Tech CEOs Request Immigration Reform

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100 CEOs of American tech companies have signed a letter calling for immigration reform to address skills shortages. It was signed by Google’s Eric Schmidt, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Zynga’s Mark Pincus and Microsoft’s Bradford L. Smith among others.

“As you know, the United States has a long history of welcoming talented, hard-working people to our shores,” the letter reads. “Immigrant entrepreneurs have gone on to found thousands of companies with household names like eBay, Google, PayPal and Yahoo! to name just a few. These companies provide jobs, drive economic growth and generate tax revenue at all levels of government.”

“Yet because our current immigration system is outdated and inefficient, many high-skilled immigrants who want to stay in America are forced to leave because they are unable to obtain permanent visas,” it continues. “Some do not bother to come in the first place. This is often due to visa shortages, long waits for green cards,and lack of mobility. We believe that numerical levels and categories for high-skilled non-immigrant and immigrant visas should be responsive to market needs and, where appropriate, include mechanisms to fluctuate based on objective standards. In addition, spouses and children should not be counted against the cap of high-skilled immigrant visas. There should not be a marriage or family penalty.”

Source: Scribd.com

Gabe Newell On The Democratizing Of Opportunity

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While the retail sector for games seems somewhat gloomy right now, Valve’s Gabe Newell sees nothing but expansion for the Steam business. At the same time, Newell sees players in the future getting more involved with the making of games as barriers to creation get broken down.

“There’s this sort of insatiable desire for gaming right now,” said Newell after the BAFTA Awards. “I think in the last year our business has grown about 50 percent on the back of the opportunities that have been created by having these open platforms. And just so people sort of understand the scale of how big it’s getting . . . so like the last Dota 2 update we were generating 3 and a half terabytes per second, so that’s about 2 percent of of all of the mobile and land based internet activity was just for a single game update.”

“I think we’ve seen a bunch of very interesting stuff happening so if you think of a multiplayer game or a social game really as being a collaboration between a game designer and their community, we continue to see that when we have stuff like the workshop where we’re actually drawing users in and they’re making 300,000 Euros a year generating content for each other, it’s really an acknowledgment of the reality of those democratic principles at work,” he added.

Source: BAFTA Online

Pi Day Celebrated At Pizza Chain

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Your Pie hosted its fourth-annual Pi(e) Day event on March 14, 2013. The event celebrates pi, the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, approximately equal to 3.14 (thus why it takes place on 3/14).

In celebration of the mathematical symbol that gives pizza its shape, Your Pie offered their craft ‘pi(e)s’ for $3.14. “The promotion is our way of showing appreciation for our customers in a fun way,” says Your Pie founder Drew French. “The first Pi(e) Day event was so successful that we just had to keep it going.”

Pi(e) Day will took place at all 16 Your Pie locations across the Southeast. While pizzas carried a base price of $3.14 and include an assortment of fresh ingredients, additional premium ingredients or gluten-free dough cost extra.

Source: QSRmagazine.com

Nvidia Explains Why It’s Not In PS4

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Nvidia isn’t working with Sony on the PS4, but the company is not very broken up about that fact. While the company supplied chips for the first Xbox and the PS3, they say the experience working in the console space made them much more informed about how they will handle this generation of consoles

“I’m sure there was a negotiation that went on,” said Nvidia senior VP of content and technology Tony Tamasi, “and we came to the conclusion that we didn’t want to do the business at the price those guys were willing to pay.”

“In the end, you only have so many engineers and so much capability, and if you’re going to go off and do chips for Sony or Microsoft, then that’s probably a chip that you’re not doing for some other portion of your business,” Tamasi added. “And at least in the case of Sony and Nvidia, in terms of PS4, AMD has the business and Nvidia doesn’t. We’ll see how that plays out from a business perspective I guess. It’s clearly not a technology thing.”

Source: GameSpot

Tilting Point Media Investing $40 Million in Mobile Game Sector

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Tom Frisina, who helped found EA Partners and was formerly chairman of Thatgamecompany, has announced a new digital publisher called Tilting Point Media. It is designed to bring talented game creators to the mobile and tablet sector, funding developers to the tune of $40 million over the next three years.

EEDAR vice president of insight Jesse Divnich will help provide development partners with analytics and recommendations. Studios signed onto Tilting Point include Signal Mobile, Housemarque, and 1337 Game Design & Senri with the first games expected to come out some time in 2013.

