east in console games obviously when you're kind of bound to them forever with steam you know like their parasites on your steam account but uh with console games i used to keep my favorite games i would just keep a copy at deus ex human revolution because i wanted to play it and revisit when i replay value yeah well yeah you did it because you did it because you had to beat that game i beat those games i needed to make sure i didn't spend my money for no reason i couldn't bear to look at my shelf of games and see this huge backlog of frivolous spending i couldn't stand the idea of my friends making you're lying to me you would never you'd never be serious about it two and a half minutes about his shitty budgeting like his shitty budgeting all of us here i'm sure had a library of games where we would look at them and be like oh shit i still haven't played that yet have you ever seen it i'm looking at it right now well yeah i mean i'm talking about back then not right pre-steem every one you mean dude even my fucking grandma would have one right now that's just everybody you get given games that you're never gonna play but uh back then you know a list of 360 games for example you'd be like oh shit yeah i bought that one in the bargain bin i never played it huh i don't think we were having an existential crisis looking at the fucking folder being like oh god you guys don't understand you go to the cafeteria and you're like hey man if you've beaten uh gotten to the reaper in mass effect too you're like oh no i'm still i'm still in the act too as like oh oh like walk away and like don't make contact then louis makes one of you i wanted to validate myself well maybe that's the problem um maybe that's the problem i mean the maybe the foundational issue here is that the way that you are seeking personal validation isn't a healthy or like virtuous thing right we haven't gone to the big argument yet well the dragon age armor in mass effect too yo i remember that shit that was really cool wow i assume rax's point is that it's not gonna be about whether you finish the game about something and more deep in your psyche oh yeah purchases had a purpose oh but doing youtube videos incredibly different situation what i had money i had drive i had passion i wanted to talk about all kinds of thoughts and it's not going well i games i didn't have a lot of time on my hands so i'd conveniently forget to do my homework and ignore my regimen then mentally self-destruct later oh that's not good your life seems like you need to reevaluate some of your choices budget and mental care that's it this is the desperate need for approval i had as an adult sparked a consuming obsession with finishing games before i could do it do it say it put on the street again do it already you have a problem put it in a thoughtful powerful way i had i needed a scour for every detail i needed to make my writing so airtight so on the mark no one was going to make fun of me i had to stay ahead of the curve metal he had to finish those games he did he did do i would we pick that up again metal ironically this video makes me not want to finish this video yeah oh my goodness guys sucks and year after year with every failure to accomplish what i had set out to do at every stage of my life i'm a complete failure me i'm alone tell me what your bum life like what is this is this the 20 minutes you skipped the last video the trick session would turn to guilt because if i didn't finish the game what was the point of spending all this time on it the money the bandwidth dude you got some i don't know man to figure out like yeah you do have things to figure out i remember when i was young and i didn't you know prioritize things in my life but you know you get over that hopefully eventually maybe ideally i don't know i can think of plenty of games that i enjoyed thoroughly and i didn't finish plenty of gta's i didn't finish i don't think i ever beat skyrim because i'm too busy fucking around like you know i never beat skyrim yeah i bet so many people yeah i bet so many people just fucked around and never actually finished i didn't care how it ended i'm i didn't care about the story and it's their story's fault that i never cared going for it legit i completely agree with that maybe like 10 of the books that people often have on their bookshelf are the ones that i actually read they're like a huge amount of books that people buy go on red yep what's what is this definitely a start for that like this is pretty common it's kind of weird that it's out the way that it's being presented here as like a sort of this strange obsession that developed throughout your life it sounds like about how no problem with this guy for sure yeah but think about how many kindles you'd have to buy to fill up a bookshelf that would take way more the denial how could i run do you not like physical books rags that sounded like a what sounded like a how did you pull that away from my god no how did you like what's talking about space efficiency you know storage and whatnot that if you're on a kindle you don't have to worry as much about storage space no no the opposite think about how many kindles it would take to fill up all that space it'd be it'd be nonsensical with books yeah with books you could do it you know and i wouldn't want a thousand kindles on a bookshelf i would want the books that looked nice yeah make made me appear only appear well yeah well right but in reality the bookshelf always look good i think what you want is that they have like a lettering that when you pull the books across it spells out i had to read that book i had to finish my homework i had to beat the shelf i would respect this video a lot more if this is all built up to i have to finish this intro i don't think you have to tell them for that i'm writing this video from an insane asylum that's where i ended up because if i didn't finish the game what was the point of spending all this time on it the money the bandwidth the denial the fun you had along the way of course because that's what gaming's about bro yeah but i mean that's a that's a life lesson though rags it's not about the destination it's about the journey that's a that's a hard one no it's about the bandwidth like what the throw it is guy it's not about the destination it's about the bandwidth it's about the bandwidth you consume and steal from your parents along the way fucking up the wi-fi i want to my parents money can i waste in my vain pursuit of playing video games i'm just i am a i'm a good son sorry to run a successful youtube channel if i wasn't covering the newest game within a week of it coming out how can i call myself a fan of these series is or talk how can i call myself a gamer series series series i don't know what happened there i think that series is also plural isn't it seri you just say series for plural yeah seri seri through the two eyes yeah talk to my friends about games if i never finished them how could i justify the thousands of dollars full minutes see some people think a game of life is an easy life but this is proof that it's one of the most difficult existences gamers really are at the runtime gamers are oppressed by their friends by their parents by college by louis i loose and is fucking trouble it yeah i'll probably roll the shoulder louis is like that the ghost and blind manner just hovering over his shoulder louis please i'll finish them some sander i swear i know this is a big old tangent but looking at this uh still frame unlike narrow straights in japanese cities like a vibe they kind of yeah they are especially with all their signs the neon and everything. It's like a really, it's, it's a cool, really cool. I like it. The end game Ronin scene. They had that same vibe to it with the tight narrow streets. Well, because this is the Yakuza games, right? Yeah. It's like a Kyoto and Tokyo and stuff.  You don't realize just kind of like a normal size, you know, proper to scale alleyway would be like it. Probably be pretty close to this actually. Good point. One of my favorite games is Shenmue and it's got terrific world design. It's very authentic Japanese neighborhood that you start off and it's really cool to just explore. I would say it's like a super fun game, but the mechanics behind it are kind of incredible for the time. Like you can actually, every single NPC has a schedule and like they'll actually, I followed this one guy. I think it was like the burger stand guy or something like that. He closed up shop, walked to the store, zoned into the store, grabbed some groceries, then zoned out of the store, then you can follow him back to his specific apartment. He has one specific apartment he goes back to just like the detail of every single NPC in the day is really, really cool. He doesn't just walk around the corner and then there. It is actually nice when you search for those details and they pay off. Is this subtitle here an attack on the stealing video? It was a recent one. Bent on my digital library. If I hadn't touched more than half of it, what was the point? What was my motive? Why can't I stop? I'm sorry. What's happening? I can't fight with stealing anymore. This guy needs meds, man. I don't know. What did I say to you guys? Like, can I truly review film when I haven't seen all of them? All of the films? If I haven't seen all of the film, how can I begin to talk about the film? I don't know. You better just, I don't know. Jumb of a brush. Jumb of a brush? Jumb of a brush. Jumb of a brush. Aim for the bridges. Feeling this way. So eventually one existential crisis after another, you start learning a lot about yourself. The differences between who you are naturally. By the way, Theo, is this not your favorite video essay of all time right now? I'm so checked out, dude. I'm gone. That's great. Yeah, I love this. I hate it. Nothing for four minutes. Absolutely. The art style of this game, though. Which game is this? This is Fire Emblem. Oh, wow. Nice armor. Three houses, which I didn't complete. You have much content. Did you have an existential crisis? I know. That's not, well, you know, only for a little bit. For a day, it was pretty tough when I realized. What did Lewis think about you not finishing that? He's pretty disappointed. I mean, you spent 80 bucks on that game. Don't look in any mirrors. Second, you go to sleep after a night of not completing a game. He's just sitting there, waiting, looking at you. I like the idea that you just end up in this horrible nightmare scape. You know, like. There's Lewis. You better lock your doors, bro. He's not away, and then he's just there always. So the quarter is nice. Now we got you in the shadows. Can't look in any mirror until you beat the game. The ghost of unfinished games past, you know, just like a modern Scrooge tale. You have dabbling back in that game. OK, I'm sorry. OK, it's me. I can go recording lately. And let me tell you, you can say so much in four minutes. Like, yeah, you can get so much done in four minutes. Well, imagine that this whole section was grow it up. I always felt like you have to finish a game. And that's it. That's a little. Maybe if you feel like it, you can include a little bit of stuff to back that. Well, how can it be 20 seconds? Complain about about a long, long. How can you do that, Mola? I just did. You saw how. Wow. No, you do it again. What? Again. If I did it again, I'd be much longer. You could have reviewed Ant-Man and the Lost Quantum and you're in four minutes. You could have. Yeah, just said it. You just say it's bad. Just say it's bad. I did say it right at the end of the script. I said, Ant-Man bad. If you want to watch that part alone, that's fine. There you go. You said not great, right? I think you said, like, not great. Pretty not great. Yeah, something like that. Pretty not great. Ant-Man is a six out of 10. External factors contributing to who you've become. I've done a lot of thinking, figured some of it out. Have you? If you've ever experienced something like those scenarios for my own life, I have something important to tell you. Here we go. You don't need to finish that game. What is the time period of this game? And what is she wearing? They're in, like, a castle, but she's wearing glasses. She's a modern designer glasses, yeah. And look at her. She's got random, like, pink and white braids mixed.  It's anime. Yeah. Anime was a mistake. True. The question is so obsessed about nowadays. People gatekeep and invalidate each other's opinions based on how far they made it go. Ah, see, so it was born in the world. Come on. It was all relevant there, because he was talking about his own sort of troubles when it came to being part of the conversation. And now he's saying that part of what influences people is gatekeeping. So it all was relevant, important information. I feel the opposite. I feel like we just found out the true motivation for this video. Some people claim that you don't have a good perspective if you haven't finished the game. It's like, oh. Playing them, being up to date on a long-running series seems to be more important than caring about its trajectory, its quality, and the conditions it was made in. Are you sure? You reckon? You think so? Is? You really think that? I'm going to press X to doubt on that. That's a game. I don't know about that. That's a lewish thing. How often is it that if you gave a perspective on, well, I mean, tears of the kingdom, right? This relevance. Like, oh, have you played The Legend of Zelda? The Legend of Zelda 2, Link's Adventure? The Awakening? The Awakening? The Link's Transitioning. The Awakening? Yeah. And then Breath of the Wild, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, all of those games. How often does anybody actually got to interrogate you on how many games and series you played? You know? I think that's happened to me, like, about never. And I'm pretty entrenched into these sorts of spaces. I'm going to be interrogated. It's like, hey, have you played this one of the series? No. Oh, OK. Anyway, we went along. Oh, yeah. So yeah, I guess we'll talk about something else like humans do. Talk about the one you did play. Oh, that was one of those songs that was on Windows XP that came with it, wasn't it, like humans do? I don't remember. Wasn't that Pimball game? That was one of the games that was on Windows XP. Yeah, there was Space Cadet. Yeah, Space Cadet Pimball. But I think that bundled within the Windows XP, like music player, there was like 10 or so songs in there. And I think one of them was like humans do. Breathe in and out. Breathe in and out. Afraid of missing out on the real impact of a sequel, they'll prevent themselves from playing it until they beat the games leading up to it. Well, but that can be valid. That's not, exactly. That's not necessarily. I wouldn't recommend you play God of War or Agnorog without playing the one before that. Well, yeah, exactly. Because it's contextual. Continuity. And one, you know, like some games present themselves as essentially being, again, with Zelda, right, you can jump into any game and you don't really need to know what happened in any of the other games compared to a serialized narrative, you know, franchise. And even without the Final Fantasy.  I want to play Dark Souls first or even Demon Souls. I want to go through a chronology. I would recommend it. Maybe just see how the mechanics upgrade. That's what you should do. There's a lot of reasons why you would want to do that. Exactly. There's a lot of earnest reasons why you would want to do that beyond the pressures of society. Like Devil May Cry, I always remember loving the third one for the mechanics and like all the weapons and like abilities that you can blend together, but liking the aesthetic of the second one because Dante was older, a little bit more mature. I didn't want to see him as a teenager. So it's hard to get like the right blend sometimes. I would just never recommend playing three then one for Dark Souls because your expectation is going to be all backward while coming from one to three is basically what everyone did and it was designed with that in mind.  