Diecast – Twenty Sided

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. The Christmas Shopping season has begun, the Steam autumn sale is in full swing, award season is here, and it has begun snowing in my part of the world.

I just noticed that Christmas and New Years fall on Saturday this year. We normally record the show on Saturdays. Rather than try to schedule around this, I think we’re going to take those weeks off.

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Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast364

Link (YouTube)

00:00 Veloren

Link (YouTube)

06:11 Rust Drama

I have no idea what’s going on. I don’t know anything about this community or how it works. But the resignation of the Rust Moderation Team contains juuust enough details to create curiosity and rubbernecking.

10:03 Batman Streams!

This week I’ll be teaming up with Chris from Ramblepak64 to stream Batman: Arkham Origins. The stream begins at 8pm Eastern Time on Tuesday November 30th. This link should give you the time in your local time zone. We’ll be streaming the game on Twitch.

12:10 Potion Craft

Link (YouTube)

22:11 Wheel of Time

As someone who hasn’t read the books, I’m kinda on the fence. As of Episode 3, I’m less interested in the overarching plot and more interested in individual scenes, situations, and locations.

But what I really want to know is: What do book fans think of this show?

33:41 Mailbag: Violent Games

Hello, Shamus and Paul.

There was an interesting thread on Twitter about how games are a very young medium, and we are still exploring all the possibilities to represent the real world or create new ones. TLDR of the thread: 1) most games are violent (having big and visible change on the game world) because it is easy to create an immediate feedback loop (shoot stuff – get points – monkey brain happy) 2) and because we are on 20th iteration of 3d shooters, 3rd iteration of photo games, 0th iteration of anything else possible.

What are your thoughts on that? Do you have some ideas what some non-violent games could look like? Paul, do you filter games you let your kids play based on how immediate/violent the response they get from the game?

Best regards, Ilya.

And here is the Errant Signal video that I think sums up the situation really well. Chris Franklin has created a lot of great essays, but this is one of my favorites.

Link (YouTube)

42:12 Mailbag: Chet Faliszek on Designer Notes

Dear Diecast,

Have you heard the recent interview with Chet Faliszek? (https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/chet-faliszek) I thought it might be relevant to your (i.e., Shamus’s) interests. My favorite part is the secret origin of Old Man Murray as a grey-market games reseller.

–John

This podcast is amazing. A must-hear for anyone interested in the goings-on at Valve Software.

54:54 Mailbag: Good Design, Bad Design

Dear Diecast,

I recently watched Design Doc’s latest video on “Good Design, Bad Design” to do with UIs in video games. I thought it was very interesting and wondered if you had your own best and worst picks for game UIs? Do you have a preference for UI type: non-diegetic vs diegetic? And any other thoughts on the topic, if you feel so inclined?

Kind regards,
Andrew