The Big Wii Debate.

This week we have a roundtable cross-podcast discussion about the Nintendo Wii. Why don’t we play it more often? Is it just because of the graphics? Can the list of games that Wii lovers hold dear turn the tide with the rest of us? Five men, five opinions.
Gamerdork’s Leon Ratso Albion Cox

The Gamerscene’s Dits Symeou

Big Red Potion’s Sinan Kubba

And myself and my co-host; Tony Atkins.

Game on.

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Selling Just Cause 2.

This week we’re very proud to welcome back to the show; Comunity Manager for Eidos, now a label of Square Enix, to talk about Just Cause 2. I had the privelege of getting some hands-on time with the game last week in London and it’s looking pretty exciting.

With the game effectively wrapped and release less than two months away, Mike is here to discuss some of the changes that have occurred since the first one, the bits we can look forward to the most and most importantly the challenge of bringing awareness about it to potential audiences in a crowded Q1, 2010.

After that, we discuss our 24 hour charity gaming marathon, which is happening on Saturday the 20th through Sunday the 21st of February and how you, our community can help us.

We finish up with a spoiler-free discussion about Mass Effect 2 and how the gaming mechanics have changed since the stellar original.

You can find the official website with all you need to know about Just Cause 2 here: http://www.justcause.com/home There’s also a competition on this episode to win a Just Cause 2 T-Shirt and a rare promotional ID card connected with the Alternate Reality Game on the official website.

And the page to go to, to donate to our Haiti fund is here: http://www.justgiving.com/Digital-Cowboys-Haiti-Relief-Challenge

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Why Don’t Square Remake Final Fantasy VII?

Having just completed FFXII, restarted VII and in anticipation of FFXIII we decided to pose the question to our community as to why Square Enix don’t cash in and make a contemporary version of Final Fantasy VII, one of the most beloved JRPG’s of all time for current gen systems.

To help us tackle your responses we brought in Carolyn Sonnek of Pink Ninja productions and Snark Fu. You may also know Carolyn as Blogkitten and the better half of Commander Tim.

Carolyn lives and breathes JRPG’s. When she bumps her knee, hit points come off her. So we delve into her mind and ask why she has so much time for this most life-consuming of all gaming genre’s.We also examine our own relationship with RPG’s both Eastern and Western.

Many thanks to all the listeners who contributed. We did not have time to cram in all of your responses, but we hope we did you justice.

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In the next few weeks, Tony and I are planning a 24-hour gaming challenge. Giles from our community has donated to us a code for a 48-Hour Xbox Live trial and for one whole day we will be trying to amass the largest gamerscore that we can on it. Giles has pledged to sponsor us £10 for every 100 gamer points earned.

Now I’m thinking that with a pile of games between us, Tony and I can aim for 5,000 over the 24 hour period, which would mean Giles alone will be donating a hefty £500. What we need is community support here. Pledge either a per-gamerpoint amount like Giles or a lump sum to us, because we need a lot more than what one generous man can give. I know you get charities thrust in your face all the time, but this is something we can all relate to in terms of endeavour and all donations will be going to Doctors without Borders, which will aid in the medical care for the thousands of Haitians injured in the recent earthquake.

MSF (Medicines Sans Frontiers) an independent international medical humanitarian organisation that delivers emergency aid in more than 60 countries to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural or man-made disasters or exclusion from healthcare. In emergencies and their aftermath, MSF rehabilitates and runs hospitals and clinics, performs surgery, battles epidemics, carries out vaccination campaigns, operates feeding centres for malnourished children and offers mental health care. When needed, MSF also constructs wells, dispenses clean drinking water, and provides shelter materials like blankets and plastic sheeting.

As for the challenge itself; we’ll be up all day and night, constantly swapping controllers and checking to see where the next gamerpoints gan be found. You can help us by sending Alex any terrible games you think it would be funny to see us try to get points from, or send us good ones if you prefer. We will send them back or sell them and donate the proceeds according to your wishes. You can also help us with all the online multiplayer achievements. We’ll be twittering our progress constantly so everyone can get involved and make suggestions on what we could do next.

