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Amicable

Idle Thumbs Hiatus

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I actually haven't listened to the podcasts for a while before they stopped, for mainly two reasons:

  • I almost don't play games now, so I don't care about the topics most of the time
  • Since I don't play, I don't have any activity that could go with listening to a podcast at the same time (used to be e.g. Minecraft).
  • Wait, I actually still play Spider Solitaire (the awful ad-ridden Microsoft one) in parallel of consuming some content, but I now tend to consume insightful/instructional YouTube videos instead of entertainment.
  • I watch too many movies and that fills up my "free" time.

Did a Thumb really cut their fingers off? Was it Vanaman? Sounds like something he would do.

 

I'm technically on Slack, but I haven't really checked it out. I feel like I already have enough chats and interruptions during the day, I am very hesitant about adding another source of that.

 

Still trying to keep the Movies forum alive, but sometimes I look at the top 5 threads and see that I was the one that replied last to all of them... :|

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I think I'm here less often mostly because I'm on the waypoint forums more.

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I still check in every day and I've actually had brief (year long) hiatuses myself, but it's definitely part of my internet routine. I used to often check the Life threads/Idle Banter stuff as I don't have a decent PC to play all the good good stuff that's coming out all the time on Steam, and those threads would at least be interesting. Now there's very few responses to them and they often come days later.

 

I also don't really dislike the idea of slack chat, but as @SecretAsianMansaid I feel like I'm butting in on conversations and that people are already well established there. I kind of feel like there's a coolness about those things that I'm not willing to get into.

 

I'll still check in on this place as I've been coming here since 2009 apparently, but it's a shame that it's died off so slowly and without a word from the Thumbs (to my knowledge).

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3 hours ago, Erkki said:

Did a Thumb really cut their fingers off? Was it Vanaman? Sounds like something he would do.

 

They all cut their thumbs off in a ritual that took place at the end of the last episode to rid themselves of the genie that had been forcing them to cast pods for all eternity.

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So, uh, is there any reason the podcasts stopped entirely? I know they all moved and just might not have time for it but going from weekly podcasts to not commenting at all (?) on Idle Thumbs' future for half a year feels so weird.

 

Anyway, if this was actually it, thanks for everything!

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From now on, following Valve's schedule of Steam Sales, Idle Thumbs will release half a year's content worth of podcasts over the course of a single week, sating us for the coming drought.

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8 hours ago, Sloane said:

So, uh, is there any reason the podcasts stopped entirely? I know they all moved and just might not have time for it but going from weekly podcasts to not commenting at all (?) on Idle Thumbs' future for half a year feels so weird.

 

Anyway, if this was actually it, thanks for everything!

 

I'm sure there is a reason, but it's not been communicated.

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I'm sure it will become more alive again when Spelunky 2 is released and Chris starts posting his daily runs.

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I suspect it's mostly about a bunch of things happening at the same time making it difficult to get started: the move, Nick probably being up to his eyeballs in work, work, need to rebuild the studio, getting old and less energetic, other obligations and so on. It may be the inertia eventually gets too big and they never get back to it. If so, it's been a blast, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they get back to it a year from now. I fully get them not really having an idea when they will or would, and not wanting to say anything until they know something for sure.

 

Although I do like the Valvetime theory. They have truly become the twenty year old wax house, baby.

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I find my myself wondering if there will be some kind of "fall/winter holidays 2018" one-off pod to please the masses, if the gang is back in or around the same area of the country or all get some period of time off from work obligations for a long enough time to get together. I reckon their respective video game production schedules, moves, etc., have been taxing and the logistics are probably super complicated. Internet in Canada can be really slow, too, eh, which makes a remote "Nick on screen" pod even more difficult.

 

In any case, I miss listening to the casts and am looking forward to any possible return :)

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8 hours ago, Paul Smith said:

Coincidentally, Nick streamed on Twitch today:

 

https://www.twitch.tv/nickbreckon

 

I don't think he mentioned anything about podcasts but he is keen to stream some more provided work/allergies/other concerns don't intervene.

 

He spoke briefly on the slack about how he sees it as a hiatus like the others that Idle Thumbs has had, both as a website and as a podcast, and that they don't want to close the book on the podcast but more episodes are definitely not in the cards right now. Basically, what everyone thought was happening.

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I'm not really surprised the forum has died down; there's a lot of problems with fora as a communication model and things like Slack and Discord plug that gap a little more ably. I think the dream of substantial in-depth discussion on a forum was largely illusory - most of the good came from just giving people with diverse backgrounds somewhere to congregate together, and a lot of the bad came from the way that forums encouraged you to hold to your point even after it was clear to everyone else that it was bad. Quiet forums get quieter; noisy forums become unmanageable; and the quality of conversations and the community can be really brittle.

