A Culture Of Combat
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- We sure do be fighting a lot (in games), and I want to speculate as to why for a little bit.
Twitter - / leonmassive
Twitch - / leonmassey
Games Used (in order of appearance)
Magicka
Potionomics
Demon Souls
Super Smash Bros Brawl
Street fighter 2 turbo
Paladins
Resident Evil 4
Guilty Gear Xrd Rev 2
Unreal Tournament 2004
Garage: Bad Dream Adventure
Minecraft
Xcom: Enemy Unknown
Hatsune Miku - Project Diva Megamix
Go Fly A kite
Gears of War
Ultrakill
Madworld
Super Smash bros Melee
Elder scrolls Oblivion
Legend of Grimrock 2
Trackmania
Crimson Clover
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle R
Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja storm 2
Streets of rage
Asura's wrath
The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile
Starcraft
Diablo 2
Monster hunter rise
Fortnite
Before your eyes
Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1+2
NBA 2k18
Street Fighter 3 third strike
Age of Empires 2
Space war
Duckhunt
Centipede
Phoenix
Space invaders
Pacman
Shadows of the damned
Dig Dug
Breakout
Call of duty 4
Gradius
Battle Garegga
Halo combat evolved
Halo 3
Castlevania
Goldeneye
Titanfall 2
Rollerdrome
Undertale
Bayonetta
Valorant
Metal gear solid 5
Killing floor
Kirby's adventure
kings field 4
Percy Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game Of The Movie (this is real title, oh my days)
Super Mario strikers
Dark souls
Tetris
Infinifactory
Stephens sausage roll
Portal
Battleblock theater
Wobbledogs
Animal crossing
VA-11 Ha11-A
Stardew Valley
Fall guys
Super Mario bros
Marble it up
Super Monkey ball
Celeste
Dustforce
A hat in time
megaman 2
Ninja Gaiden
Gimmick!
Chess
Mahjong
Tabletop simulator
Trojan
Actraiser
Fire emblem (one of the japanese ones im so sorry)
Wolfenstein 3d
Doom 64
TimeSplitters 2
Singularity
Castlevania: lords of shadow
Earth defence force 2025
Mortal Kombat
Out run
Final Lap
Super Monaco GP
Hard drivin'
River City Ransom
Dirty Bomb
Gears Tactics
Castle Crashers
Dragons Dogma
Bloodstained Curse of the moon
Contra 3
Metal Slug 3
Civ 5
Pokemon Diamond
Robocop
Fist of the north star: Kens Rage
Fist of the north star (Arcade)
Fist of the north star (gameboy)
Doom
Advance wars
Battle toads
Lisa
Fallout new Vegas
The Legend of Zelda A link to the past
Homefront
Dujanah
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Final Fantasy 7
Elder Scrolls Skyrim
LSD Dream Emulator
Just cause 2
Ultra street fighter 4
Disco Elysium
The legend of zelda: The wind waker
Thomas was alone
Devil May Cry 5
The Legend of zelda: The wind waker
Resident evil
Metal Gear Solid
Chronotrigger
Shadowrun
Lovely Planet
Osu!
Apex Legends
FTL
Castlevania: Symphony of the knight
GTA5
fifa 97
I.Q.: Intelligent Qube
Chibi robo
Kula World
Harvest moon
Ridge racer 4
Madden 1999
Klonoa Beach volley ball
Guilty Gear strive
Bioshock
Superliminal
Guilty Gear XX Accent Core +R
Scorn
What Remains of Edith Finch
Powerwashing simulator
Blazblue Central Central fiction
Tekken 7
The Unfinished Swan.
I promise next time I'm just going to put the titles on screen when they show up, this list is far too long.
6:28 u spelt fallacy wrong
predatory too
and crimson in “crimzon clover”
Also for liking LoL he is now cancelled
@@sakarain might've been talking about the bullet hell rather than the song or the plant, in which case it's a z
@@Kirbymaster105 yeah that’s what I meant. It was written with an s in the description
Video essays that are edited and animated with this much love, care, and attention to detail are the best things to exist on the internet
And its free
God tier contents and it cost nothing
I was going to say this. This is the best thing that youtube has given rise to.
I guess you've seen FUNKe's vids if like this sort of thing but still go check him out
To everyone reading this, if you liked this video and you don't know who Noodle is, it's about time you found out. Look up Noodle on TH-cam right tf now.
@@Eduard_Moraru too late I already know him
Bro when did you become an editing god?!! This is definitely a thing to be thankful for.
Same editing as always pretty good as always.
Why do you believe he does the editing?
@@sadetwizelve why do you think he doesn’t?
I recognise that editing style, its from funke
To say nothing of the animation!
