Couch Podtatoes

Today's episode is courtesy of Eri's twisted mind. Oh shit, did I say that out loud? Anyway, we've delved into the topic of entitlement, not just in the sense of the word where gamers are sometimes entitled jerks, but also in the actual way we should be entitled to certain rights when speaking of gaming in general. Do you think we are entitled to certain things? We certainly do, but it might not be in ways that you think. You'll have to jump in and listen to find out more!

We didn't have an episode preplanned this week and for some reason (namely Blaugust) my creative well has been starting to run dry. Between writing posts every day and trying to keep up with real life obligations, I absolutely had no ideas. Earlier in the week I had the thought that we could do an Ask Me Anything, and put out the call on Twitter but had very little response. As such, I took a look at the Blaugust AMA thread, and decided that we could just answer the questions posed there. So that's what we did. It's a broad spectrum this episode but still mostly has to do with gaming. Thankfully me and Eri can play off each other's rants fairly well these days, so I think it turned out well after all. Enjoy.

For this week's episode we're delving back into Doone's Digital Frontier, where we'll be talking about the subject of competition, and analyzing its effects on the player base. Is it good, or is it bad? We'll share our opinions. Frankly, it was a rather in-depth and fun discussion and though it runs a little on the long side, I think you'll enjoy it.

This week we went back to the community well in that we decided to dedicate a whole show to the concept of a link-love post. I drew inspiration from Eri's series called "Link Dead Radio" and thought we could pull some community posts together to discuss. Turns out our community is ripe for the picking, so we go over quite a few different topics that lead into what I think was a great conversation. There's some talk about Blaugust in there, various mechanics in games and we even talk a little about Daybreak Games. Some of the articles we talked about are down in the show notes if you'd like to read those as well. Pull up a couch, and enjoy!

Picking up where we left off last week, here is the second half of our discussion on Gaming Company's Reputations. We discuss a few more reputations before diving into some questions about the topic at hand. Talarian is still our guest for this one. That's all there is to it!

This week on Couch Podtatoes we decided to take a look at the reputations of various gaming companies. We snagged Talarian of the blog Gamer By Design, and started tearing into the topic. However, the show ended up running quite long (and we didn't even touch on all the companies I had in mind!) so I had to split it down the middle. For episode 54, we get through what we've been playing lately, and then some of the companies on my list to talk about. You'll have to wait until next week for the latter half of the discussion!

Eri came up with this week's idea and we discuss the idea of using gaming as a coping mechanism. It's more of a philosophical topic and we definitely aren't pulling out any hard facts, but it was interesting nonetheless. Of course we also talk about what we've been playing before sharing our personal anecdotes about how we escape into virtual worlds when life gets rough. There's also some important TGEN related news that I announce towards the beginning of the show, but it's not exactly new news. Just wanted to put it out there again for those who may have missed it. That's about all I have to say on the matter, so check it out!

This week I go it alone, as time conflicts and mixups happen, even when you've been doing this podcast thing for this long! As the 4th of July rapidly approaches I decided to push this episode out solo so that I could enjoy the holiday with friends. It's another talking points episode, so I've got some articles from the gaming sphere that I found interesting enough to talk about and share with you. If the audio sounds a little funky it's because I ended up having a fan on in the background and editing that shit out makes everything sound tinny. My bad. But I wasn't about to re-record the whole thing again! I encourage you to check out the links below so you can get some extra information on the things I ramble on about!

Yeah, we've been harping on the subject of E3 for the past couple of weeks, but for this show we wrangled up Yoshi from the Game Introspection blog as he was actually at this year's E3 convention. Naturally, we poke and prod him for insider information about games and the show itself. We break the ice discussing what we've been playing and then go from there. Not much else to say about it, so have a listen and enjoy!

This episode marks ONE YEAR OF COUCH PODTATOES! Yes, that's right, we've been doing this that long already. We weren't smart enough to think of something extra extravagant for this show, but I think what we did come up with is rather decent. By the way, I realize that there are 52 weeks in a year, but we did take a couple of weeks off during the course of this run. With all of the hype of E3 starting to wind down, we saw a few themes emerge. Marketing tactics, hype cycles and even a Kickstarter announcement at the expo left some bad tastes in our mouths, despite also being very hyped for some awesome looking titles. Don't get me wrong, Eri and I agree that this was one of the best E3s in recent years, but we also were disappointed with certain aspects. We dive into a discussion about these sorts of marketing ploys that get us to empty our wallets, year after year.

Ok, so I lied last week when I said we wouldn't have anymore late shows. Me and Eri did get together and nailed down the perfect time each week to record, but we have been trying to get an episode going with Doone for quite a few weeks now, and due to scheduling conflicts it wasn't possible to do so until today. So we recorded earlier, I edited and now you get the show. It's only a day late at least. With Doone back, it's time for another Doone's Digital Frontier episode, and this time it's a philosophical discussion entitled "What are Games?" We ask the question and ponder the answer(s). I'd say this was one of our more humourous episodes, as we took the time to poke fun at each other and other stuff quite readily. We laughed during the recording session and I laughed some more while I was editing it. That's really all there is to say, so on with the show!