I'd be like, yeah, yeah, you can play three anyway. That's fine. Just saying. It's also valid to not do that. Really quickly. Which one do you recommend? Part of the way. What was that? Blood, Dark Souls, Bloodborne and the third one. Those are the three. Well, Moller would recommend some outside of Dark Souls 2. Two is the best from what I hear. You should know. No, Rags, stop. Only play two. It was supposed to be a friend. Rags. Well, I even heard it was the best. EFAP. It has the best hitboxes. Yeah, the best lighting too. It's funny. I can give you an example. I've watched your reviews on Dark Souls 2 and I've never actually played the Dark Souls games, but I understand gaming enough to understand that hitboxes and the mechanics involved are essentially like they're really critical to a game's like function. And the fact that those things can just be completely ignored when someone's reviewing it is insane. The hitboxes and DS2, the fans of the game just call them fun boxes, because you never know what's going to happen. Fun boxes. Fun boxes. I'm going to write a four hour essay saying hitboxes are implied. Start with the first five minutes of the video should be about your childhood trauma. Yeah, exactly. I had to dodge that hitbox. People are so afraid of missing out on the real impact of a sequel. They'll prevent themselves from playing it until they be redeemed. I feel like there's a broader conversation to be had about people feeling like they're missing out on the big relevant cultural moments. Yeah. I feel like it's a completely separate conversation. It is. It's a separate one, because it extends beyond video games and whether or not you've completed them. I think it just stems from people's desire to be part of the conversation always no matter what. I would say it's even probably more. That should happen organically. You don't want to force that. When it comes to Dark Souls. As well, there's the sense of should you be playing it with any information or not. And a lot of people will tell you you shouldn't.  I can play it on your own. It's like, no, no, no. I'm not saying you shouldn't, because I think it's the best way to play. I'm saying there's an experience. You can only get doing that. And once you don't do it, you can't get it. Yeah. It's like why I tell people, whenever they say I'm lost in a video game, I'm like, well, maybe kind of cherish the fact that you can get lost in a video game. Because man, there are eventually there will come a time where you will never get lost in that video game again. And that is not an experience you will ever be able to get back. And that's the thing.  You know, everyone has their preferences, but being treated here like an obsession that's killing everything. All right, calm down. That's ruining lives. It gave me trauma, damn it. I think a theme with these two videos is people's strange relationships with video games and like how different everyone's can possibly be. Yeah. A little bit. I find that really strange, because for me, it's like you have to find a way, especially if you're a lifelong gamer, it changes over the years. You have to find a way to like make sure that you have a healthy relationship with games. Like I was addicted to League for the longest time and I needed to get the hell away from that. And like acknowledging that. And Arcane pulled me right back in. No, no, no. Arcane. We're shout out to Arcane. I really love that show. But no, no. It's just just balancing it. It seems that the the end point of that big story should have been.  I would really actually like that if he brought that out, but no. Well, no.  How to do the thing again? We'll probably finish it with that. With Lewis, right? Changing the name of it. The one that just stood out to me was like, Lewis Party Seven. I didn't even check the chat. I didn't even know how to do that. I think they made Seven's Lewis Party. The first six Lewis Parties were really good. You had to expect they'd make it Seven. Yeah, just it made sense.  Or like it isn't already very apparent. You guys should have a checkbox like for these things, definitely. Just like ready any time you go into it. I don't know about you, but Mark Brown told me about Mara's jump. I had no idea. No, we didn't. That was the thing. Well, what was it? Yeah, that's the meme. The meme. Like you just wouldn't tell us. Damn it. Tell me the secrets, Mark. I was leading up to it. We're so desperate to be a part of the wave. We're insistent on buying this video about sorry.  Let's figure it out. Let's go. Dude, you don't think out of your pocket. You don't. This is J.C. Vasquez. You don't need to finish games. All right.  So let's carry right along. Oh, my God. What?  That actually sounds bull. We are five minutes in. I mean, you're right. You don't need to capitalize. I'm covered in fur because I'm a dog. I don't think you're appreciating the storytelling here because like in the beginning of the first five minutes, he was saying like, I need to finish games. But then at five, like around the four and a half minute mark, he was like, you don't need to. That's that's a setup and a payoff. This is storytelling. This is art. I'm sure that this is leading us somewhere. I'm sure that this isn't a waste of time. J.C. Vasquez will prevent themselves from playing it until they beat the games leading up to it. We're so desperate to be a part of the wave. We're insistent on buying the new thing and beating it as fast as possible. So that we're writing. I was going to say, like, yeah, I guess that would be bad for anybody who only plays games for the cultural aspects. Those aren't gamers then.  Those are poeple. I like gamers. Yeah. Like a couple of times with the fact that you're not actually interested in games for their own sake. Yeah, man. Very top. And the truth is, this is a reality we didn't necessarily force ourselves into. Some of us still haven't forced ourselves into that nature of business. I get the feeling my childhood wasn't unique. Even if you didn't rent games, I'm willing to bet your parents or whoever bought you video games weren't gung-ho about it. Even if they loved games themselves, they were also hopefully thinking about other aspects of your development. So what you have.   I didn't get any of that. What was the point of that? So it sounds to me like he said, hopefully your parents didn't just give you video games and ignore you in all other aspects of life. This is like. Is that what happened to him? Is that why he's so fucked? I don't know. Because he was saying like, hopefully they explored other aspects of life with you. It was like, yeah. Yeah, you know.  You better finish that game.  He's going to send it to you. That's it. Are you Lewis? Oh God. Locked in a room. Trying to finish that game before the deadline. Had to play from a very young age where top games need to be finished before we deserve to have another one. Oh, what? Through my base parents. I so not really.  So yeah, exactly.  They're trying to teach you a lesson about perseverance. I feel like the more common example is you're just not getting another one for a while. This is the one that you've gotten. So yeah, that was $60. Or I guess back then 50s or whatever. Well, I guess now because we're old disgruntled old men on our porches yelling at the new gamers. Yeah, back then it was $60. The thing is rags in good old Australia. If you went to EB games is more expensive than you go to Big W or Target to buy a video game, by the way, in Australia. Just in case you didn't know that. I didn't know that. Back in the day, often video games that were new would cost like $109, like in the mid-2000s and stuff.  They actually haven't gotten that much more expensive over here. Technically, it seems. You really had to commit. Exactly. It's just like, yeah, that's just expensive. You've got to get as much out of it as you can. Yeah, it wasn't about beating the games. It was just about like, it's some movies if you ask your parents about it. Well, TV shows like you don't get another one straight away. The replay value.  It wasn't like that. It's just the game. It costs a lot of money. So you've got to get as much out of it as you can because you're not getting another one for a while. Yeah, your parents are like, this is expensive and there's this element of don't make quick frivolous decisions on purchasing. Really think about what you're going to buy before you buy it. Which is not a bad lesson to learn. No, it's traumatizing. Well, you must beat the Bowser. That's why I gravitated towards fighting games because it's especially if there's like, you know, it's a solid game. Just replay value for years with that. Like how many people played Smash Bros. for years? Oh, yeah. Millie was... Millie is a legend. I was just saying the amount of money. Millie! Especially when not knowing exactly how to unlock all the characters and so the surprise of doing different things and being like, oh my god, another new person. New challenger. Yeah, he had a controller. The mini-mode games. I would spend hours trying to beat those mini-mode games where they'd give you some weird handicap with the computers or something and that there's so many different modes that you can mess around with. Just replay value is something you should look for in all the games you play. It's kind of an interesting phenomenon that's being described here because the more money that I was able to make to just buy games, all that happened was, yeah, I just didn't beat as many of them. There were some that I bought that I didn't complete at all.   Which is, it's so strange. Is that actually like a problem that people have? No, it's not. I would refuse to believe that the average area of his generation knew what it meant to complete these games. I was kind of expecting this to be about obligate completionists.  Yeah, perfectionist. Like I have to get every achievement I have to find and do. Yeah, forget that.  Yeah, how many hundreds of pigeons are in GTA IV that you have to shoot? Screw that. Finding bottles and stuff all over the city. Forget that. I'm trying to drive and like crashing the things. It's, I don't know. Or in the case of renting, there's a finite amount of time we have with this game and our limited understanding is we may never see it again when the time is up. It's probably why kids are so good at video games. Beating games was our job. Yeah, right.  What the sake? Dude, this guy's got a really limited view on like childhood. Not everyone's talented. It was like yours, dude. That's a chill out there for a second. It was our job. It was our job. What?  Absolutely.   But the thing was, you weren't very good, but you didn't know any better because you weren't buying in like in the sort of landscape that we're in now where it's very easy to sort of compare how good you are to other people. Yeah. Can you imagine that? Well, dude, everyone had that moment when they thought they were great in the video game, checked out the best person out of them, and they were like, oh my God.   I got it recently. Yeah. Also, they're doing terrible things to my mother. My first my first proper TV, like Agent Out of Flat Screen TV was because I couldn't see anyone in Call of Duty or just getting murdered left and right. Just couldn't get a single kill, so I had to get a proper TV. But yeah, you live and you learn. And I don't even know what this is assisting overall as a point, but I guess we're proud to find out. Doing it well, we'd be rewarded with more of them. And school was where we could show our efforts off.  I mean, we talked about everything in my school, not just games. Yeah. Okay. Old is like being Christ reborn in the minds of others. Calm down. All right. Jesus Christ was born? What? The social currency of the millennial childhood is that of a video game.  Children, it makes you the center of attention for a week until the rest of them catch up to you and you raise them on to mount the... You know, you didn't have to share so much. I'm just saying. Like, oh, but... What if you were the kid that was getting bullied for playing video games? Like, hey, hey, Jimmothy, did you play the... Did you finish that game? It's like, no, no. I don't need... What are video games? I don't know. What are video games? I've heard of those. It's like trying to make this all sound so much more grand and weighty. And personal. Yeah, then... Making it so emotional. You almost really want just a normal, like, down to earth video to just be like, we all played a lot of games and sometimes you get a sense that you really need to beat them, you know? It does seem like a dramatization of just justifying that he doesn't finish all games which is fine. I don't finish most of the games I play.  Like, that's not a perspective people have. He threw in that one tiny bit, a little bit ago, about how people expect that review when you've reviewed them.  Get into that. Go ahead. Because that might have been the motive for the whole video. When you've reviewed them, yeah. That's a different conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with the premise that you don't need to finish a game to enjoy it. There's plenty of games I've enjoyed that I haven't finished, but if you, is he going to now pivot to the review? I don't know. Is that, yeah. I don't know. For fear that comes as I find it more interesting that I felt I had to finish them because Lewis would give me a spanking. All of this is going to be irrelevant to that conversation. Yeah. It should be a nice time if that's what we're going for. This is like pure pressure stuff. Yeah. Olympus, welcoming them as your fellow gods. The nice lesson our parents were teaching us about valuing our possessions. Also reinforced this idea we were getting at school that beating games was cool. Like Sunny D in the fridge and McDonald's every day cool.  Sunny D in the fridge. I don't remember. I don't remember Sunny D in the fridge. Something like how this hasn't been addressed. So let's address it. Completing a game is a task you set yourself. Like when you play a game, the game is a task. Completing the game is completing the task. People like to not leave things unfinished, like naturally. Well, it's spoken like a true robot. I guess you never had a childhood. Yeah, I guess. Sure, whatever, man. Because me, I completed a game and then I'd come into school welcomed by Lewis first and then everyone else as a king, a god king. Yeah. Okay, man. Sure. How many people, the hallways parted. Everyone got on their knees and bowed to you. Dude, did you actually do Super Mario Sunshine? It's like, yes. I tipped that box upside down.  