Escapist Podcast: 078: Electronic Arts, Dead Space 3, and Puppies!

Haukur Isleifsson

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Jun 2, 2010
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I thought it was generally accepted in the social sciences that you rarely need a sample bigger than a 1000 people to extrapolate to a population of any size given that the sample is a properly drawn.
 

hotsumota

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Apr 14, 2009
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I actually remember getting the weapon DLC for Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It had very powerful weapons in that DLC. A double barrel shotgun and a sniper straight from the start. The only reason I got it was for the double barreled shotgun, but I never used it. The game it self pulled me away with its sneaking system. I found it way more fun to challenge my self to finish the game with only using the taser. I was quite sad not using, for three runs, the double barreled shotgun because it was the only reason I bought that DLC.

For dead space 3, my point is that the game it self having different features can become a good thing. In fact, let us say I buy some sort of object in dead space 3 that allows me to be more powerful, yet I end up not using it because a certain feature becomes far more interesting than using what I just bought.
 

Revolutionary

Pub Club Am Broken
May 30, 2009
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Love the new Podca(s)t logo. Also I Found the Escapist origins story very interesting.
 

KefkaCultist

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Jun 8, 2010
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TCG topic: I play Magic a lot and I'd say I'm quite experienced at it, but when my ex boyfriend tried teaching me Yugioh I just couldn't wrap my head around it.

The logo: I love it!
 

Eri

The Light of Dawn
Feb 21, 2009
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I don't understand how none of you know anything about modern Pokemon. Pokemon is one the biggest game franchises in the world, and yet everyone is like "yeah I never play that shit". It would be like saying you've never played another Mario game except the Super Nintendo versions.
 

Thuggych

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Mar 5, 2011
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As a PC player, I don't expect a huge amount of bells and whistles, but do greatly appreciate them. If you don't have time/budget/energy to fiddle with drivers and optimize DX11 properly, fine, I guess. I do however, get very upset when simple things like FoV sliders, modifiable key-bindings, High res textures are not built into the game, specifically for FPSs.

Many of these options don't require huge amounts of programming/bug testing outside of editing config files. FoV in particular may require some additional troubleshooting, but it's also a feature that's a medical issue and should be treated with that respect. When PC gamers ask for high res textures, All we're really asking for are access to the original texture assets built before they had to be down-scaled when optimizing the game for consoles...How much extra effort does that really require?
 

Strazdas

Robots will replace your job
May 28, 2011
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Regarding the 1000 people per whole united states for data thing:
You are aware that even the "big" organizations such as World Health Organization base their whole statistics on 500-2000 people per country (based on country size) and uses 2000 random queries for United states. statistically 1000 people is A LOT.

Eri said:
I don't understand how none of you know anything about modern Pokemon. Pokemon is one the biggest game franchises in the world, and yet everyone is like "yeah I never play that shit". It would be like saying you've never played another Mario game except the Super Nintendo versions.
funnily enough i have never played pokemon either and will not play any more mario games for them going totaly down the drain like... 10 years ago. Just becasue its a big franchise does not mean its a good game or that everyone must play it. actually untill the internet i thouh pokemon was some sort of crap tv show they just used to run to fill in a timeslot.
 

Dreiko_v1legacy

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Aug 28, 2008
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That "bullshit rule" in Magic is called The Golden Rule. "When a card conflicts with the rules of the game, do as the card says."




It exists in Yugioh too btw.
 

dakkster

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Aug 22, 2011
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You will not find a lot of people outside of North America that give a rat's ass about the Superbowl. Fandom of American football is pretty much non-existent outside of America. Small cliques, sure, but millions of people? Not in a million years. Over here in Europe we don't care at all. Same with baseball. Those two sports are pretty much exclusive to North America with VERY few exceptions.

Also, calling it football is stupid in two ways as you use your hands on the ball 99.x% of the time and the "ball" is not shaped like a ball.
 

