Bombin' the A.M. With Scoops and the Wolf: 07/21/2014

DESTINY.

You're a Destiny beta.

Destiny seems to continue the trend of games in 2014 that make me go "ehhh".

Whoa. The hell happened at the end of this video?

Really sucks to hear their thoughts on Destiny. I've been looking forward to it but I loved the Halo series for the single player stories and campaign in those games and always looked at the multiplayer as just a extra little side distraction. I really hope Halo 5 comes out with a solid single player because Destiny doesn't really sound like something I'll be able to get into if it's primarily multiplayer focused.

Got to see the show live for the first time and I enjoyed it. I still think it is criminal that Vinny isn't on the show but it was better than the dud of a Bombcast we got last week. No offense to the guest who seemed pleasant but a bit nervous (I would be too if I was on Bombcast) it was just an off episode. When you do a show every week they can't all be winners. Even my two all time favorite podcast, We Hate Movies and Comedy Bang! Bang! release the occasional stinker.

oh i dunno, alex seemed like he enjoyed the destiny beta, just the multiplayer seemed like something he wasnt in to. and the strike mission where you have to have a fireteam, in comparison to the rest of the stuff in the beta, that IS the most exciting mission in the beta,

i think the point about the worlds feeling empty is valid, but it does sort of goes with the story they set up, that the majority of the humans are dead because of the darkness. so earth is sort of barren and empty by design.

i think like say, if we do ever get to go to the last human city thats still alive and protected by the traveler and its as barren as this beta area, then we have a problem.

and i think bungie also knows the issue with the areas, thats why they do their damnest to populate that area with other random players doing their thing.

So glad Alex came around on the Dinklage VO. There was just something about it (I only played the Alpha) that was so dry and plain, regardless of who's name was on it, it was super dull.

I don't think Dota 2 is really as complicated as it's being made out to be, you don't need to know every character's ultimate or what exactly a carry is or all the special terminology and items just to watch and enjoy a Dota tournament, much like a lot of people have no clue what an Offside offense is in Soccer and yet they still enjoy Soccer, you can watch it, see when a lot of stuff dies and get really excited with the crowd just like any other sport.

I have a very basic understanding of what dota is, there's three lanes, each lane has trash mobs that spawn at you and your opponent's base respectively and are basically trying to push to the enemy's defensive towers and take them out to get to the main base and your job is to basically farm everything and kill the enemy base, you get gold and experience from killing trash mobs on lanes or mobs that spawn in the forest in between lanes, or killing towers or killing players and just with a base level of understanding I can watch The International and know enough of what's going on to enjoy it and get excited when big stuff happens. To be honest, people's excuses for not understanding Dota are just a big cop out, you're too caught up in thinking it's some extremely complex thing, that you can't even bother to learn the basic mechanics, which are no more complicated than any other game. It's no different than Dark Souls, people think it's some super hard game so they don't bother to try it out which just leads to further perpetuating the myth that it's a some impossible feat to play Dark Souls!

@bartok: The general consensus from the comment section seemed pretty positive of that Bombcast actually. While some of the cross commentary felt a bit forced, I think she did an amazing job.

As for this... I really hope Alex finds a game he likes this year. He's seemed really bummed and cynical about everything so far this year. That's not bad, but it would be nice to see him find something this year that clicks for him. I love happy Alex.

@clapmaster: I'm happy to say that my opinions on the game do not line up at all. I'm loving everything about how this game feels, as far as atmosphere, gameplay, multiplayer, everything. I also thing the the Dinklage voice sounds perfect. I'm sick of overly human ai (aka Cortana, EVE, etc.) and I'm happy to hear some solid robot-sounding robots for once. He also has some great little moments of personality that stand our even more due to his flat "robotness". eg during the speaker cutscene "I did!". It just sounded like perfect Dinklage smug, I loved it.

I was playing the Destiny Beta with a friend when I noticed a humorous anti gravity glitch. I added some beautiful drama with the help of a classic song. Enjoy :)

ESPN has been fine. Their stream is great quality and that in itself is better than most of the Twitch stuff.

I wanna say the ESPN stuff is the same as the Twitch stream but isn't the "noob" stream. I wish there was some more base information about strategy and terminology but I can at least watch and somewhat understand what's happening and who's winning what.

I am glad other people liked it, I just couldn't get it into it. I get nervous when anyone new does anything on Giantbomb because it seems to cause a colossal shitstorm of idiocy. So freakin' glad that wasn't the case! Again no problem with the guest she seemed nice and I hope she comes back. I just didn't dig the episode, which was no ones fault but mine.

Alex is just in a gaming rut, he will snap out of it. I love happy Alex but I also love cynical and bitter Alex too.

