Episode 465: No Frills

This week’s episode is raw and unedited, since Jonah’s laptop got fried. However, despite the audio issues and being posted via cell phone, the gang got off a pretty good show.

This week’s news includes:

  • Overwatch pro ends career with stream of racial slurs
  • Don’t expect Kingdom Hearts 3, Final Fantasy 7 remake until at least 2018
  • DOTA 2 will soon require competitors to cough up their phone number
  • Report: PlayStation VR bundle will come with required camera and one Move controller

The Question of the Week: “What kind of VR game would you want to play?”

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Episode 526: New York State of MindEpisode 526: New York State of Mind

This week’s episode of Gaming Podcast features the first news of 2019 for the podcast, and there’s some juicy items to discuss. There’s no Gaming Flashback, but there is more discussion of the latest Civilization VI: Gathering Storm civs to be discussed.

The news includes:

  • “Exciting Halo: The Master Chief Collection news” teased for SXSW 2019
  • EA cancels open-world Star Wars game
  • Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire is getting turn-based combat later this week

Let us know what you think.

Future Gaming is Family GamingFuture Gaming is Family Gaming

Gaming is mainstream and growing, this is obvious to most video game enthusiasts. Even Jack Thompson has failed in taking down the industry in his efforts on video game violence and general FUD. In order to survive in a mainstream environment publishers and developers are going to target a broad demographic to make them as much money as possible.

The game industry, like other entertainment avenues, is a risky business in which publishers have to pick titles they “predict” will do well in the market while passing on other “risky” propositions. While a the good ol’ shooter title will break sales records, the market cannot rely on one genre to carry the business especially considering many of these titles are forgotten within two months from launch. Publishers are going to be forced in expanding their reach to “family games” in order to finance new blockbuster titles.

Enter family gaming.

The idea of designing a “family” game isn’t new to our industry, as a matter of fact, it’s one of the oldest cornerstones of video game entertainment. Pong, Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders and many other classic titles were no doubt playable by the entire family, but things have changed. We’ve evolved from hit titles like Donkey Kong to hit titles like Halo. We migrated from 2D gaming to full 3D adventures and pixel graphics to pixel shaders, but where do we go next?

Nintendo has the correct vision for the next stage of the video game industry and it involves bringing the entire family into gaming. It’s mainstream, right? Mainstream isn’t your dad playing a video game in the basement after the kids go to bed, it’s replacing Sorry with Spore and bringing out Wii Sports and having little family tournaments. We must respect what the big titles have done for the industry in merchandising, novels, sequels and spin-offs but we should not rely on them to carry us into the next generation of gaming.

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Episode 232: Remember Pong?Episode 232: Remember Pong?

This week, there’s no Gaming Flashback or Gaming History, but there is a ton of news and Reader Feedback as Paul is finally present to react to some hate mail.

The news includes some huge items, like:

The Question of the Week: What was the very first home videogame you ever played?