Idle Thumbs 97: The Dash Rendar Synergy

[feelthedarkness]

This is something that I've had more and more of an issue with lately. It's really true the labels hipster/pretentious have become these catch-all-terms for describing something that a person doesn't like, to the point where both those words have become extremely devalued and meaningless. It has become a really lazy way for people to criticize something, without having to come up with an actually critique beyond: 'I don't like that, so it's bad' or 'I don't like the type of people who like that, so it's also bad.'

 

I almost want to take it a step further and say it becomes a shorthand for "you're dumb for trying something." The real artistic value of something can be hard to see without enough time or distance. To keep it with this episode, think about encountering David Lynch's stilted dialog today for the first time, without the weight of his success. Would it read as genius?

 

Also, board games! One of my current favorites is LORDS OF WATERDEEP. It's a worker placement game with a bit of D&D quest flavor. It kind of plays like Peurto Rico, where players have 2 Lords they can assign to a job (building) per round (3 Lords in later rounds). Players can purchase the buildings, and receive rent/bonuses when other players use them. It comes with more buildings than can be placed in 1 game, so the experience can be pretty different each time. 

 

Players recruit units to complete quests for VPs, gold, enduring skills/bonuses. Each player gets assigned a Lord that has victory conditions to meet, like "own the most buildings" or "receive 2 extra VPs per Piety quest completed"

 

We've had a lot of success with grizzled old dice kings, and novice players alike.

[Gormongous]

I dunno, there's tons of media out there that plays fast and loose with historical facts (pretty much all of it). I think it probably is just a combination of what Tycho and Chris said...nerd writing plus easy justification for gameplay mechanics. Gah I just remembered those stupid feathers in that game. It's like Max Payne and his golden guns. A crazed OCD assassin roaming the landscape with a satchel stuffed to the brim with feathers he's found on rooftops.

 

Yeah, but "fast and loose with historical facts" is a lot more fraught when you're dealing with the crusades, which many Muslim public figures claim is currently ongoing thanks to the US and Israeli presence in the Middle East. I'm not saying it's the only reason, but I'm sure the political situation helped recommend the crazy sci-fi veneer.

 

I almost want to take it a step further and say it becomes a shorthand for "you're dumb for trying something." The real artistic value of something can be hard to see without enough time or distance. To keep it with this episode, think about encountering David Lynch's stilted dialog today for the first time, without the weight of his success. Would it read as genius?

 

Yeah, that's why my initial comment, to which Argobot responded, was carefully phrased as "ambitious in a way I don't respect". Calling something "pretentious" tends to have a funny way of making it the artist's fault that it didn't work for you. I mean, it blows my mind that people still call Neon Genesis Evangelion pretentious to this day. It was an incredible financial success, widely imitated in multiple mediums, and still talked about well over a decade after its release. What exactly is it pretending to, again?

[Chris]

I thought so too, but then again Ubisoft is willing to publish (granted, not develop) the Anno and Settlers franchises without a framing device. I wonder if it also has something to do with the potential for backlash against revisionist historical narratives, even as tongue-in-cheek as Ubi's wacky animus shit. If you're telling a sci-fi story about a historical event, you're adding one more layer of subjectivity to discourage criticism over your portrayal of crusaders or slavery or whatever.

I guess I mean the Assassin's Creed dev team specifically. I think the aesthetic sensibilities of a team that's making a game where you're a badass pseudo-secret assassin who performs sick kills with hidden arm blades are different than the aesthetic sensibilities of a team aiming to make a relatively slow-paced pulled-out simulation-driven city builder.

[SecretAsianMan]

My random thoughts that have no merit or bearing on anything.

 

Shadows of the Empire was the first and only Star Wars book I've ever read.  It almost got me to start reading other ones, but I never got around to it.

 

I had one of those giant clear plastic turbo controllers for the N64 when I was a kid and Shadows was the only game I ever used it on.  Because the blaster didn't have an ammo count and instead just did a percent of damage based on the last time you fired it, I basically had a constant stream of lasers coming out of my gun.  They were really weak, but it shot so many so fast that I ended up destroying everything in seconds.  Also I had no idea there was an ending in which Dash survives.  That bums me out.

