Killzone: Mercenary shoots onto Vita on September 10
Trion Worlds hit with more layoffs, Defiance team impacted
Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault defending Vita next week
Game & Wario was originally going to be pre-installed on Wii U
The Last of Us digital download lets you start playing sooner
Weekend Confirmed Episode 55
by Garnett Lee, Apr 08, 2011 11:00am PDTScheduling challenges make it a three-chair show this week. On the upside, that means there's plenty of room to spread out for Jeff, Garnett, and this week's guest Andrea Rene, host of Mahalo Video Games Today. They get right in to Whatcha Been Playin? with The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Ratchet and Clank All 4 One, and more. An unexpected debate on whether survival horror games must be scary spills into the Warning before taking up the question of "narrative dissonance" raised by the Sword and Sorcery developers Superbrothers, who also drop a tune from the game's soundtrack on us for this week's featured music. We wrap it all up with videogame news in the Front Page and Finishing Moves.
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 55: 04/08/2011
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If you're viewing this in the GameCenter application, you can play Weekend Confirmed Episode 55 directly.
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 Part 1: Start: 00:00:00 End: 00:27:15
- Whatcha' Been Playin Part 2: Start: 00:28:061 End: 00:58:40
- The Warning: Start: 00:59:50 End: 01:31:40
- Featured Music "COM-64" by Jim Guthrie: 01:31:40 End: 01:32:58
- Front Page news: Start: 01:32:58 End: 02:14:44
This week's featured music is the track "COM-64" by Jim Guthrie from the iPad (and soon iPhone) game, Sword and Sworcery. Guthrie (jampants on Twitter) is a composer/singer/songwriter in Toronto with a legendary solo discography, he's a veteran of bands like Royal City & Islands and an acknowledged influence on other Canadian success stories like Broken Social Scene, Feist, Arcade Fire, and Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy).
The Sword and Sworcery EP is available in digital form through iTunes and Bandcamp or as a 12" vinyl. Get all the details from the game's music page. And of course, the game is also out now on iPad and should be soon for iPhone/iPod Touch.
Big thanks go out to Craig (the1console on Twitter), artist, animator, and writer on Sword and Sworcery, for connecting with us.
Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, The Wait is Over on iTunes. Check out more, including the Super Mega Worm mix and other mash-ups on his ReverbNation page or Facebook page, and follow him on twitter delriomusic.
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!
Remember to join the Official Facebook Weekend Confirmed Page and add us to your Facebook routine. We'll be keeping you up with the latest on the show there as well.
Comments
On one hand, is it really surprising the people buy into the stereotypical masculine action character in action games? As a gamer who likes action games, I don't really give it a second thought about what main character I'm playing. When I'm playing Nathan Drake or female Commander Shepherd, or a Cole, if the character is interesting enough for me to want to play them, I don't start thinking "why are these characters always so similar?"
The games still are FUN, developers are still able to make these characters INTERESTING. It is true that these games are marketed at a certain segment (males 18-39), and its probably true that a lot of these males like the types of main characters that are in the games today. Are we going to say that the only reason these stereotypical gamer characters in these games that sell millions is because they are the only ones available OR maybe the audience that buys the most games like these characters.
Developers sometimes try to infuse some character diversity through side characters and such, and really, I feel that's enough for most people.
You guys play a lot a lot A LOT of games. You grow tired more quickly of the typical characters just because your game volume is so much larger. Sure I'd like some more diversity in my main video character protagonist. Sure i'd like a gay male character that is a blatant stereotype that saves the world or goes through interesting experiences. Sure I'd like a strong female without size DDD breasts and that doesn't wear skin tight pleather. But the main audience doesn't seem to be demanding such characters. Developers can try to infuse these characters but they also have to think about marketing and sales. Maybe you'll get a neat indie title that can do these things, but I wouldn't really expect a 50 million dollar game to do this until the demographic grows bored of the current crop of video game protagonist.
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And about the gay character thing. I don't the think the video game community, and I'm making a sweeping generality, is mature enough to handle a main male character who is gay. Its not that character would seem so" different", but we can't seem to handle the knowledge that a character is gay without jumping straight (forgive the pun) to what we think we "know". If Nathan Drake was gay, if Elena was Erin, what do you think the reaction would be? Would Drake's wit and attitude, the gameplay etc really be enough anymore? Or would that character trait be so much of a turn off to the masses that the game would suffer in sales....and if that is even a real potential, the negative effect on sales....it's no wonder you don't see characters that are gay and not blatant stereotypes.
Its funny that we seem to be okay with certain character stereotypes in video games for the characters we play but not others....
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