Playing Games in the "Wrong" Way
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 พ.ย. 2022
- For bonus content like the full interview I did with DougDoug, go to nebula.tv/razbuten.
There are a ton of ways to play a game outside of how the developers intended it to be played, and people's desire to do that has always fascinated me. What about certain titles makes them so interesting to mess around in and why is playing games in weird ways so appealing to so many people? So this video is a look at some of the reasons I (and others) enjoy playing games in the "wrong" way.
Check out @DougDoug: / @dougdougw
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Thumbnail by @hotcyder: / hotcyder
Audio edit by @HeavyEyed: / heavyxeyed
Links to clips used in this video: pastebin.com/zhFMpuqu
Special thanks to honorary bagbutens Kay Kay and WilliamGlenn8.
An additional thanks to @wizawhat for looking over the script and to @CodexEntry for talking about Melee with me.
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ey! thanks for watching. if you are interested in seeing the full interview I did with DougDoug for this video, it is posted over on Nebula: nebula.tv/videos/razbuten-an-interview-with-dougdoug-about-playing-games-wrong
you should play hitman (III)
Be careful when interacting with DougDoug, his viewers tend to…
Get divorced
@@rage_2000 ... okaaay, I sense an inside joke here I'm not a part of, haha, but that's okay 😝
You do know about the channel called "Let's Game it Out", right??
I think theres is a guy who tried to scam me in your comment section. He said, that i had won something and that i should contact him on telegram
*Wait are you telling me Todd Howard didn't intend the fork to be the default weapon to beat Skyrim with?*
Wait there's more to Skyrim than just buying it every year?
I think Todd intended it to be beaten with a fork and a knife.
@@IronshiIron but that's the best part of Skyrim! There can't possibly be more than that
@@thespiffingbrit What about staring at Mod Organizer for 10+ hours and then playing the actual game for like 5 minutes just to confirm it still works?
Helllo, sir. Spiffing, nice to see you here.
A related aspect is the "the developer actually thought of that??" effect. When you try something decidedly weird that the vast majority of players would never think to try, *and the game actually responds appropriately* - that is one of the most satisfying experiences for me. It's like this secret little conversation I'm having with the developer.
Get to some bizarre corner of Mario Odyssey and there's a pile of coins sitting there. Or solving a dungeon in Breath of the Wild in a nonintended way (for example a torch-lighting puzzle where you just pull out your own fire arrows) and the game says "yeah, that works, here you go."
Funny seeing you here! I totally agree with that, you can't really predict how much the developers actually intend for players to find things.
"hey we would record a line in case the players make it up to the Megaton gate guard."
Ah, the Stanley Parable effect.
@@adamsbja I've really enjoyed the extent to which Nintendo games have been allowing players to using mechanics to kinda break the game.
There are few constants in life. But Outer Wilds making an appearance in a Raz video essay is certainly one of them.
Outer Wilds is truly unique. I look forward to the day someone creates a game that does something similarly impactful
@@HelloTygr so weird because both me and my roommate separately played that game and got nothing out of it.
Wish I could see what others saw in it
@@2Namii Maybe ask that question on the "r/outerwilds" subreddit. That should give you the most comprehensive discussion.
For me personally, it was a game that taught me acceptance and elevated the idea of "knowledge checkpoints" to a whole new level.
You guys and everyone enjoying games that are better, the more knowledge you gain about them.. should check out Noita. Really rewarding but also very hard. In the endgame it really is about how far you can stretch the boundaries the game gives you
@@HelloTygrhellblade had more impact than outer wilds did for me
Playing games wrong is why I love the "Let's Game it Out" channel. It is genuinely interesting to see how someone can play a game in ways you never considered. It is also hilarious. I do appreciate when developers embrace those playstyles instead of limit them. To me this is what truly differentiates gaming from other entertainment, the ability to shape your experience and determine your own outcome.
I love also that the devs at Satisfactory embrace Josh's absurd gameplay.
A screenshot of his conveyor belt tornado is one of the promo pics on the steam store page for the game.
I love that Channel it is incredible, he breaks games so well it actually helps the devs make the games better
Feel like RTGame fits it as well, though not as well as LetsGameItOut
Lol, I just love that he's also named Josh and plays games usually in a very relatable fashion to myself xD
That glorious feeling when Josh goes 'wait...what if...' and you know he's going to absolutely demolish the game. :D
I played Cyberpunk 2077 while following all traffic laws I could. Stopped at red lights, maintained lane discipline, checked my blind spot before turning, overtaking with plenty of space, the whole thing. Ended up in a traffic jam once or twice.
I'm reasonably certain the devs expected me to play these sections like a racing game, but for some reason it felt more fun to drive as I would in a real life city
I'm glad I'm not the only one who did that from time to time, especially on city center. I also wasn't ever chased by cops at all in my first playtrough. It just felt "right". If I was a mercenary with a very valuable shard stuck in my head, why would I want to put my name out there unnecessarily? Besides, just driving to get a sense of the vehicle you are using can be lots of fun, and there's so much to do in game already that doesn't requires me to kill random any passerby. I can do all the crazy physics box testing I want when I finish the game, when I'm not taking the plot/immersion seriously anymore and I don't mind reloading constantly because I got stuck inside an invisible hitbox.
@@ammygamer Oh yeah, even after 2 play throughs I still drive normally and always in first person. Just makes me feel more grounded in the world and causes me to be more aware of how wide my turns are / am I slamming the curb etc etc
Funnily I do the entire opposite and go out of my way to try to never slow down like there is a bomb tied to my speedometer which inevitably makes me crash more than if I just slowed down on sharp turns
The lights turn greed as soon as you arrive at the crossing
So glad to learn I'm not the only one who does this.
My friend and I once had a “race for last place” in Mario Kart Wii, where we drove the course backwards and tried desperately to hold onto 12th place. The race wouldn’t end until we both finished, so it was like an endless mode. Whenever we got the bullet bill power up we screamed “NO!” because it would take us in the wrong direction (forwards) and the only way to get rid of it (so that we could use other power ups) was to use it. We laughed our asses off the whole time, it was great.
Drive off a cliff, and you'll lose the power up.
