"I'm not prudish with principle, I am addicted to quality, and all I'm saying is that the crack was better before you got here" is an exceptional line. Amazing work Frost
Aye. And I find it surprising that I'm more excited to see something new from Frost than even from Yahtzee. The humor is similar; all subtle sarcasm and one-liners, but from Frost the delivery is as dry as a glass of Scotch, while from Yahtzee it's dry like an unexpected dildo.
I work in the film industry (for the last few years in VFX) and ask myself the same 'why are you here' questions weekly at this point, with a lot of the same answers. I think all the creative entertainment industries in general are in a very precarious, squeezed-the-life-out position at the moment.
From the outside, it seems like both industries have exhausted themselves chasing the big bucks. The MCU was to movies what live services were to gaming: showing that hooking your audience can generate the big bucks. But then it became all hooks, no bait and they wonder why the 10th derivative marvel thing or uninspired broken ongoing game doesn't get the same turnout. With all that research in hooking people, they haven't figured out we weren't there for the hook, but for the bait (ie story and/or gameplay promises). Destiny sold epic mysteries and promising gameplay, became mundane and repetitive. MCU sold epic story arcs and became bland. And on the side, all that could be innovative died because all the cash is funneled into these dead on arrival projects. Eventually, enough will have died that the ground will be fertile for new sprouts, I hope.
I'll admit I'm an outsider to the industry but one very interesting aspect is that today's creative industries (gaming, filmmaking, music, writing, etc) seem to simultaneously be in a creative vacuum and renaissance In many ways the big players in all those industries have squeezed their various IPs dry and are now struggling to make anything compelling However for someone trying to get into those industries it's easier now to get something published to a good level of quality than ever Taking the example of film, cameras are cheaper, VFX and editing are more available and there's an always increasing amount of talent out there. And you no longer need a big studio to discover you, you can publish a short movie to RU-vid or something and get noticed there
@@the_amazing_raisin Yeah unfortunately there's a real 'double-edged sword' to it all, in a couple of ways. I agree that a lot of entertainment media has had a real renaissance for the past decade, spurred on by talented people being given the opportunities, budgets and creative freedom to branch out. This leads to mainstream success and mass profits, and then inevitably a huge influx of studio interference, meddling, and trying to capitalise on trends, which stifles and kills the creative freedom in it's tracks, which we have seen over the past couple of years. There's something cyclical and frustratingly unavoidable about the whole process. Similarly, it's absolutely now easier and cheaper than ever to create your own projects to a higher level of quality. And this is fantastic and lowers the barrier for entry for everyone. But this also means that it is harder than ever to stand out from the crowd, to get your projects to be given a chance from audiences or potential employers/funders alike. There is always a sweet spot, like how in the 90s anyone who self-produced a halfway watchable feature film could get a distribution agreement from a major studio for it, and build there career. Or how in 2008-2013 there was the room for every well-made indie games to thrive and succeed, before the whole market became saturated. We are currently in a difficult time where we are well past the sweet spots for creativity to thrive, and all we can do is wait for the next moment when economics, industry and technology align again
I am with you buddy. In comms and TV in vfx. There is a lot of doom and gloom out there, and a lot of colleagues are dooming hard. But videos like this one is a good reminder that there is a lot of good and ways up. If film is still dragging there is a lot of work in commercials and episodic still. Not as fun or glorious, but it is a bit more stable at the moment. Keep kicking ass man. We will all get through these times.
Well, if his autobiographic introduction is anything to go by, I'd imagine he has a fair bit of experience with that haha. Either way, he does it so god dang well.
@@jiado6893 Bills gotta get paid and sometimes the way you pay them isn't glamorous; whether he did isn't something I know, but escapism by any means is an industry where demand is infinite and the product tries to match it as best it can.
Why haven't we gotten a new Viva Piñata game? With the recent popularity of cute, cozy relaxing games, farming sims, and survivalcrafting games, now is the perfect time to release a reimagined Viva Piñata!
