WEBVTT

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(static crackles)

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(ethereal humming)

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(birds chirp)

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(space-y 8-bit music)

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(space-y 8-bit music continues)

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(screen zips)

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(upbeat music)

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(upbeat music continues)

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(upbeat music continues)

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- Tabletop role playing
games had a certain hold

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on the imaginations of
early video game developers.

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Through thousands of
attempts to recreate the feel

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of a good Dungeons and Dragons campaign,

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common clusters of game mechanics
and graphical conventions

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began to cohere into popular genres.

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In the late 80s, Japanese console RPGs,

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like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy helped

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to establish a particular format

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that English speaking players
tend to refer to as the JRPG,

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epic fantasy story is
told with simple graphics,

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enjoyable by players of any skill level,

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and full of wonky little
systems perfectly tuned

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to keep you engaged.

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Capitalizing on the popularity
of this growing genre,

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in 1992, the Japanese publisher Enterbrain

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released RPG Maker,
an-easy-to-use PC application

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that allowed players to create their own

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complete standalone JRPGs.

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The software was extremely
popular and Enterbrain

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put out several revisions
to it on various platforms,

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but despite considerable
interest in the west,

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they declined to put
out an English release.

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Fan translators soon stepped
in to fill that vacancy.

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In 2000, a Russian
student going by the name

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of Don Miguel hacked the software,

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translated it into English,

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and posted it on his website for free.

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It was a huge hit.

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Its availability and
approachability made it one

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of the most popular engines of its time

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for small independent games.

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We spoke with Stephen Gillmurphy,

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the creator of the cult
classic RPG Maker games,

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Space Funeral, about
the dreams and desires

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of the western RPG maker community.

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(upbeat music continues)

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- My name is Stephen Gillmurphy.

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I guess I\'ve been developing
video games in my spare time

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as a hobby for the last 15 years

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and it all kind of started with RPG Maker,

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which I downloaded for
reasons I no longer remember.

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I think I was just looking for
something to do with my hands

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while I killed time at the computer.

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This is using the
version of RPG Maker 2000

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that was translated by a Russian
teenager named Don Miguel.

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The first thing you
see when you open it up

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is this kind of endless blank page

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and you\'re given this little pad

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where you can immediately
start to draw places

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and then once you hit play,

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you immediately start walking around.

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So the time to walking around in RPG Maker

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is pretty minimal.

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A lot of game-making
programs start you off

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with this, like, totally blank screen.

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Everything is left undefined.

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You have to bring in your own art,

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your own ideas, and so forth,
whereas with RPG Maker,

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if you just open the program,

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it has your pre-populated characters,

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it has a list of monsters, list of items.

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It\'s like this kind of
indefinite scope of thing

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and your job is to try
and fill in the gaps

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as much as you can and figure
out how it all fits together.

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You\'re encouraged to almost
think of it as a collage.

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You\'re kinda laying down tiles,

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you\'re mixing and matching
to see what works.

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You have this batch of elements

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and you can put them together

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into very kind of conventional shapes.

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So, for example, you
can make a little house,

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a little road, and so forth,

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but you can also just kinda
start chaining together elements

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to see if you can find moments

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of kind of charged potential.

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So for example, if I put
the waterfall down here

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and I put the carpet down
here, I put some pots,

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I put some skulls and so forth,

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to see if you can kind of
just, like, start combining

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these ready-made fragments in a way

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which kinda somehow makes you feel

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like something has
happened that has some kind

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of power or some kind of aura to it.

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It\'s a very weird method
of game creation that sits

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at kinda the other end

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from this traditional hobbyist approach,

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which is bare bones and very minimal.

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This gives you the most
crazy maximalist approach

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to the most crazy maximalist genre.

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You\'re left with, you know,
I have this glob of material

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and how do I sort through
it and how do I figure out

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what I actually want to do with it?

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So I think I was kind of
immediately drawn to the pleasure

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of just fussing around with no
particular direction in mind,

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but seeing what little
discoveries you can make

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by dropping things around without
the thought in your heads.

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And actually, I\'ll close
this game for a second

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and open up another one.

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It\'s called Don\'s Adventures.

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Almost the archetypal one by default

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because it is the sample
game which originally came

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with RPG Maker 2000 and was
kind of used as the demo game

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to show off what the
program could actually do.

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Not only is it his own game,

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but he is also the main character.

