WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.720 {What I Love!} 00:00:02.720 --> 00:00:07.680 Hello! I’m Scruffy, and today, I’d like  to follow up on a previous video I made   00:00:07.680 --> 00:00:12.640 about proximity voice chat in horror games. I  mentioned that communicating with friends is one   00:00:12.640 --> 00:00:18.120 of the easiest ways to mitigate the horror  in media. So some horror games developers,   00:00:18.120 --> 00:00:24.520 like those for Phasmophobia and In Silence, use  a voice chat with volume based on proximity,   00:00:24.520 --> 00:00:29.520 and tamper with the rules of that voice chat  during a game session. That both immerses   00:00:29.520 --> 00:00:35.760 and sometimes isolates the players, keeping the  atmosphere properly spooky and unpredictable. But   00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:42.040 what if the point of a game is to be equal parts  scary… and funny? How does proximity voice chat,   00:00:42.040 --> 00:00:47.720 and the greater approach to sound design, work  differently in a horror comedy game? We’ve got   00:00:47.720 --> 00:00:53.280 two brilliant examples of this niche game genre  to help us explore that today: Lethal Company   00:00:53.280 --> 00:01:00.080 and Content Warning. In Lethal Company, a group  of hazmat-clad employees delve into procedurally   00:01:00.080 --> 00:01:07.600 generated, labyrinthine, abandoned moonbases to  collect scrap for a sinisterly opaque “Company,”   00:01:07.600 --> 00:01:13.280 while avoiding ubiquitous deadly monsters and  hazards. With each mission the Company demands   00:01:13.280 --> 00:01:18.040 a higher scrap quota, pushing the team to  visit more dangerous moons and command a   00:01:18.040 --> 00:01:24.160 tight budget of supplies and tools. But the most  powerful tool in your arsenal is your voice,   00:01:24.160 --> 00:01:29.480 which you use in Lethal Company very similarly to  how you use it in Phasmophobia. You can only hear   00:01:29.480 --> 00:01:34.880 other players and they can only hear you across  a certain distance, and your volume attenuates   00:01:34.880 --> 00:01:41.040 the further you get. It’s also affected by global  reverb and diffusion filters, so near the exterior   00:01:41.040 --> 00:01:46.240 of a moonbase you’ll hear other players’ voices  rebounding off the towering walls, or if you’re a   00:01:46.240 --> 00:01:52.360 room or two away from another player, their voice  is muffled with a low-pass filter. A walkie-talkie   00:01:52.360 --> 00:01:58.280 can bypass these setbacks, especially useful  for someone at the hub spaceship’s radar feed   00:01:58.280 --> 00:02:04.680 to communicate with an expedition about doors they  can open and enemies or scrap nearby… as long as   00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:11.320 all parties keep their walkie-talkies powered. And  if you perish in any way, you are removed from the   00:02:11.320 --> 00:02:17.360 “alive” player proximity voice chat and into  a distinct normal voice chat. You can hear the   00:02:17.360 --> 00:02:23.520 other players as you spectate them, but only other  players who meet their doom can hear you. So far,   00:02:23.520 --> 00:02:29.040 that’s all very similar to the proximity voice  chat system I explained in Phasmophobia, so   00:02:29.040 --> 00:02:34.960 here’s a little more context for this one. Unlike  Phasmophobia or In Silence, and likely on account   00:02:34.960 --> 00:02:40.760 of the procedural maps and health meterd for each  player, there aren’t scripted jumpscares when   00:02:40.760 --> 00:02:46.800 you’re caught by a monster. Instead, the monsters  of Lethal Company are designed to create… shall we   00:02:46.800 --> 00:02:53.160 say, “emergent jumpscares,” where their sudden  presence, unnerving appearance and movement,   00:02:53.160 --> 00:02:58.240 and especially their deliberately loud sounds  create moments of shock just by getting your   00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:04.240 attention. Like, take my favorite and least  favorite example: the Coil-Head. Its distorted   00:03:04.240 --> 00:03:08.840 humanoid form would be enough to put you off  appearing in the darkness, but it also runs at   00:03:08.840 --> 00:03:14.960 superhuman speeds when it’s not being watched, and  it stops so abruptly that its spring neck wobbles   00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:23.280 with a very loud, sharp spring release sound.  