Broken Reality, Vaporwave, and Irony
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- Broken Reality is a game about a futuristic virtual chatroom that borrows most of its aesthetics from the 90's! You'll almost feel like you're back in 2045!
It's also deeply tied up in the vaporwave subculture for good and for ill, and we talk a bit (as much as I can bear to, anyways) about what that means and how it impacts the game.
Game link: store.steampow...
Sources, As Per My Statement I Would Include Sources:
The Music Theory of V A P O R W A V E : • The music theory of V ...
What Happened To Vaporwave? www.esquire.co...
Adam Harper's Comment: Vaporwave and the pop-art of the virtual plaza: www.dummymag.c...
Dan Bell's TH-cam: / @thisisdanbell
Dan Bell's TEDX Talk: • Inside America's dead ...
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This episode was made possible by generous support through Patreon!
/ errantsignal
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Your video is responsible for me now being hopelessly stuck watching a seemingly neverending series of videos on dead malls.
welcome to the club
Roxy Lalonde we have t shirts
Look into Andrew Yang's American Mall Act.
Vaporwave is nostalgia for the past of a future we were promised and never got.
For a moment we can look back and pretend we're back in our childhood in a world with infinite potential, and that by the time we're adults we'll have flying cars and robot friends instead of everything being exactly the same except everything is dirtier and older.
Well well well someone’s been reading about hauntology.
Welcome to egalitarian cloon world. It's boring and tiresome (and now we have no jobs too).
Oh, and everything is meant to be perceived as some conditioned -ist and -ism, which even the video creator is guilty.
It is as it was really intended to be.
We have unlimited potentional now, but some always hateful, always depressed and overall toxic old farts just can't see that. I love my childhood, cause we have more democracy in Russia back then, but still - 90's suck. We should admit it.
This seems to be a much more brass-tax definition of the term ' Saudade' or 'Desiderium'.
How interesting that a Genre of Music brought about as a mockery of Consumerism can evoke such feelings like this, especially with that of folks of the Millennial or Z Generations.
No wonder I love the Genre.
E
The dead memes that you didn't like, to me, support the nihilism of the whole movement. A joke that doesn't work is the dead mall of today.
LOL
Honestly this remind me of the joke "first history presents itself as a tragedy, and through repetition, a farce"
More of a philosophical state ment that a joke but I can't be the judge
As a vaporwave fan, i think you did a solid job summing it up despite your concerns. Also I appreciate the dan bell shout out.
it's hard not to talk about vaporwave alot without at best making oblique references and at worst sounding like a tool so yeah, citing the adam harper article and just going from there is a good way to do it imo
Eh, the whole “vaporwave is a criticism of capitalism” shtick is a bit pretentious, but overall I’d say the man did a decent job
@@TheDolphinTuna it may not be true for all vaporwave but especially near the beginning, that was the aesthetic impression a lot of vaporwave left on me - especially macintosh plus, internet club, and prismcorp virtual enterprise. It felt like satire, and a lot of people writing about it at the time shared similar sentiments. Of course, a lot of really good vaporwave, including classic stuff, is completely apolitical.
@@TheDolphinTuna well you need to factor in that the harper article was from like 2012, so alot of the vaporwave out at the time was actually trying to convey that alternate-universe utopia / skipping CD aesthetic. he also said it could be a celebration as well as a criticism, which it kind of is both, paradoxically
@@groupsounds4896 i wouldn't call alot of vaporwave "apolitical," it just evokes different things in different people, and some people won't see anything political in it. kind of redundant saying this tho because it can apply to literally all art
Reminds me partially of Second Life.
Last I checked, it had a declining user count. By its nature it's also sort of a weird assembly of everything. Realistic NPCs next to anime characters, and then a flying dildo comes rushing through.
"Broken Reality" isn't a bad descriptor of SL, either. I kinda miss it, but every now and then I'll do a flyby and it has more abandoned malls than the US itself - a critical failure of imagination, a sprawling expanse of attempted capitalism, housing everything from the mundane to the esoteric, but mostly in big grey boxes made to emulate the concrete and metal panels of real life flyover country malls.
