#i played the two portal vr demos

[ooliecat]

i meant to post hmm checks watch some days ago sorry i fell over

[shadowblade8192]

Shadow's 2024 Games List

idk i thought this would be a cool thing i could do where i go through all the games that i played for the first time in <current year> (side note: i would have put this up last year but there was a latecomer so i delayed it a couple days). It wont include *every* game i played for the first time this year, just games that i started playing this year and played a somewhat decent amount of (not necessarily finished), and going through them all and what I liked and/or didn't like about them. Also a lot of these will be older games, not necessarily games that *released* this year since that would bring the total down to 3.

Also this contains spoilers for basically all the games I played, but I will mention some games specifically in case people haven't played them and wish to, since they may be better going in blind:

Superhot trilogy (Minor stuff from the ending of the third game) Inscryption (Go into this one blind, trust me) I'm sticking a keep reading cut in there. Seriously, go play Inscryption if you haven't already.

So, in a particular order (the order i got them in mostly):

Turnip Boy Robs a Bank

Having played the first game turnip boy commits tax evasion relatively close to launch, I was following the development of this one quite closely, getting to try out the demo, and then getting the game day 1 (in fact this is the only game I have ever purchased day 1), and had a blast. It's a relatively short game, I 100%ed it for the first time in around 11 hours, there is some potential replay value though I cannot deny there is less than other roguelites. The main layout is not random, however some item placement is, and the elevator rooms are random. Still, I had a lot of fun with it, and I can also confidently say I am the only player to ever legitimately reach 1B cash in the game which is something normal to want to achieve.

Lethal Company

Didn't try this one out until about 3 months after release, but was playing it very regularly once I did. Still pick it up every update or so for a few days, the reason I don't play it more is because its a very multiplayer-centric game and requires me to have friends online to play (yes I am aware it can be played solo but its not as fun that way). Very much enjoyed this one, and am eager to see where the developer goes with future updates

Celeste

Playing this gave me a sudden urge to put on a skirt. I'm sure its nothing

Superliminal

Messing around with perspective to solve puzzles, I really enjoyed this one. Puzzle mechanics were very intuitive, and I believe this was the mechanic that would have been used in a canned sequel to portal. It isn't in the portal/hl universe obviously, but I did still have a good time with it

Manifold Garden

Absolutely stunning visuals, it feels more like an art piece made into a videogame and- *searches something up* oh wait it was. Really enjoyed this one, definitely worth giving it a go if you haven't yet

The Pedestrian

Puzzle game involving moving a character across street signs, and the puzzles themselves are good as well. It's the first game on this list I haven't actually finished yet (not 100%ed, that would go to celeste since I have basically just climbed the mountain on that), but what I have played I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Buckshot Roulette

This one was a lot of fun i love gambling. Multiplayer was a great addition but I *wish* the developers let you use it on the itch.io version, but still I'm happy that it exists at all. It's a good game to just pick up and play a round or two for.

Dead Cells

Had a lot of fun with this one, haven't beat it yet but I have played a lot, reached the final boss (I think) once but died to them. It's a great one for my steam deck as its something I can just pick up for a run or two while I'm waiting for something.

Superhot Trilogy

So I first picked up Superhot VR for the PSVR in a cex, since I'd heard about it in passing (well, Superhot as a franchise) and the points on the back of the box sold me enough to drop £8 on this second hand copy. Insanely fun. Best of all three of them, It feels like the concept of the game was made specifically for VR. If you have any VR headset that has the option to buy it, definitely buy it. One of the best games I picked up this year.

After beating and enjoying Superhot VR, I noticed the bundle of the two non-VR games (I believe the first and third in release order) on GOG was on sale, and, well, I enjoyed the VR game so I thought I'd pick up the bundle. The original Superhot was enjoyable, basically the VR game but not in VR and you can move about (Well you could move in the VR game but only as much as you had physical space). Had my fun with that, and then moved onto the third game.

Superhot: Mind Control Delete starts off strong but near the end I was struggling to get through it. A roguelite Superhot? Marketed as more Superhot? Why wouldn't I like it, having liked the first two? Well, I did like it, to begin with. The hacks were a neat mechanic, giving you special abilities, and the health was nice, somewhat counteracting the fact that unlike the other games, you can't "learn" each level, since enemy spawns are procedural (In the first two it was partially a puzzle game in the sense that you needed to work out how to defeat the same set of enemies spawning in the same locations each retry). Cores were interesting, but I mostly avoided them. The whole gimmick of roguelite Superhot was starting to wear a bit halfway through. And then the unkillable enemies started showing up. Basically, the three cores you unlock (you start with one that gives an extra HP for a total of three) all have an unkillable enemy associated with them, and later levels will always have one of these (not related to the core equipped, so you cannot avoid them by only using the default core). You cannot kill them, you must avoid them, and the most annoying one can teleport into you. I was so glad when I found out you can give up the cores to stop them spawning, but that is basically at the end of the game. The ending itself.... you have to wait two and a half hours. With the game running. It does not save your wait time progress.

SH:MCD starts off alright but really isn't that fun later on.

Inscryption

Well, back to games i thoroughly enjoyed. Inscryption is a game that you should go into completely blind. You saw the spoiler warning at the top, right? Go play it if you haven't already. I'm serious. You can read my review later. Go play it then come back. Now, where should I start...

I love this game. A lot. All I knew about it going in was two offhanded mentions in a Pyrocynical video, where he says the ourobouros card can be buffed to like 10k if you waste enough time on it, and also the game looks at your files (if you know of Pyrocynical, you'll be able to guess why he brought that up), the latter of which I forgot about until the moment happened. Also a bundle on steam it had with Buckshot Roulette called "basically the same game". I did not buy that bundle, instead I bought it with a coupon code from the GOG newsletter that, upon looking at SteamDB and GogDB, would put the game down to an even lower price than anyone else would get (seriously do not sleep on GOG's newsletter, it gives out free games and coupons on some pretty decent games, I got Shotgun King: The Last Checkmate on a discount from there last year), and since I knew it was kinda similar to buckshot roulette, I bit the bullet and bought the game.

Started out with Leshy's Act I. I died a lot but had a lot of fun, solving most of the puzzles (on my first playthrough I didn't unlock the ring, nor the bee statue to replace squirrels), and beating the moon on the first attempt that I actually got that far on (so it wasn't until later I found out that you get a champion card on the door instead of a deathcard when you win, also I didn't encounter any death card nodes despite dying enough to. I do kind of wish I beat the moon once before getting the film roll to experience that, but still), and then got confused for 3 minutes after picking up the new game button, not realising I had to actually exit out and start a new game.

Act II was slightly disappointing at first, but it definitely grew on me, and I have replayed it standalone a handful of times with some challenges (e.g. 4 runs where I only use one class of cards, and a run where I use every card I acquire in a run since the only requirement is at least 20 cards, and there didn't appear to be an upper limit. The answer is yes, it's possible, but *very* RNG heavy).

I did enjoy Act III, I wish a few more of the mechanics were brought over to Kaycee's Mod (more on that later, also I do wish there was an option to do an act 3 kaycee's mod run but I do get why that's not there in the vanilla game for lore reasons. I'll get to mods later), but it is a decent act and I like Lonely Wizbot and the fisherman. The Archivist boss fight was fun cause i gave it Daily TV #69 which it put on as a face, and then /dev/core from my pc which was 128TiB. I wish Golly had the ability to interface with GOG Galaxy like it does with Steam to show friends there, but still a good concept.

The Finale was.... certainly interesting. Saying goodbye to all the scrybes, Grimora's interesting concept of the chessboard, Leshy's "One more game" (I did shed a tear when he insisted we kept playing and didn't need to keep score), and Magnificus' "All style no substance" battle (seriously is there anyone who has tried to win at that? I cannot find a single result online for that). All culminating with finding the OLD_DATA and then the final video... and Magnificus' act 2 theme is perfect for credits music.

Kaycee's Mod is great, Basically Act I but with a few mechanics removed (I do miss deathcards but yeah, balancing, same with ouroborous not keeping stat bonuses between runs and some unlocks like the bee statue, squirrel totem, dagger, boons before the final fight, etc., though I wish there were more escape-roomy stuff like act 1 had). Loved (most of) the challenges, Royal's boss fight is a fun alternative if you are bored of the moon (boss totems make no changes since none of Royal's cards have tribes)

Overall I would easily say this is one of the best games I played [for the first time] this year.

Webfishing

Imagine club penguin but instead of a whole island you can only go fishing and you don't get banned for saying fuck. Also gay as hell (positive). It's great, you can, if you want, never use online and exclusively play a singleplayer (or coop with friends only) fishing game where you collect a lot of fish, alternatively you could only use it as an online chatroom, or some mix of fishing and chatting, anything's possible. Good fun, better with friends imo but I like multiplayer with friends if I can. Also you can get drunk.

Balatro

The latecomer I mentioned in the first paragraph (feels like a while ago, I don't know how long it takes to read all this but I started making this post like 2 months ago), I got this one as a gift on christmas (well, a day or two after but it was a christmas present). This one has been a blast, this combined with inscryption being some of the most fun games I played this year is leading me to probably check out some more roguelike deckbuilders next year (well this year since this is going up on jan 1st). It is a very popular recent release so you may have heard about it, but the general gist of the game is you play poker hands to score points, and you get jokers which have effects to increase your score and you progress through the rounds. There's other mechanics that can add or remove or modify cards in your deck (adding 3 new poker hands being five of a kind, flush house (combo of flush and full house), and flush 5 (being 5 of a kind and a flush)). Very fun game and a perfect one for steam deck where I mostly pick games up to play a few rounds of something at a time. Also I found a tool to create an apk from a steam install to play on phone which is neat.

So that was my wrap-up of games this year, overall positive, see you again next year when I do the same thing (hopefully I get enough new games...)

[hydralisk98]

Here’s my follow-up to my commentary about the game’s lore and list of acknowledgments.

I won’t list the reference links as you (or anyone who do like to research stuff) can figure it out by themselves.

Now, here we go! *starting the fact counter*

I own and played both games the traditional way. (+2)

I know about the Borealis, the Half-Life storyline and Epistle 3. (+3)

I know about the Portal ARG and the new scene retroactively added for it. (+2)

I know about Portal 1 and 2′s beta stages. (+2)

I know about the Ratmann comic. (+1)

I own the magazine Final Hours of Portal 2. (+1)

I know about GLaDOS psychological evolution thanks to Chell’s adventure. (+1)

I know about the Art Therapy and the Perpetual Testing Initiative DLCs. (+2)

I played a little with both the Hammer Editor and the in-game Puzzle Editor. (+2)

I know how much time Chell slept before being awoken by Wheatley. (+1)

I know about Portal Stories Mel, some other mods and their related easter eggs (+0.5)

I know about the plot holes and can fill those out with probable hypotheticals that Valve has probably not worked on because it made as it is actually needed. (+1)

I know about the Portal wiki and Wikia. (+2)

I know about the hidden core in the ascent against Wheatley. (+1)

I know about the fact that GLaDOS has actually let us escape because of her before-mentionned psychological evolution (that is literally a coming-of age) and because we went to the freaking moon with Wheatley. (+1)

I know that Wheatley and the Space Core being in space for extended periods of time and having strong gravitational influence is a plot hole. (+1)

I know that Wheatley has lines if you keep running around in certain corner during the escape. (+1)

I know that turrets, cores and GLaDOS’ body are designed to be realistic enough for being actually implemented in hardware as far as the mechanical parts are concerned. (+1)

I know that GLaDOS was also linked to a BBS system and this system is probably similar to a administration system that Portal Stories Mel’s AEGIS controls in Valve’s canon lore and this system was the same that we have seen for Wheatley during the play in his test chambers. (+1)

I know that Portal 3 is unlikely because they were aware of the Half-Life 2 Episode 2 cliffhanger issue that could still plague Valve even with Half-Life: Alyx development. (+1)

I know about the first two Portal VR demos, which are The Lab and the Aperture Robot Repair demo. (+2)

I somewhat know about the Moon demo and other of the newest VR developments. (+1)

I know about Whealey old voice. (+1)

I know about the Oracle turret. (+1)

I know about the short-lived Portal MUX. (+0.5)

I know about my dream of making vintage computers like those found in many action titles where where there are computer props. (+0)

Now, for the approximate counter I made here... 32 points and I did not mentionned some more I might or not be aware of.

Just go ahead and ask because I sure still have a lot to learn about.

[stuartripley-blog]

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[kinsie]

Overly Belated Game Impressions from PAX Aus 2018

Every year I go to PAX Aus with some close friends to check out the Incredible Future of Games that everyone else already checked out six months ago. This is usually coupled with checking out some wonderfully well-preserved old games and hardware, along with some typically wonderfully weird indie stuff I've never heard about before. Every year, I've written up a little review of things I've played (or watched get played) on an old private forum some friends maintain, but this year, I've figured, fuck it, I might as well post it publicly, right?

Not Indie Games

Super Smash Bros Ultimate sure is a Smash game. That's not a bad thing, but since this was the same demo build from E3 (so before the Castlevania reveals) there wasn't a huge amount of surprises - just a damn good fightfest. Amusingly, the demo booths were split into two groups - For Fun (items on, Switch Pro Controller) and For Glory (items off, the new Gamecube controllers). New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe has a nonsensical name and spawned an even more nonsensical meme. The demo had six levels to play - three from the base game, three from the Luigi expansion - with both the new and old characters to play. It doesn't look like anyone other than Toadette can get the meme crown, meaning players using that character won't have to jostle for powerups in multiplayer. I didn't play Pokemon Let's Go Eevee because the queue was like 90 minutes long, but my friend braved it and gave it a resounding "ehhhh" with a hand gesture resembling a teetering see-saw. Apparently the co-op stuff wasn’t available in the demo, either, which concerned my friend since that was specifically what he was interested in.

V-Rally 4 looks nice aesthetically, but the gameplay seems pretty "eh". The name seems to be about the most interesting part. Dragonball FighterZ for Switch seems like a pretty decent port. I don’t know much about the source material or original game, but it ran fast and I didn't notice any obvious hitching or whatever.

Luigi's Mansion for Nintendo 3DS is... a 3DS port of the Gamecube launch title. It ran at a solid 30fps... a whole lot better than I recall Luigi's Mansion 2/Dark Moon running, but I was also using a vanilla 3DS for that game while the demo units at PAX were New models.

