Rocksmith 2014: Return To Player
As a guitar newbie, I was excited to give Rocksmith 2011 a test run, but ran into a number of snags trying to get myself hooked. I turned to musician friends to help decipher the guitar system, but even some pros were baffled by the teaching method that decided to literally re-write the wheel. They basically threw tablature out the window and created their own signature system. In Rocksmith 2014, Ubisoft wants us to believe that they’ve listened long and hard to feedback and improved on a number of aspects including the dreaded loading times between songs. I love the frankness in creative director Paul Cross’s speech, the glint in his HD eyes, and especially his bleeped out disclaimer to millions of n00bs like myself who think they’ll be an axe warrior over night, now don’t forget kids “learning guitar is f**king hard!!!” That being said, I still can’t wait to give this shred-machine a go.
Ubisoft’s Watch_Dogs Live Mobile App Interview with Jeyson Acevedo
I had the chance to sit down at Fan Expo 2013 with Jeyson Acevedo, PR manager for Ubisoft Canada to talk about how things are going with the Watch_Dogs Live mobile game (iOS & Android) that has been engaging fans with a number of crazy stunts like the vomiting ATM machine that spewed cash at a mall in Mississauga and the live webcast/explosion countdown of an internet privacy advocate’s car containing a briefcase supposedly full of cash. Read on to see how their innovative campaign is developing, how the developers have been dealing with real in-game hackers, and some handy hacker strategy tips for conquering the game!
So how is everything going?
Really well! We’ve passed the 120,00 download mark which is great because we’re not even halfway through the campaign. It’s great to see people come through at Fan Expo and have fans know everything about it.
(a quick breakdown courtesy of a subsequent Ubisoft email)
– 121,065: Downloads to date (iOS and Android combined)
– 86,132: WatchDogsLive.ca visits
– 215,446: YouTube views
– 4,893,645: Total of hacked locations
– 110: Average time spent per hacker (in seconds)
– 6,762: Number of “Crack for Cash” in-app participants
– 0: Number of cars destroyed (for now…)
Who owns the Metro Toronto Convention Center in the game?
Haha, I don’t’ know because the reception here is not so great but if you go outside you’ll see a bunch of stuff that’s been hacked around here. That’s great. For me, I travel a lot around the country and whenever I load the app I see people have been active hacking and enjoying it.
Watch_Dogs Live is just in Canada right?
Yeah, its exclusive to us and that’s great because Canada is often the forgotten country when it comes to promos. I’m excited to show everyone that this Canadian-made game has great intellectual property and that we’re doing something fun to raise awareness. There’s the feeling that only Canada has it, that we have something nobody else does. US and Europeans on the web think that it might be coming but we have to let them know that it’s not. And then they’re like, “oh, now we know how you feel, to be left out all the time,” haha.
There are some great prizes involved for participating in contests. Ubisoft has a history of this from early days with Splinter Cell promos.
It’s good when we come out with a nice program and partners want to be part of this. We have EB Games as our retail partner, Sennheiser, Scion cars, Frank & Oak with the clothing, and they’ve made caps and other gear.
And Frank & Oak is also from Montreal.
Yeah! When you look at the amount of content that we put out and our partners, it shows that this is a serious thing and we want to be part of the adventure.
So who are the highest-level hackers right now? I think one of the highest is level 60 something. I’m at level 23, and I hack stuff, but I’m not constantly in it. I’d assume some of those #1s are much higher. But we also have cheaters! They have hacked the app to be #1.
How do they do that?
I have no idea, but we find them and clear their profile immediately by sending them an email as Dedsec saying we’re hacking them back. In the beginning the team actually asked the question, what if hackers actually hack the game? And now they are actually dealing with it. For example, we detected this guy at one point who gained massive amounts of Kb, like something 100,000 in a few seconds, so it was pretty obvious. It’s really fun but cheaters are everywhere!
Prizes have gone out right?
Yeah, every week we have prize giveaways like Sennheiser headphones, EB Games gift cards, Frank & Oak gear, with a car from Scion as the grand prize.
What are some strategies for players?
I can’t win prizes as an employee but I thought I’d try. But then you realize that there are people way better than you finding ways to get those prizes. I realized that even if I do try I cant do this. However, my strategy is building my defense systems. Like a good basketball player knows, the best offence is a good defense. Even if I don’t hack a lot and don’t care about my signal strength, I can still hack different places when I travel. So I focus on my defenses, so that people can’t steal from me. Someone else might say they want range, so they can hack different things, and even if you fail a hack you still get Kb and money. Someone else might build their signal for the widest reach possible if they don’t move around as much so they can get to higher level places. But in theory the higher your level, the more KB and cash you’re going to earn. Like most RPGs, there’s no one strategy, and it’s non-linear. There’s no easy way to do this.
DJ Nu-Mark, Incubus, Pharcyde members team up as “4 Player Co-Op” for Rayman Legends
4 Player Co-Op – Picture Perfect Fantasy (Music Inspired by Rayman Legends) from New Science Agency on Vimeo.
So this is totally weird in my books. Under the name “4 Player Co-Op” Incubus’ founding members Dirk Lance and Jose Pasillas II, along with former Pharcyde MC Slimkid3 and Jurassic 5’s DJ Nu-Mark, have released a new song and music video titled “Picture Perfect Phantasy” inspired by Ubisoft’s ‘Rayman Legends’ video game.
The artists bring together a unique blend of funk, rock and hip-hop to create a song that is quirky and fun – much like the game itself. This collaboration also marks the first time that Lance and Pasillas have recorded together since Incubus’ 2001 multi-platinum release ‘Morning View’.
