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Playscape: Los Angeles - Brendon Chung

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Playscape: Los Angeles 2:

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Brendon Chung

Teddy gets serious with Brendon Chung (aka Blendo Games) about working solo, how he keeps a routine, and pushing to push out of his comfort zone. After a weekend of crunch work, Teddy attempts to summarize all of Los Angeles in five minutes.

Games Discussed: Quadrilateral Cowboy, Thirty Flights of Loving, Atom Zombie Smasher, Gravity Bone, Hyper Light Drifter

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Was there something weird that happened with Playscape and Tone Control, or is the episode manager for the Thumbs network quirky? The URL for this is https://www.idlethumbs.net/playscape/episodes/brendon-chung-1 but https://www.idlethumbs.net/playscape/episodes/brendon-chung (no -1) takes me to the Tone Control episode with Chung, but the URL is still /playscape. Is there something that enforces unique episode page URLs or something? (sorry, I work at a CMS company and am curious)

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Was there something weird that happened with Playscape and Tone Control, or is the episode manager for the Thumbs network quirky? The URL for this is https://www.idlethumbs.net/playscape/episodes/brendon-chung-1 but https://www.idlethumbs.net/playscape/episodes/brendon-chung (no -1) takes me to the Tone Control episode with Chung, but the URL is still /playscape. Is there something that enforces unique episode page URLs or something? (sorry, I work at a CMS company and am curious)

That last URL segment is a unique identifier. So when Teddy submitted the episode title "Brendon Chung," the CMS did its standard conversion of that into an appropriate string for a URL, "brendon-chung," found that there already was one, and appended the number. That episode-specific segment is the sole part of the URL that actually identifies the episode itself. The earlier segment identifies the show. I guess there's no checking to make sure the show segment matches the episode segment, haha. Whoops! Doug Tabacco wrote our CMS himself and did an amazing job but apparently you can break it in this weird way. I suppose a fix for that would be to check the episode segment against the show segment and then recompose the URL so the show segment matches, and redirect.

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Oh, yeah, looks like it doesn't assert that the episode slug matches the show slug. So you get the wrong template applied to the page. Will add that to my to-fix list.

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Thanks guys, sorry for immediately crapping up the thread with weird URL questions (it was a slow day at work). I promise to go listen to the episode now. :S

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I dig your podcast, Teddy. Interesting questions, I mostly had no idea what the discussion could lead to.

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Love the podcast. Very true about Los Angeles bubbles. I'm an east-sider (somehow found a nice, cheap apt in Silver Lake), so going out to Culver City, West Hollywood, Santa Monica always feels like a whole to-do. I'm perfectly content with my set of neighborhoods (Silver Lake, Los Feliz, Downtown, Echo Park, Atwater, Highland Park), and am almost overwhelmed by all of the micro-communities. Side note: Frogtown has the best name.

 

That being said I'm happy to hear about what's going on way over where you all are.

 

Interview with Brendan was really great. Love how obsessed Teddy is with his Forest Gump analogy. Feels like it's a question about zeitgeist and whether it can be felt by the creator, but I don't think a massive-scale cultural phenomenon can be known until it happens. This is why the music industry functions like a bad investment bank; they fund 10 artists and hope that 1 of them can at least recoup the cost of the other 9. Each artist can make something truly spectacular, that they (and the record label) feel good about for the rest of their lives, but it might not resonate.

 

That being said, the video game industry is still so young and fresh-faced. It's like when "Last Year at Marienbad" came out in 1961 it was a (minor) cultural phenomenon. People talked about it at cocktail parties, it was exciting. Plenty of movies like "Last Year at Marienbad" get made nowadays, but it's not a conversational thing. It's an "art film", it's a "passion project". To put it bluntly, weird shit can be made in video games and it still has the chance to be something people talk about, and could even be elevated to zeitgeist status. It thankfully (and excitedly) still feels like a no man's land.

 

So I wish Teddy well on his launch! May he become the Forest Gump of video game designers.

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Hearing about Brendon's scheduling was interesting. I'd really like to do something similar for my free time projects but I've never found myself to be consistent enough to do it. :P

 

I forget if there's an email so I'll just ask here and hope Teddy sees. We've heard a bit about the general run up to Hyper Light Drifter's release, but since it's happening literally today in a few hours I'm curious about what release day is like. You're already done the work (I... think) so are you just watching social media and the feedback? Reading reviews and watching let's plays? Or maybe you want to totally distract from the event for a while, take a break from the all consuming project that's finally released. I'd love to know what the day is, because it's such a strange idea to have years of life culminate in a single day where it becomes public.

 

Also, good luck! I just got my Steam key and I look forward to playing when I can. :tup:

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Thanks!

 

WELL WE RELEASED! I think I'm going to wait until tonight to record Thursday's episode so I can really talk about what release day was like.

 

brb, spinning in circles.

 

Hearing about Brendon's scheduling was interesting. I'd really like to do something similar for my free time projects but I've never found myself to be consistent enough to do it. :P

 

I forget if there's an email so I'll just ask here and hope Teddy sees. We've heard a bit about the general run up to Hyper Light Drifter's release, but since it's happening literally today in a few hours I'm curious about what release day is like. You're already done the work (I... think) so are you just watching social media and the feedback? Reading reviews and watching let's plays? Or maybe you want to totally distract from the event for a while, take a break from the all consuming project that's finally released. I'd love to know what the day is, because it's such a strange idea to have years of life culminate in a single day where it becomes public.

 

Also, good luck! I just got my Steam key and I look forward to playing when I can. :tup:

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Congrats on releasing what looks like a cool game! Can't wait to play it when I get back home tonight.

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Love the show so far. I'm really impressed with the guests right out of the gate.

 

There are plenty of talks on their personal history, but having these more intimate discussions has been something missing from most dev interviews. I'm really in love with how open Teddy is in these almost-diary intros.

 

I hope these continue in some form when he moves to Sqeenix!

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