Featured Image

First of all, we’d like to thank the amazing yurricanes for working with us to create the featured image for this episode. I think you’ll agree that it’s an amazing piece of art, and you should definitely check out their work.

Players

Squidge

Jay

Chief

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Content Warning

At 4:28 Suidge says the phrase:

you rotten bugger

and he repeats it at 4:39

which isn’t really a swear, so we’ve left it in. But some listeners might want to avoid it.

We also have a potential set of spoilers for Game of Thrones at 12 minutes. If you are still watching GoT and haven’t finished it, I would skip the entire 12th minute of the episode.

At 15:25, Squidge also uses the phrase:

All the ending are crap

And he uses a similar phrase at 29:03.

At 31:41 I use the phrase:

You’ve got a butt load of money upfront

At 39:02, I use the phrase:

I couldn’t give a monkeys

Then, at 40:43, I say:

A video game is like a movie, is like porn

As always, please listen responsibly.

Show Notes

Keep an ear open for where the title for this episode came from.

Chief had that much to say about RTS games, that he was back for a third episode

seriously, there’s that much to say about them

and much to his chagrin, right at the top of the show, we mention that we’re going to EGX

did you know that we’re going to be there?

But unrelated to that, I start the show out by wanting to tell the world all about Yoshi’s Crafted Story - it’s seriously that good. It has a wonderful crafted and whimsy aesthetic, making it super fun to look at, AND super fun to play.

plus, it’s as cute as the Dickens

Jay's Avatar Jay:

Playing this game is what happiness feels like

I then almost launch into a tirade about video game reviews, and how annoyingly stupid it is to give a numerical rating for stuff. But that gets me to talk about my favourite review show: The Anthropocene Reviewed.

Chief tells us that he like the story of Metal Gear Solid 4

a game that I call Cutscenes: The Video Game, for reasons which should be obvious

We then introduce Chief to the Desert Island Games segment, and he takes a long time to figure out which games he’d take with him. I’d recommend listening to the show for his reasoning, but here are the games that he eventually settled on:

Chief’s Desert Island Games

  • Medieval Total War 2
  • Pro Evolution Soccer 2020

During the Desert Island Games segment, we start talking about Game of Thrones and Squidge talks about the ending. So if you haven’t seen the show, but want to remain spoiler free, you’ll need to skip the entire 12th minute

I haven’t seen GoT past the first episode. So if you were to tell me that Aliens descend and take over Westeros, I would believe you

Also Westeros sounds like it should be the name of an operating system

Before he was able to pick a second game, because he was thinking too short term: what if he picked a game and he got stuck 30 minutes into it, for example. He also puts a lot of thought into his second choice, and his thought process is fascinating.

Squidge then recommends looking into what he calls “waiting for an appointment games” - games which you can pick up and play for five minutes without having to worry about losing you progress when you have to drop out of the game

something something casual games

We then touch on the disaster that was No Man’s Sky, which was all down to an unprepared person taking questions that he had no answers to and just making up the answers. All of this lead to potential fans being hyped up for a product which they could have never released.

Chief's Avatar Chief:

Essentially, it was an early access game… if it had been marketed as an early access game, it would have been fine

Chief then starts a conversation about Epic Games and the recent Metro game: the developers promised that it would be released on Steam, and now it’s going to be an Epic Games Store exclusive for an amount of time shortly after release. We touch on the reaction from the gaming community, and how it might have been a little ham-fisted. That being said, I tend to side with the developers in this instance - in that they are making games in order to make money, and if they can make a boat load of money up front by offering it exclusively via one store for a period of time, then why not?

It’s economics 101. Not nice for gamers who don’t have access to the Epic Store, but that isn’t the goal of the company. In fact, the same thing happened back when Half Life came out. But the pitforkers from that generation are either not around or grown out of this kind of knee jerk reaction.

I digress.

We then segway into gamers being tribal about video games consoles - to the point where I have seen adults having physic fights

like actually fighting each other… with punches and stuff

over “my console is better than your console” nonsense.

All of which, naturally, brought us to another discussion on Shenmue 3. A game which will still be unfinished by the time it comes out, as Yu Suzuki has said that content has had to be cut from Shenmue 3 in order to release it in time. Also, unless they drastically diverge from the previous entires in the series (gameplay wise), it’s going to be panned by contemporary critics. It will receive great reviews from Gen X journos, but the Millenials will hate it. All because people don’t play games the way that they did when Shenmue came out, but removing that will push the hardcore fans away.

We then talk about the Modern Warfare games, as Activision have recently announced that they might make the next game more gritty and realistic - which will be a departure from what the Modern Warfare games have become.

All of which brings me back to my “the creator should be in charge of the thing that they are creating, not the consumer” point, because that’s how I truly believe that creative endeavours should be approached. Which leads us back to “video games are art” vs “video games are entertainment”. If games are art, then it shouldn’t matter what the consumer thinks because the creators are expressing their artistic drive. And this is a big problem in video games, but not so much in TV or Movies… which is a really interesting point to me.

Squidge then comes up with a super scary idea - especially if the big TV and Movie content creators get hold of it - DLC for Movies and TV Shows which is required in order to get the most out of the experience.

Jay's Avatar Jay:

You don’t go to the cinema, watch a movie, then have to pay again to see the ending

I then talk us through how TV networks make their money

psst, you are only there to watch the adverts

which forces me to talk about TiVo and it’s ability (in early versions) to record a live broadcast without capturing the adverts. This was something which really upset the TV networks.

All of that brings us to the sticky subject of gambling loot boxes “surprise mechanics” in video games, and how it really is gambling. Seriously folks, if you can’t see how “surprise mechanics” isn’t gabling, then perhaps you need to take a trip to the opticians. It. Is. Gambling. and these companies are teaching children to do it.

Certain countries are outlawing it but others haven’t caught on

or perhaps the corporate bribes lobbyists are too good

it’s entirely possible to physically go to another country (taking your game with you) and gamble use the “surprise mechanics” feature to get the content which you previously wouldn’t have been able to get.

I’m sorry for that getting a little in your face. I’m just quite passionate about not having gambling in video games. Gambling has the ability to completely ruin people’s lives, when not done responsibly.

We then introduce Chief to The Cupboard of Shame. Here are the rules of The Cupboard of Shame:

  • Something you ashamed of having bought
  • Something you didn’t think that you’d like, but you enjoyed way too much

And just like Desert Island Games, Chief takes his time to pick something to put into the CoS. I won’t mention the game that he nominated here

you’ll have to listen to the episode to find out which game he chose

but it does lead to us bringing up the entire Final Fantasy XIII series. Because it’s been years since FF XIII came out, I’ve had a long time to think about why I think XIII has such a bad reputation among the fans, and I really think it’s related to the legacy of the previous games in the series. Combine that with XI and XII being terrible, and the fact that younger JRPG gamers wouldn’t have wanted to grind, in the same way that older JRPG gamers would.

Also, have you noticed that all of the things which make FF XIII “bad” are things which are key gameplay mechanics for Pokémon?

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 36 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: