John Romero Kickstarter put on “hold” until playable demo is complete

We'll have to wait until the demo's complete to see how these Blackroom weapons will work in John Romero's next video game. (credit: John Romero)

John Romero announced his return to video game development on Monday in the form of a Kickstarter project, but he and another ex-id Software veteran, Adrian Carmack, apparently agreed with Ars' initial assessment of their crowdfunding campaign. The duo has now put its money request on hold, declaring that they will return once they can put a playable demo into the hands of their fans.

"The team is at work on a demo which demonstrates the kind of gameplay, look, and innovative, cool features that make Blackroom truly unique," Romero announced in a "backer-only" update post. "Simply put, this will take more time than the Kickstarter has left, so we’ve decided to suspend the campaign and launch a new one when the gameplay demo is ready."

Blackroom's Monday announcement came with little more than big promises of a return to "classic" first-person shooter gameplay, a few snippets of concept art, and the confirmation of a single additional staffer in the form of a "metal composer." Instead of putting any money where his mouth is, Romero instead teased fans with a pair of remade levels (1, 2) from the original version of Doom—as in, downloadable WAD files you could inject into the original executable. Those throwback levels were admittedly very good, but they failed to illustrate new mechanics or systems to expect in a new game.

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You’re more likely to vote if you think someone will ask you about it later

(credit: flickr user: hjl)

When people think they’re being watched, they’re more inclined to behave themselves. This behavior pops up again and again: in blood donation, energy saving, and charitable giving. There are many explanations for why this happens—maybe we think people are more likely to treat us well if they see us behaving in a prosocial way; in some cases, we might behave ourselves in front of others in order to avoid awkward conversations or having to lie.

Harvard researchers Todd Rogers, John Ternovski, and Erez Yoeli wanted to find out if they could leverage this tendency in order to increase voter turnout. A “get-out-the-vote” (GOTV) letter is a simple, impersonal reminder that has a small but noticeable effect on voter turnout. A meta-analysis of 79 experiments on the effects of GOTV letters found that, on average, they boosted turnout by 0.194 percentage points—for example, from 39 percent to 39.194 percent.

It’s a tiny figure, but if applied across the US, it would result in around 450,000 extra voters (out of an estimated 235,248,000 eligible voters). Not nothing, but still not a lot. Rogers, Ternovski, and Yoeli suspected that adding a hint of oversight to the letters could make a bigger difference.

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Waving glowsticks at hologram anime pop stars: Our night with Hatsune Miku

Muraki Kanae

The 3D hologram pop star known as Hatsune Miku wags her hand at a Seattle crowd while singing about how men should bring her "pudding made from special eggs." (That's what Google Translate says, at any rate.)

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SEATTLE—"Do you think ten-year-old you would believe that a concert like this could ever exist?"

My buddy asked me this after we'd spent two hours laughing at the weirdest concert we'd ever attended: Hatsune Miku Expo 2016. The concert's distinguishing feature was a massive, see-through screen in front of a rock band, on which singing, 10-foot-tall anime princesses were projected. Forget Britney, Miley, or Taylor: no pop star fits the "larger than life" bill quite like a hologram singer who packs stadiums and can change costumes with a single hard-drive swap. The snark possibilities were rich.

As we walked out of the concert, however, snark gave way to giddy delight. We had finally seen Miku in the "flesh." Its creators and backing band rarely play in Miku's homeland of Japan, let alone elsewhere, forcing the curious to watch one of a scant few YouTube videos to see what the heck this show is all about. North Americans have nine more opportunities this year, including this coming Saturday in San Francisco, thanks to a continent-spanning tour. I caught the tour's opening night in Seattle last Saturday, fully prepared to chide it.

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Six Years of Work and Rationale In A DIY Book Scanner Documented

[Daniel Reetz] spent six years working as a Disney engineer during the day and on his book scanner, the archivist at night. Some time last year, [Daniel] decided enough is enough, got married, and retired from the book scanner business. There’s a bit more to it than that, but before leaving he decided to dump, not just the design, but the entire rationale behind the design into a twenty-two thousand word document.

