Pokémon‘s a pretty popular franchise, and smartphones are pretty popular devices, so combining the two was probably a pretty smart idea. Well, as it happens, it definitely was a smart idea, as new data suggests that players have now spent an approximated $2.5 billion on the games to date.

The data comes from mobile app intelligence site, Sensor Tower, which has taken into account total spending across six smartphone Pokémon titles. You can probably guess which game tops the charts in terms of revenue, but let’s dive into the good stuff anyway, shall we?

Pokémon GO is obviously the highest-earning mobile game in the franchise, taking home almost 98% of that total with an estimated $2.45 billion in total player spending. The other $50 million (which sounds strangely tiny in comparison) is split across Pokémon Shuffle Mobile (estimated to have taken $25 million in player spending), Pokémon Duel, Pokémon Quest, Pokémon: Magikarp Jump, and Pokémon TCG Online.

Interestingly, Sensor Tower’s report also suggests that 35% of this revenue has come from US players (or $875 million), with Japan accounting for 29% (approximately $725 million). The apps have amassed “nearly 640 million” downloads between them.

Anyone else wishing that they’d invented the series back in the ’90s? There are some pretty staggering figures here!

Every day there seems to be a security breach reported in the news where our data is at risk. Despite the fact that SSH is a secure way to connect remotely to a system, you can still make it even more secure. This article will show you how.

That’s where two-factor authentication (2FA) comes in. Even if you disable passwords and only allow SSH connections using public and private keys, an unauthorized user could still gain access to your system if they steal your keys.

With two-factor authentication, you can’t connect to a server with just your SSH keys. You also need to provide the randomly generated number displayed by an authenticator application on a mobile phone.

The Time-based One-time Password algorithm (TOTP) is the method shown in this article. Google Authenticator is used as the server application. Google Authenticator is available by default in Fedora.

For your mobile phone, you can use any two-way authentication application that is compatible with TOTP. There are numerous free applications for Android or IOS that work with TOTP and Google Authenticator. This article uses FreeOTP as an example.

Install and set up Google Authenticator

First, install the Google Authenticator package on your server.

$ sudo dnf install -y google-authenticator

Run the application.

$ google-authenticator

The application presents you with a series of questions. The snippets below show you how to answer for a reasonably secure setup.

Do you want authentication tokens to be time-based (y/n) y
Do you want me to update your "/home/user/.google_authenticator" file (y/n)? y

The app provides you with a secret key, verification code, and recovery codes. Keep these in a secure, safe location. The recovery codes are the only way to access your server if you lose your mobile phone.

Set up mobile phone authentication

Install the authenticator application (FreeOTP) on your mobile phone. You can find it in Google Play if you have an Android phone, or in the iTunes store for an Apple iPhone.

A QR code is displayed on the screen. Open up the FreeOTP app on your mobile phone. To add a new account, select the QR code shaped tool at the top on the app, and then scan the QR code. After the setup is complete, you’ll have to provide the random number generated by the authenticator application every time you connect to your server remotely.

Finish configuration

The application asks further questions. The example below shows you how to answer to set up a reasonably secure configuration.

Do you want to disallow multiple uses of the same authentication token? This restricts you to one login about every 30s, but it increases your chances to notice or even prevent man-in-the-middle attacks (y/n) y
By default, tokens are good for 30 seconds. In order to compensate for possible time-skew between the client and the server, we allow an extra token before and after the current time. If you experience problems with poor time synchronization, you can increase the window from its default size of +-1min (window size of 3) to about +-4min (window size of 17 acceptable tokens). 
Do you want to do so? (y/n) n
If the computer that you are logging into isn't hardened against brute-force login attempts, you can enable rate-limiting for the authentication module. By default, this limits attackers to no more than 3 login attempts every 30s.
Do you want to enable rate-limiting (y/n) y

Now you have to set up SSH to take advantage of the new two-way authentication.

Configure SSH

Before completing this step, make sure you’ve already established a working SSH connection using public SSH keys, since we’ll be disabling password connections. If there is a problem or mistake, having a connection will allow you to fix the problem.

On your server, use sudo to edit the /etc/pam.d/sshd file.

