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McDonald's will deliver your Big Mac, if you're in New York City
What's that? You want a Big Mac combo for lunch but don't have time to venture out? Well, if you happen to be in New York City, McDonald's will soon bring that double-decker burger to you. The company announced today that it will test a 24-hour delivery service in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan as part of a partnership with Postmates. If you'll recall, that startup powers similar delivery options for Starbucks and Chipotle. This news comes as part of CEO Steve Easterbrook's plan to turnaround the fast food chain's business by focusing on better food and acting on customer feedback -- all-day breakfast, sirloin burgers and "artisan" chicken were mentioned. It's going to be an uphill climb for the Golden Arches too, as the franchise will close 700 total stores this year. Looking to try the new service? You'll be able to do just that starting today from NYC's 88 participating locations. Don't expect ice cream, though, and you'll want to order $10 worth of food to avoid a delivery fee. [Image credit: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images]
Facebook clarifies what you're allowed to post on its social network
Facebook's content guidelines have sparked confusion, to put it mildly -- a lot of people are unsure as to whether or not they have to use their legal names, or whether it's safe to post breastfeeding photos. At last, though, the social network is clearing the air a bit. It just posted new Community Standards that don't change the company's stance, but should remove some of the gray areas. For one, it's emphasizing that you only have to use your "authentic identity," not the name your government recognizes -- important if you identify with a non-traditional gender. Facebook also clarifies that you can mention hate speech for the sake of social commentary, and refines its views on harassment, nudity and what happens to your account when you die. A few sections are completely new, such as one explicitly forbidding revenge porn and other forms of sexual exploitation.
Facebook lets you choose what happens to your profile after you die
You can't take your Facebook friends with you to the afterlife, but at least you can now prevent your snarky comments about Drag Race serving as a poor memorial. The social network has announced that users will be able to designate a legacy contact that can maintain their accounts after they have died. According to the Wall Street Journal, a new group of options will let you pick a digital executor to run your page as a memorial, or elect to have your profile deleted once it's proven that you've passed away.
Revival talks about death, decoration, and defenses
You remember Revival, right? You know, the game funding its development by selling in-game houses? That one. The developers haven't been quiet over the holiday season, with several recent blog posts detailing the high-end concepts behind several of the game's key mechanics -- for example, dying, which doesn't simply leave you to run back to your corpse but forces you to traverse the spirit realm, fighting off malicious spirits and seeking the Mortality Gate to drag yourself back from the dead. Of course, you can stay alive longer by making use of combat mechanics like the shield wall to defend yourself from dying. You can also use your continued "being alive" status to take advantage of the decoration kits available for housing, which allow you to convert existing rooms with certain fixtures to more functional equivalents. It's all interesting stuff and worth considering if you're sorely tempted to drop a bunch of money on the promise of virtual real estate.
What you need to know about your digital life after death
"One small fact: You are going to die," Death says in the opening of The Book Thief. "Despite every effort, no one lives forever." If you've come to terms with that (or have at least thought of death at one time or another), perhaps you've prepared for the inevitable by getting insured, saving up for those you're leaving behind and writing up a last will and testament. These days, though, you also need to decide what will happen to your online life after death. What can you do to prepare for it, and what can you do to help if someone close to you passes away?
Star Citizen aims to redefine avatar death, combat realism
Remember way back in February of 2013 when Chris Roberts posted his Death of a Spaceman concept? It was a high-level look at how character death would function in Star Citizen, and it broke from gaming industry norms by aiming for an immersive system with strategy and consequences rather than the typical run-and-gun and die-and-respawn mechanics common to MMOs, FPSs, and most other games. This week Roberts and company have released another extensive design doc called Healing Your Spacemen, which greatly expands the original concept. "In the end, the team decided to run counter to the standard FPS mechanics of regenerating health and instantly respawning on death to make every fight a calculated decision that can have ramifications that impact your character and place in the 'Verse," Cloud Imperium says. Character health involves a limb-based system featuring four levels of health for each limb, and the system deliberately avoids "the current trend of hiding behind cover for blood to clear off your screen and jumping back in the fight ready for more." The post also explains how characters may be dragged to safety and how the spaceflight portion of the game will include "a robust rescue system" that complements the character death and damage mechanics. Read all about it via the official site links below! [Thanks Cardboard!]
