#who shot guybrush threepwood

[rp-rs]

I guess its one of those Days where i rewatch "Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? | Genre and the Adventure Game" by innuendo studios for the 25th Time.

[henrykathman]

Stardew Valley, Wylde Flowers, and the Future of ‘Wholesome’ Games

Video Description below the cut!

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Spoiler Warning: the following video contains some light spoilers on elements of the game Wylde Flowers, so if you are interested in going into this game blind, consider playing it on PC, Switch, or Apple Arcade before diving in.

This video will be exploring the emergence of the "wholesome" video game first seen in games like Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing, now becoming a genre onto itself with the success of games like Stardew Valley. What is the draw of these sorts of games? Can this truly be considered a genre? What should be the platonic ideal that future wholesome games should strive for?

Original Music by Molly Noise

Additional Music from the Wylde Flowers Original Soundtrack by John Guscott 

Script Editing by Argus Swift

Recommended Readings & Sources

Danskin, Ian, "Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? | Genre and the Adventure Game" Innuendo Studios, YouTube, July 8, 2019 Grayson, Nathan, "The Past, Present And Future Of Stardew Valley" Kotaku Australia, Pedestrain Group, March 23, 2016 Marks, Tom, "The creators of Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon talk to us about farm games" PC Gamer, Future US Inc, Dec 1, 2016 Nicholas, Heidi. "The rise of wholesome games: A roundtable interview" TrueAchievements, TrueGaming Network Ltd, April 18, 2022 Taylor, Matthew, "The Rise of Wholesome Games" Wireframe Magazine, Raspberry Pi LTD, 2020

#Wylde Flowers #Wlyde Flowers Spoilers #Wholesome games #cozy games #stardew valley #farm sims #indie game #Studio Drydocks #concernedape #cottagecore games #video #video essay #youtube #Youtube

[innuendostudios]

We’re talking about adventure games again! Or, more accurately, we’re speaking in the context of adventure games about why some genres are hard to define, different ways of thinking about genre, and what genre is even for.

If you'd like to see more work like this, please back me on Patreon! Transcript below the cut.

Hi! Welcome back to Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? Meditations on the life, death, and rebirth of the adventure game.

Adventure game.

Adventure game.

Ad. Ven. Ture. Game.

What kind of name is that, “adventure game”? It’s an atypical way of categorizing video games, I’ll say that much. We usually give game genres titles like "first-person shooter," "real time strategy," “turn-based role-playing game.” Real nuts-and-bolts kinda stuff. Meanwhile, "adventure" seemingly belongs on a turnstyle of airport paperbacks, in between "mystery" and "romance." When they slap that word on a game box, what is it supposed to communicate to us?

Other one-word genres, I can see how they get their name. A horror game is horrifying, a fighting game earns its title. But how is exploring an empty, suburban house an adventure? Why is exploring a universe not?

When I started this series, I offered up the rough-and-tumble definition of adventure game, “puzzles and plots,” and said maybe we’ll come up with a better definition later. That was… four years ago. Sorry about that. I know it’s a little late, and a lot has changed, but I did promise. So we’re gonna do it.

Today’s question is: What makes an adventure game an adventure game?

This is a tricky sort of question to ask, because, upon asking, we might stumble down the highway to “what makes an adventure novel an adventure novel?”, “what makes a rail shooter not an RPG?”, and that road inevitably terminates with “what even is genre?”, the answer to which is a bit beyond the scope of a YouTube video essay… or, it would be on anyone else’s channel, but this is Innuendo Studios. We’ll take the long road.

Welcome to Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? A philosophical interrogation into the meaning of genre in and beyond the gaming idiom, with the adventure game as our guide.

***

The historical perspective reveals only so much, but it is a place to begin.

If you don’t know the story, in 1976, Will Crowther released Colossal Cave Adventure, a text-based story game set in an underground land loosely based on a real Kentucky cave system. The game would describe what was happening in a given location, and players would type simple commands to perform tasks and progress the narrative, usually a verb linked to a noun like a book that writes itself and responds to directives. This was the first of what we’ve come to call “interactive fiction.”

Crowther’s game - often abbreviated, simply, Adventure - inspired a number similar titles, most famously Zork, which was called an “adventure game” for the same reason Rise of the Triad was called a “Doom clone” - because they were more or less mechanically identical to the games they descended from. This is where the genre gets its title.

But the evolution from then to now has been oddly zero-sum, every addition a subtraction. As more and more adventure games came out, the text descriptions were eventually replaced with graphics, still images replaced with animations, the parser replaced with a verb list, and the keyboard itself replaced with a mouse. In the progression of Zork to Mystery House to King’s Quest to Maniac Mansion to Monkey Island, you can see how each link in the chain is a logical progression from the game preceding and into the one that follows. But you end up with a genre that began comprised entirely of words on a screen but that, by the early 90’s, typically possessed but did not, strictly speaking, require language. There is no question wordless experiences like Dropsy and Kairo are direct descendents of Monkey Island and Myst; that they are therefore in the same genre as Wishbringer, despite zero obvious mechanical overlap, is, for a medium that typically names its genres after their mechanics… weird.

(Also, for anyone confused: Nintendo used to delineate games that explored a continuous world from games that leapt across a series of discrete levels by calling the latter “platformers” and the former “adventures,” and an earlier game in that model was the Atari game Adventure, which was, itself, a graphical adaptation of the Crowther original, so what 90’s kids think of when they hear “a game in the style of Adventure” depends on whether they played on computer or console, but that lineage eventually embraced the even fuzzier “action-adventure” and is not what we’re here to discuss.)

