Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 70

Rez HD, Call Of Duty Future, WoW Relapse, Wii 3rd Party, Steamworks, EA Gets a Bad Rap, Interfaces, Your Emails and more!

We have a topic buffet this week so everyone brought something to the table. The end result? Sleepiness and gas, mostly. Stay tuned for a date and time for the upcoming LIVE Conference Call with your opportunity to call in and join the show! More details in the next show.

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

"Podunk Stomp" - Ian Dorsch - 0:20:50
"Los Pistoleros" - Ian Dorsh - 1:05:20

Comments

rabbit wrote:
Alien Love Gardener wrote:

EDIT: Also, Dark Messiah was so much better than any game with an orc on the cover has a right to be. Rabbit is full of crazy talk.

Kicking people into spikes is good fun. Blue screens, flickering text, walking through the occasional wall, lockups on backstabs - those, not so much. I'm sure if I downloaded the game NOW and applied all the patches it would a lot more fun. At release, Oi!

Yeah, fair enough. I never had any trouble when playing the demo the demo, but I did come to the full game a couple patches in.

Currently EA is still in 'EVIL' mode for me. This is purely because I am bitter about Rock Band not releasing in Europe till SEPTEMBER 2008 (estimated).

As soon as I get my hands on a copy I'm sure they will be elevated to messianic status and I will love them again.

There are a few CoD4 PC Players on the boards. It's just that they keep no-showing on the event nights

Rez is indeed freakin awesome.

Aaaand I think that's about all I have to comment on.

I've been disdaining WoW since before it was cool.

I was with you on the Super Bowl, Ely. I'm pretty happy with the results, though.

This whole "English majors can make up words" thing: Would you say that we forge those words, perhaps? What would you call someone who forges words as if they were, say, swords for example?

Hey!
I'm not 100% sure if i'm right about this, but you comment that Wii has an 8:1 tie in ratio is a bit wrong I believe. In their press release, Nintendo got tricky with their wording by saying that Wii had an 8:1 tie in ratio in December. Which from reading it, I would come to believe that meant for every console sold in December they sold 8 games, not necessarily to those new console owners but quantity wise. So if 1 million consoles sold in December, that means 8 million games sold for the Wii in December.

P.S. Sorry Shawn Andrich I accidentally PM'ed you this comment, didn't see the comment box at the very bottom originally.

Would you say that we forge those words, perhaps? What would you call someone who forges words as if they were, say, swords for example?

Wordwright.

Would you say that we forge those words, perhaps? What would you call someone who forges words as if they were, say, swords for example?

Executive hamburger heating technician?

DudleySmith wrote:
Would you say that we forge those words, perhaps? What would you call someone who forges words as if they were, say, swords for example?

Executive hamburger heating technician?

Barrista

Would you say that we forge those words, perhaps? What would you call someone who forges words as if they were, say, swords for example?

Vorpal Visionary of Vernacular?

wordsmythe wrote:

This whole "English majors can make up words" thing: Would you say that we forge those words, perhaps? What would you call someone who forges words as if they were, say, swords for example?

Certis would moderate my answer.

I'm not 100% sure if i'm right about this, but you comment that Wii has an 8:1 tie in ratio is a bit wrong I believe. In their press release, Nintendo got tricky with their wording by saying that Wii had an 8:1 tie in ratio in December. Which from reading it, I would come to believe that meant for every console sold in December they sold 8 games, not necessarily to those new console owners but quantity wise. So if 1 million consoles sold in December, that means 8 million games sold for the Wii in December.

You are, in fact, correct, though I'm not sure how they do the math. I can tell you from experience, however, that no one ever buys 8 games when they buy their system, so I suspect there's some clever number crunching going on to make this 8:1 ration seem legitimate.

There are a few CoD4 PC Players on the boards. It's just that they keep no-showing on the event nights

I count myself in this group, been a crazy time this year so far but I keep meaning to show up for CoD4 PC Wednesday.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it, but I can't think of Canadians and buffets at the same time without thinking of "buff, eh?" I blame a restaurant in Hamilton, Ontario for this.

