Save and Reload Podcast 17: Barnyard Sluts

So this week's show happens to be the debut of our newest writer/podcaster Mc Ryan OD. This made the show quite silly as jokes were flying around everywhere and anything could happen. Before going in I have to warn you of some Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy spoilers that happen about 10 and a half minutes in.





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The song is We Are Your Friends by Smiletron Ft Joule.

That picture was originally of Grant, do you like what he did with his hair?

The contest we started this week is to make us a creative interpretation of us as barnyard sluts. You can do this through drawing, writing, or any other way you see fit. You can put all submissions into comments below, but Grant has expressed that he doesn't want any submissions with him in them to be explicitly pornographic.

If you have any questions or comments, please put them below.

Tell Me a Story

When discussing games as an art form one of the most common critique is that games do not have the authorial control necessary for artistic expression. How can something tell a meaningful story when the reader gets to draw all over the pages in crayon? This idea strikes at the core of gaming as an art and more importantly at storytelling in general.

There are two main camps as far as authorial control goes. The first camp is the “Author Is Always Right” camp. This camp is built on thousands of years of storytelling in which authors tell stories to listeners. Books, Movies, Painting, Photography, Poetry, and all other art forms that predate the twentieth century work in this way and it works great. This form allows viewers to experience aesthetic pleasure and derive thoughtful lessons from authors. Its easy flexible and allows for smoother predictable creation and consumption. The second camp is the “Anyone Can Be An Artist” camp. This camp is based on the assumption that authors are not uniquely qualified to deliver meaning, that meanings are based on interpretation and personal reaction. Some Modern and Post-Modern art falls into this category, pieces that don’t have a distinct meaning and must be interpreted by viewers to have any merit.

Video Games come in both of these flavors, although they are seem fundamentally suited for the latter. Games usually have very guided authorships, they have writers and levels are constructed in a way to guide players where they need to go. These principles seem almost too obvious to be considered, but they are not necessary for a game. Some games discard these principles to varying degrees. Noby Noby Boy is a dramatic example in which the game contains very little authorial guidance. The player is a worm that is able to jump, stretch itself, and devour people and objects. There are no objectives or goals and nothing leads to a victory screen. This game is in a sense without an author. Now Noby Noby Boy won’t win any awards for inspiring grand revelations, but it does do something that only video games can do, it presents a space without guidance in which a player can create something. This is something that the ‘Author Camp’ does not believe has any value. But player involvement in content creation can actually have profound consequences and imbue stories that would be less meaningful with one author.

Recently Jason Rohrer released the game Sleep is Death (I’ll refer to it as Sid), a story telling game that required two players. One of the players is the director who controls objects, characters and backdrops; and the other is the player who moves his own character and chooses what to say. With a good director both players have a similar amount of control. Stories that are created in Sid are practically never as good as stories written by individual authors when read afterwards. Despite this fact though Sid stories have something that normal stories do not. During their creation the player is both receiving and creating the story, two people act as both creators and receivers. This results in a story that does not have one meaning for one person, but is rather a conglomeration of multiple meanings. Sid combines the two players prespectives into one strange storyteller after its all over, but other games allow the player to remain independent in their experience. Games like Left 4 Dead survive on stories that players tell their friends, the story is the player experience in the game. And that is a way of creating hundreds of thousands of stories without doing the grunt work. Gaming can create numerous artists in hundreds of genres, easily.

Bonus Save and Reload Podcast! E3 Miracles!

So Matt, Grant, and I made a bonus podcast for you. There really isn't much to say about it other than the fact that we talk all about E3 so far, and get really excited about things. We bring what we feel is an informative view on both Microsoft and Nintendo's press conferences so far.



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Save and Reload Podcast 16: I MAED A PODCAST WITH ZOMBIES IN IT!!!11!1

I have always subscribed to the theory that I shouldn't lie to the good people of the internet, so I'm going to tell it to you straight. This is the best podcast we have made yet. With that out of the way we talked about all sorts of things that I will include in a huge list at the bottom of this post.



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The song is Yeah He Did Write Fanfic Bye by Spamtron . Does anyone else think it sounds like a Phoenix Wright song?

