We were so close to finally drifting on the cobblestone streets of Yharnam, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for Bloodborne Kart. And, it’ll be called something else when it does arrive. Lilith Walther, the developer behind the project, said the team has to “scrub the branding” off of the game and delay its release after Sony intervened. It was supposed to be released on January 31 for PC. The outcome isn’t exactly surprising, but it means the game will take shape a bit differently than planned — in a thread posted on X, Walther said, “This is a fan game no more!”
Bloodborne Kart, a retro-style racing game that started out as a meme, has generated a ton of support from fans who have been yearning for new Bloodborne content. In response to the latest development, many have joked that the whole saga has forced Sony, which owns the IP, to actually acknowledge the title for the first time in years. Walther previously released a free Bloodborne “demake” in the style of a PS1 game.
“So Sony contacted us,” Walther wrote in an update on Friday. “Long story short, we need to scrub the branding off of what was previously known as Bloodborne Kart. We will do this, but that requires a short delay. Don't worry, the game is still coming out! It'll just look slightly different.”
The developers planned to feature 12 racers styled after familiar Bloodborne characters, including The Hunter and The Doll from the Hunter’s Dream, with single-player and multiplayer modes. There were to be 16 maps and boss fights, so you could race against the likes of Father Gascoigne. It really sucks that they won’t be able to follow through with the original idea, because it looked awesome, but I have no doubt they’ll spin it into something equally great.
“We were honestly expecting something like this to happen and the idea of having full creative control is kind of exciting!” Walther wrote. There's no new release date just yet, but in the meantime, you can rewatch the Bloodborne Kart trailer on a loop and dream of what we almost had.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fan-made-bloodborne-kart-catches-heat-from-sony-forcing-developers-to-shift-gears-183652390.html?src=rss
We were so close to finally drifting on the cobblestone streets of Yharnam, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer for Bloodborne Kart. And, it’ll be called something else when it does arrive. Lilith Walther, the developer behind the project, said the team has to “scrub the branding” off of the game and delay its release after Sony intervened. It was supposed to be released on January 31 for PC. The outcome isn’t exactly surprising, but it means the game will take shape a bit differently than planned — in a thread posted on X, Walther said, “This is a fan game no more!”
Bloodborne Kart, a retro-style racing game that started out as a meme, has generated a ton of support from fans who have been yearning for new Bloodborne content. In response to the latest development, many have joked that the whole saga has forced Sony, which owns the IP, to actually acknowledge the title for the first time in years. Walther previously released a free Bloodborne “demake” in the style of a PS1 game.
“So Sony contacted us,” Walther wrote in an update on Friday. “Long story short, we need to scrub the branding off of what was previously known as Bloodborne Kart. We will do this, but that requires a short delay. Don't worry, the game is still coming out! It'll just look slightly different.”
The developers planned to feature 12 racers styled after familiar Bloodborne characters, including The Hunter and The Doll from the Hunter’s Dream, with single-player and multiplayer modes. There were to be 16 maps and boss fights, so you could race against the likes of Father Gascoigne. It really sucks that they won’t be able to follow through with the original idea, because it looked awesome, but I have no doubt they’ll spin it into something equally great.
“We were honestly expecting something like this to happen and the idea of having full creative control is kind of exciting!” Walther wrote. There's no new release date just yet, but in the meantime, you can rewatch the Bloodborne Kart trailer on a loop and dream of what we almost had.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/fan-made-bloodborne-kart-catches-heat-from-sony-forcing-developers-to-shift-gears-183652390.html?src=rss
Note: This review was originally published during Sundance 2024. We're reposting it because Seeking Mavis Beacon is now out in theaters.
With a healthy dose of heart and whimsy, the Sundance documentary Seeking Mavis Beacon follows two young Black women who are devoted to finding the original model for Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. If you touched a computer during the '80s or '90s, there's a good chance that Mavis helped you get comfortable with a keyboard. Or at the very least, you might remember her from the program's original 1987 cover: a smiling, elegant Black woman dressed in a cream-colored outfit. She embodied style and professional poise — it was as if you could be just as capable as her if you bought that program.