EVE Evolved: Could permadeath work in EVE?
Permadeath has been one of the most contentuous features in online gaming since as far back as I can remember. The feeling of permanently losing a character you've spent months training up and playing with because of a single mistake or lag spike would be horrifying to most people, yet the idea continues to intrigue both players and developers. Diablo II's Hardcore mode is probably the most successful permadeath mechanic in an online game to date, separating the hardcore players onto a different server so that they develop their own game economy and leaderboard. Several MMOs have experimented with permadeath servers or mechanics over the years, but they're almost always reverted as failures. In a recent presentation at EVE Vegas 2014, EVE Online developer CCP Rise discussed the idea of permadeath characters as something he's wanted to add to the game for the past few years. This is particularly problematic for EVE as the game uses passive time-based skill training and the whole game takes place on one massive shard. The hardcore players would need to have enough incentive to risk their characters' lives on a daily basis, their abilities would have to be balanced with non-hardcore players, and abuse of the system to suicide gank players would need to be handled. But if those problems are tackled, is it possible that there's a place for permadeath in EVE? In this edition of EVE Evolved, I look at how permadeath could be added to EVE Online without disrupting the rest of the game.
EVE Vegas 2014: CCP on the new player experience and permadeath
Every time some huge scandal or record-breaking battle erupts in EVE Online, thousands of new players flood into the game ready to create epic stories of their own. Confronted with a confusing interface and a practically mandatory tutorial that takes most of the day to complete, most of those players, unsurprisingly, don't stick around. The past few updates have improved things by adding tooltips to the main UI elements and introducing a new notification system, but there's more to come. At EVE Vegas 2014 this weekend, CCP Rise discussed his plans for a new Opportunities system that will replace the tutorial. To help design the system, developers got together groups of gamers who had never played before and dropped them into EVE with little to no instructions. The playtests highlighted a lack of action compared to expectations and showed how confusing things like the map, station UI, and hangar inventory system can be for newcomers. Many of these problems are very easily fixed and may even be solved in one of the two remaining patches this year. In an interesting move, Rise went on to talk about his idea to add a form of permadeath to EVE Online. Although you lose your ship when you die in EVE, it's actually only a financial loss as your character is reborn in a fresh clone. What Rise wants is for people to make new mortal characters with no clones and a fixed number of skillpoints to allocate to skills. It's possible that this could close the gap between old and new players by allowing newbies to purchase single lives with the focused combat skills of a veteran. This isn't something that will be introduced any time soon or even that's definitely coming, but the fact that CCP is talking about the idea publicly now is intriguing.
The Daily Grind: Who gets your MMO accounts when you die?
Last month, Delaware became the first US state to pass a broad law to ensure that families can access their deceased relatives' digital assets. In most states, though, your spouse can't even log into your Facebook account to delete it if you kick the bucket. And that makes me wonder about MMOs. It might be macabre, but I actually maintain a document that tells my survivors how to distribute my digital property, including my MMO accounts and characters, usually to guildies who will appreciate them and/or leave my characters dancing naked on a mailbox forever in tribute. Does anyone else do this? Do you have a plan for how to divvy up your MMO accounts and such when you die? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
The Daily Grind: What's the ideal death penalty for an MMO?
