Video Gamers Podcast - The Do’s and Don’ts of Gaming – Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

Gaming hosts Josh, Ryan and Ace are laying down their ultimate do’s and don’ts of gaming! From the features we wish every developer would include to the design choices that make us want to throw our controllers, we’re breaking down everything we love and hate about modern gaming. Whether it’s rewarding exploration, satisfying progression, annoying trends, or frustrating mechanics, this episode is packed with strong opinions and plenty of laughs. If you’re passionate about video games, this is a gaming-filled discussion you won’t want to miss. Join us as we celebrate the best of gaming, call out the worst, and share what makes video games truly great on the Video Gamers Podcast!   Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Disratory, Ol’ Jake, Gaius, Jigglepuf, Phelps and NorwegianGreaser, Dettmarp and Night Wizard63   Thanks to our Legendary Supporters: HypnoticPyro, PeopleWonder, Bobby S.   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: ⁠patreon.com/videogamerspod⁠ Join our Gaming Community: https://discord.gg/h2cHKAvSmu Follow us on Instagram:⁠ https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/⁠  Follow us on X:⁠ https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod⁠  Subscribe to us on YouTube:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@VideoGamersPod?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Visit us on the web:⁠https://videogamerspod.com/⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the video gamers podcast. You ever wish you could tell a game developer the things we love or hate as gamers? The do's and the don'ts of gaming. Don't put escort quests in your game, but do allow us to skip cutscenes. Well, on this episode, we're breaking down the do's and don'ts of gaming, the things we as gamers all love and all collectively hate. But before we get to that, some of the games. introductions are in order.

I am your host, Josh, and joining me, do res me, Ryan. And don't push too far into the enemy. Ryan, watch out. Oh, he's dead again. It's Ryan. Maybe if you do heal me, then I don't die. Oh, okay. For the record, Ryan, the other day, you were pushing, and I literally said, Ryan, Ryan,

no, don't. And then Ryan was just gone. Just gone. She has one bar. She had one bar. It was so close. Into the enemy team. And I was like, bro.

And to Ryan's credit, he actually did go, okay, I might have gone a little too far. It's like you were in their spawn, Ryan. I got the little too far. I got the kill, but then I got, I got, I got. That kill feels so good, dude. That kill feels so. It does not matter if it's the dumbest thing you've ever done. If you get that kill, it's like it was all worth it, man.

Vindication. Yeah, exactly. Goobers. And joining us, his perfect do's and don'ts list would be, do make every game a Metroidvania. And whatever you do, don't call your game AAA or he won't play it. It's ace. I mean, that's a little bit of exaggeration.

Although, if you do make your game of Metroidvania, I'm much more likely to say yes, no matter what it is. Yeah. What if it's a AAA Metroidvania? Then Ace would be like... Don't charge me $70 for your game. Does that exist? Is there a AAA Metroidvania Ace?

Yeah. Bandai Namco made one last year. It was the Pac-Man one. Shadow Labyrinth. Pac-Man? Wait a minute. That's not AAA. There's a AAA Pac-Man Metroid Navy.

Band-A is a AAA company, so yes. I mean, I know who Band-I-M-Kamco is, but they made a Pac-Man Metroidvania? Yeah, it's a gritty dark retelling of Pac-Man called Shadow Labyrinth. I love the adjectives. Yeah, it's a greedy... I'm a hungry mouth. Let me... A hungry disembodied mouth that's a wedge. Let me set the scene for you.

It had an episode in that Amazon Prime TV show about... Imagine you don't... With pellets and a hungry Pac-Man. A dark and gritty fantasy tale of betrayal. Also, I'm pretty sure every Castle is a AAA Metro.

In a world where yellow circles love pills. Also, Metroid. Metroid is a triple A game. And hate ghosts. Metroid is the AAA. All right. Well, welcome in everybody to the video gamers podcast. Hey, guys, one of the do's and don'ts is don't get sidetracked right off the introduction, like immediately.

It's a shame because that's what we like to do. Yeah. This actually looks pretty good. Don't say this. No, it does. It actually does. Oh, my gosh. I'm not even going to look this up right now.

I'm not even going to look this up because I've never heard of this. My brain refuses to believe that there is a Pac-Man Metro-D-A. You can save 50% today. I say Pac-Man franchise sale today. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. All right. Well, if you hate ghosts and love pills, this game's for you.

Yeah, if you love ghosts and pills, that's- No, hate ghosts and love pills. Oh, yeah, that's everybody, right? I thought so. I mean, this is games for everybody. Yeah, exactly. Gaming's for all people.

Pac-Man, a game for everybody. Yeah. Well, guys, we have a lot to get to in this episode, so we are going to just dive in. These are, you know, there's the things that we love as gamers, guys. You know, every time you're playing a game and, you know, you go,

I wonder if I can kick that chicken, right? And then the game lets you just kick the chicken. And you're like, yeah, that's awesome. Or a game where it's like, I wonder if I can go in this building. And then it's like, no, it's just an empty building. There's nothing in it. And then you're like, man, why did you put all these buildings here if I can't go in them? You know, that kind of stuff.

So there are the do's and don'ts that we all love. Let me just ask you guys, because this isn't one of them. I know. Because we did share our lists on these. If you see a waterfall in a video game, what's the very first thing you're going to do? I'm running into there. Go through it. Right, because what's supposed to be behind a waterfall?

