Matt Chat is a KZread show hosted and produced by Dr. Matt Barton, a professor at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Author of several books on the history of videogames, Matt is among the best-known academics studying videogames today.
This channel is for game developers, especially those making CRPG (computer role-playing games) and Adventure Games. If you want to know the stories behind games like Ultima, Wizardry, or Quest for Glory, you'll love my content. The show is supported directly by fans via Patreon.
"I think these are the most definitive interviews with me so far. One of the most pleasant interviews I've ever been in." -- George "The Fat Man" Sanger
"Matt, after plenty of requests, this was the first interview given in about 15 years. I thought you did a great job with the interview. Pleased so many people found it informative. Thanks for the opportunity to speak my mind to your fans." -- Robert Sirotek
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Post-apocalyptic shapshifter mayhem? This is gonna be awesome!
thanks for another great ep matt !
Interesting that Heineken 0.0 scored so highly after you were somewhat unimpressed by a bunch of NA craft beers. But I agree, it is pretty hard to tell apart from the original.
I'll be sure to give this game a try. It's right up my alley with the list of its major influences. Sorry to hear about the bad launch. Keep it up with the patches and it'll turn around. I'm sure that it's a special game. It'll become obvious with time. Keep it up!
Thanks and much appreciated!
When listening to the interview, I realised I made a grave error: I said "Warlords III", but I meant "Warlords II", the one that came out in 1993. I shall atone for my sin by posting this comment. Amazing work Roger Keating, Ian Trout, Steve Fawkner and crew. I only found out today that Strategic Studies Group was also an Australian game development studio. And Stone and Wood PACIFIC Ale is the one, Matt.
Thanks for the shoutout Craig! Great interview Matt!
No worries and thanks for the ongoing support and encouragement!
This guy is like the Freedom Alternative of computer games 🇷🇴 ❤🇷🇴
This scenario sounds absolutely fascinating (especially to those interested in Australia who will never be able to afford to go there)! Let's try to help them recover from the rough launch and make a classic absolution arc!
That would be amazing - thank you! If you play and enjoy the game, please do leave a positive review on whatever platform you play on, as every single one of them helps!
@@DropBearBytes Sure thing, but FWIW I don't usually play this new breed of CRPGs, I'm retro only, so I might not be able to figure it out.But this story is so compelling, I can't just not give it a try. Also, I'm interested in Australia, but will almost certainly never be able to go there.
2:09:22 YES! Please do a Let's Play of Broken Roads!
This guy must be like IQ 200 or something 🤯
A wildly ambitious project with educational and artistic merit.
Sounds completely awesome; I'll give it a chance.
Great to hear - thank you!
P.S. I will never realistically have time to play this game, but I would like to support philophical post-apocalypse work - is there any place I can donate twenty bucks to Craig Ritchie?
That's super kind - thank you. Maybe the game will go on sale for that cheap one day, but for now I reckon twenty bucks donated to Matt's Patreon would actually be the best use of it. His channel is awesome, under-appreciated/under-supported, and if you show that twenty bucks came from this video then HE IS OBLIGATED TO HAVE US ON AGAIN.
