Hynospace Outlaw on the surface may look like nothing more than a fun, novelty parody of the old internet, but if it were just that I wouldn’t have made an hour long video essay about it. Hypnospace is an incredibly thoughtful look into the internet and the people that use it.
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How tf can Zane be dead?! He has to be alive to make Slayers X!!!!
Hypnospace was not a game I thought I would enjoy for the people aspect. Initially, I played the game for the quirky 90s internet aesthetic. But overtime, I found myself reading pages rather than just looking at them. The way you get glimpses into people's lives is so fanatically done, that I eagerly kept checking on certain pages to see what they talked about next.
My favorite was Ashley's Planets, this 8 or 9 year old girl would post updates about her fictional planets she makes. Like a planet named after her sister whom she loves. I adore this game, and cannot wait for the sequel.
This game is criminally underrated
You should really anaylise slayers X, it takes place 20 yrs after hypnospace and focus’s on what would have happened if you banned Zane before new years (he cannonlu survives)
thoughtful, well made, fantastic video on one of my most favourite games ever made. thank you for letting me relive hypnospace and appreciate it from yet another new perspective. great stuff!
The story about the creative force behind Freezer using the funds received from his satirical anti-capitalist art being coopted by corporations to bankroll projects designed to hit back against those same corporations reminds me of Chumbawamba.
When Chumbawamba released Tubthumping on a major label and it became a massive radio hit, reaching audiences outside of the anarcho-punk scene that they came from they channeled a significant amount of the proceeds into supporting anarchist projects and funding legal challenges against the same corporation who owned their record label.
Obviously, it's a bit different but I do recognise some parallels beyond Freezer being a very on the nose parody of vaporwave.
insanely good video, with the release of slayers x, and getting a glimpse inside's zanes psyche ive been feeling more and more nostalgic about how good hypnospace was, and this video just randomly showed up in my recommended (after i briefly mentioned the game on twitter? huh) but im glad it did
28:53 I like the reason Slushmouth gives for adding Inspirohaze to the web.
i love because it is unfiltered and raw in the sense of being both parts endearing and outright delusional. only way you'll ever see that sort of thing is bronies, influencers, crypto bros, neckbeard crap like /r Atheist/Incel, and 2020 election "fraud". even those spectacles are almost boring in comparison. Coolfest represents how engrossed we got about fads and the aesthetics like "COOLPUNK WILL NEVER DIE!!" month later it'll be like "i can't believe i was into this shit"
Dylan Merchant gives me huge Todd Howard vibes. Just replace "Outlaw" with "Elder Scrolls" or "Fallout", and I can see this all playing out the same way. Oh, and replace the Hypnospace set with some modern-day Metaverse headset thing.
amazing video jus started playin dis game cuz free n broke mylefr hamd, glad 2see sum bout dis
It's so goddamn shame that I'm dysphasic. This game and its story are right up my alley. I would've wanted to play it blind but since most I saw was a lot of text, I wasn't very interested since it would give me a hard time, so now that I've watched a few videos of this game, I feel like it's REALLY a shame that I struggle with the written world, since I've played games that really gives the best experience when coming in blind and if not that, at least experiencing the game yourself at your own pace really welds the experience to your head, not giving 2nd hand information feeling of "oh ok" but "OH! Wow!", I really wanted to get that welded feeling for this game since I already have strong emotions towards it. I want my heart broken even worse and to think about it for weeks! Now it feels like the experience has gone past already since I know too much with all the 2nd hand experiences. I will make a few people play this game in front of me for sure and see what they think of it.
If zane died how did he make slayers x?
Squishers.. are really cool
Jay Tholen, the designer of Hypnospace Outlaw, talked about the very thing you're describing in this video being his design philosophy when developing Hypnospace. It's a very inspiring message which almost made me tear up because it really shows the respect and care he has for people as unique individuals, something that is felt so clearly in Hypnospace:
> Aw dang, thank you. It makes me extremely happy that the game reads this way for you. What you've described was a major priority in the construction of characters/worlds in both Hypnospace and Dropsy.
> Browsing the Geocities archive really struck me because you can usually get a sense of the person behind the page with a small amount of digging. Even sites with the most theatrical "ENTER MY DOMAIN" facade will often have a buried "About Me" section that rewards you with more context about the person. Sometimes it can be quite sad. It's like you're seeing a person perform in costume, and then you get to go backstage and see what they're actually like, and maybe why they chose to perform the way they did.
> Personal home pages were also often concerned with subjects we might consider mundane or boring. Pets, recipes, riddles, poems, etc. Many times imperfect or downright bad, both in content and execution. But it's what they had to share and something they thought may be valuable to others. Sharing something in this way requires vulnerability and I find it super inspiring.
> In many games there's a tendency to pattern characters characters after traditional archetypes and exaggerate their personality quirks so that audiences immediately 'get' the kind of character they're dealing with. Conversely, Non-villain characters in stylish indie games tend to seem diverse initially but don't end up having any actual diversity of thought or differing moral frameworks.
> In both cases the characters tend to look too COOL or character designer-y, which I guess can be seen as the game equivalent of those shows where the actors for high school students are clearly 30 years old.
> All told though, I think honoring the uniqueness of each person in our world (fictional as they may be) lends itself to the spiritual/theological framework that I try to build my games within. People are made in God's image as valuable and truly unique, no exceptions.
