Gamers Wives

We talked to six women about how gaming affects their relationship, and what games they play alone and together. The results were surprisingly varied and interesting. We’re very proud of this show and would like to thank the ladies who made this possible.

1. Tony’s wife; Lizz Atkins AKA Lyra Silver
2. Our long-time Xbox Live friend Natalie Edwards AKA Ace Star
3. Commander Tim’s main squeeze Carolyn Sonnek AKA Blogkitten
4. One of my work colleagues: Karen Webb AKA Show_Girl
5. Regular website contributor Steven Jones’ other half Linda Thomsen AKA Penguingirl
6. And my wife, Sharon Shaw AKA Cai Boxer

Along with these we have the show regulars; news on the Xbox summer dashboard update, more delays for what would have been Christmas games, our views on 1 VS. 100, reader mail and the random game of the week.

The music at the end credits is by Marian Call, a professional singer-songwriter from Alaska and new friend of the show. The song is “I’ll still be a geek after nobody thinks it’s chic” and is available on iTunes from her Firefly/BSG-inspired album Got To Fly. You can find her website here. We’ll be featuring more of her music in the future. Cheers Marian!

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Mike Oldman from Eidos (who was our guest on episode #113) has very kindly given us a Battlestations Carrier Battles Map Pack code to give away to one lucky listener.

Just email us now at mailbag@thedigitalcowboys.com with the subject title “Battlestations Code” and we’ll pick at random and announce the winner on this Saturday’s show.

Digital Cowboys Film Club is a new project we’re starting with next week’s first episode. We were a Movie and Video Gaming podcast for nearly 90 episodes and since we switched to just games there have been many times we’ve wanted to talk about movies but couldn’t because we want to stay focused on games. We at Digital Cowboys have a commitment to excellence, so we couldn’t just talk about any old movies.

So we decided to go back and take a look at some films that made us love cinema in the first place. We’re holding off Star Wars, The Matrix and the other big franchises (at least for now) in favor of slightly more esoteric, unusual and challenging films. It also allows us to share some of the great pictures that may have passed by our audience over the years. We’re treating it like a club. We’ll give you all a heads up as to what film we’re doing next and you’ll have three weeks to get hold of and see it. Borrow it, rent it, buy it, but SEE it, because we’re going deep on these films and each show will be a spoiler-filled discussion. Sometime in the future we may do a film that absolutely sucks, but is such a train-wreck that it’s worth seeing, and sometimes we may have totally polarized viewpoints on a film.

Here are the eight rules of Film Club.

1. You do talk about Film Club
2. You DO talk about film Club
3. Everyone on the show has to see the film just beforehand
4. One show every three weeks
5. One film per show, gentlemen
   
6. No going “Er… I don’t remember that bit”
   
7. Shows go on as long as they have to
   
8. If you have an opinion on Film Club… you have to voice it

This is going to be great. Our first film is Fight Club and you should see it before Tuesday August 4th

Mr Maynard.

This week our guest is Zach Maynard of the Unknown Gamers of Saint Louis and Gamehounds Humpdate.

We reflect on the barrage of mail we had on last week’s Room 101 Episode (Download it NOW) and accusations of our being soft on our guests. We talk with Maynard about his podcast and gaming, his podcast and which demographic is worse, the apathetic masses or the shrieking fanboys. We also do a few Room 101 entries of our own and end the show on an interesting bit of news about show expansion.

This is all following news from last week that Activision will be charging us in Britain an extra £5 for every copy of Modern Warfare 2, allegedly due to a weak pound, but more likely just because it’s easy. For every outraged post on a forum somewhere screaming boycott they will have ten compliant buyers, which if you do the math works out about the same.

Thank you to everyone who sent us mail. If you’d like to do the same; mailbag@thedigitalcowboys.com

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There’s a lot of talk at the moment about the increase in pricing on XBLA for the average game. I have a few issues that need going over.

• The premium priced titles of 1200+ MS points are vastly outnumbered by smaller, cheaper games.

• The 400 point, achingly simplistic dual-stick shooters shoveled out at the inception of XBLA are hardly a decent point of comparison to weightier offerings like Braid and Battlefield 1943. So yes the prices appear to be going up, but so is the general quality level of the top games on offer.