One of his big theses in this document, is his perceived failure of the open hardware movement. The licenses aren’t adequate, as they are based on copyright law that only applies to software. This makes it impossible to enforce in practice, which is why he released the entire design as public domain. He also feels that open hardware shares design, but not rationale. In his mind this is useless when encouraging improvement, and we tend to agree. In the end rationale is the useful thing, or the source code, behind a design that truly matters. So, putting his money time where his mouth is, he wrote down the rationale behind his scanner.

The rationale contains a lot of interesting things. At a first glance the book scanner almost seems a simple design, not the culmination of so much work. Though, once we began to read through his document, we began to understand why he made the choices he did. There’s so much to getting a good scan without destroying the book. For example, one needs a light that doesn’t lose any color information. It doesn’t have to be perfect, as the software can correct the white balance. However, it can’t lean too far away from the natural spectrum, it can’t be too bright, and it can’t be uneven, and it can’t be prohibitively expensive. A lot of thought went into the tent light design.

[Daniel]’s book scanners are immensely popular, and are being used all over the world. He’s certainly made an impact, and the community that formed around his project continues to grow without him. He made some interesting points, and if anything wrote a really good build and design log for the rest of us to learn from.

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The Wheel of Time turns… into a “cutting-edge TV series”

Cover art for the first Wheel of Time novel. (credit: Tor Books)

After a rough false start, it looks like Robert Jordan's fantasy epic The Wheel of Time will be coming to television after all. The news was delivered on the series' Google+ page by Jordan's widow, Harriet McDougal, who owns the copyright to the novels and has controlled the franchise's direction since Jordan's death in 2007.

We have few details about the project at this point, aside from assurances that a "major studio" will have more to share soon:

Wanted to share with you exciting news about The Wheel of Time. Legal issues have been resolved. The Wheel of Time will become a cutting edge TV series! I couldn’t be more pleased. Look for the official announcement coming soon from a major studio —Harriet

Optioning The Wheel of Time makes sense, given the appetite for TV adaptations of dense, sprawling fantasy series. HBO's Game of Thrones and Starz's Outlander have both been successful, and Wheel of Time is a firmly established property that has the added benefit of actually being a finished story already.

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Patent appeals court rejects challenge to venue rules

Winter ice rink in Marshall, Texas. The historic county courthouse is in the background. (credit: Joe Mullin)

Patent reform advocates who were hoping to "shut down the Eastern District of Texas" face disappointment today, as the top US patent appeals court ruled (PDF) against a venue transfer in a dispute between two food companies.

Tech companies and patent reform advocates have been complaining that they don't get a fair shake in East Texas, a rural district that's been a hotspot for patent litigation for more than a decade now. The case decided today, In re: TC Heartland, doesn't directly involve tech companies or East Texas, but it could have had a big effect on both.

The lawsuit began when Kraft Foods accused rival food company TC Heartland of infringing its patents on "liquid water enhancers." Heartland's defense lawyers asked to move the case from Delaware to TC Heartland's home state of Indiana, but a Delaware magistrate judge rejected the transfer motion. According to the magistrate, the fact that TC Heartland shipped about 2% of the accused products to Delaware is enough to allow the plaintiffs to sue there.

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Marvelous news: There will be a Punisher series on Netflix

(credit: Marvel)

For many viewers, the introduction of Frank Castle—aka The Punisher—was the highpoint of Daredevil's second season. Played by John Bernthal, Castle takes a very different approach to ridding Hell's Kitchen of crime, choosing the kill shot over just crippling the bad guys. Evidently Marvel was listening to the chorus of fans calling for a full Punisher series; on Friday Entertainment Weekly reported that the comic empire has ordered just that.

Bernthal is actually the fourth actor to play Frank Castle, after Dolph Lundgren (The Punisher, 1989), Thomas Jane (The Punisher, 2004), and Ray Stevenson (Punisher: War Zone, 2008). The character is one of Marvel's grittiest, and those previous three adaptations did poorly at the box office. But we live in a post-Deadpool age, where comic characters no longer have to be PG-13. Not to mention that a series on Netflix enjoys freedoms denied to tentpole cinema releases.

This will be the sixth Marvel series to run on Netflix. We've already seen Jessica Jones and Daredevil, with Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and The Defenders all in the works. Certainly, Disney's acquisition of Marvel for $4 billion in 2009 continues to look like a clever move, particularly in contrast to how DC's catalogue is being translated into live action. Now if only someone would finally push the button on a Dredd series for Netflix...

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