It’s another glorious episode of the podcast– and it’s a good one. DeathSpank’s debut and Limbo’s kick-off of the XBLA Summer of Arcade are up first. If you aren’t up on Limbo, as always, the Giant Bomb Quick Look is a good primer.
In tech, we spend a good amount of time on the state of iPhone 4 after the mini ‘Jobsnote‘ last Friday. Spoiler: None of us are too happy. We are happy about the overview of Windows Phone 7 that hit the tech sites recently though, and Erik is in a holding pattern for its release.
Jon quickly covers Inception because as it turns out, we recorded a 50 minute special(!) about the movie that will go up on Thursday. That’s right, our first podblast/castlight/castheavy/blastcast (name pending). Seriously, check it out on Thursday!
Covered topics and games: DeathSpank, Limbo, iPhone 4 antenna update, Windows Phone 7, Inception
Runtime – 35:53
Links → mp3 | iTunes | Zune | rss
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I'm really looking forward to the CM Inception podcast.
Seeing Inception tommorow, dam Australia gets movies late, looking forward to it and your podcast about it.
As anticipated, Limbo is awesome. This game has style. A dark, depressing, frighteningly grizzly style…but style nonetheless.
"Humor juice" was great. Someone on Idlethumbs punned Deathspank "Torch-lite."
Good gametalk and podcast summaries as always, looking forward to Inception thing guys.
If Limbo were 10 bucks I might have bought it, but there doesn't seem to be enough meat on the bone for it to be worth 15 bucks.
Without trying to sound pedantic, I always find it kind of odd when people buy a ticket for a movie for $10 which lasts about 2 hours yet hesitate to buy a 4-8 hour game for $15. Sure, I frequent cheapassgamer.com, but I'm also willing to pay $15 for a good game. (CAG tip – Amazon is selling 1600 point cards for $16.54, which means that Limbo "really" costs $12.41!)
Jon – I don't really like the argument much, either; but isn't it an extension of our own agreement that Crackdown 2 isn't worth $60, but we'd buy it for $40? Ignoring the actual dollar amounts, it's pretty much the same positioning: "this game isn't worth its full price to me." That's a relevant argument no matter what the price point actually is.
And the dollar-per-hour argument is also unsatisfying because there's no way to quantify (or is it qualify?) the value of the entertainment to the individual. Two hours of uninteractive entertainment where I can just veg does have value to me that might be worth four hours where I have to be engaged. Maybe we need to quantify entertainment somehow? You created 'humorjuice', can we also have 'enter-joules'?
Also, I should probably use my economics major to make some argument about inelastic and elastic demand; but I'll be damned if I can remember which one is which.
Well yeah, you're right. I feel like movies are far more relatively inelastic on a large scale, considering the fact that there are millions of teenyboppers out there who are willing to blow $9-10 on a terrible movie at the drop of a hat.
On the particular point of Crackdown 2, though, I feel like the pricing of games is far more predictable on a whole and builds expectations that are hard to ignore. When you know that the price of a game is going to drop to $40 in a month, isn't it reasonable to wait to save the cash? Similarly, if you have interest in a film that you know has got financially panned, wouldn't you have a higher propensity to just wait for its quick DVD release in a month?
A hooker probably costs a lot more per minute but could be quite satisfying. I expect. And Too Human could be better value than Braid if length is important.
Apart from quality and length, the value calculation should take into account the time, effort, and resources taken to make it. Limbo is chizzled to near-perfection. I feel more ripped off when I buy FIFA with minimal changes over the last game.
I think the argument is more of comparing what else is out there on the medium than comparing it to other mediums. I might spend 50 bucks playing paintball for 3 hours and not feel I wasted money but if a game was that long, well.
There's been this constand discussion on new media and podcasts, Giant Bomb and Rebel FM have addressed this recently. There's even a site for ratings to dollars ratios whose denominator is the movie thing of skip it or rent it or own it. Thats a 3 star system that's as gross and arbitrary as metacritic or ign reviews. It's weird, the marketplace has changed. For gamers there is buying now or waiting to buy at discount or gameflying or just never playing, or stealing for free. The game is still subjective. The whole disc of Crackdown 2 is worth $60 to someone, to me the 4 hours I just got out of Leliana's Song DA DLC was a steal at $7. Jesse has an okay point at personal value and I dont know how the new school of video games vs dollars will be. I know what makes me interested and what makes me buy games is conversation, podcasts and stories of playing the real actual video game. Price points are important, maybe selfishly we all need to know the dollars of stars
I don't view a game's worth as something that can be broken down into money spent per hour. I played the Limbo demo and it just didn't feel like a $15 game to me. It felt like an indy game made by a small team. I don't see why that game should cost more than Geometry Wars 2 and the same as Shadow Complex. Limbo is small and the production while smooth is not exactly spectacular. If it were 10 bucks it might get my money because I like to support arcade games, but I don't want to be taken for a ride. I also didn't find the mechanics to be all that interesting.
Ah. I thought by "meat" you meant size, or length. I disagree that the production wasn't spectacular. It's technically very simple, but they use a lot of subtle visual and sound effects. I feel more engaged with this than I did in Alan Wake or Red Dead Redemption (two great games I've played recently).
If the mechanics didn't appeal to you at all, then you probably shouldn't buy it at any price.