Literary Analysis of Papers, Please

[@hund7458]

I was watching this and imagined you as having like at least 100k subscribers. It shocked me that there was only 14 comments haha You need more subscribers man. You deserve it.

[@TheGemsbok]

Thank you! I'd like to think the channel will explode in popularity . . . any day now. Ha. In all seriousness, though, the channel has grown a lot since last year when I started publishing about every month, and I do think it'll grow faster and faster if I can keep that up.

[@HobbesGaming]

Got bored and came back to rewatch your videos, I don't think I have seen this one yet!

[@TheGemsbok]

Thanks for swinging back around! These early video are a bit rougher on the editing and the narration, but I'm still proud of them (except maybe the Awesomenauts one, where I screwed up the audio editing to a ludicrous degree).

[@HobbesGaming]

@@TheGemsbok *Goes back to specifically rewatch that video*

[@TheGemsbok]

Nooo

[@Alicia-lo9gl]

A wonderful analysis! Very interesting.

[@TheGemsbok]

Thank you so much for saying so!

[@PenandBlade]

What an interesting comparison to poetry! Hmmm....

[@deirdrevabbins3330]

Great analysis of a great game. Thanks for the vid.

[@petercalyspon1094]

Good stuff dude

[@amadiolivas1405]

Very cool and interesting video. I think this one video of this channel I watched it from will lead me to watch more videos on this channel. Perhaps after an hour or two of watching these videos, I will subscribe inorder to find more entertainment of the same type.

[@matty1094]

nice video man. I really appreciate the analysis of one of my favorite games ever. I'm not much of an academic brain so I kinda started zoning out to all the big words haha but I think I could connect. will rewatch this from time to time

[@CherryEye]

Yeah I feel like some of the vocabulary was unnecessarily complicated but other than that I liked the analysis

[@nickbooze9766]

Revisiting your older work. Just what did you study at school? I've never seen this level of literary analysis as theory in videos about games. You remind me of a professor I had. Your application of theory is seamless.

[@TheGemsbok]

Thank you for the kind remarks! I started off studying literature and literary theory, but bridged over to philosophy (via philosophy of language) a few years into the program. Ultimately ended up writing my thesis about both---specifically, about how philosophical materialism offers a strong point-of-entry into analysis of the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. Coincidentally, the next video that I am planning to make will be another literary analysis of a game, quite like this one (though nearly three times as long, and using more recent thinkers). I'm hoping to have it ready to publish in late August or early September.

[@nickbooze9766]

@@TheGemsbok And it absolutely shows man, I just made out w/ my measly BA. You must sneak some dialectical materialism into some of these videos lol. Hell of a thesis, must be a great read. I think your video Philosophical Analysis of Dark Souls is the peak of this 'brand' of commentary about video games here on KZbin. You've left your contemporaries in the dust. And to hear you've got a Noah Gervais length video in the pipeline is just fucking awesome. I'd be overjoyed to support you on Patreon if you ever make one brother. Thanks again.

[@TheGemsbok]

@Nick Booze Ah, to clarify, as I don't want to get anyone's hopes that far up: I don't have a Noah-like 4-hour video in the works. I may never be able to produce something even remotely that long with my fastidious style of writing and video editing. What I meant is that my next video will be a literary analysis three times the length of _this_ literary analysis about Papers, Please. I estimate the next project will be around 35 minutes. Patreon is something I've considered, but I'm unwilling to open one until I'm ready to take the plunge and work full-time on Gemsbok stuff. Also, you might not see any Hegel or Marx here for a while, but there _will_ be a German Idealist featured prominently in my next FromSoft philosophy project . . .

[@TheGemsbok]

P.S. It occurred to me later that you mentioned dialectical materialism because of what my thesis was about---not simply out of some random interest in German philosophy. Ha. I missed that because the type of materialism I was writing about in the thesis was very far away from the work of Marx. Sorry about the miscommunication.