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You\'ll see this guy in a couple
different RPG Maker games

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if you go through the archives
and it\'s always kind of used

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as a cameo of Don Miguel himself.

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You can see all these
little movements here,

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like the scrolling backgrounds,
the little bits of clouds,

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the cat that does the
little dance back and forth

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before joining your party.

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This is all intended as a
very hokey and artificial way

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of indicating, yes, you
can do this in the program.

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For example, this rock here,
if I interact with it...

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(thunder rumbles)

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(cat meows)

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I think this miniature game,
the very bare bones-ness of it

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and the way that it serves to illustrate,

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in a haphazard, handmade way,
what could be fun about this

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or what the capabilities
of the program are

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perversely means it\'s maybe
held up better than most games

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which are kind of aspiring
to be beyond this, right?

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Like, this is a very base
level and every subsequent game

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was kind of aimed to be at least
as good as Don\'s Adventure.

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But the simplicity and,
like, pleasure he takes

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in exploring what this program can do

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is one of the more endearing things

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about RPG Maker in general.

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(calming music)

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(upbeat funk music)

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There\'s ways of importing
your own tilesets and,

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over time, the RPG Maker community

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has been an ongoing exercise in gathering,

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well, stealing resources from
as many places as possible

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and adapting them into this format

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and then swapping up between each other.

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So there was kind of an ongoing thing

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where the way you play
someone else\'s RPG game

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was mostly you played the
first few minutes of it

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and then you kinda go
into the resources folder

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and you take a look at what
tilesets they were able

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to scavenge together, which
has to move their own ideas

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buried in there as well as recycled things

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from other people\'s
projects and then you steal

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whatever seems good to you.

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This one is called Complete
Chaos by a guy called Yeaster.

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He\'s one of the more prolific
RPG Maker developers.

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I think this is his opus.

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I think this is his largest,
most convoluted work.

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It\'s kinda charming in the sense

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of it\'s a kind of 90s TV fantasy.

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It\'s all hard boiled detectives
working to solve a case

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and there\'s mystical people
from another dimension

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and so forth.

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But what really makes it
charming to me is the fact

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that all the characters are meant

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to represent these kind
of archetypal TV people.

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So, for example, there\'s police
officers, there\'s, you know,

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assassin boss and so forth.

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But all the face images in particular

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are this totally random
grouping of celebrities

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and mismatched magazine
cutouts and so forth.

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Harry Potter is in there, the
guy from AI is a party member,

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and so is Vin Diesel.

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I think he is (laughs) corrupted job type

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and presumably plays
some kind of assassin.

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He has multiple games like this
and you can see an interest

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in accumulating this
library of character types

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from faces that you just
see on TV or in magazines

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and then it just becomes
kind of using that

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to populate the private
universe of your video game,

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what kind of ways they could be reused.

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Another very charming
quality of RPG Maker games

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is they kind of expect an
enormous amount of ambient text.

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So they have these little guys here,

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easy to drop in the game,
little NPC characters,

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and they each have a text box

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because part of the pleasure
of the RPG is going over

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to open these little treasure box NPCs

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and seeing what they have to say.

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In the police station,
you kinda have this,

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one of the very first areas
you\'re able to wander around,

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everyone is just continuously, like,

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talking about their desks and
how much they hate looking

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at a desk and how unhappy
they are with their desk

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or the relative position of their desk.

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Whenever the game itself
seems like it\'s getting

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too overwhelmed with some degree of, like,

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epic potential and so forth,

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the author doesn\'t really
have enough distance

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to just delegate this to someone else.

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They have to be the one to get sucked down

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this little digression
of trying to figure out

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what people in the police
office would actually say.

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And in this case, it means
people sitting at their desks

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and complaining about their
desks and doing nothing else.

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(laid-back music builds)

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(ominous music)

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The feeling I had about the
early 2000s English speaking

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RPG Maker community was
that they often could never

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really shake a wistful
desire for JRPG-ness.

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Even though people had access
to all these RPGs now, like,

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all these Japanese RPGs,
which they could now find

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on ambulator sites and play
as many as they wanted to,

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only a certain amount of
JRPGs would get translated

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to begin with, so they\'re
always kind of elusive

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in a way I don\'t feel like
they necessarily were,

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maybe in Japan itself.

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You could make a random
game about Sonic wandering

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around people\'s houses
and because it was shaped

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like an RPG, there was a sense
of it inviting the same level

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of passionate scrutiny
as a Final Fantasy game

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just because you\'re a part of an audience

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that felt so starved for
that kind of content.