> Some folks we encounter may make terrible choices or believe awful things, and maybe they're abrasive and rude to us directly. We can't possibly know what led them to this point, and they're going to continue to exist either way. If only we had an "about me" page or some internet history to spelunk, right?
> For our small part in their lives we can either vilify them and push them deeper into darkness or offer a small amount of warmth that, given their current state, they may not have seen from another human in a long long time. This can shock a person who has only experienced bile in return, and ultimately may be the first step of their way out of hell.
> I was a 16 year old internet edgelord (some of the content in the game is from my high school Livejournal) and this kind of unexpected warmth continues to remind me to choose the path of gentleness & understanding in my own interactions.
This is a really amazing video essay on one of my favorite indie games of the last decade. Thank you for putting the time into making this! keep up the great work.
me and some friends are going through hypnospace and man did the gumshoe gooper case mess me up right away, I actually wasn't sure if the drawings were part of the infringement and ignored them at first, then I learned about what kind of nut the gooper creator was but still, the people enjoying a harmless cartoon getting punished like that was hard to swallow, luckily the rest of the enforcer crew also felt bad and none of the users get banned for that, until the users start fighting back and keep posting the fish out of protest, then it really hurts to find out hot rod guy gets the ban, man I get copyright and why we need it but its so sad to see projects constantly getting the axe just because its attached to an IP, that IP is a flag people can rally behind, and since the law basically works for people with money, there is nothing we can do about it.
Although you use YouTube as your example, copyright messing with web video is not anachronistic. Even before YouTube, web video was harshly policed. AMVs were a particular target, due to their everything. Its copyrighted footage edited over copyrighted pop music.
Fansites used to get taken down due to copyright violations. You couldn't use The Simpsons material on your The Simpsons fansite. Now corperations turn a blind eye because free fan labor benefits them. Companies like Fandom/Wikia are built off of this casual copyright infringement, this legal game of chicken where you get free labor out of pretending you do not see it.
Wikipedia is still shaped by this history, intentionally using poor quality images of copyrighted material, to avoid being sued. And so they can argue minimal usage. A part of fair use is to use the absolute minimal amount of copyrighted work you can, and Wikipedia argues they this by only using tiny crusty jpegs.
I don't want to be that "technically Nintendo was in the right for their creator program". But. But when I say it, I say it like its messed up and I hate copyright law.
I think something that isn't mentioned here, but also is a nod to the headband interface, is how the internet was experienced in the 90s: through chunky CRT monitors that at most hit 1024*768 resolutions. You could see every pixel, albeit kinda blurry. That blur produced a weird smoothing effect making the low palette of colours used not nearly as bad looking as it does now on crispy LCD+ monitors.
I was really not expecting this game to make me cry
cars
they exist
they bring happiness
they eat ice cream
they hug
I just finished this game, and WOW it took me back. I've been surfing the net since 95, so HO was an incredible nostalgia trip. HypnOS really nails the Windows98-ish/OG Macintosh look and feel. I got lost looking through the character's corners of the 'web'. Social Media really killed the fun in a lot of ways, I feel. MySpace really was the last gasp of the old Net.
No spoilers here, but there are a few points in the story where it's a sort of "hard-stop", page-turn, chapter transition. For full immersion, I recommend logging out of the game and coming back in a few hours or the next day.
I felt so bad when I had to copyright strike Abby's Gooper pics and seeing her shock reaction to it. Wasn't long into the game when I had that "…are we the baddies?" moment.
awesome video about and awesome game
Balls
14:00 yooo is that a remix of the "Youtube Anthem"?
you sound like mistermysteryW lmao
i’ve been wanting to find a video like for a long time, or even make one myself, because this game is often summed up to being a funny internet simulator and when you really look into it and study the characters it’s just such a beautiful collection of human stories, it’s full of personality and love and insecurity and all of this shit that gets lost in translation because “funny grandma ice cream haha”. while i do love the games humor i wish more people saw how beautiful this game really is!!
This game was the basis of so many papers in my college years. This whole world goes so deep, it’s basically why I love storytelling in my games and look for such a depth in narrative when I pick up a new game to play. So excited for Dreamsetter and I hope it has the same feeling and accomplishment.
Really good video, kind of gutted to see this is the most recent one but I know how motivation goes sometimes… If you ever feel like doing another exploration of deeper themes hinted at with background details you might enjoy Umurangi Generation.
I'll say nothing about it just in case you haven't heard of it but after watching this I'd be dumb not to mention it.
Zane is one of the users that can live if you ban them in time but I imagine uou know that by now. Not too long after you uploaded this video an effective sequel to Hypospace featuring Zane was released which does mean him living is canon and much like Tim. He does become a functional member of society.
I have no idea what Hypnospace outlaw is. time to buckle up and find out
What is the remix of the 009 sound system dreamscape from
The music genre history page was based on the real Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music, which is now dead because of the death of flash, but remade for a new generation in an entirely different style.. If you ever wanna get lost like that I'd check it out
I woke up on a hotel room floor with a horrible hang over exacerbated by some flaming wreckage from a chowderman branded helicopter aka chowder copter.
Apparently the chowderman likes to party.
The Slushmoush music guide seems like a parody version of Ishkurs music guide which is pretty cool