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Weekend Confirmed Episode 35
by Garnett Lee, Nov 19, 2010 12:20pm PSTThanksgiving might be a week away but the new release feast is in full swing. After a couple of quick follow ups to last week's Black Ops coverage, Garnett, Brian, and Jeff serve up Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, 007: Blood Stone, and Donkey Kong Country Returns as the main dishes in Whatcha' Been Playin? The reactionary commentary of ESPN's 1st and Ten cast in response to Kobe's appearance in the Black Ops ads starts off the Warning. Your thoughts on shooter fatigue, urgency without a ticking clock, and more take the conversation right up to the Front Page. October's NPD sales numbers and Bizarre Creation's uncertain future headline a full slate of news.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 35 - 11/19/2010
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Listen to Weekend Confirmed Episode 35 (player window will pop-up)
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Weekend Confirmed comes in four segments to make it easy to listen to in segments or all at once. Here's the timing for this week's episode:
Whatcha' Been Playin: Start: 00:00:00 End: 00:31:07
Whatcha' Been Playin and Cannata-ford a New Game: Start: 00:32:10 End: 01:03:58
The Warning: Start: 01:05:08 End: 01:37:16
Music Break featuring "Never Get 2 See U Again": 01:37:16 End: 01:40:30
The Front Page: Start: 01:40:30 End: 02:11:14
NFL 'Tailgate': Start: 02:12:15 End: 02:20:42
Music Break this week features "Never Get 2 See U Again" by Beta. Chris Contreras aka Beta is an emcee and aspiring filmmaker hailing from Southern California. The Hip Hop culture and movies have made a huge impact in his life, and to his work. Beta is also an avid gamer. "Never Get 2 See U Again" is a collaboration between Beta and his brother Brandon Menace (who is currently in the military stationed in Japan). He has known and worked with Tak/Ribkat from the acclaimed groups Fort Minor and Styles of Beyond, for many years. For more from Beta, keep up with him on Soundcloud, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest single, Small Town Hero on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page.
Jeff can also be seen on The Totally Rad Show. They've gone daily so there's a new segment to watch every day of the week!
Our Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page is coming along now so add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
Just a note on sales, marketing, Call of Duty, and Activision.
My basketball coach in highschool gave the team a lesson during our first practice senior year. We had split up into 2 groups, and were playing a short skirmish game. My team had possesion, and we ran a smoothly exicuted pick-and-roll play, and scored.
Our next possesion, our point guard decided not to be predictable and called for a different play. Our coach blew the whistle and stopped the game.
"Why did you use a different play?" He asked. "The pick and roll worked the first time, right?".
Our point guard responded "I thought they might be ready for it this time". Our coach smiled and asked "If a play works, how many times to you repeat it before you switch to a different play?".
Our entire team started throwing out random gueses, but we had clearly missed the point.
"You use the same play as long as it works. If you run that pick and roll, and you score, then do it again and again and again until you don't score. Why change your play if you are scoring with it?"
That is EXACTLY the approach Activision takes in general, and specifically with Call of Duty. They don't give a crap about game quality or driving the medium forward. They care about making money. Or perhaps I should say, the way they judge the quality of a game is by looking at how much money it makes.
If Call of Duty keeps selling more than any other game, then Activision will not allow it to change. If Modern Warfare 3 doesn't break all kinds of sales records, then we might see things get shaken up a bit. But as things are going right now, Activision doesn't need to change their play... they are scoring every time.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 16 replies.
In your basketball analogy, there's a distinction between an open fun game, and a competition game. In an open fun game, its fine to change it up as such. However in an official game, if a set play is working and the opposition is not able to stop it, then it make sense to keep at it if it is producing results.
Obviously you have competing companies, but often I feel that games companies are more content with doing the best that they themselves can, and so focus one getting their stuff better and putting it out there.
It seems that in Activision's case, they are content to just go out there and annihilate the competition, where they really do seem to treat this as competition, hence the much more business-like approach.
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