Idle Thumbs 102: Standing on the Shoulders of Babies

[Sno]

Did you choose to go because it was easy?

He chose to go because it was hard.

[Sententia]

As I watch subsequent Idle Thumbs twitch.tv videos Chris continues to slowly morph into Jeff Goldblum.  Not sure if this is a result of high video exposure to cool cool Jeff, or some secret yearning on Chris' part.  I wonder if Chris could fake a Goldblum voice and posture well enough to pass, and have his shoes stolen by Nick.

[Roderick]

Oh god, all Thumbs are morphing into celebrities. A few years ago Kingzjester morphed into Orson Welles, and now Chris has become Cool Blum.

[miffy495]

He chose to go because it was hard.

 

What other things did he do?

[BobbyBesar]

Regarding navigating environments naturalistically, I think part of the problem is the problem of affordances. Every action that a player is capable in the game is an ability explicitly granted (afforded) to the player, requiring explicit implementation. Players know this, and so if you allow a player to do something, you are inherently instructing the player to do it.

 

When walking down the street, you don't explore every building that's opens because you have no need to look at every hotel lobby and bodega. But in GTA, because it's a designed space, you do. The only places you can enter are the ones that have a gameplay function. Therefore, you should enter every building you can. If you could walk into every store in GTA (instanced into randomly generated mini marts), paradoxically, you no longer would want to.

 

Developers make it even worse by hiding things in out of the way places, therefore explicitly rewarding you.

 

Even in a game like Skyrim where you can pick up lots of garbage, you can still only pick up items that are specifically designed for it, so the affordance problem remains. Implementing it halfway actually can be even worse, because then players want to explore the system you created, to see how far the interactivity goes. If you could literally pick up any rock, or any leaf, in Skyrim, your desire to pick up random garbage in the outdoors would likely decrease.

 

This applies not just to environment design, but to game design in general. If there is an implementation for something, people will assume that you are supposed to do it, because all implementations in games are explicit. Which is why editing down to the core of a gameplay idea is so important.

[Henroid]

So my first game of Neptune's Pride 2 is reaching its point of critical mass. Or rather, the pre-emptive wave before the actual shocking blast or quake, whatever metaphor you want to use.

 

We're just a couple days in but the galaxy is almost filled with peaceful star grabs. I branched out fast and have been holding 2nd place consistently. Another player has been holding 1st in the same manner. 3rd has been juggling. Now, 1st place is starting to push on me and my neighbor (who I tried to ally with and they either abandoned the game or wanted to be stubborn and fly solo). My neighbor is being devoured. I'm starting to push my defense in place against the bigger player.

 

But what I'm really waiting for is the other shoe to drop, because on the other side of the galaxy two guys are growing pretty exponentially.

 

I am in absolute terror of what the next cycle will bring.

[Ucantalas]

My Neptune's Pride 2 match is about to get... violent.

What started out as a simple bottleneck of my progress has turned into a complete blockade by another player preventing my progression. I've been offered tech by another player to helping take out the player blocking me in. I'm now biding my time, increasing ships and planning my attack.

I've never felt more alive then I have playing the slowest paced strategy game I've ever seen!