Story and Narrative in Games / Batman: Arkham Asylum

We welcome back Daniel Floyd to the show. YouTube legend and animated lecturer Mr Floyd makes for a fantastic conversational guest, bringing his insight and clarity to the show, which this week is about the way story, script and narrative have progressed in the thirty year history of video games. We reach some surprising conclusions about the nature of interactivity and how far we’ve come when held against movies and literature.

The competition segment in the middle explains how you listeners can get your mitts on a MAG beta download code (this immediately afterwards expanded into a full ten available codes so get cracking PS3 owners), with the winners to be announced next week. A Digital Cowboys MAG game night will be on the cards. This is all part of a massive 128 code giveaway brought to you by Platform Nation.

After that there’s a full dedicated 40-minute review of Batman: Arkham Asylum. We leave no stone in Batman’s grim and gothic world unturned exploring this surprisingly high quality comic-book license. There’s a spoiler section at the very end with full warning so those playing know when to spin on.

At the close there’s more music from Jonathan Coulton, a song which as it so happens was on one of the very first podcasts Alex ever took part in. (It wasn’t Digital Cowboys, it was Joinee Radio episode #21 – 22/04/2007 DC completists may like to check that one out and thus pay their respects to the man who taught me how to podcast; Mr Matt Fowler.)

Daniel Floyd can be found at his blog: Talking About These. And definitely check out his series of YouTube lectures, especially the one that tonight’s subject is based on: Video Games and Storytelling.

Jonathan Coulton’s site also features a comprehensive MP3 store. As always, we heartily recommend you take a listen to a few of his songs.

There is a bit of poor sound quality at Tony’s end for the first half, our apologies, and it does get better for the Batman section. We’ll try to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

Next week: The guys from Big Red Potion and we review Beatles Rock Band.

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We’ve decided to move Game Club back into the main show for now due to work hours and in the interests of staying focused. We may move it back into two shows at a later date but for now look for just one Digital Cowboys show a week. This weeks game that we will be talking about for a full 40 minutes is Batman: Arkham Asylum. Look for Episode 122 out Friday night.

The Final Word on PAX 09

This is a full look back on our PAX experience and we’ve brought in Chris and Kelly Brown The Married Gamers who were there with us. We talk about a boat-load of upcoming top titles that we got to play and then pick over our favorite memories.

As of next week we’ll return to normal with a Game Club episode focusing on Batman: Arkham Asylum. There will still be plenty of interviews and articles about what we saw at PAX on the website. Also a ton of swag needs to be given away to our lucky listeners starting with one particularly rare item we’re offering up on tonight’s show.

Many thanks to Chris, Kelly, Elaine, Edie, Kevin, both Dan’s Steve, Bobby, Mike, the Gamer’s Pub, Krop and the Superhappyfuntimeshow and everyone else we met out there and to Lizz and Paul for their unending patience with what was essentially two kids in their own personal candy store.

Roll on PAX 10.

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This is an audio-only version of the Jonathan Coulton Interview with some of his music woven in to whet the appetites of those new to him and make it more special for his fans. We wanted to ensure that our subscribers had something good to listen to and we’re very proud of this. We’ll be back soon with a multi-host podcast as soon as Tony isn’t dying from (in his words) “Bionic Plague”.

Seems somehow appropriate when interviewing a man so fixated on killer robots.

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Hey all. Steve Artlip of Platform Nation very recently put up the audio file of a podcast we recorded live on the Sunday. It was the last day of PAX and we were utterly exhausted but it was a thrilling experience to have a mic thrown in front of us and basically ad-lib a show while people walked past. Tons of special guests including Jamie Cheng of Klei talking about one of our games of show; SHANK!

Since we were unable to do a regular podcast last week, this should tide you guys over. In fact it’s probably better than a lot of our regular shows, due to the raw nature and group contributions. In fact it was actually the first time Tony and I have been sat next to each other for a podcast. Thanks to Steve for getting this together, it was great to meet you in person at last.

Here it is.

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As no doubt some of you would have heard, the PAX plague has become quite the reality in the Digital Cowboys camp. Early yesterday, the official PAX 2009 Twitter announced there had a confirmed case of Swine Flu so anyone feeling ill should consult their doctor or the NHS Helpline immediately. Unfortunately, it would appear our good friend and once co-host, Paul, who attended the event along with me, Alex and my wife Lizz has now been diagnosed with suspected swine flu. Also, Lizz and myself have now succumbed to what we think is just regular flu-like symptoms due to throwing ourselves 100% at the 5 day trip and are probably, in reality, suffering from exhaustion. As far as I’m aware, Alex is OK although he is also pretty exhausted due to an inability to sleep while away. With all that said, I would have not missed PAX 2009 even if I knew how I would feel when I returned. I hope that Paul has a speedy recovery and I’m taking the rest of the week off, which those who know me will be very shocked to hear.

