singlespace

Presumably they have some funding already, but GSC and 4A are kind of ridiculous in terms of what they consider reasonable game development and budgets so who knows? Jason Rubin stated that 4A made Last Light with less than a tenth the budget of their competitors, which he noted was less than some of them spend on their cutscenes. He also had some horror stories about how they would work without power for days on end, have heating cut in the dead of winter, and working under other strange and insane working conditions. Granted 4A is based out of Ukraine, but that's still insane and scary. However, $50K probably isn't enough to even keep them alive for the span of the game's development since they're out of the US now, so I'm erring on the side that they have some other money already.

So Nintendo just announced they're making a turn based strategy game for the 3DS headed up by Hitoshi Yamagami and Intelligent Systems of Fire Emblem / Xenoblade fame. The game is set in a steampunk world where aliens invade and Abraham Lincoln creates a steam powered task force to investigate and fight off the aliens. Apparently the art style is inspired by silver age comics and we'll get to see footage of it tomorrow. Steampunk Abraham Lincoln.

Nintendo posted the Treehouse live stream so here's about 45 minutes of footage and discussion:

Valkyria Chronicles was straight up analog movement.

I'm surprised this isn't more popular amongst Thumbs... it's a game where you fight wizards on the moon. WIZARDS ON THE MOON.

There was some interesting talk on the GiantBomb late night show about bosses coming out of nowhere in areas you wouldn't expect them then locking you into the area with fog gates for a fight and it seemed like the idea was to make you feel uncomfortable and tense in areas you typically wouldn't in a Souls game. On the shotgun stun, Patrick elaborated more on it saying that there was something like the concept on a front stab where you can lock into a heavy attack after a shotgun strike in the same way you can circle around behind enemies in the Souls games to give you a backstab. Patrick also mentioned that you will not be able to gear for tanking like in the Souls games, so no heavy armours either.

This was not was I was expecting when they said silver age comic inspired aesthetic with cthulhu-esque monsters.

The number of backers and what not is available on the main page ( https://robertsspaceindustries.com/ ). As of right now, the stats are: Funds Raised $44,696,918.00 Funders 463,019 Average $96.53 There are definitely people who have spent tens of thousands on this already though. If you're interested in a sample of the breakdowns, you look at the various fleet infographics that people have made: https://www.google.com/search?q=star+citizen+fleets&safe=off&espv=213&es_sm=119&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=8QyQU5-VIei88AH8ooGgCw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=901&bih=1106#imgdii=_ Here's a rundown of some of the ship prices (though they've varied so many times over time that this won't give you a really precise idea): Idris $1000 - $5000 Scythe . . . . . . . . . $300 Constellation $275 Retaliator . . . . . . . $250 Caterpillar $225 Hornet F7C . . . . $110 - $180 Starfarer $175 Gladiator . . . . . . . . $150 Freelancer $110 - $125 Cutlass . . . . . $100 - $115 350 $100 - $120 300 - 325 . . . . . $55 - $80 M50 $80 Avenger . . . . . . . . . $75 Aurora $30 - $45

Jesus, the beginning of 159 is the height of professionalism. It's like seeing boss Valkyries descend from the sky heralding sponsors.

The iPad app should rolling out for the rest of the world soon-ish. Canada, New Zealand, and Australia already have it deployed: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/hearthstone-heroes-warcraft/id625257520?mt=8

This so much. The most thumbsian guest in the history of guests.

I wouldn't say worthless, but they're wildly overvalued as demonstrated by the various court cases they horribly lost. I agree with your point that these kinds of purchases are not as massive to large corporations as some people might think; it's just that the details of how you got to that conclusion are a bit murky. Cash on hand can be a bit misleading, especially in these kinds of deals. For instance, the Oculus deal itself was actually for $400 million in cash and 23.1 million Facebook shares, which means that they only converted $40 million of their liquid assets and paid the rest from their market cap. That means that 80% of the deal came from outstanding shares, hence it would be more apt to look at their market cap instead of cash on hand since only 20% was paid outright. When you look at those numbers, it becomes 21.1 million out of 2.55 billion shares. So they expended less than 1% of their market cap and around 3% of their cash on hand. If I recall correctly, the Motorola deal was a flatout buyout. They agreed on a price per a share then Google paid in cash.

Motorola never did pan out for them with their patents and technology, but it wasn't as bad as $10 billion. The actual breakdown is as follows: -$12.50 billion - Purchases Motorola Mobility +$3.00 billion - Motorola Mobility's cash on hand transfers to Google +$2.35 billion - Sold Motorola Home to Arris +$0.07 billion - Sold manufacturing to Flextronics +$2.40 billion - Tax deferred assets -$2.00 billion - Motorola Mobility's operating loss during the owned period +$2.91 billion - Sold Motorola Mobility =========================================================== -$3.77 billion - Loss So what that means is that Google paid about $3.77 billion for the majority of Motorola Mobility's patent portfolio and Motorola's Advanced Technology & Projects Group. I don't think that those are worth $3.77 billion, but $3.77 billion is not $10 billion.

