By Kieron Gillen on October 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm.
Yes, we managed to find enough willpower to sit in a room with one another for long enough to record a podcast without throttling one another. Three times now! This luck won’t hold. Anyway, this time Alec Meer and myself sit and talk about the issues of the day. And the day in question being the Geekiest Day Of All Time. Namely, today. You can grab it here, subscribe to it at Itunes over here or on general RSS here and complain about the sound quality in the comments thread. Because we’re back on my dictaphone again. Man! Running order follows…
Running Order
00:02: Introductions!
00:38: Why we’re in my living room – namely, the Games Media Awards we went to last night.
1:00: Alec admonishes Kieron for painting Skaven while podcasting.
1:15: The Geekiest Day Of All Time is Introduced.
1:43: We start talking about the GMA awards, but end up talking about awards we won when we were children.
3:00: Finally talk about the GMAs. We insult pretty much everyone.
4:01: Steps and Alphabeat being Fascists.
4:30: More GMA nonsense.
6:30: Why we went to do the day of geek – to get a copy of Fallout 3. Which we then discuss a bit.
11:38: Heading to forbidden Planet. Slander of Matt Fraction followed by discussion of Lego Batman.
14:04: Alec has the best idea ever for a new Lego game. Lego Watchmen. The idea astounds us so much we’re incapable of speaking.
17:02: Kieron decides not to try and do Rab Consolevania’s accent when telling the story of Quintin hitting on girls in the style of Oblivion.
20:02: We go to Games Workshop, which leads to discussion of Endwar and the idea of all games being MMOs.
25:20: Skaven make-out. Alec has doubts about whether this is a good idea.
26:05: We go into Zavvi and buy series 5 of the Wired. Or Wire. Or the Wire. Kieron is useless. We fail to link it to videogames, despite giving it a good crack.
27:50: And finally we talk about King’s Bounty!
27:52: Actually, we back out and talk about DRM. WE LOVE DRM.
31:09: And finally – King’s Bounty!
35:40: Which segues into East European and Russian development, and King’s Bounty relation to it.
43:30: We get a bit worryingly self-congratulatory. But hurrah for King’s Bounty!
45:02: RPS decide to end the pod-cast with a high-fiving. Natch.
17/10/2008 at 19:16 kyrieee says:
itunes it is
17/10/2008 at 19:16 Feet says:
Yaaay.
17/10/2008 at 19:29 lobsterjohnson says:
Acquiring via 56k, best be good!
17/10/2008 at 19:55 Andrew says:
LEGO WATCHMEN.
17/10/2008 at 19:59 nabeel says:
Downloadin’
nabeel
17/10/2008 at 20:26 Paul says:
Do I need to be on guard for The Wire season 5 spoilers?
17/10/2008 at 20:31 Jay says:
Any chance you could put up a link to a generic RSS feed for the podcast, instead of one that only works with iTunes? Big kudos if you manage that.
17/10/2008 at 20:40 The Dark One says:
Jay, it shows up in the generic site RSS feed.
17/10/2008 at 20:44 Kieron Gillen says:
Jay: Edited in. And, for your convenience, here it is.
KG
17/10/2008 at 20:54 subedii says:
Whilst I’m downloading, is the format for the show going to remain a 2-man gig for the time being, or are there plans on bringing in the rest of the crew soon?
17/10/2008 at 20:58 Andrew says:
The thing about clothing improving stats in Fallout 3…
Fallout 2 had that. From my brief play. Mirrored shades improved charisma, I remember, as an example.
NMA will complain about anything.
17/10/2008 at 21:19 WhollySchmidt says:
I do love The Wire.
17/10/2008 at 21:24 Jim Rossignol says:
Haven’t we touched on the idea of Lego Watchmen before?
17/10/2008 at 21:25 pkt-zer0 says:
Fallout 2 had that. From my brief play. Mirrored shades improved charisma, I remember, as an example.
Exception proves the rule, huh? Even that aside, equating a charisma boost from wearing shades to merchant’s clothes increasing your bartering skills or blood-stained scrubs making you a better surgeon is stretching it. (Though the latter is doubly weird, with the Medicine skill granting a boost to the amount of health restored by stimpaks.)
17/10/2008 at 21:36 James G says:
Yay! I don’t know how its possible, but the podcasts are even more irreverent and prone to tangents than the rest of the blog. I think I may end up getting Kings Bounty, I was looking forward to it, but was slightly dissuaded by the demo, but Alec’s enthusiasm, even while struggling with a hangover, has convinced me to go with my first instincts.
17/10/2008 at 21:40 Cian says:
Is it wrong that what caught my eye in the summary is Alphabeat? I can’t help but love them.
17/10/2008 at 21:42 du bios says:
This, 1upyours and gfwradio all hitting pretty much simultaneously – it’s like the xmas rush of talking.
Big thanks for putting up the timed running order.
17/10/2008 at 21:47 Legandir says:
I tried subscribing through the general rss feed link but instead of bringing up the usual window, it just showed me a lot of code
17/10/2008 at 21:54 chesh says:
Mentioned Lego Watchmen on IRC. Amusement ensued:
13:52 haha that’d be only awesome if it had a Lego Moore in it.
13:52 Lego Moore would be an easter egg
13:52 admonishing you for playing this crap
13:53 and loudly proclaiming that he’ll have no part of it
17/10/2008 at 22:29 MisterBritish says:
Splendid. Was quite impressed that John managed to maintain his ‘Alec Meer’ all the way through.
17/10/2008 at 22:42 JediK809 says:
Thanks for the personal response, Kieron. I’m touched, even despite the fact that you misspelled “convenience”. :-P
17/10/2008 at 23:58 DragonSix says:
Still an awful sound quality x[]
18/10/2008 at 00:00 ZenArcade says:
The wire is a top quality show, love it!
