This is really exceptional. I feel like it deserves a better platform than youtube, where it just gets mixed in with all the thousands of loosely edited essays. For now though, I feel lucky to have seen it.

I can't believe this is actually not about No Man's Sky

This video is more in-depth & thought provoking than most video essays on KZfaq. You're criminally underrated for the amount of effort put in. It's like an introspective of art through the lense of video games - beautifully put together. Amazing work on the script and the music is spellbinding. Thank you for putting this out there.

Wow. Your videos are always a journey, and this was no exception. Thank you for your beautiful analysis review thing. Also I can't wait to checkout those indie showcases.

I come back and watch your videos every few months. They are some of the most beautiful and thoughtful video essays out there. It’s all simply wonderful!

every now and then, i come back to this video

Good lord. I came here from your stunning Witness video and only just noticed the number of views. Good gravy I wish that KZfaq had a better algorithm for picking up quality content like this. I’ve got a video I uploaded for work that got 20K videos that took me two minutes to make. My daughter is sat next to me watching trash Minecraft videos that have literally millions of views. And then there’s your channel, total class, well produced and brilliantly thought out. Please keep going till the algorithm notices you, then we can all say ‘I remember when he was nothing!’

Great video, Joel. Really fantastic script and pacing. I enjoyed your presentation style and I strongly connect with something you said in another comment--the feeling of, when you have an idea, it feels as though you've "found" it rather than "created" it. I've found this to be the case in my own creative works. I'm reminded of Solomon's proverb, "there is nothing new under the sun." (I wonder if he was the first to voice this opinion...) Thanks for your hard work on this video and also for crediting all the musicians!

I'm glad I found your videos. I'm going through a rough season of days, and founding a field of flowers just when the spring arrived it's just amusing. Thank you for the wonderful presentation of your memories, ideas and propositions. Keep digging deep in those subjects, your style it's a very good Frankenstein!

Your videos are incredibly well done. They are very interesting and pleasant to watch. Please never stop doing them.

Thank you for the crazy trip throught this video, Joel. Good work.

Marvellous job. Tracing game design lineage is always fascinating.

Wonderful video, excellently edited, looking forward to rewatching it in the future

excellent. i appreciate the time and care you take for setting up and strengthening your point. the subversion of 'error:non-original-game-mechanic-detected' was well worth the build of it. NMS is a game i look forward to playing. everything i've seen of the 2018 version of the game looks like it's right up my alley.

That was really excellent. Great analysis and I loved the music choices.

Underrated channel. Fun and thoughtfull. Thank you.

You've earned my sub for the niche references alone. Then everything on top of it solidified it

I love your theme, tone, and analysis here. Youre an artist in your criticism and even though I love reading your writing on your website too, there's something special in getting to hear you. Your message is on point and very compelling and you used No Man's Sky really well as a jumping off point to the larger view. Thank you so much.

I'm in love with your content. Awesome!

cant wait to devour this video i love this channel so much

Wow what a great video to watch, what a breathe of fresh air.

This is beautiful. I feel like I'm going to be saying that about all of your video essays.

incredible video as always. thank you!!

QUALITY CONTENT

It is so awesome you create such videos. Things nowhere to be found. Must take ages to produce it.

This video is really good. If youtube had more videos like this I would watch it more even if I had to pay

Loved the video. You are probably gonna love Outer Wilds.

I am so pleased that I'm already well versed with all the indie space exploration games you mentioned and am happy somebody could finally show the connection to Out There, it's so obvious. I always wanted to get Mirrormoon EP running with really strange peripherals on my computer, like a ball mouse dedicated to rotating the nav screen ect.

Another fascinating video from you! I do believe I heard some AdhesiveWombat in there, too!

What an amazing video, almost hypnotic

This did not disappoint. LIKED!

This was quite interesting. I'll be sure to stick around

I think i love you and your channel

Good content. You mentioned Soma, would be cool to see you do an essay on it and more generally on using the medium of gaming to tell a story and where this sits in the industry. Thinking specifically of titles like Soma, gone home, firewatch, penumbra and adjacent formats etc

In the Incredible Machine, you did have laser reflection puzzles, it also had colour combination puzzles. Awesome video, Subscribed.

Soooooooooo good!

Brilliant. A masterpiece. Quote me on that.