"Many of us have grown up with video games,
but videogames grew up during the cold war."
- Ahoy
I'd like to note that "has a clear and defined goal and failure state" is _also_ a thing you can say about most sports, as well as about rhythm games. It seems like this is _the_ quality that most games need to have to be engaging at a gameplay level.
However, Minecraft is by some measures the best selling game of all time, and is a game with essentially no predefined goal. Is Minecraft just an anomaly there? Maybe!
@@jukmifggugghposer Minecraft isn't engaging at a gameplay level, it's engaging at a story level (because you're deciding what the story is)
@@jukmifggugghposer its not predefined directly but its mechanics and GUI give an idea. Get resources, build stuff with said resources, survive with stuff. Its freeform but survival mode still has a basic predefined goal.
@@jukmifggugghposer I mean consider why MMO's and sandbox simulators sell succesfully as well, despite not having a true failure state. Because they're easily accessible tools for experimentation, individualistic expression and community building, something Minecraft combines all three of. Failure states only becomes more necessary when it's the sole fundamental thing you interact with as a player a.k.a in a single player game context.
Considering how much you kinda write off the influence of real sports and sports games, I think it's worth noting that the cultural idea of "games" usually involves two opposing forces in conflict with one another, and the kinds of games that don't - whether they're solo experiences like Sudoku or Solataire, or groups cooperating towards a shared goal - typically aren't as popular. Credit that to the more engaging spectator experience that lets them be major pieces of culture, or whatever, i don't know or care. Adding a more fantastical element, such as explicit violence, is a logical progression when you're moving those kinds of games into a fantastical realm.
Also at least from my own impression and probably more stereotypical than factual, but the kinds of sports that involve direct confrontation have a bit more of a reputation for rowdiness, aggression, and even violence. This kinda hints at a connection between the two, and could even be related somehow to the idea that both sports and games are typically seen as more "masculine" activities,,,
i don't know man, this is just a good video that's making me think about things.
Tbh this video didn't make me think about very much. It did however make me think about why someone felt this was a topic that deserved this long of a video essay, because I still haven't been able to put my finger on his point.
Violence is the medium in which society conducts its relationships to power.
It is a really good video
Good comment. The sports and general 'competition between two groups' side of this would have added to the video.
@@RhizometricReality I feel like this video exists to field shit takes like this. You might as well ask why everyone's favorite action movies involve fight scenes, and why there are not a whole bunch of fun, interesting G rated action movies, and say its because of our deep and sordid past with violence. This is some Jack Thompson shit.
IMO, it's not about combat, it's about conflict. Most forms of human entertainment require a conflict, otherwise there's nothing to become invested in. Combat is the simplest and easiest form of human conflict. Want to make a movie or tv show more exciting, throw in a bit of physical violence. Everything from a character slapping another character to a full blow fight in the street is physical conflict, and it immediately gets our attention. You may not know what's going on in a movie that your room mate is watching, but if a character gets hit, there's a good chance you'll notice. I think you skipped over sports and racing games a bit too quickly because those games demonstrate the phenomena. They are conflict with out combat. Untitled Goose Game for example is a stealth game that keeps conflict, but rejects violence. Getting shooed out of an area in UGG or dying and restarting a mission section in MGS are functionally the same thing.
I think games focusing on combat are just a limitation of the medium and current gen tech. It's hard to have a character drama with today's AI. You can do it (I'm looking at you visual novels / Detroit become human), but I think it will be a while before games can effectively engage in social or psychological conflict, but I strongly believe they will at some point, because not everyone wants to play a game with combat.
Dungeons and dragons, most ttrpgs
And dwarf fortress
tbh as far as games doing social/psychological conflict, it can already work just fine
after all, most combat games cant simulate what injuries would actually kill you, but they use abstractions like an HP bar and damage numbers instead and it works just fine
like, a really good example of a game focusing on social conflict is potionomics (which Leon put a screenshot of on the screen for a half second at one point) - it has things representing how interested a customer is in buying your potion, how much theyre willing to pay, how much longer until they get sick of your haggling, how stressed you are, etc, and as a result it works pretty well!
...actually detroit: become human did this too a little bit, with the stress meters
although yeah its a lot harder to do like, interactions where the whole point is to have you directly talking to the characters, idk if itd get any easier without having like... AI in the "sentient AI" sense (which feels like itd be a very long way off)
Definitely this. A good narrative will generally include conflict of some kind, and conflict itself is very easily and effectively represented with or by combat. This is the case even before considering the ways in which video games are uniquely suited for making combat feel good compared to other mediums.
