SideQuesting

Nobody likes the act of moving to a new house.  Perhaps the most terrible part of moving to a new place involves rummaging through your possessions in your old apartment and deciding what goes with you and what gets thrown out.  As you pick up each item, you ask yourself, “Do I really need this?”  Items that get the nod get to make the trek to the Promised Land  — a nice brown box, a trip in a U-Haul, and the new house.  Unfortunately, some items — things like old magazines and wire hangers — are not as lucky.  They usually end up on the curb inside of a big, black Hefty bag.

A similar phenomenon happens in the video game industry.  As years pass and more consoles are released, it becomes more apparent that some genres either relocate or become obsolete.  Where are our puzzle games, 2D platformers, and on-rail shooters today?  For the most part, they’re restricted to hand-held consoles, DLC, and arcade cabinets.

We’re knee deep in this current generation of consoles, and I’m wondering if the Japanese RPG has a similar fate.

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While Day 1 was spent learning a bit about the game and setting up my farm, Days 2 & 3 were spent mostly growing crops and making friends.

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With PAX East around the corner, we’re trying to stay on our toes.  SideQuesting Alpha Team (Dali and Ryan) will be in Boston covering the event next month. Since there will be several panels and games to try out, we may be a little swamped. Therefore, we’re turning to the readers. If you can’t be at PAX East this year, we’ll try our best to be an extra set of eyes and ears for you in addition to the other blogs covering the event. Are there any games that you’d like us to give impressions on? Are there any panels you’d like us to hit up?

Check out the event schedule and let us know!  You can leave a comment here or @reply us on Twitter.

Farmville is wildly popular.  How popular?  Popular enough to be the most widely-played video game on the planet.  Eighty million people popular.  Farmville is part MMO, part Animal Crossing, part Monopoly.  At first glance it is incredibly simple, but I’ve been assured that it can become quite deep.  I’ve seen countless friends playing it, their updates flooding my Wall on an hourly basis.

I held strong for the entire time.  I played Zynga’s other huge game, Mafia Wars, extensively early on.  It became too complicated (and boring) to continue for more than a few weeks.  I admit that I come back to it once in a while to see how much money I’ve stockpiled, but it just isn’t the same.  I think the static text and graphic game genre had a nice revival, but its time has come and gone again.

Farmville, I was assured, was different.  Yes, I was told that there is some specific daily timing for events to occur.  Yes, there are a considerable amount of “pay to play” aspects.  But the visuals are improved, there is plenty of animation, and it is designed for those sick of Mafia Wars.  I still held tough.

But then something hit me the other day: Why not?  Why not give it a whirl?  It should be easy to turn off if I get sick of it (which I’m sure I will).  It should be a synch to quit.  If I’m already on Facebook, and all of my friends are playing it, it may be worth me checking out to kill some time in between Olympic hockey games.

So I decided today to do just that: Give Farmville a try.  But the caveat is that I need to play it for 7 days straight.  One full week.  If at the end of that week I haven’t become so bored that I want to gauge my eyes out then I’ll have perhaps discovered what draws so many people to this meta-game.

What will follow is a daily journal of my experience in the virtual farm world.  Beginning cold, beginning now.

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For every game that gets created, there are dozens that get put on the chopping block.  Here are a few that didn’t quite make the cut.

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We’re addicted to achievements.  We can’t get enough of trophies.  We love to rack up high gamerscores and show off our gaming highlights to anyone who is willing (or forced) to see them.  Whether it’s through the XBox 360’s Live network, or via PSN or Steam, or even through the Wii’s tracking of game play time, we need to show off our accomplishments.

While there are already several game-related methods of tracking accomplishments, there are quite a few that can be found outside of the gaming world as well.  In this article we’ll take a look at two of them: Foursquare and LoseIt!

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Are there a new Wii and DS in the works from Nintendo?  In all probability, the answer is “Yes.”  Typical business and product-development cycles dictate that work begins on a new iteration once the current version “breaks even”.  After this point, the current product is generating pure profit and a successor is prepared for the next sales cycle.  This is why companies like Apple create new versions of their iPods every year, why Microsoft began developing Natal as a possible pseudo-successor to the current XBox 360, and why Nintendo itself created the DS Lite and DSi.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Nintendo has more than likely been developing an update to its current consoles as long ago as early 2008 in preparation for an announcement at this year’s E3 Expo.

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Contributed by: Toby Davis

Wine.  Many of us enjoy and drink it on a regular basis.  However, it hasn’t quite been a “gamer’s” drink (Mountain Dew tends to take that crown on late Friday nights).  Michael James, the founder of 8-Bit Vintners, believes otherwise.  Wine, according to James, is meant to be a fun, enjoyable experience.  Growing up a gamer himself, James’ wine selection offers that fun experience, especially those of our gaming youth.

Mike took some time away from tasting the latest batch of wine to speak to us about his company and his love of video games.

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Welcome to the SideQuest, your semi-weekly podcast devoted to gaming, culture, and gaming culture, with the occasional tangent.

It looks like the show this week is a little earlier than usual!  And lucky for you, dear viewer, its a tad more organized. We’re joined again by devoted listener and friend, Joshua Arnold, we talk about Dali’s strange sex life, MAG, LOST, and the podcast goes off the edge of a cliff when Dali leaves and is replaced by Ryan. Then again, even Ryan has his own ‘Shocking’ charms, so tune in and enjoy this latest episode of The SideQuest.

Hosts:
Yaniv Pereyaslavsky, Dalibor Dimovski, Ryan ‘Pat Pat’ Gan, Mike Wehner, Josh Arnold

Music:
Main Finger

Links:
Twitter.com/MikeWehner
Twitter.com/kewlrats
Twitter.com/RyanGan
Twitter.com/randomslagathor
Twitter.com/yanivp

 

 The SideQuest Ep 126: Shoc Joc Edition [81:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (320)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “How do I get into games journalism?”

Now, we at SideQuesting don’t necessarily consider ourselves journalists; we’re more of the “active enthusiast” type.  We play games as much as we can, but don’t make a living writing about them.  We write for the fun of it, whenever we can, to whomever will read it.  We have many friends on the video game journalism side of things who make a living (sometimes barely) from reporting and writing about the industry.

We’ve always wondered, as have many others, just how they got into the field professionally.

So, it was a great surprise to us that The Freelancers Podcast recently launched.  The Freelancers — comprised of Xav de Matos and Kyle Horner — deal with answering just that question, giving hints and tips and reminiscing of both good and bad experiences in the industry.  Each episode the duo are also joined by a special guest sharing their experiences, allowing the listeners to hear from several writers and their points of view on the topic.

We dissect the show on this week’s OPP: Other People’s Podcasts.

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