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Jake

Idle Thumbs 89: The Ship Economy

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The tone of the world in Borderlands is sort of the end result of the 'kill it and take its stuff' game, which I think is part of what builds this weird uncomfortable feeling that led to me not wanting to play it much. There are shards of amazing technology but everyone lives in these were shacks assembled out of garbage, and no one gives a fuck about anyone else, they're just trying to get more stuff for themselves, which is also what you are trying to do when you murder all these other human beings. It's weirdly honest, in a way, about the end result of the 'kill things take stuff' mentality, and it ends up feeling really gross in a way they almost certainly didn't intend. (for me, at least)

They are smart enough to realise this for sure. You can tell from the writing. It's just that your average player doesn't care or even finds that it adds to the charm.

I HOPE THE SITE YOU ACTUALLY USED WAS HOVER.COM/WIZARD

Check the URL ;)

(unless you admined that in).

The Steam economy isn't based on games btw, it's based on hats, keys and earbuds. See also this awesome blog post by Valve's economist.

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Thanks for answering my questions, guys! I think that's Sean's job now - he was recently subjected to an interview by me, as well ;P

But yeah, some good answers. Sean's thoughts on writing basically reflect my own experience, except that I've had less chance for reality to bash me into working shape. I *think* I'm finally starting to get the hang of it, having now been an indie developer for a year or so, and having been blogging heavily for a bit. But even the Xmas break threw my work ethic pretty hard.

As for the Far Cry 3 stuff - I pretty much agree with everything the Thumbs said, although this is coming from the POV of someone who hasn't actually touched the game. I find it so hard to play shooters these days. I think I'm similar to Jake in my struggle to find AAA games that really engage me.

(And you should all read that crazy interview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/12/19/far-cry-3s-jeffrey-yohalem-on-racism-torture-and-satire/)

Anyway, if anyone's interested in my crap, here's a blog I wrote about Sean and Jake's game: http://digitalspiritguide.com/how-telltales-the-walking-dead-tricks-us-into-feeling/

And here's a game I made with my company (which shocked me by winning a writing award :0): http://www.seethroughstudios.com/games/

And yes, shameless self-promotion here, and I apologise for that, but it seems to be the lot of the indie developer/freelance writer on this crowded Internet...

I'm a new Thumbs fan, but I'll be back. I'm addicted now.

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Count me in on a The Ship match if that ever happens. It's one of those games that I always wanted to play but never got around to actually trying. I did play a bit of [Robot Voice] Bloody Good Time [/Robot Voice] and it was too fast paced and lacked the Poirotian restraint that The Ship seems to do so well.

Then again my PC died over the holidays and I'm taking a few months to save up for a powerful new rig so... The Ship may have sailed again.

Great cast!

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Hover does seem a lot less sketchy than the guys I'm currently using. I wonder how much of a pain it would be to transfer over.

On the other hand, I probably shouldn't even keep my domain. It's pretty pricey to have a .xxx TLD, and google apps doesn't support it, so it's even a pain to have decent email. (Google understandably doesn't want to deal with porn stuff, but goddamn it, wieners.xxx isn't a porn site.) I also don't do fuck all with it.

It's just… so amusing to my juvenile brain.

edit: it seems weird that we're even talking about the sponsors. I think it's a testament to how not gross it has been on the podcast.

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It might have been more timely in the last episode, but people that want a more "restrained" experience like Far Cry 3 should try out Miasmata. It was made by just two guys and is accordingly rough in spots, but it has some incredible atmospheric gestalt going on when everything lines up right.

The short premise is that you're stranded on an abandoned island that once housed some pharmaceutical research facilities. You have to find three components for a cure to this disease you've contracted. The whole thing is fairly HUDless and very immerive with an in world map, a character that animates to interact with everything, physics influenced locomotion model, etc.

One of the greatest things is the choice density of the environment. You're constantly searching for plants to pick and analyze. Additionally there's an incredible cartography mechanic required for you to orient yourself on the map, so you're always on the lookout for landmarks. On top of that, locomotion is heavily influenced by physics so you have to be careful about the grade of inclines, location of water, etc.

It doesn't have the overlapping systemic emergence that the Far Cry games do so well, but it makes up for it in atmosphere and the way they leave so much investigation, planning and navigation in the hands of the player.

