Episode 510: Red Dead Surprise

This week’s episode didn’t initially have a Gaming Flashback, but the crew accidentally started one with 2010’s Red Dead Redemption, which shouldn’t be a flashback since it fails the “10 Year Rule”, but it was so fun to talk about, it became one. They also found some interesting stuff in a thin-news week, which is the usual for Summer.

The news includes:

  • Valve adds temporary fix for fake item scams on Steam
  • Halo devs not working on Battle Royale mode for Infinite
  • Nintendo Switch sales near 20m, down slightly on last year
  • Playground Games staffs up for the rumored Fable reboot

Let us know what you think.

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Episode 236: Now With PandasEpisode 236: Now With Pandas

This week, Paul is not around, as Jonah Falcon and Jordan Lund discuss the latest news, which includes pandas. Lots and lots of pandas. That, and a Gaming History profile on David Crane.

The news this week includes:

  • World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria announced
  • Sony: April PSN outage has resulted in improved service
  • Deep Silver: “There is a clear technology gap
  • Starcraft II DOTA mod will remain free but monetized
  • “Literally, there’s three of us” on console Diablo III
  • Minecraft dev wins interim injunction over Scrolls name

With that is Reader Mail and the Queston of the Week: What was your favorite Atari 2600 game?

Episode 508: MarriageEpisode 508: Marriage

TJ announces his nuptials the previous week, finally marrying his live-in girlfriend of 10 years. All that, and many parables that had to be cut from the podcast lest it last 90 minutes.

That said, there’s plenty of news this week:

Let us know if you spent $50,000 on a virtual spaceship.

Distributed Game Development Using ContractorsDistributed Game Development Using Contractors

Gamers around the world have noticed a large trend in the video game industry in the last 15 years, massive growth with massive projects and unbelievable costs, goals and sales. We’ve seen the impossible become achievable in epic projects like World of Warcraft and huge sales figures from Halo 3 but we’ve also seen game titles fall down in a burning wreck.

Each studio tries to beat the next studio with crisp realistic graphics, real time physics engines, life-like explosions all with huge costs. Does it all sound familiar? If you’re a movie buff you’ve probably seen movie studios cranking out the same style of movie, high computer graphic effects with talented high priced actors making longer and longer films.

The only big difference? A game studio hires most of their talent for full time positions and then has to figure out what to do with them when the project ends. Perhaps this explains Microsoft’s effort to remove game studios like Ensemble, Bungie and FASA, it’s all too much to handle when a high budget project ships and time frees up in the studio.

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