To be fair, I enjoy Mountain for what it is: a funny screensaver that throws surprises at you from time to time. It's cool to have it open while you are working on something else. From time to time you go back to it and see how much it has changed.
I love that when you Re talking about how it conveys the idea of certain things we consider to define our lives is insignificant on a larger scale or something going beyond us. And then a trophy pops in the corner.
Like I said, there are bits of tonal weirdness that contradict a lot of what the rest of the game's trying to do. But yeah, the cheevos are totally a part of that.
Errant Signal hey! Great video, I just thought the irony was funny and imagining someone spending hours trying to get the platinum, completely unaware of what the game is about
In hearing your issue with the presentation of Alan Watts' ideas of everything being Events in the face of the game presenting things, I was reminded of the dilemma I faced while studying Heidegger in parallel to learning Object Oriented Programming techniques. We're so thoroughly steeped in thinginess, down to the minutia of our language.
Fascinating. 🤔 The first time I heard of this parallel was from the underappreciated Jacque Fresco - who made it perfectly clear that any time anything is beyond functionality, is due to fear driven motives. You can train a Dog to tear ppl to shreds or to help the Blind & save ppl from drowning. You an create a holistic system to created shared global abundance, or you can stock pile enough weaponry to wipe out all life as we know it. We are all as one. Currently at war with each other due to this irrational fear.
"One thing the game doesn't do so well is selling the interconnectivity of all things" lmaooooo realtalk tho i'd be surprised if a game ever fully realized this idea
I mean I can do bile too See: Bioshock Infinite, Dead Rising 4, Watch_Dogs. Also I've got an episode on the back-burner that's kinda bile-y. But I try not to focus on that stuff! I've also got lots of happy episodes planned!
Errant Signal sometimes bile and snark on the critic's part is good for the consumer, its good to stay positive but dont treat a scathing review as a bad thing to make if thats what the product deserves
Bile can happen. Videogames are subjective and still in their infancy. As Bill Gates said over 10 years ago we're just now getting to the point everyone wanted to be back in the 80s.
He usually reserves his bile and snark for mainstream games. Case in point: His love affair with "Gone Home", while trashing The Last of Us for not having a good enough link between its gameplay elements and story. Too much talking, observations and then shooting zombies I guess. "Gone Home" revolves around looking at items and listening to casettes about your gay sister. Perhaps the most overrated game of the last 10 years
As someone who has read nearly all of Watt's books, I think you conveyed his ideas quite well. I didn't know about this game, and I am thankful that you made a video on it!
I really enjoy all your videos, I don't comment often but I want you to know how much I love watching them and appreciate your work. I like that your channel isn't just ripping on games, you want to stay positive because you love what you're doing. It's very refreshing. Keep up the good work!
I think Aliens 3 is primarily about a mechanical concept - an objective-driven run'gun that is also a metroidvania - and it's thematic elements are more of an afterthought. I'd assume that Probe Software was working on that title before getting Alien 3 license, and simply slapped it on to sell more copies (and not have to worry about story and concept art). Considering that it's one of 3 "Alien 3" different games by Probe, I think it's likely that it's exactly what happened. Faithful adaptation of Alien 3 would probably be a Myst-like FMV adventure horror game with emphasis on exploring the prison facility.
The External World, I think, personally, is about how the seperation between fiction/artifice and reality works in the human mind. You clearly see the model boundaries for the buildings in the opening sequence, you clearly see interstitials stating the title of the video you are watching, as if to remind the viewer of the artifice's, well...artificiality. But, in the end, does that prevent you from being disturbed by the Retirement Home segment sequence? No. Does that prevent you from being disturbed by the aftermath of the man taking "Go Fuck Yourself"? No. Does the piece still haunt you? Yes. The line between fiction and _the external world_ does not truly exist in any mind fully. The External World knows that, and in a certain, subtle way, it horrifies you throughout its running time by playing with this concept. Yet you can't look away. There is some sort of bleedthrough here. And it is beautiful. In the same way that viewing a car crash is beautiful.
Honestly, what I think about is the mythos in Skyrim set up by James Kirkbride about the conflict between what is a fundamentally gnostic elven philosophy that hates the concept of causality and views all action and reality as a corruption of a perfect hypothetical fighting to destroy the existentialist Nietschian superman philosophy espoused by the empire of men and in particular as a contrast against the Vivec of Morrowind that epitomized that philosophy. ... but then again, that existed almost solely within the lore books that you don't actually play through.
I'm going to ignore the fact that this video is over a year old because I just recently discovered your channel, and I have been thoroughly enjoying your style of thoughtful critique. It just so happens that this particular video is the most clear example of the "Play vs Game" discussion. (And Yes, I realize that most people are just puppeting others instead of actually HAVING a discussion, which leads to nothing but stubbornness and hurt feelings for most, but the discussion itself still has value). Mountain is MOST DEFINITELY not a game. Even if you don't proscribe the the Chris Crawford style hierarchy definition of "game" I would challenge you to find a definition that Mountain did fit, but something like a screensaver (which we can likely say is not a game) would not. I'm not saying it has no value/worth. But calling it a game is a bit disingenuous. It is Art, or possible entertainment, but not a game.Interesting and pretentious? Yes. Game? no. Along the same lines, Everything is not a game either. I found it to be entertaining. It was clearly an "Experience" but it lacks many of the things that need to be there to be a "game". Am I just being a pedant when I bring this up? Sort of? But I do have a reason. We (as people) label things to allow us to relate them to other things. It is a useful tool that can often (though not always) help us make good decisions with our extremely limited time. Grouping Mountain or Everything in with other "games" does a disservice to those who are in the market to purchase a game. If someone were to purchase something like Proteus, thinking it was a game because it is listed with other games, and did so with their limited money, they would be justified in being angry at feeling misled. Can this be avoided by a potential customer researching a game before purchase? Probably. But even that requires a time commitment. And time is the resource here after all. This assumes that one could even find enough trustworthy sources that are willing to label a non-game as such. The vast majority of reviews are, by their nature as user reviews, inherently not useful. I'm not claiming that they all lack in quality. But the usefulness of a review is directly linked to how well you know the reviewers tastes, and whether or not you agree with the body of their previous work. If you don't already know your tastes align with a reviewer, their opinion doesn't really help you to decide. So, uh, anyway. I enjoy your videos. I think you should define for your self what you do, or do not consider a "game' (hopefully based on some research). And possibly make a video on it?
