This video perfectly expresses the different feelings I get when dying in different games. "Dang, let me try again" vs "Well that was lame" is hard to pinpoint why I feel one vs the other.
When I play Hades, I feel the first thought; Despite every death, no matter how far I get, being sent back to the very beginning, I always feel like I'm moving forward when in reality it should be more like the endless torchures of tarturus. But when it comes to other games, I feel the second because it just feels like the game is just messing with me or being ridiculously unfair; like when an enemy suddenly pulls an overpowered attack from its butt, my ingame charater being stuck on the smallest of things, or the general gameplay not gelling with me for some reason. I just feel stuck... Ironic how a game that built around the idea of be subjected to repeated failure, is more fun than failing to a part that shouldn't be difficult...
For me it depends on how well the game is made, like the core systems that lead to my failure. if they're too flawed (Like with shoddy hitboxes, one sided mechanics or so on) the failure feels less enjoyable because it feels like my failure was less MY failure than it was just the game trying to screw me over/the issues were entirely out of my hands. Whereas when it's clear it was entirely my own mistakes which lead to my loss, it feels good because then I know it was down to me and my own skill, and I know exactly what to do to improve.
I think it has to do with the experience leading up to the death. Whether it's telegraphed that there's something you could've done differently (and still be having fun), and how punishing the loss is. Losing a mission in Deep Rock Galactic, most of the time, I have a good time doing it. Sure, I *could* blame my team (if I have one), but ultimately, if you play well enough, you can carry three greenbeards through any difficulty. The loss doesn't lose you much time, you probably learn something, and at the end of the day you probably went down in a blaze of glory killing piles and piles of angry bugs. Getting sunk in Sea of Thieves, though -- that can be utterly random, senseless, and a huge loss of time. And often, what you could've done differently isn't all that clear, aside from leaving someone on the boat to just sit there and watch the horizon so you don't get ambushed.
@@nathanjereb9944 Hades is the perfect example, because it really should feel bullshit. You have 100 enemies all at once and dying means you start all over again. But it's not, and I think the key part is that in Hades you die through compounding mistakes. It's not 1 big mistake that kills you, it's 20 small ones. You can see where you went wrong reasonably. In other games, you make 2 small mistakes and you die, or 1 medium. You never really feel like you "deserved" to die there, you can't see the logical chain of events that lead to your death because all you see is that 1 attack you let hit you or a single poorly timed dodge.
@@bye1551 if I may add to this, In hades dying dosent exactly mean you're starting "all over again". As you progress through the game defeating enemy's and completing challenges you are awarded with "darkness" which is an expendable currency that can be spent on permanent upgrades that apply to subsequent runs. (Which in my mind counts as definitive progress) In addition the story of the game continues developing with new cutscenes, character interactions, and plot beats regardless of the success of your attempts. So it never feels like the game begins to stagnate.
This really makes me wish I could subscribe to playlists. I would want to see these, 3MRs and maybe one or two more. But The Escapist puts out a lot of stuff that shows up in my feed that I don't watch.
The golden fowl made me howl with laughter. Yahtzee has conditioned me to expect that gag at face value, so shout out to Frost and the editor for the sheer hilarity.
'The Fragrance of Dark Coffee' , such a great tune. I'm slowly playing through the Ace Attorney trilogy on Xbox, and always let the game linger when Godot's theme comes in.
Came down here to comment on the use of Godot theme. So good. My college study mix go-to was that, a 10 hr crackling fireplace loop, and a 10 hr thunderstorm loop on top of each other.
Really like the style and flair of this new series, the noiresque vibe of this one was a great idea. Also the substance is really strong analysis. Great job frost, look forward to more of this series at the escapist!
One area of failure I had to deal with recently is failing in a multiplayer co-op scenario. More specifically running dungeons or boss encounters in an mmo. Final Fantasy 14 was my first step into actually being social in an mmo and that's because I quickly learned that screwing up never really had huge consequences. I always had the idea of letting my party down hanging over me but after dying mid-dungeon and then getting raised by the healer with nothing more than a funny quip I wasn't as anxious anymore. Even after my first party wipe the reaction from the party was just "ok let's do that again but not die this time." Though I was running dps at those times and since there's always a minimum of two of us there was always some shadow of "well I'm the less important one so maybe that's why they don't mind" in those situations. Then came the first time I ran healer. We go out, tank gets ahead of me, dies because I couldn't heal him, all the mobs he aggro'd slaughter the rest of us, group wipe because I wasn't keeping up with the tank. We respawned and the tank just gave me some friendly advice and we managed to clear the dungeon without any further issues. So what I want to know is, why was everyone so cool about it? Whether I was just a one-off death, part of a wipe, or the cause of a wipe I never faced any negativity from the other players. I think there's two parts to it but I'm not sure they tell the whole story. First off, low risk and high reward. You get your main reward just for clearing the dungeon with the game not caring how well you do in the dungeon. So the only thing you'd be making another player lose out on is time, though I totally can see some players being jerks over that. But then the commendation system kicks in. At the end of the dungeon you're allowed to reward any one player in your party a commendation and earning enough of these grants you some very nice, very exclusive rewards. Nobody in their right mind would hand one out to a player that treats them like dirt so it's a way to incentivize playing nice. Now I do think there's bound to be more to it, but keeping your players friendly towards each other in the face of failure is something crucial if you want players to be able to trust each other.
Noir and ludonarrative dissonance go hand in hand. I know a lot of the Escapist staff doesn't quite have the time for Dwarf Fortress, but it might pique your interest to hear that in the official Dwarf Fortress wiki, losing redirects to fun.
the thing about dark souls difficulty that makes it so fun and rewarding that people dont get a lot of the time is that its not just about the excitement of beating a boss that seemed impossible, its about fighting that seemingly impossible boss and at some point realizing "oh, i CAN do this." THAT'S what makes it so fun. if you just throw a hard thing that actually is unfair at the player they wont be happy at the end. they'll just be glad they don't have to do that anymore.
