Daniel Floyd
Director
Extra Credits (2010)
Season 2018
Join James Portnow, Daniel Floyd and Allison Theus each week as they take a deeper look at games; how they are made, what they mean and how we can make them better.
Released July 29, 2010
Episode 42 min
None+
Genres: Documentary, History
Keywords: imdb.review-show, imdb.game-review, imdb.two-word-title, imdb.2d-animation, imdb.gaming, imdb.internet, imdb.commentary + 2 more, imdb.web-series, imdb.youtube-channel
Network: YouTube
Country: United States
Languages:
English
S9E1 - So You Want To Be in QA - The Test Chamber
Quality Assurance, or QA, does not mean you sit around playing games all day. At least, not for fun. But if you have patience, love experimentation, and find the right team, it can be an extremely rewarding job.
Jan. 17, 2018, midnight
S9E2 - Games Should Not Cost $60 Anymore - Inflation, Microtransactions, and Publishing
You would think that paying $60 for a game would be enough, but so many games these days ask for money with DLC, microtransactions, and yes, lootboxes. There's a reason for that.
Jan. 24, 2018, midnight
S9E3 - Why Do Games Cost So Much To Make? - AAA Game Budgets
Let's talk numbers: marketing, office space, dev tool licenses, voice actors, and more that goes into the average AAA game budget. Why do some games never turn a profit while others seem to magically make it work on the cheapest budget possible?
Jan. 31, 2018, midnight
S9E4 - The Loot Box Question - Designing Ethical Lootboxes: I
Why does the games industry seem to prefer lootboxes over other types of microtransactions nowadays? Why are they so easily manipulated to abuse players' agency? How can we make them better?
Feb. 14, 2018, midnight
S9E5 - The Legality of Loot Boxes - Designing Ethical Lootboxes: II
Legislating regulation around in-game purchases seems like a good idea, but let's proceed cautiously: the phrasing of such potential rulings could create situations that unfairly affect gamers themselves, not just publishers.
Feb. 28, 2018, midnight
S9E6 - NieR: Automata - Sacrifice and the Meaning of Kindness
Many video games offer you the chance to make “good” or “bad” choices, but often times these choices lack weight; you as a player aren’t emotionally attached to the circumstances, the causes, or the outcomes. Nier: Automata, however, lets players truly empathize with others in a crucial end-game choice.
March 19, 2018, midnight
S9E7 - Break Points - Balancing the Math with the User Experience
Why does a small, incremental increase in a stat sometimes feel like an overpowered boost? How can we use break points to improve the player's experience? Guest art by Allison Utterback! (No, not THAT Allison, but a very awesome Allison nonethless.)
March 28, 2018, midnight
S9E8 - Impractical Research - How Academia Can Make Better Games
Academic research in games should be challenging our need for commonly accepted principles like Skinner boxes or certain narrative structures. Historically it tends to be focused on finding only certain types of quantifiable data, which can be distracting from the medium's overall progress.
April 4, 2018, midnight
S9E9 - Unpleasant Design - When Bad Design is Used to Hide Problems
Sometimes bad design is created intentionally, to cover up a flaw in the system instead of fixing it. Using cities like Seattle and London as examples, we examine how architecture is designed to remove homeless people from the public eye without actually helping them.
April 18, 2018, midnight
S9E10 - Wolfenstein vs Call of Duty - The Need for “B” Games
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus offers up one of the most honest depictions and criticisms of Nazism and bigotry in modern mainstream games, and part of that is due to its "b"-game-like nature--similar to b-movies that transgress the standards of their time.
April 25, 2018, midnight
S9E11 - The Digital Museum - Assassin’s Creed Origins Discovery Tour
The Assassin's Creed Origins team recently added a non-violent exploration mode to their game coupled with an educational voiceover narrating facts about ancient Egypt. How could we improve on this museum-like experience.
May 9, 2018, midnight
S9E12 - Choice Paralysis - Too Much of a Good Thing
Game designers must decide how to segment and present choices so that the player isn't overwhelmed. From character creation to strategy, there's a lot of complexity to the user experience.
