Harvard GSD is getting ready for another semester of exciting guest lectures included in our Get Lectured roundup of events taking place on campus in the new academic term.Starting off the Spring, will be the first Aga Khan Program Lecture from Souleymane Bachir Diagne on February 3. Following that are lectures from Dorte Mandrup (February 13); Deanna Van Buren (March 4); Princess Adedoyin Talabi Faniyi of Osogbo, Nigeria, and Tarna Klitzner for International Womens Day (March 6); Jala Makhzoumi (March 11); and Minsuk Cho (March 13).The semester continues withMaurice Coxs discussion with the former Mayor of ChicagoLori Lightfoot onMarch 25. Following that are lectures from Jorge Otero-Pailos (March 28); An-My L (April 1); Peter Barber (April 3); Kengo Kuma (April 8); David Sheldon-Hicks (April 15); and Ximena Caminos (April 17).NewClass of 2025 Loeb Fellow Tunde Wey will be hosting a special variety show on April 10, and the Spring terms final lecture will be delivered b...

While Dishonored 2 was a critically acclaimed title, according to former designer at Arkane Lyon, Julien Eveill, the studio might not have survived the games lack of commercial success if it werent for the fact that Arkane had good standing when it comes to designing games.In an interview with PCGamer, Eveill spoke about how expensive the game was to make, and the reputation of refined video game releases that the studio had. Interestingly, Eveill also reveals that Dishonored 2 cost more to develop than The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim.It was a bit strange and weird, said Eveill. I think when Bethesda was looking at the numbers, they thought, OK, Skyrim sold so much. And it cost less than Dishonored 2 to make. So they were asking questions. From an executive spend standpoint, it makes sense to ask those questions of, Why should we keep going with you? But we knew that we had a kind of seal-of-quality protection, making what would maybe be considered the most refined games of the whole Bethesda catalogue.Eveill went on to reveal that Arkanes reputation for developing refined titles kind of saved the studio. He also spoke about the departure of studio founder Raphael Colantionio, and how studio director Dinga Bakaba was able to take control of the studio. All of these actions ended up contributing to the future success of the studio.While Arkane Lyon hasnt released any single-player titles in quite some time since the release of Deathloop, the next major game by the studio will be Marvels Blade. The game was unveiled back in December 2023 with a trailer. While few details about Marvels Blade have been revealed, we do know that it will feature a third-person camera, which will be a departure for a studio known for making first-person games.Since its originally announcement, art director Sebastien Mitton has posted a few pieces of concept art for the upcoming game. While not indicative of exactly what we can expect from the game, the concept art does indicate that Marvels Blade will take place in Paris.Arkane hasnt yet announced the release date for Marvels Blade yet, but rumours from December 2023 indicate that the studio is internally aiming for a 2027 release. The rumours did indicate that 2027 was the earliest timeframe for release; if more development time is required, the release window could get pushed back further. For context, the last major title by Arkane Lyon, Deathloop, was released back in 2021.Back in May 2024, when Arkane Austin was shuttered due to the poor sales of Redfall, Arkane Lyon director Dinga Bikaba had taken to social media to talk about the closure, and asked executives to not throw us into gold fever gambits, among other things. Bakaba did, however, confirm that Arkane Lyon was safe.For more details on Arkane Lyons previous works, check out our reviews of Deathloop and Dishonored 2, the latter of which has been critically acclaimed since its release thanks to its impressive stealth mechanics and level design.

