#at this point I myself will just switch to metric and make life harder for both myself and life around me out of principle

[dawnthefluffyduck]

I drew this explanation post for why I was completely inactive for a week, but then felt too anxious and drained to post it, and subsequently disappeared for a second week

Two main blog drawings and one side blog wip later, I remembered I made this and still think it's funny, so even though I stopped being dead (TM) I still wanted to share lol

Brief series of events at work

^^^old, but I'm still taking it easy so posts on both this blog and my alt will continue to be scattered for now

[kittenfemme27]

Genshin Impact

Breath of the Wild was a game I wanted to love. I love the Zelda games, always have, and I eat up open world games like candy. Yet, BoTW has sat on my digital shelf collecting digital dust for ages. Why is that? Well, to put it simply, I don't want to play as Link. BoTW has a beautiful world, rich combat and game play puzzles, tons to see and do and experience, it's a sandbox for the ages. But it's hampered so heavily for me by the fact that I have to play this very boring and to be honest kind of forgettable boy named Link during the game play. That may sound petty, but if I'm in an open world game I want to fully immerse myself into that and video games are where we all go to escape anyway. If I wanted to be misgendered, I'd simply forget to shave and go outside.

I don't mind playing other Zelda games because in those, Link is a self contained character in the world and they're relatively short and self contained games. But BoTW is a sandbox. And for a large majority of it, you're not going to be doing the story or being addressed as link. The size of the world and the sheer amount of hours you're going to put into it mean that for almost all intents and purposes, Link isn't Link, he's a faceless avatar that you're supposed to put yourself into. The game offers so much freedom in so many avenues and yet, in your choice of how to explore the world as someone you'd actually like to be, you're not allowed. You have to be a skinny blonde twink.

So, in late 2019, in comes a trailer for Genshin Impact. It's making its rounds on the Internet as a "PC Free to Play Gacha Breath of the Wild Clone" which, while a mouthful, was something I initially wrote off. Didn't see a point in checking it out, as I really don't like Gacha games very much. But in late September 2020, MiHoYo the developers released the public 1.0 build of the game to everyone. Multi-platform, too. iOS/Android, PC, PS4, and even a switch release down the line. And maybe its the pandemic, or maybe the Internet was simply too lured in by the cute anime girls, but it took the many by storm. It took me personally over 12+ hours to download the 11 gigs of the game because the servers were so swamped with people.

Now I do want to be clear: Genshin Impact borrows many things from BoTW, but it isn't a clone. It's not a sandbox in the same way BoTW is and aside from some general game play things such as gliders, stamina/wall climbing system, and general aesthetic, the games are massively different. Still, though, playing it has highlighted to me why I never felt quite right playing BoTW, and its that lack of freedom. That lack of ability to play the game on my own terms and explore the beautiful handcrafted world the way I want to. 

Despite appearances, Genshin Impact is a lot more like a single player MMO than it is anything else. Requiring tons of farming and grinding to create high level powerful characters in a world that gets increasingly more powerful and hostile as you do. The core game play loop of Genshin Impact is pretty phenomenal, essentially giving you a massive world to explore with literally thousands upon thousands of chests and rewards to find. Either by clearing out enemies, doing random in world puzzles, or even just sitting around. Being inside of and exploring the world of Teyvat is as rewarding as it is beautiful. The art and animation design of the game are stellar and do a lot to make you forget how much time has passed since you booted up the game in the first place. There's tons of different lore books to find, NPC's to talk to, quests to complete, the world is chock-full of lore and world building even down to simple weapon and material descriptions. Teyvat is a wonderful place to be and the developers MiHoYo deserve a pat on the back for how good the world of Genshin Impact is. The other side of game play is a simple system of Character Progression where you farm materials to make your characters/weapons/abilities better so that you can farm even more materials from harder enemies, much like an MMO, and you also acquire gear called Artifacts with randomly rolled stats much like an ARPG. In that regard, Genshin Impact is highly addictive. There are a myriad of weapons, talents, artifacts, and characters all to level up and build up over the course of your play, and every character can be made viable very very easily. The game also lets you keep a party of 4 characters that you can swap between at any point, as well as each character being attuned to a specific Elemental Type that reacts to other Elements. This causes the end-game to be centered around doing some of the hardest dungeons the game has to offer by theory crafting incredibly powerful teams that work off of each other and cause Elemental Reactions in enemies. It’s some of the most fun i’ve had in a game in ages.