It's no spoiler to say that "Mavis Beacon" didn't really exist – she was a marketing idea crafted by a group of white dudes from Silicon Valley. But the program's cover star was real: Her name was Renee L'Esperance, a Haitian model who was discovered while working at Saks Fifth Avenue in Los Angeles. After her image helped make Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing a success, she retreated from the spotlight, reportedly heading back to retire in the Caribbean.
Seeking Mavis Beacon
The documentary's director and writer, Jazmin Jones, as well as her collaborator, Olivia McKayla Ross, start with those basic details and set out to find L'Esperance like a pair of digital detectives. From a home base in a rundown Bay Area office – surrounded by tech ephemera, a variety of art pieces and images of influential black women – they lay out L'Esperance's reported timeline, follow leads and even host a spiritual ceremony to try and connect with the model.
I won't say if the pair actually end up finding L'Esperance because it's the journey that makes Seeking Mavis Beacon such a joy to watch. Jones and Ross both grew up with the typing program and felt a kinship toward the character of Mavis Beacon. It was the first program to prominently feature a Black woman on the cover (a move that reportedly caused some suppliers to cut their orders), so it made the technology world seem like somewhere young Black women could actually fit in. Beacon's digital hands also appear on-screen, as if she's gently guiding your fingers to the correct letters and positioning.
To help uncover more details about the whereabouts of Mavis Beacon, Jones and Ross set up a hotline and website for anyone to submit clues. Some of those calls are featured in the film, and they make it clear that her digital presence inspired many people. The film opens with references to Beacon throughout culture, including one of my favorite bits from Abbott Elementary, where Quinta Brunson's over-achieving teacher is far too excited to spot the typing icon in a school crowd. I was reminded of my own childhood experience with Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, spending free periods at school and idle time at home trying to get my typing speed up. By middle school, typing felt as natural as breathing. And yes, I would also have freaked out if I saw the real Beacon in person.
While the documentary doesn't seem out of place at Sundance, which is known for innovative projects, it also sometimes feels like a piece of experimental media meant for YouTube or an art show filled with impossibly cool twenty-somethings. (At one point, Ross attends a farewell ceremony for one of her friends' dead laptops, which was hosted in an art space filled with people dressed in white. That's the sort of hip weirdness that will either turn you off of this film, or endear you to it more.)
Yeleen Cohen
Jones shows us screen recordings of her own desktop, where she may be watching a TikTok alongside her notes. Instead of a full-screen video chat with another person, sometimes we just see a FaceTime window (and occasionally that reflects Jones' own image looking at the screen). Finding Mavis Beacon tells its story in a way that digital natives will find natural, without locking itself exclusively into screens like the film Searching.
As is true for many first features, the film could use some narrative tightening. Jones and Ross's investigation stalls at several points, and we're often just left adrift as they ponder their next steps. The pair also occasionally appear too close to the story, or at least, that's how it seems when we see Jones tearing up while pleading to meet with L'Esperance.
But I'd argue that's also part of the charm of Seeking Mavis Beacon. Jones and Ross aren't some true crime podcast hosts looking to create content out of controversy. They're young women who found comfort in one of the few faces in tech that looked like them. With this film, Jones and Ross could be similarly inspirational for a new generation of underrepresented techies.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/seeking-mavis-beacon-review-sundance-documentary-140049830.html?src=rss
Instagram is testing yet another feature meant to give users an alternative to finstas. It’s called “flipside” and it allows people to create a secondary photo grid that only designated friends can see.
If that sounds somewhat familiar it’s probably because Instagram already makes it pretty easy for users to create posts intended for a more limited audience. The app added the ability for users to share grid posts with “close friends” back in November (Stories for close friends has been a thing since 2018). More recently, it tested audience lists for Stories, so users could create multiple lists for small-group sharing. The app, of course, also makes it fairly easy to create an actual finsta.
Flipside, somewhat confusingly, offers yet another way of doing essentially the same thing. Users create a separate list of friends, distinct from “close friends,” to add to their “flipside.” They can then choose to post to their main grid or to their “flipside,” which is also accessible from their profile but only visible to the aforementioned list of friends. People will know if they have access to someone’s flipside if they see a key icon in someone’s grid, according to screenshots shared on Threads. (You can see a video of it in action over on Threads.)
