Diecast #76: Titan, Alien: Isolation, Steam Curation

By Shamus Posted Monday Oct 13, 2014

Filed under: Diecast 82 comments


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Hosts: Josh, Shamus, Rutskarn, Chris, and Arvind.

Show notes:
2:30 Blizzard canceled it’s upcoming MMO, Tighten Titan.

We also talk about Destiny here.

17:00

Dear Diecast,

Back in Diecast #2, drawn by Zach Snyder and written by Frank Quitely, the Diecasters made several humorous japes about possible future games based on the abused Aliens franchise.

One of them, Rutskarn’s “Hiding-based stealth game”, has(sorta) come true in the form of Alien: Isolation.

Judging by what I’ve seen and read, it doesn’t look like it’ll make up monetarily for Colonial Marines, or encourage future efforts like it. What are the odds that Sega will go back to small-hearted manshoots?

28:00

Dear Diecast team,

you probably know that Steam recently introduced Steam Curators, alongside the general store front overhaul. What do you think about it, and could you imagine acting as such a Curator yourselves? Maybe under the “Spoiler Warning” label, or as a “Twentysided Curator” or similar?

Best regards,
Niko

49:00

Dear Diecast, Thanks for all the work you guys do. Spoiler Warning and the Diecast make late nights in the lab much more enjoyable. A few questions for you:
-How do you pick which Kevin Macleod song you will use for the ending credits of spoiler warning?
-Are there any games from the spoiler warning seasons that you regret picking? How about the specials? (Trainz!)

regards,
-Anthony

55:00

Ruts’s friend BlackFox here–I’ve been going through old Diecasts and noticed that you’ve been linking Josh’s name to such things as:
the wiki page for Teddy Roosevelt
the wiki page for Grigori Rasputin
the wiki page for Machiavelli
the wiki page for Troll (bridge variety)
the wiki page for Troll (internet variety)
the wiki page for Macedonian, which you all had an argument over how to pronounce in that Diecast
various other wiki pages intended to be indicative of Josh’s grouchiness
the Guild Wars 2 wiki page for the weapon called Incinerator
a recent Spoiler Warning
whiskey
This is all highly amusing. So the actual question: Has anyone else actually noticed this? Rutskarn and Jarenth had not.

We didn’t actually answer this on the show, so for the record: For the first few dozen episodes, when I linked to Josh’s name in the hosts list I’d link to a different random thing every time. I stopped doing it because nobody noticed. But now I guess someone noticed.

 


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82 thoughts on “Diecast #76: Titan, Alien: Isolation, Steam Curation

  1. Nimas says:

    Woah, that opening was trippy. Not sure it works, but it may simply be that I was *not* expecting that song when I hit play on the diecast :P

    1. Sleepyfoo says:

      Yeah, the opening sounded more like it belonged on an awesome future/retro music cast and or playlist. The crescendo/take off into warp drive followed by crashing into Josh’s voice was entertainingly jarring.

      I liked the song, not sure of the fit for the diecast though.

      Peace : )

      1. Ivan says:

        Definitely, you come out of the intro and expect to hear a bunch of vallygirls or something, but instead you just hear a bunch of men talking.

    2. Otters34 says:

      It sounds like a pop group from Some Era were hired to make the intro to a news channel. You can just imagine the giant, goofy animated logo zooming around and then fading into Josh’s gimlet-eyed face, as he sits overlord at a table of strange persons.

  2. guvnorium says:

    Does anyone else think Arvind and Rutskarn have similar voices, or is that just me?

    1. Soylent Dave says:

      Arvind has an Indian accent. Rutskarn has an American (Western bit of?) accent.

      It’s probably just you ;)

      1. Dude says:

        That Indian accent is partially Westernized.

        If you ever heard local Indian kids speak English, it’s a whole other language! (I’m from there.)

      2. Hitch says:

        It’s not just guvnorium. I couldn’t help but think a couple times that Arvid sounded like Rutskarn putting on an Indian accent.

        1. Dragomok says:

          Seconded.

