Week in gaming: Ubisoft DRM, PlayStation Move, and God of War III
Those playing Assassin's Creed 2 on the PC got a rude reminder of DRM's pitfalls when the servers that authenticate the game went down. Many complained on the company's official forum, and tempers ran hot.
At GDC, Sony showed off its new PlayStation Move controller, along with a number of games. The audience response was positive, but the demos shown seemed both inspired and informed by what the Wii has done before. We got a quick hands-on with the controller followed by a bit more time playing SOCOM 4 with it.
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Valve's Gabe Newell shares his thoughts on DRM
At this year's Game Developer's Choice Awards, Vavle's Gabe Newell won the Pioneer Award, and he used the opportunity to share a slide show with the crowd of developers, press, and business people. His message? DRM is not good for business.
He spoke about DRM adding negative worth to products, and his remarks were greeted by loud and enthusiastic applause.
"One thing that you hear [Valve] talk a lot about is entertainment as a service, it's an attitude that says 'what have I done for my customers today?'" he said. "It informs all the decisions we make, and once you get into that mindset it helps you avoid things like some of the Digital Rights Management problems that actually make your entertainment products worth less by wrapping those negatives around them."
Of course, Steam is itself DRM pretending to be a service, but as long as gamers are willing to trade the ability to sell their games or have a physical copy for the added features and convenience offered, Newell will continue to have a good thing going. DRM isn't going away, but at the very least its harmful effects can be minimized.
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Surprise: iPhone app use heaviest at night and on weekends
Apple has made inroads into the professional market with the iPhone—the company has noted that some Fortune 500 companies have deployed them alongside or even replacing BlackBerrys. Despite this, analysis of app usage suggests that it remains a mostly personal device.
Mobile analytic firm Localytics examined logs of use of third-party apps and found that app use during the week typically begins to ramp up around 5am and slowly increases to a peak around 9pm. Weekdays also tend to have a little bump in use right around lunch time.
On weekends, however, use starts picking up around 6am, reaching a steady peak around noon until 11pm. App usage sharply ramps down after 11, but slightly slower than it does on a typical week day.
This usage pattern is typical for a device that is used for personal rather than business reasons. However, it's also possible that business users are either sticking to Apple's supplied apps or are using custom-developed in-house apps for specific business needs. For instance, a business user is more likely to fire up Mail or Calendar than, say, Tweetie or Plants vs Zombies during the work day. Localytics notes that it expects to find similar usage patterns for the iPad, and that developers may want to consider these patterns when designing apps for either platform.
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Netflix settles privacy lawsuit, ditches $1 million contest
Netflix has canceled its $1 million contest aimed at finding a better recommendation engine in the wake of a privacy lawsuit settlement. The company informed its users today via the company blog, noting that it had "reached an understanding" with the Federal Trade Commission, leading it to ditch the Netflix Prize contest.
Netflix first announced the contest—actually the sequel to its original contest—in August of 2009. The goal was to crowdsource its active user base to write a more intelligent recommendation engine based on users' past rentals. This is something Netflix already does, of course, but there's always room for improvement; the company wanted to find the Next Big Thingâ„¢ by offering $1 million to the person with the best algorithm.
Part of the contest involved Netflix disclosing what it considered to be anonymized user data to those trying to come up with solutions. This, however, led to a lawsuit by a closeted lesbian mother who argued that Netflix had not sufficiently anonymized the information and that she (among others) could be easily outed due to her own rental history. Indeed, within weeks of the data being released, researchers had found a way to use an external data source to decode an individual's viewing history with surprising accuracy, but Netflix did not immediately withdraw the contest.
The FTC eventually got involved and spent the following months discussing the issue with Netflix. That brings us to today: Netflix has officially settled the lawsuit and, as part of the settlement, is giving up the contest. "The resolution to both matters involves certain parameters for how we use Netflix data in any future research programs," wrote Netflix's Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt.
This doesn't mean Netflix is giving up on improving its recommendation engine—Hunt ended the blog post by saying the company would continue to explore better options—but the company will have to come up with new ways to "collaborate with the research community."
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New Zealand relies on BGP router protocol to filter the 'Net
New Zealand's government-run Internet filtering system is now running, and two ISPs are already using the system. Seven thousand websites are on the list, most dealing with child sexual abuse, bestiality, and other illegal content, as classified by the country's official censors (you too can be a censor for a day). Such material has been illegal offline in New Zealand for years, so the expansion of the program to the Internet isn't a big surprise. But will it work?
The government runs the filter, but ISP participation remains voluntary. Currently, Maxnet and Watchdog are confirmed to be using the filter, though other ISPs are said to be interested. Maxnet CEO John Hanna explained his company's position to Computerworld New Zealand: "Filtering out child pornography is also very much in line with our company values—our customers would be disappointed to hear if we weren’t participating. So participation for us has always been a no-brainer."
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