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Jake

Idle Thumbs 93: Babywall the Horse Armor

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Idle Thumbs 93:

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Babywall the Horse Armor

This week on Idle Thumbs Sean incessantly burns things, Chris gets lost in a world of bespoke puzzles, and Jake talks about a video game he's played. Plus we talk about all the stuff Gabe Newell's been talking about.

Games Discussed: SimCity, Spore, Little Inferno, Antichamber, The Unfinished Swan

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You know what would be awkward? If Gabe puts on a red coat and trousers during the Steam x-mas sale and put in on the steam storefront.

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Wat is game? How is gamawipej0owijopg b0uqtn.jreobni pa0s;4jt

Podcast, hooooo! :tup:

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Only a few minutes into this podcast, but I immediately knew what Sean was going for re: babywalling, and when he mentioned RoboToaster RollerCoaster Tycoon, I even said "yes!" aloud.

Once my brothers and I would get stuck on a scenario in that game, we'd go back to an early one where we had huge amounts of money and awesome rides, and we'd buy a single square of land. Then, we'd trap a single dude in that square. His feedback would always be "I want to go home," but he couldn't get to the exit. Sometimes we'd fill the square with dozens of costumed mascots to cheer the guy up. Sometimes we'd buy a little more land and make him able to reach a ride that would make him puke every time. We'd never put a janitor in to clean up the puke. Eventually we'd get bored and decide either to release the guy back into the park, or we'd lower the land, flood the square, and kill him, along with all the mascots.

Strangely, I think every time we killed people with roller coasters, it was accidental.

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Any link to a transcript of the Gabe Newell thingy? I'm still not convinced that he's a bright mind rather than some guy that got in at the right time and earned money to spend like liquid and by being able to do so keep failure under wraps by occasional success.

(Also, I'm intrigued by the description of Gabe's information filtering thing, I often do that too).

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The Caro books on LBJ are so great—as biography, history, and literature—and each stand alone so don't be worried about just biting off the first installment for now. They really are one of the few titanic literary enterprises out there right now, and I hope he makes it to the fifth volume!

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Any link to a transcript of the Gabe Newell thingy? I'm still not convinced that he's a bright mind rather than some guy that got in at the right time and earned money to spend like liquid and by being able to do so keep failure under wraps by occasional success.

(Also, I'm intrigued by the description of Gabe's information filtering thing, I often do that too).

As far as "I'm still not convinced that he's a bright mind," I don't know how you can think that, but of course you're welcome to your opinion. I think you can be in the right place at the right time to make money -- to do something right almost by accident -- but what you do after that is incredibly important, and Valve seems to do the correct "after that" thing time after time.

Many many companies have found themselves in the place Valve found themselves in with Half Life's success in 1998, very few of them are around today, and none of them have Valve's continued success. Everything you read about Valve, from enthusiast press to employees to business analysis says that Newell is at the heart of it. Valve has talented people and a great company setup, but Newell enables that as well. Thinking that sort of thing happens by itself when you have money, or is "just what smart and talented people do," would be intensely hubristic.*

I keep waiting for them to totally fuck it up but they clearly don't. I don't agree with every decision they make, and I definitely don't like all of their games, but to say that they got lucky or stumbled into success is, I think, not supported by the evidence history has provided over the last 15 years of their continued success.

* Obviously Valve is far bigger than Gabe Newell, and I'm not intending to say "every good idea comes from Gabe," but I think it's very clear that he puts a lot of thought into every decision within the company that he is responsible for, and some of those decisions are very directly responsible for enabling the creative talent and high quality output that Valve is known for.

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Maybe I should have elaborated more on that. I haven't heard much from Gabe himself directly, just people/press praising him with punchlines, or filtered interview. I'm rather reluctant to accept people's words, especially when I don't know them well. And to be honest, I don't even have a clue want Gabe does, or even what's Valve's goal is. But that's was also mentioned during the podcast, Valve simply tries whatever, so see what works (sort of). The exact details are obviously somewhat secret.

Anyway, Gabe isn't somebody that puts our articles in the channels that I monitor. That's why I asked for for a link, because I wanted to know more.

I'm currently 20 minutes in on that video, and I still have no idea who Gabe is, what he does. I do like that he's most talking about "we as a team" rather than "I" or "The company".

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Yeah, Jake, what's up with your eidetic mastery of Idle Thumbs episodes? The Confestabaloo was five years ago at this point, and you've made deeper callbacks than that.

that sounds weirdly critical. it is not

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Gabe Newell is the founder and CEO of Valve, and also worked at Microsoft as a producer on Windows through Win95 (which is where he made the fat stacks of cash to go start Valve). He basically sees all these crazy opportunities and then goes "Hey we should create a digital platform so we can produce and distribute our own game" and empowers people to make it happen.

"Hey what if there was a Steam Box?" Gabe says: There is a Steam Box, but it is actually an infinite number of boxes that happen to run Steam.

