#also the environmental impact of image generation is LESS than playing a video game for like 6hrs. just to not let misinfo slide

[opha]

the fact that i use the term "AI" at all for generative tech is thanks to those who refuse to understand it and instead rely on a game of telephone passed off as fact to tell them that it's ontologically evil and will destroy the very soul of art and literature. they legit act like the real obfuscation is calling generative tech what it is because they are so insistent on calling it "AI art".

what is being described here is a result of reactionary anti-AI folks' failure to understand what they are against, so they jump at anything that even sounds similar. the call is coming from inside the house, but it's good to recognize it as a problem! i would recommend to everyone who agrees with the above tweets to read cory doctorow's "ai "art" and uncanniness". he is against generative tech in the arts, but unlike most people, he took the time to learn how it works and analyze it from both a legal and technical perspective. he describes how legal efforts to stymie the use of generative tech would also affect several of those other kinds of "AI" described, like those used in scientific models.

if you don't know cory, he is an author and staunch advocate for copyright abolition. he's intimately familiar with copyright law and how instead of protecting artists as individuals, it mostly serves the interests of corporate IP holders. he's as pro-artist as it gets. here's how that article opens:

"When it comes to AI art (or "art"), it's hard to find a nuanced position that respects creative workers' labor rights, free expression, copyright law's vital exceptions and limitations, and aesthetics. I am, on balance, opposed to AI art, but there are some important caveats to that position. For starters, I think it's unequivocally wrong – as a matter of law – to say that scraping works and training a model with them infringes copyright. This isn't a moral position (I'll get to that in a second), but rather a technical one."

[noosphe-re]

The New Nomads: Eight Characteristics of the Electric Mass Audience

APRIL 1, 2013 BY ERIC MCLUHAN Some years ago W.B. Yeats wrote a poem called Sailing To Byzantium (1928), and one of the verses goes this way:

Once out of nature I shall never take My bodily form from of any natural thing, But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make Of hammered gold and gold enamelling To keep a drowsy Emperor awake; Or set upon a golden bough to sing To lords and ladies of Byzantium Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

We Christians have always held the doctrine of individual souls and private salvation, which presupposes a ground of private identity and individual responsibility. But the Western world has laterally taken a turn in a very different direction, due entirely to the effects of new media. Private individual identity can no longer be taken for granted in the high participation world of the Internet and interactive technologies. In this situation, even the idea of private salvation loses much of its meaning and its interest. Electric media profoundly challenge the very foundations of individual identity each time they transform us into mass audiences. The base of private identity is rapidly becoming irrelevant to contemporary experience throughout the west.

The new electric mass audience has eight major characteristics and I want to present those now:

(1)

The Mass Audience is invisible. Composed as it is of de facto intelligences with no bodies. The average person daily uses interactive media from telephone to Internet by being transformed into bits of electric information. This disembodiment parodies the condition of angels, and it contributes to the disorientation that people feel in the material world.

(2)

Minus the physical body, the user of electric media can be in two or two dozen or two million places simultaneously — everywhere the Internet reaches, in fact. The electric crowd lives as if already dead. Consequently it finds nihilism natural. Death as a way of life, has a familiar ring to those who follow the news. The enabling environment for the electric crowd is the totality of electric media present and operating via broadcast, or network, or satellite, and so on. So there is the radio crowd, and the TV crowd, and so on. All of these are, as it were, dialects of the mass audience.

(3)

The Electric Crowd, composed as it is of new nomads, who haunt the metaphysical world, cannot have distant goals, or directions, or objectives. Those matters pertain to becoming, and the nomad is involved rather with being. Being is not an objective or a goal. With no outer physical body, the mass audience shifts its focus inward. For example, for over forty years youth have consistently rejected long-range goals and objectives as irrelevant.

This move inward also appears disguised as narcissism, but it is the narcissism or the selfishness of one without a self — rather different from the selfishness that attends private individualism. Fixed goals and becoming belong to incarnate existence; the electrified nomad is wrapped in the ecstasies of sheer being, bereft of all traditional ties to the natural world and to natural law. In other words, we are floundering, we are disoriented. Each new technology represents one or another modulation of our humanity.

(4)

People without physical bodies use participational imagery to generate the emotion and the aesthetics of being — the only reality left after leaving the physical body and the physical world behind. Advertisers a generation ago shifted their attention from products to image, from hard selling of things to participative forms such as lifestyle ads. These provide life fantasies and group identities for all. Mass audience is not characterized by rationality, although individual members of it may be rational. Online or on the air, minus your physical bodies, you put on the corporate body, you wear all mankind as your skin. Under these conditions, a private sensibility would be a terrible liability.

(5)

The quality of image adjusts the degree of participation. A “good” image allows a lot of participation in depth, by a big diverse mass. For this it must be virtually devoid of content. The aesthetic of these circumstances derives from manipulations of being. Each new electric medium brings with it a new mode of group being, a new we. Hybrid energy bring the biggest kicks of all, and it is in the nature of electric media to hybridize endlessly. Each new medium collects older ones as what we call features, even as it becomes included in the others as a feature, a process that will continue until all have become features of each other. Their future is features. Gadgetry. Narcissism for the self-less.

(6)

The crowd of electrified nomads has no natural boundaries. It o’erleaps all natural and physical limitations. It is exempt from natural law.

(7)

The Mass audience was coined, the term, to denote broadcast crowds. Sheer speed makes the mass, not numbers. At electric speed there is no moving to or fro, the user just manifests here or there, having left the body behind. “There” might be the other side of the room or the other side of town or the other side of the world – it makes no difference, it’s all the same. You function in more than one place at once. On the air, you can have your being in thousands or millions of places simultaneously. Physical laws no longer apply once you leave the physical body. There is nothing on which to base them. You become information. You become an environmental image. Anyone who goes online becomes thereby, a de facto node of the worldwide network. This is not an unfamiliar form. Our worldwide net then has its center everywhere and its margin nowhere.

Another parody here: recall the medieval notion of God as having being everywhere and as being nowhere circumscribed. The worldwide network presents a state of complete equality, an equality of nobodies. There is no owner, nobody owns the net, nobody is in charge, there’s no head office, and every user can say with all fidelity, “I am every man” or, “I am legion.”

The simple omnipresence of everyone on the worldwide net has some curious consequences. Of a sudden, every culture on earth finds itself present in every country or nation. Every culture becomes multinational. And for the same reasons, the reciprocal also applies: every nation instantly becomes multicultural, despite any and every effort to the contrary. Not everybody responds favorably to being invaded by foreign cultures and mores. The Islamic terrorists clearly regard it as a form of toxic pollution of their culture and of their spirit. Obviously, terrorism is a media ecological concern. As is well known, violence is always a factor in establishing, or sustaining, or retrieving an identity.

(8)

The last characteristic concerns the impact on identities. Now we believe that each of us is endowed with an individual soul since conception, and the concomitant, an individual conscience. The private individual with a private self is also charged with private responsibility for his or her own actions and quests for private salvation. The alphabet literally paved the way for these matters.

These are New Testament times. The Old Testament, for example, had declared the Jews a chosen people: group salvation. St. Thomas gives us the formula for individuation. He frequently observes that the principle of individuation is matter necessitating a material body. To separate the mind or soul from the body is to mime death. It is generally accepted that any separation of the two, mind and body, results in death. Electric media disturb the natural union of mind and body at the deepest level. They take the user out of nature in a pantomime of death. The new sensibility brings a new fascination with death and the hereafter increasingly seems here and now, not hereafter, and encourages the growth of nihilism and amorality.

Doesn’t this illuminate somewhat our culture’s present infatuation with euthanasia and abortion? A generation ago we awoke to a new awareness of the body: it had suddenly transformed into a programmable machine with replaceable parts, a kind of art form to be shaped and molded and enjoyed aesthetically at will. The new reality, which we all accept without question, is this: on the air, on the telephone, on the Internet, you are, you have being in many places simultaneously. These are literally out of body experiences and they are casual, utterly unremarkable features of everybody’s everyday life: and they pull the rug out from under individualism. Cyberspace is the home of the group, not the individual; its natural mode is the hive.

Look at the ease with which the kids put on and shed personas, in video games as easily as on YouTube, on Second Life, MySpace and Facebook, RPGs and LARPs. They can revel in role-playing because their senses of identity are very fluid and subtle. Role-playing is first nature to them, not second nature; it’s first nature. Individualism, which results from the intellectual separation of knower from known, is a specific function of the phonetic alphabet. The alphabet, and words and language and utterance, works through the left hemisphere of the brain. Individualism too is a function of the left hemisphere, and comes from the phonetic alphabet. No other form of writing, syllabary or pictogram, has the fragmenting power of the phonetic alphabet. Its message of objectivity and detachment laid the ground for private individual awareness several centuries before Christianity had need of it.

Now that ground has been supplanted by one that does nothing to encourage or sustain individualism. We know that you cannot simply add a new medium to an existing situation. In the nature of formal cause, each new medium simply engulfs the existing situation and reshapes it from top to bottom. Media are not additive, but transformative. Today, as each new medium penetrates the worldwide net, it transforms the world. Any new medium is a new culture looking for a host.

Thank you.

The above was a presentation given by Eric McLuhan on September 2, 2010 7:00 pm in Edman Chapel, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL, USA and can be watched here (23:30-37:18). Transcribed by Read Mercer Schuchardt. (via https://secondnaturejournal.com/eight-characteristics-of-the-electric-mass-audience/)

[thenamelessscribe42-blog]

Seven Hip Facts About Phone Video

Smartphones with a fantastic electronic camera and the ability to record high definition video are no longer challenging to discover-- in fact they're all over. Expert video material creators are discovering that using their mobile phones to shoot cell phone video has numerous major benefits: Smart phone are ubiquitous and we often have our phones with us. Rapidly and spontaneously catching video material does not need carrying around big video cameras when an unexpected chance emerges. Lots of apps are readily available for both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) mobile phones that extend the performance of the videocamera, supply sophisticated editing and digital impacts abilities, along with supply a method to instantly submit finished videos for distribution and viewing. Maybe most notably, as the phones have actually ended up being more capable, video entrepreneurs are discovering that getting into entrepreneurial filmmaking is a lot more affordable, too. However, while it is great to have a mobile phone with an awesome cam, using bad video making technique will probably result in a bad video product. Just because you have a really pricey hammer, with all of the functions money can buy, it does not guarantee that you will build a splendid home without practice and excellent online video strategy. Your video does not need to be ideal however following these 7 ideas, shooting fantastic video with your smartphone will be easy and the video will look great! # 1-- Excellent Lighting is Vital Correct lighting has a substantial effect on smartphone electronic cameras due to the fact that they have smaller sized image sensors and lenses. Attempt as much as possible to shoot your video in brilliantly lit areas. This will help prevent unnecessary shadows and grainy locations in your video. On the other hand, you also need to beware not to point the video camera straight at intense lights, which will trigger unusable overexposed video footage and lens flaring. Lighting ought to be stable and steady; the image sensors in the majority of smart devices do not respond to remarkable modifications in lighting very quickly. If the light is still inconveniencing to shoot your video attempt dealing with back-lighting and white balance settings if your phone or app provides them. Many phones likewise provide "touch focusing" in the event your video camera is focusing on the wrong location of your composition. After setting the concentrate on the most essential element of the video, the automated exposure control will have an easier time making small modifications if lighting condition starts to alter.

How to make great videos on your phone

Always shoot in landscape mode. Clean your video camera lens routinely. Don't use the zoom function. Utilize the direct exposure lock. Put your phone in Airplane mode. Mix it up with lens attachments. Make the most of time-lapse and slow-motion video features. # 2-- Stay Steady If you don't want your video footage to come out distorted, blurred, or impacted by "rolling shutter" the best thing to do is to keep your phone steady while tape-recording. Usage both hands to hold your smart device as close as possible to your body as you tape-record the video. This can be a bit fatiguing in long takes or sequences and there are others methods to support the phone: Stabilizers, tripods and camera cages allow you to keep your mobile phone or mobile phone still when taking a youtube video with it, they have ideal deals with to accomplish this. If a mobile phone tripod or stabilizer is a little too costly or not useful for you in your circumstances, you can rest your phone on other physical assistances like tables, chairs, desks, shelves, etc.

