Lewis Gordon writing for this gorgeous article on The New York Times (Note: This article is walled off. I’m not sure if I was able to access it because we subscribe to the NYT Cooking app, or if it was because I simply signed in with an existing account):

The two Metroidvania progenitors — 1986’s Metroid and 1987’s Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest — cultivated a sense of geographical bewilderment by letting players unfurl the secrets of their arcane worlds in any direction along the X and Y axes. Part of the charm is that the entirety of these expansive play spaces is not immediately accessible: Sections lie gated behind power-ups, like the so-called Morph Ball and High Jump Boots in Metroid, and players are forced to rely on a labyrinthine map.

Decades later, the genre continues to yield rich rewards. Ultros, Animal Well and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown were included on many best of 2024 lists, and other notable releases within the past year include Nine Sols, Tales of Kenzera: Zau and Ender Magnolia: Bloom in the Mist.

The genre has come to be known for its friction, with a propensity for baffling mazelike settings, acute sense of isolation and often punishing combat. Yet Jeremy Parish, a journalist who helped popularize the term Metroidvania and wrote an upcoming book on the genre, said that in some ways they are more accessible role-playing games that do not get bogged down in stats and menus. Characters grow while exploring a vast world, allowing Metroidvanias to deliver immersion, exploration and a sense of discovery.

Metroidvanias (referred to as “search-action games” in Japan, as listeners of The Besties will recognize) are some of my favorite games. A few years ago, in anticipation for Metroid Dread, I played through the five core 2D Metroid games:

• Metroid: Zero Mission (GBA)
• Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
• Super Metroid (SNES (via 3DS))
• Metroid Fusion (GBA)
• Metroid Dread (Switch)

Before that, I’d played through and loved Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

To Parish’s point, immersion and discovery are my favorite parts of Metroidvanias. But I’ve learned that locomotion is critical to making them feel great. Ori and Zero Mission: Bingo. Super Metroid: Not so much.

It’s a wonderful genre that continues to innovate, seemingly at all odds with its narrow corridors and repetitive core-loop. How cool that The New York Times gave the genre this beautiful treatment.

(I prefer Into the Aether’s term “Gate-Punk” for this genre.)

Last week, I welcomed games journalist Andy Robertson to Y-Button to talk about his new project Ludocene — a video game recommendation deck-builder in the form of a simple dating app. Ludocene’s special sauce lies in its human-centric connections (players who liked this also liked this) and “expert cards” that you can use to augment your recommendations — tastemakers that Andy and team have paid (which is where much of the Kickstarter contributions will go in the future).

About half of the episode is focused on some nitpicky details of Ludocene. The other half gets to the mystery and organic nature of video games, and why adults should lean into curiosity as opposed to dismissal of the new gaming experiences kids prefer.

This episode came together extremely quickly. I read The Guardian’s post about Ludocene, I connected with Andy on Bluesky, he recognized me from a conversation we’d had years ago, then he DMed an offer of a press kit to write something up. I agreed, but quickly realized it’d be more fun to talk about Ludocene on my podcast. Andy agreed. The next morning we recorded for an hour (before I rushed to work), I blurted out an intro and outro, sent the recordings to my editor AJ Fillari, I listened back, and we launched the episode in less than 24 hours. Podcasting pros out there may not think much of that, but for three people in three different time zones (and one with an extremely busy day job, speaking for myself), it felt like quite the feat. I’m really proud of this one. And I’m very excited for Ludocene.

Y-Button: 15 - Andy Robertson (Ludocene, Family Gaming Database, Taming Gaming): Website | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts

An article from The Atlantic by Derek Thompson titled “The Anti-Social Century” (Atlantic link; free Apple News+ link) has been making the rounds in my feeds. It’s a great piece that says the quiet part out loud — society has become homebodies to the point of extreme danger. We’re glued to our phones and TV, tucked away in the comforts of our own homes, shut away from our neighbors, and afraid to interact with strangers.

There are some great insights and observations in the piece and I strongly suggest you read it. However, I find it shocking that podcasts are not mentioned once.

I empathize with the piece. I’ve been working with therapists and a career coach recently to figure out why I don’t feel fulfilled in my work and how to stave off or work through bouts of extreme depression and anxiety. It’s becoming quite clear that I don’t spend enough time out with other people. Even in the workplace, I find myself working more with colleagues in other parts of the world than I do in my local office. And I’m coming to find that one of my remedies for loneliness is podcasts.

