Escapist Podcast: 083: SimCity, Story-Based RPGs and Google Glass

[WMDogma]

Unfortunately I will no longer be listening to this podcast. I do not have the bandwidth to be watching long videos and as the audio is only available on iTunes I can not download it. The iTunes software is one program I no longer use due to changes in it I dislike.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, you can access the audio-only mp3 of our podcast directly through the podcast's RSS feed [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/rss/videos/podcast/167-e15a29097a5b663fa43b258772591ecc.xml] (which is also located underneath the podcast's video player - it's the small orange button underneath the play button).

 

[Draconalis]

<p class=MsoNormal>With my history in Technical Editing, I understand Susan's anger with the new revision of &quot;literally&quot;; however dictionaries are supposed to record how a word is used in society, not prescribe how the word should be used. Since a large portion of English speakers use &quot;literally&quot; as an emphatic adverb or intensifier, then dictionaries have a responsibility to record that meaning.

<p class=MsoNormal>This is more a benefit to English second-language speakers. Imagine a Korean man, studying English, visits New York City and while walking on the street hears, "With all these restrictions on zoning, this city is literally killing homeowners." Having the amended version of literally listed in the dictionary adds needed clarity for second-language speakers (and for all speakers), and reduces the anxiety that Korean man was about to have.



Signifier[/I] for those who are familiar with Structuralism/<span class=SpellE>Deconstructuralism). A language is constructed by society, through the interaction of individuals; thus words and their meanings are decided by society. If enough people decide that literally means "to indicate that some metaphorical or hyperbolical expression is to be take in the strongest admissible sense" (Oxford English Dictionary), then the meaning of this word has changed. And this phenomenon, called Semantic Shift, <span class=GramE>occurs an incalculable number of times within any language.



My personal favorite is the word "awful", which once meant "Worthy of profound respect" or "Sublimely majestic", but now means "terrible, dreadful, [or] appalling" (Oxford English Dictionary).

Whelp... good thing I decided to check the posts before posting... because this gentleman covered what I was going to say, and in a better way.

That being said, as it was explained to me in English 101:

You want to know how the meaning of a word changes? Idiots use it wrong enough that, that is simply what the word begins to mean

I foresee 'ironic' undergoing a change soon as well.

 

[Yal]

On an entirely different language front: It's "save scum", not "scrum". It comes from roguelikes, where scumming is the process of rerolling a randomly generated outcome until you get a favorable or even exceptional result. If you've ever abandoned a Binding of Isaac run because the first item room was underwhelming, you've scummed.

It got its name because you're skimming positive outcomes off the top of the random number generator, with that added benefit of just plain sounding unpleasant.

 

[Valanthe]

Excellent Podcat as always, a little Foley Trivia, the iconic Reaper scream from the Mass Effect series, is actually the sound of a rusty dumpster being opened, and run through a few distortions, The lightsaber sound from the original Star Wars, was actually the sound of the boom mic moving too close to the open back of either a television or a speaker or something like that (Been a while, will have to look that one up again.) Also cabbages make excellent stand-ins if you need the sound of someone's head getting chopped off.

 

[Moblin88]

I don't get why anyone should be upset about the definition of a word changing. If words didn't change we'd all be speaking Latin or something.

Language is iterative, malleable and ever changing, people just got to face that reality I'm afraid.

Anyway interesting podcast! I like how escapist doesn't like to do reviews in controlled enviroments.

 

[Varya]

Regarding the debate about "literally", that is how linguistics works. Dictionaries are not meant to tell people what words mean, they are to reflect what words are used as. It is call descriptive lingustics, and it's counterpart is perscriptive lingustics.
In regards to this particular word, it's still bloddy stupid, but it happens all the time in every language. We have a word in Swedish that ment "Very" or "Extremely" a couple of hundred years ago, but because of exessive use, in now means "quite" or "pretty".

 

[Little Duck]

Could we have a literally quiz? To see who on the escapist can use literally correctly. (I want to throw a literally in there, but I'm not sure the grammar works)

Anyway this might help Susan:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/literally

I think mild variations in language is how a language is defined. For instance we don't have a word for virgin (I have a point) which I think shows a lot about our culture i.e. having such a huge emphasis on one thing in our culture, going so far as to name one of our founding cities in America, after virginity.

The emotions and ideals shared by humans in that lack of word may affect us culturally in ways we can't really see, though this is speculation. With literally we are changing as a culture to use it as a word of emphasis not just in it's literal meaning and I think we should note down how we are using it as it is how our language culture is using it and it defining our language with this variation. Not necessarily in a good way, but it is who we are.

