Episode 404: Rebel Scum

This week’s episode is a little late thanks to unforeseen circumstances, but nothing will stop us from posting new episodes. It’s actually one day late, since last week was a week off, thanks to Podbean limits and Halloween. On that note, this week, Jonah had to erase a spoiler segment about The Force Awakens, but enough remains of the convo discussing other parts of the upcoming movie.

This week’s news:

  • Sony not to offer backwards compatibility
  • Advertising Standards Authority rules Valve misled customers with Grand Theft Auto V Steam Sale
  • The Witcher movie slated for 2017
  • Ubisoft admits poor Syndicate sales are due to franchise fatigue caused by Unity
  • World of Warcraft paid subscribers at a nine year low at 5.5M

The Question of the Week is what we usually ask ourselves, but with all the new games coming out, “What have you been playing this week?”

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Bethesda’s Hines: Don’t Shoehorn MultiplayerBethesda’s Hines: Don’t Shoehorn Multiplayer

Bethesda Softworks vice president of marketing Pete Hines is critzing publishers and developers who shoehorn multiplayer into their games that doing such a thing is “a waste of time” and advises, “Just drop it, don’t bother…it’ll make for a worse game.”

In an interview with Next Gen BIZ, Hines states that using online multiplayer as a tool to prevent used game trade-ins and rental simply doesn’t work, and robs developers of valuable man-hours.

Hines stated:

“(People ask us) for a game like Skyrim or Prey 2, why doesn’t it have multiplayer? Well, our question is always the opposite when we talk to a developer. If you’re doing multiplayer, why are you doing multiplayer? What are you trying to accomplish?

“If you’re doing it just to check a box or because every other publisher says you’ve got to have multiplayer, then just drop it, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, a giant distraction and it’ll make for a worse overall game.

“We want the best game possible. If that’s a singleplayer game that’s 15 to 20 hours, then make that! Don’t waste your time on features that don’t make the game better.”

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2 are two Bethesda properties that will lack multiplayer, but one of the tools to encourage games to keep both games will be downlodable content and, even more important, good communications with the game communities and nurturing the fandom for both games.

Gaming FlashBack: Baldur’s GateGaming FlashBack: Baldur’s Gate

Baldur’s Gate isn’t too old, it was released in November of 1998, but that’s still a bit dated now. The gaming industry isn’t friendly to the years, often working in what seems to be accelerated “dog years” in terms of technological advancements. It figured this was worth covering because it’s one of the best selling and considered a top tier single-player RPG by most accounts.

It was also developed by BioWare, who, at the time, only had one other game under their belt from two years before called Shattered Steel.

The story begins just after a devastating event in the Forgotten Realms D&D campaign called the “Time of Troubles.” This was a great twist in the standard D&D campaign, it caused all curative magic (clerics) to lose their ability to heal unless near their deity, magic didn’t function correctly (I believe this is where the Wild Mage came from) and was unpredictable and gods walked the earth as mortals which caused magic to, in effect, die while the gods were away. Since the storyline starts slightly after this event, the game contains healing and magic but the storyline is impacted by prior events of course, people have trust issues.

The game was made great because it held “mostly true” to the 2nd Edition D&D roots so the learning curve for D&D player’s wasn’t so rough; some things were adjusted to handle the real-time effect of a video game RPG. You could party with up to six Non-Player-Characters (NPC’s) whom would swap in and out of your active party over time as part of the storyline (something also implemented by the US release of Final Fantasy 2).

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Gaming Podcast 130: ProselytizingGaming Podcast 130: Proselytizing

This week’s gaming podcast covers some news, history and a classic gaming flashback. We’ll be taking next week off, so this week is extra packed with content… okay, well, it’s normal. We’re looking at Breakout as our flashback and the MB Microvision in our gaming history. This weeks news includes:

This week we’ve got two questions for ya, what console/hand-held system do you bring on vacations and do you go out and buy any games before you head on vacation?