This weeks gaming podcast is epic, as per the usual, we had some really thought out community comments about DRM, game history on Krull and a bit of history on D. Gottleib & Co. This weeks news includes:
And, our question of the week, would you give up your job to be a video game tester?
SimCity was released in 1989, was originally called Micropolis and was designed by the infamous Will Wright. For those that don’t know Will Wright, its suffice to say he’s one of the most popular and influential game designers of our time. SimCity, TheSims, SimAnt, SimFarm and Spore are a few of his hits and TheSims has taken many records since its original release.
Wright had trouble finding a publisher for a game in which you couldn’t really “win or lose.” Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis. Maxis agreed to publish Simcity as one of its first two games.
When near complete, Wright and Braun took the game back to Broderbund to clear the rights for the game. Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal. Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64. On January 10th 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the GPL license as… Micropolis!
The objective of the game is simple, build and design a city. Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required. In a sense, open ended, the player was free to design the city as they chose.
Included in the city building experience was the possibility of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes and more. Pre-designed scenarios were also included in the game such as the Boston 2010 nuclear meltdown, or mass coastal flooding of Rio de Janeiro of 2047 … even a Godzilla attack of Tokyo in 1961.
In the years to follow, the SimCity franchise would continue to expand with greater detail as SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003) and a host of other “Sim” games and until the release of “The Sims” in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of games made by Maxis.
In Fall of 2008, EA will release the next child in the SimCity family, SimCity Creator for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. And thus, history continues!
Sorry, no episode this week. News too slow, and everyone needs a break.
This week, TD Gaming Podcast talks about Battlefield V and how a certain part of the gamer population completely lost their minds over it. There was also a half-hour discussion of Second Life, shoot-em-up, and developer Treasure, with web searches and aimless conversation that went nowhere.
This week’s news:
Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Well I do really like my job and plan to continue working in the field of surveying & GIS. But if I was granted the opportunity to become a game tester for Valve or Bungie then I would seriously consider it. When I was younger I basically had a full time job not playing halo 2 but testing for any bugs or glitches I could find.
Funny side story
My sister goes to Murdoch University and one of her mates Grant is currently studies Law with no ambitions or interests in Law just that his parents wanted him to. Even so Grant is really smart and a real nerd when it comes to games (his brain is Wiki Videogames). Anyway his family knows a lot of people and found himself having dinner with the Australian CEO of EA games, the man was explaining how EA have had a really bad year and Grant gave him run down on the reasons why. @ the end of the night. The EA Ceo was amazed at Grants knowledge and ideas and said that he could really do with some one like meet around the office and offered him to be his personal assistant. Grant responded saying “ Naa I don’t really wanna move out of home”……………. My sister and I have come to the conclusion that Grant is a Retarded. (Grant is now also studying a Major in Japanese….. so he can pick up Asians)
Well I do really like my job and plan to continue working in the field of surveying & GIS. But if I was granted the opportunity to become a game tester for Valve or Bungie then I would seriously consider it. When I was younger I basically had a full time job not playing halo 2 but testing for any bugs or glitches I could find.
Funny side story
My sister goes to Murdoch University and one of her mates Grant is currently studies Law with no ambitions or interests in Law just that his parents wanted him to. Even so Grant is really smart and a real nerd when it comes to games (his brain is Wiki Videogames). Anyway his family knows a lot of people and found himself having dinner with the Australian CEO of EA games, the man was explaining how EA have had a really bad year and Grant gave him run down on the reasons why. @ the end of the night. The EA Ceo was amazed at Grants knowledge and ideas and said that he could really do with some one like meet around the office and offered him to be his personal assistant. Grant responded saying “ Naa I don’t really wanna move out of home”……………. My sister and I have come to the conclusion that Grant is a Retarded. (Grant is now also studying a Major in Japanese….. so he can pick up Asians)
Fortunately for launch owners, the time clock bug self-corrected.
Fortunately for launch owners, the time clock bug self-corrected.
hahaha. Guys, GFWL is Games for Windows Live, Microsoft’s PC version of Xbox Live.
hahaha. Guys, GFWL is Games for Windows Live, Microsoft’s PC version of Xbox Live.
Lol, loved how this show started 😀
@The Nintendo Wii being picked on again:
Derrick, you do have a point there. The DICE guy is a bit out of his league. You can’t ask
@WoW authenticator:
Oh man :))
Thing is even communication based on SSL is not secure, and again, the issue is the Man In The Middle.
I guess Blizzard is finding out how it feels to be No. 1 in a market. It’s the same reason why there are more viruses for Windows than for MAC.
@StarCraft II
I would not cancel my vacation to play Starcraft II. Or any other game.
@D&D online
It’s quite interesting, this could become a very successful model.
Derrick, the post says “growing the franchise’s revenue over 500% since its launch in September.”
Let’s wait and see.
@Question of the week:
No.
When I did some testing (for game mods) I was more interested in finding game play bugs, rather than find that one place in the floor where I could fall out of the map.
Something tells me that this kind of more technical tests (find collision issues etc.) is part of the job requirement, and I don’t like that too much.
Lol, loved how this show started 😀
@The Nintendo Wii being picked on again:
Derrick, you do have a point there. The DICE guy is a bit out of his league. You can’t ask
@WoW authenticator:
Oh man :))
Thing is even communication based on SSL is not secure, and again, the issue is the Man In The Middle.
