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I think the blandness of it is what sold me. Despite the drama because of her illness, it is all rather mundane isn't it? But that's a pretty regular feature of adult life. Whatever romance exists is going to be personal and idiosyncratic. Viewed from outside, it appears unexceptional, and perhaps monstrous. It ends up mirroring his choice to design warplanes. In both cases without access to his dreamscape all the viewer sees are choices that are exacerbating the sickness of a woman and a nation.

I had a ZZZZZZZZZ category before I realized you could hide games!

I want to thank Rob & Danielle for owning their ignorance, so to speak, on the issue of game animation and following that up with talking to Jake who has a greater familiarity with the subject. It is definitely a subject that I've always been ignorant about and never really considered in any serious way, and it was great to hear that very basic breakdown of how game characters are animated. The topic of ideology in games is interesting. I'm definitely with you guys where I think how mechanics are getting defined is a little mushy, and we're seeing thematic elements get conflated into the discussion. But I think there's a second thing going on, which is the ambiguous use of the term ideology. As I see it, there are two distinct ways that the term ideology is being used in the discussion, often interchangably, to much confusion: 1. There is ideology as a well considered world view. In economics when we talk about salt water and fresh water economists we're talking about two different sets of beliefs about how the economy works, and we can refer to that difference in belief as ideological. This use of ideology represents conscious thought and belief. 2. There is also ideology in the Marxist sense of the assumptions we have about the world are all informed by the totality of the modes of production. This operates at a more unconscious level. I think this is an important distinction to make because in the 2nd definition of ideology every single culture artifact produced reflects a capitalist ideology, it would be impossible for it not to be because it exists within the social framework of a capitalist society. Our understanding of what a game is and what it isn't is informed by that ideology. We can recognize moving images on a screen that we operate with a mechanical controller as a game, but a member of an Amazon tribe that doesn't exist in the same set of relationships won't be able to have the same sort of understanding. That's ideology. That is distinct from looking at a game where you play a character that over time accumulates wealth and power, and saying that game has a pro-market or capitalist ideology. That's ideology in the first sense. I think this distinction matters because you can flip the script and make a game where accumulating power isn't the object of the game, and all the bankers, CEOs, and landowners are villains, and despite this more left-wing framework it is still nonetheless a game reflecting capitalist ideology in the 2nd sense because it is a game that exists within that prevailing social framework. So I think there are a lot of different ways you can look at the issue, but I think how the question is approached is pretty important. It kind of reminds me being in college and reading up on Lucy Irigaray's position on feminine writing and sexual difference, writing I definitely can't claim to have ever really understood, but certainly found interesting.

Osaka is really cool too. Those are both cool, enormous Japanese cities. Thanks for the info!

I don't have a strong opinion about dub vs subtitles for Miyazaki movies, but The Wind Rises is so fucking good. I got teary eyed from the thematic weight of that one. I picked up the blu-ray boxset for my wife for Christmas, so we've been working through that, but The Wind Rises has been my personal favorite by a long shot.

So looking into the Yakuza games it seems like the perfect game for me right now. I got back from a trip to Japan about a month ago, and the idea of playing a game in an open world Tokyo environment doing mundane things/attacking people by swinging a couch at them is super enticing. For a newcomer what's a good entry point into the series? 5 sounds good, but I guess there is also Yakuza 0 for the PS4 which I guess I could pick up whenever I get that system?

Oh man yeah, whoever wrote the code for the Race for the Galaxy program did a great job with the AI, it always crushed me on anything but easy difficulty. If the AI for bridge is anything similar Sarah is going to turn into a monstrous Bridge Lord.

Game felt like silly fun to me. I thought it was clever, but if there was any deeper meaning I wasn't paying attention. I thought the game had a lot of lovely detail, so I guess that was the main thing I was struck by.

Yeah, thanks to that mod I'm probably gonna grab this game finally. I'm not a baby when it comes to horror stuff, but I find having to run away from the monster constantly mechanic tedious in the games I've played where that's a thing.

I like the point Dave Heron brought up about the "comeback mechanic" in Street Fighter. I noticed the same balancing act in the spinoff game Puzzle Fighter where right when a player is about to be eliminated from a match is also when they have the potential to push back with the most punishing blow. I even came up with a phrase for this, I call it the pendulum of power. The idea is that as the path to victory becomes shorter the power that players are able to exert against each other becomes greater. This makes the whole competition exciting because neither player is truly out of the match until the victory condition has been met, but this state exists without reducing the skill involved in the game. I would love to see this method of balancing games introduced into a lot more games. However there are two difficulties with introducing it into the strategy space. 1. This doesn't always gel well with games that are set within a specific historical period. Depending on the circumstances, the pendulum swing could be wildly inappropriate for the events the designer is attempting to depict. 2. It's unclear how the pendulum of power should be implemented in a game where there are more than two competing forces. It's obvious how this works in a game with two players, but what does such a system look like when there are 3 to 6 (or more) players? Anyway this is a great topic, and I think designers need to think about this carefully if they want to make a game that is exciting to watch/play, and that respects the players' time.

I think I'm the only person here that was down on this year! The way you feel about this year was how I felt about games in 2012, and each subsequent year has been a disappointment for me. I guess I should be ecstatic next year though since 2016 will have a 2012 retro vibe with Dishonored 2 and XCOM 2 coming out. With any luck maybe Brendon Chung will release a game too and it will be the new best year ever!

Rocket League, Witcher 3, and Aviary Attorney I guess? I dunno, I thought this year was kinda weak for new games... but those games were bright spots for me.