That’s just the sound of some old industrial   00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:29.280 spring, that with a sudden change in a creature’s  running speed is all you need to scare someone,   00:03:29.280 --> 00:03:34.800 whether they expected it or not. The reason I  bring this up is that these sounds also fall under   00:03:34.800 --> 00:03:40.160 the proximity filter system: you can hear them  as far as you can hear player voices, and they   00:03:40.160 --> 00:03:44.920 get muffled accordingly across rooms. So while  they’re designed to frighten us, they also make   00:03:44.920 --> 00:03:50.920 great signals for players who aren’t getting their  neck replaced by a metal coil. But has this system   00:03:50.920 --> 00:03:56.920 really been designed to facilitate comedy? Aside  from a couple scrap items that make silly noises,   00:03:56.920 --> 00:04:01.920 like the bulb horn, and some silly decorations  you can purchase for the scavenger spaceship,   00:04:01.920 --> 00:04:07.200 there are few inherently “funny” sounds in the  game. And the sounds attract the attention of   00:04:07.200 --> 00:04:13.800 monsters anyway. It’s strikingly similar to most  other horror games with proximity chat… so let’s   00:04:13.800 --> 00:04:18.680 see if Content Warning does it any differently.  Content Warning has you play as these cartoonish   00:04:18.680 --> 00:04:25.200 humanoid characters with customizable ASCII  glyphs for faces. Cute and simple characters.   00:04:25.200 --> 00:04:31.720 You fill the role of content creators, venturing  out from a cozy facade of a normal world into “the   00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:39.120 Old World,” a dark, cavernous, monochromatic,  procedurally generated, labyrinthine complex.   00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:44.080 This time you aren’t looking for scrap, you’re  looking for the deadly monsters, because filming   00:04:44.080 --> 00:04:49.120 them and publishing a video will earn you clout  on the game’s fictional video sharing site,   00:04:49.120 --> 00:04:55.080 SpookTube. What could go wrong? Well, all the  expert content creators know, the best audio   00:04:55.080 --> 00:05:01.000 tool at your disposal is once again your voice,  and once again, the system works rather like what   00:05:01.000 --> 00:05:06.960 we’ve seen. Voice volume is based on distance,  and perishing moves your voice to an isolated   00:05:06.960 --> 00:05:12.760 voice chat until the end of an expedition. But,  here there are no sound filters through walls,   00:05:12.760 --> 00:05:18.440 and I think that’s for two reasons. One is that  the space here isn’t cramped rooms but yawning   00:05:18.440 --> 00:05:24.600 chambers with high ceilings, clearly not designed  for our player characters. And two is that you’re   00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:29.280 often going to stay together anyway, even if  you pick up the reporter-style microphones that   00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:35.200 function like Lethal Company’s walkie-talkies. And  that’s because there’s an extra VIP member of this   00:05:35.200 --> 00:05:42.000 proximity voice chat: the camera used to film the  expedition. Like, just take a moment to appreciate   00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:48.840 that this object is a separate audio listener from  any player, and it records voices, sound effects,   00:05:48.840 --> 00:05:54.440 and visuals from its own perspective, and renders  them down into a single composition that the game   00:05:54.440 --> 00:05:59.640 can not only play back on Spooktube, but save  to your real-life computer as a lightweight   00:05:59.640 --> 00:06:05.800 video file. All that while up to four players are  synchronized in a generated world instance. That’s   00:06:05.800 --> 00:06:11.480 impressive stuff. That aside, the stuff this  camera is capturing is not directly designed   00:06:11.480 --> 00:06:16.560 to make you laugh. The nightmarish monsters  in this world don’t offer any silly sounds,   00:06:16.560 --> 00:06:21.840 and if any of them catch you, you can’t interact  with other players. It’s fascinating to me that   00:06:21.840 --> 00:06:27.520 this is just how one would design