I also disagree with the Dinklage hate. He sounds great, very calming and reassuring at every moment which is kind of what I want from this game. The combat is so nerve-racking at times I'm really enjoying how soothing all the Tower/companion stuff is. Like when you approach shopkeepers in the Tower and they have these little sentences for you, they get delivered like a massage.

I also enjoyed spotting the other celebrity voices out there. Lance Reddick (Lieutenant Daniels from The Wire) and that terrorist lady from one of the early 24 seasons (who also played an elder Quarian) were the ones I gathered.

Anyway I've probably put about seven hours into a level 8 Titan, four into a level 5 Warlock and just one or two into a level 3 Hunter and it has not gotten old for me at all. I've run through each mission on both difficulties two sometimes four times and even knowing exactly what's coming with The Devil's Lair now I still find it really fun to plow through, whether that's with actual friends in a party chat or total randoms in a silent quest for glory.

Perhaps the best praise for Destiny I can leave in this comment is I woke up today with a slight hangover from staying up too late drinking brandy and playing Destiny with some friends living in another state, hit play on this video, powered on my PS4 and then had a real Droopy Face sort of moment when I remembered the Beta was down today and tomorrow. I'm feeling withdrawals from a game I've basically completed other than the skill tree upgrades.

They added a robo-filter over his voice but he still sounds a bit disinterested.

Apart from the videogame/video-game I find Video game is indeed a problem for what Video Games are today. It entails that these products should be a game (unlike cinema, or literature, where the name doesn't limit the creative direction of the medium itself, since you can read or watch a comedy or a drama or a tragedy), this "game" aspect seems to require that it should always be fun, it should always have a defined goal, it should have a defined challenge, and while some of those may be positive, they may not be necessary, which indeed is a discussions that we are having now that the medium has begun pushing on these boundaries.

I find it a bit strange to expect soul or personality from a bungie game.. I mean, Halo kinda grew it's personality pretty far into the series, and mainly from its impressive architectonic aesthetics... but initially, I always felt it was a really bland crossover between spacemarines and power rangers.

While I think Destiny looks nice, I don't really expect that it'll have any sort of conceptual aesthetic edge to it. Especially considering that it's an MMO, and most MMOs tend to have a very everything but the kitchen sink approach to aesthetics. While something like Warcraft, Borderlands or Wildstar may have some caricaturesque aspect to them, they tend to work without any finesse. (and I'm talking about aesthetics, not polish).

About the Peter Dinklage, I agree with Patrick, I think it's a problem with expectations, I'm not sure if it is SOOO terrible, but it's true that I wish it had some more spirit, and we know this voice... so we immediately notice that he's not pushing any emotions through. Even claptrap as horrible as it was, was a lot more fun. For me the most obvious comparison (and superior) is Stephen Fry's Wheatly.

In the end there seems to be a shocking lack of humor in the whole game... everything is pretty gravely serious, no hint of fun or enjoyment in the plot, but it's an MMO! there's a dance button! So, yeah , the tone is all over the place..

In the end, I think I'll play it for a while.. for the story / single player / co-op, but I don't really expect to be captivated by it. Particularly not the competitive aspect... because although I can be pretty good on pve, I suck pretty hard when faced with other humans.

also, thank you @j_smash I too believe I can fly now.

@j_smash: Thank you for that, I laughed so fucking hard.

Oh man, Alex NAILS IT when he breaks down the people complaining about video games on ESPN 2 when nothing else is happening haha.

@philosyfee: :) Your welcome.

@j_smash: Awesome. Same thing happened to my buddy when we were playing but I could not see it - he kept running after it asking me "Do you see this? Do you SEE THIS?!". That music suits it perfectly!

I like the Destiny beta so far but the side missions in the Exploration section are a mix of boring MMO collect-this and missions that force me to leave the part of the map I fought to get to just to go back to another part of the map I don't want to spend time in at the moment. I hate the PvP with all of my soul, but admittedly I never like PvP and am terrible at it. The Strike mission as by far the most exciting part.

I think Dinklage's VO is fine. It works with the robofilter but I would not say it is a stand-out performance. Hearing who I believe is Lt. Daniels from the Wire as my Titan Vanguard is awesome. There are a lot of recognizable actors doing VO in the game.

@whitegreyblack: I totally agree. I have never been good at pvp. I tried 2 matches yesterday, and had my ass handed to me. I have always been a story mode guy, so I have spent most of my time with friends in the strike missions as well. My biggest gripe so far is that you get absolutely nothing for beating boss enemies like the spider tank. It takes forever to destroy them, and you get nothing in return. It makes you want to bypass them all together because there is no satisfaction for not being rewarded.

@j_smash: Yeah, the spider tank mission actually felt like a bit of a slog to our fireteam. Took forever, not much of a reward at the end. At least the strike mission was a bit more exciting.

