Bad Games Are Better Than Bland Games | Extra Punctuation
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
- This week on Extra Punctuation, Yahtzee discusses why bland games are worse than bad games.
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It is same thing with the movie industry: media has gotten so good at being OK that the behind the scene drama is often more interesting than the end product.
This is probably one of those things that been a human constant
God this is so true. I have a friend who legit considers the marvel universe movies some of the best movies ever and Im like, goddammit you're why we cant have nice things. She wants to never be disturbed, never be challenged, never truly examine anything. So much so that she actually finds true enjoyment from it.
yeaah probably why i was more invested in how the production of Balan went and TLOU2. That seemed more interesting then the game
Luckily, we have Cats as proof that there is still someone out there with a terrible vision and the money and ego required to realise it!
Unlike the gaming industry, luckily there's still hope because they make both great indie and Hollywood blockbuster films.
The two weeks I spent entirely fixated on Balan Wonderworld was simultaneously the most painful and interesting experience I've had with games in a long time. It hurt to play, but every time I found a bad thing about the game, I started to think about what exactly the developers were aiming for and how to actually achieve that. I dont think any bland game could ever reach that because so much of it is so...fine that I could never actually fixate on anything in it. I'd unironically go back to Balan before going to try an anthem or a modern CoD.
i'm just silently waiting for someone to mod balan wonderworld
@@prcervi first mod: make a permanent jump button
@@lowhp_comic have some ambition man, a dedicated jump button and dedicated attack button at minimum
Yes. Where is the mod for game? It should be theoretically easy to mod a jump button to the game
Did you read the novel?
I never played Balan Wonderworld but am a fan of it.
That sound effect at 1:25 caught me off guard.
I agree with Yahtzee though. I had to try Ride to Hell: Retribution because I listened to his review and it was so bad that my friends and I got a solid four hours of laughing at the terrible gameplay which is more than what we've gotten from some serviceable games that have come out recently.
Afew shots an friends with ride too hell was fucking amazingly funny.
I felt the same way about The Quiet Man. It was so out-of-this-world bad that it managed to outshit Metal Gear Survive, Fallout 76, and Agony (which also came out that year).
The full-clothed sex scenes are also part of the "charm".
guh
headphones check!
As cliche as the saying is, 'Go big or go home' definitely applies here. Hit it so hard that people wonder how it became so good...or crash and burn at a scale that the dinosaurs say 'I remember a crater like that once'. Then turn and ask the dinosaur, 'are you still here?'
Well executed comment all around.
@@Pikminiman Thank you. I see you are a person of refined taste.
That's why I love Darksiders 2 in the whole franchise, it just feels more epic even with the half-ass ideas. Also in the anime movie side, I love Redline whose budget was so high, its animation studio couldn't recoup it and almost went bankrupt.
@@anshukandulna1844 Pretty sure the production meetings for Redline went, 'Can we go bigger', and when they ran out of big, 'can we go dumber'. They kept alternating between these two approaches. They blew everything so far over the top it turned out an absolute popcorn munching spectacle of a ride. That is a special film.
You just gave me the idea to make a game where the dinosaurs are still around and are just sharing the modern-day world with us like it ain't no big deal. So your next door neighbours are a family of parasaurolophus and your boss is a stegosaurus, and the game is a party-based action RPG about getting to the bottom of a conspiracy to assassinate the president, who's a brachiosaurus. And at some point in the story, a human is going to turn to a dinosaur and say "Are you still here?" just as a little shout-out to you.
Well, it's nice to dream anyway...
As an indie developer, I strongly agree that playing bad games is a good idea, it's even more educational than playing GOOD games! Usually a good game has hundreds of small details that all work together to create a fulfilling experience, and it's very hard to put a finger on WHY something works out the way it does. (Just check out the GDC talk by the Dead Cells devs where they talk about all the small details that makes movement "feel fun", for example). But a bad game can be completely ruined by a single design decision, and it's much easier to understand and analyze this effect.
I find the easiest way to learn from playing a bad game is to play the game you're developing. Chances are the game you're developing won't be that great until a decent amount into development. Something else that's great is the things that you're learning from the bad game are all relevant to your development since you're playing the game you're developing.
Basically what you're saying is you learn more from failure than success. And it's so very true. I'm no developer but every once in a while i'll find a game that's either bad or good and just go. Hmm. How's that work? Why did they do it this way? How did they make thing A do action C etc. But if I get a bland game ... I just end up asking myself where's the fun part? There's nothing that makes the game tick. Cause it doesn't have a pulse. It's generic.
I once said that Sonic Forces was either going to be a fantastic game that rides the wave of popularity. Or the next sonic 06/sonic boom etc. ... And yet it did exactly what I thought would never happen. Landed right smack dab in the middle of mediocrity. To say I was shocked is an understatement. I genuinely had more fun playing 06 than even watching footage of sonic forces and it's embarrassment of a story.
Rather ironic now the sonic colors ... hd release? Whatever it's called that recently came out has fans pissed off cause it's broken or something idk it's been a few weeks since I saw the vid. Meanwhile Project 06 a fan made from the ground up recreation of sonic 06 that fixes all the problems is turning heads for becoming what it should have always been.
(This is why I loath deadlines. The gaming industry as a whole would be so much better if the devs were allowed to take their time in my opinion. A rushed game is forever bad. A delayed game is eventually good etc.) Project 06 and the colors errr "upgrade" May have swapped ends of the spectrum. But at least they're worth talking about. (I really did not mean to get into this long rant about sonic of all things it was just the only example at the time I could think of. This was meant to be a short 1 or 2 sentence comment.)
@@omarcomming722 I dunno man, a lot of bland games tend to feel like a slog to finish which ends with me never finishing them. With Bad games, well they feel awful to finish but at least I feel something doing it. The real problems are those games which just end in the "it's bad AND bland" which is like the slog to finish with even less payoff. Like, Balan is horrible but the general ambience makes you want to keep trying.
