Leveling Up your Game Literacy | Design Club

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Good time zone internet. Hello and welcome to Design Club Live, the only game design show on the internet where Jeff forgets that I can see that he's doing sneaky things to do a bit during the intro when we're not on screen. I am your humble host Will, joined as always by my pal, the incredible prankster Jeff. Say hi to the people, Jeff. Hi to the people, Jeff. I'm pulling up a whole different thing than than what I was expecting.
Wonderful.
[laughter]
Welcome to Design Club. It is Thursday morning. It is February the 12th of 2026. And today I'm going to be joined by my co-host, Will. A lot.
Voice of the people. I'm going to drop the thing I had, which I'll pick up again in a second. And we're going to be talking about all of the games that we think you should be playing. Or it's more specifically, actually not that. We

think you should play more games and be able to tell your husband, wife, parent, kids, whatever, why you should be playing more games. That's fair. I think I think that that's yeah. Cuz I think this is this is an episode that's going to be kind of personal, right? Because Lots of Lots of people play lots of games, right? Like you play League of Legends. I do. I don't play many other games. Right. Yeah, right right. But I'm I'm choosing a specific example, right?
Oh, okay. I play League of Legends, yes. And I generally speaking don't, but did for a while. Gave it a shot. Gave it a good old college try. Was not for me, but I did give it a good old college try. And we think that that process is important because I am practicing this phrase a lot on the internet recently, especially when people ask about things like Hi-Rez, which I haven't [clears throat] played and probably never will, thanks to the news that just came out yesterday. Um What news came out yesterday? They laid off most of the studio. Oh. Yeah.

Yeah, that would do it. Yeah, that'd do it. Um uh I have heard this about the game, but don't know because I haven't played it. Right? Mhm. I have not played the game, so I have approximate knowledge of the game, but I don't have personal first-hand knowledge. And someone was asking uh during the pre-show, does watching someone play a game count? And the answer is usually no. Sometimes yes, in very specific circumstances, but Actually, I think it depends on the kind of game. I think it does. I think it very much depends on the kind of game. Mhm. Right? Because I would say watching is definitely better than never having never having seen it. Yes.
Like there's probably a hierarchy of things. And some games I think you could probably watch 10 minutes of it and say, "I've seen enough of this game." Like what whatever it is. And there's others that I think until you've played

I I'm trying to Actually, name a name me a game or two that you have to have played that you couldn't have watched. I think I'm going to assert that one of them is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. Okay. Um and that is specifically because Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, which is a phenomenal game, and if you've never played it, you should. I'm probably going to write like a games you might not have tried short on this thing. Um is a game that does storytelling through the controls. Mhm. And it's very important because there are emotional revelations that happen based on the way you control the game using a controller. And that is a key part of the storytelling. So, I think like to really understand it, you kind have to play it. And I maybe it's a level of understanding. Like I could see somebody saying Tetris is a game you have to play, but I could also see them saying

you could watch somebody play Tetris and understand enough of what's going on. Absolutely. Where other games might have surprising bits. Like I think watching somebody play Rock Band versus playing Rock Band in a group, there's a whole part of the mechanic
group performative groove that you just don't get unless you're actively participating. Yeah. Where a more where a solo run of like Guitar Hero I would say is more you could watch and more understand. But the group dynamic like So there's nuance. Yeah. As always. Wait. Wait. Wait. Are you suggesting that here on the internet we're beginning a discussion about a complicated topic with the allowance that there's going to be nuance in this? Yes. Yes, I am. My mind it is blown. Okay. So let's back up and start at the beginning. A good place to start. Indeed.
When you sing, you when you spell, you begin with A B C. When you game, you

begin with To jump, press B?
re mi Okay. Um
[clears throat]
so World of Warcraft Midnight is coming up. It's on the horizon. Mhm. My buddy Matt and I have been talking about this for a really long time. I am a Final Fantasy XIV player by trade. Uh you can see my job patches over here. I play a lot of Final Fantasy. Uh it's my main game of choice. Um and Matt has historically played World of Warcraft in the past. He's also tried Final Fantasy. And we [snorts] we've been talking a lot about how World of Warcraft's removal of weak auras and um boss mods DBM, Dungeon Boss Mod the other one, the other readout um overlay is going to change the way that Blizzard does fight design. And to look at that fight design and to play World of Warcraft without add-ons, I got into World of Warcraft, which is not a game I've historically ever wanted to play for my own enjoyment.

It's not a game I vibe with.
Play or play again? Play. Okay.
I I have I I will confess, I played an hour of World of Warcraft like in a in on a private server at college like once and immediately bounced. But play in general, I I it has never called to me, really. Um there are a bunch of things I don't on the surface enjoy about it. But I am very intellectually curious about it as someone who has played a lot of Final Fantasy XIV and who talks about video games on the internet, not having ever played WoW is a bit of a weakness. So, I'm playing World of Warcraft.
because there's a ton of those. Because there's so many games.
Yes. Because if you were in a different segment of people and and they're like, "Will, you know, have you hit a thousand hours in FIFA yet?" Or in Madden, you'd be like, and they'd be like, "Don't you play video games?" Or other people who are like, "What, you don't have a thousand

hours logged in the latest Gran Turismo or Grand Theft Auto?" Or Call of Duty or Battlefield or yeah. Yeah, FarmVille. Like the industry is so large with so many types of games that it is really hard to say You could say I've played a lot of games, but usually that falls into a more general games. I've played a lot of games in this sector. Right. For instance, I would consider myself an expert in the area of rogue-lite and rogue-like video games because I've played an awful lot of those. Like you have to go pretty far down Steam's like list of relevant rogue-lites to find one I haven't either played or specifically am not playing for a very specific reason that I can generally give you. Yeah. Right? So like we often get very spiky in our specializations. Where if I asked you, you know, to critique, you know, the eight different types of Japanese dating sims. I got

nothing for you. I would
You'd be like, I played Dream Daddy. I played I did I did play Dream Daddy once. It's a great game. I love that game. Uh it's a phenomenal game. I've also watched people play Date Everything, which is so incredibly bizarre and unhinged. Uh it's great. So the the Now I now I at least want to go watch a run of that. Right. Yeah, exactly. Um part of the So part of the the struggle here is that unlike with um many other forms of media, and we'll talk about sort of the comparison to other forms of media. Playing a game you don't necessarily find yourself enjoying is a much I would argue a much more laborious task, laborious, because of the amount of time required, right? I can sit through a 2-hour movie that I don't like and take notes on it. I've done that before for a college class.

