Sean

Yeah, I could see this being a thing at one point. Right now we're not doing a bunch of changes to the site/podcast (even though we want to and have lots of ideas) because we're so slammed on Firewatch. Hopefully down the road though!

I am saying, quite literally, that we took flack for choices "not mattering" unless they butterfly-effected out as far as possible. Verbatim "my choice to save Duck didn't matter because Shawn was just going to die anyway." That is my problem -- because that's absurd. A choice matters because you make it at the cost of something else, not because it has a clear consequence -- which is my design philosophy. A philosophy, I should point out, that in no way takes umbrage with games (say, like Civ) where early choices ripple out in incredible ways. That's fine. But I take strong issue with "my choice didn't matter because,". If you want to make and play and prefer choose your own adventures, that's awesome. Great. I'm sure I'd love the good ones and prefer them to a bad thing that is less explicit in its branches. Also, it's worth considering what is a branching narrative? If you play a narrative game that isn't explicitly about altering the timeline then you are experiencing a linear narrative. The only reason the story in the Last of Us is different than a Walking Dead playthrough -- when it comes to what the characters are doing and saying on screen -- is that there are no explicit mechanics inside of the Last of Us that highlight the fact that the story could change. It's a movie (I mean a linear story) and you play the action scenes. Nevertheless, if you edited together a Walking Dead play-through and stripped out all of UI so it was just the characters doing things, how different would it be? You would still be devouring a linear story but playing something that you knew was branching (which is what makes the game interesting and for us, worth making). Making a choice when the outcome never comes home to roost IS interesting. "Why did I say that to her? She just stormed away. Would she have stormed away anyway? Is it because she's upset about something else? Shit, should I've said something nice? Could I have? I don't remember. Shit... to hell with it, I made my choice." If you give players a choice and they experience a non-obvious outcome players will actually consider inside of the fiction why that happened. Not what number flipped to make them succeed or fail but, (holy shit!) how a fictional character experienced and interpreted their action. Now the player is empathizing. And as a designer? Hell yeah, she walks away no matter what. It's way cheaper to build and we have a lot of game left to make. The assertion that a choice in a game is not a choice unless it has an obvious on-screen outcome is juvenile and frankly, not one I pay much attention to.

FYI -- our next Rektreational match is Saturday the 23rd at 4pm PST on Twitch!

We've asked Dyer a lot and for some reason it hasn't happened. Finol at Valve said it would be absolutely no trouble so I'm not sure what the issue is.

Yeah we're pretty much the best. Fart sound.

I think the fact that we actually LIKE Naturebox and Hover and Squarespace (and even ol' Shari's Berries) is really the thing here. My favorite podcast is the Slate Political Gabfest and they have a bunch of ads but do them incredibly professionally/straight, never giving their personal opinions but always with official "this is an ad" energy. I think Ben is probably right in that it's the incongruous nature of WoT and Loot Crate that is the issue -- we clearly don't have strong feelings (I actually don't think Loot Crate is a good product now that they've sent us a few... which I probably shouldn't say, but if they were to buy more ad spots we would reject them). SO I guess the good news is that we're really bad at lying/being insincere on the pod, which I suppose is good for you guys.

Senator Frank has spoken. Thanks sir, a big fan of your service.

Again, just my personal opinion/feeling. I really don't want to have to say it, if that makes sense. Chris/Jake probably disagree but between "there's new shit in the store" and all the other stuff that can get tacked on at the end of an ep, it's just one more thing. I think there's something to finding a cool way for people to back the cast on an ongoing basis, but I'd rather come up with something fun and entertaining and unexpected, if that makes sense. Honestly, the best thing people can do to help the cast is keep rating/reviewing it on itunes and introducing it to friends. I'd take that over Patreon any day.

