The Impact Factor Ep. 91: End Transmission a.k.a. Groundhog Boys Podcast Welcome to the 91st episode of The Impact Factor! The Impact Factor is what happens when two scientists, and two best friends, get together to talk about video games. Hosts Alex Samocha [biomedical scientist] and Charles Fliss [social scientist] sit down every week to discuss the week in gaming! Listen in for the news, views, and games that made the biggest impact!
In this episode Alex and Fliss talk about about the ZeniMax vs. Oculus lawsuit, Deus Ex going on hiatus, Resident Evil 7 sales, Namco, Nintendo, Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, Shadowverse, The Last Guardian, and we flex our gamedev muscles to think up a PERFECT game.
You Kill My Brother by Go! Go! Go! Micro Invasion, East Jakarta Chiptunes Compilations. Freemusic Archive. (Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike License) Transitions: News & Views and Perspectives transitions from victorcenusa, Freesound.org (Creative Commons 0 License) Experimental Methods transition from Sentuniman, Freesound.org (Attribution Noncommercial License)
Monday, January 9, 2017
The Impact Factor Ep. 88: 2016's Game of the Year! Podcast Welcome to the 88th episode of The Impact Factor! The Impact Factor is what happens when two scientists, and two best friends, get together to talk about video games. Hosts Alex Samocha [biomedical scientist] and Charles Fliss [social scientist] sit down every week to discuss the week in gaming! Listen in for the news, views, and games that made the biggest impact!
In this episode Alex and Fliss are joined by special guest co-host Patrick to discuss our 2016 Games of the Year, listener 2016 GOTY lists, Total War: Warhammer, Final Fantasy Type 0, Hearthstone, Hidden My Game by Mom!, 2016’s Top 100 sellers on Steam, Ariana Grande in Brave Exvius and so much more!
News &
Views collects the week’s best video game writing. Check out the links below
for stories about how Rocket League strategies
have made it clear that the game is more than just soccer with cars, how Final Fantasy IX handles the
inevitability of death, and why crafting that perfect ending to your game might
not be worth it.
And of
course please check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that
was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods,
check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!
Blizzard came out early and
aggressively against Overwatch cheaters. In fact, they promised to
permanently ban a player after their first
offense. Little did we know how serious Blizzard was. I’ve copied an anecdote
from the article that summarizes it perfectly: You cheat, you lose. Period.
"Got banned one day after the official release,"
one enemy of fair play recounts. "Thought I got detected for using RPM
tools, because the game was crashing for it at that time.
"Bought the game again... didn't hack on it at all,
just wanted to enjoy the game a bit. Two days later—banned again.
"Bought the game... again. But before doing that, I
deleted Overwatch and launcher completely. Enjoyed it again without cheating only
for a day."
On his fourth attempt, he purged his
PC, changing hard drive IDs, MAC address, BiosDate and buying a VPN to throw
Blizzard's anticheat off. It didn't work.
When the term “ludonarrative
dissonance” was common parlance in the greater games discussion, Uncharted was always the first title named. People weren’t wrong for naming it,
either. How can Nathan Drake be a loveable rogue when he literally kills
hundreds of people each and every game? Part of what I touched upon in my
review, but it written much better by Evan Narcisse over at Kotaku, is how Uncharted
4 leans into this dissonance – co-opting
it to serve as the narrative foundation. Beware spoilers, but thoroughly worth
reading.
It astounds me how few game owners finish
the games they buy. Since the advent of trophies / achievements, it has been possible
to ascertain completion percentage on a game-to-game basis. As Matt Sayer
writes, laughably few players manage to finish games. Even when a game is just
a few hours long the completion percentage remains sub 50%. It’s insane. Maybe
it’s not so important to have that perfect ending to your narrative game.
Chances are no more than 30% of players will even get to it.
Friday, April 15, 2016
News & Views
4/9/16-4/15/16
News &
Views collects the week’s best gaming writing. Check out below for stories
about the environmental storytelling of corpses, when is the right time to show
off your eSport strategy, how Final
Fantasy XV has a good message about toxic masculinity, and how Spelunky makes perfect maps. Apologies
for not having comments this week- today is a whirlwind!
And of
course please check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast that
was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods,
check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!
Abstract: Video game demos were a huge part
of my childhood. Demos fulfilled a dual purpose. Demos introduced me
to new games that I wanted to add to my collection. They also provided their own
standalone micro gaming experiences. Video game demos have mostly faded away,
however. Square Enix is bringing back the demo in a fantastic way, with Episode Duscae and Platinum Demo for Final
Fantasy XV. I hope this phenomenon becomes a trend and we see more demos
coming out soon.
