Bombin' the A.M. With Zoe Quinn

@tooprime:

If people are commenting on how she looks they are insane. There's few things more juvenile then that.

Wallowing in negative emotions is part of it though. For some people, it doesn't seem to be purely a chemical imbalance, but is also a cognitive problem. Cognitive therapy for depression (which can be used in addition to prescriptions) is about dealing with the negative thoughts/feelings and not letting them spiral out of control. It's easy for a depressed person to start thinking irrationally, that they're a worthless peice of shit, will never have love, etc. and get worse and worse. Learning to catch that before it spirals can be really beneficial.

@mikemcn said:

It is.

Pet my cat.

Controversy!

Zoe, you giant lovable nerd. Where is my "Rescue the Beagles 2"? My niece and I are waiting.

Have you played Actual Sunlight? There can be more games about depression, the darker side of real human feelings.

@hollitz: Bees don't have said knees @_@

Still not interested, but hey good on Spooks for keeping the ball rolling.

Depression Quest made me feel real shitty, and 'wallow' in the negative emotions for a bit, then I picked up the phone and made an appointment with my doctor.

I can't imagine that much news happens between Friday and Monday, maybe they thought 2 news shows so close together didn't make much sense?

Holy crap what an interesting interview! Also <3.

Exactly!

Ironic, considering Depression Quest is a very cut-and-dry text adventure.

Been hearing about this game for a while, with little to no interest (I eventually conquered depression after a long struggle, it's possible!).

But this was an interesting interview and I guess I'm curious to see what this game actually is.

That was a really good edition of the show, and a great guest!

This video was pretty cool. Thanks for coming on Zoe!

As someone who's been fortunate enough not to suffer from any form of depression so far in my life, I'm really glad to see things like Depression Quest helping to raise general awareness/understanding of the issue, and encourage those who suffer from it to seek appropriate help. Also I too think cats are pretty rad.

Your post was great, too :)

Cool interview. Always been interested in Twine and Depression Quest.

@bisonhero said:

@cooljammer00 said:

I remember reading on Patrick's Tumblr that someone wrote in saying "I didn't like Depression Quest. People kept trying to help me and I just wouldn't get better and it was so frustrating" and someone else replied that that was the entire point of the game.

Haha, that reminds me of this:

There were LGBTQ people flipping out on Cellar Door Games' Twitter account when the demo was out, saying "I know what the gay trait does. You're a monster", stuff like that. If the gay trait really was completely nothing all along (other than I think getting health from the male statue instead of the female one) then Cellar Door really shouldn't have been attacked over nothing.

Yeah, I'm kind of burning out on this show. I'll still check it out once in a while because I have lengthy commutes during the week, but it's just falling a little flat to me. I posted a few weeks ago since I was kind of disappointed in it becoming "Bombcast-Lite: East Coast Edition" (what are you playing / brief news discussion / emails in the form of user questions. minus the weird off-topic stuff that has grown to become possibly my favorite thing about the regular Bombcast) and I'm hoping this episode doesn't indicate that the guest episodes are going to essentially be dumptrucks with a different name. I turned this episode off about halfway through. If there's a guest on, fine, but I'm hoping to hear them talk with the regulars about what's actually going on with gaming in general. Maybe I read too much into the original "morning zoo" gimmick this show was trying to play off of. Shrug.

It's an interactive story, not a video game. It's basically a choose your own adventure, much like the Walking Dead. There are no real hurdles to overcome through gameplay elements, therefore it's not a game. That's not to see it's a bad interactive story, it's just not a game.

Prepare to have your mind blown.

An interactive story can be a video game or a book.

I'll give you a moment to gather the shattered fragments of your reality.

@cooljammer00 said:

@bisonhero said:

@cooljammer00 said:

I remember reading on Patrick's Tumblr that someone wrote in saying "I didn't like Depression Quest. People kept trying to help me and I just wouldn't get better and it was so frustrating" and someone else replied that that was the entire point of the game.

Haha, that reminds me of this:

There were LGBTQ people flipping out on Cellar Door Games' Twitter account when the demo was out, saying "I know what the gay trait does. You're a monster", stuff like that. If the gay trait really was completely nothing all along (other than I think getting health from the male statue instead of the female one) then Cellar Door really shouldn't have been attacked over nothing.

Yeah, the gay trait has no gameplay ramifications, it's just if you happen to beat the game with a gay character, the ending cutscene shows them return to a spouse of the same gender (the normal version of the ending cutscene shows the player character return to a spouse of the opposite gender).

Hero, but cats steal your show. Just like Mario in 3D World.

Wait, you say you're hoping to hear them discuss the latest news and games with the guest but is also disappointed in the show becoming Bombcast-lite?

That might be my favorite bombing the am yet

Zoe seems like the most awesome person. I will definely try to support all her endeavors going forward.

I think I have that weird food disease too though. Everyday for some reason I get this urge to consume food and spend insane amounts of money doing so :(

This is getting to be one of my favourites shows in any platform, keep the good work.

