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Jake

Idle Thumbs 93: Babywall the Horse Armor

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I watched the Gabe Newell talk last night right before I went to bed, and I found the whole thing incredibly interesting; it's always refreshing when someone can intelligently explain their business model/philosophy with resorting to canned corporate speak (saying the word 'utilize' a lot). My only complaint is because I watched the video right before I went to sleep, I ended up having a dream about Gabe Newell, where he gave the exact same talk except the audience was just me. So, thanks for that Thumbs.

Also, my mind was completely blown by Bo the Dog's name being the same as Barack's initials; I somehow managed to never make that really obvious connection. But in case you were wondering, the dog's name is a reference to the singer Bo Diddley, not Barack Obama.

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Also, my mind was completely blown by Bo the Dog's name being the same as Barack's initials; I somehow managed to never make that really obvious connection. But in case you were wondering, the dog's name is a reference to the singer Bo Diddley, not Barack Obama.

Oh god I knew about it because shitty radio personalities that air around here kept making comments along the lines of "that's what you get when you put an uppity black in the White House! He gets so big-headed he just starts naming things after himself!"

Political radio is gross.

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Oh god I knew about it because shitty radio personalities that air around here kept making comments along the lines of "that's what you get when you put an uppity black in the White House! He gets so big-headed he just starts naming things after himself!"

Political radio is gross.

TALK radio is gross, with very few exceptions.

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If you are interested in hearing Gabe talk you'll also want to consider to the two issues of the Nerdist podcast that he was on. I haven't watched the videos yet but I imagine there'll be a fair amount of overlap. Still, that's more conversational so you can probably get a better idea of what he's like in interaction.

The nerdist stuff is a bit lighter, being that it's also a comedy podcast. Plus I'm pretty sure that gabe doesn't say something about crafting leather out of foreskin at the school talk. Still the most unexpected thing I heard on that.

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On fundamental appeal:

I had an English professor who loved to make the argument that art isn't as subjective as people tend to believe, that it tends to have a basic appeal that transcends language and culture, even if language and culture definitely tilt the reader/listener/viewer experience. In other words, art works because it's designed to communicate to people and people are more alike than not-alike. Which means there are fundamentals, there are relatively 'right' readings and 'less-right' readings of a text/show/game/piece.

Which is why you can't just replace art criticism with anthropology, even if anthropology has some important stuff to say about art.

This view also kinda wipes out the (IMO very cynical) idea that popular things are 'just marketing'. I'm willing to give Rowling (for instance) some credit and say 'you made a thing with fundamental appeal, and that made someone willing to spend marketing dollars getting it out to the public' rather than 'marketers shoved Harry Potter down our throats, we had no choice in the matter'.

Great show!

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Gave just Gabe this talk 2 hours ago. Retreading a lot of similar ground, but it's nice to hear him say it rather than reading headlines and sound bites.

I can't wait to have my Mington page on the idle thumbs steam store. You know you want it.

Correct me if I'm wrong but did he say, in the future, for example, i'd be able to sell the characters I've unlocked on sonic racer. I'd like that.

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It's not really scientifically rigorous, but I do like Robert Pirsig's conclusion, as Phaedrus, that quality in art is a thing that only exists when the observer and the object meet, that quality as a concept is too subjective to exist without someone to be able to judge it, but it can't exist just in someone's head without being the property of something else.

Gave just gave

Gabe just gave

Gave just gabe

Gabe just gabe

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You guys were asking whether Mario is more fundamentally appealing or if the marketing and branding created that fundamental appeal in the first place.

But the question isn't whether Mario is more fundamentally appealing to human nature in general - to any human culture - but whether Mario or Rayman is more appealing to our particular culture. Even if you removed all the marketing dollars from Mario... American or Japanese culture has preferences and tastes and quirks and so will have preferences for certain things over another. Removing the marketing doesn't zero out the existing culture.

It's really a question of whether Mario or Rayman is more 'fundamentally' appealing to American or Japanese culture in the 80s and 90s, or whatever. It's fairly concrete, and not the same question you answer by traveling to a far flung tribe and showing them pictures of Mario and Raymen.

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Yeah, I think "fundamentally" is a bit of a loaded term. It sounded to me like the reader was really just trying to say he had a really strong gut reaction, not necessarily that there's something inherent in his biology that makes him hate Rayman. It's not necessarily wrong to call that fundamental, since it really is based on a very deep-set emotion. It's just not very useful to base your anthropological theory on the fundamental principle that people hate weird armless bean cartoons.

Edit: Ergh, I just started watching that video Mington posted, and it opened up with a Sim City ad, which I watched because it made me so excited, until I realized that the ad was suggesting that the Digital Deluxe edition would make your land values higher? That's... Eh, it's not bad necessarily, but it does seem a little more egregious than just adding additional gameplay features. Maybe it's just me, but there seems like a there's a line between paying for an even more advanced and interesting gameplay experience, and paying to just do better at the game. Maybe not. Maybe it just means there's a higher skill cap, and the way the system works, you can potentially make an even better city just by having more, deeper options. But that one tiny tagline kind of bugged me.

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I'm not so sure it has anything to do with character design though. I think Mario's bigger public appeal is because the Mario games have simply been better games and Nintendo has never allowed the character to disappear from the public eye. The assumption that marketing and branding created appeal seems kind of like putting the horse before the cart?

And thinking about it, I am sure character design does have something to do with it. I.e. I changed my mind.

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Either you've got your metaphor backwards or you're saying that assumption is correct?

I dunno if this theory is going to go anywhere, but I think it might be relevant that Rayman was very much born out of a very specific illustration style that was popular in 1995 but hasn't exactly aged well. As I type this I can think of counterexamples*, but I feel like Mario was born out of an almost style-free format (at least, the stylistic options are very much computationally finite), and evolved over years to suit, but Rayman still has those weird googly eyes, a neckerchief, and stupid yellow skating shoes.

