Idle Thumbs 154: Super Good

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 154:

 

 

Super Good

It is the present. John Q. Video Games comes home from a hard day at work making video games, ready to kick back. He turns on the latest console, in which he plays a video game developer who turns on a PC and plays a video game. He wakes up screaming and rates the experience four out of five stars; his rating is duly recorded. With Nick Breckon as Video Games.

 

Things Discussed: Civilization Beyond Earth, Black Flag, Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, Async. Corp, FTL: Advanced Edition

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[SecretAsianMan]

I'm not done with the episode yet, but I want to point out that there in fact WAS a Flintstones Kids cartoon.

 

http://youtu.be/QYUvUJbJ8Pg

[tberton]

Who else was super freaked out by Sean's voice coming in at the end?

 

Weird thing: I was trying to get that same achievement in FTL and thought about using the same tactic that guy did and then imagined the story it would create and how I would write into Idle Thumbs about it. So I think the writer of that email is my Tyler Durden.

 

Also, I say "super" all the time now too.

[SecretAsianMan]

Man, this episode really is super good.  First time they've ever read one of my reader mails.  I purposely left the reveal of the human crew member as Breckon to the P.S. so as not to spoil the story and also to make it the twist.

[Jake]

tberton I hate to tell you this but you're surrounded by the writer of that email.

[SecretAsianMan]

And now I'm surrounding Jake.

[tberton]

tberton I hate to tell you this but you're surrounded by the writer of that email.

 

Yeah, I realized that after SecretAsianMan posted. Or was that me posting and not realizing it? AHHHHH!

[tegan]

I'm not done with the episode yet, but I want to point out that there in fact WAS a Flintstones Kids cartoon.

 

There was also a teen Flintstones spinoff and a second kid-themed Flintstones spinoff.

 

 

 

 

 

IDLE THUMBS: YOUR SOURCE FOR FLINTSTONES TRIVIA

[Razorwind]

Also here for the Flintstones kids. Darn that was good times.

[Brannigan]

super yabba dabba doo good

[Gormongous]

Man, now I feel Sean's pain with Dota 2 and Chris' pain with Spelunky, since I firmly believe that Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the greatest game ever made and I had to listen to it described in vague terms that totally failed to capture its appeal. Oh well!

 

I enjoyed the discussion that Chris and Nick had about how Civilization V's "optimistic" design was evinced largely in the often undesirable cost of waging war. Warfare always seems to be a sticking point for any historical strategy game, at least beyond a certain level of breadth, because people have voluntarily gone to war since the beginning of human history, but war has always been unprofitable to both sides in the long term. How do you make a suboptimal decision desirable in a game without an invested player avatar? It takes a special kind of game like Victoria 2, which spends immense amount of design resources and player goodwill, to construct a scenario with objectives that make war always useful but never preferable. In the case of Victoria 2, it's an open sandbox game about bringing a given nation successfully through the tumult of the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, in service of which war is of high risk and only occasional use. You can't fight political and social change with guns, after all. I wonder if, as Chris suggested, using quests rather than numerical thresholds for victory conditions will also make war a less useful tool of the state in Civilization: Beyond Earth.

 

Also, there were no aliens beyond Planet's mindworms and the fungus in the original Alpha Centauri, although the technological victory heavily implied that the entire thing was maybe a colossal supercomputer-cum-immune-system constructed and then abandoned by some unknown entity. The expansion, Alien Crossfire, ruined that like it ruined a lot of other things by having two of the new factions be the Progenitors, caught in the middle of a civil war over what to do with Planet. They were suitably alien to interact with, although ludicrously overpowered to play, but it was all so much better when Planet was a strange, hostile world touched by the hand of an unknowable, perhaps sinister god, not made by some stupid bickering shovelheaded dudes.

 

[Gormongous]

Also, and this deserves another post because I'm a history dork, but the "president emeritus" system that the Thumbs joke about is almost exactly how the Senate of republican Rome operated. You served as one of two consuls for a year, then retired to the Senate for life, where you drew up laws for the plebs to approve and "advised" the current pair of consuls on pretty much everything. Hey, it was a good enough system to conquer half the known world!

[Justin Leego]

FTL: Arab Emirates sponsor edition.

