Jake

Idle Thumbs 159: Wilson's Ghoulish Countenance

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Different people like different things. I keep indicating I'm just talking about what appeals to me. I also find some of his films to be about stuff that resonates beyond its own set of references, but others (like Spaceballs) do not for me and are essentially unwatchable.

 

And that's fine!  I wasn't meaning to imply that there is anything wrong with not liking Brooks' films.  But as the basis for the conversation was referential humor, I found that bringing up Brooks in general was a bit odd, as his best films and the best bits of his films don't rely on that kind of humor, even if they use it as a setup.  To me, it's just not a great fit for the conversation, particularly compared to that atrocity of a trailer that was just posted above me. 

 

For me, I guess referential humor is mostly dependent on how heavy handed it is.  A well timed reference joke can certainly get a laugh out of me.  But then something like Deathspank: The Baconing is just...well, just no.  That's something that I never even gave the time of day to, the name alone was enough to turn me off of it. 

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I think I watched too much Laugh In growing up. I get a little thrill out of referential humor and nonsensical catchphrases from an earlier era. Sometimes a thing being dated and a little impenetrable is a sign that it's distinctive and worth figuring out. 

 

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Absolutely nothing wrong with this reference and I can say that with absolutely no bias.

 

Also, if you turn on commentary mode and open the fridge, there's a track right next to the dressing where I explain why it's in the game and make a 'reference' to Idle Thumbs.

 

I've been meaning to go through and listen to some of the commentary tracks since they got added, this makes it more likely that I will do so.

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I didn't bring up Brooks. Somebody else did, and I commented on it.

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I didn't bring up Brooks. Somebody else did, and I commented on it.

 

I wasn't solely replying to you with my original comment.  I was replying to Brooks being brought up at all, it just happened to follow your post. 

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Chris and especially Sean seemed pretty against the idea of referential humor in general, but I think it can be done well. If you guys ever have Zach on the podcast again, you should bring it up, he seems like someone who thinks a lot about why things are funny, and KoL has a lot of what I think of as referential jokes. 

 

I think I agree with Chris for the most part.  KoL is a weird thing, because the way we develop content requires us to write, like, a hundred dumb one-liner jokes a day.  They're going to be all over the place, both because we have to make so many of them so fast and because there are three of us who write them, and we all have slightly different sensibilities.  And since it's really more of an ongoing service than a fixed product, we very rarely go back to some old thing and say "We should make this line funnier," or "was this joke worth making in the first place?" or whatever.  Part of the reason people like it is because it's so off-the-cuff, but I'm not so far up my own ass that I don't recognize that we're sacrificing quality for quantity.  It's just the nature of what we do.

 

Maybe the kind of joke that works in conversation but not as well in text works in KoL because KoL is more like a conversation than it is like a text.  That said, I personally strive to make sure that when I make a reference to some cultural thing that I do so in support of the joke, not AS the joke.  I try to be cognizant of how something will read if you don't understand the referent, and I try to avoid writing stuff that is just doomed to be complete nonsense in ten years.

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I feel like this stuff falls flat the same reason any tired writing thing falls flat in games.* There's no personal investment and the joke can't be tailored to the player. Jake says all sorts of ridiculous somewhat older internet jokes on this cast that I literally think of myself just as I hear him say them and they're great. Excepting for some really older stuff Jake's jokes are always gonna hit for me, and it's actually spontaneous and great. In a game there's a more likely chance a joke is not going to be as deep a pull, because those obscure ones can't be understood by as many people, but I'm not gonna find any of the popular current references as funny. That on top of it being difficult to write a situation that feels like it leads to the joke without feeling too overly directed or too random. The title "DeathSpank: The Baconing" basically tells the audience to strap in for generic jokes, which is basically the opposite of the way to do humour like this.


That isn't to say that those jokes won't hit for some. I was kinda surprised when I watched the Super Time Force Giant Bomb  quick look and later watched a let's play channel quick look and the reaction to the commander wearing two eyepatches was about as opposite as it could be. GB basically detested him and only laughed at his terribleness, while the let's players enjoyed it as if it was meant to just be good funny writing. Both outlets have content I think is very funny so it was kinda weird seeing those reactions be so different.

 

*It's the same reason why video game betrayals often don't work, for example. Not only is there usually a convoluted story that usually telegraphs the betrayal event, but the player doesn't feel like they themselves trust or connect to the betrayer before it occurs making the impact fairly small. 

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Part of the reason people like it is because it's so off-the-cuff...