# 3-- The Audio Matters as Much as the Video An excellent video with poor audio quality is junk unless you prepare to add a totally brand-new audio track "in post" (while modifying your video). While you desire your video to look excellent, the quality of your audio is more vital than the video-- so it must matter as much, if not more. Regrettably, the built-in microphone in many smartphones (if not all of them) is both poor quality and improperly placed. It is really typical to capture wind and unneeded environmental sound that will take on or hush any crucial audio while shooting video exterior. This is nearly impossible to modify out later on. It is advisable to shoot your video in a peaceful location, ideally indoors when possible with less ambient sound. Professionals are shooting all sorts of commercial grade videos and feature films using their smart phones however audio is generally caught with a separate recording gadget suitable for the job. So, for excellent quality videos with outstanding audio, you must get an external recording gadget or at least a directional microphone that will work with your smart device. If using an external microphone isn't possible or useful then stay as close to the audio source as possible and attempt this little trick: use your hand to cover around the phone's microphone (however don't completely cover it). By doing this, unwanted sound can be minimized, which may provide your final product an opportunity. # 4-- Get Close to Your Subject Remaining physically closer to your subject makes sure much better image quality, less digital sound and much better focus in your videos given that many smart devices use a digital zoom rather than optical zoom. If your video needs super zoom close-ups of tiny information, they make clip-on macro lenses that will fit any iPhone or Android smartphones. # 5-- Avoid Vertical Video Syndrome I really can not drive this point home well enough. Stop shooting vertical video! Some videographers, (yes ... video business owners, too) who use of their mobile phones for digital filmmaking often make the error of holding their phones vertically, that is to say up and down instead of sideways, while taping. Hold your phone horizontally so that videos played back on other screens (practically all over) will look fine. # 6-- Enhance Your Videos with Mobile Apps The video camera app on your mobile phone may do a good task however there's more to cell phone video recording than what the majority of them have to provide! Some third party apps are really user-friendly with fantastic functions for those new to developing video content while some others unlock professional-like functions that might draw out your inner George Lucas. While you will find some respectable free apps, investing in a number of apps that cost a bit of money can pay substantial dividends. # 7-- Be Prepared for the Shoot Prior to you start recording your videos, make sure that you have all of the gear, props, scripts, stars and shooting locations prepared to go. Additionally, make certain your phone is charged which you have enough storage area (offered memory) to keep the footage-- high definition (HD) video files can get big and will drain a battery rapidly. Making excellent professional videos can be an enjoyable and lucrative pursuit for entrepreneurial-minded filmmakers. Master the art of videography with your smart device by following these tips. Through practice, trial and error and you will begin seeing expert results in no time

With the evolution of technology, it is amazing just how much video has actually changed over the past couple of years. Feature films and television shows are now using iphones and tablets to shoot action sequences and entire programs. It is no longer needed to employ a production team to shoot, modify and disperse your cell phone video material. In fact, nowadays you do not even require a video cam to shoot videos that speak with your audience in a manner that gets observed. Video, now more than ever, is the best method to connect with your potential customers and engage your audience to know, like and trust you. Have you been sitting on the sidelines of the video transformation, informing yourself that you truly should begin getting some videos out there? If so, this post will be the trigger that gets you into the game. In 2006, when I shot wedding videos and corporate documentaries, I brought a huge expensive Canon GLX, an expert electronic camera that I would carry around in a heavy, hard case that held a shotgun microphone, lights with varying intensities, cassette tapes to record video, chargers and all sort of other bells and whistles. In addition, I always had a big, metal tripod dangling from my shoulder, despite the fact that most of my footage was captured on the go. It was everything about the devices at that time. It was pricey and you needed a lot of it to get quality footage. Fast forward to today ... I am still shooting videos for customers. However, now I bring an iPhone, a splitter, 2 lavalier microphones, a mini-tripod and a charger that all fits inconspicuously into my purse. In fact, things have altered a lot that sometimes I do not even need to upload the video footage to my computer system to modify prior to sending the file to YouTube, Vimeo or other social video sites. I can do all of it from my iPhone. Social videos are an essential part of marketing in today's age of social media and digital marketing. Now, here is the fun part. Are you ready to shoot remarkable videos with your mobile phone? Here is your step by step guide to producing expert videos that speak with your audience using your cell phone. What you will need: a cellular phone, a tripod (or something to prop your phone up while you shoot), great lighting, a peaceful area to shoot. Step-by-step procedure to shooting your next great video: 1. Decide on the message you wish to deliver that will help your audience to achieve a preferred outcome rapidly, with ease, having more fun or in some way better than prior to they viewed the video. 2. Find a location in your house or workplace that is quiet, well lit and where you feel comfy. If you have a tidy wall that is white or a solid color that you can stand in front of, this can be the best place to provide your message while looking like you remain in an expert studio. In my house, believe it or not ... this best space is the bathroom! 3. Quiet the area even more. Close all doors and windows. Shut off any fans, heating units or other sounds in the space. If you have children, try to shoot when they are sleeping or at school, so you aren't distracted.

How do you tape good videos?

Use a tripod. Don't use the iPhone digital zoom. Light your video. Utilize the exposure lock. Get your microphone near to your topic. Slow-motion and time-lapse. Modify on your computer. Use the video camera you have.

4. Place your phone in a tripod or propped against books or other things where it is steady and upright. Make sure to have the video camera on the phone set to face you, so that you can shoot and see yourself on the screen at the same time. 5. Shoot a 5-second test prior to you begin shooting the video. Look for lighting (brilliant enough that you can see yourself but not so bright that you look rinsed), sound (loud enough that you can be heard without any background sound of trucks driving by, kids weeping or TVs in the background), visuals (examine your hair etc and make certain to design the shot so that whatever you see in the frame is exactly indicated to be there). Get rid of anything extra or disruptive so your viewer can concentrate on you and your message. 6. Jot down the 3 key points of the video on a Post-it note and place the note above the tiny camera lens on your iPhone. This will assist you to keep in mind what you are going to state while also helping you to search in the ideal place while shooting. 7. Shoot a 1-2 minute online video that quickly and concisely conveys a smart, easy and fun message. Do not forget to encourage social sharing by asking your viewers to like your video and talk about it if they find the details useful. 8. As soon as you are finished shooting, evaluate the footage for good lighting and sound. If you wish to crop the video before you upload to YouTube, slide your finger gradually along the clip bar at the top of the video screen until a cropping timely appears. 9. When you feel the video is ready to share, click the share button (rectangle with an arrow on it) and then click the YouTube icon. A screen will appear where you can add a title and description. Use the Google Keyword Tool to create an SEO friendly title and keyword rich tags, so you increase the search results page for your video.

10. Don't forget to post the video to all of your social profiles. Embed it on your blog and dedicate to posting videos a few times a week so you can finally get your groove on with the social video transformation.+. All of us shoot video with our smartphones, but the majority of us aren't attempting to make the next fantastic Oscar-winning film. We're just trying to catch minutes that are important to us, or footage that we believe will resonate with others. There are a great deal of little things you can do to make certain the video you shoot with your smart device is something worth viewing-- whether those minutes are amusing, touching, foolish, or downright stunning. So here's a starter guide to assist make sure you're shooting the best video your mobile phone enables. Clean the lens.

It sounds ridiculous and easy, but this is always a fantastic location to start. It's the equivalent of remembering to take the lens cap off of a camera. It's something so obvious that it's typically easy to forget. Before you shoot any video with your mobile phone, ensure the camera's view isn't obstructed, and offer it a quick swab. Dampened cleaning wipes are the best for this task, however a fast breath and your t-shirt will do the trick, too. Inspect and set your settings Mobile phones might be limited in performance compared to more dedicated video cameras, however that doesn't suggest they're only efficient in shooting one type of video. The majority of premium smartphones these days have a few different resolutions and frame rates to select from. On Android phones, these settings are normally ideal inside the primary camera app, either tucked behind the settings gear wheel, or accessible via a toggle button. Apple, however, has buried these options in the main settings menu. You need to back all the way out of the video camera app, enter into Settings, scroll down to Photos & Cam, and after that scroll down to the Cam section. Once you have actually discovered them, here's a quick breakdown of the three most typically utilized video settings: 1080p at 30 frames per second: the other basic resolution/ frame rate combination. The difference here is your video has more frames displaying every second, which offers the footage a a lot more fluid look that is more detailed to how you would have seen the scene in real life. The choice between 30 fps and 24 fps is mainly an aesthetic one-- both should display correctly any place you post. 1080p at 24 frames per second: one of the two most standard settings for shooting video. 1080p is the resolution, a stand-in term for how many pixels (1920 x 1080) are caught in each frame of the video. 24 frames per 2nd (fps) indicates you're capturing 24 frames every second. That speed is just above the low end of what our brain has the ability to perceive as fluid video, however with simply adequate invisible stutter that it produces a pleasing, cinematic look. (That balancing act between fluid motion and intangible surrealism is why 24 frames per second is what filmmakers utilize in many movies.) Keep in mind: You'll just be able to shoot in 24 fps if you use an app that permits this frame rate, like Filmic Pro. 1080p at 60 frames per second: shooting at 60 fps will give you a much more fluid-looking video. It's likewise where we can start to discuss ... Slow motion Anything shot at 60 fps or greater (like 120 fps or 240 fps) can be turned into slow motion video footage. If you have a phone that shoots in 120 or 240 fps, there's a likelihood it already has a way to slow this video down for you. For reference, 120 fps is about five times slower than normal speed, and 240 fps is 10 times slower.

How do you make a video high quality?

Do not shoot vertical video. Utilize a tripod. Don't utilize the iPhone's zoom. Get your microphone near to your subject. Utilize a clip-on lens adapter for larger shots. Usage slow motion carefully. Edit on your computer system. Use the video camera you have. To shoot in slow motion on an iPhone, open the cam app and swipe right on the modes listed above the shutter button until you get to "Slo-mo." (You can also just tap on it when you see it at the edge of the app.) In order to alter how slow your footage is, you'll have to go back out of the electronic camera app to the primary Settings page and alter the speed there. With the majority of Android phones, these settings can once again be quickly changed inside the cam app. To see the slow motion video, tap on it in your phone's photo gallery or video camera roll. Your phone will immediately decrease the middle 80 percent of the video To alter when the slo-mo result begins and stops on an iPhone video, tap the settings icon listed below the video, and after that drag the little inbounds marker to the left and right. Bonus suggestion: iPhones immediately separate all slo-mo videos into their own album in the "Albums" section of Photos. Try to find them there instead of scrolling through all your phone videos. 4K video.

Many premium mobile phones are now capable of shooting 4K video, too-- normally at a resolution of 3840 x 2160. To shoot in 4K, you simply have to select this choice wherever your phone lets you change resolution settings. Do you need to shoot in 4K? Most likely not. Many people don't choose to watch (or perhaps have the capability to see, in some circumstances) 4K videos. However that doesn't suggest you should not bother, since there are a couple of concrete benefits. For one thing, you're future-proofing the video that you shoot. In a few brief years almost every screen will likely be capable of displaying 4K resolution or higher, therefore shooting in 4K now assists make sure that your videos will look their best down the road. You're also capturing more detail when you shoot in 4K, which means you can take advantage of the fact that the majority of people enjoy videos in 1080p. If you didn't frame a specific shot the method you 'd like, or you wish to concentrate on a specific subject in the scene, you can crop in on a 4K video without "losing" quality in the last 1080p variation. You'll need a modifying app that lets you crop and compress videos for this, however. Or you can just shoot in 4K and rest simple knowing that you captured one of the most detail possible. Just keep in mind that it's going to use up far more area than a video shot at 1080p. Optical image stabilization vs. digital/ electronic image stabilization A variety of phones now include optical image stabilization, like the most recent iPhones and Samsung's Galaxy phones. What does that suggest? It's when the electronic camera uses information from the phone's gyroscope and accelerometer to exactly move the cam's optics to make up for the movement of the phone. So if your hand is shaking a bit, or you're walking while you're shooting, the phone can compute and remedy for that movement. Some other phones, like Google's Pixel phones, utilize what's called digital image stabilization. It's likewise often called electronic image stabilization, and it works on the exact same principal: the phone is utilizing info from its various sensing units to neutralize unwanted movements to develop steadier video. But in this case, absolutely nothing's actually relocating to compensate. Instead, the cam app is cropping in a bit from the full field of view and using the extra pixels to replicate optical image stabilization. This means that digital image stabilization, just like digital zoom, normally results in a loss of image quality for the sake of steadier video. Most of the time, steadier professional video is great. So try shooting a comparable scene with and without digital image stabilization to get a sense of how it's affecting your video. You'll find that some phones, like the Pixel, are great at minimizing the quantity of quality lost, making the trade-off worth it. Others might not be the same. And some phones overcorrect so much that you might not like the stabilization result at all. (Some video-editing apps allow you to apply comparable digital stabilization after the fact anyhow.).

