Hi , I'm the Game Overanalyser, and this channel will be exploring the stories, themes, design and art of gaming. By my name, I suppose you can tell I'm curious about getting underneath the surface of why we love playing the games we do. Pretention aside, gaming is an artform, and we need to treat it as such to convince others of what we all know. That games are awesome!
On this channel, we will be going into the specifics of game design, critically analyzing individual games and their themes, mechanics and meanings, and trying to figure out what works and doesn't work. There will also be smaller episodes dedicated to specific philosophical and psychological concepts and how they relate to and are expressed in games.
This channel is amazing. So many game design videos feel like they are meant for people discovering game design for the first time. This channel is gold for veterans
Hey I'm also a games academic and highly politicized, revolutionary person So, my 2 cents: While I love the way this discussion leads to us developers to think about how playing a game with a revolutionary message doesn't directly lead to revolution, i think it's bogged down by semantics in a way that ends up romanticizing the whole thing Specifically, the play vs game thing This theoretical category differentiation ended up leading to a romantization where play = good and revolutionary and game = bad and weak What I'd wager is there's no practical materialistic difference between the two things This gets even more clear to a person who speaks a language where the words "play" and "game" are derived from the same etymology: in Portuguese, "play" is "jogar" and "game" is "jogo" What I'm saying is that this while differentiation thing sounds a lot like something derived, in many parts, from a cognitive system molded by language and local culture Anyways, great video still and this sounds like a really interesting topic to go further in, and I'll do that! Some of it rings especially true for me cause I'm also a skateboarder hehe
Really great video. And I totally agree with your idea of unifying different writings about games. Look at today's video essays. Impressive? Yes. But sometimes they are so subjective and personal that makes me mentally "itchy." They want to give meanings to videogames but usually end up with emphasizing the importance or uniqueness of feelings and emotions. Also, there is a lack of interaction between some critics' personal insightful opinions about game criticisms and more academic game studies. Of course, for scholars in universities or other institutions, game criticisms are not that close to the articles that can be accepted and published on academic journals. I don't know. Maybe like what they have done to novels and movies, the point is to use them as texts and in the process of interpretation we better understand and criticize the real world.
Here's an emergent story for you... Every time you cut to those guys playing Go, I felt like we were cutting BACK to them, still trying to figure out their next move. Come on! Make a move already!
FarCry 2 was a reason to exist because of "Jackal a.k.a Jack Carver" (I literally have no idea what’s he doing in Africa) FarCry 2 had two protagonists doing allocated quests & randomly visit each-other like a normal person , Just like FarCry: New Dawn crossover FC5 seeing "The Judge a.k.a Deputy"
Where was this a year ago. I was writing my architecture thesis in relation to game. I still haven't recovered, and don't think i will ever, from this obsession.
Parents missing and teenagers always saving the world is just your usual shounen manga trope since majority of demographics are teenagers and younger adults. Its why you see titles like Naruto, One Piece and Bleach features teenage protagonists
I prefer walking simulators that don't have stories but just allow to explore the worlds and visit cities. Just imagine exploring the world of Ivalice in Final Fantasy XII with no combat and no stories to tell. You can wander anywhere you like, relax, and enjoy the scenery. :)
Totally not agree with that. Chess have so many rules. Whatever I would try is forbidden, but of course the game channel you in this pipeline of a "strategy" thinking which is just a mathematic reign over everything which you are supposed to want to do. Like, everything I would try, as a kingdom, managing my peasants, making them happy, ruling them for good, preparing army for countering enemies and having epic battles... This "game" is just a series of mathematic, cold, unfunny decisions, which makes no epic, no stories, no realism, no impact on the players, etc. If there is *more* things I *can't* do in a game *than* things I *can* do, there is more and more chance of suspension of my belief. And like. My will. Eight deadly words situation. Your universe is not interesting, don't care. That is a problem I often run into when trying to enjoy a game. Why does creativity have to be destroyed by the meta? Why does rules have to trap you into the game instead of being tools for you to enjoy it? Unlike monopoly, which is worse, because in it you don't even choose where you go. (complete randomness = eight deadly words = don't care) In a game in which you can only choose how to follow its system you better have a fluid and adaptive game engine, otherwise, sooner or later, I will feel the game's wall / limits, which depending of its impact on what I like or what I wanted to do with the game, risks heavily generating the eight words. Sometimes can be negated by something in video games we call mods, some modules on board and tabletop RPGs could change how the game limits the player, but I would need to mod chess so much in the end it would be a completely different game.