All of that is fantastic but unfortunately its all also held back by one simple, huge problem: Original Resin. The game uses a currency called Original Resin that you use to challenge the harder content in the game. Dungeons, World Bosses, Elite Weekly Bosses, you name it and if its end-game content, it likely costs Resin. And not in insignificant amounts either. Dungeons are 20, Bosses are 40, and Weekly Bosses are 60. So, how do you obtain this material? Time. You start with, and are capped, at 120(Later 160 in patch 1.1). 1 resin takes 8 minutes to get back. If you spend it all, it takes 16 hours to get back. Given the rates you spend it, you can go from 120 to 0 in roughly 10-15 minutes. With no way to increase the resin cap, and the incredibly slow acquisition rate, that frequently means you only have about that much playtime a day of the game in the endgame. And that's, needless to say, incredibly frustrating. Thankfully its not an entire stamina system that means you can't play the game at all when you're out of resin, but it does mean that character progression itself is gated as all upgrade/progression materials are locked behind these dungeons and bosses that you must use Original Resin to face. Effecitvely, this means single characters will become weeks and weeks of work, with weapons and artifacts being only slightly less time consuming. I can only hope MiHoYo is looking to change this system in a way that isn't just increasing the cap as the feedback they've received has been very negative regarding it, but only time will tell.

Unfortunately, this isn't the games only problem with its players either. The game is a Gacha, there is no getting around that, but despite the fact that pretty much any character can become massively overpowered and viable in the endgame, people are going to want the rarest characters that exist. This is by design and unfortunately is more or less a glorified gambling system. And while the game is quite nice with its premium currency and how often it gives it, what isn't nice is that the rarest “5-star”characters cost a minimum of 200$ to get through money. With no guarantee you're getting the one you want.

Worse still, outside of a guaranteed 5-star drop at 90 rolls on the gacha wheel, the chance for a 5-star weapon or character is 0.6%. Not even a whole rounded up 1%. This is frankly ridiculous, as is the cost of real money to premium currency. For reference, most other popular Gacha’s doing well offer their rarest characters at anywhere between a 1-6% rate. In general, gacha's aren't known to be kind in their rates. That’s the point, they want you to gamble with real money. Genshin Impact, however, is so unkind and unfair that even other regular players of gacha gamers are very, very vocally upset. If it wasn't for the game play loop and the world, I'm not sure this would fly. And its certainly not flying in the west with the crowd that doesn't play Gacha's nearly as much. Neither is the resin system, as gamers in the west typically want to play for hours and hours at a time.

I’d be remiss if i didn’t bring up the story in Genshin Impact, as it’s genuinely fantastic. As previously stated, the world has a metric tonne of hidden lore in books, weapon/item/artifact descriptions, character stories you unlock as you use a playable character, etc. But the main story you can currently play from start to finish in the 1.0 release is the prologue.

This prologue stars very simply: Your character, the “Traveler” is an alien from another world. Not much is known about them so far, other than that the Traveler and their sibling were people with the ability to hop between worlds at will. In the opening moments of the game this power, along with your sibling, are stolen from you by an unnamed assailant. Thus trapping you in Teyvat and leaving you to begin a journey to find the Seven Gods of Teyvat, simply known as “The Seven” and seek their power and wisdom to find your sibling and potentially leave. This journey is how you meet Venti, one of the Seven in disguise as a simple human bard, and his best friend Dvalin. The events that follow have you help this strange bard, as well as the people of Mondstat, defeat the dragon Dvalin. Previously, he protected the lands of Mondstat for hundreds of years. However, as you meet both Dvalin and Venti, he has had his mind corrupted and been lied to by an order of evil mages known as the Abyss Order, and its caused him to go on the offensive against Mondstat and her people.

