Jake

The Idle Thumbs Podcast Episode 5: His Cyborg Familiar

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Lords discussed within.

His Cyborg Familiar

Thumbs returns from its whirlwind tour of every convention and expo one could reasonably cram into two weeks, to ruminate on the rise of Facebook, the fate of real games, and whether or not Nicolas Cage will ever leave the bathroom. Also lots of games.

Games Discussed: Joe Danger, Crackdown 2, Marble Madness, Klax, SWAT 4, Plain Sight, Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned, BioShock 2, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Neptune's Pride, Kayne & Lynch: Dead Men, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Bad Boys 2, The Last Express, Hitman: Codename 47, Far Cry 2, BioShock Demo, All Other Games

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Awesome! Although there's no Metro 2033, which I would enjoy hearing discussed some more, at least there's a million other games. Can't wait to hear your views on Fantasy World Dizzy.

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OH SHIT

To go to sleep or listen to Thumbs... What a dilemma.

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I don't know what Lords are in the context used in the cast. Do I want to?

Good discussion on singleplayer games.

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Just got up, and excited to listen to this.

Interesting that Chris finally got into Neptunes Bounty. I was trying to get something set up for quite some time, in regards to a thumbs match after hearing it on PCG UK, but it seemed like as soon as I got a bit of headway after talking to some of the guys from NB, I got hit by an unbelievable amount of work from university, and for that, I apologise (Chris).

Gonna be exciting to hear about how it's turned out, however.

Also, the return of FARCRY 2!

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The cast seems to be getting more weird... I also think Steve might have a secret agenda to break up the team and end the cast.

Chris' description about Starcraft 2 really felt like TF2 as well. It's all about counters.

On a 1 vs 1 level in TF it's about class vs class and also weapons vs weapon for each class; so a lot of it comes down to mechanics and being screwed or using the right strategy of having the proper load out. And when your in the zone you don't think and just do, but if your worried too much you hesitate and screw up.

Can't mention how many times a team I'm on plays better because we're just chatting away, singing songs, or making jokes rather then focused on winning.

Neptunes Pride is locked off at work so I can't play it... thanks shitty IT. It looks awesome though.

edit: I agree with Steve about the stuff we like is slowly coming out of popularity. It's like the flight sim nerds I see now, they are still playing their games from 1999; I'm sure this will be me in ten years playing gta 4 and mass effect for the hundredth time.

Actually, the guy next to me this morning lamented on why mass effect doesn't have co-op. I gave him a weird look because this never even occured to me and I'm not 100% sure if hes actually played mass effect because why would you say that, not to mention the idea of coop in the current shepherd storyline just wouldn't work with the type of game that is there.

Also agree about the comments on co-op; though I personally hold the opinion that co-op makes a mediocre singleplayer experience to be ok and fun.

But I suppose this was a narrow point of view; in reality with what the Idle Thumbs described is just that it's a good co-op game but because of it doesn't work as well as a singleplayer; but I just had an immediate reactiont hat it was coops fault for making this singleplayer game suck, when it's the other way around.

Edited by Murdoc

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I loved how Scoops was a real buzz-kill to vigi's meme shenanigans.

The swat 4 forced four wheeled ford facebook force something something segment cracked me up :tup:

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Oh man, I was disappointed that there was nothing quite shoopable in this episode, then at the very end you suddenly make a whole cyber-punk novel! Looks like I have my work cut out for me. *rolls up sleeves*

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If I took a picture of you with the puffin at the PAX Wizardmeet, it's probably here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/stiggasaurus/sets/72157623727087566/

I really liked the conversation about multiplayer/shared experience and single player experience. I'm really glad Steve is on the cast, the conversations are thought provoking and inclusive.

It's funny you mentioned "flow theory." I remember reading a short article on Flow-The psychology of happiness in a doctors surgery when i was 18. In order to be able to find out more about the book and potentially buy it, I had to remember this fucking guys name. So I will never forget Milhali Six Cent milhali.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Great first name choice by his dad and mom there.

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Chris I am dissapointed that you didn't take any pictures of Nicolas "Gone Gold" Cage... Game

Yeah, there's nothing more I want to see than a picture taken of Cage on the toilet for a half-hour.

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Thanks for reading my email about the old website and how you guys met. It seems like that could provide a little more backstory for the newer listeners as well.

So Chris, Jake, Nick met on adventure game forums? I guess I just ruled that sort of thing out since you all obviously live in a close proximity and that would be highly coincidental. Cool though!

Great gold-cast!

