#How can I get reliance trends franchise | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

adamgaskell · 3 years ago

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Football finalist Derek Barnett.

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thijnvan76 · 4 years ago

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China Officially Backs a CryptoCurrency and Establishes it as their Official Coin.

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It’s finally happened. A major worldwide government has just bestowed a huge vote of confidence and legitimacy onto the world of cryptocurrencies. China, in an unprecedented move, just announced that they are officially adopting a certain cryptocurrency as China’s official coin!

The government of China just informed us that they have chosen a preferred firm for the purchase and marketing of their new coin - YuanPay Group. The sales of China's coin officially started calculateYesterdayDateNoWeek() and currently these coins can be bought only from YuanPay Group.

In fact, China deputy minister of finance, Liu Kun, informed us that their new official coin starting price is just ¥0.12 cents!

! 1 Chinese Yuan equals 0.61 Malaysian Ringgit

That’s right, their coin is incredibly inexpensive in comparison to most other coins out there. Bitcoin for example trades at ¥65,366.84 at the time of this writing, and Ethereum, trades at around ¥1,362.76.

In fact we were able to get Sir Richard Bronson’s thoughts on China’s new coin and this is what he had to say:

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Sir Richard Bronson’s states: "Anytime a major corporation announces even a small partnership with an individual cryptocurrency that coin's value skyrockets. I can't wait to see what happens when a government officially adopts a crypto. When the name of China's coin is released many people will become millionaires practically overnight."

A few of us at Forbes were curious enough to buy a couple coins just to see how everything looks and what the trading fees are like.

It was fairly easy to get the coins, but I will show you the whole process below for those that are interested.

First step was to fill out all the details. As you can see, nothing complicated so far.

Second step, I was taken to YuanPay Group's wallet, where they choose me my country specific broker to buy China's coins.

Third step, I was taken to purchase page and had to fill out my details.

For ¥1,921, I received 21,375 coins at ¥0.12 cents each. You can see current value of my coins on the same page. PS: As a early investor they gave me 5,367 extra coins for free!

The whole process was simple and I even received a phone call from one of YuanPay Group's friendly agents, but I didn't really need any help as the whole process was easy enough.

After finishing this article, literally around 4 hours, I checked my wallet again and to my surprise:

In only 4 hours, the price increased from ¥0.12 to ¥0.31. At this point, I was positively surprised. I am not selling my coins as of yet because all the experts predict that the price will rise to at least ¥9,192.63 per coin in matter of months.

YuanPay Group was kind enough to give us a 100% accurate coin movement price counter, so everyone can see the increase directly on this page.

Official price currently

1 coin = ¥0.33

(Note - price is being updated every 30 minutes)

With a story of this nature news seems to be breaking every so often, we’ll be sure to update the story as needed.

You can find their promo video as well as direct coin sales here:

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newyorktheater · 5 years ago

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Three years after he spoofed “Hamilton” in “Spamilton” (with “I am not throwing away my shot” becoming “I am not gonna let Broadway rot,”) Gerard Alessandrini paints Lin-Manuel Miranda less heroically in “Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation,” the 26th edition of the hit-or-miss, but must-see, satirical revue.

Miranda (portrayed by Chris Collins-Pisano in a Hamilton costume) duets with Billy Porter (Immanuel Houston in a red dress) with “Ev’rything’s Coming Up Roses” from Gypsy retitled “Ev’rything Now Is Inclusive,” and given new lyrics:

Billy: Linny, ev’ryone now can dress up in their mama’s clothes!

Lin-Manuel: Ev’ryone now can start rapping when they compose!

Billy: Ev’ryone now has a chance to play Mama Rose

Both: Ev’rything now is inclusive

For me….. And for me!

I detect a stinging rebuke in that song – a comment on how self-serving some of the most admired socially conscious artists can be. Who else could get away with such criticism besides Alessandrini, who for nearly 40 years has been delivering sometimes lethal barbs gift-wrapped with humor by a small ensemble of talented entertainers on a cabaret stage.

If “Forbidden Broadway” is uneven, so is Broadway. Indeed, as in past editions, the Next Generation at the Triad offers something of a snapshot of the current state of The Great White Way — where, as Houston sings in the opening number, “the white is gray and the great is only okay.”

It is telling that some of the best numbers in this Forbidden Broadway aren’t about theater at all, but theater-adjacent movies and TV shows — “Fosse/Verdon” on FX and the movie “Judy,” both of which feature stand-out cast member Jenny Lee Stern. Stern also portrays Mary Poppins (or more precisely Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins) in a version of the song “The Place Where Lost things Go” from the movie Mary Poppins Returns, re-titled “Where the Lost Shows Go” – which manages to puncture not just Broadway flops ranging from Tarzan to Pretty Woman, but also cruise ship shows and the city of Buffalo.

A couple of numbers lampoon Broadway’s reliance on old movies for new shows. In “It’s Got To Be A Musical,” Collins-Pisano as Beetlejuice says:

You know, there are three things certain in life: Death, taxes aaaannnnd… Sooner or later most every old movie has got to be a musical.” Following Beetlejuice are parodies of Tootsie (“Toot, toot, tootsie you’re hexed/ Mrs Doubtfire’s next”) and Frozen (to the tune of Let It Go, Aline Mayagoitia sings:

Overblown, overblown Is imagination dead? Overdone, under fun kids would rather be home in bed…

Should you see this show?

Rip up your ticket and let it go

Forbidden Broadway reserves its greatest venom for the vulgarity of movie-to-musical Moulin Rouge, renaming it Moulin Rude, and having Mayagoitia as Karen Olivo singing “Diamonds out my wazoo.”

The theater’s tilt towards A Great Woke Way is another current trend that Forbidden Broadway spoofs, not just in that Miranda/Porter duet but in a more sustained effort in “Woke-lahoma!”

Oh! What a mis’rable mornin’

Oh! What a terrible day i got a sneaky suspicion Jud Fry is possibly gay

The pleasures of Forbidden Broadway The Next Generation aren’t limited to the cleverness and savvy of Alessandrini’s lyrics, which often scan perfectly with the familiar melody onto which they are grafted. It is also an entertainment because of the physical mimicry, sometimes so spot-on that it’s hilarious. The only time I laughed out loud at the new Forbidden Broadway was during the spoof of “The Ferryman,” especially the dance scene and the way they handle the baby doll. I suppose you would have had to have seen “The Ferryman” to appreciate what the Forbidden cast does (which is probably true of much of the humor in the revue.)

The unsung heroes of the Forbidden franchise are costume designer Dustin Cross and wig designer Conor Donnelly, but the cast members’ facility with the physical mimicry can make a skit… or break it: The “Forbidden Hadestown” number counts as a missed opportunity, in part because Houston fails to evoke De Shield’s distinctive physicality, his silky smooth jazz slide.

The cast members vocal talents can salvage an otherwise relatively lackluster number, such as the skit where three divas (a staple of Forbidden shows) lament how few roles are available for them nowadays; this allows Stern as Bette Midler, Mayagoitia as Bernadette Peters and especially Houston as Jennifer Holiday to belt it out.

That is one of several numbers looking at old Broadway that are unmistakably affectionate, veering on occasion almost into sentiment, and among the most satisfying. These include Harold Prince as the Starkeeper giving the graduation speech from Carousel.

It might just be a coincidence that the ones looking at new Broadway, featuring the “next generation” – particularly Harry Potter and Dear Evan Hansen – are the weakest. These tend to star Joshua Turchin, who has gotten much ink lately as a musical theater wunderkind, “singer, actor, dancer, musician, accompanist, music director, composer, writer,” who got raves for his musical at the Rave Festival about the lives and loves of showbiz preadolescents, entitled The Perfect Fit. The kid is 12 years old. He may not be the perfect fit for “Forbidden Broadway; The Next Generation” or maybe Alessandrini simply doesn’t know yet what to make of the next generation of musical theater and musical theater artists.But Turchin feels certain to be among those who will dominate American musical theater in the 21st century, and he is almost as certain to wind up spoofed in Forbidden Broadway: Deep Space Nine or Forbidden Broadway: Discovery.

Click on any photograph by Carol Rosegg to see it enlarged.

Forbidden Broadway The Next Generation Triad Theater Created, written and directed by Gerard Alessandrini; Choreography by Gerry McIntyre. Costume design by Dustin Cross, sig design by Conor Connelly, set and poster design by Glenn Bassett. Fred Barton at the piano Cast: Joshua Turchin,Aline Mayagoitia, Chris Collins-Piasano, Immanuel Houston,Jenny Lee Stern Running time: 80 minutes with no intermission Tickets: $75-$99 plus 2-beverage minimum per person. Forbidden Broadway The Next Generation is scheduled through January 5, 2020

Forbidden Broadway The Next Generation Review. Broadway Barbs Both Lethal and Loving Three years after he spoofed “Hamilton” in “Spamilton” (with “I am not throwing away my shot” becoming “I am not gonna let Broadway rot,”) Gerard Alessandrini paints Lin-Manuel Miranda less heroically in “Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation,” the 26th edition of the hit-or-miss, but must-see, satirical revue.

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alltingfinns · 3 years ago

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I’ve said it before. CGI works best when it’s used to enhance practical effects. (Like Jurassic Park that did have CGI, but not like later movies that only used CGI.)

I wouldn’t blame Marvel movies though as 1) the increased reliance on CGI predates the MCU by a far bit (most infamously in the SW PT that came out 1999-2005 when IM came out 2008) and 2) the mcu still has used practical effects. You think the fake chest Tony asked Pepper to stick her hand in was digital?

It’s honestly annoying how everyone wants to blame “marvel movies” for the decline of western civilization or whatever. Just say that you don’t know that other movie franchises exist, and have no idea of the larger trends of the entertainment industry.

Besides, we all know the real blame lies with T2; Judgement Day.

Producers were always going to prefer cgi over practical as computing gets cheaper and cheaper. CGI effects don’t require storage or upkeep, and won’t break down on set.

But Terminator 2 made even less realistic usage of CGI look “cool”. (Though it’s worth pointing out that one of the more visually engaging effects, the drops combining to reconfigure the T-1000, is actually a practical effect.) Regardless of wether the CGI was good/bad/correctly implemented, the point is that this movie had some of the most obvious examples. And it was an absolute blockbuster.

The popularity of this movie with the audience would certainly have convinced the producers in Hollywood that movies made this way could still make money. And it was the early nineties so computers had started to become cheaper and cheaper.

