Weekend Confirmed Episode 51

I think some gamers need to get their head out of their asses

Anyone that is who looks down their noses at Bulletstorm. What has happened to gamers? They all play a FPS set in an underwater city and they all turn into god damn Socrates? Who called the fun police? Someone says 'dick-tits' and all over the room monocles fall into drinks and women in fur coats faint ... when did gamers become some weird breed high-brow, sophisticated, turtle-neck wearing art critics?

I'm a 31 year old man, married for 10 years with two kids and I'm not one bit ashamed to say that I think Bulletstorm is fun as hell. And at times I'm surrounded by people half my age rolling their eyes at the games immaturity.

I have some news for you, games don't always have to be life changing, philosophical, mind-expanding extravaganzas. Sometimes they are about mindless, silly, drunken, laugh out loud FUN.

Just look at film. Sure, I enjoyed the Kings Speech and a few weeks later I had a good laugh watching Jackass 3D. There is far more offensive content in films like Scary Movie (in which a guy rides a fountain of ejaculation) which I'm sure gamers packed the cinemas to see. Why can't Bulletstorm be the Super Troopers of video games?

Lighten up kids!

Relating to the Bulletstorm content discussion:

I think gamers (including myself) are incredibly capable of looking past subject matter that they may not particularly care for, simply because they appreciate the other elements that go into the cumulative experience.

Whether that's embracing the fun shooting mechanics and scoring system in Bulletstorm despite the juvenile tone, or looking past weird Japanese cultural touchstones, or excessively sexualized women. None of those things really bother me, but I know people that they might bother who look past them because they appreciate and enjoy the game design.

I think onlookers, like John's wife, may find it more difficult to appreciate the sum total of a game's appeal going off of quick looks and sound bites, simply because they don't or can't appreciate all the other elements that make a game enjoyable.

The same way that movie buffs might look past some relatively shallow plots simply because the appreciate the skill or style of the cinematography (Robert Rodreiguez, I'm looking at you).

Ok, so I'm going to actually attempt this now... For me a AAA game is a game that's trying to convey a complete reality. If you look at the scope of video game evolution, it has really started with pixels themselves, and evolved to pixels that form 'nouns' that we're actually familiar with like cars, people, guns, etc. To me, a non-AAA game is something that restrains its attempt to convey a whole reality for the sake of game mechanics. Something like Tetris or even Mario, the later of which just sort of uses psychedelic imagery in a generalized way. While these games can be fun, and even more pleasurable than "reality" games, they're not attempting to completely suspend our disbelief. So, I think the theory of AAA games, is that we don't just play to exercise fun mechanics, but to believe we're in (a)nother world. We sacrifice mechanics to some extent, to exploit technology and use stimuli that makes an experience virtual.

I guess I'll also add, I think the standard to which we hold a game's success in conveying a "complete reality" depends on the technology available to the developers on their game's platform. So, you can argue that a game is or isn't AAA on the PC, Wii, or iphone.

Also, I do think different traditional game genres fall into the AAA fold---ie even though racing games don't even show you the person driving for instance, because the mechanics are only driving, it can be considered AAA. However, I think those kinds of "focused experiences' status is conditional based on how much they exploit the technology. So, Mario Kart may be more fun than Gran Turismo, but it's not AAA because its merely exploiting the idea of racing to create a sense of "fun."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-03-16-molyneux-sorry-if-ive-over-promised

It makes sense and after reading that it makes sense. I give Peter credit for his honesty. It is odd that he would keep over promising like that. To me when you do that, it gives me the impression that the initial ideas aren't interesting enough (to him), which at least he apologizes to the team for.

Thoughts?

The price of games and the price drop of Homefront

It seems over the last year, more and more games are getting a $10/$20 gift card when you pre-order. Then, after the game is released it seems it’s taking less and less time for games to be discounted to $50 and less. Take Bulletstorm and Dead Space 2. Both were on sale on Amazon for $40 within a week of it’s release.

