Weekend Confirmed Episode 52

So, I just listened to the part of the show where Garnett said he is sick of people "slagging" the music breaks. Unless there were posts on Neogaf, then he must have been talking about my post and the posts in response, all of which were extremely positive about the show and none that went much farther than "I don't like the music break.

Now, I know he was into the sauce a bit, but I have to admit that I am more than a bit annoyed at how childish he acted, especially when I took the time to offer up a compromise (playing 30 seconds of the song at the break then the rest at the end of the show).

If I wanted to slag the music breaks I would talk about how generic the song are, or how tenuous the connection to the shows community is, or how unbearable the song choice is... But I won't do that.

All I will ask is this; Garnett, how would you feel if a developer you loved had something a large segment of their community, including you, despised, yet they kept returning to anyway?

Going back to the discussion about Homefront and THQ's stock price, I was surprised when you guys skipped over the continued prevalance of gaming sites playing along with publishers allowing review embargoes to be broken early only if the review is positive.

This seems unethical and, in any other entertainment industry, such a revelation would be a serious black mark on an enthusiast journalism outlet. Where's the serious discussion of the "game journalists" (I know, controversial term) responsibility in this scenario?

The bottom line appears to be that sites benefit from posting early positive reviews. Good review = early post of review = more traffic = more advertizing dollars. I would hope (and challenge) Shacknews, for example, to not go along with this system. Every time a publisher places this kind of bifurcated embargo on a review, post it on the date the later embargo clears, even if the review is positive.

Love the show, congrats on a year.

In regards to the discussion this week on "love" and how it can be expressed by video games..

Please, please play "Digital: A Love Story." It's an "interactive fiction game," but there's a little more to it than that. It's definitely a Jeff Cannata game - I'm 99% sure he would love it and rave about it. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Everyone else should at least try it out, as it only takes a couple hours to complete, and it's free. It stirred up feelings and emotions I've never really had while playing a video game. It's been a couple months since I played it, and I still think about it regularly.

BTW, I'm purposefully not mentioning any details about the game and I'd advise anyone checking it out to avoid them, because you can't even really say what it's about without spoiling it.

Here's the link: http://www.scoutshonour.com/digital/

Again, please check it out. Especially Jeff.

There has been some talk lately about game pricing and length and I wanted to chime in. For me the length of a game doesn't matter as much as if it is a well made and enjoyable experience. Portal is a prime example. I would gladly pay $60 for portal because it is such a fun and well made game, even though it is shorter than some. I don't think that length should effect the price of a game. Quite often I here people say that because a game is short then it should be cheaper, but does that then mean that longer games should be more expensive? Should dragon age be 79.99 or even 89.99 because it is a 70hr plus game? Of course not.
But I think that the biggest problem that some games like homefront have is that even if they should be cheaper, if they price themselves lower from the get go then you get those people in the store that assume that because a game is only $40 then it must be crap. I think what needs to happen to break the trend of the $60 game and bring around the era of truly variable pricing is for a really big blockbuster release, something that people know is going to be good, like gears 3 or uncharted 3, to come out on launch day and be $39.99. I think that because it is already a well trusted franchise that people will trust that it will be a good game and still buy it, and You would probably also get a lot of people that have herd of the game, or the franchise, but never played it, that pick it up because it is such a great price. If someone has balls enough to try something like this do you think that other companies will follow suit, or will we be stuck with the $60 game for another decade?

The crew touched on the point of a franchise branching out onto different platforms and whether or not an identical experience on both home and portable devices(e.g. what Dead Space was aiming for) is as compelling as expanding the franchise down different avenues that are designed around the strengths and capabilities of the device.

With the NGP, I think it's great that we may be playing the same game (Uncharted 3?) on both the PS3 and the NGP and the differences between both versions could be near unnoticeable. I think there is definitely a market for those types of games to succeed, but similarly to Jeff C, I'm not as excited for those types of experiences as I am for the promise of different yet connected experiences on differing devices.

