#Activision hire me

[blut-s]

Omg is that 09 reference. Mw3 spoilers below

No guys it actually makes sense cuz in loose ends shepherd kills roach and ghost and here price kills shepherd. Yes

[soaps-mohawk]

I forgot how beautiful Alex Keller is. Thank you for reminding me 😊

The people who made COD did not have to make them all so hot and yet they did anyways

You're most welcome 😊

For a company that caters to the dudebros of the world, Activision really popped off with making the characters hot in the reboots.

[c0smiccom3t]

Cortex: Hmph! Fine, since my hovercraft is not available right now. I suppose it is time for a little back-up ride.

Coco: Back-up ride?

Crash: Huh?

[Cortex then takes his phone out and dials somebody up. once somebody picks up Cortex starts to speak in a flamboyant tone]

Cortex: Ryonna, it's Master, come get me.

[He hangs up the call, all while having a smug smile on his face. Crash and Coco are confused and then they see Ryonna run fast, once she arrives, the siblings are surprised and Cortex still has that smug smile on his face while looking at Ryonna as they use their tail as a ladder for Cortex to get on her back]

Ryonna: HOP IN, MASTER!

Crash: ????

Coco: ?????

[Cortex then walks on Ryonna's tail and gets on her back]

Ryonna: Boy, I got a warm bubble bath and tasty buttered noodles waiting for you back at the castle! Oh yeah also--

Cortex: Yeah yeah, less talking about that stuff in front of my enemies more riding back home.

[Ryonna then starts to run and then fly, in the distance the two keep talking to eachother]

Cortex: Will there also be butter on the side??

Ryonna: Well, Of course with butter on the side, my powerful partner-in-crime!!

Crash and Coco: ...

Coco: Typical Cortex and Ryonna.

Crash: Mhm.

[calkale]

AN EDIT OF MY CALL OF DUTY CHARACTER

be honest if i was an actor would you make an edit of me to bubblegum bitch

[askagamedev]

About Unity these past few days

A lot of people have asked me about Unity and their strange new per-install charges policy that they rolled out on September 12th, 2023. I wanted to give them at least 24 hours before I posted my take on it - let the dust settle a bit so I could get a chance to read the new policy properly and all that. First, however, I think we need to take a step back and get a wider perspective. Unity Software Inc. is in some serious financial trouble. Here are their operating numbers from 2019 to 2023.

The blue line here is how much money they take in and the red line is the amount of money they are spending each year. You may notice that they are spending significantly more money year over year than they earn. In fact, over the past 12 months alone (August 2022 to August 2023), Unity Software Inc. has lost almost $1 billion.

In 2022, Unity spent four times as much money as they did in 2019. If they had managed to keep costs at double their spending in 2019, they still would have earned $243 million in profit. Instead, they lost $882 million in 2022.

Where does all of this cost come from? In any software company like Unity, the vast vast majority of costs comes from employee salaries. And we can directly see it in Unity's number of employees:

Unity Software Inc. more than tripled its headcount from 2019 to 2022, and it did all of this hiring during the pandemic while competing with many many other developers all trying to hire from the same pool. I don't work for Unity, but I was in the market and I had lots of recruiters trying to recruit me during that time.

In short, Unity is suffering from the same miscalculation that Embracer Group did, that EA did, that Activision-Blizzard did, that Square-Enix did, and just about everybody else in the tech industry - they misjudged the good times at the beginning of the pandemic, overspent hiring people thinking the good times would last, and are now scrambling to figure out how to survive. The difference is that Unity was getting all of their operating money from Venture Capitalists (VCs) hoping that they would eventually become profitable, but VC money has all but dried up because it's become much more expensive to borrow money over the past two years.

As a result, the Unity executives are likely grasping at straws in hopes of saving a sinking ship. This wild and decidedly senseless pricing plan is their (seemingly-desperate) attempt to juice their revenues. It really makes very little sense from the developer perspective, which is what makes the whole thing reek of desperation. That isn't greed talking, it's survival. My guess is that Unity is currently desperately looking for a buyer to save them and doing whatever they can to buy themselves some more runway. They already announced layoffs back in May, but I suspect they'll probably have to announce some really big layoffs (e.g. 40-50%) soon. Unity Software Inc. is living on borrowed time and they know it.

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[renaultmograine]

Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime left Blizzard because he was reportedly tired of fighting with former Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, according to those who worked closely with him, the two leaders having butted heads for years regarding the future of Blizzard.

New details about Morhaime's 2018 departure and Blizzard's contentious relationship with Activision come via an excerpt from Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier's upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment , which releases on October 8 (the same day Blizzard's first expansion for Diablo 4, Vessel of Hatred, launches).

For years, Morhaime attempted to keep Activision, which acquired Blizzard in 2007, at bay. That goal of keeping Blizzard insulated from outside Activision pressure became harder in 2013 when Blizzard canceled project Titan, an FPS MMO that had been intended to be the next World of Warcraft, according to Schreier.

After the project's cancellation, which cost Blizzard around $80 million, Kotick and Activision began to assert more control over Blizzard, including pushing Blizzard to hire a chief financial officer, Armin Zerza, to keep costs in check. Zerza just "kept talking about how to make as much money as possible," according to one former employee, and at one point suggested axing Blizzard's annual BlizzCon fan convention, confused as to why a project with such low profit margins was allowed to exist, according to Schreier's sources. Blizzard announced this year there would not be a BlizzCon 2024.

Morhaime continued to battle Kotick in the following years, defending Blizzard's need for customer service employees and the studio's cinematics team. Following a meeting of Activision, Blizzard, and King leaders focused around the theme of "One ABK," Morhaime feared Blizzard was losing its independence, according to Schreier. He wrote a lengthy email to Kotick in response, stating he believed "preserving Blizzard's culture and magic" was a necessity in order to attract and retain "the best creative talent in the world." He additionally said that it had been "increasingly hard for me to provide Blizzard leadership and staff confidence that Blizzard has a stable future."

In 2017, Morhaime submitted a resignation letter, but was persuaded at the time by Kotick and others to take it back. Following the One ABK meeting in the spring of 2018, Morhaime formally announced his departure that October, saying it was time for someone else to lead.

Blizzard's story would of course continue, but without the man that Schreier said many Blizzard staff worshiped. Morhaime went on in 2020 to found a new game studio and publisher, Dreamhaven. Blizzard, meanwhile, in 2021 found itself embroiled in controversy following an explosive state of California lawsuit that accused Activision Blizzard of systemic sexual misconduct and discrimination, eventually settling with the state in 2023 to the tune of $54 million. Morhaime said in a statement addressing the lawsuit that he was "ashamed."

"To the Blizzard women who experienced any of these things, I am extremely sorry that I failed you," Morhaime said.

In the wake of the lawsuit, Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, with Kotick stepping down as Activision Blizzard CEO in December 2023.

[aliennachos]

I constantly see mf's talking about "Ubisoft should hire me I could fix allllllll of their problems" like dawg, a Chihuahua with a monkey wrench and unrestricted internet access would be a net positive to that company

We're talking about the people that had a guy BS his way out of a near DIRECT NUKE via a drop of blood and a bird get folded like an omelette by some guy with slightly better powers, bro we just not gonna talk about all of his VISCERA THAT YOU LEFT SPLATTERED ALL OVER THE PLACE

they said "oh they're gonna be so fuckin shocked when this guy reappears in the third game, we are fuckin geniuses they'll never see it comin" and then just never made a third game

(edit) Activision, it's Activision, I am a jester of monumental proportions

[theviolenttomboy]

Found this interesting segment off of an Anime News Network post about Nintendo:

This past week, there was a lot of news about Nintendo and their corporate policies; their new employee rate is clocked in at an astounding 98.8%, which isn't just high for the industry. That's an unprecedented high for Japan in general. There was also the development that the upcoming Super Mario Wonder wasn't developed with a deadline in mind—developers were allowed to iterate on ideas and metaphorically throw stuff at the walls to see what stuck. The result is, well, Super Mario Wonder. And let's not forget, this year's The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was also delayed by a whole year in the name of polishing the base game—the result is absolute programming witchcraft, courtesy of how well the ridiculously-intricate Fuse mechanic works on a Nintendo Switch (while "bigger" open-world games can't even keep their physics in line). Also worth pointing out is that Nintendo was willing to start from scratch with Metroid Prime 4 because they didn't like how the game was coming along in development. Nintendo is the result of a studio actually giving a rip about what they put out and making sure the people they hire are well-cared-for while they do it, not just in the office but also in their personal lives—while Japan doesn't formally recognize same-sex marriage, Nintendo extends the same benefits to developers in same-sex partnerships as they do to heterosexual ones. (For the record, Nintendo isn't perfect, and I look forward to Nintendo of America cleaning up their act with regards to their contractors.) Smarter people than myself have also pointed out that, unlike many American studios, Nintendo rarely—if ever—sees the kinds of mass layoffs that the likes of Activision-Blizzard see. The people working on Super Mario Wonder likely include many veteran staff who have worked at Nintendo long enough to get a grip on how a Mario game should "feel," and in turn are allowed to offer advice to younger, newer developers who know they don't have to worry about their job security. Compare this to the likes of EA, who so callously lay off key staff, including some of their most celebrated writers. While the peanut gallery explains how "underpowered" the Switch is, Nintendo has quietly written the book on sustainable production. (It's a real shame that there isn't much they can do about GAME FREAK.) I've seen some folks claim that Nintendo can only do all of these because of how much money they have. And this is valid... to a point. I can see Supergiant Games (creators of Hades and Bastion), Coldwood Interactive (creators of Unravel) or rose-engine games (creators of Signalis) not being able to just dump a ton of work to start all over again on a current project, or just delay a game for an entire year because they wanted to make sure all their "T"s were crossed. But if we're talking the usual American stand-bys—Gearbox Studios, BioWare, NetherRealm Studio, Infinity Ward—then you can miss me with that load of bullcrap. As always, the late Satoru Iwata taking a 50% pay cut during Nintendo's lean years is a big, fat black eye to the rest of the gaming industry that loves to report their record-breaking profits before dropping the axe on whole chunks of their workforce. And it's a tremendous indictment to the likes of Bobby Kotick and other overpaid executives who sit atop these gaming studios.

[theculturedmarxist]

Welcome to BIG, a newsletter on the politics of monopoly power. If you’re already signed up, great! If you’d like to sign up and receive issues over email, you can do so here.

Today, as the U.S. is drawn into wars in Israel and Ukraine, as well as the defense of now-peaceful Taiwan, I’m writing about war. Not the policy choices, or whether U.S. military power is a net force for good or ill, but the actual practical machinery behind the American defense base that produces the weaponry necessary to sustain the military.

As stockpiles dwindle, there is now widespread agreement among policymakers that America must rebuild its capacity to arm itself and its allies. But according to a new scorching government report released this week, that’s mostly just talk. The Pentagon doesn’t bother tracking the guts of defense contracting, which is who owns the mighty firms that build weaponry.

But first, I have a personal announcement. I am going on leave this week, and I’ve hired a colleague named Lee Hepner to take over for BIG while I am out. You are in for a treat. Hepner works with me at the American Economic Liberties Project. He’s a lawyer with over a decade's worth of policy and political experience at the state and local level, and when I have a question on the law or procedure, Hepner’s one of my go-to people. He’s drafted important legislation, and has recently been focusing on the airline industry, labor issues, and a lot of the major antitrust litigation I've written about here, including the trials of the Meta-Within merger, the Microsoft-Activision acquisition and the Google monopolization case. You're in good hands.

And now, let’s talk the defense base. Here’s an exceptionally boring chart that involves all the money in the world. Welcome to the Pentagon.

One of the more important side stories to the recent wars in Ukraine and Israel, and competition with China over Taiwan, is that the U.S. defense industrial base, composed of 200k plus corporations, is being forced to actually build weapons again. Defense is big business, and since the end of the Cold War, the government has allowed Wall Street to determine who owns, builds, and profits from defense spending.

The consequences, as with much of our economic machinery, are predictable. Higher prices, worse quality, lower output. Wall Street and private equity firms prioritize cash out first, and that means a once functioning and nimble industrial base now produces more grift than anything else. As Lucas Kunce and I wrote for the American Conservative in 2019, the U.S. simply can’t build or get the equipment it needs. There are at this point a bevy of interesting reports coming out of the Pentagon. The last one I wrote up earlier this year showed that unlike the mid-20th century defense-industrial base, today government cash goes increasingly to stock buybacks rather than actual armaments. And now, with a dramatic upsurge in need for everything from missiles to artillery shells to bullets, we’re starting to see cracks in the vaunted U.S. military.

The signs are unmistakable. In Ukraine, fighters are rationing shells. Taiwan can’t get weapons it ordered years ago. The Pentagon has put together a secret team to scour stockpiles to find high-precision armaments in demand on every battlefield and potential battlefield. But the problem goes beyond national defense. In Lake City, Missouri, the largest small arms ammunition plant in the world has decided all ammo production is going to the military, meaning that there is going to be a domestic shortage for hunters, sportsmen, and maybe even police. This shortage may look like a story of a sudden surge in demand, but it’s actually, as Elle Ekman wrote in the Prospect in 2021, a story of consolidation and de-industrialization.