Well said. This is exactly why I go out of my way to play bad games.
“The greatest teacher, failure is.” -some guy named Yado or something *sarcasm*
With Steam's "meritocracy", it's also worth considering which way round the causality goes: the top games all tend to be good, it's not that all the good games get to the top. Even if a game has broad appeal there is absolutely no reason to believe that it will have the opportunity to rise to the top.
Being good and broadly appealing is no guarantee that a sufficient media or word of mouth wave will grow, or that you will be able to cultivate one, enough to take the game to the point where it will be promoted on the distribution platforms.
@@quintessenceSL There are definitely ways to quantify niche games, or polarizing games, but sadly the way that steam boils reviews down to a binary Yes/No makes it difficult to do things like "people are giving this a 5/5 or 2/5 with no in between" or "everyone is giving this a 3/5"
For now at least, reading reviews helps but it's a real chore to try and find stuff that is off the beaten path for sure.
Yeah, usually what ends up being more important in my experience than just being a good game (not that it's not important) is your ability to cultivate viral appeal. There's a common perception in the Dev space on Steam that the only way to proper success is to get as many steam wishlists as possible with the hope that 20% will convert to actual sales, leading devs to spend a disproportionate amount of time on social media at the detriment to the final product or waiting too late into development and having no audience when they release. Basically, if you haven't found your audience before the game has even launched, you're practically dead in the water. This is especially tricky as most indie Devs are programmers and not marketing experts.
"Being good and broadly appealing is no guarantee that a sufficient media or word of mouth wave will grow"
I hear this a lot, and theoretically you're right, but I play mostly (almost exclusively) lesser-known games on Steam because I enjoy trawling through mud, and I can't think of a single time I found something that was great and broadly appealing and not already popular. Lots of things I found that were great for ME, or great for some other niche audience other than me, but I've never found a "sleeper hit."
I don't think they really exist. I think these hypothetical games that COULD be the next Stardew Valley if only they caught on are just fantasies. The real Stardew Valleys and Undertales get discovered.
@@Auctarius23 Maybe, but, I saw a video where someone was searching through, in a number of genres, games on steam which had 0 currently active players, and some of them that they found they were like "this is good and more people should have seen it"
The game I'm thinking of was a point-and-click puzzle game, with a high production quality and design, but not necessarily something that would have super widespread appeal. (I haven't played the game in question. Maybe you've seen the same video.) So, I guess that kind of fits the "wouldn't be a huge phenomenon even if they were known" point?
But, also,
idk, Toby Fox had connections, yeah?
Do you think it is a coincidence that he had connections?
I suppose the person behind flappy bird didn't have connections.
But it also seems unlikely that flappy bird inevitably would have risen to the top. It seems to me like that was a bit of luck.
I've seen a lot of advice people have said about indie gamedev, and much has been said that the marketing is important, and you have to begin marketing the game substantially before you finish it.
I don't have any data on that, and I don't know the credentials of the people giving that advice, so maybe they could be wrong,
but, I don't remember seeing anyone contradict it, and it seems quite intuitively plausible that that is an important factor in how much an indie game succeeds?
Perhaps there's a strong correlation between "truly great game with widespread appeal" and "knows how to market it effectively and does so" such that there are essentially no games that both fail due to lack of marketing, and also are truly great and would be a big hit if they were marketed well, and if so then you might be right
Well.
It seems hard to say what exists in the "things almost no one has heard of", because, if I/you are considered as randomly selected persons, then the chance that we would have heard of the thing, would be quite low, so... it's likely we wouldn't have heard of the examples?
concept 1 : "Obscure things don't exist. Have you ever heard of one? Every time I've thought something was obscure, lots of people had seen it. Mostly the same people who saw many of the other 'obscure' things I saw. "
Analogously,
concept 2 : "un-nameable numbers can't exist. You can't possibly give me an example of one. Therefore, there are only countably many real numbers."
its almost like indie devs need to attempt some level of their own adevertising instead of relying on luck. no one knows a new games coming out AAA or not with a zero dollar marketing budget.
The thing with Balan is, the game functions as intended, yet it is still terrible down to its very core. You can't blame Balan's awfulness on rushing or meddling or bugs or any excuse people normally give, Balan is simply a bad game because it is bad.
Box fox was something I would have expected from Undertale/Deltarune, but in those games it would have been a joke and possibly star in it's AU fan-fiction.
That game was a journy I do not regret taking
That’s the same reason I love YIIK so much as a fascinating thing to look at. It’s a complete game, it’s stable and well-made on a functional level, it’s just designed in the most disastrously poor way
@@Edagui97 "An increadible invention. When not in use, this fox transforms into an easy to model cube!"
It was bad for the same reason autocracies go to shit really fast. The system puts a complete idiot or vindictive egomaniac in charge of all the decision making with no way to curb their worst excesses.
That's why we must cherish our Swerys and weird eurojank developers
Yooo nice pfp
Good idea in theory, but at some point a bigger entity will buy the innovative kids and run it into the ground. Exhibit 1 Swedish "eurojank" DICE and BF 2042. Atleast Polish CDPR are intent to fix their game, but i think they are next in line to be bought by MS (and Take two/Rockstar)
Janky isn't really the same as bad either though. The whole problem with AAA games to begin with is that polish != fun.
*Sonic* Omens ...... 😏😏😏
😎
as a qa tester, bad games are so much more fun to play. i live for that thrill of clipping through a wall and soft locking everything. a good game is like a puzzle, but a bad game is a sandbox. sure, you can play the game the developer wanted, but it’s more fun kicking down sandcastles along the way.
I would hate for you to be a player at my D&D table. 😄
Lol. Not even a hot take. This one is so true. These days bad games are almost a gift compared to bland games.
This is why, as much as I hate YIIK, the fact it is so bad and incompetent makes it... weirdly charming?