[thesteadydietofeverything]

Let It Die is cool, but it’s also cold

It’s hard not to look at Let It Die as some sort of gauge on the viability of the free-to-play model on the greater video game landscape.  While the model has obviously had a lot of success within the realm of mobile games, and even quite a few high profile, big-budget PC games have adopted it after failing to meet their profit goals the old fashioned way, Let It Die still feels like something of an anomaly in the category at large.  It’s the newest game by one of the mediums’ few unequivocal auteurs, Suda51, and his company, Grasshopper Manufacture, and as such, has a sense of gravity to the expectations of quality and artistry that few other free-to-play games have to contend with.  

The microtransaction-heavy model has long been criticized as a just kinda generally shitty business tactic, but in today’s gaming landscape, where even $60 AAA games no longer even have to pretend to be shameful about milking extra dollars out of players hungry for extra skins or blind boxes, making a game that charges you nothing to start it almost even sounds generous.  Thus, Let It Die feels like it’s arriving at exactly the right time, a relatively higher-tier developer embracing and, theoretically, elevating the gaming model at a time where the fluctuating status quo would only require one great game to change hearts and minds.  Unfortunately, despite the surprising degree of success that the game has seen in the last month or so since its release, Let It Die just isn’t a great game.  While it’s overflowing with the wacky and undeniably cool style that Suda51 has been perfecting throughout his career, the core gameplay elements largely left me feeling empty, and reinforced for me the inherent pitfalls of free-to-play gaming.

The beautifully detailed picture that the player sees when she first start up the game is the Tower of Barbs, a monstrous overgrowth of 40 hellish levels erupting from the remains of the orphaned island that used to be South Western Tokyo.  It’s a powerfully rendered image that pairs immaculately with the glitchy 8-bit style embraced in the menu screens.  By the time Uncle Death, a grim reaper wearing 3D glasses, came riding his skateboard in and addressed me as “Senpai,” I was ready to go wherever this game took me.  One of the most frustrating things about the game is that as much as the gameplay pushed me away, the sheer style of it remained omnipresent, urging me to stay in that world.  Every floor of the tower seems to get more fucked-up looking as you go, rewarding progression with a new, weird, environment until that one gets stale.  Every enemy explodes in a high-pressured geyser of gore upon death in their own slightly unique way, and it’s morbidly satisfying, especially after a particularly harrowing encounter.

Every trip to the waiting room of the tower or The Hater Arcade promises some intriguing interaction with one of the surprisingly compellingly rendered characters.  There’s the Mushroom Magistrate, whose vocal performance by Isabelle Fuhrman does a pretty good job of convincing one she really has gone insane from too much mushroom consumption.  Naomi Detox, the teenage arcade attendant, never fails to find new, creative ways to complain about her loser boyfriend between assigning you new quests.  Meigin actually has some pretty useful tips for bettering your performance, as long as you can get past his uber-gamer elitism.  If you care to shell out real money to take the express elevator, the operator, Rin Torai, will share some delightfully awkward rides with you.  None of these characters are much more than the one-note characterizations they seem to be; as far as I’m aware, there are no actual plot arcs or anything involving them.  Regardless, they play their roles well, and serve to color the world of the game in with some remarkable personality.

If I were only grading this game based on its aesthetic impact, it would be a lot more glowing, but unfortunately, there’s also an actual game here, and I have a lot fewer nice things to say about that.  The gameplay of Let It Die has rightfully earned some comparisons to Dark Souls, with its challenging, timed-swing focused melee combat and moveset-containing weapons, not to mention the amount of time between “checkpoints.”  These comparisons do the game no favors, though, as these are all difficult mechanics to pull off in a game without making it unnecessarily frustrating, and while Let It Die might do better than some other Dark Souls clones, it still fails to meet that standard of engaging the player rather than pushing her away with its systems.

Combat takes both skill and practice to get good at, and while getting good certainly is a possibility in this game, it’s not nearly as rewarding as I would have liked it to be.  There is little weight to most of the weapons in the game.  While in Dark Souls, learning how to properly use any given weapon is a matter of spending enough time with it to memorize its moves, there is just a certain feel that you get from it as well, something that comes off as intuition but is really a combination of the careful animation of your character and the tight controls that provides instant feedback on your performance.  That feedback is practically nonexistent in this game.  Each attack animation feels generic and unintuitive, leaving you with nothing but sheer memorization of the amount of time an attack takes and what weapons are preferable for which enemy.  It’s not just boring, it’s straight-up repellant in the early hours of the game.

Going along with the Dark Souls comparisons, this game has a similar lack of a pause button and long stretches of levels to cover before the player can return to their main hub, in this case, an elevator that you can ride down to the waiting room in order to level up, buy necessary upgrades and equipment, chat with characters, or maybe even just stop playing (quitting mid-level is considered a death).  Again, while Dark Souls will use this mechanic in combination with clever level design in order to add to the level of dread and immersion, Let it Die’s levels feel practically procedurally generated, a random series of halls and rooms with repetitious textures and lazily placed enemies, and the feeling that builds as one traverses these maps is less dread as much as just tedium.  The relief that I’d feel as I’d spot an elevator in the distance had little sense of accomplishment mixed in with it; mostly I was just happy that now I could stop.

As relatively “fair” as one-on-one combat can feel, I never really found a way to successfully take on two or three enemies.  Oftentimes I’d find myself stuck in an enclosed room with little environmental factors to kite and isolate enemies with, and the second I’d try to put in a single attack, I’d get pounced on.  In short, these encounters feel basically designed to kill you, and that’s where the insidious free-to-play factor comes in.  When you die, you have a couple options.  You can follow the advice that the title of the game seems to be giving you and simply let your character die - they’ll be reborn as a “hater,” an especially tough enemy that another character can face off against if you return to that spot, and if you defeat them, can be sent out to raid other player’s games (the game has some fairly extensive online features that I never really touched, so I’ll say little about them in this review).

Your other option upon death is given to you by the helpful insurance saleswoman who greets you upon each death - to revive yourself with a death metal, a form of currency in the game that is very nearly only earned by purchasing packs with real money.  In effect, this is essentially the equivalent of putting another coin in the arcade machine, an apt mechanic given the game’s framing device.  This is really what you’re more likely to want to do, as it takes time to level up your characters, and having a well of available, trained fighters becomes more and more important as you progress through the tower.  And I’d almost feel tempted to forgive this if some of the encounters felt a little bit more doable, but as it is, death seems essentially unavoidable.  It feels like a rote exercise, that rather than defeating enemies through sheer skill or adequate leveling, you simply pay to bring your health back up and start back right where you left off; it eliminates the challenge and the reward possible in these encounters, and any time the “risk” side of a risk/reward situation is actual money, it’s going to be pretty hard to convince me to go for that risk.

To the game’s credit, it manages to work its style even into these microtransactions, such as the express elevator, that actually is much nicer looking than the regular elevator, making one feel like she paid for first class.  That it treats such a potentially damning game mechanic with a nod and a wink is legitimately funny, and surprisingly tempting, but the lack of fun I was having with the rest of the game convinced me against it.  This was essentially the main problem I encountered throughout the game: wanting to like it so much more than I did because of the style but finding myself unable due to the lack of substance.  And the style really is nothing to gloss over: Suda51’s artistic success has largely been defined by the aesthetics of excess, and the way that this game manages to balance its stylistic gratuitousness with something approaching tastefulness is an oxymoron that’s a wonder to behold.  If only it felt as inspiring to play as it does to look at.

5.4/10

[andreaj2018-blog]

Blog 2 - ENVR 2000

ENVR 2000 Blog 2: Resources Andrea Jawbone 7816718

Part 1. Questions

Describe 3 challenges and 3 opportunities that you see in the slow movement. Do you want to slow some aspect(s) of your life? If so, what concrete steps can you take to achieve this?

A challenge that I see in slow movement is the inability to work efficiently enough, because a person can become accustom to a slow pace environment. Another challenge would be a person being unable to “keep up” with their co-workers, friends, etc. because nowadays many people have a fast-paced life. Further, a person can find it difficult to become apart of the slow movement because today’s society is built upon fast-paced movement. Alternatively, an opportunity of slow movement that I see is a person having the opportunity to spend time with their loved ones. To add, a person with a slower pace in life will be more able to appreciate the smaller things in life. Generally, I feel like a person would be more joyful and less stressed in their life if they adopted slow movement.

Personally, it would be nice to have some slow aspects of my life. If I weren’t so busy, I would be able to spend more time with my mother and sisters. A step I can take to achieve this is to set aside “slow movement” time for my friends and family.

(Image:  https://www.touritalynow.com/blog/taking-it-easy-with-italys-slow-movement/)

Part 2. Action ( /11)

a.      Investigate the chemicals in your personal care products. Use the product guide from the Environmental Working Group http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/ to see how your products are rated for carcinogens, endocrine disruptors, etc. ( /3)

Product 1: Herbal Essence Shampoo

Moderate concerns for Overall Hazard. Low concern for Carcinogens and Developmental & Reproductive Toxicity. Moderate – high concern for allergies & Immunotoxicity and Use Restrictions.

Product 2: Herbal Essence Conditioner

Moderate concern for Overall Hazard. Low concern for Carcinogens and Developmental & Reproductive Toxicity. Moderate – high concern for Allergies & Immunotoxicity and Use Restrictions.

Product 3: Dove Body Wash

Moderate concern for Overall Hazards. Low – moderate Carcinogen concerns. Low concern for Developmental & Reproductive Toxicity. Moderate – high concern for Allergies & Immunotoxicity and Use Restrictions.

(Image: https://www.amazon.com/Herbal-Essences-Bio-Morocco-Conditioner/dp/B01MTNOEMI?th=1) 

b.     Do an analysis of your purchases for one week. Record all products, food, beverages and services purchased over this period. Create screening criteria to categorize all items as “Good”, “Bad” or “Ugly”. The criteria is up to you, but must be justified. You may wish to consider factors such as: environmental impact, social impact, local or foreign, corporate or small business. Add up the dollar values spent in each category and reflect on where you would like to make changes – if any. ( /3)

GOOD:

USBC Cable ($11), Winter Coat ($76.50), Eco Bag ($0.30), Water Bottle ($4), Spaghetti ($2.50), Pasta Sauce ($5), Cereal ($5), Milk ($5), Potatoes ($8), Bananas ($4), Chicken Breast ($11), Butter ($4), Birthday Cake ($15). TOTAL: $151.3

BAD:

Ice Cream Scoop ($13), Xmas Bells ($1.25), Strainer ($4), Cookie Cutter ($3), Frozen Meals ($5) and ($3). TOTAL: $29.25

UGLY:

Coca-Cola ($2), Cheetos ($2), Hickory Sticks ($2), Ice Cube Maker ($1.50), Sunny D ($1.25), Nestle Water ($12). TOTAL: $20.75

Overall, I’m happy with a relatively low amount of cost going into the “bad” and “ugly” categories, but they can still improve. Although, some of the things I bought were for my younger sister’s birthday. I am not happy with a few of my purchases and how much money I spent in one week. I would definitely want to make changes in buying frivolous things (like the ice cube maker).

