Bjorn

So with the introduction of Steam tags, the idea occurred that we can create a curated list of all the best games on Steam as decided by the Thumbs, all tagged with the same IT-centric word. Thus whenever someone asks you "what is game?", you can just link them. Because that's something refined IT listeners hear all the time. If this becomes a thing, I'll update this with the list of games that thumb listeners should be tagging. Possible tags to use: Idle Thumbs As Heard on Idle Thumbs As Loved by Idle Thumbs Jeff Goldblum Baboo Puffin Congrats Nick Wizard -The current tag link is http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/wizard/ which is kind of awesome, but would likely eventually end up populated with a lot of other wizard related games. Even if we use something else, we should still all tag Far Cry 2 with Wizard. Games to tag: Far Cry 2 Gone Home Spelunky The Ship DOTA 2

Yep! Right now if you search the store for Idle Thumbs, you get FC2 and Thirty Flights of Loving: http://store.steampowered.com/search/?snr=1_237_237__12&term=idle+thumbs But if you go to the Tag page for Idle Thumbs, nothing shows up, as apparently 2 games aren't enough for the system to populate a page. I've seen as few as 4 games on a tag page though, so it doesn't take a bunch of games to create the page. http://store.steampowered.com/tag/en/Idle%20Thumbs/

Apparently tonight was my Blendo Games Introduction evening. I played Gravity Bone and Thirty Flights of Loving back to back. I feel like I must have missed the zeitgeist on these, and since then they have achieved an almost mythological status (in part because I hang out around here). I can see what makes them crunchy and delicious. And had I played either with absolutely no knowledge of them, I probably would have been delighted. But ultimately they didn't really connect with me. I think I just had too much knowledge and too high of expectations. I was feeling a bit let down my first experience with a Brendon Chung game, so I fired up Atom Zombie Smasher to see if I enjoyed it more. Ended up playing through an entire campaign in one sitting (sure I was massively overwhelmed, but I did finish it). That is some really good stuff, and between the good I could see in the design of GB/TFoL and the awesomeness of AZS, I do finally get why so many people are big fans of his. I like it when I pick up a game like this and it scratches a gaming itch that I didn't even know I had.

I had problems finding a good summary of it. Pieced it together from multiple articles. Basically Miss Panti was asked on a talk show to specifically give examples of homophobic actions in Ireland. He named a couple of individuals and one organization. Those named immediately threatened (or maybe actually did) to take legal action against the television station for airing slander against them (even though they are on the record of saying some pretty terrible things about gays). The station, in short order and without any real discussion, elected to give a rather large settlement to the homophobes to make them go away. The homophobes and their supporters have been trying to create an atmosphere where saying awful things about gays is just good political discourse, but calling someone a homophobe, or explaining how they are bigoted, is a repressive hate crime. It's twistedly fucked logic. In pretty short order, it seems like the tide of public opinion is turning in favor of Miss Panti and his supporters thankfully.

Thanks for the link on that. I really need to be following Brice's work on a more regular basis.

Sweet jebus, that was probably the most touching speech I've heard in a while. Makes me want to go out and hug the world.

The Idle Thumbs tag on Far Cry 2 actually looks like it went up in prominence following the reporting feature. That feature also seems to have cleaned up the Gone Home tags. I think an Idle Thumbs tag would probably stick on at least some games, but using something weirder probably wouldn't.

But then you would have to give some people a level of moderation power to strip out certain terms, which has it's own problems. I mean, tagging something with a critical word is not an inherently bad thing, it's just clearly being abused. So what are people's thoughts on trying to pull this off? Should we go for it, or is it just contributing to the overall noise on Steam?

I'm both fascinated and a bit repulsed by everything I see in this thread. This is the second game in a few weeks to have full frontal male nudity (Rust does as well), which I think is both awesome and hilarious. But the character design is just gross. I'm not sure I can even explain my discomfort with the woman. It's not her size or clothing. I've been to a full figured burlesque show before, which was actually pretty amazing. Women that society usually shames taking a real ownership and pride in their bodies. The design of the woman here though just feels...wrong. Like you're meant to find it gross. Whereas the men are cartooney exaggerated muscle-bros. Even if it's meant to make fun of how women are normally treated in games, that doesn't mean that it was executed well. And totally agree on the design of the black dude. It definitely feels like it's drawing on historically racist imagery.

Internet assholes are more likely to be real life assholes

Namco clarified that they are expecting the PC version to drop weeks after the console version, not months.

I'd argue that something like this is still useful, even while being a funny in-joke for the thumbs fans. If someone wanted to go to Steam and find a whole bunch of games that the podcast had recommended over the years, this would be one of the easier ways to do it. If I had never heard of Far Cry 2, and I saw that "Deep Malaria Based Gameplay" tag, I'd be buying that shit in a heartbeat. Whatever that is, is something I need. Even some of the shitty tags can be useful. A bunch of games I like are tagged Pretentious.