Two guys even more into post-apocalypse than I am: jackpot
Haven't actually played this myself yet. Hated how many jumped on that supposedly 8ish hour campaign length though originating from a popular YT genre reviewer. Who's since admitted he's rushing through games. Why? The original Fallout would have a real hard time nowadays for all the wrong reasons. As due to its focus on multiple quest solutions, non-linearity and reactivity you can finish that in between two coffee snacks if you wanna. A focus on reactivity and open quests eats into critical path / campaign length. ALWAYS. Think of Bloodlines, and how picking clans even gets you a completely different kind of experience (Malkavians, anyone?). No wonder barely anybody is running with those ideas anymore. This isn't about replayability purely. This is about choices actually mattering. Those are like the pinnacle in player agency. And have been arguably more present in Immersive Sims more recent (Arkane's underrated Prey) than in traditional C/RPGs. PS: That also got a 4/10 on IGN on release. ;) Meanwhile, CRPGs absolutely padding their playtime with paste© trash combat and linear fetch quests are getting away with it. As it may be padding. But at least it's 80 hours of padding. Outside of more recent BG3, every dev is on a budget. And it often shows. In particular with the ones who have the ressources for an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess at best. But are still aiming for an epic surpassing the Lord Of The Rings. Sorry for the rant. Great interview and interesting insights. :-)
Wow, this guy gets it. Thanks for posting! Glad you enjoyed the interview, and it's cool to read people who do understand where we're coming from in some of our approaches to things. Fully admit, as you'll know from having listened to the interview, that there is a lot we could have done better and are still working on - but we do want this to be a 'play how you want to play' kind of game, as cliche'd as that may sound. It IS designed for *actually role-playing*.
@@DropBearBytes Cheers! I'm also gonna leave a quote of Eric Fenstermaker, Ex-Obsidian Entertainment here: "I'm not sure if people understand that when you're on a budget, there's a zero-sum tradeoff between gameplay length and gameplay polish." That was from an interview taken a year after the original Pillars Of Eternity. Source: RPG Codex. Of course, RPGs come with expectations as to their very heritage. The original Baldur's Gates were quite epic in length, and classic JRPGs were no tiny games either. Unlike yours, those have also been very combat heavy games though, with JRPGs being notorious for their random encounters. Which to this day is the easiest way to make a game longer. :-) Meanhile, the forebears of Prey or Dishonored, they'd always been 15-30 hour games: Ultima Underworld, System Shock/2, Deus Ex. So devs can more easily afford to go "all-in" on player agency. And they are also less "pressured" to stretch their games with cheap filler. Disco Elysium as a (relatively) shorter RPG seems to be getting away with it mainly because it's not perceived as a more "traditional" CRPG. Sad but true. 😞
Interesting interview, I was one of the people that had thought this was an Australian Disco Elysium!
I like the interview, success through hard work and not giving up. Lots of people look for the easy success, but it's the tough challenges, the ones that turn coal into diamonds which really matters. Keep it up.
Great episode!
I've read a lot of books on Western philosophy, but the best book I've personally ever read on the subject by a landslide was "Passion of the Western Mind" by Richard Tarnez.
I hope the team reads this: I honestly don't have time to play this game anytime soon, but I'll pick this game up just up toss a bit more to the team
Hey, thanks loads @techieg33k - really appreciate that. It all helps. And when you do get round to playing it, would love that Steam review (or GOG or wherever you play!). They all really do help.
G'day, Drop Bear Bytes team member here, thanks a lot! We really appreciate it and hope you love it when you get around to playing it, cheers!
@@sundaysunday9718 I'm certain i will. Thank you!
Hey, that is so awesome to read. Thanks so much @techieg33k
Bought it on release but haven't played it yet. Heard it had some rough spots so I figured I'd wait it out before jumping in. TBF being buggy on release is kind of an RPG tradition.
Listening while i water shrubs and fix the fence in the cattle pasture
Matt - so much to love about this episode. It is absolutely awesome to see Becky back on your show. I really enjoy the banter, the stories, the history, everything. I also like the dips back to the Apple // era. I grew up w those games (you guys remember Labyrinth? et al)and seeing those graphics and parser etc was awesome.
FJB That is all.
I really hope rest of the series is on the platter now :)
Copyright seriously should only be 5 yrs. I hate it when games are acquired by massive companies ie Neverhood by EA and they refuse to reissue it
Awesome interview. Touched on so many salient points!
Are there any available contacts to see if there are issues with making a fan-made variation of Stonekeep?
Awesome Daggerfall shirt! My favorite box art I still own.