It's a fair bit emotional, humorous at times thanks to Venti, and overall very engaging. Mondstat is a city built on freedom, to the point that its own god Barbatos(Venti) refuses to rule over it and allows himself to be the weakest of the seven gods, as that would take away some of the cities freedom. Within this prologue, there is a huge focus on Mondstat being a city of Freedom, the prologue quite literally ends with Venti telling Dvalin after you have saved him from the corruption that even though he is "meant" to be the protector of Mondstat, he hopes Dvalin chooses whatever life he wants, even if that's not Mondstats protector, and that Venti simply wants him to be happy. Venti's own personal story quest goes further in depth about the foundation of Mondstat and its origins as a rebel city founded after the citizens overthrew the oppressive rule of an awful tyrant God and killed him. In a very pretty hand drawn "cathedral window" style cutscene, you get to see the end of this war and why Barbatos chose the form he currently inhabits and took up being a bard, which was to honor a dead friend from this very same war. This explains why Mondstat and Barbatos value its freedom so highly. I cried at this moment both times I played it.

For a free game, the storytelling here is off the charts. As i said before, Venti and many other characters have personal stories that both introduce you to a trial version of the playable character, thus letting you see how they work and play, and also giving you either more info on the world or an introduction to the character in question, or both. They're fantastic little stories and are up there with the main story in quality. One of my favorite parts of the game and something that will only be expanded with time. Each one takes you on a journey of discovery or even simple fun with a character and it all feels very personal and touching, as all of the main stories and character quests are very well voice acted.

The prologue being so focused on freedom makes it all the more awkward, then, that MiHoYo is a game developer based out of China, and as such has to follow China's censorship rules. Taiwan and Hong Kong both are censored in-game chat and if you're reported for saying them, you'll be banned for daring to speak the words. These aren't the only censorship decisions in the game, but they're by far the ones that struck me the most. I understand that the company is based out of China and thus has to follow the censorship rules, as they are the actual law of the land and they could be fined or even shut down if they refused. But the disconnect of knowing there are actual human rights atrocities being committed in China with the Uygher Genocide and Re-Education camps, the human rights violations in Hong Kong, the breakdown of democracy and the treatment of Taiwan, while this game that comes out of China boasts on and on about Freedom and the Human right to self actualize and choose their future is... troubling. It's one that I don't really know how to reconcile, if it can be reconciled at all. I'd like to believe that the developers really believe in their own story and secretly oppose those sorts of atrocities. But at the same time, banning players who mention Hong Kong or Taiwan isn't in the law. That’s a decision MiHoYo is making. Right now, China doesn’t have the freedom that Venti and Mondstat and Genshin Impact try to instill in you so hard as important and a human right. And knowing that and knowing the censorship is in the game make it very difficult to get a read on what the game actually wants you to feel.

Overall,i think Genshin Impact is a fantastic game. Its updates plan to bring in not only more story, as there are meant to be 7 Acts and currently the game features the Prologue and half of Act 1, but in those acts it plans to explain the playable areas and bring in new Events, Characters, Weapons, etc. And that makes me excited for the future of Genshin Impact! It’s a beautiful game of genuinely Triple AAA quality completely for free. But. Its also a Gacha game and by far one of the least rewarding Gachas you could play right now. Maybe that will change with time. I certainly hope it does. But it feels hard to recommend something that, once you beat it, disrespects your time so much and so badly. I hope Genshin Impact has a bright future, I really do, and I’m definitely going to continue playing it. But right now, I can’t say for certain that I feel confident in the developers to make it the game it clearly wants to be if it wasn’t shackled down by its Gacha.

[berniesrevolution]

Only a year ago, Nintendo was in the midst of a severe corporate crisis. Its flagship console, the Wii U, had been comprehensively wrecked by its competitors, Sony's Playstation 4 and Microsoft's Xbox One. Hemorrhaging money, the company was considering moving out of the hardware market altogether, and focusing on developing games for consoles and mobile devices.

