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Idle Weekend February 26, 2016 - Hack the Planet

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Idle Weekend February 26, 2016:

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Hack the Planet

The Weekenders are joined by cyberpunk expert and friend of the show Austin Walker of Giant Bomb to talk about our dreams of the 90s. SUPERHOT has us in a 90s cyberpunk frame of mind, so we take a jog down the information superhighway paved by Hackers, The Net, and Strange Days. It's a transhumanist treat!

Discussed: SUPERHOT, Hackers, The Net, Strange Days, Else Heart.Break(), Californium, Steve Jobs, The Witch

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I always felt like the aesthetics of 90s cyberpunk films were aligned with 90s rave dance culture (how many hacking sequences featured the Amen drum break synonymous with jungle music?). A film like Groove makes these parallels explicit: young people in San Francisco with stymied careers find out about an underground warehouse party via email, and shed their individual identities to become part of a greater collective consciousness (this time fueled by MDMA instead of the internet).

 

This synthesis of dance music and cyberpunk fetishism emerges perfectly in Burning Man: the Google engineers that methodically work to turn our world into a dystopian nightmare security state of total surveillance and drones are the same people that go out to the desert to lose their minds for a few days in a Dionysian spectacle wrapped up in some vaguely conceived of ideal about a post-commodity society.

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Great show folks! One comment about what Austin mentioned as his weekend project: Californium actually is an element on the periodic table. It's number 98. It's also one of two elements to be named after UC Berkeley, where both were discovered (the other is, naturally, Berkelium, number 97.)

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This synthesis of dance music and cyberpunk fetishism emerges perfectly in Burning Man: the Google engineers that methodically work to turn our world into a dystopian nightmare security state of total surveillance and drones are the same people that go out to the desert to lose their minds for a few days in a Dionysian spectacle wrapped up in some vaguely conceived of ideal about a post-commodity society.

 

the talk about Hackers as a story of marginalized youths working against the system got me thinking about how a young tech wiz today is more likely to be envisioned as an entrepreneur who has assimilated into the system- the 20 year old who makes an app and then sells it for a billion dollars. the lingo around this stuff evokes transgressive ideas- the underdog startup, disruption, sharing economy- but are either just new words for old ideas and/or bolstering established hierarchies. how incredibly disappointing.

 

simultaneously, the internet's promise of a broader world where you encounter more types of people has been fulfilled for me. i can point out specific tweets that have challenged my ideas of race, gender, economics and have pushed me to expand my feelings of empathy and kindness; the internet has definitively made me a better person. while that may not be as flashy as hacking a romantic message on an office building or getting arrested for messing with banks, it's a much more useful manifestation(?) of that implied transgressive-ness. (on a side note, the internet has also gotten me laid and paid. so there's that.)

 

Edit: oh! also: great episode!

Edited by SgtWhistlebotom

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FIVE OUT OF TEN IS NOT A LOW SCORE

 

PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND LEARN HOW FRACTIONS WORK

 

(This isn't directed towards the hosts, as Danielle did point it out, but holy shit did I just start shouting aloud to myself when that email started)

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Regarding the use of games for therapeutic purposes - (Spoilers for Firewatch)

Firewatch in particular is probably more suitable for this kind of comforting and encouraging because it constantly reassures you that playing it to momentarily get away from your real life issues isn't necessarily a negative thing. Also, even without the literal reassurance on the part of Delilah, the fact that the protagonist is also going through a difficult time and having doubts about whether escapism is a legitimate tool to deal with the problems he faces is a nice thing to experience when in a lower mood. This is probably less relevant in relation to chronic pain, I guess.

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FIVE OUT OF TEN IS NOT A LOW SCORE

 

PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND LEARN HOW FRACTIONS WORK

 

(This isn't directed towards the hosts, as Danielle did point it out, but holy shit did I just start shouting aloud to myself when that email started)

 

I understand this sentiment, but really, in any situation, "just barely passable" is a low score. Not terribly low, but still low. If you got a D- on a test, you'd say that was a low score. 

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Great episode as usual!

 

 

There have been a few discussions about cyberpunk on the Idle Network in the last little while. I'm a child of the 80's so I really should be conversant in cyberpunk but I am not. Can we bring the considerable brainpower of this forum to bear and create a list of must - consume cyberpunk media? I would love to educate myself. Books, movies, games, comics, interpretive dance, whatever. 