Video game
demos hold a special place in my heart. A PlayStation demo disk was one of my
favorite experiences on the PS1. Before you click away, hear me out. Game demos
were a bedrock of my childhood gaming. They contained the new, the
exciting, and the unreleased. It was hard scraping together enough money to buy
new games as a 9 year old. Even more than that, it was excruciating trying to
decide if a new game would be worth it. Sure, I read reviews in gaming
magazines. Sure, I listened to my friends to see what they had been playing.
But being on a shoestring budget meant that the next game I bought was a
serious commitment. A several month commitment at least. Demo disks solved
that problem and more. Demos were also experiences onto themselves—‘micro’
games for those in need. As a kid I was in desperate need. Trust me.
My parents' staunch refusal to buy me a video game console meant that when I bought my PS1
in 1998 it represented years of saving my money. It was a gargantuan ask for a
kid who spent money faster than he could get it. Bubble gum and trading cards
were my vices. But I put my head down and saved the $180 or so it took to buy
my PS1 and one game, Crash Bandicoot 2.
It was months before I had saved enough to buy a second game. For anyone who
has played it, you’ll know that Crash 2
isn’t a particularly long game. So I used game demos to fill my time.
Thankfully,
my PS1 came with a one-month subscription to PlayStation Underground.
Underground is a now defunct video game magazine that spotlighted PlayStation games and
news. Its biggest claim to fame, at least in my book, was
the demo disks. Each issue came with a disk that contained several demos for
upcoming games. My disks, so titled
because I only ended up with two or three, were good ones. They had demos for
Tomb Raider, Brave Fencer Musashi, Parappa
the Rapper, and Bloody Roar among
others. I played the living hell out of those disks. Over and over again. Hours
at a time over the span of months. Even though most demos were short, they gave
me so much.
If one image could sum up my childhood...
(P.S. I owned this disk.)
On one
hand, demos sold me on games that I later added to my collection (Tomb Raider). On the other, they were
self-contained games themselves. Brave
Fencer Musashi, in particular, worked start to
finish to not only spotlight the full game’s mechanics but also act as a worthy standalone experience. A well-designed demo was transportative. A
well-designed demo worked synergistically as a 30-minute long game and interactive trailer for a much bigger experience. I also enjoyed demos for
the breadth of experiences they presented to me. Parappa the Rapper, a rhythm game, is a genre I would have never
considered until I played through the demo (roughly 100 times over). Demos
rounded out my gaming time. Whenever I had finished a game, I would pop back in
a demo disk and mess around with old favorites. Demos feel like an old friend.
Is Brave Fencer Musashi a good game? I don't know.
The demo sure was.
Demos are
an old friend that doesn’t come around too often anymore, though. For the most
part, video game demos have mostly faded away. There are a myriad of reasons
why and no single one tells the full story. Perhaps it was the rise of smaller indies
titles or the huge mass of gaming content on the web. I do not have the time,
nor impetus really, to more fully speculate as to why this has happened.
Needless to say, though, it has. Demos are few and far between.
What
‘demos’ we do get are often multiplayer-centric betas for upcoming games. We’ve
seen the number of betas rising over the past few years. This month we’re
getting a Battleborne beta. Next
month we’re getting an Overwatch
beta. The DOOM beta is currently
running. At their best, betas can give a similar experience to the ones I had with
demo disks. They introduce you to something new and unreleased, and familiarize
the player with the game’s mechanics. Something is lost when the beta is just a
multiplayer mode or two, however. You lose that self-contained game experience
like that one I had with Brave Fencer
Musashi. You can’t look past that the demo is just an ad, a taste of the
goods to get you hooked for when the final product releases. They are not
something you can, or would even want to, go back to. I’m thrilled we are
getting more opportunities to play snippets of upcoming games, and I know I’ll
play the heck out of both Battleborn’s
and Overwatch’s betas, but they don’t
quite hit all the right notes.
Battle of the betas.
Thankfully,
it looks like Japan (or more specifically, Square Enix) is looking to bring
back demos in a significant way. Final
Fantasy XV is a game that’s been in development for a literal eternity,
i.e. about ten years now. As one might expect for a game that’s taken nearly a
decade to come out, a lot of resources have been put into making FFXV a game people care about. It has taken many forms: an
anime prequel, a
feature length motion picture, a
free-to-play mobile pinball game, and demos. The first of which was Episode
Duscae. Given to players who ordered the Day 1 edition of Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, Episode Duscae allowed you to explore a
huge open area snipped from FFXV.
