Jake

Idle Thumbs 206: Owen Wilson's Nose

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I kind of see the analogy here, but I love lyrics in music and they are generally the entry point for my emotional connection with a song, rather than closing things off.

 

Most people do, but my point is you have no idea what sort of emotional connections to a song you would make absent the lyrics. I realize I'm arguing a counter-factual so it isn't anything I can prove, but I feel like there have to be at least some instances where there might be alternative emotions you might feel towards a particular song if they didn't have the same lyrics attached to them.

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Anyway, definitely not disagreeing with you tberton, or the point Chris made. I agree it is not the same thing. Lyrics are like actually this super weird thing because they are both a part of the music, and not a part of the music (in that music doesn't have any intrinsic meaning even though it creates these emotional states for us, but words of course are tied to meaning, and can generate emotional reactions).

 

But I suppose another way to look at it is imagine an alternative universe where music is overwhelmingly instrumental, and the occasional song with lyrics is like this weird, eccentric thing done by artists without great commercial ambitions. In this alternative universe don't the people that hear those songs with lyrics react to it much the same way we react to an abstract game with the message that feels hammered on?

 

It's possible of course that it doesn't work that way at all. Perhaps the creators of these games are just clumsy with their artistry and that's all there is to it. But I'm at least open to the possibility that part of it just comes down to historical & social conditioning, and that songs with lyrics feel like a natural thing to us just because it has been such a recurring aspect of human creative work.

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I would say that music has intrinsic meaning, at least to the extent that words do, if not in exactly the same way. A light flute means something quite different than a booming tuba.

 

But I'm with Chris here. I still don't think the analogy works. Saying that, for instance, "Dreams" by Fleetwood Mac would mean something different to me without the lyrics is true, but it would also mean something different without the guitar. Both are pretty intrinsic to the song's meaning. What Chris was talking about on the show seems to be more that those textual elements feel completely separate from the rest of the game in such a way that the game would hardly change if they were removed.

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I was going to make a Super Briefly game! I've had the idea rattling around in my head for a while now, but I'm not done with university until next month. I might pick it up once I have some more free time. I'm surprised nobody else has made one yet.

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A lot of the Guitar Hero Live reveal struck me as a weird choice. Not only is the FMVness of the presentation really laughable and distracting, but the way it transitions between the success and fail states is jarring. The heavy blur they employ isn't evocative of anything and feels like it would actually get in the way of trying to play a song. It also seems like the most expensive possible way to try and do a game like this. And if you're going the route of filming real people, why not try and make cool original music videos to go along with the actual music videos they have in the other mode. That way they'd at least end up with product that could be impressive outside of the sheer scale of it. 

 

The footage I've seen also makes the game look like it avoids the original games' progression where you start off in smaller venues. Those seem like the settings where the game's core concepts make the most sense. Feeling nervous about your first gig and slowly turning a local dive bar's growing audience into fans would fit in perfectly.  It's still really early, though so maybe that stuff will find its way in (or maybe it's been talked about in previews, I just watched a couple levels and the trailer). The guitar does look like a nice innovation, at least for rhythm guitar, not sure how it'll feel for solos.

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They've said specifically that they feel the "rags to riches" story is tired out in the series, but that there is some feeling of progression in the single player campaign. Who knows though.

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They've said specifically that they feel the "rags to riches" story is tired out in the series.

 

Joseph Campbell's The Guitar Hero's Journey

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Two things:

 

1) High-five, Danielle. Steven Universe is the best. We talk about it in the cartoons thread a bunch.

 

2) the new Guitar Hero looks like somebody's Rainmeter skin. It looks clean in a very lazy way: stark black and white vector art and helvetica text against a Photoshopped lacquered wood guitar neck against someone's instagram video. It's simultaneously aesthetically pleasing and very off-putting. To me, at least.