Well said
@@diydylana3151 Dexterity based challenges also are much more open to individuality and emergent gameplay, which generally fosters a game's continued success, and how do you introduce player-dexterity/intellect challenges to a task? Conflict and combat, either literally with the oldest trick of mankind, The Fist, or in metaphorical ways, fighting the environment or the abstract through movement, resource management or spatial reasoning, or even converting non-physical forms of fighting into familiar systems, such as the small RPGMaker game "The Last Word", which casts debates as its form of conflict and fighting
Protagonist and Antagonist are building blocks of writing for a reason, even in a story with no out-and-out conflict, there will be things and people who in some manner, serve to hinder our viewpoint character, whether intentionally, or not, ranging from "That dude who dumped Jimmy in a trash can" to "That guy who's car always breaks down at the gas station right in my way" or even "My own self-doubts about this upcoming project", hostility and intent are not necessary for conflict, but conflict is almost inevitable
Just finished the video - I definitely think this is one of the best vids in a while. However-im not sure im entirely sold on the limitations games historically had being the prime determinant in creating the modern landscape of combat-centric games. If we look at another industry, like hollywood, we see that the industry became increasingly dominated by combat since at leasst the 80’s, to the point that almost all the billion dollar grossing movies are combat centric (whether superheroes, star wars, whatever). It seems like society just moved towards combat in entertainment for whatever reason. Not that this is new (the ancient epics like the illiad, etc. hold similar appeal), though movies at least were far less combat centric till the early 80’s
I would say that was because of the cold war
combat normally involves danger, overcoming danger is fun, even if it's fictional danger. There's also the aspect of people liking to win, and in combat, someone is going to lose and someone is going to win, so that's another plus people like, i guess
If you wanna be slightly conspiratorial you could draw a correlation between the rise of videogames and combat centric movies becoming more popular
Fair point, but you have to admit, the logic is *very* convincing.
Although, I think Hollywood has a *much* more general notion of what qualifies as "combat" and how much of the runtime is taken up by combat.
I think you could just as easily come to the conclusion that specific structural or contextual aspects of film pushed them to the same result from a different source. i.e. the elements pushing games into a culture of combat are specific to games, but being in a culture of combat isn't necessarily unique.
A big part of why Hollywood has so many expensive modern combat movies is that the US military are sponsoring these kind of movies
A culture of combat, man, these ideas you’re pulling out and making into videos are awesome, you go above and beyond regular analysis. While having a style of your own, and that’s admirable. Thanks Leon!
As others have pointed out, i think the most enticing thing about combat and what makes it so popular is the conflict inherent to it. Conflict sets stuff in motion and develops interest in the viewer. This is why action shows create more engagement than slice-of-life shows except maybe when the latter has a story-progressing moment once in a blue moon. It also explains why sports are successful and not just an outlier as the focus on combat implies. Almost every sport is conflict, between teams or individuals, direct or indirect, some with more combat put into the mix than others (and then there's contact sports, which ARE combat). Sure, these sports games ride on the popularity of their real-life parallel but they wouldn't be as popular if they didn't replicate that conflict they associated with (along with the branding).
Plus, combat is so successful because it's the most direct and easiest to implement form of conflict. Psychological or ideological conflict is also possible but it's more complex and has a way less unilateral perspective. The conflict around a superhero registry requires understanding both sides' positions and how their lives would be changed by it. Maybe you'd compare it to a real-life equivalent to relate to it better. But a punch to the face? Everyone gets it and most importantly, it makes dough.
I think we also naturally enjoy combat due to survival urges, y'know, the same reason animals play with each other, combat in games can give us a safe way of engaging in fights for survival and also gives us the pleasure of conquering said fights. I think that as much a history contributed to our current situation, we are naturally drawn to combat and conflict, if even for a little bit.
I think so too, almost all creatures have that in them even if they aren’t violent by nature. My dog is a great example, she wouldn’t hurt a fly yet she will brutally rip apart her plushes happily despite never showing interest in doing something similar with a living being. There is just this primal satisfaction of killing our enemies, drive them before us and hearing the lamentation of their allies.
Yeah I was surprised this wasn't touched on at all. I really do think that's closer to the primary reason than just historical context.
Violence is the medium in which society conducts its relationships to power.
Recommend Zizek's work, "Violence"
Yeah that was my first thought. I often observe my cat playing with things on the ground and its the exact same behavior as when she's playing with a mouse.
@@RhizometricReality violensh💦 and sho on and sho on💦
Now I want a co-op game where you have to beat an arcade game while holding off hordes of zombies
The culture of combat in games is something that I been genuinely thinking about for years
Thank you for making this video
Violence is the medium in which society conducts its relationships to power.
