We Talked to the American Hero Who Clicked a Mouse a Million Times in 17 Hours

People post a lot of silly stunts to YouTube, but one sub genre of video that always fascinated me is the boring endurance run. This can be a video of someone pressing the return key on an excel spreadsheet for 10 hours until he hits the program's limit, or simply a video of a guy spending almost 24 hours (!) counting to 100,000.

As an appreciator of competitive StarCraft, where a player's high actions per minute (APM) is a key skill, I was particularly impressed with a recent endurance video, in which a YouTuber and Twitch streamer who goes by the screen name Tocen clicked his mouse 1 million times. It took him little over 17 hours.

That's a lot of clicks, and as far as I can see, a heroic waste of everyone's time.

I had a lot of questions about this, primarily: ...Why?

I wanted answers, so I emailed Tocen, whose real name is Reno Baker.

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Motherboard: Hey Reno. Why did you do this?

Reno Baker: After seeing MrBeast on YouTube count to 100,000, I felt inspired to complete a similar daunting task, only because I had the time.

How did you keep yourself entertained while you were clicking?

I was planning to watch some anime, listen to music, and just pass the time any way I could. But after 100,000 clicks I had realized how focused I was on clicking fast. I didn't want to divide my attention. Going for a world speed record that has never been set before was not something I had in mind for life after the military. But after realizing I've already started and I'm this far in, I had no choice but to focus all of my energy on the mission. So, while keeping my mind on the tempo of clicking, I would look around the room: gazing at the lit candle next to me, watching the number of clicks rise on the screen, and staring off into the distance for long periods of time.

You were in the military? If so, thank you for your service! How did you serve and for how long?

Yes, and thank you! I served for four years in the Air Force. I had just recently finished my service honorably a few months ago, and I really wanted to go after this YouTube dream when my service was done. I think my military family would be really happy to see where I'm going right now.

Did anything in the military prepare you for this? I don't mean to make light but I have friends who were in the army and they always talk about how there's a lot of boring downtime.

The skills I learned in BMT [basic military training] really prepared me for this. BMT was one of the most challenging things I've had to go through. And I know at 400,000 I was already comparing the clicks to some of the mentally breaking things we had done in training. Yes, we've had downtime. Every position in the military has its ups and downs. The Air Force brings in more people who are mentally adept. So I never had to do anything with combat, nor did I deploy overseas.

How many bathroom and food breaks did you take?

I took several short breaks to go to the bathroom. Staying hydrated was key to ensuring my click numbers would be maximized. While eating and drinking with one hand, I continued the clicking with the other. The exception to this being the celebratory "500,000 clicks" cake halfway through the challenge.

Why do you think there are so many endurance challenges like this on YouTube?

The internet has always been a place to showcase weird talents. I think what draws people in is seeing some of the ridiculous stuff "anyone could have done." Yes, anyone could have clicked a mouse one million times. But there still has to be that first person to do it. And when you get down to it, not many people have the time nor the will to do something for no good reason.

Image: Jeffory Willis

Do you think you're the first person to ever record himself doing a million clicks?

Yes, I believe I am the first person to ever do a million clicks in one sitting like this. And I don't believe anyone will ever attempt this again. Although, I am looking forward to seeing someone else try.

Tell me about this tracker you programmed for this video.

I've been using GameMaker for years, so making the program was easy. I just thought of some neat details I wanted to track throughout the video, and wrote a few lines of code for each of the algorithms that I needed. I chose a YouTube subscription theme for the main click counter to encourage others to subscribe. On the video, you'll see an estimation timer that shows how long it might take to entirely complete 1 million clicks, which was fairly accurate through the entire video. The pace counter keeps a pace of a million clicks in 40 hours, which is how long I expected this to take. Who would have thought my hands would actually get stronger and faster after the first 300,000? Not me.

What did the people close to you in real life, friends and family, say about this stunt?

My brothers were really excited that I was going to do something so crazy. My friends didn't believe I was actually going to do it. My wife really didn't care that much, but she was happy for me.

Any tips for other YouTubers doing endurance stunts like this?

Just get past the first few hours. If you can do that, you won't let yourself give up.

Thank you Reno, for everything.

from We Talked to the American Hero Who Clicked a Mouse a Million Times in 17 Hours

'Turok' Source Code Will Be Sold on eBay Soon, Thanks to Lucky Warehouse Find

Like many fans of the 90s first-person shooter Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, I was intrigued by a video posted to the YouTube channel SiliconClassics on Friday, which shows what appears to be the source code for the Nintendo 64 version of the game, discovered on an old SGI Indy computer.

Also like many fans, I immediately began to wonder how we might benefit from seeing this source code posted online for free, where a whole community of modders could begin tinkering with it.

If you're a fan of Turok or never played it before but want to see what it's all about, it's not hard to find a playable copy, especially since Nightdive Studios remastered and republished it on Steam last year. But with the source code, those who know how would be able to modify the game to create new content for it, recompile the code for different platforms, or simply dig through notes and documentation the developers left behind for odd bits of history.

On Sunday, the man in the SiliconClassics video, Aaron, announced that he won't post the source code online. Aaron is a lawyer, so he's well aware that dumping the source code online could get him into legal trouble, precisely because it's still being sold on Steam. However, that doesn't mean the source code won't end up online. Aaron isn't going to dump the source code online, but he is going to sell the SGI Indy computer on eBay.

What the buyer does with it at that point is up to them, but Aaron told me over email that "an attorney I'd advise whoever buys the systems to exercise good judgment and act within the confines of the law."

It seems that at least one of the key developers directly associated with Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Stephen Broumley, is impressed with Aaron's discovery.

"I coded all the bosses, cinemas, effects, and a bunch of other systems for Turok back in the day when I was a young lad," Broumley wrote. "I remember that dev hardware - what a blast from the past! Thanks so much for sharing!"

Aaron, who collects and tinkers with old computers as a hobby, said he first spotted this SGI Indy at a warehouse where he was picking up a 24-bit video board for an SGI Indy from another seller. While there, he saw a whole stack of SGI Indys there along with boxes of obsolete 3D animation software. He made note of it, and last summer went back to buy the stack of SGI Indys and software. As he started going through the files, it became clear that the SGI Indys came from a liquidation auction for Turok publisher Acclaim, which went out of business in 2004. Acclaim should have wiped those drives before the sale exactly for this reason, but for whatever reason, didn't.

Aaron also said that the SGI Indys contain a treasure trove of vintage game assets that he plans to share soon on his channel. If you care about this kind of obscure game history, we're sort of lucky that this stuff ended up with Aaron and not the dump.

Aaron said that the eBay listing for the SGI Indys with the Turok source code will go up this week.

from 'Turok' Source Code Will Be Sold on eBay Soon, Thanks to Lucky Warehouse Find

The 12 Best Games of 2016 That I Had Time to Play

Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, and holy hell, what a year!

It was an absolute nightmare in almost every respect, but it's actually been an incredible year for video games. Like, one of the best. We're talking something that's up there with 2004, maybe even better!

Needless to say, I didn't have time to play nearly everything that came out this year, and there are many games that I played, but not enough to include on this list. If you see a glaring omission that is personally insulting to you, it's probably just one of the many games I hadn't had time to play yet.

With that said, let's dig into the best games of 2016 (that I had time to play):

Image: Devolver

12. Shadow Warrior 2

One of the dumbest, best games of the year. There is really no reason why this revival of an idiotic, most likely racist first-person shooter from the '90s should work. Just ask Duke Nukem Forever how that kind of thing usually works out. But it does totally work. Mostly, it seems, because the answer to every design decision was "why not?"

Should the player be able to to zip around the level at light speed? Why not?

Robot ninjas? Why not?

More than a dozen guns including a demon-possessed chainsaw? Why not?

