Is Undyne's
True
Identity
Pope Francis?!?
Leader of the Catholic Church?
How could I have been so blind!?
All the proof points to yes!
Evidence the first: Similar hats.
Long pointed hat, long pointed hat.
BOOM!
Evidence the second:
Undyne's spear
is obviously a direct parallel
to the Pope's shepherd staff.
Evidence the third:
Undyne is a fish-like monster
and the Catholic church is all about those loaves and fishes.
they don't call those bumper decorations Jesus fish for nothing!
*gasp* and Undyne the undying is clearly a reference to the immortality bestowed upon us in heaven!
So there you have it. Undyne... is the Pope.
But hey, that's just a theory.
A Half Baked theory!
Hey, at least it's better than Sans is Ness, right?
Intro Music Plays
Hello Internet. Welcome to Game Theory
Where first of all, let's just set the records straight
I liked the Sans is Ness episode, a lot.
Thats the one where Game theory jumped the shark-
NO it ISN'T!
NO, it isn't.
Whether or not you agree with the conclusion,
You have to admit, there's a lot of evidence there that just lines up really nicely.
Just sayin' ~
So anyway, I literally just flew back from Rome,
and uh, boy, are my arms tired.
*ba-doom crash*
okay, but seriously.
about a month ago I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to represent YouTube and the good ol' U. S. of A.
in an interview with Pope Francis.
*music*
The first time ever, the leader of the Catholic church has been interviewed by YouTubers
You might say that I was "#blessed" to be a part of it.
no? Come On! That's like, the most legitimate usage of that hashtag ever.
basically, the Pope asked to meet with YouTubers from around the world,
not to talk about being Catholic or anything Religious,
but to talk about how the Internet can bring people together.
Not the Tinder style bring people together,
just the, "hey, we're from different walks of life but we're all humans at heart" kind of bringing people together.
and in the process, I was brought together with George Clooney.
THE George Clooney!
see? This is me talking,
and That is George Clooney.
Same row and seat as mine, only mirrored across the vertical-axis
There he is intently listening to everything I am saying,
enraptured by every word coming out of my mouth.
I mean, sure, he might just look like a blurry speck in this picture,
but, you'll have to take my word for it.
He was Enthralled.
we're practically BFFs now.
*music*"people let me tell you 'bout my best friend"*music*
OTP Georgie
but enough about my new bae.
In preparation for the event, they told us it was customary to bring the Pope a gift,
and encouraged us to bring something that was representative of our home country's culture.
and don't get me wrong, while I would've loved to have presented the Pope with an oversized hamburger, a cowboy hat, and a bald eagle carrying a machine gun,
*gun shoots*
Let's be honest. The guy knows about the United States.
When I showed up wavin' the ol' stars and stripes,
it's not like the Pope would've suddenly fallen out of his Pope chair, all " What is this country I've never heard of?"
to me, If I was to be the representative of any culture,
it was going to be, of this culture.
The Internet culture.
and more specifically, of gamers.
because our voice has so rarely gotten represented offline,
and when we are discussed, it's always, ALWAYS in the negative.
Gamers as killers. Gamers attacking women.
Gamers putting up with Jimmy Kimmel.
and that's why, as my gift to the Pope,
I gave him a copy of Undertale.
because regardless of how you feel about this game, Undertale represents an evolution for gamers.
and what they expect from the games that they play.
making it the single best representative of where we are as a community, today.
well that and, because I thought FNAF 3's tale of child murder might not me the best foot forward when meeting a world leader.
but in all seriousness
considering the tragic circumstances around both Christina Grimmie and
Orlando
it's an even more important topic now than it was just a few weeks ago and I
feel it merits making a video.
So this is the story of why i gave the Pope Undertale, and why this is such an
important symbolic gesture for all of us gamers. for us it's easy to think about
the gaming community as being super diverse,
spanning a range of genres from the retro gamers to the achievement hunters,
casuals to pro gamers to game specific types like the FIFA 'tubers and the
Minecrafters. We know that this game is not and should never be confused with
this game under penalty of death. We know that there are gaming music groups,
gaming comedy channels, gaming educational channels, gaming reviewers,
gaming news outlets, and gaming personalities, but to the outside world
it's all just one thing gamer from the C.O.D. player to the Mario Maker... Maker. And
honestly that's not entirely their fault
the way people perceive gamers goes pretty far back. No like, uh.. really, really
far back to the days before video games even existed
oh yeah back to the dawn of time.
...well, at least back to the way our brains evolved. When we talk about the identity
of a gamer, and really the identity of any group of people were dealing with
the social anthropological principle of out-group homogeneity bias. Basically the
human tendency to believe that people from an outside group are more similar
than the people in your in group. In simpler terms, it's the idea that we
generalize or stereotype groups of people that we're not familiar with. It
applies across races, genders, religion, sexual orientations, and even petty stuff
too, like gamers vs jocks. "guys who play sports are just a bunch of stupid
meatheads." ,"oh, yeh, well bro,
nerds are so socially awkward." That has been theater with MatPat. Thank you. Even
though my "nerdy" may revolve around Advanced Dungeons and Dragons stat co
and encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek Enterprise deck layouts, to the outside
world unfamiliar with those things, I could be grouped together with weeaboos,
bronies and whovians!