I watched a bunch of movies that I were not for me. Watched a lot of horror. Don't like horror. Like suspense, don't like horror. Um and I could do that, and that was sort of a thing that was reasonable. It's much harder to play a game because you need to be actively invested in like acquisition of skill, usually, and uh it's much longer. It's so much longer than a movie, right? Leveling your character to level 80 in WoW is like much much much longer than a single movie, right? You you did just pick a really long one, though. Like Sure. If you take like James um partner who you know helped found the channel and writes a lot or used to write a lot of EC scripts. Still I think plays a couple of games a week. Every single week. Sure. New ones, but he'll only play a couple hours. Right. Like he'll play an hour or two and be like, "Cool. I've seen enough of this game, you know." Right.
He and I he he used to do this thing where he'd be like, "Jeff, there's this amazing game, hop in." So I'd like hop in a week later and join him as he was

on his way out and then I'd sit there and get like mastery of the game and 6 months later he'd be like, "Man, I haven't seen you in a while, James." He'd be like, "Yeah, I played another 40 games since then." I'm like, "Well, I went really deep in this one."
Tall versus wide um sort of uh strategies, right? You can I started League of Legends specifically because he was like, "Come play. A couple of us are playing." Yeah. But actually it's funny you mentioned the um watching films because Will, at a high level Sure. I have a question for you. Why do film students watch a lot of films? Uh to learn about the art form, I would say. Mhm. Right?
And like from what you mentioned, do they only watch their favorite genres of film? Nope. It is important to watch It is actually I would say even more important to watch films that you don't like so you understand why you don't like them. Mhm. Right? And what the what the parts of those movies are?

But also like film students watch to learn all sorts of thing. They learn about writing. They learn about how the films are made. They learn about the cinematography and the different kinds of shots and the different kinds of focus and about how you know, they learn about the actors. They learn about the directing. They learn not just about the camera, but you know, the types of shots, the way you shoot depending upon the kind of movie you're making and how you set it based on you know, everything from scenes to up close shots where it could be shot wide, the amount of cuts, the edit I mean, there's a lot to learn in there. So, if you're like, "Hey, you know, I like Hong Kong action movies." the editing and the pacing of those may be completely different, so you may not get to see other kinds of editing based on the style of film you like.
Right. And therefore, it's important to go wide Right.
and watch old stuff all the way up to new stuff because you get to see, "Oh, here's where they obviously made cameras a lot wider because we're suddenly

getting these." Or, you know, 5 years ago when you start seeing all these incredible drone shots or these incredible like aerial zoom out shots or like establishing shots way out coming in. I go, "Yeah, they have drones now." Like that shot used to would have cost, you know, a couple million to make. Now it costs, you know, a drone and a camera. Right. And I think that DemonWorks has a really good point here in chat, right? The other The other thing is to understand why somebody else does like that thing, right? Even if you can't emotionally resonate with Citizen Kane, right? Or Memento, right? Or Donnie Darko.
Right. Donnie Darko or Silence of the Lambs or Little Shop of Horrors or, you know, choose
That's cool. The Iron Man. Choose your thing. Um the the goal of um of it should be, "Okay, I don't like Donnie Darko, but I see why people do."

Right? But I see the things about it that people do and maybe I can take some of those things as inspiration for myself. Yeah. And so same kind of question, Will. You know, if you're an MFA student, why do you read a lot of books? Same reason. You You need to learn And And And there's a there's a very interesting case for um MFA students uh that that makes it a little clearer. You learn a lot of vocabulary that way. Right? Like we we often talk like when we talk about film, we talk about like big things, right? We talk about like editing styles and everything else. For for writing, it's simply you learn the new word. And that could be enough. Or a new way of putting them together. Right, or a new way of putting them together, or a new style of writing dialogue, or any number [clears throat] of other things that you learn um both from
iris'd open. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Um and same thing. You don't just read the books of the genre you like.
Right. And I will third one cuz I like to do it in sets of three. Yeah. Why do you musician listen Musicians listen to all kinds of music? Because every kind of music has something for musicians. Uh yeah. Like
And do they listen only to the genres they like?
No. They they And And that's how we get like really weird interesting fusion stuff. I've been listening to a lot of uh game music actually. And the number of like Yeah, so we took this song from Zelda and made it into a big band remix, and you're like, Mhm. you can do that? And they're like, "Yeah, we did." Right? Because you gain inspiration from different places and you can make something your own without liking the original in a lot of ways. I mean, early rock music took a lot of their rhythm and their drummers like studied a whole bunch of blues. Yes. Yeah, blues
And like came in with that like I've I've read some great

interviews on that. Yeah, blues and jazz have a lot to do with rock. Rock has a And And then early rock and pop have like this weird symbiotic relationship with a bunch of other stuff. Country actually fits in there really interesting if you're looking at the music of the US. There's all kinds of stuff. But it all I think the other thing that's important to acknowledge here for music is it all always comes back together. Like you are always going to share roots with some other genre that doesn't on its surface seem to be directly related, but if you go back far enough, it definitely is. Right? Everything started with right? Like uh electric tennis, right? With Tennis for Two. Mhm. Yeah. Um and so those things allow you to understand those connections and to use those connections in your own work. Right?
Yeah. And I think though me mentioning those that rule of those three things

there's also a question which is well, what's the difference between people who like movies and people who study film? Because I think that concept is very applicable here. Yeah. Um I would say that the difference is that a person who has watched a lot of movies that they like Mhm. is generally speaking a person who likes movies. And a person who has simply watched an awful lot of movies, even ones that they don't like for a reason, is someone who studies film. Yeah. Right? Like And I think that's important to bring up because not everybody has to be you know, a cinephile or a film junkie or film student or a music student or a literature student or everything else. But there's kind of a difference between saying oh you between liking and deciding that you want to be more of a

an expert. Right. So like we could take um I'm going to go grab this. Um Michael's uh example, right? Of specifically playing a game you've never played every month, right? That's like a that's an example of this, right? Like you're not playing a game that you that catches your fancy necessarily, but you're aiming to play a new game every month for a reason. And in this case, it's because of Steam Rewind and how effective Steam Rewind is at shaming all of us for not playing our backlogs. Play your backlog. Play your backlog. I need to play my backlog. You should, too. Um So, I think that that's that's a big part of it is the intentionality, right? The A whole bunch. And part of it, too, is deciding if that's a thing you're interested in. Yes. Um like, you know, kind of what does it take to go from being a person who likes games to being a person with broad video game literacy. Yeah. Because there's a lot of

people who like games, and that's great. And that's everybody can stop there. There is no reason, unless you personally want to, to kind of go because go from I like games to I want to have tremendous literacy in games and be able to talk intelligently about all types and see how, you know, the roots and they come in and they interact with each other and everything else.
Right. And again, I'm going to do the thing I do quite often, which is if you're here watching this, the chances are better than usual that you will find yourself in that category of people who desires to understand games more deeply and to have interesting conversations about them rather than being someone who simply likes video games, right? There are plenty of people who like video games and that they come home from work, play 4 hours of Baldur's Gate 3 on a playthrough that they'll never finish, start a new playthrough because they got an idea for a new character, and that's the relationship with games. And they love Baldur's Gate 3 and they love the idea of playing games. They don't go any further than that, and that's fine. Were

you watching that Dear Stalker Productions uh short on that? No, but I I mean, the phenomena is common enough that it's pretty easy to call that out. There is a great one. They shifted from doing like more generic They're not generic. They had their own world of D&D to also covering Baldur's Gate
Mhm. with some really great like cosplay videos. And there's one where basically all of the characters slowly realize that the main character has never, I think, gotten actually into act three. It just keeps resetting somewhere around two and that they've seen this thing over and over and over. Groundhog Day. Yeah. Yeah.
100% on that. I do I also love the my one diversion. I love that we have linguistic drift, right? That Groundhog Day used to mean the day that we check and see if a rodent sees its shadow and that will dictate the whether or not we have winter and now Groundhog Day means a day that's repeated over and over again because of a movie. The Bill Murray effect.
Yeah, right. Exactly. It's great.

