Slashdot Mirror

I'm big fan of the franchise, especially RTCW (Return to Castle Wolfenstein) and the most recent title was beautiful, just a cool story. They made a great bizarro world where the Nazi's won, I liked the attention to detail Machine Games put into the title. There were some well done spoofs of 60s era songs (polygon has a little on it)

I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger... Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent... Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.

Maybe she's right. Because the above quote came from a mass shooting. You'd have a point that this was a wacky thing to say if the data didn't support her thesis. Which, sadly, it does. The language school shooters use when making angry as fuck disaffected manifestos is always the same spew of pseudo macho toxic masculine shit. Never mind Anders Brevik and Marc Lepine, either.

It's not like she has experience with this or anything.

That's kind of the big legal question. I remember that Nintendo went after a bunch of "watch me play" people on YouTube. The music in the background is often owned by a third party and licensed for use in the game. And I know that Youtube often takes down videos (video games and others) based on copyrighted songs being in the background.

Let's put it this way: When a game doesn't suck publishers generally don't embargo reviews until 12 hours after release...

Even games that end up releasing in pretty dubious shape often manage to score fairly positive pre-launch press through some combination of assurances that 'those little issues won't be in the final version, just see the promise!' and the degree to which the reviewer depends on the goodwill of the publisher for future access, so if reviewers aren't allowed to talk about it even after it is on the shelves, you might want to run away. Maybe pick it up for $20 a year from now, if they actually do fix it.

I also think it's notable that polygon was the only major game site that did not receive a prelease copy of fc4 to review. They were the ones who wrote a harsh editorial criticizing Ubi's embargo policies. I don't know how to spell retaliation, but fortunately my phone has autocorrect.

I also think it's notable that polygon was the only major game site that did not receive a prelease copy of fc4 to review. They were the ones who wrote a harsh editorial criticizing Ubi's embargo policies. I don't know how to spell retaliation, but fortunately my phone has autocorrect.

That's why I don't get why people are flipping out about these particular "attacks".

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Because they've already damaged gaming. Recently a studio announced a game where the objective was to take on the police and go on as long a shooting rampage as possible. "So what?" you should be asking. "That sounds like Grand Theft Auto." Well, yes, it does.

But this time, the leftists attacked the game and the developers and managed to get Epic to pull the license to use the Unreal engine. That's why people are fighting back - because if they don't, leftist censorship will win.

I was curious about what happened, so I looked it up and all I found was this story where Epic requested their trademark not be used to endorse the game; the game still uses their code.

So here I am, an indie-turned-professional game developer, who has not really followed along with the controversy. I don't read much game-related journalism, and my games aren't quite big enough to get media attention themselves.

In short, I'm not familiar with the controversy, and I don't have a whole lot of stake in it. Nor do I have a whole lot of time to devote to it. So how should I judge it?

I guess I could take a Slashdot user's word, especially if the user was voted +5. That's something.

On the other hand, I could trust the Extra Credits. As a game developer myself, I can tell that they do their research on game-development-related topics, so I would assume they'd do their research on Internet movements as well.

I could trust the CEO I work for, who has done a statistical analysis demonstrating that women in the game industry get harassed (at least slightly) more than men.

Or how about Newsweek? Gamergate only claims that gaming journalism is corrupt, right? Other journalists should be fine, right?

Or I could go to Wikipedia. After all, Wikipedia attempts to cite its sources and provide a neutral point of view. Wikipedia doesn't take a stance on what the movement is "really" about, nor does it state whether there is or isn't any corruption. But it does state that certain allegations against Nathan Grayson that are false. You do agree that Nathan Grayson is not guilty of everything he's been accused of, right? Because otherwise, I'll be forced to conclude that you're simply denying the facts of the situation.

Are you really going to tell me that, even though I haven't found a single reliable source agreeing with you, I should ignore them and take your word for it? Are you going to tell me that even Wikipedia is in on the conspiracy?

The city of Alamogordo: http://www.alamogordonews.com/... The person who dumped the cartridges in the first place: http://www.kboi2.com/news/loca... http://www.polygon.com/2014/5/... One of the archeologists on site running the dig: http://www.dailydot.com/geek/e... And the forthcoming documentary itself (which a rough cut was shown at Comicon, and Classic Gaming Expo), first presents that "mass burial of ET" myth and then deoncstructs it to show what was actually buried there.

You are deliberately misrepresenting the article.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/...

