Easy Allies Podcast #85 - November 8th 2017

Correction: a fiduciary duty is not some exotic legal concept unknown to the Easy Allies. EZA is a partnership and the 9 of you each have a fiduciary duty vis-a-vis EZA and the other partners.

The Velvet Underground & Niko Bellic

Sugar Ray.

The big FPS on XBL before Halo 2 came out was Return to Castle Wolfenstein. The top game overall was Mechassault.

If Telltale do indeed move to "more proven technologies", it may allow them to offer cosmetic DLC in the future - alternate costumes etc. I suspect that's one area they'll be looking at closely.

Halo 2.. biggest gaming disappointment of all time. I've never been so hyped and then absolutely destroyed by a game in my life. I haven't over hyped a game since, so at least I learned a valuable lesson from it. I was in denial for weeks before I finally admitted to myself that Halo 2 was gutter trash compared to CE.

Thwap23

This whole episode was just sort of a giant bummer. Business conversations are among my least favorite topics. There’s no way to bring any sort of joy to them which is what I like most about this podcast.

Jason Jordan

Well... Hoeg never said that all games should be as service, he said that companies should consider it and make informed decisions. Nintendo was seen as an example by him, as a company that should stick to single player games. Moreover, he never said that games as a service mean microtransactions or loot boxes, and he didn't say where and how those should be used. So, to justify EA or Warner Bros doing things that destroy their games as a fiduciary obligation makes no sense. You need to examine your company and you games. One may argue that Bethesda exists because of their commitment to single player, and you see a lot of multiplayer done right in lots of places. You don't have to kill your franchises to maximize profit. It's just a logic falacy to say that...

Miguel Pires Ramos

Am I the only one to think of this when they say "fiduciary" over and over? <a href="https://youtu.be/XxyB29bDbBA" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/XxyB29bDbBA</a>

Miguel Pires Ramos

Huber, please do a “Housemarque-Arcade farewell-stream” with Nex Machina and maybe some community-coop Alienation

CORRECTION: You can definitely play a game with baseball cards: it's called MLB showdown. Surprised huber didn't know about it!

Correction: Ilari Kuittinen is a finnish name, not danish

Cottelito

I think the definitive highlight of this weeks podcast is Kyle's short debate with himself about whether to talk about the fact that he wants to do a Saul impression.

Sam Handrick

Correction : New Super Mario Bros Wii was released in 2009. It was shown at that years E3 along with Super Mario Galaxy 2, which released in 2010. And it was exactly halfway through Wii's lifetime, not near the end. (the lifetime being 2006-2012.) I don't mean to sound picky, but since it is Easy Allies' fiduciary duty to get their facts right, I feel an obligation to help out.

irene035

Slight Correction: The Amazon Game Studios big esports game, Breakaway, hasn't been cancelled, and is actually (according to amazon) still in development by the team, but they're going dark after their recent Alpha tests and have said they won't make any further announcements for an indefinite period into the future.

Sam Handrick

I am that guy from the Call of Duty commercial. I used to play the very first COD and its expansion COD: United offensive with my best friend for years. We skipped Cod 2 and 3 and stoped playing untill COD MW came. We had a clan and trained 3 times a week and had a clan war 2 times a week against other clans. Good times! Eventually we both stopped playing cod. Now we both have a wife, kids, jobs and we live across the country from another. When we learned COD was going back to WW 2 we were so exited. Time to re-live the glory days of Cod. Time to jump back to the war. It was time to awnser, THE CALL OF DUTY!

FreeDoM

Suggestion for your Hoeg law segment: call it "Rick's Schtick" or "Easy Alaws"

Sean Dupree

Clarification: Halo 3 was actually the game that ruled all on Xbox Live eventually, it went head-to-head with CoD 4: Modern Warfare and it won, and it was only dethroned on Xbox Live when Halo 3 was over 2 years old by Modern Warfare 2. As you said, Halo 2 was pretty much the only option, but it still ruled over everything when Halo 3 came out. It would have been incredible to see Halo 3 and Modern Warfare 2 go head-to-head on Xbox Live. Of course, overall Modern Warfare 2 ended up being way bigger because it was multi-platform. I used to love going to Major Nelson's site to see the Monthly Xbox Live leaderboard. What a time to be alive.

Jones.. that was the best pun.

POKEY CLYDE

The "push forward with the left analogue stick" videos at the end of these podcasts are very close to being my favourite thing EasyAllies does, or anyone for that matter.

Correction: It was Call of Duty 2 that the Xbox 360 launches with, not Call of Duty 3. Also for what it’s worth my friends and I got together everyday after school in high school to play 4 player split screen Call of Duty 2, so that was a huge game for us. L&amp;R

Trey Whetstone

Wow. Jones had the chance to bring ghosts as being real back.. and passed on it!