It will probably make you dumber by the minute, but if you got the brain cells to spare, Shadow Warrior 2 is a great way to kill them.

Image: Playdead

11. Inside

In all honesty, the arty, indie, 2D platformer has overstayed its welcome. In 2008, Jonathan Blow showed the world with Braid that you can make a game that on its surface looks as simple as Super Mario, but use that format to tackle big ideas. Many indie developers followed, including developer Playdead's Limbo from 2010. It was fine, it had a few clever puzzles, but it was just another one of those.

With Inside, Playdead didn't only find its unique voice as a studio, but proved that there's always more juice in the 2D platformer if approached with new ideas. It's a bizarre and haunting adventure I don't want spoil in the least here, but imagine something between Akira, The Twilight Zone, and E.T.

It's about three hours-worth of game that Playdead spent six years developing, and the effort it took into perfecting it really shows: in some of the best animation you'll see in a video game, in its brilliantly paced puzzled progression, and the visual composition of scenes that make it so memorable.

Image: Drool

10. Thumper

.austin walker November 30, 2016

Play it in VR. Play it on a normal screen. Play it under the influence. Play it not under the influence and you'll probably still feel like you took something. I have no room in my life for rhythm games of the Guitar Hero variety, but I'm willing to make room for Thumper's "rhythm violence."

Image: EA

9. Battlefield 1

I actually cooled on Battlefield 1 quite a bit since I wrote about. Out of the many, many multiplayer first-person shooters that came out this year, it didn't turn out to be the one I was itching to go back to. When it came out I worried that a Battlefield game without helicopters isn't the kind of Battlefield game I love, and that turned out to be true. On the other hand, it's still easily one of the best looking games of the year, and one of the best single player campaigns of the year. That's especially impressive because that has never been developer DICE's strong suit. Somehow, by deciding to make a more somber, serious war game, it found something interesting to say. It doesn't always work. It's still morally messy for a variety of reasons, but it actually tries to say something, which is way more than most shooters try to do.

Image: Heart Machine

8. Hyper Light Drifter

Much like Inside, Hyper Light Drifter is a small game by a small team, years in the making, and a labor of love.

It has fantastic pixel art (another thing about indie games I thought I was done with), super challenging combat, and a mysterious world that's established without lengthy exposition. In fact, it barely uses any writing or dialogue at all, instead using its environment to tell a story that doesn't get in the way.

It's the best Zelda–type game I've played in years, and I don't evoke that classic lightly.

For more, check out this excellent documentary about the game and its maker from our friends at Waypoint:

Image: Microsoft

7. Gears of War 4

I spent way too much time this year thinking about Gears of War 4 as part of my feature about the state of big budget games and why they're so hard to make in 2016.

It's hard for me to divorce what I know about what it took to make and the final product, but I did enjoy it a lot.

The single player campaign, which you can also play with a friend, is very much like the old Gears games, meaning it's a cover-based shooter. It's a sub-genre that Gears made popular, and Gears 4 shows that it's still the best in this class, with huge set-pieces, clever AI that's fun to out maneuver, and the best gore that technology is capable of.

The real attraction, however, is the Horde 3.0 mode, in which five players fight up to 50 waves of increasingly tougher enemies. It shows just how strong the game's fundamentals are. It's just about using cover, an array of inventive weapons, and outsmarting the AI. I could play it forever and probably will during the Christmas break.

Image: SUPERHOT Team

6. SUPERHOT

SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT. SUPER. HOT.

(Time only moves when you move. No game will make you feel more like Neo from The Matrix. It's fantastic)

Image: Blizzard

5. Overwatch

Does Blizzard make bad games? I can't recall the last one. Does it make first-person shooters? Not really, but when it does, it makes one of the best team-based first-person shooters we've seen in years. It's colorful, incredibly deep, and at the same time immensely accessible.

There are so many specific characters and special abilities I could call out here, but ultimately it's a lot of more subtle UI and user experience decisions Overwatch makes to hide the things that make shooters overtly macho and toxic. Even if you're not a great player, the game doesn't humiliate you for it, instead choosing to highlight what you are able to accomplish. It's got posi vibes!

Team Fortress 2 was the king of this genre for years. You'd basically have to make something perfect to take its place, and that's what Blizzard did.

Image: Sony

4. The Last Guardian

2016 was the year I got my first dog, Gordo. He's the best thing that has ever happened to me. 2016 was also the year that we finally got to play The Last Guardian, a game we've been waiting for since 2007. It turns out that The Last Guardian is a game about the deep relationship between a boy and his sometimes loyal pet. As you can imagine, it's hard for me to even think about The Last Guardian without it getting a little dusty in the room.

It has a lot of technical issues, but it's an incredible feat of animation and characterization. Trico, the beast, feels like a living thing, and The Last Guardian managed to make me care about a game character, which is something so few games accomplish. I still find myself thinking about it, which is the biggest compliment I can give it.

Image: EA

3. Titanfall 2

Titanfall 2 wins by virtue of the number of hours I put into it. Currently, that's over 40, which is the most I put into a single game in 2016. This was a year that was packed with AAA, multiplayer shooters, and Titanfall 2 is head and shoulders above them all. It's not the best looking game. It doesn't have the biggest player count, and it doesn't come from the largest team. But it's the most fun to play.

Developer Respawn took what was good about the first game—its high mobility, wall running pilots and giant mech suits—and made it even better.

Add to that the fact that it also has the single player campaign that Call of Duty has been trying and failing to make Modern Warfare 2, and you have one of the best games of the year.

2. The Witness

The Witness, Jonathan Blow's puzzle epic and the first game he published since his landmark Braid, is another game we've been anticipating for years that finally came out in 2016. It, too, didn't disappoint.

It is ostensibly a game about drawing line mazes on a remote island, but with each puzzle it digs deeper into that simple concept, until you feel like you are direct conversation with Blow, speaking in a language he's invented for this game alone. It activates parts of your brain that only a game can, and it has—much like Braid—broadened the definition of what a puzzle game can be.

Hell, even Rachel loved it, and she doesn't even play video games! Not many games can say that.

1. Doom

We love Doom around here. We love the original game. We love its still thriving modding scene. We love Brutal Doom. We love Masters of Doom by David by David Kushner, one of the best books written about game development.

It's the game that made first-person shooters take the world by storm by being faster, more violent, and more outrageous. Does something as simple as that still work in 2016, when first-person shooters have evolved to be so much more sophisticated, with open worlds, role-playing game elements, and realistic bullet physics?

Hell yes. If anything, Doom showed us how far we've strayed from god's light with all these unnecessary embellishments. It's called a first-person shooter. It's about shooting. That's what you do in Doom, beginning to end, and it is glorious.

Every weapon sounds too powerful to hold. Every enemy looks too disgusting to fight...until you blow its head off with a double-barreled shotgun. The whole thing feels like a modded V8 engine made of blood and bone that's running so fast it's about to explode.

Doom should be illegal.

Games can do a lot of things. The can make us care. They can make us think. They can take us to places we've never been and others that will never exist…but sometimes they're just about killing demons like a maniac without blinking for hours, and that is the best thing that games did in 2016.

from The 12 Best Games of 2016 That I Had Time to Play

'Farming Simulator 17' Is the Fastest Selling Farming Simulator Yet

A lot of video game hits have been released during this holiday season: Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, Battlefield 1, Gears of War 4 and...Farming Simulator 17.

To be fair, "hit" is somewhat of a relative term here. Aside from being the only game that's not about shooting hundreds of people in the face, Farming Simulator 17 differs from the rest of the games mentioned above in that it won't sell as many millions of copies. But for a niche simulation game, it's doing great.