But now, the tide has turned. As Navneet Alang writes, its new console, the Nintendo Switch, has been a breakout success. It has sold over 10 million units worldwide just in the last 10 months — becoming the fastest-selling console in U.S. history, and already beating the Wii U's total sales in Japan.

It's remarkable both as a come-from-behind victory, and also as a way a corporation succeeded by breaking out of what Marxists call the capitalist dialectic — that is, by ignoring the received wisdom of the market and the ideology of capitalism itself.

First, let me describe the Switch, because it's a pretty strange device. (I picked one up myself for Christmas out of curiosity, and have quite enjoyed it thus far.) It's a portable-console hybrid, with a tablet that can be used as a handhold or plugged into a dock and played like a normal console. The tablet has two controllers that can be attached to either side of the tablet, or detached and used remotely, or attached to a separate controller platform.

The tablet is not that big, and the video processor is not that powerful, and the battery life is only okay, with about three hours under heavy load. But its specs reflect inherent tradeoffs between size, portability, and performance, and Nintendo hit a pretty solid sweet spot between the three.

The first interesting aspect of this design is how similar it is to the failed Wii U. That console has a controller with a tablet functionality, and one of its main selling points is that if someone wanted to use the TV you could just move your whole game to the tablet — just like you can with the Switch.

Marxists often reference the "capitalist dialectic," which as Leon Trotsky once pointed out is merely a pretentious synonym for "the logic of evolution." To abuse Marx somewhat, this can be seen in the ordinary marketplace: Businesses sell products, and the things they sell are recursively influenced by what sells and what doesn't sell. The Wii U's flop convinced many that the tablet idea was a total non-starter, and that what Nintendo needed to do was something similar to what Sony and Microsoft were doing. The Almighty Market Had Spoken.

But businesses are still run by human beings, and contrary to the strict determinism that some Marxists espouse, they can attempt to jump out of whatever narrow dialectical confines an industry might be caught in; i.e. they can try to sell something that customers don't know they want yet.

The Switch was quite a gamble for Nintendo. Businesses are always hesitant to take a risk on developing a new customer base, and almost none of them will make the same gamble again after it failed once. But that's just what Nintendo did, trusting their rational analysis of their customer base rather than blindly trusting market outcomes — and it paid off.

The second interesting aspect of the Switch is how it treats games. As I have written before, the logic of the market is corrosive to the creation of works of art. Art is resistant to being commoditized, and the more it is treated like a commodity, the harder it is to achieve any artistic success. For example, Sony and Microsoft have long been competing over measurable metrics like cutting-edge graphics and computing horsepower, and trying to leverage their consoles into being general entertainment systems. The results are bloated user interfaces and games that are sometimes good but always extremely resource-intensive and require frequent large patches to be downloaded.

Other game developers have straight up ruined their titles by building them entirely around extracting small payments (or "microtransactions") or cramming in manipulative "loot box" gambling mechanics. The more a game developer allows capitalist thinking and ideology to penetrate its development process, the more it will tend to think of its customers as brainless vessels to be mercilessly pillaged for cash.

(Continue Reading)

[seanmalatesta]

5 Reasons You Need a Business Coach

In early 2002, I was the general manager of Nelson Books, one of Thomas Nelson Publishers’ fourteen divisions. In eighteen months, we had gone from number fourteen—dead last—to number one in terms of revenue growth and profit margin. I felt great. I was proud of myself and my team for the results we’d achieved.

That euphoria lasted for about a day. 

Then it began to dawn on me that I was out of tricks. I’d harvested all the low-hanging fruit in an effort to turn the business around. I knew that continued growth would be difficult. And, I wasn’t certain I could deliver it. Getting to No. 1 and staying at No. 1 are two different things.

That’s when I first considered hiring a business coach. I asked John Maxwell, a leadership expert and one of my authors, if he could recommend one. He introduced me to Daniel Harkavy, the founder of Building Champions, an executive coaching company. We hit it off from the start.

After my initial call with Daniel, I went to my boss, Sam Moore, to explain why I wanted the company to foot the bill for Daniel’s fees. He was surprised by my request. “Why do you need a coach?” he exclaimed. “You’ve just transformed our worst division into our best. You’re our most successful publisher!”