          1. Wide And Nerdy says:

            Side note, as someone who has trouble with accents, I love the Indian (or I guess Westernized Indian) accent its always easy to follow, even moreso than many native english-speaker accents. Maybe its because I work with a lot of Indians but I think it might also be because the syllables are so discrete.

            Hope its ok to say that.

            1. Zak McKracken says:

              This is the first time I’ve ever come across that statement.
              Nothing against the accent of course, and I’m probably handicapped that way in some sense, but I’ve been in several situations where I decided to just smile and say yes after asking someone for the nth time to repeat what they just said …
              That said, Arvind’s accent is so light it’s just enough to tell it exists. I was referring to the fast-talking syllable-rattling melodious accent (Apu in the Simpsons is just on the understandable side for me). I actually do like the sound but understanding it is Oh So Hard!
              (apologies to all owners of that accent! I know it’s not your fault!)

    2. They sound familiar when starting sentences with “Um,” “Yeah,” etc. It’s not until the speaker gets two or three words into a sentence that they seem to differentiate to my ear.

      1. Dragomok says:

        Ohh, exactly. I fully realized that only at 34 mintes mark.

  3. Toasty Virus says:

    You should sample Rutskarn saying “IT BEGINS” for the opening song.

  4. krellen says:

    Yay, new Diecast. Now I have something to listen to while traveling the vast, empty miles that lead to Roswell, NM tomorrow.

    1. Shamus says:

      Those are extremely empty miles indeed. I wish we had more Diecasts to keep you company. I’m sure one a week isn’t nearly enough.

      1. Even better, your podcast will be studied by the UFO crew that abducts him!

      2. krellen says:

        It might be, since I tend to only travel to Roswell once a week.

        Now, covering trips to Tucumcari and Clovis might be pushing it. :)

        1. PowerGrout says:

          13th age, (now if only I could remember how to spell…)
          Ro(u)g/ue(?!) Elements (meh, it’s probably pronounced “R’uuguu” with a silent ‘R’ anyway…)

          no need to thank me

        2. crossbrainedfool says:

          If you are going to be spending a long time in cars, can I offer a recommendation? Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History is excellent, although his subject matter tends towards the dark.

  5. Hitch says:

    All I know is, during Eurovision (The Former Yugoslav Republic of) Macedonia is pronounced with a soft “c.” That may be a difference between the pronunciation of modern Macedonia and ancient (Greek) Macedonia, but I’m willing to take the chance on being embarrassed if I ever run into an ancient Macedonian.

    Also, from what read on the internet, Kevin MacLeod’s last name sounds like Dennis Weaver’s character McCloud. Also In Highlander, Christopher Lambert played Connor MacLeod, which also sounded like “McCloud.”

    1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      In English it is pronounced with a soft c. I’ve known a couple of Macedonians -well, let me restate, they were Serbs and Albanians who had Macedonian citizenship -and they pronounced it that way, too. Now, how they pronounce it in their own languages I never thought to ask.

      1. Ivo says:

        They pronounce it with a hard (?) c, like you pronounce “cat”, as the name of the country is Makedonija in native tongue.

      2. 4th Dimension says:

        We damn forigners speak our country names how you speek them in wane attempt for you to understand ud even though in mostt cases your pronounciation is an attrocity. But than again most languages do that.
        Prime example. In english my country’s name is Montenegro which is a wierd Italianised translation of it’s actually name Crna Gora (Black/Dark Hill/Mountain, or arternativelly what it menat when it was named WhereTheFuckAreWeNowAndWhyIsThatGuyTakingPotshotsAtMe), which no matter how you pronounce it sounds nothing like the English and most of the world’s version. Well except I guess for our neighbours and rest of Slavs.

        TLDR: It kind of doesn’t matter how a toponym it’s pronounced in the original, since it’s in your language you pronounce it how ever you want it’s still nowhere near the original.

        1. If my country was called anything like “Dark Mountain,” I would’ve petitioned the world to recognize my country’s name as “Mordor.”

