Colorization

This week’s issue of The Magazine is special: instead of running five articles of our typical length (about 1,500 words), we published two regular-length articles and an amazing, 7,500-word feature article by Pulitzer-winner (!) Eli Sanders, with illustrations by Tom Tomorrow, on the status and future of domestic drones — from hobbyist to government uses — and the potential ramifications to our society.

Since the app experience isn’t ideal for articles this long, we’ve split it into three parts. Here’s part one. Highly recommended.

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43/100

Filed under: Beats, Latheeena Tagged: album, music, new, Ricky Martin

Yoichi Wada is leaving his post as Square Enix president and representative director, Square Enix announced this morning. Wada, who became the company's president and CEO in December 2000, is to be replaced by former company director and CFO Yosuke Matsuda. According to Square Enix's announcement, the change is "subject to a resolution" at the company's annual shareholders meeting in June, and a board of directors meeting held afterwards.

The news coincides with Square Enix announcing further major revisions to its fiscal year forecasts, which the company attributes to its decision to implement major restructuring in the wake of "the rapidly changing environment of the game businesses." Square Enix expects the changes, which it noted as affecting development policy, organizational structure, and business models, to incur a total "extraordinary" loss of ¥10 billion, or around $106 million.

However, Square Enix says the primary reason for the company's lower-than-expected results is the "sluggish" sales performance of its major games in western territories. When Square Enix announced its nine-month fiscal year net loss of just over ¥5 billion, the company said then it hadn't recovered the losses from earlier in the year because of "the increasingly difficult condition of the worldwide console game market."

Today's forecast revisions show a dramatic turnaround for the company's yearly financials. For the fiscal year ending March 31, Square Enix is projecting now a net loss of ¥13 billion, or around $138 million, compared to initial forecasts of a net profit of ¥3.5 billion, around $37 million. The previous fiscal year, Square Enix posted a net profit of just over ¥6 billion.

Update: GamesBeat is reporting Square Enix sold a number of its free-to-play games to privately funded start-up Sleepy Giant, with sources "familiar with the matter" saying four unannounced games were included in the deal. Neither party has announced the deal, with a Square Enix representative telling GamesBeat it doesn't "comment on any details for external development deals."

Square Enix president Wada to step down, $106M 'restructuring' loss [update] originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 26 Mar 2013 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Previously, I had never found a weather website anywhere near as good as weather apps on iOS. Weather sites have always been so terrible that I’d always just check the weather on my phone, even when sitting at my computer, because the thought of going to a weather site was so unappealing.

Now, I use Forecast. They were nice enough to let me beta-test the site, and it’s great.

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Om Malik:

We have been privately musing that Apple’s iWatch might just be a head fake, a way to throw off the rivals (and even insiders at the company) and send them on a wild goose chase.

How great would this be?

Update: Although I’m not sure what the point of fooling “insiders” would be. If this watch thing is a head fake, it’s meant only to misdirect competitors.

The more likely scenario, of course, is that Apple is working on a watch or watch-like device. But some combination of Samsung, Google, Microsoft, and others will rush their smart watches to market first. Then, if Apple ships theirs (a big if — Apple scraps more projects than it ships), it will look and work like no other. Then, mysteriously, the next round of watches from all the other companies will somehow wind up looking like slightly clunkier versions of Apple’s. (Remember the “slates” Microsoft heralded at CES 2010?)

 ★ 

megamasterx:

HAHAHAH

Genuine out-loud chuckles.

Stanley Kubrick at work on the set of The Shining. Clips taken from Vivian Kubrick’s documentary on the making of The Shining, as well as Jan Harlan’s film, Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.

(gif assembly courtesy pickledelephant.tumblr.com) 

Weird

John Siracusa:

Google’s present position looks weak, but it has two big trump cards. First, Google has proven to be one of the few companies capable of creating, popularizing, and supporting a platform. Despite all the skinning and branding by handset makers, Google is still the driving force behind Android. This power can only be negated by another company that’s willing and able to match Google’s Android efforts on all fronts: OS development, app store, developer tools, evangelism, the works. That’s a tall order.

And they’re getting pretty good at hardware, too. Great piece—make sure you read it.

Apple’s biggest weakness right now is web services. Is Apple getting better at it faster than Google is getting better at hardware, as they move toward a more integrated approach? I don’t think so.

Black Pixel said a little about what’s happening with NetNewsWire. The good news: they’re developing new Mac and iOS versions. The bad news:

As far as sync is concerned, we knew we would likely need an alternative to Google Reader as early as last year. At the time, the option that seemed to make the most sense was to embrace iCloud and Core Data as the new sync solution of choice. We spent a considerable amount of time on this effort, but iCloud and Core Data syncing had issues that we simply could not resolve.

Ugh. As Steve Streza said on Twitter, if they can’t get it to work—a team of incredibly talented people—who can?

I really hope Apple’s working to fix iCloud’s issues. It needs to work, both for developers and for Apple.

“If you spend your life doing what you love, the speed at which the world goes on and changes around you is irrelevant.”
- Milton Glaser

From conversation between Cool Hunting and the iconic Milton Glaser

I usually agree with Om Malik, but not this time, on why he won’t use Google Keep, Google’s new Evernote clone:

It might actually be good, or even better than Evernote. But I still won’t use Keep. You know why? Google Reader.

I spent about seven years of my online life on that service. I sent feedback, used it to annotate information and they killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken. No conversation — dead. The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned.

Looking from that perspective, it is hard to trust Google to keep an app alive. What if I spend months using the app, and then Google decides it doesn’t meet some arbitrary objective?

In this business, you can’t count on anything having longevity. To avoid new services that are likely to get shut down within a few years, you’d have to avoid every new tech product. Products and services lasting more than a few years are the exception, not the rule.

And unfortunately for users, Google doesn’t owe anyone a “conversation” about what they do with their products. Companies can do whatever they want. They could shut down Gmail tomorrow if it made business sense. There wouldn’t be a conversation.

