Technology that speeded the development of Covid vaccines has potential to transform the pharmaceutical industryThe hunt for new medicines has often been more like a game of roulette than high-end science. But now the pharmaceutical sector is on the cusp of a transformation, as it delves into cutting-edge technology to come up with new treatments for diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s.Artificial intelligence (AI) is set to improve the industry’s success rates and speed up drug discovery, potentially saving it billions of dollars, a recent survey by the analytics firm GlobalData has found. AI topped a list of technologies seen as having the greatest impact on the sector this year. Almost 100 partnerships have been struck between AI specialists and large pharma companies for drug discovery since 2015. Continue reading...
Multi-year agreement is one of more than 50 the tech giant has made with Australian media companiesGuardian Australia is the latest media company to strike a deal with Google to feature its journalism in the News Showcase product just days out from the Senate debating the federal government’s news media code.The multi-year commercial agreement was finalised after weeks of negotiation between Google and the Guardian’s leadership in Australia, as well as editorial and commercial staff in London. Continue reading...
by Josh Taylor, Michael McGowan and Archie Bland on (#5ECJC)
News remains blocked as satirical websites are reinstated and Qanon and anti-vaxxers continue to be unaffectedFacebook may wait up to a week before unblocking some of the pages of hundreds of non-media organisations caught up in its news ban, while anti-vaccination content and misinformation continues to run rampant on the social media platform.Content designated as news was blocked on Facebook in Australia on Thursday morning in response to the federal government’s news media code, which would require the tech giant to negotiate with news publishers for payment for content. Continue reading...
by Archie Bland, Amanda Meade and Victoria Bekiempis on (#5EC1R)
Politicians and news providers in UK and US condemn site after blocking access to media contentPoliticians, news providers and civil society groups in the UK and US have rounded on Facebook and said the company’s decision to block all media content on its platform in Australia should hasten moves to bring its powers under control.In a step condemned as “an attempt to bully a democracy” and “threatening to bring an entire country to its knees”, Facebook stopped its 18 million Australian users from viewing or sharing news stories overnight in an escalating row over whether it should have to pay media companies for its content. It said the new rules “ignore the realities” of its relationship with news publishers. Continue reading...
From hairdryers to ovens, we would like to hear about your gadgets and devices that are still workingAs we spend more time at home than ever, some of us have looked to upgrade our home appliances – but for others, there has been no need.From ovens and fridges that have outlived their owners, to hairdryers passed from one generation to the next, we want to hear about your gadgets and devices which haven’t given up the ghost, despite many years of use. Continue reading...
Drivers say working conditions remain poor after voters approved measure exempting Uber and other apps from labor lawsWeeks after Proposition 22 went into effect in California and exempted some major tech firms from fully complying with labor laws, workers for rideshare and delivery apps in the state claim poor working conditions have persisted and pay has decreased.Drivers and labor groups opposed Prop 22, saying it would allow companies to sidestep their obligations to provide benefits and standard minimum wages to their workers even as they make billions of dollars. But the measure passed at the ballot box. Continue reading...
The PM says the social media giant’s move to block news on its platform in Australia will harden the resolve of his government• Emily Bell: Even for a company that specialises in PR disasters, Facebook has excelled with its Australian blackout
Facebook has made good on its threat to ban Australians from seeing or posting news content on its site in response to the federal government’s proposed news media code. As of Thursday morning, news publishers were unable to post content on pages, while articles were also blocked from being shared. In implementing its new ban, the social media giant also blocked a number of government departments, charities and its own page. Treasurer Josh Frydenberg lambasted the company, saying the social media giant's 'actions were unnecessary, they were heavy-handed, and they will damage its reputation here in Australia'
Lawsuit claims ‘disregard for health and safety requirements’ and retaliation against employees who raised alarmsNew York is suing Amazon, claiming the company failed to provide workers with a safe environment at two warehouses in the state as Covid-19 infections surged nationwide.The suit from Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, landed just days after Amazon pre-emptively sued to block the suit over its coronavirus safety protocols and the firing of one of its employees who objected to working conditions. Continue reading...
Options for couples with different skin tones and a bearded man or woman also part of iOS 14.5More than 200 new emojis will arrive on iPhones with the release of the next operating system update, including a vaccine-ready syringe, a flaming heart and a vast array of options for couples with different skin tones.The emojis will arrive as part of iOS 14.5, expected to hit iPhones within the next month. The changes, collated from beta versions by Jeremy Burge, the founder and “Chief Emoji Officer” of Emojipedia, are a mixture of all-new creations, modifications to existing emojis, and a few updates unique to Apple’s platform. Continue reading...
