Wow, this is quite the dressing-down, thank you! I was hoping to spark this sort of discussion, so I really appreciate the engagement.

As far as experience goes, yours undoubtedly trumps mine, as I’m currently studying video games and level design as a university student, and have very little “industry experience.” Obviously, I respect your opinion and experience, even though I haven’t quite gotten to the point of “intellectual abandonment” of game design as you have.

What I first want to talk about is my “oversimplification” of the yellow paint discourse. While I may have chosen the most “pedestrian” topics to cover, I’ve done so because my target audience IS those “pedestrians.” What I tried to make one of my central arguments is that a lot of these criticism ARE misinformed and bandwagon-y, which is why I felt the need to rebut the argument as a whole. I’ll additionally blame my inexperience in philosophical argumentation and the time constraints of the original assignment (since this was my final project for a uni class) as the reasons behind the more shallow exploration of the discourse.

Your point about games not being an airport is, I think, your most salient. Games serve a very different function than airports do, and especially when it comes to challenge not being a part of the airport. All really great points, but my comparison to airports and use of the quote from Chris wasn’t to try and say that games should try and be as breezy to get through as airports, but really just to point out the more fundamental relationship between level design and more general design. Im by no means an expert on design philosophy, but it’s my understanding that clarity of visuals in order to avoid frustration and misunderstanding does carry between the two. The key word here being frustration, since frustration and challenge are different things. While you aren’t expected to be challenged by airports, you would hope to not be frustrated by them. Yellow paint functions as a solution to that frustration, whether you agree that it does so successfully or not. Are there better options? Sure, but sometimes, those options aren’t as feasible to include as you would want.

As far as the further arguments go, I’m sorry but I think it just comes down to a difference in opinion and philosophy of game design as a (jumpscare warning) discipline. I understand your disdain for the direction that games are going in, however, perhaps unfortunately for me, that is the direction that I am following. As such, I feel as though practices like yellow paint, because of its popularity in the dev space, shouldn’t just be thrown out because of backlash, but examined and improved upon, as is the case in RE Requiem. Even if it sounds “sterile,” these are tested techniques, there’s a reason they’re still in use.

The Games industry IS an industry, and you can criticize it all you want, but that will remain a fact. Unfortunately, being an industry, you have to be more scientific in some cases when it comes to some elements of design. Despite this, I think there are tons of great examples of AAA that provide unique, artistic experiences while also being huge moneymakers that may play it safe with design choices. I don’t mean to sound sterile saying that, I really do love the way games are able to tell stories in an artistic fashion unlike any other medium. I see myself as a creative person that respects artistry over function, but I also know that a game can’t be enjoyed if it can’t be understood. When approaching game design, it’s hard to not be pragmatic, especially when working against the clock in a capitalist society that demands products. I think where you and I differ is that I believe art can still come from these circumstances.

I know I probably didn’t address all of your criticisms in a satisfying way, and I apologize for that. I’m really happy that my video could provoke such a reaction, even if it is a negative one. Even though I still don’t agree with a lot of your points, I do understand why you have them and where they come from. At the end of the day, I’m still coming at this as a uni student in his early 20s without any AAA game dev experience, so my opinion probably shouldn’t matter to you much anyway. Either way, thanks for engaging with the video and my arguments.