The BEST episodes of Extra Credits
Every episode of Extra Credits ever, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Extra Credits!
Join James Portnow, Daniel Floyd and Allison Theus each week as they take a deeper look at games; how they are made, what they mean and how we can make them better.
#1 - Choice Paralysis - Too Much of a Good Thing
Season 2018 - Episode 12 - Aired 5/23/2018
Game designers must decide how to segment and present choices so that the player isn't overwhelmed. From character creation to strategy, there's a lot of complexity to the user experience.
#2 - The Loot Box Question - Designing Ethical Lootboxes: I
Season 2018 - Episode 4 - Aired 2/14/2018
Why does the games industry seem to prefer lootboxes over other types of microtransactions nowadays? Why are they so easily manipulated to abuse players' agency? How can we make them better?
#3 - The Legality of Loot Boxes - Designing Ethical Lootboxes: II
Season 2018 - Episode 5 - Aired 2/28/2018
Legislating regulation around in-game purchases seems like a good idea, but let's proceed cautiously: the phrasing of such potential rulings could create situations that unfairly affect gamers themselves, not just publishers.
#4 - NieR: Automata - Sacrifice and the Meaning of Kindness
Season 2018 - Episode 6 - Aired 3/19/2018
Many video games offer you the chance to make “good” or “bad” choices, but often times these choices lack weight; you as a player aren’t emotionally attached to the circumstances, the causes, or the outcomes. Nier: Automata, however, lets players truly empathize with others in a crucial end-game choice.
#5 - Break Points - Balancing the Math with the User Experience
Season 2018 - Episode 7 - Aired 3/28/2018
Why does a small, incremental increase in a stat sometimes feel like an overpowered boost? How can we use break points to improve the player's experience? Guest art by Allison Utterback! https://twitter.com/ingrid_archer (No, not THAT Allison, but a very awesome Allison nonethless.)
#6 - Impractical Research - How Academia Can Make Better Games
Season 2018 - Episode 8 - Aired 4/4/2018
Academic research in games should be challenging our need for commonly accepted principles like Skinner boxes or certain narrative structures. Historically it tends to be focused on finding only certain types of quantifiable data, which can be distracting from the medium's overall progress.
#7 - Unpleasant Design - When Bad Design is Used to Hide Problems
Season 2018 - Episode 9 - Aired 4/18/2018
Sometimes bad design is created intentionally, to cover up a flaw in the system instead of fixing it. Using cities like Seattle and London as examples, we examine how architecture is designed to remove homeless people from the public eye without actually helping them.
#8 - Wolfenstein vs Call of Duty - The Need for “B” Games
Season 2018 - Episode 10 - Aired 4/25/2018
Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus offers up one of the most honest depictions and criticisms of Nazism and bigotry in modern mainstream games, and part of that is due to its "b"-game-like nature--similar to b-movies that transgress the standards of their time.
#9 - The Digital Museum - Assassin’s Creed Origins Discovery Tour
Season 2018 - Episode 11 - Aired 5/9/2018
The Assassin's Creed Origins team recently added a non-violent exploration mode to their game coupled with an educational voiceover narrating facts about ancient Egypt. How could we improve on this museum-like experience
#10 - Why Do Games Cost So Much To Make? - AAA Game Budgets
Season 2018 - Episode 3 - Aired 1/31/2018
Let's talk numbers: marketing, office space, dev tool licenses, voice actors, and more that goes into the average AAA game budget. Why do some games never turn a profit while others seem to magically make it work on the cheapest budget possible?
#11 - Blockchain Games - Can Blockchain Technology be a Game Mechanic?
Season 2018 - Episode 13 - Aired 5/30/2018
Say hello to Matt Krol, our new narrator! Today we're talking about about that cursed buzzword "blockchain" that's appeared on the fringes of the game industry within the past year, most infamously Cryptokitties. How could blockchain tech actually provide good game design value?
#12 - Ladders and Team Games - Doing it Wrong
Season 2018 - Episode 14 - Aired 6/6/2018
Thanks to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. The first 500 people to sign up at this link get their first 2 months for free: http://skl.sh//extracredits Why do team-based video games like Overwatch seem to struggle with judging team cooperation and not just individual skill? The answer, surprisingly, comes from chess.
