Episode 273: Flinging Guts

This week’s Gaming Podcast is a fairly routine one, with no Gaming Flashback or even a Question of the Week. However, this week features a ton of great news and industry discussion. Paul also announces that he will be unable to do the podcast in a few weeks for an extended period of time due to surgery.

The news items for the week includes:

  • Yoshida admits absence of Vita at E3 was a mistake
  • Irrational Games now includes 85+ Metacritic game requirement for employment
  • UbiSoft patches UPlay rootkit issue
  • Paradox Interactive announces dungeon builder Impire
  • EA: Current CEO John Riccitiello’s job is secure

All that plus Reader Feedback, check it out.

0 thoughts on “Episode 273: Flinging Guts”

  1. Blah … I’m biased towards ATI/AMD, so GT, GTX, GTY all the same

    @Yoshida admits absence of Vita at E3 was a mistake
    Ahem! Ha ha ha ha ha :))
    Really?! You have a major event and you don’t make noise around your newest product?! Who’s in charge of the marketing there? Fire the dumb ass who decided that, if you ask me.
    Jordan, excellent point regarding the way the subject was shifted from PS Vita games to PS3 games. If you ask me, this was done because Vita doesn’t really have a games library …

    @Irrational Games now includes 85+ Metacritic game requirement for employment
    Erm, rating is not just about the game, it’s also about the rating agency. If you hire somebody, do that after you administer them some tests that are relevant for you.
    Paul, I’m with you on this one, it is crap.

    Oh, about good games (not sure how it rates on Metacritic :P), play Ib! (http://vgboy.dabomstew.com/other/ib.htm)

    @UbiSoft patches UPlay rootkit issue
    Ok, I don’t use it, I don’t care that much. Still, you don’t code a rootkit by mistake …

    Paul, I hope there’s nothing too serious. Get well.

  2. @PS Vita

    I complain a lot about the 3DS. Thank heavens I don’t have PS Vita. At least Nintendo is trying. I might pick up a PSP at some point. They are cheap as dirt these days.

    @Metacritic scores shaping industry

    I agree with Herr_Alien and Paul. It’s crap. Metacritic scores are an average. If they want them to be representative of the true quality, the game industry should have reviewing standards and guidelines. Without them, any critic can review however he sees fit. I use Gamespot a lot. Their reviews tend to rate games 2 or 3 points (out of 10) below IGN reviews. As far as I know both are part of Metacritic. There is the problem right there.

    @Impire

    Played quite a few of those. There is Crystal Chronicles: My life as a Darklord dungeon/tower builder on WiiWare if anyone cares. It has girls that look like 10 wearing S&M outfits with breasts the size of melons (Japan, you so silly). I’ll admit I find most of these games boring. Although I know how addictive they can get. Blasted RollerCoaster Tycoon.

    PS: good luck with the operation, Paul. I promise to write you hate mail so make sure to come back and read it.

    @QOTW
    Have you ever been overly attached to an NPC? A digital someone who would call up feeling of companionship? Someone you would feel bad for loosing?

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The Question of the Week is “Which game would you love to see remade?”

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Much like Kameo: Elements of Power, Fable 2 ships without online co-op mode on day-one. However, Kameo didn’t promise the co-op mode prior to the games release, or talk about it in their presentations and hype machine conferences.

How does that happen? It’s easy to promise a feature but words do not make games true. More than likely the online co-op was a bit more complicated or had some bugs that needed to be shaken out prior to shipping. Microsoft is talking about releasing a patch for the new co-op play on the first week or so of the game release.

There are two options: ship a product that’s buggy and deal with the online PR nightmare with bugs and day-one patches, or, ship it without the feature and promise it early in the launch phase of the game. Once the code is complete, game software has to go through the packing, duplication and shipping phase. A lot of last minute testing can get done in the time it takes to produce the boxed product.

Hopefully Microsoft is doing some last minute testing to make a more reliable presentation of online co-op which everyone can use. However if it releases with a bunch of bugs…

(Thanks, GameSpot)