Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 86

Age of Conan Deep Thoughts, Penny Arcade's New Game, The Bad Boys of Gaming, Demographics, Multiple Endings, Your Emails and more!

This week we realize just how drunk we'd get playing the rabbit drinking game. From turtles to terrorists, we also talk about gaming bad guys through the ages and some of our favorites. Big thanks to Benoit Casey for the new tune! This podcast only has one ending, but Shawn wishes there were a few more.

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.

Penny Arcade Game
Age of Conan
Mirage UI For Age of Conan

Thread of The Week

GWJ Demographics - nsmike

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Intro/Outro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

"Unknown Wonder" - Apoplexia (Benoit Casey) - http://outtobrunch.blogspot.com - 0:39:41
"George" (Benoit Casey) - http://outtobrunch.blogspot.com - 1:06:03

Comments

Certis wrote:

If you have three GREAT potential endings, and you reach one of them and you think "Wow, what a great ending!" you believe it's devalued by the mere possibility of things happening differently for someone else?

I have to agree that yes, they are all devalued. A game will never exist that has multiple endings that aren't boldly proclaimed in the marketing or box art, so the chances of not realising there are multiple endings are nil. I find the knowledge of multiple endings to be distracting because I'm forced to constantly make sure I get the ending I want, which is always the good one. It's tiring and not fun.

Certis wrote:

I'd take one great ending over a handful of moderate ones, no question. But if all of them are equally great and have the bonus of being relevant to your input I'd think the ending is made even better for it. Who cares if there were other possibilities if I'm satisfied?

I care about the other possibilities when the ending I got is thrown out the window in favour of a different one I never saw so that they could do a sequel.

I think that once you start introducing variable endings you either begin down the path of insanely complex flow charts of endings that differentiate themselves by the colour of your house (or other such pointless things), or are destined to disappoint players who feel the endings are too simple, such as that offered at the end of SW: Knights of the Old Republic (light side or dark side).

Why consume valuable development time on such a triviality especially when we remember that most people won't finish the game at all to see just one of the multitude of endings available. Having multiple endings also becomes a mini-game of it's own where, armed with the knowledge of the endings and what triggers each, players will aim for their ending of choice.

I never finished Fallout, never could force myself to get interested enough in it to play past the first few battles, so I can't really comment on the endings available except to say they were of no value to someone who didn't finish the game.

"Nazi's and stormtroopers" Haha so true, no matter what game it is, if you can shoot nazis, it will sell.

harrisben wrote:

I find the knowledge of multiple endings to be distracting because I'm forced to constantly make sure I get the ending I want, which is always the good one. It's tiring and not fun.

Why don't you just play the game out as normal and deal with the ending you get? It's not like you won't be able to find a vid of the ending you want online. Why do you pressure yourself to get a certain ending if you don't enjoy it?

If you have three GREAT potential endings, and you reach one of them and you think "Wow, what a great ending!" you believe it's devalued by the mere possibility of things happening differently for someone else?

This is a good question, but the thing is it has nothing to do with what anyone else has. It would be as odd as saying that my life sucks because other people are having different experiences. That's irrelevant.

The problem is that my very much that _my_ game has multiple endings. It just destroys any conclusion of a narrative for me. The need to artificially imagine that I'm affecting a static world with the illusion of freedom is far less important to me than having firm resolution in the story. I don't buy into that whole, and then you live happily ever after ... OR you kill a busload of nuns style. For one thing, I'm not sure I've seen a game that had more than one really well executed endings - I imagine the very nature of the thing is fraught with pitfalls. It's just so damn gimmicky, and despite the illusion the medium doesn't support the structure.

It might be different if a game could dynamically react to events as they were unfolding like in your D&D analogy; if it understood how to interpret and develop a story, but that's not possible.

That's exactly it. As with my Wing Commander IV example, I liked the good guys, hated the bad guys, and the last thing I wanted after investing so much time into the game and story was the bad ending where the bad guys win (I thankfully didn't get this).

