Electronic Arts’ subscription service EA Play has officially launched on Steam, bringing the program to its first non-EA-owned storefront on PC.

EA Play, previously known as either EA Access or Origin Access depending on the platform, is EA’s own take a the subscription game library that also grants early access or discounts to some EA-published games as well.
 
The recently rebranded service has been on PC for a while through EA’s own Origin platform, but agreements between Valve and EA only recently have helped move both the service and a slew of EA games previously missing from Steam to Valve’s digital game storefront.

Players can subscribe to EA Play from right within Steam, either annually or monthly, through the same process they’d normally go through to buy any game or digital product on the platform. An active subscription grants them on-demand access to whatever EA games are featured in the EA Play library, 10 percent off of EA purchases through Steam, and some in-game content.

This marks EA Play’s fourth home following its earlier Origin, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One launches, but it’s worth calling out that the service itself is platform specific and as such a separate subscription is needed for each of those individual platforms.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Agoura Hills, California

At Visual Concepts, we believe great games are made by diverse and empowered teams with a shared passion for play. As one of the world’s top game development studios, we have shipped over 100 multi-sku titles to critical acclaim and commercial success. Our teams are independent and entrepreneurial. Our studios in Agoura Hills, Novato, Orange County, Budapest, Shanghai, and Seoul are committed to artistry and technical innovation, offering top candidates the opportunity to learn and grow with some of the smartest and most creative minds in the industry.

Are you fascinated by the function and literacy of virtual cameras? Do you admire the flawless logic of a 3rd-person camera, or the seamless blending of gameplay and narrative? Do you have a passion for cinematic design, and its impact on the gameplay experience? Can you explain the virtues of a great shot, and write a spec that translates your aesthetic into a set of tools and game logic? If so, we are looking for you.

Our Agoura Hills studio is looking for a Camera Designer to design and implement game cameras that make players feel like they are part of the action.  As a Camera Designer you will interface with the design and programming teams to ensure you have the tools necessary to deliver state-of-the-art cinematic and gameplay experiences where every shot is framed perfectly for maximum dramatic effect.

What You Will Do:

• Own the design of the in-game camera system, features, and creation tools
• Author cameras that support core gameplay and highlight special moments
• Work with a team of designers, producers, and engineers to ensure that camera authoring tools are simple and intuitive, and  can be used to implement changes quickly
• Use systems you design to deliver great camerawork across multiple game modes, from in-ring fighting, to cutscenes, to narrative sequences
• Be an advocate for the end user by pushing for systems which are easy to understand and use
• Be a go-to resource for team members when questions regarding the camera system arise

Requirements:

• One to four years’ experience as a camera or system designer
• Ability to design and utilize systems that replicate real-world broadcast and film cameras, incorporating hand-held vs. mounted, viewing angle, depth of field, aperture, etc.
• Ability to design logic for camera behavior which considers a variety of constraints, including multiple characters, spacing, varied height and occluding objects
• Ability to tell story using camera literacy in broadcast and narrative, including composition and framing, zoom usage, multi-camera live setup, cutaways and group and table dialog
• Ability to design and utilize systems to replicate director and cameraman behavior and choreography, including movement (i.e. cameraman holding a camera), zoom, anticipation, rack focus, tracking, etc.
• Attention to detail and completeness, ability to see around corners, anticipate issues
• Organized, excellent communication skills, passion for games, collaborative demeanor

Preferred Qualifications:

• Scripting experience – C#, LUA, Blueprint, etc.
• General experience with development software – Jira, perforce, bug tracking software, etc.
• Experience with 3D editors – Unity, Unreal, etc.

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Garena, the Singapore based publisher of Free Fire, has unveiled its first Indian playable character based on Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan. The new character, Jai, also sees the introduction of an exciting new campaign called ‘be the hero’.

This new addition to Free Fire comes after the Indian ministry of information and technology decided to ban over a hundred mobile games and applications, including PUBG Mobile and PUBG Mobile Lite. It is well known that PUBG Mobile has a huge fan base in India, with over 175 million downloads since the game’s launch. Indian PUBG players have been aware of an incoming ban since as early as last year and began looking for battle royale alternatives. Interestingly, Free Fire’s popularity has grown over 880% in India since September 2019, significantly more than PUBG’s growth of 261% over the same period.

