Latest news with #Nanni
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
As calls for Star Wars Battlefront 3 grow stronger, an ex-Pandemic dev explains why the original games never got a third entry: "We started working on it and then negotiations just didn't take off"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Star Wars Battlefront 2 is having a resurgence in popularity at the moment, with calls for a sequel to the 2017 DICE-developed title to come out being so strong that even former devs are getting in on it. But it wouldn't be the first Star Wars Battlefront 2 to not get a sequel, as the mid-2000s version of the series also never made it past the number 2 (and no, I'm not counting the squadron games on handhelds). A Pandemic Studios follow-up never surfaced, and Free Radical Design's take on it never came out despite being allegedly very close to completion. Battlefront 2 designer Dan Nanni claims that Pandemic did in fact start working on a third game, but a breakdown in communication with LucasArts is what caused it to never happen. "We started working on it and then negotiations just didn't take off," Nanni told VideoGamer, adding that the one-year development time of the previous two games wouldn't fly a third time due to the transition to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. "When you're moving to a new console it's not as easy as saying, 'let me just make a game for it like we did for the old console'. New consoles have new hardware and new hardware comes with new limitations and you don't know exactly what you're working with until you've got it." Nanni added, "I think, negotiations stalled out because I think we wanted more time to work on it. But obviously, Lucas was also trying to align it with their own marketing beats." One of the big elements found in the leaked Battlefront 3 from Free Radical was the inclusion of missions that took place in both flight and ground sections. Nanni told Videogamer that this was actually in the cards for Pandemic's version too, "We had some tech on it that was pretty fun. And was working really well," adding "in Battlefront II we had space missions and we were like, 'well, what's the evolution of that' and everyone was like 'well, it's ground to space'. A big battlefield that is Star Wars all the time." Nanni said that if the team had been "given the time, we'd have made something really special." Pandemic would move on from Star Wars, with the closest thing to a sequel from the studio being The Lord of the Rings: Conquest, which adapted the gameplay of Battlefront into a better property. After that, it was the underrated WW2 game The Saboteur before EA threw the studio into its big landfill of shuttered studios. "We cough up a chunk of our soul": 32 game devs, from Doom's John Romero to Helldivers 2 and Palworld leads, explain what people get wrong about games.
Yahoo
06-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This Bronze-Age Tablet Is The Oldest Customer Complaint on Record
Almost 4,000 years ago, a Mesopotamian man named Nanni was so disappointed with the copper he bought from a trader named Ea-nāṣir, that he decided to write a formal complaint. Today, this Bronze Age clay tablet is the oldest customer complaint we know of – and it's a doozy. Writing and trade have an inseparable history. Some of the oldest surviving examples of written language are stocktakes and ledgers recorded in the ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform script. Since copper is a key ingredient in the very bronze the age was named for, it's no surprise that business surrounding this resource sometimes got heated. But letting a business know you weren't satisfied with your order was not so easy in those days. Without a customer help line or an unblinking AI bot to rant at, the outraged customer Nanni had to etch his gripes in earth, and then send it to Ea-nāṣir via messenger (as in, a person who physically carries messages between people, not an app that sends them across the Internet). Wasting no inch of his clay, Nanni's complaints cover both front and back of a small tablet measuring 11.6 by 5 centimeters (that's 4.6 by 2 inches). It was translated from its original Akkadian language by assyriologist Adolf Leo Oppenheim, and published in his 1967 book Letters from Mesopotamia. "You put ingots [of copper] which were not good before my messenger and said, 'If you want to take them, take them, if you do not want to take them, go away!'" Nanni writes. Presumably, he had already given Ea-nāṣir the money for an agreed amount of copper, which, as he seems to have discovered soon after, may not have been a wise move. In spite of being, by all accounts, a terrible copper merchant, it seems that Ea-nāṣir was a meticulous record-keeper. During 20th century excavations of the city of Ur (in modern-day Iraq), this clay tablet was found alongside multiple others addressed to the same hapless businessman, in what was presumably his own dwelling. Nanni's was not the only complaint among these records – Ea-nāṣir seems to have ticked off more than just a handful of his clients – but it's the oldest, and most scathing. "I have sent messengers, gentlemen like ourselves, to collect the bag with my money (deposited with you) but you have treated me with contempt by sending them back to me empty-handed several times," Nanni continues. "Is there anyone among the merchants who trade with [Tilmun] who has treated me in this way? You alone treat my messenger with contempt!" 'Tilmun' traders are thought to have brought several hundred kilograms of copper to Southern Mesopotamia during the 3rd millennium BCE, which includes Ur. It's unclear whether Tilmun describes the copper's origin, or a renowned trading post for the metal, but Tilmun copper was so dominant that transactions in Ur were conducted using the 'Tilmun standard' of weight. Yet, by the time Nanni wrote his complaint in 1750 BCE, Tilmun copper had been on a long and steady decline, overtaken by Magan competitors. If Ea-nāṣir was indeed a crooked businessman, it may have been because of his supplier's dwindling stocks. "It is now up to you to restore (my money) to me in full," Nanni concludes. "Take cognizance that (from now on) I will not accept here any copper from you that is not of fine quality. I shall (from now on) select and take the ingots individually in my own yard." We will never know if Nanni got his money back, but he certainly had the last word. 23andMe Is Bankrupt. Here's What That Means For Your Genetic Data. Once Lush Sahara Was Home to a Surprisingly Unique Group of Humans 3,600-Year-Old Tomb of Mystery Warrior King Found Beneath Egypt's Sands
Yahoo
25-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Udinese clarify Lucca transfer stance after ‘unpleasant' penalty incident
Udinese director Gianluca Nani insists that the recent penalty incident involving their striker Lorenzo Lucca was 'unpleasant' but claims the club don't want to sell the Italian striker in the summer. Lucca argued with his teammates on the pitch on Friday, pushing to take a penalty kick, which he later converted, for a 1-0 win at the Stadio Via del Mare against Lecce. However, his persistence in taking the penalty cost him a yellow card and forced coach Kosta Runjaić to replace the Italian forward a few minutes later. 'It was an unpleasant and unsportsmanlike incident, but it was then handled perfectly, primarily by the coach, who showed his integrity by making the substitution,' Udinese director Nanni told Il Messaggero Veneto via TMW. 'I also appreciated Bijol's reaction after the match. He apologized to all the fans, including those of Lecce, without blaming Lucca, emphasizing that he was part of the group.' Reports in Italy suggested Udinese would put Lucca on the market in the summer, but Nanni insisted this was not the case. 'We don't want to sell him, even though we know that certain offers can change the players' perspective, making it difficult to keep them,' he said. 'Lucca made a mistake, and I'm not encouraging him to repeat it, but he also showed character by insisting on taking the penalty at all costs. A player like that, I'd have him play in a Champions League final.' Lucca has scored 10 goals in 25 Serie A appearances this season, providing one assist as well. Lautaro Martinez has scored the same number of league goals this term, and only Mateo Retegui, Moise Kean, Marcus Thuram, and Ademola Lookman have more.
