Apple being Apple

Patents are important. We need patents to protect our inventions and ideas in order to profit from them. However there are some patents out there that are just silly (in my humble opinion).

A more recent patent issue is between Apple and Motorola over the implementation of 'slide to unlock'. 

Again, I concede that patents are necessary to promote innovation and protect profits, but this sort of patent is what's wrong with the tech industry. Apple has recently filed a patent claim against Motorola and won. Which is fine, since Apple does own a patent for this 'idea'. The question from me is, why can this even be patented? To protect Apple from losing sales? That's absurd. Most people do not make a smartphone/tablet purchase decision based on how the device is unlocked. I can't see how Motorola having this technology would hurt their sales at all. 

Apple being greedy as always.

Crowdsourcing at its "Double Fine"st

Kickstarter is a website that helps fund independent projects by reaching out to those that want to see the final product, be it music, art, games, or any creative content. Talented artists of all kinds, who don't have the means, can really take advantage of Kickstarter to jump start their career. 

Kickstarter basically facilitates crowd funding/crowd sourcing. What Kickstarter does best, however, is the ease of access for 'regular' people that just want to get their ideas out. If anyone believes they have a great idea to offer, there are no difficult hoops to jump through to start receiving funding. If the idea is actually a great idea, then there will definitely be supporters. 

Tim Schafer's studio, Double Fine, developer of cult classic Psychonauts, has been trying to pitch one of his game ideas to publishers but none will take it. He believes that publishers are afraid to take a risk with his game, understandably because games cost quite a bit to make. So what does he do? Tim looks to Kickstarter  to get his fans opinion of weather they want a game from Double Fine or not. 

The fans spoke and and this experiment exploded into two Kickstarter records: most funds raised in 24 hours, and highest number of backers. The project reached its goal of $400,000 in about eight hours, and (as of writing) with 31 days to go, it is currently at $1,489,517 with 41,310 backers.

"We raised HOW MUCH?"          

I'm sure even Schafer was surprised at the results, but what does this mean for the video game industry? I believe that because of this experiment, the crowd funding model can drastically reduce the importance of big name publishers. One of the issues many consumers may have with the publishers is their constant appeal to only the majority, and therefore only producing popular genres, namely first person, third person shooters. The publishers don't believe there is a big enough market for anything else, and don't want to risk making anything else. But after what happened with this Kickstarter project, there is clearly a market for (in this case) adventure games. I truly believe unheard fans of other genres can get games that they want directly from developers they want now, thanks to Tim Schafer stepping up. Although there have been indie games before Double Fine that get funding through Kickstarter, I think it took someone like Schafer to really get this model kickstarted out there.