 

The video game term that always sticks out in my mind as weird is "spawn".  In most games, spawn usually means a character just pops out of thin air or refers to the place that happens.  When I think of it in the biological sense, I usually envision gross slimy messes.  So I sympathize with Sean that game words are disgusting.

 

There was something else but I'm sick and too tired to try and remember it.

[Jason Bakker]

I've always assumed it's just that a bunch of video game developer nerds don't think straight historical fiction is rad enough.

 

I don't think the Assassin's Creed games would have existed without some portion of the team being very into history. Whether the impetus to add the future layer came from within the team or external we'll probably never know. When you're dealing with millions of dollars spent in development and marketing, you can see people choosing to hedge their bets. Which is unfortunate - the part of AC that's historical is the most interesting to me as well, and the futuristic elements really detract from it.

 

On the board game front, Lords of Waterdeep is great. Another shorter form game that has the "easy to learn and difficult to master" thing sorted is Citadels. It's a hidden role card game where the roles change every round. It's expertly balanced, and full of bluffs and second guesses. Definitely recommended to people who are interested in dipping their toes into the board gaming world.

[Chris]

I don't think the Assassin's Creed games would have existed without some portion of the team being very into history. Whether the impetus to add the future layer came from within the team or external we'll probably never know. When you're dealing with millions of dollars spent in development and marketing, you can see people choosing to hedge their bets. Which is unfortunate - the part of AC that's historical is the most interesting to me as well, and the futuristic elements really detract from it.

Oh yeah, no doubt. There are clearly a lot of people there who really love digging into the era and creating something really visually evocative of it.

But on the narrative side, I don't see that being as much the case. It doesn't really come close to living up to visual side of things, either from a historical point of view or just in terms of general quality. In general it seems like people trying to make An Impressive Narrative Driven-Franchise are almost always unwilling to restrain themselves from putting in endless ridiculous lore and crazy twists.

 

On the board game front, Lords of Waterdeep is great. Another shorter form game that has the "easy to learn and difficult to master" thing sorted is Citadels. It's a hidden role card game where the roles change every round. It's expertly balanced, and full of bluffs and second guesses. Definitely recommended to people who are interested in dipping their toes into the board gaming world.

Agreed, really fun game.

[HTRM Repairman]

Twilight Imperium is a great, truly epic game. So what if it takes 6-10 hours, it's worth it. Also, when whoever that was said "win conditions", he really meant "how to score a VP." There are a lot of different ways to score VPs, and you need 9-10 to win. Everyone has the same chance to score any particular VP condition.

 

As far as the Twilight Imperium not-quite-recommendation, I'm going to make my obligatory pitch for Eclipse, a game I very much enjoy, and one that should be receiving an iOS port sometime soon. It is also a 4X space board game with multiple ways to earn VP, but the rules are much more elegant than TI.

 

Eclipse and TI are not comparable, as far as I'm concerned. Eclipse is an economic game with a space theme, and Twilight Imperium is a grand, space empire building game.

[Codicier]

As far as the Twilight Imperium not-quite-recommendation, I'm going to make my obligatory pitch for Eclipse, a game I very much enjoy, and one that should be receiving an iOS port sometime soon. It is also a 4X space board game with multiple ways to earn VP, but the rules are much more elegant than TI (TI is a pretty gnarly combination of Axis & Allies, and Puerto Rico).

 

I feel even eclipse is may be a bit much for a group of people un-familiar with board games, Cosmic Encounter would be my go to game for people who want a good starter strategic space game.

One of the smartest choices in the games design it is that every player is involved in every turn, there's no sitting round waiting for your turn to do something. It has quite simple base mechanics, which are modified by a wide selection of alien race cards each of which has a very distinctive personality. It's a game someone can learn quickly but still have a different experience each time they play.

