Idle Thumbs 123: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9: Colon!

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 122:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9: Colon!

You peek around the corner and squint into the darkness. Nothing. You peek again, your hand gently resting on the door frame. Still nothing. Or... You flick open your camcorder view screen - the night vision already enabled - and see two tiny dots staring back from the end of the hall. They know you're here. They know. Deep breaths now. Deep breaths, then run. Count to three. Idle Thumbs One Two Three.

Games Discussed: Outlast, Spelunky, PlayStation Vita TV, Dota 2, Half-Life 1, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 3

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[Henroid]

So that discussion at the end of the episode about engaging people in discussion or arguments.

 

I recently went on a self-righteous rant elsewhere on the internet regarding the insane people on Twitter or website comment sections who launch vile threats of harm (or wishing of harm) on others. You know, like the Bioware writer who was told by people that her children would be killed and such. The gist of my rant on the topic was that people within internet communities need to confront their peers about that sort of aggression.

 

"Community" is the important word here though. On sites like Twitter and YouTube or news organizations it is harder to orchestrate. But within a forum or video game guild / clan, it's something people can definitely execute on. If you see a peer or many of them being ridiculously hostile, point it out. The whole concept of "just ignore it, it'll go away" doesn't really make a whole lot of sense because the very act of clicking a "post" button gives those people the satisfaction of having some sort of voice. They can't tell you're ignoring it or paying attention to it.

 

Mind you this wasn't a call to go on a witch hunt or to be hyper-aggressive in response to this people. Again, the key word is community, and the more you know someone the more likely your response to them will have an impact. And the more people that have a response toward someone will have an impact. Collectively telling someone to chill will have better effect than telling random commenter to chill. And if it gets bad enough, the heavy hand of moderation / administration can come in and send the person on their way, no longer a part of the community. Either they'll learn through Persona Non Grata that they should shape up, or they'll continue doing what they do. But it's better than saying / doing nothing and let them continue what they do in the first place.

 

It's hard being confrontational while also keeping away from aggression (trust me I know, I have anger management issues). But it's possible to do. "This isn't the community for that shit, shape up or ship out" could really go a long way.

 

Anyway there's my dumb tangent.

[Zeusthecat]

Don't worry too much Sean, when your leg is fully healed the bone will be much stronger than it was before. And at least you know your bones are already stronger than Obama's old ass bones.

 

Also, thanks for backing me up on my nosebleed theory. I've definitely had cases in the past where I've gotten a massive nosebleed and not noticed until someone pointed it out. Something about the warmth and viscosity of blood makes it easy to sneak by if there isn't any pain associated with the bleeding.

[tegan]

Still partway through the episode, but regarding Vita TV and entirely cross-compatible hardware: The NEC TurboExpress was literally a TurboGrafx-16 stuffed into a portable housing. You could pop the game card out of the home console and play it on the go. It was "the Rolls Royce of handhelds," but had pretty massive problems that came with being a scaled-down console. Text was often unreadable since it was designed for a television and not a two-inch screen, it cost about three hundred dollars in 1990 money, and it got three glorious hours of playtime out of six AA batteries.

 

Plus there's a precedent for weird hardware add-ons like the Gameboy Player.

[Jake]

GBA player! True!

It seems different that this one is literally Vita hardware but with components cut, and cost cut. It's usually the reverse, as you said (stuffing a system into a pocket version and charging a lot for it) or a weird add-on (GBA player). The Vita TV is the perfect "why don't they just..." made real. It's weird.

[Henroid]

GBA player! True!

It seems different that this one is literally Vita hardware but with components cut, and cost cut. It's usually the reverse, as you said (stuffing a system into a pocket version and charging a lot for it) or a weird add-on (GBA player). The Vita TV is the perfect "why don't they just..." made real. It's weird.

People are generally confused about the handheld gaming world and lean toward "well mobiles do that now" so I see a lot of sentiment lean toward... well, this. I wonder how the 2DS reception would've been if they just said, "Here, play your 3DS / DS games on your T-

 

haha oh wait two screens. Whoops, I got a little too excited there.

[CaptainFish]

You guys need to implement review scores for something just to have "GAGAGAGA Jake face" as your GamePro review face icon.

[tegan]

After you guys described Outlast as a haunted house game (and especially after you mentioned that it was a first-person game without much violent interaction), I thought for sure you would call it a GoneHomelike.

[Brannigan]

Sega Nomad was also just a portable Genesis, which even had a port for player 2 controller and was able to plug into the a tv if you wanted.  Again the battery life was terrible.  Did get me through a lot of study periods in high school though...