"Gamer" is in quotes because she's not talking about "people who play games" but adolescent boys or emotionally stunted man-children that have typically been the prime target audience for video games since marketers in the early 1990s arbitrarily decided video games were "for boys." The "gamers" she is referring to are the same people who shout racist and misogynistic garbage over voice chat on Xbox Live, and are the very reason many Slashdot posters either only play single player games or disable voice chat the second they enter an online game. This is pretty clearly spelled out in her article, and is obvious to anyone with half a brain.

Her article is about how gaming has finally grown and evolved to the point where the audience is large enough and diverse enough that game companies no longer have to make games specifically designed to appeal to this small niche group of men physically or mentally aged between 10 and 18. Games no longer have to be about the adolescent male fantasy of murdering all of their foes and rescuing the large breasted, scantily clad woman. We can still have those games, just like we still have those books, those comics, those movies, etc. But those experiences no longer have to be the primary focus of the industry. There are other gamers aching to be catered to that don't fit into that classical "gamer" demographic box the marketers constructed 20 years ago.

I'm not going to start because Sony stupidly made patches mandatory, even if I just want to play a single player game.

Turn off it's internet connection, then it won't even check and you won't have to worry about updates at all.

And PS+ costs money that I should not have to waste to have something as rudimentary as auto-patching.

Yes, they shouldn't have kept that PS+ only for so long. You get some automatic updates if you're not PS+....now. But you have have it turned on, and many people...especially if they don't keep up with PS3 news, don't know it's available.

http://manuals.playstation.net...

http://www.polygon.com/2013/10...

If you have PS+ it keeps track of your disc based gameplay and automatically gets the updates for those most recently played games for those too.

They belong on personal blogs, or on Twitter or Tumblr or Reddit, where individuals build a full, searchable body of work and can be judged accordingly

This bit right here tells me the author doesn't know much about Twitter. Twitter has an almost identical problem. One person I follow (who happens to at least front as an African-American female), has a dedicated Twitter stalker who makes new accounts every day just so he can make sure she gets to greet each new day with a tweet calling her the N-word. Rape threats are endemic there for identified females too. A "searchable body of work" is only a concern for those of us who care about our reputation. Trolls don't care in the slightest.

The only even partial cure I know of for crap like this is reputation-based user moderation, like you find in sites like Slashdot or Stackexchange. This at least allows the manifold eyes of your readers to do some of their own policing, and provides for much more prompt cleanup. A dedicated troll can create a hopeless amount of soul-killing destruction for one or two poor beleaguered individuals. But against a community of hundreds (or more) moderators, the amortized work is manageable. More importantly, the troll isn't going to get much satisfaction, as almost nobody sees their handiwork before someone mods it away.

If you have an online commenting system, you really need a user moderation system to back it up. I'd suggest Discourse, but there are probably other drop-in solutions available.

This has already been changed: http://www.polygon.com/2014/7/...

There was a huge backlash on social media, which drew Blizzard's attention. Blizzard kindly made it clear that they didn't want their game being used in a male-only tournament, and the problem was fixed.

Slashdot is pretty far behind on this one.

Not even a single person that mentioned it will support Linux?
This fall on Linux, Mac and Windows PC for $49.99, Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth will [...]"
This is incredible news.

Indeed.

As a whole, mobile game players don't actually buy anything. It's the tiny, tiny percentage of whales that brings in much of the revenue (and ads fill in much of the rest).

0.22 percent of players account for 46 percent of mobile app revenue

Given this, it's no surprise that mobile game development is so damn broken. It's impossible to have a healthy development environment if most players aren't actually willing to pay for the game.

Wow. John Carmack quit his job at iD (Zenimax) to be the CTO at Occulus Rift and then in less than six months is probably getting a few dozen millions of dollars.

Talk about knowing where to be at the right time....

Same with Marc Andreesen and his VC cash infusion of $75 million just a few months ago. Those guys are going to turn that $75 mill into a bunch more through this turn and burn deal. Not so much a 'burn,' but it is a very quick harvesting on their investment.

I can't wait!!! They sound soooo much fun!!!!

You should try Desert Bus.
http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Where does this bullshit number keep coming from? They're possibly approaching 2 million SALES, which is not the same thing as SUBSCRIBERS, which is certainly not the same thing as ACTIVE PLAYERS.