Apparently, even Instagram head Adam Mosseri realizes this is all a bit redundant. “On one hand it feels good to create a clear space that feels more private,” he wrote in a post on Threads. “On the other, it's yet another way to reach a smaller audience on top of secondary accounts and Close Friends.”
He added that “we're not even sure we'll launch it,” which might explain why the company has been relatively quiet about the test. Flipside was first spotted back in December but was an internal prototype at the time, according toTechCrunch. However, it's now started to appear for actual users, with a number of reports of it appearing on Threads over the last day.
Early reactions seem to be mixed, with some enthusiasm for the update and some wondering why on earth they need yet another social media profile to maintain. Others seem to be, understandably, confused.
While finstas have (sometimes hilariously) been maligned, Meta’s recent obsession with creating “more private” spaces on Instagram is likely about more than simply adding convenience. Mosseri has noted many times over the last couple years that Instagram users simply aren’t posting as much as they used to, especially in their feeds. For an app that relies on advertising — much of it in users’ feeds — that’s less than ideal. So it’s not all that surprising Instagram would be looking for new ways to get people to spend more time posting to and scrolling their feeds.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/instagram-is-testing-flipside-a-finsta-feature-that-already-kind-of-exists-215905150.html?src=rss
Cities: Skylines II developer Colossal Order has a uniquely close relationship with its community. The original Cities: Skylines came out in 2015 and gobbled up the audience that was left behind by EA’s SimCity, which came out in 2013 and was a busted mess. Cities: Skylines scratched that urban-planning itch, plus it cost just $30. The game came first to PC, Mac and Linux with modest hardware requirements, and it hit consoles within two years. Critically, Cities: Skylines also supported mods through the Steam Workshop, allowing players to add their own tools to the game and share those features with others.
“With Cities: Skylines, the audience grew in size and the modding took even a bigger role, allowing for a huge amount of creativity and inspiration for us devs,” Colossal Order CEO Mariina Hallikainen told Engadget. “Anything from quality-of-life improvements to ideas for DLC content, we have gathered a huge amount of information to help us create the game that Cities: Skylines is today.”
Colossal Order and its publisher, Paradox Interactive, continued to support Cities: Skylines with consistent game updates and DLC drops, and its mod community continued to grow. The game picked up a ton of new players during the pandemic in 2020, and around that time, a number of now-prominent content creators leaned into Cities: Skylines for streams and videos.
In the months before the launch of Cities: Skylines II in October 2023, Colossal Order partnered with a handful of content creators and gave them access to bits of the game early, so they could create YouTube videos showing off specific features each week. These partners included Biffa, two dollars twenty, YUMBL, Infrastructurist and City Planner Plays. City Planner Plays has a clever edge in this space — Philip, the man behind the builds, worked as an urban planner for more than a decade, and his videos often include insights about how real-life cities are designed. He started his channel in mid-2020, and today he’s a dedicatedCities: Skylines streamer and video editor with nearly 650,000 subscribers on YouTube. Like many other community members, he has a history with Colossal Order that spans years.
“Prior to the Cities: Skylines II release, I think that most everyone in the community viewed them incredibly positively, looking at them as ‘one of us’ and the type of developer that you want making a game that you love,” Philip said. “They were viewed as responsive and generous. …I can’t recall a bad thing being said about them.”
“We have seen a growing tendency of toxicity in our community, something we have not experienced to this extent before,” Hallikainen wrote, clarifying that the negativity was being directed at developers and players alike. She continued, “We have always treasured having the devs present on the different social platforms and having direct communication with the community, but our biggest responsibility will always be protecting the team.”
Tensions have been high in the Cities: Skylines community since the launch of the sequel in October. Though the game was originally pitched as a simultaneous PC and console release, it’s only available on PC and there’s no concrete timeline for when the other versions will come out. On top of that, Colossal Order raised the game’s minimum and recommended specs just a month before release, and the new requirements placed it out of reach for a large chunk of players.