CannibalCrowley wrote:

Why don't you just play the game out as normal and deal with the ending you get? It's not like you won't be able to find a vid of the ending you want online. Why do you pressure yourself to get a certain ending if you don't enjoy it?

You could make the argument that, if you're putting the effort in to connecting with the story and its characters, you want the best possible outcome for them.

Playing something like, say, Persona 3 (which is an easy 80+ hours gone) and getting the "They all died in a car on the way to school" ending isn't very fun. I mean, I'm sure the majority of us would have COD 4 SPOILER INCOMING
[color=white]liked to have saved American Private McWhatshisname instead of having him die in an atomic wasteland[/color] if we could have.

Maybe it's because my experiences with single-player PC FPS games are limited, but some of my favourite bad guys are definitely the marines in the first Half-Life. A lot of that comes down to the way they're introduced, gunning down an innocent scientist, which establishes them as the Bad Guys, as well as showing pretty clearly that (at least at that point) they far out-gun your weedy physicist self. With their superior firepower, group tactics, and the atmosphere provided by being able to overhear them hastily yell orders amongst themselves, they just felt so real and alive, and surviving an encounter with them always felt like a solid achievement.

Elysium wrote:

So, I will agree that if I don't know there are other endings, and I experience a great ending then I can be satisfied, but when is that ever going to happen?

You're admitting to the fact of being a neurotic game player then? It sounds like you're letting multiple endings devalue the experience because you want to experience them all - equally. If you don't know there's another ending then it doesn't affect you because you think you've completed the story-telling experience. I have a question: Are you an achievement whore*? (Not trying to sound antagonistic here)

I completed Neverwinter Nights once. I believe that there were multiple paths throughout the game depending on your alignment, allegiances (henchmen) and choices throughout the game. I didn't feel cheated because there were other paths in the story that i had missed - i felt like i had experienced my own story, within the limits of the developers' power. It was my tale, my 'life' - just like how in more open-ended games the game never really ends, you just live in the world. Except that having multiple story path elements allows players to feel like they have some sort of agency.
Using your same logic then you must hate open world games because ultimately the player has no effect on the world. You can choose to go through the storyline or not, regardless of that fact there is little changed in the world and maybe (if you're lucky) you get some fame or something - there is a climax but no resolution to your story.

Sitting in Half Life 2:Ep 2 and riding the Temple of Doom mining cart ride (TM) is exciting but ultimately shallow in the player's experience of it. You cannot choose to save or leave Alyx, you cannot decide that you leave a strider to keep attacking a rebel outpost. Ultimately games like that end up being a shooting gallery - a very pretty and complex one - and their lineage can be traced back to games like Duck hunt or Time Crisis in terms of presentation. I find those games devoid emotionally and mentally from the events taking place. Apart from my interaction with the game i could just as easily be watching a demo on a CRT screen in 1998 at a computer fair inside a cricket hall...
There are exceptions to that rule though... but those games tend to never be FPSes: namely Ico, PoP:TSoT etc

*I perhaps should've gone with junkie or something... i only just woke up so my vocabulary isn't great yet.

Spaz wrote:

I mean, I'm sure the majority of us would have COD 4 SPOILER INCOMING
[color=white]liked to have saved American Private McWhatshisname instead of having him die in an atomic wasteland[/color] if we could have.

I really appreciated that part of COD4, I think it was flawless design for this type of game, and having a choice would remove 80% of the dramatic impact and a sense of permanency.

Actually the whole game was a masterpiece. I can't bring myself to uninstall it as its mere presence on my hard drive means something to me.

I've only listened to half so far on my drive in this morning (yesterday was a commute from home day) but I must say, excellent as always. I also want to extend my appretiation for this site in general. Thanks.

I liked the most recent Indy movie with the exceptions of:
- Shia whatever his name is over the top i-have-a-chip-on-my-shoulder character
- The ending that felt bland
- Most of all, the vine swinging scene. I have no problem with the magic skull have great influences on the surroundings, but vine swinging to catch up to group?

And I swear if they make another movie, especially one based around Shia's character I believe I will cry or curse Lucas's name.