Absolutely loved this version of wizardry. Thank you so much
To Stephen and Ian and the rest of the Digital Eclipse team, thank you for all your hard work over the years. If you're reading this I have one request. We need you to work your magic and give us a Dani Bunten Berry collection. An interesting human being who created such trailblazing games. Cytron Masters, M.U.L.E, The Seven Cities of Gold and Modem Wars to name a few. Would be the perfect subject for your Gold Master series. EA may be a problem perhaps but worth a try!
What FO1 or FO2 encounter Matt talked about in the news?
I will be buying this on GOG. It looks fantastic. Some day I hope there is a remake of M&M 1. Back in the day that game astounded me. I am currently playing M&M 6. I have never completed it. It's much larger than 7 which I have completed like 5 times.
Prof Noctis is 100% wrong. Go with the original of FF7. The remake is a literal abomination.
Good interview. I'll be buying the Japanese physical for Wizardry when it comes out this fall.
I hope they plan on remaking/remastering more of the Wizardry games
It's so refreshing to see truly passionate developers. Gaming history is absolutely worth of preserving and explaining to younger generations. It's important part of our art and cultural history - if someone likes it or not. Thanks Matt.
I'd like to thank Ian and Stephen for their fantastic work on the Wizardry remake. Great, great stuff. I'd love to see this with other games! (ULTIMA!)
(Of course filling out the original Wizardry Trilogy would be great, and I understand there are probably lots of legal and other reasons Ultima will never get a facelift, but that would be my hearts desire.)
XU4 at least lets you run Ultima 4 on a modern computer… Moonring is a new game that is like a spiritual successor to the older Ultimas. Not quite what you’re asking for, but maybe it’s helpful.
@@adilosphen Yeah I know all about those projects. XU4 is very cool, as is Exult for U7. I'm talking about... well, what they did with Wizardry.
Hey Matt, this was a great interview. I grew up with games like Wizardry, Jagged Alliance, SSI classics like the gold box games and Eye of the Beholder. This was the stuff I was trying to program when I was a kid. It lead me into Psscal, x86 assembly and C which lead to getting a degree in computer science. Everything I work on for pay now days is so high level and abstracted from the hardware that I feel like I'm just working with magical tools. Just thinking about these old games reminds me of hundreds of hours I spent reverse engineering their executables and saved games files. I love modern games like Elden Ring but nothing has the same of complexity and magic I remember from the old days. Some of my feelings are just nostalgia but there are also very design elements that we've lost as we move toward cookie cutter design. Thanks for you content and interviews, you're doing great work!
I'm not sure why I'm bothering to vent. The original Wizardry on the Apple II was one of the first games I played. This particular remake is not enticing me to buy, especially at that price. The visual style just isn't doing it for me or giving me nostalgic vibes. I like the way the dungeon walls look. The models, on the other hand, feel cartoony in a way that seems generic, whereas literally nothing in the original Wizardry looked normal. Even the wizard in the opening screen of the Apple version looked some sort deranged cook. It was just so unique and the limitations of the pixel art actually forced it to be less realistic and more imaginative. I miss the "what the hell is that supposed to be" aspect. In the remake the rooms during combat look bigger than the room you walked into, as in ballroom size, which for me takes away from the claustrophobic dungeony feel. It kind of dwarfs the monsters (no pun intended) who all line up in the middle of the room waiting to get whacked. I guess people familiar to the JRPG type crawlers would find that style to be on point, but it just doesn't feel very Wizardry to me in a nostalgic sense, especially since there have been so many dungeon crawler clones. It just feels like yet another clone that happens to use the same maps and context as the original.
You can enlarge the original graphics as an overlay over the new graphics. They literally gave you the ability to pretty much play the original.