This is a good thing we can do for other people, lend us your support folks.

Alex

The idea of the segment will be to give you the community a chance to have a voice on our show, but in a far more interesting way than just listener mail. The plan is to dedicate the last few minutes of certain shows covering a topic that we set out for you. This will normally have some correlation with what we will be discussing on the following week’s show.

There is one simple rule: -
Keep your answers short as long essays are hard to do justice to.

Now how is this going to work? Well, we give you four options: -

• The first is you can leave a voicemail via Skype, name Digitalcowboys
• Leave a comment on our website at www.thedigitalcowboys.com
• Send us an email on mailbag@digitalcowboys.com
• Or lastly, leave a post under the dedicated forum thread

So it’s time to set out the topic for you for next week’s show. We will be covering RPGs and the question that I pose to you thus: -

Why has there not been a Final Fantasy 7 remake yet? And if there was, what changes would have to be made to its formula, to fit within the modern day standards?

So there we go you’ve got your assignment for the week and we look forward to hearing your comments and this is open to any followers of the Digital Cowboys, so podcasters, PR Persons but most importantly, the general community.

A Question of Morality.

We’ve brought in Daniel Floyd once again, this time to discuss the topic of his latest animated lecture, based on an article by James Portnow on the challenge of designing games with ambiguous moral choice.

The situation so far has been Renegade/Paragon; being a total arsehole or a goody two-shoes and somewhere in-between an under-powered and frustrated player of games trying hard to make decisions that seem realistic. Portnow’s article argues that it’s possible to achieve more and in this episode, we look at the supreme design challenge that this represents. We also assess the difference between problems in a game and choices and how rarely the latter ever show up.

Many thanks to Daniel for joining us and adding his usual brand of classiness and incisiveness and also to Mr Portnow for the inspirational article. More people like these please.

Stay tuned at the close of the show for a fantastic Tim Minchin song and a cherry on top.

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Live Twittercast.

This evening we decided to open up the floor to our community and let you guys pick our topics. Edie Sellers of Gamehounds joins us to field your questions on Twitter and the forums.

We cram into 100 minutes all of your questions about what’s coming up in 2010 including Natal and the Sony Gem, 3D technology, Final Fantasy XIII, God of War III, new handhelds and many many more.

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Last week we appeared on The Married Gamers. We talked about hand-helds gaming and what has worked so far about it, along with what might occur in the future.

Also how we’d kill our loved ones in the event of a Zom-Pocalypse. Make sure you stick around for the tirade of filth at the end when we discuss the possibility of video game porn movies.

The show can be found here…

My Generation.

Since the Xbox 360 was launched in 2005 we’ve all come to embrace the many changes that it brought to us, along with those of the PS3 and Wii, launched a year later. But now that we’ve become complacent with the advantages and internet connectivity they delivered, we can barely imagine a world where we can’t see what our friends are playing every time we’re online and never find ourselves unable to walk further than two meters from the television with our controllers.

Tonight, let us explore that world by looking back on just what innovations we’ve been party to that would be impossible to abandon now. To chat with us, we have Dan Illson, a man with close links to Some Other Castle. We finish off with what we’ve been playing over Christmas; many RPG’s.

Note: During the show I call Final Fantasy XII “Ugly”, I realise that this clearly isn’t the case, it’s quite beautiful in fact, but that statement does speak volumes for how inured I am to HD gaming. -Alex.

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End of Year Awards 2009.

To close out the year, we look back on the last twelve months of game releases and name our nominations in a multitude of categories. Every nominee is a winner and deserves your attention.

To give us a balanced perspective we’re joined by Neil “Xibxang” Brooks and Leon “Ratso Albion” Cox of GamerDork.

To close out the show we announce the winner of our T-Shirt design challenge. The lucky entrant will receive a $40 gift voucher for Casually Hardcore, purveyors of fine geek, nerd and gamer-friendly clothing.

Happy New Year to all our listeners.

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