Something tells me neither Rare nor their business daddy, Microsoft, are willing to risk pulling people off of Sea of Thieves to revisit an old IP. While WE can see the market is right for it, that level of clarity rarely (pun not intended) persists into board meetings.
There is that RareWare Flashback on platform. And you have some Indie attempts like Monster Harvest. But, yes, Viva Piñata kid of fell off far sooner than it should, probably because XBox stopped competing for the family market and became the Pew Pew console.
God damn, Frost's combination of sexy ass voice, insightful observations, and poetic writing all wrapped up in a noir package makes for some of the most stylish and entertaining games journalism around.
I'm an aspiring indie dev and I genuinely believe video games have an unprecedented level of potential still to be explored, an art form yet to be truly honed, and the homogenisation trends that have only gotten more pronounced in the last decade means it's all low hanging fruit ripe for the picking.
Good luck. Personally, I've been pleasantly surprised a few times recently. The fact indie games are beating CoD and the Fortnitificatio of art styles of games, certain games saying screw it and owning the bizarreness, Baldur's Gate selling well, and the surprise goodness of Unicorn Overlord. Heck, even ex Blizzard devs are making something akin to StarcraftXWarcraft. You guys are doing great. Keep it up.
I wish you all the luck and success in the world, man! Oh, how I wish 15 years ago, when I still had the time and energy, game dev industry had as much accessibility through tools and funding models as it has now!
Hi-Fi Rush proves to me that making good, colourful and fresh games like a decade ago is still possible. Even Ubisoft had shown its devs and creative leads can make original games like the new Prince Of Persia metroidvania or Mario+Rabbids. Those devs and creative directors need to be the ones deciding which ideas of theirs get funded.
It's all about letting creative minds loose with a normal budget. We don't need games that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. You can make more games and lessen the risk of failing because only a few need to be a hit instead of pouring a ton of money into a single "can't fail" game and watching it flop. Hollywood is going through something similar in that movies need to make a billion dollars to be profitable.
@@UnNuclear I am not against big budget games as a concept, there has certainly been ones that Inrather enjoyed. And there are some that flop. But for an industry as varied as gaming, I wouldn't want to have some arbitrary budget limit. That said, the issue is the lack of variety to keep games more mainstream.
"Third world country wearing a Gucci belt" is the best description I've heard for the US in a long while. I stick to single player games more because I've never had much of an interest in playing online with others, but at the same time I have some friends who play online MMOs and MOBAs so I can also understand that side of things. I know enough about LoL that when a friend said she started playing it I just went "oh no".
@@UrbanTheFox Yep. I've tried to explain it before, but that descriptor is perfect. It's short and gets the point across immediately when trying to describe how things are in the US.
I used to play League _a lot_ before, and honestly, it is very fun when you play with friends and in moderation. When you start playing ranked, that's when sh*t goes south! I haven't played it in years now, because I just don't have the time, but I wouldn't discourage people from trying it TBH.
@@Zeverinsen I'm pretty sure she plays with people she doesn't know, but I'm not sure. I just know she started playing it a couple of months ago. If she's been on her PS5 in the past month, though, she's been invisible since I haven't seen her actually online on it in a little bit now.
Cold Take: There is only so much demand for video games globally. Which doesn't really gel well with this mandate for business to squeeze out as much profit as possible. If we know that the market can be saturated we know that the only two ways to make more profit is: 1. To make things better so they do more stuff in less time at better quality.l 2. Make things more shit because it makes it cheaper. I want more of the former than the latter as I expect people do. Yet most of our economy is managed by people that just really LOVE Nr.2.
The problem is that too many people in power think that creative mediums are subject to economies of scale. That a hundred crap games will somehow be considered just as viable as one good one, that you can get a slice of an existing audience pie just by offering equivalent material, never once thinking about how much that audience has already invested and will be loathe to lose in a switch to a new product. I'm glad the bottom is falling out on the idiots who think that.
