Architect Address October 2020 (Patreon)

Hello hello and welcome to the Architect Address - the occasional video I do to explain what the deal is with the channel and the last couple of videos. This monthish I managed to get myself a new computer, and whilst the longing video is mostly to thank for that, you patrons are as well so cheers for that, I can finally run adobe premiere without it chugging constantly. The transfer did result in a bunch of my footage getting corrupted as a crappy hard drive finally gave up the ghost but hopefully the move to a fancy new system will be better in the long run.

So, the first video I want to talk about is Frog Fractions is a game about fractions, something that you ought to know is absolutely not the case. I absolutely love metafiction, I enjoy nothing more than shows that break the fourth wall or play with the expected formats of their genre because it plays into my hyper analytical frame of mind - I love seeing how things work and metafictive works are intrinsically conscious of that fact. 

So, it’s no surprise then that making this video was loads of fun, particularly playing through all the frog fractions games. One thing I was going to talk about regarding those games that I could never quite make fit, however, was the fact that metafiction is a constantly evolving thing, and so no frog fractions game - no matter how crazy - will ever have that same punch as the first game. Frog fractions two in particular was a fantastic ARG but the game itself lacks the same spark that made the 1st one work, frog fractions 3 works better as a game but is still missing something - you know you’re playing a frog fractions game so whilst the weirdness is entertaining, you’re always going to be mentally prepared for it.

Most of the games that are going for outright laughs or scares are much more successful, the stanley parable still holds up completely and I absolutely LOVE pony island and everything Dan Mullins makes - if you’ve not seen his upcoming game inscription then please check that out, very excited to get the chance to play it. There’s something about how absolutely ruthless all of Dan Mullin’s games are with their fourth wall breaks that completely throws you off guard, I love how twitch chat pops up in the corner of the screen whenever you win an RPG battle in The Hex and all the fuckery that Pony Island gets up to in order to try and make you fail puzzles. I guess it all ties into one of my big ideas with the channel that games are at their best when they take the form of a conversation between designer and player, and metagames are pretty much the purest form of that.

The other video released recently was all about RPGs, and boy was this a hard one to put together, between the aforementioned footage loss and transitioning over to a new PC I also had to contend with the fact that I just could not find a good angle on what I wanted to talk about. I went in thinking that RPG combat wasn’t fun, after all, it was the main sticking point where I got consistently bored, wasn’t it? However, the more I tried to justify this position, the more I came to realise that it just wasn’t true.

RPGs have this weird reputation, particularly in the west for having boring samey combat, and that really isn’t true, even the games I rag on in the video have interesting things going on and combat that has a lot of interesting design - what the combat of these games don’t have is the longevity required to last for their forty to sixty hour runtimes. Final fantasy is great for like the first few hours but by the time the combat and whatever skill system they’ve got going on has shown all its tricks you’ve still got two thirds of the story left to go. 

Honestly, I’m sort of not happy with the way the video turned out, because I feel that the end segment where I discuss actual solutions to these problems is the real meat and I don’t spend nearly enough time on the subject. RPGs have length and a particular kind of combat deeply baked into their design genetics, but that doesn’t mean these things have to be included in every RPG ever, and - to be honest - the term has become so unusably broad over time that I’m not sure trying to stay true to “RPG tradition” is even possible any more. I dunno, I think i’d like to have a look at how long games should be at some point but I’d like to let that topic cool off before I touch it again.

On the plus side, it was really fun going through a bunch of RPGs I’ve either sidelined or never gotten around do, Chrono Trigger is just fantastic, and it amazes me that the damn thing is more than 20 years old, Divinity OS 2 is just great and I actually had a fun time grabbing a little bit of footage from Final Fantasy 15 which is a controversial and transparently unfinished game but damn if I don’t have a bit of a soft spot for it. The thousand year door, surprisingly, didn’t hold up as well for me, there is a LOT of backtracking and fetch questery in that game that really slows everything down, particularly towards the end, and forget about the trouble board sidequests, jesus. 

Anyway, I’ll upset certain people if I slander the gamecube any more so I’ll stop things there, thanks for paying attention as per usual and I’ll see you…  around at some point for a video about among us! ooooh! yeah, I've been meaning to make a video about traitor games for a while, it should be fun! Anyway see you around, bye!.