(Image: https://stylecaster.com/best-canadian-snacks/) 

c.      Investigate the options and end fate of your household’s e-waste. Discuss where and how you will dispose of this waste and your future electronics purchase plans in relation to the waste they will one day become. ( /2)

I own a cell phone, and so does my boyfriend (whom I live with). We own other types of e-waste such as a flat-screen television, a computer, a printer, and a couple of gaming consoles. Between the both of us, we have many younger siblings, so when we want and/or need to purchase a new cell phone, we just pass down our old phones to them. Although I do not know what happens to them after that. Overall, the ending fate of our cell phones would probably be them being stored away, similar to our other e-waste items. At his old home, my boyfriend still has the original XBOX gaming console, which he had since he was a child. Eventually, I would like to go through all of our old and current e-waste and find out how to properly recycle them. We haven’t had the need or want to replace our other electronics; however, I would like to be more conscientious about purchasing new electronic items that we do not essentially need.

(Image: https://www.123rf.com/photo_45354017_stock-vector-waste-electrical-and-electronic-equipment-pile-computer-and-other-obsolete-used-electronic-waste-sta.html) 

d.     Consider your food system and the ways in which you can improve the sustainability the food that you consume and throw away. Are there ways to improve sustainability such as shopping locally, growing your own food or reducing your household’s food waste? Which options might suit your household and value system? Create a plan for one change that you think would improve the sustainability of your food system. ( /3)

My food waste system is not satisfactory because I generate food waste at an unacceptable level. There are many ways that I can sustainably improve my household’s food waste. Shopping locally is a great option because I feel there is more incentive to it. For example, it is quite expensive to shop at a farmer’s market, so I would be more inclined to use those food items if they were more expensive than what I am used to buying. I believe that if I budget and only buy things that I need, I would be able to buy local food. This plan would vastly improve the sustainability of my food system because I would not be wasting as much food.

(Image: http://www.goodhood.ca/whats-good/underpass-park-farmers-market-brings-fresh-local-produce-to-corktown) 

Part 3. In-class Blog Questions ( /6)

Zoos

a.      What role, if any, should zoos play in conservation / education?

Zoos should have conservation and education at the top of its priorities. Zoos should not only exist for entertainment purposes, but they should exist for the conservation of wildlife and the education of individuals. Studies have shown that AZA-accredited zoos (Association of Zoos & Aquariums) improve the public’s knowledge of the conservation of wild spaces and grows a heavier connection to nature (Conservation Education, AZA). This is why zoos have a critical role in conservation & education.  

(Image: https://give.columbuszoo.org/global-impact) 

b.     Is it ethical to keep animals in zoos? If so, what size / type of animal or zoo?

Personally, I believe that in some cases it is ethical to keep animals in zoos, and only for conservation purposes. For example, as a result of the melting polar ice, polar bears have become a vulnerable species, with their numbers estimating from 22,000 to 31,000 (World Wild Life, Polar Bear Facts). Which is why I believe that the Polar Bear exhibit at the Winnipeg Zoo is beneficial/important in the conservation of this species. However, there are problems with keeping larger animals in zoos with little space for them to roam.

(Image: https://www.assiniboineparkzoo.ca/zoo/home/explore/exhibits/journey-to-churchill) 

c.      Do you enjoy visiting zoos?

I have only visited two zoos and one aquarium in my life. While I was at the Winnipeg Zoo, it was an enjoyable experience to see those animals in reality, rather than in photos and videos. However, I still felt somber at the facts that those animals are not in their natural habitat and are fenced off in rather small areas.

(Image: https://assiniboinepark.ca/zoo/home/plan-your-visit/upcomingevents) 

Food

Consider your food system:

a.      What do you like about it?

What I like about my food system is little compared to what I dislike about it. However, I can say that I like the simplicity of it and the ease of cooking. I tend to buy things such as meats, pasta, frozen vegetables, frozen meals, snack foods, etc. I feel like the cost situation could improve.

(Image: https://fitnutricisepro.wordpress.com/tag/food-groups/)  

b.     What do you dislike about it?

I dislike the unhealthiness of my food system. And as stated before, I do not have a broad variety in my food system. I would like to expand my food system to other things like grains, fresh produce, etc. and not buy snack foods. The nutrition of it can also be better, and I can also reduce my environmental impacts by buying less in general.

(Image: https://graphicriver.net/item/healthy-food-versus-unhealthy-food/12283745) 

Oceans

a.      What are your primary concerns about the oceans?

My primary concerns about the oceans definitely includes the major issue of plastic pollution. Over 8 million ton of plastic are dumped in our oceans each year (A Plastic Ocean, pg. 8). It is the fact that today’s society is dependant on plastics in almost everything that we use in our daily lives. Further, another critical issue is the amount of oil that leaks into our oceans. In the United States, 4.9 million liters of petroleum are spilled into their waters in a regular year (A., Thompson, Live Science). These things are my personal primary concerns about the oceans.

(Image: https://www.nrdc.org/stories/10-ways-reduce-plastic-pollution) 

b.     What, if anything, do you plan to do about it?

The most that I can personally do about the plastic pollution in our oceans is to use less plastic and recycle them properly. I feel like I cannot do much to lessen the impact of oil pollution in our oceans.

(Image: https://www.greenerpackage.com/recycling/65_consumers_confused_over_plastics_recycling) 

REFERENCE LIST:

“Conservation Education.” Association of Zoos & Aquariums, aza.org. URL: https://www.aza.org/conservation-education

Polar Bear, “Facts”, worldwildlife.org. URL: https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/polar-bear#

“A Plastic Ocean.” Education & Discussion Guide, plasticoceans.org, pg. 8. PDF: https://plasticoceans.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/PO_Educational_Sup_v16_NOV2018.pdf

Thompson, Andrea. “FAQ: The Science and History of Oil Spills.” Live Science, 23 April 2010, par. 18. URL: https://www.livescience.com/9885-faq-science-history-oil-spills.html

[golfbunkers-blog]

Selecting the best Golf Ball

golf balls

When this comes to selecting that golf ball to participate in, you practically have the thousand choices. These people selection in prices from gentle to wild. If you have fun with a ball which is appropriately fit for your video game, your shot execution will be better and you will decrease your score. Each hit counts and so do you get a ball, yet we generally find out golfers say that they enjoy "whatever is throughout my case. " Functionality differences among golf golf ball brands and models are generally online game changing, especially about limited game scoring injections. Having fun with the same basketball model each and every round reduces this overall performance variation along with will help you strike more greens in rules and hit the soccer ball closer to the personal identification number for converting more putts. This kind of is major steps for you to developing a much more regular game. Remember, there is certainly just one piece of tools you use in each picture, your golf ball.

golf balls

Opt for a Ball That Best Meets Your own personal Short Game

Irregardless of ability, golfers struck their car owner only fourteen times each round. The actual vast majority of images incorporate approach shots, pitch in addition to chips. For example of this, if you take a average score of three months, you will hit a lot more than forty five shots to help the green however simply 14 drives. Positives as well as amateurs alike capture their own best rounds when many people decrease the number associated with short game photos. And so select a ball which performs best for your own rating shots.

What With regards to Swing Rate?

Ball installation for swing movement speed is actually a myth. Some sort of golfing ball must perform for all those golfers of all move rates of speed on all pictures, normally it won't conduct for any golf player. A new PGA Tour player's operater swing speed will be greater than most amateurs. Still his speed on lengthy or mid-irons may always be comparable to your driver golf swing rate.

Should I Employ What The Expedition Plus Use?

Tour gamers help make the game look quick. Even though they may well have a higher swing action speed and more continually implement good swings, these people are participating in the exact same game. They nonetheless pass up greens in control and also have to get up-and-down. They will, too, want in order to hit far more shots better to the hole. No matter if you regularly shoot 1980s, 90s or over hundred, you will be faced with the actual same types of score shots on your strategies, pitch and chips.

The particular difference in between Tour participants and many enthusiasts is usually that they prioritize playing golf ball efficiency on their particular scoring shots. Messing around with any high performance ball can translate into hitting some sort of few more grns with regulation and injections more detailed to the hole any time you reach your photo the way you designed. Amateurs and pros the same make a higher proportion regarding 3' putts compared to 12' ones.

Understanding The game of golf Ball Contrainte

There is definitely a common misconception a player must match the particular compression of the the game of golf ball to be able to his or even her swing speed so as to properly "compress" the baseball. Every golfer compresses typically the golf ball on every single full swing movement shots. Throughout fact, the differences from the amount of compression over motorist swing speeds usually are almost indistinguishable.

Another fable is lower swing acceleration people will hit a new lower compression setting golf golf ball longer. No single portion of golf ball design can determine often the golf ball's functionality or perhaps its distance. Data compresion is really a test of the actual relative actual softness of the golf ball and pertains to how firm or tender a golf ball seems to your golfer. While right now there is no effectiveness gain to choosing a precise contrainte, many golfers (regardless involving swing speed) accomplish have really feel preferences. People who like softer sense may desire lower data compresion golf balls.

85 -- Lower compression golf balls tend to be also the softest. This supplies a sling shot impact, which propels the basketball further. Yet, it is actually more challenging to control. Decide on a golf ball which has a 80 compression rating if you don't normally drive the soccer ball a long distance, are usually a jr . player, senior citizen or girl of common strength. Typically the 80 compression setting ball makes it possible for slower swingers to more readily compress the particular ball using the club confront on the downswing along with obtain a greater range.

90 : Played by simply the majority of guy players and experienced women players. The 90 contrainte ball requires a more rapidly organization head speed in impression to maximize the sport of golf ball compression in addition to springtime effect at effects. In the event that you are not confident if you should possibly be hitting a 90 data compresion ball versus one connected with the 80 rating, examining numerous shots of every single type about the practice array will help you notice which ball travels even farther for your swing.

75 rapid The hardest compression setting, this ranking is greatest suited for advanced members with fast swing rates. Choose a golf baseball with a one hundred contrainte rating if you generally drive the ball over 275 yards off typically the first tee and have any fast club mind pace. You will be ready to maximize the gap with regard to all of your images, but actually will see reduced variety over tee if often the club brain speed will be not fast plenty of for you to achieve the full early spring result.

Test several evaluations associated with ball compression with the exercise range as well as annotate the common distance that will you hit each one score of ball with all the very same golf club. Some gamers choose to play some sort of smoother compression rating since they have got a better experience for smacking approach photos, so you will need to outburst the distance measure versus how each ball can feel when hitting your wedges and short irons.

Have you considered Choosing A Ball With regard to Long distance?

Since you will probably only hit 13 turns per round, putting first a new ball with the top distance off the 1st tee will not likely necessarily help anyone lower your credit score. Along with if you miss saving money, you still have to help get up-and-down. Participating in the golf ball with the actual best credit scoring performance will certainly help you shoot cheaper scores.

How About Whirl?

Focusing on how spin affects your current game will assist you to choose the particular best golf ball. About pictures with the drivers, low whirl will present longer and more straight runs. On shots using your very long irons, lower rotate makes straighter flight yet lowers stopping power. In typically the small game, more rewrite supplies more stopping electrical power into the eco-friendly.

Right now there are significant performance dissimilarities between golf ball products, specially on the brief game credit rating shots. For you to shoot reduced scores, golf players will make use of a golfing ball that provides fantastic scoring spin, the spin and rewrite and control needed in order to arised more greens nearer to often the pin along with irons and also wedges.

The sport of golf Ball Feel Choice

When many golf ball overall performance attributes such as length and whirl control are generally measurable any kind of time launch issue, feel is actually a preference alternative and is remarkably opinion-based. Feel is person reliant. Some golfers choose much softer feel while others such as a crisper, firmer feel. Experience is also shot based mostly. A number of golfers gauge truly feel upon full swing injections exactly where others evaluate that in partial swings or maybe putts. While feel can not lead directly to be able to scoring performance, costly significant consideration for many players.