#13 - Games You Might Not Have Tried #14 - Mechs, Monsters and More!
Season 2018 - Episode 15 - Aired 6/13/2018
These games are definitely perfect...ly suited to expanding your game design knowledge, even if they have some flaws here and there. It's another edition of "extra" game reviews: Games You Might Not Have Tried!
#14 - The Content Conundrum - Why So Many Games Feel Generic
Season 2018 - Episode 16 - Aired 6/20/2018
Procedurally generated content seems like a really appealing route for a lot of indie developers--it's what AAA game studios are doing, and it seems to protect game balance! But often times it's worth the extra effort to craft a few handmade pieces, even at the risk of "breaking" the game.
#15 - College E-Sports - Road to Glory?
Season 2018 - Episode 17 - Aired 6/27/2018
E-sports scholarships are becoming slowly more commonplace, but they have inherited some of the bad qualities of other college sports, as well as unique issues like the usually short lifespans of video games themselves. Should you pursue an esports career?
#16 - The Three Pillars of Game Writing - Plot, Character, Lore
Season 2018 - Episode 18 - Aired 7/4/2018
Let's examine the elements that make up "game writing." Plot, characters, and lore all have to be balanced depending on the type of game you're making--knowing what to cut from your story bible is just as important as knowing what to keep.
#17 - The Price of Randomness - Balancing RNG
Season 2018 - Episode 19 - Aired 7/11/2018
Let's compare the RNG design in Hearthstone and Slay the Spire and figure out how we can design RNG for strategic difficulty without veering into completely frustrating players.
#18 - Ma, The Space Between - Uncluttered Game Design
Season 2018 - Episode 20 - Aired 7/18/2018
Today we're talking about a Japanese word "ma" and how it applies to game design. Incorporating rest, space, and emptiness can make the rest of the gameplay, action, and narrative stand out.
#19 - A Eulogy for Quintet - Melancholy and Wonder
Season 2017 - Episode 41 - Aired 11/15/2017
We loved games from Quintet back in the Super Nintendo era: ActRaiser, Soul Blazer, and Terranigma touched our hearts with their gentle, melancholy exploration of themes like working through tragedy or facing the dark experiences in our lives.
#20 - PAX WEST 2017 Extra Credits Panel
Season 2017 - Episode 33 - Aired 9/20/2017
The Extra Credits crew gathered at PAX West in 2017 and did a panel! We hope you enjoy our answers to audience questions and the debut of Scott's yearly secret video.
#21 - The Anchoring Effect - Why Review Scores Matter
Season 2017 - Episode 34 - Aired 9/27/2017
The first data we see affects our opinion about everything afterwards - so a good review score makes us like the game more, and an apparent sale makes us more eager to buy a game with a higher price point. This anchoring effect is even built into game design itself.
#22 - The Problem with Power Fantasies - We're Not Always Right
Season 2017 - Episode 35 - Aired 10/4/2017
Games embrace power fantasies that let the player do whatever they want, to whomever they want, without anyone questioning the morality of their actions. But questioning and re-evaluating our choices is an important part of life, and players don't need to be treated so delicately that we never address these issues in game.
#23 - Prey: The Enemy Inside - Testing You Softly
Season 2017 - Episode 36 - Aired 10/11/2017
What we want to believe about ourselves and what's actually true may be very different things. Prey: The Enemy Inside starts with a simple psychological test... and then puts you in situations that may reveal your answers to be lies.
#24 - One More Level - The Arbitrary Endpoint Trap
Season 2017 - Episode 37 - Aired 10/18/2017
When we stay up later than we wanted just to hit a progress point in our games, we have fallen into the arbitrary endpoint trap. Some games deliberately manipulate us to do one more level, but many times we're doing it to ourselves and making playtime a chore.
#25 - Games You Might Not Have Tried: Horror - Find New Games for Halloween
Season 2017 - Episode 38 - Aired 10/25/2017
If you want to try games that feel different, that feel new and ambitious even if they're not necessarily the most polished experiences, then check out this list of Games You Might Not Have Tried - Halloween Edition! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games for you to discover and enjoy.