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Businesses

World of Goo Dev Wants Big Publishers To Build Indie Teams 74

Ron Carmel, co-founder of game developer 2D Boy, which created the indie hit World of Goo, gave a speech at Montreal International Games Summit in which he encourages large game publishers to put more time and money into smaller, indie-like teams. Quoting GameSetWatch: "'We need a medium-sized design studio. Something that is larger than a typical indie, but has the same propensity for of talent density, focus, and risk-taking,' said Carmel, formerly an employee of major publisher Electronic Arts prior to going independent. Notably, a focus on profit must be eliminated from the equation. 'Creating this within a major developer doesn't present a problem,' said Carmel. With a budget of $1-$2 million dollars, 10 staffers could be hired to work on 'creatively ambitious and forward-thinking projects.' He likened it to the automobile industry, which alongside its mainstream consumer products works on concept cars — few of which enter production as regular models. The concept car is, said Carmel, 'a marketing expense to build your brand, and say, "Look at all the amazing things we're creating."' It also helps with recruitment. Said Carmel, 'there's no reason the larger game companies can't do that.' He also said that developers must move away from the notion that a team comprised primarily of programmers and artists can create a great work. Why do Valve's games have such amazing environments? Because, said Carmel, 'Valve has architects on staff.'"
Books

Bible.com Investor Sues Company For Lack Of Profit 181

The board of Bible.com claims that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than to make money on the domain name, but an angry shareholder disagrees. From the article: "James Solakian filed the lawsuit in Delaware's Chancery Court against the board of Bible.com for breaching their duty by refusing to sell the site or run the company in a profitable way. The lawsuit cites a valuation done by a potential purchaser that estimated bible.com could be worth more than dictionary.com, which recently sold for more than $100 million."

Comment Re:The Truth (Score 1) 590

I concur. I find that code is very infrequently reused. Often, it will take longer to understand some horrible api that has too many classes, parameter overloading (a personal pet peeve), and other unnecessary over-engineering. Instead, a modest, and mostly functional, design will be easily refactorable when you find that reuse is needed. I find that it is faster to refactor code when I need to reuse it than it is to engineer it for all possible reuse cases.
Crime

Justice Not As Blind As Previously Thought 256

NotSoHeavyD3 writes "I doubt this is much of a surprise but apparently Cornell University did a study that seems to show you're more likely to get convicted if you're ugly. From the article: 'According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences — an average of 22 months longer in prison.'"
PlayStation (Games)

Final Fight Brings Restrictive DRM To the PS3 240

Channard writes "As reported by Joystiq, the PS3/PlayStation Network version of Final Fight Double Impact features a rather restrictive piece of digital rights management. In order to launch the game, you have to be logged into the PlayStation Network and if you're not, the game refuses to launch. This could be written off as a bug of some kind except for the fact that the error message that crops up tells you to sign in, suggesting Sony/Capcom intentionally included this 'feature.' Granted, you do have to log into the PlayStation Network to buy the title but as one commentator pointed out, logging in once does not mean you'll be logged in all the time. Curiously, the 360 version has no such restrictions, so you can play the game whether you're online or offline. But annoying as this feature may be, there may be method in Sony's madness. "

Comment Re:Not another Dune RTS? (Score 1) 589

You do realize that the first dune RTS games came out way before starcraft, and in my opinion laid a lot of the groundwork for what RTS gaming in the 90s became. But yes, the 4-disk dune3d rts game wasn't great, but the cut scenes were sufficiently creepy to give you the feel of the dune universe.

Comment Re:JavaScript (Score 1) 295

I'm not entirely certain the web developers entirely to blame here either. If I accidentally leave pandora on overnight at work, my firefox will be hosed when I get back in the morning. However, using opera I do not have this problem. This also holds true for facebook, cnn, slashdot, and other web sites as well. It seems as though opera is doing something smarter such that my whole system isn't hosed by the web page. This is why I'm starting to use opera more than firefox at work. (ubuntu 9.10 x64)

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