          Just imagine how awesome the currency would look. That alone would be worth it.

    2. Groboclown says:

      So, having taken both Latin and Attic Greek, I’ll put in my comment here.

      Roman Latin used a hard “k” sound for the letter “c”. What we commonly refer to as “Church Latin” (as in, the Latin spoken by the Roman Catholic Church) uses a soft “s” sound for the letter “c”. (Edit: the Romans would use a “K” letter for borrowed words, but it wasn’t a formal part of their language.)

      In Greek, there’s both a Kappa (Κ and κ) and a Sigma (Σ and σ). Now, the Kappa is definitely a hard “k” sound, and the Sigma is a definite soft “s” sound. One bit of confusion comes into play is that the lower-case Sigma has a final form – ς which is used when it’s at the end of a word. Unfortunately, I’ve seen some Greek texts which use that final sigma form, but without the tail on it, so it ends up looking like a “c”.

      Now, in the case of Josh’s Macedonians, he’s right. The Greek uses the Kappa (Μακεδόνες), so it’s a hard “k” sound.

      My five years of study pays off in the form of pedantry! Horray!

    3. Geebs says:

      I’m not sure you want to look to Highlander for pronunciation tips, given the French Scotsman and Scottish Spaniard.

  6. DaMage says:

    I don’t know if any of the cast are followers of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, but they recently announced a new game coming and are basically crowd-sourcing many of the major decisions about the content in the game. It has been interesting to as fans that have entered the series at different points (I mean the 20th anniversary is coming up next year) have had very different opinions about what is important in the game.

    Of course, the whole thing is only interesting if you are a fan of the series and know the development hells that certain games in the series has gone through.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Im..not sure if I should like the game.I mean,it introduces some stuff that I wanted them to do,but it does it in….lets say not so stellar manner(“here we have cover mechanics,something never seen previously in any heroes game”,yeah,except heroes IV*sigh*).

    2. Someone says:

      Didn’t they just run the series into the ground with HoMM 6 though? I don’t know the details, I kinda stopped following the franchise after Heroes 5, being a Heroes 3 man myself (a game which itself has drawn some objections from Heroes 1 and 2 fans back in the day). But I’ve heard 6 wasn’t very well recieved by most fans. So this could be the devs throwing up their hands and going “what do you people WANT from us???”.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        6 is a buggy mess.But unlike 4,which was a buggy mess,6 didnt add that much new stuff,and didnt have the good stories,and didnt have a good editor.

  7. Retsam says:

    While to some degree I really respect Chris’ caution regarding Steam Curation; at the same time, I think he might be over-thinking it. Like, particularly the bit about price, (i.e. “this game costs $50 and I don’t know how much $50 is worth to someone”) that really doesn’t seem like something a curator really needs be too concerned with. They recommend a game, and whether I buy it is up to me as the consumer and my own willingness to spend money.

    It’s not like I’m going to go “Hmm, well I need this $50 to feed my children this week… BUT Curator X recommended this $50 game, so too bad for Calvin and Susie, I suppose”. (Or if I do; I certainly wouldn’t blame the curator for that)

    Sure, I wouldn’t want to buy a “terrible game, but good soundtrack” for $50; and so it’d be a shame if that wasn’t communicated in the curation list, and it sounds like the difficulty of doing that is part of the problem, but the main issue there isn’t the question of price, but of ability to communicate reason for curation.

    And I’m a little confused on the distinction drawn several times between “recommending a game” and “telling someone they should should buy a game”. I presume the intention isn’t to suggest piracy; so in that case what’s the difference between a recommendation to play and a recommendation to buy?

    1. Zukhramm says:

      I have to agree. They way I think about Steam Curation is that it’s something helping me find games, not to help me with whether to buy them. I can figure out if they’re worth my money on my own.

    2. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Recommendation to play can mean different things.Rent it,if you have the means to do so(not that common option nowadays,sadly),or wait till it gets 5 times cheaper,then absolutely play it,or play it as soon as its released,or play it if someone gives it to you,or play it at your friends house,…Recommendation to buy,however,usually implies buying it at full price in order to maximally support the developer.

