This podcast ran short, so to make sure it ran at least an hour, the guys ramble about the games that are coming soon. It’s good padding, but still padding.
Enjoy!
This week’s news includes:
Let us know what you think.
No Paul this week, no Gaming Flashback this week – just Jonah, Dan and Jordan discussing a ton of news items where Jonah expresses shock that Jordan had never heard of No One Lives Forever.
The items this week include:
This week’s Question of the Week: “What’s the most offensive thing you’ve seen in a videogame?”
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…
Lode Runner, a game many of us logged hundreds of hours upon. Lode Runner has a great deal of replay value thanks to its great map editor. The game was first published by Broderbund in 1983, but was first prototyped by Douglas Smith, an architecture student at the University of Washington.
The Lode Runner prototype was called Kong and was originally written for a Prime Computer 550 minicomputer on campus, but shortly after it was ported to the VAX minicomputer. Originally programmed in FORTRAN and utilized only ASCII character graphics (the most basic of characters).
In September of 1982 Smith was able to port it to the Apple II+ (in assembly language) and renamed it to Miner. In October of that same year he submitted a rough copy to Broderbund and he’s said to have received a one-line rejection letter, “Sorry, your game doesn’t fit into our product line; please feel free to submit future products.”
The original title had no joystick support and was developed in full black and white…not exactly exciting. So, Smith then borrowed money to purchase a color monitor and joystick and continued to improve the game. Around Christmas of 1982, he submitted the game, now renamed Lode Runner, to four publishers and quickly received offers from all four: Sierra, Sirius, Synergistic, and Brøderbund.
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Hi guys.
Sorry for not leaving a comment on the last episodes (the one you read in this episode was months ago ^^), i was very busy the last weeks with business stuff and some personal issues. Anyway, thanks as always for the episodes and your effort you are putting in to each episode. I respect that very much!
Regarding the topics in this episode: I did not play Civ since …. i think Civ 3? The game is good, but its taking so much time …. sadly i dont have that much time 🙁
I played Life is strange 2, God of War (the old ones because i want to play though all of them before i play the actual one), Overwatch, Borderlands 1 (never played any Borderlands before) Hearthstone and a lot of Magic The Gathering Arena. If my friends are online, we like to play some Apex and/or Division 2 as well. I want to start Blood Bowl in the upcoming days, because i played the Board Game .. 20 years ago 🙂 I also pledged for “Ant Stream”, the retro streaming platform (will be live for early access on may 28th) … i hope this will be good 🙂 Did you heard of it ? What do you think of pledging video games / pc Games in general ?
Regarding the Apex update: the Havoc is ONLY playable with the turbo Charger .. without that it is absolute unplayable 🙂
Did you heard of Splitgate- Arena Warfare? This seems to be a new Arena Shooter which combines Halo and Portal (i think Jonah mentioned it in a youtube review of upcoming games from E3?) Its for free at the moment on steam 🙂
Regarding the backwards compability on PS5: this would be awesome! i would pay very much money for a ps5 which plays ps1,2,3 and 4 (and 5 of course) games. The only problem will be the chip for PS3 afaik.
Red Dead Online? I only see the promotions / advertisments all the time on twitch, but have no intention to play it 🙂
WoW: i really love this game, loved it in the beginning and still love it … problem is, that my friends are not playing it anymore …. and playing a MMORPG on your own is not that fun 🙁 I played the last expansion (as far as possible without a raid / group) and it was great gain. I listen to the music very often and like to see the cut scenes and updates. For sure the vanilla version was harder (in my opinion) but that was great … 40 people in a raid .. defeating Raganros for the first time … what an amazing feeling, so much emotions, better then the first time s** 🙂
First question of the week: The last game which has been released and i did not noticed it was Hollow Knight. I noticed it 1 year (or 2?) later and it so awesome, that i was wondering, i did not notice when it came out 🙂
Second question of the week: I think the game i will still play in 20 years or will not age is Magic The Gathering. But its a card game, so i dont know if this is a “real” game regarding to your question 🙂 If i had to pick a second game, it would be sth like WoW .. i started playing it in 2004 .. thats already 15 years ago 🙂 or one of the so called retro games, like Musha Aleste, Mushihemasama or any of this bullet hell shooters for the 16 and 32 Bit consoles. I still love to play them today 🙂
Thats all for this one. Sorry for this big and long one, i hope that´s ok 🙂
When i will be in the U.S. the next time, i will invite you guys for dinner to thank you for all your work you put into this podcast. Thanks for that!
Greetings,
Ralf