Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 42

NCAA 2008, All Pro Football, Growing Up Gaming, Peter Moore, Suing The Pants Off Epic, Your Emails and more!

Hi kids! This week the crrraaaaazy GWJ crew talk about various topics related to the video game genre. We pierce the veil to reveal our deep, dark, gaming pasts. Thread of the week for people who suck, your emails and more! More I tell you!

Want to support the show? Hit the Digg link just above (it's fast and easy to register) or review us on iTunes! Read on for show notes.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind. You can even send a 30 second audio question or comment (MP3 format please) if you're so inclined.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"Los Pistoleros" Ian Dorsch - 0:25:18
"PodunkStump" Ian Dorsch - 0:58:05

Comments

Something wrong with the download site? I'm only getting 12kb/s from it instead of the usuall 400+

48kb/s here....*shrug* Certis must have given the hamsters the night off.

It's my server actually, and I got hit hard tonight. I mean yes, there are a zillion of you all out there, but I think when Certis posts it this early in an evening, every single listener is online with itunes open playing games, and thus I get 200 apache threads opening at once.

You people with your needs. Needs needs needs.

(It should be fine by now though. I just tested it. You may now return to stalking the Olsen Twins.)

(It should be fine by now though. I just tested it. You may now return to stalking the Olsen Twins.)

Some of us never stopped.

I'll listen to the show on the plane tomorrow, which means I won't have anything else to distract me if you guys go on a Sorkin-esque monologue about football formations or "tight ends" and such. I'm just saying, it better be good.

The iTunes version of the cast only gave me an 11MB file ... I wonder why.

Edit: reloaded and all is fine. never mind.

Yeah, i only got the first 15 minutes when i downloaded from the link the first time but the second time game me the whole file.

Was GWJ down this morning as well as your server Rabbit? Couldn't access it from work... hope they haven't blocked it!

Its only beginning to dawn on me how you poor North Americans were never exposed to the genius that was the Amiga A500. Speedball 2 on the Amiga is probably one of the greatest games ever.Check out the intro from 1990. God, I wasted some time on that game.

Ice-cream. Ice-cream.

If you are doubt check out the intro of Xenon2 for the PC and the Amiga. That machine was king of gaming for about 2-3 years there.

Regarding Silicon Knights lawsuit: Denis Dyack did not make the lawsuit public. Mark Rein, VP guy from Epic made a statement pretty much bringing the lawsuit to the public view.

Actually, that's a good point. I've thought maybe I was being a little rushed in my judgment there.

I could have sworn I'd tried to interject that little tidbit about Mark going public with it first, but you guys never let me talk!

/runs from the room crying

I had an Atari ST! Man, Atari computers rocked. They were awesome gaming machines for their time.

I had countless hours of gaming with Dungeon Master, Road War 2000, and Autoduel on the ST.

One note on playing a support role, that is usually what I play in any game I play. Whether it is a medic or engineering in an FPS or a healer in an MMO, it's the role I love playing. It's not that I'm bad at being the front line guy, it's that no one generally wants to play and I love playing.

In Team Fortress I used to be the medic that would follow the heavy. In World of Warcraft, I played a priest and a paladin because I can do the most to help the group in that way.

One saying I heard about WoW one time:

DPS (attackers) win the fame but the Healing (and support) wins the game.

You can have a team of guys great with the sniper rifle, but you're still going to need the support or else their screwed and in most games, that support role isn't glorified so nobody wants it.

BTW, ever since that director rant Elysium did, I've had "Walk Through The Fire" from the buffy musical stuck in my head.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

I had an Atari ST! Man, Atari computers rocked. They were awesome gaming machines for their time.

I had countless hours of gaming with Dungeon Master, Road War 2000, and Autoduel on the ST.

Hey me too! That thing was pretty amazing for the time, wasn't it? Didn't have the graphic firepower of the Amiga, but i remember the OS very fondly.

Car Wars, such an un-mined property.

I didnt get an ST, but I had the Atari 800. I remember Colonial Conquest; Crush, Crumble&Chomp, Ultima III, Autoduel, Bards Tale I&II, the Infocom Games, Temple of Apshai... oh all kinds of fun stuff.

Aww, temple of apshai. That takes me back.

I did love me some Roadwar 2000. I had the grand mother of all station wagons in that game. It had seen so many performance shops in my adventures that I didn't have the heart to swap it out for a bus or anything other more useful vehicle later in the game.

Wizards Crown was great fun too. The enchanted +5 crowbar got the job done for all those fights waiting just behind locked doors.

Wow.. Rabbit couldnt be more wrong about the importance and role the "top" guys can make at a company/division.

Wizards Crown was great fun too. The enchanted +5 crowbar got the job done for all those fights waiting just behind locked doors.

Awesome game.. one of my all time favorites.. despite never being able to finish it.. there was a point in time fairly late in the game where there was an encounter where you went into an inn and get "ambushed" that I simply could not survive despite trying like 100 times or something..

I killed my friends copy of Wizards Crown, by accidentally turning off the floppy drive while the disk was still inside. Back then.. that was the kiss of death for a floppy disk.

jonnypolite wrote:

Hey me too! That thing was pretty amazing for the time, wasn't it? Didn't have the graphic firepower of the Amiga, but i remember the OS very fondly.

Car Wars, such an un-mined property.

I can't say I remember the OS fondly, but the games were great.

Irongut wrote:

I didnt get an ST, but I had the Atari 800. I remember Colonial Conquest; Crush, Crumble&Chomp, Ultima III, Autoduel, Bards Tale I&II, the Infocom Games, Temple of Apshai... oh all kinds of fun stuff.

