You Tube is about to launch a music subscription service. We don’t know the date yet. But not everybody is celebrating the occasion.
Independent record labels and acts are upset, to put it in kid friendly terms. There’s a dispute going on. Indie labels, such as Beggars Group and Google’s mega streaming video service can’t agree on royalty terms or existing terms of free service. You Tube leaders say they can’t offer free service and pay indies royalties at the same time. Therefore, indie videos are being taking down. You Tube leads the world in free streaming music and video service. Since it’s inception in the mid 2000s, they’ve paid over one billion dollars to music-right holders.
And it’s not just your local garage or nightclub band’s video that’s being pulled off You Tube. Major acts like Adele are being affected due to the dispute. Indie labels are skeptical. They argue they get far better treatment at rival digital services. This dispute is going to be settled eventually. There’s too much money to be made and too much potential. The indies may not get what they want out of this. But a little something is better than a lot of nothing. You Tube may have to shell out more cash, but look at the alternative. Keep in mind they’ve literally given out billions for royalties. Now they can’t give out more to these independent labels? So they’d rather cut off artists’ videos altogether, and the fan base is the one that suffers most. Come on people! These guys are executives of businesses and have people’s careers and dreams on the line. This isn’t some 4th grade playground dispute over whose captain of the kickball team. How should this dispute be settled?
Another E3 conference has concluded. In honor of this gaming party, we’re saluting the greatest PC games of all time.
5. Oregon Trial: For many, this was our first PC game, taking us back to the mid 19th century Missouri. Did anybody actually make it to Oregon?
4. Doom: It revolutionized the PC game market. It made first person shooter PC games popular. Because parents and critics complained of it’s violence, we wanted more.
3. Star Craft: It’ one of the highest grossing PC games ever and one the most strategic. Which species do you remember most: Zerg, Terrans or Protoss?
2. The Elder Scrolls V-Skyrim: It more than lived up to it’s historic hype. It gave you the freedom to travel anywhere in this game world, and ignore the whole main plot if you want. But the main plot was too good to ignore.
1. World of Warcraft: It’s the highest grossing video game of all time. In a nine year period, over 100 million accounts have been created. It has everything from time travel to steam powered machinery, horror monsters to spaceships. Yet they seem to combine all these, and many more elements, into one pot of gaming paradise.
Most people growing up from the late 1970s through the mid ’80s can remember the Atari home video game, especially the Atari 2600. Thirty years later, this institution is poised for a comeback.
Atari’s new CEO Fred Chesnis wants to lead that comeback. With only ten employees, one step is licensing the brand to other studios. Let others carry Atari’s legacy. Don’t expect any old consoles to come back either. The focus will strictly be on online and smartphone gaming. They will be new games coming out this fall. Some new games, like Roller Coaster Tycoon, are already out. They plan on entering global gambling, only where it’s legal, of course. Then there’s Atari TV, set to go on You Tube and other acts of social media. Their first Atari TV, will be of all things, a video blog following soccer legend Pele through the ongoing world cup in Brazil.
This is a great step for Atari. It shouldn’t just stick to gaming. It should branch out to other venues like this. If it wants to compete in today’s market, this is the way to do it. And something else I’m excited about: they’re bringing old games back! I don’t mean the old bulky 2600 set, I mean our favorite games like Asteroids. It will be updated to fit the 2010s, but still, it’s nice to have nostalgia. I hope they’ll bring Pitfall and Q-Bert back as well. What old school Atari games would you like to see comeback?
How would you like to go to a movie? In this movie, the actors have one thing in common: none of them are real!
It’s already happening, thanks to Paul Debevec, who runs USC’s Institute of Creative Technology. They use thousands of LED’s (light-emitting diode) and 50 cameras to capture every minute detail. The computer measures lightning off the skin and penetrates the skin. They can capture any wrinkle, any facial movement, even down to a blink or twitch. Real life actors are scanned and their images are turned into technological stuntmen. Digital cloning has been used in “Avatar”. They scanned Sandra Bullock’s face for a scene in Gravity. And in the recently released film “Maleficent”, human face clones were used as fairies. Debevec seems to believe we’ll be able to make whole movies using this technology.
And it’s not just movies. The US military is using digital cloning. Even in the classroom, they’re using digital cloning to preserve history. I saw a demonstration of a Holocaust survivor telling his story to school children through this cloning. Now those are great ways to use digital cloning, but what about the not so great ways? I’m already reading chatter about how this is going to cut cost. I’m worried that could include cutting actors’ and crew people’s jobs in an industry that’s already extremely difficult to get into. I wonder what could happen if hackers, spies, or other cyber criminals get their hands on this technology. So like anything else, digital cloning should, and must be used for good and not abused. Is digital cloning a blessing or curse in the making?
I’m talking about video gaming. Many technological experts believe gaming is the way to get girls, particularly ages 8-18, interested in coding and other tech fields. The game that can change everything is Minecraft. For those unfamiliar with this gaming phenom, it’s like a combo of Lego, Matrix, and your favorite movies/TV shows. It’s family friendly and it’s everywhere. Minecraft has around 100 million users. The majority of those are in grades K-8. It teaches creativity through computer science. You can use ‘mods’ in Java code and created your own. You can create your own personal fantasy world. Recently, girls have been outperforming boys in Minecraft.
Without giving my age here, I grew up in the time of Nintendo and Game Boy. Some games I played really taught me something. The Legend of Zelda taught me problem solving skills and saving skills. That game was a continuation and I had to know what tools I needed to get to the next level. Tetris was a great teaching tool. It taught me to organize and? think fast and on my feet. You had to organize blocks and had little time to do so. Oregon Trail taught me a lot about basic math. I can go on and on. So if Minecraft is going to build our next generation of computer scientist, then I say let the games begin! How has video games positively impacted your life?
A month ago, it was announced Xbox One would come to China in September. It didn’t take long before Sony’s Play Station announced they would be making their debut in the Far East.
Sony will team up with Shanghai based company Oriental Pearl Cultural Development (acronym OPCD) to form companies based on sales manufacturing of hardware and license/distribution of software. Ironically, Microsoft’s Xbox and Sony’s Play Station? are both part of the Shanghai Media Group. According to their own statement, they want to introduce quality games suitable to national conditions and relevant to government policies. The release of Play Station in China isn’t yet known.
You know, China released a ban on video games. It was a light ban, but a ban nonetheless. So the statement about bringing games suitable to national conditions and government policies just scream censorship to me, which is never a good thing. I guess we won’t be seeing any M for mature games sold in China, or any games glorifying the US, the way things are Geo-politically. Some of you may wonder why I even talk about China. Well, it’s the fastest rising economy in the world. And it’s a major step they’re even selling video games at this level. So the success or failure of video games there is going to have global economic ramifications. So will Play Station be a hit or flop in China?