...KoL is more like a conversation than it is like a text.

This is a good point, I hadn't thought about that.

 

I want to say that I think this is also why Jazzpunk works for me. The reason there's a wrench that makes the Vigilante 8 sound when you pick it up isn't because that's an especially funny joke, it's there because a weird goofy thing is better than an empty parking lot. 

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Maybe the kind of joke that works in conversation but not as well in text works in KoL because KoL is more like a conversation than it is like a text.

 

I totally buy this, and I also think you guys, intentionally or otherwise, cultivate a general aesthetic that advances this. It's also really hard to separate the experience of playing the game from the knowledge of who makes it and how it is made, which adds further content, even if it's technically "outside" of the game itself. To me that's different to seeing a Hollywood film and having the tacit understanding that it is created and polished by way of a fairly standardized system, even if you are aware of the aesthetic sensibilities of the creators. (Not everyone has to feel this way obviously, it's just my own angle.)

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The difference between Blazing Saddles and Spaceballs is huge, but the difference between Spaceballs and 

 

 

is also huge. 

 

I'd be willing to suggest you're not comparing things that show a comparison of strong and weak traits so much as you're comparing a thing that's competent with a thing that's not in the slightest. None of those joke setups are even the least bit humorous, referential or no. Sometimes things are just bad. The original Scary Movie was a relatively decent movie, but we're almost 15 years deep with people trying to copy that style and spit something out based on the last 18 months of pop culture.

 

 

That isn't to say that those jokes won't hit for some. I was kinda surprised when I watched the Super Time Force Giant Bomb  quick look and later watched a let's play channel quick look and the reaction to the commander wearing two eyepatches was about as opposite as it could be. GB basically detested him and only laughed at his terribleness, while the let's players enjoyed it as if it was meant to just be good funny writing. Both outlets have content I think is very funny so it was kinda weird seeing those reactions be so different.

 

Watching the Super Time Force QL and listening to the Bombcast, to me they seemed to really LIKE the dumb double-eyepatched general. Interesting that you got the opposite vibe.

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Watching the Super Time Force QL and listening to the Bombcast, to me they seemed to really LIKE the dumb double-eyepatched general. Interesting that you got the opposite vibe.

 

They like the fact that he's a dumb character.

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Return of the best guest!

 

Now we wait for the MRAs to show up.

GODDAMN WOMEN SUPRESSING ME THROUGH... GETTING PAID LESS YOU FILTHY SKANKS STOP TRAMPLING ON MUH FREEDOMS

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Psyched for this episode, came into Wolfensteiner with low expectations but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit.

 

Not only shooting Nazis, thats always fun, but some of the stylistic choices they made were spot on imo, I like to think I even detected a hint of subversion simmering under the surface.

 

first of all the "resistance" is polish, something that always warms my heart. All we ever hear about is the french resistance, the poles are always painted as victims (which they were, the nazis exterminated 16% of the polish population, try and wrap your head around that).

 

In reality the polish resistance was fuckin fierce however, throughout the war. the only countries that kept up in terms of insurgency were russia of course and the czechs. an objective look at warszawa uprising will show you just how dedicated and downright insane the polish resistance was.

 

My granddad had to choose whether to surrender to the germans or the russians when they invaded poland, they chose russia and spent 3 years in a gulag eating fish heads until they were traded to the english. He went on to fight from africa to italy under an english flag, and got lots of medals despite being a mechanic (one of the medals was for pushing a german officer and his car off a mountain near monte casino in his halftrack :-D)

 

anyhow you can imagine my pops inundated me with glorious tales of the polacks kicking nazi ass, and despite my inherent skepticism as far as I can tell most of em are pretty damn true.

 

In fact, anyas gramps in Wolfenstein kind of reminded me of my grandpa, he was a bit of an asshole as well;-)

 

obviously its still a cheesy AAA action game(max payne called, he wants his dangerous whisper back) but I really thought they did well within that confine.

 

Max Hass was a nice addition, even a subtle reminder of the cost of war like Max`s deformed head is a victory in AAA imo, the ex nazi taking care of him was well done too(of course the main character always stays pretty, but hey its a start).

 

usually I groan at AAA attempts to invoke humanity, but it actually kind of worked in Wolfenstein to some extent.

 

Fuck I almost teared up when the ex-nazi sings "Schlaf, kindchen, Schlaf" to Max, my mom used to sing that to me.

 

as for the subversiveness, im pretty sure its there and im not just thinking wishfully.

