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[Carrying on our countdown of the Top 5 lectures of GDC 2010 in terms of what we thought particularly neat, here's an Indie Games Summit talk written up by our own Leigh Alexander, and featuring a Thatgamecompany duo on development methodologies to make everyone happy.]

Game development is one of the highest-pressure, most anxiety-inducing careers there is. An exploratory development process can be a solution, but only if it's managed with confidence and honesty, say ThatGameCompany's Kellee Santiago and Robin Hunicke.

ThatGameCompany's process emphasizes exploration -- especially long prototyping periods that are highly flexible, and the pair shared personal insight in a talk at GDC 2010.

"We know it's expensive. It's costly; you have to throw stuff away, you have to wander looking through the truth, and you have to explain it to other people -- and that can be really difficult," says Hunicke.

Santiago says the TGC team evolved their methodologies first-hand after dealing with an extremely stressful period for critically-acclaimed Flower.

"Even though we had a fantastic response from the public and from the press and our publisher, they actually asked us to spend more time and money making the game even better," she says. That made the team "generally miserable," she adds -- morale at TGC hit an all-time low.

So the process had to change, she continues, based on two assumptions: "We could have done better," she said, "and two, it was unsustainable. TGC was going to collapse if we continued on the path we were going on."

Sustainability matters, says Santiago. "Fantastic games and a lifetime of successful video game development are not two separate things," she says -- her philosophy is developers don't need to "starve and suffer... to create truly beautiful works of interactive art."

It was that philosophy with which Santiago and Jenova Chen founded TGC, she says, identifying a pyramid of qualities they wanted to build into their team culture to make it thrive -- but at that time, she says they were failing at all of them.

The picture was grim: There was no motivation toward common goals, with individuals getting lost in personal objectives. No one was invested in decisions, people felt a lack of responsibility, and it led to a lack of trust in one another.

"Development of a game is a great excuse to dismiss all these problems," she continues. But there's no motivation to invest in ideas when one fears being responsible for all the work associated with them and people don't trust each other. People fear appearing weak too, so they work solitary rather than approach a collaborative process.

So over the year, the team focused on developing better-defined roles, and they worked better to distribute accountability to give everyone some feeling of ownership.

Hunicke says one thing that's essential about accountability is having a goal, not only for the project but for the company. There are many elements that come into play when thinking about a company's identity -- motivations can be anything from art to craft to profit.

But whatever the goal is, everyone on the team should share it, she advises. Composition of a team can change depending on what everyone's motivations are not just for the company but for the game, and even for working together as people. "It's very important to figure out what your priorities are and where everyone stands," says Hunicke.

But it's not so simple as merely choosing roles. People can be tempted by titles, like the desire to be a lead designer -- "but the things that are required of a lead designer, especially in light of responsibility and accountability, can be very different than what you might have expected when you were playing Super Mario Kart as a kid," she says.

And if everyone sticks to a strict role definition, it can create gaps in the team. "These are the sorts of things that make development painful," she says. If one member of the team isn't on the same page on a given day and someone else has to make up for it, "it can be hard to get up in the morning and be super motivated to fill in those gaps," says Hunicke.

Knowing the project's scope is also important. "We're referring to the amount of resources that will be required in order to complete your game," says Santiago. Resources can be anything from time and money to personal sanity -- but the general scope should be defined up front. Since all games are creative gambles, says Santiago, "You don't want to bet anything you aren't prepared to lose."

To allow for exploration in the design process, scope should be relatively small. In a pre-production process that involves many unknowns, it's hard to determine what shape that exploration process should take.

Discovering the game that manifests the core idea of what the team wants to achieve can take a very long time -- and what allows TGC to spend so much time on it is that once they achieve the core idea, they can build it relatively rapidly.

Digital distribution makes that easier because consumers have different expectations. Ultimately, the total time spent is determined by a sustainable use of resources, but once it's defined, the team must determine what qualities of a prototype will best serve the team in making forward progress in development.

"This is definitely an aspect of your process you will discover over time," says Santiago. But TGC evaluates on three levels: Interactivity -- game mechanics -- art, and audio, and the goal is to bring each element to the same level of quality. It's a high goal that they don't always attain, but they aim to get as close as possible.

"We're always a little hesitant to move on from a prototype if we haven't achieved these goals," she says -- however sometimes, due to other constraints, they have to.

"You have to be flexible in your understanding of the final game," she says. The exploration process is about discovering what the game is. "Sometimes we find the game and it doesn't really look like the game we thought we were making at the beginning, but you know intuitively that it's right... it's just a gut check."

"It's a creative endeavor," Santiago continues. "If you can't recognize it when you see it, it justifies throwing away all of the plans you made... and following what that goal is. It's like following your passion... that's the place where you'll find success."

They make a calendar that defines the time period according to a lot of different goals -- each discipline has a different timeline. "It's like what I call a fake schedule," says Hunicke -- it keeps everyone on track to approach goals loosely on a timeline.

Realistically, Hunicke says they know a game will take 20 months, for example, so they make a 20-month calendar. "We know that it takes more time to do our style of development and we plan for it," she adds.

Morale may get low at the pinch points -- those items on the calendar that can't be moved. "That's natural; it's totally okay," she says. "Because we understand the difference between estimates and commitments." Although "it's your job to be good at guessing," according to Hunicke, it's critical not to hold oneself accountable for estimated in a way that makes them feel over-committed.

"We're not a traditional agile team; we actually encourage people to admit when they failed estimating," Hunicke continues. TGC asks people to think in two week chunks and review that thinking three times a week.

