MIT is trying to crack wireless VR, too
Smartphone-based virtual reality headsets are great and all, but for the best games and experiences you need a dedicated facehugger tethered to a powerful PC like it’s a diver’s lifeline. Wireless hardware is one of the inevitable next steps for VR, and a company called TPCAST is already developing a cord-cutting peripheral for the Vive, supported by HTC’s VR accelerator program. MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) is making headway in this area too, today releasing research into a wireless system that’s both headset-agnostic and could address some unforeseen problems with peripherals like TPCAST’s.
MIT CSAIL’s prototype system, known as MoViR, uses millimeter waves to send data from a transmitter that’s hooked up to a computer to the headset’s receiver. These high-frequency radio waves are capable of maintaining wireless connections at speeds over 6 Gbps — enough bandwidth to stream the two, high-definition feeds required for VR — but the signal doesn’t penetrate objects well. As VR games and experiences typically require you move around in physical space, there is a high chance of your floor-standing lamp or flailing arms blocking the signal and impacting performance, in turn breaking the immersion.
To solve this problem, CSAIL’s system includes a millimeter wave “mirror” — an intermediate device that receives the original broadcast and tracks the position and orientation of the wearer in real-time, always aiming the signal directly at the headset receiver. In this way, the millimeter waves can avoid furniture, limbs and anything else that could interfere and impact performance.
As the image of the signal bouncer above shows, the system is still very much a prototype, though researchers hope to create neater, smartphone-sized hardware in the future that could be used with any VR headset. Subsequent work will also entail measuring and potentially improving the latency of the system — on paper, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but the team has primarily focused on developing the mirror thus far.
With various companies, including headset manufacturers themselves, and researchers working on solving the finer problems of wireless VR, hopefully it won’t be too long before we can forget that inelegant, stop-gap solutions like backpack PCs were ever a thing.
Ben Heck’s Atari junk keyboard, part 2
We’re not so sure about Ben and Atari making beautiful music together, though the Ben Heck Show team certainly builds good circuits. Previously, they took apart a keyboard and made a manually activated switch matrix to read the piano keys. Now it’s time to take those outputs and hook them up to a 555 logic chip array to create the Atari inspired sound effects.
There’s a lot of wiring to do, so Ben and Felix split up the tasks. Ben wires up the bank of chips onto a board that will sit on top of the transistor array that Felix is wiring, with a header interfacing them. Karen meanwhile, paints and designs the casing in a retro feel befitting of the time. Ben and Felix then go to work on making additional adjustments to the board and create a totally ’80s Atari junk keyboard. What instrument would you like the team to make? Join the element14 Community to tell us about your music hacks and suggest an instrument.
‘Desert Bus’ video game charity kicks off its 10th year
It’s a big moment for video game charities: Desert Bus for Hope has launched its 10th annual campaign. As is their custom, the volunteer team will play the Desert Bus mini game from Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors for as long as they can in the name of the Child’s Play hospital charity. This year, they’re aiming for at least 111 hours — the more money you donate, the longer they drive on that incredibly boring virtual road between Tucson and Las Vegas. And this year, there are quite a few reasons to check in beyond the usual on-camera antics.
To start, there are numerous guests, including musicians like the Doubleclicks, Molly Lewis, Paul & Storm and Seth Boyer. Actress Ashly Burch, Penny Arcade’s Jerry Holkins and others will also make appearances. And of course, there’s the obligatory mix of auctions and giveaways, including the all-important 10th anniversary Jenga set.
The charity isn’t the biggest (Extra Life raises millions each year), but its unique non-stop, single-game hook has its allure. The charity managed to raise almost $684,000 in 2015, and each year has represented a big jump in donations. In short: the odds are good that kids in hospitals will have something to celebrate when Desert Bus 10 finally wraps up.
Source: Desert Bus for Hope
The Morning After Weekend Edition
Letter from the Editor
It’s the end of an era. Obama’s out (in two months), Trump’s in, and uncertainty abounds as details about how, exactly, our president-elect is going to change things slowly emerge. Managing Editor Terrence O’Brien has been reading the tea leaves and the Donald’s tweets, however, and it’s not looking good for either fans of net neutrality or those folks concerned about climate change and protecting the environment in general. And Violet Blue’s latest column pulls no punches in describing the dangers Trump’s presidency poses to US cybersecurity.
