web02.fireside.fm Sat, 18 Apr 2026 05:39:22 -0500 Fireside (https://fireside.fm) Topic Lords - Episodes Tagged with “Nathan” https://topiclords.com/tags/nathan Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0700 Every week, Jim invites different friends to guest on Topic Lords and be excited about whatever they've been fixated on this week. en-us episodic The only place on the internet you can hear topics discussed! Jim Stormdancer Every week, Jim invites different friends to guest on Topic Lords and be excited about whatever they've been fixated on this week. yes Jim Stormdancer jim@goombas.org 284. Spotting a Wild Misogyny https://topiclords.com/spotting-a-wild-misogyny b92e7f9b-b899-45ec-959d-08c0f0c59f4a Mon, 31 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Mitch and Nathan. We discuss Ursula LeGuin, Ryu Numbers and Tom Scott Numbers, how to get out of a chair, Have you seen the new show? by Orcboxer, and OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist 1:17:54 yes Lords: * Mitch * https://www.youtube.com/@HBMmaster * Nathan * https://store.steampowered.com/app/2976260/ChainStaff/ Topics: * I wish someone told me all classic Star Trek was based on writer Ursula LeGuin * Ryu Numbers and Tom Scott Numbers * https://www.tumblr.com/tomscottnumber * How to get out of a chair * Have you seen the new show? by Orcboxer * https://www.tumblr.com/orcboxer/745859389762764801/poob-has-it-for-you * OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1LhdhQEKtg * https://www.tumblr.com/fullanimationfilmartist Microtopics: * Mitch from jan Misali. * The episode where we have beef. * The milk frother attachment to the chain staff. * The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother. * Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time. * The Wind's Twelve Quarters. * The Clock Before Armageddon. * Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords. * Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author. * What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price? * Dreams of gutting the collectors market. * Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price. * A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it. * Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game. * Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit. * What counts as a Bacon Connection. * A character who has been in a lot of crossover games. * The de facto authority on Ryu numbers. * Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions. * Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World. * The British buy who wears a red shirt. * The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers. * Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game. * White men who have had a long Youtube career. * Whether Ryu has a surname. * Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number. * Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music. * The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play. * Why do people love squats? * Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed. * Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise. * Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly. * Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair. * The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag. * Watching the X-Files with your wife. * Aged Like Me. * Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking. * A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat. * Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes. * How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down. * A.C. Slatering. * Why isn't Jim an industrial designer? * Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume. * Poob has it for you. * Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you. * The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!" * Tumblr eras. * The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything. * The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter. * The Tumblr Funnymen. * The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr. * Someone who looks like they've been deactivated. * The miracle of Tumblr still being online. * The Poster's Curse. * Bucket, where are you? * A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for. * Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create. * Beatboxing puppy! * A contextless segue into a musical number. * An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie. * A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it. * Legally distinct Marios rapping. * Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law. * The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about. * It's cool when people make art. * Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other. * A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers. * Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be. * Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie. Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mitch from jan Misali.
  • The episode where we have beef.
  • The milk frother attachment to the chain staff.
  • The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother.
  • Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time.
  • The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
  • The Clock Before Armageddon.
  • Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords.
  • Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author.
  • What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price?
  • Dreams of gutting the collectors market.
  • Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price.
  • A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it.
  • Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game.
  • Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit.
  • What counts as a Bacon Connection.
  • A character who has been in a lot of crossover games.
  • The de facto authority on Ryu numbers.
  • Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions.
  • Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World.
  • The British buy who wears a red shirt.
  • The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers.
  • Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game.
  • White men who have had a long Youtube career.
  • Whether Ryu has a surname.
  • Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number.
  • Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music.
  • The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play.
  • Why do people love squats?
  • Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed.
  • Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise.
  • Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly.
  • Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair.
  • The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag.
  • Watching the X-Files with your wife.
  • Aged Like Me.
  • Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking.
  • A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat.
  • Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes.
  • How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down.
  • A.C. Slatering.
  • Why isn't Jim an industrial designer?
  • Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume.
  • Poob has it for you.
  • Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you.
  • The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!"
  • Tumblr eras.
  • The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything.
  • The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
  • The Tumblr Funnymen.
  • The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr.
  • Someone who looks like they've been deactivated.
  • The miracle of Tumblr still being online.
  • The Poster's Curse.
  • Bucket, where are you?
  • A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for.
  • Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create.
  • Beatboxing puppy!
  • A contextless segue into a musical number.
  • An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie.
  • A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it.
  • Legally distinct Marios rapping.
  • Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law.
  • The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about.
  • It's cool when people make art.
  • Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other.
  • A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers.
  • Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be.
  • Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Mitch from jan Misali.
  • The episode where we have beef.
  • The milk frother attachment to the chain staff.
  • The milk frother is DLC you pay extra for that milk frother.
  • Hearing about Ursula Leguin for the first time.
  • The Wind's Twelve Quarters.
  • The Clock Before Armageddon.
  • Solving sexism, here on Topic Lords.
  • Living long enough to discover a new favorite sci-fi author.
  • What's interesting about Sapphire for the PC Engine, other than the price?
  • Dreams of gutting the collectors market.
  • Spending $2,000 on a rare game and trying to convince itself it's good enough to justify the price.
  • A game that is not very rare but it's still expensive because it's so good that people want to keep it.
  • Deciding at the last minute to not use motion controls for your Wii rhythm game.
  • Erdos numbers preceding Bacon numbers because of course it was mathematicians who came up with that shit.
  • What counts as a Bacon Connection.
  • A character who has been in a lot of crossover games.
  • The de facto authority on Ryu numbers.
  • Whether the frog at the end of TXT World is the same as the game from Frog Fractions.
  • Whether Hatricia from the Hat DLC is the same as the cat the wedding dress in the photo at the end of TXT World.
  • The British buy who wears a red shirt.
  • The ever-shifting discourse for what counts as a connection for Scott Numbers.
  • Adding rules to make a trivial game into a non-trivial game.
  • White men who have had a long Youtube career.
  • Whether Ryu has a surname.
  • Stephen Hawking's Sabbath number.
  • Movies and plays tending to tell different stories whereas recorded and live music tends to be the same music.
  • The hypothetical guy whose favorite movie is just one where they pointed a camera at a stage play.
  • Why do people love squats?
  • Doing a 500 pound deadlift to get out of bed.
  • Doing one exercise to get better at a slightly related exercise.
  • Fucking up your knees by getting out of a chair repeatedly.
  • Doing the old heave-ho thing to get out of a chair.
  • The Inherently Beautiful Design of Everyday Objects, by Bonald Normag.
  • Watching the X-Files with your wife.
  • Aged Like Me.
  • Putting your knees under the chair and standing up, and unbending your knees pushes the chair backwards and it falls over, but you're upright, and then like the punching bags with sand at the bottom the chair bounces back up and hits you in the ass so you don't even need to work to start walking.
  • A wheelchair with an extremely gentle ejection seat.
  • Why obese people have worse COVID outcomes.
  • How to make a bed that fat people want to lie in face-down.
  • A.C. Slatering.
  • Why isn't Jim an industrial designer?
  • Applying for an industrial design job and putting sharks on your resume.
  • Poob has it for you.
  • Screenshotting a Tumblr post and cropping out the username to post it on Tiktok and claiming that it's something your therapist told you.
  • The ghost you're talking about waving its hands in your face being like "I'm right here!"
  • Tumblr eras.
  • The event that convinced the Tumblr community that Tumblr users should not ever be in charge of anything.
  • The people who left Tumblr when they banned porn and then came back when Elon Musk bought Twitter.
  • The Tumblr Funnymen.
  • The Tumblr CEO personally harassing trans women off of Tumblr.
  • Someone who looks like they've been deactivated.
  • The miracle of Tumblr still being online.
  • The Poster's Curse.
  • Bucket, where are you?
  • A jumble of keywords that someone might hypothetically search for.
  • Distinctly amateurish outsider art in a way that only a human could create.
  • Beatboxing puppy!
  • A contextless segue into a musical number.
  • An hour long trailer for a twenty minute movie.
  • A movie made by people who were figuring out 3D animation as they were making it.
  • Legally distinct Marios rapping.
  • Being anti-AI art because you are extremely pro copyright law.
  • The beatboxing puppy scene that everybody forgot about.
  • It's cool when people make art.
  • Four consecutive narrators all explaining the same concepts in slightly different ways that slightly contradict each other.
  • A movie asking you to watch it over and over to pump up its numbers.
  • Wanting to see a sequel to "OUR DRAWINGS - PRINCESS MOVIE | Full Animation Film | Artist" because you want to know what the title will be.
  • Complaining that Amazing Digital Circus is more important than your own movie.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 257. Stinky Judo https://topiclords.com/stinky-judo 9977c3ee-390c-4c4f-916c-cbcdaf825c59 Mon, 23 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nathan and Tom. We discuss France stealing breakdancing during the 2024 Olympics, growing to an age where media is good, how are you saying goodbye to trigraphs, Rain by Raymond Carver, how to pronounce things you normally just type, and rolling in NES tetris. 1:14:40 yes Lords: * Nathan * https://store.steampowered.com/app/2976260/ChainStaff/ * Tom Topics: * During the summer olympics, France introduced breakdancing as an event, which was invented in America. They stole it from us! What new event should we steal from another country when the Olympics comes to LA in 2028? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Izzy_(mascot) * Getting to an age where media is good: the writers are your contemporaries so their work doesn't feel stodgy anymore. * How are you saying goodbye to trigraphs? * Rain by Raymond Carver * https://readalittlepoetry.com/2012/12/13/rain-by-raymond-carver/ * Jumping levels of abstraction while explaining computery things, how to pronounce angle brackets and command-line flags * 3rd tetris playtest developed ("rolling"), ponder an entirely new approach to a game (or medium, or problem) that comes nearly 40 years later. * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV5DIZyqsaw Microtopics: * Whether the chain staff is also the grappling hook. * How all games ought to be made. * Using an ancient alien artifact as an immersion blender. * Getting the steamer arm upgrade before you can steam the milk. * Space Opera by Catherynne Valente. * Books where you read a couple paragraphs and you're done for the day. * A sport where if you reach just a little bit further maybe you can touch your opponent's face with your foot. * Stealing cheese rolling from France at the 2028 Olympics. * Hosting the Olympics: a huge money-loser. * Shouldering the terrible burden of hosting the 2028 Olympics. * Aging up the 1996 Olympics mascot so they'll be the right age for the 2028 Olympics. * The Chinese Olympics mascot Jim keeps confusing for Tingle. * Olympic announcers just assuming everyone knows what a "B-Boy" is. * This right here is a horse. * Arranging a competition as bracket of 1v1 matches when it could just as easily be individually scored performances. * Gymnasts all over the world chalking their hands because humans are more alike than they are different. * Running fast at the Olympics. * Hiring Topic Lords as Olympic announcers. * Synchronized swimming except you need to synchronize with all your competitors. * Getting out the shotgun mics to televise basketball players trash talking each other. * Liking television alongside people who share your generational values. * Enjoying being part of a target demographic until you get too old. * Making an effort to appreciate new art more. * The inexhaustible supply of old movies you haven't seen. * What is lost and what is gained now that we're not all watching exactly the same TV shows every night. * Realizing your social values match the media you're consuming because you didn't roll your eyes at the Very Special Episode. * All the video games where you build a bionic arm for an NPC. * Two guys in a missile silo arguing to keep trigraphs in the C standard. * Boring programming situations where memory leaks are impossible. * A guy drinking a beer looking over your shoulder while you program who says "yep" whenever you do something he approves of. * Compiling C++ to a web site. * Writing a web assembly program by typing opcodes into a Javascript string. * What website people are into. * Music that plays while you're waiting for a game to load. * Loading the loading screen. * Some things are being destroyed and other things rebuilt. * Waking up and it's raining. * Saying you have no regrets when of course you have regrets – everyone has regrets, fool! * What cities were destroyed in December 2012? * Scraping information so you can stick it in a file system. * Complete List of Destroyed Cities. * How grumpy Raymond Carver was as a six year old. * How to communicate about what you want someone to type. * What they call curly braces in other countries. * Smooth brackets. * How Mandarin speakers write C code. * Drawing weird shit with Unicode glyphs, making it your URL, printing it on the side of a bus and making people figure out how to type it. * Mathematicians giving all their variables single letter names. * Embarrassing yourself by begging the compiler to not reformat your code. * Choosing to do the easy part of your job right now. * How to play Tetris faster. * Strumming arcade buttons to press them faster. * Weird ways of holding the NES controller to move Tetris pieces faster. * A new way to interact with this piece of plastic. * Turning the back of the controller into a giant button. * What high jump competitors thought the first time they saw the Fosbury Flop. * Learning to do close-up magic and getting frustrated because you can't literally make the card vanish. * Funding a weird game and finding out later if it ever ships. * Whether the folks who made ZPF considered any better names. Lords:

Topics:

  • During the summer olympics, France introduced breakdancing as an event, which was invented in America. They stole it from us! What new event should we steal from another country when the Olympics comes to LA in 2028?
  • Getting to an age where media is good: the writers are your contemporaries so their work doesn't feel stodgy anymore.
  • How are you saying goodbye to trigraphs?
  • Rain by Raymond Carver
  • Jumping levels of abstraction while explaining computery things, how to pronounce angle brackets and command-line flags
  • 3rd tetris playtest developed ("rolling"), ponder an entirely new approach to a game (or medium, or problem) that comes nearly 40 years later.

Microtopics:

  • Whether the chain staff is also the grappling hook.
  • How all games ought to be made.
  • Using an ancient alien artifact as an immersion blender.
  • Getting the steamer arm upgrade before you can steam the milk.
  • Space Opera by Catherynne Valente.
  • Books where you read a couple paragraphs and you're done for the day.
  • A sport where if you reach just a little bit further maybe you can touch your opponent's face with your foot.
  • Stealing cheese rolling from France at the 2028 Olympics.
  • Hosting the Olympics: a huge money-loser.
  • Shouldering the terrible burden of hosting the 2028 Olympics.
  • Aging up the 1996 Olympics mascot so they'll be the right age for the 2028 Olympics.
  • The Chinese Olympics mascot Jim keeps confusing for Tingle.
  • Olympic announcers just assuming everyone knows what a "B-Boy" is.
  • This right here is a horse.
  • Arranging a competition as bracket of 1v1 matches when it could just as easily be individually scored performances.
  • Gymnasts all over the world chalking their hands because humans are more alike than they are different.
  • Running fast at the Olympics.
  • Hiring Topic Lords as Olympic announcers.
  • Synchronized swimming except you need to synchronize with all your competitors.
  • Getting out the shotgun mics to televise basketball players trash talking each other.
  • Liking television alongside people who share your generational values.
  • Enjoying being part of a target demographic until you get too old.
  • Making an effort to appreciate new art more.
  • The inexhaustible supply of old movies you haven't seen.
  • What is lost and what is gained now that we're not all watching exactly the same TV shows every night.
  • Realizing your social values match the media you're consuming because you didn't roll your eyes at the Very Special Episode.
  • All the video games where you build a bionic arm for an NPC.
  • Two guys in a missile silo arguing to keep trigraphs in the C standard.
  • Boring programming situations where memory leaks are impossible.
  • A guy drinking a beer looking over your shoulder while you program who says "yep" whenever you do something he approves of.
  • Compiling C++ to a web site.
  • Writing a web assembly program by typing opcodes into a Javascript string.
  • What website people are into.
  • Music that plays while you're waiting for a game to load.
  • Loading the loading screen.
  • Some things are being destroyed and other things rebuilt.
  • Waking up and it's raining.
  • Saying you have no regrets when of course you have regrets – everyone has regrets, fool!
  • What cities were destroyed in December 2012?
  • Scraping information so you can stick it in a file system.
  • Complete List of Destroyed Cities.
  • How grumpy Raymond Carver was as a six year old.
  • How to communicate about what you want someone to type.
  • What they call curly braces in other countries.
  • Smooth brackets.
  • How Mandarin speakers write C code.
  • Drawing weird shit with Unicode glyphs, making it your URL, printing it on the side of a bus and making people figure out how to type it.
  • Mathematicians giving all their variables single letter names.
  • Embarrassing yourself by begging the compiler to not reformat your code.
  • Choosing to do the easy part of your job right now.
  • How to play Tetris faster.
  • Strumming arcade buttons to press them faster.
  • Weird ways of holding the NES controller to move Tetris pieces faster.
  • A new way to interact with this piece of plastic.
  • Turning the back of the controller into a giant button.
  • What high jump competitors thought the first time they saw the Fosbury Flop.
  • Learning to do close-up magic and getting frustrated because you can't literally make the card vanish.
  • Funding a weird game and finding out later if it ever ships.
  • Whether the folks who made ZPF considered any better names.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • During the summer olympics, France introduced breakdancing as an event, which was invented in America. They stole it from us! What new event should we steal from another country when the Olympics comes to LA in 2028?
  • Getting to an age where media is good: the writers are your contemporaries so their work doesn't feel stodgy anymore.
  • How are you saying goodbye to trigraphs?
  • Rain by Raymond Carver
  • Jumping levels of abstraction while explaining computery things, how to pronounce angle brackets and command-line flags
  • 3rd tetris playtest developed ("rolling"), ponder an entirely new approach to a game (or medium, or problem) that comes nearly 40 years later.

Microtopics:

  • Whether the chain staff is also the grappling hook.
  • How all games ought to be made.
  • Using an ancient alien artifact as an immersion blender.
  • Getting the steamer arm upgrade before you can steam the milk.
  • Space Opera by Catherynne Valente.
  • Books where you read a couple paragraphs and you're done for the day.
  • A sport where if you reach just a little bit further maybe you can touch your opponent's face with your foot.
  • Stealing cheese rolling from France at the 2028 Olympics.
  • Hosting the Olympics: a huge money-loser.
  • Shouldering the terrible burden of hosting the 2028 Olympics.
  • Aging up the 1996 Olympics mascot so they'll be the right age for the 2028 Olympics.
  • The Chinese Olympics mascot Jim keeps confusing for Tingle.
  • Olympic announcers just assuming everyone knows what a "B-Boy" is.
  • This right here is a horse.
  • Arranging a competition as bracket of 1v1 matches when it could just as easily be individually scored performances.
  • Gymnasts all over the world chalking their hands because humans are more alike than they are different.
  • Running fast at the Olympics.
  • Hiring Topic Lords as Olympic announcers.
  • Synchronized swimming except you need to synchronize with all your competitors.
  • Getting out the shotgun mics to televise basketball players trash talking each other.
  • Liking television alongside people who share your generational values.
  • Enjoying being part of a target demographic until you get too old.
  • Making an effort to appreciate new art more.
  • The inexhaustible supply of old movies you haven't seen.
  • What is lost and what is gained now that we're not all watching exactly the same TV shows every night.
  • Realizing your social values match the media you're consuming because you didn't roll your eyes at the Very Special Episode.
  • All the video games where you build a bionic arm for an NPC.
  • Two guys in a missile silo arguing to keep trigraphs in the C standard.
  • Boring programming situations where memory leaks are impossible.
  • A guy drinking a beer looking over your shoulder while you program who says "yep" whenever you do something he approves of.
  • Compiling C++ to a web site.
  • Writing a web assembly program by typing opcodes into a Javascript string.
  • What website people are into.
  • Music that plays while you're waiting for a game to load.
  • Loading the loading screen.
  • Some things are being destroyed and other things rebuilt.
  • Waking up and it's raining.
  • Saying you have no regrets when of course you have regrets – everyone has regrets, fool!
  • What cities were destroyed in December 2012?
  • Scraping information so you can stick it in a file system.
  • Complete List of Destroyed Cities.
  • How grumpy Raymond Carver was as a six year old.
  • How to communicate about what you want someone to type.
  • What they call curly braces in other countries.
  • Smooth brackets.
  • How Mandarin speakers write C code.
  • Drawing weird shit with Unicode glyphs, making it your URL, printing it on the side of a bus and making people figure out how to type it.
  • Mathematicians giving all their variables single letter names.
  • Embarrassing yourself by begging the compiler to not reformat your code.
  • Choosing to do the easy part of your job right now.
  • How to play Tetris faster.
  • Strumming arcade buttons to press them faster.
  • Weird ways of holding the NES controller to move Tetris pieces faster.
  • A new way to interact with this piece of plastic.
  • Turning the back of the controller into a giant button.
  • What high jump competitors thought the first time they saw the Fosbury Flop.
  • Learning to do close-up magic and getting frustrated because you can't literally make the card vanish.
  • Funding a weird game and finding out later if it ever ships.
  • Whether the folks who made ZPF considered any better names.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 224. Following a Garden Hose Around in the Dark https://topiclords.com/following-a-garden-hose-around-in-the-dark 0f6c713d-f900-4a73-aa83-4a9c67054140 Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Jason and Nathan. We discuss painting your nails, jukebox griefing, the team that developed Donkey Kong, Hypothetical Explanations for the Paradox, how color happens on monitors, and Bach's looping doodle. 1:10:21 yes Lords: * Jason * https://jmac.org/ * https://masto.nyc/@jmac * Nathan * Mommy's Best Games Everywhere Topics: * When I paint my nails I don't paint my thumbnails. This is because I see my thumbnails all day long but I don't see my other fingernails nearly as often, and so every time I do I'm like "Whoa!!!!" * Jukebox griefing * Nintendo farmed out the development of Donkey Kong to an outside dev team, because they didn't have an in-house video game team yet. Donkey Kong was that team's first game. Their second game was Zaxxon. * Hypothetical explanations for the paradox * https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/3/3597ddeb-e52e-4cda-a59c-c64600489fea/bZmUoKct.png * Thinking about RGB color programming for games, then wondering about how the color actually happens on monitors. * Bach drew a loopy doodle at the top of the cover of his original manuscript of "The Well Tempered Clavier". It looks like he was just warming up his pen-hand, but scholars have been arguing for years that it contains secret codes about how to well-temper a clavier Microtopics: * Interactive Fiction Land. * Panoptikum Budapest. * Bumpy Grumpy's emotional arc. * Frantic Frank. * Men and male-presenting persons with painted nails. * Painting just one fingernail dark green and wondering whether that's a hankie code thing. * What's going on with my thumbs? * Your non-thumb fingernails. * Painting your nails and repeatedly rediscovering them. * Looking like an android. (But in a cool way.) * Forehead loaves. * Starting to pay attention to where your fingers are. * Why not to wear a magnetic nose stud. * Being old enough to remember when you had to walk up to the jukebox to queue up Beat It by Michael Jackson ten times in a row. * Getting into a jukebox griefing war with someone you've never met. * Walking up to the jukebox and typing in the binary code of the WAV file you want to play. * Binary data played back at audio rates. * The math describing Mario's jump arc. * Making the first racing video game and thinking "well that's racing games sorted." * Satoru Iwata's understanding of Mario's last name. * Mario: a weird little dude. * Drill Dozer. * How to run a video game business when games are sold on cassette tape for six pounds which is way too heavy for a video game. * Platformers where you go off the edge of the screen and end up on another screen and each screen has a name. * Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument. * Earth is purposefully isolated. (Planetarium hypothesis.) * They are here undetected vs. they are here unacknowledged. * Arguing about a sexy robot. * Ironically Sexy Robots * The Fudd Paradox, by Ray Bradbury. * People who just want to toss salad and don't want to know about your weird slang. * Gender-expansive anthropomorphic rabbits. * Blank verse vs. free verse. * Burning Monkey Solitaire. * What your cat sees when he's swatting at Kratos. * How blue is blue? * Watching old episodes of Bob Ross and you can't follow along any more because they don't make Mummy Brown anymore. * The Opaque See-Through TV. * Seeing a see-through TV at CES and asking the guy at the booth what use case is of a see-through TV and he's like "to look cool at CES." * Ribbed monitors. * The secret textures of the Nintendo 3DS. * All kinds of words that you don't know how to pronounce. * The Moogseum. * Bach's looping doodle. * The structure of the J.S. Bach speedrunning community. * A community obsessing over minutia and never worrying about whether it's true or important because it's just some bullshit you made up and agreed to care about. * Hungry music theorists who need human connection. * Sponsoring AGDQ with your clavier etudes. * Black MIDI. * Using up all the claviers in the world during your clavier speedrunning event. * The Fetaverse. * Making an arcade cabinet. Lords:

Topics:

  • When I paint my nails I don't paint my thumbnails. This is because I see my thumbnails all day long but I don't see my other fingernails nearly as often, and so every time I do I'm like "Whoa!!!!"
  • Jukebox griefing
  • Nintendo farmed out the development of Donkey Kong to an outside dev team, because they didn't have an in-house video game team yet. Donkey Kong was that team's first game. Their second game was Zaxxon.
  • Hypothetical explanations for the paradox
  • Thinking about RGB color programming for games, then wondering about how the color actually happens on monitors.
  • Bach drew a loopy doodle at the top of the cover of his original manuscript of "The Well Tempered Clavier". It looks like he was just warming up his pen-hand, but scholars have been arguing for years that it contains secret codes about how to well-temper a clavier

Microtopics:

  • Interactive Fiction Land.
  • Panoptikum Budapest.
  • Bumpy Grumpy's emotional arc.
  • Frantic Frank.
  • Men and male-presenting persons with painted nails.
  • Painting just one fingernail dark green and wondering whether that's a hankie code thing.
  • What's going on with my thumbs?
  • Your non-thumb fingernails.
  • Painting your nails and repeatedly rediscovering them.
  • Looking like an android. (But in a cool way.)
  • Forehead loaves.
  • Starting to pay attention to where your fingers are.
  • Why not to wear a magnetic nose stud.
  • Being old enough to remember when you had to walk up to the jukebox to queue up Beat It by Michael Jackson ten times in a row.
  • Getting into a jukebox griefing war with someone you've never met.
  • Walking up to the jukebox and typing in the binary code of the WAV file you want to play.
  • Binary data played back at audio rates.
  • The math describing Mario's jump arc.
  • Making the first racing video game and thinking "well that's racing games sorted."
  • Satoru Iwata's understanding of Mario's last name.
  • Mario: a weird little dude.
  • Drill Dozer.
  • How to run a video game business when games are sold on cassette tape for six pounds which is way too heavy for a video game.
  • Platformers where you go off the edge of the screen and end up on another screen and each screen has a name.
  • Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument.
  • Earth is purposefully isolated. (Planetarium hypothesis.)
  • They are here undetected vs. they are here unacknowledged.
  • Arguing about a sexy robot.
  • Ironically Sexy Robots
  • The Fudd Paradox, by Ray Bradbury.
  • People who just want to toss salad and don't want to know about your weird slang.
  • Gender-expansive anthropomorphic rabbits.
  • Blank verse vs. free verse.
  • Burning Monkey Solitaire.
  • What your cat sees when he's swatting at Kratos.
  • How blue is blue?
  • Watching old episodes of Bob Ross and you can't follow along any more because they don't make Mummy Brown anymore.
  • The Opaque See-Through TV.
  • Seeing a see-through TV at CES and asking the guy at the booth what use case is of a see-through TV and he's like "to look cool at CES."
  • Ribbed monitors.
  • The secret textures of the Nintendo 3DS.
  • All kinds of words that you don't know how to pronounce.
  • The Moogseum.
  • Bach's looping doodle.
  • The structure of the J.S. Bach speedrunning community.
  • A community obsessing over minutia and never worrying about whether it's true or important because it's just some bullshit you made up and agreed to care about.
  • Hungry music theorists who need human connection.
  • Sponsoring AGDQ with your clavier etudes.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Using up all the claviers in the world during your clavier speedrunning event.
  • The Fetaverse.
  • Making an arcade cabinet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

Topics:

  • When I paint my nails I don't paint my thumbnails. This is because I see my thumbnails all day long but I don't see my other fingernails nearly as often, and so every time I do I'm like "Whoa!!!!"
  • Jukebox griefing
  • Nintendo farmed out the development of Donkey Kong to an outside dev team, because they didn't have an in-house video game team yet. Donkey Kong was that team's first game. Their second game was Zaxxon.
  • Hypothetical explanations for the paradox
  • Thinking about RGB color programming for games, then wondering about how the color actually happens on monitors.
  • Bach drew a loopy doodle at the top of the cover of his original manuscript of "The Well Tempered Clavier". It looks like he was just warming up his pen-hand, but scholars have been arguing for years that it contains secret codes about how to well-temper a clavier

Microtopics:

  • Interactive Fiction Land.
  • Panoptikum Budapest.
  • Bumpy Grumpy's emotional arc.
  • Frantic Frank.
  • Men and male-presenting persons with painted nails.
  • Painting just one fingernail dark green and wondering whether that's a hankie code thing.
  • What's going on with my thumbs?
  • Your non-thumb fingernails.
  • Painting your nails and repeatedly rediscovering them.
  • Looking like an android. (But in a cool way.)
  • Forehead loaves.
  • Starting to pay attention to where your fingers are.
  • Why not to wear a magnetic nose stud.
  • Being old enough to remember when you had to walk up to the jukebox to queue up Beat It by Michael Jackson ten times in a row.
  • Getting into a jukebox griefing war with someone you've never met.
  • Walking up to the jukebox and typing in the binary code of the WAV file you want to play.
  • Binary data played back at audio rates.
  • The math describing Mario's jump arc.
  • Making the first racing video game and thinking "well that's racing games sorted."
  • Satoru Iwata's understanding of Mario's last name.
  • Mario: a weird little dude.
  • Drill Dozer.
  • How to run a video game business when games are sold on cassette tape for six pounds which is way too heavy for a video game.
  • Platformers where you go off the edge of the screen and end up on another screen and each screen has a name.
  • Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument.
  • Earth is purposefully isolated. (Planetarium hypothesis.)
  • They are here undetected vs. they are here unacknowledged.
  • Arguing about a sexy robot.
  • Ironically Sexy Robots
  • The Fudd Paradox, by Ray Bradbury.
  • People who just want to toss salad and don't want to know about your weird slang.
  • Gender-expansive anthropomorphic rabbits.
  • Blank verse vs. free verse.
  • Burning Monkey Solitaire.
  • What your cat sees when he's swatting at Kratos.
  • How blue is blue?
  • Watching old episodes of Bob Ross and you can't follow along any more because they don't make Mummy Brown anymore.
  • The Opaque See-Through TV.
  • Seeing a see-through TV at CES and asking the guy at the booth what use case is of a see-through TV and he's like "to look cool at CES."
  • Ribbed monitors.
  • The secret textures of the Nintendo 3DS.
  • All kinds of words that you don't know how to pronounce.
  • The Moogseum.
  • Bach's looping doodle.
  • The structure of the J.S. Bach speedrunning community.
  • A community obsessing over minutia and never worrying about whether it's true or important because it's just some bullshit you made up and agreed to care about.
  • Hungry music theorists who need human connection.
  • Sponsoring AGDQ with your clavier etudes.
  • Black MIDI.
  • Using up all the claviers in the world during your clavier speedrunning event.
  • The Fetaverse.
  • Making an arcade cabinet.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 207. Muppet Bird Generation Ship https://topiclords.com/muppet-bird-generation-ship 06ba70c9-4ca6-4a59-b0e6-7851cf7994f4 Mon, 09 Oct 2023 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Lesley and Nathan. We discuss whether wilderness survival is a sport, variation in NextDoor posts, pastry arbitrage, The Light That Shines When Things End, wild takahe returning to New Zealand, and Boston Robotics. 1:11:39 yes Lords: * Lesley * Nathan Topics: * Thinking of survival shows like Alone, is "wilderness survival" a sport? * Regional differences in the tone and caliber of NextDoor posts * Pastry arbitrage * The Light That Shines When Things End * https://files.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads/images/3/3597ddeb-e52e-4cda-a59c-c64600489fea/bOfIPmqs.png * Wild takahē (TAH-kah-hay) have been reintroduced into the mountains of New Zealand * How are we feeling about the Boston Robotics advancements? Welcome our new robot overlords or not? Microtopics: * Hyper Light Breaker. * Bumpy Grumpy. * Recording a podcast from inside a toilet. * Fishtank bubbling noises. * Assigning a point value to eating reindeer lichen. * Eating your belt because someone famous ate their belt once in the 19th century. * Starving contests. * Calling in an air drop for your favorite outdoor survivalists. * The reality show where a guy is living alone in an apartment scouring thousands of magazines for offers of free stuff. * The "it's a living" joke. * Pez Guy. * Trying to redeem Pepsi tokens for a fighter jet. * A boiler room full of people tilting soda bottles. * Weary cereal mascots. * Hippies living in a canyon until Topanga emerges. * Making a Nextdoor post about a guy peering in your window and the replies are like "it's cool it's just Window Peering Jim checking out your remodel." * Making a Nextdoor post about finding a baby goat and what do I do and a reply saying "you need to call the Goat Goddess" and another reply saying "I'm the Goat Goddess and I can help you." * Encouraging microcultures. * Surfacing positive comments to the top of Youtube videos. * Using technology to steer people away from being terrible. * Writing a story about a guy with a sword. * Writing a parody of bad fanfiction and building Minecraft worlds to support your world building. * Whether jokes are funnier now or if old jokes are just out of fashion. * Trying to relate to the kids by saying "I can has cheeseburger?" * How art used to happen before copyright law fucked everything up. * The dudes at the farmers market selling tomatoes that are obviously from the grocery store. * The farm with a sign that says "come pick pumpkins at our pumpkin patch" but the pumpkins are just sitting on the ground and by pick they just meant "select." * The Quasi-Authentic Experience. * A pumpkin velcroed to a vine. * A large hill. (Not a mountain.) * Making the light a liar, at least until your mid-thirties. * Ruining an otherwise amazing moment. * A Minority Report precog murder kind of situation. * Whether the light has a bell too. * A poem that's just a shower thought if you think about it. * Taking the eggs to an incubation center. * Muppet Bird flavor. * Cutting open a cookie monster to reveal the cookie layers inside. * Seeing the Cookie Monster's leg in the window of the butcher shop. * The roast chicken saying "It's a living!" as you slice it up. * Robots that sound like bees. * Slipping on the ice and hearing the bees. * Whether fun robots are even scarier than serious robots. * Moxie the child companion robot. * A dog named Spot and his SDK. * Too loud, too scary, too many bees. * People who can pollinate. * If it's empty, fill it with bees. * Memes that the kids don't think are old because they have fallen out of the cultural memory entirely. * Still being on Twitter because you have games to sell. Lords:

  • Lesley
  • Nathan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Hyper Light Breaker.
  • Bumpy Grumpy.
  • Recording a podcast from inside a toilet.
  • Fishtank bubbling noises.
  • Assigning a point value to eating reindeer lichen.
  • Eating your belt because someone famous ate their belt once in the 19th century.
  • Starving contests.
  • Calling in an air drop for your favorite outdoor survivalists.
  • The reality show where a guy is living alone in an apartment scouring thousands of magazines for offers of free stuff.
  • The "it's a living" joke.
  • Pez Guy.
  • Trying to redeem Pepsi tokens for a fighter jet.
  • A boiler room full of people tilting soda bottles.
  • Weary cereal mascots.
  • Hippies living in a canyon until Topanga emerges.
  • Making a Nextdoor post about a guy peering in your window and the replies are like "it's cool it's just Window Peering Jim checking out your remodel."
  • Making a Nextdoor post about finding a baby goat and what do I do and a reply saying "you need to call the Goat Goddess" and another reply saying "I'm the Goat Goddess and I can help you."
  • Encouraging microcultures.
  • Surfacing positive comments to the top of Youtube videos.
  • Using technology to steer people away from being terrible.
  • Writing a story about a guy with a sword.
  • Writing a parody of bad fanfiction and building Minecraft worlds to support your world building.
  • Whether jokes are funnier now or if old jokes are just out of fashion.
  • Trying to relate to the kids by saying "I can has cheeseburger?"
  • How art used to happen before copyright law fucked everything up.
  • The dudes at the farmers market selling tomatoes that are obviously from the grocery store.
  • The farm with a sign that says "come pick pumpkins at our pumpkin patch" but the pumpkins are just sitting on the ground and by pick they just meant "select."
  • The Quasi-Authentic Experience.
  • A pumpkin velcroed to a vine.
  • A large hill. (Not a mountain.)
  • Making the light a liar, at least until your mid-thirties.
  • Ruining an otherwise amazing moment.
  • A Minority Report precog murder kind of situation.
  • Whether the light has a bell too.
  • A poem that's just a shower thought if you think about it.
  • Taking the eggs to an incubation center.
  • Muppet Bird flavor.
  • Cutting open a cookie monster to reveal the cookie layers inside.
  • Seeing the Cookie Monster's leg in the window of the butcher shop.
  • The roast chicken saying "It's a living!" as you slice it up.
  • Robots that sound like bees.
  • Slipping on the ice and hearing the bees.
  • Whether fun robots are even scarier than serious robots.
  • Moxie the child companion robot.
  • A dog named Spot and his SDK.
  • Too loud, too scary, too many bees.
  • People who can pollinate.
  • If it's empty, fill it with bees.
  • Memes that the kids don't think are old because they have fallen out of the cultural memory entirely.
  • Still being on Twitter because you have games to sell.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Lords:

  • Lesley
  • Nathan

Topics:

Microtopics:

  • Hyper Light Breaker.
  • Bumpy Grumpy.
  • Recording a podcast from inside a toilet.
  • Fishtank bubbling noises.
  • Assigning a point value to eating reindeer lichen.
  • Eating your belt because someone famous ate their belt once in the 19th century.
  • Starving contests.
  • Calling in an air drop for your favorite outdoor survivalists.
  • The reality show where a guy is living alone in an apartment scouring thousands of magazines for offers of free stuff.
  • The "it's a living" joke.
  • Pez Guy.
  • Trying to redeem Pepsi tokens for a fighter jet.
  • A boiler room full of people tilting soda bottles.
  • Weary cereal mascots.
  • Hippies living in a canyon until Topanga emerges.
  • Making a Nextdoor post about a guy peering in your window and the replies are like "it's cool it's just Window Peering Jim checking out your remodel."
  • Making a Nextdoor post about finding a baby goat and what do I do and a reply saying "you need to call the Goat Goddess" and another reply saying "I'm the Goat Goddess and I can help you."
  • Encouraging microcultures.
  • Surfacing positive comments to the top of Youtube videos.
  • Using technology to steer people away from being terrible.
  • Writing a story about a guy with a sword.
  • Writing a parody of bad fanfiction and building Minecraft worlds to support your world building.
  • Whether jokes are funnier now or if old jokes are just out of fashion.
  • Trying to relate to the kids by saying "I can has cheeseburger?"
  • How art used to happen before copyright law fucked everything up.
  • The dudes at the farmers market selling tomatoes that are obviously from the grocery store.
  • The farm with a sign that says "come pick pumpkins at our pumpkin patch" but the pumpkins are just sitting on the ground and by pick they just meant "select."
  • The Quasi-Authentic Experience.
  • A pumpkin velcroed to a vine.
  • A large hill. (Not a mountain.)
  • Making the light a liar, at least until your mid-thirties.
  • Ruining an otherwise amazing moment.
  • A Minority Report precog murder kind of situation.
  • Whether the light has a bell too.
  • A poem that's just a shower thought if you think about it.
  • Taking the eggs to an incubation center.
  • Muppet Bird flavor.
  • Cutting open a cookie monster to reveal the cookie layers inside.
  • Seeing the Cookie Monster's leg in the window of the butcher shop.
  • The roast chicken saying "It's a living!" as you slice it up.
  • Robots that sound like bees.
  • Slipping on the ice and hearing the bees.
  • Whether fun robots are even scarier than serious robots.
  • Moxie the child companion robot.
  • A dog named Spot and his SDK.
  • Too loud, too scary, too many bees.
  • People who can pollinate.
  • If it's empty, fill it with bees.
  • Memes that the kids don't think are old because they have fallen out of the cultural memory entirely.
  • Still being on Twitter because you have games to sell.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 164. Dead Bodies Are Always in the First Place You Look https://topiclords.com/dead-bodies-are-always-in-the-first-place-you-look 06d046ab-78d8-40b5-80db-0ed5ceb12953 Mon, 12 Dec 2022 00:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nathan and Tyriq. Topics: octopodes, teaching your son to drive, breaking the RNG in The Colonel's Bequest, and fixing the camera in Mario Odyssey. 1:12:56 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Nathan * MommysBestGames on Twitter. * Tyriq * FourBitFriday everywhere. Topics: * Octopodes, continued * My wife and I are both teaching our son to drive, with separate lessons. It's going OK but with bumps. * The most widely-used crack for The Colonel's Bequest works by breaking the random number generator. This has wide-ranging effects on the gameplay. * https://www.benshoof.org/blog/case-cracked * How are we going to fix the camera in Mario Odyssey? Microtopics: * Game Type DX. * Implementing the Xbox dashboard and trying to get it approved by Sony. * The most serious episode of Topic Lords. * Bringing up Octopuses every three years. * Giving yourself an electric shock because you're so bored. * Sea pork. * Eating the animals that are extremely convenient to farm. * Aoes sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen. * Chimpanzee pranks. * Making art because that's what people do. * Trying to disentangle making art from making a living. * Whether zoo animals would prefer their natural habitat or whether they just enjoy a chill cool time. * Inventing an octopus psychologist to figure out what parts of their lives they like and what parts could be improved. * Children of Time and Children of Ruin. * Molluscs having a good time. * Terraforming gone awry. * The impossibility of talking smart people out of bad ideas. * Why a teenager might or might not want to learn to drive. * How hard to push the brakes and how hard to push the gas. * Pushing the gas too hard and the car is like no, take a deep breath and try again. * Terrifying two lane roads. * Whether to start turning before you reach the stop sign. * Driving in Atlanta. * Learning to drive because you have to get to college somehow. * The responsibility of being in charge of heavy machinery. * Driving and suddenly realizing you need to be paying way more attention right now. * Saying the worst possible thing to someone who is already anxious. * Detective adventure game structure. * The botched Red Baron Easter egg. * Walking by windows whenever possible. * Blinking, fidgeting and moving with lifeless constancy. * Serious Sam 3's copy protection scorpion. * Finding the thing you're not expecting in the first place you look. * Whether the Law and Order video games implement both Law and Order. * A detective game where you spend most of your energy preventing the detective from having a nervous breakdown or hurting somebody. * Game design that is driven by fun tech. * Getting a fancy new drill press and for a while all the furniture you make has a bunch of extra holes for no apparent reason. * An RPG character with the ability to manipulate the RNG. * A game design critique of darts. * Fingers in the brain, squishing. * Why Game Genie codes are encrypted. * The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level editor. * BASIC Programming and Computer Intro. * The guy who wrote half of the Odyssey 2's game catalog. * Whether console exclusives, or indeed video game systems at all, should exist. * Why they set Mario Galaxy on planetoids. * Looking into a shoebox of fun. * Mario's fluctuating weight throughout the series. * A classic 3D platformer problem. * Manipulating the camera while you touch all kinds of other buttons. * The kind of Mario game that your dad can play. * Been solved. Not fun. * Trying to show Portal to people who have never played first-person shooters. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Nathan
    • MommysBestGames on Twitter.
  • Tyriq
    • FourBitFriday everywhere.