Indie Stuff

The Xbox Adaptive Controller was present as part of a demo setup for a version of One More Line. I wasn't expecting to have to push the Big Novelty Button as hard as I did, I thought it'd be a lighter touch for some reason. Although I know the button kinda isn't the point of the thing...

Supertrucks Offroad is a PC adaption of a mobile take on old top-down racing games. There's promise here, but the current handling and physics leave a lot to be desired. Hopefully it continues to develop and evolve.

Infinity Heroes is a card game with some simplified mechanics and animated versions of all the card graphics. Has potential, but still plenty of rough edges and pre-alpha grit to sand out.

Metal Wolf Chaos XD sure is a port of an Xbox game. It feels pretty well done, all things considered - the framerate is great, the controls are responsive, and the English subtitles are sometimes even connected to what's being said by the characters!

Ghoul Britannia: Land of Hope and Gorey is a point-and-click adventure game that, unexpectedly, uses a Fallout-esque isometric perspective instead of the usual side-on.

Table of Tales is a VR tabletop RPG where you control an entire party of Scoundrels by moving pieces around a constantly-changing board and playing ability cards. Since it was a VR game, there was a long sign-up queue to play, so the developers set up a little booth where Arbitrix, the game's DM (and, incidentally, a mechanical talking bird), would cheerfully explain the game for you. He said my goatee was perfect for a pirate adventure. It was probably intended as a compliment.

Supermarket Shriek is very similar to a game I prototyped years ago, except it's got a Supermarket Sweep theme and shrieking goats. Also, it's actually getting finished and has more than one level, which is another differentiator. Use the shoulder triggers to make the characters inside a shopping trolley scream their lungs out, propelling the trolley and allowing you to steer it through silly retail-themed obstacle courses.

You probably think, based on the squat protagonist and camera angle, that Tunic is a riff on Zelda: A Link to the Past. Surprise! It's actually a riff on Zelda: Ocarina of Time! The combat is very similar, with a dodge/roll button and Z-targeting (although I guess it's more RT-targeting now) that jumps to the next enemy upon beating your current one. I can't say enough nice things about the graphics... One thing that's interesting is that the entire game is in a fictional language. This includes stuff like the pause menu!

Dash Blitz is a pretty amateurish attempt at a Smash-esque platform fighter. The "feel" just isn't there, sadly.

Nom Nom Apocalypse is a top-down dual-stick roguelite about fighting off food monsters. It looks pretty interesting, but sadly I didn’t get to go back and give it a hands-on look.

Henry Mosse and the Wormhole Conspiracy is a good old-fashioned point and click adventure. The graphics are wonderfully drawn in a cartoon style, but they suffer from really puppet-y animation like an old Flash cartoon, and it breaks my heart.

No Moss Studios bought along Beam Team, a couch co-op game about fighting a giant donut that I didn’t get to try, as well as a collection of weird little Patreon-funded oddities like Sprout Up, a simple little mobile game about weaving through vines, and My Magpie, a bird-aiding simulator of sorts. 

Little Reaper is a platformer with a fun movement twist in that you can throw your scythe - which travels in an arc like a hammer in Mario - and teleport to where it lands. I'll have to give this a closer look.

Mars Underground is an Earthbound-esque RPG-style adventure game with a Groundhog Day-style conceit of being stuck in a time-loop. I can't really say it struck me, to be honest.

Scout's Honor is a co-op party game where four players team up to set-up a camp-site in a limited amount of time while dealing with hazards and such. It looks kinda cute, reminds me of Overcooked a bit.

Ice Caves of Europa is a rather odd-controlling game where you pilot a hover-drone controlled by an artificial intelligence. This one probably takes a bit more time to wrap your head around than a convention center allows.

Introspect looks really cool - a Shadow of the Colossus-style boss rush with an emphasis on movement tricks and agility. I didn't get to play it while I was there, but the developers were handing out download codes for the show floor build. It seems pretty fun, although it still needs a good deal of polish.

Soundfall is a dual-stick rhythm-shooter where you have to get to the end of a course before the song ends, with rewards for shooting and slashing to the beat ala Crypt of the NecroDancer. One to watch. 

Ticket to Earth is a tactical strategy RPG ala Fire Emblem with a tile-matching mechanic that makes how you move to your enemies even more important by limiting your movement and charging your special abilities. The comic artwork is nice, although the talking heads only seem to have one or two facial expressions.

Nova Flow is a first-person speedrunner that reminds me of a blend of Mirror's Edge's DLC maps and that one paint game that got incorporated into Portal 2. One of the demo levels was apparently one of the hardest levels in the game, and the developer was quite impressed at my getting within inches of completing it before the demo timer ran out...

Dawnblade seems to be an attempt at doing the whole Diablo thing on a phone, with the player hacking their way through short, pre-made maps. Visually, it looks like any of a million other games riffing off of Warcraft 3, and it seems to have some weird mobile game trappings like a stamina system to limit the amount of time you can play in a period of time.

Little Bit Lost is a survival game where you've been shrunk down to the point where ants tower over you and are powerful monsters. This one felt real early. It has promise, but needs a lot of polish to truly deliver on it.

Rogue Singularity is a 3D platformer with procgen levels. The feel didn't gel with me, and I can't really say I liked it all that much. It didn't help that the Switch port I played seemed to lack anti-aliasing entirely, giving the entire scene an unpleasant jagged look.

Ashen looks utterly fascinating - an open-world Souls-esque action RPG with Journey-style "passive" co-op where you can occasionally meet other, anonymous players out in the world and either help them or leave them to their fate. It looks really pretty.

Speaking Simulator is a hilarious puzzler where you have to manually operate a human mouth in order to say Entirely Normal Phrases in order to convince people that you are absolutely a human and not a murder robot in disguise.

Untitled Goose Game had a massive queue that I was absolutely not going to fuck with. :(

yeop

[nickgerlich]

Meta Analysis

I have long been enamored of the Apple Store. They are sleek. They are sexy. And it is hard to walk in without buying something very expensive. It is an interactive experience of the highest order, and completely by design. Apple wants you to play with everything. That’s the whole idea.

Check your email. Surf the web. Watch some videos. If you don’t drink some Kool-Aid along the way, it’s only because you have more resolve than most of the folks who cross the threshold.

Never mind that Apple really does not have all that many different products to sell us, even though the product line is considerably larger than when these stores—of which there are now more than 500—started appearing in 2001. If you feel like the laptops, tablets, and phones start repeating every 10 feet or so, you would be right. But then again, think of all of those display tables as play stations of a different sort.

Now comes news that Facebook has opened its first Meta Store in Burlingame California, yet another immersive experience kind of store like Apple, but with far fewer products, which are limited to a VR headset and the Portal video calling device. While demo units of the Ray-Ban smart glasses they partnered on will be available, you’ll have to go to the Ray-Ban website to order yours.

Aside from Apple, technology companies have had a tough go in retail. Google has only two of its eponymous Google Stores, where it showcases phones, digital assistants, and home security systems. Microsoft permanently closed its 83 stores in 2020. And based on my experience at one years ago at the Mall of America, you could hear a pin drop on the carpeted floor. I couldn’t even hear crickets.

And we all know that Amazon, first a foremost a retailer but also a dabbler in its private label tech products, has not done well.

That leaves Apple, a hardware company first and foremost that also developed proprietary software and operating systems. Microsoft did not have the hardware, at least when it came to computers. Google is still primarily a search engine and advertising agency, but with some hardware. Facebook? Social media site writ large trying desperately not to suffer from FOMO.

While I agree with Facebook’s emphasis on an immersive experience, it simply does not have the products to keep many people interested. There are fears the Portal device may be just a little too invasive at home, not to mention duplicative of other devices we already have for doing face time chats. While VR is very cool and all that, it has been slow to find traction.

All of which means that, while Facebook might get people through the door if only because of curiosity, sales might be less than stellar.

Which raises the more important question: Should a company venture out from its mainstay product or service category into uncharted waters? Yes, there are profits to be made by anyone with the right product at the right time, but just because you can does not always mean you should.  Why haven’t Amazon retail stores been successful? Because we view them as an e-commerce site. Yes, Alexa devices have been hugely popular, and their Kindle tablets beat everyone else to market, but both are examples of a company that did not have any competition in those products early on.

I have mixed emotions at best about Facebook’s store, which sounds more like a showcase than anything. Yes, I would go in, but I teach this stuff. I have a reason. I’m just not so sure that many other people have one.

Dr “Watching Closely, But Not Hopeful“ Gerlich

Audio Blog

[jelliclesong]

I’m going to Jacksepticeye’s show in August, and dragging along a friend who doesn’t watch him, and so... crash course. (This list in no way represents the “best” videos; just the ones I personally enjoyed. Under the cut because I am going to get rambly as fuck.)

Probable Reference Points - Happy Wheels (useful largely because it went on for four damn years. There’s a hundred episodes, but you can totally jump ahead randomly if you choose to; mostly this is on here as a good “Watch the Channel Shift” type thing.)

- Subnautica (Also goes on for ages. If you just want the proper game [a lot of things happened in beta] that playlist is here. I love this one.)

- The Jacksepticeye Power Hour (Genuinely entertaining, and also happens to be where most of the egos get introduced, for what that’s worth.)

- Night in the Woods (A Very Important Game for the channel. I love the art style on this one.)

- All the Way/What Is My Life (Songs made from things Jack’s said. Better than this description makes it sound.)

-Tour Vlogs (For some idea of what to expect? They’re usefulish, anyway, and contain some fun behind-the-scenes type stuff.)

Collabs With Other People

- Farming Simulator 2013 (One of the older things I’m linking. Partially because it’s funny, partially for proper Irish accent and general failure to play the game as it’s meant.)

- Human Fall Flat (Starts out as just Jack, eventually adds Robin. One of my favourite things on the channel.)

- Astroneer (Also with Robin. Dorks in space.)

-Portal 2 (With Bob. Contains much “accidental” killing of one another.)

- The Escapists 2 (With Robin. Jack plays through it once first, but... Robin. He’s important.)

- Sea of Thieves (With several people over the course of the videos. All comedy gold. This series makes me Very Happy.)

Funny Shit

- Goat Simulator (Everyone’s played this at one point or another. Doesn’t get old, doesn’t get less stupid.)

-Baking Simulator (Frustratingly difficult to play, apparently, but a great deal of fun to watch.)

- Job Simulator (VR nonsense.)

- Japan World Cup (...I’ve no fucking clue what this game is. Features Jack doing a fairly impressive old-timey announcer voice, though, so...)

- LA Noire VR (This is a Very Serious Game to be taken Very Seriously. xD [Side note. Griffin McElroy also played this, and it is exactly as good as one would expect.])

- Chuchel (The world’s cutest fever dream.)

-Passpartout (Art game featuring what may be the Worst French Accent I’ve ever heard. I love this way more than I should.)

Long-Form/More Serious Games (roughly in order of my favourites, with run times included for planning purposes)

- Fran Bow (Love the art style of this one. Fairly creepy story, great characters, and some fun voices. About six hours total.)

-Slime Rancher (This game is insanely cute. Eventually gets around to a pretty good storyline as well. 11ish hours total, mostly non-story related, but soothing to listen to.)

- Bendy and the Ink Machine (Quasi-horror game. Awesome art style, not overly jump scare laden. In-game voice acting. About three hours so far.)

-Pinstripe (Deeply cool, pretty damn creepy. In game voice acting [Dan’s in this one!] plus some voices from Jack. Three hours.)

- What Remains of Edith Finch (Very beautiful, very very sad. I really hated to see this one end. A game of stories... About two hours.)

- The Last Guardian (A less tedious [sorry] companion piece to Shadow of the Colossus. Has the unfortunate side effect of making me really want a giant cat-bird. Eight/Nine hours.)

-Ben and Ed (It’s about a zombie trying to protect the small boy he’s befriended, and it’s awesome. About two and a half hours.)

-Spyro 3 (Lots of rambling about nostalgia and childhood. About nine hours.)

- The Final Station (I love the art style here. A bit sad, the story, but overall fascinating. About six hours.)

- Life is Strange (Heavy heavy themes in here, a beautiful art style, and some very cute girls. [also an Amanda Palmer song in one of the episodes.] There are sequels, but I haven’t gotten around to them. About 11 hours.)

- Neverending Nightmares (Horror game, with some deeply weird imagery. Very very cool art style. Contains jump scares, but nothing too terrible. About an hour and a half.)

Live Action Type Things

- Septic Art  #2 (But only from 16:02-16:34, if you want the bit that’s relevant to me. I am Very Important, damnit.)

- A Day With Jack!/It Was Closed!/I’m Terrified of Heights!/It Snowed In Brighton! (Vlogs. Useful if you wish a better idea of the person behind the channel, plus they’re quieter than the edited stuff...)

- Playing Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds (Watch a person we look up to meet a person he looks up to and struggle not to dissolve into a puddle of awkwardness! Yay! [Also it’s Ryan Reynolds, who is always a win, even if he is terrible at video games.])

Miscellaneous Whateverthefuck

-ABZU (An hour and a half or so of beautiful underwater shenanigans. I love it.)

-Richies Plank Experience (Watch a man who is terrified of heights try to walk out on a narrow plank 30 stories up in VR. It... doesn’t go well.)

-Banished (A nice pleasant little resource management/town builder game.)

-Once Upon A Coma (Just a demo for the moment, but I love this game. [Also, Dan’s in this one too!])

-The Boss (A fan-made game, my favourite one so far. Full of references and awesome things. Six/Seven hours long.)

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #444

Top Ten PlayStation Games I Hope Get PC Releases

And once again I turn my steely eye to the world of gaming. This time though I’m pulling on my blue jumper and talking about PlayStation (because I guess Xbox would have a green one and Nintendo’s would be red? I dunno, I’m making this up as I go). I’ve said in the past that as much as I like Sony and would love a PlayStation, I’ve never actually owned one myself because I always tend to buy an Xbox first. As much as I love the gaming industry, gaming as a past-time, and games themselves as an art-form, I have a rapidly dwindling supply of free time and unfortunately once I factor in trying to see enough films to maintain polite conversation and staring at my phone for hours on end in order to maximise my ennui, I don’t have an awful lot of minutes left in the day to dive into a wide variety of triple-A titles. As such, because I’m used to the Xbox’s way of working, because I tend to prefer its controllers and its whole ecosystem, and because I love several of their franchises (Halo and Fable especially), it’s always Xbox I gravitate towards, and then I just don’t have enough gaming time left over to justify the expense of a second huge console. And let’s get it out of the way – the PlayStation 5 is huge.