From what I remember, Microsoft were the first to announce a push for this type of thing at E3 2006 when Bill Gates announced Live Anywhere (The crew discussed this when they mentioned Forza being accessed on your Windows phone, Windows PC and Xbox 360), but it never came to fruition.

Lionhead Games experimented with a similar idea by bringing the Fable 2 Pub Games to XBLA prior to the release of Fable 2. I think there is definitely room to take this further. Jeff C talked about games that had you thinking about them when you weren't playing them, which sparked in me an idea for the Fable franchise.

In Fable 2, you were able to buy such businesses as fruit stalls, and then generate revenue from them. Although the concept was great, the execution was very barebones and not very fun. Instead of exploring the world of Albion while you were away from your console, wouldn't it be great to be able to manage these businesses on your phone in a game that suits the strengths of the device? Hiring staff, adjusting prices, making business decisions with local producers etc. Sure it's not Fable in its true form, but it's another way of investing yourself in that world that is unique and fits well with what a phone is capable of doing.

Is there room for these types of experiences to be had? If so, what franchises do you think could implement them?
Are we as traditional gamers guilty of labelling these efforts by developers and publishers a simple cash grab?

I finally got to have a (very) brief hands-on with the 3DS this afternoon, and I have to say, after weeks of tempering my expectations in response to what I've been told, I think you guys are out of your minds.

This whole "viewing angle" thing you keep complaining about... it's not a tenth as bad as you made it sound, neither is switching from the 2D bottom screen to the 3D top screen. The location of the d-pad isn't *that* awkward either (maybe it was someone on a different podcast complaining about that? I'm not sure, just throwing it out there anyway.) Should any Monster Hunter clones come out for this thing (practically a given in Japan) at least the setup will make "the claw" a little easier to pull off.

As for the 3D... I was sort of impressed, if not altogether convinced that it was necessary. It adds nothing to the games, but it takes nothing away either. Maybe some games are different, but I didn't see a huge difference between the cranking the 3D up to eleven and having it set very close to zero, though the lower setting was a little easier on my eyes.

I will admit, though, aesthetically, the 3D does add a nice "pop" to the image, so it's definitely something I'll take advantage of from time to time.

Jeff Cannata's opinion of DA2 pretty much tells me he's not the guy I should go to for opinions on video games. He and I must just be polar opposites.

I felt the story in Dragon Age 2 was the weakest thing about it. To try to make the point without spoiling the game, the great story moments that Jeff C. talked about surrounding the Deep Roads are recycled again in the very next act. The enviorments are recycled, the dramatic twist is recycled, the combat is recycled. It's one big circle. Even the character development is weak, as your family is put to the screws from start to finish, and your only real bond to them is "it's your family." Which is mostly what your connection to the Mage/Templar dispute is as well. Your involvement begins and ends with what Templars and Mages do to those people who surround you. There are even plot twists that seem to happen just to make another boss fight, with no real relevance to the plot at all.

I find it interesting that MLB 11 The Show was released for the PS2. We are five years into the current generation, and Sony is still supporting the PS2. Wal-mart still has a new PS2 section, but it's been years since I've seen new Game Cube or Xbox games in any store. What do you think about that? Have you ever seen anything like this before? It just seems odd, especially considering that newer PS3s are not even backwards compatible with PS2 games.

Hey guys,

There were a couple of points in the shows where videogame critics were compared to film critics and I wanted to weigh in a bit on this issue because it is one I have been thinking about for some time.

Very few self respecting film critics would rate the big dumb blockbuster movie highly because they choose to demand something more than just lowest common denominator entertainment. Similarly, no self respecting food critic would rate McDonald's burgers high just because it feeds the primal urge for fat and sugar. Instead, these critics strive to challenge their readers to cultivate a more sophisticated taste because they believe there is something far more worthy to be found beyond the realm of instant gratification.

