And we’re back!
We’ve been on break with the GamerSushi podcast for several weeks now because I was on vacation in the land of Florida, drinking orange juice and sunshine and visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. As soon as we got a chance this week, we all sat down and recorded a new edition of the show.
In this episode, we talk about a number of things including Limbo, pirating video games and the idea of rage quitting. It clocks in at right around an hour and forty minutes, and I think it’s a good time. Unfortunately, something went wrong with our connection, so the last twenty minutes or so has some audio glitches, but it’s nothing that breaks the podcast. We actually recorded this a few days ago, but since I’ve been lazy it’s not going up until now.
As always, please go rate this cast on iTunes and subscribe with the handy links to the right. Enjoy!
This week’s topics:
What Are You Playing?
Half-Life Two Episode Two and gaming backlogs
Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands and course-correcting franchises
The Mass Effecting of Dragon Age 2
StarCraft II and multiplayer games with steep learning curves
Limbo, Alan Wake and the re-rise of single player gaming
Community Topics
Photorealistic graphics and visual styles
Rage-quitting in multiplayer gaming
Gaming News
Machinarium and pirate amnesty
Obviously, this list doesn’t fully cover the broad array of topics that we hit, so you need to listen on your own to find out. Feel free to continue the discussion on any of these topics in the comments. Thanks for listening!
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Whoa! I just refreshed my page, and up popped the podcast! Downloading…
That’s podcasts for yah. Showing up when least expected. Gotta love ’em.
In response to Nick’s comments on the moral ambiguity of dragon age, I haven’t played it yet but from what you said, that is something I would love to see Bioware do for Mass Effect 3. My only criticism of ME2 was that you knew straight away what was paragon and what was renegade. Especially considering how dark the story was meant to be, knowing straight away that what you were going to do/say was from one alignment or the other did seem to take away from that. Granted, a lot of decisions haven’t entirely come to fruition which will come about in part 3, but I would like to see more of that.
I totally agree supernovaforce, Mass Effect 2 seemed almost too simple with a few of the dialogue choices. I mean, it was easy to just spam the side that you knew was the badass one (in my case). What I liked about DA:O is that you never knew what decision you made was going to piss off who, so it was a constant juggling act.
A lot of that in Dragon Age seemed force to me, but not as much as Mass Effect one. Do you remember how your party would automatically go Renegade/Paragon no matter what their character was? Having Tali urge me to kill the Rachni queen was kind of funny.
Next year is going to be ridicules, we are getting Gears of War 3, Killzone 3, Portal 2, Crysis 2, Dead Space 2, and Deus Ex: Human Revolution, all early 2011.
Indie games shouldn’t cost $5. Too prove this Jeff Vogel (the creator of the Exile and Geneforge series) has some really good points “[when your game costs $5-6], You better hope you’re earning more per copy elsewhere because otherwise, if you want a pretty meager payout for your work (say, $100K before expenses), you have to sell forty thousand games. You know how hard it is to move that many copies? PRETTY DARN HARD.”
I also like Vogel’s argument for people who pirate to “make sure they like it first.” namely that “You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don’t get both.”
Finally if 90% of the copy’s of world of goo are pirated, and people complain about DRM treating them like criminals guess what, 90% of gamers ARE criminals!
MGS, Portal, Deus Ex, Half-Life 2, Mafia, Fallout 3.. etc etc.. All my favourite games have been single player only. My favourite Online game is and always has been Counter-Strike, a multiplayer only game.
I feel like more games should make up their mind and be one or the other, and get it right, rather than squeeze in a no-fun campaign (Battlefield Bad Company 2) or squeeze in a no-fun multiplayer component (GTA IV)
Once again, great pod cast guys.
I got the quotes from Jeff Vogel’s Blog which can be found here,
jeff-vogel.blogspot.com
His games can be found here,
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com
I would highly suggest trying out a demo for some of his games, they are very good, if you are into old school turn based RPG’s.
To bring up a tired horse, I used to pirate tons of stuff, because I felt some entitlement to them, some “try before you buy” attitude. Nowadays, I don’t expand much, so I pretty much buy stuff now. As far as independent musicians, authors, game developers, etc. There’s really no way to justify pirating them, because that money goes straight to the creator/team and their families, no middle man.
Pirates use the hippy excuse for everything else as not “wanting to give money to the man” or some shit like that. The problem here is that there are still people who make these things for a living, even if they work for tyrannical businesses. Every sale counts.
Back then, I hated the RIAA. And I kind of still do. Their positions on whether or not I can upload a video with a copyrighted song make no sense, or vice versa, because…well, that’s going off on a whole other tangent I don’t feel like talking about. But even though I don’t like big music, I still buy songs and albums, because that money goes towards the producers, musicians, lyricists, and etc., even if it also goes towards the big guys and their schemes.
