Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
The Almighty Buck

Average Budget For Major, Multi-Platform Games Is $18-28 Million 157

Posted by Soulskill from the large-potatoes dept.
An anonymous reader passes along this excerpt from Develop: "The average development budget for a multiplatform next-gen game is $18-$28 million, according to new data. A study by entertainment analyst group M2 Research also puts development costs for single-platform projects at an average of $10 million. The figures themselves may not be too surprising, with high-profile games often breaking the $40 million barrier. Polyphony's Gran Turismo 5 budget is said to be hovering around the $60 million mark, while Modern Warfare 2's budget was said to be as high as $50 million."

Apple Orders 10 Million Tablets? 221

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the pricepoint-better-be-right dept.
Arvisp writes "According to a blog post by former Google China president Kai-Fu Lee, Apple plans to produce nearly 10 million tablets in the still-unannounced product's first year. If Lee's blog post is to be believed, Apple plans to sell nearly twice as many tablets as it did iPhones in the product's first year."
Image

NASA Tests Flying Airbag 118

Posted by samzenpus from the drop-the-cloud-anchor dept.
coondoggie writes "NASA is looking to reduce the deadly impact of helicopter crashes on their pilots and passengers with what the agency calls a high-tech honeycomb airbag known as a deployable energy absorber. So in order to test out its technology NASA dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether its deployable energy absorber, made up of an expandable honeycomb cushion, could handle the stress. The test crash hit the ground at about 54MPH at a 33 degree angle, what NASA called a relatively severe helicopter crash."

Comment Game Design Isn't Programming (Score 1) 324

by searchr (#28566425) Attached to: What Are the Best First Steps For Becoming a Game Designer?
A Game Designer, as job description, is not the same thing as Game Programmer or Engineer. So focus on what it is exactly that you want to do. If you want to be a programmer, listen to these people talking about languages and it's hard and stuff. If you want to be a Game Designer, it's still hard and stuff, but has little to do with programming. Instead it's about game theory, storytelling, resource management, play mechanics, architecture, lighting, and puzzle and quest building. Game design is like being a movie writer/director, and sometimes cinematographer as well. You are the one who designs the game, the story, the mechanics, the levels and level design. All those really smart programmers write the stuff you need to make your game. There are usually proprietary tools with each studio, 3d tools and scripting tools, so being flexible and skilled at quickly learning new applications is vital (good exercise is to pick up 3DMax or Maya or Photoshop, and learn how to use it cold, no documentation. Most in-house tools are sorely lacking in instructions, so get used to that.) A Game Designer is a swiss army knife of skills, but seldom is one of them programming. And there's really no school for that.

Comment Re:Quick advice (Score 1) 324

by searchr (#28566293) Attached to: What Are the Best First Steps For Becoming a Game Designer?
Yes. It is a terrible idea to want a career in the entertainment industry, one of the rare GROWTH industries during this economic downturn. And it would suck to get into game design, as unlike the movie industry, is virtually union-free, removing a serious barrier for entry. I can't imagine a worse career than one with a starting salary above $50,000, senior salaries in the six figures, doing something creative, and consistent job security. Sounds awful.

Comment Pretend to take up smoking (Score 1) 865

by searchr (#28550895) Attached to: Staying In Shape vs. a Busy IT Job Schedule?
For some reason, smokers get four or five 10-15 minute smoke breaks a day, outside of the normal break schedule (this holds even more true if the boss is a smoker). So claim smoking, then string all your alotted smoke breaks together, and go to the gym for an hour mid-day, or split it with a 30 minute walk/run, and a 30 minute self-directed calisthenic workout. A fake unhealthy habit is your ticket to good health!
NASA

