Video Gamers Podcast - Most Important Game Elements Ranked - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 9, 2022

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul are back with another Bonus Round. We get deep in this episode as we break down gaming elements (gameplay, graphics, story etc) and then are forced to rank them in order of importance. Things get a bit crazy as we argue, but it’s a gaming episode for the ages! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, Josh here. I just wanted to take a second and let you know about this amazing new product called MultiplayerSquad.com. It's the greatest new addition to gaming. Well, I mean practically life. It's sure to fill you with glee, help you make new friends, and expose you to all sorts of awesome memes. It's got the best community of gamers around, and more than that, it's the best way to help support the show and let us keep providing awesome content. What? I gotta read this disclaimer for legal reasons. Warning. MultiplayerSquad.com can cause feelings of joy, happiness, companionship,

ownage, and all around sense of being awesome. If you notice yourself acting more like Josh, please discontinue use immediately and seek professional help. Hey, who put that in there? Paul! Happy Monday to all our listeners out there. You've tuned into the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, and we're so glad that you're here.

We are three dads who love gaming, and we release three pods weekly. Please make sure to rate us five stars and leave a written review. You can hit us up on socials at MultiplayerPod, release three pods weekly. Please make sure to rate us five stars and leave a written review. You can hit us up on socials at MultiplayerPod, and you can join our free Discord community by using the link in the episode description. And then lastly, if you'd like to help fund our show, since we are funded almost entirely by our listeners, you can do so through Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. Support starts at five bucks a month, and you'll get bonus episodes and early access. Today is a bonus round episode, which means we are going to pick a single

gaming topic and then pound it into the ground for the next hour or so. I am your host, Paul, and joining me is the man who I know appreciates good story in his video games. It's Michael. Story is absolutely super important. I actually have a story for you guys. So back in 1982, I was born. And I'm just kidding. I was just going to tell my whole life story.

And I realized that... You're not going to go back further than that, Michael? So back in... That's... I mean, the 80s, the music was really good. And I was born. So two great things came out of the 80s. All right, moving on. 80s music, get out of here.

All right, and then joining us, it's the man who appreciates gameplay and also the ability to rebind every single key in his games. It's Josh. Dude, you just adding one thing to my list for today. Oh, my goodness. So, you know, this bonus round topic, I think, is a really interesting one. I think in the outset, it's not going to sound like the most exciting topic. But Josh, why don't you tell the people a little bit about what we're going to be doing in this bonus round episode?

It's going to be exciting, man. All right. So what we are doing is we are going to, as a group, which you all out there listening know is difficult because we have very different opinions. So this should make for some delightful arguments. But we are going to collectively decide on what the most important game design categories are? Is that the right way to say it? Elements? I don't... Elements? Characteristics? Game elements? Characteristics? I don't know, something like that.

All of those. So basically, what we're going to do is we're going to say, in order of importance, what makes a game? Is it gameplay? Is it graphics? Is it sound? Is it the ability to rebind all of your keys, which I've recently added to the top of my list? And that sort of thing. So what we're going to do is we're going to just kind of talk about different things. If I think character customization

is one of the most important things, I'll throw it out there. YouTube will shoot me down. I'll whine and cry about it, and then we'll figure out where it goes. So what we're going to do is, from order of most important to least important, as long as time allows,

we're basically going to fight each other until we are forcefully made to agree with each other. Does that sound about right? That sounds perfect. And this is a stupid question, but Michael, are you excited to record this episode? made to agree with each other. So that's not about right. I think that sounds perfect. Yeah. And, this is a stupid question, but Michael,

are you excited to record this episode? You know that this, this show, I proposed a name change, uh, for the show, by the way, I got shot down quick because apparently it has too many syllables and won't

fit, but I propose the show should be called. Is it the multi-player podcast no that's not right um no i propose that it would be called michael butler's favorite thing to do ever in the history of ever ever ever podcast but they said there's too many syllables and so no but yes this is my favorite thing to do i'm so excited and that name is taken it is actually what's weird i don't know who took that one, but there's like 358,000 Michael Butlers in the

United States, so probably one of those guys. It is impossible to understate how excited Michael is to record every single time we start recording. It's awesome. You're so much fun to work with, Michael. I get really excited. The other thing that Michael gets excited about

is winning a round of Overwatch. I can tell that he's not used to that. It's never happened before. Because we just played a couple rounds of Overwatch 2, and we won both of them. And Michael was so giddy that the victory popped up on the screen. And I was like, is this your first time, man? I was like, we didn't just win one. We won two

michael's sounding out the letters to victory he doesn't know what it says i've never yeah i've never spelled that i've had to spell it before i got to vic and i got lazy and got tired i was like what's that say josh he's like we won i'm like no oh how funny all right so before we jump into this josh i think you've got a review or two. I got two. And they're good ones. Two reviews. I know.

So we're going to get to cracking because I know we want to get started on this episode. So this first one is from, I don't know how to say this. So it's AJJADTR2002. Ajetter? Ajetter 2002. That's as good as it's going to get, boys. And it is titled Phenomenal Podcast. I went through two other gaming podcasts that really didn't work for me.

As soon as I started listening to the multiplayer podcast, I instantly loved it. All three hosts do a tremendously fantastic job of keeping the audience engaged. It's funny, well-pacedpaced and all around a well put together gaming podcast a must listen oh thank you aj that's how i'm gonna choose to pronounce the name yeah aj also great great title and the reason why it's well paced is because paul keeps josh and i in line really well that is not an easy task either. No. I'm also to blame for the incredibly long length of episodes that have been coming lately because I don't do a very good job at reining everybody in. The listeners don't mind that.

It's free. All right. And then this next one is titled, This Podcast is Epic. And it comes in from Wellesley Land from Great Britain. And it says, this is the podcast I listen to when I sleep, and it really helps. And waffles are peak. I love Josh and how cool and interactive the hosts are in the Discord. Thank you.

Now, I know people out there would say, wait a minute. Yeah, I was like, like hold on so these guys put you to sleep is what you're saying but he mentioned my name in the review so of course i had to pick this one and it was a five-star review and it's titled this podcast is epic so you know what guys sleep is very important dude as long as as long as the download numbers count right care you can be asleep if you want to listen to this when you're under anesthesia getting surgery we're we're more than cool with that as well the best surgery ever it would be yeah oh well how nice we love getting the reviews make sure to keep those coming

and you know we've said before if you've already left us a review make a second apple account go leave another one through apple Podcasts. Borrow your friend's phone, whatever you need to do. Go get the word out. We would really appreciate it. All right, so let's jump into the bonus round content here today. I'm not entirely sure where we should start. I'm thinking maybe we just throw the gauntlet to Michael and let him pick something that he thinks is an important element of gaming and then i guess from there we can just either agree or disagree we can talk about it and just take things from there does that work for you guys disagree

