I believe your first idea is probably more useful in the current game environment. An unfinished game is lacking core aspects that keeps it from providing a certain level of experience. Which is different from a game that is still being worked on, with new content being added continually. To reuse an example from the vid, Cyberpunk on release was an unfinished game, but after several updates and a DLC its a game that is not finished, but no longer unfinished.
@@SunbleachedAngelthe difference is that most games of the 6th generation didn’t have gamebreaking bugs or crashes. Out of all the Xbox games I played growing up, I only had a few that weren’t great. Superman Man of Steel being the worst, but still technically a finished playable game. Even the licensed shovelware of that era was pretty good: X-Men Legends, SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom, Ford vs Chevy, Fairly Odd Parents Breakin Da Rules, Hulk, Star Wars Jedi Starfighter, Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, Shrek 2, Disney Extreme Skate Adventure, Simpsons Hit n Run, I could keep going…
@@Documentoh Same, I had to lock in on the video itself on that part and take the video outside of background noise mode because bro was cooking a 5 star meal with those final few minutes.
"'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'" I think a nice metaphor is carving a bust, because in that case "adding" or "creating" is removing parts of the medium (say stone, or marble). In this case, add to much, and you wind up with a pile of useless gravel on the floor. The difficult part is being confident in your craft and in your own judgement, such that you're able to say "it's done" and not be tempted to keep changing or adding things. This tends to be one of those things that comes with hard-earned experience (and many failed works, that were either left incomplete or ruined by endless tinkering and superfluous additions).
Yeah, every time I finish a piece, I eventually notice a flaw, and fix it, before noticing another flaw. I've also completely redrawn the linework for some drawings multiple times, and of course, redoing the linework requires redoing absolutely everything else as well! Hell, I've even redrawn some at double the resolution they were originally at! At this point, I see "finished" as a state where I'd be fine if there were no more changes, not a state where no more changes will happen.
As a writer of 4 x 400+ page fantasy novels with loads of bloated content, I can attest to this. For that reason I never read my own books after release, because I will always be able to either find overlooked errors or things I wanna refine. It may not even be whole story beats, but just sentences I think I could rephrase better etc.
Not necessarily. Finished can mean any number of things. Inaccessibility to people doesn't make an incomplete game suddenly "finished". It simply becomes an unfinished lost game. Who says finality has to carry a negative meaning?
@TheRealNullcallerToo and yet, the day all Mario games are forgotten, people will still be living in a world of games that only exist because of the influence Mario had early on. You could say a 4th death is when it no longer has a measurable impact on the world.
I'm a new subscriber and I have to say, I love the way you put together your videos, especially the ones like "The games we forget.", "Games with unsatisfying endings" and "Games you can never play again." where you effectively start with one topic or subject and then jump between branching topics and eventually wrap it back around to the original topic throughout and at the end of the video. There is something very poetic about a lot of your videos that I really like. Keep up the good work and I hope you have continued success in the future as you make some quality videos.
People constantly complain about games being live service games nowadays, but then you have people complaining that your literal single player game is “dead” after two months because they looked at Steam Charts and act like that makes for a good denominator for a game’s success.
When I saw the title of this video, I thought about truly unfinished games along the likes of Glover 2. A 60% complete build was leaked, but the game was cancelled in the middle of production. While fans technically could mod it, they do not know the original vision. Games like Glover 2 are left unfinished, and now no one will ever see the completed version.
This is one of the reasons why I really dislike it when people aren't upfront about which parts are "recreations" and fan "interpretations" regarding prototypes. Like when a certain group (TCRF iirc) tried to mix real, genuine, beta pokemon content, with best-approximations by fans, and yet present it on live stream as if it were the genuine deal in its entirety; only confessing after-the-fact when called out. Stunts like that do a huge disservice to the preservation community by muddying the waters. I still know people that present fan recreations from that stream as genuine beta content to this day. It doesn't matter if it's a great approximation of a genuine concept art drawing by a skilled pixel artist - that's not how it works. As you say, we as fans can always try and recreate things to the best of our abilities (using concept art, developer interviews etc.) but there is a fundamental difference between that and the original (elements of the) game, which is ephemeral and unobtainable.
When it comes down to it, the developer always decides when a game is finished. However, that doesn't mean that the player doesn't experience a "complete" experience when he plays the game. To a player with no knowledge of what the final product looks like, the most unfinished of games can still have meaning and value. If you look at a painting, who's to say the painting can't be improved upon or changed? The player's intended experience may not be what the developer first envisioned, but that can go with any game. Even if a game is endlessly in early access, the player's experience can still be a unique, interesting, and satisfying time. To me, that's what I would call a finished game.
Under this framework, the status of "finished" is entirely subjective, equivalent to "fun", making the word redundant and thus meaningless. Why not just call a game fun then? Why invent new words at all?
@@LARAUJO_0 I think you may have missed ariadame102's point somewhat, which is that OP is just describing "fun" or "enjoyable" as a bit of a non-sequitor after waxing philosophically about what "finished" means. Are we to take them as synonyms, then? I think you're both actually in agreement: fun and finished have nothing to do with each other, despite OP conflating the two; thus you can have an unfinished game that is fun, and a finished one that is not fun.
Except the developer hasn't chosen when it's done for a LONG TIME, publishers and share holders do now and you know this. Developers haven't chosen that kind of thing since publishers weasaled their way in and told people "you need us as a middle man like EVERYWHERE does even though all we do is cough up money and marketing". Its a messed up balancing act of egos and idiots to be honest, you have again the publishers thinking bottom line and nothing but money / control over the gamers which brings you such fantastic piles of trash like halo 5 / infinite, and the developer wanting their vision put out, which if their reigns ARN'T PULLED you end up with crap like Duke Nukem Forever happening..... basically, humanity are idiots and its one extreme or the other.
@@CrashHeadroom This is an age-old problem in art, sadly. Often, capitol - be it pecuniary or social - is required in order for something to get the exposure or support it needs to exist, or to become the best it can be. This means creatives with strong visions often wind up becoming tied to (or become the slaves of, even) those who can readily provide access to said capitol. Thankfully, technologies like the Internet have done much to reduce the need for this parasitic relationship (the rise of flash and indie games being a great example) but it's still a very common reality for a lot of creative endeavours. With that said, having an outside force of some kind to limit and oversee a project can often prevent said project from getting stuck in development hell, or suffering from feature creep etc. Many of the best games created ime are the product of an incredibly creative visionary, coupled with a publisher that - whilst understanding and supportive of their work - will make the right decisions regarding deadlines, budgets etc. including when to reduce/extend or increase/decrease. A good example that always comes to mind for me is OoT vs Zelda 64; whilst I'm sure a lot of good ideas had to be scrapped due to deadlines and budgets, a lot of the things they wanted to implement (like every part of the world - down to the grass tiles - having total permanence) would honestly have done little to add to the experience whilst costing a lot in terms of time and money.