It doesn't make much sense to release games at less than $60 since gamers are willing to pay it day one. Once sales start to slump, they drop the price $10-$20 for a week. Then after about two months $40 is the retail price, then drop another $10 after another month or two. The only exception to this seems to be big “AAA” releases like Call of Duty, and first party exclusives.

Just this week we saw Homefront discounted to $42 on Amazon and Walmart the day after release. I saw a lot of people claiming this was because of low review scores. Even the stock of THQ dropped. However, if you pre-ordered the game from Amazon you probably paid $57 and got a $15 credit to use at Amazon.com. That works out to paying... wait for it... $42. The price on Wednesday was virtually the same price everyone was pre-ordering it at. I buy a lot on Amazon and it's quite common for the price to drop to after launch to match the pre-order price with the store credit.

I don’t think the quick price drop on Homefront directly had anything to do with the bad review scores. If anything, both retailers had an abundance of stock that wasn’t selling to their expectations. The other thought is that maybe THQ wanted to get Homefront to a quick million unit seller and was subsidising the $40 price tag of the game somehow if retailers sell a certain number of copies.

What is a AAA game?

For me, a AAA game uses the latest technology for visuals, offers lengthy experience with multiple layers.
A multi player only game CAN be a AAA game if it is filled to the brim with features, is expertly designed, and includes top notch design. ....wait

Yet, when I look at something like Team Fortress 2, I don't get the AAA vibe. And I ask myself "why not?" It feels like since it wasn't marketed as this stand alone full priced title, I didn't expect it give me a completely new or extraordinary experience. Arguably, though, it has fantastic visuals, addicting game play, and is full of features.

Portal offered a new experience BUT is it AAA? I don't know.

I don't think we would consider a downloadable title like Flower or Shadow Complex to be AAA games because of the smaller budgets, the cheaper price, and the shorter/smaller experience.

But if we take a game like Singularity, which has a single player and multiplayer, has a 60 dollar price but isn't as "good" as the "best" FPS games out there right now, do we consider this title AAA?

When it comes down to it for me, a AAA game offers a big experience, whether its mainly single player, mainly multi player, or both. It is a deep experience that has multiple mechanics beyond the standards for the particular genre. It offers the best visuals and has the potential to offer the better than most experience for that particular type of game (better than most FPS, better than most RPG etc...). I also expect these games to cost the going rate for a good video game (meaning, right now, 60 dollars). I don't think a 40 dollar experience is aiming to be "AAA". But the question I ask myself, can't a 40 dollar game who meets all these requirements a AAA game?

In reality, a AAA game is a state of mind for games. Games really are AAA after they are released, successful both critically and financially. It is the audience (critics and consumers) that decide if a game is AAA. I think developers and publishers have this AAA mentality of what a AAA game is. Really, a AAA game from the developer/publisher side is something that cost a lot of money to make and to market. However, I don't really think the critics or us consumers stick to that definition. The AAA experience is something that feels COMPLETE, feels NEW, LOOKS AMAZING, and JUSTIFIES a purchase.

As you see, I can't define a AAA game because its something that doesn't really exist. Why is Uncharted a AAA experience but why is games like Singularity or Timeshift not?

Is it the success of game combined with the cost/marketing of the game? Or is it the endgame experience that we judge for the game being considered as being AAA or not?

Probably an old topic, but do the negative actions or controversial opinions of a game designer have an effect on your enjoyment of a game, or the perception of a game to come? I started thinking about this after reading the following article:

http://au.ps3.ign.com/articles/115/1154560p1.html

Basically its an editorial regarding an interview and surprising response from "Last Guardian" creator Fumito Ueda regarding why he seems to choose to have a male protagonist in all of his games. His answer is both surprising and disappointing, depending on how aware you are of cultural differences.

Last time I felt similarly was with Shadow Complex.