@@megatennepster3833 That's the thing. We may never get games like that game in the mainstream because of just how these games are made to fit a "broad appeal"
So TLOU2 was a necessary evil after all
Agreed. I'd honestly rather end up wasting my money on a bad game that at least tried than have a game that I'm just bored out of my skull just trying to play because there isn't an ounce of creativity to it. Either way I'm disappointed but at least I feel happier to support the ones who actually put some creative effort in.
@@CeliriaRose I was just more surprised Yahtzee still though TLOU2 was good in its own way.
"Having a 'So-Bad-It's-Good' game is so much harder than having a 'So-Bad-It's-Good' movie. With something like The Room, you just pop it in and watch Tommy do his thing. A bad game would be like having Tommy Wiseau make the movie, but also the DVD it's carried on, and the DVD player. If you're spending more time lost or frustrated than laughing at the works of a madman, it's just not a good bad game." - Mandaloregaming
A lot of 'so bad its good' categorised games are usually more games that, on a technical level, are just good enough to play through without getting too fed up, while having baffling and entertainingly bad presentation and design decisions obvious enough to stand out even when the bar is pretty low.
While we play game to feel something, it's also important to see it from the developers' perspective. When someone creates art, it's because they have a vision, something they want to express to the world.
Good and bad games both have visions, and it's the way they are expressed that makes them good or bad. But bland games often lack this vision, this "thing" that the developers or story writer wanted to express. This is why big AAA titles are often in the bland list, because anything committee designed just smothers creative vision with piles of money.
The games I find most fascinating are the ones that have little to no vision yet have a weird endearing quality about them. Resident Evil 6 for example. It was clearly made to cash in on 4's more over-the-top action approach just as RE5 was yet despite the complete lack of Wesker it manages to be weirdly endearing. It's designed by committee to the extreme but it's so utterly filled with those design by committee elements it feels like the climatic finale to something, yet it clearly doesn't feel like the climatic finale to Resident Evil so much as the climax of Dead Space (admittedly you fight a fucking Hellstar at the end of Dead Space 3 which tops even RE6's kaiju, so maybe DS3 is the finale in that case), or the The Fast and the Furious movies. But it sure as shit ain't the climax of Resident Evil, that was Resident Evil 5 if anything.
NOTE: For those who haven't played Resident Evil 6 the game can summed up as "Seven (one for Ada's Campaign, two for the other campaigns) off-brand John Wicks fight legions of zombies, monsters, one off-brand T-Rex and at least two kaiju and the game is completely serious".
"But nevermind, I'm sure 'Star Citizen' will be out any day now."
YEEAAAAH, saw THAT joke coming a mile away, and it still landed EXACTLY as intended. **applause**
By the time mankind starts expanding to the actual stars, Star Citizen MIGHT be in Beta already
@@generalrubbish9513 I love the optimism that it will actually reach that lofty goal.
@@tri-clawgaming7682 Don't worry, if the Beta gets delayed past the heat death of the universe, a couple of Boltzmann brains are practically guaranteed to pop up as a result of quantum fluctuations after an arbitrary but finite amount of time. They'll continue development so that they can hopefully have the 1.0 release ready by the time another spontaneous entropy decrease causes a new Big Bang.
@@generalrubbish9513 or you could download and play the game now, wich is better than most AAA games even in its current unfinished state.
@@FreebirthBoccara I don't know if over a decade of development and raking in $100 million dollars to develop really separates it from the AAA scene that much.
I think the truly worst-feeling games are ones that represent something personally bad for the viewer. I’m thinking of Scott the Woz and his hatred of Chibi Robo Zip Lash, and how it represents to him almost all of Nintendo’s flaws and shortcomings. Dunkey hates JRPGs because they slow gameplay down and rely heavily on cliche storylines, which he is against. Similarly, Yahtzee hates bland games because they represent a lack of artistic spirit and corporate greed in the triple-A industry.
I love the energy that Balan put into the world, had something went different it could have atleast been a billy hatcher situation. The pieces are there, someone had enough thought into the story to put a book out. But it just feels like they loaded the cart with too many things and just ended up watching it collapse in on itself.
At some point, someone is gonna mod that game into something more consumable. It still may not be great, but it'll be an experience
Balan is fundamentally ruined by the "all the buttons do the same thing" decision. A platformer where you can get stuck unable to jump?? Then it causes a domino reaction of all sorts of issues, like the level design having to account for all the potential moves you can have at any one point (spoiler: it fails to do this), and all the unskippable suit-change animations that wears on the player's patience.
(Not to mention even navigating menus is a pain, since there's no "cancel" button!)
The main issue with Balan is that one button does everything (excluding the shoulders, those change equipped costume).
One-button games were fine when control pads had three buttons, but now with 10 action buttons (Including the two triggers, L3 and R3), you really need to use at least two of them for function unless you're designing for a certain scheme (e.g. zipping around like a blue rat or rolling around a sticky micro-planet with tank controls).
Balan tries to do a lot of things that are fundamentally at odds with each other. Like, the one-button control idea supposedly for kids or casual gamers, okay yeah sure, it worked for Sonic back in the day, but Sonic had gameplay and level design built around getting the most out of it. Balan is trying to have its cake and eat it too with all the costumes and gimmicks that it's just not enough for.
Also Left Alive for trying to rekindle the Front Mission franchise without making a soulless tps
Quantic Dream nails the "AAA car crash" experience, we'll always have them to fall back on. Until David Cage gets arrested for some kind of creepy sex scandal, anyway.
He hasn't been already?
detroid was just bad imo
@@sushikazuki5945 He's in France right? Isn't Roman Polanski still living in France?
@@rizkyanandita8227 Oh no
Oh no
**Oh no**
Skill up brought me here and now I can finally see the context Yahtzee was bringing up on full
You’ll love to know, then, that the PC Master Race is one of Yahtzee’s early creations :D
@@mechanicalmonk2020 that's fair enough . But I think we get their points
I said it in the YT Community Post and I’ll say it here after some feedback:
I find bad games better as they tend to educational. Nothing shows you how bad it can be without showing an example of what not to do when designing a game. And depending on your disposition, it can at least be entertaining to a point.
