Eurogamer.net Podcast #117: Try Before You Dubai
Thoughts on Spec Ops and Peter Moore's F2P vision of the future.
It's Tuesday at 5pm, which can only mean one thing: we've managed to publish the Eurogamer.net Podcast on time on the right day for once! Thank you for your ears.
For this 117th instalment, we thought we would bring together several titans of UK games journalism to discuss the issues of the day. When we couldn't get them, we fell back on me, Chris Donlan and Martin Robinson.
As for the issues of the day, we felt those were Spec Ops: The Line - due out from Yager and 2K this week - and EA COO Peter Moore's comments on a future of free-to-play games and microtransactions.
- Download the Eurogamer.net Podcast as an MP3.
- Eurogamer.net Podcast on iTunes.
- Eurogamer.net Podcast RSS feed.
Spec Ops is an interesting one. It's about the futility of war, and while pretty much all cover shooters convey that by the time you're crouching behind the 900th wall shooting more of the same guys for reasons you've forgotten, this one does it by other means besides snore-inducingly repetitive mechanics, drawing on Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness for inspiration. Donlan reviewed it for us, so we cross-examine him about it. Warning: may contain wanky discussion about what we mean by "literary".
Then we get into Peter Moore's thoughts about F2P, and use it as a jumping-off point to discuss the contrasting new business models that have emerged since apps, DLC and microtransactions became such a big deal. We're also rude about Pocket Planes.
Finally, we go through another round of Questions From The Internet. Thank you for your contributions, even though not all of them were about Viva Pinata.
Background reading!
The Eurogamer.net Podcast goes out every Tuesday at 5pm, except when it doesn't.