 

[Susan Arendt]

To people commenting on the Google Glass discussion - you're right, of course, that it won't be able to do half the stuff we mentioned. But as Justin rightly brought up, these are discussions and considerations that have to happen now, before the problem is actually a problem. It would've been great if someone had, for example, started discussing the difficulty of virtual ownership before people were getting bilked out of in-game currency and objects. Now things have happened, people are screwed, and there's absolutely no legal recourse. There will be eventually, but that doesn't help people currently facing unfair situations. It's not unreasonable to suggest that technology like Google Glass could evolve to the point that it presents the kinds of issues we discussed, so why not start thinking about it?

Beyond all of that, though, it's just an interesting conversation to have, like would you put a chip in your arm to turn on your house lights. I can't actually *do* it now, but it's still an enjoyable discussion to have.

 

[shiajun]

On the google glasses thing. The invasion of privacy is one thing to be considered, though I don't know when the capabilities of doing what all you guys suggest will be here. My concern is that people are not ready for the... I don't know...responsability of their own interfacing with the real world to put this veil in between them. Let me explain. We've far suprassed our biological evolution rate by our technological evolution rate, and this discrepancy may have repercussions we've yet to assess. It seems to me this need for instant info for everything and hyper-connectivity (much more than you brain currently can even get a grasp of) distorts people's mental capabilities and relationships. If you've taught a class to kids in recent years it's almost disturbing how very little information they can actually recall. Since they trust they can just google eveything, their brains get used to not storing much at all. This, in turn, alters their pattern finding skills. When they don't store concurrent knowledge it gets harder for them to find relantionships among the knowledge they acquired, internalize the subtle links between things and have a better grasp of the bigger picture and the world around them. Reality is atomized and spoon-fed. In my opinion, I don't see the benefits of this strategy beyond instant gratification. Diminishing the exercise of such important skills like intuition and lateral thinking to find creative solutions does not seem to be outweighted by the convenience of basically menial things the google glasses will supposedly do.

Of course, this is all based on the feeling that these skills are indeed atrophied by not using them and I don't really have evidence to back it up at the moment. However, it has been my very empirical observation of how kids treat the world around nowadays.Also, if it already bothers me when people gather around to socialize when everyone is just playing away on their smartphones instead of, you know, talking to the person in front of you (which is trully very sad), then I have no idea how it will be when you don't even have to look away from the person to zone out of interacting with them.

EDIT: Typos and stuff. Also, I'm very curious at how the google glasses are supposed to work, not in the internet part but the actual image. Try to focus on your glasses in you have them, or put your finger way up close to your eyeball. There comes a point were no matter what you do, your eye simply cannot make the plane where the images resides converge on your retina. According to the videos of google glasses this pristine, clear interface is being broadcast to your eye at a very, very close distance. What are the glasses doing to make that focal plane exist at all?

 

[Louis Martin]

I hope I'm not being an ass by saying this, but somebody breathing into the mic really bothered and distracted me this episode. Is it something that can be avoided in future, please?

 

[Sonic Doctor]

Stopping mid podcast to discuss the Sim City stuff.

So...the new SimCity does not have a single player mode where you can play offline? This confuses and angers me.

EA put out plenty of updates and news about the game before launch saying that it should have be well known that there will be no offline single player. And now, of course, there is no offline single player. They stated plenty of times that the main thing they were doing with SimCity was making into a game of multiplayer co-op.

You have to be online for single player. If you want someone to blame, blame pirates, because it is a tactic to keep track of all people that play so they know if people are pirating and/or hacking.

RE: The technical issues on SimCity

It is another well reported fact that EA has stated that one of the big reasons Sim City was going to be so hard for pirates to make working copies of was that a vast majority of the city simulations were going to be personally handled server-side then sent back to the player.

This would mean that if you are running some bogus copy of the game, the EA servers will know it and won't be processing the important simulations your game and city need to run properly.

The only way I see pirates working this one out is if they purchased large amounts of similar type servers and got the exact codes and make-up of what EA's servers calculate for the city simulations and then run their own version of it on their own server farm.

With the time and money it would take to do that, I don't see pirates wasting their time and money(and I'm glad, good riddance). But if they do, it will be the longest time in history for a game to get cracked and playable by filthy stinking pirates.

--------------------------------------

On this whole situation, I agree with Susan. These days you have to be a smart consumer. It is pretty much a giving that a game that requires you to be always online will not have a perfect launch. Not everybody or nobody will get to play until it is fix.

And I as a consumer if I did have the money and computer to run the game, I would have bought it and waited patiently for them to fix it. If it means that they get it fixed and running along with the stuff that is for wacking pirates upside the head, I'm all for it.

 

[GabeZhul]

Well, there goes one of the podcasts I used to listen to...
I mean, okay, you can experiment with this video-feed idea all you want, but a podcast, first and foremost, is supposed to be like a radio show that you can listen to on the go (like I do while working or doing other stuff), and then what did you do?

You put the audio only version into goddamn iTunes! Sorry, but no. I am not going to go even CLOSE to any goddamn Apple service ever again, not even for you guys. Adios, it was fun.

