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Three Moves Ahead Strategy Podcast Thread

eznark

Banned
Troy, Rob and Bruce participate in the wonkiest Three Moves Ahead ever, as Dr. Geryk makes up for weeks of absences with another tour de force rant. How does Achtung Panzer compare to Combat Mission? What do we expect from a WW2 tactical game, and how do these expectations mesh with reality? Turn based, real time and replay – how do they fit together? Bruce also recommends a bunch of books.

Direct Link

Great show this week. Any episode with Bruce is bound to be interesting and this one had the added bonus of inflating my reading list. I'm also about to hit Impulse for Achtung Panzer. Game sounds pretty excellent.
 

eznark

Banned
Another wargame show! Troy, Julian and Rob are joined by NorbSoft’s Norb Timpko and Jim Weaver to talk about Gettysburg: Scourge of War. Learn more than you ever wanted to know about how to make a civil war game. Why is the AI so recalcitrant? What are the lessons of leadership here? How do you make a map like this? And where do history and gameplay collide when the AI hasn’t read the books you have?

Direct Link

This was an excellent episode. I love hearing designers on relatively small projects talk about their games. This has the added bonus of featuring a Civil War buff! If you're kind of broke though, don't listen because yet again this podcast sold me on a game I had been previously unaware of.
 

eznark

Banned
Tom and Bruce are absent again while Troy, Julian and Rob dissect the still in beta Frozen Synapse, a small team tactics game from Mode 7. Troy finds it too difficult, Rob loves the potential for story telling, and Julian digs the puzzles. Listen as we talk about tactical games, the union of art and design, indie game marketing, a digression on Ancient Trader and an apology from Troy on his terrible mailing skills.

Direct Link

I'm warming to Rob but the podcast just isn't the same without Tom or Bruce. Frozen Synapse sounds interesting, but just does not seem like a $30 game to me.

I did go out and buy Warhammer 40k Squad Command for my PSP though, since the thing was just collecting dust and I'm sadly getting into the universe after DoW II Chaos Rising. So far Julian, I am unimpressed.
 
I played a bit of squad command a while back and found it a bit clunky. The mechanics were ok, but they didn't fit that well with the PSP interface.

I've been having a lot of fun with Frozen Synapse. It's another one of those games you fire up for a minute, start up a few games, then pop it open again when you get an email about the next turn. Until earlier today it was 20% off for the UK election, but even at full price you can split the cost with someone else and come out at $12.98 per person.
 

eznark

Banned
It's one of those games that I wish was coming out in like August, or that it had come out a month ago. As it is I know I won't buy it til it goes on sale somewhere or I find myself with a ton of free time.
 

eznark

Banned
Tom Chick returns after a month away from the podcast to join Troy and Rob in a discussion about designing tutorials for strategy games. Is the failure of tutorial design a root of the decline in strategy gaming? Can you really integrate a tutorial into a story based campaign? What are the responsibilities of the gamer to learn what he/she is doing on a battlefield

Direct Link

Haven't listened yet, waiting for the Brewers game to end (and holding out hope Hoffman kills himself on the mound).

I didn't post last weeks because for me (I'm using Google Listen) the episode was only 30 minutes long and seemed like it started half way through. It also was not the greatest episode in the world.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
eznark said:
Direct Link

Haven't listened yet, waiting for the Brewers game to end (and holding out hope Hoffman kills himself on the mound).

I didn't post last weeks because for me (I'm using Google Listen) the episode was only 30 minutes long and seemed like it started half way through. It also was not the greatest episode in the world.
I wish RTS games embraced puzzles. They're common in chess and they're a great teaching tool. I don't consider moving some units to a waypoint and rotating the camera to be a tutorial.
 

eznark

Banned
Really fantastic episode this week.

Oy. Troy breaks his computer and therefore sounds like he’s calling in from a submarine. But the rest of show is a long discussion about Games Masters experimenting with RPG and miniature mechanics. Julian and Rob discuss a fascinating game session before the team digresses onto iterative learning in game design and whether games do a good job of teaching through systems at all.

Direct Link
The discussion about adding a robust feedback system to strategy games is something every designer needs to listen to. A number of these companies churn out games based on the same engine. Instead of working on a new era skin or subtly tweaking interfaces, it would be great to see someone like Paradox work on something like the feedback system discussed.

I'd also love to see the RPG+Strategy elements Rob brought up. Being a commander, interacting with officers of higher and lower rank but then still getting a Total War style tactical battle. That sounds fantastic. Is that what King Arthur strategy rpg does?
 

eznark

Banned
This week, Troy, Julian and Rob are joined by PR pros Joe Ziemer (Triple Point PR, Paradox shill) and Stephanie Schopp (Tinsley PR, Stardock water carrier) to talk about marketing strategy games in this gaming and business environment. Is strategy gaming really dead? How do you find new audiences and keep the old ones? How do PR people deal with media and developers?