Weird is enough of a reason to not do the reads, in my opinion. I'll wait for some sort of official "we are not doing game ads," decision between Jake and Chris and I, but if something is even a little weird/alienating on the cast then I don't think it has any place. Ads *do* pay pretty well or we wouldn't do them but there is zero amount of money we're comfortable taking if the feedback is "i didn't hate it but it was weird." The truth is it was weird for US and it caused a big gut check. Another thing about ads vs no ads vs patreon vs whatever. Doing ads have made Thumbs cash positive every month since we started doing them -- which is huge. We don't pay ourselves to do the show -- we've never actually taken money from the company account -- but it allows us to have conversations every day about interesting things we could do. We've talked about an event (probably after Firewatch is done), live shows, new products, weird shit like finding another Thirty Flights of Loving inside of some indie dev. All sorts of things. It's part of what keeps Thumbs exciting and interesting for us, so beyond covering the cost of the podcast (which the KS money could probably do for another couple years, TBH) it allows us to think of new things to do you might like (we talked about this in our Kickstarter video way back when -- finding ways to keep the podcast sustainable). One thing I don't like about Patreon is that we'd inevitably have to replace an ad with a call out to "back us on Patreon." You guys support us way more than I could ever imagine and I don't want to pass the hat (I'm speaking personally here, Jake and Chris might have different opinions) again. If we ever did anything like that -- Patreon or another Kickstarter -- it would be "we are doing X (event, making x product) and we need this much capital to make it happen but it is definitely happening." (The way XOXO, a creative conference in Portland, sold their tickets and funded the event). I guess what I'm saying is, in terms of supporting the cast, I think we can do something better and more interesting as our time and lives permit. Most of this was stream of consciousness so I preemptively apologize for any contradictions of myself or with my cohorts.

I played the game on iOS and was like "OK, this isn't the worst, but I don't have anything interesting to say about it," hence our really bland read. But yeah, we're talking a lot about game ads in general now and, frankly, I don't see them still being a thing. It's just weird.

We found out after the ep came out that has to be ALL CAPS. Ridiculous.

That's interesting. For me, the story was more about a man who believed he needed redemption but actually never did. I think the whole concept of "redemption" is nonsense and someone in pursuit of it, because they're so upset with themselves, so ashamed, is the thing that is really sad to me. motherfucking video games

Like I said on the podcast, I literally sat down to the game, no idea what it is, made a character (two) and went "oh fuck this is a Diablo!" And obviously, as I play it I continue to realize that my assumptions are wrong. But Thumbs isn't a review or recap podcast -- it's what impressions do the four/five of us have when we experience a thing.

I apologize for everyone for esoteric Dota talk taking over the ep thread but I will just say I agree. I think players are just inexperienced and yeah, fear plays a factor. It's so dull to say but it's why I like Navi. I feel like their lord picks tend to land in the "oh shit, we might be able to win if we do this and if we lose at least it'll be spectacular." I don't think risk-averse / fear-driven drafting is evidence of some sort of "fuck the fans" attitude but I don't think that opposite thought comes into play either.

Yeah, I agree. I don't think the snowball nature of the game precludes people from not GG'ing after one tower. That 4' tall guy can still punch Shaquille O'Neal in the balls.

Sure, I'm not trying to dictate rules here -- which is why I would never say "pull GG as a feature of the game." But I'm saying VG laid down 3 times in a row in the grand final. They GG'd after losing ONE TOWER. I think, if you're a player who really knows you're there because of the people watching you play, you play differently in those scenarios.

I could be wrong, but being around the teams all weekend, I think it's a culture problem.

I take it you missed this year's world cup final?

A great counterpoint is what happened RIGHT before -- EG got wrecked in 20 minutes. But instead of GG"ing after one tower, those crazy sons of guns went into the Roshan Pit. It was a stupid, wild Hail Mary and they lost one minute later but EG Is a fan favorite for a reason -- they'll use the game's systems to try to pull of the improbable because they seem to care that people are actually watching. I think that's huge. I'm not saying teams shouldn't try to WIN in boring ways -- that's fine. I'm saying if that doesn't work out you have to remember to try to put on a good show and do something worth watching.