Over time, things get checked off, but things that stay on the calendar for a long time are examined -- is it unresolved because people are no longer interested in the idea or because it's no longer relevant? Calendar items aren't permitted to merely sit there causing anxiety.

"We try to be really honest with ourselves about the fact that process improves us," adds Hunicke -- admitting problems, failures or lack of understanding is encouraged. "If it's not okay for you to say that to your fellow developers, you're kind of screwed."

"I think there's just as much personal exploration," says Santiago. The smaller the team, the greater the impact of individual needs. "The process of development has to be flexible to the ebb and flow of individual lives."

"If you think someone else on your team has to lose at whatever they're trying to do for you to succeed, then you're doing it wrong -- yet we see this behavior repeating itself over and over in our industry," Santiago continues. "You're on the same team, we all win together and we all lose together."

There will be stressful times where everyone thinks the game sucks, but everyone must remember while they're all on the same page. "To turn on each other while everyone's already having anxiety is just a complete epic fail," Santiago says.

Honesty is essential to make this approach work. "We can call a task easy in one of three cases: we really want it, we have no idea what it entails or we don't have to do it ourselves," says Hunicke, quoting a friend of hers. "You can't underestimate the value of being honest with yourself about the expense of individual tasks. It's not something that humans are good at because we're optimistic by nature, but it's definitely something that you need to recognize."

"This can be an enjoyable conversation because you can celebrate the fact (like we are right now) that you're getting better at this every day," she adds.

But what about answering to publishers? "If you've gone through some of the process that we've talked about, you've either determined how you work best and what your goals are for the project... or you've had these discussions as a team about what your goals are so you can express it to someone else," says Santiago.

If developers choose to work with a publisher whose understanding of making games is completely different from their own -- "it's your fault if your games get canceled," states Santiago. "Not everyone who gives you money is stupid, and you shouldn't approach them like they are."

The solution is to be as up-front and clear as possible, and continually communicate. For example, when TGC was supposed to have finished a prototype for Flower, they decided to admit they didn't think they had a complete prototype and had to extend the phase.

This really prevented us from getting into a much worse situation later in development," Santiago says. "Please, please differentiate between your contractual commitments and your best guess as to what's going to happen." Make it clear that something in the design document is an idea targeted for exploration versus a decisive feature.

"In general," says Santiago, "Don't be afraid to have difficult conversations. When you're working with such a volatile system, really the best tool you have available to you is just constant communication." Lack of transparency is what creates the worst conversations between developers and publishers.

And how one communicates during difficult conversations can make a big difference, says Hunicke. If one approaches a tough conversation with a feeling of personal shame, it sets the tone. "If you have pride in the fact that you're making changes every day that are getting you closer to the game that you know is gonna be awesome and you recognize that bumps in the road are just bumps, you're going to come across very differently... be confident that you know where your game is. It's in your heart. They can't see in there, but you can."

"Be honest with yourself and with everyone around you, because wandering is okay in every role on every projet until you die," she adds.

Yahoo Inc. has announced at the 201 IMG World Congress of Sports that it will be acquiring Citizen Sports, a social and mobile application development firm focused on sports. Terms of the deal were not announced.

The acquisition, according to Yahoo, helps strengthen its “social strategy of enriching, aggregating and distributing social content from across the entire Web.” Our guess is that Citizen Sports will provide Yahoo more distribution channels to promote its content and expand its reach, something we recently discussed at length.

Citizen Sports will be deeply integrated with the Yahoo Sports property, one of the most popular in terms of athletics. Citizen Sports provides Facebook, iPhone, and other apps for filling out brackets, checking scores, and participating in league partnerships. Having talented developers create the apps that will spread Yahoo Sports across the web seems like a sensible move.

When we learn more details, we will bring them to you.

Tags: citizen sports, Yahoo, Yahoo Citizen Sports

Fairmont Hotels & Resorts operates luxury properties in countries all over the world, from the U.S. and Canada to Asia the Middle East and Africa. Aside from traditional promotions, one of the ways it connects with current, past and future guests is via its main Twitter account. Several accounts are also maintained by individual properties.

"We push out news and information; we think that's valuable," Mike Taylor, Fairmont's public relations manager, told the Hotel Marketing Strategies blog. "We include package and rate offers. We don't see Twitter primarily as a distribution tool. But if we have something that's a great deal we're going to let people know about it."

In terms of results, it has seen hotel occupancy rates rise after tweeting "online only" discounts, and it's been able to reach out and promote its brand.

"Twitter has introduced us to people we otherwise wouldn't have a relationship with," he said. "So it's sort of that global neighborhood concept where these people wouldn't have reached out to us or vice versa if we were not participating."

Other Twitter PR success stories include Comcast, Dell, JetBlue and Shaquille O'Neil. They have all reinvigorated their brands using the service. All are near becoming social media case study cliches.

Some in the hospitality industry take it one step further: The Roger Smith Hotel, for example, is connected to every corner of the social web. But its innovative use of Twitter is where it really shines. The New York City boutique hotel attracts travelers based on its regular -- and charming -- use of Twitter.

"I really found the genuine ability to connect with people valuable," Brian Simpson, the hotel's director of social hospitality, told Techipedia, "and we have continued to use this as just one of many pieces of the funnel hopefully driving people to be more involved with us outside of just booking a room."

These successes are well documented. However, many businesses, organizations and individuals have trouble converting the case studies of others into success for themselves. As it turns out, public relations thought-leaders suggest it's less about the tool itself and more about learning to adapt and adjust to the new medium.

Maggie Fox, CEO of the Social Media Group, suggests Twitter has become the driving force of the news cycle.

Her company has been Ford's social media agency since 2007, and claims status as "one of the world's largest independent agencies."

