The Giant Beastcast: Episode 18

Maaaaannnnn that V/O session was incredible. That Alex death scream

great ep 18 debut!

I'm pretty sure Vinny referred to himself as a "Vin-gilante", but maybe I'm just hearing what I want to hear.

The game actually addresses the super obvious "You are the robit" plot twist pretty early on. I wouldn't even really call it a "twist," because it certainly isn't treated like one in the story.

He's selling the Hawkmoon!

I've had a pretty good experience with Kickstarter, not perfect, but good. As a result I keep going back because I think I've gotten some unique stuff from it.

When it comes to the Star Citizen situation it seems like the money going into expanding the team or reworking assets. At this point they have four internal studios and several contracted ones. Given the scope of what they want to produce it seems reasonable to throw the crowdfunding money back into the game. Far more concerning I think is will there be an audience for the game to match its budget. It's a niche genre and I wonder if it'll be able to hold people's attention or i,f like Elite: Dangerous, it'll capture people for a week or two before losing them.

WOOO! BRING ON THE BEASTCAST!!!! YEAAAHH!!!! =) Happy Friday everyone!

For our college internet which was wired only we were able to the ISP, get us off the college internet and pay them for our own internet with real speeds. Which I guess is crazy and isn't normal?

People in our dorm were confused that only like 7 people in the building had access to wireless internet.

My secret IDENTITY!

I have good news. It turns out what they call "animals" in games are actually just collections of AI routines and pixels made into digital representations of real animals, and are themselves not actually real at all. That means that killing them, skinning them, and turning them into wallets isn't actually hurting any animals! In fact you aren't actually killing or skinning anything, and there is no wallet. Crazy, I know. It also turns out that you aren't actually killing people when you run them over in GTA. Hopefully with this shocking new information the e-mailer on this weeks episode can stop being a crazy person and just play games. Which to restate, are not actually real, and no rights violations, human, animal, or otherwise, are occurring in by you playing them.

I know the US has a pretty, let's call it storied, association with unions but the part about enforcing all-union workers seems extreme and also extremely anti-worker. Unless the union that enforces such a restriction on labour with employers is barred from charging dues then it sounds indistinguishable from a shakedown (and possibly violation of sane minimum wage laws for some workers?). I occasionally hear these stories that sound extreme about state legislatures outright banning unions: is this the sort of behaviour they use to leverage public support for those bans?

Is this just part of US political orthodoxy (again, not being from over there we get the cultural exports in terms of stories of "The Mob" etc that warps what the non-fiction might be like) or is the current SAG-AFTRA demand to further extend locking-out workers from being allowed to do jobs associated with this area of game development (under penalty of blacklisting publishers from employing any union members) also part of why this is contentious? Alex talked about how that affects smaller devs but is that not considered dubious even for working with the big publishers (effectively locking out anyone who doesn't pay dues from getting voice work there)?

I don't know maybe he was drunk?

Undertale is amazing and I'm really glad somebody on staff noticed it.

Aha! Vinny is a secret vigilante!

I swear he said Vinngilante

GASP!! But wait, what about all those characters I read about in fictional novels or watch in movies or even...PLAY IN VIDEOGAMES?!?! Are any of THEM real?? If not: why should I have ANY emotional investment in ANY fiction at ALL?!?!

@thejoker138: I get your point, it's nuts to be so upset about a random enemy being a vicious dog or wolf. But people have their hangups, you know. I'm not above that, personally. I was trying real hard not to murder anyone except my target in Assassin's Creed 2 because that was the first "realistic" action game I played(Grew up with mostly Nintendo). Wasn't until I discovered that killing guards really was the right way of playing the game that I got over the feeling that killing random stupid NPC enemies would be bad because they were humanlike. Hitman GO really hit that home too, recently, with the board game abstraction of normal Hitman gameplay making it exceptionally clear that it is just a game. And a very entertaining one, too.

Games that give you the option of being nonlethal for challenge(MGS in general), or for practicality reasons(MGSV), or because the good gameplay is in the nonlethal options(Undertale) or because you're supposed to roleplay and take the story seriously(Mass Effect) are also fun ways of using lethality that's kinda pointless if you don't care one way or the other.

@kentonclay Ah, I see. The way Alex wasn't saying anything outright, I thought it was supposed to be a twist. Good thing it isn't.

That VA session was just magical.

@thejoker138: I mean, you're basically making the argument that you should never be emotionally affected by any media ever, since it's all just fake.