US congressman Tom Emmer appeared to be floating upside down on screen during a virtual congressional committee hearing, shifting the mood of the meeting. Emmer's peculiar on-screen appearance prompted chairwoman Maxine Waters to ask if he was ok while other lawmakers commented 'at least he's not a cat' referring to the viral video of a lawyer who was unable to turn off a kitten filter during a virtual meeting. Continue reading...
Chinese company turns to UK high court in attempt to stop extradition of Meng Wanzhou from Canada to the USHuawei’s battle to prevent the extradition of its chief financial officer from Canada to the US will open a new front at the British high court on Friday when the Chinese telecoms giant seeks an application to access records from inside HSBC in a bid to prove that she did not mislead the bank.The future of Meng Wanzhou has become a major three-way point of diplomatic and legal tension between China, Canada and the US since she was arrested at Vancouver airport in December 2018. Continue reading...
Workers in Dublin office claim US company used NDAs to try to stop them talking to Leo VaradkarFacebook has been accused of using nondisclosure agreements to try to build a “wall of secrecy” and prevent its moderators from discussing working conditions with Leo Varadkar, the Irish tánaiste (deputy PM).The moderators claim that Facebook warned them they could not break a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) they had signed with the company during discussions with Varadkar, and warned them that any discussion of their work outside the office would be treated as a disciplinary offence. Continue reading...
Google failure to update more than 80 apps to comply with Apple’s ‘nutrition label’ requirement means users are being told apps are out of dateGoogle’s privacy standoff with Apple has lasted so long that even the company’s own apps are complaining about it.Since early December, Apple has required any iOS app to include a privacy “nutrition label”, listing all the ways the app uses personal data. Continue reading...
The Game of Throne actors will take on the roles of Ellie and Joel in HBO’s adaptation of the blockbuster video gameGame of Thrones actors Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal – who also stars in Disney’s Star Wars spinoff The Mandalorian – have been cast in HBO’s television adaptation of blockbusting video game series The Last of Us. They will take on the roles of Ellie and Joel in the forthcoming drama.The Hollywood Reporter broke news of the adaptation last March, and since then speculation over the casting has been rife. Fans on social media initially favoured Booksmart star Kaitlyn Dever for the role of Ellie, and the actor expressed interest. Meanwhile, True Detective’s Mahershala Ali was rumoured to have been approached for the role of Joel. Continue reading...
This mumblecore drama about a man’s obsession with an online sex worker is uncomfortably funny and semi-insightfulIn a 2016 Vanity Fair article, Nancy Jo Sales wrote about prostitution going mainstream, describing a new economy of young people selling their bodies to pay off student loans or just to get by in the tough economic climate. On the same theme, Ben Hozie makes his feature debut with this semi-insightful, uncomfortably funny indie drama about a man who becomes obsessed with an online sex worker. It’s a film with a slackerish mumblecore vibe, and Hozie is refreshingly grown up about sex. But it’s hard to see how his film adds much to the conversation about intimacy in the internet age.It’s set in the self-consciously hip New York art scene where Jack (Peter Vack) calls himself a professional gambler; though watching him max out his credit cards playing internet blackjack it’s obvious that he’s hooked. His other addiction is cam-girls – women who perform sex acts in front of a webcam for money. Jack spends a fortune tipping his favourite, dominatrix Scarlet (Julia Fox); she calls him her slave and in a funny-excruciating scene virtually stubs her cigarette out on his tongue. Continue reading...
Most workers for San Francisco’s biggest private employer will come into an office just one to three days a weekSalesforce has become the latest tech company in San Francisco to signal a transition away from in-person work, declaring the “9-to-5 workday is dead”.The city’s largest private employer announced on Tuesday it would permanently allow many employees to work from home, even after it becomes safe to return to offices following the Covid-19 pandemic. Continue reading...
