PCGP Episode 73
The team reports back from GDC with thoughts on Playstation Home, the Maple Story MMO, Games for Windows, Live for Windows, Piracy, and Vista’s lackluster launch; “Australian Gamepro on the take” rumor debunked; Q&A and playlists!
46 Responses to “PCGP Episode 73”
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March 12th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
1st
March 12th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
L0Lz0R!!!!! RFMLAO!!11!!! etc.
March 12th, 2007 at 11:33 pm
awsome !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11
March 13th, 2007 at 12:09 am
Did Dan just say “gay” in reaction to the GDC being held in San Fran? Is that supposed to be a joke or is he referring to the news being negative.
Glad to see the Vede back in action. Fishbowl was awesome.
I’m surprised not many of you have heard of Maple Story, in the end its not really a game its more of a Sims type thing. not worth covering in the mag.
I agree, Windows for gaming is bs. All I’ve Seen is marketing.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:10 am
I seem to remember an issue a few years ago where everyone there went out and dug Hammy up and there was nothing in his tin, going to visit his grave could unleash a zombie hamster horde on the PCG crew.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Gay? No, I did not say gay. I think I said “yay!”
March 13th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Oh yes… another podcast FTW!
March 13th, 2007 at 1:17 am
in my country,singapore, maplestory is quite big for 9-14 year olds my mom went to buy 5 $10 cards for my cousin for his b’day and heard from the store clerk that people would come in and buy hundreds of dollars worth of cards at one time!!! i remembered when all my friends played it but it passes after 1 or 2 years,then again there are still some who play and get ‘married” online , it also has a huge “gold farming” and account leveling up community with ppl selling accounts on ebay and stuff for hundreds of dollars
March 13th, 2007 at 2:56 am
Black Fathom Deep Dan! Keep playing!
March 13th, 2007 at 7:35 am
WOOOOOOT
PCGPODCAST for PRESIDENT
March 13th, 2007 at 8:28 am
That was a nice podcast, it was good to hear about korea since i live here, and yea it is very different compared to the usa in that gaming is just a thing that almost everyone does, you can go to pc rooms, and you will see all ages from 9-70 year olds playing games, mostly starcraft, warcraft 3 and WoW. but many many other games are played and its a blast to live here. email me if u want more information!
March 13th, 2007 at 9:23 am
Big panties eh? Maybe something with a leopard print…
As always great podcast, really enjoyed it.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:38 am
I’m a huge adventure game fan and during the time Greg was incharge with his iron fist, there were no adventure games worth an editors choice award. in fact most of then didn’t deserve greater than 30%. It was a really crappy time for adventure games. Rather unfair to blame him or his reviewers. Its only recently with Sam n Max episodes and Runaway 2 have we finally started getting some good adventure games again.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:48 am
The Maple Story site works on my Firefox browser. I have version 2.0.0.2.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
On piracy. I won’t go into a long spiel. Especially because some people (stays quiet) will never understand my viewpoint unless their others shoes. But today 75% of games are just crap. To short, to boring…etc.
As for the topic of stopping piracy by doing things like Steam. Well that failed a long time ago. I use Steam and so many people online have fake accounts its ridiculous. Heck I even know sites where you can play Steam games that are “exclusives”. Having something like Steam doesn’t matter, for every step developers take the pirates will be end up getting past it.
Bethseda (hope thats right) is a good example. When they had you download extra stuff (of course paying for it) it ended up being on the net for free and it didn’t take much effort top find it.
I am not for piracy but I think developers need to stop waisting money on a losing battle. Its just like trying to stop people from “recording” movies or copying them. Or stopping people from putting out viruses or hacking pcs. It will never end, people will always find a way. You just learn to live with it. The only thing that can stop piracy in any form is to monitor PCs 24/7 for illegal items. And we all want our privacy Other then that.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Assassin X: This is the link that requires IE.
March 13th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Well I’m Russian and Grihsa is the casual version (a nickname if you will) of Gregori
March 13th, 2007 at 1:29 pm
Kill all sites that only works on IE!!!!!
March 13th, 2007 at 1:38 pm
viva la firefox?
March 13th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
No wonder. I was going here:
http://www.maplestory.com/
It appears to be the same thing. Whats the difference then? Both sites are the same game. Is one different then another?
March 13th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
WOOT WOOT
Jeremy Williams
Dan Morris
President 08
March 13th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
I do the odd stint of part time teaching here in korea. A few days ago I taught a 14yo kid English for an hour. One of the questions in the text book was ‘talk about a lesson you have learned in life”.
