Chris

Idle Thumbs 46: First Annual Year

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READERMAIL: Why didn't you guys play Ultima?

PLEASEEEEE... at least try and play Ultima 7 (part 1 for open world done right, or part 2 for a more linear masterpiece from Warren Spector, preferably both)

And Ultima Underworld. Again 1 for more non linear approach and 2 for a more guided story.

If you can get your fingers on a copy of any of the Ultima 7s, go there and use this exult.sf.net for nicer rendering and compatibility with every electronic machine conceived by man.

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Great episode again guys. Definitely got really silly but it made me laugh so no complaints here. And hooray for a year!

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Chris, video games have a long way to go before they can compete with the sheer idiocy produced by comics.

Case in point: Rob Liefeld's Godyssey.

They also have a long way to go before they can compete with comics' more thoughtful material, however.

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They also have a long way to go before they can compete with comics' more thoughtful material, however.

Snap. Anyway, considering comics have been around for 50 years, they do have a head start on both thoughtful works and stupidity; a lot of what I find is the most ridiculous stuff in comics just comes from the fact that there is so much retarded back story and most of the characters that have been going since the golden age are just played out.

Imagine 50 years from now with Gears of War 30 and just how ridiculous those already stone dead retards are going to act.

With that said, the same thing seems to be going on in hollywood over these days; I'm finding that hollywood has finally caught on and is making some of the most interesting things in their industry with a budget, then on the other side we get the polar opposite of giant pieces of stupidity.

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I think a neat corollary to the "This Year in Thumbs" of all the games y'all have discussed would be a "That year in Thumbs" of all the times it went off the rails ("JESUS CHRIST... I did not like that at all," "Time Donkey Balls," "serving you tools on a plate made of tools," "pulling shit out of your ass" "that card blows my asshole," etc etc etc).

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I noticed the sirens were back again in this last episode. I don't know if they ever really left, but I hadn't been aware of them for the last few episodes. And it occurred to me that the Idle Thumbs gang getting arrested in the middle of the podcast would be a pretty fitting end to the first year of Idle Thumbs.

But a regular episode is good too.

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Snap. Anyway, considering comics have been around for 50 years, they do have a head start on both thoughtful works and stupidity; a lot of what I find is the most ridiculous stuff in comics just comes from the fact that there is so much retarded back story and most of the characters that have been going since the golden age are just played out.

Imagine 50 years from now with Gears of War 30 and just how ridiculous those already stone dead retards are going to act.

With that said, the same thing seems to be going on in hollywood over these days; I'm finding that hollywood has finally caught on and is making some of the most interesting things in their industry with a budget, then on the other side we get the polar opposite of giant pieces of stupidity.

Comics are more than a century old at this point really. What you're saying applies more to superhero comics specifically, which is an area of comics I'm not really interested in. It's true though, the neverending continuity lines of superhero comics are completely absurd. Sadly since they cater to similar audiences, games will probably go in that direction, although they will be limited by the fact that you can't release games in a given series with the same frequency as you can release comics pertaining to a given character.

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Ahaha oh man, Muzzy reference. We watched that in my French class... good times.

I think the whole 'video game writers draw more reference from films than books' thing is probably fair (not 100% true obviously, but it most likely happens). I think a lot of current movie writers do that too. Romantic comedies basically being spawned from themselves.

It's another giant '_ meets _' cycle!

When Harry Met Sally meets Bride Wars meets... :s

Edit: Forgot to mention that although I admited somewhere else around these boards my love of cheeziness (I will now have to try Red Faction), I for one will not be following The Ripper. Whole new levels. :shifty:

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:woohoo: :woohoo: :woohoo:

I need to listen to this cast asap.

I mention Stargoose basically to bait you into listening.

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Comics are more than a century old at this point really. What you're saying applies more to superhero comics specifically, which is an area of comics I'm not really interested in. It's true though, the neverending continuity lines of superhero comics are completely absurd. Sadly since they cater to similar audiences, games will probably go in that direction, although they will be limited by the fact that you can't release games in a given series with the same frequency as you can release comics pertaining to a given character.

