"Zero Punctuation" and "Dev Diary" by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - The only thing worth watching on The Escapist

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Cloud Somersault said:
Did he get #me-too'd or something? I thought everyone liked him because we're all still pretending MGS was good.
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He ran out of good will post his exodus from Konami, especially with Death Stranding 2 being meh. People realized that maybe studios had a point in giving actual limits to how much time and money can be sunk into a game.
Cloud Somersault said:
If it's anything like the first HK I probably will give it a miss.
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My main issue is having very hostile level design. Very few save points, including a lot of hidden ones, platforming that can be aggravating early game when you lack a lot of navigational options, gauntlets that just waste time and can be overlong, complete areas that can be missed if you didn't notice a small unmarked opening in a random room, and very long boss runbacks that don't even allow you to grind effectively. I'd probably appreciate more on a replay, due to knowing the bullshit the game will throw at me and many of the ways to go against it, but trying to play blind is miserable, and I had to resort to a walkthrough to get the true ending due to conditions for it being either bugged or partially missable. The plot is also very derivative and bland.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
He ran out of good will post his exodus from Konami, especially with Death Stranding 2 being meh. People realized that maybe studios had a point in giving actual limits to how much time and money can be sunk into a game.
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Did these niggers never play MGS4? Or the first Death Stranding for that matter? I only enjoyed Phantom Pain because I literally skipped every cutscene (I still don't know who Skullface was).
wtfNeedSignUp said:
The plot is also very derivative and bland.
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Tbf that sounds like every "Soulslike." Just be vague and non-committal and put in something about uhhh decay or entropy or whatever, job done.
 
Cloud Somersault said:
He used to kinda glaze Hideo Kojima in a distant, mutual-respect-esque kind of way. He hates his games but has repeatedly said that's he's an important auteur (read: art-fag) voice in the soulless corporate behemoth of the industry.
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When did he ever have respect for the guy? Yahtzee railed on the dude and his games in every possible way.
 
Looking back, I don't really get the hatred people have toward enemy gauntlets, even the one that triggered yathzee, and I had to clear that same gauntlet 4 times, once in my first playthrough and then 3 times because of steel soul.
Funnily enough, Silksong is a metroidvania, so if you struggle somewhere, you should go back later, and the devs did thought about it too, as you can get 2 NPCs to help you with that specific gauntlet if you complete their quests earlier.
Lorewise it makes sense that you go against an army, since that specific room is what separates you from the last ruler of the place, combat is fast paced so unless you are a fucking retard, clearing that gauntlet takes on average the same amount of time you would normally need to beat a boss.
Even if I ignore that, what really makes me question his remaining intelligence was that he didn't ragequit the game because of that specific gauntlet, but rather becuase of the runback to the second-last boss (for the normal ending) containing something like a 5 seconds cutscene of Hornet taking an elevator.
In a game where people lament about a late-game boss (required to unlock the true ending) having a minutes long runback requiring platform (which is in an area the area that requires a power-up you get from first mastering platform but shhhh) runbacks and ending with a gauntlet, yathzee is complaining for what's basically a slightly extended screen transition.
 
Strangolapreti said:
also he admitted that he doesn't likes Hideo Kojima.
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well that's not shocking, he's always shittalking the things kojima does in his games which would be fair if it was generally from the viewpoint of "difficult to enjoy the game when these things suck" and not from viewpoints on the level of "he gives things stupid names." even if you're deflating any sense of difficulty by using the easy gun like he did in mgs4 you could maybe have a few valid complaints about the controls being sticky, although i do not remember if they were. point is he gets annoyed at stupid things and focuses on that too much which may just be padding but who knows, i don't watch his kojima videos for that reason.
wtfNeedSignUp said:
especially with Death Stranding 2 being meh.
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i havent heard anyone talk about ds2 but im chalking that up to it being a ps5 exclusive console and despite it being a console owned by millions, i never hear about anyone playing games on it except for streamers who have to play all the timed exclusive games day one.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
He ran out of good will post his exodus from Konami, especially with Death Stranding 2 being meh. People realized that maybe studios had a point in giving actual limits to how much time and money can be sunk into a game.

