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From the subtleties of typography to the emotional impact of color, and the way everyday objects influence our lives, our guests share their unique perspectives on the power of design. Through candid interviews, we’ll get a closer look at the challenges they’ve faced, the breakthroughs they’ve had, and how design is not just about aesthetics, but about problem-solving, communication, and making an impact.
Join host Rae, as Type Speaks aims to inspire, inform, and showcase the voices behind the visuals.
This podcast is supported by WEGL 91.1 FM, Auburn University’s radio station. weglfm.com
(0:00:03) Welcome into Type Speaks, the show where I dive into the stories, struggles, and sparks of inspiration behind great design. I'm your host, Rae, and I'm going to be pulling back the curtain on the creative process, but not just the work itself, but the people who make it happen. Each episode, I sit down with a different creative mind to uncover how they think, work, and everything in between. So if you're curious about the why behind design and the stories of the people shaping our world one idea at a time, you're in the right place.
(0:00:46) So hello, hello, and welcome in to the 15th episode of Type Speaks. Of course, I'm your host, Ray, and we have a special guest. I didn't ask this, but do you prefer to be Quinns instead of Quentin? I'm a branding disaster. It's complicated, but basically Quinns. Quinns is great. Quinns is the name I work on with. Quinns is awesome. Quentin Smith is a Dead by Daylight character that I play as, so it was hard Googling it. Yeah.
(0:01:14) Did you not know this? I didn't know. That's news to me. Man, that's crazy. I've seen so many clips of that game and I did not know I'm running around in it. Quentin Smith is a survivor in that game.
(0:01:24) I'm a survivor in real life. This is perfect. It's perfect. But yeah, you are a journalist, critic, and creator best known for co-founding work at Shut Up and Sit Down, one of the most influential board game platforms of the last decade. You're now leading Quinn's Quest, an independent exploration of role-playing games in game design history that blends research-driven criticism, intentional, visual, and narrative framing. Your work sits at the intersection of journalism, community, culture, and experimental storytelling. Does that sound good? This is a...
(0:01:53) That's wicked. Yeah, that's a great intro. Love that for me. It's cool. Thank you. I try to hype up a little bit. I try to give a bit. That's good. That's good. Get your guests happy. Yeah, thank you. So they'll answer my questions later in the best way.
(0:02:07) You've got me figured out. Shit. I'm in your lair. This is going to be bad. My din that I've been given. Obviously, this is a design podcast. You are not a designer. But I did want to talk about because I'm very interested in obviously media storytelling and the space of that is huge. It's been growing for years now. And with video games, it's kind of one of the biggest growth we've seen. And especially with tabletop gaming as well.
(0:02:36) So I wanted to ask a few questions. Being a critic and being someone that writes about that, I wanted to ask your view and how you've seen the space evolve. A critic's, journalist's, creator's space in that, if that makes any sense. Wow, so like how the entire games in general, or specifically how we tell stories in this landscape? That was my lead-in to my first question.
(0:03:05) That question was so big, I was panicking, I was like... It was more of a lead-in to my next question, giving some context. But yeah, so you're an independent creator, you've been working in kind of the independent media space for a long time,
(0:03:23) How have you seen that space kind of evolve over time now with a lot of platforms being more algorithm driven versus like human created? How have you seen that affect that space in general?
(0:03:37) wow okay so when you talk about um yeah some of the disturbing stuff we've seen like super recently to do with um more formulaic kinds of journalism um i mean before we had algorithms creating articles or video content we had you know humans trying to operate to the whims of an algorithm by writing articles that were all about search engine optimization right but like i've actually uh unfortunately for
(0:04:00) But well, fortunately for me, for the sake of answering your question, I've been in this for longer than than anyone would believe. Like usually journalists have a shelf life of about 10 years. It's quite a poorly paying job. And also there's an extent to which it's a job that's easier when you're younger and angrier and have something to say. And then that tends to mean that journalists
(0:04:22) usually run out their shelf life when they're about 28. I'm generalizing massively, but I've been doing this job since I was 15. I was in video games for 10 years, then I was in board games for 10 years, and now I'm in role playing games. And that's one of the reasons I'm able to keep doing this job because when I run out of things to say, I just like crab walk sideways into a different field. But yeah, so I've been doing this job forever. But what that means is actually I've seen the media landscape evolve so much
(0:04:50) I thought of this round about the turn of the millennium, which is crazy and awful. And I don't like to think about that too much because it makes me feel super old. But the main thing I've seen is it might
(0:05:08) There's a case for getting depressed if you look at the role of algorithmic generation in the media landscape. There's also a lot of things to be positive about in just the last five years, but for me,
(0:05:21) I feel overwhelmingly positive about the change I've seen across 20 years because I can't tell you how infantile and small, a lot of, not all, but a lot of elements of games media was when I was starting out. There were some incredibly talented people, of course, some trailblazers, there always are.
(0:05:42) in terms of the quality of the media, in terms of the quality of the games, in terms of people taking experiments, and then most importantly, in terms of the amount of different kinds of people we see in games. You think games are white and male now? You have no idea how bad it was in the 90s. Holy crap. So yeah, I'm happy to drill down on a particular part of that if you'd like to. But yeah, where do you want to take this conversation from here?
