Jake

Idle Thumbs 108: A Premium Price

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I've learned more about video games and their nature as both artistic medium and an economic product from listening to other people than I ever had simply thinking on my own. When Sean mentioned Amir Rao I immediately wanted to listen in on that conversation. 


@Sean: Has Amir ever done an interview or an essay where he has elaborated his ideas on the industry?

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Well, I really screwed up listing to this episode. I usually either listen the episode when I get home from work, or when I'm commuting to and from work. But today I worked at home, so I tried listening to it in the morning. I think I sort of missed half the episode right now as I didn't pay enough attention :/

I guess I have to relisten this episode.

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Well, I really screwed up listing to this episode. I usually either listen the episode when I get home from work, or when I'm commuting to and from work. But today I worked at home, so I tried listening to it in the morning. I think I sort of missed half the episode right now as I didn't pay enough attention :/

I guess I have to relisten this episode.

 

I often have this problem. I find myself constantly rewinding as I realize I have no idea what was said over the last 15 minutes because I'm too distracted by work. I would listen to them at home, but video games.

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I've listened to at least 108 Idle Thumbs podcasts and I still don't know the lyrics to the opening song.

Were you the guy who wrote that email a long time ago saying that you thought the opening lyrics were, "I don't love"?

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I've listened to at least 108 Idle Thumbs podcasts and I still don't know the lyrics to the opening song.

Speaking of the Idle Thumbs theme, I've enjoyed all the different arrangements Chris has done, but always felt the vocals were the weakest part.

 

Until this one.  The vocal arrangement, performance, and mixing are really great.  A big improvement over the previous versions.  Congrats on continuing to step up your musical game, Chris.

 

(Any chance we can get the new version of the theme added to the music downloads page, Jake?)

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The Spin Doctors tangent was fantastically enjoyable. I love it.

 

I liked the tweet that spawned the conversation. Pretty clever if you do actually know the lyrics. One of my favorite songs, it's so dumb.

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Were you the guy who wrote that email a long time ago saying that you thought the opening lyrics were, "I don't love"?

 

No, I was just making fun of people (unspecified people) who listen to a song over and over again without attempting to discover what's being sung. =P

That's a funny thing I had almost forgotten about though! "Iiiiii don't love...games etc"

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No, I was just making fun of people (unspecified people) who listen to a song over and over again without attempting to discover what's being sung. =P

That's a funny thing I had almost forgotten about though! "Iiiiii don't love...games etc"

i generally have a hard time hearing lyrics in songs, vocals usually just end up being another instrument with the odd clear word i can actually hear 

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i generally have a hard time hearing lyrics in songs, vocals usually just end up being another instrument with the odd clear word i can actually hear 

Across all musics? Or do you just listen to those (*dismissive wave*) noisy songs? =P

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I don't know what the name of the song is but there is one on the radio I've heard 1000 times where they say "Move along move along". I always thought they were saying "Mow the lawn mow the lawn".

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(Any chance we can get the new version of the theme added to the music downloads page, Jake?)

It'll drop along with the 3 other re-recorded tracks as part of the Kickstarter album (aka The Final Piece Of The Puzzle, Without Which The Kickstarter Is Incomplete), coming soon.

i generally have a hard time hearing lyrics in songs, vocals usually just end up being another instrument with the odd clear word i can actually hear

That's how I often perceive music as well. I remember some time in high school, I finally heard a pop song enough times that I fully comprehended the music and could sing it back. It was completely fascinating.

(I sang in choir as a kid, played the piano and even a little sax in high school, and obviously when super young listened and sang along to children's records and in classrooms and things, so it's not like I don't have the capacity to understand and sing back lyrics in music, but super highly engineered ambient music played on the radio is still almost always noise to me, unless I force it to be drilled into my head in a really conscious way.

When I'm sitting in a diner with friends and one of them randomly starts singing along to whatever happens to be playing in the background, it baffles me that they could hear what was being sung and pull it out of the air in an environment like that, because while I can hear and pull out the melody/other performances in the background, I'm almost unconscious that there is also someone singing.)

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So you guys said you wished you could change the difficulty level in Ace Patrol, and I would like to point out that you can do that, and it gets much more challenging much more quickly. I very much recommend it, and the game starts to develop that tense XCOM type feeling when you bump up the difficulty. I love the game for similar reasons, in terms of getting in and out of some satisfying tactical combat quickly. The discussion of the aesthetics was interesting, I chalked it up to being a Sid Meier thing rather than an iOS thing

 

I read that Susan O'Connor piece, and I didn't interpret it in the same way as you guys. What I read was a very personal statement, that she didn't have the "deep seated passion" for games that some of her peers did. She talked about being an advocate for better writing in games, something I think Idle Thumbs is as well. She also specifically called out a couple of instances of games doing cool things with writing, and emotional narrative. But starting up an indie studio isn't really a realistic thing to do if your passion for games isn't there, and if her passion exists for other mediums I think it is valid for her to want to consider a career change.

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Chris sounds noticeably upset responding to the email about JRPGs. His pain is my entertainment!

