The Ludonist: Recent Episodes
The Ludonist
A single-topic podcast about a life lived through games, featuring Nick Cummings and Aaron Thayer from Silicon Sasquatch
Making open worlds fun isn't easy. It took one of us nearly four years to appreciate Skyrim's sense of wanderlust.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
Nick and Aaron riff on the highs and lows of E3 2015.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
E3 still isn’t officially underway for another day or so, but Bethesda sure wasn’t gonna wait around for other companies to break their news. The developer and publisher took to the stage last night to promote its upcoming games, including sequels to Dishonored and Doom.
But for many people, those games paled in importance when compared to Fallout 4 — the long-awaited sequel to Bethesda’s revival of the classic Interplay-developed computer RPG series. (Yeah, I know: a sequel to a sequel that revived a series that already had a sequel. Games have a convoluted history — bear with me.)
When it comes to Bethesda’s style of immersive, open-world, and wildly popular RPGs, Aaron and I come from very different schools of thought. Aaron’s the type who loves to get lost and forge his own story in the fantasy wilderness of The Elder Scrolls or the knowing satire of a nuked-out America.
To me, those things sound great on paper, but Bethesda’s quality can never keep pace with its ambition. But now Fallout 4 is coming. And you know what? It actually sounds like a really good idea whose time has come. Again. Let’s figure out why.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
Video game fans are a notoriously opinionated bunch. Picture the acerbic, humorless affect of The Simpsons' Comic Book Guy and toss in a lot of strong opinions about player progression systems and you've got the makings of a gaming Subreddit.
Aaron and I have a pretty diverse range of interests, so we keep up with news and conversations in all kinds of media. That's probably why we've both noticed the dry sarcasm and exclusionary discourse that defines gaming more than anything else in the mainstream media. But where does it come from? And what can we do about it?
In this episode, we study the sharp tone of gaming discussion and question where it comes from and why it's largely seen as normal. What is it about the relationship between PR and consumers that keeps this cycle of brash opinions and grudging purchases in constant motion?
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
In this episode we explore the concept of taste: Do we still choose the same games that we've always loved, or has the industry influenced what we play?
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
“What is dead may never die.”
So say the followers of the Drowned God, and frequently repeated by House Greyjoy of Game of Thrones fame. And, for the purposes of this episode, an apt phrase for the sudden resurgence of formerly powerful franchises like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Rock Band and Guitar Hero.
In this episode, we postulate and prognosticate about the reanimation of these formerly deceased franchises (brands that apparently never received the memo announcing their demise), and what such zombification says about the state of today’s games industry.
“What is dead may never die, but rises again, harder and stronger.” The publishers sure hope you’re right about that, Drowned God.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
Here at The Ludonist, we do our best to bring you a fresh, topical episode every week. We think we’ve got a pretty good system down that accounts for unexpected changes to a story, but there’s always the risk that a topic will become irrelevant within 24 hours of a recording.
What can I say? We sure didn’t expect that Valve would pull the plug on its brand-new paid mod support just days after launching it. And Skyrim’s thriving and well-established modding scene seemed like it had real promise for community investment!
But what can you do? That’s what happened, and we’ll just have to roll with it.
So here you have it: 35 minutes of discussion examining the flaws, pitfalls and promises of a brand-new means of monetization within the gaming world. Consider it a time capsule from a more-optimistic period when anything seemed possible.
Rest in peace, paid mods. You never got the chance you deserved.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
It’s been a couple months since the 2015 Game Developers Conference took place in San Francisco, and we’re just beginning to feel the repercussions of some major changes in game-development tech that were announced at the show. With engines simultaneously becoming faster and cheaper and virtual reality hitting the retail market in a big way later this year, it’s an exciting time to study the way games are made — and an even better time to get started making your own.
Nick and Aaron dissect the news from GDC and make some projections about what the broader impact on the established games industry will be. How does proprietary tech (like Bethesda’s id Tech, EA’s Frostbite Engine, etc.) stay competitive with the accessible and popular Unreal and Unity engines?
Nobody really knows, but it couldn’t hurt to make an educated guess.
Show Notes:
- 0:05:10 – Watch the Unreal Engine 4 apartment walkthrough demo video that we mentioned.
- 0:19:45 – Call of Duty’s engine is the IW Engine, which is built on id tech.
- 0:31:54 – Here’s too much information about Croc: Legend of the Gobbos.
- 0:34:05 – Student project from Pax 2013: Untitled. Here’s more information from the Lake Washington Institute of Tech, who did the demo.
Header: “Unreal Engine 4 – Demo” screenshot by Flickr user K putt. Used under the Creative Commons BY-NC 2.0 license.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.
In our first episode, we set out to do the impossible: define what the games industry looks like in 2015.
As it turns out, things aren’t as simple as they used to be. For example:
- What does “triple-A” game development mean?
- What constitutes an “indie game”? How do you distinguish between Frozen Synapse and Frog Fractions?
- Where do consumers and creators fit into this complicated ecosystem?
We hope you enjoy this first episode and encourage you to stick around — we’ll have new episodes every week. In the meantime, please let us know what you think.
Header: Laser Hello World by Micah Elizabeth Scott. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.
Intro/outro music: “Sunrise” by WJLP. Used under the Creative Commons CC-BY-NC 3.0 license.