Game Theory: Are Theories KILLING Video Games?

a portion of this episode is sponsored by capital one shopping let me tell you a story a true story a story about an email i received from a game developer that for privacy reasons has to go nameless but let me assure you that it's someone who works on a game franchise that you're quite familiar with anyway we'd done a theory or two trying to predict the plot line and some early twists for their upcoming game out of the blue i received this email from the ceo of the company asking me if i had a mole on the inside feeding me information now obviously it was a joke but also not quite a joke anyway i was just ecstatic that we were on the right track and then the game came out and it was nothing like our theory had predicted it also seemed rushed and a bit unpolished like a lot had been changed in the game last minute it got me wondering whether our theories had prompted them to change the game in order to move the storyline away from what i'd predicted but no that that couldn't be right right are developers actually changing their games in response to fan theories well friends that's exactly what i aim to find out today [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello internet welcome to game theory the show that sixty percent of the time gets it right every time lately and maybe it's just me i've been seeing a lot of discussion around my role uh this channel's role in the wider games industry obviously i got that email that i mentioned in the cold open but i also had this random conversation the other week with someone who said that getting a theory video made for your series is like landing a white whale let's just make sure that there are fewer harpoons there ahab there's also been videos from creators like dags and sagan hawks that explore the evolution of indie horror and our specific role in that if you're lucky enough you may get the blessing of the god set as a game theory video on your story in this era of post-fanath indie horror it can be really easy to want to chase that trend filling your game with secret lore but if it doesn't fit your concept don't do it don't chase that game theory video there's also meme material like this no don't get me wrong i don't bring all this up to be self-aggrandizing like oh look at how important we are to the games industry i bring all this up to question the assumption is this actually true is there evidence to suggest that games are changing themselves in response to theorists have we and other online theorists shaped the way that games are made and marketed and has this sometimes resulted in worse games well first and foremost we know that we have a very strong impact on search results last may during our video on the game only cans i made a quick offhand joke about the 19 year old meme lemon party that new flavors name lemon party by the way do not google that super random right but wouldn't you know it off of that very brief mention suddenly searches for the term lemon party hit their highest point in five years and this is after we told you to not google it so do me a favor don't hit that subscribe button and absolutely do not leave a comment that has the word jump kick in it don't you dare don't you even think about it i will be so disappointed in you if you do but that's just a search term what about an actual game well we dug around using google trends which if you're not familiar tracks the volume of search traffic over time data that can then be filtered by geographic region and search platform so we started to look at games that the channel had covered in the past starting with one from four years ago the vr game duck season if you don't remember this one it had a cute animal mascot a horrible family dead kids a 1980s aesthetic and none of this is really helping narrow it down isn't it it was our mission in that first video to reveal the identity of the murderous dog mascot behind it all just another normal day over here at game theory that video is one of our best performing videos of all time with over 19 million views so we stuck the term duck season into google trends and would you know it the timing of our video's release corresponded to the highest peak in search traffic ever for both youtube and on the web in general other spikes and trends certainly seemed to exist immediately after the game's release when jacksepticeye corey extension and others played the game but in december of 2017 web search had dropped to 47 percent of the high then in january immediately after our theory 100 all-time high of search traffic if we get even more granular you can see that the highest point from 12 1 2017 to 2018 is december 31st the day after our video came out we kept searching and we kept seeing the same thing over and over again mobile game lily's garden video june 22nd 2021 100 spike in youtube search immediately afterward andy's apple farm game released november 26 2021 our video december 12th 2021 100 spike and it wasn't just for game theory either night mind a theorist for all things creepy had a video on catastrophe crow 64 in early february 2021 and sure enough we see a sizeable spike in trends for the united states right after the video releases when you run the same trend search worldwide get a different 100 during the week of february 21st to 27th when dross rotsenk award-winning venezuelan youtuber released his video on the topic and then our video came out on march 13th setting a new higher benchmark for the whole thing theorists not just us it would seem get people excited to search for more info on the games that they talk about but okay this is all for small titles that no one would normally be searching for what about something more mainstream well we see this trend happening with massive titles as well in 2019 minecraft saw this massive resurgence in popularity with its 10-year anniversary happening in may and then pewdiepie picking up the game in june long live svens fenson but despite a year full of huge events for this