Garena is also not under scrutiny from the Indian Government as the ban has only affected Chinese-based mobile applications so far. This new character could be Garena’s opportunity to draw in more players following the widescale ban.

The character collaboration with Hrithik Roshan isn’t Garena’s first either. Alok was another character introduction based upon the popular Brazilian DJ of the same name. Free Fire also recently ran a collaboration the with Netflix series, Money Heist, adding a game mode and a bunch of new outfits.

If you’re unsure about giving Garena Free Fire a go then check out the new character trailer above. We also have a list of great battle royale games, for anyone affected by the PUBG Mobile India ban.

Today, we are proud to announce the general availability of the Lists app in Teams for all our commercial and GCC customers. As you might already know, Microsoft Lists, which we announced at Build 2020 is a Microsoft 365 app that helps you track information and organize your work. Lists are simple, smart, and flexible, so you can stay on top of what matters most to your team. Track patients, loans, issues, assets, routines, contacts, inventory and more using customizable views and smart rules and alerts to keep everyone in sync. With ready-made templates, you can quickly create lists from directly within Teams and access them on the Teams mobile app by accessing the Lists tab you added as a channel.

Introducing the Lists app in Teams

The vision of the Lists app in Teams is to bring all the collaboration and communication modalities to lists and list items, so it is easy to get work done.

The new Lists app experience in Microsoft Teams, for mobile on the left and for Web and desktop on the right.

Lists in Teams is supported as a team based tab app built on top of the Microsoft Teams platform and supports the following features:

1. New list creation from scratch, from templates (8 standard templates and 3 industry specific ones: Patients, Loans, and Incidents), from Excel table data and from an existing list.
2. Importing existing team lists as new tabs.
3. All standard list features that you can access in SharePoint web: column types, view formatting, Quick Edit, exporting to Excel, sorting, filtering, etc.
4. The ability to have a channel conversation about a list item (see below for more details).
5. All user actions on the list are audited and available in the Security and compliance center audit logging.

How do I get started?
To get started, simply go to any channel where you would like to start tracking a list and hit the “+” button to explore the tab gallery and select the Lists app. Once the tab is added you can either create a new list or bring in an existing list (from another team or an older SharePoint site, but not a personal list from Lists home) into the channel as a new tab.

Create a new list inside Teams with conversations side-by-side. The above shows using the Asset manager template.

The Lists app in Teams includes 3 new industry-specific templates – Patients, Loans and Incidents. Team members start managing and tracking these key entities. Here are some examples of how these templates can be leveraged.

Create a new list from within Microsoft Teams and choose from numerous ready-made templates, including the new industry-specific ones.

1. Healthcare organizations can use the Lists app in Teams to support patient rounding, multi-discplinary huddles and discharge planning. The Patients template is an easy way for all health teams to track patient progress and keep in touch with their peers. If you have questions about storage of PHI in Teams, Lists, or Office 365, please see more documentation here.
2. Government agencies can use the Lists app in Teams to track incidents and coordinated incident response. The Incidents template helps people quickly setup a list and get started.
3. Loan officers at a morgtage broker or bank can use the Lists app to track a set of loans and informally collaborate on advancing a them to approval. The Loans template helps them get started with plenty of scope for further customization.

How do I start a conversation alongside a list item?

Once you have configured the tab and have a list with list items, you can start a conversation about an individual list item. Go to the details view (or form) for the list item by clicking into the title field and then click on conversation to start a conversation about the list item on the channel. With this feature, you can collaborate with your team about the list item (your key business entities) and get work done, faster.

Since the conversation is a channel message in Teams, all the messaging features like @mentions, rich text, giphies, stickers, emojis, mentions, tagging, and attachments are available for use! The conversation shows up in the right rail for the list item and also on the channel for those who might not have viewed the list as yet.

You can chat side-by-side individual list items within Teams.