So the connection between the genre’s beginnings and its current incarnation is less mechanical than philosophical. Spiritual, even. Something connects this to this, and we’re here to pin down what.

Now, you may be readying to say, “Ian, it’s clear the determinant of what is or isn’t an adventure game is pure association and there is no underlying logic, you don’t need to think this hard about everything,” which, ha ha, you must be new here. I would counter that, as soon as a genre has a name, people will (not entirely on purpose) start placing parameters around what they consider part of that genre. Even if it’s just association, there is some method to which associations matter and which ones don’t. So shush, we’re trying to have a conversation.

***

Another one-word genre named after a philosophical connection to a single game is the roguelike, christened after 1980’s Rogue. And, in 2008, members of the International Roguelike Development Conference in Berlin set about trying to define the genre. (I promise I’m not just going to summarize that one episode of Game Maker’s Toolkit.) Attendees began with a corpus of five games that, despite not yet having an agreed-upon definition, were, unequivocally, roguelikes, an attitude roughly analogous with the Supreme Court’s classification of pornography: “even if I can’t define it, I know it when I see it.” And, from these five games, they attempted to deduce what makes a roguelike a roguelike.

So perhaps we can follow their example. We’ll take a corpus of five games and see what they have in common. How about The Secret of Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, Myst, Beneath a Steel Sky, and Trinity? All five visually and mechanically dissimilar - three third-person and two-dimensional, one first-person and three-dimensional, and one second-person and made of text (no-dimensional?) - yet no one would dispute they’re all adventure games.

Okay! We can see a lot of common features: dialogue trees, inventory, fetch quests. But here’s the rub: to define the genre by the first two would be to leave out Myst, and defining it by the third would leave out Gabriel Knight, and, honestly, any one of these would exclude LOOM, which I think anyone who’s played one would look at and say, “I know an adventure game when I see one.”

For the sake of inclusivity, we could go broad, as I did with my “puzzles and plots,” and, while this does include everything on our list, it also, unavoidably, includes games that provoke the wrong reaction, like Portal - “I know a puzzle-shooter when I see one” - and Inside - “I know a puzzle-platformer when I see one.” Trying to draw a line around everything that is an adventure game while excluding everything that is not is no easy feat.

The best adventure game definitions are written in a kind of legalese; Andrew Plotkin and Clara Fernandez-Vara have both tackled this, I would say, quite well, with a lot of qualifications and a number of additional paragraphs that specify what counts as “unique results” and “object manipulation.” It takes a lot of words! And no disrespect - I can’t have an opinion in less than twenty minutes anymore - but I can’t help thinking we could go about this a different way.

What the Berliners cooked up in 2008 was, instead of a lengthily-worded definition, a list of high- and low-value factors a game may have. The absence of any one was not disqualifying, but the more it could lay claim to the more a game was… Rogue-like. These were features that could exist in any game, in any genre, but when they clustered together the Berliners drew a circle around them and say, “the roguelike is somewhere in here.”

A central idea here is that the borders are porous. If we apply this thinking to the adventure game, we could say that Inside and Portal are not lacking in adventure-ish gameplay; they simply have too low a concentration of it to be recognized as one.

This is genre not as a binary, but as a pattern of behavior.

***

So, to unpack that a little, I’m going to use an allegory, and, before I do, I want you to know: I’m sorry.

In 2014, professor and lecturer Dr. Marianna Ritchey, as a thought experiment demonstrating the socratic method (I’m sorry), hypothesized a conversation between Socrates and Euthyphro (I’m sorry) in which Socrates posed the internet’s second-favorite argument: is a hotdog a sandwich? (I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We’re doing sandwich discourse.)

Ritchey imagined Socrates asking Euthyphro to define “sandwich,” and sparking the dialectic in which Euthyphro offers up increasingly-specific definitions of “sandwich” and Socrates challenges each one with something non-sandwich that would necessarily fall under that definition: is a hotdog a sandwich? is a taco a sandwich? are three slices of bread a sandwich?

Now, in this scenario, Socrates is - as is his wont - being a bit of a tool. Euthyphro does all the work of coming up with these long, legalistic definitions and, with one, single exception, Socrates sends him back to square one. But Socrates is making a point, (or, rather, Ritchey is): can we really claim to know what a sandwich is, if we can’t explain why it’s a sandwich? Perhaps we should admit the limits of our common sense. Perhaps we should embrace the inherent uncertainty of knowledge.

Or perhaps we could tell Socrates to stop having flame wars and think like a Berliner.

Does “sandwich vs. not-sandwich” have to be a binary? Could we not argue that a sandwich has many qualities, few of them critical, but a plurality of which will increase a thing’s sandwichness? Are there many pathways to sandwichness, a certain Platonic ideal of “sandwich” that can be approximated in a variety of ways? What if the experience of “sandwich” can be evoked so strongly by one factor that some leeway is granted with others? What if many factors are present, but none quite so strongly that it generates the expected sensation? The question then becomes which factors contribute most to that experience, and how much slack can be granted on one axis provided another is rock solid.

A sandwich is not merely an object. It is a set of flavors, textures, sensations, and cultural signifiers. We so often try to define objects by the properties they possess and not by the experience they generate. But a sandwich does not exist solely on the plate, but also in the mouth, and in the mind.

Let us entertain that it’s fair to say a difference between a chip butty and a hotdog is that one feels like a sandwich and one does not.

