Links of the Day, 12/30/2008

Video Games

Game industry conferences are a huge part of the professional life of the industry, and the number of them is growing by leaps and bounds. Game Developers Career Guide has compiled a list of conferences for 2009 – if you're thinking of making this booming industry your career, it may be worth your while to check one out.

Crispy Gamer offers its year-end review list, the top 21 stories of 2008. Among the items covered: the number of companies exiting the Entertainment Software Association, among them Activision/Blizzard and LucasArts. Some cited financial reasons, others the desire to do their own lobbying in Washington. The president of the group, Hal Halpern, said he expects more defections in the next 12 months. Given that the strength of a good trade association (especially one with clout in Washington) can be a major boost to anyone's career, this is a very curious case, and hopefully, it'll reverse itself with the economy.

Also continuing its Year in Review is Gamasutra, whose roundup of the third quarter includes items such as the free-fall of Electronic Arts and the Xbox 360 price cuts. Definitely worth studying as a lesson in how even big companies can do things very, very wrong. (Just look at Sony's refusal to cut prices).

FanToPro Crush Object Emergent has integrated a complex light map system into their Gamebryo development tool - which compliments a new animation engine.  These are people to send resumes too! 

NC Soft has been sued over patent infringement. The case sounds like a company looking to make a quick buck off of a poor patent, but other MMO makers could get roped into this, which might be troublesome. NC Soft may have been picked due to potential vulnerability over the Tabula Rasa failure. 

For you future and current game pros, a look at franchises to resurrect - and some telling tales of how franchises fade away. 

Technology

Is Microsoft looking to go to pay-as-you-go computing? Apparently, there's a leaked document out there documenting a plan to have hardware that can be utilized on a pay-per-use basis. Users would pay to unlock different levels of computing, meaning that for a high-end game, they'd have to pay heavy to utilize the potential of their own hardware. This is extremely preliminary, but it definitely looks like a company trying to maximize a revenue stream in a slow economy. If something like this goes through, though, it may mean not only a gripe for consumers, but also an extra headache for programmers.

A Dutch IT consultant has started a campaign to have IBM open source Notes/Domino – based on an earlier campaign to have Sun do the same thing with Solaris, which was successful back in 2005. Ian Tree, the campaigner, said that doing so would make the business program "something schools use to teach groupware and application development concepts," which is "how various Unixes, relational databases, Linux, and a raft of other products eventually became commercialized." Interesting concept, and it definitely could do for Notes/Domino what open sourcing has done for the suddenly-red-hot Linux. Worth watching to see if Tree succeeds.

Streaming video has even invaded the world of Blu-Ray. LG has announced that it has added YouTube support to its new line of high-definition video players. If someone has an idea for high-definition streaming video, by all means, put it into practice. You could make a mint.

Chipmaker AMD is increasing layoffs, in a sad sign that the employee cuts in the industry aren't over yet. They've been having problems, so it's not entirely surprising, but it's never good to see another high-tech company hit.

Publishing

Advertising, the bedrock of the publishing industry, will stay in a slump for at least another 12 months, according to trade publication Ad Age. Sadly, this may result in a lot more news of layoffs and consolidations at newspapers and magazines – if you were thinking of making a career shift into this field in the immediate future, you may want to seriously reconsider.

Economics/Geekonomics

A look back at the 2008 financial crisis provided by the blog The Big Picture, and Bloomberg offers a year in review in video form. We've had another sobering reminder that we're not out of the woods yet with the news that home prices have dropped by 18 percent over the past 12 months, falling to 2004 levels.

– Bonnie (with input from Steve)