GWJ Conference Call Episode 548

Persona 5, Typeshift, Shovelknight: Spectre of Torment, Onirim, Playerunknown: Battlegrounds, Rose of Winter, When To Enter The Game, Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Julian, Allen and Amanda talk about when to jump into games.

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Comments

00:02:35 Persona 5
00:19:09 Typeshift
00:20:16 Onirim
00:21:04 Mini Metro
00:23:28 Zelda: Breath of the Wild
00:26:26 Night in the Woods
00:27:25 Shovelknight: Spectre of Torment
00:29:50 Mass Effect: Andromeda
00:35:01 Playerunknown: Battlegrounds
00:41:38 Rose of Winter
00:43:47 When to Enter the Game
01:00:50 Your Emails

I'm a big fan of early access, mainly because I'm of the opinion that all games ship unfinished these days, and at least the developers releasing into early access are incentivized to make their games better.

The comparison to Mass Effect Andromeda is apt. If EA had published the game in early access it would have 1) been honest about the state of the shipped software and 2) created the impression that someone was going to be working on finishing it as part of the actual plan instead of PR damage control.

It's a classical business maxim: underpromise, overdeliver. Set my expectations for the game being a buggy mess by telling me it's not finished, and I'll be pleasantly surprised by what's working and give you some slack for what's not. Telling me your game is finished when it's not just leaves a Bad aftertaste.

My problem with Early Access is that I'm a chronic gaming gadfly. I'm a classic time-poor gamer, and I flit from game to game, abandoning half-played games frequently. Early Access is just a recipe for getting a mediocre first impression, then abandoning the game as a result. It's better for me to wait until the game is baked before diving in - then it can get it's hooks into me. At least until SQUIRREL!!!

Re: Early Access. I really just wait until the game looks fun. Usually I like things to say they're feature complete, so that new subsystems don't come in and throw me for a loop. I generally don't jump on ASAP unless it's a pretty mature looking produce. (Mature in the dev cycle, not MA rated.)

In response to the mail about artificial characters being "real": First, I'm under no compulsion to accept that artificial character have free will, or souls, or even that either of these things exist. There's already plenty of debate about both of these things, finding out that we're a simulated universe wouldn't conclusively settle anything.

But strictly on the subject of if an AI can be "real", I draw the line at volition. If an artificially constructed mind can want something without being explicitly told to want it, and is additionally capable of expressing it's wants, then that seems to cross our basic understanding of being a living mind. I'm not sure a cat understands "maybe", but I am sure it wants things. It seems like a fair line to draw. Especially since we can already build bots that pass the Turing Test.

Day One is starting to feel like Early Access at times these days.

Player Unknown is the modder who did the 'battle royale' mod for DayZ and ArmaIII. Which H1Z1 took and did their own spin on it and made popular on Twitch.

Shawn referred to it, but the essence of PUBG is definitely a condensed version of DayZ without the crafting. You get all the rush and thrill of a DayZ match, but condensed into 15-20 minute chunks due to the collapsing circle. People aren't allowed to find a corner and just hide there. It becomes very intense and they made joining another match extremely quick and easy. So whether your match ends in 30 seconds or 30 minutes you can instantly requeue and get right back at it again.

In regards to Early Access I treat it as a form of Kickstarting. I only do it with games where I like the premise and want to support that type of work. Granted the bulk of that are shooters and mmos. They can definitely be painful, and in some cases, disheartening. Looking at you Repopulation! As long as the developers are in it for the long haul and want a finished product and not just trying to do a cash grab it can be worth it.

PUBG, and Conan Exiles which are relatively new releases in Early Access have definitely been gems. PUBG is probably the best one i've seen right out of the gate. Yea it's buggy and has issues, but they're actively working on them and we have a roadmap from them about what to expect. Conan Exiles was hurtful that first week, but right now it's a lot of fun and becoming more fleshed out.

For Honor is still a ton of fun and unique, but they're hampered by their insistence to do their matches with P2P connections.

My issue with early access is that I already have soooo many games to play. Why would I spend time on something that's unfinished? I'd rather bide my time and play it later on. And since I don't play multiplayer games all that much, time zones and kids and everything, I don't really about beating the learning curve or being there for peak population.

I realize how ironic this must seem since I got my hands on Mass Effect: Andromeda as soon as I could and have been enjoying it thoroughly, but I'm not one for alphas and betas, at least not anymore. Maybe ten years ago, when I was still in college and didn't have two special needs kids and a 55 hour work week, but not anymore.

Hey Julian, you should have made a shoutout when you were stuck at the airport. There are a few of us here in the ATL that may have been able to help you with the delay.

Of course in the past month we've managed to burn down an Interstate, have apocalyptic storms, and apparently there was an earthquake in central Georgia the other day. We would probably have been blocked by a plague of locusts or something.

wrong thread!

Glad to hear Shawn give Persona 5 a good chunk of time. I've been plucking away at it whenever I can find the time and loving every second. I thought the comparison to survival games was interesting and quite apt.

