Extra Credits

Too many strategy games are over hours before you actually win the game. Once you build up enough of a lead, you have the resources you need to respond to all the game's minor challenges. The key to fixing this problem is uncertainty: hidden information or unexpected events that make you change your plans and keep the game dynamic.

Casinos and online gambling sites have begun to recognize the potential to use video games as a new source of revenue. With more and more skill-based games being re-purposed for gambling - sometimes legally, sometimes not - it becomes important for developers to look ahead at the features these adaptations may have.

User experience designers act like translators between the game and the player, crafting everything from menus and tutorials to in-game effects to help players learn and interact with the systems.

Even if we reduce game literacy to just "being able to play," the number of genres and platforms make it surprisingly difficult for even experienced players to claim well-rounded literacy. But the creative rewards for a game literate community could be immense.

Advanced game literacy lets us analyze our games beyond the surface level, finding meaning in the mechanics and much more. To get there, we need developers, consumers, and academics to help create a community of analysis.

Why are hobby and personal games important? Even though they rarely make waves in the mainstream game industry, they are a fantastic outlet for expressing a wide range of creative possibilities.

Want to binge watch some TV shows that are interesting, different, and off the beaten path? We've got you covered. Here are some of our favorites from the world of television!

Progress bars and other forms of gamification have begun to crop up everywhere. But what about the pure joy of undirected play?

Xbox quietly introduced a new feature that creates family sharing, more accessibility, and custom co-op modes. Let's examine Co-Pilot mode.

We can't remove politics from games. They express our perspectives and understanding of the world, just like movies, books, or any other art form. We can agree or disagree with the stances they express, but all media is political.

Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it.

When a game comes out, blame or praise often falls on the one person we think of as its "auteur," the lone visionary who directed its creation. This skews the reality of development: games are the product of a whole team whose diverse contributions all help shape what it becomes.

As games grow connected to our online accounts, they start learning about us: our names, our friends, and so much more. That connected information has the potential to create really cool experiences, but only if it's not abused.

Cutscenes have long been the whipping boy of "bad" game design, but Yakuza 0 shows us they can still be amazing in a modern game if done well. What was Sega's secret?

Nothing feels worse than seeing a game you really like but can't play because it's only being released in another part of the world. But does it have to be that way? Here's why we think every console game should be published worldwide.

Sometimes a game is more than just a game: it's a lifestyle. You play it enough for it to become a part of your life. Often these games have different playstyle genres, but the way we play them makes them "lifestyle games."

When launch day bugs ruin a game, why don't publishers just delay the release to fix everything? While it's definitely bad business for them to make such broken games, it's worth taking a look at how the problems get that bad instead of just blaming "lazy developers."

Firing somebody is hard, but if one team member isn't keeping up, it's better for everyone if the team leader fires them early before their part of the project falls behind. It's better for the team, better for the game, and often even better for the person being fired.

Games driven by personal data have the potential to change the medium in exciting new ways, but they also have the potential to cross boundaries. What laws regulate a game's ability to harness player data, and what responsibility do devs have to use that information wisely?

Some recent Japanese games have tried to examine the hentai sensibility, with varying degrees of success. Where Yakuza 0 succeeds in finding a new perspective through bawdy humor, Persona 5 tries a more serious look that falls flat when the game thoughtlessly engages in sexual objectification.

If you want to try games that feel different, that always feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried - Console Edition! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated console games for you to discover and enjoy.

Did you know Persona 5 is based on Jungian psychology? Learn about the symbolism behinds the masks and major arcana! These concepts can be surprising helpful when analyzing or even writing games.

So you want to be a game journalist! Where to start? Freelancer Rob Rath shares his experience and advice, from practicing writing on a personal blog to researching the types of articles sites publish and even how to write a good pitch.

Whether you've been with us from the beginning or just found us on YouTube, you are what makes Extra Credits special. Your support and encouragement keep us going. And the conversations and questions you bring with you to your friends, your family, and your world are the reason we started this show in the first place.

