Rumors of an upcoming PS4 “4.5” expansion lead today’s headlines, which also include a 5000 page petition advocating for a Vanilla WoW server being passed onto Blizzard’s president, and a Gears of War dev bemoaning the fact that players don’t understand the meaning of the word “beta”. Somewhere in there Ben also accuses Alex of being an Amazon Prime Hater, though she insists that he’s simply a Prime Fanboy.
The rest of this week’s episode is centered on the topic of game piracy, particularly as it relates to popular independent games. In The Top Three List of the Week each host relates their “top three experiences with pirated games or software”. Next up during The Worst Thing That Happened To Us This Week Ben tries to cut through the excuses and figure out what users’ actual reasons are for pirating games. Also, why have certain indie devs actually started embracing the culture of piracy in the gaming world?
Episode 33: #NotAllBrazillians
Here are the relevant links from today’s podcast:
- PS 4.5 Rumors @ ign.com
- Amazon blocks non-Prime members from buying certain video games @ videogamer.com
- Mark Kern’s promise to deliver Legacy WoW petition to Blizzard @ twitlonger.com
- Have MMOs Become Too Easy? (quoted during the show) @ mmorpg.com
- Gears of War 4 dev: Consumers think beta means highly-polished demo @ mcvuk.com
- The Witness is getting pirated big time @ venturebeat.com
- Punch Club Celebrates Being Pirated Over 1.6 Million Times @ cogconnected.com
- Why People Pirate Video Games @ kotaku.com
- Some Indies Don’t Fight Piracy, They Embrace It @ indiegames.com
Quantum Break for Xbox One has been well received, but Ben’s excitement over the that game is quickly overshadowed by his hatred of April Fool’s day (which took place in between recording sessions for last week’s episode and now). However, even Ben’s disdain for April Fool’s day is nothing compared to his complete and total contempt for diehard comic book fans, which is revealed as Alex, Jared and he discuss fans’ reactions to the recent “Batman v Superman” film during The Worst Thing That Happened To Us This Week.
Today’s episode shuffles around the usual formula a bit by opening with a series rundown of the Spring anime season. First impressions end up being quite positive, as both Alex and Jared are fairly impressed with the line up. Particularly Jared, who after a disastrously moe-light Winter finally has a few decent looking Cute Girls Doing Cute Things series to sink his teeth into! (This series rundown segment runs until the 38 minute mark if you decide to skip ahead).
At the top of today’s episode Alex and Ben discuss their newfound obsession with mechanical keyboards, and Ben insists that Jared will soon join their ranks. Later when discussing recent gaming news the team decides that Pokemon Go is already looking like a shitty cash grab, but is still holding out hope that No Man’s Sky won’t follow in Spore’s shallow footsteps.