With Nightdive Studios having recently released The Thing: Remastered back in December, the studio has now released a new update for the title. Numbered at patch 1.1, the update brings with it a host of bug fixes for various aspects of the game, including crashes, gameplay bugs, and display-based bugs.Among the fixes to the game are one for the Steam Deck, where the frame rate used to be locked to half of the systems screen refresh rate when the title was played with the Vulkan renderer outside of the Steam client. Other fixes include one for weapon firing rates not being respected, the direction Blake faces in the ending cutscene for the weather station level, and the addition of a Most Recent button in the load game menu.The Thing: Remastered is, as you might have presumed from the title, a remastered release of the classic 2002 shooter The Thing. Much like the classic movie it is based on, The Thing: Remastered features plenty of body horror, along with Fear/Trust mechanics to keep players on edge, as well as squad-based shooter gameplay.For more details on The Thing: Remastered, check out our review. In the mean time, you can find the patch notes for the latest update below.The Thing: Remastered Patch 1.1 Notes:General:Fixed the Conspiracy Theorist achievement. Old saved games are retroactively fixed!Updated Colins Fate achievement description.Fixed a softlock where Stolls would stop running to the black tech lab door.Fixed a crash after detonating the C4 on the airstrip level.Fixed a rare intermittent crash when fighting Thing beasts.Added a Most Recent button to the load game menu, so its easier to load your latest save.Autosaves now contain the name of the level they were saved on, instead of just Autosave.Fixed a bug where characters would sometimes become unable to step up onto higher surfaces after falling off of the curbs in the roadway tunnel.Fixed a crash when quitting the game.Fixed a bug where bindings would be missing from the input options on first launch.Fixed a crash in Strata Medibay when Fisk dies before telling you the code.Fixed Blakes hand clipping with his sleeve in the first cutscene with Faraday.Fixed a bug where the second camera angle would fail to activate during the weather station cutscene, allowing you to interrupt it and recruit yourself.Improved performance when querying dynamic game options.Moved the game version information to the options menu, off of the interstitial screen.Decreased the visibility of the game version information so it is less intrusive.Reimplemented the pan upwards when the game over screen is visible.Added support for autoexec.cfg, allowing users to customize console variables not usually marked as saved to kexEngine.cfg.Gameplay:Fixed an oversight where weapon firing rates were not properly respected when mashing the fire button. Excluding the pistol.Ammo and health dispensers now dispense fewer clips and medipacks depending on the difficulty. This can be changed at any time during game play.Marked some grenades as volatile so that they explode when damaged, like the original game, to fix a quirk where grenades placed for cinematic purposes would not explode.Changed the direction Blake faces after ending the cutscene in the weather station level.Levels:Fixed an oversight where an explosive barrel would explode when passing through the tripwire of an already exploded trip-mine charge in the penultimate level.Hid the out of bounds Back Door Key item that looked like a document in the submersible level.Fixed inaccurate collision in the first level, where characters would appear to sink into the snow.Fixed collision in the watchtower on the third level where you could get stuck in the handrail.Renamed Carter in the Strata Medibay level to Hawk, to utilize a set of unused voice lines.Added the missing green light to a save terminal in the third level.Fixed two computers in the weather station level that did not have an ID set for the Conspiracy Theorist achievement (given automatically to old saves).Shimmied a medipack dispenser down in the level following Strata Medibay that was WAY too high up.Fixed bad collision on the external stairs in the weather station.Flipped a few ammo boxes which were facing the wrong direction.Fixed several collision bugs in the Norwegian outpost where you could fall off of the world and walk underneath the building.Fixed sounds across several levels that would duplicate forever, causing the game to eventually fall silent.Display:Fixed the depth of field effect sometimes creating bright flickering pixels.Fixed the glass on the doors in the submersible being opaque.Improved normal maps on many posters and boards.Gave Whitley new trousers.Changed the on-screen watermark in the editor build, so it doesnt confuse people.Performance improvements when using the D3D11 renderer.Sound:Fixed a bug where speech audio would sometimes not follow the speaker.Steam Deck:Fixed the framerate being locked to half the screen refresh rate while using the Vulkan renderer, when launched outside of the Steam client.

LouLou, an elephant at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, was one of five that the Nonhuman Rights Project claimed in a lawsuit should be able to live in a sanctuary. Molly ConditOn Tuesday, Colorados highest court ruled that five elderly African elephants do not have legal standing to sue to leave a local zoo, because they arent human. The Supreme Court of the state ruled 6-0 against the Nonhuman Rights Project, the animal rights organization that brought forward the case.The group alleged that the Cheyenne Mountain Zoos five elephantsnamed Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambowere unlawfully confined, according to the ruling. They made their case under the principle of habeas corpus, which allows legal persons to challenge their confinement.Elephants have a right to bodily liberty, because they are autonomous and extraordinarily cognitively and socially complex beings, the organization argued, according to the ruling. The animal rights group cited affidavits from seven biologists explaining that elephants can experience empathy and self-awareness, as humans do, per Reuters Jonathan Stempel.One affidavit suggested the animals suffer from chronic frustration, boredom and stress when theyre deprived of a variable environment, exercise and the social opportunities of the wild. The group wanted the creatures to be transferred to an elephant sanctuary.Though the court ruled unanimously against the animal rights group, the case does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically, wrote Justice Maria Berkenkotter in the decision. Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person as that term is used in the habeas corpus statute. And because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim. Missy, an African elephant at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Molly ConditThe Cheyenne Mountain Zoo cheers the decision in a statement, calling the legal affair a frivolous lawsuit.While were happy with this outcome, we are disappointed that it ever came to this, the zoo writes. For the past 19 months, weve been subjected to their misrepresented attacks, and weve wasted valuable time and money responding to them in courts and in the court of public opinion.It seems their real goal is to manipulate people into donating to their cause by incessantly publicizing sensational court cases with relentless calls for supporters to donate, they add.This isnt the first time the Nonhuman Rights Project has fought for the release of elephants. In 2022, the organization lost a similar court case on behalf of Happy, an Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo in New York. That time, however, two judges ruled in favor of the organization.[Happys] captivity is inherently unjust and inhumane. It is an affront to a civilized society, and every day she remains a captivea spectacle for humanswe, too, are diminished, wrote judge Jenny Rivera in her dissent at the time, per the Associated Press.In a statement, the Nonhuman Rights Project says the Colorado decision perpetuates a clear injustice. But they also suggest the tides will turn on cases like this one.Whereas the court refused to look beyond the species membership of our clients, we envision a legal system that respects the conscious experience of individuals regardless of their biological label, says Christopher Berry, executive director for the Nonhuman Rights Project, to Newsweeks Tom Howarth.A big part of our challenge is simply overcoming the inertia of the status quoand that requires time and education, Berry adds to Rachel Pannett at the Washington Post. As we overcome that inertia, more and more judges will find the motivation and courage to rule in our favor.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Animals, Elephants, Ethics, Law, Mammals, Zoology

