Welcome to Big Game Hunger, a show where me and a guest craft the big next game every episode.We'll be taking three random ingredients and blending them together into one incredible game.I'm Jenna Steber and I crave content.
And I'm joined by Amber Da Silva.Amber, who are you and what do you have a hunger for?
Howdy.I am Amber Da Silva, a car and motorcycle journalist with a little website called Jalopnik.Good luck spelling it.And I tonight am craving a Mets win.
We got the Dodgers last time, OK?This is what they get for leaving Brooklyn.Payback?Yeah, payback for their dealings with Robert Moses.
We're all getting payback for Robert Moses one of these days, one way or another.
I would like a little more payback for Robert Moses, I'll be honest.
When was the last time you played a baseball video game?
That would have been, it would have been as a child in my, I didn't have the games myself, but my next door neighbor had the, I think it was the 2K games, like MLB 2K.I'm trying to remember if it was on the GameCube to give you a sense of time.
Old, old throwback.We're talking a while ago.
Yeah, some real crunchy baseball games.
Oh yeah, when you could make like a player character that was entirely unbalanced and was just the best at everything.
I kind of miss when sports games would just make you let, let you make a perfect gamer, like a perfect player archetype.I think games should just let you do that if it's single player.
I think we should bring that back and we should introduce it to more video games.I want that in, as like a custom creatable character in Deadlock or XCOM or every game should let me be sort of a superhuman.
full god mode.Yeah, exactly.What I like about that, and maybe this is an accidental big game hunger pitch, I love the idea of creating a situation where you can be super ridiculously OP'd and then follow people who choose not to.
Like follow the people who are like, no, I want to make a balanced character.
I don't know if I want this more as a game or like as a novel. Like, in a world where superpowers exist, where people can be so incredibly powerful, what is it like to be someone who chooses normalcy by our definition?
Because that's certainly not by the definition of that universe at that point.
That is super fascinating.I do feel like quite a lot of movies about video games that are not video game movies are like, oh, what if you became a super powerful player character and you're not an NPC anymore?
And it's like, what if you just kind of want to be an NPC?Right?What is the reverse free guy? Yeah, yeah.I mean, that that is sort of like, I feel like that's kind of what Animal Crossing is.
It's like you could play any game in which you are super powered and massively OP.But if you choose to play Animal Crossing, Doesn't that say something?
It does.And what's really funny is I did this exact thing.There was a point in COVID lockdown where I had, I don't know, like $300 to spare.And two roads diverged in a yellow wood.
And in one, I bought a Nintendo Switch and Animal Crossing like the rest of the free world did.
And in the other one, I bought a, I don't know if they still have the Oculus branding, but I bought the Oculus Quest and Beat Saber and VRChat and became transgender.And that's clearly the one that I picked was that road.
You don't think some aspects of that would have happened if you had gotten Animal Crossing?
There's simply no way to know.If I've gone down that path, I may be an attorney now.Who knows?
Wow, that well, that I mean, I can't imagine you as an attorney, but maybe that's because I exist with you in this universe, the VR universe.
That's fair, but let me tell you, if you have ever been my landlord, you would understand that there is an attorney in this brain here and it is very unhappy.
Oh, fascinating.You got attorney brain?Shit.
My dad and aunt were both attorneys.
I've got terminal attorney brain.
It's hereditary and it is life-ending.
Do you feel like there's some overlap between that and the car motorcycle journalism that you do?
Absolutely.Whenever there's some fucked up new law that is implemented, I'm the one at the website who has to read it and interpret it and translate it into English.That's the niche I've carved for myself.
That is so funny.I mean, that's not a bad niche to have.That's very valuable.But I would rather die.
Most people would, I think.
OK, that's great.That's great.If you have to go in and ask for a raise, that feels like a great thing to put across the line to be like, I'm sorry, do you want to read about laws?No?Pay me.
Or like, I'm fighting my ex-landlord right now.I was on the phone with the attorney general's office yesterday.There's attorney brain in there.
And that attorney brain is going to take that ex-landlord to small claims court and try and get a MacBook out of it.
Wait, because they've got a MacBook out of you or you're hoping to get money for a MacBook?
I'm hoping to get money for a MacBook.Mine broke a very long time ago and I've been laptop-less since then.Working on a gaming rig is great until it's beautiful outside and you live near a park and you can't go work in it.
Being mobile is pretty nice.It's pretty nice.Especially if you're like a journalist and you don't have to be like doing too much like tech heavy stuff.Yeah.
Especially if you're me and you're the sort of cretin who edits directly in the CMS.
No, ours is good.I can't support that.I like ours.
I even write long emails in a separate document.That's how I'm like, I'm so web doc brained where I just like, I cannot write unless I'm in like a Google Docs or something.
I have written straight into the CMS from my phone on the subway.Wow.
There's something wrong with me.What kind of games do you like to play?
I play a weird little mix.There are two things that really get me interested in a game.One is narrative and characters that I can really get totally healthily attached to, which is where I get my life is strange side from.
I have a very normal mental relationship with Chloe Price, and I definitely did not take my name from Rachel Amber. Normal boundaries for these fictional characters.Exactly, exactly.
Listen, it's better than the boundaries some people have with real people.
The other thing that gets me really into a game is when it has movement that rocks.So this is what gets me into Celeste, Neon White, Warframe.
All of these things are when the movement feels good and it feels like you are moving at speeds that should not be possible.I love it.
Oh, yes, I do love a game with just buttery smooth movement where it's just the action of running across the screen and jumping feels good.I love that.
I realized earlier today I've been knocked out of my position for neon white speed running, so I need to get back into that.
Oh, man.Do you mean like amongst the... Because Neon White has a thing where you can see your other Switch friends' rankings.Are you talking about that kind of friend ranking or like a global ranking?
Like speedrun.com global ranking.I used to be... I only do like little chapters from the beginning, but I used to be top 10 on one of them.And now I'm not, so I need to get back into that game.
Oh, I didn't know you sped run at all.Sped run, speed ran.
I didn't know you sped ran.Not a ton, not much.But sometimes the game just grabs you and you get really into it.I've tried to speed run Celeste and it turns out that requires like a level of fidelity in your motor control that I simply lack.
Yeah, Celeste speedruns are quite difficult.My partner for a while was speedrunning Celeste and was had broken like the top 500 ranking.Oh my god.Yeah, yeah.And they had like a special controller
that special pads mounted to it so they could be extremely exact with their movement.And I was like, that's impressive, but also crazy.
Oh my god.I feel like I'm cheating just using, I've got one of those Xbox Elite controllers.So I can use the little back paddles.
You don't think the other nine people on the top 10 list of that level were using that?
Well, for neon white, I do keyboard and mouse. Whoa, really?I am firmly a keyboard and mouse bitch wherever possible.
The only thing that will get me to use a controller, I will do it for Celeste, because that's built for an analog stick, and I will do it for driving.
So if I'm playing GTA V, I will be all keyboard and mouse until I get in a car and then I pick up a controller to drive around and put it back down to shoot.
I thought you were gonna say, and then I pivot to my fully automated two foot pedal steering wheel gamer loadout, my cockpit, and I just like, vroom.
I was sent one of those at one point to review.So sitting in my office is a full Fanatec direct drive wheel, pedals, I tried it on the other thing I'm like competitively ranked in is the rivals mode of Forza Horizon.So like their time attack mode.
And I was faster on a controller.
really because of input lag or because of this is it might get a little bit into the weeds of how these like pedal setups are built but if you just have like a potentiometer on a spring that's all you need for a gas pedal that's all you need for a clutch pedal but you're not going to get feedback from it
You'll get the force of the spring.But if you are, say, on the brakes in a car, you're not going to get the feedback of when your tires are locking up, when they are sliding.This is all input you get from a real motor vehicle.
If you've ever driven one on track and overheated your brakes and had them go out as you're going into turn one at 90 miles an hour, ask me how I know. It's feedback you would get from the bars on a motorcycle, as I discovered.
Don't take your 500-pound adventure bike on $100 dual sport tires, 100 miles an hour on track in the rain.Don't do that.But these pedals don't deliver that.
So all the competitive players, they run something called a load cell brake pedal, which actually gives you all of that feedback. Oh, I just didn't happen to get that in that setup.
So I was slower because you get force feedback through the triggers on an Xbox controller.
You know, that's actually really interesting.I for a while back did a video on Microsoft Flight Sim.
and people who have like really complicated setups, like technology setups with buttons and levers and pulleys and like the full cockpit setup, and who then went to actually try to fly planes in real life.
And a common occurrence and complaint that people had was that They knew how to do everything because they had hyper-realistic cockpit setups in their homes.And when they got into an actual plane, it like vibrated.
And there was like that other, the feedback that you get from doing the actual physical activity that you don't get in a video game setup.And it was just like that the vibrations of the plane were so unsettling and so uncomfortable for them.
used to these other loadouts, that that was a huge barrier for people trying to actually get a pilot's license after playing Microsoft Flight Sim.
That makes sense.You think about the professional sims that people used to train, because they do that in Formula One now.They have full sims for training in, but they have all that force feedback.
They're basically built out of old cockpits, so it's the full experience.
And when people are training to hunt dinosaurs, you'll find that they often go to arcades where they have the full Jurassic Park machines with the Jeeps.
You have to get in the Jeeps because then you're getting that physical feedback of what it's like to be chased by a T-Rex.
