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Amicable

Idle Thumbs Hiatus

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I also love how you and I have Christmas avatars. I don't even remember who made mine, or when, but I am still grateful for my Christmas Link.

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I also have continued to keep my Christmas avatar from 2010 or whatever since the day. Christmas-Russian-Muppets-Poster-Animal is who I am now.

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I'm also almost 100% a lurker here these days. I never was particularly active, or am ever! I still visit the forums frequently. I made five posts this year, three of them in January. Interesting...not exactly magical, though. ;)

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On 11/2/2018 at 7:25 PM, pabosher said:

I also love how you and I have Christmas avatars. I don't even remember who made mine, or when, but I am still grateful for my Christmas Link.

I think SpeedyDesiato also still has theirs.

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Seeing the four of us, christmas-bearing Thumbers, on a row, makes me feel warm inside. Then there's the Grinch, in the form of Osmosisch, who just won't leave poor SpeedyDesiato alone!

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For what it's worth, my engagement with the forums has dropped as conversation has coalesced into a few megathreads, even if they're for subjects I'm actually interested in, like Switch games. It's basically turned the forums into a slack channel anyway.

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On 30-10-2018 at 11:55 AM, Merus said:

I loved the idea of Idle Thumbs as a podcast with musical comedy and I'm sad that Chris couldn't keep it up, but also accepting that Chris couldn't keep it up. I do dearly miss the formula of peak Idle Thumbs, where they'd talk about games, they'd start to really do a deep dive down into the game design or how it could be improved, and then they'd descend into silliness until they crack each other up and move on. I've never found anything that quite managed to capture that balance between brilliant insight and playful comedy - something about Waypoint Radio doesn't quite work for me, and I haven't heard of anything else that gets close.

 

I have to echo this; nothing is like Idle Thumbs. Podcasts weren't talking about Far Cry 2 in a funny anecdotal way OR for the unsung merits of it's design perspective. They were just talking about features and review scores.
Even now, where we DO have people digging deep into design decisions, everyone else just seems too self-serious, not experienced enough or less inquisitive.

When Bioshock Infinite came out, I was refreshing the page waiting for the Idle Thumbs episode. It felt like a perfect storm for picking apart ambitious endeavors that were often very well achieved, sometimes not, and always lead to bizarre cool-dude antics that don't hold up to scrutiny.

 

I agree, I like listening to Waypoint Radio when they have an episode about what a "game developers union" would actually look like, or when Quantic Dream is arguing with journalists, or somebody says the N-word, but I don't tune in to listen to them talk about games.

 

Forum-wise, I've checked into this forum very sparingly over the passed 10 years. Similar to the podcast, it's my outlet for going way too obsessively in-depth about something when nobody else is. Because I trust that this community is on that wavelength, I take my recommendations from here and deposit my own thoughts, even though I don't track who's reading them.

I generally don't use fora any more. When I was 13 I joined an internet forum called "Stick-Suicide.com" so I could learn to make Flash cartoons. That site closed down in 2007, and sprang up again as "Explosm.net", the web-comic. I stayed there being a snarky teenage asshole until I was about 19. Now I'm 27, and I've long since quit fora.

I guess I still check in here, like I said.

 

If there were anything I wanted to say to members who might be leaving, I'm sorry I failed to attend a community meet-up in real life. I almost did, one time when I moved through town on a work trip, but I didn't have the space to break away. I was a real junior at my own company, and was paddling a lot to just keep my head above water, but from another perspective I probably looked like a jerk. Now I've missed out on that memory of meeting a bunch of real-life nerds who know what baboo is, and it probably won't come around again.

 

Oh well, remember 555-Wizard-No?

 

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16 hours ago, I_smell said:

Even now, where we DO have people digging deep into design decisions, everyone else just seems too self-serious, not experienced enough or less inquisitive.

When Bioshock Infinite came out, I was refreshing the page waiting for the Idle Thumbs episode. It felt like a perfect storm for picking apart ambitious endeavors that were often very well achieved, sometimes not, and always lead to bizarre cool-dude antics that don't hold up to scrutiny.

 

I agree, I like listening to Waypoint Radio when they have an episode about what a "game developers union" would actually look like, or when Quantic Dream is arguing with journalists, or somebody says the N-word, but I don't tune in to listen to them talk about games.

 

I've mostly had my Thumbsy needs met by a judicious cocktail of Crate and Crowbar + Video game Hotdog, with a smattering of Idle Weekend and Designer Notes.

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On ‎11‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 4:36 AM, osmosisch said:

It's he who has abandoned us. But I shall always have the memories :violin:

 

Also, talking about tegan @SecretAsianMan? How's she holding up?

 

She's having some ups and downs lately.  I won't get into detail since it's not my place to discuss her personal life but I've been trying to help her out as much as I can.

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Man, Gaynor era IT is/was one of my absolute favorite media things in this world, and it breaks my heart a little that it's gone-ish. Though. I also felt pretty sad as they lost interest in games generally, mostly through the lens of being an older person who has not experienced that. Haha.