Surges due to wars aren’t new, and there’s always some time lag between the build-up and the delivery. But today, the lengths of time are weirdly long. For instance, the Army is awarding contracts to RTX and Lockheed Martin to build new Stinger missiles, which makes sense. But the process will take.. five years. Why? What is new is Wall Street’s role in weaponry. We used to have slack, and productive capacity, but then came private equity and mergers. And now we don’t. The government can’t actually solicit bids from multiple players for most major weapons systems, because there’s just one or two possible bidders. So that means there’s little incentive for firms to expand output, even if there’s more spending. Why not just raise price?

But don’t take my word for it, take that of the Pentagon. In 2022, the DOD reported that “that consolidation of the industrial base reduces competition for DOD contracts and leads DOD to rely on a more limited number of suppliers. This lack of competition may in turn increase the risk of supply chain gaps, price increases, reduced innovation, and other adverse effects.” And that’s why, more than a year into the Ukraine conflict, the ramp-up is still not where it needs to be.

This week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is a Congressional office charged with investigating problems in government and business, explained why. The GAO came out with a report on how the Pentagon is doing essentially zero oversight of Wall Street’s acquisitions of defense contractors. The title is as boring as you’d expect, designed to have few people pay attention, but offering a red-alert to procurement officials.

The report is simply jaw-dropping. Despite all the chatter about consolidation at high levels within the Pentagon, and in Congress, the bureaucracy has made essentially no progress whatsoever. For instance, we have a trillion dollar defense budget, but there are just two people in the Department of Defense who look at mergers in the defense base. You couldn’t staff the morning shift of a small coffee shop with that, and yet two people are supposed to look at the estimated four hundred mergers plus going on every year among defense contractors and subcontractors.

Four hundred mergers every year is a lot, but of course, that’s just an estimate. Why don’t we know how many acquisitions happen in the defense base? As it turns out, it’s an estimate because the Pentagon isn’t tracking defense mergers anymore. To put it in boring GAO-speak, Pentagon“officials could not say with certainty how many defense-related M&A now occur annually because they no longer track or maintain data on all M&A in the defense industrial base.” So the DOD is almost totally blind to the corporate owners of contractors and subcontractors, which might be one reason that, say, Chinese alloys are being discovered in sensitive weapons systems like the state of the art F-35.

It gets worse. There’s no policy or guidance on mergers, and DOD doesn’t even require contractors or subcontractors to tell them that there is new ownership when an acquisition occurs. In fact, the Pentagon relies on public news to learn of mergers. They often do not know that the mergers are going on, or that the Federal Trade Commission is reviewing them. When big mergers happen, even if the Pentagon is concerned, no one tracks what happens after it closes. They do no analysis of industry sectors, as their “M&A office is not collecting robust data or conducting recurring trend analyses that could help them identify M&A in risky areas of consolidation among defense suppliers.”

The Pentagon’s head-in-the-sand approach is why Lockheed now has a chokehold on nuclear missile modernization, since it bought the key supplier of rocket engines and denies those engines to rivals bidding for the contract to upgrade what is known as the nuclear triad.

So how does the U.S. government manage defense base mergers? Well, the Pentagon defers to the antitrust agencies to look solely at competition. “While DOD policy directs Industrial Base Policy and DOD stakeholders to assess other types of risks, such as national security and innovation risks,” wrote the GAO, “they have not routinely done so.” Basically, dealing with their own defense base is someone else’s job.

What I found most useful about the GAO report is the Pentagon’s response, a classic bureaucratic hand wave. The DOD agreed with all the conclusions of the GAO. It should track mergers and what happens afterwards, it should have more personnel doing so, it should consider national security aspects of corporate combinations, and it should have clear policy on mergers. But it doesn’t. The DOD says it will have a better strategy to deal with mergers… by 2024. Basically, you’re right, but it’s not our problem.

Every day, it seems like political leaders and consultants are saying it’s time to really get that arsenal of democracy going, and to re-industrialize for real. It’s quite possible to get a lot done. The FTC and DOJ now have significant amounts of national security-related information on mergers due to a Congressional change in pre-merger notification laws in 2022, so the DOD could easily do a better job of tracking what’s happening in the defense base.

More to the point, the Pentagon is very powerful. The Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks could simply start smashing heads on competition and begin telling contractors that if they don’t shape up, she will start an internal war against them. Or the head of the Armed Services Committees could threaten the cushy cash flow that leads to record stock buybacks among contractors, if the ramp-up doesn’t start. Or they could grant antitrust authority for the DOD straight-up, which would rely on a national security standard that allows widespread corporate restructuring without the long slog of a court case. There are many paths.

But if you actually look at the guts of the bureaucracy, nothing is happening, because doing something about our industrial base means thwarting Wall Street, and that’s generally not something that’s considered on the table among normie policymakers. Giant bureaucracies are hard to change, but they are not immovable. One of the ways that you know a previously non-functional bureaucracy is on the right track is, ironically, if there is bitter infighting and anger among staff, who are being tasked to do things differently. But as the GAO showed this week, that’s just not happening in the Pentagon, or at least, not happening nearly fast enough.

And that’s why America is increasingly out of ammunition.

[life-caretaker]

You can scroll if you want. I’m not gonna stop you, How ever I am gonna tell you what I think Activision should do to give us Call of Duty Ghosts 2!

Do I have your attention? Good okay here we go:

They just remade Call of Duty MW2 no I present you this, I don't know much about cod when to ready the fandom wiki to try and understand it more even though I have played many cod games and completed almost all of the campaigns how ever I don't know jack shit. The point is I believe this...

I believe the reason the Ghost team was created was in memory of Ghost right? That would make sense considering the task force dose a lot of things Ghost did like wear spooky balaclavas, Refuse to give up intel, Don't die easy, And are super skilled in their fields. 

Activision makes Call of Duty MW3 a remake. I don't know much about the game but considering the fact that technically Soap and Ghost were supposed to die in the Second game and they didn’t in the remake they will probably kill them off in three.

How ever what if they took a different rout with Ghost? 

What if instead he retires? Or he lives and become captain instead of Soap? then he has a reason to make a new squad because his old one died. 

It would be a lot like the Ghost team they made back in Las Almas and because of this hey would all be trained under ghost and follow his motives we could end Call of Duty MW3 with a really cool cutscene where we get to hear Ghost  talking to a man he Calls Scarecrow and then abruptly ending a game after Ghost says turning to the camera;

“I have a mission for you” We see ghosts face for the first time! and it could Segway into Call of Duty Ghosts. they could remake the game. How ever I feel like the original had a grate story line. What they could do how ever is make a Call of Duty Ghosts 2 explaining what happened to Logan and all that shit because what happened to my baby!?

You got me attached to him and for what!?

