Playing Games the 'Right' Way | Cold Take

This week on Cold Take, Sebastian dives into how we talk about playing games the 'right way'.

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[OverlySarcasticProductions]

I've really been enjoying Cold Take these past few months, and this one might be my favorite. The underlying point about what you say only being half of the conversation, and it's up to the interlocutor/audience to interpret it as intended, is something that colors my entire video-writing process, as it hopefully does for many other video-makers. Being "Right" is subjective and fiddly, while being Understood is achievable and absolute.
That, and the "one man's frustration" joke nearly made me spit out my tea, good times all around.
-B

[cosmiclive]

"One mans frustrations are another mans kink" Stealing that one lol

[cameronjohnson]

“No one ever asks if you played the game right if you say you enjoyed yourself”

I’d never realised that before but that’s exactly right. Best video yet Frost

[blackamaterasuflame]

This is my favorite series on this channel since ZP

[FOL]

Escapist giving me just that little bit of hope for humanity. We need more voices like Yahtzee and OtherFrost.

A reasonable perspective, with a clear explanation leading to its conclusions, while openly conscious of the inbound knee jerk reactions and still giving them fair consideration.

Looking forward to the next Cold Take!

[MatthewBester]

I remember letting my nephew play Portal 2. He didn't care or listen to any dialogue. He rushed through the first few puzzles as fast as he could, ignoring every set piece along the way. Proudly proclaiming he beat it! Where as I had expected him to soak in the atmosphere, enjoy the dialogue, be curious about the world's story telling all around him. No, not to him. It was just puzzle rooms to be solved and completed as fast as possible.

I still assert he played it wrong.

[timgarcia]

It's more important to me that a reviewer has a clear consistent point of view than it is that they like all the games I like. If I know they aren't really into a certain type of game, I can watch or read the review with that in mind and form my own opinions.

[unvergebeneid]

I like that a lot of games frame easy and hard mode as story and challenge mode and make it clear that they're different experiences for different people.

[yuuneeq]

For a 9 year old reader, this guy sure can write a good script.

[ThroughfulGamer]

What I personally believe is that a player can go into a game with the 'wrong' expectations. I think every player should try to understand what the game they're currently playing is trying to achieve and accept that. That is not a guarantee they'll like it, which would be perfectly valid, but playing a game wishing - or even believing - it to be something else very likely will lead to, what I would genuinely call, an unfair dislike or evaluation of the game. This holds especially true for critics and reviewers.

[meefvongrau]

"It's not about being right, it's about being understood"

this my dude comes on my list with smort things someone said.

[nickg]

People conflate "intended way" with "right way". The devs create a game, intending the player to play in a specific way (sometimes wayS). That doesn't mean the player is wrong for not playing that way though.

Also, I'm on board with this for single player games. Multiplayer is more complex.

To combine the argument with another common one, easy mode in souls games:

If I play a souls game, and summon help, I want to know that the other player has a certain level of mastery of the game, so I don't waste my items/time. Easy solution is to lock multiplayer encounters to other players who chose the same difficulty as you.


Also, for coop games, there's an implied agreement between players that "I'm going to fulfill my role, be it dps, tank, heals, whatever, in order for us to complete this challenge"

It might be fun to die on purpose in funny ways by yourself, but as the infamous and 100% not scripted Leeroy Jenkins video showed us, there is a wrong way to play multiplayer games.

[glittalogik]

I'm sure The Escapist knows that ZP is their flagship - just for a laugh, sort their videos by 'Most Popular' and keep scrolling until you see a non-Yahtzee title or your PgDn button breaks, whichever comes first...

That said, I'm glad I clicked on this because a) the writing is stellar, b) I feel this deeply in my soul as a veteran casual gamer with picky tastes, erratic attention span, and limited free time, and c) holy hell, I could listen to Sebastian all day. Dude's voice sounds like a cross between smooth jazz, every detective novel ever, and drinking hot cocoa under a weighted blanket.

[Richard-qxzx]

This is touched on a bit with what's said about Stray or Signalis, but I think it really is less about how you play any particular title, but more about what your background in games is going into the title. Stray is just easy to play, not in a bad way, anyone can see the intended experience. Its easy to leave more gameplay focused people cold though, its a near walking sim for its level of depth, but cats are just likable.

I've had the 'played too much' experience recently with a *very* beloved game, Neon White. Having vastly more time than anyone should on TF2 jump maps, the game felt a bit basic, I felt slow moving through the maps, even when getting platinum metals compared to how *fast* TF2 rocket jumping combat is, and with moving enemies doing the same moves back to you to boot. A bit like a tutorial for TF2 air control. Of course, my experience with that is the vast minority, how many people are going into a game with 1000+ hours in another, incredibly similar title's competitive scene.

[Jelly_Skelly]

Was Yahtzee represented by the guinea pig Lulu from Little Adventures? Great guinea pig channel! Also that 3rd guinea pig was a capybara. A very close cousin to guinea pigs, and a great visual metaphor for trying so hard to find someone who validates your opinion that you have to stretch the definition of the source.

[justanothernerd]

I recently started playing Unsighted, which has a mechanic where the player character and most NPCs have a time limit until they lose their consciousness and become mindless killing machines (they're all robots) The game gives you the option to turn this mechanic off, which I did once I saw how fast the timers actually go down. I feel a little guilty for not engaging with this game's core mechanic, but I know that if I turned it back on, I would be too stressed out to really enjoy the rest of the game. This dilemma was recently compounded when I got stuck on one section where I need to find the key to a certain room, but I've been unable to find the key yet. It made me wonder how many NPCs would have died just in the time it's taken me to search for this one key in this large, maze-like environment.

[gogauze]

I like the thoughtful depth of this series, and hope it has enough traction to justify sticking around.

Frost's insistence on trying to keep an open mind throughout the whole experience in games, and everything around them—and communicating that it's a good quality to cultivate and maintain—is the yin to Yahtzee's yang on the Escapist for me, atm.

And, so, I continue to be impressed by Nick's ability to scout talent that brings new things to the table, while delighting the old guard and newcomers alike. In addition to listening to the audience, gracefully taking constructive feedback, and growing the brand in a direction that I really think is going to throw off the common perceptions of the Escapist from the before times, and bring it into a real golden age.

While I'm handing out praise, Marty is also one of the goats, and he must be protected at all costs.

[GamingTonberry]

That was good. It's an interesting idea to explore deeper. I remember watching friends play growing up and thinking they were playing "wrong" but it was really just how they enjoyed the game and a matter of shifting perspective.

[GeneralNickles]

No one asks if you played a game right when you say you liked it because it doesn't matter at that point.

It only matters if you did it right when you didn't like it.

Imagine playing golf with a baseball bat, and saying you hated it, then someone points out that you didn't do it right. Do you get defensive and say "there's no wrong way to play golf!" Or "you're just a fanboy that can't accept someone not liking golf!"

No. You go back and play it with a damn golf club. Then form a proper opinion.

There may not be a "right" way to play a video game, but more often than not, there are certainly wrong ways. Those wrong ways can be used as fun challenges for experienced players, like speedruns or nuzlockes in Pokemon, but for everyone else, those wrong ways will likely ruin the experience.

Like skipping the dialog in a story driven RPG and then bitching about how the story sucks. That's just not how the game is meant to be played.

[ruttzorz]

This is the best response to gatekeeping in video games I've seen. Frost is some sort of mad genius.