So Bill Murray's had a couple of those where the actually the movies he's been in have like changed the Actually, we don't need to get into linguistic drift.
[laughter]
No, we're going we're going Let's focus. I was focused. I was focused. Okay. So So let's say let's say that I as a person wants to go from I've played a bunch of video games and I like video games. I enjoy them. I spend money on them. I spend time on them. I have access to a wide variety whether that's on a console or a PC or my phone or whatever. Play a lot of video games. Now I want to have game literacy. How do I do that? Does it involve a blowtorch or at least a cigarette?
lighter No. Oh, different kind of lit. Okay. Yeah, not not that kind of lit. Um And the answer is
Yeah, game literacy is And I think that's like I think that's a hard term to use here because I think kind of game literacy is a phrase that makes people think this might be more studious and academic than it is. Yeah.

Because I think it's that way for some disciplines. But I think a lot of game literacy is intentionality of playing, but also just playing widely. You know, it isn't doing the thing where you come home every night as you were saying like, "Ah, going to do a couple hours of League of Legends and crash." It's you can still do that, but you know, maybe you take an hour every other day and you start playing, you know, a couple games a week. Work through that Steam backlog. Check out demos, you know, go buy a whole bunch of things, you know, look at the free Epic Store game or a whole bunch of others you're picking up just things and starting to check out what all is going on out there. The Epic Store giveaways are a great example of something you can leverage here because there are all kinds of games in the giveaways and they're all free. So, you're not investing money because that's another thing that is a barrier, right? Is that some people don't don't have a ton of money to throw at games that they might not like. [clears throat]

Yeah. Like honestly, if you just made yourself an Epic account and went every single week for the next year or two and claimed the game and then decided you're going to play 10% of those. Yeah. Like that's already hundreds of dollars of free gaming things and you'll have be as a nice side benefit making Epic give a whole bunch of money to developers.
Yeah, right.
Because they have to pay the devs for each of those games to the best of my knowledge. Yeah. So, there were two ways
Wait, this is also worth calling out. Yeah. Yes. That yeah, that is also a
Time is the Time is the very hard part. And as before we get into it, the the strategy for the time not money one is you know, you start combing the internet for you know, best of lists or you you even go over to Metacritic and you're like, "Cool. Let me look at every 90 plus Metacritic game that's come out over the past 20

years." Yeah. Maybe over the next 2 years you'll work your way through at least an hour or two of each of those games. In other words, maybe your thing is let's take the exemplars of the industry and play like you can go about your literacy in radically different ways, but having a plan for that if you're short on time can make it feel much less overwhelming. Yeah. Uh and and I want to talk about this, right? Uh Thomas has the the idea of playing bad games, too. Oh, the Burger King Sneak King game. Oh. Right. Or or or um I'm going to I'm going to get some people right in the nostalgia real quick. Chex Quest. Chex Quest was a game that came in boxes of Chex cereal in like the target age for millennials. A bunch of people played Chex Quest, right? Like um Well, actually, do you have the ability, by the way? I don't know with this setup to show a quick picture on or

or not set up for that right
more difficult cuz I need a different setup for that.
For anybody who's never seen it, Google the Burger King Sneak King game cover. Yeah. It is one of the single creepiest things I think I've ever seen on a game cover.
Yep. 100%.
so yeah, anyway, go ahead. So, there's two things, right? One is you still get to select a subsection of games, right? So, like I agree that there is a group of people who will take the idea of playing bad games as part of this to see why they are bad, right? In just the same way that we do things to see why someone likes them, you can play a thing for yourself to see exactly why it's bad. Um in fact, there were a bunch of uh reviews on High Guard to that effect. People were like, I didn't look at any of the negative reviews and I played it myself and here's why I think it's bad, which does happen to line up with with what other people thought, but I wanted to find out for myself, right? That's one category. The other category

is that because we're talking about literacy not for a class, there you are allowed to self-select out bad games, right? For some people, those experiences are and this is this is going to be true in a broad way. There are going to be You should work up to it, right? You shouldn't immediately play the game you hate the most, right? You shouldn't immediately play the game that you think is the worst piece of trash ever. You should like work towards that with purpose, I guess. Is that like my only like pushback on that. So, I'm Thunder [snorts] just posted a cover where it's the shadow. There was one that was much, much creepier. Uh. Where is that one? Sorry, keep going. I just I saw the cover come in and there there was one that was much, much, much uh
[laughter]
We have lost Jeff to the to the whims of nostalgia. So, Well, this is back when I was running my game research game studio and like the Sneak King game was

like amazing for so many ways on when you're looking at everything else that was coming out. Yes. Uh I love I love I love this quote, right? That that literacy is itself a spectrum, right? And that all we're saying is that there is a methodology to go from your current level of literacy to be more literate. Uh and that's what we want to talk about, right? Specifically with this wild thing, specifically with um some of the other games I've played on the channel, I'm going to speak heresy now. You may brace yourselves if you feel it is necessary. All right, what do we got?
I don't like Hades 2. Mhm. It didn't land for me at all. Didn't like it, but I did want to play it and I did play it and chat got very confused for 2 days, in part because it made my hands hurt, and in part because I was very open about the fact that I did not like the idea of playing the

game, but wanted to understand why people liked it and what it did well. Right? Um and that was sort of the beginning of me thinking about this was how how would I do that effectively? Why didn't it land? Great question. I think uh the Hades combat is super sloppy and unfun. Like the moment-to-moment combat. The build generation is interesting. The moment-to-moment combat I just completely misses me. And I just don't like it. Um so that's why. But the character design, the writing, the score, the visuals, the world-building, the upgrade system, the meta progression unlocks, all top-tier. Absolutely. And I can definitely see why some people do like the combat, but I don't. It's interesting. That also shows in a lot of cases going back like with my dev hat on how hard it is to make games, because they did so many things right for that. But one of the things they did was not quite up to like it was enough of a

deal-breaker for you. Yeah. And games have the opportunity to do that on everything, you know, it could have been the story where you're like, "The combat's fun, but man, the story is just or the characters or the art style." Like I know you're not a big fan of League of Legends art style where I you like Dota where I think the League is much cleaner and I dislike Dota. I also think that style is enough for me not to play it. Right. And I think I I I also, and this is like the beginning of I think a part of the conversation is I think that while I prefer Dota's art style personally, I recognize and respect that League's art style is more effective at communicating key gameplay information to an eSports viewer quickly and cleanly. Mhm. And we have evidence of that in some footage that we actually just looked at this morning.
Oh, Will. Joey Tracker? Yeah, well, I mean
So, great thing. If you guys remember like a year ago Yeah, it was an actual year.
separate two-hour streams where we were