Comparatively, the big dumb blockbuster videogame is almost always handled with a kid gloves. The most recent examples being Bulletstorm and Homefront. As much as I generally love Jeff (Totally Rad show is awesome, btw), it really grates me to hear him talk about Bulletstorm because he repeatedly will say things like "It's self aware!" or "It's meta!, as if a dumb game being aware that it is dumb some how makes it smart. (Actually, it just means the designers knew they were relying on dumb humor and didn't respect their audience enough to not be lazy and try to develop smarter humor instead). And I say this as someone that has finished Bulletstorm.

I was even more embarrassed to hear all the violin music being played for Homefront due to the fact that bad reviews may effect its sales/stock value. Come on guys. Homefront is huge budget military first person shooter. If it can't hang with the top games in this incredibly over saturated market, then maybe it should fail. Maybe if that happens enough then publishers will free developers to a different, more original style of game that doesn't try to ape Call of Duty. Maybe some of these types of games fail more often, more spot light can be placed on some of the wonderful, smaller more original titles that are smart and deserve that attention far more than someone that can just buy it with a huge marketing blitz.

This is ultimately the reason why those film critics write scathing reviews of stuff like Transformers 2. Not because the special effects suck or because it might not be a decent if forgettable 2 hour pop-corn flick. But because they take a long view of their industry and they know there is so much smarter, better stuff that deserves that attention more than something that just has a lot of money behind it. And they want to help their readers develop a more sophisticated critical eye so they they can appreciate the difference too.

Why can't we have that in the game industry? Why, on the whole to game critics have to be so closely in bed with giant publishers that they feel sorry for them when one of their games don't sell well? Do you ever see Ebert writing an apology when a Jerry Bruckheimer film bombs?

In other mediums the critics attempt to be taste makers and trend setters. But it feels like in the gaming media, writers are far too comfortable being passive conduits of big budget hype and popular bandwagons.

Don't be afraid to demand more from your entertainment. Try to challenge your audience to demand more too.

You know that discussion awhile ago about what we wanted from first-person shooters in the future. I said that I was looking forward to Crysis 2, because it looked like it was trying to combine the scripted intensity of a CoD with the flexible and dynamic sandbox elements of a Halo.

I'm playing through the single-player now (called in sick...it happens), and short of something going terribly off the rails in the third act, the game has delivered on this idea beautifully. The nanosuit offers so many options to take down enemies and make your way through the battles, even as scripted sequences set the atmosphere of war and chaos around you.

Don't know if the multiplayer will be strong enough to pull me away from Halo Reach (just cause I've sunk so much time into that game and have such a strong community of friends), but it stands the best chance to date of being that game.

Loving it so far. Big recommendation from a Halo nut, for what that's worth.

This has been bugging me for awhile, but you guys brought it up again this week so I'm going to talk about it now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw

Kinect can do this. Why is no one using Kinect to do this. This is way better than using glasses for 3D. This is where I want the future of gaming to go.

A big thank you to everyone who listens. Without you, there'd be no show.

And an equally big thank you to the Shackers for not only taking us in, but lifting the quality of the conversations in the show comments to whole other level. Over all the years of making shows, I can honestly say that week in and week out, we have the best discussions here I've read.

Jeff Cannata, you make me so happy.

Grandia 2 is one of my favorite RPGs of all time. I loved it way more than Skies of Arcadia. Great battle system, charming world, colorful graphics. So good.

There was a Grandia III on PS2 I believe, but it wasn't anywhere near as joyous an experience.

While we're all listing the layers of the stupidity to the whole 'Homefront' situation, here's another one.

Stockholders pulled out money because the game scored in the range generally defined by most critics and review scales as 'very good'.

Remind me to pull my money out of Toyota the next time they make a 'very good' car.

Is it me or has the podcast taken a turn away from gameplay to focus more on story and character development?

I particularly noticed it when Jeff C. was giving his impressions of Dragon Age 2 and Homefront. Both times Jeff M. did what I wanted to do and stepped in to ask for his impressions of what one actually does in the games.

Anyway, I still like the podcast, but I do miss hearing Leahy say system, mechanics and all that. Happy Anniversary.

