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YouTube CEO talks misinformation, creators and comments at SXSW
YouTube's presence at SXSW 2018 extended beyond its Story HQ, a space where it turned ads into videos that feel more like art. The company's CEO, Susan Wojcicki, was part of a panel at the event titled "Navigating the Video Revolution in the Digital Age." There, she talked about a wide range of topics, including experiments for YouTube's comments section and how much money creators are making. But the biggest news Wojcicki dropped on stage was about a new feature she called "information cues," which will help fight hoaxes by linking viewers to articles on Wikipedia that debunks those.
Alternate 1980s RPG Majestic Nights is one big conspiracy
Some choose to believe the Apollo 11 moon landing of 1969 was a hoax, or that the United States government is keeping extraterrestrials in a hidden building somewhere in the Nevada desert. Epiphany Games is playing off these types of conspiracies with its freshly-announced episodic game, Majestic Nights, which will debut in September. In the alternate 1980s game, these sorts of conspiracies aren't just theories, but are "truths." Players guide an intelligence operative known as Cardholder and a private investigator named Cal in the isometric RPG, uncovering clues to the criminal cover-ups and world-breaking facts about events like alien abductions. The first season of Majestic Nights includes six episodes and kicks off with a "Chapter Zero" prologue for free in September, which dives into the aforementioned moon landing. Majestic Nights' subsequent chapters will come at a cost; the first is expected to arrive in October, with the season's conclusive sixth episode currently slated for April 2015. The game is in development for PC, Mac, iOS and Android, and while Epiphany didn't put a price to each chapter, season passes will be available for players to guarantee access to the whole shebang. [Image: Epiphany Games]
The Game Archaeologist: EA's Majestic
"This is not a game. Or is it?" Conspiracy theories and paranoia were hot with pop culture in the 1990s, largely thanks to movies like The Net and TV shows like the X-Files, which had the tagline of "I want to believe." With the rise of the internet during the decade and the fantastic leaps and bounds technology had been making, people were not only experiencing new ways to play games but also growing suspicious that these tools could have a sinister side. It was into this niche that EA stepped to create an ambitious $20 million project that would fuse massively multiplayer interactivity, the growing variety of technological mediums, and conspiracy theories together. The project was Majestic, an alternate reality game (ARG) that would be the most expensive and highest profile attempt to date. It generated great amounts of interest and publicity, had a promising start, and then flared out hard by the end of 2001. Considering how ARGs and MMOs have crossed paths since, most recently with The Secret World, I wanted to take a closer look at an attempt to develop a game that would run parallel in many ways with the industry that we love today.
Engaging the brain: Funcom talks about the immersiveness of story in The Secret World
"No designer could ask for more to draw upon," The Secret World's Joel Bylos says. "This world, our world, is the greatest resource of them all." And so begins a fascinating trip down the dark alleys of storytelling in Funcom's upcoming MMO. In a dev diary posted at MMORPG.com, The Secret World team suggests it's more interesting to set the game in our world instead of in rehashed fantasy lands. By embracing the concept of "everything is true," the writers open the door to every conspiracy theory, every urban legend, and every branch of pseudoscience known to man. "The story is exploration. The story is discovery," Bylos promises. He says that the ultimate goal of the storytelling team is to get players to stop mindlessly clicking and to start engaging the story on a conscious level. This includes investigating events, hunting for clues and solving puzzles. No, this isn't Scooby-Doo Online (although that would be awesome). It's also interesting to note that every character in the game has full voice-over and motion capture as a way to pull you into the story instead of jolt you out of it. Bylos also outlines the different types of missions, which include stealth and infiltration, action, investigation, and story. [Thanks Even!]
Funcom hints at Secret World death penalty, sabotage missions
All is very hush hush around Funcom's The Secret World. While a good bit of new info surfaced at last month's GDC, there are still more questions than answers regarding the firm's followup to Age of Conan. That said, occasionally the devs will dangle a tasty morsel, and in a new interview at Game Snafu, Funcom designer Martin Bruusgaard does just that with regard to TSW's death penalty mechanics. "We will not implement a death system that can be exploited as a fast travel system, because dying in The Secret World should be a sign of failure, and not optimization in any way. We don't want to punish the players in a form where they can lose stuff, neither items nor experience, but rather penalize on time," he explains. Designer Joel Bylos also chimes in with some interesting bits about the game's questing mechanics, chief among them a hint about new sabotage missions. "These missions share a similar gameplay style to the original Deus Ex game -- avoiding security cameras, disabling traps and hacking computers, etc. Generally the traps are dynamic only in the sense that players can disable/enable them in the world. This becomes interesting when other players can accidentally trigger an alarm in the camp you are sneaking through," Bylos says. Check out the full interview at Game Snafu.
Conspiracies, kittens, applesauce, and AT&T SIMs
Yesterday, Steve Sande posted about his experiences testing iPhone 3GS signal attenuation. In his post, he showed a picture I had snapped during our morning experimentation showing my 3GS and my 4 competing head to head with the same carrier. My 3GS appeared to have better signal strength than my 4 throughout our testing. I used a Best Buy O2 SIM for that test. It's basically a re-branded AT&T SIM. Because of that it works in any 3G or later iPhone, just by dropping it into the unit. (Unfortunately, no such luck for 1st generation iPhones, which must be jailbroken and hacktivated to take advantage of the SIM.)
Ragnar Tørnquist on what sets The Secret World apart
One of the games we've seen a lot of reader interest in at Massively is The Secret World, in development at Funcom. One of the key people behind the upcoming horror MMO is Ragnar Tørnquist, Producer and Director of The Secret World. Tørnquist recently sat down for an interview with Vladimir "Evoker" Georgiev from UGDB.com to discuss what will set The Secret World apart from other MMOs we've played. One of the refreshing aspects of the game is there are no levels or classes in TSW. Tørnquist tells UGDB, "Our goal is to make sure that players can sit down and play this game and enjoy themselves from the very beginning. You don't start out fighting rats with a rusty sword. You get cool firearms, black magic, occult weapons from the outset -- and you're fighting demons and the undead, not wild boar or petty criminals."