@@BobisOnlyBob I like the concept of SL. Sadly it's laggy, has outdated tech/graphics, and a horrible scripting language. Not to mention the overpriced regions that are too small. And Linden Lab isn't really looking to fix it. Sansar is a different thing altogether imo.
th-cam.com/video/XQkYBbM9YyM/w-d-xo.html
@@BobisOnlyBob Second Life has a huge problem of uneven density where there are worlds where regulars normally hang and vast acres of land that are nearly dead if not abandoned. This comes from the whole land system of Second Life with everything being on a monolithic map (unlike VRChat where worlds are self-contained). The result is that people can lose interest in their virtual land since you get a chunk of land free with a premium subscription then simply ignore it after you build it (yet it still part of the same monolithic map), then you have 3rd party owners of land that rents it out and finally the fact abandoned land goes back to Linden Lab that could leave it as is for years.
A lot of the iffy jokes are probably the fault of Kickstarter backers. There were a lot of "make an ad" type rewards, so there is a lot of (appropriate, I guess) ambiguity about authorship in the details.
This makes sense but is also fitting. All of the ads, iconography, creators, people in chat rooms were obviously fron different people. Since the game is presenting a three dimensional representation of the echoes and ruins of 90s cyber space, I think this sort of mixed authorship only adds to it. If every aspect of the game was tonally similar, well, that wouldn't make for an immersive, believable internet at all.
@@joshualane1716
Absolutely. It looks like it has encapsulated the popular idea of the monolithic internet, "The Internet", perfectly. Even the criticisms of discordant tonal shifts and questionable humour that may be in bad taste fits within the overarching aesthetic (pun intended) of the game because "The Internet" is everything from everyone all at once.
Looks like we found the _one game_ where "contribute content of your own with no rules" as a backer reward doesn't make the game worse.
Lol, that's actually perfectly fitting here.
i'm a backer and if i remember correctly, barely anyone got to the "make an ad" tier
i spoke w/ the devs on discord and they straight up told me that (at least some of) the games jokes are meant to illustrate how internet / gaming culture can be toxic
although there were jokes that they cut out because they seemed to be broadcasting it rather than criticizing it, so i'm not sure how stuff like "loli pop" made it in
Critiques a game called "Broken Reality", and struggles to find a coherent meaning behind it. I like it.
What is ur profile pic
I think broken reality really means "detached from reality"
Something I'm surprised to see nobody else point out yet: This game is like an antithesis to a similar game with a similar aesthetic known as Cruelty Squad.
They're both strange, incomprehensible games with equally incomprehensible themes and a very retro-inspired aesthetic. But they're polar opposites: Cruelty Squad is a tough-as-nails tactical FPS, Broken Reality is a fairly sedate exploration/puzzle/collectathon game. Cruelty Squad has an aesthetic designed to make you feel uncomfortable, uneasy and vaguely nauseous, Broken Reality has an aesthetic designed to be calming and nostalgic. Cruelty Squad presents a depressing, broken world with hope hiding at the end of a long tunnel of pain, Broken Reality presents a bright, colorful, and peaceful world with something dark lurking beneath it.
They're so alike, yet different, that I'm surprised they are not made by the same developers. Both are quite good, though.
uh, maybe because this video came out years before Cruelty Squad did?
dumbass?
Are they jokes or are they comments over saturation and desensitization. Jokes like the peephole and the loli sign could be metaphors for stumbling upon and diving down a whole and finding something unsettling or odd by accident. These things also are shocking to the uninformed but are known by people in internet culture.
Yeah, they're more like dark references that further contextualize (probably using the wrong word, dont hate) the cyper aesthetic. It cant be a game about the internet without some Pepe's, weird fetishes, or sex
Chronic the Hedgehog is almost as old as the Internet. I’m assuming he’s in there more as a reference than a joke...
Chronic the *Hemp*hog.
I spoke about that add with one of the developers that is teaching me game design in college
They are joking about Sonic being exploded a lot to the point that he is wasted
@@CCHSurTigresWait the devs of this game teach?
🅱️ohn 🅱️oltrane Rodrigo Saco the programmer is a teacher in my college and works in the sabe studio developing new games
Erick Costa Rica shit that’s awesome
i love this video so much.
Me too
I absolutely loved the aesthetics (Geocity is such a beautiful place) but never had an issue with the memes/jokes because they're exactly what you would find in such a place. Even if they are problematic it's realistic and it certainly fits the theme of the game.
But what purpose do they serve?
@@kevinwillems8720 Worldbuilding.
I look at this piece now, and all I can see in my rear view mirror is how much of the pop impact of vaporwave is the platonic ideal of a Bored Ape Yacht Club hodler. The talk of accelerationism, the talk of poorly communicated angst at capital, not just the clearly crass memes but the sheer quantity of doges and toothless parody of advertisements.
Which is to say that it’s a good watch, but this game has absolutely nothing on Cruelty Squad
@@lancesmith8298 Well, can't really blame the game for that.
