There’s not a lot of love lost between gamers and video game companies when it comes to NFTs–and Strauss Zelnick, CEO of Take-Two Interactive Software, says he gets that. However, as CEO of a company that has made billions of dollars in microtransactions on Grand Theft Auto alone, he’s quick to add: don’t expect Take-Two to ignore them forever. “We’re a leader in the [digital goods] space,” Zelnick tells Fast Company. “So naturally, we
Ask Michael Simmons what distinguishes Fantastical from myriad other calendar apps and scheduling services, and he’ll give you a nonspecific answer: It’s just better. Sure, he may point to a few particular features, like how it offers a native Mac app that feels at home on Apple’s operating system, or how its new scheduling tool doesn’t require bouncing over to a separate service such as Calendly. But the larger point is that Fantastical excels at the little details t
“How do we get our name out there?” During an all-hands company call in December 2020 at the then two-year-old crypto exchange FTX, CEO Sam Bankman-Fried issued that challenge. “What are some big ideas?” he asked. Among the bigger notions that percolated during the ensuing brainstorm was, “How about we put our name on a sports stadium?” FTX US’s VP of business development Avi Dabir, who had spent some time working in digital media at the NBA a dec
Timoni West was thinking and talking about spatial computing and mixed reality long before Mark Zuckerberg ever said the word “metaverse” in public. West’s company, Unity Software, is a go-to graphics engine in game development (while the company also serves the film, animation, and architecture industries). As the VP who oversees augmented reality and virtual reality, she’s charged with making sure the Unity platform offers the tools and integrations developers need
The big story in tech over the past week has been Neil Young’s decision to remove his music from Spotify in protest of Joe Rogan’s podcast. After Rogan hosted a vaccine critic on his show and offered little pushback, Young accused Spotify of spreading false information about COVID-19 vaccines, and he threatened to pull his catalog if Spotify didn’t drop Rogan. Predictably, Spotify stuck with its star podcaster, and Young stuck to his word. Several other artists followed Youn
The tech world is gearing up for the next digital revolution. Buzzwords are everywhere: Crypto, NFTs, Web3. Tech icons from Mark Zuckerberg to Jack Dorsey have renamed their companies in their enthusiasm for the metaverse and blockchain technologies. In reaction to the rise of private cryptocurrencies, central banks are exploring whether to issue their own digital currencies, and policymakers are contemplating how to regulate private stablecoins&
On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a session to amend and then vote on the Open App Markets Act, a bipartisan bill designed to rein in the monopoly power of smartphone app stores—mainly those run by Apple and Google. Notably, the bill would require those companies to allow users of Android and iOS devices to download apps from places other than the Google Play store and Apple App Store, a practice called sideloading. As you might imagine, Apple and Google and the lobby group
Earlier this week, the celebrity video shout-out platform Cameo announced that it was getting into NFTs (nonfungible tokens). Starting on February 17, fans of the 40,000 athletes, musicians, and other influencers who populate the platform will be able to mint a Cameo Pass via OpenSea. The NFTs, at a current cost of about $550, will give people exclusive access to Cameo events, such as parties hosted at the company’s Beverly Hills villa; meet-and-greets; merchandise drops; and celebrity Q&
Last September, Dr. Shuhan He, a faculty member at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Computer Science Lab, contributed an article to the Journal of the American Medical Association drawing attention to the creation of a comprehensive set of medical emoji. “The next step is for the medical community to better leverage these hard-won emoji. But how? And why?” he wrote. In his piece, the doctor outlined a rash of ideas for how clinicians could use these digital hieroglyphs.
The video game industry has never been shy about embracing a new technology, but the speed at which publishers and developers hopped on board the NFT hype train was dizzying. Seemingly overnight, game makers announced ways they planned to incorporate the tokens into their product, with one eye on the metaverse and another on bigger revenues. Players, though, are having none of it. And that pushback may be having an impact. The trickle of game companies backing away from NFTs that started in Janu