white. I feel weird about it, as the warmer light and cooler shadows when I first saw them reminded me of theater. Now that this has been happening for the past 5 to 6 years, it is a reminder of of how a friend of mine has asthma, making an aqi above 75 dangerous, about how the pharmacist that gave me my last flu shot had to abandon her home and still come to work the next day, that we don't minimize smoke by doing controlled burns in most of the Oregon and Washington area despite wildfire being common before smoky the bear and European farming practices made the fires worse, that a problem with clear and obvious solutions of burning less or no oil is being treated like something impossible. I wish it could be whimsical again, like it was the first time I saw it, but now it is haze floating above us threatening to drop, reminding me of a problem I can't make a difference in solving on my own.
I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon, which has the largest park inside of city limits, Forest park. It will burn in my lifetime, but I don't know when. And it scares me how close so many people live to the forest, and how little control so many in the city have on the 100ft from their home that is important to stop your house from burning.
As usual, this is thoughtful, on point, and great.
Umurangi has been on my "I will pick this up someday" list for a while, and this has pushed it a lot closer to the front of the line.
Especially with Tali's comments around Neoliberalism as a force overwhelmingly focused on selling you good vibes, I'm struck by the sort of implicit self- and/or player-loathing of the speedrun-for-more-loot mechanic. Like... would you like to breezily zip past everything going on in the game in the name of cool swag that will do nothing to materially change the world or your impact on it? I don't get a sense of whether this is a sort of "We are all complicit in modern consumption" versus "Yeah you morons eat this shit up", but I also wonder if it isn't a little combination of both.
Hey, so showing up 9 months late. yeah I know.
But no, unless you're either lucky or looking up a guide some of the objectives are usually going to take you long enough you will have to experience the level to find them.
Really good video man I highly recommend Road 96 if you haven't played it.
I loved the game before the video but now I like it even more.
Thank you for covering this game.
Thx for making this. The video was really well done.
"a little spicy" huh... I'll give you that. I think I'm going to have to lie-down for a while.
Yeah man.
Thank you very much for exposing me to this game.
Such an intelligent video game
I fell there's a sense in which the game's cities somehow seem less isolating than ours, which is not a super happy thought
The choice of a colonial organism as the end of the world was also very good. It is the right level of on-the-nose allegory for the rest of the game, the end of the world is ultimately the work of colonies.
It also works well for Sci-fi. A singular jellyfish blown up to the size of a skyscraper might beggar belief, but this Kaiju is not a single organism. It's millions of organisms working in tandem, a city all in its own right, sweeping our blighted facsimiles from this earth.
Seeing that news footage absolutely broke me.
That was...two years ago...yet it simultaneously feels like last month & ten years ago at the same time.
I'm just so, so tired.