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.
A few months ago, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick said investing $500 million to a billion still wouldn’t be enough to compete with an MMORPG like World of Warcraft. The MMORPG space is a costly investment and you’d need to really burn a lot of money to start competing against the mega-giant, but Mythic VP and Warhammer Online lead designer Mark Jacobs disagrees with that quote.
“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.