Via BB: A bunch of successful Indie gamedevs announced at GDC 2010 that are setting up a VC fund for indie game developers. Quoth the indiedevs:
indies no longer need the traditional distribution channels publishers once provided, they simply need the funding
Jill and Turntable and I were at the Olympics with Dr. Z two weekends ago.
We played two counting games while we were there. First, Jill and Turntable and I wanted to see who would run into the most people they knew. I figured I had edge having lived there for three years, but the final tally — not counting significant others — was Turntable: 3, Jill: 1, Jack: 0. Government workers had the volunteerism edge.
The second game, which I liked more because I won, involved counting hockey jerseys.
On the second day of our trip, on the way into town, Turntable and Dr. Z and I divided Team Canada hockey jerseys into three rough piles which we thought were about equal:
We odd-manned-out and Dr. Z took “everyone else”. Then we RPS‘d and for the first time in my life I didn’t pick Rock, so I lost that. Turntable got Luongo and I was left with Crosby.
I wanted to play with the design a bit so I suggested that signed jerseys should be worth more — double points. We didn’t see any over the weekend (plus, they are hard to see), so Jill’s patch was that in future they should be worth 10x as much.
I liked this game, but Turntable got off to a bastard of an early lead in the line at Deutsche Haus. Plus, I wanted to make more of a game of it, and games are made of interesting choices, but this was essentially passive. I suggested one more rule, which proved somewhat exciting:
You can zero another player’s score at any time by buying them a drink.
This game lasted until the puck dropped at the gold metal game (wooo!), and I was well behind the whole weekend up to then. We were all scoring for each other, and called Turntable to report a couple of penultimate Luongos when I overheard Z:
Z: So you got a couple and… What do you mean [Jack] won? 40!?
It was about a dozen Luongos versus about a dozen “everyones” versus about five Crosbys at the start of the day — without me having been zeroed. The good doctor was preparing to strategically zero his competition right before the game when Turntable walked by a troupe of Crosby fans that shot me far and away into the lead with minutes left to go and no liquor vendor in sight.
The day, as they say, was mine.
We worked out some final stats. I had zeroed G-Turns’ score of three in the Deutsche Haus at the cost of a $9 half-pint for a spot rate of $3 per Luongo. Later on Saturday Z was getting a better price at something like $1.25 each.
The dominant strategy, which was arrived at pretty quickly, and which the math above indicates, is that you should wait as long as possible before zeroing someone. Not only is it more cost effective, it’s better strategy barring SNAFUs like my late-hour rocket-win.
Maybe some other mechanic could be introduced to make it more rough-and-tumble. Or maybe it’s the kind of game you don’t bother to play optimally?
There’s been continuing drama over Cryptome, a site that… Well, here it is from the horse’s proverbial:
Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance — open, secret and classified documents — but not limited to those. Documents are removed from this site only by order served directly by a US court having jurisdiction. No court order has ever been served; any order served will be published here — or elsewhere if gagged by order. Bluffs will be published if comical but otherwise ignored.
Some of the drama was over this document, which contains Microsoft’s policies for providing information to police, including advice to the cops on what to ask for and how to ask for it.
I’ve read it, and it’s actually pretty benign, aside from Softie’s DMCA action over it. The part about XBox Live is the most intrusive. Microsoft preserves, forever, every IP ever used to talk to your 360 and the title-and-time of every game you’ve ever played while online, as well as obvious stuff like your GamerTag and credit card info.
MSN conversations, interestingly, aren’t retained server-side at all. This has been a big worry of mine and my more paranoid friends for a while.
That said, you should still encrypt basically everything. 
Ubisoft’s DRM servers went down over the weekend, denying access to all customers who had legitimately obtained Assassin’s Creed 2. Quoth the Doctorow:
Of course, pirates and people who break Ubisoft’s DRM can still play. Way to correctly align the incentives, Ubisoft.
As I mentioned before, DRM is bad business. This is another reason. It’s like those legalese FBI notices that you can’t skip at the start of a DVD, or the anti-piracy threats in theatres — they only annoy paying customers.
Dune 2000, a game that I was eagerly anticipating, shipped with DRM that wouldn’t let it install if your computer had a CD burner. I bought it, was told “tough luck” by customer service, cracked it, and it was pretty decent — until I reformatted (I was still jockeying Windows at that point) and had to crack again.
cf. This comic about Cleveland libraries and audiobook DRM.
Pirates play, listen, and watch without insult. DRM is bad biz.
I got 86.7% on BB’s games quiz — two wrong. I think that’s pretty awesome because I hadn’t played at least six of the games, I just gamer-lore’d them.
Of course, if it was only recent titles I wouldn’t have done as well 
Via BB, Assassin’s Creed 2’s supposedly “uncrackable” DRM (Digital Rights Management) was broken in less than 24 hours.
DRM is bad business, for a bunch of reasons. When I was working for Unnamed Giant Game Conglomerate they wanted us to cripple our games for future generations by making them unarchivable add digital locks to our games to briefly stop piracy.
“Briefly”, yes. The theory was if we could hold off the pirates for just a month — just one — then most of them would give up and buy the game.
So we added a week to our already-horrible schedule (at the cost of actual features) to cripple lock-down the product.
We uploaded the gold master to the disc printer, and my brother sent me a link to download a cracked version that afternoon.
BUSINESS FAIL
Via Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a video showing the gameplay and windup clockwork behind Blip a Tomy “digital” game (and PONG rip) from 1977.
The only digital part is the LED, but it manages to include mechanical pseudorandom action — a neat trick — and somewhat cleverly fuses game design and the engineering of the beast (the “game timer” is actually the windup knob).
Thank God for digital technology. It makes my putative calling so much easier (but don’t get me wrong — working on Blip was probably pretty awesome).
It would be pretty sweet to come up with CNC plans for this thing — open source clockwork pong.
Valve’s super-awesome PR machine seems to be ramping up for an announcement at GDC 2010.
I’m still going through Apple’s supplier responsibility guidelines. Chekkit:
Working hours
Apple’s Code sets a maximum of 60 work hours per week and requires at least one day of rest per seven days of work, while allowing exceptions in unusual or emergency circumstances.
It strikes me that companies which supply software to Apple, ones that I might have worked for, do not meet this standard.
Is buying software from companies that employ a constructive (in the sense of “created”), structural overtime development strategy a violation of business ethics? Of consumer ethics?
I wish I had the same rights as a Chinese factory worker.
If you’re being entertained by a software title ground out of the crushed dreams of pixel-stained wage-slaves does your guilt bone tweak as much as when you groove on a device from iPod City while jogging in your sweet sweatshop sneaks?
Or are we all just callously oppressing each other?
Via BB: The changelog for the last Steam update for the infamous Portal contained this cryptic item:
Changed radio transmission frequency to comply with federal and state spectrum management regulations.
Which, of course, prompted an immediate nerdcore investigation.
The results? The radios in the game have been modified to transmit morse code when they are moved into certain locations on each map.
The morse code? Encoded SSTV images watermarked “Aperture Science” that hint at a Philadelphia-like experiment conducted by Aperture aboard a research ship called the Borealis, for which GLaDOS was the authorizing signatory.
In essence: the viral campaign to launch Half-Life 2: Episode Three is off and running, and it looks like they’re more-fully integrating the Poral microcosm into the overarching story.
This is how you engage an intelligent audience.
Nerdgasm!