Idle Thumbs 72: Crazy Crane's Deceit

[Problem Machine]

Trying to deliniate generations is also dangerous to me. What is a third generation roguelike? Fourth? Fifth? Barf. Can we just say "it is a roguelike," and then have a conversation within that definition?

I'm actually completely cool with that, I just dislike the term roguelikelike because it's absurdly clumsy. Though honestly I doubt there would be another generation-- if there were it would probably be called an Isaaclike or a Spelunkalike (which actually seems super fun to say. We should just call them that.)

[miffy495]

This game feels a tad "spelunkish".

[scinder]

I'm actually completely cool with that, I just dislike the term roguelikelike because it's absurdly clumsy. Though honestly I doubt there would be another generation-- if there were it would probably be called an Isaaclike or a Spelunkalike (which actually seems super fun to say. We should just call them that.)

Perhaps we need another acronym like MMORPG or Lords Management for rogue like, perhaps? RLL, rogue like like? RLL, like the old hard drives.

[Roswell47]

Jake's Ian Holm in Alien impression at the Goldblum Jurrasic Park references made my day.

[Manresa]

I don't think games media is substantially worse, if at all worse, than other forms of entertainment journalism. Take music, for example: the main media for music is radio, and the only time radio isn't an advertisement for the publishers it's a literal advertisement, except for the single hour of public service content broadcast at 6:00 Sunday morning. With movies, how many people read a review in the New York times, versus see an actor on late-night talk show? Or hear a story on NPR about the ridiculous ways movie studios avoid paying royalties, versus US Weekly's coverage of Jennifer Lopez's "tight abs"?

I'm not saying this is good, it's just the norm. Book criticism may be more substantive, but at this point most books are niche.

On another note (to the Thumbs' crew), don't sell yourselves short. At the same time you guys are going "some of our listeners have important jobs" I'm amazed that you put together a literate podcast about the interaction of video games with society (I think that's a fair description of Idle Thumbs) in your spare time. All I do is walk the dogs, mix drinks, and play read about video games.

[Roderick]

I have an issue with the last few minutes of this podcast, wherein it is postulated that Buzz Aldrin's head might be indefinitely stored on the surface of the moon without the need to be frozen since it's cold in space. This isn't true: as soon as it hit the sun side, Buzz' head would burn to a cinder. Since the moon has no atmosphere, it exists in the same vacuum as space itself. In a vacuum, heat can't escape properly from the body, so the sun's warmth would quickly warm up poor Buzz until his head melts away like Toth's face after opening the Ark of the Covenant. One of the major difficulties of space exploration is actually getting rid of the heat you build up in the void, not staying warm.

Clearly your conspiracy theory is full of holes!

[Colourful Stuff]

I have an issue with the last few minutes of this podcast, wherein it is postulated that Buzz Aldrin's head might be indefinitely stored on the surface of the moon without the need to be frozen since it's cold in space. This isn't true: as soon as it hit the sun side, Buzz' head would burn to a cinder. Since the moon has no atmosphere, it exists in the same vacuum as space itself. In a vacuum, heat can't escape properly from the body, so the sun's warmth would quickly warm up poor Buzz until his head melts away like Toth's face after opening the Ark of the Covenant. One of the major difficulties of space exploration is actually getting rid of the heat you build up in the void, not staying warm.

Clearly your conspiracy theory is full of holes!

We all know the moon has an atmosphere, why else would the flag wave?!

Probably because it's being jostled.

[Chris]

Kotaku is the 24/7 news channel of video games. Which is the nice way of me saying it is garbage. It really surprised me last episode when Chris claimed that it's the site devs go to all the time. I'm hoping it wasn't meant to be spoken with any mount of authority, because if it's true, it means the industry's hands-on people are the ones who feed into the bullshit tangential video game "news" content.