With all the "consolization" concerns going on, I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth it for a developer to try to achieve platform parity between consoles and PC, or is it virtually impossible to please both sets of gamers with the same game.

When developers try, in most cases they seem to end up with a Dragon Age Origins or a Crysis where they have a great PC game but a bad console port or no console port at all, or a Rainbow Six Vegas that looks dumbed down from the last game. Should they start treating the PC as a whole separate tier like the Wii or the handhelds?

When they make a game on the HD consoles and the Wii, most developers don't have any illusion of creating the same experience on all three, so they try to make something that fits for the Wii on the side. Just like that, there are inherent differences with the PC that developers just can't get around with a straight-up port. The examples of games that are great on both consoles and PC this generation are few.

BioWare is at least trying by giving each version a totally different control scheme in the case of Mass Effect and Dragon Age. You also have Bethesda's games like Oblivion and Fallout, but those games were satisfying on PC largely because of UI mods that would emerge days after release. Ubisoft had a unique solution of making an entirely different GRAW game on PC. Modern Warfare 1 was the last great COD on PC, but was also a very different game on that platform with higher player counts and mods.

Garnett, Bioware's decision to dumb down Dragon Age, or Mass Effect 2 it, is all the more confusing when you consider that Origins is their most successful game sales wise. It outsold Mass Effect 2. I remember Todd Howard talking about something like this when someone asked him about Skyrim as it compares to Fallout 3. Someone asked him how a fan of Fallout 3 will feel about Skyrim if they didn't care for Oblivion. He basically said that this game isn't for that person then. They learned lessons from Fallout but they won't be turning Elder Scrolls into Fallout. It's a different game with different fans. Why didn't Bioware do that?

Hello. I've been a listener of your podcast for some time, but this is the first time I really find myself compelled to comment. This is in regards to your coverage of Bulletstorm and specifically the comment made that one felt the need to apologize to his wife for the dialogue.

Someone else here already made the point that you can turn the profanity off and get completely clean dialogue without the cussing or the creative insults, so I won't beat on that point. However, that comment about apologizing because of language just really struck a nerve with me.

I mean, let's look at this. We have a game where you're doing incredibly violent things to others in dramatic, gory fashion. Pinning them to walls with drill bits, taking heads of with superheated chains linking grenades together. All this violence and gore and you have to apologize for the language? You'll pardon me if I find that to be a pretty weird double standard.

Let me be clear, I have no problems with the violence in this game or others. I play Bulletstorm and find it an enjoyable 'turn your brain off' shooter that's great for when I want to unwind from work. The language doesn't bother me, though I do engage the censor if I play while my son is still awake. (all things fair, the last thing I need is my 3 year old calling people 'dicktits') But, to say that the language is what triggers you to apologize to your wife or other people in the room while you're doing all these violent things, we really have messed up priorities here in America, don't we?

God forbid someone cuss or string together adjectives into a fairly creative insult, and Lord save us if there's even a hint of sexuality, but violence, eh that's cool yo. Disembowl, curb stomp, rip em up, that's fine, but do so without using potty language or looking sexy, can you do that?
Clearly a double standard that needs to be addressed.


In terms of other topics, I really don't think of games in terms like AAA or middle class. I have a very limited game budget, so I just look for games that I think will be fun to play. I don't buy on release day, I read reviews and I see what others are saying, then I purchase. At the end of the day, these are games and games are supposed to be fun. They fulfill their purpose with that accomplishment alone. When I shut off my console, I have one question, "did I enjoy that?" If the answer is yes, then it's a good game, if not, then it's a crappy game.
I have no interest in the marketing blitz that seems to accompany the annual shooters or the 'full of cheap crap to hike the price' special editions thrown out. The only special edition I've bought was the Fallout 3 one and I use the damn lunchbox to take my lunch to work!

I have to wonder just how much of that $60 price tag is there to support the marketing blitz instead of paying the development teams. How much cheaper could games be if their launches didn't have to be some sort of massive event? I'm perfectly fine with a quiet release, without much if any fanfare, but accompanied by solid reviews and glowing comments about the game and it's contents.