 

Think malkav11's recommendation for Pandemic is a good one for a general starter game, but for someone wanting to scratch that sci-fi itch stick with cosmic encounter.

 

I also like Pandemic a lot, but I agree that it is on the simpler side of things.

I am a big fan of Space Alert, which was a board game that inspired FTL, and has vaguely similar mechanics. Each player controls a space cadet dude, and you collectively have to deal with a variety of threats to your spaceship. There are two things that distinguish the game from the rest of the cooperative board gaming crowd. 1. You have these cards that allow you to either move to another room, or to activate a certain type of control (firing a weapon, rebuffering shields, transferring energy somewhere, etc.). So that becomes this sort of puzzle that you need to solve, moving and activating things in the right order. 2. The game is in real time. It comes with this CD that you play, and the CD is just the voice of the ship computer letting you know a threat has arrived (so you then draw from the threat card deck), or that the communication channel has gone offline (so players aren't allowed to speak when this happens), and stuff like that. The game has a hard limit of 10 minutes of play. The real time mechanic does an excellent job of solving two problems: it eliminates analysis paralysis from stretching out your board game session into an ungodly long time, and it also eliminates the problem that is rampant in a lot of cooperative games where one person just sort of takes charge of how to play the game, and everyone else just sort of passively agrees. The real time mechanic also makes things considerably more difficult. In your haste to put cards down before you run out of time, it is entirely possible you put a card down in the wrong order, or put down your card so that you are moving instead of activating something or vice versa. A single misstep can lay waste to all your planning. Some people will find that incredibly frustrating, but other people will find it hilarious. So its not a game for everyone, but for people that are amused by things going horribly wrong the game is great fun.

 

I think there's probably far more Space Alert in Space Team than there is in FTL. Which given how much fun the guys had with it back on episode 87 could mean it might not be a bad recommendation for Chris, Jake & Sean.

 

I thought so too, but then again Ubisoft is willing to publish (granted, not develop) the Anno and Settlers franchises without a framing device. I wonder if it also has something to do with the potential for backlash against revisionist historical narratives, even as tongue-in-cheek as Ubi's wacky animus shit. If you're telling a sci-fi story about a historical event, you're adding one more layer of subjectivity to discourage criticism over your portrayal of crusaders or slavery or whatever.

 

I think that depends if the "Prince of Persia: Assassins Video which has been lurking on the net for a while now ( & I'm linking bellow) is a fake or not

 

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqma6i_prince-of-persia-assassins-assassin-s-creed-prototype-128-bits-hd_video games#.UTqW9hyePTo

 

If what I understand to be true is true AC basically evolved out of a desire to do a more grounded PoP game, that's why the wacky animus stuff is there it basically just replaced the Prince's Sands of Time powers. (I'm sure if they could have contrived a way to put actual rewinding in they would have).

 

In short AC started life as a fantasy story, and in many ways it remained one.

Well at least it did if like me you agree with Margaret Atwood on all Sci-fi being basically either a type of speculative fiction (anything that could conceivably happen with what we know about the world) or a type of fantasy (anything where it basically has to invent special new rules about the way the universe works).

[Jason Bakker]

But on the narrative side, I don't see that being as much the case. It doesn't really come close to living up to visual side of things, either from a historical point of view or just in terms of general quality. In general it seems like people trying to make An Impressive Narrative Driven-Franchise are almost always unwilling to restrain themselves from putting in endless ridiculous lore and crazy twists.

Definitely agree with you there. Over the past couple of years in particular Ubisoft have really established themselves as a leader in the field of overwrought storylines filled with extraneous detail. The Assassins Creed stories (at least the ones I've experienced) seem to have been written by a conspiracy nut.

[Tiemachine]

The picture of Dash Rendar on wookiepedia is pretty great.

 

Pecan shoulder pads.

