Sean

Idle Thumbs 146: Osama's Dog

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I never have been on a treadmill while gaming; however, I used to balance on an indo board while playing. I got pretty good at balancing when playing really low key games, like Hexic HD. Anything else and my balance would be shot. This was about 10 years ago...

 

I now play while on an elliptical. I can play games with a little more action than the indo board without falling over. The closest I've come to falling off the machine was during an intense section of Hotline Miami. Lately I've been playing Pixeljunk Shooter without a balance issue.

 

The best part about it is that the time just melts away. If I'm not playing a game, 20 minutes feels like an eternity, but when playing, an hour will go by in what feels like 5 minutes. 

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I think the reason the original Donkey Kong became so Cranky was because he realized he and all of his descendants have rapid aging disorder. That dude used to stand toe-to-toe with Mario but he quickly aged to the point where he could barely move while Mario just continued to get more nimble. It appears that the current Donkey Kong has also had this genetic disorder passed down to him and he wears his tie as a symbol to promote rapid aging disorder awareness.

 

God I'm so stupid.

 

(Dr.) Mario was trying to research Cranky to help him in Donkey Kong Jr., but his son kept 'saving him'.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

 

Also, please don't come in here and be an asshole.

 

 Fair enough.  I'm sorry about that.

 

 

Joking aside, I like how he points out the overlap between how Levine writes his villains and how Levine presents himself in that recent statement. I think it's a salient point about how Levine seems to perceive leadership and power, albeit overshadowed by knee-jerk misogyny.

 

 

It is completely within the realm of possibility to both like women and dislike the philosophy of feminism.   I understand that I'm somewhere where that debate may not happen so I'll just leave it alone.  I just like games seperated from politics for the most part and it sort of frustrates me when they are artificially jammed together.  Apologies all around.

 

Thanks for the compliment.

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 I understand that I'm somewhere where that debate may not happen so I'll just leave it alone.

 

Nah! It just happens in this thread. :)

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It's not really politics, it's about culture and trying to seperate any sort of entertainment or work into some sort of vacuum where these issues don't exist is frankly naive. There's a cultural influence loop to and from any given work and not having that up for discussion is to ignore whatever cultural ideas, stigmas, or attitudes surround it. You can't accurately discuss something without including everything associated to the work.

Plus pretty sure the donkey kong thing was an offhand joke

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Ok, some Donkey Kong facts:

 

1.  Cranky Kong is in fact the current Donkey Kong's grandfather.  This means that his father is Donkey Kong Jr. which makes him Donkey Kong III.

 

DKC6-7.jpg

 

2. Diddy Kong is Donkey Kong's nephew, not his son

 

3. The "cool" Kong was supposed to be Funky Kong

 

FunkyDKC2.jpg

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The last time i looked, Twitch Plays Pokemon had more viewers than the League streams, and its popularity is apparently causing some server load headaches for Twitch.

What a weird thing.

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I am the world's worst multi-tasker, and I am trying to imagine myself playing a video game at the same time as exercising.  How do you keep your balance?  When I have to move or lean in real life it always affects my position in the game.  I can't keep a car going in a straight line or keep Commander Shepard in cover.

 

I'll stick to slouching on the couch!

 

Gritfish or anyone that's tried gaming on a treadmill, have any tips?  I've played while on a stair climber but my feet were relatively locked in place so I was never concerned or had any trouble.  I'm a bit more worried after having recently acquired a treadmill though.  I don't want to lean into a corner in Forza Horizon and tear an ACL or something silly.

 

Do you throw it on a lower speed or just generally try to stick to certain games or genres that are a bit more menu based or less action oriented?

 

The choice of game is a pretty big part of it - anything with a first person camera is pretty hard, because you DO get that leaning effect (The Ideomotor phenomenon). The games that work best are either 2D, turn-based, or games that don't require a lot of dexterity at the same time as quick reactions (I have a feeling I'm going to get wrecked trying dota for this reason). There are plenty of AAA games with a mostly fixed camera that are great - Saints Row 4's camera actually doesn't move a lot unless you make it, so that makes it easier to play. The camera in Mass Effect 2-3 is pretty fixed as well. I never had leaning issues with it (1 was completely different though, and the mako sections were really hard to stay upright through)

 

Some other games that work really well:

Civ5 - using joy2key, it's pretty playable, and the constant stream of stuff to do keeps you from realising how long you've been on

The Banner Saga - turn based, fixed camera

X-COM - same, but with really good controller support

Awesomenauts - talked about in the podcast

Spelunky - same

Brothers - A short experience, but the camera is always kind of fixed, so you don't lean

Lumines / Audiosurf - Amazing games that are quantised, so when you're walking/jogging/peddling to the beat it feels incredible

 

As far as speed goes, games with a lot of cutscenes are your friend, because while they're going, you can crank up the speed and run a bit more without having to worry about screwing up. The Back to the Future games were really good for this.

 

DO NOT TRY MIRRORS EDGE. JUST DON'T.

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I just like games seperated from politics for the most part and it sort of frustrates me when they are artificially jammed together. Apologies all around.

Sorry; I have to comment on this.

The narrative that we can somehow extricate politics from anything, especially culture, is ridiculous and often times recounted by folks who are either stoked about that status quo or simply don't see anything wrong with "the way things are." You may not like "politics" commingling with your video games but, unfortunately, that's a lot like saying "I don't like evolution commingling with my science." They are inextricable, for one, and it's kinda shitty to come at someone like Danielle (in any forum) for advocating that the thing she has spent her vocational career promoting be a little bit smarter about not just the things it makes but also the politics of the things themselves. Politikos, literally "of, for, or relating to citizens," is going to be a hard thing to carve out from any community -- especially one that self identifies by posting thoughts, criticisms and dick jokes to forums on the internet.