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or maybe they moved closer to each other

I mean, of course, but I still find that highly coincidental since people live where they are employed. Unless you guys were making full time profit from Idle Thumbs and didn't need other jobs, lol ... which would clearly be grrrrrrreat! (Frosted Flakes style)

Anyway, yeah, just curious. I'm a Geography major, so I guess I was just thinking spatially. :yep:

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I mean, of course, but I still find that highly coincidental since people live where they are employed. Unless you guys were making full time profit from Idle Thumbs and didn't need other jobs, lol ... which would clearly be grrrrrrreat! (Frosted Flakes style)

Anyway, yeah, just curious. I'm a Geography major, so I guess I was just thinking spatially. :yep:

It was coincidental that Jake and I already lived relatively close to one another, although we now live even closer than we did before. When we first met Steve, lived in a different state, but about a year later he moved to San Francisco, where I was living, and got a job in games. Nick lived in Michigan and moved to San Francisco after working at Shacknews for a while, because that's where the game coverage is. Now he's lame.

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Man, when Steve said "I tend to play games more like the way you read a book," it made me realize that

  1. That's how I enjoy games most: careful, individual, cover-to-cover playthroughs,
  2. Book-like reading is changing because technology isn't as isolated and isolating as it was, say, fifteen years ago,
  3. Reading books, to carry on the analogy, is something that is not nearly as accessible nor as popular as watching a film or hanging out with friends, two analogies to gaming that are, given recent games, more apt.

I mean, people read more books before other forms of entertainment or intellectual activity—cheap printed magazines and etc., radio, television—were available. Likewise, the proportion of intense single-player book-style games made and played was greater before wide-spread internet access, Facebook, etc.

The reason the kinds of games being made nowadays are less book-like is the same reason early computer games had a lot of nerdy themes (eg. Star Trek and D&D) but have now expanded (eg. Diner Dash and Viva Piñata): as the technology became easier to access by non-nerds, so did the sorts of games change. As technology and accessibility change, so does the content.

Which doesn't mean that those kinds of games will go away. As Chris and Jake suggest, it's not like books disappeared once People magazine started selling or Gilligan's Island premiered. So while there'll be some "degree of change" (eg. novels becoming more and more focused on small niches or flight sims and old-school Japanese design sensibilities falling off), it's not like dense single-player games will disappear completely. (This seems especially likely if all this long-tail theorizing holds true.)

But it is like reading books: it'll fall off because the alternatives of TV and movies, Facebook and casual games, are easier to get into and more popular. You can still go out and find heavy, single-player games (eg. BioShock, Dragon Age) as you can find books (eg. Pynchon's Against the Day). It's just that more people would rather watch American Idol while playing FarmVille on their laptop.

Edit: Added examples, made it even longer and less likely to be read.

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It was coincidental that Jake and I already lived relatively close to one another, although we now live even closer than we did before. When we first met Steve, lived in a different state, but about a year later he moved to San Francisco, where I was living, and got a job in games. Nick lived in Michigan and moved to San Francisco after working at Shacknews for a while, because that's where the game coverage is. Now he's lame.

Hmm! I suppose this does make sense given that SF basically a video game mecca. Or at least compared to where I live in North Carolina. This place is a mecca of...well...jack and shit. And, to borrow from a fantastic classical film, "Jack left town."

Also, lol @ big dog with a ladder head.

Edited by thegoodguylives

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Which doesn't mean that those kinds of games will go away. As Chris and Jake suggest, it's not like books disappeared once People magazine started selling or Gilligan's Island premiered. So while there'll be some "degree of change" (eg. novels becoming more and more focused on small niches or flight sims and old-school Japanese design sensibilities falling off), it's not like dense single-player games will disappear completely. (

Actually I think Steves concern is warranted. You missed the part where they mentioned(though this is common knowledge, but it's a good point) that it doesn't take any money to write a book; that's why books won't go away (though when half the best sellers are adapting classic tales with zombies in them or about teenage vampires you may just wish they would)

A finally crafted singleplayer that can be delivered a high level experience to todays standards won't become cheaper in ten years; even making a retro game ten years from now to be like GTA4 might be cheaper then what it cost to make GTA4(100+mil) but won't be cheap enough for the indy devs to do it and I doubt it ever will.

So they may not go away, but if they become that weird niche market like flight sims(they're still play ms flight 200x) we're pretty much fucked.

We've already seen in the last 10-12 years publishers unwillingness to commite to even new IP, they understandably go where the buck is, so while certain games may not completely go away, it would suck that something like this would be a rare occurance in a gaming year.

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You missed the part where they mentioned (though this is common knowledge, but it's a good point) that it doesn't take any money to write a book; that's why books won't go away (though when half the best sellers are adapting classic tales with zombies in them or about teenage vampires you may just wish they would)

Yeah, you're right. That's what I get for pausing the 'cast type a forum reply, instead of listening through to the end.

