CAGcast #259: Buddhists Do It Cheaper

I've gotten sucked into the collect-the-all aspect of Skylanders too, but they need to figure out a way to give achievements for the bonus levels on the store-bought stages. Then the obsession will be complete.
The Portal of Power technology is impressive; I expected a delay between changing figures and the reaction in-game, but there is none. It is disappointing that the characters aren't referred to with their names, only as "skylander". And I've not heard any of them talk, except the moment they're placed on the portal. Why voice one line, but nothing else?

I'm excited and afraid that there is no reason why Activision can't team up with Heroclix to use this technology for the next Marvel Ultimate Alliance game.
 
Wombat is correct in criticizing what passes for journalism in gaming. The reason that embargoes exist is because the game industry has the press scared into doing what they want, when they want. Somehow movie and music criticism is possible without embargoes, perhaps because the media wields the power by providing coverage at their discretion. Leaks happen all the time, sourced by the observant public and people who work in the industry. The same thing would happen in the games industry and publishers would be eager to try to woo games press outlets in order to get the spin they want. A lot of it comes down to the games press abandoning all their power in order to get early and/or free access to final products. It's a compromising position to accept freebies (games, travel, booze and food) and there is a reason why film and music critics who avail themselves of the junkets and swag bags are looked down upon by critics and consumers who value independence and credibility.
 
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Regarding the Battlefield discussion:

Cheapy mentioned that the PC visuals put the consoles to shame. Shipwreck replied, "Yeah, but you're really gonna want to play this on your TV."

I just want to point out: PCs have HDMI ports. Yeah, I agree, sitting at a desk to play a game doesn't sound like fun. Good thing I don't do that, even though my preferences lean towards PC. The experience of playing Batman on PC paired with a TV and a 360 controller is indistinguishable from playing it on an actual 360 (aside from additional visual effects, higher frame rate, and faster load times).

Yes, I realize that Shipwreck was referring specifically to Cheapy's situation, which doesn't involve a computer hooked up to his TV. I'm just tired of hearing the "Yeah, but you want your COUCH" / "Yeahhh, you're right." conversation when some hot new game didn't just port the console textures to PC. I don't mean that you guys do it all the time, it's not just the CAGcast.
 
I love the podcasts, but I tried Audible and the program won't even recognize iTunes so I could put it on my phone. So I go to cancel, and you have to call to cancel. That's BS.
 
What turned me off about Battlefield 3 was that it's trying too hard to be like Modern Warfare. It looks as if they scrapped the humor and laid back feel that in was Bad Company and are taking it way too seriously. One of the reason I liked Battlefield is because it wasn't Modern Warfare and after playing the beta, I lost what little interest I had in the title.
 
[quote name='BobTheGamer']I love the podcasts, but I tried Audible and the program won't even recognize iTunes so I could put it on my phone. So I go to cancel, and you have to call to cancel. That's BS.[/QUOTE]

I was able to listen on my ipod, it should appear in the books section of your itunes. You can just drag file into your iTunes from your desktop as well. Also I was able to cancel my trial from the website without an issue. I am not sure why you had these issues.
 
[quote name='jkanownik']This article was painful to read. Pulling together bits and pieces that make sense on their own and combining them with comments that clearly show you have no idea what you're talking about does not make you a journalist. It makes you a guy who suckered 1up into paying you for an incoherent and pointless article.[/QUOTE]

Since you're obviously an expert in both economic theory and journalism, please give some specific examples to back up your claims.
 
[quote name='Mayday']Your discussion on Buddhism infuriated me to the point I actually had to switch the show of. I've been studying eastern religion and practising Zen Buddhism for about ten years and not only has it changed my life, it's transformed me into a better person. It gave me a better perception on life and the people around me. After my two year retreat in Sōtō I returned to the UK a new person. If you're going to ridicule something, do it with reason not just because it's different and foreign to you.[/QUOTE]

Wow, dude relax, meditate or something. I listened, and didn't hear them ridicule anything except themselves. Learn to laugh at things a little more.

It is what it is.