Raven Perez

CORRECTION: There's precedent of gambling with in-game currency in GTA Online, and as such also indirectly real life cash... From day 1 you could bet up to 10k GTA$ on whether or not a player would win a race, and you could bet on every player. Later Premium Races was added, with a 20k GTA$ entrance fee. 8 players compete and only the top 3 wins cash back. To make that even worse, the top 3 shares 150k GTA$. The entrance fee of all players combined is 160k GTA$ so Rockstar takes 10k away for every premium race. GTA Online is scummy as all hell. Surely poker would be a complex legal issue, but don't count it out. I'm with Huber.

GermanScientist

Corporations have earned limitless rights in the last hundreds years. Maximizing profits while ignoring externalities is why you have major polluters, market crashes, layoffs etc... I think it’s important that people understand this and why corporations and capitlism are NOT a good thing. I don’t want to bring in politics but this is inherently political. I’d suggest that we not humanize corporations. They’re one of the greatest contributors to suffering around the world.

Hi panel, just wanted to say that even though Bethesda games don't have microtransactions for the most part, the problem is most of them this year have not sold well, at least for now ! Evil Within 2, Prey, Dishonored 2 (and the dlc) have had lackluster charts sales, from the numbers I've seen in videogame medias. So yes, Bethesda has good practices, but good practices don't make for an appealing game. Even being a great game (like Nex Machina) doesn't become a success because it's great. I think most of all, you have to market the game properly. EA and Activision make the more money because they have both Big franchises and huge microtransaction revenues. So they have the bigger marketing campaigns... See, that how the circle goes, whether its good or bad.

Térence Caron

Regarding the 'uhms', you could also just make a small break or stretch a word instead of doing an 'uhm'. I think this improves the subjective quality of a statement (of course, objectively, there is no difference in the quality of a statement with or without an 'uhm')

Timo Arnken

can't the platypi win up to a maximum 2 points per week? Or 3 when you include Don bets as well?

Dileepan M

I agree with Kyle, Nex Machina looks like rainbow puke from a screenshot. I remember as soon as I saw that game I wrote it off. I think Dead Nation, AlienNation, and ResoGun are all much more appealing to look at. I gave those a chance, but even now hearing that Nex Machina is great - I still have no interest because of it's art style.

Ian Alexander

Was just thinking that what if Skyrim had loot boxes and that made it less successful and then they couldn't make the card game based on it. With the audiance of buyers right now that probably wouldn't be the case but it could be with a different public. So the public informs what a companies duty is. Basically it's still your fault if you bought horse armor.

Ben's great at avoiding umms.

Cash

Fiduciary duty lol

A Joker Fan

Bosman and Huber on any show together instantly makes it a 10/10

A Joker Fan

Correction: House Forrester - the family in Telltale's Game of Thrones - was not invented for the game. They are briefly mentioned in book five. Things like their members or crest however were new inventions.

Can we get a Huber Syndrome on camping? I used to enjoy sniping a lot in the original Battlefront - playing splitscreen with my brother against the AI, we'd rack up like 50 kills per death. It was cheap. It was disreputable. It was far from hardcore. But I loved it.

Samuel Cardwell

Love the Hoeg Law section.

Evil camping Kyle, lol.

CORRECTION: Kyle implied that it is possible for the Purple Platypi to "catch up" or even possibly overtake the Red Eagles in points. Assuming that the same schedule is used as last year, as of this week the Red Eagles have clenched, with a 7 point lead and 6 weeks of shows remaining.

micspam

honestly was hoping to see it on the switch. Is that now impossible I guess.

Perfect World is the name of the MMO as well. I put way too many hours into that game back in high school :P

o7

Hob &lt;3 One of my favorite games I’ve played in this great year for games. EDIT: iirc, Hob was 20% off on PSN if you preordered.

Luke Sandstrom

Jones killing that Sugar Ray bit with surgical precision was a beautiful thing to see. We salute you, Jones o7.

Bradley Spies

Here is a VERY ambitious idea for Tell Tale. Making it one big joined universe. Have a new series that takes the choices you make in each game to change the story for the new series. So the problem with the game industry is how players spend so much money knowing microtransactions. So if most of the industry goes to Games as a Service you know who to blame. Hate the players not the game really makes sense.

Chris H

Nvm cough at 9:00 confirms very sick

VGJunky

Kyle sounding a little sick still or just my hearing?

VGJunky

Always appreciate the hard work! Thank you L&amp;R

Daniel Murray