Weekend Confirmed Episode 19

Jeff Canata I'm sorry to say I would love to go to the Electronic Playground and Reviews on the Run panel at Fan Expo. However it seems Hobbystar Marketing has scheduled that panel at the same time as Yoshitaka Amano's panel.

Good luck on the panel though!

Happy birthday, Jeff! Wahay!

During the discussion of whether gameplay or story should come first, someone (Jeff?) was complaining that it sometimes feels as if the designers said "Let's have a snow level. Now let's have a lava level" and built the story around that.

I don't know if any of you are Indiana Jones fans, but this is pretty similar to the way that Raiders of the Lost Ark was made. The writers sat down and hammered out a bunch of set-pieces they knew they wanted in their film -- the boulder-chase, the dragging behind a truck, the mine-cart sequence -- and then wrote the story of the film around them. The ones that they couldn't make fit (the mine-cart sequence) were held over for other films.

Okay, I realise it's not quite the same as banging out lazy, uninspired levels because you think they're expected in a game or because you can't be bothered thinking of something more interesting or unique. Still, it's worth keeping in mind when you're discussing the merits of building a game (or movie) around set-pieces.

Great show guys. Since I am also someone who loves loving things, I would like to turn the question by Jameslikesfun (near the 1:05 mark) around.

Have you ever played a game that you enjoyed immensely but that was universally panned by reviewers and fans?

I'll go first: Fallout Tactics and Severance: Blade of Darkness - two games that I loved way out of proportion to the reviews they were getting.

Great show this week, and I was kinda holding my breath this week since I don't know jack about Starcraft other than Koreans loving it and it being made by Blizzard. I always just kind of assumed it was Warcraft IN SPACCCCEE! But I really enjoyed the discussion on it.

I also have to say I really enjoyed the music this week. Generic rave music drives me crazy, but when it has as much going on as that song had it the it becomes far from generic raver music.

I also enjoyed the talk on PC games. I used to be a huge PC gamer, but just can't go back to it. I keep trying games, but I get such an inconsistent experience, and have simply gotten spoiled and lazy from playing on consoles and not having to futz with settings to try to get a playable experience.

You know, it is funny- I have Red Dead, Borderlands, Singularity, Crackdown 2 and Blur to play right now, and instead I just spent the whole weekend playing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. It kind of makes me question if I should just try to get out of the "You gotta play the new games as soon as they come out" mentality and just play the games I already have.

Back to Oblivion!

A question, why do we keep getting new multiplayer shooters? There are a few that seems to be able to do well. Call of Duty, Halo, Battlefield and I guess Killzone but otherwise it's a wasteland of games that nobody plays/are terrible.

The top 3 games on Xbox live are MW2, Halo 3 and COD WAW. Does anybody seriously think they are going to make a game that gets those players to give up all the time they've invested in progressing their characters?

If you went to the bank to get a loan and told them you wanted to make an mp3 music device similar to an ipod but with less features and that looked half as good but you were going to charge the same price as an ipod, they'd tell you that you're crazy and to piss off. My question then is why are these sub-par multiplayer shooters getting made?

I've listened for the past couple episodes and Jeff's rant is always referenced and sounds pretty amazing. Which episode is it in?

Wtf just saw that Gamestop now is the exclusive way in to the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood beta. I realize the main point of a beta is to server test for the developers, but isn't a secondary function to let potential customers decide whether or not they wish to purchase the game, sort of like a multiplayer demo?

I hate buying from Gamestop, but I had to preorder Medal of Honor there for the beta, and they won't let me move my money over to another preorder or refund it or anything, even though the beta showed me that I don't want the game.

What are your thoughts on this trend?

Play Limbo with Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You Black Emperor. Yesssssssss.

On the "couch vs. chair" thing, I personally prefer a good chair for PC gaming, and I feel uncomfortable in a couch. Back when I played 8-bit NES as a kid, I sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor in front of the TV. I feel that couches are too soft to provide a stable platform for accurate muscle memory.

