GeekNights Tuesday - Twitch Plays Pokemon

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, we discuss the Internet and its fascination with, well, itself playing Pokemon... collectively. It's Action Pokemon. It's amazing to behold. It's Saltybet 2.0. It's unbearable to watch, yet captivating not unlike a trainwreck in slow motion. Five days in, and it already has its own fandom, its own fan culture, and its own fan merch. Twitch Plays Pokemon. In other news, the videogame industry is as it's always been with Ken Levine shutting down Irrational , and Rym tries a single-day variant of Mafia.

• Squirrel hides nut in dog
• Spance Daddy

Download MP3
Source Link

Rym

I don't have any admin powers, so Scott can merge this with http://forum.frontrowcrew.com/discussion/9690/twitch-plays-pokemon if he wants.

Victor Frost

Why do you not have admin powers? That seems rather silly.

pence

I had the chance to play One Night Ultimate Werewolf two weeks ago, three games in a row - since the werewolves don't have a night kill, it removes one of the risks inherent to claiming you have a powerful role like seer. Which also means the werewolves need to have a good alibi, because the village will often just win if they all claim roles and share their privileged knowledge right away. Since you're not allowed to look at your role after the night phase, the troublemaker can publicly declare they switched two people - if only one of them was a werewolf, they'll immediately out the other player and win it for the village.

Of course, half the group is also lying about what they know the entire time. It's great.

Coldguy

pence said:

Of course, half the group is also lying about what they know the entire time. It's great.

Or they could say nothing

pence

Coldguy said:

pence said:

Of course, half the group is also lying about what they know the entire time. It's great.

Or they could say nothing

Next time I'm putting more non-villager roles in. Too many passive people plus too many vanilla villagers means the werewolves hide for free. :P

muppet

These guys are soliciting voice work from some of the same places I get actors for Minds of Terminus right now. Weird synchronicity seeing it here for me. Heh.

pence

On the topic of multiple people playing a single player game together: http://flapmmo.com/

Omnutia

Bronzdragon

Hey Rym and Scott. You talked about Ken Levine, and how much of a jerk he is for shutting Irrational games down. I would like to talk about this. You're wrong.

See, Ken Levine is simply not in charge of Irrational Games. Take Two Interactive owns that studio. Ken Levine has no say over it's employees. In his statement he mentions that, initially, he wanted to start a new company, but after talking it over with Take Two, he decided against that.

Now, this is complete speculation on my part, but I suspect Ken talked about his resignation, Take Two said that without Ken, the studio wouldn't be worth keeping around, and offered him to keep the studio's name.

Regardless of how it actually went, Take Two could've split up the 70 or so employees into their own studio. So even if it was all Mr Levine's fault, Take Two didn't help.

Apreche

I don't know the guy personally. You also do not know him personally. His true jerk level remains unknown. All I am saying is that if you take his statement at face value, it sounds way jerky.

Apreche

Victory Road approacheth!

Churba

Apreche said:

I don't know the guy personally. You also do not know him personally. His true jerk level remains unknown. All I am saying is that if you take his statement at face value, it sounds way jerky.

No, but I do know someone who does, or at least used to. Apparently, he's only average person jerky - sometimes, but not very often, and mostly nice.

Rym

The thing is, no one at that level isn't 100% aware of the ramifications of a deal/change like that. Behind closed doors, they know everything.

Apreche

Churba said:

Apreche said:

I don't know the guy personally. You also do not know him personally. His true jerk level remains unknown. All I am saying is that if you take his statement at face value, it sounds way jerky.

No, but I do know someone who does, or at least used to. Apparently, he's only average person jerky - sometimes, but not very often, and mostly nice.

Sure, whatever. I still say the statement he made sounds really bad. Mostly because of this one paragraph, right here. Emphasis added by me.

Seventeen years is a long time to do any job, even the best one. And working with the incredible team at Irrational Games is indeed the best job I’ve ever had. While I’m deeply proud of what we’ve accomplished together, my passion has turned to making a different kind of game than we’ve done before. To meet the challenge ahead, I need to refocus my energy on a smaller team with a flatter structure and a more direct relationship with gamers. In many ways, it will be a return to how we started: a small team making games for the core gaming audience.

He's saying that HE, the individual person, has had a change of heart. HIS individual passion is in a different direction. Because he, and he alone, wants to change things up, all you people have to find new jobs.

Is this really the truth? Maybe he was commanded to do it. What is the actual deal behind the scenes? We will never know. But I have to take his public statement at face value.

"I'm bored doing this. I want to work with a small team again. Everyone except that small team, go home and don't come back."

Jerk level = high.

When you are a boss of a company, you have a responsibility to your employees. If you don't like your job anymore, you quit and find a new one. Let someone else lead the team. You go form your new small team somewhere else. You don't send everyone else out onto the street to change your job into the one you actually want.

HMTKSteve

Wrong thread...

Axel

This is how I feel. Even if this has a higher mandate, that is not what he wrote and I don't believe it.