@@RhizometricReality thnks gengar
@@arison9876 remember kids, Officer Jenny is a class traitor
Leon whipped out the Funke editing and I love it
10 seconds in and I'm already amazed, i love you Leon
one book i read recently was a book called "conflict and suspense" by james scott bell, and it outlines one idea in writing that you generally want to have your stakes be some kind of "death".
and it outlines three kinds of death:
-physical death
-professional death (loss of job or some kind of status)
-psychological death, or as i like to call it, "dying of cringe" (donkey kong's banana horde is a good example. he wants his bananas back mostly because they're important to him. same with knuckles and the master emerald.)
the idea is that a story is more interesting if you follow somebody willing to strive for their goals and will not stop at doing so, and where failure has permanent consequences for them. just like in the game, in a narrative that isnt video games.
and in stories, permanent consequences are just... easily depicted as literal death, since thats just natural.
good examples of other fail states with permanent consequences are stuff like "will phoenix wright save his client"? "will jill be able to pay rent and save the bar from closing down"? "will cooking mama fuck up the ingredients, and have to drive to the store to buy another dozen eggs"?
stakes like that are TECHNICALLY not permanent consequences, jill could still find a place to live and cooking mama can just buy more eggs, but it implies that its a loss off progress in their lives thats significant to them. they all care immensely.
what happens when even literal death isnt a permanent consequence? you get something that ends up like dragon ball, which some people criticize for not permanent consequences when they can just revive everybody. the audience reacts similarly to a certain scene in DBZ abridged, where after the main character supposedly dies, tien flat out says "why do any of you care? we can just wish him back."
flat out, "we dont have a reason to care". and that means no stakes.
there are workarounds to the issues with dragon ball, like making the conflict something different (can dbs broly calm down without having to die?), or taking away the reset button, or goku making the conscious choice to not get brought back. but i digress.
the point is that the characters need to care. wrestling is a great example of conflict, and iirc its the oldest sport in history. look at any main-event wrestling match, and they'll hype up their match to be the MOST IMPORTANT WRESTLING MATCH IN ALL OF HISTORY FOREVER!!! the way wrestlers hype up their matches not only implies that you should care, but that the wrestlers themselves care, and that losing will be a huge shame to their career, and to themselves.
would leffen vs chillindude be as memorable without the diss track beforehand? what if instead, chillindude said that it would just be a friendly match and hed be happy to see his best friend leffen win? what if he never told us that he cared? would i even have taken note of that match?
i guess what im trying to say is that so many video games find death and combat to be the source of their conflict is because it was ALREADY normalized, in both fiction and real memorable events.
and this whole time, the most important fighting game was our real lives...
Leon definitely leveled up his video editing skills for this video
I think the way game mechanics influence what stories they can tell is really interesting. Because so much of conventional game design is built on a fail state paired with increasing challenge as the game goes on, you end up with a ton of games that directly (mega man x, ocarina of time) or indirectly (most games with skill curves lol) have themes of “you grow stronger and overcome challenge” and “you were weak but now you’re strong.” It’s part of why killing God is a trope in JRPGs, because RPG mechanics lend themselves to “kill monster, level up, kill bigger and stronger monster” and who is the biggest and strongest and most dramatic monster if not literally God? But this means you end up with a surplus of games that focus on this one theme of becoming more capable. And like, I like these games, I like to become more capable of dealing with challenge, but I’d also like to see more games use their mechanics to tackle some more interesting thematic ideas that literature and film can do. But I probably won’t end up playing em anyway bc boring art game I want to punch things
your last sentence is something frustrates me so much, these "artsy" games may have a interesting things to say but the majority are So. Fucking. Boring.
and it isn't like the average gamer has zero interest or appreciation to these more in-depth narratives, just look at the explosion of popularity Metal Gear Rising received this year, MGS is an example of a game with both stupid fun combat and "gamey" aspects while also having a in-depth narrative with themes and such and such, the secret here is how it integrates the 2 to create a engaging and immersive experience.
tbh something i really wanna see now is a game where theres still a skill curve, but instead of getting more capable your character is getting _weaker_, and whoever youre fighting is roughly the same power level
especially since like, it feels like the theme of "getting stronger over time" is kinda everywhere in _every_ media, and in US culture in general, just look at stuff like the phrase "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"
but sometimes that just doesn't happen, sometimes something doesn't kill you but it leaves a lasting negative impact, sometimes nothing even has to be happening to make your situation worse
maybe you could have a game where its like, a character with a chronic disease that slowly gets worse, and you have to deal with that
or something less obviously tied to real life, where you have a spaceship running low on fuel and power, and you have to keep jettisoning weight and deactivating systems to keep going, and then the final battle is against someone in _a normal ship_, the same type of ship you had before you had to tear yours apart just to survive
@@eden3669 What you said is called Negative Progress Curve, and I think I remember quite a bit of game with that exact structure, one of which is that you play as a knight in an RPG, but each round you have to play with fewer and fewer mechanic to move and fight with, leading to a game that get progressively harder at each turn. Don't remember the title though
@@eden3669 I think that happens with the 2020 SUPERHOT sequel where each level you have to give up another ability, although I personally do not think the direct removal of player mechanics works best for this. What seems like a more fun way to go about it would lean more into having to skillfully get the maximum return from whatever abilities you have instead of the game becoming simplified in that way.