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I think that\'s kind of an awkward thing

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the games themselves feel like
they need to wrestle with.

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This is a game called RM2K Survivor:

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New York Stock Exchange
and the premise of the game

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is that you\'re a stockbroker
who\'s recently lost

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all his money in this very moving intro,

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which I\'ll show you here.

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(moving music)

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You have to survive 15 days.

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You have to level up your skills.

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It\'s kind of tasteless in
the way that a lot of games

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in this particular context
are because, you know,

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it\'s just 2000s-era teenagers
with enough free time

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and resources to poke around
on the computer ambiently,

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doing whatever they found amusing.

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(upbeat jazz music)

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The ultimate fantasy of RPG Maker itself

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is it\'s broad enough as an engine

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that you can just kinda plop
any kind of fantasy in there

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and you can kind of have a
new modular version of it.

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But of course the downside
is that every version

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of the fantasy looks like
another RPG Maker game.

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Love and War: Act I is
one of those very dense,

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20 hour long RPG epics, which
is all about the politics

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and geopolitics of this
imaginary fantasy empire.

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But the part that always sticks in my mind

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is the very kind of adorably
self insert-y main character

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who is this capable,
effortlessly confident young man

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and who also has this
inexplicably doting love interest

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he never seems to notice called Lavie.

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It\'s one of those wonderful
things where you can see

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that the author\'s original
plan for this entire epic

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RPG thing gets swallowed
up by the pleasure he has

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in writing for this
klutzy love interest lady

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because after that game,
he released a spinoff game

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called C\'est Lavie.

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It\'s a visual novel in
which she and the hero

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have some extremely long-winded
kinda back and forth

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about meeting up in the park for a date

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and the complications
and misunderstandings

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which result from there.

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It\'s one of those things
which can only really result

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from someone\'s expectation

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that their own private fantasy universe

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will be shared and understood
by everyone around them.

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And I think because of that,

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it\'s very endearingly optimistic,

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considering how many RPG
Maker games are defined

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by an effort to be grim
and dark to compensate

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for the childishness of
using RPG Maker itself.

00:12:19.650 --> 00:12:22.980
- [Lavie] Yes, last year, when
the carnival came to town,

00:12:22.980 --> 00:12:23.813
do you remember?

00:12:25.164 --> 00:12:26.564
- [Ryan] I\'m afraid I don\'t.

00:12:27.906 --> 00:12:30.690
- [Lavie] Ah, well, we didn\'t speak much.

00:12:30.690 --> 00:12:32.190
Just, \"hello,\" really.

00:12:32.190 --> 00:12:34.500
A blink of the eye and you\'d miss it.

00:12:34.500 --> 00:12:36.537
- Love and War I was, I
think, an instant classic

00:12:36.537 --> 00:12:38.890
when it came out in
the sense of, you know,

00:12:38.890 --> 00:12:41.400
(laughs) it was competent
and had no major issues.

00:12:41.400 --> 00:12:43.500
People played it and liked it well enough.

00:12:43.500 --> 00:12:45.373
I don\'t remember anyone ever
talking about C\'est Lavie.

00:12:45.373 --> 00:12:48.000
I was just kind of fascinated
by it when I saw it

00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:49.200
for the first time.

00:12:49.200 --> 00:12:51.090
It seemed like such a
wonderful thing to exist,

00:12:51.090 --> 00:12:55.080
but there was almost a
consensus not to acknowledge it

00:12:55.080 --> 00:12:58.170
within the community
to my memory. (laughs)

00:12:58.170 --> 00:13:00.260
It probably struck too close
to the bone \'cause I think part

00:13:00.260 --> 00:13:01.950
of the pleasure of making
these kind of games

00:13:01.950 --> 00:13:05.820
is to indulge some kind of
deep, very dramatic impulse.

00:13:05.820 --> 00:13:08.628
Having it out laid out
in this very direct way,

00:13:08.628 --> 00:13:12.250
I think everyone felt a bit, you know--

00:13:12.250 --> 00:13:17.250
- [Lavie] Oh yes, oh I,
well I, uh. (clears throat)

00:13:21.810 --> 00:13:23.330
- My impression of the RPG Maker community

00:13:23.330 --> 00:13:24.810
is a community of isolates.

