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allhailthesanders · 4 years

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Hi...How Y’all Doing...? It’s Time For Another Watcher Weekly Commentary

So I got a super nice message from an anon (i love you anon) saying that they enjoy this series thing so... I’m going to continue it just for them and for me. Anyway here’s the rundown for this shit show I watch a Watcher Weekly episode and write down my stream of consciousness commentary then I rate the episode (All the episodes deserve at least a 10 though). I include quotes and timestamps and most importantly ~my opinions~. It’s not that deep so let's get it started!!!

Previous Episode: WW #03 First Episode

WW #04: Weird Wonderful World Q+A

Right off the bat, we have Shane going “It’s January 29th and it’s time for Watcher Weekly” before he strikes a pose

GROUP POSE @0:07

@0:14- 0:20 we have a little Steven and Shane dual kick/ bonding moment that I guarantee no one has noticed (I just did and I LOVE IT)

*Goat Steven*- that’s all that’s the tweet

“facebook.com/watcherentertainment you can be our 60th like”-Steven Lim

OH! IT’S THE FIRST TIME WE SAW STEVEN BLUE HAIR

Blueberry Boy! 🥺

Baby-Faced Bergara!!!

Also, love that Mari doesn’t know that he shaved. Also, may I just go on a tangent about how much I absolutely love Mari. I feel like I have never specifically said it but I love her so so much. Anyway back to your regularly scheduled programming

@2:15 remember that time Shane forgot that there was a pen in his hair. me too

“This is the closest I have ever been to Steven”- Ryan Bergara 2020

I love how Shane skips over weird wonderful world talk to talk about Ryan and Steven playing b-ball together

I never thought I would hear Shane say the phrase “Run D on each other”

Then Ryan immediately going don’t say that 🤦‍♂️

I just want people to appreciate the little Steven spin @3:05

Ryan’s fall at @3:18 scared the shit out of me. He went down so fast. Like scary fast

Steven Dance = Salmon

I MISS HOMEMADE!!!!! 🥺🥺🥺 It was so sweet and wholesome and I love food

Which Would You Rather Have? Steven Lim tap-dancing selling cars or Steven Lim with a Nike logo tattooed on his head

This is so unrelated but have you guys seen that show How Far Is Tattoo Far on MTV. It is ridiculous. Sorry that was off-topic

Okay, so something that I want to say about this episode is that there is so many microexperssions and little jokes between Steven and Shane and Ryan and Shane, and like rewatching this episode really makes me appreciate the chemistry these boys have with each other. Like you can feel like it’s a genuine friendship. IDK I’m getting self-conscious about how much I’m commenting on this episode

@7:10 i- I- umm I- Steven just pulled out one of Ryan chin hairs and Shane is shouting in the background i-i’m just going to move on

TIL Steven’s hair is ~crunchy~ and Shane’s little yelp when he felt it

@7:36 a little Steven nuzzle

~HOMEMADE~: The only Watcher show that can bring laugh, cheers, and fears

@8:36-8:54 a little Ryan and Shane car bit

Also, Shane shouting “keep your eyes on the road” is triggering my fight or flight senses

“Swaggy Jagger I see you” sounds sooooo much like a John Mulaney bit

Oh, Ryan just said that okay I’m not going crazy

you know who I would want to meet *long dramatic pause*

-Go watch the episode to find out who Steven would want to talk to at a séance- (Mainly because I can’t give Steven’s answer the justice it deserves)

Does Ryan eat human bone marrow? The history will remain UnSoLvEd

Me: What part of the human body tastes the best?

Steven & Ryan: The bone marrow

Shane: The ASS

“Just to clarify we do not support eating human meat”- Steven Lim 2020

@12:34 We have not only a Steven Sting but also a sassy Steven sip, Shane having to get out of his seat and Ryan whispering un-fucking-believable

Now onto ~✨PLANT TIME✨~ then the Watcher Boys almost killing their plant

Ryan is a PLANT MURDER!! Yo I cannot stan this type of behavior 😂😂

This is also the first time Shane has heard Ryan say that he’s sorry

I love petty arguments I live for spite

THE DIPLOCOCCUS is back and he has Lenny held hostage

oh... Lenny has betrayed Ryan

THEY’VE REACHED A 1000 PATRONS🎉🎉🎉

“Well I believe that when I’m dead I will cease to exist and become a mere echo of a human”- another inspiring quote from Mr. Shane Madej

also loved the echo on the word echo

Bazinga said, Steven

Ryan Logic: a guest host=ghost

you know I’m not even a little surprised at this point

STEVEN SNAPS!!!! *snap* *snap* *snap* *snip* *snap*

#SUBSCRIBETOWATCHER

Shane talking about Ryan mercilessly killing his plant “ I’m telling you he cackled like a witch”

AWW Ryan and Steven are two little peas in a pod!!!

