Chris

Idle Thumbs 210: Pro Fish Smart Fish

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Vanaman does the best ad spots on the podcast, he just has this kind of sly enthusiasm and very cleanly enunciated patter that just makes the ads sound so goofy and fun, especially when he's talking about underwear. 

 

(Also if any of the thumbs want to play WoW or Diablo, hit me up! It's so weird still to hear people talking about Diablo or WoW when I know people don't consider those "real video games.")

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Yeah, "bombshell" was Alan Partridge. Clarkson and the like started using it probably without considering that they are exactly the sort of awful presenter that Partridge was a mockery of.

Re. pronunciation, I didn't know on Tegan and always get confused on Toblix as to whether he put up that little toe-blix text as a corrective or a fun-poke.

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(Also if any of the thumbs want to play WoW or Diablo, hit me up! It's so weird still to hear people talking about Diablo or WoW when I know people don't consider those "real video games.")

 

People don't consider Diablo and WoW "real video games"? That's nuts. I can kind of see it with WoW's mainstream success, but Diablo's the most videogamy video game to ever video game.

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If enough "regular people" play it, it stops being a real video game.

 

I actually think that's what it boils down to.

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Diablo is a bit of a more edge case, but I know that for years, only playing WoW meant you weren't a real gamer. On the other hand, I'm a woman so nothing I play is really video gaming, naturally. But Blizzard games and the community around them are quite insular for something that is so massively popular. There's always felt like there's a barrier around WoW especially that separates that game's fans from the rest of the gaming community, weirdly, and I think that's a product of MMO culture in general. They are an all-consuming type of game so if it's your first game (from being a "non-gamer") it tends to be what you play (also known as your "one game" which I know has been mentioned on the podcast before.)

 

Either way, I still really love Diablo 3 even if I only play WoW off and on now, but still, weird to hear both games being discussed on Idle Thumbs regardless. I always feel like more popular gaming spaces really did a good job of neglecting both for years. 

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The Jr Mints have shipped so hopefully they'll arrive by next week's cast.  Everything else should already be there.  One clarification on the Kit Kats: they're not normal Kit Kats, it's a variety pack of Japanese ones

 

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I saw those at the local Asian market, what is different about them?

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Thumbs talked a lot about Diablo 3 in the very early episodes (eg the wizard, etc etc), but that was something like half a decade before that game was actually released.

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Diablo is a bit of a more edge case, but I know that for years, only playing WoW meant you weren't a real gamer. On the other hand, I'm a woman so nothing I play is really video gaming, naturally. But Blizzard games and the community around them are quite insular for something that is so massively popular. There's always felt like there's a barrier around WoW especially that separates that game's fans from the rest of the gaming community, weirdly, and I think that's a product of MMO culture in general. They are an all-consuming type of game so if it's your first game (from being a "non-gamer") it tends to be what you play (also known as your "one game" which I know has been mentioned on the podcast before.)

 

Either way, I still really love Diablo 3 even if I only play WoW off and on now, but still, weird to hear both games being discussed on Idle Thumbs regardless. I always feel like more popular gaming spaces really did a good job of neglecting both for years. 

 

 

Blizzard games also seem to do a really good job of recapturing people who played their games a decade+ ago.  Seems like a know a bunch of people who don't play many games, but did buy both Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2.

 

 

On Diablo 3 specifically, I really disliked the original PC release of it.  Both the lady and I bought it, and I don't think we made it past Act 2.  But then we bought the PS4 version of it, and absolutely loved it.  Besides all the re-balancing that was done, playing it in same screen co-op on our TV with controllers was just a 10 fold better experience than each of us sitting at our PCs clicking away. 

