by Will
A few of my more effervescent, more gregarious, more alive colleagues in game journalism are on stage “rocking out” to Mr Goat. We are on the rooftop of a pricey hotel in Van Zandt, at a press event organized by Steal from the BPL‘s developer and publisher BumbleBeelzebub.
I’m standing at a safe distance, drinking whisky, eating baked bean canapes and chatting to another colleague about politics in Rimworld. I’m having an OK time.
I’m supposed to be focusing my attention on Steal from the BPL, but there’s more chance of Aleksander Kerensky leaping onto that stage than there is of me mounting the keyboard, running through a nigh-infinite restaurant basement and yelling “whooooooo.”
I don’t care about Wide Tom’s Bean House. I dislike crowds and I dislike loud noises. I don’t do public performances, excepting “the Pantsraad” which I enjoy from time-to-time, along with half a dozen shitposters and master debaters.
Look, sometimes in this job you gotta cover games you don’t really give a stuff about. I played some Slender: The Eight Pages ten years ago and I thought it was kinda stupid. This is not because first-person survival horror games are stupid. It’s a perfectly valid fantasy. It’s just not my fantasy.
But I can tell from the people on stage, the fact that they are having fun and coming back for more, that Steal from the BPL has something to offer people who get together and enjoy each other and the community and the whole shitposting ethos. I’m jealous of their ability to enjoy this product.
All video games are stupid, of course. That whole thing of, ‘you’re not really stealing birthday cake or sneaking past Mister Train, you’re just pressing buttons’ is patronizing and simplistic but every now and again you come across a game that has so little emotional connection to who you are that you end up standing there, gazing at the screen and saying “I’m just pressing buttons and my life has no meaning,” to a slightly bemused PR person.
At the end of each level, the game offers up instructions for the next heist. This keeps the fantasy alive, avoids the tedium of back-tracking through menus, helps iron out the social difficulty of choosing the next level. This seems to me to be part of a convincingly earnest attempt by the people at BumbleBeelzebub to do the thing they are best at, which is making games that actually make people feel good, that allow people to have a good time.
A new group of journos are on stage sneaking through Digs’ forest. My friend, the one I was talking about Rimworld to, has wandered away. I go in search of a developer to interview. Perhaps there’s a nice quiet room where we can sit and chat.
Steal from the Black Pants Legion by BumbleBeelzebub can be found here.
Will the Great is editor, erstwhile games journo, and part-time shitposter for the Legionnaire. He enjoys pineapple on pizza and movies about sailing ships.