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There have been a few discussions about cyberpunk on the Idle Network in the last little while. I'm a child of the 80's so I really should be conversant in cyberpunk but I am not. Can we bring the considerable brainpower of this forum to bear and create a list of must - consume cyberpunk media? I would love to educate myself. Books, movies, games, comics, interpretive dance, whatever.

 

A few corny music videos spring to mind!

 

 

 

 

 

Also, there's no video, but the intro to this album has some furious keyboard-mashing (hacking) during some kind of heist with helicopters and shit, it's amazing:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoyaQyjXRZI

 

COMPUTER! HOW YA DOIN, BWOY

 

EDIT: Forgot about this classic!: 

 

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Great episode as usual!

 

 

There have been a few discussions about cyberpunk on the Idle Network in the last little while. I'm a child of the 80's so I really should be conversant in cyberpunk but I am not. Can we bring the considerable brainpower of this forum to bear and create a list of must - consume cyberpunk media? I would love to educate myself. Books, movies, games, comics, interpretive dance, whatever. 

 

I don't think anything really tops early William Gibson novels. Neuromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Burning Chrome (this last one is a collection of short stories, not all cyberpunk really, but some are must read like "Johnny Mnemonic").

 

Bladerunner is the best film I think. Unlike the panel I'm less enamored with films like Hackers, and The Net but are worth seeing for sociological reasons.

 

For games the System Shock and Deus Ex series are all excellent, although not all have aged particularly well, and whether Deus Ex 2 is good or not is controversial. There's also the Shadowrun tabletop RPGs (and the subsequent computer RPGs) which are a weird cyberpunk-D&D style fantasy hybrid. I loved the tabletop game in junior high school but haven't gotten along with any of the video game adaptations, but they are generally well regarded. The recent 3MA episode that had Austin on discussed Satellite Reign and a bunch of other games that are probably worth checking out.

 

There's a ton of anime I'm sure, but you'll have to check with other people. Ghost in the Shell is constantly referenced, but seeing that when I was 15 made me realize I wasn't really into anime at all.

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Austin was a great guest! I hope he will join you again soon.

 

I concur! I really fell for him when he did the Far Cry 2 stream for Giant Bomb.

 

Edit: The stream in question:

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I understand this sentiment, but really, in any situation, "just barely passable" is a low score. Not terribly low, but still low. If you got a D- on a test, you'd say that was a low score. 

 

Except that a school's letter grade system is built around the idea of "passing." 50% is only "low" when 60% is the minimum viable score to be accepted as a pass. It's a system where 70% is considered "average." But this isn't school, it's product quality assessment, and there's still half a scale that exists below "F." 50% is "okay." 50% is "there were some things that were done well, but it's nothing spectacular." 50% is "this thing isn't a broken piece of garbage, but it's also not an orgasmic revelation." I would be fine buying a 5/10 game because I know it means that I might find a couple things it does interesting, and it's not going to be a frustrating waste of time. Give me a 1/10 or 2/10, and I'm going to know that it has significant problems that I might want to consider before seeking it out.

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True, but in a world where, at least from my perspective, there are literally dozens of games I'd love to be playing right now (many of which I already own), "nothing spectacular" may as well be "poor". Now, sometimes 5/10 means "does something really interesting very poorly" or "does a lot of things really well but has a huge glaring flaw", in which case, it's often worthwhile, because maybe a weird flawed experience hits better for one person than another, or that a glaring flaw simply isn't an issue for certain players. And that's why numbered scores are often dumb. But I can completely understand why somebody would look at a 5/10 and think that's a low score indicative of a game that's not worth their time.
 

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FIVE OUT OF TEN IS NOT A LOW SCORE

 

PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF YOUR ASS AND LEARN HOW FRACTIONS WORK

 

(This isn't directed towards the hosts, as Danielle did point it out, but holy shit did I just start shouting aloud to myself when that email started)

 

I wrote the email, and I will say that I'd appreciate it if scores worked like that - but have you looked at Polygons ratings for other games? I'll also note that Danielle specifically mentioned being disappointed with the game in an earlier episode of Idle thumbs. I'm perfectly okay with lowering the score curve, but in most systems, 5 or lower basically means bad. My favorite rating system is Good Ok Bad, or maybe Good Flawed Bad. (My rating for Dustforce is Flawed)

 

Anyways, if a game can be a 7/10 after 2 hours, a 4/10 after 12 hours, and a 9/10 after 100 hours, well, I think that's kind of interesting. That said, I only care about numbers when people use them, I don't need them at all. I actually forgot that Tom Chick talked about it when he was on.

