While adventuring to PAX 2008, the team at Big Download recorded three special edition episodes. While the audio quality in the first was laughably bad, the episode is a hilarious look into the minds of tired Warhammer Online developers, Paul Barnett, Jeff Hickman and Josh Drescher. Give it a listen, if you can! In the second special edition, GameDaily's Robin Yang joined the team to discuss everyone's favorite titles at the show. In the final installment of the special series, former 1UP editorial director and co-founder of WhatTheyPlay.com, John Davison, went into some detail on the sex and violence in games debate. Check out the episodes if you get a chance -- we assure you the first audio hiccup was corrected in episodes two and three.

In the world of professional game blogging, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: the bloggers who investigate the stories and readers who make silly comments. These are the first group's stories.

• Name: Ludwig Kietzmann
  
• Job Position: Senior Contributing Editor, podcast host and typo killer.
  
• Past Experience/Education: I have a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, with majors in Computer Science, Mathematical Techniques and Organizational Psychology. Fat lot of good that did me. Before joining Joystiq, I awarded games 3 out of 10 at some more obscure review sites.
  
• Life Outside of the 'Stiq: If, hypothetically, I ever left my laptop, it would be to watch a movie, get lost in a good book or wrestle down marauding lions.
  
• Why I'm Blogging: Though the ability to mash words together in order to form coherent sentences has brought me nothing but trouble, I rather enjoy it. Blogging is a great outlet for creative writing, opinion and unrelenting use of puns.
  
• First game experience: Destroying invaders (from space!) on a hand-me-down piece of hardware attached to a yellowed, CGA monitor. How many aliens have died by my hand since then?
  
• Favorite games: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge, Grim Fandango, No One Lives Forever, Half-Life 2, Jet Set Radio, Metal Gear Solid 3, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Beyond Good & Evil and ... Rayman 2.
  
• Can love bloom on the battlefield? I need scissors! 61!

There's more to come every Tuesday and Thursday.

In the world of professional game blogging, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: the bloggers who investigate the stories and readers who make silly comments. These are the first group's stories.

• Name: Justin McElroy
• Job Position: Blogger and host/producer of the Joystiq Podcast
• Past Experience/Education: I've been writing about video games since I started reviewing them for The Herald-Dispatch when I was 12 years old. Besides Joystiq my work has appeared in Computer Games Magazine, The Escapist, Gamezebo, Gamers With Jobs: Press Pass and GameDaily.
• Life outside of the 'Stiq: I also have a degree in theater that I occasionally utilize. And, as you can tell with a quick Google Image Search, I love exercising. But my favorite (usually) non-gaming activity is hanging out with my wife Sydnee.
• Why I'm blogging: It's not very hard.
• First game experience: My earliest gaming memory is playing H.E.R.O. on the Atari 2600 at my friend Eric Near's house.
• Favorite games: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Seaman, Spider-Man 2, Quest for Glory series, BioShock, Phoenix Wright series, Fugitive Hunter, Portal.

More to come every Tuesday and Thursday.

Playstation Nation is one of the most popular and widely listened-to Playstation podcasts on the internet, and we're pleased to bring news that PS Nation is joining up with Joystiq satellite sites PS3 Fanboy and PSP Fanboy to become the official PS Fanboy podcast.

New episodes of the podcast will premiere in April, and be released every Friday on both PSP Fanboy and PS3 Fanboy, as well as vgevo.com. Format-wise, PS Nation won't change much, but will benefit from the collaboration of the PS Fanboy team, with more exclusive interviews, previews and reviews. We'd like to say congrats to all those involved. We're looking forward to tuning in.

EGM's Shane Bettenhausen has caused quite a ruckus as of late by suggesting in the latest 1UP Yours podcast that a high-profile first-party Microsoft game has been canceled. The first game confirmed to be alive was Banjo-Kazooie 3. Now, the developers of Fable 2 and Alan Wake have both chimed in to say their games are also still breathing. We wonder if all Microsoft developers wouldn't benefit from a role call meeting, where attendees are told to simply raise their hands if their project was canned.

