Jake

Idle Thumbs 118: A Simple Litter

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TychoCelchuuu, I'll simplify what I'm trying to get across.

 

The Idle Thumbs dudes play a lot of games, some are AAA and some aren't. There are some games they love (both AAA and non-AAA) and there are some games they don't like so much (again both AAA and non-AAA). They don't love every indie game they play and they don't hate every AAA game they play (Far Cry 2 and Dishonored are great examples of this). All I am saying is that I love hearing what their opinion is even if it is a negative opinion because it is usually stated in a unique and hilarious way. I'm not saying they should try to play games they think they will hate, I am simply saying that some of my favorite moments in the podcast have been when they have offered their take on some of the big AAA games (which I tend to be more familiar with).

 

If I didn't misread Zeusthecat, and he was actually saying "I don't care if you guys like the games, just talk about them because I love AAA games!" then I think I'm still right - having the Thumbs talk about Game X because it's an AAA game rather than because they think they want to talk about it strikes me as a bad idea.

 

This actually is sort of what I'm saying although a little bit twisted (i.e. I never said "I love AAA games", I just like hearing their opinion on them because those are the games I tend to be more familiar with). I think it is very entertaining to hear them talk about a game they took the time to play and didn't end up liking because they usually have very interesting reasons for not liking it. It sounds like you are saying they should only talk about games they love and that strikes me as a bad idea. If this is the approach they took, then there would be some weeks where they would have nothing to talk about if they didn't happen to enjoy any of the games they played that week.

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It is the year 4715. The distinct jagged legs of a BigDog body amble across the Nevada Desert with purpose. The robot stops and extends a pair of skeletal robotic arms with clawlike hands and begins to carefully in the seemingly random patch of dirt. Day turns to night and back again. At last the skillful hands heave a heavy metal canister to the surface and turn it over delicately in the sun before unscrewing the lid with a quiet hiss. The nimble fingers remove a barely-aged piece of paper, on which is written: "A Game For Someone." The severed head of Nick Breckon, floating in the tube of life-sustaining fluids affixed to the BigDog, grins with pride. "At last."

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The Idle Thumbs dudes play a lot of games, some are AAA and some aren't.

That's what I'm saying though. I thought they didn't play many games. My impression was that they rarely played a game that didn't get talked about on the podcast at some point, or at least not for very long. Nick actually seems like he might play lots of games sometimes but Sean, Jake, and Chris don't seem like they play much that they don't talk about.

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I just want to point out that I had "hipster" in my profile tag before any of you posers.

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That's what I'm saying though. I thought they didn't play many games. My impression was that they rarely played a game that didn't get talked about on the podcast at some point, or at least not for very long. Nick actually seems like he might play lots of games sometimes but Sean, Jake, and Chris don't seem like they play much that they don't talk about.

 

What are we arguing again? Oh yeah, Han shot first.

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I don't get the impression that the Thumbs would have a hard time finding things to talk about even if none of them had played any video games in the preceding week. In fact, I could swear there have been episodes like that.

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That's what I'm saying though. I thought they didn't play many games. My impression was that they rarely played a game that didn't get talked about on the podcast at some point, or at least not for very long. Nick actually seems like he might play lots of games sometimes but Sean, Jake, and Chris don't seem like they play much that they don't talk about.

 

I always had the opposite impression.  They always seem to be talking about new things week to week.  Even if half of those weeks are covering games that have been discussed before, that's still a lot of games, probably more than I play.

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You seem pretty angry about the fact that some people can dislike things that you like. I think it might be time to swallow a chill pill or something. If Chris doesn't want to play Borderlands 2 or Saint's Row 3 because he doesn't like the humor, it's not like he's telling you you're not allowed to like it. He's just expressing personal taste. If I had to choose being "a little earnest and Woody Allen" or being forced to play whatever stupid game some person on the Internet was determined that I play just so I could enjoy it as much as that person even though I don't like this sort of thing, I think I know which option I'd take.

 

LOL. I'm not angry I just find the criteria wanting, and the soft pawing questionable is all. 

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I don't get the impression that the Thumbs would have a hard time finding things to talk about even if none of them had played any Video games in the preceding week. In fact, I could swear there have been episodes like that.

Torchlight and Sean stumbling into Snoopy's Flying Ace come to mind.

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I can't stand it anymore; what is "soft pawing"?

Since I've already admitted that I don't know, I might as well ask what being "Woody Allen" is and I have no idea what "can do posturing" means. I'm not sure if i am too old or too young to know these terms.

Is "SO" an abbreviation for "significant other"?

I'm so behind.

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SO is an abbreviation for significant other.