Yahtzee said in his Extra Punctuation on "Prey" that our memories can't grasp perfection, so the perfect game becomes un-memorable, like how nobody noticed his class' best student until he ended up with a prosthetic testicle from a soccer injury.
What made me click so much with DS was when I go awol for 2 months, my friends jokingly asking me if I have gone hollow. Suddenly it rains on me even their death & failure mechanic was philosophycal designed in Dark Souls and so integral to the game itself. There is no alternate time line, we all playing in our own linear time line when we fail the game the moment we stopped playing, and thus gone hollow just like our own characters in game. Very rarely (if any) modern games even bother to design something so fundamental to playing as a video game character yet the impact of it is so profound to immersion and suspension of beliefs that we're playing a video game.
One of my favorite moments in any video game is when I realized that I wasn't actually THE chosen undead but A chosen undead, I was just the most recent one that hadn't gone hollow yet.
The Art of Failure by Jesper Juul is a great book on this topic. For my 2 cents, I'd say that until you fail for the first time there is no way to have any perspective on the game, its rules or the world it resides in. Everyone thinks they want to be One Punch Man, but what they really aspire to be is Mumen Rider. Mumen Rider is where meaning lives.
@@RejectAllCookies13 Really? Wouldn't have thought of that. Maybe because Yathzee is usually more high octane in scripted videos. It could maybe work in that context. Or maybe they'd just bounce off each other better with Marty there too
@@Eliagiulio Yahtzee needs a chipper and positive cohost to contrast against to really shine in a multiple host setting. If the other host is also chill or critical, he doesn't really light up much.
I enjoy when my failure seems fair, ie when I can point to mistakes in my gameplay or choices that lead to my failure, I don't often drop a game in the middle of playing it but something that will make me not want to keep playing is experiencing something that feels unfair; a boss or puzzle that I can't find a reasonable way of winning even after I have taken a break or tried to find other strategies. I think its a balancing act making something difficult but not unfair
i really am enjoying this slower more methodical approach to talking of various gaming topics and the noir elements only make it so much smoother of an experience. Really cant wait for more of these to come out
Wow this is amazing..! The noir gimmick is excellently executed and the content is supreme. Well done! I'm definitely adding Cold Take to my rotation of Escapist content to look out for!
Okay the points raised about games and challenge, and all that is great, and I do agree with a lot of the points raised. I think Challenge and Failure needs to be a a part of game design, to test the player on something if they don't know it, and then later challenge them on it to ensure they know it. But good god this voiceover. Absolutely marvelous. I could listen to this guy talk about the intricacies of making yarn and it would be a good time. I'm sure its effort to put on that voice, and I can sympathize with that but it is so worth it. Just, wonderful to listen to. More of this please, its so good.
One of, if not _the_ biggest moment of catharsis I had from a game was Journey. You know the bit. And in that game you literally can't fail; there is no failure mechanic (other than not progressing, of course)...
I like using TF2 as an example of accidental design. Two different modes of movement which feel amazing mastering it, and the feed back from other players makes it even better. Blast jumping, and trimping. Both work using the wonky source engine physics to achieve a similar result. Players arriving from unexpected angles at incredible speeds. That feeling after practicing a trimping spot, and flying into a critical hit which sends the enemy's head flying while the demo man screams "There can only be one!" and the enemy team panics as they find a mad man in their midst. However, you have to fail so much to get to that point. To unlearn holding w, or movement keys. To learn to use the camera to turn. To learn how to properly air strafe. All comes together in one shocking display of skill, with your dude flying through the air in a Bonzi charge. Even if you die, you feel satisfaction in accomplishing a difficult task l, at least part way.
I was unsure because the title for that first episode seemed like the most pretentious thing I could imagine but I was totally wrong, love it so far. Feels like a lot of game chat tends to gloss over the surface and give you context "whats here" but youre able to actually dig deeper into "what does this being here mean" in a way thats genuinely really satsifying to listen to and learn from. Looking forward to more!
If you haven't, the first video is more about the difficulty of getting people to play even good games (just because there's so many of them constantly coming out)
I feel like this is one of those elements in games design that is so so obvious when highlighted and yet so easy to miss when you're not looking to find (or implement) it.
I went on this expecting that analyst guy who does the Sidebar bits. But then my ears were met by the smooth, dulcet tones of Sebastian Ruiz. Gah DAYUM this guy's voice is butter to my ears.
00:27 Man this song from George Michael from 1984 has been used sooo much, I'm surprised he didn't pick "Moonlight In Vermont" by Jo Stafford for his saxophone one. Every time I think of night skies, frozen waters, and cool winter nights, or even summer nights, I always think of Jo Stafford's or any 1950s artists using strings, pianos, and brass instruments that are chill and mostly taking place at night, and "Moonlight In Vermont" just fits this one really, really well. George Michael's one I feel is a bit over the top and supposed to be romantic and sexy, which is not what I feel this show's all about. It's more of "Hey, I'm down at the bar & grill or a diner open 24/7 and always love company coming over for a talk as we eat and drink beverages or small meals to hold our hunger and thirst over for the next day so to speak." Anytime when I see this, I feel like I'm transported back to the 1950s, not really the 1920s, when it comes to these types of situations...I don't know that's just me. Anyway, back to the video. To be honest, I can't tell you how many times I've failed at video games. Whether it's not completing the game on time (Mismanaging the time in the game before your character dies in say, 30 days in Pikmin 1), getting killed by the same individual repeatedly, The difficulty of normal and hard are out of your reach and you try repeatedly, but can't seem to quite know the specifics of what you're doing wrong in the first place, or simply you are lost and just meander, not knowing what you'll end up getting until it's too little too late (being naive and ill-knowledge) that you die in the game and have to start over, or get captured and have no way of going back except loading a checkpoint or a save file before you were lost and meandered in the first place, or most of all, the challenges are hard, you die often, but you keep going despite the many deaths you went through, up until a certain point where you feel satisfied where you are in the game, and never play the game for a good decade or more. That's pretty much me in a nutshell and as a 4/5 year old RPGs and Single-Player games were pretty hard for me to beat in the late 90s, but in 2015 I did take a crack at playing new horror games I never played before, sure got lost in Resident Evil or probably didn't look at the message the game was giving me in the first place, but eventually did beat it with say a walkthrough to understand how it works, but some were pretty difficult and not shown in the walkthrough. Made me realize that those type of games are something that may be difficult, but I do love the atmosphere and the music it gives despite that without them, I pretty much would have been stuck and probably wouldn't bring up the game in a very long time. So seeing you mention it here nowadays as a 27/30+ year old adult with much better experience in games compared to when I was 3/4/5 years old, I've come a long way from just quitting right on the spot, to playing through it up until a certain point that I can't go no further than what my sustainable difficulty curve allows me to go until I end up mentally and emotionally insane. I can't imagine video game players playing more than 10+ hours on a game that leads into frustration and repetition, and so I just choose the ones I know I would like for the most part.