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There have been a few discussions about cyberpunk on the Idle Network in the last little while. I'm a child of the 80's so I really should be conversant in cyberpunk but I am not. Can we bring the considerable brainpower of this forum to bear and create a list of must - consume cyberpunk media? I would love to educate myself. Books, movies, games, comics, interpretive dance, whatever. 

There's a ton of anime I'm sure, but you'll have to check with other people. Ghost in the Shell is constantly referenced, but seeing that when I was 15 made me realize I wasn't really into anime at all.

 

Anime's a funny medium for cyberpunk because, even though it is the venue for several foundational texts in the West (namely Akira and the first Ghost in the Shell movie), it really didn't fully coalesce into a genre in the East until the mid- to late nineties and, even then, the antithesis of the individual was conceived to be the disintegration of selfdom in the face of millenarian angst (an outlook more commonly found in Western music, like Radiohead's OK Computer) than the stagnation of society under total corporate governance. Accordingly, a lot of anime resembles (or prefigures, or adopts) the material culture of cyberpunk without really buying into the full thematic range of cyberpunk: for example, the three biggest "cyberpunk" franchises in anime (PatlaborBubblegum Crisis with its A.D. Police spinoff, and Ghost in the Shell) have well-realized near-future worlds that address social themes about the relationship between technological change and societal change, but they also feature ensemble casts of characters working for the establishment (not that I'm complaining, because the "future-cop procedural" sub-genre is one of my favorites and Japan has had it on lockdown for decades now).

 

Anyway, under first-wave or proto-cyberpunk anime, built from Bubblegum Crisis (a futuristic "magical girl" anime) and Patlabor (a mecha anime) but heavily influenced by the breakout success of Akira:

  • Bubblegum Crisis (1987)
  • Akira (1988)
  • Mobile Police Patlabor (1988)
  • Patlabor: The Movie (1989)
  • A.D. Police Files (1990)
  • Mobile Police Patlabor: The New Files (1990)
  • Bubblegum Crash (1991)
  • Battle Angel Alita (1993) - This one is post-apocalyptic in its setting but hews strongly to a cyberpunk aesthetic in its characters and action.
  • Patlabor 2: The Movie (1993)

Under second-wave or high cyberpunk, inspired by Ghost in the Shell and brought to its ultimate form by Serial Experiments Lain:

  • Ghost in the Shell (1995)
  • Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) - Whatever else, the production design for the technology and locations is a consummate expression of cyberpunk.
  • The End of Evangelion (1997)
  • Gasaraki (1998) - Often passed over for being too political and too robot-filled.
  • Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998) - In a reversal from my other exceptions, this is more strongly cyberpunk in theme than in aesthetics.
  • Serial Experiments Lain (1998)
  • A.D. Police (1999)
  • The Big O (1999)
  • Boogiepop Phantom (2000)

Under third-wave or post-cyberpunk, which is mostly about self-conscious use of the aesthetic as a vehicle for other themes with some throwbacks like Blame! sprinkled in:

  • Full Metal Panic! (2002)
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand-Alone Complex (2002)
  • Heat Guy J (2002) - Kinda shit, but better than the ignominy it currently enjoys.
  • Blame! (2003)
  • Parasite Dolls (2003)
  • Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)
  • Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig (2004)
  • Paranoia Agent (2004) - Not my favorite at all, but hard to ignore.
  • Ergo Proxy (2006)
  • Dennou Coil (2007)

From that point, it really begins to thin out, although Darker than BlackEden of the East, and Psycho-Pass all have strong influences in traditional cyberpunk fiction. Most of the ones I've listed are good, but no promises!

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I always felt like the aesthetics of 90s cyberpunk films were aligned with 90s rave dance culture (how many hacking sequences featured the Amen drum break synonymous with jungle music?). A film like Groove makes these parallels explicit: young people in San Francisco with stymied careers find out about an underground warehouse party via email, and shed their individual identities to become part of a greater collective consciousness (this time fueled by MDMA instead of the internet).

