Bio
He/Him (Evan)

Deranged Teacher, Baseball Fiend, and Aspiring Gamedev. Vgotsky had a lot to say about Dark Souls is all I'm saying šŸ˜¤

5 Stars: Inner Circle, Evancore Media
4.5 Stars: Hall of Fame Media
4 Stars: Rock Hard Classic
3.5 Stars: Pretty Tasty
3 Stars: It's got some SnP but it ain't all that ya know?
2.5 Stars: Plain Toast
2 Stars: Would you please leave?
1.5 Stars: I could vent and complain but that's a waste of my time
1 Star: The Yankees
.5 Stars: Comedy of Errors
Personal Ratings
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Epic Gamer

Played 1000+ games

GOTY '23

Participated in the 2023 Game of the Year Event

Shreked

Found the secret ogre page

Trend Setter

Gained 50+ followers

GOTY '22

Participated in the 2022 Game of the Year Event

2 Years of Service

Being part of the Backloggd community for 2 years

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Created a list folder with 5+ lists

Clearin your Calendar

Journaled games at least 15 days a month over a year

Loved

Gained 100+ total review likes

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Gained 10+ likes on a single review

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Received 5+ likes on a review while featured on the front page

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Journaled games once a day for a month straight

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Gained 15+ followers

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Voted for at least 3 features on the roadmap

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Become mutual friends with at least 3 others

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Liked 50+ reviews / lists

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Journaled 5+ games in a single day

GOTY '21

Participated in the 2021 Game of the Year Event

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Gained 10+ total review likes

Elite Gamer

Played 500+ games

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Gained 3+ followers

On Schedule

Journaled games once a day for a week straight

Gamer

Played 250+ games

N00b

Played 100+ games

Favorite Games

Mario Super Sluggers
Mario Super Sluggers
Pikmin
Pikmin
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Cruelty Squad
Cruelty Squad

1027

Total Games Played

019

Played in 2024

891

Games Backloggd


Recently Played See More

Dragon's Dogma II
Dragon's Dogma II

Mar 24

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

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Escape Academy
Escape Academy

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SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated

Mar 23

Unicorn Overlord
Unicorn Overlord

Mar 23

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As a school teacher, the distinction between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation is something I face on a day to day basis. You cannot teach a student to be intrinsically motivated, but you can force them to be extrinsically motivated. Grades, parental pressure, peer to peer comparisons, even compliments from the authority figure. These methods do not get students to suddenly become invested in learning about math, science, literature, etc. They do, however, get them to put effort into learning regardless of what little joy they find in it.
Such is the way of public education. A constant push and pull between individualized education for the diverse group of students in the world as well as ensuring their skills and knowledge is apt for the future of our society. The best thing a teacher can do then within said system is create an environment for the students to find a love of learning regardless of the exams, grades, and other negatives. If you think back to your favorite teachers in school there is likely something they did to instill a level of passion or joy for just coming into the classroom each day. If they matched really well with you perhaps they got you invested in a new topic or career path.

In many ways I find that the AAA game landscape is similar to public education in how its goal is to appeal to the masses. Public education serves everyone who does not have the opportunity to choose a private school or homeschooled education. Those situations end up being highly specialized areas where the expectations and results can be controlled due to the individual interests of the stakeholders being more considered. AAA games try to make experiences that are broadly appealing and interesting, niche appeals and interests canā€™t be catered to as to get the most people involved as possible. So like in public education they overcorrect the expectations for the player and try to implement rigid and clear methods of both punishment and reward with the ultimate goal of getting to the end.

Nintendo, the video game industryā€™s local House of Mouse, is a notable producer due to their seemingly massive amounts of Quality Control put into their top titles. They are a system built to get people from all backgrounds interested in games, as Disney is the same with animation. Though realistically most games they make are still reliant on very cheap extrinsic design. One does not have to look much further than this same yearā€™s Super Mario Odyssey as a game whose core loop is based on an empty, extrinsic ā€œgrab all the moonsā€ open world style. A game whose mechanics bore much discussion but there isnā€™t really much to say about the middling open world design of the game.

Breath of the Wild of course stands as a sharp difference to most AAA games on the market, even those created by the Japanese Michael Mouse itself. It is a game when discussed is about free flowing decision making as opposed to an accomplishment of objectives. For this review I will simply point to the current third most liked review of the game on the site by @JimTheSchoolGirl which will be my cheap short hand to show why many people love this game. The game itself is less focused on you, the player, beating it but instead giving you different opportunities to interact with systems and create your own creative solution to multiple problem solving situations. Jimminy was never told to do the things he listed here as a goal or a scripted sequence, this was meaningful because he decided to do this himself.
This is Intrinsic Motivation at work. This is something most game designers (and teachers) find nearly impossible to discover naturally but not only did this work for Jimminy, it has worked for hundreds of thousands of other people who salivate at the mere idea of this game. How in the world did they do it?