long-running massively popular series searches for minecraft peaked on both youtube and on the web between july 21st and 27th the week we started our deep dive lore analysis into the game in fact that week was the most searched that minecraft had been since 2015 a record that has only been surpassed in mid-2020 by the surge of some guy that you might be familiar with dream even when you're talking about crazy viral hits like among us the game hits its peak in web search on september 20th our first video on the title came out the day before september 19th at this point it certainly seemed like there was a strong correlation between our coverage of a game and it reaching the height of its search traffic immediately thereafter and honestly it does make some amount of anecdotal sense when you watch our stuff and we tell you that there's something cool and compelling in this game naturally some of you are going to want to know more you're going to want to find more clues and help solve the mystery i mean why else do you think we've done 50 videos on fnaf at this point as theorists we're not just engaging with these games at a surface level making jokes at a game and then moving on to the next like a lot of let's players tend to do we're trying to immerse you in these worlds i like the storytelling that's being done inside the games or should be being done inside these games and heck if you like our little primer on it then you're inclined to dig deeper and explore the world for yourself but that's just talking about audience interest what i want to know now is whether these trends have led developers to start paying attention to us have online theorists actually made an impact in the way that games are marketed and made now before i tell you about our hypothetical impact let me tell you about something that'll definitely have an impact on your wallet our sponsor for this portion of today's video capital one shopping buying games these days is increasingly more expensive which is especially frustrating when all you're getting is a broken buggy mess but the thing is most of us don't really think about where we're buying our games from i know i just often go to amazon for my console games because it's more convenient which means that we're at the mercy of those companies and whatever prices they choose this is actually where capital one shopping comes in the capital one shopping browser extension allows you to compare prices from all across the internet ensuring that you are getting the best available deal online plus once you find the place with the best deal capital one shopping takes it one step further it scours the internet for coupon codes coupons that actually work not like the ones that you spent hours looking for only to have it expired great now i'm paying more money while also losing hours off of my life so i'm very thankful that capital one shopping is dedicated to not only saving me money but also saving me time which you know if you saw my schedule you'd know that every minute matters and by using capital one shopping when buying the stuff you'd be picking up online anyway you earn yourself capital one shopping rewards that can then be redeemed for gift cards so by using capital one shopping you're buying the stuff that you'd be buying online anyway you're ensuring that you're paying the lowest price available online that you're using relevant coupon codes that are gonna save you money and hey along the way you're also earning rewards that can then be redeemed for gift cards which are basically the equivalent of just more money it is a win-win-win-win scenario and the best part of all of it anyone can enjoy these savings you don't have to be a capital one card user or anything just go to capitaloneshopping.com or you know the deal at this point go down to the description below click the link download the free browser extension and start saving right now every purchase that you make without this is costing you money so thanks again to capital one shopping for saving me money and for sponsoring this part of the episode now let's get back to the data let's start with the game that we actually went back to recently merge mansion originally we covered this mobile games lore on october 24th 2021 concluding that grandma is a cold-blooded murderer in disguise shortly after our theory a message got sent out to players by the game itself telling them that grandma did nothing wrong she has nothing to hide followed by a youtube link where you could find four live-action videos starring actress and sledgehammer enthusiast kathy bates can i prove that we were the thing that prompted him to go with that campaign no no i can't but does the timing work out for them to have seen our theory and then leaned into the whole granny's innocent wink wink angle you betcha that's some circumstantial evidence but can we make a more one-to-one connection what about something more substantial something a bit more narrative driven what about bendy and the ink machine we made a theory after the release of chapter 2 talking about this random angel character this character that had shown up in a random poster on the walls speculating that she was going to be important to the story moving forward first we'll see alice take center stage as the game goes on like betty boop we'll hear about how her popularity skyrocketed surpassing bendy sure enough when chapter 3 released 123 days after the video the world was introduced to alice angel she was front and center now did we predict what the creators were gonna do with alice all along or did we somehow speak this new character into being according to mike mood in an interview we'd like to say we knew exactly what was gonna happen but really at the end of the day we knew the beginning and we knew the end of the game everything that happened in between was kind of developed as we went along in chapter two we had a poster of alice angel and that was just one poster there was nothing explaining what this character was the fans just