Architect Address June 2022

Wait, who let you in here, I was supposed to be doing the Architect Address! Eugh! Typical. Well, seeing as you’re here, you may as well listen to me ramble on for a few minutes about the latest videos I’ve put out and what’s going on with the channel lately. It’s the least you can do.

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is the idea of several weird traditions that I do on the channel where I don’t really know why I do them or where they came from. For example , every single episode I will, without fail, only use music from games I mention and this often leads to some kind of weird audio choices, lots of extra busywork finding good tracks and on more than one occasion… me including a game in the video specifically so I could use its music. Same goes with the weird dressup I do every video - I’m bad a drawing in case you couldn’t tell and I’m not really sure why I started the trend.

On one hand, these weird things are time consuming and arguably take away from the quality of the video - I certainly don’t like the way the various outfits I draw end up looking a lot of the time, but equally - they’re kind of part of the unique flair of the channel so maybe that offsets the lack of… err… quality. Like, sure I could use the same lo-fi video essay beats as everyone else and cut to me talking in front of a camera to explain things, but I think the fact that I play music from the games, get all in character and have (what I think of) sort of a unique vibe fits the more holistic, enthusiast style I’m going for with the videos better than something more generic.

I dunno, I think broadly the channel’s visual presentation and production values have always been, to put it bluntly, absolute dogshit but it’s also not something I care about too much so i’d rather be weird with it, you know?

Anyway, the first video I’d like to talk about is How Nostalgia is Holding us Back, which is a bit of a clickbaity ass topic but I think it’s fine. In case you couldn’t tell, I initially went in wanting to make a sort of video wrapping up all the games that had tried to surpass pokemon but the more of them I played, the more I found they were just… Lacking that special something. It’s crazy because on one hand they make objective improvements over pokemon, but equally they also seem to not have the texture that people actually like about the games. Sure, making pokemon but more difficult feels like a slamdunk common sense move but I think a lot of people have come to enjoy pokemon because it’s easy, and let’s be honest the battle system can’t really support highly strategic play because of how over centralised it is around type matchups - at least when we’re talking singleplayer, competitive pokemon is fairly deep.

I think this focus on  nostalgia is kind of part of a pattern of audiences not really knowing what they want. By taking only the high points of a piece of media and then spreading them out over the entirety of something new, not only do you miss out on interesting nuances, you also end up with a vastly more simplistic final product. I think this general principle also applies to stuff like balance problems as well, I can’t stop thinking about how, overwatch, gwent and games like them start out as these really interesting fresh takes on a format with lots of interesting idiosyncrasies, but because people *claim* they want perfect balance in much the same way they claim they want replications of the past, the games gradually become more and more boring, losing the individual, flawed character that made them fun to begin with.

I’ll be honest there’s probably a whole different video on that, the whole wider cultural perception of games is an angle I’ve not quite delved into on the channel before so who knows. I’d really like to do a similar vid on spoiler culture or the psychology behind review scores but I think I’ll leave them for a later date. Overall this video did a bit worse than I was expecting - I kind of thought pokemon would be a crowdpleaser but I guess I don’t really cover handheld stuff all that much on the channel so who knows. Something to keep in mind.

As for the next video, that one did much better! And I have no idea why! Not only is it a fairly niche writing theory one but it also came at a heavy delay, so no idea what’s going on there. As for the reasons why this video was late, honestly, I’d love to claim I got sick or was busy with other stuff but I just bit off more than I could chew with this one, it’s SUCH a complex topic with so many pitfalls to dance around. You’ll note that I don’t really give any spoiler warnings for newer or more popular games in the video because I felt like if I really went all in with that stuff, then the entier video would be wall to wall spoilers and associated warnings, which is compounded by the fact that  explaining why endings don’t work in any depth takes ages because you have to essentially recap the whole plot and the way it can branch.

Even then, there’s just a lot to talk about between the development side of things which I have no firsthand experience with, and trying to break down some fairly complex philosophical and literary theory stuff which means that I basically skip over a bunch of stuff. It was… a nightmare to put together. In the original draft that ending segment with all the weird anti-endings like with citizen sleeper or how fish is made - that was the length of an entire video right there, same with just me talking about mass effect, it was like 6 or 7 pages.

Honestly, I’m kind of impressed I managed to chop the thing down as much as I did, but I feel like the quality suffered as a result, a lot of the gameplay footage isn’t great - what’s left of my script sort of jumps around and stretches itself into segues that don’t quite make sense a lot. Am I sort of spoiling the magic by revealing that the only reason I talk about true endings at all is that it’s the least insane way of explaining how the choice to not make a choice can actually be a choice in of itself - which is a concept you can’t approach head on because it’s insanity but equally I feel like you kind of need to be able to get your head around to understand why citizen sleeper’s endings in particular work.

Yeah this video is one I honestly may dissect a bit more at a later date because… kind of a lot went wrong with it! who’d have thought I’d do two length record breaking videos sequentially, crazy. Anyway, I am COMMITTING to a shorter video this time around so let’s hope that I can stick to it. With that said I’ll bid you all adieu - bye!