If your first MMO was a modern themepark MMO, you might not realize that a corpse run and a small repair bill are fairly light penalties for death. In Ultima Online, if you couldn't make it back to your body in time, a devious player (or mob) might come along and relieve your corpse of its loot. If you were a murderer, you'd even lose stats! Your gear was safer in EverQuest, but you'd lose experience, and you'd still have to run from your bind spot back to your body, assuming it wasn't in such a dangerous place that you needed a Necromancer to summon it. And games like Asheron's Call and City of Heroes once had experience penalties so harsh that it was possible to cripple a character so much that you might as well just reroll. MMOs are torn between wanting to make death feel meaningful enough that people are careful but not so punitive that players would rather log out than recover. What do you think is the ideal death penalty for an MMO? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Yahoo Japan will erase your digital footprint after you pass away
What happens to your online life after you've passed away? Unless you've left your passwords in the will, those Facebook and Twitter profiles will linger on for years to come. If you'd prefer your digital life to be as neatly tidied up as your real one, then Yahoo Japan is offering the solution. The outfit is offering Yahoo Ending, a service that'll help locals prepare for their funerals in the real world, as well as closing down their social media profiles after notifying followers and friends of their demise. The package will also close down any digital wallet accounts held by Yahoo, and can even offer basic will-writing advice for those who need it. There's no word on if the company plans to bring the offering to the western world, so until then, we'll just have to hope that future archaeologists don't use our poolside selfies as exhibits in a museum.
'Alien' designer HR Giger dead at 74
Yesterday the world lost the man behind one of the most memorable movie villains of all time. HR Giger, the Swiss-born artist who designed the "Xenomorph" monster for the film Alien, passed away at age 74 after suffering injuries from a fall. While he'll be best remembered for visual effects in Ridley Scott's sci-fi masterpiece, Giger was also a prolific surrealist painter and sculptor -- one of his large-format paintings was even the inspiration behind the famous Alien character. Giger's received numerous awards throughout his career, including induction into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame last year. Sci-fi, cinema and art fans won't be forgetting his work any time soon, but now's a better time than ever to check out this documentary about the making of Alien. [Image credit: Cinephelia and Beyond]
The evolution of mortality in America, presented as beautiful graphs
While everyone (and everything) dies in time, just how and when they die has changed a lot in the past few decades; it's not necessarily clear how you're likely to kick the bucket. Thankfully, Bloomberg has used visual data to make sense of death trends in the US. Some trends aren't surprising -- medicine, science and societal factors have helped Americans both live longer and avoid unnatural ends, like murders. As of 2010, roughly a third of all deaths were of people 85 and older. That's a big jump from 1968, when just 13 percent of people would live to become octogenarians.
The Daily Grind: Have you ever killed off an MMO character?
Eliot's last Storyboard column about killing off characters in MMORPGs got me thinking how rare that practice is outside of permadeath MMOs, both in RP and a literal sense. It's rare that I delete a serious character that wasn't just a bank mule or throwaway toon, and in fact, the one time I did so, I did it for roleplay effect, killing her off for a story and deleting her for good. I don't think it's too common among my friends, either. In fact, I remember a hung-over guildie logging in one morning, shocked to discover that in a drunken rage the night before, he'd deleted his alchemist. I think that moment in time made me covet my characters; I'm almost afraid to delete them even if I never play them, lest I change my mind later. In City of Heroes, for example, I frequently moved abandoned characters to remote servers just in case. But other folks delete to dramatize roleplay, to get attention, to ensure they can't return, or to ensure a clean slate if they ever do return. What about you guys -- have you ever killed off or deleted a "serious" MMO character? And can I have your stuff? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Night Trap, Sewer Shark developer Ken Melville passes away
If you've ever played Sewer Shark or other beloved full-motion video games of the '80s and '90s, then you're likely familiar with Ken Melville's work. Today we regret to report the famed FMV developer and Digital Pictures founder has passed away at the age of 65. Melville not only produced Sewer Shark, but he also created numerous other FMV games such as Make My Video: INXS and Make My Video: Kriss Kross. Melville also helped create the controversial Sega CD game, Night Trap. By the late '90s, FMV games fell out of prominence. During the genre's heyday, Melville worked on over a dozen FMV games overall. Our sympathies go out to Melville's family and friends. [Image: Digital Pictures]
Storyboard: Only mostly dead
Dead is dead. I can't stand when comics endlessly bring back dead characters, I can't stand when shows bring back dead villains, and I can't stand when death is treated less like the final note and more like a brief inconvenience. If you want someone to come back from the dead, don't kill the character in the first place! Death needs to be permanent to have any impact. So this week's article is all about ignoring that and bringing characters back from the dead anyhow because the only reason to have rules is to know when to occasionally break them. Roleplaying deaths are already rare, of course. I can count how many characters I've actually killed on one hand, and that's stretching back to roleplaying in Final Fantasy XI (abortively). But sometimes you decide that you want someone alive after all. And when it's done carefully, you can actually make the revival interesting again because you're not doing it for shock value so much as making a point.