• We’re really just paying for the right to play the games, physical media is a by-product of how it is usually conveyed to us. In other words, these are games and just because they’re downloadable doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay a premium price. In a perfect world for game developers there would be no physical media or second-hand market, because that represents a loss to them.

Bearing in mind that I love having a solid copy of every game I own over downloads and I’m a total cheap-ass, that was pretty hard for me to say.  What bothers me (and always has about MS points and XBLA) is the pricing structure. I’m sure I’ve said this before but if you buy a 1200 point game you’re not paying $14.99 (£10.20) for it, because you invariably have to buy 1500 points: $18.74 (£12.75). Unless you have the self-control of a Franciscan monk, those extra pounds, dollars and pennies get spent on odd Rock Band songs, themes you probably didn’t need and soon an eye-patch for your avatar. Microsoft know this, otherwise the price points would be different (500/1000/1500 point games) or the bundles you can buy would be different (400/800/1200 etc.)

It’s the third-oldest trick in the book and it’s remarkably effective, because for every one of you reading this with the discipline to buy 2100 point cards and sit on their caches of juicy space bucks for months on end there are fifty of us (myself included) who leap on the first shiny thing that catches our eye so we can throw our change down like it’s burning a hole in our pocket. Sony are just as bad with their £5 minimum wallet transaction, which becomes infuriating when you’re 8p shy of a Littlebigplanet costume. There are all sorts of ramifications on display here about the current economic crisis, but I’ll just say this. I don’t mind paying for DLC, it costs what it costs, but I DO mind buying MS points I clearly don’t need.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to continue my scouring under the couch cushions, that rent won’t pay itself you know.

One of our regular listeners and consistent message-writers is Steven Jones. We’ve recruited him to occasionally post articles and musings on our site and as an introduction I’m putting up this entry he made at the beginning of June on his blog Stex Toys. It’s about moving back to consoles after PC-only gaming for many years. We get a kick out of reading his work and we’re fairly certain our audience will too. You can expect more from him in the future.

-Alex

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It’s been fast. It been packed. And perhaps most importantly of all it’s changed me forever. Bold words but a little over six months ago, when XBOX ownership fell upon me by pure chance really, I didn’t expect to find myself where I am today.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been a PC gamer. That platform of a never ending release cycle, that would laugh at the idea of ten years and consider ten months a ‘constraint’, constantly straining at the edges of what can be done, pushing the limits that actually make console gaming possible. Now that said I’ve owned a Nintendo device since the N64, but I could justify that for the top notch first party releases that were never going to come to a PC.. at least not without the dubious world of emulation.

My view was that anything the XBOX could do could surely be done just as well on a PC. After all the XBOX was just a PC in a box, sure it was cutting edge when released, but by this time the technology has seriously moved on. PCs do exist that can actually run Crysis, just. Anything else would be easy. I was even put off more by the games which found their way from the console to the PC, I found them poor relations and badly implemented. Hindsight now shows me that this was lacklustre ports, even the acclaimed Bioshock turns me off in it’s PC incarnation.

What I hadn’t been prepared for, what you can’t actually get a feel for until you are actually in there is how joined up the whole experience is. Sure I use X-Fire and Steam on the PC which can link me up to other players who are playing the same games as me, but it’s an option addition, a nice to have that a large number of PC gamers just don’t bother with. On XBOX this is a part of the whole thing. Linking up with other players is about more than just the odd bit of multiplayer. It’s a competitive, cooperative, social, true community, bring people together not just to play, but to interact. It’s something you can really feel a part of, and which makes you better for it. Or rather it can, whether this environment turns you into a more complete gamer or just some arsehole who gets a kick off beating up, virtually as it might be, other gamers is down to your own mental makeup.

And so it is I find myself six months later with a game collection two thirds of my Wii game collection, which has had years to establish that lead, with plans to expand it further well bedded in. The system which I planned purely to play a couple of multiplayer games on with the couple of friends and family members has become just that only several times over. It’s opened my gaming world to new friends and communities that have come as a very welcome addition, no doubt helped on by the explosion in use of Twitter during the same period. The XBOX has become my go to system for gaming, and for creating some new shared experiences with my fiancée and friends which really is what life is all about. The PC has become far more of the versatile communication tool that it always has been, and will be for a long time to come. Sure I still play my RTS games there, for the mouse has yet to be bested for the intricacies of those game mechanics and I have a large enough PC game collection to keep me going back from time to time. However even some of these games, the likes of Bioshock and Mass Effect I’m contemplating selling and re-buying for that games console I avoided for so long.