Topics:

  • Octopodes, continued
  • My wife and I are both teaching our son to drive, with separate lessons. It's going OK but with bumps.
  • The most widely-used crack for The Colonel's Bequest works by breaking the random number generator. This has wide-ranging effects on the gameplay.
  • How are we going to fix the camera in Mario Odyssey?

Microtopics:

  • Game Type DX.
  • Implementing the Xbox dashboard and trying to get it approved by Sony.
  • The most serious episode of Topic Lords.
  • Bringing up Octopuses every three years.
  • Giving yourself an electric shock because you're so bored.
  • Sea pork.
  • Eating the animals that are extremely convenient to farm.
  • Aoes sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen.
  • Chimpanzee pranks.
  • Making art because that's what people do.
  • Trying to disentangle making art from making a living.
  • Whether zoo animals would prefer their natural habitat or whether they just enjoy a chill cool time.
  • Inventing an octopus psychologist to figure out what parts of their lives they like and what parts could be improved.
  • Children of Time and Children of Ruin.
  • Molluscs having a good time.
  • Terraforming gone awry.
  • The impossibility of talking smart people out of bad ideas.
  • Why a teenager might or might not want to learn to drive.
  • How hard to push the brakes and how hard to push the gas.
  • Pushing the gas too hard and the car is like no, take a deep breath and try again.
  • Terrifying two lane roads.
  • Whether to start turning before you reach the stop sign.
  • Driving in Atlanta.
  • Learning to drive because you have to get to college somehow.
  • The responsibility of being in charge of heavy machinery.
  • Driving and suddenly realizing you need to be paying way more attention right now.
  • Saying the worst possible thing to someone who is already anxious.
  • Detective adventure game structure.
  • The botched Red Baron Easter egg.
  • Walking by windows whenever possible.
  • Blinking, fidgeting and moving with lifeless constancy.
  • Serious Sam 3's copy protection scorpion.
  • Finding the thing you're not expecting in the first place you look.
  • Whether the Law and Order video games implement both Law and Order.
  • A detective game where you spend most of your energy preventing the detective from having a nervous breakdown or hurting somebody.
  • Game design that is driven by fun tech.
  • Getting a fancy new drill press and for a while all the furniture you make has a bunch of extra holes for no apparent reason.
  • An RPG character with the ability to manipulate the RNG.
  • A game design critique of darts.
  • Fingers in the brain, squishing.
  • Why Game Genie codes are encrypted.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level editor.
  • BASIC Programming and Computer Intro.
  • The guy who wrote half of the Odyssey 2's game catalog.
  • Whether console exclusives, or indeed video game systems at all, should exist.
  • Why they set Mario Galaxy on planetoids.
  • Looking into a shoebox of fun.
  • Mario's fluctuating weight throughout the series.
  • A classic 3D platformer problem.
  • Manipulating the camera while you touch all kinds of other buttons.
  • The kind of Mario game that your dad can play.
  • Been solved. Not fun.
  • Trying to show Portal to people who have never played first-person shooters.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

  • Nathan
    • MommysBestGames on Twitter.
  • Tyriq
    • FourBitFriday everywhere.

Topics:

  • Octopodes, continued
  • My wife and I are both teaching our son to drive, with separate lessons. It's going OK but with bumps.
  • The most widely-used crack for The Colonel's Bequest works by breaking the random number generator. This has wide-ranging effects on the gameplay.
  • How are we going to fix the camera in Mario Odyssey?

Microtopics:

  • Game Type DX.
  • Implementing the Xbox dashboard and trying to get it approved by Sony.
  • The most serious episode of Topic Lords.
  • Bringing up Octopuses every three years.
  • Giving yourself an electric shock because you're so bored.
  • Sea pork.
  • Eating the animals that are extremely convenient to farm.
  • Aoes sitting around waiting for something interesting to happen.
  • Chimpanzee pranks.
  • Making art because that's what people do.
  • Trying to disentangle making art from making a living.
  • Whether zoo animals would prefer their natural habitat or whether they just enjoy a chill cool time.
  • Inventing an octopus psychologist to figure out what parts of their lives they like and what parts could be improved.
  • Children of Time and Children of Ruin.
  • Molluscs having a good time.
  • Terraforming gone awry.
  • The impossibility of talking smart people out of bad ideas.
  • Why a teenager might or might not want to learn to drive.
  • How hard to push the brakes and how hard to push the gas.
  • Pushing the gas too hard and the car is like no, take a deep breath and try again.
  • Terrifying two lane roads.
  • Whether to start turning before you reach the stop sign.
  • Driving in Atlanta.
  • Learning to drive because you have to get to college somehow.
  • The responsibility of being in charge of heavy machinery.
  • Driving and suddenly realizing you need to be paying way more attention right now.
  • Saying the worst possible thing to someone who is already anxious.
  • Detective adventure game structure.
  • The botched Red Baron Easter egg.
  • Walking by windows whenever possible.
  • Blinking, fidgeting and moving with lifeless constancy.
  • Serious Sam 3's copy protection scorpion.
  • Finding the thing you're not expecting in the first place you look.
  • Whether the Law and Order video games implement both Law and Order.
  • A detective game where you spend most of your energy preventing the detective from having a nervous breakdown or hurting somebody.
  • Game design that is driven by fun tech.
  • Getting a fancy new drill press and for a while all the furniture you make has a bunch of extra holes for no apparent reason.
  • An RPG character with the ability to manipulate the RNG.
  • A game design critique of darts.
  • Fingers in the brain, squishing.
  • Why Game Genie codes are encrypted.
  • The Sonic the Hedgehog 2 level editor.
  • BASIC Programming and Computer Intro.
  • The guy who wrote half of the Odyssey 2's game catalog.
  • Whether console exclusives, or indeed video game systems at all, should exist.
  • Why they set Mario Galaxy on planetoids.
  • Looking into a shoebox of fun.
  • Mario's fluctuating weight throughout the series.
  • A classic 3D platformer problem.
  • Manipulating the camera while you touch all kinds of other buttons.
  • The kind of Mario game that your dad can play.
  • Been solved. Not fun.
  • Trying to show Portal to people who have never played first-person shooters.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 135. I've Been a Bad, Bad French https://topiclords.com/ive-been-a-bad-bad-french 62021d3f-ecad-4087-9e62-acd4981e9808 Mon, 23 May 2022 00:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nate and Fred. We discuss rice cookers playing music, competition in a utopia, Hot Ice, Cool Sounds, Goblin Time, whether the D&D-themed Nerds marketing campaign is good for D&D, and convincing the four horsemen to hire you as fifth horseman. 1:15:23 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Nate * http://mommysbestgames.com/ * https://twitter.com/MommysBestGames/ * Fred * https://twitter.com/brobbeh Topics: * Why do rice cookers play music but not microwaves? * https://twitter.com/_LucasRizzotto/status/1516205625662836739 * If all your needs are met in a utopian society will we still need sports and competition? * Hot Ice, Cool Sounds * Goblin Time by Emma * https://mastodon.art/@emmajuettner/108103474257806186 * Esper says: "My long-held suspicion has always been that humans are generally way less prone to salt-related health issues than suggested by nutritional science. I think a lot of that stuff was ginned up by cigarette companies trying to deflect blame. But I try not to go full-on conspiracy theory about it." * Nerds candy has a Dungeons and Dragons themed box. Is this good for D&D? * If the four horsemen of the apocalypse were recruiting for a fifth member, how would you convince them to hire you? Microtopics: * A shmup about how Microsoft screwed up their Xbox 360 dashboard. * Screaming for 24 hours straight and having a heart attack, or vice versa. * Remastering your obscure protest game and needing to build a museum explaining the context for the protest. * An educational title about how to find games on the new Xbox 360 dashboard. * An infinite runner with extremely awkward horse controls. * Using all the right dark patterns. * Meeting an indie game developer in San Francisco and recognizing him because he's a white guy with a beard and glasses who likes Dark Souls. * A pot that's specifically for rice and it knows when to school cooking the rice. * Only rice cookers get to sing a song. * Installing an AI in your microwave so your microwave can try to murder you. * A codependent washing machine. * Landlords in California doing an end run around renter's rights. * The keyless entry system on your apartment that has a battery backup just so it can play "These Boots are Made for Walking" when it can't let you in because the power is out. * 3D printing some laundry to fold because people are bored in your Utopia. * Extremely soporific TV. * A mashup of music and sports. * Gathering to watch a live band play while a chef makes crepes. * Whether you can be bored while watching two things at the same time. * An orchestra trying to live-score a basketball game. * Trying to listen to an arcade game in the arcade. * Goblins in our community. * A bullet point list of how you can help a goblin. * Spicy radish waffles. * Blackwheat crepes and whether they're really black. * Lemonade crepes. * Dipping a sandwich in mustard. * The pros and cons of salting food. * Chickens laying pre-salted eggs. * Paying a monthly subscription to Monsanto to keep up the injections that make your tongue exude its own salt. * Getting in line to hate Monsanto. * Whether nerds are more or less likely to eat Nerds candy. * A candy for people who forgot D&D exists. * Candy&D. * A series of Nerds-themed D&D campaigns. * Hiring people and paying them. * Star Trek Jeopardy where 70% of the answers are 1980s pop culture because the federation is obsessed with the 80s. * Seeing yet another college sports question in the New York Times crossword and deciding whether to get irrationally angry at Will Shortz. * What Jim embodies that is the worst thing. * Death, war, famine, pestilence, crypto and late-onset melatonin. * John Cleese teaching sex ed in a boarding school. * Starting with death and going downhill from there. * Convincing Death to not kill anyone and Death just rides off and mopes. * Whether the four horsemen listen to podcasts or if the internet is down during the apocalypse. * The four new horsemen of the new apocalypse: crypto, gaslighting, late-onset melatonin and Elon Musk. * How to find people to follow on Mastodon. * How to be a part of a human-sized community. * The Topic Lords subreddit. * The photo of a middle school basketball team that somebody posted to the Topic Lords subreddit. * How to keep spam bots out of your Discord. * Batbarian. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Why do rice cookers play music but not microwaves?
  • If all your needs are met in a utopian society will we still need sports and competition?
  • Hot Ice, Cool Sounds
  • Goblin Time by Emma
    • https://mastodon.art/@emmajuettner/108103474257806186
    • Esper says: "My long-held suspicion has always been that humans are generally way less prone to salt-related health issues than suggested by nutritional science. I think a lot of that stuff was ginned up by cigarette companies trying to deflect blame. But I try not to go full-on conspiracy theory about it."
  • Nerds candy has a Dungeons and Dragons themed box. Is this good for D&D?
  • If the four horsemen of the apocalypse were recruiting for a fifth member, how would you convince them to hire you?