You can see a pretty clear break between the eighties and nineties in terms of practical effects (including puppetry) being replaced by cgi. Nineties cgi is horribly dated now, but immensely popular at the time. Though even then, by the late nineties at least, people were getting sick of it.

But sure. “Marvel movies” are why people nowadays aren’t used to practical effects. They’re also why silent film stars can’t catch a break with the “talkies” and why everything is in color.

Marvel movies have completely eliminated the concept of practical effects from the movie-watching public’s consciousness

#other social ills we can blame on t2 is terminator being a franchise #that first movie was perfectly self contained even if it did involve a timeloop #film industry #sorry not sorry for the sarcasm #hate love neutral whatever in regards to marvel #I sure have my own mixed feelings #but it’s a pretty dead horse to beat especially when everything blamed on them #are part and parcel of entertainment at large or even just disney specifically #it’s annoying because it’s just typical tumblr backlash at something popular #it removes any nuance that can be had in actual problems with the franchise or media in general #it also erases the rest of the industry’s culpability in worrying cultural trends #it’s also just lazy

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thefloatingstone · 6 years ago

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syhraus replied to your post: syhraus hum… avoid the recent anime version, not...

good, i hope you’ll have a nice time catching on with the old anime -3- Also on a sidenote, why are some animes nowadays worse than animes made years ago ? I mean technology got better, so they should be able to make better animes no ?

I could answer this but it would take another 5 page essay to explain everything @__@

In as little amount as typing as possible;

1: Homogenization. In modern times, people have a more set idea of what “Anime” should be about. And the industry is more and more catering to this mindset with its stories and character designs. Meaning shows have gotten extremely formulaic as the anime studios want to appeal to what they believe their audience wants in anime. Meaning less risks are taken in writing, plot, art style, animation, character, genre, etc etc. And people fall for it (look at how many people call Mob Psycho 100 “cheap” and “Ugly” despite it having some of the best animated sequences in a show lately just because it doesn’t follow conventional anime character design) Basically most of anime’s problems fall into this category. From the fanservice, the boring stories, the moe girls, the cliche’d tropes. Almost all of it is designed to cater what the anime industry think fans want in an “anime”. The studios see this as “safe” and therefore a low risk high rewards system for business. And despite it generally thought that anime is not as good as it use to be, its still raking in enough money to justify this mindset. (similar to Hollywood’s current treatment of movies btw)

2: Pushing merchandise. Many anime are made purely with the mindset that people will spend hundreds of dollars on its merchandise (especially figurines) if the characters are “pretty” enough. This means animation itself becomes stilted and bland as every frame is meant to have the characters look pretty at all times. Meaning less movement and range in expressions. It also affects character design. Some shows almost feel machine assembled and obviously exist for no other reason than to sell its own merchandise. with hollow characters and flat story telling.

3: Higher profit margins. Like all businesses everywhere, the anime industry wants more profit for less expense. Meaning some anime get outsourced to inexperienced cheap studios that result in lackluster animation and visuals. They spend less on making the actual show and therefore get more profit when the show sells.

4: Catering to what they think the audience wants, without asking the audience. This is almost the same as the first point, but in this case, it also means even though many an audience member might be eager for something better and more interesting in anime (which is why shows that DO try and be different often do pretty alright) the industry as a whole don’t like risks. And instead of trying to find new things which are good, they doggedly cling to what has been working for them for the past 10 or 20 years and what has been reliable. Thereby telling its own audience “this is what the trend is in anime right now!”. Even if the audience itself is not even really interested in this trend any more. (Luckily Shounen Jump can help this slightly with its reader poll on what is the most popular series running which often dictates what will get made into anime. But this doesn’t count for the hundreds of anime made every year which have nothing to do with Jump)

5: Visuals over writing. This also ties into the above point of every frame looking pretty and pleasing to the eye. But in this case specifically it means that as long as a show looks PRETTY, it doesn’t have to actually be... you know.... well written. It just needs good looking characters in nice outfits, flashy fight scenes and some fanservice or other form of “sexiness” and it will make money.

6: Over-saturation. Especially in art style and tone. An obvious one. Too much anime made all at the same time. So instead of quality anime given time and effort, larger amount of anime are churned out instead. Studios copying other studio’s popular shows, chasing whatever the big trend is at the moment before it dies out, not taking time to craft a good show. Instead focusing on making it fast and getting it out. Quantity over Quality.

7: Over reliance on brand. This is for things such as Berserk and Sailor Moon and such. Where a company or studio will make an anime of an already super popular franchise or title that’s been popular for years. And then put in the minimum amount of effort into it. Because the recognition of the brand itself guarantees profit. So they cut costs everywhere else and rely on bran name recognition.

and 8: Animation still requires human animators with artistic skill and time to animate. Flashy effects, camera movement and other pointless CG effects, do not. And animators cost money, especially if they need more time to animate things. So you either give your animators less time to animate, or you animate in CG because it takes less time to do. Or both.

Anyway there’s like a TON more but those are the basics.

As always, I’m linking my Tip Jar on posts like this from now on as they take well over an hour to write every single time.

(Time taken to write reply: 2 hours)

#syhraus #anime #C-Puff replies #long post #gif warning #image heavy

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loyolafilmcircle · 7 years ago

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“There was an idea...”

by Renzo Guevara

edited by Anna Cayco

Avengers: Infinity War (2018) is the 19th film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a franchise that has been relatively consistent in terms of quality and vision for the last 10 years. It’s the massive culminating event that has constantly been set up with the three phases of movies with each of the individual heroes’ adventures leading up to this film.

But Marvel’s massive reputation and cultural impact was not as prominent as it is today. They sold some of their most recognizable characters’ movie rights to other companies such as the X-men and the Fantastic Four to 20th Century Fox and Spiderman to Sony. Their first movie, Iron Man (2008) was a risk to say the least. The concept of an Avengers movie was merely just a thought but never an actual legitimate vision. A fun little innocent scene was placed at the end of the credits, showcasing Samuel L. Jackson’s now iconic character Nick Fury showing up to talk to Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark about the Avengers initiative. Conversations about this scene grew until Marvel Studios revealed its plan to produce more superhero movies to lead up to an Avengers film. Thus, the MCU was born.

The first real culminating event was 2012’s Avengers directed by Joss Whedon. To say that the film was a success is an understatement compared to how exactly fans and critics responded to it. It featured breathtaking action sequences, entertaining interactions between the characters and a carefully crafted three-act structure that successfully combined all the elements that were set-up during the standalone movies. Included in Phase 2 was its sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), which featured new characters such as Scarlett Witch, Quicksilver and Vision. Unlike its predecessor, it was met with mixed reactions between the audience and critics. Some commended it for the sheer spectacle on display and seeing our heroes assemble again but in time people soon accepted the fact that the film had a disjointed narrative, a disappointing villain and a few unlikeable characters.

Regardless, these first two Avengers films successfully assembled the heroes and characters we’ve all come to love. It’s not wrong to say that some of us may have garnered some sort of attachment to them that naturally makes us care for what happens throughout the series, especially in Infinity War where stakes are at an all-time high with talks of possible permanent deaths and ending of contracts of certain actors.

What could possibly have created this attachment to this universe is how these movies always tried to set themselves apart not just in their tonality also in the production behind it. The directors the studio hired were not your typical action filmmakers but were more story, character and comedy focused. And it’s also not uncommon to see the MCU go with the recent trend of giving blockbuster projects to directors who mostly made a name for themselves in the indie scene or in television. Filmmakers Anthony and Joe Russo, who were mostly known for the TV series Community (2009-2015), were hired for Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and then for Civil War (2016). Both films were met with commercial and critical praise. With engaging plots that were grounded in reality setting it apart from the rest of the MCU, it was a clear choice for Feige to call upon the Russo brothers again to work their magic. And boy did they deliver with Infinity War.

The 3rd Avengers film features an incredible roster of every hero that has been established alongside the Guardians of the Galaxy. This feat has been so monumental in scale and scope that it has often been regarded as the most ambitious crossover event in cinematic history and if I’m being completely honest, it definitely earns that title.

Immediately, the film starts off incredibly strong with the chilling rightful introduction of the main event, Thanos. Gone are the days of post credit setups or small cameos, here we are placed face to face with him alongside his team who are not to be messed with. Thanos as a villain is truly an achievement for the film. You would think that him being a purely CGI creation would make him feel weightless and absent but that’s far from the case. Josh Brolin gives a hauntingly calculated performance that was beautifully motion captured as real emotions were seen, and true terror was felt whenever he was on screen. The MCU has always faced criticism about its villains but recently they have been nailing it in that department especially with Thanos. When people say that Infinity War is a Thanos movie instead of an Avengers one, it’s a valid statement to say. This is ultimately Thanos’ story and the Avengers are simply background characters. Some could even look at them as the real antagonists of the story as Thanos’ actions may be grim but once you deconstruct his motivations, they actually present a proper argument to a certain extent.

A massive cast is something that’s unavoidable with this being a culmination of 10 years’ worth of movies. At times, the film, struggles with the weight it has to carry as it tries to give each character their own individual adventures that all come down to stopping Thanos. Despite this, it doesn’t feel overly bloated. Each of the heroes get a decent amount of screen time. Some may shine more than others, but this can easily be forgiven given that this is technically a two-part storyline and the film was already nearly three hours long.

Considering the run time, the film is still a rollercoaster ride that rarely lets you take a breather. Just from the very first shot all the way to the last you will be left speechless and in pure state of either awe or shock. If in previous MCU movies, the stakes were rarely felt and a sense of danger was minimal, Infinity War turns this over your head and whacks you with it continuously. I wouldn’t say that there were certain throwaway scenes that could’ve been left on the cutting room floor but there were definitely some moments where I was more invested in than others. This can mainly be due to personal attachments to certain characters or just a simple desire to get back to the action. Character moments between our heroes are highly entertaining with the filmmakers and writers taking advantage of each of their quirks and antics that play off of each other. But what’s more impressive is that in its core, the identity of its characters remains intact. When the Guardians are on screen, it feels like a Guardians movie and so on.

But it’s also worth noting that some characters may not act the way we were accustomed to them in their solo movies. This should be expected given the difference of directors and writers and visions towards what and who they are. None were too different to the point where it’s a complete 180 of a character trait but just subtle enough to be noticed a bit or can be argued as part of their arc.

