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

[Irrational Exuberance]

Why on earth would you open a bar if you dislike interacting with people/have anxiety?

I don't have a hate boner for the guy like some folks in this thread do, but no fucking wonder that particular venture went tits up.

You may have a point: let's see what the man himself has to say about that.

Meet the Mana Bar Team - YAHTZEE

Meet the Mana Bar Team - YAHTZEE Yahtzee is one of the owners of the Mana Bar, well known in the gaming industry for his online video series Zero Punctuation...

www.youtube.com

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

This thread is just an endless loop of Wendy praising Yahtzee and TTC shitting on him

I feel it goes to show why Yahtzee didn't have a thread here, he doesn't have much interesting drama, and he has a fairly small fanbase. If you don't have much drama you can talk about on here then you need to hope that there's decent overlap between the subjects fanbase and Kiwi Farms, RedLetterMedia would be an example. But evidently it seems there isn't much of a following for Yahtzee in these parts, a few that casually like or dislike him but regardless no one's interested enough to talk about him.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

I feel it goes to show why Yahtzee didn't have a thread here, he doesn't have much interesting drama, and he has a fairly small fanbase. If you don't have much drama you can talk about on here then you need to hope that there's decent overlap between the subjects fanbase and Kiwi Farms, RedLetterMedia would be an example. But evidently it seems there isn't much of a following for Yahtzee in these parts, a few that casually like or dislike him but regardless no one's interested enough to talk about him.

I wouldn't say Yahtzee's fanbase is small given that he still rakes in decent views, although it seems his more recent vids have been having a harder time cracking 1 million views (some come close though). That being said, I do agree that there isn't much of a following on this specific site.

I've mentioned that my username is a Yahtzee reference, but as far as I can recall, only one or two people noticed that. Everyone else points out the obvious Baldur's Gate reference. If my username were a dual reference to something like RLM, I'm pretty sure more people would get it.

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

I wouldn't say Yahtzee's fanbase is small given that he still rakes in decent views, although it seems his more recent vids have been having a harder time cracking 1 million views (some come close though). That being said, I do agree that there isn't much of a following on this specific site.

ProJared's around the same size as Yahtzee, in some respects bigger, yet despite that a common joke during that drama was that no one had a clue of who he was despite his size. With that in mind I'll agree with you that saying his fanbase is small isn't right, what I was actually saying that he isn't relevant outside of his fanbase. At least personally I never hear of the guy being mentioned by anyone else, the only thing of his that a everyman would know would be the PC Master Race meme, and I'd bet very few know that it originates from him. Maybe back in the day he had more clout, but now I think he only has appeal to his current fanbase, I don't think his style has much appeal to new audiences. Granted that's just my take, and probably a biased take at that, but given what you mention about decreasing viewership and just knowing what a mess the Escapist is in general I don't think I'm far off.

 

[The tired cat]

I wouldn't say Yahtzee's fanbase is small given that he still rakes in decent views, although it seems his more recent vids have been having a harder time cracking 1 million views (some come close though). That being said, I do agree that there isn't much of a following on this specific site.

I've mentioned that my username is a Yahtzee reference, but as far as I can recall, only one or two people noticed that. Everyone else points out the obvious Baldur's Gate reference. If my username were a dual reference to something like RLM, I'm pretty sure more people would get it.

Well, let's be real. How many are actually his fans and how many are just rando's who stumbled across his video because it talks about a specific game (specially when it's a triple A title) or just hipsters who wanna see a guy bash popular triple A games and praise some indie stuff. Like, only thing that sets Yahtzee apart from say Jimbo is that he isn't constantly raving about "DA EVULS OF GREEDY COMPANIES!!!" (save for that Hunt down the Freeman video) or him blabbering about a game crash.

 

[Irrational Exuberance]

He does have the capacity of being irrelevant while doing other work, such as his "Judging by the Cover" series, and also his occasional criticisms of the video game industry in general, rather than just individual games, day in and out. Behold!

Judging Police Quest (Judging by the Cover)

Subscribe to Escapist Magazine! ►► http://bit.ly/Sub2Escapist Want to see the next episode a week early? Check out http://www.escapistmagazine.com for the la...

www.youtube.com

 

[Pumpkin Girl IRL]

I think you guys are over thinking it, tbh. He doesn't talk shit over social media, nor has he been involved in any scandals. He has enough fans and work to support him, so he just gets on and cultivates that.

Regardless of what you think about his actual work, there's not much to say because he hasn't shit himself with any of it. Doesn't have the drunken past of Leigh Alexander, the delicate aversion to boobies of Patrick, hasn't tried to fuck anyone Burch style, and hasn't built his reputation and career on being harassed online.