basically deconstructing MOBAs. With a It was a great interact like we had a It was a really good interact stream. We were just talking about all of the basic MOBA concepts. We slowly turned that into a script, did a whole bunch of footage capture on top of the animation, and I think that's I think it's the next extra credits or maybe the one after. Soon to be coming out. Yeah. It's basically a MOBA's 101, a deconstruction of MOBAs for people who either played a lot or who have never played one. Yeah.
Walking them through like the the concept, not like how to play League or Deadlock or Dota or anything. It's the the concepts of what a MOBA wants you to understand to play it. Right. Yeah. The way Yeah, to play it interestingly. There's already plenty of videos on how to play Deadlock and how to play Dota and how to play League and all of that, and that's not our That's not our wheelhouse. Our wheelhouse is
a whole different thing, yeah.
What What What is MOBA? Why do MOBA? Anyway.
Yeah. Not the point. So,
And we were watching footage this morning of the rough cut, so it's on the

top of both Will and I's minds. Yeah. Um the We have led ourselves astray into the woods of distraction. Then it's on me to talk about Anyway, game literacy. So, there is a thing, you know, between a person who likes games and a person who has broad game literacy. Right. And that's a step that most people take with intentionality is moving from I like games to I want to invest in game literacy and Yeah.
you know, making myself more of an expert on that.
And that does pay out because it does help with games, right? Like you can see this in all kinds of ways. Once you understand core concepts in card games, other card games generally become easier, because you understand like primary, tertiary, secondary Did I do them in that order? No one

knows. Resource structures, you understand like win conditions and and various different archetypes of things that rely on cards and some amount of math, right? And it's not just games or like it works that way for everything, you know, if you have broad literacy in you know, how internet hardware, you know, your ability to take an off-the-shelf router or other things and get it working in your house is radically different than someone who doesn't. Yes. Like it's just it's part of becoming an expert in things is you understand the concepts, and that lets you understand the variation or just look at them and go like, "Oh, of course it works that way." And to be surprised when it doesn't and question to why they made those decisions. Yep. This those are that's a big one. So, let's let's sort of I want to break litera- the idea of literacy down into like two

It's actually three, I think, now that I think about it. Like broad categories, right? So, like there is
Your surprise and a fanatical devotion to No. [laughter] No, not making money Python jokes. This is not the Spanish Inquisition. Um Three things. One, extremely general game literacy. This is a thing that most of you probably already have, but people do not acquire without effort. For instance, controllers. It takes time to acclimatize your hands to the shape of a controller. That is a kind of literacy for what we're talking about. Right, yeah. Right, like a Joy-Con versus a Pro Controller versus using a keyboard for WASD and mouse, right? That is a kind of like baked-in basic skill literacy that people do have to acquire in some way.
minorly curious on how many different controller things that can control

movement. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, that's
my head right Yeah. So, that's one of them, right? That's like the top level, right? That And that's the thing that most of you have on lock because you're here watching a video on a channel about game design on a show about game design that's two dudes talking in a virtual coffee shop. So, you probably have that on lock. Second is genre literacy. And that's kind of what we were talking about with MOBAs, right? We were attempting to find a way to help people build genre uh literacy for MOBAs because if I say last hit, you probably understand kind of what that means, but not necessarily why it's important right off the bat. Right? Or understand what the idea of the laning phase is or what a jungle is or what ganking is. We've used that word way too many times. We're going to have to do something about that at some point.
to write a short on the etymology of Hey, surprising thing, when we were doing the MOBA episode, Matt at one

point was like, "Hey, you keep saying ganking. And like, where'd that come from? Is that a League term?" And I actually did some research. It comes, I believe, out of early hip-hop culture. Yes, it does. So, I'm going to have to write an etymology of the word ganking and trace basically modern MOBAs back to hip-hop.
hip-hop. Yep. Yep. Which relates to blues. It's all related and we're tying it back. Right. So, so so those are all examples of genre literacy. Or if you're familiar with MOBAs and not with fighting games, what's a combo? What's a mix-up? What's chip damage? Right? What's Right. What's wind-up frames? Right? What's a hit box? What's a hurt box? How are those different? What Right. And so, we have all of these What's frame data? Right. All of these things are genre-specific and you can choose a specific game to help gain genre literacy. And some are better at it than others. For instance, I've been playing a fair amount of Street Fighter 6 to try

and understand fighting games better. And that has a lot of those things baked into it. But, I could also play Guilty Gear Strive or Mortal Kombat or Tekken or any number of other things to get that genre literacy. Um as as an example there. And then, I think the third one is game literacy. And that's probably the one that's the weirdest and I will say the hardest. And what I kind of
You say game, g a m e? Yeah, a single game. Literacy Literacy about one particular game. Mhm. And I think that's sort of where our title leads us and I think that's where the like it gets more difficult. Cuz I don't know. Jeff, if I Is there a genre of game that you don't particularly like? Plenty. Okay. Can you name one? Sure. Not a big fan of sports games. Okay, cool.

In the field of
going to say I I can keep going, but okay.
That's a good one. In the field of sports games, is there for you is there a gradient between sports games you might find vaguely interesting, probably related to some kind of sport that you enjoy, and sports games that you just completely miss and have no relation to whatsoever? Um I mean, I'm sure there must be. But for me in general, like I don't think I've ever, other than like for research purposes played any Actually, Wii Sports is probably the single sports game I've played the most. But I don't think that actually counts. Right, cuz it's not a sports game in the way that we would consider most sports games sports games.
Right. Right. It is a game about sport, but not a game about FIFA or Madden or Gran Turismo or Well, Gran Turismo would be racing. I

would differentiate that out. I think racing's a subcategory of sports games. Uh I would
about this later. Sure. We Not important. But my my point is that because it's a genre, right? If you wanted to gain literacy about sports games in general through that genre, you could probably find one that was more palatable to you than others. Versus the extreme case of this game, this particular singular game is pivotal to the industry and I don't like it, but I'm going to play it because it specifically brings things that no other game does to the idea of literacy. And actually, I'm going to throw something in just looking at chat for a minute that may also sound controversial. I think when people talk about sports games, it it actually is shorthand for team sports games.
with that. And that, you know, something like where you take individual turns like bowling or golf

don't have the same characteristics of baseball, soccer, football, basketball, cricket, like kind of the big sports games that you see. Can we have a cricket game, please? That would be so much fun because I might actually learn cricket. Oh. Or rugby. Like There there are big like the team sports games are obviously all very different depending on the sports, but have many, many, many of the same overlapping characteristics. Yeah. That just You know, I don't watch them on TV. Why would I go spend a whole bunch of time playing Right. them there. But also, it's weird. I've played them because I recognize that for some people, those are the most important games in the industry.
Right. Those are the game, you know, they buy two games a year, one of which is the updated Madden. Which is why they do that, chat, right? For all that some people continuously bemoan Madden's habit of coming out with a new game every year, there's a reason they do it. It's because it sells. They

wouldn't do it if they weren't making a lot of money off of it, and they make a lot of money off of it. Well, and not just it sells. For the people who are interested in it, the fact that player A is moved over to this team, or player B had a breakout year and their stats are better. Like, those things matter to them when they're playing through and in game engaging with their favorite pastime. Like, having, you know, somebody who is 4 years out of date, or missing, you know, a third of the roster on a team because there was only an update every 4 years would feel, in some cases, disrespectful. Yeah. That's fair. That's valid. I actually just kind of had that epiphany right there as well, that um Like, I kind of knew it, but it came back in full force.
It was a good epiphany. Um Anyway, but The the So, so my point is that there are When we talk about literacy, right? So, we talk about general, we talk about genre, and then there's specific game. And I think there are like When I say specific game literacy, I am not

