Cuphead
In this stream we discussed the question: what game always makes you tilt? We talked about our interpretations of tilt, which influenced potential answers and let us reflect on one of our earlier streams where we talked about gamer rage. Turned out that the thing that caused us the most tilt was the actual reading, as we could fill the first hour with critiques easily. We talked about whether tilt is just an emotional affect by a game, whether it is always negative in that reading, and we reflected upon how player type might influence the occurrence of tilt.
Afterwards, we loaded up Cuphead. This game has a lovely aesthetic, clearly influenced by 1920s and 1930s rubber animation style cartoons. Everything started out pretty good as Angus expertly played through the first bosses (a carrot, an onion and a potato). The tilt was not that far away though, as this game turned out to be quite punishing (only a couple of mistakes allowed per miniboss!). In addition, we were also graded on each of these encounters (no full points for us sadly :(). Putting the difficulty down to easy made the game more playable, but didn’t allow us to get the necessary elements to progress. We reflected on how these types of decisions make games more appealing to certain audiences, but turn others (like us 3) away to never return.
Crusader Kings III
We were blessed with a guest for our second stream of the month, in which we asked the question “What’s a game where your expertise gives you an edge?” Dennis Jansen, PhD researcher at Utrecht University and expert in all things simulation, militarization, and wargaming, joined us to talk about real-world skills helping game-world ‘skillz’, and vice versa. Our answers ranged from COD and Virtual Battle Space to city builders and Tiny Bookshop, and we debated the difference between proficiencies you develop by playing games that you can then apply to others, and proficiencies you build in your day-to-day life that give you the upper hand at your console. We also talked about games like Chef, where expertise is the opposite of helpful (sour parsley, anyone?), and how games have always been skill-building tools.
This led us to some delightful playtime in Crusader Kings III, where we started as Prince Mstislav, a well-intentioned guy who happened to have beef with literally everyone we knew, including immediate family members. Despite steadily declining in popularity, we did manage to sire several heirs (named Dennisslav, Keerthislav, and Corineslav, of course), gain a ton of territory, and resolve several conflicts while holding court. While Corine stopped us from dying on numerous occasions and built up the Kingdom of Ruthenia, we discussed the militarization of maps in particular, embodied literacy within the grand strategy genre, and games as a defense recruitment strategy. It was a delight to have Corine play CKIII for PlayTime after her long tenure as reigning CKIII champion over at VALUE. What’s the game where your special skill always comes in handy?