@@eden3669 iirc Senua's Sacrifice does this
The 3D sections of this video are a welcome addition. Also, yes Before Your Eyes is a fantastic game. It's one of those games I can't believe exists because it's so outside the norm but so good.
14:06 I think most of your points made earlier in the video also explain the appeal of racing games! A tug of war between dexterity and potential failure, the peril of crashing, losing, underperformimg
Good talk. I feel one aspect left unexplored is other genres of storytelling.
For example, in books classically conflict drives the story. Very similar to games.
So you could say that's more a human storytelling thing, rather than just being limited to games..
This is such an interesting discussion subject, holy SHIT-
I was definitely aware of this pattern with video games but I never really tried dwelling on it. Cool.
Great work on the video man, always glad to see you doing your thing.
I think the opening is maybe a bit seeing a pattern and then not getting the causality entirely right. I think it is a lot more important that the people making games just found action stuff really cool so that's the kind of stuff they tried to make. Kinda like how the people making games like Rogue or Nethack just really liked DnD and those games were a way to sorta get to play old school DnD when you couldn't get a group together. I think a good reason to go for this explanation rather than thinking about the specific challenges and failure states and all that, is because the most popular movies and series and so on are also all about "combat" or as they call it "action", and they don't have failure states or dexterity challenges or anything like that. And also plenty of different games with combat in it have completely different sets of challenges to portray those. So basically the reason games are about combat is because up until like 50-60 years ago it was not unlikely that you would die in violent struggle, and also in 1824 a Prussian Junior Officer named Georg Heinrich Rudolph Johan von Reisswitz made the version of his fathers game Kriegsspiele that would become the default game for training the Prussian army generals, and thereby make complex tabletop games be about war for the next 200 years. Okay that was a lot of maybe kinda sour stuff to read, I hope it's still convincing for me to say that I really liked the video.
Visual novels are a key example of how history has this effect, since early Japanese games made it very easy to implement these kind of systems, which in turn led to them being a much bigger trend in Japan in contrast to the rest of the world
This channel is literally the quickest rise in quality and proficiency over time I have ever seen on this website. It’s honestly incredible. Keep it up, glad I can say I’ve been here since (near) the start
Even in physical (tabletop etc) games, we see combat a lot
Combat sports, tabletop roleplaying games, heck: EVEN CHESS involves combat in it's thematics as it represents a war.
Yeah, I've too been thinking about why combat and death are so prevalent in not only video games, but basically all forms of fiction, and in my opinion the aswer is pretty simple:
The concept of death is an integral part of a human mentality and stands for the worst thing that can happen to you (by default). Fear of death is engraved in every human since birth. And precisely because of this, death is everywhere.
The driving force behind any narrative is conflict. The ultimate form of conflict is combat. And combat ends in death.
I've heard a lot of flippant comments of "why are games always about fighting? more game devs should make non-violent games", but this is the first analysis I've seen that really goes into explaining _why_ fighting is so prevalent. Well done!
My mom was always hyper worried about me playing violent games, and she’s surprised that the games I have the most hours on today are games like Farming Simulator, Stardew Valley, and MLB The Show. Combat is inherent to gaming, but it isn’t why I play them. I’m only a few minutes in, but I am very excited to watch this. I love video essays, and in school and university, I LOVED essays because they gave me an avenue to express my thoughts.
Even if you get burnt out with animating and editing, your medium is an extremely enjoyed by those that want to consume it. Keep it up, dude.
The Advance Wars tank in this video’s thumbnail got me thinking about something important.
Off the top of my head, here are the top five best tanks in fighting games:
5. Either Jacky or Jeffry has an oxygen tank (for scuba diving) that they can equip in Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, if I recall correctly
4. The tank that you can wall-combo against in Tekken 6 (Urban War Zone)
3. Blitztank
2. The tank that Alex Valle was wearing at the 1998 SFA3 World Championship
1. Politank Z from Waku Waku 7
Injustice 1 does have a small propane tank you can hit someone over the head with (Metropolis museum) but it detonates about as violently as a standard-size water balloon, which honestly just feels surprisingly underwhelming, and especially in the context of the rest of that game.