Whereless a bland game is just there to fill a quota. Regardless of how long you play them it feels like a massive waste of time. And yet they are competently made to the point of inoffensiveness that you can’t really get worked up about them.
My take anyway.
You can lean from mistakes, but if you are literally not doing anything what's there to learn or gain.
Extra Credits did a video on the same idea; you can learn from bad so as long as those games don't have some really bad messaging (usually racist ones), even bad games are worth analyzing for the sake of study.
A bland game can also be educational. "You see this and how boring and by the numbers it is? Do NOT that"
Play YIIK a postmodern RPG. It's like a crash course on what not to do when making a video game
This argument only applies to game designers or would-be game designers. I'm neither of those things. I don't have the money or time to waste on a game that is actively fighting me. It's all well and good for people like Yahtzee who make a living, in whole or part, on playing/designing games to really analyze what went wrong with a game. I'm not looking for a homework assignment in my leisure activity.
There is so much you can learn about from a failure, if only to motivate you to avoid the same fate. Something that is adequate but forgettable just doesn't inspire action the way a colossal fuck-up can.
"Every life lesson worth learning, was first learned by someone who completely ruined his life by doing the exact opposite" --me just now
@@1337m4n very smart-mr right about now
Most people who talk about "learning" from bad things don't ever do anything with such knowledge, if they ever gain it. It's mostly just a bland cliche (speaking of blandness) deployed by people who want a blandly crowd-accepted excuse to rubberneck at a car wreck.
@@MegaZeta Speak for yourself. My team's done pretty well thus far as we take notes by the comfortable flickering light of this channel burning down due to a colossal fuck-up.
Yahtzee's description of what it takes to be a "car crash game" absolutely perfectly encapsulated something I've had difficulty finding the words for: Why I love YIIK.
1:54 **me not hearing anything as I spend the rest of the video trying to figure out which letter I need to change to make Filcher a bad word**
Cant believe he didnt mention swery in the "car crash fascinating" section
or YIIK
I recently watched a full dissection of Banal Wonderland and it is so incredible textbook in "good idea, bad execution."
The story is legitimately interesting...unfortunately our smug prick of a director thought the idea of showing the story IN THE FUCKING GAME was bad. "Show don't tell" only works when you fucking show us something, ANYTHING to work with. The fact players need to scrounge around through the promotional website, concept art, and the "novel" that's literally just a game script in a book tells you that something was really fucking wrong.
Even the idea of the costumes could be cool...in theory. 80 costumes, half of which are just the same as each other, but slightly better/worse, is bad. Costumes functioning as HP is bad. Costumes being single use is bad. The whole key-unlock-collect system is rancid. If they simply cut the fluff, focused on making each costume actually interesting, made them permanent as a form of progression, and kept HP separate, there could be some legitimately interesting gameplay to be had. But no. Our smug prick director rammed his square "vision" through a circular "game."
If anyone had the courage to roll up a newspaper and whack Yuji Naka over the head a dozen times during development, the game might have actually turned out something playable.
Do you remember the name or creator of that dissection?
@@wasdlmb It's "Austin Eruption" video: "I Beat Balan Wonderworld 100% and Read the Novel so you don't have to"
here's the video code as well: /watch?v=XhulaUqpWPQ
Haven't seen any of his other stuff yet, but this video was legitimately great.
@@PaperFlare I like his stuff, he looks at a ton of different games. Mostly quirky games, so it's fun! :)
@@PaperFlare Yuji's last game prior to Balan was Sonic '06, a game which, despite all of it's failings, had potential. Sure, it was overly bloated, rushed, and buggy from here to hell and back, it still had so much potential. It seemed like not just Sonic Team, but Yuji Naka both took the wrong lessons from Sonic '06. It led him to think that "simple means better," which isn't always true. Unfortunately, he had to go prove it to himself by making Balan, which was so utterly CRAP and so utterly SIMPLE that they *_FIRED_* him.
@@sonicrulez6916 "Simple means better" is a similar philosophy that Bethesda has demonstrably taken soooo far beyond its useful end-point. People so often seem to start with a fair or even great idea and just run that shit into the absolute GROUND. So many people take a philosophy and make it a cripplingly dogmatic catchphrase instead of a genuinely nuanced idea/school of thought.
Always been, to me, the worst possible reaction to any artistic endeavour: Indifference. People loving your work is great. People hating your work tends to mean at least some people love it, if only for the wrong reasons. See: Ed Wood. But indifference? People don't even want to talk about how bad you are. They'd rather forget they ever encountered your work.
But what about people that would love your work if there wasn't one thing that ruined the rest of the experience for them?
@@artman40 it falls into bad game in that case, if that detail realy can't be overlooked. because if you loved it otherwise, that means the creators actually gave a shit.
bland games are defined by how little passion they're designed with. passion is what incites the effort and needed for the soul and design of the product to be immersive and interesting. bland games are bland because they aren't designed with enough of that, if any at all.
No, it's definitely when people dislike your work because it's awful. But a lot of talentless hacks console themselves with the other idea.
Not that they'd rather forget a bland game.
They _will._
"Car crash games require a certain set of ingredients - the money, resources and talent to realise the creator’s vision, and the vision itself being completely fucking nuts. And the creator must have that specific kind of ego as well that makes them utterly deaf to criticism"
That part made me immediately think of kojima's death stranding
and yet the full AI logic behind Death Stranding can be seen as far back as MGS 3 where Kojima's team "perfected" their AI habits but who am I to say when I watch videos of a guy who turned MGS 3 into an episode of tom and jerry... which he could mor eor less replicate in Death Stranding as some of his DS videos goes
Or Sakamoto's Metroid Other M
@@edwardtan1354 i wanna watch that video. can i get a link?