As a result, as time has gone on, there is an ever-growing number of PlayStation exclusives that I’ve barely played. In The Olden Days this was less of a problem, as pre-kids (and, heck, pre-everything considering how old the original PlayStation is at this point) I was able to saunter over to a friend’s house and try out games on their console. In this fashion I sampled a good many PS1 and PS2 titles such as Metal Gear Solid, WipeOut, Resident Evil, Time Splitters, Ico, and my absolute favourite, the original PS2 Transformers game. By the time PS3 rolled around this happened more rarely, but I’d argue it was fairly late in the generation when they showed off any games that really interested me (specifically those from Naughty Dog); and with the PS4, I’ve barely played on one at all, more’s the pity. And I really do mean more’s the pity, because this time around there have been loads of games I wanted; they really have had a better generation than Xbox, even if I couldn’t give up my Halo or Gears, to say nothing of the huge collection of backwards compatible games that get played to death by my kids.

That’s why I’m overjoyed that Sony have finally taken a leaf out of Microsoft’s book and are starting to release some of their bigger games on PC. I’ve been largely laptop-only for about a decade now, but it is a very powerful laptop, even if it’s not dedicated gaming hardware, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised how well it manages to run even quite demanding 3D games such as Assassin’s Creed Odyssey or Gears Tactics (I really must try out Flight Simulator sometime soon). The first big Sony exclusives to drop on Steam are Death Stranding (which looks bonkers but not my cup of tea) and the intriguing Horizon: Zero Dawn, which I’d probably really like. But those were never the Sony games that totally floated my boat; no, there are others, and I would absolutely love it if Sony saw fit to unleash them on Steam in the near future. Hey, I’m not picky; you don’t need to day-and-date it. I don’t mind enjoying a “Part I” whilst PS5 gamers are playing the hot new “Part II”. But I increasingly think be-all-and-end-all exclusives are rather old-fashioned, and whilst I get that there should probably be games tied to specific boxes, the services those box-companies provide should be more universal. That’s why I like Microsoft’s Play Anywhere initiative and the mobile game streaming via xCloud. But this is a Sony list, and these are some very, very good Sony games. I assume. By and large, I haven’t played them.

Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018): I love Rocksteady’s Arkham series of Batman games, but I do find them a bit relentlessly dark and miserable with an oh-so-gritty art style. What could be better, then, than a game that seems to play broadly similar but is nice, bright, funny, and sunny? Spider-Man is the perfect hero for that sort of game, and this looks absolutely like everything I’d ever want from a superhero game. I really, really, hope it comes to PC at some point, but I’ll be honest, I doubt it.

The Last of Us (2013): I like a good third-person action-adventure, whether it’s Gears, Tomb Raider, or Jedi: Fallen Order. TLOU looks most up my street, however, for its story, and its seemingly moving depiction of a family unit forming amidst the end of the world. By all accounts it’s a tear-jerker; I’ve tried to steer clear of the plot. Porting it over to PC whilst the well-received sequel is getting an inevitable PS5 upgrade seems like a good idea.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection (2015): I’ve very briefly played one of the Uncharteds, but not really; I hear they’re like the Tomb Raider reboot, but better, which seems nice. A rollicking third-person action-adventure with an Indiana Jones spirit? Count me in. With the long-mooted film adaptation finally underway, COVID notwithstanding, it seems like a good time to let PC gamers have a go at the classic saga. I’d add part 4 to the existing trilogy collection before shunting it to Steam.

Shadow of the Colossus (2018): I’ve played Ico a bit so I’m broadly familiar with the tone of these games, but Colossus seems like an even cooler idea. Scaling moving monsters, killing them but feeling guilty, sounds like both a great gameplay mechanic and a moving and evocative theme for a game. Port the recent remake to PC please, Mr. Sony.

Ratchet and Clank (2016): full disclosure: the new PS5 Ratchet game is the only title I’ve seen demoed that really looks next-gen, with its fancy ray-tracing, excessive particle effects, and funky portal-based gameplay. How’s about, then, giving PC gamers a chance to enjoy the relatively-recent remake of the very first game? A bit of cross-promotion works wonders, Sony.

God of War (2018): the old PS3-era God of War games never really appealed, I guess because I’m not always a huge fan of hack-and-slash and they gave off a kind of crazy excessive, almost laddish vibe that I found off-putting (having not played them, I may be being incredibly unfair). The new one, though, sounds like it’s all about being a dad and being sad and remorseful, so count me in.

Wipeout Omega Collection (2017): I’ve always enjoyed arcade racers, but one sub-genre that I don’t think gets enough love is a futuristic racer, especially where you’ve got hover cars (they seemed to be quite popular twenty-odd years ago). I played the original Wipeout on my mate’s OG PlayStation, but I’d love it if us PC gamers could play the whole series. Could it possibly be even better than Star Wars Episode I Racer?

LittleBigPlanet 3 (2014): chances are, if I’d done this list back around the time the first two LittleBigPlanet games were released, they’d have topped the chart. They looked like cool, fun platform games, with a fantastic creative aspect; I bet my kids would love them. With that in mind, I’d be over the moon to see Sackboy take a bow on Steam. I’d have put Dreams on this list, incidentally, except I can’t see myself getting a VR set anytime soon.

The Last Guardian (2016): feels a bit of a cheat having both this and Colossus on the list, but I do want to see what the fuss is about. One of those games infamous for its time in development, it seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and I am intrigued. Plus I want to know who dies at the end, the boy or the monster.

Killzone Shadow Fall (2013): gaming cliché has it that Nintendo does cutesy platformers, Microsoft does shooters, and Sony does third-person action-adventures; so whilst I’m well-versed in Halo and Gears, I’ve never sampled PlayStation’s key FPS franchise. Famous for its genuinely wowing showcase when the PS4 was announced, I’m not sure how good Shadow Fall actually is (or any of its predecessors for that matter) but I’d be very interested in finding out. Alternatively, give us one of the Resistance games and let me tear around an alternative Manchester or something.

So, there we are; ten games that I think are probably quite good – or even, y’know, masterpieces – but I’ve not had the chance to really sample them yet. And short of me picking up a PlayStation on the cheap, I don’t know when I really can. I mean, I told myself I’d buy a second-hand PS3 and a copy of TLOU once this current generation was in full swing, but that never happened. So throw me a bone, Sony! I still want to buy your stuff! Just sell it somewhere else! Somewhere I already am! Like Steam! Please?!

[aurelliocheek]

20 Years HandyGames: The Interview

Happy Anniversary! German developer and publisher HandyGames exists now for 20 years. We talk to the founders, CEOs and brothers Markus and Christopher Kassulke.

HandyGames is one of the most traditional game developers in Germany. And one of the most successful: HandyGames has published more than 200 games to date, which together have resulted in hundreds of ­millions of downloads.

Founded 2000 by the brothers ­Markus and Christopher Kassulke and their business partner Udo Bausewein in north Bavarian university city of Würzburg, HandyGames was specialized in the ­early years – the company name suggests it – in games for mobile phones. In 2003 ­HandyGames had a big hit with the strategy game Townsmen. The series continues to thrill game fans worldwide to this day.

In 2015 HandyGames won three important awards at the DEP – „Best Studio“, „Best Mobile Game“ and „Best Social Engagement“.

Since 2018 HandyGames is part of the THQ Nordic and Embracer Group family and operates as an international publisher for mid-sized projects and developers for a worldwide audience.

HandyGames always strive for gameplay innovation. The company received the German Developer Award as “Best German Game Studio” in 2015, produced and published award-winning games of ­virtually every video gaming genre imaginable for a diverse range of audiences and gameplay styles. One example is “Townsmen VR” which was awarded with the German Games Award 2018 in the category “Best Game Design”. Now located in Giebelstadt, a tiny town close to Würzburg, ­HandyGames is a proud part of the ­German and European gaming scene.

How HandyGames started 20 years ago, how the two brothers get along with each other in everyday life, how it went with the takeover by THQ Nordic, which decisions they regret afterwards and much more we discuss in an interview with Markus and Christopher Kassulke. And we show a lot of cool photos from 20 years of HandyGames!

An idol and a close friend – “Lord British” Richard Garriott and Lars Janssen ­during their studio visit in 2018.

Making Games: Tell us how it all started 20 years ago with HandyGames? Markus Kassulke: Our history in the games industry begins a little before HandyGames. Christopher and I worked as freelancers developing cheat software and add-ons for games like Sim City or Age of Empires. At some point, we wanted to make our own games. We didn’t have a lot of money, so the mobile phone was a good platform. On Christophers old Nokia, which is still in the showcase here, you could only play Snake, and we thought we could do better. We had a buddy in Romania who wrote us an emulator and some minigame demos. We presented it to Siemens in Munich, and a few days later we got the confirmation. So we had to start the company because Siemens didn’t want to sign a contract with just a few freelancers for software that would be used on millions of mobile phones. We brought Udo Bausewein into the company so that we had someone with a business background – who looked a bit more serious than the two of us with long hair. At that time, it was tough to find programmers, so we looked for people at the University of Würzburg who were interested in programming games on beer benches and old chairs in a noisy office above the Norma supermarket. Startup at its best.

Christoper Kassulke: Unfortunately without venture capital, because back then there were no venture capitalists who believed in games. Especially when the dotcom ­bubble burst.

Markus: When we moved into our office in Giebelstadt in 2004, we already had 20-25 people. Then came the mobile internet, the first Ericssons with colour display and the Nokia 7650. The time came when our business partners were no longer mobile phone manufacturers, but the network operators who built portals for mobile games.

Christopher: We have always been globally positioned, and in some cases have worked with up to 250 network operators worldwide. Today, with the App Store and the Google Play Store being the only ones left, you can’t even imagine that.

With Townsmen VR the team enters new markets with a well known spin-off of its build-up strategy brand.

You must have done many things right in the last 20 years, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be here today. But are there any decisions you regret today? Markus: Not having bought Apple shares (laughs).

Christopher: Apple is the right keyword, because we were one of the few developers who didn’t jump on the Apple bandwagon immediately. We were used to working with T-Mobile, Vodafone and Co. and then a young wild man named Steve Jobs comes and says, I don’t give a shit about the network providers, I’m turning everything upside down. A lot of people laughed at that time, including the CEO of Nokia. In the end, we supported iOS too late, but you learn from it. Since then, we have always been very open to new platforms and technologies. What we also regret today is having relied on a single partner for too long. When Siemens was sold to BenQ and shortly afterwards closed its mobile department, this was, of course, a problem for us, since at that time about 60 percent of the workforce was working on games for ­Siemens devices.

Markus: You are always smarter afterwards. Who would have thought at that time that Nokia, with a market share of 64%, would disappear from the market a few years later because they started building smartphones much too late? I like the way you see supposed mistakes in the US. When you’ve failed your third company, you are still the hero when you try it for the fourth time. And here in Germany, it’s like “Oh God, he already went bankrupt with his company once.”

A milestone in mobile gaming history: the Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson.

Over the years, you may come to a point where you ask yourself whether you want to do business as usual or change, take the next step. Have you ever had such situations?  Christopher: Such situations were and are permanent. I can’t remember a single time we said let’s just keep going.

Markus: The mobile market was and is simply too fast-moving for that. First, there were the embedded games on mobile phones, then came the download games via network operators, then the smartphones. Then people suddenly didn’t want to spend money on games anymore, so you had to be prepared for in-app purchases, which has since changed again. We had to constantly consider whether the current orientation was still up to date. The biggest step, of course, was to sell HandyGames to THQ Nordic in 2018.

Christopher: We always wanted to publish, not only for smartphones but also for PC and console. We could have afforded to make 3 or 4 games at the same time, but not nearly as many as we now have in our portfolio. For that, you need a completely different backing than what we were used to. You need access to the capital market. That is limited for a German publisher. That’s why we decided to sell ­HandyGames.

Markus: A major decision was to leave the mobile sector long before the takeover. At that time, the Ouya console was announced, which in retrospect was a huge flop. But when we saw the mobile games on the big TV for the first time, we thought “Gee, that doesn’t look too bad”. And if that looks good, why should HandyGames doesn’t make games for the big consoles?

Having fun even with lawyers like Kai Bodensiek during the shooting of „Talk in der Alm“.

You mentioned the takeover by THQ ­Nordic and the Embracer Group. How did they convince you? Markus: In the past 20 years, we had countless discussions with companies who wanted to buy us. But we were the stubborn Franconians and thought about it: What will they do with us?

Christopher: Is that an added value for us, also for our colleagues? When you have been working together for such a long time and watch the children grow up, you approach things differently than a CEO of a stock company. You think in the long term.

Markus: We were simply looking for a partner who fits in with us, and we don’t regret taking this step. The Embracer Group is worth 3 billion euros, the number 2 in the European market. We are now over 60 people and are financing even more people in external studios worldwide. That’s not a bad figure for a German publisher, and we feel a responsibility to the people.

Christopher: Finally, we want to celebrate a few more anniversaries.

Where do you see HandyGames in 5 to 10 years? Markus: Difficult question. What I can say: HandyGames will be bigger, have more projects. But we want to grow organically. We have no growth plan. We want to continue to be a courageous publisher, but there will be no kamikaze actions from us.

A nice place to work: the famous „Alm“.

How difficult is it to lure employees to ­Giebelstadt, in the Franconian province? Christopher: It is not very difficult. Of course, we can’t compete with a Berlin scene here, but we are a suburb of Würzburg, and the city offers everything you need. At the end of the day, you have to feel comfortable, and we want to achieve that by creating a familiar atmosphere.

Markus: We have no problems finding people, quite the opposite. We are very picky, the benchmark is high. Our team is getting better and better, and I’m not only talking about skills, but also human qualities. The team spirit, motivating each other, is ­essential to us. It’s certainly not easy to get someone from Berlin or Hamburg to the Franconian province. But for someone from France or Spain, Würzburg is perfect for studying, by far not as expensive as Munich. And we are a very cosmopolitan, international company.

Show responsibility! Donating PCs to local schools.

Brothers do not always get along. How harmonious is your cooperation? Christopher: We have a rule: We can argue – and sometimes the doors can fly – as long as the door opens the next day again and we are all about the good cause. It is helpful that our tasks are clearly separated: Markus takes care of production and publishing, I take care of sales and marketing.

Markus: It’s certainly not always easy, but we always come back on a common path. After all, we have responsibility for the team, their families and also for the developers we work with.