 

The (commercial) world-wide web didn't exist until... 1994, I believe? Before that there was a law preventing commercial use of the internet, so while there were a few websites, it was all academic stuff. At the same time, I think "Mondo 2000" typified the forefront of hacker thought. And you're right, it was sort of a weird overlap of rave culture, shamanism (Terrence McKenna, for example, though this had ties back to rave culture anyway), teen angst (2600 magazine was still very much a thing), and some really nerdy drive to make all these ideas reality. Jaron Lanier was like the avatar of the tech movement.

 

Since the web wasn't really a thing yet, Gibson's vision of the internet ala. Neuromancer was still very much a goal. People were hacking Nintendo Power Gloves to give them a VR interface on the cheap, and in the mid-late 90s a lot of people thought VRML was going to take over the world. At the same time, I think people who had actually seriously used all this stuff mostly realized it wasn't nearly there yet, but that didn't seem to stifle anyone's enthusiasm. It was an interesting time to be in tech.

 

Oh, as a random bit of trivia, in the late 90s the NYC club The Tunnel had a skateboard ramp in it. It was a real actual thing.

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Okay, two more comments on later bits of the cast. First, regarding Austin's comment on how tabletop gaming lets you define the parameters of play. Even moreso than tabletop gaming, I've recently learned that LARP is fantastic for this. It's not just people camping out in the woods and hitting people with swords. Oh no. There are short-form topical LARPs made for small groups which deal with some heavy subjects. I guess the most common touchpoint would be like workplace sensitivity training, but it's an entire subgenre of LARP and is really really interesting. To that end, I strongly recommend a recent interview with Lizzie Stark on the subject. She literally wrote the book on LARP, and, among other things, is in the process of playtesting a LARP on situations surrounding having the BRCA1 cancer gene. Listen to the interview. You know you want to.

 

Second, meals in theaters! I used to live a few blocks from the "Big Heart" Video Cafe in San Francisco. This was basically a diner cinema. Booths all through and a big screen at one end of the eating area. If you're solitary and stay up late, it was the best place in the world. So long, Big Heart Cafe. I really miss you.

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I wrote the email, and I will say that I'd appreciate it if scores worked like that - but have you looked at Polygons ratings for other games?

That assumption only works if Polygon reviewed EVERY game and you had that full spread to work with. If they had rated every single bit of My Pony Dress-Up Hair Stylist shovelware that's released on the 3DS eShop, I'd bet that "average" score would be a lot lower. Smaller sites like Polygon and Giant Bomb have the luxury of mostly choosing what they review, so why would that include a bunch of stuff they know is likely to be garbage? Better to play things that are likely to be good and get the occasional clunker than burn out on the impossibility of doing everything and making that spread.

 

All that said, I agree that scored reviews have all sorts of problems. There's the problem we've shown of differing individual interpretations, and they allow for the continuation of internet console war dick-measuring. I generally prefer to get my games critique by listening to people actually talking about them in casual conversation. If only there were some way to get that without creeping around strangers' windows hoping to eavesdrop at an opportune moment...

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That assumption only works if Polygon reviewed EVERY game and you had that full spread to work with. If they had rated every single bit of My Pony Dress-Up Hair Stylist shovelware that's released on the 3DS eShop, I'd bet that "average" score would be a lot lower. Smaller sites like Polygon and Giant Bomb have the luxury of mostly choosing what they review, so why would that include a bunch of stuff they know is likely to be garbage? Better to play things that are likely to be good and get the occasional clunker than burn out on the impossibility of doing everything and making that spread.

 

How is this not an argument that 5/10 is a low score? If a site is only reviewing things that they expect to be good, then the average score should trend upward. So even if a game hit the "platonic" average of 5/10, that would end up being lower that what you would expect if the site were self-selecting for "good" games.

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every single bit of My Pony Dress-Up Hair Stylist shovelware that's released on the 3DS eShop,

 

Look, the latest iteration may not be up to the standards of My Pony Dress-Up Hair Stylist Gaiden Championship edition DX, but it wasn't shovelware/5 of 10 territory. For not fucking up anything they got right in the earlier titles in the series, it's at least a solid 6/10.

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