Jake

Idle Thumbs 218: Yanis' Last Move

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Idle Thumbs 218:

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Yanis' Last Move

Unlike some, we live in a bountiful place. A place where the stars stretch out before you, full of life and endless, a place where soccer is played by not just Mario but glowey demons and even cars, a place where every gun is unique even if that is the last thing you want. We live there so enjoy all of it.

Games Discussed: Super Mario Strikers, Dota Strikers, Splatoon, Team Fortress 2, Into The Stars, No Man's Sky

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Argh, the episode is just over 100 MB and Apple's podcast app refuses to let me download it until I get home to a Wi-Fi signal!

 

Usually an hour and a half episode comes in under that file size, but if it means sweet Pono-quality dynamic range it'll be worth the wait.

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You guys already played Into the Stars? It just came out on steam today. I won't have time till friday night.

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SHOULD LEGOS TALK?!

 

 

 

It's interesting that World of Warcraft was used as the example of "an MMO would never upgrade its engine like DOTA going from Source 1 to Source 2", because World of Warcraft has totally revamped nearly everything about the game, engine-wise. They didn't come out and say it's WoW 2, but Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor were both very large visual bumps and the game requirements jumped a bit too as far as I know.

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So I just finished up last week's cast and immediately started this one (because I had forgot to finish 217), and it was so perfect that 217 finishes with Remo promoting the Life thread in the forums, and 218 begins with a lament about the sadness of adult life, something that would fit perfectly in the Life thread. 

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So Into the Star was a Kickstarter game which I backed, they put in on greenlight before they got fully funded. The game was greenlight in three days. After getting funded the game got picked up by Iceberg Interactive.

 

I was young enough when Star Wars Episode 1 came out that I enjoyed it, but by the time the second movie came out I knew the first one had been bad. By the third movie I was more excited about the release of Star Wars Battlefront 2 than I was about Episode 3.

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A friend of mine got a sunburn when he was waiting in line to get tickets for himself and some friends. Now that I think about it does that mean this was pre-Fandango or did they not allow online sales for Star Wars?

 

I remember enjoying every moment a lightsaber was on screen, but then during all the horrible stuff I'd think to myself "Uhh, do I like this?" I even saw it a few more times trying to convince myself I was enjoying it because it's the first new Star Wars in ages, but in my heart I knew it was shit. That was also one of the first movies where I had seen the trailer so many times that it threw me off to hear the dialogue in the proper order.

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It's interesting that World of Warcraft was used as the example of "an MMO would never upgrade its engine like DOTA going from Source 1 to Source 2", because World of Warcraft has totally revamped nearly everything about the game, engine-wise. They didn't come out and say it's WoW 2, but Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor were both very large visual bumps and the game requirements jumped a bit too as far as I know.

Yeah wow feels like a weird example especially This expansion.Not only did they replace they update the models, they gave you the option to toggle between those brand new skins and the 10 year old originals.

But perhaps the biggest thing that has happened in this current expansion is the change to the economy because they basically brought in Free to Play by stealth, you can buy a token for a months game time for cash, and then sell it to another player for gold (using a weird anonymous auction house system).

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Man, I didn't know any of this. Never got to the Cataclysm expansion!

 

Yeah wow feels like a weird example especially This expansion.Not only did they replace they update the models, they gave you the option to toggle between those brand new skins and the 10 year old originals.
But perhaps the biggest thing that has happened in this current expansion is the change to the economy because they basically brought in Free to Play by stealth, you can buy a token for a months game time for cash, and then sell it to another player for gold (using a weird anonymous auction house system).

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Man, I didn't know any of this. Never got to the Cataclysm expansion!

 

The Luclin expansion for EQ is probably an even more striking example of an MMO graphics engine update, among other tweaks.

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I'm pretty sure Ultima Online also had a significant grapics overhaul at some point

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ex machina chat:

 

 

the first anecdote people tend to latch onto about a new general intelligence is the pitfalls of anthropomorphization. 99% of pop culture showcases this by highlighting a lack of empathy, which is exactly what the script did, and I didn't get the sense ava's 'betrayal' was any more then that.

