<p>Hosts: <a href="http://www.jamesonwhiskey.com/us/agegate">Josh</a>, <a href="http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/">Chris</a>, and <a href="http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale">Shamus</a>.</p>
<p>Show notes:<span id="more-22813"></span></p>
<p><strong>1:20 Josh is playing FTL: Advanced Edition.</strong></p>
<p><a href="?p=17335" title="FTL: Random vs. Skill">My write-up on FTL is here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>8:00 Chris is playing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfbheiGx0-A">Disney Magical World</a></strong></p>
<p><strong>13:00 Chris is also playing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qsdIveYJ0Y">Actual Sunlight</a>.</strong></p>
<p>Interesting that this is the <a href="http://www.depressionquest.com/">second</a> game about depression I’ve run into in the last few months.</p>
<p>Personal talk:</p>
<p>I’ve had days where I woke up and found I couldn’t feel joy or happiness or even contentment. Where nothing felt worth doing. The usual fire I had to consume and talk about games (or do anything else) was just… <em>gone</em>. There was never any reason for this. Everything was fine in my life, aside from the fact that my mood was unaccountably mis-calibrated. I don’t know that this is anything like the clinical depression that some people talk about, but I use it as a frame of reference. My episodes always blow over after a few days and don’t linger for weeks or months on end.</p>
<p>Regardless of whether this is depression or not, it’s certainly an interesting phenomena. We tend to assume that our moods are linked to our situations, and it can be completely baffling and frustrating when that connection is broken. <em>I have no reason to be sad right now. So why am I sad?</em></p>
<p>Having never played either game myself, I do wonder what the intent behind them is. Are they a way for people suffering from depression to feel some sort of connection with each other? Is this a way of saying “You are not alone” to others? Or is this intended to share the experience with people who have never been through it and don’t understand what it’s like?</p>
<p>I wish I’d asked Chris during the show, but I’d love to hear from anyone who has played either game.</p>
<p><strong>15:00 Shamus is working on programming. But not Good Robot.</strong></p>
<p>Stuff I’m working on / thinking about:</p>
<p>1) GLSL shading language. 2) Systems which are incredibly robust with regards to consistency of framerate. 3) Different techniques for offloading CPU work onto the graphics card.</p>
<p>Maybe we’ll talk about this later in the week. Maybe not. I still need to finish my write-up on Thief.</p>
<p><strong>16:00 <a href="http://www.civilization.com/#trailer">Civilization: Beyond Earth</a> has been announced. So we spend a bunch of time talking about Alpha Centauri.</strong></p>
<p>This topic gets derailed by religion in games. If you want to skip that, jump ahead to somewhere around the 37 minute mark.</p>
<p><strong>26:00 Surprise mid-podcast mailbag!</strong></p>
<p><strong>34:00 We talk about Jade Empire.</strong></p>
<p><strong>37:00 And back to Civilization.</strong></p>
<p><strong>44:00 Mailbag!</strong></p>
<p>Amazing question. I’d already been thinking about this it for a while when the question showed up, so I had a lot to say about it.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.ninja-blues.com/">Let me plug Jarenth here while I have an excuse.</a></p>
