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Idle Weekend July 27, 2017: The Little Engine That Could

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Idle Weekend July 27, 2017:

Idle Weekend July 27, 2017


The Little Engine That Could
This weekend, we wade into the game engine kerfuffle with opinions, context, and that characteristic Idle Weekend spice. Then, we go hard into a discussion of weekend projects, with action movies, professional wrestling, and combat sports. Like you do on a gaming podcast!

Discussed: game engines, Mass Effect Andromeda, Ultimate General: Civil War, John Wick 2, Kingsman: the secret service, GLOW, Game of Thrones, WWE, Lucha Underground, Japan Pro

 

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Sorry but that Unity kerfuffle is not easy to find on twitter, Steam, or Google. I tried searching all with:

"Unity"

"Unity3D"

"What engine is this running on?"

"What engine is this running on? Steam"

"What engine is this running on? Unity"

 

I get nothing that pertains to the kerfuffle.
 

Please put some links in the show notes.

 

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I think you're reading into Kingsman things that are not there. They're not making a political point about Obama. The villain has roped most, if not all, world leaders into his crazy plan. It would be weird not to include the then US president. Honestly I think it would be more overtly political if they made a thing out him being one of the few to resist (and I like Obama). Neither is the fact that the villain cares about climate really a comment on climate politics. How often do villains have some grain of truth or sense in their grand evil plans to make them a more interesting antagonist? He is just a crazy evil dude who happens to care about the climate - I think climate change is one of the foremost challenges of our time and I had no problem with this plot point - I get that we live in frought poltical times, Americans especially, but you should be careful not to immediately project nefarious intent just because someone whose opinions partially overlap with yours is framed negatively in a fictional context.

 

Also that whole thing about the film being about fear of the young ... I did not get any of that from it at all. If it's political about anything it's political about class.

 

You guys should read Film Critic Hulk's essay on this movie. I seem to remember he had an interesting take.

 

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/07/17/film-crit-hulk-smash-kingsman-and-the-maybe-genius-of-non-winking-satire

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This is what they referring to:

 

Unity is pretty great, not really their fault people use it to make low quality stuff.

Garbage in Garbage out, no engine can fix that.

 

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Tuned in to this podcast today while searching for more gaming podcasts to listen to, and thought I might as well give you some "first time listener" feedback.

 

The podcast started interesting with a discussion about game engines. Then it went into a rather boring discussion of a TV show that I don't watch. Then it went on to alienate me with a discussion of one of the most stupid and fake "sports" that I know of. Yes I know that people like it, and that it's apparently a big thing in the US, and that's fine. Different strokes for different folks. I'm just pointing out then when I tune in to a gaming podcast, then talking at length about wrestling instead is a pretty good approach for driving me away. And at the end of the podcast, when you asked to recommend the cast to friends, I really thought - why would I recommend a podcast where people talk about wrestling, I don't want to _annoy_ my friends.

 

Anyway. First impression unfortunately ends up being negative. 30% of on-topic content (even if it's interesting) aren't really enough to keep me listening to something that's advertised as a gaming podcast. I may give it another try in a couple of months, but for now, I'm afraid you haven't really given me a good reason to keep tuning in, sorry.

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I don't think Idle Weekend is a gaming podcast, it's a video game and pop culture podcast. (At least, that's what it says in the description and that's what it's been since its inception.) The almost entirely gaming focused podcasts on the network are Idle Thumbs, Three Moves Ahead, Terminal7, and Designer Notes, plus from the archive, Tone Control, Dota Today, Esports Today, and Playscape LA.

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13 minutes ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

I don't think Idle Weekend is a gaming podcast.

Well. One might want to ask, then, why the author of this episode's summary explicitly calls it a gaming podcast. Or why the image that the podcast is advertised with, shows clear references to gaming, but not to any of the things that made up the majority of what I just listened to.

 

No hard feelings though. As I said, I was looking for a gaming podcast. If "Idle Weekend" isn't one (despite being called such in the episode description), and instead focuses on things that are of little interest to me, then I'm obviously not the target audience and should just move on. It's a bit of a shame though because during the game engine discussion in the first 30 minutes, it seemed that the hosts _could_ offer some interesting insights into gaming-related topics. It then just petered out with a mutual "We can't talk about about the games we've been playing", which seems a bit counter-productive to hosting a podcast where games are a topic.

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17 minutes ago, Psyringe said:

Well. One might want to ask, then, why the author of this episode's summary explicitly calls it a gaming podcast. Or why the image that the podcast is advertised with, shows clear references to gaming, but not to any of the things that made up the majority of what I just listened to.

I think because it is a gaming podcast (albeit not only a gaming podcast) and because the image is pretty. Notice that the episode description pretty clearly mentions the fact that the podcast is also about action movies, professional wrestling, and combat sports, so if your view is "if it's in the episode description, then that's what the episode should be about," then it's not like Idle Weekend is off-base at all.

 

Again, if you're looking for a podcast that focuses only on gaming, as opposed to gaming and pop culture, the Idle Thumbs podcast network has four active podcasts and another four completed/ended podcasts that fit the description, so it's not like you're out of options. 

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That's fair enough feedback, and the Idle crew may want to take it into account.

 

The problem *might* be - I'm by no means an expert - that iTunes makes it difficult to have a successful podcast that isn't categorised as games only (or one thing only). I expect it is very much like every other big, shitty platform like Youtube or Facebook in that they are constantly tweaking algorithms to target the 'right' content to the right people, and content creators have to cater to those algorithms or sink. This is only a guess.

 

The Idles should also be grateful you left feedback directly here rather than leave a low-star review on iTunes because that would also help lower their visibility.

 

Somewhat related: The Facebook Mom Problem Is Real

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