I feel like DOA almost certainly must have a big exploding gas tank somewhere in the series, but I don’t know for sure so I can’t include it.
I like how combat makes me feel
This was fantastic. The animation and editing adds so much value to the message. I can only imagine how much time you put into all this. Thank you 🙏
The crazy thing is, this isnt just limited to video games! The first media we know of? Cave paintings, which often depicted people hunting. First myth? The Epic of Gilgamesh, where the titular Gilgamesh kills tons of things. I think its just a natural human feeling to be interested in combat
God damn I'm so glad I found your channel early on. It's been a wild ride seeing you go from "guy who talks about guilty gear and other fighting games" to an established video essay creator making incredibly high quality stuff like this. It's great to see the funke/noodle inspired animation and continued experimentation with your videos, underpinned by your continued excellence in scripting. The beats hit fast and keep the videos consistently engaging. Great work once again
For the record my idea was something ive been thinking of every now and again.
Basically a cardgame like Legends of Runeterra or gwent but with spaceships and more strategy involved.
Since the cards would be in 'combat' I guess that counts
Also, the title in this case primes the mind for fighting games too
i think something that makes combat so pervasive in fiction is that it's frowned upon in real life. killing something in a game (usually) amounts to little consequence - other than forward progress - that can't be easily resolved, and there's something inherently fun and cool with video games in being able to do things outside of reality
Running a business (such as in management sims), driving (such as in racing games), dancing to/playing music (such as some rhythm games), etc. are things that most people *can* do in real life. Games in those genres introduce other elements that make them cooler by virtue of spectacle, not everybody can own a theme park, be a Formula 1 driver, perform on a stage to thousands of people, play in a huge sports team etc. but the basic mechanics of those are (relatively) accessible to the average person and won't have much negative impact on one's life
On the other hand being a gangster with a kill count in the hundreds, fighting waves of people on the streets, most combat in general is either something that is (a) illegal (b) gets you killed (c) inaccessible to most people (d) all of the above, and games let you have those experiences without the real world consequence
of course there are fringe cases like wrestling, boxing and UFC for example, that end up in that first category (not everybody can be a Muhammad Ali or a Hulk Hogan but there are amateur leagues for those things), but i think the difference is that those are regulated sports where the goal is not to kill but simply to fight the best (whether judged, by forcing a surrender, or knockout), and they also end up in the second category where the "base mechanic" of those sports would just be picking fights with people in the street, which of course comes with the aforementioned conseuences
Whoa... this is an amazimg video essay. Best I've seen in months, in fact. Thank you!
Bro the animation is fire.
Bro what is this JUMP in editing all a sudden this is awesome!
Love your video essays, the animations you made elevate it even further, they really appreciated
You may not have put the game titles in the video but thanks anyway for putting them in the description. Most youtubers would of gave up on it by then so Thank You! Ganna give Marble It Up a try.
The adventure/quest/point-and-click genre was, for some reason, relatively popular on PC during the 90s. Most of these games had little to no combat involved and I have great memories of them (notable examples: The Neverhood, Gabriel Knight, Monkey Island). It's hard to believe that this genre was ever popular, harder to believe how quickly it disappeared, and very reassuring to know that it's somehow survived thanks to the indie movement.
Side note: it's also very weird to notice how many years have passed since I was a kid playing these games
Funke 2????
Good video, love seeing your style evolve. I don't even care about fighting games but you're so fucking interesting that it never mattered?
Man you went from making really good videos somehow tied into Guilty Gear that I wanna watch into making literal essays about video games that I wanna watch.
Literally, it's like 12:43 in the morning and I'm only just now going to sleep. Worth it for this
🏰When battle is joined, let all men of good lineage think of naught but the breaking of heads and arms,
For it is better to die than be vanquished and live ....I tell you I have no such joy as when I hear the shout
*"On! On!"* from both sides and the neighing of riderless steeds, And groans of *"Help me! Help me!"*
And when I see both great and small Fall in the ditches and on the grass And see the dead transfixed by spear shafts!
Lords, mortgage your domains, castles, cities But never give up war!
-by Bertrand de Born (12th century)⚔
this video feels like it was made with the intention of proving something you thought rather than because it was a real phenomenon.
These videos are criminally underrated
Something I believe to be noteworthy is that a LOT of games are designed around a win condition and a lose condition, when they don't have to be. On one hand this makes combat more prevalent in games, but on the other hand this idea of a game needing a win condition did not start with video games specifically.
