Why "Perfect" Games Are Boring 

This is what I like to call, “lawnmower talk”. Normally, when you talk about art, you talk about how it made you feel, or what it meant to you, or how it spoke to you… With video games, the conversation is often: how does it look, how does run, how does it handle? Which is pretty much what you would say about a piece of luxury machinery, like one of those rideable lawn mowers. Obviously, video games are a very technical form of art, so that kind of technical talk is important. But when it becomes the only thing that matters, that’s when the conversation transforms into “lawn mower talk”, at least in my opinion. We are the only industry that treats our art this way. Retro games are also a victim of this as well. Something like Silent Hill 2 is seen as needing to be “remade” even though all of its artistic choices were perfect and still are today. It’s gameplay design is seen as an outdated relic and not something that was deliberately designed to make you feel a certain way. As an industry, we have gotten used to defending “games as art” and calling them art. But we still don’t really treat them as such, at least not entirely. Certain qualities (usually non-interactive components) are lauded for being artistic, but the actual gameplay (the most important part) is not always seen as a form of artistic expression.

It's precisely because of all the hostile and unintuitive features of Dragons Dogma that I had an experience that I'll probably still be thinking fondly about many years from now. Long winded personal anecdote below. Thanks to the long travel time between settlements, coupled with the steep price to rest at inns (I didn't understand the value of camping in the early game), I arrived at the capital half dead, broke, and severely undergeared. I decided to look around the capital for quests to make some money, making sure to avoid agreeing to any quest that would require a lot of travel time or danger. Suddenly, one of the random NPCs I talk to mentions that a guy I met a while back was just sent on a suicide mission and "won't survive the night". I don't get a quest marker or anything, but the game has already conditioned me to take its NPC dialogue seriously. As a player, it's unclear to me whether the timer starts now or when I pick up the quest later, but its a risk I'm unwilling to take. So I track down the guy's wife, and ask her about it. I get a quest, a map marker, and a confirmation that I am indeed on a timer. I check the map, the guy's further out than I've ever had to walk before, in completely uncharted territory. It's like 5pm in game, and for all I know I only have until morning, so I have neither the time nor money to gear myself up OR recover my health, which is currently capped at about 40% until I rest. The game is not going to wait for me to be prepared. So I just start SPRINTING blind and half dead into the wilderness after this guy. I pick up pawns on the road along the way, hoping they'll at least give me a fighting chance. One of them says she knows the way because her Master has already done the quest, so I ask her to lead and now I'm sprinting after her. We run past goblin ambushes, bandit camps, a charging minotaur, everything, as it slowly gets darker and darker. Eventually, it's the middle of the night and it's pitch black. I can see on the map I'm only like a 5 minute walk away, but I can't see in front of my face, we're getting constantly turned around and ambushed by undead, and the pawn I picked up is too busy fighting them off to guide me through the dark. I painstakingly drag myself over to the quest objective, just in time to see the guy I was sent to save being slapped around by a giant monster I can barely make out in the darkness. I do my best but as expected it's completely beyond my abilities right now. My pawns die, I get slapped around for 10 minutes, and its all I can do to simply scare the thing off. But it's too late, the guy I was sent to save was killed in the battle. I even get a quest failed notification. Feeling defeated, out of desperation I decide to burn the one Wakestone I had to revive him and see if that somehow 'unfails' the quest. To my shock, it actually does. The quest notification reappears, completes itself, saying I saved him, the guy even verbally comments on being brought back to life. I limp back to the capital in the morning, and the wife showers me with way more gold than I've ever seen and a set of shiny new fighter equipment that is still better than pretty much anything I've found 40 hours in. I went from half-dead and destitute to thriving, purely because I met the game on its own terms, and treated a life or death situation like an actual life or death situation. Now, I know I probably made a lot of dumb assumptions during that quest, like I probably would've been okay if I had just waited to talk to the wife, it's possible the guy wouldn't have literally died by morning, etc, but that's the point! If the game had been more clear about its systems, I wouldn't have had to act on those assumptions. If the game had reliable fast travel, if it was willing to wait for me to do that quest when I was actually ready for it, if the game didn't have a super punishing economy, if you didn't lose max health until you rest, if the game wasn't willing to throw completely unwinnable challenges at you, if the game wasn't willing to let you completely mess things up and get people killed, then this experience would never have happened for me. It would've just been a marker on the map that I got around to like 20 hours later, early in the morning, well equipped and way stronger. I would've kicked the thing's ass and fast traveled home. A smooth, efficient experience, but completely unmemorable, just another sidequest to tick off my list.

Majority of AAA games have been optimized to make the player feel productive above all else. It's all about achievement and consuming as much content as possible, rather than providing a experience

The problem seem to be on how gamers over the last few decades ended up thinking of videogames as goal/objective oriented, instead of the experience of playing oriented, players are now focused on the goal, instead of the process leading to it, gameplay in their eyes become an obstacle to to their goal, it is probably a consequence of how gamers started to see games more like a competition than just a game, there is nothing wrong with videogames wasting your time with gameplay experiences...because that's what games and the act of playing is...

This is how I feel about the "QoL" improvements in the newer Monster Hunter games. I started with Monster Hunter World, but in going back and playing the older games, I find I really enjoy a lot of the friction that World and Rise removed. I like hot and cold drinks, I like inventory limits, I like not being able to warp back to camp, etc.

I think the problem with both audience demanding less friction in games and the companies who comply to them are to blame for *a lot* of modern releases just not having much staying power past its launch year (or month), regardless of playtime and content I remember once Mark Brown came to this conclusion when comparing Far Cry 2 to Far Cry 4 and its subsequent entries: the latter are bombastic adventure to breeze through like in an action movie, and the former being this brutal endurance experience you are unlikely to forget, like an emotional scar

We need to accept that: 1) Not all games are for everyone and 2) You don't need to play every game out there and those things are fine

SuperBunnyhop once said “some of the most interesting games are the most flawed” in reference to The Witcher 1 - it’s an amazing experience you won’t get anywhere else, but it’s also far from perfect.