Exactly.Unless you actually get out to the island and they've got the Ford Explorers from the other movie, and then it's a totally different experience and you're completely unprepared.
Yeah, and these days, you already have to have experience to get that experience.It's like, how am I going to hunt dinosaurs if I don't have that experience already?
Exactly.Every entry-level dino hunter job now wants three to five years.It's like, come on.
There's one island where dinosaurs exist.How am I supposed to get that experience?Amber, are you ready to move to the ingredient list? I am.Let's see what we've got.I'm very excited to see what our loadout is.
I'm going to roll my 3d20 and pick out the corresponding number of an adjective, a premise, and a type of gameplay.
Okay, our words are the adjective comes from former guest Jeff Moon, and thank you, Jeff, and it is gooey. Gooey.
Our premise comes from very recent guest, Clayton Ashley, and it is quorum for our premise.And then our type of gameplay also comes from a former guest, Julia Schifini, and it is nautical horror.
Gooey, quorum, nautical horror.Okay.This is really fun.
There's so many O's.There's a larger than average number of O's in this selection of words.
This is going to be a vowel-heavy episode.
This is going to be a vowel-heavy episode.And you know, I say that every episode, but I really mean it this one.These quorums, these nauticals.
We'll have to say a lot of those.The sentences that contain every letter in the Latin alphabet, we'll say a bunch of those to sort of balance it out.
Yes, I love that.Okay.Yeah, we'll have to provide a lot of the continent energy.Yes, exactly.Are you good with these three?Should we try rerolling any of them on the Grand Howard Dagger dartboard?Or are you feeling good about this loadout?
I am kind of really liking this combination.Okay.
Have you ever read the book Snow Crash?
And that's Neil Stevenson, right?
I don't think I ever finished it, but I did try to read it.That's the one with Hero Protagonist, right?
That's Hero Protagonist and yours truly, yeah.
Yours truly, I like.Hero protagonist was a little bit of a struggle.
I never finished it.I describe it as like the Gurren Lagann of cyberpunk novels in that it's simultaneously satirizing them, but also like kind of a great rendition of them.
That makes sense to me that it feels like that is kind of Neil Stevenson's vibe where he's like, yeah, sort of very self aware of the genre he's working in, but also kind of just good at the genre.
The the book, I think it's towards the end.So this may not have come up, but it's like not a spoiler.In the universe, there is a boat, I guess?Okay.It's called The Raft, and at the center of it is a decommissioned aircraft carrier.
And tethered to it, spanning off in every direction, are fishing trawlers and dinghies and Boston whalers and any other kind of boat. Okay, and it moves from some China or something.I don't remember exactly where it comes from.
I have not read this book in years.And it brings people down to the west coast of the US where they untether from the aircraft carrier and it goes back and they all tether back up and build another raft.And it comes back again.
To say that is to get into spoilers on the book because it gets into like mimetic neuroviruses transmitted by language.Okay, interesting.
Maybe I'll take another run at Snow Crash.
It's kind of a wild book.It takes a minute to get there.
Okay, I mean, what you're describing is already such a powerful borderline horror image in my mind of being like, hopelessly tethered to dozens of other ships.On the one hand, I think that could provide a lot of safety.
But on the other hand, if there's like a storm, you're just like, attached, you can't escape. Yeah, exactly.
That stresses me out.Especially if you're a small boat towards the outside, and you've got no control over where you're going.That's all up to the aircraft carrier in the center.
And if that aircraft carrier went down, it would take the whole rest of the net down with it.
Oh, I'm sure. So you've got a little bit of a nautical horror element in there.Yeah.I'm thinking if they are attached not by rope and cable, but by something gooier.
Like, tendon?Are we going to the body horror angle?
Oh, OK.No, that's really interesting.
Because my visual concept of what you're describing looks almost like a really intense close-up of cells.I can see that, yeah.Of just having, like, these little boat cells all attached together to make a larger organism.
So now I'm picturing, rather than, like, a US aircraft carrier, you've got biomechanical ships. that when they dock up, there are tendons that lash them together.
That's such a cool, gross concept.Real, real gooey.And the gooeyness is that.I guess this fiber is just inherently gooey.And so that is what's sticking things together.Is part of the gameplay of this? stickin' and unstickin'.
See, this is where I'm trying to work in the quorum part.Like there's some sort of interaction you have to have with these other ships, these other biomechanical boats, to prevent them from taking over yours through
Maybe when they are linked up, there are some nerves that run through those tendons.And when certain brains behind the ships disagree, one needs to find a quorum.And it is up to the player to maintain that the quorum is in their favor.
Oh, okay, there's a lot here conceptually that would be fun to run with.So we could do, it could be like a single player game where it is like you're trying to almost fight off like this quorum infection.