‘My first picture of Nyome Nicholas-Williams was removed by Instagram. This one was taken as a celebration after it agreed to change its policies’When I noticed the model and activist Nyome Nicholas-Williams on social media early last summer, I felt hugely appreciative of how confident she was in her images. She was celebrating who she was. I base a lot of my work around photographing women and trying to encourage self-acceptance, which is motivated by my own low confidence. I lived through the 90s and 00s heyday of gossip mags and size zero. So when I saw Nyome, who is confident in front of the camera and boldly herself as a plus-size black woman – a marginalised and censored group of people – I reached out because I really wanted to capture her.She came to visit me in Cambridge in July, when we were recently out of the first lockdown. I shoot only with natural light, in a barn that is open to the elements along one side. I hang my backdrops in there, and the light enters from one direction only, like in studio photos. I prefer it because it creates the most beautiful, diffused light, with depth and a soft feel to it. I would never have thought it possible to create photos like this – you don’t need a big fancy studio! Shooting out of a glorified shed is an ice-breaker, too. I have to move the bikes to one side and we’re looking out into the garden with the dogs running about, which makes everyone relax and that has an impact on the photo. Continue reading...
Deal would have shifted video app’s US assets into new entity to prevent total ban on useOracle and Walmart’s plan to buy TikTok’s US operations has reportedly been pushed back indefinitely, as the US president, Joe Biden, reviews the previous administration’s efforts to address potential security risks posed by Chinese tech companies.The administration of the former president Donald Trump had cited national security concerns in its targeting of TikTok, arguing the personal data of US users could be obtained by China’s government. TikTok denies the allegation. Continue reading...
Soo Youn is considering giving up the apps. She speaks to those who have already taken the plunge – with liberating resultsMy memory and recall are alarmingly good – borderline photographic. But when I used Instagram, I found it would short-circuit my recall in an alarming way. I’d be describing something mid-sentence and I’d just stop speaking, unable to finish. So I rarely use it.
by Samuel Gibbs Consumer technology editor on (#5E07W)
After 4,500 folds the screen is pristine, the device is useful and the wow factor hasn’t worn offAre phones that unfold into tablets really the future of mobiles? And is flexible screen technology really ready for prime time? I spent four months with the £1,800 Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 to find out.The second iteration of Samsung’s smartphone that unfolds into a tablet was impressive on first inspection, reinventing what it meant to be a premium, cutting-edge device. Continue reading...
Genetic testing company with 10 million customers’ data has ‘huge cybersecurity implications’The genetic testing company 23andMe will go public through a partnership with a firm backed by the billionaire Richard Branson, in a deal that has raised fresh privacy questions about the information of millions of customers.Launched in 2006, 23andMe sells tests to determine consumers’ genetic ancestry and risk of developing certain illnesses, using saliva samples sent in by mail. Continue reading...
A lawyer showed up to virtual court in the 394th district of Texas with a kitten filter turned on, the cat moving its lips and eyes, as Rod Ponton said he and his assistant were attempting to remove the filter during the court case.The judge later posted the snipped and wrote: ‘If a child used your computer before you join a virtual hearing, check the Zoom video options to be sure filters are off. This kitten just made a formal announcement on a case in the 394th’ Continue reading...
Hackers claim to have copied source code for a number of CD Projekt’s biggest gamesThe company behind troubled gaming blockbuster Cyberpunk 2077 has been hit by a ransomware attack, it has said.In a post to its Twitter feed on Tuesday, CD Projekt, the Polish developers, shared the ransom note left by the hackers, who claimed to have copied the source code for a number of the studio’s biggest games including Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3, as well as encrypted the servers themselves. Continue reading...
Company will remove posts with false claims and groups with repeated violations will be shut downFacebook has banned misinformation about all vaccines following years of harmful, unfounded health claims proliferating on its platform.As part of its policy on Covid-19-related misinformation, Facebook will now remove posts with false claims about all vaccines, the company announced in a blogpost on Monday. Continue reading...
Instagram posts of homely scenes are striking a chord with users taking a renewed interest in their outdoor environmentAt a time when domesticity and what’s inside the home makes up the majority of what most people encounter in their daily lives, the still life is having a resurgence on social media – from influencers sharing their own photographs of satsumas and candles, to posting 18th-century paintings of shells and corals.The still-life hashtag has more than six million Instagram posts. Lucy Williams, an influencer with more than 490,000 followers, has been posting shots of lamps and lemons throughout lockdown. Fashion industry insider Ben Cobb recently shared an 18th-century still life by French painter Anne Vallayer-Coster on his feed, while interior designer Luke Edward Hall has been posting shots of just-opening narcissi against books. Continue reading...
