Posts Tagged ‘jeremy’

RRQ E06: Narrative & Storytelling

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

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Episode 06:
“Narrative & Storytelling in Games”
with special guests Joab Gilroy and Jessica Citizen

After an unforseen hiatus due to a computer being in for a service and an extended period of being busy with my web series project, we’re back for another episode.

This time, after playing through the relatively-recent possibly-overhyped PS3-exclusive Heavy Rain, we decided it was worth focusing an entire discussion on narrative and storytelling in games. As it seemed like a natural continuation of our inaugural episode on Gaming as a Unique Medium, we brought back Joab Gilroy from GameArena. To provide a different perspective, we also invited along Jessica Citizen of Gamepron (and some other sites).

Due to the nature of this discussion, please be warned that we spoil the ending of  a fairly large number of games including Heavy Rain, System Shock 2, Bioshock, Shadow of the Colossus and Planescape: Torment.

Our meandering discussions took us to subjects such as:

  • D&D Gold Box games
  • Space Quest, Quest for Glory and other adventure games
  • Interactive Fiction
  • Half-life 2 (Because Jeremy can’t go 5 minutes without discussing it)
  • 101st Airborne in Normandy
  • The Mass Effect series and character death
  • Continuing on after character death
  • Delivering multiple choice options in games
  • Meta-story in the game world (such as in Assassin’s Creed and the new Prince of Persia series)
  • The passage of time in game stories (such as in Metal Gear Solid)
  • Dialogue trees
  • Cut scenes as a method of delivering plot
  • Plot twists in games
  • A huge discussion of the merits of Heavy Rain
  • The limitations of game stories – having to be based around action or conflict for the most part
  • Flower & Flow – narrative without dialogue or even characters
  • Metro 2033 and Book-to-video game adaptations
 Restore Restart Quit Episode 06 [127:42m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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RRQ E05: Epic Fail – Gaming Disasters

Thursday, March 18th, 2010

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Episode 05:
“Epic Fail – Gaming Mistakes & Disasters”
with special guest Nate “Blunty3000″ Burr

During one of our fairly common drinking-and-gaming sessions, an idea popped up: Why not devote a podcast to all the things that have gone wrong with gaming? From niggling but constantly-recurring game design mistakes to whole consoles that failed to launch, it seemed the perfect topic for our next big discussion.

It also seemed appropriate to bring on one of youtube’s most creative rantists (yes, I’m inventing that word if it doesn’t already exist) Blunty3000.

So, join us for a 90 minute exploration of all the things that gaming has done wrong – either by ineptitude,  publisher intervention or just plain old bad luck.

Topics brought up include:

 Restore Restart Quit Episode 05 [104:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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RRQ E04: Game Jam 2010 & Indie Development

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

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Episode 04:
“Game Jam 2010 & Indie Game Development”
with special guest host Epona Schweer
and guests Marc Chee & Glen Forrester

Last month, I had the good fortune to watch the incredible unveiling of the results of the Sydney Game Jam 2010 competition at the Powerhouse Museum in Darling Harbour. In a packed room near the bottom floor of the Museum some 50 sleep-deprived developers showed what they’d been working on for 48 hours straight – and blew the audience away.

Some of the strangest, funniest, most creative games you’ve ever seen got turned out.

Inspired, we decided to bring on two of the GameJammers to discuss the competition, and indie game development in general.

With us for this episode is Marc Chee, who worked on the team that built the fascinating game Spy Wear (a game complete with multiplayer code) and Glen Forrester, the one-man team who built Gnilley, the game that almost literally made Stephanie “Hex” Bendixson fall off her chair with laughter.

Also with us to poke our two guests with different questions is Epona Schweer, a teacher at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment‘s Sydney campus.

Topics brought up include:

  • GameJam itself.
  • Designing and programming games.
  • The game development industry in Australia.
  • RAD & Agile (yes, those are real terms) software development as they relate to games.

Note: We had a few internet-related technical issues while recording this podcast, and as such there are a few glitches that had to be edited out. They should not cause any listening issues, but if something if a conversation point sounds slightly strange – we were cutting around internet dropouts.

Links to things discussed or relating to this show:

PS. We here at Restore, Restart, Quit would like to give our thanks to Dan Graf, Malcolm Ryan and everybody else involved with Sydney’s Game Jam 2010 – great work, guys!