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Ok, so I'm now on 2/3rd of the movie (really have to get to bed). I still cannot conclude if Gabe is a bright mind. What I get from the video is that Gabe, as managing directory of Valve (right?), cultivated a culture of experimentation and running with it for a long time to see where is goes. This is quite in contrast with most companies, there's either no experimentation because of the uncertainty of "ROI", or experiments are killed of when they didn't reach a certain level of success at a given point. Valve obviously (or rather apparently) can get away with it because they've got plenty of money. Although, the reason they've got plenty of money could be because they were open and patient with experimentation. Given that Gabe is constantly positioning himself as a team player in this video makes it difficult to attribute anything to him, or rather anymore in valve. That, I think is a good thing he presents himself as open for debate, or even remarks. Obviously there is a chance that this is all a really well played manager role where he makes you give the delusion that you have something to say (or have influence). So he might be brilliant at herding cats. Anyway, the jury is still out. I'm a tech focused person, and as far as I can tell Gabe is ... erm ... well, not really tech focus, but surely not standard business focused. He's more a tinkerer, and facilitator thereof.

Anyway... I do like that Valve is somewhat moving in a direction to open up Steam. This has been one of my major complaints with Steam pretty since it started to become a digital distributor rather and a DRM solution. Looks like they finally realize the fundamental flaw of a walled garden. We'll (including Value) see how this experiment turns out.

ps, thanks for the link to the video. It's way more interesting than the usual PR filled content that circulates the gaming press.

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FYI the second session of that talk is

(seem like it's the tail end of that session). There is a lot of overlap, but some new stuff, including specifically referring to killing Greenlight (in the context of this newer API-driven approach).

I find his conception of the future of Steam to be incredibly exciting. Nobody has even caught up to Steam revolutionizing game distribution last time. This could lap everyone.

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FYI the second session of that talk is

(seem like it's the tail end of that session). There is a lot of overlap, but some new stuff, including specifically referring to killing Greenlight (in the context of this newer API-driven approach).

I find his conception of the future of Steam to be incredibly exciting. Nobody has even caught up to Steam revolutionizing game distribution last time. This could lap everyone.

Great, thanks! Seems to line up with the discussion we had on the cast.

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I probably read The Phantom Tollbooth sixty times. Hearing it mentioned on the cast dropped me into a such a nostalgia well that I completely missed how it has anything to do with Antichamber.

Anyway I have a question: Was Vanaman consulted during post-production, or was making "babywall" one word a unilateral decision?

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FYI the second session of that talk is

(seem like it's the tail end of that session). There is a lot of overlap, but some new stuff, including specifically referring to killing Greenlight (in the context of this newer API-driven approach).

I find his conception of the future of Steam to be incredibly exciting. Nobody has even caught up to Steam revolutionizing game distribution last time. This could lap everyone.

It's cool to see Gabe geek out about Navi and Dota for a bit in there -- you can really tell he loves working on this stuff.

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I have three comments.

As I do every week, I listened to this episode on my nightly dog walk. I haven't listened to Gabe Newell's talk at LBJ so I wasn't sure what Sean was talking about at first. Something about Greenlight and API and Sean having to take a walk. Jake seemed to share my confusion. Then all at once everything clicked, and Jake and I simultaneously understood the brilliance of Gabe's incredible Greenlight plans. And once that idea sunk in, I had to take a walk. Fortunately I already was and I walked the rest of the way late at night in a quiet neighborhood laughing out loud like a madman at jokes about booty clappers and babywalls.

I agree with Sean with the idea that there aren't really fundamentally likable character designs or anything, but I still agree with Chris with his point that, with the cultural zeitgeist we already have in the developed/western/whatever world, if you were to introduce the characters Rayman and Mario to the world at the same time Mario would still just be a more appealing character because that's the sort of thing we like.

As a sort of subpoint, it seems to me the theories don't necessarily contradict. It makes sense to me to have common fundamental rules as well as cultural bias. It's hard to argue that as a humans and as an organisms with some form of nervous system, people are inherently inclined to avoid pain, but at the same time, it's impossible to deny that there are still masochists and ascetics who actively seek out pain.

Sean is really bad at describing things. But I totally empathize with him for that because I am too, and like Sean, all my friends spend more time making fun of me for being bad at telling the story than they do actually letting me get out my thoughts. Also like Sean, I have terrible friends. Unlike Sean, my friends don't look like Big Bird and sound like Steven Spielberg.

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I probably read The Phantom Tollbooth sixty times. Hearing it mentioned on the cast dropped me into a such a nostalgia well that I completely missed how it has anything to do with Antichamber.

I ended up not really going into it much, because Jake and Sean had no frame of reference.

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Thanks for reading my mail. It gave me a buzz like getting a letter printed in N64 Mag years ago!