The action sequences in Infinity War are spectacle in its purest form. The Russo brother’s first two films in the MCU, The Winter Soldier and Civil War both contained amazing action scenes but most of them would regularly use quick jump cuts and an overly reliance on shaky and handheld camera work. Infinity War is arguably their first “fantastical” movie as their previous projects in the Captain America franchise were mostly grounded in reality. Thankfully they improved their craft in this one utilizing mostly wide shots and steady cams. The fight choreography and the breathtaking visual effects that supplement them invoke an epic feeling that is so much more emphasized with the familiar iconic score of the Avengers theme. One moment in particular near the climax had all these elements come together to create one bombastic moment that had the entire theater screaming in delight.

On the topic of the Avengers theme, Alan Silvestri’s score for this film also deserves much praise for what it accomplished. Although it should be expected given that the Avengers score is one of the most recognizable themes today, Silvestri’s new pieces in this film are as memorable and impactful as the scene themselves. The action sequences are injected with auditory adrenaline rush coupled with the masterful sound design and mixing but even the slower, more emotionally driven moments in the film contain some of the best scores to come out of the MCU.

All in all, it really was incredible to witness the development of the MCU franchise from its humble beginnings with Iron Man all the way down to Infinity War. All the stories the directors have told and all the elements they had to set up all coming into fruition in this one epic cinematic event. The Russo brothers deserve all the praise they could get for accomplishing this monumental task. Many have tried and failed to launch a cinematic universe such as the DCEU or Universal Studio’s Dark Universe, but it’s with the MCU that truly believes in its own vision and in the stories they tell.

All the beats in Infinity War hit when they need to. Wonder and spectacle alongside tension and emotion jell together for one massive sweep that generally satisfies majority of the hype that developed over the years. A global cinematic event that deserves to be seen and a proper payoff to all those years of excellence. Infinity War is definitely up there with the best of the MCU and it cements itself as one we would be talking about years down the line. The future of the franchise looks bright and with the continuation of the storyline scheduled to release next year, it’s only a matter of time till we see our favorite heroes assemble once again.

Photo sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6

#infinity war #avengers #avengers infinity war #film review #renzo guevara #anna cayco

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myhahnestopinion · 7 years ago

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THE AARONS 2017 - Worst Film

A funny phenomenon overcame me this year, as, in my pursuit to watch as many new releases as possible, I found myself much more eager to watch the films I expected to be horrendous than those I felt would be quality. Well, like they say, and by “they” I mean one of the films you will find on this list, be careful what you wish for. And so, I ended up watching a lot of dreadful films this year. Here are The Aarons for Worst Film:

#10. Leatherface

While The Last Jedi and The Fate of the Furious showed this year that eighth installments in franchises can still feel fresh, Leatherface brought the Texas Chainsaw Massacre series sputtering to that ordinal in the laziest of fashion: the unnecessary prequel. Even wonder what Leatherface was like as an orphaned child who embarks on a road trip with a group of other unlikeable, thinly-written inmates? No? Like most people, you understand that the whole point of having a character who wears other people’s faces for a mask is the element of mystery? Oh. Well, don’t worry! This fundamentally flawed entry will probably get completely retconned by the next inevitable installment.

#9. Wish Upon

If I had a magical music box that granted me seven wishes, I wouldn’t waste one trying to figure out why the main character in Wish Upon continues to use all her wishes after learning a person dies every time, why she uses one of those wishes to make her dad hotter, why the film’s attempted Final Destination-style kills rely on a woman nonchalantly sticking her braided hair down a garbage disposal, or why the film casts two Korean-American actors to be its experts on Chinese culture. The answer is because the filmmakers were simply incompetent.

#8. The Book of Henry

The Book of Henry is the charming little story of a precocious child named Henry who navigates school with his younger brother, while being raised by a single mother, and crushing on his next-door neighbor. It’s also about 11-year old Henry romantically kissing his mom’s alcoholic friend on the lips while on his death bed, adults unconcerned by obvious conflicts-of-interest but persuaded by the power of interpretive dance, and, oh yeah, it’s about Henry’s elaborate, yet never detailed, plan to convince his mother to murder their abusive neighbor in cold blood and get away with it. If you’re one of the surely numerous people confused and appalled as to why anyone would think that would make for a good whimsical family film, congratulations! You display better judgement than Colin Trevorrow, who’s decision to film this thoroughly bizarre and hilariously misguided script led to him getting fired from directing Star Wars: Episode IX.

#7. Bright

A thinly veiled attempt to explore systemic racism in the way only a white beneficiary of nepotism like screenwriter Max Landis can, Bright magically manages to mash together generic buddy cop formula with generic fantasy “chosen one” tropes in a way that renders both entirely incoherent. Netflix squanders their biggest budget for an original film yet on the murky aesthetic of Suicide Squad director David Ayer and a script entirely disinterested in any worldbuilding. By the time Bright reaches its bafflingly ill-constructed climax, the viewer still hasn’t learned why it takes three magic wands to resurrect the non-descript “Dark Lord,” nor why the film uses fantasy stand-ins for every real-world ethnic group except for Latinx people. Rather than light the way to further tolerance, Bright suggests a dark future filled with dull half-baked ideas for Netflix’s attempts to become a major blockbuster competitor.

#6. Split

In many ways, 2017 was a year of going backwards. Though many critics heralded the film as a return to form for director M. Night Shyamalan, Split is another misfire from the once promising director. James McAvoy tries his best to salvage the bland exposition-heavy screenplay, but the film is ultimately undone by its reliance on regressive horror tropes. The marketing for the film was already concerning, preying on archaic fears of those suffering from mental illnesses, but the movie itself manages to take its offense in a whole other direction, fetishizing trauma while giving its survivors no agency. With years of potential growth in-between, it’s disappointing that this is the direction Shyamalan chose to finally return to the world of his best work, Unbreakable.

#5. The Bye Bye Man

What can one say about a film like The Bye Bye Man? What is one supposed to think about a film like The Bye Bye Man? Luckily, the movie gives us an answer. “Don’t think it, don’t say it,” reads the film’s tagline, which is certainly a philosophy the filmmakers took to heart, as they don’t tell viewers a single comprehensible detail about The Bye Bye Man, his powers, his motives, his poorly rendered digital mutt, his obsession with trains and Greek coins, or why he apparently makes other people impotent. This lack of detail is probably because the movie clearly didn’t put any thought into its premise, ripping off numerous better horror films throughout its nonsensical, jump-scare-heavy cornucopia of inept filmmaking techniques, abandoned plot threads, and unrealized ambition. From the silly name to the lazy costuming to the character’s grab-bag of distinguishing features, The Bye Bye Man is actually quite charming in its complete ineptitude, hence its position as a longest running point of ranting and mockery on the Reboot Already Underway podcast I co-host.

#4. CHiPs

When Baywatch can’t be considered the worst raunchy reimagining of a classic TV show of the year, you know something went massively wrong. CHiPs’ repeated insistence that its jokes aren’t actually homophobic is about as convincing as Donald Trump’s tweets about his genius intellect. The film’s treatment of its female characters is about as misogynistic as, well, Donald Trump’s tweets about women. The movie’s formulaic buddy-cop plot is about as lazy as, well, jokes about Donald Trump’s Twitter. The point is, CHiPs is loud, brash, incompetent, and nauseating, and you just can’t wait for it to finish out its allotted time.

#3. The Mummy

How do you kill what is already dead? Universal Pictures certainly found the answer when they killed their shared cinematic universe before it truly began. The Mummy is a thorough embarrassment, which elicited uncontrollable laughter from my friend and I as soon as the credits rolled due to its ridiculous dialogue, its jarring attempts at comedic relief, its logic-defying plotting, and its rancid stench of desperation to get audiences invested in the Dark Universe of shared monster movies, as seen in a momentum-destroying trip to the lab of shadowy monster-hunting organization, Prodigium. Universal’s decision to hand the reigns of this hopeful universe and the film’s $175million dollar budget to inexperienced director Alex Kurtzman makes about as much sense as Prodigium’s decision to keep their monster prison in the heart of a major metropolitan city like London. How could that possibly go wrong?

#2. Transformers: The Last Knight

If there was one consistency in a year of chaos and confusion, it was that the latest Transformers is once again one of the worst films of the year. No one probably expected The Last Knight to reverse the trend, especially with director Michael Bay still at the helm, but the film miraculously manages to lower the bar for the franchise ever more. What exists of The Last Knight’s so-called plot is a truly confusing attempt to weave together the Transformers mythos with King Arthur, Harriet Tubman, Nazis, Stonehenge, and Mark Wahlberg’s inability to get laid (Seriously, this is a big defining character trait in the film). The massive budget for special effects gets drowned out by the decision to switch aspect ratios ever other shot, even during simple dialogue exchanges, which makes the film nauseating and nigh-unwatchable. Unfortunately, despite the title, The Last Knight will not be the last we see of the Transformers series, as the near 3-hour run time apparently wasn’t enough for the film to finish up its story, ending with the cliffhanger reveal that the Earth is a Transformer. I repeat, the planet Earth is revealed to be a Transformer, and that’s not even in the top five dumbest plot developments of the film.

AND THE WORST FILM OF 2017 IS…

#1. The Emoji Movie

Should I just put a poop emoji and leave it at that? I mean, the world really needs to develop a new form of communication just to describe how awful this film is. Perhaps the only thing lazier than the jokes inspired by having to evaluate such a film as The Emoji Movie are the jokes in The Emoji Movie itself, with its festering byproduct of a screenplay, apparently created by a malfunctioning A.I. force-fed nothing but rough drafts of The Lego Movie, a book of old knock-knock jokes, endless Sony product placement, and the broken spirit of Sir Patrick Stewart. Led by two of the most obnoxious voices in modern comedy, the movie drudges viewers through an infuriating journey that replaces plot points with brand names, and never establishes any coherent dramatic stakes beyond the audience’s struggle to maintain sanity in the face of a Twitter bird deus-ex-machina and its half-hearted attempt at promoting feminism before a quick devolution into fascism. The Emoji Movie may not be the death of cinema, but it certainly feels like it while watching it, making it the worst movie of 2017.

NEXT UP: THE 2017 AARON FOR BEST DIRECTOR!