1.8 million players, 6.7 million characters. According to this polygon article, which is according to Square Enix

The people behind the Kickstarter seem to be defaulting on agreements to pay royalties to the developers of the games they're bundling, and not really responding well to questions asking them why, which isn't a great start.

...and yet, it could have been a nerd story, if only they'd have given up a bit of bias. I don't eat from the super bowl, but I'm lead to believe that Goldieblox advertised on it: http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/...

The amusing thing is that I found the ad, and the product, to be a bit sexist itself, even while it aims for more gender equality. Part of a big problem is the notion that many boys and girls toys need to be different in the first place, and that you have to color a "boy's toy" pink before it becomes a "girl's toy." It didn't used to be that way, it's only in the last few decades that toy stores have been segregating the genders. I heartily recommonend this article, and while I don't agree with everything, it makes some good points.

Wake me when the 4K Oculus Rift is available.

Ryse looks pretty good.

Unfortunately, that's exactly all there seems to be to it.

Gamespot: 4 / 10
http://www.gamespot.com/ryse-son-of-rome/
"You are not entertained. Ryse is all sizzle and no steak, a stunning visage paired with a vapid personality."

EuroGamer: 5 / 10
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-21-ryse-son-of-rome-review
"There's no brains, no muscle, no fibre beneath Ryse's extravagantly engineered good looks - this game rings loud but hollow."

Polygon: 6 / 10
http://www.polygon.com/2013/11/21/5128888/ryse-son-of-rome-xbox-one-review
"Ryse has all the guts of next-gen — often quite literally — but none of the glory."

Destructoid: 5 / 10
http://www.destructoid.com/review-ryse-son-of-rome-265770.phtml
"An exercise in apathy, neither Solid nor Liquid. Not exactly bad, but not very good either. Just a bit 'meh,' really."

*Looks at Pokemon X/Y sales and 3DS/2DS sales*

All signs point to yes. Dying companies don't sell 4 million games in 2 days and millions of consoles in a year.

A very good video showing movement mapped to real gameplay.

The obvious: It's not QUITE as 1-1 as a mouse with 4 inches of control surface.

But I'd still rate it a bit higher than a trackball, which is high praise from me, since I really enjoy using trackball inputs when a mouse isn't convenient.

This is a real accomplishment in input innovation - even without considering the dynamic haptic feedback portion of the design.

I'd be amazed, if this works as advertised, if Sony and Microsoft don't push for a copycat controller very rapidly - especially given the PC-like nature of their new consoles.

The remaining challenge: How would it fare against a 360/Dualshock controller in specialized console games. From what I've heard from developers so far:

Super Meat Boy dev trys out the Steam controller

It sounds like it's a good compromise overall - but it's still got some hurdles to clear to being "the best" - but man, it sounds promising so far!

Ryan Fenton

Oh boy, this again. It's totally okay to be sexist and racist as long as it's self-aware. Excluding the fact that this wasn't actually self-aware. It was a joke specifically designed to reinforce the idea that it's okay to stare at women in public because all they are is statues to be gawked at. In the technology sector women face huge amounts of actual sexism, all the time, which I sort of assumed everyone was aware of. They are mocked and belittled, denied jobs, connections, promotions, because they lack credibility as tech experts, because they have boobs. Women in tech get reminded EVERY DAY that women don't understand computers (ha ha!) that women should stay in the kitchen (ha ha!) that ugly women are worthless as human beings (ha ha!), that women should be fine with being harassed by their male coworkers and women who aren't are all frigid bitches (ha ha!) and so much more. Don't you think this has an effect? That it keeps women out of tech? If your "joke" is designed to put down women and make them uncomfortable, it's not really a joke anymore, is it? It's harassment. If your ironic sexism is actually hurtful and upsetting, it's not ironic anymore, is it? It's just sexism. Why do you think nobody feels comfortable telling "ironic" racist jokes in mixed-race crowds? Because deep down, people know it's still kind of racist. A black person who hears a joke like that will be made uncomfortable and hurt. That's not funny. It's not lighthearted. It keeps people down, like it's designed to do.