There better be a secret. air. Yeah. And when there's not anything behind the waterfall, what is your reaction? Instant disappointment. Yeah, exactly. So that's a dude, right? Like, hey, if you put a waterfall in your game, you better put treasure behind the waterfall, you know?

Don't, right? Like, hey, I killed a monster and it had a cool looking sword and I go to loot the monster and there's three copper on that monster. And I go, well, where's the freaking cool looking sword? Like, where he just had it? And it's like, don't do that. me loot the cool sword if the monster was using it. So these are the things that as gamers that we go, we love it when developers do this and we hate it when they do that. You know, I mentioned

unskippable cutscenes. Maybe that's going to make an appearance here on this show because it's like, hey, there's not a gamer in existence that loves it when you force them to watch your cutscenes. Now, we're not saying skip the cutscenes people. Like many of us love watching the cutscenes, but when you can't skip it, that's a don't. So we have each come up with our own list of do's and don'ts. And we're going to be breaking those down on this episode. So I'll tell you what, guys, let's just dive into it. And since we just talked about it,

I'm going to start us off with one of the major don'ts, in my opinion. And that is don't have unskippable cutscenes. And I'm going to lump this together with a tutorial. on a game where the tutorial is, press W-A-S-D to move. And you're like, bro, I know how to play a video game. And then it's like, okay, skip. Wait, I can't skip this. Start.

Where's the skip tutorial option? There's no skip tutorial option? Like, okay, what are you talking about? Okay, well, I can get through this. And then it's like, you know, then it's the splash screens. I'm going to lump splash screens into this too. Because, guys, we are playing currently. We're playing Lego Batman, Legacy.

I knew this is going to get you. I knew it was going to annoy you. What is the unskippable thing on the, when every single time you boot up the game, Ace, what is it? What's the part you can't skip? You can't skip the opening cutscenes. You can't skip the epilepsy warning. You can't.

Oh, yeah. There's a freaking epilepsy warning at the beginning of every single game. Or like the opening like cinematic to the menu. In existence. And you know what I can't skip is the freaking epilepsy warning. I have to wait like six seconds before it's like now you can press. I was like, now you can confirm. You read the epilepsy.

Do you know how infuriating that is that I can't skit? I don't have epilepsy. Okay? And guess what? We're not joking about epilepsy. Like, we're sorry if you have epilepsy. But like at the same time, you probably shouldn't be playing video games if you have epilepsy. You're sorry.

You know? I'm just saying, like, isn't this something that you think, like, if I had epilepsy, I'm not going to be just diving into flashing video games all the time. What have you brought over a friend? Really ignoring the warning. What have you brought over? a friend and then he's like, you're like, oh, crap, I didn't know you had epilepsy. And then it didn't have a warning. And the warning had popped up and he's like, oh, I shouldn't

play this. And it saves his life. They should have a little box. You say, if a little box, you could check at the beginning. It says, do you have epilepsy? Yes, no. And then that decides with the warning keep popping up. It's that easy. Like you just say, no, I don't. And then it goes, puts you right into the game. Go right. I'm playing with anyone with Epilepsy. Listen, one of the major complaints, this is a massive don't do this is don't and this is like replaced i'm going to just mention replaced again because i liked replaced but replaced it a couple things that were some quality of life issues and i know because listen the comments section we love our comment section and we read all of them

but there were people like josh you're an idiot you can skip the cutscenes the only way to skip the cutscenes was to pause the game go into the pause menu and then tab down to the skip cutscene option and then say yes i want to confirm skipping this cutscenes That's not a quality life issue, people. I knew that existed, okay? But the point is that I can't just press space bar or click or escape to skip the cut scene. Have it on the window. Easy access.

Yeah. Right. Exactly. But if you make it to where I can't skip something, if I can't skip dialogue, if I can't skip a cutscene, if I can't skip your stupid splash menus every single time I load up the game, like I get that there's legality. You got to display them because Unreal Engine wants their piece of the pie, you know? But it's like, bro, just let me push space.

bar. Let me skip past it. Skip, skip, skip. And that's fine. But if you don't build that into your game, that's a serious problem for me at that point. That's, yeah, that's fair. That's a minor annoyance that just, it'll eat at you. Minor ace? Are you down playing my aggravation in this don't ace? How dare you? That's a major annoyance. I'll tell you what a major annoyance is. The fact that I've just found out you played replaced on a keyboard instead of a control. Oh, that is. He's a platformer. He's so anti-controller. It's ridiculous, dude. Ace.

It was a platformer. Holding A and D on my keyboard and hitting space to jump is not that complicated. Okay. I will say, I'm playing Lego Batman with my controller. You better be. I would not try to play this in mouse and keyboard. I mean, I know what games are controller-based games. I would not be trying to play this on mouse and keyboard. Yeah, no, I know which games are controlled.

But anyway, so there you go. There's the first developers. Listen, listen, this episode is meant to be educational for all of you out there. We love you. You make, you make games, which we love. It's our favorite hobby. But listen to what we're saying and don't make it where we can't skip your dialogue.

