The RPS Electronic Wireless Show 30
Come the hour, come the men. Come the hour to podcast, come the three men (eventually). Quinns, Alec and Kieron gather in a (mostly) hungover state to discuss important things. You can download the file here, subscribe to it by RSS with this, or get it on iTunes from here. Hurrah! Also, you'll find the full list of chat-topics below...
0:00 Introduction. Quinns squeals.
1:00 A little about the site.
2:00 A little mocking of the Activision
2:20 Our highlight of the re-design, being the beards on the About page.
4:00 A little about the subscriber situation. Also, the idea of subs-funded journalism.
8:00 A little about Red Faction Guerrilla.
10:00 Achievements. What are they for, as a tool for developers? What are they, as a breaker of atmosphere? What are they as an enabler of gameplayosity? The difference between actual achievements and just-rewards-for-playing-the-game? Achievements as games' equivalent of photo-albums?
15:26 "You can tell we're both hungover" Oh, we certainly can.
16:25 Kieron's been playing Llamasoft's Gridrunner Revolution. He talks at length about it, including the history of Llamasoft and Jeff Minter's games. Also, Space Giraffe. Features the phrase "Neolithic Games Development" and lots of mechanic picking-over. Kieron uses the word "interesting" too much.
25:00 Quinns is looking forward to playing the Void, Ice Pick's post-Pathologic game.
27:01 WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY!?!?!? It's Alec. Also, Quinns has played Gridrunner now.
28:48 Alec is amazed by Kinder eggs.
29:09 Alec and Quinns played Space Hulk against one another! We talk about the beauty of cardboard and how evocative the game's mechanics were, and what PC Gaming could take from it. Also, what is randomness for?
39:00 Which links to randomness in RPG combats. Kieron says something which makes everyone else say HEYYY!!!! Fundamentally, what people are willing to accept in terms of verisimilitude.
42:56 Reader twitter questions! First up, Spelunky! It's tight apparently.
46:09 Are we going to the Eurogamer convention in Leeds? Not as far as we know. He's going to Thought Bubble thought.
46:48 Kieron refers to stuff he cut from earlier. Monterization!
49:00 Schmug has a splendid name. WHAT DOES RPS PLAN FOR THE FUTURE?
49:55 The most inappropriate dating sim you'd play?
51:12 What other games would work like The Typing Of The Dead?
52:12 What would RPS the game be?
54:21 Borderlands a game of the year contender? Quinns thinks not. John's thigh muscles are discussed.
57:50 The important gaming Polish question.
58:44 The important Quinns and turnips question.
59:00 What's the best-worst videogame title. Alec brings up the classic.
1:00:06 What videogame podcasts do you listen to?
1:01:00 Are there any gaming books you'd recommend? Yes. Lots, in fact. We're mean to all our friend's ones though because we're total cows.
1:06:00 Will we ever see a return to joystick based games?
1:07:06 What are our shame piles?
1:09:00 What other superhero games would we like to see? We talk about the problems of superhero games at length.
1:15:00 Cheerio!