Ep. 370 - Holiday Question Hole Special

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Ep. 370 - Holiday Question Hole Special

The three finest minds in video games plumb the depths of our listener-submitted Question Hole, dredging up all manner of holiday cheer, the Floridafication of America, and the return of Seaman. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Ash Parrish, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.

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SHOW NOTES:

1: Tradegood asks, what is the best video game to play on a first date? (03:04)

2: Kiko B asks, aside from jumping and running, what are the most important verbs in a platform game? Are there any that don’t get the attention they deserve? (06:28)

3: Breadytodie asks, which is the better racing game series: Initial D or Wangan Midnight? (07:34)

4: Goonbag asks, what’s the most shame you have ever experienced playing a video game? (08:48)

5: Hobart Painsborough asks, why do so many games lie to the player when they say “press any button to continue” when in reality “any button” does not, in fact, allow you to continue? (11:23)

6: A small rabite asks, is the Mana series the most mismanaged Square-Enix franchise? (12:43)

7: LeFish asks, who is the coolest videogame character whose design is family friendly or specifically aimed towards kids? (13:27)

8: Tom Arrow asks, I recently noticed while playing the Dreamcast that a bunch of these games feature an arcade-style race against the clock mechanic. What was the deal with that? (13:43)

9: Connrrr asks, can playing a video game be a form of puppeteering? (15:48)

10: Michael from Cyprus asks, it was Alain Badiou I think that said ” Most people resort to the certainty of misery than the misery of uncertainty.” What two Video Games ultimately answer to the two paths? (16:27)

11: LowGuppy asks, what video game most needs a sequel subtitled “On the Beach?” (17:55)

12: Spencergifs asks, what is the best video game that is not played with a controller, mouse and keyboard, or arcade stick (19:19)

13: Rice_9 asks, when looking at a new game online, do you watch the video, read the copy, or look at screenshots first? (21:39)

14: Why Why asks, how do you make destructible items fun to destroy? (22:01)

15: Psinuxie asks, what are some later games that figured out design fundamentals? (23:29)

16: Dustin asks, what was a favorite multi-disc game for you? (26:36)

17: BluntForceMama asks, is GTA 6 late to the party regarding Florida culture? (29:18)

18: Anonymous asks, how do one’s actions in the human realm affect which video game world you go to when you die? (30:39)

19: Anders Matsen asks, what specific elements make up a “hang out game?”

20: Will Heydt Minor asks, is the world ready for Seaman 2? (35:36)

21: Kyle Karesh asks, what game series is better to play in chronological order rather than release order? (37:54)

22: Cara Esten asks, what video game would make the memory of a traumatic event worse? (38:49)

23: Dilson asks, what makes in-game lore compelling? (39:22)

Credit Report (52:00)

Recommendations and Outro (52:37):

  • Brandon: Do what you can
  • Frank: Help those around you
  • Ash: Keep hope alive

This week’s Insert Credit Show is brought to you by patrons like you. Thank you.

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Buttons are in fact a type of trigger, a special case where there are 2 values rather than 256

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I will reiterate. This would work on me.

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Lately I’ve been huge on buying Bandcamp albums. Like $3 or $5 every few weeks and then I have cool music forever, and paid the artist directly to get it! Got email notifs on for a ton of artists so I can always be in the first round of supporters too. Feels good. Feels right. More direct and more real than these disparate isolated channels culture has been trying to funnel us into. Fight against the commodification of art and support creatives. Hell yeah

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made an ex play strip Mario Kart with me

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For some reason I’m reminded of those older internet banner ads 'Use these psychological tricks to get ANY girl to sleep with you" but this guy actually cracked the code with monkey ball lol.

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Ma (2019) Rio Kart

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Thanks a lot for this, @adashtra.
Just last night I lost someone very close and I needed to hear those words.