Plus, I like having a physical copy of something, or even a secure thing that is guaranteed to work. With pirated material, there’s not always the guarantee of high quality or secure files.
Old issue aside, another great podcast. It did get a little choppy near the end, as you said, but it wasn’t too bad. Man, I really wish I had a 360 to play Limbo!
Has anyone ever played earths special forces, a mod for 1.6? Yeah that’s a game with a learning curve lol
Yay I was mentioned in the podcast! But on the whole paying for stuff and companies making money issue, this frustrates me all the time when someone sells a game at my store and I give them 10 dollars, and they are just appalled that we turn around and sell it for 30-35 dollars. It’s called being a successful company, profit is required.
JUST AN OBSERVATION, BUUUUT…
what I’ve noticed in the few podcasts is that everyone in it doesn’t seem to be permently keeping games. For example, in this podcast, Eddy says that he traded in a bunch of games for Red Dead (major paraphrase, of course).
Personally, I don’t trade in games…ever. GameStop doesn’t really give you a fair price for a game and it doesn’t seem worth it to lose 3-4 really good games for 1 or 2 games that just happen to be coming out.
[quote comment=”12854″]JUST AN OBSERVATION, BUUUUT…
what I’ve noticed in the few podcasts is that everyone in it doesn’t seem to be permently keeping games. For example, in this podcast, Eddy says that he traded in a bunch of games for Red Dead (major paraphrase, of course).
Personally, I don’t trade in games…ever. GameStop doesn’t really give you a fair price for a game and it doesn’t seem worth it to lose 3-4 really good games for 1 or 2 games that just happen to be coming out.[/quote]
I agree with you. I only buy games that I won’t trade in. The rest I rent.
Games are expensive, and trading them in is the way I keep current with what’s out. If I’m not going to play a game again, it’s kind of a waste of money and space to keep it. FF13 fetched me almost $45 upon trade-in, which I turned into RDR, which then fetched me $35. So playing 2 great games for about 6 months total (2-3 for each) cost me $40 instead of $120. I don’t see the lose in that at all, haha.
Like, by this time next year, what good would the following games be to me, sitting in a trunk in my closet?
Gears of War
Gears of War 2
NCAA 2008
Dead Rising
Halo 3
Call of Duty 4
Final Fantasy XIII
Mass Effect
Dragon Age
Left 4 Dead
Halo Wars
Splinter Cell: Double Agent
Forza 2
Fight Night Round 3 + 4
Viva Pinata
Halo ODST
Off the top of my head, those are all games I’ve purchased and traded in this generation. Most of them were traded in for their brothers and sisters (sequels), and some because there was no reason to keep them. I keep a handful of games that I know I’ll be playing for a while:
Borderlands
Resident Evil 5
Uncharted 2
Bad Company 2
Halo: Reach will be one of these, too. It really comes down to preference. For me, a big part of gaming is playing games when they come out, and I feel like I can do that at a reasonable rate without pissing my wife off from a) buying too many games or b) taking up too much space with clutter.
Keeping games is a nice thought, but I’m a little behind the 8-ball money wise. To keep current and up to date with everything going on in gaming, I trade in.
To me, spending $60 on RDR and getting $40 back means in reality I only spent $20. Worth it to me. I don’t mind that it’s all in-store credit either, cause every penny I don’t spend on games is something I can use to keep gas in my car or food in my fridge.
I don’t see any reason to keep a game that I’m never going to play again, even if it’s a fantastic game. I don’t miss a single one of the games I’ve traded in.
I’ve realized over the past few years that I already have way more possessions than I’ll ever need, and anything I can do to cut back on stuff sitting around taking up shelf space is a good thing.
If the price is what stops you, there’s always selling it used on Amazon, Half.com, Glyde.com, etc., although the major benefit with GameStop is that you 1) don’t have to figure out shipping and 2) don’t have to wait for someone to buy it from you.
Yeah, like the guys say, it works for some people. I am always behind on my backlog of games, so renting and only buying 2 or 3 games a year works for me.
If I ever catch up, then I might be able to power through games like Eddy and Mitch and get some of that trade in credit before it turns to crap from Gamestop.
I’m a hoarder. I love hanging onto games because even though I might not play them, I can if I get the urge out of the blue.
I’ve gone through several purges of my gaming collection over the years and I almost always regret it after the fact. I’ve bought the same game several times as a result of these purges.
I finally just accepted that I like to have all the games I like at my fingertips and stopped selling them even after I’ve beaten them.