Something else I just caught on to...
The "μ" in "μPay" is used as shorthand for "micro", as in "microseconds" (μs) or "micrometers" (μm). So it could be read as micro pay, aka, microtransaction.
or its like μTorrent as in μPay - you pay
@@sonicbro6446 Doesn't they also just stand for micro or tiny? They always mention the program being small.
@@807D14M0ND5 you do have point
@@sonicbro6446 It was supposed to be muTorrent
moo pay
the cow matrix is real
wake up
I feel like if it didn't have jokes that were out of line or just kinda stupid, it wouldn't feel like a good representation of social media.
Tbf, you'll find those same tastless jokes on social media anyways. So theres no difference
YOU WOULDN´T DOWNLOAD A CAR
*literally downloads a car*
Really enjoyed this game from start to end, also, there´s a hidden jumpscare, you must go out of your way to see it
"Things that are seen... cannot be unseen."
Wait, what jump scare? I played through it but can't remember finding that.
@@schufck5272 that's because you played the last part correctly. If you don't follow the orb closely and get lost, you will come across a terrible evil.
@@chumblesthecheese8580 Sounds ominous - is there Chronic dabbing?
@@schufck5272 no, nothing that evil.
Broken Reality: Is it sincere or is it purely ironic.
Answer: It doesn't matter nor does it care to matter.
@Fernand The Fresh Why shouldn't he?
@Fernand The Fresh As if that's somehow bad.
@Fernand The Fresh
"Oh no, someone had thoughts about something and shared them!"
@Vapor Dissecting memes, much like dissecting frogs, may reveal the inner workings, but also kills them.
I didn't take a lot of the sexual stuff as jokes. It seemed to be more of an acknowledgement that in online communities of bored or disillusioned people you'll casually encounter lots of weird sex stuff and nobody seems to care. A sort of commentary on the relaxed sensibilities of the users. That was my take, I'm not sure if that's what the developers intended, but I didn't really see it all as humor... Or at least not 'haha humor'. More like that sort of cynical humor response you express because the alternative is being sad and you're trying to stop yourself from being sad so you overcompensate and resort to irreverently coughing out a snarky laugh because that's better than crying.
Feeling sad just because someone has a weird fetish is a bit...extreme don't you think ? Also the internet doesn't have borders or didn't used to have them, so one didn't really feel like enforcing the particular dogmas of ones society.
Yeah, it was just reminiscent of how the internet really was in the 90s, or how Second Life has always been. I experienced these things as verisimilitude, that NATEM was a product not only of its creators but of the users as well, so of course there's going to be weird shit, awful textures, sexual fetishes and so on.
@@DisplayLine6.13.9 its less sad and more... broken. like youre fine until you find out people eat shit for fun, and then even though it doesn't hurt you in any way, you find yourself unable to reconcile reality and it just bothers you.
tbqhwyf (to be quite honest with you family) the ambiguity about its meaning or purpose is what makes broken reality. If it were to have a concrete statement in one direction or the other it would be betraying what it set out ot do
Despite the preemptive warning, I think you've done a better job talking about what vaporwave is than most deliberately explanatory videos and articles on vaporwave. Really amazing seeing two of my favourite things come together, Your style of in depth video game writing, and my history immersed in the development of the vaporwave subcultures on the internet. Beautifully done. You have a knack for bringing ideas on a subject into consideration without reducing the subject to such ideas, which is incredibly refreshing.
Isn't not being able to distinguish between playful irony and disturbing sincerity exactly the internet in microcosm?
As a genre, vaporwave seems bent on being as belligerently contradictory as possible, and for some reason that makes me love it even more. Like so much from the internet, it seems to have an almost zen-like humor towards being accurately described, and refuses to be so.
Also, I want to play the fuck out of this game. I've never heard of it until now but this is my jam.
I think there is a bit of love for L.S.D. Dream Emulator in this game ;)
I love vaporwave and this game is pretty good in my opinion, and I feel you really nailed this game on the head. Its as serious as you make it really. Because Vaporwave is hard to gauge in its level of irony and this is no different. I personally recommend you treat it how I'd recommend you listen to Vaporwave: Just relax and enjoy.
Thank you. Too many people get caught up in finding meanings and intentions and dissecting what probably isn't there instead of just enjoying the D O P E A R T and
C H I L L M U S I C.
The adult jokes are a parody of what sort of stuff you can find in forums that are no longer moderated, abandoned by its creators
Would be interested in hearing your critique of Hypnospace Outlaw relative to this game.
what_can_I_say_but_yikes.jpg
Have you been watching Lindsay Ellis lately?
