PolyCast Episode 255: "That Much More Enticing"

Possibility and potential. The two-hundred-and-fifty-fifth episode of PolyCast, "That Much More Enticing", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, Stephanie "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with returning guest co-host Ernie "DarkestOnion". It carries a runtime of 59m59s.

The summary of topics is as follows:

- 02m15s | News
Anticipation and trepidation collide awash much speculation following the official announcement that Civilization VI is in development and is but months away from release; the extended coverage addresses Wonders, Diplomacy (10m13s), Research (18m27s), Units (24m56s), Victory Conditions (33m25s), Multiplayer (34m16s), Screenshot Analysis (38m21s) and Price Points (46m56s).

- Intro/Outro | Miscellaneous
Scary, shiny and a moratorium for reality.

PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production recording live every other Saturday throughout the year, in an ongoing effort to give the Civilization community an interactive voice; sibling show ModCast focuses on Civ modding, TurnCast on Civ multiplay.

Let me clarify the Steam pricing thing.

I live in Belarus (Eastern Europe). Most of the games on Steam cost us 50% of what they cost in USA. You can add to this usual sales, so when it's -33% sale for you we still pay half of the -33% price. For example, I can buy Civ5 for 15 USD right now without any sale while it costs 30 for people in USA. Civilization 6 will cost me 30 USD.

However there's a catch: you usually can't gift it to any user outside of your region. Depending on publisher you can get further limitations. For example, many games come only in localised version, so I'm forced to play Russian version instead of English. Many games I don't see in Steam at all and if I go by direct link it lies to me that the game does not exist. The scariest thing happens with games like Skyrim: if you move outside of your region and try to launch the game you just can't, you have to buy local version. So this price range is a normal thing and it seems to me Firaxis/2K are not nearly as bad about it and some other developers and publishers.

And in case you're envious for our low prices: average income in Belarus is 500 USD per month.

Certainly for whatever price we're talking for anything -- games or otherwise -- putting it into context gives us a better understanding of what it means to consumers practically speaking. As such your note with respect to average wordly regional incomes is acknowledged, Ilitarist (though I'd prefer considering a median given the size of the data set we're talking about here). Region blocking for gifting is also noteworthy, but as you note it's not applied absolutely or even necessarily consistently.

As was noted on the show, the ability to purchase the game outside of Steam while still being able to attach it to a Steam account is what keeps 'buyer beware' at the forefront of consideration.

Hope you enjoyed the listen.

great show...
I found it interesting that you never brought up the appearance of what we have seen so far. The forums are full of opinions on that subject!

slo

slo said:

great show...

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Thanks.

I found it interesting that you never brought up the appearance of what we have seen so far. The forums are full of opinions on that subject!

Click to expand...

Are you referring to the art style or..? A passing reference was made to said style in the blooper reel.