This is why I get disappointed that the "gaming chair" is getting ignored by developers. Things like wide FOV are the result of not paying attention to gamers who sit in a chair right in front of a monitor, instead of way back in a cushy couch with a 62" LCD TV.

my last thought for the week, its somthing i noticed not long ago and havnt heard it discussed atall i dont think.
how much of a games direction should be controlled by its story?
for example alan wake i think we all agree was a great game, the main complaint i hear about it is that its repetative. and im not arguing against that i did start to get a little weary of the woods after a while but concidering the story it makes sense. he's in a tiny town surrounded by a huge forest and although at times it might feel like filler from point A to point B its not unjustified. should the story be written around a games mechanics or the other way around? im trying to keep it short and sweet here but i have thought about it and explained it alot more on my first blog which im shamelessly name dropping
http://gamehobo3.blogspot.com/
but i wanted to get your guys views on it so, thoughts?

Games for Windows has kind of become / is a whipping boy for PC gamers. Did GFW have any presence at E3 this year? Between Blizzard and Valve supporting OSX, not to mention Steam as a distribution platform for other publishers, the Mac is nearly a viable alternative to Windows boxes as a gaming desktop/machine. Do you think Microsoft is at all interested in remaining competitive in this market? It seems that, while not as lucrative as continuing to pump developer, etc. resources towards the Xbox, they should be keen to not let Apple run away with any slice of their customer base (or game developers, for that matter!).

I feel like I may have misrepresented myself a little this past week. When I referred to skipping the cutscenes, I was talking specifically about games with generic or generally uninteresting storylines, and the same goes for custom soundtracks.

It probably goes without saying, but just to be sure we're on the same page, when a game's story segments or soundtrack are done well, then no, I generally don't want to skip over or replace them. It only comes up as an option when the games are lacking in these departments.

Phantasy Star Zero was one of my favourite games last year, but I found the story to be completely insufferable and felt like nothing was lost from skipping all the cutscenes. Whatever information I missed, I could generally take it as given that I was probably supposed to kill that giant octopus that suddenly appeared in front of me, which was the fun part of the game anyway, but certainly this is not always the case, in fact, it's pretty rare. I'll totally mia culpa to the flippancy with which I made this point originally. Much like Garnett, I often forget to include the winky face when writing facetious things on the internet. ;)

With regards to music, I haven't played Limbo and can't comment on it's use of atmospheric sound design in place of music, but I've certainly played games where going in such a direction was clearly the best choice - Riven comes to mind, but I do enjoy having the option of choosing music that fits the mood I'd like to create. Like I said, your mileage may vary.

also: The Cure's Disintegration with any 16 or 32 bit Shmup...just try it, just once.
also also: I was prolific last week because my work is contract-based, and I don't have a lot to do during dry spells.

Loved the show, as usual.
j

I suppose I have a Warning question I'd like to hear everyone's opinions on (I'm going to try to keep it short):

What are your opinions on outsourcing in the game industry?

I've heard this discussed a few times on gaming podcasts, but never on here. Apparently, back in 2009, a report was done where 200 anonymous studios completed a survey on outsourcing. From 2007 to 2008, apparently the percentage rose from 76 to 86, which is already a large majority. Here is a link to the article on Gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23008

Price of modern day game production on the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles obviously is in large part the reason for this. I know that recent AAA games Alan Wake and Heavy Rain used outsourcing in their development and I am fairly sure that Mass Effect 2 used it to some extent as well.

So I was wondering if you all felt it is being used responsibly and is beneficial in getting games made in more reasonable amounts of time. Also, is there something to be said for a "pure" game that was made entirely in-house? Do you think something with the creative artistic vision of a game like Bioshock would be possible with outsourcing? Or can freeing artists and designers of the need to create everyday objects like chairs, trees, and grass free them to contribute to a project in more meaningful ways (i.e. focus on creating things unique to the game they are working on).

Anyway, just food for thought. What do you all think? I'll reserve my opinion for now.

So, here's my suggestion for a warning topic:

"Is it ok to consider a video game character attractive?"