He's abnormal because of how thoroughly mundane he is.

 

[Well Intentioned]

But he doesn't like triple A titles, reeeee

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

So Gamumentary is making a documentary on Zero Punctuation.

Should be interesting.

 

[Wendy Carter]

Looks like I missed a whole bunch of stuff, so let's catch up, shall we? Yesterday's review's subject was Blood: Fresh Supply.

Blood: Fresh Supply - Escapist Magazine

This week Yahtzee reviews Blood: Fresh Supply.

www.escapistmagazine.com

Spoiler: Blood: Fresh Supply summary

Blood: Fresh Supply is an updated port of the original Blood from 1997. The review acts somewhat as a retrospective of old FPS's in general, seeing as Blood: Fresh Supply is basically the same game as the one originally released in 1997. Levels in the very first shooters, such as Doom and Quake, were just a variety of labyrinthine corridors connecting the beginning to the finish point. Later games, such as Duke Nukem 3D and Blood, created levels that depicted various environments instead, to add to the game's atmosphere. The criticism of the game comes from flaws that could be found in some very early shooters, seeing as the genre was still evolving, such as later levels of the game consisting of many reused assets from previous levels and slightly dodgy AI. Yahtzee's biggest gripe with the game were cultists with hitscan weapons, as they appear very early on and have a "shoot on sight" policy, so their attacks cannot be dodged, unlike other enemies'. Despite all that, Yahtzee praises the gameplay core, gory action and great spritework.
A very positive review.

New episode of Dev Diary is up and it's quite long.

Spoiler: Very long

The name of the game was changed to BRTV, as Battle Royale Tycoon was already taken. The game isn't turn-based, as I originally thought, but real-time instead.

(A close-up view of the battlefield)

Yahtzee laments the massive increase in scope this early on, especially since he was busy with E3 for a few days during the development. The game is nowhere near ready, but work is happening, despite Yahtzee's habit of procrastinating, and he assures us that '[we'll] have something to play at the end of all this'. Here are the things that still need to be implemented:

Something that programmers and coders might be interested in judging is Yahtzee's code, starting from 2:44 and until 5:44. He was hesitant to do so because his coding is rather amateurish, but he does, nonetheless, show the code that every player goes through when they land.

(A tiny snippet of Yahtzee's code)

Yahtzee describes what the variables do for people who don't exactly understand coding and talks a little bit about how the AI can be made a little bit more complex. Yahtzee also answered a question addressed to him:

The answer goes as follows: 'I have this mad idea that some people might take advice from me, and if there only one piece of advice I'd like taken away from this entire series, it's this - focus on the primary gameplay loop.' He proceeds to describe gameplay loops (primary, secondary, etc), which is what the players should try and achieve on a timed basis (second by second, minute by minute, etc.). He gives examples of primary gameplay loops from Doom (move around, shoot monsters) and Pac-Man (eat pills, avoid ghosts).

(An example of three gameplay loops in Pac-Man)

'You can have as many layers as you like, but they all come down to the constant repetition of a primary loop.' Ultimately, the game designer's task is to make sure the primary loop is fun and/or engaging.

'So that's my advice - start with an empty room, put a dude in it, then keep fiddling with his movement physics and his animation and the little dust clouds that come up when he turns around too quick, until you're thinking "Boy, I could just move this dude around this empty room all day", then put one single enemy in the room, 20 GOTO 10. Do all that, then think about scope, and if you're still taking advice, ideally do all of this before you run to a crowdfunding website with 2 bits of concept art and a bad attitude.'

More E3 footage still coming. Yahtzee interviewed Ivan Moen about Moons of Madness:

And, as @Baldur's Gait mentioned, a mini-documentary is scheduled for release later this year.

This thread is just an endless loop of Wendy praising Yahtzee and TTC shitting on him

Honestly, it's less of a praising and more of just trying to summarize the review. Explaining or summarizing things in condensed form, especially in a live conversation, is a personal weakness of mine, so this whole ordeal serves as practice for me, especially since english isn't my native language. Whether there's any actual progress in that regard is up to you to decide.

In regards to @The tired cat, I asked him to stop coming to threads he hates to the point of angry sperging, but he didn't take my advice, so I'd rather just ignore him. Asking mods to thread-ban him is just way too petty, and I'll probably be laughed at anyways because I can't resolve some Internet vendetta.

Why on earth would you open a bar if you dislike interacting with people/have anxiety?

I don't have a hate boner for the guy like some folks in this thread do, but no fucking wonder that particular venture went tits up.