What really struck me with this video is that you frequently used the word "optimized" as opposed to "improved." Optimization in this context sounds like the act of trying to better something in a very formulaic and almost sanitizing way, a method of making games to a very calculated extent. But that's not how art works. Contrast that with improvement, which can mean any number of things to make something subjectively better, even if it sounds strange or even contradictory on paper. That was a great choice of words that resonated with me big time. And yes, I'm still of the mindset that Deadly Premonition was a game that openly changed how games criticism could and should be approached, so it's nice to hear it brought up here. Awesome work.

A game for everybody is a game for nobody. -Arrowhead Games

Seeing people saying "I have a job and kids, I don't have time for games without fast travel" about dragon's dogma 2 makes me a bit sad. In a way we got there because of the last 15 years of open world games that set up this expectation, but travelling in dragon's dogma IS the game. If you put unlimited fast travel there's barely anything remaining to the experience. They made travelling engaging, you have to make important choices, think about your resources and if you want to spend your limited ferrystones for each travel. I'm 80 hours in and I'm still enjoying travelling around. I'm honestly amazed capcom greenlit a high budget game so niche. It's very clearly not for everyone, but if it's for you, it's great.

I only have one thing to say: THANK YOU FOR THIS! Art is not a product that needs to "function", it's a form of human expression that simply wants to be experienced. And sometimes friction is a vital part of that experience. Like Patrick Boivin said in a recent episode of his podcast "Castle Superbeast", talking about Dragons Dogma 2: Friction makes sparks fly.

I love Morrowind in all its weirdness and "datedness". I think it's cool that your quest log is your character's journal and you needs to flip through the pages chronologically to find directions some yokel gave you because you don't have magical GPS embedded into your brain. I like that getting around takes more than picking a spot on a menu and teleporting there. I even like the janky real time/d&d hybrid combat. People hate "jank" these days, but many of the best experiences out there are at least a little janky. If it goes down too smooth how will you know it was even there at all?

This video speaks so deeply to my soul, the exact perspective I advocate for in my position at a major game publication, and an increasing need to help with media literacy in a medium that has yet to see its peak. This is literally a topic I wanted to do for The Kurt Locker, so THANK YOU for being on the same page.

This video nailed what I've been frustrated by. Absolutely zero consideration went into asking why the creators may have made a given choice, people instantly go "It's a flaw, the developers did a bad job, and should patch this". If my expectations are the requirements, and deviating from them is a failure, then I will never appreciate anything new again. It's a creative dead end to approach art this way!

Palworld has quicktravel, but you still have to hoof it to the nearest eagle statue, and they're kilometers apart. So far so standard. But the feeling you get when you finally catch your first flying mount and can soar over terrain like it's nothing is amazing, and it wouldn't work if you hadn't spent hours walking everywhere on foot before that point. You get an appreciation for how large the world is, and when you're able to fly around you can FEEL how much time and effort you're saving. (And if you're careless your bird can get knocked out stranding you in rough terrain, which can also give you a memorable experience - found that out first-hand)

a lot of the complaints people have about dragons dogma 2 make me feel like they really didnt want to play dragons dogma 2, like they talk about the lack of fast travel and the quests that arent explicitly outlined with everything you need to do, and i really feel like if the devs caved and added quest markers for every little thing and let you use camp sites or riftstones for fast travel then it would lost a lot of what made it feel like dragons dogma

Just from the title I will say Number one reason why I love death Stranding flaws and all I literally could not imagine it any other way Infact I love it BECAUSE of it's uniquqe flaws To paraphrase RU-vidr Bricky: *"Alan Wake is proof that people would rather play a unique 6/10 game than a boring 9/10"*

Recently, I've been playing GTA III for the first time. Never touched a GTA game, and a friend of mine has always recommended them. It is an old, janky piece of shit sometimes. I found a payphone where the game told me to steal a fast car and enter a race, which I proceeded to bash my head against for about an hour because the driving controls are so hard to parse. I found myself in love with how unapproachable and alien it often feels. That same friend told me there were a bunch of cheat codes to try, so I summoned myself a tank, turned on anti-gravity, and just started fucking around for a few hours. Turned on the code where citizens start beating the shit out of each other on the streets. I have no clue what's going on half the time, other than people asking me to steal ice cream trucks and plant car bombs, or go talk to some dude named Luigi. Yet, it is one of the most memorable experiences I've had with a game in a long time because it is absolutely unlike anything else I have ever played. No matter what's going on, I'm having a wonderful time, even if I walk into a gunfight and die in five seconds, or my cars explode after ten light grazes against a wall. There's just something about it that draws me in to play more. I'm almost always laughing along with how absurd it is. I'm sure that as I progress through the franchise, it will become more and more approachable. Maybe that will even make it more fun. But there's an absurdist comedy to how rough GTA III feels which I wonder about losing as I approach more recent entries. A "modern" gamer would have looked at my play session and give me strange looks for going back. I think we might all enjoy this medium more if we learned to laugh along with it.

"if given the chance players will optimise the fun out of games" is forever topical and applicable. games by definition are just an artificial challenge being presented, most gamers do not realize this basic truth. now the key lies in how interesting the designer can make overcoming that challenge. sometimes the gameplay is just boring. sometimes the gameplay is not for that person's taste. sometimes it's just a clash of expectation vs reality. and there is teleportation in the game in fact. the dialogue doesn't even seem be handled properly.

Killer7 seen you have my like

I'll admit I didn't like the fast travel thing till I realized 1. there's ox carts 2. the world is fun to explore (just remember a camping kit) the game gives me Elden Ring levels of "world I can get lost in for a bit". Great video.