 

(also Chris should consider playing The World Ends With You, because it's a weird-ass JRPG that foregoes almost all JRPG mechanics and instead replaces them with crazy shit that you never see anywhere. The recent Metro discussion actually made me start thinking about it again, because it does this thing where all of your combat mechanics are actually expendable resources that you use as currency)

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When I'm sitting in a diner with friends and one of them randomly starts singing along to whatever happens to be playing in the background, it baffles me that they could hear what was being sung and pull it out of the air in an environment like that, because while I can hear and pull out the melody/other performances in the background, I'm almost unconscious that there is also someone singing.)

I do that sometimes. It's extremely weird, because I feel like I'm terrible at remembering song lyrics compounded with being TERRIBLE at picking out the actual conversation in a room that has a lot of busy chatter in it (also paying attention to idle chatter).

 

I remember an older sister of a middle school friend who took the position that if you didn't know all the lyrics to a song, it couldn't possibly be your favorite. Under those criteria, I don't think I've ever had a favorite song.

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It'll drop along with the 3 other re-recorded tracks as part of the Kickstarter album (aka The Final Piece Of The Puzzle, Without Which The Kickstarter Is Incomplete), coming soon.That's how I often perceive music as well. I remember some time in high school, I finally heard a pop song enough times that I fully comprehended the music and could sing it back. It was completely fascinating.

 

And the iPhone wallpapers!

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I often have this problem. I find myself constantly rewinding as I realize I have no idea what was said over the last 15 minutes because I'm too distracted by work. I would listen to them at home, but video games.

 

I do this all the time as well.  The worst is when the realization comes in the middle of a discussion about a game and the name of the game is mentioned once and never again.  I then rewind to find out what game they're talking about, only to forget again 10 minutes later.

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In terms of playing Metro: Last Light in English or Russian, I'm a proponent of playing in Russian (with subs). Though I don't think it is ideal - since having to read subtitles while also controlling an avatar is never going to be ideal.

 

However, the point I would make is this: I played through 2033 with English dubbing and I could not describe to you the plot of the game or my character's importance in it. Besides general statements like: "it's the future," "shit's fucked" and "people live underground," I would be hard pressed to come up a cohesive list of events that transpired while playing the game. I still think it's an incredibly impressive accomplishment, however, because as Chris alluded to, the narrative generated by the tone and the environment stands on its own. The explicit narrative of Artyom being 'the one' and nuking some ghost-like alien dudes exists really apart from this. And it's not terribly interesting, for that matter.

 

So when I picked up Last Light I decided that would be the aspect of the game I would focus on: the atmosphere and tone. The minute details that lend credibility to this world that no amount of VO, no matter how well delivered, ever could. It reminds of Tom Bissel's review of Skyrim where he compares its overflowing amount of disposable lore with the rich environmental storytelling of Dark Souls (http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7290527/one-night-skyrim-makes-strong-man-crumble).

 

In choosing Russian, I am purposefully limiting the amount of verbally delivered lore I am receiving. Much of the incidental dialogue isn't even subtitled. And it's having the opposite effect from bringing me out of the game. It's similar to what's been said here about music vocals being interpreted as instruments. The Russian voices lay over the backdrop like a rich aural tapestry. They add to the game's character in a way that poorly voiced English delivery does not (I did play briefly in English so I can safely say the English VO is mostly not very good). It's an experiment I guess, it's almost like skipping the cutscene, but from my experience with 2033 I am - perhaps unfairly - anticipating that the meat of the game is not in its explicit narrative.

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For me it was the moment early on when I was with the sniper woman, out in the series of trenches looking for the weird baby creature. (I also remember no nouns from this game.) It's simple, but the woman being in communication with me the entire time, just giving me simple commands, pointing out things she saw, etc, felt more real to me because I could understand it without thinking. I only had to use one sense -- hearing -- to comprehend what the NPC was communicating in a complicated situation. That's not got much to do with plot or atmosphere, but more with (very simple) mechanics.

As far as the feeling of the game, I'm sure that the cartooney Russian accented English doesn't help the tone, and I'm sure it doesn't do the story any favors either, but the English voice does let me pretend I am a person who lives in a world where there is no language barrier between me and my compatriots.

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Yeah, I understand that perspective. Reading subtitles in a game is really, really weird. And it does erect an extra layer between you and the content that can be somewhat immersion breaking.

 

It's odd though, I'm still able to feel like I'm occupying the world of the game despite not understanding much of what's being said. Perhaps this is because, at least 5 hrs in, there's not much attention being paid to who your character actually is. It's a testament to the devs actually that the world appears to function apart from your character's input. So even if I do feel like an outsider, for the first five hours (after the sniper/intro segment) you actually are an outsider trying to survive in hostile territory. Maybe this will change if the direction of the narrative ever flips inward. I'm also interested to see how you feel about all of this after playing more of the game. So go play more Metro already!  :P

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Sean's description of Ipad Xcom reminded me of this art that's come up every time I google xcom.

 

xcom_personal_armour_power_suits_i2.jpg

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When I typed dotatoday.net into my browser, it briefly appeared as "potato day" in my mind.

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When I typed dotatoday.net into my browser, it briefly appeared as "potato day" in my mind.

 

Awesome. The podcast is now officially named Dotato Day.

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When I typed dotatoday.net into my browser, it briefly appeared as "potato day" in my mind.

 

After reading this, my mind created a scenario where Chris and Jake created a new potato themed podcast called "Potato Today", complete with a [email protected] email.

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