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GDC! Idle Thumbs Conf Grenade 2: Don't look at me, I'm Hideo

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A million Thumbs guys on this episode! Crazy town.

GDC! Idle Thumbs Conf Grenade 2:

"Don't look at me, I'm Hideo"

Partake in a virtual luncheon with a pantheon of gaming greats. Witness the changing of Will Wright's mind. Scream as you are wholly seared into the fourth dimension of experimental gaming. We're joined by guests Alex Ashby, Lawrence Bishop, and B. M. Bronstring.

Things Discussed: Experimental Gameplay Sessions, Hideo Kojima, Dave Perry's Lunchstravaganza, Keita Takahashi

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That newspaper looks awesome. Send me one or some, I will pay you. Fuck PDFs. With my eyes on my screen.

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Backwards clapping is my new favourite thing ever :tup:

have you tried to play it backwards? you should

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The title is superb !

On the "will onlive change everything" matter, I guess that graphics can be involved but you could surely design some crazy fucking IAs and crowd behaviors that a normal PC could not process seamlessly, of course you can think of it in terms of better graphics but you could also think of it in terms of "Hey, I can really have a fucking huge amount of universe evolving in a intelligent way and calculate the every implications of the player's action"

Because that's the main reason said for example on of ES:Oblivion guys said to the designer seating next to me and reading over my shoulder said: in what way isn't Oblivion the pinnacle of the RPG genre in the number of possibility ti offers ? Simply because everything is short termed, even a powerful PC would have a hard time calculating how the world would evolve if you killed the emperor or slayed that guy that's supposed to save the world at that point. To reprocess the story and implications of your actions in the longer term. And I guess you could do that with such a fucking huge amount of calculating power...

I'm currently working on a side scrolling 2D project so I'm not the one craving for raw power but hey, that could open some sweet possibilities :)

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Great grenade action, there.

Especially interested in the Experimental Games bit. Anyone have concrete links or vids for some of those mentioned? I should probably go back and listen again, but I'm sure some were just referred to as 'that crazy game that broke my mind'.

I did hear, and did follow the URL for Achron, though. Mind-bending videos.

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On a more serious note, the backwards clapping might be making this one the Braid of Podcasts... OMG CROSS REFERENCE BETWEEN MEDIAS CRAZY SHIT !!!

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have you tried to play it backwards? you should

Why waste the effort of playing it backwards on your own when, here at Idle Thumbs, we do it for you, in the last 30 seconds of the episode. Life couldn't be simpler!

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I did hear, and did follow the URL for Achron, though. Mind-bending videos.

That looks very complicated.

Why waste the effort of playing it backwards on your own when, here at Idle Thumbs, we do it for you, in the last 30 seconds of the episode. Life couldn't be simpler!

zomg... I missed that

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Achron was fantastic. Traveling through time is done by a resource, and the cost becomes more expensive and non-linear the further you move along the timeline from wherever you presently are. So small tactical tweaks are cheap, whereas major strategic rejigs are possible but very, very expensive.

At one point he described an opponent losing a battle to him, then later researching nukes and sending them back into the past in order to win. He then went back further, did something different, and made sure the only units waiting for the nukes were the guy's own forces :)

There was also a more complex game using 4D space. Actual 4D coordinates, rather than 3D with manipulatable time. Maps could be rotated to almost incomprehensibly alter things and move around objects. I heard programmers in the audience behind me muttering about complex things they would rather revise than play that thing.

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Good cast. :tup:

I will be checking out Rom Check Fail! This weekend.

There seems to be a lot of good discussion coming out of GDC. Between Thumbs and Bombcast, I'm in cast heaven. Work is flying by. :yep:

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I liked hearing the stuff about Kojima vs GDC.

It definitely seems like the kinds of people who would go to GDC, would be the kinds of people who would not respect Kojima. He's the guy who makes long cut-scenes, he's just a failed film director, his games are the perfect example of a failed direction for games, etc.

But at the same time, he's progressive for his circumstances.

Not many people made blockbuster Playstation games that are still fantastic to this day and reward you for not killing people.

Yet when he goes to get his lifetime achievement award, people are like F this guy, he's a hack.

I don't think he's a hack, I just think he's not ambitious in a showy way. I mean, you don't get any credit for your facial animations in Snake Eater, that's kind of too subtle a point for people to think that's interesting or worth paying attention to. The freedom of Splinter Cell seems much more interesting from the perspective "I'm a game player, freedom in game play is what is interesting." Of course that's interesting, but so is Snake Eater.

