De-Gamification - Flexibility to Play Your Way - Extra Credits

[@extrahistory]

Gamification has begun to crop up everywhere. But what about the pure joy of undirected play?

[@kalechips078]

Extra Credits I love you!!

[@StrimClocks]

De-Gamificaton is one of the reasons why the recent update to Overwatch was so great. Ana paint ball anyone?

[@ktheiss]

The timing of this video is impeccable. Watching it reminded me of Breath of the Wild, because it does exactly this. Have you guys played it yet? Because I could see this video being a good segue into a video on how Breath of the Wild utilizes this "de-gamification" design philosophy.

[@ericcartman9009]

Please make a video on Skanderbeg

[@J1P2K]

Yeah, for me I don't give a damn on how I finish a game, I just want to finish the story. When I get to a boss that I can't beat, I've see about using a god cheat just so I can get the end. I'm currently stuck with the final boss of Dragon Quest 8, and I'm trying to get the god cheat.

[@salemnightlark8161]

My little sister loves to play skyrim with me because she loves the horse riding but she hates fighting and isnt good at it the invincibility code makes the game endlessly fun for her instead of horrifically difficult.

[@salemnightlark8161]

She was three when we started

[@EdgarTheRaven]

I was doing the same thing with Oblivion and my nephew no more than 2 years ago. I hope you're acting responsible and covering her eyes on certain parts, mate. Those games are pretty brutal.

[@salemnightlark8161]

She just rides horses up and down the world. She doesnt even want to fight anything.

[@drakan4769]

... make sure you teach her horses can't actually run straight vertically though, or she's in for a disappointment if she ever gets to try horse riding IRL

[@SuperLotus]

I was going to have my dad (who doesn't play games) try Skyrim, but after showing him Dark Souls he said he didn't want to play a violent gaming. However, I was thinking about doing something similar in Skyrim where he's invincible so he doesn't have to fight anything and there's probably mods to make enemies non-aggro.

[@Zackapo]

The GTA franchise completely thrived on this concept. After playing a few story missions, nothing better than inputting 'PANZER' and blasting stuff for a while

[@idndyzgaming]

AEZAKMI FTW

[@abdAlmajedSaleh]

yeah

[@samuelmacfarlane]

I never owned any GTA game, so most of my experience with the game is just messing around, especially with some level of cheats, and totally ignoring the long term goals.

[@ll-sz9fl]

Or just biking

[@RachniThane]

Fun story, I was playing a game called StarDrive. It's a 4 x strategy game . Now I'm talking to my friends holding my push to talk button. Suddenly a sun blows up. I'm a little freaked on how that happens. Then I realize holding down X when i"m talking is blowing up my planets!! I posted in the glitch forum. The dev tells me left a debug command in the game. HE LEFT THE BLOW UP THE SUN BUTTON.

[@CptCaptainClockwork]

RachniThane Zero is an interesting chap

[@Loregamorl]

Exactly what I need

[@MiketheNerdRanger]

OMG that's hilarious

[@Zwockel95]

When I was a child, I played Super Mario Sunshine with a friend of mine sometimes. Just the overworld, no levels, no failstates, no objectives. Just running around and creative jumping. Hours at a time. One of the most fun gaming experiences I ever had.

[@Golossus117]

Although it was a few years ago now I did this a LOT with The Sims 2 and 3. Removing the more "realistic" parts like eating, sleeping and earning money makes it so much more open!

[@TheChrizine]

Oh yes! Also, building fantastic houses and creating a family to live in them is much more fun if you can just give the family enough money to actually buy the house. Most of the time I spent in sims was probably in building and character creation, envisioning stories about the family in my head. After that I would mercilessly skill the characters up by taking away all their needs to make them fit what I had thought of. Sometimes I continued playing then, but mostly I'd have an idea for the next family by then...

[@Ajehy]

J. Finsberg Boolprop for the win! Or, rather, for the experience of creating the dream house, watching the characters interact... I'd create my favorite characters from various media, or from my own stories, and let them run around as I watched their antics. Good times :3

[@biblicallyaccuratecockroach]

Oh boi, do I love myself some cheatcodes

[@ViolosD2I]

Actually I turned the first Sims into a "marriage fraud simulator" after finding that marrying a newly created neighbour and then disposing of them is the quickest way to get rich, as it nets you all their starting money minus the cost of a phone. And you can do it several times a week. Perfecting that evil plan to bypass all the designed content was a game on its own.

[@kvweber]

Mine is kind of weird and out there, but when I was very young there was an N64 in the house and it came with Mario Kart 64. I'd never played a console game before and the controller was weird, so in short, I totally sucked at racing in it. Then I discovered that if you played Time Trial mode you could just drive around as much as you wanted and just spend time exploring and looking at stuff without worrying about losing the race. I spent *hours* exploring parts of the map that were not intended to be part of the racing course, like trying to get on the steam ship in DK Jungle or visiting the castle in Royal Raceway. Two interesting things came about from this experimentation and exploration: One, I got really good at Mario Kart 64 because I knew the courses inside and out. All it took was a lot of practice with technical skills, which were much easier for me to grasp through muscle memory than course layouts were. Two, when I finally played a 3D action game on the N64 (weirdly, not Mario 64, but Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon) the concept of moving around freely a 3D world in 3D space was not as foreign to me. This in and of itself is pretty wild because I can't actually visualise things in 3D in my head- I almost totally lack that cognitive ability- but being able to picture something in 3D space in 3rd person based on what I've seen in video games can actually act as a sort of reference point for me now when I try to visualise locations. :)

[@dddmemaybe]

This is good. It reminds me of all the times I played games as a kid, I loved exploring and trying to get on top of every building and mountain, fighting the invisible walls as hard as I could. I boldly think that, children typically like games that have a lot of mystery through exploration and adventure. Ask yourself this, if as a kid you played any games like Poke'mon or Spyro or Super Mario 64, what did you enjoy the most. It was finding out what was in the next level and adventuring through all of the things you could interact with wasn't it? In my honest opinion I believe games that are most masterful in their use mystery-lure and reveal are of the most interesting to children. Kids tend to naturally be more curios than adults as they are naturally strong at learning and taking in new things and ideas. And, tend to enjoy learning and exploring as well I would say, if the style, experience, and hooks fit for their opinions fairly well enough. tl;dr: I put large-emphasis on designing mystery-versus-reveal when designing a game to be enjoyable for kids, as we all might likely agree, children are the most curios of any large-scope audience. www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/why-young-children-are-curious/

[@LoopyLemon8]

Kids are really weird in the way they explore things. I have strong memories of playing a racing game as a child where they did not have invisible walls, rather let you infinitely drive into the flat distance. I swear I spent more time driving into the distance than I did playing the game and the fact that this particular game didn't reset me onto the track made it one of my favourites.

[@zig131]

The Rosebud cheat from The Sims is surely the classic example. Infinite money and the ability to kill off or evict Sims turns the game into a house designer.

[@Thalugor]

That's how I feel playing a lot of 4x grand strategy game, more interested in the fun of exploring and developing an ever sprawling empire than the actual strategic challenge.

