iGame Radio

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Corey Tamas of MacGamer reviews StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty by Blizzard Entertainment. A true inheritor of the StarCraft crown with superbly balanced gameplay and gorgeous graphics, Corey still wishes that Blizzard was willing to go out on a limb and evolve it.
  

Show Notes:

• Host Omaha Sternberg chats with co-host Corey Tamas of MacGamer about the announcement of Torchlight II and Steam’s impact on Mac gaming in general.
• Apple is rumored to be acquiring Chinese online game developer Handseeing. Is Apple finally getting into the publishing business?
• Corey and Omaha talk about other games they’ve played, and games soon to be released, including the pending launch of Supreme Commander 2.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Digital Droo for featuring music from Burning Monkey Solitaire.
• Rich Carlson for featuring music from Dr. Blob.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Omaha reviews Torchlight for the Mac by Runic Games. A lightweight 3rd person adventure dungeon crawl with fun monsters to defeat and cool swag to find. Comfort food for your Mac gaming habit.
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha hosts alone as she talks about the StarCraft II launch, and whether it signals the beginning of the end of midnight launches.
• Apple has announced a new Mac Pro for August. Is it worth it to upgrade? Will it compete with other gaming machines?
• Other games for the Mac have been announced or released this past week, and Omaha talks a little about them all, including Ubisoft’s announcement of Assassin’s Creed 2 and Tom Clancy Splinter Cell: Conviction in their financial statements.
• No Plants vs Zombies 2 this year, and say goodbye to the dancing zombie, and hello to the disco zombie.

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Zach Young for featuring music from The Great Tree.
• Tomas Dvorak for featuring music from Machinarium.

Blizzard’s latest RTS, StarCraft II, experienced its midnight launch last night amid fanfare and trumpets. Or, at least, I suppose that somewhere it did. Where I was located it was more like a quiet milling around, and an attempt not to make too much noise talking.

That was the scene at the local GameStop I visited last night for the successor to Blizzard’s long awaited space-based real-time strategy game. StarCraft II would be available at both midnight launches of select GameStop (as well as Walmart and Best Buy) locations, and for digital download. The catch was that, though the digital downloads could be started before the launch date, the activation couldn’t happen until 10 am today. Core fans would decide they just couldn’t wait, and purchase the game at midnight (some doing a pre-order for a coveted Collector’s Edition).

But just how many core fans are there for StarCraft II?

In my area, not many. Admittedly, I live in a little town called Burien, just south of Seattle, but most of the GameStops in the King County area (the most densely populated in Western Washington) were closed because they were in malls. So, if you wanted to get it from a GameStop, there were five locations all told, and Burien was one of them. And really, are you going to celebrate a StarCraft II launch at Walmart?

I arrived at a little after 11 pm, and there were only four other people before me. By the time the midnight launch had occurred, only about 20 people had showed (though it was enough in such a small store to create a line out the door). Speaking to the staff, they had expected more around 40.

Should we be surprised? Staff members mentioned that they figured that a lot of people were going to take advantage of the digital download opportunity. In fact, one of them would have had it not been for his employee discount.

A 1Up poll performed the day before the launch also showed some interesting numbers, with only 30% showing that they would get the game on the first day, and of that, 5% stating that they would do a collector’s edition pre-order. In the same poll, 44% said that they would buy the boxed edition, and 16% getting the digital download. Parse the numbers together, and you come up with a small percentage that actually intended on attending the midnight launch parties to begin with (statistically, probably about 20%).

A big question is whether this is the beginning of the end of midnight launches. This information is of course based on only a small sample size, but the fact is that as Blizzard becomes more popular in a wider audience, that audience is not as hardcore in total as it used to be. And a smaller percentage of the number of fans that would have come out for an event like this will do so. Would it be financially viable for a company to even try to put on a midnight launch?

As fewer and fewer people show up for a launch of this type, the value of selling the game becomes less than the cost of keeping the physical store open. And that, my friend, is the deciding factor.

The big launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty begins early tomorrow morning, at midnight specifically. But if you don’t want to wait in the lines that have already formed to purchase a boxed copy, you can download it right now.

If you intend on buying the digital version of StarCraft II: WoL, Blizzard announced a program wherein you can download the digital copy ahead of time at your leisure. Then when the digital version of the game launches tomorrow at 10am PDT, you can simply pay for your purchase and begin playing immediately. Of course, it means you won’t be playing at 1am in the morning like everyone who stayed in line, but for many who can’t do the lines for one reason or another (coughworkcough), this becomes an invaluable method for getting the game.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Omaha reviews Osmos HD for iPad by Hemisphere Games. A great port of a beautiful ambient arcade game, Osmos HD has taken everything good from the original and dumped any bad stuff. Except for getting it to go fast, fast enough.
  

Show Notes:

• Apple announced today their fixes for so-called “antennagate”, the issues with the iPhone 4 antenna and connectivity. Free bumper cases for all (till September 30, at least). So, what does this all mean? How will gamers benefit? And shouldn’t Apple have figured this one out during testing?
• Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about Blizzard’s re-decision to nix requiring their RealID to use their official forums. They do the Strike-Counterstrike thing and come to some interesting conclusions.
• A mysterious picture is floating around the net, sporting an image of a zombie hand holding up the date of August 2. Could we be looking at an announcement of Plants vs. Zombies 2??
• DS Effects has created what is probably the first HTML5 gaming portal. What could this mean for the future of iPhone gaming?