i'm sorry i'm ahead of the game it's it's literally whatever i say josh is going to disagree and i tried the same thing to him um so are we starting at like any any is there any like top down or what's the most important thing to me or what do you think is most important and then we can disagree we can start most important and then we'll kind of try to whittle it down and we'll see how much time we have maybe it'll be like a top six maybe a top eight maybe top ten who knows we'll just keep going until we're bored or run out of time oh man um it's actually really hard i i think though because there's so many different ways there's so many different kinds of games that i play um but i want to say that that one of the things i definitely want to throw out first of all if

you're going in order of importance, is I love games like Overwatch, and I love Deep Rock Galactic and things like that that absolutely do not have this element at all because they're short little matches and stuff. But the best games I ever played got to have a good story. They got to have a good story. I mean, I got it on the intro, but it's true. I love a good story, a great story. So I got to start with story. I'm got it on the intro but it's true i love a good story a great story so i gotta start

with story i'm throwing out there it's it's just one of the most important things i love to feel things when i'm playing games i mean i felt something earlier in a game that didn't have a story i felt uh a little spike of dopamine when i want to match it overwatch for the first time ever a few minutes ago um And that was really exciting. And there's not really a story there that kind of is, but story is really important. I think it's, I think it's,

it's, it's a top three thing for sure. In most of the games that I play, the caveat there being most. What'd you think, Josh? Disagree. I knew he disagreed too.

I will say this. I mean, story is obviously something that makes a game stick with you. I will say that while I think story is going to rank very high, I do not think that it is the number one most important thing in a video game. I can think of a lot of games like you just mentioned Overwatch that has very little story, but it's just an absolute blast to play. You both know, I absolutely love rocket league. I play it every single freaking day.

It has zero story involved, you know? Now there are games like honestly that, that are insanely memorable, which are three, right? Dragon age, mass effect that have amazing stories to them.

And they're memorable, but I don't think it's the number one thing. So, I mean, I would counter Michael's point that I think the gameplay is the number one most important thing in a video game, because if it doesn't have good gameplay, the story can be great, but it's going to be boring. if it doesn't have good gameplay, the story can be great, but it's going to be boring.

If it doesn't have gameplay, can it still be a game? Don't they call those interactive movies at that point? It's essentially a movie, right? You can have a game without story. I don't know that you can have a game without gameplay. So I am inclined to agree with you, Josh, but I do think that these are absolutely two must-haves. I think they're both

going to make it in, and I think maybe we would give a little bit of a weightier tip to gameplay. Disagree completely. I mean, no. I don't actually disagree completely. Michael, you toughen up, man.

You stand your ground, buddy. Well, what about here? Michael and I, I would say we definitely value story-based games in general more than non-story-based. Like if you came to me and said, Paul, for the rest of your life, you can play amazing story-rich RPGs or you can play like multiplayer matches like Call of Duty and Overwatch. And for me, that would be an easy pick. And I would stick with the storyline games because those are the ones that draw me in the most. But I mean, gameplay with games, they go together. Let's use a couple examples for this, right? I've got one. We've all played Firewatch.

Michael, recently you played Firewatch after we talked about it, right? Absolutely, yep. Firewatch is an amazing story. Very little gameplay elements. And this is not to slander Firewatch at all because I think Firewatch is amazing. I see what you're doing here. You're throwing it at Paul, aren't you? Because he hated it.

No, Paul thought Firewatch was okay. He just thought it was overhyped. He didn't understand why people loved Firewatch so much. Yeah, it was fine. But Firewatch is a perfect example of a game with a great story with minimal gameplay elements. What Remains of Edith Finch. I don't know if you guys have ever played one of those. The Telltale Games, right?

Yep. Very little gameplay elements, phenomenal story to those games. Detroit Become Human, same thing. I never played that one. Very little gameplay. Heavy Rain, Josh. Yeah, Heavy Rain, right? So this is to show that, yes, a great story can absolutely carry a video game, right? But let's go back to a couple of recent deep dives. I'm going to lose you guys on this one just a smidge, but you'll understand the difference here. You guys know that I absolutely love God of War. And honestly, I love Red Dead Redemption too.

We just did a deep dive on both of those. We ranked Red Dead a little bit higher, but I think that's the classic example of story, right? Whereas gameplay, because I feel like God of War has much better gameplay elements than Red Dead does. They're both games that are honestly all around great. But for me, gameplay trumps story every time. Because if you have a game that's just story, while it may be memorable, it's not as fun. God of War is infinitely more fun than Firewatch in that regard. Rocket League is infinitely more fun because of the replayability of gameplay. I think you hit on something good, actually, with that point. Because if you think about it, let's look at it from this perspective. If you have a game that is all story,

and even if it has limited gameplay but the gameplay doesn't work well like the controls are tough and it sucks i'm gonna be frustrated whereas a game without a story at all um you know rocket league for instance which by the way i mean i've also never won a match of rocket league but i'll play with me. Are you just going to carry me? I will. Your beard will carry the other part of me. But when it comes down to it, a game can have no story and I can still have fun with it. But even a game,

any video game has to have some element of gameplay, correct? Yeah. Otherwise, it's a movie. Or it's a cartoon. Even, for instance like firewatch yeah like the gameplay was very limited but it worked it wasn't like frustrating i walked around i pushed the f button when i wanted to talk to something it worked i guess kind of but i so i i kind of

say that you kind of might actually have a tiny bit of an edge i would prefer to have a game that has a great story that's true but you can't have a game without good gameplay. Otherwise, I mean, Elden Ring? Yeah. I mean, I know there is some kind of weird convoluted story to Elden Ring. Does anybody really care about the story in Elden Ring? No, because the gameplay is so incredible that it carries everything else. Now, see, I had to know about the story in Elden Ring.

That's why I watched like three hours worth of YouTube videos about an hour into the game, because I'm like, what am I doing here? Like, what is the point? Why is everything trying to kill me? Isn't there a town where I can just buy like some shoes? Or like a gherkin or something? I don't know what a gherkin is, but I wanted to buy one.

It's a small pickle. I thought it was a small sword. It's a pickle. It's not a sword. Gherkin is, but I wanted to buy one. It's a small pickle. I thought it was a small sword. It's a pickle. It's not a sword. Gherkin is a sword. No, there's a Gherkin sword. Beware my Gherkin! It's like, dude, are you going to hit me with that little pickle?

Hey, you can whittle it down to a fine point. I can't throw it at you, but I can't throw it at you without good gameplay. Yeah, I think for most video games it most of them have bad story right can we agree with that like how often to have an amazing story it's rare and so when you happen to hit a really compelling story i think that's really special and And if you can nail both, that's incredibly important. But you can have a game that has fantastic gameplay and a terrible story,

and most people are still going to play it because they come to video games for gameplay, not so much the story. And I think Michael and I are probably bigger movie buffs than you, Josh. I mean, I love TV and movies just as much, if not more, than gaming. But if I'm really going for a top-notch story, there's only a very small handful of video games that I think are at that level of quality. You do have your Red Dead Redemption 2s and your Mass Effects and your Witcher 3s but you it's very forgivable to play a game with good gameplay and a bad story and then also i think gameplay is just so open-ended like you can have all these sports games and you don't need a story it's replay like how often are you going to go back and play firewatch again i'll never right exactly because. Right, exactly. Because, I mean, the story's amazing, right? Or, now, I haven't played this,

but another great example is Disco Elysium, right? I hear the story in that game is absolutely phenomenal. Minimal gameplay elements to it. It's basically a book. Right, exactly. And so it's like, while that may be amazing for what it is, are you going to ever go back and play Disco Elysium again just based off of the story?