“your arm is still on my shoulder” “BECAUSE YOU’RE FRIENDS!! why do you always have to point that out!”

@19:50-20:00 Ryan’s impression of Steven

Steven stopped Shane and Ryan’s secret handshake?!?! Yo I cannot stan this type of behavior 😂

Oh Shane designed the Watcher Launch Tee

@20:39-20:46 “Hi I’m Ryan Bergara and I’m going to the moon”

And finally @20:57 to basically the end we have a little Steven dance

So this was a long commentary. Great episode though! As I said before there were a lot of little microexpressions I had a hard time explaining. Then again I did unstan both Ryan and Steven in this episode, so I do have to take that into account. I’ll give this episode 34.78 dead plants out of 5 Swaggy Jaggers.

Next Episode: WW #05

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mysterious-prophetess · 3 years

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Wonder Woman 84

Days ago I did a two-part Spoiler-Free review of this movie x, xx

My conclusions from that spoiler free review were it was a very mixed bag of a movie and that, ultimately, I did like it but I could see why people might dislike it.

Now with a read more coming, I will get into spoiler territory because I’ve given the movie a few days to sink in.

If you don’t want to get spoiled, click away.

Warning: What follows are personal opinions. You are free to disagree, these are just my thoughts and feelings.

Ok. The emotional parts, I liked. This movie had a very good handle on its emotional scenes.

Actions scenes-they varied in quality for me. The bad CGI everyone is citing is in fact the reason for this for me as well.

The pacing. That’s where I ding this movie the most.

It. was. too. damn. long. and. slow. It was also horribly uneven.

This script could and should have been pared down to two hours at MOST.

We didn’t need the opening to be Ancient Themyscira. We could have had that bit as a flashback later with Diana getting it as some sort of revelation of “cheating for what you want isn’t right” And that Ancient Themyscira bit could have been pared down to make a better flashback or a story Diana could have told Steve once she finally gets the message of the film: Truth over Lies.

The message of the film was also HAMMERED over our heads with how they went about it with that opening.

Also those competitors’ costumes are terrible. That fabric looks like the fabric they used to make plush dinosaurs from when I was a kid.

Just no. Their leather garb or have them wear pants like that of the culture the Ancient Greeks likely based the mythological Amazons on.

Jumpsuits--Just don’t.

I honestly have a whole bunch of stream of consciousness notes on how much I hate those jumpsuits but that’s a side-tangent rant.

Costume quality for the non-modern clothes seems to have taken a hit or they spent all the non-modern clothing costume money on that gold armor.

Speaking of bad, I have to touch on the CGI again in regards to Cheetah.

Oh, honey, what did they do to you? I don’t even LIKE you as a villain and that design made me sad.

So, I will now address the elephant in the room that I see being talked about EVERYWHERE: Diana and Steven having sex with Steven in that man’s body.

I found it icky because this ran through my head at Diana “you don’t know where that man’s been, you don’t know that man’s name, and you don’t have that man’s permission.”

I just don’t get why that was even part of the plot?

The Monkey’s Paw was already draining Diana’s powers.

They didn’t need to add the extra caveat of Steve possessing some guy’s body.

And that, more than the sex, was why I was pissed at Diana’s choices in this movie.

She was STEALING A MAN’S LIFE FOR HER OWN DESIRES. This character-not even given a name in the credits beyond “Handsome Man” deserved his own chance at a life. Diana refusing to renounce was her being ok with essentially sacrificing this man for her own happiness.

That was not ok. That was never ok. That wasn’t something Diana should have even thought was ok. I get that it’s showing her having her own decisions and how some of those are selfish and don’t turn out well but....we kinda got that in WW? She selfishly ran-off to try to kill the man she thought was “Ares” (Ludendorf I think his name was?) and it didn’t work out too well.

I just think this was a good angle to take, showing that even Diana can be selfish, but that this was a sloppy execution.

I think that a dangerous wish stone was not a good plot for a WW movie.

Some other godly artifact might have worked better, especially for the 80′s. Maybe, the Hammer of Hephaestus and its problem could have been in how it improved weapons or something if it HAD to be a MacGuffin centered plot. I know a more mystical magical plot does fit with a demi-goddess but it just didn’t feel like this plot was all that Wonder Woman like.

That villain, has the name of Maxwell Lord but he is not Maxwell Lord.

That said, he is sympathetic. There were times it seemed like they were trying too hard to make him someone to feel bad for, but on the other hand it worked. I did feel bad for him and wanted his kid to have his dad in the end.

Cheetah felt like an after thought and them trying their own version of a character like Amazing Spider-Man 2′s Electro. The overly clingy person who gets upset.