Also on BF3, I play it on PC and haven't had a problem on any server since release. I think all the talk is over blown. Haven't touched the single player, will sometime when i'm completely bored or my internet connection is fried.
Good show guys, keep them coming.
 
[quote name='VonWolfman']Wow, dude relax, meditate or something. I listened, and didn't hear them ridicule anything except themselves. Learn to laugh at things a little more.

It is what it is.

Also on BF3, I play it on PC and haven't had a problem on any server since release. I think all the talk is over blown. Haven't touched the single player, will sometime when i'm completely bored or my internet connection is fried.
Good show guys, keep them coming.[/QUOTE]

I wasn't offended by the discussion, but to play devil's advocate, I could see why Cheapy's comment about Buddhism being a "waste of time" for Tai would make some people uncomfortable. He's made similar comments about Judaism, though, so yeah.

Anyway, I hope next week's CAGcast doesn't upset people. In the words of Cole Phelps, "friends who want to stay friends don't discuss politics or religion."
 
I think rather than saying humor is subjective a better analogy of Wombat's jokes are if you throw enough shit at a wall some of of it is going to stick. But I'm with Cheapy, I just ignore Wombat's bad jokes and listen to the ones that stick.

As far as the Wii U bombing, I remember everyone (and by everyone I mean at least me) saying the Wii would fail...
 
Loved this weeks show, but I'm scared of skylanders... I have avoided them so far... If there is a sale I might have to buy a small stock of them though...maybe
 
Wombat, the only problem with your idea of no embargoes is that the best reviews/articles will come out after a game's release. Writers would be awarded for being the fastest, not the most thoughtful or well-written.
 
Great episode! Despite you guys not agreeing with Wombat about embargoes I'm glad someone had an opposing view so you guys could have a nice discussion. Skylanders sound like such a money pit...I think Shipwreck saved Wombat's life by not sending it heh
 
Any notion of embargoes creating a fair environment gets tossed right out the window as soon as a site negotiates an early post in return for a good review.

Embargoes support a rotten and corrupt system.
 
It's obviously why Cheapy's son became a Buddhist, everyone who is Japanese encouraged him to because they think Cheapy is the reincarnation of Buddha. ;-) All joking aside Cheapy, you do look a lot like the Buddha of those gold statues except you're not gold or fat.
As for religious school shouldn't the kid make up the mind for themselves? If I ever have a kid you better know that I will tell my kid I believe this, not that it's necessarily true. If the mother or my spouse tries to tell the kid this is truth I will pitch a shitfit. That's called indoctrination.
No I'm not an Atheist either. I consider myself a Daoist more then anything because I believe it allows Science to fit into said belief. That being said, if I was telling my son or daughter about it I'd say this is what I believe and why not "This is the truth".
Kid's brains get scrambled enough with that early on then they have to unscramble that whole mess when they get older. I don't want that happening to a kid I have.
 
Great show as always. I just wanted to weigh in on a couple things.

I play Battlefield 3 on the PC and it's amazing. I guess it's the way it's always been and since we're going on around year 6 since the launch of the xbox it really sucks that a new console hasn't been released that can keep up with top end PCs but I guess it makes great business sense for Microsoft and Sony to keep their consoles around longer. Looking back though, the Xbox 360 was released the same year that Battlefield 2 was. Go look back at that and compare it to BF3 and see what developers are doing with 6 year old hardware. It's really amazing.

Also, I was at Blizzcon. Just wanted to correct the bit on the Cannibal Corpse thing. The opening band for the closing ceremonies was none other than the Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftains. They are a heavy metal band made up of Blizzard employees including their own CEO Mike Morhaime who plays bass. They're pretty popular (I guess) among the wow crowd, but it was probably the worst 40 minutes of the weekend including the appearance by the Cannibal Corpse guy who plays wow. He only "sang" in one song... and it was terrible, unless you're into that kind of thing. The video was also ridiculous. They were followed up by Foo Fighters who put on a great show. 2010 brought Tenacious D and 2009 saw Ozzy Osbourne. Blizzard knows how to put on a good show, just the Cannibal Corpse/L80ETC bit was stupid and unnecessary though it was cool to see Mike Morhaime up on stage rocking it for the crowd. To Blizzard fanboys, he is their Steve Jobs.

tl;dr Great Show. BF3 is amazing on PC. BF2 was released the same year as the Xbox 360. Foo Fighters was the headlining act at Blizzcon... not Cannibal Corpse.
 