People seem to react in two ways. Either, yeah it's fine, digital chicks are HAWT! And another group of people cry out that you must be a sad desperate person for liking something that is made of pixels. Then accusations of virginity fly around.

Personally, I'm 30, married with two kids (so I can prove I've sex at least twice lol) and I can admit that certain game characters are attractive. And why not? We often talk about how good a game is if it makes us feel emotionally connected to characters and react to them with respect, tragedy, anger and guilt in an RPG, then why is attraction off the table?

Sure, people will say that it's not ok to obsess of sexually fantasize over a girl in a game but honestly, there's probably none of us that will take it that far so it's besides the point.

And as far as attraction goes, isn't beauty skin deep? When I see a character in a game wearing plate armour that features exposed belly and cleavage I'm generally taken out of the experience. But when I see a strong female character like Kat from Halo Reach who has an attractive but realistic face with scars, a standard military shaved head and her body covered by reasonable armour I see a character that can be attractive provided her role is written and acted well.

And one more point, we are allowed to find real life actresses attractive because they are 'real' but how are they any more real than a video game character? We will never meet either of them, we will only see them in pixel form or as pics in a magazine. They are both fiction to us.

I think that video game characters are no more real than the painting of a lady on an aircraft you see in war times and I think it's completely innocent to view them, an any fictional creation as attractive.

In sparking the mobile gaming discussion, worldwide Q2 mobile phone numbers are in.

http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/news/item/11899_Canalys_Q2_stats_show_Nokias_S.php

As usual, Nokia is sitting on the bulk of the marketshare with 38% for 2010. The big shake up is Android based phones enjoying a 886% growth in 2010 while Apple hold a 61% growth for 2010 thus far. By the end of 2010, Android based phone might surpass the U.S. marketshare leader RIM.

Q.
Are (game) developers myopic and overlooking an opportunity in android development?

What genre do you want to see on a mobile device?

What game would convince you "Mobile phone gaming has arrived"?

In regards to the "what happened to Resistance 2?" I don't think it's that nobody's playing it anymore, there's probably still a sizable audience on there playing it I just don't think they're being vocal about it.

thanks for the name compliments, think i might take the blog idea up. Ill set up a facebook or twitter or somthing later in the week, if that gets a good response ill move it to a pourpose built site. any ideas or tips for getting it started?

in the mean time somthing to think about thats been bugging me lately, the stigma thats still attatched to gaming. do you guys feel that its lifted at all in the past few years? ive brought it up because i went for an interview last week and was asked what are your hobbies/interests as soon as i said i play alot of video games i could hear the rolling of everybodies eyes. i think video games have come a long way, yet with indistries that are not in anyway involved video games they seem to be still related to idiotically sitting around and giggling at mindless violence (and as much as i enjoy that) i think games have become a great story telling device and would even argue that i feel much more involved in the video games than any movie ive seen lately. yet if i say i read or i take an interest in films i become smart or artistic. ill stop ranting now. thoughts?

hey, it's Scott from Australia, I'm a long time 1UP and now Weekend Confirmed listener, first time commenter.

Just wanted to say that I can relate the the segment about the guy feeling like he's the only one that doesn't like a universally applauded game. For me that game is .... Left 4 Dead.

Shocking huh?

I bought it a few months ago at a discount and hadn't played it because I was waiting to have a friend over to do so (I hadn't played online cause my friends no longer play it, I don't wanna play with randoms and Australia doesn't have the best internet for online gaming). So, last night my friend (also a gamer) is visiting from interstate and I was excited to finally try this Left 4 Dead phenomenon I had been missing out on.

What I experienced was a game with terrible graphics, super repetitive game play, shallow mechanics, only 3 weapons, janky animations and effects just overall very unendurable. We stuck it out through the first campaign but by the end we were just wanting it to be over.

I really wanted to like that game too.

Anyway, where is the best avenue to submit a question for The Warning segment?