"From a PR perspective, Twitter is the circulatory system of the news cycle," she said when asked if PR practitioners can use Twitter effectively if only checking once or twice a day. "It is a constantly churning stream of scoops, updates and perspectives generated by millions of users and mainstream media outlets. Twitter interaction advances the story in realtime, as you watch."

She said knowing about Twitter is one thing, but engaging in conversation is what is key. "Twitter [usage] patterns are different for different people," she said. "Some tweet every quarter hour, others, every day. Whatever suits your style and objectives, go with -- as long as it's regular and consistent. I think the point is you have to use the platform to know it; setting up a Twitter account and tweeting once six weeks ago is not using the platform."

Dave Fleet, a well known PR blogger and the account director at Thornley Fallis, a national Canadian PR firm, said it requires more than just becoming a proficient user of one tool like Twitter.

"If you're able to connect with people through Twitter then great, but you can also make great connections through in-person contact, over the phone, through other online tools or through any number of communications media," Fleet said.

Edelman Digital's Steve Rubel agrees with Fox and Fleet's assessment, suggesting "it really depends on the individual PR professional's focus."

Rubel said "customization is key" for both clients and PR pros adopting Twitter as a business communications tool.

"Generally speaking, however, I believe that every PR professional needs some level of situational awareness about what is going on in a given community at a given time and will need to check into Twitter accordingly," he said. "In addition, those on the front lines will need to become increasingly visible online and offline -- including their client affiliations."

When asked how he advised clients to stay on top of the changes and evolution of Twitter, Rubel said, "I generally don't."

"There's way too much focus on the technology and tools," he said. "Instead I advise them to study audiences and trends and then identify tools that fit. Too many people start with the tools first. That's like buying paint before you have a floor plan."

Fleet said the same is true for PR pros.

"Most people don't need to stay on the bleeding edge of the latest tactical client," he said. "It's more important that they use the various social media tools effectively and strategically rather than looking for the next shiny object. With that said, part of our job as consultants is to stay on top of these tools, and to be able to recommend the best tools for our clients. So, part of that onus falls on us."

Ian Capstick is a progressive media consultant. He worked for a decade in Canadian politics supporting some of Canada's most charismatic leaders. He is passionate about creating social change through communications. Ian appears weekly on CBC TV's Power & Politics, weekly radio panels, and is regularly quoted online and off about the evolution of public relations in a connected world. He describes his small communications firm, MediaStyle.ca, as a blog with a consulting arm.

This is a summary. Visit our site for the full post ».

Music subscription services promise unlimited access to enormous libraries of songs, typically on the order of 6-10 million tracks. And while a few superstar artists are famously absent from streaming services as well as Apple’s iTunes -– the Beatles and Garth Brooks among them -– my experience testing out several services has left me frustrated in other ways.

Indeed, there are plenty of empty trays at the all-you-can-eat music buffet, though some will leave you hungrier than others. Use one for awhile, and the gaps in its catalog soon become apparent. Try two or more, and the inconsistencies among them become downright baffling.

Most of the services claim to provide access to the full digital catalogs of all four major labels and a slew of independently distributed recordings, most delivered via aggregators such as IODA and the Orchard. But why is MOG missing the first two Tom Petty albums, while Thumbplay has them all? Why does Spotify – at least the preview version I’m testing here in the U.S. – have only two or three Bob Dylan albums, when its competitors have dozens? Why is Rhapsody the only one that has Grizzly Bear’s “Veckatimest,” an acclaimed independent-label album that entered the Billboard chart at No. 8 last June?

As I’ve learned from conversations with subscription providers, obtaining a complete and stable catalog of music is hardly as simple as working out a contract with a label or distributor. Songs and albums are constantly blinking in and out of view as ownership rights change hands, reissues are prepared, and songwriters and performers change their minds as to where they want their songs to be heard. Some labels handle their own distribution rather than going through aggregators, meaning that individual deals have to be struck in order to make their catalogs available. Geography can be a factor, as licenses vary from country to country. What’s more, a glitch in something as simple and unsexy as the file metadata that identifies a song –- a missing capital letter here, a misspelling there –- can render a track invisible to the consumer, even if it’s properly licensed by the subscription service.

Filling holes in the catalog is time-consuming and labor-intensive. (As MOG’s director of content licensing, Buzzy Cohen, told me, “Finding the holes is harder than filling them in.”) Companies with deeper financial resources and more personnel will have the upper hand when it come to chasing down rights holders one at a time in an effort to maintain a more complete catalog, so it makes sense that the older companies are more successful at it than the new ones — and explains why Rhapsody’s service, which has been around for more than eight years, satisfies my searches more consistently than any of its upstart rivals.

Though the causes are manifold and the companies’ efforts to fill the gaps are admirable, it’s frustrating to music fans when our searches aren’t satisfied, and even more irritating when songs in a playlist disappear without warning. And as consumers choose from among several services — or choose not to subscribe at all — holes in the catalog can ultimately be a dealbreaker.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user samsmith

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d):

Rankings: Spotify Leads the Streaming Music Scene

Jibjab co-founders and brothers Evan and Gregg Spiridellis are pulling no punches in an interview that NewTeeVee reader and CinemaTech blogger Scott Kirsner was kind enough to pass on to us. Asked if advertising works for his industry, Gregg responds: “To support a high-quality produced product at scale — no way. Absolutely no way.” He admits that advertising might work great as part of a larger strategy if you already have your production costs covered, adding: “If someone is saying: I want to do webisodes, I want to produce a series of two-minute comedy shorts and I want to make a lot of money with advertising, I’d say: ‘You’re probably not, but good luck.’”