The art comparison is valid in general, but in DD2 specifically, the microtransactions exist in tandem with the "time wasting" design, which, intentionally or not, does prey upon players with vulnerabilities in a similar way that gambling does. Capcom's choosing to place microtransactions to circumvent the frustrations the developers crafted cheapens the artistic merit of the game. Not to a dire degree, but to a noticable one. Ultimately, these frustrations end up mountains instead of mole hills only if you don't enjoy the core experience or are not being enticed by a more meta experience (such as a mystery to solve, an intriguing plot, or characters to enjoy the company of). If someone enjoys the experience, it's easier to overlook quirks and oddities. An example i think of us Fallout: New Vegas pre-order dlc (later bundled into the ultimate edition). It ruins the difficulty curve of the early game and cheapens the artistic merit of the developers, but i don't mind it because combat challenge isn't one of the most compelling experiences of FNV. It also helps that i can choose to just drop them on the ground in Doc Mitchell's house if i want that challenge.

One of my favorite open-ish game is still Shenmue, just because the game asks me to actually look at the world and ask people around to find the way forward, instead of overlaying a marker on the screen.

Yeah having completed DD2 the discourse surrounding it makes me really, really irritated. It has me wondering if the MTX discourse hasn't kind of poisoned people towards DD2 when I hadn't spent a cent on its MTX. I didn't need to; they are completely superfluous and, honestly, the game is better off if you never look ONCE at the storefront. The friction is the point. The rough edges are the point. The pain points are the compelling part. Discourse surrounding games really does feel a lot like discussing software and not about discussing art, and it makes talking about DD2 absolutely maddening to me, because the fact that DD2 pushes back so often and so frequently is what makes it so compelling to me! I LOVE the fact that its systems and world constantly push back against me! I love the fact that i can't trust the ox carts, that ferrystones are expensive IN-GAME, that portcrystals must be placed BY YOU, and that you MUST REST in order to recover after a grueling fight. Going uphill makes stamina recover slower. Stairs are tiring! You have to properly pace your running...you know...like in real life. Jogging IRL isn't a constant sprint you have to pace yourself; save the sprint for when it's most important. (That said doing a Ravenous Lunge and doing a paintrain across the map at max speed is the funniest thing ever and I hope it stays like this, but I digress) It has me approaching traveling in the game like I would a roadtrip; Oh, I'm here! I might as well do a few quests while I'm in town. It makes the world feel so much larger when you can truly internalize the distance and in-game time it took to two locations. I found myself memorizing paths, recognizing landmarks. Honestly the fact that Dragon's Dogma 2 exists with this intentional pushback and this kind of budget should viewed as a minor miracle. The fact that it was made at all and it COMMITTED to its bit (including its frankly bonkers decision surrounding the endgame) makes me kind of love it. Not in spite of its warts and complications but BECAUSE of it. Turns out, art that bites back kinda rules! There is another element about the DD2 discourse that does trouble me though and it's this impression that it's somehow not intentional, that DD2 just stumbled into being full of friction and it's like...Itsuno has been in the industry since the 90s. The staff are all Capcom vets. Is it really that much of a stretch to think that it's intentional? There's a bizarre unwillingness to engage with video games in good faith; it's never intentional friction, oh clearly they're just incompetent. Or worse, it's clearly cynical. It's like this urge to condescend and grouse at designers for not fitting the ideals of players 1:1. Honestly I want more games like DD2*. I know it won't happen because that's kind of the nature of big budget art in our capitalist hellscape but the fact that it exists in 2024 makes me unbelievably happy. *without the cash shop but tbh it's capcom, they've been doing this tipjar shit since for years now.

Every year i introduce a new cohort of students to both killer7 and Deadly Premonition. To show that something interesting can be provided even though the component elements individually aren't "the best". killer7 especially confuses students the most at first but then they begin to understand the significance.

I think games are just like any other artistic medium. Some pieces of art are deep and complicated with heavy themes and interesting characters, some pieces are mechanically impressive with tight design and meticulous pacing, and some pieces are focused on spectacle with impressive scope and budget. All this is to say I think its fine for people to prefer one style of artistic creation over another so long as they recognize that's what's happening and don't try to criticize a piece with a different artistic priority for not appealing to them.

I'm convinced the biggest problem with the Horizon franchise is that it isn't flawed enough. It's so smooth and polished that it's impossible to remember any detail.

I tend to believe that a lot of the games that have had a sense of historical reevaluation in terms of their quality (Haunting Ground, God Hand, the Bouncer) as well as games that I’ve found to be interesting partially because of their clunkiness (Rocket Robot on Wheels, the Maximo series, Rumble Roses, and the like) would kind of be reviled by the same people who praise them SPECIFICALLY because of how weird and semi-unintuitive their mechanics are. It’s a shame too, because there’s a lot of games that people crap on now, that 15 years from now are gonna get the exact same treatment that God Hand did, but c’est la vie I guess.

That happens when the Ubisoft formular is the standard for the industry...

I don't want to bring up any names, but I watched a video about Dragon's Dogma 2 yesterday that really bothered me. I haven't played the game, so I obviously don't know if I would agree that the things they pointed out are actually problems in Dragon's Dogma 2 specifically. What bothered me was the implication that those are problems which video games have in general. That repeated backtracking is bad by defualt, that forcing a player to traverse larger distances without the option of fast traveling is disrespectful of the player's time. Death Stranding is a game that does those things, but it's so clearly what the entire game is built around. It wants the player to consider the paths, to reflect on their journeys as well as their surroundings. While I'm a firm believer in that video games should be way more customizable than they often are (kinda like how Pathologic 2 did it) I also believe that, had there been a bunch of "quality of life options" at the very start, it would have undermined the entire artistic purpose of Death Stranding. And for what? So that it can be exactly like other open world AAA games? How terribly boring would that be!? Thank you for making this video. I really wanted to vent after I watched that other one yesterday, and this video satisfied that need.

This is what I've been saying. A 7/10 game often means a lot more to me than a modern, so-called "9/10" game. A game that is fun, yet flawed, is supremely more interesting and memorable than a game that is objectively well-made, but lacks identity.

I wonder if the Dragon's Dogma 2 discussion would have played out differently had it not been for the microtransaction controversy. Capcom assigned a numerical dollar value to traversal, so anyone running across the map won't be considering the art and experience; they'll be thinking of the cost.