$ sudo vi /etc/pam.d/ssh

Comment out the auth substack password-auth line:

#auth       substack     password-auth

Add the following line to the bottom of the file.

auth sufficient pam_google_authenticator.so

Save and close the file. Next, edit the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file.

$ sudo vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Look for the ChallengeResponseAuthentication line and change it to yes.

ChallengeResponseAuthentication yes

Look for the PasswordAuthentication line and change it to no.

PasswordAuthentication no

Add the following line to the bottom of the file.

AuthenticationMethods publickey,password publickey,keyboard-interactive

Save and close the file, and then restart SSH.

$ sudo systemctl restart sshd

Testing your two-factor authentication

When you attempt to connect to your server you’re now prompted for a verification code.

[user@client ~]$ ssh user@example.com
Verification code:

The verification code is randomly generated by your authenticator application on your mobile phone. Since this number changes every few seconds, you need to enter it before it changes.

If you do not enter the verification code, you won’t be able to access the system, and you’ll get a permission denied error:

 
[user@client ~]$ ssh user@example.com

Verification code:

Verification code:

Verification code:

Permission denied (keyboard-interactive).

[user@client ~]$
 

Conclusion

By adding this simple two-way authentication, you’ve now made it much more difficult for an unauthorized user to gain access to your server.

In 2018, we conducted a study in collaboration with Dr. Shalini Kesar called Closing the STEM Gap. Our findings revealed that 31 percent of girls believe that jobs requiring coding and programming are “not for them.” In high school, that number jumps up to 40 percent. And by the time they’re in college, 58 percent of girls count themselves out of these jobs.

We also discovered that girls who know a woman in a STEM profession are substantially more likely to feel empowered when they engage in STEM activities (61 percent) than those who don’t know a woman in a STEM profession (44 percent). Unfortunately, most girls don’t have any female role models in STEM to look up to. So it’s no surprise that, when asked to describe a typical scientist, engineer, mathematician, or computer programmer, 30 percent of girls say that they envision a man in these roles. As do almost 40 percent of adult women—and 43 percent of women in STEM and tech fields.

You may be asking: How do we reverse these trends? One of the most important first steps is introducing girls and young women to positive female role models in STEM fields. But it doesn’t end there. An even bigger impact is possible when those women offer encouragement.

Enter: Microsoft EDU’s WomEncouragement Series.

In honor of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day, we’ve created a series of downloadable posters featuring advice and encouragement from women who are paving the way in STEM and opening doors for future generations of girls to step through and succeed.

These are free to download and print so young women and girls can hang them up in their rooms, in their lockers, on their mirrors, or in their classrooms — anywhere they need a dose of positive inspiration!

But we couldn’t pull off this project without our education community! We’d love to hear from you, too. Send us your own words of encouragement and we might turn them into a poster or share them on our social channels!

Technology jobs are among the fastest growing in the country, but only 24 percent of computer scientists are women. As educators, when we encourage girls to pursue STEM, we double the potential to change the world for the better and help ensure ALL young people are future ready.

Are YOU ready to help make a difference?

Other resources you can use to help close the gap or inspire girls, and all students, to love STEM:

• Get the free STEM action guide. You’ll find easy things education leaders, teachers, and parents can do today to help inspire girls to stay in STEM and #MakeWhatsNext.
• New! Earn a Girls-in-STEM badge when you take this Microsoft Education Community course that shows how you can turn research into action and engage all students to love STEM.
• New! Learn from education experts and teachers to get tips and resources to encourage and engage all students in computer science. Education. Download our free guide to inclusive computer science education now.
• Participate in a free Microsoft Store DigiGirlz workshop near you through April. Each store will host 2-hour workshops that include presentations from guest speakers along with live Q&As, hands-on coding, and other STEM activities. Workshop topics will cover Women in Gaming, Aviation, Space, Coding, and Business!
• Check out this gender equality MEC lesson to complete with your students.
• Sign up for a Skype Collaboration with a woman in STEM and introduce your students to their new favorite role model!
• Check out how these amazing female code creators who use STEM and CS to save endangered species, create art, fashion, and animated Pixar movies!
• Discover female Nobel laureates, women who have broken boundaries to change science in their fields. Find out how to connect students with female pioneers in the Women Who Changed Science experience
• Join the #MSFTEduChat global TweetMeet at 10AM PT on March 19^th. The topic is #MakeWhatsNext in STEM, all about empowering young women to pursue careers in STEM to help close the gender gap. This is a great opportunity to engage with educators in over 11 languages globally on this topic!
• Learn how EVERY Individual’s Actions Can Make a BIG Impact with Dr. Jane Goodall in a special Skype in the Classroom broadcast on April 2nd & 9th.
• Explore the Girls & CS resource pages for even more ideas on how to introduce your female students to STEM and encourage them to stay with it.
• From Microsoft on the Issues: How girls from diverse backgrounds have the lens computer science needs.