I know that there's a lot of different choices you can make in something like that, but I don't think you're as likely to play a game that is only story-based repeatedly like you would a game that has phenomenal gameplay that you just keep going back to over and over again. A few notable exceptions being games that actually have you make choices, i.e. Weird West, which we just did that review of, Detroit Become Human, which is notably known

for everything you do in that game. There's literally thousands of combinations of how that story can end. And I think that's a game that is story-driven that you can come back to,

which I'm drawn to very heavily. But you kind of make a good point. I would put them almost equally important to how i choose to pick a video game however that doesn't necessarily mean it's the most important thing in gaming so i think josh you've kind of won the argument with me that gameplay is a little more important than story um but when i'm picking a game me as as Michael Butler, I look for games that have a good story. And if they can make me cry, maybe with a little glass of Cabernet Sauvignon or something, then I'm really, really going to get into that game.

Get the wine tears flowing. Get the wine tears, man. Let's just force it. is you can only play that kind of game so many times whereas your sports games in particular have an infinite cap for how much you can play it so yeah let's go ahead and we'll we'll lock in gameplay number one for now story at number two but as we bring in more elements we're going to keep revising this list until we are done oh i see what you're doing i like that i like how you're doing that we're just kind of like our leaderboards yeah okay cool i think that means paul's next right yeah okay so let's let's just knock out what i think are like the most obvious i think gameplay and story are

the first two most are going to think of and probably the next one people are going to think of is graphics now i would say graphics absolutely come in below gameplay and story you can play a great game that looks like hot garbage if it's fun enough i don't care how good that game looks i'm not playing it if it has bad gameplay and bad story it's very true i you guys know that i love good graphics i i've always said hey i'm not a graphics snob. Guys, let's be honest. I'm a little bit of a graphics snob. You are a little bit. I have noticed this over the years. I've come to realize this about myself. And that it used to be, I used to go, good graphics aren't everything, guys. Look at Tetris, right? Graphics suck in that game. But hey, we all grow and we

learn little things about ourselves. And in my old age, I've realized I really enjoy good graphics. They can help make a game for me. I don't think, Josh, I don't think you would ever buy Loop Hero. Ever. I tried. I got Loop Hero for free. I think it was either Epic Game Store or Amazon Games or something like that. I got it for free.

I booted it up. The idea was neat. I like roguelite type games and the graphics were so abysmal that I literally could not play that game. And so, yes, I am a little bit of a graphics snob. Stardew Valley, right? I know there's a lot of people out there that are gasping right now, but I think the graphics in Stardew Valley suck. I think they actually... Oh, they're so charming i think they detract from the game charming's like that nice way like when somebody's really weird you're

like oh they're kind of unique like just call them weird man you know that's like special the graphics are special charming graphics mean those graphics aren't good i think it also comes into play like especially when you look at things like in the age of a game so for instance perhaps one of my top well actually i know because we did a list of a list about this a long time ago i think my top three games of all time included the game elder scrolls for oblivion i can't play that game today it doesn't matter how much i mod it the meshes look so weird that i'm waiting for sky oblivion come out, which is that mod in the Skyrim engine, which brings Oblivion in. And it's done by 300 and some odd modders who are all

working for free, which God bless you people for making me play Oblivion again at some point. I can't play that game again. So it's not even the importance of good graphics. It's the importance of not having bad graphics that really takes me out of it. Now, there are certain caveats to that. Games that are not graphics driven. I'm playing My Summer Car. We talked about that just a couple of episodes or last episode, actually.

I went into that knowing the graphics are not really important and not good, but it's like, well, but the graphics that are important are good. The engine looks fine. The car looks fine, but the trees are literally EverQuest trees. You know what I'm talking about, Josh. The game has EverQuest trees. It's four. It's an X. I was going to say it's the plus.

Yep. That's it. It's too plain. Yeah, and I'm fine with that, but games that are supposed to have good graphics, for instance, Oblivion back in the day had the best graphics. It was really incredible at the time. Now you look back and you're like yuck ouch can't do it yeah i i have a question for you guys when talking about graphics do you care more about frame rate or resolution or is there like a fine mix of both i mean that was fast michael you're all all about that resolution now is this meaning that

i'm playing at at least 30 frames a second 60 frames a second because once you get under 30 dude it's unplayable at that point well so my thing is that is that i will turn my tv backwards when i'm watching a movie i will go to that native watch the back of your tv no no no i don't oh you legit i just that was a loud boisterous laugh just now because you caught me off guard completely i will watch the back of my tv back of the tv that's where the magic happens i will guess what these people look like while i look at the serial number hs407817 whatever it is in the back of my tv no but what i'll do oftentimes is a lot of people you know they buy these really nice tvs and they want to do like

the super smooth rate the super smooth motion and stuff i think it looks cheesy and i hate it i put everything even tv shows down to the film which is 32 frames a second is what film is done at because i feel like it's that nostalgia piece. It looks good. And that's how I want it to be. It's still got to look crisp and clear, but 32 frames a second is fine for me. In a game, it's kind of the same way. Now, there is a painful part where you can't play the game because you're lagging or you can't get at least 30. But I want it to look incredible. So I literally, in every single game ever, will ever will pick when it's got that scale, the performance versus quality. I am all quality 100% of the time.

I'm with you, man. I'm the same way. As long as it's playable, I want everything maxed out. Even if I have to sacrifice some frame rate for that, give me the resolution, give me those eye-bleeding graphics, that kind of stuff. So I'm with you. Graphics really are important. Now, that's not to say that there aren't some great games out there that have lower quality graphics, and there's still plenty enjoyable. But again, I'll reference God of War because the graphics in God of War were amazing. Red Dead Redemption 2, amazing graphics. I like Elden Ring. I'm using these because they're recent games that everybody's familiar with,

but it's like Dark Souls games have always been garbage graphics, and then they finally came out with Elden Ring, and it's like, dude, this game's beautiful. Now, maybe the individual character textures and stuff aren't super high resolution, but the world is beautiful. They did a great job with the vistas and stuff aren't super high resolution, but the world is beautiful. Like they did a great job with,

you know, the, the vistas and stuff like that, that you see. So I do think graphics are pretty important in a game. So what do you, what about you, Paul?

I definitely agree that they're important. It kind of depends on the game. If it's more action oriented and movement based, I might choose higher frame rate over higher resolution. But if it's like a slower paced RPG, then I'll boost that resolution to the max. Kind of just depends on what kind of gameplay. I will also say that I am far less concerned about things like ray tracing. Like famously, when Todd was still on the podcast, he bought his 2070 or maybe it was a 2080 graphics card.

