Problem Machine

Here is as good a place as any I suppose to mention that I picked up Dark Souls for $7.50 during the Amazon sale and it is ruining my life in a wonderful wonderful way. Making my way through Anor Londo now: Fuck Roof Archers (congrats roof archers?)

Crouching is quite useful in TF2 in terms of adding a bit of mobility and adding another axis on which you can dodge a headshot if you think someone is lining one up, but that's TF2. There's a lot of games where it really doesn't offer anything. As another tangent to the same point, it's worth noting that IIRC TF2 doesn't bother with the Source engine convension of holding shift to sprint(HL2) or slow-walk(L4D). They wouldn't have any place in the game, so they're taken out.

Well that got weird and awkward and unpleasant. Internet people, man. I dunno. I guess there are always these little tensions and whatnot even between good friends, and people who are used to watching soap operas where everything is foreshadowing some terrible secret pick up on what are really little annoyances and inflate them into clandestine conflicts. Or maybe they just be trollin'. Who knows? Worth mentioning at this juncture though: I like Sean, insofar as it's appropriate to like a person who one has never met and just enjoy listening to bullshit about games with his buddies every week. I think he adds a lot of focus to the discussion: It probably cuts down on the goofing off a bit (which maybe some people don't like?) but, aside from contributing his own worthwhile insights on gaming and stuff, subtly prods the other Thumbs to do so as well. I think it's swell. Thanks, Sean!

It seems to be a design concession to avoid the shots from the dark that instakill your soldiers that were the norm in the original X-Com

Phone book?

Right, and if we were talking about Nintendo claiming a slice of the pie in this instance then my opinion would be quite different. As I mentioned in my piece before, I totally think that Nintendo did put in some of the work on these LPs and are therefore entitled to some of the profit. However, the way the system is set up, the ad revenue either goes entirely to Nintendo or entirely to the LPer, and if I have to pick one of the two who deserves it more, it ain't gonna be Nintendo. TBH, Youtube is to blame for a lot of this. They seem to have absolutely no interest in protecting their content creators, which is fucking absurd and indicates a lack of healthy competition in the streaming video marketplace. I would very much like to see them usurped by a competitor on this basis, but since one of their major competitors was already taken down by corporate IP owners I'm definitely starting to get a sense of who's buttering whose bread here.

I suppose I've always bristled at what I perceive to be the artificial divide between technical work and artistic work, as one who does both. To me, this seems a lot like stealing the entirety of a musician's revenue because he or she used an unlicensed sample or synthesizer patch. What if you, as a musician working for Nintendo, did exactly that: Extrapolating forth, would the creator of that sample then be entitled to all of the revenue for that game?

I am far from an expert but I will argue this on the facts I do have available, culled from your citations and the wikipedia article on transformative work. So that addresses the first of the four. I think it would be very difficult to make a case that Let's Plays are in any way intended to or capable of superseding the original work, and thus I believe are a prime candidate for defense under transformative use. So, that leaves the third, which is indeed very difficult to defend if you assume that the actual gameplay content of a game is of no intrinsic value-- a particularly ironic claim for Nintendo to make, being popularly regarded by their fans as one of the only places left to go for a game that's actually fun to play instead of being cutscene-laden 'cinematic' pandering. You could show a game like Spelunky beginning to end a hundred times over and still not have scratched the surface of what it has to offer, because the content is the gameplay. These are not films. You are not giving the product away by showing it. Nevertheless, yes, that would be the point of contention. I didn't say Nintendo didn't have a case, merely that it was not the obvious open and shut case most people seem to be of the opinion it is. Though, sadly, I do agree with you that no judge would find against them, that says more about my confidence in the courts than anything else. Regarding the last point, I am clear on the difference, but my point is that this is a contrived and nonsensical and arbitrary division and our ready acceptance of it is the product of approximately a century of overreaching IP litigation. The problem is, as time goes on, everything comes to be built upon everything else and someone owns a piece of everything. I perceive a slow erosion of usage rights, which would be alarming and worrisome on its own, but what is driving me crazy is that there are people cheering it on against their own best interests, and in so doing treating people who have done nothing but make a living trying to entertain while having a bit of fun with the most astounding contempt. It plays into a lot of my pre-existing anxieties, so sorry if I get a bit shrill on the subject, but, ugh. It is just emblematic of a whole lot of super gross legal and political shit that is going on right now.

I think it's some of each tbh. I think that we've gotten so beaten down in regards to fair use rights that a lot of people don't even regard them as rights any more because it's impossible to defend them in court against corporate pockets. Really, I'm not even terribly upset at Nintendo: What they're doing is stupid and unethical and on shaky legal ground, but if they want to make stupid decisions I'll be happy to watch it bite them in the ass. No, what makes me mad are the apologists who think it's completely okay that corporations steal the meager revenue of buskers just because they provided them the tools to make their content. I don't think people would be okay with it if Adobe or Microsoft started collecting ten percent of their pay, and I'm not clear on what's qualitatively different when it comes to creative works as opposed to technical works. Everything in the modern world is built on top of everything else, and to decide that this is where the line is drawn and to then deprive entertainers of their income on that basis is fucking absurd.

