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Do you have a link to that playthrough? I tried looking for it, but there are a lot of videos to go through...

Oh yeah, I don't think this was like a secret or anything, but since war gaming is such a niche hobby I guess it isn't covered that much. Rock, Paper, Shotgun did a really big, excellent feature awhile back on the types of war games people work with in the Pentagon. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/11/16/interview-james-sterrett-professional-wargamer/ There are also a number of game designers that come from a military/intelligence background. Volko Ruhnke who is the designer behind GMT's popular Counter-Insurgency (COIN) series had a dayjob as a security analyst for the CIA. You can read about him in the Washington Post, which is another nice piece of coverage from a mainstream outlet: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/in-the-world-of-role-playing-war-games-volko-ruhnke-has-become-a-hero/2014/01/10/a56ac8d6-48be-11e3-bf0c-cebf37c6f484_story.html Edit: Oh, I see that Economist article mentioned Volho Ruhnke as well, nice!

It was confirmed by friend of the show, Kirk Hamilton.

I can't wait to see my lordly aura!

What a cool tower defense game!

I've only played Andean Abyss, but I assume it is representative of the rest of the COIN series in that it is excellent. The way victory conditions are modeled in Andean Abyss is definitely interesting. Some factions have "easier" conditions than others, but also have more limited means. The Colombian government has a relatively difficult victory condition to achieve, but they also are the faction that can bring the most force to bear in the conflict (of course, they are also the least nimble of the factions, so this causes problems as well, the player who is the government has to play the most precisely to achieve victory). The victory conditions also will influence how the players negotiate with one another. The drug cartels have a strong interest in negotiating in a way to keep everyone off their backs because if left alone they should have no problem cruising to victory. The FARC is stuck in an interesting position where their real opponent is the government, but the force they really have to deal with are the right-wing guerrillas.

I'm definitely most curious about how you will be interacting via radio communication since it sounds like that's going to be a core feature. Will there by dialogue trees? Genuinely curious how they want players to communicate in the game.

Maybe it's an age thing? I think it's telling that the people that aren't that into it are saying they are 26. That's my brother's age, and while he appreciates the show, it doesn't seem to be that big a deal for him and his friends compared to my friends who are in their early 30s where the show did take on like a second language for all of us. Or maybe it is something else... who knows... I also am with you on Seinfeld reruns, but for a different reason. I never found reruns of Seinfeld that compelling to watch just because the moment I recognized which episode it is I immediately recall all the jokes right away. This is in contrast with the Simpsons where there are so many random jokes that aren't necessarily tied to the main story line that inevitably I forget about some jokes, or catch things I never caught the first time around, etc.

I'm really looking forward to some sweet hand/arm animations.

Oh, I'm really happy about this SEGA bundle. People should definitely play Company of Heroes, I've been looking for some friendly folks to play with... my friends that own the game are flaky about playing RTS's.

I wonder if Wealth of Nations will address that? That's supposed to totally redesign how trade works...

Weird, nevermind. Of course the moment after I post that it works fine...

Does anyone else have issues with looking at the website on Chrome?

Seeing Steve fret about the pocketsquare on twitter yesterday made my day.

I'm playing as Castille in this game. I mostly need the heavy warships because I spent most of the game pissing off France and England (I pissed off Portugal too, but they're not really a threat as Morocco successfully invaded them), and they both have pretty substantial navies and I hold territories in Europe that they have potential claims on. I refuse to show any weakness however! I'm also playing a pretty aggressive game. It's not even quite 1500 yet, but I have a substantial foothold in both Africa and South America with about 4 or 5 colonies in each continent. I'm enjoying stretching things out to see how far I can take things, I suspect any potential/inevitable implosions should be pretty impressive. So far I haven't encountered any problems though, no matter how many loans I take out I never seem to have any problems paying them back.

