sclpls

I'll also say I am generally a fan of stereo for podcasts even if I understand where others are coming from wishing it was mono. I find it especially helpful for podcasts like Idle Thumbs - where there are lots of different voices - in helping to distinguish between people before you know who everyone is...

I like that when Valve decides to hire an economist, they decide to hire a guy that previously was busy working out the details of the Euro crisis. Like, you could be studying trade imbalances in the Euro zone, and the problems with having a monetary union without a political union, or you could study the problem of why making the courier pink for your Lords Management game nets you $38k.

Oh man, I was curious about that rant!

Wow hahaha that is great.

I get to Hell, and the final final boss, and then die promptly. This is the first time I've done that, so that was pretty exciting! http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/478246572

Man, Troy's point about how internet connections in the 90s shaped the development of RTS's was totally genius! That leads to the situation today where people lament how the single player campaign of a RTS teaches you "to play the game wrong". Best of luck to Soren.

This analysis about the intentional fallacy and meta-conversations as it relates to gaming perfectly encapsulates why I think there is often a major disconnect between people that play games vs. people that don't when trying to figure out what are good starting games. http://www.edge-online.com/features/the-importance-of-meta-conversations-and-the-intentional-fallacy/

Yeah, he does A Life Well Wasted. One came out this year. He mentioned working on another one on twitter, but that was many months ago so it'll probably be out in 3 years. ALWW is amazing, but I'd love to just hear him on podcasts about whatever talking about stuff. I definitely dig his outlook on things in general.

Same thing happened to me. I was curious how much of the space was going to be utilized on Eerie St. itself out front of Public Works. It was some, but it was mostly inside, and that venue was a tight fit for all the people interested in video games!

This Daily Challenge may have been my worst run of all time. I just made all sorts of mistakes I should be beyond at this point.

Yay Jeff Green! This actually kind of had the structure of a GFW podcast where it starts out and it isn't clear if anyone has anything to talk about, people start talking about the game that people are always talking about (Spelunky replaces WoW/CoH), and then it spirals into a bunch of fascinating tangents. If for whatever reason Idle Thumbs decides it needs another former GFW person to appear as a guest, my vote is for Robert Ashley.

Yeah, I think you are exactly right about why card draws are a good mechanic for performing different actions in a tactics game. To my mind, that's a better way to simulate the uncertainty of battle than other types of fog of war mechanics that you see in a lot of war games. That's why I prefer a game like the Combat Commander series to something like ASL, which is maybe more robust, but also more difficult to play without necessarily being a better game. Of course some players won't like the amount of control that's taken away from them by including the random draw of cards so the downside is you will turn some people off that way, but the more varied game play certainly makes it an attractive feature.

I can't really think of any examples of a foreign language, but when I was a kid playing NetHack I definitely picked up a lot of SAT-quality English vocabulary.

I have a coupon for 40% off Company of Heroes 2...

It took a long time for me and climbing gloves to get along. The main thing is to be even more careful than your already cautious self when approaching tiki traps.

Miike's work ethic is definitely impressive. I appreciate his inventiveness as a director, although I think all the extreme violence stuff doesn't hold up as well upon reflection so I don't find myself coming back to his movies very much. I do think Audition and Gozu are both pretty superb though. Gozu in particular is wonderfully bizarre.

I died right before I got to the black market. http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/476763623

I appreciate that for a game as "cinematic" as TLoU, Neil & co. spent as much time as possible trying to tell the story without cut scenes, and then after that exercise adding everything in where it was deemed necessary. That sort of economy of narrative exposition really goes a long way towards keeping your players engaged I think. The story of TLoU wasn't one that I found interesting, but I really admire how Naughty Dog told that story, and that's the more interesting half of the equation really, so a lot of credit is due there.

Whoops. http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/476141188

I got back from the Day of the Devs thing, and I gotta say I haven't been following the documentary at all or anything so this was my first real look at Broken Age, and it is really cool looking! I was also impressed with how Space Base is looking. There's some very nice art style coming out of Double Fine these days.

Still need to fix video lag, but otherwise this is probably my best recording yet of a run that went okay until I got unexpectedly blasted by a UFO http://www.twitch.tv/sclpls/b/475731332

It provides assets to the deceased's heirs. I believe most people find some value in the idea that they can pass along assets to other people after they die. Although I still agree that the merits of copyrights having this sort of lifespan are outweighed by the problems they create. Copyright exists as an incentive for people to create original works. That's would be all well and good if you believe that there are a deficiency of original works, but that would be an odd thing to believe.

The jungle level today felt extra brutal.

A lot of cool stuff discussed in this episode. I liked that it opened up with early internet-era talk as I was just reminiscing about using Gopher protocol in the early 90's to find tips about how to play video games. The CastAR stuff is also way more exciting to me than the Oculus Rift. It seems like the sort of thing that has a lot of potential to create some really cool hybrid between video games and board games, and that is way more exciting to me than the idea of virtual reality. Basically I find the idea of interesting new game play mechanics more exciting than the idea of feeling like "I'm really there". I'm glad Delver was mentioned, I hadn't heard of it, but it looks cool so I will probably check it out at some point (probably after I pick up Nuclear Throne, which also looks amazing). As far as Eldritch's aesthetic goes, I feel like that's a choice out of necessity for the type of game that was being designed. It bums me out to see a lot of people complain about that because the game does get so many different things right, like the controls are amazing. I agree with Zack's criticism that it could be a better game with more equipment and a few more systems in place so I really do hope they roll some sort of expansion or something like that at some point. Also I totally feel where Chris is coming from when he talks about the frustration of having a harder time getting enthusiastic about music. And it is partly about because it it is much easier to look stuff up instantly, and so you no longer have that sense of anticipation that used to exist, but of course that isn't entirely it. Like one of the most exciting moments I've had in terms of experiencing new music in a recorded format in the last year or so was a friend directing me to this youtube video of this band from Thailand (maybe?) playing at a wedding (I think?) and it is this just totally nuts psychedelic music. (For reference, it is this: ) That's something I couldn't have reasonably found on my own because I don't even understand the character script and language that you would use to search for something like that, and on top of that I don't have the cultural knowledge to even comprehend this thing that I then just witness. And that right there is the power and allure of discovering new music, that feeling where you are confronted with something unfamiliar and your sense of what is possible in the world just explodes and opens right up. It's a rush and really exciting, and people get really into books, music, movies, video games, whatever else chasing that feeling. So as Jake says, part of it is just getting old too, and a greater amount of the world is more familiar to you than when you were younger. Also, personally for me, I've found specifically with music that living in San Francisco, which is something I mostly enjoy, is kind of frustrating in terms of being able to seek out cool stuff happening musically just because of how expensive property is here, you don't see a lot of spaces and opportunities conducive to the formation of an interesting music community because most music isn't profitable enough to really be sustainable here. That's not to say there aren't any cool things happening, but it does create a whole feeling of musicians being a dying breed, which drains my enthusiasm to seek it out.

JonCole's strategy is on point. The temple blocks always feels like playing Russian roulette.