#film #theaarons #theaarons2017 #theaaronsfilm #worstof2017 #worst film #the emoji movie #transformers #the mummy #chips #split #bright #book of henry #wish upon #leatherface

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maxwellyjordan · 6 years ago

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Academic highlight: Hyatt is latest example of textualist-originalist justices’ willingness to overturn precedent

Anita S. Krishnakumar is the Mary C. Daly Professor of Law and the Associate Dean for Faculty Scholarship at St. John’s University School of Law.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Franchise Tax Board of California v. Hyatt has received significant attention for its overruling of Nevada v. Hall, a 40-year-old precedent that held that states lack sovereign immunity in each other’s courts. Observers have been quick to quote the penultimate sentence of Justice Stephen Breyer’s dissent (“Today’s decision can only cause one to wonder which cases the Court will overrule next”) and point to Hyatt as a harbinger that Roe v. Wade and other similar high-stakes constitutional precedents may be next in line for abrogation.

Overruling prior judicial decisions is a big deal; the doctrine of stare decisis directs judges, including Supreme Court justices, to follow prior decisions even when they think those prior decisions are wrong. The Supreme Court is not supposed to overrule a prior ruling unless at least one of several conditions is met: The decision is unworkable and lower courts have found it difficult to administer; it rests on outdated facts; or it is inconsistent with later legal developments, such as other judicial decisions or new laws passed by the legislature. The court is also not supposed to overrule precedent that parties have relied on in structuring their lives.

Despite all of the above, the Supreme Court’s decision in Hyatt should not have been surprising — because it continues a jurisprudential trend that extends beyond the court’s constitutional cases and that began more than a decade ago. Indeed, in a recent article titled “Textualism and Statutory Precedents,” I note that the court’s textualist justices have proved remarkably willing to abandon stare decisis and argue in favor of overruling established statutory interpretation precedents — even though such a practice is difficult to reconcile with textualism’s core aims of promoting clarity and stability in the law. The article suggests that textualist justices’ proclivity to overrule may be connected to two related features of modern textualism: (1) the oft-unspoken predicate assumption that there is a singular “correct answer” to every interpretive question; and (2) the political reality that some textualist jurists see themselves as “revolutionaries,” whose function is to overthrow the old, corrupt jurisprudential order — including outmoded precedents reached through the use of illegitimate, atextual interpretive resources. Both of these observations apply equally to constitutional interpretation; in fact, they may apply even more powerfully in the constitutional context, where the stakes are higher and Congress cannot step in to correct an incorrect interpretation.

Let me expand on each of these observations briefly. Textualist judges, particularly in the post-Scalia era, tend to presume that there is a correct, definitive answer to every (or nearly every) interpretive question — and there is some evidence that they tend to find a plain meaning more often than do nontextualist jurists. As the late Justice Antonin Scalia and co-author Bryan Garner put it in a book designed to serve as a primer on the interpretation of legal texts: “[M]ost interpretive questions have a right answer. Variability in interpretation is a distemper.” This assumption, which I have called the “correct answer mindset,” may have an underappreciated side effect for those who subscribe to it. That is, a belief that all interpretive questions have a single correct answer can make it especially difficult for textualist jurists to accept the idea that an incorrect statutory or constitutional interpretation should be left in place simply because it was first in time. As a result, the famous tenet that “in most matters it is more important that the applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right” may prove challenging for textualists to adhere to in practice. Justice Clarence Thomas in particular seems to have a difficult time reconciling the “correct answer” mindset with the doctrine of statutory stare decisis: He regularly has authored opinions that advocate overruling precedents because they are simply “wrong” — and this argument has featured prominently in a number of cases in which he alone has voted to overturn a statutory precedent.

Textualist jurists’ readiness to overturn precedents may also be explained, in part, by an underappreciated background attribute — that the most committed among them see themselves as “revolutionaries” seeking to reinvent the judiciary’s approach to interpreting statutes and the Constitution. Many served as legal advisors to Republican presidents prior to joining the bench, and some played key roles in selecting and vetting judicial nominees who could be counted on to follow specific jurisprudential approaches. As judges themselves, they now are on a mission to reshape the way that courts construe both the Constitution and statutes — championing an originalist approach to constitutional interpretation, and a textualist approach to statutory interpretation. Given their revolutionary mission, these jurists are perfectly willing to overrule past precedents — which, in their view, not only are erroneous but were decided using interpretive methods that these jurists consider illegitimate and, indeed, took office intending to overthrow. In other words, rejecting old precedents does not bother these textualist revolutionaries because it is part and parcel of their agenda to depose the old jurisprudential regime.

Whereas some state courts appear to be comprised of a solid bloc of jurists who fit this “revolutionary” bill, the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court seem to fall along a scale, or spectrum, in their commitment to a textualist-originalist revolution. At one end of the spectrum is Thomas, who regularly calls for overruling both statutory and constitutional precedents. Scalia was next on the spectrum, with Justice Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts a little further down the scale, along with former Justice Anthony Kennedy. Although it is too early to make definitive assessments, Justice Neil Gorsuch appears to be closer to Thomas’ end of the spectrum than to Alito’s or Roberts’ end, and Justice Brett Kavanagh may be as well. This now gives the court at least two solid revolutionaries and a five-justice majority that is either strongly originalist and textualist or at least originalist- and textualist-leaning.

When similar majorities have overtaken state courts in the recent past, precedents have been upended with notable alacrity. In Michigan, for example, when a textualist majority was appointed to the state supreme court in 1998-1999, the court rapidly overruled numerous statutory precedents on the ground that the precedent interpretations were clearly “erroneous.” Indeed, during the newly constituted Michigan Supreme Court’s first five years (2000-2005), it overruled 61 precedents — compared to only 18 overrulings in the previous five-year period.

In short, we have heard this tune before from committed textualist and originalist jurists: Precedents that a newly minted majority deems clearly “incorrect” are fair game for a quick reversal, irrespective of stability and rule-of-law concerns. Thomas’ decision in Hyatt fits within this framework, in that the five justices who voted to overrule did so on the grounds that Nevada v. Hall was clearly “erroneous” and therefore undeserving of adherence. Moreover, the majority opinion contains language suggesting that its constitutional reading is consistent with an originalist interpretive methodology (“Nevada v. Hall is contrary to our constitutional design and the understanding of sovereign immunity shared by the States that ratified the Constitution.”). In the textualist-originalist justices’ view, such certainty that a precedent got the constitutional question wrong provides sufficient reason to overrule, no matter how longstanding or settled the original decision. (“Stare decisis does not compel continued adherence to this erroneous precedent.”) Indeed, Thomas’ opinion laid bare the textualist-originalist justices’ jurisprudential priorities when it dismissed the plaintiff’s reliance-interest argument with the cursory comment that “in virtually every case that overrules a controlling precedent, the party relying on that precedent will incur the loss of litigation expenses and a favorable decision below. Those case-specific costs are not among the reliance interests that would persuade us to adhere to an incorrect resolution of an important constitutional question.” In other words, stability and predictability — and fairness to litigants who relied on the old rule established by the existing precedent — are secondary to accuracy, or the importance of getting to the “correct answer.”

Prior to 2018, the textualist and textualist-leaning justices on the Roberts Court, led by Thomas, called for overruling several statutory and constitutional precedents — but they only occasionally succeeded in garnering the votes necessary to overrule. Now that the court’s composition has changed — and at least one more seemingly committed textualist-originalist revolutionary has joined the court — it seems likely that we can expect more constitutional and statutory precedents that do not comport with these justices’ preferred originalist-textualist interpretive methodologies to be overruled, perhaps in quick succession.

The post Academic highlight: <em>Hyatt</em> is latest example of textualist-originalist justices’ willingness to overturn precedent appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law https://www.scotusblog.com/2019/05/academic-highlight-hyatt-is-latest-example-of-textualist-originalist-justices-willingness-to-overturn-precedent/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #justice

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gyrlversion · 6 years ago

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Senate votes down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs Green New Deal 57-0

The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal as expected on Tuesday with not a single senator voting ‘yes’ for the progressive star’s signature policy initiative.

Ocasio-Cortez defended herself after the defeat and argued she encouraged the Democratic senators to vote ‘present’ instead of in the affirmative.

‘I encouraged them to vote present, along w/ others. McConnell tried to rush the #GreenNewDeal straight to the floor without a hearing. The real question we should be asking: Why does the Senate GOP refuse to hold any major hearings on climate change?,’ the self-described socialist explained in a tweet responding to the lack of Democratic votes.

‘The GOP’s climate delaying is costing us lives + destroying communities. Iowa, Nebraska & many in the Midwest are catastrophically flooded right now, in one of the 1st major climate change disasters of 2019. A #GreenNewDeal urges us to pursue a plan on the scale of the problem,’ she added.

Democrats slammed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for holding a ‘sham’ vote on the matter – it was a non-binding resolution, meaning it had no force of law, and needed 60 votes to advance in the legislative process, which was an impossible task given Democrats only have 47 votes in their corner.

Most of the Democrats voted ‘present’ in protest while Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin, who represents the red state of West Virginia; Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona; and Doug Jones of Alabama voted no, as did Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, who caucuses with Democrats.

The final vote was 57 nays and 43 present.

The final Senate vote was 57 nays and 43 present

The Senate roundly rejected Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal as expected on Tuesday with not a single senator voting ‘yes’

Ocasio-Cortez defended herself after the failed Senate vote

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (left), who represents the red state of West Virginia; Kyrsten Sinema (right) of Arizona were among the ‘no’ votes

Republican Sen. Mike Lee mocked The Green New Deal on the Senate floor Tuesday

Sen. Lee brought a variety of props and photos to make his point

Ahead of the vote, Democrats and Republicans exchanged bitter words on the Senate floor while Ocasio-Cortez slammed the Republican senator who mocked her Green New Deal in a speech that used props and photos – including one of a Aquaman riding seahorse – to make his point.

‘If this guy can be Senator, you can do anything,’ she said via Twitter, retweeting a tweet with photos and comments from Sen. Mike Lee’s floor speech making fun of her signature program.

‘GOP Senators are using their Congressional allowances to print Aquaman posters for themselves to argue that a #GreenNewDeal saving our nation from climate change is a ‘waste of money,” she also tweeted, adding an emoji of laughing face.

Lee, in a colorful speech, used a variety of photos to make his point, including Aquaman on a sea horse, Ronald Reagan and a dinosaur, a still from the ‘Star Wars’ franchise of Luke Skywalker riding a tauntaun, and cows.

‘After reading the Green New Deal I’m afraid of not being able to get through this speech with a straight face,’ he said as he began his remarks.

He claimed the Green New Deal wants to eliminate airplanes – a likely reference to its goal to end reliance on fossil fuels – and suggested states like Hawaii would have to use a fleet of sea horses to travel instead.

