Episode 416: Blowing Winds

Unfortunately, we had to skip a week despite recording a good podcast thanks to technical difficulties – don’t worry, we’ll air it at some point in the near future. It was a good episode. This episode had its own issues, as Jonah was unable to record the podcast at home, so he was outside in the New York City night air podcasting with TJ and Scott.

This week’s news includes:

  • Microsoft cancels Fable Legends, closes Press Play Studios, considers shuttering Lionhead Studios UK
  • Report: SpinTires developer sabotaged his own game
  • 10 months later, MAME finishes its transition to open source
  • Valve announces The Lab, a compilation of free VR “experiments”

Let us know what you think.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Post

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.

Episode 503: Battlefield LadyEpisode 503: Battlefield Lady

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:

  • The Steam Link Mobile App has been blocked by Apple
  • Killer7 is coming to Steam this Fall
  • The Wolf Among Us 2 coming in 2019
  • Mega Man X-inspired roguelike 20XX coming to consoles
  • WWII-themed Battlefield V drops October 19, abandons paid expansion model

Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Command and Conquer: Red Alert – Free!Command and Conquer: Red Alert – Free!

It is the 13th anniversary of the Command & Conquer Series, Red Alert, and Electronic Arts is giving away the original C&C: Red Alert as a download for free. Holy crap, how neat is that?

This is also a great marketing technique, Red Alert 3 arrives soon, so this will help you keep it fresh in your head prior to the new release. Maybe this also gives new gamers the ability to experience the old title before heading into the third revision.

“Download both the Allies and Soviets discs (each disc contained the single-player campaign for its respective faction), but the files are actual ISO images of the CDs themselves. That means that in order to play them, you’ll either need to burn the ISO images onto a blank disc, or use a Virtual CD program to load them.” (1up)

The free Red Alert game download will run on XP/98/Me/95 but no official Vista support. Now, you’ve got a chance to play Red Alert… what about Red Alert 2? If you pre-order Red Alert 3 you’ll get the second in the series for free as well- genius!

There is really no reason not to take advantage of this awesome deal if you’ve never played a Red Alert game and want to see how the foundation of early RTS style games started. Although this isn’t the first C&C in the game franchise it launched a few new advancements on the original C&C title so you’re really getting an RTS based on learning experiences from the first, at no price.

Heck, maybe we’ll download it again just because we can! Excellent.