"I just like games separated from politics," is a statement that somehow suggests that these things aren't made by people who are making choices. That these choices aren't informed by the lives they lead and the world they exist in. And those lives and that world aren't OUR society -- that we don't live in a society of human beings, organized together for our general well-being, with culture being one of its many many byproducts.

In a society things can, quite effortlessly, become True or False, Right or Wrong, Said and Unsaid -- that IS politics; the descriptor we use to describe the mechanisms at play when we operate as an organized society. Danielle was making a sarcastic comment towards her relatively unending political position; she is harangued, quite publicly, for criticizing the limited human scope of this culture's "serious" efforts so pointing out "typical gender tropes" in something like DK is, what we call in the biz "a joke." You might groan but that groan seems, and correct me if I'm wrong, directed towards your general dissatisfaction with this dialog inside of the culture of which you are citizen.

We don't get to extricate politics from things; it's not the way it works. You might not agree with that fact but I'm gonna tell you that if you go through life, as a citizen in a society of humans, wishing that politics would just get the hell out of [insert thing you like] you're going to end up resentful and feeling falsely marginalized in ADDITION to being just plain wrong.

Now I can never come back to the internet. Goodbye forever.

 

PS: For further reading, and an example of this in a very different realm of society, may I recommend The Politics of Life Itself by Nikolas Rose. I don't get to say I'm wise and read the whole thing but I live with a PhD so I get to reach for books while on the toilet and feel smart by association.

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I was going to make a dumb comment that Mirror's Edge would be the first and last game I'd try on a treadmill, but now that seems somewhat out of place.

 

Don't leave forever, Sean!

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No Sean come back!

 

Kishijugo: The fact that the sentiment of separating video games and politics coming from (often times) the same people who want to push video games as an art form and a legitimate part of our culture is super weird.

 

It's possible that you do not believe video games or game systems to be art or capable of human expression, and that might justify your statement about politics, but there are people who do view games as a part of culture and extract human meaning from them, so the politics and sentiment from these games do matter and the matter quite a lot.

 

Edit: Also that sentiment seems to come from the fear that people will for some reason stop measuring things based on metrics other than having an opinion, and that's...weird and wrong.

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truth, dropped

 

At the risk of contributing to a page of nothing but Sean-cheering: this is why I read these forums.

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(Dr.) Mario was trying to research Cranky to help him in Donkey Kong Jr., but his son kept 'saving him'.

 

Dr. Mario is obviously the guy from the original Donkey Kong who was saving up money as a plumber to go to medical school.  The current Mario is probably that guy's son or nephew.

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I had a brief discussion with John Walker about politics in video games / the enthusiasm thereof, and it basically came down to this:

 

Everything in our life is political, either at the social level or actual government level. It's inescapable and trying to escape it or denounce it is kinda like turning your back on being a responsible person. I can understand just wanting to talk about what's fun in video games as opposed to talking about social ailments perpetuated through them or surrounding them, but that's gotta be specifically worded.

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Hmmm. The guy apologized. Twice. 

 

He didn't need to apologize once, and I almost didn't post that because I didn't want it to be a smackdown - he didn't say anything patently offensive but at the same time if one is going to plant the seed of a dialog with a statement like "one double order of culture, hold the politics," then I'm going to have to respond.

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Hmmm. The guy apologized. Twice. 

 

This is where things could potentially get hairy, and I hesitate to post what I'm about to post, but I think we've already reached the point of no return in this thread so here we go...

 

Yes, he did apologize, and part of me feels bad that his damage control efforts basically failed. But his apology came after a sort of lets-agree-to-disagree sentiment in the form of "It is completely within the realm of possibility to both like women and dislike the philosophy of feminism", and the quip about separating politics from entertainment, etc. Which are the kinds of opinions that are hard not to react to, even when their intent is to curb reaction. It felt, to me, like saying (oh shit this is where I get in trouble) "it is completely within the realm of possibility to both like people of color and dislike the philosophy of civil rights activism". I already regret making that reductionist comparison, but it's how I saw things.

 

I stopped myself from responding as such precisely because he apologized, but that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it when Sean didn't. Which is kinda gross and sadistic but whatever.

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I don't think any of us are angry with him persay, it's more about discussing the idea of seperating a work unto itself, to take it out of cultural and political context and why that's really not possible to do. It's an argument we've all seen at some point and I'd rather discuss it than let it propagate even in a small fashion.

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If you all haven't seen it already, this video puts a lot of the points being discussed quite well.

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I just love the hypocrisy of this guy expecting people to care about (or even want to hear about) his desire not to care--his desire not even to hear--about what's important to other people.

"I'm so sick of hearing (occasionally) about what other people are sick of dealing with all the time."  Boo hoo.

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So I listened a couple times and i still don't know what Danielle Riendeau actually said that sounded like "Osama's dog."

You are not alone, I had this same reaction.

 

 

Sean, I agree with you fully. With that said, sometimes I totally feel "ugh just keep your X out of my Y" even when it's impossible to do so when what I mean to feel is "I don't, currently, want to discuss how X and Y are inextricably linked and in fact should be discussed", mostly because reality is shitty and forced moments of willful ignorance help me escape it.

 

I wish that thinking and talking about what Diddy Kong is going to when he grows up was more relevant to the state of the world as a whole because it makes me laugh and feel good.

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Hey guys I heard about this cool video game podcast so I decided to check it out, it was pretty cool and I liked listening to it. I thought the four people who were on it worked really well together, is that the same crew you have every week? I hope so. I will keep downloading it and listening to it if that is the case.

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