Jake

Idle Thumbs 194: A Grave Ghost

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I think it's kind of odd to dismiss an entire competitive scene because of one or two incidents. Even weirder is thinking it's dead at birth when CSGO is getting about the same numbers that Dota2 did two years ago and CSGO only got popular last year.

 

Sean, I don't know how much you're following the pro Dota2 scene these days but just last year two teams got caught match-fixing. Notably, one of the teams was Arrow Gaming. You can also just Google the seemingly innocuous number '322'.

 

I don't really get comparing cheating in a video game to cheating in live sports when it's so much easier to cheat in a video game and there's very rarely any legal repercussions. The 2010 Brood War kerfuffle in South Korea is the only one I can think of that has gone to court.

 

Match fixing and cheating are also different things, wallhacks are IMO different from betting against yourself. Both bad but still.

 

Also, MLG never did events in South Korea, cmon.

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Match fixing and cheating are also different things, wallhacks are IMO different from betting against yourself. Both bad but still.

 

Also, MLG never did events in South Korea, cmon.

 

What does MLG have to do with it?

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I don't know if I agree with everything Sean had to say about all the cheating stuff, but I think I agree with his points broadly. Rampant cheating really does end up poisoning our cultural values. That being said, I do think money has a lot to do with it in many cases, how could it not? That is always going to have an impact on the incentives people face regardless of what action they end up choosing. But it isn't just about money. I think it was PC Gamer that did a deep dive into an examination of the people that buy hacks for a game like CS:GO, and examined why people cheat at these games. For a lot of people, it seems, it simply comes down to a thrill. It's very difficult to wrap our head around for all the people that have no interest in cheating. But essentially for some people that's just how they get their kicks.

 

Here's the article: http://www.pcgamer.com/hacks-an-investigation-into-aimbot-dealers-wallhack-users-and-the-million-dollar-business-of-video-game-cheating/

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I was so excited and then immediately so let down. You guys are just rubbing salt in the cheese wound. :P

 

 

CHEESE

 

 

WHY!!!?!?!?!!?

 

 

 

literally, maddening....nice troll through, *golf clap*

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Someone needs to extrapolate and reconstruct the cheese story using snippets of old episodes based on Jake's comment from earlier:
 

story: there was smelly cheese in my car and I couldn't find it among the garbage. then I found it and threw it away.

 

It's a tough job but at least there is a good database of Danielle's horrified No!s from the previous episode.

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Just a heads up to anyone who wants to watch Black Mirror: series 1 deals HEAVILY with sexual coersion and other dark themes regarding that and if that's something that bothers you, maybe skipping the first two episodes, especially. Series 2 is slightly less grim in that respect.

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The New 3DS XL is the first time I've been burned by Nintendo's thing over the last ten years of having multiple new versions of a particular hardware platform come out. Just a month ago I bought a 3DS XL to replace my 3DS (and thus I could give my brother the 3DS). I mean, it'd be fine if it was just the standard "longer battery, bigger screen!" stuff, but if the actual hardware performance is better to the point that it will run games the current versions can't run, that really burns my ass. Why not just make the next gen of hardware altogether if you're going to allow for that shit? Or is this some goofy Wii / Wii U name crap and this actually is the next hardware gen?

 

Can you imagine if later this year we hear about the New Wii U?

 

Anyway. Noticed that Jake referred to GOG as "Gee oh gee." Was different.

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When Sean (I think) said neither Rich Uncle or Cool Uncle had ever worked at Nintendo I suddenly imagined another painting to put up beside them of Miyamoto titled "My Friend's Uncle"

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The New 3DS XL is the first time I've been burned by Nintendo's thing over the last ten years of having multiple new versions of a particular hardware platform come out. Just a month ago I bought a 3DS XL to replace my 3DS (and thus I could give my brother the 3DS). I mean, it'd be fine if it was just the standard "longer battery, bigger screen!" stuff, but if the actual hardware performance is better to the point that it will run games the current versions can't run, that really burns my ass. Why not just make the next gen of hardware altogether if you're going to allow for that shit? Or is this some goofy Wii / Wii U name crap and this actually is the next hardware gen?

 

It's basically the DSi to the 3DS' DS, or the Gameboy Color to its Gameboy. You'll miss a few features and a couple of exclusive games, but probably not anything worth the price tag. I'm only getting one because my 3DS has had a broken hinge forever.

 

 

Want to know why Microsoft bought the Battletoads name? Here's why:

ODyFA9Z.png

 

The new Windows startup sound for Windows 10:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQxHzys2hBo

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On Majora's tonal weirdness: 

 

The promotional stuff for the original Majora's Mask was real nightmare fuel as a kid.