I like this new show! The delivery is pretty relaxing and soothing and the writing is insightful enough to hold my attention! Will definitely be coming back for more
You make a good point about catharsis in games. Games like Dark Souls and other FROMSOFT titles understand that difficulty should not exist just for its own sake. Rather, difficulty is used as a means for the player to learn, improve, and gain satisfaction therefore by their success. While there are certain times where their games can be unfair, it's actually quite rare in practice (as much as people will complain to the contrary). "Tough, but fair" game design is precisely what I want to see more of, but many game developers seem to simply try to make things artificially difficult instead. Such as by making their hard difficulty levels only difficult by making enemies take a thousand hits to kill or making the player die to a stiff breeze, rather than making them difficult because of enemy move-sets or the environment or so on.
In my mind one of the hardest needles to thread is how punishing failure should be and I think it relates a lot to how often you expect someone to fail. Too little danger and there is no fear in of death or real reward in success (mostly). Too much punishment and people are liable to storm out and not come back. Raymen Origins and Crash Bandicoot (the remake) are two good examples of this. They are both very similar games in gameplay but in Rayman the only punishment for death is going back to a checkpoint which there was many of and the the almost instant time it took to reload. Crash on the other hand had a life system which would send you to one of the much more sparse check points and if you ran out of lives would send you to the beginning of the level. You could argue crash stayed closer to its old roots but i'd argue that Raymen realized that the old life system didn't serve a purpose in the game and eliminating it greatly improved the experience. After all you were going to die a lot in both games. I only finished one of them and you can probably guess which. I could write a book about all the terrible design decisions that FF11 made but the one that gave it the shiney star of worst game I've ever played was two fold. First you lost experience when dying and could actually get into negatives. Second the game's complete lack of a tutorial (I had to google how to MOVE). These two keystones along with a completely unintuitive design everywhere else meant the game punished you for just trying to figure out how to play it. If you didn't learn fast enough you could get yourself so far into and exp hole that the game was effectively impossible to progress in. Retrieving your body after you die would on its own send you on a downward spiral if you weren't very careful. They even barred you from just starting a new character for a set amount of time. Seriously the 'tutorial' for the game was hidden in the menus and was literally a text pop up that just said, "this is an online game so ask other players for help".
Ludonarrative dissonance was the entire point of Undertale. Telling us not to kill anything, but rewarding us for doing it. And then coming back and saying "Muhaha, killling was evil all along (but not when we kill you)"
This video reminds me a bit of the feeling I get when I'm barely scraping by in a game. Just an inch above failure, but I also have my hand on the edge of success. Nothing feels better than winning just barely, and on the other side, it feels so horrible to lose right as the ultimate clutch was tangible.
This reminds me quite strongly of two modern high budget games: Tomb Raider the misnamed reboot, and Uncharted. Tomb Raider spent a lot of effort on making utterly stupid death animations. They were cutscenes taking not just the character but also the player out of the action; things like, if you fall into some water on the wrong side of an invisible wall, you get an animation of the character getting smashed on rocks in an impossible manner. Never mind those weren't relevant or plausible obstacles. It also spent ages training you to dodge unidentifiable debris while going through sliding sections, only to suddenly have one of those sections end with *all* unidentifiable debris, requiring you to instantly know which bit to hit. Hit any other, and you get both an irrelevant death animation cutscene (making sure you didn't have another moment to tell what went wrong) and a restart to waste more time on the boring section with no agency or reward. Oh so much "fun". Uncharted is a fancy adventure romp interrupted by boring shooting galleries ("gameplay"). What it totally fails to communicate is why there would ever be a reason to play the way the game expects you to. You're supposed to hide behind unrealistic cover, popping out from time to time to shoot at the innumerable enemies that aren't supposed to storm you but stay at convenient target range. The problem is, if you don't know that beforehand, you might be tempted to take out enemies as they appear. But that requires coming out to aim, and then the enemies just don't stop coming. Why is hiding a mechanic that not only heals your character magically (which you weren't told) but makes enemies approach slower? Who knows. The game is just totally unprepared for a main character actor who hasn't read the script. I love scenic exploration and puzzling. Some games that scratched that itch better are Ico, Rime, Hollow Knight, The Witness and Submerged.
More from this guy and his buttery smooth voice please. Maybe speaking lessons? Not that it outshines the thought-provoking insight of this new series... 🙂
Failure can be fun. Ever played the crash events in the Burnout series? Although you want to get that high score, falling short just means you get to create a bit more mayhem at that location before more action-packed racing or another chance to turn your vehicle into a projectile.
THANK YOU! I've been saying something to this effect bout "Souls" games since the "Dark Souls", and even more now with "Elden Ring." Making games that frustrate the player simply for the catharsis is bad game design. I don't want to beat my head against a wall; I want to explore the environments, fight new and interesting enemies, and find glorious treasures. If you're gonna bottleneck my experience with gameplay or enemies that are deliberately, CRUELLY more difficult than they need to be, then I'm not playing. If I want to be frustrated regularly, I have daily life for that. Beating a boss the first time is ecstatic. Beating the boss after the third or fourth time is a relief. Beating the boss after the tenth time, and you've replaced a keyboard or controller, just feels shitty.
