Creator of Xbox Blockbuster 'Fable' Blames Success on Baked Beans, Happy Accidents: Peter Molyneux, creator of the popular “Fable” gaming series and head of Microsoft Game Studios in Europe, recalls the highs and lows of a 22-year career in video games – GUILDFORD, U.K. — April 15, 2011 – Peter Molyneux, one of the video game industry’s most celebrated designers and the creative force behind hits such as “Fable,” “Populous” and “Dungeon Keeper,” credits much of his 22-year career to a happy accident involving baked beans. Peter Molyneux, head of Microsoft Game Studio Europe, in 2007 shortly after receiving the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (The Knighthood in the Order of Arts and Letters). It happened shortly after he graduated from university. Molyneux already had tried his hand at game design and business without much success, and was searching for a way to make ends meet. He soon discovered the region didn’t have much of an appetite for baked beans. And then the accident: Commodore, creator of the popular Commodore 64 console, confused his floundering bean business, Taurus, with a software company called Torus. Bewildered, Molyneux played along. A long line of people would disagree. Early Entrepreneur
The Trenches - Ship It. Ship It. Suppose you found a bug in a game that rendered a console unplayable? Suppose it was something akin to the original Myth II Uninstall problem where it basically formatted your hard drive, only worse? There was a game that was released in the last 10 years that had a peculiar issue toward the end where you could crash the title just before one of the end bosses by doing a manual save just as it was autosaving. If you did, it caused the console kernel to overwrite itself, rendering the entire unit non-functional. After causing this to happen once, I was asked to replicate the issue in front of people who made a lot more money than I did. (To me) “You can do this every time?” The game shipped. I got fired.
Behind The Scenes Of The Portal Proposal Stephanie Harbeson - Stephy to her friends and loved ones - wasn't what you would call a core gamer. Sure, she played her share of casual games and would always offer to play co-op when her boyfriend Gary Hudston got something new, but no title ever really captured her - until she tried Portal 2. Suddenly, after five years of watching Gary play, she was playing with him - taking charge, in fact, and telling him where to go. For the first time, the pair had a game they both truly enjoyed. By now, you've almost certainly seen where that led - Hudston commissioned a romantic and well-designed mod of Valve's hit game to propose to Stephy. Here's how it happened. Hudston had always promised Stephy that his proposal would be geeky and unique. His first step was to contact Valve. A month later, Wolpaw told him an opening had been found - but Hudston had less than a day to get a script to them. Securing the dialogue was only step one, though. The challenge was the timeframe.
Over 1 billion PAC-MAN Dots Eaten by HTML5 users - Ubelly When we released the worlds biggest PAC-MAN we knew it was going to be popular, but I don’t think anyone at Microsoft (with maybe the exception of Michael Kordahi) really expected it to be as popular as it has been. Users of the site have managed to eat over one Billion PAC-DOTS during a combined playing time of 22 years. Staggering really when you think about it. One of may favourite things about the worlds biggest packman is that you can create your own levels. Of all the user submitted mazes, 6.7% had to be removed due to, well, naked parts 80% of those naked parts were the type that uniquely belong to the male of our species. If you want to take a look at some of the great mazes that have been submitted, the team behind building the site put together this tumblr to showcase the best ones. The UK has a total of 63,070,022 points… which makes us 5th.
Not so fast: Sony's Playstation Network hacked again - TNW Industry Less than 2 days after Sony started bringing its PlayStation Network back online reports are coming in that the besieged gaming giant’s platform has been hacked yet again. MCV is reporting that the exploit allows for hackers to change users passwords using only a PSN account email and date of birth, two pieces of user information that were obtained in the original hack. Update: Sony has responded to the reports of a new hack. MCV says that the hack, which is really an exploit of Sony’s password reset system, was first reported by Nyleveia.com and then corroborated by Eurogamer. According to Nyleveia the exploit was demonstrated to it personally by someone who knew the method. “It has been proven to me through direct demonstration on a test account, so I am without any shadow of a doubt that this is real. Note that if you changed your email when you regained access to the PlayStation Network you are most likely safe from this exploit.
appBlaster lets you kill the aliens hiding in your home The appBlaster is an iPhone accessory that allows you to shoot at virtual aliens in your real-life surroundings, via the Alien Attack augmented reality app(Photo: RED5) Image Gallery (5 images) Last month we reported on the Aurasma augmented reality (AR) app, and compared it to the special sunglasses in the John Carpenter movie They Live, that let their wearers see the aliens secretly living amongst us. Well, the new appBlaster iPhone accessory is much, much more reminiscent of that film. It's essentially a toy gun, that your iPhone mounts on top of. Running the free Alien Attack AR game, the phone will proceed to show you the virtual otherwise-invisible aliens that are all around you, overlaid on real-time video of your your real-life surroundings. View all Unlike some AR apps, Alien Attack appears not to recognize real-life objects, so aliens won't come through doorways or sit on chairs, for instance. Source: engadget About the Author Post a CommentRelated Articles
Unlimited Detail’s non-polygon 3D gets more unlimited When first (and last) we met the Brisbane-based technology company Unlimited Detail, it was promising to revolutionize the creation of 3D images in games. Its technique was called a “point cloud,” a software-created collection of billions of dots that would bestow lifelike characteristics on graphics that, even when rendered by the best video cards on the market, have traditionally looked blocky and unrealistic. And it would do all this with modest, rather than excessive, processing power. But when Unlimited Detail vanished from the public eye almost as quickly as it arrived, many (including yours truly) assumed its experiment was a failure — and not even a spectacular enough one to warrant more press coverage. The reports of Unlimited Detail’s death, however, have apparently been greatly exaggerated. The company resurfaced two days ago under the name Euclideon, and posted a video to YouTube (embedded below) demonstrating the work it’s been doing the past 15 months.
Battlefield 3 PC version won’t have in-game server browser The tables have turned. A day after we gladly reported that console gamers would be getting this great PC feature called “server browser”, we can now report that PC gamers won’t have an in-game server browser. DICE’s Alan Kertz has confirmed that in order to switch servers, you have to exit Battlefield 3, and use Battlelog to find another server and join. Granted, Kertz points out that BF3 “starts up really fast”, but we can’t imagine it being more effective than having an in-game server browser, which has been the norm in PC games for decades — in fact, there’s no other game that requires you to exit in order to switch servers. Considering that server switching is frequent among gamers, either because of rage quitting or trying to find a better game, or something third, this could cause some annoyance. Console gamers now have in-game server browser, while PC gamers don’t.