Wow, no ethernet ports for resident students at a university? I would've been fucked wherever that is. I only have a desktop PC and went through all 4 years of college with just that. (I know you can get wireless cards, but that's money.) And this was relatively recent, so I was pretty much the only person without a laptop. My rooms all had two ethernet ports (per resident), but only one functioned. So I couldn't have my PC and console hooked up at the same time. Was a pain in the ass if I wanted to play my PS3 online. I once tried to bridge the connection, and they literally shut down my ethernet port. They detected what I was doing and had some kind of block in place. Had to go to the tech center and ask for them to turn my port back on, was so stupid.

Those Kickstarter stories just reinforce my stance that I'll never back any of those things. I never want to spend money on something that is not a concrete product. Pre-orders are as far as I'll go, and I don't even like doing those most of the time.

Isn't that rat some sort of union protest symbol?

Alex and Vinny are the best. Austin keeps getting better and better. And I can't wait for Jeff to come Backalar. This was a fantastic episode. I thought all the SAG voice acting stuff was fascinating. Believe it or not my uncle did some voice work for a game last year. He was the main character in Murdered: Soul Suspect and I believe he had to do some performance capture as well. From what little of the game I've played I thought he did a solid job audio wise. It's nice to hear a protagonist not voiced by a North or a Baker or any number of recognizable dudes. Anyway he was just coming off an ACL injury so he was kind of putting some risk into the work. He wasn't exactly active after that game flubbed and who's to say whether or not he could have had a better gig going on had he been attached to a more successful game. I'm not clear how much this strike would affect him should any of this get settled. Guess I'll ask next time I see him. Thanks as always for this podcast and don't forget to destroy all of your data.

I remember that. The teams were having difficulties in some combat and animation areas and consulted Kojima for help. Wonder what happened to the second... it was a solid game but that story took a heavy nose dive and this is coming from someone that really never paid attention to Castle Vania lore.

Alex's death screams during that VA session were a little too good.

austin, star citizen hasn't bolted on additional features. maybe look into it a bit more than the nonsense derek smart is dreaming up. there's so much information out there for it-- and all the original pitch info is still available.

yeah, it's not a twist.

I'm a US postal worker and our union is corrupt as all Hell. They'll only help you if you pay dues (despite the contract saying otherwise) or, more specifically, if they like you. They're basically management's lap dogs. I would say that was just at my building but every union I've ever had to deal with was a soulless cash grab that never helped anyone but themselves or, again, their friends and friends alone.

As for the "not killing animals in games" thing, I really don't understand the problem: They're not real. That's it. End of story. You're not actually killing anything, at all. To be reductive, it's just some ones and zeroes. If it's a phobia, such as a fear of sharks or spiders, I understand avoiding them. Other than that? You person murdering (in a game naturally) animal lovers confuse me...

I don't see voice actors make a lot more money, and I'm not sure they should. The more money we waste on middling actors the less money gets spent on the actual game.

Good voice acting and whatnot is fine, but so is really really bad voice acting. Men of War was made infinitely better by having terrible voices for EVERYONE, seemingly by accident.
Either spend way more and get actual actors, or just stop paying and get your friends to do it.

They must already get more money for doing mocap, right? More work should mean more pay, but celebrity bonus makes no sense for a game. I don't need celebrities to voice my pixel fellers. Minecraft Steve isn't Bruce Willis in my mind.. Nathan Drake is Nathan Fillion, though.. Some people just line up.
That's what I think...

On Halloween, can we call him Count Drakalar?

I agree that voice actors have a raw deal and have every right to ask for a better one. But suggesting that game devs just run off and unionise is a little reductive and dismissive of how hard it is for programmers, designers and producers to do something like that.

The formation of the SAG, where stars are a higher commodity is vastly different from a more labour based one, where essentially you are but one of many who can be easily replaced or outsourced. '

I know, yes, we should all be in it together, but its very easy to see why a level designer who is forced to work 70 hrs a week or lose his job, is a little annoyed and frustrated by this, even if they shouldn't be or should be more supportive to their 'comrades' in VA. So yes voice actors deserve everything they get but telling devs to 'take a look in the mirror' rankles me a little.

That said, great podcast, please comments, don't rip me to pieces!

Harming digital animals seems like a complete non issue. Just can't sympathize.

Scabby the Rat is my favorite obscure Vinny reference.

At our Polish birthdays, we sing like 5 different songs. It takes several minutes before you can dig into cake. Think about what you're proposing with these new tunes!

I use the Stitcher app to listen to my podcasts, and I can't seem to get the Beastcast on there. Any way to do that? The Bombcast is on there.