Users have no power.

We can complain about Google Reader’s shutdown and start as many online petitions as we think will make a difference,¹ but we all have short memories and can’t resist free stuff.

Want to really stick it to them? Stop using Google. All of it. Search, Gmail, Maps, the works. Delete your account and start using Bing. Ready?

…

Yeah. That’s the problem. You won’t. I won’t. Nobody will.

It’s not just Google. Everyone does this. Facebook introduces some giant privacy invasion or horrible redesign every six months, then when its users “revolt”, they roll back some of it, and everyone forgets about it because they got what they wanted: Facebook still accomplished most of what they wanted to do, and the users feel like they matter. Almost nobody left Twitter when they started screwing over their API developers, almost nobody switches away from iOS when Apple controversially rejects an app, and almost nobody stopped going to your corner deli after they raised the price of your favorite Thursday sandwich.

They’re not all evil or mean — business owners often need to make decisions that anger some people. That’s the nature of business, government, parenthood, and life. Facebook and Google need to collect more of your personal data and keep you on their sites longer so they can keep increasing their ad revenue. Twitter needs to take control of its product and its users’ attention away from third-party clients so it doesn’t become an unprofitable dumb pipe like AOL Instant Messenger. Apple needs to keep the App Store locked down so people feel safe buying apps (and more iOS devices) and developers are forced to use Apple’s services, APIs, and stores. Your corner deli needed to raise the price of your favorite Thursday sandwich because their health-insurance premium increased by 10% this year. The deli’s health-insurance company needed to raise premiums by 10% because that’s the most that New York State would permit, and how would the insurance company’s CEO justify not taking that opportunity for more profits to the board and shareholders?

That’s business.

Google Keep will probably get as many users as Google’s other low-priority side projects: not many. They’ll probably shut it down within two years. A few people will complain then, too, and they’ll be powerless then, too, but they’ll keep using Google’s stuff after that, too.

Users need to be less trusting of specific products, services, and companies having too much power over their technical lives, jobs, and workflows.

In this business, expect turbulence. And this is going to be increasingly problematic as (no turbulence pun intended) we move so much more to “the cloud”, which usually means services controlled by others, designed to use limited or no local storage of your data.

Always have one foot out the door. Be ready to go.

This isn’t cynical or pessimistic: it’s realistic, pragmatic, and responsible.

If you use Gmail, what happens if Google locks you out of your account permanently and without warning? (It happens.) What if they kill IMAP support and you rely on it? Or what if they simply start to suck otherwise? How easily can you move to a different email host?² How much disruption will it cause in your workflow? Does your email address end in @gmail.com? What would have happened if we all switched to Wave? What happens if Facebook messages replace email for most people?

Proprietary monocultures are so harmful because they hinder or prevent you from moving away.

This is why it’s so important to keep as much of your data as possible in the most common, widespread, open-if-possible formats, in local files that you can move, copy, and back up yourself.³ And if you care about developing a long-lasting online audience or presence, you’re best served by owning your identity as much as possible.

Investing too heavily in someone else’s proprietary system for too long rarely ends gracefully, but when it bites us, we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

---

1. Has an online petition ever effected change? (The vague, unquantifiable, feel-good fallback of “raising awareness” doesn’t count.) ↩

2. This is why I don’t use Gmail. ↩

3. I don’t mind using Dropbox because it’s compatible with responsible practices. If Dropbox goes away, you still have a folder full of files, and there will always be other ways to sync folders full of files between computers. Even if Dropbox’s client somehow screws up and deletes all of its files, you can just restore them from a backup, because it’s just a folder full of regular files on your computer.

   When most “cloud” companies or proprietary platforms cease to exist, they fall out of the sky like a plane without power, and everything is lost. Dropbox failing or ceasing to exist would be more like a train losing power: it stops moving, but everything’s still there and everyone’s fine, albeit mildly inconvenienced. ↩

Om Malik, continuing the conversation by clarifying his point:

It is hard to trust Google anymore to make rational and consumer centric decisions. I said — nuanced as it might be — that I don’t trust Google to introduce new apps and keep them around, because despite what the company says, these apps are not their main business. Their main business is advertising and search — regardless of whatever nonsense you might read. …

I am far more likely to believe in and use products that are the main focus of the company behind them. Online storage? Dropbox. Time-shifting web content? … Instapaper. Short form communication? Twitter. Baby pictures and wedding photos to make single people miserable (or happy for being single)? Facebook.

The point is that a company whose main focus is a specific service or a singular product, like Evernote, is far more likely to focus its energies to build a business around it and keep it around.

It’s a good distinction to make. I’m more conservative about what I invest my time into and who I trust with my data.

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Should I Sleep:

(Free) - Annoyed by the display getting dim when you’re reading or watching something? Installed an app for that but always forget to activate it? By using a combination of heuristic sensors, such as FACE DETECTION, Should I Sleep checks if you are actually at the computer before it sleeps. Yes, the computer “sees and hears” you.

La-Mulana, Nigoro's Greenlit "archaeological ruin exploration action game," will be released via Steam April 15.

The 2D side-scroller was developed in 2006 and passed through Steam Greenlight in January. In La-Mulana, players explore ancient ruins in search of the "Secret Treasure of Life." It features 40 quest items, 18 areas, seven primary weapons and more. Players must dodge traps while avoiding enemies and solving puzzles.

The game has been modified for Steam to include 64 achievements, Cloud saves, extra language settings and support for Big Picture Mode, which allows it to be played on a TV.

La-Mulana is available for pre-order now for $13.49, a 10 percent discount off its usual $14.99 price tag. It will be available for Windows...

Continue reading…

Every now and then someone will ask me for advice on making it as a professional indie game developer. First, it’s a huge honor to be asked that. So I want to say “Thank you!” Second… damn, if I really want to help out it’s a serious endeavor. Of course, I could always say “Give it your best! Work hard! Be true to yourself!” and it wouldn’t be a terrible reply… just not a terribly useful one, either.