[I_smell]

Just wanna pop in and say AGAIN that I love the episode descriptions.

 

"He wakes up screaming and rates the experience 4 out of 5 stars" Is a hilariously fast shift in tone that's perfectly fit for the thing you're making a joke about. Nice work!

[tberton]

FTL: Arab Emirates sponsor edition.

 

FTL: Alien Emeritus.

[Patrick R]

I also find myself saying "super good".

[Polish Hill]

Some might say this episode was "super good."

 

-e- I somehow missed this is the episode title which makes me super bad.

[Badfinger]

In Assassin's Creed 4 you're a beta tester, and also literally every desk has an animus (and you hack into people's animii). You (THE PLAYER) are extremely good at pulling Cool Memories out of the Animus. If you're following the story or care, that seems like a relatively important part of it. It IS extremely ~META~.

 

 

To answer Chris's question, in this fictional universe AC: Liberation is the ONLY game this company has released. Also the name of the game is Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. e: this has been sussed out 90 seconds later.

[Problem Machine]

It hadn't occurred to me until now, but it's true that the way super good and similar phrases can seep into one's vocabulary can be kind of gross. It's the worst.

[electricblue]

I'm fine with Beyond After Earth losing the pessimistic quality of Alpha Centauri but I hope the Technology quotes maintain the same feeling from AC and don't have that awe inspired feeling from Civ V. Does anyone have the Civ V trailer mash up mentioned in the episode? I was unable to find it.

[sclpls]

You guys are the worst! This is how it starts.

 

One of the articles about Beyond Earth has a quote from one of the designers talking about how the players are in a race to complete quests to achieve victory.

 

Nick Breckon appears on the podcast and talks about how the designers totally talk about races in the game.

 

Idle Thumbs listeners express outrage on Twitter. Twitter blows up.

 

Kotaku runs an article on the weird racism of Beyond Earth. Neogaf complains about social justice warriors.

 

IGN runs an article with an image of an Aryan looking dude punching a tentacle alien in the face.

 

It is super weird.

 

P.S. Congrats Nick.

[lizzyinthesky]

In Assassin's Creed 4 you're a beta tester, and also literally every desk has an animus (and you hack into people's animii). You (THE PLAYER) are extremely good at pulling Cool Memories out of the Animus. If you're following the story or care, that seems like a relatively important part of it. It IS extremely ~META~.

 

 

To answer Chris's question, in this fictional universe AC: Liberation is the ONLY game this company has released. Also the name of the game is Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag. e: this has been sussed out 90 seconds later.

Yah, it specifically points out that you: The player in real life and also in the video game are a guy who reached the max level in AC3 Multiplayer and thus were given a job by Abstergo. This ties into the actual multiplayer unlocks in AC3, which has a video at max level announcing that you have won this opportunity, if I recall correctly. Its really really weird.

[Nick Breckon]

Yah, it specifically points out that you: The player in real life and also in the video game are a guy who reached the max level in AC3 Multiplayer and thus were given a job by Abstergo. This ties into the actual multiplayer unlocks in AC3, which has a video at max level announcing that you have won this opportunity, if I recall correctly. Its really really weird.

 

Assassin's Creed 4, starring video game beta tester Max Level.

[Justin Leego]

You guys are the worst! This is how it starts.

 

One of the articles about Beyond Earth has a quote from one of the designers talking about how the players are in a race to complete quests to achieve victory.

 

Nick Breckon appears on the podcast and talks about how the designers totally talk about races in the game.

 

Idle Thumbs listeners express outrage on Twitter. Twitter blows up.

 

Kotaku runs an article on the weird racism of Beyond Earth. Neogaf complains about social justice warriors.

 

IGN runs an article with an image of an Aryan looking dude punching a tentacle alien in the face.

 

It is super weird.

 

P.S. Congrats Nick.

 

You should send that in to questions at idle thumbs dot net.

[Gormongous]

One of the articles about Beyond Earth has a quote from one of the designers talking about how the players are in a race to complete quests to achieve victory.

 

Actually, and I know you're joking, but it's Tom Senior at PC Gamer using "race" instead of "faction" in a question to David McDonough and Will Miller on page two of this interview. They both carefully reassert the use of "faction" in their response, probably to avoid the exact scenario about which you're joking.