This reminds me of people saying everything in a game MUST be designed around fun factor. It's absolutely true that you want a game to be enjoyable for the player, but not every feeling can be conveyed through enjoyment or fun. I would say everything should be some form of engagement, But there are things in video games that I don't think are always fun. Some things are tense. Some things are full of anxiety or heartbreak. Gameplay can do all of those things and a lot of people just like to simplify games into some kind of product based out of simple fun. Don't get me wrong. Fun has so much value and it's a complex and interesting thing, but there's a lot more art should explore.

Agreed. Most discussions about game design often are too superficial.

Some games arent for everyone, thats just how art kinda work's

Well, I totally agree with this, I also look at a game like cyberpunk 2077 and think wow it’s just such a better game now because it’s so much smoother. So it kind of depends on the game a bit.

Totally with you on killer7. Even with the clunky controls and some of the worst bosses I’ve ever fought in a game, it ended up being my favourite game I played last year. I’ve heard a lot about how horror games combat systems are purposefully designed to be shitty and hard to control since it reinforces how weak and afraid you’re supposed to feel. Killer7 isn’t horror in genre, but its gameplay keeps you paranoid going around every corner, just as if you’re running around an abandoned building being hunted by invisible exploding monsters. You know, because you are.

Fantastic video! I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot too. It’s why I hate when something is called “dated” or not up to “modern standards.” I feel like we’re missing out on so many cool experiences because certain styles aren’t trendy anymore. While things like tank controls and fixed camera angles aren’t popular anymore, I still think there’s potential to create fresh gameplay experiences with them. I’m glad you brought Rise of Ronin’s traversal feeling mindless. I felt this way about God of War Ragnarok Uncharted style climbing. The giant wall climb in Asgard didn’t impress me because I was just pushing up the whole time like every other climbable surface. And hell, games with inconvenient can become beloved because of that. Shuhei Yoshida thought Demon’s Souls was garbage when he tried it, and now look at FromSoftware. And hell, look at how the original Dragon’s Dogma got a dedicated fanbase over the years. I can’t remember the interview, but I know Hideaki Itsuno said that he predicts not everyone will like DD2 100%, but the people that are really into it will like it 120% or above. I hope those folks are having a nice time

Couldn't agree more. Video games are unique among popular media, in that they give meaningful pushback when you want to experience them. In other words you watch a movie, you experience a game because you took active participation. I often prefer to play games that others have dubbed as "awful" or "dated" then I do playing a game that checks all the boxes of being what is considered top tier. Often those games are kind of soulless, I would rather play an imperfect game that has noticeable issues but you can tell the dev team poured their passion into it than a game feels like it was made by committee of what is industry expectation. Games like the first Alan Wake, Batman Arkham Origins, or Watch Dogs 1.

A game that comes to mind from this is The Sinking City. From gameplay perspective it's janky with odd combat and movement. But I thought the game was awesome, and it's probably because of that stuff that made it memorable for me.

In the weirdly poignant words of one Pat Stares At, “Friction makes sparks fly."

This is the #1 thing that's been bothering me about gaming discourse for a while and you've expressed it beautifully. Thank you!

I feel so vindicated watching this!!! Dragon’s Dogma 2’s “inconveniences” are part of its design and experience! Too bad the microtransactions make it so people think the lack of fast travel is simply to sell more ferrystones. Excellent video 🙌

Okay, so I agree with the overall thesis of this video. There are a lot of "flawed" games that I love, and many games that eschew "industry standards" because of their design ethos or artistic intention, but I have to ask honestly though, if Dragon's Dogma 2 wants you to travel between each town on foot aside from specific fast travel locations and methods, why are they selling ways to bypass that part of the game for extra money? If the game was designed around the feel of the larger world and the experience of living and moving in it, why undercut the design by selling shortcuts? The cynicism that people have toward this decision is entirely justified because we can tell that many games will add microtransactions to games that set the overall game feel to something closer to what you might expect the experience to be (permanent XP boosts are a good example). I'm fine with having many games that don't click with everyone, but when microtransactions are added on to, let's say, give people the opportunity to adjust the game to their own pace for extra cash instead of just adding those features in as optional free content for players to take or leave at will, it really feels like the shareholders have more influence than the designers in how a game is designed.

Great explanations and analysis here! Very nice video!

We should however be wanting to get as close as possible to perfect without actually getting there. Never stop striving for better.

Hang on, how does this view work with cyberpunk 2077? From what I've heard it was a buggy mess, and that's still a problem isn't it? I doubt that really made the experience better for anyone, or more artistic. I think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between "imperfections" that are intentional and ones that aren't, or between ones that suit a game and ones that don't.

There's some middle grounds, though. Like when Tactics Ogre Reborn came out, it changed so many specific things that, while modernizing the work, almost told you a story and it went along. Like how one particular unit type got heavily buffed, so when us long timers went to go recruit it...we wondered where it went from an early area. It seemed to just be removed. But then, coming back on glorious fashion, there was the Zombie Cyclops in a late game dungeon, front and center to let you know he got promoted. Things like the crafting recipes required less grind of random areas (having mostly been relocated to a few floors of a particular dungeon, this was just for the basic stuff) , but also mentally established this feeling that "yeah, these dragon lords down here really were studying something, huh?" One of the big frustrations of original players was when the AI would steal your loot, but rather than just give it to the player (which many players use cheats to do for the big community overhaul mod of that version), you can now kill that unit to steal it back. It's an extra step, but feels so cathartic. They could have dropped the near nonexistent drop rates of the end game gear, but instead now you get a sort of improved version of randomized loot, where their base numbers and additional skills are the same, but instead now can be merged into a vastly improved version, while scattering these versions to way more places. In most games I would prefer the rarity of the original, but in an odd twist, that version was also a remake, the original original of which was this generous, but just never got around to making those items special. They could have just upscaled the graphics, but instead took the time to remake the local province for backgrounds from in game assets. They could have just improved the music, but also added more audio sliders for those moments where you just set the team to AI to gather materials, and only need to check in to see who's still alive. I could go on for hours about the little weird changes they made to improve it, but "modern game bad" discourse often just labels it as a simple port or cash grab, when it's an insanely good revision of an already insane game. (Who makes up to like 6 alternate cutscenes with 4+ variations for a 600 hour + game that adapts to things constantly? Folks legitimately demanded a ground up remake of that.)

stuff like this is why i appreciate someone like yoko taro. his games aren’t afraid to make you do the most tedious things over and over again in order to really get a point across, whether it be replaying the 2nd half of nier 4-5 times to experience the full story or literally every aspect of drakengard.

This is something I’ve really had to come to terms with in the last 10 years or so, that I don’t only love my favorite games in SPITE of their flaws, but also because of them.

YES YES YES. These days I really appreciate a game that is a bit thorny and unconventional, precisely because it is that. There's a million other games where every piece of friction has been sanded away to make them feel like every other game. We don't need yet another one. Trying different things is where innovation comes from, and gives games a distinct personality. Having an experience that had its ups and downs is way more engaging and memorable than one that just hums along being inoffensively fine too. People need to be way more willing to meet a game where it's at rather than demanding it give them everything they think they want with minimal inconvenience. Even if that results in something that isn't for you, or even if it "fails" at what it's trying to be, that's valuable and interesting to examine in its own right too. It's not some personal insult to the player if a game tries something that doesn't quite pan out.

Movies are cut all the time for viewer experience. Books have editors for a reason. It's fine for a game to make an experience difficult on purpose, but it's also fine to critizise the game for that so that people who don't want that experience can stay away from it. It's like your friend warning you a movie is very artsy or slow before starting to watch it. Maybe you're not in the mood for that so it's good to know about it.

I still think making fast travel accessible from the start after Dark Souls 1 was a mistake by Fromsoft. One of my core memories from gaming is being stuck in Blighttown in DS1 with no idea how to get out. That was a terrifying experience and I felt so accomplished when I finally heard that Firelink Shrine music again

I have the feeling that if Death Stranding was released today it would be considered a "mediocre" game because fast travel in this game is also *very* limited and you only unlock it in chapter 3. And I'm saying this knowing very well that the game was only released 5 years ago.

Just recently played Mafia definitive edition. The driving mechanics are “rough” by modern standards, yet they were still so memorable to me. Really feels like you’re trying to manuever a heavy steel box around, which matched perfectly with the prohibition era vehicles at the time. Same feeling is present in how every mission immediately starts after the other with a jumpcut to another location. Not exactly the most “modern” solution, but I felt like it helped immerse me in the main character’s hectic/nonstop lifestyle where you never even get a chance to consider how the jobs you’re doing are getting increasingly immoral. Agree that a game having character should be praised rather than attacked.

I saw the Jimquisition video about dragon's dogma and it actively made me lose braincells. "If you say you like walking around this world, you're lying!" Maybe the game just isn't for you?

100% Agree. When I was younger, I played a lot of FFXI, which at the time had a lot of friction in the game world in relation to travel from place to place. As the player level and resources go up, the friction goes down, but it was still usually a bit of a hassle to get somewhere remote. You experience the wonder of strange new vast landscapes. Your first time, you may not have a map, or if you do, its a vague map. Its part of what made the experience memorable. It also cost you a lot of time and the game was extremely grindy.

Great piece and my views exactly. Another example for you: The two-and-half-minute long sweeping scene in Twin Peaks The Return, Part 7.

Honestly ive been feeling this way for a long time. Whenever someone mentions "quality of life" improvements in a game i sigh. Ppl seem to want a frictionless game that doesnt have anything weird or unusual, things that would have stood out in the ps2 era. Also this obsession we seem to have about getting through things is tied to people not wanting to do stuff like actually explore the game world or do more manual tasks like walking places, which robs the worlds of a more tactile nature that i prefer (should've waited till the end of the video as u pretty much cover a lot of what I say in my comment 😅)

Yeah. One of my favorite games I've been playing recently is Beyond The Citadel. It's the sequel to The Citadel, which was a boomer shooter that came out a few years ago, notable for having a mix of unusually realistic guns, simple but powerful movement, and a 90's anime-esque art style. Beyond The Citadel made a major change to how weapons work. Instead of hitting Reload to reload it, you use three different buttons. One to take the magazine out, one to put it in, and one to cock it (pull the slide or charging handle, for example). They also made it so that, if an enemy is taken out by a part of their body below the waist being shot off (legs, possibly hips), they will sometimes play dead, then use a pistol to shoot the player. These mechanical changes drastically changed the feel of the game. The lean mechanic changed from being handy but forgettable, to being almost a necessity, as the cognitive load from managing my guns was too high to dodge bullets and retaliate at the same time. It meant that I could very much be on the defensive in a fight, while still having lots of resources. Also, guns can jam in Beyond The Citadel, and how often they do that is dependent on how damaged they are. This can completely upset the balance of a firefight at any time, putting the player on the defensive. Or forcing the player into a more offensive route, say, using the axe for example. All of this, combined with the art style and sound design, creates an incredibly tense FPS that does not really fit in any genre I know of. It's great. And I've just been playing beta versions, not the full release.

There's a false equivalency happening here wherein the assumption is that folks who are against the monetization of fast travel are entirely the same folks who think it should be a standard. The game could have just not ever had fast travel at all if that was the desired outcome of the developers in the first place. I wouldn't mind that. I didn't mind having to work toward it in the Souls games. I don't mind games that don't have it outright. But that doesn't mean I can't find this monetization scheme as something I don't ever want to support. I'd rather suffer through a game that for the sake of its intended design had me trudging through its world and slapping me across the face until I git gud. But to do that and also dangle a "QOL" feature in my face for added cost to an already full priced game? It's an insult.

I have the Feeling that the MMORPG players behaviour (nothing against them I am also guilty of doing that for a time) is bleeding into the culture as a whole. We are so focused on min-maxing everything, look for guides on how to be most efficent in games. Where are all the chests, where do I find the best loot. How to 100% everything. Together with trying to "gain" the most out of it. Which prohibits us from forming a deeper connection with the game itself. So we tend to just consume the art and not understanding it. A great experiment for that is just asking people what the critic or the broader Topics of a game beyound it's direct story is. "What thing is the driving force behind Kratos development in GoW (2018)" etc. EDIT: Also we are really bad at distinguishing between things that can and should be optimised (like the inventory in skyrim) and those that are more than a superficial layer and do play a more important role in shaping the experienece as a whole (like the inventory management of Resident evil, or a lot of helldivers 2)

This video was needed. Thanks

For me, the imperfection of DD2 is in what rewards it has for exploration. I would typically consider rich environmental storytelling and interesting, intricate armor/weapons to be a compelling reward for exploring. Unfortunately what DD2 rewards you with for entering cave #47 is the same enemy types you saw in caves #1-46, for creature parts that serve considerably less interesting purposes. Larian made exploring their games more enjoyable than anything DD2 ever did. There's just not enough meat on the gaming experience to make "discovering" the next cave feel like a compelling experience. THAT is where I think the real complaints about fast travel actually stem from.

I think you are too generous when you say that people don't expect other art forms to be more convenient for them these days. In the latest book club meeting I attended people were complaining that the book we read could have been much shorter -- which I vehemently disagreed with, but could not articulate why; the parts of me that experience art, poetry etc. are very much here to vibe and more often than not fail at using words. I also remember an omake comic at the end of one volume of Victorian Romance Emma, where the mangaka Kaoru Mori defended quite a few extended scenes to her editor with "this is an important part!". And I agreed with her, though again, f*cked if I know why lol

To be honest, while I generally understand and agree with the argument that some degree of flaws or clunk to a game is desirable, I also think it's an issue that is dependent on the context and intent of the game. Like yes there is also the player element sure, but I've had instances of games doing largely the same thing that I have absolutely loved in one case, and fucking loathed in others. And the difference will lie in one or two small decisions that change the feeling entirely, that may not even be a strictly mechanical decision. And Even within the purely mechanical zone, if the game does not adaquetly build towards the intended experience it doesn't really matter what the intent is if the legwork to have it work wasn't done enough. You can say what your goal is all you like, and players WILL tolerate some absolute nonsense, but only if the game actually gets you to buy in. Like I enjoy just wandering through game worlds a lot, but even games that intend you to do it can be more infuriating than not if they don't nail it (and this is said as someone who genuinely loved the sailing in wind waker, a feature so maligned that the remaster added a speed up option to correct what was to me perfectly paced)

Dang, this was a wonderful video. It almost feels like a perfect thesis on why games are art. It also reminds me of a janky game that I love, Blue Reflection, because there is nothing else like it. Just looking at my recommendations next to this, I reminded that there are people who do challenge runs, intentionally adding friction in where there was none before. Something like a Pokemon Nuzlocke exists because people don't always want to be able to just get away with having their Pokemon faint. A setup where they get attached, and mourn the losses of their favourites. Saying that reminds me of Twitch Plays Pokemon, which added so much friction that a relatively straightforward game became a days long undertaking, and spawned a temporary, crazy community.

Been playing dark souls for the first time and after putting some 60 hours into the game i have been putting it off. There comes a point in the game where after the 10th boss you have fought, walking the 300th time from the bonfire 3 minutes at a time that you just dont feel like its worth it. Maybe ill try pushing on a bit further tho

This is a message that really needs to get out. I think a lot of the most potent and strongest games were the ones that just felt so strange to behold. Often their weird contrivances actually keep me in the loop, one way or another. Its some quirk, some unknown, or some strange quality, it keeps the game and pace flowing and mixed with your mind, and really compels you to play it. Now turn instead to "streamlined games", well guess what? Some of them just lose me because of their clutter, and other times traits they believe were focus tested for me to love are what send me away. Borderlands sunk a small addiction in me, but when I was over it, I was just finished with its entire gimmick. I was so fed up with blasting apart a cool battle scene, only to spend minutes at a time picking through the field and comparing data, and numbers, and discard the stupid guns telling me it was a superior assault rifle with an 8-mag count. The industry now says to RPG everything, put looting mechanics all over, but that drives me away and makes the experience a total slog, more so than any such weird setup with a strange and exotic walk & on-rail system, or one game that uniquely employs sudden tank controls, etc. When the FPS genre had a small boom in platforming games, I felt almost liberated to tell all the whiners "See! It can be fun!", only to see those games intensify into cool arcade slashers, and neat tricks. It doesn't mean some before it weren't flawed, but it was in those flaws they were finding and working to something or inspiring the future that ended in something amazing. When I see a game like Dragon's Dogma 1 or 2, the fans aren't just telling you the game is totally perfect. Nobody is, or means it that way. We're all laughing and quoting dumb lines that are over-repeated, discussing the odd quirks, that one time the game completely screwed you over, or how it let you hire a strange online hairy midget dude with a high-pitched female's voice. But we're laughing with the journey, finding and solving complex treasures under the surface, and baffled to find the most obscure and odd little details hidden around or reacted to by an unconventional design system. When we're not busy throwing pigs around, we're discussing some niche philosophies and strange sights we came across, and then celebrating not only that there was a sequel, but the devs IMPROVED goofy animal catching games. Sure it sucks with absolute rage that they lock us to one save in an RPG of all genres, but genuine hard flaws and fun-blockers aside, we still power through because of how awesome the other content is, and the layers and silly systems that make it as fun as it can be weird. When I got the sequel, made camp for the first time, and was hit with a real filmed video of someone cooking steak in high detail, I burst out laughing and just said "Of course DD would do this." It was just amusing, and so much more memorable than some other game doing a cooking buff on any sense of a "normal way". And the Dragons Plague? OMG, its amazing to watch this turn into one big meta game of paranoia, and misinformation, as the conclusions seem to shift around, and tips include killing your in-game pals over some pretty average quirks, almost making it a crazy social game that does have big consequences if you lose the warnings. It has me just fascinated, and immersed, once even booting up the game and playing more of it by mistake of just "let me check something out" moment going on. This is what art made out of passion does. Its strange, its rough, its distinct, and it calls to the right person to have a far better experience than the tens of people all sharing a solid okay time with a factory-produced brand formula result.

