TudsGamol

Can we rename the thread 'Ways Patrick Can Improve"?

I cant take anymore of his exhausting speaking style where he is compelled to try and explain so much when making simple, boring points. Everything get a tiresome back explanation of things that are either obvious or irrelevant to the point he is making. Rather than say "I liked that first segment with the coins." its "Ok, so that segment with coins, you had to start to find seven of them, and before that I was looking for purples only, because to start out you get seven of them, but when I look at the map...." and on and on. His speaking style doesn't lend it self to any interplay, banter or amusement. Its just a long lecture that, as others have pointed out before me, he is compelled to finish talking about even if its going nowhere. He brooks no interruption to his boring perspective. I already scrub past his airtime, but the problem is that it drags down everything else when he sucks the air out of the room and kills the light and entertaining feel of the show. I really think he should be re-evaluated if he is actually a net-positive as a featured personality on the site, because I haven't seen much of his famed journalism ether. Alex seems to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to written pieces, Patrick seems to just munch on press releases.

Also, they seem to have lost sight of the fact this podcast is for an audience. On last week's bombcast why the hell was up with Brad begging to spoil a game that wasn't even released yet? He only stopped because it had to be spelled out to him that it was a bad idea, and even then he pouted about it. You have listeners, dont forget this like you do when you always have too little time to spend on emails.

CBSi should be willing to pay for hair plugs for on-air talent. Something has got to give and the current up-do is doing nothing to help.

I'm going to use this thread to post my own views on the bombcast so as not to clutter up the forums.

Today's podcast, 2012-09-18, was terrible. Its revealing of some real structural/functional problems with the site and personalities. All I could hear today was burn out. Low-engergy and worse, low investment in videogames and their job of illuminating/entertaining us on the state of game.

Very glaring was Vinny's complete un-involvement in looking all even the most perfunctory spec-sheet of the WiiU nearly a week after the curtian was lifted. Why were there so many inane questions like "Does it have X" "Does it come with Y" "What happens with Z?" type of lazy information getting. Its Your Job to be ready to talk about things. Should the bombcast turn into an information rehash zone for people that dont care enough about the biggest launch this year? Is that really the purpose of getting a team of long-term industry veterans together for 3 hours? No, It isnt, and the culprit isnt Vinny, its burn out. If he wasnt prepared to discuss the week of video games, he should have not been there. If his other business/video/life priorities have kept him away, he should have tagged out. That was a wrestling analogy. Burn out, is another quasi-wrestling analogy. WWF has no off-season, neither does the bombcast. Its a gruelling schedule for both groups. One way to keep things fresh is a longer-term rotation of people. Perhaps not Ryan, who manages the show so well, but the rest of the crew need a breather if they arent invested the same way their listeners are.

Let me make that clearer. Respect your listener more. If you cant be assed to look at a WiiU spec sheet, why would I be assed to listen to you if you cant bring any insight to the table? Its courtesy, yes, but its also part of the underbelly of the Personality-Driven site's problems. What do you do when a personality starts to flag. The answer, should be, time away from the camera/mic.

Secondly, and again, focusing on burn-out, not grudges with bombcast members, was Patrick. His apparent scoop of the Bioware founder departure was presented in the most low-energy way i've ever heard. No insight, no analyis, just barely mumbling out a line and letting Ryan tell the tale. He brings NOTHING to the "news" segment... when prompted, he sighs out two huge obvious headlines, again, when prompted. And then its back into weak, somewhat uninformed discussion. He is the DEDICATED news guy, he should be brimming with stories that come in from eveywhere, small things, exciting things, obscure things, things that only tertially relate to videogames but impact the industry.... maybe a word on the state of video-game specific schools, new storage technologies and how they could apply to future consoles. Anything! Again, a table full of industry veterans to chew the fat as they say, and Patrick, recently, has only been serving up gruel.

Maybe, he could be brought-in for the news segment and take the two preceeding hours to load up on news stories to present to the group. Then he'd have energy, and the bombcast would have new topic to really dig into. It would liven up the normally moribund last half hour. There is another benefit to stopping to recharge before the news comes on, Brad could use that time to check his emails when he is outside of the recording booth. For the past month Brad goes completly silent unless prompted for input. Reference has been made in the past to Brad investing himself in other work while recording. If that is the case, why is he there? The site is suffering from a lack of content, is Brad's time best used half-listening to 2 hours of discussion he isnt invovled in? Again, it seems to be a fair case to be made for burn-out.

The Ex-Whisky Roster is what, 10-12 people? Could no other people lend up to an hour and a half each week for a month to add some energy and excitement to the sites most popular feature? Why wasnt this put forward as an idea before? Is there a protectionist mindset at work? I mean, they dont even have to be the most up to date on industry news if they are more development and design oriented, again, back to the Vinny example, it was somehow acceptable to show up and not have the slightest clue about the WiiU, so you cant say a new voice would be any worse.

That is my screed. I just want things to get better. The lack of energy, effort and investment is apparent, lets think of creative ways to fix it. Or we can all just attack me for writing and caring too much.

@LegendaryChopChop said:

But, thanks to the whiners, they retired two key faces from BioWare. Not a good thing... but I know the right people will be there. I hope.

(Being as optimistic as I can.)

You have a child's comprehension of the situtation between ea and the former founders of bioware. How would "whiners" affect a huge buyout from back in 2007 with a standard non-compete and retention clause?

I mean, its ok to not understand, and its ok that you are likely a child, but really. Wild assertions like this are just sad. You can do better. You can make yourself smarter. You'll have to spend time working at it, but there is still hope for you to spruce up your reasoning, debate and deduction skills. We are all with you on this, TO THE LIBRARY! GO TEAM EDUKATE!

@Wilshere said:

@Tarsier said:

blizzard, just admit it. you failed again.

At least give them credit for trying to improve the game and listening to the user feedback.

Its nice of you to pretend they werent dragged into this patch kicking and screaming. From Morehime's non-apology, to the excuse and ignore filled blog posts that accompany these changes. Blizzard the company has taken a very insular and anti-customer track in the last little while. They took the complaints about the colour palette and mocked their customer's feedback by making the reactionary rainbow level. Do you tihnk that design is anything aside from naked comptempt bubbling up to the surface? They have their haeds up their asses and really did not want to make these changes, because in their collective minds, they are still right about the design.

Its ok to criticize a corporation, they have pople that payoff the right outlets with junkets in order to smooth all criticism over. Non-industry people standing up and being vocal is the only thing that got them to improve their broken and unsatisfying game.

Funny how a game that was 5/5 on release needs so much changed and added to it in order to keep a rapidly falling playerbase/revenue stream. I'd really like to see Brads' low-standards "But I had da funzez! And for 60 hours guyz!" review be revisited, or maybe re-reviewed post 1.1 PVP (somehow that huge feature wasnt necessary for a PERFECT score either). Yes, I am a "butthurt" ex-fan of the diablo series, I admit that. Its just so disappointing to see what little critical intelligent analysis goes in to a revew around here post-CBS failure-sale.

its available now if you edit the url of the old one to 073112.mp3