started doing fan art they just fell in love with the character and it made it really obvious that chapter 3 should be about alice angel that right there is pretty conclusive they literally took ideas from the fan community and used them to fill out their story which let me be clear isn't a bad thing it's awesome to listen to the fans and respond to the things that they're all most excited about but it's clear that we the collective we playing these games not just us theorists we influenced how bendy turned out those middle chapters so now we're starting to see how theories can have an influence for the better or for the worse which segues nicely to the 300 pound elephant in the room hello neighbor at least he's a dapper elephant i mean he wears a sweater vest and everything now you might remember this little series of tweets from april 2020. for anyone that doesn't tinybuild one of the developers for hello neighbor had just released a tv pilot and began tagging my twitter in their posts seemingly trying to get another theory out of me however some have suggested that this block of tweets is part of a larger pattern of behavior a pattern that implies that tiny build changed the game hello neighbor during development to chase theory videos like ours but is that true to figure it out we decided to look at the development cycle for the game i'm going to skip the first couple of alphas because they didn't give us too much to work with basically during this period hello neighbor's popularity was doing fine but nothing to write home about alpha 2 was released on november 22 2016 27 days after the last build in fact up until this point tinybuild was releasing a new version of hello neighbor every 27 to 30 days like clockwork and wouldn't you know 30 days after alpha 2 alpha 3 gets released players are treated to a much larger house with more rooms and a ton more to look at but then things start to get weird you see sandwiched in there on december 15th is the release of our two-part hello neighbor expose which looked at all the demonic and satanic symbols around our dear mr rogers wannabe in the latest alpha build of the game you can find a house on a darkened street and look at the bottom of his shoes a seal that reads six six six the sign of the beast combined these two videos have been viewed 19.3 million times now there's such a short time period between our video on the 15th and the alpha 3 release that there's no way our video could have altered that version of the game beyond that though things get a little bit odd alpha 4 is released may the 4th 2017 a whopping 133 days after alpha 3. now remember all the other releases were only a month apart but alpha 4 was in development for over 4 times the length of anything prior to it it's also an oddly similar amount of time to the gap between our video on alice angel and the release of bendy chapter 3. but it wasn't just the length of time between versions that was noteworthy it was also what tinybuild had used the lengthy design time to create specifically the game's brand new nightmare sequences we're broken away from the main stealth gameplay that had been the selling feature up to that point and transported to another section to play surreal minigames where lore takes the center stage and this is the trend that would continue until the game's release once hello neighbor came out it was disappointing to say the least a lot of people were really excited about this game myself included the original concept of an ai learning how you broke into a house and changing tactics accordingly was brilliant but it seemed that there was a decision made to chase the hype at the cost of this original concept they changed tactics and focused more on the lore of the series which again seems to be backed up by the tweets and their eventual book series and their tv pilots and in turn they lost focus on the game itself which became a broken buggy mess but of course if we're talking about buggy games no one else takes the cake like security breach uh freddy freddy i'm gonna shove a beak inside of you and you are going to be able to talk better you did you hate the idea that much you haven't seen so many things and yet you've seen karate kid huh yeah oh hey wait oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no what happened what happened what happened i i fell through the wormhole apparently you've watched my theories on the game you'll know that i walked away confused and disappointed with the lore it felt like the pieces didn't all quite fit together and now there's a ton of speculation about whether or not the game that we got was the game that was intended and to be honest i'm right there with you i get it we released a video back in late 2020 right around when security breach was due to launch but a few weeks later the game was delayed we did another theory in april of 2021 when the game was once again due to release but shortly after the game was once again delayed both of these videos were heavy on the predictions as to what the game was going to be about so would it be that strange to believe that we may have gotten a bit too close if you look at all the content that was cut from the game via channels like tetra bit gaming you start to see elements of the original story start to poke through like the fact that at one point in development there was such a thing called the vani meter and as that vanity meter got full security guard vanessa would disappear only to transform into the evil vani something that we had actually theorized about a lot but also something the final game was weirdly cagey about now i can't necessarily say that i have solid proof that security breach changed things based on online theories but scott himself has admitted that he's changed things based on what the fan base has found interesting as scott in his own word says i watch all the game theory videos you know and you know me and matt have some had sometimes had an antagonistic relationship back and forth you know i inconvenienced him