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Having been around for the rise of MMOs and the critical reaction to them, (Ultima Online, and before that, DikuMUDs, up through the current batch of MMOs) I came to the conclusion that game devs and critics that cast pods eventually ran out of new things to say about the more successful (and mostly) theme park MMOs so they...just stopped talking about them, more than anything else (the other thing being burnout and the time pressure difficulty in actually getting to and playing endgame content when you're trying to write a review). Nice to see that eventually they've been gone long enough that there are some new things to mention in that game space. I'd still like someone to talk more about The Secret World and it's interesting (supergood?) take on questlines, but I can understand devs/critics just being tired of the MMO-space.

 

The other factors being that there were so many other games to discuss with the rise of indie publishing, mobile games, game jams, and new funding models that allowed previously unfundable game development (e.g. Kickstarter), everyone just had other stuff to talk about. Which has been great.

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Yeah, "bombshell" was Alan Partridge. Clarkson and the like started using it probably without considering that they are exactly the sort of awful presenter that Partridge was a mockery of.

Re. pronunciation, I didn't know on Tegan and always get confused on Toblix as to whether he put up that little toe-blix text as a corrective or a fun-poke.

 

Neat. I have learned something and for that I am glad.

 

Spaff, you Partridge'd the end of the podcast.

 

D3: Reaper of Souls is such a better long-term experience for Diabling. The difficulty settings make sense, which makes advancing to a new difficulty a something exciting. Ironically enough, the loot changes are basically what happened from Vanilla WoW to Burning Crusade. Yes, you're not getting a bunch of stuff with intelligence on it as a Monk which means each piece is either just a flat upgrade or garbage, but it means you're getting things that legitimately make your character better. Layering on the unique legendary items, the blood shard vendor, item sets, and then adventure mode and rifts is so much good Diablo.

 

Even the "season" system is really neat, which makes no sense to me externally considering it's a game of ever increasing progression on a specific character. Somehow though, it's incredible.

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Diablo 3 has been polished into a really tight game that hits the right spots that you can also just pick up and put down on a whim. I love it so much now. 

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Diablo 3 on PC or Console has pretty much been perfected to what it should have been on launch. If Blizzard can pull their usual hat trick and continue to offer more polished mechanics in updates it'll be around for the long haul. Using the Seasons (for skill/achievement runs) mechanism to test out new equipment/systems is a genius idea.

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Sorry for the topic shift, but I was actually taking a break from Blueprint for Armageddon when I listened to the Thumbs cast this week, and I was really excited for the Hardcore History plug.  I love the way Carlin breaks down war history, focusing on the human tragedy enough to keep me grounded in the horror of it, but leaving me feeling like it's important and significant to think about the events and ideas that created those tragedies. 

 

Talking of Twilight Struggle reminded me a little of the old talk of Neptune's Pride, I would love to see a game take on an earth-based, history driven strategy game that incorporated secrecy, speed of communication, and diplomacy the way that game does.

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It also results in rifts that can take decades to heal! 

 

 

 

I had a high school history teacher whose brother literally didn't talk to him for a couple of years because of a game of Diplomacy. 

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One thing that nobody's mentioned about Twilight Struggle is how brilliant it's scoring mechanic is, both in terms of gameplay and how it evokes the Cold War. You mentioned the Tug-of-War scoreboard, but not how points are actually scored. Essentially, the board is split into 6 regions (Europe, Asia, Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia) and each region has a card associated with it that, when played, will score points based on how many territories a player controls in that region. Only the Europe, Asia and Middle East cards are in the deck at the beginning of the game - the other three get added later. This means that you have a rough idea of when certain regions will get scored but can't be exactly certain.

 

This creates an effect where you are trying to guess what scoring cards your opponent has based off of how they play. If the USSR is targeting Europe really heavily, and I don't have the Europe scoring card, then I can be pretty sure that they've got it and I'd better do something about Europe before they score a boatload of points. So I, as the US, start to care about Europe. This means that regions on the board are only important insofar as your opponent seems to care about them. That maps really nicely onto all the political power plays of the Cold War, where one power would try to gain control of a country only because the other wanted it.