Colossal Order
Even with a capable rig, the game is riddled with visual and mechanical bugs. Philip said Cities: Skylines II strained his RTX 4090 graphics card, making it run at 100 percent on the main menu, and he couldn’t play in 4K at launch because the game was so GPU-bound.
Simply put, it feels like the game needed more time in development.
“Since the launch of Cities: Skylines II, things have without a doubt gotten more prickly,” Philip said. “While many people have been appreciative of Colossal Order’s transparency with the weekly updates as well as the frequent bug fixes, many appear to view Colossal Order as being all-too-willing to release a game that wasn’t ready to be released.”
Hallikainen acknowledged that the game is missing some promised and highly publicized features, like mod support.
“Naturally we’re disappointed we weren’t able to achieve everything we aimed for, but it’s fantastic to have the game finally out and continue working on it with more openness,” she said.
The issue, as far as Colossal Order sees it, lies in the community’s response to Cities: Skylines II. Players have been venting on social media and in the Steam and Paradox forums, and the feedback has risen to toxic levels, according to Hallikainen. She cites a surge in personal attacks on developers and other players.
Colossal Order
“Cities: Skylines II attracted a lot of attention and very high expectations were set,” she said. “When the game did not fulfill all the promises, it was natural to cause frustration in the audience. However, the shortcomings should spark a conversation on ideas for improvement, constructive feedback and respectful discussions in the community.”
For City Planner Plays and other community members, the issue is the game itself. Where Colossal Order sees toxicity, Philip sees justified frustration.
“I will admit that I was taken aback by this description of what’s happening in the Cities: Skylines community regarding Cities: Skylines II,” he said. “I have noticed increased negativity. However, I wouldn’t say that I have noticed increased toxicity. And bluntly, I think the negativity is completely understandable and predictable.”
Philip identified four factors driving the negative sentiment: The game is only on PC, it’s buggy and unplayable on many common hardware configurations, there’s no official support for mods, and Colossal Order hasn’t held itself accountable for the game’s blunders.
“Colossal Order has been transparent, talking with the community, but has not taken accountability for the release of the game,” Philip said. “I hear this over and over again. Many players appear to want them to admit that the release state of the game was poor, say that they are sorry, and make some gesture to make amends. To date, they have delayed the DLC release — which actually was a huge negative for people that purchased the Ultimate Edition of the game — but not made amends. [They haven’t] provided the information that people are looking for.”
Colossal Order
The biggest misstep on Philip's list is the lack of mods. Colossal Order is planning to add an official pipeline for mods directly through Paradox, rather than Steam Workshop, which was the home for mods in Cities: Skylines. Shifting to an in-house modding platform will ensure parity across all platforms, bringing mods to consoles and players outside of Steam. However, the Cities: Skylines mod community was built on Steam Workshop, a popular and easy-to-use platform, and with the delay of the console release, the current player base is simply being inconvenienced.
“The maps that come with the game aren’t great — incredibly high difficulty level, unforgiving weather — and many basic features need refinement,” Philip said. “Mods offered that opportunity and they aren’t available just yet. Worst of all, early messaging made it seem like modding was around the corner, weeks after launch, [but it’s been delayed] to some undetermined time in Q2 of 2024.”
Collaboration with the community is what made the original game so successful, and the sequel could certainly benefit from crowdsourced improvements. For now, some players are using a third-party tool to make mods work in Cities: Skylines II.
“The tech is new, the simulation has been entirely rewritten and the game has all the potential to become the city-builder of this decade,” Hallikainen said. “What we failed in was to get the modding support available for the release, and we’re doing our best to catch up. We have been delighted to see the modding community has not waited for us, but are already creating amazing mods for the game.”
Paradox Interactive
This is only the beginning for Cities: Skylines II. Colossal Order has plans to support and expand the game over the next 10 years. The original Cities: Skylines didn’t have all of the bells, whistles and mods when it first came out in 2015, and the sequel is starting in a similar position. Colossal Order sees Cities: Skylines II as a fresh foundation, but its core community expected a more complete experience.
“The feedback we’ve gotten from the content creators and modders has immensely helped us in heading in the right direction, and we love working in cooperation with different parties,” Hallikainen said. “There’s a lot of work to be done and we plan to keep going for the next decade.”