***

In 2012, the internet was besotted with its fourth favorite argument: “Is Dear Esther a video game? You know, like really, is it, though?” And David Shute, designer of Small Worlds, a micro-exploration platformer (and maaaaaaaaybe adventure game?), countered this question with a blog post: “Are Videogames [sic] Games?”

Shute invoked the philosophical concept of qualia. A quale is a characteristic, an irreducible somethingness that a thing possesses, very hard to put into words but, once experienced, will be instantly recognizable when it is experienced again. Qualia are what allow us to, having seen a car, recognize other cars when we see them and not confuse them with motorcycles, even if we haven’t sat down to write a definition for either. And if we did try to formalize the distinction - say, “a car has four wheels and fully encloses the operator” - our Socrates might pop in to say, “Well then, friend, is this not a car? Is this not a car?” To which Shute - and, by extension, we - might comment that Socrates is, once again, being a buttface.

“If I remove the wheels from a car, then it no longer provides the basic fundamental functionality I’d expect a car to have. But it’s still a car – Its carness requires some qualification, admittedly, but it hasn’t suddenly become something else, and we don’t need to define a new category of objects for ‘things that are just like cars but can’t be driven.’”

What’s special about qualia is that they’re highly subjective and yet shockingly universal. We wouldn’t be able to function if we needed a three paragraph definition just to know what a car is. Get anywhere on Route 128?, forget about it. These arguments over the definition of “game” or “sandwich” ask us to pretend we don’t recognize what we recognize. Socrates’ whole rhetorical strategy is pretending to believe pizza is a sandwich. And anyone who doesn’t care about gatekeeping their hobby will see Dear Esther among other first-person, 3D, computer experiences and know instantly that they fall under the same umbrella. Certainly putative not-game Dear Esther has more in common with yes-game Half-Life 2 than Half-Life 2 has with, for instance, chess.

Shute goes on, “To me, it’s obvious that Dear Esther is a videogame, because it feels like one. [W]hen I play Dear Esther I’m experiencing and inhabiting that world in exactly the same way I experience and inhabit any videogame world – it has an essential videogameness that’s clearly distinct from the way I experience an architectural simulation, or a DVD menu, or a powerpoint slideshow. I might struggle to explain the distinction between them in words, or construct a diagram that neatly places everything in strict categories, but the distinction is nonetheless clear.”

This is the move from plate to mouth. If you’re trying to define the adventure game and you’re talking only about the game’s features and not what it feels like to inhabit that world, you’re not actually talking about genre.

***

So if we want to locate this adventure experience, and we agree that it can, theoretically, appear in any game, we might look for it where it stands out from the background: in an action game. Let’s see if we can find it in Uncharted. It’s a good touchstone because we know the adventure experience is about narrative gameplay, and Uncharted has always been about recreating Indiana Jones as a video game; converting narrative into gameplay.

When attempting such a conversion, a central question designers ask is, “What are my verbs?” Nathan Drake’s gotta do something in these games, so we look to the source material for inspiration. A good video game verb is something simple and repeatable, easy to map to a face button, and Indiana Jones has them in abundance: punch, shoot, run, jump, climb, swing, take cover. All simple and repeatable; you can get a lot of gameplay out of those.

But that’s not all there is to Indiana Jones, is there? There’s also… well, colonialism, but turns out that translates pretty easily! But... Indy rather famously solves ancient riddles. And he cleverly escapes certain death, and has tense conversations with estranged family members, and finds dramatic solutions to unsolvable problems. And none of these are simple and repeatable; in fact, they’re dramatic because they’re unique, and because they’re complex. And Uncharted renders all of these sequences the same way: with a button remap.

When Drake talks to his long-lost brother, or discovers the existence of Libertalia, his jumpy-shooty buttons turn into a completely different set of mechanics for just this sequence, and then go back to being jumpy-shooty. Where, typically, you have a narrative tailored around a certain set of core mechanics, here, the mechanics tailor themselves around a certain narrative experience. And each of these narrative experiences tailors the mechanics differently.

What if we made a whole genre out of that?

Adventure games are the haven for all the misfit bits of drama that don’t convert easily into traditional gameplay. In the old games, you’d never ask “what are my verbs,” because they were at the bottom of the screen. Or, if it was a parser game, your list of possible verbs was as broad as the English language; if a designer wanted to, they could, technically, have every valid action in the game involve its own, unique verb. Rather than specialized, the mechanical space of possibility is broad, the verbs open-ended, even vague, meaning different things in different contexts. The idea is that any dramatic beat can be rendered in gameplay provided you can express it with a simple sentence: push statue, talk to Henry, use sword on rope. Nathan Drake shoots upwards of 2000 people in a single game, but he’s not going to solve 2000 ancient riddles, and he shouldn’t. What makes ancient riddles interesting is you’re not going to come across very many in your life. So maybe the mechanics should be as unique as the event itself. And maybe discovering what this event’s unique mechanics are is part of the gameplay.

The best word we have for these moments is “puzzle.”

Adventure games aren’t named after their core mechanics because, by design, adventure games don’t have core mechanics. Puzzles have mechanics, learning them is the game, and they can be whatever you can imagine. Which is not to say they will be; many games over-rely on inventory and jumping peg puzzles. Even in a near-infinite space of possibility, there are paths of least resistance. But many adventure games have neither, and many are built around single mechanics that don’t appear in any other games.

An adventure game puzzle isn’t simply a thing you do to be rewarded with more plot, it is an answer to the game’s repeated question: what happens next? It was literally the prompt in many versions of Colossal Cave. How did The Stranger find the linking book that took them to Channelwood? How did Robert Cath defuse the bomb on the Orient Express? How did Manny Calavera find the florist in the sewers of El Marrow? It is story told through gameplay, and gameplay built for telling stories.