Ship,

If you promised to give Wombat Skylanders to review and then kept it for yourself, you should buy it for Wombat despite him saying "no". That would be the right thing to do. He's just being nice by saying he doesn't want you to buy it.
 
If the removal of embargoes would reward quickness over quality, I don't think it would be long before the cream would rise to the top and the best, most widely read writers would be the ones who could produce quality reviews quickly. Of course, this is all an extension of economic theory and it may end up being a miserable extension of unchecked capitalism.

Regardless of embargoes, I don't care how quickly a review goes up. Though I like for reviews to arrive quickly, as a CAG, I am not necessarily quick to spend my money or my time. In this day and age, we have access to so much media and we often get lengthy playable demos. I don't really need reviews to guide me most times anymore, but it's nice to be able to read about the potential unforeseen failings of a game. That's the sort of information worth waiting for.
 
Cheapy if you want investigative journalism, you should read Patrick Klepek's articles on Giant Bomb. He writes some good stuff.
 
Is ship getting Skyrim for review? If so, I think he should hand it over to wombat in lieu of the skylanders shenanigans.

Besides, even though shipwrecks reviews are great, I'd rather read wombats opinion on this one.
 
[quote name='Dr Killotron']Is ship getting Skyrim for review? If so, I think he should hand it over to wombat in lieu of the skylanders shenanigans.

Besides, even though shipwrecks reviews are great, I'd rather read wombats opinion on this one.[/QUOTE]

Skyrim is one game I would dread reviewing. I would also like to hear Wombat's opinion on it, but to have the task of completing the game as fast as possible for review purposes would ruin the game for me.
 
[quote name='Curufinwe']Since you're obviously an expert in both economic theory and journalism, please give some specific examples to back up your claims.[/QUOTE]

Journalism is meant to inform the intended audience. I'm not sure what anyone is learning from that article that ends with:

Believe it or not, when it comes to determining value, you're always right... and so is the person who says you're wrong.
Click to expand...


The article grossly misrepresents the LTV value of the 3DS by using the component price. The author should have gone back to the professor for help on developing a real LTV value. Developing a meaningful LTV value isn't easy because it was developed long ago and hasn't been used much since it was championed by Marx in the 1800's. The original theories were applied against a significant simpler economy than that of today.

The middle of the article is a convoluted mess. The author tried to introduce too many ideas and didn't do any of them justice. For example opportunity cost is only relevant if space or money are significant limiting factors on future purchases. They reached too far by trying to cover both hardware and software in a single article of that size.

I would also contend that for the article to really deliver on it's title of "Supply and Demand: Behind the Scenes of Retail Pricing", it should have also investigated the impact of pricing on supply. The author implies that by simply not paying full price you can get the same product for a lower price. It's important to note that a price below the producers expectations will most likely lower quality goods in the future and deters future investment.
 
I learned something from the show, I did not know you cannot be Jewish if your mother was not Jewish.
 
Cheapy: Not sure if this has been mentioned yet but Tom Bissel wrote a great book titled "Extra Lives - Why Video Games Matter." If you enjoyed his Grantland review, i am sure you will enjoy his book.
 
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I never comment but need to weigh in on the embargos discussion.

It's not exactly the same, but I'm a producer for a daytime talk show and have been a journalist for years. When the show first started, we spent a lot of time looking for guests. Now that the show has been going for awhile, we are in a position to turn down PR companies who want their people on our show. We control what goes on TV, not the PR companies. If they want to control it like that, they can start their own TV network.

That's what would happen relatively quickly if embargos on screenshots and announcements went away. It's a pipe dream but if all the big companies said "if you invite us to something, we're talking about it," it wouldn't take long for things to change. Activision, EA and the rest aren't going to depend on microscopic websites run on the weekends by Gamestop employees for long, even if they agree to their terms. And that stuff always leaks anyway, so why not level the playing field? Wombat was dead-on correct.