"Blizzard polish" used in a non-ironic way ? Never heard of Warcraft 3 reforged I guess... Yes I'm still bitter, why do you ask ? Nevertheless, this new series is really cool (pun totally intended).
Cool concept As for difficulty in games, the idea that it brings forth trial and error makes the experience all the more worthwhile because it comes with the design of the whole game that nothing really feels like padding. I think most who like to go back to retro games is because of this, back when games were shorter in length but expected to be replayed by their natural learning curve.
This makes a lot of sense to me, when I played DS3 and got killed from an enemy attack clipping through a wall while my attacks bounce off, I thought "this game fucking sucks and is broken" and then I quit. When I beat the same enemy how it's meant to be played, I feel happy and continue only for some other bullshit event to make me rage quit again. I've noticed that I end up quitting games not because of their intended difficulty but more of the type of frustration caused by failure.
"Not fun just hard" is a notion that will be slapped with "it is fun you just don't personally like it" I want to feel like I had fun fighting the boss not that I'm finally done with the boss as if it's chores or something else that is just unpleasant.
When it comes to inconsequential decisions, game developers have a great way to resolve this - save points and NG+ all you to live with the consequences or redo things without a forced safety net.
Honestly at this point I just want to hear a bunch of closing punchlines from Frost just to see what he comes up with. Each one is a nugget of comedy gold.
You can’t have a fascinating failure without genuine ambition. Failing safe plays makes for a less bad game but paradoxically a far less worthwhile play experience. I would rather spend time on a good game but if I do start one that goes janky fast I will only end up finishing it if it’s fun to watch it fall over.
I wish more RPG games could do away with gear score / item levels and instead just make a bunch of unique weapons and items. Make a sword that freezes stuff and players will be encouraged to use it on fire enemies, make a sword that burns stuff and players will use it on ice enemies. So sick of the only upgrades being "this sword is the same as the one you already have but 5 levels higher and has 3% higher strength"
The biggest mistake people make in Dark Souls is killing Orenstine first. He's both more predictable in attack patterns, but killing him second lets you get his armor, which has one of the best curse resistance in the game. Which is useful later against Seath.
Failing in games really only kills the fun when it overtakes the entire experience. The point of super meat boy is to actually get through the levels.... If you're hitting a wall where you're just not able to get past something.... That's when it's difficulty goes from engaging to frustrating... And really accessibility options for games really need to be dramatically improved. Celeste had ok options... But it really could have used an option to turn on an indication of which way you're going to dash... I played the game with infinite dashes and no death. It was still fun. But I kinda wanted to try without those but there wasn't a way to overcome the main reason I used them..... It's not fun to fail because I dashed in the wrong direction and just can't reliably dash the direction I want to dash. And when watching videos talking about how enemies telegraph their attacks in cup head I thought it might be fun to play if I could adjust that stuff to make them more obvious and the timing easier to her right.... Like we need better and accessibility options that work with the game mechanics to make them more accessible not just lazy god modes.... Stuff that would probably double as dev tools for balancing and refining the gameplay.
Actually disagreed with a programmer on a game I worked on for years over this. He is a Prince of Persia 3 fan (losing a fight means get back up immediately with half your life restored) while I am more of a Bloodborne fan. The real answer is: don’t try to make your game appeal to people on opposite ends of a given spectrum, and make sure Marketing markets your game to the people who should enjoy it… which is never everyone.
This video perfectly expresses the different feelings I get when dying in different games. "Dang, let me try again" vs "Well that was lame" is hard to pinpoint why I feel one vs the other.
When I play Hades, I feel the first thought; Despite every death, no matter how far I get, being sent back to the very beginning, I always feel like I'm moving forward when in reality it should be more like the endless torchures of tarturus.
But when it comes to other games, I feel the second because it just feels like the game is just messing with me or being ridiculously unfair; like when an enemy suddenly pulls an overpowered attack from its butt, my ingame charater being stuck on the smallest of things, or the general gameplay not gelling with me for some reason. I just feel stuck...
Ironic how a game that built around the idea of be subjected to repeated failure, is more fun than failing to a part that shouldn't be difficult...
For me it depends on how well the game is made, like the core systems that lead to my failure. if they're too flawed (Like with shoddy hitboxes, one sided mechanics or so on) the failure feels less enjoyable because it feels like my failure was less MY failure than it was just the game trying to screw me over/the issues were entirely out of my hands.
Whereas when it's clear it was entirely my own mistakes which lead to my loss, it feels good because then I know it was down to me and my own skill, and I know exactly what to do to improve.
I think it has to do with the experience leading up to the death. Whether it's telegraphed that there's something you could've done differently (and still be having fun), and how punishing the loss is.
Losing a mission in Deep Rock Galactic, most of the time, I have a good time doing it. Sure, I *could* blame my team (if I have one), but ultimately, if you play well enough, you can carry three greenbeards through any difficulty. The loss doesn't lose you much time, you probably learn something, and at the end of the day you probably went down in a blaze of glory killing piles and piles of angry bugs.
Getting sunk in Sea of Thieves, though -- that can be utterly random, senseless, and a huge loss of time. And often, what you could've done differently isn't all that clear, aside from leaving someone on the boat to just sit there and watch the horizon so you don't get ambushed.
@@nathanjereb9944 Hades is the perfect example, because it really should feel bullshit. You have 100 enemies all at once and dying means you start all over again.
But it's not, and I think the key part is that in Hades you die through compounding mistakes. It's not 1 big mistake that kills you, it's 20 small ones. You can see where you went wrong reasonably.
In other games, you make 2 small mistakes and you die, or 1 medium. You never really feel like you "deserved" to die there, you can't see the logical chain of events that lead to your death because all you see is that 1 attack you let hit you or a single poorly timed dodge.