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I remember when Chris was talking about the weird feeling of watching people play Spelunky and having the remaining time on the video slowly counting down until their otherwise unpredictable demise, and felt the same kind of spooky predestination as the conversation slowly wrapped in on Owen Wilson's nose, as the title decreed it must.

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Tearaway is so excellent!  I'm a cynical shithead and I was smiling the entire time I played it.  Every time the front-facing camera brought an image of me into the game, I would smile and wave at Atoi.  The PS4 version is definitely a day one purchase for me.

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It would be happy if Spaff was permenantly on the podcast, playing as Nick Breckon.

 

I was going to say the same thing. Spaff should be a regular.

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There's lyrics that mean nothing at all but work wonderfully from the standpoint of voice as instrument.  From chant to scat to

 (featuring a scat break repeatedly caned off...)

 

And then there's lyrics that are deeply meaningful as text, but don't work at all musically-- see, uh, endless piles of bad political music made continuously since the dawn of pop.  There's a special place in music-hell for '90s activist rap-rock, is what I'm saying.

 

But it sounds like we're all in contentious agreement, here.

 

So here's to songs that have stupid, forgettable, or outright fascist lyrics, that nonetheless work fantastically musically?  From Carl Orff to... oh, whoever.

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I was going to say the same thing. Spaff should be a regular.

 

I agree, but not in place of Nick. Nick needs to be on more, the busy bastard.

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I was going to make a Super Briefly game! I've had the idea rattling around in my head for a while now, but I'm not done with university until next month. I might pick it up once I have some more free time. I'm surprised nobody else has made one yet.

I'm convinced Super Briefly led to Idle Thumbs being sponsored by MeUndies.

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They've said specifically that they feel the "rags to riches" story is tired out in the series, but that there is some feeling of progression in the single player campaign. Who knows though.

 

Now desperately wishing and hoping that the progression is a band at the height of their popularity who slowly decays out of prominence and public consciousness regardless of what they do or how good they are.

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I was thinking about the the discussion about that abstract game and how it had theme which almost appear (without at least knowing the context or reason in that case) "forced" in. This kind reminds me about the old saying "just because you can, don´t mean you should". Which I don´t mean a literal way, but, let´s say, as conscious act to think about before you tackle on certain objects, just remember how some games or movies or even cartoons which tried to tackle a subject, but instead of any insight or a meaningful message, all you got was at best a weird pseudo bad psa (which fail to deliver because the whole point got off track) or maybe even kind might be kind offensive to certain people (other day I was listen to the We Have Movies where they talked about a certain episode of Captain Planet, where he tackle the LA Riots...). Overall I think the ideal is figure what kind of game you have and what you could adress that could be tied and work inside it (in sense of theme/subject and game begin one thing or even figuring out that certain subject might not work at all and that there is nothing wrong with that)

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I agree, but not in place of Nick. Nick needs to be on more, the busy bastard.

 

Does any podcast need six hosts though

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Have you guys been enjoying the crazy rotating host thing that's been happening lately? I've liked it as a participant because it means each week I get to talk with a different mix of people but I can never tell what it's like outside.

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Its sort of exciting never knowing who will be hosting each week. I enjoy the range of perspectives. 

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I think I prefer podcasts that are just the same people each time but given how much else every individual person seems to have going on (I've assumed that Sean's regular absences are a result of being hard at work writing Firewatch, Chris has a jet-setting lifestyle flying all over the damn place, Danielle has all sorts of Polygon stuff in addition to working on a game of her own, Jake's always one week away from some major utility collapsing on him and Nick Breckon is Nick Breckon) it's a very reasonable approach.

 

I assumed that the addition of Danielle as a regular was in part because you guys were too busy with Firewatch to be up on video games like you used to, and in that role (among many many others) she's been a great addition. If making Spaff a sixth thumb is a step further in that direction I'd be cool with that. At this point I still don't really know his voice really well, but I imagine the more he's on the more prominent it'll become.

 

He just needs a nickname.

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I'm liking it just fine!

 

I need more Nick and Nick's ridiculous stories in my life, though.

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