Management
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‘Two Point Campus’ offers evolution, not revolution
It's not a dramatic departure from the template laid down in 'Hospital' but that's not a bad thing.
LG replaces mobile chief to reverse its smartphone fortunes
LG's mobile sales are a not only a drag on its other businesses, but an embarrassment next to its nemesis, Samsung. To address that, the company has made a "sweeping realignment" of its businesses, naming Hwang Jeong-hwan as president and CEO of LG Mobile in the place of current chief Juno Cho. It also named former Harman CTO and current software head Park Il-pyung as its new chief technology officer (rival Samsung acquired Harman last year for $8 billion). The moves are aimed at "enhancing competitiveness," LG said.
Uber reportedly ignored repeated sexual harassment by manager
A former engineer at Uber wrote that she was sexually harassed and that her complaints were ignored by the human resources department, despite other harassment reports against the same manager. Furthermore, she says she was threatened with firing for reporting sexist emails and other issues. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has responded, calling what she describes as "abhorrent" and saying "anyone who behaves this way or thinks this is OK will be fired."
Fujitsu wants to fix Japan's deer problem with software
Fujitsu is teaming up with a Japanese forest research institute to learn how animal populations grow. The pair will look into Sika deer, a creature that's causing plenty of environmental damage due to overgrazing. Traditionally, these sorts of studies require a manual survey and plenty of theoretical calculations, but Fujitsu is hoping to build software that is significantly more accurate. The eventual plan is that this project can help conservationists prepare effective defenses to ensure the deer don't cause permanent harm. Given that the country hunted the deer's only natural predator to extinction a century ago, it's probably the least that they could do.
Blood Bowl dev launching football simulator next week
Blood Bowl developer Cyanide Studio announced the impending launch of its new sports management game today, Front Page Sports Football. The PC simulation game has players managing a fictitious football team, picking from over 2,300 plays to lead their franchise to gridiron glory. Squad members rely on over 20 skills such as speed, agility and morale, each influencing the effectiveness of plays called by armchair coaches. The game marks a resurgence in Sierra Online's American football management series of the same name that spanned 1992 to 1999, though Sierra is not involved in the latest game. Cyanide Studio announced Front Page Sports Football in July, and is also working on a Blood Bowl sequel in addition to its stealth game, Styx: Master of Shadows. Images of Front Page Sports Football's menu-heavy interface can be seen in the gallery below, or when the game launches next Thursday, September 25 for $19.99 (€19.99, £14.99). It's not the only upcoming football simulation game, as the developers behind the Out of the Park Baseball management series plans to launch Beyond the Sideline Football in 2015 with full NFL licensing support. [Image: Cyanide Studio]
Dean Hall is leaving behind DayZ and Bohemia Interactive
Games are a bit like children. You work with other people to craft them, to help them go from little more than a twinkle in your eye to something capable of surviving without you. Dean Hall created DayZ, but he's jumping ahead to the part where he metaphorically kicks it out of the house and tells it to get a job. Or he's kicking himself out of the house... the metaphor is a bit tortured, but the important point is that he's leaving DayZ behind. Why leave a game that's still early in testing and doing well? As Hall puts it, keeping him on the project could eventually lead to his being someone who tells others how things are done rather than adapting along with a changing game and culture. Instead, he's heading to New Zealand with plans of opening a different studio. The changeover is not happening immediately but should take place before the end of the year. [Thanks to Zipzopboobidybop for the tip!]