00:13:24.810 --> 00:13:27.030
Everyone\'s RPG Maker
project is essentially

00:13:27.030 --> 00:13:29.340
a termite art passion project.

00:13:29.340 --> 00:13:31.566
For the most part, these games are never

00:13:31.566 --> 00:13:32.399
actually gonna get completed.

00:13:32.399 --> 00:13:34.740
It\'s some 16 year old with
a pirated copy of software

00:13:34.740 --> 00:13:36.930
and a bunch of stolen assets and their job

00:13:36.930 --> 00:13:40.410
is to poke through this
enormous clump of raw material

00:13:40.410 --> 00:13:42.660
and pull it together in a way which fits

00:13:42.660 --> 00:13:45.450
with their idea of an admirable work.

00:13:45.450 --> 00:13:47.670
I think that\'s such a
strangely private thing

00:13:47.670 --> 00:13:49.830
and something which is
so open to being misread

00:13:49.830 --> 00:13:52.230
and also being made fun
of that it developed,

00:13:52.230 --> 00:13:54.510
almost defensively,
this strict outer shell

00:13:54.510 --> 00:13:55.860
of here are the good ways in which

00:13:55.860 --> 00:13:58.950
to pursue your private dream
fantasy, here are the bad ways.

00:13:58.950 --> 00:14:01.950
So for example, if you make
a hero who\'s too obviously

00:14:01.950 --> 00:14:04.710
a self insert, or if you
divert from a particular,

00:14:04.710 --> 00:14:06.750
quote-unquote, standard in the mapping,

00:14:06.750 --> 00:14:08.730
then you can kinda be dismissed,

00:14:08.730 --> 00:14:10.350
essentially as an amateur where, like,

00:14:10.350 --> 00:14:12.480
all the more advanced members
of the community will try

00:14:12.480 --> 00:14:15.060
to take pains to differentiate
themselves from that.

00:14:15.060 --> 00:14:17.670
I guess that kinda came out of
weird word anxiety to do with

00:14:17.670 --> 00:14:20.310
it\'s a dream, but you\'re not
sure if the dream is yours,

00:14:20.310 --> 00:14:22.942
if the dream is the dream
of the engine itself

00:14:22.942 --> 00:14:25.410
that\'s just being expressed
through your own behavior

00:14:25.410 --> 00:14:26.613
or vice versa, you know?

00:14:27.713 --> 00:14:30.630
(funky jazz music)

00:14:37.110 --> 00:14:39.680
RPG Maker MV has its own
character generator as one

00:14:39.680 --> 00:14:41.730
of the advertised product features.

00:14:41.730 --> 00:14:43.770
But before that, people
made do with their own.

00:14:43.770 --> 00:14:45.930
So there\'s a website
called the Charas Project.

00:14:45.930 --> 00:14:47.970
You select the body, you select the head,

00:14:47.970 --> 00:14:50.273
and the heads go for very
standard, glowering hero ones

00:14:50.273 --> 00:14:52.920
to ones which had been pulled
from random Star Wars games

00:14:52.920 --> 00:14:54.570
or someone\'s novelty chicken heads

00:14:54.570 --> 00:14:57.150
and you\'re kind of encouraged
to try chopping them around

00:14:57.150 --> 00:14:58.830
and, again, just seeing if
you\'re able to get something

00:14:58.830 --> 00:15:00.750
which works even if it wasn\'t

00:15:00.750 --> 00:15:02.070
what you originally expected, right?

00:15:02.070 --> 00:15:05.520
So I can get something funny
if I combine this nun\'s outfit

00:15:05.520 --> 00:15:09.240
with this evil duck head and
put a little fluffy hat on it.

00:15:09.240 --> 00:15:10.500
And then you go, \"Oh, well, you know,

00:15:10.500 --> 00:15:11.670
that is a cool little guy.

00:15:11.670 --> 00:15:14.730
I wonder if this guy should be
included in the game somehow.

00:15:14.730 --> 00:15:16.200
Maybe they go to an entire planet

00:15:16.200 --> 00:15:19.530
or monastery of the strangely
religious little duck people

00:15:19.530 --> 00:15:21.773
and one of them becomes a
party member or a boss fight,

00:15:21.773 --> 00:15:25.470
or maybe he\'s like the
weapons merchant or so forth.\"

00:15:25.470 --> 00:15:27.900
Because every asset here
was submitted by someone,

00:15:27.900 --> 00:15:29.250
you\'re kinda seeing the fragments

00:15:29.250 --> 00:15:31.860
of everyone\'s private projects
just kinda being gathered

00:15:31.860 --> 00:15:34.200
in one place for you to chop
and choose between at random.

