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IGDA party features dancers, prompts controversy, resignations
The International Game Developers Association's GDC party resulted, rather than merriment for all, in the resignations of several IGDA leaders, after the appearance of underdressed dancers on stage at the event, reportedly hired by party sponsor YetiZen.Student Alicia Avril first brought the appropriateness of the dancers into question in a Forbes report, noting that it doesn't square with the professionalism or advocacy the group espouses. "Knowing there are such concerned women as members of this group," she told Forbes, "you'd think that the IGDA would be more thoughtful in their own party and how they're portraying themselves."Some members' concern led to the end of their membership, including game designer Brenda Romero, who publicly resigned from her position of co-chair of the IGDA Women in Games SIG, and developer Darius Kazemi, who "formally resigned" following the party.The IGDA issued a statement in response to the controversy. "We recognize that some of the performers' costumes at the party were inappropriate, and also some of the activities they peformed were not what we expected or approved," the statement reads. "We regret that the IGDA was involved in this situation. We do not condone activities that objectify or demean women or any other group of people." The group pledged increased vigilance toward "encouraging inclusion and diversity."During the IGDA meeting today at GDC, executive director Kate Edwards elaborated on the organization's position, Gamasutra reports. "We realize that we make mistakes sometimes, and we want to make sure that all of our programs and activities are considered inclusive and professional." She called for participation from all members, including those who left, in order to know "what we can do to do a better job in the future."
Programmer builds bot to buy random stuff from Amazon, takes secret Santa to a whole new level
In what may be the quickest route to landing on an episode of Hoarders, programmer Darius Kazemi has built a shopping bot to buy him around $50 worth of stuff every month from Amazon completely at random. He compared it to putting something on backorder and then receiving it months later, as if it's a surprise gift you bought yourself. The only difference with this Amazon Random Shopper he built is that it buys him, well, random crap that he may or may not like. Kazemi recently received his first shipment, and it consisted of a book about Cartesian Linguistics by Noam Chomsky and an electro-acoustic album by Hungarian composer Ákos Rózmann. We'd say that's pretty random. Maybe if he increased the limit to $300, he could get a Kindle Fire HD, or a maybe a few deer heads. This could turn out to be a pretty good idea or a really bad one, and we can't wait to see what treasures the following months will bring him.
'Oregon Trail' and 'Carmen Sandiego' coming to Facebook in Feb.
Please excuse us if a bit too much childlike excitement comes through in today's news that fresh takes on The Oregon Trail and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? will be released for Facebook early next month. Next-Gen.biz spotted a note revealing the two titles on developer Darius Kazemi's personal blog, where he expressed his own childlike excitement to have worked on them. "I loved both of these games as a kid (my favorites were Where in Space...? and Where in the USA...?), and one of the main reasons I took the job at Blue Fang was to get a chance to work on these awesome titles," Kazemi gushed. Even better, trailers for both can be found after the break, revealing a bit about the titles' respective gameplay, as well as their launch dates -- February 2 for The Oregon Trail (with hunting, yes!) and February 9 for Carmen Sandiego. And both games, we must add, look totally awesome. We're starting to get worried about this whole "Facebook" thing.%Gallery-115170%
JoyStats: Reaching Rank 50 in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 takes about 282 hours
Battlefield: Bad Company 2, EA's addictive team-based shooter, requires approximately 282 hours -- or 11 days and 18 hours -- of play to reach the highest rank of 50. The statistic was provided to Joystiq by Darius Kazemi, president of Orbus Gameworks, a consulting company that helps game developers keep track of what players are doing in-game. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the International Game Developers Association (IGDA). Kazemi collected the data of 3,373 player profiles from BFBCS.com using their API. For a jarring sense of scale: the average Rank 50 player has put 295 hours into the game, the equivalent of over seven weeks of working a full-time, 40-hour-a-week job. The time requirement to rank up increases dramatically around Rank 25. Kazemi explained, "From rank 1-25 it takes about 2 hours to climb to a new rank. From rank 25-50 it takes about 10 hours to level up." Read on to see how it all breaks down -- if you have time, that is.