Of course. I think the structure of those sports is such that it's a rarity. But it's like, pulling your first-stringers in a blowout. It makes sense if you're in playoff contention and don't want injuries to impact your team, but more of than not, you'll see someone like Kevin Durant (basketball here), say, after being pulled in the 4th qr during a blowout say, straight out "I'm upset. I wish I could've put on a better show, played better. We/I let the fans down." I think that's enough. In this year's Super Bowl, a full on prison-yard-beatdown by Seattle, Peyton Manning (of Denver, for our readers not in the sports know) threw every single pass the Broncos attempted. No backup. And this is a 37 yo man whose robot neck is one hit a way from putting his giant head in the cheap seats. But he knows he can't sit down and doesn't want to.

Yeah, I actually agree in principle. I would like to see the group phase occur before the tournament to establish team rankings (ie: a few smaller lead-up tournaments) and then more best of 5's earlier. I agree that VG would've had a better chance at being exposed.

I disagree with you're disagreement! This was a 10 million dollar prize pool, 90% of which was put up by the fans. It's probably pretty obvious that I love sports quite a bit. All sports, pretty much. There is no other way to classify professional sports than entertainment. And if you're an entertainer your responsibility is to your audience (fans, we call them in sports). It's really cut and dry to me. None of these kids would be doing this if the community didn't pack an arena and funnel millions of dollars (with NO OBLIGATION!) into the game simply out of enthusiasm. Professional athletes in established sports know this and it's rare for an athlete to not care about the fans perspective of their performance. I attribute most of that to the maturity of established sports. In the decades of being around there are veterans in the locker room who cultivate this attitude -- that we're here BECAUSE the fans are and we play FOR the fans -- and I believe it's one of the healthier cultural aspects of established professional sports. If you are an entertainer you do not have the right to pursue boring outcomes. I have faith that, in the long term, that sort of behavior will get weeded out because peoiple who love Dota will simply stop being fans of certain teams (like VG), and as the audience grows and begins to out-scale the prize pool, sponsorships will become more important (and reliable) to the individual athlete (gamer) than winnings and being a boring player will simply be less lucrative (in that Razer wants to put their money behind the player that people pay attention to). Nevertheless, Dota 2 is not there yet (prize pools dwarf sponsorship income, as they did in the early days of the MLB, NBA and NFL). So in the short term -- in the burgeoning days of the sport -- the athletes DO have an obligation to the fans because that's where the money is coming from.

Pretty much zero percent. UNLESS it's followed up with "Seriously, you have to cut that because we'll get sued," or "Seriously you have to cut that because it will severely damage an important relationship in my life." But that's just about it.

Deep cut info about Feaster's Queest. The joke, in classic Jake form, triple-ruined me because a) it played perfectly into the absurd-and-backwards-in-the-service-of-unneccessary-rhyming nature of Reece's Pieces it was a reference to a game I hadn't thought of in twenty years and c) this is the big one -- my best friend Adam had a longtime roommate (and still a mutual friend) named Feaster (Ryan Feaster, although in seven years I've never called him Ryan) (and Jake knows this/has met him). Feaster is a man with like, signature moves. Blacking out at 4pm on a Saturday. Doing this crazy tongue-waggle when he gets jazzed up about something. Anyway, I laughed about Feaster's Queest for about eight hours after the cast.

This is my entire point. Sometimes people just haven't seen a movie. I have never dodged TRYING to see Casablanca and I'm sure I've been sitting on the couch going over and over Netflix, stumble on Casablanca and say "I want to watch this, but man, I'm tired and might not make it through. I'll wait til I can sit down with it or see it at The Castro." The entire HOW CAN YOU NOT HAVE SEEN thing is just a big pet peeve for me. My answer is usually "because there's literally infinite things to do in a life and that isn't one I've got to yet."