00:15:34.200 --> 00:15:36.330
So in that sense, it\'s kind
of the ultimate embodiment

00:15:36.330 --> 00:15:38.163
of RPG Maker itself.

00:15:39.180 --> 00:15:41.280
I know when I was a teenager,
I probably spent more time

00:15:41.280 --> 00:15:44.520
on this site combining
random graphics and seeing

00:15:44.520 --> 00:15:46.320
if I could get some cool
than I did actually, like,

00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:47.470
working in the program.

00:15:49.305 --> 00:15:51.972
(playful music)

00:15:54.541 --> 00:15:55.950
A lot of the games I was just showing off

00:15:55.950 --> 00:16:00.600
come from the Rare RPG Request
Thread on RPGMaker.net.

00:16:00.600 --> 00:16:01.950
People make an effort to go through

00:16:01.950 --> 00:16:04.710
all the abandoned Mediafire
links and so forth,

00:16:04.710 --> 00:16:06.930
try and find working copies
of what\'s still out there.

00:16:06.930 --> 00:16:10.410
So games, assets, patches, whatever else.

00:16:10.410 --> 00:16:13.050
I think there\'s a single
user called SegNin.

00:16:13.050 --> 00:16:15.180
It started off as a request
topic where you\'d ask something

00:16:15.180 --> 00:16:17.190
of this one particular
member and they would try

00:16:17.190 --> 00:16:19.116
and just dig through their hard drive

00:16:19.116 --> 00:16:20.116
and see if they had it.

00:16:20.116 --> 00:16:21.180
And then it became this elaborate resource

00:16:21.180 --> 00:16:23.730
and documentation project
where you\'d have a full list

00:16:23.730 --> 00:16:26.610
of how to contribute and notes on hosting.

00:16:26.610 --> 00:16:29.040
There\'s little tech
demos for if you wanted

00:16:29.040 --> 00:16:30.720
to get a particular feature
in your own project,

00:16:30.720 --> 00:16:32.940
you could download this and
then kinda steal the way

00:16:32.940 --> 00:16:34.320
they did something.

00:16:34.320 --> 00:16:36.780
There\'s full projects, there\'s old games

00:16:36.780 --> 00:16:38.430
from people who kind
of became better known

00:16:38.430 --> 00:16:40.770
in indie game later,
there\'s collaborative games

00:16:40.770 --> 00:16:42.030
like the Alex Projects.

00:16:42.030 --> 00:16:44.275
And all of these are uploaded
one by one individually

00:16:44.275 --> 00:16:46.890
after all the previous hosting services,

00:16:46.890 --> 00:16:48.958
so Rapidshare, Megaupload,

00:16:48.958 --> 00:16:50.880
those are all kinda shut down one by one.

00:16:50.880 --> 00:16:54.030
So every time there\'s
kinda this continuous push

00:16:54.030 --> 00:16:57.120
to put everything up
in a new place in a way

00:16:57.120 --> 00:16:59.550
that it can kinda be kept active.

00:16:59.550 --> 00:17:01.980
So it is kind of perversely
inspiring to see,

00:17:01.980 --> 00:17:03.780
especially considering
that if you played some

00:17:03.780 --> 00:17:06.543
of these games with titles
like Donald Fuck RPG,

00:17:07.410 --> 00:17:11.733
produced as a joke by someone
called Daffy F in 2003,

00:17:12.570 --> 00:17:15.360
slowly being moved from hosting
server to hosting server

00:17:15.360 --> 00:17:16.980
until it\'s, like, readily accessible

00:17:16.980 --> 00:17:21.033
on the most easily used file
sharing program in 2022,

00:17:21.033 --> 00:17:24.437
like 19 years later, that
these could still survive

00:17:24.437 --> 00:17:27.545
as an inspiring and encouraging act.

00:17:27.545 --> 00:17:31.200
(upbeat playful music)

00:17:31.200 --> 00:17:33.540
This was a game I made in 2010.