@mrsmiley:

Yeah, I've seen poker, billiards/pool, NASCAR, horse racing, bowling and fishing among other quasi-'sports' on ESPN. It seems hella silly to complain about competitive video games being shown.

I loved the Destiny Beta. The story stuff and the strike team missions were great. There were some pretty neat collectibles hidden out there, if you figured out what to look for.....

I TOTALLY agree with Alex though. The competitive multiplayer was not fun. I tried it for a couple hours and never had an enjoyable time. I never felt like i had a chance in a firefight with a normal gun. Between the small ships, super powers, and special weapons, it was a cluster mess.

I thought Peter Dinklage was fine. He was an AI and sounded like one. I never once would have focused on his performance as negative if it wasnt a all over the internet.

Yeah for once im gonna pass this week. If i wanted to hear someone bitch constantly i'd just play Dota.

I have to agree with Alex that Destiny's competitive mode feels like a bit of a mess-- particularly in the way they claim to automatically "balance out" level and gear differences without ever telling you how that works, or what that means.

The fact that higher level people still have more abilities than lower-level people... and I'm allowed to switch between all my inventory weapons, but don't know which stats are or aren't being impacted... it's confusing, and never feels quite right.

In competitive modes, they'd probably be better off with the weapons being default loadouts and on-map pickups, Halo-style, and limiting the RPG elements to what skills you've chosen and what your armor looks like.

Guess it's time I got around to downloading this Destiny beta and see how it is for myself...

While a good rating doesn't necessarily mean he super liked them, he's has given eight of the ten reviews he's written this year 4 of 5 or higher. His cynicism is just brighter than most things.

The artwork on Alex's shirt is rad! I really like that style.

If they were calling Dota a sport on ESPN, people are definitely justified in taking issue with that. Dota isn't a sport. It is competitive gaming. Sport, by definition, involves a physical exertion. Pro gaming wouldn't be a sport unless VR had come so far as to have actual physical running around as part of your gameplay... or something. And I do agree with Patrick that eSports is a bad term that hurts the whole scene more than it helps. I like Competitive Gaming, I think that's fine and clear enough for everybody.

As for accessibility; i don't think it's really so much the complexity of the game that is the problem. I understand the basic tenets of the game (learned from watching a few matches). That's not my problem with it. My problem is that I think Dota is boring to watch and I don't care how much money is involved. Ditto for Starcraft. I do, however, get crazy hype for fighting game tourneys.

Not a sport. Poker isn't either. Or darts. Bowling is a bit of a fence sitter on that.

That ending... hilarious!

I dunno, it just seems to me that at some point clinging to definitions is really silly. Who does it hurt if sport is a broader term, why should it annoy?

Understanding a sport is and seems a lot easier then anything Dota. Just the terms alone

The lighting makes it look like Alex has a black eye lol

There's so many people in e-sports and competitive video game communities that hate the term e-sports and don't feel like they have to be recognized as athletes. This effort to be looked at as more legit by calling it a sport seems to be hurting them more than anything. Why can't competitive video games just be its own thing? I feel as this generation gets older it'll become less of an issue.

EDIT: Just to make sure, Patrick you know that Cosmowright is the same speedrunner that was in the Ocarina Of Time video you posted in Worth Reading a year and a half ago from AGDQ 2013? Crazy to think the run has gotten over 4 minutes faster since then. Link

Best sign-off yet!

Digital sports!

Not sure if this is related to last Friday's BtA or Monday's, but I think it's worth trying to explain some business stuff because typically games media people don't have any clue about it (naturally, I find that reporters at the Wall Street Journal often don't have much of an idea how business works either, they're trained as writers, not in business, their editors are there to help them get the business stuff right, not to correct their punctuation, and they definitely don't know anything about games).

EMEA is typically pronounced as one word "ah-may-ah." For most international companies it means Europe, Middle East, and Africa, Typically these markets have a single marketing/sales office. The other big regions these days for most companies are North America, Latam (Latin America), APAC (Asia/Pacific), and China or Greater China.

When you're a company doing layoffs in Europe, the timeline is always going to be longer. Many of the European nations have strong labor protection rules, including what is known as worker's councils. Worker's councils are basically mandatory unions. Everyone working for a specific company or at a specific factory is covered by law by a single bargaining unit. Depending on the specific country, the process by which a layoff can progress is different, and the involvement of the worker's council is different. Generally the process involves the company saying that layoffs are required, and presenting a financial plan to the worker's council related to the number of positions that are projected to be cut, and a high level financial overview, as well as information on severance and other termination benefits proposed to be provided (typically this is also set by law and could be multiple years of pay depending on the country and the term of service for the employee).. The worker's council then generally has a period of time to propose an alternate plan that would save the same amount of money or cost the same amount of money for termination with some different allocation, or they can sign off on the plan proposed by management. The United States is basically the only country in the world where the majority of the labor force is made up of "at-will" employees who can quit at any time and who can be fired at any time with no sort of contract other than "you show up today and you get paid." Even in China, you can't just fire people like that.

