Comments on: The Sunday Papers

By: Max Paean

Max Paean — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:50:29 +0000

Shawn Elliott’s humor and general intelligence is what makes GFW worth listening to, in my opinion. It is a breath of fresh air to listen to a gaming podcast with a host who seems to have picked up a book once or twice in his life.

By: Brokenbroll

Brokenbroll — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 06:16:18 +0000

“I don’t know, Elliott gets too much airtime with his sophomoric shit about Second Life and/or other griefing, it isn’t half as funny as he thinks it is, it’s just more bullying, basically.”

Most listeners of GFW find it very funny, his griefing in most games is not bullying. The Ralphie character he has is designed precisely to irritate the “bully” online gamers who yell and swear and tell people to shut up and make fun of others.

Shawn talks about games plenty, and generally offers the best insight, stirs up talk about deeper things in game design, during the GFW podcasts.

Its shame he’s gone over to the cesspool that is the 1up yours podcast, with their fanboy approach to sales numbers and “teh console warz”.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 05:10:35 +0000

Wait till next week, it will just be Jeff, Silent Ryan and Shawn Molloy Phoenix. they said he can only do 1 podcast apparently…

I think that was a joke. They said they were going to do daily podcasts from GDC and Elliott said he would have to do 8 podcasts or so, with Jeff saying it was his own fault.

I do think he’s a bully – they make a lot of jokes about him being a bully, to the point that you start to think those jokes are based on reality. The before last edition of the GFW podcast was a breath of fresh air, no Shawn Elliott, just a lot of talking about.. games! (Umm.. to be fair, they then talked about Lost, which sucked..)

I don’t know, Elliott gets too much airtime with his sophomoric shit about Second Life and/or other griefing, it isn’t half as funny as he thinks it is, it’s just more bullying, basically.

By: Chris R

Chris R — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:18:30 +0000

Hey, in that 1up article about the development of Portal (where Walker’s lunacy gets name checked), they mention that “One player literally spent 30 minutes trying to push a shelf onto the button, meanwhile, the box was sitting right there.”

I wonder if they’re referring to CargoCult, when he was visiting valve and forgot about the “use” key, and spent quite a long time just pushing things around before discovering the use key?

Kinda funny if it is. :P

By: Phil H

Phil H — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:30:58 +0000

@Imperial Creed
I’m seconding mbanana, well worth the time on this slow, slow Sunday.

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:15:33 +0000

“Shawn hasn’t been moved, he’s been copied. (He’s still appearing on GFW Radio.)”

Wait till next week, it will just be Jeff, Silent Ryan and Shawn Molloy Phoenix. they said he can only do 1 podcast apparently….

By: Phoenix

Phoenix — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 21:57:53 +0000

Shawn hasn’t been moved, he’s been copied. (He’s still appearing on GFW Radio.)

By: mbanana

mbanana — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 19:38:46 +0000

@Imperial Creed

Nice work, definitely worth the read.

By: Kadayi

Kadayi — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 17:42:19 +0000

“Shawn Elliot writes for Games For Windows and thus for 1Up. He’s also on the GFW podcast (1Up again) and practically dominates it, in the bullying kind of way.”

I wouldn’t say he bullies the others, just he’s a tad more articulate than the rest, save Jeff Green. Plus Shawn is a genuinely funny guy, and is clearly passionte about his games. I like the surrealness that is the GFW podcast, it’s interesting that he’s been moved up to the 1upyours show now, to battle it out with the console boys.

Cool article, as always.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 15:08:29 +0000

A 70% spike immediately after making fixes seems a pretty solid cause and effect pair to me.

Well, purely statistically, that wouldn’t hold much ground. You’d have to know all the possible factors that could influence those kind of fluctuations before even beginning to fiddling with one to see if it has an effect. As long as there’s a possibility there are other, unknown elements influencing test results, you can’t speak of any cause and effect reliably.

I’m not saying that’s how you should look at their results, I’m just saying.. :)

By: Theory

Theory — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:45:17 +0000

I’m not unwilling to believe 92% as a number particularly, but the article is rather short and confusing on the detail of precisely how they came to that number.

I’m under the impression that it’s an online game.

The other part of the reasoning based on sales figures also strikes me as slightly specious as well. How can they be sure that the associated fluctuations in sales were due to the current quality of their DRM?

A 70% spike immediately after making fixes seems a pretty solid cause and effect pair to me.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 14:19:22 +0000

I found this quite interesting – Gabe Newell on Portal:

The interesting thing about Portal is that we know who the protagonist, Chell, is, and we’d already planned that character’s part in something that occurs later. With Portal, we sort of opportunistically said, “Oh, she fits in here. This makes sense.”

GFW:So she’s not Alyx’s mom?

No, she’s not, although that’s a good guess. It hadn’t occurred to me that she could be Alyx’s mom! But we know that the character’s going to be there going forward.