I just wanted to chime in about the mid level pricing. The Lego games(Star Wars, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones) have all set themselves at $49.99 on the next gen platforms and saw success without a question of quality.

I view video games, movies, and books as different types of storytelling. However, to me an important part of a story is the emotional attachment to a character in the story. This is one place I think other medias have far surpassed video games. I rarely feel an emotional attachment to video game characters. The only one I can think of is Alex from Half Life 2, especially after the ending of episode 2. So, have any of you felt an emotional attachment to a video game character? If not, why do you think there haven’t been any?

Homefront. If I were writing a review for the game I would say here a great example of a game that was obviously focused tested out of it's original intent. As clued in as I am to the comings and goings of most of the games on console and PC I was surprised to learn this game had multiplayer. To add to that I was even more surprised to learn that the multiplayer was probably the focus of the game. The single player campaign at times teases you into believing that the game would be the serious take on war and US occupation that the trailers show but every time it gets there it slips into a COD moment. OMG!! I'm so pissed lets kill all these guys despite the fact we're heavily outnumbered! Seriously why the fuck does every publisher believe that what we want is for every game to be COD. Hey publishers, if I wanted more COD I would just pop it in or buy the next one. Anyway Homefront is my most disappointing game of the year. I fell for the ads and really believed this game would be different. I truly hope this game is a colossal failure so devs and publishers can wake up to the fact that not every fps has to be COD.

Request for the show!!

Please explain how Chatty is meant to work, its very confusing! So each Post has a chat thread... but so does each 'game'... but you cant see the chat threads of stories associated with the game... as i say, i don't get it!?

I really wanted to post something regarding Sterling McGarvey's avoidance of talking about the political connotations of the the phrase 'middle class' with reference to games, because I actually think he was onto something there.

It seems to me that gaming has become increasingly aimed at a smaller subsection of society with a higher disposable income more and more. The industry now is propped up on a 'marquee release' type structure, where everyone into games flocks to the hot new thing - and this could even explain why multiplayer, shorter campaigns, and immediate, accessible gameplay has become a higher priority for developers than replayability, depth, and complexity.

I'm currently living in a relatively poor Eastern European country, and there are loads of gamers here, however most of them are PC gamers, and piracy is the most common form of getting games. It was the same when I lived in Brazil, and I assume other poorer countries across the globe. The pricing of games (not to mention the amount of periphery stuff such as DLC, subscriptions, etc) is extremely alienating to people in these parts of the world, but coming from the UK I know that there are game enthusiasts who will prop up a arbitrary pricing and media-hyped artificial obsolescence.

In the long run I think this will mean less diversity, fewer new developers, and increasing piracy, whilst the idea of games being a niche, hobbyist form of media will never go away.

@Jeff

In the the 6 hours campaign of Bulletstorm full of "dicktitis", they have 3 lines of self referential jokes. I cant see how this makes the writing funny or even clever.

That said, at the end I did not hate the characters or the story as I did in the first 3 hours, and some of the stuff that happens in the game made me laugh. But 10% of good jokes dont make the rest of the incredible stupid jokes, ok.

I also want to call Jeff out on something else (sorry, I'm picking on you this week, haha).

During the Dragon Age 2 discussion, he disappointingly mentions that he hasn't seen too much carried over from the original.

Or that he didn't perceive it.

Now I haven't played either Dragon Age, but the vibe I've gotten regarding the rise of choice based WRPGs this gen is that the eventual goal is to play a story that was uniquely yours, without even noticing when you've branched the story line. However I think in Jeff's case, he is naturally curious and want's to take a peak behind the game's curtain to see how it's all working. In my opinion, these two are incompatible.