Direct Link

Sound quality is bad due to Stephanie's poor connection and Joe's insanely loud inhaling at time. Also I found the topic mostly uninteresting. So....yeah.
 

Goldmund

Member
I didn't know this thread existed. Thanks for fighting the good fight, eznark.

Tom's lame jokes, Bruce's vile personality, Julian's fatherly honesty, Troy's silent dissent and Rob's argumentative compliance -- these are the qualities that rekindled my interest in strategy games.

I sought out Solium Infernum right after I listened to the corresponding episode of Three Moves Ahead. The game blew me away. Despite its many faults, it's become one of my favorite games of the past few years.

I had forgot: I love strategy games, even if I'm miserable at them.
 
First topc that has jumped out to me in awhile, good on ta for the thread as I think I'll listen to this one tonight.

Don't let the lonely threads get ya down! :solidarity fist bump with the Triangle Wizard thread: :lol
 

eznark

Banned
Promises to listeners are not kept, so Troy flies solo for an interview with Jon Shafer, the lead designer of Civilization 5. 15 minutes of Hex Based Strategy Gaming.

Direct Link

Short but sweet. Seriously, this is probably the best interview with Shafer to come out of this week just for the religion part.
 

eznark

Banned
Excellent, excellent episode. Love when Bruce is on there trolling everyone. "Ugh, dwarves and elves were not in that time period"
Gameshark’s Editor in Chief Bill Abner joins Troy, Rob and Bruce to talk about Disciples 3, Heroes of Might and Magic, Jagged Alliance, King’s Bounty – strategy games with tactical components. To what extent are these RPGs? What differentiates a good one from a bad one? Bruce mentions Odium again.

The good doctor also promises to write something.

Would have really loved to hear his impressions on new XCOM. Bruce is good, hope Troy has him on more often when the show regulars flake out.

Direct Link

I actually just started playing HOMM V again this week, just to check it out as I wait out the Steam sale to see if King's Bounty Gold drops at all. Man I really love those kinds of games. I know what Rob is saying, that maybe they are too simple from a strategy standpoint, but they do blend my favorite game elements; story and strategy. If only more bad-ass strat games tried harder.
 
I didn't know this thread existed. I've been listening to 3 moves ahead for ages. A few months ago I completely caught up with everything from ep2. Julian and Rob have been very good replacements for Tom and Bruce, I think. Their tastes aren't as rounded as Tom's, but much broader than Bruce's and they provide enough interesting commentary to keep me coming back.

I don't really miss Bruce when he's not on the show, he brings very particular viewpoint and narrow perspective that I don't always find very good. Usually his rants seem like half finished thoughts than anything insightful. Yet, when he is on, it's always interesting to listen to, especially his sense of humour. He also turned me onto the Republic of Rome, which is a fascinating beast of a board game. I do miss Tom 'anything ever made is a strategy game' Chick more, but the show has done just fine without the two of them.
 

eznark

Banned
This week, hardware expert and long time strategy gamer Loyd Case joins Troy, Julian and Rob in a chat about how various advances and changes in the technological environment have changed how see and approach strategy games.

Listen Here

Guess what Julian talks about? Some of these episodes, where Facebook and Apple are sort of naturally on the periphery...we need a vuvuzuela-like Julian filter. He was also a strange stickler early about this only having to do with innovations that affect solely strategy games. Like patches, when Rob brought it up Julian got all huffy about how it affects all games so it shouldn't be discussed. His thoughts on graphics...also kind of asinine, especially since he spent time on GWJ talking about how pretty Civ V looks.

Honestly, the discussion is a little disjointed and stalls in spots but all in all it is a good show. I really wish some of the board games on XBLA would come to PSN and the PC (and Android!)

Yet another week and Tom is MIA. If you want to hear him though, he is on this weeks Jumping the Shark (so is Bill Abner) which is steadily becoming a decent podcast in its own right. The web site itself is a fucking atrocity though. If you can find a link to the podcast on the site, let me know because I cannot.
 
Such a puzzling podcast for me.

I hate/love it all at the same time.

I can't quite pin down what I love about it...or hate about it but for the moment, the love keeps pulling me through.
 

eznark

Banned
Ken Levine from Irrational Games drops by the show to talk about what made Freedom Force so special. Is it an RPG or a strategy game? We discuss the virtues of pausable real time play, the fine line between homage and parody and learn about what games Ken plays when he is not writing kick ass game stories.

KEN LEVINE!!

