Jake

Idle Thumbs 22: Put On the Top Ghost

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Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White, the Movies, Fable.

Ask yourself how many of those Molyneux was the primary designer on, how many he was involved with at all, and how many designers may have worked in Molyneux's shadow.

I don't want to downplay Molyneux' accomplishments and influence entirely, but some adjustment may be necessary there.

I was equally surprised when I read about Will Wright's support for the Republican party, by the way. Not that his political views should matter that much, but it was quite odd considering his opinions and background.

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Ask yourself how many of those Molyneux was the primary designer on, how many he was involved with at all, and how many designers may have worked in Molyneux's shadow.

I don't want to downplay Molyneux' accomplishments and influence entirely, but some adjustment may be necessary there.

The same can be said for any complex creative endeavor that employs more than one person working to some common end. I'm not seeing how it is especially pertinent to Molyneux.

It makes me think of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: very few of those half-an-hour stories are actually directed and written by Hitchcock, but he curated them and picked the people he would have liked to see make them. It is an influence somewhat removed. But it is influence all the same.

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But I think Anachronox is a example of a good long game which didn't contain a lot of tedious padding.

Whoa, someone else played Anachronox? That makes, like, almost a dozen of us.

It did have quite a bit of padding though. Remember the routubes and museum ducts? Those crystal caves full of glarebears? Anachronox is an excellent game nonetheless; it's the best Japanese-style RPG I've played.

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Well, in my defense "quite a bit" != "a lot", and I'm not going to argue that Anachronox doesn't contain any padding (Rictus' ship comes to mind). But if you're going to qualify every sense of traveling from one place to the other, then there's a lot of padding in pretty much all games.

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Hmm.. its about time for me to go home from work, and usually by this time I've got a new Idle Thumbs to download, yet today, I do not... sad panda.

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The same can be said for any complex creative endeavor that employs more than one person working to some common end. I'm not seeing how it is especially pertinent to Molyneux.

It makes me think of Alfred Hitchcock Presents: very few of those half-an-hour stories are actually directed and written by Hitchcock, but he curated them and picked the people he would have liked to see make them. It is an influence somewhat removed. But it is influence all the same.

Surely, however, the person who wrote and directed a given episode of Afred Hitchcock Presents should be given primary creative credit over its creation. I am pretty confident there were a number of Bullfrog projects over which Molyneux could not be considered the main creative influence. I do think the distinction is pertinent, because I strongly suspect Wright's direct creative influence over the cited games is probably more meaningful than Molyneux's direct creative influence over at least several of the cited games developed by his studio.

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Surely, however, the person who wrote and directed a given episode of Afred Hitchcock Presents should be given primary creative credit over its creation. I am pretty confident there were a number of Bullfrog projects over which Molyneux could not be considered the main creative influence. I do think the distinction is pertinent, because I strongly suspect Wright's direct creative influence over the cited games is probably more meaningful than Molyneux's direct creative influence over at least several of the cited games developed by his studio.
Hm, I didn't realize that he was credited as "Management" in many of those Bullfrog games according to MobyGames. :blink:

His wikipedia page made it seem he had more of a relevant input than just management.

Still, dude gets too little credit whereas Wright gets too much.

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Hm, I didn't realize that he was credited as "Management" in many of those Bullfrog games according to MobyGames. :blink:

His wikipedia page made it seem he had more of a relevant input than just management.

Still, dude gets too little credit whereas Wright gets too much.

Considering how many games they released, it probably would have been impossible for him to take an active creative role in all of them. Actually running a studio is a pretty full-time job.

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I don't have anything original to add to this thread but I want to chime in to Remixor how much I loved his Randy Newman song about Up THE Video game. It should be in the movie in my opinion. And if not that, then a short before the movie with a loop of the old man hitting the snake from a video capture from the PC game scored along with the song.

Also I agree long games have a tendency to really try your patience, even if well made. No matter what game you think is god, I think the majority of people who play anything linear and story driven max out at about 40 hours. I'm just taking an opinionated average. I don't like playing games longer than 30 hours each myself, even if it's great, and I feel like the game had better be very good and concise to offer less than 15 hours. And as other posters said, I think games stretching to the 50-80 hours mark will usually be found to have a lot of filler and retreading, even if it's a great game.

Again, I agree that this margin will grow smaller with everyone that is older and has less time, but sees the buffet of great games and with lots of adult income on hand.

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Hey so I just watched up, waiting for the stupid QVC guy, and it never happened, what part of the movie does this take place in? There is one part, where Carl first meets Russell, but thats not the clip Chris plays during the podcast

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Hm... I have yet to see Up myself, but bump fer truth and justice!

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Carl is watching the ad before the kid shows up. That is as specific as I can be both because of my memory and because of possible spoilers.

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