Episode 656: Gooey Episode

This week includes a Gaming Flashback about the sticky puzzle game World of Goo, which was one of the first games released without DLC — which is one of the main themes running through this podcast: videogame obsolescence. The guys also discuss James Gunn’s work on Lollipop Chainsaw and speedrun cheating.

The news for the week includes:

  • Ubisoft to pull online from older games, which also takes away your DLC
  • Sucker Punch has “no plans to revisit” its Sly Cooper or InFamous games
  • Squad’s 50v50 tactical FPS action has moved over 3 million copies
  • Fable reboot gets a new narrative lead

All this and Listener Feedback.

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Episode 278: Second Chance to Win Borderlands 2Episode 278: Second Chance to Win Borderlands 2

This week’s episode has heated arguments between Jordan and Jonah, as this new podcast runs a little long. However, there are tons of news items to make up for the lack of a new show last week.

The news items include:

  • Bethesda’s Hines unexcited over next-gen console launch
  • Borderlands 2‘s melee skill tree for Zer0 “thanks to them ignoring” Pitchford
  • EA’s Gibeau brags he has not green-lit any single player games
  • Valve responds to angry indie developers over $100 Steam Greenlight fee
  • Crystal Dynamics: Lara Croft had become “unrelatable
  • City of Heroes may be saved from shutdown
  • Ron Gilbert blames point and click adventure stagnation on DOOM

The contest continues – just mention what your favorite game from the 2000’s was – and a winner will be announced next week.

Diablo 3 Content Creation PhaseDiablo 3 Content Creation Phase

Now that Blizzard feels their engine is solid, it’s time to move on to creating content for the full game. Jay Wilson, Diablo 3‘s lead designer, says the game engine is in an advance stage of completion and much of the art team has moved onto Act 2. Don’t read into that, he said game engine.

Blizzard is obviously not hurting for money, given the success of World of Warcraft and they’ve always taken their time with projects to make them solid products. Blizzard’s name is on the line and they’re brand consists of three major franchises: Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo. When you produce so few games you’re expected to do them perfectly.

How do they do it? As Wilson says, “If we haven’t rebuilt something five times it really doesn’t deserve to be shipped. That’s pretty much our policy.” (eurogamer) While a game engine is the foundation for a great game experience, the content is king. Blizzard is deep in the mire of content production so, although the engine might be solid, the final product is probably still far from complete.

End result, expect a high quality product once again from Blizzard.