So you could drag him away after I thought I killed Rorke?!

Any way I believe this would be a very solid path to go down to continue/bring hype to the franchise. They could also continue down the path of Call of Duty Ghosts. make Logan a bad ass bitch.

Maybe give us a heated love story that end with a bullet through some ones brain and a revenge plot?

I'm just saying! 

They have options... (Activision hire me)

(Feel free to correct any of my knowledge of COD or rant to me about it i’m willing to hear you out just don't get mad at my lack of knowledge.)

[gigakoops]

I'm seeing articles talking about Bobby Kotick talking about reviving Guitar Hero using AI, and everything about this upsets my rhythm-game-loving ass. For one I don't want to be tempted to buy another Activision game ever again. But then, if they start using AI to do stuff like note charts, it's not going to go very well and it's going to be awful to play.

So if you've seen my username anywhere else, it's likely been in the Clone Hero/Rock Band communities. I make custom note charts, and have been charting since 2011, when I worked on the Rock Band Network. So I know the in's and out's of what goes into a note chart. There's a lot of nuance that goes into these things, and when making a chart I always notice new details, even with songs I've heard hundreds of times. I don't trust an algorithm to notice such things.

I'm also left thinking about CAT, a program used at C3 (a big ol' hub for Rock Band customs that I've pretty much cut ties with at this point) to generate lower difficulties and such. And let me tell you, the results there are subpar at best. You can instantly tell how mechanical it all feels, as if there was no thought put into the note orders, or even the actual rules to how these lower difficulties work. And that's an algorithm that uses existing Expert charts as a basis!

AI-generated Expert charts would be a fucking nightmare. Instead of charts that flow well with the music, and account for all the little details in actual instrument lines, you'll get some clunky thing that technically works, but doesn't feel "right" with the music. Like, imagine playing a song, and while the notes are technically on-beat, it feels like the chords are charted in a way that feels unnatural, and there's a lack of polish when it comes to little licks and such. That's how I imagine an AI chart feeling, and it'd be downright dreadful.

There's also the thought of "What if they use existing charts to train the AI," which leaves two possible outcomes, neither of which are great. The lesser-bad one would be them using old Guitar Hero charts to train the AI. The GH series in general is pretty all over the place with chart quality, leaning oftentimes towards "overcharted" due to charting power chords as three-note chords, and sometimes just charting notes that aren't there for the sake of challenge. That's also the style of the series post-Harmonix, is to be really challenging. But also, I don't see that as being a good basis to train an AI to make charts by today's standards.

Which leads to my biggest fear: using custom charts (mostly Clone Hero charts most likely) to train this AI. And let me tell you right now, I don't consent to this. No way in Hell do I think it's an ethical thing to do to train an AI using potentially hundreds of other peoples' charts. Charting itself is an artform, and I think it'd be horrendous to just steal other peoples' styles so that you can save time on your cash-in revival.

This was originally going to be just the first paragraph, but then I decided to elaborate further until it became, well, all this. Still, I really hope that if they decide to revive Guitar Hero, that they actually hire people to make charts, because the idea of an AI seeing a Skrillex overchart, then ripping off that style for an Alter Bridge song or some shit is going to keep me up at night.

[collinnmckinley]

Modern Warfare III Review:

Okay so, I finished my first play through last night 5 days ago and ngl… lmao i had to open a gameplay so i could recount what actually my thoughts were at those times because I was confused half the time if not more from the story.

So here’s my unfiltered, filled with spoilers, and honest review. 

Before anything let me just say this; I was wrong, my theory was wrong (although a banger if you ask me. Hire me Activision), and nothing I said in that post mattered. I’ll swallow my words… But I am slightly annoyed by it.

Here're the points I had problems with:

The story: it was…. Idk how to put it other than it being super fucking fast and filled with plot holes. Like half the time I was confused as to what was going on or I would forget what needed to be done. I think I blacked out 40% of the playthrough, because I would go into an OCM (Open Combat Missions) and Graves/Laswell would be like “bruh you need to do this we don't got time for stroll on the park get to it” and I’m just running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what are the obj. I think they could’ve made it a bit slow paced, like MWII or MW even. Those had perfect story pace, even after the fact MWII didn’t have good writing. I just thought, MWIII would be impactful in a way the previous MWs weren’t, the ending WAS, but it took them 5 hours to of dragging and stretching one fucking thing, literally one thing. Because if you see the campaign in a way, even the bad guy, Makarov, wasn’t THAT impressive. I legit didn’t give a single fuck about Makarov or what his motives were, I just followed with 141’s intuitions.

Speaking of Makarov’s plans, he just appeared out of nowhere, and he has some beef with Farah and Urzakstan for some reason. Why? They didn’t specify other than he wants to “bring Russia to its old glory”. And of course they had to put fucking Farah into middle of this fiasco because why wouldn’t they. I hate the fact that she’s STILL to this day the center of the fucking MW storyline. She didn’t have much of a role to play in MWII campaign but the Raids took the center part. And that annoyed me tbh. Alas, we can’t have everything we ask for. (I would’ve stanned Farah in the long run but her holding hands with Graves in season 5 REALLY annoyed me but that's for another day).

Operation 627: Misleading. That's what I have to describe this mission, when i read the mission name, I was expecting it to be Price centered mission. I really wanted it to be a Price centered mission because the number 627 is Price’s identity. So to just take the number away and give it to Makarov really irked me if I’m being honest. And the whole marketing for it was misleading too (I’m looking at you barry). Gameplay wise it was okay I guess, typical CoD campaign mission.

Open Combat Missions: now here things gets fucked up. I was not expecting to be thrown right into OCMs right away. And by the end of my 400th try I was just running around and shooting without any care. I tried to do it stealthy, and with the enemies standing around the objectives that you CANNOT avoid it's almost impossible to even go undetected. It’s like a mixture of campaign and DMZ, which BTW is a really bad combination. And also, whenever I try to restart from the checkpoint it starts from the TOP! You have to do it all over again. I just wish they added the checkpoint thing it would’ve made so much easier. I know they want to make it feel like DMZ but it just SUCKS. And I wish it would've been at least a choice that you could make before the mission starts. Basically either you go OCM or just a regular mission, but in this case you’re forced to go to OCM. 

(Also Farah’s Arabic sucks ass. At least they casted a good VO for Dena who knew how to speak Arabic properly.)

Reactor: again, another OCM. But this time, it was Price I played as. Now here everything felt off for me. Normally we would be playing as Soap or Gaz in ANY scenario because that would be the logical thing to do. But when the camera angle shifted to Price’s perspective, everything changed. And following this mission, every mission we got to play as Price just gave me a fear of sorts. Same as before, hard not to go undetected but more manageable than “Precious Cargo”. By the end of the mission Price almost gets incapacitated by the toxic gas, and that's what we see in the trailer. And from it we knew someone’s gonna die but it was not Price for sure, because he lives and kicks ass left and right.