Free mp3 Download of this song: ubi.li/guEBn
Anyone remember this bizarro George Clinton & The Goombas song from the Super Mario Soundtrack?
Sound PellegrinoThermal Team on Boiler Room TV
Teki Latex & DJ Orgasmic (Sound Pellegrino Thermal Team) have been in business for over ten years making music and now curating the Sound Pellegrino label out of Paris, selecting the finest in up and coming sounds and styles. Read more about them and their work with the French rap group TTC, and their Institubes label in my Beatport interview!
Console Wars Xmas 1990 – Nintendo vs. Sega
History repeats its self with dark foreshadowing of the Nintendo situation. Took about 20 years but there’s a kernel of truth to this report.
Knifefight EP
It’s easy to get excited about anything when they have knives involved. There’s just the right amount of bad assery to capture the human imagination (like Knife Party), especially when it’s a new project from Anticon rapper Beans and Mux Mool with guest appearances from Kool AD and Cities Aviv!
Cop a feel for your ear drums with this one.
GTA V: Official Trailer!
Intersections: Baldwin & Spadina – Now Magazine – First photo credit!
While I’ve made the odd cameo appearance in Now Magazine via Zach Slootsky’s photo column and Graeme Phillip’s NowTube, this story marks my first photo credit with them! The fire took place in what is a derelict squat that happens to be my backyard unfortunately. While the squatters that crawl out of the structure like rats and cockroaches do provide for some off beat, against the grain entertainment, it would be really great if the city could get their shit together and make something happen here! It’s been way too long. How many more spontaneous disasters will it take before action is taken?
Here are some more shots of the fire that didn’t get published.
New York producer MNDR on signing to Ultra, eating diamonds, and Tom Cruise’s son – Beatport New
Interview by Jesse Ship
Amanda Warner (aka MNDR) has been living a pretty serious musician’s life, moving from her hometown of Fargo, North Dakota to Oakland to New York, all in the name of music and exploration. She’s been touring hard since 2009 and was on her third music gathering of the weekend when we caught up at Montreal’s Osheaga Festival—which is fitting since she’s actually secretly French Canadian (well, half of her is). But that half has built bonds with other Canadian divas like Austra and Emily Haines’ band Metric, both of whom she’s remixed in the past year. Singles are still trickling out from her 2012 album Feed Me Diamonds, with another one in production, and she’ll soon be releasing a tune with RAC and Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke. Mon dieu!
There’s a lot of uncertainty as to how to pronounce your artist name. Set us straight!
It’s just the letters M-N-D-R. It’s the DJ/IDM name that I used in the Bay Area, a combination of my legal name Amanda Warner. I had a lot of criticism with that at first, but now with artists like SBTRKT, it’s lifted. I will claim that I paved the first no-vowel road officially in 2004.
So what do you do for fun in New York?
I have a party called Youth Group that I throw with another DJ friend named Musa who DJs for Spank Rock. The party is starting to make tech-house and downloadable dance singles as part of the party/label. We will be releasing those in the fall; it’s a footwork, tech-house, dirty-bird genre. We call it that because the party’s on a Wednesday; it works across the board.
What sort of music influences you?
I moved to Oakland to be at the US center for techno and tech-house. I like labels like dirtybird and Kid 606’s Tigerbeat6. So that’s my world. For the Feed Me Diamondsalbum, I wanted to make a straightforward pop album; not something electro-pop-defining but I have a feature coming out with RAC that will be more electronic-sounding.
Did signing to Ultra influence that?
Patrick [Moxey, Ultra’s owner] wanted to sign a pop project, not so much an EDM thing. I am definitely an artist that they don’t usually sign but they’re growing the label and signed some more hybrid acts like myself and TOKiMONSTA.
How did you meet Connor Cruise?
I played on The Late Show with David Letterman and his dad, whom you may know, Tom Cruise, was the guest. He threw an after-party where Connor DJed. He asked if he could do the remix and I agreed. He’s really young but he’s a great DJ—totally not bullshit. I think he’ll do well.
Feed Me Diamonds is a reference to the performance artist Marina Abramovic. Can you tell us more about that?
I think when you’re writing pop songs and trying to be really honest in your writing, you have to go to really scary emotional places. She was doing her MoMA sitting-and-staring piece [The Artist Is Present] for 30 days where she sat for eight hours straight. I thought, “Oh, I love her so much,” and in my research I found she claimed her father was murdered by being fed diamonds, a tactic used to kill kings and queens. If you do that, it rips your GIs apart and you bleed out. But it’s a beautiful metaphor and I knew it would be a great song idea. Lyrically, I go through different phases when I write songs. This album was very personal and politically motivated. I draw a lot of inspiration from sounds, beats, music that I love, which is mainly electronic. It’s a marriage of both. Prior to that, it was mostly just beats and sounds. Now it’s fun to be motivated lyrically as well; it’s a different creative thing.
Andre Saraiva – What’s Your Dream Concert?
Over the past few months, André Saraiva has covered the city streets of Los Angeles, New York, London, Venice, Paris and Basel with his fantasy concert posters. These Dream Concerts represent the ephemeral quality of street art and daydream aspect of the artist’s practice. At Gallery Steinsland Berliner, André will present the concert poster series alongside two mythical nightclub sculptures. Together, the works create a new narrative of illusion versus reality in the constantly evolving worlds of music and nightlife.
Saraiva is also the impresario behind Paris’s Le Baron, located in the notorious red light district, Place Pigalle. On Saturday August 24, Saraiva will kick off Stockholm’s Mercedes-Benz Swedish Fashion Week with a Le Baron pop-up club installation “Back To Sweden”.
