what should the podcast hosts rename âThe Dirtbagâ in order to better reflect their appreciation for those of us who take time out of our busy lives to contribute to the show?
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Dirtbag is a term of endearment. I wouldnât want it changed.
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I propose the worst of all worldsâa valorizing, almost saccharine term.
It will give the panelists plausible deniability in being even sarcastically mean to their most ardent supporters.
But then it will also make those same fans feel the most frustrating, uncomfortable emotion possible in modern day videogames: a chilling self awareness that you are being pandered to, and the embarrassing sense that the pandering has failed.
Ironically the only way to truly restore the denigrating contradiction in designating the most dedicated fans a normally insulting term is by turning 180 degrees and slamming the pedal to the metal
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The Manure Bag, for we are the manure the beautiful flowers of Insert Credit sprout out of
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And hereâs another missive - from the g4mer godz.
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As an American, I demand to be pandered to at all times.
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What is the forcing your child to do sports regardless of their interest of video games?
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forcing your child to play video games
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Playing Pac-Man 2
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Forcing your child to play esports
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Whatâs the flattened penny of video games?
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Kickstarter backer rewards maybe
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Specifically physical tchotchkes that ship broken
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Achievements
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Animal Crossing.
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What was the actual first strand-type game?
Is Elden Ring a strand-type game?
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or is it this naughty German hotel management sim??
In Biing! 2, you take over the part of a hotel manager at a holiday resort called âLollibay Innâ.
Youâll have to care for employees (very low dressed girls) and for the facilities of your club (e.g. pools, SM-centers, etc.).
The game has comic graphics and features harmless nudity. A German XXX movie star called Manila May helps you as an interactive teacher to lead your holiday resort to success.
Also, I was perhaps the last to get the memo that âStrandâ is German for beach.
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MUDs would be the first strand-type I can think of, where one could (and did) play them single player or small party but where sessions could affect others in the MUD.
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Is there such a thing? jk
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Iâm gonna say no for a specific reasonâif a game being a âstrand typeâ game means anything, it means that the asynchronous multiplayer features allows co-operation on more mechanistic, tangible, gameplay levels than is possible in the Souls games.
The asynchronous multiplayer stuff in Elden Ring is quite hands off and intangible from a gameplay perspective in comparison to Death Stranding (and, no, I donât think the psychological experience of navigating the game world itself is a gameplay mechanic, even if it is executed on as brilliantly as From does). If I remember correctly you can get a spontaneous heal when someone rates a message you have left, but, beyond that, the asynchronous multiplayer stuff is much more socially based.
In comparison, Death Strandingâs asynchronous multiplayer gameplay is highly tangible and much more directly effects gameplay. Being able to asynchronously communicate with someone about how there is treasure across a ravine is a lot different from building an actual bridge to allow others to asynchronously cross the bridge and traverse the ravine.
Not to be a Kojima fart sniffer but if I take Kojimaâs insane statement about how a strand type game is a distinct type of game and Death Stranding is the first one entirely at face value, and perhaps exaggerate the meaning of some subtle distinctions in what a strand-type game is even defined as, well, I think it very well could be Death Stranding. Itâs honestly is a pretty unique game with novel gameplay and multiplayer features.
I will attempt to define what a strand-type game could be:
- Continuous open world with multiplayer integration
I donât think Death Stranding is Death Stranding without the open world, and, even those itâs all heavily instanced, itâs pretty important that youâre sharing that open world with other players. This is hardly unique on either end, but, there are plenty of other reasons why World of Warcraft isnât a strand type game just because it has a continuous world with multiplayer integration.
- Co-operatively built/maintained player structures with tangible gameplay elements
I do think itâs cool and significant that the multiplayer elements are pretty strictly co-operative and collaborative. You leave stuff behind to be able to facilitate traversal or to share resources with other players pretty much exclusively, and itâs all tied intimately with the gameâs core gameplay mechanics, and even its narrative. Online games where you build and maintain things with gameplay elements in collaboration with other players where the player built structures are so tangible in oneâs own instance of the game seem hard for me to think of. On one hand there is stuff like Second Life or VR Chat but those donât exactly have gameplay so much as they are heavily videogame inflected social platforms. Another corollary here is player housing in MMOs which are, to skip a more nuanced definition I could give, more cosmetic inflections on the MMO as a social platform than gameplay, although many MMOs like FFXIV do allow players to build gameplay relevant amenities (like gear repairpersons) inside their housing. Though, that is a pretty minor thing compared to the degree to which Death Stranding allows you to do things like that.
There is stuff like collaborative server events in various MMORPGs but those are quite depersonalized, and, arguably, those are really more about narrativizing a game-wide compulsion to do more videogame chores (unsurprising in the Stylized Videogame Chore genre) than they are about personal expression, so, itâs not like in a strand-type game where you do to some degree make a personal statement by choosing to build a bridge or leave a ladder at a specific point. Youâre communicating to other players that you feel traversing that specific place needed to be easier, so you expended resources to be able to do so, both for yourself and potentially for others after you. Itâs a collaborative smoothing out of the gameâs vast array of nigh-countless points of friction. Thatâs something very different from plopping a generic equipment repair amenity within your Erotic Roleplaying Den so that no one has to put on more decent clothing to go use the apartment lobbyâs amenities.
- Asynchronous, and strictly so
Taking a big whiff of Kojimaâs farts here but I think Death Stranding was doing something pretty interesting by ensuring all of this collaboration never had a real time component, and, narratively and on an immersive level, your connection with other players truly was strictly socially removed from any sense of real-time communication. It splits the feeling of the game between an experience that is somehow able to provide a sense of isolation and a sense of connection and community simultaneously. The game world is simultaneously empty and alive, the environment is simultaneously hostile and collaboratively maintained. When you travel somewhere well trodden and heavily developed, you do so with the support of those who came before you, and when you travel somewhere and the resources or structures are sparse or even nonexistent, youâre doing so as a trailblazer who can leave things behind to help other players. All while knowing you will never actually feel real time confirmation that other people are playing the game as you at the same time.
Itâs like the total inverse of that magical moment in playing Journey, when, at least if you somehow missed that that was its whole deal (was this just me? I literally had no idea it wasnât a singleplayer game lol) you realize that for this particular journey you will have a companion assisting you and theyâre able to communicate with you on some level.
At any rate I think the asynchronicity is very important for what makes Death Stranding something unique in that way. MUDs or MMOs or online survival games and the like all have collaborative player structures, but even the possibility of stumbling on the builder actively in the act of building something changes how it affects the player psychologically.
In any case, yeah, I honestly canât think of another game that captures that specific cocktail of a multiplayer experience. But, maybe if we want to be a lot more general about what a strand-type game is, and weâre just talking about a multiplayer game that, through clever staging of the multiplayer elements and framing of the way players are able to communicate and collaborate, you end up feeling some kinda heady mix of some kinda profundity of human connection, maybe the first strand type game was Journey.
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