The Diecast

Diecast #53: FTL, Civilization Beyond Earth, Actual Sunlight

Shamus Young — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:20 Josh is playing FTL: Advanced Edition.

My write-up on FTL is here.

8:00 Chris is playing Disney Magical World

13:00 Chris is also playing Actual Sunlight.

Interesting that this is the second game about depression I’ve run into in the last few months.

Personal talk:

I’ve had days where I woke up and found I couldn’t feel joy or happiness or even contentment. Where nothing felt worth doing. The usual fire I had to consume and talk about games (or do anything else) was just… gone. There was never any reason for this. Everything was fine in my life, aside from the fact that my mood was unaccountably mis-calibrated. I don’t know that this is anything like the clinical depression that some people talk about, but I use it as a frame of reference. My episodes always blow over after a few days and don’t linger for weeks or months on end.

Regardless of whether this is depression or not, it’s certainly an interesting phenomena. We tend to assume that our moods are linked to our situations, and it can be completely baffling and frustrating when that connection is broken. I have no reason to be sad right now. So why am I sad?

Having never played either game myself, I do wonder what the intent behind them is. Are they a way for people suffering from depression to feel some sort of connection with each other? Is this a way of saying “You are not alone” to others? Or is this intended to share the experience with people who have never been through it and don’t understand what it’s like?

I wish I’d asked Chris during the show, but I’d love to hear from anyone who has played either game.

15:00 Shamus is working on programming. But not Good Robot.

Stuff I’m working on / thinking about:

1) GLSL shading language. 2) Systems which are incredibly robust with regards to consistency of framerate. 3) Different techniques for offloading CPU work onto the graphics card.

Maybe we’ll talk about this later in the week. Maybe not. I still need to finish my write-up on Thief.

16:00 Civilization: Beyond Earth has been announced. So we spend a bunch of time talking about Alpha Centauri.

This topic gets derailed by religion in games. If you want to skip that, jump ahead to somewhere around the 37 minute mark.

26:00 Surprise mid-podcast mailbag!

34:00 We talk about Jade Empire.

37:00 And back to Civilization.

44:00 Mailbag!

Amazing question. I’d already been thinking about this it for a while when the question showed up, so I had a lot to say about it.

Let me plug Jarenth here while I have an excuse.

Diecast #52: Goat Simulator, Burial at Sea

Shamus Young — Mon, 07 Apr 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Josh, Chris, Jarenth, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 Christopher is playing Goat Simulator

Here is the Goat Simulator trailer, which is a send-up of the infamous Dead Island trailer. And I’m pretty sure this is the Farming Simulator Joke Jarenth was taking about.

8:00 Joshua is still playing Dark Souls.

17:00 Joshua also played BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea DLC. Both of them. Together.

31:00 Dr. Jarenth has been playing Netrunner.

Here is the Leigh Alexander piece on Netrunner, which is what got both Chris and Jarenth interested in it. Also, he’s been playing a bit of Creeper World 3.

35:00 Shamus is playing Terraria.

38:00 Shamus and Josh talk about Archer.

Here is the Archer YouTube channel, to give you an idea of what the show looks like. Note that in the latest season they’ve abandoned the spy motif for a Miami Vice motif. Haven’t seen it yet myself. Netflix releases typically lag behind broadcast television.

42:00 MAILBAG!

This is my favorite question in ages. It turns out all of us have dabbled in game development. Also I talk a bit about the programming I’ve been doing lately.

Diecast #51: The Mailbag

Shamus Young — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 05:37:00 +0000

This is it: The great Mailbag Reckoning. If you sent in a question before March 26^th and it hasn’t been answered before, then it’s either answered today, or never. All questions are forever answered, or forever ignored.

To be clear: If your question didn’t make the cut, it doesn’t mean it was a bad question. It might just mean we didn’t have anything to say on the subject. If you ask about something and there’s less than three people that have something to say about it, then we usually set the question aside.

Hosts: Josh, Chris, Mumbles, and Shamus.

2:00 What are some RPG systems you don’t like?

21:00 What happens when a vocal group of players demands things that are antithetical to the design?

30:00 What are your favorite board games / card games?

36:00 What are your thoughts on procedural content?

51:00 Question time is over. Chris talks about Infamous: Second Son.

1:04:00 Josh is playing Assassins Creed: Liberation.

Have a question for the cast? Address is in the banner at the top of the post. To have the best chance of it making it onto the show:

Try to keep it no more than two sentences.
Aim for subjects that the whole cast can discuss. (So, questions about Good Robot would be bad, since it would just be me talking.)

Diecast: GDC 2014

Shamus Young — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Double Diecast this week! Chris attended the Game Developers Conference, and he’s returned with tidings and folk wisdom. Stay a while and listen.

Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:
0:00 GDC is expensive.

5:00 Oculus Rift and VR in general.

24:00 The Steam controller.

30:00 IGF/GDC awards.

For the curious, the winners are listed here.

41:00 GTA is “Ugly”.

Just to avoid any potential fan-rage, let me make it clear that I’m not talking about graphics. When I say GTA is ugly I’m talking about the nasty heart of the game, which seems to hate everything, even its own despicable lead[s].

45:00 Project Greelight is being discontinued, and replaced with anarchy.

Here is the Errant Signal that Chris made about Greenlight when it was introduced back in 2012.

47:00 Lost levels

A couple of Lost Levels moments: Professor Oak Dance-Off and A History Of Jeff Goldblum In Games, and a Talk by Ric Chivo

Diecast #50: Alpha Protocol, Dark Souls, LA Noire

Shamus Young — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Chris was at GDC this week. Mumbles couldn’t make it. This means no Spoiler Warning. It also means the Diecast is a little lighter than usual. But! We’ll have a special GDC-focused Diecast later this week. In the meantime, here is your weekly dose of NERD:

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, and Shamus.

Show notes:

0:30 Rutskarn is playing Alpha Protocol.

Of course, no discussion of Alpha Protocol is complete without mentioning the Disclosure Alert LP:

And I’ll repeat my suggestion here: We need a term for the “first ten minutes of Morrowind” problem. The thing where an otherwise engaging title has a horrible and off-putting intro.

26:00 Josh is still playing Dark Souls.

38:00 Rutskarn answers Diecast mailbag question from last week, “What game would you give to a different developer?”

From here we launch into a discussion of LA Noire.

42:00 Shamus is still playing Path of Exile.

45:00 MAILBAG!

1) How do you feel about cheat codes and what are your favorites?

We get into a really interesting conversation about what happens when the player hits a frustration point and how they respond when they overcome it.

2) Roughly: What’s the difference between good DLC and bad DLC?

3) Do you think the relative shortage of female protagonists has anything to do with the additional difficulty of animating hair?

Under no circumstances will we be discussing feminism this week. I know this kind of strayed a tiny bit close to that, but let’s not do it. Nothing could possibly be said this week that wasn’t said last week.

Diecast #49: Broken Age, OOPS FEMINISM, Dark Souls

Shamus Young — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 05:37:00 +0000

So let’s have a nice, calm, non-controversial week talking abo- aw damn it someone mentioned feminism again, didn’t they? Let me get my crash helmet on.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Mumbles, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

4:00 Mumbles completed Broken Age.

Mild spoilers.

12:00 OOPS FEMINISM

It’s hard to stop talking about this subject once you get started. For me the compelling thing is the completely anarchic and asymmetrical nature of the debate. This isn’t a two-sided war between people who want female protagonists and people who don’t. This is a multi-faceted debate where extremists tend to get the most attention. There are a lot of different types of “feminists” (who might not even self-identify as feminists[1]I don't self-identify as one, but I've been called one. Labels are dangerous things and the LAST thing I want is another argument over what the word "feminist" means.) who just want more female protagonists. Then there are angry people who think that sexy characters are inherently destructive and that enjoying some T&A makes you a horrible person. Then the other side fails to draw a distinction between these two positions and hilarity ensues. Add in a handful of really ugly, Angry Young Men who spew hate and threats. Then have the feminist side[2]And remember, this side is actually several sides that don't all self-identify as feminist. paint all of the opposition as if they were in league with – and sympathetic to – the Angry Young Men. Add in a couple of layers of counter-backlash to either side and suddenly it’s really hard to understand how such a simple idea can generate so much outrage.

This complete mayhem creates a desire from people like me to clear up this confusion. Maybe I can’t settle the debate, but maybe I can at least help the various sides understand the complexity of the conflict? But no. My efforts never help and I just end up being yet another idealistic idiot shouting into the storm. And so it goes.