Cities: Skylines II has improved significantly in the months since launch, thanks to a slew of updates from Colossal Order. It’s on the right track. Colossal Order continues to publish updates on the game’s progress each week, but it’ll take time — and maybe an apology, a plan and free in-game perks — to rewrite the narrative around Cities: Skylines II.
“I think the most ‘toxic’ people right now are the game’s biggest fans,” Philip said. “And bluntly, they are just disappointed that the game doesn’t run well for them or that they can’t play it at all. They’re disappointed and lashing out, which isn’t right. But to me, that means that there is a path to repair the issues if the game is fully fixed and accountability is taken.”
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/whats-up-with-the-toxicity-around-cities-skylines-ii-213034938.html?src=rss
To the surprise of just about everyone — seemingly including the studio behind it — virtual reality game Ultrawings 2 has hit PlayStation VR2 earlier than expected. Developer Bit Planet Games wrote on X that "shadow dropping Ultrawings 2 on PS VR2 today was not on our 2024 bingo card but, well, here we are." (A shadow drop refers to a surprise release of a product as soon as it's announced, like Hi-Fi Rush.)
It's unclear exactly how Ultrawings 2, which debuted on Steam and Meta Quest in 2022, arrived on PS VR2 ahead of schedule. Bit Planet had wanted to bring the aerial adventure title to that platform by the end of 2023 but was unable to. It instead promised to release Ultrawings 2 on PS VR2 early this year. On January 9, Bit Planet noted it had started the submission process.
Nevertheless, the studio says the PS VR2 debut was "unforeseen." While the developers say the current version of the game has some "relatively minor issues," those have been resolved and were planned to be fixed in a day-one patch. That's more likely to be a day-five update, but the studio saidUltrawings 2 is "solid" as is.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ultrawings-2-hits-ps-vr2-early-and-even-the-developer-was-surprised-173918655.html?src=rss
A woman has a text chat with her long-dead lover. A family gets to hear a deceased elder speak again. A mother gets another chance to say goodbye to her child, who died suddenly, via a digital facsimile. This isn't a preview of the next season of Black Mirror — these are all true stories from the Sundance documentary Eternal You, a fascinating and frightening dive into tech companies using AI to digitally resurrect the dead.
It's yet another way modern AI, which includes large language models like ChatGPT and similar bespoke solutions, has the potential to transform society. And as Eternal You shows, the AI afterlife industry is already having a profound effect on its early users.
The film opens on a woman having a late night text chat with a friend: "I can't believe I'm trying this, how are you?" she asks, as if she's using the internet for the first time. "I'm okay. I'm working, I'm living. I'm... scared," her friend replies. When she asks why, they reply, "I'm not used to being dead."
Beetz Brothers Film Production
It turns out the woman, Christi Angel, is using the AI service Project December to chat with a simulation of her first love, who died many years ago. Angel is clearly intrigued by the technology, but as a devout Christian, she's also a bit spooked out by the prospect of raising the dead. The AI system eventually gives her some reasons to be concerned: Cameroun reveals that he's not in heaven, as she assumes. He's in hell.
"You're not in hell," she writes back. "I am in hell," the AI chatbot insists. The digital Cameroun says he's in a "dark and lonely" place, his only companions are "mostly addicts." The chatbot goes on to say he's currently haunting a treatment center and later suggests "I'll haunt you." That was enough to scare Angel and question why she was using this service in the first place.
While Angel was aware she was talking to a digital recreation of Cameroun, which was based on the information she provided to Project December, she interacted with the chatbot as if she was actually chatting with him on another plane of existence. That's a situation that many users of AI resurrection services will likely encounter: Rationality can easily overwhelm your emotional response while "speaking" with a dead loved one, even if the conversation is just occurring over text.
In the film, MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle suggests that our current understanding of how AI affects people is similar to our relationship with social media over a decade ago. That makes it a good time to ask questions about the human values and purposes it's serving, she says. If we had a clearer understanding of social media early on, maybe we could have pushed Facebook and Twitter to confront misinformation and online abuse more seriously. (Perhaps the 2016 election would have looked very different if we were aware of how other countries could weaponize social media.)
