This week, Xbox starts ramping up to new games and a new console, Adobe Flash looks into the sunset, Superliminal is like Portal and that’s a good thing, and the Sims 4 gets an Eco Lifestyle. But first, more fan conventions are going online.

More fan conventions moving programs online

Comic-Con at Home begins today and runs through the weekend. This is the online version of San Diego’s massive fan event that includes everything from TV and movies to games, and even comics.

The event includes presentations and demonstrations, panel discussions, watch parties, and portfolio review, and it’s all happening across different platforms, including Discord, Facebook, Twitch, and YouTube.

There are hundreds of things to choose from.

Later in August, DC FanDome is Warner Bros celebrating DC Comics characters and worlds over a 24-hour virtual event on August 22.

Organizers of FanDome are already looking for fans to share their creativity for a chance to be included in the virtual event. You can submit artwork, questions, cosplay, and even portfolios.

And from September 12 to 20, PAX Online combines PAX West and PAX Australia in a nine-day gaming extravaganza. The free event will include three streaming channels worth of panels coming from Australia, London, and the U.S.

One of the things that makes PAX different from other fan events has always been the spontaneous games that happen all over the place, and organizers are working to find ways to support that same kind of discovery online.

Xbox begins the ramp up to a new console, new games

Microsoft’s new video game console, the Xbox Series X, is just a few months away from being released. This week, the company begins ramping up the hype machine.

Phil Spencer’s promise to gamers

The head of Xbox has authentic gamer cred, and in a post online last week he laid out their commitments to gamers. I encourage you to read the article, but here are a couple of highlights:

• “You won’t be forced into the next generation.” For the next couple of years, all games developed for the Series X will also be playable on the Xbox One.
• “You can buy games once at no added cost.” With many games that will be playable on both Series X and Xbox One, you will be able to upgrade your game for free when you upgrade your console.
• The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription will not only give you access to more than 100 games, but you’ll be able to play them on your console, Windows computer, and your phone and tablet.

Xbox Games Showcase

Spencer also pledged that there will be new games to play on the Series X on the day it is released. We’ll know a lot more about some of those games tomorrow, as the Xbox Games Showcase streams in all of the usual places:

• Facebook
• Twitch
• Twitter
• YouTube

I will be tuning in because I am so excited for Halo Infinite.

Become the Hero. #HaloInfinite pic.twitter.com/oKBgy3dn6a

— Halo (@Halo) July 22, 2020

Play show floor demos of more than 60 Xbox games until July 27

As the usual summer game festivals and conventions aren’t happening, people are missing out on an opportunity to try out new games and games that are new to them.

The Summer Game Fest aims to remedy that, and as part of that, Xbox is making nearly 100 games available to try out for free.

Many of these games are being developed by independent studios, and you can access them on your Xbox One. Just look for the “Game Fest Demo” tile on your screen.

Major Nelson has the full list.

Adobe Flash is technology that has come to its end

Flash is sunsetting. This December, Adobe will stop distributing and supporting the software, which for more than 20 years has helped create the browsing experience we enjoy today.

Flash, which came into being in 1997 as part of Macromedia software, has been used to create interactive experiences, animation, and video for the world wide web. And in the next couple of years, having Flash on your website was a badge of honour.

In 2005, Adobe acquired Macromedia’s assets, and in addition to embedding Flash in operating systems and browsers, the company hoped the mobile revolution would expand growth.

That didn’t happen, though, for a number of reasons, including Apple’s Steve Jobs refusing to let Flash on the iPhone.

The functionality that Flash allowed is now available through HTML5 and other applications, so it’s time. Even today, most browsers won’t automatically run Flash code, and Adobe recommends that users uninstall the Flash Player now:

• Instructions for Mac OS users
• Instructions for Windows users

Superliminal a fun, quirky, Portal-like puzzle game

If you’ve ever played Portal, you need to be playing Superliminal.

Where Portal taught players how to use the mechanic of doorways to move between places, Superliminal uses perspective. When you pick up an object, its size scales depending on what it’s close to. So a small chess piece can become gigantic or a block becomes miniature.

The puzzles are all about playing with this perspective, and it gets progressively more difficult, where you’ll need to alter the size of a dollhouse so that you can walk into it.

Seattle-based Pillow Castle Games has also given Superliminal a conceit, too, which is another homage to Portal. Here you are a patient at a sleep institute, and there’s a robotic voice, the “Standard Orientation Protocol” that provides you with some context for what you’re doing.

