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Valve forms Overwatch for CS:GO community to police itself
Joe Danger racing to PC this year
Weekend Confirmed 144 - Holiday Special Part 1 - 2012 retrospective
by Jeff Mattas, Dec 21, 2012 11:00am PSTThis week kicks off a special two-part episode of Weekend Confirmed to celebrate the best in gaming for 2012. A cavalcade of special guests joins Garnett, Jeff Cannata, and "Indie" Jeff Mattas, including Shacknews' Andrew Yoon, James Stevenson from Insomniac, Jason Paul from Naughty Dog, Andrea Rene from Machinima, and comedian Christian Spicer. Personal favorites of the year are revealed, and much fun and merriment is had by all. Be sure to tune in next week for Part 2 of the special Weekend Confirmed holiday/end-of-2012 celebration, too!
Weekend Confirmed Ep. 144: 12/21/2012
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Show Breakdown:
Round 1 - 00:00:50 - 00:32:19
Whatcha' Been Playin Part 1 - 00:33:04 - 01:04:24
Whatcha Been Playin Part 2 01:05:08 - 01:42:40
Listener Feedback/Front Page News - 01:43:23 - 02:19:06
Tailgate - 02:19:46 - 02:26:03
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Jason Paul @jmpaul
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Original music in the show by Del Rio. Get his latest Album, Club Tipsy 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.
Comments
So the reason Mass Effect 3 fails, where as TWD succeeds, is that ME is asking the player to project a personality onto their avatar, where as TWD is asking the player to change what happens by changing what an existing character does. Its like giving the player the opportunity to participate in a person's life Ground Hog Day style.
That said, everyone who is engaged in this debate, and deriding The Walking Dead as not qualifying as a game, needs to watch this trailer for the PS2 title Shadow of Destiny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9e4fkop7CE
"It may seem trivial,
but suppose you're in a cafe
trying to decide between coffee and tea.
The you that chooses coffee,
after a long deliberation,
and the you that chooses tea
actually both exist."
And a tag line: "Life is a wheel of changes."
This is an adventure game with 8 endings, and dozens of variations in the plot leading up to those endings. It is no more mechanically in depth than the Walking Dead, but it does compensate the player for figuring out a variety ways to shape the long term outcome of the plot.
"Player choice" is a falsehood, but branching narrative is not.
So on The Walking Dead you can't just say it isn't a game because the architecture of the design is built around its story. And likewise you can not just isolate the story itself and proclaim that it isn't "game." The story of TWD is intrinsic to what kind of game it is.
So likewise on Mass Effect, it is irresponsible for a critic of games to just throw up his or her hands and say "well there's just no way they could have actually made the story different based on your choices." That game's failure was based on the false concept of the player projecting his or her individuality into the experience, and conflating that with strong narrative.
Also props to Garnet for going all out on this episode.
Thread Truncated. Click to see all 26 replies.
He's addressing criticism that Christoph Waltz' character Dr. Shultz' plan to save Django's wife is "harebrained"/faulty:
"Here's the thing: you've got to think of who Schultz is. I see where you're coming from. But it does sound like you're thinking what you would do. You have to think about how Schultz would respond. And it is actually kind of interesting that we've been getting a lot of different reviews coming out of England and France and no one has questioned Schultz's methods when it comes to that. But they have been questioned in America. Now, I think there is a little more common sense laid in the American mindset when it comes to these kinds of things."
I think this idea of a "practical" American mindset is at least partially what I would attribute this criticism of a game like TWD to. Its like Americans seem to lack the moral imagination, and empathy, and just understanding of drama to accept a film character's subjective view in the world. But when you apply this same American bias to video games, and because the discussion around games is isolated in such a concentrated sub culture, its not even just a criticism of narrative, it actually becomes like a debate about about the nature of the meddiuummmm
Its like Americans want to say "well I'm mad at this video game because I would have struck the right tone in that dialogue choice." But the reality is that "you" are not the character speaking. It defeats the purpose of the drama if all the characters just tie everything up into a neat little bow together. So I mean, there has to be an internal logic of the universe that you're seeing, but its not really the audience's place to question character motives in story telling.
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