Mass Effect 3 has a key problem, one that faces much of the industry. The game is too long. Not because its loaded with interesting content but because its bogged down with fetch quests and aimless wandering.
Assassins Creed 3 was shaping up to be one of the greatest games of the console generation. It was a fresh face on a well loved franchise. It boasted established mechanics that sucked people in and a complex double narrative that promised an end game of modern day assassin adventures. Yet by many accounts, my own included, it was a fumble. I’d like to propose a component of why it failed to live up to expectations.
You’re mind is like a computer in the sense that we have limited cognitive resources available. In order to optimize the way we operate the best course of action is to try to reduce wasting that load on unimportant tasks and move it to something useful. As a programmer we know ways to reduce work from algorithms class. We even have notation. Can we apply what we do in the programming world to our own minds?
I recently saw Triple Town on Steam for a few bucks and decided to pick it up. With no forehand knowledge, I settled in and had an a fun time for awhile. Then I noticed that it wasn’t really going anywhere, got boring, and asked some friends what they thought of it. At this point I was told it was free to play originally and it all made sense.
The iTunes store is flooded with thousands of broken, uninteresting, useless apps. Help Apple. Do something, anything, have some standards. Thousands of free or $1 apps have destroyed all concept of value. A bunch of fresh faced grads and even large companies have no idea how to stand up for the worth of their product, Especially when faced against the steaming tidal wave of junk flooding the store.
After reading about the recent blow up over Code Hero, I decided to do a bit of math and lay out why this guy vastly underestimated his costs.
A look at the positive and negative aspects of working for an established game studio, as opposed to going indie or leaving the industry.
AAA is dying… I said it, there, you happy, cause I sure ain’t. Well I’m a bit nervous and a larger bit ambivalent. A month or so ago Polygon released a series of articles about the state of the games industry. In it the numbers paint a grim picture of publishers struggling to make decent margin off multi-million unit sellers. They also tell of rising indie, PC and mobile sectors. I figured I’d weigh in because I like the sound of my own typing, so here’s where I think we’re headed as an industry.
This morning I woke up at 3 am from post surgical pain and played through a very special game that made up for recent sequel fatigue. That game was 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. It reminded me what games can be when they suck in a good way.
Though a fan of sleep, this article is actually about a programming architecture that’s come up often recently. REST (REpresentational State Transfer) is said to be used by many websites and services, but not completely according to many. After researching this for the last week or so I think I’ve stumbled into some reasons why it isn’t fully understood, and can relate some potential uses that will clarify things a little.