 

God I love board games for exactly this kind of mechanic. It's not exactly rare that a game manages to match theme and mechanic so perfectly, but a lot of games don't seem to care about it, and it is so satisfying to experience. Kind of the board game equivalent of "ludonarrative dissonance." (Or rather it's opposite, "ludonarrative assonance?")  :barf:

 

In the 'cast you guys almost got there, but not quite, to the concept of interactive systems (be they digital or otherwise) as simulations to explore real world concepts and systems. Games can be a great way to gain intuitive understanding of complicated systems, by letting you explore different strategies to accomplish something, or just to mess around and see what happens.

 

I saw a great video of a talk somewhere explaining how interactive mediums could be used for this purpose and just how powerful they would be, but can't remember who or where it was. Maybe a TED talk? The guy went beyond digital flat displays, and beyond VR/AR displays, but using nanobots to create a physical interactive medium for that purpose. Wish I could find that video again.

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I saw those at the local Asian market, what is different about them?

 

They're different flavors instead of just chocolate.  It's supposed to be red bean, apple, green zunda, wasabi, strawberry cheesecake and cayenne pepper.  I've never had them myself so I can't personally speak to what they taste like.

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Holy shit. I figured they'd just be slightly different versions of sweet Kit Kat flavors, not that different. Strawberry cheescake sounds amazing. I might pick up red bean next time I'm there just to see what that even tastes like.

 

I also looked for Ovaltine candy bars the last time I was there because I heard they had those in Thailand and I love Ovaltine like an insane person. Unfortunately the closest I could get were nasty powdery sweettart type tablets of ovaltine.

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It also results in rifts that can take decades to heal! 

 

I had a high school history teacher whose brother literally didn't talk to him for a couple of years because of a game of Diplomacy. 

 

 

I definitely had a group of game pals that had been together since WoW launch totally disintegrate over a mobile Diplomacy game. I think we only made it like 2 or 3 turns in before 3 separate people stopped speaking forever. 

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I know that it was on the Day Today and Alan Partridge used it too.

it's got to be top partridge action.

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The cool thing about Diplomacy is that a game of it takes about as long as the actual war.

 

It also results in rifts that can take decades to heal! 

 

 

 

I had a high school history teacher whose brother literally didn't talk to him for a couple of years because of a game of Diplomacy. 

 

I definitely had a group of game pals that had been together since WoW launch totally disintegrate over a mobile Diplomacy game. I think we only made it like 2 or 3 turns in before 3 separate people stopped speaking forever. 

 

Well, he was asking for a game similar to Neptune's Pride, which exhibits similar characteristics to what everybody was mentioning here.

 

Also, not to cast aspersions on all these people you're talking about, but I think it's nuts when I hear stories like this. What could you possibly do in Diplomacy (or how weak was your relationship already) that it would keep you from talking to somebody you care about? Likewise, if you thought your actions in the game might have that strong of an effect on your friends, why the hell would you go through with it anyway?

 

People are more important than games, folks.

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I just wanted to come in here and throw down a big ol' +1 for Dan Carlin's Hardcore History. The way he talks history is extremely entertaining. Highly recommended.  :tup:

I'm really excited to see what he covers next.

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There's a part of me that is satisfied by the idea that someone made a fish that enters schools of fish, appoints itself leader and them presumably leads them to glory against the humans, and that it is white. That seems like the kind of thing a white fish created by humans would do.

 

What could you possibly do in Diplomacy (or how weak was your relationship already) that it would keep you from talking to somebody you care about? Likewise, if you thought your actions in the game might have that strong of an effect on your friends, why the hell would you go through with it anyway?

 

Think about a game like Neptune's Pride, where your nerves are constantly frayed because a devastating attack can come at any time and knock you out of a long game. Take away the 24-hour, can't-sleep-we'll-be-attacked aspect, and replace it with your friends lying to your face and betraying you. Not like the coy 'I'm not the traitor' but things like 'don't worry, I've got your eastern flank, you worry about the west, and together we're going to win this thing'.

 

You learn things about your friends while playing Diplomacy that you can never unlearn.

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