Beetz Brothers Film Production
Eternal You also introduces us to Joshua Barbeau, a freelance writer who became a bit of an online celebrity in 2021 when The San Francisco Chronicle reported on his Project December chatbot: a digital version of his ex-fiancee Jessica. At first, he used Project December to chat with pre-built bots, but he eventually realized he could use the underlying technology (GPT-3, at the time) to create one with Jessica's personality. Their conversations look natural and clearly comfort Barbeau. But we're still left wondering if chatting with a facsimile of his dead fiancee is actually helping Barbeau to process his grief. It could just as easily be seen as a crutch that he feels compelled to pay for.
It's also easy to be cynical about these tools, given what we see from their creators in the film. We meet Jason Rohrer, the founder and Project December and a former indie game designer, who comes across as a typical techno-libertarian.
"I believe in personal responsibility," he says, after also saying that he's not exactly in control of the AI models behind Project December, and right before we see him nearly crash a drone into his co-founders face. "I believe that consenting adults can use that technology however they want and they're responsible for the results of whatever they're doing. It's not my job as the creator of the technology to prevent the technology from being released, because I'm afraid of what somebody might do with it."
But, as MIT's Turkle points out, reanimating the dead via AI introduces moral questions that engineers like Rohrer likely aren't considering. "You're dealing with something much more profound in the human spirit," she says. "Once something is constituted enough that you can project onto it, this life force. It's our desire to animate the world, which is human, which is part of our beauty. But we have to worry about it, we have to keep it in check. Because I think it's leading us down a dangerous path."
Beetz Brothers Film Production
Another service, Hereafter.ai, lets users record stories to create a digital avatar of themselves, which family members can talk to now or after they die. One woman was eager to hear her father's voice again, but when she presented the avatar to her family the reaction was mixed. Younger folks seemed intrigue, but the older generation didn't want any part of it. "I fear that sometimes we can go too far with technology," her father's sister said. "I would just love to remember him as a person who was wonderful. I don't want my brother to appear to me. I'm satisfied knowing he's at peace, he's happy, and he's enjoying the other brothers, his mother and father."
YOV, an AI company that also focuses on personal avatars, or "Versonas," wants people to have seamless communication with their dead relatives across multiple channels. But, like all of these other digital afterlife companies, it runs into the same moral dilemmas. Is it ethical to digitally resurrect someone, especially if they didn't agree to it? Is the illusion of speaking to the dead more helpful or harmful for those left behind?
The most troubling sequence in Eternal You focuses on a South Korean mother, Jang Ji-sun, who lost her young child and remains wracked with guilt about not being able to say goodbye. She ended up being the central subject in a VR documentary, Meeting You, which was broadcast in South Korea in early 2020. She went far beyond a mere text chat: Jang donned a VR headset and confronted a startlingly realistic model of her child in virtual reality. The encounter was clearly moving for Jang, and the documentary received plenty of media attention at the time.
"There's a line between the world of the living and the world of the dead," said Kim Jong-woo, the producer behind Meeting You. "By line, I mean the fact that the dead can't come back to life. But people saw the experience as crossing that line. After all, I created an experience in which the beloved seemed to have returned. Have I made some huge mistake? Have I broken the principle of humankind? I don't know... maybe to some extent."
Eternal You paints a haunting portrait of an industry that's already revving up to capitalize on grief-stricken people. That's not exactly new; psychics and people claiming to speak to the dead have been around for our entire civilization. But through AI, we now have the ability to reanimate those lost souls. While that might be helpful for some, we're clearly not ready for a world where AI resurrection is commonplace.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/sundance-documentary-eternal-you-shows-how-ai-companies-are-resurrecting-the-dead-153025316.html?src=rss
Catching up on a new podcast should get easier very soon. Apple has announced that it will automatically transcribe podcasts, which should allow more people to enjoy episodes. Apple Podcast will allow creators to upload their own transcript for display or opt for Apple to create one.