Beyond the Sideline Football NFL management sim coming in 2015
Beyond the Sideline Football is a management simulation game like the ever-popular Football Manager series, due out in 2015 for PC, Mac and Linux. Unlike Football Manager, the game is centered on a different sport: American football. Coming from Out of the Park Developments, the creators of the excellent Out of the Park Baseball management series as well as Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013, the game will include all 32 NFL teams and their current roster of players. Like other management sims, the game has players managing their team's depth chart, simulate matches for decades and call every play in individual games. Additionally, players can bring their favorite teams to fortune (or run them into the ground) by negotiating contracts, participating in the annual player draft and make trades to better their franchise's future. OOTP Developments is boasting "nearly 50 tracked stats" for the game's virtual athletes as well as "complete histories" and automatically-generated news and stories to build the game's sporty universe. Beyond the Sideline has another connection to Football Manager, as former Sports Interactive developer Francis Cole is the lead developer on the project. [Image: Out of the Park Developments]
Fight manager sim Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013 out on iPad, Android
Boxing management sim Title Bout Championship Boxing 2013 is now available on iPad and Android via the Google Play store. Title Bout 2013 launched on PC, Mac and Linux in June 2013, one month after Out of the Park Developments sold the series to PISD, an independent company that provides OOTP with development libraries used for Out of the Park Baseball. Title Bout 2013 has players simulating boxing matches, setting up tournaments, training sessions and more in a management simulation/text-adventure-style interface. Much like OOTP Baseball and Sports Interactive's Football Manager series, Title Bout 2013 features a huge database of real-life athletes, sporting over 8,000 fighter records. The management sim is said to be nearly the same on iOS and Android as it is on PC, though it's priced at a moderate $1.99 compared to the current $9.99 price for two PC licenses on the game's site. Title Bout Championship Boxing has a lengthy history, as it began as a tabletop game created by brothers Jim and Tom Trunzo in the late 1970's, later seeing DOS-based text simulation TKO Boxing in 1990. Comp-U-Sport created Title Fight 2001, a brand later sold to OOTP Developments, which launched Title Bout Championship Boxing 2 and version 2.5 in 2005 and 2008, respectively.
Football Manager 2013 was pirated over 10.1 million times, once in the Vatican
Sports Interactive studio head Miles Jacobson revealed that Football Manager 2013 was illegally downloaded over 10.1 million times in a talk at the London Games Conference, MCVUK reported. He explained that the cracked software featured a "Home" flaw, which let the developer track the IP addresses of all pirates. Among the regions Jacobson discovered the illegal downloads in, China led the group with 3.2 million downloads followed by Turkey with 1.05 million copies of the game. Jacobson added that one person in the 547,000 that illegally downloaded Football Manager 2013 in Italy was located in Vatican City. While the developer said it would "be ridiculous to think" that every illegal download equated to one lost sale of the game, he estimated that 176,000 sales were lost to pirating, and that 1.74 percent of downloaders would have potentially purchased Football Manager 2013 had the cracking software not been available. Putting it in tangible terms, Jacobson equated the lost sales to $3.7 million in revenue that Sports Interactive and publisher Sega won't see. Jacobson was previously optimistic in November 2012 about the new anti-piracy measures placed in the game, noting that Football Manager 2012 wasn't pirated until two weeks after release. By comparison, Football Manager 2013 went 119 days without being cracked, the official LGC Twitter account noted during Jacobson's talk.
Beta access now available for Football Manager 2014 pre-orders
Those that pre-ordered soccer management sim Football Manager 2014 can now access the game's beta version on Steam. Participating in the beta program gives players a head start on developing athletes in their franchises, as all progress made in players' management careers is saved, carrying over to the full version of the game. Football Manager 2014 includes cross-save support for those that own a copy of the PlayStation Vita version. Additionally, the simulation game will launch for the first time on Linux and come with Steam Workshop support for players to create and share custom roster databases, graphics and skins. Football Manager 2014 will launch on October 31.
CCP hires new Executive Producer for DUST 514, Jean-Charles Gaudechon
It makes sense to hire people based on what they've already proven capable of doing. That's obvious. If someone has built seven houses that have all stood up to hurricanes, you're probably going to hire that guy to build your hurricane shelter. And if someone's familiar with making multiplayer first-person shooters work in the free-to-play market, well, you'll hire him to manage DUST 514. That's what CCP Games did with their newest Executive Producer for the game. Jean-Charles Gaudechon previously worked for Electronic Arts in Stockholm, Sweden, where he worked on both Battlefield: Play4free and Battlefield Heroes. He also worked on Need for Speed World, which is less of a shooter but still an online title with similar needs to DUST 514. Gaudechon will be responsible for overseeing further development of the title at CCP's Shanghai studio and will report directly to senior VP of product development Sean Decker. [Source: CCP Games press release]
God game Maia lands on Steam Early Access in December
Colony management simulator Maia will launch on Steam on December 3 via Early Access. The game earned £140,481 ($225,219) on Kickstarter in late November 2012. The god game has players building an underground colony to avoid hostile creatures on the surface of a planet. Maia's world is procedurally-generated and features both top-down and first-person game modes. Simon Roth, the game's developer, noted that direct pre-orders have already totaled a tidy £12,000 ($19,238).