To overcome the fear/awkwardness, or possibly an idea that just didn't work out as well as expected. If I recall correctly, our very own Null has said on one of his streams that he was very awkward when interacting with other people during his teens, but after working in some sort of diner/fast food place he managed to overcome this. Looks like Yahtzee was less successful in that regard.

 

[The tired cat]

A review of Yahtzee praising an old shooter while wanking of to 90s nostalgia? Color me fucking surprised. Think it would have been more a shocker if he gave it a negative review, like even me being negative on the guy, why would it be a surprise that he gives positive to an old game.

 

[Well Intentioned]

To overcome the fear/awkwardness, or possibly an idea that just didn't work out as well as expected. If I recall correctly, our very own Null has said on one of his streams that he was very awkward when interacting with other people during his teens, but after working in some sort of diner/fast food place he managed to overcome this. Looks like Yahtzee was less successful in that regard.

Yeah, that's fine, just a very expensive experiment to undertake. Bars, new bars especially and new concept bars especially especially require a shitton of cash. I'm guessing they wanted to use his small/niche celebrity as part of marketing the bar and he sort of fell into it.

 

[The tired cat]

Yeah, that's fine, just a very expensive experiment to undertake. Bars, new bars especially and new concept bars especially especially require a shitton of cash. I'm guessing they wanted to use his small/niche celebrity as part of marketing the bar and he sort of fell into it.

They had like two bars both in Aussie land and apparently had plans to expand to other countries, I do recall they also had some problems of being accused of serving really strong alcohol to minors, which they had to disprove. Then one bar folded because lack of costumers, while the 2nd lasted I think only a year before also folding. I do wonder that after the Bar thing collapsed he tried his hand in that game review show which also collapsed.

 

[Wendy Carter]

Review of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is up.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Escapist Magazine

This week Yahtzee reviews Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.

www.escapistmagazine.com

Spoiler: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night review summary

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a "metroidvania" action-adventure game by Koji Igarashi, responsible for many original Castlevania titles. If you enjoyed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, then you will very likely enjoy Bloodstained as well, seeing as it's a situation similar to Mighty Number 9, and the only reason it's not called "Castlevania" is because Konami is sitting on the IP and not willing to let it go. Yahtzee also praises some game mechanics that originated from later Castlevania titles, such as a soul-collecting mechanic, where each type of enemy grants you a buff unique to them. Criticisms include some rather unintuitive paths, main protagonist's visual design and inability to skip cutscenes rather than dialogue screens, forcing the player to press the skip button multiple times instead of once. With Bloodstained being a very recent example of a successful nostalgic "remake", Yahtzee raises a slight concern that its success might start a big resurgence of nostalgic remakes' Kickstarters once again.
An overall positive review.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Dev Diary went up yesterday.

It's interesting how much he had to scale back to make the game playable and how he had to sacrifice some of the more ambitious ideas such as stealth and armor to maintain the core balance. Feature creep is an issue that plagues so many indie games in general so it's fascinating to watch someone try to avoid that trap.

Also the new game to make a rhythm based plaformer is kinda neat.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

I think you guys are over thinking it, tbh. He doesn't talk shit over social media, nor has he been involved in any scandals. He has enough fans and work to support him, so he just gets on and cultivates that.

Regardless of what you think about his actual work, there's not much to say because he hasn't shit himself with any of it. Doesn't have the drunken past of Leigh Alexander, the delicate aversion to boobies of Patrick, hasn't tried to fuck anyone Burch style, and hasn't built his reputation and career on being harassed online.

He's abnormal because of how thoroughly mundane he is.

He is the quintessential Japanese style Gaming Journalist. His job is to review games with something most devs dont expect, a harsh and deflating attitude that companies have not grown accustomed to

 

[The tired cat]

He is the quintessential Japanese style Gaming Journalist. His job is to review games with something most devs dont expect, a harsh and deflating attitude that companies have not grown accustomed to

I mean, let's be real the guy is about as harsh and deflating as either a typical hipster you'd see at a coffee shop or an obnoxious wanker at GameStop. The guy is a small drop in the proverbial sea and his reviews aren't making that big of an impact, hell he's just a nobody schmuck on youtube, most of his audience are either blatant hipsters or just idiots who are stuck in their 90's-early 2000's gaming mind set. An that's not even getting into when he talks out of his ass (examples being his RE2 Remake review, where he bitched about the game being a remake that nobody asked for and how it'll all be ruined again, while sperging how RE7 was amazing and innovative) or say a review where people watched him for an entirely different reason say like Wolf New Colossus where it would seem everyone watched him in hopes he'll go "DE SJW'S RUIN MUH GAMES!!!".

Actually, this does raise a interesting question: What the hell is this guy gonna do when his gravy train runs out? Like, it's clear by the number of views he isn't reaching the same heights he used to and him doing all these other projects makes it seem he's very desperate for relevance. So, really sooner or later his numbers will start dropping, then what will the guy do? Become a Patreon bucks type like Jimbo? 'Cause I really don't see him grabbing any other alternatives.

 

[BrokenWokenBespoken]

I mean, let's be real the guy is about as harsh and deflating as either a typical hipster you'd see at a coffee shop or an obnoxious wanker at GameStop. The guy is a small drop in the proverbial sea and his reviews aren't making that big of an impact, hell he's just a nobody schmuck on youtube, most of his audience are either blatant hipsters or just idiots who are stuck in their 90's-early 2000's gaming mind set. An that's not even getting into when he talks out of his ass (examples being his RE2 Remake review, where he bitched about the game being a remake that nobody asked for and how it'll all be ruined again, while sperging how RE7 was amazing and innovative) or say a review where people watched him for an entirely different reason say like Wolf New Colossus where it would seem everyone watched him in hopes he'll go "DE SJW'S RUIN MUH GAMES!!!".

Actually, this does raise a interesting question: What the hell is this guy gonna do when his gravy train runs out? Like, it's clear by the number of views he isn't reaching the same heights he used to and him doing all these other projects makes it seem he's very desperate for relevance. So, really sooner or later his numbers will start dropping, then what will the guy do? Become a Patreon bucks type like Jimbo? 'Cause I really don't see him grabbing any other alternatives.

And that is what made him stood out as he and Rolfe pretty much shattered the rose tinted glasses of the 90's gamer with brutal relentless commentary and rampant fanboyism that gave birth to CWC. Had there been a Yahtzee to tell CWC and the countless 90's gamers their games sucked balls and rely on hype things would have been different.

He is the reason why guys like Klepek went from hormone driven to losing his balls at the sight of cheesecake to the rise of Polygon all because all that hipster "intellect" had to go somewhere and literally no one in the industry is a 90's hyped up game reviewer anymore

 

[The tired cat]

And that is what made him stood out as he and Rolfe pretty much shattered the rose tinted glasses of the 90's gamer with brutal relentless commentary and rampant fanboyism that gave birth to CWC. Had there been a Yahtzee to tell CWC and the countless 90's gamers their games sucked balls and rely on hype things would have been different.

He is the reason why guys like Klepek went from hormone driven to losing his balls at the sight of cheesecake to the rise of Polygon all because all that hipster "intellect" had to go somewhere and literally no one in the industry is a 90's hyped up game reviewer anymore

Quite naive of you to think that someone like Yahtzee could have turned things around, also shattered rose tinted glasses? Ummm...Hello, Yahtzee's praises a lot of 90's games and he constantly does that, but please keep living in this lovely fantasy that some hat wearing hipster would have changed things.

 

[AsbestosFlaygon]

And that is what made him stood out as he and Rolfe pretty much shattered the rose tinted glasses of the 90's gamer with brutal relentless commentary and rampant fanboyism that gave birth to CWC. Had there been a Yahtzee to tell CWC and the countless 90's gamers their games sucked balls and rely on hype things would have been different.

He is the reason why guys like Klepek went from hormone driven to losing his balls at the sight of cheesecake to the rise of Polygon all because all that hipster "intellect" had to go somewhere and literally no one in the industry is a 90's hyped up game reviewer anymore

I wouldn't say that about either of them, their videos are first and foremost entertainment, they're not meant to be taken too seriously. I can't comment so much on Ben, but James when out of character clearly loves that era of gaming, and AVGN was made because of his reverence of it, not to rip the nostalgia googles off and expose how much it all sucked. Is him taking off the rose tinted glasses a part of it? probably, but I'd argue that AVGN mocks anyone that cares too much about this stuff. I don't remember who said this, but a part of the comedy comes from the fact the Nerd's a loser, he's raging at two decade old games and companies that everyone, likely including those that made them have moved on from. Yet he treats them as if they're the biggest issue in the world, because they're his world, unlike everyone else he never moved on, he's never accomplished anything else. Everything about AVGN's a mockery, it doesn't have a message condemning people for their tastes, it's just meant to celebrate retro gaming by showing how weird it is in a entertaining way.

Also I don't get why you're using CWC as a example here, sure he exposed himself to the world with Sonichu. But ultimately that's but a portal showing what he thinks of the world around him, gaming had nothing to do with the actual problems with his life. The main problems being his fucking shitty parents that refused to do what was best for him, and a lack of good friends to help him out. Having some angry gamer guys tell him that his favorite game was shit wouldn't change what really mattered, it just would've maybe made him less funny.