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Right now our very own Josh and Mumbles are on their way to the Penny Arcade Expo. The plan is for them to take some pictures, write some words, and put them up here where we can enjoy the convention vicariously. On the other hand the expectation is that Josh will spend the entire time in the NCsoft booth, offering to bear children for members of the the Guild Wars 2 dev team.
Either way, their adventure might yield some amusing content for us.
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How did this niche racing game make a gameworld so massive, and why is that a big deal?
Another PC Golden Age?
Is it real? Is PC gaming returning to its former glory? Sort of. It's complicated.
Playstation 3
What was the problem with the Playstation 3 hardware and why did Sony build it that way?
Civilization VI
I'm a very casual fan of the series, but I gave Civilization VI a look to see what was up with this nuclear war simulator.
Who Broke the In-Game Economy?
Why are RPG economies so bad? Why are shopkeepers so mercenary, why are the prices so crazy, and why do you always end up a gazillionaire by the end of the game? Can't we just have a sensible balanced economy?
I hit PAX east last time around, and it was spectacular. Tell your people that if Scott Kurtz is hosting one of his “Evenings”, that they should make every effort not to miss it.
I have no idea what they look like, but from your description, it sounds like Josh and Mumbles are in an odd couple buddy-cop movie. Maybe there’s a humorously large height differential between them?
Ha! There is. And mumbles is the tall one!
(Reportedly. I’ve never met either in person.)
So for all you know, they might be cyber-terrorists determined to Hack your life?
They already have. Spoiler warning is the most fun feature on the site now for a reason.
Or they might be the hackers trying to hack the mainframe in order to save Shamus’ life from The Corporation.
All I know for sure is that I swear, if ONE MORE Johnson calls me up about assembling a rag-tag group of mercenaries with unique skills and abilities… Then he better not double-cross me. Because that would be mean.
If Josh wants to swing by the TERA booth and check us out, I promise he won’t have to suffer the pains of childbirth, we’ll just give him a t-shirt. We’re booth #142. :)
– Jason Mical, Community Director, En Masse Entertainment –
I’m sure you’ll see him before he sees you.
He’ll be the one bunnyhopping and trying to put things into other people’s pockets.
Yeah probably models his in game behaviour on his real life, so he will have about 20 needles stck in his arm and a beer hat (The little saftey hats with cups ‘n straws)
The beer hat will have a chin strap, so he doesn’t have to stop bunnyhopping to drink.
A summer bonnet will be affixed to the beer hat.
With a lucky bandana under it all and some sunglasses.
If I was anywhere near the US I would be at PAX, begging to have the children of all employees in the BioWare booth.
Maybe they are fortunate that I don’t live in the US.
Curse you, Shamus. At around 2:45 in that vid was a guy cosplaying as Waldo. I was forced to go back and watch the entire video again to see if I could spot Waldo in any other shots.
Oh, and poor Josh. He has no idea what he’s in for if anyone at NCSoft takes him up on his offer.
Fun fact: since I’ve never seen a picture of Josh, my mental image of him literally is Reginal Cuftbert. More specifically, the Reginald Cuftbert image I did a while back.
This means that, when I hear “Josh is going to PAX,” a very small part of me hears, “Reginald Cuftbert is going to PAX.” Which means I have an image of this guy wandering around bunny-hopping and glancing furtively around, stealing things, deciding who he can and can’t kill without pissing people off, and ingesting absolutely everything lying around.
Funny enough me too.
Do you have a link to the picture you did? I’d be interested to see it.
http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=8154
God help the trousers of any Bethesda developer who might be at PAX.
Just as long as he remembers to differentiate between Bethesda and Obsidian we’ll at least profit from it.
Not in terms of money so much as an increase in catharsis and the laughter of small children.
Now I would forever share the same mental image, but I don’t actually generally think in images…
I’ll try imagining it anyway. (What would Reginald Cuftbert do?) Josh will sneak around, spot some film crew and shout “Stop shooting me!”. Then he’ll draw his MacGyvered Sword of Fire and proceed to stealth-kill the crew one by one, yelling aggressively each time.