iOS 7: Benefits to business and enterprise
Ask IT managers and CIOs serving large organizations "What keeps you up at night?" After they get over their cold sweats from considering public security breaches or datacenter meltdowns, they'll probably come around to the rapid, relentless pace of change in the technology ecosystems they're running. Nowhere is that speedy spin cycle more frenetic than in mobile and portable computing, where the "consumerization of IT" driven by bring-your-own-device policies and the radical popularity of iOS and Android has completely overturned the pecking order (as recently as five years ago, Blackberry above all). Apple's story for iOS in the enterprise has been one of incredibly fast uptake, especially considering the usual cycle for upgrades and new platform rollouts. In many ways, that rapid adoption was in spite of Apple's traditional arm's-length relationship with enterprise customers, compared to the tight ties with vendors like Dell and IBM. Over the iOS lifecycle, however, more and more sophisticated features for management and security have helped to make the challenge of enterprise support easier and easier. Aside from Exchange ActiveSync support, introduced in "iPhone OS 2.0" back in 2008, the single biggest piece of the enterprise puzzle is probably mobile device management (MDM). The inclusion of MDM "hooks" in iOS means that enterprise managers can control device configurations (networking, mail, VPN and more) and keep track of their deployed fleet. Apple offers its own core MDM tool as part of OS X Server, but most organizations of scale find themselves turning to third parties for their MDM solutions. There are several pieces of good news in iOS 7 regarding MDM. First of all, many of the major ISVs have announced day-one support for the new operating system: AirWatch, MobileIron, Maas360 and JAMF's Casper are all compatible right away (you can see the full matrix of supported MDM tools at Enterprise iOS). Second, Apple has added many, many more hooks into the MDM toolkit on iOS 7. Want to manage AirPrint printer destinations, or even AirPlay-enabled Apple TVs? Can do, in iOS 7 MDM. Install apps silently, push app configuration settings, or even preset a fleet of purchased devices to auto-enroll in your MDM when employees take them out of the box? It's in there. What else do enterprise managers of iOS device fleets have to look forward to in iOS 7? Apple's brief rundown of iOS 7's business-facing features hits many of the highlights; let's dive into a few of them here. App Store license management. Ever since the App Store launched in the summer of 2008, the process of buying and assigning iOS apps to corporate users has been fraught with difficulty. Until the Volume Purchasing Program launched three years later (!), the best/only way to manage this process was via gifting, or having employees expense personal purchases. Those apps, and their sunk costs, would also walk out the door if the employee left the company. No more -- now the VPP can deliver licenses rather than download codes, and the apps are company-owned. If an employee leaves, the license and the app can be deactivated and redeployed. (Mac apps and iBooks are also now available for volume purchase.) Enterprise SSO. Single sign-on implementations are common in enterprise, but were tricky to deal with on mobile. Now iOS 7 allows apps to work with the system-level SSO capability, meaning that business users (with the proper back-end and app support) can enter their corporate credentials once and use multiple apps without reauthentication. Multiple levels of in-app data encryption for third party apps. Application data can now be automatically encrypted until the first time a user passcode is successfully entered after a device reboot; optionally, developers can flag apps to re-encrypt the data when the phone locks. Managed Open In. Want your employees to open their email attachments in a specific, managed application rather than willy-nilly in whatever iSharedThis app of the month they choose? The option now exists to limit the range of the share sheets for corporate data. I can see this being a valuable tool in highly secure and regulated enviroments, and a huge annoyance/productivity killer most everywhere else. Per App VPN. Virtual Private Networking is an essential piece of the enterprise ecosystem, but until now it was either all on or all off on iOS -- when on, all network traffic funneled through the corporate concentrator. Now, MDM admins can define which apps should use the VPN connection, and which ones can simply go straight to the Internet. One of the business-friendly features that was rumored for iOS 7, LinkedIn system-level integration, actually is not present in the 7.0 release -- it may make an appearance at a later date. Below, a rather remarkable alt-universe version of Apple's iOS 7/iPhone 5s announcement (courtesy of enterprise iOS and Moovweb) imagines what could have been if all the enterprise features had been front and center. You can read more about the enterprise features of iOS 7 in Craig Johnston's thorough rundown for iMore.
How SOE deals with bad seeds, in-game and out
At this year's GDC Europe, SOE's director of global community relations, Linda Carlson, talked about her management philosophy for a community infected by trolls and bullies. GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Carlson after the panel to further discuss this growing issue. Interestingly enough, Carlson also commented on how SOE monitors player behavior -- even outside of its games. "If we know who you are and you're abusing somebody on Twitter, we will ban your game account and we will not accept you as a customer ever again. It's not always possible to identify people [in that way], but we take that seriously." Carlson goes on to say, "A very influential player, high up in a huge guild -- we'll still ban them... In our games, if you are an exploiter we don't care who you are, how big your guild is, how many people you threaten to take with you when you go." Take a look at the entire interview for more on how SOE plans to deal with levels of negativity in its community.