Rayman feels like something I might have doodled in my school textbook. There's an interesting idea there, but he's charmless and his rad 90s parting winds me up. Rare have put googly-eyes on toilets and created characters with more charisma. Jake commented about babies being considered universally cute, and perhaps if Rayman was a miniature, big-eyed, limbless puppy he would appeal. I loved Sonic when he started out with a chubby little body and huge eyes. Then he grew gangly, became a bit of a dick and started hanging out with more of my doodle rejects.

I find it incredible that Nintendo manage to tie together all the disparate elements of the Mushroom Kingdom into a charming and coherent whole, especially when Miyamoto constantly reminds us that story and character play second fiddle to mechanics in his games. Most of these characters evolved from the function they were required to perform in-game, exploiting the player's skill set. Let's face it, a goomba is a turd with a face and feet. Toad has a football on his head. Birdo is...well, who knows. On paper, these characters have less potential than the limbless Rayman, and yet they work and, in many cases, have become part of the iconography of video games.

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Ok, so I'm now on 2/3rd of the movie (really have to get to bed). I still cannot conclude if Gabe is a bright mind. What I get from the video is that Gabe, as managing directory of Valve (right?), cultivated a culture of experimentation and running with it for a long time to see where is goes. This is quite in contrast with most companies, there's either no experimentation because of the uncertainty of "ROI", or experiments are killed of when they didn't reach a certain level of success at a given point. Valve obviously (or rather apparently) can get away with it because they've got plenty of money. Although, the reason they've got plenty of money could be because they were open and patient with experimentation. Given that Gabe is constantly positioning himself as a team player in this video makes it difficult to attribute anything to him, or rather anymore in valve. That, I think is a good thing he presents himself as open for debate, or even remarks. Obviously there is a chance that this is all a really well played manager role where he makes you give the delusion that you have something to say (or have influence). So he might be brilliant at herding cats. Anyway, the jury is still out. I'm a tech focused person, and as far as I can tell Gabe is ... erm ... well, not really tech focus, but surely not standard business focused. He's more a tinkerer, and facilitator thereof.

Anyway... I do like that Valve is somewhat moving in a direction to open up Steam. This has been one of my major complaints with Steam pretty since it started to become a digital distributor rather and a DRM solution. Looks like they finally realize the fundamental flaw of a walled garden. We'll (including Value) see how this experiment turns out.

ps, thanks for the link to the video. It's way more interesting than the usual PR filled content that circulates the gaming press.

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.

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1. Classic Babywall -- Commodore 64 "Little Computer People" -- refusing to feed the little computer person for days, and when he turns green and gets into bed because he's starving...buy him some dog food. Then pester him to play anagrams with you.

2. I partially agree with Famous about whether or not characters can be intrinsically appealing. I don't think there is necessarily some quality in Mario that would guarantee his heroic status in any era. I couldn't tell if Sean was saying that there is no such thing as an inherently appealing ANYTHING, or if he was just referring to characters. I have to believe it was just characters, because he does apparently think that "marketing" at least is inherently appealing? =P Anyhow, it's probably not fair to fully dissect a passing podcast remark...bah, anthropology, etc... (p.s. I also have had an undefinable resistance to ever playing a Rayman game...I think I rented one from Drug Mart one time in the distant past).

3. First-person puzzle games with stark graffix always seem like the kind of thing I would like, but for some strange reason I never actually end up playing any of them. The one about the paint, also this Antichamber, and a few other ones from the past...it seems that I'm the epitome of "casual" for that particular genre and the only thing I can play is Portal. The rest of them I just read about while tapping my chin with a thoughtful finger.

4. There is a lot of enthusiasm / loathing for the idea of "games as platforms" but while listening to this podcast I had the strange realization that I just simply don't encounter those games in the wild. None of the games I play fit the mold, or at least not the way I play them...I think I must be instinctively avoiding them. I like feelings of completion, and being able to lean back and say "yes, it is over" and imagine that at some point in development, the developer did the same thing. =P

5. And most importantly: yesterday I put this cast on my mp3 player to listen to on the drive back from work...then I stopped at a Wendy's 10 minutes down the road (to buy a tea that was too big for my cupholder and spilled everywhere...in the last 13 years medium-sized teas have actually outgrown the capacity of a 2000 Focus Sedan's cup-holding receptacles! >_<) and when I started driving again I was so distracted by laughing at babywalls that I accidentally drove the wrong way and didn't realize it until I was back at work again. So I was 20 minutes late and covered in tea when I got home, but it was a good podcast so I didn't mind overmuch.

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Where was the post from the gentleman talking about the same team being on SC4, Spore, and the new Sim City? I thought I heard it was in last cast's thread but I didn't find it there.

So I was 20 minutes late and covered in tea when I got home, but it was a good podcast so I didn't mind overmuch.

www.coveredintea.com/wizard

I have to say, I don't dislike the very introspective and critical podcasts, but I sure did laugh a lot at this one and in retrospect that was a fun change from Far Cry 3.

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