Wow. Phenomenal work on this. First cursed judge video ever (Recommended) and I was really into everything he said near the end. The line "Every game is a live service game now whether anyone likes it or not. Cyberpunk was finished, Project Zombie is not." Actually gave me goosebumps. Bravo. Easy sub. Keep doing your thing.
I remember reading an interview from the super mario 64 devs about how they really wanted to add more to the game (namely luigi), but had to stop adding new content and just ship it because they were out of time. The most iconic 3D platformer of all time and a game that set the standard for all 3D games that followed, and by some metrics you could say that even it wasn't quite finished.
The eternal struggle of art is learning when to call your work "good enough." When you make something, there's always more you could do, always something you could change or add or remove or completely reimagine, but at a certain point, you have to call it complete and move on to something else. In a sense, the ability to update and patch games has made this a harder thing to do than ever for game developers. How can you call it finished when you have the ability to change things in real time, so that the people experiencing it will get to experience every single change you send out? How can you call it finished when there is no clear point of no return on changes? How can you call it finished when you were rushed to complete it, and didn't even finish the basic piece in the first place?
You just flew over the fact , games are just financial tool / investment now , no mecenes + it's a collective work not a solo piece of art , a camel in fact. CDPR didn't patch cyberpunk cuz of players, the stock tanked , investors sued
I play a game called Hydroneer which was released a few years ago, it has gotten some pretty big updates to the point where huge parts of the game have been overhauled, and recently announced a DLC that is in development. The next day, the head dev of the game released a second announcement, this one a response to community backlash. It wasn't overwhelming, but apparently there was a significant response that boiled down to, "Your game isn't finished. Why are you releasing paid DLC when the game isn't done?" The problem is that, as he stated in the second announcement, the game was never officially in Early Access. They released what they considered to be a completed game and then added a bunch of free updates and content to it to keep it alive, growing, and improving including a couple of huge overhauls, but the creator considers the first release their full release. It was a minor part of the community, but there was a group of people that simply assumed the game wasn't done and would continue to be developed with no additional cost to the players possibly indefinitely. And I think that's a great example of what is happening in gaming right now and builds on your point of, "What's the difference between forever Early Access and a forever game?" Some game developers, no matter how much I respect and am thankful for their work, like the Terraria devs or Concerned Ape with Stardew Valley, have given some players an unrealistic expectations of game support. I've seen reviews of a video game claiming that the developer abandoned it to work on something else so people shouldn't buy it when it was a complete, stand-alone, single-player game. I can understand that with some games; they make big promises, claim there's more to come, and then abandon the game because they're basically running a rolling scam of overpromising, underdelivering, and then doing it all again with a new name and coat of paint. But I've also seen that on games that are done. They're not perfect, but they're nothing less than what was promised. Some people, it's a small number but they exist, have come to expect new content to be created for a video game indefinitely if it has a certain feel, regardless of the size or state of the development team. Inversely, gamers have also gotten used to large games that are broken on release. I saw this a lot especially when I was still using Twitch. Streamers and captial-G Gamers would insist on playing a game that had just released as soon as it came out, then they would simultaneously complain that the game was broken while also defending that it would probably be fixed soon. But they were always done playing it by the time it had been seriously patched because they were constantly chasing the next new thing, be it to keep their channel relevant or simply because that's how they were. There was always an apologist attitude for games from big studios that the full release wouldn't be the final release and any problems would simply go away with times, be they game breaking bugs, performance issues, or whatever. We are in a very strange period in gaming and really media delivery as a whole. Free or subscription services have become the norm, TH-cam is one of those, and as such have shifted expectations to having free or cheap media available easily, but there's been backlash against the increasing monetization of those same systems because they were developed at a loss as a way to gobble up marketshare and ensure little to no competition. Now they're having to actually make money, and people are angry that what they'd been given so freely before is being locked off. This is still gaming I'm talking about here too, with video games that do tons of free updates in contrast to ones that put similar kinds of updates in paid DLC as well as subscription models to live service games or even things like XBox Game Pass or PlayStationPlus. People I talk to have voiced concerns over the future of the artform due to monetization methods, the unreliability of said standards (I know Patreon is currently the biggest third-party way to be financed by fans outside of one-time purchases, and it's been having some trouble as of late that puts its future into uncertainty), evolving customer expectations, and the preservation of media in a historical context due to the often "always online" requirement to access much of it. And all that isn't even to mention just general concerns over the state of the world and near future.
I have recently started making my first ever video game in my free time and although it's a pretty simple puzzle game, my progress on it has been slower than I wanted and I've been struggling with motivation. I clicked on this video to make me feel better about my game not being finished yet, and you know what? it helped a lot. thank you :)
Love these videos. It especially always makes me smile when you talk about trackmania, it's a game close to my heart and to have someone describe it a beautifully and eloquently as you is always nice. Also, the music as the end there building and becoming more chaotic as the rant builds is a really nice touch! As with every one your videos, this is a joy to watch.
What I realised when I started painting miniatures, besides me not having enough time and money, is that no matter how good you think your creation is at one point, you will find things you wish you did differently sooner or later. With Indie games I think that's a very similar thing. You want to add one more feature, one more boss, one more weapon... it's an infinite loop that can end with those forever in progress games.
And this is why I now have the 5 year rule for all triple A and big dev games now. Since they refuse to release finished games I have not only ended any and all preorders but I know longer will even buy their games until 5 years after they have released.
I think how "finished" a game is comes down to two factors: *content* and *construction.* Content refers to the design of the game, the world, the story, the missions, the items, the characters, and anything else on the list of features the devs plan to add in order to make the game a complete experience. Construction refers to the code, the assets, the music, the graphics, the removal or incorporation of bugs, the playtesting, and the optimization of the game at a functional level. Under these definitions, Project Zomboid is finished construction-wise but unfinished content-wise, whereas Cyberpunk 2077 at launch was finished content-wise but unfinished construction-wise. Both are/were finished in some sense but not entirely finished
For the longest time, (probably 3-5 years) I lived without internet and an Xbox one. Playing games on there day 1 release version, was definitely a trip. You don't really realize how different a day 1 version game is to patched version until you actually play them. But I kind of miss it now.