I appreciate your attempt to use an actual framework in order to understand what's going on here, it's a good step, and certainly I agree with some amount of this, but gamergate was never about gaming journalism ethics at all. It was claimed, by a guy who is more than fairly defined as a "psycho ex", that his ex partner had cheated on him with a game journalist -- who had never actually reviewed the game maker's game! we also don't know if they ever slept together. I agree there are no ethics in this realm currently, but to understand this issue, and the gaming community, you need to first understand gamergate more extensively, which requires an understanding of the incredible amount of misogyny and anti fem sentiment 'gamers' hold. The "ethics" claim was a way for these incels to justify their harassment of people who disagreed with them, almost entirely women in academia, doxxing and making rape threats (to this day, insanely).
I think proof came out that people wanting to fan the flames of controversy chose ethics in games journalism as a smokescreen for their harassment. They didnt care about it and I do feel like they used gamer's passion for their own awful ends. ..That being said, ethics and transparency in games journalism was and is a huge problem so it shouldnt be ignored.
Was "ethics in games journalism" used as an excuse to harass women? Absolutely Did anti-gamergate supporters use those terrible cases as a way to ignore all opposing opinions? Absolutely No one should be harassed, ever. But its important to set baseline standards that everyone covering games professionally should follow, including youtubers and streamers. I dont want to live in a world where every journalist gets harrased endlessly, but i also dont like the current system where influencers are allowed to shill products without consequences.
Just want to say I really enjoy the content here. I feel like not many go into the importance of story and narrative in games, so I really appreciate all the analysis and thought. Thank you thank you
My problem with Skyrim is that IMO it actually DOESN'T deliver on a promise to forge "Your own identity". Any semblance of identity melts down when instead of being one particular thing of your choice, you start to be 5 or 6 things at once. It feels like collecting achievements when you are not restricted by anything and can be master in everything. While at the same time no one seems to know that you are for example an Archmage. Identity in Skyrim exists only locally and almost never comes up during your other adventures. (Like in Oblivion sadly) I'll say it again in this comment : Skyrim is not half as good as people say it is. The only actual metric it wins over other games is it's sheer size. Which in a sense is the point of the series however IMO Skyrim is the low-point of the series compared to what previous installments achieved in relation to their release date.
For some reason I never understood the love skyrim gets. It's always on everybodies mouth when talking about games. Is it really so much better than let's say - Oblivion or Morrowind ? IMO it's not. Out of those 3 Skyrim was the least interesting for me as it basically mirrors Oblivion but never mechanically improves the formula enough for me to see meaningful difference... And narratively ? I much preferred the otherworldly and dream-like Oblivion to Skyrim.
As someone with both a background in fine arts and concept art; lemme throw in my two cents. Some videogames are art. Some convey a story, have an artistic vision, or create an interactive experience with enought value to be righfully considered so. But the kind of titles that come to mind are things like Journey, Gris, To the Moon... things that are complete tiles, with unique takes most people would think of as indie. I'd argue that games like Super Mario have also reached that "Art" status by virtue of becoming "pop art" icons in their own right. But most games are just entertainment; and created to entertain without any artistic intention or cultural aspiration whatsoever. The bigger a project is, the harder it becomes for it to maintain a passionate and clear creative vission. And let's not fool ourselves, most videogames are created with the intent of exploiting a certain genre for profit, not ir order to open oneself out and create emotion into the audience. The work of a videogame artist I'd say is more imaginative than creative. Yes we'll do animation, and illustration; but it falls more under the category of desing to spec, than with the expression of moods and ideas we associate with plastic arts or films. An there's one other thing that bothers me in regards of beign able to consider games as art in a broader sense, and that's mutability. One can revisit old Super Mario games, and experience them fully as they were created. You can listen to a record, and it will sound the same everytime. Art has that sort of function of capturing and preserving the experience it offers. But you cannot re-experice the latest update as the first time you've played the same. You cannot go back to playing WoW as it was back in the day. The "work of art" in itself has muted. While this is not something unheard of in the "art world", being the pivot of some form of art like land art; I feel like videgames, comics and movies have not learned to take advantage of it, and tend to take a negative impact in narrative and aesthetic originalty as time goes by.
I'm not going to lie I do not feel this way f*** this guy I've been through the most playing this damn game I'm joking by the way I do like the game but it's too hard for me I'll just play something else❤😂
