firehose

By Nathan Grayson on June 6th, 2013 at 1:00 pm.

In Double Fine’s Massive Chalice, heroes follow one of (videogame) life’s most well-worn paths: fight demons, fight demons, fight demons. But these heroes age, and their blood slowly ceases its boiling. They grow old and begin to seek out someone else to warm their weary bones. Also, to birth and raise the most powerful combat babies in all the realm because, you know, demons. Still, it’s a rather traditionally minded system at heart, so I had to ask: where do gay couples enter the picture, if at all? Massive Chalice lead Brad Muir was honest: that issue totally slipped his mind… at first. But then Kickstarter backers swooped in to save the day. Hurrah! It is, however, an ending that Muir doesn’t think would’ve been quite so happy had a traditional publisher been in the mix.

To hear Brad Muir tell it, Tim Schafer makes worlds first and systems second. Muir, meanwhile, does it the other way around. He just makes things work, then he worries about the details.

He acknowledges, however, that maybe this time around, he should’ve worried about the details a teensy bit sooner.

“We did not talk about [the possibility of gay marriage] until we launched the Kickstarter,” he tells RPS. “We were so focused on pure pragmatic mechanics and how it would work and coupling and all these things that we hadn’t [considered it]. That was something I got kinda blindsided by. That was really unfortunate. It kinda makes me feel shitty that it’s not something I’d thought of. I think it’s sort of hetero privilege that I didn’t see it coming.”

It’s not that Muir doesn’t want his game to embrace people of all codes, creeds, and backgrounds, either. He just made a mistake. But then, that’s why Double Fine opted to bring the idea of Massive Chalice straight to Kickstarter instead of going with a stretch goal and prototype-oriented “pre-order model”: because they know they’re not perfect.

“One of the cool things is we have the opportunity to think about it and address it because we brought it to the community,” says Muir, suddenly grinning. “We brought it to a broader group of people, and then there were some people who brought it up and wanted to talk about it. There’s a raging thread on our forums.”

So hurrah, hugs and well-muscled sexytimes for all. This, Muir figures, is the optimal outcome. Everybody wins, and then they all get married. But what would’ve happened if Double Fine hadn’t fulfilled the conditions to unlock real life’s good ending? The contagious enthusiasm in Muir’s voice wilts a bit as he explains:

“If we had gone with a publisher on this, I really think [it wouldn't have ended well]. Because you sign the deal, you go underground, you start working on the game, you don’t talk to the community or anybody, and you get so focused on all these other aspects of the game. Just making it work – and all the tactical combat and mechanical things. We might just overlook something like same-sex coupling all the way until we announce the game. And then people say, ‘Hey, what about gay marriage?’ And we’re like, ‘Fuck,’ because we’ve already worked on it for more than a year.”

“If somebody did think about it during that whole thing, they would’ve probably just killed it because it is such a controversial issue. They’d probably not want to have it associated with the game at all. And then they’d give me a PR company line that I’d have to tell in every interview, and it’d be super, super shitty. And then any gay gamers who are coming to the game and playing it and wanting to see themselves represented would just be really disappointed.”

Either way, no bueno. Fortunately, Double Fine was able to reconsider their systems ages before ever implementing them, and the resulting discussion’s given rise to some rather interesting ideas.

“We’ve been talking about ways to actually incorporate gay marriage,” Muir continues. “One of the suggestions was to allow couples – male/female or otherwise - to contribute to the good of the realm via means other than childbirth. So couples could raise children or research technology. That’s one interesting way to handle it. And then if you couple it with the ability to foster children, I think that’s a way you could have same-sex couples in the game. And it’s optional. People can choose to engage it or not.”

“The other option is to be less explicit about it. Maybe these aren’t marriages. Maybe you’re just retiring two heroes in the same keep. Because I really like it when more procedural, systemic games allow the player to kind of use their imagination a little more to fill in the gaps of what’s actually happening.”

Ultimately, though, Muir is keen to point out that Massive Chalice still has a long way to go. Someday, the chalice will be massive indeed, but at this point it’s not even on level with Chip from Beauty and the Beast. But he’s aware now. His eyes and ears are open. And while his absolute foremost goal is to make the best, most enjoyable game possible, he also wants everyone to come along for the ride.

“I don’t know where we’re gonna land on it,” he admits, “but I will say that I want the game to be inclusive. I don’t think that hurts anyone. If you as a gamer feel like you’re more represented in this thing, that’s only gonna deepen your personal story. I really like emergent story stuff, and I think that only stands to improve emotional connections to these heroes. That’s only gonna be a good thing.”