[@subgerocallidus]

Eon2641 My brother plays civ to win. I play civ to roleplay as a country. He always beats me though XD

[@Codraroll]

I do this even in RTS games. Instead of focusing to win the game efficiently, I see if I can set up a regiment of armoured knights and steamroll the enemy through sheer volume of the game's strongest units. Or removing the entire fog of war all over the map by strategically placing watch towers. Or seeing if I can move an entire battle group from one side of the map to the other using helicopters, and how fast I can get them into a well-defended position. Or setting up defensive structures/positions that grind any enemy force into dust without losses of my own. Or testing if I can do area denial effectively with artillery, then create a choke point no enemy can pass. Or just building the biggest and most impregnable fortress ever. RTS games are fun.

[@RageofNash]

We use to get the unofficial NES game consoles back home in Africa. Included would be pirated versions or cracked versions of all the classic NES games. Some game cartridges would have 30 different version of Contra and each version your character would start off with different attributes. We always took: 30 lives, infinite continue and starting/swapping weapon was the spreader/spread blast. We out it, we would have never seen the ending or encountered the final boss...brain thing. There were other games that swap character sprites. So, Mario show up in games he didn't belong in. Good times! Peace! :3

[@gobraz]

Several times when I was playing Gothic 2, I began to play it with cheats (Marvin mode) - he helped me not only to make the character stronger, but also allows you to fly around the world and "possess" and control all characters and monsters in the game (including to have access to their inventory)! You could make a variety of experiments - who will win - the paladins or elite orcs? How many paladins you need to kill the dragon? What will happen if the undead army attacks the monastery of fire mages? The familiar Gothic 2 was suddenly in a whole new perspective.

[@ViolosD2I]

Haha true. Don't forget dressing people in each other's clothes.

[@LaZodiac]

GTA Vice City. Summon tank. Turn on flying cars. Turn tank turret behind you. Thus began the most beautiful dance of the sky I've ever seen. A majestic eagle known as, the flying tank.

[@TheYear2012book]

LaZodiac checked out the comments to say exactly this.

[@rngwrldngnr]

LaZodiac you can also have some truly ludicrous jumps just summoning the tank and taking off the ramps at the airport in reverse.

[@MalaysianGov]

Oh my gosh that takes me back haha. That's some good memories!!

[@Naterkix]

Literally _exactly_ what I was gonna say.

[@raipogonowski8450]

Reminds me of how all puzzle games and arcade games used to have a "zen mode"

[@duwang3195]

how did that work?

[@lexo5470]

It's the same game but without timers or fail states, just relaxed puzzling and play

[@duwang3195]

cool

[@danabinghammclaughlin919]

Yeah, Alto's adventure has a Zen mode.

[@terykprince-hughes1371]

Kirby air rides free trial mode was a great degamed mode that is often overlooked.

[@dddmemaybe]

Kirby Air Ride WAS trial city mode. I wished that mode had a non-timed version back in the day, could never fully explore the rooftops on that map I could.

[@luliby2309]

Kirby Air Ride is overlooked too much in general and is great. And dddmemaybe, it's City Trial, and yes...that was the absolute bomb of that game. Also, there is a mode where you can go into the city without a time limit to do things (I'm pretty sure it's the Free Trial mode).

[@milojacquet7507]

This isn't quite de-gamification as it is never being gamified, but this is how I feel about Space Engine. It's the kind of thing where you can just relax and spend hours exploring real or fictional planets. It's really engaging, despite having no score, achievements, survival, or danger. I recommend it.

[@FortWhenTeaThyme]

Most games are gamified while still in the concept phase, so yes, the video is about de-gamification.

[@milojacquet7507]

I meant that my comment wasn't really about de-gamification. The video certainly is.

[@thenefariousnerd7910]

The Simpsons: Road Rage had a "Sunday Drive" mode where instead of racing the clock you could just explore the different levels. I sunk hours into that mode, on one hand because i was a little too young to be any good at the normal timed mode, but on the other I also loved exploring the nooks and crannies of each level. Discovering shortcuts, pulling crazy stunts, and breaking all the destructibles I could find was an engaging experience all by itself.

[@CaptainHoers]

This video has actually brought me to a really profound, yet in hindsight obvious understanding. Let me explain. I've been consuming a lot of theory and criticism lately about RPGs, particularly as regards the golden age of RPGs (titles like the original Fallouts, Deus Ex, etc), and comparing and contrasting it with, for example, Bethesda's handling of the Fallout series (in my opinion it's been something of a travesty). I've been hearing a lot about telling a story in an RPG, and using careful placement and pacing of gameplay elements to make the play feel like the story. I have a friend who plays, among other things, Bethesda games, by giving herself millions of caps and every other kind of countable you can get in the game. For a long time, I didn't understand this at all. I'm aware of the value of uninhibited play, I've been having a whale of a time with 500% modes in custom Overwatch matches, but I figured it was a waste of an RPG to do that. One of the things I loved about Wasteland 2, which I got to playing a few months ago, was how refreshingly challenging it was, and the ludonarrative of the party dynamic that creates. I couldn't help but wonder why on earth you'd want to make that challenge evaporate by using cheats. Then between this and Noah Gervais' video on Skyrim and Dragon Age, I've had that 'aha' moment. My friend isn't playing these games wrong at all; I'm the one playing Fallout 4 wrong. It's not a game about its story like classic Fallout is (the radial quests and the derivative nature of many of its sidequests make that abundantly clear). It's a style of game designed around freedom of player experience first and foremost, and console cheats dovetail into that very neatly. What doesn't fit so neatly into that is a compelling and structured story. In hindsight all of my best memories of Fallouts 3 and 4 are when I've made my own meaning and fun from the game rather than looked to the design of it for that. So I guess the sum of this is that this video showed me the validity of other ways of playing games, that when I think about it I was really aware of already, but hadn't thought about in the right way.

[@FortWhenTeaThyme]

It is Bethesda's fault though for taking control of a series known for its narrative and roleplaying elements and then turning it into a FPS series whilst still calling itself an "RPG" and using the same title.

[@CaptainHoers]

That is a big part of it. It's practically false advertising to anyone who's aware of what Fallout first came to be known for to then be associated with the checklist sandbox that is Bethesda Game (they only really make one).

[@QuietDuplicity]

This is actually one of my biggest problems with a lot of single player games today, there is little challenge and/or immersion to be found *in addition to narrative.* If there isn't a threat of failure then it's almost impossible to create tension or drama in the narrative, in fact one could even argue that with a legitimate threat of some kind it's impossible to create a compelling narrative. It's not that I think easy freedom of choice games are bad, they're just not my cup of tea, it's probably why I'm one of the few gamers around that didn't like Skyrim. I've already spent hundreds if not thousands of hours running around in games doing my own thing over a decade or two ago, it just feels old and unsatisfying to me now.

[@a-blivvy-yus]

This reinforces 2 opinions I have about Fallout 3: 1. It's a great game. 2. It's a terrible Fallout game.