There's also the inconvenient fact that unending growth is a bad thing for whatever system it takes root in. We know this from how it works on biological systems, where it's called cancer.
I have also watched one of Kyle Bosman's Delayed Input in which he explains that by virtue of FF VII Rebirth being so much of a good game, he is "Full for now" and many new games will just not be interesting enough until he is done with it because he is not going to divert attention from one to the other. Not only is the demand lower than they think, a big part of the audience will be content with the same game for months or years and these suits will rather let decent games die of starvation because it was not the next big thing and keep pumping more budgets for software that fails to entertain or try to pump monetization to justify said longevity.
@@subtlewhatssubtle Hell yeah. I was reminded recently of just how many workplaces do "open plan" workplace studies. (yes, I'm going somewhere with this.) Because c-suites can never grasp that it's bad for productivity to shove all your employees into a noisy, smelly, oversized room along with the crappy managers who harass everyone, not just the scandal way, but the very real way that a low level manager's actual job is "harass employees", punishing them with micromanagement for drawing any kind of attention, good or bad. A corporation will read the industry studies on how bad open plan is (I highly suggest looking up modern jails and prisons and comparing them.), pay top dollar for their own study, which inevitably comes back agreeing that it's a bad idea... And do open plan anyway. Because the goal of capitalism is obviously not profit, it's maximum wealth gap... and if they can't pay you less, they'll make damn sure they get away with making you more miserable. Hell, why do you think we always hear about toxic execs protecting serial workplace harassers? It's not out of friendship. And, yeah, the audience pie is real. I've logged near a hundred hours in Helldivers. As a result, Pacific Drive and Baldur's Gate 3 are sidelined. It's not even an equivalency issue, my time is finite.
The ice cold wordplay is, as always, on point. And honestly, taking the time to just pull myself up and out of the muck and putting in real effort to look at the upsides is a kindness I don't grant myself nearly often enough. What I'm getting at, my dearest fellow commenters, is that it would seriously do all of us some good to just close Xwitter and walk away from it every few hours. Or minutes, if you're feeling generous.
Like any self-reinforcing system, it spirals either outward or inward at an increasing rate until it falls apart or implodes. The 'algorithm' was a terrible idea.
Social media jumped the shark around 2015-2016 when it flipped from goofy fun to reactionary right-wing churner and state sponsored psyops. Really, now that the guy running the official Sonic accounts is retired what even is the point of these sites?
The last two cold takes have really elevated this show in my eyes from a kinda cool thing on second wind to one of my favourite things to see in my inbox
I think 2007-2012 was a golden age for video games. People had really gotten to grips with getting the most out of the HD Gen, the processing power was there to create interesting mechanics and still hit a threshold of visual fidelity. I took a little break around 2015 and came back to video games properly in the last couple of years. Nothing has really changes in terms of the gameplay options in that time. Sure they look better, but the features are carved up behind grind and the title menu resembles a shopping app. Games have gotten bigger but not better. There are gems here and there, but it feels like we've peaked in terms of quality.
Gonna have to disagree, even as someone who grew up in that era myself. The industry and media surrounding games is much more mature now, we live in a media ecosystem that actually supports nuance and subtle conversation, e.g. this video we're commenting on. There exists support structures and actual career paths for indie devs outside the studio system, they have platforms for support that are well established, and with games being more mainstream, they're able to reach a bigger audience than they ever could previously. More games than ever are being released, and sure a lot of the AAA stuff doesn't interest me at all, but more games period = more good games, statistically speaking. And we're miles ahead on hardware, I have a steam deck that allows me to play games literally anywhere I want, and if the deck can't run them, I can just stream from my PC, which is still *insane* to me. We have SSDs and literal terabytes of storage on consoles, controller tech has gotten better, literally every aspect of the experience has improved You can certainly have nostalgia, and I wouldn't dream of telling you what your tastes should be, but to say that an industry that's only 30 years old peaked 10 years ago is just flat out incorrect
Game dev here. One reason to be here is that it *is* getting better. All of my older coworkers talk about working insane hours for months of years at a time. This has been a bad year, but even so it's obvious that things are better than they were in the recent past. There are still some studios who work their devs to death, but the majority are pretty decent now-a-days.