00:17:33.540 --> 00:17:36.600
I\'d started using RPG
Maker when I was a teenager

00:17:36.600 --> 00:17:38.820
and then I kinda moved
on to other game engines

00:17:38.820 --> 00:17:40.740
and then after I\'d worked
on other games for a while,

00:17:40.740 --> 00:17:42.876
I thought it would be fun
to go back to RPG Maker

00:17:42.876 --> 00:17:44.580
and see, you know, exactly what I could do

00:17:44.580 --> 00:17:47.640
in my very first love of game engines.

00:17:47.640 --> 00:17:49.110
There\'s an interesting back and forth

00:17:49.110 --> 00:17:52.890
between RPG Maker games
and the indie games,

00:17:52.890 --> 00:17:55.020
like art games, whatever
you want to call them

00:17:55.020 --> 00:17:58.196
that came since and in many
ways, those indie art games,

00:17:58.196 --> 00:18:00.390
they were initially kind of represented

00:18:00.390 --> 00:18:02.658
as more aesthetically adventurous.

00:18:02.658 --> 00:18:05.790
They\'ll do original assets
and often original music

00:18:05.790 --> 00:18:08.039
and so forth, but at the same time,

00:18:08.039 --> 00:18:11.610
the move to produce something
which is kinda self-contained

00:18:11.610 --> 00:18:14.280
and could be allowed to circuit

00:18:14.280 --> 00:18:15.870
as a self-contained art object

00:18:15.870 --> 00:18:17.550
in this more commercial environment,

00:18:17.550 --> 00:18:19.650
it\'s kind of interesting
to me in the sense of,

00:18:19.650 --> 00:18:23.310
on one level, that\'s
actually more conservative

00:18:23.310 --> 00:18:25.020
than traditional RPG Maker games

00:18:25.020 --> 00:18:26.367
because traditional RPG Maker games

00:18:26.367 --> 00:18:28.950
are based on crime, basically.

00:18:28.950 --> 00:18:32.400
They\'re based on stolen,
illegally translated engines

00:18:32.400 --> 00:18:33.810
and illegally shared resources

00:18:33.810 --> 00:18:36.180
and a back and forth sharing of those.

00:18:36.180 --> 00:18:38.550
So in Space Funeral, there\'s no generic

00:18:38.550 --> 00:18:40.140
RPG Maker assets in here.

00:18:40.140 --> 00:18:41.742
It\'s all hand scribbled.

00:18:41.742 --> 00:18:44.280
But at the same time, I guess I\'ll say

00:18:44.280 --> 00:18:46.260
it\'s questionably legal because it\'s still

00:18:46.260 --> 00:18:48.420
using whatever songs I thought were funny

00:18:48.420 --> 00:18:50.670
at the time on the soundtrack.

00:18:50.670 --> 00:18:52.350
And the big plot reveal of the game

00:18:52.350 --> 00:18:55.200
is that the mangled corruption
world you\'re going through

00:18:55.200 --> 00:18:58.860
is a distorted copy of
the standard RPG universe,

00:18:58.860 --> 00:19:01.440
the kind of one that
you\'re encouraged to make.

00:19:01.440 --> 00:19:03.799
It\'s kind of this back
and forth within itself

00:19:03.799 --> 00:19:05.730
of these kinda two different strands

00:19:05.730 --> 00:19:07.230
of amateur game development,

00:19:07.230 --> 00:19:09.510
the one which wishes to
become more careers-oriented,

00:19:09.510 --> 00:19:11.880
very self-contained, standalone games

00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:14.850
which were all custom made
and therefore legal to sell

00:19:14.850 --> 00:19:17.460
and commodify versus
the hobbyist mulch thing

00:19:17.460 --> 00:19:20.013
of just a pile of assets, who
cares where they come from,

00:19:20.013 --> 00:19:21.360
just kind of throw them all together

00:19:21.360 --> 00:19:23.333
and see you can get anything interesting.

00:19:24.962 --> 00:19:27.795
(laid-back music)

00:19:33.453 --> 00:19:37.120
(laid-back music continues)

00:19:40.300 --> 00:19:41.910
The ways that all the RPG
Market games were fast

00:19:41.910 --> 00:19:43.230
and loose with things like copyright

00:19:43.230 --> 00:19:46.170
can seem perversely
inspiring now that, like,

00:19:46.170 --> 00:19:48.450
everyone is paranoid about
that stuff in part because,

00:19:48.450 --> 00:19:49.680
if you break copyright in your game,

00:19:49.680 --> 00:19:52.140
not only can you not sell
it, which is whatever,

00:19:52.140 --> 00:19:54.180
but often people can\'t even play for free

00:19:54.180 --> 00:19:55.800
because they\'re worried
about their Twitch stream

00:19:55.800 --> 00:19:57.420
will be taken down, their YouTube channel

00:19:57.420 --> 00:19:59.400
will be demonetized, that kind of thing.