Microtopics:

  • A shmup about how Microsoft screwed up their Xbox 360 dashboard.
  • Screaming for 24 hours straight and having a heart attack, or vice versa.
  • Remastering your obscure protest game and needing to build a museum explaining the context for the protest.
  • An educational title about how to find games on the new Xbox 360 dashboard.
  • An infinite runner with extremely awkward horse controls.
  • Using all the right dark patterns.
  • Meeting an indie game developer in San Francisco and recognizing him because he's a white guy with a beard and glasses who likes Dark Souls.
  • A pot that's specifically for rice and it knows when to school cooking the rice.
  • Only rice cookers get to sing a song.
  • Installing an AI in your microwave so your microwave can try to murder you.
  • A codependent washing machine.
  • Landlords in California doing an end run around renter's rights.
  • The keyless entry system on your apartment that has a battery backup just so it can play "These Boots are Made for Walking" when it can't let you in because the power is out.
  • 3D printing some laundry to fold because people are bored in your Utopia.
  • Extremely soporific TV.
  • A mashup of music and sports.
  • Gathering to watch a live band play while a chef makes crepes.
  • Whether you can be bored while watching two things at the same time.
  • An orchestra trying to live-score a basketball game.
  • Trying to listen to an arcade game in the arcade.
  • Goblins in our community.
  • A bullet point list of how you can help a goblin.
  • Spicy radish waffles.
  • Blackwheat crepes and whether they're really black.
  • Lemonade crepes.
  • Dipping a sandwich in mustard.
  • The pros and cons of salting food.
  • Chickens laying pre-salted eggs.
  • Paying a monthly subscription to Monsanto to keep up the injections that make your tongue exude its own salt.
  • Getting in line to hate Monsanto.
  • Whether nerds are more or less likely to eat Nerds candy.
  • A candy for people who forgot D&D exists.
  • Candy&D.
  • A series of Nerds-themed D&D campaigns.
  • Hiring people and paying them.
  • Star Trek Jeopardy where 70% of the answers are 1980s pop culture because the federation is obsessed with the 80s.
  • Seeing yet another college sports question in the New York Times crossword and deciding whether to get irrationally angry at Will Shortz.
  • What Jim embodies that is the worst thing.
  • Death, war, famine, pestilence, crypto and late-onset melatonin.
  • John Cleese teaching sex ed in a boarding school.
  • Starting with death and going downhill from there.
  • Convincing Death to not kill anyone and Death just rides off and mopes.
  • Whether the four horsemen listen to podcasts or if the internet is down during the apocalypse.
  • The four new horsemen of the new apocalypse: crypto, gaslighting, late-onset melatonin and Elon Musk.
  • How to find people to follow on Mastodon.
  • How to be a part of a human-sized community.
  • The Topic Lords subreddit.
  • The photo of a middle school basketball team that somebody posted to the Topic Lords subreddit.
  • How to keep spam bots out of your Discord.
  • Batbarian.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Why do rice cookers play music but not microwaves?
  • If all your needs are met in a utopian society will we still need sports and competition?
  • Hot Ice, Cool Sounds
  • Goblin Time by Emma
    • https://mastodon.art/@emmajuettner/108103474257806186
    • Esper says: "My long-held suspicion has always been that humans are generally way less prone to salt-related health issues than suggested by nutritional science. I think a lot of that stuff was ginned up by cigarette companies trying to deflect blame. But I try not to go full-on conspiracy theory about it."
  • Nerds candy has a Dungeons and Dragons themed box. Is this good for D&D?
  • If the four horsemen of the apocalypse were recruiting for a fifth member, how would you convince them to hire you?

Microtopics:

  • A shmup about how Microsoft screwed up their Xbox 360 dashboard.
  • Screaming for 24 hours straight and having a heart attack, or vice versa.
  • Remastering your obscure protest game and needing to build a museum explaining the context for the protest.
  • An educational title about how to find games on the new Xbox 360 dashboard.
  • An infinite runner with extremely awkward horse controls.
  • Using all the right dark patterns.
  • Meeting an indie game developer in San Francisco and recognizing him because he's a white guy with a beard and glasses who likes Dark Souls.
  • A pot that's specifically for rice and it knows when to school cooking the rice.
  • Only rice cookers get to sing a song.
  • Installing an AI in your microwave so your microwave can try to murder you.
  • A codependent washing machine.
  • Landlords in California doing an end run around renter's rights.
  • The keyless entry system on your apartment that has a battery backup just so it can play "These Boots are Made for Walking" when it can't let you in because the power is out.
  • 3D printing some laundry to fold because people are bored in your Utopia.
  • Extremely soporific TV.
  • A mashup of music and sports.
  • Gathering to watch a live band play while a chef makes crepes.
  • Whether you can be bored while watching two things at the same time.
  • An orchestra trying to live-score a basketball game.
  • Trying to listen to an arcade game in the arcade.
  • Goblins in our community.
  • A bullet point list of how you can help a goblin.
  • Spicy radish waffles.
  • Blackwheat crepes and whether they're really black.
  • Lemonade crepes.
  • Dipping a sandwich in mustard.
  • The pros and cons of salting food.
  • Chickens laying pre-salted eggs.
  • Paying a monthly subscription to Monsanto to keep up the injections that make your tongue exude its own salt.
  • Getting in line to hate Monsanto.
  • Whether nerds are more or less likely to eat Nerds candy.
  • A candy for people who forgot D&D exists.
  • Candy&D.
  • A series of Nerds-themed D&D campaigns.
  • Hiring people and paying them.
  • Star Trek Jeopardy where 70% of the answers are 1980s pop culture because the federation is obsessed with the 80s.
  • Seeing yet another college sports question in the New York Times crossword and deciding whether to get irrationally angry at Will Shortz.
  • What Jim embodies that is the worst thing.
  • Death, war, famine, pestilence, crypto and late-onset melatonin.
  • John Cleese teaching sex ed in a boarding school.
  • Starting with death and going downhill from there.
  • Convincing Death to not kill anyone and Death just rides off and mopes.
  • Whether the four horsemen listen to podcasts or if the internet is down during the apocalypse.
  • The four new horsemen of the new apocalypse: crypto, gaslighting, late-onset melatonin and Elon Musk.
  • How to find people to follow on Mastodon.
  • How to be a part of a human-sized community.
  • The Topic Lords subreddit.
  • The photo of a middle school basketball team that somebody posted to the Topic Lords subreddit.
  • How to keep spam bots out of your Discord.
  • Batbarian.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 102. I Wouldn't Touch That With a 3.048 Meter Pole https://topiclords.com/i-wouldnt-touch-that-with-a-3048-meter-pole c64ed0e5-8784-43cd-9bbc-8f8e289847c3 Mon, 04 Oct 2021 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: Nathan and Tyriq. We discuss the length of poles with which to not touch things, how bands make money, why the Doom plasma rifle is like that, Yeasayer's Ambling Alp, and why the Metaverse looks so bland. 1:02:50 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Nathan * https://twitter.com/MommysBestGames/ * http://www.mommysbestgames.com/ * Tyriq * https://twitter.com/FourbitFriday/ * https://www.ckgame.net/ Topics: * The length of poles with which to not touch things as a measure of repulsion * Weezer just released a new album. You can already listen to it, on demand, for free on youtube. How do they, or any band make money today? * Why is the Doom Plasma Rifle like that * Yeasayer - Ambling Alp * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyBl5ZgnEr4 * Unedited (syncable) commentary: https://youtu.be/avmEL1T03qA * Why does the Metaverse look so bland? Microtopics: * Getting feedback and becoming insecure. * Entertaining each other. * 400 Microsoft points. * What you would do if you were lame. * Whatever you call the boy version of Lisa Frank. * Pillboxing. * The consequences of an extremely wide screen. * The Big Steel Battalion Box. * Various pole lengths, esp. the one from How The Grinch Stole Christmas. * The length of the pole with which you don't want to touch continue. * A ten foot pole with haptic feedback so you can touch things with it. * Poking something with a stick to discover how gross it is. * Whether pole vaulting is ridiculous. * Whether pole vaulting is real or just exists in Tremors and The Last Jedi. * That Dutch town where everybody uses communal poles to vault across the river, and how it's all Uber poles now and you have to pay rental fees. * Nobody being trained for pole vaulting but the coach is like "does anyone want to just try it so we don't lose this pole vaulting event by default" and everyone looks at you. * The most salient thing about pole vaulting. * How a band might still make money if some rando uploads their album to Youtube. * Content-ID's failure modes. * Living in a world where piracy won over paying for things. * Trying to watch a movie, where piracy is easier than figuring out how to pay, vs. trying to play a video game where paying is easier than figuring out how to pirate it * All the ways you can support a band financially other than paying for the music, because everyone just listens for free. * The most American gun ever made. * Whether the Doom plasma rifle overheats after it runs out of ammo. * Punishing the player for being careful. * What Tom Hall would've written in the Doom Bible about the plasma rifle if he still worked at id. * A geodesic dome with two of the triangles painted red. * A guy with a mirror for a face. * Someone who lives in the cheese. * Reverse nachos, where things come out of the cheese and eat you. * If the Grim Reaper had a mirror instead of a skull. * This Squishing Face. * Not being allowed to punch the mirror-faced boxer above the neck. * Trying to sing while people pull on your lips. * Getting drenched in VHS fluid. * Homer Simpson in hell taking and spitting out one bite each of infinite burgers. * Whether they are mustard men or cheese men. * Peeling off the cheese and realizing there is a dude in your cheese. * Taking a bite out of a chocolate Easter bunny and the live bunny inside wriggles out and hops away. * Mole. * The music video continuing to be weird while you talk about food. * All the naked people in the desert lying on astronaut blankets and closing their legs relative to the camera. * Making s'mores in a solar oven. * Extremely white flesh in the bright, bright sun. * Facebook giving the Olive Garden treatment to Second Life. * Making the Metaverse as uncool as possible. * Shipping a half dozen telepresence robots to every employee's house so they can have a conference call. * Gravitating towards whatever process or technology has the least friction. * Spelling it as if you are giving a gift to Bit Friday. * Possessivemommysbestgames.com Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • The length of poles with which to not touch things as a measure of repulsion
  • Weezer just released a new album. You can already listen to it, on demand, for free on youtube. How do they, or any band make money today?
  • Why is the Doom Plasma Rifle like that
  • Yeasayer - Ambling Alp
  • Why does the Metaverse look so bland?