This game has the unique honor of losing my interest with its plot summary.
5:02 "No end of terrible indie games" he says as he flashes silksong onscreen
Silksong is bad because is not lauched yet- yathzee(probably)
also Sea of Stars
Philosophically I like the idea that bad but memorable things are more valuable than bland experiences. But , I still would rather play a bland game than one that actively inspires negative emotions.
Exactly. I think many comments on this video miss the point that bad games are better to talk about, not better games to play. If I buy a game and its catastrophically bad (in a hypothetical situation where I didn't see reviews) I wouldn't come out of the experience gleeful at how bad it is, I'd be annoyed that I wasted my time and my money. Yes, it would make a far more interesting rant to my mates about what a awful experience it was, but that doesn't make the experience worthwhile.
Thank you for citing that Bloomberg article. As soon as I read that line you mention, I thought about your eventual reaction to it.
Even though I agree with you on this, I still think that, sometimes, an auteur needs reigning in. In that article (if what is in there is correct) they mention that Levine basically has all the money and time to do what he wants, and he doesn't seem to be able to stop and deliver a game. In cases like this there should be a supervision of sorts guiding the author, otherwise we might not ever see another BioShock.
That's the "another game of BioShock's caliber, coming from him"-meaning of "another BioShock", right?
Just making sure
I mean yea, the best case senario for most endeavours is for there to be a balance between the passion/artistic merits vs the cold calculations and realistic views of what can and can’t be done or should be done. That’s why you needed George Lucas held back by his other associates when making the star wars trilogy because then we got to see the literal 2 extremes of bad what happens when balance is broken; you had the prequels which were laughable indulgent messes since no one told Georgie no more using CGI as a crutch or bafflingly lore points. And then later you had the Disney trilogy which was painstakingly and corporately designed by community with no real new ideals but sucker people in with stuff they liked from the originals only to bungle things up when the attempts to mass appeal to everyone led to no one being happy with disneys juggling charade.
Hell, it was that one Yahtzee video I can’t Remember exactly which one but it talked about how iD’s golden boys; Romero and Carmack were so essential for eachother when they developed Quake because Romero’s ideas had to match and clash with Carmacks technical know how and when the 2 separated, we got Quake 3 and Daikata. One was Samey boring whatever hardly talked about and Daikatana was a laughingstock both because the game itself sucked and Romero himself basically making an arse of himself to the public before the game even came out.
@@vinnythewebsurfer quake 3 almost literally created multiplayer shooters
I think the problem is that Levine is being misidentified as an auteur in the first place. The whole problem is that he doesn't actually have a firm vision of what he wants to create, he keeps finding new shiny things and trying to bolt them on, changing the whole direction of the project repeatedly and thus ensuring it never actually happens. Autocratic management does not an auteur make.
@@richardvlasek2445 honestly, I think I’m mixing up quake 2 and 3 again.
Here, here, Yahtz. Give me a terrible experience over a forgettable one. I've often thought a bad game can't be a bad game if it has nothing to hook the player. While that might sound a bit maladaptively codependent, it's true, isn't it? If there wasn't a kernel of value to be wasted, we wouldn't be nearly as bothered to see it go to waste.
But what about terrible games that non-gamers are convinced are amazing because they swallow up a few awards here and there? Like most David Caige games, and Life is Strange? Those games I legitemately had kind of a fun time playing just for how hilariously bad they are narratively. Unfortunately, game awards automatically assigned them awards, because it had the exact qualities that most often associated with those Oscar-like societie's; homosexual themes, overly instrumental music, pretty visuals, acting that's admittedly good but there's more to a character than being played well, and worst of all, no personality nor subtlety.
@@simple-commentator-not-rea7345 "homosexual themes" lmao
well, I don't think something that's bad doesn't have value. I think many bad things we experience allow us to become wiser in some way, and that it also works when it comes to games. Sometimes I'm engaged just because I'm so curious what else I'm gonna have to scoff at lmao
@@simple-commentator-not-rea7345 I think you’re talking more about popularity than quality. People will have all sorts of reasons to follow a game that have nothing to do with how good or bad it is. A lot of those things you mentioned are there for popular appeal. Then there’s a lot of great games that end up falling under the radar.
@@geldonyetich Well yeah, popularity is always a factor. I guess I'm just bothered by the fact that the most popular games are usually the ones that just resemble oscar-bait movies, and I'm a firm believer that the best games are usually the ones that fully embrace the fact that they're video games and don't just try to resemble movies.
The thing about bland games is that they're only bland because you've already played so many similar things. A consumer that only buys one or two games a year won't find them bland because they haven't gotten bored of that kind of gameplay yet. Thus, bland games can still make money while properly bad games can't.
Yes, but how can you explain people who buy every installment of the same goddamn series every goddamn year, like the Call of Duty or Assassin's Creed fanboys, or even worse, the people who buy those sports games with the yearly installments that are literally nothing more than roster updates and a chance to force the players to buy all the loot boxes over again?
Arguably, the spunkgargleweewee genre was bland right from the start. But even there, I guess it meets the desires of people who want to play an action movie, so the fact that they're inherently bland from a gameplay perspective is entirely irrelevant to whatever appeal they might have.
@@mithiwithi It's more like laser tag with meat jelly ragdolls shooting each other
Depends. Bland stories remain bland stories. Bland gameplay features are another thing.
Nah I fundamentally disagree. They're bland just because there is literally nothing of note to them. Nothing to do with uniqueness or novelty. Just do SOMETHING y'know?
I tend to unironically enjoy a lot of games that are technically "bad" because they have some kind of identity. The Over the Hedge game, while slow to control, hooked me in after the initial levels because after the movie plot wrapped up it just went completely insane with cool obstacles like barbecue grills that turn into helicopters and shoot coals at you, and a story about the animal control agency literally mind controlling animals. If a game is trying something, even if it doesn't succeed, at least that keeps me interested because I can see the effort that went into certain parts.