Game dev student here. Yeah, I hear that Sega Of America unionized recently. My main worry was that I'd be going into an industry where I'd have to work 60 hours a week, and I'd be unable to do that, but now things are looking better. Hopefully when I'm out of college things will be better then they are now.
man seeing that jimquisition vs digital homicide article really just made it hit how far weve come in what felt like a short time. I dont watch em anymore for various reasons that i wont get into but back then everything did honestly feel allot simpler. Ive grown as a person allot in those years being able to tell at a glace what games are usually worth my time not at all or worth the risk. i miss those comforting days of everything being in that fun middle ground of not knowing what is beyond the horizon but I know im better for my growth as a consumer. after all it just makes those games that do make me feel that way again all the more special.
Honestly, I highly encourage people who were fans of theirs to check them out again. Their editor is far better at their job, the jokes tend to be funnier, and most importantly they don't just cover the doom and despair aspects of video games they also seem to generally enjoy themselves more and are much much happier than they used to be.
@@ianstewart-vital trust me man i dont think going back is a good idea for me. It was never their content that drove me away. I hope shes doing well but for my own mental well being i cant stay in enviroments that toxic.
Frost, please write a noir character that monologues. I can't get enough of these lines, they're amazing. Would love to see you on a writing team making a CRPG or something. Great video as usual
Frost, you and I may not see eye to eye on somethings but damnit if that isn't the point of expanding perspectives. I will always appreciate your intellect and ability to recognize the multifaceted nature of this bizarre industry.Thank you for this show, and you're continued efforts, sir.
I still remember when indie games really took off. Playing Braid, and Aquaria. Gaming got so much better, and it seemed to happen almost overnight. Now I can play stuff that hits as hard as Hyperlight Drifter, Transistor, Crosscode, Tunic, and Dredge. There's so much choice right at our fingertips. Damn Braid was good.
Yes, for players who are able to ignore hype culture and AAA releases, gaming is incredible nowadays and has been for a long time. I hope that more and more people realise how much better gaming is when you spend a little time looking beneath the surface.
I would love to see a modern VP3. Game would look stunning with modern hardware, and the depth you could take garden creation..... *sigh* Just made myself sad knowing its never gonna happen :(
That's why I followed the people at second wind, people who want to just sit down and have a discussion without making everything one thing. A bit of middle ground is needed for people to shake hands, otherwise it's just trench warfare and seriously fuck social media for being so entrenched 😂
I want to become a game developer for the same reason i make music: for the sake of making art, making someone feel something. I couldn't care less about being a wheel in Ubisoft's blood machine for the 6 months before they fire me. But it's clearly a class privilege: most people do have to think of their livelyhoods first.
As a kid my mom got me Viva Piñata and Gears of War on the same trip to the store, polar opposite experiences that I probably put an equal amount of time into over the years. In these modern times of Pal World and Minecraft inspired survival games it's hard to imagine a garden simulator type game that wouldn't contextualize itself much like GoW, around a player avatar that can sprint, jump, etc; as opposed to the floating icons you inhabited in VP, which really let you zoom in on details and arguably felt more personal in a similar way to your silent protagonists. Such a game would likely have a chorus of people calling it "dated" or a "mobile game" under a false veneer of objectivity, as opposed to simply "not my kind of game".