 

first of all the only reason you get into a certain building is with the help of an allied suicide car bomb, if that isnt a little poke in the ribs then I dont know what is.

 

there are a couple of those moments where I was all "whoa, are they comparing US imperialism to nazism?!" but I might be talking out of my ass.

 

Im gonna shut up now until ive actually listened, final thing is I found it a bit easy honestly, and im no FPS Pro. Go ahead and try it on "Über" you will probably be fine and enjoy the combat more.

 

Oh also, I dont know if anybody mentioned this but jimmy hendrix lives in your hideout :-D

 

P.s.

 

The diatribe your jewish friend gives in the KZ you are holed up in was excellent, although I think ive heard it before, somewhere:

 

"This is the product of pure conviction"

 

gave me goosebumps

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one of the medals was for pushing a german officer and his car off a mountain near monte casino in his halftrack :-D

 

If someone wants to make a game where this is the core activity, you have my blessing.

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Ok, this was a weird idea... I made an intro animation for Sean's dream/nightmare animalpunpuzzleplatformer (at about 1:28:00 in this episode). It was mainly also a chance to try out this kind of big characters in lo-res style (it's in NES resolution & color palette).

post-26597-0-62082200-1401247121_thumb.gif

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I'm pretty sure the title of Sean's game should be 

 

Hoarse, of course.

 

Which is in the spirit of Full Bore, which is a homonym pun, which is like a level 3 pun.  It is like making the obvious pun and snatching it away at the last possible moment.

 

And it should be a point and click adventure which stars a Horse in a groundhog day like scenario where he wakes up every day with terrible throat dryness until he can re-enact everything just perfectly to get some Buckley's and soothe his throat.   Every day he wakes up an his throat is Hoarse, of course, because every day is a nightmare.

 

The game design would require unlocking access to new areas of the map each day, by pushing the boundaries in the previous day.  You learn more about the horse and the city with every passing day and use that knowledge to explore deeper into the world, until unraveling the Big Pharma conspiracy which involves treating the water supply with Rhaspoids, a chemical compound which causes Hoarseness.

 

We're going to need some concept art.

 

Or maybe it is a puzzle platformer, who cares.

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And it should be a point and click adventure which stars a Horse in a groundhog day like scenario where he wakes up every day with terrible throat dryness until he can re-enact everything just perfectly to get some Buckley's and soothe his throat.   Every day he wakes up an his throat is Hoarse, of course, because every day is a nightmare.

The Silent Hill 2 of animal-pun themed video games. Possibly even the Citizen Kane of the Silent Hill 2's of animal-pun themed video games.

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I think I agree with Chris for the most part.  KoL is a weird thing, because the way we develop content requires us to write, like, a hundred dumb one-liner jokes a day.  They're going to be all over the place, both because we have to make so many of them so fast and because there are three of us who write them, and we all have slightly different sensibilities.  And since it's really more of an ongoing service than a fixed product, we very rarely go back to some old thing and say "We should make this line funnier," or "was this joke worth making in the first place?" or whatever.  Part of the reason people like it is because it's so off-the-cuff, but I'm not so far up my own ass that I don't recognize that we're sacrificing quality for quantity.  It's just the nature of what we do.

 

Maybe the kind of joke that works in conversation but not as well in text works in KoL because KoL is more like a conversation than it is like a text.  That said, I personally strive to make sure that when I make a reference to some cultural thing that I do so in support of the joke, not AS the joke.  I try to be cognizant of how something will read if you don't understand the referent, and I try to avoid writing stuff that is just doomed to be complete nonsense in ten years.

 

I thought KOL was successful in that when I was playing it as a teenager, I was constantly driven to look up the meaning behind jokes I didn't understand. It's super weird to think that a text-based game I was playing like 10 years ago actually widened my cultural perspective in a notable way. That said, any time I found myself explaining elements of the game in a more strict gameplay sense I'm 100% sure I sounded like a total idiot. You really just can't say "Bonerdagon" out loud and have anyone take that seriously.

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New life goal: Figure out a way to slip Bonerdragon into a conversation naturally. 

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The Silent Hill 2 of animal-pun themed video games.

"It's being invaded by the Otterworld. A world of someone's nightmarish delusions come to life." ...

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New life goal: Figure out a way to slip Bonerdragon into a conversation naturally. 

 

God I feel like a tool, but it's "Bonerdagon". It's meant to be a misspelling of Bonedragon. All the KOL newbs called it "Bonerdragon". 

 

:fart:

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