I rather liked Mountain. It was weird, but easy to put in a corner while working to see what stuff it'd collect. That being said, if there was a meaning to it, I didn't find one outside of "I wonder what's going on with Mountain today"
Every episode inspires me to continue caring about gaming on a deeper level when it seems like everyone and everything just wants to take the most superficial subjective look at things. Stuff like this is why I still game and will do it my whole life.
This game got me interested in his lectures, so after that I went and looked up the ones put on youtube, and now they are what I listen to while going to sleep, his voice is just so soothing for some reason.
...and it's not like watching (these hordes?) of animals rotate 90-degree increments to move across the lands while you have a conversation with a house
Damn I love this youtube channel. Thanks for the great content. "There was a young man who said 'Damn. For it certainly seems that I am, a creature that moves in determinate grooves, I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram.'"
This is one of those times where you say what I would’ve said but far more thoroughly and somehow more succinctly than I would’ve done. Thank you for giving me a video I can show people to get them to play this game
Part of me hates that I watched this before I have a chance to dive into Everything, but at the same time, I'm happy that I'll be able to go to it with this insight
this is a really good game to play with kids, they love the absurdity. thanks for your analysis I missed how time moved differently in each level and I didn't really think about why the game played itself on a philosophical level,I just thought it was like a screensaver and a way of making the trophies a little less of a grind
I should note here for those of you who are like me, an atheist, and shy away from anything with the word "spiritual" in it: Alan Watts is pretty much a non-theist, and tries to put concepts like "God" and "spirituality" into a context that isn't predicated on believing in those things. It's difficult to explain, but to put it simply, he's inoffensive to atheists and theists alike. Despite being such a heady, conceptually verbose guy, all of his ideas are very mundane and easy to relate to for almost anyone. Listen to his speeches and don't feel bad if you zone in and out. You'll come back to him over and over again throughout your life and learn something new when you need it.
To expand on this, one would probably be better to listen to lectures from Watts than a video about a video game. Watts core views are to highlight the unity of reality, and that involves examining the conditioned self we make and ultimately identify with that blurs this unity into divisions. This is something we can say is more true about reality today than when Watts was alive, for he died in the 1970s. We know enough of the self from a neurological and psychological sense to know it's an illusion, so there's no need to see the points Watts makes as exclusive to Buddhist thought: it's accountable thought, factual thought, hence why his somewhat wooly words about God and spirituality don't even secret, spooky knowledge, games of authority, and blind belief. His philosophy, simply put, is self-inquiry: to find your ego is to see it as an image, not an entity. Many of us suffer in this world because we confuse images for reality, and that starts with all of us by identifying with a self. There's no "surfer" to the "wave" of your organism, and with enough discipline and inquiry, one can grasp this. There's no "looker" in addition to looking, no entity peeking in addition to what your eyes perceive. And yet, so long as we think in terms of dualism, to think we have a special snowflake soul or ego that has these attributes, we get caught in this warped lens of perception. Jiddu Krishnamurti, a friend of Watts, goes very hard on these issues to emphasize where divisions are created, suffering and conflict occur. One need not go too far in their lives to see this unfolds just from a first-person perspective of identification to concepts and thoughts.
You really like words, eh? I think a videogame is a fine place to absorb watts. Like you, he's extremely wordy and hard to follow, and even myself, who's normally pretty thorough with texts and speeches, enjoy him when I'm doing something else and he's passively talking in the background. Makes it easier for his lessons to wash over me, and then when I am actually utilizing those ideas in practice later, I can go look up what he said and confirm the lesson.
Always Falling Short Old comment but if you shy away from anything with the word “spiritual” in it, then you’re no better than a zealous theist. Replace “spiritual” with Yahweh, God, or Muhammad. Boom, crusade. All isolation and ignorance have given us are bloodshed and divide. There’s nothing wrong with trying a bite of a new food, or dipping your toe in the pool. You don’t have to become a monk to understand Buddhism, so you shouldn’t feel afraid to do research or try to see things from their point of view. I loved how civil the two of you were and it’s a great show of how simple communication can be a beautiful way of spreading ideas instead of outright ending the conversation at “Wow you talk too much”
So I picked up this game when this video first came out, and I never actually got around to playing it until today. It was so jarring and mystifying that I had to come back to this video and see what you thought. I completely agree the game's tone could've been more consistent, although I think the strange non-articulated art style, on top of being absurd, helps convey the metaphorical nature of the message. Abandoning the notion of the individual is made more stark when the game is overtly surreal. It's unique in that it gives you this agency by letting you do this strange stuff, and also tells you how your thoughts aren't really yours (at least not in the sense that you alone create them), but they're the product of other thoughts, and ultimately the circumstances of the world around you, and therefore all thought is the world thinking itself. So you can advance your will into the world and do whatever absurd thing you want, but only inasmuch as you're part of this absurd world (the game) yourself, and so your will is just another ingredient in the confluence of events that are taking place, no matter how wild it is. Now, I never did get back to the golden gate after I wandered off, and I never had the world be "destroyed by too much winning" and if I had, maybe I'd be more put off by the other absurdist elements. That absolutely clashed.