:)
@@Numbabu :(
@@Numbabu :/
@@Numbabu :]
The line at 14:17 "He chose not to see the glitch as a mistake" is so poetic here since the Journey's ending was made after a playtester experienced a glitch right before the end!
There's a video called "Composing Journey" where Austin Wintory talks about how difficult it was to write the ending of the game until that experience. If you like Journey, I highly recommend seeing it.
Edit: I didn't realize that part wasn't in the polygon video, which is still an excellent interview to watch. It was actually in a video called:
"How Journey was made and why the developer went bankrupt" by a channel called ThatGuyGlen
I found a video made by polygon but it didn't mention any glitch? Is there a different video you're talking about?
@@brandonallbritton260 Oh! my apologies! I didn't realize that part wasn't in the polygon video. It was actually in a video called:
"How Journey was made and why the developer went bankrupt" by a channel called ThatGuyGlen
@@LeRoyt97 no worries I just thought that was a cool bit of info and wanted to see it! Thanks!
I too only played Journy once, and never even completed it for that sake.
But it still sticks in my mind to this day. I remember thinking Oh yea Journy i own that game, so i booted it up.
After around 10 - 20 min in some guy joined, and he began showing me the spots to get all the achievements only communicating with the sounds.
I felt like a baby chick getting taken around by my parents showing me the way home or something. I was really sad when i had to leave around halfway trough.
I just never played it again after that, since it was probably a once in a lifetime experience you only get once.
Maybe i should just complete it once, but i don't really see the point without my buddy guiding me tough it :(
@@Kiritomensk I've played a lot of games in the last 5 decades and have never had an emotional reaction like I did with Journey. Highly recommend that you play again and try to meet another traveler to finish the game with. It really is worth it. My first full playthrough with a companion, she showed me what to do with such patience. I'll never, ever forget the experience.
I spent my first BotW play-through completely ignoring the main story quests, running around shirtless and climbing everything. I only entered Kakariko Village after I had gotten the Master Sword, cleared all four Divine Beasts, and completed ~115 shrines, and it was so I could complete yet another shrine. My roommate at the time kept asking me when I was going to go to Kakariko, to which I frequently reminded him that it wouldn’t happen, only to finally get there and realize the shrine in question was a combat tutorial. Having already beaten most if not all of the tests of strength, I found this absolutely hilarious
the best case i’ve ever had of “Playing a game wrong” is playing Forza Horizon 4 like a driving sim. I would put on a podcast, put the controls on the most realistic settings, I followed stopped signs, i followed red lights and green lights, and followed speed signs, followed traffic laws and looked at the pretty sights like a tourist.
It was extremely relaxing and extremely odd in a fun way as I knew this was not the intended way to play the game XD
if you havent yet, check out the shutoko revival project. basicly zooming around in japan with other people, really chill and nice to hoon around in.
The thing with the Forza games is that they craft beautiful worlds and vistas around the tracks and races you are supposed to engage in. Which is interesting because if you play the game in the way you are "meant" to play, you end up not being able to focus on those beautifully crafted and rendered vistas and be able to properly appreciate them.
I am sure more than a few developers tested their game (and then played with their hard work after release) in a similar way, so as to fully appreciate said beautiful graphics.
this makes me remember trying to be a good sunday driver in a gta, stopping at lights until I rearbumped a cop by mistake and died. Just like in real life ; -)
@@juampan I also tried that in GTA several times. But since I'm playing at PC with mouse+keyboard controls, there's virtually no way to abide by the speed limit.
GTA Law Abiding Citizen Challenge
I love how DougDoug gave a shoutout to Raz's channel on stream the other day, and this feels like Raz being such a stupidly nice guy that he made a whole video to give DougDoug a shoutout back. Both of you guys are awesome!
lol are you talking about the moth thing? that wasn't just a shout out! I put my kid's name on the line!
On the real, me having him in this video and him giving the shoutout are entirely unrelated, but I do guess it all comes from a place of us having mutual respect for each other's works!
lmao that's true, there were def stakes involved
Coincidence or not though, I feel like both of you are just genuinely good people, and I appreciate that. Unless... it's all just all just a ploy to fool naive people like me to get more subs?!
Well played, sir
@@foxglovelove8379 if you don’t mind me asking, what happened? I don’t actively watch DougDoug’s streams, but I’m very intrigued.
@@Atellas saaameee
@@Atellas doug was telling his chat how when he upgraded the discussion generator like half of the wiki’s he got where just moths. So in classic dougdoug fashion he started a bet that there would be a moth wiki in the next 10 he got. (It picks random english wiki’s). He lost several times. Then raz came in eventually and doug bet with him instead of chat, that if a moth would come up in the next 10 or 20 wiki’s ( I can’t remember the number) raz has to change his kids name (I think to the name Doug) raz won, sadly😢😢
I think I got the gist but correct me if i was wrong on something😅
This exact message is why I fell in love with games and Role Play in MMO’s, which eventually developed into me becoming a Dungeon Master for the last decade. My players making decisions that completely baffle me and permanently change the story creates unforgettable memories. It makes the story ours and not mine. ❤ Thank you Raz.
I am a new player interested in dnd
Do you still dm? And can you dm a game in text only?
i have a group of friends that have tried to do a dnd campaign, one time i was like this battle hardened samurai like character that never admits when hes wrong, we were attacked by undead which are sometimes hard mobs to deal with because of their 50% chance to respawn and the weren't normal undead from what i remember, one of my friends was really "drunk" and on my shoulder and throwing up while we were running from these beefed up zombies, i killed one and was continuing to run but they were starting to gain on me, thats when i had the brilliant idea to use my friends throw up as a distraction, i pointed my friend in towards the enemy to distract them so i could go for a blow to kill one or both. the throw up was enough, both of them tripped on the throw up and died. we were laughing because my plan somehow managed to work out in my favor then we expected, using throw up as a distraction did all the work. thats what makes dnd great, is there are really fun ways to play if the dm allows, i always find dnd memes funny because it points out these wild stories that can be shared with other players and for some reason the shenanigan's always seem to work out but reasonable plans only sometimes do. it gets wild the stories i hear from past campaigns.