Price being an errand boy: there’s a cutscene before mission ‘Payload, where Price and Farah get together to infiltrate an underground bunker to stop some rockets. In that cutscene it felt like the roles have been switched between the two. When Price was this leading figure in Farah’s life that had an enormous impact that changed the course of her life, now she’s acting like he owes her? It’s the other way around if you ask me, and she owes him fucking big. I don’t know man, I just hated the way she treated him the way she did. They keep giving her a piece of the story bigger than she could chew, and Price is left with crumbs (even with the amount of cutscenes and gameplay we have with him), he almost felt like he was being LED by everyone around him instead of him LEADING the team (and Farah). He felt like what Soap felt like in MWII, even Soap had a major ass role in MWII. That cutscene, as much as he looked good in it, felt really undermining Price for me. And the audacity Farah had when she said “do you trust me” to Price. Girl, after what you pulled with Graves, I would never trust you with anything. And Price giving his utmost loyalty to her just didn’t feel like he would do something like that. And I mean that in the most respectful way. When Price told her about Shadow company calling a hit on 141 and Shepherd being a bad man, I legit thought she would actually be shocked and side with Price, but what did she say? “My weapons are my business” fuck you Farah, and fuck your weapons. In conclusion, yeah Price felt more like an errand boy than the Captain of 141 task force. The mission that follows that cutscene was almost standard campaign mission. I say almost because it still felt like OCM.

Yuri Volkov: I’ll be honest, I was not expecting Yuri to make an appearance, I was expecting ‘Roach’ to be there more than anything. And we finally got to see Yuri’s face. I liked how they took Yuri’s story and twisted it around so he never 'betrayed' 141 by keeping the fact that he worked with Makarov from them. I guess Laswell is indeed useful sometimes. The fact that they made him be useful to 141 without having him take one in the face from Price was indeed surprising. (I was screaming in discord chat about it to Mari when he appeared.) Though we don't know what his fate is, but I'm 100% sure he's still alive and I have a feeling he'll be joining 141 in the next installment if not in the upcoming seasons of MWIII. I just hope he got away safe. That man sounded like a rascal lol, he definitely has some stuff up his sleeves.

Oh and special mention about Nikolai, am I happy to see Nik again. That man deserves every bit of love. No MW or 141 would be complete without Nik. 

Stealth: For some reason this game was made to be played as ‘go big or go fucking die’ because in “Deep Cover”, you play as Laswell trying to sneak into the Arklov base, to meet up with Yuri, and i got caught like at least 10 times before I had to restart all over again, and again and again. The fucking stealth in this game is horrendous. Whoever made it IMPOSSIBLE to stealth, I hope you choke on water you drink and recover so you know how I felt all those tries I had to restart. It’s the same case even in regular missions, you either get caught even in fucking desguise, or they start shooting you for no fucking reason. I walk far, I'm too far from the obj, I walk close they shoot me. Fuck me man, I just had to fucking power walking through the first half of this whats suppose to be a 10 minutes walking simulator, took me 3 minutes of multiple tries because of that. Not gonna lie, I was kind of expecting Laswell to meet her demise in that mission because of the unavoidable missiles (maybe I was little bit of hoping it too who knows), but she survived, yaay.

Alex & Farah: then comes in the Master and the Lapdog duo. At this point I’ll never get tired of complaining about Farah and her personality. They tried so hard to make her into a girlboss, and they would have succeeded if they just left her story as is after MWII. But no, they had to drag her and her lapdog into this story and make something out of it.

I am just annoyed by everything she says. She keeps secrets from Price, the man who basically saved her life to become the commander she is today, her motives are unclear, she says she does this to protect her country and that she doesn’t get out of it to protect but stays INSIDE it protecting it (her words not mine), extends hands with a war criminal when she said that she doesn’t work with people who kills civilians for no reason, she compares herself, 141 and PRICE to the Shadows/Shepherd by saying “we’re all dangerous”, and the icing on the cake, her Arabic is horrendous. I know because I speak Arabic fluently. You might say “but Jay thats her accent you can’t judge her like that”, I know how Arabic accents sounds like, and this bitch’s is fucking incoherent half the time if not all the time. 

And Alex… oh boy, this man is a fucking idiot lmfao. He had good intentions in MW2019, and I liked him there, but they should’ve just killed him off. But no, they had to bring him back. What are they gonna do now with Soap huh? They're gonna bring him back too? Also didn’t Keller say “he’s tired of getting told who his friends are” and didn’t want to follow the CIA blindly anymore? What’s he doing now with Farah, hm? I’ve never seen a boy so delusional like him before. 

So many plot holes in these two characters only, I hate how they’re written.

Makarov lives: we… never got to learn the reason. Yes I went back and watched the gameplay today just to make sure I was not wrong, they never say why Price stopped Soap from killing Mak in that heli. “John he’s in custody he’s not going anywhere. Stand down.” FOR WHAT?! If they knew Makarov had this much power in the world, they should’ve just executed him. But noooooo they had to keep him alive for plot progress. If he died then and there in that heli, Soap would’ve been alive at the end. Was it because Shepherd said “bring him out ALIVE”? Or was it because Price wanted a win so bad that he threw his moral ambiguity out of the fucking heli he was riding? Man, I miss the MW2019 Price. But we’ll get to Price’s personality section later.

Yeah, we never got to learn the reason why Makarov didn’t die, why he is still alive. They just made it so that he’s the only villain that had the balls to do what he did. Bitch please, he looks like a whiny rich child that thinks he can do anything he wants to do. Literally that's how I saw Mak in the reboot. His character legit sounded like a spoiled child, not the evil man we knew and hated from the og MW series. And I can’t believe that I’m saying this but I kind of miss that Mak.

Like, who would look at this face and say “oh he looks intimidating shiver me timbers” 

Yullian is too adorable for this role, and he did a good job to bring a villain to life, it just wasn’t enough to be "The" Makarov.

Soap & Ghost: now that brings us to this broski duo. Watching that heli scene made me realize two things, 1. Either Ghost and Soap were friendly before MWII and Ghost was never a lone wolf to begin with. Or 2.141 was tight as knit before it was even formed. Because if you actually go back to the mission itself these two sounded as close to each other as they were aftermath of MWII Alone mission. Like it doesn't make sense, bare with me a little bit as I go through the timeline of the campaign. 