[@ANMAnation]

Mind if I ask for some of the videos you were watching about the golden age RPGS vs Bethesda ones? I'd be interested in learning more :)

[@Coaster42]

How about sandbox mode in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3? I find it way more fun to just build whatever I want without hassle than to actually play the scenarios.

[@Xeyler]

I played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon for the first time several years ago, and it had a feature that allows you to type in codes to accept specific missions. I realized that there was probably an algorithm the game used to determine what a specific code did, so I searched for a code generator online, and I discovered that someone had discovered how it worked and had published a generator. Learning more about how the game worked and accepting missions that I could lay out completely was really fun even though it may not have been an intentional de-gamification by the developers.

[@konstantinkunz2256]

Oh something like this I did there too. Difference whas, instead of having friends I bought myself Red and Blue and so played them seperatly. So when I failed on one version I rescued myself with PW with the other one. It whas really fun feeling invincible so.

[@tecinplace1316]

4:56 As a cuber this bothers me so much The cube is unsolvable I expected better from you Extra Credits

[@AstarTiamat]

Johannes Right! And they made it so obvious with orange being on one cube twice.

[@Kromiball]

and the colour scheme is wrong!

[@Adam-cq2yo]

What's most concerning is that you managed to recognize at a glance whether a rubix cube is solvable.

[@Kromiball]

@@Adam-cq2yo I know there is alot wrong in the Rubik's Cube Extra Credits drew but, Look at the corner in the middle; The colours don't match the centres. So it's impossible to solve without switching some stickers around.

[@armchairwarlord]

Back when I was extremely young my family had an Apple II, and we had a few games for it. One of those was the original, black and white version of Task Maker. This was an RPG from the dawn of time that had a level of difficulty and learning curve that makes Dark Souls look like Angry Birds. But while messing around in the very early levels I found an Ethereal Ring - an item that made my player character completely insubstantial. While I had it on I couldn't harm or by harmed by enemies. This let me use utterly cheap tactics like fighting for a little, going insubstantial to rest and heal damage while my enemies flailed away at me ineffectually, and repeating this as often as I needed to win any fight in the game. This let me, as a SMALL CHILD, beat TASK MAKER.

[@Billaxle]

I think my most fond memory of de-gameification was playing Warcraft 2 on Battle net on a map where all the buildings you could want were already built, there were no resource limits or needs, and unit building was instantaneous. The three straight lanes I fought on were covered in massive aoe spells, overpowered flying units, and just absolute chaos! It was awesome!

[@BlankPicketSign]

Metal Gear Solid: For the PS1 (Actually, ANY Metal Gear Game) Infinite Ammo, Stealth Camo, And all the silly crazy unlocks. I spent easily 30 to 40 hours just fucking around, rollplaying as a SEAL Team, or just exploring. I made my own challenges of how many baddies I could kill. I discovered you can place C4 on an enemies's back. In MGS3 I created Hostage situations where I would take literally EVERYONE hostage by holding them up while they were on the ground, I held them in one room, and then I set off the alarm and tried to see if I could hold off the incoming hoard of soldiers trying to rescue their comrades.

[@Darklightxzero]

For me, a great example is the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series. I had a blast messing around with cheat codes. The space jump and perfect railing made it really fun to explore the levels and do awesome and whacky stunts!

[@glitchycruton7108]

You know, games are a little like onions. Games have layers. Onions have layers.

[@MrFanmar]

Ogres. Are not. Like games.

[@skullbearer]

Cake! Everybody loves cakes! Cakes have layers.

[@vietthangho9262]

GlitchyCruton and they sometimes make you cry. Like an onion.

[@adamdavenport8009]

No, you dense, miniature, irritating beast of burden! Games are like onions! End of story!

[@blodsubhistory1334]

I hate cakes.

[@Blizzic]

A perfect example of this is how I play skyrim. I'll playthrough the game, building a character and role playing the whole time. Then, using a mod that lets me save characters and later use them as followers, I'll do so and restart. Before beginning I'll come up with what style of play I want (archer, mage, etc) and download appropriate mods. During the character creation segment, I'll come up with who the character is and how they relate to the other characters I've saved. Then I'll play all the new modded content I added, role playing as I go. Since I don't want to spend too much time on a particular playthrough, I'll use console commands to get what I want for the character, be it perks or armor. Then I'll save and restart. I currently have six characters that I've played as that all have their own stories that relate to each other. Skyrim has become a playground for role playing for me since I got tired of the old way I played it. Below is the full tale of all my characters. You need not read it if hi don't want to. There's first Koribias, the old, blind warrior who spent his early years on the streets, stealing to survive, before being taught morality by an old mentor named Mendicant and his daughter Kyra. Kyra herself was my next playthrough, as she disappeared later in Koribias's life and returned as a powerful vampire/necromancer. She bound a soul to bones called Ossis and began on a conquest to take over the world, only to be defeated by Koribias once he realized how evil she'd become. Her spirit merged with that of Ossis, becoming a powerful ghost that, in the name of vampires, sunk a fleet of ships that a young archer named Lauren was on with her husband. After the wreck, she discovered her husband's entire boat was missing, and vowed revenge on the vampires, joining the dawnguard. However, she later discovered that her husband, Alt, had been wandering skyrim for a while now with a serious case of amnesia, fighting injustice and performing miraculous feats of restoration magic, becoming known as the warrior of life. They reunited and worked together under the Dawnguard against the vampire menace. Before a particularly difficult fight, Lauren inquired about Alt's family in Solitude, only to discover they knew not of his safe return. He promised to go to them, only...well, at this point, my save corrupted, and I didn't even get a chance to save Alt. I explained this by saying he fell in combat against the ghost of Ossis and Kyra. His sister, Nyla, a rich property owner in solitude nearly fell into despair at the news, but upon hearing of the great works Alt did, became inspired to leave Solitude and make a difference somewhere. She quickly discovered, however, that she was quite adept at learning shouts for some reason... I'm currently playing as Nyla with Lauren as my follower. I'll come up with the rest of the story as i go. One day, the spirit of Kyra will be defeated once and for all.

[@DudePossum]

I see you snek at 5:16! Sneaky sneaky snek!

[@mightybear5441]

Snek? Snek!?!

[@yurisonovab3892]

Snek! I see you! Bottom corner under the play button as Dan says heck.

[@czechmeoutbabe1997]

Wow you are observant. Good eye.

[@UnpronounceabIeName]

Heck you, you sneaky snek

[@butterskutz]

Oh, that's what that was! I saw it on my first viewing too, and was absolutely distracted by it at first x3

[@doubleru]

I am surprised Caillois's ludus vs. paidia scale has not been mentioned at all, given how the process of "de-gamification" coined here calls essentially for sliding the game away from ludic/gameful play towards paidic/playful play by relaxing one formalized rule at a time.

[@LamanKnight]

I was just about to comment something similar to this. I think that a video explaining ludus and paidia might even be worth one or two episodes on its own.

[@peterw4910]

Gmod is basically degamified Half-Life 2.

