Jake

IDLE THUMBS 200

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Congrats on the 200th episode of your super(optional b ) show, it's one of my outright favourite things.

 

About Notch, I don't feel like he has an obligation to spend his money on charity but when you have that much money, that much time and seemingly little idea of what to do with either of them, it seems like there's a lot of avenues to help the world given the resources you have available. He doesn't even have to divorce it entirely from what he's done before. Maybe try to make a game that helps the world, whatever. I was kind of annoyed that he said that charity seems like it's just to score points because I personally would feel like it's better to be perceived as fake when trying to help people than to just have the public persona of the millionaire dude with more money than he knows what to do with. Again that's totally my personal feelings, Notch doesn't need to share them at all but it bums me out a bit.

 

...though admittedly I heard that second hand through the podcast so I can't be too critical of it without exact wording and context.

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Because of the similar voices and the point where Jake says "you've regressed 150 Nick Breckons" I thought of Nick as the proto-Steve who got a branching line of production after the Steve model succeeded, and every few episodes the thumbs crew redesigns the Nick model, loads him with the Baboo database and puts him on the podcast to see if he has a meltdown. If he does, he's put in the incinerator and a new one takes his place.

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every few episodes the thumbs crew redesigns the Nick model, loads him with the Baboo database and puts him on the podcast to see if he has a meltdown. If he does, he's put in the incinerator and a new one takes his place.

 

You're talking as if the whole point of a Breckon isn't for it to have meltdowns. It's the ones that don't melt down that got incinerated.

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I think Papa & Yo is different from the games Chris was trying to describe because the message of the game is directly tied into the mechanics of the monster (who is an allegory for a drunk, abusive father) that the player is interacting with.

 

I think maybe the problem with these subset of puzzle-platformer games (even setting aside the potential objections that some of these games might be appropriating other people's struggles) might be that they are the indie equivalent of the ludonarrative dissonance problem where the theme and mechanics just aren't aligned in a satisfying way. Or that's just me speculating from listening to the conversation, I haven't actually played any of these games (besides Papa & Yo, which doesn't sound like it really belongs since it actually does have some mechanical and thematic coherence).

 

I think Braid is the only puzzle-platformer I've played that actually managed to give its game mechanics some allegorical significance (especially that amazing final level), although I think it also made the mistake Chris mentioned of talking too much about what it was about.  If it had only been the game, the paintings, and the level titles, without any of the stuff in the books, I think it would be a much stronger and more resonant work.  "Do you ever wish you could rewind time?"

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At about 32 minutes, Nick says that because Notch made Minecraft he should be basically immune to criticism about his vane opulent consumerism.  I don't want to jump on Nick for that (okay I do, but I won't).  Instead, I just want to point out the perniciousness of that idea.

 

I think that's a misunderstanding.  I think he was speaking with his game developer's hat on.  He said it's silly that Forbes is making snide comments about how Notch spends his time when Notch has already accomplished more than pretty much any game developer alive.  And I think you can make a pretty good case that Minecraft is a more positive contribution to society than most entertainment products that have made people rich. 

 

Does Notch deserve a condescending, "Look how he spends his time now," more than, say, George Lucas?  I think not.

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I think Braid is the only puzzle-platformer I've played that actually managed to give its game mechanics some allegorical significance (especially that amazing final level), although I think it also made the mistake Chris mentioned of talking too much about what it was about.  If it had only been the game, the paintings, and the level titles, without any of the stuff in the books, I think it would be a much stronger and more resonant work.  "Do you ever wish you could rewind time?"

 

It's not really allegorical, but The Swapper does a great job of merging it's puzzle gimmick (cloning yourself) and narrative. Worth checking out if you haven't played it.

 

Anyway, happy 200, Thumbs. I think this podcast is the fucking bee's knees.

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I have no positive or negative feelings toward Notch, but I will say that I hear his name a lot during various Games Done Quick marathons.  He usually donates a few thousand at a time.  On the other hand, he could have single handedly met the $1 million goal for the last AGDQ so I dunno.

 

Also congrats 200.  Fuck 200.

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At about 32 minutes, Nick says that because Notch made Minecraft he should be basically immune to criticism about his vane opulent consumerism.  I don't want to jump on Nick for that (okay I do, but I won't).  Instead, I just want to point out the perniciousness of that idea.

 

I also think that the idea of hyper-wealthy people being honored for their charity donations is pretty problematic.  Take the most famous case of Andrew Carnegie who was one of the most violently exploitative capitalists in American history.  Today we celebrate him for giving some of his wealth to self-honorific charities and foundations.  Yet, his and his peer's labor exploitation create a permanent lower-class whose needs can never be solved by his charity.  The same process is occuring now.  You can read about the autrocious labor conditions and wages given to workers at microsoft's contract factories or read about how the rare metals needed for their consumer products fuel conflicts.  Yet we celebrate Bill Gates as a humanitarian.  In my opinion, the super wealthy shouldn't be honored for giving to charity, we should consider it the very least they can do to recompense for the exploitative system that they are benefitting from.

 

To be fair to Bill Gates, the time period where MS was making most of their money, they were a software company. It's only fairly recently (5 yearsish?) that they've been really pushing the devices side of things and thus had factories. During that time Bill wasn't making the decisions and also wasn't profiting from them (since MS's stock has been pretty static for a while.) He's also given away a lot more of his money than most people that are honored for their charity.