And there were no games that had ray tracing. And Todd would like go out of his way to play games with ray tracing because he had the capability. And I remember playing the first games with ray tracing, like Control and things like that. And I would stop and be like, oh, that is really cool seeing that reflection. And four seconds later, I move on and I don't really think about it again. So even those new state-of-the-art things I think are neat. I think it adds to the atmosphere, but it's not essential at all. Have you guys ever seen the benchmark tests or the screenshots where it's like, hey, this is this game on medium quality?

And then it's like, this is this game on medium quality and then it's like this is this game on ultra settings yeah and it looks like they turned down medium quality a whole bunch to make it super low quality and no actually i'm thinking the opposite where it's like i can't really tell the difference like both of them look good to me i'm not saying that there's not but it's like if you have to look to spot what ambient occlusion does when you toggle it on and off do you know what i mean it's kind of like is that really worth the five frames a second hit that you're gonna take on that because it's like i can't really tell i know i know i want it like i'm leaving that bad boy on but i can't tell the difference i don't know the first thing that i ever do when i mod a game it's always numero uno number one on the list is update those you know the graphics the

textures all of it textures which by the way i do have to i gotta break the fourth wall real fast and talk to you real fast listener i apologize to you i messed up about a minute and 37 seconds ago when i said films were shot at 32 frames per second i knew it was 24 i didn't want to say anything because i knew it was 24 no don't want to say anything because i knew it was 24 no you gotta correct me you got i know you gotta correct me though because i know it's 24 i'm a film guy uh and i totally messed up and i apologize that i misspoke about that continuing on with the show you're fired michael get out yeah get out i gotta go guys i'll see you later yeah i remember when like the hobbit movies came out at 48 frames per second, and it was so weird because of the soap opera effect.

I think now people are a little more used to it. It's a weird thing because you get so used to the lower frame rate, but objectively, you know the higher frame rate is better. And so our kids are going to grow up know being used to that and they're gonna appreciate the higher frame rates but it's rough for us yeah yeah so all right so we got our first three here gameplay story and graphics respectively uh michael i think we're back to you what's something else you want to throw out here we are and i wonder because there's something that's really important to me but it's a really small thing and you guys are gonna throw it away for a second so let me see not gonna say anyways, and I don't know how to say

this. So I must say it in like sentence form. You know that thing on the screen where it's there and sometimes you can move it. Yeah. So there so it's this rectangular thing that sits in front of you, right? And you look at it and colors display on it. What's it called? Starts with Emma. It's

your monitor, right? That's important. Sorry, that was a bad joke. I didn't go anywhere go anywhere i felt real flat we need we need a snare drum sound two cymbals and a snare drum go rolling down a hill oh all right um so it's the this is gonna sound so stupid but the ease of understanding versus the effectiveness of an abilities or skills tree. Okay. Kind of makes sense.

Valid. Okay. Like, like I've seen skill trees in games before. I'm like, I know I can do things with this. I don't know what I'm doing and there's important stuff in here, but I can't figure it out.

You know, a good game that did it. Well, it was probably weird. West. We played that really recently and I liked how it's like, okay, this is pretty easy. I've got the abilities. They change, but I still can figure it out you know a good game that did it well was probably weird west we played that really recently and i liked how it's like okay this is pretty easy i've got the abilities they change but i still can figure it out easily i've got three points i can put in each thing good to go but then you look at like world of warcraft circa like 2007 and you're like man i gotta like get

like an excel spreadsheet out and try to figure out what's gonna be the best dps for this part and that part and they simplify it to make it very diablo-esque and i was like i know it's less customizable but thank you for doing that um does that kind of make sense so do we would we call that learning curve would that be the easiest way yeah you know that could be learning curve and michael is talking specifically about a skill tree see because disagree we... Disagree! We can umbrella it, though, and say learning curve, because it also could be in the learning curve. But this is why I asked, because I actually am the guy that I love the really big convoluted skill tree, because I like theorycrafting, right? That's why I like customizable card games, right? It's like, ooh, Outriders had a decent one, because you could branch a few times, and you

never had enough skill points to put everywhere. Right. So you had to make those choices. I really appreciate the theory crafting part of a big, complex skill tree, because ultimately it's like, man, I have to decide how I want to play this game. So I like Weird West again, disagree, because that was just, like, abilities. And yes, it would affect your character, but they were so simplified that I felt like it didn't matter. Well, that's why I bring in the effectiveness part. Like, that worked in that game.

Like, for instance, when you're playing the melee style, or in Paul's words, melee, right? Is that how he says it? Melee? That's so weird. Melee. The multiplayer game podcast. That's not how I say it, but go ahead. So the melee build of the pig man um but like the pig man had more mealy i'm saying it sorry i can't um so but the melee build had the pig man you know of the pig man like those things

fit with it and that's why i'm saying like the ease of understanding versus the effectiveness i'm not talking about is it something that i can go into and craft my own thing customizably is it worth doing that so if it's hard to understand then it needs to be very robust and very like what you're saying it has to actually make a difference if i'm theory crafting now in the game weird west it'm theorycrafting. Now in the game Weird West, it was very simple, but it was effective in that game because it's like, okay, I'd be using these stomp abilities where I'm knocking people back because I'm a melee fighter. You know what I mean? So that's kind of where I'm at. So it really could be under learning curve. I'm going to go ahead and say that we can put it under learning curve because

it's all about like, is it worth the time to figure this out? I will say if we want to name it learning curve, I can definitely get on board with that because it's all about like, is it worth the time to figure this out? I will say if we want to name it learning curve, I can definitely get on board with that because there have been some games that have an absolutely insanely difficult learning curve, and it can absolutely ruin a video game. A game where you can just pick it up and it makes sense right away. Again, I hate to always go back to this well, but I remember the first time I ever played Rocket League. You pull the trigger, your car goes. You push a button, it jumps. The learning curve is insanely simple.

A four-year-old could play that game. Now, there's an insane level of mastery involved there, but anybody can literally pick that game up and do the basics of that game. I mean, Paul and I famously struggled with Terraria, right? Because it's a kid's game. But they don't teach you. And they didn't teach you a thing. And we were going like, why does everybody like this game? Kerbal Space Program. A lot of people love that game. I couldn't play it because it crashed every single time, but I've heard that has a steep learning curve. Michael, we're seeing this with Elite Dangerous.

I was going to say, we're about to dig into that. I'm not going to spoil anything for that episode, but let's be honest, the learning curve for Elite Dangerous is pretty intense. It's ridiculous. You know? And so I feel like learning curve could very much drastically affect

somebody's enjoyment of a game. Yeah, and that's why I say learning curve as like, is it worth it? That's my whole thing. If a game is hard to understand, but it's incredible, it's worth it to me. And you know what I mean? That's kind of where I was going with the ease of understanding versus the effectiveness. I guess you could put that under learning curve because it's like, is it worth it to try and figure this out i hate nothing more than opening a skill tree and seeing

things like after you kill an enemy with a critical hit then your next dot ability will have its duration increased by four percent and i just see that and i eyes glaze over i i don't care i won't even spend points in my skill tree if that's the kind of stuff I see. You know what I like to see? Improve your crit rate by 1%. Great. Improve your HP by 30. Done. I love that kind of simplicity, but it still gives you the ability to play and mess around with it. And then if we extend learning curve all the way into gameplay, I'm going to go as far as to say, I think learning curve is more important than graphics. I can deal with bad graphics. I do not have the time or the patience to deal with an incredibly

steep learning curve. But I don't know, maybe that's just me. What do you guys think is more important, graphics or learning curve? No, I think you make a really good point there because i like we just said a few minutes ago there are certain games that have terrible graphics that i still am going to have fun with there are games that are designed to have bad graphics what is it what is that oh no what's it called the transal oh the the games where it's metroid metroidvania right well that's a genre yeah right but those games don't have good graphics. It's typically your platformers and stuff. I still have a blast with that.