@@bye1551 if I may add to this, In hades dying dosent exactly mean you're starting "all over again".
As you progress through the game defeating enemy's and completing challenges you are awarded with "darkness" which is an expendable currency that can be spent on permanent upgrades that apply to subsequent runs. (Which in my mind counts as definitive progress)
In addition the story of the game continues developing with new cutscenes, character interactions, and plot beats regardless of the success of your attempts. So it never feels like the game begins to stagnate.
You could offend a hundread people and still make it sound like a compliment with the way you talk. Your voice is just cherry on top
The Yang to Yahtzee'd Yin. Yahtzee could give the most lovely compliment, and still sound like he hates you.
This series has immediately joined my must-watch set of subscriptions.
immediately feels like a core part of the channel already. i had no idea it was a new series.
This really makes me wish I could subscribe to playlists. I would want to see these, 3MRs and maybe one or two more. But The Escapist puts out a lot of stuff that shows up in my feed that I don't watch.
@@Paxtez We wish that was an option too. Hopefully YT makes it happen at some point.
@@theescapist You could bring back RSS feeds for the individual Escapist series. That would helpful! =)
Couldn't agree more.
The golden fowl made me howl with laughter. Yahtzee has conditioned me to expect that gag at face value, so shout out to Frost and the editor for the sheer hilarity.
I was like "why are there so many lines" haha
'The Fragrance of Dark Coffee' , such a great tune. I'm slowly playing through the Ace Attorney trilogy on Xbox, and always let the game linger when Godot's theme comes in.
Came down here to comment on the use of Godot theme. So good. My college study mix go-to was that, a 10 hr crackling fireplace loop, and a 10 hr thunderstorm loop on top of each other.
"Failure. No, not you."
God damn it, hurt me more frost!
Really like the style and flair of this new series, the noiresque vibe of this one was a great idea. Also the substance is really strong analysis. Great job frost, look forward to more of this series at the escapist!
“Conversationalist” at the end killed me 🤣
One area of failure I had to deal with recently is failing in a multiplayer co-op scenario. More specifically running dungeons or boss encounters in an mmo. Final Fantasy 14 was my first step into actually being social in an mmo and that's because I quickly learned that screwing up never really had huge consequences. I always had the idea of letting my party down hanging over me but after dying mid-dungeon and then getting raised by the healer with nothing more than a funny quip I wasn't as anxious anymore. Even after my first party wipe the reaction from the party was just "ok let's do that again but not die this time." Though I was running dps at those times and since there's always a minimum of two of us there was always some shadow of "well I'm the less important one so maybe that's why they don't mind" in those situations. Then came the first time I ran healer. We go out, tank gets ahead of me, dies because I couldn't heal him, all the mobs he aggro'd slaughter the rest of us, group wipe because I wasn't keeping up with the tank. We respawned and the tank just gave me some friendly advice and we managed to clear the dungeon without any further issues.
So what I want to know is, why was everyone so cool about it? Whether I was just a one-off death, part of a wipe, or the cause of a wipe I never faced any negativity from the other players. I think there's two parts to it but I'm not sure they tell the whole story. First off, low risk and high reward. You get your main reward just for clearing the dungeon with the game not caring how well you do in the dungeon. So the only thing you'd be making another player lose out on is time, though I totally can see some players being jerks over that. But then the commendation system kicks in. At the end of the dungeon you're allowed to reward any one player in your party a commendation and earning enough of these grants you some very nice, very exclusive rewards. Nobody in their right mind would hand one out to a player that treats them like dirt so it's a way to incentivize playing nice. Now I do think there's bound to be more to it, but keeping your players friendly towards each other in the face of failure is something crucial if you want players to be able to trust each other.
Noir and ludonarrative dissonance go hand in hand. I know a lot of the Escapist staff doesn't quite have the time for Dwarf Fortress, but it might pique your interest to hear that in the official Dwarf Fortress wiki, losing redirects to fun.
the thing about dark souls difficulty that makes it so fun and rewarding that people dont get a lot of the time is that its not just about the excitement of beating a boss that seemed impossible, its about fighting that seemingly impossible boss and at some point realizing "oh, i CAN do this." THAT'S what makes it so fun. if you just throw a hard thing that actually is unfair at the player they wont be happy at the end. they'll just be glad they don't have to do that anymore.
Yahtzee said in his Extra Punctuation on "Prey" that our memories can't grasp perfection, so the perfect game becomes un-memorable, like how nobody noticed his class' best student until he ended up with a prosthetic testicle from a soccer injury.
What made me click so much with DS was when I go awol for 2 months, my friends jokingly asking me if I have gone hollow.
Suddenly it rains on me even their death & failure mechanic was philosophycal designed in Dark Souls and so integral to the game itself. There is no alternate time line, we all playing in our own linear time line when we fail the game the moment we stopped playing, and thus gone hollow just like our own characters in game.
Very rarely (if any) modern games even bother to design something so fundamental to playing as a video game character yet the impact of it is so profound to immersion and suspension of beliefs that we're playing a video game.
One of my favorite moments in any video game is when I realized that I wasn't actually THE chosen undead but A chosen undead, I was just the most recent one that hadn't gone hollow yet.
The Art of Failure by Jesper Juul is a great book on this topic. For my 2 cents, I'd say that until you fail for the first time there is no way to have any perspective on the game, its rules or the world it resides in. Everyone thinks they want to be One Punch Man, but what they really aspire to be is Mumen Rider.
Mumen Rider is where meaning lives.
I need a three-way-show/podcast between Marty, Yathzee and Frost, that sounds like a fun listen
It would literally be a conversation between Phoenix Write, Godot, and Edgeworth from the AA series
@@noizepusher7594 HOLY HELL, YOU'RE RIGHT, THAT'D BE AMAZING
Yahtzee and Frost are too much a like so the chemistry would not be there, I saw their stream....booooring. Jack and Yahtz or Frost would work fine.