According to a press release from publisher Focus Home Interactive, Farming Simulator 17 has sold 1 million copies since it was released on October 24. That's twice as many copies as Farming Simulator 15 sold in the same period of time. Overall, Farming Simulator 15 sold 3 million copies in two years. It seems Farming Simulator 17 is well on track to surpass that number. According to Steam, it hit a peak of almost 15,000 concurrent players Friday, which coincidentally puts it right behind another recently released simulation game: Planet Coaster.

"Farming Simulator was always a game for fans, but with Farming Simulator 17 it has expanded into a whole new experience for a wide audience, who needed to be offered new things in video games," Cédric Lagarrigue, president of Focus Home Interactive, said.

Image: Focus Home Interactive

I played some Farming Simulator 17 when it came out. It is very much like Farming Simulator 15, which is to say that it is really fun and different, especially if you play it with a $300 custom controller.

That being said, I'm a little disappointed that it hasn't addressed my biggest issue with the series: it is still pretty damn hard to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing at any given moment. The tutorials just don't do a good job of explaining what I should be doing on a micro level (how the hell do I get this bale of hay in my truck?), or on a macro level (what kind of crops do I want to plant, and why?). But if you can figure out that stuff and sort through some other user interface issues, it's fun. Meticulously driving a combine harvester over a wheat field is a nice change of pace over shooting a carbine rifle in Battlefield 1.

It's encouraging to see that there's clearly a market for a game like this, especially in a season when it seems video games are mostly about bullets. The issue is that the game's developer, Giants, has been dominating this genre for years, so it didn’t have much of a reason to change a working formula. This is why I'm very excited about the release of Pure Farming 17 early next year, which seems like the first legitimate competitor to Farming Simulator. Hopefully it shakes things up a bit.

Correction: This article originally misidentified Farming Simulator 15 as Farming Simulator 16. There is no Farming Simulator 16 for PC.

from 'Farming Simulator 17' Is the Fastest Selling Farming Simulator Yet

Why Are Investors Cold on Nintendo’s New Console?

On Thursday morning Nintendo finally revealed its next console, Switch. The device, previously codenamed “NX,” was what many suspected it was going to be based on Nintendo’s patent filings. It’s a home console and mobile device hybrid, a screen you can either insert into a dock at home to play on a TV, or attach input devices to and play with on the go.

The stock market reacted capriciously. Nintendo’s stock climbed 3.3 percent in the hours of buzz leading up to the announcement (adding more than a billion in market value), then dropped by 6 percent following the actual news, losing more than two billion in market value.

Why?

There are a few factors at work here, but the gist is that Nintendo is in a tough spot and it needs a hell of a hit to get out of it. While the video reveal of Switch on Thursday might have been exciting to Nintendo fans, it didn’t show anything that made investors feel confident that it was the hit the company needs. Also, the stock market is weird.

Let’s break this down.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about Switch

As much as we learned about the Switch on Thursday, Nintendo still left a lot of unanswered questions. The most important of these—as we mentioned at the time—is the price point. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 both currently have models at the $300 price point, and they’re already millions of units ahead of Nintendo. PS4 has more than 40 million units out in the wild. We don’t have exact figures for Xbox One units sold, but it’s well above 20 million.

Players who want the latest Call of Duty or FIFA either already have one of these machines or will buy them this holiday season.

Nintendo hasn't been directly competing with Sony and Microsoft in this sense for many years. Instead, it offers more casual experiences, Nintendo’s beloved and exclusive game series, and at a cheaper price. Nintendo’s mega hit Wii, for example, launched at $250, while the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 launched at $400 and $500 respectively.

At this point, it’s not going to be enough for Nintendo to match Microsoft and Sony at $300. It needs to come in lower, at around $250.

“The main issue is that we know right now that Switch cannot compete with the PS4 and Xbox One when it comes to high end graphics and third party games,” analyst at Niko Partners Daniel Ahmad told me over Twitter. “As soon as it's over the price of a PS4 and Xbox One in a big way then it no longer becomes an option for [gamers.]”

Price is the biggest question, but there are other important things we don’t know about Switch. How long is the battery life? Is the screen also a touch screen? Will Switch only play Switch games, or will it also play the new mobile games Nintendo is publishing on the smartphone app stores? Can it play Pokémon Go? Can it access the Google Play Store?

The right answers to these question could make investors bullish on Nintendo, but since we don’t have them, it’s safer not to take the bet.

The stock market is weird

Before Nintendo stock took a dive yesterday it actually saw a big bump of 3.3 percent.

This is just one of those things that investors do: invest in the rumors leading up to an announcement, then sell when the actual news hits. Buy the dream, sell the reality.

It doesn’t necessarily reflect the value of the actual product or the company. It’s just what investors do to make money.

“I like to think (hope) it's novice traders,” Ahmad said. “But it's seen time and time again across multiple companies and industries… It’s almost a running joke with Apple products to the point where everyone does it. Rumor comes out > stock price goes up > news comes our > sell at higher price = profit.”

Investors don’t really get Nintendo

The reality is nobody knows enough about the Switch to evaluate how it will shape Nintendo’s business, and recent history has shown that the average gaming forum dweller is just as informed if not more informed than the investors who pour and siphon millions of dollars in and out of Nintendo.

Let’s recall a little game called Pokémon Go, which took the world by storm in July. It was an unprecedented success that seized the number one spot in the app stores in every region it was released in record time, and is estimated to earn $1.6 million a day in revenue. The phenomenon sent Nintendo’s stock soaring...even though Pokémon is not strictly a Nintendo property. In fact, Nintendo only makes a small cut from Pokémon Go after its developer Niantic (previously owned by Google), the app stores, and ThePokémon Company, which actually owns Pokémon and in which Nintendo is a major (32 percent) stakeholder, take their cut.

The frantic investment in Nintendo following Pokémon Go’s success was so disproportionate, Nintendo had to issue a statement to investors saying that the company wouldn’t adjust its earnings forecast since profits from Pokémon Go would be minimal. When investors realized this, Nintendo shares plummeted.

All this in order to say that investors can be not so great at their job, and that this could also help explain the current lack of faith in Nintendo.

Like I said, Nintendo is indeed in a tough spot following the miserable failure that was the Wii U, and the Switch is far from a guaranteed hit, but there is a lot of potential here. Just because the stock market doesn’t show it right now, doesn’t mean Switch is a failure before it was born.

from Why Are Investors Cold on Nintendo’s New Console?

Letters to the Editor: AAA Game Crunch and Conjuring the Alt-Right

Another week, another inbox filled with really great feedback from Motherboard readers. There’s a lot to get into today, from artificial intelligence, to the alt-right and 4chan, to big budget video game crunch. As always, we appreciate your thoughtful responses, even when they’re very critical. In fact, those make for some of the best exchanges, so please keep them coming by emailing us at letters@motherboard.tv, or hitting us up on Twitter and Facebook.

Let’s get right into it.

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RE: Making a Big Budget Video Game Is Riskier and Harder Than Ever. So Why Do It?

This was pretty funny. Wouldn

Andreas Papathanasis October 12, 2016

To sustain ethical plausible deniability, we

Jim Crawford October 12, 2016

This is very good and very troubling. Ben Kuchera October 11, 2016

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I got a lot of responses to my article about the making of Gears of War 4, what it takes to ship a big budget video game in 2016, and why that is still even something worth pursuing. Overall, the responses have been overwhelmingly positive, but as you can see in the tweets above, several people have taken issue with the way crunch—a period of time when developers work extra long hours to ship a game—was presented in the article.

Some readers thought that the article was justifying or glorifying game development crunch.

I’d like to point out that I the article does explain that crunch can have a terrible impact on developers. I cite the latest numbers from the The International Game Developers Association on how many people in the industry still report crunch, the notorious EA_Spouse case which ended in multi-million dollar settlements, and Kotaku’s extensive report from earlier this year on how terrible crunch can be. The article also lets an employee at Gears of War 4 developer The Coalition, QA lead Rob Guwick, say in his own words how difficult crunch has been on his family.