Closing the STEM gap matters for everyone. More diversity in thought, background, and experience creates more innovation. Innovation is what will help us solve today’s most pressing problems. Together, we can help keep girls inspired and encouraged to pursue a career in STEM.

Spread the support by sharing your words of encouragement or any posters you display using #MicrosoftEDU and #MakeWhatsNext. Then, visit aka.ms/girls-in-stem to learn more.

The basic concept of Wars Across the World is to take a single set of game mechanics that can underpin a range of different scenario types across history, at varying command levels. The design justification being that the base mechanics only need to be learned once, so that the developers can offer a breadth of battles and campaigns that all follow the same underlying logic, and so can be played in succession without much difficulty.

I was rather sceptical that such a design could both be fun and plausible, but so far I’ve been pleasantly surprised with what has been created. A combination of modern gaming techniques and ease of accessibility make Wars across the World an impressive achievement, and an excellent addition to mobile war games overall.

The company behind this, STRATEGIAE, have managed to find the sweet spot for mobile gamers and very much captures you in the ‘just one more turn’ trap. Whether it was defending Berlin in the dying days of the Second World War, force marching down to London from York in 1066 or desperately trying to seize Sinai whilst holding off the Syrians in 1967, I always needed to keep clicking that button to see what happened next.

The success of this game isn’t down to a single contributing factor, there are a range of elements here that have just been done very well underpinned by a well thought out baseline.

Firstly, the game is incredibly easy to pick up and play. Within a minute or two of installation you are quickly in the front line of the action dragging units around, making political decisions and trying to get some sort of strategic plan together. Within ten minutes you are quickly wondering whether not bothering to read through the scenario notes is really an excuse that will go down well in the Fuhrer’s Bunker and perhaps you are just better off blaming everything on Steiner (Insert Downfall meme video-ED).

Every phase it’s very clear what you need to do as the game highlights units and warns you when you haven’t activated elements. Even better it highlights cards that you could play so you don’t need to wade through endless cards trying to figure out what you need to do. It is so well implemented it ought to be mandatory for every game to copy this style of in-game assistance. Mr. Clippy this is not.

The game is built around an area movement map with strict turn and phase orders, but the designers have not let themselves be restricted or influenced by any specific school of wargaming techniques or traditions. This game is a smorgasbord of mechanics and they come together beautifully. Yes, there were times I didn’t really know what was going on but because I was so immersed in the experience it didn’t detract from the game.

My biggest concern was that I couldn’t see how they could merge such wide ranging historical eras together, let alone combine that with options for grand strategic level and operational level player perspectives all into a single game.

How they have overcome this is through incredible flexibility in their design tools. Units can be given any combat, movement and morale stats that fit the geographical region and the historical/ political situation. As a result not all scenarios are equal in quality, some of them are simply better designed than others. The base game on the iPad comes with a tutorial and a single mission but you are going to have to buy additional scenarios to justify getting this game in the first place.

Apart from the Berlin 1945 scenario ($2.99), the rest of the scenario IAPs are $1 each Everything I tried was worth the app purchase fee, and for this review I played Hasting 1066, Waterloo 1815. Tannenberg 1914, Normandy 1944, Berlin 1945 and Six Days 1967. I thought Berlin 1945 was the best of the bunch; an excellent scenario that had considerable depth compared to the other options, which probably explains the higher price. 

