On this week’s show, EZK and Andrew continue to Kick the Bucket List (12:38), discuss the ESA’s public E3 event being held down the street from the main show (31:46), try to figure out the chronology of events surrounding a Cleveland police officer donating his Pokemon collection to a boy whose own was stolen collection was recovered (40:19), and spend a ton of time debating super-important questions like: “Should ‘fun’ be the baseline descriptor for games?” “Should games be called ‘games’ or something else?” “How do you define ‘video game’?” (46:06).
1 CommentMonth: May 2016
Let’s talk about fun for a bit. When you think of “fun” you probably think of something that makes you feel positive, happy, makes you smile, and perhaps “twinkle” a bit. Fun is a good time. Perhaps we have fun with friends or family, usually when we play, joke around, or watch a movie. For the longest time, we have used “fun” as the base descriptor for how the player feels about a game they have played.
But is having “fun” the only way to play a game? Should it be? There are plenty of arguments in favor of making games fun, and generally those are the types of games that sell the most. However, there are plenty of experiences out there that games can provide, that one generally don’t describe as “fun”. So perhaps we should move past fun as the baseline expectation of games.
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Let me regale you with the story of a 9-year-old boy and his recent interaction with a Cleveland police officer.
(No, no one gets shot.)
Young Bryce was walking to his friend’s house with a binder full of Pokemon cards tucked under his arm when some loathsome bully snatched it from him and ran off.
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Looks like it is possible to get the lumbering behemoth to budge. Last week we wrote that Apple had rejected Liyla and the Shadows of War as a game. They wanted the game classified in the News or Reference sections. Yet, to anyone that actually took the 10-15 minutes to play through the game, it is clearly a game.
We now learn that Apple has relented and classified Liyla as a game.
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For a reporter, covering the goings-on at E3, the annual video game trade show put on by the Entertainment Software Association, is a massive pain in the ass exacerbated by the fact that a good chunk of the people you’re wading through to get to the person you’re supposed to interview or the game demo you’re supposed to attend are not a part of the industry and have no business being there in the first place.
Yes, every year gamers who are excited about what’s new in the gaming world but are not a part of the video game industry manage to weasel their way into the event and get in the way of those of us there to work (and, let’s be honest, fan boy and fan girl out at all the exciting gaming goodness).
For years, people have floated the idea of opening up one of the event’s days to the public. Well, this year, the ESA has taken a slightly different approach.
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In the most recent episode of my YouTube series Video Game Fashion Police, my sister and I critiqued the obnoxious outfit Link wears in the opening hours of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. She noted that Link has very boy band good looks and would be right at home with music group One Direction.
So, naturally I inserted him into a group shot a found via a Google search and the result is what you see on the left. And you know what, she was right! He does fit right in!
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Update: Apple has relented and classified Liyla as a game.
When is a game not a game? According to Apple, the answer is when said game has a political message. At least that is what it is telling Liyla and the Shadows of War developer Rasheed Abueideh when it rejected the game.
In a tweet from the official Liyla Twitter account, the developer expressed confusion over the rejection. “Unfortunately Apple rejected the game as a game,they say its not game,it has a political statement.” They instead suggested that Rasheed reclassify his game as “news” or “reference”. This is a confusing but sadly not uncommon move from Apple.
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Other than directors Anthony and Joseph Russo still somehow failing to comprehend the very simple fact that shaking the camera during action scenes does nothing to increase audiences’ enjoyment and in fact makes the action more difficult to follow and thereby frustrating to watch, I rather enjoyed Marvel’s latest superhero film, Captain America: Civil War.
But I’m a nit picky pain in the posterior so I’m going to regale you with what I consider the biggest flaw in the film and why I’m a goofy hypocrite for thinking so.
7 CommentsMolehill Mountain.
That’s the name we’re trying out for the podcast. So far the reaction has been positive but please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below.
On this week’s show, EZK and Andrew discuss Nintendo’s continued nonsensical localization changes to Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE (14:11), the Pokemon business model and which Sun and Moon starter is best Pony (31:38), Microsoft back peddling its Universal Windows Platform announcement (47:52), the #BlackPantherSoLIT hashtag and what the heck “LIT” means, and properties like Monster Musume and The Purge that don’t live up to the full potential of their premise (1:15:55).
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