I think the beauty of Outer Wilds, at least before the DLC, was that there isn't a wrong way to play it. The game doesn't push you towards a specific order to approach things, it just gives the player an interesting mystery then gives you a spaceship and sends you on your way to explore it's universe in any way you please.
The number of fortresses I cleared out in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey by just buffing my eagle, standing at a distance from the place, and just having him attack people repeatedly until they were dead still tickles me.
And you're proud of that ?
@@vee1766 why wouldn't he be
I respect that everyone has their own way of playing, but to me that does sound pretty boring. It's the equivalent of putting in a console command >kill all enemies - I guess it can be funny that it's possible in the first place.
@@emilio_mlx My problem isn't the action, it's the repetition of it. These people sound like drug addicts, doing the same mindless thing over and over and over without even really knowing why.
@@emilio_mlx to each their fun
My brother once asked me to playtest a level he'd been building and was dismayed when I took the controller and immediately jumped into the completely cosmetic river and tried to walk up it underwater. He was asking me to stop when his girlfriend cut in and said "Let her do it. This is exactly the kind of stupid stuff people are going to do."
It has to be a weird 'kill your darlings' moment for game devs to realise that the beautiful path that they've constructed is a challenge of limitation to others in a way I didn't really think about until then.
This is what it means to playtest a game you do every unimaginable thing the dev wouldn't expect you to do. This is what helps create well polished games.
@@LewdMe Its part of the reason Botw turned out so good. I think they spent more time play testing it than actually designing it.
@@LewdMe feels like no studio does this these days…
@@Dan_K_Meme exactly looking at you security breach devs
I like that his girlfriend jumped in to defend you by calling you stupid
The point made about flexibility at around 8:15 reminds me of a lesson I learned when pursuing illustration and artwork as a hobby in the past years. Having limitations breeds creativity, just like having resistance to a players creativity makes a player want to do more to see what they can get away with. It's a lot like an artist stuck with just one brush, one pen, or maybe a selection of just 3 paint colors for their canvas. When a person is presented a limited range of options they will use those options in ways they probably never would of imagined they could.
One of my fondest gaming memories is my sister and I playing "gardner" in Mario Kart 64. Staying in last place and getting the star to see who could remove the most trees from Peach's Castle
My second, full, "white robe" playthrough of journey was perhaps the most memorable and emotional video game experience I've ever had. I was going for the trophy where you've shared the majority the journey with 1 player, and was immediately paired with another white robed player. We preceded to fly through the game by giving each other infinite flight, as if we both knew exactly why we were playing this playthrough. But the real beautiful moments came from the surfing scene where we couldn't go faster than the game intended, so we spontaneously criss-crossed paths. From then onwards, and at the very end of the game, we continued to weave patterns together. Journey is honestly such a fantastic work of art as an exploration of human communication.
I remember watching my dad play it and he'd constantly go to the most out of the way corners of the map in order to explore. He'd walk the edge of the map until the wind walls pushed the character back just to see the animation of the wayfarer shaking the sand off its robes. The time I remember most is one day he got to the end of the underground area and we found out that once you reach the shrine, all the war machines despawn, so he walked all the way back to the beginning of the area to look around, it was incredible.
I remember the second playthrough of the game I promised myself to collect these stuff that make fly longer and try to reach stupid places. Then in the snow mountain I just kept trolling with these big stone like serpent flying predators...I had nothing to lose afterall
A brilliant game. My first n only playthrough I stumbled across someone else about 10 minutes in. We stuck together the whole way through and it felt so special and I can't imagine another game giving me that feeling
I fricking love the entire genre of let's plays where players try to break the game or intentionally don't try to do what the developers intended. RTGame and Let's Game It Out are some of my favourites.
I don't watch many letsplays, but the ones I watch are usually chaotic game breaking ones that are super funny
Botw is the best example of this
Let's game it out --- for Chaos :D
i hope he tries Skyrim
@@isaiahkepner8078 idk, with botw it often feels like Nintendo was like "here's some Tools, go ham"
RTGame is one of my favourites in this genre of TH-cam because despite his chaotic tendencies he is still willing to get invested
"The most rewarding part of pursuing dumb things is doing it with others." 11:25
Well said sir.
The amount of joy I get from clipping into a debug room is unmatched.
I'm 2min in and I'm immediately thinking of how art is not complete when the artist is done, it's complete when the viewer interprets it.
I really like how you included Human Fall Flat in the footage - I think that game does a really great job of suggesting that finding your own solution to the puzzle can be just as entertaining as solving it in the way the devs intended
The later levels feel more and more restrictive though. I think they went to far into the "one solution challenge" there
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton you can still beat all the levels while not doing any of the puzzles
but its definitely not as easy as the older levels.
On the topic of Journey, it has some of my favorite glitchy movement in any game ever. With enough finesse, you are able to launch yourself at mach speeds and fly around like superman. It’s a skill that you can master and the community calls it fancy flying. You can even slowly just elevate yourself infinitely to the edge of the sky. I love replaying the game now and it’s because of this other world attached but separate from the intended experience
Recently a couple of friends and I bought ICARUS, the survival game. We set up a dedicated server and started making a base. After a while we discovered that not all the map was accesible and that we had to do missions to unlock it. We didn't do that, instead we built a giant fucking tower to get over the mountains into the desert. We didn't play much after that but it was fun.
Edit: The last part of the video is why streaming is so compelling for so many people. Sharing that moment is so so powerful.
I remember back when internet wasnt as common,Everyone would play older gta games and instead of like trying to the missions in the intended ways and unlocking new cities,everyone would just try to come up with their own methods to cross the barriers placed to prevent players from going there
I tried for hours and hours just to unlock the next city when I could have just played the missions
I remember this stuff more fondly now than the proper mission sequence
Discovering new things and mechanics not even the developers know about is always a wonderful experience
It can add a lot to a game, like combos in street fighter, too bad there are companies like blizzard
Would assume that you don't mean all combos because most of them are not only known by the developers, but they built the game around them.
@@semicolonArial was really only talking about the first one when combos werent a thing yet, but because of how the game worked it was possible to string together moves to make combos, which wasnt intended by the developers
@@semicolonArial surprisingly majority of the combos are unknown by devs. And after every single balance patch new combos are created. The devs wouldn't have the time to figure out every possibility for every character hence the balance patches to fix certain things or add more options for the characters
@@semicolonArial
Sometimes the illusion is good enough though.
