Jake

Idle Thumbs 284: Live From The Past

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Idle Thumbs 284:

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Live From The Past

Welcome to episode 4186-0000-028C-E9F8! We bring you word from a simpler time. A better time, before the mess we're in today. A time when you played World of WarCraft. Join us in this life until Chris Remo returns from Japan and tells us of what he saw there.

Discussed: Virginia, World of WarCraft: Legion, Nidhogg 2, GameMaker, Nintendo NX

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I think the jumpcuts in Virginia are used to mixed success. Sometimes they are used in a way that is very dramatic and effective, and assist in providing momentum to the game's narrative. At other times they definitely feel off for reasons that are less easy to describe, and sometimes what these edits communicate to the player are very ambiguous. And that really highlights what an amazing achievements that Blendo games catalog is. The jumpcuts in Brendon's games are always masterfully placed, and help make his worlds feel like thrilling places to occupy.

 

That Nidhogg 2 art style is definitely outrageous! I haven't watched any of the video clips so I don't really want to judge the art style without seeing it in motion. My only concern I guess would be about how readable it is because the nice thing about Nidhogg is it is really easy to figure out what's going on generally. I do disagree with Jake with answer to the question, "why Nidhogg 2?" where he just pointed out that a game like Street Fighter has a bunch of different styles. Each Street Fighter iteration brings with it new characters, balance changes, etc. But a game like Nidhogg specifically feels like an exercise in cutting all the bloat of a genre, and reducing it to a simple set of mechanics, and extracting as much depth as possible from those mechanics. So I'm not really sure what Nidhogg 2 brings to the table besides the new art style, that's the main thing that makes the Nidhogg 2 announcement baffling.

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There's a good interview with Messhof on RPS regarding why they wanted to make a sequel. Multiple weapon types is probably the biggest change/addition gameplaywise.

"Kristy and I have been playing the game quite a bit since it was released, and it’s hard not to see little things that could be changed or added. I started keeping a list, and eventually it became pretty long. I started seeing ideas connect to each other and it felt like a sequel would make sense. I also wanted to tweak a few things with the original moveset, and it felt wrong to rewrite history for a game that so many people still play. Better to make it its own thing."

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I had to look up Two More Eggs after the short discussion

 

 

and it sure does have that same weird homestar feeling, boy howdy

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There's a good interview with Messhof on RPS regarding why they wanted to make a sequel. Multiple weapon types is probably the biggest change/addition gameplaywise.

"Kristy and I have been playing the game quite a bit since it was released, and it’s hard not to see little things that could be changed or added. I started keeping a list, and eventually it became pretty long. I started seeing ideas connect to each other and it felt like a sequel would make sense. I also wanted to tweak a few things with the original moveset, and it felt wrong to rewrite history for a game that so many people still play. Better to make it its own thing."

 

Ahh, okay, in light of that information that makes my take on Nidhogg 2 look like total garbage. Go figure!

 

Also, I continue to be sad when I hear like Chris or someone say he feels pressure to keep playing new games instead of playing whatever he wants to play. I feel like my favorite times with the podcast are when people go deep with a game like Far Cry 2, Spelunky, or DOTA. That's when a lot of deep, interesting observations often happen. But I guess when you're running the podcast you have to hear from the other side of people complaining about how they are still talking about some dumb game.

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I was also really confused by the time travel in this episode! At one point I found myself wondering "Wait, I know Chris is recording this in the past because he's in Japan right now, but why is Spaff recording it in the past when he's in SF and can still go to the studio?"

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I was also thrown off when I realised that this Nick was the Nick who travelled back from 2026 to politically assassinate Donald Trump.

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Regarding WoW radio stations/podcasts, there's the really old one that TB was the person in charge of it.

 

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/WoW_Radio

 

It had I think nearly a dozen shows? They did live broadcasts that you'd listen to via Winamp with music before/after the shows. I think I first started listening to podcasts on their site. 

 

I wonder what Slanik, Octale and Hordak are up to now.

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I can only just believe they still make these, haha.

 

This ad was on TV all the time when I was a kid and it's hilarious.

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yo chris! stumbled across this the other day, and thought you'd appreciate it as an erstwhile calculator mario jockey:

 

c3mNeXg.gif

 

a 3D engine for the TI-83, written in assembly and running on the the calculators 6megahertz processor (blog post about it here)

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a 3D engine for the TI-83, written in assembly and running on the the calculators 6megahertz processor (blog post about it here)

 

This is amazing!  Definitely write this in to questions at idle thumbs because I'd love to hear them talk about it.

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When I've heard discussion about Let's Plays on Podcasts (or as more mainstream examples, that time Jimmy Kimmel joked about why anyone would watch other people play games), it's always from an outsider perspective, which doesn't personally watch other people play games for fun. For example, on the podcast they joked about it, but there are legitimately people who re-upload entire episodes of television and put their face cam in the corner (or alternatively, the entire episode is in the corner), and then declare they are fair use because it falls under criticism. Not going to link to any specific examples, but it's a more direct and less 'sketchy' way for a kid to watch online episodes of something they may like, and in general, the audience for those types of videos are strictly for the episode, not the person. I've grown up on this stuff, and seen how trends have evolved and changed, so I just want to give my two cents.

