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Google Sets Its Sights On Gaming, Hires Noah Falstein As Chief Game Designer
MojoKid writes "Google has its hands in every other aspect of the tech industry, so why not gaming, too? It appears as though the company is eyeing a run at the gaming market by hiring Noah Falstein as its 'Chief Game Designer.' Falstein's LinkedIn profile has been updated to reflect his new title, which is the latest in a long career. He started out in 1980 and put in time at (the recently-defunct) Lucasfilm Games as well as 3DO and Dreamworks Interactive."
Perhaps you were looking for this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0274518/
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
The market that Google operates (Google Play Store) is primarily associated with devices that ship with a touch screen. Like a PC mouse, a touch screen is great for point-and-click games. But not all games are point-and-click. How, for example, would a platformer be played with the touch screen of an Android phone or tablet? Emulators aren't very satisfying on my Nexus 7 because a flat sheet of glass lacks any tactile feedback as to where the thumbs are relative to the on-screen buttons. How many people are willing to buy an OTG cable and connect a USB controller to an Android tablet?
3DO sucked balls and was over priced. Lucas, who knows what happened to that.
Is this dood really that awesome?
How much do you want to bet that when Apple collapses, all their engineers will go over to Google?
(Yes, I know that is the flamebait of the year, but Google does have a tendency to go for the big-name programmers).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Gaming used to be something much smaller that gamers could really take pride in being a part of. Just Nintendo and Sega for the most part and some highly dedicated hardcore gamers. Games were actually awesome back then, until the industry went on a slow, continuing decline once Sony came in and made it mainstream. As a Nintendo fan I had a couple extra generations of truly great gaming, but these days even they almost seem to be drying up overall. And now games are so big, they're becoming more and more like typical horror movies: cheap thrills, no substance, shitty games. Meanwhile, it seems that every fucking company in existence wants to cash in on the gaming industry's success by producing more of the same old garbage, eliminating *real* gaming hardware for multi-purpose multimedia products that don't do anything well.
I had such high hopes over the years. It's a shame everything took a turn for the worst. Well, at least Nintendo still seems to be closest to their original goal--but too bad they're starting to veer off course due to pressure from their kitchen-sink competitors and retarded demands from the masses.
In post God Russia, Googlers beg to be chosen by God for His temple.
Too many fucking 'social' requirements in games already. Go fuck yourself. I don't want to post my game scores on G+, no one else wants to fucking see them either. Nor do I want you to shove MORE ads down my throat. Its getting hard enough to avoid ad-laden games already, last thing I want in my games is for them to turn out as full of bloatware marketing crap as something like the Nexus series devices.
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Google has already been working on Ingress for awhile, tho it's still in closed beta.
I can't speak to the man's record, but the companies involved aren't exactly an A list? I'm confused.
That's not an ad hominem, that's a plain insult.
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Google has decided to abandon the gaming market!
It would be great if there were finally some really good games on tablets.
I mean, there are tons of games available for my wife's iPad or my Nexus 7, but I haven't seen any that were very exciting.
Have I missed the great Android or iOS games? The hardware seems ready, but the game designers seem like they have not been up to the task. And even if they get a halfway decent game, they spoil it with advertisements or micro-transactions. If a game were really good, I'd pay a price comparable to a AAA PC or console game.
You are welcome on my lawn.
note taken, not that I read what other sniling anonymous cowards reply with anyhow, I myself you ask? I cba to register only to have my post history stored forever.
the problem with AC is that it can be used as you described, they wouldn't dare do that in person, unless they fancied a trip to the hospital.
Thanks Mr Ballmer. Will you be squirting your W8 around here again today?
Well, that's fun that is. There are a few games that stand out but none that really hit the spot. I'd like to see more games that have quality and effort put into them or at least RPG's, perhaps even Pangya. Valkyrie Crusade is pretty fun but if you don't play F2P then it will cost you a looot of money to play and you get the same features, just earlier than what you would normally with F2P. Please give us more Japanese titles, they seem to get it right.
It was a POS.
It had half the MHz we developers were promised and it was missing the FPU as well.
Nobody loves you and you'll be alone forever.
the whole micro-transactions thing is really holding back android gaming.
Sounds fantastic to me. The world would be a much better place if people just fucked off and left me alone.
You're comparing 20 years of the best of gaming to 3 to 5 years of everything. Look back at not just the crap, but the mediocre. Take out the garbage from the last 5 years and you've got some amazing stuff. La-Mulana, Shogun Total War, Sonic Generations. And there's just no comparing old school racing games to modern stuff like Need for Speed and Burn out. I literally can't go back to playing 16 bit or even 32 bit racers Post Burnout 3.
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90% of what you just said could be applied to white trash. Good job moron!
Falstein hired again by a big company! I think in the past decade or so he only worked on smaller titles, like educational games, just like many of the designers that had their big moment in the late 80s to late 90s. It would be fanstastic if he got another shot at a "big" game. Probably not going to happen at Google, but one can dream.
For those who forgot why the guy is a genius: he made several good games, but his work on 'Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis', together with Hal Barwood, is a high point of video game story development and writing in my opinion. Companies like BioWare today that are known for designing "well written" games built on their work.
Too many fucking 'social' requirements in games already.
Social gaming has always been big...ever since you could play Doom across a network (although many would claim Arcades were more social and first), and just because you want to game in isolation, most don't. It was interesting to see how although Microsoft had failed in so many years with the Xbox...Live has been an incredible earner, it even helped breath new life into Microsoft shares.
touch screen platformer.. needs different control scheme than virtual buttons, like dragging.