Whenever someone says "yikes" like that I like to imagine the internet bit them.
So you're saying it's Vaporwave Dark Souls
It's the Dark Souls of Vaporwave E E E E EEEEE E E E E
It really makes you feel like vaporware spiderman
@@rapidfart9579 no no, that's Verlet Swing
Thanks so much for the review!!. I Really like the approach/critique of it.
I think more than trying to make a direct statement, the game was trying to portray the type of things you might stumble upon on the internet, and of course that includes some edgelord humor. In any case the most meaningful thing for me is to see how everyone makes their own conclusions out of the experience. Much love to everyone that played it ❤️
I feel like I exclusively get into things when they are dying. This game might give me flashbacks.
geez, and I thought my sex life was bad...
@@jiffylou98 It's the neopets forum all over again!
I didn't know we were cybering. I gently nibble your earlobe as I loosen your buttons.
Out of all of the "experimental" indie titles that you've covered this is one I'll be picking up. It looks ingenious and hilarious. I know nothing about vapourwave but it looks like it has encapsulated the popular idea of the monolithic internet, "The Internet", perfectly. Even your criticisms of discordant tonal shifts and questionable humour that may be in bad taste fits within the overarching aesthetic (pun intended) of the game because "The Internet" is everything from everyone all at once. Also accelerationism sounds fucking terrifying and a horrible idea.
It Is great. I hired one of the main devs once (pior learning about broken reality). He is quite an interesting guy who looks like white Jesus.
@@MiloDelMal What did you hire them for?
@@Crispman_777 As a technical designer.
He was looking for a job while Broken Reality made some cash.
Right now he teaches at an University and He is working on another game he showed me recently.
@@MiloDelMal That's cool. What was the project you hired them to work on? Was it games related or something else?
@@Crispman_777 I only hired one of the guys.
It was a full time position, sadly, the company we used to work wasn't the best place to be at.
We work together in an AR game for KFC México. We worked together like a month and then I quit. (I had resigned before I hired him, but I was management so I gave a 3 months notice).
He stayed there for about 2 or 3 more months and moved on.
Uh, minor hiccup. I think your knowledge of anime culture might have lead you astray into misreading Oneechan's (older sister; big sister) name as Onii-chan (older brother, big brother). It's a pretty simple mistake when e's in romanized Japanese are exclusively an "eh" sound like "edge" rather than "ee" like "fee". Onii sounds a bit like the Japanese demon, Onee sounds like sounds more like "oh-neigh" (like a horse). But when the subject of "onii-chan" and such comes up so much in anime memes, it's pretty easy to see that ee in oneechan and think it's oniichan.
@shazam t h o t
So I'm super late to the party, but hey maybe you read this and consider it or maybe you don't.
I have a problem with the phrase "embraces aesthetics over values." To me, an applied aesthetic is a statement of value, maybe not the type of statement we're used to, but a statement nonetheless. The best analogy I can make is to your Far Cry 5 "Art of Saying Nothing" video, where I would say it is a missed opportunity at best and dangerous at worst to claim that the aesthetics are not part of a value statement. For example, as a teen I loved (and still do, but as a guilty pleasure) emo-punk music. Most, not all, but most of the lyrics were hollow and did not really make any large statement outside of "I'm sad," but the consistent embrace of the aesthetics of teen angst and sadness made an implicit argument that these were emotional states worth taking seriously, whether or not the lyrics themselves could produce anything we would typically consider "substantial." I take this to heart especially considering the depression and anxiety memes that continue to come from my generation, which only makes me wonder what may have happened if individuals read the emo trend aesthetically as a cry for help, albeit an admittedly whiny and self-important one as teenage shenanigans tend to be. Similarly, Quake's aesthetics could be read in much the same way, and Broken Reality could be read as embracing the vaporwave aesthetic, thus circulating it, making the implicit argument that it is, in fact, worth circulating, and therefore a sensibility to be taken seriously.
Now that is a very surface-level read, and I am by no means an aesthetic scholar so I'm sure there is even more there, but I think it is worth bringing up. It could have also just been a wording oversight that I'm overreacting to, which if it was I hope this argument can at least be read in good faith :)
"Because there's no earnestness, because it's so dedicated to its own aesthetic trappings above everything else, one doesn't get a sense of what Broken Reality actually values"
I feel like a lot of people on the internet are guilty of this, because for a long time, actually caring about things would get you bullied, no matter what it was you were actually caring about. I don't know why this happened, but I do know that it developed into a cycle of "new person expresses opinion on topic, gets shut down by people spouting forum's consensus on topic, begins to parrot forum's consensus out of survival, shuts down other opinions to 'prove' they belong." Eventually it becomes easier to just ridicule opinions immediately as performative detachment.
