Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 51

TF2 Beta, Steam Community, World in Conflict, Tokyo Game Show, Resident Evil Extinction, Game Slippage, Let's Get Ready To Rumble and more!

Welcome to episode 51 of the Conference Call! This week Cory makes his triumphant return as we dive into the Tokyo Game Show and talk about some of our favorites. We're also trying out a new file host, hopefully nothing blows up.

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.

Sponsor
Liongames.com

Thread of The Week

(1) Oh what a difference a year makes - Lobstermobster

  • Subscribe with iTunes
  • Subscribe with RSS
  • Subscribe with Yahoo!
Download the official apps
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android

Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"PodunkStump" Ian Dorsch - 0:31:36
"Los Pistoleros" Ian Dorsch - 1:06:23

Comments

Great show guys. See you all in TF2

I'm very glad World in Conflict is doing as well as it is. I knew when I first saw it and played the closed beta that this game was going to be something very special and was going to really change up the RTS genre. I was very happy to be at least a small part of the game development process. Playing the single player campaign I am very happy with it and extremely happy that it turned out very well.

Stranglehold is a neat game according to the reviews but honestly for 6-7 hours of gameplay it's a rental. Same with Heavenly Sword. It's an awesome rental but why buy a game for 6 hours and no replay value?

On that PS3 card game. I just don't get why a card game is going to be online with physical cards. I mean honestly lets make people even less social by making this very interactive social game as solitary as possible. So lets make a group of people not only have to buy physical components and then also pay for the online interface. It's like raping the consumer twice.

GT:HD vs. Forza 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjQD4...
I'm not saying one is better than the other but this is the first video I've seen that compares the two graphically like this. Neat vid. BTW I think the prologue thing blows chunks. While I wouldn't mind downloading a prologue for $15. It's kind of like a neat little demo thing on a few tracks but not $45.

Not much opinion on the rest of the games or the Sony controller topic. On the Levine thing check out this developer that I just read about.
http://www.38studios.com/
The company's first game is in development with Todd McFarlane (Spawn) as art director and author R.A. Salvatore as the creative director.

Now doesn't that sound promising?

You totally CAN "Shift+Tab" in Steam Community (I personally set mine to Shift+Scroll Lock as it causes issues in games with scoreboards and walk bound to the shift key) in any game you have loaded - whether it be a Steam-bought game or opened through a shortcut - and have the overlay. I haven't had issues with it yet except in OpenGL games, but that was during the BETA and it works fine now. Also, in Tiger Woods, my M and P keys don't work unless I hold shift when I press them. That's due to the keys being bound to things within the game. Very minor bug, but that's all that I have run into ever since Community went live, and I run ALL of my games through Steam.

DEMI!!! WOOOT!

Welcome back, missed ya man - you're the GWJ equivalent of Wombat on the cagcast. My favourite type of person.

One thing: Max Payne was 3rd person, not first person... right?

I heard the pain in Shawn's voice when he was asked which was better between steam community and Xbox live He did a good job though...

I agree Rob. I won't pay for partial stuff. It's why i won't get a 360 until the stability is there... why i held off getting a PS3 before the price will drop more and i knew that they would 90% likely to introduce rumble in the near future.

I also reckon that the new controller will be more expensive than the normal sixaxis. Adding in extra hardware will undoubtedly drive up cost... or they'll keep the cost the same - taking a hit on price or resulting in less profit. Controllers are expensive though i'm not sure how inflated they actually are.

I'm also worried about the wireless issue you guys bring up. As wireless becomes increasingly ubiquitous there are going to be more problems. Maybe it's not so bad in the US where a load of houses are separated by enough space but here we have smaller houses that are close together. Wifi (a,b,g and n), WiOs (in the US) WiMax, Bluetooth etc all compete (well except a) around 2.5 GHz. Although a certain amount of interference will always be expected from what i've seen of the technologies they aren't designed very well with respect to numbers of components. ie. They all work excellently in low numbers of users but as it scales up there are increasing problems. My wifi network has problems sometimes even though there are only 5 or so other routers within range.
The technical specifications suggest having the "Channel" that each router is set to have a two channel space (ideally)... but there are only 12 or so channels...

kilroy0097 wrote:

On that PS3 card game. I just don't get why a card game is going to be online with physical cards. I mean honestly lets make people even less social by making this very interactive social game as solitary as possible. So lets make a group of people not only have to buy physical components and then also pay for the online interface. It's like raping the consumer twice.

I don't think you have to pay for the online interface*... as for the physical card's part of it. I think it makes more sense to do it this way than to do it "online only". Once the servers go down you've not wasted potentially tonnes of money buy having a virtual product - you can still use the cards in the flesh because they have all their values and stats on them AFAIK.

Unless you're talking about the game and camera - which is actually pretty reasonable i think...

