Episode 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.

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This weeks soapbox segement, we ask the question, does unlimited level creation cause bad press in video games?

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This week’s podcast has Dan Quick filling in for an ailing Jordan Lund, while Civilization V inevitably comes up in conversation with the Polycast host with Jonah Falcon. There’s no Gaming History or Gaming Flashback, but tons of news items.

The news includes:

  • Andrew Wilson named Electronic Arts CEO
  • PlayStation Vita TV announced
  • Sega buys Atlus for 14 billion yen
  • Star Trek video game “big disappointment” to J.J. Abrams
  • Chair on Shadow Complex 2: Fans “don’t want it more than we do”
  • Steam adopts Xbox One’s former family sharing program
  • Diablo III auction house closing in March 2014

There’s also some Listener Feedback from the T-shirt winning contestant.

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Now that Blizzard feels their engine is solid, it’s time to move on to creating content for the full game. Jay Wilson, Diablo 3‘s lead designer, says the game engine is in an advance stage of completion and much of the art team has moved onto Act 2. Don’t read into that, he said game engine.

Blizzard is obviously not hurting for money, given the success of World of Warcraft and they’ve always taken their time with projects to make them solid products. Blizzard’s name is on the line and they’re brand consists of three major franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. When you produce so few games you’re expected to do them perfectly.

How do they do it? As Wilson says, “If we haven’t rebuilt something five times it really doesn’t deserve to be shipped. That’s pretty much our policy.” (eurogamer) While a game engine is the foundation for a great game experience, the content is king. Blizzard is deep in the mire of content production so, although the engine might be solid, the final product is probably still far from complete.

End result, expect a high quality product once again from Blizzard.