I'm not sure how I feel about the deal, but it does have very definite advantages. The thing is that Oculus needed money in a really bad way and I don't think people really understood this. One of the absolute biggest hurdles OR had was being so tiny as to be utterly insignificant to panel manufacturers. It's no exaggeration to say the volume of money they were playing with was barely enough to get suppliers to even turn their heads. OR was in a position where there was only one manufacturer in the world that produced panels that were suitable for their usage and that was Samsung. The problem is that currently Samsung's only customer for their high density AMOLED displays is Samsung and Galaxy phones are big business. The Samsung group's revenue is roughly four times that of the estimated size of the entire video game industry as a whole. Samsung Electronics alone comprises more than half of that revenue and the overwhelming majority of that revenues comes from Galaxy phones. Galaxy phones are generally supply limited for quite sometime after launch meaning that it would be next to impossible for OR to make Samsung any kind of deal that would make financial sense to divert some of their supply. What that means is that OR would have been relegated to using panels from older processes where there is excess capacity. Worse still, those parts wouldn't even have been a good fit for OR because they were engineered with other applications in mind. Having custom panels manufactured is not cheap. Not cheap as in hundred of millions of dollars not cheap and that's if you don't need an entirely new process, in which case the cost sky rockets into the billions of dollars. I think the biggest upside of this deal is that OR now has access to the kind of funds to have custom panels manufactured to whatever specifications they require instead of being stuck with hand me downs the phone industry are no longer interested in.

Palmer Luckey on Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/21cy9n/the_future_of_vr/ I’ve always loved games. They’re windows into worlds that let us travel somewhere fantastic. My foray into virtual reality was driven by a desire to enhance my gaming experience; to make my rig more than just a window to these worlds, to actually let me step inside them. As time went on, I realized that VR technology wasn’t just possible, it was almost ready to move into the mainstream. All it needed was the right push. We started Oculus VR with the vision of making virtual reality affordable and accessible, to allow everyone to experience the impossible. With the help of an incredible community, we’ve received orders for over 75,000 development kits from game developers, content creators, and artists around the world. When Facebook first approached us about partnering, I was skeptical. As I learned more about the company and its vision and spoke with Mark, the partnership not only made sense, but became the clear and obvious path to delivering virtual reality to everyone. Facebook was founded with the vision of making the world a more connected place. Virtual reality is a medium that allows us to share experiences with others in ways that were never before possible. Facebook is run in an open way that’s aligned with Oculus’ culture. Over the last decade, Mark and Facebook have been champions of open software and hardware, pushing the envelope of innovation for the entire tech industry. As Facebook has grown, they’ve continued to invest in efforts like with the Open Compute Project, their initiative that aims to drive innovation and reduce the cost of computing infrastructure across the industry. This is a team that’s used to making bold bets on the future. In the end, I kept coming back to a question we always ask ourselves every day at Oculus: what’s best for the future of virtual reality? Partnering with Mark and the Facebook team is a unique and powerful opportunity. The partnership accelerates our vision, allows us to execute on some of our most creative ideas and take risks that were otherwise impossible. Most importantly, it means a better Oculus Rift with fewer compromises even faster than we anticipated. Very little changes day-to-day at Oculus, although we’ll have substantially more resources to build the right team. If you want to come work on these hard problems in computer vision, graphics, input, and audio, please apply! This is a special moment for the gaming industry — Oculus’ somewhat unpredictable future just became crystal clear: virtual reality is coming, and it’s going to change the way we play games forever. I’m obsessed with VR. I spend every day pushing further, and every night dreaming of where we are going. Even in my wildest dreams, I never imagined we’d come so far so fast. I’m proud to be a member of this community — thank you all for carrying virtual reality and gaming forward and trusting in us to deliver. We won’t let you down.

I had that same feeling of it being too constructed. I don't even play DOTA2, but I didn't really like how they dumbed down the explanation of the same so much as to not explain it at all. I watched it with some friends who don't really game and they had no idea what was going on during the second half of the movie outside of when they explicitly told you who won or lost. To me, the commentaries by Dendi and Fear seemed a lot more honest and respectful in the sense that they didn't present the material in a way that just assumed you wouldn't understand.

Does anyone else feel a bit uncomfortable listening to these, not in terms of content but rather the actual recording? There's something weird about either the recording or mastering that makes it sound as if the voices are between your ears, or maybe slightly behind, when you're listening with headphones, but all the audio cues indicate that it shouldn't be. It's really strange, I've never had this kind of feeling with any other Podcast.

They would rather be anywhere else at that very moment. Anywhere.

Sometimes, yeah. I've had situations where I've held up a gas station then drove away slowly or switched vehicles after the police had temporarily lost me and had squad cars drive past me without batting an eye. At one star you can sometimes even pull into a lot, stop the car, and have them miss you. I just wish that cars were more persistent so I could plant getaway cars around the city, but I get the feeling all those crazy sandbox scenarios are going to be fleshed out in GTA Online.

So anyone have any good sandbox moment so far? My strangest non-scripted moment so far has been switching to Trevor and finding him half drowning in the middle of a lake up in the desert. I needed to get back to Los Santos so I did what any reasonable person would do and carjacked a black hatchback SUV, which was promptly reported to the police. Before I made it to the interstate, I blew past the first squad car only to lose him immediately at the on ramp where I ditched the SUV and stole a truck from this angry hillbilly who promptly jumped into the SUV I abandoned, screaming obscenities, dead set on following me to the ends of the earth. That is if the police didn't roll up just at that very moment pushing his SUV into the on ramp retaining wall. I just sat there stopped in the truck surprised as the police jumped out of their squad car, guns drawn, yelling at the hillbilly to get out of the vehicle, which is when things took a dark turn. He didn't, of course, so they opened fire killing the wrong driver as I listened to them report back to dispatch that they got him and my wanted level returned to zero.

Whooosh

But the background color doesn't change....

Something is happening: http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/

So awesome! It's so strange and amazing that they have both Olly Moss and Panic onboard.

I'm finding the dynamics with people playing the game are half the fun. Some people like just clicking through it, others enjoy applying the tools they've learned to the problem like marginal cost analysis for the more financial mind or linear optimization for the mathematicians, some people simply cheat, others like discussing the game like it's a sport. It's as fun as people watching.