“We wanted to have the capability to start doing some smaller, more experimental games,” said Pardo. “At Blizzard, each team has gotten bigger and bigger, and our dev cycles have gotten longer and longer, and the industry moves much faster than that. Even though we still are going to keep doing large games because that’s what we’re great at, we still wanted to build some new capability and experiment with some games that might turn into the next big thing.”
Hearthstone is a collectible card game that will appear on Mac and PC, and then on iPad, and it’ll be free to play, with additional content available either by earning it in-game or purchasing it. It’s the first brand-new property for Blizzard in quite some time, and quite a departure.
Blizzard’s chief creative officer Rob Pardo talks about the small team that’s working on the game, and how its development made Blizzard look very differently at creating a new property.
Want great press for your startup, app or company? EZPR specializes in getting great stories written about what you’re working on. Call 646-569-9027 or email Ed Zitron to get started.
If you only read one gaming statistic this week, let it be this one: In a pre-conference survey, GDC 2013′s organizers found that 58 percent of gaming professionals attending either last year’s conference or this one plan to release their next game on smartphones or tablets. That’s a tad greater than commitments to the Xbox 360, Microsoft’s next console, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U and Wii, which combined garnered “next game” pledges from 56.5 percent of developers.
It will certainly be interesting to see how this week plays out.
First we’ll look at the relative popularity of different chords based on the frequency that they appear in the chord progressions of popular music. Then we’ll begin to look at the relationship that different chords have with one another. For example, if a chord is found in a song, what can we say about the probability for what the next chord will be that comes after it?
This is a three part series and is very interesting. I can’t imagine what must have gone into analyzing so many songs.
It’s great to see how businesses are using the iPad to make things better for its customers. I can’t see many iPads sticking around a restaurant in North America though.
What we can say, however, is that the sentiment and stock action related to Apple offer a perfect study in how conjecture and misunderstanding can trump actual knowledge when it comes to evaluating a company. When the company is as much the focus of worldwide attention and as uncommunicative about its own plans as Apple, the effect is even sharper.
Michael Hiltzick scores a bullseye here as he dissects the conflation of “myth-making” with actual news reporting on Apple and some fundamental misunderstandings of Apple’s clientele compared to Samsung’s and Google’s.
Even as data moves to computers and the cloud, staplers continue to help people keep it together. On the computer, we can file copies in folders and send messages to mailboxes. We can cut, copy and paste text and files. But which computer activity is similar to stapling? Sure, there’s the paper-clip icon that attaches documents to e-mail. But nothing, really, comes close to the satisfying ka-chunk of a stapler: it’s a sound that means work is getting done.
More than you ever thought you could know about the lowly but oddly treasured office stapler.
Do you like Android? You should, it’s amazing. iOS? Wow, what a great platform, no wonder it started a revolution. Windows Phone? Seriously, it’s got a remarkable and beautiful interface. BlackBerry? There are plenty of great reasons people love it. And no matter which platform you adore, it’s shockingly possible to both have a preference and respect that other people may prefer an entirely different device. I know. Totally weird. But true.
Nobody cares what kind of smartphone you believe in. It’s not a religion. It’s not your local sports team even. Stop being a soldier. You are not a soldier. You are just wrong. Shut up.
The “Smartphone Wars” reminds us “old timers” of the Mac vs PC wars. And it’s just as pointless.
“Let Me Tweet That For You” is pretty simple — you type in a Twitter username and a message, and it generates a realistic-looking image of a tweet from that person. It even adds fake retweet and favorite counts to lend some more credibility.
That should be a bit scary for journalists and anyone else concerned about potential hoaxes. Of course, it would be pretty easy to debunk one of these fake tweets if you just visit the person’s actual Twitter profile to see if the tweet really exists.
But what if it’s passed off as screenshot evidence of an allegedly deleted tweet?
Poynter says it raises concerns for journalists but it should raise flags for all of us who use Twitter and social media. Such as this fake Tweet:
Two giant rocket engines that launched U.S. astronauts to the moon four decades ago have been recovered from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral by an expedition paid for by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
The F-1 engines, which powered the first-stage Saturn V boosters that fell back to Earth after their fuel was depleted, were found at a depth of 14,000 feet, Bezos’ expedition announced Wednesday.
Remarkable use of private funds to do public good.
Software should empower you, not distract you. It’s a tool, and like any good tool it should feel like a part of you. Once you know how to use it, the software itself should fade into your subconscious.
I observed design students who were acting mindlessly, simply doing their assignments as presented. No creativity, no imagination, no questioning. That’s not what design thinking is about. As a result, I have changed my mind: Design Thinking really is special. Alas, it isn’t embraced by all designers, but where it exists, it is powerful.
The two-year-old startup has developed ways for mobile apps to detect a phone user’s location in a building using Wi-Fi signals. It has been offering the technology to application developers for indoor mapping and new types of retail and social networking apps. The company has a handful of employees, and its co-founders include former Google software engineering intern Joseph Huang.
The only changes players should expect in the iOS game is fewer maps; a result of file size limitations on the iPad, and a revised user interface that makes sense on the iPad. Even with the reduction of map numbers, Solomon says there will still be more maps than what a player would experience in a single playthrough of the game’s PC and console versions.
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a turn-based tactical role playing strategy game developed by Firaxis. It’s based on and inspired by the 1990’s classic UFO: Enemy Unknown (also called XCOM: UFO Defense). A Mac version is in the works, as well (coming from Feral Interactive this spring).
I’d like to thank Squarespace for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.
Squarespace is a beautiful and intuitive website publishing platform that allows anyone to easily create professional web pages, blogs, and galleries all in one place.
Simply start with one of Squarespace’s award-winning designs, add images and content, connect your social accounts, and you’ll have a website that looks great on every device.
All Squarespace accounts come with award-winning 24/7 support, as well as cloud hosting, real-time analytics, and a free domain.
Whether you’re a creative professional, business owner, or blogger, Squarespace makes it easy to bring your ideas to life.
Nick Arnott gives us a walkthrough of how the exploit worked. It’s important to note that Apple has already fixed the security hole, but it’s interesting to see what happened.
I saw this mentioned on App.net the other day and it looks interesting. I pinged its creator Ben Ubois and asked if it was meant to be a Google Reader alternative and he said yes. I haven’t tried it out yet, but I will.
More than two decades later he found out a dark, but compelling secret about the guitar. It had been stolen and once belonged to a well-known artist in the Austin, Texas, music scene.
It had been handmade by Ted Newman of Austin for alternative country artist Joe Ely, who has toured with The Clash, Lyle Lovett and Guy Clark, among others.
A high school principal took a hands-on approach to school safety in San Francisco when he chased down a suspected iPad thief and pulled him off a fence as he tried to escape, school officials and authorities said.
Korean technology giant LG Electronics is developing its own smart wristwatch, effectively joining the competition between Apple and Samsung Electronics who are making theirs as well.
Okay, so now we have LG, Samsung and Google that are making a watch to compete with a product that Apple is supposedly going to make.
Now it’s time we embrace the third epoch in performance optimization: symbol fonts.
Embedding a symbol font lets us move some of those tiny icons into a single font file rather than a sprite. This has the same caching and file size benefits as a CSS sprite, as well as some additional benefits we’re only now realizing with high-resolution displays.
Throughout the museum, the iPad offers options for learning about items in the collection. “There is only so much information you can put on a wall, and no one walks around with catalogs anymore,” Mr. Franklin said. One of the app’s simplest features is also one of the most effective: in many cases, it can produce a photo of the artwork’s original setting — seeing a tapestry in a room filled with tapestries, rather than in a white-walled gallery, is revelatory.