[@migBdk]

You know, we need to find a different word for gamification if you start using it in the sense of "adding extrinsic motivation". Story/setting, cooperation, creativity and exploration are also elements used in gamification. See for example the Octalysis framework for gamification, where intrinsic and extrinsic motivators are given equal weight (and the ideal is to have a balance between them)

[@Drummerfly9000]

Halo 2 Co-op campaign. I fondly remember going with friends to find all the nooks and crannies of the map, and building things with vehicles and moveable objects. As long as only one person stayed alive, death never mattered.

[@b.sharp.]

I think that Pokemon Showdown is a perfect example of De-Gamification in a way. You are able to have complete freedom when building your Pokemon team because, even though there are some rules and the Pokemon you create must be actually obtainable in the real game, some Pokemon would literally take months to catch, breed, hatch, iv train, ev train, and level up to even become competitive. All the while, you can create any Pokemon and bypass all of those hours in order to create any team you want. It's perfect for people just starting out, people that want to practice before making their in-game team, or for people who don't want to fork up the money for the real game. Even though there is still a challenge when it comes to battling, it take out all of the leg work that it takes to even start battling. Although, Showdown might not technically count because it is a third party game, sooooo......... yeah.

[@JeffyLB]

B. C. Sharpe Yes! I never would have gotten into competitive Pokemon without Showdown. But have you ever actually raised a team in one of the first few generations to level 100 and then battled with them? The feeling you get is so much different than winning with a team that you created in Showdown, because you literally had to spend hours raising the team from scratch, it's quite a special feeling!

[@JeffyLB]

B. C. Sharpe Traditional 6 v 6 had level 100 . I don't think the levels evened out to 50 until gen 5

[@Xerceis]

110% Agreed! I'm busy and do not have the time to catch, trade, level up, breed and EV train Pokemon. I just want to pick Pokemon and attack moves and play for an hour. Showdown is incredibly simple and fast. Would recommend.

[@mushroomdude123]

It's also great for experimentation. Pokemon who evolve with stones (like Togekiss, Nidoking, or Victreebel) can't relearn moves thier previous forms had. This is pointless and frustrating, but in Showdown, you can bypass all of that.

[@Overhazard]

The leveling up or down to 50 mechanic (officially known as "Level 50 All" existed at least as far back as Pokémon Stadium 2, a Generation II game. It was not standard until Pokémon Battle Revolution (Generation IV), and it was not implemented into a main series game until Pokémon Black and White (Generation V). I personally love that mechanic, as it means I don't have to bring everyone up to Level 100. This is particularly so in Pokémon Sun and Moon, where options for grinding are very few, and the only times I bring them to Level 100 is if they need Hyper Training.

[@ethan6287]

YAY SPONSERS. no idea why you hadent have them befor, great to see you guys line your pockets more, thankyou for all your amazing content

[@swiftfox3461]

With all the buzz around gamification, it never occurred to me to check the other direction, degamification. Thanks a lot for the eye-opener!

[@Viva_Reverie]

Some of my earliest memories of gaming were with Commander Keen 4 and Wolfenstein 3D on DOS, and I remember almost exclusively playing those games by abusing their cheats because I was a young idiot who didn't know how to play games. ...Or I suppose more accurately I did know how to play them, more I think I had more fun screwing around than playing as intended. The former game especially more than the latter game (Wolf3D I just played on easiest difficulty, that was good enough for me).

[@samperryman167]

I don't think that I would have loved Morrowind the same if I hadn't discovered the cheat that automatically refills the health bar. The refill wasn't instant, so you still had some constraints according to your level, but I don't think I would have felt the freedom to explore most places in that game without it.

[@crystalsoulslayer]

I know this comment is a few months old, but I _loved_ Morrowind. I modded and/or cheated that game into the next county. There was something about the way that game was put together that just drew me in. The way that place felt, all the stories waiting to be read, to be told, and you were the one telling them. The world was so strange, but not in a way that made it unnatural or wacky. You just had to see more of it. The combat wasn't the point, the lore was -- and not only could you read the lore, you added to it. It was the first game I played where I wasn't simply acting out a script written by other people, but writing one myself. _God_ I loved that game.

[@Bobhope99]

That cheat code letting me make it through the first time, allowed me to actually play the game normally the next several times through, but I had been trying for months to figure out how to play that game before I found the cheat code that let me get to know my way around the world.

[@darkmage07070777]

Awesome way to explain what I've been craving in my games lately! I find that Adventure games tend to really show off inherent de-gamification. Hardly any time limits, no skill-based challenges, and the puzzles are one-and-done straightforward, such that if you play through once, you can easily beat it repeatedly. Myst, especially, takes this concept and runs with it, as it allows players to enjoy the puzzles at their own pace, refusing to penalize them for mistakes or hurry them along with timers or scores. Heck, in many of the Myst games, you can ignore the puzzles and just wander around looking at the scenery. This intrinsic fun might also explain some of the veteran gamers who go back to play older games instead of trying new ones: they know the challenges from sheer repetition so well that they're NOT challenges anymore, allowing them to "de-gamify" the old games and just enjoy all the nooks and crannies at their own paces. I know it's why I bust out Quest for Glory and Colony Wars so often. 5:20 Snake...?

[@anewsin]

I take great pride in the fact that I have spent hundreds of hours in Oblivion and never once gotten to the end of the narrative. I love traveling the worlds in Bethesda games. I love the stories, do not get me wrong, but the worlds are so fleshed out. Plus: Bear Rolling.

[@theknightskyisi]

I'm curious about this Bear Rolling you speak of. Does it resemble cow tipping?

[@anewsin]

KZbin search "bear rolling oblivion" and watch the first result. Much less depressing than cow-tipping

[@DrPinkieDie]

I've never reached story end in skyrim, mostly because my game keeps breaking under the weight of 200 mods and I need to start a clean save before I get there

[@AdamRBi]

The earliest instance I can remember, fondly, and with great accuracy, was the Debug mode in the Genesis Sonic titles. Spawning enough monitors to slow the game down before bouncing on all of them one-by-one until no more remained goes to show how much fun the designers made that one small aspect of the whole game.

[@oro2play]

I'm glad you made a video about this. Difficulty/challenge aren't the reasons to enjoy a game. Tired of people telling me I shouldn't like Symphony of the Night cause it's too easy.

[@wrlrdqueek]

Personally I tend to approach most tasks from a goal-oriented perspective. I tend to get bored quickly if I don't have something I'm actively working to accomplish. For example, when my sister was growing up she liked the Tony Hawk game I had, but she only enjoyed running in free skate mode (A practice mode that doesn't keep scores and let's you explore a level without a timer). Since I had already explored the maps, I couldn't enjoy the "freedom" as the way I saw it, without any set challenges, there was nothing to do.

[@rymlks]

The Simpsons: Hit and Run. Honk to jump + insta-kill other cars + your car takes no damage + 2x superspeed + glitchy broken collision detection. Way more fun than actually playing the game

[@LeeLemon008]

We used to just drive around the map (with the music off) xD Mind you, my brother's really into cars. But among his racing games, the one we probably played the most was a German game I've never heard mentioned anywhere else, where all the race tracks were just sections of road on a pretty big map, and there was nothing to stop you leaving it. So we would just drive off in different directions and explore - trying to climb mountains, trying to fall _off_ mountains, getting stuck in rivers, driving around underwater, finding a straight stretch of road and seeing how fast you could go before crashing spectacularly, etc. The damage was permanent for the race too, so after a point the cars would be knackered and you could only go 10 miles an hour while listing from a bent axle, which was also pretty entertaining :D

[@redcell2]

You had Age of Empires....Then you had Big Daddy vs Flying Dutchmen... You could win Age of Empires normally....or with a Legion of Olympic Sprinting Priests.