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Great episode! I loved Danielle, and agree that the Saint's Row discussion maybe suffered a bit from the 'bargo, though imagining Chris' face as SR4 was being described («It's a parody of The Matrix!») made it worth it.

 

I had the same sort of negative preconceptions of Saint's Row as Chris seems to have, built up over years of terrible porn star marketing and hearing stuff that made me consider it the «Pyst» of video games. Recently, however, I was tricked into co-oping SR3 it with Lucien, and found that, though many of my negative expectations were met, it didn't come off anywhere near as vile as the Tera Patrick marketing I had associated with it (recently, there was this interview about exactly this) and, though most of the humor was really broad and on-the-nose, it never really offended me, and there were some chuckles to be had. I don't see myself playing a SR game in single-player, and think Chris is not missing some great experience by skipping the series, but it really goes very well with the sort of crazy, ridiculous behavior co-op gaming tends to entail.

 

Oh, and if you're considering Dwarf Fortress, you should maybe get some sort of guide, like Evan «DayZ» Lahti. If you watch the Giant Bomb videos in which the guy has read up on a DF book before starting, you'll see how truly lost you'll be coming into it without any guidance at all.

 

edit: Ooh, an eight-pager!

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There was an arstechica article where the author tried playing DF for 12 hours and just hit a brick wall.

 

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/02/dwarf-fortress-ten-hours-with-the-most-inscrutable-video-game-of-all-time

 

Though I believe article would have gone very differently if the author had known one thing: 'k' is the look key.  If you don't know what is going on on a tile, look at it.

 

That and embrace the "losing is fun" thing.

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Leaving aside the discussion we're somehow still having about which part of the Thumbs' awesomeness is most integral, I'd like to agree vocally with how Chris described Nick's understanding of medieval history. It seriously is the funniest, weirdest, most frustrating thing I've come across in a while.

 

As far as I can tell from the streams, Nick understands the Middle Ages as a time without any higher authority to constrain those who ruled, but feudal politics was really more like how much of your neighbors' stuff you can borrow and how much of their goodwill you can abuse without them moving away or kicking your ass. The king who behaved the most like Nick wants was King John of England. He married a woman betrothed to his vassal, punished other vassals for minor slights, and told the pope to go fuck himself. As a result, he lost all his continental holdings, got England placed under papal interdict, fought off a French invasion, and was forced to sign the Magna Carta, all before dying of dysentery and leaving his son the first child-king since before the Norman conquest. There are mods for Crusader Kings II like The Prince and the Thane that do better to simulate the fundamentally affective character of medieval rule, compared to which the vanilla game is quite lenient. Still, if Chris rather than Nick were playing, it'd probably a lot less entertaining, if also less infuriating.

 

If anyone's curious about the experience of medieval lordship, I.S. Robinson's Henry IV of Germany, 1056-1106 from 2000 is a great study on one of the Middle Ages' most controversial kings. I'd recommend something on King John, like W.L. Warren's 1978 book, but I honestly find Anglophone scholarship on the Plantagenets a little stodgy and would feel bad if it were read on my account.

 

 

EDIT: Or I could be incredibly cruel and recommend Bissons' The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship, and the Origins of European Government. Fascinating, but impossibly self-indulgent. I guess you earn that right when you're emeritus at Harvard.

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Well I think that there's a good point in that they've been maybe getting a bit insular, but also a good point that if they're not into it then it's just going to be a crappy reading assignment. I think getting guests in really does help to stir things up, but when all 4 thumbs are there there really isn't a lot of room for guests to talk. I don't think there's any 'solution', per se, to this issue so much as just, maybe, something that the thumbs could keep in mind, and see if they can be aware of opportunities to get guests once in a while, or play a game outside of their normal preference once in a while, just to stir things up.

We only do guests when we have one or two hosts absent so there is not a situation where we have five people taking (other than weird GDC episodes and stuff). Honest reason why: we only have four microphones.

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Yeah I'd sort of guessed as much, it seems like things would either get really chaotic or someone would end up being really quiet. I forgot about the 4 mics thing though.

Does that mean we'll never get a complete thumbcast in the office with you, Chris, Sean, Nick, and Steve all together?

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Yeah I'd sort of guessed as much, it seems like things would either get really chaotic or someone would end up being really quiet. I forgot about the 4 mics thing though.

Does that mean we'll never get a complete thumbcast in the office with you, Chris, Sean, Nick, and Steve all together?

You've left off JP and Marek Bronstring!

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We only do guests when we have one or two hosts absent so there is not a situation where we have five people taking (other than weird GDC episodes and stuff). Honest reason why: we only have four microphones.

 

Kickstart the 5th microphone ;)

 

Nah, I think 4 people is the max, otherwise it becomes quite difficult to follow everybody. And it's not that difficult to arrange for somebody to break a leg.

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