Could you recommend a free or cheap Android game on Google Play that I could look to for best control practices in a touch screen platformer? I tried one of the Sonic games, but after I installed it on my Nexus 7 running Android 4.2.something, it crashed on run.
however, there's plenty of android devices with buttons.
I'm aware of Android devices from JXD that take design cues from other popular handhelds. But how many of these devices have Google Play?
Ahh, OK then. Enjoy your new PS4, I'm sure the Always online requirement will be enjoyable for you. For less than $100 ($99.99) you can enjoy the latest Multiplayer Games, incidentally, they've taken the liberty of not allowing any kind of Single Player games; internal testing has shown nobody wants those. They have stated also, if Single Player Games are produced, they'll make sure you're not inconvenienced with Game-play that lasts for more than four hours. Also don't forget you need to register your game on no less than three different sites in order to unlock it, for your protection.
Also, if your Console should break, you'll need to re-buy and re-register your Games. This not only helps support the AAA Developers, so they can continue to bring you a quality Gaming experience; but, also to protect you from anyone whom may try to borrow your Games. Passwords and Credit Card info is stored in Plain Text, studies have shown it's much easier to read and they didn't want to bother users with silly encryption. After all, Sony, Microsoft and AAA Game Devs only want the best for it's users, right?.
Hopefully they can get a real game designer for Ingress. Simple design flaws such as: If you're behind, you'll have more disadvantages to keep you behind. And "If you're late getting an invite, it's going to be super boring for a while."
I'm guessing that their games will have all kinds of neat choices that will tell google and, thus, the feds who are salivating over the the total control that total surveillance gives them, all kinds of interesting things about you. They will know you better than you know yourself. I used to love the idea of ethical choices in games, now I fear that I may be alerting pre-crime.
I can't find decent strategy games for mobile.
Googling "best games for Android" doesn't give me very useful results.
Then your being deliberately obtuse I just types your phrase "best games for Android" and unsurprisingly gave modern up-to-date lists of Android games, the first post is http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/04/18/51-best-and-4-wtf-new-android-games-from-the-last-2-weeks-4213-41813/ 51 Best (And 4 WTF) New Android Gameswhich unsurprisingly gibes everything from strategy to flight simulator to...hell they even have a point-and-click adventure on the list. Ironically you caould have tried everything on the list...for less price than one of your dated console games.
but what about Ratchet and Clank or Sly Cooper? I'd argue those are the equal of even a Mario 64. Still, you can play the GBA Sonic games on a Gamecube with adapter (or the upcoming Retron 5). Sonic Colors & Generations on the Wii are really 2D games. Generations is fantastic. And if you just want 2D there's tonnes of great indies. Rayman Origins, Super Meat Boy, Dust Force, La-Mulana, Freedom Planet, etc, etc.
As for a dedicated machine, computers today are so powerful you're not sacrificing anything for the extra features (Netflix, browsers, Facebook, etc).
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I just read through a good chunk of the comments on this, and I have to say, you are all looking at this in the wrong way. I don't think Google is going to make a AAA game for android. Rather, they are working on android as a gaming "platform". They are going to make a service similar to Xbox Live (hopefully w/o the monthly fee). I don't play games on my phone because I flash new roms and switch between phones often. I hate losing my game saves. If they create a unified game structure where all my saves are uploaded to the cloud and I can pick up and play the same game on my phone or tablet without having to start from the beginning again, then Google is taking android in the right direction.
I wish google would just fuck right out of the content creation business if they're going to take such a big part in the search, ads, and development platforms, then the should stay the hell away from creating content for it. It's like they're taking a clue from the cable companies here. No. Stop. Focus on your core competency, be the platform -- I don't want to waste my time trying to compete with a company who owns the platform.
Now, if they're just going to focus on discoverability and ease of development to make it easier for gamers and game makers to meet up and get their game on, then that's fine. Soon as they have a vested interest in putting one game ahead of the other, I'm out. I'll release my products as bootable firmware / BIOS images before I let another greedy platform owner bend me over to make their own titles look better by comparison.
Reading all the earlier comments, I see most slashdaughters thinking of games as the stuff they grew up with. No extrapolation whatsoever.
Board games aren't even dead. They are a solid profitable industry (as are mainframe computers).
There are many other ways 'games' are being built. Unity developers spend as much time building models for training as they do for actual gaming.
There is an excellent book called Reality Is Broken about how gaming can be applied to all sorts of real life situations.
I suspect Google has read that book and is operating from that paradigm, not from a console one.
What always online requirement? The one you pulled from your ass like all of that other BS in your post?
Really, you should at least TRY to know something about what you are talking about. The PS3 makes it super easy to backup data to external storage and to transfer data to another PS3. PS4 will offer the same or better.
What I find strange is that google does not offer streaming services for live gaming tournaments.
Seems like the perfect position for an ad vendor.
It won't be anything much different from Ouya? I'll pass and get the PS4 instead. I'm no casual and hate the thought of an OnLive system or anything similar.
Whoever downmodded me is a fucking smartphone whoring casual.
tied to the us dollar at a 1/1 ratio ...
hyping it up by selling off the first zone for $100k before it's in game
then hyping it up two years after by having it sold for six times the price
the only game that pays you !
(o no that would be the second one then)
i'm actually curious, i hope it's not to make another version of angry birds
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
PS3 is bluetooth, you just connect it and it works.
According to the publisher's web site, many HTC and Samsung devices don't work with PlayStation 3 controllers. In fact, the publisher had to make a second application called Sixaxis Compatibility Checker just to let people make sure that their devices would work with Sixaxis Controller before spending $2.99. Furthermore, the Sixaxis Controller application requires rooting, which tends to require backing up the device, wiping it, and restoring data. How many people are willing to use compatibility with the Sixaxis Controller application as a selling point for one phone over another?