He answered that he has learned not to trust his friends with his password because they agreed to team up in the game ‘Maple Story’ in order to build up their shared character but instead the friend stole all his items.
He he, the new generations version of keeping family/friends and buisiness seperate I think.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:06 pm
Kristen, http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030416/warren_spector.jpg
I have friends who play MapleStory. Tried it, didn’t like it, stopped. As I’ve always said, The punishment you get for playing MapleStory is playing MapleStory.
It’s a sidescroller MMO, which is a big reason, I think, of why anybody plays it. It has ridiculously low system specs. Basically if you can run Jazz Jackrabbit and have dial-up, you can play the game.
The “Cash Shop” which is the pay2play part doesn’t make you much better at the game, the majority of the items just make you look cooler (so you can look uber l33t and score MapleWimminz), sort of like a new skin on a weapon: it still does the same damage, just looks cool. There are items you can buy that will, say, increase the experience you get for each monster you kill, for maybe 1-3 hours. There’s also a “Gachapon” (or Hackapr0n as I’ve labeled it) machine, wherein you buy tickets for real money which when you put them into the Gachapon machine give you an item, in game, that is worth some in game currency. Basically you’re buying mesos (which are the in game currency, like WoW has gold) from Nexon.
The game itself isn’t like Second Life, it’s not just a social mixer like that. Calling MS a social game would be like calling WoW a social game. There are those who play the game to meet people, but I’d say that the majority of people are there to play and level up.
The thing about MS is that there’s no end game. The level cap is 250 I think, so nobody ever really hits a wall like you do in WoW where you run the same dungeons over and over ad nauseum. Every so often a patch comes out and adds a new area to the game, usually with an accompanying theme. The reason Nexon can add new areas so easily is that the game is 2d. Mapping would then, I guess, boil down to glorified photo shopping.
The number of subscribers being so high, is probably as Greg said, inactive accounts. Since it’s free to have an account, there’s no reason to delete your inactive ones. Mine is still there. Also, since the system specs are so eye-rapingly low, people in China, Korea and Thailand can play on their old PCs.
And that’s more than you need to know about MapleStory.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Internet Explorer for the win.
March 13th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
Any impressions on the final version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. yet? It went gold last week and was hoping you’d talk about it in today’s podcast. Maybe on Thursday? It sounds so promising and the early previews have been good outside of some performance issues here and there.
March 13th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Oh my God! MAPLE STORY IS INVADING EVERYWHERE.
In the words of Uriel Septim VII,
“Go forth, and close shut the jaws of… MAPLE STORY!!!”
March 13th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Like Rivalz said, Gregori is a Russian name. My Russian teacher in HS was named Gregori, and his son was named Mikhail (hey, wait a minute… my name is Mikhail!).
Gregori was shortened to Grihsa, and Mikhail was shortened to Misha (at least phonetically :p). I go by Mik, personally.
Just FYI.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Oh, and I have seen a Games for Windows gaming Kiosk in an upscale mall’s EB Games/Gamestop here in Spokane, WA. If I go down there today/tommorow, I’ll get a picture so I can post it somewhere near here.
March 13th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
And lastly:
Had the podcast turned up pretty loud on the computer here….
I was cleaning in the other room.
And guess what? Their crackly now when I play anything. “From the FISHBOWL!” By Dan Stapleton just blew one of my speakers.
…
Ass. Wheres the Dinosaur DJ Mic picture when you need it.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
I don’t know about everybody else, but I was glad Greg was venting about how Bill Gates was proclaiming the PC was its number one console and completely having Microsoft do the opposite. “Complete BS” comes to my mind every time I hear Gates’ empty promise. We’re still waiting a ridiculously long time getting the PC versions of the 360 games and we still don’t have any good reason to get Vista yet in my opinion. Even if Halo 2 was out I would’ve considered getting Vista. I’ve noticed my local Gamestop has a Games for Windows booth with a PC setup for people to play on, but it wasn’t turned on. It was sitting there with a plastic bag covering it gathering dust.
Get well soon DJ
March 14th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Ah, so that’s why. I thought only my issue got misprinted and shown Infernal preview twice
March 14th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
I don’t really care about Vista. XP runs fine for me and hardly ever crashes. I’m sure Vista will give me some cool features when i eventually upgrade but i have more trepedation than anticipation about it. Anytime Microsoft upgrades anything it just gets bloated with more avenues of cash flow that goes from the user to them. It seems like their whole design ethic is centered around that these days rather than making a great product.