See more about getting started with the Lists app in Teams “Create a list in Microsoft Teams” click-thru demo. And do not forget to try the Lists app experience in the Teams mobile app to track your lists within Teams on the go. Just go to your Teams android or iOS mobile apps and go to the channel where you have added the Lists app and click on more and tap on the tab name to open up the list.

Learn more about the Lists app in Teams

If you are unable to see the Lists app in your channel, please contact your Teams Admin because applications in the Teams app store can be disabled or enabled by app permission policies. For more information, see the Manage the Lists app in Teams article. If you are looking for more resources and guidance, please review the help article here. For general help content and resources on Microsoft Lists, check out the Microsoft Lists resource center.

Note: Users of the existing SharePoint tab app in Teams that have pinned a list will see their experience inside the tab get upgraded to the latest Lists in Teams experience. This change will be rolling out today as well.

Millions of people use SharePoint lists and libraries every month in Microsoft 365 to track issues, manage inventory, report status, onboard new hires, build out event agendas, manage FAQs, and more. With flexible columns, forms, and views, you can build your own solution to meet your specific needs without knowing how to code. All these great capabilities now come to you inside the Lists app in Teams.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read about Lists in Teams! We’d love to hear any feedback or ideas you might have. Do submit suggestions on user voice. We are listening!

Following the success of the Netflix’s animated Castlevania series, a new series based on Capcom’s action-RPG Dragon’s Dogma will soon be coming to the streaming platform. To get you in the mood for release in a fortnight’s time, the company has released a character showcase trailer introducing the cast of the series.

Featuring a visual style very similar to its stablemate anime series, the above trailer gives us a glimpse of the resurrected Ethan, as well as Hannah, Olivia, Louis, Salai and, of course, the Dragon. Here’s a snippet from the video’s description on YouTube:

Fighting to protect his beloved family from the Dragon, Ethan is robbed of his heart by the nightmarish beast. Although thought to have perished, Ethan is resurrected as the “Arisen.” Reawakened, Ethan meets a follower of the Arisen, a Pawn named Hannah. Together, the two set out on a quest to retrieve Ethan’s stolen heart.

Meet for the first time the people Ethan and Hannah encounter on their journey of vengeance against the Dragon who robbed Ethan of his heart.

The series will be debuting on Thursday 17th September, so there’s not long to wait to see if this matches the quality of the three existing seasons of the Castlevania adaptation.

It seems that Netflix’s relationship with Capcom has bloomed into a very productive partnership, with a live action Resident Evil series and season four of Castlevania also in production.

Are you looking forward to Dragon’s Dogma (the series)? Think it can live up to the greatness of Dragon’s Dogma (the game)? Let us know in the usual place.

The Game Boy was a true revelation when it launched back in 1989, and kickstarted a portable gaming industry which endures to this very day. However, it also meant that players had to have a steady supply of AA batteries to hand if they wanted to make the most of the console, and while we’ve since moved to rechargeable power cells in systems like the 3DS and Switch, there’s always the issue of running out of juice at the wrong time.

Delft University of Technology’s Jasper de Winkel has taken a step towards removing that limitation by creating a Game Boy-style system which doesn’t need batteries to function, and he hopes it could pave the way for future technology. Working with Josiah Hester from Northwestern University in the US and Przemysław Pawełczak and Vito Kortbeek from TU Delft, de Winkel’s “Engage” project (no relation to Nokia’s failed gaming smartphone, we should add) is seen as a proof of concept to show that a battery-free handheld is possible.

The 3D-printed system isn’t an exact match for Nintendo’s iconic handheld – it’s thicker for starters, and its screen is much smaller than the one on the original console. It’s also using emulation rather than authentic internal parts, but it can play original Game Boy cartridges. There’s also no sound whatsoever, as this would draw too much additional power.

It derives its power from an array of solar panels fixed to the body, as well as kinetic energy from the user pressing the buttons and D-Pad. The system is based on “Intermittent computing”, a new energy-harvesting technique that supplies small amounts of power rather than the “always-on” nature of traditional batteries. There’s a pretty huge catch, however – this newfangled setup can only keep the device active for around 10 seconds, which isn’t going to give you much gaming time. However, the team have come up with a way of ‘checkpointing’ your progress which means when the power is restored, you pick up from where you left off. The challenge now is to take the technology to the point where running out of power and having it restored is instantaneous, so the user doesn’t even notice.

