Weekend Confirmed 162 - Xbox reveal, Star Trek, Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine

I am in the middle of the show here so you guys might talk about this later, but I think the idea of taking Jeff's idea of taking an engine and making it to a smaller conversion map could work for license games. Instead of making a big $60 Star Trek game. You could take the engine of Mass Effect and make a decent $15 Star Trek game.

Or take a Battlefield/Call Of Duty/ Homeland engine and make it into a G.I. Joe game. The publisher could make a cheaper game, but we would get quality licensed games that sell.

If you take a look at the relative success of Deadliest Warriors or even that Robot Boxing on XBLA I think there is a good market for a smaller licensed game.

I really wish I could sit down and talk to Spicer about why he disliked Bioshock Infinite, because I feel like I could understand why he didn't like it and it still be compatible with why I love it so much.

I think that the themes that the game sets up such as religion, American Exceptionalism, racism, and less talked about, class warfare, are used in a way that is far more realistic that usually found in games or any other media. This is literally the environment that you have found yourself in, it is made simply to be a setting for your story. This story doesn't have to culminate in you freeing all of the slaves while converting them all to atheism and renouncing the good of American society. The themes come back in more subtle ways. [SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT] The racist element of of Columbia is mirrored back when you meet Daisy Fitzoy and the Vox, where they are just as awaree of the usefulness of Propoganda and manipulation of people. Religion becomes a large part of the ending, but it's not a criticism on the practices of religion, it is the question of what is redemption and can a person be a)Good without God, b)Evil with God, and also the value of the 'weight of sins' in a persons life. Booker seeks to redeem himself simply because he accepts that he has done bad things in the past and actively works to atone for them, whereas Comstock has forgotten his sins and is doomed to repeat them or even surpass them, because he has nothing holding him back.

I think the best description I've heard in regards to Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite is that Bioshock is a game in which the story starts off small, and grows emmensely until by the end you have this Randian parable about humanity and it's search for genetic perfection. Infinite, on the other hand,is a game that starts with huge ideas (Religion, American Exceptionalism, Class Warfare, Quantum Physics) and it slowly draws itself in until, by the end, it is simply a story about a man in search of redemption for what he has done.[END SPOILERS]

I completely agree that there are flaws in Bioshock Infinite. But most of them are in the realm of the gameplay, and yes, they are things that need to be criticized. The navigation tool is far too hand hold-y, the vigors feel a tad out of place, and it would be nice if the other characters were using them, and there are other problems. As someone who loves this game with his whole heart, I am more than welcoming to criticism of it, because it is not only a major game and story experience in and of itself, but it is also a great step towards where I want gaming to go in terms of story, character interaction, etc. And I think that the people at Irrational want to hear this things, too. They don't what their game to be bronzed and put on a pedestal as the pinnacle of gaming. I believe they want to hear these criticisms so that, next time along, they can work to fix what can be fixed, and fine tune what people loved.

So, yes, I can understand people's problems, and almost none of the criticisms I've heard have made me say "no, you're wrong". But, after finishing it twice and starting again, I still think it is a fantastic storytelling achievement in gaming, despite its flaws.

2013 is going to be a Gauntlet throwing year for video games.

The GTAV trailers were off the charts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf38HiYPMiI

Did Garnett ever say where he went on a cruise? My wife and I were on a cruise to the Caribbean during the same time frame. Just curious.

ok garnett, nowi have two words you say that make me giggle, roof and metaphor, hahaha

i love ya man, so hopefully you know i am laughing with you not at you :)

keep up the good work and i am glad to hear you had a great vacation, you and ariel deserve to have some happy fun time together away from it all.

The problem with everyday things in games is like Jeff said its not "fun". Task aren't fun what enjoyment do you get out of a game where you wash dishes, turn on your blinker, hold the door for a old lady, etc...

Here's a example baseball it's "fun" to hit the ball. Now when you get out you can go eat sunflower seeds, and put your bat away. Or in football bust out a big run and then the game is get to the sidelines hydrate and get oxygen. Really realism not fun! We aren't getting there EVER why because every person ever wants to be Neo that's just the way people are. Nobody wants to be bank teller number 5.

