gaming -

Episode 225: Voodoo DoughnutsEpisode 225: Voodoo Doughnuts

August 3, 2011| Jonah Falcon| 0 Comment| 6:34 pm

We’re back this week, as a ton of major news has hit in the past week. Paul starts going insane over doughnuts, Nintendo, and Max Dominic. There’s no gaming history or gaming flashback this week, but a ton of reader feedback.

This week’s news items include:

Nintendo in deep financial trouble
Diablo III requires constant internet connection
Tribes Ascend developer states free-to-play on 360 is “inevitable”
Gamestop offering in-store purchases of Deus Ex: Human Revolution digital download
Xbox co-creator brags “consoles have won!”

This week’s question of the week: Do you wait for a price cut before buying a console system? Let us know.

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

July 23, 2011| Jonah Falcon| 0 Comment| 12:00 pm

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.

TD Gaming Podcast 98: I Was Bad AssTD Gaming Podcast 98: I Was Bad Ass

November 25, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 10:54 pm

This week we’re giving our impressions of Wrath of the Lich King, taking a look back at Ikari Warriors for the arcade and NES. This weeks news covers a few cool topics:

7-11 getting into the video game market
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King Sells 2.8 million copies
Harmonix facing drum pedal lawsuit
Playstation 3 online community matches Xbox 360’s

This week we’re taking a historic look back at SNK Playmore, a company that managed to collapse yet rise from the flames under a new name with their old SNK franchise licenses. Also, we’ll announce the winners for our Bejeweled Twist Contest.

TD Gaming Podcast 97: A Third Level Coke DealerTD Gaming Podcast 97: A Third Level Coke Dealer

November 18, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 10:08 pm

In this episode we’ve got a lot of MMO-style content and news. Although we’re not reviewing Wrath of the Lich King yet, we’ve got other subscription based news. This weeks gaming flashback is Defender and this weeks news includes:

Ubisoft getting closer to obtaining and MMO
Microsoft giving away Xbox live points in a sweepstakes for the new Xbox live experience
Wii vs 360 vs PS3 install base
GTA may go subscription based

This week we’re taking a look back at William Higinbotham, the man who created the first video game by accident but wants to be known for his nuclear nonproliferation work. This weeks podcast continues the contest to give away two copies of Bejeweled Twist on the gaming podcast and another two copies in our gaming podcast forums.

Fanboy Turf Wars and Metacritic’s The TurfFanboy Turf Wars and Metacritic’s The Turf

November 8, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 1:27 pm

Gamers are passionate about gaming, love their games, follow the industry all while living and breathing all things game. This is the green pastures upon which fanboys are born. As we’ve seen at gamingpodcast.net, where we were hit hard by fanboy rage a few days ago the blood boils with hate and rage.

Although our site only received 30+ comments, other sites whom picked up the article have 100+ comments on the article about Blu-ray and my opinions of it. PS3 fanboys ran wild telling me how my name has been “dragged through the mud” followed (and preceded) by many curse words and name calling, many of which I simply refused to post because of the vulgar content.

They have moved on to larger more popular platforms to voice their opinion, by dinging Gears of War 2 prior to the games release on metacritic.com dolling out a 3.5 user submitted review (which has since gone up upon the release). Why did they target GoW2? Because the 360 fanboys nailed LittleBigPlanet with crappy reviews, says smashpad.com.

The response was to hit Resistance 2 for another bad user review score all while forcing metacritic to change their user review process to only allow users to post reviews after a game has hit store shelves. Metacritic isn’t to blame here, although it is sensible to only allow reviews prior to a games release, the fanboys have found a way to hold their turf wars.

Who’s next? Amazon.com allows reviews as well and, as we saw from Spore, it can get pretty dirty there too. Now that Metacritic is altering their review process will gamers wait until they’re allowed to spam with bad reviews to do so, or will they hunt for new social networking proving grounds to give games a bad name?

Perhaps they’ll compete for google keywords to rank #1 for a fraud review of a title to beat out other sites or they’ll find another popular user-generated review site to scar the name of a to-be released title.

There is a gang war on the Net and it involves fanboys finding social media outlets to spread their hate and deception on the opposing consoles. For us, we’ll stick with gaming and leave the rage to someone else.

Would You Buy An Apple-Based Console?Would You Buy An Apple-Based Console?

