It’s been a while since we talked about programming around here. But this week Paul and I brush up against the topic.
Hosts: Shamus and Paul. Episode edited by Issac.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #199: System Shock Kickstopped, Creeper World, Factorio”
Our Villain Frau Engel has captured Caroline, leader of the resistance. Caroline is paralyzed from the waist down, but in New Order she got a power suit that allows her to walk. It telescopes out to envelop her body like the Iron Man suit of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Frau Engel has captured both her and Wyatt, and removed Caroline from the suit.
So now it’s time for our character to surrender. The writer has a lot of things they need to accomplish in this scene:
That’s a lot to do. Like I said earlier, this sequence takes 11 minutes. That’s a reasonable span of time to accomplish all of these story beats, but it’s still a really long time in terms of first person shooters. And like I keep saying, this one doesn’t break up its cutscenes with little bits of gameplay. Even worse, this sequence breaks the rules the writer previously adhered to. Instead of sticking to BJ’s viewpoint, the director cuts over to do a “Meanwhile, at the enemy base” scene for a conversation that BJ couldn’t possibly be privy to.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Wolfenstein II Part 4: Empire State”
Good news everyone! Last week I took yet another swipe at the big publishers, arguing that their attempts to raise prices via lootbox shenanigans were damaging and self-defeating. Also I said that if they wanted to increase revenue, they were looking at the wrong part of their business. In response, John Videogames, the worldwide President of Videogames, called me up and said he liked my blog. As a reward for posting smart things on the internet, he said I could run my own set of development studios. I even get a bunch of stock or shares or whatever it’s called when you own part of something.
Now, most of you know me as a nice guy who isn’t really interested in money except as a tool to fend off starvation. I don’t push merch. The vast majority of my work is given away for free. I’m very low-pressure when it comes to promoting my Patreon page. So you probably think I’m going to run this company like a bleeding-heart hippie. Maybe you’re expecting me to have some kind of “artists first!” crap. Maybe you’re hoping I’ll run it like a nonprofit and only charge enough money to pay the expenses. Six hour workdays. Free fair-trade coffee and organic vegan energy bars for everyone! Five months of paid vacation! Paid maternity leave if you adopt a puppy from a shelter! On-site grief counseling for players exploring Blighttown for the first time! Footrub Fridays, where I personally massage the feet of our proud workforce!
But screw that.
All I care about now is money. I want to make as much money as possible, for as long as possible. I no longer have any use for artistic integrity and I don’t particularly care if people like me, as long as the dollars keep rolling in.
I figure I’ve got an edge in this game. Andrew Wilson, Bobby Kotick, and the Guillemot Collective are all business types who don’t have a background in programming, game production, game design, or criticism. While none of them are willing to hang out with me yet, I’ve kind of pegged them as the typical golf-playing executive types who only understand technology as translated by terrified underlings. Phil Spencer understands technology, but he’s worked at Microsoft for most of his life and those guys can’t tell the difference between interface design and weapons manufacturing. I don’t think any of them actually understand their customer base, so it should be pretty easy for me to stroll in and eat their lunch.
So here’s my plan to get filthy rich as a gaming executive…
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “How I Plan To Rule This Dumb Industry”
After a 10-month hiatus, the Diecast returns! We’re still messing around with the format. Will we get other hosts? Will the show vary in length? Will the show continue to be weekly? I have no idea. We’ll see what works.
The podcast-specific RSS feed is broken and isn’t going to be fixed anytime soon. I’ve tried a number of plugins for making podcast stuff, and most of them overbearing, overcomplicated things that assume your blog only exists to host a podcast. Also, I always get complaints that the RSS feed doesn’t work in iTunes or whatever, which is the only thing I want the plugin to do.
People are always telling me how easy and turnkey it is and how service X or plugin Y fixed everything, and it always ends up eating a bunch of time, causing confusion, and failing to work as advertised. I don’t know what sort of hassle you’re supposed to go through to get podcasting RSS to work, but it’s evidently more hassle than I’m willing to put up with.
Show notes: Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Diecast #198: Internet Strangers, House of the Dying Sun”
This week I discovered Raycevick, a YouTube channel dedicated to retrospectives, primarily focused on shooters. I know some of you have nudged me in the past to check this guy out, but I didn’t get around to it until this week. I’m only about halfway through his catalog so far, but it’s really solid stuff.