[@Lugmillord]

Oh yeah, I remember making custom scenarios that were basically impossible to beat the normal way and when I didn't want to play much longer, I just spawned 20 cars in AoE2 ("howdoyouturnthison") and destroied the enemies. That was pretty funny.

[@ThomasstevenSlater]

Torpedo# where # is the number of the civilisation. It works on any civilisation. Even your allies.

[@Theraot]

I liked aegis, insta-build anything... and the AI gets the cheat too, makes up for crazy battles.

[@Beremor]

I remember the one time I played the original Age of Empires and was just messing around against the AI. I spawned five laser gun troopers (PHOTON MAN) and one nuke launcher trooper (E=MC2 TROOPER) and tried to win using only those guys. It worked pretty well, until I overlooked one enemy priest who successfully converted my nuke launcher trooper ... Suddenly, the game became very frantic. Good times.

[@drakan4769]

say what you will about AoE 3, but george crushington was simply glorious

[@tvsonicserbia5140]

What made Skyward Sword and Silent Hill 2 some of my favorite games because of it's intrinsic rewards rather than extrinsic challenges.

[@IffyJottere]

6:03 Who's that givin' Extra Credits a hand? The Cheat! The Cheat!

[@Mark-qx8vv]

Every time i watch one of your videos i get back to work on my personal game!

[@wtrbns]

For some strange reason your statement made me really curious about that game

[@gebatron604]

Mark Lydon what's the game?

[@levilukeskytrekker]

Now I want to know what your game is.

[@jorionedwards]

You have me curious.

[@gubx42]

Probably not. Extra credit gives really good advise but there are too many of them to put in a single game. A really hard part about game design, and design in general is what not to do. See how many of the best AAA games don't follow all of Extra credits' advice. It's not that the designers don't know about them, they are pros, they know their job. It is just they can't do everything at once, they have to take decisions, sometimes tough decisions and stay focused.

[@Spritesuit]

Though it is a touchy subject, ROMs. They allow you to save and reload at any time, plus many allow you to speed up time. Imagine condensing hours of RPG grinding into just one, which was probably overkill. Imagine curbing any enemy because you spent the time to not only grind, but could speed up the process to do it much more efficiently. In addition to THAT, the emulators also typically allow the player to use any cheat codes they find. These codes can allow you to walk through walls and otherwise dissect the game to find out more about it.

[@TheYear2012book]

Shamus TheKnight yeah, fire emblem on gba is perfect with quick save states.

[@Sybato]

They actually implemented this starting in awakening, you can save mid-map on "casual" difficulty

[@Atariese]

Roms are a great example of game exploration in retrospect. Without hype, value or the dedication associated these amazing games are a world of potential exploration into not what is, but defining what was. In less flowery language: there is a reason why older games were popular, and the rom gives you the entire picture of what those older games were. And If you know how to look, there is a lot to marvel about them. I use a snes emulator that allows me to turn on or off different layers of graphics, and occasionally ill just pause and flip thru them. Imagine being able to access the original Photoshop layers of an artist you like. Its kinda like that. Also Hie shamus *huggles* its atariese from M#9forums

[@kinokochan]

Agree with this! I am a lifelong Pokemon fan, and my boyfriend plays along with me sometimes but finds the grinding tedious. ROMs of the older games with the speed cranked up allow him to power through much faster.

[@Chivi-chivik]

Agree. I could've never finished some games comfortably without using save states

[@S3D77]

GTA San Andres was great in that aspect

[@gibenameplox]

First thing to come into my mind! Haha

[@BROODxBELEG]

ah the sweet memories of flying cars around while a riot was going on beneath me.

[@danielsjohnson]

Saad I simply drove around listening to the radio when I was younger. It was a pretty calm and fun game like that.

[@TwentySeventhLetter]

To this day that's the only way I've ever played San Andreas. When I got the chance to play my brother's copy of GTAV, I re-gamified it where I would try to snipe different targets from atop a moving train, and each type of target had a different point value (say, people were 5 points, but a flying bird was 25, etc.). I had a freakin' ball, needless to say. I think this is why Minecraft is probably my favorite game.

[@MaraK_dialmformara]

You guys should check out No Wrong Way to Play on Tumblr. They do this kind of thing with all the games.

[@Liggliluff]

Crackdown featured a mode called "Keys to the City", were you could increase and decrease your levels at will, and span items. So you can max out everything immediately if you want, and try things out. - It's clearly a developer tool to test the game with. But it's great that they included it for players to use.

[@ihappy1]

While it's not exactly de gamification, I think this kind of mentality is why I love Platinum games the best (Bayonetta, Metal Gear Rising, Etc). Rarely do they focus on experience bars or ammo counters or quest objectives, the main focus and appeal is the gameplay itself, I replay a platinum game not really for its story or to unlock everything, but to play it again and get the excitement that comes from the moment to moment gameplay. I've had way more fun in a 6 hour Platinum game than 40 hour big budget RPGs.

[@baronzad2056]

My childhood was pretty much messing around with the WC3 unit editor.

[@stayphrosty]

+

[@viccie211]

I fondly remember playing around with cheats in GTA Vice City. The combination SEAWAYS COMEFLYWITHME PANZER was amazing! The first let you drive on water, the second made cars fly and the third spawned in a Rhino tank. Turn the barrel of the tank backwards, start shooting and BAM you can go anywhere you want without risk!

[@deadlydemon666]

Know this will not reach you guys, but do you mind consider doing an episode related to games Demos: the importance of a good demo and what characteristics can a Good Demo achieve for a game. Still good job with all the episodes, very interesting!

[@BFedie518]

deadlydemon666 they did an episode on why we rarely see demos. not quite what you're asking, but it shows why demos aren't generally done

[@LuisFelipeFFX]

The Worms series, in multiplayer mode, used to let the player tweak with things like the use of secret weapons, max HP, damage cap, etc. The main missions were very restrictive, but the multiplayer shine because of this perspective, and now I understand why. Thanks Extra Credits!

[@BrawlerClaws67]

One good example of fond memories my siblings and I had growing up with degamification was with Simpsons Hit and Run. We would look up different codes for things like superspeed or being able to jump in the car, or we would look up where the secret hidden vehichles were in each level, and we would just generally screw around and have fun together, laughing at what kinds of ridiculous fun we could have.

[@manzanito3652]

People usually compare videogames with films,but I think it has more similarities with theatre. Like the theatre,the same play or videogame can be a completly different one depending on how you play it.

[@BFedie518]

Manzanito :3 I've heard the argument that, from an experience standpoint, it's closest to a book. Books and games both require audience input and interactivity while movies and plays don't.