Meanwhile, I enjoy the aggressively mediocre games, like Ghost in the Shell and Eve of Extinction for PS2. Games that really try to be interesting, but wind up not. At least their stories are... uh... written. But seriously, look up EoE's story. That shit's so weird.
jesus christ I remember playing that Over the Hedge game with my best friend and we had an absolute blast
Well goodness gracious, I'm glad you don't tend to ironically, or do so unironically without tippy-toeing around "tending" to do things
Sick burn on Star Citizen at the end there. 🔥
When I was about 15 a teacher took us to a ... hm, I dunno what you call things like that... a 'scene' theater, maybe? It was in a badly lit area, a train line ran over a bridge right next to it or something, and it evoked the feeling of a run-down industrial setting. And I think it was like two turns away from the red light district.
The play was about Troy, I think, but with themes of the Vietnam or Korean war, the lighting was harsh and sparse, they included stuff like a crt monitor to display images of fire; overall the stage was pretty... desolate (as in, there wasn't much on it, it wasn't fancy, you couldn't see much etc). At some point where some character experienced great anguish he poured 'gasoline' all over himself (and maybe 'set himself on fire' (perhaps that was the crt fire thingy?)). The train line would sometimes cause great rumbling.
Now, some of the artsy types liked it. For me though, sitting there was anguish. The 'car crash' analogy fits somewhat, though I was forced to sit through it since we were there with our teacher. It wasn't even during school hours, but an event in the evening. I absolutely hated it.
But... when it was over, and my mother picked me up... I really enjoyed complaining about it in the car. And I quickly realized so and was able to communicate that to her, so the mood in the car was actually cheery and not "kid moans about his misfortune".
I would never go to that theatre again, if it even still exists. I wouldn't recommend going there to anyone whose tastes are remotely similar to mine. But I will admit that it left much more of an impact on me than... well, all of our other theatre visits in school, and that in hating the experience I've found more joy than I've gotten from any of the other theatre visits.
I agree. I think this happens in any artistic industry that grows too big. Things come out with a lot of hype, but end up disappointing or uninteresting. It's not that good or bad stuff doesn't come out, just that there's way more fluff to get to it.
I feel like this video would have been the perfect place to give a shout-out to 2015's 'I Am Bread'. It was made by a studio with more than 10 employees that's owned by the multinational Endemol Shine Group so 'indie' might be a stretch, but the fact that it got made at all still feels like a testament to the power of a weird idea undiluted by committees or demographic pandering.
It's a short game with unremarkable graphics, nonsensical plot, janky af camera, and even worse controls. And it was utterly, utterly addicting. I spent the entire time either laughing or swearing at it but still couldn't put it down until I had 100% achievements across the board.
I still play Castlevania 64 at least once a year. Theres so many really great ideas buried there.
That villa stage is inspired, i want an entire game of that.
But they ran out of time and we got a bunch of terrible platforming.
Well, I lucked into finding an obscure Discord server where some really creative programmers are taking the game apart, bit by bit, and byte by byte, and they are seeing what they can do with it.
I've been a "Castlevania 64 Loyalist" since its release, and I'm looking forward to see what this motley crew of coders comes up with.
@RedSpadeTre7 thats really exciting news.
@@JonahPleatherbooth Currently, the only thing substantial is a "randomizer" that I haven't tried myself, but CZcamsr Jupiter Climb played it a few months ago. However, I can't seem to find the videos on CZcams, but there may be clips of it on Twitch from when he streamed it.
I can't invite to the server, I don't think, but I can see what I can do, if you're interested.
Dungeon Master: The Fox Shapeshifting spell allows you to turn into anything, as long as it fits in a 5 foot cube.
Player: I jump on top of the enemy and turn into a 5 foot cube of granite.
Dungeon Master: Um, that's, *checks spell wording* *checks falling object damage*, yeah, that works. The enemy's dead. Congrats.
In Pathfinder, a 5feet cube of granite would deal like 3d6 damage, and half as much back to you.
Oof either way.
I've been obsessed with Balan Wonderworld pretty much since it dropped. There's something so captivating about how impressively misguided it is, everything from the lack of dialogue to infamous controls just has you stop in your tracks and ask "who in their right mind thought this was a remotely good idea?" It's just so damn fascinating to me
That and the soundtrack just straight up bangs, like if anyone did their job right it was the composer 👌
Don't forget the art direction and whoever designed the Tims, God DAMN them fuckers adorable
@@aortaplatinum Oh aye, if the choice wasn't limited to one colour then I would totally have a flock of Tim plushies by now 😂
I'm adoring this series! I wait for every one and really appreciate your perspective wrapped up in my favourite writer's voice and vocabulary.
For those looking for an exploration of car crash gaming im going to suggest Watch and Play, a Loading Ready Run series of streams about subjecting a victim to awful games
That itty-bitty moan out of nowhere is what killed me
Love this vid. I’ve always articulated the worst thing something can be, and that’s how I get annoyed when people rag on me for getting pissy about underwhelming things only to be told “it’s not that bad it’s fine”
But as you said, bad things create discussion inherently about fundamentals.
I missed EP so badly when it stopped updating. Glad it's resurrected!!!
These videos remind me of TotalBiscuit. That's a great thing.
Good job, Yatzee and Team!
I'm frankly loving this series. It's got the pace and tone I expect from Zero Pun, but more educational. Hope this stays a regular thing.
To me, the absolute worst are the bland games that look interesting. The kind that you'll see something about and think "that'll be fun to play", but then after you play it for a while you just kind of get bored. Maybe you push through and finish it, maybe you don't, but it ends up so utterly forgettable that as time goes on it no longer registers to your mind that you played it. Then, one day years later, you come across it again, having completely forgotten you had ever played it, and you think to yourself "that'll be fun to play" beginning the cycle again.