Sounds like a party from Hell! And we all know the differences between those
classifications, because by and large these are all part of our in group of
nerd internet culture. But to the out groups, a Picar trekkie looks
exactly the same as a Shatner trekkie. out-group homogeneity bias is a large
reason why stereotypes exist, and a big reason why everyone hates America and
why America hates the rest of the world. But why? Why would we, as humans, do this?
Well, a prevailing theory, a prevailing anthropological theory states that this
is all related to the preservation of our identity.
Each and every one of us is a complicated collection of likes, dislikes,
fears, experiences, and beliefs
it's hard to boil down to the core what makes you you, so instead we define
ourselves
not by what we are, but what we are not. We are not them.
We draw a clear, black
and white line. This is who I am and I would never be one of those sorts of
people. And that is the first reason I gave the Pope a steam code for Undertale.
For as ridiculous as that sounds, it's a game determined to get gamers to fight
out group homogeneity bias. So determined, in fact, that it's the central premise of
the game.
Humans vs monsters. Us vs them. In any other game,
monsters are just monsters. Just fodder for XP grinding with stats and visual
design swap between counters.
They don't look like our team of mages and knights, so let's slash our way through
them! But monsters in Undertale aren't some homogeneous group who
look think and act the same way. Toby Fox specifically stated that he wanted
each enemy to have its own personality.
They go from being grunts, underlings, and bosses to Temmie, Sans, Mettaton
Froggit, Goat Mom. Individuals with names, hopes, fears, insecurities, existing beyond
just a simple label of "monster".
In fact, that's one of the most subtle and ingenious design decisions that Toby
Fox included in this game. Even though a group of characters is classified as
"monsters", in this game, there's only one true monster
by the end of the game. You at the end of a genocide run. Someone who didn't take
the time to understand,
listen to, interact with, and show mercy to a group of individuals. But it goes
even deeper than all this!
Humans are almost destined to hate each other, and the root of it all comes from
humans being lazy.
Seriously, that's not a judgment call, it's a biological fact! The human brain is
just a lazy organ that craves efficiency, so it tends to over-simplify complex
situations using what are known as heuristics. A heuristic is a simple rule,
often learned through evolution, that helps the brain deal with difficult situations
when it doesn't have enough information to decide. For instance, a serious one
that we in the West deal with a lot is "Muslims are terrorists". Obviously,
there are literally BILLIONS of Muslims who are not terrorists, and a large number of
non-muslims who are, and yet so many share this belief based on one such
short hand rule: the availability heuristic. When people make a judgment
based on the number of examples that come to mind.
Ask yourself the following question: are there more words that start with the
letter K or have pay as the third letter? When tested, most people will say that
there are more words with K as the first letter, but that can be further from the
truth.
There are far more words with K as the third letter. But based on the
availability heuristic, we're able to come up with more examples of K words, and
thus assume that there are just more words that start with the letter K. In
this case, many have only ever heard about Muslims through news stories
covering terrorism, and since those are the only examples that come to mind, as a
result have concluded that it's a group of violent individuals. The outgroup of
Muslim are all dangerous religious extremists, despite the fact that
statistically, this clearly isn't true.
Same thing with all Texans are redneck and racist, all Democrats are socialists
hippies, and all Republicans are gay hating gun-toting corporate sympathizers
knowing all this, think back to the way most people hear about games :through the
news or through marketing. And look back across the last decade of games, where
franchises like Grand Theft Auto and Assassins Creed have been two of the
biggest. Games with violent crimes right in their titles and of course,
Call of Duty, a franchise that continues
top bestseller lists to this day! One that's synonymous with war and violence
against outgroups. bBsed on the availability heuristic,
these are the games that gamers are getting judged off of! This is why our
community has gotten such a negative stereotype of spoiled foul-mouth kids who
laugh over killing people. And I get it! It sounds stupid to say, "Oh Grand Theft Auto
has grand theft auto in the title, and it's crime so people must judge us as
violent killers!"
I get it! It sounds like I'm over-exaggerating, there's no way that this is
all that people judge us off of. But if you think that, then look no further than
game publishers themselves. I've spoken to rooms full of game developers, and
asked the number of people who knew of Five Nights at Freddy's. *playback* "I would hope
that everyone in the audience is familiar with the Five Nights at
Freddy's franchise" *end playback* to have only five percent of the room raise their hand!
And these are people who work in video games! Unaware of what is perhaps one of
the largest most popular games to have hit in the last two years!
If they don't know the games that are shaping the industry, the games that
we're passionate about, what hope does anyone else have? They'll just continue
to learn about the negatives of games on the nightly news.