Content Warning: Abusive Relationship. Harm doesn't end when physical or emotional abuse stops. In Injustice 2, Harley Quinn is a hero who's still dealing with the aftermath of her trauma - and neither of those aspects of her character detracts from the other.

Games have made great strides in the last few years towards public recognition and arts funding in the United States, but all that could fall apart unless we step up to support the programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities which make it possible.

Game design is a language and games speak to us in ways that we can understand. But how does that work? By understanding three simple ideas, we can both make better games and learn what makes the ones we play and love so special.

Since the founding of the Olympics, games have been a tool to bring people together, allowing us to compete but also to recognize the humanity in our opponents. Although online games have become a breeding ground for toxicity, they still have the potential to teach us about each other and find role models in professional players.

Every game has some skills or abilities that are just weaker than other abilities. Players wind up ignoring them or resenting them, so why include these "red herring" mechanics? While it can be just lazy design, there are also some very good uses for these marginal mechanics!

Games often advertise their complex AI, but in truth, offering a wide variety of simple NPC behaviors unique to each enemy often feels more engaging AND challenging to the player than putting them through multiple hours of facing a bunch of NPCs operating on the same AI behavior tree.

Once development begins on a feature, game developers often get drawn into a sunk cost fallacy that compels them to keep working on that feature even when it's failing. Cutting those features is hard, but often the right choice to make the game better.

Accessibility design makes the game better for all players, not only the disabled. By planning ahead and making more options available, designers can give players the tools to customize their experience in a way that fits them best.

The Extra Credits crew gathered at PAX West in 2017 and did a panel! We hope you enjoy our answers to audience questions and the debut of Scott's yearly secret video.

The first data we see affects our opinion about everything afterwards - so a good review score makes us like the game more, and an apparent sale makes us more eager to buy a game with a higher price point. This anchoring effect is even built into game design itself.

Games embrace power fantasies that let the player do whatever they want, to whomever they want, without anyone questioning the morality of their actions. But questioning and re-evaluating our choices is an important part of life, and players don't need to be treated so delicately that we never address these issues in game.

What we want to believe about ourselves and what's actually true may be very different things. Prey: The Enemy Inside starts with a simple psychological test... and then puts you in situations that may reveal your answers to be lies.

When we stay up later than we wanted just to hit a progress point in our games, we have fallen into the arbitrary endpoint trap. Some games deliberately manipulate us to do one more level, but many times we're doing it to ourselves and making playtime a chore.

If you want to try games that feel different, that feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried - Halloween Edition! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games for you to discover and enjoy.

Why have we become obsessed with a game where nothing happens for minutes at a time? It's because PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is something rare in games: a multiplayer thriller. CORRECTION: This episode was co-written by Rob Rath, not only James Portnow as listed in the endslate

If you want to try games that feel different, that feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games for you to discover and enjoy.

We loved games from Quintet back in the Super Nintendo era: ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Terranigma touched our hearts with their gentle, melancholy exploration of themes like working through tragedy or facing the dark experiences in our lives.

The games industry gives less to charity than any other major entertainment industry, but charity events can be great both for business AND for making the world better. DomiNations (Big Huge Games) shared data from their own charity events to help us show how!

Games Workshop started handing out bits of the Warhammer License like candy - but did it work? We think so! They used the great detail of the Warhammer Universe to distribute risk and create tiers of investment in games with varying quality levels, resulting in a test bed for small studios and a template for working with big ones.

Companies rely on metrics to tell them how players respond to a game, which can mean that short-term bumps (like revenue gained by adding microtransactions) disguises real player unhappiness with a game's quality and a publisher's integrity over time.

When resources are limited, self-interest works against itself. We see that in games like DayZ, where players could team up to fight a common threat, but the fear that someone will backstab you leads everyone to assume the worst and therefore behave as enemies.

Sometimes games trick us into having a more engaging experience by simulating near-death escapes and gently massaging the odds to be kind to us. These hidden game mechanics play into the expectations of our human psyche to give us the results we expect.