Women in Games – we support the „Girl’s Day“ initiative from the beginning.

Let’s talk about publishing. Which criteria are decisive for you to sign a title? Markus: I don’t know how many platformers I’ve looked at lately, but there were many. There are some things that have no USP at all. Of course, a game needs that certain something. But also the whole package has to fit. It’s important that the team stands behind their vision and that they don’t want to sell us the slimmed-down version of their idea in the hope to increase the chances to get the money. We want to see the big picture – and then it is up to us to decide whether we want to spend the money for it. The composition of the team is also important. Since we are developers ourselves and know all the platforms, we have a good sense of whether the team may have overestimated the human resources for the port, has too few programmers, etc. You should approach pitching with the necessary seriousness and also keep an eye on the economic aspect. Thinking beyond the first game, imagine the ­second and third game – and be prepared for the dry period in between. Many studios have their difficulties with that – not only in Germany. We also prefer when the ­developers themselves do the porting, so that they can build up the know-how. Of course, the human factor is very important. You have to be a good match.

Christopher: We don’t want to have a one-night-stand. We want to have long-term, sustainable relationships. You don’t build a publisher-developer relationship overnight. And just like in a love relationship, the strength of it is particularly evident in phases when things are not going so well.

King Christopher on his Throne of Games.

If you look at your lineup, it seems very un-German, very international, which surprises us. Markus: That’s a big compliment for us because that’s exactly our goal. We see our competition, not in Germany but worldwide. And I think, with the lineup we can take on the international competition. We have projects in Mexico City, Hungary, Sweden, Belarus, Spain – many international influences. I look forward to seeing how it works.

The competition with other publishers to discover the potential hits of tomorrow is tough, isn’t it? Markus: Yes, for sure. But you have to see it in a sportive way. I have already lost developers which had a contract ready to sign; other publishers experienced the same for sure. It’s important that when teams decide to be our partner, they believe, think, feel and live that way.

Christopher: But it’s not uncommon to experience friendly competition when a publisher calls you and says “Here’s an interesting game that I can’t sign right now, wouldn’t that be something for you? On the other hand, we are also happy when a title that doesn’t fit into our portfolio finds another publisher. The developers also talk to each other, and our current partners are the best publicity for us.

Enjoying the masses at ­gamescom 2019 with our international developers on the Indie Arena Booth.

Many events are cancelled because of ­Corona. What has changed the most for you? Markus: That I now have to do all the events online (laughs). So much has not changed at all. We meet developers, do pitchings, it goes on as usual.

Christopher: Although the effect of having a beer together in the evening should not be underestimated (laughs). The small talk between the door and the hinge or the typical chance conversations during the smoking break at a conference is something that I miss. Chicken Police, for example, we tracked down on Reboot. Or that you stroll over gamescom and wonder why there are 20 people standing at the small booth in front of it. That’s how we became aware of Spitlings. To see how end customers react to something would be important.

We love sports! From sponsorship …

What changed for you internally when you changed from developer to publisher? Was there a culture clash? That some people say “Things used to be better.” Markus: That went pretty smooth. We had already prepared the employees half a year before the takeover. Of course, we had to adapt the organisation, i.e. producer, QA, marketing, to the new circumstances and enlarge it. Especially in these areas, we are looking for experienced people from the industry, but also for newcomers.

Christopher: I think it is helpful for every company after a few years to bring people into the company who have a different point of view, who bring in experience and know-how from other companies. What I also like is that someone can now also get a taste of publishing if they want to, in order to develop themselves further. Especially in our QA we have many examples.

… to kick some ***** on the football field.

In conclusion: What do you want to give the studios out there, who are perhaps just starting out, to take along? Markus: I would like the games funding to contribute to the fact that we in Germany are approaching more ambitious products and fewer clones. With 200,000 Euros I can already move a lot as a small team, impress the big publishers with a cool demo. We have to become even more courageous in Germany. For me, there is no excuse anymore why you can’t develop games in Germany that are internationally successful. For AAA titles this may be true, but in the indie sector, as far as the general conditions are concerned, there are no more excuses why the next Dead Cells or Hollow Knight or Inside should not come from Germany.

Christopher: The situation for developers has never been so rosy. When we started, there was no funding, also no banks that gave loans with almost no interest. These are brillant conditions. Ok, if necessary, you have to move from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Bavaria to get the local funding. But there is also federal funding, even EU funding. And there are as many publishers as never before. Even the big publishers sign indie games. Especially in the range of 500,000 to one million Euros there is a huge choice. Twenty years ago, games were hated by politicians. Now politics like us, we are in the mainstream press with Through the Darkest of Times. From young to old everyone feels like a gamer. Grab it, people!

Thanks a lot for the interesting interview and all the best for the next 20 years!

  El Hijo – A Wild West Tale: A spaghetti-western stealth game where you guide a 6-year old boy on his quest to find his mother. Developed by Honig Studios, published by HandyGames.

Triple I Games “Made in Germany”

In November 2019 Handy­Games announced that it intends to invest “a high single-digit million amount” in German indie titles over the next three years. HandyGames is thus supporting the foundation of new start-ups or securing jobs at existing studios. “The prerequisites for the cooperation are a strong team and a breathtaking product, which will be able to captivate gamers around the globe in addition to our publishing team,” says Markus Kassulke, CEO of HandyGames. “We are well aware that the development of the next big indie hit can have production costs of more than a million. Hence the clear signal: HandyGames is prepared to bear the own contribution required by the funding”.

A gripping story and atmosphere, innovative gameplay and a unique graphic style can be keys to success. HandyGames already supports the highly motivated German teams of Paintbucket Games (Berlin), Honig Studios (Berlin) and Massive Miniteam (Cologne) in the development of their current titles. Through the Darkest of Times, ­El Hijo – A Wild West Tale and Spitlings will convince gamers worldwide in 2020 that games “Made in Germany” can cause a stir on the international market.

Markus ­Kassulke Co-Founder & CEO

With over 25 years experience in the gaming industry, Markus Kassulke is responsible for managing HandyGames as a whole. He oversees all internal projects as well as Publishing team and is responsible to form the DNA of the unique games portfolio. As a member of the HR team, he is always looking for new team-players to join the family.

Christopher Kassulke Co-Founder & CEO

Christopher is responsible for the international Business Development and Sales of HandyGames. As the face of HandyGames ­Christopher regularly speaks at developer conferences and events around the globe.

The post 20 Years HandyGames: The Interview appeared first on Making Games.

20 Years HandyGames: The Interview published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[sheminecrafts]

Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android

Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus or it augmented reality glasses to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT named Mark Lucovsky with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according the The Information’s Alex Heath. To be clear, Facebook’s smartphone apps will remain available on Android.

“We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us” says Facebook’s VP of hardware Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We don’t think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that’s the case. And so we’re gonna do it ourselves.”

Eye OS

By moving to its own OS, Facebook could have more freedom to bake social interaction — and hopefully privacy — deeper into its devices. It could also prevent a disagreement between Google and Facebook from derailing the roadmaps of its gadgets. Facebook tells TechCrunch the focus of this work is on what’s needed for AR glasses. It’s exploring all the options right now including potentially partnering with other companies or building a custom OS specifically for augmented reality.

One added bonus of moving to a Facebook-owned operating system? It could make it tougher to force Facebook to spin out some of its acquisitions, especially if Facebook goes with Instagram branding for its future augmented reality glasses.

Facebook has always been sore about not owning an operating system and having to depend on the courtesy of some of its biggest rivals. Those include Apple, who’s CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly thrown jabs at Facebook and its chief Mark Zuckerberg over privacy and data collection. In a previous hedge against the power of the mobile operating systems, Facebook worked on a secret project codenamed Oxygen circa 2013 that would help it distribute Android apps from outside the Google Play store if necessary, Vox’s Kurt Wagner reported.

That said, its last attempt to wrestle more control of mobile away from the OS giants in 2013 went down in flames. The Facebook phone, built with HTC hardware, ran a forked version of Android and the Facebook Home user interface. But drowning the experience in friends’ photos and Messenger chat bubbles proved wildly unpopular and both the HTC First and Facebook Home were shelved.

Investing In Tomorrow Tech

Now Facebook is hoping to learn from past mistakes as it ramps up its hardware efforts with a new office for the AR/VR team in Burlingame, 15 miles north of the company’s headquarters. The 70,000-square-foot space is designed to house roughly 4,000 employees. Facebook tells TechCrunch the team will move there in the second half of 2020 to make use of its labs, prototype space, and testing areas. The AR/VR team will still have members at other offices across California, Washington, New York, and abroad.

Interested in potentially controlling more of the hardware stack, Facebook held acquisition talks with $4.5 billion market cap semiconductor company Cirrus Logic, which makes audio chips for Apple and more, The Information reports. That deal never happened, and it’s unclear how far the talks went given tech giants constantly keep their M&A teams open to discussions. But it shows how serious Facebook is taking hardware, even if Portal and Oculus sales have been slow to date. Facebook declined to comment on the matter.

That could start to change next year, though, as flagship virtual reality experiences hit the market. I got a press preview of the upcoming Medal Of Honor first-person shooter that will launch on the Oculus Quest in 2020. An hour of playing the World War 2 game flew by, and it was one of the first VR games that felt like you could enjoy it week after week rather than being just a tech demo. Medal Of Honor could prove to be the killer app that convinces gamers they have to get a Quest.

Social Hardware

Facebook has also been working on hardware experiences for the enterprise. Facebook Workplace video calls can now run on Portal, with its smart camera auto-zooming to keep everyone in the board room in frame or focus on the action. The Information reports Facebook is also prototyping a VR videoconferencing system that Boz has been testing with his team. Facebook tells TechCrunch that Boz hosted two internal events where he videoconferenced through VR to about 100 of his team leaders using virtual Q&A software Facebook is prototyping internally. It’s hoping to learn what would be necessary to consistently hold meetings in VR.

The hardware initiatives meanwhile feed back into Facebook’s core ad business. It’s now using some data about what people do on their Oculus or Portal to target them with ads. From playing certain games to accessing kid-focused experiences to virtually teleporting to vacation destinations, there’s plenty of lucrative data for Facebook to potentially mine.

Facebook tells TechCrunch that Portal currently takes data like if you log in, make calls, or use certain features to inform ad targeting. For example, it could should you ads related to video calling if you do that a lot. With Oculus, if you connect your Facebook account, then data about apps you use or events you join could be used to tune its algorithms or target ads.

Facebook even wants to know what’s on our mind before we act on it. The Information reports that Facebook’s brain-computer interface hardware for controlling interfaces by employing sensors to recognize a word a user is thinking has been shrunk down. It’s gone from the size of a refridgerator to something hand-held but still far from ready for integration into a phone. Facebook tells TechCrunch it’s making progress, improving the word error rate significantly up the state-of-the-art research and expanding the dictionary of words that can be recognized. Facebook can now decode brain activity in real-time, and it’s working on an intermediary system for identifying single words as it pushes towards 100 word-per-minute brain typing.

Selling Oculus headsets, Portal screens, and mind-readers might never generate the billions in profits Facebook earns from its efficient ads business. But they could ensure the social network isn’t locked out of the next waves of computing. Whether those are fully immersive like virtual reality, convenient complements to our phones like smart displays, or minimally-invasive sensors, Facebook wants them to be social. If it can bring your friends along to your new gadgets, Facebook will find some way to squeeze out revenue while keeing these devices from making us more isolated and less human.

Facebook is building brain-computer interfaces for typing and skin-hearing

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[reneeacaseyfl]

Siggraph 2019 offers a sneak peek into what’s next for AR, VR, and CG

It’s hard to believe that the computer graphics conference Siggraph is celebrating its 46th birthday this year, but the annual event certainly doesn’t show any signs of middle age. Held this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Siggraph 2019 is all about the future of 2D and 3D digital worlds, attracting everyone from luminaries in pre-rendered CG to budding AR developers and VR artists.

Siggraph’s exhibition area opens today, adding to educational sessions that have been in progress since this weekend, and an “experiences” area that opened yesterday. I had the opportunity to attend the show’s official media preview and go hands-on with a bunch of this year’s most exciting innovations; here’s a photo tour of some of the best things I saw and tried.

Biggest wow moment: Il Divino – Sistine VR

There’s no shortage of sophisticated mixed reality hardware at Siggraph, but I was most impressed by a piece of software that really demonstrated VR’s educational and experiential potential. Christopher Evans, Paul Huston, Wes Bunn, and Elijah Dixson exhibited Il Divino: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR, an app that recreates the world-famous Sistine Chapel within the Unreal Engine, then lets you experience all of its artwork in ways that are impossible for tourists at the real site.

The app begins with a modestly impressive ground-level recreation of the Chapel. Epic’s Unreal Engine lets you see realistic marble barriers and ceramic floor tiles if you look closely, and you’ll have no trouble making out the individual paintings as you approach them, though you won’t confuse the faux wall curtains or other elements with reality. Even so, Il Divino’s developers provide an impressive audio and lightly visual guided tour through the space, making the most of an interface that’s largely about teleporting from place to place within a large box, and looking at art.

But everything changes when the app opens up access to a mechanical lifter and wooden scaffolding that elevate you to the Chapel’s ceiling. All of the sudden, you can control your up-close views of the paintings, and experience Michelangelo’s masterpiece Creation of Adam from the same perspective as the painter himself. The developers use VR — including your own fatigue after a comparatively brief session — to suggest how difficult the act of painting for hours (and months) on end must have been, while offering insights into the pacing and order of the works.

There are thousands of eye-melting VR experiences out there, and an equal number of dull “educational” ones. Il Divino succeeds because it’s hyper-realistic in a different way, using virtual reality to both simulate and go past the original experience, enabling a form of education that feels more open to personal exploration. It will be available for free later this year from SistineVR.com.

Cinema, group and individual

It wouldn’t be Siggraph without an exhibition of computer-generated movies, and the VR Theater at this year’s show is worth seeing. Fifty guests at a time are welcomed into the venue to see a collection of five different realtime CG shorts developed by separate studios, most notably including Disney’s happy cartoon A Kite’s Tale, Faber Courtial’s impressively realistic space odyssey 2nd Step, and Baobab’s charming interactive Bonfire. Below, Disney’s Bruce Wright welcomes early visitors to the VR Theater.

