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Bryan Bishop at The Verge:

As outlined on the Android Developers site, Google now uses the data collected when users visit the Google Play Store; under the previous system, any check-in to the store by the device would have been incorporated into the results, user-generated or not. The new system went into effect starting with this month’s results.

The change essentially skews the results towards those users who are actively visiting the Play Store. Google says as much on the page itself, noting that the new system “more accurately reflects those users who are most engaged in the Android and Google Play ecosystem.”

The Verge’s headline for this article: “Google changes how it measures Android version adoption, sees uptick in Jelly Bean devices”.

A more accurate title would be: “Google changes how it measures Android version adoption to show an uptick in Jelly Bean devices”.

You could argue that it better reflects the breakdown of OS versions among active buyers, but that means that Google’s statistics on version adoption can no longer be trusted to represent Android as a whole. Given that Play Store engagement seems about as disproportionally low as web-browsing marketshare on Android, these numbers now have far less relevance to the real Android market and aren’t useful for much.

It’s hard to see this change as anything but a desperate move by Google to attempt to hide Android’s poor update-adoption rates.

∞ Permalink

The edX project today announced that they are joining forces with Stanford and releasing the source to edX on June 1st. As part of the platform going Free, Stanford will be integrating features from their Open Source Class2Go project. From Stanford: "Mitchell said that Stanford's Class2Go platform development team has been in contact with the edX team for a number of months, and that much code is already synchronized so that the collaboration between the two platforms will be a smooth one. The advantage will then be 'a larger team building one strong open source platform, rather than two competing open source platforms, which we think will be more desirable for universities around the world,' Mitchell added."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Plaid Hat Games has announced Bioshock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia, a board game adaptation of the recently released Bioshock Infinite video game. Bioshock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia is set during the events of the video game, and 2-4 players take on the role of the Founders or the Vox Populi and fight for control of Columbia. The board game is currently available for pre-order, and is expected to be available in the next two to five months.

images via Plaid Hat Games

via Destructoid

septagonstudios:

Hillary White

DON

Helveticat

Covers From The US Space Program

“I have always loved RSS because it gave me just the slightest bit of control and measure of accountability for the sites and blogs I read. I was able to sit back and opt out of most of the chatter, receiving only the important stuff without the risk of falling for false controversies and inaccurate news. I could spot editorial trends, identify site-biases, develop affinities for particular writers or aversions to others, and generally get the news on my terms. When a site stopped delivering a quality product, I had the satisfying ability to withdraw my subscription. Apparently that power was threatening.”

- Our Regressive Web

Forty years ago today, senior Motorola engineer Marty Cooper made one very important phone call.

theartofanimation:

Andy Fairhurst

If no one's supposed to see your passcode, why does it matter?

Massachusetts federal authorities involved in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz have received threatening e-mail and snail mail, the Justice Department said in a court filing, while the lead prosecutor in the case had his Facebook page hacked.

by darkpixel2k

Plywood Dome v.2 via Kristoffer Tejlgaard

A geodesic dome, like the one put up by Kristoffer Tejlgaard and Benny Jepsen at the Danish music festival, Roskilde Festival in 2012, is a construction that optimises the use of resources to a high degree, by imitating natures own methods.   The molecular structure found in one given family of carbon molecules, is copied when constructing geodesic domes. This structure allows for great strength and stability, construction of large-sized spaces using a minimum of building materials as well as reduced energy consumption used for heating because of the minimal surface and aerodynamic form of the dome.

modernizing:

Hello World.

Valentin Ruhry is a contemporary artist who conceived this work called “Hello World”, consisting of hundreds of electrical switches, offering to show this expression.

By Nathan Grayson on April 3rd, 2013 at 9:00 am.

Good news! SimCity‘s gotten a potentially substantial piece of DLC, and it’s totally free. Bad news! It’s a gigantic ad for car company Nissan. Worse news! Its in-game functionality seems to make your city planning decisions even less consequential than before, which is quite a feat. Worst news! SimCity isn’t a very good game at all, even with its online issues mostly cleared up. Contrary opinion! This is one seemingly asinine move I think we should only partially leap down EA’s throat for. So maybe, like, just put in one leg. And do it kind of gently. Avoid the teeth, if you can.