I get what they were doing with her in the film. Showing how power can corrupt and what she traded away was how personable she was and how kind she could be despite the world ignoring her and treating her badly. There was just something about how they handled her characterization that just didn’t sit well with me and just didn’t feel like it 100% worked.

And That’s really why I say this film’s a mixed bag. For every one thing I liked: the armor, Asteria, Steve’s awe at modern planes and space vehicles, the emotional moments, and even showing Diana having the ability to make a plane invisible as a nice wink and a nod to Wonder Woman’s invisible plane from the show, there were other moments that I didn’t like. See above. Then there were moments I was “meh” on and moments I did roll my eyes at. See the “hammered over the head” comment in regards to the Themyscira opening in regards to the main lesson of the film and even some of the cornier bits in that “saving the day” opening.

So, I stand by saying I liked Wonder Woman 84, but I also liked Batman v Superman, the other infamously flawed and overly long DCEU film. I even could enjoy Suicide Squad and all its Mid 2000′s Hot Topic-ness (but could not enjoy Harley Quinn).

What I’m trying to get at is, I like it but I can fully acknowledge that there are parts of this film that just are bad. Bad enough to drag those parts I really like down a little.

#ww84 spoilers #wonder woman 84 spoilers #ww84 #wonder woman 84 #personal thoughts

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bexical · 5 years

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Player fantasy: A look at Niantic

A while back, I wrote a post on something important to me in game design, player fantasy. And I'm back to discuss the same topic, but this time, in the context of Niantic and their two franchise-based games, Pokemon Go and Wizards Unite1. (Note: I no longer play Pokemon Go, and never downloaded Wizards Unite, so my descriptions may occasionally be inaccurate.)

In the spirit of my last post, let me start off with some numbers: According to this article, Wizards Unite had about 400,000 installs in the first 24 hours, while Pokemon Go had about 7.6 million installs in its first 24 hours (unfortunately, I was unable to find numbers regarding current usage). Why the stark contrast? There is a wide variety of reasons, some with more explanatory power than others: its paywall is too high, or it simply wasn't different enough from Pokemon Go, or the Wizarding World brand isn't as big as Pokemon (#7 here).

This wasn’t a surprise though: I would claim that this was actually easily predictable, even as early as 2017 when we first heard rumors of a Harry Potter AR game being made by Niantic. I think it's only fair to note though that I have an immense bias against Niantic: I feel the company has a disturbing disinterest in the desires of their players (among other issues). Or, to rephrase in terms of the central topic: they have no understanding of the player fantasy and no interest in such.

It might be hard to accept that claim without hesitation. After all, Pokemon Go was immensely successful that first summer, and it still has a decent playerbase (based entirely on anecdotal evidence). Fundamentally, it does deliver on the main aspects of the Pokemon trainer fantasy: you can go out into the world and find Pokemon in the 'wild' (kind of), and you can battle your friends and train to be the very best.

But the game doesn't feel designed to deliver on that fantasy. Battling friends wasn't introduced until Dec 2018, two and a half years after the game was first launched. As for going out and finding Pokemon… the app directs players towards a Pokestop, where they can then find the Pokemon they are looking for. The experience is so disconnected from the imagined experience of going out into the world and finding Pokemon, and I would claim this is because they never intended to deliver on that experience. In fact, the game's first iteration of Pokemon tracking was much closer to that imagined experience (in which a tracker indicated the distance to nearby Pokemon), and they actually removed it in favor of the current system, which is explicitly designed to encourage exploring Pokestops.

And I get why. The CEO of Niantic, John Hanke, gave an interview to BusinessInsider back when the game was released in 2016, in which he describes the three goals of Pokemon Go: "to promote exercise, to allow people to see the world with new eyes, and to help break the ice" (alternate source, since the original interview is now behind a paywall). Their goals are evident in the design of Pokemon Go: egg-hatching correlates with exercise, Pokestops (and by correlation, the experience of catching Pokemon) promote exploring the world, and gyms and raids promote a social experience. But… there is very little overlap with the player fantasy of a Pokemon trainer.

What is that player fantasy though? To answer that, let me cite the first few lines of the Pokemon theme song:

I want to be the very best, Like no one ever was. To catch them is my real test, To train them is my cause!

How well does Niantic deliver on this? Let's see:

"I want to be the very best/ Like no one ever was." - Meanwhile, as mentioned earlier, battling went unimplemented for more than two years. How do you prove you’re the best when you can’t even compete?

“To catch them is my real test”2 - Acceptably implemented, but barely, as the experience is designed with ulterior motives. Do see the footnote though.

"To train them is my cause"3 - Training a given Pokemon involves… catching Pokemon of the same type?? It is such a nonsensical concept, and it is hard to imagine anything less related to the idea of Pokemon training.