Hi Matt Barton, My name is Tom Ewers. TommyGoog is my Google account name. I was the guy who "re-engineered" the executable AppleII disks of Wizardry into "source" Pascal code. I started the project in the 1990s and completed the Pascal code about 10 years ago. You can read about it in the old Apple Newsgroups (no longer supported), by searching Google Groups: "Re-engineered: Wizardry III, Legacy of Llylgamyn" and "Wizardry re-engineering, Diddier VALLET" -- for Wizardry I, Proving Grounds. I also created "source" code for Wizardry II as well and had begun on Wizardry IV. Tom
Digital Eclipse really are doing some amazing work on these remakes!
Matt, i know you are mostly an RPG guy but if you could ever nail down Jeff Minter for an interview...the Yak himself...that would be amazing!
I played a lot of his Mutant Camels back in the day, but I think there's a lot more for me to learn after seeing the Llamasoft gold master. Totally fascinating guy, and I admire his status as a renegade/iconoclast quite a lot. It's better to stay true to yourself than chase after whatever's popular at the moment.
@@MattBarton 100% :)
Such a fantastic remake. Matt, as always fantastic interview/discussion. Was a pleasure!
John Romero fails to age
I think financial drops for the channel may be partially due to uneven and infrequent release schedule. After contributing, if nothing comes out for a long time, it can make a donor think their contribution isn't helping content come out or come out any quicker. If you were able to release at least once per week, I wonder if that could help?... even of it is doing gameplay videos more frequently and/or branching out a litte into periphery genres or game release dates, covering more of what you enjoy or might like without diluting your desired focus or brand too much. Just a thought, but I'm hoping more donations can come soon, regardless the reason for the drops!
Thanks for the feedback! I used to chop up interviews into 30 minute episodes to spread them out over a period of weeks. That was how I was able to reliably maintain a weekly release schedule. Do you think I should go back to that model?
You're welcome! I think that could be helpful, particularly if you're able to have your cool outros on them where you talk about news, things happening in the gaming or related worlds, and the occasional beverage taste/review... making them unique to each video. But, then again, my personal preference might be to keep those lengthy interview vids, but figure somrthing else out for the in-between weeks. More frequency is why I suggested in the past that I think even if you just record and broadcast your random game-playing sessions more often, that could help fill in gaps between the interviews or between the more major milestone gameplay sessions you already do. I don't know if that sounds appealing to you, though, as maybe you like to keep most of your play sessions private and not feel like you have to do commentary... which would be understandable. Or maybe you need to give your voice a rest, so you prefer to not record those. But it is also why I thought it might be cool for you to have occasional 'news only' videos, where you talk about news happening for maybe 5-10 minutes. Where you don't feel rushed because the focus of those videos would be news/release stuff. And I thought they "might" be fairly easy for you to produce(?). However, that assumes there is actually enough gaming news for you to mention or talk about, which I don't know if there would be? I know all of the above takes time, though. It would be great to figure out something you could do that you enjoy (doesn't feel burdensome and/or is intrinsically rewarding), isn't too time-consuming for you to produce (since you seem very busy), to help shorten the gaps. For me, it'd be great to have more frequent videos! Those are just some of my ideas. Others may have more or better ideas. And maybe this wouldn't help to get more Patreons/donations, but I hope it would. If I think of other ways that I think might help, I will let you know
I got to meet Becky this weekend at VCF. She didn't know me from Adam, but grabbed me in a huge hug. Wonderful person, and left a huge impact on the gaming world in general. Tass Times is one of my all time favorites, too, so it really was cool getting to meet her. Great video, Matt, as always!
This man (Frank) constantly contradicts himself to an absurd level. Apparently wanting to watch a movie in the theaters is bad and you should just buy the digital version to watch on your laptop because "that's gatekeeping"
He also tries to guilt trip people for "pretending" which is what video games are, and especially RPGs and ROLE-PLAYING IN GENERAL. PRETENDING IS FUN. The fact that this is the person behind preservation worries me.
I'm sure there is more in the video I can vent my frustration towards but I couldn't even finish it.
Mommmyy that cake sounds so goooood
Not all games need to be for all people, remember this