Regardless of your political views, there is one result of the election we can all agree is a very good thing — we got to hear a bit of the Wu-Tang Clan’s Once Upon a Time in Shaolin album 87 years earlier than we thought we would.
Finally, while many are worried about the future, NASA’s excited about peering into the past: the James Webb Space Telescope is finally complete, with incredibly precise mirrors that will allow us to see the cosmos as it was 13 billion years ago. It’ll also help us find other habitable worlds, which, you know, could come in handy given our new president’s stance on protecting the environment.
Nostalgia in a nutshellReview: NES Classic Edition
The NES is back! Well, not quite. Sean Buckley reviews Nintendo’s miniaturized system and finds that while it does well in living up to the nostalgic hype, there are a few hiccups to be aware of. Short controller cables and an inability to expand with new games are annoying, but for $60 it’s still a good value and the games look better than they ever did in the old days. The only problem now? Actually being able to find one.
Time to go exoplanet huntingNASA’s follow-up to Hubble is complete
This week NASA unveiled the fully assembled James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Scheduled for launch in October 2018, the $8 billion wonder is about to undergo a battery of tests intended to make sure it doesn’t suffer the sort of problems faced by Hubble. Since its planned orbit puts it a million miles away from earth, we’ll only get one shot at this — there’s no repair team incoming.
Is this your next gaming upgrade?Review: PlayStation 4 Pro
The PS4 Pro is here, and yes, gaming in 4K and HDR is amazing. Additionally, some of your old games are getting upgraded, and it’s a powerful friend to the PlayStation VR headset. So is the $400 console worth buying? It lacks an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive, and if you’re still living a 1080p lifestyle, then it won’t be a huge upgrade.
16 hours of battery life and two regular USB ports never looked so goodReview: Surface Book (2016)
The Surface Book is back, and it comes at a good time, alongside the new MacBook Pro. It’s still a bit thick, and heavier than last year’s model, but an impressive 16 hours of battery life, tablet mode, pen support and powerful GPU help balance things out. The only snag left is its starting price: $2,400.
Electric motorcycles without the range anxietyZero’s 2017 models can go 200 miles on a single charge
The market for electric motorcycles is getting more crowded, so how does a pioneer stand out? Zero unveiled two models this week that it says are the first ones that can travel over 200 miles on a charge (with the optional Power Tank, and only in the city — 100 miles of range on the highway). Prices start at $8,495, and the bikes also support a new mobile app thats lets riders adjust torque, top speed and regenerative braking settings on the fly.
This is the plot of the next “Final Destination”Everyone dies once, except on Facebook
A bug on Friday caused many Facebook profiles to flash a message claiming the owner was deceased. It even affected founder Mark Zuckerberg before it was fixed, but now things are back to normal.
No more bullshotsSteam’s redesign is live
PC gamers may have noticed a new front page for Steam, focused on personalization and highlights of what it thinks you’ll like. Part of the redesign also means developers need to post real screenshots instead of renders, so it’s time to say goodbye to bullshots. Let us know if it’s working for you.
Election 2016What does the election of Donald Trump as president mean from a tech perspective?
We’ll walk you through it, plus the first online moves of the new administration and what people were searching for as the results came in. Not enough election talk for you? Tune into this week’s podcast to hear more.
But wait, there’s more…
- Vacuum-tube-era tech could lead to faster computer chips and better solar panels
- Now you can run Android Auto directly on your phone
- Navinder Sarao admitted using software trades to profit from panic, causing 2010’s stock market “Flash Crash”
- Bits of Wu-Tang Clan’s single-copy “Once Upon a Time in Shaolin” album are available for listening
- Whatsapp is testing two-factor authentication support
- YouTube turns on HDR support
- Harvard researchers believe they’ve discovered the physical seat of human awareness
The Morning After is a new daily newsletter from Engadget designed to help you fight off FOMO. Who knows what you’ll miss if you don’t subscribe.
