In this episode, Paul arrives in time for the letters, with some audio issues on his phone.
In the meantime, Jordan and Jonah cover some of the week’s news including:
All this and Listener Feedback.
Bethesda Softworks vice president of marketing Pete Hines is critzing publishers and developers who shoehorn multiplayer into their games that doing such a thing is “a waste of time” and advises, “Just drop it, don’t bother…it’ll make for a worse game.”
In an interview with Next Gen BIZ, Hines states that using online multiplayer as a tool to prevent used game trade-ins and rental simply doesn’t work, and robs developers of valuable man-hours.
Hines stated:
“(People ask us) for a game like Skyrim or Prey 2, why doesn’t it have multiplayer? Well, our question is always the opposite when we talk to a developer. If you’re doing multiplayer, why are you doing multiplayer? What are you trying to accomplish?
“If you’re doing it just to check a box or because every other publisher says you’ve got to have multiplayer, then just drop it, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, a giant distraction and it’ll make for a worse overall game.
“We want the best game possible. If that’s a singleplayer game that’s 15 to 20 hours, then make that! Don’t waste your time on features that don’t make the game better.”
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2 are two Bethesda properties that will lack multiplayer, but one of the tools to encourage games to keep both games will be downlodable content and, even more important, good communications with the game communities and nurturing the fandom for both games.
This episode starts with an MMO focus and ends with community feedback, we’re looking back at an MMO that never made it to life: Ultima X. We give a quick and dirty first-look at Cataclysm, the next World of Warcraft expansion. This episode arrives on day early as Derrick is flying off to Germany early this week on business. This weeks news includes:
This week’s question of the week, “as 2011 approaches, what game really surprised you this past year?”
After a week off, Gaming Podcast recounts the eventful week that saw Song kowtowing to cyberterrorists over a Seth Rogen comedy, while Jonah and Paul have mixed opinions on the controversy.
The news this past week were also big, including:
This week also sees new Listener Feedback, and the Question of the Week: “Have you used Humble Bundle?”