Rutskarn mentioned this post from Susan Arendt on the Titanfall trailer.

We also talk about women being integrated into the US Navy. This is such a sad topic for me. There are a lot more anecdotes like the one I told. The problem is that the whole subject is dripping with politics, and even people doing the right things are often doing them in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. For reference, these events happened around 1991 through 1993. (My brother was in boot camp when the Tailhook scandal took place.) I don’t know how the Navy is doing these days, but the early days of co-ed service were a complete mess. I could fill several pages with stories about how completely dysfunctional the service was and about how ugly and unfair (to both genders) integration was.

36:00 Rutskarn is working on Unrest and playing Alpha Protocol.

39:30 Chris is prepping for GDC and playing Titanfall

48:00 Shamus is playing Borderlands 2 again, and also playing Path of Exile.

Also we briefly discuss Race the Sun.

55:30 Josh has begun playing The Walking Dead Season 2.

56:00 Josh is playing Dark Souls.

Here is the Dark Souls Critical Close-up Chris mentioned.

1:05:00 MAIL TIME!

Diecast #48: Chex Quest, Garden Warfare

Shamus Young — Wed, 12 Mar 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Due to some recent changes, it’s harder than ever to get the whole crew together for our weekly recording sessions. Our various job situations are changing, making it harder for us to find windows of mutual availability. I don’t know what this means, long-term. We’ll do what we can.

Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

3:00 Shamus is playing Rise of the Triad

For those of you you’ve never heard of it before, this is Catacombs of the Abyss:

It pre-dates Wolfenstein, and is one of many games that competes for the murky title of “first FPS”.

7:00 Shamus is also playing Puzzle Quest: Galactrix

In this segment we went off-topic and talked about oddball product tie-in games. I mentioned Chase the Chuckwagon. That’s a real game that’s a dog food product tie-in from 1983. My friend David had a copy. Even though we were kids and the videogame industry was in its infancy, we were still able to recognize that the existence of the game was inherently preposterous.

Also mentioned: Avoid the Noid.

I’d never heard of Chex Quest until now.

14:30 Chris is playing Assassins Creed: Freedom Cry

22:30 Chris is playing Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare.

31:30 Josh shares a Project Zomboid anecdote.

39:00 MAIL TIME!

And yes, we answer several questions this week. These are good ones. Remember to send your questions in for next week. (Email in the banner at the top.)

TRIGGER WARNING: We discuss rare vs well-done steak, which to some people is a religious topic. For some reason.

Diecast #47: Thief

Shamus Young — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Here is an entire episode dedicated to a single game. Thief [4] has been a long time coming. Some have been excited to see it return. Some hopeful. Some outraged. Some resigned. But now we’ve played it and we can see the result for ourselves.

It’s not the game we hoped for, but neither is it the train wreck we feared.

Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

The entire show is about Thief, so no timestamps. We spoil some of the themes of the story during the show, but nothing that shouldn’t be incredibly obvious after the tutorial.

At the 57-minute mark we talk about the ending, so you might want to skip that part if you’re spoiler-averse. Although as Chris says, the story is pretty much broken, and I don’t think spoilers will hurt you. And by “broken” I mean, “clearly a patchwork of different revisions of the story that don’t fit together or form a proper sequence of events”.

Diecast #46: Irrational, Europa Universalis, Assassins Creed Black Flag

Shamus Young — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 05:37:00 +0000

As announced on the show, I’m vetting the diecast@shamusyoung.com emails now, and I’m going to try and be a little better about answering them. Also, we might use Diecast questions to fill slow moments in our Skyrim series. Protip: If you want the question to appear on the show, keep it short. Two or less sentences is ideal.

Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:30 Chris has been playing Thief (1998) in preparation of playing Thief (2014).

5:00 Ken Levine and Irrational.

Here is the announcement, and here is the Leigh Alexander piece that Chris mentioned. (Protip: The latter is really good.)

27:00 Josh talks about Europa Universalis IV.

Specifically, we talk about the way the game portrays a world in which only Europe invented stuff.

44:00 Shamus talks about Assassins Creed: Black Flag.

Spoiler Warning: He’s not delighted.

Diecast #45: Candy Crush, Banner Saga, Total Biscuit

Shamus Young — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Rutskarn, Mumbles, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show Notes:

1:00 Shamus is playing Dungeon Keeper.

We also dig into the EA conversation again. Because that’s not getting old. We also discuss whales. I couldn’t find the promised link about how former EA boss John Riccitiello spent a lot of money on free-to-play games, but I did find this interview from shortly after his departure, which came with this pull quote:

Astonishing.

EDIT: Zidynnala found the quote I was looking for, along with some context.

11:30 Mumbles is playing Candy Crush Saga!?!

Here is the statement from the creator of Candy Swipe. The guy made Candy Swipe in 2010. The King.com made a rip-off of the game in 2012. Then King trademarked “Candy”. Then they used the trademark to force Candy Swipe out of the market. That’s what’s been alleged, anyway. Snopes has a good round-up of the story so far.

14:30 Mumbles is also playing Octodad.

21:00 Josh is playing The Banner Saga.

Here is a look at the fight between King.com and Banner Saga.

34:00 Mumbles really likes the 3DS.

Here is the Starship Damrey game that Mumbles and Chris were talking about.

41:00 WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!

For thos eof you confused by the chaos, what happened is that Rutskarn lagged out. Ventrilo then queued up all of his chat over the space of 30 seconds and delivered it all at once. Not sure why Josh left that in, but there you go.

42:00 Guise of the Wolf

As of this writing, the Total Biscuit video in question is still down. But here is a copy uploaded by someone else. It starts off looking just a little shabby, but if you stick with it you’ll see the problems go a lot deeper than bad art.

Diecast #44: EVE Online, The Bureau

Shamus Young — Tue, 04 Feb 2014 05:37:00 +0000

This episode was recorded AFTER our Spoiler Warning session this week, but it’s being released first. We were a little tired and a couple of hosts short by the time we got to this point.

Hosts: Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 Shamus is playing Elder Scrolls Online and EVE Online.

We can’t talk about ESO yet. (Embargoed until Feburay 7th.) But we can talk about the battle of B-R5RB. Note that we had this conversation before I did the homework for my recent EVE post.

28:00 We move on from EVE and talk about space games more broadly.

Like I said in the show, there are a lot of space games on the way. Check it out: Blockade Runner, Elite: Dangerous, Felix Vast, Kerbal Space Program, Kinetic Void, Limit Theory, The Mandate, No Man’s Sky, Pulsar: Lost Colony, Rodina, Space Engineers, Star Made, Starbound, Star Citizen, and Starpoint Gemini 2.

Did I miss any?

34:00 Chris is playing Call of Juarez: Gunslinger.

We only cover this briefly. Not because there’s nothing to talk about, but Rutskarn already went over this a couple of months ago.

38:30 Chris is also playing The Bureau: XCOM Declassified

Here’s the rant (and comic) that I wrote about this game way back in 2010, when it was still in development. Here’s the Polygon Article Chris mentioned: The many faces of the bureau: xcom declassified: from 2006 to 2013

This conversation got sidetracked into…

43:00 Another Mass Effect rant? Really? REALLY?

I blame Chris.

53:00 Mailbag!

We talk about Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition and about Steam Early Access program and the difficulties of defining when a game is “done”.

Request: When you send us a question (the address is in the splash image at the top of the post) please put “Diecast” in the title so Josh can find them when we finally get around to reading them.

Diecast #43: Broken Age, Wii U, Nintendo

Shamus Young — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Mumbles, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show Notes:

First three minutes of the show: Mumbles is established as the Podcast Queen.

3:00 Shamus is playing SPACE GAMES and Broken Age.

Also Shamus gives “marriage advice” on the occasion of his 17^th wedding anniversary.

11:00 Josh is playing the game Adobe Premiere Doesn’t Friggin’ Work Dammit Hell Shit.

Josh also talks about a Crusader Kings II succession game he’s talking part in. For the uninitiated, CKII is a strategy game where you guide a particular dynasty through the ages. A succession game is where one player runs a generation, and when power passes on in the game, the save file is given to another player and they take over.

Also we talk about the weather for like ten minutes. Sorry.

22:30 Chris kicks off a discussion about Nintendo, the Wii U and their troubled sales.

Nintendo projected 9 million Wii U’s sold, but when the numbers came in it was more like 2.5 million. Now they’re in a tough spot.

