PXAbstraction

Cool article Patrick. I hate horror anything and am not a fan of super hard games either but I bought ZombiU after getting a Wii U for Christmas because the ideas behind it seemed so cool. I'm just about to finish the game (no spoilers but I'm in the "final sequence") and have absolutely loved it, despite the scares and punishing difficulty. It just feels so satisfying when I actually make progress in it and the game really shows the potential of what the Wii U GamePad brings to the table. I do hope DLC is coming, I'd dive into it for sure.

Did they give any kind of hint in your interview as to whether a sequel is coming? I have no idea how well this sold but I'm hoping given the kind of weak visuals that it didn't have a massive budget and didn't have to sell a couple of million to justify a sequel. I would love to see them take the ideas they had with this and be able to fully flesh them out into a more expanded scope.

And this is the company that now owns Volition, wonderful.

Also, I blame Phil Kollar for mentioning the comments here and making me check them out of morbid curiosity. There is so much growing up left to be done in the video game industry and community. As someone who has played games for almost 30 years, that makes me sad.

I've been getting dead slow video loading lately too. I have to use Progressive because using Streaming mode always results in super low quality playback but now videos are cutting off a few minutes into playback. This is happening on my 28MBit cable connection at home and on my 10Mbit fibre connection at work, both of which are different ISPs. I have no issues on any other site. This has been happening and getting steadily worse for weeks. As a paid premium member who primarily comes to the site for video, this issue and the lack of response is getting frustrating. :( I'm probably going to have to start just downloading the videos.

EDIT: Oh never mind. Even downloading the videos cuts off early. Tried to download the Primordia quick look and the server reset the connection after 200MB or so. I tried to do the same thing from a remote to my home PC and got a similar result. Different ISP, different connection. This is ridiculous. I don't think paying for a service and asking it to work is out of line.

I'd just like to chime in on this problem as well. I don't like to sound entitled but as a Premium member who primarily comes to the site for video content, I'm getting really frustrated by these constant video player issues. I have 28MBit cable at home and 30+MBit fibre at work, both of which used to have no problem with Giant Bomb videos until the new player launched. I can play multiple 1080p videos from YouTube simultaneously without a problem. Twitch live streams are also fine in 720p+. Now I've got the following issues:

-If playing streaming and the quality is set to Auto, the videos are clearly not playing in 720p. Everything's blocky and pixelated. If I try to change the quality to 720p, it switches to Progressive mode and restarts the video, making scrubbing to the previous position impossible.

-In progressive mode, videos are taking forever to download and unless I wait a long time before I start playing, I'll run out of buffer.

-Streaming frequently stalls out after a few minutes and pausing and resuming the video results in it restarting. This happens both in the Flash player on multiple PCs and the HTML5 player on my girlfriend's iPad.

I understand that you guys are using a new player from CBSI that's apparently not as good as the original player and that you are a small development team that is trying to focus on the site redesign but this is unacceptable. I'm paying to get good quality videos and on connections that should be able to handle them effortlessly, they're basically broken. At this point, my Premium membership is going to waste. Is there any progress we can expect to be made on this? I really love the site and I appreciate the work you guys do but this is just not good enough. Thanks, hopefully it can be sorted. :(

Really EA? Really?

Hey Matt. So after doing some research, I ended up just deciding to use the official Extra Life system after all. All the other alternatives I looked into were either sketchy, required Facebook (which I refuse to use) or took a substantial amount in fees. While I'm still not impressed by Extra Life's lack of organisation, it still seems to be the best option. Here is my donation page URL and the live stream will be hosted here. If you could add me to the list, that would be awesome. Thanks again!

I ordered a copy of this today but being in Canada, I was told it would take 6-12 business days to arrive. I have no idea if I'll like this game or not (I'm not a huge fan of Rohrer's other work) but I think the idea and the drive behind it are important and worth supporting. I've been thinking of getting into some YouTube stuff and would love to do a video of this. I wish there was a way to capture DS footage that didn't require a debug unit. :(

Is anyone else having issues lately with videos (especially in HD) running into constant buffering problems? I have fibre at my work at 24Mbit cable service at home and used to be able to play HD streaming videos no problem. However, now in either location, they frequently lag out and can take as much as a minute to buffer to the point where they can play again. I am trying to watch the They Bleed Pixels Quick Look now and it's lagged out at least half a dozen times. It doesn't constantly happen but seems to be with greater frequently lately. I use Chrome on Windows 7 but it happens in other browsers as well so it seems to be something on the server's end. I would normally assume it was the connection I'm on but my home and work connections are both very fast and from two different ISPs, nor do I have problems playing even 1080p stuff from other sites like YouTube without issue. As a premium member paying in part for for HD, this is getting frustrating. Is this just me or have others been running into it as well? Thanks!

@Matt: That's cool of you, thank you. The Fundrazr/livestream pages aren't setup yet (working on both this week though I'm holding down IT at work by myself this week so it might take a bit) but I will let you know once they are up.

Hi Matt! I've been a Giant Bomb user for a while but don't use the forums much. I had a question for you. I participated in Extra Life last year through the "official" channel and am planning to do the same thing on the same day this year (likely playing DayZ for 24 hours with a stretch goal to play Amnesia in one sitting, I also plan to do a live stream) but I am not doing it through the Extra Life organisation. They were a disorganised mess last year, it took months to get the premium t-shirts from them, they never responded to e-mail questions in a timely manner and they took so long to make the donations to my hospital that their fiscal year had concluded when the money made it to them so a my donors didn't get tax receipts. I e-mailed them multiple times this year asking how they were planning to combat these organisational challenges and have been completely ignored. Their support e-mail directs to the IT support desk of a Minnesota hospital (I guess the organisers work there) and they said they'd forward my concerns but I never heard anything.

As a result, I'm going to be organising and promoting my event through Fundrazr.com which will still allow me to accept credit card donations. The trick this time is that I'll be receiving the money personally and will be passing it on to the charities myself (I'll likely be splitting mine between the hospital and a local humane society that's hurting for money). I know this requires an extra element of assumed honesty from me but given that most of my donations came from friends and co-workers last year, needless to say I would be drawn and quartered if I tried to pocket any of it. I will be donating 100% of the money to charity and personally assuming all the expenses for setting up the live stream. Given this, would you be comfortable listing me here or would you prefer to keep it only to people participating through Extra Life "proper"? Either way is fine by me, I just wanted to ask you first. Thanks!