So here it is. Here is what I’m going to link when that rare situation arises again, because it’s too much work to write it up more than once! This is advice that I feel may actually be practical to someone who is just starting out as an indie game developer. Hope it helps!

INDIEPENDENT

So yeah, what does being “indie” even mean? Is “indie” short for independent? Is this game “indie”? Is “indie” a genre? IT’S CONFUSING - WHY DO WE NEED THE WORD “INDIE” AT ALL.

To answer the last question, I offer the following scenarios. Scenario 1: a person wants to make games, and perhaps start their own studio. They type “game development” into a search engine. The results, to say the least, are underwhelming. Dry. Academic. Programming-centric. (Try it yourself and see.)

Scenario 2: the person instead types “indie games” into a search engine. Instead of pages upon pages of conferences, bachelor’s degrees, and programming tools, that person is met instead with pages upon pages of games to play and vibrant communities filled with people who are doing exactly what he or she wants to be doing. Some of them went to school, but many did not. A wealth of different ideas and tools are used. There are even documentaries about making games! It’s not just something where you get a degree and wait in line for a job. You can start making games RIGHT NOW.

The word “indie” is more than just a way to describe a type of developmental process… like any label, it actually provides an avenue for people to explore that process and then flourish within it. It has a real purpose. It serves real lessons on game creation and entrepreneurialism. It offers real motivation!

Of course, it can be irritating to see the term misused, or become a vehicle for pretentiousness and arrogance. Like any label, “indie” also breeds a certain amount dogmatism, croneyism, and other -isms. But the net result is really worth something. As someone who once gave up on professional game-making because I thought it meant a 9-to-5, I can tell you that it’s genuinely valuable.

As for what games are “truly” indie, we’ll never fully agree, and that’s probably for the best. But I can tell you the criteria I’ve devised for The Independent Gaming Source to determine whether a game is fit for coverage:

1. “Independent”, as in no publisher.

2. Small studio (roughly 20 members or less).

I choose that definition because it’s the most useful one. Someone who is looking to become an “indie” game developer is interested in what is possible under those constraints and how those types of studios operate. It excludes companies like Valve and Double Fine, which are certainly independent but too large to be “indie”. It also excludes “feels indie”-type games that are not self-published.

Under that definition you still run into gray areas, but hey, just because we don’t know when “red” turns into “purple” doesn’t mean the words aren’t useful. Just think about someone who wants to make a game with a small team and self-publish it… what should they type into Google for inspiration, advice, community, etc.? “Indie” is still as good a word as any, in my opinion.

So, should I go to school to learn how to make games?

The most important thing to know about video game development and schooling is that no one, whether it’s an indie studio or big company, cares about degrees. How could it, when some of its most prominent members are drop-outs or never-beens? John Carmack, Cliff Bleszinski, Jonathan Blow, and Team Meat are all prominent members of this club.

A degree is a piece of paper that says you can do something in theory - game developers want to know that you have enough passion to do real work, regardless of whether you’re being graded on it. And if you’re thinking of going indie, it won’t matter what other people think - you’ll simply need that passion to succeed or else you won’t. You’re the only one holding the door open in that case.

This isn’t to dissuade you from going to college, per se (I studied computer science in college, and while it was far from a perfect experience, I also gained a lot from both the curriculum and the friends I made there). The point is make something - games, mods, art, and music. If school helps you with that, great. If it doesn’t, then you need to rethink how you’re spending your most valuable resources: time and money (both of which can be exorbitant costs for schooling).

If I go to school, what should I study?

At a regular university, I would suggest majoring in computer science, even if you “just want to be a designer”. The design of games is very much tied to how they are made.

At an art school, illustration, concept art, and 3d modeling courses are probably the most useful for games. This Polycount thread has lots of advice for student artists trying to get into games.

At a game school, they will hopefully try to involve you in all aspects of game creation, from programming to design. I would stay far away from design-only schools or curricula - those are either scams or are better suited to academia than actual game-making. Also, it’s worth finding out whether or not the school owns what you make while you’re a student there.

See also: Jonathan Blow - How to Program Independent Games (read the comments as well as watch the video)

Okay, you say make something. How do I start?

My best advice for those starting out is not to get ahead of themselves. It’s easy to start worrying about tools, teams, platforms, deals, marketing, awards, and whatever else before you’ve even gotten a sprite moving around the screen. Those stars in your eyes will blind you. They’ll freeze you up. You need to be actively making games all the time.

If we were talking about painting, I’d tell you to pick up a painting kit and a sketchpad at your local art store ASAP and just have at it. You’d proceed to put absolute crap down on the pad and get frustrated. But it’d also be kind of fun - so you’d keep doing it. Along the way you’d read some theory and study other people’s work. With good taste and under a critical eye, you would keep doing that until the day you painted something good.

We’re talking about games, though. I recommend Game Maker and Unity as two all-purpose game-making suites. They both have a good balance of power versus ease-of-use; they’re both affordable or have free demos, and they both have a wealth of tutorials and plug-ins online. Both are used by professional developers (Unity in particular). Grab one of those and start running through the tutorials. When you run into trouble, ask for help. Give help back when you begin figuring things out. Get active in a game-making community.

But above all else, keep making games. It’s the only way to truly answer all of those questions in your head right now.

Also, watch this:

LASTLY, MY TOP 10 TIPS

1. Finish your games.

2. Don’t skimp on artwork. It’s easy to underestimate the importance of artwork to a game. And even if you don’t, it’s easy to underestimate the importance of having a unique style of artwork. The result is that there are many ugly or generic-looking (i.e. “clip-arty”) games failing to capture people’s attention.

If you have no artistic talent, go for style and coherency as many successful indie developers do. And even ugly is probably better than generic, all told. Remember: this is most people’s first impression of your game.