Golf Ball Color Inclination

There are several elements that bring about to any golf ball's appearance: dimple pattern, area stamp, perform number, along with, of course, coloring. Regarding players who seek out increased visibility against the colours of blue and environmentally friendly (the colors you observe through every round regarding play), a high optic yellow solution might become best for you. All these optic colors reflect all-natural light considerably more powerfully as compared to traditional bright golf lite flite. Color does not effect the golf ball's efficiency but can be a good important factor in most golfers' selection process.

Golf Soccer ball Structure

Solid Two-Piece instructions Often the workhorse of most balls, starters should start off here. It is just a solid, rubbery ball that may be durable in addition to affordable from $18-$30 some sort of dozen. Comprised of a sizable, uniform inner core below a hard cover, participants may hit a "thin" as well as "fat" shot together with much less fear of removing the golf ball. The tradeoff is very low spin or even less command for increased distance plus a longer rotate.

Multi-Layered or perhaps Three-Piece -- Preferred by means of intermediate people, this less demanding ball maintains a higher rotate pace, and consequently, price indicate around $28-$45 a 12. The tradeoff is much more control for less long distance.

High Performance - Designed for minimal handicap members, the basketball is fewer durable with a better cover for more management. The look provides the very best of both planets : high spin as well as yardage - at a price of $45 to $60 every dozen. They are not really recommended for starters since they will cut and deform quickly.

Golf Ball Covering

Starters needing durability should certainly not forget the golf ball include. The material takes on a new large role in deciding performance. The top a few protect materials are:

Surlyn rapid Prized for their durability, cut-resistance, distance and also affordability, it does not take most commonly used material on the actual market.

Balata - Less demanding and more high-priced, the particular material is valued regarding spin, feel and manage. Nonetheless it is a lot more likely to get grazes along with cuts.

Elastomer instructions Utilised by low-handicap players, who have want rewrite without reducing too much durability.

The next thunderstorm report also influences which usually ball to choose. Cozy situations can expand projectiles, asking for players to employ a higher data compresion. The harder ball works well for excessive humidity or within lower sea level regions, everywhere thick air drops typically the ball down.

More over, frosty weather tends to calcify often the ball. Players can easily fight the effect through choosing lower compression setting tennis balls. Softer balls likewise support in high altitudes wherever air is thinner and less resistance.

Now Really Time To discover the Right Golfing Ball For You!

Recall, you can cut away a few cerebral vascular accidents for each round by doing only choosing the correct playing golf ball. It's a wise decision to preserve a few of every in the bag and training using them. Learn how that they feel. Ask how you similar to them. Figure out what kind to use so you actually can get an border on your own playing partners possibly before a person tee down.

We hope an individual identified this guide on deciding on a golf ball helpful. Many of us will carry on and offer anyone more helpful courses about other golf matters for you to the e-mail address you actually provided to help a person become a good better player in the near foreseeable future.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

I am the founder of FOURM design studio and one of the architects for The Witness. This article is inspired by my experience working with the landscape architects and game developers on this project. It may be the first time all three have collaborated so closely to do so.  

As with all attempts at cross-industry collaboration, there are growing pains -- but if successful (and I believe we were) the results can generate beauty and innovation. It is also my hope to illuminate and facilitate this process for others through our learnings and to explore how this collaboration leads to an experience of gaming with gravitas.  

WHY WORK WITH AN ARCHITECT

It was September 2010 when Jonathan Blow approached me to work on his new video game in development, titled The Witness. After viewing the prototype, we also brought on landscape architects Fletcher Studio. This seemed like a good idea considering that while there were 20 or more buildings on the island, the majority of the environment was landscape. Architects and landscape architects know that a building is a mark on the land in a context. No building should be designed without considering the landscape it is a part of. Jonathan saw the logic of this, and by the summer we were off and running.

My experience working on The Witness the last five years has been one of the single most creative and exciting experiences of my career. While I am grateful that artists like Ronen Bekerman are advancing the quality of architecture in gaming, as I look at the architecture of most video games I feel let down by what I see. I wonder why do we not see more collaboration between experienced architects, landscape architects, and video game developers.

From the architect’s side, I know that we like to make stuff in the real world, and perhaps don’t think it will be rewarding. Architects often don’t play games or see how they can be of service. Many think it’s all about coding and that we need to have this skill. I also think architects may not see the value of the video game industry and its products, which is unfortunately an ignorance that I also possessed prior to working in the industry.

From the game developer’s side, they may think they do not need architects and do not understand their value. After all, they are not trained in the video game industry. My experience is that most game developers, including artists, just don’t understand architecture or landscape design. This is not a surprise, given that it is a highly specialized field where people study for up to seven years in college to absorb and develop design skills. Finally, many developers may also just think that designers like us are not affordable.

The reality is that these beliefs may be interfering with a collaboration that could both expand the design and development of physical architecture and video games as an art form.

Let me provide some reasons to consider working with us:

When you include an architect and landscape architect as part of a development team you are bringing on a profession already trained to work conceptually, iteratively and critically.

The design development processes and tools are similar even though products are different.

We are trained in considering the user experience when moving through a space so absorbing the concept of gameplay is not difficult. 

We bring great depth of knowledge to the creation of 3D environments that can foster deeper immersion and enhances gameplay.

We are used to working with clients and in multi-disciplinary teams so should be essentially easy to work with. 

Technological advancements in game engines, rendering capacity, virtual reality etc. present a more urgent need for our expertise as digital environments strive to become even more realistic and/or fantastical.

To conclude, any game that is three-dimensional in nature could potentially benefit from an architect or landscape architect. We can help developers think of space as more than just enclosure/envelope. When this thinking is not applied, many elements of design that are critical to enhancing gameplay immersion and experience are lost to the detriment of the game developer’s intention. 

DESIGNING FOR GRAVITAS: THINGS TO CONSIDER

If you are working without an architect or landscape architect there are 10 basic things that games tend to do that could be avoided with some design knowledge and application. I am going to refer to some games other than The Witness as both successful and less successful because they are popular, diverse, and frankly most of them I really like. It would be nice to see them taken to the next level so that the environments are not distracting and incongruent with the goals they are trying to achieve. 

1. Developing architectural narratives

It is always helpful to remember that landscapes and architecture are based in the temporal, physical, and institutional constraints of the real world. What is the topography of the land? What materials are available to us? What climate are we in? What are the zoning laws? Where is the sun coming from?

Therefore, one of our first questions we asked Jonathan’s team (Thekla) was “What direction is north?” They replied, “What difference does that make?” I knew then that we would need to recreate and reframe the real world constraints with which we had been working. In order to design customized environments we would need to develop a narrative and new kinds of constraints that would define it.

So how do we create narratives that deliver rich environments? Sometimes in an effort to create a holistic identity or world, video games commit to one style/period, or genre yet this is not how environments exist in reality. Our built environments have history, a story across time. They are layered. In The Witness we use this passage of time to create the narrative so the environments are a series of adaptively re-used buildings and landscapes beginning with prehistoric times to the present day and beyond. Each building and landscape is designed in response to the needs of at least one civilization and in some buildings all three civilizations are expressed.  

For example, at the edge of the island is a concrete factory that sits in a quarry. The environment registers how the Stone Age people (Civilization I) began to quarry stone for tombs through small cuts in the cliff side. Then one can see where the stone was mined at a larger scale for religious structures such as churches and cathedrals in Civilization II. A church is built here both carved and constructed from the stones being quarried around it. As Civilization III developed, even larger stones were mined and used to make concrete, a more contemporary building material. Small stones were also required as aggregate and the church was converted to a factory in order to scale this process and construct other buildings on the island.  As a gameplay wayfinding element, the factory exhaust rises up out the old steeple. Inside factory equipment integrated with the religious frieze panels provide the game artists with additional opportunities to tell a deeper lever of narrative.  

While architectural narratives like these were easy for us to develop, they may not be as easy for gameplay developers. For us the gameplay constraints were more challenging. We were fortunate to have a developer like Jonathan who provided us with what became our primary constraint-game play. The rules of The Witness with regards to gameplay were rigorous and finite in many ways. As architects, we had to learn about what this meant. It is one of the things architects need to understand when working with developers and an aspect that developers can more rigorously apply to environmental design.

2. Integrating landscape and architecture

Developing a close integration between architecture and landscape is critical towards creating a realistic and integrated experience. Games like The Witness, Bioshock Infinite, The Talos Principle, Ether One, and even Super Mario 3D World are creating environments where the integration of this aspect of the world is critical to the player's experience. In The Witness, the landscape architects helped us to understand the way the natural world develops and how to explore and adapt the variety of amazing geological formations and bio zones to meet the needs of gameplay. We also worked together so that every building was integrated into its environment and used the landscape to guide players to components they needed to locate or see.

3. Building design

Buildings in games are usually references to images of buildings the game developer or artist sees in magazines, their lives, or image references. Rarely have I seen in games buildings that are purpose-built or designed specifically for the style, concept, and narrative of the game.

Bioshock Infinite is a game that has an interesting premise and yet does not take full advantage of the opportunity to create really amazing and unique buildings that could have supported the narrative. I love the scenes with the floating 18th century buildings jammed together and the exciting spatial quality they have achieved.

It would have been stronger if they had applied the steampunk aesthetic to the design of the buildings. If conceptualized as characters in the context of the game, a series of customized forms and details could have been replicated throughout the interior and exterior environments that would reduce the visual noise in this game. They would have been able to achieve a more sublime feel like they have achieved in the lighthouse level. 

4. Deploying materials & textures

Most game designers probably know all too well the trappings of placing brush, ruin wall, stones, or stains and noise to address issues that aren’t working well in their design. Yet understanding the properties of materials, how they behave and are created can help artists make better decisions in how they deploy this aspect of the design.

Look at the world around you as much as you can, and you will start to see how concrete stains, wood cracks, or how steel rusts or melts in fire. Many games suffer from what I call the “cut and paste” look -- where buildings or materials are deployed without any rigor or understanding of their properties. This may happen due to the pace of building massive worlds within a short amount of time but if you understand some basic principles of materials then you can make fast decisions that are well informed.

For example, the steampunk style that BioShock Infinite draws on for its narratives is a genre rich with textures and details. However, in the game they create a noisy collage. Stone columns are supported by wood flooring, a much lighter material. Structures and architecture elements are made up of four or five different materials that have no relationship to one another and would not actually stand up.  

In The Witness, we tried to develop a palette of materials that supported the narrative and helped the artists to understand them such as the ways concrete is formed. They are now experts themselves and  are able to develop the textures in a thoughtful way that aligned with the gameplay style. We also worked on the textures to pull out the essential quality of the material to you could understand what is was without diverging from the art style of the game.  

The Witness: Belltower with Corten Steel and Civilization II Stonework

5. Scaling, proportion, and style

Understanding building assemblies (connections between elements) and how that influences our perception of these environments can help with the development of the interior and exterior environments. This is something architects understand very well. Therefore a good way to work cheaply with an architect is to have them do sketches over scenes like this one I did in a few minutes on a scene from Ether One.

The wood texture should be finer,  and the desk has a low level of detail compared with other aspects like the wainscot on the wall, whose height looks too low (3 to 4’ is ideal). The lighting needs to be more integrated and the plants in the dark corners would definitely be dead from lack of light (which could be cool if they actually were). They have used stone columns throughout this area, so why not bring the element into the space for consistency? In addition, there are no pieces of wood that would span the entire back wall. Showing seams/panels here and in the desk add honesty, verticality, and a level of detail that is consistent with the rest of the space. They coudl also consider showing more layers of time in a single room that might stregnthen the dementia narrative. For example, old wood showing through gypsum wallboard that has been ripped away. 

A great example of these aspects of design can be found In Journey. Here, the architecture assemblies are accurate, consistent and in proportion to one another while still creating a fantastical world. The landscape and buildings are scaled well with the character and other assets of the game. There is a verticality to the proportions that is lovely and consistently replicated throughout the game. This gives is a very refined and holistic look and feel. Even through there is a distortion in these proportions from reality it is done with an understanding of the basic principles of design so it works quite well.  Once you develop an eye for the scale and proportion of architecture and landscapes they are easier to manipulate. 

