Caspar Neickel

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About Caspar Neickel

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  1. I want to weigh in on the new direction of the show. I feel that video games has always been and should continue to be the big frame within which the podcast operates. You came together in the video game industry, you continue to work in video games, and the whole idea for idle thumbs was always focused on video games. That's what makes me and many other listeners/readers love it. So I kind of hope you will continue to bring that perspective into the podcast every week. But who ever said it had to be reviews of games??? Every other podcast on earth has a "what we've been playing" segment, so by all means, don't give that another thought as some kind of obligatory, defining characteristic. But it would be a huge loss for all of us who care in any form about games to not hear from the makers of the Walking Dead I and Firewatch among many other projects about some aspects of the industry, of your work, and of how this does inform the other things in your life. There are now, finally, other smart podcasts about video games, but none with your particular set of experience and personalities. Please keep games in the picture. Your pal, Caspar
  2. Firewatch Spoiler Thread | Henry Two Hats

    I loved this game. I was, however, surprised by the introduction of game mechanics at the beginning of the game in ways that are not consistent with the rest of the experience. For example, in the opening section of the game, when the game is switching back and forth between the story of your marriage and the actual first-person experience of traveling to the park, you pick up your backpack using a prompt . . . and then never repeat that action again in the game. Instead, you always pick up the backpack automatically when you choose to open the door of your tower. I suppose the intention was to introduce the notion that you can interact with objects. But why use an object that you see for the rest of the game but never interact with again? That produced a strange dissonance for me. Likewise, you are prompted to put the backpack into the back of the truck, but when you get out of the truck, you don't have to use prompts to get it out - in fact the backpack is gone. This was so strange that it made me wonder if Campo Santo was deliberately telling the player that control will sometimes be taken away? I'd love to hear your thoughts, Thumbs.
  3. In the brief discussion of Jordan's letter about TF2 and Steam's various economic cultures related to buying and selling cosmetic dlc/microtransactions, Chris said "it is so strange and so specific to video games," which struck me as being (very unusually for professor Remo!) completely inaccurate. The Steam economic subculture of hat barons is very similar to the way that banks and investment firms have at various points in the history of global capitalism created "innovative tools" to manipulate the market and profit from rising and falling interest in financial products that have no real value or function (kind of like TF2 keys and buds)! See the plentiful journalism and scholarship on the role of derivative securities, credit default swaps, and other nonsense.
  4. Uggghhhhhh anyone wiling to help me with Rom? PSN casparnic
  5. Idle Thumbs 213: Build the Nublar

    Enjoyed this week's version of Robot News. Has anyone made a master cut of all the Robot News segments from all podcasts? That would be amazing.
  6. The All New XBox Gamertag Exchange Thread!

    I'm casparnic so please add me. Only Xbox 360 for now.
  7. Spelunky!

    I have been playing Spelunky almost every day on my Vita for the past 8 months. It has become a terrible, wonderful obsession. I still play other games on the consoles, but this is a daily constant, something to do after work or before bed. I am bad at it, but am finally seeing improvements. I beat Olmec for the first time about a month ago, and now have made it to Yama a few times, though I haven't defeated that final level yet. Baby steps. PSN: casparnic, XBLA: casparnic, Steam: casparnic
  8. Spelunky!

    I need advice, y'all. I'm not sure how to proceed in Spelunky, which has become the only game I play on my Vita and the thing I'm pouring the most time into even though I'm also finishing up other games on the console and PC. I've set up all the shortcuts, and I can reliably kill individual shopkeepers. I can sometimes get the Ankh and escape form the Black Market, but I haven't made it out of the Temple yet. I want to get to Hell, but I don't feel like I'm making any more progress. How did people get further in the game? I'm assuming that it simply comes with practice . . .
  9. New people: Read this, say hi.

    Hi all, I've been a listener for a long time and a member for a couple of years, but rarely post. I'd like to try to read and post more often. I'm a college professor. My gaming genealogy: Commodore 64 and arcades --> NES and SNES --> arcades in Japan --> Nethack and MUDs --> Long winter of no games in grad school and when an assistant professor --> PS3, XBOX360, iOS, and Steam after tenure. PSN: casparnic, XBLA: casparnic, Steam: casparnic. -Caspar
  10. Idle Thumbs 88: Lacks Restraint

    Long-time listener, first-time poster. The critique of Far Cry 3 was disappointing in this episode. The discussion of the problems with how the game frames missions, based by all accounts on not that many hours of gameplay, was not edifying. The pirate boat mission, for example, is explicitly set up to be a stealth mission. Sneaking around the boat, taking enemies out one by one, and slowly infiltrating a marvelously designed level is just plain fun. Feeling upset that you swam out of the zone is a bit like being upset that you can't open most doors you encounter in the Walking Dead; the problem is not the game design but expectation. If you accept the parameters of the design and discover how you can innovate within those parameters rather than whining that the design was not what you expected, you will have a different experience. The discussion of the connection between the hunting system and the RPG progression was particularly depressing. FC3 brilliantly links game systems that could have been free-standing, vertical units with little to no impact on each other or the story; instead, these systems are linked horizontally and also contribute to the narrative of the character. Being told that your wallet is too small encourages you to find the animal you need to hunt, which encourages both exploration and attention to the wildlife that populates the game; learning to track and kill these animals trains the protagonist in the skills that later get put to use in the main story. The larger wallet, larger ammunition pouch, and larger arrow quivers all allow the player to attack bigger bases, take on more enemies, and enjoy more success in story missions. Every system brings rewards that are tangible and also aid the RPG progress. If you balance hunting, taking on bases, exploring, and doing story missions, everything fits together incredibly well. I understand that this is not how Far Cry 2 worked, but your refusal to explore this game on its own terms demonstrates the same kind of obstinance that leads to uninformed bro-critiques of games like Journey, Fez, and again, Walking Dead. This game is not FC2, and deserves your serious attention. More broadly, I feel disappointed by the tendency of Idle Thumbs (which I have been listening to since the reboot, because y'all are the smartest people who talk about video games online, which I deeply appreciate) to turn to critique as a kind of default analytical position, as if saying something negative about a game is better than looking for strengths and positives. "Put a pin in that problem. Oh, we'll get back to it" was the refrain of this episode, uttered almost joyfully. I'm a university professor, and see a similar tendency both among my graduate students and in my profession in general--when a new book comes out, or when an article is under review, it is always easiest to rip it to shreds. The work doesn't do what was expected. It doesn't do what I would have done. It doesn't do what other works do. It has bad grammar, or data, or a boring title, or something. Whatever can be criticized must be highlighted in a patronizing fashion. This is intellectually lazy. The more challenging task in academia, and I suspect in video game critique and production, is to always look for what a game offers on its own terms. What does this game do that other games do not? How does it refine a system or a story or a style in an innovative or exciting way? How am I empowered and constrained in a new formulation when playing this game? As a kind of coda, by all means exercise your critical faculties and wallow in a game's shortcomings. But for that to be the foundation of your articulation of what matters in the game seems counter to your ostensible support of the industry as a whole.