So I would amend my prior definition, “adventure games are about puzzles and plots,” to “adventure games are about puzzles as plots.”

Beyond that, if you want to know what understand the adventure game experience, you may just have to play one (I suggest Full Throttle).

***

Rick Altman argues we too often define genres by their building blocks, and not what gets built out of them. If you want to write science fiction, you have many components to work with: spaceships, time travel, nanomachines. You can make sci-fi out of that. But what if you take the component parts of science fiction and build… a breakup story? Or a tragicomic war novel? Is it still sci-fi? Let me put it to you this way: if somebody asks you to recommend some science fiction to them, and you say "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," how likely are they to say, "yes, this is exactly what I was asking for"?

Blade Runner is what happens when you use science fiction to build film noir. Dark City is what happens when you use film noir to build science fiction. So what defines a genre, the bricks, or the blueprint? Any meaningful discussion should account for both.

Adventure games are mechanically agnostic, all blueprint. You can build one out of almost anything. We took the long road because the ways we’re used to thinking about genre were insufficient.

***

So: from a few steps back, the adventure game isn’t even that weird. Game genres are usually named after their mechanics, and a small handful are left in the cold by that convention. This would have been a much shorter conversation if not for the fact that video games run on a completely different set of rules from every other medium that has genres.

...but do they, though?

What actually is genre for?

Well, Samuel R. Delany - yes! yes, I’m still talking about this guy - describes genre not as a list of ingredients but a recipe. Imagine for me that you’ve just read the following four words: “the horizon does flips.” If this is just a, for lack of a better word, “normal” story - not genre fiction - that’s gotta be some kind of metaphor, maybe for the protagonist feeling dizzy, or when the drugs start to hit. Whatever it is, it can’t be literal; the earth and sky do not change places in naturalistic fiction.

But they can in fantasy. Certainly stranger things have happened. And they can in science fiction, but by a different set of rules: now there’s a “why.” It’s gotta be something to do with gravity or the warping of space; even if the story doesn’t explain it, it has to convince you, within a certain suspension of disbelief, that such a thing is happening in our universe. Whatever it is, it’s not magic.

These four words can mean many things. Genre informs you which of the many possible interpretations is the correct one. (For what it’s worth, they’re Barenaked Ladies lyrics about being in a car crash.) The label “science fiction” isn’t there to tell you whether a story has rayguns, it’s there so you know which mechanism of interpretation you should employ.

Genre not what’s in the book. It’s how you read the book.

The opening chapters of a mystery novel may be, by the standards of any other genre, excruciatingly dull. A lot of descriptions of scenery and a dozen characters introducing themselves. But, because you know it’s a mystery, these first pages are suffused with portent, even dread, because you know someone’s probably gonna die. And some of these mundane details are just that, but some of them are clues as to who committed a crime that hasn’t even happened yet. You are alert where you would otherwise be bored. And you know to watch for clues, because you know you’re reading a mystery. Those are the genre’s mechanics.

Genre dictates the attention to be paid.

Words, sounds, and images don’t mean things on their own. They have to be interpreted. If part of genre is the audience’s experience, it’s an experience that audience co-creates, and it needs clues as to how. I’ve said before that all communication is collaborative. Here’s what results from that: all art is interactive.

Video games are not unique in this regard, they are simply at the far end of a spectrum. But if the purpose of genre is to calibrate the audience into creating the correct experience, perhaps it makes sense that the most interactive medium would name its genres after what the player is doing.

So the label “adventure game” is, to the best of its ability, doing the same thing as “adventure novel,” and as “first-person shooter,” if, perhaps, a bit inelegantly. There may be better ways to straddle all these lines, but the shorthand reference to an old text game gets the job done.

So that’s the end of our journey. I really hope we can do this again, and preferably not in another four years, but we’ll see how thing shake out. Regardless, I’m glad you were with me, and I’ll see you in the next one. It’s been an adventure.

#video essay #adventure games #who shot guybrush threepwood

[theweefreewomen]

Yet Another List of Video Essays

Annihilation and Decoding Metaphor - Folding Ideas

About the film Annihilation, how to find meaning in subtext-heavy film, and bad-faith movie criticism.

The Psychological Horror of Gaslighting, Explained - cherry bepsi

Looks at the films Gaslight and The Invisible Man (2020), as well as the manga story The Town Without Streets by Junji Ito.

The Systemic Abuse of Celebrities - Broey Deschanel

An exploration of celebrity culture and how damaging it is.

Elevated Horror & The Purpose of a Genre - Pim Is Online

Talks about the trend of 'elevated' horror films.

Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood? | Genre and the Adventure Game - Innuendo Studios

About adventure games, game genres, and genres as a whole.

Fortnite: The Party That's a Platform - Errant Signal

An exploration of the good and and the bad of Fortnite, with reference to Dan Olson's video and Tevis Thompson's article on the game.

Remembering With A Twist - A Jojo Rabbit & The Book Thief Video Essay - LadyKnightTheBrave

A deep dive into novel The Book Thief and Jojo Rabbit and how they portray Nazi Germany and Jewish characters.

Why the Music in Cats (2019) is Worse than you Thought - Sideways

An exploration into why the music in the Cats film is as bad as it is. (Note: the video got copyright-claimed, so parts of the video either have replaced music or are muted for a few seconds.)

A Thousand Ways of Seeing a Forest - Jacob Geller

The art of translation.

