Welcome to the Podcast page for COUCH PODTATOES. A place where we discuss gaming mechanics, news and opinions with a little extra crazy flair from me and Izlain of ME VS Myself and I.
POD LIST
Youtube playlist thingy
Couch Podtatoes 62: Remasters
Well, we missed the last episode because IZZY is a poopy head and probably due to his computer doing the funny business. We rehashed what we talked about a little in this episode, the social changes we’ve seen and experienced but instead of going over our same conversation again we looked at a new topic.
This week we talk all about remasters and compilations of earlier games. Bringing these titles to a newer generation and the challenges that face them. We also talk about our personal feelings when it comes to remastering titles… eg., just make it pretty.
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Couch Podtatoes 61: Evergreen Games
This week we explore the concept of Evergreen games, a concept that I’d heard before and was recently brought up at the blog Green Mushroom recently. Basically it’s the idea of games that you always seem to come back to or, a game you could theoretically play forever. We look into a few concepts and mechanics that both appeal t us and also might help in creating these kind of experiences.
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Couch Podtatoes 60: Talking Points 4
This week we take a few key news items and just ramble on about them as we usually do. There’s talk of Funcom and Star Citizen, and also quick thoughts on Diablo 3, Hearthstone, GTA V, the YouTube Gaming.
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Couch Podtatoes 59: Entitlement
This week we delve into a discussion about entitlement, and what as consumers, players and gamers we might be entitled to when when throw money at our screen. Personally I think there are certain expectations and entitlement but it is very much personal opinion.
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Couch Podtatoes 58: Question Time
This week we delve into the Blaugust nook to unearth a few of the questions being posed there. We answer a few, rant over others and of course it gives me an opportunity for more random Arenanet hate.
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Couch Podtatoes 57:Competition
This week we were finally joined by daddy doone to explore the Digital Frontier once more. This time we talked about competition: the pros and cons of it within various genres and styles. The mechanics we enjoy but that also might be problematic. AND lots of personal opinions and experiences around our own competitive interests.
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Couch Podtatoes 56: Link Love
This week we went back to the community well in that we decided to dedicate a whole show to the concept of a link-love post. I drew inspiration from Eri’s series called “Link Dead Radio” and thought we could pull some community posts together to discuss. Turns out our community is ripe for the picking, so we go over quite a few different topics that lead into what I think was a great conversation. There’s some talk about Blaugust in there, various mechanics in games and we even talk a little about Daybreak Games.
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Couch Podtatoes 55: Company reputation part2
Anyway – this week is the second parter in our chat with Talarian, of Gamer By Design, about company reputations and this time we answer a few questions about our thought, interests and dislikes when it comes to changing our opinions.
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Couch Podtatoes 54: Company Reputation Part 1
This week we were joined by the amazing, and oh so cute Talarian from Gamer by design for a talk about game company reputations. I believe in this half of the show we looked over a few of the big companies with a reputation for shitty stuff. Can’t be sure though because listening to my own voice recordings makes me want to stab my ears out with a spoon. Oh, and we totally plug his awesome game stuff.
Next week more rep talk but we go into a few questions about our own beliefs and habits so STAY TUNED adventurers
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Couch Podtatoes 53: Gaming as Coping
This week a more personal episode where we look at using Gaming as a coping mechanism. We go into the elements that immerse us and help us escape into games. The social connections we make and how the help. And also the negative effects of delving too deep in these moments. A few personal anecdotes of stress, worry, and coping shared as well.
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Couch Podtatoes 52: Talking Points 4
This week Izzy goes it alone, as time conflicts and mixups happen, even when you’ve been doing this podcast thing for this long! As the 4th of July rapidly approaches I decided to push this episode out solo so that I could enjoy the holiday with friends. It’s another talking points episode, so I’ve got some articles from the gaming sphere that I found interesting enough to talk about and share with you. If the audio sounds a little funky it’s because I ended up having a fan on in the background and editing that shit out makes everything sound tinny. My bad. But I wasn’t about to re-record the whole thing again! I encourage you to check out the links below so you can get some extra information on the things I ramble on about!
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Couch Podtatoes 51: E3 Insider
Yeah, we’ve been harping on the subject of E3 for the past couple of weeks, but for this show we wrangled up Yoshi from the Game Introspection blog as he was actually at this year’s E3 convention. Naturally, we poke and prod him for insider information about games and the show itself. We break the ice discussing what we’ve been playing and then go from there. Not much else to say about it, so have a listen and enjoy!