I understand them for review copies, as those take some time to play. But a well-written review a week after release will always trump one out the first day.

Also, lately I've noticed that CheapyD seems to want to rush when a good topic of discussion comes up on the show. You don't have to get to everything on the outline every single show if you have something better. If I were in your position, I'd welcome something that was actually interesting and topical. You blew past the Battlefield 1943 on PS3 thing too. That's a situation where a game company actually lied to the consumers and sold them a game without promised content. That's a huge deal and warranted more discussion.
 
Just now listening but the server issues aren't as bad as you've said. They were FUBAR starting when stores opened on Tuesday and there were a couple of 1-3 hour outages during primetime during the week, but I've been able to put 13 hours of MP in over the course of the last 4 nights.

Bottom line if you like BFBC 2 MP on console, then you'll love this game. The "beta" has to be the worst one ever because it was such early code it should never have been shown outside of the press given how terrible it was.
 
I rarely post, but I felt that after listening to the latest show, I had to say something and at the same time admit that I'm becoming more and more of a wombat fan.

Shipwreck pulled a bitch move on wombat by keeping that skylanders game --plain and simple. If wombat had initially asked to review it, it's only right that he reviews it, especially after Shipwreck had specifically stated that he didn't want anything to do with that game. Shipwreck's bitch move continued by later asking Wombat if he wanted him (ship) to buy the game for him (wombat)....I mean come on -- you don't "ask" you just buy the game and send it to him.. You DON'T ASK, it's a rule.. It's written somewhere in the How to be Human book. It was a bitch move on top of another, 2x times the bitch. This seriously made Shipwreck seem like he is getting review greedy.

I know Wombat will probably say that it didn't bother him, but I've been listening to the show for years now and I can easily tell when any of you guys are in rare form.

I later felt proud to be a Wombat listener when he pulled Shipwreck's "embargo" card and had Shipwreck with nothing to say other than "you are in marketing, you should know this" because Ship didn't have a strait answer to the embargo points Wombat was making.

I am proud of you, wombat. You were in rare form this time around -- like a ghetto Jew, if you will...but I liked it. It could have been a mixture of baby crying and the fact that Ship pulled a bitch move on top of a bitch move, but in the end, it worked! I look forward to listening to your wisdom next week, wombat!


bitchx2 = Ginger

No hard feelings, Ship!
 
My favorite part of the embargoes argument was the part where Cheapy said he was bored and mercy-killed it.
 
[quote name='desz']I rarely post, but I felt that after listening to the latest show, I had to say something and at the same time admit that I'm becoming more and more of a wombat fan.

Shipwreck pulled a bitch move on wombat by keeping that skylanders game --plain and simple. If wombat had initially asked to review it, it's only right that he reviews it, especially after Shipwreck had specifically stated that he didn't want anything to do with that game. Shipwreck's bitch move continued by later asking Wombat if he wanted him (ship) to buy the game for him (wombat)....I mean come on -- you don't "ask" you just buy the game and send it to him.. You DON'T ASK, it's a rule.. It's written somewhere in the How to be Human book. It was a bitch move on top of another, 2x times the bitch. This seriously made Shipwreck seem like he is getting review greedy.

I know Wombat will probably say that it didn't bother him, but I've been listening to the show for years now and I can easily tell when any of you guys are in rare form.

I later felt proud to be a Wombat listener when he pulled Shipwreck's "embargo" card and had Shipwreck with nothing to say other than "you are in marketing, you should know this" because Ship didn't have a strait answer to the embargo points Wombat was making.

I am proud of you, wombat. You were in rare form this time around -- like a ghetto Jew, if you will...but I liked it. It could have been a mixture of baby crying and the fact that Ship pulled a bitch move on top of a bitch move, but in the end, it worked! I look forward to listening to your wisdom next week, wombat!


bitchx2 = Ginger

No hard feelings, Ship![/QUOTE]

You are a bitch and an idiot, sir.