Eleima wrote:

My issue with early access is that I already have soooo many games to play. Why would I spend time on something that's unfinished? I'd rather bide my time and play it later on.

Totally agreed. I can't keep up with all of the highly polished, finished games I want to play. Why would I actively seek out unfinished games to fill my time? I enjoy being part of the conversation with gaming, but not enough to spend my time in half-baked projects.

I do appreciate the fact that other people are willing to be the guinea pigs for me. I'm sure it lets me play some much better games when I finally get around to them.

Eleima wrote:

I realize how ironic this must seem since I got my hands on Mass Effect: Andromeda as soon as I could and have been enjoying it thoroughly, but I'm not one for alphas and betas, at least not anymore.

I'm also guessing you didn't know ME:A was going to be reminiscent of an early access game when you bought it, so can't really blame you for that one

I'm actually curious what Amanda would think of Persona 5. A lot of the social aspects are actually very much in line with Japanese dating sims. I played a (terrible and even worse translated) one in high school out of curiosity, and based on your choice to do things like athletics or go shopping or relax impacted different statistics, and these in turn could impact social events.

That game was a piece of trash. But, Persona 5 sounds like it takes those elements and wraps them around a dungeon crawl RPG.

Regarding dream games and projects: Bungie + Bioware. Both create the setting, Bioware handles story and script, and Bungie handles the gameplay.

Boom. Best game either company would ever make.

Rat Boy wrote:

Day One is starting to feel like Early Access at times these days.

Y'know, I remember, before even the original Xbox came out, people complaining that no one was ever going to release games complete anymore because you could just patch it on the Internet. Then Xbox Live happened (because no one paid attention to Dreamcast's online capability (we were all still on dial-up after all)) and people were saying the same thing about consoles.

Lo and behold, both The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Horizon: Zero Dawn released and in pretty polished condition. Are they perfect? No. Do they still contain glitches? Yes. But this is going back to the statements about "unlimited time and unlimited money". To put another way: art is never finished, only abandoned. No one, not even publishers, want to release an incomplete game. The incomplete game is usually released due to poor (time) management, failure to properly scope or rein in the project, or at no one's fault but that's how things turned out, and the publisher is no longer willing to spend money and just wants to get it out the door. ME:A and FFXV both seem to be the victims of this fate.

Four huge games, with two of them releasing in fantastic shape and making the other two look bad in comparison. Would Squenix and Bioware have released complete games if they could? Yes, but they spent how many years on their respective games while spending how much money?

And honestly, considering what we know of the facial animations in ME:A and the history of FFXV, I think "poorly managed" is most certainly the culprit there.

What change in technology or change in trends is going to be the definitive cause for purchasing incomplete games? Weren't DLC and microtransactions supposed to be the tolling bell, too?

Sorry, RatBoy. I'm not specifically targeting you as I know you weren't really singing the Doom song, but it just seems a general sentiment that is the equivalent of standing on the street corner with a sign saying "The End is Nigh". It's been "nigh" for so long that I'm starting to think "nigh" is another word for "whenever".

I'm curious of what I'd think of the Persona series, too! No ps4, though. And stubbornly so, at this point, because I'm committed to the switch/pc life now.

Maybe if we cross our fingers hard enough a Persona 5 Port on the Switch will become the system's Half-Life 3.

Did my ears play tricks on me or was there an email from Brandon Routh? Superman Returns actor Brandon Routh?

Amoebic wrote:

I'm curious of what I'd think of the Persona series, too! No ps4, though. And stubbornly so, at this point, because I'm committed to the switch/pc life now.

My household is the same way, but about the Xbox. My wife won't have one in the house.

I really liked Brendan's email question, so I threw together a new topic in the Games section:

Lesser known games that got overshadowed Remember-All

Well that Horizon spoiler section felt completely confusing for someone who hasn't played the game. You talked about the ending a bit, but it almost felt like you didn't want to say what specifically happened in a bunch of instances.

That's interesting. I always do a spoiler section assuming the listener has played the game. We opted out of a blow by blow of the plot since that felt a bit boring.

Actually, I'll listen to spoiler sections, even when I haven't played the game, with the caveat that I have zero intention of playing it. It can be interesting to simply listen in on how people react to a game, how they feel about it.

Eleima wrote:

Actually, I'll listen to spoiler sections, even when I haven't played the game, with the caveat that I have zero intention of playing it. It can be interesting to simply listen in on how people react to a game, how they feel about it. :)

This this this.

I go into Spoiler Sections having played all of the game I intend to, which usually means all of it, or none of it. F'rinstance, i listened to the Bioshock Infinite one about 2 years after I started the game, after returning to it one afternoon and realizing that I wasn't going back after that.

It depends for me. I've never played Journey but listened to the spoiler podcast because it's not something I'm super fired up for. However, in some ways I appreciate spoiler-casts being vague because then, should I choose to go and play the game anyway, I'll still only have vague concepts of what was discussed while also knowing what to look out for. There can still be surprise.

ccesarano wrote:

I've never played Journey but listened to the spoiler podcast because it's not something I'm super fired up for.