 

It's a bummer that nothing came together for the 10 year anniversary, given the history of one offs and goofs

 

Random memory I always come back to for a laff: 1) Chris saying I'mnickbreckon in a really gruff voice in the early episodes, and the one two-part XMAS spectacular where the recap was just them saying scoops and a fart noise or whatever. 

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I never posted on here much, but I've just realized that it's been somewhere around five years since I started listening to the podcast(s). Though this community is so storied that I still feel like a newcomer. I'm also younger than most of you so I often feel like (and am) a total idiot. I truly hope that Important If True comes back, or really, any podcast featuring any of the Thumbs, but of course I understand the logistical difficulties. The combination of smart discussion with ridiculously stupid humour is something that can't be found anything else, and re-listening to old eps always makes me feel better when I'm down. I guess that's really all I have to say. Idle Thumbs, as a podcast and as a network, has been super important to me. 

 

I grew up on forums, like many of you. I was on the Slack for a while but I felt what a lot of people here felt about it going too quickly and just feeling like another thing pinging all the time, even though the discussion was often enjoyable. I don't know if I'll ever refresh a forum the way I used to as a kid, but I do still check over here relatively often to see what's up, even though I don't really post. 

 

And my favourite memories have always been Chris reading auto-generated posts. And of course, Jeff jefferson jeff bloom gold jeff gate (I was Screaming with laughter when I first listened to episode 50, and eventually made this video so I didn't have to keep the episode on my phone all the time) 

 

 

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I want to build a Markov chain builder trained on the Thumbs' permutations on Jeff Goldblum

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I never was very active, now even less so, but still, this forum is the best!

 

And the bestest part: Idle Santa! The joy of sending gifts, handpicked, locale little things, media I like, stupid stuff and sweets to some strange place, and then receive (in my case first receive, far to late send) awesome presents was one of the highlights of the three years it ran.

 

Thanks to all who participated, thanks to N1njaSquirrel for organizing, and in general thanks to all the people in this forum!

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Nick says he's going to start streaming from the http://twitch.tv/idlethumbs account now (he's been streaming on his personal account for a little while) and started a FC2 playthrough this weekend.

 

He talked a bit about thumbs and even though there's nothing concrete in place he'd like to do something when they have more time.

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Never used Slack so I didn't notice people moving there, but I did notice activity drying up well before the podcast went on hiatus, though to be fair this was never the most active of forums anyway. Even though I used to be a diligent IRC user back in the day, I never jumped on Discord / Slack. I try to keep as few apps on my phone as possible, because I hate the idea of having a phone as a distraction, and when I'm on a computer sitting in a chat channel just doesn't feel like the thing to do any more. I probably would if I played more online games.

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Not sure where else to put this, but I recently discovered that the Chris Remo Spelunky Supercut featuring 99 days of daily challenges is no longer available on Youtube because the account that posted it was terminated. What a shame! It was a thoroughly enjoyable compilation of both triumphs and hoistings that I went back to every couple of months to hear Chris' lamentations about bees in the dark.

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From the Patreon:

 

What's going on with us?

Hi, everyone. Before we get into anything else, there's one thing we should clarify: We did not intend to charge you for the Patreon campaign this month. We've been putting the campaign on hold each month, but we must have missed December somehow, for which we apologize. Since we haven't been putting out content, you shouldn't be getting charged.

Once we realized our error, we contacted Patreon to see if we could refund all of this month's money. Unfortunately, they let us know that's not possible, so we'll have to refund everyone individually. We'll get that done as soon as we can. You don't need to contact us to request a refund; we're just going to do everyone.

Beyond that, you're probably wondering what exactly is going on with this whole "podcasting" thing.

Well, so are we.

As you may know, our lives have all changed pretty considerably. All three of us have moved out of the Bay Area, and Jake and Chris took new jobs in Seattle, which meant we had to uproot our personal and professional lives. It also meant we left our recording studio behind—and the frictionless access to group recording and regular routine that came with it. Honestly, we still haven't adjusted to the change enough to make room for podcasting, but we want to.  We've been discussing ways to dip our toes back into the (frankly very gross) waters of Important If True, and we have some ideas, but nothing concrete to report yet.

Sorry that we don't have anything more to tell you at this point—we didn't mean to go this long without any word. It snowballed before we even realized it'd happened. Thanks to everyone who's stuck around, and hopefully we'll have more to say soon!

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Also, just a random idea, get a portrait of all the Idle Thumbs crew as Yule Lads as a welcome gift for the new studio?

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I like all of this.

 

Also, to add I threw in about 260 dollars on the original kickstarter, but wasn't a patreaon supporter due to not having a regualr job/income at that time. If the Thumbs did come back, and I get the job I am hoping for - I will definitely be backing them, even if it is only 5 dollars.

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21 hours ago, twmac said:

Also, to add I threw in about 260 dollars on the original kickstarter, but wasn't a patreaon supporter due to not having a regualr job/income at that time. If the Thumbs did come back, and I get the job I am hoping for - I will definitely be backing them, even if it is only 5 dollars.

 

They haven't charged for the Patreon since the hiatus started and don't plan to until they can figure out how to produce content again.  They even refunded last month when they forgot to waive the charge.  You could back them now for essentially zero dollars and get informed of any updates posted on Patreon.  I'm sure they'll say something before they start charging again.

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