      “this game costs $50 and I don't know how much $50 is worth to someone”Âť

      It does make sense,and some smart reviewers take that into account.Its often that youll hear TotalBiscuit say things like “Its a good game,but not at this price”,or “Its an average game,but for that price its worth it”.

      1. Retsam says:

        I guess I just don’t see that implication “that a recommendation to buy usually implies buying at full price to support the developer”. For me a recommendation for a game says “you should play this game”, which is the same thing Chris is already saying in his videos. Unless it’s explicitly stated otherwise in the recommendation, I assume the primary purpose for the recommendation is for my benefit, not for the developers’ benefit.

        1. ET says:

          Ditto. Recommendation for the game to me first means, “get this game so you can play it”, and then after that, the recommender needs to put the reason for the recommendation.

    3. Corpital says:

      A few friends already assaulted me with curators I should follow and while they were mostly rather sensibly made, several of them recommended upwards of 200games and looked like someone just dumped half their games without too much thinking, so…not a big fan.

      Having mad jedi skills for searching stuff and a rather erratic taste, this just adds an extra layer of work if I were to use it. First search through the innumerable hordes of curators for people of equal wierdness, then browse through recommended games anyway to find something possibly useful.
      I get the intended use of it, it just is not for me, mhm mhm.

      1. Daemian Lucifer says:

        “First search through the innumerable hordes of curators for people of equal wierdness, then browse through recommended games anyway to find something possibly useful.”

        Well then,good news everybody,someone did that for you already*.

        *Ok,not really,but its a joke,cut me some slack.

      2. Retsam says:

        It was pointed out by Aravind that your curation lists that you subscribe to seem to feed into an algorithm for what is displayed on your front page; so theoretically just following the lists is enough to contribute to Steam recommending you games that you’d like, you don’t necessarily need to do that second step of filtering through occasionally quite long lists of games.

        You do still need to follow curators because they have similar tastes, and not simply because other people tell you to follow them…

    4. Chris Robertson says:

      It's not like I'm going to go “Hmm, well I need this $50 to feed my children this week… BUT Curator X recommended this $50 game, so too bad for Calvin and Susie, I suppose”Âť. (Or if I do; I certainly wouldn't blame the curator for that)

      In my experience, if you are the type of person who would purchase a game instead of feeding your family, you are also likely the type of person who would blame your situation on outside factors (such as the curator).

    5. ET says:

      Calvin and Susie are siblings? :O

    6. Primogenitor says:

      I wanted to shout this point at the podcast when I heard it!

      The curator shouldn’t be deciding if the reader can afford the price – as discussed, prices change over time (sales!), and prices have different impacts on different people.

    7. Sleeping Dragon says:

      See, every time I see/hear something along these lines I wonder what the whole issue is, after all any kind of recommendation, review or opinion piece on a game is just a tool to help me figure out of I want to buy it. But then I remember that I seem to be in the minority in that I actually research a title before buying it and most of the time I’m okay to buy it cheaper when the hype dies down (and sometimes not buy it at all when the hype dies down, despite getting a bit caught up in it… I’m looking at you Guild Wars 2).

      On a more general note, I do find it interesting how Steam tries to outsource certain aspects of their business to the community, first with greenlight and now with curators.

  8. Phantos says:

    With Destiny, it really feels like they’re holding back on us. And I’m not just talking about DLC.

    I guess they were afraid of doing anything that would make the game feel “complete” enough for people to stop playing.

    Which if they wanted, they would buy some freakin’ servers already. I think they can afford them on the half-a-billion dollar budget. This is Diablo III all over again.

    1. Canthros says:

      I think the incomplete feeling has a lot more to do with whatever happened around the departure of Bungie’s head writer and the subsequent firing of Marty O’Donnell. There’s some dubiously-sourced stuff about that on Reddit. While it’s hard to tell how legit that is (source says he’s a Bungie dev, Bungie says he’s not, etc), it does seem to fit with some of the stuff said by alpha/closed beta testers, and the final game. Long story short, it sounds a bit like the story was “completed in a completely different style at great expense and at the last minute.” (Watch out for llamas!)