Of course, that's assuming any project was canceled at all. Bettenhausen originally said, "a big Microsoft first-party title that has been in the works for a very long time, that people are very excited for, sounds like it's being canceled." That's far from a confirmation, although there may be some merit to a project being in trouble. Bettenhausen responded to the proliferation of his statement in the comments to one of his blog posts (search for "egmshane"), but only to confirm the game in question was neither Alan Wake nor Banjo-Kazooie.

IGN's Matt Casamassina silenced (most) of his critics by providing video footage to prove he did, in fact, play a DS version of Halo. C'mon Bettenhausen, at least give us a riddle or some enigmatic limerick to analyze.

Update: As noted by GameSpot, the developers of Too Human and Halo Wars have also chimed in to say, "It's not our game!"

Read - Is Alan Wake canceled?
Read - Is Fable 2 canceled?

The world's greatest indie gaming podcast, The Arsecast, has gone through a metamorphosis. Instead of 30 minute episodes released every month (or, uh, 6-8 weeks), the new format treats us to shorter, more digestible blog-style bits at a comparatively rapid pace. This allows the 'cast to cover breaking indie news with the usual dose of arseness we love so much.

You can grab the final old-format episode from The Arsecast website. Mini-arsecasts have already been released and will devour no more than a few minutes each.

Hey, it's time for the Podcast Rodeo once more. This is the very special episode where we learn a little something about ourselves. Hopefully, you'll come with us on this very emotional journey.

1UP Show: The show returns for the summer with a hot new theme song, Odin Sphere video, a preview of Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings and tons of stuff on Team Fortress 2, which still looks incredible.

Gamers With Jobs Conference Call: The old, old men of GWJ celebrate their 30th episode with special guest star Big Huge Games' Brian Reynolds talking about the making of Catan. Also, there's some interesting discussion of the debacle, if you've not yet grown tired of the topic.

In this, the premiere edition of the Podcast Rodeo, we save you time by trolling the podcast ocean, bringing the freshest catches to your table and then running a knife across the length of their bellies, spilling their guts for your pleasure. Enjoy.

GFW Radio: Just listen to the first two minutes. You can thank us later.

1UP Yours: This week on 1UP Yours, Luke Smith records his last episode of the show before he stuffs his objectivity into a man cannon, shoots it into the sun and spins madly as dollar bills with Master Chief's face on them fall in a shower from the sky. Farewell, Luke!

Chatterbox: Fresh from a triumphant visit to the Joystiq Podcast, Chatterbox wins the official "You're Late to the Party" award by complaining about King Kong: The Movie: The Game for the 360. Playing the game was apparently just an act of desperation in pursuit of that accursed Old Spice Gamer Picture, which holds within it not only a fresh scent, but the power to drive men mad.

Insomniac Games (Resistance: Fall of Man, Ratchet and Clank series) interviewed David Jaffe (God of War) for the second episode of their new podcast, The Full Moon Show. Of note is Jaffe's explanation for the delay of his upcoming PlayStation Network title, Calling All Cars.

Jaffe said that during playtests people were enjoying themselves more when the scores were close, rather than when the scoring gap was wide. He talked to some industry vets who had worked on a few Midway titles to see if they had any code that could be used to narrow that scoring gap, and sure enough they had some code.

"We certainly don't want to go into and put in tons of that, but we've gone in and added just a little bit," he said. He continued to say that his hope is folks who are within 20% of each other's skill levels to have very competitive matches. Jaffe also explained that this was the reason for another playtest, and if the code's effects are noticeable then they will take it out.

Jaffe noted that they are still planning for a release during the month of April.

The interview starts 21 minutes into the 2-hour podcast. Jaffe also talked about his frankness in discussion, his love of playtests (the fifth one is coming up) and his ambitious, now on permanent hiatus, PSP tearjerker Heartland. The podcast also includes updates on Resistance: Fall of Man and the upcoming Ratchet and Clank Future.

[Via Aeropause]

Arsecast, the most aptly-named retro and indie podcast ever, has just released its February episode. Yes, we're aware it's late March, but what do calendars know, anyway? Featured this month is the usual dose of indie news from around the web plus reviews of La Mulana, Clean Asia, and several other shooters, all of which receive a cutting dose of honest opinions with a few dirty words thrown in for good measure.

No podcast has ever been created that's more arse-like than Arsecast. The fact that it's the most entertaining and informative indie gaming podcast around is just a nice bonus.