Here is the article I mentioned. In the article we learn:

Wii hardware wasn’t finalized until very late in development, and without a lot of communication with developers.
The hardware is incredibly weak, bordering on Xbox 360 level of power.
The people at Nintendo that designed the Wii U do not use or have any understanding of the other consoles.
The Wii U development tools are horrible, bordering on the barbaric.
Nintendo has shameful support for third parties, to the point that their few third-party devs have trouble getting coherent answers to basic technology questions.

Diecast #42: Skyrim, Elder Scrolls Online, Alien Isolation

Shamus Young — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

01:00 Shamus got over his Skyrim problem and made screensaver.

For the record, the mods I was using are Realistic Needs & Diseases, Frostfall, and Random Alternate Start, along with about 40 others.

I already talked about the screensaver earlier this week.

13:00 The Elder Scrolls Online

Here is the Nerdrage video on Elder Scrolls.

51:30 Chris is writing things and talking about Alien Isolation.

From Wikipedia:

Whaaat?

So you’re playing as Ripley’s daughter. Who is an adult. Not only does this muck with establish canon, but it drags in a character that was better left where she was: Having lived a perfectly mundane and unremarkable life on Earth.

A much better idea? Let us play as Newt. You wouldn’t have to screw with any existing lore, and the mechanics are all right there in the movie: Newt survives by hiding in tight spots and using her wits. She can crawl through the duct work and watch the Aliens tear through the colonists. We’ve got a huge installation to work with and lots of blank space on the timeline. It would be a very cat-and-mouse type stealth, where the tension comes from the times when you’re obliged to leave the safety of the vents and venture into the open to accomplish something.

I’m not saying it can’t be a great game, but the whole “Ripley’s daughter” thing smacks of ham-handed fanfiction.

Having said that: This is the first Alien game in ages that sounds promising. Survival stealth? Oh yeah. I’m on board with that.

Diecast #41: The Novelist, Aunty Paladin, Patreon

Shamus Young — Wed, 08 Jan 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

0:00 Josh has Jellybeans.

Aside: Last year I watched Candyman: The David Klein Story. (That link goes to Hulu where you can watch it for free.) It’s interesting and a little sad. It also made me want to eat candy, so watch out for that.

2:00 Rutskarn is playing the Saints Row 4.

We talk about the series, compare the humor to GTA, discuss the the “romance scenes”, and talk about choice and Mass Effect.

17:30 Chris is playing Continue?9876543421.

28:00 Shamus is playing The Novelist.

This is a game all about balancing creative work with family life. Like I said in the show: I found a lot of meaning in the game, but it depicts a problem we spent years dealing with. I’m curious if it holds the same appeal for someone that hasn’t been through this.

42:00 Josh is playing the Ys Chronicles.

46:00 Rutskarn recaps the Aunty Paladins.

Rutskarn spins us a yarn of how the stream went and shares some of the highlights.

1:02:00 Chris talks about his Patreon campaign.

I find this incredibly encouraging. I might give this topic a post of its own, but the short version is that by sponsoring a show directly, the money ends up in the hands of the people who make the content we love. Compare this to the old model where:

Acme buys advertising space on YouTube.
The ad runs on a video made by Bob.
Carla clicks on the ad. (Probably by accident, if my own surfing habits are any indication.)
YouTube gives a tiny little bit of the advertising money to Bob.

And all too often:

Actually, some jackass copyright troll flags Bob as producing infringing content and siphons off some of his revenue while Bob spends time disputing the claim instead of making more content.

Acme can’t tell where their ad shows up or who will see it in this madcap YouTube world. YouTube doesn’t care about the quality of Bob’s show as long as people watch it. Bob doesn’t care about Acme as long as he gets his money. When Carla clicks, it’s not because she likes Bob’s show, but because she’s ostensibly interested in Acme. The parties all have goals that are either completely unrelated or even in conflict.

It’s an awful system, and the only reason we’re using it is because we don’t have anything better. Services like Subbable and Patreon might be a way to route around this madness.

Like Errant Signal? Want to encourage it? You can support it here. And as Chris is quick to say: The show will continue whether you give or not. Giving is your way of saying, “Dear internet. Make more stuff like this.”

Diecast #40: Happy New Years Evesmass-ica.

Shamus Young — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 05:37:00 +0000

Happy new year! Rather than doing a big year-end retrospective, we talked about the here & now like we usually do.

Note that I produced this episode. Josh usually does it, but he’s visiting his parents and doesn’t have access to his normal equipment. So any complaints about the audio quality should be directed at me. Note also that I make about two episodes a year, so your complaints won’t do any good because I end up re-learning the whole process from scratch every time.

Hosts: Chris, Josh, Shamus.

Show notes:
3:00 Josh is sick, and so he’s taking Fireball Whiskey in search of the cure.

To be clear, I don’t know if gargling with alcohol is medically useful for killing throat-based infections, but it FEELS like it helps. The only reason I doubt it is: If all you needed to do to kill throat cultures was gargle alcohol, wouldn’t they have figured it out ages ago? Wouldn’t this just be standard procedure for sore throats?

As an aside: How could you do a proper double-blind study on this? With most tests, you can easily administer a placebo without detection. But the test subject is going to feel that alcohol in their throat and the control subject won’t, and that sensation is going to skew the results. I don’t know. I think the best solution is for us to make a field trip to the liquor store and begin what I’m calling a “blind drunk trial”.

Given how good it feels, I can’t believe this treatment doesn’t go all the way back to the middle ages.

8:30 Josh got Tie Fighter working on his tablet, using a 360 controller with Dos Box.

This is madness. Awesome madness.

9:00 Josh is playing Project Zomboid

We throw out the term “offsite SVN” without explaining it. For the record, SVN is a system for keeping track of source code. An offsite one is a place where you can upload your code so that even if your computer gets hit by an asteroid, you still have a complete record of your code, your documentation, and the history of the project. VERY useful. I use BitBucket.

Also, I claimed I was a “one man operation”, which is completely untrue. I have Peter Olson going over my revisions and making sure it all works on Linux.

19:00 Chris is playing The Pinball Arcade and Simpsons: Tapped Out.

27:00 We talk about the new Rise of the Triad. Here is footage of the original.

35:00 Shamus is playing Skyrim.

We talk about the oddball leveling, the screwy balance, the broken economy, and the way the modding scene is becoming more visible and useful to the community.

Diecast #39: Pokemon, Hearthfire, Burial at Sea

Shamus Young — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Yeah. I couldn’t make it this week due to equipment problems. But I really like how focused and spirited this episode was.

Hosts: Chris, Josh, Mumbles.

Show notes:
1:30 Mumbles went to see a wrestleman show and played with Pokéthings.

14:00 Mumbles also played Chivalry.

17:30 Josh has been playing Skyrim: Hearthfire.

The video where Mumbles talks about Skyrim can be found here.

41:30 Let’s talk about BioShock Infinite: Burial at Sea DLC

1:14:00 Chris is playing Race the Sun, Asassin’s Creed: Black Flag as King Pirate McDudeFace.

1:23:00 MAILBAG! “Should devs be putting more effort into QA?”

Diecast #38: Frozen, No Man’s Sky, and Rambling

Shamus Young — Wed, 11 Dec 2013 05:37:00 +0000

We usually do a little warm-up before the show. We talk for a bit and get our brains thinking about games. But about ten minutes into the warm-up we realized we were basically doing the show, so we started recording. No plan. No designated host. No timer. The result is two hours of rambling and confusion.

You’re welcome.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

18:30 Frozen

We’re talking about the recent Disney movie. Here’s the MovieBob review I mentioned.

25:00 Rustkarn is playing Shadowrun Returns.

30:00 Rutskarn also finished Skyrim.

This completes his multi-game play-through of the Elder Scrolls series.

40:30 Shamus is playing Batman: Arkham Origins and Starbound.

48:00 We stop the podcast for a minute to watch the trailer for No Man’s Sky, and then come back to share our reactions.

During this segment I said that there’s no way this is an indie project by four people. In this RPS interview it sounds like the team is actually four people.

57:30 Josh picked up a bunch of Steam sale games, so we talk about Chivalry and Godus and Europa Universalis.

1:40:00 Chris is playing Need for Speed: Rivals and Long Live the Queen.

Diecast #37: Oblivion, Anthropology, and Sid Meier

Shamus Young — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, and Shamus.

Show Notes:
1:00 We Dump on Oblivion for ten minutes for no reason.

Also, Rutskarn Wants to be an Anthropologist!

17:30 Shamus is watching Brady Haran videos and playing Kerbal Space Program.

Here are the Deep Sky Videos mentioned.