You’re given a few simple objectives to accomplish, but the meat of the demo experiencing
the gameplay you (should) have when the final game launches in September. You
can explore, you can grind to level up, you can summon, you can fight
impossibly hard monsters. Episode Duscae
also served as a beta of sorts, since Square Enix used it to gauge fan concerns.
Heck, they even updatedEpisode Duscae to reflect how they are
addressing players’ issues. Crazy.
Episode Duscae was a great introduction to Final Fantasy XV.
Square Enix
did not stop there. Announced at their huge Uncovered FFXV event last week, and released the day after, Platinum Demo Final Fantasy XV was a
second demo for the game. Platinum Demo
was a little different than Episode
Duscae, though, and in a way that caught my attention. Platinum Demo was a new, standalone experience. The content within
the Platinum Demo would not be
included in the final retail release of Final
Fantasy XV. It is an experience that was designed to be exactly what I viewed
demos as when I was a child: a self-contained, albeit small, game. A title that
introduced you to the universe, but was also its own thing. I’ve seen a few
demos like this pop up recently, like Bravely
Second’s Ballad
of the Three Cavaliers demo. It’s a phenomenon I would be more than happy
to see be made into a trend.
You won't see this in Final Fantasy XV. At least not in the same way.
The thing
is, Platinum Demo was a pretty
stellar experience. I came away impressed with the demo’s design after my
roughly 30 minute playthrough. Platinum
Demo retools the various systems that will be in Final Fantasy XV and presents them in a through the looking
glass-styled dream. Though short, the demo covers what I imagine are all the
basics to playing Final Fantasy XV.
You’re taught about combat—the switching between weapons, light and heavy
weapons, combos, thrown items, dodge rolling, targeting, warping. You’re taught
about exploration—jumping, activating trigger switches to open new pathways, tangible
rewards for scouring the open world. You’re taught about how FFXV play with scale—you’re pitted
against large monsters, groups of monsters, huge open environments. And Platinum Demo accomplishes all of this
while still being a set in the main character’s childhood dream. Playing Platinum Demo would have been one of my
childhood dreams. It is self-contained, it is edifying, and it got me
re-excited for the game it’s selling to me. What more could I ask?
Platinum Demo does a great job at being a great demo.
It looks
like we may be in store for more demos in the future, too. While writing this
piece, Team Ninja announced that their new Onimusha-Dark Souls hybrid game Nioh would have a demo
out at the end of this month. I hope the demos keep coming. Demos, like Platinum Demo Final Fantasy XV, bring me
back to my childhood. They remind me of the wealth of joy I derived from the
smallest of experiences. Let’s hope game demos stay underground no longer. I
want to return to the fantasy.
(In the
meantime, you can check out my full playthrough of Platinum Demo Final Fantasy XV below.)
Monday, April 4, 2016
TIF Plays: Week of 3/28-4/1 Gameplay Welcome to the The Impact Factor's last week of gameplay! Check out below to links of all my gameplay. Be sure to catch me live on Twitch (MegalodonPhD). I stream every Tuesday at 5:30pm PST and Thursday at 6:30pm PST. Plus some special Friday streams, too! You can do me a favor by subscribing to The Impact Factor's YouTube channel, but hey, don't let me tell you what to do! To keep up to date with everything The Impact Factor, and me, follow me on Twitter: @alexsamocha See you all next week!
Friday, February 5, 2016
Da
News
& Views
1/30/16-2/5/16
Happy February to all you Impact Factors! Heh, I like that. January
might have been a bit slow for new releases, but February is no slouch! With Crypt of the Necrodancer this week, Firewatch the next, and Street Fighter V after that, there’s no
shortage of awesome gaming goodness coming our way. Keep up with the blog or
follow me on Twitter to stay
on top of it!
Onto News & Views! As always, this Friday feature compiles my favorite
video game writing, stories, videos and more. I found some really good ones
this week. From how the PC port of Final
Fantasy VI is secretly good for modding, how to talk about games if you’re
blind, and a report on the state of game development in central Africa, this
week has it all. Let me know which stories you found the most resonant!
And of course you can check out the brand new episode of The Impact
Factor podcast that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if
you prefer other methods, check out our SoundCloud. We’re
on YouTube too!