Escape that Groundhog day feeling by trying out our creative tips on cooking, crafting, ‘camping’, and chucking stuff at DadChristmas, Easter, Bonfire Night and Halloween – the events that usually punctuate our year – haven’t felt sufficient in the pandemic, so in my family we’ve gone all out for occasions that would usually pass us by. Cultural appropriation maybe, but it has livened up Groundhog Day dinner times. We had a Diwali party in November, taking advice from an Indian friend on how to do it right, and cooked pakoras, wore new(ish) clothes, played games and covered the kitchen with fairy lights. For Burns Night my four-year-old helped make frozen cranachan, we ate haggis, played a bagpipe Spotify playlist and recited poems, including a welcome address penned by my seven-year-old, whose lines included: “I don’t know why but my dad is wearing a skirt …” (In lieu of a kilt, a peach silk number had to suffice.) Continue reading...
Facebook has said it will no longer algorithmically recommend political groups to users, but experts warn that isn’t enoughMark Zuckerberg, the Facebook CEO, announced last week the platform will no longer algorithmically recommend political groups to users in an attempt to “turn down the temperature” on online divisiveness. Continue reading...
by Presented by Rachel Humphreys with Desmund Delaney on (#5DR23)
When a group of amateur investors on a Reddit messageboard began buying up stock in a video games retailer it forced huge losses on major Wall Street hedge funds that had bet against it. But following a trading frenzy the stock began to fall, almost as quickly as it had risenAt the beginning of the year, not many people were paying attention to GameStop. Its business of selling video games in retail stores looked increasingly shaky as the market shifted ever more online in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic. GameStop’s seemingly grim prospects led Wall Street hedge funds to take out big bets on the company’s share price falling further (known as short selling) but they had not reckoned with a force that was about to blow them away. Users of the Reddit messageboard WallStreetBets began grouping together to buy huge quantities of GameStop’s stock, driving the share price higher and higher and inflicting huge losses on the hedge fund titans.Desmund Delaney tells Rachel Humphreys that as part of the Reddit community he was tipping shares in GameStop back in 2019 and took his own advice investing in the company, despite the derision of other users. But he gave up on the company last year while its share price was below $10 and cashed out. If he’d sold last week he would be sitting on half a million dollars. Continue reading...
Scientists at MIT have taken the leafy greens online – in the hope they will be able to warn about explosivesName: Spinach.Age: About 2,000 years old, originating, it is said, in Persia. Continue reading...
The Amazon founder’s relentless quest for ‘customer ecstasy’ made him one of the world’s richest people – now he’s looking to the unlimited resources of space. Is he the genius our age of consumerism deserves?The first thing I ever bought on Amazon was an edutainment DVD for babies. I don’t recall making the purchase, but the data is unequivocal on this point: on 14 November 2004, I bought Baby Einstein: Baby Noah – Animal Expedition for the sum of £7.85. My nearest guess is that I got it as a Christmas present for my nephew, who would at that point have been one year old, and at the very peak of his interest in finger-puppet animals who cavort to xylophone arrangements of Beethoven. This was swiftly followed by three more DVD purchases I have no memory of making. Strangely, I bought nothing at all from Amazon the following year, and then, in 2006, I embarked on a PhD and started ramping up my acquisition of the sort of books that were not easily to be found in brick-and-mortar establishments. Dry treatises on psychoanalysis. Obscure narrative theory texts. The occasional poetry collection. Everything ever published by the American novelist Nicholson Baker.I know these things because I recently spent a desultory morning clicking through all 16 years of my Amazon purchase history. Seeing all those hundreds of items bought and delivered, many of them long since forgotten, was a vaguely melancholy experience. I experienced an estranged recognition, as if reading an avant-garde biography of myself, ghost-written by an algorithm. From the bare facts of the things I once bought, I began to reconstruct where I was in life, and what I was doing at the time, and what I was (or wanted to be) interested in. And yet an essential mystery endured. What kind of person purchases within the space of a few days, as I did in August of 2012, a Le Creuset non-stick crepe pan, three blue and white herringbone tea-towels, and a 700-odd page biography of the Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno? (The tea-towels are still in use, and so is the crepe pan, while the 700-plus page Adorno biography remains, inevitably, unread.) Perhaps the answer is as simple as: a person with an Amazon account. Continue reading...
