Web of Games

The birth of the real-time strategy game

How “famiclones” spread all over the world

Interview with Jonathon Wilson, Hangar 13 Games

Excellent advice for any writer, not just game designers.

And all the IP holders have gained is a lot of ill-will. They could have had free advertising instead. Good job breaking it, hero.

Only 22 years late!

What it was like to work on a Nintendo DS launch title.

The Galaksija computer was a craze in 1980s Yugoslavia, inspiring thousands of people to build versions in their own homes. The idea behind them was simple – to make technology available to everyone.

Right on my birthday, Ars Technica posts a long, detailed history of Flash from its humble beginnings to its relatively recent demise, complete with testimonies from key people. And you know... Steve Jobs may have been a jerk and the bane of good engineering, but in that infamous essay he only echoed the concerns of industry at large. Flash wasn't just proprietary, insecure and a resource hog. It was such a mess that even after key components were open-sourced, and the rest extensively documented, 3rd-party clones just couldn't come close to playing anything but the simplest animations properly. Successful preservation efforts leverage the official player, not open source implementations. No, Flash was terrible engineering even by IT's abysmal standards. And frankly? Its much vaunted ease of use was never apparent to me. Even as an authoring tool, Flash sucked. There, I said it.

Wait, what? I guess the layoffs shouldn't surprise anyone after the previous announcement, though having them come without warning just a day later is ugly. But how in the world do you blame the ongoing health crisis for the woes of an internet company that does everything online by definition?! Your business should be booming right now! You know, from all the people stuck at home with not much to do.