Craving even more? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
Have a suggestion on how we can improve The Morning After? Send us a note.
Audi Japan is selling one ‘Final Fantasy XV’ themed R8
Square Enix’s long-awaited next entry in the 30-year-old Final Fantasy franchise arrives November 29th on PS4 and Xbox One, but first up is this promotional tie-in from Audi. In the run up to Final Fantasy XV , Sony Pictures released the all-CG rendered Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV movie back in July, and it featured a special version of the 2017 Audi R8 called the Star of Lucis.
Now, the company’s Japanese branch produced a one-off version of the car in real life and will raffle off the opportunity to buy it (for 50,000,015 yen or about $468,713) on November 21st. Of course, snagging a copy of both the movie and game later this month would be a bit cheaper, and just checking out the trailer or official website is completely free.
Via: Kotaku
Source: Audi Japan, Audi Final Fantasy
First official ‘Infinite Warfare’ tournament happens December 3rd
With Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare just now landing and Modern Warfare: Remastered reminding FPS fans of the franchise’s glory days, Sony is ready to celebrate the Call of Duty New Year. It’s that time of year when CoD players get their hands on a new game, start leveling up their weapon kits again and getting ready for the next round of Call of Duty World League. As they did with last year’s release of Black Ops III, PlayStation will be kicking off the new season with an invitational tournament and some big announcements about what’s in store for one of the biggest games in eSports.
The invitational tournament takes place on December 3rd and 4th at the PlayStation Experience in Anaheim, CA, where eight teams will square off in Infinite Warfare’s first official LAN broadcast. Before the first virtual rounds are fired, the conference keynote will include some some official news and possibly some PSVR announcements. The tournament livestream will also be introduced with more details about the season structure, game updates and key events coming to Infinite Warfare and CoD: World League. Of course, if you can’t be in Anaheim, the whole thing will be streamed on MLG.tv and the Call of Duty Twitch Channel.
Source: PlayStation Blog
Ender Dragon is coming for your Windows 10 ‘Minecraft’ realms
Microsoft is all about unified apps these days and that applies to its $2.5 billion baby Minecraft, too. The Pocket and Windows 10 versions of the blocky creation-and-survival game are almost at parity with the original Java version, developer Mojang announced today. The 1.0 update, dubbed “The End,” brings end-game boss The Ender Dragon and the The End dimension to desktop and mobile players. But, despite its name, Mojang says that continual updates are planned after this is released. Oh, and the 1.0 version is what will arrive by year’s end on Apple TV as well.
More than just adding a dragon (as cool as that is), world height is getting a bump to 256 blocks — a big step up from the previous Pocket and Win10 version’s 128. For a bit of context, clouds start appearing at 127 blocks high. Reach for the sky, y’all. There’s also a new Elytra glider available for soaring over the pixely world, in addition to a handful of bits like a new mob (the Shulker) and new resources to mine.
Android users can try it out in beta starting today, but everyone else will have to wait until the update is released because the beta is exclusive to Google’s mobile platform.
Source: Mojang
NES Classic Edition review: The best and worst of retro gaming
“I don’t want to sit on the floor while I play video games,” my buddy Josh told me. “I’m not 7 anymore.” My friend was parked just 4 feet away from my 40-inch television, playing Ninja Gaiden on the NES Classic Edition — a tiny re-creation of Nintendo’s original home game console. The diminutive game system has everything a nostalgic gamer could want: an iconic design, a built-in collection of 30 classic games and pixel-perfect emulation. But for Josh, the two-and-a-half-foot-long controller cables were a deal-breaker. It’s a shame, too: Almost everything else about the NES Classic is perfect.
In a lot of ways, the Classic is a product that feels long overdue, if only because Nintendo’s longtime rivals have been selling officially licensed plug-and-play consoles for over a decade. These devices were relatively cheap and usually came with a robust selection of each console’s most popular games. They also had a reputation for bad sound emulation, antiquated video-output technology and poor build quality. Nintendo’s take on the mini-console is late to the party, but at least it’s fashionably late: Not only does the NES Classic offer a hearty collection of the original console’s most popular games, it delivers them to your television in crisp, high-definition resolution over HDMI.
