Connect with us

FACEBOOK

John Carmack Has Some Great Advice About Games Preservation

Published

on

John Carmack Has Some Great Advice About Games Preservation

Screenshot: Star Wars | Kotaku

Doom co-creator John Carmack, legendary game designer, rocket guy and VR enthusiast, left Meta/Facebook late last year after a decade working on the company’s virtual reality efforts. Just because he’s gone, though, doesn’t mean the company’s decisions are out of his thoughts.

Accompanying the news last week that Meta had blown through almost $14 billion on failed VR bullshit was the announcement that Echo VR—a game first released on the competing Rift system before its developers were bought by Facebook—would be shutting down.

It was far from the only game to be killed off last week, with Rumbleverse and Knockout City suffering similar fates, their collective departures helping remind us that modern video games have a serious longevity problem, in that once discarded by publishers they’re extremely vulnerable to simply disappearing forever.

It’s a problem that Carmack recently addressed, sending a lengthy statement to UploadVR last week that covers all kinds of angles surrounding Echo VR’s shutdown. The stuff I’m mostly interested in, though, are all the bits about how it’s important for studios to keep old games alive, and that cost and manpower shouldn’t be the only things they’re thinking about when making those decisions.

“Even if there are only ten thousand active users, destroying that user value should be avoided if possible”, he says. “Your company suffers more harm when you take away something dear to a user than you gain in benefit by providing something equally valuable to them or others.”

Of course, his experience with this stuff is largely built on his time at id Software, whose older games—like Doom and Quake—were slightly more popular than some random VR game with only a few thousand users. His basic point is valid though! As he expands on here, with some tips built not just around good PR, but solid development fundamentals as well:

Every game should make sure they still work at some level without central server support. Even when not looking at end of life concerns, being able to work when the internet is down is valuable. If you can support some level of LAN play for a multiplayer game, the door is at least open for people to write proxies in the future. Supporting user-run servers as an option can actually save on hosting costs, and also opens up various community creative avenues.

Be disciplined about your build processes and what you put in your source tree, so there is at least the possibility of making the project open source. Think twice before adding dependencies that you can’t redistribute, and consider testing with stubbed out versions of the things you do use. Don’t do things in your code that wouldn’t be acceptable for the whole world to see. Most of game development is a panicky rush to make things stop falling apart long enough to ship, so it can be hard to dedicated time to fundamental software engineering, but there is a satisfaction to it, and it can pay off with less problematic late stage development.

To its credit, Knockout City—one of the games I mentioned above—is doing exactly this. When its existing version shuts down later this year, a new standalone release will drop that will allow for private servers, in effect letting people keep and play the game until the end of time.

Like Carmack says, there should be more of this, please!

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

FACEBOOK

Early Facebook for Scousers that was the 'best thing ever'

Published

on

Early Facebook for Scousers that was the 'best thing ever'

Back in the noughties, Paul’s Boutique bags were at the height of fashion, Girls Aloud were named the winners of Popstars the Rivals and Mean Girls …

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

FACEBOOK

San Benito County Sheriff’s Department stalls kidnapping by non-custodial parent

Published

on

Seal courtesy of San Benito County Sheriff's Office.

Stocken man allegedly fled with two children to avoid San Joaquin County Child Protective Services.

Information provided by San Benito County Sheriff’s Office Facebook Page

On March 24, the San Benito County Sheriff’s Office posted a news release on its Facebook page saying on March 23 Commander Yerena saw a suspicious vehicle near State Route 25 and San Felipe Road in Hollister and performed an enforcement stop. Checking records, he found the male driver had been reported missing from Stockton and the adult female passenger had a felony warrant.

Yerena found that the two children (11 and 13) also in the car had allegedly been abducted by the male who is their father but does not have custody.  He had allegedly fled with the children to avoid Child Protective Service (CPS) who had taken three other children into protective custody following the arrest of their mother in Stockton.

