Episode 647: Advertising

[This episode has been re-uploaded due to technical issues]

This week’s is pretty short, featuring a Sonic the Hedgehog and Halo discussion before delving into what’s okay and what’s not okay with in-game advertisements. The Gaming Flashback for this episode is the tripping Journey.

The news includes:

  • PlayStation wants ads in its games, too
  • Bugsnax leads late April Xbox Game Pass line-up
  • Amy Hennig is taking another shot at making a Star Wars game

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?

Bethesda’s Hines: Don’t Shoehorn MultiplayerBethesda’s Hines: Don’t Shoehorn Multiplayer

Bethesda Softworks vice president of marketing Pete Hines is critzing publishers and developers who shoehorn multiplayer into their games that doing such a thing is “a waste of time” and advises, “Just drop it, don’t bother…it’ll make for a worse game.”

In an interview with Next Gen BIZ, Hines states that using online multiplayer as a tool to prevent used game trade-ins and rental simply doesn’t work, and robs developers of valuable man-hours.

Hines stated:

“(People ask us) for a game like Skyrim or Prey 2, why doesn’t it have multiplayer? Well, our question is always the opposite when we talk to a developer. If you’re doing multiplayer, why are you doing multiplayer? What are you trying to accomplish?

“If you’re doing it just to check a box or because every other publisher says you’ve got to have multiplayer, then just drop it, don’t bother, it’s a waste of time, a giant distraction and it’ll make for a worse overall game.

“We want the best game possible. If that’s a singleplayer game that’s 15 to 20 hours, then make that! Don’t waste your time on features that don’t make the game better.”

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Prey 2 are two Bethesda properties that will lack multiplayer, but one of the tools to encourage games to keep both games will be downlodable content and, even more important, good communications with the game communities and nurturing the fandom for both games.