I always approached each new scenario somewhat sceptically, doubting that the mechanics I had just been using could work on a totally different time frame I was now loading up. However I continually found that my doubts were unfounded and that it was actually really fascinating to see how different unit types worked in different era’s and situations.  It was genuinely interesting to compare how my tanks performed in Suez against how my cavalry performed in 1815 or in 1914 at Tannenberg.

There are nuances to combat which I found strange at first as there are restrictions on unit limits and leader requirements. However these restrictions are designed to abstractly reflect logistical limitations and can occasionally be broken with the right card. Relatively modern armies tended to suffer morale collapse less readily than historical armies but none of the scenarios felt like a grind and there was often a real decision to be made. Most importantly the end result is plausible more often than not.

The AI isn’t a genius but considering that I lost my first four games in a row suggests that the competency level is definitely a fun challenge. Certainly the AI rarely lacks compunction to act, which often kills computer war games for me in general.

Wars Across the World also has an option for hotseat multiplayer and because it doesn’t take more than 1-2 hours (and I finished some in 30 minutes) to complete a scenario so you can easily sit down with a friend/ adversary and play a game or two over an evening or on a journey.

Everything you would want from a modern wargame is here; fog of war, morale, logistics, political considerations, supply, time pressures, interesting investment trade off’s. This is a far cry from many of the other wargames that we see with no real political context or pressures. War isn’t a logical, mechanical odds counting exercise, it’s a disorganized mess in which you simply attempt to act less badly than the people on the other team.

Wars Across the World captures that essence through the use of scenario specific cards. These cards cover a whole range of political and military factors and can be played at a strategic and tactical level during various phases of the game. Each set of cards is different for each side in each scenario and they provide a central part of the immersion that make this game good.

Most scenarios allow you to spend investment points on new units, replacements or cards. This creates interesting strategic dynamics and decision trade off’s.  Many of the political elements allow you to buy time in some way or alter the balance of the conflict in the longer term. Some of the political cards impact the opponent, creating unforeseen challenges and friction of war.

Current scenarios range from ancient warfare through to the 20^th century and there are more being released. Excitingly there is the option for user created scenarios as well. Wars Across the World straddles a line between offering meaningful depth and decisions, without crossing too much into the territory of hardcore wargames that you might see grace the front page of our sister website. It’s a welcome site in an app store increasingly looking at free-to-play and casual audiences.

At the time of writing, Wars Across the World has the following IAPs, all of which unlock additional scenarios to play within the game:

• Saratoga 1777 ($0.99)
• Six Days 1967 ($0.99)
• Tannenberg 1914 ($0.99)
• Malaya 1941 ($0.99)
• Waterloo 1815 ($0.99)
• Bulge 1944 ($0.99)
• Bull Run 1861 ($0.99)
• Hastings 1066 ($0.99)
• Berlin 1945 ($2.99)
• Hamilkar 264 ($0.99)

Today at MWC 19 in Barcelona, Microsoft announced the second release of their HoloLens augment reality headset.  Costing an eye watering $3,500 or $150/month, the HoloLens is not a mass market or consumer device.  The HoloLens 2 includes improved sensors, a better display, improved ergonomics and more.  The Microsoft blog describes the 3 pillars of HoloLens 2 development:

Immersion is greatly enhanced by advancements across the board, including in the visual display system, making holograms even more vibrant and realistic. We have more than doubled the field of view in HoloLens 2, while maintaining the industry-leading holographic density of 47 pixels per degree of sight. HoloLens 2 contains a new display system that enables us to achieve these significant advances in performance at low power. We have also completely refreshed the way you interact with holograms in HoloLens 2. Taking advantage of our new time-of-flight depth sensor, combined with built-in AI and semantic understanding, HoloLens 2 enables direct manipulation of holograms with the same instinctual interactions you’d use with physical objects in the real world. In addition to the improvements in the display engine and direct manipulation of holograms, HoloLens 2 contains eye-tracking sensors that make interacting with holograms even more natural. You can log in with Windows Hello enterprise-grade authentication through iris recognition, making it easy for multiple people to quickly and securely share the device.