I never could get the rolling quadrupeds thing. Usually I'd switch over to something small enough or upright enough (penguins) that did the South Park hop.
Oh, would just like to note. Everything does have a little bit interactivity between the things, animals will get allerted by fire, and seen at least one other. They think fire, when fire nears them.
given the rest of the junk in the comments I feel like adding something more positive would be nice. though I don't have any meaningful to add but I can say I do really like these videos and really appreciate a more thoughtful and meaningful approach to criticizing and talking about games.
Tim Martin may write about art(which includes video game) and books for the Times, the Telegraph, and The Economist very well. But you are still better. Also, its really cool now that games are talked about in terms of art in well respected magazines like the Times, The Economist and etc. And now magazines about culture talk about games as well.
Could you say that your playing the game, and moving around in the world, causing new objects to be rendered/generated, is an example of things being defined by other things.
Man, the quality of your videos increases significantly with each new one. I hope to see a collab between you and Mark Brown some day, that would be mind-blowing.
I find it that the message in "everything" and the philosophy it presents is a very 'neutral' way of seeing the ego-less universe. Everything we know as bad that the universe absolutely does not care about is also absolutely justified just as much as good and everything without ego. A lot of people find this profound, and it is, I'm happy for you but it just comes off as a step in no direction. I can be pessimistic or optimistic, either way this neutral philosophy just does not encourage anyone one way or another. It tries too, because the philosopher comes with good intention, saying were part of everything. But that everything only says OK, it does not say BE MORE or BE LESS. All it says is OK, which just does not ring the urge to git gud or learn, but just accept where you are... were humans, and we are abstract. I cannot be happy with just eating and sleeping, I want to create. I will want to make other humans happy. This is predictable to the universe and so it does not care, but "I" do and so does "They" and "We". I am not here (Current presence) without a reason. And that is what bugs me with "everything"s philosophy... were more than what everything is intending. Everyone likes to look at big bang as being huge and grand (Even if it is just a theory)... but anything else is much more complicated.
This is one of those games that I'm glad exists but could never play or engage with myself because I'd be too bored asking what the point of it all is.
Alan Watts sentiment, is perhaps?: We are everything we belong to as much as everything we belong to is us. Our cells act individually, and act with individuality, but also predictably form human like behaviour together which we call a human. We act individually, and act with individuality, but also predictably form an overlapping network of societies and even the galaxy we live in. In a very real sense, we are the galaxy we live in as much as our cells are us, a neutron is a creature in itself, a cell, but is also in its entirety and on a very different scale a small piece of a thought. A river "whirlpools" and a planet "cities", these verbs can be a more natural way to understand things though there process than nouns are a way of understanding things through there substance. Perhaps one in every 1,000,000,000,000,000 galaxies by the time it is 1,000,000,000,000 years old does something unusual like civilisations to the point where most of the matter in it is organised into a geometrically neat shape. Even this just a process that the process we call a galaxy occasionally goes through. And from there down (and up) can be thought of not as hierarchy, not in a stack of things, but an overlapping collection of processes we call "everything".
I can't wait for that game from Her exist in VR. That would be hilarious and be much more hilarious if they hired Spike Jonze as the swearing alien creature. Either way, I will pick up Everything (the game) in two weeks.
I'm not big into actual hardcore philosophy, so this kind of stuff goes right past me. If I had played this game, I'd have gotten bored with it very quickly. But through your video, I can understand it's meaning and it's actually very interesting to me. Still, probably not going to do any sort of philosophical research or anything.
I had know about Alan Watts, but I didn't knew that he helped spreading Eastern philosophy in the West. My mom is into it a lot, and it's really interesting to think over.
The game's mechanically light and philosophically "heavy" by design. There really isn't a way to execute the pitch of the game in a way that would bring everybody on board so if there's major criticism to be made of it, well, you might as well just be blaming it for trying. I've enjoyed the numerous hours of Alan Watts scattered on YT so for me I suppose it's preaching to the choir, but I appreciate the fresh take on the words of one of my favorite people to listen to when I want to put my head in the clouds.
The only other game (that I know of) that tried something like this was _The Old City: Leviathan_ and I *hated* it. You know those lectures that begin with an anecdote to better illustrate the subject? Well, TOC:L is a very dry, very sleepy Ontology 101 lecture, with the anecdote (about the titular city, its rival factions, its Fall, minotaurs, Jonahs, whales, Solomons and assorted mythological references) that gets abandoned a quarter of the way through, so that the last 3 hours of the game is spent wading through a mire of slapdash platonistic imagery. All non-interactive, of course. Y'know, I liked _Dear Esther_ but, as its clones grew more popular, I began to understand _why_ I liked Dear Esther and just how much all the pretenders can't even shine its shoes when it comes to writing.