I’ll still always be a PC gamer of course, it’s the platform that still delivers some of the most interesting and diverse gameplay styles anywhere, although I will admit some of the iPhone/Touch games coming along are a challenge to this. However even with the opportunities offered by XBLA, PSN and WiiWare there is no easier way than making something for PC, and just placing it out there on the internet. You can control your own distribution, maximise your return. Of course what you don’t get is the visibility to the market, there are just too many ways for people to find new things on the internet which is where the power of the consoles enclosed marketplaces can be a boon.

I realise that this whole post reeks of the evangelical spiel of the newly converted, however for me, right now, it’s how I feel. It’s why I’ve left it six months before I made a real stand about it, assuming any honeymoon period will have passed, my excitement and interest in this years E3 pretty much confirmed that I had moved into a new era though. Who knows where I’ll be in another six months, maybe by then there will be a BluRay based system joining the fold, that’s when I’ll know things will never be the same again!

This week Tony and I are on the GamerDork Podcast. This is a great show with strong ties to the Rllmuk forums, presented by wily, gravel-voiced Scotsman; Neil “Xibxang” Brooks. It’s been going several years and just went through a major overhaul (hence we’re on episode 6) and gained a new host named Leon Cox (AKA: Ratso Albion). We had a brilliant time getting pally with these guys and talking about cloud computing, EA VS. Dana White for the UFC crown and the ridiculous Night Vision Goggles Prestige Edition of MW2. One more show for you guys to listen to, but one of undeniable quality with two cracking hosts. We recommend!

Check Out Gamerdork #6

After the recent announcement that Modern Warfare 2 will have a “Prestige Edition” released that comes with a pair of Night-Vision Goggles on a Styrofoam head, I did a little research to assess the ten levels of crazy for video game special editions. Here are my findings, organized from sane to bat-shit nuts.

10. Maps: Especially cloth maps (Lunar: Silver Star Story/Darksiders/World of Warcraft). Along with strategy guides (Super Metroid) this is the most useful pack-in item a game can have. Often there was no special edition, you just got this in the box. These are actually useful for the game experience, plus they look and feel nice to have as part of your gaming library.

9. Soundtrack or making of DVD: Again a pretty nice edition and I honestly wish we’d get more of them. The original Grand Theft Auto and Killer Instinct may not have music you’d rather listen to than *insert your favorite band here* but it’s part of gaming history and again good to have around. The making of DVD is the equivalent of extra features for a movie disc. These are pretty common these days. Most special editions will have some sort of disc full of behind the scenes footage. They vary in quality, but once again this is part the game’s heritage. The work these people put into making the game needs to be documented and it gives us, the consumer, an insight into what that takes. I honestly haven’t watched any of them twice though.

8. Figurines: It’s all downhill towards Crazy Town from here. This is the largest growing trend for pack-ins at the moment and the first item on this list that really has no function, unless you plan on collecting 32 of them and using them to play Chess. Admit it, most of these figurines on closer inspection are far less cool than they looked in the promotional picture. Fallout 3, Metal gear Solid 4, Assassin’s Creed, Street Fighter IV and Sacred 2 are all offenders here. On Digital Cowboys one of my guests had bought the Bioshock special edition just for the Big Daddy figurine. On reflection he commented that it looked like it was painted by “a blind two-year old”. Another friend of mine found the drill arm had fallen off his Big Daddy, and this became a fairly common complaint. If figurines are going to continue, we should demand a higher quality of tat.

7. Resident Evil 5: Now I’m going to start singling out games because this is symptomatic of simply throwing crazy crap into a special edition for the sake of it. Mirror’s Edge did have a very limited edition messenger bag which fetched high prices on eBay but RE5 went one further. In this special edition you get a bag, a figurine, a steelbook tin, a patch and a necklace. How many of those patches are currently adorning denim jackets? Who’s wearing their Kuju Necklace? Hands up! I’m guessing a high percentage of this stuff is just in drawers. Was it worth it?