OK, this was probably the best part of PAX for me, so I thought I’d get it up as soon as I could. I was incredibly honored to interview nerdcore superstar Jonathan Coulton, a man I had at that point only been listening to for two weeks. By the next evening after this interview, his involvement with the Harmonix Rock Band network panel and seeing him in concert (along with Paul and Storm, his stellar co-musicians) the guy had my damn heart in a vice.

So here we are, 2.30 on Friday afternoon, myself, Tony and the gushing but oh-so-controlled Edie Sellers interviewing Joco (or Mr Coulton as I addressed him at the time) and asking him about his music, the path he’s taken and where it might lead.

Find out more at www.jonathancoulton.com

To all our listeners, I can recommend going to iTunes or your favourite music provider and buying at least his greatest hits collection: Joco Looks Back. There’s a huge variety there and he will make you laugh and cry. You can also buy all his songs for download directly though him here.

Also check out Skullcrusher Mountain on the Rock Band Store and just this week RE: Your Brains. 80 MS points each. Paul & Storm are on there too with Opening Band. More on them later.

Tony and I have a number of Xbox Live Avatar T-Shirts to give away. We’ll feed you the code and you enter it and then tell us it worked by posting underneath, mentioning the code that worked. We will then highlight that code in red to indicate it’s been taken. Please DO let us all know when you’ve used a code as it saves other listeners fruitlessly entering a used code. I’ll be adding to this list in the next few days until they’re all gone. We have PAX 09 logo shirts and Beatles Rock Band shirts in both male and female styles.

PAX Male – XK3V4-QWH69-PFM2Q-JB42P-B4TRQ

PAX Female – V66TX-FR3PD-YGPKJ-7CK9X-YWPDD

Beatles Male – TFXW3-QYW4P-JPKYD-BMVX2-G4HH6

Beatles Female – J94HH-76FM9-996WGP9FVR-W8CMT

New codes…

PAX Male (2) -R9MMK-BJT6R-GV29F-JY3BX-PP9BY

Beatles Male (2) – C242B-4RF82-R2BF9-DD94J-BHWJ8

Greetings. It has been a week of relative silence from the Digital Cowboys and I think it’s time we spoke up. We just got back from The Penny Arcade Expo or PAX in Seattle, one of the biggest fan-events in the world for folks who love gaming of all kinds. We saw so much over the past few days it’s impossible to summarize. Over the next few days and indeed weeks, the effects of this are going to become obvious. We’ve got tons of hands-on info on unreleased games, interviews with developers and PR and accounts of what it’s like to just be there with 60,000 other like-minded people.

So in the interests of streamlining, we’ll leave the questions up to you here. treat this as your own ongoing panel and ask Tony and I anything you want about PAX.

Regarding podcasts, we DID record a show on Sunday night along with the hosts of The Married Gamers and Some Other Castle, but there was a catastrophic technical foul-up and we lost the whole thing. Plans are afoot to do a long-distance, multi-host Skype session this week and bring that fantastic evening back for our deserving listeners because it really was excellent stuff and we want to share it with you.

Meantime check out Platform Nation (who were an absolute pleasure to meet with) in the next few days there should be the recording of a live podcast Tony and I hosted on Sunday afternoon at PAX with several walk-in guests and co-hosts. It was nerve-wracking stuff because we’d never recorded live (or indeed next to one another) but I think it was also a great show.It should be called PN @ PAX 09 Sunday’s Live Show Recap.

It’s great to be back, but we’re also going to miss everyone we met, some people especially.

OK now DC listeners can make with the questions.

This is the first of our mid-week shows where all we talk about is what we’ve been playing. This allows us to properly discuss the massive amount of games coming out this Christmas without it dominating the other elements of the main show.

This week Trials HD, Shadow Complex and in fact every single game from Xbox Live’s Summer of Arcade gets dissected. This is going to be heavily community-based so we need your feedback to guide this part of the show in the way our audience wants.

Also our Shatter on PSN code-winner is announced so tune in, because next week’s show it could be you. We’ve just acquired a UK-compatible code from the very helpful folks at Sidhe Interactive so now everyone can compete.

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