3. Don’t blame marketing (too much). In the indie community it’s become popular to write “how I failed” articles where the screenshots and comments tell the story of an ugly, boring game and yet the article itself tells the story of bad marketing decisions. Let’s face it, no one wants to admit that they lacked any amount of creativity, vision, or talent. It’s much easier to put the blame on release dates, trailers, websites, and whatever else.

This is the internet, though. A good game will make its way out there. Marketing will certainly help, and hype may get you quite far in the short term, but it’s not going to make or break you - it’s only a multiplier of however good your game is. Saying otherwise is only hurting your ability to self-criticize and therefore improve your craft. It’s also encouraging others to do the same.

4. Indie is not a genre or aesthetic. Make the game you want to make, not what you think an indie game “should be”. Recently, the very small and very independent team behind The Legend of Grimrock announced that their very traditional first-person dungeon crawler sold over 600,000 copies. Don’t feel pressured to be dishonest about what you’d like to do - after all, what is independence if not freedom from such pressures?

5. Build yourself a working environment that’s healthy for you. Are you introverted and lose energy around other people or are you extroverted and gain energy that way? Or something in-between? What do you want your average working day to be like?

You’ll want to focus all of the energy available to you toward creating, and it’s amazing how much of it can be lost to seemingly mundane things. Figuring out your physical working space as well as your personal support system is a key part of the solution to this problem, and its vitally important to you as an independent creator.

6. Stay independent! To be sure, going indie can be daunting. There is always going to be the temptation of selling yourself or your ideas to someone else for a bit of a feeling of security. But honestly, once you go down that road it’s hard to come back - every moment you’re simply securing may not be a moment you’re progressing. I’m not recommending recklessness, but it’s important to stay committed and focused on the task at hand. Life is short.

Also, don’t give up your IP or in any way limit your opportunities long term. Keep exclusivity timed. When Aquaria released we weren’t aware of Steam. The Humble Bundle did not yet exist. iPad did not exist. Being on all of those platforms has been great for us. You need to keep your hands untied to take advantage of what future will bring.

7. Create your own luck. As an artist, I owe a lot to the people around me - my family, friends, peers, and idols. I accept that a lot of my success was simply the luck of being born with these people in my life.

But it’s important to realize that you create many of your own opportunities, too. For example, I met Alec (my friend and Aquaria co-creator) because he offered to help work on I’m O.K. I’m O.K. was a game started on the Pix Fu forums. The Pix Fu forums were part of my personal website and its members were friends of mine I’d made much earlier during my Blackeye Software/Klik n’ Play days.

You could trace a similar path from the XBLA version of Spelunky to the original PC version and the TIGSource forums.

The point is - put yourself out there. Make things (I can’t stress that enough!). You never know when serendipity will strike, but when it does it will likely be related to situations in your past when you chose to actively engage someone or some idea.

8. Avoid “business as war”. As a professional you’ll need to do business and make business-related decisions at least occasionally, and as a creative type you might not be that interested in that stuff. Hell, you might even be downright scared of it.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you don’t have to be Gordon Gekko to make it as an indie. And please, don’t try to be. In fact, avoid the Gordon Gekkos. Avoid the people who try to confuse you. Avoid the ones who try and nitpick. Avoid the ones who try and rush you.

If you have a great game, there is no distributor you will absolutely have to work with, platform you have to be on, or person you will have to team up with. Always be willing to walk away from a bad deal, especially if it’s to maintain your independence as a creator. In turn, be a direct and generous person yourself.

People get defensive when they’re scared. Don’t sit at the table with someone like that or as someone like that and doing business should be fairly pleasant! This isn’t Wall Street!

9. No gimmicks. Simply put, focus on making a good game - a deep, interesting, unique game - rather than devising cheap tricks to grab people’s attention. Whether we’re talking about clever-sounding-but-ultimately-shallow game systems or off-the-wall marketing ideas, a gimmick is a gimmick. And you should stay away from them because they’re short-term, high-risk solutions that ultimately cheapen you as an artist, perhaps literally as well as metaphorically.

Certainly, one should take risks in game design as well as in life. My point is that they should be honest, worthwhile ones - those tend to be less risky in the long run.

10. You are your game - understand and develop yourself. As an indie game developer your game will likely be more “you” than a game made by hundreds or thousands of people. You have to understand yourself quite well in order to make a truly successful game. Fortunately, the unraveling of what makes you “you” - your taste, what you care about, your abilities - is one of the great pleasures in life and goes hand in hand with your goal of being an independent creator. Treasure it!

I’ve recently been gripped by retro-gaming nostalgia. First, I wrote about playing classic Nintendo games on your Mac, then I made some SNES-themed wallpapers for iPhone 5, and then some NES-themed ones too.

Now, I want to share some Super Nintendo controller wallpapers with you, for your Mac or PC (or iPad and iPhone, if you crop/resize them yourself).

There were three different primary models of SNES controller: the Japanese (Super Famicom) version, the European Super Nintendo version, and the American Super Nintendo version. The Japanese and European ones looked almost identical, differing only in the logo and the font used for the labels of the “Start” and “Select” buttons, but the American version had several more changes. It shared the Start/Select label-font of the European controller (albeit in a lighter colour), but almost all of the plastic parts were a different colour from the other two versions.

It also lacked the Super Famicom crescents-and-discs logo, and instead of the Y/X/B/A buttons being green, blue, yellow and red respectively, they were instead paired: Y and X were a soft lilac shade, and B and A were a darker purple. Uniquely, the Y and X buttons were also concave, like the B/A buttons on the original NES, and the Y/X/B/A labels were in a different (narrow, italicised) font.

I drew all the various parts of the Super Nintendo controllers in Photoshop CS6, taking account of the differences between models and using Layer Comps to display each different model.

These wallpapers are based on that master Photoshop document, and are available in a set on Flickr. I’ve created three basic versions: full, simplified (no text), and abstract (no actual controller outlines). Where appropriate, you can choose from all regional variants of the controller.

