Month: March 2020

A few weeks back (which at this point seems like a trillion years ago) we published our "War Stories" interview with Naughty Dog's Andy Gavin, wherein he spilled some fascinating details on the technical tightrope walk necessary to bring Crash Bandicoot to life on the original Playstation. As you might expect, Andy gave us way more info than we could reasonably cram into a short amount of time—he's a brilliant guy with lots of brilliant stories, and it'd be a shame for them not to see the light of day.

Therefore, we've tapped Andy's interview to be the third in our series of "extended" interview videos. We previously published extended chats with Oddworld's Lorne Lanning and Myst's Rand Miller, and Andy's conversation makes a great addition to the collection.

We've heard comments from readers that these extended interviews make for great podcast material, too—they're hosted on YouTube, but the primary draw is the audio component, so if you're stuck at home doing something that doesn't require your full attention, this might be a good thing to toss on in the background to accompany your day. We're planning on running several more of these in the next couple of weeks, too, so stay tuned for even more extended interviews. (The one I'm most looking forward to is our extended chat with Star Control creators Fred Ford and Paul Reiche, which I believe is next in the queue!)

Enlarge / The Uber Technologies Inc. logo is seen on the windshield of a vehicle in New York on Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018. (credit: John Taggart/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

An Uber driver in New York has died as a result of the coronavirus, the New York Post reports.

Anil Subba was a Nepalese immigrant in his 40s who lived in Queens. He had a wife and three children.

According to his cousin, Subba picked up a sick passenger from New York's JFK airport during the first week of March. The experience scared him enough that he stopped driving for Uber, but it was too late. He developed COVID-19 symptoms and checked himself into the hospital about two weeks ago.

Enlarge / The first three studios with Epic Games Publishing deals are as follows: Playdead (Limbo, Inside), Remedy (Max Payne, Alan Wake, Control), and gen DESIGN (whose staff was responsible for Sony exclusives like Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last Guardian). (credit: Collage by Aurich Lawson)

Epic Games: The engine maker, the game maker, the storefront handler... and now the games publisher.

Epic Games Publishing came into formal existence on Wednesday by announcing plans to fund, launch, and promote new multi-platform video games. The announcement hinged on two key points: which studios had already signed to EGP and what financial terms EGP games developers can expect.

While most game publishing deals aren't typically laid bare for the public, Epic has already chosen to confirm some of EGP's financial nitty-gritty. In addition to letting studios retain "100%" control of their intellectual property (an increasingly popular term for game-publishing contracts), EGP also promises to fund "up to 100%" of all game development costs. "Once costs are recouped," Epic says, developers will earn "at least 50% of profits." (That mix of "up to" and "at least" in the last two points may imply that those figures vary as a pair—meaning, if a developer pays for more of its dev costs, it might stand to claim more profit-sharing in the long term. Epic has not clarified that point.)