Idle Thumbs 285: Candor, Expertise, and Candor

[Jake]

Idle Thumbs 285:

Candor, Expertise, and Candor
The future arrived and for once, we liked it. This is very confusing, but it's definitely happening now. This is really when it's happening. Nick and Jake get their hands on PlayStation VR and play the heck out of it. Chris, who prefers a more traditional immersive themed environment, visits the immaculately produced Tokyo DisneySea and can't contain himself. Where does VR sit next to the rest of gaming? Is there space for the player in stories that aren't about them, especially in a medium fixated on literally putting players in the heroe's shoes? What does this have to do with a fictional New York in the middle of Japan, with a janitor who, when your back is turned, starts emitting cartoon sound effects and giving high fives to everyone around him? Find out moments from now. Step into this pod, press play, immerse yourself, and please tell a friend about what you experienced here.

 

Discussed: PlayStation VR, Super Hypercube, Job Simulator, Batman Arkham VR, Thumper, The Playroom VR, Wayward Sky, The Future, The Entertainment, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tokyo DisneySea, Sour Flush

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[thenexus6]

I heard "FMV" not "FNB" initially and was pretty confused..

[frythefly]

Re Intentional posthumous releases: In 2015 Margaret Atwood was the first author to submit a book to the Future Library Project. Her novel Scribbler Moon will be released in 2114. A limited edition of all submitte books will be printed on paper sourced from trees planted in 2014.

[Gamebeast23456]

So, on the subject of David Bowie and posthumous releases... 

 

While Blackstar was released before his death, Bowie did plan to have something of a content drip after his death. We've gotten a few extra new songs, plus the release of the previously unreleased album The Gouster, beguilingly in the middle of a huge compilation album. 

 

So, while many artists are said to have lots of unreleased music in the vaults, like Prince, Bowie seems like he actually meant to have some of this stuff released posthumously. 

[elvaq]

Haven't quite heard the cast yet but I chimed in on Slack and may as well do so here. The Master and Margarita was published 26 years after Bulgakov died. He wavered back and forth just a bit on actually wanting it published, mostly for reasons related to the Soviet Union's continued pressure and blacklisting of him...

 

Fun bit from a letter to his wife, two years before he died

  Quote

In front of me 327 pages of the manuscript (about 22 chapters). The most important remains - editing, and it's going to be hard, I will have to pay close attention to details. Maybe even re-write some things... 'What's its future?' you ask? I don't know. Possibly, you will store the manuscript in one of the drawers, next to my 'killed' plays, and occasionally it will be in your thoughts. Then again, you don't know the future. My own judgement of the book is already made and I think it truly deserves being hidden away in the darkness of some chest...

Of course, he did change his mind in the end, sort of.

 

But maybe this doesn't quite count since he might have published the novel during his lifetime if he could?

[sclpls]

Thumper is a really cool game, and I agree with the cast in that I suspect Chris would enjoy it quite a bit just because it is a fun twitchy kind of arcade experience. I think the other thing that really stands out about it as a rhythm music type game is that the way your actions synchronize with the soundtrack is flawless, which actually makes a huge difference in terms of how enjoyable these games are. I bounced off of Audio Surf because it felt kind of floaty and not very well attached to the soundtrack.

[feelthedarkness]

Also, fun fact! Thumper was made by 1 of the 2 dudes in early oughts drum and bass freakout mini-legends Lightning Bolt.

[mikemariano]

You guys trying to end the show but failing is the true ruination cast.  Every additional "e-mail us at questions at idle thumbs dot net!" contained another piece of your souls breaking off and floating away.

 

It was a good podcast.

[zerofiftyone]

Good header image this week. 

[I_smell]

Yeah I signed in to say that the new header image is really good!

[juv3nal]

Hello, let the record show I was both a kickstarter backer and got the curtain reference.

[Badfinger]

Aisha Tyler is very busy in video games these days, huh!

[plasticflesh]

  On 10/21/2016 at 2:06 AM, feelthedarkness said:

Also, fun fact! Thumper was made by 1 of the 2 dudes in early oughts drum and bass freakout mini-legends Lightning Bolt.

 

WHOA! This is very exciting to me. I was a big fan of the Fort Thunder scene. So I checked out his BarkleyDog youtube channel. Great raw animation, great swamp prog-abily music. 

[RubixsQube]

UGH IT TOOK ME TOO LONG SEARCHING ON THE INTERNET TO FIND THIS

 

 

IT WAS MY LAST CASE...

 

(edited to include a way more clear image)

[SecretAsianMan]

I hope Jake realizes he has now sealed his fate and the next candy shipment will contain gross toilet candy.

[atte]

Maybe this for a sweet Poirot cosplay?

"Play Now, Chew Later!"

[Vasari]

Hi! I'm the guy who's really into Kentucky Route Zero!