[@ethanbuchanan7368]

I think your confusing the roles a bit. With the exception of improv, theatre is nearly identical to most every form of media except games in that the consumer is watching a story progress without interacting. The consumer for a play is the audience, for a book it's the reader, for a video it's the viewer. All of these don't interact with the story. Video games are unique in that the consumer, in this case the gamer, interacts and changes the story. I think what your confusing is in theatre, the consumers: the audience, and the ones creating the media: the actors. The actors could theoretically make a change to the story and the whole thing would be different (although if the other actors don't know about the change, the play could not work out well). Improv is interesting since it allows the audience to contribute to the play and ends up being a fair comparison to games. Improv though is one of the rare exceptions though, and is a niche in the theatre industry. There are a few other small niche versions in other media like choose your own adventure. However Gaming is the only whole industry that has interactivity as a main trait of the media.

[@ethanbuchanan7368]

+Eon2641 I should have started with this, but I was mostly replying to the original comment, however I did all so try to make it apply to your comment. I see your point about not narrowing our perspective on games, however I can't think of a time where breaking the distinction between the audience and the creators, is going to help anything. The creators take a very long time refining the experience the audience will receive, the audience enjoy the experience and reward the creators for entertaining them. I can't think of very many exceptions or reasons to change how we think of this basic formula. Plays are slightly different in that the bar of entry is lower so being a creator could be seen as an ends unto itself. Fundamentally though, the actors are trying to provide entertainment. Gaming is also different, in that the consumer has a way change the story, however categorizing them with the creators of the game doesn't make much sense. There isn't really a wrong way to play a game. Even if you play the game in a way the developers discourage, the developers worked to make that an option when playing the game. I just can't see anything that could be improved if changed.

[@SaberToothPortilla]

Eon2641 Can confirm, theatre is very much consumed by the performances just like it's consumed by the audience, and unlike a film, live theatre is by tradition *meant* to be performed (and in that way consumed) by many people.

[@JeffyLB]

I completely agree! I'm a game designer and I've been reading a lot of plays lately to help me with narrative, it's much more helpful than one might think

[@normILL]

First game I explored cheats with was pokemon yellow/blue. I started the game with all 6 of the pokemon I wanted to have trained up from level 1 by the end. Sometimes I did dream compositions, but more often I did challenge compositions of "all normal type" or "all fire type" to really struggle at the first two gyms. Those were the days.

[@Spritesuit]

Oddly, Breath of the Wild seems to exemplify this perfectly. Up to Eleven, even.

[@asbelirving5536]

I thought exactly the same thing ! x)

[@Giraffasaur]

Even more so, degamification is exactly what Amiibos are used for in BotW because they enhance the Zelda experience through bonuses rather than break the experience through "cheating."

[@larsonthewolf3518]

... how so?

[@GoldPowderFreak]

I'm almost certain that was their goal. I mean, maybe not intentionally degamification, but making the game enjoyable without all the gadgets and areas to unlock. I've had a hell of a time doing whatever looks interesting since leaving the beginning area.

[@Giraffasaur]

Larsonthewolf, 6:26

[@ChrisPoindexter98]

I got so caught up and obsessed with the right gamifications in a game, I forgot from childhood how sometimes just fucking around in a game can also be just as if not more fun than playing within objectives and limits. I swear a lot of my fun in Mario 64 when I was younger was just dicking around with Moon Jump and exploring.

[@Flyborg]

This was one of the more useful Extra Credits videos for me. I've known that some players care more about the experience than overcoming a challenge (or at least a challenge with punishing consequences), but if you want to actually setup a mode for those types of players, you need to actually know WHY they choose the "easy" mode or use cheats. For example simply creating an "easy" setting might not be the optimal solution if you can still die and have to restart the level, because they weren't looking for an "easier" experience, just a less punishing or gamey one. Instead, someone may still enjoy the challenge (for example, in a Maro-like platformer) but they'd rather just not die, or maybe instantly respawn a few feet back. This is more than just "easy mode" - instead, you have to consciously think about which parts of your game are essential to the feeling of playing the game, and which parts can get in the way of that for some players.

[@TheRollsen]

The one game i can think that was mostly de-gamified is Journey because that game is more to explore and like the world

[@gab_gallard]

It is certanly de-gamified, but aren't cheat code fueled GTA, Gary's Mod or Minecraft better examples of what you're saying?

[@TheRollsen]

Well, gary's mod is a better example, but Journey is also in my opinion a game that looks prettier Another good example would be a Bird Story, which is a really nice game and it tells a story without making the characters speak at all it was made by the guys who made To the Moon

[@a-blivvy-yus]

Also a free game called "The Plan" on Steam.

[@gab_gallard]

blivvy that's a really beautiful game.

[@azbeth11]

I never finished any GTA, but god damn I had fun playing with the cheat codes with my friends :)

[@troperhghar9898]

Mass effect is a really degamified game most people I know play it on casual mode where the enimies die in one hit just because they aren't playing for the gameplay but the story and characters

[@dragoncrashhero12]

I believe you are reffering to Mass Effect 1 in particular?

[@Deskof003Blogspot]

Actually Mass Effect 3 also had three seperate modes: Story, where you couldn't die, and I believe cooldowns and ammo were less/not a stress, Shooter, where you didn't have to make any decisions (don't know how that worked, never touched that mode), and (I think it was called) Classic, where shooting difficulty and story choices were both present.

[@teisonedwards7111]

I never would have gotten into Morrowind without the health regeneration code. Because it wasn't an invincibility code, I still felt like I was overcoming challenges, but it wasn't as grueling.

[@jwil4286]

7:14 Anyone who played Fire Emblem: Fates (any of the three games) would probably remember how the game had a "Phoenix Mode", which made death pretty much meaningless.

[@rumelismorende8177]

JWil42 Phoenix mode was always the sort of thing that I appreciated, but never played. I kind of wish I had it when I was dying in Shadow Dragon at age 12 or so-- the first time I beat it, Marth could be one-shot by the ballista reinforcements in the final map.

[@LeannLeannProduction]

They added the similar Casual mode in Awakening, and I think these modes are partly why the Fire Emblem series has become popular. It's allowed people (like myself) who don't like heavy strategy games to enjoy the story and characters, so the games could appeal to a wider audience instead of the same niche. I very much wanted to play the older Fire Emblem games when I first heard about them because of their characters, but I didn't want to worry about the strategy so much. But when I heard they had a mode that lessened the consequences in Awakening, I immediately went and played that game and loved it. After playing Birthright I felt comfortable enough to play Conquest, the more challenging version of Fates, which was still pretty challenging even on Phoenix mode. So de-gamification really helped that series out and turned it into the phenomenon it is today, despite the older fans complaining that it "ruined" the games. Like the video said, de-gamification does a good job of opening up games to a wider audience and Fire Emblem is an example of that.