Just as you remember it, but smaller
If you’ve seen the original Nintendo Entertainment System, you’ve basically seen the NES Classic Edition. The mini-console looks almost exactly like the gray and black box Nintendo released three decades ago, albeit at a much smaller scale. The NES Classic is, in a word, tiny — it barely stretches beyond than the length of its own gamepad at its widest point, but it’s still faithful to the device that inspired it. The same horizontal grooves reach across the top of the console’s chassis, leading down to a pair of controller ports that are exactly where you remember them to be. To the left, you’ll find a familiar red LED, as well as power and reset buttons that look identical to their progenitors. Around the back are two more connections: a micro-USB port for power, and HDMI output.
At first blush, the Classic is a dead ringer for the original, but the modernization of the NES has wrought a few minor cosmetic changes. Instead of using the original NES’s controller ports, the new console has opted for Wii Remote accessory connectors. These ports are compatible with Wii Classic Controllers and a slew of third-party accessories (more on that later), but their width cuts into the “gray” area of the NES Classic front more than the original console’s controller ports did.
Despite having a perfectly molded re-creation of the original console’s cartridge slot, the Classic’s chamber lid door is purely cosmetic — it doesn’t open. Even so, the vestigial door lends itself to the nostalgic experience. It’s the details that make the NES Classic a joy to hold and play with. Even the power button feels just like the original, depressing with a deep, springy tactility that clearly defines where the “on” position is.
It doesn’t take long before you can press that power button, either — setting up the NES Classic Edition is as easy as plugging a power cable into your TV’s spare USB port (or the included wall adapter) and hooking up an HDMI cable. That’s it.
Gaming like it’s 1985 (but better)
Nintendo’s diminutive retro console boots up in less than five seconds and presents users with what might be the most straightforward, easy-to-use menu the company has ever created. Save for a few bells and whistles, the NES Classic Edition’s menu is little more than a horizontal scrolling list of 30 of the system’s most revered titles — an alphabetical smorgasbord (see the full list below) that runs from Balloon Fight to Zelda II: Adventure of Link. Pressing select will sort the list by publisher, title, multiplayer, recently played, times played and release date, but there’s not really enough games on the list that it needs sorting options. Simply scroll left or right until you find something you like, and press start.
| The NES Classic Edition game library | |||||
| Balloon Fight | Bubble Bobble | Castlevania | Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest | Donkey Kong | Donkey Kong Jr. |
| Double Dragon II: The Revenge | Dr. Mario | Excitebike | Final Fantasy | Galaga | Ghosts and Goblins |
| Gradius | Ice Climber | Kid Icarus | Kirby’s Adventure | Mario Bros. | Mega Man 2 |
| Metroid | Ninja Gaiden | Pac-Man | Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream | StarTropics | Super C |
| Super Mario Bros. | Super Mario Bros. 2 | Super Mario Bros. 3 | Techmo Bowl | The Legend of Zelda | Zelda II: The Adventure of Link |
Playing classic Nintendo games on the mini-console is almost like having a revelation — if you’ve only ever played NES games on official hardware, you’ve never seen them look this good. Complex pixel patterns and shading that would traditionally be obscured by the blurry glow of a CRT television simply pop with detail over the Classic’s HDMI connection. Colors that once blurred together are now distinct, pulling out details like the whites behind Megaman’s eyes, or the expression on a zombie’s face in Castlevania. The Classic outperforms the Wii, Wii U and even the original NES in terms of visual quality. It’s about time, too: Nintendo has been offering classic NES games on its Virtual Console service for a decade, and until now they’ve always looked terrible.
It’s true. For some reason, Virtual Console games on the Wii and Wii U suffer from muted colors, dim contrast and a gross, blurry overlay. It’s a problem classic Nintendo fans have been aware of for years: NES games simply look better on PC emulators and third-party consoles like the Retron5 and RetroUSB AVS. The NES Classic finally closes that gap, offering an official solution for playing classic Nintendo games that can compete with the best efforts of unofficial (and sometimes legally questionable) competitors.
