Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
[AUTO-GENERATED CAPTIONS]Mixed media gaming.
All right.
Well, welcome back to Mixed Media.
If you are watching live,
you just heard me talking aboutso not a form
and the narrative of Tchaikovsky'sSixth Symphony.
(00:21):
And now you're on to mixed media gaming
with another installmentof Arguing with Reddit,
where Nathan will be responding to
hot takes thatI think he picked one out for himself,
one that I've submittednow that he hasn't seen and just things,
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you know, heartachesthat are we've gathered
from Reddit mostly, butalso from other places on the Internet,
giving his takes for thingsthat he hasn't seen live.
Okay, so ready to go, Nathan?
I'm ready.
All right.
For all for those of youlistening in post,
I haven't been talking very muchbecause I'm not feeling too well
(01:04):
and I have had a crazy day,so I'm kind of also exhausted, so
I won't be speaking very much.
So I'm going to forego my segmentand also there's a ton of stuff to edit,
so it gives me one less episodeto have to put out.
So there you go.
Let me grab the first one.
This one will be from producer wife.
(01:27):
Here it is. So
let's see.
It says Elden ring is average at best in.
Fair enough.
You'll be able to talk on this but I thinkit's a great great topic in general.
Elden Ring graphics are averagegameplay is slow and clunky,
storyline is non-existentwithout doing your own research into it.
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Basically it comes off as a brain dead
type of type game for the masses,like Call of Duty.
It can be enjoyable for a lot of people,but really it's
just a time burnerfull of frustration and aggravation
meant to keep you busyand in a low vibrational state,
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especially considering the imagery.
I think it is designed the way it isto bring people down mentally.
So those are some accusations.
So there you go.
Yeah, I never playedElden Ring seemed like
the smallest amountof footage of the game, so I'm not really
too knowledgeable about it.
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So, like the whole first half hour,
but the gameplay, the graphics and storyI can't really comment on,
I guess I actually end up to like,you know,
like in the back of my mind thing,but the graphics,
I don't remember being like,Oh, is this super good?
But I don't think it was value.
So maybe average or averagefor the budget.
(02:52):
It's been good then I guess.
Yeah. I mean the type of game it is.
He's like,
you know, like like
a raging type of game where you're goingto get frustrated and aggravated.
I don't really know if he's like,
it's all because that's sort of sort of.
Breaks, like,you know, like one of like the, you know,
the principles of game design reallyshouldn't be too hard or one's right.
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People do enjoy this sort of game.
You know, there are similarthere are other types of games
that are intentionally madejust super hard, like
the game is calledthe world's hardest game, right?
Jumping, stuff like that.
Thinking hard.
I don't really know
it. Obviously,I was probably one of those things where
it's like a brick wall rule, as with allrules against, you know, it's been broken.
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It's been broken in a way that works.
So I'm not really sure like whywhy it works
in this scenario, but it will workin a lot of other games estimations.
It was just more than the target audience.
But I do think Elden Ringis more mainstream
than I was to your beat for what it is,given how hard it is
supposedly at leastI think it's mainstream in terms of
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like, you know, people
in the games media have heard of it,pretty much everyone, you know.
But maybe it's not mainstreamin terms of people playing, which
is actually a certain section of peoplewho enjoy the really big challenges.
And that's just for them.
And I can't really commenton the rest of it because I had said
before the game, okay, here
is the way you're done with thatone, right?
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Yeah.
Okay, here's the next one.
This one is from I think I grab fans.
Yeah awesome is person
saying that I know that I would be
really good at being a game dev
but how come you know itit was as the person's
headlines is how can we accepted the gamethat is are so severely underpaid
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in comparison with other skillsperson says that you know
I could spend 40 hours a week doing gamedev for a company at a very high level,
but now I pay so much less than my currentjob of doing web development.
And you know, how come so many
how come that's the state of thingsand how how did people.
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Choose this industry,if I know is going to pay so little.
People who choose the industry,despite its negatives,
to choose of your passion.
I feel like, although, you know,
probably I think thatthey choose that passion because it's like
the role of a game developer,at least as a coder,
doesn't really have any upsidescompared to the encoder
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or many other.