I played through dark souls 3 with a first person mod with some friends and my buddy learned in the last boss fight that holding circle let’s you run. Ended up being accidentally impressive he almost beat DS3 without running once.
That's pretty much exactly what happened to me when I played Titan souls. It wasn't until during the final boss fight or perhaps when I started New game Plus that I learned I could run by holding the roll button.
Wait til he hears about the player that finished it without taking a single step
hang on... you can what? If this is true of DS1 as well I might just be able to keep playing
@@KyriosHeptagrammaton Yeah, all the souls games have a sprint. in DS1 letting go of sprint and immediately hitting the same button again is how you do "jumps". In DkS2/3 you click the joystick when sprinting to do the jump.
You can also sprint up ladders in some of the souls games, and depending on the game you can either hold or tap dodge when on a ladder to slide down.
@@TuffMelon I just played for the first time in 8 months. Super rusty and yet had my second best attempt against a boss ever. Sprinting and Jumping is a game changer! This is like when it took me 2-3 Divine Beasts to learn you could dodge
I remember in Smackdown: Here Comes the Pain, you can actually glitch out of the Elimination Chamber and basically play hide-and-seek in the crowd. Also, when playing a hardcore match outside of the arena where there's a helicopter overhead, pressing the square button on the PS2 controller while standing on a platform will basically make your wrestler do a super jump w/o taking any damage.
Damn
Not playing games the right way has given me my best memories with games, and I love combining that with getting achievements with others, because then I have an indicator to the memory.
There's an achievement in Halo Infinite that asks you to have 3 other players get into your vehicle after you've used the horn. I carried the achievement out with my friend that I always play games with, my brother on his PC, and my dad on his own console. We then all hopped out of our seats, and rotated around the vehicle clockwise - each taking our turn to get the achievement. Meanwhile, some other player on our team was stood there watching us perform something that looked like a ritual. They probably didn't even know it was related to an achievement, so it would've looked ridiculous, and that just made it even funnier. Now I'll always remember that and all of us laughing into our mics, whenever I see the achievement.
"Sharing experiences makes them feel more important." I think that is another reason why reaction videos have become so prevalent, besides living vicariously through others to re-experience something for the first time. When you play a game on your own, the experience doesn't have that same feeling of significance as when you experience it with someone else. Watching someone else react to something you played can, albeit to a lesser degree, still give you some of that feeling.
I think that's why I have not been playing games so much because no one played with me or I did not have the people to play it with no wonder I still remember the memories of me and my grandmother playing peggle or playing a game of l4d2 with people and communicating with each other
For me it was gears of war 3,i played it on xbox late enough that the servers were mostly empty,but eventually i ended up playing it with friends locally and what was just a fun game about manly men tearing cave dwellers with chainsaws became a vague but precious memory
Halo 2 is just such a special game. The fact that Bungie placed things such as the Blind skull or the Scarab gun in the weirdest, least accessible out-of-bounds places tells me that they fully expected people to break the game the way they did and I think that's absolutely beautiful.
_yes_
many hours were spent with my best friend trying to get to places we weren't supposed to
scarab gun was actually a mistake that it was left there, joseph staten explained it on twitter recently
Comment had 117 likes so I can't give it more...
I love that DougDoug joined you for this video, I have had so much side-splitting laughter from his crazy game experiments!
My favorite thing to do in Halo 2 as a kid was seeing how far I could go with a ghost vehicle😂 I would fit it through every door and hallway I could until the next mission
Playing Skyrim as an npc is one of the most fun and surprisingly entertaining things you can do in the game. Changing the game’s perspective makes you feel almost part of the game itself and allows true immersion.
This couldn't be more true. I did this recently and it was surprisingly fun.
It took me a year to even deliver the Dragonstone. So I had no dragons, except the one in the intro, for an entire year. When they finally showed up, it made a much bigger impact on me than it would have so soon. I knew when I gave that stone to that shady wizard that shit would get bad.
How do you play as an npc
@@saribzahoor they mean play like an NPC. Or in other words, Role Play.
Skyrim doesn't really have enough content to make this worth it. Plus the economy is broken. You get way too rich doing stuff like mining or farming, compared to what real NPCs apparently get for their labor.
Huh, somehow it had never really occured to me that 'death of the author' really does apply to videogames as well as literature. This was a really inspiring essay, thank you Raz. Also I know Doug's not exactly a small creator, but it's still cool to see him being shared around the internet, so that was awesome too!
Death of the author is kind of the main feature of gaming honestly.
@@saisameer8771 what is death of the author?
@@ShinoaburameX3333 Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing. If one follows that direction, they might interpret a piece if writing in a different way then what the author intended. So, for games, death of the author would be playing(interpreting the game) in a way that wasn't intended by the developers.
@@DGHeina so like we shoukdnt condemn harry potter because of j.k's views even though she did include alot of thrm in her writing?
@@ShinoaburameX3333 I mean, I can't tell you how you should treat a book, but I think it's best to separate the piece of literature from it's author. Certainly makes reading it more enjoyable in cases like J.K's
I'm largely a rule-follower, so stumbling across speedrunning & other game-breaking shenanigans baffled me at first. But you're right, instances of playing a game "wrong" are often more memorable and hilarious than the "right" way. My earliest memory is probably goofing off with my brother playing Dark Orbit (the one that got erased) on PC, with me controlling movement of the ship, and him in charge of the guns. Naturally, it was pretty funny to brake suddenly or go the wrong way =P
This reminds of how inside jokes are bonding experiences - they're typically shared group experiences
I think this is the core of why TTRPGs are so much fun; while there is no 'right' way to play them, there are so many layers of expectation and interpretation - the DM has what they expect, each player has their own view, then they own character's view, and these interact with everyone else's view. You often get so wrapped up in your own expectations and interpretations that what everyone else does, or even your own character does, comes as a surprise and invokes this feeling of communal discovery.
I absolutely love it when my players do something I didn't expect, even if it throws me off in the moment because it leads to the best and most memorable parts of a game, and seeing how even my own NPCs react and provoke situations according to their choices is just so interesting.