^^
So basically if they are making a physical card game first and if the online portion of the card game was a supplement to the actual physical card game I would then agree with you. However in this case, from what I can gather, it's an online game first and a physical card game second. So the secondary after thought usage is potentially trading cards and the such just like Magic, Jihad or many other card games. Also they still lose something if the servers go down because then that camera package isn't all that useful. Unless there is a secondary benefit to the package being online visual webcam kind of things or other games that will involve the camera in the future. Which will probably be more card games.

Does this mean they are actually aiming this particular game at people who want to ebay their cards to other online players in some kind of massive shipping trading economy? So you spend money on the game and the camera, you spend money on the cards and the booster decks and then you spend money buying cards you want on Ebay. Nevermind you obviously have to buy the PS3 in the first place. So start adding up the money spent to play a simple card game. I guess the card game fanatics didn't have anything better to spend money on or so Sony hopes.

What a huge money sink this will be.

Er, kilroy. The camera is actually really good. It's the highest def webcam i've ever seen. It has positional microphones and is supposed to be used in myriad games - just like the eyetoy and the 360 webcam.

It's no more of a money sink than normal card games. You wouldn't buy a PS3 for this card game but the card game is a perk of owning a PS3. The trading will probably work just like any other card game you mentioned so rare cards will be sellable etc.

I view the Eye of the Beholder game in a similar manner to the new D&D online portion. It's just another way to expand the audience of normal games.

kilroy0097 wrote:

^^
So basically if they are making a physical card game first and if the online portion of the card game was a supplement to the actual physical card game I would then agree with you. However in this case, from what I can gather, it's an online game first and a physical card game second. So the secondary after thought usage is potentially trading cards and the such just like Magic, Jihad or many other card games. Also they still lose something if the servers go down because then that camera package isn't all that useful. Unless there is a secondary benefit to the package being online visual webcam kind of things or other games that will involve the camera in the future. Which will probably be more card games.

Actually, it's not online first, meatspace second. They're just pushing it like that, since the EyeToy has tanked so hard in the past, and they've finally got something that will get the thing to sell. I think of it like MtGO, but you can take your decks built online over to your friends house and whoop his ass in person. Pretty sweet stuff, all in all.

TF2: I love this game. Last night, I was trying to log in, getting the STEAMID User Ticket Error. It was making me crazy. Eventually, I took the delete 'Steam.dll, SteamUI.dll and something.blob' file route, which cleared it up. I swear I was going through withdrawal all over again ><

Short Games: I'm both a fan and not a fan all at once. I cringe at paying 50-60 bucks for a game that's going to deliver enjoyment @ 6 bucks an hour. TF2 is sitting at 4.50 an hour, and it's a freaking beta. I'm not even going to get into MMOs. Heavenly Sword could be a fantastic game, but all signs point to God of War ripoff, and I've heard the same for Stranglehold. Perhaps once it hits the bargin bin for 15-20 bucks, but I wouldn't pick it up before then.

Full Price Demos: I'm gonna wave the BS flag on this one. I've been a long time supporter of Gran Turismo over Forza in the past, but this killed it for me. 45 bucks for the prologue is crap, unless you're gettting 90% of the game, and they give you the rest on launch. And since that's a Sony thing, I'll keep railing on them rolling right into the controller debacle. Kaz Hirai, you started with a small gun. A .38 Chief's Special, if you will, trying to shoot yourself in the foot. It's not accurate, so you had to keep trying. You moved up to a nice 9mm, perhaps a Glock, or a Smith & Wesson. You succeeded, and for some reason, decided you like shooting yourself in the foot. Perhaps it's all the money Sony pays you to do it. I don't blame you, they make it sound so appealing. But you know what would have kept you from this? PAYING UP FOR THE FREAKING RUMBLE. For crying out loud, would it have been that hard? Fork over a little money, and everyone is happy. You ship PS3 with Dual Shock 3 at launch. Your customers are happy, you are happy, the folks giving you the rumble are happy. Everyone is freaking happy. No, you just had to go buy that 12 gauge, and look what happened. You blew your frigging leg off, that's what. Good Grief. /chiggierant (This rant is purely for entertainment purposes)

All in all, another excellent podcast, can't wait till next week!

Woohoo, I got Thread of the Week! I win!

I haven't bought/played it but World In Conflict is on sale for the next few days at GoGamer for $35 (+ shipping, usually $2.5 for the cheapest for me)
GoGamer Link

Not much opinion on the rest of the games or the Sony controller topic. On the Levine thing check out this developer that I just read about.
http://www.38studios.com/
The company's first game is in development with Todd McFarlane (Spawn) as art director and author R.A. Salvatore as the creative director.

Now doesn't that sound promising?

McFarlane isn't someone I typically get too excited about. A fantasy novelist and bland, corporate artist don't leave me feeling too inspired. We'll see what they do.

One thing: Max Payne was 3rd person, not first person... right?

Yeah, I didn't have the heart to point that out after he said it for a third time.