Check back soon for the full interview, in which we discuss plans for everything from ground-level combat to Civilization-style multi-generational mechanics, emergent game systems, whether or not Double Fine’s truly done with publishers, the potential dishonesty of rooting a Kickstarter in ideas instead of confirmed features, Muir’s frightening inability to stop almost killing himself, and ska music.  

For such a reclusive country, North Korea is getting very good at using the internet to deliver its messages of propaganda to the outside world. After embracing Twitter and Flickr (and suffering hacks across both), it's now live streaming video programming at the official Korean Central Television Facebook page. Newscasts and other content from the state-run network can be watched by pointing your browser to KCTV's Facebook page, with one important prerequisite. Before users can start streaming, they're required to "Like" Korean Central Television — a token of approval that KCTV wants to see reflected on your profile page. Going directly to the associated Ustream page gets you past this obnoxious hurdle.

You'll only be able to tune in during certain hours of the day. Broadcasts start at 17:00 KST (that's 3AM Eastern) six days a week, with programming kicking off at 09:00 KST (7PM EST) on Sundays. Unsurprisingly, South Korea has already taken steps to block access to KCTV on Facebook within its borders. "The site will be classified as being off limits because of materials that conflict with national interest," said a National Police Agency officer according to the Yonhap news agency.

Video discovery app ShowYou was created to help users keep track of all the videos being shared across their social networks. But like most video app developers, including the market-leading YouTube, it has struggled to replicate the easy viewing offered on cable, Netflix, and Hulu. Most people prefer to watch a single 30- or 60-minute program than string together shorter clips, even when those clips are professionally produced.

Today ShowYou is trying to change that with an update to its app that lets anyone create a channel of videos, which can be browsed and followed in a manner similar to the curated "magazines" in Flipboard. As with Flipboard, ShowYou’s bigger play is for old-time publishers, trying to help them generate new revenue from content they have already produced.

"If you are a content company trying to build a ‘YouTube business,’ you are investing in your own demise."

Its transformation into a distribution hub comes at a time when publishers are eager to find new places to distribute their work. This weekend, in a widely read blog post, entrepreneur and YouTube partner Jason Calacanis urged his fellow video makers to find alternatives. With YouTube taking a 45 percent cut of its partners’ revenues, he wrote, it is nearly impossible to earn a profit based on YouTube views alone. “If you are a content company trying to build a ‘YouTube business,’” Calacanis wrote, “you are investing in your own demise.”

YouTube declined to comment on his post. But Calacanis gave voice to simmering concerns among some of YouTube’s top creators that the platform exacts too high a price from the revenue-sharing agreements it makes with partners. That’s one reason that the people behind popular channels are hedging their bets by publishing their videos on sites like Vevo TV, Blip, and Rocket Jump, which let them to keep a higher percentage of their ad revenues. The sites also help the channels’ stars develop an identity outside of YouTube. “Some folks struggle because the’ve got all their eggs in one basket,” said Michael Cerda, Vevo’s senior vice president of product and technology. Vevo, which offers music videos from three of the big four music labels, can afford to build its own property. Smaller publishers can’t.

ShowYou’s pitch goes something like this: mobile is the future, mobile is hard, and mobile is something we’ve already figured out. The updated app puts a new emphasis on channels, so that once a viewer has picked one, swiping to the left or right brings up the next video in the channel. If the user does nothing, the next video in the channel autoplays as soon as the current video ends. (That’s not the case at YouTube.)

The publisher can insert video ads into the ShowYou stream, but instead of sharing revenues with ShowYou, they pay the company a monthly fee as low as $5. The videos can be hosted anywhere, YouTube included; publishers just give ShowYou the feed.

“Think of us as the browser,” said Mark Hall, ShowYou’s founder and CEO, in an interview at the company’s offices.

"It's a browser with built-in social distribution."

“But it’s a browser with built-in social distribution, a browser with intelligent discovery, including recommending people to come to your channels.”

Meanwhile, users get a single place to browse, watch and share videos that are now fragmenting across more and more websites. Most of the big content creators continue to publish their videos to YouTube, of course, since that’s where most of the audience remains. But there’s plenty of high-quality video that isn’t on YouTube, and Hall says people want a central app where they can find it.