Also like Portal, you’ll find yourself exploring behind the scenes, as it were, and trying to make sense of what’s really going on.

Superliminal is an inventive puzzling experience. It’s available for PS4, Switch, Windows, and Xbox One.

Solar panels come to The Sims 4 with Eco Lifestyle expansion

Electronic Arts has released another expansion for The Sims 4.

Eco Lifestyle modifies the systems of the game so that there are consequences to the actions of your sims.

There are three new communities to live in. Conifer Station, Grim’s Quarry, and Port Promise all have different beginning states, and the sims in those neighbourhoods can embody new personalities, including a Freegan, who will dumpster dive in order to get used objects – like furniture – out of the waste stream while saving a few bucks.

Eco Lifestyle is available now for Mac OS and Windows through EA’s Origin.

This week on The Shift, Shane Hewitt and I talked about Clearview AI getting out of Canada, Adobe’s Photoshop Camera for mobile devices, and the new games, Paper Mario: The Origami King and Ghost of Tsushima.

This week, the Photoshop Camera for mobile devices from Adobe, Paper Mario: The Origami King, and Ghost of Tsushima. But first, facial recognition service Clearview AI has left Canada.

Update at 10 p.m. PT, 2020-07-15: Hackers appear to swindle hundreds of thousands of dollars in Twitter hack

• The Twitter accounts of verified users, including Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Apple, were compromised on Wednesday.
• The Verge reports that the scam was designed to get people to put money into a Bitcoin account, thinking they’d be getting double that amount back.
• Motherboard reports that hackers claim to have paid a Twitter employee to give them access to internal systems.

Clearview AI no longer operating in Canada

The technology company, which provides facial recognition services to law enforcement, government agencies, and even retailers, has exited Canada.

Toronto police forces, the Department of National Defence, Rexall, and Via Rail were all customers at one point.

The technology reportedly only pulled image data from the internet, but privacy commissions across Canada, including Alberta, B.C., and Quebec, in addition to the federal commission, are continuing their investigations.

Canadians can choose to opt out of the Clearview AI database of images. But you have to send them a photo of yourself in order to do so.

Adobe Photoshop Camera software comes to mobile devices

Adobe, the software company behind Photoshop, Illustrator, and so many other design apps, has released a camera app for mobile devices.

Adobe Photoshop Camera gives you easy access to backgrounds and filters, which Adobe calls “lenses”. You can apply these to your photos when you take them, or afterwards.

Artists and photographers are also creating other filters that you can add to your lens library. “Astrophotographer” Jaxson Pohlman, for example, has created a couple of lenses that will enhance your night sky photos.

The Photoshop Camera is now available for Android and iOS.

Nintendo’s Mario flattens out with The Origami King

Nintendo’s got a way of taking its franchises and doing something different with them every time. With Paper Mario the conceit is that everything is made of paper, and the world and its characters know it.

In the Origami King, the bad guys are the usual enemies which have been folded up and brainwashed by the titular ruler. Mario straightens them out by engaging in turn-based puzzle combat, in which he stomps on or pounds enemies to flatten them out into proper two-dimensional creatures.

As Mario navigates this paper world, he has to repair holes in the landscape that expose the wire framework upon which it was constructed. To do this he needs to collect confetti, which he then throws onto the holes to patch them.

I enjoyed exploring the world and searching for collectibles more than the combat, which involves you rotating the rings of a circle in order to line up enemies for grouped attacks. It’s a clumsy mechanic that breaks the paper theme.

But it doesn’t destroy the game, which is a typical, cute affair that is winking at itself the entire time.

Paper Mario: The Origami King releases on Friday, exclusively on the Nintendo Switch.

Beautiful Ghost of Tsushima makes it fun to be a samurai

This role-playing adventure game, a PS4 exclusive from Sony’s Sucker Punch Studios, turns players into a samurai on Tsushima Island, an archipelago between what is today Korea and Japan.

Ghost of Tsushima is an open world game, and plays much like the Assassin’s Creed series. You’ll roam the countryside, often on horseback, encountering enemies, helping the locals, and collecting resources that can be used to upgrade your weapons and gear.

In becoming samurai Jin Sakai, players find themselves in 1274, when the Mongol Empire’s Kublai Khan invaded Tsushima as a way to conquer Japan.