And it's like, once the game has quorum, either in your favor or something else's favor, that's the game.So it could be something like that.Or it could be like a multiplayer game, almost like, nautical horror werewolf.
It's about like maintaining peace in this bioengineered webbing of ships where you all have to like agree and you have to excise any part that doesn't agree like a tumor.
Yes.Oh, that's interesting.I'm picturing these ships as like the interior of a Cylon base star.
Very goopy.Very goopy.Connected together.I'm wondering if you could do drop in drop out co-op.
So you can play single player, you can also have someone jump in and they will likely have quorum with your decision, given that you're both players, you both have probably the same goal.
But what happens if you have a player in there who's playing with you, you two have Maintained your quorum, you have control over this whole amorphous fleet of interconnected, congealed boats.And then your friend's gotta go.Your friend has to leave.
And you're just all alone.The drop-in drop-out becomes part of the quorum mechanic.
Oh, okay.So like, you're more powerful when somebody drops in?Or I mean, dropping in does feel like has the capacity.I mean, I'm, I'm so in a cyberpunk brain now, because that's how we open or I'm just like,
What if each of these cells is like uninhabited flesh bodies that people can inhabit?But then that I mean, I guess there's like, there's two ways this could go.
Either it's a physical quorum, or it's a like mental social quorum, where it's like these could be because if we're thinking like a vessel, a vessel can mean like a ship or a boat or a vehicle or it can be a vessel for someone.
Yeah.Oh my God.Yes.Okay.I see where you're going with this and I'm very into it.
Multitude has a brand new show and it's called Attach Your Resume.
On Attach Your Resume, the hosts interview online creators about how their jobs work and how they got there, hear the personal stories behind seismic events and digital media, and learn what concrete steps you can take to build a sustainable media landscape.
Hosted by longtime podcasters and business owners Eric and Amanda, Attach Your Resume proves that the best credentials for deciding the future of media is actually making stuff.
New episodes every Thursday until they run out of episodes and have to go make more.Subscribe to Attach Your Resume in your podcast app now. I have a merch shop with DFTBA.You can find it at bit.ly slash jennamerch, all one word, all lowercase.
There you will find beautiful items like a Big Game Hunger t-shirt that you can wear to declare your love either for this podcast or for melting Sonic the Hedgehog ice cream pops.
There's also some general emote stickers from my live streams and some wonderful burnt cookbook party merch from my other actual play podcast. Check that out at bit.ly slash jenna merch, all lowercase, all one word.
Maintaining quorum there would be about your vessel is obviously inhabited by you, the player.
As you go through, if you can find ships that are uninhabited, find other empty vessels, you can bring them in and lash your tendons to them and integrate them in.And this adds to your mass, it adds to almost like a, I assume you've seen Evangelion?
When the magi computers have to have a majority vote?
You've got more parts on your side.You have more of a majority vote.So maybe once you've got a few vessels that are all inhabited by you, you have the power to go grab one that is inhabited and boot out its occupant.
Oh, I love that.So it's like a salvage.It's like a salvage operation game where you're like trying to find these empty discarded vessels, like a crab trying to find a bigger shell to move into.But you're like gathering it up.
And then once you get to a certain point, OK, Amber, here's what we've done. We've created creepy flesh Katamari Damacy.On water.
On water.And I love it.To clarify.That is Katamaran Damacy.
Oh, Amber, I'm writing it down and maybe that'll be the title and we can just like nail that down.
That's so good.That's so fun, oh my God.I don't know, for a title, I'm also really just liking Vessel.
Vessel also very ominous.Vessel is so ominous and has such openness.That has the same vibe to me as dredge, where it's just like, boom.It's just an ominous word.It's very straightforward.Yeah, these are two different games.
One of these is a serious horror game.One of them is a weird category. So those are both good options.We're miles away from having to deal with a title yet.You just crushed it so clearly.
Because like in the concept of Katamari Damacy, you're trying to roll up things that are appropriately sized to grow your Katamari, your Katamari ball, so that it's bigger and you can get roll up bigger and bigger stuff.
And that is sort of what we're describing, where it's like, you need to start off with some smaller vessels and work your way up to the cruise ship, right?
Yes.Unfortunately, there is a part of my mind that is noticing that we've invented the fish eating slightly larger fish game that shows up in my Tumblr ads.
Yeah, that's a good concept.It's a fine concept. I guess, here's an important question that I think is going to help me emotionally and mentally moving forward.Is our vessel flesh?Or is it biomechanical?
Because you touched on the Battlestar Galactica kind of bio ships, which might be a good touchstone for me to visualize.
I mean, now, I am imagining that this is a post human world.And that these ships were built by humans, they were mechanical, but they have since been inhabited by something else, something biological.