@@RejectAllCookies13 Really? Wouldn't have thought of that. Maybe because Yathzee is usually more high octane in scripted videos. It could maybe work in that context. Or maybe they'd just bounce off each other better with Marty there too
@@Eliagiulio Yahtzee needs a chipper and positive cohost to contrast against to really shine in a multiple host setting. If the other host is also chill or critical, he doesn't really light up much.
I enjoy when my failure seems fair, ie when I can point to mistakes in my gameplay or choices that lead to my failure, I don't often drop a game in the middle of playing it but something that will make me not want to keep playing is experiencing something that feels unfair; a boss or puzzle that I can't find a reasonable way of winning even after I have taken a break or tried to find other strategies. I think its a balancing act making something difficult but not unfair
This series has been saying what's been on my mind for years that I couldn't quite articulate very well into words to express them. I love it.
This was really, really good! The style is what makes it. Another great show in the new era of the channel. Keep up the good work!
How apropos that Careless Whisper played at the beginning of the video, cuz it plays in my head every time Frost speaks
Finally! Someone other than Yahtzee I actually want to listen to! Might throw money at you guys soon! Keep it up!
I love the fact that Frost fully imbraced the "sexy jazz" voice.
i really am enjoying this slower more methodical approach to talking of various gaming topics and the noir elements only make it so much smoother of an experience. Really cant wait for more of these to come out
I don't come to escapist for much, mostly Zero Punctuation, but this, this is something special. I'm really enjoying Cold Take.
I don't know how he manages it, but this gem of a human being is simultaneously one cool cat and one sly dog.
Dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria!
Wow this is amazing..! The noir gimmick is excellently executed and the content is supreme. Well done! I'm definitely adding Cold Take to my rotation of Escapist content to look out for!
Keep the cold takes coming, Frost.
Okay the points raised about games and challenge, and all that is great, and I do agree with a lot of the points raised. I think Challenge and Failure needs to be a a part of game design, to test the player on something if they don't know it, and then later challenge them on it to ensure they know it.
But good god this voiceover. Absolutely marvelous. I could listen to this guy talk about the intricacies of making yarn and it would be a good time. I'm sure its effort to put on that voice, and I can sympathize with that but it is so worth it. Just, wonderful to listen to. More of this please, its so good.
One of, if not _the_ biggest moment of catharsis I had from a game was Journey. You know the bit. And in that game you literally can't fail; there is no failure mechanic (other than not progressing, of course)...
I'm falling deeply in love with this series
So excited to see you on here Frost. Looking forward to more
the last line was just the perfect way to end the video. I will watch this video series's career with great interest
That ending line was gold. This was relaxing and informative with a dash of humor. Great stuff 👍
I'm really liking this new series. Also loved the CP77-noir look.
"failure in... game design" [spy on screen] absolutely murdered me
The end song was Fragrance of Dark Coffee for those wondering.
Love the series Idk how I missed it when it was first uploaded. Please continue this awesome series
I like using TF2 as an example of accidental design.
Two different modes of movement which feel amazing mastering it, and the feed back from other players makes it even better. Blast jumping, and trimping.
Both work using the wonky source engine physics to achieve a similar result. Players arriving from unexpected angles at incredible speeds.
That feeling after practicing a trimping spot, and flying into a critical hit which sends the enemy's head flying while the demo man screams "There can only be one!" and the enemy team panics as they find a mad man in their midst.
However, you have to fail so much to get to that point.
To unlearn holding w, or movement keys.
To learn to use the camera to turn.
To learn how to properly air strafe.
All comes together in one shocking display of skill, with your dude flying through the air in a Bonzi charge. Even if you die, you feel satisfaction in accomplishing a difficult task l, at least part way.
these cold takes are so well written and narrated. pls do more :)
Once again, beautiful writing. Thanks for delivering an enthralling script.
I was unsure because the title for that first episode seemed like the most pretentious thing I could imagine but I was totally wrong, love it so far. Feels like a lot of game chat tends to gloss over the surface and give you context "whats here" but youre able to actually dig deeper into "what does this being here mean" in a way thats genuinely really satsifying to listen to and learn from. Looking forward to more!
If you haven't, the first video is more about the difficulty of getting people to play even good games (just because there's so many of them constantly coming out)
Man oh man this is some of the most premium VO and writing. Thank you!
I feel like this is one of those elements in games design that is so so obvious when highlighted and yet so easy to miss when you're not looking to find (or implement) it.
I went on this expecting that analyst guy who does the Sidebar bits.
But then my ears were met by the smooth, dulcet tones of Sebastian Ruiz.
Gah DAYUM this guy's voice is butter to my ears.
00:27 Man this song from George Michael from 1984 has been used sooo much, I'm surprised he didn't pick "Moonlight In Vermont" by Jo Stafford for his saxophone one. Every time I think of night skies, frozen waters, and cool winter nights, or even summer nights, I always think of Jo Stafford's or any 1950s artists using strings, pianos, and brass instruments that are chill and mostly taking place at night, and "Moonlight In Vermont" just fits this one really, really well. George Michael's one I feel is a bit over the top and supposed to be romantic and sexy, which is not what I feel this show's all about. It's more of "Hey, I'm down at the bar & grill or a diner open 24/7 and always love company coming over for a talk as we eat and drink beverages or small meals to hold our hunger and thirst over for the next day so to speak." Anytime when I see this, I feel like I'm transported back to the 1950s, not really the 1920s, when it comes to these types of situations...I don't know that's just me. Anyway, back to the video.
To be honest, I can't tell you how many times I've failed at video games. Whether it's not completing the game on time (Mismanaging the time in the game before your character dies in say, 30 days in Pikmin 1), getting killed by the same individual repeatedly, The difficulty of normal and hard are out of your reach and you try repeatedly, but can't seem to quite know the specifics of what you're doing wrong in the first place, or simply you are lost and just meander, not knowing what you'll end up getting until it's too little too late (being naive and ill-knowledge) that you die in the game and have to start over, or get captured and have no way of going back except loading a checkpoint or a save file before you were lost and meandered in the first place, or most of all, the challenges are hard, you die often, but you keep going despite the many deaths you went through, up until a certain point where you feel satisfied where you are in the game, and never play the game for a good decade or more.
