Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures dev balances pleasing himself with pleasing his audience

Which do you find more exhilarating, Trevor, pain or pleasure?

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The Angry Video Game Nerd does his best to be empathetic, especially compared to his successors. In this world of near-constant Youtuber and Twitch personality scandals, James seems like a downright sweetheart most of the time. Sam Beddoes of Freakzone Games, the creators of The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures games, does his best to follow suit. His goal is to express his love for the AVGN and give his audience a good time in unison. That’s why he is reworking the difficulty of the entirety of the first game in the series per player feedback before launching both games on Switch later this year.

Seeing as fans have pushed back against the idea of “Easy Modes” in games like Sekiro and Cuphead out of concerns that the difficulty is part of the artists’ vision, I was worried Sam would suffer a similar backlash. He sounded undeterred, saying “My intent is to make a game that’s hard, that stays true to the kinds of scab-picking frustration that ‘The Nerd’ expresses so well in his videos, but I can also take criticism. When I hear that players aren’t having fun with a game I made, I want to take that feedback and use it to build my skills. This new version of AVGN Adventures has a lot of improvements, both visually and technically. It’s still hard. It’s just hard in a more fun way, at least in my opinion. And if you liked the original level designs, you can play it that way too. Giving players options is always a good thing.”

Sam’s also adding some kind of new 3rd campaign for people who beat both games in the collection. It’s hard to imagine anyone complaining about that, no matter how angry and nerdy they are. 


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Jonathan Holmes
Destructoid Contributor - Jonathan Holmes has been a media star since the Road Rules days, and spends his time covering oddities and indies for Destructoid, with over a decade of industry experience "Where do dreams end and reality begin? Videogames, I suppose."- Gainax, FLCL Vol. 1 "The beach, the trees, even the clouds in the sky... everything is build from little tiny pieces of stuff. Just like in a Gameboy game... a nice tight little world... and all its inhabitants... made out of little building blocks... Why can't these little pixels be the building blocks for love..? For loss... for understanding"- James Kochalka, Reinventing Everything part 1 "I wonder if James Kolchalka has played Mother 3 yet?" Jonathan Holmes