Wal-Marts aren't everywhere. Chicago had a huge debate last year about whether the City would allow Wal-Mart stores to open stores within city limits at all. It's a big issue in major urban centers, even if I don't usually consider Seattle as part of that group. (They've got a higher concentration of hippies that will make a point of supporting local merchants over big-box stores than you'd find in similarly-sized towns elsewhere.)

EA's numbers and Sarbanes-Oxley: The law has actually been around a lot longer (roughly 70 years) than SoX. Materially false statements get you into millions of dollars of trouble as an individual director or officer of the corporation (though companies often have contracts to cover them if legally permissible). I could give you all sorts of details about things like the PSLRA and other intensely boring stuff (tough certainly without violating my emploment contract ), but trust me that there are gigantic law firms almost entirely devoted to looking for reasons to sue publicly traded companies -- especially tech companies.

I want to agree that we're being asked to buy too many peripherals. I know that current normal controllers are intimidating for non-gamers. I'd like a more intuitive standard, but I'm not prepared to call for controller designers to stop now, because what we have now isn't universal enough.

I still think America's Army is a solid game, but I'll admit that I would never have touched it if it hadn't been free.

Honesty time: I still haven't played TF2. That's mostly because I only have it for the 360.

Thanks for this relatively svelte podcast. I'm still not done listening, though. I'll probably post on the non-buffet stuff later.

PS: Vibrator. "Certis will post more links to vibrators for you."

"There's not enough money in the world..." -- I'm sure I could come up with a number based on an hourly wage for how much I'd need to play a crappy game through to completion as part of a review. Maybe $50/hr? Would you really turn down an offer to write a scathing review of a 30-hour game for $1,500 on top of what you'd get for your writing itself?

Demi: Dude, just move to Chicago. I'll set you up with a girl.

D.C. hates Wal-Mart, too. Huge controversy. I would not, however, call D.C. residents hippies.

Oklahoma loves walmart.
And I love its loose and easily exploitable return policy.

wordsmythe wrote:

Honesty time: I still haven't played TF2. That's mostly because I only have it for the 360.

Join us on Wednesday nights, Wordsmythe. Good times are had by all. Except maybe for the public teams we tend to trample when we get all the Goodjers on the same team.

wordsmythe wrote:

Honesty time: I still haven't played TF2. That's mostly because I only have it for the 360.

I've still got that video card I won at GDC if you need to upgrade your PC.

The problem with EA is that they are the kings of half-ass game releases. They never release a really nice polished product. It's always about first to market and owning the market through marketing and business means rather than releasing high quality product with AAA support to gain loyalty and thus sales.

Compare them to Blizzard or Nintendo. And you see that they just go about business in a different manner.

I always find their games junky and sloppy. They get features in there so they can justify the bullet points on the back of the box and not much more than that.

That being said my favorite game franchise is Battlefield. I think Battlefield still holds up because DICE is in Sweden and still does the game. Still if Blizzard made the game we would see a lot more support for the product through patches. And we wouldn't see official mods like BF2142 a year after the release of BF2.

That's my beef with EA. I never feel like they are trying to hit a homerun with their product. They are mostly about doing just enough to give you a decent game and no more.

On the subject of other wars to cover in FPS, I thought you missed the biggest problem with the setting of WWI: trench warfare. It's the stereotypical battlefield from the war and has little in common with most people's preference for a FPS with highly mobile combat.

Miraba wrote:

On the subject of other wars to cover in FPS, I thought you missed the biggest problem with the setting of WWI: trench warfare. It's the stereotypical battlefield from the war and has little in common with most people's preference for a FPS with highly mobile combat.

Truth be told, most organized wars before WWII didn't much allow for individual heroism. I played the Revolutionary War mod for Half Life and had a good time, but it was always a pretty obvious departure from history.

gtnissanfan wrote:

Join us on Wednesday nights, Wordsmythe. Good times are had by all. Except maybe for the public teams we tend to trample when we get all the Goodjers on the same team.

It's a date.

McChuck wrote:
wordsmythe wrote:

Honesty time: I still haven't played TF2. That's mostly because I only have it for the 360.

