This week’s episode is a little late due to a power outage. However, despite the lack of really interesting news, the crew still finds plenty to chat about.
This week’s news includes:
The Question of the Week is, “What popular game did you play long after its initial release?”
This weeks gaming podcast covers a bunch of hot topics along with a bit of gaming history. We take a flashback look at Tapper, a great arcade classic and we’ll hit up some popular news articles:
This weeks history covers the Havok physics engine and we stand upon our soap box and talk about the rumor Starcraft 2 will arrive after Diablo 3 hits the store shelves.
This week’s Gaming Flashback is a major one, in particle for Gaming Podcast: World of Warcraft, as the WoW guild established by Derrick and Jennifer is well-remembered. For Paul, however, World of Warcraft was and is the source of some deep pain.
Along with the Gaming Flashback, this week’s news includes:
All this plus Listener Feedback and the Question of the Week: “What are the strongest memories of World of Warcraft that you have?”
Rhythm games are the new FPS for a lot of gamers, a broader audience of gamers, and the market is thriving and demanding new titles. Harmonix and Activision are at the front of the battle with Konami following a bit behind but still contending (we think) very soon.
Each company plans to up each other with cooler instruments, tighter controls and new in-game options and multi-player fancies. It’s a business and each competitor tries to gain a lead by whatever means needed to win… or do they?
Harmonix stops short when it comes to purchasing exclusive rights to music artists, for now at least. Harmonix’s Eric Brosious went on blogger record saying, “We prefer not to sign exclusive deals with artists because while it seems like the competitive “business” thing to do, in the long run, it’s really not good for anyone. We think we should be working to get more music out to more people.” (kotaku)
As Marky Mark once said, we need “Music for the people” not for in-game exclusives making us choose between Guitar Hero and Rock Band titles. We’ve seen what EA has done to the football franchise by taking control of the NFL roster, money talks and the best game doesn’t always win.
If Activision decides to buy up a ton of great exclusive content and you’re a rock band gamer, you’ll lose out in a ton of great content. For some gamers, that might mean losing out in some artists you’ve never heard before which also means the artist loses out in new fans. We’ve seen younger gamers fall in love with the sounds of Boston and The Police, bands famous way before the birth of many of the Rock Band fan base.
You can tell Harmonix is a development group with roots in music while Activision is a development group with their roots in business. While exclusive access brings you an advantage, in terms of broadening the culture of music, it does very little. Harmonix may be in the right but will that matter in the end when business deals hit the table?
p.s. sorry about the Marky Mark reference, but it had to be done. Bringing out a bit of my own childhood there…
Hi guys.
Thanks for the episode. It was intersting and funny as always 🙂 To your question of the week: I Played Portal the first time last year. Of course i completed it very fast, but this was a PC game i played about 10 years after its release 🙂
For Console games, it must be some of the first 6 Mega Man Games … i don´t remember which ones i played as a kid, but of course not all of them. So i decided to play through the first 6 Mega Man games last year 🙂
I like to play all the old games, i missed in my youth, but as you know: now (as an adult) you got the money to buy games, but you dont have the time anymore to play all of them 🙂
Jonah: Archon is a really great game! I loved it as a kid, even i did not understood it at all 🙂 (I am born in 1980, so i was 4 years old, when Archon was released, and i got my first C-64 when i was 8).
So thanks again guys and keep gaming 🙂