I replied, “Yes, but the world’s top performers all have coaches. That’s how they get there and stay there.” I then went on to point out that even Tiger Woods—the world’s best golfer at the time—had a coach. So did Tom Brady, who had just taken the New England Patriots to their first (but not last) Super Bowl win. 

I then said, “You want me to keep winning, right?”

“Of course,” he said.

“Then I need a coach.”

He laughed and then approved my request.

Daniel and I talked every two weeks. I shared my problems and opportunities. He advised me and held me accountable to my commitments. He helped me see what I couldn’t see. He challenged my thinking and expressed his belief in my leadership, even when I felt less than confident.

Coaching had a direct, positive impact on my results. 

I led Nelson Books for two more years before I was promoted. It remained the top-performing division in the company for more than a decade. When I left the company in 2011 to found Michael Hyatt & Company, it was still Thomas Nelson’s most profitable division.

I’ve had a formal business coach since 2002 when I met Daniel, with the exception of very brief transition periods. It’s the single best investment I’ve ever made in my professional success. It’s also why I’m so passionate about coaching and why our BusinessAccelerator coaching program is the single most important thing we do at Michael Hyatt & Company.

So I’d like to make the case for hiring a business coach. If you already have a coach, this will explain why you’ve made a smart decision. If you don’t have one, this will hopefully convince you why it’s important to get one—and, frankly, the sooner the better. 

There are at least five reasons why you should hire a business coach.

1. Because you recognize the need for a change.

If you’re happy with the status quo—business-as-usual—don’t hire a business coach. You don’t need one. But if you’re unhappy with the results you’ve been getting, you need to consider it. For example, perhaps—

You feel overwhelmed with what’s on your plate and don’t know where to focus.

You keep missing your goals—or don’t have any goals.

Your professional and personal life are unbalanced. You’re spending way too much time at work.

Your sales have stalled or your margins have eroded.

You’re not sure you have the right people. Your hiring process feels risky and unpredictable.

Your competitors are getting more aggressive and you’re fighting harder than ever to acquire and retain customers.

You know you need to grow professionally in order to lead your organization to the next level.

If this sounds like you—if you want something to change—you need a coach.

2. Because you want an edge against the odds.

Let me state it bluntly: the odds are stacked against you. According to the Department of Commerce, entrepreneurs start four million new businesses a year in the U.S. Eighty percent of those will fail within the first five years. Of those that survive, eighty percent of those will fail in the next five years.

This means you have a 96 percent chance of failure in the first ten years of starting a business. Or to flip it around, you only have a 4 percent chance of surviving your first ten years in business.

Those aren’t great odds, are they? 

Let’s switch contexts. Imagine you’re facing a daunting challenge in some area other than business. Let’s say you wanted to climb Mt. Everest. You know the journey will be difficult and dangerous. You read that in 2019 alone, eleven people died in the attempt. It’s a risky venture but you’re excited about the possibility of achieving your goal.

Do you think it would be smart to go-it-alone? I don’t think so. I’ll bet you’d hire a guide, right? That would be the smart thing to do. You want someone who has made it to the top and back, preferably multiple times under a variety of weather conditions. 

The truth is that there is only one way to learn: trial and error. But it doesn’t have to come from your trials or your errors. By hiring a coach, you outsource your mistakes and dramatically improve your odds for success.

“ By hiring a coach, you outsource your mistakes and dramatically improve your odds for success.

—MICHAEL HYATT

3. Because you want to fill in gaps in your knowledge or skills.

In business, you will eventually reach the limits of your own knowledge and skills. If you don’t continue to grow professionally, you limit your company’s ability to grow. You become the governor on the engine of growth. As John Maxwell says, “everything rises and falls on leadership.”