The only authority I claim is having worked at two game studios where that has been the case, and knowing a ton of game devs who reference the site all the time. One thing I've said on Idle Thumbs many times is that I feel game players, journalists, and devs are essentially similar to one another in terms of taste and opinions about games, even though obviously devs have a massive additional amount of technical knowledge and skill on top of that. But in terms of the fundamental approach to what games are and what games are good, I think those groups are essentially aligned at least in the broad strokes, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that they rely on similar websites.

[toblix]

I know of Kotaku, and that it's part of Gawker. I haven't visited it much, but I have this impression that they write about video games and hentai figurines. Is this just my mind inserting hentai figurines where they don't belong, or is video games only one of several topics Kotaku covers?

[Jake]

The only authority I claim is having worked at two game studios where that has been the case, and knowing a ton of game devs who reference the site all the time. One thing I've said on Idle Thumbs many times is that I feel game players, journalists, and devs are essentially similar to one another in terms of taste and opinions about games, even though obviously devs have a massive additional amount of technical knowledge and skill on top of that. But in terms of the fundamental approach to what games are and what games are good, I think those groups are essentially aligned at least in the broad strokes, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that they rely on similar websites.

Yep, that's my experience too. Game devs, especially devs who are also game fans, are going to read the same things as everything else. Just like fans, some developers read Gamasutra, some read RPS (especially if you're in a PC-focused house) or Giant Bomb or whatever, but by and large you're going to see a ton of Kotaku, a fair bit of Joystiq, trailed by a smattering of everything else

[mikemariano]

I know of Kotaku, and that it's part of Gawker. I haven't visited it much, but I have this impression that they write about video games and hentai figurines. Is this just my mind inserting hentai figurines where they don't belong, or is video games only one of several topics Kotaku covers?

Anime figurines have showed up on the site, but (as of two years ago at least) it wasn't a regular or defining feature of the site.

Things they post always have some video game connection. My favorite was "See child actor Christian Bale in a Pac-Man cereal commercial!"

[gregbrown]

I know of Kotaku, and that it's part of Gawker. I haven't visited it much, but I have this impression that they write about video games and hentai figurines. Is this just my mind inserting hentai figurines where they don't belong, or is video games only one of several topics Kotaku covers?

Kotaku—and the other Gawker blogs—are increasingly sprawling into whatever they think will get them pageviews. TLC redux.

[Merus]

I know of Kotaku, and that it's part of Gawker. I haven't visited it much, but I have this impression that they write about video games and hentai figurines. Is this just my mind inserting hentai figurines where they don't belong, or is video games only one of several topics Kotaku covers?

That would be Brian Ashcraft's work. His brief is technically the Japanese side of the industry but this mostly results in him posting hentai figures or stuff he saw on his walk.

Protip: if you feel compelled to read Kotaku for some reason, Kotaku AU is a licensed version that has most of the US site's content without the layout. It also has a couple of Australian writers that are actually not bad.

[vimes]

Yep, that's my experience too. Game devs, especially devs who are also game fans, are going to read the same things as everything else. Just like fans, some developers read Gamasutra, some read RPS (especially if you're in a PC-focused house) or Giant Bomb or whatever, but by and large you're going to see a ton of Kotaku, a fair bit of Joystiq, trailed by a smattering of everything else

Sadly, this is mostly true: game devs feed on Kotaku because, during production, it's fairly difficult to put enough time aside in the day to read full length articles whereas screaming-headline news fit that constraints perfectly. But the disappointing truth is that there's also a very significant amount (I want to say majority, but that might be wrong) of game dev who completely agrees with the editorial style, tone and vantage point of Kotaku and will forward the shit out of them on internal newsletters.

That makes me sad, because it gives the impression (sometimes proven wrong in face-to-face discussion) that they don't really have any distance with the PR-built image of the industry and don't want to be more articulate or subtle about the medium they work in and what's happening around it.

Still, I've noticed that 'seasoned' developers are mostly using Kotaku,VG24/7 and Joystiq rss feeds as 'flag' that something in the industry came up: they know better than to read the content of the articles or comments and go straight to the source the aggregator mention instead.

