Mobile developer Red Robot Labs snags industry vet John Davison

Mobile games developer Red Robot Labs welcomes their new Director of Content and Publishing John Davison. His history with the gaming industry bring a lot to the table for the start-up.

Mobile games developer Red Robot Labs focuses many of its games on location-specific elements, but with its latest hire, the company may be looking to relocate itself to the top of the gaming world. John Davison, a 20-year veteren of the video game industry, will call Red Robot Labs his new home as he settles into a role as the start-up’s Director and General Manager of Content and Publishing.

Davison’s most recent position prior to this announcement was Vice President of Programming for CBS Interactive Games, which left him as overseer of content for GameSpot and Metacritic. He had also served as editor for Ziff Davis’ network of tech and gaming sites. Essentially, if there is anyone that knows the gaming world, it’s John Davison. 

Red Robot Labs, the team behind the well-received Life is Crime and Forever Drive–both available on iOS and Android–are happy to welcome Davison in from the world of covering gaming and into the world of making them. In a press release from the company, CEO Mike Ouye stated, “As a video game industry veteran with a proven entrepreneurial track record, John is the perfect addition to Red Robot as we aim to disrupt and innovate the mobile space for gamers.”

Davison is already staking his claim for what he plans to bring to Red Robot Labs and the gaming landscape as a whole. “There is a huge opportunity to build new products around the ways that gamers interact and discover content, and the team at Red Robot understands this better than any group I’ve ever come across. We want to empower gamers with technology designed specifically for them.”

Considering both Red Robot Labs’ and John Davison’s track records of innovation, creativity, and community, there’s a lot of promise in this partnership. Gamers everywhere should be on the lookout for whatever may come next from this team.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Insomniac Games joins EA, is finished making single-player-only games

Like its publishing partner for multiplayer shooter Fuse, Insomniac Games is done with single-player-only games.

Earlier this month, EA Labels president Frank Gibeau proudly touted that he was finished greenlighting development on games that are only for solo players. The Insomniac-developed, EA-published Fuse, formerly OverStrike, certainly fits the bill. Like so many shooters these days, Fuse is playable solo but it’s built with four players in mind. Resistance 2 and Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One are Insomniac’s experiments in co-operative play that gave birth to Fuse, but the studio has a rich heritage in single-player games. Is it giving up the single player ghost?

Just like Electronic Arts, Insomniac is done developing single-player-only games.

Speaking with Gamespot, Insomniac CEO Ted Price said that the nature of the modern game industry means that the era of games like the original Ratchet & Clank is over. “I can’t imagine that any game we’d do from here on out will be single-player-only,” said Price, “The [industry] has changed. As gamers, we have always been social, but thanks to the way technology has evolved, it’s much easier for us to play together. And it’s much easier for developers to create experiences where you can play together. So we want to encourage that with all of our games because ultimately, in my opinion, it’s often more fun to play with a friend.”

To reiterate, solo campaigns aren’t disappearing from EA or Insomniac’s games. After Gibeau’s words circled the web last week, the executive was quick to say that EA would still make single-player content. “You can have a very deep single-player game but it has to have an ongoing content plan for keeping customers engaged beyond what’s on the initial disc,” Gibeau told Kotaku, “I’m not saying deathmatch must come to Mirror’s Edge.”

Price mirrored the sentiment. “We understand that a large portion of players are interested in that single-player experience. A lot of us gamers are interested in both. I love single-player games but I also love multiplayer games, and I think Fuse offers you the opportunity to do both without having to skimp on either side.”

Skimping on either side is definitely the concern when it comes to incorporating online and social elements into every game. EA’s SSX for example would have benefitted from a greater focus on how the game played by a single person rather than incorporating intrusive annoying social features and micro-transaction-based gear acquisitions. Insomniac games have often benefitted from that sort of focus. Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time is a crafted single-player-only game and it happens to be the finest thing the studio has ever made.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Digital publisher BlueToad claims to be unwitting source of leaked Apple UDIDs

BlueToad, a digital publishing company, has said it was the unwitting source of last week's leaked Apple UDID codes.

The story of the Apple Unique Device Identifiers, or UDID codes, leaked by hacking group Anonymous last week, has taken another turn. This time, rather than blanket denials, someone has owned up to being the unwitting source of the codes themselves. And it’s not the FBI.

NBC reports that the database of one million UDID codes came from BlueToad, a digital publishing company based in Orlando, Florida, that has a library of nearly 150 apps — primarily niche print magazines converted over for digital use — for both the iPhone and the iPad inside the iTunes App Store.