My issue with the whole "F2P/Liveservice games allow more people to play who couldn't before" is that while yes, that's true, it's also by nature forces in microprogression loops, and grind to incentivize purchases, as well as holding back content in general as releasing "too much" means you don't have anything to sell later. So yes, more people can play it, but for everybody the game is also made into a shallow reflection of what it could have been. Just look at any modern fps, sure there's hundreds of unlockable skins and you can put an american flag on your rifle, then you can use them to play grind more of your daily objectives on your battlepass on the same 3 levels over and over. Same with the mobile market they all take on this extremely shallow time-wasting design, and unless you're a gambling addict who gets hooked on that feedback loop honestly...they get boring extremely fast. Even the people who play them a ton don't seem to be having fun, they're just there to grind out some new skin for a weapon they'll probably never use. Wouldn't be that big of an issue if every major AAA dev hadn't decided this is how ALL their games will function going forward, and while I'm all for indie games some game types just don't work so well with the lower player counts that come with that. I would fucking kill for a new online FPS to play that wasn't infested with battlepass nonsense and just let us have our custom games, mods, and maps....
Just by chance before leaving for work I stumbled upon one of your videos for "Cold Take" was instantly hooked and very soon subbed, and now this comes out right as my lunch break starts. What amazing timing.
Thanks fo this video man. I'm a former copywriter who has been doing the stay-at-home dad grind and teachinf myself to be a 3D Environment Artist and acting as a Producer for some friend's indie studio. The layoffs in the industry have been disheartening, but this video is a great reminder to just stick with the passion.
Another exceptional observation on the video games industry, Frost. Honestly, the reason I’m still here? Well, it’s not to chase the latest and greatest of the current year in gaming - I haven’t kept up since circa 2016, and the only gaming I do partake in is on my SNES Classic with my son (Solid package, by the way). No, the reason I’m still here is to gain perspective on the human experience, with video games as the main MacGuffin. I love hearing perspectives on the industry from yours in particular and The Second Wind team’s in general. You guys continue to keep me in the loop. Hearing you guys gush about video games as art and citing what you like and dislike, that resonates so much to me, and I’m glad there’s an entire team that can communicate that in their own unique way.
I spent most of my teenage years getting into programming, graphic design, and what have you to try and "break into" the game industry out of school. And all the while, I watched- in horror- the shift from what I considered "pure" game development into the live service swill we often get now (and I did my time with World of Warcraft all the same). Since then, I've worked in a few different areas from VR research for government projects to web development while only tiptoeing around the *idea* of making games, thinking the industry just wasn't worth it. These days, it seems I was only half-right: sure, the executives behind some of the larger companies have got "it" wrong about games and what they mean to me, but indies time and time again prove me wrong by reminding me that you CAN have your quality game cake and eat it without the absurd monetization and addiction-enabling sprinkles on top, too.
Frost strikes me as a guy who's actually been to Palookaville. Spent a couple months there, worked some odd jobs, pushed a broom, turned a few wrenches, kept a watchful eye on the door while some folks dealt with business he knew better than to ask questions about. Still has friends there. They don't keep in close touch but he gets the occasional Christmas card, or appeal for bail money. Sometimes it's both.
I don't know if that analogy quite works. I think a better one is that the US is a gorgeous skyscraper full of various rodents and critters and is also one loose brick away from total collapse. Solid video otherwise, though.
Reaching for the kind of impact that Anthony Bourdain had sounds like good motivation, Frost. I hope you didn't mean that ending "I will gladly be the Anthony Bourdain of the gaming industry" flippantly.
It's curious honestly, you're always just stating the obvious in these videos, but it feels real nice to have someone actually point those things out. One can get too bogged down in the negativity of it all at times, so it's nice to see some positive aspects too. A balanced diet has both negatives and positives, previously mine may have been a bit too negatively focused. As always thanks for the great video Frost :p Looking forward to the next one.
I do enjoy getting info about how the industry functions, it's shaped my playing and buying habits, helped me enjoy games in ways that also fit my values and how I wish the world be.
Frost publishing a video named "the bright side of gaming" is all you need to know how Second wind has changed the lives and mentality of everyone involved on it. Just, Frost don't end like Bourdain.