Sorry about the late show, my computer build and whatnot pushed things back considerably, and then weekends tend to be when Eri and I have more going on, so it was just a pain to get this one recorded. However, we did take the time to nail down a regular schedule that we could both commit to, so there shouldn't be anymore late episodes for the foreseeable future. The only way things will get out of whack is if we need to accommodate a guest's schedule, but I'll give you heads up on Twitter if that type of thing is going to happen. Anyway, this week we're discussing E3, and have a laundry list of games that we're interested in learning more about. E3 starts next week, and we're looking forward to updates on games in development and new titles we probably haven't even heard of. Of course we couldn't touch on every single game that will be at the conference, but we did talk about a heap of AAA titles coming down the pipeline.

This week's show is probably our shortest to date. The reason being -- we recorded it last week, so we didn't talk about what we have been playing again (would have been redundant), so we just dive right into the topic. Our discussion revolved around emulation, and touched upon MMOs that are running emulation software, along with console emulation programs available for computers/phones and actual emulator console hardware. I think you get the idea, so I'll leave it at that.

Apologies for the late episode, but as I mentioned previously, Eri has gone back to work, so we're still trying to sort out good recording times. We did however record next week's show in advance so we'll at least be on time with that one :P We mutually decided that we would answer the third NBI talkback challenge rather than writing it out on our respective blogs, so after a short discussion about what we've been playing this week, we dive into our gaming histories. There really isn't much more to it than that!

As it is still the month of May and we’re plugging away at this whole NBI thing, I felt it was fitting to do a show with one of our brand new bloggers. Mr. Tyranny, otherwise known as Tyrannodorkus was kind enough to volunteer his services for this special community content episode. As is tradition with this feature, Mr. T was able to bring his ideas to the table for discussion, and as such we went on to talk about user-generated content in games. We also talk about what we’ve been playing lately, and I do a small interview with my guest to ask him what he thinks about the NBI so far. Unfortunately do to time conflicts Eri wasn’t able to make this recording so it is just Tyrannodorkus and I. Check it out, and we’ll see you next week!

This week we've gone back to tradition, in that we are running our standard format that we've gotten away from for a few months now. We start with what we've been playing, jump into a shorter discussion on the perils of PC to Console (and vice versa) ports, talk about some idiots on the internet, and highlight the 2015 NBI newbies in our community spotlight. There really isn't much more to say about it. 

So as I mentioned, this week's show should have technically been last week's show but I went on a trip to visit family I hadn't seen in a very long time, so I didn't feel too bad on missing out on a show. However, Eri rounded up Doone to talk about EvE's CSM which wrapped up in recent months. They recorded over the weekend, but as the resident editor/poster, I didn't get my hands on their recordings until I got back from my vacation. At that point it was late enough that I decided to just release this episode today. We'll be getting back on schedule this week. I'm not big on EvE; don't know much about it, but I do respect all of the craziness that it has spawned. Eri and Doone go into details of the CSM and many political aspects of other MMOs as well.

This week's episode of Couch Podtatoes is special in that we volunteered to be the host for the second quarterly TGEN Tribunal. Don't know what TGEN is? Well there are some handy links on my side bar that you can check out for a bunch of awesome podcasts that are part of the network. The Tribunal is the network's quarterly show where members of the various shows get together and discuss the hot topic around that time. This time around I'm joined by Roger of Contains Moderate Peril (whom has been a guest on CP many times, you should know him by now) and Braxwolf of Beyond Bossfights. We discuss at length the upcoming NBI 2015, which will be kicking off in May for it's 4th consecutive year. If you're a new blogger or would like to get involved in blogging (or podcasting for that matter) you should give the show a listen which should answer some of your questions, and head over to newbiebloggerintiative.com.

Hey gang. This week is the continuation of last week's show with Mystical Mesmer. The same disclaimer applies to the audio quality, and Mesmer is already in the market for a new microphone :P I should also notate that it's a much shorter show than usual, as it was too much to add to last week's show, and this is all that was left. Next week we're doing something big, so stick around.

As mentioned previously, we have decided to fully embrace the community aspect of our show and are continuing on with this new feature, where a member of the blogosphere comes onto the show and picks the topics for discussion. I love the community interaction and seeing what topics people want to discuss first hand, rather than just taking stabs in the dark or only talking about what we care about. It's also rather nice to get a break from brain storming show ideas! This week The Mystical Mesmer joins us and we had a rather lengthy discussion revolving around games in progress and PvP. Because this recording ran a bit long, I decided to break it into two parts, so you'll get the first couple of topics this week, and we'll finish up the discussion next week. Due to some technical difficulties/limitations, there were some parts where the sound quality wasn't quite up to par, and my normal editing techniques helped a bit, but you'll probably notice some portions of the show that don't sound quite right. I apolog