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Couch Podtatoes 50: Marketing Mischief
This week we look at the Tools these game companies use to sway the masses into throwing money at the screen. The marketing tools that are used and abused. What we don’t mind, what we understand as a necessity and of course what annoys the shit out of us. We focus a bit on the E3 elements for a time but also discuss the recent satirical Piece by Kotaku (totes a must read).
Have fun
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Couch Podtatoes 49: What are games
For this week we had Doone joining us again for the Digital frontier – A segment where we bodly talk about certain things and idea, get all deep in that gaming goodness. The subject “What are games” was a really interesting. Great natural, and amusing talk together and of course I add that element of brilliance to the conversation with my caveman cohosts.
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Couch Podtatoes 48: E3 Exuberance
This week we show our silly excitement for the shenanigans of E3. I don’t know why, but even though it’s a whole vent and time of marketing BS I still enjoy watching the glut of new trailers and hearing about all these new upcoming games.
Anyway we discuss a many of the games we’re looking out for, the reasons why and what we would want to hear during E3 as well.
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Couch PODtatoes 46: Gaming Beginnings
This week in Couch PODtatoes we decided to tackle the third NBI Talkback Challenge: “What made you a gamer”. Instead of writing it all out it just felt more natural to have a normal sort of conversation about it all. It was a great conversation too that while repeating some of the same personal tidbits I’ve written about before also share a few personal stories about where and how my love for gaming started.
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Couch PODtatoes 45: Community Content 4
As it is still the month of May and we’re plugging away at this whole NBI thing, I felt it was fitting to do a show with one of our brand new bloggers. Mr. Tyranny, otherwise known as Tyrannodorkus was kind enough to volunteer his services for this special community content episode. As is tradition with this feature, Mr. T was able to bring his ideas to the table for discussion, and as such we went on to talk about user-generated content in games. We also talk about what we’ve been playing lately, and I do a small interview with my guest to ask him what he thinks about the NBI so far. Unfortunately do to time conflicts Eri wasn’t able to make this recording so it is just Tyrannodorkus and I. Check it out, and we’ll see you next week!
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Couch PODtatoes 44: Perils of Porting
This week we’ve gone back to tradition, in that we are running our standard format that we’ve gotten away from for a few months now. We start with what we’ve been playing, jump into a shorter discussion on the perils of PC to Console (and vice versa) ports, talk about some idiots on the internet, and highlight the 2015 NBI newbies in our community spotlight. There really isn’t much more to say about it.
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Couch PODtatoes 43: Eve events and CSM
Me and the delightful Doone take the time to talk about the recent CSM election. The components and mechanics that go into it, the aspect of campaigning and the unique gameplay it creates.
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Couch PODtatoes 42: Newbie Blogger and TGEN
I was away unfortunately but Izzy was joined by Roger of Contains Moderate Peril (whom has been a guest on CP many times, you should know him by now) and Braxwolf of Gaming Conversations and the Podcast Beyond Bossfights. We discuss at length the upcoming NBI 2015, which will be kicking off in May for it’s 4th consecutive year. If you’re a new blogger or would like to get involved in blogging (or podcasting for that matter) you should give the show a listen which should answer some of your questions, and head over to newbiebloggerintiative.com.
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Couch PODtatoes 40-41: Community Content 3
Welcome back to another episode of community content where we invite fellow listeners and bloggers to ramble along with us as well as answer a few of their questions. This week it was the Mystical Mesmer (who has also changed blogs) came with questions about Crowfall and games in progress. There were some great discussion in this first part about the presentation and our decisions based on this, as well as elements for these projects to avoid.
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Couch PODtatoes 39: Character Customisation
We have an izzy free podcast for this one and I amazingly put together a discussion about elements of customisation in games from our characters to our clothing and the mechanics around them. I was joined by the lovely Jaedia and Danryu to discuss a lot of these elements, our favourite aspects and just ramble on a little with stories abut insane efforts to collect random knick knacks.
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Couch Podtatoes 37: Talking Points
Another one of our News posts where we look at what’s hapnin in mmo’s and gaming and then be opinionated assholes.. ENJOY!!
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Couch PODtatoes 36: Community Content 2
A great episode with Randark of Return of the retro today about toxicity in gaming. Lots of talks about our experiences, ideas about what the issues are, and ways to improve.