I find it hard to take any philosophy which insists that not following it's precepts leads to misery, and similarly for texts which insist the same about their philosophies. This is particularly true of Everything's portrayal of anchoring oneself to their identity and hence isolating oneself from Watts's philosophical musings as a broken hellscape. This is made worse by the fact that his philosophy is fundamentally at odds with my understanding of identity, leading to it coming off as nonsensical in the square triangle sense. Not a great first impression. Which is a shame, since a few of those ideas (like how you can't define things except in relation to other things) seem to merit consideration.
so glad to be learning about this game. this idea the game is based on immediately reminds me of evangelion, where it proposes humans are all only separated by the ego. and the goal of the angels were to return the world to a primordial soup where humans all become one again and ego is non existent
I've been torn on this game since I first played it. On one hand, many of of it's existential themes can be nice and relaxing in a way, and sometimes it's humorous. On the other hand, and maybe this is just from me hanging around too many... let's say, interesting... psychedelic communities online, but Alan Watts has always rubbed me the wrong way. Whether it's from the way a lot of people (from what I've seen, tbf. Could just be sample bias) uncritically consume the things he says and put him on an insane pedestal, or whether it's them using his philosophies as though-terminating clichés when thinking or talking about issues of the world, or to avoid thinking about such things altogether. It's kind of reminiscent the stereotype of hippies once being staunchly and vocally anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-discrimination, etc., and doing activism that aligns with those values, only to eventually have those values fall away while hippie culture becomes nothing more than "good vibes", avoiding stress just for oneself, and engaging with philosophical ideas only in a "whoa, dude,", purely theoretical, politically impotent way. It's easy to say things like "We are everything, we are all one. Untether yourself from the issues of this world," when you yourself are not in a position of significant suffering, or when you have the relative privilege of being able to look past the suffering you are experiencing. And it's an especially easy framing of the world to internalize, as it presents no call to action to help others be free of suffering. It's something to make yourself feel good, that presents this idea of a sort of ontological peace as one that simply requires freeing yourself from stress and worldly attachments, rather than seeking to help others also live peacefully when you can. It's similarly easy to say things like "Bears eat the fish, and in so doing help define the fish," when you yourself are a human raised to be speciestly unconcerned with the suffering that any non-human experiences, outside of maybe pets or perhaps thought experiments involving theoretical creatures that are imagined to be sufficiently "human-like." Many of Watts's talks just seem riddled with these sorts of things that at times demonstrate shockingly little care for questioning the material realities of the status quo. There's some lip service to the suffering of others at times and how that's a shame and all (IIRC. Been a while since I've listened to any of his work) but that seems more to just cover his philosophical ass than anything. This all to say, many of Watts's talks give (and many of the ways I've seen his philosophies be spoken about give) me the same vibe as a "Live, laugh, love" sign hanging on the wall of a conservative's living room. His philosophies are things that people take in and display as an easy way of making themselves feel good without truly needing to change in any challenging way, but more importantly, without truly needing to change in any way that's external or does much to benefit anyone other than one's internal headspace. And while I do see how that singularly important goal that his philosophy has can be very useful, this lack of philosophical and especially ethical breadth leaves his talks feeling hollow and paradoxically self-important. Maybe this all shouldn't get under my skin so much. I don't know. I just know that I so often see him touted as such amazingly "radical" thinker despite never saying much of anything that poses any challenge to the oppressive forces and people of the world. In the end he's just another self-help guru. I feel like there's other things about him that get under my skin, but they're hard to parse, and this comment has meandered more than enough already.
I love this video, and the message, and having discovered this corner of everything, because, and I'm sure I speak for others here, I would never play this. I/me/everything am gonna go grind the everything that is Warframe for awhile now.
I really enjoyed this game. I think people need to get over the idea that just because something is heavy handed or wears its argument on its sleeve, that it's immediately "bad."
In the last video, you said you "were behind on everything"
I see what you have done here.
Double entendre?
Tyson Williams Something like that.
i like the way it treats tree/plant movement
"Certainly ... better than Mountain "
It's not really hard to be be more enjoyable than Mountain
To be fair, I enjoy Mountain for what it is: a funny screensaver that throws surprises at you from time to time. It's cool to have it open while you are working on something else. From time to time you go back to it and see how much it has changed.
Thank you. This is the best Everything review out there; very comprehensive and focusing on what matters.
I love that when you Re talking about how it conveys the idea of certain things we consider to define our lives is insignificant on a larger scale or something going beyond us. And then a trophy pops in the corner.
Like I said, there are bits of tonal weirdness that contradict a lot of what the rest of the game's trying to do. But yeah, the cheevos are totally a part of that.
Errant Signal hey! Great video, I just thought the irony was funny and imagining someone spending hours trying to get the platinum, completely unaware of what the game is about
probably a good game to play after trying psychedelics
No comments, just likes❤️🔥🙏
Or during
In hearing your issue with the presentation of Alan Watts' ideas of everything being Events in the face of the game presenting things, I was reminded of the dilemma I faced while studying Heidegger in parallel to learning Object Oriented Programming techniques. We're so thoroughly steeped in thinginess, down to the minutia of our language.
Fascinating. 🤔 The first time I heard of this parallel was from the underappreciated Jacque Fresco - who made it perfectly clear that any time anything is beyond functionality, is due to fear driven motives. You can train a Dog to tear ppl to shreds or to help the Blind & save ppl from drowning. You an create a holistic system to created shared global abundance, or you can stock pile enough weaponry to wipe out all life as we know it. We are all as one. Currently at war with each other due to this irrational fear.
If this game is of interest to viewers, please read 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' by Alan Watts. Very readable, good sense of humour and life-changing.
"One thing the game doesn't do so well is selling the interconnectivity of all things" lmaooooo realtalk tho i'd be surprised if a game ever fully realized this idea
-Dwarf Fortress-
Pardon me for fanning too much, but your stuff is amazing. In a sea of snark and bile it is nice to see meaningful game commentary. Keep it up.
I mean I can do bile too
See: Bioshock Infinite, Dead Rising 4, Watch_Dogs. Also I've got an episode on the back-burner that's kinda bile-y.
But I try not to focus on that stuff! I've also got lots of happy episodes planned!
It is nice to see a game that isn't picking through the same old pile of human centered narrative structures, too.
Errant Signal sometimes bile and snark on the critic's part is good for the consumer, its good to stay positive but dont treat a scathing review as a bad thing to make if thats what the product deserves
Bile can happen. Videogames are subjective and still in their infancy. As Bill Gates said over 10 years ago we're just now getting to the point everyone wanted to be back in the 80s.