Comfort is enhanced by a more balanced center of gravity, the use of light carbon-fiber material and a new mechanism for donning the device without readjusting. We’ve improved the thermal management with new vapor chamber technology and accounted for the wide physiological variability in the size and shape of human heads by designing HoloLens 2 to comfortably adjust and fit almost anyone. The new dial-in fit system makes it comfortable to wear for hours on end, and you can keep your glasses on because HoloLens 2 adapts to you by sliding right over them. When it’s time to step out of mixed reality, flip the visor up and switch tasks in seconds. Together, these enhancements have more than tripled the measured comfort and ergonomics of the device.

Time-to-value is accelerated by Microsoft mixed reality applications like Dynamics 365 Remote Assist, Dynamics 365 Layout and the new Dynamics 365 Guides applications. In addition to the in-box value, our ecosystem of mixed reality partners provides a broad range of offerings built on HoloLens that deliver value across a range of industries and use cases. This partner ecosystem is being supplemented by a new wave of mixed reality entrepreneurs who are realizing the potential of devices like HoloLens 2 and the Azure services that give them the spatial, speech and vision intelligence needed for mixed reality, plus battle-tested cloud services for storage, security and application insights.

Building on the unique capabilities of the original HoloLens, HoloLens 2 is the ultimate intelligent edge device. And when coupled with existing and new Azure services, HoloLens 2 becomes even more capable, right out of the box.

HoloLens 2 will be available this year at a price of $3,500. Bundles including Dynamics 365 Remote Assist start at $125/month. HoloLens 2 will be initially available in the United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand. Customers can preorder HoloLens 2 starting today at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/hololens/buy.

In addition to the HoloLens 2, Microsoft also announced the release of Azure Kinect, an updated and more powerful version of the Kinect motion sensor previously bundled with the XBox 360/One. 

The Azure Kinect DK is a developer kit that combines our industry-leading AI sensors in a single device. At its core is the time-of-flight depth sensor we developed for HoloLens 2, high-def RGB camera and a 7-microphone circular array that will enable development of advanced computer vision and speech solutions with Azure. It enables solutions that don’t just sense but understand the world — people, places, things around it. A good example of such a solution in the healthcare space is Ocuvera, which is using this technology to prevent patients from falling in hospitals. Every year in the U.S. alone, over 1 million hospital patients fall each year, and 11,000 of those falls are fatal. With Azure Kinect, the environmental precursors to a fall can be determined and a nurse notified to get to patients before they fall. Initially available in the U.S. and China, the Azure Kinect DK is available for preorder today at $399. Visit Azure.com/Kinect for more info.

Epic Games were also on-hand to announce Unreal Engine support for the HoloLens 2:

Epic Games today announced that support for Microsoft HoloLens 2 will be coming to Unreal Engine 4 starting in May 2019. The announcement was made during an onstage presentation by Epic Games Founder and CEO Tim Sweeney during the Microsoft keynote at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
This development has been highly anticipated by augmented reality (AR) communities across entertainment, visualization, manufacturing, design, and education. In a future release, Unreal Engine will fully support HoloLens 2 with streaming and native platform integration. Unreal Engine support for HoloLens 1 currently enables streaming to the device.

GameDev News VR

GAEA (not to be confused with GAIA for Unity), is a newly released terrain generation tool from QuadSpinner.  They describe GAEA as:

Gaea takes terrain design toe-to-toe with the rest of the CG landscape. Designed with artists and their vision in mind, Gaea brings together advanced toolsets in an easy-to-use package where you can get Hollywood quality results in minutes.

Using either a simple stack of nodes, or a more complex graph of nodes, you can easily compose primitive landscapes, apply millions of years of erosion and other modifiers, mix and match nodes to your hearts content, until you get the perfect terrain for your game.  The ultimate output from GAEA are height maps that can be used in almost any modern 3D game engine.  GAEA is available at a number of different price points, including a completely free but still usable for commercial projects tier.

GAEA is available for download on Windows PCs here.  For more details of GAEA, a getting started tutorial or just to see GAIA in action, watch the video below.

Design GameDev News Applications

Swery’s new game The Missing is about a woman breaking herself to achieve her goals. Right now, it’s hard to look at it and not think about crunch.

Announced earlier this year, The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories is a side-scrolling adventure in which protagonist J.J. searches for a missing friend, solving puzzles with her supernatural ability to heal from (nearly) any injury.