Ghost was introduced in season 2 of MW2019, he was in the 141 just immediately after Price had formed it, and rumors say Soap was too, but we never saw him until the very last season of whatever game that was released before MWII (I think Vanguard), as a character bundle in the store itself. Mind you the bundle was leaked long before Cold War was out (it came out right after MW2019). And in MWII we get introduced to Ghost as this lone wolf/rogue esque soldier that only takes orders for solo missions. So when he was told that Soap would be assisting him in that first mission we played, he sounded annoyed to say the least. 

Now, up until the “Alone” mission and aftermath of that, it's as if they were only on acquaintance bases, then they became close after the hardship they went through in that mission. And it makes you sympathize and understand why they became close all of a sudden. They were betrayed by the people they trusted, they were in this together. But I digress.

Now in ‘Flashpoint”, the mission that was supposed to take place 4 years prior to MWIII where they catch Makarov, Soap was WITH Price, and Ghost was in overwatch with Shepherd in that heli. When they spoke with each other they sounded very close to each other, mind you this was before MWII took place. I kept thinking long and hard about it. Did they tell us what took place in between? Why do they sound like bffs in that mission when Ghost was not fond of Soap in the beginning of MWII? Did I miss something? 

It’s one of the two, either they are not telling us the whole story of 141 and how Soap and Ghost know each other, or this is a massive ass yet another fucking plot hole.

Ghost: I have to talk about him, because as a character that had been glorified and milked to the brim, his presence in MWIII was so fucking underwhelming. Even as playable, I nearly forgot it was him we played as in that mission. And his dialogues felt kind of… dry… normally he would actually have a smart reply or he’ll talk very bluntly but it just felt dry from him this time around. Like… who asks “what’s the rest of your plan?” to the big baddie plain and simple expecting them to reveal everything? Man they made him sound dumber than MWII. Literally reduced to this emoji 🧍🏻‍♂️. He had almost no impact on the story if you ask me, he was just… there… I expected more from him.

no words....

“No Russian”: well, that was a lame ass “No Russian” mission if you ask me. Now bear with me if I keep comparing this game with the og one because it can't be helped. This is a reboot, this should be BETTER than the og, it had to be but instead we got this. If you compare the og ‘No Russian’ mission, as brutal and raw it was, it left quite the impact on the series. It told us how savage Makarov can be, it showed us the brutality of the world, and that the world has some BAD people with no remorse. In MWIII, the ‘No Russian’ we got was extremely underwhelming, it didn’t make us feel bad for our actions, it did not hold any sort of impact except feeling sorry for the woman because she was forced to do what she did. It wasn’t us following Makarov’s plan and orders, it was plain and dumb if you ask me. Now, I understand in the political climates we live in today, it would be controversial to remake that mission with the player being one of the gunmen that… mows down a whole airport filled with innocent people and civis, but that is what made the og game/mission so good. It didn’t hold back on brutality and the reality of villains, the truth of characters who want to play gods, their motivations, how the player is tied down to the villain no matter what they want to do because it’s inevitable. And It had an impact on the player, the game and the story. We needed the necessary evil so the game could progress. But instead we got a woman trying to save an airplane filled with innocents, disarm the bomb that was strapped on her chest, and clear her name at the same damn time, which was like 3 minutes. Could’ve done better if you ask me. 

Shepherd: how the fuck did this cunt get captured in the first place? Wasn’t he supposed to be in Shadows and Grave’s protection? The man weaseled out of 141 and CIA’s grasps but somehow was weak enough to be captured by the Koni group? What is even the plot anymore? And they didn’t say how or why he got captured. Maybe it was that one Shadows soldier that Mak and his right hand man Nolan interrogated? How does Makarov get his intel? We don’t fucking know. He’s just a prophet at this point :) 

I can’t express how much I dislike this man, I don’t hate him I just really really really dislike him. There’s a difference. 

His character was, again, weak af in the reboot. God… why do they keep making me compare the reboot with the og games, I hate doing that for real. BUT, og Shepherd being as fucked up as he was, still had a strong personality. And if you just put these two side by side, no one would believe they’re the same character. I’m glad he got offed by Price at the end, no one likes loose ends after all. And he was a massive one, and a liability, and someone that no one can trust anymore after what he pulled on 141 and Laswell. Especially after he threw Graves in the fire when he was in trial when Laswell and 141's condition for helping him out was to confess everything. But of course, as the fucking weasel he is he didn’t do that.

Graves: oh man… Can this guy be any more pathetic? I love Graves, as he is, as a whole, pathetic or not, Warren’s acting made me love this character. But again 😭, reduced to nothing but a pathetic man who looks for glory. Stabbing his handler in the back to save his own ass, although he got stabbed in the back first. 

They legit took everything good and cool about any character we like (Price, Graves, Ghost, etc) and gave it to Farah, a character that should not have an impact as much as her. 

Price: that point brings us to John Price himself. I cannot describe how angry I feel towards sledgehammer’s writers now. I’m so pissed at them for writing Price like this.

real img of me reacting to the way they wrote price:

In MW2019, his actions were so RAW, he was brutal, blunt, calculated and honest about his work and what he does. And he took pride in what he did and how he did. He didn’t give a fuck about what the upper management (Laswell, Shepherd) thought about his work. He was THE Captain that everyone respected, even CIA agents and the U.S General were at his feet asking for help from him. 

Laswell: “What can you brief?”, Price: “We just did”- LIKE WHO ELSE CAN SAY THAT SO CASUALLY AND SOUND SO FUCKING BADASS LIKE THAT. NO ONE, thats fucking who. Now even Price doesn't sound like that AT ALL. 

They reduced my man into a puppet that ‘trembles’ in front of Farah whilst she calls him “Old Man”. That scene annoys me every time I think about it. Why would they do this to him? Where did that man that said “they were leverage” to Gaz when he questioned Price’s morality about the hostages, disappear. MW2019 Price would never be this mild, or he would never be gentle or compromising when it comes to civilian lives. That heli scene? It should’ve been HIM instead of Soap, grabbing Mak and pointing a gun at him. MW2019 Price wouldn’t even hesitate to cut out Mak’s tongue for talking too much. Killed Shepherd where he stood in Frozen Tundra. It's as if Price was not there anymore, it was Gaz telling him, reminding him what HE would do, it wasn't just once when Gaz advised him to what to do. Price is losing his mind for some reason.

In MWIII, he looked like he was too scared to be cancelled if he said or did something out of the line. That’s you’re fucking job Captain! To step out of the fucking line when no one would!!

Price is a morally grey character, a necessary evil, and that is what made him so good as a character. MWIII took all that away. I want to cry at how badly they wrote him. I wanted them to bring back “Angry Price” from MW2019, and add even more rage in him because of Makarov, but instead they pumped “Fear” into him. Price was scared shitless in MWIII for some reason, and it made it look like it was because of Makarov. He didn’t take risks anymore… he was not the same Price that we got to know from the beginning of the reboot. It's as if they keep having to change his character in every game he’s in, they can't keep it consistent for some reason. And it cost them dearly. 

