Chris

I am extremely excited about. The title of the game is phenomenal, and I'm really excited about what Pinchbeck and co. will add to the project. Like you, I think Dear Esther is more valuable as an experiment than as an experience unto itself, but I'm giving Pinchbeck the benefit of the doubt and assuming he has the ability to lead a project that is more gameplay-driven.

And EA owns SimCity, so even if it were given to another developer, EA would be publishing it no matter what.

Exciting! I'd be surprised if there were actually many individuals currently employed at Maxis who have been actively thinking about Sim City V development challenges for ten years.

It's pretty unlikely the podcast is going to get that kind of stereo mix unless some amazingly compelling reasons present themselves. Sorry folks!

What do you mean by this? Are you asking us to up the bitrate? Why would stereo make voice clarity any different?

For what it's worth, Ron is working on his own separate project at Double Fine. He's leading up that team and presumably that's still where most of his effort will go. I doubt he will be a principle creative force on the Kickstarter game; rather, I imagine he'll serve essentially as a consultant.

I also expect this game to be a mainly comedy thing, so yeah that's a fair point. But it's definitely worth pointing out that the two games of which Schafer was the only project lead--Full Throttle and Grim Fandango--are definitely dramatic stories with levity, as opposed to comedy games. I always hope he'll do something in that vein again, but I don't imagine it'll be this project, for a lot of reasons.

While I agree with you about voice acting dampening a lot of types of adventure game humor, it's still the case that I think Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, both written for voice acting, are the best-written adventure games ever. I guess to me the funniness isn't really the thing I value about the writing in LucasArts' adventure games--I love that they have levity, but I don't think I've ever really played a game where I was actually busting up all the time.

iTunes doesn't provide any of this data. There's no actual backend interface for iTunes content providers. You just submit them an RSS feed. They don't host any content or track requests for that content--or if they do, they don't make it available. Or if they do make it available, they only do so for some people.

For example, we are probably going to have to do a whole new print run of the Idle Thumbs Journal of Games, even though original the whole point of offering it was that backers would get one of the last remaining copies. It didn't even occur to us to limit the number of potential backers at that tier, since we expected so few people to pony up $200.

I have to admit I'm not familiar with him.

What the fuck?? I never even heard about this.

I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy for the third time in theatres on Friday, with Sean this time. Man I really love that film. I honestly feel like I'd be happy to see it yet again in the near future. I've also been really pleased by how many people I run into who saw it once, thought it was really good, and said they'd like to see it again. I think it's a good sign for modern film that I've encountered so many folks who acknowledge how dense and layered it is but don't just say "Yeah that was too complicated," and render a positive opinion even though they feel they still need another viewing to fully absorb it all.

http://pzrservices.typepad.com/vintageadvertising/advertising_from_the_1980s/ etc.

The page on the left isn't an article, it's an advertisement. The page on the right is an article continuing from an earlier page.

"Street"

Well, the state of California has one of the higher minimum wages in the country, but on top of that the city of San Francisco has the actual highest minimum wage in the country (until March, when Santa Fe will edge it out by a few cents). So while obviously not everyone living here is living in the lap of luxury, not by a long shot, what I was saying is that companies across the board have higher operating expenses and payroll simply by virtue of being here, even for low-wage positions.

Welcome, new folks!

I've seen the film, which I really enjoyed, but wasn't aware there was a television show.

Essentially

They're also located in the city of San Francisco, which is expensive and which commands higher employee salaries, regardless of industry or profession, than equivalent jobs elsewhere.

People are definitely going to pirate this game. I'm sure a whole lot of people will. That doesn't mean worrying about it is the correct course of action, but it will clearly be pirated.

90s'ed.

Bumped.

Does Germany require ratings, legally? Because I imagine Edmund McMillen just didn't care about having his game rated. (I sure wouldn't.) He has no reason to do so.