Now that I’ve gone back and re-read my original list of suggestions for campaign mode in KSP, I think the final product looks a lot like my wishlist.

Also, Rutskarn drags us back to Anthropology again. Here’s the book he’s banging on about.

30:00 Josh is playing Sid Meier’s Ace Patrol: Pacific Skies

Josh would have us believe that Top Gun was not a documentary.

We also talk about Ron Gilbert‘s Scurvy Scallywags.

49:00 Hey, let’s go back and beat up on Oblivion some more!

1:03:00 TWO Mailbag questions this week:

1) How do you organize your gigantic Steam library?

2) [Comparing roleplay focused tabletop games with systems focused ones.]

Diecast #36: Battlefield 4, and Gaming Culture

Shamus Young — Tue, 12 Nov 2013 05:37:00 +0000

You know what we need more of around here? Controversy. Nothing livens things up more than gnawing on the old bones of a horse that was flogged to death in the flamewars of yesteryear. If we’re lucky, we might get through this without having some kind of rage-driven meltdown.

Show notes:

00:30 We talk about Battlefield 4 and how the matchmaking / server browser is cutting-edge 1996 technology.

18:00 Chris talks about the single-player aspects of Battlefield 4.

24:00 The Telltale segment: Wolf Among Us and The Walking Dead.

This is a non-spoiler discussion, mostly talking about how Telltale is moving TWD forward and discussing what we hope / expect / guess will be in Season 2.

35:00 Mumbles talks about Agents of SHIELD.

Related: This Penny Arcade strip.

Chris references this gem: MST3K – Space Mutiny – The many names of David Ryder

48:30 Shamus is playing vanilla Minecraft 1.7.2.

If you’re curious, the map project I mentioned is this:

49:00 Mailbag:

Neil (or Neal? Or perhaps Kneel? I don’t have the email handy) asks:

“How much do you think the bad behavior of and reputation of so-called “gaming culture” has to do with it coinciding with the transparency and anonymity of the internet?”

This might be our favorite question so far. It certainly launched the most discussion, and I’ll bet we could have filled an entire episode on the topic if we wanted.

During this discussion I mention this episode of Jimquisition, talking about how most game journalism is simply relaying information provided by marketing. We also discuss Neil Gaiman‘s Angela character. The business side of her character is a lot more interesting than the narrative side.

1:04:30 Why gender-based discussions suck so bad.

Hoping we can get through this topic with minimal loss of life.

Diecast #35: Dump on Indies Week

Shamus Young — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Often people tone down their criticism when talking about indie games. I know I do. It’s easy to dump on a huge multi-million dollar project with hundreds of contributors. But when you’re talking about something made by half a dozen people, it all becomes kind of personal and I’m shy of eviscerating something on that level.

But sometimes you have to give a game the thrashing it deserves. This week is a reckoning for a handful of misbegotten indies.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Mumbles, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:30 Josh played Home.

In the process of discussing the game and the horror genre in general, we talk about 7th Guest and the recent 7th Guest 3 Kickstarter.

20:00 Chris is playing Batman: Arkham Origins and Battlefield 4.

We also spend some time talking about good ol’ Team Fortress 2 and how the game has changed.

35:00 Shamus has been playing indie games. The Void, Spelunky, and Eldrich.

Of these three games: He praises one, complains about a second, and hates on the third. But not in that order.

49:00 Mumbles has been playing Batman: Arkham Origins.

Here is an in-depth discussion about the new Batman game from Mumbles.

1:00:00 Rutkarn has played The Wolf Among Us and Typing of the Dead: Overkill.

Here is the story about how Typing of the Dead was made (sort of) in six weeks, salvaged by a team that believed in it.

1:16:00 Mailbag!

Diecast #34: The Stanley Parable, Elder Scrolls

Shamus Young — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 05:37:00 +0000

While we didn’t record it with Halloween in mind, I guess this is our Halloween episode. This year we decided to dress up as guys with audio that cuts out worse than usual for no reason. What’s your costume this year?

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 The public health hazards of fun-size candy bars.

7:15 THE STANLEY PARABLE.

While the stuff we discuss are spoilers in the technical sense, I don’t know if we’re actually likely to ruin any surprises. I’m not even sure the conversation will make sense. We might say nonsense things like, “Did you get the toaster ending? When the siren went off I didn’t know where to go, but then that door opened up and the narrator did the thing with the wastebasket.” It’s gibberish to someone who hasn’t played.

The point being, this section is either:

1) Terrible, terrible spoilers.
2) Annoying impenetrable nonsense.

14:00 Batman: Arkham Origins

We also briefly digress into talking about the new Saint’s Row DLC.

27:00 Okay, I lied. We didn’t actually spoil the Stanley Parable in that earlier segment.

This segment is also free of Stanley Parable spoilers.

39:00 We will not be discussing the Stanley Parable in this segment.

Actually, I lied again. The previous segment is packed with Stanley Parable spoilers. It’s brimming with them. In fact, I don’t think you could get a greater density of spoilers than what we had in the last segment. This segment is safe, though.

Instead we talk about Gas Guzzlers Extreme.

44:00 Rutskarn’s Great Voyage Through all the Elder Scrolls Titles

He’s taking playing through all the games, in order, with the same character. (Inasmuch as that’s even possible to have the “same” character in such a mechanically diverse series.)

1:11:11 MAILBAG!

We talk about BioWare and LGBT characters.

Diecast #33: Crusader King Modding, Haunted Houses, and Elder Scrolls

Shamus Young — Tue, 08 Oct 2013 05:37:00 +0000

We open today’s show with a secret topic that I will not reveal. The only hint I’ll give you is that it’s about a certain perpetually broken and tragically mismanaged game that has appeared on the show many times in the past, was published by EA, and features the simulation of a city based on a game concept by Will Wright. See if you can unravel that riddle, Batman.

If you can’t figure it out in the space of five minutes, the answer is: ~~Shame on you.~~

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

8:00 Actual start of show

9:30 Shamus talks about Good Robot and also about Pac-Man Super Mega Championship Classic Ultimate Remix DX Turbo III HD Gold Edition Plus or whatever the damn thing is called. Also a bit of Reus, which is very interesting.

17:00 Josh is messing with Crusader Kings II mods.

26:00 Chris has been in vacation land. We also talk about the Escapist Expo.

41:30 Rutskarn talks Elder Scrolls

If you want to see only the best parts of Morrowind, then you want to read Rutskarn’s play-through.

53:30 Josh talks about the Steam Machine and system specs.

Diecast #32: Steam Machines, Permadeath in Far Cry 2

Shamus Young — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I was worried about recording an episode on Saturday to release on Thursday. A lot can happen in the course of five days, and some bit of news might come along to make our discussion irrelevant. Then I remembered that we’re talking about Valve, and Valve only makes non-hat announcements on odd-numbered years. So maybe in 2017 we can have Diecast #230: Valve has released a photograph showing the first Steam Machines will be orange. Still no release date. Still no Half-Life 3.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Mumbles, and Shamus.

Show notes:

2:00 Steam Machines you guys. STEEM MASHIENZ!

19:00 Haptics

35:00 Rutskarn talks about a permadeath run of Far Cry 2 and how it can fundamentally alter your perception of the game.

46:30 Mumbles is playing GTA V and looking for a good RPG. No, not the one you’re thinking of. She wants a GOOD one.

1:01:00 Shamus talks a bit about Good Robot and the music people have offered.

Seriously composers: You folks are doing a fine job. But the number and quality of the submissions has kind of caught me off guard. I’ve got submissions via email, comments, and Twitter. I’m going to try and organize this stuff and see what I’ve got, what I need, and who made it. We’ll talk more about this in a future entry and I’m going to want to trade emails with anyone offering tracks for the game.

Diecast #31: Bad Endings and Good Booze

Shamus Young — Thu, 26 Sep 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Feel sorry for Chris. We got to do the podcast this week, while he was forced away from his job and dragged to Disney World. He’s probably miserable right now, sitting in the gorgeous weather and scenery, drinking a beer, and wishing he was with his internet-friends. He can’t even produce an Errant Signal from there. Poor guy.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Mumbles, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 Shamus is annoyed with how the game Brothers ended.

SPOILERS! We go on to compare other well-known downer endings and talk about what makes an ending work and what doesn’t. We talk about The Walking Dead, Mass Effect 3, and Brothers. It was impossible to have this conversation without a few spoilers.

I still recommend Brothers, and I recommend spoiling the ending first.

7:45 Mumbles is Birthday-ing this week. She’s also playing GTA V.

22:00 Here we ramble our way into talking Borderlands 2.