(0:06:10) My interest has kind of been, obviously, there's so many more platforms now that prioritize video and, like, short-form content. And I see that streaming, stuff like that, like, very direct forms of video. So I know at the beginning, it obviously was just written. Like, we have old game magazines, stuff like that. I have a friend who collects old, like, Nintendo mags. Oh, super cool. Those old magazines are such a trip. And they're...
(0:06:37) they're awesome. But now we've, I say almost unfortunately, very switched to very short form, like quick content. So do you think there is still like room for slower written journalism in that space? Oh, written journalism is a big question mark. But I mean, it's difficult to get anybody to read anymore, right? But like, the lack of or the disappearance of
(0:07:04) You know, though, even in the 90s, even in the heyday of like what I would call, like before the creation of YouTube and video, it's crazy that I can be an authority on this. I've never felt so old on a podcast before. But even before the inception of platforms like YouTube, let alone like, which is, you know, 10 years before the creation of platforms like, you know, Vine or YouTube Shorts or Instagram Reels or whatever.
(0:07:25) No one was doing long form articles. Like it was, I mean, some, you know, freaks like Tim Rogers were experimenting with that platform. And I love Tim. God bless him. I say that without the tiniest bit of sarcasm. He's an amazing creator. But, you know, when you were writing for magazines in the 90s, no one's paying you to write more than six pages, which tops out at about...
(0:07:47) I don't know, 3,000 words. And a magazine might have one of those features a month if it's one of the highbrow ones, like, I don't know, Edge or PC Gamer in its heyday. So actually, what's cool about the media landscape right now is there's never been so much interest in long form content as there is today because of video essays.
(0:08:13) because of this unbelievable moment we've reached where suddenly lots of people really like having one creator, like not even a conversation, not even a documentary, but one creator doing an incredibly extended talk on something that interests them for an hour or an hour and a half. And in terms of sheer word count, there is nothing from the 90s or noughties that compares to that. So while, yeah, people today do have to absorb stuff like...
(0:08:43) through their ears while they're doing the dishes or at the gym or whatever. And make no mistake, a lot of us on YouTube are making long YouTube videos, but then we all quickly get the data that no one's actually watching them. They put them on and listen to them. They second screen them. But if you're okay with having 75 to 50% of your audience's attention, that attention is dynamite because it lasts for so long.
(0:09:05) Yeah, people read less now, but they absorb way more words. And that opens up the space for what creators can do massively.
(0:09:13) I hadn't even thought about that. I was just more concerned with, especially in my, I'm 21, I'm senior in college. So, so many students get information like in TikToks and in that kind of short form content. But obviously there's students and I'm very blessed to be at Weagle where people have such niche interests like 90s, a Belgian noise rock, you know, and we'll talk about that for hours and hours. No matter how much you want them to stop. Yeah.
(0:09:41) They will talk about it and they'll listen to people talk about it. I just, that was interesting for me. Yeah, no, that's another thing that we have now that, again, so easy to get depressed about so many things about the current era. I don't know, like it's much easier to see the stuff that's wrong with our time than to see the ways in which we're blessed. Yeah.
(0:10:00) Like niche content, like again, back in the 90s, back in the early noughties, before YouTube, before like the dissemination of creators, I mean, we've got to talk about that on the call. Well, I mean, I'll do it right now. The big difference in the media landscape now, and this is an enormous help to people who make games and make products, is that we have way more creator owned platforms, whether you're a streamer or a YouTuber, or, you know, whether you're making content about, you know, like RPGs on TikTok.
(0:10:28) you're much more likely to work for yourself. Like that simply, you could not do that in the 90s. You couldn't own your platform and work on it. You could be a freelancer like I was and sell articles to magazines and newspapers, but you don't own those platforms, which means you don't choose what to write about. You went to an editor and said, can I write about this?
(0:10:48) And they would say, oh, you would say like, I literally have a tattoo about an obscure Russian indie game that I was like obsessed with talking about that no one else had played. No one liked. I mean, it's called Pathologic. It's like they've just announced the Pathologic 3 recently, which is wild. It's not Nisho Tumblr.
(0:11:06) Well, fair. And actually, I don't know the degree to which this is true, but me pitching to editors in the 90s and saying like, please, can I write about Pathologic? And then some of those articles going viral might be the reason that Ice Pig Lodge was able to continue making those games. If I had my own platform at the time, that would have been easy. But instead, I had this crazy friction point where I had to go to editors and say, can I write about this game, please? And then you'd have an editor being like, yes, absolutely, you can. You can do 400 words on it.
(0:11:36) And it's like, you gotta be kidding. No, that what? But that was actually the, yeah. And that's a funny test for writers that, um, uh, this definitely does not happen as much. Um, but when I was writing for magazines, this is a fun test for any, um, like media students who might be watching this, but the test would be, Oh, what's your favorite video game? And then you would say it and they'd go great. Review it in 200 words. And that's the test.
(0:12:01) Because that's the reality of magazines. That's the reality of page counts and word counts. Anyway, I lost my thread. The point is that creator-owned platforms mean that people can write about niches. Back in the day, Jesus, I sound so old when I say the words back in the day, but back then you had to negotiate with a third party to write about anything.