Just started listening.... So excited :)

Hey Garnett,

Stop harassing Jeff about DA2's "all about". When you finish Witcher, tell me if you knew what it was all about from the beginning to the end.

There aren't many games that gives you the end goals. DA2 sets you on a goal for each act, but doesn't give away the entire premise from the beginning. Being open ended allows for discovery and character development during a playthrough. You're not going to keep player's interest if they know what's going to happen.

Hey guys, so on Homefront you talked a little about the flow of the SP campaign. I have to say, they did a great job drawing you into the story, up until about halfway through the game, where it's like they gave up and decided they didn't really need any more narrative.

As far a the ending goes, yeah it was pretty great, and I like that it ended where it did. This way they can actually make a relevant sequel, chapter 2 of their story. They don't need to start from scratch, inventing a whole new ridiculous story the way call of duty does.

Personally, I think they missed a great opportunity by not making better use of the resistance's "base". They could have had you do several missions from that base of operations and give you time to become more invested in it. (much like they did in Freedom Fighters)

And my last gripe about the story, is that I never felt like the hero. Conner was the clear hero of the story, and he was a huge D-bag dudebro. I played an unimportant sidekick, not trusted to fire my weapon until Conner gives me the order.

Regarding the brief Kinect discussion in episode 51, could they (the Guiness Book of World Records) have been talking about the rate at which the units sold? If so, total number would be irrelevant; they're just boasting about how FAST Kinect sold instead of how many total units.

A question for the Warning:

Have you ever re-discovered a game you used to love but more or less forgot about, only to realize that it actually had a significant influence on your current taste?

For myself, I just recently started replaying Lemmings, and it totally holds up. So very fun. I'll save you the rant, but the point being that I feel like a puzzle piece has fallen into place. I think this game has been invisibly informing my tastes and opinions of games in all the years since it'd fallen off my radar.

Congrats on the 1 year annv. It has been a real treat listening to you guys. I am also going to buy Torchlight on XBLA after hearing so much about it on the show.

I know that FIFA isn't very popular in the States but what you guys are talking about with picking up your game and continuing it has been a part of FIFA since FIFA 06. You can start a season or do the equivalent of franchise mode and continue it on your PSP. I know that I wouldn't be able to go through the equivalent of 10 franchise seasons if not for the ability to manage and play games on the bus and train. It takes about 3 minutes to upload your save file.

Orson Scott Card should collaborate with Rush Limbaugh and Alexandra Wallace - that has AAAA realism written all over it. The plot contrivance of Homefront is garbage.

Got my question asked on the show :) Quite awesome minus the name butchering lol, but it's all good. Another great show, loved James' commentary and the rest were excellent as always.

So my question has to do with Homefront, Jeff indicated that it was a very very short game, and from what it sounded like it seems natural to ask, was a game so short worth $60?

Obviously some games can't be measured in their length, Portal in my opinion is worth much more than $60 because of a wonderful experience you can't get anywhere else. So what do you think?

One Year Anniversary Show Contest: Leave a comment in the facebook discussion thread here: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=124737857547100&topic=379 and we will pick one random name from the thread on Wednesday, March 28th, at 11am PST.

Winner will get:
1 - Mad Katz R.A.T. Wireless Gaming Mouse
1 - Weekend Confirmed t-shirt

Good luck! If you don't have a Facebook Account then send me a personal message and I'll enter your name into the contest.

Thanks!

Del

Nice Homefront hate. Where was it when Call of Duty: Black Ops came out?

Oh one note about the NGP talk.. Sony made a Japan only VMU for the PSone. Square created some kind of Chocobo giga pet for it that worked with Final Fantasy VIII I believe. It was actually quite similar to the Dreamcast memory card, except it didn't have the cool thing where you could see the screen running certain information while you played the game and what not.

Dear Garnett, Jeff, Del Rio, Billy, Christian, Other Jeff, Xav, and all the weekend confirmed contributers....

