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KiraTV does an excellent investigation into one of the most popular and hyped games called ‘The Day Before’. Hounded by continual delays, strange announcements, and then final removal from Steam – Kira jumps in and finds that the reality behind the game and it’s studio founders is even MORE bizarre than you could imagine.

Besides documenting the bizarre development of the game itself, he finds a lot of interesting things about the even more bizarre Fntastic game studio. This includes the almost cult-like studio heads and their idea of ‘volunteering‘ – which appears to be unpaid work wrapped in lots of creepy grooming.

This is absolutely something I see on the rise in startup and game culture. I see institutions that create cult-like atmospheres around founders and a culture that gaslight new or naïve employees using words like ‘passion’. Meanwhile, the reality is they provide inadequate/non-existent pay, long hours, and dangerous levels of emotional manipulation for anyone who questions, disagrees, or tries to threaten their control.

What’s the state of using VR/AR goggles as a replacement for your desktop? Here are two takes.

First is Alan Truly who used the Meta Quest 3. He notes there have been some big improvements in web browsing and web apps that he uses daily. There’s still a number of tasks that it isn’t suited well for – such as picture editing. He also tried various software solutions such as Horizon Workrooms, Immersed, remote desktop, and a variety of other apps. He also tried a mixed version in which he used his keyboard and mouse for input. His conclusion is that besides concerns of comfort wearing a 1lb device all day, he says VR is ready for desktop work – but might not be best suited for the type of work you’re doing.

Hallden tried using his 3d goggles as virtual monitors for a week in a variety of situations. He uses the Meta Quest Pro because he noted that Apple has to solved issues with using them in unstable/moving environments (Update: They have not).

How well do they work in general? Watch the video and find out

Spoilers: He finds that the weight and video quality weren’t really an issue – but the lag and connectivity were. He seems to mimic what others are saying: AR is more likely the future instead of VR.

The $3499 price tag for Apple’s Vision Pro device was received with an audible groan and is being panned by even staunch technologists.

Now everyone is speculating over much less visually invasive eye-glass format. Both Apple and Google are experimenting with it via Apple glasses or Google Iris (Though Google just pulled the plug on Iris).

But stand aside hipsters, there’s a new player in town. What about a AR powered monocle?

Brilliant Labs‘ augmented reality wearable monocle popped on the scene for only $349 and weighs only 15 grams. Processing happens on the OpenAI server then transmitted via Bluetooth from the users phone to the device’s display. It comes with five different processors, including a hackable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) accelerator chip that handles the data coming in from the device’s camera, microphone and capacitive touch sensor.

The project already has attracted a dedicated following of developers, hackers, hobbyists, and researches in the open-source community. While far too clunky right now, I think this is the right way to go about things; though the idea that these will help you come off as a smooth operator in awkward dinner conversations is highly unlikely:

See the fun video of cheating on an interview here:
pic.twitter.com/HycQGGXT6N

The FTC vs Microsoft trial has caused spilling the beans on a lot of corporate secrets and dirty laundry. Such gems as Microsoft admitting Xbox lost the console wars – all to persuade the courts their acquisition of Activision won’t create a gaming monopoly.

What’s the most recent leak? Sony’s revenue on key titles – all because someone did a bad job with a sharpie/redaction.

What was revealed?

• Horizon Forbidden West cost $212 million over 5 years with 300 employees
• The Last of Us Part II cost $220 million over 90 months with 200 employees
• It appears Sony only shares about 10% (hard to read) of revenue with third party publishers like Activision
• About half of PS5 owners have a Nintendo Switch
• Call of Duty data:
  • Around 14? million users spend 30% or more of their PlayStation time playing Call of Duty
  • Over 6 million users spend more than 70% of their time playing Call of Duty
  • About 1 million users spend all their time on Playstation playing Call of Duty
  • CoD players an average of 116? hours per year
  • The document suggests CoD generated $800 million in the US alone in 2021. It generated $1.5 billion worldwide in 2021.
  • When you add merchandise, accessories, subscriptions, this jumps to $13.9 or $15.9 billion a year
  • Sony only has one more exclusive CoD game left in its exclusive marketing deal to be released in late 2023

This indicates that the average game dev employee cost $146,666 for each of the 2 titles – that’s without spending a dime on anything else (computers, studio equipment, licenses for 3rd party art/components, benefits etc). This means the average Sony game dev almost certainly made less (or a lot less) than $100,000/year range if you assume a very generously low 30% overhead cost per employee.

This seems less than the $115,000 average – though averages are bad indicators in game development because programmers and directors make substantially more than artists and content generators. You could also go to Glassdoor and get this info too.