(0:12:22) Can I please write about, you know, Pathologic, can I please write about, you know, noise punk rock? And they'd be like, maybe. Can you sell it to me, the editor? Which was awful. It takes little to sell students want to review bands. It takes a little to convince me, so.
(0:12:40) Yeah, that's great. But do you have advertisers breathing down your throat who need you to hit certain amounts? No? Yeah. But this is why student radio is amazing, right? It's an opportunity. It's like the coolest kind of media. It's like where you don't have any of the economic pressures to... You can just cover whatever you want, which is like, that's solid gold for both journalists and audiences.
(0:13:06) Yeah, I'm super lucky to be here, and that's so true of all our student media, our newspaper and our TV station for radio. We all have our different niches, but I always tell students, if you want to do something, do it now. You do not have the financial. It's not breathing down your neck anymore.
(0:13:24) Oh my god, it's so true. It's so true. I wanted to, it was kind of interesting. Oh, sorry. I was going to transition. It was interesting. Let's go. No, let's transition. No, I thought it was interesting because so many indie-er video games are more popular now than I think ever been before. I can think right now, is it the horror game Am I Still Human? Is that what it's called? I cannot remember. Oh, the one, wait, is that the one where you're letting people into your house? Yes. No.
(0:13:54) Yes, and it's got that crazy green and gray aesthetic. Yes, but it's so popular now, and I'm also thinking about mouthwashing. These games are smaller, and I don't think they would have ever become this popular with such a big fandom if it wasn't for creators just playing it just because they want to. Even on TikTok, just clips of it becoming viral. How do you think that has affected the indie game?
(0:14:20) Well, I mean, I'll tell you one way that it's affecting the indie game world is you have to factor into your budget now. Well, you don't have to, but from my friends who make indie games, you would be wise if possible to factor into your budget. You need to pay content creators to play your game, which is the one of the ways in which advertising revenue or like advertising budgets have shifted. You're no longer paying for a, you know, two page spread in Game Informer magazine. You're paying
(0:14:48) these 40 creators to stream your game for an hour which is wild but yeah I mean obviously it also means that you're making games which can succeed over TikTok or you know Instagram or whatever which is wild it means you need to make a game where like I don't think it's called I worry it's not called what you said that like I can't remember the name either the like am I still human I don't know the title yeah that's great can you edit it is this going out live or could you no I can edit it
(0:15:17) Uh, here's the edit. The game is called No, I'm Not a Human. That's what the game is called. Sweet, great. I'll put it. Okay, love it. Amazing. Those are those correct words that appear at some point now. But yeah, like, obviously that game works because, like, on socials, because you see one clip of it for 15 seconds and you're like, oh, I understand the game. You see a streamer looking at someone through, like, a door, like, their little...
(0:15:43) circular window through their door. What do you call that? Peephole. The little peephole. Peephole. That's a creepy name. We don't call it that in England. Maybe in America we just call it peephole.
(0:15:53) Yeah, cool. Great. So you look through the peephole. That just sounds dirty. I don't know. So, and then, you know, you see someone be like, please let me into the house. And then you're checking your notebook for like signs that they are like other or like, you know, some kind of SCP looking creepy. Like, perfect. You understand the game. That's it. And so it's about making your game, like giving it a language, which is immediately passable and funny and entertaining. And it's,
(0:16:20) It's interesting because we've heard in the music industry, artists are complaining that they're being pushed to make TikTokable songs that are- What? Okay, I'm fascinated by this. I've heard that as well. What does that mean to a musician? So, I remember the last person I saw complained about it was Halsey, but I've seen other smaller creators also do this because
(0:16:42) Unfortunately, it's how a lot of smaller musicians are being found is through TikTok. Is that, is there like a part of your song that is able to be like trendified on TikTok? Oh, wow. Oh, do you mean like used as a sound? Yes. That is like the biggest thing for an artist right now. So you need lyrics that are like, you know, relatable to a variety of situations? Yes.
(0:17:10) Damn. And like a hook, presumably. So we've seen that. And then also people complain that it's like, I heard the song on TikTok and it sounds awful, except for this one part.
(0:17:21) Okay, yeah. Oh, that's wild. I'm kind of wondering if game designers are kind of sometimes unintentionally doing that. Or intentionally. It's the same thing, right? Because if you're making a game where that game will sell based on like
(0:17:43) is seeing 15 seconds of this exciting, then there's a very valid possibility that you download the game and it's like, yes, it contains a bunch of those 15 second moments, but not the eight hour arc or experience. I actually don't think mouth washing, for example, is particularly TikTokable. I actually haven't seen it on TikTok and that makes sense to me because I played it recently and it's obviously amazing. I think I saw the fandom more than I did the actual game.
(0:18:11) Right, yeah. Oh, well, but that's interesting. So that's another way to interact and get virality online, right? Because Mouthwashing is a game that's so rich. And for people who haven't played it, the reason it's so engaging is it tells a quite simple story, but out of time. So it's about a spaceship that has an accident. And then you see like...