May 23, 2018, midnight
S9E13 - Blockchain Games - Can Blockchain Technology be a Game Mechanic?
Say hello to Matt Krol, our new narrator! Today we're talking about about that cursed buzzword "blockchain" that's appeared on the fringes of the game industry within the past year, most infamously Cryptokitties. How could blockchain tech actually provide good game design value?
May 30, 2018, midnight
S9E14 - Ladders and Team Games - Doing it Wrong
Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. The first 500 people to sign up at this link get their first 2 months for free: http://skl.sh//extracredits Why do team-based video games like Overwatch seem to struggle with judging team cooperation and not just individual skill? The answer, surprisingly, comes from chess.
June 6, 2018, midnight
S9E15 - Games You Might Not Have Tried #14 - Mechs, Monsters and More!
These games are definitely perfect...ly suited to expanding your game design knowledge, even if they have some flaws here and there. It's another edition of "extra" game reviews: Games You Might Not Have Tried!
June 13, 2018, midnight
S9E16 - The Content Conundrum - Why So Many Games Feel Generic
Procedurally generated content seems like a really appealing route for a lot of indie developers--it's what AAA game studios are doing, and it seems to protect game balance! But often times it's worth the extra effort to craft a few handmade pieces, even at the risk of "breaking" the game.
June 20, 2018, midnight
S9E17 - College E-Sports - Road to Glory?
E-sports scholarships are becoming slowly more commonplace, but they have inherited some of the bad qualities of other college sports, as well as unique issues like the usually short lifespans of video games themselves. Should you pursue an esports career?
June 27, 2018, midnight
S9E18 - The Three Pillars of Game Writing - Plot, Character, Lore
Let's examine the elements that make up "game writing." Plot, characters, and lore all have to be balanced depending on the type of game you're making--knowing what to cut from your story bible is just as important as knowing what to keep.
July 4, 2018, midnight
S9E19 - The Price of Randomness - Balancing RNG
Let's compare the RNG design in Hearthstone and Slay the Spire and figure out how we can design RNG for strategic difficulty without veering into completely frustrating players.
July 11, 2018, midnight
S9E20 - Ma, The Space Between - Uncluttered Game Design
Today we're talking about a Japanese word "ma" and how it applies to game design. Incorporating rest, space, and emptiness can make the rest of the gameplay, action, and narrative stand out.
July 18, 2018, midnight
S9E21 - Game Therapy - How Can Games Improve Mental Health?
Games can help us heal, emotionally as well as physically. We need to do more research on their positive impacts and how we can maximize the emotional value of commercial games, not just on the harmful effects of gaming disorders.
July 25, 2018, midnight
S9E22 - Don't Just Hire Your Fans - Creating a Good Design Team
Having 500+ hours logged on a particular game or franchise shouldn't be a job requirement to work on that particular game or franchise--in fact, by working with folks who aren't already "super-fans" of your game, you'll end up making better creative design decisions.
Aug. 1, 2018, midnight
S9E23 - Steam: What Sells - What Steam's Player Numbers Tell Us About Game Genres
We can learn a lot from Steam's player numbers about why certain games, like PUBG and Paladins, continue to be popular on Steam, as well as why niche driving simulators are doing better than adventure games.
Aug. 8, 2018, midnight
S9E24 - Gestalt - The Parts and the Whole
Gestalt design principles--how we understand groups of objects as a whole unit via symmetry, proximity, closure, and more--is a powerful tool in game design to quickly and effectively communicate visual information to the player.
Aug. 15, 2018, midnight
S9E25 - How Games Challenge Us - Empathy and Intuition in Puzzle Design
How can we use empathy, intuition, and other types of design vectors to create interesting gameplay besides the most popular mechanics--which are based in reflex and logic challenges?
Aug. 22, 2018, midnight
S9E26 - Games You Might Not Have Tried #15 - September 2018 Edition
Check out some new games to play this month!
