axemtitanium

Sounds like you've independently reconceptualized Wolpaw's law. As for the representation in games discussion, I recently had a chat with my cousin who just got into college. While we were talking about affirmative action in admissions, I realized that it was actually surprisingly relevant to this debate. I had long been opposed to any sort of affirmative action and preferred a purely merit-based admissions process (being Asian and male, I am in one of the only demographics that affirmative action is purely detrimental towards). However, after finishing college and looking back, I actually think there is something (perhaps intangible) of value that I would not have had access to under a pure merit system. Merely existing in a space, be it workplace or college or whatever, in which people of different backgrounds are represented is good and enriching in itself, and you as a person reap the benefits so long as you don't go out of your way to avoid it. I think it's the same in games as well. The mere existence of diversity in game protagonists is enriching to the medium because most people won't go out of their way to avoid it and consequently will have a chance to experience something other than white middle American male. No one has to like it (though that would be a plus), its mere existence and consumption is enough. Unfortunately, there's a chicken and egg problem here where no one wants to make a game starring someone other than a white male because a market doesn't exist for it, hence the need for this debate and the potential "affirmative action"-ing up game protagonists.

FTFY.

This might be the greatest idea. Alternatively, I would be completely unopposed to filling out the rest of the space with new songs (perhaps from the Kickstarter Buddy Package?). This is the unrealistic, EntitledGamer, fanboy side of me talking; feel free to ignore. Anyway, now I just need to buy a turntable so I can actually listen to it. Thanks for being mega-ultra talented people, Thumbs.

I haven't listened to the cast yet (I'm waiting for the annotated YouTube version so I can skip spoilers), but I noticed that the new Wuxtry is here to stay. Does that, by chance, mean new music is being recorded for the EP? Or just new songs in general?

I don't consider it a primary news source, or even read it regularly, but I've always enjoyed opinion pieces from http://gaygamer.net that friends have linked me. You wrote a piece for them recently, right? I seem to have forgotten what it was about, but I recall that it was good. Might have to give them a second look.

Huh I guess I never did this. Hello! I first found Idle Thumbs in the downtime between The Idle Thumbs Podcast and the Kickstarter and tore through the archives in a delirious summer haze. Proud backer and reader since. I'm also Ben and I may have met you at the Idle Thumbs PAX East 2013 meet-up. Hope to see more of you guys in the future!

I'm still optimistic about this game. Naughty Dog has (pretty) good writers. Maybe the narrative dissonance of Uncharted will be less because instead of blowing away a million dudes as Nathan Drake, you probably will only blow away a thousand dudes as Joel. Maybe Ellie develops in a similar fashion to Clementine but slightly older and more competent (Clementine + Elizabeth combination as a companion character?). We will see.

Speaking of board games, Der Weinhandler uses your wine as both currency and value. Each wine has a specific value (in euros) which is used to bid for other wine, but euros themselves are not a tangible currency within the game. Stop me if you've heard this before.

I haven't watched these videos but I do recall in a prior demo that 1) there's no regenerating health and 2) you don't automatically reload when your clip runs out of bullets (because people aren't psychic). These two facts make me excited about the minute-to-minute gunplay, and will hopefully be enough to keep it from being an otherwise unremarkable 3rd person shooter.

Now we just need Anno 2007 to come out and the future will be complete.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-Thanks Jake. Thanks for pointing that out. It's ok though, because the family's actual last name is Goldblum.

As a matter of fact, Disney does have an incredible archive (see section on Becky Cline). This article suggests that the same influx of materials into the vault that happened when Disney reacquired Oswald happened with Star Wars. Here's hoping.

I definitely read this as BioShark Infinite: A Jeff Gone Home Game. You can probably tack a "Minerva's Revenge" on there somewhere. Ah fuck, now I've associated Gone Home with Jeff Goldblum. What have I/you done?

Gone Home's a pretty cool guy. Eh has no dead bodies and doesn't afraid of anything. Interesting! Now I'll have to decide which mode to play first...

You could always play Social Ops. Oh wait, JP onry.

Looking back at my playing habits, I've only very rarely opted to eschew the "traditional" objectives as laid out by the designers to just play in the sandbox. The instance that sticks out in my mind is Katamari Damacy, which allows you to just experiment and observe the world in Endless mode. Coincidentally, I had a brief encounter with this paradigm again recently when I played Noby Noby Boy for the first time last week. However, I'm a self-described completionist and crave objectives to complete. That said, I'm not unfamiliar with the philosophy of playing certain (usually) sandbox games as emergence engines; I'm a fan of the podcast after all. I just think that it would be interesting and bold for the designers of Gone Home to choose to not include any explicit objectives or win state in the game. I believe there's a difference between having objectives and letting the player ignore them (GTA, Far Cry 2, SimCity, etc.) and actually having no objectives. In the latter case, there isn't even a construct to ignore and might force the player to deconstruct why exactly they're still playing. In the ideal case, the player will decide that the act of exploring this house and uncovering the mystery is an interesting enough act in itself to continue playing, even if there's never any narrative payoff at the end other than knowing in your head that you figured it out. At this point, I'm critiquing/praising a game design choice that might not have even been made. What is this, Idle Thumbs? Baboo. P.S. Noby Noby Boy is fantastic.

True, we're in spoiler warning territory now, methinks. That said, the article suggests an interesting possibility which I hadn't considered about the game: that there could literally be no objectives in the game. The house exists and the things inside it exist, but it's possible that there is no "win" state for the game. You, the player, could "solve" the mystery of what happened to the player character's family in your head by piecing together evidence, but there's no acknowledgement of that, other than personal satisfaction. If that turns out to be the case, I say "Bold move, Mr. Scoops."

PolyGoneHome.

I think you mean Day 1 Perch. *whack* That said, here's hoping there's some sort of public ARG related to MGSV. I know Kojima Productions sent out severed Raiden arms for MGR but only to press. The original Phantom Pain trailer and Joakim Mogren hullabaloo seemed like it was building up toward that but then they just said what it was.

Also for the record, Weinhandler is a surprisingly devious game to play (not that I doubted the Thumbs when they plugged it before). There are some mindgames and trickery to be had while playing that game.

But corporations are people too! So by the transitive property, developers are people. *shocker*

Oh you weren't going to make that Nick Breckon plaster cast to turn your firstborn into CollegeBabyBreckon?

I played the demo for this at PAX. It's got the same issues as other free-hand control schemes (Wii, Kinect, etc.) of me slowly drifting out of the "sensing frame" as you play it but the Leap Motion felt very sensitive and responsive (almost too responsive) while I wasn't doing it wrong. It's like Minority Report except without a holographic indicator of where you should be putting your fingers, hence the slow drift as I found my fingers moving out of the correct z-plane where they could be detected. That said, it's pretty fun and it definitely scratches that same Super Hexagon itch.

Vertical slice!

Hey guys, it was really fun hanging out with you guys. Post here so I know who you are on the forums. I'm Ben.