Return of the Obra Dinn Part 1

**Notable events**

**Pre-game Show**

* Sean P confuses the title for "Return to Obra Dinn" "Return to the Obra Dinn" and "Return of Obra Dinn"
* Leigh has three mugs, one with tea, one with two spoons, one with nothing at all
* The beta testers of Leigh's new game are called farmhands
* Both Seans think "Eyes wide shut" is a weird movie
* Leigh has only watched the weird parts of that movie (on youtube) and did not think them that weird
* Sean B questions if that was Kubrick's last movie: Sean P replies that that was A.I., the point where Spielberg took over is noticeable because of the use of 100% cg.
* Both Seans recommend AI to Leigh, who hasn't seen it yet.
* Early access to University (Sean P) is called early decision (Sean B)
* Season pass structure for University is coming according to Sean B

**During game**

* Sean P states one of Lucas Pope's consistent failings as a designer is his disrespect of dither transitions
* File 3 is chosen
* Sean P compares a skeleton to the viewers wanting them to play the game
* Sean P coins the term auto-ludology, where you make a game specifically for yourself
* The opening preface reminds Sean B and Leigh of Myst. Leigh: It is not a "Myst" opportunity
* Leigh makes a joke about sea men and apologizes immediately
* The game does not have a relational database, but since they never fuck up that shouldn't be a problem (Sean P)
* The game shows a spectacular way to get around hiring an animator (Sean P)
* The smoking trail is like Donny Darko (Leigh)
* Both Seans have seen and liked the show "the terror"
* Each snapshot is like a snuff film (Leigh)

**Post Game**

* Different type of fun, didn't laugh once but leaned in the whole time (Sean P)
* One of the most creative story telling style games seen.
* Sean B: Similar to Diorama Games (term not heard before by Leigh)
* Environmental narrative on steroids. Piece together what has happened or what is happening in a space by observing the things that happened at particular times
* Control, card game that got turned into a digital game by mike rosmastler(?) and jamie (?)
* Story of last four minutes on a space station and you could follow the crew in 15 second intervals
* Sean P: Writing a linear sequence in a story is the hardest thing (change chapter 3 and 5 if you change anything in 4)
* linear storytelling is hard, especially in a game. hard/expensive.
* story driven games last 6-8 hours tops
* dark souls cheats. world is encyclopaedia, locations are entries about what happened in a location
* no need to worry about connections between entries, get a sense of a mythos, not a sequential story
* obra dinn leveraging same idea
* snippet and snapshot, brain fills it in. super effective because assumptions are made by the player (justifying behaviour)
* connect them conceptionally
* Sean B: historical events like wars, wikipedia linked articles.
* articles not sequentially linked but different context and more background to understand situation it is part of better
* constructing narrative in my head, larger than articles has a linear flow without reading it in a linear way
* Sean P: linear story of this game heightened by visceral sequences, this game avoids trappings of sequence to sequence story telling problems.
* favorite exiting hand signals were shown (Leigh waved, Sean P peace sign, Sean B rock on)