All in all it felt like Makarov and Price were having a personality mid-off the whole campaign.

Gameplay: 87% of it was ass. And short. And annoying af. I actually prefer the fucking driving mission from MWII than this bullshit.

The necessary death: I get it. I understand what they were going for, someone had to be the sacrificial lamb, the motivation for 141 to keep going, for Price to get angry and drag everyone to hell as we went there himself. But did it have to be Soap? They just introduced him like a year ago… and they took him out just as fast. In that scene Makarove appeared out of fucking nowhere to fight with Price and Soap, like… where did he appear from? Why is he here if he just armed the bombs? Did he REALLY want to take a body count with him that badly?

We were playing as Price, and again, I had a bad feeling, I couldn’t tell what it was but it was there. Then Mak was pointing a gun at Price, I honestly thought he would die then and there, and I was so scared that it would actually happen but Soap, my man Soapy boy, saved us. When Mak shot him I thought he was incapacitated but stood up and saved up, for like 5 seconds it reminded of the og MW gameplay, just for a short time. 

And then, instead of shooting us (Price), he deliberately shot Soap, in the fucking head. And ran like a fucking pussy… I keep remembering his run, it was so stupid.  Mari mentioned this to me the other day, in the OG we see Soap struggling to live, to breath out the last words to Price so he can know the truth, he was bleeding everywhere, there were seconds to at least say goodbyes, here his soul left his body before it even hit the floor. And after everything went quiet I thought Price would fall to his knees and grieve. But he just stood there like 🧍🏻‍♂️. 

I guess I felt just what Price felt because, I didn’t feel anything at first, because it felt surreal, seeing him take a shot in the head like that. Instantly wiping the light from his eyes like that, it shocked me that I didn’t even react at first. Took me to the last scene where they were spreading Soap’s ashes. And when Price said “Who Dares Wins. sleep easy soldier”, I lost it. 

Again, I get it, a major character death motivation was necessary, but did it have to be Soap?

What I liked about the game:

Frozen Tundra: I liked this mission for one reason only. Okay maybe two… Reason one being that it's a classic cod campaign mission, reason two being that it was in Siberia, Russia. And Icy and snowy environment… thank fuck that they did this in the classic style mission. Also sneaking, and actual stealth that worked, because we were wearing white suites IN the snow. *chefs kiss*.

Wish we had a bit more options and choices, where we would be able to ride vehicles, like snowmobile, or idk maybe snowboard? Some creativity would’ve been nice. Because dammit it’s a snow map. A lot could have been done tbh.

The Cinematics: if call of duty is good at one thing, it’s making good ass cinematic cutscenes for their games. It was filled with eye candy; Price, Soap, Gaz, Nikolai, Graves, Ghost, every single person looked amazing in the cinematics. And yes I was swooning over Price every shot he was in (although his personality was meh). 

Yuri, Nikolai and Gaz: the only characters that I actually liked in MWIII. It seems like the less presence you have in the story the better your character can be. (not you Ghost and Graves). These characters were actually tolerable if anything compared to the rest of the cast. 

The After Credit Scene: oh that was satisfying. Killing Shepherd before he became danger to anyone else ever again, and Shepherd was like “I ain't begging for my life” and Price was like “I know” and just shoots him. Price was not taking risks anymore. 

Now this scene, here we saw the RAW Price. Now after losing one of the closest 141 members to him, Price was in for blood, he was on his way to hell, and he was going to take every. single. poor and pathetic bastard that inflicted harm to his task force. You can see the pain and the guilt in Price’s eyes in that scene, he blames himself for Soap’s death for sure. I loved that emotional part of him, I just wish he was like that the whole campaign. RAW and unfiltered. This was my favorite scene in the game, period.

Conclusion: they had good intentions… but making what was supposed to be DLCs into a fully fledged campaign was not the way to go. I wish more creativity was thrown into the story, the points were good, yes my theory was good, (shut up im biased) but it had some solid points, but the plot holes and the poorly executed story was the demise of this game. 

Like Mari and I had a better fucking story written out WITH this storyline WITHOUT anyone dying, and to prepare for MWIIII. They could’ve used the “Price going MIA” from the og games and implemented it in this game, instead of killing Soap like that. Maybe kill him off later on after recovering Price back like they did in the og MW. so many potentials, yet very poor and bad execution to the story. Man Sledgehammer writers were not fucking cooking at all. I hate them all. 

I would give the game: 6/10.

also I'm still expecting apologies from the people who theorized Soap was a traitor. yall better be so fucking sorry about it. even the people who entertained the idea of it even if you didn't come up with it. shame on you all.

[yourtoradorasextendedwarranty]

Uh Oh.

So I mentioned this in a prior post but activision Blizzard will be using AI to "monitor" Voice chat and text chat in games from now on. See below video about the topic here:

He does not get into everything that I think that he should, one of which is the fact that in order for AI to work with voice recognition, it has to send what it hears to a server, which is then put through its learning algorithm, and kicks back it's understanding of what you are saying in order to decide if you said "Bad thing".

A huge issue with this is the fact that, there is no legal precedent in which prevents Act/Blz from taking your voice, and the voices of many other, using AI to recreate it, and then use it in future games rather than hiring Voice actors. And while you might think to yourself, "That will never happen". It can. It will. And there is nothing stopping these companies from doing it.

Why? Because just like people with the iPhone, the CEO could quite literally R*PE a kid live on TV, and continue doing it. People will KEEP buying Apple products. Their entire upper staff could do the exact same. People will KEEP BUYING iPhones and other Apple products. Gamers? Exact same for a lot of them. It does not matter how shitty the company, how much they give you the middle finger, people WILL keep buying. CoD, FIFA, GTA, NBA2K, etc, etc, etc.

So yeah. These greedy shit bags would in fact do something like that. Turns out, I was only half right. And that scares me.

Turns out activision has already put a patent on something very similar to that except far more in depth than I could imagine.

Peeps this is super scary and you need to be concerned. I'm not trying to scare you. I am not levying scare tactics. THIS SHIT BE HORRIFYING!

@silent-calling sir, if you get a chance look into this.

[clarenecessities]

Can we not say the newly canon confirmed lesbian would be better as a bisexual?

I understand if you are really into your headcanons but it’s sad how often lesbians are not celebrated by the wider community.

I understand also if you just meant it as a joke but it stung a little too much and maybe that is a sign it’s time for me to mosey on out and hit the dusty trail. Pleasure blogging with you.