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Digital Droo featured music from Active Lancer; pick up the Active Lancer soundtrack
• John Gatti for featuring music from El Ballo; pick up the El Ballo soundtrack

Blizzard has posted a new update to its upcoming StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. The Hyperion is where you’ll be purchasing new units and upgrades during the single-player campaign, and there are three locations within the Hyperion, the Armory, Cantina, and Laboratory, to find the necessities.

With enough credits available, one can purchase new tech and upgrades in the Armory, purchase mercenary contracts in the Cantina, and building, unit, and tactical upgrades in the Laboratory. Each location has their restrictions and requirements.

For more details on what the ship provides, check out the preview.

Earlier this week, Blizzard introduced their new RealID feature. This optional feature allows players of World of Warcraft, Starcraft II (and presumably Diablo III when it comes out) to link their real names to their character names, then list each other on their friends lists. It is meant to provide more depth and engagement for players of Blizzard games, and allow real life friends who game together to see each other in-game.

Okay, so nice idea.

Then Blizzard decided that in order to post on their forums from now on, you would have to use your RealID, i.e. your real first and last name, to do so. And the entire Blizzard universe blew up.

Many, many people have already posted about why this is an absurdly bad idea on many fronts. Peter Cohen and I also talked about it at length on the latest iGame Radio podcast as well. It’s a bad idea for female gamers, for minorities, for parents, for people who want to keep their jobs. It’s a bad idea for gamers who simply want their game life and their real life separate.

Well, over 15,000 European and 50,000 American posts later, and Blizzard has finally realized it’s error. They have rescinded their decision (in record time).

“We’ve been constantly monitoring the feedback you’ve given us,” stated a Blizzard spokesperson in the forums, “as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we’ve decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.”

One can speculate over many different reasons for the decision to change this. But the bottom line is that any company, when they try something new, will not really know what the response of their customers is going to be until they actually hear back from their customers. This is precisely the way a game company should operate. Blizzard tried something new. They got an immediate and overwhelming negative reaction to it. They chose to accept their customer’s response as a good indication that the decision was a bad one and withdrew it.

Case closed.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Omaha reviews Drawn: The Painted Tower by Big Fish Games. A beautiful hidden object game that integrates puzzle with storyline, graphics with sound. If only she could have done something at the end! But, don’t worry, there’s that cave…
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha Sternberg and Peter Cohen of The Loop talk about Blizzard’s decision to require their RealID to use their official forums. And one Blizzard employee finds out the hard way that, yes, you CAN find out a hell of a lot of info from just one’s first and last name…
• The App Store and a number of iTunes accounts were hacked last week to increase the ranking’s of a bookseller online. But is this an isolated incident?
• Apple gave many indications that iAds would be kind of the hill come launch time. Yet there are still apps getting approved using AdMob and other competitor’s adware. What’s the deal? And what impact could this have on gamers?
• Peter and Omaha start talking about 3Dchat and eventually get around to erotic hamburger (in 3D!). Bet you want to listen to the show NOW!

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Michael Hu-wong for featuring music from Fizzball.
• Steven Johnson for featuring music from Escort Wing.

 

What’s inside this episode:

• Corey Tamas of MacGamer gives a review of GodFinger for the iPhone by ngmoco. Use your finger to be god. I mean, what else would you use your finger for? Make charming critters worship you, then roast them when you had a bad day. All for free!
  

Show Notes:

• Omaha Sternberg and Corey Tamas of MacGamer talk about the iPhone 4 first impressions. Despite over 1.7 million iPhones sold in 1.5 weeks, only 48 apps have been updated for iOS4. What gives? Omaha and Corey talk about what that means. Also, what do people think about the gyroscope, multitasking, and retina display so far?
• OnLive is live. But Omaha can’t connect. Find out why.
• Feral Interactive has announced a teaser for their next game announcement, and Omaha thinks she knows what it is.
• Virtual Programming reissued X3: Reunion as a native Mac port because they didn’t feel the Cider was “good enough”. Omaha and Corey talk about what the means, and whether this is the start of a trend.
• Contests! More contests than you can shake a crashed iPhone at!

Music Notes:

• Digital Droo produced our theme music here at iGame Radio.
• Matt Jarvis for featuring music from Osmos.
• Bobby “Glorian” Slavov and Victor Stoyanov for featuring music from Eschalon: Book 1.

BlizzCon tickets will start selling today at 7 PM Pacific Time. BlizzCon 2010 will take place October 22 and 23 at the Anaheim Convention Center, and tickets cost $150 USD each. This two-day event will contain Q&A panels featuring Blizzard Entertainment developers, social events for players and developers to meet one another, and hands-on gameplay featuring your favorite Blizzard Entertainment games. Tickets will go fast, and you only get to order 5 per billing address. Another batch will go on sale June 5th, Saturday, so if you lose out today, you can try again then.