Robert Ashley (A Life Well Wasted), and Andrew Fitch (1UP) join the Aaron Thomas-Greg Ford hosting team this week. Robert and Greg are leaving California soon, so might be off the airwaves for a while.
Robert, out of the games press for a while, asks how reviewing games affects their enjoyment of them. This segues into Fitch’s topic, asking for a unique voice in the games press. A Life Well Wasted approaches games culture from a unique angle, and Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw (Zero Punctuation) has his unique review style, but they can’t think of anyone to compare to the greats of sports journalism.
Next, they compare disc-based and downloadable games (as opposed to the distribution methods themselves). Downloadable games are more varied, and easy to flip through but the biggest titles are still only available in boxes. In a related topic, they talk about making blockbuster releases like Red Dead Redemption episodic. It starts to turn into a conversation about the pace of their lives, and how shorter bites would be easier to digest.
To end, they talk about endings and how they can make or break a good game. Naturally there are a few spoilers here, but only small ones for Bioshock, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and God Hand. And Portal, but Fitch hasn’t played that and even he knows the ending by osmosis.
Covered topics: The review process, a unique voice for the games press, disk vs. download, episodic games, endings.
In this episode, The Geekbox‘s Andrew Fitch and A Life Well Wasted‘s Robert Ashley join Bitmob’s Greg Ford and Aaron Thomas. The group mulls over their picks for the best and worst game endings, the difficulties of finding a unique voice in game coverage, the differing consumer benefits of digital distribution and brick-and-mortar stores, the notion of dividing tent-pole releases in to smaller episodes, and the nuances of the review process.
Runtime – 1:13:50
Links → | web | mp3 | iTunes | Zune | rss |
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A classic Mob-Cast, awesome guests, funny and intelligent comments. Made me go back and re-listen to an old episode (#2) of "A Life Well Wasted", which in turn made me realize that getting into the video game industry is gonna take a lot more then just the 2 1/2 years of school I've already done.
P.S. I think that Robert.A is our version of a "great sports journalist". He just uses podcasts, clever edits and music to WOW us.
Nice use of the word "osmosis"
Hehe. Thanks.
Although I think someone in the podcast said it.