Conference Call

GWJ Conference Call Episode 302

Secret of The Magic Crystals, Spec Ops: The Line, LOTRO Rohan Beta, Gotham City Imposters, Dyad, Wii U Experience, Life in Day Z, Your Emails and more!

This week Shawn and Julian are joined by Jeff Cannata and DayZ expert Charlie Hall! We dig into the experience of playing Day Z and how it may influence the industry at large.

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/Outtro Music - Ian Dorsch, Willowtree Audioworks

Chandra - (b-sides) - workbench-music.com - 33:54

Equinox - (b-sides) - workbench-music.com - 1:07:03

Comments

Leave it to Rabbit to love the things about DayZ that are the most weird and broken! And an excellent debut performance from Charlie.

Also, I always feel this way, but this is a good chance to actually say it: I really enjoy it when Jeff Cannata is on the show. I'm hoping he becomes a regular

Ponycorns!

I really like Charlie's DayZ coverage! Is there a link to the DayZ "war photographer's" work?

Best sponsor of all time!

Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

Best sponsor of all time!

+1

Also, I'd love to see a Vita port of Dyad some day; it sounds neat!

The War photog has yet to do any substantial work. It's been an announcement so far and little else. Stay tuned.

Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

Best sponsor of all time!

Hell yes. Making up ad copy for a castle was surprisingly challenging, but fun.

Certis wrote:
Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

Best sponsor of all time!

Hell yes. Making up ad copy for a castle was surprisingly challenging, but fun.

I think, "it's a freakin' castle" pretty much sold it

Tanglebones wrote:
Certis wrote:
Gimpy_Butzke wrote:

Best sponsor of all time!

Hell yes. Making up ad copy for a castle was surprisingly challenging, but fun.

I think, "it's a freakin' castle" pretty much sold it :)

I agree! But then, I'm a bit biased...

cant believe people say you guys dont give playstation time, you are the best out of any podcast to be even handed lol

For DayZ life expectancy when we first started was 4hrs. It's dropped down to 30m and now back up to 49.

I don't think you can just "Youtube" SpecOps. For all that the combat is filler, most of the poignant moments in that game come from things you do in the course of combat. For instance, all of the hundreds of American soldiers that you gun down. The mechanics aren't based in neat customization or moves like Bioshock, they're based in what you see if you stop for a moment and look around.

It's definitely a weird game, if not entirely successful. I'm glad I played it, but I'm not quite sure how they were planning to make money off the thing. It's not so much a critique of the modern military shooter so much as it is a massive f*ck off to the modern military shooter. In fact, I'm paranoid enough to wonder if the gameplay is so average as part of their overall point. Weird, weird game. I hope people start paying a little more attention to it.

I'm open to the idea of Spec Ops being deeper than the gameplay suggests, but I suspect the gunning down hundreds of dudes could have been made more technically enjoyable and still retained the punch of what they were trying to get across.

Still not finished though, we'll see!

Finally finished the episode on my drive home. Julian, have you read Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber? The dimension hopping you described re: Day Z seems like it would lend itself well to the dimensional 'shadow walking' that the characters in Amber are able to do.

gore wrote:

Leave it to Rabbit to love the things about DayZ that are the most weird and broken! And an excellent debut performance from Charlie.

Also, I always feel this way, but this is a good chance to actually say it: I really enjoy it when Jeff Cannata is on the show. I'm hoping he becomes a regular :)

Not that I'm biased, but I like Jeff more on this show than his other show. Also, it sounds like he needs Secret of the Magic Crystals.

Shawn was saying that one can hook up the sound to a TV using an HDMI cable. How do I find out if I can do that? I use a laptop without a dedicated video card (Sandy Bridge Processor - so I get decent graphics for what I use it). Is there a website I can use to look that up, because I was very intrigued by this idea...

Tanglebones wrote:

The dimension hopping you described re: Day Z seems like it would lend itself well to the dimensional 'shadow walking' that the characters in Amber are able to do.

Whoa. Switching servers as walking Shadow? I want to play a game designed around that.

misplacedbravado wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

The dimension hopping you described re: Day Z seems like it would lend itself well to the dimensional 'shadow walking' that the characters in Amber are able to do.

Whoa. Switching servers as walking Shadow? I want to play a game designed around that.