With Insomniac Games launching its podcast today, It now seems like everybody has an online audio show. But the Insomniac approach intends to be different than most because gamers get to hear what goes on inside a developer; the twice-monthly show should could be a great marketing and community-building move.

Insomniac plans several regular segments, including interviews with members of its staff and even gaming personalities outside of the Resistance and Ratchet developer. The show will cover basics like gamers' mail and Insomniac product updates as, but we'll be regular listeners if it pulls off its fly-on-the-wall aspirations.

[Update 1: Insomniac let us know that it changed its mind and won't have a "/podcast.html" URL for the audio show. Instead, the main page will be updated when the podcast goes live in the next few hours.]

UK PSP owners may be surprised to find their handhelds' web browsers being automatically directed to Channel 4's 4Radio website when launching from one of The Cloud's 7,500 public wi-fi hotspots. Don't worry, it's all part of the plan.

According to Channel 4 Radio director Nathalie Schwarz, the deal with wi-fi provider The Cloud is part of an effort to "connect with a young, mobile audience," the lot who's hungry for "bold and mischievous radio programming," but doesn't want to turn on the radio. If you find Celebrity Big Brother podcasts being aggressively pushed onto your PSP completely invasive, you're not alone. This is one PSP novelty we hope is never adopted again.

Xbox Live's Major Nelson discussed in his latest podcast that he has been playing around with the upcoming Xbox 360 Wireless Communicator on his development kit, which of course has "excellent" sound quality. Be sure and listen to the entire podcast. Near the end "e" from Microsoft gets a jab in on the PS3 by way of an article he read here on Joystiq.

However, Major Nelson goes on to say that "even if you went to the store today and bought it, you couldn't use it until you have the fall upgrade to the dashboard." This is an extremely interesting little tidbit, because every online retail site that lists this for sale has a release date of October 31st -- which is also a Tuesday, the day new retail items are typically released.

So, does this mean that the dashboard update is less than a week away? It is entirely possible that Microsoft could change the release date for the communicator to whenever they wish, but with two major consoles launching less than three weeks after the 31st it seems doubtful that they'd want to do that. What's more likely is that the fall dashboard update will probably appear sometime before the 31st, or possibly even that day. Microsoft is going to want to have every oar in the water pulling for the finish line through the rest of the year, and not dropping updates after the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii launches.

Our prediction is -- drumroll please -- big dashboard update early next week. Mark your calendars ... in pencil.

[Thanks, Josh and Thomas]

Listen -- Major Nelson's "Show #199: The one about Gears and the maintenance" (around 1:16:30 in)

Last night I was invited by CheapyD, founder and Cheap Executive Officer of Cheap Ass Gamer, to join him and co-host Wombat on "a very special" episode of the site's podcast. No, we didn't talk about teen pregnancy and drug abuse; we talked about boobs in video games, the demise of E3, why epobirs can't get any more stars, and the apparently inscrutable Dead Rising save system. What made the show so special? It was the 40th episode and one year anniversary of the CAGcast. Congrats guys!

Listen - CAGcast #40: Happy CAGiversary!

National Public Radio in the U.S. has started a fortnightly podcast on the topic of video game culture called Press Start. Kyle Orland, the guy that runs VGMWatch, is one of the hosts of the show along with Ralph Cooper, an ex-NPR staffer and current stand-up comedian, and Robert Holt, NPR's server guy who also reviews games for All Things Considered. Their first show, which runs for a short but sweet 15 minutes, covers that time old topic "video games as art". Some choice quotes:

Kyle - "You really need to know what art is before you can determine whether video games are art".

Ralph - "I feel like a lot of video games, at least right now, they're not really trying to make statements".

Rob - "When I was in Grand Theft Auto... I was driving through the city and listening to the radio and I drove over a hill and I saw... this huge moon rise over the horizon, I was just in it at that point. I just knew that this was not your normal game. Of course, I could have just been beating up hookers..."

If you're up for some interesting and to-the-point video game culture commentary but want to skip on the usual "I like to hear the sound of my own voice" crap from the host(s), then make sure to add Press Start to your player of choice (iTunes link, My Yahoo! link, generic podcast RSS feed).