Ryan, famous game that I hated more than anything for Spoken. Another really good example of you could not skip all of the dialogue and cutscenes. And I rip that game to shreds because of it. Yeah, I will say you were also kind of right about it replaced because they did a quality of life update where you can skip the cutscenes from within the game.

Funny how that works, right? It's kind of like, oh, look at that. I don't, I really. don't like gloating, so I'm so glad you did it for you, buddy. Like, yeah. What's crazy is like, you know the archetype, like, of what the vast majority of people

want. And so to not program that from the get-go seems crazy to me. Like, he's got another one that he's going to be mad about not in-program for the get-go that we'll get to. But I'm going to bring that one up. Don't worry. Yeah, I figured you would. I'm going to lighten things up, don't do it. Do.

Allow fast travel from the map instead of going to the location to fast travel. all this for me. Thank you. I'm surprised. I'm surprised we all have this same gripe. I hate when a game makes you like they unlock a fast travel. It's like, oh great, you unlock the fast travel. You can go to this point, this point, this point, this point. It's like, well, that's great. I'll just do it from the map. No, you got to go there. I have to walk. Is it really fast travel if you have to walk your butt over to like the portal? To the portal? Yeah. Well, we have to make it realistic, you know, I'm like, I'm like shooting lasers and beams and

all these things out of my eyes. I have to walk to this portal. Like, no, let me fast travel to where I want to go. Respect my time. I know we always say it. Respect my time. Yeah, respect my time. Jeez. I love this one, Ace, because you're right, dude. If you're going to have

fast travel in your game, then I should be able to open up the map and say I want to go here. I actually like, now I will say there's a balance here and I get this from a developer standpoint. I like that I have to initially walk there. Yes. Like that makes sense. Locking it first.

I'm 100% for the, if you want to make me walk to this location the first time, that's fine. I get to see the world. I get to see the game. I'm okay with that. But from that point forward, I should be able to teleport to this location from anywhere at any time. And Ryan said it, it's just respecting my time. I don't need to spend six or seven minutes or however long it is to hoof it back to this location or hoof it to the portal that's then going. to let me now travel to this

location at the same time. I'm with you guys. That is a very, very good quality of life. If I want to explore, I'll explore. The best example I can think of is Eldon Ring just because you have to go to each side of Grace's location in order to unlock the

fast travel and then you have it. Then you can navigate the entire world because you have the fast travel. Yeah. Yet another thing that makes Eldon Ring awesome. So, yeah, I love that one. And you know, a lot of these are probably going to seem like quality of life issues, but the fact that we have to continually point to these quality of life things and go, you should do this, you shouldn't do that.

It keeps happening. I know. Why? Why? Like, why do developers do this? Everyone knows better. Why do you hate us? This works from all these games, but let's like not include all the best features in our game. Let's, let's be unique, you know? Yeah. All right, what's one for you, Ryan, what do you get for us? I'm going to say a due with, I guess, the theory of progression. I want, I think if you were going to, I want it to feel like a good flow. Like I want it to be every session that I play, I unlock stuff. I always feel like I'm moving forward.

Give me that carrot. Give me something that no matter what, I'm always kind of, if it's not that big of a deal, it doesn't matter, but it's like kind of that, you know, that sale, like that really doesn't take that much off, but somebody feels like they're getting a deal. It's like, give me, give me something. Every time I play, I want, yeah, I want that. I want that progression. I want that, that constant carrot that I'm chasing to keep rewarding me. And the more games that do it, the more it's going to draw people in, and the more it's going to make them want to keep progressing through the story and through the world. So, yeah, I think that's a, that's a big do for development.

Yeah, I agree. Getting rewarded for just progressing in the game feels good. Like, oh yeah, we encourage you to explore because you might find something cool. Yeah, you discovered a new land. You did this. You got a hideout. You know, like, unlocked this, you know, anything. You found the ancient sword, the stone.

Yeah, it doesn't even need to be a big crazy thing. But like programming in something that excites you in the thoughts of discovery, you know, I love it. Yeah. I'm huge, I mean, huge on progression in video games. It's that kind of fantasy of like your character is getting stronger and you go for getting rats to wolves, you know, kind of thing. For me, progression and a steady pace of progression is paramount to continuing to just draw me back to the game like over and over and over again.

This is why games like Diablo and Path of Exile and role-playing games in general, I freaking love because it's like, you know, you're just constantly getting that new skill that new ability, that new piece of gear, that new area that you can go to, this new boss fight that you found, this new party member that you came across. Like, there's so many things where it's like you feel like you're accomplishing something in a game. And I will say, currently playing Batman, my first Lego game. And the progression in Batman is very slow to me.

And it's like, and, you know, this is not my final thoughts on the game because there's going to be people like, oh, Josh doesn't like it. Well, you're going to have to listen to that episode to know if I like it or not. I will say that I am having a little bit of a harder time feeling like the game is rewarding me for playing the game itself. And a lot of games do this really, really well. And there's some games that do it very, very poorly. And it's like you said, Ryan, like, why am I playing if I don't feel like I'm accomplishing

something at that point? So, yep. All right. Let's see. I'll do another one here. This is, this one. Oh, here it comes. I bounced off of, I bounced off of this.

game right away because of this. There actually, there are many games that I have bounced off of instantly because of this. Because I view this as one of the most basic parts of developing a game. And when you don't allow me to do this, it is an instant no for me. And I know this is petty, guys. Listen. Cardinal sin incoming. I'm not saying that this is everybody or this is every gamer.

