Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 125

Killzone 2, Retro Games Challenge, Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment, Special Guest Ironclad's Blair Fraser, Overcoming Cheese, Design Challenges, Your Emails and more!

This week Ironclad's Blair Fraser delivers the latest on Sins of a Solar Empire, their awesomely small company and his complete lack of a cellphone of any kind. We also dig deep on design challenges, the marketing risk of trying to sell A.I features over flashy new units and lots more. If you want to submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563.

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. You can also submit a question or comment call in to our voicemail line at (612) 284-4563!

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"Opening Theme" - Sins of a Solar Empire - www.sinsofasolarempire.com - 0:28:28
"Opening Theme" - Sins of a Solar Empire Entrenchment - www.sinsofasolarempire.com - 0:52:27

Comments

I haven't listened yet, but any show that has "Overcoming Cheese" in the show notes is at instant winner imo

If you like Robo Rally, I'd recommend http://www.eyeplaygames.com for some similar online gaming.

The rules there are slightly different (I guess it's a copyright thing), but there's a good number of fans around making it easy to find opponents.

I've been a member for several years, always participating in a number of active games.

Certis- 43 minutes in and thank you.

It was getting rough before that.

Sweet, Blair's on.

Thanks very much for the plug, sir!

Question for you guest from Ironclad....

Why does Ironclad insist on cramming that IMPULSE platform down your throat? Now, you have to install that to get any patches. Between that and Steam, how many of these proprietary resident programs am I going to have to juggle just to play PC games? Love SINS, don't love IMPULSE.

I have a pre-production screen shot showing the new features discussed on this Conference call with Blair Fraser.

IMAGE(http://img300.imageshack.us/img300/7045/kolbattleship.jpg)

Also f*ck I'm buying the damn expansion, thank you GWJ! I thank you for what my wife is going to say when she gets the bill.....

SoulRFlair wrote:

Question for you guest from Ironclad....

Why does Ironclad insist on cramming that IMPULSE platform down your throat? Now, you have to install that to get any patches. Between that and Steam, how many of these proprietary resident programs am I going to have to juggle just to play PC games? Love SINS, don't love IMPULSE.

I would hazard a guess that it's because Stardock is the publisher.

Brad Wardell has frequently said that their key to combat piracy is design a platform that enables them to provide good service to valid customers, (patching, matchmaking etc) a small platform application is their method to do that. Basically the same thinking as Valve had with Steam.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
SoulRFlair wrote:

Question for you guest from Ironclad....

Why does Ironclad insist on cramming that IMPULSE platform down your throat? Now, you have to install that to get any patches. Between that and Steam, how many of these proprietary resident programs am I going to have to juggle just to play PC games? Love SINS, don't love IMPULSE.

I would hazard a guess that it's because Stardock is the publisher.

Brad Wardell has frequently said that their key to combat piracy is design a platform that enables them to provide good service to valid customers, (patching, matchmaking etc) a small platform application is their method to do that. Basically the same thinking as Valve had with Steam.

Since I'm an avid Stardock fan and have read/listened to a ton of interviews with Brad, I would say what MrDevil says is 100% accurate. Stardock doesn't put copy protection on their games, but if you want updates, you have to register with their system, which is now Impulse.

garion333 wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
SoulRFlair wrote:

Question for you guest from Ironclad....

Why does Ironclad insist on cramming that IMPULSE platform down your throat? Now, you have to install that to get any patches. Between that and Steam, how many of these proprietary resident programs am I going to have to juggle just to play PC games? Love SINS, don't love IMPULSE.

I would hazard a guess that it's because Stardock is the publisher.

Brad Wardell has frequently said that their key to combat piracy is design a platform that enables them to provide good service to valid customers, (patching, matchmaking etc) a small platform application is their method to do that. Basically the same thinking as Valve had with Steam.

Since I'm an avid Stardock fan and have read/listened to a ton of interviews with Brad, I would say what MrDevil says is 100% accurate. Stardock doesn't put copy protection on their games, but if you want updates, you have to register with their system, which is now Impulse.

Yep, and considering it now works 95% of the time, it's much less of a PITA than before. I don't run impulse 100% of the time like I do Steam (no reason to) so it's really not a burden. Actually, having a platform that auto updates all my games is nice, and it's sort of communist to hope for only 1

I'm not even that big of a Stardock fan, but I think requiring the Impulse client only when you need to download updates to games is so minor it can barely be called an inconvienience. I think it's more than a fair system to protect their investment, considering you don't need to run it to actually play the game, nor do any kind of online serial check at all.

When there is sound suggestion that 90% of a new PC game is pirated, while it's certainly arguable as to whether any of that is a lost sale, Wardell has been defending this patching policy by explaining the part of that equasion that people forget about. It means the patches they put out are downloaded by amounts exponentially higher than the amount of copies sold, and the majority of tech support is for people with illegal copies. It's understandable for a company to want to cut down on those costs.

If this turns into another piracy thread I'm going to start cracking skulls. Fair warning.

good show altho you guy didn't really get into some of the email questions as much as i liked. your discussions were kinda watered down. is it because you guys had a guest?

Oh, how could you not ask the Stardock guy about why there's no defense to the Novalith yet everything else even remotely powerful has been nerfed - except the Vasari cannon, which only recently even became useful.

Thanks for linking Robo Rally, I wanted to check it out when you mentioned it, just on the name alone.