GAAAAAHHHH!!! O_o You're heartlesssssssss. :'(
That game pulls at my heartstrings every - single - time.

Eleima wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I've never played Journey but listened to the spoiler podcast because it's not something I'm super fired up for.

GAAAAAHHHH!!! O_o You're heartlesssssssss. :'(
That game pulls at my heartstrings every - single - time.

Let's be clear. Not playing Journey and listening to a spoiler cast instead is symptomatic of being interested, but generally lazy about acquiring first hand knowledge.

I, on the other hand, haven't played Journey nor do I care what happened in it.

Insufficient curiosity cannot be called heartless, because it leaves no room for labeling willful neglect.

Amanda, this was a huge and vast improvement. Most people can't take constructive criticism and view it as an attack but it was never meant that way. Really, really well done. I mean reallllly well done.

Eleima wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I've never played Journey but listened to the spoiler podcast because it's not something I'm super fired up for.

GAAAAAHHHH!!! O_o You're heartlesssssssss. :'(
That game pulls at my heartstrings every - single - time.

I am certainly heartless....ssssss.

But oddly enough, that anonymous multiplayer aspect of Journey is what made me too intimidated to jump in.

That said, that spoiler podcast is one of my favorite episodes of GWJ and as such I think of the game fondly despite never having played it.

The email about Bioware joining forces with CDPR was probably more about Bioware needing CD Projeckt than the other way around.

I think Julian was confusing Defiance with Terra Nova, the latter is about time travel, or parallel universes or something. The Defiance game is still running, I keep meaning to check it out it sounds interesting, and while the show was cheesy they created an interesting world.

I really liked the idea of Early Access back when it was fresh, I still like it more than Kickstarter because it at least requires something functional. I bought into both Mount & Blade and Minecraft before release. Both were innovative and ambitious ideas that would have never seen the light of day with conventional funding or bootstrapping. Importantly, they both had a sliding buy in cost that increased towards release, I bought both right before a price increase. Paying more, or release price, for early access is pure bullsh*t, imo. Testing someone's game isn't a privilege, or an exclusive club.

And now that Early Access is a Steam feature with, conservatively, 78 thousand multiplayer survival games gumming up the works it seems like an idea whose time, like Kickstarter (for vidya games at least), has come and gone. It's loaded down with bandwagon jumping and innovation isn't getting through.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

I think Julian was confusing Defiance with Terra Nova, the latter is about time travel, or parallel universes or something. The Defiance game is still running, I keep meaning to check it out it sounds interesting, and while the show was cheesy they created an interesting world.

I was completely on board with Defiance. It was a decent MMO (SciFi to boot!) and the idea that we were going to get episodic content based on the TV show AND the TV show was going to reference the game was for me going to be the bee's knees. Episodic stories that shaped the game world have not been done properly for a MMO since Asheron's Call. Sadly it got overrun by hackers and the developers kept getting farther and farther behind the storytelling curve. It just stopped being fun.

ccesarano wrote:
Eleima wrote:
ccesarano wrote:

I've never played Journey but listened to the spoiler podcast because it's not something I'm super fired up for.

GAAAAAHHHH!!! O_o You're heartlesssssssss. :'(
That game pulls at my heartstrings every - single - time.

I am certainly heartless....ssssss.

But oddly enough, that anonymous multiplayer aspect of Journey is what made me too intimidated to jump in.

That said, that spoiler podcast is one of my favorite episodes of GWJ and as such I think of the game fondly despite never having played it.

That's okay, you're off the hook, DoubtingT is even worse than you are.

The first time I played Journey, the PS3 was offline, so it was effectively a single player experience. And it was still a powerful experience, very much so, at least for me. I don't know that you should feel all that intimidated by the multiplayer part, it's a variable that enhances the game (the first I met someone in Journey, I was so excited), but it's not a sine qua non element of it. It's a very unreliable element too since you never know if you'll run into one, two, three players or none. You might find someone who will stick with you from beginning to end. Or have people come and go. It's kinda like life, that way.
But if it's the multiplayer that's holding you back, try your first playthrough offline. It's still a gorgeous, heart wrenching game, even in 2017.

One other thing that occurred to me, I find it amusing that Amanda wants to see the return of what sounds a lot like a DVD game.

ranalin wrote:

Sadly it got overrun by hackers and the developers kept getting farther and farther behind the storytelling curve. It just stopped being fun.

Ah, that's a bummer.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

One other thing that occurred to me, I find it amusing that Amanda wants to see the return of what sounds a lot like a DVD game.

ranalin wrote:

Sadly it got overrun by hackers and the developers kept getting farther and farther behind the storytelling curve. It just stopped being fun.

Ah, that's a bummer.

Full circle, my friend. It's come around. Still choose-your-own-adventure to it's core, but hopefully with less fmv!