The frustrating part about functions like early access is that, on paper, they're a great for their purpose (ie. getting small studios the funding they need to continue developing) but are so often subject to abuse by large companies that were not the intended benefactors (Cyberpunk, ME Andromeda, etc). Anyway, great video and I'm glad you approached this the way you did. You hit a lot of great points
I think one of the best examples of this is Halo 3's forge map overload glitch. It shaped the way Halo 3 custom games worked and extended the game's life far beyond anyone's expectation. The trick was easy, spawn a ton of land mines, blow them all up at once, and you are able to spawn objects without physical/numerical constraints. This led to some very creative forge maps, such as Fat Kid, Rat Tunnels, Duck Hunt, etc
Great timing that this video gets posted on the same day that Satisfactory announces that the next update will officially be 1.0! I'm curious how this unfinished video game concept compares to games like that and factorio that was early access a Long time but is now also officially out of beta and Finished
the difference between Terraria and Project Zombie is one of honesty, Terraria has been having its final final final final final final update (for real this time) for years now, whereas Project Zombie has honestly been under heavy development for years now
Reminds me of a quote "No film is ever finished, it just gets released.", while the difference between a film and a game is that a game is so intractable no matter from a buyer or a maker stand point, which can make things better, but makes the release itself meant so much less.
It’s like making recorded music. It’s almost too overwhelming now with the ability to re record everything endlessly. That’s why some people still prefer to use tape because it forces a more permanent state of finishing the process. Much like the technology limitations of offline games being forced to be released as finished as possible
You brought up some amazing points in this video, its fantastic. In my opinion, a game is "finished" when it is no longer being worked on by the developers. Yes, community members could still be working on and releasing mods, but when the developer is no longer working on a game, they are "finished" with it.
The integrating DLC as part of a story section. There are very few games I've ever seen do it well that dont make any major sacrifices to do so. I think one of the best examples of integraing story DLC into a game was last years Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty. Flows fairly seemlessly into the main story, and doesnt really feel out of place given what the plot of the game is about, and the main character's motivation to help with that plot. Only issue I had in terms of blending with the core game was you could tell that the female main characters voice lines were recorded in an entirely different setting than the base game, as they sound notably different.
The passionate anger at the end was nice. Love hearing when people get like that. The definition of “finished” is arbitrary and up to interpretation from person to person, which is a problem when people try to find an objective definition. Some people consider 1.0 to be when something is finished, regardless of how much is in there and how buggy it is. Some people consider the game hitting check marks in terms of what it has to be finished. Some people consider the game being unbuggy to the point you need to look for them to be finished. Some people consider a game that’s stopped receiving any support to be finished. None of them are objectively wrong.
Video games are the only entertainment medium that allows unfinished media to exist you will never watch an unfinished movie or hear an unfinished song but everyone’s played an unfinished game
This statement is false - especially with the talks about "bad CGI", many CGI artist already came out to say how CGI was rushed or something scrapped because there wasn't enough time or that something is unfinished. The existence of "extended cuts", "enhanced cuts" and so on, that add previously unfinished elements to a movie or "update" a movie also disprove this. The difference in the perception of the media (A movie released on bluray and in theaters "feels" finished more than games that are not bound to such a medium anymore and can receive updates during your time playing it - disregarding if the update actually has any meaningful updates in regards to "finishness", such a situation enhances the feel of unfinishness) and the "harshness" of seeing those unfinished elements (a bluescreen or not loading NPC faces give you enhance a feeling of an unfinished medium, more than a movie lacking an important scene that couldn't be finished that you only are able to see in the "extended cut" 3 years down the line) - and those unfinished elements are now also harsher in movies exactly because CGI is one of those fields where the "unfinishedness" can be seen.
Honestly, I like this method of not having games perfectly finished, cause it adds so much more potential to great games. Imagining some of these games without DLC or updates is a chilling thought. TF2 at launch is wildly different to now. It's wild when you go play the Orange Box versions on console, where they were never updated since launch. I think it's generally a more positive thing, to incorporate more in to a great game, or even fixing a game that didn't have enough time to complete as intended at the original launch date, like No Man's Sky. So, at that point, does it really matter if games are never "finished"? There's always more potential, which is nice. It's nice to have a type of media that isn't just over, so you can have even more enjoyment out of it.
Hollow Knight is an example of a great unfinished game. It’s probably one of the best games ever made, but we know it could have been even better if more stretch goals were reached. And if that giant spider boss in Deepnest had been finished.
I feel like early access games are a reflection of humans. We are all unfinished, but there is a certain beauty in the rough edges. Some people run from that, but others embrace it.
What a great video. It gives great context for some of my favorite things about speedruns and speedrun retrospectives - the glitches that become so important in those communities that they become beloved and almost have a quality of being legendary.
This was a very thought provoking subject. Makes me think about when art is finished? Like Star Wars. We all thought it was a trilogy. Then there was a prequel trilogy. Then there was so on and so forth to the point where a new character has actually been behind the scenes this entire time. So was Star Wars finished? Wow. I understand your dilemma
My favorite video game was never finished, as in it was never actually completed. You can play it from the beginning to the end, but it's still not done. It's a narrative-driven visual novel with multiple storylines, each with multiple endings. It was to have 9 routes through the story, but only six were finished before the development team was forced to disband due to life circumstances, with a seventh being written many years later by an anonymous fan. By any objective metric the game is not finished, but enough of it is done that it has a dedicated fanbase that can still play through it.
This reminds me of what Tehsnakerer said in his "Playing Classic Sonic Wrong" video, where he brought up the question "are released video games actually finished" when discussing Sonic 3D Blast and how the lead dev for that game a unofficial director's cut that fixed various issues that were in the released version for the Genesis.
Something that my composition teacher in high school told me about pieces of music applies to this, I feel: "Pieces are never finished - just abandoned." You can add content to a video game as long as you'd like in today's age, but as a consequence it's never truly finished. All games that aren't being updated are abandoned, and all that are aren't finished.
