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GeForce Now goes live for all users today
GeForce Now has arrived. After seven years of tweaking its delivery systems and gathering beta feedback, NVIDIA has finally unveiled the consumer version of its game-streaming ecosystem. GeForce Now streams games of all sizes to PC, Mac, Android and the NVIDIA Shield, and it works with players' existing libraries on Steam, the Epic Games Store and all other digital platforms. Games are capped at 1080p and 60 FPS.
Ninja's management firm is 'actively seeking to diversify' its talent pool
Bridget Davidson helped establish the League of Legends Championship Series nine years ago. Back then, competitors brought their own equipment to world-class tournaments and Riot Games wasn't sure if anyone would tune in to the online stream. The premiere LCS finals lasted three days in June 2011, and nearly 1.7 million unique viewers watched the show online. It was considered a success and Davidson continued to help Riot grow its esports venture. Eight years later, the 2019 League of Legends World Championship drew in a peak concurrent viewer count of 44 million, with an average of 21.8 million online audience members per minute. Hologram music groups performed at the opening ceremony and Louis Vuitton designed the trophy case.
'Life is Strange 2' and the reality of gun violence in games
Life is Strange 2 deals with a litany of heavy themes, covering everything from police violence and immigration in the United States, to racism and family bonds. French studio Dontnod handles each subject with care, respect and research, consulting with people who have lived through situations that the game's main characters, Sean and Daniel, encounter. However, there's an extra, unintentional topic humming beneath the five-part series: gun violence. Throughout Life is Strange 2, moments of high drama often culminate in scenes involving guns, asking players to make quick decisions at the threat of being blown away -- or, pulling the trigger themselves.
An exclusive look at Samsung Ballie
The first thing I notice when I pick up Ballie is how light it is: It's about the size of a hefty grapefruit but much less dense. Ballie's plastic, scalloped frame gives this otherwise nondescript ball a sense of playfulness, one that might not have been possible if Samsung had gone with the cloth finish it first considered.
The crowdfunded cult of Amanda Palmer
Amanda Palmer wouldn't exist in her current form without Patreon. That's not to say Amanda Palmer the person would dematerialize if Patreon didn't exist, but Amanda Palmer the artist would be a completely different beast. As it stands, Palmer is an independent musician churning out music videos, new songs, complete albums, blazingly honest social media diaries and bits of international activism on the daily. She's constantly online, sharing her life as a touring artist, mother, wife and modern human with more than 1 million people on Twitter alone. She responds to a shocking number of tweets. All of this is funded through Patreon. Every month, more than 15,000 individuals send some of their money to Palmer, in amounts ranging from $1 to $1,000. She takes that cash and turns it into art, bypassing restrictive corporate contracts and pop-obsessed music labels. Palmer fled the traditional system in 2010, after years of fighting for creative control over her solo albums and those of her debut band, The Dresden Dolls. So, sure, it's fair to say Amanda Palmer wouldn't exist in her current form without Patreon. It's also true that Patreon wouldn't exist without Amanda Palmer.
Some of the best video game ideas come from a Twitter philosopher
Pippin Barr is what happens when you hand a philosopher a video game controller. He received a Ph.D in Computer Science in 2008 with a thesis titled, Video Game Values: Play as Human-Computer Interaction. He's built a tongue-in-cheek series of games based on Greek mythology where players are handed impossible tasks, such as pushing a boulder up a hill as Sisyphus, or struggling against chains while a pixelated eagle pecks out your liver as Prometheus. In 2011, Barr created The Artist is Present, a digital version of artist Marina Abramović's famed MoMA performance piece. In it, players pay to enter the museum and wait in line for hours, in real-time, for the chance to sit and stare into Abramović's eyes for as long as they wish. Well, at least until the museum closes.
Crowdfunding is better than Netflix for YouTube's creep queen
One day six months ago, Christine McConnell picked up the phone and learned that her Netflix show, The Curious Creations of Christine McConnell, wouldn't be renewed. The production company called with the news, citing an email it had received from Netflix. McConnell had been floating in limbo since her first season wrapped and aired around Halloween last year, unsure if she'd get another chance at streaming stardom.
Alex Garland's 'Devs' explores free will in the age of predictive computing
Alex Garland deconstructed the Turing test with Ex Machina and tormented our psyches with a horrifying alien invasion in Annihilation. Now he's tackling free will vs. a deterministic universe in Devs. And instead of trying to cram all that philosophy into a two-hour film (that might not even see theatrical release), Devs was crafted specifically for TV as an eight-episode, big budget miniseries on FX, where every installment was written and directed by Garland. It's not strictly science fiction either: He calls it a "science-based thriller."
Oprah’s Book Club is coming to Apple TV+
Oprah Winfrey is one of the A-list celebrities Apple has enlisted for Apple TV+. Winfrey has already signed on for a series with Prince Harry on mental health, and she's expected to release another documentary, Toxic Labor, about workplace harassment. Today, we learned that Oprah's Book Club will get a place on the streaming platform, too.
A dentist made a game in MS Paint and it's terrifying
The scariest thing about World of Horror might be the fact that it's being lovingly crafted by a part-time dentist. Pawel Kozminski is the sole creator of World of Horror, and he also practices dentistry in Poland, splitting his time between poking at people's molars and placing pixels in the perfect spots using MS Paint. Yes, that Paint.
