[Episode 53] The Gamut

[Ravenlock]

Given our enthusiasm in releasing the Bastion interview, among other things, this episode is a tad late. But, it’s nevertheless full to bursting. We’ve got classic games covered as Robert revisits the original Red Faction and experiments with Virtual Box for titles like Dune 2000, Stronghold, and Diablo. And I recount my time with SWAT 4, the Dungeon Keeper 2 release from Good Old Games, and the original Deus Ex. We’re on the cutting edge, too, with the (oft misheard) Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Clayton’s experience as benefactor of a public Minecraft server, a look at OnLive’s progress, and Eric’s shiny, new GPU.

Following the break, Eric and I can’t help but share our potent feelings about Ubisoft’s mis-management of From Dust for PC, and GameStop’s Deus Ex debacle. But, the good feelings flow again when Gabe Newell’s latest comments about piracy and Valve’s growth spurs us to take a positive look at the developing free-to-play scene.

There’s something for everyone as we run The Gamut.

Hosted and Summarized by James [Vigil80]
Participants are Robert [Trebor] and Eric [Ravenlock]
Produced by Clayton [Voodoo]

Direct Download

[Vigil80]

Kotaku - Why Portal's Publishers Don't Fear Piracy, Competition

These links courtesy of Robert [Trebor]

Deus Ex Nameless Mod
Deus Ex HDTP Release 1
Deus Ex New Vision Mod

Minecraft4kids texture pack

[nabokovfan87]

Listening now, about halfway through.

Did you guys talk about Deus Ex, the ending and so forth or was it just the "been playing" bit?

I beat it sunday, spammed I think 3 of you trying to find someone to talk to about it and spend the next hour having some in depth philosophical "thing" with one of my friends. Needless to say I don't know where to sit with this game, I don't know if it is good at all, or if it is just the ending, or what exactly this game has done.

Going to be a long week or so of pondering, and I am interested as hell to hear about the first one (I was the guy who played it without the graphics update). So I think that is the next thing I play until SS3.

If you guys plan on doing a podcast about the game, talking about what exactly did everyone choose to do in the end and their thoughts on the game as a whole, as well as discussing "deeper meaning" in games as a sort of main topic, please hit me up. Like I said, I need to talk about this thing.

Also, if anyone who has played it wants to talk about the above on my pod, you know my email feel free to hit me up and we can record something this weekend.

[Vigil80]

You've heard all the DX talk for this episode, if I recall correctly.

Ravenlock has mentioned perhaps talking about it more in the future, but I couldn't say for sure when.

[Ravenlock]

I want to spoilercast the crap out of it, but I need to beat it first. It's been a busy month.

[Doogie2K]

I'm almost through the topic, and left with a couple of questions.

1) Was that "Deus"-"Zeus" thing a legitimate argument people were making when that game came out? There's just...oh my God, I don't know where to begin with how dumb that is.

2) The actual serious question: Why are Ubisoft and GameStop even trying to remain in the PC space? Honestly, can any of you guys think of any entities that have been more actively hostile to PC gaming as a platform and PC gamers as consumers in the last five years than these guys? Even EA and Activision have at least been around 50-50 in this regard (though admittedly Acti's half is mostly Blizzard); Ubi's been about 90-10 against, and GameStop's PC section at my local consists of a single column on a back wall, full of Blizzard and Valve games, some shovelware Tycoon knockoffs, and the same used PC boxes that have literally been there since 2002 (I think the copy of Birth of the Federation I sold them in '04 is still there). It just blows my mind that despite all the hot water these two have gotten into for all of the obviously anti-consumer, and especially anti-PC consumer, things that they've done, they still keep on keepin' on, as though they actually think people want or like this. Why do they bother? Why don't they just admit that they really don't want to continue to support the PC as a platform, for whatever reasons, real and imagined, and call it a day? It's fucking ridiculous that after all the strides the PC has made as a platform in the last handful of years that we're still seeing companies try (and thankfully fail) to pull this kind of bullshit. If they're not going to take the lesson of Valve and others, and woo PC gamers with more carrot and less stick, then why bother? Just...ugh. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

[Ravenlock]

I think Gamestop's involvement in the PC space will soon be 100% digital. In that respect, buying Impulse was actually a pretty savvy move on their part, and since they picked it up they've actually done more Steam-style 60 and 70% off sales, which I did not expect. They also allow you to use Gamestop gift cards on Impulse now, so if you get a $20 card as a preorder bonus for a console game, for example, you could use that on a game you download from Impulse.

