Tag Archives: Guardian

Technology and Videogame Podcasts/shows

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I’m half interested in promoting that I listen to these, and also half wondering what other ones I’m missing out on – but I’ve been listening to weekly podcasts for a while now and having some more for when I travel and so forth would be awesome. List any you think are good in the comments please πŸ˜€

I personally listen to, in no particular order (and with RSS and usually iTunes links on each page):

  • One Life Left – which has irrelevant humour, some surprisingly good discussion randomly, and mostly some great features and the odd bit of music. Is also an hour long, which is nice.
  • Tech Weekly by the Guardian’s team. Yes, I still dislike the the “Videogames shoved into technology section” part, but I’d likely listen to it anyway (in addition to a videogame one. You listening Guardian?), since it has a good mix of technology news and discussion, and with some good comments about what is in each episode I have missed the ones I don’t want to bother with.
  • Idle Thumbs now has 2 podcasts – a UK and USA one. I’m going to listen to the UK one this week, and the USA one is good – rather random discussions, and also a big bonus in the form of funny songs πŸ™‚ There’s some good writers and people who do the shows, despite the very American “Well, you know” thrown around a lot. Worth a listen!
  • The Rock, Paper, Shotgun Wireless Show is a nice if a little hard to hear one, randomly produced whenever the RPS guys get together. I’m a PC gamer so it’s all good for me.

I’m also going to see what the Mega64 podcast is like, although I’m looking for more to listen to. I’m willing to expand my horizons, simply because there’s barely a few hours of regular content in the ones I currently listen to since some are so happenstance (with One Life Left and Tech Weekly being the most regular).

GameCity 2008: Saturday

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The “canvas” of Lego stuff

TT Games own Jonathan Smith presented how the Lego platformer series of games they’ve made came about. He explained about appealing to people who don’t like Star Wars for instance, and gave some detail on how the games were developed.

Sadly, the session “I was there…. DMA” was cancelled (due to the presenter Brian breaking his nose). This along with the other two “From the Desk Of” sessions sadly πŸ™

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This is how Media Molecule rolls…everyone gets a say!

Media Molecule did the “GameCity Vision Statement supported by BAFTA”, and provided information on how the game was made, who made it, the changes during the game development – I also got the presenter Alex Evans to initial my Sackboy, and autograph my book. I do want to play the game, it would be real great to try it sometime despite my lack of proficiency with platformers.

I also got Alex the presenter to autograph my Sackboy model, and he also showed off four interesting videos I got a chance to record some of, the first being prototype footage of “brainfluff”, ie; Little Big Planet and what they showed Phil Harrison to get Sony on board. The second shows their prototyping method to get the team working together – showing the way 2d and 3d can be combined. The third and fourth interesting ones showed the “focus” of the game (made up to keep the team on track on what they were doing), and the last video was what they’ll show at their Christmas party, a short run of clips from their development. Really cool stuff πŸ˜€ I should have asked if I could have got any of them for the Internet Archive…damn.

I visited Indiecade through gaps in the day, and got a talk through of Where Is My Heart which looks like the finished game could be a nifty platformer. I played through . I saw levelHead – the physical blocks with a camera, it’s an interesting use of a camera. Democracy 2 was taking me ages to start, but I get it’s simulation aspect, and looks pretty in depth. I played through Ruckblende (Flashback), which aesthetically was amazing, being a paper-built world to do the point and click adventure, and hand drawn animations to portray moving things. I also saw Machinarium being shown off again πŸ™‚

I also recorded one of the more interesting games, Dark Room Sex Game. I’ll let you view the video, since it’s quite hard to describe. Additional info though; yes, you can be male on male, or female on female. It is hard (I didn’t try it myself however) and obviously, the noise your controller makes is the other person’s response πŸ˜‰

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I hate American politics. Our’s wasn’t the only “Joe” reference either

Lastly was the Guardian GamesBlog Quiz, and the closing party. We didn’t win the quiz (tough competition I’ll say!) but the last round we did the most spectacular entry out of the lot. The party was okay, if a little empty – some free drinks (which lasted me the night), and a great “30 player game on a projector” setup was crazy. The first band, PowerPlay, were loud. Very loud. They also did a lot of Megaman, sadly (since I find the games’ themes all a bit repetitive). Press Play On Tape were more varied, and had some great songs during the night, but also were a bit loud (although more quiet then the others).

Some more pictures are available in my gallery too. My autograph book got a few more signatures, although I missed the bands’ – but all in all a fun day.