Idle Thumbs 103: A Person-Shaped Thing is a Person

[Scipio]

Instead of the book cast intro being read by the guy who normally does it, can you get Nick to do it in his excited/frantic voice?

 

the Soviet space program is uuuuuuunbelievably fucking interesting, if you can find Asif Siddiqi's books on the subject at your local library they are well worth a read. 

[Rxanadu]

Funny you guys were talking about the "Infinite inventory" problem during your podcast: I made a forum topic discussing this exact problem last year.  You can check it here.  

A game I've constantly cited for somewhat solving this problem is Beyond Good & Evil with its S-A-C inventory system, which is literally a fanny pack that digitized all the things you get in the game.  

 

I would love more futuristic games that would just say they turned your guns, beer, etc. into MBs.

[doctorfrog]

  On 4/25/2013 at 2:57 PM, feelthedarkness said:

I love the discussion about Neptune's Pride, but boy does it sound like my personal definition of "not fun." 

I know exactly what you mean. All this Neptune's Pride talk got me fired up to play Defcon for a second time, and it took installing it, and watching the AI play against itself for one game, to remember how little I enjoyed the mind-cracking tension of the thing. Marvelous game though, just not for me.

[sclpls]

I would get in on the NP2 game going on here, but I leave for vacation with my fiancee in about a week, and don't want to wreck the experience by being an obsessive/compulsive weirdo.

 

The Game Design Roundtable Podcast recently had a discussion about Diplomacy in honor of the passing of the game designer. They had a guy who plays at the higher level, and it was interesting hearing him talk about how at the higher level there's a lot less revenge-motivated play where someone might backstab someone else, and after a turn or two the person will be like, "okay, I see why you did that, but lets just forget about it and move on", which is like something that never happens when you are playing against your friends, and you're just fuming at what an asshole they are. Really cool discussion, and I would recommend that episode to anyone that enjoys (if that's the right word) these types of backstabbing games.

[SecretAsianMan]

"IDLE THUMBS!"

 

Nope, didn't work.  Guess I'll listen anyway.

 

The only reason I even thought to timestamp the Kerbal stream was because Sean came in at the end and asked if anyone had a timestamp while we were catching him up.  While looking for the moment referenced in the cast, it occured to me that I might as well do the whole thing.  Although in the future I'll probably be keeping a running list during streams because I love rewatching those things.

[tegan]

I haven't seen the "different" ad for the Wii U yet, but I love the latest Japanese ad. It's a professional singer singing the Evangelion theme as part of a karaoke game. It would be legitimately cute advertising if they didn't leave in the shots of the TV showing showing that her professional-grade performance is actually making her lose.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0NNte7C8ac&feature=youtu.be

[BigJKO]

  On 4/25/2013 at 2:43 PM, Jake said:

This has been a bad year for Nintendo so it's surprising to me that they don't use the opportunity to remind the big mainstream press outlets that they exist. I don't think Entertainment Weekly and USA Today care about Nintendo Direct, but they're the type of press who propelled the Wii into everyone's face.

Yeah. But they're still presumably showing and having the press playing games behind closed doors. I'd assume that's the only thing that the press actually cares about. They're just dropping the big, awkward keynotes that are just for show and for people to awkwardly clap and woo at. The only people that would miss that, I think, are fans and they get what they need in Nintendo Direct. I mean, just.. with all the negativity surrounding these big, showy keynote commercials, essentially, I feel like no one, not even the mainstream press, takes them seriously anymore.

[Jake]

  On 4/26/2013 at 2:05 PM, BigJKO said:

Yeah. But they're still presumably showing and having the press playing games behind closed doors. I'd assume that's the only thing that the press actually cares about. They're just dropping the big, awkward keynotes that are just for show and for people to awkwardly clap and woo at. The only people that would miss that, I think, are fans and they get what they need in Nintendo Direct. I mean, just.. with all the negativity surrounding these big, showy keynote commercials, essentially, I feel like no one, not even the mainstream press, takes them seriously anymore.

Oh man that's a good point.

[feelthedarkness]

  On 4/25/2013 at 10:39 PM, doctorfrog said:

I know exactly what you mean. All this Neptune's Pride talk got me fired up to play Defcon for a second time, and it took installing it, and watching the AI play against itself for one game, to remember how little I enjoyed the mind-cracking tension of the thing. Marvelous game though, just not for me.

 

haha. I can deal with it in board games, because that ends after one day, and I don't have ongoing analyses on my personality, though I have one friend who will always shoot himself in the foot for the chance to derail my imagined plans.