The wallpapers are 2880 x 1800 pixels, and each come in two editions: regular, and Retina Display. The pixel-resolution is the same in both cases, to allow you to crop/resize both editions as you wish, but on the Retina versions the actual controller graphics are doubled in size for extra detail and smoothness. If you prefer bigger graphics, you can of course use the ‘Retina’ versions on non-Retina devices too. If you use the non-Retina versions on smaller-screened devices, you’ll probably want to centre them, rather than scaling to fit the screen.

Thus, the following wallpapers are available below:

• Full: Japanese, European & American models (3)
• Full: Japanese, European & American models, Retina Display (3)
• Simplified: Japanese/European & American models (2)
• Simplified: Japanese/European & American models, Retina Display (2)
• Abstract: Japanese/European & American models (2)
• Abstract: Japanese/European & American models, Retina Display (2)

That’s fourteen choices. I’m sure you can imagine how much fun these were to export from Photoshop (not too much fun at all).

Please do not redistribute these wallpapers in any form. They’re for your personal use only. If you want to use them for any other purpose (such as including them on a website, as elements in another design, any profit-making enterprise or anything other than personal use on your own devices), then please contact me first.

Full controller

This version has all visual elements present (minus the cable; I didn’t think you’d want it snaking across your desktop).

Download Full – Japan.

Download Full – Europe.

Download Full – USA.

Full controller (Retina Display)

Download Full – Japan (Retina).

Download Full – Europe (Retina).

Download Full – USA (Retina).

Simplified controller

For this version, I’ve hidden all text, labels and logos, to convey just the essence of the controller. There are only two variants instead of three, because with all textual and logo elements removed, the Japanese and European models are identical.

Download Simple – Japan/Europe.

Download Simple – USA.

Simplified controller (Retina Display)

Download Simple – Japan/Europe (Retina).

Download Simple – USA (Retina).

Abstract controller

Finally, this version removes any strong outlines (except the lovely disc around the Y/X/B/A buttons), including the controller casing/border itself. It’s just buttons floating in a solid-coloured background. To me, this one says “retro gaming”. Again, there are only two variants since there’s no distinction between Japanese and European models at this level of abstraction.

Download Abstract – Japan/Europe.

Download Abstract – USA.

Abstract controller (Retina Display)

Download Abstract – Japan/Europe (Retina).

Download Abstract – USA (Retina).

Footnote

I’m @mattgemmell on Twitter, and also on app.net. You should follow me. If you enjoyed these free wallpapers and want to feed my gaming habit (or something else), I have an Amazon UK wishlist.

Enjoy the wallpapers!

Always. No matter the task, the job, the career. No matter how simple or complex. Always look for a way to make it better. Make it better for yourself. Make it better for others. In fact, make it better for the sake of better. Even if you don’t like it (or, heck, even hate it) you should always be looking for a way to improve it.

Because learning how to improve things is transferable. It scales. It is a skill. It can be learned. And when you can learn how to make even the mundane or uninteresting or loathsome better you can do that with the good and the great and the perfect. Yes, even the perfect can be made better (once you divorce yourself of the idea that perfect exists).

In fact, I would argue that every invention, every innovation, and every revolution, can be traced to this simple goal. Someone, somewhere, just wanted to make it better and had the gumption, skill, and opportunity to do so.

Steve Jobs, for instance, made computers better. Then, he made music buying better. Then he made music players better. Then he made phones better. Then he made computers better all over again. Of course, he did not do this alone. He created an entire company who’s sole collective commitment is, in my eyes at least, to methodically and relentlessly make things better.

Think of someone you admire. Perhaps someone you know or even someone famous. Think of what it is you admire most about them and I’d be willing to bet that it fits some version of, “They make X better”. They make your life better or your television better or your food better. You get the idea.

It’s not enough to change the world. Change it for the better. Put a dent in the universe once you can see clearly that the dent will make it better. And, when you leave, as we all will inevitably do, leave it better.

I’m a writer. Writing is how I make this world better, friendlier, stronger place. If these words improved your day, please let me know by contributing here.

Artist: Fernando Reza

Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney.

It has the spirit of the tale.

Cameron Moll on the rumored Apple Watch:

Apple faces the opposite problem it faced with iPhone, where every phone in the market was painful to use. Just about every analog or digital watch on the market is already extremely easy to use. The challenge facing Apple is one of introducing new complexity, rather than eliminating it.

Cameron has been wearing an iPod nano with the Lunatik watch strap for the past year and a half (he’s the only person I’ve ever seen in real life wearing one). If Apple ships a watch, I think Cameron is exactly right and I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the press label the watch as “boring” and missing its potential from the start. If people are asking themselves, why would I want an Apple watch instead of my current analog watch / in addition to my iPhone?, then it’s a safe bet Apple has a runaway hit on its hands.

✚

Firaxis Games' turn-based strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, is coming to iOS devices this summer, publisher 2K Games announced.

The game is being ported by 2K China with guidance from Firaxis. XCOM's lead developer Jake Solomon tells Polygon that the iOS version is intended to be a complete port of the AAA console and PC experience.

"The idea was to port the game fully," Solomon says. "The one exception we made was to the number of maps in the game, but we still have all the destructible environments, there's the fog of war — this is a full AAA game we're porting. It really is XCOM."

Solomon tells Polygon that work began on the iOS port almost a year ago, before the core game shipped on PC and consoles. He says Firaxis knew that...

21/100

Filed under: Beats, Yankee Panky Tagged: art, artwork, cover, kelly clarkson, people like us

Manami Matsumae is the composer of the original Mega Man video game, developed and published by Capcom. In this brief chat, I let her share stories about her past and the development of Mega Man, as well as talking about music and her new track for World 1-2 LP.

World 1-2 LP is an upcoming music album from Koopa Soundworks and directed by Mohammed Taher. For more information, read about it here.

---

Mohammed Taher: Hello, Matsumae-san. I’m happy to be having this conversation with you.