Justin 'JewWario' Carmical passes away at 42
Justin Carmical, a games writer and entertainer known for his You Can Play This series and "JewWario" persona, has passed away. Carmical's wife, Jenny Valentine, posted on Facebook that she was with Carmical when he took his own life on January 23. "He knew I loved him, he knew all of you loved him," Valentine wrote. "You all made him so happy, every time he was recognized from his videos, it made him giddy with joy." Carmical was 42 at the time of his passing - far too young for someone of his talent. We share our condolences to his friends and family.
Nvidia marketing manager killed trying to rescue man from train
Nvidia marketing manager Philip Scholz, 35, was killed on January 20 when a commuter train struck both him and an unidentified man whom Scholz was trying to help off the tracks. Mercury News reports that Scholz saw the man, who is currently in critical condition, down on the tracks and laid down to help him up. It is not known why the man was on the tracks, but Scholz's wife, Emily Scholz, told Mercury News that it "didn't matter" to her at this point, and she wanted people to know her husband aimed to do well. "I just want people to know that he wasn't doing something stupid, or that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He wasn't in some kind of argument. He was doing the right thing when it happened." Philip Scholz's memorial service will be held at 10 a.m. on February 10, at the Veterans Memorial Building in Pleasanton.
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MMO Mechanics: Exploring death mechanics
They say death must come to us all, and that inevitability extends to our characters in MMOs. The death of our characters may be inconvenient when we want to plough through content, but penalising failure is an essential part of any MMO and further incentivises success by making you learn from your mistakes. As much as players crave gratification through rewards and progression, they also need to feel that such progress has been well-earned and greatly deserved. Rewards become that much sweeter when we must risk something to secure them, and failure without consequence would render the gains made in our favourite MMOs insignificant. Without a considerable death penalty, it becomes possible to mindlessly crush content through brute force. I don't know about you, but I don't find fun in bashing my skull repeatedly with a rock in an attempt to crack it! In this week's MMO Mechanics, I compare various death penalties and the effects they have on the MMOs that employ them. I'll explore just how tangible death penalties such as corpse running, gear durability loss, and XP drain make our character's demise feel.
Audio pioneer Ray Dolby passes away
We've sad news to report today in the world of audio: Ray Dolby has passed on. His death comes relatively soon after losing both Dr. Fritz Sennheiser and Dr. Amar Bose, and as with those two gentlemen, Dolby's legacy will continue to impact viewers and listeners around the globe for many years to come. Dolby founded Dolby Laboratories in 1965, seeking to provide a place for like-minded engineers to "push the limits of sight and sound," as is stated on the outfit's homepage. He is perhaps best known for the Dolby noise-reduction system, and in more modern times, for his company's iconic stamp on just about every major motion picture and piece of AV equipment known to man. Dolby's surround sound magic continues to lead the industry, with Dolby 3D and Dolby Atmos as its latest contributions. Ray Dolby was 80 years old, and is survived by his wife Dagmar as well as sons Tom and David. A tribute video compiled by Dolby Labs can be found after the break.