Do you want to know when you've done something with effects (like in Fallout: New Vegas, where I've heard you get fail messages for quests you've never even started if you kill someone important or pick a certain decision?) or do you want to not know, that is, to go down a fluid story that flows as continuously as a Call of Duty campaign, and you remain unaware when you even made changes?

In regard to your discussion on "middle of the road" games, I don't think Jeff realized what a blanket statement he was making when he said a studio putting out a AAA game at $40 was incompatible.

One of the biggest lessons learned this gen is from the downloadable games. Is Jeff suggesting that if the creators of Limbo had any confidence in their game being AAA, they should have boxed it and sold it at $60? I think it's perfectly reasonable for a game like Homefront to have devoted all resources to single player and come out at $40, and still attempt to be AAA.

I need to agree with Sterling saying legendary edition buyers last gen enabled the $60 games, and even take it a step further, since in my opinion, the response to $60 games has been pretty apathetic. Honestly, I think it's because of the internet. Not the technical part but the sociological one. Marketing has got us so wrapped around their finger, that when, for example, L.A. Noire comes out in May, you're gonna have to buy it then, because all podcasts, websites and message boards are going to be talking about it. If you get it in September, who will you discuss it with?

It sounds completely illogical, but I think people almost feel a sense of loneliness if a big game comes out and everyone on their favorite website is discussing it, and they don't have an opinion to spew. It's amazing that peer pressure can exist with people that don't know each other.

I've essentially gotten this gen at half price by trailing a few years and never buying a game for over $30. You guys are completely right that patience pays, and more than willing to wait. This month I am going to start playing Fallout 3 GOTY, which includes $110 of content. I just bought it on Ebay for $25. And guess what? It's the same code that many of you played in 2008. I don't feel like I missed a thing.

I got to play a lot of Section 8: Prejudice at PAX East this weekend. The game is shaping up really well. Great mix between Tribes, Battlefield, and Halo. I was very surprised then to discover that Section 8: Prejudice is being released as a $15 XBLA game. It's scope and production value are far beyond anything I've seen in an XBLA game before. It made me wonder if we are seeing the very beginning of the shift we've been asking for; a new price point for big games?

I spoke quite a bit with the development team, and they said that they are building the game as if it were a $60 box release. They recognize that the "Section 8" brand can't go toe-to-toe with Call of Duty or Halo, so they hope that a $15 release will help get their game into more hands, and build their fanbase.

Personally, I'm super excited about the game. It was a lot of fun. Being a show floor demo, it was difficult to see just how much "scale" the game really has, but what I got to see was very impressive.
I really do hope more teams and publishers follow this approach.

Just something I've been wondering today regarding game design philosophy: Do you prefer that deveopers design the character(s) first and then build the world around them, or design and build the world first, followed by the insertion of characters that would fit the world?

For the former, I see the classic games like Mario and Sonic being designed this way (hence a more iconic IP) and of recent, Unchartered where Nathan (and friends) show so much personality with the game basically playing the "everyman in extraordinary situations", God of War where so much of the focus revolves around Kratos' quest for vengeance, and Sam and Max for obvious reasons.

On the other side, you have a lot more games that fit the "world before characters" design such as the whole Fallout series and the Elder scrolls series where your character is what YOU build them to be, but the world within the game really have that depth behind them, Bioshock and the Half-Life series where you essentially play the "faceless protagonist" but are given the opportunity to fully absorb the wonderment of the world and get a sense of the feeling the developers were trying to convey in the world, and Assassins Creed, where the world begun with the historical context, but the character you play is essentially an avatar representing you, visiting the past.

Either seems to be valid, though for character design first, trends more towards a linear yet structured gaming, and for world first, a much more of an exploratory experience where you are encouraged to absorb the settings.

Thoughts?

Dragon Age 2 is not a dumbed down version of Dragon Age.... on the PC.

Having played Origins and Awakenings extensively on PC, and being about 18 hours into DA2 so far on PC, I have to say the combat is almost identical.

