Episode 569: Red Dead Memories

The guys talk about Resident Evil 3 (and by extension Evolve), but most of the episode delves into the Gaming Flashback, Red Dead Redemption and its sequel Red Dead Redemption 2, focusing on where the original succeeded and where the sequel failed.

The news items this week include:

  • Valorant closed beta rushes to 1.6M viewers on Twitch
  • Rumor: Resident Evil 8 is first-person, takes “serious departures”, and will be out next year
  • E3 2020 won’t hold an “online experience” after all

Let us know what you think!

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Exclusive Artist Deals In Rhythm Games Not Good?Exclusive Artist Deals In Rhythm Games Not Good?

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…

Gaming Flashback: SimCityGaming Flashback: SimCity

SimCity was released in 1989, was originally called Micropolis and was designed by the infamous Will Wright. For those that don’t know Will Wright, its suffice to say he’s one of the most popular and influential game designers of our time. SimCity, TheSims, SimAnt, SimFarm and Spore are a few of his hits and TheSims has taken many records since its original release.

Wright had trouble finding a publisher for a game in which you couldn’t really “win or lose.”  Turned down by Broderbund, Wright eventually pitched the idea to Jeff Braun of Maxis.  Maxis agreed to publish Simcity as one of its first two games.

When near complete, Wright and Braun took the game back to Broderbund to clear the rights for the game.  Broderbund executives Gary Carlston and Don Daglow saw how addicting the game could be and signed Maxis to a distribution deal.  Four years after initial development, SimCity was released for the Amiga and Macintosh platforms, followed soon after by the IBM PC and Commodore 64.  On January 10th 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the GPL license as… Micropolis!

The objective of the game is simple, build and design a city.  Though the player could focus on building a highly efficient city with an ever growing populace, it was by no means required.  In a sense, open ended, the player was free to design the city as they chose.

Included in the city building experience was the possibility of natural disasters such as flooding, tornadoes and more.  Pre-designed scenarios were also included in the game such as the Boston 2010 nuclear meltdown, or mass coastal flooding of Rio de Janeiro of 2047 … even a Godzilla attack of Tokyo in 1961.

In the years to follow, the SimCity franchise would continue to expand with greater detail as SimCity 2000 (1993), SimCity 3000 (1999), SimCity 4 (2003) and a host of other “Sim” games and until the release of “The Sims” in 2000, the SimCity series was the best-selling line of games made by Maxis.

In Fall of 2008, EA will release the next child in the SimCity family, SimCity Creator for the Nintendo Wii and DS systems. And thus, history continues!