After listening to the podcast I was all ready to go on about game endings, but since Certis is so 100%, completely right on this I'll just defer to him.

Instead, I'll express a bit of incredulity at the other subject briefly touched on, games as shared experiences. If I recall correctly, the email was concerned about discussing the game with friends if their experiences were too different. Excuse me, but isn't this one of the *great* things about games? Sharing war stories and have them turn out completely different? For me, it just makes me appreciate the game more, and might even inspire me to go back to it.

Also: Flight Unlimited was the best flight simulator because it was made by Looking Glass, so clearly it could be nothing but awesome.

Jedi Academy had 2 endings that were top notch.

The endings were more about the end boss battle, of which both were much more than satisfactory. The cinematics at the end were the closure for your efforts. The evil one was more interesting, yet it needed to be. The scabs needed to be ripped off for a sequel. The good ending was much simpler. It needed to be nothing more than a ride off into the sunset.

For the record, I do not work for an ad agency, nor for any gaming-related company, and I am not looking for statistics to sell to someone. Hell, I know very little about statistics to begin with. And if you notice, I forgot to ask for people's genders, which is a pretty critical omission for someone looking for demographics. Fear not to post on the thread.

I work for a company that writes loan origination software for mortgage companies. I'm a technical writer for them. That's all.

nsmike wrote:

For the record, I do not work for an ad agency, nor for any gaming-related company, and I am not looking for statistics to sell to someone. Hell, I know very little about statistics to begin with. And if you notice, I forgot to ask for people's genders, which is a pretty critical omission for someone looking for demographics. Fear not to post on the thread.

I work for a company that writes loan origination software for mortgage companies. I'm a technical writer for them. That's all.

HE LIES! EVERYONE AFTER HIM!

I was hoping someone would mention them and was disappointed when they were mentioned but from the wrong game. Gaald brought up the mimes from PA's game but I love the mimes from NOLF 2. (I think it was 2). I also love the Russians in that game whose plan was to take over Florida because they're tired of being cold. They had some of the funniest overheard conversations.

I also favor the Haunts from Thief 1 along with the main villains in all of the Thief games. Especially 3, just because I like how the character was introduced in a creepy children's rhyme that you find in the first mission or two.

My sense from listening to the show today was that all of you really wanted to like AoC, but for some reason it fell short: boring star, lame drops, nothing new to the table, bugs that need fixing...so here is my question: why didn't anyone man up and say it sucked?

If anyone was on the fence about the game (like me) it sure sounded "meh" especially when compared to WoW, LOTRO, or even DDO. All of which you compared it to, and not that favorably from the sounds of it.

mateo wrote:

My sense from listening to the show today was that all of you really wanted to like AoC, but for some reason it fell short: boring star, lame drops, nothing new to the table, bugs that need fixing...so here is my question: why didn't anyone man up and say it sucked?

If anyone was on the fence about the game (like me) it sure sounded "meh" especially when compared to WoW, LOTRO, or even DDO. All of which you compared it to, and not that favorably from the sounds of it.

That's one interpretation, but it doesn't match the intention. Not by me, anyways.

so here is my question: why didn't anyone man up and say it sucked?

(cough)

so here is my question: why didn't anyone man up and say it sucked?

Because it doesn't. Not by a mile. I was probably the least enthusiastic of the group, and I quickly concede that it is in many ways outstanding. Smooth launch, impressive yet largely smooth graphics engine, copious content, storytelling, dynamic combat. Yeah, there are some little things like the UI and the fact that I'm already a WoW whore, but that's a long damn way from "it sucks". My first impression is that it's probably better than LOTRO, DDO and a strong challenger to EQ2 - maybe better once it gets some polish through patches. It's not WoW, but then again that's a great game that's gotten greater with a couple years worth of fine tuning and content. Not at all a fair comparison.

I dare say you're vastly misinterpreting our thoughts. I wonder if we were trying to hard too be analytical about it, because frankly it's easy to look past the flaws we might have mentioned.

