#203 Show Notes
Host: Patrick
Co-Hosts: John, Vic
Time: Friday, Aug. 31st, 7pm GMT
Host and Co-host specific notes are displayed like this
What’s up?
Free range segment where you talk about what mods/games you have been playing or just anything of interest.
- New youtube videos:
- William Visits Valve: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_qeIZoNbME
Podcast 17 News
Does not have to be described in detail. Just mentioning everything will be sufficient for the experimental format.
- New experimental format
- UPDATED Podcast 17's Sidecasts Website
- More content coming soon including a special news section for “The Potato” and possibly videos and shows created by YOU!
- Contact thelastlambda or [email protected] for details on how to get your own section on Sidecasts
- If you want your news/discussion to definately be seen, do not post topics as comments on rough agendas, instead use the “Suggest Discussion Topic”
- New & updated social media sites Facebook , Twitter, and Google+
- Check out our brand-new parody account The Potato
- Looking for people who want to be writers, Hosts/co-hosts, reviewers, video creators, content creators, coders, musician, and website developers
Follow-Up & Errata
- Grey is released
From the Mouth of Valve
- New steam community beta is out for everyone
- Vic’s summary on the trials and tribulations of Counter Strike’s history
- DOTA 2 International
- WETA Workshop to produce Dota 2 merch
- Steam Greenlight is live
- http://www.valvetime.net/threads/steam-greenlight-is-live.221143/
- http://steamcommunity.com/greenlight/
Releases and Updates
- Lost Under the Snow (Tipped by Deadrawkstar)
- http://www.modinformer.net/2012/08/25/lost-under-the-snow/
- http://www.planetphillip.com/posts/lost-under-the-snow-half-life-2-ep2/
- Person of Interest
Discussion Topics
Make your own discussions (whatever you want, questions or broad topics [Such as Source 2]) You can have fun with it and make it your own
- Steam Greenlight questions, Should Steam Greenlight have all these mods (grey, NMRIH, etc.) on it? Do you think SG is a good idea? Won’t having mods & f2p games on SG confuse the community if not properly labelled? Will it just confuse the community more when such a clean and already established group such as MODDB has been taking care of the mod community for years? Do source game makers realize that going on greenlight does not exclude them from getting a source licenses if they want to release commercially? -Gerardo
- In RPS’s article about the history of Garry’s Mod (verison 1-10), he states something I think was very profound,
- “Erik views the time Garry spent working for free as a hugely significant exercise: “As opposed to the constraints that tend to get placed on ‘professional’ game developers, my guess is that it was valuable for Garry to spend a bunch of time figuring out what the interesting problems were to solve, and how to solve them in the best way for the long term. This is a pretty difficult thing to do when you have a large audience that will quickly outstrip the amount of work you can get done day-to-day, and Garry did a great job at figuring out how to navigate those issues. “To put it simply, I think Garry figured out what he had to do to make a large number of customers happy, and that is the core problem to solve before trying to figure out how to build a business out of it.”
- How do you feel about those sentiment? Do you think it would be a good idea for indie devs to cut their teeth in this manner before they start working on a schedule? Do you think Garry’s mod is a good example for other devs? Feel free to talk about what you want from this article. -Gerardo
- "Why aren't more mods modifiable?" - Mods are about community, sharing and openness; yet why does Modding Culture hardly ever seem to allow mod Assets (art, code, sounds etc.) to be freely re-used by others? What can we do to improve this situation? - Henry Swanson
- Monetizing Modding: what does the runaway success of "DayZ" and in the increasing interest in Crowd Funding mean for the future of independent modding / gaming? Eventually, will only a handful remain free (ie. libre and gratis)? - Henry Swanson
- Is the Oculus Rift the next step for gaming? Do you think this device will be considered a necessary step that advanced the medium in the future or will it wane out of existence with ideas such as the Eyetoy, Kinect, and PS move? Finally, if it was in an affordable price range (about the price of a video game console) would you get one? - Gerardo
- http://www.valvetime.net/threads/gabe-newell-and-michael-abrash-want-you-to-back-the-oculus-rift.215062/
- Leveraged comments on the Rift, “It’s very encouraging to see such an rallying of support for the device & the Oculus company from a number of industry heavyweights. It’s interesting to look at this from a standardization perspective; by providing support the big players in the market are beginning to move towards a standardized VR head mounted display methodology. Obviously things are just getting started with both the Oculus as well as the VR tech in general so it’s pretty early right now. But it’s my hunch that even if Oculus doesn’t succeed as a product, the fact that the industry has more or less stated “With what we know right now, this is the best way to do VR head mounted displays” means that we’ll see future hardware follow the direction set by this standardization. The reason this is encouraging is because this process sets a precedent for the future. It’s a great demonstration of people working together to build cool stuff that everyone wants and will benefit from. Palmer Luckey developed a great concept, John Carmack noticed the concept & tested it out, John got a bunch of important people interested, Palmer built that interest into support, decided to move forward with the Kickstarter, fans & future customers responded, and the hardware will be shipped next year. There’s a lot more going on here under the surface of course; what we’re seeing is a convergence of technology maturation & smart people working on those technologies.But so far, the Oculus Rift Kickstarter and the all the cross-company cooperation leading up to it have provided an interesting example of how future gaming hardware & software standards can be developed through this method of support from key players in the industry coupled with mass support from future customers in the form of Kickstarter-type funding campaigns.”
- XBOX 720 “sorta” confirmed, what will Microsoft and Sony need to do in this next generation of consoles? In the next-gen will consoles rule over PCs again or do PCs have a fighting chance?
- An interesting approach to piracy, certainly not the first time someone has done this, but check out how “Under the Ocean” has approached piracy as an indie studio. What is the solution to piracy? DRM? Openness? Free-to-play? Kickstarters? Premium physical benifits? Bohemias FADE/DEGRADE approach? What makes you pirate, when do yo upirate? Do you feel guilty when you pirate? What about the old days of freeware, open demos? Pre-order bonuses? Does the fight on piracy hurt developers and refocus development efforts? Putting advertisements in your game like Angry birds did?
- “Let’s talk about Death!!”. Death in video games can be more than just a respawn... let’s discuss some ways that we have experienced death in video games that were unique or game changing. Anything from perma death like in Eve Online to simple respawns in TF2. Things like respawn timers, death penalties, having to replay areas of a scary game, frustration, games you can’t die like Heavy Rain, consequences of death, games with no death consequences. Lives in games like Mario. Games like ARMA which have HEAVY consequences. - William
- SWTOR has gone free to play under both pressure and through necessity. Are month-by-month pay models feasible now a days? Under what circumstances do month-by-month models work? Why is EVE so popular, why is WOW so popular? Why do people pay monthly subscriptions - William
- Every time a big mod, such as Black Mesa Source, makes a misstep or does something the community doesn’t like, people always come to defend the constructive criticisms saying “Well it is a free mod... you should be thankful that they are doing that” I feel people miss the point of the criticism and then assume we have to be happy with the product we got from the team that is producing it. What if we don’t like the team or the outcome or the amount of time or x or y? Should we really just be happy and thankful it was a free mod? Feel free to sound off about this running comment. -Gerardo
Water Cooler Chat
Here is where you can just discuss anything you want that you feel will be engaging to the audience.
- Earl Alexander, the voice actor of Louis in L4D, did an AMA on Reddit
Post-Show Play Session
Get a chance to play a game with the cast and crew of P17. Join us in our mumble server (85.236.100.59:2812) to talk with us after the show. Feel free to come back during the week and talk/play with other community members.