He usually reserves his bile and snark for mainstream games. Case in point: His love affair with "Gone Home", while trashing The Last of Us for not having a good enough link between its gameplay elements and story. Too much talking, observations and then shooting zombies I guess. "Gone Home" revolves around looking at items and listening to casettes about your gay sister. Perhaps the most overrated game of the last 10 years
As someone who has read nearly all of Watt's books, I think you conveyed his ideas quite well. I didn't know about this game, and I am thankful that you made a video on it!
I really enjoy all your videos, I don't comment often but I want you to know how much I love watching them and appreciate your work. I like that your channel isn't just ripping on games, you want to stay positive because you love what you're doing. It's very refreshing. Keep up the good work!
I think Aliens 3 is primarily about a mechanical concept - an objective-driven run'gun that is also a metroidvania - and it's thematic elements are more of an afterthought. I'd assume that Probe Software was working on that title before getting Alien 3 license, and simply slapped it on to sell more copies (and not have to worry about story and concept art). Considering that it's one of 3 "Alien 3" different games by Probe, I think it's likely that it's exactly what happened. Faithful adaptation of Alien 3 would probably be a Myst-like FMV adventure horror game with emphasis on exploring the prison facility.
I'll be honest I'm surprised there aren't more comments re: The External World
The External World, I think, personally, is about how the seperation between fiction/artifice and reality works in the human mind. You clearly see the model boundaries for the buildings in the opening sequence, you clearly see interstitials stating the title of the video you are watching, as if to remind the viewer of the artifice's, well...artificiality. But, in the end, does that prevent you from being disturbed by the Retirement Home segment sequence? No. Does that prevent you from being disturbed by the aftermath of the man taking "Go Fuck Yourself"? No. Does the piece still haunt you? Yes.
The line between fiction and _the external world_ does not truly exist in any mind fully. The External World knows that, and in a certain, subtle way, it horrifies you throughout its running time by playing with this concept. Yet you can't look away. There is some sort of bleedthrough here. And it is beautiful. In the same way that viewing a car crash is beautiful.
Honestly, what I think about is the mythos in Skyrim set up by James Kirkbride about the conflict between what is a fundamentally gnostic elven philosophy that hates the concept of causality and views all action and reality as a corruption of a perfect hypothetical fighting to destroy the existentialist Nietschian superman philosophy espoused by the empire of men and in particular as a contrast against the Vivec of Morrowind that epitomized that philosophy.
... but then again, that existed almost solely within the lore books that you don't actually play through.
Banksy.
I'm going to ignore the fact that this video is over a year old because I just recently discovered your channel, and I have been thoroughly enjoying your style of thoughtful critique. It just so happens that this particular video is the most clear example of the "Play vs Game" discussion. (And Yes, I realize that most people are just puppeting others instead of actually HAVING a discussion, which leads to nothing but stubbornness and hurt feelings for most, but the discussion itself still has value).
Mountain is MOST DEFINITELY not a game. Even if you don't proscribe the the Chris Crawford style hierarchy definition of "game" I would challenge you to find a definition that Mountain did fit, but something like a screensaver (which we can likely say is not a game) would not. I'm not saying it has no value/worth. But calling it a game is a bit disingenuous. It is Art, or possible entertainment, but not a game.Interesting and pretentious? Yes. Game? no.
Along the same lines, Everything is not a game either. I found it to be entertaining. It was clearly an "Experience" but it lacks many of the things that need to be there to be a "game".
Am I just being a pedant when I bring this up? Sort of? But I do have a reason.
We (as people) label things to allow us to relate them to other things. It is a useful tool that can often (though not always) help us make good decisions with our extremely limited time. Grouping Mountain or Everything in with other "games" does a disservice to those who are in the market to purchase a game. If someone were to purchase something like Proteus, thinking it was a game because it is listed with other games, and did so with their limited money, they would be justified in being angry at feeling misled.
Can this be avoided by a potential customer researching a game before purchase? Probably. But even that requires a time commitment. And time is the resource here after all. This assumes that one could even find enough trustworthy sources that are willing to label a non-game as such. The vast majority of reviews are, by their nature as user reviews, inherently not useful. I'm not claiming that they all lack in quality. But the usefulness of a review is directly linked to how well you know the reviewers tastes, and whether or not you agree with the body of their previous work. If you don't already know your tastes align with a reviewer, their opinion doesn't really help you to decide.
So, uh, anyway.
I enjoy your videos.
I think you should define for your self what you do, or do not consider a "game' (hopefully based on some research). And possibly make a video on it?
Errant Signal I prefer Please Say Something, personally. It's an absolute punch in the gut.
I rather liked Mountain. It was weird, but easy to put in a corner while working to see what stuff it'd collect.
That being said, if there was a meaning to it, I didn't find one outside of "I wonder what's going on with Mountain today"
Every episode inspires me to continue caring about gaming on a deeper level when it seems like everyone and everything just wants to take the most superficial subjective look at things. Stuff like this is why I still game and will do it my whole life.
This game got me interested in his lectures, so after that I went and looked up the ones put on youtube, and now they are what I listen to while going to sleep, his voice is just so soothing for some reason.
...and it's not like watching (these hordes?) of animals rotate 90-degree increments to move across the lands while you have a conversation with a house
I love how the animals move!
My first introduction to Alan Watts was the track "Japanese Ceremonial Tea" by Electric Sons. Thanks for giving me more to explore.
Damn I love this youtube channel. Thanks for the great content. "There was a young man who said 'Damn. For it certainly seems that I am, a creature that moves in determinate grooves, I'm not even a bus, I'm a tram.'"