 

Of course, chat rooms have their own problems (which Slack and Discord address to a lesser or greater extent) and they don't even try to solve the same problems as forums do. Honestly, I'm not really sure where you'd start in 2018 if you want to try and contribute a logical argument to the world, and I'm conscious how much of my output over the past, god, 15 years has been to forums where my contributions will be forever forgotten. But I'm happy to let forums go the way of usenet mailing lists and make room for whatever's next.

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Hopefully the forum is not dying. It's been a part of my life since I was 16, and it's really weird to think how much this particular community was a part of me becoming the man I am today. I don't check in daily anymore, but I still usually do so once a week. Don't post nearly as often either, as the post-kickstarter flood of people felt like they were always having more conversations faster than I could keep up with. I was actually super comfortable back in the pre-podcast "dead" days when the forum was running as a relic of a once-super-great blog/news site, just a small network of people that I actually really got to know and played the only online games I ever really got into with.

 

Like SAM and Rodi, I'm not really interested in getting on board with slack, and that seems to be where everyone has headed to. Good for you all, I suppose, but I hope enough people keep checking in that this remains a thing. It's been a good 14 years, and it would suck to have it end on such a whimper.

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IT and the forum are very formative for me, so much so that I don’t think I’m ever gonna stop checking in routinely. It is sort of a bummer not having new pods, though.

 

I noticed that the last post in the anime thread was made half a year ago, and it was a new user boldly declaring that Spirited Away is the best anime of all time. So I feel like he kinda closed the book there; anime is over forever.

 

Random memories: 

 
-burning down the wolfman (the pax episode) is the single best episode of idle thumbs. 

 

-at some point the podcast had a hectic five-person lineup, which was I think eventually toned down because it alienated some listeners. I thought it was hilarious.

 

-“the idle thumbs podcast” series of episodes with gaynor  and eventually Sean might be my favorite stretch of the show. funny and informative with anecdotes and critical wisdom that I have ingrained in my memory. 

 

-I was 13 when I discovered idle thumbs and I found it by randomly googling “video games podcast”. I am not lying

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UGH, now that we're on the topic of reminiscing about fav podcasting moments... Apart from the obvious first twenty eps or so when it was still Remo putting in way more effort than was expected, making songs about wizards and space assholes, the immediate story that comes to my mind is Jake going for a run in Golden Gate park and finding it darker, emptier and yet more filled with tree-strafing fiends than he expected.

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I fully endorse reminiscing about our favorite Thumbs moments.

 

One of mine is only tangentially related to the actual cast.  In one of the pods with Steve they spent a good chunk of time talking about the Heavy Rain demo and how you could make the character do some ridiculous looking stuff.  A friend of mine didn't have a Playstation but was interested in trying out the Heavy Rain demo so he came over one day.  Right after playing it normally I put on the podcast bit and we proceeded to do it again but with 1000% more hilarity.  He said I ruined the game for him but he also loved the podcast and became a reader so I'd say it was worth it.

 

On a more egocentric note my favorite moments are when I get mentioned on the cast.  I have a private YouTube playlist of all the moments that I got name dropped, mostly due to candy but occasionally to other things as well.

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8 hours ago, Coods said:

I noticed that the last post in the anime thread was made half a year ago, and it was a new user boldly declaring that Spirited Away is the best anime of all time. So I feel like he kinda closed the book there; anime is over forever.

 

 

god bless you coods

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My all-time favourite is still Chris dramatically reading the counterfeit description for Batman Begins. The punchline where it namedrops the wrong superhero is so beautifully delivered. I think my second favourite bit is when they (Chris) got self-conscious about how often they say something was "interesting" and proposed to use "magical" instead for the rest of the episode.

 

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.

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I check the forums fairly regularly but almost never post. You might call me a website watcher.

 

People subscribed to Idle Thumbs are called podcast readers.

 

If Nick were to refer to his streaming audience as Twitch listeners, the stupid circle would be complete.

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I've been here for 14 years also, and stuck with it even when it went quiet last time. Like an old man, sitting on his porch, watching a Tornado, I will remain until the (hopefully not) bitter end.

 

Again, these have been informative forums for me, I can see a different person having gone to Neo Gaf or somewhere else and ended up a more terrible person than I am now. I value that my effusive post about Dan Ryckert turned into a long thread about why Dan Ryckert is terrible as it helped me re-evaluate a lot of thoughts and grow quite a bit (hopefully at a more accelerated level than Dan).

 

I remember the first time I drunk posted on here and used a whole string of expletives and someone calmly posted 'Dude, no, don't do that', and I don't think I ever did again.

 

And I remember being surprised when I decided to load up the second episode of the Idle Thumbs podcast a week after it had been released and found myself laughing out loud.

 

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So, well, but, in reality, this topic has probably scared everyone, including myself, into getting a little more active around these parts. I've been having a ball actually engaging with the topics I used to only read a little more. TAKE THAT, dying forum! Have some QUALITY ACTIVITY.

 

[I am SO reaching that delicious 10,000 posts count.]

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