My main issue is having very hostile level design. Very few save points, including a lot of hidden ones, platforming that can be aggravating early game when you lack a lot of navigational options, gauntlets that just waste time and can be overlong, complete areas that can be missed if you didn't notice a small unmarked opening in a random room, and very long boss runbacks that don't even allow you to grind effectively. I'd probably appreciate more on a replay, due to knowing the bullshit the game will throw at me and many of the ways to go against it, but trying to play blind is miserable, and I had to resort to a walkthrough to get the true ending due to conditions for it being either bugged or partially missable. The plot is also very derivative and bland.
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Lol you're a pussy coping hard about being shit at video games. Just like Yahtzee.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
My main issue is having very hostile level design. Very few save points, including a lot of hidden ones, platforming that can be aggravating early game when you lack a lot of navigational options, gauntlets that just waste time and can be overlong, complete areas that can be missed if you didn't notice a small unmarked opening in a random room, and very long boss runbacks that don't even allow you to grind effectively. I'd probably appreciate more on a replay, due to knowing the bullshit the game will throw at me and many of the ways to go against it, but trying to play blind is miserable, and I had to resort to a walkthrough to get the true ending due to conditions for it being either bugged or partially missable. The plot is also very derivative and bland.
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Gee, it's almost as if this is a standalone expansion for those who already finished the first game and want something harder
wtfNeedSignUp said:
I beat the game before the nerfs and without abusing tools so you're just being a retarded nigger. Ironically the bosses are the easiest part of the game.
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He is indeed a retarded nigger that makes the dumbest posts I have ever seen, seemingly because he enjoys being a contrarian. If only he heard of /v/, he would be in heaven among his equals.
 
30+GameOvers said:
Gee, it's almost as if this is a standalone expansion for those who already finished the first game and want something harder
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Maybe originally, but most people haven't played Hollow Knight since 2017. So expecting them to be immediately familiar with the gameplay is pretty bullshit. Plus even if it was released in 2018, the bad level design is still the biggest fault and doesn't relate to being an expansion. I'm not speaking on hard platforming here, but stuff like Bilewater.
 
Quarterly report. They made 40K somehow.
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Also hit half a million subscribers, tbh didn't think they would hit it but I guess making yourself the victim of the algorithm does wonders.
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Posting the photos here as I think they will be out of date soon enough.

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wtfNeedSignUp said:
They started a video The weird thing is the Work for Hire that got bumped by 30K dollars. My only guess that they whore out Yahtzee to investors.
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I will post the breakdown as well

"REPORT BREAKDOWN​

Note: We've added unpaid contracts to the report which means these are contracts we've already signed, but have yet to complete and be paid for. These amounts are marked with ( ) in their columns and listed in the summary. They are not included in the net profit, loss, or warchest in the report.

We had a really strong Q3 this year. I'm extremely proud of the team for hitting all of the financial targets I set for us earlier this year. We're in a really good spot right now as a business and things are looking steady for us as we plan for the future.

As expected, we saw a drop in sponsors for Q3, but we've already signed a lot of sponsors for Q4 which includes some bigger partnerships that we will be talking about soon.

Our updated merch strategy with Omar at the helm is also going really well at the moment. We didn't include the numbers in this month's report because we had some accounting errors to fix on our end, so that will be included in Q4's report.

The long-awaited Adventure is Nigh - Season 1 and 2 blu-rays will be ready for pre-order VERY soon, and we'll have a couple extra merch items dropping on our DFTBA store before the end of the year. You can also expect the Year 2 compilation of Fully Ramblomatic on Blu-Ray at the start of next year.

On the Work for Hire front, we're close to wrapping up the Guild Wars 2 Documentary, which Javed has done an absolutely stellar job of editing. We're really proud of how that project has come together to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the franchise. That documentary will be airing later this fall on the official Guild Wars channel as we don't host our work for hire projects here on Second Wind.

We also wrapped up work on Surgent Studio's Dead Take which released to great reviews and player feedback. We did a full rebrand of that project, helped with all of their trailers and social media assets, rollout strategy, mock reviews and even helped with some of the visual feel and tone of the game.
YOUTUBE VIEWCOUNT UPDATE(blatantly lying and begging for support!)

