Sign in to follow this  
Jake

Idle Thumbs 140: The Customer's Always An Asshole

Recommended Posts

Idle Thumbs 140:

 

481__header.jpg

 

The Customer's Always An Asshole

A message from the future arrives, delivered by hand: Idle Thumbs 140 -- a real bionic back massage of a cast -- is here, with reactions to the CES Steam Machine announcements, failed pursuit of the Nuclear Throne, and more terrible happenings in the world of DayZ. With special guest Chris Remo.

 

Games Discussed: SteamOS, Nuclear Throne, Flywrench, DayZ

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

With special guest Chris Remo.

 

Holy fuck, no way! It was about fucking time you guys had him on!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hover keyword "Breckon"? I'm not sure I understand the significance of that word.

 

Signed,

 

Captain Fish, a Bring Back Breckon Booster

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I want to publicly declare, to Nick Breckon, AKA F. Nick Breckon, AKA Congrats Nick Breckon that he is a PERMANENT and BELOVED host of this podcast. We cannot bring someone back who, in our minds, has never left. The seat is open for him. The door is ajar. He is the Elijah to our Pod-Seder. 

 

Seriously, Nick has just been super busy and it's a long haul to drive from TTG to the Mission in SF where the cast is recorded (having done it for a years, I have empathy for the man).

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

On that note, do you guys just record from the Campo Santo office now? You, Sean, have mentioned several times that you record feet away from your desk, so I'm kind of confused.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I want to publicly declare, to Nick Breckon, AKA F. Nick Breckon, AKA Congrats Nick Breckon that he is a PERMANENT and BELOVED host of this podcast. We cannot bring someone back who, in our minds, has never left. The seat is open for him. The door is ajar. He is the Elijah to our Pod-Seder. 

 

Seriously, Nick has just been super busy and it's a long haul to drive from TTG to the Mission in SF where the cast is recorded (having done it for a years, I have empathy for the man).

 

Whatever man, we know Nick has been there the whole time. He doesn't need to talk, we can just feel the man's presence.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've noticed that press seem to have real trouble with Early Access. They seemingly simultaneously occupy two opposite positions about it and it's causing them to do and say weird things. They almost universally agree that it's a great thing for all the usual reasons, transparency, freedom for developers, etc. But they also still hold strongly to the consumer/product review paradigm, where if a product is asking for money it should be treated the same as any other product asking for money, if the consumer pays for a thing then they should get that thing.
On the Giant Bomb GOTY podcasts there was a discussion of Early Access in the context of it maybe being a finalist for 'Worst Trend' category (they talked themselves out of it, eventually) where Jeff read out the Steam Early Access note from the developers of RUST :

“We are in very early development. Some things work, some things don't. We haven't totally decided where the game is headed - so things will change. Things will change a lot. We might even make changes that you think are wrong. But we have a plan. It's in our interest to make the game awesome - so please trust us.”

, which he reacted strongly to, saying that the proper response to being told that a product you are being asked to pay real money for might change a lot is "fuck you". The rest of the panel generally agreed that this was an example of what was wrong with early access, calling it "crazy" and "egregious".

Earlier (and later) in the discussion they expressed that early access was great so long as the developers were open and honest, not misrepresenting the situation to gamers, etc. Faced with an example of exactly this, they balked, reverting back to responses more reasonable for the games-as-consumer-product viewpoint.


I'm not pointing fingers at GB or anything, they are just the most recent example to come to mind. To me, this is emblematic of how the press have reacted generally, to greater or lesser degrees. I do think everyone will adjust, but it's going to be weird and frustrating for a bit.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Early Access usually doesn't bother me, since there are so many other games I could play that I don't mind waiting for something to be "complete", or at least in a state where I'm ok with it. With multiplayer games like DayZ or Rust I have more of a problem with it though, since multiplayer communities frequently don't last all that long, I have to choose between playing an unfinished game or hoping there will still be people around when it's done. Even if a community does exist, in my experience, game communities that do have been around for a while tend to have lots of unwritten rules and expectations which is frustrating to try and get into if you haven't been there the whole time.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Early Access (or, rather, open development) is great because it allows words to exist, like this:

 

If you haven’t been keeping pace with development, things are going well. I finally found the source of the colonists getting stuck and not doing their work. They were actually colliding with their own heads. And let's never speak of that again.

 

From the latest Maia Kickstarter update.

 

I have nothing constructive to add.