Much as I hate to admit it, that's smart business. Impulse has a solid technical back-end and they seem to be running it well so far. It's got a light front-end that doesn't need to run to play your games, crazy fast transfer speeds, and a decent storefront. I'd expect to see a lot more cross-promotion between the two in the future.

If you consider that PC gaming has been moving out of the physical boxed copy world and towards all-digital-distribution for years (which is an easy argument to make and believe), Gamestop is actually ahead of their brick-and-mortar competitors now in being prepared to make that leap. Best Buy for example has just as little shelf space for PC games these days, but no similar digital counterpart.

EDIT: Your Ubisoft remarks I have no response to, because I don't know what the fuck those guys are thinking either.

[Vigil80]

Seems to me they don't want to leave money on the table, but they only want to deal with the PC market on their own ham-fisted terms. Have their cake, and so on.

[Ravenlock]

We're talking Ubisoft not Gamestop in that post, yeah? I can agree with that.

[Doogie2K]

Originally Posted by Ravenlock

I think Gamestop's involvement in the PC space will soon be 100% digital. In that respect, buying Impulse was actually a pretty savvy move on their part, and since they picked it up they've actually done more Steam-style 60 and 70% off sales, which I did not expect. They also allow you to use Gamestop gift cards on Impulse now, so if you get a $20 card as a preorder bonus for a console game, for example, you could use that on a game you download from Impulse.

Much as I hate to admit it, that's smart business. Impulse has a solid technical back-end and they seem to be running it well so far. It's got a light front-end that doesn't need to run to play your games, crazy fast transfer speeds, and a decent storefront. I'd expect to see a lot more cross-promotion between the two in the future.

If you consider that PC gaming has been moving out of the physical boxed copy world and towards all-digital-distribution for years (which is an easy argument to make and believe), Gamestop is actually ahead of their brick-and-mortar competitors now in being prepared to make that leap. Best Buy for example has just as little shelf space for PC games these days, but no similar digital counterpart.

EDIT: Your Ubisoft remarks I have no response to, because I don't know what the fuck those guys are thinking either.

I honestly haven't even opened Impulse since GameStop bought it. Then again, I also hadn't opened Impulse in a good six months before that, either, not since I last played Sins of a Solar Empire. But that is very shrewd; I dislike many of GS's business practices, but that sounds like it's actually legitimately good for the consumer. Now, if we could just get rid of the brick-and-mortar part of that operation.

Also, I think the direction you took on my question was a good one. It'll be interesting to see how the balance shakes out between $60 "full package" games (more on that in a sec) and a la carte/FTP/shareware type packages. We as gamers have been talking about the need for granularity in pricing between $60 for boxed games and $20 or less for downloadables; this seems like a good solution. One recent example, that wasn't known at the time the show was recorded, is Crimson Alliance. Free to download, but you only get, I think, the demo, and then you pay to be able to play through with one character class for 800 Spacebucks, or all three (?!) for 1200 Spacebucks. The numbers are a bit screwy, but hey, it's nice to see companies experimenting with these models. Actually, if anything, CA reminds me more of the shareware experience than anything else. You're not getting as much up front, but I know with Wolfenstein 3D, you could buy the next two episodes only for $20, or get "The Nocturnal Missions" for an extra $30. So the whole shebang still came to $50 if you wanted, or you could buy it piecemeal (you might have even been able to buy an episode at a time), or you could just play Episode 1 over and over again until you'd memorized enemy and secret placement like I did.