All they have done is balanced the console version slightly better, and changed spells around. Sure there's no friendly fire on AoE spells anymore, but you'll need to use AoE spells way more often. Anyways, that wasn't fun in the first game it ended up restricting what spells you'd end up using.

You will still face dragons that wipe your party, and fights that almost seem broken as you chug potions on cooldown. And while it's mostly a more streamlined difficulty curve, most trash fights aren't going to give you problems if you pause to make decisions. If you don't pause the game, you'll definitely see a party member or two die on even the easiest fight. The game let's you in gently with an abilitease tutorial and a slow ramp up, but it's not too long before you're in deeper than the original game.

Bioware didn't "sell out" dragon age combat for consoles, anybody preaching that hasn't played nearly enough or any of the PC game.

Also, I'm really glad that Jeff brought up the map. I feel like it's such an essential experience to any fantasy game or book. And though I love that art style in the cinematics, they really made a mistake by making it the overworld. I can get over the fact that I'm not on a Tolkien adventure, and I think it's really great for someone to try to tackle a city state over a long period of time. But it feels so restricting when the locations are abstracted like that. The level design and navigation was very similar in DA:O, but this artistic choice highlights the problem.

Old:
http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/6/62830/1548050-map___denerim_super.jpg
New:
http://steamcommunity.com/id/Forbin/screenshot/559776799887925002

I would definitely not say there's less to do, if anything there's way more to do, but without that traditional over map, and trail of blood for loading, I just feel like I'm loading distinct levels from a menu.

Anyways, great game, and anybody who tells you otherwise is probably just building a case to save themselves $60. Don't let someone's hate of superfluous DLC or "consolofication" turn you away.

Just a quick comment:

The rotating split screen mode in the game being made by ex-bungie employees? I believe it was Jeff who made a comment about how great that would be in a Lego game, which made me chuckle, because one of the Lego games actually used this exact feature about a year ago (I'm blanking on which one..... anyone remember?)

Very cool feature though... I do hope it finds its way into more co-op games.

Hey Garnett, Jeff,

Love your show. Been lurking here for awhile and thought, since you guys are one of the rare podcasts that actually interacts with their listeners, that I should jump right in.

I've been playing Dragon Age 2 on PC and, after 38 hours, I am finding it a very tactically deep game. Part of this, I think, has to do with the vastly increased utility of the rogue and warrior classes, which now have a lot more spec options and rival mages in terms of versatility. The other reason is that I kicked the difficulty up to Hard - I remember reading somewhere that Bioware balanced Casual and Normal so that you could play only one character and not die. But the Hard setting, at least from my experience, requires full party control and rewards synergy. And I can't even imagine playing Nightmare.... As a person who really enjoyed DA:O, I'm finding combat in DA2 just as rewarding, maybe more so.

Well, that's about it. If you end up playing DA2, Garnett, I hope this helps you enjoy it more.

AAA is determined mainly by marketing. It's pretty easy to figure out.

A game is AAA if it got:
- Gamestop pre order bonus content ( bonus: other retail chains with unique bonus content).
- Exclusive trailers at keynotes/award shows (bonus: Made by Blur).
- Collectors edition with artbook and gimick toy or figure (bonus: Super legendary edition that is more than $100)
- Day one dlc. Additional dlc announced before/near game release.

The more bulletpoints you have, the more 'AAA' you are.

Jeff:

I just wanted to say thanks for all your designer boardgame talk, It really helped me out this weekend.

My friend just got married and she and her husband really enjoy Settlers of Catan and had one of the expansions on their gift registry. For the life of me I couldn't remember which one, so instead I bought them Last Night On Earth based on your recommendation. Less than 24 hours later I got a call from her to say it was their favorite gift!

Anyway thumbs up and thanks!

Hey guys I'm new here and I thought this place was great to have a real discussion about video games in a grown up matter and bigger issues other than this game is great or not. So then,

In the past year or so I've tried avoid using gamer lingo such as AAA, Hardcore, or Casual gamers. I'm doing this because I feel really silly when I do use those words. It does not best describe what I want to talk about.