Cheers boys

Laptops seem to be the popular choice for heavier computer use (business, school, casual gaming) but we are seeing some interesting developments for consuers. Social networking, light media consumption, surfing can all be done on iPads, tablets, smart phones, notebooks. (I'm typing this comment on an iPad.) I'm guessing hardcore gamers still buy and/or build their crazy expensive rigs. What about the new development we're seeing with home media computers, MacMini for instance? We can now plug affordable yet powerful computers into our living room hdtvs via built-in hdmi. When, or will this type of computer eliminate the need for a console? Remember how excited people were when we discovered the PS3 could run Linux, or that the wii offered a web browser?

Happy belated birthday to Jeff! I think the term to use in regards to your Deadly Premonition experience is that it just 'didn't click' with you.

Also, if you guys want to experience some great game storytelling, check out Silent Hill:Shattered Memories.

Really enjoyed the show this week guys. Glad you are having Geoff on next week. It's been a while since you've had any guests. Don't get me wrong, I love you guys, it's just that guests are good to switch things up.

I kind of wanted to clarify what I said about generic storylines in huge RPGs being useful. I think you guys sort of missed my point by way of my interchanging "generic" and "traditional". I swapped those words as a sort of way to detract from calling Dragon Age generic myself, but in recognition of the OP's opinion. Because, as you guys said yourselves, there is a negative connotation to the word. I usually, like most people, use it as a negative thing, but by definition it really just means general or pertaining to a group. And that is what Dragon Age's story is. If you look at it as an outsider, it isn't some fantastically incoherent drama like Final Fantasy XIII. It's The Lord of the Rings. It's "traditional" or "generic" high fantasy, with some elements of low fantasy thrown in to make it all edgy and cool. It is where Bioware takes the story after the traditional setup that makes it interesting and unique and thought provoking. This is something Jeff and I totally agree on but I think he might have missed the fact that I was by no means talking mess about Dragon Age's story, just being realistic about a few of the cliches that are ostensibly in the game. (like dwarfs, elves, and dragons, etc.) You can easily look at Dragon Age and think, "Oh, cool! A LOTR RPG! Awesome! I'm going to play as an elf and use archery to kill those things that look like orcs!" Then, once you get into the game itself, you realize it's actually very much it's own thing. I feel like Bioware are masters of that technique. Look what they did with Star Wars.

Anyway, I just felt like clearing up what I was trying to say. Oh, and Garnett: Jeff is right. The details of Dragon Age's story are incredible. Not just in volume, but in metaphorical weight and moral ambiguity. As in, weird rituals and character issues are only one level removed from real issues and human emotions. I know I got all arty there, but I'm trying to do the game justice.

Also, I don't know how far you played the game, but Morrigan and Alistair are two of the best characters Bioware has ever written. Good enough to make the Mass Effect fan in me go green with envy. :)

No kidding about Capcom. They are just not doing well.

With a future of digital distribution well on its way, what will happen to game rental services like Gamefly? I'm a heavy Gamefly user, playing through far more games, sometimes, 10 or more, every month than I could afford to actually buy. Will there be some option like paying a monthly fee and being able to download a game for a few days and then have it removed so you can download another?

Also, are publishers and developers compensated at all with game rentals? Are they paid a small fee per rental, or does the rental company pay a higher price per copy to give them the right to rent it out?

I've listened to part of the podcast thus far.

I myself have been outside the general consensus internet conventional wisdomish kind of opinion before. CS is probably the biggest example for me...I never got it...still really don't. I used to think I hated "realism" in FPS games but I think I just didn't like CS and some of the games that tried to do what it did too closely (I've loved SoF2, CoD 1-4, the Battlefield series, and many many other multiplayer games that have gone down that road of stylized limited realism...and there are a ton of single player games where it hasn't bothered me).

I also run into games that I enjoy but I think are waaaay overrated and that they have flaws...and sometimes bringing those up will get you in trouble. I remember back when BF42 was new there were people going on and on about how it was the best MP game ever and anyone who didn't see that was crazy...and I enjoyed it a lot but I felt that the infantry combat was lacking. The guns lacked oomph and the run speed was really really slow (I've described it as geriatric combat more than once)...but that game is really fun if you're playing with all the nifty toys it gives you and when the experience comes together its really great and I could overlook that. Thats the only example I can think of offhand...but its probably not the best.

