Rad! Will check out on the ride home from work.


...bysmittyPosted at 1:12PM on Aug 11th 2008 by bysmitty

Haha. I'll forgive you, but just this once! Still listening, but your opening made me crack up =P

And I have to agree with the last commenter on the previous episode's post... this podcast definitely has the best music of those that I listen to. Had to go get the whole song for myself.Posted at 5:17AM on Aug 12th 2008 by Sokkratez

So a few things.

On GameTap: I think it was definitely marketing that caused GameTap to lose AOL money. Commercials were there at 2am on Cartoon Network, but I only ever saw things for Sonic or Splinter Cell. I think I saw Sam & Max featured once. It wasn't very informative.

Also, press didn't cover the release of GameTap games very well outside of Joystiq. The rest of the industry acknowledged it from time to time, but didn't really KNOW what was on GameTap. Somebody on 1UP Yours this last week said that GT is "Tomb Raider and Neo Geo games", and that's completely wrong. But that statement is telling of the industry, and undoubtedly the community's perception of GameTap.

So what I am saying is that I don't think that it's a problem of the service itself or the business model as much as it was a marketing and image problem. I also think that it may be telling of AOL's stability in general, what with them telling bloggers to stop posting (I am glad you guys didn't). But they may be trying to sell off some of their poorer earners.

The problem of games getting dropped isn't really as much of an epidemic as I think you guys made it seem. It was only with EA and Interplay games. There was warning given, I remember it being all over blogs for at least a month prior. But you may be right, GameTap didn't send an e-mail, I don't think. Anyway, Interplay games are coming back now.

I am hoping that Valve or EA picks up GameTap and keeps it running as it is while adding their own libraries. Then EA could buy Valve and PC gaming will be Heaven on the Web. That's my pie in the sky dream, though. I'll be happy if anybody picks it up and keeps its current library intact.


On the subject of Grimm: I haven't gotten to try it yet, but my friend has and he described it as having De Blob-like gameplay mechanics. After hearing you guys describe it, I have to agree. If you guys haven't played De Blob before, it's coming out from THQ on Wii and I think DS, but it originated as a student project and was released on PC for free a couple of years ago. I did a write-up on my site about it if you want to check it out (we do cheap PC gaming features like this). Instead of making the world crappy and disgusting, you instead add color to an otherwise dull world: http://downloadablesuicide.com/2008/03/01/de-blob-de-blob/

Another great episode :) I like long podcasts.
Posted at 7:08AM on Aug 12th 2008 by Sokkratez