Microtopics:

  • Getting feedback and becoming insecure.
  • Entertaining each other.
  • 400 Microsoft points.
  • What you would do if you were lame.
  • Whatever you call the boy version of Lisa Frank.
  • Pillboxing.
  • The consequences of an extremely wide screen.
  • The Big Steel Battalion Box.
  • Various pole lengths, esp. the one from How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
  • The length of the pole with which you don't want to touch continue.
  • A ten foot pole with haptic feedback so you can touch things with it.
  • Poking something with a stick to discover how gross it is.
  • Whether pole vaulting is ridiculous.
  • Whether pole vaulting is real or just exists in Tremors and The Last Jedi.
  • That Dutch town where everybody uses communal poles to vault across the river, and how it's all Uber poles now and you have to pay rental fees.
  • Nobody being trained for pole vaulting but the coach is like "does anyone want to just try it so we don't lose this pole vaulting event by default" and everyone looks at you.
  • The most salient thing about pole vaulting.
  • How a band might still make money if some rando uploads their album to Youtube.
  • Content-ID's failure modes.
  • Living in a world where piracy won over paying for things.
  • Trying to watch a movie, where piracy is easier than figuring out how to pay, vs. trying to play a video game where paying is easier than figuring out how to pirate it
  • All the ways you can support a band financially other than paying for the music, because everyone just listens for free.
  • The most American gun ever made.
  • Whether the Doom plasma rifle overheats after it runs out of ammo.
  • Punishing the player for being careful.
  • What Tom Hall would've written in the Doom Bible about the plasma rifle if he still worked at id.
  • A geodesic dome with two of the triangles painted red.
  • A guy with a mirror for a face.
  • Someone who lives in the cheese.
  • Reverse nachos, where things come out of the cheese and eat you.
  • If the Grim Reaper had a mirror instead of a skull.
  • This Squishing Face.
  • Not being allowed to punch the mirror-faced boxer above the neck.
  • Trying to sing while people pull on your lips.
  • Getting drenched in VHS fluid.
  • Homer Simpson in hell taking and spitting out one bite each of infinite burgers.
  • Whether they are mustard men or cheese men.
  • Peeling off the cheese and realizing there is a dude in your cheese.
  • Taking a bite out of a chocolate Easter bunny and the live bunny inside wriggles out and hops away.
  • Mole.
  • The music video continuing to be weird while you talk about food.
  • All the naked people in the desert lying on astronaut blankets and closing their legs relative to the camera.
  • Making s'mores in a solar oven.
  • Extremely white flesh in the bright, bright sun.
  • Facebook giving the Olive Garden treatment to Second Life.
  • Making the Metaverse as uncool as possible.
  • Shipping a half dozen telepresence robots to every employee's house so they can have a conference call.
  • Gravitating towards whatever process or technology has the least friction.
  • Spelling it as if you are giving a gift to Bit Friday.
  • Possessivemommysbestgames.com

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • The length of poles with which to not touch things as a measure of repulsion
  • Weezer just released a new album. You can already listen to it, on demand, for free on youtube. How do they, or any band make money today?
  • Why is the Doom Plasma Rifle like that
  • Yeasayer - Ambling Alp
  • Why does the Metaverse look so bland?

Microtopics:

  • Getting feedback and becoming insecure.
  • Entertaining each other.
  • 400 Microsoft points.
  • What you would do if you were lame.
  • Whatever you call the boy version of Lisa Frank.
  • Pillboxing.
  • The consequences of an extremely wide screen.
  • The Big Steel Battalion Box.
  • Various pole lengths, esp. the one from How The Grinch Stole Christmas.
  • The length of the pole with which you don't want to touch continue.
  • A ten foot pole with haptic feedback so you can touch things with it.
  • Poking something with a stick to discover how gross it is.
  • Whether pole vaulting is ridiculous.
  • Whether pole vaulting is real or just exists in Tremors and The Last Jedi.
  • That Dutch town where everybody uses communal poles to vault across the river, and how it's all Uber poles now and you have to pay rental fees.
  • Nobody being trained for pole vaulting but the coach is like "does anyone want to just try it so we don't lose this pole vaulting event by default" and everyone looks at you.
  • The most salient thing about pole vaulting.
  • How a band might still make money if some rando uploads their album to Youtube.
  • Content-ID's failure modes.
  • Living in a world where piracy won over paying for things.
  • Trying to watch a movie, where piracy is easier than figuring out how to pay, vs. trying to play a video game where paying is easier than figuring out how to pirate it
  • All the ways you can support a band financially other than paying for the music, because everyone just listens for free.
  • The most American gun ever made.
  • Whether the Doom plasma rifle overheats after it runs out of ammo.
  • Punishing the player for being careful.
  • What Tom Hall would've written in the Doom Bible about the plasma rifle if he still worked at id.
  • A geodesic dome with two of the triangles painted red.
  • A guy with a mirror for a face.
  • Someone who lives in the cheese.
  • Reverse nachos, where things come out of the cheese and eat you.
  • If the Grim Reaper had a mirror instead of a skull.
  • This Squishing Face.
  • Not being allowed to punch the mirror-faced boxer above the neck.
  • Trying to sing while people pull on your lips.
  • Getting drenched in VHS fluid.
  • Homer Simpson in hell taking and spitting out one bite each of infinite burgers.
  • Whether they are mustard men or cheese men.
  • Peeling off the cheese and realizing there is a dude in your cheese.
  • Taking a bite out of a chocolate Easter bunny and the live bunny inside wriggles out and hops away.
  • Mole.
  • The music video continuing to be weird while you talk about food.
  • All the naked people in the desert lying on astronaut blankets and closing their legs relative to the camera.
  • Making s'mores in a solar oven.
  • Extremely white flesh in the bright, bright sun.
  • Facebook giving the Olive Garden treatment to Second Life.
  • Making the Metaverse as uncool as possible.
  • Shipping a half dozen telepresence robots to every employee's house so they can have a conference call.
  • Gravitating towards whatever process or technology has the least friction.
  • Spelling it as if you are giving a gift to Bit Friday.
  • Possessivemommysbestgames.com

Support Topic Lords

]]> 67. Immersion Blended Lasagna https://topiclords.com/immersion-blended-lasagna dab6cfb4-d3cb-4499-a930-8b4b17f8b254 Mon, 01 Feb 2021 08:00:00 -0800 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords: Nathan and Tim. We discuss easy modes, art that depresses or scares us, solving unsolvable problems in multiplayer, youtube videos all having the same sound effects, playing games with your kids, sports that would be more interesting in low gravity, and vegan commune disaster stories. 1:08:20 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) 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. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

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.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

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.

Support Topic Lords

]]> 39. A Delicious Mushball https://topiclords.com/a-delicious-mushball 528841ca-99a7-4824-b596-04f9263d1961 Mon, 20 Jul 2020 08:00:00 -0700 Jim Stormdancer full Jim Stormdancer Lords this week: Shane and Nathan. We discuss Beforeigners, curating your child's entertainment so they grow up with good taste, watching someone do Sudoku, taking care of children vs. taking care of pets, jobs game designers could find after they leave game dev, and the history of changing worldviews. 1:08:03 yes Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early! (https://www.patreon.com/topiclords) Lords: * Shane is a Jesuit Regent who used to make video games. * https://twitter.com/OptimistPanda * Donate to the Jesuit Refugee Service: https://jrs.net/donate * Nathan makes games mostly about jumping and shooting 2D monsters. * https://twitter.com/MommysBestGames * http://mommysbestgames.com/ Topics: * Beforeigners (Norwegian TV show about refugees from different historical periods showing up in present-day) * Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASr0n5LnWnU * Curating your child's entertainment so they grow up with good taste * I spent half an hour watching someone solve a Sudoku and it was amazing * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKf9aUIxdb4 * Brandon asks: "Taking care of children vs taking care of pets" * Other jobs game designers would do well performing, after they leave game dev * History of changing worldviews -- not just Darwin, but things like the Big Bang and Continental Drift were originally seen as crackpot fringe theories Microtopics: * Saying your names at the beginning of the podcast and activating your wonder twin powers. * Quality inventive gameplay-driven entertainment. * Doing an earnest plug for once. * Figuring out how to make games for someone other than gamers. * Your game dev heroes being in their fifties and chasing success they had in their twenties. * Taking a vow of poverty and annoying off your wife and child. * Needing to find a patron because your art is not commercially viable. * No longer having your finger on the pulse of indie games. * Assuming the internet will be all over a particular TV series but somehow there are not endless memes about it. * Vikings apparating into modern Oslo and and solving a murder mystery. * The show about Vikings solving a modern-day murder mystery somehow not incorporating The Immigrant Song. * The American remake of Beforeigners where it's still about vikings so the protagonists can be white. * Finding out that a game is only four hours long and asking if it could be two hours instead. * Introducing video games to your child in order of release so they develop a taste for the classics. * Figuring out how to introduce your child to the Internet without ruining them. * Installing an internet proxy to protect your child from depraved porn by replacing it with videos of normal people having normal sex. * Today's teens playing Bushido Blade and discovering that it has a pocket sand button. * The classic game history situations. * Wanting your child to like all the hobbies you think are boring. * Watching a man repeatedly astonish himself at his own ability to solve a puzzle. * Feeling like you are in conversation with the puzzle designer. * Watching a movie over and over again. * Taking the smallest possible step when a problem seems impossible. * One of those Master Class videos if the person was discovering that they were a master while making the video. * A five year old taking the family car to California to buy a Lamborghini with the $3 in his pocket. * Feeling your family tree stretching out forwards into the future and behind you into the past. * Watching your child grow agency and opinions and knowing it's your responsibility to shape them. * You and the cat enjoying each other's company while the cat doesn't die. * Your kid doing something bad and everybody looking at you. * Cheering when your child goes down the stairs correctly. * Game design teaching you to see the world as systems. * Studying economics at an academic level and feeling like you're turning our game design skills inside out. * Trying to convince people outside of game development that being a game developer has taught you anything meaningful. * Being failed up to a level design role because anyone can scrub out a tile map. * Level designers getting more respect when it started requiring technical chops. * Needing a web page and getting your nephew to do it rather than paying an expensive consultant, because frankly 99% of people can't tell the difference. * Trying to write your own CSS renderer because you don't want to just make it a web page. * Trying to convince your friends that you were once a big shot in the game dev world. * The Societate Jesu having an incredible faction progression. * Giving people progressively cooler titles instead of raises. * Getting an extra year of being a priest before you die. * Doing a cool thing while you're alone and getting bummed out that nobody saw it. * Trying to throw fruits and vegetables as close as possible to the ceiling without actually hitting it. * Hating doing marketing so much that you invent a project where the whole point is that it's a secret and you'll never promote it. * How South America kind of fits right into Africa. * Hypothesizing continental drift and the scientific community telling you to fuck right off. * The lost continent of Lemuria. * Fringe scientific theories only gaining traction when existing scientists die. * Taking comfort in the fact that how people in the past were wrong but what we believe now is definitely correct and we'll never have to change our minds. * Being presented with contrary evidence and dying on the spot. * The most delicious bolus. * Eating cookie dough rather than ruining it by putting it in the oven. * The variety of textures and flavors of drinking milk and then eating cookies. (Not dipping the cookies in milk.) * The worldview shift that leads you to change your handle from Cynical Panda to Optimist Panda. * Playing Bomberman '93 with your nine year old and eventually having to explain to him that 93 is your dad's age. * An alternate-history Spock-with-a-goatee video game console. * Living in your house for 30 years and suddenly discovering three additional rooms. * Buying a NES and SNES classic even though you've been playing those games in emulation since the 90s. Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Beforeigners (Norwegian TV show about refugees from different historical periods showing up in present-day)
  • Curating your child's entertainment so they grow up with good taste
  • I spent half an hour watching someone solve a Sudoku and it was amazing
  • Brandon asks: "Taking care of children vs taking care of pets"
  • Other jobs game designers would do well performing, after they leave game dev
  • History of changing worldviews -- not just Darwin, but things like the Big Bang and Continental Drift were originally seen as crackpot fringe theories