I am applying this to like the giants, right?
Okay. I am applying this to the games around which the the industry continues to turn. Not necessarily last year's game of the year, although game of the year lists are a place to start with this, but a game that continually shows up and has a gravitational force that moves other games around it. I'm talking about Fortnite. Oh, I heard gravitational and I immediately went to Portal. I mean, that's Portal's definitely on the list, right? Like if you haven't played Portal, play Portal, but but I think Fortnite is a game that is probably very easily dismissed by some people as being a game that is not for them because it isn't cuz it's not aimed at you.
[snorts]
And you don't do the things that you wanted to, but I've played a little Fortnite with Matt. Mhm. It is surprising how much like

specific cultural nuance and literacy just oozes out of so many weird corners of Fortnite that I just did not understand till I played Fortnite. And I think that that is sort of my my uh my first big thing is that if you've never played it and you want to play play games for gaming literacy, play Fortnite. For like not a long time. You'll you'll be playing against bots. Play for like 2 hours. You'll you'll play against bots who win all your games, but play Fortnite, right? And that's weird because normally we suggest games that people would enjoy and I actually did not enjoy Fortnite at all and I think most people will die.
of people do. Yeah, lots of people do and I understand why they do now in a way that I don't think I did before. Mhm. Um it's weird. Fortnite is weird. Talking about playing Fortnite even though I dislike it is weird.

But it's also like that thumbnail I made where you should play, you know, insert game with Fortnite but a whole bunch of covers up on the Yeah. thing like there is a reason for that if you're trying to get broad literacy. Yes. The same thing with something like Madden. Or Halo. Or I mean, League of Legends or any number of other Like if you really kind of want to start understanding it or to be honest, FarmVille. Or two or whatever you know, the current one is. Or what's the game that just passed Candy Crush? There's a game that I think No, it There's one that's out I have to go look at I saw it in a script come in that apparently is crushing No pun intended, crushing Candy Crush right now. Mhm. When Candy Crush has been around for a long time as one of the number one games in the industry just from Yeah. people playing and money made and all the stuff. Yeah.
Like it's interesting to see it may not

be your game, but understanding of why all other people are sticking to it. Yeah. Quick side note as we're talking about this. We accidentally came up with a new idea for some shorts we want to try doing. And this specifically like I was showing off oh pre-stream I was showing off this. Ooh, wow.
first Switch cuz I actually missed the Switch and went right to a Switch 2. Um and again, I've missed a whole swath of games for that, but there are so many games to play. But I have a young'un and for Valentine's Day weekend the family is getting a Switch 2 that we can all go start playing Mario Kart on. And he's just getting to the age that we're showing him some real games as opposed to like iPad games. iPad Well, iPad games for young kids.
Yeah. And I was thinking about it because we're starting to also do shorts of for We used to do a series called games you might not have tried. And we're thinking to turn that also into shorts, games you might not have tried. And I was asking Matt and Will

is Portal something we could talk about on that? And Matt was immediately like, "No, Portal's too old. Everybody's played it." And I'm like, "Well, actually, I just gave Portal as a birthday present to my mid-teen nephew." And he was like, "Wow, Uncle Jeff, this game is amazing." And I'm like, "Yes. Yes, it is." So, thinking also of a series we might do games your kids might instead of games you might not have tried, games your kids might not have played or something like that. Like and I think that's a whole other series. Like games you might not have tried is probably a sleeper hit or something with a really cool mechanic. Right. Or games your kids might not have played is for the, you know, late 20s, early 30s, or even 40-year-old parents whose kids are starting to get to the age where they're like, "Oh, what games still stand up?" Like not for necessarily game literacy, so that though that's part of it, but just really fun games that still hold up well, like Tetris. Cuz well, I think that there is

I think there's broad overlap in that cuz I think that there's the first kind of literacy we're talking about, right? Like the top-level how to play video game literacy is a thing that is often developed strongly by those first games that we play, right? Like I'll get I'll give you an easy example. I have like no platformer literacy like at all. I am bad at Mario in every format, but I'm particularly bad at 2D platforming cuz I skipped Mario Brothers. Despite many of my peers having played Mario Brothers, I did not do the Mario Brothers thing. Um so I'm bad at it because I don't have a lot of literacy there, but I do have literacy in other places because those were the games that I started with like Tetris. Played a lot of Tetris. Played Tetris a lot. I think that's going to be one of the first games I download for um Shorty. Yeah, absolutely. Um So, So there's two things, right? One, I see

Chad talking about what games to play. And the second one is like, how do we approach this, right? Because
[snorts]
if we're trying to get the most out of the experience, it's not merely, all right, I am going to find a stick, put it between my teeth so I don't bite my tongue off, and go install Fortnite. I'm going to bite on the stick the entire time I play Fortnite, and I'm going to hate it, is not going to be a productive experience, and it's not what we're suggesting. How do you do the thing? How do you make that experience the most productive it possibly can be, the most enlightening it can be, the most rewarding it can be intellectually, if you're going to spend time playing a game you don't emotionally vibe with. Um, and I think one of the first ones for me, and this is definitely true in me playing wow right now, is to have a specific goal

uh, that you want to like get to, right? And it needs to be like a specific time-bound or, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Aspirational, skill-based goal, right? But have a specific goal. Don't just be like, I'm going to play Fortnite. It's I'm going to play for three games of Fortnite with the intention of, you know, seeing the whole map, or getting all the loot, or finding all the things, or getting in a one-v-one, or whatever, right? Um, and I like the Yes, I like, if possible, with friends. Also, plan your exit strategy correct. No, but
Okay, some games with friends Actually, let me push back on that a little bit. Sorry, I was trying to like start taking notes down from some of the chat stuff. Yeah. I think playing some of these games with friends is actually detrimental, because it means you don't have the freedom to stop and kind of poke at a thing. They Like, if you're trying to hop into a game of League of Legends, do it with friends. Hopefully somebody who's played

before so they can kind of walk you through. That is an information-dense and concept-dense game. If you're going to go play a Call of Duty, don't hop into multiplayer. Go play through a couple hours of the campaign. And be like, "Cool. I've kind of seen the thing." Like, enter in the way and don't put a time pacing on yourself that expectation of somebody waiting for you may kind of rush you along. If you're going to go play Peak or Among Us, friends. Yeah. You're looking thoughtful, Will. Oh, um uh I don't know. I'm I'm I'm trying to formulate a disagreement with chat and I'm trying to do it in a in a thoughtful way because I'm having like a gut reaction to to chat pushing back on some of these things because I think one of one of my problems is