Graphics are not important. But learning curve? Super, super, super important. But like I said, I'm okay with a hard learning curve as long as it's worth it. And in your case, Paul, I totally agree because nothing takes me out of it more than that. Every time you kill a zombie with your machete

whilst hitting them somewhere between the third and fourth thoracic vertebrae, you get four extra crit points for the next three hits. I literally find myself playing the game, trying to hit the zombies in between the third and fourth thoracic vertebraes and getting those four extra hits, and then it changes the game for me because I'm trying to only tunnel vision that skill. As goofy as this is going to sound because I don't think a lot of people out there would even

identify learning curve when it comes to a game but i'm gonna agree man because sweet i i will absolutely not play a game if it feels like work to me you know what i mean like let's be honest like you know like we're playing elite dangerous and and Michael's very aware that there's a steep learning curve. Now we have somebody that can kind of teach us that. But if a game requires so much effort to learn and play that it makes it not fun, I'm not going to continue to play that game. Right. At that point. So it's just one of those things where it's like, I think that's one of those things that people don't think about.

But man, if it goes wrong, it'll absolutely ruin a game, hands down. Totally agree. All right. So we'll put Learning Curve right above graphics. Last comment on Learning Curve. Yeah, go for it. Last comment on Learning Curve. It's the exact same thing, right?

I stopped playing Elite Dangerous for, what, about nine months? And I played it. I have 900 hours in this game. And when I stepped away from that game for nine months i came back and josh was like hey can you give us a tutorial on how to play this and i'm like i'm gonna bring my buddy jason who has 4 000 hours because i can't remember because there's so much and i left the game for nine months and i can't remember how to play it that's tough now granted for me it's worth it but that's my last comment on that oh boy yeah yeah i

totally hear you all right josh what's the next element you want to toss out here i'm gonna say sound okay audio design you know because all right let's be honest games are about immersion you know we like to we want the gameplay right we want we want good graphics we want a great story and stuff like that but if you guys have ever played a game where the sound's just garbage in design versus a game that has absolutely top-notch audio quality it makes a world of difference right voice acting is becoming a big big thing in gaming now right and it's like if there's not voice acting you have to read People, it just doesn't hit the same. And so, you know, when the Hellblade, Senua's Sacrifice, has some of the best sound design in a video game, I think I've heard, with the 3D sound,

and it absolutely helped to make that game. That game with poor sound design would not be anything near what I think it is. You know? And so, like, Overwatch 2. I don't want to spoil anything, but they've completely redone the sound design in Overwatch 2 to where all of the weapons feel so meaty. They're just punchy and meaty and they feel good. You know?

Doom Eternal. Another game with phenomenal sound design. You feel like you're really shooting a heavy gun. And I get it. It's kind of like, well, yeah, that's down my list. But in a game with immersion, I think that audio design makes a world of difference. In a game like Dragon Age or Mass Effect, to have those characters have their personalities come through in the sound design makes a big difference.

So I'm going to say good audio quality slash sound design. So I have a quick question for both of you. And I know the answer to one of these. Josh, did you or did you not spend decent money buying a sound card for your PC? I did. Absolutely. I spent too much money. I would argue you spent way too much on that sound card michael what about you do you use on board sound or did you buy a super fancy schmancy sound card i don't think i bought a sound card since they were relevant in 1998 oh they're still relevant you don't know what you're missing really people people have gotten just used to mediocrity when it comes to sound. I mean, I don't know.

I've got the 7.1 surround on my headphones and all that stuff. I can say, though, that sound design transcends even video games. Because film and video games are very similar in so many ways. Sound design is so important. It's so important. For instance, there's nothing that can change the way that like the sound of like when somebody slaps someone in a 1960s TV show versus a 2022 TV show. The sound is so wildly different because they're like not just like slapping paper or whatever they're slapping. It sounds terrible.

A pow sound. But it's kind of funny because a brief anecdote and I didn't think about this before, but I was actually on a plane recently and I was flying. I had my AirPods in and I'm watching on my iPad, a TV show. And I turned my head to the left and apparently Apple did an update that blew my mind. And so I'm going to score you pretty high on this one, Josh, because this blew my mind. I looked to the right and I was like, oh, my AirPods must not be on because I'm hearing it come into my left ear. It sounded like it was coming from my tablet. And so I'm like, hold on.

Let me turn my head to the left. And I'm like, it's coming out of my tablet, but it's not. It's in my AirPods. And I was like, this blew my mind because it had directional sound on the AirPods. Now these things, that's insane. And so, yeah yes sound is very important to me um paul is smirking which to me is like

shaking his head now he's just given all right let me let me make a point we've all played over proof we've all played ocarina of time right nope paul you know this we talked about okay wind waker you said wind waker is your favorite right okay

the sound if wind waker had crappy sound would it still be the same game to you uh it would be 98 the same to me here's the thing so i i grew up with an audiophile dad okay i spent many a day traveling all the way across town to test sound equipment test different preamps uh testing tube amps versus you know non-tube amps i i can appreciate good sound and i love good quality music i will say i care a lot about music i do not so much care about sound effects all right right. That makes sense. Let me counter that. Like when we when you first talked about Hellblade on the pod, I don't know, a year and three months ago, you kept bringing up sound and I just started laughing. And I'm like, Josh, all you say is it has good sound.

I'm not going to play a game because it has good sound. I need like these other elements. I can deal with terrible sound. I honestly couldn't even really care less. If it's good, I will sometimes appreciate it. You were talking about the updates of sound in Overwatch 2, and you get things like in Call of Duty, if you fire a gun when you're underneath rocks, you hear the echo, or if you're out in the open, there is no echo. That's cool. I don't really care if it's there or not. I'll appreciate it if it's there, but I don't think it's central. For me, sound would absolutely go below gameplay, story,

learning curve, and graphics. I'll appreciate it when it's there, but I don't think it's really necessary. What sound did the enemies in metal gear solid make when they saw you yeah do you know the mario theme song yeah of course what sound does mario make when he jumps uh yeah so tell me sound design doesn't matter it absolutely matters it matters a little i would not say it matters a lot. I disagree. I think there's so many video games where the sound is what you remember. I can still remember the Ocarina of Time songs. I mean, we all know what Mario sounds like. I'm not saying it's the pinnacle, but I think it ranks up there as far as importance in a game. See, I would say voice acting is important,

and the music writing is important. The sound effects and the sound quality itself, I just don't care about as much. None of those Nintendo games had good sound. You're kind of lauding Mario. I'm not talking high fidelity. I'm talking the audio of a game. I'm not saying that it has to have like high five sound, but audio design in a video game matters, whether it's a catchy tune, catchy sound effects, a good gun sounds in a first person shooter.