I wasn't even led into my friend's house until we compared gamer scores. You know, exactly. Yeah, there was that club where you could only get in if you had 100,000 game of school. There was a special room in the back for the million game of school people. Oh, good days, good times. If there's one thing I know the games industry is good at, it's finding ways to turn children and teens into loyal consumers. I mean, generally it's like the goal of the game. Yeah, that's all the creation. Yeah. Yeah. We want them to buy our stuff and then keep buying our stuff. No, it's just this. Particularly. I remember the famous Steve Jobs speech where he's like, nah, you don't need to get the next iPhone. It's fine. In the late 90s, early odds when I was a kid and yes, I am nearly 30. Looks can be deceiving. Game companies were already nearly 30. What is that ad? I don't know. I guess he was more to say that he looks good. There he goes. All right. It's like, yeah, sure. Okay. It's also a weird choice to use previous footage from another one of your videos while you're doing voiceover, but the voiceover doesn't match your lips. It's kind of weird. I'll allow him a pass. He's had a lot of trauma. Oh, right. Realizing on the way I played games, games with obtuse progression, games with secret levels and new things to discover, and games too big to finish in a rental period where they're red and butter. These were ways to keep players renting or convince them to just buy and the message Sorry, there's a lot of content in that game. I don't even know what to say about this. What do you say? Yeah, there's just also doesn't that doesn't make a lot of sense. The the copies are bought by a say blockbuster or whatever. And then they must have to buy realties or something for every single like rental that they do. Like how they buy it. They buy it once. The the company gets one copy sold and then blockbuster can make money forever. Like I have a good example of that. Like I bought I rented Chrono Trigger way back in the day and I really liked it later on. I bought it. That's fine. But I don't think it's like some conspiracy. It's like I have them rent until they can finally buy the game. Bill, you guys would verbally slap me if I said like I've been thinking a lot and I noticed a lot of games have like secret levels or collectibles or big levels or sort of like difficult levels. And it's an attempt to really just make you play the game a lot more. Like yeah. Okay. And it would be like so this is the beginning of your thought. Right. Like you've got way more to say. Please. You should do a lot of value basically to beg their parents to buy them the new crash bandicoot or the new Spyro or the next Banjo 2e and no I don't want to rent anything new and going to like it. But what I think about Banjo 2 was the same role but he said the next Banjo 2e. The next Banjo 2e, yeah. Oh, maybe that's what threw me off. Yeah. That's a strange thing to say. Don't think they expected was for the kids to dangle what they knew in front of each other's faces to use the fact they had games and knew a lot about them as a form of social status or maybe they did. Okay. I don't know what's happened. Are we done with that? Was that like a conclusion? What was the point of that? Now the actual video is beginning. We're seven and we're seven and a half minutes into a 19 minute video and I don't think I've learned anything. Dude, his personal trauma. That's all of the foundations. I think it's not for show like an ad from the 90s. World time's a year. Six great issues. Plus, six three. Dude, that's no way. That's another time. That's twice the power for still 15 minutes. Whoa. Go now. This is Timmy. Timmy knows how to get the first newest video games first. But now someone else is his course, Timmy. Dude. Is it Louis? No. No. Dude, just release games until midnight the next day. Beating games wasn't. Oh, God. OK, fine. Captain Midnight does have to take like this. Try to be nuts. But it's OK. Just cool. His socks, too. But it's more relevant than this, guys. I will give you that. Yes. Brand consumption was cool. We were either Nintendo or Sega Kids or Nintendo or. Boring. Say something. This is really not. Tell me what it was like to be a kid. Like, did you know this video was going to be this way? This is one of the why you the way that you are. What's this specifically just to torment me? I can torment multiple people at once. I don't know. What if there was no point? What if it was all the video essayist preamble? This is also very kind of narrow-minded in that. He kind of expects that everybody's experience with video games is exactly like him. Yeah. So if they speak for yourself, he keeps saying these limited statements where it's just what he's talking about. I feel like all of us could describe a different experience with video games at the age he's talking about.  Yeah. His stuff is ranging from N64 days to Xbox 360. Back in the PlayStation days, you could get a demo disc with like 20 demos on there. That could keep you busy for hours if you're worried about the money factors. There's plenty of other options. There's a rental buy wasn't the only option. Weird. PlayStation Kids.  You'd think people would grow out of those childlike conceptions, but teenage adolescence has a funny way of making us feel a lot smarter without doing much of anything different. Okay.  I have no idea. I'm starting to think the answer to that is ads. I figured this was going to be along the lines of actually talking about like reviewing games.  I didn't know that that was something that people felt strongly. As we got older, the words used may have changed, but it was the same dynamic. My teenage years were when the console wars became a monolith. You know, this is spoke like the Vietnam ship for Movie Bob.  Just telling us how he felt about video games. This is a point that like...  Everybody is very passionate about gaming and that we have like different cultural flash points of crazy things happening. I don't really know. If that was this point, he'd be willing to explore different points of views other than his limited perspective of video games and childhood. He keeps limiting it to like his perspective. Like, I don't think that's it.  That's pretty much the conclusion. And much more like the kind of hints into that, but not really explored to be like, did marketing back in the 90s kind of create that kind of feeding frenzy that influenced the sort of peer pressure that created this sort of I got to finish this or else I'm going to be left behind. That's an interesting idea, but he doesn't explain it at all. 90s advertising essentially creating and capitalizing on the console war is a big topic that would be worth. But it feels like it's not the same topic. No, not really. Like, yeah, just really aimless. The whole Sega does what Nintendo and creating mascots that would essentially compete with each other and trying to undercut each other and being hyper competitive. Yeah, they're they're really aggressive, too. The advertising companies between Nintendo and Sega, they would absolutely just dump on the other console. The advent of the Internet. But shout, are you here? Yes, man. Oh, my God. Beautiful. Mr. Sword. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome. We are approaching hour three of our 24 hour extravaganza. Nice to see you. Whoa. It's nice to be here. So I did. It's funny. I was hanging out with you more this week than, I think, Fringian Rex. Oh, my God. Wow. That's the streaming world for you. If you scroll up, there's a link to a watch together. We're currently listening to Mel. Why don't you summarize what we've learned so far?  I'm just scared of Louis. We've learned about one man's trauma with video games. Yeah, a lot of trauma.  One man being tormented by Louis. It happened. Had to finish every game.  Essentially, five minutes of explaining how he felt like as a child, he had to finish every single game, but then he realized he didn't. That's basically what's happened so far. That's the revolutionary kind of conclusion. And how much of the effect in his life? He missed the best part, though, shout out is at the beginning, four separate times. He said he felt, based on the events of his childhood, that he had to finish the game. He's increasingly serious each time with words on the screen. Did he explain what he felt would happen if he didn't? Death. Death? Shame. Banishment. All of the shame. He basically, he couldn't be... Like, he couldn't live almost. Like, it was... Banishment to wherever Throne was banished. He put a great deal of importance on being validated by his gaming experiences, compared to how other kids viewed him and how he socialized regarding that. So it was very... Interesting. Is he mentally stable? I think he's mentally stable. He's got his priorities a bit gloopy. Well, I think we're into the substantive part of the video. That's off-theory anyway. We're about to get started. Well, I love substance. I don't blame you. Substance is great. Matt, paired with one of the most popular console generations of all time, really brought it out of people. Well, game companies learning about internet marketing really brought it out of people. Why do you... What game... Everything. Everything learned about marketing. And it's not... It's not even in due. Again, the console war is from the 90s, like, as a phenomenon. You could say it even started earlier than that, but it really... Like, it's not like it was a new thing with the PS4 and the Xbox One. Like, that's just because you were getting more immersed in those spaces at that time. We have seen a reference to Nintendo and Sega, right? That fight, but it goes beyond that. Obviously. Yeah, exactly. You could go back to the Odyssey and the Atari and stuff. Yeah, it's been going on for a long time. Yeah, well, before Nintendo and Sega, Atari just dominated everything for so long. So it wasn't really a competition. But it wasn't as fierce as some of the battles they were on. Don't worry. There was still plenty of Game of Cringe. All the eras. Exactly. Love to enjoy. And whether or not you were a willing participant, you were in it. No, you weren't. No. No, you were.  Exactly. You weren't a part of it if you didn't care about it. It just cuts to some guy reading a book on a chair. He goes, I wasn't. Sitting there wearing a monocle next to the fire at the fireplace. Yeah.  I was just playing my games.  I legit was just like, which one is better, though? I just need to know. Just let me know. So I can spend my money better, that's all. I just want to know that. Had one current gen console, an Xbox 360 or a PS3, and the Wii probably. If you had all three, chances are you were an outlier, but therein lied the social hierarchy. I thought he was about to say you were the coolest kid in school if you had all of those. Everybody liked you if you had all of the gaming consoles in school. If you had all of them, you were in fact Lewis. His schooling experience was just odd. But he's about to mention a social hierarchy based on the amount of consoles you have. So with the nerds, potentially, yes. You'd be the cool kid. But going outside of the nerd crews, I don't know about that.  Just show up and it's like, I've got gamer score in three currencies. There was... I still remember that in school because there was like a place to go where everyone would play Maricot DS, right? And there would be a teacher everyone saw being like, do you want to go outside and play with a ball? No? Okay, do whatever you want, I guess. When you're a teammate with numbers... Hey, you want to be a part of everything. You're learning about yourself. You're trying and feeling lots of new things. And if there's something people are doing you don't have access to, you start to feel like you're missing out. You lose the sense of belonging in your social circles when all of your friends are talking about a game you haven't played yet, or when everyone's getting on Xbox Live to play Gears 3's Horde mode, but you don't have it. Gears 3 Horde mode, why would you reference that of everything? Well, because a specific example, you know, like it's good to have a specific example. Yeah, but you couldn't have gone with like Halo 3 custom games, or Mon Warfare 2 just online in general. Why? It was called... What is... I... I'm not sure what's the complaint here.  Okay, all right, okay. No, I like Gears 3 Horde mode. I didn't play Gears of War. No. I played the first one on Xbox One, the remaster. The Gears 3 Horde mode was better than two. It's just the... Gears online was still better than the Horde mode by far, and then the online for Gears was already so glitchy that I would recommend Horde over it, you know? And then Halo. That's a controversial take though, isn't it? Because all I heard at the time was everybody really liked Horde mode. I really liked Horde mode, but I would definitely say that Halo was played a lot more online, for sure. For sure, but... But he's just saying it as an example. That's it. Yeah, it just... I'm allowed to be critical of any example given at any time for my own reasons, otherwise I'll make a video about how wrong you are. I'm just gunning your opinion, while I'm just saying that I'm agreeing with you in that, this particular video, he's using his specific experience examples as if that's what everybody went through. He's basically... He's imprinting his very, very specific... He's been doing that with everything. Yeah, the thing is, I can understand the feeling of like, I'd like to play that game with my friends, but I can't. But I don't know, you just get over it, right? I mean, I kind of get some of the things... Yeah, he's playing the game. I get some of the things he's saying. I mean, I felt that with... I have a few close friends of mine are huge Dark Souls fans, and they're able to talk about it on such a deep technical level.  And then... But I really enjoy having played it. But I just haven't progressed that much, and sometimes they have a deep conversation about it. It's like, oh, fuck, I wish I could participate. I kind of feel like a losing... Hearing the detail that they discussed it in, that makes you want to play it more when you have the time.  I don't know what his problem is. He just seems to be this weird emotional response.  With everything he said, he's painted a very big cultural issue that's causing us all to think we need to finish games, right? I assume from the title. It's a personal issue that he's turning into a cultural issue. Yeah, he's making an essay about the history of GPS's. And then he's like, yeah, when you take Turner and North Street, like everybody does, that reward is really difficult to navigate. You know what I mean? And just using a very, very specific example that affected him as indicative of the greater problem or the greater solution that GPS has provided. It's a weird example. But this isn't a video game problem. This is like a life thing that you need to get over, which is like being excluded or the fear of missing out. Like these are not video game problems. These are general problems. I don't know why we're making it about video games specifically. Yeah, that's really the point of the finger. All this, yeah, everything. Even sports, they're just not good enough. Exactly, yep.  Now I'm just like, whatever. I just like playing the games that I enjoy spending time on. No, I mean, have you ever considered making a video essay on this and the trauma you're hearing about this problem? I was like, well, I've gone through my ad.  I've tried to get over that. I don't, yeah, I don't worry about it. And I'm just like, what, I just want to play whatever is what makes me the most happy at this moment. And a lot of that time is just firing up Tetris. That's my saying, as you get older, you're going to have to balance your gaming a little bit better. Make sure you have a relationship with the games you play. Okay, so every time the cinema came around, did people make the memes about how steam was going to rape your wallet, right? So I'm going to throw a spanner into this philosophical discussion right now, right? Because there are some games that I purposely choose to not finish. What? Well, I know, this is shocking. This is shocking stuff, right? So interesting, I think you guys, brace yourselves, right? I've played, I don't know how many hours of Skyrim. I'm like, I'm just if not thousands, right? What's Skyrim? Of what? Of what? Skyrim. Me and Rags, we're just talking about that. Skyrim. Oh, Skyrim. Oh, we're just talking about that. And I have never... I've never completed the main storyline. Me and Rags are saying the same thing. Really? I don't know. Yeah, it's so funny they say that.  I don't care how we do it. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, though. I haven't been in it for a long time. But also, I've done that on purpose because I've noticed a weird phenomenon when I finish a game. I feel like I now know kind of, there's no mystery anymore. Yeah, since I've wanted to discover and as a result, it actually kind of makes me check out of the game. It takes away... Yeah, yeah. And so as long as I don't finish that main storyline, there's a sense of mystery still of something left to be done that causes me, man, if I start a new playthrough, oh, there's so much... I haven't finished the main storyline. And even though I go through all the stuff that I've already done, but then you go over it doing random side things anyway and it becomes a really different playthrough. And then at the end, I still choose not to finish the game with that character because I don't want it to be over. I just want the experience to keep going. Yeah, even as you're messing around just doing side quest stuff and leveling your guy, it's still looming over you that there's this quest at the end and there could be a greater meaning to all this. Exactly. If you just beat it, if you just beat it right away, it makes the messing around and you're less motivated to do that. Why don't I want to get a level 90 of this when I know there's no way... It's funny. I think there's a lot of guys that have the same experience when it comes to beating things. Well, beating them. I just can't believe of all the games in the world. You brought up Skyrim. We're both made right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same thing. It's so funny. Well, this happened to me with Fallout 4. After I finished the main quest line, I was like, I had this feeling of emptiness.  And I've really played it since. It was a way. If there was just like 10 strict levels in some kind of game that was much more linear, you'd stop at nine so that the next time you play it, you know that there's one that you haven't played yet. Depends on the game. Maybe. It might really depend on if it's an open world RPG like that. It really has the same effect to me like so. Yeah, Skyrim. I think Skyrim is a great example because it's so distracting. But same thing, I'm doing the same thing with Elden Ring. I purposely haven't finished Elden Ring. And again, I don't want the experience to be over. So now when I go back to it, I'm going to start a brand new character, go through everything that I've already done before. And I'm motivated to do it now because there's still that sense of mystery of how it could end. And I know that it seems a multiple different endings anyway. And so you can keep going that way. So you're discussing the benefit of not finishing games. And I mean, all that makes sense. This guy is just having like an existential crisis or something. He's not doing what you're doing. Like this guy, you missed the beginning of this. He's just got a weird relationship with games. The conclusion he's going to reach at some point is you don't have to finish games. It's like, who said you did? Yeah, I know. This is a philosophy I already live. This is new news. Haunted multiplayer itself feels like this distant place where everyone else is having a new kind of fun you can't afford to maintain. Sometimes it was... What does this got to do with finishing games? Again, this is a broader thing. This is just fair of missing out in general. Which means that the video itself feels like it's already... Oh, no, the video. It's too narrow and too broad. Like we're all over the place. Yeah, exactly. It's simultaneously all about you while also being about a much bigger topic than games. It was so integral to the stability of your friendships that not playing the same... Okay. There it is. There it is. That's not a friendship you have. There it is, right there. Wow. Yeah, that was not the case for... I had several things that me and my friends were interested in beyond individual game storylines or multiplayer experiences. I was with him to an extent with the whole like it feels bad when your friends talk about how much fun this thing was and you don't have that game yet so you just can't play it with him.  Yeah, that's pathetic.  Well, at that point you need better friends. It's really fun to be able to talk to someone who's like... You can... League of Legends, for example, talking to someone who's as high level as you and actually can understand it at the same level, it's really satisfying. But just because you can't do that doesn't mean you can't enjoy the game. Like you can always build up to that. But this guy, this is... I don't know. He's taken this really way too personally. Yeah. In games as a player. Yeah, he seems to think like if you haven't played the games that your friends have played, you're like locked out of a conversation.  It's kind of like the opposite, actually. I would say that you're attracted to the games that your friends play, not that you're excluded from being friends because you're not playing the same games. If all your friends... You look at your games list and... Or your friends list and they're all playing Halo 3, more than likely you're probably going to think about getting Halo 3 because you want to play with your friends. It wasn't like a...  You want to enjoy an experience with your friends and people you know. And if you didn't work with Halo 3 and your friends Andy you and say, I don't want to play with you anymore and drop you in the dumpster, that means you've got a good friend. I know, yeah. If your friendship was based around... Your friendship was tied by a game. A video game. Like, geez. If it's tied to a game, like, that's... It's... Come on now. Maybe you need to re-evaluate your friends and like your whole relationship with games. Yeah.  Like, no, I'm playing a big team death match on Halo 3. It's like, you should really get Halo 3. We could play together. That'd be basically be the conversation for the most part.  Exactly. Come play this game. Let me lure you over to this side. Get this.  Those are the real friends. That's such a good point. This guy seems like he doesn't understand that because if these people cared about it... No one was traumatized.  You know what I mean? I don't know what he did to this guy. You'd be smaller as a friend.  It's like, no. Then I buy everybody Gollum. Buy him a copy. Yeah. It's love you come into school. Gears of War 3 releases. Lewis is there and you say like, kind of forward and he just goes, You can't say here. You can't say here. I don't know, man. Sorry. You don't know what happened. We were standing in the street for our friend. Maybe that's true. Maybe this is actually Verlaphaged. But maybe that's his real reality. Yeah. Well, I was going to say, he's like, that's unfortunate if you had those friends, I guess. Yeah. He does talk of school experience. He talks of a school experience as if everybody experienced the same thing. Mine was much different. I mean, the school that I went to in the early grades, a lot of kids from financially lower class or lower middle class families. And they were just not a lot of people were playing video games. Like it was just me and a few other people. But I get like him saying that games are a sort of social currency at school. Like I remember when I got a Game Boy Color with Pokemon Red and I went to school with it. And like all the kids are gathering around me. Like, oh my God, that's so awesome. Not everybody has it. So yeah. This meant you weren't hanging out with them anymore. Not on purpose, just by circumstance. It might not seem like this was all about beating the game per se, but remember where these feelings developed from? This panic, you lose your credibility if you didn't know what happens. This... We didn't agree on that. I never had. Yeah, I just never... This is all you believe in to me. This is projecting. There it is.  You don't have credibility. You didn't be able to drink.  Then later on it's like, now knowing that, we can conclude. It's like, no, no, no. Now that we've agreed on this same thing I've said, we can move right along. Desire to be included in what was being talked about video games were a fad, and the internet shortened the lifespan of how long those fads would be in style. If you didn't beat Red Dead Redemption in the two weeks it came out, your friends were already moving on to something else. Oh my God, man. Oh my God, man. It's been two weeks. Damn, bro. It's been two weeks. Isn't that game like... The game is huge. Yeah, I was about to say. Was I... All I know about that game is it's massive. I feel like an alien listens to this guy. He's like, my friends played RDR2 and I didn't, and then they would be like, it's really good and I'd be like, cool. That's awesome. Right, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about some other things. I don't know, it's really noted. The game's lasted for a while, even while the internet, you know, even in the... Yeah, it's just... And if you have someone... If you have someone who hasn't finished the game, you finish already, it's like, oh, sure, I hope you finish it soon so we can talk about it. Yeah, that's it. You can't wait. Well, but then also, here's a crazy concept. You could have somebody talk about a game that you haven't played and you can still listen to them and engage with them. It's insane, yeah. That's entirely possible, so... There's so many variables, it was precedent for this. People did it with film. It was nuts and bugs. Well, you bring up an important thing with them all because if I was to try and steal man it, I'd say the only type of experience I can really relate to what it's saying is with TV shows, but it's a bit of a different experience because I hang out with a lot of reviewers and so if we want to really talk about all the spoilers in Soka, right? Well, like on FNT, yeah, or hanging out with you guys, we want to review a movie that's recently come out. Then I do feel a certain pressure. It's like, oh, I better watch that so I can... But it's not to the sense where I don't know, like you left behind or something like that. With games, there's still the gameplay element to it where with movies or shows, you get the whole story revealed. That spoilers are much more damaging. With games, you can hear the entire story or you can hear about the boss and everything and still want to play it to explore the mechanics. Well, there are also other ways, yeah, there's other ways to experience games as well. You can watch through or play together or whatever as well to be somewhat informed. Because it's also interesting, right? Because I did not play Last of Us 1 or Last of Us 2, but I remember having conversations with Moeller or something like about... Maybe I was just watching it when you guys were reviewing it on eFap and I felt like I was part of it. Oh, yeah, the coverage with the gaming. Yeah, because the coverage was extensive and I've never played the game, but I felt part of the conversation because I was just engaged about the controversy of Last of Us 2. And comparing the game to the movies. Comparing the game to the show, that actually really helped seeing what they changed, what they didn't. Because I didn't play it either, so being able to have that filled in, whoever did that, perfect. It's kind of isolating this problem as if it's something to do with games, but it really couldn't be applied to any shared interest. Hey, did you see that Pigger's game yesterday? Yeah, that was crazy. He threw the ball in the place and they got a point. Wow, that's nuts. Hey, did you catch that episode of Seinfeld? Hey, did you read that book that was a New York Times bestseller? Yeah, 50 Shades of Grey. Isn't that a great read? As I said, no one. But it's not really indicative of games itself. It's just any shared interest that is currently being shared or discussed by the people you hang out with, which could be literally anything or about anything or anybody or any particular industry. And holy crap, I remember actually, yes, I was on an e-fap talking about Last of Us 2 because it was the last e-fap anniversary stream and we were reviewing...  Hey, Daryl? What was he talking about? Jim, the fact that Jim Sterling... Yes, Sterling, that guy. And I'd never played the game, but I had no problem engaging on a substantive level about the commentary he was making because he was saying really stupid things as well. And so you can still be part of, you know, the conversation, the interaction of a game without ever having played it. I've experienced it first hand with e-fap, but it was the last anniversary stream we did. There we go. But I guess maybe that's what we're ramping up to with this video, that it's eventually gonna get to, you know what? And that's okay, that's fine. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we're jumping the gun. You're being included in a discussion closed. It wasn't in the fairy tale high school bully kind of way, but beating games had gone from making you cool to being accepted. Is it hard to believe the industry with capital? Where did she grow up? I was gonna say, what was that?   His childhood was messed up, his school sucked. Like, this is just a terrible situation he was born into with games, I don't know. But it lies on its biggest demographics, worst anxiety, limited editions, pre-order bonuses, DLCs. Okay, this is a whole other thing that we're getting into when we're talking about that. That's a different conversation again. Extending the story, or in some cases providing the ending to the base game story. Online functions at a monthly premium. Season passes guaranteeing- Wow, god, Xbox, yeah. This out on future developers utilizing underhanded methods of making pre-owned copies of games impossible to use. It became harder and harder to keep up with the rest of the community if you weren't buying the new release and tunneling through it for the sake of being part of it. Even now- God, I just- You okay, Theo? I was about to ask you. You okay, Theo? When am I- I'm not okay. My soul is- So this video is just about FOMO, not- Yeah, I was about to say this video could just be literally called FOMO. It's got nothing to do with whether or not you need to finish a game. Yeah, a lot of the comments agree with it, too. A lot of the comments on this video are hyper-positive. So I'm just like, this is not a video essay. This is a vlog that people are finding and agreeing with. Yeah, it's kind of funny. You can solve a lot of this by just having a casual interest in almost all games that are coming out. Like, even if you don't play them, pretty much anybody can mention any game to me. I'll be like, oh, yeah, I heard that you can do blah, blah, and blah, and that it looks like blah. And it's sound- And blah made it. And it's like, you have a casual interest in all games. And therefore, you can never be left out because you know a little bit about everything. Like, it's not too hard to keep up with the industry if you actually enjoy the games and things coming out. Feeling like I'm missing out on a game my friends love convinces me to buy games without a second thought. Compounding into a sunk-cost fallacy I've built up since high school. You need to, like, let it pass. Don't lie to us. We have the footage. It's from childhood. Like. Yeah, I can imagine. He just needs to properly balance all this stuff.  