Over the course of a year, I will listen to hundreds of hours of the same voices. One-way conversations where I feel intimately familiar with the hosts’ lives; laughing, nodding, and crying along to their conversations as if they are speaking to me privately. I feel a connection to these people with shared interests, hobbies, humor, and passions, many of which I’ve never met. And just as soon as I have a quiet moment to acknowledge that this intimacy is false, another episode is right there to fill the silence.

I’ve been fortunate enough to befriend some of the hosts of my favorite podcasts. Thankfully, that “connection” and “intimacy” have borne fruit. Now when I listen to thier shows, I know there exists a genuine relationship where I can reach out directly and chat about a topic they brought up, or something else entirely. But that is not the case for the overwhelming majority of podcast listeners. Yet, they likely feel an “intimate connection” to their favorite hosts.

So, when I came across this bit in Thompson’s piece, a chill ran down my spine:

AI’s ability to speak naturally might seem like an incremental update, as subtle as a camera-lens refinement on a new iPhone. But according to Nick Epley, fluent speech represents a radical advancement in the technology’s ability to encroach on human relationships.

“Once an AI can speak to you, it’ll feel extremely real,” he said, because people process spoken word more intimately and emotionally than they process text. For a study published in 2020, Epley and Amit Kumar, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, randomly assigned participants to contact an old friend via phone or email. Most people said they preferred to send a written message. But those instructed to talk on the phone reported feeling “a significantly stronger bond” with their friend, and a stronger sense that they’d “really connected,” than those who used email.

Speech is rich with what are known as “paralinguistic cues,” such as emphasis and intonation, which can build sympathy and trust in the minds of listeners. In another study, Epley and the behavioral scientist Juliana Schroeder found that employers and potential recruiters were more likely to rate candidates as “more competent, thoughtful, and intelligent” when they heard a why-I’m-right-for-this-job pitch rather than read it.

This bit about AI is hardly the meat of the article. Perhaps even a distraction from the core thesis. But it did remind me of a fear I’ve had for a few years now — one that seemed almost too “science fiction” to write about, but is no longer fiction: Personalized AI-generated podcasts.

Years ago, the concept of podcast dynamic ad insertion led me to consider a sci-fi future where beyond ads, podcasts became hyper-tailored to the listener. To Epley’s point, speech can create a much stronger bond than text. What if a podcast could tailor itself to you, going as far as to address you by name? This would not only be compelling in the face of loneliness, but extremely dangerous considering the free-range of rhetoric available in podcasts.

So when Spotify announced that they had partnered with Google to create custom Spotify Wrapped AI Podcasts for each Spotify user, you can see why I freaked out a little bit.

I’m sure I’m behind the curve here, and not only is Google’s NotebookLM playing in this space, but people are surely feeding their digital interactions with obedient GenAI content. So what stops a future where we are not only reading what we want to read, but we’re hearing what what we want to hear from a voice speaking directly to us for hundreds of hours a year?

With Nintendo’s announcement and teaser of the Switch 2, a few thoughts have been percelating in my mind. I’ll keep this brief, inspired both by Brendon Bigley’s ingenius hot take “Switch 2 thoughts but I only have as long as Nintendo’s announcement” and the limited time I have while my daughter naps.

I stated the following on my post “Nintendo Switch Presentation 2017 Impressions”:

Without question, Switch is another unique and possibly industry changing device. Like Apple, Nintendo often skates to where the puck is headed, defining industry trends. And without question, the biggest dream of all is being able to take your home console on the go.

Boy, if that wasn’t an understatement. At 146.04 million units sold (so far), Nintendo Switch is the third best-selling video game console of all time (and only ~14M units away from dethroning PS2 from the top spot). Five years after the launch of the Switch, Valve released the Steam Deck and we’ve seen a plethora of other manufacturers following Nintendo’s lead.

But where does the puck go after the Switch and “home console handhelds”?

So far, the Switch 2 looks like a bigger, more comfortable Switch. The new Joy-Cons seem to suggest some new features such as doubling as a mouse. And we can only assume the Switch 2 will pack a bit more power, if not for the fact that chips have gotten much more powerful in eight years, but the form-factor alone should support better thermals, larger components, and a bigger battery to support said power. It’s an iterative upgrade, which would (sort of) be a first for Nintendo considering the fact that they’re touting strong backwards compatibility with the Switch.

