The Podcast Thread

I can't listen to Idle Thumbs anymore, Danielle has just turned it into a Polygon podcast of trying to find things in games that you can use as an example of game developers being misogynistic or racist and to show how amazingly politically correct you are. The discussion on Shadow of Mordor was cringe worthy.

They had a bit of a rant about it on Chet and John's podcast, it's nice to hear others get annoyed with Polygon's staff smug self righteousness.

[iup=3584638]Hime[/iup] wrote:I can't listen to Idle Thumbs anymore, Danielle has just turned it into a Polygon podcast of trying to find things in games that you can use as an example of game developers being misogynistic or racist and to show how amazingly politically correct you are. The discussion on Shadow of Mordor was cringe worthy.

They had a bit of a rant about it on Chet and John's podcast, it's nice to hear others get annoyed with Polygon's staff smug self righteousness.

I heard chet and jon's rant about it, i think it was during the shadow of mordor part. I really don't like polygon at all , the writers on the site constantly sound like a bunch of pretentious twats about games and seem to just complain a lot. I swear years ago gaming was about having fun and playing a game.

I find Idle Thumbs insufferable sometimes but not often enough to stop listening. That's got nothing to do with Danielle either, I don't see any difference between the kind of things she says and anything else on the show.

CLT: The cast of the Giant Bombcast discussing drugs and people throwing dumpsters at people. There's a lot of variety in my podcast listening.

Also The Comedy Button (which I still adore ) launched a Patreon recently and they're currently getting OVER $10,000 A MONTH

Idle Thumbs Still the only gaming podcast I listen to every week. I only listen to 8-4 Play after looking at the timestamps to see if they talk about any games or news I'm interested in. Other than that it's slim pickings for me. I've tried Chet and Jon's but the hosts annoyed me.

Is One Life Left still going?

[iup=3584961]Skippy[/iup] wrote:I find Idle Thumbs insufferable sometimes but not often enough to stop listening. That's got nothing to do with Danielle either, I don't see any difference between the kind of things she says and anything else on the show.

CLT: The cast of the Giant Bombcast discussing drugs and people throwing dumpsters at people. There's a lot of variety in my podcast listening.

Also The Comedy Button (which I still adore ) launched a Patreon recently and they're currently getting OVER $10,000 A MONTH

yep i put 2 dollars towards it, it's not much but combined it helps and i love that show. I've gotten so much out of it for nothing well except for the kickstarter which i put 10 dollars towards but that is still a small amount for such great content.

I was going to put $2 in but decided to put $3 so I could be in the Thank You song

[iup=3584984]Skippy[/iup] wrote:I was going to put $2 in but decided to put $3 so I could be in the Thank You song

$2 got you that as well

Also the $10000 mark gets a new show called nightmare fuel which is basically brian altano drinking loads of crazy stuff , i'm sure they will all join in anyway.

Skippy wrote:I find Idle Thumbs insufferable sometimes but not often enough to stop listening. That's got nothing to do with Danielle either, I don't see any difference between the kind of things she says and anything else on the show.

CLT: The cast of the Giant Bombcast discussing drugs and people throwing dumpsters at people. There's a lot of variety in my podcast listening.

Also The Comedy Button (which I still adore ) launched a Patreon recently and they're currently getting OVER $10,000 A MONTH

Obviously they have been on the verge of getting completely lost up their own arses for some time now but I didn't think they had gone down the Polygon route of moral superiority until she started as a regular.

Is this another case of people not understanding a bunch of game developers talking about games using game developers' speak to describe them?

Ostensibly, yes.

Yeah this weeks thumbs starts with Chris and Danielle basically declaring Mordor racist for being one white guy cutting through orcs.

Madness.

[iup=3585386]Rog[/iup] wrote:Yeah this weeks thumbs starts with Chris and Danielle basically declaring Mordor racist for being one white guy cutting through orcs.

Madness.

That's not what I took away from the discussion at all. They both really like the game for a start, but talked about the disconnect between the gameplay and the story that I found rather interesting. They then talked about all the cool stuff in the game and settings that would better fit. If that's not the sort of talk you're after then you're listening to the wrong podcast.

ok so i'm confused. What did they actually talk about as you both have different opinions.

I think the argument was that orcs are a race that can form a society, master spoken language, have leaders, a societal structure and etc. but they're all seen as evil and going full on genocide against them is considered okay.

I might have misunderstood or misheard stuff though as I was playing Wasteland 2 while listening to it and my attention was mostly fixed on the game.

The point was more that it's a game where your actions don't fit your character. You spend most of your time brutally slicing through hundreds of orcs without a moment's hesitation, which is awesome, but you do so as a supposedly caring family man. The racism thing was referring to the character, not the game. They go on to say how the gameplay would better fit a more stylised, over the top setting equivalent to Team Fortress 2's, and jokingly discuss the idea of hunting down warchiefs for their hats.

The only time the word racism was brought up was when Danielle pointed out that it's sort of runs through the Lord of the Rings books, as in each race is defined by a certain characteristic (Men: easily corrupted. Elves: Kinds of dicks. Dwarves: Jews. Orcs: Cockney banter lads oi oi) There's a decent point there but I don't think she meant to make any big deal out of it or anything.

As for Chris' whole thing about it being weird that this guy is going around slautering all these orcs just because you're told they're evil, I thought that was just bollocks. Then bringing the Batman games into it and calling Batman an agent of death? Just the kind of pointless quest for any sort of controversy that lots of people have a much larger problem with - only a lot of those people consider any discussion about sexism in anything to fall under that category.

Oh come on. The whole conversation was basically just the ludonarrative dissonance thing, and Batman being an "agent of death" was a joke! I really don't see how you could take it any other way without some very selective hearing. It certainly wasn't "basically declaring Mordor racist" as Rog suggested.

In my experience, the Idle Thumbs don't really do controversy. Any points they make are generally well argued even if I don't always agree with them, and they're pretty much the least sensationalist podcast I listen too. They pretty much just dismissed Gamergate as soon as it was brought up a few weeks ago for instance, saying it was too incoherent to really address and quickly moving on. They've always just done their own thing.

Bumpity bump





Man, I thought I was bad at cooking. The part where he tries to crack an egg was amazing.

Chet and jons is ending next week

[iup=3650713]Boo![/iup] wrote:Chet and jons is ending next week

yeah i heard, very good podcast as well. Did they say why they are finishing it.