Manami Matsumae: As am I. Nice to meet you. This is the first time I’m interviewing with a person from Kuwait, so I’m pretty excited. Thank you for the opportunity.

Mohammed: My very first Famicom game was the original Mega Man. The series had a great impact on me and my brothers — and it still does. The game was really hard, though; I remember I used to cry a lot for dying at Guts Man stage over and over again. (laughs)

Manami: Yeah, indeed Guts Man’s stage is difficult. I also end up falling and dying right away. (laughs) Just between you and me, I have actually yet to complete Mega Man.

Mohammed: Interesting! We’ll get to that later. Let’s start with the expected question: How did you start making music?

Manami: When I was around 4 or 5 years old, I listened to a song my father played on his acoustic guitar once, which apparently led me to playing an organ (which had the perfect sense of pitch), surprising my father. So he brought me to a music class, where I began learning the piano. That’s how I began my foray into music.

After that, I did nothing but played the piano and eventually entered college. I didn’t engage in activities such as playing in a band during high school.

During my 4th year of college, I was thinking about what I wanted to do after graduating, and I thought about becoming a piano teacher since I was majoring in it. One day, I happened to see a job hunting bulletin at university, which said that Capcom was recruiting people who could create music.

At that time, I was into music for games such as Super Mario and Dragon Quest, and I knew that Capcom was a game company as well. Therefore, with a bit of curiosity as to how this would turn out, I ended up applying for it. I figured that even if I didn’t get the job, I still could become a piano teacher. Yet somehow, I managed to get hired.

Until then, all I did was study musical composition in my university classes. All I did was create a number of original songs during my tests. Those were also classic-style songs. Therefore, after joining Capcom, I would end up suffering from musical composition. (laughs)

Mohammed: After joining Capcom, what was your first project?

Manami: My first product after entering Capcom was one song (a classical type song) for Ide Yosuke’s Jissen Mahjong.

Mohammed: Oh, so Mega Man wasn’t your first game to compose at Capcom. Have you done a lot of work before working on Mega Man?

Manami: Yeah, a lot of people believe that my first work was Mega Man. However, before even making it to that point, I needed to do a lot of practice as a new employee at Capcom; that’s why I ended up making one song for Yosuke Ida’s Jissen Mahjong, and when my seniors at the company OK’d my work, I was asked to help out at the next team for the first time. So at that point, I ended up creating music for Mega Man.

Mohammed: As a person who has been classically — and professionally — trained, did you find the limitations of NES hard to deal with? You only have three sound channels, for example.

Manami: Regarding my composing music with 3 sound channels, it wasn’t actually all that stressful. That’s because in college, I played Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier to the point where people got sick of it. (laughs) The Well-Tempered Clavier is 3-4 sound channels, and a piece of work that can really impress its audience through the feel of its beautiful chords. I had been studying that, so I didn’t have any issues at all. However, I didn’t have any experience with rhythm-based songs (drums) at first, so I studied the drum by listening to a lot of the music that was popular at that time (Propaganda, Phil Collins, Mezzoforte…or something).

Mohammed: That’s fascinating.

Back then, no one could have predicted the success of Mega Man as a mascot, and this is the first game in the series — so you have no grounds to walk on. You built those entirely. How did you decide what feel and music you wanted to go for?

Manami: I’m happy you’re saying that. I myself had no idea Mega Man would go on for this long. When I saw a screenshot of Mega Man, I imagined him being cool and strong with a heroic presence, like the Astro Boy anime. Therefore, when I told the planner I wanted to create a lively melody song that was easy to remember, like that of an anime song, he told me, “That’s OK!” And so I created the song in that manner.

Mohammed: Was Rockman built, from the very beginning, to rely heavily on music? I mean, Rockman, and then Blues (In the US, his name is Proto Man), then Roll, and we also have characters like Bass (in Japan, his name is Forte) and his dog Treble. Rock, Roll, Blues, Bass, Treble. Was this established since the game’s inception, or was it decided later on?

Manami: I don’t believe it was decided from the beginning to be like that. When I was still at Capcom, I remember the composer of Mega Man 3 saying, “With Mega Man 3, this time we’re going to make a blues whistle!” There was also a change of planners beginning with 3, and many characters were made after, who each had their own music.

Mohammed: Yeah. When you think about it, Mega Man did something brave and different: It changed the composer in every new release. The original game had you, Matsumae-san, composing it. The 2nd game was composed by Takashi Tateishi, and the 3rd game was by Yasuaki Fujita, and so on. This brought up diversity in music.

Manami: Exactly. After I handled Mega Man, I ended up moving onto the arcade section (business-related), so after that, Tateishi-kun was put in charge. He did a wonderful job grasping the music the planners wanted, and the music I created, which led to him creating cool evolutions of those, which is why Mega Man 2 was such a major title that was a boost above the previous game. His music is very much worth of the praise it receives. He ended up moving onto a different company afterwards, so Fujita-kun ended up doing a wonderful job with Mega Man 3 as well.

Mohammed: Personally, I see your involvement with the original Mega Man as the most important part of the series. You made some of the most iconic sounds in all of video games: The sound effect when you die; when you get an extra life (one-up); the short jingle after you select a stage; the sound of a boss’s door when you enter it. Some of them might be simple, but they carried through the entire series. I see your legacy in the subsequent Mega Man games, even though you weren’t given another chance until 23 years later.

Manami: I’m pleased to hear you say that. Nowadays, usually music and sound effects are done by separate people, but at that time, I had to create both. The sound effect when you die or get an extra life, among others, are quite popular today. The boss and stage music are still loved.

Mohammed: Indeed. So now, after all these years, what’s your favorite music from the original game?

Manami: Hmm, probably Cutman and the Ending. Cutman was the first song the planner gave the OK on, while I liked the ending because all the stages were upbeat tempos. I’m quite fond of the slow tempo of the ending.

