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I watched a bit of the videos Brad & co. put up on twitch with them playing XCOM and Final Fantasy Tactics while answering fan/backer questions, and they were really entertaining.

I thought it was unfortunate how down these guys seemed to be on kickstarter. The accusation that it's just a nostalgia machine comes up a lot, and I think that is true to a degree, especially if you look at the RPG space, where I think there is a serious argument to be made that they don't make 'em like they used to... but I've been impressed with the new games getting funded in the strategy space (Massive Chalice, At the Gates, and Battle Worlds: Kronos come to mind, and that's completely ignoring the tabletop space which has also been very successful). I understand that kickstarter probably isn't the right route for them to follow, but between that and a few other comments it did sound like kind of sour grapes.

Count me in as another person that found both names uninteresting. That's okay though, I just looked through my Steam collection, and I didn't find more than one or two game titles that seemed particularly memorable. Ron Gilbert made a blog post a long time ago that he thought publishers worry too much about game names, and for evidence he pointed out how stupid the name Gameboy is, and how it nonetheless was an incredibly successful product. I think there is a lot to that. Phillip K. Dick comes to mind as someone who seemed to have a knack for coming up with terrible titles, but that hasn't hurt his reputation as one of the great science fiction writers.

For what it's worth, none of the mechanics are set in stone in terms of how raising children work. One of the possibilities Brad mentioned was that different households represent different types of character classes (warriors, archers, mages, etc.), and you assign your heroes to become lords of various households, and then the children born into that household are raised to become that sort of character class. So if the game went down that route it would fall more on the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture debate, and wouldn't really have much to do with eugenics or trying to create genetic advantages and would be more like a sort of worker placement type Euro game mechanic. It is interesting how strategy games sometimes have these unintentional messages in their game mechanics. If you sit down to deeply analyze the mechanics of a lot of city builders and 4x space games you'll often find these unexpected endorsement of conservative politics (3MA had a good episode about this, wish I could remember the episode number...). Rob Zacny did a piece talking to one of the Paradox developers who made a good point about how historical WW2 games are sort of morally problematic because people are going to like playing the Germans since they have the smaller scale, but more powerful military units so they have this underdog appeal. http://www.pcgamesn.com/not-here-make-friends-part-3-dark-side-historical-strategy/page/0/1

I agree that whether or not a game features crouching isn't an interesting design decision. I feel like the FPS is sort of on the tipping point of the ossification you were talking about on the podcast. The genre's actually much more diverse compared to its inception when it was a lot of Doom clones... I'm thinking about how different all of Valve's FPS games feel from each other despite having very similar controls/actions. On the other hand, FPS games are a genre I only dip my toes into the water on occasion so that might affect my perception of how stale the genre feels.

I'm sympathetic to developers of shooters always including crouching because that's how these games are designed. I've seen so many people say they won't play a game if they can't jump. Why cause unnecessary anger? I also firmly believe that good UI should be a gradual evolution process, and that you better have a damn good reason if you plan on reinventing the wheel. I played the Company of Heroes 2 beta last night, and I was able to play the game without any real issues without consulting a tutorial or having played the previous game simply from having a working knowledge of how most other RTS games work. That's a really valuable experience, and I think this is one area where I applaud more conservative/cautious game design.

I appreciate the inclusion of gay relationships in the game. I hate when people complain about things being historically inaccurate in fantasy games of all things. Similar complaints crop up when people of color appear in fantasy games too...

I am now the happy owner of an iPad so I was finally able to play this game. So fantastic! Between this and Eclipse I've been getting a lot of excellent strategy gaming in lately. Can't wait to see Shenandoah Studios's next effort.

I still haven't found a Paradox game that really sucks me in, but I like the sound of the changes that are happening with EU4 so maybe this will finally be the one...

I did the soccer player thing as well, although I didn't go so far as making them try to look like their real life counterpart, I was faithful to the nationality of the players. That also grew tedious since it seemed like I was constantly going on wikipedia to look up the names of players for like the Indian women's soccer league. I was also annoyed during that play through that I didn't get any Argentinians. Not having a Messi in my squad was probably my downfall.

I think record collecting isn't as interesting as it used to be, so the collection of games I have on Steam kinda fulfills the same purpose. It's really nice to be able to look at a well curated collection of games even if I don't get around to playing many of them in any substantial way.

I think crowd funding is still in the early stages of development. In a couple of years you won't see people pitching ideas on kickstarter necessarily, but different sorts of fundraising sites with different sorts of models of operations. You already see that to a certain extent with websites like indiegogo, etc. but I think it's something that's going to become more diversified, and specialized (where certain websites are better places to make a pitch if you're a filmmaker, others are better for musicians, game makers, etc.) What I'm not looking forward to is the endless forum debates about every single production that's funded this way because there are so many weird hangups socially with asking for money, and different things are worth different things to different people yet somehow people will think it's idiotic to give your money towards a project that they don't personally see the value in or aren't convinced by the particular pitch or whatever.

This has turn based tactical combat, which I love, and also seems kind of like concepts from CK2, but with an interface I can wrap my brain around. Definitely hits a sweet spot... so backed.

So you guys said you wished you could change the difficulty level in Ace Patrol, and I would like to point out that you can do that, and it gets much more challenging much more quickly. I very much recommend it, and the game starts to develop that tense XCOM type feeling when you bump up the difficulty. I love the game for similar reasons, in terms of getting in and out of some satisfying tactical combat quickly. The discussion of the aesthetics was interesting, I chalked it up to being a Sid Meier thing rather than an iOS thing I read that Susan O'Connor piece, and I didn't interpret it in the same way as you guys. What I read was a very personal statement, that she didn't have the "deep seated passion" for games that some of her peers did. She talked about being an advocate for better writing in games, something I think Idle Thumbs is as well. She also specifically called out a couple of instances of games doing cool things with writing, and emotional narrative. But starting up an indie studio isn't really a realistic thing to do if your passion for games isn't there, and if her passion exists for other mediums I think it is valid for her to want to consider a career change.