I guess Blizzard is finding out how it feels to be No. 1 in a market. It’s the same reason why there are more viruses for Windows than for MAC.
@StarCraft II
I would not cancel my vacation to play Starcraft II. Or any other game.
@D&D online
It’s quite interesting, this could become a very successful model.
Derrick, the post says “growing the franchise’s revenue over 500% since its launch in September.”
Let’s wait and see.
@Question of the week:
No.
When I did some testing (for game mods) I was more interested in finding game play bugs, rather than find that one place in the floor where I could fall out of the map.
Something tells me that this kind of more technical tests (find collision issues etc.) is part of the job requirement, and I don’t like that too much.
In answer to the question of the week… Yes, immediately. Without a second thought.
That might have something to do with the fact that I’m currently unemployed, and a student (bring on the debt), but I’ve ‘taken’ a lot from the gaming industry by way of playing the games a lot, and I haven’t ever been involved in modding or the like, so I rather enjoy the idea of giving something back to the industry (other than money, obviously).
On the PS3 clock-failure problem;
I think it made news in the first place because of the pure geekiness of the problem, many people (myself included) find that type of fault very interesting.
It’s not that people consider the fault to be on par with the faults that plagued, and continue to plague, the 360 (which are in many ways completely inexcusable) it is simply that it is a new, and more interesting, fault than the one associated with the 360, which is simply down to God-awful design.
As I consider myself a PC gamer with a purely academic interest in console gaming, and therefore have little or no emotional attachment to any of the current gen. consoles, I tend to rank them on Reliability and Versatility, rather than the number of games released for them. Which is why I always tend to prefer the PS3 in the commonplace ‘Which console is best?’ arguments, due to the fact that it is highly reliable and has the added bonus of the BluRay player (which is counted as one of the best BluRay players for it’s price bracket, even when compared to standalone models).
As always, the podcast was brilliant, cheers and peace.
In answer to the question of the week… Yes, immediately. Without a second thought.
That might have something to do with the fact that I’m currently unemployed, and a student (bring on the debt), but I’ve ‘taken’ a lot from the gaming industry by way of playing the games a lot, and I haven’t ever been involved in modding or the like, so I rather enjoy the idea of giving something back to the industry (other than money, obviously).
On the PS3 clock-failure problem;
I think it made news in the first place because of the pure geekiness of the problem, many people (myself included) find that type of fault very interesting.
It’s not that people consider the fault to be on par with the faults that plagued, and continue to plague, the 360 (which are in many ways completely inexcusable) it is simply that it is a new, and more interesting, fault than the one associated with the 360, which is simply down to God-awful design.
As I consider myself a PC gamer with a purely academic interest in console gaming, and therefore have little or no emotional attachment to any of the current gen. consoles, I tend to rank them on Reliability and Versatility, rather than the number of games released for them. Which is why I always tend to prefer the PS3 in the commonplace ‘Which console is best?’ arguments, due to the fact that it is highly reliable and has the added bonus of the BluRay player (which is counted as one of the best BluRay players for it’s price bracket, even when compared to standalone models).
As always, the podcast was brilliant, cheers and peace.
“The DICE guy is a bit out of his league. ”
Wrong. He’s very knowledgeable. The problem is that the guys took his response out of context.
He was asked if he’d ever develop a game for the Wii. His answer:
”If I got paid to develop a Wii game I would do it. I would not put an original IP on the Wii today unless I thought I had an absolute home run.”
When asked why, he answered correctly:
Third. Party. Games. Don’t. Sell. On. The. Wii. They just don’t, for the reason he gave: people buy the Wii because it’s a cool toy, not because of the games you can buy – just the stuff that comes with it.
“The DICE guy is a bit out of his league. ”
Wrong. He’s very knowledgeable. The problem is that the guys took his response out of context.
He was asked if he’d ever develop a game for the Wii. His answer:
”If I got paid to develop a Wii game I would do it. I would not put an original IP on the Wii today unless I thought I had an absolute home run.”
When asked why, he answered correctly:
Third. Party. Games. Don’t. Sell. On. The. Wii. They just don’t, for the reason he gave: people buy the Wii because it’s a cool toy, not because of the games you can buy – just the stuff that comes with it.
QotW: yes, but I guess I’m in a similar position to eni. Although I am employed, I have a pretty boring and repatative job so spending hours doing boring bugtesting is hardly much worse that what I do now, with the added benifit of not having to deal with customers hopefully.
Also nice context Jonah tot he DICE quote. It always makes me wonder how many other out-of-context quotes and propoganda I believe when I see this sort of reporting. I must admit I thought the DICE guy must have a screw loose before I read the context you provided.
QotW: yes, but I guess I’m in a similar position to eni. Although I am employed, I have a pretty boring and repatative job so spending hours doing boring bugtesting is hardly much worse that what I do now, with the added benifit of not having to deal with customers hopefully.
Also nice context Jonah tot he DICE quote. It always makes me wonder how many other out-of-context quotes and propoganda I believe when I see this sort of reporting. I must admit I thought the DICE guy must have a screw loose before I read the context you provided.
@jonahfalcon: My bad on the DICE guy in that case. Funny how one (missing) sentence changes things 🙂
@jonahfalcon: My bad on the DICE guy in that case. Funny how one (missing) sentence changes things 🙂