September 17, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 9:36 am

Does the console market need any more competitors? We’ve seen record sales in the game industry for titles like Halo 3 and Grand Theft Auto IV along with huge expectations for Resistance 2 and some new Sony PlayStation 3 projects. Yet, the tiny little Wii product holds best sales records around the world as the heavy hitter, Microsoft and Sony, compete for the most awesome spectacle show of graphics.

Competition is a great way to drive down costs, drive up expectations and give consumers new innovative products with better quality. Imagine if Apple got into console development and produced a new highly sexy product with the hype and consumer desire of the iPhone or iPod.

“Apple has the infrastructure in place through iTunes to create a real value proposition for those that want to extend the capability of their console beyond gaming and has the cash — about $20 billion — to not only invest in the best components on the market, but in an online gaming experience that could rival Xbox Live.” (kotaku)

Apple’s showing a huge surge in recognition and sales thanks to the iPod and growing desire for Apple hardware competing against Microsoft’s Vista operating system. As more consumers turn to Apple for their music and mobile gaming needs, Apple must see windows of exploiting the gaming market further.

More importantly, nobody can pull off digital rights management (DRM) and locking consumers into a product line like Apple all while they beg for more. Consoles are little boxes of DRM waiting for happy consumers to buy into the concept all while avoiding the hacking and bittorrenting like you’ve been seeing on Spore in the last few weeks. Had Spore been released on a console this DRM fiasco would have been avoided because gamers don’t even realize (or care) that a console locks them into playing and, more importantly, buying the game for the hardware.

(more…)

TD Gaming Podcast 87: One Star ReviewTD Gaming Podcast 87: One Star Review

September 9, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 9:58 pm

This weeks gaming podcast is packed with content, our emotional rant on the latest news and we take a look back at Rygar and its infamous stupid pause system. This weeks news covers:

Xbox Red Ring of Death Woes Explained
EA Considering Licensing the Spore Engine
New Buffy the Vampire Slayer MMO Planned
Wii getting a storage solution that is “better than a hard drive”

This weeks soap box, we explain our emotional disappointment with Spore’s DRM news and its 1-star amazon vote. Also, lots of great listener comments, touch on our own personal podcast history and another great contest! This time we’re handing out eight copies of Peggle Nights! Winners will get the title the day it releases, but can win before it’s out.

TD Gaming Podcast 86: Trouble with Norse MythologyTD Gaming Podcast 86: Trouble with Norse Mythology

September 2, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 9:42 pm

This weeks gaming podcast we stroll down memory lane with Gauntlet, ponder Microsoft’s role as a PC game publisher, hit up some news:

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick trying to scare off MMO developers
Diablo 3 in content creation mode
Sony may be thinking of charging for PlayStation Network
Starcraft 2, may get a fourth race.

We’ll also take a look at the history of the joystick and pimp our new gaming podcast forums. You can also checkout our new World of Warcraft guild, Fallen Souls.

2old2play’s 2008 LAN Video, Older Gamers Having Fun2old2play’s 2008 LAN Video, Older Gamers Having Fun

August 22, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 9:18 pm

2OLD2PLAY from Janks Morton on Vimeo.

For those 25 and older, 2old2play offers lots of great gaming fun and communities for all genres of gaming. They’ve been around since roughly 2005, this video, done by Janks Morton (one of the members) is excellent. This type of footage could easily be something on a cable network, A&E or Travel Channel, very high end editing that can’t be beat for a LAN party.

The Chicago LAN is an annual event for these older gamers. As a fellow community member, I’ve got to tip my hat to the quality content in the coverage. Hopefully, next year, I can go too.

(Thanks, 2old2play.com)

TD Gaming Podcast 80: 2600 In a Trash BagTD Gaming Podcast 80: 2600 In a Trash Bag

July 22, 2008| schommer| 0 Comment| 7:24 pm

This weeks gaming podcast, we’re talking a bit about E3 but not enough to make you sick. We’re curious to the fate of the E3 event, is it really done or will it live on? We’re finishing up the RPG history and we take a look back at the Atari title KABOOM! Was he catching bombs with a box, barrel or pie?

Also in the gaming podcast news:

Nintendo’s Wii takes US Console Lead
Bungie not allowed to talk Halo
Wii Motion Plus and Wii Sports Resort
Rock Band Instruments and Guitar Hero World Tour

We’ve also got a listener comment pointing out where Jennifer is wrong about rhythm matching games and give away Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords.

Please take our podcast survey!