This might all sound like a bit of a bust, but the Engage isn’t meant for public consumption. It’s a system designed to get people thinking about what future portable tech could look like. We throw away millions of devices each year because their internal rechargeable batteries have failed and they cannot be replaced easily, but what if you had a device which had a power source that could be restored by leaving it in direct sunlight or simply playing it?

While the Engage isn’t going to be ready for retail any time soon, it’s an exciting new direction that consumer electronics could potentially take.

When Guido van Rossum released the first viable Python version 0.9.0 in 1991, he couldn’t have expected (by a long shot) that he was on the verge of creating the most influential programming language in the world. Python has a bright future: every new Python version adds new features to the programming language.

In this quickstart guide, you’ll learn how to set up Python on your computer and install the newest version. Because Python is constantly evolving, we keep this information as generalized as possible.

So, how to get started with Python? Let’s go over the steps one by one.

Step 1: Download Python

First, please visit the official Python website and download the latest Python version. The download manager should already propose the correct installer for your operating system because it receives this information through your browser accessing the site.

Step 2: Install Python on Your Machine

Second, run the installer on your computer. In most operating systems, there’s nothing more to it than double clicking the downloaded file.

Step 3: Check Your Python Installation

Third, check if your Python installation worked properly by running the following command in your command line or PowerShell (Windows), terminal (MacOS), or shell (Linux).

$ python –version

Python 3.8.3

Related: You can find all about checking your Python version on my detailed blog article.

Here’s a screenshot checking the Python version on my Windows machine:

Congratulations, you have installed Python on your computer!

Step 4: Write Your First Hello World Program with IDLE

You can start writing your own programs with the IDLE editor that’s built into your system. Just search the phrase ‘IDLE’ on your operating system and open the program:

To start your first own program, type the following command into your shell:

>>> print('hello world!')

Python will interpret your command and print the desired words to your shell:

hello world!

This mode of communicating back-and-forth with your Python interpreter is called “interactive mode”. It has the advantage of immediate feedback. However, the great things about programs is automation—writing a program once and running it again and again.

For example, how to write a program that greets you by name every time you run it?

Step 5: Create Your First Python Module

To allow you to write a program once, save it on your computer, and run it at any later point in time, Python comes with what you may call a “scripting mode”. In this mode, you write a Python script and store it in a file with the suffix .py such as my_first_program.py.

You can create such a file via the menu of your IDLE shell:

Click “New File” and copy&paste the following code into your new file:

name = input("What's your name? ")

print('hello ' + name)

You’ll learn about the commands of the Python programming language in my free email academy (with cheat sheets). For now, please store your file under the name 'hello.py' on your Desktop or any other location. Your current state should look like this:

You can test-run this program here in your browser in our interactive Python shell:

Exercise: Run the code and type in your name. What’s the output?

Step 6: Run Your First Module

Now, let’s get some action going: Click Run > Run Module. The Python program start executing in the interactive shell—but without you needing to type each line into it. It runs through the code file line by line. The first line asks you to put in your name. Type it in. The second line then takes your name and prints it to the shell. Here’s how this looks in my case:

Conclusion

Believe it or not, this procedure will later allow you to run your own applications. Although the applications will get more complicated, the basic process looks the same: First, you create a Python file that contains the application. Second, you run the application on your computer. Theoretically, you don’t need any other Python editor – the preinstalled IDLE editor is all you need!

While this is already a great accomplishment for the day, most coders don’t use the built-in Python editor IDLE a lot. Why? Because it’s harder with the IDLE editor to write simple programs and the editor doesn’t provide you with advanced tools, assistance, and language support. Instead, a far better option for most coders will be to install an integrated development environment (IDE). One of the most popular for Python is PyCharm.

However, this is an optional step and different coders prefer different development environments. You can find detailed installation and setup guides online. We recommend you follow these instructions to set up your own PyCharm projects. Even if this takes you an hour or so to complete, it’s a good investment in your future productivity!

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!