There are some caveats to be aware of, though. Apple Podcasts should start creating the transcription when the episode is uploaded. However, it has a "short delay" until it's available, so people eager to play their favorite podcast right away will have to wait for an unspecified amount of time (Apple tells podcasters to give it at least 24 hours after uploading an episode). It's likely that the longer the episode is, the longer the transcription will take to be ready. The transcription will also not update if parts of the recording are changed with dynamically inserted audio, and it won't display music lyrics.
Podcasters must follow Apple's quality requirements for their episodes to get correctly transcribed. According to Apple, podcasts with people talking over each other or music might not have as good a transcription. If someone chooses to upload their own, it must be a VTT or SRT file. A podcaster can also edit a transcription for greater accuracy.
Apple Podcasts' transcriptions should launch in the spring on iOS 17.4 in English, German, Spanish and French. The feature is available in over 170 countries and regions, with older episodes getting transcribed over time.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apple-podcasts-will-automatically-generate-transcripts-in-ios-174-091040750.html?src=rss
The Last of Us Part II Remasteredarrived last week, and if the cutscene commentary from the game's director, writer and key actors wasn't enough for you, Naughty Dog has another behind the scenes piece coming. Grounded II: Making The Last Of Us Part II, a documentary on the game's creation, will arrive on February 2 at 12PM ET on YouTube as well as in the game itself. There's a trailer in the remastered game currently, and the full documentary will be added via a downloadable patch. That patch will also have some new skins for Ellie and Abby in the main game.
The development of The Last of Us Part II was challenging, to say the least —Naughty Dog infamously crunched its employees to get the game done, but it was still delayed multiple times. Plus, key scenes from the game that contained extensive spoilers were leaked just a few weeks before the game launched, and the team also had to content with the Covid-19 outbreak while finishing everything up.
Judging from the Grounded II trailer that Naughty Dog released a few weeks ago, it looks like all those topics and more will be added in the documentary — though I wager Naughty Dog will only address the crunch situation in a way that doesn't reflect badly on the studio or Sony. That caveat aside, the previous Grounded documentary that covered the development of the original The Last of Us for the PS3 was a pretty in-depth look at how things work inside a game studio. So while we're certainly going to get a sanitized version of the truth, fans of the game will likely be interested to hear directly how the studio decided to make the controversial narrative choices it did, and how the fallout from the leaks affected the game's launch.
Grounded II: Making The Last of Us Part II is coming on February 2!
You'll be able to watch this documentary on YouTube and as part of an upcoming downloadable patch for #TLOU2Remastered. The update also includes additional new skins for Ellie and Abby! pic.twitter.com/kcWG2YVI6l
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/naughty-dogs-behind-the-scenes-documentary-on-the-last-of-us-part-2-arrives-february-2-184556009.html?src=rss
We're not even one month into 2024 and it's already been another brutal year for workers in the video game industry. Microsoft is the latest company to announce a major round of layoffs in its gaming division as it's cutting around 1,900 workers from its Xbox, Activision Blizzard and ZeniMax (aka Bethesda) teams. That brings the total number of video game layoffs this year to around 6,000 already. There were around 9,000 layoffs in the industry in all of 2023, according to some estimates.
"As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we’ve set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the best opportunities for growth," Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer told employees in a memo obtained by The Verge. "As part of this process, we have made the painful decision to reduce the size of our gaming workforce by approximately 1,900 roles out of the 22,000 people on our team."
The majority of the cuts are said to be within Activision Blizzard, three months after Microsoft finally closed its $68.7 billion takeover of the publisher. Some positions on the Xbox and ZeniMax teams will be affected too. The cuts equate to around eight percent of Microsoft's gaming division.
"The people who are directly impacted by these reductions have all played an important part in the success of Activision Blizzard, ZeniMax and the Xbox teams, and they should be proud of everything they’ve accomplished here," Spencer wrote. "We are grateful for all of the creativity, passion and dedication they have brought to our games, our players and our colleagues. We will provide our full support to those who are impacted during the transition, including severance benefits informed by local employment laws."
Spencer added that Microsoft will "continue to invest in areas that will grow our business and support our strategy of bringing more games to more players around the world. Although this is a difficult moment for our team, I’m as confident as ever in your ability to create and nurture the games, stories and worlds that bring players together."