[Max Ernst]

I'm just going to chime in here and say that Kentucky Route Zero is my favourite game so far this year. I think someone might have mentioned it in the podcast, but you could take a screenshot anywhere in that game at random, and you would, without exception, have a beautifully framed illustration. I disagree that the story writing is pretentious, because I think if you really try to connect the dots in that game, the vague, affected dialogue of the character's totally makes sense. It is a game that refuses to spell things out for you, with slippery characters that resist interpretation.  Unlike The Walking Dead, Heavy Rain, etc, the plot doesn't really branch. You simply choose how you are feeling, and what kind of person you were prior to the events of the game. It uses dialogue choices to create back-story in such a neat way, it creates a weird dynamic where you are keen to find new dialogue choices and explore the world so you can further craft your character's past.

 

Also:

keep your lamp off in the minecart sequence. If you get a chance to be in darkness, do it.

 

Final note, 'pretentious' is word that is thrown around so hastily, without any real consideration of its meaning, that it lacks any sort of descriptive power in the larger discussion of games. 

[Marcelloz]

The talk about exchange rates reminded me of a conversation I had with an Argentinian friend about the same thing. Apparently as far as cost of living, AR$1 roughly equals US$1, as in if you buy a hot dog off from a street vendor you'll spend about the same amount of pesos as dollars. However, in terms of exchange, back when we spoke, it was about three pesos to the dollar. Argentina has jack shit for national industry, so most manufactured goods have to be imported at ridiculous cost. My friend's boss wanted a custom self-inking rubber stamp, and ended up importing one from Germany, which after exchange and shipping cost AR$80. That shit's crazy.

The plus side to Buenos Aires is that if you're a foreigner with a moderate amount of spending money you can take it really far.

Here in Europe there was a BIG discussion on the Steam forums about the $1 = €1 price-rate: A game on Steam cost most of the time the same in Euro's as in Dollars. Most people in Europe are therefore waiting for games to go on sale before buying them. The prices in the UK however are comparable with those in the US so the mainland of Europe is like the chicken with the golden eggs for distributors. Some people have actually build websites to show the price differences, eg http://www.steamprices.com/eu

 

at least STALKER is 120% cheaper here in Europe ;-)

[Max Ernst]

Just to give you an idea of the horseshit I have to put up with as an Australian: GTA V- pre-order for $108.00.

 

You can get it at a better price if you look around, but that high price point very much exists.

[darthbator]

This is something that I've had more and more of an issue with lately. It's really true the labels hipster/pretentious have become these catch-all-terms for describing something that a person doesn't like, to the point where both those words have become extremely devalued and meaningless. It has become a really lazy way for people to criticize something, without having to come up with an actually critique beyond: 'I don't like that, so it's bad' or 'I don't like the type of people who like that, so it's also bad...

Pretentious as "aiming for the sound and feel of something from higher art or culture for its own sake or for the sound of it, without the meaning or maybe even raw talent to back it up" is what I think people mean when using pretentious that way, not "I don't like it." I think they're trying to say "your attempt to elevate your work tonally came off as affectation, not as genuine to me," and are shorthanding it in a way that doesn't always work. Honestly, I think people mean something close to that more often than not when they use the word "pretentious" as a pejorative, and that is a far more specific criticism than "I don't like this," so dismissing it out of hand as people not having anything to say seems... too dismissive.

I think that's definitely how it is used sometimes. However, the tone in which it is said, especially on internet forums, does tend to itself be extremely dismissive and not conducive to legitimate discussion, as Argobot says.

I almost want to take it a step further and say it becomes a shorthand for "you're dumb for trying something"...

 

Actually lots of times when I encounter people (and when I myself say) "oh that's just pretentious/snooty" what I'm actually saying is that I don't agree with it's point of view or value judgements. IMO it's hard for something to get called pretentious unless it's at least attempting to espouse some kind of point of view. Not accounting for times when someone is just swinging at ideas outside of their creative league I think most things being labeled as pretentious just present things in a way the labeler doesn't agree with. 