[SecretAsianMan]

Every time I heard Outlast, my brain conjured up Outrun

 

Also, Chris needs a Happy Cat Alarm Clock

[tegan]

Nobody will make a Hunger Games Lords Management until there is a Battle Royale Lords Management to rip it off from.

[SecretAsianMan]

Also RE Games with bluffing: I'm reminded of the TF2 Studio Rumble and Telltale's Mighty Ducks shenanigans

 

Reference:

[Chris]

So that discussion at the end of the episode about engaging people in discussion or arguments.

 

I recently went on a self-righteous rant elsewhere on the internet regarding the insane people on Twitter or website comment sections who launch vile threats of harm (or wishing of harm) on others. You know, like the Bioware writer who was told by people that her children would be killed and such. The gist of my rant on the topic was that people within internet communities need to confront their peers about that sort of aggression.

 

"Community" is the important word here though. On sites like Twitter and YouTube or news organizations it is harder to orchestrate. But within a forum or video game guild / clan, it's something people can definitely execute on. If you see a peer or many of them being ridiculously hostile, point it out. The whole concept of "just ignore it, it'll go away" doesn't really make a whole lot of sense because the very act of clicking a "post" button gives those people the satisfaction of having some sort of voice. They can't tell you're ignoring it or paying attention to it.

 

Mind you this wasn't a call to go on a witch hunt or to be hyper-aggressive in response to this people. Again, the key word is community, and the more you know someone the more likely your response to them will have an impact. And the more people that have a response toward someone will have an impact. Collectively telling someone to chill will have better effect than telling random commenter to chill. And if it gets bad enough, the heavy hand of moderation / administration can come in and send the person on their way, no longer a part of the community. Either they'll learn through Persona Non Grata that they should shape up, or they'll continue doing what they do. But it's better than saying / doing nothing and let them continue what they do in the first place.

 

It's hard being confrontational while also keeping away from aggression (trust me I know, I have anger management issues). But it's possible to do. "This isn't the community for that shit, shape up or ship out" could really go a long way.

 

Anyway there's my dumb tangent.

I feel similarly, which I hope I communicated on the podcast, I just generally feel it is more the responsibility of those who host the community more than anyone else's. That's not to say communities shouldn't also be self-policing—that's the ideal scenario—but I think a big part of creating the particular tenor of conversation that becomes self-policed is for the stakeholders themselves to establish it.

[Argobot]

This is also tangentially related to how fans react in the video game community. Active online communities tend to mirror the opinions of their community hosts. So if those hosts support a toxic environment -- whether explicitly or implicitly -- the community sees that as permission to be as disgusting as they want to. That's why it makes me so happy to see video game monoliths like Kotaku or Giant Bomb (or The Idle Thumbs) make unequivocal statements on "volatile" issues in the games community. That makes it harder for the community to get away with spewing hatred and is more effective than having a moderator wade into a comment thread every so often to weed out the nastiness. 

[Berzee]

Seeing the "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9" made me think there were 9 pages of comments on this thread already. D:

[thestalkinghead]

the conversation about fan interaction, made me think about my internal dilemma i have with this, i think that it is good that fans have input, but i do hope that creators can just think "no, you're wrong, i am going to do it my way" because the thing i like about most fiction is that i didn't think of it, so it is completely new and interesting, but i do think that a community can sometimes have good points and ideas that will improve something, i guess it has to be a balance between fan input and unique creator only ideas. 

 

Edit; yeah i don't really like the idea of "don't read the comments" why put it in the public if you aren't going to read public opinion

[seamus2389]

The topic of bluffing and local multiplayer brings back memories of playing 64 games with my 2 brothers when we were young. We used to play alot of Jet force Gemini multiplayer and in one match we all played as the dog character cause the dog would float in water which there was alot in the map. My brothers decided to gang up on me and at one stage I snuck up behind them and started shooting one of them. Cause all our screens showed dog characters floating down a tunnel my brother didn't know what was going on and one of them started shooting the one I was shooting thinking it was me

 

WQe used to play Conkers bad fur day multi and one of the modes was playing as cave men trying to steal eggs from dinosaurs. The game allowed friendly fire so occasionally we would headshot each other in such a way that it was credible that the other person was hit by accident. Eventually this led to a death for a death rule - whether the death was deliberate or not the person killed got a free kill. While there were fewer friendly fire incidents we started  losing few matches in endless cycle of revenge killing cause one of us would refuse to be killed for killing the other.