Elysium wrote:

I wonder if we were trying to hard too be analytical about it, because frankly it's easy to look past the flaws we might have mentioned.

That might be the case.

When you say that the UI isn't all that great, the trading system is broken, the loot is lame, there are class exploits, etc, and the list of problems gets larger...it seemed like the balance of the opinion was negative.

I don't think being fair to AoC is really a consideration. Prior to World of Warcraft, the big MMORPG was the Everquest series, right? So if World of Warcraft was released and was a clanker, it would not have been fair to compare it to Everquest? I don't follow the logic.

Faced with an entrenched competitor, all rival producers have to do something new or exciting to lure customers away.

World of Warcraft had accessibility, flexibility, and a straight forward UI going for it when it released, which pulled players away from other MMORPGss and even appealed to non-MMORPG gamers. Oh, it was also coming from Blizzard, which certainly helped.

It certainly pulled players away from the Everquest series, despite the fact that it wasn't as polished, balanced, or as tweaked.

Now the only new thing that AoC seems to bring to the table is Dynamic Combat. That sounds cool.

Great graphics are background noise. It's like touting multi-player capabilities for an FPS. It's expected.

Copious content, or the promise of it, is also background noise. There are wide swaths of WoW content I probably will never even see, much less the myriad backstreets of Liberty City, or each dream from Lost Odyssey.

What I want to hear is is there compelling content, something that is going to get me through to the next area, quest chain, or instance? I didn't really get a sense of that from the Conference Call.

When I listened to the analysis, AoC sounded like it had one thing going for it, and a bunch of flaws that would be too significant for me to overlook.

The further you lot got into describing what was wrong, and how great is going to be when it was patched, the more it seemed like rationalization and more like you wanted an MMORPG, just not one made by Blizzard.

Now that may not have been the intention, but that's what I got out of it.

Don't worry, you guys still rock.

Note: random sampling of one, no reviewers or goodjers were harmed in this post, and y'all are going to play whatever you want to anyway.

I thought the discussion about GTA, GoW, and Nazis was fairly mislead.

GTA is reflective of real life. Not in the ability steal cars and run people over, but in that we all have choices to make and sometimes doing things we may not want to. I also don't think the random crap you cna do in a game like that should be held against it because most of the thins that bring some people out if the expreience are there for gameplay purposes, and if that takes you out of the game you probably should be reminded you are playing a game if you are brought out of it.

Nazi's should be left alone. I'd like to think that as a society we can get beyond having this sick feeling of enjoying killing a certain people group. Not all those in the German military during WWII were evil blood sucking bastards, and despite the atrocities those poeple have descendants and they are called Germans. They are people and probably aren't big fans of Americans' sick obsession with making them the end of our endless killing of them in VR.

GoW: has anyone heard the rumor about the upcoming GoW having a clearer story? I throughout I heard it focused more on WHY the locusts came up, and that in that you see that the situation isn't so cut ad dry as it seemed. If you notice throughout the first GoW its never stated why the Locusts are coming up. I also think it is quite fitting the Locusts be so humanoid in nature. It isn't out of lazyness or a fear of making them TOO human but making them human enough to be hated and feared. Is that not the age old latency in our DNA? TO distrust and hate things we find aggressive and that which we don't understand? I think if nothing else the second GoW if it goes down the path I think it might well be more social commentary than we might expect. I think there was more in GoW than we might admit also.

Balaamsdonkey wrote:

GoW: has anyone heard the rumor about the upcoming GoW having a clearer story? I throughout I heard it focused more on WHY the locusts came up, and that in that you see that the situation isn't so cut ad dry as it seemed. If you notice throughout the first GoW its never stated why the Locusts are coming up. I also think it is quite fitting the Locusts be so humanoid in nature. It isn't out of lazyness or a fear of making them TOO human but making them human enough to be hated and feared. Is that not the age old latency in our DNA? TO distrust and hate things we find aggressive and that which we don't understand? I think if nothing else the second GoW if it goes down the path I think it might well be more social commentary than we might expect. I think there was more in GoW than we might admit also.

