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Chris

Idle Thumbs 145: Rich Uncle, Cool Uncle

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The vitriol towards the Flappy Bird developer confuses me greatly. As for the game, it is true that it is well tuned to be an experience that requires more focus than the few games like this I've tried. However, even though it is well tuned, I don't think it's all that great. I can totally see why it has captured a lot of school kids though because I experienced that arc. I got the game, played a little bit of it. Didn't get more that like 15 pipes and then closed it assuming I wouldn't play it again. Then, when the game controversy came up, someone talked about their 60 pipe score, so I opened it up, focused on it for like 10 minutes and got 65. I imagine a lot of the enthusiasm comes from being able to just challenge someone and then go back and forth on score, but I don't think the game without that meta has anything that really draws you in.

 

I haven't played Jazzpunk yet, but I found it kinda funny, in comparison to Jake's analysis, that I saw a slight Blendo Games comparison and it made me super excited for it. There's so few games that are remotely similar to those, after all. Then I watched the quick look and the intro was so amazing, and then after that it seemed like it had a much different goal and aesthetic choices. This is something I've heard from others, but Airplane was the comparison that stuck with me: here's this thing that's just a vehicle for humour. So, yeah, when Jake took it to task in comparison to Gravity Bone as specifically as he did I was a little surprised. I probably won't approach the game that way, but it was nice to hear the specific comparison breakdown.

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I mean beyond the "it's a Mario ripoff" jargon just because there's green pipes.

Actually I thought that Kotaku article explained the gameplay ironically well! Too bad it was a shit article otherwise. EDIT: Now that I say that, I may actually be confusing it with another article that explained it well... I am an undependable source of information!

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I've definitely heard more than a few comparisons between Jazzpunk and Airplane and other spoof movies as being basically a framework to hang jokes on.

 

Actually, speaking of spoofs, here's this article about the people behind the [bLANK] Movie franchise that I found fascinating.

Yeah I saw Cara Ellison say it was the closest we'll ever get to a Naked Gun game or something along those lines. I can imagine this makes some people really excited to play it and others really skeptical/turned off. 

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For whatever reason, the comparison to Airplane just finally clicked for me. It's totally applicable.

Comparing it to a Zucker movie wasn't being initially allowed by my brain, I think, because I don't associate Airplane and the like with any sort of high concept aesthetic humor -- they don't make any attempts to look like high budget or particularly well production designed movies. Jazzpunk has it's own crazy style front and center, but that's kind of a headfake as far as what's actually going on moment to moment - unlike a Blendo game, Jazzpunk isn't really about that a lot of the time. What happens within that, though, is very much in the spirit of those movies.

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What's a simple description of app store rating juking? Like sockpuppet 5starring?

 

I love human interactions like "I could face that wrath for 50k a day." "I live with you and no you couldn't." For the record, I'm also more than willing to try to face it for that money too.

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Listening to this episode, I was infuriated with Nick's quick dismissal of Jake and Chris's opinions and how cold he came across towards the developers motives. His thoughts ran counter to my own and pretty much everyone else's who had weighed in on the matter and seemed sensationalist at best. Having listen to this this podcast since its beginning I had never felt so annoyed at any of the host like this before. 

 

Now having said all that, I want to say in all honestly, thank you Nick. Thank you for offering a counter argument that many might not think of or want to consider. Thank you for not simply agreeing and leaving at that. Thank you for not being afraid to present an idea that is controversial and not filtering or tailoring your thoughts to appeal to your audience. Thank you to all of you for leaving the discussion in the episode and allowing us to hear it. It felt like an honest conversation and I am glad there is a podcast that celebrates those kinds of discussions. Thank you.

 

 

 

On a side note, how do we go about changing Steve's nickname to "Cyber-Shit"?

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The more I think about the whole Flappy Bird thing (which continues to be fascinating because it exposed a really ugly vein that runs completely counter to the usual games industry narrative) the more I'm convinced Dong Nguyen being Vietnamese has a lot to do with it. I think it's got the same kind of virulent, ignorant anti-Asian rhetoric that I've seen from people raging about gold spammers in WoW - the idea that these poor Asian countries are ruining our games. Mattie Brice has a pretty good piece about this (and by 'pretty good' I explicitly mean 'it raised my hackles for no adequate reason' which suggests it's bringing up issues I'd rather not think about.)