 

I played 1 game of Android Diplomacy with some friends, and it put a cork in 1 fading friendship, and almost a year later there are still several people not speaking. 

[Ucantalas]

  On 4/26/2013 at 3:59 PM, feelthedarkness said:

I played 1 game of Android Diplomacy with some friends, and it put a cork in 1 fading friendship, and almost a year later there are still several people not speaking. 

This is basically why I dont think I could ever play Neptune's Pride 2 with anyone I know. Right now I'm playing against people I'll probably never run into again, and thats fine. But there are times where I just feel like backstabbing someone, and I dont imagine that going well with groups of friends.

[Zeusthecat]

So for some reason I've had the Home Alone orchestral theme stuck in my head all morning from the moment I woke up. I drove to work, still running the song through my head, and once I got to my desk I saw I had a new episode of Idle Thumbs on my phone. I started listening to the episode as I continued bobbing my head to John Wiliams' theme when suddenly, I here Jake make a reference to Michael Jordan on a fucking toy train.

 

What the fuck have you guys done to me? Have I been inceptioned?

 

And I'm pretty sure all of the other props were mannequins, including the one on the record player.

[SecretAsianMan]

  On 4/25/2013 at 3:27 PM, Mington said:

wizard-ad.jpg

 

I just now noticed in the last picture he suddenly has a wizard hat on.  Well done.

[SecretAsianMan]

  On 4/26/2013 at 4:45 PM, Zeusthecat said:

So for some reason I've had the Home Alone orchestral theme stuck in my head all morning from the moment I woke up. I drove to work, still running the song through my head, and once I got to my desk I saw I had a new episode of Idle Thumbs on my phone. I started listening to the episode as I continued bobbing my head to John Wiliams' theme when suddenly, I here Jake make a reference to Michael Jordan on a fucking toy train.

 

What the fuck have you guys done to me? Have I been inceptioned?

 

And I'm pretty sure all of the other props were mannequins, including the one on the record player.

 

[Jake]

Oh man it works so well but I can't bring myself to actually change it...

[Berzee]

Hahahahaha.

I do like the Papers Please background as well, though. Howzabout you compromise, and sneakily switch out one of the immigrants for Cardboard Michael Jordan? =P

 

[DENIED] (<-- or whatever you stamp on papers...I haven't actually played it yet)

[Roderick]

Great episode! Now where's dem Wii U ads with the beggin' and pleadin'? Please, buy our upgrade. Please.

[Gormongous]

Man, it's the best when Jake goes on a hysterical rant about the future of games. He's like a kinder, gentler Francis E. Dec.

[gregbrown]

RE: the advertising class-divisions discussion

Offering paid, ad-free versions is rarer than you think, since in many cases advertisers specifically want to target the monied, as they're the ones with the disposable income to throw at their products. I think this is why the NY Times, for example, doesn't offer a more expensive ad-free experience.

[melmer]

[DrSbaitso]

The advertising captchas that make you type in a slogan is exactly why I stopped watching Zero Punctuation videos.

[malkav11]

I'm not convinced that Neptune's Pride is actually creating the experiences that y'all are so excited about. I think rather it supports and encourages that sort of play if that's what you bring to the table. It's an important distinction, because a game that inherently produces amazing experiences will do so almost regardless of who plays. (You do typically have to be willing to bring at least a little bit of engagement to the proceedings, but that's a relatively low bar to cross.) On the other hand, a game that supports amazing play requires you to bring amazing players. And that tends to drown out any inherent qualities of the game itself. I had a grand old time playing The First Templar with my best friend, for example, because we really enjoy one another's company and the game wasn't actively hurting our fun. But I don't think there's anything about The First Templar that's terribly interesting in and of itself and I doubt very much that I ever would have come close to finishing it solo. It's goofy, slipshod, mildly buggy and full of rough edges, with no real standout moments or much in the way of originality. And I kind of suspect that if I played Neptune's Pride with, say, the folks that I've played Battlestar Galactica with, it wouldn't be particularly exciting because the game's mechanics are fairly simple and arguably not inherently interesting and these people really don't do cutthroat politics or backstabbing. (Which, needless to say, rather dampens the BSG experience as without a lot of animated traitor-hunting and politicking, it's merely a fairly lightweight cooperative game.)

[Sean]

  On 4/27/2013 at 5:14 AM, malkav11 said:

I'm not convinced that Neptune's Pride is actually creating the experiences that y'all are so excited about. I think rather it supports and encourages that sort of play if that's what you bring to the table. It's an important distinction, because a game that inherently produces amazing experiences will do so almost regardless of who plays. (You do typically have to be willing to bring at least a little bit of engagement to the proceedings, but that's a relatively low bar to cross.) On the other hand, a game that supports amazing play requires you to bring amazing players. And that tends to drown out any inherent qualities of the game itself. I had a grand old time playing The First Templar with my best friend, for example, because we really enjoy one another's company and the game wasn't actively hurting our fun. But I don't think there's anything about The First Templar that's terribly interesting in and of itself and I doubt very much that I ever would have come close to finishing it solo. It's goofy, slipshod, mildly buggy and full of rough edges, with no real standout moments or much in the way of originality. And I kind of suspect that if I played Neptune's Pride with, say, the folks that I've played Battlestar Galactica with, it wouldn't be particularly exciting because the game's mechanics are fairly simple and arguably not inherently interesting and these people really don't do cutthroat politics or backstabbing. (Which, needless to say, rather dampens the BSG experience as without a lot of animated traitor-hunting and politicking, it's merely a fairly lightweight cooperative game.)

 

Man, I've got like, 10'000 things to unpack in this (starting, in no particular order, with "not inherently interesting") but I guess I would say get some cool friends? I think a large part of what makes Thumbs enjoyable for me is that I simply enjoy games and my job more because I have good people around me to experience them with. I don't think there's any magical game that will turn a stone-faced dolt giddy with childlike glee. Maybe NP isn't for you and your friends -- it's totally not for everyone -- but I don't think that's because the game doesn't bring some capital-q Quality design mechanics to bear. 

[Gormongous]

I don't know, I feel like it's something of a commonplace in board game design that some designs enable aggression and others require it. It sounds like Neptune's Pride is the latter, which doesn't make it a bad game, but does make it a disappointment for people who aren't able to become Nick Breckon for the duration (or just don't enjoy becoming him, like me). Out-of-game diplomacy aside, if there's no other option except to be a warmongering jerkin order to win, I think it's fair to criticize the design, though maybe "simple and not inherently interesting" is going a bit too far.

 

Even Imperial 2030, for all its conflict-based gameplay, has various aspects of the shareholding mechanics that enable a more passive player to profit from other players' aggression without being the target of it. To me, that's part of a robust multiplayer design, but I haven't seen much evidence of it when people talk about Neptune's Pride, which is part of why I've hesitated to join the games of it being organized.

[malkav11]

  On 4/27/2013 at 5:42 AM, Sean said:

Man, I've got like, 10'000 things to unpack in this (starting, in no particular order, with "not inherently interesting") but I guess I would say get some cool friends? I think a large part of what makes Thumbs enjoyable for me is that I simply enjoy games and my job more because I have good people around me to experience them with. I don't think there's any magical game that will turn a stone-faced dolt giddy with childlike glee. Maybe NP isn't for you and your friends -- it's totally not for everyone -- but I don't think that's because the game doesn't bring some capital-q Quality design mechanics to bear. 

I really can't speak to the quality of NP's design. I'm just saying that I think you may be incorrectly attributing some of the things you're enjoying to what the game brings to the table when it's actually what you and your friends are bringing to the table. Most of the stories you're telling (and that I've heard elsewhere on places like Rock Paper Shotgun) are about out of game communication, dealmongering, treachery and so forth. These tactics certainly exploit facets of the game's design and I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that those design elements are in place explicitly to encourage such tactics, but still, they're originating with your friends, not the game.

 

(As for "inherently interesting", that's going to be hugely subjective, of course. What I personally would consider "inherently interesting" are game mechanics that I'm interested in playing just to fiddle with - regardless of whether or not I win, or whether there's a challenge. There's just a joy to watching those systems operate. It doesn't sound to me like Neptune's Pride offers that. It sounds like it offers some meaningful but fairly abstracted strategic decisions that are relevant to one's success but do much less to define it than politicking, maneuvering, and treachery. A useful metric, to me, would be "would this be fun to play against an AI that can understand the game rules and make appropriate strategic decisions, but is completely incapable of social interaction?")

[Patrick R]

Sounds like Neptune's Pride isn't for you, but it's definitely the mechanics that make the game interesting for me. It's not even diplomacy so much (though I imagine it will be later on when things get more cutthroat) but the concept of a glacially paced real-time strategy game. It makes most of the game play out in your head, so you worry about it when you're away from your computer (though this could be just for people without smartphones like me) and it becomes this whole other thing. But everything about that game, from the emphasis on diplomacy and talking to the constant low-level anxiety it causes, is from the central mechanic of real-time strategy being slowed down. It's what creates all the hilarious backstabbing and chaos.