That's pretty much me in a nutshell and as a 4/5 year old RPGs and Single-Player games were pretty hard for me to beat in the late 90s, but in 2015 I did take a crack at playing new horror games I never played before, sure got lost in Resident Evil or probably didn't look at the message the game was giving me in the first place, but eventually did beat it with say a walkthrough to understand how it works, but some were pretty difficult and not shown in the walkthrough. Made me realize that those type of games are something that may be difficult, but I do love the atmosphere and the music it gives despite that without them, I pretty much would have been stuck and probably wouldn't bring up the game in a very long time. So seeing you mention it here nowadays as a 27/30+ year old adult with much better experience in games compared to when I was 3/4/5 years old, I've come a long way from just quitting right on the spot, to playing through it up until a certain point that I can't go no further than what my sustainable difficulty curve allows me to go until I end up mentally and emotionally insane. I can't imagine video game players playing more than 10+ hours on a game that leads into frustration and repetition, and so I just choose the ones I know I would like for the most part.
Turnabout Jazz Godot's theme is *perfect* for this! :D
I like this new show! The delivery is pretty relaxing and soothing and the writing is insightful enough to hold my attention! Will definitely be coming back for more
I'm so glad to see another one of these. My new favourite series!
Man... I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. It's quite conversational
You make a good point about catharsis in games. Games like Dark Souls and other FROMSOFT titles understand that difficulty should not exist just for its own sake. Rather, difficulty is used as a means for the player to learn, improve, and gain satisfaction therefore by their success. While there are certain times where their games can be unfair, it's actually quite rare in practice (as much as people will complain to the contrary). "Tough, but fair" game design is precisely what I want to see more of, but many game developers seem to simply try to make things artificially difficult instead. Such as by making their hard difficulty levels only difficult by making enemies take a thousand hits to kill or making the player die to a stiff breeze, rather than making them difficult because of enemy move-sets or the environment or so on.
This was a great start to a new series. Informative and entertaining in equal measure. I look forward to more of these little bits
In my mind one of the hardest needles to thread is how punishing failure should be and I think it relates a lot to how often you expect someone to fail. Too little danger and there is no fear in of death or real reward in success (mostly). Too much punishment and people are liable to storm out and not come back. Raymen Origins and Crash Bandicoot (the remake) are two good examples of this. They are both very similar games in gameplay but in
Rayman the only punishment for death is going back to a checkpoint which there was many of and the the almost instant time it took to reload. Crash on the other hand had a life system which would send you to one of the much more sparse check points and if you ran out of lives would send you to the beginning of the level. You could argue crash stayed closer to its old roots but i'd argue that Raymen realized that the old life system didn't serve a purpose in the game and eliminating it greatly improved the experience. After all you were going to die a lot in both games. I only finished one of them and you can probably guess which.
I could write a book about all the terrible design decisions that FF11 made but the one that gave it the shiney star of worst game I've ever played was two fold. First you lost experience when dying and could actually get into negatives. Second the game's complete lack of a tutorial (I had to google how to MOVE). These two keystones along with a completely unintuitive design everywhere else meant the game punished you for just trying to figure out how to play it. If you didn't learn fast enough you could get yourself so far into and exp hole that the game was effectively impossible to progress in. Retrieving your body after you die would on its own send you on a downward spiral if you weren't very careful. They even barred you from just starting a new character for a set amount of time. Seriously the 'tutorial' for the game was hidden in the menus and was literally a text pop up that just said, "this is an online game so ask other players for help".
Ludonarrative dissonance was the entire point of Undertale. Telling us not to kill anything, but rewarding us for doing it. And then coming back and saying "Muhaha, killling was evil all along (but not when we kill you)"
This video reminds me a bit of the feeling I get when I'm barely scraping by in a game. Just an inch above failure, but I also have my hand on the edge of success. Nothing feels better than winning just barely, and on the other side, it feels so horrible to lose right as the ultimate clutch was tangible.
This reminds me quite strongly of two modern high budget games: Tomb Raider the misnamed reboot, and Uncharted.
Tomb Raider spent a lot of effort on making utterly stupid death animations. They were cutscenes taking not just the character but also the player out of the action; things like, if you fall into some water on the wrong side of an invisible wall, you get an animation of the character getting smashed on rocks in an impossible manner. Never mind those weren't relevant or plausible obstacles. It also spent ages training you to dodge unidentifiable debris while going through sliding sections, only to suddenly have one of those sections end with *all* unidentifiable debris, requiring you to instantly know which bit to hit. Hit any other, and you get both an irrelevant death animation cutscene (making sure you didn't have another moment to tell what went wrong) and a restart to waste more time on the boring section with no agency or reward. Oh so much "fun".
Uncharted is a fancy adventure romp interrupted by boring shooting galleries ("gameplay"). What it totally fails to communicate is why there would ever be a reason to play the way the game expects you to. You're supposed to hide behind unrealistic cover, popping out from time to time to shoot at the innumerable enemies that aren't supposed to storm you but stay at convenient target range. The problem is, if you don't know that beforehand, you might be tempted to take out enemies as they appear. But that requires coming out to aim, and then the enemies just don't stop coming. Why is hiding a mechanic that not only heals your character magically (which you weren't told) but makes enemies approach slower? Who knows. The game is just totally unprepared for a main character actor who hasn't read the script.
I love scenic exploration and puzzling. Some games that scratched that itch better are Ico, Rime, Hollow Knight, The Witness and Submerged.
Ah! Wham's "Careless Whisper" plays at the beginning! Good gangster talk! :D
This is exactly the way they talked in the training videos at KFC when I was a teenager
This MF is the morgan freeman of youtube gaming
More from this guy and his buttery smooth voice please. Maybe speaking lessons? Not that it outshines the thought-provoking insight of this new series... 🙂
Ludonarrative Dissonance
I swear that is the red headed stepchild of video game commentary.