 

[marr]

According to the RSS, the audio version of this episode is at http://www.themis-media.com/videos/get/0/e15a29097a5b663fa43b258772591ecc/6974.mp3 which redirects to http://video2.themis-media.com/766d9ea2d7d02d7e2dec3a7c47146f9d/mp3/escapist/escapist-podcast/407591a6bd29a27cce7def3aee1f45a5.mp3

Those are some crazy ass filenames, btw.

 

[marr]

The problem with EA's strategy is that at this point, they no longer sell video games. They sell lifetime membership to small MMOs with a large solo component, to run for an indeterminate amount of time until that service is no longer profitable for them, they shut it down, and the game no longer exists.

But they'll still market it in terms of selling a game. I'll stick with solutions that have an offline mode, thanks all the same.

 

[Henriot]

Well, there goes one of the podcasts I used to listen to...
I mean, okay, you can experiment with this video-feed idea all you want, but a podcast, first and foremost, is supposed to be like a radio show that you can listen to on the go (like I do while working or doing other stuff), and then what did you do?

You put the audio only version into goddamn iTunes! Sorry, but no. I am not going to go even CLOSE to any goddamn Apple service ever again, not even for you guys. Adios, it was fun.

Despite the RSS feed currently being wonky, you WILL be able to download the podcat as an MP3. Cool your jets, don't make any hasty decisions!

 

[Susan Arendt]

Well, there goes one of the podcasts I used to listen to...
I mean, okay, you can experiment with this video-feed idea all you want, but a podcast, first and foremost, is supposed to be like a radio show that you can listen to on the go (like I do while working or doing other stuff), and then what did you do?

You put the audio only version into goddamn iTunes! Sorry, but no. I am not going to go even CLOSE to any goddamn Apple service ever again, not even for you guys. Adios, it was fun.

Or you could just download the mp3 from our RSS feed. Up to you.

 

[PrimePowerOn]

As to the Google Glass discussion. A number of these issues have been raised in public photography discussions. (A lot of reading I've done has been on here: http://www.photographyisnotacrime.com/ . I admit they might be a little photographer-biased, though not unreasonably so) The legal issue that seems to crop up, and that I find appealing, is that you cannot expect to have the protection of privacy if you are in a public area. I think that makes sense, as people can see you when you're out there (*cue horror fanfare*). There are other legal protections for individuals / organizations improperly using images captured of you while in public.

I like that we're having the discussion about the issues though. I think that Google Glass, with admittedly huge software improvements, could eventually see someone's face and link to their public Google Plus information, etc. Google is great (and scary) at information aggregation. This is yet another reason to make sure you've thought very hard and are being very careful about the information you make public about yourself to the internet!

________

As to the bandwidth / video vs. audio issue, I connect to the webbertubes using my cell phone (tethered via USB). I'm in the middle of a building which is was designed back before human flight was actually popular. It has a bit of a Ghostbusters 2 motif, Tungsten, other exotic building materials, etc. My speeds are not great. If you start the video, pause, and walk away for a bit (ten, fifteen minutes) and restart it works just fine. (Kudos to the Escapist infrastructure on your buffering allowances! Thanks for not making it stop at 20%!) The iTunes versions work pretty well for me as well, but watch out. If you forget about it for awhile iTunes will "stop updating the feed because you haven't listened to it in a while". It took me a few days to realize that it wasn't a problem with the RSS / Escapist end.

 

[bdcjacko]

Stopping mid podcast to discuss the Sim City stuff.

So...the new SimCity does not have a single player mode where you can play offline? This confuses and angers me.

EA put out plenty of updates and news about the game before launch saying that it should have be well known that there will be no offline single player. And now, of course, there is no offline single player. They stated plenty of times that the main thing they were doing with SimCity was making into a game of multiplayer co-op.

You have to be online for single player. If you want someone to blame, blame pirates, because it is a tactic to keep track of all people that play so they know if people are pirating and/or hacking.

Still news for me. I don't go to EA's or any other game website besides really the escapist. And if they don't mention it on the podcast, news segment or something I can watch in my lunch break I don't see it. Usually I can either have time to play games or read about games, so I rather just play them.

 

[Lieju]

I actually knew about the custom of brass rings from some children's comics, but had no idea it was a phrase.

 

[GabeZhul]

Well, there goes one of the podcasts I used to listen to...
I mean, okay, you can experiment with this video-feed idea all you want, but a podcast, first and foremost, is supposed to be like a radio show that you can listen to on the go (like I do while working or doing other stuff), and then what did you do?

You put the audio only version into goddamn iTunes! Sorry, but no. I am not going to go even CLOSE to any goddamn Apple service ever again, not even for you guys. Adios, it was fun.

Or you could just download the mp3 from our RSS feed. Up to you.

*sigh* Yeah, I suppose I should have waited a little longer before posting. In my defense, it was mostly the sleep-deprivation (and my intense hatred towards iTunes) talking, but still, my bad. -.-'