 

http://www.inquisitr.com/181177/since-2007-bill-gates-has-given-away-48-percent-of-his-net-worth-for-charity-infographic/

 

So while I get the point that you're making, I don't think either Notch or Bill Gates fall into this "dirty money" category where they owe the world something.

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I have no positive or negative feelings toward Notch, but I will say that I hear his name a lot during various Games Done Quick marathons.  He usually donates a few thousand at a time.  On the other hand, he could have single handedly met the $1 million goal for the last AGDQ so I dunno.

 

Yeah, but did he choose to save or kill the animals?

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I guess I am just disappointed in Notch. I always thought he was a cool, intelligent guy, but he took his billion and started spending it like a trust fund kid. I mean its his money, so he should do what makes him happy, but i have a lot less respect for him now.

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Nothing says he can't spend money like a trust fun kid and then still have plenty left over for more sedate/charitable living later. Man, I just got a small bonus from work and I'm spending it like it's going out of style.

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I guess I don't understand what people need with a lot of money. Like, this sounds like I am joking, or being deliberately obtuse, but is it really that people want money so that they can spend money on things? I guess I can understand supporting a family, or buying a house so that you can house yourself and your family, but I don't think that billions of dollars are needed for that. 

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I guess I don't understand what people need with a lot of money. Like, this sounds like I am joking, or being deliberately obtuse, but is it really that people want money so that they can spend money on things? I guess I can understand supporting a family, or buying a house so that you can house yourself and your family, but I don't think that billions of dollars are needed for that. 

 

I mean I don't think billions of dollars are needed for anything aside from giving to charity, but certainly it's easy enough to spend into the hundreds of millions if you have a whole mess of people doing stuff for you. If you want security person (people?), driver, nanny, PA, gardener, housekeeper, chef, personal trainer, masseur/masseuse etc. and then you probably want a backup on-call one of each of those for when they first set take their vacation and/or are sick. That stuff probably adds up quick.

 

Obviously no one needs that, but it's not inconceivable that it's something people might want.

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My impression of Notch is just that he has more money than he knows what to do with it. 

Usually people who get a huge windfall like that (see: lottery winners) spend too much and end up worse than they were before.

I don't think he is required to donate to charity or that he should (but it would be nice).

 

I always pictured Notch to be a bit like Tarn and his brother, but the spending spree kind of breaks that image, and it makes me feel a bit sad.

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I don't think it's easy to get rid of a lot of money. If you just carelessly dump it somewhere it could easily do more harm than good. I mean, how would you get rid of 2 billion dollars? Like actually get rid of it?

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Not saying it applies to Notch, but with lottery winners, they tend to lend out a lot of money and they don't factor in maintenance costs and debt repayments in their budgets.

 

For us, it sounds difficult to get rid of 2 billion dollars, but if your change your lifestyle drastically as a result, it could be very easy.

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Not saying it applies to Notch, but with lottery winners, they tend to lend out a lot of money and they don't factor in maintenance costs and debt repayments in their budgets.

 

For us, it sounds difficult to get rid of 2 billion dollars, but if your change your lifestyle drastically as a result, it could be very easy.

 

Yeah I was thinking of lottery winners when I made my earlier post. I think the problem a lot of lottery winners face is suddenly they have friends and family coming out of the woodwork to hit them up for money, and it's very difficult to say no in that situation.

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Lottery winners get, like, what, 100 million for a big jackpot? Notch has 2.5 billion dollars. He could give everyone in Sweden $100 and still have more than $1.5 billion left. Would even most charities know what to do with that much money if they suddenly got it, or would undermine their entire fiscal structure?

 

My point is just, like, yeah it's a shitload of money, and he's obviously not making especially good use of it at the moment, but how would you actually prefer that played out? Would you rather Microsoft still had the money and bought the company for less than it was worth? It's easy to criticize him for not doing enough with what is obviously an immense power, but how could he even spend that money in an intelligent and generous way without making a full-time job out of it? I don't see any reason why he should be more scrutinized than people who invest their money into trying to make more money, and so on, forever, which is largely accurate description of other immensely wealthy people.

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Well, it's an adaptation of a novel which had previously been adapted into a play and several films.

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Notch has 2.5 billion dollars. He could give everyone in Sweden $100 and still have more than $1.5 billion left.

 

In fact, that's pretty close to what he already did (or will do) given Sweden's tax structure. 

 

The mere fact that Notch didn't ditch his Swedish citizenship to avoid paying taxes makes him way more progressive than, say, Bono and U2.

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Would even most charities know what to do with that much money if they suddenly got it, or would undermine their entire fiscal structure?

 

There's no need to drop it all on any one single charity. Besides which, if you really wanted to drop it all on one charity, I'm sure there's a way to structure it so that the money serves as an untouchable principal for an endowment and the charity just spends the investment income off of it.

 

edit: which itself might be significant enough to cause problems sure, depending on how small a charity you're looking at, but the bigger players could easily handle it I think.

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Who cares how Notch spends his money. He earned it by selling a company that became big in an ethical way (unlike a shit load of other companies). If Notch doesn't want to redistribute his wealth to the highly paid executives at "charity" organizations.

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