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Single-Player Game Model 'Finished,' Says EA Exec 439

Posted by Soulskill from the sorry-about-your-luck dept.
Frank Gibeau, label president for EA Games, recently spoke with Develop about the publisher's long term development strategy. Gibeau thinks developing major games without multiplayer modes is a passing fad: "...it’s not only about multiplayer, it’s about being connected. I firmly believe that the way the products we have are going, they need to be connected online. ... I volunteer you to speak to EA’s studio heads; they’ll tell you the same thing. They’re very comfortable moving the discussion towards how we make connected gameplay – be it co-operative or multiplayer or online services – as opposed to fire-and-forget, packaged goods only, single-player, 25-hours-and you’re out. I think that model is finished. Online is where the innovation and the action [are] at."
Programming

Linus On Branching Practices 90

Posted by CmdrTaco from the not-the-wood-kind dept.
rocket22 writes "Not long ago Linus Torvalds made some comments about issues the kernel maintainers were facing while applying the 'feature branch' pattern. They are using Git (which is very strong with branching and merging) but still need to take care of the branching basics to avoid ending up with unstable branches due to unstable starting points. While most likely your team doesn't face the same issues that kernel development does, and even if you're using a different DVCS like Mercurial, it's worth taking a look at the description of the problem and the clear solution to be followed in order to avoid repeating the same mistakes. The same basics can be applied to every version control system with good merge tracking, so let's avoid religious wars and focus on the technical details."

Comment Re:1000 Yuan (Score 1) 204

by magores (#30629234) Attached to: China Arrests Thousands In Internet Porn Crackdown

As someone that lives in Beijing.....

-5USD will get you a lunch at MacDonalds, it takes 25RMB to get the same thing in Beijing
-1USD will get you a can of Coke, 2RMB for the same thing
-5USD at Starbucks, 25RMB for the same thing

Two boneless chicken breasts are ~15rmb
Butter cookies (the xmas traditional kind) are 50rmb for a tin
New modern paperback novel is 60rmb to 160rmb depending on author
mp3 headphones are 20rmb to 160rmb depending on brand and what store
The other night, dinner for 2, fish hot pot, with veggies and mushrooms was 300rmb

People carry 100rmb notes the way most Americans carry 20 dollar bills. 1000rmb is not that much.

(Of course, Im talking about a city like Beijing, middle class consumers. Not farmers out west.)

Feed Could In-Game Currencies Substitute For The Real Thing During A Crash? (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
There's been a lot of discussion about the fact that currencies and goods in virtual worlds have become quite valuable in the real world. This has prompted lawmakers all over the world to address the economic implications of these currencies, as existing regulations aren't designed to handle in-game economies. But perhaps lawmakers should be looking to the past for clues. Dave Birch discusses a period during the Great Depression when the US literally ran out of currency, and private organizations had start printing their own currency for local use. One such printer was Parker Brothers, which used their Monopoly money printing presses to help out their hometown of Salem, Mass. Technically, they weren't printing Monopoly money itself, but the company was able to take advantage of the fact that it had experience printing out bills. Hopefully, we won't have another collapse again, but if we were to, you might want to hold onto your Linden Dollars.

Feed Atari's Porfolio: the world's first palmtop (theregister.com)

From feed by registerfeed
18 years before Palm's Foleo...

Forgotten Tech There's nothing new under the sun, some folk say, and that's certainly true of Palm's recently announced Foleo. It's the palmtop reborn in a slightly sexier, slightly larger form. Even its name is reminiscent of that bygone arena - it's rather like the Atari Portfolio, the world's first palmtop PC, released in June 1989.

Feed New Interview Technique Could Help Police Spot Deception (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
Shifting uncomfortably in your seat? Stumbling over your words? Can't hold your questioner's gaze? Police interviewing strategies place great emphasis on such visual and speech-related cues, although new research casts doubt on their effectiveness. However, the discovery that placing additional mental stress on interviewees could help police identify deception has attracted interest from investigators in the UK and abroad.
Science

Forgetting May be Part of the Remembering Process 191

Posted by samzenpus from the what-was-I-talking-about dept.
CFTM writes "The New York Times is running an interesting article about how human memory works and the theorized adaptive nature of forgetfulness". From the article, "Whether drawing a mental blank on a new A.T.M. password, a favorite recipe or an old boyfriend, people have ample opportunity every day to curse their own forgetfulness. But forgetting is also a blessing, and researchers reported on Sunday that the ability to block certain memories reduces the demands on the brain when it is trying to recall something important. The study, appearing in the journal Nature Neuroscience, is the first to record visual images of people's brains as they suppress distracting memories. The more efficiently that study participants were tuning out irrelevant words during a word-memorization test, the sharper the drop in activity in areas of their brains involved in recollection. Accurate remembering became easier, in terms of the energy required."

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