Of course, once that becomes your entire online persona, any opinion you *actually* hold has to be tinted with this detachment, otherwise you blow your cover. So you start professing to like stuff "ironically." And when people start catching on to you as the guy who likes X Thing, you go defensive, like "oh you're just thinking about it too much" or "I like it's surface-level presentation, but it's deeper messages really don't matter." And it's still happening.
There are people doing it in the comments section right now. Stuff like "wow u put way too much thought into a meme game," making fun of the phrases "irony poisoning" and "toxic memery" because they disagree with what you're saying but don't want to let on that they even have an opinion about the game at all. And I'm sure some of them will retort to this comment the same way (along with "wow ur reaching so hard" and "here's that attention u ordered" because I'm addressing them directly and they know it.) And I'll give it to them, saying you don't care doubles as a very easy way to "win" without actually putting in any effort.
But I think the difference between sincere celebration of a decaying era and performative nostalgia is an important distinction, and I think it *does* matter which one this game is. Even celebration or critique of irony can be done sincerely, but this game refuses to actually commit to anything, because I think it knows that its intended audience's first reaction would be to scoff at any sincerity or hint of a message.
i do everything daddy vaush tells me too~
I'm convinced that the only way to discuss the very serious modern anxiety is with layers and layers of irony and self-referencial humor and I'm totally okay with that. This looks right up my alley.
Maybe you're just not good at communicating your ideas. XDD
I kind of feel like whether vaporware is a joke or a serious genre is the bad faith arguer turned into music. No matter how you think or talk about it, you are wrong and people will aggressively tell you you are wrong by using any angle they can understanding it isn't about finding truth, it's about proving the other false.
I don't see how that matters. Why someone created something is much, much less interesting than what they created and what that does for you. People using irony as an alibi as if their intent actually mattered much. It follows from death of the author that ironic trash is exactly, completely equivalent to plain trash. I don't necessarily subscribe to a work being completely independent from its author, and you can discuss schools of criticism up and down, but in the end only one question matters, is the work worth *your* time? How much does it being a joke vs not being a joke impact that?
@@dotanuki3371 the reason why "is it a joke" or not is important is because it completely flips the frame thru which the piece can be understood, which can completely change the answer to the question of "is it worth your time?". But ultimately I think the resolution to this is the realization that meaning is a personal and temporal thing that manifests in experience, not some essential timeless thing that persists after the human race is gone. When you realize that "is it a joke" remains important, but having a definitive answer that we can all agree on is not important
@@JamisonMyth the only frame it flips is the one of authorial intent. I said that is not important to me.
dotanuki regardless of authors intent, you must interpret it as a joke or as serious within your own mind, and so the question really isn’t “was the artist joking” it’s more “is this a joke to me”
dotanuki also, the intent of one character in a novel imposes meaning on the dialogue from the readers perspective, so I think ignoring authorial intent is a mistake, but the much more common mistake is to think the authors intent is paramount.
ＭΞＴΛＭ♢ＤΣＲＮＩＳＭ （ぎ演ヱ）
'Irony poisoning' has got to be the take-away phrase for me. This is how you do game recommendations. I was drawn in by the 90's and 00's aesthetic, but I am absolutely turned off by the post 2010 toxic memes. You not only evoked a sense of insidious heavy metal toxicity with the phrase 'irony poisoning', but told me exactly why this game would be disappointing to me. Excellent work as always.
@M R god damn you just owned this noob with that scathing takedown, simply epic
I feel as thought that it'd be rather unfitting for a game about the Wild West days of the internet to not include at least a couple edgy jokes and references.
Also, the point of having so much irony in the game is to replicate the feeling of Vaporwave and the heyday of the lawless internet, before anyone really saw edgy humor as bad. Irony and the internet have been hand-in-hand for decades, and it would leave a major void in what it felt like to be in chat rooms back then.
That's another way of interpreting the game; that the old ways of the internet are dead and dying.
Personally, this game looks amazing. I kinda miss the internet from back then, and I love the vaporwave aesthetic. I can understand why some people, especially with the current culture of the internet, wouldn't like it. Much like the internet itself, it only fits a very niche audience.