Anyway, when someone usually explains what a AAA game is you usually get the description of High Budget, Looks Amazing, Controls are tight (FPS), Lots of great dialog or branching stories (RPG), detailed world with lots of things to do (Open world/sandbox). To me AAA is just a promise from the developer/publisher that this game will be awesome and have lots of money behind it.

For Hardcore/Casual I feel silly calling myself hardcore for anything. I would consider myself straight edge (Don't drink/smoke/etc...) but just saying that just feels awkward and I would not say that about myself if I was talking to someone.

(I played this game on Very Hard) As for Bulletstorm I really liked all of it, not a popular opinion on here, I know. I liked how dumb it was. I have not played a game in a while that is just dumb low brow fun. I'm not gonna say that the writing was brilliant but it was self aware once or twice.

I feel like there was much hyperbole from the press about the vulgar level in Bulletstorm. Maybe it was because I died a lot but there was a long time where the characters did not say anything. If you are someone that does not enjoy low brow humor than I can understand why you would not want to be near this game. The only thing I didn't like was that it got ridiculously hard from Act 5 onward so I had to turn down from Very Hard to just Hard.

Also I'm looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever, maybe it is just because I'm in college so that is the audience these games are geared towards.

Note to Jeff---visceral and emotional are the same thing. The delineations you might've been trying to make are ethos (emotional), pathos (credibility), logos (logical). These are criteria of argument, but I guess they could be applied to story telling. There was a quote I read of Hideo Kojima's recently that was something like, 'If you can't convince the player that the world is real then there's no point in making the game.'

I think that design philosophy comes down to developers wisely implementing the minutia you were talking about with Heavy Rain. With that said, Metal Gear Solid games (which you interestingly brought up as an example of how not to tell a story in a game, and yet suffered amnesia with regards to this) are famous for this kind of gameplay minutia.

Would Dom be convincing drinking a glass of orange juice in a cheesy 80s movie style, post-apocalyptic war zone? No. But he might be convincing smoking a cigarette. It might even be a fun meta touch if the smoking affected his ability to resistance to taking damage in battle. If only there were developers out there who did something like that.

A developer who valued story in their games, and respected their audience as mature enough to handle such values.

Oh wait, gamers (including gamers on podcasts and who somehow get paid to write things) have proven time and time again that they're not mature enough for that stuff. Whenever you confront them with this reality they usually just write it off as a game that's just "fun." But I tend to think that "fun" in these cases is just a code word for stupid.

All that talk about the dick jokes in Bulletstorm. Bad taste and embarassing moments. Apparently you could play the game without a single curse word.

From the game's creative director Adrian Chmielarz in a PCGamer.com article:

"In Bulletstorm, you can turn off the profane language. I’m not talking about beeping out the swear words. I’m talking about replacing entire lines with alternate ones, something we and Rick Remender worked hard on. This way you don’t even know when the characters curse and when they don’t, the experience is very fluid.

Originally, we made it so the players had to choose the language (profane/alternate) before they could play the game. But then we thought: “Fuck it, people already have to go through a couple of info windows before they get to play, let’s not make it even more painful – let’s put that option into Options menu. Everyone will find it if they want to”.

Worst. Decision. Ever.

It really cost us. My opinion is that our Metacritic score is a few points lower just because of that decision. Just as an example, check out the review from Wired, where the reviewer didn’t really like the dick jokes (calling them our “Achilles’ penis”, which hurt, but was also awesome). That’s absolutely fine, but I wish he knew about and was able to choose to play with the alternate dialogue."

Middleclass games
I think gamefly adds a new thread to this discussion, I could care less how long or how expensive a game is now that I use gamefly. I loved Singularity(did not play MP) and Enslaved and I will give any interesting game a shot. The only games I ever actually buy are realllllllly long games like Fallouts, Dragon Age, Fables, cheap downloadable games or the premiere multiplayer games that I know will have a large following for long time like COD or Halo. I would not buy a $10 I would just put it on my gamefly que.

