All these years of podcasting have really honed your skill of speaking freely. Loving these. Keep them coming. Greetings from Germany

Super positive. Right on.

I'm puzzled that anyone could be upset about Aristeia "borrowing" from overwatch, since OW is basically a reskin/tune-up of another extremely popular video game. I don't mind ideas being replicated and expanded upon, but the developer needs to bring something new and innovative to the table, and give their game a real sense of identity that stands on its own. Instead of a loving tribute, many of these "inspired" games just come across as lazy cash-ins.

Hey Jamie. I agree for the for the most part that art style and character clones don't necessarily have to be unique to be enjoyable. There are only so many archetypes for a Hero that can be seen as fun. That said, I recall early on I don't remember where I read or saw this, but that artistic anime styling of OverWatch was inspired by a Miniatures game called Infinity. I find it kind of ironic once I dug a bit deeper, that Infinity's creators are Corvus Belli and are the same makers of the game you reviewed on the last podcast.

Hey Jamie great discussion and I really liked the review on the podcast as well and not sure how much you know about Infinity but manyof the Aristeia characters are actual characters from the Infinity game and have been around the Infinity game for at least 2 editions. Also you were talking about more characters for the Aristeia game and CB announced an alternative skin for Maximus coming out this month as well as they are supposed to be doing expansion packs of 4 characters each quarter so by the end of the year there is supposed to be 24 characters to draft from some will be new characters some will be pulled in from the Infinity game. In the Infinity back story Aristeia is like what we would consider either football or soccer but in a galaxy spanning way.

I agree Jamie, I think it's stealing when (in game design) the creator gives no recognition to any prior mentions of a game mechanic or theme. Like with dominion, if someone crafted a game almost exactly like D and game Donald no credit what so ever but acted as if they just came up with it then that's a total shame and that person should be called out. However if they put in the rule book something like "instead by.....thanks to xxxx.....etc" then that can be a great tribute because it may lead others to check out the source material along with continued sales and future aspirations of others....I'm rambling but I think you get the point.

I think it's hard to make that style of game without having overlap with Overwatch or team fortress which you talk about also. They are defining games in the genre. If they were required to come up with totally new characters they would probably a) not be that good b) probably not be interesting. Blizzard doesn't own the concept of big guy in armor or femme fatale sniper. It's a trope. For mechanics i think there is a line where its clearly just a clone but if they try and do something neat with it then I'm fine with it

well blizzard had a contract to make a game for GW and GW renaged on it to protect their ip because they didnt trust blizzard, so blizzard took the things they had the rights to and the ideas and made starcraft.......

Who copied what from secret cabal podcast?