00:19:59.400 --> 00:20:01.860
It kinda becomes a ripple
effect for seeing the ways

00:20:01.860 --> 00:20:05.610
in which the initial trade
off between certain levels

00:20:05.610 --> 00:20:08.760
of control and the right to
access these commercial spaces

00:20:08.760 --> 00:20:11.130
gradually becomes more
of a horrible monkey\'s

00:20:11.130 --> 00:20:14.010
paw-type curse in which you
can make whatever you want,

00:20:14.010 --> 00:20:16.233
but it\'s only allowed
to be this one thing.

00:20:17.550 --> 00:20:19.620
- That\'s a really great
point about streaming, too,

00:20:19.620 --> 00:20:21.780
because that\'s the way
a lot of people find out

00:20:21.780 --> 00:20:23.370
about small games.

00:20:23.370 --> 00:20:25.230
And, like, if there\'s copyrighted
music in one of these,

00:20:25.230 --> 00:20:26.730
then that can prevent
it from even being able

00:20:26.730 --> 00:20:28.800
to get any kind of attention.

00:20:28.800 --> 00:20:31.110
- Yeah, and in a way, it kind
of encourages the streamers

00:20:31.110 --> 00:20:33.840
to turn from people who are
potentially just curious

00:20:33.840 --> 00:20:36.000
and interested in these
things and showing them off

00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:39.007
to be regulators-slash-police,
making sure you know,

00:20:39.007 --> 00:20:41.550
\"Oh, we cannot show any
kind of sexual content,\"

00:20:41.550 --> 00:20:43.522
because otherwise it\'s the
risk of it being marked

00:20:43.522 --> 00:20:46.110
as inappropriate to
people under a certain age

00:20:46.110 --> 00:20:48.900
or it\'ll be demonetized
based on that and so forth.

00:20:48.900 --> 00:20:50.790
They\'re being the ones
pushed into the position

00:20:50.790 --> 00:20:53.130
of internalizing these horrible guidelines

00:20:53.130 --> 00:20:55.500
and pushing them out to
developers themselves.

00:20:55.500 --> 00:20:57.330
And it\'s presented itself as so sensible

00:20:57.330 --> 00:20:59.730
that often the only way
you can see the ways

00:20:59.730 --> 00:21:01.710
in which it\'s not a natural thing,

00:21:01.710 --> 00:21:04.290
the ways in which it was an
imposed, artificial thing

00:21:04.290 --> 00:21:06.270
is by going back to see
what people just made

00:21:06.270 --> 00:21:09.120
when they thought it was
funny just to make things.

00:21:09.120 --> 00:21:10.710
This is another game called Life of Bob,

00:21:10.710 --> 00:21:12.210
which is very explicit
from the start that,

00:21:12.210 --> 00:21:14.250
yeah, like, all the graphics
are just badly converted

00:21:14.250 --> 00:21:16.500
from Earthbound, of all games.

00:21:16.500 --> 00:21:18.533
This is a playfulness about the resources

00:21:18.533 --> 00:21:22.260
that the game itself is made
of that you can\'t afford to do

00:21:22.260 --> 00:21:23.910
once those things actually lead

00:21:23.910 --> 00:21:27.792
to the risk of legal
consequences and so forth.

00:21:27.792 --> 00:21:30.959
(playful dance music)

00:21:35.250 --> 00:21:37.230
I guess in commercial
game software spaces,

00:21:37.230 --> 00:21:40.110
there\'s always an emphasis on
a need to maintain scarcity,

00:21:40.110 --> 00:21:42.157
so you kinda see people
regularly talking about,

00:21:42.157 --> 00:21:44.100
\"There\'s too many games
on Steam and too many

00:21:44.100 --> 00:21:45.597
of them are low effort,\" and so forth.

