Thayala’s World

50% off Ultima and Wing Commander Series

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 07:13:51 -0400

50% off Ultima and Wing Commander Series:

For $27 you can get ten Ultima and five Wing Commander games though Monday, June 4 at 11:59 PM EDT. Purportedly runs on Windows XP/Vista/Win 7.

I am so tempted.

CNN: Man Turning Airplane into Dream Home

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 06:57:06 -0400

CNN: Man Turning Airplane into Dream Home

Blizzard offices raided over Diablo 3 refund policy after Error 37 strikes Korean gamers

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 22:28:38 -0400

Blizzard offices raided over Diablo 3 refund policy after Error 37 strikes Korean gamers:

I did not see this coming.

German Forza Motorsports fan site ForzaLife has screenshots of...

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 13:19:00 -0400

German Forza Motorsports fan site ForzaLife has screenshots of the forthcoming Forza Horizon (Xbox 360; Fall 2012). I’m not a big fan of racing games, but these screenshots look so amazing I might be willing to crash into countless walls just to see the sights.

Source: ForzaLife (via VG247)

The 20-Year Estrangement of the Two Guys from Andromeda

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 09:19:24 -0400

The 20-Year Estrangement of the Two Guys from Andromeda:

Leigh Alexander interviews Scott Murphy and Mark Crowe, better known as Two Guys from Andromeda, the creative team that brought the Sierra Space Quest adventures to life. The Two Guys have launched a Kickstarter campaign to create a new “SpaceVenture”—the Space Quest intellectual property is owned by Activision these days and Activision isn’t ready to do anything with it yet.

The Brainy Gamer: High Noon for Shooters

Sat, 02 Jun 2012 08:04:00 -0400

Great comparison by Michael Abbott, a.k.a. The Brainy Gamer, of the modern shooter genre to television Westerns of the 40s–60s. Abbott asserts that while Rockstar seems to be trying to move the shooter genre forward in its most recent games (Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire, and Max Payne 3), the developers seem unable to escape the current expectations of the FPS genre:

[I]t’s Rockstar’s Max Payne 3 that most painfully illustrates the shooter ball and chain. I’ve played many games I wish had skippable cutscenes. Max Payne 3 is the first to make me long for skippable action. Buried under hours of conventional designer-charted gunfights is a story with genuine noir sensibility, not merely cosmetic style.

Not only is the gunplay repetitive and meaningless, on the Xbox 360 version the game mechanics for shooting are terrible.

Source: brainygamer.com

ilovecharts: brooklynmutt: Social media explained with...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:47:25 -0400

ilovecharts:

brooklynmutt:

Social media explained with donuts

(Geek.com)

A repost in honor of National Doughnut Day

"[P]eople choose to buy an iPhone. No one chooses to go to prison. And if you happen to be in a..."

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:45:00 -0400

“

[P]eople choose to buy an iPhone. No one chooses to go to prison. And if you happen to be in a situation where you’re “forced” to use an iPhone or iPad (by your school or work, say), it’s highly unlikely that any alternative platform they might have issued you would be any less locked down.

The piece is supposed to be a criticism of Apple’s platform design and policies, but really, what they’re doing is criticizing users for enjoying it.

”

- John Gruber on the EFF’s Crystal Prison article

Exactly.

This bizarre trailer from Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit...

Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:07:49 -0400

This bizarre trailer from Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit (Xbox 360, Playstation 3) is both intriguing and frightening.

"Two weeks ago, Steve Wozniak called for Apple to jettison all its existing customers in order to..."

Thu, 31 May 2012 12:38:49 -0400

“Two weeks ago, Steve Wozniak called for Apple to jettison all its existing customers in order to chase a tiny market of techno nerds who frankly prefer free software and would never buy Apple products anyway, and wasn’t it obvious 30 years ago that Woz wasn’t the Steve with business skills?”

- The Macalope on Steve Wozniak’s call for a more open Apple in “The Macalope Daily: And now a word from some kooks”

EFF: Apple's Crystal Prison and the Future of Open Platforms

Wed, 30 May 2012 12:27:57 -0400

On May 29, the EFF published an article calling for Apple to make its iOS and Mac OS operating systems more open. The quotes below are from that article.

Apple’s recent products, especially their mobile iOS devices, are like beautiful crystal prisons, with a wide range of restrictions imposed by the OS, the hardware, and Apple’s contracts with carriers as well as contracts with developers. Only users who can hack or “jailbreak” their devices can escape these limitations. […]

Since jailbreaking is so useful, why doesn’t Apple let their customers (or at least their technically inclined customers) do it? One reason is the profits from the App Store. Apple keeps 30% of the money from each app or in-app-purchase sold through its App Store. That means that for each 99 cent app sold, the developer gets 69.3 cents and Apple gets 29.7 cents. Cydia has 4.5 million weekly users and earns $10 million in annual revenue, and Apple doesn’t get any of that competition. This is more like traditional software sales where consumers get to choose which store they buy their software from, and they can even buy it directly from the developer. Locking down iOS helps Apple maintain their monopoly on software sales for iOS.

I don’t believe that is “so useful.” I consider myself a power user in the general sense, but I’ve never felt the desire to jailbreak my iOS devices. I’m not aware of any of my friends that have a jailbroken device—those that wanted the ability to tinker with the internals of their smartphone or tablet bought Android devices.