@M R stay mad brainlet
@kevin willems I mean literal metal toxicity, like exposure to lead and arsenic. It's just a little pun because irony sounds like iron. Admittedly it's not a perfect comparison, since iron is not generally considered one of the more toxic heavy metals.
@kevin willems Haha yeah not the music. That metal cannot be destroyed, it is much too strong.
I was curious about this game for a while, but had to play it after watching this, I just finished, and I gotta say, that was really worth my time haha. It seems on the surface like a memey walking sim, but there was some real heart put into this thing I feel. It was nice
This looks like something right up my alley. I wrote some stuff on Vaporwave last year. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
"what_can_i_say_but_yikes.jpg" is a great touch
I appreciate you deliberating some on the actual worth of this kind of ironic vapidity. Always comes off as a lack of ability to properly commit. "Is it a critique of capitalism?" It's not a critique of anything if it doesn't commit to a position.
Eh I think people are projecting quite a bit with the capitalism thing. But as it is the internet, you can never really know why someone is appealed or creates something
@@entropino9928 I mean, even if the game isn't going after capitalism, the vaporwave movement itself is, so it's not really projecting, just expectation.
@@erickschusterdeoliveira2662 I think that is projecting too
@@entropino9928 Not really? The one thing it reliably and consistently holds is a mournful look at consumer culture, the artifacts it leaves behind, and the false futures we were promised. I don't know how you could see vaporwave as anything but anti-capitalist.
Gabriel Ammerman I don’t see the mournful look though, I just see beauty.
I don't get why the bar being called "Tres aliens" could seem racist, without knowing any other info about it. Americans are so extra with this stuff.
I am watching this on 360p.
Hey, the first Dan Bell video you showed is a local mall of mine (Marley Station) glad that we’re getting some representation here.
Mate, may I recommend you reading "The Argentine writer and tradition"? It might give you a better undestandng about how we, South Americans, deal with what we perceive as an hegemonic culture, and how we read those cultures. I think it's on PDF if you Google it.
This is just Dave Strider the Game and it needs to admit that it needs a hug
You mean Dirk Strider? All it's missing is muppet r34.
@@LimeyLassen no, I mean Dave. Dirk might have made it though.
@@MaraK_dialmformara Dirk is the one who pushes past the max(longInt) of irony and loops back to sincerity. At least that's something like what he said, probably ironically
I've had an interest in Vaporwave over the last few years, but not from an angle of irony, social jamming or political critique, but as a source of nostalgia. I rocked that rainbow cursor back in college on my Mac LC, and have a Sega CD collection I run in emulation on my current PC/Mac hybrid setup. I've not yet developed a "get off my lawn" mindset, but your mention of the subculture's more recent "accelerationism" tone is making me wonder if my developing a sense of crankiness about how my own life is being shadow mocked is inevitable.
did Broken Reality finally come out? (lol i found it back in 2017 and i've had it on my wishlist ever since waiting for it to come out) (back then i was looking for a vaporwave game i seen it loved it (the look reminds me of three things 1. vaporwave "Duh" 2. jazzpunk 3. LSD Dream emulator))
(joined vaporwave back in 2015)
Edit: :D the dead mall series (i love dead malls its peaceful, its like going outside to the woods for someone who likes hunting and hiking. watching years finally take its toll on the building as the internet gets "better" for shopping more malls will die out leaving it like a ghost town.
So two things...
1) Before watching this video, I thought vaporwave was only a visual medium. I had no idea it was also a music subgenre.
2) Vaporwave - both audio and visual - fits the neo-Dadaism aesthetic that has become so popular throughout internet culture, and this game fits the look and feel of that perfectly.
If you're unfamiliar with Dadaism, neo or otherwise, this Tumblr post does a great job describing it. aint-that-kind-of-blog-bruv.tumblr.com/post/150209646443/bebeocho-mustangsally78-fringnubs
your comment about looking for meaning at 17:40 , reminds me of a Tarkovsky quote: “If you look for a meaning, you’ll miss everything that happens.”
I loved this game right up until the point I needed to take a photo of the 'green spiky friend' on the cruise ship and it simply wouldn't register that I had taken it no matter what I tried. From this video it looks like I had barely started the game. I certainly didn't yet run into the... more questionable parts you highlighted. Yikes.
I genuinely don't know why, but I end up rewatching this video at least once a month, if not more.
Your writing is excellent, and I'm a "soft mark" for this style of game as well.
Good stuff!
These vaporwave video essays are the best form of entertainment on youtube for me💖🔮
Someone should make a game where you start out 8-bit and slowly progress to photo-realistic 3D. You can have this idea for free. If you make a mill with it, pay me.