Because now you feel pressured to go and see it. We're like, what? No, this is good news. That means I'm probably going to like the film. I don't know. Like, why, why, why are you putting it this way? It's like, I had to finish it. I had a sunk-cost fallacy of knowing that if I didn't complete it, I fear I would never be able to discuss with them. It's just like, dude, you need to calm down. When they say Red Dead Redemption 2 is neat, and then you go, hmm, I might pick it up. And then they go, yeah, that'd be neat, because we could talk to you about it, maybe play the multiplayer. Okay, doesn't need to be some, say, Tannig Lewis dominated version of this. That's awful. Like, it could just be all that. I just imagine, I just imagine, like, Lewis and all his friends were like surrounding him and it lies on the ground and the playground is like, hey, hey, JC, did you buy Red Dead yet? It's like, no, no. It's like, open up your phone. Buy it. Come on. Do it. I want to see you do it. Lewis is holding Chad. I think we should fill in Chad. Lewis was his childhood friend that started this whole drama for him. Lewis is just like holding, calm. Like, he brings people in. Like, has he played the game? Yeah, at this point, Lewis is a slenderman like creature that appears in his nightmares. They haven't finished the game. A scientific study waiting to prove video game backlogs begin at around the same time a video game enthusiast gets their first job. And maybe you want to make it up to your younger self and fulfill a desire which was never indulged. Maybe you're like me and bought every game you pirated as a kid to justify your own conscience. Or maybe, like many of us, you practice retail therapy and get yourself something you like when you're going through a rough time. Retail therapy. Retail therapy? What is that? Apparently, when you buy something, it's an American thing. When you become happy when you buy something. Look, I experienced that today, guys. I bought two new swords at a medieval festival and it made me pretty darn happy. I just, you hold the sword and I just smile. That makes sense, I guess. I was imagining like going into Toys R Us and just like talking to the cashiers, like, yeah, I've got to have some problems, like my friends. I think that's what he said. Sir, please. I appreciate the version. Then you realize you've spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on a huge list of games you kept assuring yourself you'd definitely play. Dude, you need someone to talk to about all of this. He is talking to an audience. Talking to the world, because that's what the internet did. It allowed everyone to share all of their trauma. This is his therapy. And so your backlog and the sunk cost fallacy attached to it is born. Beating games isn't your job anymore, though. Playing games is what you do in your free time or in between tasks at work. In other words, you can't devote an entire week to them without taking a few days off from, well, everything. But what's the point in buying and playing games if it doesn't be you? What is this? Like, what are you saying? What are you saying? What are you saying? What are you saying?  Seriously. Died. I think we figured out, like, four minutes in that this was, like, totally personal, just emotional.  I don't know about you guys, but, like, when there was a game that was kind of running on a bit, GTA IV, that game would never freaking end. My reward for being in that game was, like, oh, man, I can try something new. I can get a new game and play that. I kind of would make that a really game. And that's personal. It's probably not applicable to everybody. But my kind of reward was, like, wow, I finished that. I'll get another game. I can try that. So he's, like, saying, like, he's, like, I can't stand playing games seven days a week. I got to get a reprieve and, like, curl up in a ball on the floor and the story is just not enough time between all of the worldly responsibilities that we have and playing video games. But I got to play the video games. Otherwise, I'll be alone, huddled over on the ground like this guy, grieving to the heavens what the hell am I supposed to do now? It's so dramatic. It all depends on it. Yeah. I don't know, like, you can't, if you're talking to someone and they've played a game that you haven't, just ask them questions about it. Because I'm sure the person who has the game will probably be quite happy to go into detail and explain how a game works to a person who hasn't played it. Yeah, you can get help without spoilers. It could be a benefit sometimes to have a friend.  The idea that you didn't talk to people about games that you didn't play at any length at all is, like, alien to me. That's, that's baffling. I can't relate to that at all. I definitely talk to people about games that I hadn't played. And to them about games that they hadn't played, it wasn't, like, this crazy thing that would end the friendship. That's, I don't understand. Like, hi, Fringy. That's usually how you get into new games. Then you talk about how you want to talk about BioShock and I'm like, I haven't played it, bye. Bye. You don't beat them, right? It's like losing out on an investment or something. Because that's totally what I'm doing. A game is an investment, I think, because it might beat it. It depends on how you. You could argue that. You could argue that with everything you choose to contain. If you see the way that he's delivering these lines, he's approaching a revelation, seeing the pause of like, but it's an investment. And it's like figuring it out in real time. It should truly be treated as just fun experiencing, not an investment. Yeah, we're ramping up to a realization, I think, hopefully. I've been saying that for a while. The content of the video is going to be in the last two sec. I think we're about to pivot into the inspirational part of the video essay. You know, the part where it starts. Where he figured it all out. Yeah. We're not nearly at the end. We still got seven minutes left, but we're getting there.  Move on to the next one. If you ask me, the presence of a backlog implies we've never grown out of our childhood habits. We've... Whoa! What? Bro! What? What are you talking about? Speak for yourself! Having a backlog is the normal state of affairs. Yeah, especially when there's things like Humble Bundle, which I still am subscribed to. And the stream library and the sales. You can only build a backlog. Entries in my Steam library, because of all these dumbass things. Not all of them, like Humble Bundle. Just over time, just add it up, add it up. Absolutely. They're making it combined. I'm faster than I can play them.  I'd be like, what? Why would you buy a game and never play it? And I'm like, listen, adulthood's complicated.  Like, we're lucky we got it at the right time. Like, there's way too many games, way too much. And like, it's impossible to not have a backlog in this day and age. We have Steam banned Lewis, so... Damn, we can get to it. Isn't this one kind of antithetical to his whole video? Because he's saying that like, oh, because we have the fear missing out and we've got to buy all these games that we're still doing the same thing as our childhood. So we shouldn't buy more games. Isn't that kind of antithetical to the fact that you can try games out and not finish them? Because that's like the whole premise of the video, right? I mean, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but like, is he familiar with the idea that you have a wish list and then they come on sale but you don't have time to play them so you buy them to play them in future and then you forget about them. But this is a thing that can happen. A very reasonable thing that can happen. You want to grab the deal, but you don't have time. Happens to me a lot. I have such a huge backlog when I look at my Steam games. A lot of my backlog, I don't even consider backlogs, just things in my inventory, which I got randomly with those bundles. So which is highlighted, yeah. Everyone has a backlog from the moment they're born because of free-to-play games. They're always there. They're in your library if you want them. Oh, don't mention that to him.   You've found ways to add importance to something which should have never mattered in the first place.  Yeah, there it is. Ooh, boring. Capitalism. Boring. Boring. We have Karl Marx. We could learn a lot from the answer. Karl Marx always finished his game. Once we start to understand how expensive that is. Socialist hands couldn't even kill Kang. I don't know, man. They can't do anything right. I played games because they're fun. I don't know how this guy can put those things into the such a crappy statement. Our hobby is suddenly we're measuring cost versus experience and seeking to maximize our profits by mil- You know what? I can't take any of this seriously.  Do you? Yeah. Like, yeah, I do that, buddy. Is the reason that all this is happening is like, wow.  Yeah.  Well, you have friends who are just iffy them. There's no- His friends don't do that. Come here. You're not here. I'm not this guy. Definitely not. There are so many great free-to-play games as well. And- Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's so boring to listen to one of you like, you see, it's the cost that's attached to the games. It makes us feel as though.  I feel like a much simpler explanation is we have finite time on this planet. We've got to make choices about how we spend that time. Yeah. And we often make half choices, half measures where we're like, I'll pick up the game now. I'll play it a little bit now. I can't complete it before I go on holiday, but I'll try. And then you'll forget about it. There's all kinds of things. Yeah. And until you retire, generally speaking, from it from being a child to an adult, the older you get, the more money you make, but the less time, free time you have. So that ratio is going to get a little tighter. So you're going to buy just logistics alone. You're probably going to have more games to play than you have time to play them all. Belting the game for everything it's worth. And if we don't, well, that's our fault. We made a bad investment. No, why? Why do you even do this? If there's a game, there's so many games I haven't even completed recently than I've played on Steam that if I don't look at them and feel shame, I look at them and I'm like, well, I picked that up again. Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure.  Something didn't hold us long enough and now it's money wasted. It's not though. You paid money to play a game and you played it. You enjoyed something until you were. So you presented the crazy person just to say the rational thing. Is that the point of this video? Tired of it. That's normal. No one expects you to cash optimize how you go bowling and quite frankly. Yeah, nobody does. So why did you say it? No, he's playing it. It's just therapy for him. That's what this is. Over the head with my ball if you try to rush me. And likewise, there shouldn't be an expectation to beat a game just because you spent money on it. Yet some of us still push through a game we don't like and. Hey, don't show him. That's Simpsons. Fuck. That game is awesome to play. Just to knock it off the list, you better believe the industry took advantage of this mindset too. The last decade has been 10 years of re-releasing old games. The last decade has been hang on. But the idea that like dead space in Resident Evil 4 that just re-releases is annoying.  I imagine you might be talking about like remasters of the because it feels like remasters became very popular with the eighth generation in particular. Remasters would be a fair argument. They were mastering still. They've been remastering and re-releasing games since the 80s at least. How many times have they redone Tetris? They did the entire like first four games in the Super Mario Brothers series for the SNES. They did the all-stars. Yeah, all-stars, which is a great collection, by the way. But yeah, it's like it's done a new thing. Yeah, it's probably a little more common now because there's more games to remaster. That's just kind of an obvious thing. There's more games remasters. There's going to be more remasters. Monthly subscriptions for instant access to your very own backlog and massive sales to drive up purchases. Why is he saying this like a bad thing? Yeah. Subscribe to his service, get access to a huge library of games. So that sounds like a good thing. Yeah. Pretty cool. It's seen games as a service become a popular way of keeping players invested and begrudgingly getting through bad content to get to new content. What? What? The whole point of it is to make it up. Is he doing the thing, represents the TISM argument and then says it's not that? I don't get it though.   Just to get to the ones they like. Rather than, this is just a good way to get people to be in the Xbox ecosystem and play the games that they want to play. And in fact, it relies on people playing. Like the system doesn't work if people are playing every single game. The system works because people are only playing a handful of those games. Because if everybody was playing every single game, it would make it to like, to where it wouldn't be sustainable. To have every single game on the platform. Because people wouldn't be buying any of those games anymore. There'd be like no individual purchases.  It's, because that's what he's implying. It's, it's very important. I think he's implying, he's showing Destiny 2, so I'm assuming that's relevant. Destiny 2 does have like DLC, buying DLC to be on DLC. Ha ha, yeah, that's enough. A lot of content and stuff. But that's specifically that game. Well, the thing about that though, is the point of the live service game is to make sure you're only playing that game forever. They want you to play that game and nothing else. They want you to be hyper immersed in their ecosystem to the exclusion of everything else. I'd say that's like a very different phenomenon. You know, if you're missing out, baked into live service games and season passes and everything like that, they want you more and more and more and more invested in one game. Because you want to keep up with the conversation about that one game, you're invested in the community of that one game. I think that honestly, that this whole premise of this video is just kind of missing the forest for the trees because honestly, the reason why we have such a great huge backlog is because games have never been more affordable and more plentiful than ever in history. You can buy great games for $5, $10, on sale for $2, you know, you can get them on Steam, you can get them on GOG, you can get them on Uplay for some reason. If you want to use Uplay, you know, there's all these different platforms. Yeah, Game Pass. Game Pass, you get like access to 100 games at a time or something. Oh, well, you get new games for no additional cost from Xbox anyway. Yeah, it rotates out every few months or whatever, but you get access to potentially hundreds of games over the following years. So yeah, we just have so much more affordable to get a lot of games, especially with the sales and stuff.  It would take years to go down. Eventually, it might go down to 40 bucks or whatever, but or you can get it used maybe, but yeah, the games are extremely affordable and plentiful nowadays. So it's really just a, not even that unfortunate. It's actually a nice side effect of it, just you have tons of options to play now. Kind of went past it, but I do want to, it's just, it was on my mind. I was trying to think about it. You know when he said like, you would even start to buy games he pirated previously to try and clear his conscience? I was just thinking of myself like, why would you phrase it that way instead of, I wanted to support the games that gave me so much entertainment back in the day. You know what I mean? Everything's a self report with this guy. Yeah, it's like he did it because he felt guilty. As they often are. Yeah. This whole video. In any case, on that note, Mr. The Movie Cynic, that was very subtle and nicely said. You're going to have to have to get on out of here, I suppose. You've, I don't know, you're going to sleep. You're going to do things in real life. I'm not sure. I actually have a gaming situation going on. I'm going to go play some Call of Duty, of all things. You don't have to. I know it's, is Louis forcing you to do this? It's the only way I can hang out with like, all of my childhood friends live across the country. So it's the only way we can all hang out and play. Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's the only game we can all agree on anyway.  