Games – Page 9 – Ciaran Laval

November 7, 2014

Digital Cybercherries Use Oculus Rift And VR To Take Us Back To An 80’s Style Arcade

Over at New World Notes Hamlet Au recently posted : James Cameron: Virtual Reality a “Yawn” Until it Gets Mass Market Growth, Non-Gaming Experiences. The inspiration from the post comes from the following quote from movie director James Cameron regarding virtual reality :

The question that always occurred to me is, when is it going to be mature, when is it going to be accepted by the public at large, when are people going to start authoring in VR and what will that be?” Cameron said. “What will the level of interactivity with the user be other than just ‘I can stand and look around,'” he elaborated, adding: “If you want to move through a virtual reality it’s called a video game, it’s been around forever.

He has a point, but things are happening with devices such as Oculus Rift and whereas the example I’m going to highlight is game related, it’s game related in a different manner than you may expect. The example I’m highlighting has been talked about on The Road To VR and Gizmodo.

Digital Cybercherries are taking us back to our youth, well some of us, it may be going to a time before you were born for others. They have developed a retro arcade complete with playable arcade machines from the 80’s and early 90’s, playable gameboys, basketball nets, darts, a two lane bowling alley. In short you’re immersed in an 80’s style arcade which you walk through.

Then there’s the icing on the cake, that little bit of extra polish that makes this look so bloody awesome. The retro arcade has cassette tapes with 80’s music which you put into a cassette player and then listen away to those old favourites (or not so favourites). The wonder of this is exemplified in the Gizmodo blog post :

You can even find cassette tapes with ’80s music and stick them into a boombox, then carry it around the arcade with you. Because what’s cooler than playing Missile Command while jamming to The Final Countdown?

Come on, you’ve got to admit that sounds cool!

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November 5, 2014November 5, 2014

Bad Juju Games Acquire Desura From Linden Lab

Desura has changed hands again with a press release from Linden Lab stating :

As has just been announced, Bad Juju Games has acquired Desura from Linden Lab.

Bad Juju has taken over all day-to-day support, maintenance, and ongoing enhancements to the Desura website and service platform. The Bad Juju team will be reaching out directly to developers with games on Desura and are happy to respond to any questions they may have.

Transitioning Desura to a new owner is great for Linden Lab and our customers, as it allows us to further enhance our focus on creating the ambitious next-generation virtual world, while continuing to improve Second Life and growing Blocksworld.

Desura is a fantastic platform for game developers and players, and we look forward to seeing it continue to evolve and grow, now as part of Bad Juju Games.

The post on the Bad Juju games website explains that this is not a suddent process :

Indie Game and Middleware Tools Developer Bad Juju Games®, today announced that it has officially acquired Desura™, a comprehensive digital distribution service for PC, Mac and Linux gamers from its former owner and operator Linden Lab®. The move comes after several months of coordinated planning by the companies to ensure uninterrupted operation of the Desura service as well as a comprehensive roadmap of new features that will significantly benefit both its users and game developers during the upcoming months and beyond.

Linden Lab has begun an ambitious project to create the next generation of virtual worlds, while continuing to improve Second Life®, and grow Blocksworld®. Transitioning Desura to Bad Juju Game ship enables the company to enhance the focus of its resources on these priorities, while ensuring that spirit of Desura’s original vision lives on and game developers and players on the platform continue to be well served.

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October 7, 2014October 7, 2014

Drax Files Radio Hour Episode 39 – Argyle Alligator

Episode 39 of The Drax Files Radio Hour is another packed affair with the star attraction being Argyle Alligator. However as usual there’s much more than that and they touch upon Facebook’s real name policy with Jo Yardley and Drax both seeming far from impressed about Facebook’s policy. However I really can’t see room for Second Life’s profile feed to fill much of a gap here. Jo does however make good points about the features of social networking sites to promote events which brings me back to an old point of mine, web pages for groups.

This is something that could be added to the Second Life profile feed and the advantage of a web based group page advertising events is that it means you don’t have to send landmarks, notecards, textures, etc. All you would need to do is send a link to the event on the group web page.

Moving on, they give a shoutout to the 250th edition of Designing Worlds which was broadcast on October 6th and has already been covered in her usual magnificent manner by Inara Pey.

However the main feature is an interview with in game reporter Argyle Alligator who talks about his interviews, which are at times amusing. Argyle Alligator isn’t only an in game reporter for Second Life, he also interviews people in Garry’s Mod and Rust but this interview is largely about his Second Life experiences.