I know podcasts aren't supposed to be this much fun or supposed to make me care so much. Ever since 1up, Garnett Lee has carried my weekends into completion. I cannot say enough how much I enjoy Weekend Confirmed and how much happiness it gives me. I really appreciate you guys taking times out of your busy schedules to talk about the games you love, the topics of the gaming industry that interest you, and your engagement with your online community. You guys inspire me to continue believing that my passion for games need not be questioned.

Garnett, you are the Phoenix that has arisen from the ashes and you truly have created the most focused, engaging, and entertaining podcast that I have ever had the pleasure if listening to(even with the Crystal Skull vodka). You truly are a master of your craft and we are all lucky to have such a man as yourself at the helm.
Jeff C., your wicked energy and wit really complement Garnett Lee. You two are a duo that make the internet a better place(which aint an easy thing to do).

You guys really inspire me to follow my dreams. You guys stick with what you love to do and you've been able to make a career that you are proud to have and have fun doing f it. Even though I don't know you personally, I feel like you guys are a part of my life and you make it better each and every week. Passion is contagious and you guys have plenty of it.

Congratulations on one hell of a year and I look forward to many more.

Sincerely,
John E.

I knew this PR guy was bad news when he threw around Lester Bangs and turing machines within 5 minutes of each other. When he started throwing out wild guesses about Blizzard's sub model as fact I knew we were dealing with some Leahy-esque authenticity.

Hey guys,

There were a couple of points in the shows where videogame critics were compared to film critics and I wanted to weigh in a bit on this issue because it is one I have been thinking about for some time.

Very few self respecting film critics would rate the big dumb blockbuster movie highly because they choose to demand something more from their entertainment than lowest common deonominator entertainment. Similarly, no self respecting food critic would rate McDonalds high just because it feeds the primal urge for fat and sugar. Instead, these critics strive to challenge their readers to cultivate a more sophisticated taste because they believe there is something far more worthy beyond instant gratification.

Comparatively, the big dumb blockbuster videogame is almost always handled with a kid gloves. The most recent examples being Bulletstorm and Homefront. As much as I generally love Jeff (Totally Rad show is awesome, btw), it really grates me to hear him talk about Bulletstorm because he repeatedly will say things like "It's self aware!" or "It's meta!, as if a dumb game being aware that it is dumb some how makes it smart. (Actually, it just means the designers knew they were relying on dumb humor and didn't respect their audience enough to not be lazy and try to develop smarter humor instead).

I was even more embarrassed to hear all the violin music being played for Homefront due to the fact that bad reviews may effect its sales. Come on guys. Homefront is huge budget military first person shooter. If it can't hang with the top games in this incredibly over saturated market, then maybe it should fail. Maybe if that happens enough then publishers will free developers to a different, more original style of game that doesn't try to ape Call of Duty. Maybe some of these types of games fail more often, more spot light can be placed on some of the wonderful, smaller more original titles that are smart and deserve that attention far more than someone that can just buy it with a huge marketing blitz.

This is ultimately the reason why those film critics write scathing reviews of stuff like Transformers 2. Not because the special effects suck or because it might not be a decent if forgetable 2 hour pop-corn flick. But because they take a long view of their industry and they know there is so much smarter, better stuff that deserves that attention more than something that just has a lot of marketing money behind it. And they want to help their readers develop a more sophisticated critical eye so they they can appreciate the difference too.

Why can't we have that in the game industry? Why, on the whole to game critics have to be so closely in bed with giant publishers that they feel sorry for them when one of their games don't sell well? Do you ever see Ebert writing an apology when a Jerry Bruckheimer film bombs?

In other mediums the critics attempt to be taste makers and trend setters. But it feels like in the gaming media, writers are far too comfortable being passive conduits of big budget hype and popular bandwagons.

Don't be afraid to demand more from your entertainment and to try to challenge your audience to demand more too.

Just want to say this is my favorite gaming podcast on the web by far. It's the realization of everything the old 1Up podcasts hinted at, and what every other gaming podcast aspires to be basically. You guys stay on topic, take the discussion seriously, and don't derail into irritating self reverential humor and what not. So, thank you for that.