Before I arrived at The Coalition, I expected that Microsoft would either find a way to make crunch seem like a non-issue, or witness some of the horror stories I heard about crunch myself.

What I found was much more complicated. From studio head Rod Fergusson to entry level QA testers, everyone at The Coalition works extremely hard to ship a game. Some, I’m sure, genuinely want to put in the work so the game is as good as it can be. As a fellow creative person, this is not at all hard for me to relate to. At the end of the day a level designer or an environment artist got started in this field because they have some kind of passion for what they do, and if staying in the office until midnight could make their work shine more, many people will choose to do that. I have done this myself. I’m sure you have too.

Though there is no rule that says that anyone has to work these extra long hours, there are also spoken and unspoken pressures to work very hard. As the story mentions, before the team started crunch, Fergusson gave a speech to the studio explaining the challenges ahead, and what needed to be accomplished before deadline. I am sure that the fact that Fergusson and other senior members of the team often work until midnight or later also makes employees feel that they need to work just as hard. If your boss is doing it, why shouldn’t you?

Crunch is not a problem that is unique to game development. I work in media, and I haven’t met a single person in this field that doesn’t put in extra hours because they wanted to be the first to get a scoop, make a piece shine, or as The Coalition director of QA Prince Arrington told me, avoid being the first car that leaves the parking lot.

Crunch is a combination of the reality of software development, self imposed pressure, company-imposed pressure, and much broader, culturally imposed pressure to work hard.

Tanya Short is an indie developer and author of the “Crunch is Failure” pledge, where developers promise not to overwork themselves or their teams. I think her quote in the story sums up this problem best:

“North American culture especially is likely to work really hard and not notice they’re burning out until it’s too late because we normalized the idea that if you care about something, you will give everything to it, until you have nothing left. I think it’s completely natural and kind of beautiful to want to sacrifice yourself to something like this, but it takes a lot of time and experience to figure out when you’re doing it for yourself.”

My goal was not to glorify crunch or condemn it, but to see it for what it is and report back. Even Fergusson didn’t outright defend it. He admits that it is a grey area. I agree, and believe that the piece overall expresses that as well.

Emanuel Maiberg, Motherboard weekend editor

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RE: We’re Not Ready For Superintelligence

I was extremely disappointed that your article “We’re Not Ready For Superintelligence”did not allow reader comments. I have much more expertise in the field than people like Gates and Hawking'. There is absolutely no chance that a real AI will emerge from binary processors, and I rely on Turing's seminal article "Can Machines Think?", rather than the watered down definitions we currently employ today to describe the capabilities of AI.

Rather we in the field should be focusing our attention on 100x100 quantum bit arrays. Such an array would be a far more powerful machine than if every atom in the universe was converted into a transistor. It could crack a public key encryption, which are not NP-hard but are computationally extremely difficult, in microseconds. I, along with everyone else, do not understand if large quantum arrays are capable of hosting an AI. But I can assure you that binary computers cannot. The human brain is composed of 10 billion neurons, each of which can connect to hundreds of other neurons. That sounds like quantum computing to me. Such an architecture can never be simulated using binary processing.

john

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Hey John,

You say that "There is absolutely no chance that a real AI will emerge from binary processors," and that "The human brain is composed of 10 billion neurons, each of which can connect to hundreds of other neurons. That sounds like quantum computing to me. Such an architecture can never be simulated using binary processing."

I really appreciate your comments, but I don’t find them convincing. First, it seems like your claim rests upon a weak analogy between quantum computing and the microstructure of the biological brain. (Incidentally, there are actually 100 billion neurons in each brain, and many neurons make 10,000 or more connections!) You say that one "sounds like" the other. This is not a sufficiently good reason to reject the possibility of superintelligence emerging from binary computers.

Second, superintelligent systems that run on binary computers already exist. These systems are, in fact, all around us. Consider the calculator on your laptop. It’s able to perform extraordinarily complex mathematical calculations at extremely fast speeds. The only difference between the calculator and the kind of superintelligence discussed in my article is that the former is "narrow" whereas the latter is "general," meaning that the latter can solve problems in a wide variety of different domains, whereas the former is limited to math. So, we already have proof that an extremely powerful superintelligence—i.e., a powerful algorithm—can emerge from binary systems.

Finally, as for the specific architecture of the biological brain, I see no reasons that a posthumously scanned and "uploaded" brain would need a different kind of hardware for it to become conscious. To my knowledge, no notable AI theorists, neuroscientists, or philosophers have argued that this is the case. Quite the opposite, in fact!

Phil Torres, Motherboard Contributor

*

RE: The Alt-Right Was Conjured Out of Pearl Clutching and Media Attention

Wow, thanks Vice for calling me a racist for frequenting forums where people joke around and have fun about today's political situation in the USA.

I used to respect Vice as a publication and will now avoid reading articles on your website or your other documentaries. I can't believe you guys are peddling this excuse for an article. I mean jesus, isn't it somewhat offensive in concept to call people racists without evidence? I'm a white guy, and I'm on a forum with other predominantly white guys and people are talking primarily about the politics of today. There simply isn't racial overtones, or white supremacy being peddled or any such xenophobia. Just because people are talking about political issues like immigration, refugees, employment, etc. etc, does NOT make them xenophobic or racist.

In a matter of 50 years, we've gone from a country that it was OK to make racial comments to a country where accusing people of racism flows like water from a faucet. No real evidence, just stereotyping groups of people in the name of justice. Why is it OK to label white people as racist, in these settings, with little to no context? How is this OK?

You guys should be ashamed of yourselves for publishing this junk. Who the heck is in charge over there?

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/conjuring-the-alt-right

What a joke. I'll be sharing w/my other "white racist friends" (terms used sparingly) that your editorial team has the same standards of rolling stone when investigating and vetting stories before publishing. I mean, hey, fake rape stories and fake xenophobia stories are OK as long as they get clicks right?

Shameful. Shameful.

Anonymous

*

Hey Kavan,

Thank you for writing in.

Here's what I found on 4chan's political message board (/pol/) at the time I read your email. As I'm sure you know, 4chan deletes its posts once they reach a certain threshold, so you probably won't find these messages there by the time you read my email, though I'm sure you'll find something similar.

An image of Donald Trump burning Hillary Clinton alive:

An image comparing the domestication of dogs to differences between black people and white people:

An image of Hillary Clinton being walked to a guillotine:

An image suggesting that the Jews (represented by the anti-Semitic caricature here) manipulate the media against Donald Trump:

There's also a gif I saved but don't have the stomach to send you of Pepe the Frog in his Trumpian form raping Clinton.

You say that 4chan simply doesn't display racial overtones, white supremacy, or xenophobia. I knew that I would find all of the above on any day I visit /pol/, and I did.

Is anyone who visits or posts to 4chan and /pol/ specifically racist? No. Not everyone is posting this kind of thing and I'm sure that many of the people who do post these images will insist that they are just a joke.

But as Whitney wrote in the article:

"Of course, whether extremism is sincere or—as in the case of Pepe, a frog meme conscripted into the alt-right’s cause—presented as some kind of joke, it is still extremism; as my co-author Ryan Milner and I argue of Pepe’s emergent bigotry, that is the message being communicated, and so that is the message, period."

I can speak to this as far as the last image goes, and anti-Semitic messages on 4chan in general. The same type of images were used to dehumanize Jews in Europe, to the point where it was socially acceptable to segregate and then murder them by the millions. My grandmother was born and raised in Poland, and many of the family members she grew up with were murdered in the camps.