Once inside, viewers are seated in chairs with individual VR headsets, headphones, and two controllers, collectively experiencing the five shorts over a roughly one-hour session. A bank of high-end PCs sits in the center of the room, powering and synchronizing the experiences, though there’s little ongoing sense of collaboration between participants. Instead, it’s a VR theater where everyone’s watching pretty much the same thing, albeit from whatever angle a specific head is on, and — in some cases — with differences attributable to the shorts’ interactive elements.

In a smaller room elsewhere at Siggraph, New York-based Parallux is offering a more clearly shared experience. The company has developed a short story for group viewing that’s akin to watching a Broadway show with friends, but you could be watching it from anywhere.

Here, Parallux CEO Sebastian Herscher gestures towards a table surrounded by Magic Leap AR headsets, which seated viewers use to watch Mary and the Monster, a unique spin on Mary Shelley’s creation of the Frankenstein story. Strong voice acting and solid motion capture bring the animated experience to life within a diorama-like stage setting. Magic Leap wearers can use their controllers as magnifiers to zoom in on the individual actors, akin to opera glasses.

Each viewer sees the play-like performance appearing on the same table, and it’s synchronized across all of the headsets at once; it can also be watched using VR headsets, and can be scaled to fairly large local or remote audiences. This is a glimpse into what could be the future of plays, experienced holographically and from any seat in the house you prefer.

Apart from the examples above, most of the VR displays I saw at Siggraph were focused on individual experiences. One interesting exhibit, MIT Media Lab’s Deep Reality, used live heart rate, electrodermal, and brain activity monitoring to create an intensely personal relaxation and reflection experience. After someone lays down and dons a VR headset, Deep Reality uses “almost imperceptible light flickering, sound pulsations, and slow movements of underwater 3D creatures [to] reflect the internal state of the viewer.” Who wouldn’t love to kick back and relax to something so personally attenuated at home?

Next-generation AR eyewear

Two of Siggraph’s most notable hardware exhibits were Nvidia’s new prescription AR eyewear and foveated AR headset — both still in research stages, but available to test with prototypes. The prescription AR glasses offered a vision-corrected, see-through AR display solution, including a demo of how the lenses let viewers see optically sharp projections that appear to float within the real world.

In the prototype form, the glasses had small, clear ribbons that displayed projected virtual images such as colored bottles or an Nvidia logo in front of the lenses. They didn’t require cables, and were as lightweight as modern, inexpensive plastic glasses are today.

A separate demo showed off Nvidia’s work on a Foveated AR Display, which the company suggests will use gaze tracking to enable multi-layer depth in AR images. In the image below, you can see how a specific small gaze area tracked by the headset becomes sharper to your eye as the background becomes softer and less detailed.

Nvidia is touting the Foveated AR Display as a “dynamic fusion of foveal and peripheral display,” and releasing a research paper to accompany the project. It’s unclear when the technology will actually appear in a shipping product, but interesting to see Nvidia diving deeper into the AR world at this stage.

Next-generation haptics and immersion

Some of the other innovations at Siggraph are wild, if not crazy. For instance, Taipei Tech is showing off LiquidMask, a briefcase-sized face haptic solution that lets your face feel hot and cold liquid sensations in VR.

LiquidMask can deliver feedback and temperatures between 68 and 97 degrees Fahrenheit, potentially useful for underwater VR experiences — assuming, of course, that you’re willing to hook yourself up to something as large as this to experience those sensations.

Another company was taking steps towards a very different type of future with a gigantic prosthetic tail — something that one wouldn’t have expected to find at Siggraph. The tail can be used to augment someone’s existing sense of balance with a third stabilizing limb, or disrupt their balance for exercise or other purposes.

The prototype tail uses pneumatics, relying on a separate cabled air tank for motion, so there’s no need to worry about an imminent attack by The Lizard or Doctor Octopus. If it can be made portable (and quiet), it might wind up being useful for people with physical disabilities or motor limitations.

More small steps for Magic Leap

Magic Leap is offering two main demos at Siggraph’s “experience” area. Long lines were forming to try Mica, a demo of the company’s AI assistant, which presently can’t do much. Mica looks like a pixie-haired human woman, and at some point, will supposedly be able to speak with and guide headset wearers.

In the demo, you can look at her as she looks back at you, then silently follow her gestures to make an artistic collage together. It’s not particularly exciting stuff at this stage, but in a world where digital assistants such as Siri can spend years delivering hit-and-miss experiences, Magic Leap may well beat Apple to delivering a more compelling, fully-formed alternative.

Magic Leap’s other new demo, Undersea, lets users interact with a nearly photorealistic coral reef that appears within any room you choose, and a picture-sized portal window into the ocean on the wall. In addition to letting you walk around and view a piece of coral and small collection of fish, the demo lets you hold out your hand to generate bubbles and hold a fish in your palm, albeit with so-so tracking.

While the Siggraph demo is designed for a two-minute experience (and isn’t especially compelling), a full version of Undersea with more settings and depth has just been released for Magic Leap users. Regardless of how many or few of the $2,300 Magic Leap headsets have been sold, it’s clear at Siggraph that the company is working to actively push the platform forward.

Best of the rest

One of Siggraph’s greatest strengths is the diversity of computer-generated art it brings into focus for attendees. You mightn’t love all of it, but even some of the most basic concepts are thought-provoking.

John Wong’s RuShi interactive art exhibit above uses your birthdate and birth hour to generate, through some unspecified mechanism, a moving and colorful AI-based data flow that is presented on the central screen while prior users’ data appears on adjacent screens. It’s supposed to make you consider the amount of data about you that’s already being processed by AI in the real world, and whether that processing has any value.

A Siggraph-wide new focus on Adaptive Technology includes multiple Microsoft adaptive controllers, a touchscreen presentation of different adaptive technologies, and 11 sessions/talks on the subject.

Last but not least, David Shorey’s booth demonstrated the use of 3D printers to create real-world physical clothes that looked like they were straight out of video games and fantasy settings, including dragon scale-like fabrics that could be used for cosplay. His techniques yielded an incredible collection of different textures, surface treatments, and end products that look set to merge the worlds of CG and real-world fashion.

The future’s already here

My biggest takeaway from Siggraph 2019 is that the CG future some of us were expecting a decade or more ago is already here — if you know where to look. VR and AR aren’t ubiquitous at this point, but it’s obvious from this show that there are lots of smart people working to evolve CG from its early 2D roots into genuinely immersive, interactive 3D.

Attendees could spend nearly a week at Siggraph without fully grasping everything that’s underway with huge companies such as Disney and tiny groups of researchers across the world. Scenes like the one below, where a group of people are all sharing a computer-generated entertainment experience in VR, have become table stakes for VR as of 2019.

The question is “where does it go from here,” and there’s not just one good answer. If anything, Siggraph shows how many directions CG is heading in, and the reason is simple: hugely talented and creative people are now heavily invested in the futures of these technologies. At this point, the challenge is to polish and spread their ideas to as many people as possible, bringing what’s currently in the Los Angeles Convention Center out to everyone’s homes and public spaces.

Credit: Source link

The post Siggraph 2019 offers a sneak peek into what’s next for AR, VR, and CG appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/siggraph-2019-offers-a-sneak-peek-into-whats-next-for-ar-vr-and-cg/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=siggraph-2019-offers-a-sneak-peek-into-whats-next-for-ar-vr-and-cg from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186656747342

[velmaemyers88]

Siggraph 2019 offers a sneak peek into what’s next for AR, VR, and CG

It’s hard to believe that the computer graphics conference Siggraph is celebrating its 46th birthday this year, but the annual event certainly doesn’t show any signs of middle age. Held this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Siggraph 2019 is all about the future of 2D and 3D digital worlds, attracting everyone from luminaries in pre-rendered CG to budding AR developers and VR artists.

Siggraph’s exhibition area opens today, adding to educational sessions that have been in progress since this weekend, and an “experiences” area that opened yesterday. I had the opportunity to attend the show’s official media preview and go hands-on with a bunch of this year’s most exciting innovations; here’s a photo tour of some of the best things I saw and tried.

Biggest wow moment: Il Divino – Sistine VR

There’s no shortage of sophisticated mixed reality hardware at Siggraph, but I was most impressed by a piece of software that really demonstrated VR’s educational and experiential potential. Christopher Evans, Paul Huston, Wes Bunn, and Elijah Dixson exhibited Il Divino: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR, an app that recreates the world-famous Sistine Chapel within the Unreal Engine, then lets you experience all of its artwork in ways that are impossible for tourists at the real site.

The app begins with a modestly impressive ground-level recreation of the Chapel. Epic’s Unreal Engine lets you see realistic marble barriers and ceramic floor tiles if you look closely, and you’ll have no trouble making out the individual paintings as you approach them, though you won’t confuse the faux wall curtains or other elements with reality. Even so, Il Divino’s developers provide an impressive audio and lightly visual guided tour through the space, making the most of an interface that’s largely about teleporting from place to place within a large box, and looking at art.

But everything changes when the app opens up access to a mechanical lifter and wooden scaffolding that elevate you to the Chapel’s ceiling. All of the sudden, you can control your up-close views of the paintings, and experience Michelangelo’s masterpiece Creation of Adam from the same perspective as the painter himself. The developers use VR — including your own fatigue after a comparatively brief session — to suggest how difficult the act of painting for hours (and months) on end must have been, while offering insights into the pacing and order of the works.

There are thousands of eye-melting VR experiences out there, and an equal number of dull “educational” ones. Il Divino succeeds because it’s hyper-realistic in a different way, using virtual reality to both simulate and go past the original experience, enabling a form of education that feels more open to personal exploration. It will be available for free later this year from SistineVR.com.

Cinema, group and individual

It wouldn’t be Siggraph without an exhibition of computer-generated movies, and the VR Theater at this year’s show is worth seeing. Fifty guests at a time are welcomed into the venue to see a collection of five different realtime CG shorts developed by separate studios, most notably including Disney’s happy cartoon A Kite’s Tale, Faber Courtial’s impressively realistic space odyssey 2nd Step, and Baobab’s charming interactive Bonfire. Below, Disney’s Bruce Wright welcomes early visitors to the VR Theater.

Once inside, viewers are seated in chairs with individual VR headsets, headphones, and two controllers, collectively experiencing the five shorts over a roughly one-hour session. A bank of high-end PCs sits in the center of the room, powering and synchronizing the experiences, though there’s little ongoing sense of collaboration between participants. Instead, it’s a VR theater where everyone’s watching pretty much the same thing, albeit from whatever angle a specific head is on, and — in some cases — with differences attributable to the shorts’ interactive elements.

In a smaller room elsewhere at Siggraph, New York-based Parallux is offering a more clearly shared experience. The company has developed a short story for group viewing that’s akin to watching a Broadway show with friends, but you could be watching it from anywhere.

Here, Parallux CEO Sebastian Herscher gestures towards a table surrounded by Magic Leap AR headsets, which seated viewers use to watch Mary and the Monster, a unique spin on Mary Shelley’s creation of the Frankenstein story. Strong voice acting and solid motion capture bring the animated experience to life within a diorama-like stage setting. Magic Leap wearers can use their controllers as magnifiers to zoom in on the individual actors, akin to opera glasses.

Each viewer sees the play-like performance appearing on the same table, and it’s synchronized across all of the headsets at once; it can also be watched using VR headsets, and can be scaled to fairly large local or remote audiences. This is a glimpse into what could be the future of plays, experienced holographically and from any seat in the house you prefer.

Apart from the examples above, most of the VR displays I saw at Siggraph were focused on individual experiences. One interesting exhibit, MIT Media Lab’s Deep Reality, used live heart rate, electrodermal, and brain activity monitoring to create an intensely personal relaxation and reflection experience. After someone lays down and dons a VR headset, Deep Reality uses “almost imperceptible light flickering, sound pulsations, and slow movements of underwater 3D creatures [to] reflect the internal state of the viewer.” Who wouldn’t love to kick back and relax to something so personally attenuated at home?

Next-generation AR eyewear

Two of Siggraph’s most notable hardware exhibits were Nvidia’s new prescription AR eyewear and foveated AR headset — both still in research stages, but available to test with prototypes. The prescription AR glasses offered a vision-corrected, see-through AR display solution, including a demo of how the lenses let viewers see optically sharp projections that appear to float within the real world.

In the prototype form, the glasses had small, clear ribbons that displayed projected virtual images such as colored bottles or an Nvidia logo in front of the lenses. They didn’t require cables, and were as lightweight as modern, inexpensive plastic glasses are today.

A separate demo showed off Nvidia’s work on a Foveated AR Display, which the company suggests will use gaze tracking to enable multi-layer depth in AR images. In the image below, you can see how a specific small gaze area tracked by the headset becomes sharper to your eye as the background becomes softer and less detailed.

Nvidia is touting the Foveated AR Display as a “dynamic fusion of foveal and peripheral display,” and releasing a research paper to accompany the project. It’s unclear when the technology will actually appear in a shipping product, but interesting to see Nvidia diving deeper into the AR world at this stage.

Next-generation haptics and immersion

Some of the other innovations at Siggraph are wild, if not crazy. For instance, Taipei Tech is showing off LiquidMask, a briefcase-sized face haptic solution that lets your face feel hot and cold liquid sensations in VR.

LiquidMask can deliver feedback and temperatures between 68 and 97 degrees Fahrenheit, potentially useful for underwater VR experiences — assuming, of course, that you’re willing to hook yourself up to something as large as this to experience those sensations.

Another company was taking steps towards a very different type of future with a gigantic prosthetic tail — something that one wouldn’t have expected to find at Siggraph. The tail can be used to augment someone’s existing sense of balance with a third stabilizing limb, or disrupt their balance for exercise or other purposes.

The prototype tail uses pneumatics, relying on a separate cabled air tank for motion, so there’s no need to worry about an imminent attack by The Lizard or Doctor Octopus. If it can be made portable (and quiet), it might wind up being useful for people with physical disabilities or motor limitations.

More small steps for Magic Leap

Magic Leap is offering two main demos at Siggraph’s “experience” area. Long lines were forming to try Mica, a demo of the company’s AI assistant, which presently can’t do much. Mica looks like a pixie-haired human woman, and at some point, will supposedly be able to speak with and guide headset wearers.

In the demo, you can look at her as she looks back at you, then silently follow her gestures to make an artistic collage together. It’s not particularly exciting stuff at this stage, but in a world where digital assistants such as Siri can spend years delivering hit-and-miss experiences, Magic Leap may well beat Apple to delivering a more compelling, fully-formed alternative.