#long post #video essays

[drkineildwicks]

BH6 Snippet--1/30/2022

Now that Safe in Brother’s Wings is done and posted, it’s time to start working on other BH6 stories. \.o./

Anywho--mostly been working on a super-event for Crescent Cavern, but in the midst of Pokemon writing I’ve been picking at The Aken/Hamada Collective.  Have nebulous plans of posting pre-story stuff as short stories but in the meantime have Kaijo’s first encounter with Obake and Cass--gotta warm up for BH6 month, after all. :D

(under the cut it’s a little long)

Kaijo’s apartment was part of a much larger building that was honestly above his pay grade and was nicely swanky courtesy of its owner, Kent Allard.  Said owner was totally cool with renting rooms for cheap to people he considered worth it—how he determined that, Kaijo didn’t know, but he wasn’t complaining, the security was good and with the exception of certain still-sleeping girls in his bed, people didn’t usually just waltz in.

Which was why a second girl on his living room couch was such a fright.

“Hi,” the girl chimed.

“Uh—h-hi,” he said.  “Er—not to be rude but ah…wha-what are you doing here?  Who are you?”

“To answer both questions: starving.  You have no food in here and what you do have gained sentience six months ago.  Seriously, what do you even eat?”

“Ah—o-out mostly—how did you get in here?  Why are you here?”

“Oh we’re here because of our sister,” the girl said brightly, moving a bit so she was better facing him, one arm hooked over the back of his couch.  “Elaine Aken? She said she was dating some dorky doctor.”

“Oh…oh you’re…her sister,” Kaijo said, still trying to process this.  “Wait, dorky?”  The rest of her statement caught up to him through the indignation.  “And hold up—we?”

“So.  This is the current miscreant bothering our sister.”

Okay, the scream he just made was probably more befitting a little girl, but having someone just hiss that into his ear from behind was terrifying—leap away, twisting to see a guy he hadn’t even realized was there straightening up.  Taller than Elaine, looking like he was barely out of teenagedom but dressing like he was heading a mafia group.  Also eyeing him like he planned on fitting him with cement overshoes and chucking him off the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Dis-a-pointing,” the guy chimed, sliding his attention to the girl on the couch.

“Yeah,” the girl agreed, leaning on the back of the couch now. “There’s been better Guybrushes.”

“Low tier.”

“At least he has the ponytail.”

Kaijo really wasn’t sure how to respond to any of this, including the dismissive tch the guy made, was saved from further nitpicking by Elaine surging in with her gun drawn and barking hey!—

And then cutting off several colorful curses as she registered who was in the room, finally settling on “You.  You idiot I could have shot you—”

“Elaine!” both strangers chimed, completely changing tacks from picking him apart to focusing on their sister, dismissing Kaijo entirely in favor of going over to her and hugging her.

“Don’t you Elaine me how are you even here?”

“Bob hacked your phone,” the girl said brightly.

“Bob.”

“We missed you, dear sister,” the guy said, laying it on thick.

“I’m going to shoot you, Bob,” Elaine said, putting emphasis on every word and sounding totally done.

Kent Allard might sound familiar if you’re into pulp novels, and by this point Elaine’s been in the service and taking jobs that involve removing nasty jerks from the face of the planet.  Obake’s probably out of college and Cass has not yet stabbed someone (but it’s coming).

And yes, as I said in this post, until Kaijo Hamada showed he had staying power, all of Elaine’s boyfriends were only ever referred to as Guybrush Threepwood. XD

#bh6 #big hero 6 #big hero 6 the series #big hero six #big hero six the series #the aken/hamada collective #elaine aken #aunt cass #obake #kaijo hamada #prior to meeting Elaine Kaijo was very straight-laced and by the book he was not ready for her sibs and the chaos the Akens bring #my writing #kent allard is from the shadow by the way

[chucktaylorupset]

Harry Potter’s Magic System Does What It’s Supposed To, But What It’s Supposed To Do Isn’t Combat

Harry Potter’s magic system is a verb bank adventure game. Which is a fancy way of saying Harry Potter’s magic system was meant for puzzles, not battles.

I was thinking about that post that was like ATLA is a hard magic system with clearly defined rules and many limitations, which mean it can have some very creative and visually interesting battle scenes.

Harry Potter uses a soft magic system that as far as the reader knows can do anything and makes for visually and intellectually uninteresting.

But that’s because Harry Potter magic isn’t actually made for a boy to defeat the dark lord. It’s, at its heart, made for a boy to solve puzzles.

We don’t get any serious dueling until book 5, for most of the series Harry has to overcome static puzzles like the ones in the Sorcerrers Stone.

Harry has access to a bunch of spells the books has told us he’s learned over the years, and the problem is a static obstacle that needs him to pick the right one to unlock. Magic is less a use of overwhelming power and more picking out the one key that works from a comically big key ring

Which is, so I’ve heard, exactly like an Adventure game.

I’ve not played a lot of adventure games myself but if you’ve watched innuendostudios video series “Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood” you’ll know that many old adventure games came with a word bank of verbs you could do, and you picked up objects and tried to push those verbs and nouns together and launch that at problems until you win the game.

Which reinforces the idea that Harry Potter was originally intended as a purely hobbit style mystical children’s book series, with soft magic and fairy tale logic that children had to think hard to puzzle around. It’s only around book 5 that the cracks start to show as Harry gets closer to adulthood and therefore starts getting into fights.

The books actually plot pretty well around this. Umbridge is hidden and circumvented not fought. Deathly Hollows is a massive fetch quest that occasionally bumps into the action sequences of the war, but theoretically they never needed to fight any of Voldemort or his forces.