So the ships themselves may not even be biological.The ones that you are going and, you know, collecting and getting out there that are uninhabited, they're just steel or aluminum or whatever they build boats out of.
I'm an autojournalist, I should know this.Fiberglass, probably.
Yeah and in order to connect to them you are it's not you know a docking maneuver it is an appendage growing and extending and reaching across and filling in the gaps in the cabin and incorporating this into the biomass.
Oh, I mean, you've already raised the specter of Evangelion, but the idea that you have like this exoskeleton, but underneath there is a flesh creature that you don't know about quite yet is so, what a good slow burn reveal.
This could be the sort of game where that's not even evident for the first like three or four hours of the game, where it's just like, what you see is like your little tugboat, you're such a cute little tugboat.
And it's because it's a game, you are the boat.And you kind of have to, you can just kind of assume like, oh, yeah, I'm the captain of the boat.Like there's no character, you are the boat.
And then as the game progresses, you realize that you are the boat.Like, you're not a thing on the boat.Like, you are the boat.The boat is your body.That is very fun to me.
I love the idea of, like, you get through the whole tutorial, you learn the controls, you know, you learn how to navigate the waves and how to read, you know, a rogue wave coming in.
The last Nautical game I played was Assassin's Creed Black Flag, apparently.
The last step in your tutorial is docking with another boat and suddenly there is this pulsating, dripping appendage that shoots out from the glass of your cabin and reaches in and grabs onto an adjacent boat.
And now you have visible blood running through the link between these two. That would be gooey.That would hit the gooey mark.
So gooey.That's so gooey.Okay.It sucks the ship in closer.And now you can acquire even larger ships because I'm imagining almost like a situation where once you have this additional ship, it's not full of you yet.You have to like populate it.
So maybe there's even a mechanic where it's like, You've gotten a new ship to your fleet, but it's going to take a couple day-night cycles for you to fully expand into it.Fully incorporate it.Yeah.
We'll have to pin down the most ominous word we can for that for the UI element, but I think that's really good.Fully engorge?That's not quite it.Permeate? Permeate's pretty good.
Permeate is the right balance of like, oh, that's not a weird word, but then you think about it in context and you're like, ooh, whoa, what am I actually doing to it?Don't ask.
The word permeate is fine until you apply it to flesh.
Yeah, like so many words, it is a fine word in most contexts, but not to the body.
Once you have flesh permeating something, that's horror now.Now body horror is happening.Yes, some gooey, gooey body horror.
And then not only can you incorporate larger ships once you've fully permeated those in your fleet, you can also start to take on ships that have their own sentience.
Ooh, yes, yes, yes.I did want to circle back to this idea, because I like the idea that you can get empty vessels.That's very low challenge, but you're going to hit a point where all of those empty vessels have already been taken.
They've already been salvaged by other ships.Now, what are you going to do about it?
And once you come up to one, okay, so here's where the quorum part comes in.
You can incorporate another ship, but again, once it's sentient, it will take even longer to permeate, because you have to oust the existing consciousness and introduce a new one.
And in that time, if anyone else were to attack you, if you were to come in and try and take on another sentient ship, they could wrest control of your ship from you because you no longer have quorum.
Oh, hostile takeover.Okay.Here's my pitch for how the actual takeover happens.I think if it's a salvaged ship, it's automatic.It's happening in the background.You can still explore and stuff like that.
If it's a sentient ship, I think you have to go through a series of minigames. Yes, to beat it.
And if you, and I think it's like a longer term, maybe it's like the size, the number of mini games you have to play through depends on the size of the thing you're trying to conquer.And the amount of successes you need varies.
Maybe if it's a smaller ship, you only need like five out of eight.But if it's a bigger ship, you're getting into like, you're gonna have to do like 20 out of 22 and succeed.Like it's gonna be harder and harder with the ratio of your
Exactly.And so if you're really good at them, you could even take on a sentient ship bigger than you.But that's a fucking challenge.
Oh, I love that as a way of determining how challenging the game is.Because if you wanna spend most of your time salvaging and spending time exploring and not engaging with that, you totally can.
You'll probably hit a limit, but you can definitely emphasize that in your gameplay.And if you're a fucking sicko and you see the biggest, juiciest mega yacht and you're like, I have to have it, you can just go for it.
Now here's another gameplay question.
Is this an MMO?Are those other sentient ships players who are playing those mini games against you in real time?
Oh, that is such a different game.I mean, it's in structuring the same game, but conceptually, so difficult.
Like EVE Online scale. But the fleets are controlled by one person.They're not guilds.They're one hive mind, one consciousness spread through its appendages into all these other boats.
