Update: Google have now issued an update that should resolve a major bug affecting Journey To The Savage Planet. More below.
Journey To The Savage Planet landed on Google Stadia last month, but unfortunately it arrived with a game-breaking bug that makes it unplayable. It's a pretty serious issue that you'd think the developers would be working on ASAP. However, Google are in the process of moving those developers to new roles within the company after shutting down their studios earlier this month, and now nobody seems to know who's supposed to be working on a fix.
]]>Search engine and all around web giant Google famously love to put hidden features in their products, and a few days ago a new easter egg was discovered: a full text adventure game hidden away in the dev console. The game sees you playing as a “big blue G” and searching for your friends, the other colourful letters that make up the Google logo.
]]>Google have reverted a recent change to their Chrome browser which was intended to block annoying auto-playing sound and video on websites but had the knock-on effect of silencing many browser games. After outcry from developers, players, conservationists, and the ol' paper-shaking press, Google have temporarily undone the damage - but only temporarily. Google plan to reimplement the change later this year, saying the problem isn't that they are breaking things, rather that they didn't give enough notice before breaking things - so now devs have a few months to update their games before Google break 'em. Given that about half the Internet uses Chrome, this matters.
]]>Every silver lining has a cloud. While much of the internet may be jumping for joy at Google Chrome's latest update disabling auto-playing video and audio by default, the new feature may have a rather nasty knock-on effect on many older sites, including a multitude of art and game-related projects and many newer HTML 5 pages being left partially broken. Many sites and some games are still without music or audio layers, and the full scope of the damage done still unknown.
]]>Teaching kids how to code has a surprisingly long history, going all the way back to the 1960s and the first programming language designed for children -- Logo. On its 50th anniversary, Google’s latest Doodle recalls the game-like Logo with Coding for Carrots. It’s the first ever coding Doodle, and it’s lovely.
]]>When the robots come for us, bad sci-fi has taught me, it'll be teenage whizzes who save the world. In light of that, I believe that Blizzard and Google's DeepMind Lab are taking the audacious and treasonous step of pre-emptively toadying to our future robot overlords. They've teamed up to release a machine learning API and toolkit to use StarCraft II [official site] as a testbed for artificial intelligences. In short, they're trying to teach robots how to outthink and outmaneuver twitchy teenagers in war.
Congratulations, you've sold the human race out for... what? Smarter surveillance tools? Better self-driving cars? When those spy drones hunt us and your car transforms into a bipedal robot with you still inside, you won't find it so exciting.
]]>Google has announced Be Internet Awesome; a collaborative project focused around teaching children how to be safe online. There are a bunch of teaching resources for parents and schools but I'm posting about it because the Interland section [official site] is a suite of four colourful games each focusing on a different aspect of safety.
]]>EEEEE! The Google Doodle celebrating the 2017 ICC Champions Trophy [link] is such an adorable little cricket game! You control a pair of little crickets who have ventured out to bat while the fielders are all snails!
]]>Tilt Brush [official site] was, hands down, one of the best things in VR last year, but given the VR platform means a smaller potential player-base it's got that challenge of "How do I share any of this cool stuff with people not wearing VR headsets?" That's where the new Sketches gallery comes in, letting you peer at people's creations using a regular browser.
]]>Today, on Tech That Sounds Kinda Cool But TBH What Really Matters Is Whether Games Using It Are Good But Hey Y'Like Tech Doncha Ya Funny Little Thing, comes news about SpatialOS [official site]. It's a server platform which boasts about using the mystical powers of clouds to host thousands of players in super complex simulations, and which is supposedly dead simple to build games with. Improbable, the gang behind SpatialOS, aren't the only folks with drifting servers but they have just announced a partnership with disruptive meteorologists Google and launched an alpha.
]]>The Oculus Rift and HTC Vive were both released in 2016, but what was the best VR experience of the year? The RPS Advent Calendar highlights our favourite games of the year, daily, and behind today’s door is...
Virtual artistry tool Tilt Brush.
]]>I've lost entire afternoon's to GeoGuessr, hitting the button again and again to teleport to a random place in the world in Google Streetview and then try to work out where I am from the scenery. Now I've spent a similarly long afternoon making Google do the guessing. Quick, Draw![ official site] is a sort-of game, sort-of web tool in which you doodle images upon request and a neural network tries to guess what it is you're drawing. Come, play, abandon productivity.
]]>Over the weekend I decided it was time to dive back into Google's VR art project, Tilt Brush [official site]. I hadn't played it since a brief demo out in Seattle but I had an afternoon of waiting for a Sainsbury's delivery* ahead of me and access to an RPS Vive. That header image isn't mine, by the way - it's by Tristan Reidford! I'm more about trying to master the basics right now.
Something I was fiddling with initially was the background. You get to sort of set the skybox to different things as a backdrop for your work - black or white offer you a plain background but I wanted to do something foresty so I picked the night sky with all the stars overhead.
]]>Google search's autocomplete suggestions offer strange and wonderful glimpses into what the rest of the world wants to know. It's trying to help us by guessing what we're after, but we're left with a giddy voyeuristic thrill wondering "Who is asking this and why?" Now there's a game based on those autocomplete oddities.
idiots.win [official site] is a free browser game which starts asking Google incomplete questions then shows you five of the top ten autocomplete results - can you guess which is #1? It's a big of a giggle, yeah?
]]>YouTube have announced a subscription service called YouTube Red. We've known it was on the way for a long time, but now it's official. In return for a monthly fee, you can watch YouTube videos without ads, save them offline, and gain access to a bunch of original content being produced by YouTube themselves in partnership with some folks you'll have heard of, including popular game-player/millionaire/generational hot take topic, PewDiePie.