I like the idea of the, you know, half of people agree on great games.  All right. Thank you for popping in, sir. Appreciate it. And I'm sure we'll catch you again in the future. Yes, I will catch you guys later. Enjoy the rest of this vlog self-report, therapy session, whatever. You know it. And happy anniversary, you guys. Thanks for the invite. Thanks, dude. You betcha. Thanks for coming. Bye. Have a good day, man. See ya. Oh, thank God he's gone. Oh my goodness. Oh, absolutely. Oh, I thought he'd never leave. Franks was still alive. Ah. Oh, no. I love everyone in all things. Because I was going to say like, God, you know the way I really hate is Mark the Cyborg, I'm so glad that he ended up here. Oh, hey, dude. If he turns up, I'm going to. Oh my God. Really? Oh, I really appreciate his presence.  Oh, hey, man. Yeah. Yep. I sure do like things.  It's like he doesn't want to talk to us. That's fine. You know, I couldn't stand that. May, may. Fair enough. Fair enough. Maybe.  That does with the amount of footage we had of that in this video. I feel like that was a particularly traumatic experience for this man. That was the one that did it. Mark, if you can hear us, we can't hear you. And as you get in that all fixed up, there is a watch together link. You're welcome to join us. We go further into this adventure. Now I can hear you guys. There you go. There we go. Yeah, I was on a stream using restream and I had to reselect my mixing board in that program. And I think it broke discord somehow because I definitely use discord more than I use a web solution that I've never once used ever. Well, we have friends like that. Gumi friends who use like insane archaic technology. They're called Adam and Sitch. They use Zoom. Oh, they use Zoom. Yeah, they do. Oh, my goodness. And they pay for it, Rags. They pay for that. They pay for it. They pay for it. You know what? I don't like shaming many people, but that is embarrassing. I didn't even know you could pay for Zoom. I didn't either. They pay for what? What are they getting out of that? I don't know what they pay in full because this is selfish. When I pay for discord Nitro, I get a shitload of stuff. Yeah. And if you don't pay for it, you get all the bait and stuff. I just, you know, I just, I just don't get it. They let you to like 40 minute calls if you don't pay for Zoom, I think. Oh, that is true. He's fucking... Anyway, off to this video. Continuing it. Mark, link right there for you if you need it. It's seen digital storefronts compete with launch window discounts and the growth of the sketchy gray market where people can make haphazard additions to their libraries. It's seen game design philosophy change to cater to a completionist mindset and focus on keeping... I mean, some of it, maybe. I don't have a... Wait, hang on. Why have we demonized the completionists? They can be normal people. Yeah, can be. I'm crying. Can be. It's just some games are like this, sure. But other games are definitely not like this. Yeah. But also the completionist mindset is another way that can add greater playability to a game. I remember when me and my wife were playing through the new Tomb Raider. Or, well, the old new Tomb Raider. Anyway, the first of the reboot Tomb Raider. That one, right? Yeah. Like, oh, very fun game. Didn't take too long to get through the story, but my wife was enjoying the game so much that she wanted to keep playing it. And the thing that offered her, you know, greater playability was going through and completing all the achievements. And so she just went back and started going through, hunting for all the achievements she's got. And so that actually gave her greater value, having that completionist kind of goal. And so... So an interesting thing to bring up in the context of achievements with Lewis's video is there is a subset of people who feel like they have to be rushed their way to clearing every single achievement. And it's big in the PlayStation community because there's a specified trophy called a Platinum trophy that you get when you finish every single other trophy in the game. And I know people that will flat out play games that they don't like to full completion because they feel like they had to get the Platinum or they didn't really play the game. And they'll say, if you didn't get the Platinum, then you didn't really play. You obviously didn't really love Horizon Zero Dawn because you don't have the Platinum trophy. That's like, well... As someone who did a lot of achievement hunting and had friends who were obsessed with Platinum, even the most obsessed, I didn't see that sentiment around at all. It would be seen as like, you're not as good at the game as me if you haven't got the Platinum. I do that sort of sentiment, but like a sense that you haven't actually played the game fully if you haven't got the Platinum. Some games, Platinum's are retarded, you know, the same for... Which just goes well beyond like any normal person's enjoyment of a video game. So I don't know. There's some games you can kind of make that argument for. Like anyone here play Diablo 2, I'm assuming? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People I'm assuming. Not with achievements, but I played Diablo 2 quite a bit, yeah. If basically for me, I felt like if you didn't play to the point where you actually got a character strong enough to duel and like go into the PvP aspect, then you didn't experience the game fully. If you just went through normal Nightmare in Hell and just killed monsters, you didn't get the full experience of the game. So that's one game I kind of have that feeling with, but it doesn't apply to like all games when it comes to just achievements because I think that's like a distinct aspect of that particular game where you have to get strong enough if you actually want to do the PvP aspect to it. I didn't do PvP professionally, but I just play it with friends and kill each other a bunch, collect ears, you know, have a laugh, then go back to the main game because... Not professionally. I just mean like in the games, like you go to the custom games or the public games and you can get dual rooms all the time. There would be fights and public duels where the most intense part of that game. You'd go in and you'd just get one shot thinking you're strong. You'd reevaluate your whole build. So, yeah. Yeah, I was never going back to achievements. I don't know if that was really the point of the video, but I've gone back to achievements. I never was interested in chasing achievements. The only exception to that I think was probably, I want to say Soul Calibur 4 or 3, because there's so many of them. It was, I think it was 4, I want to say. Soul Calibur 4 had a really, I don't, I've not seen this anywhere else in any game. They actually unlocked content based on the quantity of achievements you got. So, you could customize, you could take any character build from any of the fighters and make your own completely custom character. And I actually like recreated the entire cast of the Lord of the Rings. You know, I made a Gandalf character with the staff. I made an Aragorn character with like a rapier and all those different other characters. And it was, it was pretty fun. And you could actually customize them visually. But they actually would lock visual customizations for those behind milestones of the quantity of achievements you got. So, I would actually specifically find the easiest achievements to accomplish and get like 20, 30 achievements in order to get more customization gear. It was very weird, but that's the only reason I ever did it. Proper incentive. Yeah. I find achievements and trophies, like any kind of meta game system that's usually at the platform level can be really good if you're into the game anyways. And it can give you a really, as Shad was saying a moment ago, it just, it gives you that carrot on the stick to chase after if you want to just get some time. I like those challenges. Yeah.  I find them lame, but where it's like, you know, go through a particular area without using the obvious thing that you use to win easily. It's like, yeah, fun challenges. The ones that actually test your skill. Like not, yeah, the repetitive ones are just so dumb. Fire this gun 20 times. Yeah. Busy work. Kind of like that. Yeah. It's just, you roll your eyes at them immediately as a gamer. Ever heard of a game called My Name Is Mayo? So, it's okay. It's a PlayStation Network game that is famously just a buy this game and get an easy platinum because it's a game where all you have to do is tap on this jar of mayonnaise to win and you can get the platinum in like 10 minutes and it's sold like hundreds of thousands of copies because there's people just for the game score. Yeah. Yeah.  You know, it's funny is King Kong, the official video game.  Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the game where they gave you only golden as well. But yeah, these were all games that achievement hunters would get because they like easy money sort of thing and the currency of social coolness because everyone thought you were really cool the more game score you had. Where I think that has become a problem in Sony's design is they've now stopped tying difficulty to achievements. So, you notice you do not have to. Mark, you're quiet. Oh, am I? Sorry. Yeah. Turn yourself up a wee bit. I think you're quiet. Better? Yeah. Any different? Yeah, a little bit better. Yeah, a little bit better. Yeah. Yeah, cool. What I was saying, though, is the achievements in Sony games are no longer ever tied to difficulty, I believe.  And I think the reason they did that is because so many casual people started freaking out because they couldn't get the Platinum Trophies. So, they wanted to make it so that, well, you can throw it on very easy and still get the Platinum. So, it's more. They always want to nerf it now. Where's the challenge in games? There is a lameness to it, what is like the beat on the hardest difficulty. But then there is an increased layer of lameness when it's like, beat on the hardest difficulty and don't take a single hit. You're like, what?  And it's like in 20 minutes. Like, okay. Or when you have to beat it on the really hard difficulties and it's like 10 gamers score. It's like, yeah, awesome. Yeah, thank you so much for that. Thanks so much. The damn tutorial gave me 30. So, like whatever. Players busy long enough to void refund periods. It's required the redefinition of a refund to protect consumers in however small a way it does. The pride, the need for it. I just think that's normal. I don't even see that as a bad thing. The fact that I wish did that happen more, that there's more attention given to the new markets as they evolve and an understanding of how things reflect that going forward in times. It's the same with piracy, right? Like in everything to do with the react stuff. So companies almost don't even want to get involved because it's so insanely complicated and strange, but they will as soon as enough money changes hands, right? Or is enough is stolen. And yeah, when it comes to what is the nature of refunds when it comes to video games? It's like, I don't mind the idea that it's like we need to restructure the whole thing to figure out. It's like, yeah, just get it done. Figure it out. Get it fair. And as flawed as the steam refund system is now, it's still tremendously better than the old one. Wasn't there a game that prompted it to happen? Wasn't like No Man's Sky or anything. Was it? I don't remember. Total Biscuit used to talk about it. And I think he actually fought to get a mandated refund system. And now it's like two weeks or two hours, whatever, whichever one happens. Something like that, yeah. But it's like a flat thing. Like you can always get a refund as long as you meet that criteria. The only time you can get screwed is like I've had this happen before where do you ever run a steam game and it keeps on running even after you close it. I've had that happen like once or twice.  How come night was the game that made it happen? Oh, okay. Maybe.  It's like refund now. Think either a game can sit in your library for two weeks unplayed or you play two hours of it, whatever comes first. And then your refund is invalidated. And I think a GOG, not to toot their horn, but I think they have like a pretty much a flat 30 day 30 day. Yeah, it's pretty fair. If you go over two hours in steam, can you like do a personal appeal and if you can explain it and you have a history of no refunds they'll give it to you. Yeah, extreme situations. I think people were actually able to get no man's Sky refund even after two hours. It's possible it might be happening for Armor Core 6 because I actually tweeted a steam review of it where people were saying, yeah, I just I just died to the tutorial boss for fun. I was like, oh, that that first boss is pretty hard. Teaches you how to play pretty quickly, though. Well, apparently 20 June 2015 was when they implemented their Steam policy. I don't remember which game kind of prompted that, but. Acceptance and now a misplaced urge to be responsible. We've attached so many odd values to an insignificant part of playing games the industry has with every breath reinforced and ingrained into the culture of gaming. God, so this is the problem. Did you just include achievements alongside like value list things that we've attached to video games because a lot of people see value in them and we face some of them are really fun. Yeah, that can be some fun ones. Oh, yeah. Beating to finally be going after that achievement and then to do it into here, that little bloop. Yeah, pop up at the bottom. It's one of the most cathartic and satisfying things you'll ever do in your life.   And it pops up in like videos for fun things. Yeah. It's the obligate achievement hunters who are the weird ones. Yeah. Ames isn't about increasing our net worth literally or figuratively. Playing games is supposed to be a relaxing or invigorating experience. No, it isn't. Boring.  To you. Yeah. Ends on you depends on the experience you're looking for, but not necessarily. He doesn't want to relax a game with the competitive games. He doesn't understand the difference between an investment and a cost. Like you're not investing in a video game you're buying really, you're buying it. And the value that you get out of it is did you feel that it justified the cost that you played? Because you're not playing to finish the game and get every achievement. You're playing to own the game and play the game. The thing is, it's so broad again because when I buy, let's just say the newest whatever, hop it in to start playing it. It's like, what are you expecting? I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I guess I hope I'm engaged. I hope I enjoy this. I hope that maybe I get through enough hours that I can feel that the price was actually not at all a knock to my account at all. I'm like, oh, okay. But what if you don't like it? It's like, I mean, you know, I guess I might be able to refund it or I might go further. The amount of experiences that come out of it, and he's sitting there like, we've cynically as a capitalistic society turned video gaming, which is supposed to be a wonderful experience where we, you know, have art and humans coexist together in a wonderful equilibrium. But now instead, we constantly think about our investment cost portfolio and our network. He's like, what are you talking about?  