Eric David
Latest from Eric David
How Facebook stalking your friends is bad for you
Have you seen that study that says using Facebook excessively has been linked to symptoms of depression? If you asked “Which one?” then you have noticed a growing trend over the last few years where a series of academic studies continues to point out the negative emotional effects of using Facebook. The most recent example comes ...
Amazon reportedly saved Crytek with $50-$70 million licensing deal
Crytek, the German studio behind CryEngine and games like the Crysis franchise, faced some tough financial challenges at the end of last year. The developer appeared to have trouble paying some of its employees on time, and it was reportedly forced to cease development on a sequel to Ryse: Son of Rome. Earlier in March, Crytek announced that ...
Square Enix tries to drum up excitement with #CantKillProgress, annoys everyone instead
Confusion and annoyance are two emotions game publishers probably do not want to evoke in their fans, but so far that seems to be exactly what is happening with Square Enix’s “unique 3-day interactive experience” called Project CantKillProgress, which is currently livestreaming on Twitch. The event is cryptically leading up to some kind of announcement on ...
Steam Spy gathers the Steam sales data that Valve keeps secret
Valve Corporation’s Steam is an incredibly popular digital distribution platform, often reaching several million concurrent users at peak hours, so knowledge about what Steam users are buying, what they play the most, how long they play, and so on would be incredibly helpful to game makers and publishers. Unfortunately, Valve Corp is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to ...
Halo Online modders moving forward despite Microsoft’s DMCA notices
Many Halo fans were perplexed by Microsoft Corp’s announcement that it would be producing a new free-to-play shooter called Halo Online that will only be available in Russia. A few enterprising modders gained access to Halo Online’s code and promised to create a port of the game for Western audiences, but they were quickly hit by a DMCA takedown notice ...
Turkey blocks Twitter, YouTube and Facebook over “terrorist propaganda”
A Turkish court has ordered a block for Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and other Internet sites over photos being shared of a recent attack on an Istanbul court house. The images show a Turkish prosecutor being held hostage at gunpoint by two members of DHKP-C, a leftist group that is considered to be a terrorist organization by Turkey, ...
Hyperkin used April Fool’s prank to test the market for Smart Boy product
Every now and then a company releases a fake product announcement for April Fool’s and then is shocked by how badly some people actually want that product. This is what happened to ThinkGeek.com a few years ago when it teased a Tauntaun sleeping bag based on a famous scene from the beginning of Star Wars: The Empire ...
How chaos theory comes into play in designing video games
In theory, programming a video game should be nice and mathematical, with each line of code following an ordered structure that produces straightforward, predictable effects. You tell the program to spawn a monster, it spawns a monster. But as game designs become more and more complicated, adding things like realistic physics and destructible environments, the outcome of ...
Twitter acquires TenXer, a project management platform for devs and engineers
Twitter Inc has announced that it has acquired TenXer, a San Francisco-based collaboration platform for developers and engineers. TenXer was created in 2011 by Jeff Ma, an engineer and math genius who gained renown as a member of the MIT Blackjack Team that inspired the film 21, a 2008 movie starring Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne. Ma confirmed ...
Ambitious player recreates San Francisco in city-building sim Cities: Skylines
A talented player of Cities: Skylines has made a 1:1.5 scale recreation of the entire city of San Francisco, California, within a game that has only been out for a little over three weeks. Paradox Interactive’s Cities: Skylines is one of this year’s biggest surprise hits so far, selling over 250k units in its first 24 hours ...