Everybody's Talking At Once

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/etao-podcast-26.mp3

Yes, it’s time to discuss Dark Souls, and the fandoms attendant thereto.

This week’s episode unfortunately comes with a TRIGGER WARNING for sexual assault, since we follow up on the whole Devin Feraci situation, and more broadly, on the complications that arise when an episode sits in cold storage for a few weeks, the world ticking on without our acknowledgement. If you want to skip past that and get right to the Souls talk, then you can jump to 00:03:43.

I’ll also mention that SPOILERS ABOUND ONCE AGAIN, in case you care about that kind of thing. (If you find yourself caring more about spoiler warnings than about trigger warnings, do consider taking a quick look in the mirror, though).

• Ocarina of Time did come out in 1998.

• There are definitely some games embracing the low-plygon, low-res texture style, but I’ve still encountered far fewer of those than games based built around pixels and voxels. If you feel that I’m missing out on some exemplary and/or beautiful example(s), then by all means, let me know!

• I said that Rab Florence made the Fail Forward series, which is not true at all. Rab Florence made Memory System Aging.

• It is in fact Marsh Davies who has blessed us with Fail Forward, including the entirely excellent episode on Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2.

• And here’s Super Bunnyhop on what the first Dark Souls has to say about mortality.

• VaatiVidya’s work is singularly detailed and fascinating, especially the “lore” and Prepare to Cry stuff.

• Here’s what the hell it means to say that “Dark Souls creates its own precursors.”

• And here’s “The Journey To Kill Everyone In Dark Souls. Yes, Everyone.”

“All The People Say (Season 2)” by Carpe Demon.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher and Podbay and Google Play.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Lucio and I are both fans of Steven Universe, but we're not exactly members of the Steven Universe fandom—or fandoms, plural, each with its own social norms, its own orthodoxies about what the series means, and its own articles of faith about where the story is headed. The people most conspicuously enthusiastic about Steven Universe sometimes seem to be watching a different show than we are. Which can make fandom into something distressingly sectarian, prickly, and alienating.

In practice, fandoms sometimes run counter to what I called "utopian" geekiness way back in the very first episode of this podcast. Being a geek should be an earnest search for the weird and the wonderful, in my estimation. It should be open-hearted, radically inclusive. Enthusiasm in one thing should lead to enthusiasm in more things, one's world growing larger as a direct result of being peopled by geeks.

A serious fandom frequently has the opposite effect. Fandoms can isolate us. They can laser-focus our passions and calcify our biases. We can all find ourselves having perpendicular conversations, every interpretation incompatible with every other interpretation because each is so leaden with unalterable baseline assumptions.

Here we take a first pass at figuring out how to learn from fandoms that aren't for us, and that may not even have any interest in talking to us. (And if you think we can't, we'll always find a way, and all that). SPOILERS WILL OCCUR.

And stay tuned at the end for some Dark Souls talk, with more to come next time. ("Ashes of Ariandel" is out!)

———

• This week's discussion is centered largely on "All These Black Characters and 0 Done Right———How Steven Universe Fails Its Black Fanbase, Part I" by Riley H. [UPDATE: We say in this episode that Riley H.'s pronouns are he/him, which was true at time of recording, at least according to Twitter and Medium. Riley H. now goes by they/them.]

• For thoughts on the toxic aspects of fandom, we refer to "Fandom Is Broken" by Devin Feraci. (And we recorded this before he stepped down as editor of Birth.Movies.Death, so we don't mention those rather horrific happenings).

• And for some thoughts on the mechanics of 'shipping, we turn to "Social Justice, Shipping, and Ideology" by Aja Romano.

• Lauren is doing excellent, important work with Project Am I Right, if I may say so. You can learn more on the organization's website and on its Twitter.

• I stand by my definition of woke, and the nuances I was describing were all at work in the phrase "woke-ass white man," but it's worth mentioning that people of color and queer folks definitely do refer to one another as woke—only sometimes tinged with the sarcasm that we woke-ass straight white cismen tend to elicit.

• That quote that Lucio couldn't quite remember, in which Garnet explains to Amethyst why they shouldn't fuse into Sugilite, went like this: "I can be brash, and you can be reckless, and we can both get carried away."

• And Kofi's mom is Nanafua.

• Smokey Quartz is voiced by Natasha Lyonne (yes, of Orange Is the New Black fame).

• J.K. Rowling's first post-Potter, non-Potter book was The Casual Vacancy.

• It was indeed Film Crit Hulk who said, "YOU WANT TO BE INDULGED. YOU WANT OPTIONS. YOU WANT GLUTTONY. WE HAVE A WORD FOR THAT KIND OF VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT AND IT'S CALLED PORNOGRAPHY. AND IT'S PERFECT AT SATISFYING YOUR EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL IMPULSES SO HAVE AT IT."

• And yeah, the Pokémon GO talk is already pretty dated. Likewise the Google Play Podcasts stuff.

"All The People Say (Season 2)" by Carpe Demon.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/etao-podcast-25.mp3

A serious fandom frequently has the opposite effect. Fandoms can isolate us. They can laser-focus our passions and calcify our biases. We can all find ourselves having perpendicular conversations, every interpretation incompatible with every other interpretation because each is so leaden with unalterable baseline assumptions.

Here we take a first pass at figuring out how to learn from fandoms that aren’t for us, and that may not even have any interest in talking to us. (And if you think we can’t, we’ll always find a way, and all that). SPOILERS WILL OCCUR.

And stay tuned at the end for some Dark Souls talk, with more to come next time. (“Ashes of Ariandel” is out!)

———

• This week’s discussion is centered largely on “All These Black Characters and 0 Done Right — How Steven Universe Fails Its Black Fanbase, Part I” by Riley H. [UPDATE: We say in this episode that Riley H.’s pronouns are he/him, which was true at time of recording, at least according to Twitter and Medium. Riley H. now goes by they/them.]

• For thoughts on the toxic aspects of fandom, we refer to “Fandom Is Broken” by Devin Feraci. (And we recorded this before he stepped down as editor of Birth.Movies.Death, so we don’t mention those rather horrific happenings).

• And for some thoughts on the mechanics of ‘shipping, we turn to “Social Justice, Shipping, and Ideology” by Aja Romano.

• Lauren is doing excellent, important work with Project Am I Right, if I may say so. You can learn more on the organization’s website and on its Twitter.

• I stand by my definition of woke, and the nuances I was describing were all at work in the phrase “woke-ass white man,” but it’s worth mentioning that people of color and queer folks definitely do refer to one another as woke—only sometimes tinged with the sarcasm that we woke-ass straight white cismen tend to elicit.

• That quote that Lucio couldn’t quite remember, in which Garnet explains to Amethyst why they shouldn’t fuse into Sugilite, went like this: “I can be brash, and you can be reckless, and we can both get carried away.”

• And Kofi’s mom is Nanafua.

• Smokey Quartz is voiced by Natasha Lyonne (yes, of Orange Is the New Black fame).

• J.K. Rowling’s first post-Potter, non-Potter book was The Casual Vacancy.

• It was indeed Film Crit Hulk who said, “YOU WANT TO BE INDULGED. YOU WANT OPTIONS. YOU WANT GLUTTONY. WE HAVE A WORD FOR THAT KIND OF VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT AND IT’S CALLED PORNOGRAPHY. AND IT’S PERFECT AT SATISFYING YOUR EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL IMPULSES SO HAVE AT IT.”

• And yeah, the Pokémon GO talk is already pretty dated. Likewise the Google Play Podcasts stuff.

“All The People Say (Season 2)” by Carpe Demon.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher and Podbay and Google Play.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Dan Teasdale returns to discuss No Goblin's sophomore effort, 100ft Robot Golf, a game about (wait for it) hundred-foot-high robots playing golf. This being a No Goblin game, of course, there's more to it than that. It's a deeply personal and proudly goofy admixture of influences that maybe shouldn't even be called an indie game so much as a farm to table game, as Dan jokingly said. (Joking aside, it might be a better term than indie, though).

We talk about the exciting possibilities of Virtual Reality, the equally exciting differences between this first generation of home VR, and the value of unwinking, internally consistent tonal absurdity—running gags become lore, and vice-versa—not to mention the value of not perusing "perfect design" in games.

We also discuss the "unsolvable problem" of having voiced commentary without having that commentary get repetitive—and how having The McElroys in the booth, and therefore being able to use just about every take, certainly helps with that.

———

• Well, "Can A Computer Make You Cry?" (Emphasis mine).

• For those who don't know why I say "kiss the egg" when I putt, or who generally have yet to enjoy Monster Factory.

• James Whitbrook was the one who said that he was sick of saving the world.

• Patrick Lee also talked about that idea in the context of Persona 3.

• The Cheffo Chronicles are pure entertainment.

"All The People Say (Season 2)" by Carpe Demon.

Chris McQuinn stops by to discuss DrinkBox Studios' latest, the touch-based first-person dungeon-crawling amputate-'em-up Severed. You're a warrior named Sasha, seeking out your lost family in an ever-threatening and arrestingly otherworldly environment. Monstrosities stand in your way (of course) and monster parts get sliced off (as the title suggests) and things only get weirder from there.

Chris and I discuss why it felt right to tell this story of loss and perseverance with bold dreamy color palettes, Punch-Out!!-style puzzle mêlées, and older-than-old-school RPG exploration. We also talk a bit about how the game's faux-3D spaces work under the hood, and the innate complications of a multi-platform release.

And Chris divulges his own favorite control scheme for Severed, which happens to be the Wii U controller. (Yes, of course with a stylus. Dude wasn't raised in a barn).

———

• Here's that great Rami Ismail piece on submission processes for console games, day one patches, and (tangentially) No Man's Sky.

"All The People Say (Season 2)" by Carpe Demon.

The whole Question Games team stops by to discuss (and to discuss the discussion surrounding) their debut project, The Magic Circle. Their debut project as a team, that is. It's not the kind of game that anybody would or could make without some experience in the world of making games, and specifically of making them on an ambitious, possibly-even-impossible scale.

The game tries to balance between vitriol and affection, despair and hope, and to direct a little of each at developers, players, critics, and pretty much everybody else. As we get into the nuts and bolts of all that, beware the spoilers (or don't; your call).

Having worked on productions as grand and singular as Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dishonored, South Park: The Stick of Truth, all three BioShocks (with Jordan acting as director on the second one), this is a team that knows how games are made, sold, and played?and about all of the things that can and do go wrong at every step of that process, and about why the medium is worth it even so.

That, and the player as "the lead actor who walks onstage without knowing their lines, and you need to still canonize whatever it is they say," ? la Point Break Live!

And no, we did not talk about ludonarrative dissonance. But we did talk about the magic circle as a game design concept. ("You've hooked us with your meta dance," Jordan said to me, thereby making my month).

———

• I love me some FJORDS, and I'm excited and intrigued by the upcoming, co-op-centric sequel FJOREVER?and also, I am The Idiot Of The Year for not mentioning Hack 'n' Slash, since that's still the most ambitious examples to date of the program-the-game-from-inside-the-game genre.

• That recent research on the relationship between losing at gaming and harrassing women in-game comes from Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff and their observations of online multiplayer in Halo 3.

• Have I mentioned that I think "The King and His Objects" is a hugely useful piece of writing? Oh, I have? About a thousand times? Cool.

• Here's Anna Anthropy's scratchware manifesto.

• Around the same time, Edmund McMillen wrote what he called "a manifesto".

• And here's what I referred to as "the notgames manifesto," the words turning to ash in my mouth as I recalled that it is pretty specifically "not a manifesto".

• Turning "punk rock into elevator music" is a turn of phrase from this particularly excellent episode of the generally quite excellent Reply All podcast.

"All The People Say" by Carpe Demon.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/20150522_francisco_castillo_trigueros.mp3

The game tries to balance between vitriol and affection, despair and hope, and to direct a little of each at developers, players, critics, and pretty much everybody else. As we get into the nuts and bolts of all that, beware the spoilers (or don’t; your call).

Having worked on productions as grand and singular as Thief: Deadly Shadows, Dishonored, South Park: The Stick of Truth, all three BioShocks (with Jordan acting as director on the second one), this is a team that knows how games are made, sold, and played—and about all of the things that can and do go wrong at every step of that process, and about why the medium is worth it even so.

That, and the player as “the lead actor who walks onstage without knowing their lines, and you need to still canonize whatever it is they say,” à la Point Break Live!

And no, we did not talk about ludonarrative dissonance. But we did talk about the magic circle as a game design concept. (“You’ve hooked us with your meta dance,” Jordan said to me, thereby making my month).

———

• I love me some FJORDS, and I’m excited and intrigued by the upcoming, co-op-centric sequel FJOREVER—and also, I am The Idiot Of The Year for not mentioning Hack ‘n’ Slash, since that’s still the most ambitious examples to date of the program-the-game-from-inside-the-game genre.

• That recent research on the relationship between losing at gaming and harrassing women in-game comes from Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff and their observations of online multiplayer in Halo 3.

• Have I mentioned that I think “The King and His Objects” is a hugely useful piece of writing? Oh, I have? About a thousand times? Cool.

• Here’s Anna Anthropy’s scratchware manifesto.

• Around the same time, Edmund McMillen wrote what he called “a manifesto”.

• And here’s what I referred to as “the notgames manifesto,” the words turning to ash in my mouth as I recalled that it is pretty specifically “not a manifesto”.

• Turning “punk rock into elevator music” is a turn of phrase from this particularly excellent episode of the generally quite excellent Reply All podcast.

“All The People Say” by Carpe Demon.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher. And let’s not forget Podbay.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Zach Barth sits down to complete our interview triptych. Having already covered the art of the anti-puzzle and the question of whether it's even possible to spoil Infinifactory, we focus this time on the softer launch that Steam Early Access provides, the conversation alchemy of developers discussing development with developers on The Zachtronics Podcast, and Zach's fearlessly esoteric new project, TIS-100, "the assembly language programming game you never asked for!"

Zach describes TIS-100 as "kind of a terrible game," and says "it's abusive" and that "it barely makes sense at all." And yet, as he's well-aware, it's more than a few people's now-favorite Zachtronics game. There's probably a lot to learn from that, as far as received wisdom in the realm of designing and selling games. One of those insights might be that we should stop thinking about elevator pitches and start think about loglines, or better yet, truthful and sincerely self-effacing jokes that players and would-be players can pass around.

We also talk about the small, oft-ignored potential value of Achievements, the annoyances of editing podcasts—trés meta—and choosing to "aggressively" ignore the uncanny valley dog and pony show that is E3.

———

• Steve Gaynor was talking up Tacoma at Microsoft's E3 press conference, and the weirdness of that moment figured into Experience Points' E3 debrief.

• In case you missed it, Nintendo's "Digital Event" for E3 was exceptionally and welcomely puppet-centric, as described.

• Here once again is that DoubleFine video about hacking Zelda.

• Slate did a great piece on the terrible power of Save The Cat.

• And Zach's recent AMA is good reading.

• As is the ESRB's summary page for South Park: The Stick of Truth.

"All The People Say" by Carpe Demon.

https://etao.blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/etao-podcast-21-20150714.mp3

We also talk about the small, oft-ignored potential value of Achievements, the annoyances of editing podcasts—très meta—and choosing to “aggressively” ignore the uncanny valley dog and pony show that is E3.

———

• Steve Gaynor was talking up Tacoma at Microsoft’s E3 press conference, and the weirdness of that moment figured into Experience Points’ E3 debrief.

• In case you missed it, Nintendo’s “Digital Event” for E3 was exceptionally and welcomely puppet-centric, as described.

• Here once again is that DoubleFine video about hacking Zelda.

• Slate did a great piece on the terrible power of Save The Cat.

• And Zach’s recent AMA is good reading.

• As is the ESRB’s summary page for South Park: The Stick of Truth.

“All The People Say” by Carpe Demon.

We’re on iTunes. We’re also on Stitcher. And let’s not forget Podbay.

Left click to play. Right-click to download.

Action Henk is out (of Steam Early Access) today, and to celebrate, here's my conversation with Roel Ezendam of RageSquid Games.

Action Henk is a game about momentum, perfectionism, and making things that actually are as amazing as we remember things being in our childhoods—not just recapturing former glory, but surpassing it. Or to put it another way, Action Henk is the game that we all expect Sonic the Hedgehog to be, but that it never quite is. Or it's Sonic by way of Trials, maybe.

Roel is the kind of guy who gets deep into the nerdery of in-game physics (albeit mostly in Dutch rather than English), and who talks consummately and lucidly about the hard science behind that most squishily of goals, making it feel good to control a character. (For Roel, this comes down to thinking of the player-character as a "toy" within the game, compelling even without gameplay context).

It's such a tough thing to pin down, and yet it's what puts Action Henk a cut above—and for that matter, it's the main thing that separates Super Mario World from Shaq-Fu. Powerful stuff, then.

———

• I haven't written about Lethal League (yet), but it and Gang Beasts do both come highly recommended.

"All The People Say" by Carpe Demon.