(0:18:31) six days before the crash, then two days after the crash, then eight days before the crash, then 60 days after the crash. And so you're getting like slices of this plot that's revealed. It's basically the structure of a thriller, like a Netflix thriller. But because it has loads of subtle like winks and nudges in the script, then you get an online fandom that's like really peeling the script apart, discussing it, you know, sharing memes. And that is one element of reality. Whereas the game, we can't remember the name of about letting people into your house. That's that 15 second loop.
(0:19:01) But, so I was going to complain about, I get musicians complaining that it's like, okay, well I'm being encouraged to make a song which has like this super hooky 10 second bit and then the rest of the song might not be as good. But with video games, like if you're, I kind of, I mean, indie designers can feel free to like, you know, email me, throw shoes at me in the street and stuff. But I like that
(0:19:25) It actually encourages development in a way that's like, okay, we just need to have like 60 seconds of this game that is so surprising and so funny. Um, and then maybe the game itself is short because that's what we've been saying we want to do for like 15 years. They're like, you know, that viral, the viral tweet. That's like, I want smaller games made by less people for that. I know what you're talking about. I couldn't remember.
(0:19:51) I want smaller games that cost less made by less people. And I'm not, and I'm not kidding. Something along those lines. But that book, you know, TikTok kind of,
(0:20:00) encourages us to get there and that's cool. Yeah. I love a good short game currently. Short games. Short games are great. I don't have time to play Death Stranding 2, Hideo Kojima, please. So my friends are like, oh, play this really solid 7 out of 10 third person shooter that lasts 40 hours. And I'm like, no, I can't. Look, I will play a two hour game for two hours and feel good about myself.
(0:20:24) I remember Stray getting really popular because it was shorter almost. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I sat down for six hours and played it all in one. What did I play recently? That's still very long, but in terms of game...
(0:20:40) Yeah, the games that I've got queued up right now to play, Consume Me, Easy Delivery Company, Dispatch, all these experiences that are just tight. And yeah, I'm for it. I'd say that I did just also absolutely spend like a week off. I took a week off work to Kane, Hades 2 and Silksong. But you know,
(0:20:59) There's room for, this is a broad church that can contain all these kinds of experiences. You can play long games, you can play short games, it's all fun. You can. It's all, the cops aren't gonna arrest you for either of those things. And I can replay Fallout 4 for the fifth time, and that's okay.
(0:21:14) that it's fine it's all fine we're allowed to enjoy what we want to enjoy but what's cool like we've always had long games and then that period of the noughties where for a while their video game like well i mean we're sort of only just coming out of it but like we're only just coming out of the period of video game publishers all wanting you to play a game forever you know from which sort of runs from like
(0:21:34) World of Warcraft to Destiny 2 and now we're coming out of that and it's like actually we can have really short bite-sized experiences and thank god because the video game industry we haven't been able to make these games for like um ever yeah um and and now we've got it and that's that's a relief opens up a whole new world of artistic possibilities yeah artistic is a good transition word because I wanted to ask about um oh my goodness where is it
(0:22:02) Oh, take your time. I always do this in interviews. This is like looking in a mirror. This is great. No, we can just... I'm gonna fill while you look for your question. I did it. I got it. See? No fill. Not anymore. I got it. Okay, great. Nice. So my next question was going to be... It is visually focused, obviously as a designer. I tried doing pixel art for a project. I have such an appreciation now for anyone that does pixel art game design.
(0:22:31) I cried, I think, multiple times. But I want to talk about... Oh, damn, that sucks. But also, it's good that you learned. That's a great learning experience.
(0:22:38) It was rough. I would never. You know what I see? I actually feel, for real, when I see a video game has pixel art, I feel increasingly nauseous the more frames I see animations have. I know how much more work went into it. It's almost like, I don't know, you know when someone serves you a meal and then the plating is so nice and so delicate you almost don't want to eat it? That's how I feel with pixel art video games. I kind of just feel sorry for all the labor involved in these games. Anyway, sorry, you're
(0:23:08) It was so intense, but I wanted to talk about that. How do you think the idea of video games visually has changed? Because I remember when I started playing, when I was in middle school, that was, I don't know, how many years ago? I'm only 21, it was like seven years ago.
(0:23:24) Hyper-realistic games were becoming more popular popular. It was like, look at us, look what we can do. And we still have those games now, but I feel like there's been a little bit of a shift in wanting more differently visually aesthetic games.
(0:23:39) Yeah, absolutely. I mean, to me, one of the best things that's happened in games anywhere, I've got several answers to this and I really love this question. Yeah, one of the best things that's happened to video games in the last 10 years is we are now finally hitting the point where AAA video games are too expensive to make. So we're no longer striving for that
(0:24:00) paper, real, you know, like new sort of liquid physics, hair physics, like, you know, draw distance, all this junk that does not necessarily like there is tons of technical artistry and like amazingly intelligent people who were and still are making that stuff. But
(0:24:19) It's a relief that now we're at the point where it's diminishing returns. It's no longer about just making games more technically proficient. And now that we're in an era where, oh, we can't just literally increase the resolution of our video games to drive innovation, we've arrived somewhere way more interesting. And me and the other critics who care about aesthetics have been talking about this for
(0:24:47) as long as they're, I don't know, like 15 years, 20 years. Having an interesting artistic aesthetic is cooler and richer than simply making something more hyper real. And what I really love about aesthetics in games now is
(0:25:03) Games are in conversation with themselves now. I remember this really trippy moment when Undertale came out and Undertale is of course like visually riffing on like 8-bit JRPGs, you know, with the text box and the battles and the pixel art and like it's literally made in Game Maker, right? Which is, I think, which is, you know, the engine that is used to make games that are like SNES and NES JRPGs.