I agree with this _so much!_ Perhaps my favourite feeling when GMing is when the players take the world seriously enough that they figure something out about it that must be true, that even I haven't considered it.
I love TTRPGs, but I feel the sessions are too long. I get all burnt up after 2 hours and want to take a break and go home. Why do they have to play for like 5 hours straight at a time. They are even more complex than ordinary board games which I can play easier for a longer time. I think the way you have to be creative in each situation is more taxing than just following a simple ruleset like in a regular game
As I've got older I've found myself becoming less and less infatuated with gaming. I know a lot of us do and we put it down to responsibilities and lack of time. I've always felt like it was the death of couch co-op that did it for me, and a lot of what you've just said in this video validate my feelings. My fav memories are ducking about in games with my mates, whether it be catching a friend mid jump just to drag him off screen in little big planet or driving 2 different direction on Gran Turismo A-spec just so we can collide at top speed further around the track. At the end of the day we are social creatures and having someone sat next to you sharing your experience and fun will always top sitting in a dark room by yourself for hours on end. Bring back couch co-op and lan parties!
Local co-op is generally the best experience in gaming. Even a small detail like the second player controlling the cursor in Mario Galaxy improves the game. Playing online games on two computers in the same room also accomplishes much the same.
I remember playing battle mode in the original Mario Kart. On normal tracks.
Even just taking turns in GTA or Skyrim can be great fun
I'm sure I'm not alone in this, but I never lost my joy of gaming, even as I grew older. I suppose it's partly because I never really played games for experiencing it with others, but rather just for my own entertainment and improvement. Sure it's nice to share my experiences with others, but often times I actually prefer sitting in a dark room by myself for hours on end. There's something very soothing and relaxing about people not spoiling the experience of a game for me. Maybe I'm just weird.
With that said though, bring back couch co-op and lan parties! Those were fun too.
@@FumeiYuusha Still gaming as much with as much fun as I used to. Playing on your own means you can play at your own pace, and my pace is not the pace of most people, especially if you play with someone. I also tend to just not like most online multiplayer or especially mass multiplayer.
Nintendo still keeps couch co-op alive.
A yt channel I love that plays games like this (kinda) is @Sample, he does crazy challenges like beating hollow knight without directly killing enemies, beating celeste without climbing or beating the whole Kirby series without jumping
Back in the Halo 1 days, my friends and I would load up Boarding Action, a weird map where you're always within a few feet of the central abyss. In Halo, falling off the map denies everyone credit for the kill -- unless they just damaged you. So we'd spawn and immediately jump into the void, giving the others a few seconds to try to land a single shot for the credit.
We did this for hours on end and had a blast... high school amirite
There was a unity game - splat death salad - that had a gun that oriented your gravity to whatever surface you pointed it at. If you went underneath stairs on one map and ran into the area they intersect with the wall, you would clip out of bounds. I spent far more time exploring and messing around with that than playing the game correctly.
One time me and a friend used that to go inside the stairs and shoot rockets at anyone who entered the room.
god i miss splat death salad
This is the first time I've seen someone online talk about Splat Death Salad
Great video! Made me realize that a big part of the succes of Portal was the fact that it really tickled this feeling of rebelling against the system and trying to find ways to break the system. Not only could you experiment with portals in all kinds of creative ways, but the actual objective of the game was to break free from the controlled puzzles you were supposed to solve. And that feels a lot like what you're decribing here!
It helps that the system is represented by GLaDOS.
I always love going out of bounds. I like being outside looking in, and just exploring.
great video! a sincere thank you for including captions. this topic reminded me of "pick my unit" restrictions on fire emblem playthroughs: where unit selection/restriction is something that creates a tension that makes each playthrough potentially unique and often memorable
I've noticed my interest in gaming nearly stopped after graduating college and moving away from my roommates. With the move-out took away nearly all those small interactions and opportunities to share my experiences with others, and... with it my motivation went away. I honestly don't have many friends right now, so I'm not in the game playing mood since I wouldn't even have that many people to share my experiences with afterward.
It reminds me of how people always want to consume the latest media - if they consume something at the same time as others, they get to socialize more in this new social circle. Consume the media significantly afterward, and nobody cares anymore.
I have also noticed this. It brings to mind how elves eventually grow weary and tire of life
Funnily enough, for me it is the complete opposite. Playing alone is the fun thing in it.
If I had more friends and roommates, or a girlfriend, that I could see more often and who wouldn't just *work* all the time, I could spend time with them and share conversations with them and not devote as much time to games. Although I would probably till continue playing them, since I enjoy them
I usually play old games for several reasons. I have usually been disappointed with newest titles, and they dont even run well on my computer. I listen to 300 year old music or read 2000 year old books if they interest me. I might be a special case, though. I think the fuzz over elden ring and Victoria 3 was overrated. good games, to be sure, but not my cup of tea
There's something beautiful about forging your own experience.
It's like you become your own little game dev or play tester, enjoying every nook and cranny of the game. Or even the opposite, instead of enjoying everything you prefer to experience only certain parts - but you explore them to the fullest.
Speedrunners know many of these feelings/experiences very well. As to play the game fast, you must first play it slow and learn everything you can about it. Bending intended mechanics into unintended ones just feels so good.
Sounds fart sniffing to me
This editing was amazing! Both the content of the video essay and the editing of it blew me away, well done Razbuten!
As a child, I had Sly 3 for the PS2, and once I revisited it now that I'm grown up, I realized I never made it past level 1. I would just keep running around the Hub world rooftops of Paris, sneaking behind guards and stealing their coins. I had the introduction island and the police breakout memorized, but I never did the stages past that!
Sniper Elite is a game series that, true to its name, is designed for the player to use sniper rifles as much as possible. The levels are clearly designed with this in mind.
On one playthrough of Sniper Elite 4, I chose to only use a revolver pistol to kill enemies in a game where half of the words in the title were "Sniper". I ended up completing the entire game in this fashion, including the DLC mission where you kill Hitler.