Here's what I, okay, I do like about that is that you could have ships that do almost like an angler style where it's like, I'm imagining a loadout where you have like mostly submarines or you've got like one baby ship and then a line of submarines and then a bulky ship yard, like really far away.
Cause you've got so much of it sub, not subterranean, sub aquarium. And you have this one really, what looks like very easy to pick off, flesh boat.Somebody sidles up, they're like, oh, easy pickings, I got this.
And only when they latch on do they realize that there is a much larger fleet here that they are now stuck in.That is such a fun pirate concept.
And through the minigame mechanic, they can win.They can take out that whole fleet if they are a fucking master.
Oh my god.And that is the sort of thing that would trickle outside of that community.And you would just hear like, yeah, somebody lost like $50,000 actual US dollars on this game because their fleet got destroyed.And you're like, what?
What's happening in that game?It's going to be that kind of vibe.
All those articles that I read that make me think, God, should I try Eve Online?And then I never do.
Those are the articles that make you want, you're like, oh, somebody lost their life savings in ships on Eve Online.
Yeah, but I'm built different.
That's true.You've got lawyer brain.
That and I just simply would not spend money on it.
You wouldn't invest your life savings in Eve Online?
I make journalists money.I don't have life savings to invest.
That's so fair.Okay, there will be no money.This isn't M&O with, you do have to pay to get the game.It's gonna be 30 bucks, but there will be, and there will be cosmetics.There will be little hats for the boats to wear or something better than that.
You won't be able to pay, pay to play or pay to improve any of your ships or any shit like that.
Yep, it's only cosmetics.You can change the blood color of your boat. You get sort of like a homestuck chemo spectrum going.
I like the idea that you can get premium blood color options.It's like glow in the dark, neon green blood options.I would pay for that, for my boat to have glowing blood.
That would honestly be pretty cool.And that would actually be a disadvantage in gameplay when you're trying to sink it beneath the waves to go down to the submarines.Oh, man.
Yeah, there would have to be all sorts of cosmetics about like, I want my boat to look even more like a ship or even less like a ship.There's gonna be skins where it's just like flesh skin. I got a flesh skin for my boat.
Why are boat owners actually doing that?Think about how unique your boat would look if it looked like flesh.
There's got to be someone out there with a speedboat that is painted like flesh, right?I hope so.I hope so.There's got to be one pervert parentheses complimentary.
If I had a speedboat, I would paint the inside to look like the tongue and teeth section and then the outside of it to look like the bottom of a jaw.So it looks like I've just taken the jaw off a large monster and now I'm riding in it.
The little rim around the outside is all white and trapezoidal.Exactly, and sharp, so sharp.So sharp.It is so safe to climb on and off of this boat.
You can behead a fish just right there.What is your ultimate goal in this game? I feel like the ultimate goal has to be quorum related, but what actually are you trying to achieve?
See, that's sort of why I like the MMO idea is that your goal on the long term is survival in the face of all these other players, any one of whom, if they are good enough, can take you out no matter the size of your fleet.
I love the idea of branding and advertising this game as a survival game, because that implies you're in, like, the woods, and you've got a stone axe, and you're chopping down trees, and we're gonna come from left fucking field and be like, no, you're a boat, first of all.
Second of all, you're on the sea.And third of all, there are no trees.You have to eat other boats.
And there is so much flesh.
There's so much flesh.There's so much flesh. This is so good.This is horrible and I love it.Let me clarify, by so good, I mean really horrible and so good.Are there any actual sea creatures?Is that an element in this at all?Can you get a whale tail?
OK, so here's a really interesting idea.There are sea creatures, and they are the resource you harvest for biomass with which to reach out to other ships.Oh, I like that.
You can grow on your own very slowly, enough of a limb to reach out and grab and permeate. But if you want to do things a little faster, you want to expedite the time between permeations, you need to incorporate some fresh flesh.
And that comes from sea creatures.
Oh, that is such a smart way of engaging with sea creatures and also cleaning up the loop of what you are doing with the flesh.Because you're right, flesh is a resource in this case.
And so you have to have things that are going to replenish the flesh.
We've gotten into such David Cronenberg territory.
Yeah, I guess it's just because of the word gooey.We could have taken this anyway, but the gooey and the horror combo is really, there's one direction and it's towards the gaping hole of Cronenberg.
I hope you're so happy, former guests who suggested the word gooey, that this is where this is led.
Thank you, Jeff.Thank you, Jeff.
I hope you're happy.You fucking monster.
You've helped us invent boats of the future.
In particular, Amber, have you read Moby Dick?
I've read the first few pages.I can't say I've gotten to too much further than that.
That's fair.Snow Crash is my Moby Dick, in that I'm almost done reading Moby Dick.And when I do, I'm going to make it my whole personality.And I'm just sort of testing out that energy right now. So I'm like, I'm almost finished with Moby Dick.