Xbox confirmed to Engadget that Spencer sent this memo to Microsoft employees on Thursday morning.
Among those leaving the company is Blizzard president Mike Ybarra, who is exiting of his own accord. "I want to thank everyone who is impacted today for their meaningful contributions to their teams, to Blizzard, and to players’ lives. It’s an incredibly hard day and my energy and support will be focused on all those amazing individuals impacted — this is in no way a reflection on your amazing work," Ybarra wrote on X.
"To the Blizzard community: I also want to let you all know today is my last day at Blizzard. Leading Blizzard through an incredible time and being part of the team, shaping it for the future ahead, was an absolute honor," Ybarra continued. "Having already spent 20+ years at Microsoft and with the acquisition of Activision Blizzard behind us, it’s time for me to (once again) become Blizzard’s biggest fan from the outside." Microsoft’s game content and studios president Matt Booty told staff that the company plans to appoint a new Blizzard president next week.
I want to thank everyone who is impacted today for their meaningful contributions to their teams, to Blizzard, and to players’ lives. It’s an incredibly hard day and my energy and support will be focused on all those amazing individuals impacted – this is in no way a reflection…
The layoffs included most of those remaining in Activision Blizzard's esports organization, according to reports. The publisher previously let go around 50 esports staffers last summer ahead of a reorganization of the Overwatch competitive circuit — Blizzard has outsourced operations of the new Overwatch Champions Series to ESL FACEIT Group. This round of layoffs included Call of Duty League and Overwatch League broadcast staff, onscreentalent and observers (folks who keep an eye on the action to make sure the broadcast team is catching the biggest plays).
“Our esports business is not going away, but we’re being thoughtful about how to evolve to better deliver for our players and fans. With a continued commitment to competitive esports, we have landed on a model that more closely aligns with our game franchises," Activision Blizzard told GamesBeat. "We’re not stopping esports, instead, we are adapting to a new business model to better serve the community. The people who are directly impacted have all played an important role in the success of our team, and the success of Activision Blizzard. We are grateful for their contributions, and we will provide our full support with severance, equity, bonus, healthcare, and job support.”
After 7 years of service, I've just been laid off by Blizzard. It was a dream come true to work there & I'm saddened that my time was cut short.
(Yes, I was rdy for this call with champagne...gotta celebrate the good times & opportunities I had!)
One other major consequence of this reorganization, according to The Verge, is that Blizzard's survival game, codenamed Odyssey, has been cancelled. That would have marked Blizzard's entry into a new genre, but it did not reveal any other details about the project since announcing it two years ago. Some of the developers who were working on the survival game are being moved over to "one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development," Booty wrote.
According to Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier, Odyssey had been in the works for six years. Partway through development, Blizzard execs reportedly told the team to switch from making the game in Unreal Engine to an in-house engine called Synapse. However, the tech was taking too long to come together. Despite positive feedback for early versions of the game, it was going to take several more years before Odyssey would be finished. In the end, Activision Blizzard canceled the game after reportedly determining that Synapse was not ready for prime time.
Layoffs are commonplace following major mergers, especially once higher-ups pinpoint areas of overlap. Oftentimes, that's seen in positions on the corporate side, such as marketing and human resources.
The Communications Workers of America (CWA) told Engadget in a statement that none of its members were hit by the layoffs. The union represents hundreds of people across Microsoft's gaming division, including around 300 quality assurance workers at ZeniMax and others at the likes of Raven Software.
Last June, as it was trying to appease regulators and close its purchase of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft pledged to adopt a neutral stance when employees covered by an agreement with the CWA express interest in joining a union. In turn, the CWA backed the planned merger.
Update 1/25 3:59PM ET: Added more details regarding the cancellation of Odyssey from Bloomberg's report.
Update 1/26 1:20PM ET: Added confirmation from the CWA that none of its members were laid off.
Update 1/30 3:14PM ET: Added details about layoffs in Activision Blizzard's esports division.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/microsoft-slashes-1900-jobs-across-xbox-and-activision-blizzard-145304693.html?src=rss