I think American comics have been artificially infantilized by the influence of the Comic Code which killed off almost every genre besides super heroes. video games seem unlikely to suffer a similar fate and should thus be able to continue to build more diverse experiences for a more diverse audience.

It seems to me that if it's possible for there to be good stories in video games (and I'm not sure there is) then developers don't have any of the excuses comics had for wasting so much time not making them.

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I appreciated the achievement hate, since I'm in the same boat. It seems that its a small crowd between those that either enjoy them or don't care much either way.

My concern about the achievement meta game was its potential effect on game development/design, but I'm not sure how well founded those fears are since the development process is generally opaque to the consumer.

The in-game goals should be fully self contained. You should either be doing something because you are genuinely interested in the story or because its fun (or I guess an in-game unlockable that you want). The person who designs a particular mission or task can simply give you a points incentive if they want someone to do something or care about something in the game. They may not consciously be doing it necessarily, but having the option seems like a bad idea.

Regarding linear progression achievements: That may actually be the best kind. Since every game is required to have them, it shows that they put no thought into them and that they did not affect the design of the game. Plus you can turn the notifications off.

What do you think? Furthermore, how do some of your friends in the development community feel about achievements?

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This is the only game where achievements are fun.

A lot of achievements are either implied by playing the game, or based or retarded grinding, or even completely unrelated useless actions (like start the game on a given date).

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I appreciated the achievement hate, since I'm in the same boat. It seems that its a small crowd between those that either enjoy them or don't care much either way.

My concern about the achievement meta game was its potential effect on game development/design, but I'm not sure how well founded those fears are since the development process is generally opaque to the consumer.

The in-game goals should be fully self contained. You should either be doing something because you are genuinely interested in the story or because its fun (or I guess an in-game unlockable that you want). The person who designs a particular mission or task can simply give you a points incentive if they want someone to do something or care about something in the game. They may not consciously be doing it necessarily, but having the option seems like a bad idea.

Regarding linear progression achievements: That may actually be the best kind. Since every game is required to have them, it shows that they put no thought into them and that they did not affect the design of the game. Plus you can turn the notifications off.

What do you think? Furthermore, how do some of your friends in the development community feel about achievements?

Some achievements are really cool though (in how you go about getting them): Such as in HL2 getting through ravenholme without shooting a single bullet, completing Halo 3 on legendary 4 player Co-op with ghosts with a specific skull on, and the similar one for ODST. In all if an achievement leads to you finding an easter egg or interesting way to play a segment of a game then it's cool. Achievement whores will exist wherever there is a meta score though.

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Those incentives dont have to be exterior to the game though. There have always been bizarre things you can do for in game rewards. There have always been time trial enthusiasts and high score runners. They didnt have to get a suggestion/bait to play the game a certain way.

Someone will discover it and write it into a faq or the published guide to the game.

Of course from a sales perspective and a community perspective, a unified cross-game achievement system is genius.

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To compare video games to movies again, when it comes to maturing as a medium...

The film first debuted around 1895, and then it was only very short, very basic snippets. So we can call that the Pong era. Then it wasn't until 1915 that movies became the feature film we know today, with full length, close ups, proper character development, et al. So that's 20 years, which puts us at the mid-ninties.

Now for the point I'm getting at, which is that we're always pining for the Citizen Kane of video games. Well, Kane was released in 1941, almost 50 years after the films first inception. It took that long to get Welles and co. to perfect their medium, and come up with all these techniques for visual story-telling.

So I guess my point is, maybe we shouldn't be so quick to say that games are inherently immature story-telling devices, or that we should be so quick to look for the greatest achievement in video game narrative just yet.

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I can't believe Visceral Games' bullshit. I had it planned out more as a progression than an "infinite spiral" or whatever.

Dead Space - Ripper - Dante's Inferno - God of War

I hope their next one will be something completely batshit like "Loch Ness Monster: Vengeance Unleashed - It's like Dead Space meets Endless Ocean in the Late Cretaceous!"

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Comics are more than a century old at this point really. What you're saying applies more to superhero comics specifically, which is an area of comics I'm not really interested in.

Ah, well I pretty much associate the term comics with american comic books since that seems where most of the games are getting its reference. I tend to ignore pretty much everything else happening in Japan and Europe, especially stuff pre 1950.