a serious  horror game’s sound and voice chat… so why is   00:06:27.520 --> 00:06:34.320 it funny when these games do it? Well, because  the comedy comes from something else: a setting   00:06:34.320 --> 00:06:41.080 and gameplay that encourage funny interactions on  proximity voice chat. Characters in these games   00:06:41.080 --> 00:06:46.760 are cartoonishly designed and pushed to fill  roles that are obviously dangerous for them:   00:06:46.760 --> 00:06:51.920 cogs in a monstrous corporate entity that only  communicates to them through automated recordings,   00:06:51.920 --> 00:06:57.440 or content creators capitalizing on putting  themselves in mortal danger. Both situations are   00:06:57.440 --> 00:07:03.480 inherently making fun of the player characters’  circumstances, so players already have material   00:07:03.480 --> 00:07:07.760 for something to joke about. Y’know, you  could lean right into the role, complaining   00:07:07.760 --> 00:07:12.680 about a non-safety-compliant workspace as you’re  getting chased by circuit bees in Lethal Company,   00:07:12.680 --> 00:07:18.320 or putting on a YouTuber voice to thank and plug a  video sponsor as you just barely escape a monster   00:07:18.320 --> 00:07:24.280 in Content Warning. The best parodies know to  play their parts straight and avoid winking at   00:07:24.280 --> 00:07:30.240 the audience, because comedy will emerge from  the situations that emerge. So that’s exactly   00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:35.480 what the sound design and voice chat in these  games do: play it as though it were all horror,   00:07:35.480 --> 00:07:40.480 so that you can find the humor in it. Now ther’s  laughing at the folly of the characters and their   00:07:40.480 --> 00:07:46.680 situation, but there’s also just plain laughing at  the folly of your friends. These yawning corridors   00:07:46.680 --> 00:07:51.640 with enemies that pop up and give chase mean  that you’ll hear your friends screaming often,   00:07:51.640 --> 00:07:58.120 and after the fact, it’s funny to reflect on  that momentary panic and suspension of disbelief.   00:07:58.120 --> 00:08:03.560 Content Warning lets you literally rewatch it from  a different perspective, thanks to the camera.   00:08:03.560 --> 00:08:09.240 Lethal Company in particular adds an element of  potential comedy-by-folly by making friendly fire   00:08:09.240 --> 00:08:15.000 possible, accidental or otherwise. Content Warning  doesn’t feature physical friendly fire… but   00:08:15.000 --> 00:08:20.920 there’s certainly potential “social” friendly fire  through the camera-holder subjugating the fear,   00:08:20.920 --> 00:08:26.960 or even the demise, of other players, for the  content. It’s certainly a comedy that can test   00:08:26.960 --> 00:08:31.640 the tensile strength of your friendships,  but those person-to-person funny bits are   00:08:31.640 --> 00:08:36.680 the parts of these games you’ll remember the  most. And it would not function at all without   00:08:36.680 --> 00:08:43.000 a horror-grade voice chat, serious unnerving  sound design, and most of all multiple players   00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:48.200 communicating with each other. Like, try playing  either of these games as a single player, no one   00:08:48.200 --> 00:08:53.840 to interact with. They become very different  games. Not in a bad way, mind you, you just   00:08:53.840 --> 00:08:59.880 might not laugh as much. I hope you enjoyed  this little analysis of horror comedy games,   00:08:59.880 --> 00:09:05.080 and I hope more games of this type come along that  experiment with the roles players fill, the ways   00:09:05.080 --> 00:09:11.120 they interact, and the dramatic irony that ties  the experience together. And as always, I’d like   00:09:11.120 --> 00:09:16.840 to thank my patrons on Patreon, who help keep my  video making process sustainable. If you'd like to   00:09:16.840 --> 00:09:22.440 support my work directly, and get perks like your  credit here, seeing videos early, a vote on what   00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:27.120 music I arrange, and more behind-the-scenes  content, you can visit my Patreon link in   00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:37.360 this video's description. And with that, I’m  Scruffy, and thank you very much for watching.