That being said, for your $60, I'm not sure you can often be said to not be getting something that isn't a piecemeal experience. Assassin's Creed II sticks out as an example, here. You paid your $60, and you still didn't get the whole game: there was a big hole in the middle of the fucking memory sequence where the DLC would go. It wasn't even something tacked on at the end, like with say Allan Wake. No, it went right in the Goddamned middle of the story. I personally waited, bought the DLC, and am playing through now as a seamless whole, and I can't imagine how they broke the darned thing up. (This is, of course, separate from preorder bonuses, which are mostly retarded, or Call of Duty/Gears of War/Bethesda style DLC, which are more like the expansion packs of yesteryear, and which I'm totally down with.) I know they're trying to create a long tail and reduce the number of people who sell the game back to GameStop after two weeks, but that hardly seems like the right way to engender such goodwill.

Finally, I had to chuckle at the comment by either Eric or James that no one's going to pay $60 for two-hour entertainment experience. I'm assuming no one on the show is a professional sports fan, because $60 is practically entry level for a pro sports experience, and most of those games only last 2-3 hours. Here in Calgary, for instance, $60 buys you a nosebleed ticket to the Flames game, parking, dinner, and a beer (but only one, because they're $8 a pop). I think price per hour really depends on what you're investing in the experience, what your expectations are for the experience (gamers expect a minimum of 6-8 hours for their $60, even today), and so forth. For example, I got two lower-bowl tickets to the Flames and Jets in March for $438. But it's also the first Winnipeg Jets game here in fifteen years, and I'll be sitting in the top of the lower bowl behind the net, which is just about the best seat in the house. So it's all relative.

Final question. So I'm way behind on podcasts, as you probably gathered, and I just heard the Bombcast from Oct. 4, where Brad talks about Rage, and from what he describes, Rage sounds not unlike Wolfenstein '09, in terms of the nature of the hub world and the fact that you can pretty much shoot from the hip, old-school. Strictly in terms of those things (because there's obviously no weird supernatural medallion or Nazis), and most importantly, in terms of the gunplay, does it feel like that? Because I really quite liked Wolfenstein '09, and I figure if it plays mostly like that, and I understand what the game is and isn't going in, that may be something I get for $30 on the Steam sale this Christmas. And then play in 2014.

Until next time...

(Instant Edit: Christ, wall of text much?)

[Vigil80]

Originally Posted by Doogie2K

Finally, I had to chuckle at the comment by either Eric or James that no one's going to pay $60 for two-hour entertainment experience. I'm assuming no one on the show is a professional sports fan, because $60 is practically entry level for a pro sports experience, and most of those games only last 2-3 hours.

I can't remember who said it, either, but you're right in my case. Even when I've had other occasion to go - invited by a group, something like that - the ticket price is a big turnoff.

I am hard pressed to shell out $60 for two hours of any entertainment. $20 is closer to the cutoff, being the price of a premium movie-going experience, at least in my area.

[Ravenlock]

I'm with James on this - you're right that we weren't thinking about sports when we made that comment, but I personally don't buy sports tickets for just that reason.

That said, though, I will pay $60 for a ticket to a theatre show that lasts only 2 or 3 hours, so "price / time" isn't a consistently valued equation, I agree. A live performance does strike me as different in some important ways than a packaged entertainment product, though - I wouldn't pay $60 for a 2 hour video of a show - and I imagine that's true for sports as well.

[Doogie2K]

That's actually a good distinction. I wouldn't pay $60 for a pay per view event, either. Hell, I could barely stomach paying $12 back when the Western Canadian teams all still had PPV games. I wonder if we're more okay with it because of the necessarily limited supply. There's only a few hundred or few thousand tickets to a live event, depending on the venue, whereas literally millions can buy DVDs, BluRays, PPV, etc.

[Ravenlock]

That and the experience is substantially different. Being in an audience of excited people for a live event is totally different from sitting at home watching the same thing. You're paying to be in the crowd - to be part of the show, not just to see the show.