It felt like I was playing an entirely different game, since long-range targets (such as enemy snipers) were almost completely out of my reach, and because I had limited myself to a single weapon I had to watch my ammo usage carefully. It was also very funny to hear the enemies refer to me as "Sniper" despite having no evidence to support that accusation. In the Hitler mission, I had to choose my kills carefully since firing a single shot could be enough to trigger the alarm and get Hitler to try to escape, and the revolver doesn't have a silencer. I ended up only killing 3 enemies (including Hitler himself) because of this.
Definitely one of my favorite playthroughs of that game, hands down.
Dude I LOVE playing SE4 as just a stealth action game with a sidearm and close quarters combat.
It's such intriguing seeing the boundaries of a stiff experience getting shattered just for the sake of it, it even gives players the feeling of control over it. I love it
So cool to see Atrioc’s hitman run in the beginning! Hitman is such a good example of people breaking down game mechanics to run the game as quickly as possible, and build there own experience
This was super heartfelt and gave me a sense of clarity in the fun moments I had gaming as a child, both alone (which I was lots) and with my best friends. Great vid 💚
I’m so glad DougDoug was highlighted for his differing stream ideas!
I don't think games are alone in this. Every art form is only complete when it is viewed, listened to, or read by the audience. It's more obvious with games, since the active role of the audience is so physical, but I don't think it's more important than the act (note the word relation between 'act' and 'active) of interpreting a painting, empathising with characters in a novel, or just vibing to music.
every fanfic author writing a fanfic twisting the meaning of innocuous lines comes to mind
This made me cried. Although I have friends, none of them are interested in gaming. I love games and they have accompany me through the loneliest times. Now I wish I could share them with others
I feel like I used to play games more like this when I was a kid and didn't have 1000 games I can play
The Stanley Parable is a weird one, it intends you to play the game in an unintended way.
Then when people find something completely unintended, it gets added as an ending.
fun fact, dougdoug's brother was the develper of stanley parable. Maybe the two grew up gaming together in unintended ways, one became a streamer playing them in weird ways and the other made a game about that concept
I got the bukit in real life and an adventure line yellow duct tape ^^
CONTROOLLLL? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT, STANLEY? CONTROOOOLL???
the epitome of this video's concept.
i like that outer wilds always comes up in good video game essays its just such an extraordinary game even the music
I never considered myself as someone who would "play a game wrong" because I always took that as in exploring glitches and design flaws and take advantage of them. But this video made me realize that creating your own rules and playing by them also fits the bill! I have *always* played MGS3 by only using the tranquilizer gun, from regular enemies to bosses (the ones that you can of course), but that came more of a realization that it was possible with the fact that it helps putting my personality into the character (going non-lethal is way more challenging than powering through with guns blazing). I simply cannot imagine playing the game differently now, and I think that while it's not something particular to me, it's definitely something special for me.
What you're describing is what I love about 'imm-sims'. Games in that genre are in my eyes the best example of what games can do and be.
Outer Wilds is definitely one of those games that gives you free reign to mess about however you want, but equally predicts almost exactly how you'll mess about. You decided to throw yourself at one particular planet with a speed that would otherwise instantly kill you? We have an achievement for that :)
Really? Ive been playing for a while and found a lot of hidden deaths and interactions and I got like 1 achievement out of all of them...
Something that should also be mentioned is how awful it can feel if you play a game your way and get told by friends or diehard Fans that you "play it wrong". Whilst they want to you to experience the best the game has to offer, they try too hard and Ruin it for you.
I remember Undertale during it high time being a very big victim of this mentality
my friend told me i was playing Postal the wrong way because i wasnt commiting crimes
There is a lot of elitism in the gaming community. I play a lot of American Truck Simulator, multiple hundred hours, and I like to go way over the speed limit and to burn every red light. Naturally I wanted to disable the traffic ticket, now it's an option in the base game but it was not some years ago. Some people were mad at me for the playing in the correct way when I asked how to disable the ticket on reddit back then lol, you don't decide how I like to play my games!
What really kills me is when someone plays a game in a way that actively makes it unfun for themselves, but they refuse to play the game any other way.
I don't like saying there is a right or wrong way to play a game, but I fail to see the point of making a game miserable for yourself and hating the game as if it was at fault.
@@memelordmcmike3096 playing a game one way may be fun for you but perhaps they are having fun themselves
Amazing video I’ve never thought about this topic that much, rly cool idea. Now that I think of it a lot of my favorite moments in games were when things happened the way they weren’t supposed to and it was it’s own moment
15:43
Thanks for including this, it really opened my eyes. My brother and I don't play games together as much any more, but a lot of my fond memories spawn from either playing against him or with him when we were younger. I'm working on making a small game at the moment - supposed to be "the game I wanted as a kid" (nothing special though). I now realise that what I am actually making is "the game I would have wanted to play with my brother as a kid". In a way, I want kids to be able to experience the same thing I did with my brother in years gone by - even if just a little
The experiences I've had with other people on games is what I really love about games, not so much the games themselves and I want to share that. I'm glad I see that now, thanks heaps for the video!! 👊 🎮
I’ll never forget as a kid, the countless hours I spent and halo 2 just trying to get vehicles in parts of the campaign that they weren’t supposed to be. I remember spending hours trying to get the tank on the bridge map into the tunnel or try to hijack a banshee to bring it through the tunnel and then shooting the wings off at the end of the tunnel to get it to the next section of the map. As much as I love a good story based campaign, it’s memories like those I’ll have forever.
Honestly seeing a player demolish a level in a way you didn't even think was possible is amazing.
This really put a lot of my experiences into perspective, and you continue to have insights into games that give me more tools to use when trying to get more out of my game experience, and I'm grateful for that.
kind of disappointed you didn't include a clip of driving the gauss warthog into the scarab in halo 2 though 😅
Fantastic video, as always.... I was feeling emotional coming towards the end.... then you played the outer wilds sound track.... now I'm sitting here with the biggest most fuzzy happy grin!
Growing up I played a lot of Lego Star Wars with my friend from across the street, and I remember the days that were most fun we never even really made any progress. We would sabotage each other from trying to get collectibles, murder each other when they got the hat that I wanted, etc. The part of it that I think really made it possible was the couch splitscreen, and it makes me really sad for the next generation of kids and gamers who won't have those experiences of sitting down on the couch with your best friend.
Man, I love these moments of wholesomeness in your videos. This kind of "Isn't that what gaming is all about? Isn't that using games in a way that's only possible with games?"
The Journey story almost put a tear to my eye because it felt so right.
Kinda like watching someone approach a plot twist and looking away at the key moment. Or figuring it out before the reveal. Sure, I'd feel kinda disappointed at first, but it's THEIR time playing the game and they may just make a different memory. And that's a-okay.
I played Tomb Raider: Anniversary for PC, generally unable to do the dodging jump shoot (due to a mental disability), which they had aggressively woven in as the only intended way to defeat the boss. They only really explained how to do it once. Defeated the T rex by finding a blind spot where its big head and little arms couldn't get to me. Got stuck at the centaurs and had to wait to get internet access to revisit how the heck you do it.
Back in the 360 days, I invited 4 friends over. They all played minecraft for the first time ever, in splitscreen mode. With no restrictions or goals, all of them did their own thing, and showed their personality. One tried to build a house, another tried to kill everyone, another was obsessed with getting pets, while the last tried to break the world by building the tallest possible tower. Instead of working together they clashed and laughed at each other and joined in the shared confusion and chaos. It was the most fun I had with minecraft, and I wasn't even playing.
Love to hear your thoughts Raz, your ideas always change the way I think! Your ability to see games from so many different angles is really special.
LITERALLY UR TOPICS ARE ALWAYS SO INTERESTING MAN FR KEEP UP UR WORK AND EDITINGG??
This is kinda why I have so much time Cyberpunk exploring the city. The freerunning isn't perfect, but it's super satisfying to platform up and leap across massive gaps, just barely hanging off a ledge after holding your double jump for just the right moment to get you up onto (or off of) a tower or crane and into some new vantage point, or to even little areas that had development but you are usually barred from etc.
Nothing beats OG Live party days messing around on various games, it's something I enjoy for sleepless nights and all.
As a small unknown indie dev, the 18:27 part, the final line of the main video, after all its build up, it made me tear a bit.
It's hard to get our games noticed with a very saturated market and everyone is competing against each other, regardless of their budgets.
But every time someone does find your game and tell me about their experiences, it's the best day of my life. Every time.
And also, I'm developing a new title now and I'm in the prototyping stage and I've already found an unintentional bug/feature that it's very fun and I'm letting it in. Just to reiterate that devs leave some stuff for the players like that for sure.
Enjoy the process and good luck out there!
@@Shrooblord thank you!
Honestly one of the angles for this that is incredibly relevant is that the argument of "limitations" has been discussed for multiple decades now within the TTRPG genre, such as DnD and pathfinder.
Games ARE defined by the rules and limitations, same as play, same as DND, what makes it compelling for me to talk about that one time my player monk ran down a wall to chase a fleeing enemy to kick it to its death and climb back up is because the rules for pathfinder 2e and his choices allowed him to do that WITHIN the rules, not just because "i said so"
That is why elden ring and souls like games are so compelling with how you can "exploit" to win because so much of it is within the rules but makes sense, cheesing something through a small open door or poisoning to death is allowed within the rules, even if its not a "fair fight"
Gosh I remember playing tons of custom matches on halo 3, my favorite was always max movement speed, low gravity, headshots only and magnum only. Sand trap was the best map for it because you could ramp off the geometry and fly across the map trying to dink someone who’s also flying through the air at Mach 3 😂 good times
I thought this was gonna be an essay on the appeal of speedrunning, but instead it was just a really heartfelt expression of unintended fun, and while you used clips of speedruns I don't think you even bothered to mention it. So, thanks for subverting my expectations, this was a great video!
11:25 This kinda makes me think of dnd in a way. The stuff is fun cause you do it with a group. Additionally, I've been workshoping the concept of live world building a setting with a audiance. I think that it could make for a very unique experience to see an audiance building a setting with a streamer on stream. I can't actually do that cause I don't have an audiance, but who knows maybe someday.
Also, I love seeing human fall flat clips here
i’m taking a worldbuilding class at college, and we sorta had to do something like that idea you have! it’s fun, it would definitely be cool to see it happen online. especially if the audience were able to contribute to the writing like an improv thing.
we had a project where we needed to form a group with at least 2 people outside the class and spend an hour or two together making up a world/setting together. there was a questionnaire provided by the teacher for this assignment that we needed to answer as a way of like prompting us to consider different aspects of the world. it’s probably a good idea to follow some sort of structure like that so the audience knows to take it seriously (unless you want it to end up as a funny joke thing).
it was a neat experiment, having multiple people working on the setting together led to some out of the box ideas that none of us would have come up with on our own.
A decent amount of my World of Warcraft experience was not doing raids, quests, instances, or grinding. A decent amount of it involved me just trying to reach places I wasn't supposed to get to, like the areas made to look nice that you fly over pre-Cataclysm. I spent sooooo much time doing that. It was lots of fun though glitching up on top of mountains and what not.
I've always enjoyed exploring places you should and especially shouldn't be at in all kinds of games.
Then Blizzard got tired of people going out of bounds and removed it. Beginning a long period of "no fun allowed" changes and future development.
@@cattysplat You're talking about exploits in a multiplayer game. It's not about not allowing "fun", it's about doing their jobs.
@@AnotherDuck WoW isnt a multiplayer game in the way you think it is
@@selectionn You presume to know that what I think of a game I've known for almost twenty years is wrong? Do you comprehend the amount of arrogance you've just displayed? Just for the sake of displaying your skill and expertise in a random TH-cam comment thread? And despite all of that, you utterly fail to make even the slightest of hint of a point.
Ayyy, DougDoug! I love his videos. This is a team up I never would have seen coming, but I'm loving this.
One of my favorite games I like to revisit from time to time is skate 3. Not only can the physics in that game be broken in half very easily, but you can also place stuff like rails and quarter-pipes in the game world. I've sorrento countless hours making up and building various lines to skate with the various things you can put in the world. And if that's not enough you can even build your own park from scratch.
