In this week’s @GamesAtWork_biz episode, Michael & Michael welcome special guest Halldor Sigurdson of @FlyingFishGamin to discuss an upcoming new game entitled Corporate Sharks. Check it out on https://www.flyingfish.games/corporatesharks
Michael and Michael welcome special guest Halldor Sigurdson of Flying Fish Games to the Games At Work podcast this week. This episode is all about games, making games, and the fun and games thereof. Halldor shares what it’s like to design, playtest, market and achieve worldwide renown with making games. A specific focus on the pre-kickstarter game entitled Corporate Sharks gets a great deal of attention.
Michael, Michael & Halldor
What are your favorite games? Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know!
In this week’s @GamesAtWork_biz episode, Michael & Michael show their space geekery & awe for the initial @NASA #JWST images, discuss time travel with maps, future of gaming, automotive microtransactions
Michael and Michael start out this episode with some serious space geekery and outright awe for the first images coming back from the James Webb Space Telescope this week. These initial images are incredibly detailed and the co-hosts agree that it is extremely exciting to think about what discoveries will be made now that the JWST is online and scanning the sky. Conscious of the fact that the light that the JWST is seeing is from billions of years ago, prompts another form of time travel, but on a much shorter scale.
You can use maps of the same place over the years to do some time traveling as well, to see what a place looked like based on old cartography. Old Maps Online and World Imagery Wayback are two such web services included in the Wired article that prompted this discussion. An interesting wrinkle to consider regarding old maps is the concept of a ‘trap street’, which is a fake street or details like incorrect names, elevations, etc designed to trap someone copying another’s map without permission. A terrific Doctor Who makes use of this idea (see show notes below).
The co-hosts enthusiastically note that Magic Leap is rolling out a second generation of their headset in September. Then they consider the talk Mark Venturelli gave at the BIG Festival 2022 in Brazil regarding the future of game design that morphed into a talk on NFTs, and why they are bad for games and gaming. Next up is a story about automotive microtransactions from BMW for services such as heated seats.
Michael R wraps up this week’s episode with a discussion on LG’s rollable phone, and sets up for next week’s conversation with the local game designer from Flying Fish Games.
What would you pay a subscription fee for in your car? Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know!
The Roman 'Vettweiss-Froitzheim Dice Tower'. Dated to the 4th century CE. Intended to be used in dice games to produce a trustworthy throw of one or more dice. Discovered in Germany in 1985. 📷 Rheinisches Landes museum of Bonn. pic.twitter.com/qOqEg1Ii8T
Ground-breaking, innovative, retail in the metaverse (definitely a totally new idea); crispy snacks; digital museums and saving software; and the usual fun quick hits.
Andy and Michael explore the new, exciting concept of retailers opening outlets in different virtual worlds, we mean, in the metaverse… and experience a strange sense of déjà vu, thinking about the same thing happening back in 2007 with Second Life!
Next up is an opportunity to take up virtual employment – would you like to stock an in-game vending machine with your favourite crispy snacks? If you play Train Sim World, you may find the NPC helping refill the Pringles is actually getting paid real money for their real likeness!
We take a deep dive into an opinion piece from The Register about a digital equivalent to the Library of Congress, leading to a discussion on patents and copyright, and how software (and data) might be preserved through the passage of time. Good news about those old Super Nintendo games though – all of the manuals have now been scanned and preserved digitally!
Our final quick hits look at a massive, humungous, LEGO Super Mario Bowser set; and a funny video of Homer Simpson going God of War with a tree trunk… check out the links!
[note: a technical issue crept into the later part of the recording, and Andy’s audio has a crackle – apologies for this – improvements will be made for the future!]
Comments Off on e373 – Patently virtually hard to beat
Photo by Dominika Roseclay
Stories about robocalls, patenting, modding, Nethack at @MuseumModernArt, @Atari ’s 50th anniversary games & @Artiphon ’s Orba.
Michael, Andy and Michael begin this week’s episode with something everyone wants to minimize: unwanted telephone calls. As of 1 July, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States requires small and medium sized phone companies to implement the rules known as Shaken/Stir for caller ID authentication. This means that calls that are placed must have their caller ID signed by the originating carriers and validated by other carriers before reaching consumers per the FCC website. All in all, good news for consumers to make it easier to determine what is probable spam and what may be a legitimate call to take. And of course the James Bond reference is not lost on the cohosts.
The team then covers an intriguing story about how a government contractor attempted and succeeded in patenting an open source concept. After a conversation on hardware hacking, the team turns to games that were unintentionally unbeatable. Nethack is now in MoMA and a modder is making $20k per month by porting popular games to virtual reality. This modder is funded by Patreon backers who are remarkably consistent in their support.
The cohosts discuss Atari’s 50th anniversary, and the updated takes on classic games. Wrapping up this week’s episode, Andy shares his experiences with Bitburner and Michael R demos his new Artiphon Orba.
Are you in the 100% club? Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know!
