I listen to a bunch of podcasts, and I’ve been searching for a good replacement to GFW Live since it sadly departed. Various people suggested the GamersWithJobs podcast or One Life Left, but neither one has really worked for me. I can see why people would like them, but the GWJ guys are targeting a less knowledgeable audience, and I have some sort of weird anti-british-podcast thing, because I haven’t loved any podcasts I’ve listened to made up of more than 50% people with British accents. It’s probably just that I suck at understanding accents. Finally, Lan Party, which is the official successor to GFW Live, hasn’t really clicked for me. It has potential but it’s also a different kind of podcast.
Just today, I listened to a fairly new podcast for the first time: Idle Thumbs… and it’s great! It’s hosted by 3 knowledgeable people (Chris Remo of Gamasutra, Nick Breckon from Shacknews, and Jake Rodkin from Telltale games), and gets the mix of humor and strong ideas right. It’s actually got a lot in common with the old ShackCast, which makes sense because that also had Chris and Nick. The only complaint I have is that they laugh more at their own jokes than is strictly necessary. Anyway, here are the reasons why I recommend Idle Thumbs, from listening to episodes 7 and 8:
- A nice discussion of the end of Ensemble Studios. Apparently the Halo MMO was fairly far along in development, but was cancelled after an internal Microsoft reorganization in mid-to-late 2007. In case you’re wondering why Microsoft now hates MMOs, this is a good clue
- http://vigivigivigi.com/, and http://www.eightbitcock.com/, http://www.idlethumbs.net/ and http://strategychocolate.biz are all valid, alternate URLS.
- They actually had an intelligent discussion about Fallout 3 that contributed ideas I had not thought about before!
- The songs are the best part of the podcast. Chris is brilliant at writing clever songs about obscure gamer in jokes. His musical interpretation of this blog post is awesome.
- They pointed out the reasoning behind the 3 planes in LittleBigPlanet, which as far as I can tell no reviewer actually figured out. (It’s to standardize the concept of space and avoid per-object tagging, as well as make the physical relationship between coincedant objects obvious)
- It pointed me to watch the BEST OFFICIAL GAME TRAILER EVER!
I’m going back to listen to the rest of the episodes, which I am now looking forward to.