Liked just for the Farscape reference.

Didn’t expect to see Faith at 21:49!

Hm, do you think then that the creative part of being a game designer is then mostly in making those disparate, yet cool, ideas work together?

beautiful video :)

4:55 that ball is totally red.

Hey, a new video from Electron Dance! Immediate like from me, started watching now. Edit: another wonderfully produced video! Joel’s perspective on these indie games and his philosophy always strike my chords. Thank you!

the virtue of games is being completely unique. if it's not unique it's worthless

You rock ❤️

good

I have had this basic thought for some time, that there's essentially nothing new in video games. This is one of the reasons why it's worth caring about graphics, because graphical presentation is what designers build on top of the mechanics and ideas that have been there from the start.

No wait, I can't watch this now. Must see on the big flat tv in the living room, wtf am I doing on the laptop outside? What's wrong with me!

Damn, I totally got tricked into thinking this was a film about No man's sky!

Do you have a patreon at all? I absolutely adore your many videos, and have shared the witness one with every one of my friends. I'd particularly like to hear your take on Stephen's Sausage Roll, which is probably one of the best designed games ever made.

so it's a YES _and_ NO at the same time ? figures ! i couldn't stand it anymore after completing the atlas path or something, haven't run it for some time now

Fantastic essay, your videos are always a delight! Your channel is criminally underrated/viewed. Maybe partner with a bigger channel like Errant Signal.

The video is brilliant but any video that references my favorite Dungeon Master is brillianter. Add the reference to Ultimate and it's brillianterest! That does sound like I missed the point, though... In a way this essay is a counterpiece to an article you included in your newsletter not long ago, about how many games nowadays engage in exactly the same core loops and toxic design trying to be addictive without substance. It shows that reusing old ideas just is. It's not bad or good, it all depends on how they are reused and for what purpose. Cult of the Lamb, which was recently released and I picked it up, is for me a brilliant example of how you can pick and chose things you like from games and create a cohesive and enjoyable whole. I've recently got rid of reddit and get a lot of my gaming news from Google Discover which is baked into my phone's home screen. I've read a lot of articles through that, about video games and not, but what struck me is how everything gets padded, fluffed and devoid of substance (and in one extreme case was such an awful piece of journalism that a random primary schooler would be able to do better investigative work). But then comes Electron Dance, on a shining C64*, typing away prose full of personality and meaningful and multi-layered content, exploring the topics in thoughtful and humorous ways. Which reminds me I recently wrote a blog post for my company's blog. It started as very "my" content, chaotic, unstructured, difficult to read, overflowing with bad jokes and references no one but me could understand. Over 4 or 5 iterations I transformed it into something quite readable - focused on the matter at hand, with just enough personality to hopefully make a person smile and nod in agreement. But then it went to the editor who... Well, they did a good job of making it read like something that could be put on the company's website. But it no longer had any personality. If you ever read anything I wrote and compare that to my body of work, you couldn't tell it's me. That soured my enthusiasm for writing more, because I want to read art and I want to produce art, not informational pamphlets. Even if the art I make is bad, I'd still rather produce bad art than perfectly sterile, erm, nonart. What I am saying is, I shouldn't be allowed to write more than one paragraph of text at once because I lose track of my point. I love your content and the best part is I still have a bunch of your videos I haven't watched! Oh and by the way, I've stumbled recently upon your old article about your disdain to the name "walking simulator". Since the comments were closed there and I am already writing to you here I wanted to say - I think Death Stranding is befitting that genre name, as walking and managing walking and balance is a huge part of the game's gameplay (at least early (did you ever notice how often in video games there is some kind of restricting or annoying mechanic that's fun only for a little bit and then the game does something to make it no longer matter? And sometime they fail to do so and it creates this interesting mess, like I suppose forever hunting for rocks in No Man's Sky, or dealing with this damned selling in Moonlighter (I like stacking parenths for comedic purposes (I also like this type of British humor, where you repeat a joke so long it stops being funny and then starts being funny again because of how unfunny it got in the first place (now I wonder if it's truly British or just Monty Python thing (though one could argue Monty Python is the epitome of British humor (but then again that's based on my purely pop culture-based experience ))))))) * - If you're more of an Atari guy replace it with Atari

Good video 👌