The next XBox WILL have a unique name! Sorry, you know I love my Weekend Confirmed, but everyone jumping on this bandwagon is just getting frustrating.

Product naming conventions are based on marketing reasoning, and the way Apple names the iPad is not at all the same as the way Microsoft names the XBox. Products like the iPad drop the unique model number because they have set the exterior design, and are expecting frequent, minor, internal updates. It is more confusing to consumers to have the iPad or Macbook or iMac continually change number when there is no outwardly noticeable difference on 90% of the updates. They want consumers to assume that these products are always up to date, and they can buy them whenever. This is the opposite of the XBox.

The XBox receives very infrequent updates, with huge changes. Product names is this type of category want to inform people as easily as possible that this is a totally new thing you need to buy. Iwata just spoke this week that about how he thought the Wii U name was detrimental, because people thought it was an accessory to the Wii. The next XBox will have a unique name, or I will send ya'll a beer.

I've absolutely adored my 3DS XL since buying it a month ago. It's got great games- Luigi, Monster Hunter, Mario Land and Sticker Star, Zelda OT, RE Revelations, Professor Layton, and a couple of great Shin Megami titles. The control stick is great, and the future for the machine looks great!

I was a huge doubter of it at launch, but it has me choosing handheld gaming over titles like Bioshock Infinite.

"yes, it's been on calanders for years" you almost killed me with that one mr. 2n1team!

great episode! and congrats on the nerdist stuff too

It is easy to complain about games without offering any solutions.

It is not only getting redundant and boring every time it is brought up in this podcast, but I find the hosts to appear more pompous with each one of these discussions. Garnett kept saying that people just need to come up with new and different ideas to make games fun but offers no good ideas on how to solve this problem. It is easy to complain without offering any solutions, but complaining just to complain is just pointless.

To Jeff's comment, I am sure that 2k games would love to make every single background character have the same amount of depth as Elizabeth, but is it really worth the budget and development time?

To Garnett wanting to interact with every single item in the game when you are looking for just one thing, is the ability to interact with every single item in the environment worth the development time and possible bugs when the average player is only going to interact 1% of the environment?

The types of games that Garnett and Jeff are pushing for usually sound like really boring games that would be ridiculously expensive to produce and very few people would want to play.

I felt that Andrew covered it best when he said that he feels that there are so many games out there with so much variety for gamers to choose from. Not every game is mowing down tons of dudes as this podcasts often implies. I usually hear about at least 2 of them every time Indie Jeff is on.

MH3U gets CRUAZHY in G Rank, that is all.

Jeff and Justin?! Mbmbam and weekend confirmed?! Two worlds collide

"Why can't every character in a game be as fully realized as Elizabeth? I'm looking forward to the day that happens!"

Jeff is looking forward to the day when it takes 40 years to make a game...

The problem I had with the discussion in the first segment is that all of you say you want these amazing new ways to play games but when push comes to shove you still fall back on playing games the traditional way. None of you took the Wii or Kinect seriously. You never gave Wii games a chance because they don't have the high def graphics. Kinect was never part of the discussion because you're not ready to let go of the controller. We're not going to instantly arrive at the holodeck. The advances in interactivity have to start somewhere. The people who can make these things happen are never going to try when people like you keep shitting on the Wii and running back to the comfort of your HD twins.

People don't want the Holodeck anymore, they want The Matrix. Moving around for the purposes of simulation is old hat and not nearly as enjoyable as canned science fiction from the 80s made it.

I don't want Haptics or motion controls or things not designed for repeat gestures (which is something that NO video game has gotten away from). Until you can plug into my brain and let me control it with my mind I will take precision abstracted controls every single time.

Also quirky finger gestures is NO DIFFERENT than face buttons on a controller.

In conjunction with the Xbox reveal date, I've been checking some speculation (warning Jeff C.). One thing that stood out was an anticipated price for Xbox Live of $10/ mon. I would guess for the subsidized model, a discount 12 month card isn't an option. (If at all for anyone).

Given what we've been given this gen- access to apps that are free everywhere else- XBL is certainly going to have to bulk up next time