This is one of those times where you say what I would’ve said but far more thoroughly and somehow more succinctly than I would’ve done. Thank you for giving me a video I can show people to get them to play this game
I didn't think much of this game when I first saw it, but you sold me on it and now I want to play it.
Part of me hates that I watched this before I have a chance to dive into Everything, but at the same time, I'm happy that I'll be able to go to it with this insight
Stellar analysis. I'll be sharing this video with others as a way of explaining what it is.
this is a really good game to play with kids, they love the absurdity.
thanks for your analysis I missed how time moved differently in each level and I didn't really think about why the game played itself on a philosophical level,I just thought it was like a screensaver and a way of making the trophies a little less of a grind
I am that I am, achievement get!
Trophy no more.
It needs a multiplayer version.
I'm hooked. I definitely want to check this out now
I should note here for those of you who are like me, an atheist, and shy away from anything with the word "spiritual" in it: Alan Watts is pretty much a non-theist, and tries to put concepts like "God" and "spirituality" into a context that isn't predicated on believing in those things. It's difficult to explain, but to put it simply, he's inoffensive to atheists and theists alike.
Despite being such a heady, conceptually verbose guy, all of his ideas are very mundane and easy to relate to for almost anyone. Listen to his speeches and don't feel bad if you zone in and out. You'll come back to him over and over again throughout your life and learn something new when you need it.
To expand on this, one would probably be better to listen to lectures from Watts than a video about a video game.
Watts core views are to highlight the unity of reality, and that involves examining the conditioned self we make and ultimately identify with that blurs this unity into divisions. This is something we can say is more true about reality today than when Watts was alive, for he died in the 1970s. We know enough of the self from a neurological and psychological sense to know it's an illusion, so there's no need to see the points Watts makes as exclusive to Buddhist thought: it's accountable thought, factual thought, hence why his somewhat wooly words about God and spirituality don't even secret, spooky knowledge, games of authority, and blind belief. His philosophy, simply put, is self-inquiry: to find your ego is to see it as an image, not an entity. Many of us suffer in this world because we confuse images for reality, and that starts with all of us by identifying with a self.
There's no "surfer" to the "wave" of your organism, and with enough discipline and inquiry, one can grasp this. There's no "looker" in addition to looking, no entity peeking in addition to what your eyes perceive. And yet, so long as we think in terms of dualism, to think we have a special snowflake soul or ego that has these attributes, we get caught in this warped lens of perception. Jiddu Krishnamurti, a friend of Watts, goes very hard on these issues to emphasize where divisions are created, suffering and conflict occur. One need not go too far in their lives to see this unfolds just from a first-person perspective of identification to concepts and thoughts.
You really like words, eh?
I think a videogame is a fine place to absorb watts. Like you, he's extremely wordy and hard to follow, and even myself, who's normally pretty thorough with texts and speeches, enjoy him when I'm doing something else and he's passively talking in the background. Makes it easier for his lessons to wash over me, and then when I am actually utilizing those ideas in practice later, I can go look up what he said and confirm the lesson.
I am a very wordy person, yes. ;)
Good sport :D
Always Falling Short Old comment but if you shy away from anything with the word “spiritual” in it, then you’re no better than a zealous theist. Replace “spiritual” with Yahweh, God, or Muhammad. Boom, crusade. All isolation and ignorance have given us are bloodshed and divide. There’s nothing wrong with trying a bite of a new food, or dipping your toe in the pool. You don’t have to become a monk to understand Buddhism, so you shouldn’t feel afraid to do research or try to see things from their point of view.
I loved how civil the two of you were and it’s a great show of how simple communication can be a beautiful way of spreading ideas instead of outright ending the conversation at “Wow you talk too much”
14:08 Someone call Noah Caldwell-Gervais so we can get an hour+ retrospective about the philosophies of Alan Watts!
Done and done.
twitter.com/mrchapel0203/status/851278160020688897
If you let go of the controls, you'll gently float back to your starting world.
I remember saying that to my driving instructor once. Needless to say things did not go well.
So I picked up this game when this video first came out, and I never actually got around to playing it until today. It was so jarring and mystifying that I had to come back to this video and see what you thought.
I completely agree the game's tone could've been more consistent, although I think the strange non-articulated art style, on top of being absurd, helps convey the metaphorical nature of the message. Abandoning the notion of the individual is made more stark when the game is overtly surreal. It's unique in that it gives you this agency by letting you do this strange stuff, and also tells you how your thoughts aren't really yours (at least not in the sense that you alone create them), but they're the product of other thoughts, and ultimately the circumstances of the world around you, and therefore all thought is the world thinking itself. So you can advance your will into the world and do whatever absurd thing you want, but only inasmuch as you're part of this absurd world (the game) yourself, and so your will is just another ingredient in the confluence of events that are taking place, no matter how wild it is.
Now, I never did get back to the golden gate after I wandered off, and I never had the world be "destroyed by too much winning" and if I had, maybe I'd be more put off by the other absurdist elements. That absolutely clashed.
I love david's work so much!
I liked Wats' view of things, and absolutely love that somebody did this. And thank you for exposing it to me. :)
... In its right place
Everything gives me a similar feeling that 4 grams of mushrooms in quiet darkness can give me.
I never could get the rolling quadrupeds thing. Usually I'd switch over to something small enough or upright enough (penguins) that did the South Park hop.
Oh, would just like to note. Everything does have a little bit interactivity between the things, animals will get allerted by fire, and seen at least one other. They think fire, when fire nears them.
I left this video even more interested in this game than various writeups had me already. Finally! An approachable fun entry to Watts.
As soon as I saw my guy Alan Watts I knew I had to not spoil any of this for myself
This game has 10/10 animation.
sarcasm?
sarcasm?
sarcasm?