26:30 Josh talks a little bit about his experience playing Good Robot.

31:30 Talking about Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.

34:00 Rutskarn is playing FTL and Gunpoint.

53:00 Mailbag!

In talking about Dreamfall, I referenced my old rant on the end of the game. Check it out:

Correct on all counts. I’m 42, my daughter is about to turn 16, and I barely remember the game aside from being angry at the end. Also relevant is this ancient post on why I dislike episodic games.

Diecast #30: It’s a Good Day to Diecast

Shamus Young — Tue, 17 Sep 2013 05:37:00 +0000

It’s another rambling chit-chat that’s long on anecdotes and short on news. These conversational shows seem to spend more time talking about what we’re doing and less time gnawing on obnoxious game companies, which makes the show more positive. So that’s nice.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:
1:40 Shamus is programming.

But you knew that already.

We actually spend most of this segment talking about Minecraft and social media.

13:30 Rutskarn is playing Thief Gold and Super Hot.

33:00 Chris is playing Brothers and Game Dev Tycoon.

We also digress into game piracy vs. abandonware. (And also Sim City. Obviously.)

56:00 Josh has been playing Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Rome War: Total 2.

We also talk about Dear Esther.

Diecast #29: Happiness is Mandatory

Shamus Young — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 05:37:00 +0000

As Rutskarn declares at the start of the episode, this week Happiness Is Mandatory. This requirement extends to the audience. You will be required to appreciate this episode cheerfully and without pointing out our numerous mistakes, omissions, errors, and war crimes. Thank you for your cooperation.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

02:20 Shamus saw Dredd, and liked it!

15:30 Shamus is playing Saint’s Row IV and shooting people with the dubstep gun.

Here is the original Dubstep Gun skit.

22:25 Chris is playing Aliens: Colonial Marines.

27:25 Chris is also playing Shelter.

31:30 Chris is also playing Disney Infinity:.

33:30 Rutskarn is designing a game. No, not that game, another one.

40:30 Josh is playing Total Rome: War 2

Spoiler: ~~This part might slightly diverge from mandatory happiness and spiral into an angry tirade.~~

1:07:30 Shamus is making a videogame and working in 2D is easy!

Diecast #28: Papers Please, Saints Row, Sim City on Mac, Focus Testing

Shamus Young — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Here is an hour and a half of five people talking about videogames. We got together and realized that one of the big problems in the world is that people don’t spend enough time talking about videogames. So we went beyond the call of duty and gave you an extra half an hour.

You’re welcome.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, Mumbles, and Shamus.

Show notes:

02:00 What’s the Happy-haps?

Josh is playing Papers, Please. And as a reminder, later today he’ll be playing Rome II, Complete and Absolute War.

Mumbles left Guild Wars 2 for the Old Republic. She’s also playing Quest for Epic Loot, but it’s in closed beta and she can’t talk about it.

Chris is playing Saint’s Row IV and Disney Infinity.

Shamus has been playing Papers, Please and Saints Row IV. During this segment Chris mentioned I get this call Every Day.

Rutskarn is playing Gone Home.

00:37:00 A talk about game duration vs. the pricetag of the game.

Shamus tells a long rambling story about how game prices relate to the airplane ride he took as a kid.

41:00 Rustkarn talks about Crusader Kings II

45:00 Sim City Online has troubled launch on Macs.

It really is amazing how this game can continue to find new ways to fail.

51:00 Mumbles talks about Dragon Age 3.

1:00:00 Somewhere around this point we segue into talking about focus testing and the way it (should) shape games.

We compare the changes made to Overstrike to the changes made in Portal 2.

Diecast #27: D&D, Analogue, Elder Scrolls Online

Shamus Young — Tue, 27 Aug 2013 05:37:00 +0000

As all of you demanded, here’s a rambly show that’s mostly about what we’re doing. Well, some of you wanted this. I distinctly remember one or two of you saying you wouldn’t mind a directionless show. Occasionally. So here it is!

I hope you like it because ~~these are way easier to produce~~ we’re eager to please!

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 What’s everyone doing this week?

Shamus is writing code, writing about writing code, and in this show he’s talking about writing about writing code.

Rutskarn is playing AD&D. Here is Fate Core, which we discussed.

17:30 Josh is playing… Fireball Whiskey? Somehow? It’s the incinerator of whiskies!

He’s also playing Hate Plus, sequel to Analogue: A Hate Story. I’m giving this bit its own segment here in the notes because it runs long and it has spoilers for the first game.

27:30 Chris is playing a lot of stuff. To wit:

Disney Infinity, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist and Saints Row IV.

50:00 Elder Scrolls Online will have subscription fees.

Story here. We also discuss Wildstar.

Diecast #26: Not Gone Home, Sim Stuff

Shamus Young — Tue, 20 Aug 2013 05:37:00 +0000

We don’t talk about Gone Home in this episode, but we wanted to. We do spend the first segment of the show talking about how we reacted to the game. I don’t know if it’ll get its own one-off special, or if we’ll just give it a couple of weeks so people can play through it. But I will say the response from the cast is universally positive.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Josh, Mumbles, Chris, and Shamus.

01:00 What is all the peoples doing this week?

Josh is playing Gone Home. He’s also playing Warthunder and suggests that you sign up using this link in order to most optimally benefit him.

Chris is playing Gone Home and Spelunky. He also made this video about Gone Home.

Mumbles is playing Gone Home and Guild Wars 2.

Shamus is playing Gone Home, Valley Without Wind, and Kairo. (I called it “Kairos” throughout this segment. In my defense, a friend of mine owned a coffee shop called Kairos and saying “Kairo” is like trying to say “Borderland”. It’s hard to make my mouth stop before the s!) But mostly coding.

Rutskarn is playing the Humble Origin Bundle.

27:00 (ish) The Sims, in general.

Not a planned topic, but we spent some time talking about it.

38:00 Sim City News

The “Gimmie five bucks to not stab you” video is here: Doctor Who – Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?

Diecast #25: Games Journalism, Carmack Joins Rift, Tropes vs. Women

Shamus Young — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 05:37:00 +0000

We spend a lot of time talking about what we’re playing. Conceptually the Diecast has three segments: The personal warm-up talk about what we’re playing, the supposedly informed discussion of current gaming news, and the mailbag. Often a third of the show is spent on the warmup, and the mailbag often gets pushed out. How do you guys feel about that? Would you rather more news discussion? Or more mailbag?

Not that we’re promising to change anything. I’m just askin’.

Hosts: Josh, Mumbles, Chris, and Shamus.

Show notes:

00:30 What’s everyone playing?

Josh is playing Metro: Last Light and Civilization V.

Mumbles went to NATURE and bought Magic Cards. She also played The Secret World. Here is the Banjo-Kazooie promo we talked about.

Chris is playing Return to Nai Pali, the expansion for the original Unreal. Also Spelunky and Guacamelee but not Dragon’s Crown.

Shamus is playing Doom³ BFG edition and doing a lot of programming.

20:20 Games Journalism is tough gig with low pay and poor job security.

We begin with this story.

36:30 John Carmack joins Oculus Rift as chief technology officer.

51:00 We talk about the Tropes vs. Women series and how it’s improving.

We don’t say anything terribly controversial here, so I hope people can keep calm. And if anyone does feel the need to object, I hope you can do it calmly.

Diecast #24: The Mailbag

Shamus Young — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Special episode this week. There’s no news we care to talk about, so we’re answering mailbag questions. Note that I’ve paraphrased the questions in the show notes because I don’t want to transcribe the originals.

Hosts: Chris, Josh, Rutskarn and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 What’s everyone playing?

Chris is playing Rogue Legacy, Animal Crossing, and Civilization V: Brave New World.

Rutskarn is writing for Unrest and playing Sleeping Dogs. He’s also looking for a job making words for a living.

Shamus has been playing Titan Attacks and Ultratron from indie developer Puppygames. Also programming.

Josh is playing Metro: Last Light.

20:00 What is you opinion of game design colleges?

38:00 Why are games so obsessed with using “ruins” as gameplay space?

There was a sub-question directed at me, which we forgot about. So I’ll answer it here in the show notes. The question was, “Why do you like Spiderman?”

I fell in love with Spiderman because he was the first superhero that felt real or relatable to me. Batman was a millionaire playboy. Superman was a handsome invincible saint from another planet. Wonder Woman was a warrior princess of the Amazons. Thor was a Norse God.

But Spiderman was a “regular” guy and when he took off the mask he had regular guy problems. He wasn’t rich, or famous, or popular. He had to buy his groceries and take out the garbage just like everyone else.