But for me, if I jump into your game and you don't let me rebind the keys, in your game, I'm not playing your game. Like, I am not playing your game at that point. Like, just plain and simple, dude, I, I don't know what it is, guys. Like, I don't know what it is, but if, like, and I'm not, I don't want to name names right now because there's a game that I just play the demo of and I don't, well, I don't want to slander anything because it's still early. But there was a game that I was excited to try and I go in. And the very first thing I did was go into the controls menu and I tried to rebind the keys and it said, nope, that's not an option. and I went, you've got to be freaking kidding me right now.

Because, listen, if you can make graphics and music and movement and game mechanics and all these other things, my brain instantly goes to the, you have the programming chops to allow me to change the E key bind to the R key bind if I want to. You know what I mean? And when you go, that is not possible. I instantly go, I don't like this game anymore. Like, where's the quality of life stuff? If you can't let me rebind keys, then what other things in your game am I going to hate? And the answer is probably everything at that point.

Because it's like, this is the most basic thing imaginable. And like, why? It's 2026. We have AI people. We're going to Mars and the moon and these things. And it's like, you can't, you can't program in a let me change E to R in the key bindings? Well, it's not like, it's not like a keyboard or. a PlayStation or Xbox controller

or static, dude. It's fluid. They're always moving. Hey, buddy. Yeah, I'm recording out. Ryan just got crashed by his car. I got crashing by my son. Jackson just runs in the room. He just bulldoze. The look on his face of like

stunned where he was like, oh, crap. Are you streaming? No, buddy. We're recording. Like I was saying, it's not like these things aren't static to where, you know, they don't know the layout of a keyboard. Or they don't know, you know, the layout of a controller.

Like, it's so simple to input a B, an X, or an A or a Y for like a controller, or, you know, the keyboard, you know, R-E-W-A-S-D, all those things. Like, there should be no reason why it's not so easy to lay it all out, implement it once, and then just assign, you know, whatever you have to do. I'm not a coder. I don't know how much it is, but I can tell you that it's worth it. Like there should be no reason why you can't script your key binds and do the things that you want to do as a player to a game. It's just crazy. Yeah, you wouldn't think it'd be that difficult. And I've never seen Josh He'll turn on a game as fast as he did as Thickest Thieves when he found out it doesn't have control.

He did. I wasn't going to name names Ace, if you remember. No, name it. No, name it, dude. We don't pull punches here. It's five bucks. It's just, that's the number one complaint people have about it. If you can't, if you can't give me the most basic quality of life thing in a video game,

it tells me that there are going to be other issues with this game that are going to irritate me. And so that is like the litmus test for me to go, you need to at least have this. I can get through a lot of headaches and things that don't quite jive. But like if you don't have that, I will 100% just bounce off your game, you know, until you give it to me. I'll forgive you. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a vindictive, like, grudge-holding person. Oh, come back.

Yeah, but man. All right, I'll tell you what, let's take a quick break, guys, and then we will come back with some more gaming do's and don'ts. We'll be right back after this break. All right, we're back. Ace, what you got for us? Hit us with a do or a don't. I'll do a don't this time. Don't make your game's complete story of the campaign at the end of the campaign at the paid deal.

that comes out a year later. Do not put the end of your campaign in a paid DLC. So wait a minute. You're telling me that there are games in this world where somebody went, we have a story to tell. Yep. We're going to tell this story. Yep.

But then they're going to cut the end off of the story. They cut the end off the story. They cut the end off. And then they say, you have to buy the DLC if you want to know how this story. This sounds like, don't. I'm not even going to, I just want to guess, Ace, because there's only one gaming company that sounds like they, is this an Ubisoft game? Oh, it absolutely is an Ubisoft game. They have done it twice now.

Twice. Twice. Twice. Twice they have done this. That's so bad. No, once twice. It reminds me of the meme where the guy gets thrown out the window. And it's like, they're like, you know, let's, well, they're like, why don't we just cut the game at the end and we can resell it?

And the guy's like, well, why don't we just finish it and let them have their whole, you know, purchase. And then they chuck them out the window. Check them out the window. Yeah, it happens in ASEA Odyssey because you can't do any of the fun late Greek mythology myth stuff without the DLC where you go through. Oh, my gosh. Atlantis and Hades and Elysium. You can't go do any of that unless you buy the DLC. And the worst part is Assassin's Creed Vahala, which is a direct sequel to Assassin's Creed Odyssey in the modern day.

it picks up where the DLC ended. So if you didn't play the DLC, you are completely lost at what the heck's going on. That's what are we doing. And then Shadows. Shadows did the same thing. This is a punishable offense. This isn't just a simply like a do and don't.

This is a like going to get you canceled by gamers. Yeah, no. You absolutely should not be allowed to do this. This is like this is not happened yet, but there are companies that continue to try to do this where they try to put advertising inside a video game. And gamers will revolt, dude. Oh, yeah.

And this is one of the things where I love gamers coming together because as collectively gamers have said, we will not play your game if you try to put ads in the middle of your freaking video game. And it's like, this is one of those things where it's like, I can't believe they tried this twice. Not once, but twice, man. Not once. It's embarrassing.

Yeah. All right. Well, that's a definitely don't do that one. But I also feel like that is not a super common thing, thankfully. Thankfully, that didn't catch on. No, no. How did I know which developer would have tried that? Just crazy.

There's only one person. Simple guess. Easy guess. Only one company with enough, well, we'll just call them guts to try to pull that. I don't know. Guts is the word. All right, Ryan, what's up next for you, buddy? I'm going to do a don't.

And this comes with, I guess, my foray into the world of, Overwatch and other games that have a lot of, you know, cosmetics. Uh-oh. And it's not entirely specific to one game, but I think across the broad spectrum of if I pay a massive amount of money for a game, you know, especially $50, $70 now for these, like cosmetics for these games should not cost me real world money. I want to unlock the cool look. cool design by playing the game.

Like, I bought the game. Let me, let me unlock these things. I shouldn't have these extra micro-transactions and extra things just to get skins or cosmetics or things like that. That thing is, uh, is annoying to me. Like, it's frustrating to have to do that to be able to get the look I want or the design I want.

Um, yeah, it's not as big. Obviously, you don't, you don't pay for Overwatch. So I get it a little bit there. But the other games where they'll have like single player games with cosmetics that you have to pay money for are crazy. Yeah. Assassins Creed is another one that's guilty of that. Oh, weird.

Oh, that's weird. They put micro transactions in a single player game? They put micro transactions. They put like $20 microtransaction. Oh my gosh. I'm just going to hop in because this is literally one of my don'ts. It says do not put any kind of micro transactions in a single player game. So this is, look, there's not a gamer alive that appreciates this.

If I paid $60, $70 for this game, you should give me all the cosmetics that I can find. Now, I get, if you want to put them behind quests and rewards and progression. Put it behind quest and collectibles. But if you want more money from me so that I can make my single player game character look a different way, then that is a major issue. And it just shows me that you don't respect me as a gamer either. So like using old Assassin's Creed games, an example, like unlocking Altaire's armor and Assassin's Creed 2 was one of the coolest things.

you could do and it was one of the best looking fits in the game. And then you could continue doing that through the series. It's just like by completing these quests and doing these cool things. It's like, but now you can't even do that. It's like, oh, yeah, you could buy it. You got 1999, sir? That's straight up scummy. Oh, I'm sorry, we only sell our points in $25.

So you'll have to buy $25. Oh, my God. That's what I should have put on here. That's actually a good one right there. That's all right. You know what? Like, that's the worst, dude. Oh, that's the, that is scummy, dude, like to where it's like, there's no round numbers.

You have to buy another round. You can't just buy what you want. You're like 10 coins off. You're like, oh, dude. Guess I'll buy a hundred. Add that to the list. That's a bonus one. Yeah, that is a bonus.

That's a huge. Don't do that. All right, let's do a do. Because this is, you know, we've been talking about the things we hate on this. I'm going to say, do have fun interactions in your game. And I'm going to use a very specific example because we just had this recent re-release on this episode. and this game's been on my mind a little bit lately. We were playing Abysus, you know, fantastic.

Indy Rogue-like game, really, really good. We just had the re-release of the episode that a lot of people caught for the first time, so I'm glad we did that. Do you guys remember in the vendor, when you go to the vendor in Abysses, what happens if you shoot the vendor? Yep.

I remember what happens. You turn this. Yeah, if you shoot them just enough, he gets a little peeved, turns you to solid gold. Oh, I remember that. Do you remember when we discovered this, though? Because it was like, wait a minute, what happens if I shoot this vendor?

And then you shoot him and he kind of reacts and you're like, oh, ha, ha, and then he turns you to gold. You can't move anymore. For like a few seconds. Yeah. And that little thing, that little thing makes all the difference in the world to gamers, people. And I know it sounds silly because it's such a minor thing.

But when we are playing a game that we are enjoying, and then you discover this little hidden thing that the developers coded in because they had the same idea. You know what I mean? It just tells you that they care about their game, that they're passionate about their game, and that they, too, are gamers

and appreciate the things that gamers do, even if something is stupid as shooting the vendor. You know what I mean? But the fact that that existed tells you everything you need to know about that studio and the way that they approach this game and develop this game.

As gamers, we love this. kind of stuff. You know, these little hidden, like just hidden surprises. You know, some people call them Easter eggs.

It's whatever. It's just, to me, it's passion and fun in a video game. We talked about waterfalls. That's a very, very common thing.

Put a treasure chest behind a waterfalls. Is it cliche? Maybe. But it's cliche for a reason because it's like, it's the little things that matter to us as gamers. So do put in these little interactions in your game.

If you are making your game and you're playing your game and you go, what happens if I shoot the vendor and you code that into your game? I guarantee you people will love and appreciate it, no matter what the outcome is, you know, at that point. But it's those little things that matter. And it just shows that you had a passion for your game. Yeah, nobody's going to look at that when it happens and be like, oh, that's lame or oh, what a waste of time.