Launched today across consoles and PC, this is the first game developed in-house at Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro’s studio White Owls, which opened in Osaka back in 2016 and is now 12 people strong. White Owls is relying on publisher Arc System Works for support with tasks like QA and marketing, but Swery says the game itself is something he and his team have been focused on since they set up shop.

“We’ve been sort of working on it ever since,” Swery said during a recent chat with Gamasutra. “This game was made all in-house at White Owls, and so a lot of my vision, my ideas, have materialized in this game very accurately.”

Working on two games at once

The Missing is reminiscent of Playdead’s atmospheric puzzle-platformers Limbo and Inside; protagonist J.J. strolls from left to right across a seamless and surreal island landscape, traversing obstacles by breaking her body (snapping a hand off on an obstacle and throwing it to knock a key item out of a tree, for example) and regenerating it back together.

It’s anodyne cruelty. J.J. is repeatedly beaten and broken, crying in pain as she loses limbs or snaps her spine, but there’s no blood (just sprays of white) and she always heals herself back to normal at the press of a button. Swery has described it publicly as a sort of love letter to the 2D platformers and puzzlers he grew up playing, games like Out of this World and the original Prince of Persia.

 

“The influence of Inside and Limbo was really, you know, them bringing this genre back to life. And I was able to then jump on that.”

“By the time I got into game development, those genres had already died down, at least in Japan,” said Swery. “But in recent years, with Limbo and Inside coming out and garnering a lot of popularity, it seemed like a good opportunity for me to make a side-scrolling game. The influence of Inside and Limbo was really, you know, them bringing this genre back to life. And I was able to then jump on that.”

It’s a sharp departure from The Good Life, the debt repayment RPG that Swery has also been promoting and working on. Unlike The Missing, The Good Life was narrowly crowdfunded and is chiefly being developed by Grounding (a Japanese studio only a bit larger than White Owls) with Swery’s input on creative matters.

This seems like a decent hustle, if you can swing it: two projects in the works means potentially Too Much work, but it’s also two chances to ship a successful game. Swery claims he’s intentionally taking two different tacks with these projects, to up his chances that at least one lands and finds lasting purchase.

“I’m doing this and The Good Life, and I have a bit of a strategy with this,” Swery said. “The Missing is something that a triple-A publisher would never touch, right; it’s got very extreme themes. But then to have Swery do that is like ‘oh yeah, this is what Swery does.’ So I think [my name] does help it a little bit.”

“The Good Life, we took a different approach. We started out with crowdfunding, and we wanted that title to be familiar with people, from starting development on through release,” he continued. “It’s drastically different from The Missing, and while I think they’re both indie, they’re two different approaches that are really thought through in trying to give both games longevity.”

Bringing Arc on as a publishing partner for The Missing is something Swery is especially keen to talk about, as he says the game wasn’t an easy pitch — and Arc’s decision to get involved makes him much more confident about its sales opportunities in Asia.

“At first, when I showed it to the people at Arc, they were very taken aback. ‘Oh no, we can’t do anything like this.’ But after explaining to them the essential theme and concept and idea behind this game, they finally gave me the opportunity to go ahead with the production and publishing,” said Swery. “Arc has a very big fanbase in Asia, their domestic market. So I feel like we cover that, but at the same time I feel like my fanbase is very international, so I think we’re able to hit both sides.”

This is important because Swery is keen on the value of a good publisher nowadays, especially to indies who are trying to sell games without a big existing fanbase.

“I think right now it’s really important to establish your identity, and have something that’s very unique. And that’s very very difficult to do, in the face of a lot of triple-A titles and triple-A companies going into the indie market as well,” he said. “So I think it’s very important, and I would recommend up-and-coming developers partner with a publisher, if they can, to really help them get up there.”

Combating crunch on a small indie team

It all sounds like a lot of long hours, which is hard to stop thinking about when you’re demoing a game about a woman who can only succeed by hurting herself.

Crunch is a perennial problem in the industry, and the recent spate of layoffs and studio closures is especially insulting to devs already accustomed to overworking themselves in pursuit of goals like milestones and ship dates. Swery says he’s no stranger to it, though he does claim to try and minimize it at White Owls.