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Hover does seem a lot less sketchy than the guys I'm currently using. I wonder how much of a pain it would be to transfer over.

On the other hand, I probably shouldn't even keep my domain. It's pretty pricey to have a .xxx TLD, and google apps doesn't support it, so it's even a pain to have decent email. (Google understandably doesn't want to deal with porn stuff, but goddamn it, wieners.xxx isn't a porn site.) I also don't do fuck all with it.

It's just… so amusing to my juvenile brain.

edit: it seems weird that we're even talking about the sponsors. I think it's a testament to how not gross it has been on the podcast.

I figured I was now obligated to move my two domains to Hover and it was really goddamn easy (three minutes of time?) and I saved ten dollars a year.

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According to this episode, I'm the only human ever to not own The Ship :(

Neither do I. I feel left out.

btw, is nobody going to mention the fact that the Pist-on is not the steambox?

As for the question regarding not being able to get invested into a single game that much anymore. I sort of have that too, but there are multiple reasons. One of the major reasons is that some games demand a lot of time if you want to play it. You cannot really jump in a play for a little while because you need to reach a certain checkpoint first. So you have to keep playing until an unknown point where you can save and quit. For example Borderlands has this where you can loose a lot of progress in a level when you quit halfway. This really puts me off to play some games during the week. An other reason, which doesn't happen that often, is that some games really suck me in for a long time, and because I need to work the next day I don't want to risk playing games right up to the point I want to go to sleep, because my mind keeps processing the game preventing me from getting a good nights sleep. Most recent example of this would be Tropico 4. I played that last weekend, and before I knew it hours have passed.

And of course there's the number of games that are simply not enganing enough to play for long periods, so I need a break from those for a while and then continue.

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To get back to Borderlands 2. I've played B1 purely as a single player game, as for B2 I mostly played it as single player, I've played coop with 8bit a couple of times.

Coop is nice, but when I'm playing a game for the first time I really want to explore the whole space. This isn't really great when playing coop, there you simply want to kick as with your buddy as much as possible. So for a second playthrough of B2 I will probably enjoy coop much more, I've seen it all, all I want to do now is chew bubblegum.

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They are smart enough to realise this for sure. You can tell from the writing. It's just that your average player doesn't care or even finds that it adds to the charm.

Check the URL ;)

(unless you admined that in).

The Steam economy isn't based on games btw, it's based on hats, keys and earbuds. See also this awesome blog post by Valve's economist.

(I did admin it in. I'm a jerk.)

And yeah that is a fascinating post.

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Just used this week's sponsor- Hover.com- to register a site and I'm going to go ahead and second all the positive things that were said about it on the episode.

If anyone has suggestions for a good hosting site, I'd like to hear those.

I came to this thread because Hover's down for scheduled maintenance and I plan to use the /wizard link shortly. I hope the link works for re-reg, too...

I like the Positive Internet Company, though Linode are good people, too. If you want a simpler shared hosting setup, I'd suggest A Small Orange. Their cheapest service is $35/year and you get their actually-quite-good customer service even with that plan. Alternatively, there's NearlyFreeSpeech, which is distinctively low-key and has a paid customer service system (so I'd recommend them if you're comfortable with basic website management).

As an aside, Hover is owned by Tucows, which also operates the Ting cellphone service in the US. I'd recommend them if 1) you're geeky and 2) Sprint coverage is good in your area.

oop, Hover's back up.

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Hi all, first post :-)

As always, loved the episode. Look forward to it every week.

Now, after having read the interview with the writer behind Far Cry 3 I think this is where it failed in delivering its message: it's a satire of a generation of games that is no longer the current one; imagine that story and its content and how it ends and how it would relate in a timely context to games 10-15 years ago, like Postal, Soldier of Fortune, Manhunt or the mentioned Tomb Raider. Then the exaggeration might have worked and the punch line of the ending might have as well.

Now, for me personally, his whole message was lost: I played Far Cry 3 in full consciousness of delving into a power fantasy of exploration. I enjoyed the intro for that, pumping it up. I played it for the entertainment of being the guy to explore and exact power on that environment.

So what actually happened when I came across the 'exaggerations', as the author put it or rather the in parts offensive tones (mainly in the story bits)?

I found it first and foremost uninteresting and having now heard his reason I think I'm glad I didn't push through the story, it's message is nothing new, valuable or challenging for a mature person. It's like wrapping the message of a children's story in adult content.