Send the ISS To the Moon 387

Posted by kdawson from the one-of-these-days-alice dept.
jmichaelg writes "Michael Benson is proposing that NASA send the ISS to the moon instead of leaving it in low earth orbit. (While we're at it, we should re-brand it as the 'International Space Ship.') He points out that it's already designed to be moved periodically to higher orbits so instead of just boosting it a few miles, strap on some ion engines and put it in orbit around the moon instead of the earth. That would provide an initial base for the astronauts going to the moon and give the ISS a purpose other than performing yet more studies on the effect of micro gravity on humans. Benson concludes: 'Let's begin the process of turning the ISS from an Earth-orbiting caterpillar into an interplanetary butterfly.'"
Censorship

UK Teen Cited For Calling Scientology a "Cult" 995

Posted by kdawson from the what-it-is dept.
An anonymous reader writes "A 15-year-old in the UK is facing prosecution for using the word 'cult' to describe the Church of Scientology at an anti-Scientology demonstration in London earlier this month. According to the City of London police at the scene, the teen was violating the Public Order Act, which 'prohibits signs which have representations or words which are threatening, abusive or insulting.' There's a video of the teen receiving the summons from the City of London police at the demonstration (starting about 1 minute in), and now he's asking for advice on how to handle the court case."
Power

The Texas Petawatt Laser 174

Posted by kdawson from the you-can-pet-a-dog-or-you-can-pet-a-cat dept.
Roland Piquepaille notes the hype surrounding what the University of Texas at Austin is calling the world's most powerful laser. During a tenth of a femtosecond this laser is 2,000 times more powerful than all the power plants in the US, and is brighter than sunlight on the surface of the Sun. On his own blog Roland points out that UT's is not the first petawatt laser; that distinction belongs to a system installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1996.
Medicine

One in Ten Americans Are Chronically Sleep Deprived 329

Posted by Zonk from the good-thing-no-one-reading-this-works-a-high-stress-job dept.
WirePosted writes "A CDC research study released this past week indicates that the physical and mental health of many Americans is being adversely affected by a lack of sleep. According to the study, a part of the organization's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, one in ten US citizens are consistently failing to get enough sleep every night. Almost 40% of the people surveyed didn't get enough sleep for more than a week every month. The article notes that this trend can have far-ranging implications for health beyond simple fatigue."
Censorship

China Bans Horror Movies 292

Posted by Zonk from the won't-someone-think-of-the-braaaaaiiinnnnsss dept.
KublaiKhan writes "According to an article on Reuters, the Chinese censors have decided that horror movies are verboten. 'Offending content included "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling for the sole purpose of seeking terror and horror," the administration said. This is apparently a sort of Chinese version of the Jack Thompson effect, as the "mental health of adolescents" is cited as one of the reasons for the ban. Presumably, this ban — much like the spitting ban — is intended to improve China's image in the rest of the world before the Olympics open; but given the Streisand effect, would this ban perhaps unintentionally spur a surge of horror movie popularity in China?" Blizzard has had trouble with skeletons in World of Warcraft , and I imagine this decision stems from similar objections.
Security

Modeling Urban Panic 105

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the godzilla-disappointed dept.
Schneier is reporting that Arizona State University's Paul Torrens has been developing a computer simulation to model urban panic. "The goal of this project is to develop a reusable and behaviorally founded computer model of pedestrian movement and crowd behavior amid dense urban environments, to serve as a test-bed for experimentation." The simulation tests behaviors from how a crowd flees from a burning car to how a pathogen might be transmitted through a mobile pedestrian over time among others.
Displays

Monitor Draws Zero Power In Standby 405

Posted by CowboyNeal from the green-screens dept.
fifthace writes "A new range of Fujitsu Siemens monitors don't draw power during standby. The technology uses capacitors and relays to avoid drawing power when no video signal is present. With political parties all over Europe calling for a ban on standby, this small development could end up as one of the most significant advances in recent times. The British Government estimates eight percent of all domestic electricity is consumed by devices in standby."

Slashdot Top Deals

Work continues in this area. -- DEC's SPR-Answering-Automaton

Close