Deanna

E3 2017 Predictions | Ep.66

We all sit down and take a good, long look through E3’s conferences and what we think’s going to be announced during each one.

Our E3 Post-Show Recap will be live on Twitch this coming Tuesday, June 13, at 3PM EST, and we’ll be talking in-depth about each conference.

Recorded live on June 5, 2017.

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We accept questions for the podcast constantly on our site, through Discord, and if you email questions@thelifecast.net.

Shadowrun: The Coda Conflict- Episode 8

Our runners find out what’s wrong with Rizzo and ask the technicians to run some tests on Tablespoon, Teaspoon’s lost brother.

Stardew Valley, Bloodborne, osu!, and Thimbleweed Park | Ep.61

This week we revisit some old gaming flings, and take on some new ones! Deanna revisits Stardew Valley and Bloodborne, Pat talks about Thimbleweed Park, and Derek compares Player Unknown Battlegrounds to another game that’s already been through its run and talks about osu!. As a welcome improvement, Tiffany mixes our audio live.

The episode where we recapped our Game of the Year episodes is here.

Thank you to Sydney, Colin, Damian, Wasabi, and Dave for your questions!

If you do wanna do us a huge favor, rate us on iTunes, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. We have YouTube, and a Discord server, and we stream at least once a week on Twitch. Thank you all so much for listening!

Weekly Update #3 – Teasers

We’ve been busy this week working on things behind the scenes once again. The weekly installment of our podcast will be out at 2PM today, and on YouTube at 11AM tomorrow.

For now, I’ll leave you with a teaser of our upcoming podcast, Encryptid. Featuring Deanna and Kennedy, Encryptid is a show about conspiracy theories and things like Bigfoot. The audio comes out normally, as a podcast would, and the video is the prize of the whole ordeal. It’s like a scavenger hunt and a short TV show rolled into one.

We are also bringing you the first episode of our D&D series as soon as we can. Greg’s working on the story and getting a good backlog of episodes. As one can imagine, it’s difficult to get eight people together for an extended period of time since we’re all pretty busy.

Episode six of The Coda Conflict is out, and things really start to pick up plot-wise. A new cover image for The Coda Conflict is in the works, from our very own Kennedy. Hopefully that’ll come around with the next episode. Not this Sunday, but the one after.

As always, you can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Follow us on all of those channels to get updates as soon as they happen.

We’ll leave you, though, with the cover image for this podcast:

Shadowrun: The Coda Conflict – Episode 6

Join our runners as they dabble in biotech, drag, and get a speedy escort to the Godless Republic after meeting with a familiar face.

From now on, we will be highlighting our tabletop videos on the site, but they come out on YouTube first. You probably know it already, but subscribe if you want new episodes as soon as we release them.

PAX East Highlights – Dipped in Neon and Bleeding Synth

There was a trend in the things displayed at PAX East this year, and it’s one I’m happy is making its way into the mainstream. That’s right, folks, we’re getting cyberpunk, and it’s not stopping anytime soon. Welcome to the world of neon lighting, driving synth-based music, and themes of grappling with the big bads in charge of corporations. Buckle up.

Weekly Update #2 – Cryptids & Wrap-ups

This week, things have slowed down. We recorded our podcast on Tuesday as usual, and that will be up tomorrow at 2PM and on YouTube on Friday at 11AM. As for anything else we have in store…

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Weekly Update #1 – PAX East and Upcoming Features

As many of you know by this point, a whole slew of us, dare I say all of us, were at PAX East this past weekend. We walked the show floor, touted a really cool geofilter on Snapchat, and had a good time. A lot of time was spent in the Twitch Prime Lounge, and the few of us that had energy abounding got to play nearly every game we wanted. But more on that later, in our upcoming PAX recaps! They’ll be out over the next week or so.

In addition to our individual recaps, we have a yearly tradition of doing one final show floor walk on Sunday. We recorded the footage and are currently putting it together. Again, it’ll be out sometime next week and we will cross-post it basically everywhere.

In the vein of video features…

We’re doing our best to work on a lot more of them! There are a lot of things happening behind the scenes, and we’ve been saying that for a while, but this time it’s true! In addition to our weekly Twitch streams (we were on hiatus this week because of PAX), we’re planning more. Several of us are working on putting together something for our YouTube channel, and those will be coming in the next several weeks.

We’re also working on extracting highlights from our streams and our podcasts. It’s for anyone who misses it, as it can sometimes be hidden in our main content.

Videos out this week:

We published two things on our channel this week: the first being the continuation of The Coda Conflict, our Shadowrun actual play series. We also published the podcast in YouTube-friendly format for those of you that prefer to listen to it there.

 

And that’s it, folks. That’s what we’re up to and what we’re planning. There will be more of these weekly updates in the future– ideally weekly, but definitely after larger events like PAX East and other conventions around town.

For now, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and join our Discord if you’d like to stay on top of things.

