Bombin' the A.M. With Andrew Groen

Ahh, good times.

This might be unpopular, but I really don't like the interview episodes of SatW. So far there haven't been any developers/people in the industry I've found interesting.

Now, that being said, I wouldn't ask that they stop because someday maybe you'll have one of the Team Meat guys on. They're about the only devs I an think of that I'd like to hear more from. Maybe Phil Fish too, cause he seems like he just doesn't give a fuck.

@deanofpsu: I couldn't disagree more, but I guess that's one upside of them only having guests on a Monday: everyone get's what they want once a week.

@deanofpsu: You're not the only one who has expressed that opinion, but I disagree. I find these interviews very interesting more often than not, and this episode was one of those.

@deanofpsu: I dunno man, I really enjoyed Nathan Vella last week. That man is one of my indie development heroes. Rami Ismail was great too, he and JW (also of Vlambeer) are two of the coolest indie devs, along with Team Meat and Phil Fish. Basically I like it when they have developers on, being an aspiring dev myself.

What I don't like is the few times when they just have other game journalists on, i.e Jenn Frank and Jim Sterling. I can hear their opinions anytime I want, they share them all the time... cos, like, they're journalists. I think the slots on the show would be better served by giving time to Developers. I'd like to see a few AAA devs on too. Bombin' in the AM with Cliff Blezinski could be cool.

I haven't watched this one yet, but EVE is something I love to hear about, so imagine I'll enjoy it. (Y)

@deanofpsu: I agree for the most part. I really enjoyed it when they first started having guests on. It was really great to have a third person there to talk about what they've been playing and their take on the news from a different perspective. Now it seems to just be an interview dumptruck with Alex thrown in, which is not something I really want to watch.

After the recent Harmonix Kickstarter story/un-story, is there now a policy on covering Kickstarters on the site? I ask because this guy has friend-(and-possibly-landlord-)of-the-site Max Temkin as a business advisor/consultant, and is now guesting on a show (guests normally organised by Patrick, I believe) to talk about his still-in-progress campaign.

It seems reasonable to talk to him about the book, given the previous EVE coverage on the site, but not while there are still stretch goals on the horizon. It's been months since the last EVE coverage; this couldn't wait two weeks?

@bobfantastic: Jeff said they were working on a policy now.

I don't think there's any problem in this case though.

I really hate all this thoughtful praise of a man who tried to bully a person into suicide over a fucking video game.

I love living in Vegas. 110+ degree weather with near 0% humidity in the summer is actually pretty therapeutic. Humidity is a killer.

Thank you for creating the idea of a Cathy sidescrolling platformer and reminding me of the absolutely awful B.C. game on the Commodore 64 and the Snoopy Summer Olympics (I think that was its name? Maybe it was just Snoopy Track & Field) on the NES. That Snoopy game was pretty dope, either way.

The weather in Chicago is indeed awful--the humidity is intolerable, and all this rain we're having means that 1. it only gets worse 2. I can't really open up the windows in my house because then my floor gets soaked. It is a no-win situation.

I definitely backed that EVE history kickstarter. I like EVE more in concept and I'd love to read a well written history of that game in any capacity.

@jedo: That you clearly had to tell people about for some reason...

I know nothing of EVE.....but now I'm interested, it sounds very complex and deep. I find that after watching this I want to read his book. Nice interview guys.

If you ever want to Eve a go Kite Co's still around! It's certainly not for everyone but it's unfathomably and dedication requirements are often overstated and who knows you might end up enjoying it.

@patrickklepek Pandemic Legion are the people with the stations named after GoT spoilers, not Goonswarm, fyi. :)

@luck702: That is way too much.

It's shameless plug time: The Giant Bomb EVE Corporation!

We're always open to duders (friendly to non-duders!) and we have a nifty in game channel, "giantbombing".

If you're interested in EVE give it a try and let the GB community help you out!

Just donated to the Kickstarter. Sounds like it'll be a fantastic read.

Is Andrew using a standing desk?

@patrick When I played the Super Time Force demo back at Pax Prime last year, I ended up getting stuck in the boss battle. Once I had enough previous lives backing me up and took down the boss, I kept running out of time to get to the next area. No matter how many guys I had with me, there just wasn't enough time for me to make that final dash to the finish, even with the boss dead. I had to walk away because I was only moving parts of a second further every time and it really turned me off to the game. Did you run into any of those (seemingly) futile loops?

Also, totally agree about how the latest season of 24 hasn't been so hot. I may just be cynical, but I shouldn't be able to call the 'twists' accurately so early on. And of course I'll still watch the whole seasons.

Anyone interested in EVE should look up us Kites. We're more than happy to break through the notion of "EVE is Hard" and talk internet spaceships, how to start having fun in EVE immediately, sandwiches, just how criminal is microwaving hot dogs, Space Beef and how anime is for jerks.

We regularly go on roams, where we band up as a group and wander around space looking for people to put lasers in. A new member can get into a roam in about 15-20 min after joining Kite, most of which is "how do I get to where you are?"

EVE's a game where the community makes all the difference. Without Kite, I probably wouldn't be playing.

I think the reason Dust failed and CCP seems directionless is that at the end of the day they're not all that good at making games. They caught lightning in a bottle with EVE, which at it's heart is a bad game, but one that allowed a great community to spring up around it. Basically CCP succeeded by accident so they don't really have a grip on what to do next.

Loving these guest episodes Alex and Patrick! Will absolutely be backing this Kickstarter soon. Book sounds awesome.

@bobfantastic: also it seems that the crux of the problem with that story, or rather the problem people constructed around it, was that the kickstarter was short of its funding goals, so it was getting advertising for something that could theoretically never happen.

This book is hugely overfunded and barring some kind of massive con, will be getting made, so where's the issue in telling people about it?

@bugbarbecue The article on Harmonix was basically a press release, from a well-known game developer. If Brad had been the one to put the story up, I expect nobody would have batted an eyelid, but Alex has the benefit of being on the East coast which means he sees the news before the others. Because of his historical association with Harmonix, what was otherwise a fair and newsworthy article about a major company going in a new direction was pulled. Personally I don't think the article should have been pulled, but I can see the argument for this being a conflict of interest.

Giant Bomb currently receives office space from someone directly involved in promoting this kickstarter. As someone else pointed out, this episode of Bombin is not like the others; instead this focusses so heavily on the content and context of the Kickstarter, that they acknowledge they have run out of time to discuss other news, and instead end on discussing the stretch goals. In this case I think there is a serious conflict of interest because of the link through Max.

I don't believe that anyone involved made dodgy dealings, but that doesn't matter. A conflict of interest exists regardless of the intent of the parties involved. Whether or not there are shady backroom dealings going on, even if no airtime was explicity exchanged for office space, both parties have to recognise that it could have.

If the parties decide to go ahead anyway, it's then addressed in two ways - first of all, by announcing clearly and publicly that there is a link, and that nothing was exchanged to facilitate something; you see that on reviews all the time, indeed the EVE fanfest coverage last year was all heavily prefaced because the company paid for the travel. The other part of addressing the conflict of interest is to make sure that even with the disclaimers, that the interaction between the two parties is absolutely no different than with third parties which do not have a conflict. In this case, in my opinion, that did not happen.