EPISODE 67: "I, Zombie"

Now available for ALL AUDIENCES on ScrewAttack, plus embedded below:

Will The Next XBox Use CARTRIDGES??

You may recall that I've been in favor of such a thing since last year; so obviously I'd support the HELL out of any company that actually tried what MCV claims Microsoft might by trying with the next XBox: Ditching disc-based games entirely in favor of "solid state" storage - aka the return of games on cartridges (or, more specifically, some kind of proprietary SD Card-esque format.) Wouldn't that be something.

It almost sounds crazy, but consider the difficult situation for Microsoft otherwise: Downloadable and/or "cloud" gaming is the wave of the future to a large degree (and whatever else the "NextBox" is, you can bet it'll be optimized for that), but physical media isn't going all the way away anytime soon; and the physical-media of choice for the forseeable future is Blu-Ray... a format owned by their competition, Sony. Given that, it's understandable how MS could at least be considering a potentially risky move like this.

What I want to know is, IF this goes down... do the others follow suit?

Sony, certainly, is unlikely to abandon Blu-Ray outright for the innevitable PS4... but if solid-state "carts" looked poised to catch on as a legit alternative (obvious benefits: low-to-no loading times, durability, on-board saving/writability) would it be that hard to "add a slot" to the machine just in case?

Similarly, though the WiiU is already in-production with a scheduled release of later this year, I could easily imagine otherwise-cautious Nintendo jumping on this theoretical bandwagon - if there's any game company bound to become almost sexually-aroused as the prospect of returning to proprietary cartridges it's Nintendo, after all...

Update Time!

Head's up! EPISODE 67 will be viewable by all audiences on 3/12 at 10:30 PST on ScrewAttack.

ADVANTAGE subscribers can get an early look starting tonight right here. Remember, if you sign up for Advantage and choose "The Game OverThinker" as your show-of-choice, a portion of your subscription goes to support the production of this series.

Episode 66: "Why Do You Love Video Games?"

Here it is, now live for ALL AUDIENCES at ScrewAttack. For a quick refresher, here is the FilmCritHulk article from BAD which the main premise of his episode is affectionately ripped-off from...



So, about this episode...

I really like this one, and believe it or not it came together all at once: I've been pretty sick the last few weeks, and as such a significantly more elaborate episode (in terms of central topic and bookends) that was originally planned to be #66 fell a bit behind in production. I didn't want to make everyone wait any longer than they'd waited already, and it occured to me that A.) nobody had done a "gamer" version of the Hulk-spawned "Why You Love" meme and B.) it would be an easier to script to read/edit with my in-and-out vocal chords since it'd lack run-on paragraphs. Also, I got the sense it could really be something special, but naturally that's up to you to judge.

So I did it up, spent a day compiling the 200+ images (a new record!) and put together some short "filler" bookends that don't necessarily "advance" the narrative but at least they 're-up' everyone on NecroThinker and the Video-Zombies; along with giving me an excuse to 'borrow' that wicked-cool ending animation from "Golden Axe."

Is This, At Last, The Bottom?

If I was asked to sum-up the thing MOST wrong with "geek culture" in general and gamer culture specifically, it would be three simple words: BETA-MALE MISOGYNY - the general sense of angst-driven entitlement among a sizable chunk of geekdom's dominant white/hetero/male demographic that it's somehow "justified" for them to engage in the casual hatred/debasement of women (and minorities and gays while we're at it) because they were (or at least percieve themselves to have been) slighted by women in the past/present.


You see this manifest everywhere, from the absolutely brutal woman-hatred that afflicts shut-in havens like Reddit or Tumblr, to say nothing of the toxic environment fostered in online gaming communities... and, of course, the wailing about criticism of such spaces in the form of "Aw, c'mon! This is the ONLY place left where it's okay for guys to talk like that!" - as though the fact that there shouldn't be a place where that's "okay" has NEVER occured to them - and now you can see it in Kotaku's most-recent brain fart: Giving over article space to a "comedic" memoir by a self-professed "ladies' man" detailing his Tucker Max-esque 'challenge' of getting women to have sex in his Sonic The Hedgehog themed bed.

Okay, so... pretty vile. Congratulations on the traffic Kotaku, you've more than earned it - but can I ask if this can please be the BOTTOM now? Seriously - Gamer Culture? Can we let this be "it," the last worst thing "we" do to make ourselves look like the degenerate lumps everyone assumes we are to begin with? Or do we have further yet left to sink...

EPISODE 66 ANNOUNCEMENT!

Head's up! Episode 66: "Why Do You Love Video Games?" - inspired by this article from friend-of-the-show-FilmCritHULK - will debut wide on ScrewAttack on Tuesday 2/28. ScrewAttack advantage members (remember: Advantage gets you an ad-free site and directly supports the shows of your choice) can get an early look NOW at this link.

BIG UPDATE TIME!

Okay, so...

Things went a little dark-ish here, for a bit. Short version: Got a nasty sick-bug of some sort that played hell on my vocal chords and knocked-out one of my ears for awhile, so my productivity went to shit. Things are picking back up, so time for some updates:

Firstly, two more episodes have "aged into" YouTube-readiness: Episode 61: "Bells & Whistles" and Episode 62: "Seeing Red."

Second: A new episode HAS been completed, though I don't know when (presumably in the near future) it will air at this time. I will post it as soon as I know more.

Third: I recently learned that, unfortunately, the proposed TGO panel was not picked up to be part of PAXEast this year. Dissapointing, but these things happen. I'm in the process of contacting folks who had offered to participate; and I will still be appearing on/at (at least) two other events at the show.