I'm certainly going to remember ride to hell retribution and Agony more than I'm going to remember whatever the last farcry I spent a couple of soul numbing hours playing because it was deeply discounted.
@@mechanicalmonk2020 rhetorical exaggeration. I played farcry 5 for maybe 10 hours before I got bored. I think it was in ps now so I didn’t specifically pay for it.
The use of the sad Brendan Fraser eyes at the end evoked quite the complex emotion- good editing Matt!
I want to say I'm mixed on bad vs bland games, but as I thought about it during the video, I realized I've beaten more bad games than bland.
Sometimes I can hate a game, yet the soundtrack makes me want to keep going. I've hated games so hard I've wanted to toss them, yet I kept pushing through just to see if there's any light in this mess of a toilet.
With bland, I just stop caring. I'll beat it if I don't have anything new, maybe, possibly... Or say fuck it and go outside because life is too short and I'm not going to die early from sheer boredom.
The cube fox was baffling until I thought about it for a bit and realized...
Box fox, fox in a box
On indie games. A new one called reiterate came out this week. The developer (ltgd/zayne) did a devlog series inspired by Dev dairy. It's actually really good it has a real flow to it and all the obstacles seem to move in time to the music. Give it a look if your into short snacky platformers.
A name like ‘Reiterate’ makes me imagine a game where you only play a single level, but each time you do it gets slightly more complex and detailed.
Commenting to give this more reach.
@@Xalerdane …so… the give up flash games?
"Car Crash Fascinating"....Love it! That is forever emblazoned in my memory!
Bad games can be a surprisingly good sourçe of inspirations for creators. There are quite a few stories of indie devs being inspired by the mechanics or concepts of a terrible game and doing something much more fun and fleshed out with them.
indeed. as an aspiring dev, i've found that bad media makes me realy start thinking about what it tried to do and how to do it right. bad media incites creativity in sort of a "you're doing it all wrong. let me show you how it's done" type of way, which is why it's valuable.
the fox turning into a cube was clearly a nod to chaos fox from Lar's Van Trier's film Antichrist
I just love how this show is like really funny and thoughtfull video essays, that is not two hours long.
Keep making these please, they're so fucking needed
Just based on the title, I know cardinal sin of youtube comments, this sounds very much like a video game reviewer problem, not a video game player problem.
What I mean is, I spend money on a game and have limited time. A bland, but fun, game can be just fine for me, but a bad game is simple a waste of my time and money.
For someone who's job it is to play a lot of games, bland games are going to be much more exasperating because at least bad games give you some sort of reaction.
I'm sure there are players who feel the same as YZ, but not me. Give me a bland but fun game in a genre I like and I will be moderately happy, but a legit bad game just pisses me off.
I agree completely. If I'm eating fast food, I want that kinda boring 6/10 experience over something that's 90% inedible trash, 10% michelin star-level greatness, because I'm not eating it to review it. I'm eating it because I'm hungry and don't have the time/energy to cook for myself. The reason these supposed bland AAA games make so much more money than 99.9% of the imperfect indie masterpieces reviewers love is because they simply do more for more players.
I also think the dichotomy between innovative, unique indie games and soulless AAA games doesn't really exist. There are plenty of AAA games which are original in some manner and if you've spent more than 5 seconds browsing Steam's store page, you'll have seen that the indie scene is rife with knock-offs, derivative, exploitative or otherwise soulless shite made to ride the newest trend. Even the supposed good games are more often than not 2D platformers with some sort of gimmick and honestly, they just don't do anything for me.
His list of blandest games this year included games that millions of people found fun, though.
@@claytonweaver7335 the reason why those people find such games fun though is because they've perfected the skinnerbox. dangle a reward and a sense of progression in front of the mindless masses and they'll eat it up like there's no tomorrow, no matter how repetitive and shallow the experience is. that's why destiny 2 is so popular, yet has such a toxic relationship with it's fanbase. because they're smart enough to see the poor and repetitive design, but are too addicted to stop playing.
turn your brain off, don't put any thought into analyzing the design, and anything that isn't unconcealably bad becomes enjoyable. it's the same deal the movie industry has perfected, with how shallow garbage like marvel, transformers, or fast and furious are so successful. all spectacle, no substance.
when you actually put some thought into the experiences, and look past the skinnerboxes, you'll find they have nothing to them that makes them worthwhile.
To the people wondering what naughty word Yahtzee is talking about that is one letter away from 'Filcher', take it from someone who Googled it long ago, you do not want to know.
There, I've warned you. You will now only have yourself to blame if your curiosity gets the better of you.
Ok, but these people (myself included) literally can’t Google it because we don’t know what word to Google… what’s the word? Or at least what’s the wrong letter?
@@rainbowevil In the interest of not being banned by Google comment moderation I can't say it outright but you would need to make all of the vowels 'E.'
Thank you for the word "identicate". It's kinda rare to learn a word you've never heard nor read that is also conspicuously useful. I felt the same way the first time I read the word "resultant" in some academic shit I've long since forgotten. Probably not a coincidence that both words sort of blur the line between rare conjugations of commonplace words and separate words in their own right.
That Star Citizen jab was the cherry on top of a most pleasant extra punctuation sundae. Good show, Yahtzee.
I've always agreed seeing bad games as a necessary stepping stone to building a better one. They are the lessons of what NOT to do.
I agree with this about art in general. some of the best, most influential art in history could have been viewed as "bad" in their current time period, perhaps not by adhering to the current standards, or containing subject matter that is hard to deal with ... but what made it stand the test of time, was how interesting it was. in that way, I honestly feel like "bad" art could be viewed as better than "good" art, because it pushes the boundaries in ways people find uncomfortable or strange, further expanding our perception of what art can be.
They star citizen burn at the end had me dying 😂
6:22 I was just thinking "is this going to be a star citizen joke?"
3:40 Nice MST3K reference! Love that show!!