Game of the Year 2016 | Deanna’s Picks

I’m going to start out being completely honest. I did not play many games that came out this year, but I do have a clear pick for game of the year. Things like Stardew Valley and Dark Souls III didn’t catch my interest enough to continue past the first little while. I bought games that turned out to be complete flops, but for some ungodly reason I still enjoy. There are games that I had never even heard of that I ended up loving. Though I say I didn’t play many games this year, I can certainly fill out a list of five (well, four plus one update) that I enjoyed more than others, and I daresay I thought were better.

No Man’s Sky: Rise Again

What the Foundation Update did for No Man’s Sky was, at first glance, make it a lot like Minecraft. This was my original gripe with the update, and that’s what the patch notes sounded like. You can build things, you can craft things, and most importantly, manage your inventory. No shame in trying to reinvent the wheel unless you’ve got bad PR to work with.

Relaxing Games: Things to Play When You’re Stressed

With the holiday season upon us, it’s high time for stress, commotion, and of course, a lot of really good food. Sometimes though, it’s important to take a step back and chill. Sometimes it’s with a book, sometimes it’s with some music, and sometimes you need something to take your mind off of things for a bit.

Scavenger Hunt: When Video Games Aren’t Enough

A growing trend in media is the scavenger hunt. Everyone likes to play Sherlock Holmes, everyone wants to be a detective. Sure, Easter eggs in movies are fine and we all look forward to our Stan Lee cameos in Marvel movies. There’s an ongoing hunt across both seasons of Mr. Robot as viewers scramble to uncover clues about what, exactly, is going on. And over the last month or so, we’ve gotten maybe a glimpse as to who Sombra is.

Overwatch is a character-centric team-based shooter where you battle for control of a point for an extended period of time, capture points from the defending team, or defend then escort some cargo. It’s pretty tried-and-true, as there are other games like it that have done very well over the last decade. It’s no surprise that these types of games come with dedicated followings. After all, it’s a Saturday morning cartoon, and everyone’s got their favorite character.

The full roster. No hidden characters!

The full roster. No hidden characters! (via FacePunch)

In case the very plain comparison to Team Fortress 2 was missed, here’s the deal. Initially both games started out the same way. You pay up front and have a chance to earn unlockable things. The way the two differ, however, is in the way they presented their characters. Now, I’m not saying one is better than the other, but at least when Valve released their last ode to the characters of TF2 it didn’t send fans into mania.

First up, we’ll cover Valve. Team Fortress 2 was released in 2007 as a successor to their team-based FPS Team Fortress. The main changes were the style and the emphasis on character personality. TF2 looked more like a cartoon, and Team Fortress looks a bit like a low-res Counter Strike map. Over the next several years, all the way up to 2012, Valve put out videos in the “Meet The…” series. It was a jovial look at the personality of each character; what made them tick, if you will. But Valve had every one of those characters as a playable class from the beginning.

Blizzard, on the other hand, had a set character roster at the outset of Overwatch. Currently, one character has been added: Ana Amari. Her reveal was a bit unceremonious, although not silent. Blizzard released the character on their public test region (PTR), then into the base game as part of a larger update. Simple. We got to know her, and the history she has with other characters.

And then Blizzard started teasing players. One by one, clues for a mysterious hacker started cropping up. Edit an image a certain way, and there’s a clue. Look into the source code of one update’s patch notes, another clue. And so Sombra was hinted at for so long. Over a month, in fact. Fans speculated that once the countdown found on amomentincrime.com, Sombra would be released. It’s over now and all that’s left is another clue. As of October 25th, there’s even more, promising something big next Tuesday.

This article, situation, and past several weeks summed up in one image. (from XOGram on tumblr.)

This article, situation, and past several weeks summed up in one image. (via XOGram on tumblr.)

For the most part, it’s tiring. Just release the character. Please. At this point it’s a conflict of interest between Blizzard and the Overwatch community. From a casual player’s standpoint (hi that’s me) it just seems like a shallow attempt at getting people to play Overwatch. And people do still play it. Blizzard is not ceasing development due to a dwindling player base. Overwatch, like every other Blizzard game, will stay in the niche that it fits into. And it will do well in that niche.

Game devs do not need to go to great lengths to engage their players outside of the game. Guess what? It’s a video game. You’re engaging your audience through it. There’s no need for a scavenger hunt to extend the realm of it. Whether it’s due to the lack of immersion or some other angle, it all seems so extra.

Then again, I did praise Mr. Robot for doing this exact same thing. The show’s crew, namely Kor Adana, saw the potential for it to be hackable. A show about hackers, itself, being hackable. It’s a match, and it works. And it makes sense. Mr. Robot’s entire premise is that viewers do not know what’s happening. Viewers don’t interact with video games the same way they do with TV. There’s no mechanical input over a course of time. There’s no engagement further than what the show makes viewers think about, so capitalizing on that absence isn’t over-the-top.

Is there a niche of players who love ARG puzzles and want the trend to continue? Sure, I bet there is. There’s also a whole band of players who think that over a month of teasing for one cryptic character release is unnecessary. Information about updates from game devs needs to be told in absolutes. Are we getting something? Yes? Cool, when?

 

Cover image from iTech Post.