Every joke has a target and a message. If the target were sexism, that would be fine. But it's not. The message is, "haha women are basically just for sex, so it's totally natural for men to make them uncomfortable all the time because if they didn't want that kind of treatment, why would they wear makeup, right?" And you expect women to laugh at that? You expect ANYONE to be okay with that?

for more articles that explain this better than I can, please see:
Kotaku article on nerd sexism: http://kotaku.com/5868595/nerds-and-male-privilege
Blog post on why women are unhappy in the geek community: http://sakurasaurus.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/the-girl-geek-community-is-hidden-ever-wondered-why/
Why women don't just "lighten up": http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/
Women nerds speak out against systemic sexism in the industry:http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/28/4155650/women-in-the-gaming-industry-share-their-number-one-reason-to-be-in

tl;dr The huge, painful, actual problem of sexism >>>>>>>> your desire to not have to be "PC". Deal with it!

~cue the jokes about how I'm PMSing

Something I see often about developers and most developers know for themselves.

The first 30% to 60% of a project - especially if you are not simply tying frameworks together but creating most things from scratch - are fun. People work overtime without even knowing it. As soon as the tiresome stuff starts, and the mostly painfull/dull last 5% to 10%, motivation drops.

Well, as someone who develops games, it's actually 9001% creating experimental things and prototyping new ideas. Coming up with the core mechanic(s), and proofing the in-game player interface, etc. That's the hard part. I'd say less than one out of ten ideas plan out. Coming up with tangential mechanics and adding a bit of depth that works is the first 30% to 60% of the actual project, and putting the polish on something and seeing through is the rest, but there was a ton of effort you never even see, possibly even entire games that never see the light of day. Even if you do make public the "in-progress" game/ideas most of the them won't be known to the general public leading up to a successful project.

So, what if someone came along and does most of the experimenting and prototyping and comes up with something playable and fun. What if instead of coming up with your own ideas you just take that? What if you add a bit of the tangential stuff to someone else's proven core mechanics and gameplay platform. If you do that you can avoid all that pre-production work. That's what Notch Did.

So, if you got rich by co-opting someone else's ideas wholesale, and your own new ideas are bland and self admittedly devoid of fun... What would you do? Would you decide to go back to making procedural rip-offs of mario? Maybe hang out with some indie gamedevs since that's where you got your best idea from in the first place? Isn't that what Notch would do if he needed new ideas to execute before lesser funded folks could?

Oh, maybe not. Maybe Notch just needs less pressure, yeah, that's it... Let's ignore the whole "Creative Block" story that came out months ago: "It's just some kind of weird creative block that's been going on for too long and [0x10c] is going to be put on ice until we can fix that."

Huh, a weird creative block, that's actually very odd. Odder still that this cancellation is news... You know, most game devs, especially indies, suffer from having so many damn ideas they have no time to try them all out. A common problem is having TOO MANY projects going on at once, and these are just a few folks with zero dollars... The games you get could have been 50 times better in most indie devs' minds, they just had to stop adding stuff at some point -- Or strip stuff out to streamline gameplay. How Strange.

FYI: If you hang out with Notch, keep your ideas to yourself, especially if it's kind of fun. Don't get Zynga'd. Don't be Notch's next Infiniminer.

Then it's a question of wether it's a private or semi-private project or something that HAS to be finished. Sadly, many (unexperienced) developers tend to give their timeframe projections during those first "proof-of-concept" days or weeks, and then become even more frustrated when they realize they can't hold the deadline and everything becomes even more painful. I think most of us have been there. And since 0x10c was a very "special" idea from the beginning, I am not as surprised as I though I would have been that the project is shelved. At least he admits that it simply wasn't fun...not an easy thing to do when you speak about your own pet-project.

It's coming.

Wow, I thought the negatives for Xbox One couldn't be any more before it got launched. Did Sony get a leak of Microsoft's plans and then decide to do the opposite? 1) Make PS4 cheaper, 2) Not require constant internet connection, 3) Allow used games, 4) Push for indie games.

where did you hear that the camera and mic can't be disabled at all? MS hasn't said, yet. all i've seen is people misreading what is stated

Camera, no. I haven't heard specifically. However, as to the mic: "The new Kinect is listening for a specific cue, like 'Xbox on.'". When it's "off", it's still listening. Combined with their camera-counting-people DRM patent and the fact that - as far as I know - you can't run the XBox One without the Kinect, I'm not eager to take the gamble.

Yes, "Here's a gaming console with a camera and mic you can't unplug that's listening when it's off." is not the same statement as "Here's a gaming console with a camera that's always on." But it's not any better.

