The Experience Points Podcast

This week on the EXP Podcast, Kotaku's Nathan Grayson has us exploring the very depths of Overwatch's elo hell. Down there in the cold, dark abyss, one man sought to lower his rank to zero. And like some mortal man who sought to count himself among gods and demons, he achieved his dream. What does that mean for us? And what does it tell us about the worst fans of Overwatch? All this and more!

Show Notes:

- Runtime: 32 mins

- "The Guy With The Lowest Possible Rank in Overwatch," by Nathan Grayson via Kotaku

- Music by Brad Sucks

Behold! We have consulted the most ancient of tomes and conjured an auditory apparition for your amusements. Some may seek to explain this feat by turning to the actions of humankind and their feeble attempt to use technology to harness the great cosmic forces. We know better though. We know podcasts are governed by an older logic, one governed by laws untouched and untouchable by simple mortals. Laws that some, in an attempt to make sense of an impenetrable code, attempt to distill into a single word more easily held by our fragile cultural psyche: magic.

This week on the EXP Podcast, Scott and I take to the skys and poke strange alien creatures with sticks. We're back to No Man's Sky. Does the game live up to the hype? Is it possible to understand the breeding habits of the pyramid-headed freaks that litter my starting world? Why do Sci-Fi games have universally bad UI? All these questions and more in our latest debrief.

Show notes:

• Music from No Man's Sky OST
• Runtime: 38 mins

If you're tired and need a break from space mining, here's a little piece of history for you. That's right: it's the last podcast recorded before No Man's Sky ushered in the new era of prosperity/despair in which we now find ourselves living (I'm writing this pre-release). Since we PC players are still waiting on the go-ahead from mission control, we decided to have a pre-release conversation around expectations, hype, and the best way to leverage brand synergy when naming planets. See you on the forest moon of Chevy's!

This week on the EXP Podcast, Scott and I look at friendliness by the numbers. Thanks to a recent survey by research firm Quantic Foundry, we have some data about the ideal way gamers like to play with other people. Some of the results are actually surprising, but are they accurate? And what does this say about games that bridge the competitive/cooperative divide? And what about VR? All this and more!

What if you knew the exact number of minutes you spent in BioShock's hacking minigame? How about precise amount of damage done by Ryu's fireball? Do you ever dare look at your Spelunky death count? This week we're talking about "the quantified self" as it relates to video games. Don't worry, we haven't sipping the Soylent, we're just wondering what the numbers mean and whether we should be paying attention.

A game has done the unthinkable. It's made thousands of people go outside. Pokémon Go has become a cultural phenomenon overnight. Your parents, your neighbors, even your coworkers can be found wandering the streets in search of some rare Snorlax. What has the world come to? What can explain all this madness!? This week on the EXP Podcast, Scott and I venture into the tall grass to find out.

This week we reach the triumphant conclusion of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End. We go into all the grave-robbing, clock-smashing, jeep-winching antics. And before you ask, yes we did make a cheap pun about Drake's butt being a "theif's end." I mean, how could we resist?

Blizzard has filed a lawsuit against Bossland, a German-based software company that sells access to cheat programs for Overwatch players. The company actually offers this service for other multiplayer games as well, but does cheating in Overwatch mean something different? Why do people cheat at all? And most importantly, how are Lebron James and Big Boss involved? All this and more on today's EXP Podcast!

Well, Quake, you've had a good run but it's really time to calm down and grow up. You're not a teen anymore, so you'll have trade your nail gun for a briefcase and rocket jump your way into some adult responsibility. All of this is a roundabout way of saying that Quake came out 20 years ago. To mark this occasion, we give ourselves over to a Wikipedia black hole and talk about the other video game highlights of 1996. For the full experience, you should probably be listening to Jamiroquai on loop during this whole podcast.