Chris
Park of Arcen Games shares a truly tragic story of the risk, sacrifice, and
harsh reality of being an independent game developer. Despite the hard work of
the team and a well-reviewed final product, the financial realities of the
fledgling studio meant that a large number of employees had to be let go. Game
development at all levels is difficult, but these vignettes about indie
development should serve as a warning sign for both young and old: it ain’t
easy. I hope everyone let go can land on their feet somewhere else.
Not the kind
of story I usually share with you all here on the blog, but one I felt I needed
to. Online gaming isn’t all fun and games. My heart goes out to this family.
Especially for those of you with young children, but still important for those
without, be vigilant about your online activity. There are some bad people out
there. Further, this story reinforces a stance I’ve had for quite a while—law
enforcement needs to take these situations more seriously. Whether it be better
tools to seek out offenders or protections for potential victims. Just
something more.
Rev3Games
was a big part of my video game media consumption a few years ago. They
produced thoughtful, quality content that wasn’t ashamed of being different
from other gaming news or op/ed sites. Rev3Games gave one of my favorite games
pundits, Adam Sessler, a vehicle to share his uninhibited self with the world. It
was great, until it was just…gone. Sessler’s departure was the beginning of a
very rapid end. As a footnote to the article, one of Rev3Games’s alums Max Scoville
took to Reddit to clarify (and refute) some of the topics the author discussed.
“Max: The people most responsible for its creation were Zac Minor and
Anthony Carboni. Everyone left for different reasons. I won't go into
those (partially because it'd be unprofessional, partially because it's tedious
boring business stuff) but it wasn't just as simple as the thumbnails not being
flashy enough, or headlines not being stupid enough.”
Video
games haven’t always (read: ever) been a source of the most dynamic character
relationships. If it’s some big budget AAA game and there a few guys and a few
girls, odds are two or more of them are in a romantic relationship with each
other. Tremblay writes both specifically and generally about why games need
more ‘just good friends’ relationships, citing Tales
from the Borderlands as a recent success.
Agreed. We need more Rhys & Fiona.
Friday, January 15, 2016
News & Views
1/9/16-1/15/16
Welcome
everyone to a much more normal News & Views! It’s been a busy first full
week back in lab, but The Impact Factor never skips a beat! Really looking
forward to relaxing some this weekend, though.
News &
Views is always here to bring you the best video game writing, stories,
editorials & opinions from around the web. This week, I found great pieces
about drug use in eSports, how a dating app is like Warcraft, why Life is Strange
passes the Spielberg test of games as art, and how H.G. Wells was one of the
impactful pioneers of tabletop gaming. Enjoy!
And of
course you can check out the brand new episode of The Impact Factor podcast
that was posted today! You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or if you prefer other methods,
check out our SoundCloud. We’re on YouTube too!
What an awesome look into the
analytical mind of a game designer. So many games use, and rely upon, dice
rolls (hidden from the player or not). Gage runs through the evolution of the
dice-rolling system in Tharsis and it’s fascinating. One
of the key points here is the balance of dice rolls leading choices or making a choice and then relying upon dice to see if you can accomplish your goal. It’s the
difference between craps and King of Tokyo. Very interesting and well worth a watch if you have any interest in
board games, video games, randomness, or game design.
Fussell continues to write
extraordinary pieces for Offworld. Here, Fussell ponders what games can do to better
represent black women. The depiction of black women often focuses on strength,
but in the process loses ‘personhood.’ It would be great to see more characters
that are funny or quirky or dark, and less one-note.
Well, if you needed any more reason
to like (or at the very least appreciate) H.G. Wells, here it is. Taylor
details how Wells championed a tactical tabletop game titled Little Wars, and the evolution of that idea into the modern board game, especially
those that are miniature-based. Very cool.
I’m a big fan of ranked lists. For
example, you can check out a list of my #12-7
and #6-1
top games of 2015. Or my ranking of the Soulsgames.
I can’t say this Final
Fantasy list is 100% accurate (since I
haven’t played them all), but I mostly agree with their ordering. Final
Fantasy 6 is the best. Period.
Friday, January 1, 2016
The Impact Factor Ep. 35: Gaming Resolutions for 2016! Podcast Welcome to the 35th episode of The Impact Factor! The Impact Factor is what happens when two scientists, and two best friends, get together to talk about video games. Hosts Alex Samocha [biomedical scientist] and Charles Fliss [social scientist] sit down every week to discuss the week in gaming! Listen in for the news, views, and games that made the biggest impact!
In this episode Alex and Fliss talk about Valve, Steam, Holiday Sales, AGDQ, Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, fashion, New Years resolutions, Nuclear Throne, Sportsfriends, Jackbox, Star Wars & more! AGDQ Schedule
