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Jake

Idle Thumbs 35: A Great Way to Have Fun

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Skydive to safety with Wii Sports Resort! And this episode of Idle Thumbs!

"A Great Way to Have Fun"

Join us as we take a safely-secured look at Wii Sports Resort, and spoil exclusive food news. A connection to the Internet is required to listen to this episode.

Games Discussed: Wii Sports Resort, Dawn of Discovery/Anno 1404, Command & Conquer 4, Alan Wake, League of Legends: Clash of Heroes, StarCraft, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Castles, Castles II: Siege & Conquest, Rock Band Network, Guitar Hero Fruit Roll Strawberry Whammy

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When you say there's dog fighting in Wii Sports Resort, do you mean that in the Battlefield sense or the Michael Vick sense?

The latter sounds implausible (those poor Nintendogs!), but I didn't expect my Miis to shoot at each other in aerial combat, either.

The Nintendo Description only mentions "Air Sports", so is it really more of a stunt flying thing?

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A Google search for "Strawberry Whammy" shows that these fruit rolls have been in discussion (and still not verifiable) since last fall. Sorry; there goes the Idle Thumbs exclusive.

http://www.davidicus.com/blog/2008/11/07/closest-ill-get-to-being-on-a-wheaties-box/

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/showthread.php?t=72222&page=39

Yeah, we saw those too. What we figured is that this product has been oddly stealth-launched. I don't think there have been any press releases or anything. It's extremely bizarre.

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Were you guys simply overlooking sports games in your discussion of genres that are played competatively, or do you not count them since they're just approximations of a real-life sport? Because there's an entire television show on ESPN all about competative Madden players, to name the most obvious sports game that would fall under this discussion.

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Sports based games have never been as popular in eSports as other types.

I can understand how based on average exposure one might feel that fighting games would rank up at the top but I believe it's FPS and strategy games that top the list.

Comicon is probably a skewed example to show what genres are being played competitively. While comics and all things dork are in full effect, same with the Penny Arcade con, I think competitive gaming takes a back seat and provides more amusement than competition.

I forget the exact wording in the podcast and I've already deleted it with the strange porno I didn't want my girlfriend to find in the trash so its lost forever, anyway was it fighting games are the most popular or why is competitive gaming primarily fighting games?

Counterstrike is still big but since the migration from 1.6 to source it's not as big as it used to be. Craig Levine and his company (the ESEA) definitely made a name before the wave broke though. Off the top of my head there were 6 (8?) CS 1.6 teams that either recruited new or migrated over to source for the Counter Strike TV show thing that was on for a while. In addition to Levine's 3D, Complexity was also there but without FRod I believe. MugNmouse might also have had a team, my memory gets sorta fuzzy since I didn't actually watch the show. AlienGamers Miami 2005 1.6 pug was better than any 44 minute studio programming IMO. The CPL folding and selling out to a Chinese company doesn't help things but I would still say it's still a huge market with a huge player base.

Condensed version - huge gaming base destroyed by migration to sequel and tv show, lol. The Chinese purchased the largest tournament organizer and everyone is playing CEVO now instead?

TF2 has made a decent play in the eSports market but without a league with a large marketing team and proper event coordination to corral the sponsors I doubt it will take off.

Quake and 1v1 FPS games have always had a rich competitive history. Fatal1ty had his own 60 minutes segment... and a teeny tiny booth at E3, I guess he's not doing as well as he was but I don't know anyone who wants to play him in QL/Q3 any time soon. Anyone remember Thresh? Dennis won Carmac's Ferrari at quakecon and went on to co-found the firingsquad.com, Gamers.com, Xfire and of course a party at the playboy mansion. You sanfran boys should know this.

Quake 3 was on the eSports books for a long time and in my personal opinion is still one of the best competitive games out there. I was really happy to see the beta of Quakelive open up. Painkiller made a payola style move to be featured in the CPL for 2 seasons I think but was later replaced. Console gaming can't be excluded from the FPS giant, Halo 2 has been huge, like really huge for eSports. Ogre1 and Ogre2, come on people.

There are many reasons why you could miss out on competitive gaming, even if it's your favorite game. The fact that there's no mainstream media promoting these activities is one reason. The learning curve from pub to pug is huge in most cases. Take counter strike for example. Most pub players are completely unaware of the competitive aspects of the game. TF2 is the same. Gotfrag.com is not a news outlet that most hardcore gamers frequent.