[Chris]

Actually lots of times when I encounter people (and when I myself say) "oh that's just pretentious/snooty" what I'm actually saying is that I don't agree with it's point of view or value judgements. IMO it's hard for something to get called pretentious unless it's at least attempting to espouse some kind of point of view. Not accounting for times when someone is just swinging at ideas outside of their creative league I think most things being labeled as pretentious just present things in a way the labeler doesn't agree with.

I think this is frequently the case. I've had that instinct myself sometimes and I have to consciously bat it away.

[Badfinger]

This KILLS me because I knew it was D'Brickashaw -- my fantasy football team was called D'Brickashaw's Rickshaws this year and I simply got confused and befuddled by the majesty that ist he name "Ndamukong." (Which, if I'm not mistaken, means "House of Spears." Holy shit.)

That is an excellent fantasy football team name. Ndamukong is absolutely a name completely ensconced in majesty, you are correct.

[tegan]

[chummer]

Ha!

[Roswell47]

That's like the sci-fi version of Sherlock Holmes and ejaculation.

[Argobot]

I have to know which book that's from.

[malkav11]

I feel even eclipse is may be a bit much for a group of people un-familiar with board games, Cosmic Encounter would be my go to game for people who want a good starter strategic space game.

One of the smartest choices in the games design it is that every player is involved in every turn, there's no sitting round waiting for your turn to do something. It has quite simple base mechanics, which are modified by a wide selection of alien race cards each of which has a very distinctive personality. It's a game someone can learn quickly but still have a different experience each time they play.

 

Think malkav11's recommendation for Pandemic is a good one for a general starter game, but for someone wanting to scratch that sci-fi itch stick with cosmic encounter.

 

I was definitely not recommending Pandemic as a starter for a complete boardgame novice, but rather as one of a couple of fairly lightweight games that would probably be decent ways to ease into specifically cooperative boardgaming. I'm not really a fan of it -or- Forbidden Island because they're too simple for me personally, but I understand that not everyone's willing to just jump into the deep end like I prefer to do. I don't even know what I'd recommend as an introduction to hobbyist boardgaming. Games that are most suitable for that tend to be stuff that doesn't work for me.

 

Incidentally, for people who like a meatier coop experience, besides Ghost Stories and Yggdrasil (both available on iOS, incidentally), I would also highly, highly recommend Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's a cooperative superhero card game, with 3-5 superheroes (each represented by their own unique deck of cards) facing off against a single powerful supervillain (w/ associated deck) in one of several different hazardous environments (also decks). The basic rules are very straightforward and easy to learn (I haven't even touched the rulebook since the second game except to check how difficult villains are considered to be), but the various decks are all unique and highly thematic, with a dizzying array of possible combinations and interactions. As of now there's a base set, three expansions, and a few addon decks that were stretch goals on Kickstarter projects for the expansions but can be purchased separately now, for a total of 18 heroes, 18 villains, and 10 environments. It's really quite brilliant.

[TychoCelchuuu]

I have to know which book that's from.

Tales from the New Republic. And for future reference, when Googling "the sultry purr of smooth jizz," enclose the phrase in quotes. If you don't... well, porn.

[HTRM Repairman]

Tales from the New Republic. And for future reference, when Googling "the sultry purr of smooth jizz," enclose the phrase in quotes. If you don't... well, porn.

 

Reminds me of the time my wife tried going to the Dick's Sporting Goods website, and a minute later looks over to me and says, "FYI, dicks.com is not the right address."

 

Edit - Hmm, apparently they have since acquired said domain.

[TychoCelchuuu]

Just make sure you don't go to dickssportingwood.com.

(I have not tried that url)

[Urthman]

But on the narrative side, I don't see that being as much the case. It doesn't really come close to living up to visual side of things, either from a historical point of view or just in terms of general quality.

 

Of course AC is hardly the only series where the visuals are a couple orders of magnitude more thoughtful and higher quality than the narrative.  That's pretty much an industry-wide issue.

 

Seems like most people have a pretty good idea whether they're any any good at creating artwork, but crap writers have no clue how bad their writing is.  Pretty much everyone thinks they can write a rad video game story with snappy dialogue.