Well put, Frost. I'm in a social media group for TTRPG players that are "old dudes," and I feel like I'm in the minority when I say "the kids are okay, we're the ones that got screwed." Thank you for bringing up the "freemium" monetization and how it actually does help in that one way...
frost thank you so much for your videos, i watched all of them from southamerica also thanks to second wind for be a good spotlight for yahtzee, desing delve and obviusly you 😊
This is going to sound ridiculous, but I was not aware of gamer culture when I started playing. I was pretty young, so I was playing whatever my parents thought was good. Even after I got access to the internet, I merely focused on catching up on whatever series I missed, or game I found interesting for my personal preference. Maybe that's why I am neutral about opinions. (Just as a note: Have not played a new game in years, and lack...well a lot of things.) Once again, personal timestamps with personal thoughts. :) 0:45 - That...that is a lot. And you are still pretty young. Honestly, very impressive. (Sidenote: Voice acting? Now I'm curious what game that was for.) 1:20 - Once again, clean line delivered. 1:31 - A series of questions, which sometimes I do question... (Also not my brain thinking, "why cobble here?". It's a Minecraft smp reference.) 3:28 - This is still a principle I follow for myself. Just enjoy whatever interests me, if not, it's fine. 4:45 - I agree with the improvements, and the downside mentioned. It's a double edged sword with modernisation. 5:52 - A note on personal stance of Live service. 6:38 - For me, I do not like monetisation that hinders progress, or is a pop-up annoyance. (If it is pricey, say $60, then I do not want any please.) 8:25 - Frost's opinion on sticking to the job. 10:11 - Of all the podcast vids to take footage from lmao. XD
I didn't expect the narrator of LA Noir to be such a skilled writer when it comes to describing the state of modern gaming (or completely nailing that fact that (anti)social media seems to be the source of a lot of the modern problems when it comes to just talking about games.
As a fellow eclectically-employed individual, your unique angle of insight is always appreciated. The space between the commonly held opinions is so seldom explored. There's definitely som Bourdain in your style of critique, but you throw in a little Mike Rowe in there, too. Astoundingly approachable as you expose the disgusting guts of a process you clearly love without losing sight of why it's so vital. Wading through the waste so we can appreciate what that waste affords us, without us having to get soiled. Every tour you invite us on is appreciated.
I have my answer. Why am I here? Because, I don't like gaming. I *love* it. I love talking about it, having discussions, debating nuances. I like knowing how the sausage gets made, weird bodges that devs make, post-mortems on particularly nasty bugs, you name it. I'm here because for me gaming isn't just a hobby, it's what I love. So if that means having to sift through the bad to find the good, so be it. Gonna need some good gloves though. Cheers.🍻🍀
Great video Frost. My earliest memory of noticing the 'Hype cycle' was original Destiny. "Here's our game. In 10 years it's going to be amazing!" and suddenly roadmaps were a thing. There may have been earlier examples, but that was the first time I remember sort of 'buying into a promise of things to come' as a marketing strategy.
Having absolutely no background whatsoever in business or it's ilk, your opinions and insights are refreshing and intelligently put. They give me something to chew on and consider, seeing it from another angle that a small town nobody farm boy who adores gaming very dearly and just wants to afford things in his life would never, ever see. Not to mention they make baffling things-failing upward-suddenly click and make sense, and give me a direction to direct my vitriol. It won't do anything, sure, especially not in this modern world. But it helps me know where I stand and where I want to stand, having more options, opinions, and information to work off from, and should a chance come down the line, I'll have the most important thing in my toolbox: Information. Doesn't hurt that your voice is absolutely sweet, creamy caramel for the ears. Keep on keepin' on Frost, I'm glad you're here, positive or negative video.
I really like the second wind crew because they actually think, even if I disagree with some things, I stopped being burned by preorder culture after Homefront 2. After that I only played if I could watch video after video of a game and never get bored, or thinking I could do better. And hella indie games, lots, a bit too many according to my steam library, lol
One of your best pieces yet, Frost. Keep on being you. if you ever change that intro though I may become one of those internet strangers who demands a duel, tho :p