I haven't found any source that has MS saying specifically that the Kinect has to be plugged in. There is a lot of misreading that says it. Here's a sample:

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4352732/xbox-one-requires-kinect

The headline from Polygon.com is "Xbox One requires plugged-in Kinect to function." However, if you go to the Xbox.com FAQ page the question is "Why require Kinect with every Xbox One?" The question seems to be regarding making people buy a peripheral they may not want. With the 360 you don't have to have it. Neither the question nor the answer says anywhere that Kinect is required to be plugged in only that the system comes with it and there will not be an option to buy one without.

This doesn't say that the Xbox One won't require it to be plugged in, but the headline does not accurately reflect what's in the FAQ.

Here is IGN with something closer to the always plugged in statement:

http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/21/xbox-one-will-not-function-without-kinect-attached

The quote is "Kinect does require to be connected to Xbox One in all cases, yes." The IGN statement is then "Xbox One will not function without Kinect attached." However, again, we see an error in logic. Breaking down the statement we have X is required to be attached to Y to function. It is a logical fallacy called "affirming the consequent." That is, IGN is saying that the Kinect needs to be connected to the Xbox One to function therefore the Xbox One must be connected to the Kinect for it to function. It is not necessarily true that if X requires Y to function that Y requires X to function. IGN's headline reads the quote in reverse which may or may not be true.

The IGN headline is the one you see most. Anytime you see "Harvey Eagle says Kinect is required" or something like that they are referring to this. Eagle has never said that the Xbox One requires the Kinect only that the Kinect requires the Xbox One. That does not mean Y won't require X, only that that statement has not yet been made.

Actually, when owners of Xbox 360s with Kinects were watching the live stream of the announcement, the presenters' commands on stage were controlling the viewers' Xboxes.

http://www.polygon.com/2013/5/21/4353010/kinect-trouble-xbox-one-reveal

in effect, the ps4 memory is even more integrated.. see: here and here

http://www.polygon.com/2013/1/7/3848380/hawken-project-shield-exclusive-tegra-4

Mind you, the above link is for Hawken on a Tegra 4, which this isn't using, but the point is that developers are working on bringing console-level titles to phones.

Right, they should learn from the company that went into bankruptcy. If you look at the history of EA's stock prices, they took a nose dive along with everyone else back in 2009. If the stock price was the reason then they would have dismissed him back in '09, not five years later.

However, I will agree this may not be over SimCity at all, the press release that /. links to doesn't name any specifics, though another poster linked to his letter of resignation stating that they weren't going to make their mark this quarter. While SimCity might get reported for this quarter, I doubt the fall out of the bad launch has yet hit their books. That "free" game offer they're giving might hurt them a bit, but given the timing I wouldn't be surprised they can make that run on next quarter's reporting, thereby possibly giving them a chance to soften the blow on their earnings report.

He'll somehow have to scrape by on 24 months of full pay (and stock vesting):

http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4120344/ea-ceo-john-riccitiello-quits

As part of Riccitiello's separation agreement, he'll receive 24 months of salary continuation and continued vesting of unvested stock options until Nov. 30, 2013, with those options exercisable until Feb. 28, 2014.

The guy tendered resignation. The letter he wrote is in that link there. Besides of that EA has been all over the place in terms of performance for awhile. I picked up a few hundred shares at $12 ~6mo ago and sold them at $18.50, which while not a spectacular turn around was decent enough.

I'm a game developer who happens to work in Poland and I track CD Projekt (GOG parent) stock close enough. GOG did bring them profit (a bit less than 1 mln USD for 1H2012), Wiedzmin (Witcher) for 360 got them even more (about 5 mln USD) but they are losing money on traditional retail market, their primary source of income up to now (source in Polish). Also, compare those numbers, which may be good for Poland, to 40 mln USD needed to create a modern AAA game.

Also, DRM is essential to delay piracy for the first month of game release. Games only really sell in the first few weeks after launch, if you didn't know - after that, people move on to something else and the "long tail" of sales begins (see just about any game's charts: [1], [2], [3]). So the games need to make up for that large upfront investment in first 4 to 6 weeks, if they don't break even, they are dead. Alan Wake, L.A. Noire, Max Payne 3 - all those arguably known and high profile titles are commercial failures. Most current triple A games flop or barely make even, but unless explicitly asked, publishers rarely admit it. However, if you work in gamedev you probably saw the closures of Grin, Pandemic, 38 Studios, and in general, it starts to happen too frequently.

So no, it's not just about "having control". There would be no need in control if existing model provided a sustainable way to earn money. Truth is, nowadays interactive entertainment market is a gamble.