      The loot is disappointing, but it also seems to be calibrated for a player-driven economy that doesn’t exist. I’ve heard they’re adding trading, at least, so maybe that’s a problem that will be solving/mitigating itself before long.

      The mechanical side seems really solid.

      I think the sanest recommendation on Destiny may be: “come back in six months or a year, when you can buy the game and most of the DLC for <= $60." I hope it's still around at that time: I really want to play a game more like what Destiny was billed as.

  9. A side note: Does pausing the Diecast player in-browser wreck the stream for anyone else? I can hit pause, come back less than five minutes later, hit play, and all I get is about two seconds more of someone talking and the player just stops, putting a slash through the volume symbol. I can’t even successfully restart it without reloading the page (and downloading the MP3 like I probably should’ve done in the first place).

    1. Phantos says:

      A lot of times I have to refresh the page once or else it only loads the first minute and then fails.

      I really should just download it and avoid the five seconds of annoyance, but I’m dumb and lazy like that.

    2. Retsam says:

      Yeah; I’ve always had the same issue; if I pause there’s like a %50 chance of it not unpausing; I was never sure if it was a browser issue or a wordpress issue, or what. I usually end up downloading it, too.

    3. ET says:

      I never noticed any bugs like that, but I’ve been downloading them, ever since I figured out how to do volume-level flattening in VLC. Far less burst eardrums from somebody shouting immediately after I turn up the volume to listen to a whispered comment. ;)

    4. Dt3r says:

      I get the exact same problem. It tends to cut off after 60-90 seconds, but refreshing the page seems to fix it for me.

  10. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Im happy with your season of alan wake.Not because it was good,but because it got me interested in playing the expansion,and that was a good game.

    Also coffee?I like coffee!

    1. Peter H. Coffin says:

      A lot of the Let’s Play leaves me with not needing to play the game. This isn’t to say that I won’t BUY it, but I kind of already got the money’s worth from it. I had pretty much no interest in Deus Ex, Elder Scrolls, or Fallout before seeing Spoiler Warning, then bought them, and haven’t touched them since.

      On the other hand, I’m still playing Guild Wars 2, and that only got a short treatment, so my opinion about games doesn’t seem to line up with many here to begin with.

      1. Geebs says:

        Games by Platinum make the best let’s plays, because they show you how much of an awesome time you could have if you just got good at them, as opposed to the stuttering mess you get when, like me, you have no skill.

    2. ET says:

      I too, liked the Alan Wake season! For a different reason, however: It was a more flawed game, than anything else on Spoiler Warning, which led to a lot more interesting discussion. The other seasons to me feel like, 90% admiration of the game and goofing around, and 10% actual commentary on the game. Alan Wake felt like 90% commentary on (fixing) the game, and 10% goofing around.

      Am I watching Spoiler Warning for the wrong reasons? Are there other Let’s Play shows which cater to wannabe game devs like me? :S

      1. Spoiler Warning is often at its best when not much is happening. I like a mix of commentary and goofing around. I don’t think the AW season has as many overall laughs, but it often reminds me of the Boomer Massacre episode of Fallout New Vegas: Josh is wrestling with actually winning the game while everyone else’s conversation often wanders off into tangental territory.

  11. Zukhramm says:

    Chris, just make multiple groups if you want to make multiple lists. Sure, that’s clumsy, but you can lock the group and not let other people in and it’ll be a group in name only.

    Really, don’t worry about the price, or about having a good review, just point interesting game out to me. The fact that you can end up with people just recommending everything you’ve already played it is a problem and the first thing I said when I saw this system, so I have a “No or few AAA and popular indie games”, so no Skyrims and no Super Meat Boys. On my own list I try follow the same system, not all the games on it are good, and the “reviews” are just the worst possible thing that came to my write when I wrote them.