The other PAX visitors will not even be disturbed by this; as long as Josh is crouching, they will just continue on with their daily routines, seemingly ignoring the fact that some of their colleagues seem to be getting down with a nasty case of the Burning Stabs.
Somehow, this image helps alleviate the sting of not being able to go to PAX myself.
“Now have fun at PAX, and remember: if you see a flaming sword flying around about two feet in the air, run like hell and never look back.”
I’m really liking this dynamic between all of the people on Spoiler Warning. It’s like we’re all watching these cool gamers chill out in real time.
Me too, i hope the Team of Shamus, Ruts, Josh & now Mumbles stay working together as they have a good vibe.
All they have to do now is get a cute little mascot so that they can go on insane adventures, solving crimes and mysteries as they progress on their ultimate quest to save the universe from a tyrannical evil mastermind (who may or may not be the CEO of Bethesda Softworks).
Only true arch-nemesis can be Bobby Cotick. There are no other options ,and there is no doubt of it.
PAX looks more and more fun every year, its like Disneyland for adults (or manchildren anyway).
You Americans always get the best entertainment.
Looks like Duke Nukem Forever is coming.
http://kotaku.com/5628894/its-official-duke-nukem-forever-coming-from-gearbox-software?skyline=true&s=i
They should probably announce it a few years ago, back when this game mattered.
What, in 1996?
I was thinking 2002 or so. But really anytime before Halo 2 or Half Life 2.
The thing is, despite nobody actually giving a damn about Duke or what’s in the game, I’m betting it’ll sell like hotcakes because EVERYONE will want to play it just out of curiosity.
Hey Shamus, maybe it’s time to create http://www.shamusyoung.com/spoilerwarning/ ?!
For now it could just mirror the Spoiler Warning related posts, but who knows in the future?
Maybe Josh and Rutskarn and Mumbles and future guest hosts would like to blog a little in-between the episodes. (about Spoiler Warning related stuff that is).
That would kind of focus http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/ back to Shamus “solo” stuff again, where only you post/do stuff.
And http://www.shamusyoung.com/spoilerwarning/ would give room for Spoiler Warning to grow further too. I’d love to maybe see some commentary by the guests in addition to the video as well.
(Besides, it would give you a chance to fool around with a Spoiler Warning design too ;)
That would split up the traffic a bit – which is not good for a blog. Shamus needs each and every one of our unique hits.
To be honest with the few posts from Josh… I wouldn’t mind seeing TwentySided become a blog where there might be content by people other than Shamus at times, namely Rutskarn, Josh and Mumbles.
Also Randy. I miss Randy.
I’m not familiar at all with PAX, probably because I’m not up on these latest types of games (and I live in the Seattle area, too – you’d think I’d have heard about this before).
Anyway, when talking with a friend and asking about PAX, his comment was something like “… you mean ‘Wait-In-Line-Con’? ”
So to those that have gone to PAX – is it really like that? Lots of waiting in line(s)? I did see in the video a couple shots that looked like nothing but line…
I’ve heard that the Valve booth at PAX last year sat at the head of a giant line, but that was just before Left 4 Dead 2 came out… and they’ll probably have something Portal 2-related there this year, so it’ll probably be just as crowded.
The expo itself is huge, though, so if something has a huge line there’s always something else to do.
Turns out Snowblind (a studio making a new LotR game called War in the North) thinks it would be fun to get me in to PAX for free tomorrow. And take me out to dinner afterward. And I don’t even have to pay for parking, because I work within walking distance of the convention center and have a monthly parking pass… Sometimes I’m absurdly lucky.
Maybe I’ll run into Josh and/or Mumbles there… but I’ll probably never know, because I have no idea what they look like.
I’ll mostly be hanging around the Warner Bros booth (since they’re getting me in and all), but I’m going to try to hop over to the Star Wars and Wil Wheaton events :D
Like we said, watch out for the bunny-hopping, bonnet wearing chap with mutton chops and plenty of syringes in his arms yelling “STOP SHOOTING ME!”
Plus Josh should be easy enough to find by following the trail of empty whiskey bottles and blokes with their pants blown up.