[@jwil4286]

LeannLeannProduction I only play on casual, not because I dislike strategy but because I'm still not amazing at those games. And I also thought that casual wasn't really de-gamifying; just an easier difficulty

[@SingeScorcher]

That's kind of me as well. I enjoyed Fire Emblem back on the GBA but I never played one of them to completion because I'd get to where I was restarting the same battle over and over because of moments where I'd lose characters I couldn't afford to lose, and it wouldn't always be due to error on my part. I remember 1 battle where you get to recruit a new pegasus knight, and every time, the moment I'd recruit them, I'd put them behind my other units to avoid losing her and I'd STILL lose her anyway. Really sapped the fun when I had to replay the same half hour like 10 times

[@saikanzen1762]

Breath of the Wild immediately came to mind while I was watching this.

[@leomeyer9537]

I love how Kerbal Space Program does this with cheats and sandbox.

[@Karreth]

The funny thing with those games is that, as they were in public early access, in the beginning there was only creative/sandbox mode and then the survival/challenge mode was added later.

[@QuietDuplicity]

+Karreth I think that probably has more to do with the nature of game development. I mean if the creative/construction systems aren't in place then you can't actually have a survival/challenge mode because there is nothing the player can actually do. The idea of _Sandbox modes_ started decades ago as developer cheats in order to test creative systems still in development.

[@goffe2282]

When I was a kid I had infinite money all the time in Sim City. There was a cheat code, but it would cause earth quakes every so often to wreck your city.... the solution was simply to use the code before you had started building. It took a while to grind the amount of money that would last you forever, but after that you could just build your city and not worry about the money. Today I might try to actually play the game, but back then the economic aspect did not interest me -- building a city did.

[@ardrej]

same for me i love the city building, but hate to manage the economy, i still remember my first city, it was beautifull

[@Syllkort]

Overwatch was recently blessed with its own version of "undirected-play mode". A custom server browser was introduced, one that allows people to create custom games with a variety of crazy rules and settings. That server browser is exactly the kind of degamification that was explained here; not only that casual players can unwind and play for pure fun with ridiculous options (such as 500% running speed, no ability cooldowns, etc...), but also many interesting and creative ideas for game modes have been born as a result, like a 6v1 Boss Battle for example. Thanks to this video, I finally found the term I've been looking for, for this type of undirected play that I enjoy so much.

[@ShantoPwnage]

The degamified experience my mind jumps to is Skyrim with Godmode on and spawning in the best equips from the beginning. The entire world feels completely unlocked, knowing I can go anywhere and everywhere with zero worry. Causing whatever havoc or situation I found funny or engaging. I loved that experience.

[@89taklung]

My absolute favourite cheat is "Rosebud" from the original sims. I always found the working caring routine tedious after soem time but I LOVED building houses, decorating them etc. So I always used rosebud to built grand luxurious mansions, when the people moved in I stoped using the cnheat and played normally though ^^

[@__---__----__---__]

Sims 1 without any of the expansions actually had "klapaucius" instead of "rosebud". I remember typing ";!;!;!;!;!;!;!;;!!" after it and then leaving one of those large batteries on the Enter key for the lunch time to get huge amounts of money. The semicolon thing worked the same for rosebud and klapaucius.

[@AnimilesYT]

4:58 That rubik's cube is impossible. One edge has 2 orange sides. Also, the colour scheme is not a normal one. Red and orange should be on opposite sides. (edit: The last point doesn't make it impossible. But it makes it obvious that the people who designed it have no knowledge about the thing they designed.)

[@Hobojo153]

Neeeeeeeeerrrrd!

[@Balsiefen]

At least it wasn't a flag this time.

[@minecraft15555]

Balsiefen XD

[@Duke_of_Lorraine]

That Rubik Cube is part of the limited Walpole Edition

[@RadarLakeKosh]

They de-gamified the rubik's cube. That way you can enjoy the intrinsic fun of rotating sides back and forth without worrying about "solving" the "puzzle."

[@justinwood2]

This is what made GTA: san-andreas great for me. The missions were fine, But i spent far more time bunny hopping a bmx bike over buildings.

[@zippo504]

I liked to take the jetpack everywhere, and use the Hydra VTOL Jet as much as humanly possible. So much fun just flying in like a boss either way!

[@dddmemaybe]

I loved going on mount Chiliad(Always thought it was called mound Chilidad because of how low quality the game's text was) and taking my bunny-hop bicycle off and landing for no fall damage. Also in GTA 4, flying on top of skyscrapers and cheat-coding a car and driving it off the building was hilarious because your car would have be squished-in like 3 feet on one side. GTA 3 was really fun trying to fly a personal plane(called dodo after the flightless dodo bird which was fantastic) because it was really satisfying yet complicated to fly the silly thing without blowing up instantly.

[@felisathurmann3458]

I don't have good reaction time or anything else you usually need to be good at games, I often struggle even on easy difficulty settings. So I like cheats and mods that grant unlimited lives or even let me skip segments so I won't get stuck and just quit the game altogether. I also like being able to turn enemies off so I can just explore. Having everything try to kill you can be very exhausting after a while, so just taking a stroll or collecting plants or something can be nice sometimes. This is also why I used to like Animal Crossing a lot. It's a game designed entirely around playing peacefully at your own pace.

[@TonyTheTGR]

EARTHWORM JIM 2. Being able to jump to any level at any time, and never run out of lives made it more like a world you could mess around in a bunch, even episodically, rather than a start-to-finish thing.

[@nbtwall7287]

I find it very depressing that nobody acknowledges the strongbad reference :(

[@wingracer1614]

Finally, someone else noticed. I've been scrolling through the comments to find the "The Cheat" discussion and this is the only thing I see.

[@petervilla5221]

www.homestarrunner.com/ this seems like an appropriate place to put this. :)

[@mikked01]

Be careful, that's their only "The Cheat."

[@IffyJottere]

I just fixed that

[@Aging_Casually_Late_Gamer]

"we installed that light-switch so the cheat could turn the lights on and off! Not throw light-switch raves!"

[@beswick1306]

Back when i was a kid me and my friend would play GTA vice city with cheats. We were too young to play it properly, we just wanted to hole up in the car showroom with infinite rockets and the minigun.

[@orhblin]

Suddenly I don't feel so guilty about using console commands in paradox titles :V

[@marlonyo]

i only played a single ironman game to prove to myself that i could do it but after that full on console comands and try to break the game

[@orhblin]

Gogetters the same way some people feel guilty for liking certain kinds of music I guess. A guilty pleasure if you will.

[@SupahMike90]

Honestly, I forgot you guys were a thing. I'm glad, now I have tons of content to catch up on.

[@cobalius]

Scribblenaut was such a game i guess. I had much fun with finding unique ways to complete the levels. I don't know whether there were archivements, but i loved it, that nearly every thing was scribblable.

[@gigglysamentz2021]

When I was very young, I could play Doom just like my dad thanks to cheats making it less scary :)

[@TheWandererGhost]

did you see the snake at lower left corner at 5:17 xD

[@SamuelHulick]

Yeah, what's the story with that?

[@garethlagerwall]

Was wondering what that was :-)

[@MattPetruzzelli]

I've never played a non-multiplayer game that I didn't enjoy more with the choice to use cheat codes. I've got better uses for my time than beating my face against some epic challenge just so I can advance in the story. The lack of such options in newer games has absolutely stopped me from spending money on some games and made me regret buying sequels to games that had such options in previous editions and stopped including them (looking at you Hitman). It doesn't hurt any player's fun to leave the options in. Disable achievements. I don't give a 💩 about achievements.