Please link to the game's page.
Wasn't that hard to find on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/757480/Broken_Reality/
Just Google it
@@joshualane1716 I don't know, when showing it off, it seems like a link should be provided.
He put it in the description now.
He told you where it was. The only place you can get it is on Steam
I honestly can't put a finger on why I find vaporware so utterly enthralling. I've seen it being criticized as shallow, simplistic and devoid of anything meaningful to say, but I still enjoy it a lot.
I think that's why it is meaningful
8:23 It's not always Japanese, but also Taiwanese Chinese or ANY FORM THAT DOESN'T USE SIMPLIFIED CHARACTERS! 16:17 That's the funniest use of Katakana and English language IN ONE AREA LMFAO! They forgot the markers for B, D, sounds, and P If can read Japanese from the Katakana Hiragana perspective, it's saying something MUCH WORSE THAN YOU THINK! Also you lost on a joke 16:29, learn or understand some French, by the way, you butchered the pronunciation. It's far from racism. It's somewhat genuinely ironic but earnest in the execution. The Spanish, French, Japanese influences are FUNNIER IF CAN READ THEM.
Errant Signal (or Chris or whatever), you're a very smart guy and your videos are well-made but the problem with your analysis is always that you think literally every piece of story and gameplay *needs* to support some central theme or argument in a game. You willingly ignore that the vast majority of art can effectively communicate themes or arguments to its audience while also having parts that are designed for entertainment or aesthetic, separate from those themes.
i suppose he's very much one in support of aesthetic cohesion, like every part of a game working together to evoke a specific feel. you're right that that's not the only way to judge games but it seems to be the way he judges them
16:10 I laughed way too much with the way you said Loli Pop
I feel like this video was about a year too early.
17:56 this looks like a pretty clear parody/reference to 80s supermodel and Bond Villain Grace Jones, known for her high-top haircut. You're overthinking it beyond "Grace Jones existed in the neon-soaked 80s and had a super-distinctive look, therefore put her in the vaporwave game"
this game's messages, themes, and intended takeaways are the polar opposite of that of The Beginner's Guide - you really know how to pick 'em, huh.
... Is... it?
If anything, the takeaway of The Beginner's Guide is that while "Every Painting Is a Self-portrait", you can never actually reach and know the artist entirely because your own personal biases and lenses through which you view the game get in the way and distort the narrator you have in your head as opposed to the artist that created the work.
Broken Reality, meanwhile, seems to hover in a zone of "ironic" statements where it's extremely hard to discern what is earnest and what is just a joke, and maybe the creators don't know, either.
In the core sense, their themes seem to be quite similar.
Then again, I found the Innuendo Studios take on The Beginner's Guide to be more insightful than the Errant Signal that seemed to try to end in a meta joke instead of really getting to the core of the game's message. th-cam.com/video/4N6y6LEwsKc/w-d-xo.html
@@WraithMagus
I really like Innuendo Studios but I really miss his video game videos
E R R A N T S I G N A L
/music plays
@@WraithMagus for some reason i thought of the gaming side and the alt-right side of innuendo studios to be different channels. guess i was wrong
@@cartoonhanks1708
Way to not let anything I actually said stand in the way of taking down that strawman!
Where does this false dichotomy of "only authorial intent matters" versus "only subjective reader opinion matters" come from? Especially if we're talking about The Beginner's Guide, where authorial intent is purposefully obscured?
the NPC's remind me of the current dead state of Habbo Hotel and it's really depressing
"Everybody loud and clear
But the truth comes out in riddles that are
Safe enough to share" S.J. Tucker in Cheshire kitten
Wow, did not expect to find another SJ Tucker fan here!
Just imagine being the guy that helped invent an entire genre of music. The weight of that knowledge that, even accidentally, you created a genre.
Unnamed protagonist? What do you mean, the protagonist is clearly named "Player."
dont worry about trying to understand it. vaporwave is more about the aesthetic and mood. the music is just the background theme to it all.
Aesthetics over values is vaporwave in a nutshell. Definitely giving this one a look, cheers!
floral shoppe's legacy is CRAZY. you can't find any vaporwave art that doesn't use at least one of the ideas from the floral shoppe cover (greco-roman sculpture, japanese, grids, or the pink and blue color scheme).
This looks like a place where memes go to die.
"Aquí es donde vengo a llorar."
translation: "this is where i come to cry."
that joke killed me x'd.
For somebody who isn't much into Vapourwave, you described perfectly.
