This week’s Gaming Flashback has no cake — instead it’s the history of Portal. The guys try to keep the podcast meme-free as they discuss Valve’s first person puzzle platformer.
There’s also non-Portal related news items, too:
Let us know what you think in the Comments section.
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)
XBLA offers great opportunities for the indy developer but everything comes at a price. Over the last three years Braid‘s developer Jonathan Blow spent a reported $180,000 to create the popular Braid title on Xbox Live. He’s going to need a lot more sales before he can celebrate the highly valued, highly reviewed title.
The Independent Games Festival was kind to him, giving him the “Innovation in Game Design” back in 2006, since then he’s put his money where is mouth is; his own money. There are good times and bad times when you’re discovering your dreams. The reviews surely made him feel great about the work he has done over the last three years but a review won’t pay the bills.
It may be a hard road ahead for Jonathan, hopefully at least breaking even on the project. Although he may not look back at the game as a financial success we can only imagine he’ll have a lot easier time getting funding or publishing for his next title, if that’s the path he chooses.
(Thanks, Kotaku)
This week’s episode has no news, despite the beginning of 2019 having some earth-shattering news items, which will be discussed next week, probably.
Instead, Jonah, TJ and Scott talk about their favorite games of 2018. Let us know which game was your favorite last year.
I wanted Killer Instinct on the mini SNES.