I will say, the discussion of Sins lost me fairly quickly, but in a different way than MMO discussion loses me. That's not a bad thing for the CC, but it is for me. I'm not into those specific games, but people that listen and are on the site do, and it works to keep games that appeal to everyone in on the discussions, even if it leaves someone out in the cold on a conversation.

mrtomaytohead wrote:

I will say, the discussion of Sins lost me fairly quickly, but in a different way than MMO discussion loses me. That's not a bad thing for the CC, but it is for me. I'm not into those specific games, but people that listen and are on the site do, and it works to keep games that appeal to everyone in on the discussions, even if it leaves someone out in the cold on a conversation.

This is the reason I love this site. You people are cool.

No one ever suspects the butterfly. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Shoal07 wrote:

Oh, how could you not ask the Stardock guy about why there's no defense to the Novalith yet everything else even remotely powerful has been nerfed - except the Vasari cannon, which only recently even became useful.

Well for one I had a million questions I would have loved to ask but that would have been way too crazy so I had to choose and because I am pretty sure I know what the answer would have been. The defense for the Novalith is to destroy the Military bases like it is all for all the canons. Without them they can't fire. The Vasari cannon is pretty dam devastating now too. Not only does it allow for the jump but shuts down all the buildings in that gravity well for a pretty significant amount of time. Moondragon crushed me last game when he jumped in, and this was after we let loose like 11 shots. The Novalith isn't the game ender it used to be.

For the record, on Stan's for TF2, we largely follow the "If it's in-game, it's fair game" rule. People complain, a lot and there was a time when people tried to call other folks out for shooting into / out of the spawn, but really, some of the custom maps just work that way. Desert Fortress is infamous for sniping into and out of the spawn. None of these are kick/ban offenses, though, and I'm inclined to say they're perfectly legit. Desert Fortress is a REAL bugger when it comes to getting that last point, so much so that your only option is usually spawn camping and sniping. People seem to like that map, though, so it sticks around. Most of the time, though, the server population vetoes a map that allows clearly exploitable and unfair play, or simple unbalance. Castle was the biggest offender of this, especially with the exposed defensive spawns.

Holy crow?

Last word on the Impulse thing. I know it's fairly inocuous. I just don't like random sh(*&^*^ installed on my PC. I appreciate Stardock's attitude on piracy.

I actually just bought Zen Bound--the iPhone game mentioned, I'll be trying it soon.

Good show so far guys, as I'm still listening.

EDIT:

Wow this game is very good, I also highly recommend buying this if you have an iPhone or an iTouch.
For 5$ This game has a lot of fun.

Does Sins of a Solar Empire have a demo? The interview from today has me really interested, but I suspect that it won't run well on my system, and I'd like to know before I spend any money.

adam.greenbrier wrote:

Does Sins of a Solar Empire have a demo? The interview from today has me really interested, but I suspect that it won't run well on my system, and I'd like to know before I spend any money.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/sin -- button on the right side, about halfway down the page.

I've downloaded and played the demo a few times. I want to like it, I really do, but I think I just can't handle 4X games.

Edit: Woah, when was I promoted to Office Linebacker?

adam.greenbrier wrote:

Does Sins of a Solar Empire have a demo? The interview from today has me really interested, but I suspect that it won't run well on my system, and I'd like to know before I spend any money.

Looks like it has virtually the same sys reqs that Left 4 Dead has. For me that means I barely make it at the very bottom. Since it's a really deep RTS, I'll continue to pass, despite the constant temptation from the conference call. I will, however, continue to play Left 4 Dead because GWJ during Steam sales is nothing but a bunch of filthy enablers.

merphle wrote:
adam.greenbrier wrote:

Does Sins of a Solar Empire have a demo? The interview from today has me really interested, but I suspect that it won't run well on my system, and I'd like to know before I spend any money.

http://www.impulsedriven.com/sin -- button on the right side, about halfway down the page.

I've downloaded and played the demo a few times. I want to like it, I really do, but I think I just can't handle 4X games.

Edit: Woah, when was I promoted to Office Linebacker?

Thanks for that link!
I wanted to try this.

mrtomaytohead wrote:
adam.greenbrier wrote:

Does Sins of a Solar Empire have a demo? The interview from today has me really interested, but I suspect that it won't run well on my system, and I'd like to know before I spend any money.

Looks like it has virtually the same sys reqs that Left 4 Dead has. For me that means I barely make it at the very bottom. Since it's a really deep RTS, I'll continue to pass, despite the constant temptation from the conference call. I will, however, continue to play Left 4 Dead because GWJ during Steam sales is nothing but a bunch of filthy enablers. :)

If you can play Left 4 dead (even if it's just barely) on your system you should have no problems playing Sins, you may even be able to play with everything on medium settings or higher. Try the demo see what you think. It's a fantastic game, that is if your into RTS type games.

I'd like to try some of the Brettspielwelt stuff (Dominion, etc.), but I'm not really a hard core board-game person and I'm kind of intimidated by their web site. It sounds like you guys are having a lot of pick-up games of Dominion - how do you hook up with other players? Is there a Brettspielwelt primer on the forums here (I couldn't find one, but I'm lazy)? Any tips?

hubbinsd wrote:

I'd like to try some of the Brettspielwelt stuff (Dominion, etc.), but I'm not really a hard core board-game person and I'm kind of intimidated by their web site. It sounds like you guys are having a lot of pick-up games of Dominion - how do you hook up with other players? Is there a Brettspielwelt primer on the forums here (I couldn't find one, but I'm lazy)? Any tips?

There is a Dominion thread where you can get a run down on how to get into a game or create and host one.

Darn it. I was thinking about trying Sins after hearing this podcast until you all said it was an RTS. Can someone reassure me about the pace of the game? Or, you know, break my spirit?