Standing next to a large photo of Aquaman riding a sea horse, Lee noted: ‘Under the Green New Deal, this is probably Hawaii’s best bet.’

He conceded that ‘a massive fleet of giant, highly trained sea horses would be cool, it would be really awesome. But we have no idea about scalability or domestic capacity.’

Lee claimed his floor speech which propelled him into a Twitter trending topic, was meant to illustrate how silly he believes the non-binding resolution to be.

The Republican senator from Utah even claimed that ‘problems of human imagination are not solved by more laws, they’re solved by more humans, more people.’

‘The solution to climate change is not this unserious resolution we’re considering this week in the Senate but rather the serious solution to human flourishing. The solution to so many of our problems at all times and in all places is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids,’ he added.

Rep. Ocasio-Cortez argued she encouraged the senators to vote ‘present’

Sen. Mike Lee claimed his speech was to show how silly he thinks the resolution is

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will stage a show vote on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez slammed the majority leader for holding a ‘bluff vote’

McConnell put the vote on the calendar to force Democrats, including a slew of 2020 presidential contenders, to go on the record about the progressive plan in a vote that he knew would fail.

But Democrats’ countered his maneuver with one of their own: voting ‘present’ – which does not count towards or against passage but does contribute to the quorum, meaning the lawmaker does not have a missing vote on their record.

Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, the principle sponsor of the legislation in the Senate, called McConnell’s move a ‘sham.’

He said Tuesday before the vote that the GOP leader ‘wants to sabotage calls for climate action.’

And Ocasio-Cortez slammed the majority leader for holding a ‘bluff vote.’

‘The GOP’s whole game of wasting votes in Congress to target others ‘on the record’, for leg they have no intent to pass, is a disgrace. Stop wasting the American peoples’ time + learn to govern. Our jobs aren’t for campaigning, & that’s exactly what these bluff-votes are for,’ she wrote on Twitter on Friday.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called the vote a ‘political stunt.’

‘With this exercise, the Republican Majority has made a mockery of the legislative process. It is a political act, a political stunt. Everyone here knows it’s a stunt, including the Majority Leader himself. He put something on the floor and then votes no. What’s the point of that other than showing how hypocritical this act is?,’ Schumer said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

‘But with this exercise, they have also elevated the issue in a way I am sure they never intended. And for that, I want to thank them because now we’re finally talking about climate change,’ he added.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a presidential contender who is a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal legislation, also called it a ‘sham’ vote on Tuesday and said the ‘GOP is treating this like a political stunt, they are treating climate change like a game.’

She voted present.

All the presidential contenders in the Senate have signed on as co-sponsors of Ocasio-Cortez’s signature legislation: Sens. Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Gillibrand.

McConnell plotted his crafty move as a way to force Senate Democrats to vote their view – a potential on-the-record move Republicans could exploit in the coming election.

The move would also pit the moderate wing of the party against its left flank, a battle Democrats will be fighting in the upcoming presidential primary.

McConnell slammed Democrats for moving to the left on a host of issues.

‘This whole Democrat effort to re-brand all the failed ideas of 20th century socialism with a little green paint – every member of this body will have the opportunity to cast a clear vote,’ McConnell said Monday on the Senate floor.

He continued his barrage on Tuesday.

‘The Senate is going to vote on the far-left wish list that many of our Democratic colleagues have rushed to embrace – the so-called Green New Deal. For a relatively sparse resolution, this proposal has already traveled quite a fascinating path here in Congress. It originated with the most radical, farthest-left members of the new House Democrat majority,’ he said on the Senate floor.

Lee said people will have to ride sea horses because the Green New Deal will ban airplanes

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer is asking his party to vote ‘present’

And the National Republican Senatorial Committee is using Ocasio-Cortez in attacks ads similar to how the GOP has used Speaker Nancy Pelosi in these type of ads for years.

In a tweet attacking Democratic Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas, who is considering a run against Republican Sen. John Cornyn, the NRSC said Castro ‘votes with AOC 94% of the time.’

The Green New Deal is a statement of goals and doesn’t make specific policy proposals, nor does it specify how it would pay for its ambitious plans.

The plan aims to slow climate change by ending the reliance on fossil fuels within 10 years; to upgrade power grids and existing buildings for maximum energy efficiency; to overhaul transportation systems; and to provide every American with a job and health care.

The conservative American Action Forum estimated the Green New Deal will cost $93 trillion. Other organizations have found the deal too vague to get a full cost although Forbes estimated just six of the goals would roughly cost $2.5 trillion a year.

The post Senate votes down Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs Green New Deal 57-0 appeared first on Gyrlversion.

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sportsgameqia-blog-blog · 6 years ago

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What Trends Will Dominate Sports Games in 2019? - Operation Sports

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What Trends Will Dominate Sports Games in 2019? - Operation Sports

Predicting trends for sports games is difficult. Because the games are primarily annual iterations, we often mistake incremental improvements for long-term failure. A prominent NBA 2K developer has outlined how difficult it is to “sell” the community on changes that require 3-4 years of development when we want it now. So, in acknowledging these predictions are based on my shortsightedness and inability to recognize long-term visions, let’s try and predict some trends that may happen in 2019. Please don’t hold me to these.

Monetized Modes Remain Dominant But For How Much Longer?

Looking backwards, Madden, FIFA and NHL Ultimate Team, along with NBA 2K’s MyTeam, have been the dominant modes in sports games. This console generation has seen them become the focus of streams, marketing events and sports gaming twitter. And pack openings. They are a thing. These modes are the darling of publishers as they can extract hundreds of dollars out of a consumer. And while we can’t always look at the balance sheets to see exactly how reliant publishers are on these modes, there is enough noise around forums and Twitter to suggest that frustration is growing. These are voices in the wilderness at the moment, but expect them to become louder over the next 12 months.

This is not suggest that these modes will fall apart in the next 12 months, but I have my doubts they will be the dominant game modes at the end of the next console generation.

Franchise Modes Will Remain Unloved

The Ultimate Teams of the world are the focus of development teams because consumers could spend money on them numerous times throughout a game’s lifespan. Offline franchise gamers will pay for the game once. And so concludes the financial incentive for developers to appease this fan base. It’s the reality, and publishers only have to provide enough offline content to compel the initial purchase. Neither Madden, FIFA, Pro Evolution or NHL have radically transformed their franchise modes at any point of this console generation. Sure, minor features have been added, but nothing substantial enough to reach out to a new group of consumers or appease the long-term ones. I would assume these modes are still largely played by older gamers who are not enthused by card collecting. It’s a shame, but every indication is that this will continue.

However, there is one caveat. The above excludes the fantastic suite of features provided by NBA 2K’s MyLeague and MyGM modes. That team has realized that appealing to an informed segment of gamers who want simulation sports gaming is a worthwhile use of resources. Regardless, community members may eventually have to ask themselves, would we pay for a fully featured and resourced offline franchise mode as DLC? These gamers will not react positively to the mere suggestion they become DLC, but it may be the only way they get what they want.

These Will Be The Best Versions Of Each Game

It feels like just yesterday I was left with my mouth agape as I stared at the weather effects of Battlefield 4 on Xbox One — before I realized everyone else had got a PS4. That was five years ago and this generation is coming to a close. Companies have already started dropping hints about the new consoles through their PR vehicles in the gaming media. A look back at the major games from 2012 and 2013 shows that many of them were among the higher rated of that particular console generation. Development teams had ironed out many of the bugs and honed their game modes and features. They weren’t perfect, but reflected the accumulated knowledge gained from mistakes of the generation. Expect the games that come out this year to be among the best of the previous six years. Remember, NBA 2K barely supported online play a few years ago. Now, they can broadcast a damn TV show.

The NHL Series Will Hit A Major Fork In The Road

It’s becoming apparent EA’s NHL series is not sure of its identity. EASHL does not seem to be generating the engagement it wants, the offline modes have been similar for years, and many gameplay mechanics have not been touched year over year — I’m looking at you board play. The game has also pushed into the market that wants a more arcade style with NHL 3s. It remains to be seen where the Chel mode goes as well.

Looking back, after what seemed like a positive beta to me and many others, the development team adjusted the game away from the beta based on negative fan feedback. This in turn led to more negative feedback. So a few days ago, the team announced it would be re-trialing the tuners from the beta. It’s a bit of a mess. From the outside, it appears as if the developers don’t know what they want NHL to be. The series also struggles to account for all types of gamers because hockey is largely a niche sport (plus, the development team is smaller than the ones you would find on Madden or NBA 2K). The game is trying to please everyone, but has only succeeded in alienating everyone to a degree. This will reach a critical stage over the coming year.

Esports Suitability Will Have A Major Impact On The Design Of NBA 2K And Madden

If you ask your teenage children about esports and traditional sports, I would bet they are just as likely to know a big name in e-sports (I don’t know) as they are to know the best player in the NBA (Luka Doncic) [Ed. Note: he’s a Mavs fan, I’m letting him have this one]. Development teams need to take direction from the leagues to preserve that commercial relationship. And the leagues want esports. Here is what Michelle Micone, NFL Senior Vice President, Consumer Products, said about esports back in August: “We view esports as a key accelerant to growing the NFL as it enables new ways for young fans to engage in the sport through competition.”

NBA 2K and Madden have now had time to devote developmental time to ensuring their titles are compatible with esports. The NBA and NFL are pumping significant resources into these leagues, and this will force NBA 2K and Madden to do the same. What impact will this have in 2019? Aside from the infrastructure of finding and hosting potential players, gameplay features will be based around being esports friendly. To me, this means no overpowered competitive builds, and less reliance on animations that take away user control. And, of course, the focus will also be on trying to remove glitches as these can potentially be broadcast to thousands. We will need multiple years to determine whether the impact of esports on these games has been positive, but it’s happening.

Two Trends I Feel Less Confident About

First, EA is leading the way in bringing a mature inclusiveness to their games. Most of them have female avatars, career modes or leagues in some capacity. A positive and necessary message would be sent to the sports gaming community if NBA 2K also provided these opportunities. When players are doing triple somersault behind the back alley-oops, realism is no longer a credible excuse. Will they? It’s doubtful.

Second, the push for 2K to develop another football game will pick up steam. Forbes’ Brian Mazique outlined his case and cited the development team’s success in creating realistic sports gameplay. Many see this as a weakness of Madden, so there is a market opportunity there. There are so many reasons to say why this can’t happen, but more disenchanted Madden players will look to 2K if they ever come back to the turf.