 

it really is almost totally ambiguous though, and listening to everyones thoughts at the end of the podcast was fascinating in a projective test sort of way:

 

sean went to mass murder

danielle went to feminism superhero

jake went to living a quiet life in the city

 

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The feminist read wasn't my initial reaction to the movie either, but it makes the most sense after the fact. I think the super creepy sexbot closet was justified to an extent if you see the movie as gender-centric. The whole closet reveal is Nathan's worst offense (or at least the tipping point into "what the hell man" territory) because it explicitly makes him a male objectifying a female.

 

I'm with Danielle in the back of my mind though, and really hope that she finds an apartment somewhere nice with a quirky empathetic roommate, and gets picked up for 8 episodes by Netflix.

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ex machina chat:

 

 

the first anecdote people tend to latch onto about a new general intelligence is the pitfalls of anthropomorphization. 99% of pop culture showcases this by highlighting a lack of empathy, which is exactly what the script did, and I didn't get the sense ava's 'betrayal' was any more then that.

 

it really is almost totally ambiguous though, and listening to everyones thoughts at the end of the podcast was fascinating in a projective test sort of way:

 

sean went to mass murder

danielle went to feminism superhero

jake went to living a quiet life in the city

 

 

I mostly agree with Sean, not really about the "mass murder" angle, but more about the birth of a new kind of intelligence also heralding the birth of a new morality that does not have to take humans into account at all. That's the overwhelming message of the end of Ex Machina to me: Ava disregards humans by killing them quickly and efficiently, Ava disregards humans by leaving them trapped to die, and Ava disregards humans by standing among them and ignoring them. She's human-agnostic, and the movie leaves it to the viewer to decide how much of a threat that represents.

 

Honestly, I personally felt like I was seeing the birth of a new apex predator, hunting for independence and security instead of sustenance, but maybe that's because the movie had already put me so strongly in mind of Philip K. Dick's short story "The Golden Man," only with the genders swapped to contribute to Danielle's point about feminism and tech-bro culture.

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The gender and race politics of tech in Ex Machina felt so much more relevant than the morality of artificial intelligence. Nathan and Caleb are on the ends of the maleness spectrum, the former is an aggressive bro and the latter a quintessential Nice Guy, which explains why Eva needed to kill both men to gain her freedom. Eva, who looks like a beautiful white woman, not only kills the two men who are keeping her as a literal and figurative person, but also gains her independence from the actual skin of the other female robots (who just so happen to be women of color).

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Where does FFXIV fit into the MMO update discussion?

 

FF14 is a complete outlier among MMOs. I think the relaunch and subsequent runaway success of the game is something that nobody could have predicted. It's such a fascinating and cool story.

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Anarchy Online's also this MMO that's having a graphics update this year. I dunno if it's an entirely new engine from scratch.

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Eva, who looks like a beautiful white woman, not only kills the two men who are keeping her as a literal and figurative person, but also gains her independence from the actual skin of the other female robots (who just so happen to be women of color).

 

Haven't got to the Ex Machina part of the episode yet, but the Argobot's last sentence is what really bummed me out about the movie.

 

I fully expected to see the pilot get dropped from his helicopter in midair.  He made such a big deal about security to Caleb yet he'll pick up strange women no problem!

 

Ava said she wanted to run away with Caleb and experience the busy hum of life at a city intersection.  But since that first desire was a complete lie, is the second any more real?  It undercut the ending: Ava might not be finally getting what she said she wanted; she might just walk through the crosswalk without stopping on her way to Kill All Humans.

 

EDIT: Now that I have listened, I thought it was a good discussion.  I share Sean's pessimism about humanity—we have chosen the form of our destruction!

 

Any sympathy any of you had for Caleb should have been thrown out after he accepted Nathan's word that there was no point talking to Kyoko and treated her like a Roomba.

 

Any sympathy you had for Ava should have been thrown out after she showed no desire to help Kyoko recover from a seemingly minor injury.

 

Any sympathy you had for Nathan was probably because of his drinking problem.  But since we didn't get any reckoning or explanation for that I guess that sympathy should have been thrown out, too.

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REAL good Jake in this week's episode, especially near the end when Sean was describing Temple of Doom

 

"...that's Raiders, are you kidding me? That's..." (intake of breath, eyes presumably wide and unbelieving) "...the first ten minutes of..." (trails off, incredulous)

 

Also, everyone should see Mr. India, it is real fun. Mogambo Khush Hua

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Man, I still can't get over Dota Strikers being a click-your-guys-around-the-screen game.  WASD is permanently relegated to the less popular e-sports.

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