The design and business of gaming from the perspective of an experienced developer

Month: October 2015

SXSWhoops

SXSW isn’t supposed to be a tech conference, dammit.  From its inception, it was always meant to be a music festival, dammit, and it’s a good one.  But in recent years, it’s expanded its coverage to include movies and technology.  Being the biggest con in town, SXSW frequently gets a ton of local coverage, but usually not an above-the-fold front-page story in the Austin American Statemen describing how the conference shit the bed (electronic version).

On Wednesday night, SXSW became the latest large tech organization to not fully understand the GamerGate controversy, and therefore fundamentally screw it up.  This has been an all-too-frequent occurrence, with Intel’s $300M mea culpa being, of course, the most noteworthy example.   SXSW’s clusterfuck began  on Wednesday night, attempting to play Solomon with two GamerGate-adjacent panels on their docket, cancelling both due to security concerns.

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Mad Max: It’s All About the Thunderpoon

It is the near future.  The world has been ravaged by drought and disease, leaving the human race a broken, fragile thing.  Bands of survivors are forced to abandon their lives of luxury and ease, and fight to subsist in a land of famine, violence and constant feudal warfare.  And yet, their worst fear is the psychopathic killer who seems intent on exterminating the human race, eliminating settlements one by one, committing mass genocide in order to claim their collections of hubcaps and postcards.

You are Mad Max.  You are this psychopath.

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The Ongoing Star Citizen Silliness

Derek Smart vs. Chris Roberts.  Who will win?  I’m guessing popcorn salesmen.

I recently wrote about Derek Smart’s ongoing crusade against Star Citizen, You may remember, for example, this piece, where Derek Smart asks politely for Chris Roberts and his wife to resign the company.

Give backers the opportunity to hire an independent forensics accountant, and an executive producer, to audit the company records, and give an accurate picture of the financial health of the company, and it’s ability to complete, and deliver this project in a timely fashion. I hereby offer to foot the entire costs of this effort. And I will put up to $1m of my own money, in an escrow account of an attorney’s choosing, to be used as-needed for this exercise. [Emphasis ours.] I will pay this price to prove that I had every right to seek these answers. So this money can either go toward a good cause (righting this ship), or to attorneys who are most likely to burn it all down anyway.

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