Yeah, I had an 800 (and then a 130XE) before my ST. I'll toss in Alternate Reality, Boulder Dash, Load Runner, Load Runner's Rescue, and the original Castle Wolfenstein.

Dr_Awkward wrote:

I did love me some Roadwar 2000. I had the grand mother of all station wagons in that game. It had seen so many performance shops in my adventures that I didn't have the heart to swap it out for a bus or anything other more useful vehicle later in the game.

I loved how you could increase your max number of cars by doing tactical combat and end up with a ridiculous armada of vehicles that would run out of gas in no time.

TheGameguru wrote:

Awesome game.. one of my all time favorites.. despite never being able to finish it.. there was a point in time fairly late in the game where there was an encounter where you went into an inn and get "ambushed" that I simply could not survive despite trying like 100 times or something..

I don't remember that part, but I do remember the "White Rabbits" in the boneyard. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth!

TheGameguru wrote:

Wow.. Rabbit couldnt be more wrong about the importance and role the "top" guys can make at a company/division.

I agree.... it's like saying the captain of a ship has no role in sailing.

They determine the direction and amount of funding and the emphasis that the console division puts on certain aspects. For example, the new guy might really like downloadable content (even more so) and despise backwards compatibility. Supposedly he's profit-centric and if i were like that those would be the first two things i'd focus on.

[edit] though i thought it was rob... maybe i got confused?

No it was me. And I'm not as much of a moron as it certainly sounded like when I listened to it. I've spent most of my career surrounded by large corporations, and I know that the people at the top have a huge impact. I think my reaction had as much to do with just sheer ennui of the inside-baseball stuff following E3. I found so much E3 coverage to be meta-coverage -- coverage about E3, about executives, about companies -- and surprisingly little about the stuff I think most gamers actually care about, which would be, I'm guessing, games.

So consider that all a big fat "mea culpa" or "yeah yeah yeah" depending on how passive aggressive you think I am at the moment.

From the podcast on collectors editions - "So what could you buy with the coin?"

Correct Answer: Protection from consensual sex.

I'd buy a podcast collection CD - with outtakes... It'd be great.

Sorry for confusing your voice with Rob's, rabbit.... maybe i was thinking of a different part of the conference call.

My immediate thought when you were discussing the issue of activation was what about Starforce. The presence of that actually prevented many people from running games such as Silent Hunter 3 and one of the Splinter Cell games on PC. It wouldn't allow the game to run if you had ANY cd emulation software running (Daemon tools, etc.) despite the fact that you bought a legitimate copy of the game.

Doc

I never had any trouble with Starforce - though i did dislike it's particularly buggy and draconian system. Other CD/DVD copy protection schemes where just as effective at stopping casual copying of games... so i don't see how that is an argument for online activation at all....

Just as a counterpoint to what you guys said in the call.... wasn't going to start again as i know i'm beating a dead horse with you guys.

Having listened to the topic of the week, I just want to say my parents are awesome. Especially my mom since permission to play usually came from her. There's been a gaming system in my home since I was four. And even when she said she wouldn't be buying her sons anymore consoles now that we're grown up, she still bought me a GBA and a XBOX and a GameCube and a XBOX for my brother. Now she wants to get him a Wii.

The story behind the GameCube for my brother is a shining example of her awesomeness. My brother married a non-gamer. Not just non-gamer, but full on geek or nerd hater. The sister-in-law was pushing for my brother to give up games so money was not budgeted for a console. So, my brother makes my mom a grandmom and she buys the GameCube, knowing the sister-in-law will hate this. My mom's reply is "It's something he loves doing. Why should he give it up?"

She doesn't understand gaming, but she understands how much her sons like it and encourages rather than discourages. That makes her almost as cool as momgamer.

As for the sister-in-law, the child (a girl), that the GameCube purchase was a reward for, has become a 4 year old nerd who loves Spider-Man and Star Wars. I bought her Lego Star Wars 2 for her birthday. She exploded over it being her first videogame and it was her favorite present. My sister-in-law says to my brother, "I thought we agreed to wait until she was 14 to play videogames." My brother replies, "Oops." I guess my brother forgot to tell me that when I told him what my birthday present was.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
jonnypolite wrote:

Hey me too! That thing was pretty amazing for the time, wasn't it? Didn't have the graphic firepower of the Amiga, but i remember the OS very fondly.

Car Wars, such an un-mined property.

I can't say I remember the OS fondly, but the games were great.

Irongut wrote:

I didnt get an ST, but I had the Atari 800. I remember Colonial Conquest; Crush, Crumble&Chomp, Ultima III, Autoduel, Bards Tale I&II, the Infocom Games, Temple of Apshai... oh all kinds of fun stuff.

Yeah, I had an 800 (and then a 130XE) before my ST. I'll toss in Alternate Reality, Boulder Dash, Load Runner, Load Runner's Rescue, and the original Castle Wolfenstein.

Get out of my life!

My comment about Starforce was just directed at the notion that people purchased the product and because of the method of copyright protection, some were unable to actually use the software they paid for. Or how about the issue currently affecting Live arcade games, where if you have a RROD, you will only be able to play the games when logged into Live on your new machine, unless you repay and download again. Yeah, you can still play the game, but you're required to have the internet access available, which in some instances may not be possible.

I should say that I don't fundamentally have a problem with the activation...generally speaking it goes smoothly with products out there now (Windows, Adobe software, etc.). I'm just presenting examples that came to mind when the guys were discussing it on the podcast.

Doc

Nimcosi wrote:

Get out of my life!

I've been watching you. For a very. Long. Time. IMAGE(http://rps.net/QS/Images/Smilies/eye-popping.gif)