Strategic shift beyond music content helps streaming service to grow advertising income by 29% to €281mSpotify recorded a doubling in podcast listening hours in the fourth quarter of 2020, as locked-down listeners hunting for entertainment tuned in to Michelle Obama and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, driving a Wall Street-beating 24% year-on-year increase in paying subscribers.The audio streaming company, which now has 155 million paying customers, saw its total monthly user base, including those on its free, advertising-supported tier, grow 27% year-on-year to 345 million. Continue reading...
The failure of two online giants shows you can’t just pour in money and watch games pop out – a game studio culture takes time to developIt was perhaps not the most surprising video game industry revelation of all time. Last week, Bloomberg published an eviscerating exposé on the dysfunctional culture at Amazon Game Studios, the development teams formed by the online retail giant, which have so far failed to produce a single hit title for PC or consoles, despite recruiting a wealth of industry veterans. The backstory as presented in the article is almost too predictable: Amazon trusted its game studios to a company veteran, Mike Frazzini, with no experience in game development, who greenlit expensive projects that chased already successful titles (a League of Legends clone called Nova, a Fortnite competitor named Intensity) and ended up being cancelled. According to staff who spoke to Bloomberg, the studios also adopted a “bro culture” in which female staff were belittled and sidelined. Bloomberg said they approached Amazon for a response, but a spokeswoman declined to comment or make Frazzini available for an interview.Then came the news that Google would be closing its own game development studios in Los Angeles and Montreal, neither of which have yet produced a game for its Stadia streaming service. “Creating best-in-class games from the ground up takes many years and significant investment, and the cost is going up exponentially,” wrote Stadia GM and vice president Phil Harrison in his blog post explaining the company’s decision to focus on the platform rather than on game development. But should this have come as a surprise to a man who previously launched consoles at Microsoft and Sony? Possibly not. Continue reading...
Company’s iOS 14.5 release will allow masked users to access devices with help from Apple Watch heart-rate sensorA year into the global pandemic, Apple has solved the problem of how to unlock iPhones with Face ID without removing your face mask – at least, it has for its most dedicated customers.In the latest version of iOS, the operating system for iPhones, which is being beta tested by the public, users can enable a setting that makes Face ID work even if a mask is worn, but only if the mask is accompanied by an unlocked Apple Watch. Continue reading...
Monash University research finds Bing and Ecosia delivered substantially more professionally produced news in the top 50 results compared with GoogleAustralians trying to stay up to date with the news by searching online may be better off ditching Google and using its competitors, research by Monash University has shown.On Australia Day “Grace Tame” was the most popular search term used on Google – reflecting the fact that she had just been made Australian of the Year. The top 50 results delivered by Google included only 70% of professional news websites, compared with 94% for the same search term on Bing and 82% on Ecosia. Continue reading...
Kevin Macdonald’s film aims to give a snapshot of the modern world but its context-free clips look more like a corporate adSensory overload and incoherence are sadly the dominant qualities of this idealistic crowdsourced YouTube video project from director Kevin Macdonald and executive producer Ridley Scott, which is about everything and nothing.It is a follow-up to Macdonald’s Life in a Day movie from 2011, in which legions of people responded to a request to send in homemade videos on what they were doing on a certain day in 2010: a time-capsule snapshot mosaic from all over the world. This time he and Scott put out a worldwide call for people to record all the various sad, funny, passionate or banal things they were doing on 25 July 2020; he got 324,000 videos from 192 countries. Continue reading...
They are elusive, infuriating gatekeepers that rule our lives. Easy to crack and hard to remember, forgetting them is pricey – it cost Stefan Thomas £160m in lost bitcoinModern life is the act of entering the third character of a long-dead family pet into an online form three times a week, getting it wrong, and speaking to a call-centre worker in India whose real name is almost certainly not Kenny, ad infinitum, until you die. Our ancestors lived short, brutish lives and died in childbirth, or were gored to death on the battlefield, but at least they didn’t have passwords, and that’s something.The tyranny of passwords; it colonises modern life. These petty dictators deny us access to our bank accounts, our baby photos, our phone contracts, even our heating. They reproduce as endlessly as bacteria, and yet, like Tupperware lids, you can never find the one you need. They are our boyfriends, our girlfriends, our children, our pets. A talented and motivated adversary could probably work yours out in the time it has taken you to read this paragraph. Continue reading...