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On a side note, how do we go about changing Steve's nickname to "Cyber-Shit"?

Why not just go with "Tachikoma" or something so we can have a ghost and cyborg reference all in one?

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Also, it briefly came up at the very end, but BUCK HUNTER was a big, cool thing in Manhattan for a minute. The machines are networked, and there is either a card swipe or USB dongle thing that locks high score initials to an ID. One of my friends is really good at it, and the island gets divided into de facto territories. Players travel around defending their rankings and controlling their territory. I remember going to some random ass bar because she heard they added a machine and since it was in her territory she needed to lock the #1 spot. I think she got a wild card spot to go to the World Championships in 2012. 

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Man I didn't catch this the first time around, but I love when Jake and Chris just fuse brains for a split second.

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[...] but BUCK HUNTER was a big, cool thing in Manhattan for a minute. [...] Players travel around defending their rankings and controlling their territory. I remember going to some random ass bar because she heard they added a machine and since it was in her territory she needed to lock the #1 spot. I think she got a wild card spot to go to the World Championships in 2012.

 

This was not just in Manhattan, and it was not at all an accident.  Play Mechanix put an unprecedented amount of money into fomenting online competition in a cabinet game, and that investment paid off handsomely.

 

Farmville was a big cool thing for a short minute, too (though only an internet short minute), and for a lot of the same reasons.  Which drew in exactly the same personality type after the first few seconds of early adoption.  And made a very recognizable crowd utterly loathe it five minutes later.

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I don't think anyone mentioned this but the scores in Threes grows exponentially, so even if it looks like you're far behind someone else you might only be one match away from them. They did it this way so you're super rewarded for having a single big number and try to get larger matches rather than filling the board with moderately large numbers. 

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The more I think about the whole Flappy Bird thing (which continues to be fascinating because it exposed a really ugly vein that runs completely counter to the usual games industry narrative) the more I'm convinced Dong Nguyen being Vietnamese has a lot to do with it. I think it's got the same kind of virulent, ignorant anti-Asian rhetoric that I've seen from people raging about gold spammers in WoW - the idea that these poor Asian countries are ruining our games. Mattie Brice has a pretty good piece about this (and by 'pretty good' I explicitly mean 'it raised my hackles for no adequate reason' which suggests it's bringing up issues I'd rather not think about.)

 

Thanks for the link on that.  I really need to be following Brice's work on a more regular basis.

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In reference to simple and repeatitive meditation-games that put the knives through the clock:

I'm playing 7 Grand Steps and it manages to give me that thoughtless experience I want from a casual game, but it manages to reward me with a family's storied history. The game mechanics are similar to Pegs and Jokers without the griefing or precision. For the most part you are just trying to choose which space to move to with the hand you are dealt in order to accumulate more cards (tokens in this case) or xp. It's simple; it's mind numbing; I barely have to think, but it keeps my brain busy enough that I think of nothing else.

One of the things that this game accomplishes where others of its ilk fail, is that I don't feel like I just killed time after I've played for an hour or two. I suspect that the reason is because the game creates a narrative through authored anectdotes of the player-characters' lives that mix with auspice-like game-mechanics. Instead of feeling like I'm having withdrawl, I end up feeling like I just visited one of those museums that has dioramas of early agriculture societies like Spaceship Earth or the Semitic Museum at Harvard.

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Half of what Mattie writes just goes over my  :crazy: (head) and what often resonates with me is tangential to her main point. Oh well, I enjoy her work... even if I'm not the ideal reader.

 

 

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Listening to this episode, I was infuriated with Nick's quick dismissal of Jake and Chris's opinions and how cold he came across towards the developers motives. His thoughts ran counter to my own and pretty much everyone else's who had weighed in on the matter and seemed sensationalist at best. Having listen to this this podcast since its beginning I had never felt so annoyed at any of the host like this before. 

 

Now having said all that, I want to say in all honesty, Congrats Nick.

 

Just got to this point in the thread and really felt the above was coming -- thought it was a long con to get there. Anyway, I actually appreciated what Breckon was saying because it is worth at least considering that angle (Nick has to come from a dark place anyway, it's just Nick!)

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The shocking thing is that I didn't get the sense that Nick felt strongly about what he was saying. It was just... stuff he read that he was sharing.

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