Scaphism wrote:

I haven't bought/played it but World In Conflict is on sale for the next few days at GoGamer for $35 (+ shipping, usually $2.5 for the cheapest for me)
GoGamer Link

Nice find. Run, don't walk!

Re: Number of players in TF2 - PC versions supports up 24 players - some servers apparently ran with 32 slots though even. PS3 and Xbox 360 version support only up to 16 players. So, it doesn't get bigger than 8 vs. 8 on consoles.

Spunior wrote:

Re: Number of players in TF2 - PC versions supports up 24 players - some servers apparently ran with 32 slots though even. PS3 and Xbox 360 version support only up to 16 players. So, it doesn't get bigger than 8 vs. 8 on consoles.

If I had a console, that would be a big turn off for me.

The game seems a little bit unbalanced in lower numbers. The best are 10v10 to 12v12s.

Re: Gaald saying no dedicated servers for 360. Rainbow 6 and a few other games had a dedicated server option on the original xbox.

Re: TF2 voice. The only other bad thing is that you can't set sources to follow window's settings. So I can record on my headset but I can't set the audio to come to the headset.

Edwin wrote:

Re: TF2 voice. The only other bad thing is that you can't set sources to follow window's settings. So I can record on my headset but I can't set the audio to come to the headset.

When I first got voice working, I had exactly the opposite problem; all the audio was going to the headphones, when I wanted it in the speakers. 5.1 speakers vs crappy usb headphones, speakers win every time. I've finally gotten it to the point where voice works out, and I get all my audio from the speakers. I'd suggest playing around with your windows options some more and see if you can't get that working. I'll take a look at mine when I get home and see how it's set up though.

Finally, someone other than me is talking about WipeOut HD. I'm very excited to play this.

How has the download speed been for everyone?

I always just check the directory the files are stored in on the site the day before and pick up the file then so I'm always getting 400kbs because I'm not fighting with others to download..

Do you guys still check the gwjcc delicious thing?

So... Stranglehold feels like you had sex with its mom?

wordsmythe wrote:

So... Stranglehold feels like you had sex with its mom?

There's an OOC snuff film quote in here somewhere, but I'm too lazy to pull it out, not to mention too classy.

Mordiceius wrote:

I always just check the directory the files are stored in on the site the day before and pick up the file then so I'm always getting 400kbs because I'm not fighting with others to download..

Yea, I do this too. I'm usually listening to the podcast on monday morning at work, thinking of what I'm going to write.

Certis wrote:

How has the download speed been for everyone?

I didn't pay too close attention... it did appear a tad pokey compared to the other podcasts downloading at the same time, but it wasn't stuck in the mud.

My download speed was about 600kb/s, so it wasn't bad at all.

I couldn't get the community overlay to work in Biochock which sucks because it seems to work for everyone else.

Anyways, another great show guys. It's been fun playing TF2 with everyone from the site.

I have the steam overlay working in World in Conflict, Company of Heroes, Battlefield 2142 (till punkbuster kicked me), Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, etc.

Here's a question: What's with the way some of you pronounce "Mario"?

Edwin wrote:

Do you guys still check the gwjcc delicious thing?

I always check it when I'm putting together show notes. It's been a bit dusty lately, since we don't dip into it consistently. Not sure if it's something we should do a segment on every week or not.

Mordiceius wrote:

I always just check the directory the files are stored in on the site the day before and pick up the file then so I'm always getting 400kbs because I'm not fighting with others to download..

That ... that's cheating!

wordsmythe wrote:

Here's a question: What's with the way some of you pronounce "Mario"?

It's a regional dialect thing. Some pronounce it Mar-io, others Mare-io.

Rat Boy wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Here's a question: What's with the way some of you pronounce "Mario"?

It's a regional dialect thing. Some pronounce it Mar-io, others Mare-io.

I must have missed this segment of the show... Either that or they pronounce it the same as me - which is the correct way...

Rat Boy wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Here's a question: What's with the way some of you pronounce "Mario"?

It's a regional dialect thing. Some pronounce it Mar-io, others Mare-io.

But... we've heard him pronounce his own names in games, shows, and movies. I can (almost) understand some people don't get that "Italian" isn't pronounced with a principal "ai/eye." But in the case of Mario, there's proof that they're just wrong -- isn't there?

Duoae wrote:
Rat Boy wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Here's a question: What's with the way some of you pronounce "Mario"?

It's a regional dialect thing. Some pronounce it Mar-io, others Mare-io.

I must have missed this segment of the show... Either that or they pronounce it the same as me - which is the correct way...

It seems that while some pronounce the first syllable similar to how you'd expect an Italian speaker to ("Mah"), some pronounce it as if it were spelled "Mehrio" or maybe "Meyrio." It should be a standard short a, like in all romance languages, shouldn't it?

If only there was some official source who's opinion we could get...