tylertoo
4821
Just grabbed both episodes and added the rss to mediamonkey. Looking forward to adding this to my regular stable of podcasts. Thanks, Jon.
Can he save them from the slide they’re in?
Aleck
4823
It would take the combined awesomeness of Jeff Green and Rob “SOASE” Borges to do that.
z22
4824
I will listen to both soon. Having only downloaded them, I suggest a more recognizable filename convention. Using only numbers is not good.
What’s different from, say, 2 or 3 years ago? I recall enjoying that podcast a lot. Haven’t listened in forever though
Hey, speaking of podcasts, whatever happened to Shawn Elliot (don’t know if I’m spelling his name right). He used to crack me up big time with his Aspie and Whisky Nerd personas. Is he still working at Irrational? I miss hearing him on podcasts.
I listened to both and enjoyed them. It felt at times like I was listening to a brainstorming session where ideas are being tossed around and expanded on. I think having Rob Daviau on the show might have played a part because it seems like he has a lot of game ideas bouncing around in his head.
I thought the brief foray into the ‘Are Games Art?’ topic was LOL. Come on Jon you need to explore that topic some more ;)
Being as I bought my last computer to play Civ 5, I had to listen and find out what’s going on in your brain next Jon.
On a side-note, you guys need to get the new Warlock Armageddon DLC. It really rounds out what those guys have designed and fully changes it from a ‘Civ 5 a like’ type game to a sadistically challenging zombie apocalypse, in that you begin to realize there is no hope and you will eventually die.
Can’t tell from the context, but I’m assuming this was in response to my post?
If so, I’ll look into it. Dirk has been handling most of the tech stuff so I’ll poke him about that.
Glad you enjoyed them!
Rob is just as good at sharing ideas as he is at coming up with them. As you note, he has a lot to talk about and everything he says is insightful. I’m very much looking forward to seeing what he comes up with on his own.
I thought the brief foray into the ‘Are Games Art?’ topic was LOL. Come on Jon you need to explore that topic some more ;)
Ugh… I’ll pass, thanks. ;) There are so many other topics I find more interesting to discuss and maybe even, you know… productive.
Being as I bought my last computer to play Civ 5, I had to listen and find out what’s going on in your brain next Jon.
Haha, thanks for the compliment! I’ve got some really cool projects that will be announced in the next few months, so stay tuned.
On a side-note, you guys need to get the new Warlock Armageddon DLC. It really rounds out what those guys have designed and fully changes it from a ‘Civ 5 a like’ type game to a sadistically challenging zombie apocalypse, in that you begin to realize there is no hope and you will eventually die.
Well, you’ve caught my attention at least… :) how would you summarize the changes that were made? I played the vanilla version game for about 10 hours but never messed with any of the post-release content or mega-patches.
Otagan
4830
Listened to those first two episodes while I was driving around this last weekend and have to say I really enjoyed them. They’ll be a part of my regular podcast rotation as long as you’re putting them out. Any pacing issues I had noted from the first episode were already neatly addressed by the second, so no gripes on that end anymore. I think the only thing I was disappointed by was how often your (Rob and Jon, specifically) projects were mentioned that you couldn’t really talk about for NDA/confidentiality reasons, as all of that sounded really interesting and those trains of thought unfortunately ended up falling a little flat.
The fact that I can’t think of anything more substantial than that (apart from the cliche music choice, but I don’t hold that one against anyone) should reflect that I was very satisfied with it all. Looking forward to seeing who you can get on (hoping for Soren and getting Rob again would be great) and where you take it from here.
Thanks for the feedback Otagon!
We’ll be digging into some of Dirk’s projects in serious detail in upcoming episodes so hopefully that will help satisfy some of that hollow-ness you’ve felt. I’ll also be able to talk at length about what I’m up to in a couple months so you shouldn’t have too much longer to wait!
And yes, the music is cheesy… Perhaps too cheesy. We wanted something a little silly and over-the-top to help balance out our serious demeanors and subject matter, but maybe they’re just multiplying with one another! I’ll try to play it up a bit more in future episodes.
Lots of terraforming and more terraforming and randomly spawning Dremer gates that can spill forth demons that will splode! your best cites and gobble your best units with acumen. And its got a great new soundtrack by Engelbert Humperdinck. OK I made up that last part.
But with regards to Warlock I’ll spoil some stuff and give you the quick notes version if you must learn the deep dark secrets:
Warlock Armageddon DLC spoilers
[spoiler]Dremer gates start appearing in random locations at roughly turn 30.