The advantage to a company of having a relatively long lead time on layoffs is that just talking about layoffs is usually enough to encourage people to find another job. Every person who voluntarily walks to some other employer is a person that you don't have to pay termination benefits to. Additionally that long lead time allows you to relocate people to other positions in your company if they are qualified, or if they can be retrained to take another role. Again, the advantage is you are saving money and you're able to retain some employees that otherwise you are throwing out on the street.

Most companies that have large layoffs these days typically use a rationale that they are reducing staff in one area in order to increase staffing in another area. In particular, companies are reducing manufacturing staff. This is because production volumes can be maintained with fewer people over time. The reasons for that can be increased automation, lower demand for particular products that will be phased out, the ability to run multiple similar products on the same production line, or because a product has been re-engineered in a process sometimes called DfX (Design-for-X, in this case Design-for-Production) that allows you to produce it with less labor or fewer components (reducing both the bill of materials cost and the associated labor, allow you to push more units through with the same number of people or the same number of units with less people). In Microsoft's case it seems the majority of the layoffs are in manufacturing, then some are in design/support because they are stopping Nokia's Android phones, "Feature phones," Asha, MeeGo, etc. You also have some management layers that are no longer needed based on the reduction in manufacturing and design footprint, and most likely Nadella is trying to reduce management layers company wide already (typically this means firing upper level management or waiting for them to leave and not replacing them, the end state is that you used to have a person with three people reporting to them, and each of them had three reporting to them, now you have one person with nine people reporting to them.

Microsoft will also by necessity be reducing upper level finance people and probably a lot of accounting positions, they'll roll out their own common accounting system to make financial management a consistent process through the entire company. Some people will be retrained, others will be removed locally but will result in someone being hired somewhere else the company already does business (the so-called Center of Excellence model), others might be contracted out to Infosys or some other company that provides AP/AR/GL services.

Microsoft's devices business has a certain operating model and supply-chain that is reliant on external manufacturing and assembly partners. Incorporating Nokia into Microsoft efficiently means that either E&D or Nokia (or both) need to change operating models to align them with each other, otherwise you need parallel management, extra costs, and a lot of complication from maintaining basically two companies.

Who does Alex love!? :O

I hate to have to say this but people are DEAD WRONG about Peter Dinklage and his performance in Destiny. Oh, you can not like it, but it very little of what you hear is his choice or his fault.

Peter Dinklage can do any project he wants, so it does not make any sense on any level to say he didn't want to be there or he sabotage his own performance. If you don't like the direction than that is on the voice director in the booth. Every word recorded, its tone, its cadence, its delivery is under that voice director's control.

I'm sorry if you don't like what they have, you must blame the director in the booth first. Unless he says Dinklage was terrible to work with and took NO DIRECTION; than you cannot blame Peter Dinklage.

I thought the PvP was alright. Plays like other shooters but also everyone has skills. I mean, it's the same as PvP in any other MMO or PSO style game. You need to sorta have skill but also gear helps a lot.

I'm with @patrickklepek that Divinity is an amazing game, especially once you discover all the possible magic/terrain combos.

I don't think it's that difficult though (at least not after familiarizing yourself with the games systems - there's an in-game manual by the way, that explains a lot of stuff), so I really don't see the need to play this with a guide because of being afraid of having to restart the game.

I certainly understand why restarting would be a concern to most people, because of wasting a lot of time, but how about simply trusting in yourself not to make stupid mistakes, instead of listening to people who probably only restarted because they a) wanted to, since they want to min/max their characters or b) didn't actually try to understand the game's mechanics the first time around. You can't/shouldn't rush in the beginning of this type of game.

If you have any experience with RPGs you shouldn't make a total mess out of your characters anyways. Also there's always buffs from gear, if you really somehow did manage to make a mess and later on you can just simply unlock a dude who let's you respec your characters. So no big deal at all.

@patrickklepek why don't we just call E-Sports competitive gaming? it doesn't sound douchey and it tells you what it is up front

I'd love it if there was a system in place for RPGs that would tell you from what you've chosen as your race, skills, specials, etc exactly how hard the game will be with your current spec.

I feel we're finally at a time where that wouldn't be telling, as the internet is already telling, as a game releases, what spec will be easier for a certain type of play style.

yes please get rid of google hangout. I only listen to this as a podcast and the audio quality is just horrible.