“I think the crunch that you brought up is a pretty big problem in Japan as well, it’s very common. But at White Owls we try to sort of deviate from that sort of Japanese tradition, or the Japanese tendency to crunch,” said Swery. “In my company I let all my team members work on their own schedule, within their own time, and really be flexible with the work schedule. And I also let them remote work if they need to. That’s something I do to ensure people stay healthy, and that they’re not overworking themselves.”

Swery stops short of saying The Missing is “about” crunch, instead suggesting it’s designed to help players empathize with J.J. by making the metaphorical literal: hurt yourself to achieve something, heal, repeat.

“I wanted this process of hurting yourself and recovery, that cycle, to be this journey to the next stage,” said Swery. “I think that in life, wherever you are, there’s going to be some pain and suffering that you can’t avoid, at times. And you really have to get through that pain and suffering in order to move on in life.”

 

“Sometimes we change the course, or change the content, or change the plan so that people stay healthy and they’re not overworking and they’re not breaking their bones.”

And while he admits that White Owls does sometimes work overtime (“the days leading up to the master build upload are probably the most stressful and most work-intensive time”), Swery claims that he keeps a keen eye out to ensure nobody is being overworked. He says this isn’t just to be kind: it’s a small studio, and if one person gets sick White Owls loses a significant asset.

This is especially notable if you work at or help run a small studio, as Swery describes his crunch-foiling process as a sort of friendly intervention by the rest of the staff, one that can end in cuts or changes being made to the project.

“Any time before [that final sprint], if there’s any time that I feel like the staff is overworking or anything, we have a system in place to make sure that they’re not overworking or overstressing. It’s sort of like, they put up a red flag. So if something is a little too much for any individual on staff, we sort of get together and have a little intervention and say okay, how can we make the game project so that it’s not as difficult?” Swery said.

“We try to make adjustments so as to not put a lot of stress on the developers and the team. And since we’re such a small team, we’re only 12 people, and we don’t have a lot of money…it’s not like we can hire people left and right. We have to work with what we have. So sometimes we change the course, or change the content, or change the plan so that people stay healthy and they’re not overworking and they’re not breaking their bones.”

Swery says White Owls has one person who’s in charge of keeping tabs on the hours everyone is working, and the studio also contracts with a third-party labor consultant (“Certified Social Insurance Labor Consultant”) to help ensure nobody is being overworked.

“We have one administrator who monitors everyone’s work hours. Like, time you get to work and time you finish work. So everyone’s work hours are documented,” Swery added. “We also have another company that supports us in doing this as well. I’m not sure if there are agencies like this in the US, but it’s a separate company that monitors the employee vs. company relationship, and makes sure the employee is not being abused or anything. It’s sort of like a social benefits watchdog program, or something like that. So we partner with them, and if there’s a red flag in overtime or anything like that, that red flag gets sent to me directly, and then I take action from there.”

The veteran game designer claims this is all inspired by his time at Access Games, working on projects like Deadly Premonition and D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. It was a much bigger and more bureaucratic operation, which made it harder (at least, according to Swery) for Access to offer staffers the care and support they needed.

“It was a lot more corporate, and very systematic, and very machine-like. I didn’t feel like they were actually taking care of the people themselves,” said Swery.

“We had like, periodic doctor’s visits, but those are just required things, mandatory things we just had to do. It was like a process. It didn’t really feel like they were watching people and making sure they were okay. So what I did differently was to really focus on making sure people were okay, and doing what they were trying to do, and were able to accomplish what they wanted to do, and making sure they don’t break in that process. So I incorporated what’s required to do that, and shaved off the extra stuff that seemed like systematic, mandatory stuff. I wanted to focus on taking care of people.”

It’s the opposite of what The Missing asks of players, who must ceaselessly throw themselves into harm’s way and snap off their own limbs in order to get through the game. These puzzles can be gruesome, but they’re also strangely dream-like; for example, during the demo J.J. had to snap her neck so that A) if she was a living, breathing person she definitely wouldn’t be anymore and B) everything looked upside down — which meant gravity reversed and she was able to reach an otherwise inaccessible ledge.