12:20 this video si very cool but im not sure how dont starve fits in the pool of these games!! while it is still getting uopdated the developers work on many toher games like oxegen not included, the floor is lava and so on. anyways great video daniel as usual
Great video. Got me thinking that a "finished" game can become unfinished, then finished again, if it's dredged up by fans/GOG/Nightdive and given a new lease on life. Either through an "Enhanced Edition" (looking at you, System Shock), quality-of-life patches/mods, source ports (GZDoom, etc.), an open-source re-implementation (Marathon and Aleph One comes to mind), somebody reverse-engineering the code (like with Diablo or Mario 64), or even a total conversion mod that turns the game into something else entirely. Yeah, this is one of those ontological rabbitholes, isn't it? "Hey, VSauce. Michael here. This video game is finished. OR IS IT?"
about the DaS1 DLC: illusory wall made a good video on how it wasn't THAT obscure at the time it came out. Fromsoft literally told the players on their website how to reach the DLC area and the fanbase had the cove in darkroot in mind before the release already
All that was missing was a five minute spiel at the end about how we the players are like unfinished games, and need to keep "developing" as people in the future, with a release date that one day comes for everyone
To be clear, everyone, the problem isn't Project Zomboid or the earnest intentions of the devs. The problem is that bad faith characters see the success of Project Zomboid and want to use it as an excuse to be lazy simply because the game "isn't finished". This is about optics. It's the same problem as when, say, a videogame like FNAF or Slender becomes trendy and rather than innovating upon the idea, people just churn out thousands of "FNAF-likes" that do infinitely less while having greater asking prices. It's the same phenomenon as what happened after RE4 where people decided "Horror doesn't sell anymore, it has to be action". The same phenomenon as predatory marketing strategies such as lootboxes and battlepasses. In case you haven't figured it out the "phenomenon" is corporate business executives looking at things smaller companies are doing that are successful and trying to Min/Max their profits while putting as little creativity or originality into it as possible. "Who cares if we cut corners, it is making us money". It's not that everything is an Early Alpha game, it'd that everything is "Market Research Data" and the people making the games have no passion.
12:16 I LAUGHED SO HARD! that swear was the first in the video and caught me so off guard, i honestly don’t think it could’ve been used at a better place
The longer time goes on is what makes us realize that a lot of games are insanely broken after a deep analysis on them and ironically enough the most siple ones of them all are the least broken of them all due to how limited your options are to completely rip it's balance into shreds. No game is ever truly finished and even the most polished games of them all have the ability to be absolutely janky and broken no matter how many bugfixes are done, it's a vicious circle (but a funny one nontheless) those bugs can ALSO give a game it's identity, for example, ULTRAKILL has a plathora of mechanics like proyectile boosting and rocket riding were just stuff that Hakita (the game's dev) found cool and just left it in, so a "finished" game with barely any exploits or glitches of that kind would just fade into complete obscurity overtime
I should note everything up to heading to darkroot garden is mandatory, and you can kill the hydra and find Dusk near the start of the game (and she sells magic so a player might notice her missing and go looking to find a new enemy) but everything apart from that yeah good luck without a guide.
For some reason... this reminded me of Two Worlds II, the game came out early 2011 and had one DLC. Then 5 years later it had an engine update out of nowhere and a 10 hours DLC came out in 2017. They even released another DLC in 2019? It's so fascinating whenever older games put out a DLC years after the game initially released with nothing in between whatsoever.
I feel like Ultrakill is an interesting thing to think about. It releases more like a TV show than a typical Early Access game, new levels coming out over time etc. It seems the developer has a pretty clear roadmap of what they want to do, so they just release in chunks as it's made and then maybe go back and fix some things they missed. I feel like this, though maybe unique to Ultrakill, is a very good way of using the ability to not only go back and change games, but also the Early Access feature. Also, the hype it builds for the game every time a new level is added probably helps both fanbase and developer. Basically what I'm saying is that it doesn't feel malicious😅
Dark Souls 2 DLC, pre Scholar of the First Sin edition, did also have some shenanigans involving finding a specific item to access each individual DLC portal
![Slap Battles Script | [All executor] Mastery helper gui V1.5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/OJDjmAS1uRQ/mqdefault.jpg)
I went into this video wondering what was an unfinished videogame.
Turns out I should have thought what is a *finished* videogame.
I believe your first idea is probably more useful in the current game environment.
An unfinished game is lacking core aspects that keeps it from providing a certain level of experience. Which is different from a game that is still being worked on, with new content being added continually.
To reuse an example from the vid, Cyberpunk on release was an unfinished game, but after several updates and a DLC its a game that is not finished, but no longer unfinished.
The more you look into games, the more you realize finished games just don't exist, and it's pretty obvious too
@@SunbleachedAngelthe difference is that most games of the 6th generation didn’t have gamebreaking bugs or crashes. Out of all the Xbox games I played growing up, I only had a few that weren’t great. Superman Man of Steel being the worst, but still technically a finished playable game. Even the licensed shovelware of that era was pretty good: X-Men Legends, SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom, Ford vs Chevy, Fairly Odd Parents Breakin Da Rules, Hulk, Star Wars Jedi Starfighter, Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, Shrek 2, Disney Extreme Skate Adventure, Simpsons Hit n Run, I could keep going…
@@scottoleson1997 the bigger the games get the harder it is to make and finish then, the technology simply hadn't caught up to human ambition yet
FINISH IT!
Bro fucking exploded in the last 5 minutes holy shit
I had this in the background and paused what I was doing to check what he was cooking 😭
@@Documentoh Same, I had to lock in on the video itself on that part and take the video outside of background noise mode because bro was cooking a 5 star meal with those final few minutes.
do you rock what the smell is cooking?
Bro i was laying in bed watching this and I jumped up when he started screaming
The most important thing I learned watching (or listening to) this video is, that 'Beastars' has an absolute banger of a soundtrack.
Oh lord yeah, it's my favorite OST if you couldn't tell
As an artist, I will say this :
Nothing is ever finished, you can always add more.
Letting go is the hardest part of creating.
"'Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.'"
I think a nice metaphor is carving a bust, because in that case "adding" or "creating" is removing parts of the medium (say stone, or marble). In this case, add to much, and you wind up with a pile of useless gravel on the floor.
The difficult part is being confident in your craft and in your own judgement, such that you're able to say "it's done" and not be tempted to keep changing or adding things. This tends to be one of those things that comes with hard-earned experience (and many failed works, that were either left incomplete or ruined by endless tinkering and superfluous additions).
How about getting started?
Yeah, every time I finish a piece, I eventually notice a flaw, and fix it, before noticing another flaw.
I've also completely redrawn the linework for some drawings multiple times, and of course, redoing the linework requires redoing absolutely everything else as well!
Hell, I've even redrawn some at double the resolution they were originally at!
At this point, I see "finished" as a state where I'd be fine if there were no more changes, not a state where no more changes will happen.
As a music creator I can relate
As a writer of 4 x 400+ page fantasy novels with loads of bloated content, I can attest to this. For that reason I never read my own books after release, because I will always be able to either find overlooked errors or things I wanna refine. It may not even be whole story beats, but just sentences I think I could rephrase better etc.
