To go with the New Year's "wintery" vibe I want to share something unusual, in hopes you'll find it as entertaining as I did — Ross's Game Dungeon by Ross Scott.
The Man. The Legend.
I found out about Ross though his famous "Freeman's Mind" series many years ago. A series, which you should totally watch in full, BTW. Chronologically, from the very first episode. Here's the complete YouTube playlist, for your convenience.
One day, while I was watching a new episode of Freeman's Mind, upon finishing it, YouTube recommended me one of his other videos from the "Ross's Game Dungeon" series. Don't remember which one it was, but I got hooked and soon ended up watching all of them in the weeks that followed...
Ross's Game Dungeon?
AFAIK, there's no official "explanation" on what this series is about. The way I see it, Ross's Game Dungeon is a collection of sort-of-reviews-but-not-really of some old, weird and obscure games. Ross provides charming and animated delivery, sometimes interspersed with some amateur role-playing (like when doing voices for text-only games), as well as meanderings on the state of things in the past and the present. Overall, it's just a bunch of chill videos on weird stuff you often wouldn't normally discover otherwise.
Game Dungeon is also full of legitimate criticism and sincerity. Which becomes especially apparent if you watch some of Ross's best work. Take, for instance, the "Ross's Game Dungeon: Deus Ex" episode. There's a good reason this one sits at 1.4 million views. It's entertaining, yet thought-provoking, and leaves you with a nice warm feeling afterwards. Watch it first to get a perfect representation of what Ross' Game Dungeon is about.
As for the series — I would recommend watching all of the videos in the Game Dungeon playlist — 94 published to date. They are all good, IMO. Since this might seem daunting, I can offer a "shortcut". I feel like there's something about "Christmas Episodes" or New Year episodes, regularly published in late December, which makes them especially endearing. So if you're even remotely interested — try these, and see whether this series is to your liking.
Either way, here's the list of "Christmas" episodes, starting with "Ross's Game Dungeon: Polaris Snocross", published 11 (!) years ago from now:
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Polaris Snocross (December 25, 2014)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Still Life Part 1, Part 2 (December 23, 2015)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Puzzle Agent (December 26, 2015)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: The Legend of Kyrandia (December 20, 2016)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Freak Out Extreme Freeride (December 25, 2016)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Captain Zzap (December 24, 2017)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Apocalyptica (December 25, 2018)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Messiah (December 25, 2019)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Aida's Strange Christmas (December 23, 2020)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: The Division (December 24, 2021)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) (December 25, 2022)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: State of Mind (December 24, 2023)
- Ross's Game Dungeon: Gothic (December 25, 2024)
- TODO: link the 2025 episode when it's published
"Stop Killing Games" Initiative
Since we're discussing Ross's work, I'll mention this here just for the completeness sake, for I don't want to make a separate post on this topic:
Yes, I am aware of this "consumer movement meant to challenge the legality of publishers destroying video games they have sold to customers" that Ross started in 2024.
And, NO, I don't believe it will work.
Governments don't care about pleas and reason even on more important topics like immigration, healthcare or even privacy.
The last thing any government would do is to address the topic of videogame preservation of all things. Case in point — the UK government's response to a petition on this very initiative, completely shutting it down, which (to me) was a 100% expected outcome. Others will follow suit, no doubt.
This movement, just like traditional Western medicine, is trying to tend to a symptom, and not the root cause. Symptom being — companies publishing live-service games which depend on a third party servers to function, and later shutting those servers down, leaving players with useless client applications that don't work anymore. It's a symptom because it's a result of a profitable, widespread business practice of attracting players in the early stages of the project and bailing out when profits stagnate. The classic "pump and dump" scheme, just in a videogame form.
It's profitable because players fall for it over and over again.
The only solution would be a reasonable, grown-up approach to this matter: instead of spearheading "stop killing games", we would stop buying 3rd party server-dependent live-service games. This would directly affect the bottom-line of these developers, and ultimately lead to extinction of such practice.
But… The reason I keep saying "would" is, of course, because this will never happen due to the magic of large numbers, where the amount of people who are unaware of or don't care about their rights and seek instant gratification will always outnumber the rest. Also, considering that online videogames are mostly played by children and teens, who have plenty of time to waste and lack critical thinking skills, this behavior pattern will never change.
So for those of you who made it this far into the post — kudos! As they say: "Change Starts with You". So you know what to do. Lead by example and maintain control over your own life and expenses, so that this problem never really concerns you, at least.
In the meantime — do watch Ross's actually entertaining videos, they are really good!