 

The premise of The Entertainment is that you are playing a character with no dialogue in a play. The play is actually two plays combined together: "A Reckoning" is the one happening in front of you, which is the Steinbeck-style story set in a bar where patrons are discussing their various debts, including those to the bartender. "A Bar-fly" the one-man play that you perform, which is a wordless performance of a person sitting in a bar who realises he has no money to pay for his drink.

 

To bring it back to your point about not being the protagonist, The Entertainment is cool because it manages to make your story matter even in the context of a bigger, more important story happening around you, and the two narratives are thematically linked. I think it also works because KRZ isn't an action game. To use an example, Oblivion has you doing all the work to save Cyrodiil, but emperor's son is the one who gets all the credit for saving the world. You're still the protagonist because you're the one who engaged with the game mechanics and killed all the demons, and there's a long history of fiction where the central character isn't the most powerful or notable. And you probably couldn't have a game like Oblivion where the emperor was better at killing demons than you, because then you should just be playing as him.

[neonrev]

I'm a kickstarter backer and got the Curtain reference, although only because Jake himself has talked about it on the cast before, sometime during episode 175, being confused by Danielle talking about a game called Curtain.

[Jake]

  On 10/22/2016 at 5:58 PM, Vasari said:

And you probably couldn't have a game like Oblivion where the emperor was better at killing demons than you, because then you should just be playing as him.

 

This is a bummer but probably true. "You should be the best at every verb you have as a player" is truly everyones expectation (including mine) but is also shitty and limiting.

[Flay]

Oh god, I've been pronouncing le Carré wrong this entire time!

 

The discussion in this episode got me thinking about games where you're asked or suggested to actively and knowingly participate in something that you as the player find disdainful. Plenty of games let you be the 'bad guy', but it's almost always in the service of humour, giving the player a feeling of power, or as a compromise to achieve some other objective. Maybe the 'no Russian' scene from Call of Duty counts, although supposedly your character was undercover so I guess you could count that as 'serving a greater objective'. And I suppose historical strategy games like Hearts of Iron let you sort of do this too by allowing you to play groups like the German Reich. I'm sure there are other examples I'm not thinking of.

[Gormongous]

Just now reading Saito Tamaki's Beautiful Fighting Girl, about the psychopathology of otaku, I came across this passage, explaining why there are no Disney otaku: "And then there is the fact that everyone knows that men past puberty are not supposed to visit Tokyo Disneyland, unless they are on a date." Hope you kept Sarah close, Chris!

[Jutranjo]

  On 10/23/2016 at 12:57 AM, Flay said:

Oh god, I've been pronouncing le Carré wrong this entire time!

 

The discussion in this episode got me thinking about games where you're asked or suggested to actively and knowingly participate in something that you as the player find disdainful. Plenty of games let you be the 'bad guy', but it's almost always in the service of humour, giving the player a feeling of power, or as a compromise to achieve some other objective. Maybe the 'no Russian' scene from Call of Duty counts, although supposedly your character was undercover so I guess you could count that as 'serving a greater objective'. And I suppose historical strategy games like Hearts of Iron let you sort of do this too by allowing you to play groups like the German Reich. I'm sure there are other examples I'm not thinking of.

 

I'm really interested in how exactly Tyranny's (the new Obsidian RPG) overall feeling will be, in regards to the game making you participate in things you find disdainful.

[feelthedarkness]

  On 10/21/2016 at 6:52 PM, plasticflesh said:

 

WHOA! This is very exciting to me. I was a big fan of the Fort Thunder scene. So I checked out his BarkleyDog youtube channel. Great raw animation, great swamp prog-abily music. 

 

haha, yes! 

 

man, nothing brings me back to that era like crudely rendered masks. 

[twmac]

Actually, in your first run of any early Dynasty Warriors game, there are characters that you will not be able to beat. In DW2 especially, you often felt like the tides of war were shifting around you with you only contributing in small ways (defeating an office here and there). The first time you encounter Lu Bu, you have to run away from him.

 

Of course that has all been dumped in later iterations with you just being a super powered guy that shifts the tides of war single handedly.

[eRonin]

Games where you play as not-the-protagonist are a rarity and I was surprised when I discovered that Xenoblade Chronicles X was one such game. You're not even the deuteragonist; you're a blank slate for the player to experience the world through, while the true main characters around which the story revolves are Elma, your captain, and Lin, her second in command. The game still has you take point during combat and make a few decisions during side-quests, but for the most part your character is really just a grunt who happens to be very good at shooting things. Much of the game's content involves getting to know the other characters through missions in which they are the main actor, so even during many side-missions you are still not the main focus. The game's setting emphasises that there are larger things at play than the player character can comprehend, and is probably one of few games that justifies the player having to do small menial tasks early on since you're not the legendary hero, you're just a foot trooper who needs to earn their pay along with the rest of the colonists.