So far, so good with the weekly schedule. We recorded the second episode of Idle Thumbs last night and got it published this morning.

This week features plenty of hands-on reporting on Diablo III and StarCraft II, as well as discussion about the various Blizzard announcements (some of which are a little controversial) and a bit from TGS. There’s also plenty of hands-on from LittleBigPlanet and Fable II. Hands-on is in the air. ‘Tis the season.

Also, I composed and recorded the track “The Fanboy’s Lament,” this episode’s namesake. It can be heard during the podcast in context, with the discussion of the events that prompted it, or downloaded directly from the Idle Thumbs front page. The goal is to feature this kind of musical interlude from time to time on the show if people enjoy it.

Be sure to subscribe to our RSS if you haven’t yet, and we do have iTunes up now. Tell your friends about Idle Thumbs! We don’t really know how to promote this thing.

And feel free to send questions, comments, or feedback to questions@idlethumbs.net — we’ll read and address it on the show.

Due to a strange quirk of my gaming history, I never played a numbered Civilization game beyond the original Civ (also known as Sid Meier’s Civilization: Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time). That game I utterly consumed back in the early 90s when it was released, probably completing the game with every possible combination of civilization and victory condition.

Civ II, for example, wasn’t released until 1996, five years after its predecessor (I had spent much of that intervening period playing Civ), and at that point Quake, and then the mod Quake 40K/Chapter Honour (boy, there’s a site I haven’t seen in ages), become my time-sucking game of choice.

During most periods of my life, I’ve tried to consistently play games in a variety of genres—in the 90s, I was mainly into adventure games, shooters, and strategy games—but I’ve also generally had one game that lurks in the background, filling the cracks in my gaming time between this title or that title. Civ was probably the first game to hold that honor. (more…)

A couple of months ago, I conducted a pretty lengthy interview with adventure gaming legend Ron Gilbert (The Secret of Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, Maniac Mansion, etc.), and for various complicated reasons it was only just published yesterday on Gamasutra. We discuss Gilbert’s recent projects, including his own title DeathSpank and its Diablo influence (yes), how he feels about the game industry these days, and the merits of the Hollywood production system.

It was nice to see Gilbert a whole lot more cheerful about the industry than he was the last time I interviewed him, then alongside my colleague Jake Rodkin–although something that didn’t change was my vaguely embarrassing tendency to start asking four-paragraph questions toward the end.

As before, he was a good sport about it.

I was pointedly concise with my reaction, but it should be clear enough that I am fairly excited about the just-announced Diablo III. With the possible exception of Tetris, Diablo II almost certainly tops my personal lifetime list of most gameplay hours dedicated to a single game. For some five years or so, my friends and I played it off and on - several of those years considerably more “on.” I just reinstalled it the other day, and have reached Act IV.

Along with the inevitable internet furor that has arisen in the wake of the announcement (and in the days leading up to it, as the storm cryptically but powerfully approached), there has come an explosion of gamer-generated research to try and sate the hunger for rapidly-depleting new information about the game.  Much of this deals with singling out the personalities behind the game–and though none of this is secret information by any means, I have not seen it centralized or given full context.  So here you are.

First off, Leonard Boyarsky–one of the three co-leads on the original Fallout–now serves as lead world designer on Diablo III. Boyarsky also contributed to Fallout II before leaving with the other members of the original Fallout big three (Tim Cain and Jason Anderson) to create Troika Games.  He’s been at Blizzard for nearly three years now, and in an upcoming Gamasutra interview (look for it on Wednesday) he notes the game has been in the works since 2004.

Then, we’ve got Dustin Browder, a former Westwood Studios employee who lead the Red Alert 2 and Command & Conquer: Generals projects (more…)

Hell. Yes.