Magic Leap’s other new demo, Undersea, lets users interact with a nearly photorealistic coral reef that appears within any room you choose, and a picture-sized portal window into the ocean on the wall. In addition to letting you walk around and view a piece of coral and small collection of fish, the demo lets you hold out your hand to generate bubbles and hold a fish in your palm, albeit with so-so tracking.

While the Siggraph demo is designed for a two-minute experience (and isn’t especially compelling), a full version of Undersea with more settings and depth has just been released for Magic Leap users. Regardless of how many or few of the $2,300 Magic Leap headsets have been sold, it’s clear at Siggraph that the company is working to actively push the platform forward.

Best of the rest

One of Siggraph’s greatest strengths is the diversity of computer-generated art it brings into focus for attendees. You mightn’t love all of it, but even some of the most basic concepts are thought-provoking.

John Wong’s RuShi interactive art exhibit above uses your birthdate and birth hour to generate, through some unspecified mechanism, a moving and colorful AI-based data flow that is presented on the central screen while prior users’ data appears on adjacent screens. It’s supposed to make you consider the amount of data about you that’s already being processed by AI in the real world, and whether that processing has any value.

A Siggraph-wide new focus on Adaptive Technology includes multiple Microsoft adaptive controllers, a touchscreen presentation of different adaptive technologies, and 11 sessions/talks on the subject.

Last but not least, David Shorey’s booth demonstrated the use of 3D printers to create real-world physical clothes that looked like they were straight out of video games and fantasy settings, including dragon scale-like fabrics that could be used for cosplay. His techniques yielded an incredible collection of different textures, surface treatments, and end products that look set to merge the worlds of CG and real-world fashion.

The future’s already here

My biggest takeaway from Siggraph 2019 is that the CG future some of us were expecting a decade or more ago is already here — if you know where to look. VR and AR aren’t ubiquitous at this point, but it’s obvious from this show that there are lots of smart people working to evolve CG from its early 2D roots into genuinely immersive, interactive 3D.

Attendees could spend nearly a week at Siggraph without fully grasping everything that’s underway with huge companies such as Disney and tiny groups of researchers across the world. Scenes like the one below, where a group of people are all sharing a computer-generated entertainment experience in VR, have become table stakes for VR as of 2019.

The question is “where does it go from here,” and there’s not just one good answer. If anything, Siggraph shows how many directions CG is heading in, and the reason is simple: hugely talented and creative people are now heavily invested in the futures of these technologies. At this point, the challenge is to polish and spread their ideas to as many people as possible, bringing what’s currently in the Los Angeles Convention Center out to everyone’s homes and public spaces.

Credit: Source link

The post Siggraph 2019 offers a sneak peek into what’s next for AR, VR, and CG appeared first on WeeklyReviewer.

from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.com/siggraph-2019-offers-a-sneak-peek-into-whats-next-for-ar-vr-and-cg/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=siggraph-2019-offers-a-sneak-peek-into-whats-next-for-ar-vr-and-cg from WeeklyReviewer https://weeklyreviewer.tumblr.com/post/186656747342

[weeklyreviewer]

Siggraph 2019 offers a sneak peek into what’s next for AR, VR, and CG

It’s hard to believe that the computer graphics conference Siggraph is celebrating its 46th birthday this year, but the annual event certainly doesn’t show any signs of middle age. Held this week at the Los Angeles Convention Center, Siggraph 2019 is all about the future of 2D and 3D digital worlds, attracting everyone from luminaries in pre-rendered CG to budding AR developers and VR artists.

Siggraph’s exhibition area opens today, adding to educational sessions that have been in progress since this weekend, and an “experiences” area that opened yesterday. I had the opportunity to attend the show’s official media preview and go hands-on with a bunch of this year’s most exciting innovations; here’s a photo tour of some of the best things I saw and tried.

Biggest wow moment: Il Divino – Sistine VR

There’s no shortage of sophisticated mixed reality hardware at Siggraph, but I was most impressed by a piece of software that really demonstrated VR’s educational and experiential potential. Christopher Evans, Paul Huston, Wes Bunn, and Elijah Dixson exhibited Il Divino: Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling in VR, an app that recreates the world-famous Sistine Chapel within the Unreal Engine, then lets you experience all of its artwork in ways that are impossible for tourists at the real site.

The app begins with a modestly impressive ground-level recreation of the Chapel. Epic’s Unreal Engine lets you see realistic marble barriers and ceramic floor tiles if you look closely, and you’ll have no trouble making out the individual paintings as you approach them, though you won’t confuse the faux wall curtains or other elements with reality. Even so, Il Divino’s developers provide an impressive audio and lightly visual guided tour through the space, making the most of an interface that’s largely about teleporting from place to place within a large box, and looking at art.

But everything changes when the app opens up access to a mechanical lifter and wooden scaffolding that elevate you to the Chapel’s ceiling. All of the sudden, you can control your up-close views of the paintings, and experience Michelangelo’s masterpiece Creation of Adam from the same perspective as the painter himself. The developers use VR — including your own fatigue after a comparatively brief session — to suggest how difficult the act of painting for hours (and months) on end must have been, while offering insights into the pacing and order of the works.

There are thousands of eye-melting VR experiences out there, and an equal number of dull “educational” ones. Il Divino succeeds because it’s hyper-realistic in a different way, using virtual reality to both simulate and go past the original experience, enabling a form of education that feels more open to personal exploration. It will be available for free later this year from SistineVR.com.

Cinema, group and individual

It wouldn’t be Siggraph without an exhibition of computer-generated movies, and the VR Theater at this year’s show is worth seeing. Fifty guests at a time are welcomed into the venue to see a collection of five different realtime CG shorts developed by separate studios, most notably including Disney’s happy cartoon A Kite’s Tale, Faber Courtial’s impressively realistic space odyssey 2nd Step, and Baobab’s charming interactive Bonfire. Below, Disney’s Bruce Wright welcomes early visitors to the VR Theater.

Once inside, viewers are seated in chairs with individual VR headsets, headphones, and two controllers, collectively experiencing the five shorts over a roughly one-hour session. A bank of high-end PCs sits in the center of the room, powering and synchronizing the experiences, though there’s little ongoing sense of collaboration between participants. Instead, it’s a VR theater where everyone’s watching pretty much the same thing, albeit from whatever angle a specific head is on, and — in some cases — with differences attributable to the shorts’ interactive elements.

In a smaller room elsewhere at Siggraph, New York-based Parallux is offering a more clearly shared experience. The company has developed a short story for group viewing that’s akin to watching a Broadway show with friends, but you could be watching it from anywhere.

Here, Parallux CEO Sebastian Herscher gestures towards a table surrounded by Magic Leap AR headsets, which seated viewers use to watch Mary and the Monster, a unique spin on Mary Shelley’s creation of the Frankenstein story. Strong voice acting and solid motion capture bring the animated experience to life within a diorama-like stage setting. Magic Leap wearers can use their controllers as magnifiers to zoom in on the individual actors, akin to opera glasses.

Each viewer sees the play-like performance appearing on the same table, and it’s synchronized across all of the headsets at once; it can also be watched using VR headsets, and can be scaled to fairly large local or remote audiences. This is a glimpse into what could be the future of plays, experienced holographically and from any seat in the house you prefer.

Apart from the examples above, most of the VR displays I saw at Siggraph were focused on individual experiences. One interesting exhibit, MIT Media Lab’s Deep Reality, used live heart rate, electrodermal, and brain activity monitoring to create an intensely personal relaxation and reflection experience. After someone lays down and dons a VR headset, Deep Reality uses “almost imperceptible light flickering, sound pulsations, and slow movements of underwater 3D creatures [to] reflect the internal state of the viewer.” Who wouldn’t love to kick back and relax to something so personally attenuated at home?

Next-generation AR eyewear

Two of Siggraph’s most notable hardware exhibits were Nvidia’s new prescription AR eyewear and foveated AR headset — both still in research stages, but available to test with prototypes. The prescription AR glasses offered a vision-corrected, see-through AR display solution, including a demo of how the lenses let viewers see optically sharp projections that appear to float within the real world.

In the prototype form, the glasses had small, clear ribbons that displayed projected virtual images such as colored bottles or an Nvidia logo in front of the lenses. They didn’t require cables, and were as lightweight as modern, inexpensive plastic glasses are today.

A separate demo showed off Nvidia’s work on a Foveated AR Display, which the company suggests will use gaze tracking to enable multi-layer depth in AR images. In the image below, you can see how a specific small gaze area tracked by the headset becomes sharper to your eye as the background becomes softer and less detailed.

Nvidia is touting the Foveated AR Display as a “dynamic fusion of foveal and peripheral display,” and releasing a research paper to accompany the project. It’s unclear when the technology will actually appear in a shipping product, but interesting to see Nvidia diving deeper into the AR world at this stage.

Next-generation haptics and immersion

Some of the other innovations at Siggraph are wild, if not crazy. For instance, Taipei Tech is showing off LiquidMask, a briefcase-sized face haptic solution that lets your face feel hot and cold liquid sensations in VR.

LiquidMask can deliver feedback and temperatures between 68 and 97 degrees Fahrenheit, potentially useful for underwater VR experiences — assuming, of course, that you’re willing to hook yourself up to something as large as this to experience those sensations.

Another company was taking steps towards a very different type of future with a gigantic prosthetic tail — something that one wouldn’t have expected to find at Siggraph. The tail can be used to augment someone’s existing sense of balance with a third stabilizing limb, or disrupt their balance for exercise or other purposes.

The prototype tail uses pneumatics, relying on a separate cabled air tank for motion, so there’s no need to worry about an imminent attack by The Lizard or Doctor Octopus. If it can be made portable (and quiet), it might wind up being useful for people with physical disabilities or motor limitations.

More small steps for Magic Leap

Magic Leap is offering two main demos at Siggraph’s “experience” area. Long lines were forming to try Mica, a demo of the company’s AI assistant, which presently can’t do much. Mica looks like a pixie-haired human woman, and at some point, will supposedly be able to speak with and guide headset wearers.

In the demo, you can look at her as she looks back at you, then silently follow her gestures to make an artistic collage together. It’s not particularly exciting stuff at this stage, but in a world where digital assistants such as Siri can spend years delivering hit-and-miss experiences, Magic Leap may well beat Apple to delivering a more compelling, fully-formed alternative.

Magic Leap’s other new demo, Undersea, lets users interact with a nearly photorealistic coral reef that appears within any room you choose, and a picture-sized portal window into the ocean on the wall. In addition to letting you walk around and view a piece of coral and small collection of fish, the demo lets you hold out your hand to generate bubbles and hold a fish in your palm, albeit with so-so tracking.

While the Siggraph demo is designed for a two-minute experience (and isn’t especially compelling), a full version of Undersea with more settings and depth has just been released for Magic Leap users. Regardless of how many or few of the $2,300 Magic Leap headsets have been sold, it’s clear at Siggraph that the company is working to actively push the platform forward.

Best of the rest

One of Siggraph’s greatest strengths is the diversity of computer-generated art it brings into focus for attendees. You mightn’t love all of it, but even some of the most basic concepts are thought-provoking.

John Wong’s RuShi interactive art exhibit above uses your birthdate and birth hour to generate, through some unspecified mechanism, a moving and colorful AI-based data flow that is presented on the central screen while prior users’ data appears on adjacent screens. It’s supposed to make you consider the amount of data about you that’s already being processed by AI in the real world, and whether that processing has any value.

A Siggraph-wide new focus on Adaptive Technology includes multiple Microsoft adaptive controllers, a touchscreen presentation of different adaptive technologies, and 11 sessions/talks on the subject.

Last but not least, David Shorey’s booth demonstrated the use of 3D printers to create real-world physical clothes that looked like they were straight out of video games and fantasy settings, including dragon scale-like fabrics that could be used for cosplay. His techniques yielded an incredible collection of different textures, surface treatments, and end products that look set to merge the worlds of CG and real-world fashion.

The future’s already here

My biggest takeaway from Siggraph 2019 is that the CG future some of us were expecting a decade or more ago is already here — if you know where to look. VR and AR aren’t ubiquitous at this point, but it’s obvious from this show that there are lots of smart people working to evolve CG from its early 2D roots into genuinely immersive, interactive 3D.

Attendees could spend nearly a week at Siggraph without fully grasping everything that’s underway with huge companies such as Disney and tiny groups of researchers across the world. Scenes like the one below, where a group of people are all sharing a computer-generated entertainment experience in VR, have become table stakes for VR as of 2019.

The question is “where does it go from here,” and there’s not just one good answer. If anything, Siggraph shows how many directions CG is heading in, and the reason is simple: hugely talented and creative people are now heavily invested in the futures of these technologies. At this point, the challenge is to polish and spread their ideas to as many people as possible, bringing what’s currently in the Los Angeles Convention Center out to everyone’s homes and public spaces.

Credit: Source link

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[symbianosgames]

The new generation of virtual reality technology promises freedom from your immediate surroundings, allowing you to explore digital worlds with a degree of fidelity never before possible.

But for all the freedom that we imagine VR can provide, there’s still a significant confining factor: the amount of real-life physical space around you. You can't just walk around your house with a headset on and experience a VR world, at least not yet. Devs have been left to figure out how to allow players to move greater distances within a VR space, lest players be limited to a single virtual room at a time.

This locomotion problem is one that was immediately recognized by game developers who are making certain types of room-scale VR games, particularly ones that require moving across distances greater than the size of one room.

The solution for many VR devs today is a teleportation mechanic; select a point off in the distance and reappear at that point. But there are many different approaches to that solution, and there are unique locomotion problems that developers had to solve depending on the needs of their respective games.

Developers of games including Budget Cuts, Bullet Train, Defense Grid 2 Enhanced VR Edition and others (not all games below are room-scale) each answered a few questions on how their games expand the virtual space via teleportation and other kinds of locomotion mechanics.

How teleportation works in Budget Cuts

In Budget Cuts, our long-range locomotion system comes from a device known as the translocator. You aim somewhere in the level, and fire a small beacon. When this beacon lands, it opens up a portal in your hand. This portal can be used to see where the beacon is located, as if you were standing there. When you press a button on the controller, the portal wraps around your body, and you are then standing at the new location.

Prototyping and iteration

We started out just doing straight-up teleportation by pointing and clicking, and immediately putting the player in the new location. While it works well and doesn't cause any motion sickness at all, it feels a bit jarring. There's no smooth transition at all, so we wanted to make it so. The portal just came naturally after that.