Alex's "I'm right behind you" had a much more warmer tone to it than Vinny for the dad version, that was excellent.

And yes as someone mentioned, please incorporate these voices for the next giantbomb game jam!

That VO session slayed me. Beastcast is Bestcast.

I don't always kill virtual animals when I have the option and I have rarely felt bad about doing so when I have. I don't know if it's just that some find it easier to assume that the gunman they just shot was a purely evil being and that animals are wholly innocent creatures that don't know any better, but I find the whole mindset they briefly talked about to be baffling.

Fuck cassowaries.

That's exactly the reason why they SHOULD care and they should grow a pair and fight for their rights not to be worked to fucking death.

I've actually started buying less games new because I feel sick supporting the people who beat these devs to death with inhuman (and honestly illegal) working conditions.

@alex: Regarding your response to the killing animals vs. humans disconnect, did you ever play Metal Gear Revengance? There's a point around the middle of the game where it very abruptly and very directly tries to confront the player about those kinds of rationaliztions about the perspective of the low-level grunts you spend so much of the game killing.

I'm not sure about the kinda clunky way the game tries to move forward from there, but I thought it introduced the notion in a fairly compelling way and I would be interested to hear your reaction to it.

RE: Subtitles, I need to have them on. Growing up with deaf parents meant closed captions were always on, and now visual mediums just don't look right to me without some sort of lower-third text, even though as a hearing person I have no reason to use it.

@the_spaz_rises: from what I read Lords of Shadow 2 had some internal disagreements within the development team and several of the more talented people left, which kind of explains why large parts of it still look and play great while others feel kind of bolted on.

@alex@austin_walker@vinny Back when I had a windows phone I purchased (not streamed with a subscription) the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack from the Xbox Music marketplace. A few months later I was getting errors (I don't recall their exact wording) whenever I tried to stream or download any of the tracks from that album. I ended up on one of those live chat support things and found out that their license to sell that content was expired. Since it was straight up removed from their servers, I was unable to stream or even re-download it despite having paid for it. I asked for and received a refund, though I doubt they would have given it to me if I didn't approach them about it. To this day I make sure to immediately download and backup any music I buy digitally.

I appreciate the spoiler warning in the notes, but my podcast app only shows whatever description you put there. Most people aren't coming to this URL and seeing the spoiler warning

I'm so late to this one, but on the digital music front and iTunes, I actually have music that was purchased a few years ago, and now it only lets me download three songs of the album I bought and says something about the album being "No longer available"

Cloud Strife.
Oh boy.

Ohhhhh boy.

@cooljammer00: I also put the spoiler warning in the "comment" field in the meta tags of the MP3 for whatever that is worth.

Yeah, it's cool. I think my podcast app is just bunk.

While I have you here, regarding video game casting secrecy, Polygon's Human Angle had an episode on the guy who played John Marston. He said at the audition, they had him fold laundry and read random non RDR related stuff.

This is a photo off my camera from when I was in long island a few weeks ago for work, I was wondering what those giant rats were!? Thought it was funny and timed it right with the garbage truck driving by so they looked like they were attacking it...

This is a photo off my camera from when I was in long island a few weeks ago for work, I was wondering what those giant rats were!? Thought it was funny and timed it right with the garbage truck driving by so they looked like they were attacking it...

1. Regarding the Fox Engine, it will be getting an annual use thanks to Pro Evolution Soccer. The game uses the advanced motion-based physics engine that Kojima Studios developed. It's pretty amazing what it is capable of, actually, being able to accurately model spin mechanics and a large array of various dampening forces.

Which is what makes the dismantling of Kojima Studios all the more odd when you look at the bigger picture. Why would you lay off the team that developed your leading proprietary engine for your annual sports franchise that is selling like hotcakes throughout South America?

2. Technically, the people running the Kickstarter may have run afoul of legal obligations and could face civil litigation for bait-and-switch if they refuse refunds. Kickstarter user agreements to do NOT supersede state and federal law. It is the exact opposite. Any judge would be able to look at the documents and see that there is a clear change of goals and focus. At worst, the developers run the chance of being criminally liable for fraud; which is possibility, but unlikely.

Which is why you: release your game in late beta on Kickstarter and seek funding for distribution and legal fees, not for development funding. So many people doing these thing do not know how to run a business and/or manage a project. The worst part is that they try to do this on the dime of people without many dimes to rub, and often have little means for recourse other than to walk away and shoulder their losses. It's crappy business practice and most buyers don't know and don't care how the sausage is made, they just want their sausage and egg biscuit right now! There's a reason why a lot of devs don't talk about games until they are about to be released.