Sucking at something is the first step to becoming kinda good at something
Not trying at something is the first step to continuing to not try at something
Bad games are necessary as a reminder of how "Good", an actual good game is
I remember watching a video about the same topic but for movies on how many movies nowdays are jusy bland and forgetable etc.
I used to love making games when I was a teen yet I find it harder and harder now, I think I might need to let go of my ego and just push out games for fun cause even if they suck at least each one is a learning experience
I agree that niche indie games are hard to find. I finished Dredge recently and adored it, but whenever I looked up discussions about similar games, they all said the same 5-10 answers that were all barely similar to Dredge and I had already played (hence my knowing that they weren't similar). I do wish it was easier to find niches on steam but right now, they really only show you what's currently being advertised.
The sound effect at 1:25 has *sent me*
Best commentary on gaming and the state of the industry
That final mention to star citizen cracked me up.
Dont worry Yathzee, as long as crowdfunding is a thing we will still get car crash games.
There are also people like Sweary and whoever made Balan. As long as there is art, there shall be bad art. Something that makes you want to laugh at it or that elicits negative feelings in you. Its just a matter of chance.
Hey, Swery occasionally makes good (and mostly functional) things. The Missing was pretty good and D4 and Deadly premonitions are interesting.
the thing about balan though was that it was made by yuji naka, an industry veteran, and he stated it was likely his last chance to remain in the industry and that he may quit it if it failed.
Balan wonderworld makes a bit more sense if you read the book they launched alongside it. In an effort to tell a story without any dialogue or writing, they forgot to actually include the plot in the first place, so they had to write it all down in a book. There are a whole raft of other problems but at least it’s all interesting enough to be more enjoyable than 6 copies of the same shooter game called different names and each sold for $80.
Fox that turns into a cube (box), that's a Metal Gear Solid reference.
I'd wager Box Fox was an attempt (not saying successful) to have a power-up that was on a time-limit but didn't go away. It requires a little bit of skill and luck to get the timing right on when the automatic transformation happens, which presents a potentially engaging challenge.
1:25 Pk that bit got me.
The funny thing about fox box, is that binding of isaac literally added an item that roughly emulates the effect of fox box, but because tooth and nail doesn't remove your ability to act with invincible, it plays a lot better even if it is a timed ability you can't really control.
Like, if it kills you, it's because you got greedy on the I framea.
It's fun that this floated up the algorithm following Ghost Fire games reveal
1:25 what sound effect is that specifically and where can I find it and play it in a constant loop? Asking for a friend O///O
Is that Jimmy Broadbent at 6:31 lmfao
Neil Breen is an absolute legend great shout out!
Gotta love how Yahtzee knows Yuzusoft VNs, the one in there featured being Sanoba Witch. You're a man of culture, Yahtz!
There's something equal parts satisfying and terrifying about realizing I'm thinking the same thing as Yahtzee. In this video, that moment occurred at the end before he said the name of the game he was talking about and I thought, "Man, that sounds a lot like Star Citizen" right before Yahtzee said "Star Citizen." Touche, sir. You have mind-controlled me with your sarcastic and cynical wit, and I will forever be your Internet drone.
Now that I think of it I'm normally more inclined to finish bad games far more than bland ones. Bland games feel like they won't take you anywhere whereas bad games feel like they will, mostly to hell though it's still a destination
oh my god I feel so dumb I played trilby many years ago and I found that the character stoping the player when ko's too many npcs was really neat! I didn't know that it was made by Yahtzee ;_; great game man!
My wife plays Balan and I got the fox cube reference.. it's a "FOX IN A BOX" 😆
The first time I had this type of realization was watching The Return (the Sarah Michelle Gellar movie) in college. It made me feel like I really wasted my time because it wasn't bad enough to be fun or good enough to be... Fun.
Man, don't get me wrong I love zero punctuation but this show has really scratched a content itch I had.
You're hitting the nail on the head with these topics and it's becoming one of my favorite gaming related series
you published this vid at the time of Rainbow 6 extraction and this feels so relatable
Truth. I did a brief stint as a freelance art show and gig reviewer. Shows that are bad and show that are good you can go nuts with. The mediocre is like trying to rewrite a sigh over and over and over again and make it not sound like a sigh every time.
The talk of “super niche games that appeal specifically to you”
Is how I felt about “Haydee” and “Haydee 2”
Two super obscure RE style metroidvanias with portal//half life styled liminal space settings.
They are uniquely obscure because they are hidden on steam unless you have steam set to show 18+ games.
The games also come off as shitty sex games at a quick glance but taking any amount of time to play either of them is how you find out how not only absurdly immersive but also very challenging and pretty fucking creepy and spooky.
I stumbled across them after beating Sekiro and then Hollow Knight right after.
And coming those games you better believe the bar was high so for those two games to provide an equal or greater amount of joy is crazy.
I loved those games so much that after binging both in a week I then learned the game engine and made a 8-12 hour modded map for Haydee 2 that’s currently on the workshop.
Those are two games that will probably always remain in obscurity from their choice to make the main character look like a real doll despite the gameplay really not having anything to do with anything sexual.
Nice mention on how you added the Blandest 5 Games list back at the end of 2015.
Makes 100% sense. I go as far as to asking people about the worst movies they've ever seen rather than the best. I love how passionately people speak about what pisses them off. Friends don't necessarily have to love the same things; they can bond over the love of hating the same things.
The Star Citizen joke made me LOL
Great video
Speaking as someone who doesn't have a job taking the piss out of bad games. Bad games often provide a lot of free entertainment for me. Videos about bad games are almost always interesting and Balan Wonderworld provided a lot of material for some video makers. I have never played Balan Wonderworld and never intend to but it's existence has been very entertaining.
5:36 You forgot Daddy Derek!!
That SC jab was unexpected and completly fitting xD good one!
The Jimmy Broadbent eyes at the end. Are you a sim racer Yahtzee? Or editor?