The Extra Credits thread!! EC is amazing!

[Top Gun]

Yeah, exactly. Plus, there's an inherent pride in looking at a shelf full of physical games/DVDs/books/whatever and seeing your entire collection laid out like that. A drop-down list in Steam or menu on a 360 simply can't replicate that.

[The Damned]

I hope you guys survive this transition. stay strong!

Oh noes, now I feel all doomed! How will we ever make it through this horrible ordeal?!

It's not like it's a major issue or anything. But as Coop pointed out, there are problems with non-physical media. Plus, the extras you can have (manuals that are well done are worth owning, like the Warcraft 2 or Homeworld manuals... those were filled with tons of great stuff) or special pre-order items/collectors editions make it worth betting a physical copy.

[Modus]

Something that used to last for decades, now only lasts as long as the company stays in business (OnLive), doesn't drop your game from its list (OnLive), or as long as your system still works (Wii). I don't see an upside to that.

I too pay for an experience. And flipping through a manual, opening up a world map, knowing that the discs I paid for are professional quality (usually), artwork abound on the disc(s), manual and insert... that's all part of the experience for me. And when all those physical goodies go away, yet I'm still paying the same price... that irks me. You save no money realistically with digital downloads, and in ways, you get less for that money, as you have to expend your own resources to make backups and ensure those backups never go bad as the years roll on.

I completely agree about services that don't allow a re-download, that's crap. One really cool advantage for me is that Steam has Steamplay, which grants me a copy of the game for both Windows and Mac. My home rig is Windows while my lappy is a Mac so that's totally badass. Factor in that I use Dropbox to always have my savegame updated across both platforms and its even more awesome.

Looking through manuals and displaying your library are things I can understand, it's something I enjoyed but didn't feel was essential. Thing is, if I like a game a lot I start making memorabilia of my own or buy it from a specialty store (artwork, 'shops, swords, statues...) I take a lot of pride in my gaming, but I guess I show that off in other ways.

Hold on I think I know why I don't like boxes... they are ugly, the design is boring. I'm a snob about the whole 'gaming is an art' thing and I'm just obsessed with good design. That's why the only games I kept around forever were DS games because I liked how the boxes were made. Games like Contact, Pokemon, all FF games, Dragon Age Collector's Ed., I just wanted to lick the box because it was so perty and shaped the right way and non-commercial.

I feel kind of superficial now.

[PROTO·DOME]

Modus, like Coop has said, it's an ownership thing. When you have the physical CD (cartridge, floppy disc, memory stick, whatever) you OWN that software outright and can install it on your PC, your new PC, your new new new PC how many times you want, whenever, forever. Unless you break it physically it'll never degrade or stop working. Streaming a game, heck, even Steam, what happens when that company goes out of business in 2030 and you're left wanting to play all your old games? You'll need authentication from a service that no longer exists; or after reformating your vintage 2010 PC you'll have no way of redownloading.

Personally, I don't think this mentality will ever change because we, as a society, are inherently materialistic. Portal 2 for example; it probably would have been cheaper to play it in an arcade (if it had a cabinet), it's not very long at all, but most would turn their noses up at that idea and pay possibly $20 extra to own the software, even if they never replay it.

Take music for example; yes, buying through iTunes is popular, but how many people do you know that have loved a band/song so much they've gone out to buy the CD just so they can own a physical copy?

Unless they can find a way of making the materialists happy, I think physical copies of games will always exist (through our lifetimes anyway), even if they become simply 'collector's editions'. If I am wrong and everything goes virtual, as long as that mentality exists, there will always be piracy, not simply to get out of paying for the stuff, but so you can OWN that software outright.

[Modus]

No, I get it man. I was just 'splainin why I'm different. Now I know why you guys value physical media. Do I think worse of anyone for it? Not at all. I'm no less materialistic when it comes down to it.

You're right about Steam though. If that ever goes down, I'll be pretty massively upset. I'm just counting on it not ever going away.

[Level 99]

No, I get it man. I was just 'splainin why I'm different. Now I know why you guys value physical media. Do I think worse of anyone for it? Not at all. I'm no less materialistic when it comes down to it.

You're right about Steam though. If that ever goes down, I'll be pretty massively upset. I'm just counting on it not ever going away.

I'm sure if Steam EVER goes down (in our lifetime), that they will give people the ability to make a full backup of all their games and create a new offline steam client that requires no network activation whatsoever for steam-signed games. Granted that puts more responsibility on the user to back up their shit and keep it from getting destroyed/corrupted, but Valve knows how to do very good business practice. The only issue I see arising out of that would be the issue of DRM which, ironically enough, plagues nearly all physical media these days as well. So in the end, Steam users would likely be in the same boat as those who value physical, except the Steamers would have burned CDRs and the physical media folks get shiny boxes.