*Of course, Mickey Mouse comes to mind, who somehow managed to keep those bizarre shorts with giant buttons on them and stick around as an cultural icon to this day. For what it's worth, he's gone through some pretty major changes since 1928.

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Either you've got your metaphor backwards or you're saying that assumption is correct?

To elaborate on that a little: To say that Mario has appeal because of marketing, feels like putting the cart before the horse, because that appeal was already there by the fact that they were good games. Marketing simply made a larger audience aware that these games exist. Does that make more sense?

Mario as a character is pretty much a blank slate to me and any feelings I associate with the character are because I had a ton of fun playing the games. Thinking about it, does Rayman have a more defined personality than Mario? Because I can also imagine that the more specific a personality of a character, the more likely it is you're gonna lose appeal just by the sheer fact that people don't like his personality? Thinking out loud.

Possibly it's a factor of all these things, plus the thing you mentioned about how his design came about. I don't know!

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I never got into Rayman, I'm one of those people that can't accept the fact he has no arms or legs. The new games look beautiful, but I think the character looks dumb, but I'd accept him if he had arms and legs; as it stands as a weird Ray-man, it's super unappealing and I won't play them.

Love those rabbids though; they have arms.

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To elaborate on that a little: To say that Mario has appeal because of marketing, feels like putting the horse in front of the cart, because that appeal was already there by the fact that they were good games. Marketing simply made a larger audience aware that these games exist. Does that make more sense?

No I was just saying that the expression is putting the cart before the horse, which means to have the order confused, since it's very rarely useful to have your horse behind the cart. Sorry if that correction wasn't clear.

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Oh shit, I didn't even notice that. Oops! I plea the "It's not my first language" defense. :grin:

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I didn't buy Chris and Jake's argument about Mario vs. Rayman in terms of appeal. First of all, Jake's take of "where are his arms" doesn't mean "I don't like this character because he has no arms." Second, Mario - as a game - was in at the ground floor of video games becoming an industry whereas Rayman was not. Third, the world itself surrounding Mario was nonsensical.

Mario represents video games in a big way, and he is the icon of his series as well - crazy platformy world with turtle enemies and blocks you bash with his head.

Generally I think there's a confusion between "what people personally find more intriguing as a character design" and "which of these two characters permeates society." Mario wins the latter hands down, it's not a fair fight. I'm with Sean 100% - if Rayman and Mario had their initial games launched on the exact same day it would have been a flip of the coin to determine which would have won out for recognition or more popular design.

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So I have a hypothesis regarding Rayman's lack of appeal.

What if what we're seeing here is a microcosm of the Uncanny Valley, where a character can be either an icon or realistic, but if you get too close to the middle it becomes unnatural. Going back to even before Mario, the only characters rendered in early, low-fidelity game graphics that actually survived tend to be the ones that were either suitably realistic or can be boiled down to an emblematic shape. Compare the enduring popularity of the fairly realistic (for his time and medium) Mario and barely-anthropomorphized Pac-Man or Space Invader with, say, the largely forgotten weird not-quite-anything design of Q-Bert. I think Rayman falls into that same unnatural middle ground.

Also, I notice that I have a deep-seated innate hatred for video game characters whose designs have unusually elongated muzzles. This includes Rayman, Yoshi, and the Rare redesign of Donkey Kong.

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Also, I notice that I have a deep-seated innate hatred for video game characters whose designs have unusually elongated muzzles. This includes Rayman, Yoshi, and the Rare redesign of Donkey Kong.

This actually isn't terribly uncommon. Back in college I conducted a study on "Lookism", which is loosely defined as preferential treatment of people based on their appearance. That study, though limited in scope, was based on one where researchers found that exaggerated features on something tended to make people prefer it less to similar objects without those features. I can't seem to find the original article my study was based off of at the moment, but what was interesting about it was that this was true of everything from coffee makers to pets to people.

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Even though I grew up with Mario, or perhaps because I did, I find Mario the character to be incredibly banal and boring. A plumber with a mustache. The Rayman character I came to later in life through Legends on the PC and I love the game and the character so much more than Mario the character or the game.

I really think our perception of the quality of the game they are in colors our views of how good the characters are.

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This actually isn't terribly uncommon. Back in college I conducted a study on "Lookism", which is loosely defined as preferential treatment of people based on their appearance. That study, though limited in scope, was based on one where researchers found that exaggerated features on something tended to make people prefer it less to similar objects without those features. I can't seem to find the original article my study was based off of at the moment, but what was interesting about it was that this was true of everything from coffee makers to pets to people.

That's actually pretty interesting and goes a long way to explaining why someone might prefer Mario to Rayman. More so than his lack of limbs, I think.

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I did the exact same thing as Christopher Wallace in the old SimCity and built a long road with a stadium at the end because of "stadiums are things that are far away" kid logic. I'd never even remembered or considered that until now.

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Even though I grew up with Mario, or perhaps because I did, I find Mario the character to be incredibly banal and boring. A plumber with a mustache. The Rayman character I came to later in life through Legends on the PC and I love the game and the character so much more than Mario the character or the game.

I really think our perception of the quality of the game they are in colors our views of how good the characters are.

See, I specifically like that Mario as a character is somehow so mundane. I think it's fascinating/hilarious that in a world filled with space marines, world adventurers, and superheroes; the most enduring icon of video games as a whole has been an overweight guy with a blue-collar job and a mustache.

I don't think it's coincidence that Mario, who has stayed a fundamentally boring character, has had more enduring popularity than rival Sonic the Hedgehog, who aggressively adapted to try to be as cool as possible whatever era he was in.

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