As part of my series of Interviews with Cheerful Ghost users I started up a conversation with panickedthumb. He had and idea that we have a Interview but sort of trade ideas back and forth. Its a good format, one I plan continuing with the next few interviews.

It is a bit long so it will be broken up into two parts.

jdodson: Recently you picked up Dishonored. What are your thoughts on this one? Are you interested in seeing more of this game made?

panickedthumb: I love it. It's so incredibly engrossing, and yet... I haven't been able to motivate myself to play much of it. I feel like this is the opposite of pick-up-and-play, and I haven't had a lot of time at a stretch to play it lately. I hope to get back into it tomorrow, so I'll post a follow-up if I have more to add.

jdodson: Why is that thumb so afraid?

panickedthumb: This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6b53mXQYT4 was a special feature on Kung Pow: Enter the Fist. It was a menu item simply called "A panicked thumb." I watched it and laughed for a good long while. Since then, that's been my handle on everything. I looked it up, and it's from Thumb Wars, a Star Wars parody in a series of Thumb parodies. They are totally hilarious and I recommend them to anyone who appreciates bizarre humor.

I probably would have changed it but at some point it became a brand, and I can't imagine changing it now. I'll be panickedthumb until I'm old and gray.

jdodson: If you could see one thing added to or changed about Cheerful Ghost what would it be?

panickedthumb: Dude, I don't even know. You've implemented nearly all of my suggested features. I guess some elusive way of better connecting people, but in all of our numerous conversations about CG I've never come up with the magic bullet. So I guess the one nameable thing I'd like to see at CG is growth. :)

jdodson: What are some of the most under rated games in your opinion?

panickedthumb: The Katamari series. Especially the ones on PS2, but really, the whole series. I think I could roll that ball around for days on end and be perfectly happy. Wait. I already have. I made spreadsheets for those games so I would know what items I had collected and what I hadn't. It brings out an obsessiveness in me that no other game can. And it's beautiful.

jdodson: A few years ago there was a new Kaminari game, how do you think that served the series?

panickedthumb: *Katamari ;)

jdodson: See, isn't it obvious I haven't actually played one of the games? OK maybe not entirely true, I got the demo for the one on PS3.

panickedthumb: Are you talking about the one on Vita or Katamari Forever on the PS3? Since the second game, We Love Katamari, each subsequent game has gotten lower and lower review scores. I suppose there's a reason for that. There's only so much you can do, so far you can expand, with a mechanic like that. But honestly, whenever I get the itch to play a Katamari game, Katamari Forever is the one I go to. It's one of the very few PS3 games I've gotten a platinum trophy on. It's a bit of a greatest hits type of game, with a few new levels, and a new jump mechanic. I'd say it served the series fairly well, I guess. It was exactly what it was meant to be, and it was a ton of fun. A huge new Katamari game with some new mechanics would be amazing, but I'm beginning to doubt that will ever happen.

jdodson: End of the world happens. Aliens + Zombie attack. 95% of people die except you. 3 months after the event the dust settles and the Zombies die off due to going through the food supply and the Aliens leave. Do you head out into the wild to live off the land or try to find the last vestige of human kind to rebuild?

panickedthumb: Somewhere in between? You can be sure that in that kind of situation, factions are going to form and start power-grabbing. The last vestige of human kind isn't going to be a single place, it will be many different groups with different ideas about what's best for rebuilding. Fighting would be inevitable. I'd try to form a self-sustaining community with my last remaining friends and family, their friends and family, and so on, so that we wouldn't need to depend on anyone else and could try to avoid the fight as much as possible, and hopefully have some bargaining chips so we aren't just overrun by which ever militia thinks they own the place. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I don't think preserving human life would be the most important thing to those who seek power in an apocalypse.

jdodson: So you agree more with the Dystopian Mad Max kind of apolcalytptia than say a.... Come to think of it I don't know of any end of the world scenario where love and fuzzies wins.... I guess in the absence of Government most people think we de-evolve to a feudal tribal system hell bent on making wearable ornaments of human bones. From a positive spin, wearable human bones are back in fashion!

panickedthumb: Yeah I think that's how it would end up. Maybe not as bad as Mad Max (which seemed almost purely tribal) but something like the Fallout universe or Monroe's Militia in Revolution. People actually trying to form governments, and becoming brutal and power-hungry.

jdodson: With digital distribution of games and the fact that we can now own so many titles, I wonder if that has changed how you play games?

panickedthumb: It has. Steam in particular. I still feel like MS and Sony, and ESPECIALLY Nintendo, are really lagging on this. I have honestly given Steam way too much money, I've bought more games than I'll ever play, and it's because they make the deals so ridiculously amazing. There are some great games that I would have never played if they weren't 75% or more off the retail price. There are some bad things about it too, like feeling like your ever-expanding backlog might swallow you whole, but I love it. There will always be some games I want to have a box for. The collectors items. But digital distribution is the future, and I'm glad I'm on the ground floor.

jdodson: I agree, we will have thousands of games in Steam before we die. I wonder though is there a negative of us owning so many games?

panickedthumb: It's the cereal aisle dilemma. I think it may be plaguing me now, and that's why I can't find what I want to play. You walk into this vast aisle of cereal and like 80% of it looks delicious. What do you pick? It's daunting.

jdodson: Borderlands 2. Seriously I am going into the living room after writing this and will start Borderlands 2 up. You should too. Does that help?

jdodson: You have been elected Chairman of the Board of Bethesda but unlike Carrot Top you mean business! Todd Howard comes to you begging for leadership, they need an idea for a new game! Panickedthumb is sitting in the seat of power able to direct Bethsda's next efforts, what does he do?

panickedthumb: A new *game* or a new franchise? Like something entirely new or does a sequel count? I'll assume you mean a new idea altogether, and make their previous franchises off-limits.

I love their engine, personally. There were major changes between Morrowind and Oblivion, so I'm referring to the engine from Oblivion to the present. It has tons of bugs, and game launches are always buggy, but perhaps because of the hundreds of hours I've spent there, it's like second nature. I'd like to see what they could do with something real-world yet futuristic. Not the alternate-history future as predicted by 50's sci-fi they have in the Fallout games, but an idea of what the distant future could look like. Space travel, interplanetary quests, tons of playable races, all with the basic rules set out by Oblivion/Fallout 3.

Secondary idea: iD made some Doom RPG games for mobile. Now that Bethesda owns that franchise, how about a real Doom RPG for consoles/PC. Hundreds of hours in an RPG set in the Doom universe?

Sign me up!

jdodson: This is interesting to me as you well know I love Doom. Do you think we will see this in Doom 4?

panickedthumb: I wouldn't be surprised if Doom 4 adds some RPG elements at least. Perhaps not a full-on 100+ hour RPG masterpiece, but it's hard to find a game these days that doesn't have RPG elements. In fact, I'm not sure a numbered sequel in the series *should* be a full-on RPG.

jdodson: Yeah, it does seem like Doom is a jump scare shooter in some version of Hell. So maybe a non Doom 4 with RPG elements? I could see that being cool.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion in PART 2!