Granted the above comparison only is valid for PC software, I have to echo the popular worry about the common usage of "release now, patch later" that ps360 developers have gotten into. Say 10 years from now, when PS3 is potentially dead and no longer supported with an online service, someone gets a PS3 and a copy of Fallout 3. If there is no online support to get patches, that game is going to be broken broken broken no matter what. In a case like that, physical media is...just as useless as a digital download?

Edit: I liked it when developers fixed and finished games before they were released. I hate Day1 patches and DLC.

[Gollgagh]

how many people do you know that have loved a band/song so much they've gone out to buy the CD just so they can own a physical copy?

this is me

[Clefairy]

But in truth, it's getting less, while paying the same. $60 for a downloadable game for you to save on your own, or $60 for a hard copy with box, art, discs, manuals, etc. I'll go with the latter every time.

I look at it like this. Buying a product digitally cuts out a significant number of middlemen. In the case of games, you get down to the publisher, developer(if it's in their contract), and the seller. Given the exorbitant cost of game development(which I don't care for, but that's another can of worms entirely), you'd better believe I want every dollar possible going to the people inside the industry.

If I have to give up the trappings of physical media to do that, then so be it.

[Modus]

I

If I have to give up the trappings of physical media to do that, then so be it.

Plus we're saving trees. More importantly, the wildlife that needs trees/forests to live. But it's also taking away labor from material miners, which could be a good or bad thing.

[RDX]

Nice episode, but, next time I would recommend against representing the opposing argument as a blue blob monster.

It just doesn't look good, especially when the opposition is a group of fans and not a company or organization.

[The Damned]

Plus we're saving trees. More importantly, the wildlife that needs trees/forests to live. But it's also taking away labor from material miners, which could be a good or bad thing.

Uhhh, not really. Pulp from trees may be reduced, but the oil recovery to make plastic and the mining for metals for the hardware still goes on, not to mention the power used to extract, process and create said materials. Even if you go for more recycled materials, you still have the energy cost of gathering, sorting, cleaning, smelting and forming into what you want. Hell, by some reports these days, the impact of recycling is actually slightly worse than digging up new materials.

Plus, the servers for a streaming/download-only system need to be up and running 24 hours a day, so add the power generation impact on top of all the materials impacts. So really, physical medium or not, the damage is still being done, and any reduction in one component isn't enough to make up for the rest of it.

I guess no matter what way you go about it, you're still doing something to the environment.

I propose all manufacturing be done on Mars and/or the Moon, so we don't have any impact on environment at all. It should only take about another few hundred years until we can do that, so everyone just stop making pollution until then, alright?

[Modus]

But what about the moon's and mars' ecosystem, the damned. The spacelife will go extinct, you industrialist pig!

[EC2151]

Thanks for talking about Metroid Other M, finally.

Though I tend to think that since Sakamoto was full writer, director, and producer, as well as th interviews leading up to the game stressing just how much creative control he had over the game's delivery of the plot, I tend to lay nearly all of the blame on him (though he did have the good sense to stop D-Rockets from putting ZSS in a lot more scenes).

I also think that the seph's call for more banter between Adam and Samus, establishing a relationship, would have been good for fleshing things out, but from a Metroid perspective it would have made things way too chatty in a game that needed those long stretches of silence whenever it could actually find it.

Then again, I don't think there should have been any real dialogue at all (Prime and Echoes showed us the power of environmental story-telling, as well as the effectiveness of lore recovery!), but hey, less is more.

The story is just plain awful. And the gameplay, ultimately suffers from the linearity (which is a product of the terrible story Sakamoto penned). I mean, I am sure the guy who gave us the beauty that was Super Metroid can do better, but he should stay farrrrrr away from a writer's pen, ever again.

A lot of folks on the Metroid forum I go to get really heated up about this subject- some cannot stand the game with any fiber of their being, while others will defend and rationalize it to the death. I'm not in either category, but I can't play Other M without getting pissed off at all of the terrible design choices. Heck if a shmuck like ME could see them, it makes me wonder why Nintendo, Team Ninja, and D-Rockets couldn't.

You did mention inner-company politics, but with Sakamoto so heavily emphasizing his role, I can't help but feel that he is largely responsible for the blunder.

I think it a little telling that the show said "when you have such an important brand character and you are making a backstory, you have to be careful, and consider EVERYTHING you've established up to this point"

Juxtapose that with Sakamoto's "I never really gave thought to Samus' character until working on Other M"

[The Damned]

But what about the moon's and mars' ecosystem, the damned. The spacelife will go extinct, you industrialist pig!

Considering that he Moon has no atmosphere of an kind, as well as constantly being bathed in solar and cosmic radiation, not to mention that whole 253 Fahrenheit (123 Celsius) daytime and -387 Fahrenheit (-233 Celsius) nighttime thing... I'm pretty sure that the Moon isn't going to be any worse.

And fuck Mars. Mars has it coming. It's red, dusty and 95% CO2. Fuck Mars.

[Overflow]

Except that doing excessive amounts of mining on the moon and shipping it back to earth may have a tiny effect on the astral body that CONTROLS THE OCEANS.

