Electronic Wireless Show

New year, same us! The Electronic Wireless Show podcast returns and kicks off the new year with a look forward at what 2024 may bring. We chat about our most anticipated video games that may or may not be arriving this year, including some racing, some spac(marine)ing and some book selling. Also some freezing and some despairing (at BioWare and Bloodlines 2, potentially). Plus: Nate and James have an anecdote off, which makes me lose my mind and become a horrible person for about four solid minutes. I have apologised, and me and James are still friends.

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While Rishi Sunak bundles nerds into Bletchley Park, we at the Electronic Wireless Show podcast are investigating the real danger of AI: somewhat rubbish text-to-speech voicelines making The Finals less fun. We discuss the arrival of AI voices in big-name games, the disappointingly businessy thinking behind it, and whether we can think up some uses for AI-generated material that we can actually get behind. All sparked by voice actor Gianni Matragrano’s video compilation of the lines in question, which you should probably watch before listening to this episode, or there’ll be a bit where Nate appears to bellow "THE KING FISH" for no reason. Well, maybe not no reason. It’s still Nate.

Plus! We talk about what we’ve been playing this week, which coincidentally for me was The Finals, while Nate’s been digging deeper into the Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor demo. I also recount the teeth-based controversy surrounding Cities: Skyline 2, in turn begging the question: what are they going to do with all those teeth?

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As is fast becoming a thing on RPS this week, Alice Bee and James are both away this week, so I'm (Katharine) filling in writing this post and doing my best Alice impression in the process. In this week's episode, The Electronic Wireless Show podcast talks all things mods - specifically, the ones that got real big and broke out from their respective source games. It's a chat that's been prompted by the developers behind Slay The Spire mod Downfall announcing their own brand-new game, Tales & Tactics.

There's also a lot of undead fish chat, and Alice's plans for entertaining herself on an upcoming long-haul flight. And in James' hardware corner, the gang chat about Nvidia's comments on AI and crypto, as well as Ubisoft's AI writing software tool thinger.

Links

We record on a Tuesday so some news might have changed by the time you hear it.

• Table 9 Studio announced Tales & Tactics, an auto-battling, fantasy roguelike.
• The Sims 4 finally got bunk beds in 2021, after modders showed EA how it was done.
• Deep Rock Galactic received official mod support in 2021 as well. Big props to Googly Glyphids maker HandDrawnNerd.
• Paradox announced their new rival to The Sims, Life By You - and we interviewed head honcho Rod Humble about it at GDC.
• Nvidia's chief technology officer tells The Guardian that crypto does not "bring anything useful for society".
• Ubisoft unveil their AI dialogue-writing tool, Ghostwriter.

What are we playing this week?

James has been enjoying the Resident Evil 4 remake while also playing through Hi-Fi Rush for RPS Game Club. Nate, meanwhile, has been playing RimWorld with mods that make it a 40K / squirrel apocalypse, and Alice Bee has been playing the mildly awful Crime Boss: Rockay City for review.

Recommendations this week are John Wick Chapter 4, Sheila Armstrong's short story collection How To Gut A Fish, and YouTube mashup king DJ Cummerbund.

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This week on The Electronic Wireless Show podcast our interest was piqued by new trailers for a Jesus simulator and a politics in hell strategy game. We ask ourselves: why are there so many hell-themed games and so few heavenly ones? Is it blasphemy? What would our pitch for a game set in heaven be? (Spoilers for that last one: there's a lot of admin involved). We also chat about what we've been playing this week, and Nate orchestrates a mini-game pitchathon that goes at least somewhat off the rails.

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What a week its been! Not a great one if you like zany battle royales, as it turns out. This week on the Electronic Wireless Show podcast we discuss the recent sunetting of Rumbleverse and Knockout City, and how long is a good run for games anyway? But in happier and more ridiculous news, we also get to talk about how massively popular Dwarf Fortress's steam release has been. Good ol' Dwarf Fortress. Plus: the Dread Wolf is leeeeeaaakiiiiing.

Nate's mini-game this week is offering us both dark bargains (I think I did pretty well out of mine), and in a Good Day To Ware Hard James explains why the graphics card market is broken, with a cowboy metaphor. This is a thing now.

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