6. Details

Along with understanding scale and proportion comes the proper rendering of details in the architecture. These may be done to avoid abstraction of space if your art style is refined or making them simpler if things are of a looser style. What is most important is being consistent with the level of detail and the scale of these elements. It is something we spent a while on in the witness so that the lighting, stairs, door handles, furniture, or window openings are all developed at the same level of consistent detail and in alignment with our art style. For us, it made doing modern architecture difficult at times and we worked hard to create details that reflected these assemblies in a low poly yet realistic way for the painterly quality we wanted.  

The Witness: Hub Chapel

This scene from Ether One looks great, but making this small change would harmonize the entire space.

Mirror's Edge is another game that does a particularly great job of detailing most of its elements. They make strategic use of building systems such as electrical, plumbing, heating, and cooling systems with color to guide gameplay movement and perception. It is visually pleasing due to the lack of noise yet it is rich at the same time just by understanding materials, transitions, details, and assemblies of the built world. Even a game like Relativity that is diverse spatially but simple in its execution has an incredible consistency that makes it wonderful to be in.  

Another beautiful but quite different game that also makes good use of detail is Relativity. It is diverse spatially, unique in its style and simple and consistent in its palette and details, which I think helps you to feel immersed in this MC Echer-esque world.  

Detailing contrasting components well is also a great opportunity for good design. For example, the integration of layers of time in The Talos Principle is interesting, and it is these moments that it could have been nice to think about how they would integrate given they are very prominent in the environment. Rather than stick things on the stone, these technological pieces could have been integrated in the tectonic of the old castle wall in a more sophisticated way that would have added some gravitas to the look and feel of the game, supported the narrative and built on the textures that had. 

7. Transitions

In addition to detailing connections, it is also important to articulate transitions: areas between rooms and spaces, thresholds/entries, vertical assemblies (base middle and top), where a wall meets floor etc.

Often the architecture is covered in texture maps, from wallpaper to bricks, but then the intersection between surfaces is left out -- creating an incongruent condition between the detail of the materials and the assembly itself. I see this almost every game I have played. It is turning out to be one of the most important levels of refinement we have been doing in our final pass on The Witness. 

8. Characters and environment

Christian Nutt of Gamasutra asked me if Super Mario 3D World could benefit from working with architects. I think that perhaps it could. The interesting thing is that Super Mario 3D World has a lot of modularity as does architecture in the real world.  

With its great gameplay, investigating what a designer trained in architecture could bring to a game like this is exciting. I believe popular games like Super Mario 3D World are perfect vehicles for increasing visual literacy as they are simple and can help the player understand both the goals of the game and the world around them.

What I do notice in this game and many others is that the architecture environment does not have the same proportioning and detailing as the characters moving through the scene. In Super Mario 3D World it’s almost as if the curves and details of the characters have been scaled up to create the forms we see in the world. 

I often wonder if artists just feel more comfortable and have more experience designing characters. I know sometimes this is also being done to highlight the characters, which makes sense. However I wonder if through the exploration of the art style and articulation of the environment they could be in greater alignment with one another and improve the clarity and experience of the game. I think Mirror's Edge does this well. The backgrounds are articulated to a point that they have some gravitas but aren’t overpowering the characters. 

10. The space in between

While the architecture itself is important the relationships between buildings is just as important as the building itself. They are part of an overall scene that you are creating in every moment, and understanding how buildings can create outdoor rooms and a diversity of spatial experiences definitely enhances gameplay.

The Talos Principle is an example of a game that has some great spaces that are scaled really well and others that are not so much. In many areas there is a flatness to the experience since there is no strong vertical expression or experience of the architecture that would traditional be found in castles due to their purpose and use as place for protection and surveillance.

The open spaces, courtyards or baileys where you are shooting are too large compared to the wall height, and what would have been the interior spaces of the castle. An opportunity would have been to harness the design of castles and the development of the radial form of the medieval city to help with the experience of the game and provide more interest to the experience through spatial variety that reflects the historical narrative of this time. 

Most buildings prior to the Modernist movement have a hierarchy to them like the church nave or the grand entry. This flattening of the architectural experience in the agency of gameplay goes counter to our experience of this type of architecture and is a missed opportunity. Why not use the logic of these buildings to enhance gameplay?

Many games also often have large spaces that have game assets floating in them. An unrealistic building or room density does not provide containment of the events unfolding. Often objects are out of scale to one another or larger than any element might be in reality.

For example, the Gone Home entry foyer in plan is massively out of proportion with the height and the scale of any suburban home as viewed from the outside. The assets are floating in the space in ways that feel out of context with the real experience of domestic space pulling us out of the immersive reality. 

The player is drawn to the objects because they stand out in a bare room but it seems like they would have been more successful by integrating assets into well-scaled environments. They could use the space itself to guide players to these components in a sophisticated way perhaps through light, color, and detail.

Gone Home is one of my favorite games to play because it makes use of 3D and 2D representation of this space. It would have been more powerful to create a house or even a compound that had some logical complexity to it and generated a domestic environment that made sense and enhanced the game play experience by drawing on our personal memories of home. 

THE PROCESS

For those considering working with design professionals I wanted to share a bit about our process since we learned a lot as we went. While some things were new for us, many things were very familiar to our way of working. Architecture is an iterative process using both analogue and digital media and always requires working creatively with people coming from various engineering and artistic backgrounds. In these ways, working with game developers was no different.

The diagram below shows this process, which for us usually began with a rough prototype from Thekla.  Sometimes we would have working sessions with them to develop a prototype based on idea one of us would have but usually they were developed by Jonathan. Either way FOURM design studio would work closely with Fletcher Studio to develop the building and landscape together and return to Thekla with various options for consideration.

In the beginning, we would deliver designs in the form of Sketchup or Rhino models, hand drawings and image references but we soon realized that checking our options into the game engine itself was best. Sketchup proved to be the easiest, as we were not using 3DS or Maya, and exports from nurbs modelers like Rhino proved difficult to clean up.  

If some options seemed feasible, Thekla would develop one or two and evaluate its success. If the former or latter options did not work, we would return with additional options. Once Thekla had a prototype tested in game we would then refine it and everyone would work iteratively to get it to its final condition. Even recently, we did a complete polish on all the architecture in the game and it took everything to a level of sophistication beyond even my expectations. 

CHOOSING AN ARCHITECT

If you are considering working with an architect then there are some things to think about in this selection. Not all architects are the same and therefore not all are going to be appropriate for your team. 

You should ideally find an architect/landscape architect that has facility with 3D modeling software and understands building assemblies as most do. However, a good technical architect is not always great at thinking conceptually. You will need to find one who can develop architecture from abstract/philosophical ideas or gameplay narratives. This kind of designer can also help develop narratives for you to consider.  

If they have experience in the game industry or love games that its great but they at least need to be willing to play games and educative themselves in the industry. For me this involved finding and playing games I enjoyed and some I did not. It also involved going to industry conferences on my own dime to understand the industry more deeply. On your game they will need to respect and clearly understand the rules and concept of gameplay.

TIMING AND COST

I believe we came onto The Witness at a great time. It was after the basic working prototype had been developed since Jonathan needed no assistance in conceptualizing his game.

Some of your timing may depend on budget and cost. The sad news for us and the good news for you is that architecture is the lowest paid profession (we are also not good at math). Usually architects work on a lump sum fee based on phases and are related to overall project costs. Architects' fees can range from 5% to 15% of overall construction budget depending on the type of project. If budget is an issue an architect can be brought in a key stages for evaluation and input.  An architect’s hourly rate is roughly that of a senior game artist.

CONCLUSION

While all these aspects of design are important, the most critical thing that I teach to professionals and students alike is to just wake up and pay attention to the world around you. I hope that these recommendations can help you do that even if you choose not to work with an architect.

I would also like to conclude by presenting a bigger vision for this collaboration. I believe that everything we do creatively influences our larger cultural context. As more members of our society begin to play games in well-designed digital environments, we will ultimately improve the visual literacy of our population. In doing so, I believe there is a reverse effect where we will start to expect more from our physical environments rather than ignore them as we often do now. We will start to question the strip mall, the big box stores, suburban landscapes filled with McMansions and the bland colorless panelized architecture we crank out in the United States, at least. Maybe through the immense creativity found in the creation of digital environments we can envision better physical environments that foster imagination, community, sustainability, and well-being. In doing so I also hope that we have moved further down the road of accessing the power of video games to change the world around us for the better.

Many thanks to the other members of The Witness design team!

Digo Lima, David Fletcher, Nico Wright, Beth Bukolich

[gamemodustk-blog]

3 years later the console war is still confusing

Last year, after much previous hemming and hawing, we recommended that console gamers looking for a new console finally take the plunge and invest in a PlayStation 4. But the console market has changed in the 12 months since that recommendation, from the release of new generation-splitting hardware to the announcement of upcoming console hardware from both Microsoft and Nintendo.

Is it time to upgrade? Is it better to wait? Should you just stick to a retro-focused Raspberry Pi build instead? Below, we'll walk you through the current state of the console market, summarize what we know about the near future, and give you our best recommendation for where to put your console dollars.

Go Pro?

The PS4 Pro: It's bigger, it's pricier, and it's more powerful. But does it offer a true 4K experience? Video hosted by: Mark Walton.

By far the biggest change in the console space in the past year was Sony's release of the PlayStation 4 Pro. This isn't a full-blown "PlayStation 5" follow-up, but rather a slightly upgraded piece of hardware that's firmly in the same console generation as the PlayStation 4 Sony released just three years ago. That means that all software released by Sony or third-party developers for the foreseeable future will work on both the standard older PS4 and the newer PS4 Pro.

Without exclusive games over the existing PS4 (which sells for $250 with a bundled game during the holiday season), the only reason to invest in the pricier PS4 Pro ($400 without a game) is for that bump in processing power. The PS4 Pro includes more GPU cores and a slightly faster CPU and RAM bus, which developers can use for better graphical resolutions, faster frame rates, and more detailed character and environmental models in many games.

Keep in mind, though, that these visual upgrades don't apply across the entire PlayStation 4 library. Only games specifically coded with the PS4 Pro in mind (or older games whose developers have released a downloadable patch meant for the Pro) will see any benefit. So far that includes only a few dozen games, most of which came out near the tail end of 2016.

Going forward, Sony has said all the games it publishes directly will include upgrades for the PS4 Pro. Sony seems keen on ensuring its third-party partners also code their games to take advantage of the Pro. Adding in those Pro enhancements doesn't take much extra effort, according to developers we've spoken to, so it might not be a rarity in the future. Still, the full impact of the PS4 Pro on the PlayStation 4 library going forward will depend on how willing the development community is to support the new hardware. That, in turn, depends on how many people end up buying the new system and how many of the 50 million or so current PS4 owners stick with the older hardware.

In this gallery, I used my SLR camera to capture how The Last of Us: Remastered actually looks on a 4K TV. Here's a shot of a bookcase on the standard PS4...

... and here's the same bookcase on the PS4 Pro. Notice the smoother lines (Expand or download the photos for a better look)

Extreme close-up of the bookshelf on the standard PS4...

... the same books are much more readable on the PS4 Pro.

The model of Sarah in the mirror is pretty jaggedy on the PS4...

... on the PS4 Pro, mirror Sarah looks much smoother.

 Should you be one of those upgraders? Well, if you have a plain-old 1080p TV, the apparent improvement in PS4 enhanced games is marginal. You might see slightly smoother frame rates or slightly fewer jagged edges on certain in-game objects.

To get the most out of a PS4 Pro, you need a quality 4K TV. True, most PS4 Pro-enhanced games don't put out a full "native" 4K signal from the system itself. That said, most of those games do go well above the maxed-out 1080p image on the standard PS4. On a 4K screen, those extra pixels lead to a welcome bit of extra sharpness in supported games, especially if you tend to sit close to a large display.

You'll also notice some PS4 games have now been enhanced with high-dynamic range (HDR) color, which can make images pop with hyper-real contrast on supported 4K displays. Keep in mind, though, that those HDR colors are available from the standard PS4, too—you don't need the PS4 Pro to get the benefit.