Creating Engaging Content for the Web: JibJab Media from Scott Kirsner on Vimeo.

Jibjab has been monetizing its content through a mix of subscriptions, digital download sales, ads and partnerships with brands like OfficeMax, for whom the studio has been producing the viral holiday hit Elf Yourself. Jibjab originally inked a number of exclusive distribution deals with  portals like Yahoo and MSN, but it doesn’t pursue that strategy anymore. “YouTube put a bullet in that brain,” says Gregg Spiridellis. “There (are) no more exclusive distribution deals in a post-YouTube world.” Now, the duo is quite happy to have its content on as many platforms as possible, including Facebook. “We are happy to be a network as opposed to a destination,” Gregg explains.

The duo reminisced a little bit about the early days of web video, when everyone was still on 56k modems, revealing that animation was at that time really just a means to an end — and even that was oftentimes difficult. “Incredibly frustrating in the early years,” remembers Evan Spiridellis, “knowing that you wanted to make this thing that sings, and you had to strip it back to 300k.” You can check out other videos Scott has been doing on his site.

Related content on GigaOm Pro: Are Sponsored Apps the Key for Traditional Media in Mobile?

Le Ben NanoNote est une sorte de smartbook équipé d’un écran de 3″ (320 x 24, 16.7M de couleurs), d’un processeur 336 MHz XBurst Jz4720 avec 32Mo de RAM, 2Go de mémoire, d’un port mini USB, d’une prise casque et d’une batterie de 850mAh, le tout sous un kernel Linux avec une distribution basée sur OpenWRT. Ses dimensions sont de 99 x 75 x 17.5mm pour 126g. Ce projet est mené par des anciens de chez OpenMoko et est donc entièrement open source. Il est disponible pour 99 euros.

via greeen.eu

Yo !

J’ai reçu hier un e-mail de pix avec un bon jeu du vendredi à l’intérieur… Ce qui m’amène donc à vous donner rendez-vous vendredi à 15:30 pour empocher des brouzoufs. Mais du coup, je me suis dit, pourquoi pas vous laissez faire ces jeux du vendredi…

Je vous propose donc de m’envoyer vos idées de jeux du vendredi chaque semaine (marie@lafraise.com). J’en sélectionnerai un, et son auteur remportera par la même 1300 brouzoufs (soit un tee à 13 euros ou de l’épargne fraisienne) pour le consoler de ne pouvoir participer.

Et puisque j’en suis à la distribution des brouzoufs, je suis tout à fait ok pour relancer les BD le week-end (sous réserve d’en recevoir…). Je garde les mêmes règles soit : bd@lafraise.com / 500 brouzoufs par bd publiée / 600 pixels de large / hauteur libre.

C'est en lisant le dernier GLMF que je suis tombé sur l'article de Carl Chenet sur le serveur Web Cherokee. Ce serveur libre (licence GPL) s'annonce  stable (comme Apache), rapide (plus qu'Apache) et facile à configurer (pas comme Apache).Écrit en langage C, il propose en standard une interface Web de configuration et un système de plugins permettant de facilement adapter le serveur à nos besoins.

Nous allons donc voir le détail de l'installation de Cherokee sur une distribution GNU/Linux Ubuntu 9.10 ainsi que sa configuration standard.

Avant de commencer, voici un screencast d'introduction à Cherokee (en Anglais):

Cherokee Web Server - Introduction from alobbs on Vimeo.

Cherokee se trouve dans les dépôts standard d'Ubuntu. Seulement, la version disponible date un peut (0.99.19-1build1 au moement de l'écriture de cet article). Heureusement, il existe dans les PPA une version plus récente. On commence donc par ajouter le dépôt PPA en question:

Ensuite on passe à l'installation complète (avec support du PHP et HTTPS):

On teste l'installation en pointant son navigateur Web vers l'URL: http://192.168.29.129/ (remplacer l'adresse IP par celle du serveur sur lequel vous avez installé Cherokee...). La page suivante devrait apparaitre devant vos yeux ébahis.

Si vous avez lu l'introduction vous avez noté qu'il y a une interface Web de configuration (pas besoin d'aller trifouiller des tonnes de fichiers textes...). La  configuration cette interface d'administration (sic...) s'effectue grâce aux commandes suivantes:

Il est possible de filtrer les adresses IP sources (celle qui on le droit d'administrer Cherokee en utilisant l'option -b=192.168.29.100 seul la machine d'adresse IP 192.168.29.100 pourra accéder à l'interface d'adminsitration).

Il ne reste plus qu'a pointer son navigateur Web vers l'URL: http://192.168.29.129:9090 (ou http://localhost:9090 si vous êtes directement sur la machine).

On commence la visite du propriétaire avec le menu Etat qui permet d'avoir une vue sur votre serveur Web avec notamment un graphe sur la charge du serveur (grâce à RRD):

On peut également y voir le répertoire par défaut ou doit être stocké le contenu de votre site: "Default WWW:    /var/www"

Par exemple on va créer la superbe page HTML suivante:

cd /var/www mv index.html index.html.old vi index.html Une belle page HTML

Il suffit de recharger l'URL http://192.168.29.129/ pour voir s'afficher la page.

On poursuit par la découverte du deuxième menu de l'interface d'administration de Cherokee: Général. L'onglet Réseau permet de configurer le comportement de votre serveur. C'est notamment là qu'il faut activer le type de graphe RRDtools afin d'avoir de beau graphes dans le menu Etat.