Thatā€™s not any easy question to dissect and give a short answer. It begins with things like the art style and music along with other aesthetic elements having that draw that appeals to many people. That part is the Disney effect so to speak. The game simply looks appealing and accessible without any fluff. That isnā€™t something to be said about most games especially for Immersive Sims which BOTW is often compared to.
Thatā€™s step one. Give people the invitation into the game. If we continue with the Public School Analogy this is the mandatory attendance, the part that gets butts in seats. Except for the fact that games are profit driven and not really meant to raise the next generation (oh dear god hopefully).

The next step is expressed easiest in the intro. You cannot begin a free form adventure in chaos. Most games that do not give you much advice in the beginning are doomed to not appeal to the masses. The developers solution to this was to have a restrictive tutorial with clear objectives before putting the foot on the gas. Much ado has been said about the tutorial island so I wonā€™t dive too deeply into how it was designed, but I will say there are two pulling factors here that cause it to pull in everyone who has begun playing it.
One: A clear problem to solve. 4 shrines, 4 items, one area.
Two: Multifaceted solutions along with many smaller problems existing in the same area (temperature, guardians, weapon durability, etc.)
These combine together to form something similar to what is referred to as Problem Based Learning (PBL) in education. I am not an expert in this subject to be honest, but I will do my best to point out how these function in terms of building Intrinsic Motivation.

The first part is the clear meaningful problem to the participant. Oftentimes a PBL uses some local phenomena (forgive me if I use too many education terms lmao) to anchor itself in the minds of the student, similar to how the island creates a clear and immediate issue in the mind of the player. Secondly thereā€™s many smaller issues in the way that the individual must consider in completing their final task. The game splits up the task into four shrines, each with their own smaller problems surrounding them, however often in Education it requires the students to go through an engineering process of design and redesign. The loop is similar enough to compare them since the player must constantly rebuild their knowledge base with each issue that comes up along the way from dealing with various enemies, climbing, dealing with cold weather, and interacting with natural objects like trees.
The goal of a PBL is that the student is self-sufficient. It stands in stark contrast to the sort of null hypothesis of Teacher Centered learning. Things like lectures and rote memorization as opposed to giving the students agency to investigate solutions on their own end and learn what they need to know at their own pace. This, as you can probably guess, is the line between Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation. Being able to give an individual their own agency to solve a given, relevant issue makes it far easier for someone to get invested in something. In education that is what is called Student Centered Learning, and in Breath of the Wild that is the interaction with many systems that is exemplified in the Tutorial Island.

The benefit of the player learning this other than a sense of pride, is that the designers are able to give them different complex problems within the same system and it is up to the player to engage and figure out solutions. This knowledge base can grow for new problems and new experiences, from riding horses, dealing with more complex enemies, the glider, and the dungeons in the game. A PBL exists to get students invested for the duration of the topic before the class starts again with something new to move on to. However the skills gained in the process are invaluable as the topics become more complex.

Of course on the other hand, many people fall off of Breath of the Wild. I know I stopped playing once I hit about 20 hours in and I have no intention to return. It isnā€™t really hard to see why either in this case. While it manages to draw in a massive amount of people to be naturally entranced to explore the world it creates that wonā€™t ever work for everyone. In fact, to say that most gamers are intrinsically motivated to play games is foolish bait. I have many a person in my Twitter circle that will claim x game/genre is better because of what the player can invest themselves into, but thatā€™s ultimately a very narrow view of the appeal of Video Games. Much of the appeal of gaming can be the rigidity of systems based in extrinsic motivation, hence why the mobile market is the most popular and successful. It is nice to have a simple goal with clear success and failure states (the discourse around Vampire Survivors has made this much more apparent lately).

One of the main issues of Breath of the Wild is that the developers and the game itself do not trust themselves. The core hook, while wonderful, will not keep everyone engaged to the very end. There is never much growth in how the game builds itā€™s problem solving. The comparison of a PBL often becomes tenuous particularly when it comes to time. A given PBL lesson will last typically around 4-7 hours spread throughout a week or so, this game lasts 30+ hours. There is no growth in these systems as they are introduced early on. There are very few new systems that are introduced as well, and often the ones that are introduced often only take a few moments to solve. There are many extrinsic rewards and objectives littering the game, however you do not do the shrines or divine beasts because they appeal to the feeling of beauty and exploration the game holds within. You do them because there are rewards or because the sensation of checking off an objective on a list is appealing. In so the game does not create objectives to enhance its core experience, but instead to attempt to distract from the flaws of its lack of dynamism.
After 20 hours you may not have seen everything the game has to offer but you certainly can feel like you have. That mileage depends on the person too. Some people will drop Twitter clips in the year of our lord 2022 showing crazy interactions in the game, others like myself will drop it to never pick it up again part way through. The truth is that the game does not build upon its core. It takes a very big ā€œif it ainā€™t broke donā€™t fix itā€ approach which, while respectable, did not entrance me in the way it did for many other players. Once I hit that 20 hour mark I said to myself ā€œThis gameā€™s sequel will be straight up bussinā€™.ā€ Juryā€™s out to see if thatā€™s really true, but I would imagine the designers are more aware of what I discussed here than I am fr fr.