[@nickbooze9766]

@@TheGemsbok Late reply! I know you're not one to make a video w/ such enormity of length, with how concise you it's almost antithetical to your style. Not matter how talented any given creator is, you will lose the plot if you're video is five hours long. That's an immoveable truth but given that I'll rewatch it a dozen times it will round out to Noah length. Hoping for some Reinhold or Schelling! Kant and Schopenhauer steal too much of the spotlight. I mentioned dialectical materialism apropos-of-nothing really, very clear that your thesis had nothing to do w/ Marxist thought, your first interpretation was correct lol. If and when you take that plunge I'll be all too happy to support you. Thanks for your time man, nobody is doing this at your level so can't wait for what is next.

[@theanglo-lithuanian1768]

Love it

[@Rob_-dv6ei]

Holy shit you speak in the way F. John Fitzgerald wrote "The Great Gatsby"!

[@TheGemsbok]

Haha. I choose to take that as a compliment. So . . . thank you!

[@watching966]

You know what you added something to the game now instead of being the old kill the dragon become king solving problems you're adding why do we do that who's it for and for what reason and I have never thought of it that way I guess there's always something new

[@mrickard3621]

Beware of Dr. Robotnik

[@ludeo9718]

Great analysis.

[@thegrimmarcher202]

You just got a now suscriber

[@TheGemsbok]

Thank you very much! I've been focused on turning some of my lighter articles into videos recently, but there will be more analytical stuff like this on the channel in the future for sure.

[@thegrimmarcher202]

@@TheGemsbok good luck

[@azfaarrealm9426]

Glory to Arstotzka.

[@TheGemsbok]

The crazy thing is that you're the first person to make that comment on this video, despite it now being over 4 years old.

[@ThePeanutRocksta]

Hey I know this is an old video, but that bass note ain't moving one octave up and one octave down, it's descends a perfect 4th going from the D to the A, it also doesn't really do that ad infinitum, it goes to the relative major F. As the piece progresses the bass line continues to vary, as the piece picks up in intensity it also changes rhythmically, at one point it stops plodding along and starts playing what sounds like quarter notes.

[@TheGemsbok]

Thank you for the clarifications! Yes, the mention of 'octave' there was certainly inaccurate. Sorry about that. The important element of the line in terms of the analysis, however, is just the droning one-note-at-a-time, up-and-down, march-like movement that dominates that part of the track. While this is not spelled out there, the point refers to the moments between days specifically because players will almost never spend enough time there to reach the big changes that come toward the end of the song. Along those lines, the description of it being "in martial determination ad infinitum" is not literal; after all, even if the beat actually never changed, players rarely hear even 60 seconds of it before it fades out for the next day. In that sense, it almost couldn't be _less_ infinite. That description is a bit of poetic exaggeration to make the interpretative point about it being mechanistic, militaristic, and repetitive more clear.

[@hugoclarke3284]

If it had been an octave it would have sounded like a stop-watch or a metronome. The oscillating perfect 4th is so good because it captures the dreariness perfectly. Unlike a perfect 5th, which would seem to constantly resolve itself, the 4th pulls you relentlessly one way and then the other.

[@HobbesGaming]

I cannot for the life of me pronounce Victor Shklovsky correctly lol

[@TheGemsbok]

Ha, to be honest, I'm not convinced that I said it properly in this video (I didn't do anything with that first 'k' in his last name, for instance).

[@HobbesGaming]

@@TheGemsbok Yeah, I think it's the combination of the "sh" sound and the "kl" sounds that makes it so weird to pronounce without slowing down..

[@juliancoenen4917]

Good analysis, too much quotes and slide shows, entertaining?, kinda

[@TheGemsbok]

Ha, thank you. This is a rather old video of mine. My presentation and editing (especially regarding quotes) have improved considerably since it was made.

[@jafabian37]

@@TheGemsbok It looks like you had a very academic approach at the time, which is appreciated as it's helping me get the feel for writing my thesis for the current degree I'm pursuing.

[@TheGemsbok]

@Jose Fabian Glad to hear that! Yes, this is actually the only one of my game videos that is literally based on an essay I wrote for a university course. I adapted the essay into an article in 2015, and finally into this video in 2017. But even as my presentation has improved, my 'academic' approach to game analysis has never really faded. Just wait until video versions of my articles on The Witness and Half-Life someday show up here . . .