I didn't mean to post that 3 times but now that I did I realize it just made the joke funnier (;
it's like someone made a game with the idea you would review it in mind.
given the rest of the junk in the comments I feel like adding something more positive would be nice.
though I don't have any meaningful to add but I can say I do really like these videos and really appreciate a more thoughtful and meaningful approach to criticizing and talking about games.
Tim Martin may write about art(which includes video game) and books for the Times, the Telegraph, and The Economist very well. But you are still better.
Also, its really cool now that games are talked about in terms of art in well respected magazines like the Times, The Economist and etc. And now magazines about culture talk about games as well.
Could you say that your playing the game, and moving around in the world, causing new objects to be rendered/generated, is an example of things being defined by other things.
Dunkey's video on this really shows how much he cares about the idea that video games are art, not just fun toys.
Like a dream. In a dream you are literally everything.
Oh man, I started to laugh so much when I heard Alan Watts in the background.
Javier Sánchez why?
Great review. Sums it all up without having to get deep into the philosophy of it
I liked that Alan Watts introduction
A mountain... a game about being a mountain....
oh the humanity. oh the Everything...
As someone that makes and listens to chill music, the voice of Allan watts and his speeches are instantly recognisable :D
Man, the quality of your videos increases significantly with each new one. I hope to see a collab between you and Mark Brown some day, that would be mind-blowing.
someone should do a slow run, where they start up the game and livestream how long it takes for the game to 100% itself
I find it that the message in "everything" and the philosophy it presents is a very 'neutral' way of seeing the ego-less universe. Everything we know as bad that the universe absolutely does not care about is also absolutely justified just as much as good and everything without ego. A lot of people find this profound, and it is, I'm happy for you but it just comes off as a step in no direction. I can be pessimistic or optimistic, either way this neutral philosophy just does not encourage anyone one way or another. It tries too, because the philosopher comes with good intention, saying were part of everything. But that everything only says OK, it does not say BE MORE or BE LESS. All it says is OK, which just does not ring the urge to git gud or learn, but just accept where you are... were humans, and we are abstract. I cannot be happy with just eating and sleeping, I want to create. I will want to make other humans happy. This is predictable to the universe and so it does not care, but "I" do and so does "They" and "We". I am not here (Current presence) without a reason. And that is what bugs me with "everything"s philosophy... were more than what everything is intending.
Everyone likes to look at big bang as being huge and grand (Even if it is just a theory)... but anything else is much more complicated.
This is one of those games that I'm glad exists but could never play or engage with myself because I'd be too bored asking what the point of it all is.
Thank you for this thoughtful review, it was quite useful.
Alan Watts sentiment, is perhaps?:
We are everything we belong to as much as everything we belong to is us.
Our cells act individually, and act with individuality, but also predictably form human like behaviour together which we call a human.
We act individually, and act with individuality, but also predictably form an overlapping network of societies and even the galaxy we live in.
In a very real sense, we are the galaxy we live in as much as our cells are us, a neutron is a creature in itself, a cell, but is also in its entirety and on a very different scale a small piece of a thought.
A river "whirlpools" and a planet "cities", these verbs can be a more natural way to understand things though there process than nouns are a way of understanding things through there substance.
Perhaps one in every 1,000,000,000,000,000 galaxies by the time it is 1,000,000,000,000 years old does something unusual like civilisations to the point where most of the matter in it is organised into a geometrically neat shape.
Even this just a process that the process we call a galaxy occasionally goes through.
And from there down (and up) can be thought of not as hierarchy, not in a stack of things, but an overlapping collection of processes we call "everything".
420 bro. how much for an eighth?
The other comments dont seem to agree, but man I think this game looks fantastic!
I can't wait for that game from Her exist in VR. That would be hilarious and be much more hilarious if they hired Spike Jonze as the swearing alien creature. Either way, I will pick up Everything (the game) in two weeks.
I'm not big into actual hardcore philosophy, so this kind of stuff goes right past me. If I had played this game, I'd have gotten bored with it very quickly.
But through your video, I can understand it's meaning and it's actually very interesting to me. Still, probably not going to do any sort of philosophical research or anything.
best game to play while high, no cap
i like Everything (2017) besides Country and Rap
I had know about Alan Watts, but I didn't knew that he helped spreading Eastern philosophy in the West.
My mom is into it a lot, and it's really interesting to think over.
I'd love to hear your take on Undertale, it feels like there would be quite a bit to ponder and unpack with that one.
That last second SLAMDOWN tho lol
What was the name of that adventure time episode.
"A Glitch is a Glitch"
Darude-Sandstorm
"You can't say it's only half"
Greener221 I see you know Pannenkoeken2012 as well
Great analysis, as always.
Sounds like playing this game is going to give you a headache.
the orca's body is moving from side to side while swming, i cant deal with this its driving me crazy
This game is like Christmas at Jackie Chan's house.
Great video essay. Subscribed!
Well, dang it. I was holding off on this game for now but you might have convinced me to get it. Great work, as always!
please see: 1st 2nd and 3rd order cybernetics: specifcially anything by Heinz von Foerster or Ross Ashby.
the auido speechs are from Alan Watts
Available: April 21
This game will unlock in approximately 11 days
's out now on the PS4
The game's mechanically light and philosophically "heavy" by design. There really isn't a way to execute the pitch of the game in a way that would bring everybody on board so if there's major criticism to be made of it, well, you might as well just be blaming it for trying. I've enjoyed the numerous hours of Alan Watts scattered on YT so for me I suppose it's preaching to the choir, but I appreciate the fresh take on the words of one of my favorite people to listen to when I want to put my head in the clouds.
I feel so high watching this video. Whoa...