The combat is delicious. You switch between different stances depending on what enemy type you’re battling, and using the katana, timing cuts and parries, is particularly delightful. You’ll also use stealth and ranged weapons.

And I’m not mincing words by calling this game beautiful. The art style, which is like an oil painting come to life, is exquisite, and the animations are colourful and fluid.

While you’d be forgiven thinking this game is an Assassin’s Creed title, Sucker Punch does have some lovely touches. Rather than following a mini-map on the screen, you follow the wind, which blows in the direction you need to travel.

There’s also a nod to Japanese culture in how you can seek out shinto shrines and meditation spots where you’ll compose haiku.

But that’s where Ghost of Tsushima is problematic. The developers have admitted they were careful in how they created the game, knowing that appropriation was something to be mindful about. While that explains the tone of the game, it doesn’t excuse it.

Ghost romanticizes the notion of the Japanese samurai in a way that only a group of white, Western Kurosawa fans could. The way the characters talk about codes of honour becomes quite tiresome after a while.

At least the actors playing the major characters are Japanese. Daisuke Tsuji, as the protagonist Jin Sakai, is excellent, taking an understated approach to the role.

That said, I’m going to continue playing Ghost of Tsushima, because I love the world that’s been created, and becoming a powerful samurai is something I enjoy doing. But I’m aware at all times that this isn’t history, it’s only a game.

Update at 8:50 a.m., 2020-07-16: Japanese reviewers of the game, who are able to be more critical than I about how Ghost of Tsushima represents Japanese culture and history, seem to be okay with what Sucker Punch has done here, according to Kotaku’s Brian Ashcraft, who has been living in Osaka since 2001. I still think the game romanticizes the role of samurai, but this is a power fantasy after all.

Update at 9:40 a.m., 2020-07-24: Writing for Polygon, Kazuma Hashimoto validates my concerns about romanticizing samurai: “It feels like it was made by outsiders looking into an otherwise complex culture through the flattening lens of an old black-and-white film. The gameplay is slick and the hero moments are grand, but the game lacks the nuance and understanding of what it ultimately tries to reference.” I’m still enjoying the game, though, for moments of quiet beauty and episodes of visceral sword fighting.

This week on The Shift with Drex I talked about how social platforms are responding to hate speech by issuing suspensions and bans, major advertisers pulling out of Facebook as part of the Stop Hate for Profit campaign, how Alexa is celebrating Canada Day, Form’s swim goggles with a heads-up display, and using Xbox consoles to get sound effects for Halo Infinite.

This week, Alexa and Canada Day, Form’s swim goggles are a game changer for competitive swimmers, Microsoft shuts down Mixer, and creating sound effects for Halo Infinite. But first, here’s how social media platforms are responding to hate speech.

Trump gets temporary suspension from Twitch, Reddit closes Trump channel

First Twitter, now other platforms are cracking down. Could this be the end of the run?

• Twitch has suspended the Trump account. Twitch is owned by Amazon.
• Reddit has banned r/The_Donald and other communities it says have been breaking the rules
• Facebook has pulled accounts belonging to white supremacists David Duke, Canadian Stefan Molyneux, and Richard Spencer

Major advertisers are quitting Facebook

Is this a reckoning for the social platform? Last week as major corporations announced plans to pull ads from the social network, Facebook’s stock price dropped (the stock price rebounded this week).

The advertising boycott includes brands in the industries of automotive (Honda, Volkswagen), clothing (Arc’teryx, Lululemon, Patagonia), food and beverage, household goods (Clorox, Unilever), retail (MEC, REI, Starbucks), sports equipment (Adidas, Nike), and technology (HP). Some companies are only pausing their ads for the month of July, but others have pledged to stay off the channel for the rest of 2020.

It’s all being coordinated by Stop Hate for Profit, an initiative of the Anti-Defamation League.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has scrambled to address concerns that Facebook has, according to Stop Hate for Profit, “allowed incitement to violence” and “turned a blind eye to blatant voter suppression”. These efforts have included new policies and the promise of an audit how much hate speech has been allowed on Facebook.

Zuckerberg also said that Facebook would begin labelling and even removing posts – even from politicians – that “may lead to violence or deprive people of their right to vote”.

Civil rights organizations in the U.S. interviewed by the Washington Post say that Facebook already has policies against those things and wonder what will be different this time.