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Why the final design

Having a portal gives you that smooth transition, without any nauseating movement, while also giving players a chance to see where they'll end up before they teleport.

On teleportation mechanic and room-scale VR

I think teleportation is one of those things that's not going away anytime soon. Accelerating players in VR is sickness-inducing, so there has to be movement without acceleration, or movement within room-scale. Anything else is going to make a certain portion of your playerbase feel sick playing your game, which is bad not only for your game, but also VR as a whole. There will be a lot of games designed like Job Simulator, where moving longer distances is simply not something you do, and games like our own, using teleportation.

How teleportation works in Bullet Train

Our teleportation mechanic works by having the player press a button, which activates your teleporter. We also put the world into slow motion at the same time, which gives the player a bit of time to think if the action is too hectic.

When the teleporter is active, a beam extends from your controller, which you can then point at specific locations around the level, or at the enemies themselves. When you release the button, you blink to the new location, complete with a sound effect, and a flash to white. We also add a trail effect leading back to where you came from to orient the player.

Prototyping and iteration

We arrived at teleportation after realizing that we desperately needed a way to move around the environment.

Our very first idea was to do something a bit like the Showdown demo, where you're moving through the scene at a constant rate, and enemies are running towards you. I had a prototype where you could steal a night stick off the enemies' belt as you passed by them, and beat them with it. It was pretty cool, but as soon as you passed the enemy, players had a tendency to turn around to hit or shoot them, and that would cause the motion controllers to lose tracking because the player’s body got in the way of the cameras. Doh!

That was one of our key constraints for the Bullet Train demo, so we had to try and keep the player facing in one direction as much as possible. I'd seen a few other games that were playing with teleportation, and I knew I wanted to give it a shot. To try and keep the player facing forward in real life, we set up the teleporter locations around the perimeter of the level, always facing inward, so that the player didn't need to turn around to shoot. The action was usually in the center of the map, so after the player teleported, they were automatically facing the action.

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Why the final design

Our current design fulfilled the requirement of keeping the player facing forward for the most part. It was pretty easy to learn and the player didn't need to turn around most of the time, but it came with some trade-offs. 

Re-orienting the player when they teleport can tend to be a little disorienting, particularly if you're not sure which way you're going to be facing when you arrive. Most people got it with a little practice, but we still need to do more work at communicating your destination orientation visually. Another downside is that there is a very limited amount of positions that you can teleport to because they all have to face the action.

I've done some prototypes with a more "free-range" teleportation style, but for the purposes of the Bullet Train demo, it was too much to learn in such a short (6 minute) session. For many people, this was their first time in VR, and we’re already throwing a lot at you! This prototype was a "aim where you want to go" style teleporter, which worked fairly well, but had one slightly unexpected downside compared to the fixed-teleported method: from normal hand-height, it's really hard to steadily aim at a point on the ground any more than a few meters away while orienting, because of the limitations of your wrist. Recently, I saw the Budget Cuts trailer (above), and I think the projectile aiming method could help alleviate that quite well.

On teleportation mechanic and room-scale VR

I can't wait to see how other developers approach this topic. I think full 360-degree hand tracking is going to be really important to making fully immersive games. It's tough to ask a player to always remember which way they're facing when the rest of the experience is so engaging!

How teleportation works in Arizona Sunshine

Before the player can move to a next location, he has to be eligible to do so. The eligibility check is varying for each location, but mostly comes down to: "am I safe to move." If met, we display a shootable button near the next location. Once shot, the screen fades to black rapidly, the player is teleported to the next location and the screen fades in again.

Prototyping and iteration

Initially we didn't consider teleportation as the way to move in Arizona. We have been playing with ideas ranging from free movement as in classic FPS' to being on the back of a pickup truck which drives through the game world. Free movement was quickly discarded as the nausea rate was high. We later moved away from the mobile design as well because rapid moving detailed environments also induced nausea.  

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Why the final design

Teleportation does not induce nausea in comparison to the other options. Also, we can design a player space around the room scale and keep non-interactable uninteresting stuff outside of the reachable area of the player. This way we can make the world feel vast and interesting when in reality only a small portion of the world is playable.

On teleportation mechanic and room-scale VR

There are two distinct ways of handling teleportation in VR being used right now. Our method is to enforce the offset position from the center of the player's room when moving to another location. The locations are positioned on the center of the player's room setup. This way, if a player is on the edge of his room, he will be on the edge of his location.

Another way is to not enforce this offset, but to always center the player on the location he is teleporting to. This means the player will have varying degrees of freedom for movement depending on where he was standing in his room before the move. This can be a good alternative for faster-paced teleportation where precision is key, but would not be ideal for Arizona.

How teleportation works in Defense Grid 2 VR

To teleport from "God View" to "Tower View" in Defense Grid 2 VR Enhanced Edition, the player looks at a location on the map and presses a button to teleport there. To keep the player comfortable, we always do a quick fade to black before moving the player to a new location or changing their scale. In our game, we also avoid rotating the player during teleportation to prevent them from losing their frame of reference. - Mike Smith, programmer

God View

Prototyping and iteration

We did most of our work on making it comfortable. We tried certain fades—fades to white, fades to blacks, certain speeds of fades, and it’s amazing how things can go from annoying to comfortable, just with small tweaks. We ended up tweaking the way we fade to black, and the way we fade back in so that it seems natural and doesn’t take too long, but doesn’t go so fast that it’s jarring. There’s a lot of iteration in that…The speed and time with which you fade down, the scale [of the area around you after you teleport], all make a difference.

The tower view came from a programmer who said, "I think I can do that," and he just put it in thinking everyone was going to hate this, but we all saw it and thought it was really cool. Then we wanted to figure out how to play the game from this view, and that’s where a lot of the work ended up being. - Jeff Pobst, CEO

Tower View

Why the final design

We really wanted to stick to the fact that you don’t get sick in our game. Who wants to buy an entertainment experience that has a percent of a chance of making you ill? I don’t think many people. We wanted to be that really solid entertainment experience that’s fun, great tower defense, strategy, puzzle, and it won’t make you sick. We’ve really held onto that…This game will not make you sick! - Jeff Pobst, CEO

How locomotion works in Land’s End

In Land's End you move around the world at walking pace, in a straight line between pre-defined points. Land's End is controlled entirely with head direction so you select where to move just by looking at a marker. We never actually teleport the player because we found it disrupts your sense of direction and immersion.

Prototyping and iteration

Land's End is a game about exploration and sense of place so finding a comfortable, immersive motion mechanic was the first thing we did. It took months of iteration and user-testing to get there, and the mechanic changed a lot over that time. Critically, we learned that the movement mechanic was intrinsically linked with the game design -- they both had to evolve in balance with each other. This seems to be a standard thing in VR -- you can't force the player experience to fit your design, you have to alter your design to fit what works well for the player.

[embedded content]

Why the final design

Our priority was always to find a way of moving around that was comfortable and immersive so we quickly discarded teleportation (too disruptive) and traditional first-person gamepad control (too nauseating and required blindfold controller skillz). That left us with continuous straight-line movement and the challenge of how to make it feel natural. It took a long time to get it right but I think it was worth it. We've ended up with a mechanic that not only is really comfortable, even for the most sensitive players, but also feels incredibly natural so that players use it almost subconsciously. I think that's the sign of great design -- that users don't even notice it.

On locomotion mechanics and room-scale VR

We know that fast unpredictable movement will make the majority of VR users feel sick, so we need to come up with new ways to move players around in VR. For me, exploring new worlds is the most exciting part of VR and so it's incredibly important that we get it right. Land's End gets away with continuous movement because the whole game is designed around a relatively slow pace of play, but for larger environments or faster movement I don't see any alternative to using teleportation. Budget Cuts is the first implementation I've seen which could have a real chance of not only solving the problem but also opening up whole new avenues we've never thought of before. This is why VR is so exciting!

How teleportation works in The Gallery

The Gallery uses a system we call "Blink," that allows you to travel to wherever you’re looking, within a maximum distance. It also allows you to rotate your play volume, which can be useful when trying to fit multiple interactions into your room.

Prototyping and iteration

Previously we used regular analog stick movement, but when Valve showed us the Vive it became clear that traditional locomotion wasn’t the right way to go anymore. We spent about a week prototyping five different ideas to solve the problem, and teleportation was the clear winner. Valve had shown a similar system to us in the past, so we used those ideas in conjunction with our own to create a mechanic that worked well for The Gallery. The end result was something that allowed easy and comfortable traversal of the game world, without making you feel like a superhero.

[embedded content]

Why the final design

The Gallery is a slow-paced exploration game, so the most important thing was that the locomotion was simple and transparent, and didn’t distract from the atmosphere of the game world. Interestingly, Myst used a similar mechanic to sidestep a different set of technical constraints way back in the early 90’s, and since that game was a huge inspiration for our project, teleportation ended up feeling very natural and even added to the nostalgia we were trying to evoke.

It was understood when playing Myst that you weren’t actually teleporting around the world. It was a sort of cinematic edit, rather than a superpower. Blink is designed to have that same feel, which is why we have footfall audio, and subtle timing differences depending on the distance you travel.

On teleportation mechanics and room-scale VR

I think we’re all just scratching the surface of what can be done here. The fact that there are already a number of good solutions less than a year after the Vive reveal is a very good sign. Room-scale VR games need to conform their design to these mechanics, however. Focusing on small scale detail rather than expansive open worlds seems to be a good starting point.

[aurelliocheek]

20 Years HandyGames: The Interview

Happy Anniversary! German developer and publisher HandyGames exists now for 20 years. We talk to the founders, CEOs and brothers Markus and Christopher Kassulke.

HandyGames is one of the most traditional game developers in Germany. And one of the most successful: HandyGames has published more than 200 games to date, which together have resulted in hundreds of ­millions of downloads.

Founded 2000 by the brothers ­Markus and Christopher Kassulke and their business partner Udo Bausewein in north Bavarian university city of Würzburg, HandyGames was specialized in the ­early years – the company name suggests it – in games for mobile phones. In 2003 ­HandyGames had a big hit with the strategy game Townsmen. The series continues to thrill game fans worldwide to this day.

In 2015 HandyGames won three important awards at the DEP – „Best Studio“, „Best Mobile Game“ and „Best Social Engagement“.

Since 2018 HandyGames is part of the THQ Nordic and Embracer Group family and operates as an international publisher for mid-sized projects and developers for a worldwide audience.

HandyGames always strive for gameplay innovation. The company received the German Developer Award as “Best German Game Studio” in 2015, produced and published award-winning games of ­virtually every video gaming genre imaginable for a diverse range of audiences and gameplay styles. One example is “Townsmen VR” which was awarded with the German Games Award 2018 in the category “Best Game Design”. Now located in Giebelstadt, a tiny town close to Würzburg, ­HandyGames is a proud part of the ­German and European gaming scene.

How HandyGames started 20 years ago, how the two brothers get along with each other in everyday life, how it went with the takeover by THQ Nordic, which decisions they regret afterwards and much more we discuss in an interview with Markus and Christopher Kassulke. And we show a lot of cool photos from 20 years of HandyGames!

An idol and a close friend – “Lord British” Richard Garriott and Lars Janssen ­during their studio visit in 2018.

Making Games: Tell us how it all started 20 years ago with HandyGames? Markus Kassulke: Our history in the games industry begins a little before HandyGames. Christopher and I worked as freelancers developing cheat software and add-ons for games like Sim City or Age of Empires. At some point, we wanted to make our own games. We didn’t have a lot of money, so the mobile phone was a good platform. On Christophers old Nokia, which is still in the showcase here, you could only play Snake, and we thought we could do better. We had a buddy in Romania who wrote us an emulator and some minigame demos. We presented it to Siemens in Munich, and a few days later we got the confirmation. So we had to start the company because Siemens didn’t want to sign a contract with just a few freelancers for software that would be used on millions of mobile phones. We brought Udo Bausewein into the company so that we had someone with a business background – who looked a bit more serious than the two of us with long hair. At that time, it was tough to find programmers, so we looked for people at the University of Würzburg who were interested in programming games on beer benches and old chairs in a noisy office above the Norma supermarket. Startup at its best.

Christoper Kassulke: Unfortunately without venture capital, because back then there were no venture capitalists who believed in games. Especially when the dotcom ­bubble burst.

Markus: When we moved into our office in Giebelstadt in 2004, we already had 20-25 people. Then came the mobile internet, the first Ericssons with colour display and the Nokia 7650. The time came when our business partners were no longer mobile phone manufacturers, but the network operators who built portals for mobile games.

Christopher: We have always been globally positioned, and in some cases have worked with up to 250 network operators worldwide. Today, with the App Store and the Google Play Store being the only ones left, you can’t even imagine that.

With Townsmen VR the team enters new markets with a well known spin-off of its build-up strategy brand.

You must have done many things right in the last 20 years, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be here today. But are there any decisions you regret today? Markus: Not having bought Apple shares (laughs).

Christopher: Apple is the right keyword, because we were one of the few developers who didn’t jump on the Apple bandwagon immediately. We were used to working with T-Mobile, Vodafone and Co. and then a young wild man named Steve Jobs comes and says, I don’t give a shit about the network providers, I’m turning everything upside down. A lot of people laughed at that time, including the CEO of Nokia. In the end, we supported iOS too late, but you learn from it. Since then, we have always been very open to new platforms and technologies. What we also regret today is having relied on a single partner for too long. When Siemens was sold to BenQ and shortly afterwards closed its mobile department, this was, of course, a problem for us, since at that time about 60 percent of the workforce was working on games for ­Siemens devices.

Markus: You are always smarter afterwards. Who would have thought at that time that Nokia, with a market share of 64%, would disappear from the market a few years later because they started building smartphones much too late? I like the way you see supposed mistakes in the US. When you’ve failed your third company, you are still the hero when you try it for the fourth time. And here in Germany, it’s like “Oh God, he already went bankrupt with his company once.”

A milestone in mobile gaming history: the Xperia Play from Sony Ericsson.

Over the years, you may come to a point where you ask yourself whether you want to do business as usual or change, take the next step. Have you ever had such situations?  Christopher: Such situations were and are permanent. I can’t remember a single time we said let’s just keep going.

Markus: The mobile market was and is simply too fast-moving for that. First, there were the embedded games on mobile phones, then came the download games via network operators, then the smartphones. Then people suddenly didn’t want to spend money on games anymore, so you had to be prepared for in-app purchases, which has since changed again. We had to constantly consider whether the current orientation was still up to date. The biggest step, of course, was to sell HandyGames to THQ Nordic in 2018.