I don't know the intention of the poster, but to me it's impossible to take the cartoon as anything but an anti-Semitic insult and threat. It is not funny to me, and I'm sure the other images here aren't funny to women, African-Americans, or any of the other groups that are consistently derided on 4chan.

Frequenting 4chan doesn't make you racist. Defending this behavior does.

Thank you,

Emanuel Maiberg, Motherboard weekend editor

Editor’s note: The author of the email about the 4chan article asked that his name not be included here since it's "embarrassing" and it could damage his career "to even publically discuss race-related issues." He also sent two follow-up emails saying that it doesn’t make him racist to defend someone’s right to free speech, that the article in question wasn’t real journalism, and that Motherboard should instead focus on reporting on Hillary Clinton, who "is outright murdering black leaders in Africa" (referring to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya).

from Letters to the Editor: AAA Game Crunch and Conjuring the Alt-Right

‘Shadow Warrior 2’ Is One of the Dumbest, Best Games of the Year

Shafts of moonlight illuminate a courtyard lined with cherry blossoms, pagodas, and enemies that seem like the doodles of a bored 14 year old: cyborg ninjas, giant spiders, and missile launching mechs.

I jump high in the air and land right in the middle of the fray, slash my way out with an electric katana, then dash around the remaining enemies—many of which are missing limbs now—while unloading a World War’s amount of munitions. It’s just a mess of explosions and blood until there’s nothing left to shoot and the courtyard is a buffet upgrades: new weapons, new skills, and other goodies that will make the next encounter of this kind an even more chaotic, more grotesque power fantasy.

Shadow Warrior 2 is one of the dumbest, most entertaining games I’ve played this year. Earlier this year, Doom proved that there’s a lot to be gained by stripping the first-person shooter genre back to its 90s-era form, which focuses on constant movement and constant shooting and barely anything else. Story? Go read a book. Puzzles? No thanks, nerds. Shadow Warrior 2 doubles-down on that design philosophy. It’s as if Polish developer Flying Hog Games asked what if it made a game with psychopathic focus on shooting and killing things, realized that it wasn’t the most inspiring idea, and did it anyway.

Image: Devolver

The result is tremendous. Doom is still overall a better game—a tight, perfect celebration of the cultural phenomenon that made first-person shooters what they are today. Every weapon and enemy in that game interlock to create a violent rhythm that speeds up until it explodes. There’s no fat on it. Shadow Warrior 2 hits a lot of the same notes, but where it is less balanced, or has less inspiring weapons and enemies, it compensates with breadth and bombast. It has dozens of weapons, each of which can be upgraded with added fire or lighting effects. It has a variety of skills that will make your character run at 90 miles per hour or jump high up in the air. It has a whole spell system that will make spikes come out of the ground and skewer you enemies or air-blast them off the edge of a cliff.

The constant drip of rewards, which like Diablo or Borderlands are color-coded to indicate value (from worthless grey to “epic” orange), gives it a habit forming edge over Doom. Not only is it fun tearing enemies up moment to moment, there’s a longer arc of collecting these goodies and seeing how they modify the next encounter that keeps me coming back.

Shadow Warrior 2 is everything that makes shooters look incredibly dumb to people who don’t play them and exceptional to people who do. I love a big, dumb shooters, and if that is where Shadow Warrior 2’s stupidity ended I would recommend it without reservations.

Image: Devolver

The problematic, baffling choice it makes is that it also wants to tell something resembling a story, and it’s ill-equipped to do so. Shadow Warrior 2 and the 2013’s Shadow Warrior are reimaginings of the 1997 original, which itself is a shooter in the tradition of the proudly stupid Duke Nukem 3D. They’re very similar games, only instead of embodying the cigar-chomping, misogynistic American Duke, in Shadow Warriors players embody a ninja names Lo Wang.

About half of what he says is a Wang-related joke in a fake Japanese accent (Wang is voiced by a white actor), and he has way too much to say. Not only with quips while beheading demons, but also with extended dialogue sequences between missions, which you can mercifully skip. This is at best a huge waste of time and distraction from what’s good about Shadow Warrior 2 and probably offensive if you care to think about it for more than two seconds.

Thankfully, anything Wang has to say is easy to ignore, and that’s exactly what I recommend. It’s only $40 on Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4 right now and it’s one of the best shooters of the year despite itself.

from ‘Shadow Warrior 2’ Is One of the Dumbest, Best Games of the Year

Video Game Voice Actors Crunch Too

This is part of Motherboard’s feature about the development of Gears of War 4. Follow along here.

Gears of War 4’s character models are some of the best in the business, with highly-detailed faces and textures that are able to convey subtle expressions. But Gears 4 is a third person shooter, meaning that you spend the vast majority of the time looking at the characters’ backs and butts. If the characters have any personality, it’s mostly due to the game’s voice actors.

In our feature about the making of a big budget video game, we spent a lot of time describing Gears 4 developer The Coalition going through “crunch,” the period of time when developers work extra long hours to meet a deadline.

What most players don’t realize is that voice actors also work under extreme conditions to ship a big budget game. They might not work as many hours, but at the end of the day they can often come home with headaches and sore throats, unable to do anything but lay down and rest.

“A lot of people think you're just talking into a mic, and that's not it"

At E3 2016, I had a chance to sit down with The Coalition studio head Rod Fergusson and the main voice actors in Gears 4: Liam McIntyre (the lead in Spartacus), John DiMaggio (Bender from Futurama), Laura Bailey (a prolific video game voice actress), and Eugene Byrd.

As DiMaggio explained it, most of what people think of as acting is not that dangerous. It’s lines of dialogue and exposition. Where things get hard is what Fergusson calls “combat chatter.”

If a game character gets hurt, jumps over a wall, or calls out for help, the voice actor will have to provide matching audio and throwaway lines, with multiple versions for each action, so the game doesn’t sound repetitive. Gears 4 is such a big game, with so many actions and variables, each actor has to dedicate hours of recording just to combat chatter. Unlike dialogue, it requires screaming and grunting and in general straining the vocal cords. According to Bailey, who has worked on a lot of video games, about half her time in the recording booth is dedicated to combat chatter.

“A lot of people think you're just talking into a mic, and that's not it,” DiMaggio said. “It's a lot of work.”

Crunch has been a big issue in the games industry since a much publicized EA_Spouse blog, in which the fiancée of an Electronic Arts programmer chronicled the impact crunch had on their lives. Harsh working conditions at the time eventually prompted a couple of lawsuits from EA employees, which ended in multi-million dollar settlements.

Fergusson, Bailey, and head of Xbox Phil Spencer getting ready for the Microsoft E3 2016 press conference. Image: Jason Lewis

Last year, video game voice actors tried to get similar recognition for their own harsh working conditions, without much success. The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) tried to organize a strike to fight back against cases where voice actors are overworked, as well as back-end bonuses that are common for movie actors. Though it got overwhelming support from SAG members, the union never followed through with the strike and is currently still negotiating for conditions that will prevent or pay for damage caused by stressful work in the recording booth.

“I don't think any actor in a booth should hurt themselves to do a job"

So far, voice actors haven’t been able to convince publishers and movie studios that they deserve the same treatment as, say, actors who do their own stunts.

DiMaggio has been voice acting for over 20 years, and if you’ve watched a cartoon during that time you’re probably familiar with his work. He shifts in and out of different voices and characters as he talks, but when this subject comes up he speaks seriously and to the point.

“I don't think any actor in a booth should hurt themselves to do a job, and I think that game companies need to realize it's not just talking into a mic,” DiMaggio said. “There's a lot more to it. They have to be conscious of it. You can't run people ragged. If they can't go any further and you have two hours left, that's something you're going to have to eat. You'll get it, don't worry, but there's only so much we can do.”