Another fantastic video and analysis, I look forward to the next one. :)
please do a video about the long dark
The only other game (that I know of) that tried something like this was _The Old City: Leviathan_ and I *hated* it. You know those lectures that begin with an anecdote to better illustrate the subject? Well, TOC:L is a very dry, very sleepy Ontology 101 lecture, with the anecdote (about the titular city, its rival factions, its Fall, minotaurs, Jonahs, whales, Solomons and assorted mythological references) that gets abandoned a quarter of the way through, so that the last 3 hours of the game is spent wading through a mire of slapdash platonistic imagery.
All non-interactive, of course. Y'know, I liked _Dear Esther_ but, as its clones grew more popular, I began to understand _why_ I liked Dear Esther and just how much all the pretenders can't even shine its shoes when it comes to writing.
I find it hard to take any philosophy which insists that not following it's precepts leads to misery, and similarly for texts which insist the same about their philosophies. This is particularly true of Everything's portrayal of anchoring oneself to their identity and hence isolating oneself from Watts's philosophical musings as a broken hellscape. This is made worse by the fact that his philosophy is fundamentally at odds with my understanding of identity, leading to it coming off as nonsensical in the square triangle sense. Not a great first impression.
Which is a shame, since a few of those ideas (like how you can't define things except in relation to other things) seem to merit consideration.
I'm glad I watched this, but to be honest, I'm glad I watched episode 1 of game grumps playing it first.
Err, what? the game.
Anyone else getting heavy lag when they try to play the game? I like to think I have a pretty beefy computer and Everything plays like a slideshow
so basically this game is the thinking emoji?
Wow, I need this game
so glad to be learning about this game. this idea the game is based on immediately reminds me of evangelion, where it proposes humans are all only separated by the ego. and the goal of the angels were to return the world to a primordial soup where humans all become one again and ego is non existent
I wasnt able to find my way back to the golden gate which was kinda bullshit, I went back the same way, I'm sure of it, it just lost the data or w/e
I think the only way back may be to let the game play itself for a bit, which might be its own mechanic but I didn't know for certain
I've been torn on this game since I first played it. On one hand, many of of it's existential themes can be nice and relaxing in a way, and sometimes it's humorous. On the other hand, and maybe this is just from me hanging around too many... let's say, interesting... psychedelic communities online, but Alan Watts has always rubbed me the wrong way. Whether it's from the way a lot of people (from what I've seen, tbf. Could just be sample bias) uncritically consume the things he says and put him on an insane pedestal, or whether it's them using his philosophies as though-terminating clichés when thinking or talking about issues of the world, or to avoid thinking about such things altogether. It's kind of reminiscent the stereotype of hippies once being staunchly and vocally anti-war, anti-imperialism, anti-discrimination, etc., and doing activism that aligns with those values, only to eventually have those values fall away while hippie culture becomes nothing more than "good vibes", avoiding stress just for oneself, and engaging with philosophical ideas only in a "whoa, dude,", purely theoretical, politically impotent way.
It's easy to say things like "We are everything, we are all one. Untether yourself from the issues of this world," when you yourself are not in a position of significant suffering, or when you have the relative privilege of being able to look past the suffering you are experiencing. And it's an especially easy framing of the world to internalize, as it presents no call to action to help others be free of suffering. It's something to make yourself feel good, that presents this idea of a sort of ontological peace as one that simply requires freeing yourself from stress and worldly attachments, rather than seeking to help others also live peacefully when you can. It's similarly easy to say things like "Bears eat the fish, and in so doing help define the fish," when you yourself are a human raised to be speciestly unconcerned with the suffering that any non-human experiences, outside of maybe pets or perhaps thought experiments involving theoretical creatures that are imagined to be sufficiently "human-like." Many of Watts's talks just seem riddled with these sorts of things that at times demonstrate shockingly little care for questioning the material realities of the status quo. There's some lip service to the suffering of others at times and how that's a shame and all (IIRC. Been a while since I've listened to any of his work) but that seems more to just cover his philosophical ass than anything. This all to say, many of Watts's talks give (and many of the ways I've seen his philosophies be spoken about give) me the same vibe as a "Live, laugh, love" sign hanging on the wall of a conservative's living room. His philosophies are things that people take in and display as an easy way of making themselves feel good without truly needing to change in any challenging way, but more importantly, without truly needing to change in any way that's external or does much to benefit anyone other than one's internal headspace. And while I do see how that singularly important goal that his philosophy has can be very useful, this lack of philosophical and especially ethical breadth leaves his talks feeling hollow and paradoxically self-important.
Maybe this all shouldn't get under my skin so much. I don't know. I just know that I so often see him touted as such amazingly "radical" thinker despite never saying much of anything that poses any challenge to the oppressive forces and people of the world. In the end he's just another self-help guru. I feel like there's other things about him that get under my skin, but they're hard to parse, and this comment has meandered more than enough already.
I thought a game everything woul be longer
Redem10 when you are omnipotent you can do stuff relatively quickly
this is before you started doing lsd (you can order that from the internet)
Oh so horses don't move using those useless, flabby leg things, they move by rolling like a tumble weed. Of course how could I be so blind?
This game is what i expected no mans sky to be
I love this video, and the message, and having discovered this corner of everything, because, and I'm sure I speak for others here, I would never play this. I/me/everything am gonna go grind the everything that is Warframe for awhile now.
TOOK LONG ENOUGH
I really enjoyed this game. I think people need to get over the idea that just because something is heavy handed or wears its argument on its sleeve, that it's immediately "bad."
This guy sounds like a "deepity" generator.
Out of curiosity, are there any other reviewers out there that cover artistic video games like Mr. Franklin?
artemisfowl52 as far as I know, no one really does it quite the same way as this
Noah Caldwell-Gervais kind of does at times, but never to this extent.