The game is finished, when it becomes lost media.
No one can update it, mod it, or play it.
It is complete and completely gone.
same concept as death really. you are complete when you can no longer do anything.
@@butter_mf True
Not necessarily. Finished can mean any number of things. Inaccessibility to people doesn't make an incomplete game suddenly "finished". It simply becomes an unfinished lost game.
Who says finality has to carry a negative meaning?
yeah atp the only way a game can become finished is when it litteraly finishes
@TheRealNullcallerToo and yet, the day all Mario games are forgotten, people will still be living in a world of games that only exist because of the influence Mario had early on. You could say a 4th death is when it no longer has a measurable impact on the world.
you are a unfinished vibeo game
Well said
No u. 😎
unfin
ished
video
games
vibeo
In the best way 🤩
My dumbass wondering who is "Unfin Ished" for like 10 solid seconds
Lol
No way, my other favorite youtube video essay guy
Existential video games would be an interesting topic to talk about
Agreed
Agreed
If only there was a channel that talked about existential topics in video games
Talos Principle? that kind of stuff?
SOMA is my favorite example of those kinds of games :D
I'm a new subscriber and I have to say, I love the way you put together your videos, especially the ones like "The games we forget.", "Games with unsatisfying endings" and "Games you can never play again." where you effectively start with one topic or subject and then jump between branching topics and eventually wrap it back around to the original topic throughout and at the end of the video. There is something very poetic about a lot of your videos that I really like. Keep up the good work and I hope you have continued success in the future as you make some quality videos.
People constantly complain about games being live service games nowadays, but then you have people complaining that your literal single player game is “dead” after two months because they looked at Steam Charts and act like that makes for a good denominator for a game’s success.
Not the same people, first group hates the second and vice versa
When I saw the title of this video, I thought about truly unfinished games along the likes of Glover 2. A 60% complete build was leaked, but the game was cancelled in the middle of production. While fans technically could mod it, they do not know the original vision. Games like Glover 2 are left unfinished, and now no one will ever see the completed version.
This is one of the reasons why I really dislike it when people aren't upfront about which parts are "recreations" and fan "interpretations" regarding prototypes. Like when a certain group (TCRF iirc) tried to mix real, genuine, beta pokemon content, with best-approximations by fans, and yet present it on live stream as if it were the genuine deal in its entirety; only confessing after-the-fact when called out. Stunts like that do a huge disservice to the preservation community by muddying the waters. I still know people that present fan recreations from that stream as genuine beta content to this day. It doesn't matter if it's a great approximation of a genuine concept art drawing by a skilled pixel artist - that's not how it works. As you say, we as fans can always try and recreate things to the best of our abilities (using concept art, developer interviews etc.) but there is a fundamental difference between that and the original (elements of the) game, which is ephemeral and unobtainable.
When it comes down to it, the developer always decides when a game is finished. However, that doesn't mean that the player doesn't experience a "complete" experience when he plays the game. To a player with no knowledge of what the final product looks like, the most unfinished of games can still have meaning and value. If you look at a painting, who's to say the painting can't be improved upon or changed? The player's intended experience may not be what the developer first envisioned, but that can go with any game. Even if a game is endlessly in early access, the player's experience can still be a unique, interesting, and satisfying time. To me, that's what I would call a finished game.
Under this framework, the status of "finished" is entirely subjective, equivalent to "fun", making the word redundant and thus meaningless. Why not just call a game fun then? Why invent new words at all?
@@ariadame102 You can find an unfinished game fun and a finished game unfun
@@LARAUJO_0 I think you may have missed ariadame102's point somewhat, which is that OP is just describing "fun" or "enjoyable" as a bit of a non-sequitor after waxing philosophically about what "finished" means. Are we to take them as synonyms, then? I think you're both actually in agreement: fun and finished have nothing to do with each other, despite OP conflating the two; thus you can have an unfinished game that is fun, and a finished one that is not fun.
Except the developer hasn't chosen when it's done for a LONG TIME, publishers and share holders do now and you know this. Developers haven't chosen that kind of thing since publishers weasaled their way in and told people "you need us as a middle man like EVERYWHERE does even though all we do is cough up money and marketing". Its a messed up balancing act of egos and idiots to be honest, you have again the publishers thinking bottom line and nothing but money / control over the gamers which brings you such fantastic piles of trash like halo 5 / infinite, and the developer wanting their vision put out, which if their reigns ARN'T PULLED you end up with crap like Duke Nukem Forever happening..... basically, humanity are idiots and its one extreme or the other.
@@CrashHeadroom This is an age-old problem in art, sadly. Often, capitol - be it pecuniary or social - is required in order for something to get the exposure or support it needs to exist, or to become the best it can be. This means creatives with strong visions often wind up becoming tied to (or become the slaves of, even) those who can readily provide access to said capitol. Thankfully, technologies like the Internet have done much to reduce the need for this parasitic relationship (the rise of flash and indie games being a great example) but it's still a very common reality for a lot of creative endeavours.
With that said, having an outside force of some kind to limit and oversee a project can often prevent said project from getting stuck in development hell, or suffering from feature creep etc. Many of the best games created ime are the product of an incredibly creative visionary, coupled with a publisher that - whilst understanding and supportive of their work - will make the right decisions regarding deadlines, budgets etc. including when to reduce/extend or increase/decrease. A good example that always comes to mind for me is OoT vs Zelda 64; whilst I'm sure a lot of good ideas had to be scrapped due to deadlines and budgets, a lot of the things they wanted to implement (like every part of the world - down to the grass tiles - having total permanence) would honestly have done little to add to the experience whilst costing a lot in terms of time and money.
Honestly, the out of left field derailment in emotional composure at the end got me haha 10/10, liked, I was already subscribed ❤
Wow. Phenomenal work on this. First cursed judge video ever (Recommended) and I was really into everything he said near the end. The line "Every game is a live service game now whether anyone likes it or not. Cyberpunk was finished, Project Zombie is not." Actually gave me goosebumps. Bravo. Easy sub. Keep doing your thing.
I remember reading an interview from the super mario 64 devs about how they really wanted to add more to the game (namely luigi), but had to stop adding new content and just ship it because they were out of time. The most iconic 3D platformer of all time and a game that set the standard for all 3D games that followed, and by some metrics you could say that even it wasn't quite finished.
The eternal struggle of art is learning when to call your work "good enough." When you make something, there's always more you could do, always something you could change or add or remove or completely reimagine, but at a certain point, you have to call it complete and move on to something else.