 

 

(My favorite is the guy at the end who says "Waitin' for the moon to drop" like its a Otis Redding song)

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Of all the Zelda games, Majora's Mask does remain my favourite even though I never got to play it. Everything about it feels like I'd be on board, if only it was on a convenient platform for me.

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The "places you can shave" conversation is the perfect complement to the underwear advert from last week. 

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Majoras Mask is my favorite Nintendo game, maybe my favorite console (non-PC) game. Excited to maybe hear more about it on Thumbs, maybe.
 
For what it's worth, my favorite video game of any sort is Grim Fandango. And (and I'm starting to feel self conscious about how often I bring this up) February 13 is my birthday. So I like to think Nintendo and Double Fine are showing up with birthday presents this upcoming month that I have to pay for.

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Majoras Mask is my favorite Nintendo game, maybe my favorite console (non-PC) game.

 

For what it's worth, my favorite video game of any sort is Grim Fandango. And (and I'm starting to feel self conscious about how often I bring this up) February 13 is my birthday. So I like to think Nintendo and Double Fine are showing up with birthday presents this upcoming month that I have to pay for.

For what it's worth, you share a birthday with Junior Mints (unless I misheard that). 

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Majora's Mask is my favorite Zelda, and I judge no one for giving up on it after a first attempt.  It was by far the thing I wanted most for Christmas 2000, and I walked away from it after a few hours for what might have been a full year.  It betrays one of the tenets of Zelda, which is the franchise's reliable accessibility.  But man, once you force yourself over the hump.

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I was just telling a coworker about those terrifying commercials the other day. They suffer from some typical 90s/00s cheesiness but I remember how much they freaked out 10 year old me.

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"I don't think there's a way to come back from the early days of your sport being rife with a bunch of childish cheaters, and expecting anyone to ever take it seriously." I get what Sean's saying here, but I immediately thought of the Black Sox. That hardly killed baseball, even at the peak of the dead-ball era, and from what we can tell once baseball became better documented, it was only the tip of an iceberg of cheating, almost too widespread ever to be called out. People kept watching and the culture slowly changed, that's all.

I know e-sports are different, but I also think society is remarkably forgiving of any competitive activity wherein cheaters are able to prosper, so long as there is punishment when they are caught and there are legitimate players with which to juxtapose them.

EDIT: Okay, Jake talks later about institutions "getting burned" before they understand the public trust of viewership, if that's the idea then I agree with the rest being said.

 

I thought about bringing up the Black Sox but I'm not really informed enough on the history of league POST the Black Sox off of the top of my head. But I also think that was pre-visual media and obviously way pre-twitter era.  I think I corrected myself in saying "Pete Rose didn't be on his own team--he didn't bet AGAINST his team" but regardless, either of those scandals would ROCK MLB to the core if they happened now.  Can you imagine if it came out that the 2014 Giants rigged the World Series? Holy shit.

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I thought about bringing up the Black Sox but I'm not really informed enough on the history of league POST the Black Sox off of the top of my head. But I also think that was pre-visual media and obviously way pre-twitter era.  I think I corrected myself in saying "Pete Rose didn't be on his own team--he didn't bet AGAINST his team" but regardless, either of those scandals would ROCK MLB to the core if they happened now.  Can you imagine if it came out that the 2014 Giants rigged the World Series? Holy shit.

 

Well, as far as I know about the Black Sox angle, the league brought in the commissioner equivalent of Judge Dredd, who ruined dozens of careers in order to root out anyone even reminiscent of corruption. I'm not nearly so familiar with the Pete Rose thing, besides characters in sitcoms occasionally having very strong reactions to his banning, but I'm wondering if there'd be the will and the ability to break down and rebuild an entire sport today. I'd hope so, but I doubt it.

 

Say one thing about a massive cheating scandal, I'd probably watch at least a few games after a rigged World Series, out of sheer rubbernecking interest. It wouldn't be good for the sport long-term, but the idea of a conspiracy of that scale in today's media-compromised landscape? Tantalizing.

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On Majora's tonal weirdness: 

 

The promotional stuff for the original Majora's Mask was real nightmare fuel as a kid.

 

 

(My favorite is the guy at the end who says "Waitin' for the moon to drop" like its a Otis Redding song)

Holy shit!

Man, hearing the way people talk about it, I'm one of apparently many people who wish they'd been in the right place and right time, physically and mentally, to enjoy that game as a kid. I hope I get a chance to still, but as has been discussed, it won't have the same impact now it would have then.

Oh well. Oh well. There's a lot of parallel lives we don't get to live, no reason to get wound up about it.

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