A finally crafted singleplayer that can be delivered a high level experience to todays standards won't become cheaper in ten years… So they may not go away, but if they become that weird niche market like flight sims (they're still play ms flight 200x) we're pretty much fucked.

This might be true, though we could think that, as the market for games (in general) grows, so will the market for single-player games. Single-player may no longer be the biggest kind of game, but I mean, more people—by far—have bought and played BioShock than Origin's System Shock. (Though we can argue about just how different they are in play and philosophy and depth and whatever, I'd like to think we can agree that they're similarly dense, rich, book-like single-player games.) So while single-player games don't make the most money, they're still making more money than they have before.

There are also more people making games, and more ways of making and selling them, than ever before. Small companies may not ever be able to fund games with bleeding-edge graphics or hire Hollywood-level actors for VO, yeah, but they can still make high-quality games. Further, they're not nearly as inflexible as larger production houses and can't always compete with them in the same market (ie. AAA multiplatform games), and so are likelier to find success by creating new and exciting stuff and addressing smaller markets (ie. book-like single-player).

Lastly, I don't think that dense, single-player games (thankfully, a vague enough category that I can say whatever I want about it) are nearly as specialized and inaccessible as flight sims, and so won't retreat from store shelves (or whatever) as quickly or completely.

Thinking of it this way, single-player games don't seem so doomed. There are more people paying for and playing dense, single-player games now than ever, and it's likely that single-player games will attract, admittedly, smaller but more flexible and creative developers in the future.

Take, for example, point-and-click adventure games: they blossomed for a time (the LucasArts Golden Age: Loom through Grim Fandango), went away for a while, but as the technology became more accessible to players and creators (and consequently more people started playing games and more people made games), they've become viable once more. Sure, they're no longer AAA-level flagship titles, and they've changed somewhat (eg. King's Quest to Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People), but they're back, and look, sound, and play well.

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Towards the end of the pod, you guys were rambling about a Space Marine throne. I, being a huge 40k nerd, immediately remembered this.

2b.jpg

It's Marneus Calgar, the head of the Ultramarines. The Ultramarines are a division of the Space Marines.

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Great show! I'm fiendishly awaiting talk of Mount and Blade: Warbands, however. *nudge* *hint*

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It's funny you mentioned "flow theory." I remember reading a short article on Flow-The psychology of happiness in a doctors surgery when i was 18. In order to be able to find out more about the book and potentially buy it, I had to remember this fucking guys name. So I will never forget Milhali Six Cent milhali.

I don't know anything about Flow but what Chris Remo was talking about sounded suspiciously like baloney. Your previous wins/losses don't affect the probability that you'll win the next game! When you examine such a small subset of data its easy to jump to conclusions about performance anxiety affecting player skill, but its entirely possible to have a night where you might feel incredibly anxious yet win every game. Its all down to randomness and there isn't really a discernible pattern.

Radio Lab does a really nice job about explaining this stuff but I realize I might be gettin' mad based on some stray comment so sorry in advance if thats the case! I was too outraged about some dumb thing I perceived that may or may not be the real deal but either way doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things. Wizard.

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Thank you for doing a quick history of Idle Thumbs at the end of this podcast.

You mentioned AdventureGamer.com as an ancestor of Idle Thumbs. I had forgotten about that site---and I contributed a review to it!

In late 1998 I sent an e-mail to Adventure Gamer saying "You guys are cool, can I help?" This led to me writing a review of The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel. (MobyGames overview)

My review is on Archive.org, and I'm not sure it's worth revisiting. 18-year-old me seemed to want to make as many gratuitous Sherlock Holmes references as possible.

The most shameful part of this review is that I wrote about the game entirely from memory. My copy of the game was on 5 1/4-inch disks, and in 1998 I was about two years removed from having a computer with that size drive.

After I submitted my review, one of my contacts at Adventure Gamer wrote back. He said my review was good, but asked if I could take screenshots for the site. I confessed I could not, but offered the tiny, official screenshots from the developer's website. The man from Adventure Gamer wasn't thrilled, but said he'd use them anyway.

That man's name? Marek Bronstring.

Now I'm doubly embarrassed because since discovering Idle Thumbs and seeing Marek's name, I only thought, "Oh, I've heard of Marek Bronstring. He's a cool Internet dude." I completely forgot about our brief e-mail back-and-forths a decade earlier.

That's a long story. Sorry I was so lame in 1998. It's cool to have reconnected with you wonderful adventure game-loving people.

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