I was on the GOGcast a couple weeks ago where we talked about various topics, but games dying in particular. For those that don’t know, GOG.com is an online store that sells games without any DRM. They’re also known for getting a lot of older titles runnable again on modern systems. Anyway, the format is structured a lot like the Co-Optional podcast I was on earlier. I think there was a lot of good discussion, although we may have gone in circles a little too much talking about games being killed, but it’s obviously something I can get carried away on. More videos coming before too long!

Well I have some minor bad news. First, I ran into some complications with the next Game Dungeon and it’s going to have to be delayed several days. My plan is to get it released shortly after the next videochat. Second, I received so many varied comments on the Robot Jobs video, I was going to create a followup video to that. Unfortunately the footage to that got screwed up, so I decided to scrap it. I’ll try and address some of the bigger followup comments I had when I do the videochat on April 3, however.

Speaking of the videochat, if you have questions for the next videochat, you can post them in the comments below.

Here’s a video I meant to have out this time last month! This one got delayed for various reasons. I almost had to scrap all of it due to an error with the camera while recording. For whatever reason, my camera likes to re-enable auto-focus in between shots after setting in manually. There is no way to permanently turn it off. I forgot to triple-check that it was still off, and thus a whole lot of the footage ended up too blurry to use. I ended up being able to salvage enough of it to complete the video. I cleaned it up the best I could, but it does mean the visual quality on this is definitely lower than average. I figured people would rather see a lower-definition video rather than none at all, so here it is.

As for the topic, I don’t plan on restricting Ross Rants to just gaming topics, I’m thinking I may alternate back and forth. This is one that’s been on my mind for a while, it’s certainly a litmus test for how humanity will deal with its approaching problems. In retrospect, it’s not very rant-y, but I think I’ll more than make that up on the next one I have planned. Also I can’t tell you how badly I wanted to use the theme music to Short Circuit in this video (which I consider the best robot-themed music ever made), but I was concerned it would trip up the copyright police and something that would probably cost thousands to license.

Anyway, expect some more videos soon, it will be a few days, but I’m going try and get the next Game Dungeon out ASAP!

This is short notice, but I’ve been invited to the GOGCast, a podcast hosted by GOG.com. It will be live tomorrow (March 17th) at 5PM EST at http://www.twitch.tv/gogcom. It will get hosted on Youtube later, I’ll make another post when that happens. Also expect a new video in a couple days!

EDIT:
For those in Europe, this will be 10PM CET due to daylight savings time in America.

Back from the world of offline! Here’s the monthly videochat from Sunday. I would have had this out sooner, but my internet went down while I was doing the chat and I didn’t have any internet for 3 days afterward. My ISP got bought out by another provider and that caused a disruption to the service. Normally my internet connection is pretty good, at least the timing wasn’t so bad as I was trying to wrap up the chat when I got disconnected.

I think I rambled in this chat more than usual, but it’s mostly like the others. Some announcements worth reading about are that I do intend to have an online meetup with fans in Planetside 2 and will have details on that later (hopefully this month), also more is discussed about companies killing games. I had the thought that this practice might actually be illegal in Europe, depending on the consumer protection laws in place for the various countries. If so, maybe some action could be taken to make EA feel actual legal or financial ramifications as what they’re doing may actually violate consumer law in some countries, but no one has actually called them out on it yet. If that’s the case, maybe we can do something on that front. If anyone knows more about consumer law in any European countries, you’re welcome to email me about it.

That’s all for now, I’m running behind, but more videos coming this month!