First off, here’s how the Nissan Charge Station works:

“Plopping down the Nissan Leaf Charging Station will add happiness to nearby buildings. Adding the Charging Station will not take power, water or workers away from your city. Zoom in to the streets of cities and players will start seeing a percentage of their Sims from all wealth classes driving the electric vehicles. The Charging Station produces no garbage or sewage as well making it pollution free.”

That’s right: pure happiness with no consequences. Would that green living in the real world was so easy. Or living, for that matter. As is, the latest science calculates that ten puppies are required for every one unit of human happiness. And scientists can’t even study the phenomenon without breaching a certain puppy-induced happiness threshold. It’s a vicious cycle.

Anyway, this doesn’t exactly seem like the best bandaid for an already broken game, and honestly, it sounds like it could stomp the remaining pieces of Maxis’ once-fine series into a fine powder.

I do not, however, like the idea of damning this move completely. Because the fact is, ads (at least, where appropriate in the context of their respective games) could make heftier pieces of DLC completely free. We don’t see the idea in practice all that often these days, but it is worth considering – especially in light of the fact that DLC costs money to produce, and not everyone can afford to pull a Valve and drop it on our doorsteps without asking for even a dime. Admittedly, SimCity’s is pretty much a textbook example of how not to do this, but ads are not inherently bad.

Further, this type of practice could maybe extricate important chunks of content from the countless, Hydra-like jaws of pre-order schemes, which is something I think would be pretty wonderful. Then again: big, obvious ads or pre-orders. At that point, you’re kind of picking your poison.

But then, I suppose that’s triple-A gaming these days. Rarely (if ever) do we get to have our cake and eat it too, because the cake can’t make back its development costs even if it sells 3.4 million units – er, slices; whatever – in its first few weeks. In a ideal world, we’d get everything upfront with a nice bow and a cake and reassurance that, no, your childhood pet fish didn’t die; it really did just up and decide to move to Disneyland. But that’s not the world we live in, so concessions are a painful, oftentimes annoying necessity.

By Emily Gera on Apr 03, 2013 at 5:44a

League of Legends developer Riot Games is moving away from the often seen skin-flaunting armor used for female characters and has re-designed the game's warrior woman Sejuani with a more realistic depiction of armor in mind.

In an updated description for the character, Riot explains how the character's earlier look was at odds with her role as a warrior.

"Sejuani's lightly-armored, skin-flaunting, fleshy apparel didn't mesh with the idea of a dominating, ice warrior. Now heavily armored atop Bristle, this visual rework clearly conveys the core of our concept for the champion. She's powerful, capable of conquering the Freljord and leading the Winter's Claw to victory.

"If we were going to make Sejuani look imposing, we needed make sure her fierce steed, Bristle, could keep up. Here we added bulk and power to his model, and updated the animation on Arctic Assault to show him tossing scattered foes into the air."

Users who previously unlocked Sejuani will receive a free skin based on Sejuani's traditional look.

By John Walker on April 3rd, 2013 at 11:00 am.

There a phrases that can put a man off a game. Like “retro graphics” and “zombie”. But you’re not to let that do that here. The Organ Trail is very much The Oregon Trail, the mostly-text-based game that was first created in the early 70s, with the bandits are replaced by zombies. But what you’ve got here is an extremely compelling, extremely tough little simulator, and one that should keep you enthralled for hours.

The original free Flash Organ Trail came out a couple of years back, but this Director’s Cut version only joined us on PC this year. Finally getting around to playing it, me and my ragtag team entirely failed to cross North America in the face of zombie hordes, wild zombie bears, and a real scarcity of fuel, bullets and common sense.

It is, essentially, Oregon Trail reimagined. You have a party of five, in your station wagon (geddit?), travelling across the continent after a zombie apocalypse. Beginning with initial supplies, you have to balance fuel, medkits, junk (for repairing your car), ammo, spare parts, and most importantly, your team’s health. Every so often you reach a town, in which you can buy, sell and trade, as well as take on jobs for the locals to earn you some cash or equipment. Here there are also trainers who’ll improve either your own skills, or the abilities of your car. Between towns random events befall you, as well as letting you stop at any point to rest, heal or go a-hunting for food and supplies.

However, this Director’s Cut version allows the game to deviate slightly from its source material. Having turned to Kickstarter for just $3,000 to create the mobile version, they received over $16k. This meant the game was expanded. There’s now a crude mechanic that lets you make choices about how to handle some situations (sneak through a horde in your car, attack it, hire mercenaries to defend you…), other characters to talk to, and the ability to create a team of your own. Naming the other characters after people you know gives you the very rewarding opportunity to shout, “EMILY!” in direct, personalised annoyance when “Emily breaks her leg” for no discernible reason. “Well it’s just typical that Laura’s picked a fight that’s delayed us by an hour.”