I think those things make it very memorable. Like if it doesn't fit and it's not relevant and you're playing Skyrim and they have MIDI files for the music, is it going to work for you? Right? No, absolutely not. Well, this also might be a difference between us. When we play Overwatch, I have all of the music down to zero. And I have like,

the only thing I want to hear are the audio cues that someone's ulting. I don't want to hear anything else. When I play games, unless it has really good music, I tend to turn a lot of that stuff down because I tend to multitask. A lot of the games I play, I don't even have the sound on at all because I've got a movie going on on my second monitor and I want to hear that while I'm playing a game silently. Like Rocket League, who cares? You can play it silent or with the sound on. It doesn't make a single difference. Paul, I can't do that with Overwatch because I can't read the word victory. And so I have to know that I won by the sound in the game. We talked about this earlier. Fair enough.

So where do you guys want to put sound in regards to gameplay, story, learning curve, graphics? My vote would be last. I think it's at the bottom. I'm just saying of those importance. But I do think that it is important to a quality game yeah it's more important than a lot of things we're probably not going to cover bring up on the show or even some things on my short list here but i think of those things it's

in the right spot at the bottom right okay i think i'll say this before we move on i think sound can immensely enhance a game but i don't think it can tank a game. Does that make sense? If you have really, really good sound design, I think it's going to heighten that game hugely in that regard, whether it's voice acting, Arthur Morgan's voice, whatever. If it's really good, I think it's going to massively stand out. If it's really meh, I don't think it's going to ruin a game, but I think it's going to hinder it a lot. The fact that we now have A-list actors doing video games, the first time I can really remember that,

and I know there are examples before this, and I know I'm talking about Oblivion all the time, and that's my watershed game, guys, whatever that word means. Captain Picard? Yeah! Dude, you got you know patrick stewart and sean bean doing the two like main characters that speak in the game and it's like oh my goodness like the second you hear that iconic voice you're like that's patrick stewart and i didn't know that

because before that really i hadn't played a video game where anybody who ever did a movie would ever consider doing the voices for a video game and And I'm like, oh, that's really legit. I'm brought into this, you know? Yeah, it's very cool that we get that kind of talent now in these games. All right. Is it you, Paul? It's to me. All right. Now, I'm not necessarily saying

this is the next most important, but we're just kind of nominating things. You know where I'm going here? I know what you're picking here i doubt it maybe i'm i'm going with controls i don't know what you're picking here i want to talk about controls in games because i would argue really bad controls can tank a game yeah i mean if they're convoluted like now that i hear this lends the question then because are what if you can rebind the controls is that a separate topic or is it because i mean you know

yeah some games if i'm forced to use right bumper button to jump that feels really weird to me and it's like dude what were you thinking like like who put this there you know but if i can rebind it well then it's like i can kind of fix that problem so i'm gonna assume you mean like these are just you're forced to play it this way i mean controls in general but also like your character doing what you're telling it to do that's part of the control escape from tarkov thank you that is the number one thing i was going to bring up if you give me a game that has 426 keys where i need three keyboards just to have enough keys to control you've you've done something wrong you've gone off kilter at that point when i have to push alt shift

d to do one action it's like dude that is not no that's not gonna happen that's a terrible control scheme ultimately the reason why i have literally never finished a grand theft auto game is because the cars are really awesome to drive but when i get out and have to shoot a gun no dude it's so hard for me because it doesn't work like other games like that now somehow Red Dead Redemption 2 actually worked out RDR1 was actually still pretty hard to control but like it's impossible

to shoot people in those games and you have to do it like you have to use guns as Niko Ballick and it's like I don't do this anymore I remember one mission I stopped playing I stopped playing the game and I never passed that mission because of it's like I kill like 20 guys in this building that's being constructed. And I kill like two of them and I die because I can't shoot these people. And it's not because I'm a bad first-person shooter.

That's also true. But it's because the controls are just not fun to try and figure out versus other games where you shoot people. I think you can absolutely ruin a game if you get too convoluted. If you have menus within menus... What was that game where it's a monster hunter world? Maybe that doesn't go to controls necessarily, but if you get too convoluted with what I need to do to interact with your game, it starts to cause an issue at that point. So I'm with you in that I do think that a good control scheme and an easy control scheme, again, if you can pick it up and it just makes sense and you can learn it right away, something clicks in that regard. I mean, look at our phones, right?

Everything's touch-based and swipe-based because it's super easy for even children to learn at that point, right? It's like a natural thing. So I get it. I don't know that I think it's more important than a lot of other stuff, just because I feel like in modern times, they allow you to fix it if it's a bad control scheme. I think Josh also just doesn't want sound to be at the bottom of the list at the end of this,

so he's going to try and help me too. Well, here's also the thing like what's more frustrating than playing a game where you're on like some kind of horse and you get too close to the edge of the cliff and all you do is press backward and your horse goes forward and starts to turn and you die like that's the kind of stuff that i'm talking about that is like soul crushing where i i would i I would agree. If you have really good responsive controls, you may or may not even notice, right? But when they're bad, it's really glaring. How about this for an example, Witcher 3? What's the one overarching complaint that a

lot of people have with Witcher 3? Roach. The controls with Roach. Right? But even the way gerald turns right like a lot of people don't like that he kind of does this wide turn kind of thing or if he does turn it's kind of janky and and then he he won 80s when you just tried you know you were only trying to like 90 degree turn and stuff like that um so yeah i mean if it's frustrating to interact with a game that's what games are right they're interactive and so if that's frustrating to interact with a game, that's what games are, right? They're interactive. And so if that's frustrating, I think it can definitely matter. What's a good example of a game with amazing controls? Rocket League.