On passe ensuite à l'onglet Port à écouter qui comme son nom l'indique permet de configurer les ports TCP en écoutes pour les requêtes HTTP (c'est le port 80 qui est défini par défaut). Il est possible de configurer plusieurs ports d'écoutes en HTTP et HTTPs (on reviendra sur ce point un peu plus loin):

On passe ensuite à l'onglet Permission du serveur ou l'on peut configurer le nom et le groupe système avec lequel Cherokee va être lancé:

On passe ensuite à la partie que je trouve la plus intéressante par rapport aux autres serveurs Web: la simplicité de création des Serveurs Virtuels.

Un serveur web virtuel permet d'associer un nom de machine (par exemple blog.mondomaine.com) à une arborescence précise de mon serveur Web (par exemple /var/www/blog). Il est bien sûr possible de créer autant de serveurs web virtuels que de besoins.

La première fonction permet d'ajouter simplement une association "nom de machine" / "répertoire" (option Ajouter un nouveau serveur virtuel):

Pour le support du langage PHP (Cherokee supporte également le langage PHP via le module php5-cgi, installé dans la première partie de cet article) sur un serveur virtuel existant. Il faut cliquer sur le serveur en question dans la liste puis se rendre dans l'onglet Behavior, cliquer sur le bouton Assistants puis choisir PHP dans la liste (sous menu Langues) et enfin cliquer sur Run Wizard:

La ligne PHP va être ajouté dans la liste des Behavior:

Il faut ensuite cliquer sur le radio bouton Final

On peut tester simplement la configuration en ajoutant un fichier de test index.php contenant les lignes suivantes à la racine de votre serveur virtuel:

Et le résultat de l'URL http://192.168.29.129/index.php

Pour créer un serveur virtuel il est également possible de suivre un Assistant qui va vous proposer d'installer pour vous une liste de services (Liferay, Wordpress, Dupral, Zend, Trac, MoinMoin, PhpBB, ...).

On va ici parler de HTTPs qui permet de chiffrer les échanges entre votre navigateur Web et votre serveur Cherokee. Cette étape de configuration est bien sûr optionnelle.

On commence par configurer OpenSSL (le module qui va chiffrer) pour qu'il génère des certificats dédiés à notre serveur (virtuel ou pas).

On copie alors les deux fichiers générés dans le répertoire /etc/cherokee:

On doit ensuite se rendre dans le menu Général / Réseau de l'interface d'administration de Cherokee et activer le module OpenSSL:

Ensuite on configure le serveur pour écouter sur le port HTTPS (TCP/443) dans le menu Général / Port à écouter:

Puis associer les clés de chiffrement à notre serveur virtuel (onglet Sécurité):

Enfin il ne faut pas oublier de redémarrer le serveur pour que la configuration soit appliquée:

Et le résultat sur l'URL https://192.168.29.129/index.php

Pour finir quelques resources:

• La documentation officielle
• Le livre de cuisine de Cherokee
• Les benchs de Cherokee
• Le blog d'Alvaro

Billet original de Nicolargo.Votez pour cet article sur le Planet Libre.

For some time now Spanish judges have consistently ruled in favor of file-sharers, finding over and over that noncommercial P2P – file-sharing without motivation of profit – is legal in that country.

As far back as 2006, Spanish judges have ruled that since the there is “no talk of money or any other compensation beyond the sharing of material available among various users” that “no offense meriting penal sanction has been committed.”

Raul N. Orejuda Garcia, Magistrate Court judge of Mercantile number 7, then ruled last year that P2P transfers are not one of the “clear and specific behaviors that the law forbids, in particular reproduction, distribution and public communication without authorization.”

Fast forward to a few days ago and the same judge, Raul N. Orejuda Garcia, Magistrate Court judge of Mercantile number 7, reaffirmed his earlier ruling.

The case case was part of a suit brought by a local music industry group, SGAE (Sociedad General de Autores y Editores) against eD2K website elrincondejesus for alleged copyright infringement on the site. The owner of the site, Jesus Guerra Calderon, rightly pointed out that it only provided links to content much like Google or any of the other search engines out there.

“As you know Elrincondejesus.com never had advertising (or has now),” he said at the time. “I’m innocent and the only thing that I have done is provided links to other sites, like thousands of search engines in the world.”

Judge Garcia once again agrees.

“The system of links constitutes the very basis of the Internet and a multitude of sites and search facilities (such as Google), allowing the technical possibility of doing precisely what this procedure is trying to prohibit, which is linking P2P networks,” he said in his ruling.

He added that the owner “does not receive any money directly or indirectly related to the service offered” because the website was open to all, free and no advertising.

Judge Garcia determined that the country’s Copyright Act ultimately discusses the legality of the source not the access “so that most users of these P2P networks acted legally because they have concluded a lawful and valid contract for a fee to a service provider network.”

In the long run it may not matter, at least for file-sharing-related websites like Calderon’s. The govt approved new anti-piracy legislation back in January that will allow a judge with the National Audience, the country’s federal court, to close or block websites accused of facilitating copyright infringement within 4 days as compared to the current year-long process.

However, the law is still still dramatically different from other countries like France and South Korea in that it targets P2P sites and not users.

In fact, Joan Navarro, head of the Coalition of Industries and Creators of Content, previously referred to this effort as a “positive step.”

“They are going after the producers of the piracy, those who spread works without permission from the authors,” she said at the time. “Not the users, which is the case in France and the UK”

So all in all Spanish file-sharers are still in quite an enviable position.