BlueToad’s attention was drawn to the missing UDID’s by security researcher David Schuetz, who documents his sterling work uncovering the source of the leak in a blog post.

He contacted BlueToad and told them of his suspicions, and the company launched an investigation, resulting in a 98-percent correlation between BlueToad’s database and that of the leaked UDIDs.

BlueToad’s CEO, Paul DeHart said “that’s 100-percent confidence level, it’s our data.”

Subsequently, DeHart published a statement on the company’s blog, saying that “a little more than a week ago, BlueToad was the victim of a criminal cyber attack, which resulted in the theft of Apple UDIDs from our systems. Shortly thereafter, an unknown group posted these UDIDs on the Internet.”

BlueToad is now working with law enforcement agencies in the ongoing investigation into the leak. To help put its business partners and the public’s minds at ease, it says it has fixed the vulnerability that allowed the UDIDs to be stolen, and has stopped storing them inside its database. BlueToad had already followed Apple’s directive to cease reporting UDIDs from its apps.

Case closed?

It would certainly seem so, as both the FBI and Apple have stated the leak didn’t come from them, and BlueToad seems convinced it’s the source. Taken at face value this way, the story now reads that hackers affiliated with Anonymous and working under the Operation AntiSec name, stole UDIDs from BlueToad’s computers, then published them saying they came from a larger file obtained from an FBI Agent’s laptop.

Agent Christopher Stangl was implicated due to his involvement with operations against Anonymous and LulzSec, as proven by his presence during a conference call that Anonymous claimed to have eavesdropped back in March.

After all, the easiest and most logical explanation is most likely true.

However, those who don’t like to connect the dots in this way will undoubtably have alternative theories. For example, the FBI could be working with BlueToad (although we can’t imagine for what reason), or the company is taking the fall — it is after all, completely innocuous — at their behest.

Even David Schuetz isn’t convinced this is the end of the story, and questions whether BlueToad is the original source, or a secondary leak.

A member of Anonymous, seemingly unfazed by the recent developments, took to Twitter to say simply “FBI-notebook – There is still no evidence. Stay tuned.”

For now at least, we’d say the file on this one needs to remain open, but on hold.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Obvious Corp. introduces Medium, a new go at evolving Web media

From the creators of Twitter and Blogger comes Medium, a next-gen attempt at Web publishing.

When the early Twitter team composed of co-founders Biz Stone, Ev Williams, and early staffer Jason Goldman announced they would be relaunching their Obvious Corp. incubator this past Spring, the first product we heard anything about was the Quora-meets-Twitter Branch – but now it’s clear there is plenty more in the Obvious Corp. arsenal.

Yesterday, the team peeled back the wraps on Medium, a user-friendly, visually-heavy Web publishing platform. “[We] decided to take on the project of building a new publishing platform from scratch, not just because it’s in our wheelhouse, but because we believe publishing – and media, more broadly – is important,” Obvious Corp announced via blog. “…Medium is designed to allow people to choose the level of contribution they prefer.”

Thus far, only a select handful of Medium users have posting abilities, but the team has invited the world to come on in and take a look. The interface is simple as could be, and posted content is segmented by popularity and by how new it is. While you currently can’t use Medium for publishing your own content, everyone is able to comment and hit “like” on what’s currently available.

It should be obvious (no pun intended) right away that this is a next-gen blogging tool. Making a play for the CMS market is a smart one, as the Web publishing industry as a whole has grown rather complacent. WordPress, hands down, no arguments, dominates — it powers more than 16 percent of all Websites, at last count. And if we’re being honest here, there are no real competitors that can sway professional-level publishers away from WordPress. Tumblr, for all of its inherent usefulness and aesthetic appeal, doesn’t have the back-end capabilities that major media outlets need.

We’re at a crossroads with Web publishing, where curating, sharing, re-posting, and discovery are just as vital to a network as producing compelling content is. Medium uses the increasingly familiar tiles-on-canvas interface that Pinterest helped popularize, and big, browser-filling images that are quickly becoming a Web-wide staple. It actually reminds me of Jux quite a bit. There’s more focus on the topics – or collections, as Medium calls them – than the writers, which doesn’t speak much to its adoption as a WordPress killer.

But Medium probably isn’t trying to be a WordPress killer; no one has much interest in such a futile endeavor. Usually when a new Web product launches, it’s to capitalize on an emptiness in the market, or offer a better option to what’s currently available, and that doesn’t feel like what Medium is trying to do. Instead, Obvious Corp. seems to be trying to evolve the conversation about blogging and Web communication with Medium; it’s a gentle nudge in a new direction. Whether we’re receptive or not remains to be seen. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com