Alex Beachum Designing for Curiosity in Outer Wilds.

[@joanhailey8969]

A fitting irony that Alex holds the podium for ~22 minutes...

[@jpkan3873]

this is amazing

[@NoNameAtAll2]

right click -> loop video

[@rebycfa5673]

he planned that i just know it

[@ablazedguy]

Nothing ironic about that, please learn what words mean before using them.

[@rebycfa5673]

@@ablazedguy ? u r clueless lol

[@torkleven6515]

"We don't want you to explore like you're mowing the lawn" Wish more games followed this design philosophy.

[@joshcockrell1677]

Basically 50% of Zelda BOTW where you’re going from hill to hill in search of Korok Seeds

[@fabioagostino8948]

@@joshcockrell1677 i think botw is pretty good in this, you're not supposed to collect all korok seeds, you can go wherever you want.

[@B2Roland]

​@@joshcockrell1677that's you're own fault. Korok seeds are completely pointless

[@joshcockrell1677]

​@@B2Roland It's not "the player's fault". You go hill-to-hill to find hidden shrines & challenges.

[@Lyoishi]

It is interesting to compare that approach to exploration in Elden Ring.

[@laLuminescence]

I love how he said Skyward Sword broke him as a person, then managed to make the game that broke me (and probably you too).

[@xystem4701]

every time I hear alex speak he seems even more intelligent. His inspirations for and goals with outer wilds have such incredible intentionality, and he pulled it all off so perfectly

[@BillyTubememe]

It's so cool that the planet shown in the DLC is inspired by the planet from the early builds of the game.

[@Ascendance2001]

From what I've heard the DLC was originally meant to be part of the base game but they ran out of time before release.

[@factormars4339]

@@Ascendance2001the dlc is so huge it is like outer wilds 1.5

[@terryriley6410]

@@factormars4339 It was planned from the beginning to be in the game, that doesn't mean every detail about the DLC was already figured out. The shape and nature of the location was already known however.

[@protonjones54]

11:08 I like this game design concept from Alex, and felt it throughout my playthrough. I'd notice all the "dead space" in between curiosities, for example, like large patches of flat, plain grass on timber hearth, and then you get to a curiosity on the planet, and suddenly there's plants, trees, water, structures, all kinds of details in the environment. I would notice how, there's really not many easter eggs to find, hardly any at all. And there's no collectibles either. You're really pushed into the spirit of the game, how exploration, and uncovering secrets, becomes the collectibles, this is your focus, the meat and potatoes of the experience. I think this actually alleviates a burden off of completionist-type players and their approach to games, how they can stress out over feeling a demand to explore every nook and cranny, just in case they might've missed something valuable. And I certainly fall into that trap now and then.

[@Bleech606]

I love his point about 'mowing the lawn'. For everything BG3 does right, one thing I had issue with is the gameplay loop it kind of forces you into which Alex describes as 'mowing the lawn' - zigzagging across the map for fear that you might miss something. His quest marker point as well. He is totally eliminating so much of what I dislike about modern games. So many devs could learn from listening to him.

[@ethyr]

to be fair, BG3 has a lot of replay value, so you're not really expected to 100% everything on the first playthrough.

[@pupinator98]

it's always fun to see the playthrough videos where outer wilds engages them enough that when they go to the high energy lab and repeat the test, they look at the results, look at the cores, and then do THE THING; and of course, their reaction to THE THING

[@spencerbaldwincomposer]

In response to the first audience question: the player does receive pertinent skills that allow them to progress through the game; they gain knowledge. You can finish the game immediately from starting a new save, the only thing stopping you from doing that is the knowledge that you must gain on the way. To the developers' point, I think, at least for Outer Wilds, cluttering it up with any other mechanic or objective would have defeated the true wonder of being able to go anywhere and do anything at anytime, as long as you've gained the knowledge to do so. Playing this game with my brother was a core memory. Bravi!

[@isaackim4924]

What makes knowledge special is that it's purely a non-gameplay mechanic. And by that I mean the game can't take away your knowledge because it's outside the control of the game.

[@vaap]

this is such a good talk omg

[@GroovusGoonicus-nb5op]

Thank you for having the courage to make this game. Its the only "open world" game I've truly loved, its what I always wanted exploration in games to feel like. I turn off as much HUD and mission/map marking as possible in everything else before pressing start

[@keanureef271]

Loved the closing the spoilers tag joke, definitely gonna steal that in the future

[@Vonias]

YES finally this talk is back up! I loved it the first time I saw it and have been wanting to share it with people but it went down :( SO HAPPY to see this again.

[@TheDan337]

How has this concise talk about one of the most celebrated games of the past decade garnered fewer than 200 views in the month since it was published? Oh, yeah - the algorithm. See also Kelsey Beachum’s GDC talk, and of course the Noclip documentary (in case you somehow missed it).

[@fullindie]

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity! Due to a oversite on our end during our host migration we lost the old KZbin account. It took over a year to get the whole Full Indie Summit play list!

[@DaveLH]

Kelsey's talk is how I first heard of Outer Wilds.