Your analysis of Nintendo's legal status as "shaky" is inaccurate, and not supported by the facts (I make no judgment on the wisdom of their approach). First a quick disclaimer: although I work in intellectual property law, I am not an attorney, and although I have some experience with copyrights it is not a specialty. So everything I'm about to say should be considered to be my understanding of copyright law, which is not the opinion of a legal expert, and in no way shape or form should be considered legal advice. A video of someone playing a video game is indeed a unique work, however it is based on a similar work (the video game in question), and therefore it is considered a "derivative work", which is protectable under U.S. copyright law (see 17 USC § 103). Of course it is true that there are some exceptions to what sort of intellectual property is protected by a copyright, namely things that fall under fair use. However I can't imagine any judge would consider a lets play video of passing the 4 tests in considering whether or not fair use applies to it (17 USC § 107). In particular it fails the 1st and 3rd prongs of a fair use test 1. If the complaint is Nintendo is taking away advertising revenue it fails fair use for being a commercial work, something the creator intended to make money from, 3. The derivative work utilizes substantial material of the original work rather than a discrete, limited amount. You also ask how that is different from an Adobe or Microsoft product, which suggests you are confused about what sort of intellectual property copyright law actually protects. Copyright protects creative ideas, which we can define as the unique expression of an idea, but not the idea itself. Example: you can copyright the script of a romantic comedy, which has the same plot as every other romantic comedy, but you can't copyright the plot device boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl back. The plot device is simply the idea. The script, and subsequent film is the expression of that idea. Video games fall under the prism of unique expressions of an idea. A product like Excel or Photoshop does not. In the case of Photoshop or Excel there isn't any unique expression being expressed, those programs really are just a tool set. You can say video games are also tool sets for the player to express him or herself, and you are correct in a sense, but they are nonetheless defined by expressive parameters set forth by the game developer.

I find it funny that a black box has such polarizing opinions about whether it looks cool or not.

Both games run on the same sort of Paradox engine, and both can be classified as grand strategy games. The more limited scope of Victoria allows for greater historical detail (similar to how it can be desirable to play a WWII game that focuses simply on the Eastern Front, or even a particular battle as opposed to playing out the entire scope of the war). As with all historical strategy games, you'll consider one game over another because of personal preferences in terms of particular episodes of history you find fascinating.

How dare you! I can't believe you would besmirch my good, vowel-less name by suggesting I would pay to cheat! The nerve! ;-)

I really liked Leigh Alexander's piece on Gamasutra. This paragraph especially resonated with me:

I like the pets in NetHack.

The ratio of veterans to rookies I have in a squad is going to be determined by what my squad size is, what my reserves look like (I never want to risk all my veterans in the event I totally eat it), and what the difficulty of the mission looks like. In other words, there isn't a set formula I stick to.

You're absolutely right that "interesting decision" is so vague as to be essentially meaningless. I'm glad you mention Ace Patrol, which is a game I really love. I care about whether I bank left or right because that action determines what types of maneuvers I'm capable of executing on my next turn. It's critically important I'm able to outmaneuver my enemy if I'm outgunned, or at a higher difficulty levels because losing a pilot for a couple of missions while he or she recovers can be brutal. To me, these decisions are just as interesting as how I position my dudes in XCOM. How interesting a game's decisions are is going to be determined by how well I understand what is going on in the game. The lag in time between the execution of a decision, and its effect makes the Paradox games more realistic as a simulation, but also more difficult to comprehend. The Federal Reserve has a flash game on their website that has the same sort of mechanics, where you adjust interest rates to compensate for inflation/unemployment, but there is a time lag so you are never sure how much of an impact a decision has until it is too late, and disasterous consequences arrive from doing too much/too little. Basically, with Paradox games I never feel like I know enough about how to apply the right touch to a situation, so I end up watching events in fold in front of me that I'm not really able to interact with in any sort of meaningful way. Again, I'm not trying to criticize Paradox, I think their games are brilliant, but they also aren't something I'm really able to get into in any sort of satisfying way.

This is really silly, the specs for this thing are only slightly better than my laptop. With the last generation of consoles I actually owned all 3. This time around I think I'll just invest in a really nice PC.

This episode was definitely a concrete example of why I enjoy listening to people talk about Paradox games but don't really enjoy playing them. Tom's suggestion that players should just ride the wave is exactly what bothers me about playing Paradox games. Even after putting dozens of hours into one I still feel like that's all I'm doing. It's such a passive experience for me, and so at odds with Sid Meier's concept of strategy games as a series of interesting decisions. I guess this is what makes these games more of a simulation, and less of a strategy game. One point of confusion for me: I could have sworn in the original Victoria 2 podcast there was talk about the crisis system, but it sounded as if it was new here. Maybe it simply changed radically or something, but it wasn't totally clear to me what Heart of Darkness brought to the table.

Rob's point about colony management is a good one. One thing I really like about Fallen Enchantress, whatever its other flaws may be, is I really like the city development model in that game. The way cities level up in the same way a RPG character might is really a fantastic idea, and helps make city management feel less like a choir, and helps locations develop character. That goes to show that there are a lot of interesting mechanics to explore if game designers are willing to abandon the old sort of models that have existed forever.