 

Reason #1: I watch people play games as a substitute for playing the game

 

This is legitimately the first reason I got into Let's Plays. As a kid, you don't have money, you don't have all the consoles or all the games, and there are whatever personal restrictions your parents might enforce on you. I didn't and still don't have a PS3 or 360 for example. I had a SNES, but only had a few games for it, meaning that lots of well-known games have passed me by. By reading and watching Let's Plays, I could be in the conversation, and know what the game was about and how it played and such. So yeah, especially in some types of games where the narrative is a main draw (like RPGs, but also action-adventures), I watched long video walkthroughs, let's plays, whatever, to experience the game vicariously. And especially if they're single-player, linear things, then once you watch someone play it, the desire to play it myself is severely diminished. Just to give an example, recently I read a complete Let's Play of 999 (a branching path story, puzzle-solving, visual novel for the DS), that sequentially showed all endings and all alternate choices, and it was incredibly enjoyable. But I'm not going to buy 999 after I've already seen everything.

 

Reason #2: I watch people play games for schadenfreude and empathic reasons

 

As a trend, this probably what you think about when you think of giant youtubers like Pewdiepie or Gamegrumps, and such, but to me this calls back all the way to some of the first Let's Plays, of the Mario Romhacks like

. Seeing a person get angry, or sad, or happy over the course of a game, the best equivalent I can think of from a more traditional media might be something like a television game show, where you cheer with a person if they win, or think 'oh my god' if they pick the obvious wrong answer. It's a difficult feeling, and personally I'm not a fan of the newer youtubers who deliberately exaggerate they're reactions, but that's a personal taste thing.

 

Reason #3: I watch people play games because they add additional content to the base game

 

The most classic example I can think of is an old Let's Play of Princess Maker 2, where the author deliberately added new characters, fake dialogue, re-characterized other characters, experimented with different types of story-telling (one update was in the style of 'Flower for Agernon' as the titular Princess lost a lot of Intelligence Points during that week,) visually edited screenshots, and made up a completely new ending by editing two endings together. That's an extreme example, but I could argue more relaxed examples of something like Chuggaconroy's Pokemon Let's Plays. He's a Let's Player that

and adds in additional encyclopedic information (catch rates, local population, what role a character performs in an RPG, his opinion on how effective they are, etc). Just as a recent example, I watched a Let's Play of Muramasa that in 'Episode 0' gave an overview of the developer's prior history, giving some information on who the founders were, where they came from, how they met, etc.

 

Reason #4: I watch people play games because they have entertaining commentary

 

If you've ever heard of Rifftrax, then this a very similar motivation. The people running the thing, by themselves can bounce off of what's happening the game and use it as a platform to make a

.

 

Reason #5: I watch people play games because of unique story generation

 

Procedurally generated games like Dwarf Fortress or Crusader Kings 2 are sort of examples of what I'm talking about here. Reading through as someone tells a story of something that happened in-game, complete with crazy plots and specific named characters is something difficult to get anywhere else. Tvtropes calls them After Action Reports. I watched the entire set of the Idle Thumbs Crusader Kings 2 stream (hours of uncut, unedited stream footage) because the events that happened in it were so entertaining to me.

 

Of course, often Let's Play fulfill any mixture of these motivations, but these are just some that I can quickly point out.

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i love that pewdepie hated the end of Firewatch, and also said it was like the end of Lost which "didn't go anywhere." Gaming, as appreciation has a long way to go.

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i love that pewdepie hated the end of Firewatch, and also said it was like the end of Lost which "didn't go anywhere." Gaming, as appreciation has a long way to go.

 

Just watched that part of

.  His word choices alone—"No fucking way I will accept that as a decent ending!"—are amazing.

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I get basically the same thing from LPs that I do from Idle Thumbs - it's a way to appreciate and explore game design while listening to clever and insightful people be goofy idiots. It's a proxy for the social experience of gaming with buddies, where the game becomes the setting for a conversation.

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This ad was on TV all the time when I was a kid and it's hilarious.

 

I immediately remembered this ad as soon as Jake said "Baby Bottle Pop" and wanted to throw myself out the window to be free of it.

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I immediately remembered this ad as soon as Jake said "Baby Bottle Pop" and wanted to throw myself out the window to be free of it.

I was a junior in high school the year of that ad so I must have barely aged past the shows it was run during.

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So about that candy...

 

I swear I'm not trying to troll Nick or anything, at least not consciously.  The baby theme is really only because I don't know what to get him.  I more or less have a specific request from everyone now except him.  So until someone tells me what he really wants he gets baby candy.  And I've actually been trying to pick good candy but I've apparently failed miserably.  Or succeeded brilliantly.  Maybe both.

 

The only reason Steve hasn't yet been a recipient is because he left the cast after I started doing this, which was after the kickstarter.  In fact my kickstarter reward is the entire reason this became a thing.  My postcard told me that 70% of the money had been spent by Jake on Nerds Ropes, which led to me giving Chris Nerds Ropes at PAX to give to Jake, which he then left in the Double Fine booth, which I replaced via post and also included goodies for Chris and Sean, which then ballooned into the giant box it is today.  If Steve requests something I will include him in the next shipment.

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Regarding feeling guilt about not playing new games to talk about on the podcast:

 

As someone who is much more interested in shorter experiences and needs some assurances that longer experiences are worth my time, I find the differences (or lack thereof) in your opinions on a game from week to week very valuable. I love hearing about Hitman, Rollercoaster Tycoon, or Deus Ex over multiple weeks. It tells me if a game has staying power.

 

I also started my podcasting habit 10 years back listening to a weekly EVE show, so I'm always up for WoW updates, even if I had the opposite reaction than Spaff to going back to WoW. (I just kept thinking "Why am I not playing Guild Wars 2?")

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