In a sense, the ability to update and patch games has made this a harder thing to do than ever for game developers. How can you call it finished when you have the ability to change things in real time, so that the people experiencing it will get to experience every single change you send out? How can you call it finished when there is no clear point of no return on changes? How can you call it finished when you were rushed to complete it, and didn't even finish the basic piece in the first place?
You just flew over the fact , games are just financial tool / investment now , no mecenes + it's a collective work not a solo piece of art , a camel in fact. CDPR didn't patch cyberpunk cuz of players, the stock tanked , investors sued
@@mokeysamo3528 are games on itch io a financial tool?
4:07 trackmania jumpscare
COMMENT REPLY JUMPSCARE
😅
Well, that got intense near the end
Yeah, I think he just needed to get that off his chest…
I play a game called Hydroneer which was released a few years ago, it has gotten some pretty big updates to the point where huge parts of the game have been overhauled, and recently announced a DLC that is in development. The next day, the head dev of the game released a second announcement, this one a response to community backlash. It wasn't overwhelming, but apparently there was a significant response that boiled down to, "Your game isn't finished. Why are you releasing paid DLC when the game isn't done?" The problem is that, as he stated in the second announcement, the game was never officially in Early Access. They released what they considered to be a completed game and then added a bunch of free updates and content to it to keep it alive, growing, and improving including a couple of huge overhauls, but the creator considers the first release their full release. It was a minor part of the community, but there was a group of people that simply assumed the game wasn't done and would continue to be developed with no additional cost to the players possibly indefinitely.
And I think that's a great example of what is happening in gaming right now and builds on your point of, "What's the difference between forever Early Access and a forever game?" Some game developers, no matter how much I respect and am thankful for their work, like the Terraria devs or Concerned Ape with Stardew Valley, have given some players an unrealistic expectations of game support. I've seen reviews of a video game claiming that the developer abandoned it to work on something else so people shouldn't buy it when it was a complete, stand-alone, single-player game. I can understand that with some games; they make big promises, claim there's more to come, and then abandon the game because they're basically running a rolling scam of overpromising, underdelivering, and then doing it all again with a new name and coat of paint. But I've also seen that on games that are done. They're not perfect, but they're nothing less than what was promised. Some people, it's a small number but they exist, have come to expect new content to be created for a video game indefinitely if it has a certain feel, regardless of the size or state of the development team.
Inversely, gamers have also gotten used to large games that are broken on release. I saw this a lot especially when I was still using Twitch. Streamers and captial-G Gamers would insist on playing a game that had just released as soon as it came out, then they would simultaneously complain that the game was broken while also defending that it would probably be fixed soon. But they were always done playing it by the time it had been seriously patched because they were constantly chasing the next new thing, be it to keep their channel relevant or simply because that's how they were. There was always an apologist attitude for games from big studios that the full release wouldn't be the final release and any problems would simply go away with times, be they game breaking bugs, performance issues, or whatever.
We are in a very strange period in gaming and really media delivery as a whole. Free or subscription services have become the norm, TH-cam is one of those, and as such have shifted expectations to having free or cheap media available easily, but there's been backlash against the increasing monetization of those same systems because they were developed at a loss as a way to gobble up marketshare and ensure little to no competition. Now they're having to actually make money, and people are angry that what they'd been given so freely before is being locked off. This is still gaming I'm talking about here too, with video games that do tons of free updates in contrast to ones that put similar kinds of updates in paid DLC as well as subscription models to live service games or even things like XBox Game Pass or PlayStationPlus. People I talk to have voiced concerns over the future of the artform due to monetization methods, the unreliability of said standards (I know Patreon is currently the biggest third-party way to be financed by fans outside of one-time purchases, and it's been having some trouble as of late that puts its future into uncertainty), evolving customer expectations, and the preservation of media in a historical context due to the often "always online" requirement to access much of it. And all that isn't even to mention just general concerns over the state of the world and near future.
I have recently started making my first ever video game in my free time and although it's a pretty simple puzzle game, my progress on it has been slower than I wanted and I've been struggling with motivation. I clicked on this video to make me feel better about my game not being finished yet, and you know what? it helped a lot. thank you :)
Love these videos. It especially always makes me smile when you talk about trackmania, it's a game close to my heart and to have someone describe it a beautifully and eloquently as you is always nice. Also, the music as the end there building and becoming more chaotic as the rant builds is a really nice touch! As with every one your videos, this is a joy to watch.
Thank you! I've been playing Trackmania since 2020, I'm Owlette_ in game.
What I realised when I started painting miniatures, besides me not having enough time and money, is that no matter how good you think your creation is at one point, you will find things you wish you did differently sooner or later. With Indie games I think that's a very similar thing. You want to add one more feature, one more boss, one more weapon... it's an infinite loop that can end with those forever in progress games.
Great video as always, I love your vids and hearing the fantastic Beastars OST while you speak is great
I forget about this channel every month or so and come back to see another fire video
I’m even subbed, but it’s not sending me notifications
crazy that all of this is just ones and zeroes and gizmos! We have come super far since the Challenger accident. Hope your spring is going well❤
And this is why I now have the 5 year rule for all triple A and big dev games now. Since they refuse to release finished games I have not only ended any and all preorders but I know longer will even buy their games until 5 years after they have released.
I think how "finished" a game is comes down to two factors: *content* and *construction.* Content refers to the design of the game, the world, the story, the missions, the items, the characters, and anything else on the list of features the devs plan to add in order to make the game a complete experience. Construction refers to the code, the assets, the music, the graphics, the removal or incorporation of bugs, the playtesting, and the optimization of the game at a functional level.
Under these definitions, Project Zomboid is finished construction-wise but unfinished content-wise, whereas Cyberpunk 2077 at launch was finished content-wise but unfinished construction-wise. Both are/were finished in some sense but not entirely finished
For the longest time, (probably 3-5 years) I lived without internet and an Xbox one. Playing games on there day 1 release version, was definitely a trip. You don't really realize how different a day 1 version game is to patched version until you actually play them. But I kind of miss it now.
The frustrating part about functions like early access is that, on paper, they're a great for their purpose (ie. getting small studios the funding they need to continue developing) but are so often subject to abuse by large companies that were not the intended benefactors (Cyberpunk, ME Andromeda, etc).
Anyway, great video and I'm glad you approached this the way you did. You hit a lot of great points
can i say i have always asked for jazz as youtube background music, it is the perfect backdrop genre, thanks for making my dream come true. subbed
Remember when Terraria was supposed to receive its last update?
which?