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connorrenwick · 6 years ago

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How Neoculture Will Shape the Future of Our Cities and Suburbs

The following post is brought to you by Tarkett. Our partners are hand-picked by the Design Milk team because they represent the best in design.

Earlier this year on the Clever podcast, Amy and I had the pleasure of interviewing Chris Stulpin, Chief Creative Officer for Tarkett and Suzanne Tick of Suzanne Tick, Inc. about the concept of Neoculture, a term coined by Tarkett that refers to current cultural and societal shifts and how they impact architecture and interior design. It was such a fascinating conversation that I continue to think about it and still bring it up in conversations about the future of society and design.

Let me break Neoculture down for you to easily digest— attitudinal and societal shifts like population growth, increase in ridesharing, public transportation, and renting over owning, globalization over nationalization, sustainability, and reliance on technology are all contributing to Neoculture. The whole thing comes down to 4 Mega Trends:

Mega Trend #1: Purpose Positive: retail is changing, stores are closing, so how can we reimagine vacant stores or old parking lots into new communities?

Mega Trend #2: Sub-Urbanization: cities are becoming less affordable, so younger generations are spreading out, creating new communities, and “urbanizing” the suburbs.

Mega Trend #3: Regenerative Generation: people are more aware of product lifecycle and where their things come from, so they’re buying locally sourced products, eating farm-to-table, and even renting items rather than buying to keep them in the lifecycle.

Mega Trend #4: Future of Betterment: wellness has been the buzzword of 2017 and 2018 in architecture and interiors—consumers are also looking for integrated ways that their health can improve with things like sound, color and light.

S9 Architecture’s architectural transformation adapted Industry City’s buildings for contemporary reuse

That was Neoculture back in the Spring. However, I caught up with Chris Stulpin at Neocon, where he told me he’s been doing more research and has made some incredible new discoveries to add to the Neoculture conversation… so of course, I called him up to get the scoop. I wanted to know where Neoculture was going, but also gain better understanding of how these insights can inform design and product development. He began by explaining that Mega Trends can best be used as a map for architects and designers to see where the road ahead lies—what they’ll be spending their time on in the future. Instead of suburbs, which Chris says “don’t work for us anymore”, architects and designers will need to “meet a changing set of expectations, both in their physical location and the value they offer: ways to contribute to people’s sense of wellbeing, to connect them to each other in ways that are culturally relevant. I think people are tired of cookie cutter, franchise style design. We’re drawn to unique spaces that give us a sense of community again… we want our technology and our personal interactions to be intertwined.”

Pentagonals rubber tiles were inspired by one of the world’s most intriguing geometric puzzles—searching for five-sided shapes that tile the plane and minimize installation waste. In the last century, only 15 such pentagons have been discovered, and Tarkett has selected three of them to debut in this new rubber flooring collection.

For product designers, Chris says he recommends considering “the customer’s experience throughout the life of the product. Are the raw materials responsibly sourced? Can they be recycled when it’s time for a replacement? Are the materials easy to clean and maintain? We’re becoming so hyper aware of how we spend every moment and the impact we’re leaving on society with every individual purchase.” Good advice.

At Tarkett, they’re considering all of this. “Giving people opportunities to co-create or customize your main offering will also continue to gain momentum,” Chris says.

Offices for the Raleigh News & Observer were recently redesigned by iS Design, Raleigh. Among the space’s many wonderful features are the custom LVT planks that were digitally printed with front-page headlines from the last several decades. Photo credit: photographie:fourseven®

The Raleigh News & Observer recently underwent a redesign by iS Design in Raleigh. The design team created their own LVT through Tarkett’s Collections Infinies line, which allows you to digitally print any image onto the material. They chose front page headlines—some dating back to WWII—to make this space incredibly unique and inspiring.

But Neoculture can’t just be applied the same way for every place or situation. Chris explained that “it has be reflective of each individual city’s needs to serve their specific population.” While the world feels smaller because of the Internet and global economy, we’re very hyperlocal, so “architects and designers are going to be tasked with figuring out reasons people should put down roots in a specific location,” he says. People are being priced out of cities, and Chris believes Neoculture can begin to answer problems for both businesses and individuals trying to thrive in these times.

Seamless living and working and eating and buying is slowly taking over, Chris says. “Co-working space is predicted to grow at retail properties by a rate of 25 percent annually through 2023, according to a new report from Jones Lang LaSalle. We Work is now valued at $35 billion. People just really need a more seamless approach to work and family.” He believes that we can reimagine suburbs as new spaces for these coworking, retail and lifestyle projects: “Strip malls are being reinvented as co-working spaces. Retail experiences will offer a ‘store within a store,’ and include co-working space and great food vendors.” The future, according to Neoculture, may mean you can check all the things off your to-do list under one roof.

S9 Architecture’s Ponce City Market in Atlanta re-envisioned a former Sears, Roebuck & Co. distribution center as a vibrant community space and a model of urban redevelopment. Photo © S9 Architecture / Sarah Dorio

Chris introduced me to Industrious, a new player in the co-working industry that’s capitalizing on this idea. They’re a different kind of c-oworking vendor in that they have premium spaces, such as suites or offices, with shared amenities. “We’re going to see this concept play out in a variety of different ways as providers get creative and design their own ideas of what the perfect day at the office looks like. We’ll see the continuing redevelopment of cultural artifacts such as malls and strip malls that encouraged reckless consumption, into spaces that value experiential consumption,” Chris explains.

S9 Architecture’s Empire Stores. This mixed-use development reimagines a vacant, 19th century warehouse on the DUMBO waterfront as a contemporary creative workplace and community hub. Photo: © S9 Architecture / Patrick Donahue

At Tarkett, they’re already preparing for Neoculture. Chris says that it’s impacted their product design and development in that they’ve put product lifecycle front and center: “Tarkett has been moving toward providing the type of transparency that ILFI certifications bring to the market—we want to provide easier, healthier removal of products and make sure they can be taken back and recycled into new flooring. We’re continuously challenging ourselves to find solutions at every stage of the product lifecycle that can help our customers reduce their carbon footprint and decrease their use of hazardous materials.”

A focus on wellness has also motivated Tarkett to make changes: “we’ve been developing a flooring portfolio that solves virtually every installation and maintenance problem, especially high-moisture substrates, since that’s both an issue for installers and a threat to our health as end users in the space. We’re increasing our offering of Asthma & Allergy Friendly certified products and continuing to focus on providing the industry’s lowest TVOC emissions from our materials. We were the first flooring company to have products that are Living Product Challenge, Cradle to Cradle, and Asthma & Allergy Friendly certified,” Chris explains.

He also says they’re moving closer to closed loop manufacturing. “Our rubber plant is operating on 97% recycled water and 100% renewable electricity, which makes it even more exciting to show people how we’re elevating the design aesthetic of rubber tile. We want to understand our customers’ sustainability goals and help them achieve those. We’ve always believed you can have both responsible design and wonderful aesthetic in the same product. True innovation is when we don’t have to compromise either one.”

The Tailored Twist Collection offers a complete wardrobe for the floor with four patterns, nine colorways and endless inspiration. It’s available on Tarkett’s ethos® with Omnicoat Technology, a non-PVC backing made of film from recycled windshields that virtually eliminates adverse substrate issues.

Where are you seeing Neoculture in your city or town? Are you implementing any of these MegaTrends into your product development? Share your comments below.

via http://design-milk.com/

from WordPress https://connorrenwickblog.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/how-neoculture-will-shape-the-future-of-our-cities-and-suburbs/

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martechadvisor-blog · 7 years ago

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Immersive Technologies 101: How AR and VR can Change your Game

Michael highlights why marketers need to start prepping their immersive communication strategies today in order that they remain relevant with consumers tomorrow; points out the one ‘avoidable mistake’ marketers make with their AR/VR investments, and how programmatic AR/VR will soon be the new normal. Prior to OmniVirt, Michael spent 7 years at YouTube holding a variety of different leadership positions, and led YouTube’s content strategy across its 5 main verticals: Entertainment, Music, Sports, News, and Education.

AR/VR and immersive tech is already more than a shiny new object – is it set to be the new normal?

VR/AR isn’t just a shiny object. It represents an inevitable shift in content, and thus, in advertising. We’ve seen a similar shift before, as text progressed to photo, and then to video.

In 2007, online video was considered a shiny new object, and some believed that dollars would never flow to a low-quality video platform like YouTube.

But with improvements in technology and computing (e.g., 4G and mobile phones with cameras), online video grew in popularity and soon became the de facto content format, both in storytelling and in advertising. We are continuing to see technology improvements every year (e.g., 5G and advances in headset hardware). These advances will make the production, distribution and consumption of immersive media easier. And with that, immersive technologies will become the next content format to advance storytelling.

When our devices are so advanced, why should content lag behind?

Our devices have become more powerful than we could have imagined. **We all have super computers in our pockets. But for the most part the ads we see across the web are still flat and 2-dimensional**. This will change. If you are marketing a hotel, are you going to promote the destination with a simple photo or a fully interactive virtual tour? The data proves that more immersive formats drive deeper engagement and purchase behavior. It is becoming easier to capture and distribute these immersive experiences. This will be the future of adtech and digital publishing. Brands and agencies should invest in these emerging technologies and formats that will soon be standard.

Celebrating the early adopters of immersive technology

We see certain industries leading the charge when it comes to VR/AR advertising. In particular, travel, auto, and entertainment have found 360° VR to be highly effective for their campaign goals of showcasing destinations and products in a more compelling way. These industries tend to lead the charge in most shifts (these were same players that were first to buy YouTube Homepage Takeovers). For these verticals, it’s not just about better storytelling. Brands in these verticals are seeing better performance across their campaign metrics (300% lift in CTR, VCR and brand affinity compared to flat 2D ads).

When is VR better than AR and vice versa?

AR is all about augmenting the real environment around you. This means that AR really stands out when digital overlays actually map to the real environment in meaningful ways. For example, overlaying 3D furniture models to determine fit/style uses the real environment to help make a consumer make an informed purchase decision. VR, however, does not use the real environment (and the phone’s cameras). It’s best used for when being completely immersed in a created world, filmed or virtual, helps tell a better story. For example, a travel board that wants to showcase a city’s sights might use a 360° VR video so audiences can be virtually transported to that city...and actually feel like they’re there. As a result, we are seeing our clients using AR for utility-based experiences and VR more of a storytelling medium.