[The Damned]

No one said we would be mining the Moon, just making stuff on it. And I (self) quote:

I propose all manufacturing be done on Mars and/or the Moon

So, there isn't going to be any Moon material leaving the Moon, and even if there was, it would be such a small amount that it couldn't possibly affect the Moon's tidal forces on Earth. Shit, it's not like we would be shipping megatons of rock back to Earth for any reason. We already have dust and rocks, we don't need any more. Besides, that stuff isn't healthy for you.

No, we'll have to send the vast majority of materials o the Moon for processing and assembly, and then ship it back. Then, saying "Made on The Moon" will mean something again, dang nab it!

[Overflow]

I remember when "Lunar Seal of Approval" carried some actual significance! Now it's just about as pointless as the

[BardicKnowledge]

One of the biggest issues is that they did not acknowledge the existence or relevance of the Prime games when making Other M -- how you could think that those games are not canon is beyond me.

Metroid Prime is one of the most atmospheric games I've ever played. One would think you would be striving to re-create that feeling as much as possible...

In any case, there are really only two places where the upgrade thing really annoyed me. Obviously, the varia thing -- running a lava zone without the varia suit as part of standard gameplay was incredibly stupid and should never be required (though it's a neat thing to make possible to facilitate speed runs).

Second, while I can see good story reasons for not wanting to have Samus use her extra gear -- "We want to do as little damage to the ship as possible -- no missiles unless absolutely necessary" would have been fine, and speed boost / power bombs also makes sense so the crew is not endangered...it's much harder to justify the restriction of the grapple beam.

Really though, the bigger problem was that of monologue, as the episode points out. This was entirely too much flashback. Have Samus greet Adam, and as she speaks show us a quick glimpse of young Samus standing in line with the squad, leaving the rest to our imagination -- after Fusion, I'm sure the majority of players would be able to fill in the gap. Just because it hasn't happened in the timeline doesn't mean that players are unaware of the connection.

Similarly, except for Anthony, I don't know that we need to know the names and roles of the people on the squad. It's not likely that Samus knows each and every one of them still, is it? Make Anthony the squad leader of the losery NPC's, have him do the cool action stuff he does (all of which is admittedly pretty awesome -- his scenes are the best cutscenes in the game), and just have other people get killed off. Samus doesn't care about them, and neither do we.

[Brushfire]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3167-Gamifying-Education

This week's episode makes me wanna go back to school and try this out.

[BardicKnowledge]

I am going to run all of my classes in a points-accumulative fashion -- when those principles are applied without the explicit game aspects thrown in, it's known as "contract grading". Essentially, the syllabus states the requirements for an A compared to a B and a C -- you choose the grade you want and do the appropriate amount of work.

If I ever teach a VGM or film music class (hopefully!) then I will go all out with the game aspects also, and include an ARG for the class to work through as the review for the midterm exam (extra credit for finishing the game, which covers the midterm topics and assists in study anyway).

[avaris]

Loved this week's episode! Very intelligent and insightful.

[Malaki-LEGEND.sys]

Back on the Other M side of things, if there's anything that game has taught me it's that unless you have a writer with actual skills to produce something worthwhile, and in the case of an established franchise like Metroid, somebody who knows how to respect said franchise and weave a believable story into it, then game developers should probably stay way the hell away from storytelling in games. They generally suck at it.

Of course without fleshing out characters in that way, you end up with two-dimensional characters that aren't particularly compelling at all, and let's face it: everything about Samus, Link, Mario, etc. is 2D. They're just avatars for your actions in games about cartoony space pirate lizard things, little octopi that shoot rocks and plumbers that jump stomp on goombas. Maybe this isn't a bad thing though. Do we really NEED a higher level of characterization in games than we already have?

[Kenogu Labz]

Buut that ignores all the compelling characters that have made a positive impact in gaming. The thing that makes us so frustrated with games like Other M (speaking as someone who hasn't played it, so may be off) is that we've seen it done right before. We know what it looks like and that wasn't it. Abstracting all character and story away from games would lead to a total Dark Ages for the industry, returning to roots of only simple mechanics and casual games. And I'm fairly certain no-one wants that.

I would agree, though, that it's all too frequent that those given the task of writing story end up falling flat on their face. It's sad, really. The best storytellers write books, because for centuries, that has been considered the primary medium for the weaving of tales. Television and cinema made an attempt at one point to focus on storytelling, but this is falling away fast, with modern fare giving us little more than simple entertainment. And games? They may very well follow the same path if the industry doesn't make a conscious decision with the understanding that games can - and should - be used primarily as the most powerful means of storytelling the world has yet seen.

There are other unfortunate cultural limitations, etc, but I'll stop ranting now.

[big giant circles]

Man I have totally fallen behind on these; I'm going to spend the next couple days catching up.

[Gario]

You totally did - I mean look at that OP you have there, it's soooo four months ago.