“Our view is that independent developers own the future of games,” said Frisina, executive chairman of Tilting Point. “However, a studio’s potential can be severely hindered without a partner they can trust to help navigate the challenges of discoverability and monetization. We will nurture the best teams, positioning them for independent success over the long term. We’re taking the expertise and resourcefulness gained from our combined backgrounds and applying them to a new publishing model, where development talent gains the tools to control their own destiny.”

Prominent members of Tilting Point include president and COO Dan Sherman who was a veteran of EA Partners as director of business development and signed studios like Respawn and Insomniac, CEO Kevin Segalla who founded and managed Tilting Point investor CFC Capital, general counsel Jim Hsu who was senior counsel at both EA and Zynga, senior director of development Steve Coallier with over two decades of gaming industry experience, and advising board member Trevor Kaufman who is the CEO of ecommerce software maker Tinypass.

Ubisoft Says Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag ‘Staying Away From Cliches’

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Ubisoft has gotten out ahead of promoting Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and is implying that it is a more serious take on piracy than most games before. While not exactly true-to-life, Assassin’s Creed games of the past have been grounded in real historical events and lead content manager Carsten Myhill implies it will be similar with Assassin’s Creed 4.

“We have a fantastic opportunity for pirates in video games,” said Myhill. “Certainly when Assassin’s Creed 3 naval came out, there was a clamor from the fans for a pirate game. There’s no doubt that the people want it.”

“But it’s not easy. It takes a very talented team, a lot of experience and great tech. It’s one thing having good naval combat, but combining that with good boarding and land-based gameplay in a seamless way, is hard to do,” he added. “We’re staying away from cliches. Things like walking the plank, parrots on the shoulder and hooks for hands. We are giving pirates the HBO, reality treatment. And that allows us to redefine piracy in entertainment. No longer is it for kids.”

Source: MCV.com

Nintendo Creating Animated Pikmin Shorts

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Nintendo has started creating animated shorts for the 3DS based around Pikmin, led by Shigeru Miyamoto. While Nintendo has licensed out franchises like F-Zero and Kirby in the past for full fledged anime TV series, this is more of a side-project for Miyamoto for the moment.

“They’ll be released sometime before the release of Pikmin 3, possibly as a Nintendo video. If they’re popular we could consider selling them,” said Miyamoto, who worked with an outside animation studio to refine the first short. “I didn’t want to license our characters out to someone else to create films,” he said. “Instead, since I used to draw four-panel comics when I was younger, I thought it would be fun to bring a four-panel comic approach to creating video content, so we started work on these Pikmin videos.”

Miyamoto was quick to dismiss this as suggesting larger plans by Nintendo to push their franchises into multiple mediums and he denied that this means he’d switch away from making games. “We really just want to take advantage of the Pikmin characters,” he said. “We have started selling Shaun the Sheep videos, so we’re continuing to look at ways to expand the eShop offerings. Nintendo 3DS is great for viewing 3D video content so we wanted to look at ways to expand that offering.”

Source: Polygon.com

Veronica Mars Film Kills It On Kickstarter, Gathers Fans On Twitter

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Fans of Veronica Mars successfully backed a Kickstarter campaign to bring the cult hit TV series to the big screen, with a feature film now slated for 2014. The series’ star Kristin Bell quickly took to Twitter to thank fans for turning the film into a reality.

The project launched on Wednesday with the goal of raising $2 million in 30 days. It beat its goal in the first 24 hours. At the time of this writing it has $3.3 million in backing with 28 days to go.

Kristen tweeted after hearing the Kickstarter was successful, “I love you guys. You are all SO spectacular. I am speechless.”

The giddy Bell also cracked a few jokes about the success overshadowing the announcement of Pope Francis.

Bell, who is currently pregnant, humorously tweeted, “All this excitement is prolly gonna send me into early labor #iamsoexcited #veronicamarsmovie”

Other celebrities joined Bell on Twitter to support the project, many of whom shared how they were genuine fans of the series.

Sophia Bush, star of TV show One Tree Hill, jumped on Bell’s thread to say, “Um. The #marsfans of the world need this!”

Lauren Graham, star of TV show Parenthood, was among celebrities who backed the project.

“I just gave some dollars,” she tweeted.

The hashtags around the film project are still percolating with tweets. Search for  #marsfans, #veronicamarsmovie, or #VeronicaMars in Twitter’s Discover tab.

Source: Daily News