Jar Time w/ Jeff: It's Time, It's Time, It's Jar Time - 03/01/2012

I cant even imagine having as many games as Jeff does. there was a time when I would openly embrace that much gaming, but now... it may intimidate me to the point of never playing a game ever again.

I always kind of end up tuning out during these :(

For the people that tune out during these but want to listen, pick a game that you enjoy playing but dont need to read or do anything in other than auto-pilot it, i personally play GBA/DS roms things like pokemon black, i usually do the same for the podcasts if im not driving somewhere or something.

JARS!

@TvK11: I do minecraft.

Thanks Jeff!

Love these, hope you feel better Jeff.

@Jeff We have to see photos of this epic washing machine. Possibly even a short video of it in action.

Was pretty happy to hear my question.

Always enjoy these.

I want to chime in and give my opinion on the skipping gameplay thing that was brought up around 1 hour and 10 minutes in. I think we're getting too far into some of this no gameplay stuff that a lot of people are finding more and more compelling (see Heavy Rain and Asura's Wrath) and this was something Tim Schafer and Ron Gilbert discussed recently when talking about the Kickstarter game. We all want to see a good story in games but I want to be involved in that story. Taking out the actual gameplay feels like a step backwards. Game are an interactive medium. The gameplay needs to compliment the story. If the story is so good yet the gameplay is so bad then I can see why people wouldn't want to play it and would rather skip that stuff. This also goes back to what Ryan and Patrick were saying about Alan Wake. They enjoy the story and just want that and less actual gameplay. I think games need to find the right balance of keeping the player emerged in the experience without taking playing the game away from them.

@mrcraggle: Well, to these people's credit, navigating dialog trees constitutes better gameplay. Something to consider is that Ryan and Patrick still want Alan Wake in it's format, just without the combat. Think about it as a slightly open world with flashlight shining and wierd stuff going on. You still do everything you normally do, minus the combat.

The problem isn't that some people want to skip the combat. It's that the combat is a stale medium to convey gameplay. Games can be interactive in many, many ways without relying on either shooting something or jumping on something's head.

People want more than combat.

Thanks Jeff!, hope you feel better.

@TvK11: I play Trackmania. It only seems right.

@mrcraggle: People aren't saying they need to take away the gameplay completely, but that there should be an option to skip gameplay segments in heavily story driven games if you want to. I'm playing through Mass Effect 2 again and there are times where I wish I could skip some of the combat sequences to get the cutscenes and dialog trees.

"Out to lynch Bioware for any decision they make"

Nice one! I was UTTERLY baffled when the whole "Combat/Story/RPG" play type came out about ME3 and people were LOSING THEIR SHIT over it. Like somehow they were going to be forced to play one way...or that it somehow slackened the main mode of play, but much, MUCH more realistically they just made the RPG mode, then cut content for the other two.

If you love your washing machine that much, why don't you just marry it, Jeff.

Will Smith probably got you sick.

I know a guy in an alley that can hook you up with some speed, Jeff.

@DougQuaid:

Another reason why..fuck WS!

My dryer has needed to be replaced for Two years... and counting.

Thanks for putting these up Jeff, love 'em!!

J Allard for Giant Bomb Heavy Industries.

This is why I love Giant Bomb.

EUROPE! LEAKS!

It's funny because of the AC3 leak from Best Buy just now.

Re: Skipping Combat:

Of course Jeff thinks it's a great idea. He can play one battle, skip the rest, and write his review.

"I like Mass Effect 3 having the option of 'Okay, you don't like interactive cutscenes, let's just make this a third-person shooter.' I think, for that to work, you'd have to make a really good goddamn shooter."

Yeah, but it doesn't work the other way, either. Bioware don't actually write that well. I know everyone seems to think they do, but come on. It's video games. This isn't Dickens.

And as far as that being an option, what do we lose? Well, development time and energy. I'd rather get better textures than the ability to, you know, skip the one defining thing about video games: the gameplay.

I'm not huge up in arms about it, it just seems kinda dumb.

Further washing machine adventures with Jeff!

Hey, that's me!

Why is the title of this jar a vader time reference! wwf!

I found this to be especially interesting and insightful, even in a series about insight.

I really enjoy these trips behind the curtain.

I'm glad to have resolution on the washing machine saga.  Just listened to this weeks Bombcast earlier this afternoon so there's nice narrative Jeff related continuity happening for me today,.  Here.  
 
<3

Jar time, the inner workings of Jeff's mind.

Brought to you by DENON.

Do you feel the need, the need for speed?

Didn't he just say his house phone doesn't ring?

There be JARS!

Double Brad is double fine with me.

Hell yeah!

Premium membership could be nothing but jar videos and it would still feel like the deal of a life time.

Still my favorite part of being a subscriber. These videos alone are starting to feel worth the yearly subscription to me. Thanks for the opinions Jeff!

Keep 'em coming!

well im glad you like making these videos Jeff, because i enjoy watching em. Thats what we in the "industry" like to call win win. 

Jeff's TweetDeck going off in this videos drives me crazy. I can't even tell you how many times I opened mine during these thinking it was me. 

@gladspooky said:

Re: Skipping Combat:

Of course Jeff thinks it's a great idea. He can play one battle, skip the rest, and write his review.

