We chat about videogames and videogame accessories.

Unpopular opinion time: The so-called Monomyth is an overdone crutch and was never intended as a prescriptive formula but as a descriptive analysis to begin with. It can be a good launching point or lens to analyze through, but it should not define your story or else you’re just re-writing Star Wars, and frankly we saw exactly how good an idea that is as early as 1997.

Though, it can’t be that unpopular an opinion, since I searched some key terms on Google and have found articles I’ve never seen describing it this way.

As for game analysis, I think there are plenty of people doing that, despite the limited vocabulary it has to work with. Unfortunately. There are so many people doing it who clearly have no business doing it; more than enough complete charlatans to go around. Just thinking back on some of the ones I’ve read makes me nauseous; I don’t think I can finish this paragraph right now, so I won’t. Oh wait! Even worse, when you get to talking to some of these people you can find out how terrible some of them are as functioning human beings and it’s clear why they are doing this instead of anything else. At least it’s better than a life of crime, I guess.

*angry huff*

Also, as long as I’m being unpleasant here, I don’t see a lot of problems with Extra Credits’ content, but videos always try my patience because they go at their own slow pace and not my pace and it never really gets as in-depth as text can (strike 1), and I cannot stand the narrator’s voice because I have magical ears hypersensitive to those frequencies I just caaaan’t (strike 2). Other than that, though, every time I’ve taken the time out of my day to watch an episode I don’t really regret it. Yes, we just need more people who can think deeply and articulate quite like that. A lot more good people like these. Not bad people like those ggrrRRRRrrrr ARF ARF

It might not just be board game experience, though, for that guy, because he's also pretty good at analysis of literature/shows and getting at why certain parts work and gets exasperated when most people leave their review as "I liked this part and that part" and no deeper. Since literary analysis is such an old field compared to game design, that might be more equipped to train people to think this way, maybe?

See, I think a key thing that lots of aspiring game designers lack is a multidisciplinary view of things. A typical game design student, as my personal anecdotal observation, seems to have a hard time finding influences outside of games, computers, popular entertainment, and the like and—while I do not mean to get into identity politics or over-generalize, two of those things those awful, awful game analyzing schmucks do to tick me off—thinking outside the teenage male nerd/dudebro box.

This is a real shame; even if this student only has one other passion in life, that’s stuff that can be imported into the field in ways nobody else can provide. That’s not to say this prospective game designer can’t just live in a vacuum or bubble and be great at designing games, motivated completely intrinsically; it’s just that that’s already such a common plan, and the chances of being the one person who’s going to outshine everyone else doing that are slim.

And then of course, you see that fraction of who are constantly dropping whoppers like “only FPS matters” and stuff. Now these... these are the reasons we have jokes about them working jobs where they can literally drop Whoppers.

Alright, please don't quote this for anybody. I don't normally do this.