More important, the Classic’s high-quality emulation shows that Nintendo is finally getting serious about its digital archive of old games — if its cheap plug-and-play game console looks this good, maybe Virtual Console games on the Nintendo Switch won’t look half bad, either.
If crystal-clear pixels aren’t your thing, the Classic can accommodate. Pressing the “reset” button returns you to the main menu, where you can select from three different display modes: a “pixel perfect” setting that draws games at their native resolution; a wider, but still sharp, 4:3 presentation; or a robust CRT filter designed to simulate the blur and scanlines of an old television set. These are all pretty standard filter modes in the retro-gaming scene, but the NES Classic’s CRT mode is particularly impressive — most emulators are content with overlaying a dim layer of scanlines and calling it a day, but the Classic’s subtle blurring and pixel-distortion effects really sell the illusion. Technically, this feature makes every game look “worse” — but worse in a way that looks, well, sort of right.
Even more nostalgia can be found in the menu’s manual section — well, sort of. The game-manual icon doesn’t actually call up a list of video-game instruction booklets so much as it displays a QR code and URL that will take you to them. It feels a bit like a cop-out, but following the link is worth it. Not only does Nintendo’s NES manual website feature full digital manuals, but it also has high-resolution scans of the original printed booklets that came with each game. They’re pretty complete, too: The scanned manuals for Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda include original artwork and huge maps of each game’s overworld. It’s just a shame this content isn’t also built directly into the system. Some games, like Startropics, can’t be finished without special hints that were included in the game manual. Forcing players to access the web to beat a 30-year-old video game is a little weird.
The NES Classic’s menu has one more special feature, and it’s an important one: Suspend Points. Think of it like a bookmark feature — Suspend Points (or “save states,” as they’re commonly known) allow you to pause the game at any moment and save it for later. This can be used to add save functionality to games like Metroid and Ghosts and Goblins, or to allow you replay a challenging part of a game over and over until you get it right. It’s sort of like cheating, but it’s worth it: Some of these old games are really hard.
The fatal flaw
The NES Classic is almost perfect, but there’s a reason this review started with one of my oldest friends sitting on my floor, groaning. Josh and I (remember Josh?) marveled at the attention to detail in the Classic’s chassis as we hooked it up to my HDTV. We geeked out over its controller — a dead ringer for the square gamepad that shipped with the original Nintendo Entertainment System. We were, frankly, beside ourselves with the product — until we noticed the NES Classic controller’s cable. At just 2.5 feet long, it was too short to reach the couch.
Josh stared at me in disbelief. “This is ridiculous,” he told me. He’s right. The NES Classic makes 8-bit Nintendo games look gorgeous on modern televisions, but its controller cables are too short to allow players to enjoy them from a comfortable distance. Maybe, we mused, it’s part of the retro experience: the truncated wiring forced us to sit cross-legged on the floor, just like we did when we were kids — but we weren’t comfortable, and were too close to the 40-inch television to really take-in the whole screen.
As we played, the short cable seemed to be a compromise between inconvenience and historical accuracy. Because the NES Classic’s controller is an almost exact reproduction of the original NES gamepad, it lacks a home button to call up the menu. This means the player needs to be within an arm’s reach of the console’s “reset” button at all times. If the controller had a longer cable, we would have had to stand up and walk across the room every time we wanted to load a Suspend Point, change the screen setting or switch to a new game. That’s equally ridiculous.
Without a doubt, this is the NES Classic Edition’s greatest flaw — but what makes it worse is how entirely avoidable it was. The mini-console’s controller uses the exact same connector as the Wii Remote accessory port, which means it supports the Nintendo Wii Classic controller. That gamepad actually has an even shorter cable, but that’s not the point: The Classic controller has a home button, and that home button works on the mini NES. By choosing not to add a home button (and a longer cable) to the NES Classic Edition gamepad, it made the entire experience bad enough to spoil the system for a lifelong Nintendo fan. “I really want this thing,” Josh told me. “But, man, that controller cable.”