@tooprime said:

I'm pretty sure that was on purpose.

I'd argue that interactive stories are games in the same way as documentaries are movies. There is a certain distinction that is very key there and although they both belong to the same family of "cinema" one does not equate the other, because what we typically understand as a "movie" is not the same thing as when we think of a "documentary."

Similarly interactive stories are technically part of gaming, but it's not exactly the sort of thing we associate with what most people know as modern "video games."

@kanerobot said:

Since this feature's inception last year I frequently tuned in to listen to Alex and Patrick talk about the news, which was always very interesting, led to good talk in the comments, and provided something that Bombcast very frequently fails to do (that being, actual talk about news). Since this feature has become so much more guest and chit-chat focused I've struggled to make myself watch it. I understand very much where you're both coming from.

@marokai: I can understand how they feel. Personally, I work from home, so I usually always have something playing on the other monitor, only rarely glancing at the actual video. And honestly, if you do enjoy this weekly show but don't feel like watching it, they make an audio podcast version of it. The audio version is actually great, just treat it like a radio morning show.

Great show guys! Keep up the good work, I love it when you have interesting guests on.

@humanity: That's a matter of genre though. I'd absolutely agree that 'documentary' is a top level genre within that medium, but to suggest that 'interactive story' falls outside of this medium is absurd.

It's the same way non-fiction books are still literature. Text adventures and the like might not be what's prevalent among modern video games, but that's certainly no excuse to dissociate it from the medium as a whole.

Really like Zoe Quinn! I hope she has a lot of continued success.

I honestly don't think they meet the criteria of what video games are these days. They are exactly what the title suggests, interactive stories, nothing more, nothing less. The level of interactivity found in video games is on a completely different level than that found in these novels.

The thing is you seem to think it is demeaning or derogatory to place them outside of this category, and it isn't - it's just classifying them correctly. If you want to talk semantics then I'd argue that the term "video games" is unique in that it differentiates itself from other types of games, and simultaneously is exemplified by, the "video" part of the title - an element that is missing in interactive novels as they're mostly text that is sometimes accompanied by simple illustrations. There is no animation, no little dude running and hopping around, and in the beginning that was what video games were all about.

That is why I don't consider them video games. I'm getting a story with branching paths and pre-determined outcomes, and this much is true for video games as well, but I'm not getting that other important part of the puzzle, mainly the video.

But to be honest this really isn't worth arguing about.

I had heard about Depression Quest but only bits and pieces. I really dig that it exists.

A little late commenting on this one. To all the people arguing over whether or not depression quest is a game or whether or not it helps people with depression...I think you might be missing the point. I can't say for sure, but I would imagine that Zoe made this game for herself, because she needed to. Your opinion of it is secondary to that. I'm sure she's happy that people have responded well to it, but it's probably more important to her that she simply was able to tell a story through a medium she was comfortable with.

@humanity: Video games were not all about the animations or a specific type of gameplay, they were all about interactions and feedback in a digital format, be it exemplified with Pong or Adventure. Dots and lines, static text and images, or simple figures on screen were sufficient visual components. Just so, the simplest interactive stories are probably among the most basic forms of a video game. The video part being the format and the textual interface, the game part being your interaction through commands or choices.

You enter a room and encounter a monster.

>Say hi

>Say hi with axe

>Leave room

That one room alone would constitute a video game if it responded to your selection, albeit a tiny game.

The definition of "video game" didn't change when we entered the modern era of gaming, though standards have generally probably increased. Perhaps that has altered the perception of what exactly a video game is to some people. Unfortunately all of those perceived restrictions to the definition are unfounded.

It's as silly as someone saying a movie isn't a movie because it doesn't have any talking, or that a piece of literature isn't literature if it doesn't exist as a physical book. Really, they're just a reflection of an individual's own standards.

And it's not that it's demeaning; I'm not hurt by someone insisting things like The Walking Dead, Gone Home, Don't Shit Your Pants, Broken Age, or Depression Quest aren't video games. It's just often an exceptional display of stupidity (mind you, the way you're approaching the discussion is very far from that). That alone makes it about as worthy of an argument as anything else on the internet, which admittedly means it's not particularly worthy at all.

Ultimately, some bloke thinking x game actually isn't a game for whatever reason is no sweat off my back, just like flat-earthers and the Church of Yeezy don't keep me up at night. But sometimes it's fun to talk about.

@theht: I think a more accurate comparison would be to say a movie isn't a movie if it only has sound and no picture or a book isn't a book if it's not written down. Like I said this whole conversation is just a lot of semantics. You say it's all unfounded but the sad reality is that in the end this is my opinion against yours. Just to clarify, I'm not trying to say it's not a game at all - it is obviously a form of digital entertainment. I'm simply being a pain in the butt about the classification here as I honestly don't think you should include interactive novels in the same overall category as games like Gears of War or Uncharted.

You are killing it with the interviews I care about, Klepek. Mad props, sir!