Yeah, nobody gets annoyed with that. No, it's, it shows the love of this world and the depth they went to program things. and you you kind of get sit back and get an awe and like oh wow that's funny that's cool that's neat that they put that in and it's just an extra layer to the game you know that that doesn't do much for the game itself other than just make you get the warm and fuzzies and that's what we do this for right we play the games to have fun you know and so that's anything you can do to enhance that and multiply it all the better for it like your game's going to do better and be better because you did this little dumb thing that most people

they don't care about but when you do it like it lands. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'm going to piggyback off yours a little bit with my next do and that's do make your weapons and armor evolve and change appearance when you upgrade them. Yeah. I love it so much dude. It's one of my

favorite things man. Like the examples I have are Tomb Raider and AC Valhalla which they did actually do something right with a recent Assassin's Creed game where if you upgraded like your swords or your armor they would completely change looks. It was like you got this shoddy starter armor now as this intense plate metal like

Raven gear or in Tomb Raider you could upgrade different pieces of the bow and arrow or it would add a scope or that fletching to the arrow. It was such a cool detail. It's something I truly appreciate it. I'm just going to piggyback on this because, you know, any chance I get to mention it, but Remnant 2. Remnant 2 did a good job at this. Yet another thing that makes Remnant 2 incredible to me is every time you add a mod to your weapon,

it completely changes the look of your weapon. cool. Yeah. Yeah. But that little touch, that little thing, what we say that's little, there's probably a lot of work. It's probably a lot of all the weapons. There's a lot that goes in the add-ons. We say it's little, but it's not, but the amount of, but we notice these things. As gamers, we notice these things. And so it's not lost on us. But that ace, like you said, like when you upgrade a bow and now it has a new string to it, you know, or or, you know, something hanging off of it or, you know, I see the scope that I just added. Those little interactions I know probably are a development nightmare, especially when you're doing it across a lot of equipment. But these are the things that immerse us in your game. They are the things that we notice when you equip that weapon or that mod for the first time. And you go, bro, look, it changed my gun into like poison.

You know, like, look what it did. Those are the things and the quality of life. It's not really quality of life, but the things that we notice. And we go, these people cared about this game. This is not cutting corners. This is not shipping it as fast as they can possibly ship it. This is people that made this game with passion and wanted to like to preserve that passion and go,

let's go the extra mile on this stuff. I love that, dude. And I absolutely love. I'm not one to tell Blizzard these days, but like an old school one too was even on the old classic wow. Like in old world of Warcraft, you enchanted a weapon or something. It would change.

Like you could see the flame on it. You could see the different. Yeah, the particle effects and the. enchantments on your whatever like so it does it makes you feel like you have something or you got something out of that enchantment or that upgrade or that new gear or the new weapon so it's it's weird how much you know and there's a saying for a reason like the little things count little things matter like it does it really does it does i mean these are all things like we're not saying that these are easy development things but these are the things that matter to gamers that show us that your

game was made with passion, that you cared, that you took your time, that you weren't just rushed out the door by some kind of corporate suits that are saying, no, no, we don't, we don't need those little things in the game, just ship it, ship it, you know what I mean? And then it's like, but this game's soulless now. Like, there's nothing there at this point. So, yeah. All right, Ryan, why don't you give us another one? And then we'll hit some rapid round for these, because I know we still have a few left on these. But why don't you hit us with one that you want to dive a little bit deeper into? And if you don't mention the one I'm thinking of, then Yeah, I'm going to have to go with that one.

So, okay. Yeah. So, uh, we've come into a crazy world where everybody for whatever reason thinks that we're free interns and we can help fix. No, not free, Ryan. No, no. Oh, yeah. I guess, yeah, I guess, our, our, our labor is free.

And we have to pay initially to like, come on board. But who came up with early access games? When I was a kid, that was a beta. You got the beta and you were able to. to log in and you, if you were lucky enough to sign up and get selected, you had the opportunity to play and you played it and it was free and you helped them design and figure out the quirks and the kinks in the game. And then they went back and they went to the grindstone and they fixed everything and they were ready to launch, launch a game complete at release. No, now they just have

an 18-month early access and you have to pay full price for this game to help them design it and fix it. Not full, not, you don't have the full game. You don't have all the, uh, uh, accessories. You don't have all the things that the game comes with and it'll have a final release. But you're gonna, you're gonna basically help them develop this game well paying for it and spending all of your time to make this game. I have hated early access from day one. It drives me nuts. And I don't get why they keep doing it. And they keep doing it because people keep buying it. Um, but. I was that they do it because it works. They do it because then. And then, and then, And then you know what happens? They launched a game and they have a day one patch. Like you can't, well, come on. They do. I'm going to mention, number one, I, Ryan has swayed me. Initially, I was like, well, Borders Gate 3 went through early access.

And that game turned out amazing. There's certain games where it's like, you know, I won't play the early access because I'm very excited for the game. Subnotica 2 being the most recent one. Like everybody's like, Josh, Josh, you're playing Subnotica 2? And it's like, no, because I want to just enjoy the experience. of playing through the full game when it's ready. I'm going to call these guys out because I was very excited. I'm still excited for this game.

I'm not going to lie. Like Fate Keeper. Okay, Fate Keeper looks like a modern sky rim. It looks incredible, dude. It looks so good. We're going to be covering this in our Twig episode, so you're going to hear me repeat a little bit of this. But like, Fate Keeper, hey, we're releasing in June.