I also couldn’t hold back the rant, although I did make it near the end haha
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Couch PODtatoes 35: Crowfall and Niche Games
Talk about the new project called Crowfall and the parts they are doing differently. We also discuss our interest in the different server types in how it gives people greater options for play, and the other niche mmo’s that are trying similar things
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Couch Podtatoes 34: Crowd Funding
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releasing episode 34 a tad late, but Doone made it and we had a great discussion about the current state of crowd funding, touching on recent stories about Massively Overpowered, Daybreak Games, and the Peter Molyneux interview on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. We discuss the ethics of crowd funding and where we see the future of the industry going, gaming journalism as well. Are you ready to enter the digital frontier, once again?
Couch Podtatoes 33: Politics
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his is part two of our previous week’s discussion, this time we answer similar questions about gaming when looking through a political lens. The first ten minutes or so devolves into us just talking politics, so you can skip that if you wish, but if you are unfamiliar with political leanings outside of your own country, it might be insightful. Overall this show is basically a repeat of the last, while swapping topics, but that isn’t to say it wasn’t an interesting discussion! Roger and Jaedia helped us fill out the discussion once again. Take a listen and enjoy!
Couch Podtatoes 32 Religion in gaming
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Welcome back for another episode of Couch Podtatoes! This week we lured Jaedia and Roger back to the show to help us tackle a controversial issue. The topic at hand is Religion in Gaming, and/or how Religion can affect games. It’s the standard guest format once again, where we talk about what we’ve been playing and then dive into the discussion. We present our religious affiliations and then I ask some important questions of the group, giving my own feedback as well. I think it was done in a way that won’t offend anyone, but I was unable to get any diehard religious folk to take part in the show, so it may be a little one sided. You be the judge. Enjoy the show.
Couch Podtatoes 31; Community Content
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I took to Twitter earlier in the week and asked for a volunteer to come onto the show. The idea was that instead of just having a guest on the show for a pre-planned topic, we would instead let the guest pick our brains and come up with their own topic, and just roll with it. An organic conversation full of interesting ums and ahs should follow, right? The person who took up the call was none other than Chris, from the blog Through Wolfy’s Eyes, whom we’ve spotlighted a time or two in the past. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to accommodate time frames, Eri had a scheduling conflict so she was unable to make show time, so I’m happy to present the “Sausage Fest Edition” of Couch Podtatoes. I won’t spoil any further surprises, so dive right in, when you’re ready.
Couch Podtatoes 30: H1Z1 Controversy
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This week we’re taking a look at the controversy surrounding H1Z1’s launch. I happen to be playing the game as you all well know, and I happen to enjoy it, and don’t see what the big deal is. Eri is respectfully disagreeing with me on more than one issue, so we hash it out for a bit. Coincidentally, we’re also talking about another controversy that popped up during the week, where Heroes of the Storm went into Beta, and Blizzard decided to throw “founder’s packs” into the mix, adding more fuel to the already hateful Early Access fire. Count them for our Idiots on the Internet this week. Lastly we take a look at Aywren’s blog once again, where she wrote an interesting piece on storytelling in MMOs, and how mediocre it is these days. Let the battle begin. Fight!
Couch Podtatoes 29: Gender Identity
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As I said last week, we did a longer recording session, so here’s the latter half of that, which is Doone’s Digital Frontier in its entirety. It’s a fun discussion based on his post that you can read over here. Basically we talk about how we identify ourselves in games, how gender effects people’s viewpoints of others while playing together, and a bunch of other subtopics that meld into the complete package. Did that sound official enough? Okay, good. I’m done here. Enjoy the show!
Couch Podtatoes 28: Back to the Future
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Our topic for the week revolves around future tech that is forthcoming and some cool technological advances that are presently coming out. We were inspired by the movie Back to the Future, as one of the scenes takes place in the year 2015, so we thought it would be cool to compare our current tech with ideas that have been presented in games and movies of the past. It’s a pretty interesting conversation, so have a listen and enjoy!
Couch Podtatoes 27; Most Anticipated of 2015
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After taking a week off, it’s a New Year and we’re talking about what games we are most anticipating in 2015! We catch up on what we’ve been doing and what we picked up during the Steam Holiday Sale, and then we dive into a number of titles that we can’t wait to play. Later we take a look at some of the Holiday blogging events that just wrapped up in our little community, including Bloggy Xmas and Listmas. You can find links to those sites down in the notes. I also added my list of most anticipated games in the notes as well. We’ll be back to regular schedule for the foreseeable future, so get caught up and we’ll see you again next week!