18/10/2008 at 00:28 Pox says:
Will listen while walking today… the sound quality is almost worth it to hear you clowns rambling. ;)
18/10/2008 at 00:35 Pod says:
:(
I left my headphones in my bag that I left on the train (taht left the station without me in it).
What unfortunate timing, as I need the sound to listen to this!
18/10/2008 at 00:40 Muzman says:
I like how we’re getting a tour of the spectrum of compression settings available on that thing.
Interestingly dressing as a doctor could very well improve your doctoring abilities for the effect that looking the part has on your patients’ confidence. It shouldn’t work quite that well on yourself, however.
That’s probably not how it works in Fallout 3 though is it. I’d like to see that sort of complex psyche get into RPGs.
18/10/2008 at 01:20 Requiem says:
@Kieron I sort of agree with you about sequels, I’d rather see new IPs and new styles of games come out rather than the umpteenth derivative of series x. But on the other hand if there is going to be a sequel shouldn’t it really be recognisable as the same sort of game as those it’s following, otherwise why bother making it a sequel at all? Really sequels are cashing in on brands, people tend to find a brand they like and stick with it. I liked Fallout but hated Morrowind, if someone was to say want a new Elder Scrolls game I’d say no thanks, want a new Fallout game, yes please. To then find out that the new Fallout game is more like the Elder Scrolls games is like waking up to find your beverage of choice has changed it’s formula to be more like a rival brand’s (which you detest), to encourage more sales by appealling to consumers of the rival brand. Oh they already did that once, didn’t they.
18/10/2008 at 02:14 Radiant says:
I like that you only have 4-5 articles a day.
I think that it helps keep the comments bit sane[ish].
18/10/2008 at 02:44 eyemessiah says:
Alec you sound very respectable.
18/10/2008 at 08:43 Kadayi says:
The Wire is pure quality. I definitely agree it would be fantastic to see a game delivered that aspired to it’s level of storytelling. How someone would implement it is the problem though.
18/10/2008 at 10:28 Lacobus says:
Surely any Wire game that was made would just be Omar stomping round a sandbox Baltimore shooting up the Barksdale and Standfield ‘crews’. Which would be….. actually now that I think of it that sounds AWESOME.
18/10/2008 at 10:38 Kieron Gillen says:
Don’t forget the having sex with men.
I quite like the idea of a Bunk’em-up based around smoking a cigar and being sick in alleyways. which is a bit like an Alec Meer’em up, with added cigars.
KG
18/10/2008 at 14:55 Larington says:
I just loved the fact that Kieron saying “Skaven” whilst mid-sentence would instantly cause him to lose track of what he was saying.
And yes, a cursory glance at certain articles/websites at one point definately seemed to be ‘all about the IP’ as far as certain managers were concerned. But these people always miss the point, its the creation of IP thats compelling thats far more important than the continuation of said IP.
Publishers definately suffer from I-Pee-Itus at the moment, which is a problem, because it means players assume the gameplay is going to be exactly the same even though theres almost certainly going to be a few changes to the design during development of the sequel.
18/10/2008 at 16:55 Radiant says:
Well from a publisher/pr point of view it’s the established ip, the franchise, that makes the property worth anything [and by extension of ownership indicates the publisher's worth].
With an unproven ip, short of arbitrarily assigning a price tag to it, is worthless; there’s no measure of its worth.
When it comes down to it an idea really isn’t worth anything; as sad as that is.
18/10/2008 at 16:55 Radiant says:
well worthy bruv.
18/10/2008 at 19:01 nabeel says:
Good to hear that Tom Francis won that award, I voted for him ^____^
Nice ep, though you guys reeeaaally need to get all of you together just once at least!
nabeel
19/10/2008 at 00:13 Pags says:
Possible game versions of The Wire:
Real Time Bubble’em-Up: scrounging the streets for enough scrap metal to buy junk and avoiding being beaten up by the Barksdale/Prop Joe/Stanfield crews.
Turn Based McNulty: Attempting to conquer every bedroom in West Baltimore, one turn at a time. It’d probably end up playing a bit like that Boneland game, with booze equating to balls.
19/10/2008 at 00:16 Pags says:
Oh and Kieron, it’s pronounced proost, not prowst. He’s French, remember.
19/10/2008 at 13:18 Kieron Gillen says:
And I’m a Midlander.
KG
19/10/2008 at 19:06 Nallen says:
Oh for God’s sake, sort the sound out, it’s worse than TS!
/me lobs the toys
still my favorite podcast though… ;)
20/10/2008 at 11:32 Masked Dave says:
That sound quality is terrible. Come on guys, it’s not hard to find a better way to do this, you all have at least one PC. And since you all game online I’m going to guess you have headsets and/or microphones. Which is really all you need.
It’s actually painful to listen to at the minute.
If it’s just laziness preventing you then fair enough, however if you do want to improve and just don’t know where to start, I can give you some pointers from what I’ve picked up in producing my show.
You don’t need to be studio quality, but it does need to sound like I’m not listening through your nearest toilet’s u-bend.
21/10/2008 at 08:04 Mike says:
I think the sound quality is pretty much… fine? You only need to hear their voices.
Then again, I don’t “get” the need for stereo. ¬_¬
21/10/2008 at 12:35 Gap Gen says:
I guess sequels probably are just shameless cash-ins, yeah.
In other news, how’s Phonogram 2 coming along?
21/10/2008 at 12:52 Kieron Gillen says:
First issue out in early December. Not too late to pre-order!
KG