There's also the fascinating issue of games that aren't for me that I completely respect and know that this wasn't meant for me (and in a few cases I've bought those games just to play around with them out of curiosity...ARMA is a good example of thise). Another example for me would be WOW...its a well constructed game, it just doesn't appeal to me personally.

I'll reply to this comment with more stuff as I listen and think of stuff (and I want to mention the Dragon Age story discussion and the PC gaming discussion, but I think I'll post those when I get home as replies to this...I'm in a cafeteria at a firing range that has wifi (I have satellite and can't play games at home due to the latency, so I use wifi hotspots at places I frequent to get my BF:BC2 in on my gaming laptop)). Enough rambling, I'll post more later.

Happy birthday Jeff!

And big props for picking Thief: The Dark Project this week. Definitely a great stealth game, and no doubt where Splinter Cell borrowed a lot of it's ideas. That's not to say that it plays the same as Splinter Cell... I think it's a lot more fun actually. There's a lot less in the way of frustrating deaths / restarting at a distant checkpoint.

You said you weren't sure if it still holds up, but I played it only a couple years ago, and it definitely does. The gameplay is what carries it. You just feel like such a badass sneaking through a medieval-esque castle, stealing treasure and knocking out guards. And I've said nothing so far about the story! Great, hand drawn art in Ninja Gaiden style cinematic cutscenes, and very well written and voice acted.

My only gripe about the game is that some of the levels take place outside of castles and have you fighting skeletons and zombies and stuff. IIRC, these levels don't incorporate any stealth gameplay, and generally aren't any fun. Rush through them as fast as you can.

I still haven't played Thief II, and now I'm going to have to track it down and play it. Well, as soon as I beat the Starcraft 2 campaign.

Anyway, great show overall. See you next week!

Awriite, Hospital Records name drop by Garnett!

Aloha! You do a very well put together podcast Garnett sir, but I'm starting to feel we might be going different directions in terms of entertainer and audience. I think you put together one of, if not, the best video-game podcasts out there. I play most of my games on my DS lately and I've been kinda off the 1st person shooter kick for about 2 years. I'm sure my tastes will change again. Back in the 1up days it seemed like you had more variety in the team because there was you (the xbox 360, pc, rhythm action guy who provided the framework for the show), John Davison (the more broad video-game fan who brought his experience and perspective as a parent and more casual games), shane (the sony/nintendo/people of japan fanboy who really could appreciate the details that I like too), and Luke (the entertaining, hardcore, and cynical videogame player that represents a very large portion of the videogame player market). I feel I could relate to all of the 4 in different ways. With this current show it seems like the John Davison & Shane perspectives is sorely lacking. I felt I could relate to them the most in terms of the games they played and the views they held. I will still keep listening for now, but if you could somehow integrate those viewpoints into the show I think it would be improved much more. I might be vague and apologize if that's the case. Keep doing your best, I've been a listener for 4 years if you can believe it and enjoy your work a lot. See ya at PAX!

Nice show guys.

Riffing off the music segment where you were talking about limbo this week I have another question should you choose to use it.

I've found very often there are games where the music or visuals separated from each other are passable but not amazing but when you meld the two together the shared experience from both the music and the visuals working in tandem is an amazing experience.

How vital do you think the weaving of both together is? Also do you think that it can hurt the overall experience of a game when one piece of the experience outshines the other even if the other part isn't "bad" on its own?

Big thanks for the shoutout at the end of the cast guys -- I wouldn't say I'm a "high level of listener", but I appreciate the compliment! The poem in question, for any of you whom were wondering, is Rudyard Kipling's "If". It's short - 4 stanzas long - but when I first read it, I just thought "wow". No idea if you'd think the same, but I certainly hope so. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=175772

Great episode this week - I have to say that I think Brian and Jeff play quite well off each other, in that Jeff is clearly well-versed in the practise of taking a complicated idea and simplifying it for the masses (ie. Starcraft II and me), and Brian clearly knows his shit and definitely appeals to that higher level of player.