Stay tuned.

jared@zeropaid.com

[Hat Tip]

The Web's fastest growing, free to play football game has surpassed the one million user mark is less than five months since its open beta. Quick Hit also announced that IGN, the Internet's biggest gaming destination will be distributing its social sports game through its network of sites which reach more than 40 million users per month! (PRWeb Mar 17, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3742114.htm

Contexte oblige, comment ne pas parler un peu de politique entre les deux tours des élections régionales? Pour changer de point de vue, voici une analyse de l’audience et du profil des internautes (âge et sexe) visitant les sites internet officiels des partis politiques français dont la liste est ci-dessous :

Les données utilisées dans cette étude sont fournies par Doubleclick Ad Planner (un service proposé par Google). La présentation par Google de ce service est la suivante :

Ad Planner demographics are generated through demographic inference algorithms that combine third-party demographic data with Google sample data. The third-party demographic data is licensed from an industry-accepted consumer research panel operated according to industry best practices by a full-service research firm. The firm employs a variety of panel recruiting techniques to ensure the quality of their panel.

La tranche d’âge 0-17 ans a été retraitée en 10-17 ans afin d’être cohérent avec les autres tranches d’âge.

Voici le graphique présentant la répartition de l'âge des internautes visitant les sites officiels de partis politiques (les données ont été moyennées).

Le graphique ci-dessus permet de mettre en avant le fait que la tranche des 35-44 ans est celle qui est la plus sensible à l’outil internet des partis politiques. Par ailleurs, les 55-64 ans sont aussi très actifs sur ces sites puisqu’ils représentent la seconde population, viennent ensuite les 25-34 ans une population très sensible à Internet et au point sur les usages liés. Comme pour l’analyse sur les utilisateurs des réseaux sociaux en France, la tranche des 18-24 ans est très faiblement représentée puisqu’elle ne représente que 2% des internautes visitant des sites de partis politiques. Cette population ne visitent pas trop les réseaux sociaux (une habitude de trentenaire), pas les sites des partis politiques, ils doivent faire de la messagerie instantanée et du chat...

Ces données permettent aussi d’affirmer que la politique intéresse aussi quelques jeunes puisque les 0-17 ans représentent tout de même 5% des visiteurs de ces sites. Les plus de 65 ans ne sont pas des personnes connectées, donc absents totalement des utilisateurs de sites internet de partis politiques.

Voici la distribution de l'âge des internautes intéressés par les sites des partis politiques, les données sont brutes et toujours en provenance de Google.

Ce que l'on constate c'est que des partis politiques comme NPA, Front de Gauche présentent une distribution presque homogène selon l’âge de leurs visiteurs. D’autres partis comme le FN, le PS ou encore l’UMP ont des visiteurs de tous les âges mais avec finalement moins de jeunes et un poids plus important pour les 35-44 ans. En revanche, Europe Ecologie, le Modem ou Lutte Ouvrière ont tendance à intéresser des publics plus âgé (> 25 ans), les jeunes sont ils oubliés ou tout simplement peu attirés par les argumentaires proposés par ces partis ou le contenu de ces sites de partis politiques ?

Ce que l’on constate à la lecture de ces informations, c’est que les partis politiques majoritaires (PS et UMP) ont des visiteurs dont l’âge se situe entre 42 et 42,4 ans. Les autres partis politiques ont des spécificités comme Front de Gauche qui semble attirer des visiteurs plus jeunes que la moyenne (36,6 ans) et Lutte Ouvrière qui a les internautes les plus vieux (48,9 ans).

L’âge moyen des visiteurs a été estimé pour chaque parti politique, une moyenne générale a été calculée et le visiteur de base d’un site de parti a 42,1 ans, finalement pas si jeune que cela.

C’est une grosse surprise, sur Internet la répartition homme/femme n’est pas équilibrée. En effet, les hommes représentent presque 72% des visiteurs des sites internet des partis politiques, les femmes sont donc largement minoritaires en terme de lectorat pour ces sites. Pour information les femmes représentent 43% des internautes de Wikipedia, 57% d’Aufeminin et 30% de l’Equipe. On peut donc en conclure que ces sites politiques ne sont pas fait pour les femmes ou du moins ne les intéressent pas !

En revanche, certains partis politiques semblent attirer un peu plus de femmes que d’autres, mais le delta reste faible tout de même puisqu’il n’y a que 8% entre NPA qui est le plus macho des partis politiques avec 76% d’internautes mâles et l’UMP celui avec le plus de femmes 32% (donc 68% d’hommes).

Les données sont intéressantes et démontrent plusieurs choses :

1. Les sites des partis politiques n’attirent pas vraiment les foules et surtout pas les femmes qui ne font clairement pas parties des audiences effectives.
2. Ces sites sont principalement consultés par des 35-44 ans avec un utilisateur moyen âgé de 42,1 ans.
3. Certains partis politiques arrivent à fédérer une audience auprès des jeunes comme Front de Gauche, NPA, ou le FN, alors que d’autres ont une cible plutôt oldies comme Lutte Ouvrière.
4. Ces sites officiels ont des trafics relativement faibles avec au maximum 130.000 visiteurs par mois (source Google-Doubleclick). Ces sites sont plus des sites vitrines comme certains sites de marque.

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Copyright © 2005-2010 2803 MEDIAEtude : Qui sont les internautes qui visitent les sites officiels des partis politiques?

ZIPBOX Media unveils the complete turnkey solution to selling digital creations online. (PRWeb Mar 17, 2010)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/digitalmediadistribution/digitalmediastore/prweb3736714.htm

[In a column originally published in Game Developer magazine, former lead designer on Firaxis' Civilization IV and current EA 2D staffer Soren Johnson examines the role of luck in games, which he describes as "a social lubricant – the alcohol of gaming, so to speak."]

One of the most powerful tools a designer can use when developing games is probability, using random chance to determine the outcome of player actions or to build the environment in which play occurs. The use of luck, however, is not without its pitfalls, and designers should be aware of the trade-offs involved – what chance can add to the experience and when it can be counterproductive.