Mohammed: Right. So, you said you didn’t finish the game. What stage gave you the most trouble, and made you give up playing? Guts Man stage was bothering me when I was a child, but right now it’s definitely Ice Man stage. This guy is not as nice as he looks. (laughs)

Manami: Well, it’s Guts Man for me still. (laughs) I never got down the timing of jumping across the moving floors, so I always ended up falling. Guts Man and Iceman have those moving floors that appear and disappear, which I hate as they’re so difficult. (laughs)

All of this stands as long as we’re talking about the product that was eventually released. In actuality, I’ve beaten the game only once! While developing a game, you have to verify the music and sound effects while playing through it. But since I was always dying at the Guts Man stage, I cried to the programmer, telling him that I couldn’t make progress on my checks, so I had him make a ROM with the game’s hit detection removed. So, no matter how many times I fell, or how many times an enemy hit me, or how many times I fell into a sea of lava, I never died. (laughs) I used that neutered ROM to beat the game and finish my checks.

Mohammed: That’s a combination of cute and nasty! (laughs) When you were composing the game, were you aware of the levels? (Fire, Ice, etc.) And when you played it for testing, did you make adjustments to the music, or were you pleased for your work on each level?

Manami: I knew about the layout of the stages during the music composition stage. It’s important for there to be a balance of sound effects and music during testing, so there are times when we had to lower the volume down, but there weren’t any instances in which I actually had to change the composition of any of the music. The sound effects, which are one-note chords, play onto the music, which are three-note chords, so I had to do things such as shorten the sound effects, as well as adjust them so they don’t cut into the melody of the songs. But since it was my first time supervising such a project, there are places where the sound effects cause the melody to go away. (tear)

Mohammed: I read somewhere that you contributed to the music of Air Man from Mega Man 2. Is this true?

Manami: Huh? Where did you hear that?! (laughs) Indeed, I did write measures of Air Man’s melody, but only a small number of people are supposed to know that.

Mohammed: I learned this information from a fan site. Fans dig deeper than you might think. (laughs) Did you collaborate on more tracks within Capcom, or was it just Air Man?

Manami: All I did for Mega Man 2 was Air Man. The opening theme of Mega Man 2 was crafted as a continuation of the ending theme of the original Mega Man, so I provided the ending theme data over to Mega Man 2′s composer.

Mohammed: Okay, let’s shift gears to Mega Man 10. I think Capcom did an impressive job: They brought Mega Man’s past composers all together to compose for the game. How did this happen? Did they just call you and tell you “We want you on this new Rockman game”?

Manami: After leaving Capcom, for the most part, I didn’t work with them again. A year before composing for Mega Man 10, I did an arrangement for Mega Man 9 (We’re The Robots). The supervisor for Mega Man 9 then told me that the past composers would be brought together to compose songs for Mega Man 10, and that I was wanted for that as well. I was happy to be composing music for Mega Man after such a long time.

Mohammed: And it’s interesting how Capcom handled it: Past composers made the music for the robots, while Inti Creates’ sound team (III) handled Wily stages.

Manami: Yeah, I too think that the idea for the composers was planned out very well.

Mohammed: Were you shown the level (or character design) of Nitro Man before making the music for it, or did you just hear about the idea?

Manami: When composing Nitro Man, all I had seen was the character design for Nitro Man. I had no idea what the stage’s design was; all I had was the Nitro Man image and someone telling me to make an up-tempo song. I ended up making that song right away after seeing the character design. I think it took less than a day?

Mohammed: You did a great job — I truly love it. Apart from Mega Man 10, have you been doing any work for video games?

Manami: I haven’t done much work in video games recently. I have done a few small projects, but that’s pretty much it. If you’re doing freelance work, you have to manage and then find work on your own, but I haven’t even been doing that lately. It’s tough when you’re in between jobs/assignments. Also, recently many young composers have arrived on the scene, and they’re creating good music. I feel that the younger composers, as opposed to older ones such as myself, are a closer match to recent games. There are also many young people involved in the development of games. So, I think it’s better for younger people to be doing this. (laughs) With that said, if anyone requests that I do something for them, I wouldn’t mind — even if from outside of Japan. (laughs)

Mohammed: And luckily, that happened to be me, when I approached you for World 1-2 LP. You and I wanted to make a track that resembles Mega Man in its groovy nature. How about you tell me more about it?

Manami: When I heard about the album, you asked to make a song resembling the early days of Mega Man, as well as something akin to Mega Man 10. This was something that would, as a result, be different from the music of recent games. I interpreted this as you wanting a song that harkened back to the melodies of the olden days of gaming. So, I went with a melody that’s very easy to remember, a song that you can give lyrics to and sing, and a song that’s catchy enough to get into your mind.

As for the software, I’m using the Cubase sequencer. The sound source is HALion4, Kontakt4, Fantom-XR, and so forth.

Mohammed: And it turned out fabulous — very much like your signature Mega Man style. Haven’t you thought about doing a solo album? You know, something that’s totally “Manami” and not tied with anything else.

Manami: I’m happy you really liked it! As for a Manami-like solo album… (laughs) I’m happy you feel I’m worthy of such a thing.

Mohammed: Right now, I’m working with Keiji Yamagishi on his first solo album. Maybe after that, you and I could visit the idea of working together again — but on a larger scope.

Manami: You’ve asked me quite often to make an album! And I’m honestly very grateful for that. Yeah, someday, we should have a go at it, as long you’re happy with what I have to put forth or if I can put my heart and soul into it. Well, that’s not as fancy as it sounds. (laughs)

Mohammed: And that’s a conversation for another time. Thank you for your time, Matsumae-san. It’s been a pleasure talking with you and reminiscing about the past. I hope to play a new Mega Man game with your music in it again!

Manami: Thank you too, Mohammed! I’m also very happy to have been a part of this project. I look forward to when we can work together again.

---

You can reach me either at Twitter or e-mail. I’d appreciate it if you follow @KoopaSW; we’re trying to build something cool, from music lovers to music lovers.

Special thanks to Alex ‘cvxfreak’ Aniel for bridging the language gap between us; and also Andy Helms, who is responsible for Koopa Soundworks’ logo, as well as the header image above.

In November of 1997, shortly before the release of the fourth Alien movie, Alien: Resurrection, H.R. Giger — the award-winning Swiss artist responsible for designing the Alien itself for the original movie — learned that he wasn't to be named in the credits of the franchise's latest installment. Understandably, he was furious, and responded to the news by writing the following letter to 20th Century Fox.

Don't miss the last couple of lines.

See also: James Cameron's letter of apology to Giger in 1987.

(Source: Jim Wheeler; Image: Giger at work, via.)

November 13, 1997

To: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

The Alien Quartet has, from the very beginning, contained my unique and personal style. For the first film ALIEN, I was awarded an Oscar for "Best Achievement for Visual Effects". In ALIENS, a film I was not asked to work on, I still received a screen credit for "Original Alien Design". On ALIEN 3, I was cheated out of the Oscar nomination received by that film because 20th Century Fox gave me the credit, "Original Alien Design" again, instead of "Alien 3 Creature Design", as it was my rightful title in accordance to my contract and the work I had performed on the film. In 1976 I had completed two paintings, "Necronom IV" and "Necronom V", in which two long-headed creatures appeared. In 1977 these paintings were published in my book, NECRONOMICON, by Sphinx Verlag, Basel, in German. It was in this version of the book that Ridley Scott, in his search for a credible Alien creature, came across these two paintings and decided on them for the full-grown Alien, using the words "That's it!" The statement has been graciously repeated by Ridley Scott in almost every interview about his work on ALIEN.

The creatures in ALIEN: RESURRECTION are even closer to my original Alien designs than the ones which appear in ALIENS and ALIEN 3. The film also resurrects my original designs for the other stages of the creature's life-cycle, the Eggs, the Facehugger and the Chestburster. ALIEN: RESURRECTION is an excellent film. What would it look like without my Alien life-forms? In all likelihood, all the sequels to ALIEN would not even exist! The designs and my credit have been stolen from me, since I alone have designed the Alien. So why does Fox not give me the credit I rightfully earned?

As for those responsible for this conspiracy: All I can wish them is an Alien breeding inside their chests, which might just remind them that the "Alien Father" is H.R.Giger.

H.R.Giger

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Today would have been the 90th birthday of Norman Mailer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and journalist who also happened to write some enormously entertaining letters in his lifetime. Below are just three of the many thousands. The first was sent to one of his writing idols, Ernest Hemingway, along with a copy of The Deer Park; ten days later it bounced back, marked, according to Mailer, with the Spanish equivalent of "Address Unknown—Return to Sender." He never got his opinion. The second letter was sent to Playboy magazine seven years later; the last letter reached Robert B. Silvers, editor of The New York Review of Books, in 1965.

(Sources: Advertisements for Myself, The New Yorker, & Cannibals and Christians; Image: Norman Mailer, via.)

[To Hemingway, 1955, along with a copy of his new novel]

TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY

—because finally after all these
years I am deeply curious to know
what you think of this.

—but if you do not answer, or if you
answer with the kind of crap you
use to answer unprofessional writers,
sycophants, brown-nosers, etc., then
fuck you, and I will never attempt
to communicate with you again.

—and since I suspect that you're even
more vain than I am, I might as well
warn you that there is a reference to
you on page 353 which you may or may
not like

NORMAN MAILER

-------------------

[To the Editor of Playboy]

December 21, 1962

Dear Sir,

I wish you hadn't billed the debate between William Buckley and myself as a meeting between a conservative and a liberal. I don't care if people call me a radical, a rebel, a red, a revolutionary, an outsider, an outlaw, a Bolshevik, an anarchist, a nihilist, or even a left conservative, but please don’t ever call me a liberal.

Yours,

Norman Mailer

-------------------

[To the Editor of The New York Review of Books]

February 22, 1965

Dear Bob,

Your letter, January 26, invites me to an "essay" of eighteen hundred words on the new Hubert Humphrey. In the last year you have also asked me to review biographies of Johnson (Jack) and George Patton. Since it is not easy to think of three books which could attract me less, I expect I must make my position clear. Forgive me for digging in old ground.

A year and a half ago, you asked me to review The Group. Said you had offered the novel to seven people—all seven were afraid to review it. You appealed to my manhood, my fierce eschatological sword. St. Mary's wrath (according to you) was limned with brimfire. Would I do it, you begged, as a most special favor to you. Perhaps, as you suggested, I was the only man in New York who had the guts to do it. A shrewd appeal. I did it. Two months later my book (The Presidential Papers) came out. You had given the copy to Midge Decter for review. Her submitted piece was, in your opinion—I quote your label—"overinflated." That is to say, it was favorable. Changes were requested. The reviewer refused to make them. The review was not printed. No review of The Presidential Papers appeared in The New York Review of Books. Only a parody. By a mystery guest. Now, we have my new book, An American Dream. I hear you have picked Philip Rahv to review it, Philip Rahv whose detestation of my work has been thundering these last two years into the gravy stains of every literary table on the Eastern Seaboard.

In the name therefore of the sweet gracious Jesus, why expect me to do eight words on your subject? To the contrary, experience now suspects that a state of cordial relations with The Review is congruent to a lack of cordial relations with The Review, and marks you, Bob, on this note: negotiations with your Editorship are, by open measure, inching, tedious, and impoverished as spit. But cheer up, dear Silvers. The letter is for publication, and so should enliven the literary history of your unbloodied rag.

Yours in trust,

Norman Mailer

cc: Barbara Epstein
Elizabeth Hardwick
Eve Auchincloss
Alexandra T. Emmet
A. Whitney Ellsworth
Terry Ehrich
Samuel N. Antupit
George Plimpton
Jason Epstein
Midge Decter
Malcolm Muggeridge

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