47:00 What do you think about “benign deaths” in videogames like BioShock, Prey, RAGE, and Borderlands?

Diecast #23: Phil Fish, Gamer Fury, Company of Heroes

Shamus Young — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I have a non-binding promise from Rutskarn that we’ll be getting a new splash image that will include Mumbles. But then Rutskarn didn’t show up this week. And neither did Mumbles. So I don’t know.

Hosts: Chris, Josh, Jarenth and Shamus.

Show notes:

1:00 What’s everyone playing?

15:30 Phil Fish vs. Marcus Beer. Too many kinks to round them all up. You’re either following this story or you aren’t.

37:45 Gamer Fury: Tweets to Call of Duty developer @DavidVonderhaar from angry players over balance changes related to the SMG weapon.

45:30 Company of Heroes and historical inaccuracies. Specifically, charges of being anti-Russian.

56:30 MAILBAG.

Diecast #22: Videogame Journalism, Pacific Rim, and Comics

Shamus Young — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I’m pretty proud of the conversation we had about game journalism. We had a lot of different views, we looked at it from a lot of different angles, and I think some smart things were said.

In other news: Someone suggested that putting the fully qualified URL to the audio in the RSS feed would help the Diecast show up for podcasting software. I have done this. I’m sure you’ll let me know if it helped.

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, and Mumbles, Chris but not Rutskarn.

Show notes:

02:30 What’s everyone doing?

20:00 Warren Spector: Where’s Gaming’s Roger Ebert?

45:30 Pacific Rim. (And then Rutskarn shows up and we talk about random things for 15 minutes.

58:30 Mumbles talks comics!

1:17:30 Mailbag.

Diecast #21: Steam Sale, Mortal Kombat, Deus Ex

Shamus Young — Tue, 16 Jul 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I don’t like how Josh and Rutskarn have been tarnishing the show with their lack of professionalism. So this week I reclaimed the throne and hope to return the show to its former glory as a bastion of efficiency and order.

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Chris, Potato Chips

Show notes:

00:30 Nom nom nom. We fail to introduce ourselves.

01:30 What’s everyone Playing?

14:00 The Great Steam Salepocalypse of world-ending savings.

28:45 An unplanned aside on Dark Souls, punishing games, smashing keyboards, and dealing with frustration.

37:30 MORTAAAAL KOMBAAAAAAAAAAT

1:02:00 Deus Ex: The Fall Disables Weapons on Jailbroken Devices.

Diecast #20: SimCity, Darkspore, UPlay

Shamus Young — Tue, 09 Jul 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Some people like our random, unplanned discussions. Others prefer it when we follow a list of news items and keep the discussion nominally on track. This week we’re doing the latter.

Hosts: Rutskarn, Chris, Josh, Shamus

Show notes:

00:30 Intro: Josh is playing Walking Dead 400 Days and Skyrim. Chris is playing Walking Dead 400 Days, Animal Crossing, and The Last of Us. Shamus is playing Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep. Rutskarn is reading nerd books for nerds.

07:00 The $10 Airship DLC for SimCity.

21:00 Here we discuss the whole Darkspore debacle.

27:30 We discuss the UPlay security leak.

34:00 CEO of Red 5 Studios Mark Kern believes that WoW killed the MMO genre by making MMOs “too accessible”.

52:30 Double Fine asked for $400k to make a game. They got $3 million on Kickstarter and arguably launched the whole Kickstarter craze by doing so. Now a year later they’re running out of money and they’re less than halfway done.

1:08:00 Tea Time! (Mailbag.) Related reading: Here are my thoughts on drinking coffee, how I started and why I stopped.

Diecast #19: Scribblenauts, Skyrim

Shamus Young — Wed, 03 Jul 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Some behind-the-scenes info: We generally forward news stories to each other all week. When Sunday rolls around, we take the headlines for the week, sort them out, and figure out which ones we want to talk about and which ones we don’t. Then we record the show.

This week we had nothing. Not one news story. I don’t know if we weren’t following the news or we didn’t care, but we had no stories and nothing to say. We just got together for our once-a-week blather session and Josh began recording halfway through. That means this podcast is even less structured than last week. Just so you know what you’re getting into. In any case, the choice was between this and nothing.

We’ve got a good slate of stories now, so the Diecast should return to normal next week. In the meantime, you’ve been warned:

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Mumbles, Chris

Show notes:

00:00 No introductions. No host. No news items. NO HOPE.

00:30 We join the podcast in mid-conversation, talking about 500 Days of Summer and Scott Pilgrim. For reference, here is what I had to say about Scott Pilgrim when it came out. The MovieBob video Rutskarn mentioned is here: The Big Picture: Dumping Irony.

09:30 We troll Mumbles by not talking about Batman. Instead we talk about Green Lantern, The Aristocrats, and Tacos.

15:00 Scribblenauts

24:00 Josh is playing Skyrim. Mumbles video on Skyrim is here. Then we segue into talking about Fallout: New Vegas

52:30 MAILBAG! We discuss sharing the hobby, the Kinect, and visual fidelity and game budgets.

Also, I want to apologize to Neil (or Neal) who sent in the long question. While short questions are always better than long in this format, that’s no reason for me to be a jerk about it. Bad form. In my defense, we’d been at this for a couple of hours by this point and I was getting a bit frazzled.

If you’ve got a question for the cast, send it to diecast@shamusyoung.com. Also: Short questions make for better launching points for conversation. Long questions are better left in the comments. (I used to have a special page where people could leave long questions for me to answer. Looks like it got culled last time I tinkered with the site. I’ll look into bringing that back.)

Diecast #18: Xbox One, The Witcher, Unrest

Shamus Young — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Mystery guest this week. Even if you’re not usually a Diecast listener, you might want to give the first couple of minutes a try. Just saying.

3:15 Chris is still working off his indentured servitude to Thomas Nook, certified jackass of Animal Crossing.

8:50 Rutskarn explains the depth and verisimilitude of the Tropico political simulation.

12:00 Josh tells us some Crusader Kings II stories. And also X-Files.

19:45 Shamus has been playing Papo & Yo and watching the Red Bull Training Grounds Starcraft II tournament.

23:30 Xbox One policy reversal.

46:05 Rutskarn regales us with his horror stories of the Witcher’s tutorial and the tragedy of his faithful companion, Jackass McSpuds

54:20 Kickstarter, Unrest, Horrible Pick-up Lines, and Snake People!

1:11:55 Mailbag

Diecast #17: The Citizen Kane of Podcasts

Shamus Young — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I won’t tell you not to listen to the podcast because I know you’re going to do it anyway, so I guess I’m stuck preemptively apologizing for this chaos. I really thought they were ready for this. I don’t know what happened.

01:00 Shamus isn’t here this week.

08:45 What’s everyone playing, and what’s your favorite E3 news?

25:00 (ish) The “Citizen Kane of Videogames”. Found here.

54:30 (ish) Mailbag!

Diecast #16: XBone, Zynga, Call of Doggie

Shamus Young — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 05:37:00 +0000

We had a long, meandering conversation about videogames, business, and other dumb things. We recorded the exchange so that you can enjoy the sensation of being trapped in a conversation with us where you can’t get a word in.

Show notes:

02:10 What’s everyone playing?

26:45 XBox One

47:30 Zynga closes OMGpop one year after acquiring it for 200 million.

57:30 Upcoming Call of Duty will let you play as the dog.

1:00:00 MAILBAG!

Diecast #15: XBone, Unrest

Shamus Young — Wed, 29 May 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I know, I know. We’re basically the last people on top of the Xbone dogpile. But if we didn’t say it in this episode, then people would be asking us what we thought. On a related note: This is why I didn’t have a column this week. It felt strange to have a column that didn’t address the BIG STORY of the week, but at the same time there was nothing left that hadn’t been said a hundred times already. So I said nothing.

This gig is odd, sometimes.

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Chris.

Show notes:

01:30 What’s everyone playing?

17:00 Terrible news about ~~SimCity~~ XBox One.

51:00 Unrest Kickstarter and Development

ALSO:

We will be doing a hangout this Friday, May 31st at 4:30pm pacific time. (10:30pm GMT.) We’ll have links to the stream closer to when the event goes live.

Diecast #14: Sid Kickstopper, Nintendo’s Cut

Shamus Young — Wed, 22 May 2013 05:37:00 +0000

This was a bit of an odd week for us. Not a lot of playing games and not a lot of news. (That interested us.) But the show must go on. And really, “I have to talk about videogames but I’m not completely prepared” is about the most awesome problem you can have in this life. I mean, it’s a pretty mild affliction compared to hunger, ticks, migraines, or stubbing your toe.