I'm making an assumption Mhm. that I realize not everyone is making when we talk about this. Okay, let's hear this assumption. Literacy in the case of gaming specifically is not wholly intellectual. It is also reflexive. Mhm. And that is hard. Right? So, for instance, if I am playing a third-person shooter and an MMO, in both cases, I have a behind-the-character, over-the-shoulder viewpoint of where the character is going, but the two control entirely differently in the majority of cases. Mhm. Right? And then you're trying to No, I did that. I did that. No, um okay. So, like, for instance, right? So, I've been playing a lot of Deadlock and I've been playing a lot of Wow in 14, right? And those control differently, and

something about that experience makes me non-intellectually know that in a in a third-person shooter, I move in a certain way and I control my um my camera in a certain way to affect the way that my character moves to the game world. And in um MMO, it's totally different. And I'm not intellectually thinking about those in the moment. That's reflexive. So, like that to me also feels like a kind of literacy. Right? Does that seem true? Maybe. Like part of it is Well, you also might get up there is just some of the norms. Like
these kinds of games definitely have cameras or you know, your ability to adjust your field of view in these kinds of ways or these games are over here are different. And some of that alone, like camera control, can make a game feel radically

different.
Agreed. You know, if Overwatch was a third-person instead of a first-person game, it would just feel significantly different and the way you played it, uh you would some of the abilities they give you, you just wouldn't be able to do, but it would introduce others. Correct. For instance, um there is uh uh the peril of corners is entirely different depending on whether you are in a third-person or first-person uh shooter. Because in a third-person shooter, you can place your model against the corner against the safe side of the corner and use your camera to see around the corner. In a first-person shooter, you cannot. You have to lean your actual character's head out from behind the corner and risk getting shot to see around the corner, right? As an example of of how radically different that can make it. But I think there is Because is skill part of the gaming literacy that we're talking about? I

don't think so. Okay. I don't think being good at a thing is the same as getting knowledge of a thing. Okay.
I think getting good at a thing is a whole separate I would say skill set and journey. Okay.
I think game literacy can bring you in at a very higher skill floor for a lot of these.
Cuz I I would say that it there there is a part of the skill continuum Mhm. that is effectively game literacy, but only in so far as it gets you to the floor of playing a game. Right. Right. Like
Because you may you may have a brain that just doesn't, for example, solve block puzzles like Bejeweled. Like some people just don't see them the the patterns in the way that other people do. And a whole bunch of playing might increase your brain's ability to recognize, but it also, like, I don't think your skill at being able to number match is an important part of learning about Bejeweled I'm sorry block match is an

important part about learning about Bejeweled. In the same way, but you still need certain floors. Like, I remember playing Halo for the first time with my wife who'd never played a um Halo's first-person, right?
Halo's first-person. Who'd never played a first-person shooter before. And I think the first hour was just painful as she learned how to navigate in a first-person view with a game controller. Right.
Like, she just never done that. But a couple weeks later, we'd solve the campaign and she was like, "Hey, let's go try Halo 3 multi or it was Halo 3. Let's go try Halo 3 multiplayer. I want to see what this is about."
Right. Like, so she had this huge ramp up and she couldn't actually really understand the genre until she hit a certain floor being able to move herself with a 3D controller because that was an essential part of being able to get any experience in that. But like the next thing we tried for that, she already had that skill floor. Like she knew how to navigate in 3D

using an Xbox controller. Yeah. So, is there like a level of skill that underlies your ability to to acquire a literacy? I think so. And I think that's true for other things, too. There's a level of skill in being like a film student to be able to recognize, "Wow, that was a long take." To like actually notice where the cuts are happening. Or to like look at this to understand the style of direction and not just have it pass through your mind as a thing that happened. Except I feel like there is a difference in gaming specifically that there is no analog for in other genres of media because you have to be able to participate to some degree in the game. It is more analogous to say learning how to dance than it is to like the mechanics of putting on a movie, right? Because I would say that the the skill is not like the the kind of skill I'm talking about exists before the recognizing the

long shot, right? Recognizing a particular kind of cut or editing choice feels like literacy. And one of the problems with gaming is that we have this barrier to entry like not being able to put the movie on the television, right?
So, almost like having the right hardware? Yeah, kind of, right? That there's
watch a DVD till you have a DVD player. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's obviously not a one-on-one lineup. Yeah. But you know, if you're a music student or you need a certain amount of music knowledge, say like what different instruments sound like, to be able to start pulling pieces apart as you're listening to that. You know, as opposed to it sounds like music. You're like, "Oh, I'm hearing the strings come in." You know, I'm hearing you know, Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah.
We're never going to get exact parallels No, we're not. We're not. I'm just I don't know. I mean, there are certain floors for certain genres. Right. I'm

just trying to I'm I'm still wondering like is Are the components of this purely intellectual or not, right? I And this is why, Will, I was saying earlier I don't think the word literacy is quite right. Right. So, what is then what is the right word? I don't know. I mean, it could be broad expertise or broad knowledge, you know, if you want to have broad knowledge of games.
Yeah. Because Because some games, like if you're going to go play Monument Valley, Monument Valley for a long time has been like my gateway game for people who've never played games.
Yes, Monument Valley is so good. It's so
can show them it. It's super pretty. You kind of show them that first rotation or so, and they kind of go, "Oh." And they spend a while fiddling with it, but they don't need to bring in any other knowledge Yes. to be able to play that game. Right. In a radically different way than like let's go play

Halo. Yeah, I agree with that.
I think there's a spectrum of knowledge and dexterity and or other skills you need Yeah. to be able to play certain kinds of games.
And of course, the components of what that floor to play that game is vary wildly between genres, right? You have like incredibly high APM stuff, you have incredibly dexterity specific stuff, um Battle Royale's, right? Uh, Rocket League has very specific, absurdly high dexterity requirements for some stuff versus chess or magic or Civilization, right? Mhm. And so the components are going to be different, too, which is another thing I think that's getting in, uh, that's making it different. So
By the way, um, just as a quick note, a lot of the stuff up on the walls is actually stuff that we've like had around for a while and is possibly

Yeah. So, um, like if you want one of those little Zoe plushies up here or that, um, what One day I'll learn mirroring. It's It's right above your head.
uh, poster right here is actually a cool shirt and that one's a poster and the gaming mug down here is an actual
[clears throat]
There we go. Yeah, mug. thing. [snorts] But it's a This isn't a merch pitch. It's more of a When we were designing the coffee shop, we're like, "You should put stuff in a coffee shop." And we're like, "Well, well, Well, we have. Unfortunately, I regret to inform everyone that Hecknomancer, the cabinet video game, is not yet real nor do we have plans to make it real yet. Mhm. Actually, you're Hold on, Thunder was right. It's true. [laughter] It is true. You did turn it into a shameless plug. Um Can't help it. I'm also the studio director and part of my job is making sure everybody gets paid. That's true.
If you want to buy a cool poster for your wall and help make sure the staff gets paid, double win. I appreciate that. Uh,