Microtopics:

  • Saying your names at the beginning of the podcast and activating your wonder twin powers.
  • Quality inventive gameplay-driven entertainment.
  • Doing an earnest plug for once.
  • Figuring out how to make games for someone other than gamers.
  • Your game dev heroes being in their fifties and chasing success they had in their twenties.
  • Taking a vow of poverty and annoying off your wife and child.
  • Needing to find a patron because your art is not commercially viable.
  • No longer having your finger on the pulse of indie games.
  • Assuming the internet will be all over a particular TV series but somehow there are not endless memes about it.
  • Vikings apparating into modern Oslo and and solving a murder mystery.
  • The show about Vikings solving a modern-day murder mystery somehow not incorporating The Immigrant Song.
  • The American remake of Beforeigners where it's still about vikings so the protagonists can be white.
  • Finding out that a game is only four hours long and asking if it could be two hours instead.
  • Introducing video games to your child in order of release so they develop a taste for the classics.
  • Figuring out how to introduce your child to the Internet without ruining them.
  • Installing an internet proxy to protect your child from depraved porn by replacing it with videos of normal people having normal sex.
  • Today's teens playing Bushido Blade and discovering that it has a pocket sand button.
  • The classic game history situations.
  • Wanting your child to like all the hobbies you think are boring.
  • Watching a man repeatedly astonish himself at his own ability to solve a puzzle.
  • Feeling like you are in conversation with the puzzle designer.
  • Watching a movie over and over again.
  • Taking the smallest possible step when a problem seems impossible.
  • One of those Master Class videos if the person was discovering that they were a master while making the video.
  • A five year old taking the family car to California to buy a Lamborghini with the $3 in his pocket.
  • Feeling your family tree stretching out forwards into the future and behind you into the past.
  • Watching your child grow agency and opinions and knowing it's your responsibility to shape them.
  • You and the cat enjoying each other's company while the cat doesn't die.
  • Your kid doing something bad and everybody looking at you.
  • Cheering when your child goes down the stairs correctly.
  • Game design teaching you to see the world as systems.
  • Studying economics at an academic level and feeling like you're turning our game design skills inside out.
  • Trying to convince people outside of game development that being a game developer has taught you anything meaningful.
  • Being failed up to a level design role because anyone can scrub out a tile map.
  • Level designers getting more respect when it started requiring technical chops.
  • Needing a web page and getting your nephew to do it rather than paying an expensive consultant, because frankly 99% of people can't tell the difference.
  • Trying to write your own CSS renderer because you don't want to just make it a web page.
  • Trying to convince your friends that you were once a big shot in the game dev world.
  • The Societate Jesu having an incredible faction progression.
  • Giving people progressively cooler titles instead of raises.
  • Getting an extra year of being a priest before you die.
  • Doing a cool thing while you're alone and getting bummed out that nobody saw it.
  • Trying to throw fruits and vegetables as close as possible to the ceiling without actually hitting it.
  • Hating doing marketing so much that you invent a project where the whole point is that it's a secret and you'll never promote it.
  • How South America kind of fits right into Africa.
  • Hypothesizing continental drift and the scientific community telling you to fuck right off.
  • The lost continent of Lemuria.
  • Fringe scientific theories only gaining traction when existing scientists die.
  • Taking comfort in the fact that how people in the past were wrong but what we believe now is definitely correct and we'll never have to change our minds.
  • Being presented with contrary evidence and dying on the spot.
  • The most delicious bolus.
  • Eating cookie dough rather than ruining it by putting it in the oven.
  • The variety of textures and flavors of drinking milk and then eating cookies. (Not dipping the cookies in milk.)
  • The worldview shift that leads you to change your handle from Cynical Panda to Optimist Panda.
  • Playing Bomberman '93 with your nine year old and eventually having to explain to him that 93 is your dad's age.
  • An alternate-history Spock-with-a-goatee video game console.
  • Living in your house for 30 years and suddenly discovering three additional rooms.
  • Buying a NES and SNES classic even though you've been playing those games in emulation since the 90s.

Support Topic Lords

]]> Support Topic Lords on Patreon and get episodes a week early!

Lords:

Topics:

  • Beforeigners (Norwegian TV show about refugees from different historical periods showing up in present-day)
  • Curating your child's entertainment so they grow up with good taste
  • I spent half an hour watching someone solve a Sudoku and it was amazing
  • Brandon asks: "Taking care of children vs taking care of pets"
  • Other jobs game designers would do well performing, after they leave game dev
  • History of changing worldviews -- not just Darwin, but things like the Big Bang and Continental Drift were originally seen as crackpot fringe theories

Microtopics:

  • Saying your names at the beginning of the podcast and activating your wonder twin powers.
  • Quality inventive gameplay-driven entertainment.
  • Doing an earnest plug for once.
  • Figuring out how to make games for someone other than gamers.
  • Your game dev heroes being in their fifties and chasing success they had in their twenties.
  • Taking a vow of poverty and annoying off your wife and child.
  • Needing to find a patron because your art is not commercially viable.
  • No longer having your finger on the pulse of indie games.
  • Assuming the internet will be all over a particular TV series but somehow there are not endless memes about it.
  • Vikings apparating into modern Oslo and and solving a murder mystery.
  • The show about Vikings solving a modern-day murder mystery somehow not incorporating The Immigrant Song.
  • The American remake of Beforeigners where it's still about vikings so the protagonists can be white.
  • Finding out that a game is only four hours long and asking if it could be two hours instead.
  • Introducing video games to your child in order of release so they develop a taste for the classics.
  • Figuring out how to introduce your child to the Internet without ruining them.
  • Installing an internet proxy to protect your child from depraved porn by replacing it with videos of normal people having normal sex.
  • Today's teens playing Bushido Blade and discovering that it has a pocket sand button.
  • The classic game history situations.
  • Wanting your child to like all the hobbies you think are boring.
  • Watching a man repeatedly astonish himself at his own ability to solve a puzzle.
  • Feeling like you are in conversation with the puzzle designer.
  • Watching a movie over and over again.
  • Taking the smallest possible step when a problem seems impossible.
  • One of those Master Class videos if the person was discovering that they were a master while making the video.
  • A five year old taking the family car to California to buy a Lamborghini with the $3 in his pocket.
  • Feeling your family tree stretching out forwards into the future and behind you into the past.
  • Watching your child grow agency and opinions and knowing it's your responsibility to shape them.
  • You and the cat enjoying each other's company while the cat doesn't die.
  • Your kid doing something bad and everybody looking at you.
  • Cheering when your child goes down the stairs correctly.
  • Game design teaching you to see the world as systems.
  • Studying economics at an academic level and feeling like you're turning our game design skills inside out.
  • Trying to convince people outside of game development that being a game developer has taught you anything meaningful.
  • Being failed up to a level design role because anyone can scrub out a tile map.
  • Level designers getting more respect when it started requiring technical chops.
  • Needing a web page and getting your nephew to do it rather than paying an expensive consultant, because frankly 99% of people can't tell the difference.
  • Trying to write your own CSS renderer because you don't want to just make it a web page.
  • Trying to convince your friends that you were once a big shot in the game dev world.
  • The Societate Jesu having an incredible faction progression.
  • Giving people progressively cooler titles instead of raises.
  • Getting an extra year of being a priest before you die.
  • Doing a cool thing while you're alone and getting bummed out that nobody saw it.
  • Trying to throw fruits and vegetables as close as possible to the ceiling without actually hitting it.
  • Hating doing marketing so much that you invent a project where the whole point is that it's a secret and you'll never promote it.
  • How South America kind of fits right into Africa.
  • Hypothesizing continental drift and the scientific community telling you to fuck right off.
  • The lost continent of Lemuria.
  • Fringe scientific theories only gaining traction when existing scientists die.
  • Taking comfort in the fact that how people in the past were wrong but what we believe now is definitely correct and we'll never have to change our minds.
  • Being presented with contrary evidence and dying on the spot.
  • The most delicious bolus.
  • Eating cookie dough rather than ruining it by putting it in the oven.
  • The variety of textures and flavors of drinking milk and then eating cookies. (Not dipping the cookies in milk.)
  • The worldview shift that leads you to change your handle from Cynical Panda to Optimist Panda.
  • Playing Bomberman '93 with your nine year old and eventually having to explain to him that 93 is your dad's age.
  • An alternate-history Spock-with-a-goatee video game console.
  • Living in your house for 30 years and suddenly discovering three additional rooms.
  • Buying a NES and SNES classic even though you've been playing those games in emulation since the 90s.

Support Topic Lords

]]>