Chris

I didn't realize the game was targeted at a younger audience. That's a thing that I still struggle with in games--most gameplay systems seem relatively age-agnostic (outside of maybe certain very complex gametypes), so a game tends to target a particular demographic group simply by way of the coat of thematic and narrative paint it puts on top, which in the case of most games has almost nothing intrinsically to do with the gameplay system. In other words, what I mean is, you can say, "They're targeting a younger age group, so this is why they made these narrative choices"--but the actual thing that is appealing to me about the game actually has nothing to do with any of those considerations at all. Whereas if you were to take something like a Dreamworks animated film (or whatever), the very CORE of the film itself is already obviously intended for a particular age group. Adults certainly may also find plenty of things enjoyable about it, or they might enjoy every single aspect of it, but there's almost no risk of a weird demographic disconnect between different fundamental parts of the film's construction. And if such a disconnect is present, it's likely just the result of inexpert craftsmanship rather than anything intrinsic. But most gameplay systems are for the most part blank slates from an authored narrative context, and the kind of super-duper-gamey gameplay system you see in Clash of Heroes is almost always going to weigh more heavily than the narrative content when evaluating a game. They could have made this game with totally different subject matter, characters, setting, etc., and if the gameplay and art direction remained roughly the same, I don't think it would have affected my experience in any meaningful way. This isn't a criticism of Capy in particular, it's just an oddity of the way most games are made that I've been butting up against very frequently lately.

There's also going to be way more stuff in total than there was during Ancient Rome. You could probably make arguments in either direction about this, but it seems like it's going to be an incredibly difficult problem for future generations to sort out which cultural artifacts in our practically infinite store of ephemeral cultural artifacts are actually the ones that speak to our culture most importantly or effectively. Getting a holistic view of all this bullshit is going to be tough.

I don't know about Jake, but I played a fair amount of it, just not since 2004. It's true that it's such a minor amount of time relative to how much time I've spent with MP that any SP-derived habits were likely subsumed many years ago.

That is an amazing idea.

I think there is a difference that results from one of those two situations being essentially intentional in its obsolescence, and the other circumstantial. People can plan for things like codecs being potentially lost, by keeping well-constructed archives of codecs, or something. That's not to say that WILL happen, just that it is totally foreseeable, with a solution that is at least legal and legitimate. But having to say, "Well, someone will release a [likely technically illegal] exploit that'll make it no big deal," just kind of sucks. It relies on publishers--which may very well still be around in some form by the time this matters, even if they've been absorbed by some other company--deciding to turn a blind eye. I know that kind of thing is a problem in the film archiving world as well, but with digital stuff there aren't any of the scapegoats that come along with needing to physically store aging film reels or whatever.

Sorry, that was specifically only in reference to the new King's Bounty games.

We were kind of tired and out of it on this episode, which might explain some of the goofiness.

Do people not understand how the (really dumb) Dishonored holiday gag works?

I've only just completed the first campaign and it hasn't yet worn out its welcome for me, so that's a shame to hear. I haven't been reading it. There wasn't anything about any of the story stuff that made me want to pay any attention to it. I'm actively put off by the style of the huge characters that fly into the screen and shout stuff at each other, and the sheer volume of dialogue (even when just mashing through it) seems completely bizarre to me. I'm sure there are some interesting things in there but it simply being dark with a lot of characters dying does't really mean much to me. There's a lot of bad film and television that's super dark with a lot of people dying and it doesn't mean I'd find it interesting. That sounds really harsh, it's just that I'm already spending hours with the actual game part of this game and given all the other things I could be reading with the additional hours it would take me to read every word in this game, I just can't bring myself to do it.

Yeah, I might be the worst. I think I was thinking of an entirely different game.

I don't think there's a direct comparison there, although there may be a bit of overlap. But (at least in the New York Times Crossword, which is the only one I do) unless there's a question mark after a clue, the answer still corresponds literally, not fantastically, to the clue. But even in the question mark clues, everything you need is still there contained in the implications of the word sitting there on the page. Wacky adventure game puzzles often have wacky solutions that are entirely fantastical.

I'm pretty confident nobody made any claim to that effect; only that Mario is an actual human being, and human beings tend to more generally relate to other human beings rather than crazy made-up things. I don't think anyone said Mario is any kind of theoretical ideal.

Yep, we own the whole thing. This is our first major release that is entirely self-funded.

Correct. It would be insanely expensive to license all of the songs for resale. They're in the game itself still though.

I doubt it. Tax day itself is just when individuals have to pay taxes (or be refunded), but it doesn't signify the end of a company's fiscal year or anything like that. April 15 corresponds to the year ending the previous December 31, not a year ending April 15 itself.

Blargh. Try it again. Inventory mixup.

http://shop.doublefine.com/collections/game-brutal-legend/products/brutal-legend-art-book It's 100% definitely happening; you can already preorder it. It's just in the process of being printed then the print run has to be shipped, but that should be no later than March.

I have played it!

This is an incredible Paris Review interview with William Weaver, longtime translator of Italian authors including Umberto Eco and Italo Calvino: http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/421/the-art-of-translation-no-3-william-weaver It's really distressing if you read works in translation. I love Eco and have read all his novels, which is how I ended up reading this interview, but Weaver says some really interesting things about translating Calvino as well. Comparing his statements about the two authors says a lot about the ridiculous range in process required when translating fiction.

It would be interesting to read some more fiction of this type at some point on the cast--by which I mean fiction that plays with language in challenging or unusual ways for its own sake in addition to being purely in the service of the larger themes or intention. (This seems to be common to "postmodern" fiction, whatever that even means, but I'm not super well read in that department so what do I know.) I don't think that's the kind of thing we're generally drawn to but it seems better suited to literature than to more literally-depicted narrative forms like film.

I totally forgot about this podcast! I listened to it regularly when I lived in Boston, and somehow it got lost in the shuffle when I moved back to San Francisco. I'll have to resubscribe.

I haven't played it myself but I sat with Sean for a while as he played it, and I can't imagine you'd lose much on a per-platform basis. The interaction is really simple and doesn't rely on reflex-dependent precision.

The beta was only open for two days, so it's tough to get a sense of it. It looks like the beta will be back in a week or so though.

That is fully rational

I ended up not really going into it much, because Jake and Sean had no frame of reference.