Chris

Idle Thumbs 215: Flirtation & Procreation Abandoned and alone, Chris and Nick hunker down in the studio while everyone else braves the harsh wastelands of E3. Join us for an intimate and lively chat about social simulation, our fantasies of a historical New York city builder, video game sweaters, our inevitable AI-dominated future, and forced, soul-sucking human reproduction. The Overlord demands it. Things Discussed: Fallout Shelter, Anno 2205, Shenmue III, Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Dreams, Creator (N64), Dr. Mario, E3, Cool Video Games, Robot News, the terrible circle of life. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

To me it was simply conveying the implicit antagonism these characters foresee with officers from three different jurisdictions colliding on the same crime. I see what you mean about feeling like a shot borrowed from a Fast and Furious film though.

Welcome, new folks!

The game even seems to prevent incest among characters with different surnames—which obviously makes total sense, but it means it is very difficult to know who is related to one another and therefore who can procreate.

Idle Thumbs 214: Ship It, Droopy It's a raucous week on Idle Thumbs. D4 brings out Danielle's chowder-championing inner New Englander, Chris can't stop collecting cats, Spaff spoils Life is Strange, and Nick descends into a virtual reality waking dream. Here's Droopy McCool to play us out. Let's give him a round of applause. Things Discussed: Life is Strange, D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die, Neko Atsume, Game of War: Fire Age, virtual reality, Star Wars, Mario Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

We're dumb!

Twin Peaks Rewatch 33: Odds & Ends It's the last episode of Twin Peaks Rewatch...for now! As we await Season 3 of Twin Peaks, we're capping off our rewatch of the original run and film by digging through the listener mailbag for observations and questions that take into account everything we've seen so far. Plus, we touch on some of the official and unofficial cultural artifacts inspired by Twin Peaks in the decades since it aired. Check out the list below for details. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Subscribe to the RSS Feed Subscribe on iTunes Catching up? Listen to the Rewatch archive. Supplemental Material: Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes Twin Peaks on Saturday Night Live Psych's Twin Peaks-inspired episode "Dual Spires" Wayward Pines (television series) Deadly Premonition (video game) Alan Wake (video game) Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent (video game) Listener Mark Halski's Vine of the Palmer house

I think most other podcast apps end up crawling the iTunes directory for search. So once we're up on iTunes, we should effectively be on the other ones soon enough.

It is plausible I haven't used Gimp since then.

The RSS link should now work. iTunes will have to wait until iTunes approves our feed!

Good question! My hope is that, based on how this show is structured—a new story each season—that spoilers of those kinds will be irrelevant.

We specifically called out when spoilers were going to begin, and put a timestamp there. Did you jump into before that timestamp or something? Or are you saying you disagree about what we consider spoilers, and stuff after the timestamp is still considered a spoiler in your estimation? If so, what was the spoiler?

I don't think I've seen that movie since I was a kid, and even after looking up the video I just don't remember anything about that scene. Sorry!!

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I read this recently and also found it pretty convincing although I have to admit that by the time I was done I was pretty ready to be done with those people. I think I'm crossing the age line where there's only so much Young Urban Sex Angst I can take at once before my eyes threaten to roll out of their sockets. (This also applies to much current dramatic television.)

The Idle Forums have existed for almost a decade and a half and I have to say this is one of my favorite threads it has ever had in all that time. Just a really amazing range of opinions and reactions and analysis. I haven't been adding to it but I've read every single post and they've basically all had something interesting. It makes spending the better part of a year on this podcast feel incredibly worthwhile. (Hopefully I didn't just jinx it!)

I think you're taking this in a different place than intended. If, through repeated exposure to Kickstarters, people get a certain uninformed idea about what it costs to make a game and about what a reasonable offering for a given pledge is, they will (and, I think, do) start assuming those figures are representative of something. Why wouldn't they? There is a huge population of people who back numerous games on Kickstarter. There are games that break through that and reach a huge new audience, but those are rarer than they used to be. But there are a lot of people who are serial Kickstarter backers, who start to develop a kneejerk idea of game budgets and appropriate funding targets that they form based on simple repetition. This is self-reinforcing. It doesn't require those people to be huge trolls. I'm not really talking about word of mouth driving game sales in general.

The kinds of people who comment on things like this make up a much higher percentage of the Kickstarter-funding audience, especially the people who will fund the Kickstarters that aren't the biggest ones around, than they do of the gaming population as a whole. They are also more likely to be the kinds of people who will not just silently back the campaign, but also evangelize on its behalf.

Idle Thumbs 210: Pro Fish Smart Fish Pro Fish Smart Fish, Dice and Card Fish / Diablo III and StarCraft II, Twilight Struggle and Defcon too / A week of draws and decks and rolls, of seats too hot and wars too cold / That's this week's podcast at a glance, its half-rhymes masked with assonance. Games Discussed: Diablo III, StarCraft II, Twilight Struggle, Defcon Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Listen in iTunes Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Sadly we are terrible

Cool thread everyone

Welcome, new folks!

The End of Mad Men 4: Time & Life Sterling Cooper seems to be on its last legs, as we approach the series finale of Mad Men. But in spite of (or because of) the glum mood around the office, the crew is sharing some of their best moments in recent memory. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Subscribe to the RSS Feed Subscribe in iTunes (Sorry for the delay on this thread!)

You should write in to reader mail. Jake's first game development experience was doing exactly the kind of distributed mod development you describe (but for Quake 3). Also for what it's worth none of us were suggesting that all mods MUST be paid. I made sure to note that I strongly believe many would continue not to be. The concerns you raise are real, but they have existed in other forms of distributed online creation for a long time. That doesn't mean they're solved in a perfect way, just that they're an inevitable part of the world we live in.

The End of Mad Men 3: The Forecast It's an episode of highs and lows—for its characters, anyway. We loved this episode of Mad Men from start to finish, featuring standout moments from Don, Sally, Joan, Peggy, and Glen's chest hair. Listen on the Episode Page Listen on Soundcloud Subscribe to the RSS Feed Subscribe in iTunes (Sorry for the delay on this thread!)