67. Immersion Blended Lasagna

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Lords:

• Tim
  • https://giantsquidstudios.com/
• Nathan
  • https://twitter.com/MommysBestGames
  • http://mommysbestgames.com/website_store/index.html

Topics:

• Are there any negatives to having an easy mode that takes the player through the entire game? Should the "best ending" be locked somehow in easy mode?
• Why are we drawn to art that updisturbs, depresses, or scares? (And yes, "catharsis" is a weak answer!)
• How Super Mario 35 (and maybe battle royales in general) solved the worst unsolvable problem of multiplayer
• John asks: "Licensing issues and content guidelines have led to a homogenized aesthetic on YouTube that leads to all produced-in-bulk videos for children having the same sound effects and music."
• What's different (better or worse) about playing games with kids? Do you play games with your kids?
• What sports would be more interesting with low/0 gravity? Or with higher gravity?
• Tim's vegan commune cooking disaster stories

Microtopics:

• Shoot 1-Up.
• Controlling all your spaceships at the same time.
• The big thing about Galaga.
• The forever scrolling timeline of new content that you're fed all the time.
• The funniest Boris Vallejo painting.
• Being bummed to find out that Boris Vallejo was looking at people and painting them rather than just imagining them.
• Name-dropping Tom of Finland.
• Staring at pink blobs all the time.
• Making sure you're not wearing your good socks because they're about to be blown off.
• Looping the game twice with no deaths and no bombs.
• Jamestown.
• Being forced to do something unpleasant to feel a sense of satisfaction when you are given what you want.
• Not supporting an easy mode as well as you should have because you assumed those people could just play co-op.
• Bringing in a playtester who has never used a mouse before.
• Not valuing your own fake accomplishments as much because other people accomplished the same fake accomplishments more easily.
• Save the Date, by Chris Cornell.
• Having to wake up to play Super Hard mode.
• The necessity of hand-tuning all the enemy AI in shoot em up difficulty levels.
• Psychoanalyzing the entire human race at once.
• People turning to media to experience strong emotions.
• Whether it's easier to elicit good or bad emotions in the viewer.
• The safety of seeing a horrible thing that will definitely never happen to you.
• Being unusually upset by the Boston Marathon bombing because you recently ran a marathon.
• Knowing that an album is going to fuck you up because it is too proximate, and choosing not to listen.
• A scary movie taking months to purge from your brain.
• The relief of when the demons show up.
• People lining up at a party to play That Dragon Cancer.
• How movies basically never hurt children.
• Wanting to know what's in the box but also knowing that what's in the box will ruin your life for months.
• How you lose half the time in multiplayer games.
• Super Mario 35.
• The various ways video games can make you feel like you're winning harder.
• Taking turns feeling good at video games.
• We Didn't Playtest This At All
• Everybody choosing a number and everybody who chose 5 being the winner.
• Trying to win at Scrabble based on style points.
• Coming up with as many secondary win conditions as possible so that everybody can win even if they lost.
• Choosing a safeword to indicate that it's time to switch topics.
• Making all your own opulently animated scenes.
• Playing games as a way to develop social relationships.
• Empowering your son to express himself even though he's making a shitty Pokemon deck.
• Finding non-combat activities to do with the Pokemon that are not very good at combat.
• Buying SNES Classic to play games with your son and then realizing that there are more worthwhile games to play than those that merely entertain.
• Games which give you value that you can take out into the world.
• Wanting to show your kid the good stuff so that they can have a better life than you did.
• Learning music theory by listening to Justin Bieber.
• Worrying that you'll pollute your kid's natural interests with your taste in video games.
• A very nice video game world for other people to explore.
• Staring at people and saying "papaya" until they're like "why do you keep saying papaya"
• Skateboarding in low gravity.
• Full contact basketball with trampolines.
• Immersion Blender Night.
• Immersion blended salad.
• Immersion blended vegan lasagna.
• Learning the hard way that flambe does not burn off that much of the alcohol.
• A gargantuan stock pot of chocolatey oatmeal that is far too salty for human consumption.
• Improvising around your cooking mistakes.
• Promising to talk about Paddington 2 next episode.
• Going to the Giant Squid web page and checking out Tim's bio.
• Barf-sealed copies of Pig Eat Ball.