@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

BrendanSinclair

@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social

Former GamesIndustry.biz managing editor, previously wrote for GameSpot and USGamer

Does the Context-Free Patent Art Tumblr:
http://contextfreepatentart.tumblr.com/random

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BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

I wrote about the layoffs at Riot Games and Microsoft, hiring for culture fit, and one good thing unions would definitely do for developers

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/riot-and-microsoft-layoffs-the-same-but-different-this-week-in-business

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

I love it when spam resorts to negging:

"Hi, I hope you are doing well. I have checked that your website quality is low."

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

It's amazing to me that these execs can deflect questions about their last money pit trend chasing scheme that lost billions by hyping up their next money pit trend chasing scheme that will lose billions

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/18/24042354/mark-zuckerberg-meta-agi-reorg-interview

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Solid update on The Verge's story about a new handheld that plays Genesis cartridges.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/9/24029916/sega-genesis-emulator-cartridges-handheld-hyperkin-95-mega-drive

SirTapTap, to random
@SirTapTap@mastodon.social avatar

Video game where you're a normal person but every NPC is Nicholas Cage

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

@SirTapTap They all yell, "I am Error!"

SirTapTap, to random
@SirTapTap@mastodon.social avatar

After an intensive, 3 month long campaign, I am proud to announce there are only 3 Reese's pumpkins left in my drawer from the original box of 32

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

@SirTapTap The end is in sight.

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

This guy's lawsuit claims Activision Blizzard laying him off humiliated him and caused him emotional distress, but I could see that easily being outweighed by the humiliation and emotional distress his own suit could be setting him up for.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/ex-activision-exec-accuses-publisher-of-discriminating-against-old-white-guys

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Having one of those "Is a hot dog a sandwich" moments wondering if Resident Evil is a Metroidvania.

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

PSA: Hempuli's Baba is You x Into the Breach game Mobile Suit Baba is out on PC now and free!

https://hempuli.itch.io/mobile-suit-baba

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

You know I was the one who sent the GamesIndustry.biz daily newsletter when the This Day in Games section is twice the length of the rest of the newsletter and it's about the Burger King games selling 2 million copies.

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

The latest 10 Years Ago This Month column was written before the Insomniac leak happened, but there's a bit in here that's really striking about how the studio spent years and years trying to do very different things before selling to Sony to make Marvel blockbusters forever

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/a-poor-job-of-riot-control-10-years-ago-this-month

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

@SirTapTap Well I mean, technically I think they are infringing works with a very weak fair use defense. But I also think it's foolish for Nintendo to crack down on them. YouTube just figured out a way to financially benefit from IP violations and get away with it, the same way Amazon does with selling pirated games.

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

@SirTapTap 100% agree the system is busted. It just frustrates me that there are supposedly rules but they only matter when big companies want them to matter.

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Today's Context-Free Patent Art is getting a lot of revulsion from people because one of the things it suggests is monitoring people's vitals/sleep schedule as "quality of life" and then recommending something they can buy that might improve those numbers.

The interesting context for this dystopian consumerism IMO is that this is a Nintendo patent from their Quality of Life sensor work.

I'm glad they didn't follow through on this.

https://www.tumblr.com/contextfreepatentart/737058158129922048

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Pretty upset this never got localized. NES David Bowie!

Video of Labyrinth on the NES/Famicom, from title screen with an owl landing on the logo to the opening scene with a NES rendition of David Bowie telling the player character (a girl in a dress) something in Japanese

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Just found an all-timer patent that might go up on Context-Free Patent Art at some point, but I thought it would be fun to walk through it with a little context here. So let's look at the patent for a "Digital Telepathy Ecosystem Method and Devices."

It starts off talking about monitoring a person's emotional state by collecting heart rate, temp, O2 saturation, galvanic skin response, etc.

Then it moves to empathy.

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

One idea seems to be that you could connect users so that if, for example, someone you were close to suddenly was having a Very Bad Time, you could reach out to check in on them.

I'm skeptical that emotional state can be properly inferred from physical metrics with a useful degree of accuracy and generally don't like efforts to boil down the mystery of human existence to numbers, but OK, maybe someone could find that helpful?

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

And just in case they weren't collecting a scary amount of personal information as it was, they also want to use this for innovations in the exciting field of teledildonics.

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Bonus points for anyone who smelled the blockchain nonsense coming a mile away.

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

Blockchain and emotional detection will let them charge you different prices for movies depending on how much you enjoyed them...

I love that their answer to compensation methods being unclear is to charge people a mystery amount for a movie depending on how much they "enjoyed" it, where enjoyment is a black box algorithm that only sees your heart rate and O2 levels and the like.

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

As a kicker, they also want to use this as a parenting tool, telling parents they'll finally understand what's going on in their kid's head if they just monitor their vital stats at every moment while they play games instead of, you know, talk to them?

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

This patent is awful and hilarious, but it reflects a super common world view in tech that all you need to understand anything is the right numbers. But in a lot of cases the effort people go to (and the deeply problematic issues they ignore) in pursuit of those numbers is only going to push them further away from actually understanding a damn thing.

BrendanSinclair,
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

@design_law Whoops! Silly mistake, fixed that. Thanks for pointing it out, and for letting me know you enjoy the blog!

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

I wonder if Embracer ever considered when they were buying 100 studios that there would be 100 different layoff and closure stories when their spree came to an end.

BrendanSinclair, to random
@BrendanSinclair@mastodon.social avatar

A brief column on why I dug Pikmin 4 a whole bunch.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/pikmin-4-games-of-the-year-2023

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