And I was like, oh my gosh, yes, in early access. And then I'm like, come on, dude. like this is not the kind of game that like that needs an early access dude it really doesn't warrant an early access i don't know what we're putting into early access here with this they want money here's here's the here's the kicker right they're literally in the why early access part because developers developers write this so this is from the studio right and i'm not going to read all of it but the last line the intention is not to use you as beta testers but rather understand what elements of the gameplay are liked the most and adapt

development plans accordingly. Sounds to me, like you're using us as beta testers to tell you what part of your game is fun. If you don't know what part of your game is fun, that's on you. And if you want to know, then give us beta access. Hire a beta test. And call us beta testers at that

point. Like, bro, this is, this is, here's the problem. And I'm with you, Ryan, and this is why, because it's becoming an epidemic. It is. Like, every game now. Everyone. I am not against early access sometimes, but freaking everybody wants to release an early access now and stop it.

Stop it. We're not your bait. I'll go so far as to say this. If you want to release your game in early access, then you darn well better do it like thick as thieves did and you charge me $5. If you want to, listen, if fakekeeper is going to be a $60 game, what is the price of this game?

You can't even pre-purchase it yet. Okay, but here's the thing. If you want to give me a $10 discount for your early access, that's a bunch of crap, dude. That's a load of crap for me to beta test your game for you. Now, if you want early, if you truly want early access and we're not beta testing your game for you, then give it to me for $5.

I'll buy it. I'll tell you what I think about it. I'll give you feedback. And then that's the price that you pay for that at that point. But giving me a $10 discount on an early access game is a bunch of bull, dude. and freaking everybody's doing it now. Ryan, I'm with you, buddy. I'm with you.

100%. I'm glad I swayed you, buddy. It's just getting stupid, man. And I get it. It's getting the point where I can't defend it. Like, it's getting bad. It's getting very bad. It's just crap.

You really need to give me this game for like 90% off. If you want me to be a beta tester, I mean, I'm sorry, early access, you know, then you better give it to me a steep discredit. The early access is like, you. years. It's not like, it's not like it's like three months. Like you get early action. We just got to button up a couple things. Like let us know and we'll see if there's any bugs. No, this is like we're halfway done. Like here, play this and give us more fun so that we can finish this game. It's, it's just like crowdsourcing revenue to finish the game. And it's, it's just, it's ridiculous. Like I, I hate it so much. I hate it. But I'm still resisting. I'm still

resisting to get some Nautica too. Like I really want to. I'm going to resist. I'm going to resist. I'm resist. We can resist. All right, I'll tell you what, let's do a couple of quick hits here, guys. A couple for me, uh, a dues. This is a big one. We didn't have time to get into, but make sure that your trailer shows off gameplay for your game. A cinematics only trailer does absolutely didly squat for us as gamers. Like I'm not saying I don't love me. I don't love, you know, do Blizzard, I'll watch your trailers all day long because your cinematics are nuts, but not everybody is Blizzard and can make these cinematic trailers. But if you were announcing a game and your trailer doesn't show off gameplay, you're wasting your time, in my opinion. So make sure that you have a trailer

that shows off your gameplay. A couple other don'ts is don't release your game unoptimized. You lose it at that point. You can try to make amends out to the fact. But if your game's choppy, buggy, drops frames, all that stuff, there's no, there's no coming back from that. Like, the initial impression that you set is, is so hard to get over. We have people on our Discord that don't want to play, like, cyberpunk still. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, this is one of the best games ever. Never got past it. That amazes me, but I get it at the same time.

I get it. You know, and then and then the last don't for me is don't make escort quest and underwater levels. There's not a gamer alive that likes those. Why people are still doing this. Why people are spending their times making escort quest and underwater levels, I have no idea, stop it. Come up with something else.

So, all right, that's my quick hits. Ace, you got any others for us? Do allow me to string my movements together during traversal to speed up. So let me roll, jump, fly, whatever, string. it all together. Don't cancel out my moves and make me walk everywhere. Yeah, fluid movement. Fluid movement. It makes a game really, really fun. One you stole for me

again. Yeah, I'm surprised that was the other one. I figured it was the next few. But you know, like specifically I had infamous second son the way you could sort of string together dashes and gliding and jumping to this traverse the city. I never felt like I wanted to use the fast travel. Yeah. So if a game can do

that, that's awesome. Don't lock my skill points behind a rare consumable. Oh my God. If I want to reset my skills. Preach it, brother. Don't make me go hunt for the rare blue flower atop the mountain. Just let me reset my skills. And don't make me run back to the boss from a mile away every single time.

So you can think about your loss, dude. That's all. I think about my loss after he hits me for the final time. And I go, Ah! You got a game plan on that whole run. I hate I hate not being able to

Respec your skill tree Oh it's nasty I hate it You know what I mean Or being a dead This is one thing I hate about Eldenring Is you need the stupid seeds Stupid or the tears or whatever

And then it's like There's only so many in the game And then I get like paralysis because I'm so terrified That I'm gonna run out And then I'm gonna not be able to respect And then it's like This sucks

My skill tree People Yeah All right Ryan What do you got for Is you got any other quick heroes Yeah I got some quick ones here. For don'ts,

don't make me identify my loot, like which one's better, like my sword or my armor by a million different little subtle changes in the stat points. Give me an arrow or a down arrow. I want to know, is this better or is the worst? Green red.