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Yeah that was kind of sad to me as well. I understand he's not the most creative or ambitious designer, but he deserves some credit. Maybe lately he's gotten a little bit over his head or too self indulgent, but he has a pretty constant streak of good to above average games.

I don't think he can be a hack when there are games that a lot of people unanimously love that he has designed, like (as you said) the first Metal Gear Solid, as well as the NES one which many people loved, even though it may have been a shoddier version of the MSX one (I don't know, never have played the original-original.) Snatcher is the best Sega CD game, not that that's too difficult though, and the Boktai game is pretty novel. I can see how he's bloated, but I guess I always figure a hack is someone who puts out a nearly constant stream of mediocre, yet has enough success or support to keep going, but that's really just a definition I made up in my head.

In light of his promotion as well, I think he's becoming a part of that cycle where old game designers move up and become managers and supervisors or disappear. Why the likes of like Jeff Tunnell, Brian Moriarty, and Frédérick Raynal can't come back and do another game hands on is beyond me.

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Snatcher is the best Sega CD game, not that that's too difficult though, and the Boktai game is pretty novel.

Yeah, that's a good example. It's like, first this guy had to work on the MSX, then on the Sega CD, then the Playstation, then the Ps2 as opposed to xbox or pc, but he was able to make work of lasting quality on all these limited platforms.

So, on the one hand, it's not impressive because there was more ambitious stuff going on elsewhere. But on the other hand, he was on limited hardware and managed to achieve a lot.

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Awesome cast!

The hacked WoW account story was sad. It's too bad that there's a system that locks down a whole library of games when/if the account is hacked.

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Good grenades folks. Was nice to hear the voices of Ashby, Lawrence, Marek and Duncan join the regular podcrew.

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Oh yeah, on the WoW account, if you are contacting a call center, if you just keep asking to speak to someone higher up when someone fails to resolve your problem, even if they are "busy or in a meeting" at that time, you can get your problem solved faster. You have to be vicious with almost any company's call center if you want to get something accomplished.

And even then if the supervisor of the call center is unhelpful, you can start mentioning the Better Business Bureau and Rip Off Report.com as a last ditch effort. Usually you become so troublesome they give you your way.

Well, except for this:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/verizon_billing.mp3

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Great episode. For some reason I was expecting Chris' WoW story to end with him having made a jab at Pardo as well. Instead, it just kinda ended tragically.

I wouldn't mind paying 10 dollars a month for an Idle Thumbs newspaper. But I doubt many else would join me on that venture.

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The hacked WoW account story was sad. It's too bad that there's a system that locks down a whole library of games when/if the account is hacked.

That's actually one of the reasons I don't like Steam. I currently do use greenhouse which is also ties your games to a single account, but unlike Steam it doesn't require me to start games from a logged in client. So in greenhouse using multiple accounts isn't a major hassle as it is with Steam. (and to cross ref a different thread, GfWL is worse than steam because that one doesn't even accept real money)

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I liked hearing the stuff about Kojima vs GDC.

It definitely seems like the kinds of people who would go to GDC, would be the kinds of people who would not respect Kojima. He's the guy who makes long cut-scenes, he's just a failed film director, his games are the perfect example of a failed direction for games, etc.

But at the same time, he's progressive for his circumstances.

Not many people made blockbuster Playstation games that are still fantastic to this day and reward you for not killing people.

Yet when he goes to get his lifetime achievement award, people are like F this guy, he's a hack.

Way to spin out a hypothetical situation to a conclusion that isn't real. I think that Kojima's award acceptance got a lackluster response because his talk consisted of him saying that he wasn't retiring, that he wanted to make screenplays, and that he wanted games to be respected [implying that they will be somehow better when they are respected like film]. Not necessarily bad sentiments or whatever, but not the most rousing thing to tell a room full of game developers when you're accepting an award.

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Could you guys do me a massive favour... Could completely list all the games that you mention in your podcasts -- or at least the obscurer ones?

The reason is that, especially with all the weird Indie games you mention, it's hard to capture their titles... and hearing you go on about them makes me want to experience them! Thanks.

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We ... almost always do that. We haven't been during the GDC stuff because we've been doing them even more seat-of-the-pants than the usual casts.

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