[@darkhand412]

I'm loving that that snek keeps popping up when you say "heck"

[@mwgondim]

Great video! thanks for all this content on your channel. Regarding degamification, I just realised I had this experience with Dark Souls 3. Some time after beating the game I got back to it, and found great joy in tracing back all the steps towards the first bonfire (checkpoint) with the high level character I had finished the game in the first place. It was an interesting journey because I had a chance to admire the landscape and level design while revisiting and remembering certain experiences I had in that game world: places I got stuck, places I didn't explore quite well or simply examining boss battle arenas without dying over and over in the same room. I wouldn't say a souls game would make sense if stripped away from its game elements, but coming back as a powerful character to which the environment no longer poses a serious threat felt really rewarding.

[@MrFusselig]

Yes, thats how I played GTA

[@sirquaffler542]

MrFusselig agreed. Few things gave me as much joy as a kid as flying around in the tank in Vice City.

[@edwardelric3100]

I liked using cheat codes in GTA just to see how long it would take for the game to overwhelm me.

[@sjonnieplayfull5859]

@@edwardelric3100 gunsforeceryone, itsallgoingmaaaad and nobodylikesme, along with gunsgunsguns, tortoise and gesundheit. Good times

[@ShaneLouisArmstrong]

I have a friend who has made NOUR which is based EXACTLY on this premise of just being able to do what you want. All that's given to you is the food and artsy physics. There's no goal except perhaps to enjoy what's put in front of you. kzbin.info/www/bejne/bofGZZWefrB_rMU ^^Teejay, the aformentioned developer, is interviewed by Polygon in this video^^

[@starbound03]

0:52 why does that shirt even have holes for the arms?

[@BROODxBELEG]

armpit-stump fetishists?

[@RadioactiveMoth]

maybe they have invisible arms

[@zayberdo]

Peyton Blanscet the real question is why does the last shirt not have holes! does this imply he is armless?

[@yurisonovab3892]

Resisting urge to miss joke with entirely serious reply...

[@drakan4769]

I think that's from the backpack's straps

[@ambigaming6424]

Such a good point. I enjoy story-driven games, but sometimes you just want to be able to super- jump on a bike or drive on water because it's fun to do. It's another reason I never judge when people play on casual/easy mode. It's your game, enjoy it in a way that makes sense to you!

[@ForgedParadox]

I have an example of Degamification. The 'Tales of' JRPG series has had these items called 'Holy Bottles'. When used, monsters will actively run away instead of try to engage you. It essentially removes battles, a huge part of JRPGs from the game. It let's you run around freely without the challenge of having to battle.

[@HungryMusicologist]

Journey

[@roberthultgren9389]

heck snake sited.

[@CamsEyeView]

I get why the Dark Souls series is what it is, but I would love it if I could just have fun and not worry that every fight is going to kill me. I love everything about the game, but I don't care for having to plan out everything since then it takes my freedom to just have fun, hack away at a monster or massive boss....I don't have the time in the world to deal with super difficult games, so being able to play them with no super high difficulty wall would be awesome. Darkest Dungeon could also use some rebalancing or a mode where I can have fun and enjoy the tactical RPG element and the lovecraftian world and not worry about stress, heart attacks, and permadeath

[@onimaxblade8988]

You know, having a mode which takes out those features from Souls *would* be nice...but it also defeats the nature of Souls. I could see it in Darkest Dungeon, but Souls is a different beast. They deliberately don't have easy modes and stuff like that and that's integral to what the game represents and what experience the game is trying to provide. It would almost remove a sort of legitimacy to the game. Again, I know exactly the feeling you mean, but I think it would honestly be detrimental to the game, in a way. You can always just mod the game to achieve that (And I say this as someone who only has the console versions too, since I dont have a powerful enough computer :P).

[@onimaxblade8988]

I feel like I just repeated your point of "I get why the DkSouls series is what it is", thinking about it, but....

[@threepoundsofflax8438]

CamsEyeView Having fun and being killed should go hand in hand in Dark Souls.

[@Sultan-wj3gp]

A couple of friendly summons could bring you some fun, as long as they are skilled enough to ward out invaders.

[@onimaxblade8988]

I mean, you can save anywhere. The game constantly auto-saves, basically. Not losing anything when you die would again, take away from the game. It would ruin the message and intentions. Hm... I could possibly imagine that as a mechanic though, near end-game, or on NG +. For example, Dark Souls 2 had the power of the crowns, preventing hollowing, which I thought was really nice. So if it was done that way, it could perhaps work in Dark 3 at least, where losing Souls doesn't actually have the consequence of hollowing.

[@SendyTheEndless]

I remember the first time I played Knytt, a basic platformer with no enemies, bottomless pits, switches, puzzles, conveyor belts, hazards or, really anything besides neat pixel graphics, the joy of exploration and nice views. It was the first "ambient" game I ever remember playing and it really made me rethink games as a whole.

[@matheusmterra]

Any Bethesda RPG. You craft via console command a character who already has a set of skills you imagined in your mind and follow in the game a personal story you made up as well. It's beautiful.

[@paulstaker8861]

Tell me a story Give me a challenge GIVE ME DEUS EX

[@wellurban]

This really speaks to me: I've come to realise that these days I might love imaginative interactive environments, but I don't really like "games": combat, challenge, competition etc. There's more than enough of that in the real world! The best times I've had in games recently have been in NMS when I've found a relatively benign planet, turned off the HUD and set my own challenges, such as walking to a mountain on the horizon without using my jet pack. It leaves you so much more attuned to the subtle details of the environment. I often see clips of open world games with amazing environments, then get put off when they turn into hectic shooty gorefests. More degamification options would be wonderful!

[@ericvilas]

Personally, my favorite place to be in Ocarina of Time was the Spirit Temple... _after_ clearing it. When all the challenges were solved, it felt like I could just, idk, just be there, and it just felt nice.

[@daddiodizzle8990]

Ya nailed it. It took me 3 years (130+hours) to "finish" just cause 2, because i would primarily put it on to gain altitude and view vistas while listening to music and medicating after work. I would often play for an hour and only recover 2-3 collectibles. Some games are so big that I essentially use them as vacation destinations, firing them up to wander and enjoy the setting. (Oblivion, fallout, gta). Other titles I categorize as "sensation" games. They give you the sensation and fulfillment of doing an activity, but progress or achievement mean little, as I am there to enjoy virtual racing, flying, shooting, etc.Completion of these titles mean little to me as I am there to enjoy virtual sensations. Thank you buddy!

[@megabenlinksonicman]

Kirby Air Ride has a good example of this in the Free Run mode of City Trial. You're no longer pressured by the time limit (maximum of seven minutes normally), and you can access any of the stars/machines underground, swapping between them as you please. You can explore the city to your heart's content, be it trying to reach hard-to-reach spots or scattering the stars all over the city. It's a good amount of fun on its own. Love your videos, by the way.