Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 188

3D Dot Game Heroes, Lost Planet 2, 100 Rogues, Starcraft 2, Rocket Knight, Game Films, Emails and more!

This week we enter upside down land and listen as Cory hosts and Shawn sits in Rob's seat! Cats also marry dogs and Lara has a goatee and LOVES Heavy Rain. Some of those statements are not true. 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

"Atlantis" - Sketchbook (Pneuman) - http://blag.linuxgamers.net - 0:39:06
"Anxious Tedium" - Ouranos OST (Tom Quinn) - http://thomashquinn.googlepages.com - 1:05:45

Comments

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"I wasn't expecting it to be Lawrence of Arabia or -bleep!-"

Way to stick to your guns.

Speedhuntr wrote:

"I wasn't expecting it to be Lawrence of Arabia or -bleep!-"

Way to stick to your guns.

There was no way I was going to let that pass.

Fundamentally you can't make computer games into good films because what goes on in computer games, is for the most part, so simplistic and repetitive that from a story telling POV it's nothing other than childish, even to the point of being moronic. For the most part even the worst made films out there have more nuanced plots than the activities you have to indulge in during computer games; collect these seven sparkly macguffins so you can use them to kill the great evil and learn the importance of friendship does not make for a film any adult wants to see.

That said, if you ignore the interactive gaming parts and focus on the story you might well be able to extract the bones of a decent film out of Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia or Bioshock. I doubt many/any film studios that would be interested in making something smart from those rather than a massive brainless action blockbuster.

The Mass Effect universe has me thinking that there might be a decent movie or two in there. It's also got some novels that do a little more world building. You can even drop the "Shepard" character: the world is robust enough that there's room for more than one hero; and the "one true Shepard" is a bit of a sore point within the ME community that I think most folks wouldn't mind a movie that doesn't establish a cannon Shepard.

However, if they never made a movie out of ME, I wouldn't care a bit. The game has enough awesome cinematic events (the confrontation with Sarin on Virmire, the destruction of the Normandy, etc.) that it plays like a movie in my head.

I'm glad Pyroman was on to throw in a mention of Steam for Linux To me, it just makes sense to target Linux if you're already targeting OS X. You're already porting your code to GCC/OpenGL/etc., so the effort involved in porting from Windows to both Linux and OS X is only slightly more than porting just to OS X.

People have often said that Linux users won't buy games, but recent numbers on indie game sales don't seem to back that up. World of Goo had its greatest single day of sales the day the Linux client was released, and the Humble Indie Bundle brought in nearly 25% of its revenue from Linux users -- more than the number for Mac OS X users.

pneuman wrote:

I'm glad Pyroman was on to throw in a mention of Steam for Linux To me, it just makes sense to target Linux if you're already targeting OS X. You're already porting your code to GCC/OpenGL/etc., so the effort involved in porting from Windows to both Linux and OS X is only slightly more than porting just to OS X.

People have often said that Linux users won't buy games, but recent numbers on indie game sales don't seem to back that up. World of Goo had its greatest single day of sales the day the Linux client was released, and the Humble Indie Bundle brought in nearly 25% of its revenue from Linux users -- more than the number for Mac OS X users.

I honestly think that Linux now has a space at the table. Ubuntu is just a really nice OS, for free. It's only a matter of time before hardware is cheap enough that Linux starts making serious headway. When everything moves to HTML5 and Steam is available for Linux, why not?

I think games on linux needs two things mainly:

1- A few companies to move out of the comfort zone that is windows development, where everyone knows the APIs and common problems. I guess this means:
1a- Good middleware to develop content against. If companies can go cross platform, what's one more to a motivated company?
1b- A good install/patching scheme, steam or otherwise.

2- A few companies to trailblaze and prove it's not a hell of dependencies and compatibility problems, or that there are ways to manage it.

Also hopefully any ideas that game developers have for linux in general get adopted by some distributions to make life easier for everyone. One thing I'd say that has worked to windows detriment is the disinterest of Microsoft themselves in providing anything beyond the bare minimum to maintain windows gaming. What if Linux/Mac gaming overtook because it was better and where the interesting developments took place? (or even better, improvements developed on those platforms find their way to everyone)

Not sure if commenting on the conference call post is the right place but the iPhone app recently updated and it made all of the older bonus content vanish. I can't seem to find bonus content for any conf call for 5th May or earlier. I want to hear my exclusive content so I can feel special!

I wouldn't get too carried away about Linux gaming just yet - anybody remember Loki?

I just came in here because I need to pause the show.

"I'll watch anything The Rock is in."

So many things going on in my head. I'm ... suprised and ... confused.

This is why you wanted the guest seat, isn't it? So you could drop bombs like that.

Destrin wrote:

Not sure if commenting on the conference call post is the right place but the iPhone app recently updated and it made all of the older bonus content vanish. I can't seem to find bonus content for any conf call for 5th May or earlier. I want to hear my exclusive content so I can feel special!

Yeah, they updated the app and it threw our usual process out the window. For now, I've manually published the bonus stuff so it shows up on the main episode list.

In other news, we're getting close to releasing the earlier bonus content for everyone to download. We'll let you know!

lostlobster wrote:

I just came in here because I need to pause the show.

"I'll watch anything The Rock is in."

So many things going on in my head. I'm ... suprised and ... confused.

This is why you wanted the guest seat, isn't it? So you could drop bombs like that.

If you can watch The Rundown and not love The Rock you're dead to me.

Certis wrote:
lostlobster wrote:

I just came in here because I need to pause the show.

"I'll watch anything The Rock is in."