 Restore Restart Quit Episode 04 [82:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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It’s absurd to ban modchips

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

Nintendo, which has been encouraging people to “rat out” retailers of modded cartridges, has successfully sued a company that sells them – in Australia.

Nintendo has won its second legal victory of the month in Australia, with a seller of R4 flash cartridges in the country ordered to pay the Japanese company over AUD$500,000 in fines.

Local tech distributors RSJ. IT Solutions, which had been selling the cartridges – which allow for the use of both legally-acquired homebrew and illegally-acquired pirated games on a Nintendo DS – must cease the sale of all carts immediately, and relinquish all remaining stock and all promotional material associated with them.

In addition to the corporate fine, two men named individually in the case, Patrick & James Li, must also pay AUD$100,000 in penalties.

The decision is both absurd and wrong, and akin to fining importers of VHS recorders because they can play pirated movies.
(more…)

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Supernanny spouts crap about videogames

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Keith Stuart of the Guardian‘s “Gamesblog” has torn apart a broadcast on UK TV last night by “supernanny” Jo Frost, in which she sought to smear videogames as “desensitising kids to violence” and “reducing empathy”. As Keith points out, Jo’s methodology is highly suspect, open to contrary conclusions and highly misleading – which means we can expect to see Michael Atkinson relying on it any day now.


I’m not much of a scientist, but I sure am good at patronising people with bullshit.

Just thought you should be forewarned with the details of this fakery before you see it reported uncritically.

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RRQ Episode 03: “PC Gaming, Part Two”

Monday, February 8th, 2010

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Episode 03:
“The As-yet Incomplete History of PC Games, Part Two”
with special guest Ben Mansill

About the first part of this podcast: “It was weeks ago now, over a number of beers, that the three of us here at RRQ decided that really, what would make a fascinating podcast, was to go over the history of PC Games. Now, while most of us have at least partially changed our gaming habits to include Consoles, really we’re all PC gamers at heart. We tinker, and we love depth over The Shiny.”

So, as the discussion with our special guest Ben Mansill of Byteside (Hey! That sounds like some kind of Stargate reference) continues in this episode, we delve into different genres, how they affected PC gaming as a whole, and finally discuss the future: where PC gaming is going, and just how we all feel about this.

To be more precise, the topics covered include:

  • First-person Shooters
  • The development of 3D Acceleration
  • Real-time Strategy games
  • Turn-based Strategy games
  • Simulations (including Elite and its clones)
  • Distribution methods & packaging PC Games
  • and finally, the future of PC Gaming

We hope you enjoy the episode! If you’d like to help us out, spread the word – let people know what you’re listening to on twitter, facebook, via telegram or smoke signal (although we’d prefer a review on the iTunes store or a good tweet/forum post).

FOOTNOTE: Comments about the Ares launch vehicles were made before the Obama budget was released. Sigh.

Links to things discussed or relating to this show:

  • Duke Nukem Forever’s demise – related to the discussion of “unfinished masterpieces”.
  • Daikatana – as above.
  • Terminator: Future Shock and Skynet – the two true-3D first person shooters, and the first to push players to use mouselook.
  • Hardw[a]r (the most creative Elite-esque game ever) on Wikipedia and a still-running and useful fan site.
  • Terminus – the other Elite-clone with the scarily complex newtonian physics model.
  • Orbiter – the free, space-flight and orbital mechanics simulator by Martin Schweiger.
 Restore Restart Quit Episode 03 [122:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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MS vs Live customers

Monday, February 8th, 2010

It was nice the other week to see a little remorse, even insincere, by Microsoft on the subject of its ripoff “points” currency system:

I think people like to see the dollar amount. We never intended to ever mislead people. I think we want to be transparent about it, and so it is something that we’re looking at. How can we be more transparent and let people see it in actual dollars? The fact is that you’ve got to think that we have one service that we’re offering around the world. The nice thing about points is that no matter if you’re on the yen or the euro or the dollar — something that’s 200 points is 200 points everywhere around the world.

Yeah, but those 200 points don’t cost the same.

And you don’t sell in multiples of 200. In fact, whilst most games are priced in multiples of 400, you only sell points in multiples of 500, so consumers HAVE to pay more for games, even once they’ve figured out the real-world cost – something the points system clearly obscures.