Sept. 12, 2018, midnight
S9E27 - The Joy of Losing - Learning to Have Fun Playing Games
The design of multiplayer games means that, in most cases, half the playerbase is losing games at any given time. However, that shouldn't mean that half the playerbase is miserable or is unable to have fun. You can still have fun learning how to be a better team leader and practicing mechanical skills--which is important for combatting toxicity in multiplayer games.
Sept. 19, 2018, midnight
S9E28 - The Metaphor is Meaning - "Show, Don't Tell" in Game Design
Every developer should be taking full advantage of the visual and interactive mechanics in games to deliver extra layers of meaning without having to do all game storytelling through text. And players can enhance the depth of their gaming experiences by paying attention to possible metaphors that exist!
Sept. 26, 2018, midnight
S9E29 - World of Warcraft Epidemiology - The Corrupted Blood Plague (And Why It Matters)
Let's look at how, in 2005, World of Warcraft accidentally provided a virtual simulation of a pandemic that academics have been studying in papers since.
Oct. 3, 2018, midnight
S9E30 - Aspirational Play - Adding a Sense of Wonder to Game Design
From internet drama stories of Crusader Kings 2 to the secret rooms in Enter the Gungeon, there is value in designing really cool gameplay and story experiences that not all of your players will necessarily get to experience (at least, not immediately). Stoke imagination and wonder by including exciting details that players can enjoy experiencing, even if only vicariously through shared transmedia knowledge.
Oct. 10, 2018, midnight
S9E31 - The New Player Experience - Hooks, Tutorials, Rewards
A good new player experience consists of three pieces: the hook, the tutorial, and the reward. Spider-Man (2018) is an example that gets this right, by giving players an amazing experience right off the bat and not waiting until the second act.
Oct. 17, 2018, midnight
S9E32 - Achieving Vicarity - Creating Livable Fiction
Guest writer Evan Hill (a level designer from Naughty Dog) talks about creating surprises--expectation gaps--in your game, and why adhering to a "lifelike" experience isn't the same as preserving the player's sense of immersion.
Oct. 24, 2018, midnight
S9E33 - Games You Might Not Have Tried #16 - Spooky Scary Game Recommendations
Happy Halloween! Today a whole bunch of the Extra Credits folks are here with some spooky scary skele-games for you to try!
Oct. 30, 2018, midnight
S9E34 - Building Streaming Into Your Game - Designing Games for Observers
Adding streaming-friendly features to your game *can* increase its marketability, but they have to be as well-thought out as the rest of the gameplay mechanics that cater directly to players.
Nov. 7, 2018, midnight
S9E35 - Tutorials That Don't Talk Down To You - Context Sensitive Design
Context sensitive game design is often the key difference between a good tutorial, and a condescending, painfully obvious and frustrating tutorial.
Nov. 14, 2018, midnight
S9E36 - The GDPR - What It Means For You! (Developers AND Players!)
The GDPR stands for the “General Data Protection Regulation.” It’s a European regulation that became effective in May 2018, designed to overhaul the way we think about data and data privacy--even internationally--especially when it comes to the privacy of your game-playing data.
Nov. 21, 2018, midnight
S9E37 - Games You Might Not Have Tried #17 - New Games to Learn From!
Nov. 28, 2018, midnight
S9E38 - Episode 400! - Taking a Day
Happy 400th episode Extra Credits! Consider taking some time today to play a game you love. YOU matter, so, take care of yourself!
Dec. 5, 2018, midnight
S9E39 - Because Games Matter - MJ's Story: How Games Brought a Family Together
Growing up, MJ fought non-stop with their brother--until they discovered Pokemon Stadium together. It would not only change their own life, but that of their entire family, for years to come.
Dec. 12, 2018, midnight
S9E40 - Because Games Matter - A Teachable Moment: Kingdom Hearts in the Classroom
High school English teacher Patrick wondered how he could connect better with his students--for one in particular who kept to herself, she just needed someone to let her know that it was OK to talk about video games in the classroom.
Dec. 19, 2018, midnight
YouTube
42 min/ep
42 min
July 29, 2010
Returning Series
NR
Action
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