And also what do our heroes get at the beginning of the book? Objects. The lighter, snitch, and storybook. Objects that they had to figure out how to use by figuring out which problem it’s supposed to solve. Which is just the team builder edition of book 1, the last time Harry got a bunch of objects he’d later have to figure out to use to solve his problems. Book 1 Harry gets the broom and the cloak.

Which means I would love to see a Harry Potter Adventure game because the mechanics adapt so well.

I will also say in defense of Harry Potter, ATLA was from its genesis crafted for a visual medium, while Harry Potter was a bunch of words on a page. Words tend to be more forgiving than the camera for action sequences, because you can describe things that happen very fast and also give more details than what the viewer can see. Think of how many times in Harry Potter the movie a spell is just a flash of light vs in the book we get to hear what it’s name and intended effect is in the description.

Of course this just means it was on the visual development team to find a way to make that more interesting, and if you’ve got and answer to that be my guest.

TL;DR In this essay I explained why Harry Potter’s magic system is mechanically suited for solving puzzles and is similar to the video game mechanics of a an adventure game with a verb bank, with the spells being verbs and the occasional object being a gift. I also used this to show how the magic supports the intended genre and themes of Harry Potter for the first few books, and how the latter books adapt to work with it even if the themes change and combat is introduced.

#my post #harry potter #meta #in this essay i will #chuck writes an essay

[nexttrickanvils]

MI Fic: Beware of Karen

Title: Beware of Karen

Ships: Guybrush/Elaine, past Stan/OC (if you could call that mess a relationship)

Notes: So this is the result of lots of jokes and headcanon swapping with @captmickey. Hope you enjoy. ;)

---------

Throughout his adventures, Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate(TM) had seen the strange and impossible…

...And yet none of it compared to the sight of perpetual grifter, Stan S. Stanman standing on a dock before the Screaming Narwhal with a sleeping roll and other items in his (still flailing, how does he do that) arms.

“Guybrush! Good to see you! How’s the wife?”

“...She’s fine?” Guybrush remarked glancing at an equally baffled Elaine to his right.

“What...exactly are you doing here?”

“Haha! A good question! Typical of a smart man such as yourself! See, I need a favor and I figured we’ve been such good friends for so long...”

“You sold me a cruddy ship, I locked you in a coffin, scammed your life insurance business, you tried to sell me a timeshare, and tried to prosecute me on false charges. I don’t think “friends” is the word I’d use.”

At that, Stan’s usual bluster and “charming” salesman smile deflated like a really sad balloon.

“Alright alright. I know we haven’t exactly been on the same page but you’re the only one I actually trust with this.”

Okay that got Guybrush’s attention.

“This being?”

“I need a place to stay. Maybe a few days maybe a week. It shouldn’t be too long… hopefully”

Guybrush and Elaine glanced at each other, warriness and a little bit of annoyance obvious on both their faces.

They were planning on sailing off tomorrow and continuing their Multi-Island Anniversary Vacation. Elaine especially was looking forward to this after all the craziness with the Pox Incident… and the LeWalrus Incident before that. Winslow was even nice enough to be willing to stay at Spinner Cay with Anemone and the rest of the Merfolk so the two could have their space.

Then came Stan like a bad penny.

“Stan… we’re-” Guybrush attempted to explain

“We’re in the middle of something. As a couple. As in something for just the two of us.” Elaine added

“Don’t worry! Ol’ Stan here will be quiet as a mouse!”

Guybrush pinched his nose in frustration at Stan’s refusal to take no for an answer.

“Stan… why do you want to stay with us anyway? What? You couldn’t scam yourself a hotel room?”

“I take personal offense to that, my friends!”

“We’re not friends.” Elaine interrupted

But Stan ignored that and continued, “See I’ve been a businessman for a long time and in that field of work, I’ve met many a character, believe you me! I’ve crossed paths with the prickliest pirates, the saltiest of sea dogs, the most brackish of buccaneers...”

Guybrush muttered to Elaine, “What’s “brackish” mean?”

“I think it just means unpleasant, dear.” Elaine responded

“But none of them! None of those pillaging plunderers hold a candle to the most frightening person in the Caribbean… KAREN!”

Was… was he joking?

Is this one of those weird Pirate Prank Plays?

Was there a hidden audience ready to burst out and laugh at him?

“Unless Karen is LeChuck’s first name… which would be hilarious I can’t lie, I don’t think I see the threat.” Guybrush replied

“Who is Karen anyway?”

“Oh… she uh… she’s… err… she’s my ex-wife.”

An awkward silence hung between the three…

“Alright Guybrush, pull up the anchor.”

“WAIT! Listen I understand that I may have a… unique relationship with the truth but please believe me when I say that Karen is the absolute worst person imaginable and if she finds out that I’m on this island, I am a dead man!”

Okay… wow… even after racking his brain, Guybrush couldn’t really remember seeing Stan so… terrified (well okay the coffin thing but that’s uh something else.) He looked over to Elaine and could tell that she was still less than sympathetic.

Not that he could blame her. A guy, known for exaggeration and bullshit, shows up to your ship and tells you how his ex-wife is somehow WORSE than LeChuck? Not a good look.

But obviously Stan was not gonna go away, Guybrush had to think of something.

“Okay, listen, Stan. Elaine and I are trying to have a nice private vacation as a couple. But since you seem so worried, why don’t I just go talk to Karen?”