Playing around with the tagging system, it appears that a certain threshold has to be met before a game actually becomes associated with a tag. So the more tags we think about using, the less likely we'll be able to get them to actually stick. Though I do think that multiple tags is a good idea. And swear words are right out, all the ones I tried were blocked (thank god, you can't trust the Internet with bad things).

Nothing probably, just not as funny? Or so I thought, then I looked at the Far Cry 2 tags:

This is, in fact, an excellent idea. Thread created.

I'm taking a break, maybe quitting, Our Darker Purpose (a recent Binding of Isaac style rouge-lite). There are a lot of things I really like about this game, it's so close to being as good as other games in the genre. It combines both the actual game playing improvement of something like Spelunky with the permanent perk acquisition of Rogue Legacy. And I really like the writing and world building in it. But the opening 20 minutes of every playthrough is crushing me. There's just not enough diversity in early items, perks and level up rewards. I'm not excited to start over, I'm dreading slogging through the first four levels, and hoping I don't make a bonehead mistake that will almost ensure I don't have a shot at getting past my current brickwall. They are still making regular balance changes and adjustments to the game, so maybe I'll come back.

FFS, you don't have to own a game to tag it? That's a terrible fucking idea. Just discovered this by tagging GH with ghost on both my and my wife's accounts, and only I own it. I wonder if we could get away with tagging all of the games favored by Idle Thumbs with Jeff Goldblum to create an amazing curated tag list of best games ever.

Yeah, I've had the uncomfortable sense from several places on this that the stereotype of Asian-dude-making-crappy-knockoff has been an automatic assumption, and thus predisposed a lot of people to a particular kind of bias. It's tied into a prevailing thought in parts of the gaming community that indie devs from certain parts of the world (NA and Europe) are automatically creative, hard working, decent gents trying to bring something wonderful into the world, while indie devs in other parts of the world (Asia particularly) are just one step removed from con men trying to ride the latest clonewave to Fortune Town or just making microtransaction laden skinnerboxes. It would be fascinating to get a better look at what's going on with development in these countries. I read gaming news daily, and yet am almost completely ignorant of the happenings in that part of the world other than Japan and the odd breakout Korean game. The same is true of Africa and India.

Agreed, even the shitty tags are useful. Like Pretentious, it's full of games I either have played or want to play!

I have never made it to the city of gold. Last night I reached the Golden Door. I possessed the Hedjet. I had the scepter. Strapped to me were two dozen bombs, a jetpack and a bunch of other goodies. My health was fine. It had been the best run I ever had. Then I spotted a crate towards the bottom of the screen. No problem I thought, I'll drop the scepter, grab that and experience the wonder of the city of gold! I missed seeing the Mario block. As my crumpled body lay on the floor, the corner of the golden door was in sight on the screen. So close, but forever closed.

Just watched the video, that's ridiculously charming. The glee and wonder as each piece was revealed was amazing. Thanks to all the IT guys for the joy they bring us, and thank you to everyone who helped make their gift happen.

I used to live just up the road from the Hispanic neighborhoods in Kansas City, which had a bunch of incredible (not the typical American-Mexican fare). I miss the easy and quick access to all that delicious food. Mmmm, and that makes me miss a good Mexican hamburguesa, with a slice of deli ham on it. I have no idea of what the origin of that is, but I've only ever run into it at those restaurants and in central America.

You should get an email notifying you, after which you can opt into to the Steam client beta build through Settings option. You do have to have joined the In Home Streaming group and the Family Sharing group to be eligible to join. My wife's account got into the streaming beta about a week after my account did, and based on other forums, it seems like invites are going out on a regular basis.

I have a lot of empathy for devs and their online interactions. I own a small business, and am almost solely responsible for communicating with our customers. I also wrote a regular editorial column for a small newspaper for awhile. Both of those experiences have taught me that there is a small percentage of people who will drain almost all of the energy and time you have to engage in communication if you let them. And it can be very, very, very difficult to ignore or disengage from some of these people. It's also not just about having thick skin, though that's part of it. Like darthbator mentioned, the mentally ill can be the most draining. Early in my business, I had a man contact me and accuse me of being some other business that had previously ripped him off. I, naively, replied as politely and professionally as I could that he was mistaken, provided some evidence and called it good. For the next 2 years I received semi-regular messages from this person. Telling me about his life, the neurological damage he had from Agent Orange from being in Vietnam, his struggles to find stability while on disability, etc and on and on. I never once replied after my first response to him. He just kept sending them every month or two. Reading his messages was both disturbing and fascinating. Sometimes a little frightening. He has been by far the weirdest one I've dealt with, but there are others as well. Just receiving messages like that is draining, and it can be really hard to just delete them unread, at least for me. From talking with other small business owners, many of them have had experiences like this, but are hesitant to talk about them publicly. It seems highly likely that it is the same for a lot of devs as well.

Not my shit, but figured I would plug my sister-in-law, who was featured on an NPR show about drug addiction last week. She's just published her first book on the science behind treatment.