(0:25:30) And then I was in a car, this is like such a boomer anecdote, but I was in a car and I was doing my friend's kids and his daughters were like,
(0:25:46) playing video games and I was like, oh, what are you playing? And they're like, oh, you wouldn't have heard of it. We're playing a game called Undertale. And I'm like, first off, I know that game. Second off, why are you playing Undertale? Because this is a game that is entirely referencing an ironic send up of JRPGs that you were not alive for. But to them, they didn't care. And then that was my like, sort of coming to Jesus moment of like, oh, oh wait, games have evolved enough now as an artistic medium that
(0:26:16) In the same way that I can listen to a hip hop record and not know that it's in conversation with hip hop records that were released in the late 80s, but I can kind of feel that it's doing something interesting and vibey, people who play video games now can tell the same thing. And now we're in an era where you're like riffing off PSX era Resident Evil, like Crow County or Crow Country, that game, which is like kind of...
(0:26:41) doing Resident Evil or Parasite Eve, but different. Games have evolved enough and gotten enough confidence as an artistic medium that they reference themselves and they riff on themselves. And that to me then puts, texturally, it makes the medium so... I'm struggling for words, honestly. It just makes it like a rich tapestry that is...
(0:27:05) like artistically really rewarding to think about and plug into. And it tickles like your nostalgia in ways that you aren't even aware of. I love all of it. And it is so much more interesting than like, the draw distance in our game is 200 yards longer and the sea looks 20% more like the sea. It's like, no, this is getting...
(0:27:26) This game is like one person in a basement's reference to a game which was his artistic reference to a game and it's like this weird snake that travels through time and space and you can sometimes can't even see where that snake is coming or going but you can feel it and it's just gorgeous.
(0:27:42) Silent Hill F just came out and I love Silent Hill. I haven't played that one yet. I need to, I just don't have the time. I don't have the time, but I love Silent Hill. None of us do. And it's very interesting because a lot of the other horror games I play are harking back to the original Silent Hill aesthetic and visual and the way that it looks.
(0:28:00) But Silent Hill F is aiming for that super intricate, I don't know the right term to call it, but other people are trying to mimic your old self and you are now putting on a new veneer of something. Yeah, it's like a fork in the family tree, right? It's like, when you're making a new Silent Hill, are you trying to recreate
(0:28:20) how the original game felt? Like are you trying to drag it into the modern day and put a wig on it and make it seem like incredibly fancy like Silent Hill F is doing? Like if this game had grown with the times or do you instead realize that that's impossible and try and pursue things like
(0:28:36) The original Silent Hill, you can look at that. Both are allowed, right? You can look at the original Silent Hill and be like, it's a game set in a coal mining town in America, which is very foggy. Or you can look at it and be like,
(0:28:51) It's a game which is really hard to control and the draw distance is really short and the texture work, the resolution of the textures in the PlayStation era was so low that they could put like a texture that kind of looked like flesh maybe on a wall. And then you're looking at that being like, what is that? And then that builds up to the horror. So if you look at Silent Hill that way, then if you're making a new Silent Hill game, you're like, we need to make this in a 3D engine so raw and rough that you can't ever tell what you're looking at.
(0:29:18) Or you can be like, it should look like the Silent Hill movie, which is then pursuing a totally different path. Yeah. We don't talk about the Silent Hill movies. Oh, will we? I don't know. I don't know if I want to. I don't know if I want to talk about any movie adaptation of any video game ever. Are any good? Is that a good question?
(0:29:38) Oh, damn. I mean, they all have ironic fans. Someone I follow on BlueSky was really excited about getting Final Fantasy Rebirth. Wait, is that even the one? No, Spirits Within, that's it. Final Fantasy Spirits Within on Blu-ray. Some people ironically like the Resident Evil movies. I saw the Minecraft movie on a plane. Did you see the Minecraft movie? I didn't.
(0:30:00) A lot of my peers have. It was like viewing parties for us. Oh, cool. How did they feel about it? Most of them maybe were not in the most straightforward state of mind during it. Good. Solid. Yeah. So I think their views may have been different. I saw the FNAF movie.
(0:30:24) The FNAF movie? Yeah, the Five Nights at Freddy's movie with Josh Hutcherson of The Hunger Games. I did not even see that come out. Wait, is Nicolas Cage in that movie as well? No, that's Mindy's Wonderland. That's a different animatronic horror movie. Okay, have you seen that one? No. Okay. Tune in next week for us as we review movies that we haven't seen but have maybe heard people talk about. The FNAF movie was not like the games at all.
(0:30:55) Did you like it? It was fine. Yeah, that's all video game movies, I think. There's blatantly one that I've forgotten, and about like two days after we wrap up this interview, I'm gonna be like, God damn it, because I'm gonna remember the one good video game movie, but yeah. Arcane was good. It's not a movie, it's a TV show.
(0:31:18) Yep, Arcane is probably the best media. Fallout was pretty good. Yeah, go to your, and then like Last of Us, right? So yeah, go to TV shows for your, for your video game adaptations. Season two was fine of The Last of Us. Okay, I didn't, I haven't seen it. It's not.
(0:31:35) I think like the best, I don't know, I'm watching Northern Lions playthrough of Road to Empress right now, which is that's a sequence of words that I feel like most people watching this will not know either of those names. But if you want to have a good time on YouTube, Northern Lions Road to Empress playthrough is in a way like a movie, because it's an FMV video game where you're basically just watching a film, but then making choices at different points. I guess the most popular kind of thing of that is Death Stranding. I thought it was just like a big movie.
(0:32:04) Oh, like the Hideo Kojima, like, yeah, just making a movie. And you walk, and then you have a seven-minute cutscene, and you walk somewhere else. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, the best video game movie is Metal Gear Solid V. We can all agree. Yes, exactly. I'm glad we've got that figured out. Watch TV shows and game cutscenes. That's it.
(0:32:24) Yeah, 100%. Yeah. That kind of is leading into another question I had because those shows, well, at least The Last of Us and Fallout somewhat in Arcane are somewhat mainstream TV shows. I think The Last of Us is the most mainstream out of everything. I talked to people that I didn't even know they knew what a PlayStation was and they watched The Last of Us.
(0:32:48) You've been in game space for a long time. Sorry, that sounds bad. No, it's so true. This is all just very real. This interview is very real for me right now. Anything past me before me being 15 is old.
(0:33:04) because I just don't remember much of it. And I'm only 21. Yeah, perfect. Great. So how do you think like mainstream, obviously mainstream culture has shifted the idea of games, but sometimes still hasn't in a weird way. How do you think that has like changed, I guess the most?
(0:33:22) It's getting better. This has been this, you know, like when we started this interview and you were like, you know, how has the media landscape changed? So I'm like, oh, this is better and this is different. This is what this question is like bolder that this community has been trying to push to the top of a hill for since there were video games, right? Like since Space Invaders was first created on a stupid large machine at MIT.
(0:33:50) So video games as a young medium does not have confidence in itself. Video games now are cool and big business enough and creating a culture that's rich enough. And frankly, like the people that play video games are like young enough and have enough social capital that we have arrived. We shouldn't need to trying to like be anything other than ourselves. And
(0:34:15) What's really annoying about like, even the Minecraft movie, what's bigger than Minecraft, right? And yet the Minecraft movie is like, well, we have to make a movie that appeals to, you know, like families. And it's like, yeah, okay, you can, or you could make a movie that is like utterly impenetrable for people who don't play Minecraft.
(0:34:35) And it would be like a sensation. It would be wild. It's not a great example because obviously when you adapt video games into movies, you are trying to reach a different audience, you're trying to reach moviegoers. But there's just been this burden that video games have had forever where it's like to be proud of this medium, for video games to sort of be accepted by society, we need to become something else.
(0:34:56) And what's a bummer is to still feel flickers of that sensation among the community. When we have arrived, we've been here for years. Video games are enormous. They bring in more money than movies or music or anything. You cannot find a kid today who isn't socializing and playing games or creating memes based on the video games that they play. And yet we haven't escaped the hangover of being a new art form entirely.
(0:35:25) There's still this like vague guilt that I think comes from people outside of video game. We're reflecting that attitude because we can feel it from people who don't play video games. That this is still somehow like a nerdy or niche or uncool or unworthy
(0:35:45) habit or way to spend your time. And it's not. Those of us in the medium who have any respect for game designers or ourselves are playing. Maybe anyone who's just not playing League and hating themselves for 40 hours a week. And I say that as someone who played plenty of Dota 2. But anyone who has any respect for games as a cultural medium knows that this is not a waste of time. This is a gorgeous, fulfilling, rich
(0:36:10) art form that makes us feel things and forces us to achieve things and go through things. And yet people who don't play video games still look down on the medium enough that we're still a little bit embarrassed and a little bit ashamed. And it's this idea that when video games try and do something mainstream, we try and change what is cool about them. And for as long as we're doing that, we're not
(0:36:35) going to have truly arrived as being a mature art form. We should be letting other people come to us, you know? And actually I don't love how that sounds because obviously accessibility and welcoming people into video games is a huge thing and a massive struggle that video games have also had.
(0:36:50) It is kind of shameful when you see video games contort themselves into a different shape to try and become movies when, you know, I don't know. Movies are dying. What are we doing? How are we still trying to trade off the social capital of actors and movie theaters when movie theaters are closing all over the shop? It's just, I don't know. It's a funny time. At least for my generation, no one really saw the Minecraft movie because we love Minecraft. We saw it because it was stupid.
(0:37:16) Which maybe is bad that we do that. Well, but you have to. Defecta, the media outlet, I think it was Defecta, had a really good take of trying to explain why the Minecraft movie is important. And it's like, imagine if it's like the 1970s and there'd never been a baseball movie. And then finally someone made a baseball movie and it was bad and weird, but...
