The BEST episodes of Extra Credits season 2017
Every episode of Extra Credits season 2017, ranked from best to worst by thousands of votes from fans of the show. The best episodes of Extra Credits season 2017!
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 - 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.
#2 - Arts Funding - Helping Games that Help Us
Season 2017 - Episode 26 - Aired 7/19/2017
Games have made great strides in the last few years towards public recognition and arts funding in the United States, but all that could fall apart unless we step up to support the programs like the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities which make it possible.
#3 - How Games Speak - Learn the Language of Design
Season 2017 - Episode 27 - Aired 7/26/2017
Game design is a language and games speak to us in ways that we can understand. But how does that work? By understanding three simple ideas, we can both make better games and learn what makes the ones we play and love so special.
#4 - One Million Subs - Thank YOU for Supporting Extra Credits!
Season 2017 - Episode 24 - Aired 7/6/2017
Whether you've been with us from the beginning or just found us on YouTube, you are what makes Extra Credits special. Your support and encouragement keep us going. And the conversations and questions you bring with you to your friends, your family, and your world are the reason we started this show in the first place.
#5 - Peace Games - Gaming for a Better Future
Season 2017 - Episode 28 - Aired 8/2/2017
Since the founding of the Olympics, games have been a tool to bring people together, allowing us to compete but also to recognize the humanity in our opponents. Although online games have become a breeding ground for toxicity, they still have the potential to teach us about each other and find role models in professional players.
#6 - Marginal Mechanics and Red Herrings - Why So Weak?
Season 2017 - Episode 29 - Aired 8/9/2017
Every game has some skills or abilities that are just weaker than other abilities. Players wind up ignoring them or resenting them, so why include these "red herring" mechanics? While it can be just lazy design, there are also some very good uses for these marginal mechanics!
#7 - Game AI - Funtelligence
Season 2017 - Episode 30 - Aired 8/16/2017
Games often advertise their complex AI, but in truth, offering a wide variety of simple NPC behaviors unique to each enemy often feels more engaging AND challenging to the player than putting them through multiple hours of facing a bunch of NPCs operating on the same AI behavior tree.
#8 - Keep Cutting - Sunk Cost Fallacy and Game Development
Season 2017 - Episode 31 - Aired 8/23/2017
Once development begins on a feature, game developers often get drawn into a sunk cost fallacy that compels them to keep working on that feature even when it's failing. Cutting those features is hard, but often the right choice to make the game better.
#9 - Accessibility - The Curb Cut Effect
Season 2017 - Episode 32 - Aired 8/30/2017
Accessibility design makes the game better for all players, not only the disabled. By planning ahead and making more options available, designers can give players the tools to customize their experience in a way that fits them best.
#10 - 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.
#11 - 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.
#12 - 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.
#13 - Injustice 2: Trauma Survival - Harley Quinn's Greatest Fear
Season 2017 - Episode 25 - Aired 7/12/2017
Content Warning: Abusive Relationship. Harm doesn't end when physical or emotional abuse stops. In Injustice 2, Harley Quinn is a hero who's still dealing with the aftermath of her trauma - and neither of those aspects of her character detracts from the other.
#14 - 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.
#15 - 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.
#16 - The Pacing of PUBG - The Thriller Tension of Battlegrounds
Season 2017 - Episode 39 - Aired 11/1/2017
Why have we become obsessed with a game where nothing happens for minutes at a time? It's because PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds is something rare in games: a multiplayer thriller. CORRECTION: This episode was co-written by Rob Rath, not only James Portnow as listed in the endslate
#17 - Games You Might Not Have Tried #13 - Find New Games
Season 2017 - Episode 40 - Aired 11/8/2017
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! We review and recommend interesting but under appreciated games for you to discover and enjoy.
#18 - 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.
#19 - Big Huge Charity - Giving in the Games Industry
Season 2017 - Episode 42 - Aired 11/22/2017
The games industry gives less to charity than any other major entertainment industry, but charity events can be great both for business AND for making the world better. DomiNations (Big Huge Games) shared data from their own charity events to help us show how!
#20 - The Warhammer License (Again) - Did Games Workshop's Gamble Work?
Season 2017 - Episode 43 - Aired 11/29/2017
Games Workshop started handing out bits of the Warhammer License like candy - but did it work? We think so! They used the great detail of the Warhammer Universe to distribute risk and create tiers of investment in games with varying quality levels, resulting in a test bed for small studios and a template for working with big ones.
#21 - Losing Player Trust - The Data Dilemma
Season 2017 - Episode 44 - Aired 12/6/2017
Companies rely on metrics to tell them how players respond to a game, which can mean that short-term bumps (like revenue gained by adding microtransactions) disguises real player unhappiness with a game's quality and a publisher's integrity over time.
#22 - DayZ - Tragedy of the Commons: The Game
Season 2017 - Episode 45 - Aired 12/12/2017
When resources are limited, self-interest works against itself. We see that in games like DayZ, where players could team up to fight a common threat, but the fear that someone will backstab you leads everyone to assume the worst and therefore behave as enemies.
#23 - Hidden Game Mechanics: Design for the Human Psyche
Season 2017 - Episode 46 - Aired 12/20/2017
Sometimes games trick us into having a more engaging experience by simulating near-death escapes and gently massaging the odds to be kind to us. These hidden game mechanics play into the expectations of our human psyche to give us the results we expect.
#24 - Liminal Space - Incorporating Real Life into Games
Season 2017 - Episode 13 - Aired 4/14/2017
As games grow connected to our online accounts, they start learning about us: our names, our friends, and so much more. That connected information has the potential to create really cool experiences, but only if it's not abused.
#25 - Video Games and Gambling - When Does a Game Cross the Line?
Season 2017 - Episode 2 - Aired 1/25/2017
Casinos and online gambling sites have begun to recognize the potential to use video games as a new source of revenue. With more and more skill-based games being re-purposed for gambling - sometimes legally, sometimes not - it becomes important for developers to look ahead at the features these adaptations may have.