Christopher: We always wanted to publish, not only for smartphones but also for PC and console. We could have afforded to make 3 or 4 games at the same time, but not nearly as many as we now have in our portfolio. For that, you need a completely different backing than what we were used to. You need access to the capital market. That is limited for a German publisher. That’s why we decided to sell ­HandyGames.

Markus: A major decision was to leave the mobile sector long before the takeover. At that time, the Ouya console was announced, which in retrospect was a huge flop. But when we saw the mobile games on the big TV for the first time, we thought “Gee, that doesn’t look too bad”. And if that looks good, why should HandyGames doesn’t make games for the big consoles?

Having fun even with lawyers like Kai Bodensiek during the shooting of „Talk in der Alm“.

You mentioned the takeover by THQ ­Nordic and the Embracer Group. How did they convince you? Markus: In the past 20 years, we had countless discussions with companies who wanted to buy us. But we were the stubborn Franconians and thought about it: What will they do with us?

Christopher: Is that an added value for us, also for our colleagues? When you have been working together for such a long time and watch the children grow up, you approach things differently than a CEO of a stock company. You think in the long term.

Markus: We were simply looking for a partner who fits in with us, and we don’t regret taking this step. The Embracer Group is worth 3 billion euros, the number 2 in the European market. We are now over 60 people and are financing even more people in external studios worldwide. That’s not a bad figure for a German publisher, and we feel a responsibility to the people.

Christopher: Finally, we want to celebrate a few more anniversaries.

Where do you see HandyGames in 5 to 10 years? Markus: Difficult question. What I can say: HandyGames will be bigger, have more projects. But we want to grow organically. We have no growth plan. We want to continue to be a courageous publisher, but there will be no kamikaze actions from us.

A nice place to work: the famous „Alm“.

How difficult is it to lure employees to ­Giebelstadt, in the Franconian province? Christopher: It is not very difficult. Of course, we can’t compete with a Berlin scene here, but we are a suburb of Würzburg, and the city offers everything you need. At the end of the day, you have to feel comfortable, and we want to achieve that by creating a familiar atmosphere.

Markus: We have no problems finding people, quite the opposite. We are very picky, the benchmark is high. Our team is getting better and better, and I’m not only talking about skills, but also human qualities. The team spirit, motivating each other, is ­essential to us. It’s certainly not easy to get someone from Berlin or Hamburg to the Franconian province. But for someone from France or Spain, Würzburg is perfect for studying, by far not as expensive as Munich. And we are a very cosmopolitan, international company.

Show responsibility! Donating PCs to local schools.

Brothers do not always get along. How harmonious is your cooperation? Christopher: We have a rule: We can argue – and sometimes the doors can fly – as long as the door opens the next day again and we are all about the good cause. It is helpful that our tasks are clearly separated: Markus takes care of production and publishing, I take care of sales and marketing.

Markus: It’s certainly not always easy, but we always come back on a common path. After all, we have responsibility for the team, their families and also for the developers we work with.

Women in Games – we support the „Girl’s Day“ initiative from the beginning.

Let’s talk about publishing. Which criteria are decisive for you to sign a title? Markus: I don’t know how many platformers I’ve looked at lately, but there were many. There are some things that have no USP at all. Of course, a game needs that certain something. But also the whole package has to fit. It’s important that the team stands behind their vision and that they don’t want to sell us the slimmed-down version of their idea in the hope to increase the chances to get the money. We want to see the big picture – and then it is up to us to decide whether we want to spend the money for it. The composition of the team is also important. Since we are developers ourselves and know all the platforms, we have a good sense of whether the team may have overestimated the human resources for the port, has too few programmers, etc. You should approach pitching with the necessary seriousness and also keep an eye on the economic aspect. Thinking beyond the first game, imagine the ­second and third game – and be prepared for the dry period in between. Many studios have their difficulties with that – not only in Germany. We also prefer when the ­developers themselves do the porting, so that they can build up the know-how. Of course, the human factor is very important. You have to be a good match.

Christopher: We don’t want to have a one-night-stand. We want to have long-term, sustainable relationships. You don’t build a publisher-developer relationship overnight. And just like in a love relationship, the strength of it is particularly evident in phases when things are not going so well.

King Christopher on his Throne of Games.

If you look at your lineup, it seems very un-German, very international, which surprises us. Markus: That’s a big compliment for us because that’s exactly our goal. We see our competition, not in Germany but worldwide. And I think, with the lineup we can take on the international competition. We have projects in Mexico City, Hungary, Sweden, Belarus, Spain – many international influences. I look forward to seeing how it works.

The competition with other publishers to discover the potential hits of tomorrow is tough, isn’t it? Markus: Yes, for sure. But you have to see it in a sportive way. I have already lost developers which had a contract ready to sign; other publishers experienced the same for sure. It’s important that when teams decide to be our partner, they believe, think, feel and live that way.

Christopher: But it’s not uncommon to experience friendly competition when a publisher calls you and says “Here’s an interesting game that I can’t sign right now, wouldn’t that be something for you? On the other hand, we are also happy when a title that doesn’t fit into our portfolio finds another publisher. The developers also talk to each other, and our current partners are the best publicity for us.

Enjoying the masses at ­gamescom 2019 with our international developers on the Indie Arena Booth.

Many events are cancelled because of ­Corona. What has changed the most for you? Markus: That I now have to do all the events online (laughs). So much has not changed at all. We meet developers, do pitchings, it goes on as usual.

Christopher: Although the effect of having a beer together in the evening should not be underestimated (laughs). The small talk between the door and the hinge or the typical chance conversations during the smoking break at a conference is something that I miss. Chicken Police, for example, we tracked down on Reboot. Or that you stroll over gamescom and wonder why there are 20 people standing at the small booth in front of it. That’s how we became aware of Spitlings. To see how end customers react to something would be important.

We love sports! From sponsorship …

What changed for you internally when you changed from developer to publisher? Was there a culture clash? That some people say “Things used to be better.” Markus: That went pretty smooth. We had already prepared the employees half a year before the takeover. Of course, we had to adapt the organisation, i.e. producer, QA, marketing, to the new circumstances and enlarge it. Especially in these areas, we are looking for experienced people from the industry, but also for newcomers.

Christopher: I think it is helpful for every company after a few years to bring people into the company who have a different point of view, who bring in experience and know-how from other companies. What I also like is that someone can now also get a taste of publishing if they want to, in order to develop themselves further. Especially in our QA we have many examples.

… to kick some ***** on the football field.

In conclusion: What do you want to give the studios out there, who are perhaps just starting out, to take along? Markus: I would like the games funding to contribute to the fact that we in Germany are approaching more ambitious products and fewer clones. With 200,000 Euros I can already move a lot as a small team, impress the big publishers with a cool demo. We have to become even more courageous in Germany. For me, there is no excuse anymore why you can’t develop games in Germany that are internationally successful. For AAA titles this may be true, but in the indie sector, as far as the general conditions are concerned, there are no more excuses why the next Dead Cells or Hollow Knight or Inside should not come from Germany.

Christopher: The situation for developers has never been so rosy. When we started, there was no funding, also no banks that gave loans with almost no interest. These are brillant conditions. Ok, if necessary, you have to move from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern to Bavaria to get the local funding. But there is also federal funding, even EU funding. And there are as many publishers as never before. Even the big publishers sign indie games. Especially in the range of 500,000 to one million Euros there is a huge choice. Twenty years ago, games were hated by politicians. Now politics like us, we are in the mainstream press with Through the Darkest of Times. From young to old everyone feels like a gamer. Grab it, people!

Thanks a lot for the interesting interview and all the best for the next 20 years!

  El Hijo – A Wild West Tale: A spaghetti-western stealth game where you guide a 6-year old boy on his quest to find his mother. Developed by Honig Studios, published by HandyGames.

Triple I Games “Made in Germany”

In November 2019 Handy­Games announced that it intends to invest “a high single-digit million amount” in German indie titles over the next three years. HandyGames is thus supporting the foundation of new start-ups or securing jobs at existing studios. “The prerequisites for the cooperation are a strong team and a breathtaking product, which will be able to captivate gamers around the globe in addition to our publishing team,” says Markus Kassulke, CEO of HandyGames. “We are well aware that the development of the next big indie hit can have production costs of more than a million. Hence the clear signal: HandyGames is prepared to bear the own contribution required by the funding”.

A gripping story and atmosphere, innovative gameplay and a unique graphic style can be keys to success. HandyGames already supports the highly motivated German teams of Paintbucket Games (Berlin), Honig Studios (Berlin) and Massive Miniteam (Cologne) in the development of their current titles. Through the Darkest of Times, ­El Hijo – A Wild West Tale and Spitlings will convince gamers worldwide in 2020 that games “Made in Germany” can cause a stir on the international market.

Markus ­Kassulke Co-Founder & CEO

With over 25 years experience in the gaming industry, Markus Kassulke is responsible for managing HandyGames as a whole. He oversees all internal projects as well as Publishing team and is responsible to form the DNA of the unique games portfolio. As a member of the HR team, he is always looking for new team-players to join the family.

Christopher Kassulke Co-Founder & CEO

Christopher is responsible for the international Business Development and Sales of HandyGames. As the face of HandyGames ­Christopher regularly speaks at developer conferences and events around the globe.

The post 20 Years HandyGames: The Interview appeared first on Making Games.

20 Years HandyGames: The Interview published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

[sheminecrafts]

Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android

Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus or it augmented reality glasses to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT named Mark Lucovsky with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according the The Information’s Alex Heath. To be clear, Facebook’s smartphone apps will remain available on Android.

“We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us” says Facebook’s VP of hardware Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We don’t think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that’s the case. And so we’re gonna do it ourselves.”

Eye OS

By moving to its own OS, Facebook could have more freedom to bake social interaction — and hopefully privacy — deeper into its devices. It could also prevent a disagreement between Google and Facebook from derailing the roadmaps of its gadgets. Facebook tells TechCrunch the focus of this work is on what’s needed for AR glasses. It’s exploring all the options right now including potentially partnering with other companies or building a custom OS specifically for augmented reality.

One added bonus of moving to a Facebook-owned operating system? It could make it tougher to force Facebook to spin out some of its acquisitions, especially if Facebook goes with Instagram branding for its future augmented reality glasses.

Facebook has always been sore about not owning an operating system and having to depend on the courtesy of some of its biggest rivals. Those include Apple, who’s CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly thrown jabs at Facebook and its chief Mark Zuckerberg over privacy and data collection. In a previous hedge against the power of the mobile operating systems, Facebook worked on a secret project codenamed Oxygen circa 2013 that would help it distribute Android apps from outside the Google Play store if necessary, Vox’s Kurt Wagner reported.

That said, its last attempt to wrestle more control of mobile away from the OS giants in 2013 went down in flames. The Facebook phone, built with HTC hardware, ran a forked version of Android and the Facebook Home user interface. But drowning the experience in friends’ photos and Messenger chat bubbles proved wildly unpopular and both the HTC First and Facebook Home were shelved.

Investing In Tomorrow Tech

Now Facebook is hoping to learn from past mistakes as it ramps up its hardware efforts with a new office for the AR/VR team in Burlingame, 15 miles north of the company’s headquarters. The 70,000-square-foot space is designed to house roughly 4,000 employees. Facebook tells TechCrunch the team will move there in the second half of 2020 to make use of its labs, prototype space, and testing areas. The AR/VR team will still have members at other offices across California, Washington, New York, and abroad.

Interested in potentially controlling more of the hardware stack, Facebook held acquisition talks with $4.5 billion market cap semiconductor company Cirrus Logic, which makes audio chips for Apple and more, The Information reports. That deal never happened, and it’s unclear how far the talks went given tech giants constantly keep their M&A teams open to discussions. But it shows how serious Facebook is taking hardware, even if Portal and Oculus sales have been slow to date. Facebook declined to comment on the matter.

That could start to change next year, though, as flagship virtual reality experiences hit the market. I got a press preview of the upcoming Medal Of Honor first-person shooter that will launch on the Oculus Quest in 2020. An hour of playing the World War 2 game flew by, and it was one of the first VR games that felt like you could enjoy it week after week rather than being just a tech demo. Medal Of Honor could prove to be the killer app that convinces gamers they have to get a Quest.

Social Hardware

Facebook has also been working on hardware experiences for the enterprise. Facebook Workplace video calls can now run on Portal, with its smart camera auto-zooming to keep everyone in the board room in frame or focus on the action. The Information reports Facebook is also prototyping a VR videoconferencing system that Boz has been testing with his team. Facebook tells TechCrunch that Boz hosted two internal events where he videoconferenced through VR to about 100 of his team leaders using virtual Q&A software Facebook is prototyping internally. It’s hoping to learn what would be necessary to consistently hold meetings in VR.

The hardware initiatives meanwhile feed back into Facebook’s core ad business. It’s now using some data about what people do on their Oculus or Portal to target them with ads. From playing certain games to accessing kid-focused experiences to virtually teleporting to vacation destinations, there’s plenty of lucrative data for Facebook to potentially mine.

Facebook tells TechCrunch that Portal currently takes data like if you log in, make calls, or use certain features to inform ad targeting. For example, it could should you ads related to video calling if you do that a lot. With Oculus, if you connect your Facebook account, then data about apps you use or events you join could be used to tune its algorithms or target ads.

Facebook even wants to know what’s on our mind before we act on it. The Information reports that Facebook’s brain-computer interface hardware for controlling interfaces by employing sensors to recognize a word a user is thinking has been shrunk down. It’s gone from the size of a refridgerator to something hand-held but still far from ready for integration into a phone. Facebook tells TechCrunch it’s making progress, improving the word error rate significantly up the state-of-the-art research and expanding the dictionary of words that can be recognized. Facebook can now decode brain activity in real-time, and it’s working on an intermediary system for identifying single words as it pushes towards 100 word-per-minute brain typing.

Selling Oculus headsets, Portal screens, and mind-readers might never generate the billions in profits Facebook earns from its efficient ads business. But they could ensure the social network isn’t locked out of the next waves of computing. Whether those are fully immersive like virtual reality, convenient complements to our phones like smart displays, or minimally-invasive sensors, Facebook wants them to be social. If it can bring your friends along to your new gadgets, Facebook will find some way to squeeze out revenue while keeing these devices from making us more isolated and less human.

Facebook is building brain-computer interfaces for typing and skin-hearing

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