For now, Hall won’t say which of the big publishers are building channels in ShowYou. Most of them are doing it as an experiment, he said, and no one wants to risk offending YouTube. And while publishers have little to lose by creating a channel on ShowYou — it will be free to them for at least the next three months — it’s also not clear how much they have to gain. For the app to make them money, it needs to attract millions of users. It doesn’t have them yet.

“It’s ridiculously ambitious for an eight-person team,” Hall said, grinning. “We’re fully cognizant of that. We’re doing something that’s a little crazy given our scale. But why not?”

For its part, YouTube is adding new ways for publishing partners to make money. Last month, the company introduced paid subscriptions onto the service. And Google continues making the case that its own mobile strategy is paying off, both for itself and its partners. On Wednesday, a YouTube executive told Bloomberg that mobile advertising revenues have tripled in the past six months, to an estimated $350 million.

Jason Krebs, president of sales and marketing at Blip, said publishers’ hunt for better distribution channels is only beginning. “The future is distributed,” he said. “Producers will have more opportunity to choose distribution partners they want to work with based on the economics and audience impact. It’ll just continue to evolve that way.”

When Google made its infamous decision to kill off Google Reader, it didn't offer much in the way of reasoning, saying only that the RSS aggregator's usage was in decline and the company had made a conscious decision to focus on fewer products. That explanation failed to quell a massive backlash from passionate users who continue to plead with Google to keep Reader alive. As the July 1st cutoff approaches, Google is showing no signs of a change of heart, but it is trying to better explain the unpopular move.

"As a culture we have moved into a realm where the consumption of news is a near-constant process," Richard Gringras, Google's senior director of news and social products, told Wired. "Users with smartphones and tablets are consuming news in bits and bites throughout the course of the day — replacing the old standard behaviors of news consumption over breakfast along with a leisurely read at the end of the day." Grangras said Google is looking into new ways of delivering news to users through its other services with one goal: you'll receive "the right information at the right time." That sounds awfully close to Google Now's motto, one potential avenue for delivering news, with the refreshed Google+ serving as another path for a more social news-sharing experience. Regardless of where Google chooses to go, ultimately the takeaway here is that yes, Reader is dying, and your smartphone is the leading culprit. Thankfully for those who don't share Google's philosophy, there are plenty of alternatives.

Actor Kiefer Sutherland will take on the roll of Snake in Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain, Konami confirmed today, with the actor performing voice and facial capture for the character, who will be 49-years-old in the forthcoming sequel.

"The themes are a little different from previous games in the series. We're taking on some heavy subjects, like race and revenge. As a result, I wanted Snake to have a more subdued performance," series creator Hideo Kojima said, "expressed through subtle movements and tone of voice, rather than words."

MGS5 takes place in 1984, Kojima said, and the developer wanted an actor who could portray Snake as he would in his late 40s.

Developing...

Sean Parker came under heavy criticism Tuesday when government documents revealed that his lavish wedding had resulted in a $2.5 million fine for ignoring regulations. The California Coastal Commission report, first reported by Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic, detailed how Parker had failed to obtain permits before installing "fake ruins" and making extensive changes to the park which is in an environmentally protected area of redwood forestry.

Today, Parker has written an extensive response to Madrigal, saying that "everything we did was an homage to nature, to the natural redwood environment which I call "God's cathedral." The land which he chose for the wedding, he says, was not "undisturbed" in any way, and that much of it was already paved with asphalt. Parker says that the $2.5 million payout was not "strictly speaking" a fine, and that he "conceded to pay a $1 million into the CCC's conservation fund, and then work together to deploy a minimum of an additional $1.5 million in charitable contributions to help the Monterey/Big Sur area." He also says that there was no need or way to apply for permits as the wedding was simply renting land from the hotel which operates it, and that everything built for the wedding was designed to be easily dismantled after the event. Parker denies that the wedding cost its reported $9 million, though he admits that roughly $4.5 million was spent preparing the event space. "Contrary to media reports," Parker writes, "no redwood trees were harmed by the wedding or construction."

Finally, Parker says that "none of the usual tasteless crap that rich people do at their weddings was present here -- no ice sculptures, no caviar, no pop stars hired to sing their hits songs," adding that he found the critical press coverage of his nuptials "deeply offensive."

Apple could offer customers an option to trade in their current iPhone for credit towards the purchase of a new model in an effort to boost sales, according to a report from Bloomberg. This would be the first time that Apple has offered a trade-in option on the iPhone.