The social network’s ‘supreme court’ of 40 assorted academics, politicians and journalists to oversee the site’s content is little more than a PR exerciseThe day after the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January, Facebook suspended Donald Trump’s account indefinitely. Two things about this decision are interesting. The first is that, as Will Oremus pointed out in a perceptive post, the decision was “an overnight reversal of the policy on Trump and other political leaders that the social network has spent the past four years honing, justifying and defending. The unprecedented move, which lacks a clear basis in any of Facebook’s previously stated policies, highlights for the millionth time that the dominant platforms are quite literally making up the rules of online speech as they go along.”In this context, Facebook’s contorted decision-making about Trump throughout his presidency has been beyond parody. “The only thing that has been consistent, until now,” observes Oremus, “is Facebook’s determination to contort, hair-split and reimagine its rules to make sure nothing Trump posted would fall too far outside them.” In the end, it took the president inciting his followers to sack the Capitol to convince Zuckerberg and co that “the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government”. Continue reading...
App helping to fuel share-buying frenzy allows ‘limited buys’ after a $1bn cash injection to safeguard tradesShares in companies including videogame retailer GameStop soared again on Friday, as an army of small investors taking aim at Wall Street regained access to amateur share trading platform Robinhood.The app, weaponised by activist small investors to trap hedge funds in a “short squeeze” that has cost them $20bn on paper by some estimates, had suspended buying of stocks such as GameStop, cinema chain AMC and BlackBerry on Thursday. Continue reading...
Extra battery weight of electric cars means ways must be found to cut particulate emissionsYou would think that battery electric cars, having no exhaust pipes, would emit less air pollution than diesel and petrol vehicles. A controversial study in 2016 said particle pollution from electric cars would be worse. Due to battery weight, electric cars are about 200-300kg heavier than comparable-size cars that burn oil-based fuel. More weight means more particle pollution from the wear of brakes, tyres and roads. This could offset the absence of an exhaust.New analysis by the University of Birmingham, suggests that regenerative braking, where the electric motor slows the car, should mean electric vehicles are less polluting in urban areas. A study in Los Angeles found that brakes on electric cars are used for about one-eighth of the time of those on oil-fuelled cars. However, the extra weight of electric cars means they are likely to emit more particle pollution on high-speed motorways. Continue reading...
Cases included content on Covid misinformation and hate speech, and panel will rule soon on the decision to suspend TrumpFacebook’s oversight board, the “supreme court” set up by the company to relieve Mark Zuckerberg of having the final say over moderation, has issued its first decisions, overturning the social network’s choices on four of the five first cases it has heard.The cases, all of which were appeals to reinstate content taken down by Facebook, covered a wide range of topics, from female nudity, to Russian-language ethnic slurs, through islamophobia and Covid misinformation. The board’s decisions are binding under the agreement between Facebook and its quasi-independent overseer. Facebook now has seven days to restore content in the four cases where the board deemed it necessary. Continue reading...
Bumper payout to CEO Elon Musk and move to cheaper EV models means earnings missed forecastsTesla shares fell in after-hours trading after the electric carmaker’s earnings fell short of expectations, despite recording its first annual profit, after a bumper payout to its chief executive, Elon Musk.Operating income rose to $575m (£420m) in the fourth quarter, but it was held back by a $267m payout for Musk. Under a scheme waved through by investors in 2018, Musk could eventually be eligible for awards worth up to $55.8bn as the share price rises. Continue reading...
Coming up with sneaky routes to glory has long been a guilty pleasure in video games that feature flexible play systemsIt’s clear how the Viking raids in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla are supposed to work. Ubisoft’s latest historical adventure has you playing as a brave Norse warrior rampaging across England with your fellow raiders, battling Saxon soldiers and ransacking their burning cities. That’s not how I play. I discovered early on that, instead of approaching an enemy site in my longship, with all my skilled courageous troops, then engaging in open, bloody warfare, I had more success if I went ahead alone and hid in the bushes, picking the guards off one by one and quietly hiding their bodies. You can clear out a whole town without a scratch, and then your fearsome warriors can pop in at the end and help you open the treasure chests. It feels … wrong.Open-world video games such as Assassin’s Creed, Cyberpunk 2077 and Witcher 3 are specifically designed to give players the freedom to go where they want and do what they want, tackling the game’s quests and missions how they see fit. The best of them support different modes of play, whether that’s charging into battles or stealthily breaking into enemy bases. But whatever you go for, the idea is that you develop skills and finesse your way to steely competence. I don’t think you are meant to just hide in the bushes and murder people. Continue reading...
Technology | The Guardian