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Idle Thumbs 275: The Robot's Lips

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Idle Thumbs 275:

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The Robot's Lips

The cockpit lid closes, the engines fire up, the atmosphere melts away, and the infinite vastness of space is laid before you. "VHERH THOO?" flap the disgustingly real rubber lips protruding from your cockpit dashboard. "STHOMWHER NICE I THOOPE." You know the lips are still learning, but this knowledge does not endear you to them. You zoom out to check the galactic map, enter a destination for yourself, and prepare for a long trip. "DTHID YOU KNOW" the lips started, "I KNOOW THREE DITHVERENT PLEPLE NAMMED SEAN MURRAY?" You violently claw at the cockpit lid, spring it open and are sucked into the void, barely missing a resplendent space whale that happened to be cruising by. You think there's something written on the side of the whale, but before you can read it, you die in space.

Discussed: No Man's Sky, Overcooked, Spaceteam (card game), Pandemic: Legacy, House of the Dying Son, RimWorld, Wakeboarding Unleashed Featuring Shaun Murray

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Quick correction: Overcooked is a 1-4 player game. There is no 8 player mode.

 

I think the confusion was because of the control scheme image.  There is a "split controller" mode where two players can control two characters with one controller, but you can still only have 4 characters total.  I'd be interested to see a two person 4-player run where each person controls two characters simultaneously.

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Speaking of games that let 8 people play with 4 controllers, Micro Machines V3 (a PS1-era game from 1997) does exactly that and is a blast.

I really enjoy games that have this kind of split controller functionality. Push Me Pull You, which came out this year, also has it.

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The audio-visual illusion that Chris was talking about near the beginning of the episode is known as the McGurk Effect. It occurs when you hear a spoken sound that is synced up with the mouth motions of another, similar sound (like 'bah' vs 'fah') causing your brain to interpret the sound you hear as the sound you would expect the mouth to be making. You can even close your eyes so that you hear the sound in isolation, and then open them to the video again and the sound will appear to change, even though it's actually just your brain changing what you "hear" based on what you see.

 

The demonstration of the effect begins 30 seconds in. An inexplicable close of up the guy eating cotton candy occurs at 25 seconds.

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The Podcast title and description had me thinking of that horrifying robot mouth from a few years ago. This one - sounds awful!

 

This thing gave me goosebumps but in the WORST possible way. I'm still shuddering.

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The title and description of this episode are legendary.  Also, the front-page blurb: "In space, no one can hear the robot's lips."  I'm sitting here laughing and I haven't even listened to it yet.

 

I don't know why this is so funny to me, please send help.

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The Podcast title and description had me thinking of that horrifying robot mouth from a few years ago. This one - sounds awful!

This robot and the trololo video are of the same era of Internet and are locked together in my brain (and

).

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Ugh. Refund whales need some serious restrictions imposed, and I worry that if game developers don't self regulate, they will eventually receive government intervention for the worst.  I remember getting to the dream sequence in Dishonored, thinking, "Sweet! Now for the game-defining superpowers!"  But then, as I looked to the open space above me, I became overcome with outrage as I saw a whale where it had no business being!  I sent a complaint to the developers, only to receive this inconsiderate response!

EycjiWC.png

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When I was fairly young (around 7), I was playing Sonic Adventure 1 for the very first time, and the first stage was a blast.  Sure, the camera was horrible, and the controls needed refinement, but at that age, I didn't notice.  Then came a wooden walkway, where out from below came a giant surprise killer whale which shattered everything in its path as I tried to escape.  Of course, I now know that killer whales are actually dolphins rather than whales, but like most kids who were the game's target audience, I didn't know any better.  This trick must have been very effective in preventing refunds, as it was then re-used in Sonic Heroes, and in Sonic '06.

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But for all the faults of those implementations of refund whales, none were as egregious as that of the first Bioshock. In that game, you go through a brief 'wander game' experience, only to be quickly locked into a bathysphere cutscene in which --you guessed it-- a whale appears, all before you engage with any of the game's core mechanics, or even get Jack's iconic wrench.

 

Ultimately, this problem on developers, but for consumers, there is another important factor in the equation: traditional reviewers have used an objective time-to-crate system since neo games journalism began in 2000, and yet I still feel that these journalists still do a great disservice to their readers by not including time to refund whale.  If we cannot be trusted with the knowledge of the refund whale, how can we ever make responsible purchasing decisions?

---

P.S. Several businesses in countries, such as Iceland and the UK, offer puffin viewing expeditions, but frequently include whale searching with the ticket as well.  Of all the things that can be borrowed from games, I'm pretty sure the refund whale is the worst, and I certainly hope that this trend doesn't continue, else we meet the terrible fate anticipated in Star Trek IV.