Since they don’t get many protections in their contracts, how much stress they experience in the recording booth changes from job to job. In Gears 4’s case, the voice actors said, it’s not bad.

Fergusson flies down to Los Angeles from The Coalition’s studio in Vancouver to direct recording sessions. Voice actors work in two four-hour sessions a day, but if they ever need a break during that time to rest and drink some tea, they can.

“With film acting you work really hard, but you have to wait for 20 minutes whether you like it or not because someone has to set up a light,” McIntyre said. “In the booth you can just go again, go again, go again, and repeat for four hours. In your head you think it's just talking. How hard can it be? But two hours in you're like, I can't speak anymore.”

For McIntyre, who’s new to voice acting, sometimes Fergusson will give him a break before he even needs one.

“If every director was as giving as Rod is with that, then this wouldn't even be an issue,” Bailey said. “It's the people who don't understand that actors they bring in aren't machines and can't just do everything that they ask.”

For now, voice actors either have to put up with tough working conditions, or skip the jobs where they don’t get treated well, which is not something many actors want to do. Depending on where they are in their careers, they might not have a choice. Before that can change, voice actors have to convince publishers that their work can take a real toll, but so far they haven’t had much luck.

“Everyone who thinks this is a bullshit argument that SAG-AFTRA is trying to put forth, I dare anybody to scream and yell for two hours,” DiMaggio said. “Tell me how you feel after those two hours. Add another two hours to that. That's a bad day. Your brain hurts.”

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from Video Game Voice Actors Crunch Too

​Letters to the Editor: Waze Politics and Very Expensive Bicycles

Greetings, loyal readers. It’s been a couple of weeks since we published one of these letters to the editor sections, but don’t worry. I’ve personally been busy finishing this feature on the making of big budget video games, but we never stopped looking through our inbox. We still love you.

And of course it’s always nice to see that the feeling is mutual. As always, we have some criticisms from readers to share this week, but we also got a lot of great feedback on our recent Luxury Week, where we delved into the secret lives of the rich. If you haven’t checked it out already, I highly suggest you do so now. We had stories about virtual reality real-estate, expensive salads, the Maserati of prosthetics, and more.

Much to my surprise, one of the items readers were most interested in was the expensive bicycle Motherboard editor-in-chief Derek Mead got to take for a spin, as you can see in the email below.

*

Re: Could a $9500 Bicycle Turn Me, a Sad Sack of Flesh, into a Superathlete?

Hello Derek,

That's a nice article! I wouldn't want to push such a fine piece of engineering to limits on the streets of New York City or any other packed metropolitan area in regular traffic. After all that's quite a wacky take on to exploring the finer arts of checking out really nice bicycles.

Whereas you might consider your level of fitness as modest, you could benefit from a neat trick. If you've discovered an inner urge to continue cycling you might want to shave your legs. Slow now, it might come across as an odd move, but shaved legs bring along a very different feel while wearing cycling gear.

That's the first thing that came to my mind when I saw that one picture depicting you in front of that blue shack all smiles and eager to keep on pushing.

Once you're back home, it's a lot easier to care of sore legs properly. Not to mention the effect it has on one's inner perception as a reputable cyclist in the making.

Never mind - that was a really nice read for a Saturday morning. I quite enjoyed it!

Have a nice day,

BV

*

10 more years of legs? And you're only 29? I beg to differ.

I have two Tarmacs, a Roubaix, and an Allez (aluminum Tarmac Jr.) and I'll be 71 years-old in December.

• Restored 2006 Tarmac SL (more aggressive S-Works 10R Carbon Frame). The components are a mixture of Ultegra and 105 (not the original S-Works).
• 2011 S-Works (custom build) Tarmac SL3, all Dura-Ace, 11R Carbon Frame.
• 2011 Roubaix SL3 Expert, all Ultegra, 10R Carbon Frame, I call this my "comfort road bike".
• 2005 Allez Sport, what I consider the pinnacle of aluminum road bikes at the time is was designed and built (love this bike).

(Oh, I also have a 2014 Recumbent Performer tadpole trike)

I ride about 20 miles every day (weather and health permitting) and generally end up with 5,000 miles a year. I started riding again when I was 68 years old.

I have a bike buddy (age 79) that just bought a 2017 S-Works Roubaix E-tap ($10,000). Why not, you can't take your money with you.

So you have many more years left in those legs, especially if you ride the Roubaix (the best selling bike in America) a lot.

Enjoyed your article. I'd give my left (censored) for an E-tap Tarmac. And/or the new Roubaix.

Keep the rubber side down.

-- R.L.

*

Re: The Italian Mob's Toxic Waste Dumping Is Giving People Cancer

I am absolutely shocked about this article and the research I've been reading. I stayed in Napoli for one month and I ate all the food and I'm sick to my stomach about it. I'm so angered!

I stayed in Accera. May you please tell me if they continue to dump toxic waste in the region and, if so, where is the safest place to live near the Napoli region?

Looking at the map here,it seems nowhere is truly safe.

Is there still toxic dumping? Are they removing the toxic waste?

Thanks,

Jehan

*

Hey Jehan,

I just got your message about the Italian mob dumping waste in the Naples region.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether this practice is still ongoing. I would suggest contacting the National Institute of Health, who conducted the study on the dumping, and ask them. They'll probably have a better idea re: the current status of the Camorra mob's waste racket. You can email them at: NIHinfo@od.nih.gov

Best,

Daniel Oberhaus, Motherboard Contributor

*

Re: How Ketamine Infusions Saved My Life

Hey Motherboard,

I just finished reading the article you published on one girl’s experience with drug addiction and specifically how ketamine treatments saved her life.

I too am a recovering drug addict, as well as someone who has suffered from and been treated for depression for most of my life. I am also from Orange County, where the author resides in treatment. Even though I have been drug and alcohol free for over 2 years, I still struggle with the depression. I am on medication which works somewhat, but I am greatly intrigued by the treatment this girl went through.

This whole email is basically to thank you for publishing the article and also to ask if there would be a way for me to get into contact with the author of the article. I would love to speak to her more in depth about the treatment and perhaps exchange stories, and show support with her new-ish journey in sobriety. Please let me know if this is possible, and what you think.

Sincerely,

Adam

*

Re: Waze Lets Israelis Avoid Palestinian Areas, but Not the Other Way Around

Hello,

It's a very nice headline to claim there is some kind of discrimination done by Waze.

The thing is, and it's a small thing for sure - the only reason an Israeli would need to avoid a Palestinian area is the plain and simple thing that if an Israeli would even enter such an area by mistake he will be almost for sure attacked and there have been so many of these attacks that ended in murder of Israelis (also families and children), that regretfully, it's a necessity to avoid them (which is also bad for the Arabs since it avoids interaction and commerce that can actually improve the situation and lead to real peace). On the other hand, there is no need for Arabs to avoid Israeli areas, because unless they attack, no one will harm them. This happens every day and this is something I saw personally . So this is why Waze doesn't really need to calculate a "safe route" for Arabs.

Just setting the facts straight.

With kind regards,

Tomer Abta

*

Hi Tomer,

Thanks for reading my story and for your response. I recognize the danger Israelis face when entering Palestinian areas and I attempted to convey that danger in the article, when I mentioned the Ramallah lynchings of 2000 and the Qalandiya incident from earlier this year when two IDF soldiers were viciously attacked when they mistakenly entered a refugee camp near Jerusalem.

I agree that in most cases, the danger to Jewish-Israelis in Palestinian areas is higher than it is for Palestinians who venture on to Jewish settlements.