Yeah. See, I just wanted somebody else to say it. It's perfect controls. You didn't want me to be the guy? It's perfectly responsive. And you know what really sucks for controls? Every game with motion sensors on nintendo wii everyone went crazy for the wii we bought one my kids loved it i hated playing any game on the wii where you had

to use the the wii mote with your motions give me just a controller where i can press buttons and they work right preferably wired and i'm happy as a pig in mud so that's another big thing for me i do not like any kind of motion controlled stuff even if it's like using uh ps5 remotes i remember when the ps4 came out there were a lot of games where you'd have to like draw a symbol using the controller i hate stuff like that just give me good old-fashioned responsive controls and i i'm good to go yeah i think elden ring had really good controls too because it had very immersive controls like with the collision in the game you could feel it in the way you controlled the character which i liked and so that kind of gives a point to this as well all right so where are we ranking this

do we think controls are more important than audio less important than audio i think sound is so important but i've got to put controls ahead of it because again to paul's point if the sound is not fully immersive or fully perfect i will still play the game if i like the story or the graphics or something like that um why don't we say controls i did not use roach ever my wife got so mad at me me because I would play and I'd be like, I'm walking. That's insane. I'm sorry, you're unique. Alexa,

find me a psychologist. How about this? Let's do this because this will make me personally feel better. How about we say controls or ability to customize them? Sure. Because Josh famously, the first thing he does in any game

is rebind every single key because you love your gaming keypad. Well, it's the way my brain works, right? Like if I know that my left ring finger is reload in every single game, it just helps that muscle memory regardless, right? And so if a game's like, oh no, reload is T instead, it's like, wait,

that just doesn't work for me. And so the ability to customize them matters a lot, because then I don't have to try to relearn everything. It's just already there. Yeah, I used to bind everything a little bit differently. Because on WASD, I think it's A and D turn typically, and Q and E typically are strafing. I think that's the way it works. It's rotating. Yeah, whatever. Well, I bound everything opposite. I would flip E and D and Q and A every single time,

and then I played Atlas. And when I played Atlas, Atlas was so notoriously broken that when you played it, if you rebound any keys, when you got to actually steer your boat, which is half the game, the boat wouldn't turn. And so you'd have to like customize every time you logged in. And even I'd go change the INI file and it would still not work. Yep.

And so I had to go back to the way that every other game does the controls, which I hate. Absolute. Last thing that I'll say about controls is that my buddy andrew and i used to share my second overwatch account and he was primarily playing soldier and every time i would log back in i'd have to set my keys back because he would rebind run to be f i never understood how you could play a game with wasd and you want F to be sprint. It's shift. It's always shift.

Yes. Shift is run. Space bar is jump. Do not rebind those keys. You can rebind anything else. Please leave shift as your run button. All right. So,

uh, we're, we're already, you know, approaching an hour here on the episode. Maybe we can just kind of lightning round, bring up like one more each or, or something like that. Uh, that way we can hit just a lightning round bring up like one more each or something like that

that way we can hit just a couple last ones here michael what do you want to bring up for your last nomination yeah i have one more that we have to cover no matter what because people are probably screaming this right now if you don't cover this how important is the price of a game oh thank you that was actually going to be my next one yeah i was like i thought that if we if we're like hey we're done i was like paul stop we have to say this one because we have to say this one price how important is it to you guys it it's up there it is up there because let's be honest it depends like that's the biggest thing it depends on the game give me give me witcher 3 give me elden ring give me you know any of these games and i'll pay pay $100 for them if I know

I'm going to get hundreds and hundreds of hours worth of entertainment out of it. But famously, what affects how we rank games on the leaderboard sometimes? Or whether we make love, marry, or murder them? A price. If a game's terrible and it's a 60 game you know we're gonna say hey this game's not worth it man like no you know if it's if it's a 10 game and it's maybe it's not great but it's only 10 it's kind of like well i mean you know this game might be worth your 10 bucks well think about overwatch right like we bought that game for probably 20 bucks back in the day right and at this point playing it for thousands of hours you're talking fractions of a cent per minute that you've paid for that game so yeah if the game's highly replayable then i'm far more likely to shell out the money for it uh i will

say when we were kids video games were a lot cheaper like i remember when your average game was 40 bucks and then it crept up to 50 and then 60 and then for a while they kept saying that all new games were going to go 70 bucks and that's kind of been scaled back where we haven't really seen that but it's very hard for me to start swallowing 70 for a video game because now that just sounds like such a high amount right but yeah i think i think for me i'd say price is honestly right behind gameplay and story i think for me it might be number three it just depends though how do you quantify it right like a price for a great game how much money would you pay for mass effect 2 paul i'd pay 300 i mean and i'm frugal i'm frugal when it comes to games. But that's what I'm saying. So it's kind of like when you're saying price is important, to what degree?

Is it to, would you try a game that you're not sure is amazing if it was $100? Well, probably not, right? But if a game is $10, I'm probably going to pick that up. And if it sucks, I mean, it's only $10, right? Price for me. Oh, sorry. Just totally. No, I'm probably going to pick that up. And if it sucks, I mean, it's only $10, right? So for me, Oh, sorry. Just totally.

No, I'm just saying, I don't know how I quantify it. So for me, it's like, I, I guess it would be lower for me because it's kind of like on what stipulation.

Yeah, no, I, I, a hundred percent disagree with both of you. Price for me could not be less important than anything else in this list. I do not care about the price of a game.

Because Michael collects all games. Yeah, that's true. He's the guy that's got 500 unplayed Steam games, right? That's true. I will consider it important in a certain way. But if I walk away from a game and I have a memory from that game that I look back fondly of, am I going to remember that I spent 60 bucks in that game 10 years later? Or am I going to remember how much fun I had with that game?

Case in point, you look at two games that both cost $30, right? Love them both. $30. Oh, shoot. The Forgotten City. Five hours long. It's $30, right? Well, it was 30 bucks, right?

I believe so. I think so. Yeah. 30 bucks. It's five hours long. So what's your dollar per hour on that? Probably pretty low. I don't know.

$6 an hour. Yeah, there we go. But that seems like, okay, that's not a fantastic value. Atlas, the game Atlas that I just brought up, which, by the way, don't play that game. It's the most frustrating game that's literally ever, ever been made. I just looked up Steam. I have 1,298 hours in Atlas. It's $30. And I didn't even buy it. My buddy Nevitz got it for me. And I was like, your dollar per hour is insanely good on this. But my thought is I look back on the memories and I'm like, if I spent $30 in a game, if I spent $60, if I bought the special edition of Horizon Forbidden West for $260,

and I still haven't played it, but I look back at how incredible my memories are of that, and I don't care how much money I spent on it. Well, here's the thing. Not all of us have unlimited financial resources, right? I have an allowance. There's a lot of budget gamers. Before we started this podcast i would say on average i would buy three to four games a year and well i would see

josh and andy and some of our other buddies you guys would buy every game that came out and i thought you guys were crazy because i would not spend all that money on games i for like a whole two years, I did not even buy a single game because I just played World of Warcraft. Because to me, I could just pay $15 a month and I have all of my entertainment covered. I don't need a single other thing to get by.