You can do that. You've got some guys just like, oh, man, I don't know if I should have paid like $20 for this when I've only played it for a couple of hours and I'm bored. And then he's sitting next to you going, this is capitalism that did this. All right, calm down. I'm just saying, you know, I'm just saying that I should have bought the other game, baby. Yeah. And video games were born in the arcades, which would charge you like 25, 50 cents per life and would purposefully kill you. In fact, even a lot of arcade games would have, would you take damage by using special abilities? So it isn't a new thing to want money for millions of dollars R&D and development, you know, and actually make profits on your, on your entertainment, work of entertainment than that way for a long time. For however long it remains so, if a 200 hour RPG doesn't keep me invested for its entire length, that's fine. Maybe it says something about how I feel towards the game itself, but not me. It doesn't make me that kind of person. Finish. What was that kind of person?  Hey, you just didn't like the game enough to put the time in to finish it. So you moved on. We just got bored and move on, exactly. Yep. I think one of the factors, sorry. These are not questions I'm looking to counter, but I guess I have to, when he says like this doesn't say anything about me, it just says something about me and my relationship with the game. It's like that might say something about you. Why are we having these conversations? Like it's a relation that reflects upon you kind of implicitly. It doesn't have to be negative or positive or anything. Like what's happening? Where did this come from? So we're just going to talk about why you don't need to complete airgames for reviews. I didn't know we're going to be going. Bring back Lewis. Yeah, Lewis was, Lewis made me laugh. Like he had a narrative at one point and he just got off the rails now. Like I don't know how he's going to tie all this back in. Yeah, it's you can't really decide whether he wants to criticize the current monetization or the achievement score hunting, that sort of achievement culture versus peer pressure versus 90s marketing where it's like, you've got to play this game because you'll be cool like Chris. How cool is Chris? He's awesome. He beats games. You know, it's just like a really weird jumbled mess. He's not exploring other perspectives either, just his own. Like everything seems so limited with this guy always. Every aspect of this video. I promise I don't mean this to brag about how cool I am, but I did just finish Baldur's Gate 3. And the only reason I played that game. Cool guy. The reason I played it. So cool. It's because of.  Video regs made on Divinity Original Sin 2. I tried to play it twice and it didn't really pull me in, but I could tell there was something about it that I did really like. So when the early access for Baldur's Gate 3 came out and I was making videos for G&G and needed things to play that I could finish relatively quickly. I was like, okay, the first active in RPG I could probably do that. Really enjoyed it. And now I would honestly consider going back to Divinity because I now like Larian's work. I've played one of their games to complete the first hand. So that's a game that was in my backlog that I could look at as, oh my God, that's a game I just wasted money on. I invested all that time and I didn't even, I didn't even get out of that first beach town. But it's like, oh well, no, but clearly, clearly it had some effect on me. And I did want to continue trying to connect with that genre of games. And I just did. So, yeah. Right. And you might pick that game up later on, you know, like still have it. Finally finish it. Yeah. Finishing a game isn't even important to understanding it.   Do most of us do that? Did you take that up? It's more so just like, what does this have to do with anything? Yeah, yeah. It's like, we don't need to finish games. Most of the time we talk about how they made us feel than the end of the game. Yeah. What are you talking about? The discussion's worthless about them anyway. So why even play them? That's what it sounds like. Like, okay. What point do you think you're making?  Yes, we have feelings toward the thing, whether or not, whether or not we spend 10 seconds or 10 hours with it. Why would you even bring this up? He's just whining. He's just, he's kind of just talking about some stuff that he's thinking. He's just rattling around in there. It's funny how Shad and now Mark have only seen like different parts of the video, but these tiny parts they can figure out. You didn't need this full thing.  You can figure it out. I was watching when I was picking up my dinner or something. Oh, yeah? Oh, cheater. Oh, cheater. He talks about retail therapy. Sorry, he talks about retail therapy, but it almost seems like this is just his own YouTube therapy, convincing himself that it's okay that he has not finished his entire library, which is fine, but. I think Frim mentioned it. If we weren't in a strictly, like, whether or not, you talk about investment, right? He's talking about it strictly from a capitalistic point of view. We would have it from a time point of view anyway. Of course. And so would he just be like, this is the fault of chronalism, and we need to move on from it? Yeah, this is the fault of cause and effect. We need to understand that we can just do anything. You're always gonna be making trades between the things that you do always. Even if there's no money, there's time as a commodity in and of itself if you want to put it that way. Feel anything. They don't have to. There's no guarantee they will, and finishing them won't change that. Now that we're older, does it really matter if you know every secret a cool fact about a game?  No, never. I agree. I agree. We would do one there. Guys, now that we've come to be older in the past 10 minutes, don't you think that we don't need every secret? He's like, what?  Eight-year-old and correcting someone on some anecdotal piece of trivia, not the most annoying thing to do in the world. No, this video is one of the annoying things in the world. This is. Are you venting now? I like that. He's just like, I assume that we agree. It's like, not that we agreed that Sarin did nothing wrong. Can we all just move on and say that? On what Theos just said, it's like, isn't it evident that he had a video on Sonic and someone in the comments said, you know what you said? Fun piece of trivia for you. You were actually wrong about that piece of trivia. It turns out it's not Sonic.  Do you get meaning out of doing that to people, correcting them? Is that it? Well, yes, I do. Yeah, that's right. I mean, this is like, I'm sorry your review was shitty. It's just like the stealing video.  It's like, let me be wrong. It's like, I am letting you be wrong. I'm correcting you. Be wrong in the privacy of your own house. And don't drag us in. You'll make a decision to be wrong on the Internet. Yeah, the sterling video was especially just like, yeah, let me be wrong and don't be bitter about it. Or also, I'll play more of your games and rate them lower. By the way, this game that you don't like is much better than the games you do like, huh? All right.  It just comes all the way. Don't make me play the game more. I'll get more familiar with it. And you wouldn't like that. Yeah. So remember my code downer. It's so hard for someone to understand that when you say a projectionable things online, people object. Like, I don't understand. Nuts. Easy to have a conversation with our friends about games despite the disparity in our play times. Haven't you? It was never hard. He's still stuck on that. This is the root of his all his issues. He went through a lot, dude. Okay. He went through a lot. Someone in the mouth for invalidating you based on how much time you've put into something. Okay, wait. Let's go back there. Hang on. Hang on a minute. Easy to have a conversation with our friends about games despite the disparity in our play times.    Yeah, we all did. I think we all did. Like, oh, wrong vowel.  Wait, so, yeah.  Well, would they write? Yeah. Also, even if they were, no, I wouldn't. I didn't know.  Someone in a video game. You're like, I don't know. I want to punch like murderers and rapists, not people who talk bad about video games. Okay, I would get like a quarter point though that he is actually showing punching while he's saying that. Yeah, good for him. What has been very... Purely incidental. When you get a call and he says, I don't care what your opinion is because you've only put 10 hours into Delta. I'd probably be like, yeah, that could be fair.  I'd be like, dude. Unless you make... It's then on Jim though to make a compelling argument as to why his 10 hours in Zelda gave him a reason that he feels he can argue his position over people who have put 50 hours into the game. Because I don't necessarily think that if you haven't put as much time in as... Like I haven't put as much time into Overwatch as some of the people that have been playing Overwatch since the day it came out. But I think I can still give some thoughts on Overwatch and what I liked about it and didn't like. And I can justify that with things that are in the game because I played it. You know, like... I might have valid things to say with one second in the game. Yeah, I've never played... I've never played Overwatch but just from someone who's played, you know, first person shooters, give me like 30 seconds in the game and I could probably come to some type of opinion and like have something to say about it. Doesn't mean I'm going to be, you know, have this extensive knowledge on the game but you can still like bring something to the table.  Well, the journey to... the journey to 200 hours begins with the first 30 minutes. That's true. And not only would it be like essentially a fallacy of some kind to be like, you shouldn't be talking on this because you don't have enough time. It would also be a fallacy to be like, my opinion's better than yours because I've got more time in the game. It's like, no, it's going to be about what you guys actually said and how accurate it is.  And so that's just all people care about. Be accurate. The reason I used Overwatch as an example is because a few years ago IGN famously did a re-review of Overwatch that was a 10 out of 10 and it was written by a person who was clearly an Overwatch fanboy. So it was just like, guys, like, you just let an Overwatch superfan decide to put another number on the game three years later. Like, what's, why? How is this, how is this content? Did they even justify the numbers like some type of criteria or anything? Because it just gets people riled up when you throw a random big number out there. By the end of it is his summation. Like I don't remember a word for word but in like the abstract on it is he's like, well, while Overwatch has a significant amount of problems some of which still haven't been fixed since the first year, I just, I just am so overwhelmed with how much love and amazing happiness I've experienced in this community and playing this and I'm just like, dude. Right there, he's done. Skip over the problems and tell me about how you feel. You're not even pretending to be serious. Aren't we fully aware we'll never be able to play every game in existence and lead healthy functional lives at the the genius. Nobody wants you to and that's crazy. And that's crazy. Every single game. Do you like how he qualified it, by the way? We couldn't possibly play all of video games and be healthy. It's like, no, we just couldn't play all of video games. You could have just stopped there. It's not cost-raising. Is he not placeable? That's fine. Because yeah, why is this being presented as likes the conclusion to be drawn from this big essay? Rambling punch of nonsense.  Haven't you ever thought about that, guys? What's actually cool about the sheer amount of games now you can actually kind of just focus on your niche. What if you like very, very specific types of games? Now you've got more of them. So you can actually just focus on the games you like the most. There's nothing wrong with that. There's such a wide variety of experiences on offer. You can always find something that you're interested in on the sorts of things that you want to spend your time on. This is the revelation you guys after having considered for a long time that maybe he does need to play every video game ever made. Remember what this moment Jesus Christ back then didn't he? Is this the video that you mentioned Jesus Christ earlier on? Like where he's talking about video games and his friends? Yeah. He said you'd be seeing the God of Olympus sort of things.  He hasn't made appointments then too. That's the craziest thing. Well, doesn't it feel like you make all of these crazy different points and then you're trying to tie it all up and you say the most agreeable possible statement in the world. Let's agree, guys. You can't play all of video games.  You can't do it in a healthy way. There we go. You can, everyone can agree with this, right? Right?  I didn't catch that. An agreeable video.  Like, but I don't even want to be like mean because to me, he's just like seemingly nice, insecure guy who's just kind of talking his way through what he's feeling, turning it into a video. He's thinking out loud, for sure. I want to be him. Well, it's the kind of thing that I remember singing this about.  And it was just like, fuck, now I heard all these talking points, like all of these better explained 10 years ago by Total Biscuit. What the hell's going on? It's like, well, cycles, man. And there's people who haven't heard all of those points. There's people who don't even know who Total Biscuit is now and there's people who didn't know he was when he was actually in his prime. So, you know, you need to recycle them again because apparently this guy feels like all of this stuff is relatively new what he's talking about.  There are people who are in new gaming channels right now who are researching game analysis and going back and watching Total Biscuit. So like, how is that different from sourcing a book? You read on something. Oh, I wish it worked that way. I feel like most people don't tend to go back to all the channels unless they're already familiar with them. A lot of people just don't research period. They're just like, oh, well, stream of consciousness. I'm sure it'll be great. I can't see it being impossible though that there's a 16-year-old kid that hears about Total Biscuit, gets curious about it, goes back and watches some videos. And by the time he's 19, he has a good gaming channel. If there are any 16 to 19-year-old gamers in chat right now have never heard of the name Total Biscuit, go find him and watch all of his top popular videos about gaming. If there are any 16 to 17-year-old gamers in the chat, this isn't a chat for adults, just to be clear. Yeah, I love it. Welcome to a point where I just said to, actually, if you're any age, check him out. He's awesome. Yeah. No, he's great. He's actually my number one inspiration for starting a channel. He's awesome. Like, she got to meet him in person briefly after a panel. Super cool guy. Was he a biscuit? Just so I know. He was technically a biscuit. He was totally a biscuit. But remember, in League of Legends, they added the Total Biscuit of regeneration. Think around the Total Biscuit of that elastic. No, those things are too much. Starcraft 2 has his voice as an announcer pack you can buy. Oh, yeah, that's right. He's also, he plays the mobster in Awesome Knots. He's like, you know, actually. Yeah, I love the co-optional ganger in that game. Like, Jesse Cox plays a character as well. But no, I would love for a gaming discourse to take a couple lessons from Total Biscuit, maybe not a social media. But, you know, from his gaming discourse was amazing. He was one of the most he tried to, like, self-correct. He would be responsible with his, with what he said. He would try to take his job seriously as an industry professional, which is pretty rare nowadays. He sets so much more integrity. He's practically the post-avoy for integrity on YouTube. Absolutely. At the same time. So why do we still give so much reverence to such a small part of our hobby, which has bred such awful rhetoric? Why do we let unethical industry practice and child focused marketing pushes to treat every purchase as a lifelong commitment? Nobody does. No one does it at you. Just screaming into the void. Lifelong purchase, bro. It was part of the marketing even. Even the, like, the hypercapitalist monsters that just want to turn everything into money would be, like, lifelong. I don't know about that.  