"would be better" lmao. there's that good faith reading!

idrk how to respond to this because like. i am a lesbian? i'm not sure what you mean by wider community (gays in general? overwatch players?) but this is like, my own demographic. i'm allowed to have an opinion on how it's being 'represented'

i guess i'm sorry i can't derive more joy from representation, but i do not now and will never recognize word of god from Activision Blizzard, who have three canonical ages for the cowboy they had to rename after sexual assault allegations against his original namesake. like... they couldn't write their way out of a paper bag.

i categorically refuse to take ovw seriously. i hold up each character and i weigh them against a feather & what i determine is between me, god, and anyone who deigns to read my tags. i understand if you don't want to be counted among them & i wish you well.

what was the end game here? did you want me to reword my opinion to be less ambiguous? "i have always thought of pharah as bisexual, and do not respect blizzard in any capacity, so i will not be adjusting that opinion even though it would afford me direct representation". is this clearer/less hurtful to you?

like you shouldn't be looking to the global paramilitary hired guns for representation of any kind imo (except beloved gorilla), but if my long-standing headcanons about a game i don't even play anymore matter that much to you then like... i don't really know what to say. what stings? why? is there something about that feeling that's more tangible, or accessible, when it's caused by my tags? to me it seems like salt in a deeper wound, & i can't help address either in the course of one ask.

i guess to answer your question... yeah, we can not say that. i never said it in the first place, because it's nonsense. i'm not very into my ovw headcanons at all, as i now regard the franchise with something between ambivalence and disgust, depending on the news cycle. i guess it was kind of a joke bc i was claiming to understand blizzard's characters better than them, but i do think of pharah as bi & nobody is going to sway me on that. could see ace, maybe. but also it's barely a joke bc i really don't think they understand their characters so much as use them to deflect valid criticisms, and like... at least the versions in my head are consistent

[askagamedev]

Obviously Embracer did not buy studios with the hope that they would shut them down. What did they see that made them think it wouldn't go this way? What were they wrong about?

Embracer, much like all the other tech companies, was riding high on the early pandemic rush. Player counts were jumping, earnings were high, everybody was stuck inside and wanted to play video games. They expected that the good times would continue to roll on, so they started buying up studios at a premium in order to capitalize on it. I remember those times very well - I got a ton of recruiters sending me emails and cold calls constantly during that time. The job hunting process was also accelerated - when I finally put myself on the job market, I got more than one offer right after the initial interview. At the time, lots of studios were flush with cash and looking to hire, so they were rushing through the hiring process.

Unfortunately, the good times did not last. When the numbers started trending back towards pre-pandemic values, the publishers' massive investments ended up not translating to the kind of earnings they had banked on. Remember that game studios drain money over time - we workers don't work for free. If the money coming in from sales isn't enough to offset the money going out to pay the workers, the company's days are numbered unless they do something to either increase income or decrease expenses. Since the publishers weren't able to increase income, they needed to decrease expenses - closing studios and laying people off.

Many publishers are following a similar playbook - layoffs and cost cutting - due to overspending during the pandemic and needing to fix their numbers now that the situation has changed. EA announced layoffs, Activision-Blizzard announced layoffs, CD Projekt RED announced layoffs, Niantic announced layoffs, and so on and so forth. Embracer bet bigger than many others by buying up those studios, so they took a bigger loss when the numbers didn't pan out.

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[monriatitans]

Ta-Da! List: Saturday, June 29th

The image was made in Canva; check it out at the [referral] link here!

I share my “Ta-Da! List” every day so everyone gets a daily update and I have a reminder of what I’ve accomplished.

To learn more about “Ta-Da! Lists”, and other ADHD life hacks, check out @adhdjesse’s book Extra Focus: The Quick Start Guide to Adult ADHD.

Abbreviations

- O&T: Opinions & Truth Blog - WGS: The Weekend Game Show - ASO: Artist Shout-Out - COTM/Q: Cause of the Month Quote - BMAC: Buy Me a Coffee - TDL: Ta-Da! List

Ta-Da! List

✧ throughout the day: - kept emails manageable - loaded the dishwasher - filled out today’s TDL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ on the mobile phone: - Hive: shared today’s ASO

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ on the bedroom setup: - Movies: watched “The Nightmare Before Christmas”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ on the office setup: - WGS: gave a human artist, Jordan Lucchino, a shout-out by sharing it on O&T, Tumblr, and other social media; in the WGS Carrd, changed “neurodivergent” to “ADtistic (ADHD + Autistic)”; prepared the ASO for tomorrow, Jun. 30th; on Twitch, changed the “Artist Shout-Out Criteria” link from O&T’s to the ASO Ko-fi’s - O&T: created a new pinned message on Threads - Design: in Canva, went through templates and changed “Feature Image” to “Header”; added dates to the “COTMQs Post Headers” and “Monthly Wrap-Up Annc. Headers” templates - Gaming: played “Final Fantasy XIV” - YouTube: watched, listened to, and/or started: 1. Jim Sterling’s videos “Creepy Activision Wants To Know All About Their Employees’ Pregnancies”, “Idiotic Bill Proposes 10% ‘Sin Tax’ On Violent Videogames To Stop School Shootings”, “Corporate Parasites: Activision Pays Zero Income Tax, Gets A Refund Anyway”, “Net Neutrality: ISPs Can Throttle And Block Content So Long As They Admit It”, “EU Votes In Favor Of Article 13, Giving Copyright Holders Undue Power Over Internet Platforms”, “Should Activision Blizzard Be Hiring For Community Managers After Laying Off Community Managers?”, “Report: Epic Abusing Workers With Obscene Crunch Periods To Maintain Fortnite’s Success”, “Take-Two CEO Gets A Massive Bonus If People Spend Loads Of Money On Microtransactions”, “Pity Poor Waluigi”, “Switch Online Makes Nintendo Look Weak”, “How Fighting Games Are Carved Up To Extract Your Cash”, “Solo: A Single-Player Success Story”, “Nintendo, The Industry, And The Attack On Emulators”, “The Xbox One Is A Bit Shit”, “Harry Potter And The Crock Of Shit”, “Maybe The Wizard Game Just Wasn’t Very Good”, “The Game Awards Will Never Do Better”, “Sony Took Down A Shameless Rip-Off Of The Last Of Us On The Switch?”, and 2. Kasia Baba’s video “The Harmful Ideology of Radical Unschooling” 3. Sydney Watson’s video “Rage Bait: Influencers are making you mad ON PURPOSE”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ✧ chores and miscellaneous: - Food: had coffee, water, and grapes for breakfast; had grapes and Oreos for lunch; went to family dinner and had ice cream for dessert; had Pizza Goldfish as a snack - Chores: checked the mail

—

Well, these are all the updates I had for today! Thank you for reading!

May every decision you make be *in the spirit of fairness* and may the rest of your day *NOT go to $#!7*!

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