Poll: The Next Video (non-binding) (Patreon)

Hey team! Freelance gig is coming along nicely but still has a ways to go. It's been too long since I put something on the channel, so I wanna make something interesting but not too labor intensive. Something CO-VID sized, i.e. not The Alt-Right Playbook or the neo-noir video. So let's try something:

I'ma give you four pitches. They're all ideas I've been considering lately, and I find all of them interesting. The muse is being fickle about which one I wanna tackle next, and I'm curious if your response will nudge me one way or another. So, after reading them, click your fave(s) in the poll to let me know what seems exciting!

For those of you apt to say "just make whatever you want": these are all interesting to me and very well may all get made in time. (A couple have been kicking around for years and it's clear they won't go away.) And this is not binding - I will, in the end, do whatever feels right. But your reaction can help me decide. :)

PITCHES

Roguelike EnnuiI put 1500 hours into Nuclear Throne. During that time, it was one of my top 5 games of all time. Since I stopped playing, I haven't thought very fondly of it. I mean, it's unambiguously a great game, but the joy was leeched out during those 1500 hours. I have some notes from early on in my time with it that are just gushing about how awesome it is, and my feelings now are so... weird. I've wanted to talk about this tension for a long time, but never knew what the video was about, so there's just a bunch of thoughts scattered around in various notes on my computer. But, looking at it all, I think it's a video about mental health?

What Throwback Shooters Are Throwing Back ToAs the "boomer shooter" renaissance continues, I've noticed something: the points of reference are moving forward in time. the first wave of throwback shooters were pulling from 2.5D games like DOOM, Duke Nukem, and Blood. A few pulled from Quake. But, lately, a lot of mechanics from later games have been creeping in - games like F.E.A.R., Max Payne, and Tribes 2. I had always assumed "boomer shooters" harkened back to the days before Half-Life, when FPSes were meathead power fantasies, but now we're seeing games that draw from Half-Life and its contemporaries. If throwback shooters reject modern design and draw from the past, what demarcates "modern" from "past"? At what point do we consider the boomer shooter to be in its second wave? Poking at nostalgia the way the last Who Shot Guybrush Threepwood poked at genre.

John Wick/High Rise/Snowpiercer - Do Rules Separate Us From The Animals?This has been kicking around a while and it won't leave me alone so I clearly wanna do something with it. Snowpiercer, High Rise, and the John Wick series are all, in their ways, about "civilization." They all shrink civilization down to a manageable metaphor, like those "if the world were a city of 1000" thought experiments. The people in power are represented, in Snowpiercer, by the front car of the train; by the penthouse in High Rise; and by the high table in John Wick. And all three are very concerned with people obeying the rules set by these higher ups, and about people knowing their place. The Ending of John Wick 3 teased something akin to the endings of High Rise and Snowpiercer; did John Wick 4 deliver on that promise? And do we agree with the ways these stories grapple with power and civility?

A Homily for Captain AmericaRecently thought of a way to discuss Chris Evans' Captain America, through the lens of this one variant of the trolley problem: basically, if you pose the usual trolley problem to people - if a trolley is going to kill 5 people on some tracks, would you pull a lever that diverts it, saving 5 lives but killing a single person on the other track? - 90% of people say they would pull the lever. They believe it is ethical to sacrifice one person to save five. But when asked another way - instead of pulling a lever to divert a trolley, would you push someone on the tracks to stop the train - 90% of people say no. They believe in sacrificing one to save five when it's a lever, but not when it's a shove. One feels like a moral calculation, and one feels like a murder, even though the outcome is the same. Captain America's refusal to sacrifice Vision in Infinity War ("we don't trade lives") even though many Wakandans die defending him is an example of this: sacrificing Vision is a murder, where losing those Wakandans is pulling a lever. Let's talk about the ethical realities herein.

Poll follows; click all that apply (though be aware clicking all four doesn't tell me anything!).