Jake

Oh man it works so well but I can't bring myself to actually change it...

Oh man that's a good point.

Idle Thumbs 102: Standing on the Shoulders of Babies After an engineering malfunction left our first recording attempt dead on the launchpad, we strip off all the weird bits, hard reset the equipment and try again. We disclose this only in the spirit of early-access game development. Games Discussed: Neptune's Pride II: Triton, Kerbal Space Program, Prison Architect Listen on the Episode Page Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

This has been a bad year for Nintendo so it's surprising to me that they don't use the opportunity to remind the big mainstream press outlets that they exist. I don't think Entertainment Weekly and USA Today care about Nintendo Direct, but they're the type of press who propelled the Wii into everyone's face.

It was also on the Thumb blog a little ways back.

Read this thread title as "Show me your disk space" and got excited. Disappointed now, but it's too late.

Twitch supports YouTube export officially. We should consider moving at least some highlights over there.

I had a podcast idea?

The world self-corrected. Me claiming first chair was never meant to be.

Fuck [it, I'm] Nick Breckon

We knew they were closing them, that's why it came up. There was a way more extended talk about that on the first recording attempt, the one which was eaten by the input board.

Today's update, the making of the Broken Age teaser trailer, somehow has me more excited about that game than anything else. Seeing how they handle the realtime lighting in that game was the most flooring combination of impressive and impressively simple. Double Fine!! Fuck.

Idle Thumbs 89: The Ship Economy Your jet ski lies outside, beached and on fire. Cassowarys peck at the glass door, firmly latched. In one hand, C4; the other, a detonator. As your eyes adjust, before you can make out the faces of the patrons and tellers turning your way, you realize you're already speaking. "Give me all your gift codes to The Ship and nobody has to get hurt." Games and Hardware Platforms Discussed: Steam Box, The Ship, Dota 2, Far Cry 3, Borderlands 2, Perspective, Zombies Run! Listen on the Episode Page Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Idle Thumbs 100: King Chromin' For A Day Break out the fireworks, giant creepy parade floats, and ominous presidential statuary: it's the Idle Thumbs centennial! In honor of this, our 100th episode, we talk about one game for the duration. But how could you not when that game is the new BioShock? Game Discussed: BioShock Infinite Listen on the Episode Page Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

I can't remember why we called it Wuxtry. I know old pre-cast Thumbs was obsessed with that word, especially in the context of "Wuxtry! Joker pulls boner of the year!" but who knows why it applies to the main Thumbs theme. Wuxtry: Let The Games Begin (Love Theme to Idle Thumbs) is the full title I think. That's in part because we had an idea early on that songs from episodes should share that episode's name, and because 'let the games begin' sounded like a funny name for a podcast theme song. Then Chris and I started bolting extra titles and words and extra names onto it the more we talked about it, until it was ruined. In that way, the title of that song is a microcosm for Idle Thumbs.

Ohhhh he has to bring them the girl to something something something.

Solid.

I thought Minerva's Den did a very good job of accounting for its audio log placement. It struck a nice balance.

This probably sounds more dismissive than it's meant to, but I feel like I should not have to read a breakdown of BioShock's story to enjoy it. As an example just within the realm of video games, as a counter point consider Half Life 2. I enjoyed Half Life 2's story quite a lot, just through the act of playing the game, without reading any of the insane fan breakdowns of what everything was supposed to mean, what every briefly and ambiguously peeked-at detail meant. But Half Life 2 does not wear its world history, its plot, or its meaning on its sleeve. Half Life 2 contains ambiguity, and it asks its audience to take pieces of its narrative on faith, it asks its audience to make leaps and connections on their own, and it does a better job of not leaving things behind. Half Life 2 doesn't feel like it's trying to simultaneously treat me like I'm intelligent, while also seeming to hold me in disdain for engaging with it.* With BioShock Infinite, at the end, my response was "what did I just play?" but not in the good way. I felt that, though I played through on hard, though I listened to an above-average number of audio logs, though I stuck my nose into every corner of the world I could find, I still missed what the game was about, I missed why the game was trying to tell me what it was telling me, and even in some cases what the detail of the plot were. That's not a great playthrough experience. It's not one which motivates me to deep dive into the game's lore from sources outside the game itself. In the case of Half Life 2 I DID eventually read all of the crazy fan theories, the obsessive poring over of every note and environmental touch, but only because I already loved the experience of playing Half Life 2 and experiencing the story it chose to tell within the work itself. * Note: I'm not intending to hold Half Life 2 up as some perfect gold standard of ambiguous and interesting narrative in gaming. That game has some serious issues which have been talked about to death. It is, however, a game whose story and narrative experience I enjoyed on its own terms, within itself, without having to look externally for answers, even though the story was one which was made to feel complex through the tools ambiguity and half-revealed/player-discovered lore.

Excited for Idle Thumbs 2000.

It just doesn't act like it's about nihilism at all, but then is. I can't tell if it's made by a nihilistic person who doesn't see themselves that way or what. I don't know what the game is trying to say, but it seems like it must be saying SOMETHING because it's screaming so loudly.I am an asshole and therefore often find myself in the position of explaining something, increasingly emphatically, to another person who is just not getting it. The louder I am, the more simply I try to break my idea down, the more glazed over their eyes get. Playing BioShock Infinite, for me, has been a simulator of being that other person. The more the game went on, the more I felt like I was dumb for not keeping up, despite my best efforts to pay attention, so as it got louder and louder I didn't understand more, I just more and more asked myself if I was really as dense as playing the game was making me feel, or of the game was actually not telling me anything and was just being loud and emphatic.

Yeah it's fun but also dumb. It's a game I feel guilty for playing, which is a sign that I won't play it for long. There's just not quite enough there for me to justify continuous play to myself. I agree about the line drop and fish behavior, though!

Sure, but not measurably differently than BioShock 1 guy is BioShock 1 guy and not you.

That's a good point. What I wrote up there was my impression when I started playing the game, and it stuck and was never reassessed as I got further in.

It had never occurred to me until this thread how good/terrible it would be if the family's last name in the game was "Gone." Worst/best/