Failing at Probability

One challenge with using randomness is that humans are notoriously poor at accurately evaluating probability. A common example is the Gambler’s Fallacy, which is the belief that odds will even out over time. If the Roulette wheel comes up black five times in a row, players often believe that the odds of coming up black again are quite small, even though clearly the streak makes no difference whatsoever.

Conversely, people also see streaks where none actually exist – the shooter with a ‘hot hand’ in basketball, for example, is a myth. Studies show that, if anything, a successful shot actually predicts a subsequent miss.

Also, as designers of slot machines and MMO’s are quite aware, setting odds unevenly between each progressive reward level makes players think that the game is more generous than it really is. One commercial slot machine had its payout odds published by www.wizardofodds.com in 2008:

* 1:1 per 8 plays
* 2:1 per 600 plays
* 5:1 per 33 plays
* 20:1 per 2,320 plays
* 80:1 per 219 plays
* 150:1 per 6,241 plays

The 80:1 payoff is common enough to give players the thrill of beating the odds for a a big win but still rare enough that the casino is in no risk of losing money. Furthermore, humans have a hard time estimating extreme odds – a 1% chance is anticipated too often and 99% odds are considered to be as safe as 100%.

Leveling the Field

These difficulties in accurately estimating odds actually work in the favor of the game designer. Simple game design systems, such as the dice-based resource generation system in Settlers of Catan, can be tantalizingly difficult to master with a dash of probability.

In fact, luck makes a game more accessible because it shrinks the gap – whether in perception or in reality – between experts and novices. In a game with a strong luck element, beginners believe that, no matter what, they have a chance to win. Few people would be willing to play a chess Grandmaster, but playing a backgammon expert is much more appealing – a few lucky throws can give anyone a chance.

In the words of designer Dani Bunten, "Although most players hate the idea of random events that will destroy their nice safe predictable strategies, nothing keeps a game alive like a wrench in the works. Do not allow players to decide this issue. They don’t know it but we’re offering them an excuse for when they lose ('It was that damn random event that did me in!') and an opportunity to ‘beat the odds’ when they win.”

Thus, luck serves as a social lubricant – the alcohol of gaming, so to speak – that increases the appeal of multiplayer gaming to audiences which would not normally be suited for cutthroat head-to-head competition.

Where Luck Fails

Nonetheless, randomness is not appropriate for all situations or even all games. The "nasty surprise" mechanic is never a good idea. If a crate provides ammo and other bonuses when opened but explodes 1% of the time, the player has no chance to learn the probabilities in a safe manner. If the explosion occurs early enough, the player will immediately stop opening crates. If it happens much later, the player will feel unprepared and cheated.

Also, when randomness becomes just noise, the luck simply detracts from the player’s understanding of the game. If a die roll is made every time a StarCraft Marine shoots at a target, the rate of fire will simply appear uneven. Over time, the effect of luck on the game’s outcome will be negligible, but the player will have a harder time grasping how strong a Marine’s attack actually is with all the extra random noise.

Further, luck can slow down a game unnecessarily. The board games History of the World and Small World have a very similar conquest mechanic, except that the former uses dice and the latter does not (until the final attack). Making a die roll with each attack causes a History of the World turn to last at least three or four times as long as a turn in Small World.

The reason is not just the logistical issues of rolling so many dice – knowing that the results of one’s decisions are completely predictable allows one to plan out all the steps at once without worrying about contingencies. Often, handling contingencies are a core part of the game design, but game speed is an important factor too, so designers should be sure that the trade-off is worthwhile.

Finally, luck is very inappropriate for calculations to determine victory. Unlucky rolls feel the fairest the longer players are given to react to them before the game’s end. Thus, the earlier luck plays a role, the better for the perception of game balance. Many classic card games – pinochle, bridge, hearts – follow a standard model of an initial random distribution of cards that establishes the game’s ‘terrain’ followed by a luck-free series of tricks which determines the winners and losers.

Probability is Content

Indeed, the idea that randomness can provide an initial challenge to be overcome plays an important role in many classic games, from simple games like Minesweeper to deeper ones like NetHack and Age of Empires. At their core, solitaire and Diablo are not so different – both present a randomly-generated environment that the player needs to navigate intelligently for success.

An interesting recent use of randomness was Spelunky, which is indie developer Derek Yu’s combination of the random level generation of NetHack with the game mechanics of 2D platformers like Lode Runner. The addictiveness of the game comes from the unlimited number of new caverns to explore, but frustration can emerge from the wild difficulty of certain, unplanned combinations of monsters and tunnels.

In fact, pure randomness can be an untamed beast, creating game dynamics that throw an otherwise solid design out of balance. For example, Civilization 3 introduced the concept of strategic resources which were required to construct certain units – Chariots need Horses, Tanks need Oil, and so on. These resources were sprinkled randomly across the world, which inevitably led to large continents with only one cluster of Iron controlled by a single AI opponent. Complaints of being unable to field armies for lack of resources were common among the community.

For Civilization IV, the problem was solved by adding a minimum amount of space between certain important resources, so that two sources of Iron could never be within seven tiles of each other. The result was a still unpredictable arrangement of resources around the globe but without the clustering that could doom an unfortunate player. On the other hand, the game actively encouraged clustering for less important luxury resources – Incense, Gems, Spices – to promote interesting trade dynamics.

Showing the Odds

Ultimately, when considering the role of probability, designers need to ask themselves "how is luck helping or hurting the game?" Is randomness keeping the players pleasantly off-balance so that they can’t solve the game trivially? Or is it making the experience frustratingly unpredictable so that players are not invested in their decisions?