You know, you know, it's like the IRS. Like, you know how much I should pay in my taxes. Like, why are we doing all this? You know the exact number. Oh, no, you need to figure it out. No. Just guess. Tell me if this is better than what I have. and then I can continue on playing the game. It should be that simple. Ryan's smooth brain.

It's just like, I need the green arrow. I need, I don't want to, I don't want to sit here and just diagnose and do, do freaking mathematical equations. Figure out which one will be better for my build. For the,

for the dues, I got two more. Make side quests worth it. Like, give me, give me an addition. Like, I think that they did such a good job with this in Skyrim,

is to where I would get sidetracked. And then I'm all of a sudden down in this dungeon and I'm like reading books and I'm looking at notes and I'm just even if it's not like part of the lore or a big part of it like I'm experiencing what was going on here and there's meaning to it and it's unique and like I would get good gear from it. And so just make those side quests not just like filler to add pad to the game and the game time. Make it something that is substantial in it and people want to do it. and then the last one, which is one of my favorites, which I think it should be paramount to all video games is

everything should be destructible in a video game. If you're able to destroy something, you should be able to destroy something. I can't be Superman and not be able to punch through a wall. I'm sorry, Ryan, you can't be driving through the cherry blossom trees

and fours of Horizon 6. Right? Like, come on. Like the tree's going to stop me? They're nationally protected, Ryan, against cars apparently. No, like make it all, make it all destructible. If I, if I shoot a bomb at

this thing, it should, it should chunk up the building, you know? Yeah, I agree. Dev's everywhere screaming right now. Oh, they are. They are so much. For sure. But no, yeah. Destructible environments are. Not my problem. That's what I got to say. Not my problem.

Not my problem. I'm with you on the side quest. I don't know if I agree on the destructive environments because that that is a lot of work. How much better is it with Battlefield versus Call the Duty? I mean, it's fair, but the amount of time and effort... If I shoot a tank at a building, it should blow up.

Like, that's what should happen. It's fair. Otherwise, we should figure out what they make those out of. I will say it is funny that in some games, it's like, I can open this door, but not that door, because I just can't even interact with this one door. You know what I thought of is the Disney, uh, what were the Tootown? Oh, yeah. All those doors were just like fake doors. There were just like paper, like our paint doors.

And I'm like, I can't go in, I can't go in any of this stuff. And like it, there's so many like that where you just can't walk in anywhere. One of the things that made Hogwarts Legacy so awesome was when you go to Hogsmead. You can go in every freaking shop. Everywhere. In Hogsmeen, I remember just thinking like, this is amazing. There's finally like a game that lets me just go in like all of these buildings instead of their just fake facades at that point. By the way, speaking of that, Hogwarts Legacy 2, I was reading something.

you're supposed to be able to fly all the way from Hogsmead to London without a loading screen. Oh, that would be incredible, dude. Right? Yeah, I'm hyped for that game. So, yeah, I'm excited. We'll see. No, Starfield. I don't know.

Yeah, right? Yeah, I know. That's what I thought of too. See, I know. It's funny because some of these things that we complain about that people get upset about and the internet gets, it's mostly the internet getting carried away. But like, but at the same time, it's like, I do understand the underlying thinking of like, hey, if you make your game more interactive and these little perks and these little things,

it shows that you care about your game. So it's like there is that, but then people take it a little too far. And it's like, oh, look what we did back in 2016 and this is 2026 and it's not as good now. And it's like, but you're comparing that to like Rockstar, which you can't compare anything to Rockstar. They spent 600 million on that game 15 years ago. So you got to kind of compare apples to apples here. So all right, listen, we want to know what your favorite dues and don'ts are. What are the things?

Because look, we're going to tag some devs in this one to say, hey, you know, this is pay attention to this episode. What are the things that you love seeing in video games, the little things? You know, obviously we all want optimized games and we all want games to be fun and we all want multiplayer and we want things like this. But like sometimes it's the little things that matter and make a difference. And so what are the do's and don'ts that all of you out there have specifically? We want to hear from you. leave a comment on this episode. Join our Discord server.

There's a link in the episode description. Come talk about it. We have a super active Discord server. We talk about it all the time. It's awesome. It's, you know, there's 1,300 plus gamers in there that is active throughout all times of the day. We have people from all over the world. It is an incredible place.

And if you think that sounds good, you're exactly the type of gamer. We would love to have join us in there as well. If you love what we do, as much as we love what we do, and you think, man, I like this show. I like this podcast. Consider supporting us. We are a listener-supported podcast. We do not get funding from mega-gaming websites or publishers paying us for our opinions and things like that.

The only reason that we're able to continue to do this is through the support of the listeners. If we did, they let us go for sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, they're like, man, you guys were way too harsh on this game. I'm like, sorry. That's the truth. Fully destructible environments.

Kill that guy. I know. These guys. These guys. These guys. But there's a link in the episode description that takes you to Patreon. It only takes a few minutes to sign up. It goes a long way and we give you a ton of perks.

That's going to do it for this episode, everybody. Until next time. Happy gaming. See ya. Peace out.