Like Joseph Anderson, I often wish our tastes were more similar so I could get more out of his videos. Aside from Spec Ops: The Line (which he covered last summer) I haven’t really paid much attention to military shooters. Sure, I occasionally sampled them just to keep track of what the genre was doing, but I’ve never been a fan and to this day I still get the lineages and developers of the tentpole series confused. If someone mentions Battlefield, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, Medal of Honor, Black Ops, Ghosts, Rainbow Six, Bad Company, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell, or Infinite Warfare, I usually have to consult Wikipedia to remind myself which ones are core titles and which ones are spinoffs from which other onesAlso I tend to get Company of Heroes mixed up in there, even though that one is a strategy game.. But Raycevick knows his shooters and his videos offer a lot of great insights to the history and nuance of these games, even if they all tend to blur together for me.
The one video I want to highlight is Be Your Own Consumer:
Link (YouTube) |
I suppose this is another way to express the now-familiar tension between companies who make money to make games and companies who make games to make money. But it’s still an important point and the more people that make it the more I can enjoy my feeling of smug self-satisfaction and superiority over the suits at the major publishers. And you can’t put a price on self-satisfaction.
Before I start picking at Wolfenstein II, I should point out that I don’t think it’s a terrible gameAside from the PC technology problems I talked about last time, obviously.. A lot of these things might seem trivial or nitpicky. “Hey, if the game is good then who cares?” But this is less about griping about a terrible game and more about chastising a series that seems to be settling into some bad habits. Let me repeat my main points one last time:
So when I mention a problem, it’s not because it’s some unforgivable sin against game design. It’s because I think there are things that could have been better. Please try to keep this in mind while reading this series, because I’m not going to put one of these “I didn’t hate the game” disclaimers around every piece of criticism.
Cool? Cool. Let’s do this.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Wolfenstein II Part 3: Legacy Problems”
I really like Extra Credits. I think their analysis of Metroid: Other M is probably the most level-headed and constructive take on the game. Their Open Letter to EA Marketing is the most damning analysis of EA’s marketing behavior, and is greatly bolstered by the fact that they’re not trying to create some rage-filled rant to appeal to angry fans but are honestly trying to show how harmful these practices are to the industry in general and even to EA itself. Their analysis of what went wrong with the animations in Mass Effect: Andromeda might involve a bit of speculation, but along the way you’ll get a great education in just how complex modern animation systems are.
I often agree with the show, and it’s pretty hard to make a weekly column out of “Yeah! What that guy said!” There are tricks you can use to pad something like that out to a 3,000 word essay, but those tricks are very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, obviously obvious. So despite my admiration for their content, their videos just don’t work as conversation starters for me.
But last month they posted Games Should Not Cost $60 Anymore – Inflation, Microtransactions, and Publishing. It makes a lot of points I disagree with, so now we’ve got something to talk about. Yes, I’m aware this behavior is one of the reasons I get a reputation of being overly negative and nitpicky. But look, I’m only criticizing the show because I’m a fan. There are lots of popular YouTube channels out there that I don’t like and don’t care about, and I don’t waste time arguing with them. On this site, we criticize because we loveOr sometimes because we’re angry..
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “This Dumb Industry: Charging More for a Worse Product”
A video discussing Megatexture technology. Why we needed it, what it was supposed to do, and why it maybe didn't totally work.
I teach myself music composition by imitating the style of various videogame soundtracks. How did it turn out? Listen for yourself.
Some advice to game developers on how to stop ruining good stories with bad cutscenes.
The story of me. If you're looking for a picture of what it was like growing up in the seventies, then this is for you.
Valve still hasn't admitted it, but the Half-Life franchise is dead. So what made these games so popular anyway?
A wild game filled with wild ideas that features fun puzzles and mind-blowing environments. It has a great atmosphere, and one REALLY annoying flaw with its gameplay.
A videogame that judges its audience, criticizes its genre, and hates its premise. How did this thing get made?
A game about the ghost of an underwater football player who travels through time to save the world from a tick that controls kaiju satan. Really.
Most stories have plot holes. The failure isn't that they exist, it's when you notice them while immersed in the story.
Fidget spinners are ruining education! We need to... oh, never mind the fad is over. This is not the first time we've had a dumb moral panic.
T w e n t y S i d e d