Links to games:
Hydorah (be warned)
I Wish I Were The Moon

If you want to join the elite you can ask us a question to be answered next week below. If that doesn't float your boat you can tell us what your ideal zombie game would be in the comments.

You can also go check out our other blog (it's the same thing) at

So here is the list of topics we talk about (in order) so if there is something you want to skip to, or skip over you can.
Intro/Ebola
League of Legends
I don't like killing my friends
The Shattered Horizon free weekend
Grant still hasn't skinned any bears
I call a bunch of people scum
I am shallow
Waxing Poetic about indie games
Games are pimps
We take a break (the first time ever)
Our ideal zombie games
Listener Questions
Closing

Some Thoughts on Super Mario Galaxy 2

I recently beat Super Mario Galaxy 2. This may not seem like something big to most people, but I'm not most people. I have a very serious problem. I rarely finish games. This usually comes down to one of two things: either distraction or difficulty. Distraction happens to everyone when playing a game, whether it is something completely outside of gaming(like work or relationships), or something along the lines of a new game coming out. This is completely understandable to anyone who has ever picked up a controller. The second root of my problem is the matter of difficulty. Games almost by definition need to have some sort of difficulty or challenge to them, as without it they are little more than moving pictures.

With implementing difficulty into games comes a whole host of problems on what is the appropriate level for any given part of a game. If a game is too easy the player becomes disinterested and walks off, but if the game is too hard the player becomes frustrated and walks off. Developers have tried to remedy this with the inclusion of multiple difficulty levels, but those open up an entire new host of problems (akin to multiplying the problem with one difficulty setting by however many settings you include).

So when I sat down to play Super Mario Galaxy 2, I sat down to win. I made sure I had no other games tempting me, and I essentially fell off of the Earth for a few days to make sure I wasn't distracted. This left the only thing stopping me from completing this game: the game itself. Recent Nintendo games haven't been known for their mind-blowing difficulty, but some have been enough to frustrate me to the point of quitting. So as I first began playing Mario I became overtaken with a childlike joy that made me know for sure that this game was different.

I continued to play for the next few days and never once was I bored, or frustrated, or aggravated in any way; I was happy. I was constantly intrigued by Mario's world and its constant stream of challenges. These challenges were actually, well, challenging. Instead of setting me up against increasingly difficult waves of enemies I was confronted with constantly changing landscapes and mechanics I had never seen before.

This was perfect for me. I died a few times, but never enough to dissuade me. None of these deaths ever felt like something that was wrong with the game but something that I could track back to one of my mistakes. This didn't lure me into the overconfidence that comes with any game that is too easy, as with every challenge I wondered if I would die and if this was the challenge that would stop me from progressing. I never stopped.

I think that this is Super Mario Galaxy 2's greatest achievement: not the beautiful level design, nor the simple joys of it, but the perfect level of difficulty that brings it all together. This is why it is one of the greatest games we have.

Save and Reload Podcast 15: The Laugh Track

Grant and Matt are here for this one, but we also got some guy off of the street to come participate. His name is Jesse and as it turns out he is the Community Manager for DestructoidSanFrancisco. He stops by and talks with us for a majority of the show, but has to leave to go do science. The rest of us then talk about which games you should play to get a crash course into indie games.



Grant made the picture for this episode (tell him it is good).

The song is Wing Beats by Wiklund.

If you want to hear Jesse on a more regular basis you can listen to him here.

As always comments and questions are always appreciated!

EDIT: I totally forgot to whore Matt out. His Gamertag is Juturna916.

Save and Reload 14: Too Much Sex and the City

This week Grant joins me to talk about some new games. I expected this to be Super Mario Galaxy 2-cast, but that didn't seem to happen. Maybe next week. We did however talk about Red Dead Redemption for a while and how much I want to skin a bear (decidedly quite a bit). We chatted about Bioshock 2 for a little while but we unleashed massive spoilers, so be warned of those.



The song is by La Roux (so hip).

If you liked this nonsense leave us comments below.
If you hated this nonsense leave us comments below.
If you have any ideas for next week's show leave us comments below.
If you want to nominate a game for our Cougar Seal of Approval leave comments below.