“We never intended to ever mislead people” indeed. What a total lie.

As Gizmodo pointed out:

But don’t think they’re just doing it because they’ve suddenly acquired a conscience. In all likelihood, if Microsoft moves away from the Points system on Xbox Live, it’s because they’re planning on expanding the Zune Marketplace and integrating it more with the Xbox 360. The Zune Marketplace is in dollars (or whatever local currency you’re using), and it’d be much easier to unify the two systems by switching it all to currency than cramming the points system into the Zune Marketplace.

Meanwhile, someone else is suing Microsoft on the grounds that they were charged for points they were prevented from using.

Oh, Microsoft, will you ever really change?

(No, as the next post – about how Microsoft’s offensive ripoff hard drives for the 360 discourage gamers from purchasing Live content, and how publishers should consider switching to a platform where potential customers can actually store their product – will demonstrate.)

UPDATE: And now MS is removing online support for all original Xbox games. See the problem with games whose multiplayer is dependent on the indefinite good grace and benevolence of a soulless corporation? And just to rub salt in the wound, MS has removed paid DLC from Live, so many of those those wanting to play a last Halo 2 match at Bungie’s farewell, can’t.

Microsoft’s explanation for shutting down original Xbox games is that those older titles are to blame for the stupid 100 person friend list cap. Does that make any sense to anyone? If older games don’t support more than 100 people, then just limit those games to the first 100 games on someone’s friends list. MS’s original solution, capping EVERYONE to 100 friends, makes no sense to me; and its new solution, shutting down all original xbox games, even less.

Remember, online Xbox gamers – you’re paying Microsoft for this service.

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RRQ Episode 02: “PC Gaming, Part One”

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

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Episode 02:
“The As-yet Incomplete History of PC Games, Part One”
with special guest Ben Mansill

It was weeks ago now, over a number of beers, that the three of us here at RRQ decided that really, what would make a fascinating podcast, was to go over the history of PC Games. Now, while most of us have at least partially changed our gaming habits to include Consoles, really we’re all PC gamers at heart. We tinker, and we love depth over The Shiny.

But what a bloody huge topic. I mean, we could easily have spent a single 90 minute episode on any one genre or any one sub-section of PC gaming’s nearly-30-year history. But despite that, spurred on my caffeine and a nice lager or nine, we sat down to record what would become episodes 2 & 3.

So, in this episode, along-side industry veteran and fascinating chap Ben Mansill (now of Byteside, and founding editor of both PC Powerplay and Atomic magazines) we tackled subjects such as:

  • Our first PC Gaming experiences.
  • Classics that we never got to play, but wish we had.
  • The way game design has shifted over the years.
  • Early multiplayer, LANs and early pre-internet online gaming services.
  • Adventure Games.
  • RPGs
  • and finally, Massively Multiplayer RPGs.

Next week, you can hear the conclusion of this discussion, when we discuss First-person Shooters, Simulations, Modding, the development of 3D Acceleration and the future of PC Gaming.

Links to things discussed or relating to this show:

 Restore Restart Quit Episode 02 [87:51m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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RRQ Episode 01: “Gaming as a Unique Medium”

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

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Episode 01:
“Gaming as a Unique Medium”
with special guest Joab Gilroy

There is a grand history in both radio shows and podcasting of making a royal hash of first episodes. (Editor’s Note: This is a bald-faced lie, but a good way to excuse any problems in our own first episode.)

And, as such, we decided that, for our inaugural episode, we would clash our combined egos (and that of GameArena editor Joab Gilroy) against the third-biggest gaming topic of all: Gaming as a unique medium.

What makes gaming distinct from other creative media? Is it achieving its full potential as such, or not? Just what makes gaming such a powerful, distinct and addictive experience for us gamers?

We hope you enjoy this episode – and keep an ear out for our next one!

Links to games discussed during this show:

9:05 - Adam Cadre‘s incredible (and short) piece of interactive fiction (more of his work here).
Façade – the first-person, one-act drama discussed by Rohan.
Bioshock – the game that needs no (little?) introduction.
Heavy Rain – the spiritual sequel to Fahrenheit/Indigo Prophecy as discussed by Joab.

 Restore Restart Quit Episode 01 [109:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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