One again, the episode gets a little political as it deals with the GamerGate controversy again. No Gaming Flashback or Gaming History, but plenty of annoyed podcasters. As a side note, there will be no podcast for the next two weeks as Paul will be on a trip. However, there will be a new podcaster when the show starts up again.
This week’s news includes:
- Sarkeesian cancels Utah State presentation following threats of shooting
- Former GamerGate member explains his departure
- Unreal, BioShock dev Digital Extremes sold to Chinese companies
- Games driving “nearly all” Google Play’s revenue growth in US
- Mobile spending driven by 35-44-year-olds
All this plus Listener Feedback.
The undeniable rumor, as expected, has come to be true and Microsoft’s Major Nelson has revealed September 5th as the day the Xbox 360 shall drop in price. Although not surprising, this is really the first good price drop for the 360 hardware which does not involve phasing out an old product line.
This weeks gaming podcast, we’re talking a bit about E3 but not enough to make you sick. We’re curious to the fate of the E3 event, is it really done or will it live on? We’re finishing up the RPG history and we take a look back at the Atari title KABOOM! Was he catching bombs with a box, barrel or pie?
It’s clear publishers like Electronic Arts hate to take risks on video games. They’re not alone in their opinion, look how many sequels we’ve got for the holidays compared to new creative titles like Little Big Planet, or how publishers push out sequels to hot titles until we can’t take it anymore; how many Guitar Hero titles will arrive before we scream “enough!”?
“If somebody was making death threats against the head of BMW or mortgage bankers, the world would be up in arms…because it has to do with women in games, it’s not a real issue.”
I seriously don’t think it’s possible to be more full of shit. The death threats against Sarkeesian were published by every news outlet and the entire world was up in arms, but when hackers got hold of the president of Sony’s flight information and made far more legitimate threats against him, no one cared. The only reason people are even talking about this is because it’s about women in video games.