As always, thanks for the show, huge fan.
Phillipe Bosher

PS: Get Chris Remo on before he moves to San Fran.
PPS: Love you too Garnett. Thanks for saying my name correctly!

You three should talk about Lost Viking.

I didn't realize the same guy who did the Shatter soundtrack also did GripShift's. Both games have some excellent music.

Nice show guys.

Here's why I agree that Jeff was way off base on the issue with Alien swarm.... he said something along the lines of "if you don't have 4 friends to play with, which is needed to have fun in the game, that's your fault rather than the game's fault."

That is a pretty serious statement. One of my pet peeves these days is how few games are scaling well to various group sizes, when scaling is fairly easy.

Consider Diablo 2, on the one hand... it auto scaled in real time from 1 to, what was it? 4 players?... all it did was basically multiply the hit points on creatures by the number of players playing at any given time. That worked!

On the other hand, MMOs seem to have huge problems with this. They claim that they are solo friendly, but then make non-scalable content (and lots of it) that needlessly splits the community between "guildies" that may be able to run x content, and those not willing to deal with the guild politics, being locked out of it.

That's only one example though.. Alien Swarm could scale a lot better than it does. I've been trying to coop it, and while it can be done, it does a poor job of it... that, in my opinion, is 100% the fault of the game.

Mr. Cannata, I agree with you in that I too find the "'X' character must survive" missions annoying. However, the annoyance is more from their frustratingly higher difficulty because, to people like me and you, micromanagement is hard. As much as we may not like it, these missions are a necessity at introducing the micro factor to gamers. I hope you stop holding your special characters back from now on as you're only cheating yourself out of the exercise opportunity, like doing push-ups on your knees. (which i do cause i'm a pansy.)

I thought Microsoft owned the rights to Hydro Thunder.

Referring to the fluctuating prominence of PC gaming you were discussing, I have my own theory. I agree with Cannata that desktops are just less prominent in general these days, but I also think how desktops are made and sold nowadays plays a very large role.

Everyone seems to agree that the "golden age" of PC gaming was in the early to mid 90s. In that time period, there was really only one or two lines of PCs that you could be buying. You could buy an Amiga, or an x86, or various variants of these. All you had to do was go down to your local computer shop, buy a 486, and all of a sudden you could play literally any Windows or DOS game ever made. The only computers people ever bought could just simply play all of the games for its platform. The popularity of the video card starting in the mid to late '90s changed all of this. Computers became a lot more modular, cheap low-end models were made available that couldn't play new games, and you had to spend more money if you did want to play games, solely for that purpose.

The thing is, although I'm sure a lot of older guys got into computer gaming as adults (such as Garnett), most of us got into it as kids. Our parents don't want to play games, they aren't going to spend extra money on PCs just so they can play games. They're going to be buying cheap $600 systems that can't even play TF2. We got into PC gaming when the PCs our parents bought, the 486s, could play all the new games. The "casual" market doesn't play games like Peggle because they don't want to play more complex games, they play those games because their computers can't handle anything else. It seems to me that, more than console competition or piracy or anything else, PC sales are lowered because of the hardcore/casual divide created by hardware companies. Another way to look at it, if Microsoft released a $100 XBox 360 that could only play XBLA and XBLIG games, what would happen to the market? Would "core" games on the 360 all of a sudden become niche? That's similar to what happened on PCs.

Whew, that was long winded, I just wanted to get my thoughts off my chest and wonder what other people think.

Downloading now. Is there no discussion of Limbo this week? If so, bummer.

In Response to Garnett's "What should we talk about" plea, I figure it all could go in this one thread.

I know you were mainly talking about what you should talk about in regards to SC2, but I'd like to see a larger emphasis on games that could go in the Cannatafford section. Maybe not just "you should pick this up", but talking about it as if it's a new game -- Maybe connect it to an upcoming game. eg. When you guys start talking about Ghost Trick, I'd love to hear you talk about the Phoenix Wright games for a little bit. =)

News Clarification:

PSP Software sales jumped 900,000 units, bringing the total up to 9.2 million.

Not a jump from 900K to 9.2 million.