  12. Daemian Lucifer says:

    By the way,that story about blizzard and their mmo,its nice that they abandon a half finished project instead of shipping it in its broken state,and it would be swell if everyone did that,but sadly not everyone has blizzard money to burn on a failed project like that.Though companies that do definitely should practice such a thing.

  13. Octapode says:

    I always find it interesting listening to the diecast being pessimistic about MMOs and down on WoW in particular, given how often I end up listening to it while playing WoW.

    1. Isn’t WoW’s membership declining? And even though it’s still a moneymaker, no MMO (even ones considered successful) has come close to its level of revenue generation, with most eventually going free-to-play or shutting down.

      The next EQ might have a shot, if it delivers on its promise of a world players can construct stuff in (it sounded a bit Minecraft-y), as the MMO genre needs some new mechanics if it’s going to draw in new players. Most of the people I know would rather play a game like Skyrim or Fallout, where it may be single-player, but you can at least have permanent effects on some parts of the world.

      1. Torsten says:

        Everquest is then showing the direction the next huge success is going to come from, assuming that the kind of phenomenon as WoW is even possible anymore. The next big thing is probably going to be some sort of construction and exploration game that lets players build and modify environment but has everything happening in global server that throws in some randomness, monsters or some other encounters.

        No Man’s Sky is probably the closest of the current games in development of the next big thing, but if Lego ever decides to make a game like that, it would most likely become the winner.

        1. Trix2000 says:

          I’m not convinced another blowout like WoW can happen in the MMO space. The main problem is that the market is very full now, so unless they can somehow wrangle players from EVERYTHING it’s not likely to gain such ground.

          WoW was enormously successful mostly because, for a while, it was the only MMO in town that had widespread appeal. The momentum from that (along with pretty decent tweaking and polishing by Blizzard along the way) has allowed them to retain a lot of that playerbase, but the semi-recent decline seems to show that they’re no longer the best/only name in MMOs anymore (despite arguably being pretty good still). It’s impressive that it’s made it this far.

    2. Retsam says:

      I was playing FFXIV while listening. I just started that game, so it was pretty entertaining as well hearing how I’ve pretty much missed the boat on that one.

  14. Poobles says:

    I am still waiting for an mmo that is almost exclusively raiding, it has always boggled my mind that mmo devs put so much time and effort into the leveling content when most will either give up half way or just finish it the one time. I mean, look at Planetside 2, it doesn’t gate any areas or content behind arbitrary levels, you can just jump right into all the fun stuff right from the start and not feel like you are at a huge disadvantage compared to other players. Why has no one copied this structure for a PvE game?

    1. Zukhramm says:

      I’m waiting for the MMO that gets rid of it completely.

  15. Thomas says:

    Multiple lists would be an excellent addition, GoG already does that. I also hoped curators would be a lot more open and a lot more of a free for all, so that some survival of the fittest goes on. I guess it was a bit naive to think that.

    I do think a lot of Arvid’s points are too early to tell yet. Like surely curators aren’t going to spike games two weeks after existing. It’s when people have absorbed them into their purchasing habits and have had time to collect curators and learn how well a particular person functions that you’d expect to see it begin to affect sales.

    In the same way, maybe we can be hopeful with time that people will become famous simply for being curators. But as it is, no-one has had time to curate so it’s really unsurprising we have no people famous purely for curating yet. I could have the best list in the world and it would take probably more than a year for people to start discovering that.

    Lists would be great though. This works when it’s really specific, like it is on GoG ‘Best strategy games’ instead of ‘games that I like as a person’

  16. Where’s the bad review scores assumption for Isolation coming from Chris? It’s at 80% on metacritic and every review I’ve seen have been pretty consistent with that general range of appraisal.

    1. Sagretti says:

      The game averages out to an 80%, but the individual reviews have been all over the place. IGN and Gamespot both gave the game about a 6 out of 10, which most readers of those sites take as a dire rating. Polygon also gave it a mediocre 6.5. The lower scores have then been outweighed by near perfect scores from some other outlets.