“ARE YOU CRAZY!? Stronger men than you have buckled before her! No, it’s better for all involved to just get out of dodge!”

Guybrush just gave a cocky grin in response, “Stronger men, but not wittier. Believe me after dealing with you for years, I think I can handle this.”

Stan merely sighed and muttered, “Sounds like I need to go back to the coffin business because it's your funeral.”

Guybrush turned to Elaine and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

“Don’t worry Plunderbunny, I’ll get this done quickly and we can get right back to our vacation.”

“Oh alright but you owe me a shoulder massage after all this.”

The Mighty Pirate(TM) shot a wink and began to disembark The Screaming Narwhal.

---------

Before long the two were making their way through a marketplace full of merchants, scam artists, and those in between.

“So… how did you and Karen meet?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Yikes, Stan doesn’t want to talk about something? Maybe… this wasn’t a good idea…

...WELL IN FOR A PIECE OF EIGHT!

“Why’d you divorce? Or is that too personal?”

“We began to see each other as competition. And Karen is quite ruthless to anyone she sees as competition.”

Before Guybrush could ask further, a pained high scream rang through the market. A female pirate ran past him and Stan screaming about her eyes as she covered them.

“You’ll thank me when you have to beat the men away with a club!” shouted another woman

“...It’s her.”

Guybrush turned to where Stan was glaring and immediately spotted a woman in a jacket and plaid pencil skirt. Her hair was closely cropped with some parts flared up or sticking out. In her hand was one of those fancy looking glass perfume bottles. Her face was covered in way-too much make-up for one person and she had a pure white salesman smile similar to Stan.

“Karen...”

The woman turned to them and immediately her smile dropped.

“...Stan.”

Hoo boy, Guybrush was wearing a coat and he could feel the chill between these two. Better step in before things get more awkward.

“Um excuse me?”

“Hm?”

Guybrush straightened himself and adjusted his coat.

“I’m Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate™.”

“Uh-huh, that’s nice.” Karen remarked with little enthusiasm

She then turned to Stan and shot him a smug look, “You know Stan, I always said you couldn’t find better than me but wow you really dug rock bottom.”

Stan just continued to glare at her while it took a second for Guybrush to realize what she was saying.

“Oh, oh no! Stan and I are just… acquaintances… who keep running into each other. I’m happily spoken for to the most beautiful ex-government official in the Caribbean.” Guybrush explained, showing off the ring on his finger

Guybrush wasn’t sure what happened next; one moment there seemed to be a glint in Karen’s eyes and then he found himself pulled away from Stan with one of her arms wrapped around his shoulders.

“Oh you’re married huh? Can’t imagine the Missus being too thrilled to see you spending time with someone like Stan.”

“Uh...I mean… you’re not wrong”

“You look like the kind of guy who’s just one mistake away from the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“I… um… actually Elaine and I-”

“A lady likes to be treated… um… Gasbroom was it?”

“Guybrush… but I’m not here to bu-”

“Of course, of course. And you say she’s ex-government? Well clearly you somehow found a woman of class who deserves only the classiest -and most expensive- items in my collection!~”

Thankfully before Karen could continue with her sales pitch, Guybrush felt Stan pulling him back and he suddenly felt more clear headed. It was almost like a spell had been broken. Or maybe he was now further from the perfume fumes and wasn’t feeling as dizzy.

Karen glared at Stan and crossed her arms.

“Hmph, I see you haven’t changed a bit, Stan. You just can’t stand the mere IDEA of someone buying something from someone other than you.”

“This isn’t about sales and you know it, Karen.”

Guybrush pushed himself away from Stan and faced Karen.

“Listen, I just wanted to talk to you and clear up all… whatever this is!” Guybrush exclaimed, pointing his finger between the two

At that, Karen began to laugh.

“Oh, sweetie, there is no fixing that mess. And that mess could also be in your future if you don’t...”

“I’m not buying anything!” Guybrush snapped

“Oh… no wonder your marriage is on the rocks.”

“HEY! My marriage has survived curses, evil undead voodoo jerks, and my mother-in-law! I think it can survive not buying your stuff”

“See this is what she does! She lies and insults you every way to get you to buy from her!”

Guybrush couldn’t help but side-eye Stan as he remarked, “Isn’t that what you do?”

“Oh no no no. What I do is a little something called Cold Reading. A skill of the trade. All she does is push you down and down until you can’t take it anymore!”

“...Again, sounds like what you do.”

“I agree with Stan, how dare you compare my mercantile skills to this idiot who couldn’t sell a used ship to a pair of monkeys!”

“AT LEAST I DON’T TEST MY WARES ON THE MONKEYS!”

“Still spreading those lies and slander are we? I think we’re done here, Stan. Leave now and if I see your face around here or worse yet, try to set up shop near me. I will have the Island authorities on you like flies on a zombie.”

“BUT! You’re at a marketplace! You can’t have someone arrested for running a business near you!” Shouted Guybrush

Karen smirked, “True but I can if this is what I tell them...”

Instantly Karen pulled out a handkerchief and started crying (without any actual tears, can’t smudge the make-up after all.)

“I-It’s my ex-husband, sir! He-he won’t leave me alone! I just want to run my business in peace but he just keeps harassing me!”

In an instant, the “oh woe is me” act is dropped and that smirk came back.

“Have I made myself clear? Now go on, shoo! You’re scaring off customers.”

Realizing that there was no winning here, Guybrush and Stan began to turn around and walk away. But not before…

“Hey! Goibersh!”

“...It’s Guybru-”

Quickly Guybrush caught a tube of lipstick that Karen tossed at him before it could hit him in the face.