For those who don’t know, Doug Doug’s brother is Davey Wreden, makers of the Stanley parable. That just makes the world seem small to me
XD, seeing plague Tale as an example for a game you can more or less only play the was it was intended is so funny to me. I spend forever trapping every rat I could find in a corner and burning it untill none were left in a room and trying to kill every enemy I could, no metter how unnessiarily hard it was. I don't know why but I just had to play the game this "wrong" way. Super funny to me
The way all the rat water moves in that game _is_ pretty funny I will admit
The AI is so dodgy you can definitely do some things with them that wasn't intended.
This is literally exactly what I love to do in any video game, at a friends house, anywhere any game, I try to do what they don’t want you to do.
I remember playing the halo 1 demo splitscreen with my cousin and we just stayed on the beach for hours finding new ways to crash the warthogs while avoiding the one elite who had a 1 hit kill sword and shooting rockets at eachother. It was like playing tag/keepaway and so fun.
I remember reading a game design book where on the subject of player agency, it said to think of video games as something along the lines of “a giant play where everyone has their set parts and rules, and the main character is played by a member of the audience…
…And this time, the audience member is drunk… and keeps missing their mark… and keeps trying to put buckets on people’s heads, but they’re having fun. It’s up to the playwrights whether they encourage them, or kick them off the stage.”
Fantastic video as always my man. I love how thought provoking your videos are. Also very pleasantly surprised to see DougDoug here
Another great video! I’m always happy when you release something new. Believe it or not, your trying to save the galaxy video kinda saved my life. Your videos have a way of making me see things in a totally different way and when I watched your outer wilds video it inspired me to keep trying. There’s a lot more to that story but the point is I appreciate your work more than you may believe. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
And remember, you can’t save the galaxy in a day. Cheers!
Really interesting video discussion, thanks for sharing!
Yeah, challenge running is the new speedrunning for many of us, I think. It's great fun and I definitely recommend giving it a try! :)
Another absolute BANGER of a video. You're one of my favorite creators and you inspire me to look at video games differently. Thank you Raz!
honestly that start speech is exactly how it was when I made my mods, spent countless hours making it just right
then some person comes by, steals all my work and modifies it so it's completely unbalanced
I messed around in the Bungie Halo games for years. Got outside every level of every campaign, beat them in vehicles you weren’t supposed to have access to, etc.
Two of my favorites were these:
343 Guilty Spark in H1, you could stay inside the Pelican that drops you off if you spam grenades. This would take you outside the map and reveal some very creepy Easter eggs and allow for other fun shenanigans.
In H2, Delta Halo, you could use a Ghost to wall ride and get outside the map and then go all over the place using a Ghost, plus skip all enemy spawns and have half the level not load. Halo 2 was absolutely filled with ways to break the game and I loved it
Watching this brought me back to the days when I and a few friends played TF2 together. The silly, crazy combo's we'd try when things got stale. And then the glee when those off the wall ideas worked.
I had a "Caber Jumper" build that just used the BASE Jumper, Sticky Jumper, and Ullapool Caber as a hyper mobile pick class. I'd just jump in at reckless speed, get my pick, jump out, restock at respawn, and repeat.
I remember one game on Frontier where I was on Red. I managed to get into a rhythm of picking the Blue Medic as soon as he walked out the gates near the final point. I was just too fast for his team to react to me jumping in, popping their med, and jumping out.
Growing up I often played games alone, no one else in my family was all that interested in games so it was just me and I enjoyed the boundaries of the game just fine. But then, it was always so strange to me how as soon as I had a friend over to game with how the process of play devolved into pushing against and outright attacking the "form" of the game, riddled with laughter and exclamations of "holy shit, how did that happen?". Seeing something through the eyes of someone else, even just by having them sitting next to you can be a powerful influence on your "now" I suppose. I could probably keep unpacking this, but it's the weekend and my brain is tired. Anyways, great video!
I feel you so much on this, whenever my brother watches me play, I suddenly get the motivation to do insane shit that I hadn't even tought of before. Because suddenly there's someone there to share this experience and laugh with me. I love it so much. I still remember running into a high-level enemy in Final Fantasy XV and deciding to make a mad dash for the dungeon entrance without getting mauled to death while sing-songing "Oh, hell no" coupled with the swelling choirs of the boss music with my brother laughing his ass off in the background. Most fun I've had in the game by far until now.
I think that's why we need more immersive sim games, it's literally a genre that captures this exact feeling of experimenting and playing the game your way, with each playthrough being different
NGL, I was expecting this to be about immersive sims. But then I realized, while immersive sims give you the systems to experiment with your approach to problem solving, they're not exactly the "wrong" way to play the game. For instance, the LAM climbing in the original Deus Ex may be unorthodox but is not exactly wrong, just something the developers didn't intend when developing the title.
But I wholeheartedly agree. We need more immersive sims.
@@dinothegonzo I'm pretty sure there is always a wrong and the right way to play any game, just depends on who you ask😄 I think I just considered the idea of the video as you mentioned, and especially the replayability factor and the idea of making up your own challenges independently from what the game initially asks of you. Or maybe I'm just too sad that the genre is dying and how much I had fun playing Prey
@@dinothegonzo I once made a tower of junk to get on the 2nd floor of an apartment on the Paris level, it saved me 3 lockpicks.
@@aliisa5088 Prey is a great game and had some great gameplay moments
I think the problem is imsims cost too much money and time to develop, its kind of a niche genre and making all of these options available and having so many converging systems and gameplay mechanics takes a lot of time, especially when the casual gamer will probably just take the most straight forward path and thus all the effort of these alternate paths and ways to do something went to waste. its also easier and more profitable to just make a linear game, hence why there hasnt been any new awesome imsim single player games, just linear games like Plague tale, the last of us, god of war, etc.
A few years ago I was playing Phasmophobia with a friend I no longer talk to. We had already finished the objective of the game which is to identify the ghost but suddenly he called for us to raid the house. We then spent the next 45-60 minutes stealing every moveable object from the house. It's truly a memory I treasure and I thank you that this video expressed the importance of doing things just like it
the tension between the players creativity and a game's system is quite similar to what I've learnt in poetry class. it's satisfying and rewarding to write in poetic forms like the sonnet or the ghazal because you are then attempting to find your unique space within an established system. great video!