FURTHER READING

PlayStation VR provides a lot of bang for your virtual reality buck

The other big improvement on the PS4 Pro only comes through on the PlayStation VR headset. By increasing the internal resolution of VR games, the PS4 Pro generates much sharper images on the PSVR's 1080p display. That makes a big difference when those displays sit just a few inches from your face, resulting in a more convincing virtual reality experience.

While the PS4 Pro is the more future-proof version of the system for new console buyers to get, we can't really recommend an upgrade for players who have already invested in a standard PS4. The improved graphics on some games are nifty, but that $400 could go toward a lot of games that will also work on the PS4 you already have.

Waiting for Microsoft

Ars goes hands-on and in-depth with the Xbox One S.

FURTHER READING

This year's new Microsoft console is the Xbox One S. A shoot-out between the One S and the PS4 Pro is a bit of a false comparison, though. The Xbox One S is primarily a cosmetic upgrade to the Xbox One box itself, shrinking the total volume by 42 percent and getting rid of the bulky "power brick" that sticks out of the wall outlet with the original Xbox One.

The Xbox One S sports some slight internal hardware upgrades over the original system, however. For one, it's the only Xbox capable of outputting HDR colors (unlike the PS4, which supports HDR on all hardware). So far, only nine Xbox One games have support for that color standard, however. Although more are promised to be "in the works," this seems like a marginal reason to upgrade for the time being.

Unlike the original system, the Xbox One S is capable of pushing ultra-high-definition 4K signals to a compatible TV. This upgrade doesn't apply to games, though; those still max out at 1080p on the Xbox One S and run at the same resolution as on the original Xbox One. Instead, the Xbox One S can play 4K Blu-ray discs (something the PS4 Pro can't do) and can handle 4K streams from the likes of Netflix. A nice benefit, but, again, not really a reason to throw out your old Xbox One if you have one. (If you don't have one, the Xbox One S is the only version of the system Microsoft is selling new nowadays, though refurbished original systems might be slightly cheaper.)

Ars' Mark Walton and Sam Machkovech discuss the awesome processing power of Scorpio. But what do all those specs mean for the gamer? Where does the Xbox One S fit in? And will existing Xbox owners upgrade?

If you want more significant visual upgrades to your gaming in Microsoft's console ecosystem, you're going to have to wait until the end of 2017. That's when Microsoft is planning to release Project Scorpio, its own heavily upgraded version of the Xbox One. Much like the PS4 Pro, Scorpio isn't intended to replace the original Xbox One. Instead, Scorpio will augment many Xbox One games with improved graphics, and those games will still work on the older hardware.

Microsoft's E3 announcement for Scorpio promised significantly upgraded specs over even the PS4 Pro, including 6 teraflops of total CPU power and fully 4K games running at 60 frames per second. We're skeptical that the Scorpio will live up to that promise at a mass market price within the next 12 months, but with little in the way of details to go on, we have to wait and see.

Microsoft has also said that Scorpio will be the only Xbox console to support virtual reality headsets. Though Microsoft hasn't gone into any details about how that support will work, the company did recently get behind a line of PC-based VR headsets to launch next year. There's also some speculation that Microsoft could be planning to extend its existing, Windows-based relationship with the Oculus Rift to direct Xbox One support.

Until we know more, judging the Scorpio as anything but a series of vague promises is hard. At the same time, the knowledge that heavily improved hardware is coming to the Xbox One line within a year also makes taking the plunge on the system as it currently exists just as difficult. The result is an awkward holding pattern that probably won't be broken until more Scorpio information comes out, likely at E3 in June.

Nintendo wants you to Switch

 In last year's console round-up, we only gave a perfunctory mention to the Wii U, which was clearly circling the drainpipe of console history even back then. Despite a healthy selection of excellent, Nintendo-developed exclusives, the Wii U wasn't (and isn't) a system for anyone who wants a healthy line-up of new gaming content well into the future. Nintendo recently confirmed this assessment by ceasing production of Wii U hardware less than four years after its debut.

In recent months, though, Nintendo's attention has switched over to the Switch, a new console that seems destined to unify Nintendo's home console and portable hardware lines. The system itself resides in a roughly six-inch tablet, with detachable controllers that can be used together for a dual-joystick single-player experience or slid apart separately for more limited multiplayer controls. You can also use those controllers when you slide the Switch into an included dock, which both charges the system and displays its games on a full-sized HDTV.

 Nintendo

With a "custom Tegra processor" of the type used to power tablets and phones, the Switch seems unlikely to outclass (or even match) the likes of the PS4 and Xbox One in raw processing power, to say nothing of the PS4 Pro and Scorpio. That said, it should still be at least a marginal step up from the underpowered and aging Wii U, despite the portable form factor.

The Switch also isn't loaded down with the same kind of motion control and multi-screen gameplay gimmicks as recent Nintendo consoles. Those gimmicks, as much as underpowered hardware, ended up hurting Nintendo's support among the third-party publishers that gravitated toward Sony and Microsoft systems instead in the last decade.

This time around, recent games like Skyrim, NBA 2K17, and Dark Souls 3 are reportedly in the works for the system. And Nintendo is promoting a variety of third-party partners that are working on the Switch, though similar early support for the Wii U evaporated quickly.

If Nintendo can fix its problem with attracting external support from outside publishers (a big if, at the moment), the Switch might actually merit consideration as a "first" console for some gamers. Right now, though, it's impossible to know how seriously to take Nintendo's unique take on the console market. We'll know more when Nintendo reveals additional details about the Switch launch in January.

Should I stay or should I go, now?

 If you've managed to avoid buying a current generation console for this long, you really should hold off a little longer. With new hardware from Microsoft and Nintendo coming in the next 12 months, any purchase decision you make now might look under-informed in the near future. Plus, current systems will likely cost less next year, if you're willing to miss out on a few months of playing currently available games.

That said, if you can't wait a year to see how things shake out, we still recommend going with a PlayStation 4. It still has the best exclusive games (a list that grew to include Uncharted 4 in 2016), and it now comes with the option to add on the relatively cheap and surprisingly able PlayStation VR headset, if you're interested in taking that plunge.

If you don't plan on getting a 4KTV or PlayStation VR, the cheaper standard PS4 should be just fine for your purposes. If you do have one of those fancy displays, though, or are looking to future-proof your system, the small extra investment in the more powerful PS4 Pro is probably worth it. Then again, if you're looking to the future anyway, you should just wait and see where things stand in another year.

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

I am the founder of FOURM design studio and one of the architects for The Witness. This article is inspired by my experience working with the landscape architects and game developers on this project. It may be the first time all three have collaborated so closely to do so.  

As with all attempts at cross-industry collaboration, there are growing pains -- but if successful (and I believe we were) the results can generate beauty and innovation. It is also my hope to illuminate and facilitate this process for others through our learnings and to explore how this collaboration leads to an experience of gaming with gravitas.  

WHY WORK WITH AN ARCHITECT

It was September 2010 when Jonathan Blow approached me to work on his new video game in development, titled The Witness. After viewing the prototype, we also brought on landscape architects Fletcher Studio. This seemed like a good idea considering that while there were 20 or more buildings on the island, the majority of the environment was landscape. Architects and landscape architects know that a building is a mark on the land in a context. No building should be designed without considering the landscape it is a part of. Jonathan saw the logic of this, and by the summer we were off and running.

My experience working on The Witness the last five years has been one of the single most creative and exciting experiences of my career. While I am grateful that artists like Ronen Bekerman are advancing the quality of architecture in gaming, as I look at the architecture of most video games I feel let down by what I see. I wonder why do we not see more collaboration between experienced architects, landscape architects, and video game developers.

From the architect’s side, I know that we like to make stuff in the real world, and perhaps don’t think it will be rewarding. Architects often don’t play games or see how they can be of service. Many think it’s all about coding and that we need to have this skill. I also think architects may not see the value of the video game industry and its products, which is unfortunately an ignorance that I also possessed prior to working in the industry.

From the game developer’s side, they may think they do not need architects and do not understand their value. After all, they are not trained in the video game industry. My experience is that most game developers, including artists, just don’t understand architecture or landscape design. This is not a surprise, given that it is a highly specialized field where people study for up to seven years in college to absorb and develop design skills. Finally, many developers may also just think that designers like us are not affordable.

The reality is that these beliefs may be interfering with a collaboration that could both expand the design and development of physical architecture and video games as an art form.

Let me provide some reasons to consider working with us:

When you include an architect and landscape architect as part of a development team you are bringing on a profession already trained to work conceptually, iteratively and critically.

The design development processes and tools are similar even though products are different.

We are trained in considering the user experience when moving through a space so absorbing the concept of gameplay is not difficult. 

We bring great depth of knowledge to the creation of 3D environments that can foster deeper immersion and enhances gameplay.

We are used to working with clients and in multi-disciplinary teams so should be essentially easy to work with. 

Technological advancements in game engines, rendering capacity, virtual reality etc. present a more urgent need for our expertise as digital environments strive to become even more realistic and/or fantastical.

To conclude, any game that is three-dimensional in nature could potentially benefit from an architect or landscape architect. We can help developers think of space as more than just enclosure/envelope. When this thinking is not applied, many elements of design that are critical to enhancing gameplay immersion and experience are lost to the detriment of the game developer’s intention. 

DESIGNING FOR GRAVITAS: THINGS TO CONSIDER

If you are working without an architect or landscape architect there are 10 basic things that games tend to do that could be avoided with some design knowledge and application. I am going to refer to some games other than The Witness as both successful and less successful because they are popular, diverse, and frankly most of them I really like. It would be nice to see them taken to the next level so that the environments are not distracting and incongruent with the goals they are trying to achieve. 

1. Developing architectural narratives

It is always helpful to remember that landscapes and architecture are based in the temporal, physical, and institutional constraints of the real world. What is the topography of the land? What materials are available to us? What climate are we in? What are the zoning laws? Where is the sun coming from?

Therefore, one of our first questions we asked Jonathan’s team (Thekla) was “What direction is north?” They replied, “What difference does that make?” I knew then that we would need to recreate and reframe the real world constraints with which we had been working. In order to design customized environments we would need to develop a narrative and new kinds of constraints that would define it.

So how do we create narratives that deliver rich environments? Sometimes in an effort to create a holistic identity or world, video games commit to one style/period, or genre yet this is not how environments exist in reality. Our built environments have history, a story across time. They are layered. In The Witness we use this passage of time to create the narrative so the environments are a series of adaptively re-used buildings and landscapes beginning with prehistoric times to the present day and beyond. Each building and landscape is designed in response to the needs of at least one civilization and in some buildings all three civilizations are expressed.  

For example, at the edge of the island is a concrete factory that sits in a quarry. The environment registers how the Stone Age people (Civilization I) began to quarry stone for tombs through small cuts in the cliff side. Then one can see where the stone was mined at a larger scale for religious structures such as churches and cathedrals in Civilization II. A church is built here both carved and constructed from the stones being quarried around it. As Civilization III developed, even larger stones were mined and used to make concrete, a more contemporary building material. Small stones were also required as aggregate and the church was converted to a factory in order to scale this process and construct other buildings on the island.  As a gameplay wayfinding element, the factory exhaust rises up out the old steeple. Inside factory equipment integrated with the religious frieze panels provide the game artists with additional opportunities to tell a deeper lever of narrative.  

While architectural narratives like these were easy for us to develop, they may not be as easy for gameplay developers. For us the gameplay constraints were more challenging. We were fortunate to have a developer like Jonathan who provided us with what became our primary constraint-game play. The rules of The Witness with regards to gameplay were rigorous and finite in many ways. As architects, we had to learn about what this meant. It is one of the things architects need to understand when working with developers and an aspect that developers can more rigorously apply to environmental design.

2. Integrating landscape and architecture

Developing a close integration between architecture and landscape is critical towards creating a realistic and integrated experience. Games like The Witness, Bioshock Infinite, The Talos Principle, Ether One, and even Super Mario 3D World are creating environments where the integration of this aspect of the world is critical to the player's experience. In The Witness, the landscape architects helped us to understand the way the natural world develops and how to explore and adapt the variety of amazing geological formations and bio zones to meet the needs of gameplay. We also worked together so that every building was integrated into its environment and used the landscape to guide players to components they needed to locate or see.