TWINE LORD

Sorry, just saw this comment now! There are a couple of problems that I see with how you have framed Anglophone literary history. We can distinguish between what literary scholars refer to as realism, and a realistic style, these are two different things, and as literary scholars are correct to say that modernist literature comes after realism (and if we want to be pedantic we also say naturalism occurs during realism as well) It would be a mistake to refer to modernist literature as a dominant literary style. As you point out there was plenty of popular fiction that lacked modernist aesthetics. That was the dominant literature written and read, even if modernist literature captured the critical imagination. It isn't even correct to refer to modernist literature as a style. When we lump writers together under the header modernist, their shared trait is a desire to "make it new". Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Gertrude Stein, and whomever else you might care to include are all stylistically distinct. It's easier to define them by what they are not, i.e. they all lack the baroque and/or flowery language of their Victorian predecessors. Prior to the 20th century, however, I would argue that there are indeed dominant literary styles. Prior to modernism poetry does tend to have fairly rigid conventions. It's incredibly difficult to properly understand English prose prior to the 19th century without a working knowledge of the Bible or a well annotated edition of a book because there are allusions that are constantly made and the reader is expected to know since that's part of the shared Anglophone culture at that point in time, and that all adds up to particular styles that dominate the conversation. By the 20th century you have different social forces at work. The progressive era ushers in mass literacy, which provides new voices, readers, and shifts the traditional nodes of power within the English speaking literary networks. Most English speaking countries become more culturally, ethnically, and religiously pluralistic. This is also why I'd say that subtlety isn't something I'd associate with contemporary literature. As the English speaking world becomes more diverse, there's less of a shared cultural background, and more opportunities for people to misunderstand each other. Consequently, there's a greater demand for clarity in writing. Subtlety isn't in direct conflict with clarity, but it becomes less important, and other literary effects tend to get deployed instead.

Colonialism is easily the part of EU IV I enjoy the most. But yeah, it's expensive. You need to maintain an army to deal with the natives (and to invade neighboring colonies), you need a navy with all types of ships to transfer troops around, collect trade money, and heavy ships to fight off pretenders to the throne, and you need to spend money on colonial maintenance so colonists arrive at the fastest rate possible. I find myself constantly running out of money, taking out loans, and starting up wars so I can add war taxes to my coffers (which, you know, all sounds pretty historically accurate).

I also hope we're beyond the mindset that 2D art "looks old and cheap". It seems like it's much easier getting 2D art to look good compared to 3D art, and a game like Battle of the Bulge looks much better than a lot of war games out there with 3D art, including Conflict of Heroes, which is one of the better looking instances of 3D art I've seen in a war game (I think the presentation with the chits is nice looking though).

Yeah, I thought True Detectives was a brilliantly directed TV show hobbled by a screenplay written by a guy that thinks too highly of himself. I also agree that the first four episodes were much stronger than the last four.

Ugh yes. This has become even more irritating since I've shifted over to PC gaming more. Smashing those console buttons was always dumb, hammering away at the E key is even more irritating.

So I finally listened to this episode as well. I've been on something of a 3MA nostalgia kick lately I guess since episode 250 hit. Although I also love what the show has evolved into, the anarchy of those early episodes are definitely a lot of fun!

Nick talking about the emotional head space of shipping a game was definitely good.

I don't have any crazy game variant suggestions at the moment, but based on the news that Twitch streaming is coming to iPad soon (http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/5/5473244/twitch-streaming-mobile-games) I'd like to see Idle Thumbs stream a couple of games of Glitch Tank. That's a game developed by Michael Brough, who did 868-HACK which has received some well deserved critical acclaim. But he considers Glitch Tank his best work even though not many people have messed around with it because basically it is a local-only 2 player iPad game. But it is ridiculous fun, and seems like a great game for Idle Thumbs to play.

There were some pretty good plugs on this episode, but I couldn't help but notice the huge gap in Three Moves Ahead plugs. If I didn't know any better, I'd probably think the Idle Thumbs crew didn't give a fuck about setting up victory conditions in war game scenario design!