So many things going on in my head. I'm ... suprised and ... confused.

This is why you wanted the guest seat, isn't it? So you could drop bombs like that.

If you can watch The Rundown and not love The Rock you're dead to me.

Having not watched The Rundown... does that put me in Purgatory to you?

The Rundown is great. But I'm not sure if I would watch anything with The Rock since that. He also has some nanny movie.

For fourth chair, Shawn sure is chatty.

Edit:

Comic Book Guy wrote:

That's Lana Lang, Corey!

I really enjoyed this podcast. It delivered lots of LOL moments. Being a fan of both GWJ and DGR, I put a certain quote by Cory in my sig immediately after hearing it.

mwdowns wrote:

The Mass Effect universe has me thinking that there might be a decent movie or two in there. It's also got some novels that do a little more world building. You can even drop the "Shepard" character: the world is robust enough that there's room for more than one hero; and the "one true Shepard" is a bit of a sore point within the ME community that I think most folks wouldn't mind a movie that doesn't establish a cannon Shepard.

Once the series is wrapped up with ME3, I would love to see it made into a movie or two. The inclusion of Mordin would be a MUST.

mwdowns wrote:

However, if they never made a movie out of ME, I wouldn't care a bit. The game has enough awesome cinematic events (the confrontation with Sarin on Virmire, the destruction of the Normandy, etc.) that it plays like a movie in my head.

Agreed. As much as I would enjoy a well-made movie with good acting, I'm quite content with high level of quality found in the story and cinematics of the games.

Certis wrote:

Yeah, they updated the app and it threw our usual process out the window. For now, I've manually published the bonus stuff so it shows up on the main episode list.

In other news, we're getting close to releasing the earlier bonus content for everyone to download. We'll let you know!

But that's only the case for the last two shows as far as I can see, the older ones are unreachable for the moment?

This podcast could easily be remixed into an Out of Context Theater style thing with all the sexual innuendo, ogling of Jake G., oogaba commentary, Corey's penis pad, and Lara's reading the fantasy email. Maybe this needs to be a contest.

Rat Boy wrote:

For fourth chair, Shawn sure is chatty.

You can take the boy out of the host chair, but you can't take the host out of the boy chair or something.

Comic Book Guy wrote:

That's Lana Lang, Corey!

Whatevs. Stupid character anyway and she made a terrible Chun-Li.

Shawn, you made me cry: 3D Dot Game Heroes is a mix of the "first two" Zelda games, and you name one of those two as... A Link to the Past? Does no one remember The Adventures of Link?

I don't consider that one cannon. Never played it when I was a kid

IMAGE(http://ui14.gamespot.com/1037/zelda2_2.gif)

About MW4: Once you install it, you never have to open that MTX interface ever again. It has its uses, but you can get by perfectly fine by just launching the game, clicking Multiplayer and choosing a server from the in-game interface.

If you can make a good game out of a movie then why can't you make a good movie out of a game. I think you guys over analysed the issue. True, there hasn't been many good movies based on video games, but I think that's because gamers are misunderstood. Directors completely miss the point and don't understand what makes a good game. Knights of the Old Republic was a great story, I would have loved to see a Star Wars movie based on that game.

The way I see it is that game stories and movies should be perceived as themes in some cases, or a flushed out world like Star Wars. Look at the new Star Trek movie compared to the older ones. Look at the all Batman movies, they've done a complete 180 degrees turn on style and story. Early Star Trek movie was about saving a whale from the past, new one was about kicking ass and chewing bubble gum. I think World of Warcraft can be a great movie, because like mentioned on the podcast, it's a great world. Blizzard is going to pay a lot of attention to the talent going into that movie and as for the budget, well it's Blizzard, they can just donate a couple of days of WOW income. I'm not sure I've expressed my thoughts very clearly but I think we will see better game movies in time to come.

Also, am I the only one that loved Final Fantasy movie? Ya that's right loved.

Great Podcast.

ForTheNoobs wrote:

Also, am I the only one that loved Final Fantasy movie? Ya that's right loved.

(I own it and really enjoyed it)

SallyNasty wrote:
ForTheNoobs wrote:

Also, am I the only one that loved Final Fantasy movie? Ya that's right loved.

(I own it and really enjoyed it)

Which one? Spirits Within or the Final Fantasy VII one?

I was dragged to see Spirits Within by a friend who was a FF fanatic and loved it. Found the DVD cheap and picked it up, it still holds up really well.

I can't get it to embed... but, inspired by the email that Lara read:

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6618451

(slightly NSFW, language)

(I own it and really enjoyed it)

Which one? Spirits Within or the Final Fantasy VII one?

I was dragged to see Spirits Within by a friend who was a FF fanatic and loved it. Found the DVD cheap and picked it up, it still holds up really well.[/quote]

Spirits Within.

Certis wrote:

I don't consider that one cannon. Never played it when I was a kid ;)

You wound me, sir.

To be fair, though, as good of a game as it is, it's pretty clearly a line of development Nintendo has elected to not pursue again with the Zelda series (except for the sword maneuvers, which got great play in Twilight Princess).

Zelos wrote:

I wouldn't get too carried away about Linux gaming just yet - anybody remember Loki?

Loki did good work, but they faced the problem that they were trying to release games for Linux that had already been out on Windows for 2 - 4+ months. By that time the Windows version had dropped to 1/2 price. This created a 'Linux tax' that was not acceptable.

The true power of Steam on Linux/Mac is the license transfer. If I get access to a Linux client b/c I bought the Windows version? Win.

I don't think comparing Loki to Steam on Linux really works.

Carl

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