“Consider this a free sample. And when your dear lady inevitably demands more, you’re free to come crawling back to me without Stan.”

With that, Karen went straight back to harassing another “customer” passing by.

“Stan...”

“Yes Guybrush?”

“You can stay on the ship. THIS DOES NOT MAKE US FRIENDS! But I’d feel like a jerk if I just left you to her “mercy.””

“...Thanks. Maybe if we survive this, I’ll give you a ten percent discount on my next business venture.”

“ONLY TEN PERCENT!?”

#Monkey Island #Anvil Writings

[captmickey]

Plunderbunnies + 41

41 - “Granted, this has never worked before, so really we’re just hanging onto hope with this one.”

It wasn’t a normal virus, it wasn’t even a normal flu... and being out at sea limited their options of what to do save for the first mate who had some naval first aid experience.

Guybrush had no choice but to trust him. At least, that’s what he told himself as he kept holding Elaine in his arms, brushing back the strands of red from her face to place the cold rag on her, feeling her burning up more and more as he watched Winslow pacing around grabbing various items and vials before mixing some of them together. 

“Normally, I would replace this particular ingredient with something else to give it a bit of a kick to intensify the remedy for the common cold.” Winslow spoke, in hopes to distract Guybrush, even just for a moment. “Granted, this has never worked before, so really... we’re just hanging onto hope with this one.”

“Hope?” Guybrush sounded nervous. “Now? Winslow, we can’t-- Elaine isn’t... she isn’t just dealing with a normal cold. She--” Elaine’s brows furrowed, locking up slightly before the Guybrush held Elaine up and brushed his hand on her cheek, resting his forehead against her while disregarding the heat she was radiating off of her. “E-Elaine? Elaine, hey... s-stay with me. I-i-it’s going to be okay... I’m here... please... just hang in there a little longer.”

The first mate decided to turn a blind eye to the desperation in his captain’s voice and went back to the family recipe. But with each raspy breath, the more he could tell that Guybrush’s heart sank.

After a moment, he walked over to them, holding a mug with a vile looking drink and held it to the Threepwoods. “Sir, she needs to drink this.”

The Captain looked between the drink and the first mate. 

"Captain, I know it’s a long shot, but it’s better than nothing. Even if it’s just reduce the fever slightly until we find land.” Winslow said. 

“I... I don’t--” He looked down, seeing her pale slightly and twitch. “Elaine! N...no no no, stay with me. Elaine?”

“With all do respect, sir, we don’t have time.” Winslow sighed and looked at the torn pirate. “You love her, don’t you?”

“I... Of course I do! What makes you th--”

He handed the mug without saying a word, knowing that the blond understood what he was getting at. 

Guybrush remained unsure, but it was when Elaine starting to shake violently that made him grab the mug quickly, helping her drink it slowly, watching her shakes slowly subside but still breathing heavily. “Is... is she going to be okay?” He asked, seeing her loll her head into his chest.

Winslow moved over to place a hand over her forehead, sighing slightly as he stood up. “I’ll sail us to port... we just bought ourselves a little bit of time. Just...” He looked over, spotting Guybrush already cleaning up the sweat from her face, whispering quietly to her.

“Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

(x)

#monkey island #the ship that literally sails itself #mickey writes

[lightgreyartgallery]

With our fifth anniversary close at hand, it seemed like the perfect time to reminisce and take a look back at the overwhelming amount of incredible artists we've worked with on projects and exhibitions over the last five years. So everyday for who-knows how-long (there's a boatload of insanely awesome art) we're going to highlight a specific project (what it entailed and just a handful of the art made for it) with the hopes that you all can enjoy it, and perhaps learn a little something interesting along the way. Whether it be with fresh eyes for the first time, or as a veteran of Light Grey Exhibitions, hopefully you'll all enjoy what you see!

Today -- we're gearing up, grabbing our health potions, and kissing that final boss goodbye -- this is BOSS RUSH!

While we may not always admit it, everyone loves the bad guy. BOSS RUSH celebrated the memorable and infamous video game bosses that many of us dedicated far, far, far too much time to defeating. Whether it was the jubilation of that moment you fired off the last shot to bring the boss down, or the crushing weight of having a boss decimate you while he has just a sliver of health left -- I'm sure we all have a special place in our hearts for at least one master baddie.

Let's start things off!

"Look At" Zombie Pirate – Adam Hoppus

This is the Ghost/Zombie Pirate LeChuck from the adventure game series 'Secret of Monkey Island'. It's one of the few games I've actually beaten and returned to play multiple times. LeChuck just kept getting better as the series went on and was a great adversary to the bumbling Guybrush Threepwood. I wanted to pay homage to the way these old games played so I included what I assume would be LeChuck's only options to select from if he was the main character of the game. I also wanted to have the piece be partially 8-bit to reference the design era that series was created in.

#lgal #lightgreyartlab #lightgreyartgallery #minneapolis #minnesota #games #videogames #illustration #art #exhibition #gallery #throwback

[innuendostudios]

Hi! I've watched a lot of your videos, both the ones focused on politics and the ones focused on gaming and culture. They are both very interesting. I was thinking, do you plan to expand more on The Death of Guybrush Threepwood? I'm curious about your thoughts on those "Choose your own adventure" style games popularized by Telltale.

I have at least two more ideas for episodes of Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood. Nothing planned specifically about the Telltale model, though I talk at length about that in the Walking Dead and Life is Strange videos. I’ll talk more about Telltale if I think of something interesting to say about it.