Thanks for this. All the games i really enjoy involve some manner of preperation and limited travel options because that fuels the exploration that i enjoy so much. Having thay conflated with bad game deaign is baffling to me. Morrowind, Outward, Kingdom Come, and Dragons Dogma are my jam, and, yeah, they all have their issues, but the exploration isnt one of them. I just got kinda bummed when Steph Sterling called me a bootlicker with bad taste :(

Some of my favorite games of all time also have giant flaws. Both the first and second Dragons Dogma are far from perfect, but shining through the rough patches are absolute gems of game design that make them so unique and thrilling to play and experience. I will never forget my pawn casting their first High Bolide on some poor unsuspecting Saurians and absolutely murdering the entire forest in the crossfire. Nor will I ever forget the moment I parried a Minotaurs charge and my pawn used the opening to send him off a cliff.

This is on point. I am a musician and have to tell myself often enough to not cater to my audience or listen to the stupid social media algorithms that dictate the modern day success of any pop culture media.

For me this debated often comes down to an audience's willingness (and expectation) to feel confused and challenged by games. When I play games with non-gamers (or those with limited experience) they often really struggle when presented with ambiguity; exclaiming they are "stupid" or "bad at the game". But for me this is just a miscategorisation of the feeling; games are about figuring out systems, combinations of actions and puzzles to overcome things, so that confusion/challenge is a fundamental part of what makes gaming experiences meaningful. Of course, there can be good confusion, bad confusion and totally unintended confusion. But I feel, like you say, a lot of these feelings of friction are intentional to hit home the emotional affect of the experience. That said, it's also very complex when talking about big studio games and QOL. It really depends where you think the game stands on the scale of entertainment product to purely artistic endeavour--a scale which is incredibly subjective, especially to fans. And there's definitely something to be said about AAA game friction/jank vs the same friction/jank in indie or art games--given your expectation as a player and the general player base who would engage with either type of game.

At the end of the day just like in movies, literature or other art/entertainment forms, videogames are sometimes more product than art. I think it's always a spectrum between a "polished easy to consume product" and a work of genuine artistic expression but where a particular game falls depends mostly on the decision of the corporation paying for the creation of the games.

For me, DD2 is just a not good example for your point. My experience was marred by repetitiveness-encountering the same enemies in caves and along roads became tedious. Additionally, interactions with ox carts were frustratingly predictable as they were frequently attacked by goblins or other creatures. Worse yet, there were instances where the carts glitched, accelerating to unrealistic speeds. This lack of polish starkly contrasts with the intriguing oddities of Armored Core VI-a title I've thoroughly enjoyed through three complete playthroughs-and the immersive experience of Elden Ring. In my view, DD2 could have benefited from additional development time, which unfortunately Capcom did not provide.

Accessibility option are very important tho. What is art for if we can't engage with it?

one of my favorite game is kingdom come deliverance it made having a save file a consumable item at first i hated it but then i loved it, getting into situations and not having a load game button to undo a screwup made me play differently.

great video! full heartedly agree with everything! *however*... in music, in film, et al, there are the same voices that parrot the same noxious complaints we get about games like you illustrated. the difference is not just that people will tell those to shove it. in videogame world there is also similar backlash. the real difference is amounts of those, both in relation to the other and in absolute terms AAAND art is taken seriously in film, music and other mediums but not in some forms like games. the unspoken perception in society is still that videogames are infantile or purely entertainment. not substantial. the vocal minorities and vocal majorities echoing childish complaints at games that are invalid are a manifestation that perpetuates and justifies the perception of videogames as infantile and until the status quo changes these dynamics will also not change. videogames, along some other cultural things, have just breached from being perceived as a negative passion to have, dorkly, to mainstream recently. it has not even been 1 generation since, much less the 3 generations that are needed to completely change a status quo. once the kids that were born after that change have kids, then we can maybe expect a change.

Far Cry 6 for me could have been great if it was less convenient. When I saw the marketing talk about checkpoints I thought I would have to do something like get a fake passport or use the guerilla paths to sneak around each time meaning I would have to plan my route. With turrets I thought going by air would be a risk I’d have to consider on my travels. The opening mission where you sneak through the capital gave the sense that upon returning I’d have to be careful how I get around, sneaking through buildings and sewers to avoid direct confrontation with the military. I thought I was going to get something more like Far Cry 2 where I had to plan my routes and always travel prepared. But then I played the game. Then I realised the checkpoints were just mini outposts. Then I could just fly around with wing suits ignoring the turrets, which could be easily taken out with one grenade. Then I realised the capital was just a corridor shooter with no real strategy and the enemies were easy, even in the hardest difficulty. Because of convenience Ubisoft turned what could have been a really engaging open world shooter into a game where I turned off my brain and let the big explosions and guns entertain my eyes.

I don't see the problem in pucking a map location and being driven there, I loved doing that in FFXV, let Ignis drive and enjoy the view. In that game it helps that doing that feeds into the role playing element.

THe problem was mostly the feeling that selling Fast Travel created, is that it was something that the it was taken out of the game to sell for convenience, which can create a feeling that the lack of easy available Fast Travel was mostly a busisness decision to drive people even few ones to buy the Fast Travel microtransactions, so in the end whle games definitely can and should strive to be an artistic medium, when the surrounding discourse is about some mechanics that is bein sold than the it becomes a busisness decision not a artistic one, even if most players experiencing the game dont needed to buy the Fast Travel, just the option being there tarnish Dragons Dogma 2 decision as a artistic one.

Is it bad to want a fast travel to waypoints you've already been? (ala Sites of Grace in Elden Ring). You've already had to explore the area to get there.