That likes mechanic... Attention is the currency in the marketplace of ideas.
the rain drops turned into wifi symbols. i love it
Wait, is it mexican? Well ecxuse me while I go support the local developers.
As someone who's tangentially interested in vaporwave, I really appreciated your look at the genre and its themes!
Alright your intro sold me already, this is a game for me. Gonna have to go form my own opinion before watching the rest of this video
I love games dude. Cool little stuff like this can be made by a few peeps and just be what it is and be cool. That simple, no corruption. That's dope.
If there's one thing I'd add to your thoughts on vaporwave, it's vaporwaves reliance on nostalgia. It's a genre about simpler times in the past, about memories, and obsolescence. It's a layered statement about missing the past, acknowledging that the past wasn't great, and making it better. For me, it especially evokes a sense of processing pain. As a side note, if you haven't already, check out Sunday School simpsonswave.
from the title I was expecting a video about Star Citizen.
Quite a few things you seem confused by could accurately be responded to with "watch more anime" for better or worse. It's pretty much littered with anime tropes. Well, tropes of all kinds, anyway.
Go to say, the aesthetic of the game (pun intended) doesn't remind me of vaporwave. Nothing about it reminds me much of anything, not even the 90s or early internet 3D chatrooms.
One cool thing here is that you don't have to choose whether you're "lamenting" or "embracing" vaporwave when you participate in creating it.
This episode links in with some of the things talked about in *The Alt Right Playbook*. Where whether or not something is meant to be taken as 'just a joke' or 'actually serius' will depend solely on who the audience is.
As a super huge Dan Bell fan, I love that you mentioned him and even showed a couple of his videos! When I think of vaporwave, one of the first things that comes to mind is Dan Bell's dead mall videos. This video of yours made me want to get steam and see if my PC is good enough to play this game.... it looks like something I would really like. Keep up the awesome work!
Can you please tell me the name of thoose games in the beginning?
Tres Aliens is almost racist, but it can't be because the developers are Hispanic?
So Hispanics have a monopoly on mariachi skeletons?
Yeah I just paused the video at that part and scrolled down to hope somebody commented on that. Campster can sometimes be really dumb in the way only a really smart person can be.
Yes, they do.
They can keep the mariachi skeletons for all I care. I just want tamales!
Sí. No toquen nuestros esqueletos mariachi, gringos >:( (/s)
Ok. No molestar
It looks cool enough for me + i want to make a good latin american videogame librery
【Ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ ｉｓ ｄｅａｄ， ｌｏｎｇ ｌｉｖｅ ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ】
Loli pop... c'mon that's actually funny :D
I honestly don't get it!
@@madspunky ever heard of lolicon?
@@madspunky It's pedophilia
aha! thanks, I think : P @@sanny8716
No. It means they're advertising an underage sex ring.
You can harvest my like. Well done tying things together.
Best explanation of vaporwave i've ever seen. THank you dude.
whatcanisaybutyikes.jpg LMAO
If we like something that is meant to be 'ironic' unironically, then the thing is no longer ironic. Also hipsters are dead. Interesting game. Good video.
what better fate for a genre about existing as a saturated undead husk in a hypercapitalist society than to *be* a saturated undead husk in our hypercapitalist society.
can someone list the games on 0:19 - 0:37 ?
It's now 2022 and it looks like this game might turn out to be oddly prescient about the "metaverse" everyone's suddenly being irrationally exuberant about. Both in the theme of technology being cyclical (Second Life already tried and failed what Zuckerberg at al really think they can make work this time) and in terms of how its economy is set up (Second Life just gave you a regular allowance of its fake currency, and buying things with it was more like buying a license-you "buy" an object and then you can just spam your house with them-whereas NATEM lets you buy a whole shop full of imaginary food, suggesting the kind of artificial scarcity NFT-bros want to attach to everything).
Schrödinger's Edgelord
Finally someone’s talking about this game. I need a reason to not be mad at the ending.
Does anybody know the games in the begining when he lists game traits he likes?
In order of appearance:
•System Shock 2: th-cam.com/video/zAtAyycx-uY/w-d-xo.html
•The Magic Circle: th-cam.com/video/W7eCIkcMUdA/w-d-xo.html
•Secret Little Haven: th-cam.com/video/BzHFRfOVOuQ/w-d-xo.html
•Gone Home: th-cam.com/video/ZbNDk7D0yG0/w-d-xo.html
•Continue? 9876543210: th-cam.com/video/t8O8GvPwXvo/w-d-xo.html