Collateral damage: Apple yanks Scratch

 Posted by (Visited 10302 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Apr 152010
 

MIT’s Scratch is a tool developed at the MIT Media Lab to allow young people to learn the basics of computing and programming.

That means it’s also a development environment wherein you can run interpreted code.

Which means that it can’t be on the iPad or the iPod Touch or iPhone. So Apple has yanked it from the App Store.

As the Computing Education blog points out, these restrictions are ending up by saying that you literally cannot create procedural content on these devices.

Discussion on the Scratch forums suggests that it’s because Apple wants to focus on consuming media using these devices, not producing media.  Want to be truly computing literate, where you write as well as read?  There’s no app for that.

– “Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch”

Korea blocks late night/long play for youth

 Posted by (Visited 17571 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , , ,
Apr 132010
 

Spotted this via an article at CNet; the Korea Herald reports on new measures instituted by the government there for underage gamers. The measures are aimed at fighting game addiction.

According to the ministry, underaged users will be forced out of gaming sessions when online access automatically shuts down as soon as the clock strikes midnight.

The policy also includes a “slowdown” system in which internet connection speeds will be stifled dramatically if underaged users are logged on for a lengthy period of time.

— “Midnight ban imposed on online games”, Korea Herald

The rules are going to apply to 19 games accounting for 79% of the Korean online game market. But interestingly, Lineage is excluded, though Maple Story isn’t… apparently the issue of which games are on the list is the source of some controversy.

Game dev books for 10 year olds?

 Posted by (Visited 11353 times)  Game talk  Tagged with:
Apr 122010
 

Got this question via Twitter from @eugaet, and realized that I was drawing a blank!

@raphkoster I’m sure you’re busy, but was hoping you could give me some book recommendations. My 10yo son is interested in making games.

@raphkoster Obviously, your Theory of Fun book is on my list. 🙂

Actually, you should vet the book first — because it does include the phrase “blowjob from a hooker” — used in discussing Grand Theft Auto.

When I was ten, I was learning about computers with Creative Computing. I was typing in listings, hacking in MS-BASIC and CP/M, that sort of thing. Books like the Atari computer-based ANTIC ones were something I could dig my teeth into. These days, of course, your computer may not have a programming language on it, and the barrier is higher.

I haven’t had any luck getting my kids to get into programming yet — despite my son’s expressed interest in making games, and the fact that he merrily messes about with ROM hacks and emulators.

So I am unsure what to recommend, particularly in that age bracket. Readers, what say you?

The flip side: Apple vs Flash

 Posted by (Visited 18772 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Apr 082010
 

I actually knew about this while writing the other post, but it hadn’t seemed to break publicly on the Net yet. Well, now it has. There’s language in the new SDK agreement for iPhone OS 4.0 that appears to ban using any development environment or toolchain that Apple doesn’t like. Most especially, it seems aimed at preventing Adobe from marketing the flagship feature in CS5: compiling for iPhone standalone apps.

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

CS5 launches on Monday, by the way, so this is a huge blow to Adobe.

There is already plenty of speculation as to whether this catches stuff like Unity, MonoTouch, Appcelerator (they had a blog post up about it, but it’s gone now!), and who knows what else. Basically, all cross-compilation tools, which is a large amount of the middleware out there.

This is the dark side of the last post I wrote. Epically closed means, well, epically closed. And in this case, it means creating barriers to content creation that effectively mean it costs more dollars to engage in the market. That’s what happens when you have closed-off production-and-distribution chains: smaller developers lose out.

Nintendo vs Apple and social gaming

 Posted by (Visited 11408 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , , ,
Apr 082010
 

Reggie Fils-Aime of Nintendo thinks that Apple isn’t a viable profit platform for games. The picture for game developers on iPhone certainly isn’t all rosy — the App Store has effectively recreated all the bad elements of retail, without the profit margins.

On the other hand, there are literally 50,000 games and entertainment apps for the iPhone and iPad. Fifty. Thousand. Number for the DS? More like 2500.

And now, Apple’s taking a big big hint from the networked, connected world, and introducing a gaming social network to the iPhone OS.

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