(0:37:39) And didn't totally capture what baseball is, but it's still a baseball movie. Baseball fans are still going to go. It's still a cultural event. But yeah, I like that take a lot. So I feel like my answer to that last question, you touched a nerve in me and I just absolutely went off in a slightly incoherent way. I don't know. I think it's like talking to a veteran of a conflict or something.
(0:38:05) Games were so nerdy and so niche when I started. And the fact that anyone in games still feels that way or the fact that as a culture, we're like still replicating that feeling that we're not a worthwhile art form is so dumb. And I'm so impatient to see the end of it. There's a few other questions I'm not going to ask because I knew they were going to be hot topics. Oh, I mean, we can do we can do we can do quick.
(0:38:30) Like, if we limit me to not talking for longer than 30 seconds, we can do the Hot Topics. I don't know. I got off Twitter because of these things, because I can't stand. I've been a lifelong fan of the Devil May Cry series. Oh, okay, cool.
(0:38:45) And if you've ever seen any discourse from that, you should know it's hard being not a man in the space. Oh, I didn't know the DMC community was particularly shitty to women. That also feels weird to me because like,
(0:39:01) Dante is one of few video game protagonists who's like female gazy, I would have assumed. It's a strange split because obviously it's a hack and slash game that a lot of young boys like to play. And then there's women and non-men who really enjoy Dante and Virgil and Nero sometimes. If you remember him, I couldn't talk about it on Twitter, but on Tumblr is great.
(0:39:31) If you still use Tumblr. What's your take on DMC, the Ninja Theory game in the middle? Oh, the remake that they... Yeah, do you like? I... So, my hot take of that is that it shouldn't have been a Devil May Cry game. Okay. Yeah, because you don't like what it did to the lore? Yes, but also I think it misunderstood the characters. That it was true.
(0:40:00) This is really interesting. This is the Tumblr community's opinion on it. Yes, this is me. That's cool, that's cool, that's cool, yeah. So for me, the games of that time, kind of the male character was exactly like how they made Dante in DMC Devil May Cry. Which is how it's referred to, if you don't know, it's referred to in the community, DMC Devil May Cry.
(0:40:22) Okay, great. I always thought that game got a hard time because I thought that's such a cool take. For me, I loved the art direction in that game so much. Like the things it did with, you know, like clever camera tricks or surreal stuff to do with like swapping foregrounds and backgrounds and things I felt was so consistently underrated. And I just thought...
(0:40:45) As someone who doesn't know shit about the lore, I was just there being like, aesthetically, this game is mint. And some people in this game are extremely talented and did not get their kudos at all. That's my thing, is that the game is really well put together. The story is not bad.
(0:41:02) Like, it isn't. Like, if you look at the game as a game that is not Devil May Cry, it's great. It's a great game. But you've packaged it in the Devil May Cry branding and package, and the people that are into Devil May Cry aren't really into that. That was my thing. Is that, like, DMC4 had just, like, that was the game before that came out. And first off, they just introduced a new character.
(0:41:29) And it was still like hack and slash, you're running through, you're getting your superstars and your S rankings. And then they switch it to this more like, I'm going to call it emo, very lovingly. This emo kind of early 2000s gamer boy kind of aesthetic. A little bit. And that's not really what people were wanting. So when Devil May Cry 5 came out, that was huge.
(0:41:56) I remember that I was there, because I was like, oh my god. I was there. They're bringing back my, like, the originals. And also it kind of, that game coming out, kind of cemented that they regret the remake. Well, yeah, but that's a, I only have complicated feelings about that, because I hate any time publishers kind of give in to capital G gamers. You know, there was just so much unpleasant discourse. That was also like...
(0:42:25) kind of gamer gatey era. That was a time when gamers felt really entitled to attack developers. And I really respected Ninja Theory as a publisher for the games they made before that as well. I mean, as a developer rather. Seeing any development studio get abuse and then the publishers change it for the next game, even if that was like the correct decision, not saying you're wrong with your attitudes on the game, but like any time I see, you know, like gamers win over a publisher,
(0:42:51) and a developer has their business trajectory changed, I immediately want to take the defense of the developer. Yeah. Because I don't know, man. Game developers have it really hard. Do you have many friends who are... I would like to broadcast this on Campus Radio to anyone who's listening, who's starting to be a game designer. If you don't have friends in the games industry who are actually making these games, and you are...
(0:43:19) I don't know, on social media or in a bar, you know, dropping hot takes about how developers are lazy or about how developers are stupid or you need to STF you because like that is something that's been kind of intolerable to me throughout my time as a games journalist. For 20 years, seeing gamers deliver hot takes on how games are made or should be made or how developers should work or are working, and they're just wrong. There is such...
(0:43:47) poor literacy in games compared to, like if you're a movie nerd, you learn how movies are made. If you're a music nerd, you learn the backstories behind how your favorite bands made music. Games, gamers, do not, speaking broadly, speaking very broadly, do not learn shit about how, beg your pardon, I've been pretty good at not dropping my like, okay, thank you. But yes, I'm glad to hear you like making mm's of acknowledgement, but yeah, like gamers need to learn more about how their favorite games are made because they got no idea.