I see at least three choices: buy an iOS device and live in the “crystal prison,” jailbreak your device and bear the consequences (e.g., not getting warranty support for your devices), or buy a device from another company. EFF even points out that there is a thriving market for those who choose to jailbreak their devices: 4.5 million users a week spend $10M annually at the Cydia app store for jailbroken iOS devices.

I would be more sympathetic to EFF’s argument if I felt consumers were without choice. It’s a free market: if consumers feel that they are being overly restricted by Apple’s policies, they can stop buying Apple’s devices.

Unfortunately, Apple is building more of the restrictions that it pioneered with iOS into Mac OS X for laptops and desktops. […]

The Mountain Lion “Gatekeeper” code has three possible settings; the default is that only code from the Mac App Store or Identified Developers is installable.

The Gatekeeper feature in the forthcoming OS X Mountain Lion release allows users to opt out of App Store and signed application requirements. I would also say that speculating on what the default will be on the released OS is premature, although I admit that the default will likely be a more restrictive option than “run anything from anywhere.”

I believe that even under the most restrictive option, users can selectively exclude apps using a contextual (right) click. I’ll probably be setting Mountain Lion to allow apps from the App Store and signed applications.

Once again, I’m not sure what effect this will have in the real world. Looking through the applications that I currently use on my Mac, the only apps that I use frequently that aren’t available on the App Store today are Chrome and Firefox.

There are a lot of issues with the iOS and Mac App Store, but I don’t think that how open the underlying platform is has anything to do with it.

Maybe I’m just enjoying my crystal prison too much to realize that I’m an inmate.

Tim Cook on Video Games

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:38:04 -0400

I view that we are in gaming now in a fairly big way. One of the reasons people buy an iPod touch is gaming. Some buy it for music. I realize that is not the big screen you are talking about. Gaming has kind of evolved a bit. More people play on portable devices. Where we might go in the future, we’ll see. Customers love games.

I’m not interested in being in the console business in what is thought of as traditional gaming. But Apple is a big player today, and things in the future will only make that bigger.

— Tim Cook, Apple CEO

In any conversation that Apple has with game developers, the bottom line is that Apple builds devices for the broad consumer market, not for particular segments—such as gamers.

If a developer doesn’t want to bring their game to an Apple platform, my guess is that Apple points at the thousands of games that are in the Mac and iOS App Stores and point out that there are plenty of others who will.

In my opinion, that’s for the best—ports of PC or console games to the Mac aren’t nearly as engaging or enjoyable as games that have been crafted by someone (or a team) that really understands the platform. I think that’s probably true for any platform, Apple or otherwise.

"I don’t have anything against Android. The thing that’s frustrating is that every time we announce a..."

Wed, 30 May 2012 11:16:00 -0400

“I don’t have anything against Android. The thing that’s frustrating is that every time we announce a new game or a new version on a new platform, the first thing people ask is when we’re going to have an Android version. The problem is what they’re really asking isn’t when we’re going to have an Android version, but when they’re going to have an Android version for their specific device. That’s a very different question.”

- Eric Hautemont, CEO of Days of Wonder, on why there isn’t an Android port of Ticket to Ride.

"When it comes to Mass Effect 3, certainly they have the ‘right’ however vaguely enumerated to make..."

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 09:07:00 -0400

“When it comes to Mass Effect 3, certainly they have the ‘right’ however vaguely enumerated to make what they want, and those who consume it have the ‘right’ however vaguely enumerated to say that what they have done is wrong/bullshit/authentically evil. These ‘rights’ don’t necessarily overlap: they exist as perfect spheres, bouncing off one another in space.”

- Tycho (Jerry Holkins) at Penny Arcade

GameStop opening Deus Ex boxes, removing free game code

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 15:10:38 -0400

GameStop opening Deus Ex boxes, removing free game code

Judge OKs Unlicensed Cloud Music-Storage Service

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 23:45:34 -0400

Judge OKs Unlicensed Cloud Music-Storage Service

The patent system isn’t broken — we are

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 01:06:39 -0400

The patent system isn’t broken — we are

"Nintendo’s financial health depends on a world where they can keep selling many millions of people..."

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 08:34:42 -0400

“Nintendo’s financial health depends on a world where they can keep selling many millions of people those plastic steering wheels for $15 and nunchucks for $20 and controllers for $40 and the same games over and over again for $50 on new $250 systems every five years.”

- Marco Arment, writing about pressure on Nintendo to build games for iOS

Spoilers Don't Spoil Anything

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 13:19:56 -0400

Spoilers Don't Spoil Anything

"Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has..."

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 08:31:00 -0400

“

Diablo isn’t not really focused around a PVP experience; if you’re playing with someone who has duped items or whatever, all it means is that you will be more likely to defeat Satan. Without a means to gain advantage over another, “cheating” as a concept becomes substantially more opaque. Who is the cheated party, precisely? Satan the Devil? Fuck him, who cares.

Who is being cheated? This is the part of the movie where, in a series of retrospective realizations cut with you looking at your own face in the rearview mirror, you come bit by bit to the heart of it. The person you are cheating is Blizzard, Blizzard in the aggregate, with your attempts to interfere with their digital marketplace. You mustn’t play offline or goof around with your files or any other naughty business because they are endeavoring to transform your putative ownership into a revenue stream.

”

- Jerry Holkins (Penny Arcade) on the Diablo II DRM