Architect Address July 2022 (Patreon)

Well hi there! Welcome to the architect address, a special series of videos just for you patrons where I natter on for a few minutes about the latest video to grace your youtube sub feeds, as well as whatever other topics I feel like talking about. On that topic, I was wondering about introducing a new patreon tier sort of in addition to the $10 one or between five and ten because the ten dollar tier has been, amazingly filled up and I want to do something extra. I’d love to hear your ideas for this because I’m sort of stumped. My best theory  is something like pay to get entered into a random shoutout pool? So at the end of every video I’d pick one quick patreon shoutout and just say that. But it might not scale well because it’s random and if it was a queue I might not go through them fast enough and it is only a one time thing? I’m not sure how it’d work out so please give me some suggestions!

Also, I’ve seen a few people recently both in the youtube comments and patreon messages asking me how I come up with topics for videos and I’ve got to tell you, I wish there was a satisfying answer to that question.

So, essentially, my big ideas document is full of individual statements or observations that I make whenever I find myself asking a question about a game, like oh why are a bunch of different crafting systems in games the same kind of boring? Or what’s happening when you go oooooohhhh…! when playing a puzzle game? Or why aren’t the EMMI in metroid dread scary? Anything that inspires some sort of emotional reaction or question goes on the list, so that often means that a given video ends up encompassing several of these little ideas or thoughts.

I think rather than my videos being explanations on a given topic or tutorials on how to make games they’re just sort of me rambling about what does and doesn’t work within a given concept or way of looking at games, so I think often the hardest part of the writing process for me is figuring out what it is I actually want to talk about. I’ll have all these little ideas and observations that share a vague conceptual or vibesey link but no way to string them together with something concrete. Actually, the channel’s biggest video, the longing one was the best example of this, I played a bunch of different games  I wanted to talk about and it took me about a week of writing what felt like 3 different scripts to go “Oh! They’re all about time! That’s a cool unifying concept!” and the video evolved from there.

Speaking of which, the first video I’m talking about today, How To Solve An Impossible Problem evolved from a very tiny moment when I was explaining anno to a friend. I told them all about how the game works, about all the production chains, but when they asked what the goal was, how you win, I didn’t really have a satisfying answer for them because winning in anno isn’t really the point - it’s just a big abstract goal that contextualises the real meat of the game.

That impossible to describe… *thing* at the centre of the best problem solving games is something that I don’t quite think I managed to skewer in this video because I can’t escape the feeling that problem solving is more of a perspective than a specific genre. Like, sure some games are clearly designed around it as the primary source of fun but as speedrunning and challenge playthroughs prove, even the simplest of games can be drilled into to extract an abstract impossible problem. Maybe there’s a whole video on speedrunning but that requires a LOT of practice and I don’t think I could really comment on the practice without giving it a go myself at least once and speedrunning doesn’t really appeal to me very much because practising that much sounds… boring. So maybe that’s one for the backburner.

Performance wise honestly this one didn’t do great but given the subject matter I can hardly blame people. My biggest conflict in putting this one together was how to make boring menu driven problem solving games REMOTELY interesting to watch and let me tell you it was a challenge. If you actually pay attention I get a lot of mileage out of footage of spaceships landing and buildings being built and just classic AoG visual puns because there is just so much staring at nothing that goes on in problem solving games and I want to give you all something fun to look at. My saving grace in that regard was teardown, I was originally going to talk about something completely different in the segment where I mention that game and it’s so much more interesting than the fuckin spreadsheet simulator idle games I was thinking of talking about.

The other video that came out recently, how “bad” balance can be a good thing, was a little bit controversial and kind of not for the reasons I was expecting. Honestly I take a few swings at some beloved games here but people are much more focused on the semantics of my use of “overpowered” and that’s interesting because I’ve always thought of overpowered meaning simply the most most powerful thing or, a thing where the level of it’s power is above everything else, or dare I say, over. Other people on the other hand seem to restrict it exclusively to a derogatory context and whilst they’re not wrong per se, it’s certainly not how I see the word and hopefully the video proves that. If I’d known this, I’d have put a little clarifying “hey here’s what I think overpowered means and that’s the framework I’m operating from” mention but hey even the people calling me wrong agree with what I say, just not the words I used so it’s hard to be too broken up about it.

Besides that *small* kerfuffle I think one thing I really would’ve liked to talk about and didn’t was some more dota stuff because I love that game and I don’t talk about it very much because it’s very complicated and also doesn’t look very nice for just a few seconds there’s a lot going on. Anyway I think DOTA’s items have just the same sort of approach to balance as the heroes, loads of them have obscenely powerful, gamechanging effects like just immunity to spells or invisibility or letting you jump around the map, but they’re all very cleverly balanced by the fact that heroes are powerful by default, and very crucially, by the fact that you can only have six items at a time - which is an invisible cornerstone of DOTA’s balance that is also super important.

In general, I’m not sure how much of the video i’d change, it got a fair bit of criticism but equally it seems to have done well and most of the people upset by my terrible knowledge of street fighter also seem to have enjoyed the video so who knows, there’s actually a weird incentive to bait out angry comments because they’re great for engagement metrics but I can assure you I didn’t do that and won’t going forwards, that’s a slippery slope.

Right before I incriminate myself any further, I’ll bid you all adieu! See you around, bye!