What are the typical mistakes you see brands and marketers making with their AR/VR strategy? What should they be avoiding and what should they be prioritizing when they are making plans?

CMOs have not yet fully understood the distribution strategy. The biggest mistake we see is thinking through a meaningful distribution plan for AR/VR content. If you spent $1M dollars on a TV spot (which many brands do) and didn’t run that creative as a TV commercial or promote the experience digitally, it would be considered expensive and not worth it as well.

Standalone VR or AR apps require downloads, and that represents a huge drop off in adoption. And headset adoption, while increasing, particularly with the introduction of standalone VR headsets like the Oculus Go, hasn’t reached mass scale yet. It’s important for marketers to cater VR/AR experiences to where eyeballs are today, so their campaigns actually perform. This means embracing scalable formats like 360° VR which can be viewed across desktop, mobile, AND headset, in addition to web-based 3D and AR experiences.

Immersive media is the next wave of content progression. Investing in VR/AR media distribution will not only help CMOs get better performance today from their digital spent but prepare them for being experts in this new emerging content standard.

What are your favorite B2B use cases of AR/VR?

The best examples we have seen in the B2B space have leveraged these immersive formats primarily as a training or a stronger vehicle to communicate the value of their service. We have seen a mine in Tasmania use 360 VR to create tours of the mine when seeking investment from financial institutions in the UK. We have seen quick-service restaurants use 360 VR to train employees at all franchise locations about customer service.

Tell us about programmatic AR. Will it be via the usual adtech route or are you seeing an independent ecosystem emerge? With the current complexities and lack of transparency in adtech, how will you be able to help brands track the outcomes of their programmatic AR placements?

Given the fact that Augmented Reality leverages current mobile hardware, I believe there is an opportunity for AR to simply emerge as a creative layer within the current programmatic mobile ecosystem. The issues regarding transparency are not prevalent with these new immersive formats. When a user engages the camera, the ad experience is taking over their full-screen. What is more “viewable” than that? **Brands will need to identify new ways of measuring success beyond Viewability and Video Completion Rate, since these metrics won’t be applicable when there is no video to complete and every ad is 100% viewable**.

How expensive is it to get VR or AR content created?

VR/AR content production varies widely, just like any other production. On the lower budget end: for AR, a 3D branded object could be created at a minimal cost (quotes range from $75-$1000, potentially more for high-quality volumetric capture) and distributed across Facebook as a 3D post and the web through OmniVirt’s distribution solution. For VR, a simple 360° camera can capture high-quality footage. On the higher budget end: for VR, production might be typical of a standard film production budget.

Can AR/VR go beyond personal screens to mediums like DOOH/ POS etc.?

There are several options available to marketers, among them event activations and in-store experiences. For example, Target just unveiled screens in the beauty aisle to aid purchase decisions by enabling shoppers to virtually try on makeup. Eminem and his creative partners put together an AR experience at a concert that only concert-goers could unlock. Marketers should delight their customers but ensure that scale is met, too. A combination of distributed web-based VR/AR ads and DOOH/POS activations can lead to high campaign success.

What are the trends you are tracking in the immersive technologies space going into 2020?

Gesture / eye tracking: With the emergence of new platforms and new formats, brands will need additional metrics to measure user interaction and engagement. The impression, the click, and the view will not suffice for this next phase of media. The 3D world will enable gesture tracking, eye movement tracking, and heatmap reporting. Brands will be able to better assess how users actually engage with their ads and the implications this.

Google/Facebook’s advertising duopoly and its effect on ad innovation: Publisher and subsequently advertiser reliance on the duopoly of Google and Facebook continues to be a very interesting dynamic to watch closely. The rise of programmatic self-service advertising platforms has provided an easy way for media to be transacted. However, we are also seeing the repercussions of algorithmically driven executions. What is an impression when you don’t know exactly where the ad showed? Marketing which has traditionally been thought of as a combination of art + science has over-indexed to science and brand messaging is getting lost in the clutter. Campaigns are being evaluated on metrics like viewability, VCR, CTR, and other numbers.

CMOs and their agency partners need to ensure they are delivering their business objectives, and technology needs to be the means to do so, not the end in itself.

We think this need will be met by immersive advertising, which combines better performance with better storytelling.

This article was first appeared on MarTech Advisor

#martech #marketing #technology #business #cmo

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brigettemayes-blog · 7 years ago

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technewss15-blog · 7 years ago

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How Rainbow Six Siege Quietly Became One Of The Best Multiplayer Shooters

When Rainbow Six Siege launched two years ago to mixed reviews and somewhat lackluster sales, it would have been fair for Ubisoft to write the game off. However, the team at Ubisoft Montreal wasn’t content to leave it alone. Instead, the launch was just a rocky first step in what has become a remarkable evolution for the tactical online first-person shooter.

Over the past two years Ubisoft Montreal continued to release a stream of free content, patches, updates, and player-friendly features, building up trust with its ever-expanding player base and quietly making Siege into one of the most dynamic, well-balanced, and content-rich shooters on the market.

However, the journey to this point wasn’t easy. At one point Siege wasn’t even a twinkle in Ubisoft’s eye. Back in 2011, the studio’s next entry under the Rainbow Six banner was Rainbow Six Patriots, a more traditional project that featured both a campaign and multiplayer. The game was in development for some time (Game Informer even announced it as our cover back in 2011), but Ubisoft decided to cancel the project due to one big factor: timing.

The last proper Rainbow Six game was Rainbow Six Vegas 2, which launched back in 2008, so the franchise wasn’t exactly fresh in the minds of players. With a new console generation just on the horizon, Ubisoft decided that creating a new entry in the franchise at the tail end of a console generation wasn’t the right move.

“That’s the moment that management and Ubisoft decided that it was best to aim for the next generation of consoles at the time,” says Alexandre Remy, brand director for Siege.

An early look at Patriots Remy was a part of the Patriots team back in 2013 and has been with Siege from inception until now. As the Patriots team dissolved, he migrated to a new core team of about 25 people whose job was to design a Rainbow Six game for the next generation of consoles.

It just so happened that most members of the new Rainbow Six team had multiplayer games embedded in their DNA. They were huge fans of competitive shooters, but also MOBAs like DOTA 2, something that would become much more relevant in Siege’s design.

Thanks in part to creative director Xavier Marquis, there was one image that the team focused on more than anything else: The titular siege. “I remember very vividly, a presentation with one very striking image and visual which is that old medieval siege,” Remy recalls. “[Marquis] basically said, ‘Hey, this is the game that we’re going to be making. The whole game is about the siege.’ Attackers, defenders, and all those mechanics and everything started from there all those years ago, with that single image pretty much summing up the gameplay equation of Siege.”

In the same presentation, Marquis presented to Remy and a handful of other team members the three ideas that would end up sustaining Siege for the next two years: tactical siege gameplay, multiplayer-first design, and a game that would be built to last.

Remy and the rest of the team were in.

“That really touched us a lot,” Remy says. “At that time, in the room, of the ten of us, a lot were playing MOBAs as well, so we had an experience as gamers and as players with those games that can last such a long time. And it’s like a good wine. The more it aged, the better it is. We’re like, ‘Oh my god, this is such a disruptive idea in the genre as well as in Ubisoft, to be honest. So we’re in 100 percent. Let’s go!’”

Mother of Invention Once the team had settled on this central principle, they set out to create the foundation that would support Siege for years to come. The idea was ambitious and Ubisoft’s choice to design the game for a new generation of hardware only made it more so. With so many ways Siege could fall apart, how would Ubisoft Montreal pull it off?

Despite the complaints that players and critics had about the game at launch, it was hard to deny the game’s strengths. Environmental destructibility makes each map a dynamic arena that encourages operators to adapt to their surroundings. Each operator has a tactical ability that affects the game in interesting ways, whether it’s a small shock drone that zaps opposing players or a wall charge that shoots grenades into the next room over. Plus, Siege’s incredible sound design and focus on teamwork make each match a tense battle that depends just as much on gathering intel as it does good shooting.

However, the game’s rocky launch in December 2015 was a growing pain for both Ubisoft and players. Ubisoft Montreal had never released such an intensive online experience, and players and critics alike saw only the foundation of what would become a massive platform. A slew of matchmaking and networking issues, like inconsistent connectivity and server errors, plagued Siege from the start. The lack of content didn’t help; Siege launched with 20 operators, 11 maps, three multiplayer modes, and a player vs A.I. mode called terrorist hunt – and some serious gameplay flaws like poor hit detection marred what was otherwise a good online shooter.

Necessity really is the mother of invention, and Remy now realizes how important this turbulent time was for the team. “Looking at it now, that made us a team able to work and iterate as much as possible,” Remy says. “We had the necessity to keep the game alive, to keep the players and community happy or happier, to iterate and work really hard to make the game better and better. Launch was very rocky, but it helped us find that structure, organization, and process to improve the game.”

Despite the setbacks and pitfalls of development and launch, Ubisoft Montreal stuck with Siege. It spent the next few months not only fixing issues that were present at launch but immediately jumping into their post-launch plans.

From the get go, the team intended for Siege to be an experience that was built to last. The games-as-service model has come under fire recently for its reliance on monetization – Siege does include lootboxes with cosmetic items only – but even before launch Ubisoft Montreal had a player-first philosophy.

“How do you build trust in the long term with your players?” Remy asks. “It’s about not segregating, not putting gameplay behind a pay wall. That was the general philosophy.” Any piece of new content in Siege, whether it’s an operator or map, is available to all players. Players can purchase season passes to get new operators early, but all players are essentially on an even playing field.

The idea was, and still is, disruptive in a genre that’s only now embracing ways to create sustainable, evolving experiences. Destiny, with its massive expansions, has always billed itself as a platform more in line with MMOs, but Siege was experimenting with free content and hero-based design philosophies pulled straight from games like DOTA 2.

The core team had a lot of discussions about their post-release roadmap. How do you keep players involved with your game over months let alone years? In the end, they settled on “seasons,” a reference that points to both consistent annual divisions and the serialized format of television.

A season of Siege content comes every three months, bringing with it around two new operators and occasionally a new map. A free weekend, heavy discount on the game, and pro-league competition also accompany a season of content. This 360-degree content push gets existing players excited and gives newcomers an opportunity to jump in.