No hard feelings!
 
fuck you Wombat. Your talk about buddhism is disrespectful. If I said the same thing about jews, you would be in an uproar.
 
[quote name='GameHobo']fuck you Wombat. Your talk about buddhism is disrespectful. If I said the same thing about jews, you would be in an uproar.[/QUOTE]


uhh they make fun of Jewish people more than any other religion on this show.
 
I hope Wombat gets some sleep and that his kid is feeling better before the next show. He was so tired that trying to follow his argument on embargoes was odd, at times he shifted the nature of the argument and I'm pretty sure at one point was actually arguing against a point that he brought up only minutes before.
 
Why do these feedback threads always turn into X hates Y, Y hates Z, Z hates X & Y? I've listened to the CAGcasts off and on for years and it just sounds like three guys talking about games and life to me.

Then again, at my job 99.9% of the interaction I have with co-workers is just over the phone and not face to face, so maybe I have learned to not look for hidden meaning in every sentence.
 
Great show, I see your point wombat. I believe there should be a editori that just says screw embargo, just investigate and release the info. Will you guys cover GTA5 next episode, and cheapy how come you rarely cover OS X compatible games?
 
Great show guys. Just wanted to add to your embargo discussion by saying I have a slit decision. I agree with Cheapy and Shipwreck for embargoing game reviews. Reviews that come out first get a lot more traffic than those that come out later. This might lead to reviewers playing the game on easy or not give the multiplayer enough playing time so they can be the first to post. And to counter Wombat's point about filtering reviewers with the best reviewers rising to the top, how many people really read the entire review? I think most just look at the review score and move on or maybe read the last paragraph.

I do agree with Wombat about how embargos are useless when it comes to any previews or reveal information well before the game comes out. Game journalists do not need to write a 5000 word article to explain to me what new characters are in the new version of Marvel vs Capcom. While people are searching metacritic a week before the release of a game they want, they are not searching Kotaku everyday months before the game comes out for some new reveal about it.
 
We forget one thing embargoes also let some companies pay extra to get exclusive info which can sell copies of their magazines and get people to come to their websites which creates ad revenue.

With the Ezio reveal it could have been planed that GamePro was going to break the news which would have cause a increase in sales (not even sure if they have a Mag any more.) and site hits, but when it gets leaked out, now no one cares about going to them for the info anymore.
 
[quote name='GameHobo']Can you get rid of wombat? The show is better with just cheapy and Ship.[/QUOTE]

You've got to be kidding. He's the most hilarious. Cheapy leads the show, Wombat is the humor, and Shipwreck actually plays the games.
 
Wombat is a big fat douche. His jokes are weak sauce, his higher than thou attitude sucks. Hell even Cheapy D was getting tired of his bullshit last CagCast.
 
we should start a petition to get wombat off the show, everyone when you comment at the end of your comment type

#wombatmustdie
 
Wombat is the heart and soul of the show. He brings most of the humor. It just wouldn't be the same without him. No offense to Cheapy and Shipwreck, but I would stop listening if Wombat leaves.
 
Cheapy, you are really limiting yourself with multi-platform titles if you have a hang up buying versions that are "inferior." Get a PC and hook it up to that mammoth TV!

I do understand your point and can relate to the disappointment of playing a game at less than full specs. However, the true enjoyment of the game can still be had (in 1080P no less) on our current consoles! If it is not one of your most anticipated games of the season, then you don't need to get the shiniest copy and play it on full everything.
 
[quote name='Mayday']Your discussion on Buddhism infuriated me to the point I actually had to switch the show of. I've been studying eastern religion and practising Zen Buddhism for about ten years and not only has it changed my life, it's transformed me into a better person. It gave me a better perception on life and the people around me. After my two year retreat in Sōtō I returned to the UK a new person. If you're going to ridicule something, do it with reason not just because it's different and foreign to you.[/QUOTE]

It's comedy, deal with it.
 
[quote name='chaseamazon']we should start a petition to get wombat off the show, everyone when you comment at the end of your comment type

#wombatmustdie[/QUOTE]

Because as we all know, online petitions solve everything. :roll:
 
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