Jake

Idle Thumbs 209: Ten Percent Success Rate

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Idle Thumbs 209:

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Ten Percent Success Rate

What did we all bring for show and tell this week? Danielle explores a psychedelic outdoor world and misses her favorite book, Chris re-visits his first encounter with Star Wars, while Spaff performs one of the most amazing feats ever attempted in gaming and finds himself $70 poorer as a result. Jake brings some gifs of animals stealing cars. Nine taxi drivers were injured in the creation of this podcast.

Games Discussed: Infinite Jest, Gardenarium, The Magic Circle, Brawl, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Grand Theft Auto V

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Danielle comparing the difficulty of Infinite Jest to the difficulty of Bloodborne reminded me of this Dara O'Briain bit.

 

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It'll probably become clear when I listen to the podcast, but I can't wait to find out: what is that header image from? 

 

I think it's The Magic Circle. I haven't finished listening but Chris brings it up. I've been following this game and I am madly in love with the concept. 

 

www.magiccirclegame.com

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On J Allard's bike thing, he recently upped his game from 529 and became the founder of Portland Police Bureau Theft Task Force, appointed by the chief of police. He's not fucking around. I now have this image of a big awkward dork who obviously is not a cop but is still on a power trip like he is.

 

I know this because there was that thread where Mington was being a creepo and somehow we both got Allard to add us on Linkedin just 'cause and I get his career updates to my e-mail.

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On J Allard's bike thing, he recently upped his game from 529 and became the founder of Portland Police Bureau Theft Task Force, appointed by the chief of police. He's not fucking around. I now have this image of a big awkward dork who obviously is not a cop but is still on a power trip like he is.

 

17401998-mmmain.jpg

 

He looks so angry because he knows that someone looking at this picture might be a bike thief. He hates bike thieves so much.

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I'm a huge fan of every time the thumbs talk briefly about DFW. RIP the book club.

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quick thoughts:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopscotch_%28Julio_Cort%C3%A1zar_novel%29 Hopscotch is a novel with new game plus and it's from 1963. Read it linearly, then re-read it choose your own adventure style (well no choices, but it tells you what chapter to read next.) Context is king.

 

Anyone read austin grossman's You?  That's a text adventure being constantly remade, with the dna of the text adventure still in it.  Austin worked on Dishonored and the cover art is by superbrothers, not as good as Soon I Will be Invincible, but still worth the read.

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I think it's The Magic Circle. I haven't finished listening but Chris brings it up. I've been following this game and I am madly in love with the concept. 

 

www.magiccirclegame.com

Oh, so weird. I've seen bits of the game before, and I just knew about the glitchy black and white landscape stuff. I didn't know about the weird 90s game within the game. 

 

Dope. http://www.polygon.com/a/creativity-cover/the-magic-circle-short-story

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"A Shitload of Blums" is the Clint Eastwood/Jeff Goldblum buddy comedy that was never meant to be.

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Danielle, please feel free to talk more about Bloodborne.  Pretty please?  With blood sprinkles on top?

 

I really don't get tired of listening to people talk about the Souls games, and their experience (good or bad).  It's almost always interesting in some way. 

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Danielle, please feel free to talk more about Bloodborne.  Pretty please?  With blood sprinkles on top?

 

I really don't get tired of listening to people talk about the Souls games, and their experience (good or bad).  It's almost always interesting in some way. 

 

I agree. I don't even like/play Bloodborne, but so much of the talk on the podcast lately is about games into which the Thumbs have put a few hours here and there. That's not bad at all, but it makes it all the more cool and interesting when someone gets bitten really bad by a game and starts drilling down a lot more. I enjoyed Sean's Dota talk and Chris' Spelunky talk even as I laughed at the other Thumbs giving them shit for being obsessive.

 

My rule of thumb: if you have to say, "But I've talked enough about [Name of Game]," you should just go ahead and talk about that game, at least for four or five minutes. The people who are irritated by repetition, if they exist, are already irritated that you even brought it up and said its name, and meanwhile people like me are dying that you're teasing us with thoughts that you think are good enough to share, just not on a podcast about games.

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Yeah, I agree.  I never really got tired of all the Spelunky talk.  Dota was a bit less engaging for me, but I've never played any of the Lords Management style games at all.  But I was certainly fascinated by all the Cities: Skylines talk, even though I haven't played a city sim in over a decade. 

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Speaking for myself, often Danielle seems to self censor herself and I feel a little bummed when it happens. I don't know if she's just putting it on herself as a self editing measure that transfers over from writing at Polygon or what, but I think it's totally unnecessary!

 

Sorry if this is rude/presumptuous/entirely something I've pulled out of thin air...

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Yeah! Talk about the cool stuff you like dang!

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Anyone have a good link to the hilarious-sounding GTA V taxi driver videos? I can't seem to find any that don't have someone talking over it.

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I googled J Allard's bike project and found this picture:

 

The Firewatch wallpaper was a nice find, but I think you buried the lede:

 

j-allard.jpg

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How could anyone hate J Allard.

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Dragon Age: Orgy-ins?

 

That's the only Dragon Age porn title that I could think of and it's not very good.  Someone please carry on in my stead.

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