In the six months after launch, the team released two seasons of content, 17 title updates, and a host of smaller tweaks and patches. Siege was evolving, and gamers were taking notice. “The shift really was between Season 2 and Season 3,” Remy says. “We started for the first time at the launch of Season 3 and the end of Year 1 to see an increase of player activity. Before it was almost a steady line, and then all of a sudden, we had a boost of activity, a very major boost. That’s the moment we felt that the game can actually live for a very, very, very long time.”

Players were realizing that Siege was here to stay and that Ubisoft Montreal was willing to dedicate the time and effort to making Siege a top-notch shooter. Establishing trust takes time, but at almost every turn Ubisoft Montreal proved it had its players in mind. BattleEye, the anti-cheater program that launched in August 2016, made for a safer experience, removing almost 95 percent of cheaters from Siege. Operation Health, which began this past June, was a massive quality of life effort to fix the game’s ongoing gameplay and networking issues.

These fixes have paid off in a big way for Ubisoft. Over the past two years, Siege has quietly become one of the best-selling shooters on the market. It recently cracked the 25 million player mark two years after its release, an incredible feat considering that most player counts for online games usually trend downwards after launch. Back in August, Ubisoft announced that Siege had 2.3 million players a day. The game has re-appeared as a regular entry in the NPD sales charts this year. It may be two years old, but Siege shows no signs of slowing down. And neither does Ubisoft Montreal.

Growing Up If there’s one thing that defines Ubisoft Montreal’s approach to Siege post-launch, it’s evolution. Siege requires players to constantly adapt their strategies and approaches to situations. The environment can change dramatically, and an ever-expanding roster of characters means there’s a counter to every strategy. Never content to rest on its laurels, Ubisoft Montreal embraces the same idea in its post-release strategy.“Oftentimes [designers are] looking at the state of the meta and saying, ‘Okay, what if now we disrupt intentionally the meta to change it or make it evolve,’” Remy says. “With a live game, that’s something we’ve been very adamant about. You don’t want your game and your community to stop changing and evolving. You don’t want them to stall. You need to grow, change, evolve.”

The design team is “data driven” and “community informed,” according to Remy. Designers analyze all kinds of data related to the meta game – the strategies and operators that work well, the most common locations of engagement, where players die the most – and adapt the game accordingly. But they also use that data to push players in new directions.

White Noise, the recently released eighth season of content, proves that Ubisoft Montreal is embracing disruption and evolution in new and exciting ways. Two of the three new operators, Vigil and Dokkaebi, completely change the rules of observation and intel gathering. Vigil can manipulate camera feeds to become invisible for a short period of time, while Dokkaebi can hack enemy operators’ cell phones, making them emit audio cues until enemy operators take the time to turn them off. Players have to adapt or die to these changes. Siege’s constant evolution can push people out of their comfort zone, but the players are now more willing to embrace change.

Dokkaebi is all about interference

“I’m so surprised by the flexibility of our community and players,” Remy says. “How much they accept change. How much they’re willing to change their playstyle, change their habits, change the team composition, change all of this. And I think now it’s really becoming an excitement for them, while likely before they were a bit more conservative.”

But that’s only one side of the equation. The team’s intention is to make Siege an experience that evolves over time with its players, a unique symbiosis between the two. That means that adaptation and evolution have to happen not only with players but with Ubisoft designers.

“The game is not that rich in terms of content when you think about it, but it’s extremely rich and deep in terms of the different interactions between all of the systems,” Remy says. “And that puts so much creativity and freedom in the hands of the players, so there’s no way we can guess how our map or operator is actually going to be used. We have our feelings and usually it follows what we believe it’s going to be, but we are always extremely surprised.”

With any online game there’s a give-and-take between players and developers. Designers put new features in the game and players inevitably experiment and push the boundaries of those features. Siege is unique in that the give-and-take is part of the game’s appeal.

New operators allow new strategies and play styles to evolve in the community, which leads to new ideas and strategies for the designers. Siege has created an intimate bond between a developer and millions of players and in the process, serves as a wonderful example of how a games-as-service model can work.

Moving forward, Ubisoft Montreal has set an ambitious goal for itself: the team aims to reach 100 operators. For a game as finely balanced as Siege, this presents obvious challenges, but the design team wants 50 operators on both offense and defense to make Siege a strategic mind game as much as a skill-based shooter.

Remy only sees Siege evolving in more interesting ways. The team is more willing to take risks now with the past two years of post-launch experience behind them. It hasn’t always been a smooth ride, but with Year 3 just around the corner, the future of Siege looks as exciting as ever.

“The first two years, us as developers and the game as well, we were a little bit in our infancy,” Remy admits. “I think Year 3 and moving forward we are reaching the status of an adult, getting more mature. I think Year 3 is going to be the year that marks maturity.”

How Rainbow Six Siege Quietly Became One Of The Best Multiplayer Shooters was originally published on Tech News Center

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junker-town · 7 years ago

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The D'Angelo Russell vs. Nick Young feud, explained

The Lakers' marquee rookie filmed Nick Young admitting that he cheated on his famous fiancée, except without Young's consent. Now, Russell's teammates are livid.

So, D'Angelo Russell tried to prank Nick Young by recording him talking about cheating on famous fiancée Iggy Azalea. The video somehow got out.

Once it did, the other Lakers players shut Russell out by making him sit alone at breakfast. Brave, anonymous Lakers officials trashed Russell in the media. The saga is cited as a reason the Lakers lost to Utah by 48 damn points on March 28, 2016. (Most likely reason: the Lakers are trash.)

You have questions. We have answers.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on March 30, 2016 during the immediate aftermath of D’Angelo Russell’s video surfacing in the media. It’s once again relevant following the 2017 NBA Draft as Brooklyn Nets fans attempt to understand why the Lakers gave up on the 21-year-old point guard. For more recent context, here's Kristian Winfield on how Russell is the lottery pick the Nets never had, and Matt Ellentuck on how Russell is no longer an afterthought.

WHAT THE HADES IS HAPPENING HERE?

D'Angelo Russell is 20 years old. Against his better judgment, he befriended Lakers teammate Nick Young.

Nick Young is one of the NBA's most notorious goofballs. He gave himself the nickname Swaggy P, he is one of the biggest ballhogs in the NBA and he is engaged to Iggy Azalea. ("Was engaged," perhaps.) He starred in one of the most hilarious memes of 2014 as he celebrated a shot he missed. He's also the current star of a popular and entirely relevant meme.

Apparently Young, Russell and other Lakers have participated in a prank war all season. This is not uncommon for immature trash teams with vacant leadership. (The Sacramento Kings are prank war champs to the point where the franchise has actually embraced the nonsense.)

Russell, as noted, is young. So maybe he didn't realize that he was taking the prank war too far by coaxing Young into admitting infidelity with a 19-year-old girl he met at a club while Russell surreptitiously recorded. Live and learn!

HOW DID THE VIDEO GET OUT?

That remains a mystery. It turned up on Fameolous, which is a site that is exactly what it sounds like. Russell may have shared it with someone who shared it with someone. Russell may have passed it on because he doesn't want Iggy Azalea to be hurt. Russell might have left his phone in a bathroom, and whoever lifted it might have gone through his videos. Maybe Russell was hacked. While speaking to the media, Russell reiterated that even he didn't know how the video got out.

IS THERE A CRIME HERE?

As NBA fans may remember from the Donald Sterling saga, California is a two-party consent state, which means that (assuming the recording was made in California, as it appears) Russell may have violated the law regarding the recording of private conversations. Chances that Young actually files a criminal complaint against Russell are nil, despite how great that would be. The same applies to a civil suit. It's far more likely that Young wants this story to go away than he wants to take money from Russell.

BUT HOW GREAT WOULD A D'ANGELO V. SWAGGY LAWSUIT BE?

So great.

DOES THIS HAVE BASKETBALL IMPLICATIONS?

Young remains under contract for next season, but the Lakers have been trying to trade him basically since they signed him. He's 30, and while he can be a microwave scorer, no team in the NBA actually needs him enough to put up with his unavoidable shenanigans.

The Lakers were going to try to trade Young regardless. This incident may also lead the franchise to jettison other veterans who are apparently involved in icing Russell post-video. ESPN reports Lou Williams got up and walked away when Russell recently sat next to him in the locker room. If any veteran Lakers hold grudges against Russell, the front office might find a way to get them out of there.

WHAT ABOUT IMPLICATIONS FOR RUSSELL'S FUTURE WITH THE TEAM?

Not even the Lakers are myopic enough to risk alienating or trading Russell over something as hilarious/meaningless as this. OR ARE THEY? From ESPN:

"It's bad," one team source told ESPN.com's Ramona Shelburne. "It's about as bad as it can get. There were trust issues already. Now there's no trust."

SHOULD THIS HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR RUSSELL'S FUTURE?

Hell no. Come on. This wasn't a smart thing to do by any stretch, and it's reasonable for Young to be mad at Russell for breaking whatever trust he believed they had. It's reasonable for other Lakers to have trust issues with Russell regarding personal matters. It's reasonable for the Lakers organization to be concerned about Russell's judgment. (Chances are they were already concerned with Young's judgment.)

But in the end, it's really some stupid, meaningless stuff that has no bearing on Russell's basketball future.

IS THERE PRECEDENT FOR THIS?

Yes! In fact, the most famous NBA example of infidelity snitching comes from the Lakers and the hero currently riding into the sunset. Back in 2003, Kobe Bryant was arrested and charged with sexual assault in Colorado. According to police reports, he told investigators that his then-teammate Shaquille O'Neal paid women hush money to keep his flings secret. This detail eventually made its way into the press, adding remarkable amounts of fuel to an already-infernal feud between the two. Shaq had been traded to Miami before the incident became common knowledge, though it's unclear when Shaq found out about it.

IS THIS ALL STAGED?

Iggy has a new single out called "Team." It's widely accepted that celebrities of various stripes (particularly actors and pop musicians) leverage rabid interest in celebrity gossip to boost sales, box office revenue and general notoriety. Buzz is its own end. Lots of people are buzzing about Iggy Azalea right now. It's not outside the realm of possibility -- heck, perhaps not outside Hollywood norms -- to stage a break-up at the perfect time to boost fan interest.

hmmm i see D Angelo Russell is trending... I actually liked his film. Thanks bro.

— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) March 30, 2016

What if Iggy conspired with Young and Russell to set this up and release it to the world at just the right moment? What if the D'Angelo Russell-Nick Young saga is an inside job? The song is called "Team" after all. And the theme is self-reliance.

Baby I got me Baby I got me And that's all I need Yeah that's all I need

Stay woke, my friends.

* * *

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