Moving Pixels Podcast

The second episode of The Walking Dead, "Starved for Help", has finally arrived, and we could hardly wait to sink our teeth into more of the innovations that Telltale has brought to the adventure genre.

If you are at all interested in the creative process, in what makes creators tick, and how they deal with their creation once it is out there, you should see Indie Game: The Movie.   Of course, our Moving Pixels podcasters are interested in video games, but this week we discuss why Indie Game: The Movie should probably be seen by anyone interested in the creative arts.

We often discuss the complex economic systems generated by multiplayer games, in which players buy, sell, and trade with one another. So why simulate an economy in a single player game?   This episode we discuss the economies of single player games, how they motivate action, how they provide players additional goals, and how they can just spiral out of control, simulating nothing that we can recognize from real life economics.

Following the success of Double Fine's kickstarter for their adventure game, interest in what the web site can do for video game development has grown.   A host of potential games, some classic remakes and promised sequels along with new independent projects, are looking at Kickstarter as a viable new way to finance gaming projects. This week we consider the influence of crowd sourcing on game development.   And, of course, since our own Rick Dakan has been working on a game of his own that will in part be funded by a kickstarter, Rick has some direct insights of his own on how crowd sourcing works.

After a long hiatus, Max Payne is back. The voice of dirty neonoir is similar, but not all of the oft celebrated gameplay is.   This episode we consider Max's transition from the darkened streets of New York to the sun splashed swanky penthouses and seamy favelas of Brazil. We consider how Max Payne 3 may or may not carry on the themes of loss and redemption of the previous episodes and whether or not a cover-based system is a benefit to a more modern version of the franchise.

This week the Moving Pixels podcast crew takes a look at the latest adaptation of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead.   While the familiar trappings of a zombie-filled setting might be at risk of oversaturating the American media landscape, Telltale's latest episodic adventure game proves this video game genre might not quite as dead as some have pronounced it to be.

At the suggestion of a listener, Andrew Grech, Nick and I decided to revisit (for the first time for both of us) the cult classic FPS, No One Lives Forever.   The game has a great reputation for its clever parody of spy thrillers and for its forward thinking game design. We decided to put that reputation to the test and see if No One Lives Forever has anything to offer gamers over a decade after its initial release.

The Witcher 2's release on console seemed an appropriate enough reason for the Moving Pixels podcast crew to have a look at last year's well regarded PC RPG.   To call the The Witcher 2 ambitious is an understatement, as it is a game that approaches the question of how much control the player has in crafting the story by offering expansive branching paths rarely seen before in games. We are of differing opinions regarding the success that CDProjekt has had in doing this, though, and in their presentation of the politics and pathos in the game's narrative.

As an escapist medium, video games offer an experience that other mediums do not. You can imagine being Luke Skywalker or Spider-Man or any one of countless super humanly powerful or charming or interesting individuals from the movies or books or comics. However, you can only play witness to their heroic acts.   Video games allow you to be these people, though, not just thrill to their amazing feats from afar. What happens, though, when those people in video games are people that we would never want to be?

Fez is an amazing phenomenon, generating a unique community that both works together to solve its many perspective driven puzzles but also shares in its appreciation of secrecy with its and tehir desire to maintain the mystery of the game. Keeping hush hush on anything in the Internet Age is a rather unlikely feat, but Fez enthusiasts seem committed to the cause.   This week we discuss that community, the game itself, and, well, spoil a few of those mysteries. So, listeners, be warned (though, for a change, we actually announce when the spoiler section is coming up in deference to those committed to encouraging players to experience how Fez's mysteries unravel from your own perspective).

This week Nick and I are joined by Jorge Albor and Scott Juster of the Experience Points podcast to discuss how video games fare as live action properties.   Some of these films are homages, some are there to support their franchise, some are both. Most are better than what we have seen on the big screen.

We're all pretty enamored with the simple mechanics and smart reversal of the tower defense genre that serve as the foundations of Anomaly: Warzone Earth.   We decided to attack a discussion of the game from a variety of angles by choosing to play it across platforms in order to see how the game fares as it shifts from bigger to smaller screens.

This week, the Moving Pixels podcast considers their personal picks for the top five arcade games of all time.   In doing so, we look back to the arcade and the various spaces that game cabinets existed to occupy our time and extract our quarters. What is the place of the arcade machine in the history of a gamer culture, a culture that has largely moved towards home consoles rather than remained gaming in public spaces?

Part parody, part loving homage to the Silver Age of comic books, Freedom Force was the best superhero video game that we played before the advent of Arkham. This episode, the Moving Pixels podcast turns back the clock to revisit a title by Irrational Games that really holds up despite its age.

Having spent last week discussing the manner in which our personal playthoughs have affected our sense of Mass Effect on the whole through the series's seemingly consequential storytelling, this week we move on to a discussion of Mass Effect 3 more specifically.   We begin at the end by discussing the controversy surrounding the game's ending and the notion of requesting (or demanding) that some changes might be in order to a game in which player choice has always seemed to be of some importance to the developer. However, we also get into the game as a whole, considering some of the other moments that mattered to us in the trilogy's concluding 40 hours.

Last week our podcast crew had all only gotten started playing through Mass Effect 3, so the three of us got together to discuss our initial impressions of the game as well as how we have played through the trilogy.   So, this week's podcast concerns our sense of the significance of how the ability to carry over story data from one game to the next affects the way we play the game and how much control we assert over getting "our" Mass Effect experience just right.   Never fear, though, next week we will get into the full game, including the controversy surrounding its endings. So, stay tuned for that.   In the meantime, we submit for your consideration: The Mass Effect Effect.

Stoic lone gunmen? Check.   Delicate and sensitive female healer? Check.   Rogue with a heart of gold? Check.   Video games, like most media, draw on some fairly stock types to build their characters. However, since so much of games' plots and characterization just feel tacked on in spots, sometimes these stock types remain just that-never given the opportunity to grow as characters that we can relate to or representing ideas that we might, likewise, relate to.   Archetypal characters and stereotypical ones populate games, and it may be a fine line that developers walk between characters that personify an idea and characters that are merely simplistic placeholders for more legitimately developed ideas.

Theology, horror, and an old school console aesthetic combine in Edmund McMillen and Florian Himsl's The Binding of Isaac.   Nick Dinicola and G. Christopher Williams return from Isaac's basement with stories to tell and more than one observation about this troubling, provocative, and madly additictive roguelike shooter.

This week the Moving Pixels podcast is joined by former Digital Cowboy and current host of the Digital Gonzo podcast Alex Shaw to discuss the changing face of the gamer.   When a game full of dungeons and dragons can sell to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars on release (yes, we're looking at you, Skyrim), it seems that what was once perceived as a hobby for freaks and geeks may "belong" to a slightly broader slice of the general culture than it used to. We consider generational shifts in attitudes towards gamers, the advent of social gaming, and the inclusivity and exclusivity that gaming as a past time may or may not have come to represent as a cultural practice as we have moved into the twenty-first century.

While those of us who write in the Multimedia section focus a good deal of our time on video games, quite a number of us also have a certain fondness for games of a non-digital sort.   Rick Dakan, Jorge Albor, and myself got together a few weekends ago to discuss our boardgaming habits, the difference between the Eurogame and Ameritrash (sorry, Rick), and how being a computer gamer might relate to being a board gamer.