In a statement, the Stop Hate for Profit campaign said, “We have been down this road before with Facebook. They have made apologies in the past. They have taken meager steps after each catastrophe where their platform played a part. But this has to end now.”

Ad Age calculates that the boycott won’t have much on impact on the $70 billion revenue the company got from ads last year.

But the public awareness campaign will likely mean more than the money.

Alexa celebrates Canada all through July

It’s Canada Day, and even Alexa is celebrating.

Alanis Morisette will sing the national anthem – in both official languages – if you wish Alexa a Happy Canada Day. And if you ask the Amazon digital assistant how Canada is, you hear a message from Canadian hip-hop artist, Shad.

And all through July, you can hear “O, Canada” sung by Canadian musicians including Bobby Bazini, Johnny Orlando, The Reklaws, and Josh Ramsay from Marianas Trench. All you have to do is ask.

New Form swim goggles have display built-in

Summer’s here and it’s time to get back in the water. While indoor swimming pools haven’t yet opened in most places – thanks covid-19 – you can still swim in lakes, oceans, and some outdoor pools.

For the competitive swimmers out there, the Form swimming goggles might be just the thing to help get back to those fast split times. What makes the Form goggles so special is that they’ve got a heads-up display (HUD) in the lens, so you can see a bunch of information about how you’re swimming without having to lift your head out of the water.

These are not meant for children playing around in the kiddie pool. These are US$199, race-ready, designed for the elite and aspiring swimmers.

And they are slick.

You’ve seen the big timing clocks on the sides of pools, but swimmers still have to lift their head to see them, and when you’re swimming for speed, any movement like that takes away from your results.

With the Form goggles you can see split and interval times, pace, distance travelled, stroke count and rate. And so much more.

Add the optional Polar OH1 heart rate monitor (US$80) and you can monitor that, too.

There’s also a smartphone app so you can customize the display and track your metrics.

Now I’m not a competitive swimmer. But I’ve got a friend who used to be. So I had Kevin Clark take the Form goggles for a spin.

He said that even with the heart rate monitor clipped to the side of the goggles, they were comfortable and fit well. Form includes a variety of nose pieces that you can switch out to help get a good fit.

While the display was initially distracting, Kevin found that dimming the brightness helped him get use to the floating numbers.

Being able to personalize the information in the HUD means that athletes can focus the metrics on what they are training for.

“This will definitely be an asset for the elite swimmer in both monitoring their heart rate during workouts and decrease the time spent looking up and calculating time on the pace clock,” explained Kevin. “It will also help the triathletes in their workout programs by tracking with the app.”

One feature Kevin thinks is missing is the ability to track progress during a continuous, open water swim. That’s the kind of thing that can easily be added with firmware upgrades and app updates.

Swimmers take note. If you’re looking to improve, Form goggles have tech that can help.

Microsoft is shutting down Mixer and has partnered with Facebook Gaming

The announcement shocked the industry. Microsoft’s video streaming platform for gamers, Mixer, is finished. Operations cease on July 22. Microsoft hopes that Mixer partners will switch to Facebook Gaming.

In 2019, gamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, who made a name for himself by playing Fortnite on Twitch, made waves when he made the move to Mixer, with Microsoft hoping his 14 million Twitch followers would follow him to Mixer. It didn’t happen, though, and his Mixer follower count never really broke 4 million.

Reports suggest that Ninja’s allegedly $30 million contract is being paid out anyway.

This is about Microsoft getting out of a venture that just wasn’t working. While the company wanted Mixer to be a friendlier, more community oriented gaming platform, they started too far behind Twitch and even Facebook Gaming.

Xbox consoles used to create sound effects for Halo Infinite

I missed this when it was shared last November, but it’s just as cool now as it was then.

The sound engineers working on Halo Infinite, the next game in the franchise exclusive for the Xbox Series X console coming this holiday season, have been using old Xbox machines to create sound effects.

They were using specialty microphones from Lom to record the electromagnetic fields coming off the consoles as they turn on, off, and load and eject discs.

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Our Audio Team found these specialized lomlabel microphones in Area 51 and used them to pick up the electromagnetic fields emitting from Xbox consoles. By applying some light processing in the Kyma sound design environment by Symbolic Sound, they were able to create some interesting sci-fi textures.⁣ ⁣ #halo #HaloInfinite #xbox #343industries #sounddesign #sounddesignsaturday #fieldrecording</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/halo/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Halo</a> (halo) on Nov 16, 2019 at 6:07am PST