Yup, and make Amber and the Courts the only servers where characters can have permadeath/whatnots

IlleBellus wrote:

Shawn was saying that one can hook up the sound to a TV using an HDMI cable. How do I find out if I can do that? I use a laptop without a dedicated video card (Sandy Bridge Processor - so I get decent graphics for what I use it). Is there a website I can use to look that up, because I was very intrigued by this idea...

Your laptop have an HDMI out? I think you'd need to check on the specific model.

edit: This week's rundown, gloriously supported by Xiao Wang's Happy Time Fun Zone, where the happiness never, ever stops. Ever.

00.01.43 Nintendo's Wii U Experience (Project P-1000! Zombie U!)
00.08.23 Combat Mission: Battle for Normandy
00.08.54 Dyad
00.14.32 Spec Ops: The Line
00.17.44 The Merits of PlayStation Plus
00.18.16 Little Big Planet 2
00.18.40 Gotham City Imposters
00.21:21 Rohan Beta (LOTR expansion)
00.25.31 Secret of the Magic Crystal!!!!!
00.28.20 Certis on the PC to HDMI TV hookup
00.34.23 This week's topic: DayZ!
01.07.33 Your emails!

About the 3D TV PC gaming--unfortunately it's still not really possible at full 1080p, due to weird restrictions on HDMI bandwidth that should no longer exist due to HDMI 1.4a, but yet still does. As such, you can only do 720p 3D at 60fps on a 3D TV.

Tanglebones wrote:
misplacedbravado wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:

The dimension hopping you described re: Day Z seems like it would lend itself well to the dimensional 'shadow walking' that the characters in Amber are able to do.

Whoa. Switching servers as walking Shadow? I want to play a game designed around that.

Yup, and make Amber and the Courts the only servers where characters can have permadeath/whatnots

TAKE MY MONEY NOW.

Yes. The original amber books remain my favorite fantasy of all time. My wife had to veto "Dworkin" as a boys name.

Shawn, that's weird your 5950 didn't do audio out on the HDMI port. I've got a 5850 and haven't had trouble with getting sound out to my TV. Is that a feature vendors aren't required to do?

I'd like to offer my legal services to Jeff for violation of his contract rider that he be allowed to discuss board games in each appearance.

While I'm at it, I want to express thanks to both Jeff and the GWJ crew for turning me on to modern board games. I was one of those listeners who several years ago said to myself "what are they doing talking about board games." Now I have actually been compelled to come out of isolation and meet up with real live human people just in order to play these games and I've been having a blast. I give 50% of the credit to GWJ, 20% to Mr. Cannata, 20% to XBox for giving me free copies of Carcassone and Settlers, and 10% to the iPad for putting all these great games in my lap.

Put me down for one more vote for continuing to periodically bring up board games.

I wonder if the increasing popularity of Day Z is going to get developers to re-consider the recent trend of limiting/scrapping mod support on their games. I think every recent time I've looked at the "Best Sellers" list on Steam, Arma II has been in the top 5. I think the last time there was this much selling of a game for a single mod was either Warcraft III (for Dota) or Half-Life 1 (for Counter-Strike).

Sure it probably takes more effort on the developer's sides, but I'd like to think a successful mod like Day Z provides a lot more "stickiness" for a game than DLC packs and grafted on multiplayer modes.

I would also like to point out that this type of hardcore game play you find in DayZ has been around before in MMOs. Ultima, EVE, Darkfall. Each of these games have the same brutal type of game play where you risk everything you have each time you log on. Being able to experience that again with modern weapons has been a very special treat.

Oh, Wandy's on. It's weird to hear his voice on the podcast after hearing him in-game a bunch.

Also, best sponsor ever gets a +infinity from me.

Two things, really quick (aside from "great show, as always"):

1). Jeff, you sounded great this episode! I don't know if you took the audio equipment from "Weekend Confirmed" or what, but it was a noticeable improvement in sound quality.

2). An "epic fail" to you, Jonathan. You were handed at least 3 opportunities to "Rick Roll" everyone during this episode and didn't do it. For shame!!!

Really, great show as always. It'd be nice to get a "Today In Day Z" segment in future shows.

Charlie Hall: Tom Bombadillin' like a villain.

kincher skolfax wrote:

Tom Bombadill

The Bombadil thing made me laugh at work

Also, quite surprised no one thought to mention the SotMC hot potato wasn't a Rick Roll... it was a Steam Roll