 

Thinking back on it we created a lot of house rules for playing multiplayer games especially for maps were we would have our own area that you were given time at the start to set up a defense for before going after each other. I do wonder is there still alot of that going on but you generally don't see it cause it amoung friends on a custom map.

 

PS - in the original company of heroes bluffing grenade throws was an occasionally tactic and in COH2 I have seen players charge conscripts at vehicles to force them back to avoid being hit with anti-vehicles grenade the conscripts do no possess.

[Colourful Stuff]

Amnesia: A Mechanical Ghost, coming 2015 from the Fullbright Company.

[melmer]

I kneeeeew it!

 

Andrew House: Vita TV can "technically" support streaming PS3 games via Gaikai

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=675997

 

Listening to the podcast this morning about the Vita TV's lack of touch screen support got me thinking about how most vita games use the touch screen in some way, so in time i think you'll find that the actually focus of the gaming side of this thing will be the streaming of PS2 and PS3 games

 

annnnnnnnnnnd it's not coming to the West

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/200079/PS_Vita_TV_is_not_coming_to_the_West__at_least_not_yet.php

At least not yet, they'll blatantly wait until all the game streaming shenanigans goes live. BELIEVE

[UltimateHurl]

Fan interaction is always interesting, as is dealing with trolls. It's lead to a situation where people are hesitant to voice opinions, for fear of having to deal with extreme negative reactions, but also want to contribute to the community. 

 

Would love to see bluffing as a bigger game mechanic, like a prison-escape where you dress in a fake uniform and have to pass inspection through bluffing.

[melmer]

Playing fighting games like SF4 at a high level is nothing but bluffing and baiting

 

Also, about dong's in video games. Bizarrely i woke up this morning thinking about nudity in video games before i even listened to the podcast. Specifically willys. (although i haven't played it) Saints Row 4 seems like it would be the perfect game for some male nudity, i can imagine your player character totally naked leaping over a skyscraper with a 12inch cock and balls flapping about in the wind. Inject some rag doll physics and 100 points of articulations and hilarity will ensue. Obviously this wont be happening in a retail game anytime soon

 

hmmm, i wonder if there'll be any sex in Beyond two Souls, Its turned up in all his other games. Dave Cage is a smutty bastard.

 

So i've never actually bothered to watch this trailer, i'm just posting it because of the thumbnail image, looks like there could be some lovin. Cool, you get to play as a little girl, you get guide her and watch her grow up, then you get to see her tits

 

[clyde]

WQe used to play Conkers bad fur day multi and one of the modes was playing as cave men trying to steal eggs from dinosaurs. The game allowed friendly fire so occasionally we would headshot each other in such a way that it was credible that the other person was hit by accident. Eventually this led to a death for a death rule - whether the death was deliberate or not the person killed got a free kill. While there were fewer friendly fire incidents we started losing few matches in endless cycle of revenge killing cause one of us would refuse to be killed for killing the other.

That's amazing. I've heard of tribal societies coming to the same conclusion. I'm not sure if it was the indigenous people of New Guinea or maybe Borneo. Anyway, I heard that the general mentality is that if someone dies from a disease, witch-craft may be suspected, so they feel a need to kill a witch. It very much seems like it's a matter of not knowing if it was a head-shot or an accident but feeling the need to disincentivize any intentional killing (regardless of if the method can be determined) at the cost of executing innocents. I suppose we could see some examples in our society too.

[melmer]

[youmeyou]

That's amazing. I've heard of tribal societies coming to the same conclusion. I'm not sure if it was the indigenous people of New Guinea or maybe Borneo. Anyway, I heard that the general mentality is that if someone dies from a disease, witch-craft may be suspected, so they feel a need to kill a witch. It very much seems like it's a matter of not knowing if it was a head-shot or an accident but feeling the need to disincentivize any intentional killing (regardless of if the method can be determined) at the cost of executing innocents. I suppose we could see some examples in our society too.

 

That really is fascinating. I've had plenty of friendly-fire-caused descents into mayhem with my brother - (we could almost never make it past the 1st level of Battletoads thanks to the ease of ally-caused deaths) but never to the extent that eye-for-an-eye justice emerged. Great stuff.

 

Oh, and in response to Outlast not having permadeath and that kind of being a bummer, the upcoming Routine is pretty exciting 1. because space horror 2. has permadeath.

 

[tegan]

By the way, if anyone's interested, the Sega thing Jake was thinking of was the Nomad. It was a handheld Genesis/Master System and is notable for selling exceptionally poorly and being able to play games from any region without an adapter.