I discovered in my first play through that times of plenty are not to be enjoyed, but brutally rationed. Thinking I had too much food, and selling it off for more bullets, feels like such folly now. As indeed did forgetting just what a limited resource bullets really are, which alongside a failure to properly manage fuel levels led to my first failure around the midpoint of the US. Next time I shall know much better. And inevitably run out of everything, instead of just a few things, because I’m trying to be too careful. It is my destiny.

The full game is just $5/£4 via a Humble Store, and it successfully emerged from the murky recesses of Steam’s Greenlight last month. There’s a good deal of wit, some splendidly tough balancing, and a lot of variety as you go through. It’s definitely worth picking up.

By Porpentine on April 3rd, 2013 at 12:00 pm.

Voice quest. Brrr-ds! Crew-based shmup. Survival roguelike. IGF runner-up Cart Life.

SoundSelf Prototype by Robin Arnott, Evan Balster, Topher Sipes

Me and my friend are chanting into my desk microphone. My monitor is a pulsating vortex of lines, sometimes loose and ethereal like ropes of light, sometimes twisting into geometric ribbons.

We’re going high and low pitched, making mouth techno, kinda throat singing, just playing around, seeing what comes out of the aether. Sounds of delight when we make shapes cohere, wondering what the formula is. Too magic.

They finally figured out how to use computers for shared religious experience. SoundSelf disintegrates millennia of our slow retreat from communal singing like nothing ever happened.

Most importantly of all it encourages playing around with the sounds your mouth can make, like shower singing taken out of the shower and turned into an infinitely scaling group activity.

Ice Beak by Nitrome

I like Nitrome’s close-up pixels, so immersive and engulfing. This isn’t one of those impersonal lava worlds, it’s a cozy one where you get right up to the cute little fire skeletons and blast them with ice so they drop on switches and open the way to the next level.

There really is nothing left to say except, I really, truly hope you get the Crystal Snowflakes and save Ice Beak.

Ending by Aaron Steed

Ending is a one-hit kill roguelike based entirely around movement.

The puzzle is, ending your turn next to a facing enemy kills you. Some have one head like a tadpole, others have more.

The minimal menu contains a few modes. One isolates the puzzle element with a series of designed rooms, another generates an infinite maze of organic puzzle caverns. Test chambers versus wilderness.

Escape from Planet Doom by Yori Kvitchko, Dan Gopstein, Tarek El-Gaaly, Ming Jin

Escape from Planet Doom crosses the noble shmup genre with personnel management, swapping around crew to beat incoming enemies.

You have three stations: gunnery, navigation, and shields. Each has two slots for a total of six, but you only have three crew members to divide amongst them.

Adding crew unlocks abilities, like one crew member to navigation makes your ship faster, but two lets you teleport (shades of last year’s excellent Kumiho). With teleport I can stay ahead of the swarming space squid. This is all that matters.

A False Saint, An Honest Rogue by humbit

This chilly survival roguelike begins by telling you to head in a randomly chosen direction. Get far enough and you win.

Don’t freeze (that is, don’t walk over patches of ice). Don’t starve but don’t eat anything poisonous either. If you get lost, use tree shadows to orient.

Your world is a frozen waste eerily seeded with shoes and balaclavas and food and bullets. This feels much creepier than “realistically” placed equipment–like you’re already dying and this is your delirium of endless survival gear management.

Cart Life by Richard Hofmeier

Cart Life is a tycoon game that takes place in real life. Accordingly, it’s ugly and messy and methodical and not a tycoon game.

I pick Melanie, so I start in someone else’s house, her grandparent’s house, and I understand that, it’s intimately familiar to me. I live in a country where the unofficial health care system is the kindness of others, where millions of family and friends take care of each other because no one else will.

Anyway I heard this game has carts!

I wander around town searching for a permit, looking for supplies, figuring out the process needed to obtain the much-rumored cart of the title.

I’m so weary and confused that I miss picking my daughter up at school.

Many games with children have me escorting a child through fantastic environments as I fend off monsters. That rarely happens in real life.

Failing a basic responsibility because of the numbing distraction of poverty, that happens all the time.