]]>When all the websites got together for their spring barbecue last month, so I'm told, YouTube had a little too much to drink and caused a scene. "Who's beer is that?" the website would ask, teetering over the booze table. "BIG DADDY VIDEO'S BEER!" It claimed everything it saw - the barbecue, the grass, the jazz quartet - and even kicked Buzzfeed out the paddling pool. Except. When it claimed dominion over a gaming PC in the lounge, Twitch stared it down. "Don't you know who I am?" roared Big Daddy Video and Twitch twatted it. Out cold. One punch. So I'm told.
Perhaps in retaliation, YouTube yesterday announced YouTube Gaming to shore up and bring together gaming videos and livestreams and whatnot. Streaming might be less awful, for starters.
]]>If you use Google's web browser Chrome, you might notice that Unity games embedded in web pages no longer work as of the latest update. As they've planned to since 2013, Google have disabled support for the way the Unity plugin works. Unity 5 does support WebGL, which works without plugins, but for now that'll leave a whole load of browser games not working. You can re-enable support temporarily, if you don't mind digging in settings, or simply use a different browser.
It's been a while since I had to fire up another browser to visit certain websites that wouldn't work properly in mine. It's like the browser wars all over again!
]]>Streaming is big business. During peak usage times in the US of A, Netflix and Twitch.tv are two of the largest sources of internet traffic, as people across the country watch films, TV shows (or are they just 'shows' now, without the 'TV'?), live esports and other game streams. Little wonder then that Twitch is the target of a takeover, with multiple suitors, including Microsoft, already rebuffed according to sources who have spoken to The Verge and Variety. Numerous reports place Google in pole position, with a billion dollars on the table.
]]>Doctor Who games have historically been far more Colin than Tom Baker, as assorted game-makers struggle to reinterpret a bloke with a fancy screwdriver and a silly outfit as something interactive. The trouble is they've always pursued stories and action and companions over the two fundamentals of the cosmic hobo: he can travel in time, and he can regenerate into a new body if killed.
Someone really needs to do a Batman Arkham with the old Time Lord, and get the essences of the character right before worrying about anything else. I didn't quite expect that someone to be Google.
]]>I'd usually Google for information on a game I knew nothing about, but that's proving impossible about this Google Maps based game from Google. Googling for Google Maps kind of only takes you to one place. So what do we know?
]]>This isn't PC gaming news so much as general internet nerding, but it's a lovely thing nonetheless. I have to admit that I haven't seen the Google homepage in months, so I wouldn't have realised that the current logo is an extraordinary interactive Google doodle game thing, had John not alerted me. How did he know? Well, there are a lot of tubes from all round the world leading to his office. He was probably peering down them. [Actually my wife told me - John] Anyway, the new doodle is the tale of a meeting of robots, and has been put up in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the first publication by brilliant sci-fi author, Stanislaw Lem. Lem is best know for Solaris, which was made into movies by Tarkovsky and Soderburgh, but his influence on sf generally has been enormous, thanks to his prolific and insightful writing and amazing short stories. You should definitely have a read of some of his stuff, if you haven't already. (The art in the logo is inspired by Lem illustrator, Daniel Mrózh, who illustrated a version of The Cyberiad. Which now, I learn, was even turned into an opera!)
]]>That's my slightly sensationalist tabloid headline, but it's entirely true. So long as you own the game, etc. And via the burgeoning magic that is NaClBox. Which really does let you play Monkey Island, or indeed any other DOS game playable in DOSBox, in a web browser. If that web browser is Google's Chrome. I know it's true - I did it.
]]>I can't tell you how often we hear the same plea: "Dear RPS, please can you fix it for me to be even more bewildered than I already am by the vast array of different ways to digitally purchase PC games?" Your prayers have been answered. Added to your DirectToGoodOldSteamGetGates today is Chrome Web Store - Google's browser-based plan to muscle in on PC gaming (and apps too, but let's face it: games).
Snark aside, it's a markedly different prospect to the existing stores.
]]>TechCrunch has some news about Google investing in Farmville developers Zynga. If TC's "multiple sources" are correct, then the secret deal is intended to furnish a new Google Games project:
]]>Is it advert, is it game, is it video, is it brainteaser? Chrome Fastball is all those things. It's a promotional web-toy created by a little company known as Google, intended to convince us all to use the Chrome browser. Why, whoever would want to do that? We're all so happy with Microsoft Internet Explorer whatever-the-hell-number-that-carcrash-is-on-now.
Yeah, it's an advert. But it's also a test of how well you know the internet: both its mechanics and its concept.
]]>Edge Online report that Unity have revealed their 3D engine running in Google's Chrome browser without a plugin.
]]>It hasn't occurred to me until now that the PC could do with an App Store. Anyone who owns an iPhone, iTouch, or perhaps an Android phone, will now be familiar with using application stores, and then having all their purchases presented in the most simplified way. In many ways it's not entirely dissimilar to a Windows, Mac or Linux desktop covered in simple, square icons. Revealed at this week's Google I/O 2010 conference, Chrome intends to provide such a system for online applications, including gaming, called the Chrome Web Store.
]]>We asked Valve to comment on the rumour, and received a succinct reply:
]]>Google's social world thinger, Lively, has gone live. It's an environment-building 3D web browser thing of the "Second Life Lite" variety. I've not had time to have a good look at it, but judging by the sheer number of rooms being created by people the content tools must be fairly easy to use. It all seems a bit laggy though, so I guess the most popular rooms are getting battered by too much traffic. It also wants your Gmail login every 30 seconds, which is rather irritating. Still, let us know in the comments if you end up making something interesting from it.
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