Couch Podtatoes 26: Clip Show
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This week’s show is a little different in that it’s not a usual show. It’s more of a year in review of the podcast, where I took some of the funniest or most memorable bits from all of our shows of this year and compiled them together to make a show that’s (hopefully) full of laughs and insightful bits. I have a lot of fun putting this together, so I hope you enjoy taking a ride through time with us. That’s really all I can say, so take a listen and enjoy!
Couch Podtatoes 25: Da Favourites of 2014
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Being December, the year is coming to a close. We chose to round up some of the best games of 2014 and talk about them. To pick these games, we just decided that they had to have released (or entered early access, or completed [think episodic games]) in 2014 and we had to have played the game. As such, some of the games that we chose as our favorites might not line up with yours, but you might also be made of money, and we are not (at least, I’m not). Our lists had a little bit of cross over and I think that the discussion that ensued was pretty fun. Light-hearted if you will. We skipped over the other sections of the regular show format, and be warned we ramble a lot, so this show is on the longer side. It is our second to last episode of the year though, so why not? I should also mention that being episode #25, and the month of December, we’ve now been around for 6 whole months already! Thanks for keeping us motivated by listening, commenting, reviewing, and generally being a part of the community. Here’s to 6 more months! Enjoy the show.
Couch Podtatoes 24: Gaming Culture
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Welcome back to the show! This week we dive into the culture of gaming, and really, the culture of the Internet as a hole. I’m not sure if you’ll notice, but we’ve been taking more of a free-form approach to our discussions in recent weeks, not really being as structured and just letting the conversation flow to where ever it may. I think it’s made for some organic conversations, and it’s a little more casual, laid back and accessible. Anyway, we talk about some of the good and bad stuff when it comes to gaming culture, and then insert some personal experiences and other related stories into the mix. Personally I’ve been having a lot of fun with the show as of late, so I think that should reflect in the finished product. For Idiots on the Internet we take a look at the recent CS:GO Dreamhack tourney debacle, and then we highlight the fabulous Bloggy Xmas Holiday Countdown that was started by Syl of MMO Gypsy, of which I have already made my contribution. So have a listen and enjoy!
Couch Podtatoes 23: East vs West
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For episode #23 we’re going to be taking a look at the vast differences between eastern and western games, from their marketing ploys to the gameplay contained therein. This devolves into a rather long rant about many social and cultural differences between the two sides of the world, but is interesting nonetheless. Later we take a look at a banned Kickstarter attempt, where a couple of guys who have already claimed credit for a few other pranks were trying to fund a rather weird gaming peripheral. Lastly, we talk about a recent post on Hardcore Casual, where Syncaine talks about burnout being a myth. Take a listen, and enjoy the show!
Couch Podtatoes 22: Gaming Psychology
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Couch Podtatoes 21: Seasonal Events
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Couch Podtatoes 20: Eliminating Levels
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Couch Podtatoes 19: PvP Side Up
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Couch Podtatoes 18: News Show
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Couch PODtatoes 17: Horror Show – Our favourite Horror games and what interests us about them
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Couch POdtatoes 16: The Male Body Image – where we talk about the stereotypes of male characters in games
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Couch PODtatoes 15: Bragtoberfest
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Couch PODtatoes 14: Interview with the community Manager of Anook
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Couch PODtatoes 12: Favourite Game Characters – some Guests and Izzy
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Couch PODtatoes 11: Expansion Envy – Discussion about expansions and updates styles in games
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Couch PODtatoes 10: Attack of the clones – Discussion about cloning and iteration of games
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Couch PODtatoes 9: Blaughust Bonanza – Discussion around a few articles that appealed to us this week
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Couch PODtatoes 8: Nostalgia Trip – Looking at the prevalence of retro games and there appeal
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Couch PODtatoes 7: Sandbox Roundtable – Where we sit comfortably as armchair developers and discuss sandbox game mechanics
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Couch PODtatoes 6: Successful Sexism – DIscussion on doing sexism right and bringing light to inequalities 3
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Couch PODtatoes 5: Attack of the Beaverine – Discussion about diversity of characters in the industry
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Couch PODtatoes 4: Enter the Esports – Discussion about what MObas are and where the state of ESports is now
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Couch PODtatoes 3: Digital Distribution – They varying ways in which we by, retrieve and play media these days
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Couch PODtatoes 2: Player Rights – What are our consumer and player rights within the gaming industry? What do we own, what should we expect and what ability do we have to enact change?
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Couch PODtatoes 1: Rise of the Podtatoe – Looking at End game mechanics