An AAA game is a bit like porn, I cannot easily define it but I know it when I see it.

What makes a game re-playable?

The only game I have ever re-played is Metal Gear Solid.... Even if a story is really good and a game is generalyl good, I still have difficulty enveloping myself in a game if I have already played it through. I feel like I have already seen and experienced that world and created my story in it, I don't want to ruin that...

With all their resources, I can't figure out why Bioware cannot pull off a game as amazing as Obsidian's Alpha Protocol. AP is the most nuanced RPG I've ever come across, the story is intertwined to such a degree that unless you play it more than once or read about other peoples playthroughs, you wouldn't even have a clue thats the case. The way you handle conversations has far reaching consequences throughout the game such as pitting characters against one another, turning them to your side, killing them far earlier than you normally would (if at all), and even who you fight against as the final boss.

Story wise, Alpha Protocol is basically what most people clamor for from a RPG and no one even seems to realize it, games media being the most guilty of this

AAA is not simply a matter of quality. High scores do not make a game AAA alone, any more that great sales make a mediocre game a AAA release. To be AAA, a game has to be hyped up and actually deliver the quality that was advertised.

A game can be incredibly high quality, like a LIMBO or a Bayonetta, but these typically don't stand out quite as well amid the pack simply because word is not spread well enough for anticipation to hit critical mass. Likewise, Killzone was hyped to hell as a AAA release, but failed to deliver on the hype, so it failed to achieve AAA standing.

I haven't played Bulletstorm, but it doesn't sound to me to be any worse than Conker's was back in the day. Two games built on the idea of over the top violence and foul language for comedic reward. If they pull it off, it's probably hilarious. Of course, some people won't like it at all for the very reasons it is trying to be funny, but you can't please everyone.

As far as the AAA and middleclass games debate goes I have to completely disagree with Cliffyb. AAA in my opinion is all about a standard of quality not content. Bulletstorm for me is the definition of a middle class game compared to Gears of war to use two examples from Epic.
AAA has to have a pedigree behind it. Games shouldnt be labelled AAA unless they earn it from previous history. The example i am thinking is Half Life Episode 3. When this is announced it will rightly be called AAA.
There are also lots of examples of middle class games. I consider Vanquish to be one. Homefront possibly another. Vanquish has none of the bulletpoints on the box that Homefront has but to use Garnetts analagy 'they punch at the same weight'.
Where would you put sports games, racing games, mobile games et al in this generalisation?
Sorry cliffy your looking at this from a shooter perspective and your wrong.

I think the hipster tide has turned on Bioware and everyone is trying to out-Ariel the Mermaid the hell out of each other in tight-jeaned disdain: "yeah Bioware used to be okay I guess, but XYZ is way better"...

For DAO, my first "campfire encounter" was my last. When I met the NPC DLC salesman, I quit the game and traded it for Mass Effect 2.

Does DA2 still have NPC DLC Salesmen?

So, if you're friends and loved ones are put off or offended by gratuitous dick jokes, the solution is to convince them to listen to several hours worth of additional gratuitous dick jokes until they come around and realize it's actually clever? I'll get right on that...

... okay, before this statement gets misconstrued, the point I want to make is that the larger context doesn't really factor in. John Davidson is apologizing to his wife not because the dialogue isn't clever, but because she isn't going to listen to every line of it. It doesn't really matter if she's actually wrong in her assessment, she's assessing the situation based on the limited information she's received. I'm sure that years of marriage has taught Mr. Davidson all to well his chances of success should he decide to point out how wrong his wife is, as compared to just apologizing and getting on with his day.

Happy early 1 Year Anniversary Weekend Confirmed!

Thank you guys for keeping with the podcast this long and here's to another great year of awesome podcasts!