Ao what I got from it was simply the satisfaction of the above described entertainment and when that was starting to be hampered by the story and the pointed out contradictory and unnecessary funneling/mission walling I stopped playing.

Which, as it seems, is apparently in line with one of the endings anyway–I did not need the story for me to come to that realization.

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I've been thinking about getting a domain name for my blog&stuff again. If I end up doing it, I'll use hover.com/wizard!

It was sad to hear that Nick Breckon has been dishonored :wacko:.

PS. bringbackbreckon.com is available

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Also, for several minutes I didn't realize what you were talking about when you said two-cows (I was stuck in a cave in Far Cry 3 at the time). Took me a while to realized it was tucows.com , which we pronounced differently in Estonia IIRC.

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Being forced to deal with a 'campaign' in open world games drives me crazy, too. Like, I just want to be an unfettered space asshole without having to worry about being shot at or which area I'm supposed to be liberating.

I used a cheating program with Just Cause 2 so I could unlock everything and have a longer, stronger grapple line and it was way more fun.

It's weird how so many games get in their own way.

The best thing about Crackdown is that you can just go get those orbs and ignore everything else. (Assuming I'm remembering it correctly.)

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I assume GTA closes itself off so that new players don't get lost and feel like it takes too long to get anywhere, which might more likely happen if everything was open from the start.

...probably. I dunno. GTA is still pretty old-school like that in some ways.

I had a load of interesting stuff to add when I was listening to this, but like 12 hours later all I can remember is Chris making a sweet binary quip and going "heh heh hehhhh..." and I couldn't believe everyone didn't just crack up immeadiately. I'm still laughing thinking about that dumb concieted tiny laugh.

In my head it was like a mexican standoff, except everyone was horrified.

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I had a load of interesting stuff to add when I was listening to this, but like 12 hours later all I can remember is Chris making a sweet binary quip and going "heh heh hehhhh..." and I couldn't believe everyone didn't just crack up immeadiately. I'm still laughing thinking about that dumb concieted tiny laugh.

In my head it was like a mexican standoff, except everyone was horrified.

This describes 90% of our interactions in the Thumbs office; a percentage which greatly mitigates any desire to laugh.

I'm still shaking my head at that binary joke.

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Thanks for answering my question about not being able to get invested into a single game that much anymore.

When I think about the games I really couldn't put down over the recent years(Bioshock, Dead Space, Dark Souls) they are all games that get you in quick and they all have very sound, very clearly defined game mechanics that are actually fun to learn and work with.

Conversely, games that are just filled with nonstop, incoherent violence and nothing else like Max Payne 3 and basically all Call of Duty campaigns are just doing nothing for me now.

I've also lost all patience for cut scenes or standing in place and having dialog spoken to me so Bioware and to a slightly lesser extent Bethesda games aren't really doing it for me anymore. I just basically want my narrative to just be in audio logs or otherwise entirely implied through setting and tone.

Most recently, I was really impressed with FTL: Super short tutorial. Super easy to learn. And before the events start repeating over and over, the stories that come out of that game are actually pretty entertaining.

Also, I basically agreed with everything Jake said.

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Meh, I'm pretty sure Borderlands 2 was just making fun of all those "knowing" games. That beginning thing "these guys had friends, and family, and lives and... I'm just kidding, fuck those guys!" Was just making fun of all those self knowing games, and I love that! It's an ultra violent game, knows it, and doesn't care.

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When badassness being reflected in the UI was being discussed, what I originally thought that meant was that you'd gain more UI as your guy got more badass. Like, you'd start out with a Tresspasser level UI and throughout the course of the game work your way up to something resembling modern Metal Gear Solid UI.

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When badassness being reflected in the UI was being discussed, what I originally thought that meant was that you'd gain more UI as your guy got more badass. Like, you'd start out with a Tresspasser level UI and throughout the course of the game work your way up to something resembling modern Metal Gear Solid UI.

i thought it meant that the UI art would change to reflect your badassness

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A friend of mine gifted me a DOTA 2 invite for my birthday on Steam. It was like getting an ugly Christmas sweater, except it takes you six months to learn how to wear the sweater, and the sweater is also racist.

I left that thing unopened for a week before I worked up the nerve to tell him I'd rather not take it.

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