Hosts: Shamus, Josh, Rutskarn, Chris, Jarenth.

Additional note: I mentioned before that the new season of Spoiler Warning would begin this week. Various technology problems have pushed that back. We’re basically throwing out our entire production pipeline for Spoiler Warning and starting over. We’ll try again next week.

Show notes:

01:50 What’s everyone playing?

13:30 We regret to inform you there is no bad SimCity news this week.

14:00 Sid Meier not interested in Kickstarter.

26:15 Valve is currently developing and testing a trading card game.

39:00 You want to LP a Nintendo game? Nintendo wants all your YouTube money.

54:00 Mailbag!

Diecast #13: Star Wars Exclusive, Diablo III Integer Overflow

Shamus Young — Thu, 16 May 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Why is Chris playing Star Wars games? What unexpected turn caused me to buy Starcraft 2? What ridiculous stuff happened in SimCity this week? What mailbag letters will we answer? The answers to these questions can be found by listening to the podcast.

00:45 What’s everyone playing?

18:00 Aliens: Colonial Marines

25:20 EA gets Star Wars exclusive.

32:00 SimCity. Still! Yeah!

39:30 Diablo III integer overflow.

49:20 MAIL TIME!

Diecast #12: Trolling Pirates, No Football for Wii, and Mailbag

Shamus Young — Tue, 07 May 2013 05:37:00 +0000

This week we carefully adjusted the schedule to allow for a mailbag segment. And then we squandered all of it talking about a game we haven’t played on a console most of us don’t own in a genre we don’t care about.

00:45 What’s everyone playing?

26:00 DRM via irony.

39:00 Madden football not coming to the Wii U this year.

57:00 Mailbag

Diecast #11: Don’t Starve, Thief Troubles, EA Layoffs, and Kotick’s Millions

Shamus Young — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

For various reasons, we had to move our recording to Saturday night this week, which meant Ruts couldn’t make it. Jarenth was nice enough to step in and act as the guy that never gets a word in edgewise. Thanks Jarenth!

Show notes:

00:40 What’s everyone playing?

12:40 Don’t Starve

28:30 Bad SimCity news of the week. YES, THE NIGHTMARE IS NEVER-ENDING.

33:40 Thief has a troubled development cycle.

46:15 EA lays off hundreds of people.

59:00 Bobby Kotick got (or gave himself) an 8-fold raise.

Diecast #10: SimToothpaste, MMO Permadeath, and More Graphics

Shamus Young — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Josh couldn’t make it this week. My USB headset broke and my backup evidently has a white noise generator built into it. I did the editing. We forgot to do the mailbag segment. So basically, this episode features the usual level of polish and professionalism you’ve come to expect from us. Enjoy!

Also! We we be doing a hangout on Thursday, April 25 at 7pm Eastern Time. (Which works out to midnight on Friday morning, GMT.) I’ll post links and give a heads-up when the show is ready to go live.

Show notes:

00:30 What’s Everyone Playing?

Shamus is playing Thief 2 and Thief 3.

Chris is playing Surgeon Simulator 2013. Which he says is QWOP meets Trauma Center. Also he’s playing Starseed Pilgrim.

Rutskarn has played 30 Flights of Loving

And then we spend several minutes talking about Minecraft mods because I wasn’t sure if people wanted to talk about Minecraft mods.

23:00 It’s the triumphant return of “Bad SimCity News of the week”! You can get free SimCity DLC by buying specially-marked boxes of toothpaste or whatever. At least it’s not Doritos and Mountain Dew this time.

33:20 The developer of the MMO Salem creates a definition of the word “game”. Shocking turn: He crafts a definition specifically to favor things he likes and exclude things he doesn’t.

During the discussion, I brought up Realm of the Mad God, which was the basis for the recent Spoiler Warning joke title Realm of the Bad Dog, which nobody noticed. Alas. Also we discussed (and made fun of) Peter Molyneux’s Curiosity – What’s Inside the Cube?

45:30 Cevat Yerli, the CEO of Crytek, says that graphics are “60% of the game”.

Diecast #9: EA Wins, BioWare’s Integrity, Sherlock Sucks

Shamus Young — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

You know, we had a long list of topics in the queue for this week. We really don’t want this to be an EA bashing podcast. But dangit, EA is just so busy making noise.

Show notes:

1:00 What’s everyone playing?

Josh is filing taxes. Bo-ring!

Shamus is playing Black Mesa. Thief 2. Kerbal Space Program.

Rutskarn is playing Galactic Civilizations 2. The first entry of his Let’s Play is here:
Galactic Civilizations 2: God Save the Space Queen. He’s also playing some Mountain Blade!

(For the archive archaeologists out there, the posts Shamus wrote about this game in 2006 can be found here.)

Chris is playing Torchlight 2, Super Hexagon, Dishonored DLC.

15:50 Bad SimCity news this week:

Nothing to report. However, they are working hard to give us something to talk about next week.

17:00 EA voted “Worst company in America” for the second year in a row. Here is the Peter Moore statement that made things worse.

33:30 EA Gave BioWare “Complete Creative Control”.

42:50 An unplanned tangent on Valve’s approach to Half-Life and the fact that it’s obvious they have no plan.

47:20 Devs Had to Demand Female Focus Testers for The Last of Us

53:00 Heads up: Vary mild spoilers for Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. Additional spoiler warning: The movie could have been a lot better.

57:00 Mail time. We just got a letter.

Diecast #8: Nissan Leaf DLC, Thief, Mailbag

Shamus Young — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

In this episode we’re still talking about SimCity. We also discuss Thief, the Oculus Rift, and Lucasarts before we finally get around to answering some of your emails.

00:30 What’s everyone playing?

Josh is playing Crusader Kings II.

Chris is playing DLC Quest. But mostly he’s been working on the latest Errant Signal.

Rutskarn has just finished up BioShock Infinite.

Shamus is playing DLC Quest. Thomas was Alone, Kerbal Space Program, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Euro Truck Simulator 2.

We brought up the Oculus Rift, which is worth reading about. This is the next big technology I’m eager to try. I know VR headsets have failed in the past, but this one seems to be solving those long-standing usability problems.

14:25 The horrible SimCity news of the week: The Nissan Leaf Charging station DLC. An advertisement, a broken cheat item, and another failure to simulate things.

23:30 Thi4f, or Thief 4, or Thief 2014, or whatever marketing is calling it this week.

41:40 Lucasarts is closed.

51:30 MAIL TIME!

We had many emails over the past few weeks, and now we’re finally answering a few.

EDIT: And here is the link to Rutskarn’s Let’s Play Morrowind Part 1

Diecast Special: BioShock Infinite

Shamus Young — Sat, 06 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

I sat down with Josh, Chris, and Jarenth and we discussed BioShock Infinite at length. It should go without saying, but just in case you’re intuition-impaired: This podcast will feature complete and total spoilers for all aspects of the game.

No timestamps for this one. The discussion is mostly freeform.

As promised, here is the screenshot I mentioned in the discussion:

Diecast #7: Piracy, APB Reloaded 2, and Activision’s Face

Shamus Young — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 05:37:00 +0000

On the upside, the podcast is proving to be really popular. On the downside, we seem to be slipping on our production of Spoiler Warning videos. Oops.

Show notes:

00:30 What’s everyone playing?

Rutskarn is playing BioShock Infinite.

Jarenth is playing BioShock Infinite and Anodyne.

Chris is playing BioShock Infinite.

Josh is recovering from surgery where nope it’s too gross for me to type you’ll have to listen and hear for yourself. The “shattering ribcage” joke was a reference to Surgery Simulator 2013, which is probably the greatest misappropriation of the word “simulator” in the history of games.

Shamus was playing BioShock Infinite and BioShock Infinite.

12:00 Horrible SimCity news this week: Here is the max happiness, max density city with no public services, no jobs, no goods, no resources, no government, no electricity, no hospitals, no crime, no homelessness, and no police. Here is the Something is Wrong With The Offices post that Josh referenced. Here is the video of the broken roads in SimCity. But don’t get worked up, because American McGee thinks everyone needs to calm down.

21:00 Our giant unplanned tangent on piracy.

28:00 Retro City Rampage. Chris was talking about the WiiWare Game. I was talking about ROM City Rampage, which is a theoretical port of the game to ~~N64~~ NES hardware. Here is the video where he describes doing the port. It’s amazing.