 

EDIT: Maybe I do. Most problems people have with the early access format are purely perceptional, and will disappear over time as we all learn exactly what that means. I've never been burned by buying into a game early because I know what I'm getting into when I buy a game early. Soon enough, everyone will understand that. Soon enough may be a couple years down the line, but whatever.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Like Chris, I don't picture myself ever learning to craft in Minecraft.  When I played the Xbox demo, I basically just played Minecraft as if it was Proteus.  I climbed mountains, followed animals around, and enjoyed the gorgeous panoramas.  I actually felt really guilty about digging anything at all—why would I want to spoil this landscape?

 

But then night came and I got killed by skeletons.  In the game of Minecraft, you either craft or die.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sean's DayZ story reminded me of that Team Roomba TF2 griefing video where the guy trapped people in spawn and started quizzing them to let them out.

 

Also what was that low-frequency hum that could be heard through the whole episode?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I generally don't interact with Early Access / Kickstarter gaming. There have been a few (DFA, Shadowrun, and River City Revival) but since the early stuff, if I know a big project is going to make it I'm content to wait.... I mostly justify it because I already have a lot of steam stuff I haven't played so I can stand to wait until stuff comes out to get it. I don't really go back to games once I get my kicks out of them, so I'd prefer to just wait. Oh, I guess I bought 123 Kick It way back before Early Access (outside of Minecraft) was even codified as a thing. I messed around in it a little and haven't been back since around when Portal 2 came out.


I feel like a lot of the people asking to get money back for these games are caught up in an alternate form of video games hype cycle, where you just throw your money at everything. If you're not doing it because you want to support the game and developer, and feel like you'd have any reservations between the time of purchase and release, just don't do it, don't ask for it to be different so that the developers don't get the benefits.

 

Re: Nick, not trying to be a dick or anything, I figured it was probably him being busy. Just wanted to state that he's missed. (And I did find his name being used as a code a little funny)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Regarding Montpelier: what if the guy wasn't from America?

 

Personally I use this song to remember the names of state capitols, and it uses a more French pronounciation. I like to imagine the guy was actually reciting the song in his head to try to remember the answer too.

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I had a dream last night that involved the French origin of Montpelier and Vermont.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

re: wikis

The Dark Souls wiki opened that game up dramatically for me. While DS follows a certain internal logic, it requires some fairly wide leaps to grok it.

However, now that I feel like I understand how Dark Souls thinks, I want to play DS2 without spoilers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

FWIW I can usually tell as soon as I say "HEY, I DON'T WANT ANY TROUBLE," and the person goes "FUCK YOU BITCH," that they are American.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm really interested in the question of what's the best way to learn how to play a game. It's something that the strategy genre has been kind of bad at approaching for the most part. On the one hand, you have someone like Soren Johnson championing that more strategy games should be taking cues from board games where all the rules are transparent and digestable. Given how convoluted a lot of hardcore strategy games are, this is pretty sound advice.

 

On the other hand, you have someone like Rob Daviau who, while at Hasbro, did studies of people and discovered that the most pleasure people got out of playing board games was opening the box, and then as soon as they started reading the rules there was a precipitous drop. So his innovation with the Legacy mechanics was to take a cue from what video games have been doing for awhile, which is introducing concepts incrementally. That's the part that a lot of strategy games have been bad at, that upfront demand in learning before you can even engage with the game.

 

XCOM is great because it is the sort of thing you can learn as you go. And that's one thing that I think a game like Spelunky, and roguelikes in general, are really good at, is having the learning of the game's systems work through actually exploring the game, and testing things out, rather than having to go through some long tutorial. So while having transparency is great, it is also really rad when you learn things through surprising events because then your brain is much more engaged with what's going on.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's some fascinating insight on the joy of opening a board game versus the tedium of sitting down and reading the rules. 

 

Just started listening, and the opening question of Chris on what he had been playing was incredible. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's some fascinating insight on the joy of opening a board game versus the tedium of sitting down and reading the rules. 

 

Just started listening, and the opening question of Chris on what he had been playing was incredible. 

 

I accept that most people hate it, but I really love reading board game rulebooks, especially if they're good (which, admittedly, they often aren't). However, I do it by myself, before sitting down to play. Nothing's worse than reading a rulebook while trying to explain a game at the same time.

 

In any case, far and away the best way to learn a board or card game is to be taught by somebody who knows it really well. I suspect the same is true of video games where the learning curve is not part of the fun.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

There is this humming noise in this episode that is really annoying, especially since i listen to the podcast with my headphones.

 

plz fix tia

Yeah it sucks/is bad. We're investigating what's up. (We won't be able to fix it for this episode, but for next week!)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sean's DayZ story reminded me of that Team Roomba TF2 griefing video where the guy trapped people in spawn and started quizzing them to let them out.

 

I had the exact same thought.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this