On the topic of game's "loving" the player, I just want to point out (and I think Garnet and others were getting at this in mentioning Ico) that characters can be created through all kinds of stimuli. Dialog, music, aesthetic, animation are all things that go into making a character involving and believable. In fact, I would even say that accomplishing a character convincing enough through AI alone is such a complex prospect that it borders on the existential, and is essentially preposterous as a general expectation of game design.

Oh, Garnet. I love you bro. But you really confuse me sometimes. Have you even sat down and played Dragon Age 2? It really sounded like you were trying to find reasons to dislike it and nit pick at it, when going to equal lengths during the warning and news section to seemingly defend THQ and Homefront, when it is very obvious that the game is a steaming pile.

Don't get me wrong, I found the shift between preview coverage and release coverage to be quite surprising. Enough so that I canceled my preorder and rented it instead. I'm glad that I made that decision! The game is just subpar.

Now, I will admit that DA:2 has some issues, but you're talking a game that has great story, great characters and dialogue, and between 40-50 hours of gameplay (I clocked in at 47 with almost all sidequests and actually missing two optional bosses!). Compare that to Homefront which is what... ? 4 hours? Obviously multiplayer extends that but one has to be willing to forgive Bioware SOMEWHAT for the repeated dungeon content, because it was a better choice than losing those additional sidequests.

Additionally, I've never been able to reconcile this distaste for Metacritic. Why? It serves a logical purpose; I know myself that I would often go to several review sites to get my own personal average for a game. Metacritic just does that for me. How often is it REALLY wrong about a game, your personal tastes aside? I'd wager pretty rarely.

Finally, I'd like to wish you a happy anniversary! Been following you since your 1UP days and I've enjoyed each of your shows. Keep up the great work and content. Also a shoutout of appreciation to all the other hosts, both current and departed. None of you have disappointed.

Man, I'm a little late to the thread, but that won't stop me from posting my appreciation to all you guys on WC! I've been listening since the single digit episodes (I know I didn't hear the first episode :/ ), and you guys have brightened my weekend every week without exception. I look forward more to this show every weekend than I do to the excitement of being off work and hanging out with friends, and that's really saying something, for me.

I thank you for taking time from your work just to chat for us to hear, and hope you make it to an exciting episode 104!

Re: Neverdaunt 8bit
Since Jeff M (I think) seemed to have trouble describing it, I'd like to throw a suggestion out there:

A Garry's Mod-style MMO with primitive graphics. (there's more to it than that, but this should give you an idea)

It's a fun little sandbox to muck around in, I never got into it enough to actually bother trying to capture my own territory or anything. Whatever I build would have been made in the public cells, and was usually torn apart within an hour or two.

Happy Anniversary.. Love the show guys (as I told Garnett at GDC personally) keep it up... one of the few things I look forward to listen when I am working

Oh, and the video is awesome

When it comes to metacritic and stock price:

Shareholders are idiots.

If you asked the average THQ investor to name a game that THQ was publishing on the RELEASE DAY for Homefront, they couldn't tell you.

That's a huge, sweeping generalization, but I'm ok with that. The fact is, a lot of the people and organizations putting their money into companies like EA, THQ and Activision don't know the first thing about videogames, making videogames, or selling videogames.

Hell, a multi-billion dollar corporation like Disney found out the hard that even THEY had no idea how the industry works, and they're completely changing course after losing a ton of money for their mistake.

So what are the chances that the average schlub who has never played a game in his life, let alone researched the ins and outs of the industry, can make an informed decision about the potential revenue a game can bring in.

I'd be shocked if Homefront doesn't chart in the NPDs next month and doesn't eventually turn a respectable profit for THQ. It's a [popular genre, a marketable concept, with a solid advertising campaign behind it.

Congrats on a full year of great podcasting. Can't wait for year two!

Please keep the videos coming on the site guys. Its a great feature for the podcast!