Argyle also shares the new user experience of Second Life and highlights some issues he found, how he had to work out the teleport system for himself, how he had difficulties finding locations that supported voice. This is important for Argyle’s work as he conducts his interviews with voice.

Argyle also offers up some good suggestions about starter zones including having verified residents of Second Life easily identifiable to help new participants. Drax also asks him about the UI. Drax has commented often that the Second Life UI isn’t complicated. I disagree, not because I find it difficult myself but because when so many people keep raising this point then it does suggest there’s an issue. I’m ok with the Blender UI too but I’ve seem many complaints about that as well. There is an issue, but it’s difficult to put your finger on exactly what it is but Argyle Alligator offers some insight on this.

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October 3, 2014

Intel Give In To The Baying Mob But Don’t Make Gamer A Dirty Word

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes reports that Intel have pulled their adverts from Gamasutra in a new round of nonsense in the ever mounting pile of cack that is #GamerGate. Hamlet also suggests that this is an anti feminist campaign, which I don’t actually agree with because there’s far more to this than misogyny. Unfortunately too much of this issue is buried so deeply in that pile of cack that it’s hardly likely to see the light of day.

Intel, a company known for its processing power, don’t seem to have applied much processing power to their decision. Intel will now be faced with another angry mob, complete with torches and pitchforks, criticising their decision. The central issue of this latest round of dispute is Leigh Alexander’s Gamasutra article : ‘Gamers’ don’t have to be your audience. ‘Gamers’ are over. Intel should have shown some backbone here and let their adverts stay and I say this as someone who thinks that Leigh Alexander’s article was bloody awful, but I’ll most definitely defend her right to post the article.

The problem I have with Leigh’s article is that she goes at the subject matter with a ten ton hammer, swinging wildly and mostly missing the target whilst upsetting a lot of innocent bystanders. This is at the very least unhelpful and in many ways it’s adding more cack to the ever mounting pile of cack.

Leigh does make some good comments and amongst them is this one :

When you decline to create or to curate a culture in your spaces, you’re responsible for what spawns in the vacuum.

However what Leigh’s article also does is go some way to creating something monstrous. There’s nothing wrong with the term ‘Gamer’. I’m a gamer, I’ve been playing games going back to the days of Manic Miner, Horace goers Skiing and Sabre Wulf. This reminds me, Elite passed its 30th birthday in September, which is rather scary. Where was I? Oh yes, the creation of the gamer golem. This needs to stop, for the good of everyone.

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September 24, 2014

Blizzard’s Decision To Cancel Titan Should Sound A Warning Bell For Linden Lab

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes has a blog post about Blizzard’s decision to cancel Titan. Titan was a planned new MMO from Blizzard, a long rumoured new MMO, indeed seven years long and it never seemed to see the light of day but it was supposed to be the next big thing.

Hamlet’s article has a link to a Polygon post on the same issue : Blizzard cancels its next-gen MMO Titan after seven years. That article has some great quotes from Blizzard’s co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime and Blizzard’s senior vice president of story and franchise development, Chris Metzen. Linden Lab should pay careful attention here to what is being said and what has happened. Mike Morhaime is quoted as saying :

We had created World of Warcraft, and we felt really confident that we knew how to make MMOs, So we set out to make the most ambitious thing that you could possibly imagine. And it didn’t come together.

Linden Lab have created Second Life and I’m pretty sure that they feel really confident on how to make virtual worlds. They have now set out to make the most ambitious virtual world that one could possibly imagine, but will it actually come together?

Chris Metzen is quoted as saying :

We were losing perspective and getting lost in the weeds a little. We had to allow ourselves to take that step back and reassess why the hell we were doing that thing in the first place.

Linden Lab need to ensure that they don’t find themselves in this position with their future virtual world, that they don’t find themselves making something that isn’t fun, that isn’t really progressing how they would like it to and that might not be worth their time at the end of the day.

Then there’s the World Of Warcraft factor. World Of Warcraft may be in decline but it’s still quite healthy. The same can be said of Second Life. Chris Metzen confirmed that Blizzard will continue to support World Of Warcraft, indeed he goes further and says :

My hope personally is that we’ll support it forever

Linden Lab have said that they will continue to support Second Life, I’m sure there are people at the lab who hope they will support Second Life forever.

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