Just curious now, if you have any suggestions that you lean towards as being good comics that are unrealated to superhero stuff as I'm pretty much in the dark on that side of things.

As far as "super hero" comics I learn more towards stuff like the original Conan stories, a few books of the Authority, Miracle Man, The Ultimates, Sandman, Watchmen, and probably a few others mostly written by Moore, Morrison, Gaimen, and maybe Ellis. I consider these a little more sophisticated comics, but they are all essentially super heroes, with maybe the exception of TinTin, who rocks too.

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Ah, well I pretty much associate the term comics with american comic books since that seems where most of the games are getting its reference. I tend to ignore pretty much everything else happening in Japan and Europe, especially stuff pre 1950.

Just curious now, if you have any suggestions that you lean towards as being good comics that are unrealated to superhero stuff as I'm pretty much in the dark on that side of things.

As far as "super hero" comics I learn more towards stuff like the original Conan stories, a few books of the Authority, Miracle Man, The Ultimates, Sandman, Watchmen, and probably a few others mostly written by Moore, Morrison, Gaimen, and maybe Ellis. I consider these a little more sophisticated comics, but they are all essentially super heroes, with maybe the exception of TinTin, who rocks too.

The kind of comic books I'm talking about are largely modern-day comic books. There's plenty of bullshit that comes out of Japan and Europe as well, particularly Japan; America too of course, but no country produces only one kind of artist. When I say "non-superhero comic books" I don't mean "non-American" comic books. For example, here are some currently-working American comic book creators of the type I'm talking about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burns_%28cartoonist%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Clowes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Deitch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Huizenga

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Bechdel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Bell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Pekar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Matt

There are also quite a few Canadian cartoonists in that same kind of general group, and most of the American and Canadian guys know each other.

There are also lots of European cartoonists in the same "school" and I could list a bunch of them too; they're slightly more dependent on what gets translated. I don't really know of many guys from the UK doing this kind of thing for whatever reason, most of the Europeans seem to be from continental Europe. As far as Japan, I also am not aware much of this type of work coming out of there (it could just be another translation problem), but some of the best collections I've read in the last several years have been first-time translations of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's comics. It's older than the work of the other guys listed here, but awesome.

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Ah, well I pretty much associate the term comics with american comic books since that seems where most of the games are getting its reference. I tend to ignore pretty much everything else happening in Japan and Europe, especially stuff pre 1950.

Just curious now, if you have any suggestions that you lean towards as being good comics that are unrealated to superhero stuff as I'm pretty much in the dark on that side of things.

As far as "super hero" comics I learn more towards stuff like the original Conan stories, a few books of the Authority, Miracle Man, The Ultimates, Sandman, Watchmen, and probably a few others mostly written by Moore, Morrison, Gaimen, and maybe Ellis. I consider these a little more sophisticated comics, but they are all essentially super heroes, with maybe the exception of TinTin, who rocks too.

The kind of comic books I'm talking about are largely modern-day comic books. There's plenty of bullshit that comes out of Japan and Europe as well, particularly Japan; America too of course, but no country produces only one kind of artist. When I say "non-superhero comic books" I don't mean "non-American" comic books. For example, here are some currently-working American comic book creators of the type I'm talking about:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Burns_%28cartoonist%29

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Clowes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Deitch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Huizenga

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Sacco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alison_Bechdel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Bell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Pekar

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Matt

There are also quite a few Canadian cartoonists in that same kind of general group, and most of the American and Canadian guys know each other.

There are also lots of European cartoonists in the same "school" and I could list a bunch of them too; they're slightly more dependent on what gets translated. I don't really know of many guys from the UK doing this kind of thing for whatever reason, most of the Europeans seem to be from continental Europe. As far as Japan, I also am not aware much of this type of work coming out of there (it could just be another translation problem), but some of the best collections I've read in the last several years have been first-time translations of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's comics. It's older than the work of the other guys listed here, but awesome.

EDIT: crap I did all my URL tags backwards

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Snap. Anyway, considering comics have been around for 50 years,...

WHA? 50 years?!