Companies don't see a lot of money in eSports right now so no one's pushing it. I remember back in 05 or 06 there was a Tylenol team at WCG New York. Quiznos was sponsoring 3D at the same time...

With the proliferation of in-game advertising there's hardly a reason for lifestyle products to spend money on eSport advertising. I mean, even the game devs/producers wont touch it. You wont ever catch Valve giving away Valve Cafe Counter Strike licenses to game centers for their tournaments. The best thing you can hope is that you live in a college town and that there's a "college rep" who's willing to throw you a few copies of Civ4 (that's how I got mine). The only money to be made is from niche markets. Accessories and peripherals. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the Saitek keyboard, Razer mouse and the Steelpad that it rests on and I love that I didn't pay for them. But those peripherals aren't going to pay for entire seasons.

This is like the difference between NASCAR and local Autocross races. You've heard about one of them whether you're into it or not. You know where to access the data, and if you wanted to take part either to spectate or participate you know of or could find the proper channels. It's supported by a large governing body with sponsors and media attention.

Local Autocross races are largely hosted and developed by the participants. They like to take their Miatas and Porsches out, so they talk to airfield owners. They buy the cones, set up the timing equipment. Volunteers chase the cones and hand out bottled water and what not. It's sustained by the userbase alone. At the end of the day your average motorist doesn't have a clue who won last weekends autox race. Your NASCAR fan doesn't know. Only the guys who were deep in it.

So if you don't think people are playing Kings Moon Colostomy Quest competitively they just might be, you'll just have to dig a little deeper, there could be a whole world of user controlled competition and you might just have never heard of it.

Edited by RobTheReverend
wtf, was I drunk when I wrote this?

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When you say there's dog fighting in Wii Sports Resort, do you mean that in the Battlefield sense or the Michael Vick sense?

The latter sounds implausible (those poor Nintendogs!), but I didn't expect my Miis to shoot at each other in aerial combat, either.

The Nintendo Description only mentions "Air Sports", so is it really more of a stunt flying thing?

It's a Mario-Kart esque battle mode where you fly around in a biplane (holding your Wii-mote like a baby's feeding spoon) and try and shoot the balloons attached to the other player's plane.

It sounds like an okay way to have fun.

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So about those witches selling that spell, are you sure that they weren't trying to swindle you? I kind of think it'd be awesome for a game like that to sell you a spell that does nothing at all, except maybe make the less superstitious civilizations lose respect for you.

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So about those witches selling that spell, are you sure that they weren't trying to swindle you? I kind of think it'd be awesome for a game like that to sell you a spell that does nothing at all, except maybe make the less superstitious civilizations lose respect for you.

A lot of creative people have discovered that backhanded trickery when the audience isn't expecting it normally backfires. Valve had to change Alex's voice and expression so it wouldn't look like she was teasing you, Ocean's 12 was unpopular because of its handling of the plot and the entire 'twist' part of M. Night's stories are now heavily mocked.

Designers have to be incredibly careful when they put that stuff in to prevent backlash.

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It could however be presumed to work on a kind of placebo affect. Like if they think you have a spell protecting you, then your superstitious enemies would be less likely to attack you. After all, this is how it worked in real life, no? Self-fulfilling prophecy.

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That would be totally awesome, especially if they were consistent, and didn't have any glowing spell effects or anything.

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So about those witches selling that spell, are you sure that they weren't trying to swindle you? I kind of think it'd be awesome for a game like that to sell you a spell that does nothing at all, except maybe make the less superstitious civilizations lose respect for you.
I was thinking something similar, but instead, it would be a way to keep your peasants in line.

"Plow your fields or the 3 Witches will steal your first born."

The negative effect could be that as knowledge grows, the people in your city might realize what's going on and revolt.

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Join us as we take a safely-secured look at Wii Sports Resort

Those instructional clips were both jolly funny and educational as I have a Japanese Wii - when I finally get around to buying Resort this episode will be worth its weight in gold...it does sound complicated...

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Id just like to say i sent the Strawberry Whammy Guitar Hero Fruit Roll email and that i have now joined the forms in case you are wondering who sent the email.

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