I listened to the first 20 minutes or so and am currently too angry to fairly regard any cogent arguments presented later on. Okay, I shouldn't have read the comments first, but disregarding that, if you want to seem unbiased then characterizing the response as "kneejerk overreactions" may not be a good way to start. I'm super fucking annoyed that apparently no one understands the concept of transformative fair use and fully expects to cede all rights to corporations for 'intellectual' content, despite all of that content being built with tools owned by Adobe or Microsoft or whoever. Apparently, it makes a world of difference if it has a character on the box whether you're allowed to use it to make something else.

I... do not like the way the XBox looks. It seems like each surface has a different texture which gives it a weird ugly patchwork look to my eyes, though that could just be the pictures I'm looking at. Also, I was kind of hoping you guys would talk about Nintendo's bizarre decision to drink Let's Players' milkshakes. I wrote a bit about it earlier this week, since it's something I'm pissed off enough about that I'd like the word to get out.

I didn't get that impression, but you did make a lot of references to it being 'just like a scene from the movies.' It was clear to me that you were talking about historical and historical fiction films, but I can see how it could be misconstrued.

Well, as enjoyable as I've found it, and as much as I do think it is game-talk of a maybe different sort, I do appreciate that it's somewhat off the mark of what people come to the podcast for. I will say, though, that if there was a podcast of just insane office video game soap opera antics, I would probably listen.

Okay I'm like 10 minutes into this and I want you guys to play Neptune's Pride forever. Listening to this absurd Game of Thrones bullshit from the Telltale offices after the fact is just the best.

Hey, man, the human space body is a beautiful space thing. Don't be ashamed of your space asshole, no matter how spacious it may in fact be.

Someday soon Chris is going to look into the mirror and realize that perhaps the true space asshole dwells within.

Oh, I'm absolutely certain it's a total bullshit figure. Nevertheless, you should probably be prepared to put that much time into anything you want to be really good at.

10,000 hours is the going rate to become really really good at something apparently. It's a lot of time. Can't really spare that much for just any passing fancy: Gotta be something you love.

Super envious of Chris's easy familiarity with mr guitar. I can play around with some instruments enough to come up with ideas for things to do in electronic composing tools or with a lot of practice perform a piece of moderate complexity, but I can't burst out into song with any kind of spontaneity. It's a skill I'd like to develop, but uh I have a lot of skills like that and I need to prioritize. Maybe in a year or two. Any particular thoughts on how to approach building skill or just spend time with the instrument practicing?

Actually it's completely different content. I gather most of the XBLA stuff was pretty underwhelming (and made by a completely different company), but, uh, one of the main Terraria guys looked at all of the stuff people were adding in mods and thought some of those ideas were pretty awesome so is adding in a couple of mod ideas and then a bunch of other stuff inspired by that. That's the story I heard anyway. I can still see why people would be irked by the initial abandonment, but I picked it up a while after the previous final patch for $2.50 so I'm kind of excited.

Hm, does the coming huge new content patch salve those wounds or has that ship already sailed? Regarding the topic of candy rewards reducing the internal motivations we would otherwise be driven by and how this relates to game design, Jon Blow actually did a big presentation discussing this very phenomenon a few years ago. Part of the driving idea, as he mentions, behind Braid is that there's no big in-game reward for solving puzzles, that the main reward for solving the game's puzzles is the intrinsic satisfaction of figuring out a tricky problem. That makes it interesting that Braid was mentioned in such close proximity to this discussion in the podcast for a completely different, and perhaps slightly contradictory, reason. I'd put the video up here but I can't easily tell which it is from the ten or so one hour lectures he's got up on youtube. I'll link it if I find it later. Anyway, he mentions the book Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn there, which I checked out on that basis and which I thought was a really good exploration of how we undermine the very behaviors we try to promote by incentivizing them. If it's a topic you're interested in, I recommend checking it out.

Oh the discussion on whether reviewers should complete games before reviewing them reminded me a great deal of basically the same discussion happening on Three Moves Ahead a while back. It's a super good episode and worth checking out. http://www.idlethumbs.net/3ma/episodes/reviewers-on-revue

Tomorrow's Escapist Headline: "Braid Designer Says Bioshock Infinite 'Messy and Unfun'"-- Do you agree, or believe that he is arrogant and pretentious and only made that one game which is just a ripoff of Super Mario/Prince of Persia anyway? Tell us in the comments section!

The discussion on "No Decision is a Bad Decision" reminded me of this piece I wrote discussing the relationship between game balance and player expression. Yes. I just try to link the most appropriate essay I've written after every podcast. It's relevant probably!

I prefer the sequel, Aapocalypse