Amazon Music HD offers lossless streaming starting at $12.99 per month
Amazon is launching a new tier for its Music subscription service that will offer high quality, lossless audio streams and downloads, the company has announced. With Amazon Music HD, as the plan is called, Amazon says people are going to have access to over 50 million high-resolution tracks at CD quality and better, thanks to support for 16-bit files and sample rates of 44.1kHz and above. The service will also come with "millions of tracks in UHD," which includes hi-res audio streaming at up to 24-bit/48kHz (or 96 to 192kHz) -- in case you're a hardcore audiophile and need the absolute highest quality possible.
Consensual phishing: How to crack your half-forgotten crypto password
Phil Dougherty has a side hustle as a friendly hacker. By day, he's a software developer at the University of Wisconsin, building free educational games and conducting research on the ways people play them. Meanwhile, back at home, Dougherty is the shepherd of a program that's constantly running down ways to break into other people's cryptocurrency wallets. Dougherty works with folks who have lost, forgotten or incorrectly written down their Ethereum passwords, locking themselves out of their wallets and forfeiting the digital cash that's lurking within. These people are, essentially, shit out of luck. There's no customer support hotline for Ethereum, no security questions to answer, no "Forgot password?" link.
The uphill battle to build Honda’s first modern EV
Honda, like Toyota, has a troubled history with EVs. After pioneering them with the EV Plus in 1997 then releasing a very limited edition Fit EV, it's been radio silence from the company ever since. Now at the Frankfurt Motor Show, Honda has finally built a modern electric car that it plans to sell: the Honda E. This Europe-only EV won't be sold in the US, but it sure has attracted a lot of attention. Honda fans are eating up the retro-adorable styling, and the interior will be impressively high tech for a production vehicle. On the other hand, it's expensive and can't go nearly as far on a charge as rivals. These decisions might seem at odds with other automakers, but as the design team explained to me, Honda hopes that urbanites will love the technology and sportiness enough to forgive the lower range.
Disney says 'quality over quantity' gives it a streaming advantage
The Disney+ Showcase at the D23 Expo started with a live performance from the cast of High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. And that wasn't just about getting the crowd fired up. For Disney, it was an opportunity to give its biggest fans a taste of one of the original shows that will anchor its upcoming streaming service, Disney+. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, along with other originals like The Mandalorian and blockbuster movies such as Captain Marvel, are a key part of how Disney hopes to lure people into signing up for Disney+, which launches November 12th for $6.99 per month. From Pixar to Marvel, to Star Wars and National Geographic, Disney is betting on the power of the brands it owns to make its streaming efforts a success -- and, at D23, the company made it clear that it's going to get as much as it can out of them to help it get there.
'El Hijo' is a Spaghetti Western stealth game with heart
The art at the top of El Hijo's website says it all. A young boy in a red poncho stands at the edge of a cliff, overlooking a sun-bleached desert valley with a stuffed bear dangling from his fingertips. His shadow unfurls across the rock behind him, the teddy bear transformed into a pistol. This little boy is a fighter.
'Dark Crystal: Tactics' and the evolution of Netflix's video game strategy
Stranger Things was Netflix's first experiment with making video games. Developed by Texas studio BonusXP, the Stranger Things mobile game came out in October 2017, and it was a basic, accessible experience for anyone even vaguely familiar with the franchise, regardless of their gaming prowess. Stranger Things garnered 3 million downloads in its first week, and it set the stage for Netflix to get excited about -- and throw money at -- video games. Since then, the studio has released a sequel, Stranger Things 3: The Game, which is essentially an expanded, isometric take on the same formula, but built for consoles instead of smartphones.
Confronting existential dread through DIY musical instruments
A Day That Will Never Happen Again. Here You Are, You Are Here. Everything You Love Will One Day Be Taken From You. Believe it or not, these are not the names of Cure songs, but of electronic musical instruments -- though obviously not particularly traditional ones. They're collectively known as The Book of Knowledge of Impractical Musical Devices and they were created by Yann Seznec, a sound artist based in Scotland. (Though he is in the process of moving back to the US.) It's a project that pulls inspiration from a number of places. But there are three big ones that unify the series. As the name suggests, The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices by Al-Jazari is a major reference point. But Seznec's project also explores our relationship with sound and media, as well as the fleetingness of... well, everything. As he says in describing the third volume in the series Everything You Love Will One Day Be Taken From You: "Every time I play that sound I'm destroying it. And it's slowly slipping away from me. Just like everything is." Yikes.
From indie development to Guerrilla Games: The 'Gravity Ghost' story
Erin Robinson Swink knows when someone has actually finished her game, the hand-painted physics-based adventure called Gravity Ghost. "I can usually tell if they played it until the end based on the way they say that to me," she said. "Like, 'Yeah, I played your game.' Or like, 'I played your game,' and then they look off into the distance. OK, that person played to the end."
‘Judgment’ is a sublime detective game for everyone
Grizzly murders. A ridiculously smart hero haunted by his past. A shady group of individuals who will do anything, it seems, to cover up their terrible deeds. These are the hallmarks of a great detective story, and Judgment, the latest video game from Japanese developer Ryu ga Gotoku (RGG) Studio, has all of them.
'Sea of Solitude' looks like a brilliant, emotional horror show
Sea of Solitude feels like coming home. Footage of a hulking black monster swimming among the rooftops and balconies of a waterlogged Berlin plays on repeat like a GIF in my psyche, as comforting as it is terrifying. I've been viscerally afraid of giant creatures in deep waters for as long as I can remember -- it probably has something to do with my after-school routine as a kid. My older brother, dressed in steel-toed Docs and long-sleeved black shirts even in the mid-year Arizona sun, would walk me home and we'd plop down in front of the TV. Sometimes it was Baywatch, sometimes it was Terminator 2, but the afternoon our parents told us they were getting a divorce, it was Jaws.