However, your statement that "there is no need for Arabs to avoid Israeli areas, because unless they attack [an Israeli], no one will harm them" is not true. According to statistics from the United Nations, there were 89 Palestinian casualties last year due to violence perpetrated by Israeli settlers in the West Bank. That's a rate of about two per week. Three of those casualties were civilians, including an 18-month-old baby, who were burned to death in July 2015 when their house was firebombed by suspected Jewish settler-extremists known as the "hilltop youth." These people were in their own home, in their own community, likely asleep when their home was attacked.

Even in West Jerusalem it can be dangerous to be Palestinian. Last year, I witnessed an angry mob of Israelis from the extremist "Lehava" group march past my Jerusalem apartment chanting "death to Arabs." The Lehava organization has been known to attack Palestinians in the past, and I have Palestinian friends who avoid West Jerusalem after dark during periods of heightened tensions, such as the recent "knife intifada," because they don't feel safe there.

So I am not advocating that Waze remove its feature that allows Israelis to avoid Palestinian cities. I'm only saying: maybe Palestinians should have a similar option.

Thank you again for reading.

Hunter Stuart, Motherboard Contributor

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from ​Letters to the Editor: Waze Politics and Very Expensive Bicycles

How Buggy Is ‘Mafia III’ Right Now?

Publisher 2K’s big open-world video game Mafia III was released on Friday, and I’m not at all surprised that players are finding that it’s filled with bugs.

YouTube user CrowbCat has released a seven-minute video that details lots of these bugs, and when they’re put together into a supercut like this, it looks pretty bad.

What we have here is a collection of classic, highly embarrassing bugs you’ve probably seen before if you play a lot of video games: the player character falling through the game world, AI that doesn’t react appropriately, wacky physics and collisions, and objects spawning in hilariously wrong places.

At this point, it’s a little too soon to say just how technically flawed Mafia III is. The bugs in the video above fall into a few categories. Most of them seem like the kind of jank that’s impossible to smooth out completely and that you’ll find in any open-world game. Even mega hits like Fallout 4 are filled with bugs after multiple patches.

Mafia III is so big, and gives players such a degree of freedom, it is impossible—even for a giant publisher like 2K—to test the game enough to find and squash every single bug. There are simply too many moving pieces, and once it moves from a quality assurance team of dozens or even hundreds and gets into the hands of hundreds of thousands of players in a live environment, a lot of these bugs make their way to the surface very quickly.

Each isolated bug might not even be that big of a deal, but as The Coalition studio head Rod Fergusson told us in our feature about the making of Gears of War 4, in the age of YouTube and Twitch, bugs aren’t private anymore. Users like CrowbCat can cut them together quickly and share them with the world. Not that that’s a bad thing! A bug is a bug and the developer has to either let it slide or fix it. There’s no point in hiding them, even if it makes the game look worse than it is.

As funny as the bug supercut is, Mafia III also apparently suffers from some more serious stability issues. The game currently has an overall “mixed” rating on Steam based on more than 4,000 user reviews. A lot of them are complaining about design decisions (which are matters of taste) or the fact that the game is currently locked to 30 frames-per-second, but there are also quite a few who say the game crashes frequently.

Open-world jank is one thing. Some open-world games have more of it than others, but there was never a chance Mafia III wouldn’t show some of the seams we see in the video above. Hard crashes that make it unplayable is a different story. At that point you’re looking at what is effectively a defective product, and it could get to the point where a publisher has to pull the game from stores.

Motherboard has reached out to 2K for comment and will update this story when we hear back.

from How Buggy Is ‘Mafia III’ Right Now?

Hate Against ‘No Man’s Sky’ Is Finding New Lows in Games

To say that the much-hyped universe exploration game No Man’s Sky didn’t live up to players’ expectations is an understatement. Players thought they’d be able to explore an infinite universe filled with unique planets, but what they got is a procedurally generated game that feels more like 18 quintillion bowls of oatmeal. Disappointment has led fans to list every possible grievance they have against the game, as well as personally attack the game’s lead developer Sean Murray.

Today, however, the hate against No Man’s Sky reached a new low, with the community becoming so toxic a moderator of the game’s leading sub-Reddit, r/NoMansSkyTheGame decided to shut it down.

“It's become a hate filled wastehole of no actual discussion,” moderator R0ugeW0lf wrote. “It's not what we intended it to be and I don't like providing a platform for hate. I'm sorry to everyone who used the subreddit as intended but you are now in the majority.”

The subreddit was purged, but its admin returned to see the chaos it has wrought, dismissed the current moderators, unlocked the sub-Reddit, and enlisted a new team of mods.

Some leaked text and voice chats allegedly show that the sub-Reddit was not very well managed (and R0ugeW0lf has since nuked his Reddit and Twitter presence), so a change of the moderating guard might have been called for either way. But there’s no denying that the unreasonable hate that people have for No Man’s Sky is finding some strange new lows in the gaming community.

The sub-Reddit’s implosion follows a week in which enough complaints from players in the UK has prompted Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to investigate the game for false advertising, while other players outright called for Sean Murray’s arrest. I’m going to say this flat out in case you aren’t already hip to it: that is all absolutely ridiculous.

As we wrote around the time of the game’s release, Hello Games showed parts of the game that aren’t currently in the final product, but that is all too common with video game advertising. The difference is that, prior to release, No Man’s Sky captured the imagination of players in a way it could never live up to, which has in turn sparked a kind of indignant rage only a team of sociologists in the future will be able to fully unpack.

Like I said, the sub-Reddit is up and running again, and at the moment is mostly doing a lot of self reflection on what the hell went wrong. Here and there, there are some threads on cool planets and creatures that players have found. So perhaps burning it all to the ground and starting over again wasn’t such a bad move.

If all else fails, we’ll still always have the chill r/NoMansHigh.

from Hate Against ‘No Man’s Sky’ Is Finding New Lows in Games

AAA Game Development: A Glossary

This is part of Motherboard’s feature about the development of Gears of War 4. Follow along here.

The world of AAA game development is a mess of jargon from a variety of disciplines: software development, game design, business, public relations, and more.

This is a guide to some of the terms Motherboard used throughout our feature "Making a Big Budget Video Game Is Riskier and Harder Than Ever. So Why Do It?" in which we embedded with the development team behind Gears of War 4.

*

AAA game

Video games with the biggest development and marketing budgets in the industry. To be frank, "AAA" is not a great term because it sounds like a marketing term, implying that the game is of the highest quality, whatever that may be. Many games that cost a lot of money suck. In this story and in all instances the term "AAA" is used on Motherboard, it is shorthand for "a very expensive game on consoles or PCs that is using the latest and greatest technology and—the video game equivalent of a big, summer blockbuster movie."

Bug

A technical flaw in the build in any respect: sound, code, level design, etc.

Build

A complete or near complete version of software.

Cert

Certification. Each of the three console manufacturers—Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony—has a different certification process, meaning the company will test a developer's game to make sure it meets the platform's standards before it's published there. Usually this process takes two weeks.

Going Gold

If a game passes certification, it has "gone gold," meaning it's ready to be pressed on disc and shipped to stores or distributed digitally. The origin of the term isn't clear. Some say that it refers to the "gold masters," which are gold-based CD-Rs that don't degrade as quickly as other, cheaper CD-Rs. Others say it refers to the "golden master," on any format, that is duplicated to make more copies. Still others say that it comes from the music industry, where The Recording Industry Association of America awards a golden record to an artist who sells 500,000 units. Either way, the term always means that the game is ready for launch.

Jira

Workflow software The Coalition uses to track and address bugs.

QA

"Quality assurance." The division at The Coalition that tests Gears 4 and makes sure it meets the developer's standards.

RC

"Release candidate." A build of the game that a development team would consider sending to cert after testing. The first release candidate is named RC0 or RCLOL because there's no real chance it will come back from testing without finding more bugs. Subsequent RCs are labeled RC1, RC2, RC3, etc. An RC that "holds" through testing, meaning comes back with no new bugs or fixes that didn't work, will be sent to cert.