Probably the next time that Mass Effect has a sex scene, or when Hatred 2 gets
released, or when Jimmy Kimmel's numbers start to flag again. And that's the
second reason I gave the Pope Undertale. Because it's up to us to educate the
world about the good works of gaming. We can't wait for other people to do it,
because no one will ever deliver those lessons for us. We are in charge of our
own destiny.
We shape our story. For years, we've complained about negative coverage in
our own forums, but relatively few of us have taken those discussions out into
the public space. And if we're going to do that,
I don't care whether or not you like Undertale,
what that game stands for that's important. It's a game that taught millions
of people the meaning of the word and pacifism, and that's no exaggeration!
Look no further than global search trends on Google, where for the entire
web, searches for the word pacifism and pacifist spiked with the release of
Undertale. For the first time in over a decade, millions of people are talking
about peaceful resolutions to conflict, because of a video games! But I used
Undertale as a figurehead. The most prominent example of the evolving social
consciousness of gamers. The cry for games have options for peaceful resolutions is
really kicked off with the collective disappointment over human revolutions
lackluster no-kill runs, and now it's been spreading to some of the most
unlikely places. With examples like Kent Sheiley's peaceful run of Modern Warfare,
and Kyle Dinkley literally breaking Fallout 4 as he forced the game to
preserve his pacifist run. And it's not just that we're playing Undertale,
it's important to remember that we kick-started Undertale, a game that pitched
itself in its Kickstarter as a game about mercy and peaceful alternatives,
was something that gamers over-funded. We're actively endorsing games about
communication and understanding at a time when the rest of the world is
talking about actively building walls
to hideout other groups of people. That is something that we gamers should be proud
of. But lastly, I gave the Pope this game because it speaks his language.
This year is his self-proclaimed year of Mercy for the Catholic Church. A period
celebrating forgiveness and compassion, when one could otherwise choose to harm
a person. And what's the recurring theme throughout Undertale? Mercy. From the most
innocent victims to the most vile murderers. In fact, the whole YouTube
interview was planned by an organization named Scholas, which brings young people
from around the world together from different walks of life, to share stories
with each other, and show that even though we're sometimes literally a world
apart, we all still have the same human problems like bullying and intolerance.
There are even some loyal theorists in the bunch! It was awesome! It's all in an
attempt to break down that out group bias, showing young leaders that at their core,
people are people. But this sort of fight is hard. It's an uphill battle and
Undertale shows us that. Pacifism isn't the easiest route,
it's much more challenging than just quickly hacking your way through a
handful of enemies. Just like in the real world, putting in the effort to overcome
heuristics is really difficult.
I mean, look at this video! I'm sure there'll be a lot of people complaining
in the comments that this isn't much of a theory, or isn't about video games, or
claiming that I'm some social justice warrior, but
I'm not! I just want us to start having a conversation because you know what? It's
an essential discussion to have.
To help the world understand and respect people of different backgrounds. That
includes us as gamers. More knowledge is rarely, if ever, a bad thing. It broadens
our understanding of the world, and allows us to empathize without groups it'd
be far easier to write off as differen,t weird, or scary. But all in all, life is
just too short to hate.
At the end of the day, do I expect the Pope to be sitting in front of his
Steam account, jumping into the shoes of Frisk, and then logging onto tumblr to
post about his love for Papyrus?
No,of course not. The guy doesn't even have a computer. I intended me giving him a
video game to be a symbolic gesture, because I believe it's my responsibility
in the position that you've given me to educate not just you guys every week
with a video about quantum mechanics and Mario and psychology and Undertale, but
also the non-gamers who are confused about what the video game community entails.
Who we are and what we stand for.
There is no better game to showcase all the good of who we are as a community
than Undertale. Good luck getting through that genocide run, Pope Francis. Sans is
a doozy.
But hey, that's just a theory... a Game... Actually, a Gamer Theory!
Thank you guys for allowing me the opportunity to represent you.
Real talk. Admittedly today was a bit of a softer episode, but considering the
events of the last couple weeks I thought it was important to address.
Anyway, looking forward with E3 and VidCon behind us, it's time to get back
to some harder hitting theories on some new games that were announced, which I'm
super-excited about. So things like Sister Location, Zelda, and yeah, I'm also
going to go back to that long-awaited theory on Undertale. Those are all
planned for the next couple of weeks. So, big hype there! Now, returning for the
fun of it,
welcome back to the SUPER AMAZING END CARD TOURNAMENT, where today I want to know:
Completely unrelated to anything in today's episode,
do you like salty snacks or do you like sweet snacks? Are you a potato chip,
pretzel, popcorn person? Or candies, cakes, cookies, and chocolate nerdy nummy?
Clearly, I'm hungry and curious, so click on one to choose to get sent to the
channel page, where you should click on more things!
Aight? Aight! Now, enough of these feel-good touchy-feely emotional sort of
episodes! What is this, Leave It To Beaver: an after-school special? Heck no! It's time we
start getting dark!
I'll see you guys next week.