017 - The GRAW Special with Christian Allen
Christian Allen, CEO of Serellan LLC and lead designer for Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter (amongst many other things) joins us for a chat about GRAW, achievements, game development, and lots more. Oh, and Crandy finishes GRAW (spoiler alert!).
Show notes are available on http://www.zedtozed.com/
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Opening/closing music: "Jive Bot" by Jake Kaufman from the game Mighty Switch Force! developed and published by WayForward Technologies
Break music: "Game Cool Dubstep Mode Logo" by Sparximer
All audio production and podcast backend support provided by Tarragon Allen.
Show notes by everyone!
Hosts:
Brandon Fream aka "Freamwhole" - TrueAchievements - Xbox
Tarragon Allen aka "zzUrbanSpaceman" - TrueAchievements - Xbox
Randy aka "Crandy" - TrueAchievements - Xbox
Guest:
Christian Allen of Serellan LLC
0:00:00 - Intro
0:02:52 - Talking Zeds: Guest Christian Allen
0:51:27 - Talking Zeds: Achievements Suck
- GRAW Terminology - Cycle: Moving up and down four levels (In ranked matches)
- Invisible XP points
- Based on ELO system, not TrueSkill
- Designed before Xbox and Microsoft knew what achievements were going to be - Gary Stelmack driving the show on achievements
- Originally layered achievements for the leaderboard - before 50 achievement limit
- Seriously?
- Shipped with 890GS
- First time doing a ranking system in Ghost Recon
- Set up like Chess (LINK)
- GRAW Terminology – Blocking: Intentionally trying to prevent others from climbing a leaderboard and preventing others from earning the achievement.
- Kane & Lynch Blocking Clan
- BAFTA Game Of The Year Win and Worst Achievement Awards
1:07:15 - How Have You Seen Achievements Change and How Much Do You Hate Them?
1:14:10 - Are You Surprised At The Lengths People Go Through For Achievements?
1:30:02 - Microtransactions according to Christian
1:43:40 - Voice Acting in Epsilon
1:47:45 - Talking Zeds: The GRAW Journal
- Starflight
- 5.25” Floppy Disk
- The GRAW Journal
- Boosting
- ~300 traditional cycles for for team/solo leaderboards
- Yes GRAW is still possible! (just extremely time consuming)
- Time to complete GRAW ~five months playing eight hours a day
- Christian Allen thought "achievements are stupid" on original pitch from Microsoft
- GRAW consistently winning worst achievements ever
- Committed (Multiplayer) was not supposed to be eight consecutive hours
- What achievements have become
- Christian Allen on gaming habits of a game designer
- Arcade games
- The Division
- Fallout 3/NV/4
- Dead Rising 1/2/3
- Ryse
- "I'll get to it after GRAW"
- Crandy's post GRAW ratio dive
- My Horse and Me 2
- Hannah Montana
- Monster High
- Barbie and Her Sisters Puppy Rescue
- Even more!
- Christian Allen on Takedown: Red Sabre and Kickstarter
- Gaming nostalgia
- Social media harassment
- Rainbow Six Siege
- Ubisoft corporate training
- "you-be-soft" not "oo-be-soft"
- Toilet logo
- Ad nostalgia in GRAW
- Dodge® cars are good cover in GRAW 2
2:37:25 - Talking Zeds: Zombie Interlude
- Zombie books
- Threat matrix (includes zombie apocalypse planning)
2:40:46 - GRAW IS COMPLETED
- 3389 days 21 hours 29 minutes later
2:43:40 - Shovelware Cemetery: Hotel Blind
- Hotel Blind
- Big Rig Truck'n
- Possible future Goat Simulator episode
- Origin of "Serellan"
3:10:10 - Shovelware Cemetery: GRAW
- Too Brown
- Looks like a ten year old game
- Those achievements, wtf
- Too many big maps
- Can’t use rockets akimbo
- Gunplay, damage and movement is “unrealistic”, unlike COD
3:15:43 - Talking Zeds: Wrap up
- Brandon offering guided tours thru Destiny
- Randy offering to play GRAW 2 (More Drinking!)
3:17:01 - Housekeeping and Recap
3:27:11 - Listener Feedback
- iTunes Canada feedback from TheNyghty
- AB0MINAT10N: Clarify power brick tangent from Randy
- In short, throw out the power brick not from your region on your import console, and just use an in-country power adapter.
- Randy & Brandon explain how not to fix a RROD…
- Sinicide IiI
- Brandon apologizes for butchering the name.
- When do you release the show?
- Wednesday night Australia / Wednesday morning US.
- Saucy Slingo: Tarragon makes a guest appearance in OXENFREE
- Griffey95: Comprehensive list of demo games with achievements?
- Tron Runner
- Kung Fu Panda: Legend of the Legendary Legends
- Dead or Alive 5
- Killer Instinct
- Make a ZedtoZed list?
- Montana97: Do I need to eject external HDD before disconnecting them?
- Unknown if you pull it while in use. Maybe turn off the console before you remove. Editor’s note: generally it’s probably fine to pull it whenever, but you may cause some hiccups if it’s saving a game at the time. Note that game saves are always stored on the internal drive and the cloud though.
- GRAW (Drink!) Questions
- Facial: Favorite game in the GRAW series? Excited for Wild lands?
- Brandon has never played a GRAW game
- Randy has only played the original GRAW (No substitutes)
- Jury is still out for Wild lands, but skeptical.
- Don’t give a company money in advance for 2 years in the future. Finance 101.
- xXxB1G311xXx: That guy?
- Please stop mentioning GRAW? (Drink)… Doubtful.
- GRAW has uneven Gamerscore (So you have to do the leaderboard to be even)
- Salsbar: How can I get the leaderboard achievements to even up my gamerscore?
- Anno Mundi: Would you recommend I try for the leaderboard achievements at this point? How much did it cost you for the gold subs?
- Randy says “No”. Cost of 8 accounts with Gold. So apx $80 a month.
- jjaldana: The leaderboard achievements takes about 6 months of playing all day everyday. This account for 8 hours of sleep days.
- YODA12320: Yes what other than graw do you talk about..
- Listen to past Podcast episodes. ;-)
- IXI B1G3L1 IXI: Since GRAW is rated T for Teen, when does your mom say you will be allowed to play games that are rated M?
- Randy’s mom will allow him to play rated M games if he chooses, since he is such a big boy.
- People are still pulling a Fream! (Marknocturnal, Damien, WebChimp UK: did it in Roblox and Project Spark)
3:50:51 - News
3:59:03 - Game Delays and Backwards Compatibility
4:00:50 - Zombie News
4:02:52 - Outro
Glossary of Xbox Gamerscore and achievement jargon and terms: http://zedtozed.com/xbox-gamerscore-and-achievement-glossary