And there's a lot of fishing in that.And it is quite explicit, the discussion of like, how they remove the blubber and all of the like, It's quite fleshy and quite, quite gooey.
And I feel like having sequences where you're like, lowering a finger, like a flesh finger into the sea and having to fish up as big a creature as you can get.And if it's a, you know, if it's a small shark, you get a little bit of flesh.
If it's some plankton, you Good luck.You're going to have to get so much plankton.If it's a sperm whale, bada bing.That is like four ships worth of flesh right there.You can just like so quickly restock.
I love the idea, just sort of leaning into the horror aspect of this, that the incorporation of biomass from sea creatures happens on screen.You watch them, the flesh being torn from bone, and it happens with your boat's fingernails.
One part of the boat is the fingernails.
This is an appendage that reaches out.Maybe it bursts through the hull.And I don't know how many fingernails it has.I don't know if they're attached to fingers.There might be a tentacle situation.
But it is clearly visually a fingernail with the white at the tip that is digging in and peeling flesh and pulling it below decks.
And another great opportunity for cosmetic purchases to get cool fingernail polish for your fish rippers.Exactly.
As someone who does not do horror media, because again, I am a little bitch, I think we're onto something here.
I think you're very in tune to what makes something really creepy, as people who are often easily scared are, so. I think this is a very strong concept.And yeah, you just want to survive.
Is there going to be, because you mentioned, you touched on earlier that there are fleets in some of these games where it's like a confederacy of individuals forming together.Is that going to even be possible in this game?
Are you going to be able to have unintegrated allies?
I think so.I think going up and integrating a boat is a choice that you make.And you can sail next to one perfectly fine.You can have your guilds.You just can't trust each other.
Because now you're coming into such close proximity with people who are undoubtedly stronger than you and people who are undoubtedly better at the game.And the question is, who is who?You're never going to know.
Is that person with just a single boat, some newbie who's brand new and wants to be in your guild for protection?Or is this like a Smurf account?Is this someone who's incredible at the mini games and is just using this as a Trojan horse?
A bait ship, a Trojan, no, Trojan horse was it.You were right.It's going to be full of like poison.I don't know how we'll do that mechanic, but I love the idea of being able to make like.
Well, that's the thing.It doesn't even have to because a single boat can take over anything through the minigame mechanic.
You're so right.You're so right.You'll be able if you can do the Sudoku or whatever, whatever much better mini games we have in this, you'll be able to just like just beat them.I love the idea that
It is not, it's not based on, there is a mechanic determining how many mini games you get based on how big and small and how many wins you need.But the actual succeeding at the game is pure skill.I love that.
No RNG, nothing.The only RNG is where a vacant ship will appear, an empty vessel, and where a sea creature will appear.Anything else is all on the player.
It's really powerful.It's really eerie.It's so creepy.I feel like you don't have horror MMOs like that.
I mean, survival games are the horror MMOs of the world, depending on what they are.And the horror in those games is other people, which is fair.But that's just real life.That's just actually living.
That's also what it is here.You've got horror from, you know, you see on the horizon one ship. come over a wave, and then a second is tied to it, and a third, and suddenly there are five, seven.This massive fleet is coming at you.
It will be so easy for them to take you.Are they faster than you?You're going to have to find out the hard way.
Oh, you raise an important question, which is like, there's got to be, to a certain extent, some stats.I have to imagine a smaller ship is going to be more mobile, easier to hide.
I think certainly easier to hide, but I think maybe there are types of ships.
So if you have a fleet that is all cigarette boats, that's going to be pretty quick, but you're going to have to spend so much time filtering down and only collecting cigarette boats.
Oh, somebody's going to, though.That's such a good idea. I also like the idea that there are people out there who are like, I'm not in it for the stats, I'm in it for the design.
And they're like, I'm gonna make my flush boats in the shape of a giant turtle, tortoise, giant tortoise, and or giant turtle.I'm gonna make my flush boats in the shape of a giant tortoise. And I'm only going to do that.
So I'm only going to incorporate ships that are going to expand the design of it.But I imagine like at a certain point, are you only building out or can you build up as well?Is there going to be a way of like ramping up the stacks of your ships?
I think all the ships have to touch the water.You can ramp down with submarines, certainly.OK.OK.And maybe there's some way you could ramp up if you get a sailboat that would be taller with the mast.OK.Yeah.And you can spin some flesh up that mast.
It's a horrible sentence.
No.I mean, how else are you going to get a flesh sail?Got to spin some flesh up that mast, for sure.
And that would get you extra speed if you have, you're incorporating an empty vessel.There is no sail on that ship.That's why it's just sitting there.So if you want to move it, you're gonna need a flesh sail.
