Hello, everybody!
Happy holidays and welcome to this little holiday special.
♫ Intro Music ♫
As per usual, the extra credits channel is going to be taking some time off for the holiday.
This has been our busiest year by far
and a lot of us are beyond exhausted.
So, as of the 20th (give or take),
we're going to be taking a break until mid-January in order to recover.
Now, I know that's a long hiatus, but fear not!
It turns out that this internet is full-to-bursting
with intelligent and/or entertaining people
whom you can enjoy in our absence,
and I have put together a list of them for you:
three of them, in fact.
Today, tomorrow, and the day after,
I'm going to list off just some of my personal favorite
channels, writers, critics, and entertainers
on YouTube and the internet at large.
Now, a lot of these recommendations are hardly obscure:
chances are you've probably heard of many of these people,
and you might be fans of them already,
but I'm willing to bet that there will be at least
one name on this list that you have not heard before,
and some of these channels definitely deserve
more traffic than they're currently getting.
So, if you find yourself missing the games discussion,
design analysis, and whatever else it is we do at extra credits,
I recommend trying some of these on for size.
I'll be putting links to all of these down in the description.
Here we go!
First up: Game Makers Toolkit
If you like Design Club, you are going to love Game Makers Toolkit.
This exceptionally well-produced video series by Mark Brown
takes a practical approach to studying game design:
breaking down and studying design elements from various games,
and seeing what can be learned from their successes or failures.
Sometimes he'll focus on a specific aspect of one particular game,
like Super Mario 3D World's four-step level design philosophy,
or the value of repetition to a game like Hitman.
Other times he'll take a common design concept or a problem
and examine how different developers took different approaches to solving that same problem.
For example: how do different games handle their health mechanic,
and how do those various approaches influence how the games are played?
How do different games handle death and failure states,
and how does that fundamentally alter the gameplay experience?
He's also started a mini-series on the evolution of dungeon design
in the Legend of Zelda series called Boss Keys.
It is a massive undertaking, but it has been fantastic so far.
Really all of his videos are great, so just- just go watch everything.
How Did They Do That?
Have you ever wondered how certain classic games achieved
their impressive-for-the-time graphics and technical tricks
despite major hardware limitations?
You're gonna like this series then.
There aren't a lot of episodes, but each one
clearly and concisely explains the tricks and the technology
that these early 3D games used to look as cool as they did.
You want to know how Banjo Kazooie's dynamic music worked?
Or Final Fantasy VII's pre-rendered backgrounds?
Or Link's expressive eyes in Twilight Princess?
How about the irregular gravity in Mario Galaxy games?
Learn for yourself, and learn it from an Indie Dev who would know.
Errant Signal
As valuable as the traditional buyer's-guide format of game reviewing is,
this is the sort of literary critique that I've been excited to see more of in recent years:
the kind that's less concerned with whether a piece of art is worth your money,
and more concerned with what that piece of art says,
and what cultural significance it might have.
Chris has been putting out videos for about five years now,
digging into Triple-A and Indie game alike,
and I always leave his discussion feeling like
I understand the game just a little bit better than I did before.
These are a few of my personal favorite episodes of his,
but go dig into his backlog yourself: just click on whatever topic grabs you first.
Noah Gervais
I only recently discovered Noah's channel,
but I absolutely adore his long-form franchise retrospectives.
Noah's standard approach is to take a bird's-eye view of a series,
looking back on a franchises entire history:
examining where each game stumbles or triumphs
within the context of the larger body of work;
seeing how the vision and execution of a series of games
evolves over time as technology advances,
as creative leadership changes hands,
as audience tastes change.
And this guy is thorough.
He will spend an hour and 15 minutes on the System Shock and Bioshock games;
an hour and 45 minutes on the Mafia trilogy;
two hours contrasting the single-player campaigns of the Call of Duty series;
two-and-a-half hours discussing the Mass Effect trilogy.
Every episode is equal parts
retrospective nostalgia and fresh insight.
And I just love his presentation style as well:
the way he does his opening titles,
the little recording and editing imperfections peppered throughout each video,
the cadence of his narration...
Aesthetically, it's reminiscent of every contemporary literature professor I had in college,
and, it is just so charming.
So: pick an episode about a series of games you like,
put on some tea, and settle in for a thoroughly pleasant time.
Super Bunnyhop
Like the previous two channels on this list,
Super Bunnyhop deals in game criticism and editorial,
but the format of his content is not so easily categorized
Peruse his library of episodes and you will find
a pretty wide spectrum of gaming-centric essays,
from reviews, to retrospectives, to some pieces that border on journalism:
like this episode on the creative talent developing Sonic Mania,
or that one episode investigating Konami
just as their working relationship with Kojima was falling apart
(which Konami infamously tried and ultimately failed to remove from YouTube).
Some of my personal favorite episodes include:
this one examining the first level of every sonic game,
this look at Bloodborne through the lens of Lovecraft,
and this massive series of critiques on the Metal Gear games
(because he's a huge Metal Gear nerd and I think I might be too,
and this Metal Gear Solid 3 one in particular is just one of my favorite things...
I- Man I love that game).
Watch his videos: he's good.
Innuendo Studios
If you've seen any of Ian's videos before,
I'm guessing you either saw his video about
Phil Fish and the consequences of internet fame,
maybe this series about the irrational swell of anger directed toward
prominent feminist voices in the game community,
or possibly this excellent video explaining
the beauty of Smash Bros Melee as a spectator sport.
(And if you haven't seen that one, you really should 'cuz it's- just- it's- excellent.)
He's got a lot of other great videos too though,
and they don't have nearly as many views for reasons that I do not entirely understand.
Like this video on the role of Kenny's character in the Walking Dead games,
or this examination of Davey Wreden's The Beginner's Guide
(which might be my favorite video from Ian, so far).
Give him a look!
And finally for today:
Ask A Game Dev
This one isn't a Youtube channel
but rather a daily Q&A blog written by a game dev. veteran.
As you probably well know
the gaming industry can be frustratingly opaque sometimes,
but because this blog's writer has chosen to remain anonymous,
they're free to speak candidly about how games get made,
and why the industry does what it does.
What's a typical day like for a developer?
How do you become one?
What's with the season passes, pre-orders, and microtransactions in Triple-A games?
What is it that makes games cost so much to make?
And why is the game industry so darn secretive to begin with?
Ask a game Dev answers all of these questions,
and many, many, many more in detail every week.
They're pretty great. Go read some.
Well, that ought to do it for now.
Join me tomorrow and I will have a fresh batch of new recommendations for you.
Until then!
♫ Music ♫ (“Russian Bonetrousle” by Jose Daniel Ruiz)