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I'm mostly in the same boat as Chris with regard to No Man's Sky.  I've been largely ignoring everything about the game but now that its (PC) release is upon us I'm interested in playing it despite only having a vague idea of what it actually is.
 
Every time I heard the name House of the Dying Son my mind immediately started playing

 

Kind of disappointed the episode wasn't called "Playing chicken with the whale"

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What was better, when Spaff said "Procedurally generated" like he was a robotic James Mason on the fritz, or when Spaff said "Actually Chris, steel doesn't conduct electricity"?

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I got a super weird call-out from Chris in this episode around the 1:16:30 mark. Presumably, he was trying to find the name of the guy who sent in the Steam refund email but he accidentally read mine because it was next to it in the podcast inbox? At any rate, the refund whale stuff was way more entertaining. XD

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what the hell is that story about the 12-year-old who owns a bar I have nfi

(His parents own it.)

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I almost told my wife the story about the chair because I laughed so hard, but then I realized I'd be telling a story about somebody else playing a video game and well, I just didn't.

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there must be something in vomiting that has a high "emotional" threshold that is remarkable to characters, because Gita Jackson said a similar thing on 3MA, her colonists artist is beautiful but spiteful and only creates sculptures of instances where people vomited. in a friend's game he said there have been many epic happenings, but the sculpture only recalls times people reacted to other people or animals puke. 

 

of course this opens the door for a future patch note of "vomiting takes less of a psychic toll on colonists" 

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I dunno what the game's logic for calling something art is, but in the real world what matters is that the maker had some intention and tried to accomplish it. Wanting to create a chair that feels sturdy, or that highlights the particular character of steel would be enough, though adding something representational never hurts. I guess chris' rimworld character sought to explore one of the more rarely represented human experiences? Maybe they were exploring disgust, Patricia Piccinini style (http://www.patriciapiccinini.net/) ?

 
My fav simple definition of art is this one, which I think the chair fits in a lot of ways:
 

"Art, art, art. Art isn’t holy. It doesn’t float on gossamer truth-wings in a rarefied aether of absolute beauty. Art is merely the graphic representation of ideas, presented from a point of view. Good ideas, bad ideas, medium ideas, ideas that other people have had already, ideas that initially seem clever but get kind of old once the novelty wears off, startling ideas, political ideas, glorious ideas, ideas that fucking stink.

A few ideas typical of those that find their way into art:

Symmetry
Horse
Angst
Orange
Square
Rectangle
Hopelessness
Buy This
God Can Kick Your Ass
War Is Bad
Flowers Are Pretty
Less Is More
Women Are Whores
The State Is Glorious
Dudes Are Great!
Whoring Is Great, Too!
Look At These Fucking Naked Chicks Taking A Bath In The Woods!

Like I said, not all ideas are good ideas, and not all representations are philosophically legitimate representations. Artifying an idea doesn’t automatically legitimize it. Some ideas, such as “the male gaze reigns supreme” and “women enjoy oppression,” not only suck, they are so violent and antisocial that it is impossible to represent them without harming innocents.

Certainly lots of art, such as advertising graphics, or Koons’ “Michael Jackson and Bubbles”, which is the graphic representation of vacuous excess, ensmallens its audience. Some art merely has a null value, like the framed poster of Monet’s water lilies hanging in your dentist’s office.

Some art — this is the rarest kind — enbiggens its audience. I allude to the sort of crap that, when you look at it, seamlessly transmits to you its philosophic value. Suddenly you yearn to get off your ass and foment unrest, or wish to do good works in the community, or vow to start eating better, or sign up for a class, or experience something grave, excellent and out of the ordinary, or go “ha!”, or regard the status quo with renewed suspicion."


I tend to think good art is the stuff that humanises us to each other, that let us better understand others or ourselves or both. I guess everyone knows that terrible "I just vomited for days" feeling. 

 

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Speaking of games that let 8 people play with 4 controllers, Micro Machines V3 (a PS1-era game from 1997) does exactly that and is a blast.

I really enjoy games that have this kind of split controller functionality. Push Me Pull You, which came out this year, also has it.

 

I loved the DOS Micromachines, we were 6 kids playing it, one on mouse, two on a gamepad and three on a keyboard. But to prevent soft locking, the cars would constantly accelerate, so you had 3 keys, left/right/brake. Hard to actually stand still so the dumb sponge in bathtub obstacle, where it floats around and you need to stay on, put the race on hold for 10 minutes as 6 people tried to get across, unsuccessfully, due to pushing and giggling.

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