Dremer gates will randomly spawn all over the world and tier one demons will start trickling out of these gates slowly unless you don’t destroy the gate in a timely manner, in which case more powerful units will progressively begin invading the world.
The landscape begins to get 'contaminated ala a ‘Zerg creep’ that also damages normal units while healing Dremer and generally making the landscape economically terrible.
If a Dremer gate sits around for a very long time it will eventually blow up making the nearby land impassable and killing any nearby units.
Meanwhile you have random meteors striking the ground and volcanoes erupting out of the ground. In the case of volcanoes the geography can change drastically. When a volcano erupts it raises the nearby land even if it was previously underwater and an area can suddenly become connected to an adjacent area that is potentially full of monster/enemies you didn’t want anywhere near your territory.
^^ These would be the highlights from my point of view that make for a greatly varied and extremely challenging 4x experience.
There are also bosses and quests and enemy pocket worlds, but I found them to be less interesting than simply the chaotic fun of seeing the geography of the world change and get overrun by demons and being forced to abandon cities and certain areas of the world wholesale in order to survive and fight another day.[/spoiler]
That does sound interesting! One of the features I’ve always wished games incorporated more is evolving maps. This is the element which I feel really helps separate 4X games and makes them so special.
Anyways, I won’t drone on about game specifics here in the podcast thread!
In other news, we just posted Episode #3 of TGDRT today! This time we had Bill Abner on to talk about trends in games, our thoughts on the design of games we’ve been playing recently and what Dirk and Bill have been working on over at Conquistador Games.
RickH
4834
Funny, GWJ is the only gaming podcast I consistently listen to. I actually think they are getting better lately (i.e., more focused on the subject matter rather than the personal asides that bog down so many podcasts). When I want to hear impressions on something newly released, that’s where I go.
That said, the podcast could be 20% shorter if you edited out the laughing at their own jokes.
I love the GWJ podcast, and listen to it every week. The only times I give it a miss is when they start yammering on about stuff like Skylanders at length.
Vesper
4836
He works at Irrational Games now. For awhile he was running a podcast for them (in addition to his work on games), but I don’t know if that’s still going on.
Okay, last time I’ll shamelessly plug my podcast, I swear!
I know there are some Paradox fans here though, and for this week’s episode we had Chris King and Henrik Fåhraeus on to discuss storytelling in games, with a particular focus on what they did in CK2. We also talked about other recent and upcoming Paradox titles, including EU4.
No need to stop plugging the episodes, IMHO. Over the weekend I listened to all three episodes and really enjoyed them. I liked that you and your guests just seemed to talk about particular games, as opposed to ‘topics’ or ‘themes.’ Too many other podcasts seem to go off the rails when they have a ‘topic’ segment. Yours were pretty substantive discussions yet at the same time fairly casual.
Well! If you insist…
Over the weekend I listened to all three episodes and really enjoyed them. I liked that you and your guests just seemed to talk about particular games, as opposed to ‘topics’ or ‘themes.’ Too many other podcasts seem to go off the rails when they have a ‘topic’ segment. Yours were pretty substantive discussions yet at the same time fairly casual.
Awesome, glad you’ve enjoyed it! We’ve got another couple solid episodes coming up. I would say our best yet. Dirk and I are still working out or chemistry, but I really think things are coming together now.
And yeah, one of my priorities with the show was to ensure our discussions always relate to something tangible. Game design (in particular, but all forms of design, really) can be very abstract, and despite our choice of music we don’t want the podcast to be too high-falutin’.
Some people have criticized the amount of time we spend at the start of each episode talking about games instead of the main topic, but I feel that’s a key element of the show. One of our goals is to share with everyone how a designer’s brain works and what sorts of things we think about. Being able to compare the experience one has had with various games is a great way of doing that. It inevitably leads to some long episodes, but I don’t think cutting down really buys us anything. In many ways TGDRT is meant to be educational as much as it is entertaining, so I’d rather offer too much than too little.
For anyone who really just wants to skip to the “good stuff” though, I’ve started adding detailed outlines to each show page. Hopefully folks find those handy, as those suckers take a while to put together!
Bumping this, at tylertoo’s behest. ;)
Episode #5 of TGDRT is now live. This week Dirk and I flew solo and really dug into our design processes. A more focused show than last week, and probably my favorite so far. Let me know what you guys think!