[@purplesnowmon]

Inspirations equivalent to crack. Experiencing outer wilds makes me want to make something of similar awesomeness. Only shame would be I wouldn’t be able to play it myself, much like this legend. A small price to pay indeed…

[@estefanoterenghigoy2091]

I actually played the game planet by planet, like i discovered everything in a planet and then went to another, because it's my way to play a game, having some kind of schedule and order, but i'd love to play the game by following leads to other planet, and then another and then come back to the first one, but now it's too late because i know everything about the game ;(. I guess that's the magic of watching another person playing it, you can actually see how the curiosity gets them as it got me and wants to find answers, it's like playing it for the first time somehow. I don't know any other game that i enjoy other people gameplay more than this one, even knowing what's going to happen everywhere, absolute legendary game

[@bloky2747]

I also did it that way. It was enjoyable tho. I wish I could forget everything I know about this game, but before playing it again, write down a note to myself saying: Play this game calmly, paying attention to every detail, spend hours if you need, think about clues, make theories, but just dont rush, if you are stuck you WILL eventually get unstuck, just dont look anything up.

[@terryriley6410]

You literally cannot play the game planet by planet since the clues are scattered across planets and things rely on each other to complete.

[@countrygeneral]

@@terryriley6410 You kinda can. I played it planet by planet, stopping the exploration of a planet when I hit a wall. Sure, it is not the most pure way of playing planet by planet, but it kinda still is playing planet by planet. Granted, I switched my playstyle plenty of times. My favorite has to be the one from the DLC especially because you can just chill every time knowing that you don't really have to spend time on constant travel between planets, fretting over any missed details.

[@terryriley6410]

@@countrygeneral So you explored one planet and when you hit a wall you moved to other planets to find an answer? This is how everyone plays and its not "planet by planet", that would be like starting with Giant's Deep an finding and solving everything there is, before moving to another planet (never to return again), which is fairly impossible thanks to how the game is designed.

[@countrygeneral]

@@terryriley6410 nah, I hit the wall, bang my head against said wall a bunch of times, move on to different places on the planet a few times and only then change my target. Granted, I changed my playstyle quite a few times during play

[@caden5936]

This is very helpful for the story mod i’m making for the game lol

[@vinicius7808]

Looking forward for it!!

[@astraadams1692]

did you ever finish it?

[@caden5936]

@@astraadams1692 no i stopped working on it pretty early on 😭

[@josephmartelmusic]

Such a great talk! They did him so dirty by not including an audience mic though hahaha

[@DaFlavourFace]

the audience is TOUGH. Everytime I chuckle I expect someone else in the audience to chuckle to but I just hear silence. Alex' jokes are underappreciated.

[@FrameOneAlex]

What an informative watch

[@jameslane2326]

tough crowd, they dont laugh at any of his jokes :/

[@sbef]

Probably they have noise reduction on his audio, so you can't hear the reaction of the audience

[@Adoptulous]

Unbelievably informative

[@itspaddyd]

He forgot that you do gain a skill, meditation!!!

[@Squalidarity]

Technically true, but really this is just a more elegant means of doing something (resetting the loop) that the player can already do (by dying or quitting to the main menu). It’s quite possible to solve every mystery without ever gaining it.

[@Cellybeans]

@@Squalidarity I've literally seen people do that, it's wildly frustrating lmao

[@ridhosamudro2199]

​​@@CellybeansI mean it's kinda fitting. Players who don't have that because lack of persistence carefulness often would be just "abuse" the reset button.

[@theadamholly]

It actually is functionally different from quitting the game. I found this out when I went into the Ash Twin Project black hole, then in my next few sessions I quit the game before ever dying. Then when I finally meditated, I couldn’t even remember what I did to destroy the fabric of spacetime. (Somehow I never noticed there were two of me).

[@ifroad33]

@@theadamhollyi think that happens when you jump into the black hole inside of the core of Ash Twin. Could be wrong tho.

[@stratoge]

Re-upload? Time to re-watch! Still an amazing presentation

[@quadrupleheart]

Loved seeing this!

[@jaeckex6214]

Great talk!!

[@weymorales]

amazing video thank you!

[@alexsimper4153]

SPOILERS: the only lore-only piece of information I can recall is in the DLC, one of the reels in the dream world don't actually reveal anything and just talk about how they created the dream world you're already in

[@David-bf2cg]

I think that one is supposed to reveal it is actually a digital matrix that they did in fact create, and not some sort of dream, or teleportation or anything like that. Maybe some players have figured that out beforehand, but I think that was supposed to let you know for sure, especially if you hadnt pieced it togheter yourself so far.

[@tednugent1100]

@@David-bf2cg bingo

[@zyklan2197]

the mining site cave on timber hearth where nomai discover the hearthians

[@ridhosamudro2199]

​@@zyklan2197technically that's related to how to survive the ghost matter. A bit reaching, but I've seen people put the two and two together

[@ZumoDePapaya]

@@zyklan2197 okay but that one is just really cute so it gets a pass

[@TeamCrawfordSmith]

Too bad Alex sucks at Super Smash Brothers.

[@f0xyvixen]

loves it