This week’s podcast is a little late thanks to life interrupting, but better late than never. We discuss the Gaming Flashback, Robocop, and other weird tangeants that have nothing to do with videogames.
The news this week includes:
All this and Listener Feedback.
Twitter continues to be a tire fire, as does cryptocurrency. One wonders when either one will shuffle off the stage and fade into obscurity. Both seem to have become synonymous with chaos and instability, and it feels like there’s a new scandal or controversy every week. Twitter, under Elon Musk’s leadership, has faced constant changes in policy, mass layoffs, and a significant dip in user trust, making it increasingly difficult to see a clear path forward for the platform. Cryptocurrency, on the other hand, seems to have become more about speculation and volatility than about real-world utility or widespread adoption. While the promise of decentralized finance and digital currencies seemed promising, the market’s swings, coupled with major scandals like the collapse of FTX, have left many questioning whether crypto will ever truly deliver on its early hype. Secure Cryptocurrency Trading platforms provides secure environments for users to trade and manage their digital assets. It feels like both industries are desperately clinging to relevance, hoping to regain their former glory, but with each new misstep, they drift further from the ideals they once espoused. Anyway, lots of news this week, along with a Gaming Flashback of Dishonored.
News includes:
Let us know what you think.
I remember a day when old RPG games had either a level cap or a definite ending. From Pool of Radiance to Secrets of the Silver Blades to Final Fantasy the game had a final boss or stage and often had some type of level cap. Today, gamers don’t want it to end, they’d rather have the option to wonder around aimlessly or completing minor quests in order to soak up every ounce of money they spent on the title.
Now even Bethesda is saying “we’ve learned our lesson” from the whiplash of ending their game title and capping levels. Gamers want to go back and re-try content they missed, they want to run side quests and talk to everyone in the world they want to grind themselves to über powerful levels and become a god in their fantasy world. Can you blame them?
You can’t really blame them for wanting to maximize the content, although it’s slightly more evolved than RPG’s of old. Perhaps it was World of Warcraft and other MMORPG’s that brought us to the stage in life where we all want to squeeze every last RPG dime out of the title. As a kid I wondered the world of Hyrule and covered every tile of graphical color, burned every bush, bombed every stone looking for all the content. However, even Zelda had an end with scrolling credits – you didn’t just land on a platform with your master sword and a dream.
Other titles have used level caps to limit you and draw you into the next release of the game. This was popular in the D&D world because the game is designed to target specific levels of difficulty. They may only allow you to gain level 10 because the enemies are no tougher than level 13, allowing the challenge to be good but not overwhelming. If they allow you to get to level 50 they’d have to design the game so all the enemies grow powerful along with you — that’s not always a desired result.
Final Fantasy is a popular franchise that typically allows you to grow infinitely powerful depending on how much time you want to spend repeat killing the same enemies. Gamers aren’t always into the grind, they just want to grind “enough” to make the challenges a little more do-able.
Today, however, with larger storage capacity, larger development teams and the desire to build more value into your gameplay experience titles have dozens of side quests and sub-plots that are totally optional. The result of so many sub-quests results in a player who is much more powerful at the end of those quests compared to a player who sticks to the narrow path of the main plot. So, games much grow dynamically challenging to keep the fun per dollar high.
Do you like your RPG’s to have a definite end and a high but capped level?
If you’ve ever been through an acquisition or merger you’d have expected this news to come, but for those new to the concept it’s simple: you can’t keep everyone. After a complete merger you end up with two sales departments, two IT departments, etc.
Do you really need them all? No, not really. You’ll need to keep some on board in order to “brain dump” your job onto others and hopefully stick around for the long hall. Some employees will probably be shuffled to other job responsibilities while some get packages and a thank you card.
These are some of the growing pains when working towards a successful merger, so don’t be surprised or start spreading rumors when a few people are let go. As someone who’s gone through it in two big mergers I can say that certain departments already know their fate ahead of time. Many IT and sales folk start looking for new jobs the minute the merger is announced.
Hi guys.
Thanks, as always, for the entertaining episode. Regarding PUBG: i like their approach to increase the performance, but they should have the player decide, if he wants this or if he wants to play on a server of “another” country. And for the mobile version (same as for the Fortnite mobile game): no! just no 🙂 FPS are PC only games for me … i even dont play FPS on a console .. i prefer mouse + keyboard … and for sure not on a 4 inch touchscreen 🙂
I loved playing WOW (and still will play it with the next expansion) but fishing was .. nar .. i did it to get some special fish or some achievments .. but not for fun 🙂
The fishing game for Dreamcast (Sega Bass Fishing) with the “real” fishing rod was fun 🙂
Thanks for the infos on Ys, i think i will give it a try.
@Jonah: a “Let´s play” of mass effect would be nice. A friend recommended me the series, and i bought all the games, but did not get into it so far 🙂
The easter offtopic: We have “kinder eggs” in germany. They are called “kid´s surprise” (dont know if it is tranlated correctly). The yellow plastic “egg” around the toy has changed, its “one” part right now … i think so that kids are not able to swallow one part of it? Don´t know 🙂 Never swallowd one of them as a kid and i had a lot of them, because my mum got me one, everytime she went shopping 🙂
And that you mentioned April fool: did you fell for one? 🙂
Have a nice week guys and hope to have a new episode soon 🙂
Greetings from germany,
Ralf