"There's little guys in my screen."

#406
"There's little guys in my screen." Video Content; Use the Dang Potion!
2025.09.11
Poster for Plante Blip and Dale

In this episode, Mark and Stephen talk about what they are excited about. Lydia deals with a existential crisis about keeping too much stuff. And nobody talks about the full motion video game that Dale made during a Global Game Jam during the topic on video content, where they talked extensively about FMV games. Don't worry! Dale edited this episode and linked the game in the show notes below. ;)

Lydia played some Dutch games

Stephen is very excited about Kirby Air Riders. Is it as good as he anticipated? Past Stephen sure hopes so!

Mark went to L.A. for the Blippo+ Exhibition

Nice Games Alliance

Beth Korth was recently on the show in Episode 382 to talk about
When the club plugs the Discord, Mark mentions a Discord conversation the podcast's outro in Episode 400

Use the Dang Potion!

The reasons Lydia doesn't use the Potion:

1) She might need it (more) later, I don't want to waste it
2) Everything could matter

And more reasons:

3) Things are power in a power fantasy game, and it's hard to give up power
4) Potions feel like an assist mode, because you want to be better than that
5) Gambler's fun

Combatting the natural emotional response for players to keep their stuff

Make stuff very abundant, and add use ware (like Zelda Breath of the Wild)
Add narrative context that the intention is to sell it for in game money (like in Spirit Farer)
Add explicit indicators that an item is required for a quest.
Create items that are specific to a single purpose.
Discourage gathering more items by making them annoying to collect