On the subject of other wars to cover in FPS, I thought you missed the biggest problem with the setting of WWI: trench warfare. It's the stereotypical battlefield from the war and has little in common with most people's preference for a FPS with highly mobile combat.

I've still got that video card I won at GDC if you need to upgrade your PC.

Do go on, sir. I may be well on my way to becoming the official GWJ mooch.

If I know wordsmythe, he won't even have a PCI-E slot to put the card in.

Miraba wrote:

On the subject of other wars to cover in FPS, I thought you missed the biggest problem with the setting of WWI: trench warfare. It's the stereotypical battlefield from the war and has little in common with most people's preference for a FPS with highly mobile combat.

Yup. For example, Call of Duty: Big Red One. About a third of that game is largely trench warfare, and it's not fun for any extended duration.

boogle wrote:

If I know wordsmythe, he won't even have a PCI-E slot to put the card in.

I'm sure one of the mobos around here has one. The question is whether the mobo works.

wordsmythe wrote:
boogle wrote:

If I know wordsmythe, he won't even have a PCI-E slot to put the card in.

I'm sure one of the mobos around here has one. The question is whether the mobo works.

You still have non-functioning parts?
Take them down to PC-Club individually and test them.

wordsmythe wrote:

Demi: Dude, just move to Chicago. I'll set you up with a girl.

I'm sure your mother is nice, but I'm not looking for that kind of a commitment right now.

We joked about muskets in an FPS, but I kinda like the concept. Done well, it could add some strategy to the game.

Thin_J wrote:

There are a few CoD4 PC Players on the boards. It's just that they keep no-showing on the event nights :(

When are they again?

And also I enjoyed the podcast this week, and it's the first time I've ever heard anyone say yes, they went off the boil a wee bit on a podcast! Fair play to you, you listen to people, which means you will go far! The thing with this production is the fact that it always sounds like it's a true group of friends sitting around with some beers dicussing issues of the day. I tried listening to the 1UP podcast, and is it me or do they sound like the're on speed? Failing that, trying to impersonate Dragonball Z, in terms of talking really fast.

Gamers with jobs sounds better and that's why it's a new regular on the Ipod, joining the weekly uploads of Chris Moyles from BBC Radio 1 and the Friday Night comedy from BBC Radio 4.

I wanted to ask, I did want to do an Audio Email on an issue I wanted to explore, but I am wondering, what's the typical time required to have the email in for it to be considered for the next weeks show?

Cheers

I wanted to ask, I did want to do an Audio Email on an issue I wanted to explore, but I am wondering, what's the typical time required to have the email in for it to be considered for the next weeks show?

It has to be in before Saturday at the latest. Although I do want to point out that we have been receiving a lot of e-mail as of late (which is fantastic!) so even though we listen and read every e-mail that comes in we sometimes put some of them aside for future episodes. Remember Audio e-mails should be around 1 minute or less, mp3 format, if you plan to send one in.

Thanks for listening, and glad you enjoy the show!

Demiurge wrote:

We joked about muskets in an FPS, but I kinda like the concept. Done well, it could add some strategy to the game.

I'd love to see a well executed cannon simulator. In the right hands (Valve knows their stuff when it comes to FPS's) the whole "sponge, cartridge, wad, ball, match" routine could be really exciting. It could be a bit of a rhythm game. (By the way, if I have the order wrong, sorry. I do not actually live in the age of cannon.)

samfisher wrote:

The thing with this production is the fact that it always sounds like it's a true group of friends sitting around with some beers dicussing issues of the day. I tried listening to the 1UP podcast, and is it me or do they sound like the're on speed? Failing that, trying to impersonate Dragonball Z, in terms of talking really fast.

My thoughts exactly! It's not a bad podcast at all, and it fills in nicely if I have already listened to the Conference Call for the week, but I definitely get the vibe that I would never want to play games, or even have a beer with those guys. I get the exact opposite feeling from the Goodjer guys. That is not to say that the production of Conference Call is anything but professional, even if it does have a more laid back style.