Yeah, but you're gonna have to dedicate some of your flesh to that sail.So you're gonna have to make a choice about do you need speed or do you need that flesh elsewhere?
And you're either going to have to wait for it to grow, or you're going to have to use your fingernails to peel apart a whale.Just really upsetting and really, really good.This is a bad game in a good way.
Yeah, I don't know what the adoption rate is. This is, it feels so niche.Who knows?I mean, the gameplay is going to be so fun.People are going to love it.I'm sure.
That's the thing.It's like, it's a deeply unsettling game visually, but the gameplay loop we've described is actually really enticing sounding.
I mean, I think the minigames are going to be super fun.People are going to want to be, they're not even going to be angry.They're just going to be like, I'm going to fight this other boat because I want to play some minigames.
I just want to hang out and compete with competitive boggle.Again, we'll come up with the actual minigames later.
Is there like a version of tic-tac-toe that can't be tied?
Ooh, I bet we could make one.Can we do like a nine by nine tic-tac-toe?
Right, like something like that that would be like fast-paced and directly 1v1 competitive.Your opponent is the other person.
Yeah. of WarioWare games is sort of what this is.I think we'll have to come up with a pretty decent amount of minigame variety for this, but I think it'll be okay.I think we'll manage that in the actual development of this game.Yeah, absolutely.
Amber, what are we gonna name this?Do you still like catamaran domicy or is that crazy?
I feel like if we're leaning into the horror, it's gotta be Vessel.
Vessel's so good.It's just such a good word.
And it's one of those like two syllable emphasis on the first that everyone loves.Yeah, Vessel.Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vessel.
the three icons of gooey teen horror.
Listen, I read one XKCD a very long time ago about how trochees, two-syllable words with the emphasis on the first, just work their way into your brain, and I've never forgotten it.Amber, do you have anything you'd like to plug?
Honestly, not off the top of my head, no.I'm happy to hang out.I'm glad to be here. I'm going to put a link to Jalopnik anyway in the description so people can read your work.You know what?I do actually have something I can plug.What?
Me and some friends of mine.Some friends of mine and I. I'm a writer.I can use grammar. have been organizing, if you are a New York area listener, an all-trans rock climbing group.
So if you are trans and have ever been interested in going bouldering, come hang out with us.Tee Climbing NYC.We hang out at Vital in Williamsburg.And we'd love to hang out with you.
That's awesome.Yeah, I've been seeing the video-slash-photos you've been posting of getting all that good shoulder muscle in your climbs.
You saw the one from Monday, huh?Yeah, yeah, I did.I was like, damn, okay, rock climbing good.Next time you're out in the city, come hang.We'll let you come.
Ah, thank you, I appreciate that. To support the show directly, subscribe at patreon.com slash thejenna.Every month, subscribers can submit prompts that get added to the ingredient list.We didn't use any of them this time.
They were all former guest prompts.But that is not always the case, so you can help guide the podcast and our brainstorming at patreon.com slash thejenna.Amber, what's one adjective, gameplay type, premise, etc.
that you would like to add to the ingredient list?
I'm thinking of an adjective that is an aesthetic element, and it is Riot Grrl.
Oooooh.I love Riot Grrl stuff, yes.
I saw box art the other day for a TTRPG based on Tank Grrl, and that has not left my head.
I love Tank Grrl too.Right?Oh my god.What an incredible piece of media. society where I'm ready to review the Tank Girl movie and find that.I'm ready to do a Jennifer's Body but with Tank Girl.So whenever y'all are ready to meet me there, I'm ready.
And you know what?Let's do the comics too.
Yeah, the comics are also just spectacular.You can get omnibuses, I think, of a lot of them.There's tons of them, though.It can be hard to parse how much there is.There are so many, yeah.But they are extraordinarily worthwhile.
And they're from the guy who does gorillas, right?
Yeah, yeah.I think there's some crossover.He's done a bunch of other stuff.
Isn't he a frontrunner to be Banksy?
I read that at some point that he's like one of the people that people suspect of being Banksy.
That's really crazy. Jamie Hewlett.Jamie Hewlett was the name I was thinking of.That's great.Well, I'm going to go on a deep dive about that.I don't think one man can make Tank Girl and the Gorillas and be Banksy.I just, I refuse.
It feels unfair, right?Like what's left for the rest of us?
Yeah.What were we supposed to do?Make flesh games?Fine.I mean, I guess.We did.It's okay.
I would rather make the flesh game than be Banksy.I'll be honest.
Yeah, same.But I would rather make Tank Girl than Vessel.
It's a ranking.It's a ranking for sure.Thank you for joining me, Amber.
Thank you for having me.This was so much fun.
Good.Thank you for listening to Big Game Hunger.And don't forget to wishlist Vessel on Steam.Release date TBD.
Sign in