with my games and sometimes he inconvenes me with his theories you know but it's all in good fun he did a video on that box and he kind of said that he thinks the contents of the box changed over the years i saw that i was like he's absolutely right he's absolutely right the contents of that box have changed over the years what i was intending the game to be when it happened and then after the reaction of it i was like i need to i need to craft this into something better for the people who see this is important and that kind of indirectly does change the contents of the box you know because it because it changes the contents of everything that came before when you start red counting lore elements or changing the details within a game your story and in turn your fan base that theorized and loved your game are the ones that ultimately suffer let's be honest snap floor always been complicated even when you're not talking about these changes but it never felt like the games suffered it felt like scott was very much in control of the story and where it was going but security breach was just a lot messier than your standard freddy fazbear experience from a gameplay standpoint and from a lore standpoint and if fan theories were right and they changed the original story because of it well then it would explain why the game was so unpolished and the lore so incomplete by rushing to try and make something surprising they ultimately shot themselves in the foot they changed elements of the story to make it different but forgot to take everything out and so we're left wondering if vani and vanessa are the same person which everything up to that point had been leading up to they even went back and changed the princess's name in the game files back to princess instead of cassidy the one lore piece that we felt like we had nailed they've now changed retroactively which makes it all the more confusing where we right and they changed it was this an easter egg was it intentional who knows just let us have something and you see that's the point let us have something developers if you're watching just let us be right don't be afraid that youtubers or reddit threads guessing the story is gonna make your game any less fun if anything it adds to the excitement for us theorists when we get to that final boss and the twist is revealed and we realize that we had called it all along that is way more satisfying than a half-finished game with a messy story meant to subvert our expectations it means that congratulations you laid out the clues in a sensible way that some very dedicated fans were able to follow and piece together and hey if and when we get stuff wrong that's great too we're okay with that it just means that we have more to theorize about in the end don't sacrifice your game's integrity just trying to make us wrong in retrospect i think game of thrones author george r.r martin said it best you know i have certain things that i'm laying clues for that there'll be revelations later on some people had put together those clues even as early as 1998 or adding things together what do i do with that what do i do with that the year these people have guessed the secret that i'm going to reveal in book six people have already guessed that here and book two is just out you really have two choices there you can ignore it and proceed with your plan despite the fact that some people know where you're going or you can get all panicky and say oh my god they figured it out i can't let that be i'll have to change it i'll have to go in a different direction and i think some writers do that and i think that's always a mistake yeah you know if you've planned your book that the butler did it and then you read an internet someone has figured out that the butler did it and you suddenly change in mid-stream and it was the chambermaid who did it then you screw up the whole book because you get these just foreshadowing early on and you've got these little clues you planted now they're dead ends and you have to introduce other clues and you're retconning it's a mess we know developers recognize the impact reactions from fans and youtubers have and at times include extras and games for us to find hoping for us to get excited about finding them but too many games that started out in a really good place with a passionate team making something they love get a taste of that hype train and start changing things suddenly they're trying to chase the train for just one more ride rather than staying the course obviously we love great games with hidden lore but not at the cost of everything else we love when developers try and stretch themselves to achieve something special but we don't want to see internet clout cause them to compromise their vision just make the game and the story that you want to make the one you intend to make because if it's well made and enjoyable then we'll inevitably want to play it and talk about it if we guess the story early that's totally okay add some easter eggs pointing to the next installment if you get something wrong that's okay too and if you don't want to include any real lore at all fine i'll still be here ready to claim that it's secretly a sequel to earthbound anyway let them argue their theories whether they're right whether they're wrong but i don't need to know about that but hey that's just a theory a game theory thanks for watching you

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 4,536,815

Keywords: fnaf, five nights at freddy's, five nights at freddy's security breach, fnaf security breach, bendy, bendy and the ink machine, bendy and the dark revival, hello neighbor, hello neighbor 2, hello neighbor explained, fnaf explained, bendy explained, hello neighbor 2 gameplay, fnaf security breach all endings, game theory, game theorists, matpat, matpat ruined fnaf, did matpat ruin fnaf, Capital One, Capital One Shopping, shopping, coupon, coupon codes

Id: 4vczeQsaWSA

Length: 21min 15sec (1275 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 23 2022