The Mog Log Extra: Tips for a Final Fantasy XIV beginner
We're all kind of beginners with the new version of Final Fantasy XIV. Some of us have high-level characters already, but none of us has years of experience with the game. At best, you have memories of how things worked in the last beta test or two. But there's still a difference between having a character from version 1.0 dripping with high-level items and having a fresh guy or gal stepping off the boat into Limsa. Fortunately, the game's tutorials now do a solid job of introducing you to how the game works. But there are still some tips and tricks to consider, and it's with that in mind that I present this column. If you're new to the game completely or even just an occasional dabbler in the previous beta tests, here's some advice to help you out during your first steps.
Shroud of the Avatar team adds Starr Long to the mix
Fans of the Ultima series should be happy to hear that Shroud of the Avatar has added Starr Long to its roster as executive producer. Don't recognize the name? You should; according to Richard Garriott, Starr Long is the reason that Ultima Online existed in the first place. As Garriott puts it, while there had been discussions about doing an online installment of the series, Long was the one who was insistent that Ultima Online needed to happen. He was so much the driving force behind it that Garriott points to him as the push that kept him working on the game. A formal announcement will be made on Saturday at RTX 2013 alongside a special demonstration of Shroud of the Avatar, which will be available via livestream. If you've been hoping to see some of the key players behind UO back together, it looks as if you're in luck. [Source: Portalarium press release]
Texas Instruments brings fast charging, extended life to Li-ion batteries
Yesterday Texas Instruments introduced a couple of new chipsets (fuel gauge an charger ICs) designed to improve the charging speed and life expectancy of single-cell Li-ion batteries. The technology, called MaxLife, is expected to provide an improvement of up to 30 percent in battery service life and faster charging times. Cell impedance is carefully monitored by the fuel gauge chip while the charger IC uses a model of battery degradation to charge the cell in the most effective way. Both chips are connected via an I2C bus to form an autonomous battery management system which, according to the company, is safer and more thermally efficient than existing solutions. The two chipsets (2.5A and 4.5A) are now available along with a development kit, so it's only a matter of time until this technology lands into handsets and other devices that use single-cell Li-ion batteries. Check out the details after the break.
University of Texas gaming academy to be led by execs behind Deus Ex, Warcraft
Whatever value you see in game development schools, it's clear that few of them tout gaming industry veterans who can lead by example. The University of Texas' upcoming Denius-Sams Gaming Academy could solve this discrepancy by tapping two executives whose work many of us know by heart. Both legendary designer Warren Spector and Blizzard COO Paul Sams will guide (and sometimes teach) year-long post-baccalaureate certificate programs at the Academy that focus on creative leadership and game company management -- yes, that means instruction from gurus behind the Deus Ex and Warcraft franchises, among other classics. The programs will also emphasize that all-important ability to finish a game, rather than mastering skills in isolation. The first students join the Academy's ranks in fall 2014, although they'll need to be exceptional to stand a chance of getting in -- just 20 spots will be open in the first year. [Image credits: Nightscream, Wikipedia; Rob Fahey, Flickr]
Nutrino is a virtual nutritionist for iOS, we go hands-on
As a recovering food addict, I've been told on numerous occasions that washboard abs are created in the kitchen, not in the gym. That's why we were intrigued to take a look at Nutrino, an iOS app that promises a "virtual nutritionist" service to help slice away the adipose from our stomach. We spent some time putting the software through its paces, and if you're thinking of making the leap, head on past the break to learn more.
Tracy Hickman tapped for writing duties on Shroud of the Avatar
If you were a fan of fantasy games in the 1980s, you know Richard Garriott from the Ultima series. (Our younger readers are more familiar with him as someone who went to space.) Odds are good that you were also familiar with Tracy Hickman, co-author of the popular Dragonlance novels during the '80s. And if that sounds like two great tastes that taste great together, you'll be happy to know that Tracy Hickman has been announced as the lead story designer for Garriott's upcoming Shroud of the Avatar. Hickman's writing credits aside from the Dragonlance series include the Death Gate Cycle, the ongoing Dragonships series, and the online serial novel Dragon's Bard. There's no word on whether his frequent co-authors will be joining in on the writing duties as well, but even Hickman alone should make some old-school fantasy fans very happy about the direction of the upcoming game.
