Urthman

I would agree that the attempt to explain the premise of the show is both unnecessary and makes it sound less entertaining than it actually is.

Also, those YouTube mashup videos by Kutiman are wonderful. Thanks Jake! Check out the rest of Kutiman's YouTube channel. There's more good stuff that's not in the playlist linked on the IIT page. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7uoovBt-854ZO4-4tosU5g

I enjoy listening to the Casper mattress or the Squarespace ads over and over because of the awareness that Chris has to read it over and over and he's such a good sport about it. His voice is all, "See, this doesn't have to be drudgery!"

Anyone else think the Important If True Patreon campaign might do better if subscribers got access to episodes with extra ad reads instead of having the ad reads clipped out?

I was really hoping Jake would include the various versions of the Idle Thumbs theme song with his preroll montage and was super happy he did. Thanks Jake! That whole stupid thing was really fun to listen to.

I enjoyed this about as much as I do Idle Thumbs (which is my favorite podcast). A+ fictional and non-fictional robot content. But then, I enjoy listening to you guys talk about unfolding mattresses, domain registrars, chocolate-covered berries, and shaving implements over and over again, so I'm a big weirdo. Very glad you're gonna keep casting pods rather than just giving up because you're tired of talking about video games all the time.

Am I wrong in thinking that Important If True might occasionally talk about video games if something sufficiently dumb and amusing happens in the world of video games? It seems like the discussion of whether Wario = Older Mario would have counted as "delving into some of the more fascinating, bizarre, and stupid things going on in entertainment, pop culture, and technology" and is Important, If True.

It would be hard to overstate how happy I am about the name of the new podcast. Flawless victory.

Also, the scene where Superman floats up into the atmosphere and listens to all the voices in the world, all the people who might need his help, and what gets his attention? "Oh no! A bank is getting robbed! Are those deposits even insured? And even if they are...the bank's premiums will skyrocket! To the rescue!"

I love that Idle Thumbs has grown into a network of several great podcasts. But it's seems pretty silly, and is occasionally annoying to me, that half the time there isn't a direct link to the latest Idle Thumbs Podcast on the front page. Anyone else like to see a design revision that doesn't require drilling down through "shows" and the "Idle Thumbs" category to get to the latest podcast whenever it's rotated off the front page?

For whatever reasons, the Idle Thumbs crew have tended to shy away from talking much about games they'd worked on. Maybe there are reasons related to non-disclosure agreements or not wanting to step on the toes of former colleagues, but if it is just out of a sense of modesty and thinking people don't want to hear you go on too much about your own work, let me just say I'd love to hear you talk about that stuff. I would guess there are lots of us readers who would love for you to do some shows about your experiences with Firewatch or Double Fine or Bethesda or Telltale.

I have loved Weird Al for a very long time, but your description of him as making "safe" versions of pop songs made me wince with recognition. As a kid, I always thought of him making fun, humorous versions of songs that I enjoyed listening to more than the "dumb stuff" the original songs were about. But you could definitely also think of it as Weird Al taking songs about teenage sex, suicide, date rape, and racial profiling and "nerdwashing" them into toothless songs about bologna, bus queues, grammar pedantry, and Star Trek jokes. On the gripping hand, Weird Al was hardly purging the airwaves of songs about those topics. More like offering a tiny handful of nerd humor surrounded by an endless ocean of songs about the same stuff as the ones he was parodying. But I also can't help noticing how many songs by black artists that I only ever knew Weird Al's parody version of. In conclusion, Neil Cicierega's is a mouth of many moods. And sounds.

To me, the name "Idle Thumbs" means, "What we [gamers] talk about when our thumbs are idle." Games, sure, but not just games.

I don't remember all the rules, but the board game was a Chutes & Ladders type game where you could jump ahead with the cannons, by landing on a Mushroom power-up, or by riding across the lake on the dinosaur. And you'd get sent back by landing on Bowser (everybody does a HAW HAW HAW laugh) or the snake or getting smashed by the Thwomp block. The Goombas would start at the other end and each turn move toward the players and you'd get sent back if they landed on you but get an extra coin if you landed on them. You had to collect enough gold coins to get past the numbered doors. (Or maybe when you got Bowsered, you got sent off-board to the castle and then could re-enter at a numbered door instead of the starting pipe if you had enough coin stars.) If you landed on the clay Koopa shell, you got to ride it and it would double your speed until something happened to make you fall off. I think we might have spent more time making up new rules than we did actually playing it. The Lego thing is the castle, of course, and those are two Link figures guarding it. I think Mario, Banjo, Toad, Bob-omb, Link, the pumpkin, and Bob the Tomato were all playable characters. We eventually made figures for Peach, Wario, Spyro, a couple girls from Snowboard Kids, and a bunch of Banjo-Kazooie Jinjos. Here's a couple more that show the board a little more clearly and a couple of Banjo-Kazooie close enough that you can see the Model Magic clay we used. I think I took these with a crappy webcam because I didn't own a digital camera yet.

Jake's comment that lots of people have homemade Marios lying around at home reminded me that my kids and I made a Mario 64 board game when they were little (back in 2003, I think?). I took a few photos at the time.

I've been meaning to beg Chris, Jake, and Sean to consider bringing in some other Campo Santo folks and do a Firewatchcast to tell some stories about making the game, but this Audio Tour sounds even better.

That's crazy talk. The Hazard Course was part of the whole scene/mood-setting intro. I remember being enthralled with it the first time I played Half-Life because I'd never played a game with a diegetic tutorial and because of the little glimpses it gave you of pre-disaster Black Mesa.

I love that Jake lists Half-Life, which made you learn in the Hazard Course to use a long jump module that many players had completely forgotten about by the time they actually found one on Xen, as an example of a game that didn't feel the need to teach you every single system before letting you play the game. Of course the Hazard Course was optional and also better world-building than the mandatory tutorial sections in most games.

Role Playto Day

I think he said it once for each time that Chris used the wrong word to refer to a homunculus.

Campo Santo really ought to just put a banner on the Firewatch Steam page: Artwork So Great The Internet Can't Go a Week Without Stealing It

Glad the Thumbs enjoyed my e-mail, the subject line of which was "Jonathan Blow explained my daughter's Father's Day card to me." The card itself was amazing, but having Blow himself point out that cool detail I'd missed...I was Blown away (ign.com). I was hoping it might trigger a little discussion of The Witness and whether Chris/Jake/Nate have played any more of it and what they think. As Chris said when they discussed it on an earlier cast, it's a pretty good game for setting aside and coming back when you feel like trying some more puzzles. And I've found it's particularly good to play with other people and work on solving the puzzles together. Also, while my daughter's old enough not to be scandalized by such things, I was amused that I was thinking about how fun it would be to let her hear Jake and Chris talking about how smart she is when they segued right into "U R MR GAY" and dick doodles. Maybe won't forward it to the grandparents, though.

That feeling when Jonathan Blow points out one of the cool details in your daughter's The Witness-themed Father's Day card. https://twitter.com/Jonathan_Blow/status/745328706810351617

The best part was Jake calling bullshit the very first time Chris used the term "sly boots." He's all, No, Chris, that is not a word that you use. Stop whatever you're doing right now.

I found the clipped language to have a kind of poetic beauty in a lot of places. And I thought it was an interesting and effective way of showing how Childan has internalized his (distorted, I think) perception of Japanese culture and thinking out in his pursuit of greater social status. And I was continually impressed by the way Dick folds details about the world into the narrative without infodumps. One of my favorites was the guy talking about the difference between the two lighters, which is an intersting conversation on it's own, but also created a very natural-sounding way to drop in the detail that FDR had been assassinated in this world.