      This tells me that the game is at least somewhat interesting, because it’s not a generic experience meant to please everyone. However, there are some game consumers that only read IGN and Gamespot, so who knows how influenced they are by raw scores from those sources.

      1. Thomas says:

        It looks to me like Isolation has a bonkers difficulty curve, and it utterly broke the game for some reviewers and then the others barely noticed it. All the negative reviews I read were basically along the lines of ‘I struggled to even play this game’

      2. Geebs says:

        IGN and Polygon together are kind of like burning both ends of the candle of sucking at games critique. As far as I’m concerned both of them should contribute to a game’s metascore as 10 +(6 – score).

  17. krellen says:

    So, here are the thoughts I had on my two listens of the Diecast while driving to and from alienville today:

    Josh says MMOs are becoming hubs-and-instances: So this means City of Heroes was the MMO of the future and died because it was ahead of its time.

    Shamus doesn’t know what good a curation list would do: it would serve a “what was that game again?” effect; we might remember you wrote about a game once, and vaguely remember aspects of it, but with the curation list we could quickly browse through it and have our memories jogged, especially if your comment was a link to where you talked about the game.

    Chris has regrets: while I wouldn’t ever actually call him “pee-pants”, I love the fact that Mumbles declaring him so is out there in the ideosphere. It was really a defining moment for your character on the cast – you’re not just the over-thinking intellectual, like Shamus, but the over-thinking intellectual who is also kind of a coward (cowardice isn’t a negative trait; it frequently saves lives.) Just the fact that “pee-pants” exists adds to the richness of the podcast.

    Also, the argument about the pronunciation of “Macedonia” was brilliant. And Josh is right and English is wrong.

  18. harborpirate says:

    Should I trust pronunciation advice from someone who pronounces McLeod “Mac Lee Odd”? I think not!

    McLeod is Scottish Gaelic in origin. (As in highlander: “I am Connor MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod. I was born in 1518 in the village of Glenfinnan on the shores of Loch Shiel. And I am immortal.”)

    Correct pronunciations are in the vicinity of the following:
    “Mach Loud” – Mach like Bach
    “Mach Lloyd”
    “McLoot”
    or the very ‘mericanized:
    “McCloud”

    That said:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0CMK8MW0oU

    I’m torn, it sounds strange after having heard the other pronunciation for so long. “Mc Ya Vonia”?

    1. ET says:

      Wait, so “Mick Loud” is not even close? ^^;

      Also, does the spelling of Mc vs Mac have an influence on pronunciation, or do they both get pronounced “Mack” or “Mick” with no pattern?

      P.S.
      I can only pronounce Canadian* (and sometimes Ukrainian) names correctly. :P

      * So, you know, names like Mike-son, Poutine-derson, and Moose-ington.

      1. Thomas says:

        I always thought it was more of a ‘Muck’ than ‘Mick’ when it’s not ‘Mack’? But I barely ever remember that Mc can be Mac so I wouldn’t trust myself

        EDIT: Googling is suggesting that Mac and Mc is basically the difference between Mister and Mr and that any none ‘Mack’ pronunciation probably stemmed from someone who didn’t know how to pronounce ‘Mc’ (or maybe places where a hard ‘k’ would be difficult to say. MackCartney would’ve been super awkward)

      2. harborpirate says:

        Mick Loud is how most Americans would pronounce McCloud, so that item was meant to be reflected in the last item there.

        Just like McDonalds. Most say “Mick Donalds”, with the most common variant being a smaller group that say “Mack Donalds”.

  19. bloodsquirrel says:

    Here’s the big difference between chasing the MOBA market and the MMO market: You don’t need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make a MOBA. There’s plenty of room for smaller successes to make a profit.

    There’s always been a wave of follow-the-leader games with every big success story; Wow clones were only noteworthy in that they had picked the least suitable target for copying.

  20. Otters34 says:

    Aw damnit damnit DAMNIT.