Fast travel has always been one of those mechanics that stands out to me as missing the point. I mean, why even bother having a vast open world, if the player is mostly only ever going to be skipping past it to get to their destination immediately without effort. I think the first Dark Souls and many Legen of Zelda games do it better. There is a fast travel system, but it's something you unlock midway through the game instead of always having access to from the start. By the time you acquire it, you've already explored most of the map, and having a fast travel just makes it more convenient to hunt down those last few points of interest.

Perfectly smooth, optimized games (especially AAA) tend to be unengaging. I'm playing The Forest at the moment and it's very non hand-holdy, rough around the edges experience but damn if it isn't fascinating.

The thing about the idea of DD2's systems as designed is that the very nature of allowing you to buy items that let you skip these systems with real dollars puts the lie to it one way or another. Either these systems are not meant to be so oppositional but the intended play experience is locked behind money, or they ARE meant to work like this and the game is trying to nickel-and-dime you for ways to play the game worse.

Actually for DD2, I’d say it WAS designed this way on purpose, both for gameplay reasons, but ALSO because of greed. There are purchasable custom fast-travel points that you can SET down wherever you want, and that costs REAL money. And these are items that in-game, you can play 30+ hours and maybe never get organically without buying them for real cash. It’s super scummy, to design it this way, knowing it’s frustrating to get around, and then SELL an EASIER experience once it’s released. Absolutely anti-consumer, and even predatory.

I won't lie, I actually get a lot of enjoyment from janky games. In fact, during sales I'll often look for these games just so I can experience them. Akiba's Trip, Deadly Premonition, the original Dragon's Dogma, and both Oceanhorn games are some of my favorites. They have obvious flaws, but it's those flaws combined with the good each of them has that make them a lot more memorable than a lot of triple A games. Or heck, even some double A games like the Neptunia and Senran Kagura series are two I've enjoyed over the years because of the passion on display.

I did not expect to hear a reference to Napalm Death in a games video essay.

The title for this made me think of a completely different topic

One of my biggest regrets is picking up Killer7 in Blockbuster because i thought it looked cool, asking the guy behind the counter if it was any good. His review was less than glowing and i put it back on the shelf.

Hey thanks for this! This video captures the thoughts I was having after watching those Jimquisition complaints perfectly. I think it was Elden Ring that ruined “industry standard” open worlds for me forever. I can never play one of those that plops a HUD waypoint on the screen ever again without my eyes glazing over… it’s the opposite of engaging. :-/

“After all, the world is not a stage-not to me: nor a theatre: nor a show-house of any sort. And art, especially novels, are not little theatres where the reader sits aloft and watches...and sighs, commiserates, condones and smiles. That's what you want a book to be: because it leaves you so safe and superior, with your two-dollar ticket to the show. And that's what my books are not and never will be...Whoever reads me will be in the thick of the scrimmage, and if he doesn't like it if he wants a safe seat in the audience-let him read someone else.” D. H Lawrence

at the end of the day, just like in every other medium, all the things that challenge us will be stripped out of the big popular things for the masses beacuse most people who consume media dont like to be challenged. That's ok. Every game, movie, book, or song that comes out and has little to say improve the industry in little ways by giving new people chances to build the base skills they need to make a piece of art, showcasing new ideas, and just getting people interested in the medium. To find the things that challenge us, we need to look harder than just the popular shit and ignore the people who cry and whine about being challenged.

Quality of life imo is for those who just don't have time to play a game and still want to enjoy its best parts.

Yesterday I was playing ff7 rebirth and (spoilers I guess) I couldnt win the fight against vincent at the mansion in chapter 11 so I wanted to go back and select different characters and change some materia. After I died at the battle I was given 3 options, start just before the fight, which when chosen took me to a cutscene just before the fight where I could do nothing aside from starting the fight anyway, go back to the main menu because.... idk whatever and "before the battle" or something I dont remember correctly, and that option took me way back to just before going with cloud to the reactor, a whole 2 to 3 hours back before the vincent fight, and it also overwrote the autosave slot to top it all off. "Luckly" I had a manual save just an hour ago entering the mansion so I didnt have to replay 2 whole hours but just 30 minutos while rushing through everything (turns out ff7 remake and rebirth love to waste your time when you are in a hurry). I wont lie I got way angrier than I should have, but i dont think im wrong for not having an option that dosent fuck me up by erasing me 2 hours of story progress. Skill issue? idk maybe thats it, maybe I should have gotten my party all setup the right way before going into that fight the first time around, or I should have manualy saved, silly me for not knowing that would have happened. Its a matter of intent, dragons dogma 2 annoyances are intentional and thats the experience they wanted to make, so thats fair, ff7 rebirths annoyances feels like an oversight or mistake, when that happened I just wanted to drop the game right there and never come back, but I havd already put 55 hours on that thing doing all the marked sidequests and whatnot cus im am that type of moron, so I powerred thorough. Moral of the story: Fuck me I guess

there is a more casual audience that likes to play games just completing a story, like an interactive movie, playing from cut scene to cut scene with some button mashes in between hopping from 70$ release to 70$ release im the opposite

I think some jank is fine. Like the idea of having to walk around to get to places in DD2 isn't the worst thing. Maybe they could have added something like horse to make travel a bit faster (yes, I know about ox carts in certain locations), but its not the worst thing. I do think that some of the performance issues that are mentioned on the PC port, in particular in city/camp areas, do take something away from the experience though.

I'm of two minds: - Usually reviewers are the first ones to see a game and set the tone for its discussion. Reviewing games is more time intensive than any other art review, so reviewers will over emphasize problems with what they perceive to be wasting their time. - On the other hand, games among art have both the best ability to waste someone's time, and also the best ability to psychologically manipulate a person into wasting that time (often in the goal of boosting the perceived value of things in game to push microtransaction sales.) So time wasting is both a valid criticism, and also one often pulled out early by tired reviewers behind on quota.

not the video i thought this would be, and very pleasantly surprised