Listen here
 
bigdaddygamebot said:
Such a puzzling podcast for me. I hate/love it all at the same time. I can't quite pin down what I love about it...or hate about it but for the moment, the love keeps pulling me through.
rule of thumb is to skip all the episodes where the description talks about concepts, like the technology one. or where they're leaning exclusively on themselves for the content with the previous one before that http://flashofsteel.com/index.php/2010/07/14/three-moves-ahead-episode-73-what-made-you/ those are awful, especially with julian on. dull to the extreme.

the best ones are where they're talking specifically about one game, especially of there's a guy from the dev team on
 
hehe the fuck. last podcast now is just julian and rob. bu. why even bother having a podcast anymore

edit: with no tom or bruce anymore. and not even troy now. time to cancel this podcast completely? seems so
 

eznark

Banned
Joseph Merrick said:
hehe the fuck. last podcast now is just julian and rob. bu. why even bother having a podcast anymore
It's pretty good, actually. On phone now but when I get home I will update the thread.

Sounds like next week will be a DoTA centric show?
 

eznark

Banned
This week, with the rest of the TMA crew (i.e., me) off gallivanting around California or saving lives or something, Rob and Julian decided to have a real show. They dig deep into the perfect strategy gaming syllabus, and come up with some obvious and startling conclusions. At least, that’s what they tell me. I haven’t listened to it yet. I hope there’s pie.

Listen Here

It's worth listening to, really. Well, kind of.

Sounds like next week might be DoTA? (Popular mod of a strategy game was the foreshadowing I think). I hope so, I'm knee deep in LoL and loved Demigod.

Also, if you are jonesing for Tom, he was on this weeks Jumping the Shark talking about StarCraft II. And no, it is impossible to get enough SC II talk.

Also, screw you guys. Troy posted his traffic data from the first half of the year and GAF didn't make the top ten. On GAF, strategy PC gaming truly is dead!
 
Since eznark is slacking it seems, some people might care to know that this week's podcast features Idle Thumbs' Chris Remo in a discussion about Starcraft 2. I haven't listened yet (downloading now), but I figured this might generate a little more interest than some of the previous 'casts.

Listen Here.
 

eznark

Banned
Like Tom Chick, I am a busy man and sometimes forget about this show. I listened to it this morning and it was one of the better ones in a long while. I don't think I disagreed with any of them at any point.

I was also disheartened by their site traffic that Troy posted. Small blogs were better referrers than this thread on the force that is GAF. So sad.
 

eznark

Banned
Troy – suffering from a splitting headache – is joined by Rob Zacny, Tom Chick (hooray) and Idle Thumbs/Gamasutra star Chris Remo before he heads off to join Irrational Games. The topic: Starcraft 2. Why does such a competitive, sports structured game like SC2 have such wide appeal? Is the single player campaign really that different from other campaigns? And how about that writing? What are the great joys and great disappointments? Finally, what does Starcraft 2 mean for the future of the PC RTS?

Direct Link
 

Dennis

Banned
It seemed to me they were a little too down on StarCraft 2. I suspect partly because they couldn't resist the temptation to flaunt how 'Elite Strategy and RTS gamers' there feel they are.

Fact is, its the best resource-gathering RTS since, well, StarCraft. It is the uncontested king of that particular species of RTS, so of course its not going to try to be like the CoH and DoW games.
And thank god for that - we already have those. Now after all these years we finally get a high budget RTS of the resource kind.

Story is cheese, so was the first game. Of course there is an element of handholding to the SP campaign. They want new players to get into SC.
 

eznark

Banned
DennisK4 said:
It seemed to me they were a little too down on StarCraft 2. I suspect partly because they couldn't resist the temptation to flaunt how 'Elite Strategy and RTS gamers' there feel they are.

Fact is, its the best resource-gathering RTS since, well, StarCraft. It is the uncontested king of that particular species of RTS, so of course its not going to try to be like the CoH and DoW games.
And thank god for that - we already have those. Now after all these years we finally get a high budget RTS of the resource kind.

It was almost all incredibly positive. Aside from the story, they only said good things about it. The only time they were negative was when discussing if it would be universally appealing or if it was innovative (that it isn't particularly innovative wasn't considered bad, as Rob said a number of times).
 

Dennis

Banned
eznark said:
It was almost all incredibly positive. Aside from the story, they only said good things about it. The only time they were negative was when discussing if it would be universally appealing or if it was innovative (that it isn't particularly innovative wasn't considered bad, as Rob said a number of times).
I...don't quite agree with that. And that the best RTS of its kind in many years, scores an 8/10 and B from the participants is pretty telling.
 

eznark

Banned
Did you read Tom's review? It was pretty glowing. And his appearances on both this and Jumping the Shark he has used "loved" "absolutely love" and "adore" numerous times to describe how he feels about StarCraft II.

Wait, just remembered Tom said he didn't like the Challenges, which I thought was crazy talk.
 