@@ItstoadXD 1.4
I think one of the best examples of this is Halo 3's forge map overload glitch. It shaped the way Halo 3 custom games worked and extended the game's life far beyond anyone's expectation. The trick was easy, spawn a ton of land mines, blow them all up at once, and you are able to spawn objects without physical/numerical constraints. This led to some very creative forge maps, such as Fat Kid, Rat Tunnels, Duck Hunt, etc
Your thumbnail made me read UNFIN ISHED VIDEO GAMES.. and I thought this video was about some mysterious obscure video game developer
Great timing that this video gets posted on the same day that Satisfactory announces that the next update will officially be 1.0! I'm curious how this unfinished video game concept compares to games like that and factorio that was early access a Long time but is now also officially out of beta and Finished
the difference between Terraria and Project Zombie is one of honesty, Terraria has been having its final final final final final final update (for real this time) for years now, whereas Project Zombie has honestly been under heavy development for years now
im not gonna lie dude. I completely zone out from start to finish of this video and registered no words that you said
_Valid, the gameplay is dope. Check in next time, it's a really neat listen!_
Reminds me of a quote "No film is ever finished, it just gets released.", while the difference between a film and a game is that a game is so intractable no matter from a buyer or a maker stand point, which can make things better, but makes the release itself meant so much less.
This video made me feel something. I don't know if it's rage at the state of things, or sadness, or what. But this was great.
It’s always nice to see a new video former one of my favorite content creators
It’s like making recorded music. It’s almost too overwhelming now with the ability to re record everything endlessly. That’s why some people still prefer to use tape because it forces a more permanent state of finishing the process. Much like the technology limitations of offline games being forced to be released as finished as possible
You brought up some amazing points in this video, its fantastic. In my opinion, a game is "finished" when it is no longer being worked on by the developers. Yes, community members could still be working on and releasing mods, but when the developer is no longer working on a game, they are "finished" with it.
The integrating DLC as part of a story section. There are very few games I've ever seen do it well that dont make any major sacrifices to do so. I think one of the best examples of integraing story DLC into a game was last years Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty. Flows fairly seemlessly into the main story, and doesnt really feel out of place given what the plot of the game is about, and the main character's motivation to help with that plot. Only issue I had in terms of blending with the core game was you could tell that the female main characters voice lines were recorded in an entirely different setting than the base game, as they sound notably different.
The passionate anger at the end was nice. Love hearing when people get like that.
The definition of “finished” is arbitrary and up to interpretation from person to person, which is a problem when people try to find an objective definition. Some people consider 1.0 to be when something is finished, regardless of how much is in there and how buggy it is. Some people consider the game hitting check marks in terms of what it has to be finished. Some people consider the game being unbuggy to the point you need to look for them to be finished. Some people consider a game that’s stopped receiving any support to be finished. None of them are objectively wrong.
The effort that goes into these videos is appreciated, keep up the great work
that's an interesting angle to get at a problem I've seen videos on for almost a decade now, well done! good dog!
Woah I watched you play that racing game on the discord awesome to see it here
holy moly what a good boy!!! loved the video and hope you get lots of good treats for doing so well
Video games are the only entertainment medium that allows unfinished media to exist you will never watch an unfinished movie or hear an unfinished song but everyone’s played an unfinished game
This statement is false - especially with the talks about "bad CGI", many CGI artist already came out to say how CGI was rushed or something scrapped because there wasn't enough time or that something is unfinished.
The existence of "extended cuts", "enhanced cuts" and so on, that add previously unfinished elements to a movie or "update" a movie also disprove this.
The difference in the perception of the media (A movie released on bluray and in theaters "feels" finished more than games that are not bound to such a medium anymore and can receive updates during your time playing it - disregarding if the update actually has any meaningful updates in regards to "finishness", such a situation enhances the feel of unfinishness) and the "harshness" of seeing those unfinished elements (a bluescreen or not loading NPC faces give you enhance a feeling of an unfinished medium, more than a movie lacking an important scene that couldn't be finished that you only are able to see in the "extended cut" 3 years down the line) - and those unfinished elements are now also harsher in movies exactly because CGI is one of those fields where the "unfinishedness" can be seen.
Honestly, I like this method of not having games perfectly finished, cause it adds so much more potential to great games.
Imagining some of these games without DLC or updates is a chilling thought.
TF2 at launch is wildly different to now. It's wild when you go play the Orange Box versions on console, where they were never updated since launch.
I think it's generally a more positive thing, to incorporate more in to a great game, or even fixing a game that didn't have enough time to complete as intended at the original launch date, like No Man's Sky.
So, at that point, does it really matter if games are never "finished"? There's always more potential, which is nice.
It's nice to have a type of media that isn't just over, so you can have even more enjoyment out of it.
My dumbass thought ”Who the hell are Unfin Ished”
Yooo😂
Hollow Knight is an example of a great unfinished game. It’s probably one of the best games ever made, but we know it could have been even better if more stretch goals were reached. And if that giant spider boss in Deepnest had been finished.
It appears that the Cursed Judge has just reached the garden of insanity.
i really like ur videos, but what really sticks to me, is your background music.. havent heard beastars for such a long time, so thank you
Almost every one of my videos on my channel uses Beastars music, one of my favorite shows and OSTs
I feel like early access games are a reflection of humans. We are all unfinished, but there is a certain beauty in the rough edges. Some people run from that, but others embrace it.
Oh hey, he mentioned Terraria. I'm morally obligated to press the like button now.
you have voiced an irk of mine in a very professional manner and I can respect that
I adore team fortress 2 and I think its similar to this except its not unifinished its more unintended like wave dashing off of bullets
I can't take it anymore, everywhere I go there has to be some sort of Jerma sighting.
Great video as always though!
that last stretch at the end is a cinematic masterpiece dude lmao
Skate 3 is my favorite example of a game made more fun for the fact that the game was released in such a janky state
What a great video. It gives great context for some of my favorite things about speedruns and speedrun retrospectives - the glitches that become so important in those communities that they become beloved and almost have a quality of being legendary.
I love the slow drop into madness near the end of this video
this has to be my favorite yapper
This was a very thought provoking subject. Makes me think about when art is finished? Like Star Wars. We all thought it was a trilogy. Then there was a prequel trilogy. Then there was so on and so forth to the point where a new character has actually been behind the scenes this entire time. So was Star Wars finished? Wow. I understand your dilemma
Lol i really saw the thumbnail and went "what the hell is an unfin ished game???"
the thumbnail was so confusing i was like "wtf is an unfin ished?