The children are in the custody of San Benito County CPS who are working to transfer the girls back to Stockton.

The male said he was “headed south” with the children but could not explain where they were going. The Sheriff’s Office is unaware of what charges the mother is facing or what charges San Joaquin County will pursue against the father.

San Benito County Sheriffs Department stalls kidnapping by non custodial parent

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

FACEBOOK

Facebook layoffs: Former Meta recruiter claims she got paid $190,000 a year to do ‘nothing’

Published

on

Facebook layoffs: Former Meta recruiter claims she got paid $190,000 a year to do ‘nothing’

A former Meta recruiter has claimed that she made $190,000 a year for doing “nothing” at her job, amid the company’s recent layoffs.

In a recent video posted to TikTok, Maddie, @maddie_macho, reflected on her time working at Meta for six months during 2021. Her post was also shared only days after Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg announced Meta’s next round of layoffs, cutting more than 10,000 employees.

The clip, which was titled “Getting paid $190k to do nothing at Meta,” started off with the former job recruiter explaining how her company wasn’t hiring new workers while she was there.

“We weren’t expected to hire anybody for the first six months, even the first year,” she said. “That really blew my mind. Like ‘perfect, I’m just going to ride this out for a year, obviously I didn’t make that.’”

Regarding what she did all day, Maddie said that she was “learning”, as Meta had the “best onboarding and training” process that was “very thorough”.

She poked fun at how her “expectations” at the beginning of her job was to be “taking it all in”, before questioning some of the meetings she had to do.

“But the most that we did, this is the crazy part, is we had so many team meetings,” Maddie claimed. “Why are we meeting? We’re not hiring nobody. Just to hear how everyone else isn’t hiring anybody. And also, I was on a team where everyone was new, so none of us were hiring anybody.”

After noting that her co-workers and boss were just “trying to figure things out” at the job, she continued to make fun of her responsibilities at the company.

“I really miss it,” she added. “I wasn’t doing s*** pretty much. Um, that’s nice.”

In a follow up video, she shared why she got fired from Meta, after she first started working there in September 2021.  According to Maddie, when her TikTok video about the company’s benefits package went viral, people who worked at the company reached out to her and said that they loved it.

However, Maddie said that Meta wasn’t too pleased about the content on her account, as she claimed that she later got a write-up for posting on her story about how “challenging” her job could be. She claimed that while she stopped talking specifically about Meta, the company later went through “20 of her TikTok” videos and asked her if they thought they were “appropriate”. She said that she then decided to quit, a day before she was fired.

As of 17 March, Maddie’s videos have more than 210,400 views, with TikTok users in the comments poking fun at her time at Meta.

“See I wouldn’t have been telling anyone I wasn’t doing work lol,” one wrote.

“Getting paid 190k to do nothing is wild,” another added, while a third wrote: TEAM. MEETINGS…gotta block my damn calendar so I could have a day w/o meetings.”

Other people expressed how they could relate to Maddie’s work experience.

“I had the same experience for 4 months. Easiest paycheck ever lol,” one wrote.

“Same here!” another added. “I was making a lot of money at Amazon and didn’t hire anyone. Collected an $80k sign on and a volunteer severance.”

Earlier this week, Zuckerberg announced that more than 10,000 people were let go from Facebook and that Meta would also be leaving 5,000 empty jobs unfilled.

The business magnate said that at least some of those staff will be fired from Meta’s recruiting team and indicated that the others may be from non-engineering roles. He gave no indication of which staff may be let go and said affected staff would hear about their future in April and May.

He noted that the layoffs were part of a “restructuring” and Meta’s “year of efficiency” and that they may not be finished until the end of 2023.

“This will be tough and there’s no way around that,” he wrote in a memo to staff. “It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success.”

This decision also came after the company already laid off about 11,000 people in November.

The Independent has contacted Maddie and a representative for Meta for comment.

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending