Ep. 329 - The Nephew Line

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Ep. 329 - The Nephew Line

The finest minds in video games and beyond contemplate unique input interfaces, classic adventure games, and a return to Violence Island. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Tim Rogers, and Brandon Sheffield. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.

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Questions this week:

  1. With the recent closing of Rooster Teeth, how has machinima developed over the last 20 years? (03:19)
  2. Design a themed video game controller that ties into a particular brand but would also be fun to use. (10:12)
  3. What are the most credible depictions of gamers in media? (16:48)
  4. How do you convince a studio executive they have a bad idea before it’s too late? (23:24)
    Insert Credit Quick Break: Labyrinth of Cinema (29:55)
  5. Irish Carl asks: Rank the corpus of adventure games from Sierra On-Line, Infocom, LucasArts, and Cyan (30:51)
  6. What are your favorite broad personality archetypes in video game supporting characters? (38:11)
  7. Which video game would benefit most from the “World of Warcraft Classic” treatment? (43:14)
  8. How’s the future looking right now for emulation? (46:51)

LIGHTNING ROUND: Violence Island (55:01)

Recommendations and Outro (01:03:24)

A SMALL SELECTION OF THINGS REFERENCED:

Recommendations:
Brandon: Johnny’s Selected Seeds instead of Baker Creek Seeds if you’re a gardening type person who wants to avoid funding bad stuff, Gary Jagels, Zindrew Crunchy Garlic Chili Oil
Tim: Xi’an Famous Foods Chili Oil & Crisps Jar
Frank: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

This week’s Insert Credit Show is brought to you by Labyrinth of Cinema, and patrons like you. Thank you.

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When does The World‘s End make Simon Pegg’s character not a pathetic loser? I seem to remember by the end of it he's still pretty much the same guy

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Half-Life VR AI is some pretty good machinima done in G-Mod from ~ 4 years ago that notably lead to teenagers on tumblr becoming incredibly attracted to the HL1 security guard

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@MegaSigil oh I just mean they gave him power. Didn’t it kinda have an embiguous ending where everything was fine, too? Maybe I watched the US cut lol

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wasn't expecting the insert credit magazine to reinvent 19th century anti-irish racism

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@穴 I was staunchly in defense of the Irish myself

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@exodus Not really ambiguous so much as… ambivalent? Like civilization has collapsed but the characters are happier because it’s put their lives into perspective. Simon Pegg is a cool post-apocalyptic warrior getting into awesome barfights with his robot buddies. He gets a happy ending but only because the entire world exploded and society sank down to his level. That’s why he still felt like a loser to me lol

And you know, at the time it kind of just felt like that old sci-fi “aliens find humanity flawed and illogical but fuck them because like, that’s life, man.” But maybe there’s also some pretty cool stuff in there about how we hype up teenagers that they’re gonna have great futures if they pursue a very particular type of success and we don’t prepare them nearly enough for the reality that most of them will just end up leading unremarkable lives working normal jobs and just surviving. And maybe if we celebrated that more it’d be easier to find joy in that kind of life instead of yearning for The Simple Times.

I do have a tendency to give Edgar Wright a lot of credit though, as evidenced by my letterboxd review of Last Night in Soho

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@MegaSigil ah yeah see I thought they gave him the hero ending because he never had to change and wound up being right!

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oh rooster teeth, there were a lot of problems with you

but i liked watching red vs blue in high school

and im gonna watch the last season when it comes out cause darn it, i wanna see how they wrap it up


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Gary freakin jagels I'm all in this modern mix 17 is real fun

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Was hoping for some The Longest Journey/Dreamfall mentions when adventure games came up, but realized the constraints of the devs mentioned. That said, fantastic series with some odd puzzles.

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Jaffe brought up Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad playing Sonic All-Stars Racing, but I seem to recall there was also an episode where Jesse played Rage with a light gun.

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My adventure game corpus ranking:

  • LucasArts (I agree with Frank on them making the most-immediately playable games)
  • Infocom (the masters of text-only games. Their writing is so good, and I have a soft spot for the command-based interaction with feelies. Wishbringer was such a good intro to adventure games, and they had so much range, from Plundered Hearts [pirate romance] to Planetfall [which did space janitor before Space Quest did]. It’s closer to the idea of a table-top RPG than almost any video game RPG. I’m also heavily biased toward their version of Hitchhiker’s Guide, though it is not a fair game)
  • Cyan (fine walk/puzzle simulator, though I’ve only played Mist and Riven)
  • Sierra (King’s Quest, Space Quest … they never clicked with me.)
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I grew up watching Machinima stuff but I‘m too old for skibidi toilet. I think a big thing for me was seeing video-game related “content” that wasn’t gameplay or ads. Somehow it made liking games cooler for me because I had played the games and could therefore understand the jokes. I think Machinima was an essential building block to what became capital G Gamer culture despite its languishing later years.

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@Taliesin_Merlin Wishbringer is literally so good. I played a lot of Infocom games as a kid since the floppies were just sitting around my dad’s office and all the little items that came with those games might push them into for me. Wishbringer came with a map and a letter that the game told you when to open!

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I‘d like to nominate The Witness as ’Best Game To Half Play With A Guide In Another Tab While Also Watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 To‘. It’s aggressively ok and neat looking.

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Sort of a general question apropos of nothing: are the panelists required to answer every listener-submitted question selected for the show?

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I don‘t know what the nephew stuff is all about, but my brother’s son is very excited to tell all his friends that I work at Nintendo.

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@yeso This hasn’t happened apart from All Dirtbag episodes, but in a scenario where they all instantly refused the question, I would pick another one

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Infocom is #1 - dont agree with the need to consider “playability” or whatever. You read text and type text. Not really asking much all things considered. Most consistently good library end to end and includes at least one GOAT (A Mind Forever Voyaging) and another (Trinity) in the conversation

LucasArts is 2

Then idk it’s kind of a judgement call between Sierra and Cyan. Sierra has a lot of bad games, but some real high points (Gabriel Knight, Lighthouse: The Dark Being, Laura Bow). Love Cyan but sort of a narrow range.

Would put System Sacom and Warp in the conversation in my imo