okay, so So, let's go into this. So, if you're if you're trying to play a game that you wouldn't normally play to get whatever the it factor is that we're talking about, the je ne sais quoi. Mhm. Je ne sais quoi of je ne sais game? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Um it helps to have an approach, right? And we we got a little sidetracked. We were talking about playing with friends, right? And that's true for some games, right? Uh, versus others that are very solitary in their nature. Please don't try and stream your first play through of Undertale on Twitch. It goes poorly. Play Undertale by yourself. Don't tell any of your friends you're playing Undertale. In fact, the best way to engage with Undertale is to tell no one, to go into offline mode, to play Undertale by yourself, and then talk about Undertale when you're done. Undercover Undertale? Yeah, correct. Um Undertale is uh got quite the divisive fandom as an example. But

it is a game that many people I think would uh gain something from playing. Um the the Man, my cough today. You know what I have I'm glad I bought the thing with the quick mute. Yeah. Yeah, uh and and yeah, someone was asking why under why Undertale uh is a game that you don't do that to and uh that that is correct. Uh it is because many people believe that there is a correct way uh to play the game, um which suggests to me that they do not understand Undertale. There's a lot of uns around here. Yeah, right. Understanding Undertale, undercover. Yeah, no, it's true. Um But for all these, like getting back to the high level, how do you play games with a specific contention of gaming literacy? Yeah. And whether we have a better word for literacy,

maybe we do. Um one of them is to play broadly. Like I think that is the single most important thing is to play games that you know, if you're like, "Hey, I play League and a couple of other things." Start branching out. Some of the ways we talked about earlier. Maybe it is the free Epic game. Maybe you go on good old games and you you know, get a or you buy a humble bundle or you go over to Metacritic and you're like, okay, every 90 plus game the past 10 years. Like there's different ways to engage with it. And I kind of like, you know, the if you're looking for broad first and represent like iconic representation. Every 90 plus game on Metacritic is a great iconic representation start. Yeah. Because to get a game that scores that high, it has to be overwhelmingly good. And I'm talking about the critic, not the fan voted. Though you could do the fan voted, too. But we just did a whole

episode on that. Was that last week or two or three weeks ago?
I hope you enjoy trying to get a copy of Cory in the House on the Nintendo DS. Um [laughter] And you know, or there are places that and indie games have started showing up a lot more on Metacritic, too. But, you know, you could do it within certain ways. You could say, I want huge literacy on the indie scene, on the overall scene, on the AAA scene. Whatever it is, but broad playing with kind of a plan about how you go that. And number two is to, you know, have that exit plan we were talking about. This isn't go master all of these games. There is not enough time in the world for anybody to play all of the games of note. And I will say anybody. Yeah. Like there are too many games for that to happen. So, but play broadly and with an exit plan. Like, hey, I'm going to spend, you know, And maybe it is. Maybe it's a game a

week. You're like, I'm going to play an hour a day in a game a week. Cool. In 1 year, you'll have 52 games that you've sunk somewhere between 5 to 7 hours in. And that alone, if you're playing broadly, will have greatly expanded what you've bumped into. And kind of the plane with intentionality. Or you're playing it, but you're also looking at it. Maybe you take a couple notes. Maybe you're like, you know, what made this game interesting? I I actually put note taking on there for a very specific reason. Um which is that I think that the intention to take notes changes your mindset. Ooh, tell me more. Okay, so if I am playing a game off stream just to play the game Mhm. I will generally speaking, even if it's a game I'm interested in get very zoned in on the game. And this is like the way that my particular brain works. And it might be the way your brain works and it might not be. But if

I am attempt if I have a note doc up and I am trying to think trying to look at things and think about the game as a thing on which I am taking notes. And this is the one that cooks a lot of people. Even if I take no notes I will remember the experience differently as an object of intellectual pursuit versus, hey, I just played this game. It was like fine, right? Or like for me it can also be um the kind of conversation I'm having, right? So like with the wow example, yesterday I played with Jay from Design Dell over on Second Wind. Mhm. Having a conversation about the design of the game and the strengths and weaknesses of different parts and he as he found them in his experience with like certain crunchy parts of the game caused me to engage in the game very differently than I did when I played by myself on Monday. Cuz when I played by myself on Monday, I slipped way too far

into that like I'm just playing the game sort of mentality, right? So like finding whatever it is for you that keeps you cognizant of your experience as an object of intellectual pursuit is really helpful for me and might be for you. And it's going to it's going to be individual for different people. Yeah, absolutely. If you're somebody who treats this as more of a study thing in your brain works that way, maybe instead of an hour a day, you know, in the evenings it's 55 minutes and 5 minutes where you take a notepad and you're like, "What do I remember What was the most interesting things I noticed?" Right. You can probably It doesn't have to be to publish or anything, but like maybe your brain works best because you were trained in school. You read a book and then you you know, do a little write-up afterwards. Yeah. Maybe it's you read a book, you're taking notes while you're doing it. Maybe it's you're playing with a friend and the two of you are having a discussion while you're playing, whether it's a co-op game or maybe you're playing separately and one of the two of you is like sharing your screen with the other

one so they can watch and you can play at the same Like there's lots of ways or you grab your partner and you sit on the couch together and there's lots of ways to do this exercise. There isn't a right way. There's the way that works best for you and your personal way of interacting with this medium. Yeah. I very much agree.
I mean, that's one of the reasons I love doing live analysis so much at like conferences and other things is A, it's fun, but getting to sit with four or five experts, you know, and just be like, "Hey, what was that?" Right.
everybody like talking about it. Right. That's a fun thing. Yeah, I I and that um treating it as an object of art for consideration rather than as something that is merely for entertainment helps with that as well. Um I My other two were to have in mind what you're hoping to get out of the experience.

And that can be like a lot of things. In my case, it's generally understanding in a good piece of content, but like keeping that in mind, like, okay, I don't particularly like the way wild leveling works. But, I do like understanding how wild leveling works and how that process goes together. And so, for me, like, have that that goal of what I'm trying to learn is learn how leveling occurs in World of Warcraft versus how leveling occurs in Guild Wars or Elder Scrolls or Final Fantasy XIV or Realm of the Mad God or RuneScape or what are the other MMOs that I've played? No, and right and Any number of them, right? Like, how is it different, right? And that is
Wow leveling versus Warframe leveling will
[laughter]
They're two entirely different worlds. God.
One day, one day we can have the big conversation of is Warframe an MMO and why is it? Um
[laughter and clears throat]

The And the last one, and this one's a weird emotional one. Okay. Even if you're playing a game that you absolutely hated at the get-go, Mhm. you might you might start having fun. Yeah. And that one's like depending on your level of I think you're coming in too strong on that. I think most people, if you're playing most games, will have a decently good time. Like, I think one of the great things about video games versus say being a film student having to watch some of the early things that help build your foundational knowledge, I think most games are generally fun. It may not be your favorite kind of game, but you're still weighing, hey, I get to eat a cupcake, you know, it may not be my favorite kind of cupcake, but it's still a cupcake. That's true. I I think