I wanted to take a moment to say we're extremely appreciative of the huge wave of support that came into our Patreon earlier this summer with our call to action when YouTube was borking out. Having our views drop like that so suddenly is an extremely scary thing for our business, even if we are mostly funded on Patreon.

The YouTube view count issue seemed to end up stemming from how YouTube reported views, and an API change that disabled one of the most popular ad blockers around. YouTube seems to only be tracking non-ad blocked views now, which is understandable as that's more accurate for sponsors and advertisers... it would just be nice if YouTube would actually communicate these things.

Other big YouTubers came to a similar conclusion, and it's backed up by the fact that our ad revenue has remained consistent despite the decrease in viewership during that time-period. Things seem to have stabilized now on YouTube's end thankfully.

Regardless, that kind of unpredictability is why we'll never chase algorithms or focus too much on viewcounts. It can change at any moment and isn't something we ultimately can control, so Patreon, Merch, Sponsors, Work for Hire... etc, that is and will always remain our focus to remain a sustainable business.

/ UPCOMING PLANS​

As of this writing, we are less than 1,000 subscribers away from hitting 500,000 on YouTube which is super exciting to see and just in time for our upcoming 2-year anniversary celebration on November 15th!

For the rest of the year we're continuing our focus on refining our current shows and business as we noted in our Q2 report, but we do have some exciting events and one-off projects coming up!
Our one-shot Adventure is Nigh x Balatro episode is done and ready to go! We're just waiting on some things to line-up promotion wise before releasing it, but you will have it before the end of the month! Jack, Yahtzee, and Jenna had a great time making this and the crew knocked it out of the park with the animations and art as usual.

I'm also still planning to launch my own interview podcast soon. Had to put it on hold the last couple months just due to how busy things were with YouTube going crazy and such, but we're working on branding now and I hope to have it up and running before the end of the year.

We've also got a new episode of Game Arcadia from Jenna Stoeber dropping this Thursday!

And of course, we've got some great events coming up to look forward to.

  • Week of Horror - October 27
    • Next week, since I (Nick) will be the main full-time person in the office while everyone else is filming Adventure is Nigh, I'll be streaming a short horror game Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings with Jenna or Jess!
  • Second Wind 2-Year Anniversary Party - November 15
  • The Game Awards - December 11
  • End of the Year Party - December 20
We've got some big plans for 2026 cooking already as well.

As always, thank you for sticking with us and supporting us, and we welcome your feedback, ideas, or suggestions!

Until next time,

Nick Calandra

Editor-in-Chief"
Next time they post a Financial Report I will also post the breakdown with it. A lot of boring fluff if you ask me.
The fact they're still trying to get to 50k on Patreon tells me this quarterly report wasn't as profitable as it seems.
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don't not shoot the Press said:
The fact they're still trying to get to 50k on Patreon tells me this quarterly report wasn't as profitable as it seems.
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Yeah I don't know why you'd need to beg for more Patreon when its most of your money but its clear they've made something simple a more expensive operation than it needs to be.
The problem with Second Wind is Yahtzee is the only person there anyone gives a shit about. That 40K from Youtube, plus sponsors and his own Patreon and he'd be good to go. Just pay a single editor and your done, but he insist on having a team of like 9 other people to suck up all the revenue. Thing just has too much dead weight.
 
don't not shoot the Press said:
Regardless, that kind of unpredictability is why we'll never chase algorithms or focus too much on viewcounts
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lol what a cope "we didn't about the algorithm anyways" after organising a full internet bitchfit over it. Also absolutely retarded thing to say for a manager of a YouTube channel.
don't not shoot the Press said:
The YouTube view count issue seemed to end up stemming from how YouTube reported views, and an API change that disabled one of the most popular ad blockers around. YouTube seems to only be tracking non-ad blocked views now, which is understandable as that's more accurate for sponsors and advertisers... it would just be nice if YouTube would actually communicate these things.

Other big YouTubers came to a similar conclusion, and it's backed up by the fact that our ad revenue has remained consistent despite the decrease in viewership during that time-period. Things seem to have stabilized now on YouTube's end thankfully.
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Another cope, channels like Wendigoon didn't have a drop. And the ad revenue only increased due to massive drama whoring.

Interesting to see what happens next quarter when the drama dies down and they are still in the red. Still wondering what is a Work for Hire.
 
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