Chris

Ruinationcast will come when the new site's launch is imminent, which realistically is still probably a month or two away. We didn't want to keep pushing the real podcast back for that stuff so we're just decoupling them.

Man that is gross.

Back when I still actually played a bunch of adventure games, I played Runaway and it was one of the least enjoyable game experiences I can remember having. I played all the way through and I don't know why. I thought it was really, really poor.

Although they are creating some of that weirdness for themselves by offering the possibility of only half of the ads going away, or whatever. However it works out though it'll be for the entire year so it's at least predictable once the KS is over.

I think what they're doing is great, but I don't think Kickstarter is really the place for it. I don't think anyone objects to the notion of people paying to support creative work they like--I sure don't. I wish there was more of that in the world. And I don't think anyone is suggesting that this amount of money won't be used for legitimate purposes. The thing is, they're ALREADY paying all these people, with money they already know how to earn. They are neither kickstarting a new business, nor are they attempting to save a failing one. They are simple changing business models for an already-successful, already-funded business with more than a dozen full-time employees. That to me seems like something they should be doing through infrastructure that they license or build (since they can clearly afford to), rather than through Kickstarter. Just as a brief aside, this isn't entirely accurate. Some of our Kickstarter rewards are in fact ads on the podcast. We've never really publicly stated an intention to run no advertising anywhere on Idle Thumbs. We've never had banner ads on the site, and our current plan for the site doesn't include banner ads, but I don't want to give the impression we're hardline about that stuff, because if it ever changes, I don't want people to think we're hypocrites.

People saying "Well I don't get offended by words!" seems pretty much meaningless to me. If you don't belong to a group that has been traditionally--or is still--venemously targeted with those words, then yes of course it's pretty easy for you personally not to get offended by them. One of the most important parts of living in a modern complex multicultural society is the ability to have empathy for other groups and people who aren't you and aren't like you, who may not have the luxury to be able to easily cast aside instinctual reactions to hurtful speech. I mean even aside from getting into the real nuances of any of this stuff, saying "Well it's fine for me so I don't see why it should bother anyone else" just comes off as an incredibly shaky platform on which to build ANY opinion, whether it's related to language or anything else in the world.

This will be addressed in the other way; when we've set up our new site, the podcast will be hosted here and there will be a really straightforward page for the show and for each individual episode. We know it's kind of fractured right now and it's not ideal yet.

The main thing that annoyed me about that scene was that there was no option in the dialogue to

Also, I'm trying to quit using the term "painful" to describe situations I would prefer not to experience, because of the risk of offending SM practitioners by implying that pain is undesirable.

I was talking about all sports games. I wasn't passing judgment on any of them as games. I'm saying they tend to be considered in a different category to non-sports games, regardless of merits.

If there were one person, it would probably be Jon Shafer, not Sid Meier!

Hello new folks!

Regardless of how 2K's agreement with Amazon works, it clearly isn't a publisher-wide markdown, because the game is still full-price on Steam and 2K's own site.

What makes you think it was the publisher's decision? Amazon is only marking down the downloadable version; if demand for the game was very low on Amazon (regardless of how well it is or isn't selling through other outlets), maybe this is just what Amazon felt was necessary.

I haven't played this, but that's the prevailing opinion I've heard as well. It doesn't really bode well for the dev team, because as far as I'm aware the story was pretty much written by writers on the publishing side of things.

Oh man, that image just brought back a flood of memories.

Yeah, I think Civilization is better seen as a (very very very rough) simulation of how human society at large progresses, rather than how individual nations and governments progress.

Oh okay, that's what I had originally thought. Cool!

Sean has played a bunch of Civ IV and definitely at least mentioned it in the episode. He's also recently been playing non-expansion Civ V.

Cost to the consumer is one thing because that's affected by a lot of other factors, but purely on the service provider side, the hardware is still a lot cheaper than it would otherwise be because they don't need a discrete machine for each user. The company is also buying in volume. Similarly, colocation is cheaper than running a server yourself.

Indeed--I intended to back and edit my post or add a new one acknowledging your statements to that effect, then I forgot.

For my current game of Civ V: Gods & Kings, I set the world size as big as it can be, and the time scale as long as it can be, and it's been a pretty relaxing experience. The massive world and slow pace makes it feel like there's plenty of room, both geographically and temporally, for me to play at my own pace and in my own style, which is very non-militaristic and leisurely. I don't really play Civ to win, I just play it for the simulational aspects, and I feel that's supported well in Civ V.

If your argument is substantial, you shouldn't need to be this dismissive of any potential disagreement.

The criticism most of you levy against Civ 5 is something that I recognize but don't really think has to be seen explicitly as a criticism; Civ V is simply about different things than other Civ games are. I don't subscribe to the notion that each game in the series needs to capture the same dynamics--Civ IV still exists, after all. I too have been playing Civ since the first game (Civ 1 was probably the game that really got me into gaming in a big way, and I suspect I've still played it more than any other game in the series), but to me, Civ V is simply a game that is more about capturing a national character from the start, and working within the constraints that implies. I don't think that's inherently a bad thing. It's just a different game.

To me, one of the really important bits of this book is that we are all like this. We all inevitably frame the world and everything that happens to us as if we're the center of those things, even if we don't consciously believe that to be the case. I think as humans it's our responsibility to try and develop a sense of empathy that will allow us to better see the world through the eyes of others, and to see other people as fully and complexly as we see ourselves, even though it is impossible to ever entirely achieve that. I think, because it is capable of exploring interior lives more fully than other forms of narrative expression, fiction is among the best tools we have for improving that capability.