Tisiphone1

Doing Science
Dec 27, 2011
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The early/mid 2000s were an awful time to be a serious JRPG fan. I did the same thing with all the Atlus stuff...that I could find. I remember not necessarily being able to even pre-order it, so if you didn't happen to be the first one through the doors on release day, since many stores only got a copy or two, you were just hosed.

Later when I worked in a game store, we would joke "Atlus: At Least List", since most of their games actually cost MORE used than they did when they were new. My copies of some of the MegaTen games and my black cover version of Disgaea still bear their $60 and $70 used price tags (Standard PS2 pricing being $50).

Late in the PS2's life though, demand for their rare titles reached Atlus, and by some miracle they did a new print run of a whole bunch of their games. These lacked the soundtracks that came with many of the originals, but meant that Digital Devil Saga, Nocturne, Disgaea and others were available again to those that missed them the first time at a reasonable price. The point of this little story is that new copies of these reprints are still available, presently on Amazon for under $20, if you want to own a copy of Nocturne of your very own. Unless you really want that soundtrack, in which case, it's still crazy.

I think the fact that this will likely never happen again for the standard edition of a game is one of the greatest things about digital distribution.
 

Kuredan

Hingle McCringleberry
Dec 4, 2012
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I saw the puppies yesterday afternoon and I wasn't disappointed. I have to say the highlight was kitty halftime show. I am partial to the wee beasties. Thanks again!
 

thatguy96

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Feb 23, 2010
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I think the PTO is less appealing than the ETO in no small part because of issues of "war guilt" and how things were decided. In the ETO, the allied powers generally decided that Germany was firmly and almost solely in the wrong (we don't spend any time haranguing the Finns, Hungarians, Bulgarians, or Croatians for instance, and the Italians got away with their involvement by just abruptly switching sides for the second major European war in a row) . Germany's new regimes (East and West) for the most part were accepting of this, and its enshrined to this day in the legal system of the current unified Germany (the banning of Nazi symbols, etc).

With Japan, the outcome was entirely different. Firstly, the decisions on how things would go were largely US made, with little influence from any of the Allied powers. While Western Europe was happy to sign their own agreements ending their wars with Japan, this was not the case with the Soviet Union. Russia to this day has no formal agreement ending their conflict with Japan and has numerous territorial disputes with the Japanese. The situation of the Chinese is similar, in that the People's Republic of China has its own views on agreements cut between the Republic of China and Japan and how legitimate these are. The two Korean regimes, both of whom do not recognize the other, similarly agree that Japan has not done enough to accept its war guilt, and its about the only thing they agree on. The comment about the victors writing the history is especially interesting with regards to Japan, since the US decided to push much less on the issue of war guilt there than they did in Germany, being able to make that decision essentially unilaterally. The issue of Class A war criminals being enshrined at Yakusuni, a Shinto shrine dedicated to those who lost their lives in service to the Empire of Japan, is an especially sore subject and one that we allowed to happen in Japan, even though we would never have let it happen in Germany. All of this wraps together to make the PTO and the outcome of the war against Japan much more divisive to this day and it can't help but have an influence on marketing decisions.

Secondly, its just less well known than the ETO. The PTO was reduced in the podcast to big naval battles and island hopping, which did dominate, but airborne operations and tanks and other things were involved and a game could easily be quite diverse. The islands in question for instance aren't all just desolate beaches and jungles, but also include high mountains, swamps, and other environs. A game focused on that part of the world could also see operations in the virtually unknown China-Burma-India (CBI) Theater and the brutal fighting in the Aleutians. The developers for Company of Heroes 2 in their video developer diaries and the ad campaign for that game show that the average person really doesn't know the scale of things on the eastern front against the Germans. I think that a similar deep dive by developers into the actual particulars would cause them to be shocked at what actually happened in the PTO-CBI-Aleutians. I think that most game companies who deal in historical settings could do themselves a significant service by hiring historical consultants who are subject matter experts. This way they could reduce the amount of time they have to spend in getting up to speed on any specific event and just see about how well that would translate into the game they're working on.
 

Wolcik

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Jul 18, 2009
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Cool podcast once again, I'm pretty much up to date right now, as I listen at work or while drawing more often.