(0:44:16) It's interesting. It's very similar to design because people will complain about how something is designed, how something is like a poster or a new logo or something like that. And they'll just complain and complain and complain. And they're not thinking about the 15 designers that are working on that. So sometimes it is right to revert back visually.
(0:44:38) Yes, definitely. Like designers will be the first to tell you that something they produced did not end up perfect. It's just, so like mistakes get made because making anything is incredibly hard. And you're totally right. And a lot of like, you know, the community of a game is often right. It's like, okay, this didn't end up in the place that we wanted.
(0:44:59) but making assumptions about why that is. And your, as a fan's theory for why that is, is anything other than, oh, it didn't end up perfect because making something is indescribably hard. And any video game that comes out and it's like an eight out of 10 or higher is a miracle of luck and more hard work than you can conceive of. I think a lot of people that play games just don't understand the amount of people that work on games.
(0:45:28) Yeah, and something they understand even less is how many different leads there are. My ex-wife was and still is quite a high-level narrative designer in video games. And the thing that she became the most interested in, she was an author, she loved game design, she loves all the disciplines that are involved in being a narrative designer, like working an engine or writing a video game script or...
(0:45:56) or figuring out how to put narrative into things like animations or music or whatever. If you're someone who wants to be a narrative designer or a writer for video games, you know, if you're a student, you'll be sat at home thinking like, oh, the script for this game is really good. Or like, if I was going to do a video game, the story would be like this. No, you know what my ex did that made her eminently hireable and made her the most popular person at any video game designer party is she cared about pipeline.
(0:46:21) Which is, how do you... When you're working on a team, how do you tuck the narrative into development? When do you talk about it? How do you talk about it? How do you... Like, because, I mean, one of the realities of making a video game, right, is that...
(0:46:38) when you're making a game, it changes as you go. You're like, we're gonna make this kind of game. And then it turns out your budget's smaller and you're like, oh, okay, we're gonna make this kind of, oh, and then it turns out that doesn't test very well. Oh, we're gonna play this kind of, and then the contract you had to do your art is no longer available. So, oh, we're gonna make this kind of game.
(0:46:55) So like, you want to figure out what your story is while you're like pottery, right? But everyone's hands are on the same pottery wheel making the same pot at the same time. So yeah, she just became obsessed with pipeline. That was her nerdy special interest. She loved writing, but pipeline was more important. And that's just like the most important words a video game narrative designer will write in the course of making a video game is the design document that everyone else has to read.
(0:47:24) Which isn't, it's not the script. It's like, these are the themes we're telling in our story. These are our reference points. This character is based on these characters. Like, you know, all the, and yeah, anyway, it's, it's the internal Google documents that everyone on the team will read and none of your players ever will. That's the most important writing on a video game. Getting everyone in the same, same line in the same, everything super clear. Exactly. Everyone pulling in the same direction.
(0:47:49) And then also everyone agreeing to change that direction after nine months and 12 months and 18 months. And yeah.
(0:47:57) Yeah. Everyone agreeing to it is probably huge. Actually, it is huge. Everyone agreeing to it, even though they disagree with it. Because it's not like you're all going to look at the horizon and be like, yes, that is the exact video game we want to make. You put six video game fans in the same room, you're going to have six different arguments about 400 different games. So imagine what it's like on development studios. Even if you don't totally agree, you still have to pull in the same direction.
(0:48:26) Any type of design, it's the same exact kind of thing, where there's 15 people with different ideas of how to do it, but you have to figure out how to agree with one another to get it done. Getting it done is the big final stamp of approval for anything.
(0:48:39) It's like the, when I'm onboarding, I haven't done this often, but when I'm talking to people about getting into YouTube, the study that I always reference, and this is like, anytime I speak at a school, I always tell the same story, which is the only unfortunate thing about this is I don't know any of the details. So like, I don't know where this was in America, but there was a class, literally again, pottery, right?
(0:49:05) There was a pottery class in America at like a college level. And it was there was a famous experiment where the teacher said they split the class in half and said, for half of you, you will be graded on the best single pot you make this semester. So like, just put one pot in front of your teacher, of your choice, and the quality of that pot will be your final grade. And the other half of the class got told, you will be graded on the number of pots you put in front of us.
(0:49:35) That's it. Just make as many pots as you can." And what they discovered was that the half of the class that was graded on the number of pots also made better individual pots than the other half of the class. So you just tell someone make 40 pots, their 40th pot will be better than the single pot of someone who's been given four months to make it, or four months to practice.
(0:50:00) that it's getting it done is is like if you can tell a creative anything just make things and get them out the door at the end and you will learn so much more and you will be a better designer and people don't want to hear that because we're all perfectionists and we're all like ashamed of what we make and both of those things are enemies of actually becoming good at this thing you love
(0:50:23) Hey, thanks for listening to Type Speaks. Hope you had a good time, because I sure did. But unfortunately, the episode is over. But don't worry, you can check us out in other places. Be sure to follow the show to listen to every new episode or listen back to some old ones. Check us out on Instagram at typespeakspod. And remember, always keep creating and always stay curious. I'll see you next time. I've been Ray.