Repro

When QA testers find a bug, they will attempt to identify a reliable series of steps to reproduce it, which will help the triage team figure out what caused the bug and how to fix it.

RTM

"Release to manufacturing." The final build of the game that's on the disc, the one that has "gone gold."

Triage

The Coalition will have several "triage" meetings a day. These meetings include key staff from each division (art, tech, multiplayer, etc), who will decide if a bug is low priority or high priority and how to fix it.

Wnf

"Will not fix." This is how you would label a low priority bug that you don't plan to fix because it's too risky or not a smart use of resources. These bugs are sometimes known as "KS," meaning known, shippable bugs.

ZBR

"Zero bug release," the first build of the game with no known major bugs (excluding those labeled wnf).

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from AAA Game Development: A Glossary

Palmer Luckey Is Lying to Somebody

Oculus co-founder and VR pioneer Palmer Luckey issued a statement Friday night in response to a Daily Beast report revealing his involvement in a pro-Trump organization called Nimble America. He apologized, but also refuted details in The Daily Beast’s report. However, emails obtained by Motherboard show that Luckey didn’t tell the whole truth either to The Daily Beast reporters or in his Facebook statement about the extent of his involvement in the organization.

“I am deeply sorry that my actions are negatively impacting the perception of Oculus and its partners,” Luckey said in a Facebook post. “The recent news stories about me do not accurately represent my views.”

According to The Daily Beast, Luckey raised money for a pro-Donald Trump non-profit through a convoluted Reddit scheme. Luckey was named as the mysterious “NimbleRichMan,” a reddit poster funding the organization. NimbleRichMan and several r/The_Donald mods asked members of the subreddit to contribute, but they revolted, challenging the legitimacy of Nimble America. As Motherboard reported on Friday, Luckey’s Twitter activity has been sympathetic to the alt-right and the bigotry that defines it since March of this year.

Luckey’s Facebook post confirmed that he contributed $10,000 to Nimble America, but said he "did not write the 'NimbleRichMan' posts." He also said he did not found the organization, and that he does not plan to give the group any more money. Finally, he said he planned to vote for the libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson.

One of The Daily Beast reporters who wrote the story, Gideon Resnick, told Motherboard that Luckey isn’t telling the whole truth about not writing the NimbleRichMan posts, and emails shared with us confirm Resnick’s version of the story.

The emails show that Resnick directly asked if Luckey authored the post asking for donations, in which he said he “has supported Donald’s presidential ambitions for years,” and that Hillary Clinton is a “freedom-stripper. Not the good kind you see dancing in bikinis on independence day.” Luckey told Resnick that he did write the post “with guidance from the Nimble America guys.”

The exchange between Resnick and Luckey. Luckey’s email address has been blocked out. Image: Gideon Resnick.

"A generous understanding of the situation is that in other instances, besides the donation one, he was given a password and used the account occasionally,” Resnick told me over Twitter. “So is there wiggle room in the sense that it's not clear if he wrote each and every post? Perhaps. But he's not telling the whole truth in terms of his involvement."

“Still, my actions were my own and do not represent Oculus,” Luckey said in his Facebook statement. “I’m sorry for the impact my actions are having on the community.”

Luckey’s statement implies The Daily Beast story, r/The_Donald, other members of Nimble America, or all of the above have misrepresented his role in this controversy.

However, the post doesn’t help explain his alt-right leaning Twitter activity, or liking many of the pro-Trump tweets from his girlfriend Nikki Moxxi, who deleted her Twitter presence yesterday. Also note that Luckey is “deeply sorry” that this controversy has negatively impacted Oculus itself in light of the backlash from the VR development community—not the people who have been the subject of r/The_Donald’s racism, misogyny, homophobia, and Islamophobia.

Palmer posted the apology from his personal Facebook page; Facebook itself (which acquired Oculus for $2 billion in 2014) has yet to make an official comment.

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VR Devs Pull Support for Oculus Rift Until Palmer Luckey Steps Down

Several virtual reality game developers have announced that they will stop supporting Facebook’s Oculus Rift VR headset until its founder Palmer Luckey steps down.

Developers announced that they will stop supporting the Oculus Rift after The Daily Beast revealed that Luckey raised money for a pro-Donald Trump non-profit through a convoluted Reddit scheme. As Motherboard reported on Friday, Luckey’s Twitter activity has been sympathetic to the alt-right and the bigotry that defines it since March of this year.

"Insomniac Games condemns all forms of hate speech," Insomniac Games, makers of big-budget console games like Ratchet & Clank and one of the biggest developers making games for Oculus, told Motherboard. "While everyone has a right to express his or her political opinion, the behavior and sentiments reported do not reflect the values of our company. We are also confident that this behavior and sentiment does not reflect the values of the many Oculus employees we work with on a daily basis."

SUPERHYPERCUBE will not be supporting Oculus. Polytron September 23, 2016

Hey Tomorrow Today Labs September 23, 2016

"In a political climate as fragile and horrifying as this one, we cannot tacitly endorse these actions by supporting Luckey or his platform," Fez and Superhypercube developer Polytron said in a statement.

These are small developers even by the standards of the VR development scene, that for the most part is still populated by small, independent teams as opposed to big-budget game studio backed by major publishers.

Motherboard has reached out to several other, more well-known VR developers who work with Oculus including Fantastic Contraption makers Northway Games and Job Simulator makers Owlchemy Labs. Northway Games couldn’t be reached immediately for comment but tweeted the following:

Definitely using every fibre of my “professionalism” to not tweet some tweets right now.

ColinNorthway September 23, 2016

Owlchemy Labs, which is currently developing for Job Simulator for the Oculus Touch controls, declined to comment either way.

E McNeill, who has developed couple of games for Oculus Rift and GearVR, suggested that like-minded VR developers raise money for Hillary Clinton’s campaign to counter the money Luckey has raised for Trump.

Idle Q: Would any Oculus devs join me in a donation drive for Hillary? We could aim to beat Nimble America

E McNeill September 23, 2016

“I've had a great experience working with Oculus over the years (including working with a lot of good people), and I like the products that they've built,” McNeill told me over Twitter. “I don't think I'm going to boycott the company based on the politics of its founder. I'll keep working with them. But this sure as hell doesn't make me feel better about it.”

"This backlash is nonsense," said James Green, co-founder of VR developer Carbon Games. "I absolutely support him doing whatever he wants politically if it's legal. To take any other position is against American values."

My understanding from talking to people in the VR space is that many knew Luckey’s political leanings (mostly through his girlfriend’s pro-Trump, pro-GamerGate Twitter presence), but not the extent to which he supported the alt-right.

The decision to drop support for the Oculus Rift comes at a critical time for the platform. If VR really is the media of the future as evangelists like Luckey claim it is, we are currently in the landgrab phase. The major platforms in this race are Facebook’s Oculus Rift, Sony’s PlayStation VR, Google’s Daydream, and Valve and HTC’s Vive.

Since games are still the primary attraction for early VR adopters, and since the greatest challenge for all VR platforms is securing enough content to make them worth buying, losing support from game developers could seriously damage Oculus.

Oculus has invested a lot of money and effort to encourage developers to make games for the Rift. The company has even gone as far as to secure exclusive games and prevent them from being ported to other platform with DRM, though it rolled back its DRM after an outcry from the community.

Update: This story has been updated with quotes from E McNeill and James Green.

Update 2: This story has been updated to show that Fez and Superhypercube developer Polytron will not support the Oculus Rift in light of the Palmer Luckey's support of Donald Trump.

Correction: Two tweets originally included in this story were removed because those developers didn't have VR games in development. They were joking. We regret the error.

from VR Devs Pull Support for Oculus Rift Until Palmer Luckey Steps Down