    I’m sorry, Diecasters! Really I am! I was making an idle jest about the idea of Scott Snyder(the perpetrator of such Bat-crimes as Batman: Year Zero, a great story and a wholly idiotic idea, or the Batman: Court of Owls storyline, which was a not-bad story and a pretty silly idea), drawing a comic and Vincent Deighan(pseudonamed Frank Quitely, a gallant spoonerism and artist who’s collaborated on many works with Mr. Grant Morrison, including that best of Supermans All-Star Superman) on words. Then I screwed up by mistaking Scott for that guy who brought us slow-mo Spartans and the saddest Superman. I’m sorry Mumbles, I’ll show myself to the fake nerd jail now.

    That out of the way, thanks for answering my question. Watching reviewers doing their breakdown of the game, it really did look ominously tedious and full of pointless meandering with no tangible sense of progression. And in a place as full of samey corridors with low lighting and tension, the last thing a horror game needs is the player feeling like nothing they do is making any difference. When Mr. Franklin mentioned how the ending left ‘a sour taste’ my lingering hopes were dashed.

    Here was something that SOUNDS amazing, and even for somebody like me who utterly hates the Alien franchise, I still appreciated the fact that somebody was trying to recreate that perfect spark of an idea at the first movie’s core. A serious, tense game about hiding on a haunted house in space while a monster looks for you? That’s gold. I love the art style, I love how common-place the lead is, everything about it sounds like a checklist for a good game. Except how it uses those things it has.

    I’ll try and play it myself one of these days, to see how much of what I’ve gleaned is really true, but if the discussion is accurate that might be more a frustrating slog than spooky funtimes.

    Also, glad to hear it’s at least doing well on Steam. And that at least it wasn’t part of a God-damned fraud operation by Gearbox to fund its Borderlands habit. Hopefully more Amnesia-like games will start to creep into existence. And maybe some more games like Unrest will be made. And maybe I’ll get a kingdom for my birthday.

    Also, also, finally…Isolation’s art design is beautiful. Not in the way Destiny’s is, but in…it looks so real. Lived in. Used, clunky and like you can touch it. The Sevastopol and Torrens look like physical models that you could reach out and touch in a studio somewhere, it’s lovely.

    (PS: Mr. Young, I think the random links in Josh’s name is like the “Realm of the Mad Dog” thing. It doesn’t benefit much from people declaring they got it. Recognition would have made it a lot more fun though, yeah)

  21. Primogenitor says:

    I wish Steam would let us do more with the tags, and the feedback from the Steam queue.

    For example, on principle I want to avoid early access and free-to-play games on Steam. So whenever anything with those tags comes up in the queue I ignore it, but Steam doesn’t learn to not suggest those in future.

    Conversely, I want to tell Steam that I like turn-based games – but there is no direct way to do that. Steam can guess based on my library, but my library also includes a lot of other types of game simply because turn-based games are rarer.

    1. Cuthalion says:

      I thought there was a setting to have it not show you early access?

  22. Dt3r says:

    Cool, you guys actually included my question!

    Sorry Shamus, I don’t make deathrays. I won’t say either way about supervillains or zombies, but my boss is German… and I do work in plant genetics. Incidentally, you may want to avoid the east coast this spring.

    -Anthony

  23. Greg says:

    I haven’t followed any curators and I pretty much always know what I want to buy before I pull up steam, so I don’t know how well it works. That said, I was under the impression that the curator lists are less about recommendations and more about discover-ability. There was a lot of discussion in the last year about how Steam was being overcrowded that pushes a lot of stuff off the front of the new releases. Jim Sterling did at least one Jimquisition on the problem.

    Ultimately, Valve decided that they didn’t want to expend the manpower deciding who they will or will not allow in the store. The curator system is them applying their user-generated content approach to the storefront. This way they can open the floodgates without worrying about overwhelming customers with titles that they would never buy. The question is whether this is a valid solution or just opening the door to new problems.

  24. Jarenth says:

    Can Arvind be on every Diecast from now on?

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