31:00 Remember APB? $100 million to make a crappy, laggy, mechanically boring PvP GTA MMO that closed its doors in 90 days. Then they got an infusion of cash to get the servers back on. And now… now they’re doing a Kickstarter. For a sequel.

The discussion morphs into a conversation about Kickstarter in general. Then it’s a conversation about business start-ups. Note that when I said, “Nobody wants to live in a small town” what I really mean is, “EXTROVERTS don’t want to live in a small town.” I strongly suspect the habit of gathering in massive expensive super-cities is a side-effect of 75% of us being extroverts.

54:00 Activision’s Tech Demo. Here is the duck demo from a few years back.

Diecast #6:Not-PAX, IGN, and the Rocketeer

Shamus Young — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:37:00 +0000

Yes, we’re putting up a Diecast on Tuesday. Not sure if this is a permanent move or not, we’ll see. We record on Sundays. Given the transient nature of news and the fact that we’re already discussing things that have aged a few days, I figure the less time between recording and posting the better. Also: The browser-specific auto-play issue should now be fixed. Let me know if it isn’t.

Show notes:

00:30 What’s everyone playing?

Shamus is playing Tomb Raider, Dustforce, and The Bridge.

Rutskarn is playing Jet Set Radio

Chris has been making Errant Signal: Tomb Raider and playing Dead Space 3.

Josh is playing Shogun: Total War. He’s even dropping hints that there might be another entry in his long-dormant but still-popular series. It’s even possible that such a thing might appear tomorrow. He’s also playing Natural Selection.

18:00 Announcement:

We have an email. Squint at the banner up at the top of this post. If you’re bad at squinting or you forget how to scroll: diecast – -at – shamusyoung dot com.

Also, the forums exist and I give the address. I just want to stress that the forums are very much an experiment and could be nuked at any time if they negatively impact 1) The performance of my site 2) My productivity 3) The blog comment threads. We’re just testing the waters. The goal is to create a space for people to do something different, not to move the community from here to there.

19:15 IGN BioShock Infinite 4 Day exclusive!

IGN got permission to publish their review 4 days before everyone else, and it was a fluffy, puffy, sophomoric gush piece with no analysis and little context. These two facts look very bad when juxtaposed.

Good news: Since the time of this recording BioShock Infinite has been released and it’s looking like it really is a genuinely good game.

29:00 IGN Bro-verload

Here is the Bro-verload marketing page.

40:50 Prospective Publishers Wanted a Male-Centric Remember Me.

Can you imagine looking at this game and going, “Meh. Replace the protagonist with a man or it’ll never sell.”

52:00 John Rocketeer leaves EA

This entire discussion intersects with my column that went up today about EA’s ongoing problems.

Diecast #5: SimCity, Saint’s Row 4, Tress FX

Shamus Young — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 05:37:00 +0000

And it’s another one of these things that we seem to be doing.

01:30 What’s everyone doing?

Josh is watching movies. When I said “Liam Neesons” it was a reference to this Key & Peele sketch.

Chris is playing Kingdoms of Amalur, and various flavors of Tomb Raider and Uncharted.

Rutskarn has once again run aground on Knights of the Old Republic II. He’s also playing Fallout: New Vegas with ALL THE MODS.

Shamus is playing Antichamber and Tomb Raider. We talked about Adventure for the Atari 2600. You can actually play that in a browser window these days. He’s also playing Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. No really. (And this is the Football Manager game we referenced.)

26:30 SIM CITY IS STILL A STORY WHEN WILL THE NIGHTMARE END?

Here is a partial list of stupid, broken problems in SimCity from Rock, Paper, Shotgun. And another at The Escapist.

Here is a video demonstrating how you can build a massive city with only residential zoning. No jobs. No places to buy things. No public services. Nothing. And it grows to a massive size.

Here is the initial glowing review of SimCity on Polygon that was later altered.

45:00 Saint’s Row 4 Trailer

The trailer we’re talking about is this one:

And here’s the Deadpool Trailer that gets dragged into the discussion.

54:15 Tress FX in Tomb Raider

Here is a video of Tress FX in action.

The Diecast #4: Max Payne, SimCity, and Blip.tv

Shamus Young — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 05:37:00 +0000

We should probably title these things or something. I mean, if we’re going to keep making episodes then at some point we’ll be like, “Wait. Which one did we discuss playing through Half-Life 2: Episode 3? Was that Diecast #230? No, 230 was when we discussed Sony’s inexplicable decision to design the Playstation 5 with a cotton-candy pink case.”

Then again, I have no idea how to title long multi-topic discussions in a memorable way. Screw it. We’ll just kick this problem on down the road and let future-us deal with it.

Show notes:

00:15 Intro. What’s everyone doing? Shamus is playing Max Payne 3. (I suppose I might as well link to that one Max Payne video before someone beats me to it.) Rutskarn is playing KOTOR2. Chris is playing Perspective. Josh is playing…

17:00 Tomb Raider. The new one. Like, the reboot. This one.

40:00 SimCity. Man, does this story have legs or what? We recorded this on Sunday night, and here on Thursday the follies continue. Sadly, this means a lot of the stuff we discussed or speculated about has now been resolved or rendered moot, only to be replaced by new failures. The latest? Maxis Insider Tells RPS: SimCity Servers Not Necessary.

This reminds me so much of the ages-old BioShock controversy: A polite spokeswoman is way out of her technical depth and saying things that the tech-savvy users prove to be untrue, thus making inflaming the people they were trying to pacify. Those who do not learn from history, etc. (They are also repeating the mistakes of the Diablo III launch and the Assassin’s Creed 2 launch. So, nice going EA. You are the very last idiot to make this particular blunder.)

1:03:30 The Blip.tv story. Here is what Chris posted about it. And here is the original post where I hurled bricks at the company after too many trips through the same advertisement: Blip.tv Sucks. Stay classy, Shamus.

Diecast #3: Jarenth, PS4, Elder Scrolls

Shamus Young — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:37:00 +0000

With Shamus out for the week, I host and Jarenth guest stars on this exciting installment of the Diecast!

And now for the show notes, complete with the oft-requested timestamps!

00:15 – We talk about what we’ve been doing for the past week. Shamus is a zombie, Chris is a Tomb Raider, Rutskarn is Homestuck, Jarenth’s lost in Echo Bazaar, and I’ve been set on the Path of Exile.

15:55 – Everything and more about the Playstation 4 announcement, and in particular, the implication that “more polygons = stronger emotional connection.” And if you don’t want to watch the whole thing, VideoGamerTV made a helpful abridged version of the conference that has basically everything that’s important in it.

33:00 – We discuss the closure of Civilization World and what it can tell us about the state of Social Games, and how it compares to a similar collapse of the MMO space.

48:00 – Crytek jumps on the free-to-play bandwagon and is also very bad at naming things. We also talk about Cevat Yerli’s statement that “…the notion of a single-player experience has to go away.”

1:02:15 – Round Table Discussion: Are the Elder Scrolls games getting better or worse?

1:18:00 – We round out the podcast with the Assassin’s Creed 4 announcement. I hope you like pirates, because… uh… well I’m not really sure where the hell they’re going with this. Assassins and pirates? Are we going to finally see a video game about pirates versus ninjas? I don’t know, but here’s the announcement trailer.

The Diecast #2

Shamus Young — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 05:37:00 +0000

The Diecast number two is now here. It’s now an official thing! We may even make a third one! Stranger things have happened. In this episode:

Show notes:

Whatcha doooin’? Josh is dealing with life stuff. Chris is playing System Shock 2 from Good Old Games OH MY GOSH SO HAPPY. And also Daikatana. Rutskarn is still playing Far Cry 3: Cry Some More and Antichamber. And I’m still playing Minecraft using the Tekkit Launcher.

The Diecast #1

Shamus Young — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 05:37:00 +0000

There’s this long-running joke among the Spoiler Warning cast. When we’re getting ready to record the show, we frequently get sidetracked talking about other stuff. Sometimes for hours. Then eventually one of us will say, “You know what? We should do a podcast.” This joke ran so long that we actually went and did it.

Embedded using HTML5. It either works or it doesn’t:

Discussion:

What’s everyone playing?
Next gen backwards compatibility unlikely says random analyst.
Last of Us Squeezes Every Last Drop of Power From PS3.
FarCry 3 is a worse game than FarCry 2?
Star Wars Free-for-all: Disney owns Star Wars, JJ Abrams directing next SW movie, Obsidian pitching new Star Wars game, and new Star Wars 1313 game.

The odds of us making more of these is directly proportional to how many people are interested in this one.