11.20.12 |
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The Verge’s Nilay Patel:
The final moments in the battle to replace the cable box will be easy to recognize — it’s when you can simply flip on an Apple TV or a PS3 or a Roku box and it’s already playing something. It’s when the streaming services start making choices for you — choices that up until now have been made by network executives acting on a hunch and a prayer. Netflix’s recommendation engine is great at showing things you might want to start watching, but imagine if Netflix was just already playing your own personal Mad Men marathon when you flipped on the TV. Or if your Xbox was smart enough to know that you’d be watching the Nets game if you only knew it was on.
Very smart article. Nilay really outdid himself with his writing here.
11.20.12 |
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Nice reporting and interview work by Wired writer Chris Kohler with Nintendo heads on the eve of the big Wii U launch. More than any other part of the article, this statement by Miyamoto gave me pause:
Nintendo unveiled Wii U at E3 last year. At this year’s show, Microsoft showed off a similar concept called SmartGlass, by which users could interact with their Xbox 360 using a tablet or phone. Miyamoto took the announcement as the sincerest form of flattery. “We’re seeing the emulation [of our ideas] occur very quickly, which if anything tells us they know this is a good idea,” he said.
I think Nintendo is missing the boat here. SmartGlass wasn’t imitation of Wii U, instead more of a reaction to the tablet explosion spearheaded by the iPad. Based on early reactions on how weak the touch screen responsiveness is on the Wii U controller, I’m worried Nintendo will let down a lot of people’s expectations.
11.19.12 |
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I think almost any objective reviewed agreed the THQ first person shooter Homefront was a mess. But why? Polygon reporter Rob Zacny digs deep and uncovers a lot of problems with the game’s AAA development process:
It might have been too late to truly set Homefront apart from Call of Duty, but that didn’t stop upper management from belatedly trying to match it in terms of spectacle….Intimidated by Modern Warfare 2, senior managers started going back over Homefront asking, “How exciting is this moment? How can we dial it up to 11?”
What frustrated directors and producers about the eleventh hour revisions was that they meant misery for the lower-level developers who would have to implement all these changes. If THQ and Kaos’ senior management were going to throw out two years’ worth of preproduction and development, then a long, brutal crunch was all but inevitable.
11.19.12 |
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I’m currently a bit more developer than designer in my day job so the many virtues of Dribbble don’t apply to me as much. But the many free resources published there – especially for in house UI design, sketching, and brainstorming, really come in handy. That’s what makes PSDDD so useful. A bunch of free resources available for download, separated out by functionality.
11.15.12 |
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Developer Tyson Matanich breaks down how the newly proposed picture element was integrated into Microsoft’s new redesign. Turns out they rolled with a forked version of Scott Jehl’s picturefill JavaScript plugin. Links to it and the original are available on the post.
11.15.12 |
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Kill Screen Daily‘s Jamin Warren:
Long games have been presented as a moral imperative on the part of game makers. A game’s worth is determined by cost/hour calculations — a 60 hour game is a better “value” because it offers more enjoyment than a three-hour movie at a $15 movie ticket. This assessment not only reduces an art form to the cold metrics of cash (Is MoMA a better value than the New Museum because it has more paintings?) but it makes wicked use of what economists call “default bias.”
I see where Jamin’s coming from; as I’ve gotten older my tolerance for 30 plus hour games has gotten shorter. I just don’t have the time.
11.14.12 |
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Brian Phillips writing for Grantland:
The real story of Star Wars is the redemption of Darth Vader, while Captain Renault’s redemption in Casablanca is just a by-the-way bonus. But the resemblances are intriguing. Why do they exist? I don’t think the answer is that George Lucas deliberately copied Casablanca; I think it’s that Star Wars and Casablanca are both made out of a million spare parts from other and older stories, and some of the action-romance archetypes that George Lucas drew upon in Star Wars had also been drawn upon 35 years earlier by the committee of accidental geniuses that made Casablanca.
I normally wouldn’t have seen a connection between these two films in a million years, but Brian’s piece makes a compelling, albeit indirect, arguement.
11.14.12 |
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Ever have a conference call with a coworker living far away? Planning a trip to get a sense of jet lag? That requires time zone math. There’s a million native app solutions (e.g. Apple’s dashboard clocks) but I’ve disappointed with what’s offered on the web, until I stumbled on Every Time Zone. It’s a simple one page design with a slider to quickly calculate the time zone around the world.
11.13.12 |
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Wired‘s Chris Kohler:
The dual message couldn’t more clear: Consoles are bigger than ever, and they need to change immediately, or die.
“Consoles, in terms of the way that they’ve been operating and failing to evolve, have to change,” says Mark Kern, head of the game developer Red 5 Studios. “The console model is hamstrung by the whole box-model mentality, the idea that you pay $60 for a game and you go play.”
Regardless of the outcome, holiday 2013 is going to be a fascinating time. With Microsoft and Sony very likely unveiling their next generation hardware, how will they sell in the face of heavy mobile competition? Will the distribution model be radically different?
11.13.12 |
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Designer Chris Armstrong writing for A List Apart:
When we construct a grid, we’re creating layout boundaries: known relationships and constraints that define an environment wherein an appropriate solution can occur. But when we construct an infinite grid, we’re not just setting the boundaries for a layout, but a layout system, with too many variables for us to nail everything down. If we define the important relationships, the blanks will fill in themselves.
Really interesting read, and something that I heard several times in the UI17 conference I attended last week. In short, don’t design break points and your site’s responsiveness based on current mobile constraints, instead design based on site content.