Feb 14, 2021

Google Bans, Music Tools, and More

By Todd Mitchell • Issue #1 • View online

Greetings, game people. What a week to start a newsletter! I thought I was going to get to focus on rounding up great development tools and finishing up the interview book. Instead, news involving Google and a prominent developer dropped in my lap, and I happened to have quite a bit of experience with the topic: unexplained Google bans. The resulting post kicked off a whirlwind of activity including site crashes, story pick-ups from huge outlets, and the opportunity to provide comments about the risks of doing business with Google for an upcoming feature at The National. Sure seems like it would have been a lot easier for Google to spend 10-15 minutes having a human address my situation at any point in the last 7 years. No problem. I’m going to keep doing my job either way. Let’s dig in.

Some Great Retro Music Tools Died With Flash. Now What?

Flash has finally passed into the afterlife. It may have been a security nightmare, but the whole internet was basically one big poison cloud when we old-school dev folks came to know and love it. I certainly don’t disagree with its mandatory retirement, but loads of applications, including some handy little music tools, went with it.

It’s going to be an ongoing effort, but I’ve started a mini-directory for game development sound effects tools and music apps with a big emphasis on anything you can use in your web browser. Naturally, audio software has come a long way since the early-to-mid Flash days, but there was something magical about skipping the huge downloads and the relatively bloated feature set when you just needed to put a basic melody over a drum beat and wedge it into your jam project. I put together a starter list of seven tools with a big assist from our good friend Paul Nicholas. Pull it up next time you’re in a musical pinch, and let me know if it’s missing something you like.

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(Podcast) Video Game Patents: Good or Evil?

I’m a law nerd. With better childhood study habits and a safety net of any kind during the second half of high school, I almost certainly would have pursued a law degree. My podcast library is about 40% law, 60% comedy. 0% games, oddly enough. So when video games and law meet (frequently), I’m sniffing around right away.

When word spread that Warner Bros. had succeeded in a lengthy bid to secure a patent for the Nemesis system from the Middle-Earth series, reactions ranged from confusion to disgust, but nearly everyone agreed they didn’t like it. I don’t bring this topic up to suggest I do like it, but we’re probably doing ourselves a disservice if we’re not at least aware of the intention behind patents granted in the gaming space. If you’ve ever said or agreed that the industry has a problem with lack of innovation, there’s something to be said for the potential of a better patent system. This episode of GameDev Breakdown explores modern patents and–just for fun–the time Sega filed suit against Fox Interactive over the similarities between Crazy Taxi and The Simpsons: Road Rage.

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Google, Terraria, and My Most Popular Story in Quite Some Time

In the off chance you haven’t heard, Google locked Terraria developer Andrew Spinks out of his Google account under mysterious circumstances, and in the ensuing fallout, he eventually cancelled Terraria’s upcoming Stadia release. While there’s room to argue that it sort of doesn’t matter what happens to Stadia games between now and when they pull the final plug soon, his thread on Twitter did kick off a widespread discussion about Google’s lazy bans and the countless creators impacted by a pattern of complacency already going back more than a decade.

I sincerely expected this article to be one more quiet trip down Grudge Lane. Instead, someone’s quick repost to Hacker News led to my site crashing (twice, actually), an eventual need to move to dedicated space with my hosting provider, and later the post got picked up on Engadget, Yahoo! Entertainment, and a variety of aggregator sites. Additional comments will appear in a piece at The National by Rhodri Marsden at some point in the near future.

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Wrong AF: I Thought the CD Projekt Red Hack Was Pointless

To nicely balance my success with the Google/Terraria story, I promptly turned around and fell flat on my face while speculating that the CD Projekt Red hackers had entirely wasted their time. In my defense, this is a studio coming fresh out of a round of exposé articles and videos about abhorrent work conditions and long-foreseen issues with the launch of Cyberpunk 2077. If that wasn’t enough, the studio is about to defend itself against multiple lawsuits including one filed by its own investors.

As far as we know, I was still correct that the studio would have no interest in trying to save face by paying off the hackers. What I didn’t expect was that anyone would bother buying the leaked documents and source code. Though the final sale price isn’t known, the auction listed a buy-it-now price of $7 million. I’m keeping an eye out for any further developments on this one.

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(Interview) Joshua Johnson of TREE Industries

Joshua Johnson is the CTO of TREE Industries and leads development on an upcoming multi-platform sports title, Ultimate Disc Golf. Though I first ran into his work on the UDisc blog, he also happens to be a member of the disc golf community here in my Greater St. Louis area.

Joshua called in to talk about the most recent developments on Ultimate Disc Golf, but we set aside some time to discuss the newly-available MetaHumans system for the Unreal engine. If you haven’t heard about this, or you haven’t seen the levels of human realism you’ll be able to achieve for free in your Unreal projects, you need to get caught up in a hurry–it’s very impressive.

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That’s all for this week, folks. If you haven’t subscribed, I’d love if you did. Feel free to share it with a friend if they might be into this sort of thing. I’m always interested in your feedback, topics, and news stories. Catch you next weekend!

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By Todd Mitchell

News and commentary on the game industry, game development resources, and more.

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St. Louis, Missouri