Architect Address April 2022 (Patreon)

Hello everyone and welcome to the Architect Address, that extra special patrons only thing where I talk about some of the recent videos that have come out and what’s going on with the channel lately.

Before we get to the videos, I want to chat about length - and no, not that length you perv, video length! I’ve put out *exclusively* long videos so far this year and I think that’s why there’s not been as many of them. It’s weird - I almost always go into a topic with the intent of doing a nice short simple script about a single topic but goddam if they don’t invariably balloon into something more complicated by the end.

I think it’s my tendency to go a lot more big picture and abstract than many other people in the same gig, not to generalize too much, but many other gaming video essayists like to drill down on a particular game or mechanic, or even just a single moment in a game, that sort of detail focused approach has never really interested me that much. I like zooming out and looking at the rules and patterns that govern a whole bunch of different games, and sort of developing a holistic understanding from there. I think it’s great and gives the channel a nice bit of a theme but it does tend to pad out the old word count because I invariably will come up with a cool talking point that’s sort of tangentially related to the spotlight game and want to include it because it’s interesting, not necessarily because it’s on topic.

That’s kind of why I started doing the director’s cuts - in terms of raw unedited material, my video scripts are probably almost twice as long as the final edited down version and that’s mostly because they’re just bursting at the seams with these “oh and now that i mention it,” style interludes where I just go off on a tangent about a cool thing an interesting game does well/badly. I’m unsure, part of me wishes I could, err, pick a slightly more concrete and specific topic for my videos but I always get stuck when I do that. I dunno. Do you guys like the earlier videos where I’m more focused  and have a more concrete argument or do you like weird sort of abstract architect stuff. I guess the channel’s most popular video ever is me just going, fuck it I’m going to talk about time for 20 minutes so probably the latter.

Anyway, videos. The first one is all about open worlds that are ever so slightly closed, and why that’s good. As is to be expected because it’s cynically themed around Elden Ring, this one did pretty well. Honestly there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to open worlds and my thoughts on them but I think the most interesting thing is something that I saw outlined in the comments in various forms and I wasn’t quite able to put into words until now, and it’s the idea that some open worlds are designed like theme parks, and others are designed like adventures.

Basically, the way I see it is that a theme park style open world is all about just having a big wide area that doesn’t provide you with any inherent challenge in of itself or tie together cohesively, but it is just sort of full of lots of cool things to do. I think the biggest examples of this are Bethesda inhouse RPGs or GTA. In those games you’re incredibly empowered basically from the outset and you sort of get to wander around having fun your way. On the flipside, more adventurey games have a much higher degree of obstruction and gating in their world design the player actually needs to work to overcome, and there’s much more of an interrelation between the various locations, like in Fallout new vegas, or Outer Wilds - which, yes, is an open world game. So in an adventurey open world it’s less about the individual locations or theme park rides and more about your quest to master the world’s complexities and challenges.

I think the two games I really spotlight, that being breath of the wild and elden ring are sort of in the middle ground, there’s a lot of freedom in both games from the outset, and you’re fairly empowered to go wherever you want, but there’s a fair degree of authorship and direction in the level design that pushes you into having a fun adventure at the same time as you’re wandering around stumbling onto cool quests. Honestly, on that note - it was an absolute nightmare writing about elden ring because I was paranoid about spoilers, there’s so much I’d WANT to talk about when it comes to that game’s world design, specifically how it drastically changes towards the lategame, but I am, alas forbidden, at least until a few months have passed.

Next up is the latest video, why Tunic Hides its Tutorial, proof positive of my theory that namedropping specific games is baaaad for the viewcount. Interesting. The video did okay but it’s a shame not as many people are watching it as the elden ring one because Tunic is genuinely fantastic, it’s a zelda ripoff that slowly metamorphoses into a Fez successor and it is glorious, seriously it’s so good and I wish I could spoil why. But I can’t… so I won’t

This video was originally completely different it was going to be about Nostalgia and how Tunic’s real greatest idea is how it evokes that classic feeling of being a kid and having no idea how videogames work or even how to play this one - I can’t overstate how awesome it is that the game leaves you pretty much completely to your own devices but still gives you ALMOST everything you need to succeed.

There are a few moments where people have seemed to get stuck on unintuitive stuff though as well as one major bit of unnecessary hidden information which is that Tunic has an accessibility mode, and even goes so far as to say it’s totally fine for you to use it… but that page is hidden three quarters of the way through the game and encoded in the game’s weird language which sort of screams… what’s the point? Y’know?

Actually, in general this video was sort of cobbled together from a lot of scraps of topics that didn’t quite make it or I’m putting on the backburner, I really want to talk about lovecraftian games and the uncanny at some point and Golden Light is fantastic at evoking those sorts of feelings because, well, it’s insane and there’s a video on making a good Nemesis style character like the Emmi or Mr X that I could never quiiiite get to work which is a shame.

But then I think that the videos nature of pulling in a lot of disparate ideas from lots of places kind of fits Tunic’s whole deal - it’s this very videogamey videogame that’s just as much a greatest hits collection of a lot of other games as it is its own thing - would not recommend it for casual players even if they like, say, zelda, because it assumes so much knowledge. Maybe that’s another topic, sort of the cultural underpinning of ideas that goes unacknowledged in game design, like how you can spot, say, an area you’re supposed to come back to later easily in a metroidvania because of the iconography used and general shape of the area, but someone less familiar might think they’re missing something.

Right, I should probably stop brainstorming video ideas and just get to actually writing one yeah? Okay I’ll see you all around on the next video, hope this was at least slightly interesting!