Think I don't you know,
I'm not entirely sure what the reason is,what people are paid.
The reason I've always figuredis that it's a mixture of two things.
Like I said, the discrepancybetween the pay of like
example of debt and,and the pay of a game developer.
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That thedifference is caused by two things.
One being that dads areprobably just paid a lot not to like
do what they should be.
Perhaps giving up a jobor whatever is actually not that
depending what you're doing,whether those are very general term.
Right.
But, you know, certain types of lockdownsfor sure
aren't doing the most complicated thingsthat you still get paid amounts.
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So that and
perhaps game companies
get paid lessbecause what they'd like to think
they're making tends to be so costlyand the returns
just aren't that great.
It's also like,you know, you don't have as much
of a guaranteed cash flowfor a lot of companies, not all companies,
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because, you know,
because you never really losing one gameevery time against flop stuff like that.
So you want to save moneyat the same time.
So you have to pay even lessin order to save for the rate
is essentiallyis not as big an issue with like say
Infinity Ward, right.
Who makes call doody every once in a whileevery two years I believe to make it.
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And for them they pretty much have a know
relatively regular stream of cash goingevery two years pretty much.
We also have, you know, um, by Activisionso they can get bailed out.
Probably things go wrong, whatever.
That being said know look atI wouldn't say that as a safe as well.
Look it's not like dicewith what battlefront
are now about battlefield 24 twowhich are not doing so well at the moment.
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Even even large companies are seeminglyhaving a steady cackles in terms
of the regular games that they produce,you know, that seem to always
get a good amount of sales.
They might be in trouble in some sensethat it's not always the case.
I mean, I said there are other ways
that these companies make money outside oflike just producing games online.
But these cynically
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but as a game company,you can make money in a lot of other ways.
Do you, for example, if only a steadystream of cash flow in your contract.
So I don't know if there's like, you know,any I don't think excuse that, you know,
game over not get paid enough to paythat up as well is a good excuse.
But that's what I've been hearing.
I've been,I don't know, not knowledgeable enough
(08:12):
on the economics of it allto know if that's actually true or not.
You have a comment in the chat.
Plus, web dev is often
not mentally stimulating at allfor a web dev background into game dev.
It's both frustratingabout good and fulfilling of the work.
It's a weird industry.
Yeah, exactly. It's almost like.
Yeah,it's like people do have a passion, but
(08:36):
they're definitely
a, you know, in terms ofjust purely like monetarily speaking,
there are better places to go, but ah,
you may get paid more for your job.
All right.
Here's the last one from you.
Actually here the general premise,something about when
the person specifically requested a textor maybe a Rana.
(08:58):
I also read the commentsas also the amount of individuals
is very small comparedto the people that want those roles.
I heard Activision about that.
They get thousands of applicantswhen looking to fill a few roles.
Devs are replaceable anyway.
That's true.
I was thinking at the same time.
At the same time the devs are also morespecialized than someone like a web dev.
(09:20):
Obviously, once again, depending onwhat kind of what they were doing,
I'm sure they're highly specialized web
definitelyto deal with certain technologies
that are not very common to deal within their high value positions, whatever.
But the software required to make a gameis like generic software.
So for example, if using whatever doingweb does, I don't know, you might be using
like basically like basic servermanagement stuff, right?
(09:43):
That's not necessarily like just the webthing, writing service for many things.
Now for game dev, let's say using a gameengine like Unreal Engine,
there is no other like industrythat's going to be useful really other
that game to have except for
I don't know I guess maybe the upcomingUnreal Engine movies and whatnot.
But ignoring that that's going to be
(10:04):
game to develop is more specialized.
So I think that might sort of cancel outthe sort of like high
is sort of a weird thingthat, you know, mixed with
would make it seem that it should be,but a game doesn't pay more.
They're not.
All right.
And the next thing psychotic or nightruin building was a bad idea.
(10:25):
So I think that made ittruly unique from others.
So if you don't know, Fortnitedid a thing.
Um, was it about a month ago or somethinglike that has been more than a month now?
Not exactly sure, butthey remove the building from the game.