Man oh man i heard Microsoft is gonna charge fifty bucks to use live on the pc. As many of us suspected, this ‘Games for Windows’ bull is just a way for MS to make in inroad into what has been an open system for decads. They want to sew up as much of it as they can so that we just have to pay a toll for every darn thing we do.
This ‘charge em every which way you can’ business model is starting to really jack me off. The console model is totally ‘payment, payment’ payment’ oriented. I don’t want the PC going the same way. I wanna pay for my pc, pay for my OS and pay for my game and pay for my cable connecton and that is the end of that. After that i wannna enjoy them for as long as i like without being reamed for more and more payments.
Sure i can choose not to play 360 players but how long is it gonna be before the configure the pc/console games world to such an extent that online play becomes impossible unless you are mixing it up with the console boys and so pretty much have no choice but to pay MS if you wanna enjoy an online gaming life.
March 14th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I’m not gonna pay for the right to pwn console players. That should be free.
March 14th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Why is Chess Titans that comes with Vista not online! They’ve spent so much time making it look pretty and shiny and not even bothered to not put it online! If they’re trying to push PC Gaming forward, why bring out somthing so useless! the old Chess on XP was online.
I vote for Chess Titans Online!
March 14th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
“I’m not gonna pay for the right to pwn console players. That should be free.”
A couple of other podcasts I listen to have been saying this for awhile.
Console-centric podcasts, nonetheless.
Oh look, its a way to play against console players and maybe use matchmaking/voicechat, etc.
Or I can use Gamespy. Or xFire. Or Teamspeak. Or one of a hundred other free alternatives.
March 14th, 2007 at 7:57 pm
LOL, my own mini podcast got caught short, its a fair point, cuz if they hadn’t cut it short, I would have made an idiot of myself.
But thanks for airing the question. And I can understand everyone’s irritation at my air whoring.
But yeah, good show. I was also going to say they should give more class customization and more vehicle crap too. Good show, and I appreciate the agreement with me!
And yeah, you wouldn’t be able to pilot Hueys because the Army replaced them with the UH-60 Blackhawk. The Marines fly the Huey.
Imo, Huey > Blackhawk, but the blackhawk is still tight.
March 14th, 2007 at 8:04 pm
i think microsoft assumes that most PC gamers already have a 360…
if i had a 360 i would say its not really a bad deal… but i dont. so its not.
I dont have any desire to get a 360… so i doubt i’ll get it.
but then again i dont even have vista. and there isn’t a good reason to get it until crysis.
fun but ultimately mediocre titles aren’t gonna get me to buy vista. especially when i’ll just get a 10% performance hit across the board in gameplay.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
I say screw Live! and keep my generic in-game multiplayer options.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:21 am
He he ‘Screw Live’ ought to become some kind of pc gamers internet campaign.
From now on, everyone start your comments with ‘Screw Live’.
March 15th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I am away from my copy of the podcast and admittedly pretty lazy. What was the name of the Band simulator game?
Great Podcast guys thanks.
March 15th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Seriously, the stuff Live! has should come in the game for free.
Also, is UT3 gonna be cross-platform? Will it be a Games for Windows Live game? Cause that one could be PS3-PC probably out of the box.
March 15th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
PC - £1053
Games - £30
Monitor - £280
Decent Keyboard / Mouse - £60
Windows Vista - £120
Needed ^^
Live - £40
I bought their O/S and a expensive PC, and now they want me to pay to play online. Microsoft just want money.
Not Needed, Plus Shadowrun and Halo 2 look crap.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Halo 2 is crap. It’s inferior to Halo 1, so you might as well get that one instead.
That one isn’t too good either.
March 15th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
at least Halo 1 for PC was released with graphical update + new multiplayer weps…
Time to Scream for ep 74
March 15th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
yes 74 !!!!!!!
March 22nd, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Hey guys got 2 things to say,
#1: The MMO Maple story I myself have tried and i ain’t playing it anymore but my bro is and His class at school has about 15 kids in his class who play non stop
#2: Pirating will allways exist and for the record Vista got hacked by some person in tiwan who hacked it in 3 DAYS and then put it on the net lol…. but Microsoft keeps telling people who have it when they get updates to vaidate it lol….
Later Pumpkinman