I got the impression from the first game that the Locusts were originally disturbed by the COG's extraction of that urine/honey fuel.

The locusts are humanoid so that their figures roughly match that of the of COG's for symmetry, especially on the multiplayer side of things.

They really need to either back off on the story, or hire a decent writer.

Danjo Olivaw wrote:

I got the impression from the first game that the Locusts were originally disturbed by the COG's extraction of that urine/honey fuel.

Emulsion, I think it was called.

Though I have no idea where you gleaned that (likely to be correct) bit of trivial. Lord knows that Cliffy didn't let something as messy as proper storytelling taint the F**K YEAH I JUST CHAINSAWED THAT BUG gameplay. Hell, I didn't know they were on another planet until I read it in some message board. In Medias Res is one thing, but this was like reading 20 pages of Book 3 in the Harry Potter series and trying to piece everything together.

They really need to either back off on the story, or hire a decent writer.

I'm not sure if I heard it on 1up or GFW Radio, but apparently they had hired a professional author to work out the game's backstory and plot bits. They then locked her down and limited her creativity, IIRC.

mateo wrote:

When I listened to the analysis, AoC sounded like it had one thing going for it, and a bunch of flaws that would be too significant for me to overlook.

One day it will make for a long and fascinating Gamasutra post-mortem. It is a beautiful collection of mistakes, and hopefully a lot of future designers would use it as a reference on how not to make a game.

BalaamsDonkey:

You're points are heard and well spoken. I don't disagree with you about the "enough Nazi's already" part of it. I'm with Shawn when I say I think I've killed enough Nazi's for a while.

I stand by everything I've ever said about GTA. I'll go to the mat to defend it's existence and what it does well. I still have no interest in playing any more than the 4 or so hours I plowed into it.

After listening to the podcast for over 10 times (I’ve got it on repeat in the background) there are some insights into the show that I think I’ve gained and also some questions:

1. Rob edits his laughs slightly later and louder than everyone else. To what purpose? I’m not sure - Either that or it's Elysium and i'm having trouble differentiating their laughs.
2. Rabbit’s children sound so like him in personality – it’s scary!
3. What are the rules to Rabbit’s topic drinking game? Bioshock, Ken Levine, Flight simulator... what else? I intend to play this game sometime near the end of the next month
4. What about Russians? Surely the atypical Russian enemy is almost as overused as Nazis -In Soviet Russia, enemy overuses YOU!
5. Why does no one make/pick up the joke about Certis grappling with his game boner? A lot – according to him!
6. Rob seems to be getting less angry and other members of the podcast (not naming any names) seem to be getting slightly more moody or snappy. Though they don’t let it affect the flow of the podcast.

1. Rob edits his laughs slightly later and louder than everyone else. To what purpose? I’m not sure - Either that or it's Elysium and i'm having trouble differentiating their laughs.

If anything I am just late in laughing and have to edit my laugh closer to the joke not the other way around. I am always looking at something while doing the show so sometimes my reaction time to a joke is a little slow and it's only louder because when I laugh I am really loud.

To step back from the 'multiple endings' in general argument, and instead look at what games it fits in particular- I have to say this. Its FALLOUT. In Fallout 1, I remember feeling the first real pressure about how my choices effected the plot of a game. This occurred when I realized, oh crap, if I don't find this water chip soon my peeps are off to the big vault in the sky! This sense of urgency was one of the first directives set up for the developers of the original title- what better way to bring that home for the new title than multiple possible endings?

I mean, you could argue that you were creating variances in the complete story at every junction in previous Fallouts!

In this case:

3 great endings > 1 great ending. 3 endings at LEAST.

Gaald wrote:

If anything I am just late in laughing and have to edit my laugh closer to the joke not the other way around. I am always looking at something while doing the show so sometimes my reaction time to a joke is a little slow and it's only louder because when I laugh I am really loud.

Hehe, well i was exaggerating a little as it was only once that i noticed this happening

Never say you laugh loudly, but heartily!