With that, here are a few unfounded, potentially crackpot throughts on the Switch 2 and Nintendo at large:

• Switch 2 will not sell gangbusters. Early adopters are eager to get thier hands on this, and assuming it will pack much more modern power, it will probably do well in the years to come if more demanding games can launch alongside their PC/PS5/Xbox Series counterparts on the Switch 2. But just as the current Switch is “good enough” for many players, I assume the original Switch will continue to be “good enough” for most players until they can no longer find the titles they want to play on their 8+ year-old console.
• Nintendo will focus on micro-innovations moving forward. Maybe my imagination has run dry, but I think we’re at the end of the road for video game console innovation. Nearly as soon as console video games arrived, players began dreaming of taking them on the go. The original Switch made that a reality (per my quote above). If this is true, that puts Nintendo in a very interesting position. A company known for its video game console innovation may not have much more room for large innovations such as the NES, Game Boy, DS, Wii, and Switch. I do think we’ll see micro-innovations on their consoles moving forward (such as the suspected mouse-input on the Switch 2 Joy-Cons), but I don’t think we’ll see big swings from Nintendo or others in the industry going forward. If Nintendo is seen as prescient of the games industry, the fact that they’re only iterating eight years later may suggest that we’ve hit a plateau. Innovation will happen — motion input, touch input, XR, etc — but it likely won’t be considered the core-gaming experience consisting of… well… buttons.
• Nintendo will look outside of consoles for innovations. Maybe an iteration of the Switch was obvious. Perhaps the writing of the the aforementioned plateau was on the wall as soon as Super Nintendo World was announced in 2015. But the fact that Nintendo seems to be making a full-throated effort to reach outside of video games with theme parks, movies, a music app… an alarm clock… may show that there may be limited room to innovate in the hardware space. Video games will continue to be the hub of their flywheel, but expansion beyond innovative video game hardware and into thier franchises seems to make even more sense now.
• Switch 2 could be the Microsoft handheld. Probably the wildest idea that I’ve had for a while. Microsoft has been stressing Xbox everywhere, now even porting games to PlayStation. Depending on the power of Switch 2, it’d be silly for Microsoft not to execute the same strategy on Nintendo’s “home console handheld platform”. Just like that, Xbox titles would be on an extremely popular handheld device. A boon for both Microsoft and Nintendo (which could blow a hole in my first bullet point). Furthermore, if the Switch 2 does suggest a video game hardware plateau, what’s left for Microsoft to do in the space? Why take the loss on building their own hardware? Lean on PlayStation as a powerhouse home console and Nintendo Switch for the handheld-first market.

If this is as far as Nintendo’s console innovation goes — yes, I know how ludicrous that sounds — at long last, I’ll be able to play my “Nintendo”.

Stephen Totilo on his excellent Game File newsletter (paywalled):

I might have the games-movies-TV comparison on my mind because of Arranger’s Netflix connection.

The new game is available on Switch and PlayStation for a price, but is also offered on mobile at no added cost to anyone with a Netflix subscription.

It’s one of many excellent games offered via Netflix on mobile (see also: Kentucky Route Zero, Oxenfree, Poinpy, The Case of the Golden Idol, Storyteller, Immortality, Into the Breach and more).

But it’s not quite the kind of game that Netflix execs were hyping to investors last week as they made clear they’re still bullish on being a big player in gaming. They kept focusing on games that spin off of Netflix shows, and salivated over how a tie-in game can let Netflix “take a show and give the super fan a place to be in between seasons.” That’s the kind of synergy talk that investors like. It makes sense the way it makes sense to extend a brand by selling official t-shirts and coffee mugs. It might even result in some delightful games tied to TV shows.

It’s just not what Arranger is.

Arranger is something only possible in games that only needs to be a game and have nothing to do with anything else.

My wife and I resubscribed to Netflix the night before the above newsletter went out (July 26, 2024 — I’m a bit late to posting this). She’s been wanting to watch Live to 100 and is excited about the upcoming Emily in Paris season.

After starting our new Netflix subscription, the first thing I saw when launching the app was a row of mobile games, leading with Arranger. I had no intention of playing anything that night, but had heard a lot of good buzz about Arranger, so I launched it not 30 seconds after becoming a subscriber.

Then I had an epiphany: Netflix feels like the new Blockbuster.

Blockbuster is most fondly remembered as a movie rental store — truly, Netflix/streaming has been seen as the new Blockbuster for decades — but after seeing Netflix’s programming layout of movies/TV and games, I was teleported back to browsing the shelves of Blockbuster on a Friday night — my parents looking for movies while I looked for video games.

Movies/TV and games are complementary — the former is passive and latter is participatory. This often comes up on my podcast Y-Button. As a child, it was such a treat to browse both movies/TV and games under one roof, asking, “What am I in the mood for tonight?” I doubt Netflix is looking to Blockbuster as a model. And it’s not to say one can’t experience any piece of media or medium at any given time on their smartphone, or movies/TV and games on their console. But one curated location (the Netflix app) offering two types of experiences feels right.