Sadly, even if you have a business degree or even an MBA in business, you probably didn’t learn:

How to set and achieve clear business goals

How to translate your annual and quarterly goals into daily actions that drive growth

How to align your team around those same goals so everyone is “rowing in the same direction”

How to stay focused on your most important priorities so you aren’t distracted by the deluge of requests, demands, and even opportunities

How to find, hire, and develop world-class teammates

How to build a culture that drives operating results

How to delegate in such a way that the work product meets or exceeds your standards

How to find new customers or retain the ones you have

How to do real-world strategic planning that creates a filter for what opportunities you pursue and what opportunities you don’t

How to identify the key metrics you need to monitor to insure the health of your business

How to use financial reports, not only to tell you what happened, but what’s about to happen

How to transform setbacks and failure into the jet fuel you need for rapid iteration and improvement

Good coaching is based on sound theory, but it doesn’t stop there as it often does in a university setting. Instead, it includes practical frameworks and step-by-step processes for delivering real-world results.

4. Because you know you need to work on your business not just in it.

If there’s one thing I hear from business owners and senior executives the most, it’s that they are so busy working in the business, they don’t have time to work on the business. This is crucial. If you are going to scale your business and do it in a sustainable way, you need time to think.

Specifically, you need time to think about what you really want. For example:

How do you want your business to look in three to five years?

How can you engineer your role so you are doing more in your Desire Zone and less in each of the other three zones?

Are you happy with your company’s culture? What could you change to make it better?

Are your compensation and benefits sufficient to attract and retain top talent?

Do you have the right organizational structure for this stage of your business?

How could you sell more of your existing products or services to your existing customers? Are there new products you could create to better serve your existing customers? Are their new customers in markets you don’t currently serve who could benefit from your existing products?

What processes need to be re-imagined or re-engineered, so you can produce results faster, cheaper, or better?

Where in your business do you need a break-through?

These are just a handful of the questions that deserve serious reflection. But you’ll never find the time unless you are intentional. Coaching provides the opportunity—the context—where this can happen on a regular basis. It’s a chance to poke your head above the clouds, evaluate where you’ve been, embrace the reality of where you are, and chart a course to where you want to go.

By the way, I occasionally hear clients complain about the time required to participate in our coaching program. This is especially true for clients who live on the west coast or in another country. “I’m not sure I can afford two (or three) days out of the office each quarter.”

My response is, “What does it make possible?” What if you dedicated this time, including time on the plane, as “think time”? This is what Megan Hyatt Miller, my COO, and I enjoyed getting coaching together. 

We would determine in advance a problem we want to solve or an opportunity we want to exploit. That became the theme of our trip. We would talk about it on the plane, then interact about it over meals. We typically stayed an extra day to use the morning after our coaching sessions to reduce our discoveries to specific action items.

Coaching time has become so valuable to our business that we literally can’t afford to not take time for it once a quarter.

5. Because you want to go further, faster.

There are two ways to get ahead in business: the slow way and the fast way. The slow way is to rely on your own knowledge, experience, and skills. The fast way is to rely on someone else’s knowledge, experience, and skills.

For example, I am an avid fly fisherman. I have all my own gear. I know how to set up my fishing rig. I know how to tie the knots. If I decide to fish a particular stream, I can usually find an online “Fishing Report” that will tell me exactly what bugs the fish I’m hunting are eating. I know how to cast, how to untangle my line, and how to net a fish and correctly release it unharmed.

So why do I always hire a fishing guide when I go fishing? Isn’t that just a waste of money?

No. Here’s why. When I go fishing, I want to catch as many fish as possible. I also want to catch the biggest fish possible. I like fishing, but I love catching!

There’s no way my amateur skills can produce the same results as a professional guide. Even if I have fished that particular stream before, I probably haven’t fished it in this season or in exactly this weather. I can’t compete with a guide who fishes that same stream all day every day. Using a guide helps me get bigger, better results, faster.

The same is true of a business coach. If they have the right experience, they have dealt with the problem or opportunity you are facing dozens of times—maybe hundreds of times—in a variety of contexts. They can help you get the results you want sooner rather than later.

Coaching is what gives an edge to professional athletes, renowned musicians, and successful business leaders. There’s no question that you need it. Every leader does. The only real question is this: When will you start? 

from Michael Hyatt https://ift.tt/2W54uZa via IFTTT