00:21:45.597 --> 00:21:46.957
And it\'s always with the mindset of,

00:21:46.957 --> 00:21:49.230
\"Oh, don\'t let all
these games by teenagers

00:21:49.230 --> 00:21:52.530
get in the way of the aspiring
professional software careers

00:21:52.530 --> 00:21:54.090
of you know, X, Y, Z person.\"

00:21:54.090 --> 00:21:56.160
Whereas here, in this
wholly hobbyist space,

00:21:56.160 --> 00:21:57.510
it\'s a totally different emphasis where,

00:21:57.510 --> 00:21:59.280
no matter how throw away something is,

00:21:59.280 --> 00:22:01.770
at a point where everything
else seems to be an emphasis

00:22:01.770 --> 00:22:04.020
on forced scarcity to see the generosity

00:22:04.020 --> 00:22:05.910
of which people would be
like, \"You know, this project

00:22:05.910 --> 00:22:07.860
by a 13 year old that they just kinda put

00:22:07.860 --> 00:22:09.630
on the internet and forgot about,

00:22:09.630 --> 00:22:11.190
it\'s probably worth hosting again, right?

00:22:11.190 --> 00:22:12.990
Like it\'s only two megabytes,

00:22:12.990 --> 00:22:14.928
might as well have it up somewhere.\"

00:22:14.928 --> 00:22:17.130
It only really takes one
person saying the world

00:22:17.130 --> 00:22:18.510
would be a little less interesting

00:22:18.510 --> 00:22:19.830
if this thing were to be lost.

00:22:19.830 --> 00:22:21.540
So there is kind of an
interest in maintaining

00:22:21.540 --> 00:22:23.490
an archive of some kind of history,

00:22:23.490 --> 00:22:25.950
even if it\'s only of
interest or use to people

00:22:25.950 --> 00:22:27.300
who are still in the hobby.

00:22:28.869 --> 00:22:31.680
(peaceful music)

00:22:31.680 --> 00:22:34.411
To me, the value in RPG
Maker was it was always

00:22:34.411 --> 00:22:37.400
a very de-personalized
way of making games,

00:22:37.400 --> 00:22:39.540
it was always a very exploratory one.

00:22:39.540 --> 00:22:42.180
It was one which didn\'t
put all the emphasis on you

00:22:42.180 --> 00:22:44.940
as the the author or whatever to come up

00:22:44.940 --> 00:22:48.120
with your own ideas and your
own drawings and so forth.

00:22:48.120 --> 00:22:51.307
It was a very process-oriented
engine where the idea was,

00:22:51.307 --> 00:22:52.173
\"Don\'t worry about any of that.

00:22:52.173 --> 00:22:54.780
Just come in, just start tinkering,

00:22:54.780 --> 00:22:57.509
move your hands around, see what works.\"

00:22:57.509 --> 00:23:00.768
It was always more of
an emphasis on discovery

00:23:00.768 --> 00:23:03.450
and I think that\'s both,
like, why I gravitated

00:23:03.450 --> 00:23:07.227
to RPG Maker as the first
game engine I really got into

00:23:07.227 --> 00:23:09.420
and it was also a good entry point

00:23:09.420 --> 00:23:10.920
for the format as a whole.

00:23:10.920 --> 00:23:13.530
What it was I found interesting
about making these things,

00:23:13.530 --> 00:23:16.090
or what I enjoyed about the
way my own consciousness

00:23:16.090 --> 00:23:19.620
would kind of get distorted
and bounced around.

00:23:19.620 --> 00:23:22.350
You weren\'t quite sure
what you were doing or why.

00:23:22.350 --> 00:23:24.570
For some inexplicable
reason you felt the urge

00:23:24.570 --> 00:23:29.100
to draw 100 endless cavern labyrinths

00:23:29.100 --> 00:23:33.090
beneath the king\'s castle
and you could follow

00:23:33.090 --> 00:23:36.885
that miserable urge to
whatever strange place

00:23:36.885 --> 00:23:38.135
it brought you.

00:23:39.791 --> 00:23:43.208
(inspiring music builds)

00:23:50.172 --> 00:23:54.589
(inspiring music continues to build)

00:24:01.020 --> 00:24:05.437
(inspiring music continues to build)

00:24:13.460 --> 00:24:16.710
(laid back funk music)

00:24:22.340 --> 00:24:26.423
(laid back funk music continues)

00:24:31.597 --> 00:24:35.680
(laid back funk music continues)

00:24:36.921 --> 00:24:39.838
(singer vocalizes)

00:24:46.625 --> 00:24:50.708
(laid back funk music continues)

00:24:59.370 --> 00:25:03.453
(laid back funk music continues)

00:25:11.071 --> 00:25:15.154
(laid back funk music fades out)