The Game Developers Choice Awards are awards annually presented at the Game Developers Conference for outstanding game developers and games. Introduced in 2001, the Game Developers Choice Awards were preceded by the Spotlight Awards, which were presented from 1997 to 1999. Since then, the ceremony for the Independent Games Festival is held just prior to the Choice Awards ceremony.
A USB flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. It is typically removable, rewritable and much smaller than an optical disc. Most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz). Since first appearing on the market in late 2000, as with virtually all other computer memory devices, storage capacities have risen while prices have dropped. As of March 2016, flash drives with anywhere from 8 to 256 gigabytes (GB) were frequently sold, while 512 GB and 1 terabyte (TB) units were less frequent. As of 2018, 2 TB flash drives were the largest available in terms of storage capacity. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of memory chip used, and are thought to physically last between 10 and 100 years under normal circumstances.
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) is an annual conference for video game developers. The event includes an expo, networking events, and awards shows like the Game Developers Choice Awards and Independent Games Festival, and a variety of tutorials, lectures, and roundtables by industry professionals on game-related topics covering programming, design, audio, production, business and management, and visual arts.
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.
Jason Rohrer is an American computer programmer, writer, musician, and game designer. He publishes most of his software into the public domain and charges for commercial platform distributed versions of his games, like on the iPhone appstore or Steam. He is a graduate of Cornell University. From 2004 until 2011 he practiced simple living, stating in 2009 that his family of four had an annual budget of less than $14,500. They have since relocated from Las Cruces, New Mexico to Davis, California. In 2005 Jason Rohrer worked on a local currency, called North Country Notes (NCN), for Potsdam, New York. In 2016 Rohrer became the first videogame artist to have a solo retrospective in an art museum. His exhibition, The Game Worlds of Jason Rohrer, was on view at The Davis Museum at Wellesley College until June 2016.
Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to games produced by hobbyists for proprietary video game consoles which are not intended to be user-programmable. The official documentation is often only available to licensed developers, and these systems may use storage formats that make distribution difficult, such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs. Many consoles have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development. A non-professional developer for a system intended to be user-programmable, like the Commodore 64, is simply called a hobbyist.
A live USB is a portable USB-attached external data storage device containing a full operating system that can be booted from. The term is reminiscent of USB flash drives but may encompass an external hard disk drive or solid-state drive, though they may be referred to as "live HDD" and "live SSD" respectively. They are the evolutionary next step after live CDs, but with the added benefit of writable storage, allowing customizations to the booted operating system. Live USBs can be used in embedded systems for system administration, data recovery, or test driving, and can persistently save settings and install software packages on the USB device.
EMTEC is part of the Dexxon Group headquartered in Gennevilliers, France, and markets consumer computer data storage products and other computer related consumables. Dexxon Group's North American subsidiary, Dexxon Digital Storage Inc. is located in Lewis Center, Ohio. EMTEC evolved from BASF Magnetics producing magnetic tapes. Between 1998 and 2002 all of BASF's cassette lineup were rebranded EMTEC. While cassette manufacture has since ceased in 2005, and reel-to-reel tape operations were sold to RMGI, EMTEC continues to manufacture other recordable media such as optical discs, MiniDV and VHS cassettes, USB 2.0 and 3.0 Flash Drives. The Flash drives come in a variety of storage sizes. Distribution channels have decreased and EMTEC presence in the market is a shadow of its former BASF self. Since its sale by BASF, EMTEC has undergone several transformations.
Thomas Charles Fulp is an American programmer known for creating the website Newgrounds, as well as co-founding the video game company The Behemoth. He has been credited with "changing the landscape of the Internet forever" and kickstarting the browser game scene in the late 1990s, both with the releases of his own advanced Flash games, along with the launch of the Newgrounds Portal, which made Newgrounds one of the very first sites that allowed creators to easily share their creations with a large online audience.
Phison Electronics Corporation is a Taiwanese public electronics company that primarily designs, manufactures and sells controllers for NAND flash memory chips. These are integrated into flash-based products such as USB flash drives, memory cards, and solid-state drives (SSDs).
A game backup device, informally called a copier, is a device for backing up ROM data from a video game cartridge to a computer file called a ROM image and playing them back on the official hardware. Recently flash cartridges, especially on the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS platforms, only support the latter function; they cannot be used for backing up ROM data. Game backup devices also make it possible to develop homebrew software on video game systems. Game backup devices differ from modchips in that modchips are used in conjunction with systems that use generally available media such as CDs and DVDs, whereas game backup devices are used with systems that use cartridges.
Minecraft is a sandbox video game developed by Mojang Studios. The game was created by Markus "Notch" Persson in the Java programming language. Following several early private testing versions, it was first made public in May 2009 before being fully released in November 2011, with Notch stepping down and Jens "Jeb" Bergensten taking over development. Minecraft has since been ported to several other platforms and is the best-selling video game of all time, with over 238 million copies sold and nearly 140 million monthly active players as of 2021.
Markus Alexej Persson, also known as Notch, is a Swedish video game programmer and designer. He is best known for creating the sandbox video game Minecraft and for founding the video game company Mojang in 2009.
Porteus is a portable operating system based on Slackware. It does not require installation and can be run from fixed and removable media, such as a USB flash drive or compact disc.
Windows To Go is a feature in Windows 8 Enterprise, Windows 8.1 Enterprise, Windows 10 Education and Windows 10 Enterprise versions prior to the May 2020 update, that allows the system to boot and run from certain USB mass storage devices such as USB flash drives and external hard disk drives which have been certified by Microsoft as compatible. It is a fully manageable corporate Windows environment. The development of Windows To Go was discontinued by Microsoft in 2019, and is no longer available in Windows 10 as of the May 2020 update.
Diamond Trust of London is a turn-based strategy video game by Jason Rohrer, with music by Tom Bailey. Following a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter the game was published by indiePub and released for the Nintendo DS on August 28, 2012. The game has been placed in the public domain and is hosted on SourceForge.
The Castle Doctrine is a 2014 strategy video game developed and published by Jason Rohrer for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux via Valve's Steam platform. The game was released on January 29, 2014 for all platforms and is available as public domain software on SourceForge. Set in the early 1990s, it pits players against one another as they invade others' houses and attempt to steal money from their vaults, while also setting up traps and other obstacles to keep their own vaults safe.
A Minecraft mod is an independent, user-made modification to the Mojang video game Minecraft. Tens of thousands of these mods exist, and users can download them from the internet, commonly for free. Utilizing additional software, several mods are typically able to be used at the same time in order to enhance gameplay.
SethBling is an American video game commentator and Twitch video game live streamer known for YouTube videos focused around the 1990 side-scrolling platform video game Super Mario World and the 2011 sandbox video game Minecraft. He created original and derivative video games, devices and phenomena in Minecraft, without using Minecraft mods. He created an interpreter for the programming language BASIC and an emulator for the 1977 home video game console Atari 2600 in Minecraft. In addition to Minecraft builds that run without mods, he created plugins for the game.
Steve is a fictional character from the Minecraft video game franchise. Created by Swedish video game developer Markus "Notch" Persson and introduced in the initial Java-based version of Minecraft which was publicly released on May 17, 2009, Steve is one of two default player character skins available for players of contemporary versions of Minecraft. Steve lacks an official backstory by the developers of Minecraft as he is intended to be a customizable player avatar as opposed to being a predefined character. His feminine counterpart, Alex, was first introduced in August 2014 for PC versions of Minecraft. Depending on the version of Minecraft, players have a chance of spawning as either Steve or Alex when starting a new game.