Man I love you videos, keep it up qnd I'll be getting Nebula platform soon
I like how you talk about the good so extensively.
Amazing content as always, I got emotional at the end
All of this was so Skyrim-adjacent, I'm surprised you didnt bring it up
i love the talking about melee. i love melee.
My favorite video game was never finished, as in it was never actually completed. You can play it from the beginning to the end, but it's still not done. It's a narrative-driven visual novel with multiple storylines, each with multiple endings. It was to have 9 routes through the story, but only six were finished before the development team was forced to disband due to life circumstances, with a seventh being written many years later by an anonymous fan. By any objective metric the game is not finished, but enough of it is done that it has a dedicated fanbase that can still play through it.
Oo, what game? I've only played Adasta and Echo in terms of visual novels.
If you think about games as works of art, they're never finished in the same way that a painting is technically never finished, only abandoned.
The cursed judge is really one of the most consistently good video game doc commentator rn
This reminds me of what Tehsnakerer said in his "Playing Classic Sonic Wrong" video, where he brought up the question "are released video games actually finished" when discussing Sonic 3D Blast and how the lead dev for that game a unofficial director's cut that fixed various issues that were in the released version for the Genesis.
Zomboid is always interesting, because its a simplified Cataclysm DDA, Which is always being updated and runs on a potato
Something that my composition teacher in high school told me about pieces of music applies to this, I feel:
"Pieces are never finished - just abandoned."
You can add content to a video game as long as you'd like in today's age, but as a consequence it's never truly finished. All games that aren't being updated are abandoned, and all that are aren't finished.
12:20 this video si very cool but im not sure how dont starve fits in the pool of these games!! while it is still getting uopdated the developers work on many toher games like oxegen not included, the floor is lava and so on. anyways great video daniel as usual
maybe the finished games is the friends we played with along the way
Great video. Got me thinking that a "finished" game can become unfinished, then finished again, if it's dredged up by fans/GOG/Nightdive and given a new lease on life.
Either through an "Enhanced Edition" (looking at you, System Shock), quality-of-life patches/mods, source ports (GZDoom, etc.), an open-source re-implementation (Marathon and Aleph One comes to mind), somebody reverse-engineering the code (like with Diablo or Mario 64), or even a total conversion mod that turns the game into something else entirely.
Yeah, this is one of those ontological rabbitholes, isn't it?
"Hey, VSauce. Michael here. This video game is finished. OR IS IT?"
about the DaS1 DLC: illusory wall made a good video on how it wasn't THAT obscure at the time it came out. Fromsoft literally told the players on their website how to reach the DLC area and the fanbase had the cove in darkroot in mind before the release already
All that was missing was a five minute spiel at the end about how we the players are like unfinished games, and need to keep "developing" as people in the future, with a release date that one day comes for everyone
To be clear, everyone, the problem isn't Project Zomboid or the earnest intentions of the devs.
The problem is that bad faith characters see the success of Project Zomboid and want to use it as an excuse to be lazy simply because the game "isn't finished".
This is about optics.
It's the same problem as when, say, a videogame like FNAF or Slender becomes trendy and rather than innovating upon the idea, people just churn out thousands of "FNAF-likes" that do infinitely less while having greater asking prices. It's the same phenomenon as what happened after RE4 where people decided "Horror doesn't sell anymore, it has to be action". The same phenomenon as predatory marketing strategies such as lootboxes and battlepasses.
In case you haven't figured it out the "phenomenon" is corporate business executives looking at things smaller companies are doing that are successful and trying to Min/Max their profits while putting as little creativity or originality into it as possible. "Who cares if we cut corners, it is making us money".
It's not that everything is an Early Alpha game, it'd that everything is "Market Research Data" and the people making the games have no passion.
Games aren't burned onto a CD but pressed onto it :D
I like how you think, and talk. Subbed
bro, never thought wirtul would be a vid as existential as this
I would add Crash Twinsanity as an unfinished masterpiece
Devs had a vision that couldnt been finished because of time and budget
12:16 I LAUGHED SO HARD! that swear was the first in the video and caught me so off guard, i honestly don’t think it could’ve been used at a better place
dude this is a great video, good job
order yourself a pizza for a prize
I’ve never played Dark Souls before. I still wasn’t surprised about the path to the DLC.
The longer time goes on is what makes us realize that a lot of games are insanely broken after a deep analysis on them and ironically enough the most siple ones of them all are the least broken of them all due to how limited your options are to completely rip it's balance into shreds.
No game is ever truly finished and even the most polished games of them all have the ability to be absolutely janky and broken no matter how many bugfixes are done, it's a vicious circle (but a funny one nontheless) those bugs can ALSO give a game it's identity, for example, ULTRAKILL has a plathora of mechanics like proyectile boosting and rocket riding were just stuff that Hakita (the game's dev) found cool and just left it in, so a "finished" game with barely any exploits or glitches of that kind would just fade into complete obscurity overtime
The more I watch your videos the more I think you are the alternate ego of noodle
Probably my favourite TH-camr
I appreciate that a lot!
Accessing that Dark Souls DLC sounds like those old tutorials on how to unlock Waluigi in SM64DS. But for real.
I should note everything up to heading to darkroot garden is mandatory, and you can kill the hydra and find Dusk near the start of the game (and she sells magic so a player might notice her missing and go looking to find a new enemy) but everything apart from that yeah good luck without a guide.
Like Dan Salvato said in DDLC: a poem is never truly finished. It only stops moving.
For some reason... this reminded me of Two Worlds II, the game came out early 2011 and had one DLC. Then 5 years later it had an engine update out of nowhere and a 10 hours DLC came out in 2017. They even released another DLC in 2019? It's so fascinating whenever older games put out a DLC years after the game initially released with nothing in between whatsoever.
I feel like Ultrakill is an interesting thing to think about. It releases more like a TV show than a typical Early Access game, new levels coming out over time etc. It seems the developer has a pretty clear roadmap of what they want to do, so they just release in chunks as it's made and then maybe go back and fix some things they missed.
I feel like this, though maybe unique to Ultrakill, is a very good way of using the ability to not only go back and change games, but also the Early Access feature. Also, the hype it builds for the game every time a new level is added probably helps both fanbase and developer. Basically what I'm saying is that it doesn't feel malicious😅
So unbelievably surprised Star Citizen wasn’t even touched upon. Feel like it would’ve been a phenomenal addition to the discussion
Dark Souls 2 DLC, pre Scholar of the First Sin edition, did also have some shenanigans involving finding a specific item to access each individual DLC portal