BCB Episode 10 Halloween with Ben Judd 2

Happy birfday, Ben

Excellent show Mike! This interview was very timely and insightful.


  Cheers. 

His comments about VR are interesting because from what i've heard if it sells 2 million within the first two years it'd be deemed a success to Sony. They aren't expecting crazy sales for it, it's still early but anything like that would be a success.

Just for some perspective the Vive is at 100,000 WORLDWIDE. PSVR sold 50,000 in three days in Japan. So in terms of a 400 dollar product that's an accessory that requires a PS4 and a camera to run it i would think it's doing pretty well. On top of that they aren't selling it at a loss.

So while I don't see it as grim as Ben, people shouldn't go into it expecting PS4 levels of game support. RE7 should help it though.

Thank you for an excellent episode Ben and Mike! There is a lot information to take in and think about.

I am looking forward to Bloodstained's new traversal method mentioned in the podcast!

To answer Ben's question, one Metroidvania/IGAvania traversal idea I really liked were those boxes in Kraid's Lair from Metroid: Zero Mission that you could grab and they'd zip you across the hall. I am also partial to Metroid's speed booster.

I also found some footage of the reality bombs Ben dropped.

Another strong episode <3 Thx for doing these XombieMike , the community really appreciates it!

Comments on the Episode

• I don't think SFV was a good example for Ben to use. The issue with SFV was that it was missing BASIC features that have come to be expected in the first release of any fighting game, including past Street Fighter games. It's hard to make a direct comparison to a Metroidvania game but imagine say a "Mega Man" like game where there was no "Wily Castle" or you something of the sort - content you'd expect to be there for any game of that genre. I think we all understand the vantage point of publishers in that regard but staggered content releases have worked before (Shovel Knight being a recent poster boy). That's why the internet response was so positive to that "announcement". What matters most is what is the nature of the content that is staggered.

• I'm glad the "mystery" of the Deep Silver > 505 Games transition is mostly resolved

• I think most of us on this board agree with Ben's position on Wii U vs Switch but yeah, some sort of survey or poll needs to be done to get backer feedback. Still, don't most of the arguments of Wii U vs. Switch (old hardware, no shelf space, etc.) also apply to Vita? Or is mostly an issue of there being no direct successor?

• I think Ben got too much flak for the "better than nothing comment". People were just salty about MN9 (which did under-deliver to be fair) and taking their shots at him and Inafune.

• Didn't Goofball come in 4th? He would make a neat enemy IMO if he never became a familiar. Though that "then you have to please everybody" thing does become a real issue.

• I'm really curious to learn more about this "kind of a swing but not really" mechanic that Ben is teasing. It sounds like it might be like the Magnes glyph from Order of Ecclesia? I know that was something that was brought up in the Design Review Requests so I wonder if this is a mechanic came from us or if this was something that came from Iga himself. I wonder if this is a question Mana can answer without spoiling anything.
  

• For Ben's information, it was Shingeru Miyamoto who said the below quote:
  

The source of the quote is here

Aztec I actually got an Xbone yesterday for $150 thanks to Facebook's Craigslist like shopping section. Up until yesterday I was still a console generation behind. I only have the Live Gold games I've been accumulating since they started that, but I would like physical games soon. My wife and I will finally be able to play Gears 4 together once I get it and another controller. I really want Titanfall 2 as well.

I've always planned on getting a Xbone and for Bloodstained I've planned to get a digital Steam version and Xbone physical version. Apparently though, anything you get for Xbone you can play on PC. I still do not fully understand that. If it's just streaming from my Xbone to my monitor, I don't count that. If it's true though, I'll get the physical copy for NS if the NS is something I can afford and want to invest in.

Listened to the Bloodcast last night. It should be stressed more that we need these reality bombs. He also should have brought up again that Mike needs to play through CV3 now that he's done 1 lol....


I'm pretty close to the SF5 issues since I'm a competitive fighting game player myself. It has been quite an ordeal, lol...and I think I have mixed feelings on it as an example.

I think that the notion of "no x mode(s)" is even a simplification of what the issues were with the game. Because it was released earlier than it should have been, it is missing much, much more than that and which still now has not caught up to what it should have been when it released. Rather than a point to NOT do a staggered release, I think it's more an example of how not to do "staggered" content because it's more of a case where it's not staggered, but more incomplete as a game and "we'll finish it later". Shovel Knight was nothing like that, Bloodstained would be nothing like that. The only thing they should have done this with in a fighting game context is characters and an expanded story mode, and an actual setup like KI or DOA Core Fighters where it actually makes more sense to have two currencies, be offline server-based etc because the game actually is free to play.

V issues, and things it was (and mostly still is) missing:
"Arcade"/vs CPU, stage transitions, daily challenges/targets, 2 colors only by default (i.e. only 2 ever at tournaments...hope you like red or blue everybody), Survival mode in general, server-based offline gameplay that can interrupt even local versus and said horrible Survival mode, a near 8-frame average frame delay muddling the meta of the game, baffling legacy controller support that somehow shortened the frame delay by 1f, an awful ragequit handling system (which was later addressed by adding what was apparently a borrowed malware rootkit to the PC version that opened a backdoor on players PCs to be hacked lol), the eventual cinematic story mode update not having actual story-to-gameplay transitions (which it seems like they "tried?" because for some reason you can hear sounds during the black screen transitions...), and the communication issues between Capcom Japan and Capcom USA: "oh, the DLC characters are late again according the schedule? We in Japan never made a schedule! Capcom US made a power point slide with months on it that we didn't know about guys".

So...yeah, problems. It's pretty impressive. I'm probably forgetting things. Somehow or another, it can probably be used as an example how not to do something for any game. THAT SAID, the battle planners made a great fighting system. It just needs less delay, maybe more advantage on knockdowns so that wakeup jab doesn't have to be considered as a strategy. I've seen great players lose to (and do) that and that's NO GOOD.

I think that Goofball if desired as a familiar could be a smart DLC idea. If familiars are anything like their standard IGAvania type, they're more or less optional, aesthetic and situational choices - so that the IGA team could earn some extra revenue from something that those poll voters aren't mad about since their choice is in-game already for free, and the Goofball-faithful can get their wish, which is a demographic heavy with IGA-faithful regardless, so the extra support is a given imo haha

I don't think it will be much like the Magnes since he had specifically said that this kind of thing hasn't been in an IGAvania game before. What I'm hoping for is something I brought up probably well over a year ago now about Lenneth Valkyrie's crystal shot platforming mechanics in Valkyrie Profile 1.

Which are:


tl;dr, it was kind of a combination of Mega Man platforming tools, i.e. Super Arrow, item-1, Rush Coil, etc.

Anyways, long story short, PS4 > XB1, play CV3, I'm gonna make a RPG mechanics for Ben thread

I think Ben and IGA were on stage with Microsoft and they presented Bloodstained at E3 in the Microsoft area, so don't write off play anywhere just yet.

I'd rather not reveal how much I backed for at the moment, but let's just say it's a good bit more that what the Xbone just cost me.

I've enjoyed SotN on many platforms, but my favorite was XBL arcade for the achievements, and that is where I continue to play it.