Jake

Idle Thumbs 238: From Earth to Pluto

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What with episodic games making a resurgence I'm surprised that that model hasn't resurfaced. Was the idea of making the first episode free and charging for the rest of the season discussed at Telltale? It seems like if anything it would be more effective with the more story-focused titles, since rather than selling more of the same thing you'd be selling the conclusion to the story once people are hooked. Then again, I don't know if it was ever an especially good business model, even if it was commonplace for a while.

 

On the consoles and mobile platforms, Telltale usually makes the first episode of a season free after a couple more are out.

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On the consoles and mobile platforms, Telltale usually makes the first episode of a season free after a couple more are out.

 

I think this is across media. If you look at indie book publishing they often use the same tactic. I am actually going to try it in some games that I have in the works for mobile and steam.

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The demo for Battlefield 1942 contained the best Battlefield map, "Wake Island," and offered infinite entertainment.

 

Even if it hadn't been a particularly good map, any given Battlefield battlefield tends to contain the potential for all sorts of battlefield stupidity to emerge. I think the Starsiege: Tribes demo had similar legs.

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I want to throw out the Worms 2 demo concerning old PC demos. It had like 1 or 2 levels and many missing items and no possible customization, but the online vs. mode was completely intact and it had tons of players starting games at any time of day. I didn't ever buy Worms 2 and finally caved in by the time Worms Armageddon came out.

 

Dude! A friend and I played that same demo online constantly around 2001/2002-ish. There was that one snow level that we played over and over and over and got so goddamn good at it that we could pretty consistently take out whoever we were playing against in one to two turns. Unlike WA and WWP, in W2 (the demo at least) if you swung around on your ninja rope and let go so that your worm would gently slide down a hill, the collision physics worked out so that you could bump into an enemy worm during your slide and knock them into the water while still retaining your turn since you can use the ninja rope multiple times in a single turn. So we would just swing around the level and bump each of the enemy worms into the water and finish off the harder to reach ones with some other item.

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Yeah the ninja rope masters got amazing through that demo I feel.

 

I was never able to get any good at the ninja rope. I'd actually leave a match if multiple people started doing crazy stuff with a ninja rope on the first turn. I'm sorry. ;(

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Yeah the ninja rope masters got amazing through that demo I feel.

 

I was never able to get any good at the ninja rope. I'd actually leave a match if multiple people started doing crazy stuff with a ninja rope on the first turn. I'm sorry. ;(

 

Sorry if we ever did that to you.

 

And weirdly, we moved from that to playing online in Worms World Party on the Dreamcast. The first online console experience I ever had. So many good memories playing WWP on the Dreamcast. We even had that stupid Dreamcast keyboard. 

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I feel like Chris should use the hashtags #KillAllMen and #NotAllOverseers from now on when talking about Fallout Shelter on Twitter. 

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I know that posting in a thread about a podcast from two and a half weeks ago is equivalent to a trillion years ago in internet time, but I really wanted to post about my experience with Keita Takahashi games and Panic and am the worst for delaying doing so. *But* with the incredible recent development that Girl has gone all the way back to Earth (her ultimate destination), replete with an absolutely incredible ending sequence, special world and a letter written by the team in 2009, I feel comfortable doing so.

 

But first, you must watch the momentous occasion of "Noby Noby Boy"'s denouement: 

 

(It's so god damn good.)

 

And if you care to read my silly reminiscence of my experience with Panic and Keita Takahashi games, here that is:

 

Just wanted to say I greatly enjoyed this episode, especially the discussion of "Noby Noby Boy"/Keita Takahashi and Panic. I've been an Apple dork since seeing an iMac G3 in Wired magazine circa 1998, when I was nine. (I wasn't able to convince my parents to get me my own computer until four years later--an iMac G4 with OS X 10.2. It was a momentous occasion.) Like most young internet dorks during that era, I became obsessed with customizing OS X with beautiful icons and skins made by very talented people (many of whom later went on to work for Apple itself). I regularly visited the now sadly defunct macthemes.net and its forums and was continually delighted by the work of people like David Lanham, Sascha Hohne, Rick Patrick, Louie Mantia, Raymond Sepulveda, Daisuke Yamashita, Philipp Antoni, Brian Zeitler, Jonas Rask, et al., who created the most incredibly beautiful, well-designed icons and OS UI I've ever seen. (My username is merely a portmanteau of two of my favorite OS X Shapeshifter themes--"Siro" by Daisuke Yamashita and "Somatic" by David Lanham.)

 

The application everyone used to easily change icons on OS X was CandyBar by Panic. The first application by Panic I ever used (and loved) was Audion, but it was CandyBar that really made me aware of them as a company and all of the great work they were doing (and had been doing for quite a while).

 

"Katamari Damacy" and "We Love Katamari" are two of my favorite games of all-time, and I have very fond memories from when they came out (a decade+ ago!). I absolutely loved those "Katamari Damacy" tees that were done in collaboration with Panic--I had the light blue one that said Katamari in white and Damacy in dark blue, the yellow one with the fuzzy black Prince rolling a fuzzy black katamari, and the grey one with the Prince standing next to a giant elephant. Those were my most-worn t-shirts all throughout my high school years; well-worn to the point they became threadbare (and I grew out of them a little bit). I've been diligently checking Panic's Twitter and site every day since Cabel posted on the Panic Twitter account that due to a heavy rain/flooding he found some damp "Katamari Damacy" t-shirts he didn't know they still had, in case they ever put 'em up for sale. If I could I would perpetually wear those three shirts for the rest of my life, Charlie Brown-style.

 

I still love the fact that Panic is publishing/funding/helping out with y'all on "Firewatch," and hope that you'll be able to continue collaborating with them in the future. Y'all are the best.

 

 

Addendum: though I've loved Keita Takahashi's games for a long time, I hadn't actually ever heard him talk until I watched a great talk last year by him and Robin Hunicke about their forthcoming game "Wattam." Like Chris said, he seems like the nicest guy in the world. I think everyone would highly enjoy watching this, if you haven't--it's hilarious, smart, and edifying: 

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I could be mistaken, but I think the game activated some sort of insane multiplier after Pluto was reached. It was like a victory lap.

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Oh, I just realized I had a chance to see Wattam at PAX but passed it up. It looked... shallow? But then I guess so does Noby Noby Boy.

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