 

“Traditionally my fans know me for story-driven games…the gameplay, maybe not so much…Setting up White Owls and putting out The Missing is my attempt to break away from that.”

“We were thinking about, how can we make bone-breaking part of a puzzle? How can we design puzzles around this idea of bone-breaking?” he explained.

“And one of our programmers said ‘Hey, when you break your neck or whatever, you sort of see the world upside down.’ So I jumped in and said ‘Hey that sounds cool, can we even flip gravity, on top of that?’ And the programmer was like ‘hmmmm…..’, because from a programmer’s perspective it’s very difficult to make such things happen. But they sat down and thought about it more, and they eventually tried it, and when they saw the build come to life, it was actually very interesting, so we sort of ran with it.”

(“Something that is difficult, or is deemed difficult by a programmer — that usually means it hasn’t been done or isn’t very conventional in other games,” Swery added. “I think that’s a good indicator that you’re creating something new.”)

Flipping gravity has been done in games before, but it’s still a big deal for Swery. For him, The Missing is an opportunity to grow beyond his public persona as a storyteller, and show that he has the chops to design engaging, challenging, mechanics-heavy games.

“Traditionally my fans know me for story-driven games, games that are very character-driven and story-driven. The gameplay, maybe not so much. But Swery’s got the story, that’s where he’s at, right. Setting up White Owls and putting out The Missing is my attempt to break away from that. That sort of shell that I’m in right now, I want to sort of evolve from that,” Swery concluded.

“I wanted to show my fans I’m not just all about the story, I’m not just all about the characters. I can create good game mechanics that are engaging…this is my attempt at breaking that shell and expanding, and showing a side of Swery that no one’s ever seen before.”

Starting at 2:00 p.m. PST today, members of the Xbox One Preview Skip Ahead and Preview Alpha Rings will begin receiving the latest 1904 Xbox One system update (19h1_release_xbox_dev_1904.190224-1940). Read on for more about the new features, fixes and known issues in the latest 1904 system update.   For the next few releases we will keep Alpha Skip Ahead and Alpha builds in sync to test core functionality.

New Features:

A complete feature list for 1904 is published here https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/02/21/new-features-rolling-out-to-xbox-insiders-this-spring/

This build contains the new Voice command features to please test.

Voice Skills

• New Alexa Voice skills are available today for flighting. Please try the new “Pair controller” and “Eject disc” voice commands and let us know what you think.

Fixes:

Achievements

• Achievements list is now being displayed correctly while in a game.

Messaging

• We have resolved the issue that some users were report unable to send/receive messages.
• Users are now warned when viewing a group conversation with someone they blocked.

System

• Localization fixes.

Known Issues:

Audio

• We are aware of issues of No Audio heard from Non-Spatial Audio games when using Dolby Atmos for Home Theater with the LG SJ9 soundbar.

Blu-Ray

• We are investigating some reports that the Blu-ray player doesn’t support HDR when playing HDR10 & Dolby Vision disc with “Enable Dolby Vision” turned on in settings.

Disney Adventures

• We are tracking an issue that this title is crashing on launch.

Game Pass Mobile App

• Issue/Impact – After pushing a remote installation of a game from the Game Pass mobile app, customers will not see progress of the installation on in the mobile app and may not receive install notifications.  The game will still successfully install if there is sufficient available space on the console.
• Affected audience – must be in 1904 preview, must be a GP subscriber, must be using the GP mobile app, must be pushing game installations from the app.
• Workarounds – None.  A fix is coming in the next version of the mobile app in March.  Customers interested in getting early access to the fix can download the Game Pass Beta app.

Home

• We are aware that the clock/time is missing from home and the dashboard.
• We are tracking that notifications are not displaying on the console (such as achievement toasts).

Profile Color

• Sometimes users may encounter the incorrect Profile color when powering on the console.

System

• We are tracking an issue in which the Console locks up when accessing guide after playing a title or app.

Offworld Trading Company – Free Multiplayer is Now Available on Steam!

Stardock and Mohawk Games have announced a new multiplayer client for their critically acclaimed real-time strategy game, Offworld Trading Company, that will allow players to face off against each other for free, even if they don’t already own the game.