So half of the reason of starting the podcast was for it to fund and pay for my gaming hobby. And I think that that's been really great that we do have this Patreon support. And honestly, a very good chunk of our income goes toward buying all the games that we play. If we did not have this podcast, there is not a chance I ever would have touched

Weird West or half of the games that we've covered on this show. I would have never bought Resident Evil Village. And those the games that we've covered on this show, I would have never bought Resident Evil Village. And those are games that I love. I don't know that I would have paid for them if we weren't doing the podcast. I'll say this. There's a game out there that I really want right now. And I'm kind of like with Michael. I'm like, ah, price is kind of low. But on the flip side, there's that new game King Arthur Knight's Tale came out. It's a tactical combat-based game with Arthurian legends. It looks really good. My brain was on Weird West and it's now moved to King

Arthur, right? I'm going to wind up buying this game at some point, but it's 40 bucks. And it's like, I literally have looked at this game every single day for probably the last three or four days. And I go, I want to play that, but I'm like, Ooh, but it's $40. Like, what if I don't like it? It's 40 bucks, man. Am I willing to flush $40 down the toilet if I don't like it? Well, the reviews are kind of good. So there's a chance I'm going to like it, but what if I don't? I don't know. It's $40 and I haven't bought it yet because it's $40. I'll tell you one thing that just came to mind. I solely used to game on console so that I could sell my games when I was done with them. The fact that you can now refund any game on Steam, no questions asked, if it's two hours or less,

I'm willing to put price dead last because you can essentially have a free demo of any game you want to try. I have never sold a game in my entire life. What? Oh, Michael, I have sold back every console game I've ever owned. Every hard copy game I've ever had, I have sold. Yep. I have only kept two. I still have my copy of Eternal Darkness from GameCube, and I still have San Andreas from PS2.

I don't know why I still have it. Those are the only two I still have. But what if you want to play one of those games again? You don't sell them. You play them later on again, right? I buy buy it for 60 bucks i beat it in two weeks i sell it for 45 50 bucks and if i want to play it five years down the road i buy it for five bucks used okay that's that's what i do yeah all right all right so price are we fine putting that at the bottom but it is important like i think i agree yeah it

deserves to be on the list i just think it's at the bottom of the list sure all right josh your last element what you want to toss out oh i i thought we were out of time um i thought we were sharing that one that's why we went so long on price here's i'm gonna say this because i have a lot of things on my list i like i know we're low on time like part of me part of me says like, Ooh, atmosphere, like atmosphere in a game is great. Right. But not every game needs atmosphere, right? Like exploration is another one where I go, man, I love exploration games now, but not every game needs exploration. So it's kind of hard to quantify those. So when we're talking about broad terms here, I'm going to say, and we kind of touched on this customization. Now let me quantify that,

right? Because customization of what I could care less about character creators and all that stuff. I don't mean that. What I mean is like, can I customize my controls? Can I customize my graphic settings? Can I customize this game to play it the way that I want to play it? You guys ever played a game where it lets you actually customize the ui and move it around and adjust the size and stuff where every mmo i've ever played if i can't do it it frustrates me well and the mmo that uh josh in particular loves to always trash is really the mmo that really pioneered add-ons which world of warcraft let you do in spades and then you could go crazy and customize anything you wanted.

I did like that. Yeah. I was going to say, does this also include mods, or is that going to be completely different? The ability to customize a game. Whether it's you can mod it, you can do the control scheme, you can do graphics and your ray tracing if you want or you don't want. You can set frames per second i mean a good customization menu slash mods can absolutely look at skyrim that game's been around

for how a decade or longer because 2011 right because they let you customize everything in that game and so people go well i can keep playing this because I can customize it the way that I want. By the way, a quick quip that I have to say that has nothing to do with what we're talking about, but we've brought up ray tracing like three times now. Every time I hear ray tracing, I think of a discount spy

novel protagonist named Ray Tracing. Really? It's a person's name. And then I put it in the same amount of syllables as goodwill hunting so you think you're good ray tracing and i can't get out of my head we can move on with the show now but no but customization actually just once you said modding though because i was like customization is not that important to me the second you said modding i'm like oh no that's real important. Famously, every

Bethesda game I have has over 160 mods, even the VR ones. I love modding games. It's very important to me to make it look how I want it to look. Case in point, Fallout games. My goodness, those games are depressing to play because the landscape is just gray and dark and i get it the trees are dead yeah no i make it i make it look like horizon zero dawn i make it very lush and very green and all that stuff which i know is not immersive because the game has nuclear fallout but i'm gonna say that nuclear fallout happened maybe a couple hundred years ago and this stuff has grown back now yeah i i think modding is where you win me over with this one, because there are games, like when we did the deep dive of Left 4 Dead 2, one of the reasons why I hated that we rated it

so low is that there is such a robust modding community that you can download mods where you're playing a game that is unrecognizable as Left 4 Dead 2, and it can be an incredible experience. Now, does it require time and effort? Yeah. You run into mods that are awful and you run into other ones that are great. Human Fall Flat, same thing. Amazing mods, terrible mods. You got to sort through it all. But when you strike gold, that can really extend the life of some of these games. Portal, you can play for forever because there's so many mods available with extra levels so yeah i would say mods are pretty high on the list the list that we have right now goes gameplay story learning curve graphics controls slash ability to rebind keys

sound and price i would say customization probably goes underneath gameplay story, learning curve and graphics, but I'd probably make it number five. I'd put it above controls. What was above controls? That's what I said just now. Yep. Let's do that. Same spot.

Take the ability to change controls out. Cause that would be under customization. Okay. And then I would say, let's put it right above controls, but I'm right on board with you there. Yeah, I think so.

I completely agree. Um, especially when you add the modding element, like in something like, for instance, especially in VR, modding in VR, oftentimes with Bethesda games, like the bow and arrow, when you play Skyrim is terrible to shoot in VR. You add that weight mod where it feels immersive and real, and you have to actually aim up and down differently based on the distance because the weight of the arrow was a game changer so I that that one example alone puts it very high for me all right so we basically

have like our top eight I think we can actually let's bring let's bring in just one last thing we'll just make it dead last oh no I was really poking fun at a certain game coming out called gravity goal all right let's just say title is definitely last but can we just say that the title of a game it it it probably matters more than we're going to say here but if you have a really goofy game

name i am far less likely to check it out and if you come at me with an awesome name i'm gonna check it out what about how modern warfare i was gonna say i was just gonna mention i tweeted that from the account a couple days ago and i'm like hold on modern warfare 5 is called modern warfare 2 but there's all isn't there a modern warfare 2 that comes before 5 right yeah yeah there can be some very funny names if I hear Grand Theft Auto I get it we're stealing cars it's action I know exactly what I'm getting into and then you have other games names player unknowns battlegrounds is such an unwieldy title of a game oh there's a reason why we all just went to pubg though yeah that's yeah yeah pubg kind of like you know it stands for something but the full name is

really dumb really bad but anyway i just thought i'd mention title because i i always find the title of a game really funny to talk about all right so uh we're done we have our list here in order we've got gameplay story learning curve graphics customization controls sound price and then paul's honorable mention title we can probably just pencil in at uh number nine that's a sweet list yeah yeah all right well thank you so much to everyone out there for listening once again we'd like to ask you to please rate our show five stars and leave a written review if you have not. And please check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com. You can help fund the show and keep it running, and you'll also get some of those awesome

perks we talked about earlier. And then that finishes up this bonus round. Our next episode will be on Thursday, we talk about this week in gaming. And then our next deep dive a week from today will be on the Overwatch 2 beta. So if you want to check out some of that game, that's what we will be talking about for the next deep dive. And then I think we're done, guys. That's it. This was a fun one, man.

It's cool to just sit down and kind of talk about some of these aspects of games that we don't always think about. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks everyone. We'll see you on Thursday. Happy gaming. Cheers.

I'll see everybody.