A lot of real life games are competitions, which inherently requires some kind of win condition that becomes the opposing party's lose condition. And even in games that you don't play _against_ someone, such as solitaire, there is a clear goal you are working towards; to the point that if you were to invent a real life game with no win or lose condition to speak of, some would argue it's not a game at all, rather, just a fun activity.
Games that don't have a defined victory or defeat state did not really exist before video games, and it seems like that's because most would agree that that's no longer a game. However, that is not the case with video games. No one argues that animal crossing isn't a game, even though the game is about tasks that would not even be considered a fun activity by some people in real life.
Man this is really well done! Editing is insanely clean (one of my favorites is just the little transition from melee's 4:3 to GG's 16:9 at 1:56). Really like the visuals you crafted too, it's crazy to see how your content has evolved over the years.
God, the animation here is such a perfect fit for your whole style. I hope it's not a one-off presentation choice
Speaking of decisions, this is one of those essays that had me like "My mind has been actually blown"
I don’t know if the choice of Kirby’s Adventure as the b-roll when Leon talks about “push and pull” is an intentional reference to Masahiro Sakurai’s frequent use of the term in his videos, but I’m inclined to think he knew what he was doing given the “combat evolved” joke right before, and it got a chuckle out of me regardless.
I think it's much simpler than any issue of culture. For various reasons, most singleplayer games are going to need to be about interacting with agents of some kind. Most non-hostile interactions with any sort of agent need actual intelligence behind them to be interesting, like trading, communication, cooperation, etc. The only real option for a simple, easily programmable interaction with an agent is going to be adversarial, and then you're already basically at combat. It is a fundamental reality of making programmed games.
There's a reason that many non-combat singleplayer games tend to be far simpler gameplay wise; there's not many dynamic interactions you can create with agents that aren't combat. Those you can create are generally pre-programmed, i.e. a linear dialogue or story. You can have interactions with the world instead but that is again far more limited in how dynamic they can be (see the section on castlevania in this video, which could honestly be generalized far further).
You can probably point more to culture for why multiplayer games are combat focused however, especially as other games mediums like board games have plenty of non-combat games.
23:19 hey, i'll have you know that "wow cool guns" was a very deliberate design decision for those early id software games! there's specifically an anecdote about how, when John Romero heard the sound effect for the chaingun in Wolfenstein 3D for the first time, he was literally blown away and fell out of his chair lol
I've never seen a video with such a density and diverse quantity of screen clips from incredibly influential games I've loved, than this one right here. Subbed for this reason alone, and watching and hoping for some more of the same to come.
And the overall topic of the video is cool too, but I have little to say to it, because of just how struck by overwhelming visual nostalgia I am right now. :)
2:13 when someone says "guys I skipped the engine off" and you watch their replay
>longform animated discussions
>Classic NES games like Castlevania used for example
>Fast jokes to break the tension of long information sequences?
Fellas, a proper sequel to sequilites has been born
The production quality of this video is through the roof.
This culture makes games like subnautica so refreshing. In a world where most games value systemic military supremacy like EU4/rimworld or mechanical skills that emulate real life combat like aiming a gun, it’s nice to play a game focused still on danger but not on fighting. You’re prey with little hope of slashing your way through most threats, so you have to adapt in ways that really tickle your brain
Really well made video. I've noticed recently that almost all games I play have some kind of combat in them and wondered why that is
Pheonix is my favorite arcade game of all time, thank you for being one of like 5 people I’ve ever seen reference it
i love seeing your content and editing style constantly improve
The editing on your videos has always been amazing, but this time it’s downright insane!
In this video, Mega Man X wonders why must everyone fight in video games, and finds out that the answer is much more complicated than he thought....
This is such a good video on a lot of things. Yet somehow it feels like it's only talking about one thing alone. THAT is an impressive feat
Man, once sentence in and you're already on the razors edge. great vid
One thing Leon didn't mention is the nature of the hardware itself. There have been all kinds of use cases for these math machines over the years, but the original reason they were developed, was to calculate the trajectory of an object moving through a space in real time, for use with missiles. That's what computers are inherently good at, whereas the subtleties of conversation not so much. The tools we're using to create these games bias us toward combat before development has even begun.
This is one of the best video game "video essays" I've seen. Not only is it an interesting observation/thought, but the points are well thought out.
Dude the animation is actually insane!!
vouch
It has been fantastic to see the evolution of your production value in your videos since the beginning, this one had a lot of effort put into it with the 3d animations (love the lil' bear). Nice going mate
All Leon's videos I had watched prior were a bit older, so I was surprised when I booted up this one and a FUNKe Study began to play
Conflict makes stories, stories are about changes in hierarchies, combat is the highest and most direct level of conflict and changes in hiearchies. Its not that surprising that we gravitate towards stories with combat.