I've read that Bioshock Infinite labored so long in development with so many changes that it needed to sell impossibly high numbers to make back its money. It sold reasonably high numbers.

So I could expect layoffs. Half the company or so, numbers like that, would be expected in a situation like that.

But that's not what happened. The company is ending, but this guy and his close friends from the team get to keep making games. It sounds like he cut a deal. Which is shady.

kravenoff42

Has any one seen this. Its a similar, although way less cool idea to TPP. I was thinking that it would be interesting to measure its progress versus the progress of the crowd.

The main problem is that there is no where near the documentation for the Random Number Generator's game, also this particular channel is watch the RNG play Pokemon Gold I think. which make comparing progress trickier, not impossible but less direct.

It won't be interesting to find out the Pokemon is a game that can be won using literally no strategy and just brute forcing your way through essentially button smashing.

Churba

Apreche said:

Emphasis added by me.

As was a conclusion that you wouldn't sway from under literal torture and based on literally nothing but your own supposition, so I'm out, argue with yourself.

Axel said:

But that's not what happened. The company is ending, but this guy and his close friends from the team get to keep making games. It sounds like he cut a deal. Which is shady.

True, but the deciding factor is where the shady comes in. Did he cut a deal to keep his mates about, and fuck everyone else, in which case he's the shady one?

Or did he cut a deal to stay with the company instead of leaving if it saved some people and support the rest as much as possible financially, with job opportunities with other 2k devs, and with open days for third parties to come in for the staff to take their pick of? In which case 2K would be the shady one for holding his larger team to ransom just to keep the cream of the Irrational crop about.

Or were they both shady, and He cut a deal with 2K that he'd stay if certain conditions were met, and their conditions included the fact that they're not paying for a larger studio for a new IP that he doesn't have much to show of yet, and his condition was that he gets to pick first the ones he wants to keep around?

We don't know, we can't really say at this time, but I don't doubt it will all come out in the wash, so to speak.

Matt

What if we stream someone playing a board game, and let the crowd pick their moves?

Apreche

Matt said:

What if we stream someone playing a board game, and let the crowd pick their moves?

I've got a few ideas so far.

The first is something we did in college. We played Tokimeki Memorial for the Playstation and all collectively voted on every choice. Democracy actually makes sense for a dating sim like that. It is super fun because you get that group story telling aspect. The problem is you would be a bit harder to code than TPP. The other problem is finding a really good and complex dating sim, isn't porn, and is in English. Tokimeki is perfect except for the English part.

The second idea is to make a game where the protagonist of the game is a huge crowd. To fanservice Ro, imagine a game called "12th Man". Every player is in the stands at a football stadium, and they have to do things that actually affect the game on the field, which is played by AI. Or maybe think of Godzilla. Everyone is running away from a giant AI controlled kaiju (or one lucky real person gets to control it!) or maybe everyone is teaming up to fight it.

The last one is to have a massive tournament. Pick a really short game, or a variety of short games, like WarioWare. Everyone gets paired off randomly and plays. Lose and you're out. Win and you go on. Everyone who is out can bet on which of the remaining players will win it all. The further away from the final round, the more you win if you bet correctly. Making it to late rounds also gets you fake money prizes. The fake moneys can be used to get byes past the first round, or to make more bets, or larger bets. Have a chart of the richest players. They will probably be the ones most skilled at the games.

MATATAT

Regardless of what Ken Levine wants to do the studio isn't fully owned by him. Take Two purchased Irrational, they can do whatever they want with it. If Ken Levine leaves for his own reasons, whether they're selfish or not, he has no say in the studio shutting down. In some sense he probably does have a certain amount of power just by name alone, so Take Two may have thought his leaving wouldn't make the team stand out or be worthwhile. Either way its not fully his fault and in the end I think it will be a better decision overall. As for Take Two they are doing more than any company I've heard of to make sure those people being laid off are accommodated.

Luke Burrage

Apreche said:

The last one is to have a massive tournament. Pick a really short game, or a variety of short games, like WarioWare. Everyone gets paired off randomly and plays. Lose and you're out. Win and you go on. Everyone who is out can bet on which of the remaining players will win it all. The further away from the final round, the more you win if you bet correctly. Making it to late rounds also gets you fake money prizes. The fake moneys can be used to get byes past the first round, or to make more bets, or larger bets. Have a chart of the richest players. They will probably be the ones most skilled at the games.

This sounds awesome. As long as the game is fun, and you can practice it while not in the tournament. Otherwise those who do well get more practice and new players will never make it past the first round.

Or have a new game every 25 hours.

Apreche

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/5/5473244/twitch-streaming-mobile-games

We should make an iOS app where everyone plays Pokemon, or something else really clever. Opportunity is knocking.

Dragonmaster Lou

I'd be down with that, though it probably will need to wait until after Anime Boston. Baby's starting to sleep through the night, so I may actually get some free time back!