You're at least 60-100 years off (or way more depending on what you count as an "early comic"). Unless you mean when they started being printed in the 24-32 page issues of today, but that doesn't really change that the with the rules of the comic strip were mostly established during the newspaper boom during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Ongoing narrative had certainly already been explored and even certain treasury collections had been published before the 1940s with a couple of Rarebit Fiend books and some sort of "epic" 30 page Krazy Kat comic.

Comics didn't exactly start out stupid or spend all their time jacking off about guys in tights, they just became that way. It parallels animation in terms of sophistication rollercoaster graphs (I MADE THAT UP!) in many ways.

Edited by syntheticgerbil

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Thanks for the links Chris, I'll try to track some of these peoples works down; kind of curious to see what it's about, out of the million comic nerds I've met they've all been into the same stuff, mainly superhero stuff or a few of the things coming from France and europe.

@Syntheticgerbil: Yeah I mean the standard format of a super hero comic we see today hasn't changed a lot in 50 years(it was probably more but I tend to generalize and still think it's 1990 when I cite dates; in which case I was probably still off.) and what I just assumed the coversation was about since most video games that reference or is inspired from a comic is usually from those of that type.

So yeah, sorry, I'm narrowing my meaning because I made assumptions that may have been false, sorry for the confusion, all of which I could have probably have solved if I just said "over 50 years" which is probably what I meant all a long :)

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I actually like achievements quite a bit.

For one, being able to check friends gamerscores means that I never start talking about an area in the game that I know a friend hasn't reached and/or I know who to ask if I haven't beaten an area (I could use gamefaqs but that is boring when instead I can interact with others). I also like checking them to go 'Oh I see that is what you are playing. You've played quite a bit so it must be good (or easy if it one of my fellow achievement whores)'

But I do hate achievements that don't get the essence of what the game is about. I actually think that a lot of developers aren't very creative. For example Oblivion gets achievements horribly wrong because it should be actively encouraging people to do stuff that encourages exploring (all the achievements are story or guild quest related) the world and what the game is about. Soemthing along the lines of 'Explore 20 dungeons' or 'kill 70 wild animals' would have encouraged everyone to go around every nook and cranny and seen more of the game.

Virtua Tennis 3 by contrast has great achievements because it encourages you to learn more about the game (completing the challenges and tennis school sections) and actually makes you better at it.

I actually think that Resident Evil 5 also has a good achievement system that will actually encourage you to try things that you wouldn't normally tried and it helps you experience extra parts of the game.

So yeah achievements that make you resent the game for having them are basically poorly conceived achievements that lack imagination.

***

Also, lots of smilies are disappearing for me, and my avatar has become a hyperlink. This makes me sad.

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that bit on RedFaction/Space Asshole had me cracking up so hard, guess I'll really have to try it, the first few Red Faction games were pretty underwhelming even with the 'innovative' terrain/building deformation.

Never really thought too much about the "if you don't partake in a certain gaming experience or played through a game" your background with another gamer may become drastically different, which is very true. I myself haven't ever touched Ultima either or the Metal Gear series, too busy playing Tribes instead if I remember right.. It's just too hard to keep up with games if you don't consistently play them.

Shame on those who didn't play through all of Deus Ex or Thief! Looking Glass Studios is sorely missed, I do recall in ElderScrolls-Oblivion the main guy behind the best storyline in game, the Dark brotherhood, was from Looking glass.

By the way, 'how far back is retro?' good question. You guys should do a poll on the front page to see how old/years of gaming your general audience is?

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Looking Glass Studios is sorely missed, I do recall in ElderScrolls-Oblivion the main guy behind the best storyline in game, the Dark brotherhood, was from Looking glass.

That's Emil Pagliarulo. He was also the lead designer and writer on Fallout 3. It's amazing to me how influential the Looking Glass crew has gone on to be, even post-Looking Glass. It really drives home how important and ahead of its time that studio was.

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Hooray for Katamari!

I agree that the first two are the way to go.

I'll also 'fess to just having bought the new one for PS3 though. No, it's not novel and yes, it's more of the same thing, but what can I say. I like rolling things up. It's fun.

Also, the colossally bored clerk at Game Stop gave me a blinky prince phone-charm-thing that lights up when a signal comes into my phone. I'm such a sucker for free stuff.

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