I think I’ve reasonably established by now that Niantic has no understanding of player fantasy. They ignore the fundamental fantasy of being a Pokemon trainer and instead manipulate us into what they want - and yet Pokemon Go still succeeds because the player fantasy of walking around and catching Pokemon is so natural with AR that any failure would be impressive (not that Niantic hasn’t done their absolute best at failing).

And so Wizards Unite fails because the linking with AR just isn’t as inherent for the Wizarding World. Others have noted that the game fails to deliver on the fantasy the way that Pokemon Go does, and that really is the main reason for its failure, far beyond market timing or anything else. There might be a good WW AR game - after all, the Wizarding World is essentially an augmented reality - but Wizards Unite is not that game. The fundamental mechanic, dealing with the Foundables, is a nonsensical reskin of catching Pokemon without the appeal - no one is excited about handling Foundables (is it really anyone’s idea of a fun social activity to go out with friends and hide things from Muggles...?). Furthermore, the existence of these Foundables is new to the canon, and thus our interactions with them do not satisfy any previously existing desires for Harry Potter fans.

As strong as my disdain for Niantic is, I do want them to succeed - largely because both the Pokemon franchise and the Wizarding World are relatively dear to me, and I would be swept away in bliss if their respective games actually delivered on the fantasies of being a Pokemon trainer and being a wizard. As for whether or not it’s possible… I think it is, but it will be difficult. Pokemon Go is close, but it will still take a surprising amount of work - to fully deliver on the fantasy, I think Pokemon training needs to be entirely revamped. Catching other Pokemon to train a given one is absolutely nonsensical, and a good system would make it viable to train a Pokemon without catching hundreds just like it. And since catching Pokemon is the main gameplay, they need to move on from that in favor of other interactions.

I think exploring more interactions is actually key to improving both games, largely because one of the most important fantasies of augmented reality games in general is being immersed in that new reality. There are so many ways we can interact with the Pokemon world besides catching every wild Pokemon we see: battling these wild Pokemon is an obvious thought, but imagine an encounter like stumbling into a Kakuna nest and needing to carefully extricate yourself for fear of a swarm of Beedrill, or being confronted by an angry Rhyhorn and needing to calm it down with a berry. The Team Rocket encounters are a step in this direction, and with more of these interactions, we can be really immersed in a new world.

As I said earlier - I’d like Niantic to succeed. I want to see them pivot and start thinking about what their players want, as opposed to focusing singularly on what they want their players to do. Unfortunately, I have little hope that this will happen - they certainly won’t change because some individual wrote an angry essay. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from their mistakes. As game developers, work to understand the player fantasy, and deliver on it. As artists, understand what your audience wants and, again, deliver on it - or don’t! Subvert their expectations and deliver on a different experience, one they didn’t know they wanted - but this can only be done well if you do have that fundamental understanding of your audience.

It makes me really sad that they chose to go with the gendered term of ‘wizards’, though the decision goes back to the naming of the Wizarding World. Why couldn’t they call it the Magicking World or something? On a tangent, this is something I think about on occasion with my own work - what will fans call the setting? I’m not sure there is anything quite as charming as Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, for example. Alas. ↩︎

I would argue though that the experience of catching Pokemon is actually significantly tainted by the experience of training them. Any given Pokemon I catch is unlikely to be one that I actually keep - it is simply a source of candy for the actual Pokemon that I am training, and it is thus insignificant. When it comes to catching rare Pokemon, the experience is somehow actually unexciting because well, what am I supposed to do with it? I cannot train it precisely because it is rare, given the absurd design of the training system. ↩︎

I touched upon this in the other footnote, largely because this is actually the aspect of Pokemon Go that bothers me the most. The biggest part of the Pokemon trainer fantasy for me personally is having this partner, like Pikachu to Ash - but the system heavily disincentivizes using one’s starter Pokemon. The best way to train my Bulbasaur is by catching other Bulbasaur, nearly all of which will have higher CP simply by being higher level - and after a relatively short while, one of these Bulbasaur will have better IVs than my 10/10/10 starter. It is thus nonsensical from a gameplay point of view to waste the stardust and candy on my starter, as well as immensely more difficult to do so. Furthermore, any Bulbasaur candy I obtain can inherently be saved for that high IV Bulbasaur I eventually catch, which further incentivizes finding new, strong Pokemon instead of becoming partners with any Pokemon I catch. And so, despite the introduction of battling and cosmetics and newer generations of Pokemon and despite all the excitement that these new features may bring, I will never forgive them for designing a system that relegates my starter Bulbasaur to uselessness. ↩︎

#game design #pokemon go #wizards unite #niantic #pokemon

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