Adamant fans can close the gap with cable extenders and third-party controllers, but for Josh, it was just too much. At $60, the NES Classic offered a great value. At $60 plus the price of a bunch of accessories to make it easy to play in his apartment, the NES Classic was suddenly kind of a pain in the ass.
Wrap-up
The NES Classic Edition is everything it promised to be — it’s a tiny version of Nintendo’s most iconic home video-game system, complete with 30 fantastic games, excellent emulation and more than enough nostalgia to satisfy any adult who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s. Even so, it’s not perfect. Frustratingly short controller cables make it hard to use comfortably in a modern living space, and its nonexpandable library means that you’re stuck with the collection of games it comes with. If your favorite NES game isn’t already on the console, you’re out of luck.
If you can deal with those issues, however, the Classic is an incredible value — and a great gift for the 30-something geek in your life.
Free The Vote: A game developer’s journey to political activism
We all have a tipping point. There’s a moment when we hear about one more act of violence or one more slight against people in our community, and all of the injustice we’ve witnessed in a particular situation suddenly coalesces into clear conviction. At this moment, we can’t sit silently and watch anymore. We are compelled to act.
Dain Saint’s tipping point was the shooting death of both Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, two black men who died at the hands of police officers just one day apart from each other in July.
“I couldn’t do nothing, but I didn’t know what to do,” Saint says. To gather his thoughts, he wrote a post on Medium titled We Can Be Better. It’s a call to action and a raw, eye-opening take on the state of trust, fear and empathy in America. As a black engineer living in Philadelphia, Saint himself is realistic but filled with optimism, and so is his blog post.
Along with the Medium article, Saint designed a T-shirt campaign featuring the phrase, “We can be better” in all caps, large black letters cascading down the front of a white shirt.
“It was essentially a campaign against apathy, promoting the idea that we can fix our problems, but first we have to believe they are fixable,” Saint says.
The blog post and T-shirt campaign took off.
“It turned out to resonate more than I expected,” he says. “The day that article went live, someone saw me wearing the shirt and yelled out of an Uber to tell me they’d read the article. Crazy odds, but it was incredibly encouraging.”
The response surprised Saint, but considering his history in Philadelphia, it makes sense. Saint is a staple of the Philadelphia game development scene as one half of the independent studio Cipher Prime. He’s a co-founder of the Philly Game Forge, a collaborative space for local game developers and artists that, unfortunately, had to close down this summer. It was a wildly successful venture that spawned a game development hub in Philadelphia, but funding ran dry and the doors were closed for good in July.
The Game Forge’s closure helped spark Saint’s motivation to do something bigger with his life and his time. Something like the We Can Be Better campaign.
“It was incredibly emotional, sort of the end of an era,” Saint says. “I’ve been saying all year that 2016 feels like it’s being written like a TV show desperate for ratings, and in my own life, the Game Forge closure was like my own personal shocking midseason finale. It led to this period of harsh introspection, like completely rethinking what’s important to me now that I’m in my 30s.”
We Can Be Better is the name of Saint’s larger campaign to replace fear with hope and action across the United States, but on its own that’s a fairly vague goal. So, Saint distilled these ideas into an actionable and relevant campaign: Free The Vote.
Free The Vote is a movement designed to convince businesses and the government that employees deserve paid time off to vote.
“We started talking about what issues we could realistically tackle, where the root of the problem was, and what was most relevant to now — and voting was a natural fit,” Saint says. “When we learned that 33 percent of people don’t vote because it conflicts with work, Free The Vote became a very natural project to pursue.”
Saint approached the creation of this campaign like a game jam, something he has plenty of experience with. Game jams are fast-paced challenges that ask developers to create a functioning game in a restricted time period like 24 or 48 hours. Recalling this sense of urgency helped Saint focus on the important aspects of Free The Vote.
“Don’t spend forever trying to get everything done right, spend your time getting things done,” he says. “Shoot, then aim, right? I know I haven’t run these campaigns perfectly, but I also know that if I waited until everything was perfectly aligned I’d only just now be really getting started. And the process of trying has helped crystallize my priorities in a way that just thinking about it never would have.”
Saint found help from the local development community, too, including from Cipher Prime co-founder William Stallwood, who helped design the Free The Vote site. It’s a striking, professional-looking page with large graphics and a concise message.