Cool FindsA Man Found a Mysterious Statue in a Trash Bag on the Street. It Turned Out to Be a 2,000-Year Old Greek ArtifactAfter discovering the ancient artwork in a suburb of Thessaloniki, Greece, the man surrendered it to the police. Authorities are analyzing the statue and investigating why it was abandoned The recently discovered statue is missing its arms and head. Greek PoliceEarlier this month, a 32-year-old Greek man brought something remarkable to his local police station: a statue of a woman draped in flowing cloth, missing its arms and head. Hed found it encased in a black plastic bag next to garbage cans on the street.Authorities called in experts to examine the piece. According to a statement from the Greek police, they determined that the statue dates back to GreecesHellenistic periodwhich lasted from the death ofAlexander the Great in 323 B.C.E. until around 31 B.C.E.This is not the first time a civilian has handed over a statue to police, as Vasilis Tempelis, a culture ministry spokesperson, tells theNew York Times Christine Hauser. Plans to investigate the circumstances and analyze the statue are already in motion.Local police have turned over the statue to investigators from Greeces Cultural Heritage Protection Office. The piece will be sent to a forensic laboratory for analysis before making its way to the local antiquities authority. As the Associated Press Costas Kantouris reports, police have questioned one man about the discarded statue and released him without charge.The artifact was found in Neoi Epivates, a suburb of Thessaloniki, Greeces second-largest city, per the AP. Its just over 31 inches tallabout the length of abaseball bat. AsBert Smith, a classical archaeologist at Oxford University, tells the Times, the marble statue was probably made for religious purposes.The small size is typical for such marblevotives set up to divinities in sanctuaries or temples, he says. In ancient Greece, people prayed to divinities and made dedications to them in thanks for their favor.Greeces three-century-long Hellenistic era was marked by cultural expansion and exchange. Alexander the Great died without a successor, leaving the vast empire hed conquered to be divided into three large kingdoms, which secured Greek influence throughout the Middle East and into South Asia. Greece became more cosmopolitan, and its philosophy and art scenes flourished.Unlike the detached idealism found in the sculptures of GreecesClassical periodduring the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E.Hellenistic sculptures reflected a new awareness of personality and introspection by showing realism and human emotion,wrote art historian Summer Trentin and classicistDebby Sneed in 2018. Hellenistic sculptors paid special attention to draped fabric, like the dress worn the famousWinged Victory of Samothrace, and the female body, as seen inAphrodite of Knidos.AsEstelle Strazdins, a classicist at theAustralian National University, tells theWashington Posts Rachel Pannett, the recently discovered statues loose, draping clothingas well as its marble compositionsuggest the piece depicts a goddess. Contemporary sculptures of earthly Greek women were usually made from terra-cotta and depicted them clothed in tight cloaks.Strazdins also thinks the statue was dedicated in a temple. However, its small size suggests it wasnt the main statue in the sanctuary, she says. It might be a gift that someone has given to the god either to thank them for something or in the hopes of getting some kind of grant.The statues garb appears to be apeplos, a one-piece wool garment, per the Times. Still, the statues missing limbs make discerning its identity difficult. As Smith tells the publication, The arms might tell us what the figure was doing and what attributes it may have carried.This more than 2,000-year-old artifact is one of thousands found in and around Thessaloniki in recent years. The citys two-decade-long construction of a new subway systemwhich opened last monthunearthed over 300,000 archaeological finds illustrating Greeces ancient history.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Archaeology, Art, Art History, Artifacts, Arts, Cool Finds, Greece, Sculpture, Statues