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lemme make some slight additions:

  • try to do a little research on the precise best and most efficient way to really help someone—yes, every little bit still helps, but the big payment vendors are actively working to disincentivise small transactions by saddling them with so many costs and fees that transactions below a certain dollar amount might as well be going straight into their pockets. Frank mentioned $1/x, I think, but the end recipient might be lucky to get 35c when all is said and done, depending on the precise payment pathway they’re using.
  • don’t immediately dismiss anything not being poured down your throat by the same three funnels, and try not to use practical “realist” excuses about market share or whatever as an excuse to not investigate alternative means and methods of distribution in good faith—Steam doesn’t own PC gaming; Patreon doesn’t own per-person subscription; Substack can fuck right off, etc etc.
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I remember loving the controls for RE4 on the Gamecube, it made firing a heavy gun feel appropriately awkward. But I always felt like that control scheme was an evolutionary dead-end for console FPS.

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This episode was so good I had to make an account! Thank you everyone for your work this year!

I want to mention the roguelite/like One Way Heroics . In many ways it cleans up the gameplay of more traditional roguelikes, without actually losing any of their characteristics/complexity. Those games basically require the entire keyboard to play, this one only needs the arrow keys and a confirm/back button. With the right configuration you can play this one handed, therefore it is perfect game design.

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@adashtra, Thank you for that moving and heartfelt closing.

Also, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the better Mass Effect. You’d love it.

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Heck yeah @adashtra.

That was so heartfelt and passionate and full of expletives that it reminded me of Barret Wallace in the best possible way. I love the post-outro bit too. I am lucky enough to be able to be a patron for the show, and it’s important to me to do so simply because I want to live in a world where stuff like this exists, but also because it’s important to me to maintain silly things like this in the face of overwhelming hardship.

@exodus this is semantics, so I apologize in advance, but I think taking action in the face of hopelessness is a form of hope. I think there’s a lot of nuance and layers in that word. It’s powerful to give up the idea of a specific outcome, and do good work and act to your values anyway.

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I could see that being seen as a form of hope, possibly, maybe from the outside. It’s not borne of a hope for the future on my part, or a hope that things will get better long term, because I don’t have that. I view it more as mitigating harm and trying to carve a space for some joy in areas that I can affect while I can still affect them, and it doesn’t FEEL hopeful to me but if it makes others feel hopeful then that is good!

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I love when my questions are picked because I feel validated in a way, but I also feel exposed because those are my dumb words that Jaffe’s reading.

On the codex thing, I think the key thing to enjoying them is that the player needs to have already bought into the story. Like if you’re writing a story, it’s a rookie mistake to jam in a bunch of world building for the sake of it because that’s not moving the story forward or informing on the characters. It’s set dressing. Adding little bits in a codex is a good excuse to use some world building that was done as a tool/reference to tell the story, but wouldn’t otherwise be seen by anyone else. I think only videogames can get away with cramming in so much supplemental material and that’s NEAT.

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Absolutely felt this last week when my question was picked.

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Was happy Wangan’s soundtrack came up. I used to go to the arcade all the time for Tekken 5 and would play Maximum Tune 2 when no one was around for Tekken. Absolutely KILLER soundtrack. I still listen to it sometimes.

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great ep!

I’m not a big codex person but not for lack of trying. I’ve played many games with them and have really tried but I think that unfortunately the text in them is usually quite boring tbh!

FFXIV was the game that broke me of trying to engage with that kind of stuff. I tried really hard to get into the game in a way that encompassed all of the codex stuff, the lore books they released, fan fiction, all of that. But none of it made any difference to how much I was enjoying the game, eventually it actually made the entre thing feel like work instead of fun. So I know I’m just not a person who wants to engage with all of these elements in too intense a way. It bogs down the experience for me.

It was interesting to listen and think about what does and doesn’t work for me with them and I think I arrived at the in-game codex that has worked best for me: the Pokedex. It’s an in-universe item that you use to track your actual progress in the game while giving you extremely fun, brief bits of the world. You get some fun flavor text about each Pokemon, what type it is, where you encountered it. It’s so connected to the game itself and your journey through it.

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One thing that’s important about the pokedex (to me) is that the flavor text is indeed fun - sometimes it’s super weird, sometimes it’s informative, sometimes it’s funny, but it’s never just like “ground type pokemon.” No, it’s got something like “wears hats on wednesdays” in there too.

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