Rallying the rest of the local developer community was easy, Saint says. Plenty of developers helped with outreach, putting Free The Vote in touch with companies and individuals who might be interested in participating. Other developers provided ideas about how to use the cloud-communication platform Twilio in an upcoming We Can Be Better campaign.
“The Philly tech scene is pretty tight-knit — enough of us colonized North 3rd Street that the city officially designated it N3rd street,” Saint says. “So I could always find more people willing to listen, participate and spread the word.”
It’s going well so far. By Election Day, Saint and Free The Vote convinced 20 companies to close their doors so their employees could get to the polls. Plus, he’s in talks with the City of Philadelphia, which happens to be the region’s largest employer.
“Bureaucracies are notoriously slow-moving beasts, so even though we weren’t able to get the city fully on-board in time for this election, the fact that we’re moving forward gives me great hope for the future,” Saint says.
Free The Vote’s goal is even more pertinent after Election Day. Following Donald Trump’s surprise win over Hillary Clinton, there’s a conversation circling online and on televised news networks about the number of people who actually voted this cycle. Initial statistics show that roughly 57 percent of eligible voters actually cast their ballots by November 8th, while 43 percent didn’t vote. Free The Vote wants to close that gap.
Even though the campaign is off to a good start, there’s plenty of room for growth.
“I’m disappointed that we didn’t get as many hourly wage employers as we’d hoped,” Saint says. “A big motivator for Free The Vote was realising the choice between working and voting is painfully real for people without the security of a salary, and we’ll be focusing on ways to make that more realistic for companies moving forward.”
Free The Vote’s ultimate goal is for Philadelphia to become the first city in the United States where Election Day is a holiday, and Saint will continue to fight for that future. But, now that the 2016 election is over, the larger We Can Be Better campaign will shift its focus “to healing the divides this campaign season opened up — giving people the tools to listen, collaborate, and take action,” Saint says.
He published another We Can Be Better blog post on November 9th, one day after the election, titled Let’s get to work. It’s hopeful, and urges readers to eschew blame in favor of self-reflection and action.
These are words that Saint himself takes to heart. In fact, it’s the very foundation of We Can Be Better.
“I try to follow a philosophy of relentless self-improvement,” Saint says. “I’m always looking for ways to be a better person, even if I don’t always succeed. And that process is really painful — you have to really dig in and confront things about yourself that you don’t ever want to think about. So We Can Be Better came about when I realized that, for as much as I’ve always talked about wanting to make the world a better place, I never really did anything about it. It was just talk.”
Now it’s action.
WHSmith will sell video games again with GAME’s help
Magazine and stationary retailer WHSmith is to start selling video games in-store again, thanks to a partnership with GAME to trial concessions in a small number of locations. WHSmith pulled games from shelves six years ago due to competitive pressure from more specialist retailers like GAME and HMV. Once adversaries, the two now appear to have found common ground. For WHSmith, it’ll mean being able to offer games to its customers again — new and high-profile console releases, we imagine — and for GAME, increased exposure on the high street, however small that increase might be.
“GAME Retail is rolling out a small number of concessions as part of an ongoing trial across WHSmith stores in 2016. Alongside our 300 high street stores it means easier access to top video games, accessories and merchandise for our community of gamers nationwide,” so reads the official line from GAME.
GAME is still struggling to find its feet after going into administration back in 2012. Since being rescued from high-street heaven, the company has tried all manner of things to stay relevant. In recent history, GAME has focused on eSports in particular, acquiring Multiplay — the firm behind the UK’s Insomnia events — as well as running tournaments and setting up dedicated competitive zones in stores. Finances are continuing to be a problem, though, and GAME’s latest yearly numbers noted an 81 percent decline in profits year-on-year.
The partnership with WHSmith may only be a limited trial in a small number of stores, but in such a competitive product category, anything that gets the GAME brand out there will no doubt be welcomed. If things get any worse, we could find ourselves in a dystopian future where GAME starts charging for PSVR demos. Oh… wait.
Via: gamesindustry.biz
AIVAnet 