All the most popular games up until video games were sports, which is pretty much simulated warfare were teams could participate and the winner can bedecided without the other side having to be dead as a win trigger.
this channel is like my shower thoughts about games were materialised in video format
Excellent. Takes a point and meticulously breaks it down to every little detail. You summed up everything in a minute at the end, which makes the fact that this video is half an hour even more impressive in comparison.
i saw some winks to sequelitis, loved it
great job you massive leon
I see games as A Culture of Competition rather than of Combat
Combat, Racing, and Sports games are so popular because of their sense of victory
Perfecting a swarm of enemies, getting 1st place out of 16, overcoming Ronaldo
You win in these games
Even games before video games were about competition, like chess and monopoly
And I don't think games are always about winning either, you were "winning" at The Game up until right now when you read this comment (sorry for making you lose The Game), but I wouldn't consider that winning, or reaching a goal
And just the same as Mr. Massey points out that not all games involve combat, not all games involve competition either
Yep I didn't proofread this comment one bit, hit send
Your comment @25:24 really opened my mind. It's true, a lot of genres are propped up solely based on fan recognition, such as FIFA, and for racing games, Gran Turisimo.
But this is also true of other dying mediums, such as D&D holding up TTRPGs, and Batman holding up DC comics, and WoW / FFXIV holding up the MMORPGs, and League of Legends holding up the MOBAs.
It seems the actual demand for these games no longer exists, and are propped up by these IPs alone, but it's also the reason why these IPs can't get any bigger sa they have 90% market saturation
Extra points for referencing Shadows of the Dammed. That game deserves a sequel and more lore
My imagined game actually didnt include combat, but it was a kind of interesting idea that I want to share: You are in a room with another person, playing various board games that neither of you know the rules of (they might be procedurally generated) and not sharing a language. The gameplay loop is basically playing procedurally generated boardgames while trying to learn the language of the other player
Absolutely love that FUNKE is influencing TH-cam content
Team Sport rpgs are something I’d really like to see more of. Though really team sport games in general. I feel like there are a lot of new types of optimal and creative strategies that can be played around with that can’t be done in combat scenarios.
That's literally franchise mode in any sports games.
No one in the comments talking about the time matthewmatosis was the only youtuber able to drop the N bomb and rightfully get away with it
I love Matthew (Platonically)
I think another core source of combat culture in games is the need for escalating challenge and how it runs up against restrictions of memory. Combat is a simple system to represent and when it’s over, you can either reload the same character with modified stats or completely discard that character, freeing up memory for more novel obstacles.
There are few similar sources of novelty and spectacle which are still interactive. Heights is a great one, which is why platform games have persisted for so long. Mystery and puzzles are another. Speed is another. But all those thrills are simply more complicated to construct well than a thrilling combat.
Babe wake up new Leon Massey video just dropped
Wow, some of this feels like Egoraptor's old sequelitis series. Remember that? Remember Ego pre-Game Grumps?
Loving the structure of this video mate, keep up the good good.
This video could honestly be a Jacob Geller video. It just needs some more cutaways to how we view real life as a culture of combat and how we see combat and violence as problem solving... he kind of touched on that with the video with "Designed for Violence", but that more of focused on designing a combat arena in a video game and designing public spaces for safety against mass shootings.
love jacob geller so much, the way he writes gives so much more validity to videos games being an artistic medium.
This year I’m thankful for this video
Your style of editing and animation reminds me of Funke good stuff
Leon i could watch your little teddy bear animations for hours its so cute!
HOMIE WHEN DID YOU CHANGE THIS MUCH MY GOD THIS IS INSANE PRODUCTION VALUE
I can't believe Leon knows about Garage, holy shit.
Your editing style is amazing, very underrated
I’ve been watching those sort of 3d cardboard animated spaces in Noodle’s videos too. Still have no idea how it’s done but it looks sick as hell 👌
This is the moment Leon became Heisenberg
i appreciate how all the games used in the video are listed in the description
but i’m over here racking my brain over which matthewmatosis video the voice clip at the start is from
Dude, awesome editing!
gaddam the quality of the video for the length it goes is mind boggling, especially how fast you put these out. Amazing work, take care of yourself and beware of burning out.
Bro I'm not sure when I subbed but I'm glad as hell I did.
Top notch content, very interesting subject and superb presentation.
Cheers Leon, keep up!
This is FUNKe content with length to it, alongside some unpretentious introspection and cultural analysis
can you do a video about how fighting game players tend to smell bad
Woah graphics updated for this channel. Looks good!