Having listened to it, I kind of see it going either way. You can tell that the regular panelists are struggling to some degree to reconcile their admiration for what Starcraft is and what it represents vs. their resentment that wantonly ignores a lot of innovation that's occurred since the first came out. And that really isn't surprising since these guys (Remo aside) represent the hardcore strategy sector, and as such I imagine for them that there has to be this internal polarization in terms of weighing that Starcraft is still a great system, and the interest it generates for the genre is great, but that it's somewhat disheartening that innovation other games over an entire decade can somewhat be ignored because they're not from Blizzard.
 

eznark

Banned
Troy and Rob dig through their histories to recall bad games that had tiny moments of genius. What happens when a game gets one thing right? Can forgotten games still have a legacy beyond their failures? Can a good idea overshadow a bad game’s legacy? Also reminders of the Question show coming up in a couple of week’s time.

Direct Link


I love the topic. I think there are tons of bad games with excellent design ideas that just don't quite get there. Tom's favorite Brutal Legend comes to mind. As does AssCreed.

An obvious strategy choice is Demigod. Amazing game but killed by release month bugs and server issues as well as poor post launch support. However the idea (DoTA for the masses) has caught on like wild fire.

In terms of pure strategy one that immediately comes to mind is Mosby's Confederacy. Awesome idea, excellent premise but the game play was pretty terrible.

Oh oh! They just keep coming to me. Helldorado was an ATROCIOUS game, but a Western themed Jagged Alliance is an idea that I hope someone else gets right.

Now to actually listen to the show and see what they come up with.
 

SapientWolf

Trucker Sexologist
Steve Youngblood said:
Having listened to it, I kind of see it going either way. You can tell that the regular panelists are struggling to some degree to reconcile their admiration for what Starcraft is and what it represents vs. their resentment that wantonly ignores a lot of innovation that's occurred since the first came out. And that really isn't surprising since these guys (Remo aside) represent the hardcore strategy sector, and as such I imagine for them that there has to be this internal polarization in terms of weighing that Starcraft is still a great system, and the interest it generates for the genre is great, but that it's somewhat disheartening that innovation other games over an entire decade can somewhat be ignored because they're not from Blizzard.
There have been some great refinements (order queuing, strategic zoom, drop in multiplayer, etc.) but the truly innovative strategy games end up being grouped into other sub-genres. The RTS frameworks from the 90s are still being closely followed even today. Modern tactical RTS games like World in Conflict, Company of Heroes and Dawn of War II owe a lot to games like Z and Myth.

I understand what you're saying though. There are a lot of recent RTS releases that deserved to sell far better than what they did.
 

zoku88

Member
Thanks for bumping this. I love strategy games and have never heard of this podcast before.

People on the more mainstream podcasts talk only about starcraft and civilization.
 

eznark

Banned
A terrible launch of a game I wanted to love turns what should have been a “WOW” show into another opportunity for Brad Wardell to explain how Stardock screwed up. Listen how imperfect QA practices, overconfidence, groupthink and not taking every beta crash report seriously turned one of the year’s most anticipated new IPs into a lesson for developers.

And also, how Stardock commits to make things right – including free content, steady support, laser focus and refunds. (Ask them. I have no idea what the mechanics are.)

Listen Here

so, so excited to listen to this one!

I didn't post the last couple because 1. I was in Yosemite and 2. the audio quality was really, really rough.
 

eznark

Banned
This was probably the single best episode of any podcast I have heard this year. When the PR woman was introduced I was a little wary, but she did not cut of Brad once.

Interesting that they have not cut any Elemental staff, only staff that was working on an upcoming game. Way to run with a totally non-credible anonymous source, Joystiq.
 

arstal

Whine Whine FADC Troll
eznark said:
This was probably the single best episode of any podcast I have heard this year. When the PR woman was introduced I was a little wary, but she did not cut of Brad once.

Interesting that they have not cut any Elemental staff, only staff that was working on an upcoming game. Way to run with a totally non-credible anonymous source, Joystiq.

Lots of interesting stuff in there- though I could tell Brad was irritated with something I said on his forums a few times. (I still think it was a reason, at least subconsciously)
 

eznark

Banned
Unavailable when we needed him, but still game for a show, Victoria 2′s lead designer Chris King joins Troy and Rob for a discussion of Marxist economic models, why they are so many rebels and why he bothered redesigning Vicky in the first place.

Listen Here

Great follow-up to Wardell. You could tell King was getting a little more flustered as the discussion went on. I hope he also came away with some new ideas, at least in terms of how to think about game design. Seemed like there were some fundamental questions they asked that he had no idea how to answer.
 
Got this on the pod ready for a listen. Funny, though, I thought Troy mentioned they were going to do RUSE. Anyway, an enjoyable, if technically-iffy, podcast.
 
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