It's like another main.
Meaning temporarily,you know, a little event that did.
So there's no building.
(10:46):
And peoplepeople I talked to who enjoyed it.
Hey, you know that building?
I was kind of funny that you want to playbecause they removed the be,
you know, the main mechanics of it.
I think I played for a couple of times
and my issue with the game was thatpeople are really good at the game.
It is very hard to, to, to
(11:07):
outpace peoplein terms of their building skills
because building that, like inFortnite is a very good game.
Right?
You're not many games,at least pre Fortnite
that did that from the buildingthe way it did.
Right.
So it's not like you could transferyour skills from another game to it.
I mean, you're talking sonic objects,you know, transfer your skills
from other games. Battle Royale or not.
(11:28):
So, you know,you can like, like just in general type
games, you transfer your skills to PUBGand you won't be sort of left
in the dust with all the peoplewho started playing PUBG when it came out.
It's not a really bigdeal because you can jump in,
whereas a Fortnite, you're jumping inwith people who are, you know,
you have literally zero experiencewith the whole building mechanic thing
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and you got peoplewho have quite a lot of experience.
So that's the thingI think is pretty tough about the game
and it's an issue that quite a few BattleRoyale
is that they have such unique mechanicsthat don't exist outside of their game
and it makes it toughto play the game. Um,
you know, not, not only is gamedestroyed at every corner,
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so removing it opened up a gatewayfor a whole lot of people who didn't
like the game just because of that,of the building and the fact that people
were experienced in thatand a lot more enjoy it more that way.
So, you know,the first season was bad idea.
And so the explanation only has givenis that I think that you need from others.
Now, certainly I wouldn't say that that isthe only thing that makes it unique.
(12:35):
I mean, on avery like a very literal sense.
Right.
Obviously a different game, right? Yeah.
You know, it's not just a cup of coffee.
I'm sure the gunplay feels differentand stuff like that, you know.
But thethe tools you have accessible to you,
even though you're building,are going to be different,
this one company or whateverother battleground you play.
Okay.
So on a literal sense, obviously, it's,you know, still unique.
(12:57):
But I get I would say on a bigger scale,on a very more general scale.
Right.
It's a lot more similarto other games now.
And I don't think thatthis is not necessarily a bad, bad thing.
I think maybe
sure, that's a bad thing
in the short term,but sorry in the long terms area
where that has gone forever because well,you don't have a staple anymore.
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Right.
And as we said before last episode,I was talking about,
you know, ways to market your gameand whatnot using your game idea.
And one of the ways was by,
you know, essentially havinga nice talking point about your game.
So a talking point, it could be at leastin the elevator pitch of Fortnite, right?
It's like Battle Royale,but we're building actually like that.
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Right? You don't have that anymore.
He's Battle Royale and it's like, okay,
you don't have to havethat inherent marketing anymore.
So that built in marketing kind of stuff.
So yeah, well remember it's bad idea,but I think in the short
term is a pretty good ideabecause I want people to play the game
who didn't play it originally
and then we actually stick around with itwhen they add building back.
I don't I did that yet.
I think there were talks about adding ano build game mode,
(14:02):
which is pretty really narrowbecause then you have
even if you, you know,
we found out, wow, I like this gamewithout the building aspect.
You still play like that
and yeah, pretty much it now.
Yeah.
So that is it for tonight's
episode of Mixed Media.
Thank you for everyone who watchedand watching,
(14:25):
commenting live on any of our platforms.
We definitely appreciate it.
You can always join us on our discordand I believe that link is included.
And the link to all of our links
I think are accessibleby mixed media podcast dot com,
which is actually on your screenif you are watching this.
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But you know, our Discord Server
is where we keep our discussion goingthroughout the week, discussions going on.
So, you know, feel free to join us.
Give us your ideas.
You never know if your idea, your hot takeor whatever can make it onto a future,
you know? That's pretty much it.
Hopefully I feel better next timeand I'll be talking more.
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That's all. All
right.
Well,thank you for everyone who watched live.
And also thank you to everyonewho's watching and or listening.
After we get this published, I am so.
Have a great night. Have a great night.