I'm pretty sure there are many be way more than plain wow. Right. No, no, no. I'm overselling a bit, right? Where I think largely as a rhetorical device, but the idea of you might find a deeper connection and continue to play in a way that you weren't expecting when you go in, I think is true, right? I think there are definitely games that people will be like, "Oh, I'm just playing this game because it's in my backlog and it might end up being your new favorite game, right? Like I had I had Hollow Knight in my backlog for forever. I had Outer Wilds in my backlog forever. I had Um oh, what was the other one? It wasn't chance. Ori and the Blind Forest I had in my backlog forever, right? And just taking a chance on those, I found something that I loved and like that's what I'm encouraging, right? I'm overselling it a little bit, like that you won't have any fun, but the idea like being open to the idea that your opinions on the game will change radically as you look at it

thoughtfully. Yeah. It is my point. You're also moving from either what have I heard about it or the presentation in the storefront into the actual game experience.
Right, which are very, very, very different things.
Most times, unless you're playing one of the Japanese RPGs where the first 2 hours is all cutscenes before you actually get to any gameplay. As a Final Fantasy XIV player, how dare you call me out so accurately? Um
[laughter]
It's not mostly cutscenes. It's like half cutscenes. It's fine. There was one game I can't remember which we played on we did for Design Club at PAX one year. It was Pokémon Scarlet. The first hour was cutscenes. Oh, actually, and one of the Metroids. Yes.
One of the one of the Metroids. Yeah, Dread. We were doing Dread and we hadn't scouted it enough to know we should have skipped like started X amount into it. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, most Final Fantasy XIV expansions are mostly cutscenes, which is one of the reasons why they go so much faster when we're leveling alts, but

it's neither here nor there. Um yeah, I've lost track. Jeff, my brain is I think this was one of the ones we had like talking about it, we had a really strong here's the thing we want to talk about, here's why we think it's important, but I think because there are myriad different paths Yeah. to expanding your repertoire if that is of interest to you.
Yes. There isn't an easy Yeah. concise conclusion that we can wrap up with a bow and say Right. it's done. I think
Because it's different for lots of people. Right. I think the best that we're going to be able to do is convince you that there is a path that there is such a thing as this gaming expertise, this broad um artistic knowledge of the idea of games that exists in different levels for gaming in general, for genres, and then sometimes for very specific uh industry-defining games, right? And that it may be of

interest to you intellectually to pursue that knowledge even if those games aren't um inherently interesting to you. Yeah. Right. And that there's a way that you can do that. Quick note, I actually keep a spreadsheet of every game that I feel like I've played enough to understand. And one of the things I did on that was I marked down not just the game name, but the platform. So like I played, you know, Halo on the Xbox. And because sometimes it's interesting too is you look down there you're like, "Wow, I played a lot of console games and no mobile games." Or, you know, it's a way to see it, but it's also fun to look back years later at this ever-growing list and be able to say, "Yeah, I you know, it's a it's kind of a nice motivator if that's your thing because it doesn't start out long, but a year or two into it, you look at it and you're like, "Wow, I have looked at a lot of games."

Yeah, I'm I'm working on my backlog actually. There's a There are several uh websites that'll let you do a collection of all the games you've played and the rating you give it and Oh, nice. what what you take notes and I'm working on one of those for me because I have officially played so many games on stream that I have forgotten many of them, uh which is not necessarily a great place to be when people ask you about have you played X on stream.
You're an atypical example for a number of reasons.
That is correct. I'm playing games 4 days a week. Uh and used to be more um on stream constantly and I'm always looking for new games. So, I I will fully own that I am a quite an atypical example here. I also think that it's worth noting if we're talking about me being an atypical example, that my dislike of certain games or genres is also deeply rooted in the fact that I have a additional layer of experience, which is the way that chat behaves in that space. Undertale and Baba Is You were two of the worst experiences as a streamer that

I've had because the backseat
out of control because people are so passionate about those games that they cannot help but try and help even if it's unhelpful. Um or how uh chat often bounces on puzzle games. Chat has a real problem sometimes maintaining puzzle games because they're not allowed to solve the puzzle and solving the puzzle is the thing that makes you interested in the game. Yeah. Right.
you're going for a heavy story game, it's easy. Everybody's along for the ride. Correct. Yeah, [snorts] and that's that is like a thing that deeply influences my like or dislike of certain genres because of that. So, that is worth noting. Yeah.
about these things.
[snorts]
Yeah, um we have an interesting week. All right. What's up going on?
up for you next week, which is sort of adjacent to this topic, but more concrete. We want to talk about the games

you would give a kid. And
And this is this will be kind of for next week.
Yeah, this this this is for next week. Um so have in mind the games that are out right now that are playable right now that you would give to a child at different age ranges because it's kind of an interesting phenomena to see the games that we wish we had grown up with. I think is the way I'll say it, right? The games that we wish we'd had earlier. Um so that's going to be our topic for next week is gaming for kids.
I think let's put in the broads. Like I think five to six is where honestly most kids can start on their first level of what I'd call real games. Yeah. Um And you know, there's probably that five to And we don't have to do every year, but you know, you jump up to like the eights, the 10s, the kind of 12 to 13s, to 16s, you know, at 16 you can play pretty much anything. pretty much everything. Yeah.

Where there's kind of different like in having a young kid who's getting older, like it's been a fun experience as a designer, as somebody who's used to trying to ex- to make both make things, but then explain to people or to gently explain to them without them realizing they're getting explained to them how to do the thing that you designed. Like watching somebody who's learning. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, not not this. Yeah. Not this, right? Spin Dash knows it's not this, but not NES Monopoly, not Nintendo hard Lion King for the SNES, right? Like Actually, I'm fine with this breakpoint right here. Kind of the two to five cuz yeah, that's six to 10, 11 to 14, 15 to 18 and adult. Yeah. I think are So somewhere around there, you know, as you kind of look because for example, I said I just gave you know, I have a nephew who's in that 15 to 18 range and gave him portal for his birthday and he was amazed but in the 11 to 14 I gave him I think it was

Breath of the Wild and he was also amazed. Like picking the right game for the right age can really help sell games are interesting and worthwhile. Yeah, and also games that are enriching, right? Like oddly so in ways that we don't necessarily anticipate but So yeah, so that's our topic for next week. So please join us for that. The week after we have even more fun stuff for you planned but we'll keep that in the can for now. We do have a whole bunch of stuff planned for you and as always we'll be back on Monday with me and Matt to talk on breakfast about And it's only Thursday and we've already had a whole week of gaming news. The studio that made Highguard is having mass layoffs. There's more weird stuff about the Discord age verification thing. There was one other major piece of gaming news. Oh yeah, they're updating Diablo 2. Woah. They're updating Diablo 2 to add a new character class.

Diablo 2 came out in 2000, Jeff. Diablo 2 can vote and they're updating it. Wild stuff.
26 years Wow.
Yeah. Oh yeah, that's such a Blizzard thing. Right? Yeah. That's an old school Blizzard thing. Yeah. Yeah, so we're going to be talking about all that and more this coming Monday on breakfast. Please join us here on Twitch and YouTube for that. We'll look forward to it. If you're hanging out here on Twitch, don't go anywhere. We'll be back with me and Matt playing some more wow. I'm now accidentally ahead of Matt. So we have to get Matt caught up. We're going to be doing a leapfrog thing. So
to get good. Yeah, until next time everybody. Please take care of yourselves, please take care of each other and we'll see you all then. Say bye to the people Jeff. Bye to the people Jeff. Thanks everybody, see you next week.
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