[Salacious Snake]

I don't read Kotaku, because they don't have sweet tips and tricks.

[Chris]

Sadly, this is mostly true: game devs feed on Kotaku because, during production, it's fairly difficult to put enough time aside in the day to read full length articles whereas screaming-headline news fit that constraints perfectly.

I don't really think that distinguishes game devs from anyone else. Most people with real jobs don't have time to be reading huge articles in the middle of the day. If you care about long-form journalism, or serious writing of any kind, you'll find the time. If it's not as high on your list of priorities, you'll find time for other things instead. (The main exception to this is students, especially high school students and undergraduates, who do generally have more free time to spend in total.)

[Henroid]

The only authority I claim is having worked at two game studios where that has been the case, and knowing a ton of game devs who reference the site all the time. One thing I've said on Idle Thumbs many times is that I feel game players, journalists, and devs are essentially similar to one another in terms of taste and opinions about games, even though obviously devs have a massive additional amount of technical knowledge and skill on top of that. But in terms of the fundamental approach to what games are and what games are good, I think those groups are essentially aligned at least in the broad strokes, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise that they rely on similar websites.

I agree with that 100%. It's just that from my observations across what few sites I frequent or other communities I'm in, Kotaku is the least popular source of news and the most often ridiculed for how it functions and what it covers. Aside from my own opinion of the site, I've been under a heavy impression that it's not a good site. Hence my surprise that it's probably popular among devs.

And apologies for my original post on the matter; re-reading it I realized it seemed way more confrontational than I intended.

[Iosef Stalin]

I used to read Kotaku a lot after I got tired of how silly Destructoid was getting. The java redesign of Kotaku and the rest of the Gawker stuff just completely soured me on it though, it's so dicey if it actually works or not. There's all those links to stories in the sidebar, but the flashy implementation means they don't link half the time, or pages don't load and you have to refresh to get the links to line up with the images after some scrolling.

Added to the fact that i've found myself caring less and less about game news or upcoming games and I only read it very occasionally. I find personal experiences of games way more interesting than bland press release style reporting or reviews. It's like regular news, you can get way more depth and interesting detail on a subject from a blog or detailed account from a single knowledgeable person than you do from the bland shit they put out on the BBC News site or whatever. You don't even really have to dig all that hard to find these pieces any more with twitter and blogger/google etc.

[Roderick]

I'm less harsh on Kotaku than most of you, it seems. As low-hanging fruit I browse through it a little every day and I like the emphasis on small/irrelevant/peculiar/Japanese trivia. Partly I do also use it as a flagging system to inform me when something is happening, but I also like it for what it is: just a weird info site that is generally really really quick with the scoops.

I never read comments anywhere, so I'm not concerned about them.

[TheLastBaron]

I just listened to this episode (I'm super far behind after spending the last few months trying to catch up on a couple other casts) and while I reluctantly accept what has been said about claw machines, in middle school me and two other friends would go to the Safeway that was right next to our school after class and use the claw machine.  In this case it was full of stuffed animals and while none of us wanted them it wasn't the point.  We would each go to one side of the machine and look in to get all the angles covered and tell the one of us that was operating how much they needed to move the claw to get it lined up with the objective and most of the time we got it.  We would usually spend around a dollar every day and usually this ended up with a couple of us getting stuffed animals, and I don't think we ever left without at least one.  Since no one wanted them I ended up always taking them since my house was right next to the school so we passed it on the way to my other friends house.  I woud just put them under my bed because I didn't have any room for them and we ended up with so many of them.  Eventually it got to the point that there wasn't any more room under my bead and I just put them in garbage bags in my closet (I think now they're all in garbage bags in my attic).  Now that I think about it it probably would have looked pretty weird if someone came into my room and lifted up the skirt around my bed and saw that it was just completely full of stuffed animals. 

 

Edit:  It's also worth noting that eventually the Safeway just stopped stocking the machine.