"I like Mass Effect 3 having the option of 'Okay, you don't like interactive cutscenes, let's just make this a third-person shooter.' I think, for that to work, you'd have to make a really good goddamn shooter."

Yeah, but it doesn't work the other way, either. Bioware don't actually write that well. I know everyone seems to think they do, but come on. It's video games. This isn't Dickens.

And as far as that being an option, what do we lose? Well, development time and energy. I'd rather get better textures than the ability to, you know, skip the one defining thing about video games: the gameplay.

I'm not huge up in arms about it, it just seems kinda dumb.

This is silly though, on multiple levels. Jeff wouldn't be able to write any kind of competent review based on just one battle primarily because one battle isn't enough to get a real grasp of any good combat system. If he were lazy, perhaps, but I really don't think that is the case.

As far as how good Bioware's writing is, well, that's subjective. I personally think they've got their ups and their downs as far as main plot goes, but do a phenomenal job with character work. But what's particularly silly about your statement is the implication that video games can't somehow be on the same level of Dickens.

Which just goes down the whole "games can't be art" argument, and if you're on the side that game can't be art, then you've possibly got brain problems. Or don't understand what art is. Or perhaps what games are. Any of these options will work.

Where development time and energy is concerned, I think you overestimate how much time and energy such a feature is likely to take.

And finally, combat is not the only thing that constitutes gameplay. Gameplay is the entire interactive experience. If you're deciding which option to choose on a dialogue wheel, then that's gameplay. An adventure game with no combat still has gameplay. This feature is not skipping the gameplay but simply assigning priority to the different types of gameplay provided which better fill your personal preferences. So you aren't skipping the one defining thing about video games at all.

So Jeff, I can read Japanese and I decided to tell you how much water you need to add to your packet of Pocari Sweat. What you have there is the ポカリスエット１L用粉末 (Pocari Sweat 1 Liter powder packet). You need to add 1リトル (1 liter) of water to it and you can enjoy the sweat of the almighty Pocari. 是非飲んでみて下さい！P.S. I live in Japan, so if there is anything that your hankering for from here, lemme know and I'll mail if off to you.

It's a damn shame these are not available as MP3s

Of course Jeff thinks it's a great idea. He can play one battle, skip the rest, and write his review.

"We need all the internet." - Jeff Gerstmann

Maybe if companies stopped releasing games 3 days late in Europe, we wouldn't need to make the announcements 3 days early to offset it ;)

The thing about the option of skipping combat is that it does actually affect people that do not choose to use it.

How so?

Because by incorporating such an option to skip combat is by default affecting how those designing the game think about combat/story structure. By having such an option there they are either already going in with a mindset to keep the two seperate or at the very least making sure that they can seperate the 2 easily.

Think about how ME2-3 is structured. No exploration, get to mission start, go through linear mission combat, at the end story (sometimes a few bits of story in the middle). It's incredibly simplistic and is what gives some people the feeling that the game is more of a linear shooter. Not arguing wheather or not it's a bad thing here. I know ME2 did not have said option but it would fit in perfectly well.

Compare this to say the way ME1 was designed, landing on planets, huge amounts of exploration, it would be much harder for them to have a "skip combat" option as combat frequantly happens in an open way by itself while exploring rather then in preset controlled corridors. Or say the way DA:O is, where combat is weaved much more tighly into the narative. Plenty of combat scenarios become iconic narative moments, the stand against the constant stream of zombie hordes to protect a village with the defenders you helped organised, the fight against the final boss. What if you skipped those moments? You would actually loose a lot fo the narative and it's punch.

In order for the "skip combat" option to be available in those games they would actually have to be changed in the way they were designed at a fundamental level in order to create a much more clear cut seperationbetween combat/story. Some of yours and mine most beloved games are made in such ways where designers masterfully mesh the two aspects together. Hell it does not even have to be directly story, think of God of war and how it would have to be changed if the designers had to come up with a way to seperate it's story moments from it's combat moments.

So what's the point of all this i'm rambling about above?

The point is that the inclusion of such an option is either only possible in games that already have a clearer seperation of the 2 concepts or provisions have to be made for it. Therefore yes inclusion of "skip combat" does actually affect people who do not even have to use it. It affects what kind of game is available to them.

Personaly I would rather games go in the direction of masterfully meshing story and combat (or any gameplay for that matter) together rather then segregating the two. Is it selfish to want gaming to cater to my interests? Most assuredly. But that does not make it invalid for me to care, we all want games to be more of what we want after all.

PS: (just in case some people get this ridiculous notion of me saying: "such option makes developers go, durrrrr we now have to make our game different", this is not what i'm saying at all and you would have completely missed the point)

@piderman said:

Maybe if companies stopped releasing games 3 days late in Europe, we wouldn't need to make the announcements 3 days early to offset it ;)

Yeah! That will show them!

What he's saying about the new Gamespot writers being more "flowery" definitely seems to hold true there today. They write their reviews like highbrow criticism, not like purchasing advice, but ultimately they don't really say anything more profound about the game than a Giant Bomb review does.

The decks are particularly bad. I always cringe at how many polysyllabic adjectives they try to cram into one sentence. "Killer storytelling and creative demon slaying make the haunting Alan Wake one for the books." Like give me a break.