6. Fallout 3: I’ll admit that the messenger bag might be usable in daily life, but a lunch box and a head knocker, while cute, are literally just shelf-candy. Unless you eat lunch out of yours, that is. Remember, I’m not saying these special editions are wrong or that they should stop, just that they’re crazy and seem on first impressions to have been assembled in a frantic race around the offices of the game developer, grabbing stuff off desks. I eagerly await the Splinter Cell: Conviction limited edition paperweight and the Assassin’s Creed II stapler.

5. Grand Theft Auto IV: Duffle bag, check; soundtrack CD, check; artwork book, check; lock box, say what now? What the hell does a lock box have to do with GTA IV? It’s a game about crime; surely a wire coat-hanger or a baseball bat would be more appropriate. This one just seems like they had a meeting and after all the suggestions for pack-ins were in, the lock-box was the least incriminating. If you use yours, good, but did this special edition get bought purely because it was GTA?

4. Halo 3: Master Chief’s head. This is actually pretty cool. It’s iconic and well-constructed and bigger than you’d imagine. The drawback is it’s still a bit too small. You could put it on a child or a dog, but let’s face it, all of us wondered when we saw it; why couldn’t they have made it a little bigger so I could get that thing on? That’s Halloween for the next five years! Instead it’s just collecting dust on our over-crowded shelves.

3. Resident Evil 4: Chainsaw controller. OK, not once, not ONCE have I ever spoken to anybody about the absolutely classic RE4 and had them say “Dude you gotta try it with the chainsaw controller!” Firstly it’s entirely superfluous to play; we have a GameCube pad, several in fact. But secondly and most importantly, Leon never uses a chainsaw in the whole game! That sack-headed maniac at the beginning does. This is just baffling.

2. Gears of War 2: We get some pimped out gold lancer and hammer-burst codes with the special edition of this one. They look stupid and make you stand out a mile away to wily snipers. Clearly nobody got the message as these codes fetch decent prices on eBay. However the crowing glory is that massive toy lancer chainsaw gun (always with the chainsaws). It’s even crazier in the UK where we hate guns of all kinds (apparently) and had to make do with a gold variant that looked like (in the words of Chandler from Friends) an eyesore from the Liberace house of crap. Nothing says classy like a big gun made of gold plastic.

1. Modern Warfare 2: But nothing could compare to these working Night Vision Goggles. And not just for their ridiculous predicted price ($149.99/£119.99). I would understand if they were synonymous with the game, but you think NVG, you think Splinter Cell, Sam Fisher and the three green lights. Not to mention the incredibly creepy implications of the super COD fan sneaking around at night, looking at us, when we think it’s too dark to be looked at. If you’re thinking of buying these, I’m scared of you, plain and simple.

This week represents the combined efforts of no less than twelve individuals. This is a guest-extravaganza like we’ve never had before, but we’re not just doing a normal show so pay attention.

Room 101 is a fictitious place where all the misery in the world goes to die. It originated in Orwell’s 1984 as a room which contained your worst fear and it inspired a British TV show where guests would come on and campaign to have things they hated put there forever. Sandals worn with socks, people who talk loudly in restaurants and lateness are the type of things that get submitted. The hosts job is to attempt to form a counter-argument as to why that thing should stay out and free to annoy people.

We did this, with video games as the theme and guests from eight other shows. So you get…

1. Rob Borges from Gamers with Jobs
2. Cooper Hawks from Gamehounds
3. Daniel Floyd from Talking About These
4. Bobby Blackwolf from All Games Radio
5. Tim from Gamehounds and GridCycle (Also the sorely missed show The Widget)
6. Chris O Regan from The Superhappyfuntimeshow
7. David Turner and Michael Fox from Joypod
8. Chris and Kelly Brown from The Married Gamers

All of them came on for an interview, all of them put forward at least one loathsome aspect of video gaming to be cast into the fiery pit and we did our level best to keep them out. What it makes for is a damn good and often hilarious bumper episode. It’s longer than normal so you might want to do this in two sittings, but do check out the shows noted above and and have a listen (or a look in some cases). We wouldn’t have them on if we didn’t want to hear what they had to say. Many thanks to everyone involved. This was a long time coming, but it was worth it.

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This is our latest YouTube video. Enjoy it and spread it around. It could very well be a popular meme among those who watched this year’s E3.