One factor which helps ensure the former is making the probability as explicit as possible. The strategy game Armageddon Empires based combat on a few simple die rolls and then showed the dice directly on-screen. Allowing the players to peer into the game’s calculations increases their comfort level with the mechanics, which makes chance a tool for the player instead of a mystery.

Similarly, with Civilization IV, we introduced a help mode which showed the exact probability of success in combat, which drastically increased player satisfaction with the underlying mechanics. Because humans have such a hard time estimating probability accurately, helping them make a smart decision can improve the experience immensely.

Some deck-building card games, such as Magic: The Gathering or Dominion, put probability in the foreground by centering the game experience on the likelihood of drawing cards in the player’s carefully constructed deck. These games are won by players who understand the proper ratio of rares to commons, knowing that each card will be drawn exactly once each time through the deck. This concept can be extended to other games of chance by providing, for example, a virtual “deck of dice” that ensures the distribution of die rolls is exactly even.

Another interesting – and perhaps underused – idea from the distant past of gaming history is the “Element of Chance” game option from the turn-based strategy game Lords of Conquest. The three options available – Low, Medium, and High – determined whether luck was only used to break ties or to play a larger role in resolving combat.

The appropriate role of chance in a game is ultimately a subjective question, and giving players the ability to adjust the knobs themselves can open up the game to a larger audience with a greater variety of tastes.

Eaton has appointed Richard Jenman as sales director - power distribution for Australia and New Zealand.

The Google Public Policy Blog recently posted a summary of a speech by Chief Economist Hal Varian on newspaper economics. Alongside the we-are-not-your-enemy message that Google is hoping newspapers will someday listen to, it contains useful insights on the challenge of succeeding as an established print publication in the digital world. Varian suggests a few potential courses of action, but the real value of the piece is that it highlights the obstacles in a way that can be tackled by experienced insiders—especially marketers and salespeople, which newspapers employ in abundance but often fail to set free on experimental strategies.

One of the first things Varian establishes is the volume and value of online news readers, and then he looks at the difficulties of turning that value into revenue. The numbers may be discouraging for newspapers, but they could also become the basis of several important short- and long-term goals in an online strategy:

Varian talks about the need to increase leisure involvement with online news, and in the full speech, he lists ways this might be done: leveraging new technologies like smartphones and tablets, developing more engaging formats for journalism (like Google Living Stories, which recently went open source), and creating multimedia experiences.

These are all important ideas, but to some extent, they miss an opportunity by focusing on ways to get people reading at home instead of work: namely, don't at-work readers have value too?

For a long time, newspapers have used "business purchasing influence" as a prominent reader statistic in media kits. But we now live in a world where business purchasing influence is a much more distributed thing, hardly limited to managers and IT folk: employees at every level in every field make use of online services to expedite their work. Web services subvert the top-down model of corporate IT, allowing workers to seek out the tools that work best for them. These services usually have freemium models, with prices that suit small departmental budgets, and since there's no software installation there's no need to involve IT staff.

Think web blockers (plenty of companies still have laughably low email attachment limits). Think Flash-based presentation tools (graphics departments hate PowerPoint). These are bottom-up business services: a few employees get free accounts, a few more get on board, and before you know it a whole department is more than happy to pay a monthly fee for such a useful tool. These are the companies that want to reach people at work, during those 70 seconds they spend reading a news story while wondering how to transfer a 50-megabyte PDF.

There are some other excellent parts of Varian's post, including a look at the goldmine vertical markets which have traditionally sustained newspapers: automotive, travel, home & garden and the like (he oddly fails to mention real estate, which is a biggie). These are the same verticals that sustain Google's search advertising—the problem is that the end market is now specialty sites, not news publications. Though Varian doesn't discuss the possibilities, this is an area where newspapers still have a chance: they should be leveraging their community respect while partnering with specialty purchase sites through advertising and affiliate programs, ensuring that they continue to be an important link in the chain. TechCrunch recently reported on a Forrester Research study that estimates that web-influenced offline sales in the U.S. (purchases where the consumer made their decision online then went to a retail store) are worth nearly a trillion dollars, and news websites should absolutely be a part of that.

It's well worth reading Varian's post in full, but in the end, his core piece of advice is what counts:

That really is the core of it. Newspapers must experiment with new ways to report the news, new ways to engage their readers and new ways to get advertisers on board, while embracing the fact that their readers are switching to a medium that costs them less. There are over 70-million Americans reading news online—if newspapers can't turn those eyeballs into money, someone else will.

Blizzard ponders merits of licensing Battle.net to third parties originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Blizzard ponders merits of licensing Battle.net to third parties originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

 

Le 18 avril prochain débarquera au Japon la seconde adaptation cinématographique  des aventures du Professeur Layton. Et contrairement aux adaptations hollywoodiennes de jeux vidéo au cinéma Professor Layton and the Eternal Diva devrait mériter le détour à l’image du précédent film.

Ce qui change cette fois-ci, c’est l’annonce de la société de distribution encorefilms sur son site internet qui déclare que Nintendo et Level 5 (le studio derrière le jeu) pourraient éventuellement localiser les films (et les jeux restants) en dehors du Japon. En attendant une hypothétique sortie européenne, sachez que la boite de distribution distribuera le film dans les salles obscures Japonaises (puis en DVD) avec les sous-titres anglais et chinois.

Une bonne nouvelle pour les fans qui se procureront sans nul doute le film par des voies plus ou moins recommandables. Et petit bonus pour la route, le dernier teaser du film dans la suite de l’article.

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