Loooooooovveeee this format, keep it up!!!! Great new addition to the escapist and totally fits in with the vibe.
Failure can be fun. Ever played the crash events in the Burnout series? Although you want to get that high score, falling short just means you get to create a bit more mayhem at that location before more action-packed racing or another chance to turn your vehicle into a projectile.
2:42 quick aside, that game's a fucking rad time of a collectathon
These videos are pure solid gold. Bravo.
these cold takes warm the cockles of my.... heart
Escapist. How the FUCK am I only just now hearing the voice of Sebastian Rulz.
Good lord. The cadence. The subject matter!
Promote him more!
THANK YOU! I've been saying something to this effect bout "Souls" games since the "Dark Souls", and even more now with "Elden Ring."
Making games that frustrate the player simply for the catharsis is bad game design. I don't want to beat my head against a wall; I want to explore the environments, fight new and interesting enemies, and find glorious treasures. If you're gonna bottleneck my experience with gameplay or enemies that are deliberately, CRUELLY more difficult than they need to be, then I'm not playing. If I want to be frustrated regularly, I have daily life for that.
Beating a boss the first time is ecstatic.
Beating the boss after the third or fourth time is a relief.
Beating the boss after the tenth time, and you've replaced a keyboard or controller, just feels shitty.
"Blizzard polish" used in a non-ironic way ? Never heard of Warcraft 3 reforged I guess... Yes I'm still bitter, why do you ask ?
Nevertheless, this new series is really cool (pun totally intended).
this new series is absolutely fantastic
100% agree, great points.
Loosing should be fun, just like in Dwarf Fortress.
Excellent execution of writing and performance. Looking forward to more of these.
Cool concept
As for difficulty in games, the idea that it brings forth trial and error makes the experience all the more worthwhile because it comes with the design of the whole game that nothing really feels like padding. I think most who like to go back to retro games is because of this, back when games were shorter in length but expected to be replayed by their natural learning curve.
Fantastic work! This might be the best new video game series on the channel since ZP.
Me: Imagine a 1940s noire detective with a voice like a whiskey flavored cigar.
Sebastion: I got you fam.
This makes a lot of sense to me, when I played DS3 and got killed from an enemy attack clipping through a wall while my attacks bounce off, I thought "this game fucking sucks and is broken" and then I quit. When I beat the same enemy how it's meant to be played, I feel happy and continue only for some other bullshit event to make me rage quit again. I've noticed that I end up quitting games not because of their intended difficulty but more of the type of frustration caused by failure.
I love this. Hope it catches on. Keep it up Escapist
Come for the voice, stay for the writing
"Not fun just hard" is a notion that will be slapped with "it is fun you just don't personally like it"
I want to feel like I had fun fighting the boss not that I'm finally done with the boss as if it's chores or something else that is just unpleasant.
We need more Cold takes
When it comes to inconsequential decisions, game developers have a great way to resolve this - save points and NG+ all you to live with the consequences or redo things without a forced safety net.
Escapist for me was all about ZP. Now, it's about ZP and Cold Take. Keep this up!
Again love this episode and series. Keep them coming.
I could hear you talk about nothing for hours, what a joy it was to watch this video!
Honestly at this point I just want to hear a bunch of closing punchlines from Frost just to see what he comes up with. Each one is a nugget of comedy gold.
You can’t have a fascinating failure without genuine ambition. Failing safe plays makes for a less bad game but paradoxically a far less worthwhile play experience. I would rather spend time on a good game but if I do start one that goes janky fast I will only end up finishing it if it’s fun to watch it fall over.
What a great rumination on videogame design.
another banger, these vids have only been getting better and better since this guy joined
I’m so glad we got a frost video like this, missed this
I wish more RPG games could do away with gear score / item levels and instead just make a bunch of unique weapons and items. Make a sword that freezes stuff and players will be encouraged to use it on fire enemies, make a sword that burns stuff and players will use it on ice enemies. So sick of the only upgrades being "this sword is the same as the one you already have but 5 levels higher and has 3% higher strength"
I love this concept that people are talking about with the benefits of failing
The biggest mistake people make in Dark Souls is killing Orenstine first. He's both more predictable in attack patterns, but killing him second lets you get his armor, which has one of the best curse resistance in the game. Which is useful later against Seath.
So happy you’ve got a new home here 🎉missed that voice
Thoroughly enjoyable delivery!
Failing in games really only kills the fun when it overtakes the entire experience. The point of super meat boy is to actually get through the levels.... If you're hitting a wall where you're just not able to get past something.... That's when it's difficulty goes from engaging to frustrating...
And really accessibility options for games really need to be dramatically improved. Celeste had ok options... But it really could have used an option to turn on an indication of which way you're going to dash... I played the game with infinite dashes and no death. It was still fun. But I kinda wanted to try without those but there wasn't a way to overcome the main reason I used them..... It's not fun to fail because I dashed in the wrong direction and just can't reliably dash the direction I want to dash.
And when watching videos talking about how enemies telegraph their attacks in cup head I thought it might be fun to play if I could adjust that stuff to make them more obvious and the timing easier to her right....
Like we need better and accessibility options that work with the game mechanics to make them more accessible not just lazy god modes.... Stuff that would probably double as dev tools for balancing and refining the gameplay.
I like the way you jazz Mr Frosty
I love these cold takes. Thank you escapist.
Actually disagreed with a programmer on a game I worked on for years over this. He is a Prince of Persia 3 fan (losing a fight means get back up immediately with half your life restored) while I am more of a Bloodborne fan.
The real answer is: don’t try to make your game appeal to people on opposite ends of a given spectrum, and make sure Marketing markets your game to the people who should enjoy it… which is never everyone.
Brilliant.
Great stuff!
I love this series man. Beautifully crafted points and just the right amount of funny to take some of the sting out of the truth. Cheers Frost 🍻
One of my new favorites! God that voice