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Jake

Idle Thumbs 121: (I Know You're Having Fun But) I'm Still Working

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So who is Chris's manger at Double Fine, and does he know that "Lord Management" is now part of his job description?

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If that stuff about having a better chance of an upgrade on airplanes is true, hell I might just get myself a title. Once you've sampled the warm assorted nuts in business class you will never want to go back.

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The F2P stuff for PvZ2 is pretty bad, but it was actually the Mario structure of the world that killed the game for me, because it reminded me that I enjoyed the game play of Super Mario Galaxy way more than a tower defense game. So I went back and setup my Wii which had been gathering dust, and man is that game good. It was like Chris going back to Far Cry 2... there are just so many aspects of that game that are excellent, and it's just a joy to play. It is so great when that is the experience of an older game that you've played before.

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So, can a lord manage himself? Is this why Chris will never play Dota? I guess we'll never find out...

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Thanks for reading my Shadowrun letter!  It was really odd playing that Double Indemnity user mission, especially because they let you import a character.  So my female dwarf shaman was spouting all of Fred MacMurray's lines.  But the parts the mission got right were surprisingly on target.

 

Shadowrun Returns user missions also can have this quasi-episodic distribution on Steam.  Many of the missions I'm playing are only half-finished, with ending messages like, "Stay tuned for an automatic update that will add the next chapter!"  It's a lot of fun to see people just throw up a map and say, "watch it grow into a campaign!"

 

I have played and was really impressed by this one as well.

Beyond the narrative stuff, the bar fight strikes me as one of the best user generated content demonstrations of what the engine is capable of too. As a fight set piece, it's more complex than anything in the official campaign. There are multiple factions (which will partially fight against each other rather than just being after your team), you can get factions to flee by inflicting enough damage/killing their leader(?) instead of having to murder everybody.

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Sean, I'm pretty sure it was 500k not 5m concurrent players.

No I think it was 5 million.

 

The thing is, what counts as being "concurrently connected" with these things? I just found out that one of these LOMA games has a launch client / lobby client that possibly counts toward that, and you can idle in it infinitely. So 5 million connections maybe, but a lot of those are possibly idle.

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GREAT now I look like a dumb dumb for trying to give Sean the benefit of the doubt.

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On the topic of indie games always coming to Steam, it's worth pointing out that it's the XBLA games that are coming to Steam. (Even ones directly published by Microsoft.)

The ones published by Sony to PSN stay on PSN.

It's rather unfortuante.

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/105800/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/243780/

 

I'm not saying it's common, but it does happen, and Sony has no vested interest in Windows, whereas Microsoft makes it and still routinely pays people not to release their games and/or DLC for Windows.

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Now under Lord Remo Crusader Kings II becomes available in the latest humble bundle.  Don't act like you didn't have anything to do with that.  Truly we have entered a golden age.

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http://store.steampowered.com/app/105800/

http://store.steampowered.com/app/243780/

 

I'm not saying it's common, but it does happen, and Sony has no vested interest in Windows, whereas Microsoft makes it and still routinely pays people not to release their games and/or DLC for Windows.

i had been waiting for PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate (i will get it soon) something that this generation of consoles has taught PC gamers is patience (and emulators, but shhh)

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Papa Y Yo was a PSN exclusive at first and is on Steam now.

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I agree with Chris and disagree with Jake and Sean about in-app purchases being a very different thing for games.  It's just not true that artists now write songs differently or that directors edit their movies differently to encourage people to make in-app purchases while they listen to the song or watch the movie.   Plants vs. Zombies 2 is clearly a different sort of game than the first PvZ game because of the in-app store and that difference has got to be obvious even to people who aren't "gamers" particularly. 

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There is far less popular music intended to be consumed in album form (in favor of ala carte singles purchased digitally) than there used to be, and there is far less scripted television written as self-sufficient one off episodic stories (in favor of DVR/stream/purchased season passes which are binge watched or subscribed to in bulk). DVRs and later Netflix are probably a major contributor to the current "golden age of television" for this reason, and it's getting even weirder as we start seeing things like streaming-first TV by Netflix and Amazon, where episode length isn't even an issue.* The decisions aren't as intensely modifying as they are in video games, but they're present.

Anyway I think Chris and I were talking about separate things on the cast, but it was somehow framed in a conversation as if we were arguing related points. I was never denying that PvZ 2 is a different kind of game than PvZ 1. I was trying to be very clear that I was talking about consumer purchases of content on a digital device ("add more music" "add more apps" "add more app content") being a successful, and universal thing so it is potentially not as noticeable a change to people who see games as a commodity more than a creative medium. I wasn't denying that the change is one that is totally disruptive to the game itself, more aggressively even than other mediums which have been disrupted by post-digital business model shit -- I actually completely agree with that, I think it's irrefutable.

* You're probably right that films are relatively untouched, because their distribution is still basically same as it ever was (theater --> living room).

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I just got the latest Kickstarter update for Massive Chalice and they mention Chris completely without his title. I find this highly disrespectful.

 

 

 

 

My suggestion is to kill their wives.

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Maybe that dude on the bus wasn't really punched. Maybe he was just talking on the phone and was so into his conversation that he didn't notice that he had a massive nosebleed going on. Then the big guy, being the good samaritan he is, went over to inform him that he was bleeding all over the place. At this point nosebleed guy was probably so shocked and embarrassed that he just immediately got off at the next stop to avoid further shame and embarrassment. Coincidentally, this was also the big guy's stop.

 

That explains why no sound was made, that explains why the big guy sat back down quietly, and that explains why no-one reacted to any of it! Damn I'm good. Can you feel it? Can you feel it captain compost? I have exerciiiiiiiiiised the demons.

 

(I'm gonna go watch Ace Ventura now)

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Maybe that dude on the bus wasn't really punched. Maybe he was just talking on the phone and was so into his conversation that he didn't notice that he had a massive nosebleed going on. Then the big guy, being the good samaritan he is, went over to inform him that he was bleeding all over the place. At this point nosebleed guy was probably so shocked and embarrassed that he just immediately got off at the next stop to avoid further shame and embarrassment. Coincidentally, this was also the big guy's stop.

 

That explains why no sound was made, that explains why the big guy sat back down quietly, and that explains why no-one reacted to any of it! Damn I'm good. Can you feel it? Can you feel it captain compost? I have exerciiiiiiiiiised the demons.

 

(I'm gonna go watch Ace Ventura now)

 

How can you not notice when you're bleeding that much though? It's all dripping on your shirt and down onto the floor. Sorry, but I don't see it happening this way.

I feel like maybe the whole thing was a staged candid camera stunt or something.

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I was trying to be very clear that I was talking about consumer purchases of content on a digital device ("add more music" "add more apps" "add more app content") being a successful, and universal thing so it is potentially not as noticeable a change to people who see games as a commodity more than a creative medium.

 

Maybe so.  But I could have you listen to a dozen random songs or watch a dozen random TV shows and I doubt you could name which, if any, were written with any awareness of the iPhone business model.  Conversely, if I took a dozen random games, I bet almost any casual gamer would immediately see the difference between games that ask you for money as you play and games that don't.   So i think Chris is right that this is a thing that sticks out when you play games in a way that is really different to how it sticks out (if it does) when you watch movies or listen to music.

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