Rob's story about not getting Dark Forces to run immediately brought back memories I try to repress of the weeks of futile struggle I spent trying to get a copy of Master of Magic, also a Christmas present, to run on my computer. I had played the brief demo of the game over and over, and was terribly excited about it, but somehow all that enthusiasm wasn't enough to get the game to run.

Okay, now I kind of really want to see clips of Byul's mom crying, does that make me a horrible person? As far as EG, I was at TI5 and for me the most hype moment was probably Sumail styling all over EHOME as Windranger. It was a brilliant counterpick to Storm Spirit who was such a dominant hero that tournament, especially in the hands of a player like Cty. Although Sumail wasn't the first pro player to run that Slahser build of rushing aghs followed by a blink dagger, that was definitely the game that convinced me of how legit the build was. The excitement of that game can't be understated either because these two teams had the loudest fans out of any of the teams at the tournament, I get chills just thinking about it. I'll defend the Echo Slam too. I feel like it is fashionable to kind of trivialize it because CDEC were getting pretty seriously outdrafted and outplayed throughout the grand finals, only winning won game thanks to a bit of last pick Broodmother cheese. Which is a fair point. But there's something to be said for cementing your victory in a dramatic fashion, and that was definitely a perfect way to do that. A personal favorite moment was the DOTA Red Bull Battlegrounds Grand Finals between Team Secret and IG just because it was the first e-sports event I attended in person. It was a best of 5 that went the full 5 games with some incredible back and forth aggression. Prior to this tournament Secret were looking really bad (not unlike the situation they are currently in), but shortly before this tournament the 6.84 patch was released and suddenly the team came to life. Zai started playing out of his mind on Dark Seer and Clockwerk, and S4 was looking like the best mid in the world. From then on the team looked unstoppable until they fell apart at TI, but it was an amazing run while it lasted, and this tournament was the start of it.

I started playing this game again after having stepped away from it for a few months. This is a common thing for me with RPGs because I don't have the attention span to only play one game for 80 hours or whatever. Anyway, what typically happens is a realize I don't remember anything about the plot or how all the different systems work, and I give up in frustration. This time however I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it only took me a few minutes to get back up to speed. I think the game is just as complex as the Witcher 2, but the interface has enough improvements that it was easier for me to get back into things unlike the Witcher 2. Anyway, I still love this game. I like that the conversations often involve people talking around an issue rather than expressing their feelings directly. That feels like a true to life quality that is often missing in game writing. I like the unpredictability of some of the "minor quest" storylines that expand into much crazier things. The game basically has one theme to it, which is that you go around different villages slaying monsters, but the real monster is man. But personally I can't get enough of it, works like a charm for me.

Found the DLC for this game too hard :-\

I'm with Badfinger on this. Don't mention details that are genuinely surprising, but this idea that hearing in advance discussion of plot points will somehow corrupt your experience with a piece of media continues to feel like a bizarre concept to me.

People spent centuries believing Sir Thomas More's Utopia was nonfiction too. Some people are unable to grasp irony.

I'm glad Rob & Danielle landed where I land on series and reboots in video games (I'm for them!). The games I'm most excited about coming out next year are XCOM 2, Dishonored 2, and the next Deus Ex game. The only game I'm really excited about that isn't some sort of sequel is Firewatch. Who makes the reboot is a great point. I used to think it was only okay for games to be remade, not movies just because you can tell the same story in a game, but if the reboot has greatly improved game mechanics & systems then it'll still be great, but the same isn't the case for movies... but now that I think about it that isn't really true. I'm just so used to blockbuster Hollywood remakes that are cynical cash grabs that my mind immediately jumps to that. But you can point to examples like Herzog's Nosferatu to see remade films with artistic merit.

I like the map changes, and how optimal starting builds are no longer obvious (for now), but I have a feeling of dread that this patch is gonna turn into the next 6.83.

Really rooting for VG this tournament, and hoping they become one of those teams that once they win one, they start winning a string of tournaments.

Nice first episode. I really enjoyed the relaxed tone of the conversation, very fitting for a podcast with the name Idle Weekend. My experience playing the Walking Dead Season 1 was somewhat similar to Danielle's. My wife and I typically go back to the East Coast for the holidays to spend time with our families in DC and Richmond, Virginia. However the year that season wrapped up we stuck around San Francisco for the holidays due to some financial constraints. We discovered that San Francisco really empties out around this time. On Christmas Eve we both had the day off, and decided to finally play the Walking Dead. It had been my intention to play one episode a day or something, but my wife wasn't having it, and we powered through the whole season that day (the Netflix effect you two were mentioning). It was pretty brutal, and it was really powerful and affecting the way that game is, but also there was this special feeling of playing it on a cold day in an emptied out city that really stuck with me. Oddly enough, we will once again not being going out to the East Coast for the first time since that happened. I'm really struggling to figure out something special to do like that though. Also, I think Rob's gotta lay it out, what's his deal with Life is Strange? I haven't played the game, so no judgment here.

Thanks for the breakdown of what's happening between Riot and these Korean organizations. While it is easy enough to find a summary of the most recent big matches that have happened, learning about some of the behind the scenes stuff is tricky. I hope you guys follow up with any big developments that happen from this conflict. Can't speak for anyone else, but I find this stuff really interesting.

Watching DC beat EG game 1 at the Summit 4 was so satisfying to watch!

Yeah, my experience playing with randoms has not been great either. It has been the opposite problem a game like DOTA has though where people overcommunicate and flame each other constantly. In Helldivers I've found people generally uncommunicative via voice chat or text so people idle around too long getting into protracted fights that serve no strategic purpose.