Marc Andreessen, Yann LeCunn, and Mark Zuckerberg have all penned what appear to be responses to the Chinese open source model's ascent.Read More

Y Combinator's fastest-growing startup Origami Agents raises $2M seed round to build AI research tools that help sales teams find perfect customers, reaching $50K MRR in 8 weeks while rejecting the trend of AI sales rep replacement.Read More

Justin Carter, Contributing EditorJanuary 24, 20252 Min ReadImage via Cooldown Games.At a GlanceThe team at Cooldown are looking to release games that require less dedication than live-service and multiplayer titles.Former staffers at Gearbox Publishing have founded a new publisher, Cooldown Games.Speaking with Bloomberg, co-founder and CEO Steve Gibson said the plan is as it was at Gearbox: bring "promising projects" to the game market and continue working with his fellow alums after Gearbox Software was sold off to Take-Two last year. While some employees remained with Embracer and have rebranded into Arc Games, others were laid off as part of the parent company's restructuring plans.Helping Gibson start up the new company are chief officers Matt Charles (product), Erick Cobbs (business), Jackson Hardesty (operations), Jeff Skal (marketing), Jimmy Sieben (technology), and Brad Schliesser (revenue).Be cool(down), manCooldown's overall aim is to publish titles "where you dont feel like youre falling behind if you dont play it enough." Skal noted the ongoing struggles with live-service and ongoing games trying to vie for players' time when they already have "forever games" set in stone. Cooldown-published titles, he reasoned, can serve as good in-between games instead of titles that "ask more of us than we can give."To that end, Gibson said games from interested developers have to fit in at least two of its three categories: reliability, like an established studio or a remaster for a well-known game; the potential to be a "next big hit;" or a project that teaches Cooldown something or "helps strengthen our relationship with one of the platforms.""Our team is confident rational business models will be a long-term strength of Cooldown Games and that just might be a refreshing contrast from many recent industry trends," said Gibson in the company announcement. "My passion of helping game makers reach as many game players as possible while making sure that its a rewarding experience for everyone involved is at the center of all of this."Developers interested in working with Cooldown can contact the studio here, and those looking for a job can apply here. Meanwhile, Gibson's interview with Bloomberg, which also details his time at Gearbox Publishing and Embracer before being laid off, is here.Read more about:Studio announcementEmbracer GroupAbout the AuthorJustin CarterContributing Editor, GameDeveloper.comA Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.See more from Justin CarterDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

Nippon Ichi Software (NIS) president Tetsuhisa Seko passed away this week at 54 years old.In a translated statement, the company expressed "deep gratitude for the kindness shown to us during his lifetime." It also provided a short timeline of his game industry tenure, beginning with his start at SNK in 1993. He joined Nippon in 2002 and was promoted to general manager of its business operations in 2005.By 2019, Seko became senior managing director, and was also director for Nippon's American division. In 2023, he was appointed as president and representative director for the publisher.Seko's game credits include The Last Blade: Beyond the Destiny, Blazing Star, and several Disgaea titles. Phantom Brave: The Last Hero, which releases next week on January 30, will be one of the final games he oversaw prior to his passing.As an SNK alum, this is the publisher's second loss this week: Tsuda Eiji, who voiced Takuma Sakazaki in King of Fighters and Buriki One's Jacques Dugarry, passed on January 20.A funeral service for Seko will be held on Wednesday, January 29.

Ever since Elon Musk closed his deal to buy Twitter hes claimed the company, now called X, is in a very dire situation from a revenue standpoint. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that banks are preparing a coordinated move to sell off some of the $13 billion in debt they loaned Musk to finance the deal. It mentions an email sent to employees this month, also confirmed by The Verge, where the Chief Twit said, ...weve witnessed the power of X in shaping national conversations and outcomes, but also claimed, Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and were barely breaking even.Part of the reason Bank of America, Barclays, and Morgan Stanley areholding so much of the debtis from trying toavoid selling at a lossafter economic conditions changed, and Musk had an extended court battle attempting to get out of the deal. While equity investors have reportedly slashed the value of their stakes by as much as 78 percent, the Journal reports, banks hope to sell senior debt at 90-95 cents on the dollar, while retaining more-junior holdings.As Musk referenced in his email, the report says the banks hope to use the narrative of Musks link to Donald Trump, as some unnamed investors may be interested in buying based on a belief that its financials are on the way up. However, Musk also said that the company could become cash-flow positive within months nearly two years ago, and it still faces over $1 billion in annual interest payments on the loans. The platform is increasingly turning into a testing ground for his AI ambitions, as we reported earlier this month, and while X has added some features, like job listings and a new video tab, theres little sign of the service hed said would be able to someones entire financial life by the end of 2024.