Video games are currently the most popular form of mass entertainment, and we've been making short-form animated video essays about them for over 10 years (some of which may or may not involve a cat!).
So come along with the Extra Credits crew as we take a deeper look at games: how they are made, what they mean, how we can make them better, and how they impact our culture.
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A game that people can’t make their entire personality feels like a failure as far as the industry is concerned. Once in a while you’ll see people talk about “this game lost X% of its players” in a month or two and lumps in the story games that you’ll only ever play once or twice in that. Like of course the player count will drop, they finished it!
And then there is their us of shoddy AI art for their recent books, and new art pushing DEI and woke nonsense. Like that new one protraying orcs as Mexicans, or dwarves with man buns baking cookies while a few wre working a forge a couple of feet away.
Yay, I love The Landlord's Game! I printed my own board and cards of it. Small nitpick: I wouldn't say that the game tried to "warn against" capitalism. I'd rather say that it tried to fix capitalism, or warn against doing capitalism badly. This was Marx's critique of Georgism: That it tried to fix capitalism instead of overthrowing it. Surprise surprise, we didn't do either.
I gave a thumbs down for 1) the needlessly political endorsement of rent control (a bad policy, but also I'm here for history not editorializing); and 2) the endorsement of Monopoly, a game with an interesting history, but an intentionally terrible design because it was a critique, not for enjoyment.
Another part of this bug was how the beer got on the floor. If a dwarf was in the tavern and got summoned to a task, he would basically just dump his beer on the floor.
So, putting both studies together we can simplify it down to: People estimate their skills and knowledge towards an average So if you are below that you overestimate, and if you are above you underestimate
I hate battles! They don't make much sense as far as lore or logic go. You have to turn somersaults to make up an explanation of what they even are. "I am going to attack my battle! (Which is on your side of the field.)" Say what?
That's not really that weird for the time. It's just the Atari version of a tape drive (common to home PCs like the Commodore 64) plus a memory expansion.
It’s a novel solution for something rapid fire, but there’s a layer of interactivity and complexity that is lost that TCGs can make fun. Not to mention strategy.