3. Building design

Buildings in games are usually references to images of buildings the game developer or artist sees in magazines, their lives, or image references. Rarely have I seen in games buildings that are purpose-built or designed specifically for the style, concept, and narrative of the game.

Bioshock Infinite is a game that has an interesting premise and yet does not take full advantage of the opportunity to create really amazing and unique buildings that could have supported the narrative. I love the scenes with the floating 18th century buildings jammed together and the exciting spatial quality they have achieved.

It would have been stronger if they had applied the steampunk aesthetic to the design of the buildings. If conceptualized as characters in the context of the game, a series of customized forms and details could have been replicated throughout the interior and exterior environments that would reduce the visual noise in this game. They would have been able to achieve a more sublime feel like they have achieved in the lighthouse level. 

4. Deploying materials & textures

Most game designers probably know all too well the trappings of placing brush, ruin wall, stones, or stains and noise to address issues that aren’t working well in their design. Yet understanding the properties of materials, how they behave and are created can help artists make better decisions in how they deploy this aspect of the design.

Look at the world around you as much as you can, and you will start to see how concrete stains, wood cracks, or how steel rusts or melts in fire. Many games suffer from what I call the “cut and paste” look -- where buildings or materials are deployed without any rigor or understanding of their properties. This may happen due to the pace of building massive worlds within a short amount of time but if you understand some basic principles of materials then you can make fast decisions that are well informed.

For example, the steampunk style that BioShock Infinite draws on for its narratives is a genre rich with textures and details. However, in the game they create a noisy collage. Stone columns are supported by wood flooring, a much lighter material. Structures and architecture elements are made up of four or five different materials that have no relationship to one another and would not actually stand up.  

In The Witness, we tried to develop a palette of materials that supported the narrative and helped the artists to understand them such as the ways concrete is formed. They are now experts themselves and  are able to develop the textures in a thoughtful way that aligned with the gameplay style. We also worked on the textures to pull out the essential quality of the material to you could understand what is was without diverging from the art style of the game.  

The Witness: Belltower with Corten Steel and Civilization II Stonework

5. Scaling, proportion, and style

Understanding building assemblies (connections between elements) and how that influences our perception of these environments can help with the development of the interior and exterior environments. This is something architects understand very well. Therefore a good way to work cheaply with an architect is to have them do sketches over scenes like this one I did in a few minutes on a scene from Ether One.

The wood texture should be finer,  and the desk has a low level of detail compared with other aspects like the wainscot on the wall, whose height looks too low (3 to 4’ is ideal). The lighting needs to be more integrated and the plants in the dark corners would definitely be dead from lack of light (which could be cool if they actually were). They have used stone columns throughout this area, so why not bring the element into the space for consistency? In addition, there are no pieces of wood that would span the entire back wall. Showing seams/panels here and in the desk add honesty, verticality, and a level of detail that is consistent with the rest of the space. They coudl also consider showing more layers of time in a single room that might stregnthen the dementia narrative. For example, old wood showing through gypsum wallboard that has been ripped away. 

A great example of these aspects of design can be found In Journey. Here, the architecture assemblies are accurate, consistent and in proportion to one another while still creating a fantastical world. The landscape and buildings are scaled well with the character and other assets of the game. There is a verticality to the proportions that is lovely and consistently replicated throughout the game. This gives is a very refined and holistic look and feel. Even through there is a distortion in these proportions from reality it is done with an understanding of the basic principles of design so it works quite well.  Once you develop an eye for the scale and proportion of architecture and landscapes they are easier to manipulate. 

6. Details

Along with understanding scale and proportion comes the proper rendering of details in the architecture. These may be done to avoid abstraction of space if your art style is refined or making them simpler if things are of a looser style. What is most important is being consistent with the level of detail and the scale of these elements. It is something we spent a while on in the witness so that the lighting, stairs, door handles, furniture, or window openings are all developed at the same level of consistent detail and in alignment with our art style. For us, it made doing modern architecture difficult at times and we worked hard to create details that reflected these assemblies in a low poly yet realistic way for the painterly quality we wanted.  

The Witness: Hub Chapel

This scene from Ether One looks great, but making this small change would harmonize the entire space.

Mirror's Edge is another game that does a particularly great job of detailing most of its elements. They make strategic use of building systems such as electrical, plumbing, heating, and cooling systems with color to guide gameplay movement and perception. It is visually pleasing due to the lack of noise yet it is rich at the same time just by understanding materials, transitions, details, and assemblies of the built world. Even a game like Relativity that is diverse spatially but simple in its execution has an incredible consistency that makes it wonderful to be in.  

Another beautiful but quite different game that also makes good use of detail is Relativity. It is diverse spatially, unique in its style and simple and consistent in its palette and details, which I think helps you to feel immersed in this MC Echer-esque world.  

Detailing contrasting components well is also a great opportunity for good design. For example, the integration of layers of time in The Talos Principle is interesting, and it is these moments that it could have been nice to think about how they would integrate given they are very prominent in the environment. Rather than stick things on the stone, these technological pieces could have been integrated in the tectonic of the old castle wall in a more sophisticated way that would have added some gravitas to the look and feel of the game, supported the narrative and built on the textures that had. 

7. Transitions

In addition to detailing connections, it is also important to articulate transitions: areas between rooms and spaces, thresholds/entries, vertical assemblies (base middle and top), where a wall meets floor etc.

Often the architecture is covered in texture maps, from wallpaper to bricks, but then the intersection between surfaces is left out -- creating an incongruent condition between the detail of the materials and the assembly itself. I see this almost every game I have played. It is turning out to be one of the most important levels of refinement we have been doing in our final pass on The Witness. 

8. Characters and environment

Christian Nutt of Gamasutra asked me if Super Mario 3D World could benefit from working with architects. I think that perhaps it could. The interesting thing is that Super Mario 3D World has a lot of modularity as does architecture in the real world.  

With its great gameplay, investigating what a designer trained in architecture could bring to a game like this is exciting. I believe popular games like Super Mario 3D World are perfect vehicles for increasing visual literacy as they are simple and can help the player understand both the goals of the game and the world around them.

What I do notice in this game and many others is that the architecture environment does not have the same proportioning and detailing as the characters moving through the scene. In Super Mario 3D World it’s almost as if the curves and details of the characters have been scaled up to create the forms we see in the world. 

I often wonder if artists just feel more comfortable and have more experience designing characters. I know sometimes this is also being done to highlight the characters, which makes sense. However I wonder if through the exploration of the art style and articulation of the environment they could be in greater alignment with one another and improve the clarity and experience of the game. I think Mirror's Edge does this well. The backgrounds are articulated to a point that they have some gravitas but aren’t overpowering the characters. 

10. The space in between

While the architecture itself is important the relationships between buildings is just as important as the building itself. They are part of an overall scene that you are creating in every moment, and understanding how buildings can create outdoor rooms and a diversity of spatial experiences definitely enhances gameplay.

The Talos Principle is an example of a game that has some great spaces that are scaled really well and others that are not so much. In many areas there is a flatness to the experience since there is no strong vertical expression or experience of the architecture that would traditional be found in castles due to their purpose and use as place for protection and surveillance.

The open spaces, courtyards or baileys where you are shooting are too large compared to the wall height, and what would have been the interior spaces of the castle. An opportunity would have been to harness the design of castles and the development of the radial form of the medieval city to help with the experience of the game and provide more interest to the experience through spatial variety that reflects the historical narrative of this time. 

Most buildings prior to the Modernist movement have a hierarchy to them like the church nave or the grand entry. This flattening of the architectural experience in the agency of gameplay goes counter to our experience of this type of architecture and is a missed opportunity. Why not use the logic of these buildings to enhance gameplay?

Many games also often have large spaces that have game assets floating in them. An unrealistic building or room density does not provide containment of the events unfolding. Often objects are out of scale to one another or larger than any element might be in reality.

For example, the Gone Home entry foyer in plan is massively out of proportion with the height and the scale of any suburban home as viewed from the outside. The assets are floating in the space in ways that feel out of context with the real experience of domestic space pulling us out of the immersive reality. 

The player is drawn to the objects because they stand out in a bare room but it seems like they would have been more successful by integrating assets into well-scaled environments. They could use the space itself to guide players to these components in a sophisticated way perhaps through light, color, and detail.

Gone Home is one of my favorite games to play because it makes use of 3D and 2D representation of this space. It would have been more powerful to create a house or even a compound that had some logical complexity to it and generated a domestic environment that made sense and enhanced the game play experience by drawing on our personal memories of home. 

THE PROCESS

For those considering working with design professionals I wanted to share a bit about our process since we learned a lot as we went. While some things were new for us, many things were very familiar to our way of working. Architecture is an iterative process using both analogue and digital media and always requires working creatively with people coming from various engineering and artistic backgrounds. In these ways, working with game developers was no different.

The diagram below shows this process, which for us usually began with a rough prototype from Thekla.  Sometimes we would have working sessions with them to develop a prototype based on idea one of us would have but usually they were developed by Jonathan. Either way FOURM design studio would work closely with Fletcher Studio to develop the building and landscape together and return to Thekla with various options for consideration.

In the beginning, we would deliver designs in the form of Sketchup or Rhino models, hand drawings and image references but we soon realized that checking our options into the game engine itself was best. Sketchup proved to be the easiest, as we were not using 3DS or Maya, and exports from nurbs modelers like Rhino proved difficult to clean up.  

If some options seemed feasible, Thekla would develop one or two and evaluate its success. If the former or latter options did not work, we would return with additional options. Once Thekla had a prototype tested in game we would then refine it and everyone would work iteratively to get it to its final condition. Even recently, we did a complete polish on all the architecture in the game and it took everything to a level of sophistication beyond even my expectations. 

CHOOSING AN ARCHITECT

If you are considering working with an architect then there are some things to think about in this selection. Not all architects are the same and therefore not all are going to be appropriate for your team. 

You should ideally find an architect/landscape architect that has facility with 3D modeling software and understands building assemblies as most do. However, a good technical architect is not always great at thinking conceptually. You will need to find one who can develop architecture from abstract/philosophical ideas or gameplay narratives. This kind of designer can also help develop narratives for you to consider.  

If they have experience in the game industry or love games that its great but they at least need to be willing to play games and educative themselves in the industry. For me this involved finding and playing games I enjoyed and some I did not. It also involved going to industry conferences on my own dime to understand the industry more deeply. On your game they will need to respect and clearly understand the rules and concept of gameplay.

TIMING AND COST

I believe we came onto The Witness at a great time. It was after the basic working prototype had been developed since Jonathan needed no assistance in conceptualizing his game.

Some of your timing may depend on budget and cost. The sad news for us and the good news for you is that architecture is the lowest paid profession (we are also not good at math). Usually architects work on a lump sum fee based on phases and are related to overall project costs. Architects' fees can range from 5% to 15% of overall construction budget depending on the type of project. If budget is an issue an architect can be brought in a key stages for evaluation and input.  An architect’s hourly rate is roughly that of a senior game artist.

CONCLUSION

While all these aspects of design are important, the most critical thing that I teach to professionals and students alike is to just wake up and pay attention to the world around you. I hope that these recommendations can help you do that even if you choose not to work with an architect.

I would also like to conclude by presenting a bigger vision for this collaboration. I believe that everything we do creatively influences our larger cultural context. As more members of our society begin to play games in well-designed digital environments, we will ultimately improve the visual literacy of our population. In doing so, I believe there is a reverse effect where we will start to expect more from our physical environments rather than ignore them as we often do now. We will start to question the strip mall, the big box stores, suburban landscapes filled with McMansions and the bland colorless panelized architecture we crank out in the United States, at least. Maybe through the immense creativity found in the creation of digital environments we can envision better physical environments that foster imagination, community, sustainability, and well-being. In doing so I also hope that we have moved further down the road of accessing the power of video games to change the world around us for the better.

Many thanks to the other members of The Witness design team!

Digo Lima, David Fletcher, Nico Wright, Beth Bukolich