The next day I finally get my cart set up, but not before I drop my daughter off and watch her sullenly walk inside the school building. Pangs of guilt.

I have no idea if the game tracks family relationships but failing to pick her up on time yesterday, followed by her moody silence–I feel terrible. I promise to pick her up at 4.

A bus ride later I’m grinding coffee and I’ve sold my first cup. Selling coffee is a series of fast-paced minigames. You’re timed and Cart Life alerts you when you break your best time.

FLASHBACK SEQUENCE: It’s the week of GDC 2013 and I’m talking to Richard over a breaded fish burrito in some dimly lit restaurant. We’re talking about Cart Life, we’re commiserating over terrible retail jobs we’ve worked in the past. He mentions how the mundane actions of our workday routine can form a cadence, an art.

For me it was bagging–folding clothes and tossing hangers and filling bags and swinging them over the counter, all the while keeping an eye on the register. My hands moving faster and faster until I have to calm them down. I got into a kind of fever grinding away in that understaffed, hyper-busy, broke-ass air conditioner retail environment.

When you’re only permitted one kind of physicality, you hone it, and sure, it’s an art. Cart Life refers to realities like that.

Despite the strongest desires of capitalism, humans aren’t machines. Sometimes your flow gets fucked up and you fail your role as disposable biomechanical assembly line.

You get distracted by memories or someone hot walks by or you’re imagining what you’ll do when your shift ends and then your own hands are alien to you and you’ve forgotten basic math.

Cart Life makes you count change.

Type the phrase “Hot coffee coming right up!” without stuttering. Do it all day long.

The coffee machine screeches as you fuck up repeatedly.

This is, of course, more fun than real life because Cart Life can’t crawl out of the computer and punch your entire body into an exhausted piece of walking talking ground beef with barely enough energy to fall into bed at day’s end, but it still references something meaningful.

Richard is saying he wants Cart Life to just go away. He’s done with it.

I get that. But I’m still glad it exists, if only to add to a growing plurality, because no single discussion of poverty is enough. And I’m not even talking games designed specifically to simulate working class experience, stamped Poverty Sim in big red text, but just games that acknowledge a universe where people depend on each other, where people have uncomfortable relationships with money, where people fail their children.

A group of "hactivists" claims to have infiltrated North Korea's hermetically sealed intranet, and they have demands.

Superman/Supergirl : Maelstrom #2 cover

What happens? Bad news, that's what happens. My favorite part is the older brother's plaintive plea at the end: "Why do they even make Baby Lightsabers?!"

Read more...

A little raccoon plays with a garden sprinkler and it looks as if it is actually strumming on a harp. The musical harp noises dubbed over the video really tie it all together.

video via PETSAMI

via BuzzFeed, The Awesomer

Squigiman made this morbidly adorable supercut of Fraggles from Fraggle Rock talking about death.

via b3ta, Have you seen this?!

“Batman” (Gotham City)

City Prints, a design company that specializes in creating fine art maps of college campuses and more, released an outstanding series of pop culture maps depicting locations found in video games, comic books, films and television shows. They are available to purchase online.

Maps aren’t always based in reality, some of the real fun happens when navigating fantasy. Own a piece of your favorite story, a far away land, or the level you conquered. Display it proudly, even where your significant other or boss usually frowns upon you hanging your freak flag. Because this isn’t another geek poster, this my dear, is art!

“The Legend of Zelda” (Light World)

“Superman” (Metropolis)

“Pac-Man”

“Lord of the Rings” (Middle Earth)

“The Simpsons” (Springfield)

“Super Mario Kart” (Mario Circuit)

“Grand Theft Auto” (Vice City)

via ComicsAlliance

In the future, Tecmo Koei will be able to make a Dynasty Warriors game in which you fight a vast army of Dynasty Warriors games. The company brings us ever closer to that glorious metagame with Dynasty Warriors 8, available July 16 for PS3 and Xbox in North America.

This time, Tecmo Koei includes several "What If" scenarios, which differ from the exacting historical accuracy the series usually demands. Fighters who died in certain historical battles live, and the game shows how history might have changed.

Those campaigns, and the normal Story Mode battles, will take place across over 40 new stages, populated by your choice from over 70 playable characters and thousands of hapless enemy soldiers.

Continue reading Dynasty Warriors 8 remakes history July 16

Dynasty Warriors 8 remakes history July 16 originally appeared on Joystiq on Wed, 03 Apr 2013 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Wayfaring Anger of BURL IVES.