Breath of the Wild is a fascinating game that causes many regular people to fall in love with its world through Intrinsic Motivation. It fails often because outside of the core systems it does not provide any quality content for the players to engage in, things such as shrines and dungeons exist to fill time rather than improve the experience. I would certainly go so far as to call Breath of the Wild a classic, but it fails in so many ways I wonā€™t gas it up like everyone else on the planet.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Hey what's up gamers. I donā€™t really vibe with the authorā€™s note but I will say this is the start of a ā€œseriesā€ of sorts where I compare game design and Pedagogy since I think thereā€™s more overlap than people readily consider. Really though this is my Copium of focusing on my career at the moment rather than trying to actually make a game haha. Eventually I will make that sweet game though and hopefully itā€™ll be good. Ideally it involves punching Dracula but weā€™ll see what happens.

Important thing to note is Iā€™m a Masterā€™s student in Education and have only taught for one year so far. Iā€™m not really an expert, but I do have a lot of observations so please feel free to critique me and ask pedagogical questions. Iā€™m always happy to tell people about how Teaching works haha.

Also shout outs to my homie @SimonDedalus for his review of Resident Evil 4 which certainly influenced my writing here in more ways than one.

A story that is at odds with itself. The game is truly at its best when its analyzing the malaise of the time period that the story takes place in. Sumina is a wonderful city with rich history but the rapid industrialization post WWII has left it polluted, both in a physical and metaphysical sense. There's a moment where two main characters stand on a bridge discussing the nature of the Sumina river. The Sumina River in this case is treated as the gateway between life and the afterlife, though it has been polluted through decades of industrialization. The city is littered with poverty. One of the main locations is a high school of impoverished students who have no consistency in teachers since they can only hire people on a temporary basis. Students with no prospects become ruffians, and are treated as unteachable animals that exist simply to be isolated from society. Members of the community try to treat them with care such as the policeman Hajime who treats his job much more like a social worker than an ACAB. The tapestry here is vivid.

Often the biggest sign towards this pollution is the powerlessness of women in this society, from Sumeo not given the option to pay the ransom for her child or Michyo forced into awful circumstances stemming purely from the death of her father. Women cannot not choose their circumstances and are only finally given some amount of power once given the powers of the curse echos. @Cadensia did a wonderful job adding a historical context to the story itself and how it fits into the sociocultural frameworks of gender, socioeconomics, etc. It's much better than what I could put together discussing the gender elements at play here so go give it a read!

The problem here is while the atmosphere of Sumina and certain plotlines are impeccable the story ultimately falls flat in terms of both theming and the mystery. Did you know that the only way you can learn the motivations of the true villain is through a File in the menu? Those motivations in themselves are also pretty whack. The story is best when looked through the lense of Sumue, a woman who is both trying to gain power that she's lost in society as well stubborn in her desire to ressurect her child. Often depicted as obsessed and morally questionable, she ultimately gets that ethos dissected into three different endings for her, all of which feel complete and conclusive. On the other hand, the villain? Abjectly evil. Decidedly feminine. Depicted with an obsession on pride which while being a fine villanous crutch is ironic when at one moment in the end a main male character does a "noble sacrifice" of sorts based entirely in his pride. While the themes identify gender and the power that men have in society as a root of so many issues, it in itself does not treat the male and female characters equally in its final moments.
As soon as the story tosses away the morally complex main characters to focus on the morally one sided villanous opposition it falls flat on its face. The mystery becomes unengaging, the plot threads begin to unravel, and ultimately the themes of the story lack consistency. Sumue cannot exist in the same story as Ashino, unless the thought process is that motherhood justified her pride or added some extra layer that makes it more morally complex than Ashinos desire to stay beautiful.

Ultimately the story leaves me frustrated. It is beautiful in so many small moments. It frames its historical context so well and the themes are so rich at first, but its fixation on morality is its downfall. The story does not treat its characters equally, which is unfortunate since all the problems in Sumina stem from its inequity.

I don't wanna defend this too hard but it's certainly overhated. The sound design is an abomination for sure, every time I closed a menu it played a screeching noise that made me pray to God for salvation, but it's really just a stylish yet average ds rpg. The writing and plot are certainly all fluff but the game gives you dialougue options to role play sonic as. I always picked the smug asshole option.

When you transition between worlds the game plays this animation of sonic running through the hills as you're speeding through the map on the bottom screen. Each character has distinct play styles and special moves that appeal to their personalities. There's a minor Chao garden mode for Pete's sake!
These are the types of touches that keep the game from feeling soulless. I've played many a ds game in the past year and while the game is fairly flat and gimmicky it has enough charm to where I'd say this is not really a contender for WOAT as people make it out to be.