Archive for May, 2012

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Marvel’s Push Into Digital Comics

Rob Salkowitz for Fast Company:

Augmented reality might be the most overblown trend on the digital radar right now, and that’s saying a lot. Do we really need to wave our smartphones and tablets over every object in the physical world to find some gimmicky Easter egg or unlock some cheesy video clip? Does it add anything to the story to strip a page down to its pencils or see Iron Man come flying off the page onto the screen of your iPad? How soon till that gets old, even for a teenage male? Five times? Ten?

Bingo. I’ve been reading “Avengers vs X-Men” with the Marvel AR app and it gets old pretty fast. There’s only about 4-5 times you can use the AR functionality and even then, about 80% of the “content” is just panels stripped to pencils. Yes, it’s hard work producing a comic, but *yawn*.

It is nice that Marvel is thinking of ways to add value to their content, but AR is probably a novelty at best, especially considering that you have to hold your phone over the comic, which is kinda like attending a live concert and watching it through your phone camera. How about we work on making a Spotify equivalent for comics, first? Now, that would be something truly valuable.

Marvel Announces Big Digital Comics Push, But Will It Fly? | Fast Company.

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The Roots and Gary Clark Jr. UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival 5-27-12

Funny how they call it the “UCLA Jazz Reggae Festival” since there wasn’t any true “jazz” music to speak of, but I’m sure the crowd didn’t mind much, especially given that someone as talented as Gary Clark Jr. was just shredding on the guitar. He has a full length album coming out in September and I can’t wait to hear it, although I imagine his music is best experienced live.

The Roots did what they always do by playing a crowd-pleasing set including several covers and snippets of recognizable songs. Particularly cool was their rendition of the Beastie Boys’ Paul Revere dedicated to MCA:

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Amazon Prime Instant Videos On Xbox 360

Jeff Bezos:

We’ve also just added a new Watchlist feature, which helps you keep track of the movies and TV episodes you want to view later. You can add favorites and new discoveries to your list—then come back anytime to watch instantly. Try it on your Xbox 360, Kindle Fire, or your browser on PC & Mac … and Watchlist is coming soon to PlayStation 3 and Roku.

I’ve never really used Instant Video much on my devices, but after using the Xbox 360 Amazon Instant Video app, the Watchlist feature feels like it should have always been there. Now if they’ll just get an iOS app out…

via Amazon.

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YOU DON’T KNOW JACK Is On Facebook

I can’t think of a better place for You Don’t Know Jack other than maybe an online-enabled mobile client. The cleverly written trivia game is still fun after over a decade.

YOU DON'T KNOW JACK on Facebook.

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Damon Lindelof On The Verge Interview

Joshua Topolsky interviews Damon Lindelof:

There’s some interesting stuff here for Lost fans in this hour-long interview straight from one of the the show’s showrunners. This is the first I’ve seen of Lindelof talking candidly at length about some of the issues that people had with Lost and the finale. Don’t expect any mindblowing revelations, but at least there is some confirmation as to what was “real” and wasn’t.

via The Verge.

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Valve’s ‘Handbook for New Employees’

Reading through this guide made me wish every company had Valve’s dedication to both succeeding as a company and providing the best possible professional environment for their employees. Not everyone will be comfortable in a “flat” organization structure, but for those that are, oh boy, sure sounds like a great job, eh?

Read The PDF

via The Verge.

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Infinity Blade 2′s ClashMob Mode

Donald Mustard, Chair Creative Director talking to Douglass C. Perry for Kotaku:

“This is part of the great social experiment,” said Mustard. “We live now in an asynchronous world. Here’s an example. My wife and I love to play Scrabble, but with our kids and schedules, we don’t have enough to play together. So we play it, turn-based, on our phones.”

I’ve been having a ton of fun with “Infinity Blade 2′s” ClashMob. It gives me everything I want from a mobile game – bite-sized action, great graphics, tangible rewards, and reasons to check back every so often on my own schedule. Basically imagine “Tiny Tower” except you actually play a game and get rewards. The cherry on top is that you feel like you are a part of something more epic by taking on a boss with a billion hit points alongside people across the world.

Like real life, though, it’s kind of deflating when you contribute a lot to a seemingly doable task and find out that your teammates couldn’t do the same. While I think the mode could definitely use some tweaking, Chair is really onto something here in creating a truly great unique mobile gaming experience that combines the best of all worlds – skill, graphics, time commitment, and rewards.

via Kotaku – It Takes A Global Effort To Drain New Infinity Blade II Boss’ Billion Health Points.

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Insomniac Is Making A Facebook Game Called Outernauts

Rowan Belden-Clifford, Insomniac Games talking to The Verge:

“I consider myself the core audience of previous Insomniac games AND of Outernauts,” he says. “I’m 23 years old, and I play both console games and Facebook games, as does my roommate and many of my other peers. We as a company are as excited about reaching a huge new audience on Facebook as we are about satisfying our hardcore fans.”

Contrary to stereotypical gaming enthusiast beliefs, I think it’s a good thing that Insomniac is setting out to make a Facebook game. I’d love to see someone make a “legitimate” game on Facebook if nothing else but to prove that it can even be done. If there’s anyone that can pull that off, it may as well be one of the best console development studios in gaming today. Playdom’s “Avengers Alliance” came close to creating a Facebook game that isn’t a glorified progress quest, but missed the mark with its terrible shoehorning of “social” mechanics to bottleneck progress.

Knowing how that turned out, I’ve got some heavy reservations based on Insomniac’s partnership with EA (whom we all know love to microtransaction/DLC their games to comical levels), and the fact that the description of “Outernauts” in the piece make me visualize “Pokemon” and “Farmville” having inappropriate relations.

Still, count me in for at least seeing what they come up with.

via Insomniac Games explains why Facebook is the place for its new ‘hardcore’ RPG Outernauts | The Verge.

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NBC’s Revolution Might Be Good

Jon Favreau, JJ Abrams, and Giancarlo Esposito (Gus Fring from “Breaking Bad”) involved in a new show about a apocalyptic post-electronics world? Sign me up!

The trailer actually looks pretty good. Maybe this will be the Great Sci-Fi Show on network TV we’ve all been searching for in the post-Lost era.

Update: Jon Favreau reveals more about his involvement in “Revolution” to The Hollywood Reporter

via The Trailer for NBC’s ‘Revolution’ is Epic.

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Consequence of Sound Reviews Garbage – Not Your Kind of People

Adam Kivel for Consequence of Sound:

That said, the whole album sounds like an anomaly. This isn’t the kind of music that garners a lot of radio-play the way it did ten years ago. It’s not the type of music that gets the indie kids going, either. The appeal then, lies largely for Garbage fans (who have been salivating over this new release for a long while), those that haven’t left the ’90s behind, those for whom grungy arena pop is the genre that never dies.

I had the same thoughts when I listened to the new Garbage album. It’s not a disappointing album, nor does it blow me away. It’s just kinda… ok.

via Album Review: Garbage – Not Your Kind of People « Consequence of Sound.