No, give us just $80 now and then another $80 next year. That's what we want. Why do we stress it? Let it go. Play until you're satisfied and don't feel bad about not finishing it. It's served its purpose.  I know what this is. After all this video, I have no idea what he's going to say. This is how little I know. It probably won't even play games. Because I feel like when people say that they don't even say something really agreeable, like, you know, having fun or, you know, socializing with your friends or something where it's like, okay, not necessarily, but that doesn't make me angry that you said it. A lot of the times they say something where it's like, oh, you may be angry. This one, as you just said, there are easy answers. If he goes with fun, I'll let it pass, but let's see what he does. Fine. It's to play them. It's not to subscribe to a fictional world for the rest of our lives. It doesn't come with the price tag of needing to interact with every piece of media it's related to. Another industry practice, great for quantity. That's the point. This one coming from. What's the reason? Yeah. Now he's talking about how when you buy it, you get compelled to consume third party stuff.   I want to read books related to this. Comic books. The Lord of the Rings games. Yeah, Lord of the Rings has the same thing. These days though, it'd be like, do you want to see Ray in a video game? He's like, no. No. I don't see Ray anywhere. I don't see on our poster. No, lucky for you. She's got a movie that'll have a game, surely. I bet even Daisy Ridley is like, I kind of would like it if I had another big role, to be honest, if I could pick. She's broke. Like, what are they going to do? Her and like, Amelia Clark is cursed and Ray she's gonna make a new Jedi order.  It'll be great. Yeah, more. That's just what the Star Wars fandom want to see. That's just what they want to see. Honestly, I Ray and Finn deserve some type of redemption, but Disney just doesn't have the talent to do it. They if they haven't learned anything from that. So I have no faith in that movie at all. No. Yeah. No. I don't want to see Finn or Ray anymore. They have three movies. I don't want to see Star Wars anymore. I don't want to see the Star Wars. The Star needs to end. And we're season three. We need to have peace. Give a piece of chance. And we'll just have like all of us. I want to see Star piece.  Andor is going to be the one that suffers. Well, I already suffered. I'm pretty sure it got scuttled down from like, was it going to be five seasons at one point? Is it going to be five to two? I think it was at least three. And now it's two. Yeah. How many people said they didn't watch it because of Kenobi and Boba Fett? Yeah. Like that combo right there was so powerful. They don't make sense. It should have come out after Rogue One. That would have been fine. It would have been fine. Yeah. When people can remember who this guy is. Yeah. And then EFAP community start telling people to watch Andor. There's only so much we could do. OK. Yeah. That show has had some really, really good word of mouth like in general around the internet from what I've seen. People tried. So that's good. Yeah. Because like the biggest weird of mouth project seemed to be like Squid Game, Arcane, Andor to an extent. Like it does work somewhat, but it can't it can't survive if it's just weird. Yeah, the biggest problem I find with Andor is that you have to get through this Ludge known as Disney Plus to get to it. Like we've heard so many bad things about how, you know, they take a movie down their own Disney Plus original movie down after three months. They take their own Disney Plus shows down after five months. And then and 90 percent of the new original content is garbage. And you like dig through this Ludge and you get to like one or two decent pieces of media. And and they don't do any physical releases on any of their content. Like I would love to buy Andor. I buy Andor tomorrow. But a friend of mine, a friend of mine who who I do some stuff, he has Andor on Blu-ray that he got in an Asian mall that they do a really good transfer of it. He's in a steel book. It's like legit. And I was like, well, where do you like, I'll buy that right now. He's like, no, he's like, you can't. And it's like, it's just. Yeah, Pacific Mall type deal. Oh, wait, are you from Toronto? I was like, wait a minute. This guy said Asian mall. This guy's got to be talking about P-Mall. I don't care where you are in the world. Like you were from Toronto. I just didn't want to say. I knew I thought. Yeah, no, I remember that one of you was Canadian, but I couldn't remember who it was exactly. Soon as you said that the Asian mall, like he's got to be talking about P-Mall. Yeah, I'm Canadian as well. I'm from America. Yeah, I'll buy the back alley version of Andor and then just like track down the rider and just like slip it 20 into his pockets. Like, here you go, buddy. Good job. I just want to back up what Mark was saying. You could find anything at that mall. Like it's just incredible. I think it would be kind of crazy, though. If Netflix did like a physical Blu-ray of Arkane and cyberpunk edge runners and Disney Plus did a fan door or something. Something that make it expensive, make it only for people who want to get it and just see how it does. Because I feel like if a lot of people end up buying it, you might be like, oh, maybe that's one of the things that they watch, which they should test that out with Arkane. Arkane is the one that's worth the risk. Make it proper, give them a nice box set and like the real fans will come. Mm-hmm. Content related to something you like, but built entirely on strategies to drive invested players towards being guaranteed buyers. We're cautious of spoilers for games we picked up once months ago, played for two hours and keep telling ourselves we'll go back to someday. As if we owe it to ourselves to avoid being part of the community around those games until we know why? Why can't you have a single good faith interpretation of any of these things happen? I was thinking the same thing. It's the same thing over and over again. It's never elaborate at a point. Just because that conversation comes up all the time when someone says like, blah, blah, blah, and you're, whoa, you just spoiled the end of RDR2, I haven't played it yet. And it's just like, you should have played it by now. And then there's a bit of a back and forth. And the ultimate thing is just like, yeah, probably, I probably should have played it by now, but I'd appreciate it if you can find a way to make your point without mentioning the spoiler. And then the other business is like, yeah, sure. Okay, fine. Genius combine this notion with the notion of backlogs and that's more lost purchases of games than anything being like guaranteed from having people get into on the ground floor, as it were. But also Red Dead Redemption 2 is a prequel.   Leave me alone. Jeez. Like John, John Marston lives spoilers for Red Dead Redemption 2. Wow. About us. And in the same breath, we stress how important it is not to gatekeep each other no matter how comprehensively we know a specific piece. No, you can gatekeep. No, no, no. Gatekeep. It's okay. It's just better. Please gatekeep. Please. I'll gatekeep as I go.  Piece of media. Listen to how silly we sound. We can't talk about- Oh, I've been listening to you over the phone. Hi. Every time. I'm sounding very silly. Think about something or look at anything about it because we played it a couple times and really want to try it again some day and even though we're super interested but don't have the time or really the desire to go back to it at the moment, we won't let ourselves indulge and said thing in other ways we want to right now. I don't, anyone want to decide for that one? I'm so lost. Yeah. I'm not very interested in trying to figure it out. He doesn't have a point. I said that from four minutes in. What do you mean? That was the trove of section. It was so important. It just seems to be the most interesting part is childhood trauma. Isn't it lame that I feel the need to hold off on engaging with something to any extent until I played the game or I guess extended to watch the movie, read the book or whatever. But I mean, again, that's up to you. It's not necessarily a bad thing to try and abstain from as much as possible until you get to play it yourself. Like you said, you don't want to get spoiled. This video could be titled makes so much more sense if it was titled Dear Steam Library. This is why I can't play all of you. Dear Steam Library, where do you get off? What kind of weird self-inflicted punishment have we invented for ourselves? What exactly are we afraid of? Being someone who talks about this. It's you. Oh, it's this guy. Stop doing this. Jesting in this video. No, no, he's got the collar now. He's popping the collar now. There we go. This is some Yakuza cosplay. This is such a wow. Oh, yeah, he's serious. Stop saying we. Stop saying I. Everyone, there is a lot of we in this, isn't there? Yeah, including everyone. It is a lot of we in the top left corner as well. Me in this. That's true. There is a lot of we in the top left-hand corner there. Yeah. Wow, I can't believe it. We are in it. I can't believe that. We are gamers, you guys. We are one. We are going to touch a weiner. Gamers unite. Gamers rise up. Yep. I can't believe that bearded man is only 30 years old. I can't believe this. Crazy. Stuff for the sake of making videos. You'd assume I'm acting like I've liberated myself from the clutches of nefarious marketing strategies. I don't know. Maybe a little. You sound like you've reached an enlightened level of your life.  I have no idea. What are the point of these games? Intoxic gaming culture.  Not true. My need to be games is the worst it's ever been. Can you imagine? You're all serious. Story analysis of a game and. Maybe all of your analysis is actually detrimental. Maybe you just need to be normal. Not getting to the end. Or if someone in your comments wanted to have a discussion with you and you had to clarify, you never finished whatever it was you were talking about. The stigma exists whether or not you adhere to it. And I know plenty of people who won't. Wait, hold on. We were one like 15 seconds. It sounds like he is now talking about it in the context of reviews. My need to be games is the worst it's ever been. Can you imagine making a two hour story analysis of a game and not getting to the end? Or if someone in your comments wanted to have a discussion with you and you had to clarify, you never finished whatever it was you were talking about. Yeah. So the first thing I just wouldn't do. I don't think I would make a story analysis without finishing the story. Oh, I thought you meant have you ever finished watching or like you watch a two hour story analysis and you don't finish it? I thought that's what he meant. I thought you meant writing the story analysis.  Yeah, I thought you meant writing the story analysis. Why would you analyze a story for two hours without having finished the story? That's weird.  You don't know everything about it yet. So it does seem like it is about talking about things that you haven't completed. It might be fine. Well, there are contexts you could do it right. Like you could do a two hour breakdown of the two first episodes of a Soaker and you'd be like, yeah, but the whole season isn't out yet. And you're like, yeah, I'm analyzing the story as is right now. Exactly. But if you were, if you were to say, like I played halfway through Bioshock and then did a full story breakdown, I'd be like, what? Well, what would be the point? Why? Why? It might be just a desire to consistently be thought of as a person who knows what's going on and knows everything that's happening in the industry and what the good games are and why they're good and what the bad games are and why they're bad. Well, I'm excited about them. They seem to become posers, man. They just, they pretend they've played a whole ton of games that they might have dabbled with. They might have played a demo of. They might have played a beta of. And then they act like they're an expert on it. And I think that that, that's honestly, it's a much bigger problem when a YouTuber does it than when a random person in comments does it though. Oh, okay. I believe it's all the way.  Like a real gamer will sniff that out. And I don't know why they would even take that approach. It's just, we lose your credibility instantly. If your video was about why you couldn't keep going, then I would consider that a valid take as well. But if you really wanted to do an invested full breakdown of a story, but you didn't want to consume all of it, you couldn't be asked to something, I'd be like, that's a really strange approach. And then you. Again, it's just. Value your opinion then. Yeah.  Obviously. I feel that your perspective is incomplete. And I may not have a reason to it because you have incomplete knowledge. And then you're like, yeah, but it's my perspective regardless. You're like, okay, but that's their perspective. Regardless. Exactly. You just got to push on ahead regardless. You got to truck on and not be too insecure about getting those kinds of responses because you will. You always will. Sorry, guys. I know I was just going to say, this just seems like it's born of being frustrated by being held to a higher standard because you have a megaphone and you're talking about video games. You're going to be held to a higher standard and knowing a lot more about knowing your shit more than the average person who may or may not have played the game. You're now saying, I'm an expert. I'm making these long videos and giving reviews that could potentially affect people's purchases. And so people will hold you to a higher standard. This is this just kind of seems based on I don't want to have to be held to a higher standard. I want to play a little bit of games and not to worry about if I'm a completionist or if I know everything about the game. Just kind of silly.  Therefore, I must have the correct opinion and I don't have time to play all the games. So you've just got to deal with the fact that I'm not going to finish these games, but I'm still going to be an expert because I would. I'd say the thing that people probably value was not like purported wide sweeping knowledge about absolutely everything, but not very sophisticated knowledge on anything. It seems to me that people really like expertise on specific things, like a focus on a specific genre of game or a specific franchise, or just more like limited focus that seems more valuable to a lot of people. Then just being like that I'm the every man with sort of general, well, general knowledge. Yeah, but if you say you got expert knowledge and everything, it's not enough time in the day to be an expert on everything. Yeah, all you really need to do is just be honest about what your experience is with the games are. So that's why it often helped. Yeah, if you do make content and you're comfortable with streaming, streaming while you're playing the games that you're covering, I think it's been helpful for me to be like, okay, I'm going to really commit to getting through this game and actually forming some opinions that the people who are watching me are going to think of as insightful. And that you can't hide when you're forming those opinions. I mean, as we saw on the Ragnarok episode, when you're forming those opinions, people can really see quickly if you know what you're talking about and you're approachi