#because all the teams DO have streamers who log in later

[soups-archive]

Thoughts on Purgatory Day 4:

God what a fun day, and yet funnily enough a much more relaxed one.

It's gonna be interesting to see what the ramifications of blue's logout strat are gonna be because it's definitely going to be banned, but, from my understanding, blue used this strat to prove a point: that red's strategy was unfair.

Which is true, or at least I think it was true.

Personally, I feel like it was mostly unfair due to how difficult it used to be to get to global, but I feel like the admins have pretty fairly counteracted that and balanced things with today's introduction of the spawn portals.

Because with red's strat players HAD to physically travel to global and turn in the contracts within at least the last 30 minutes of gameplay. The portals now easily allow other teams to show up and at least put up a good fight, and we actually got to see how effective they are today with cellbit and charlie's assist they pulled for roier. If they had been just slightly quicker, green might've been able to steal back the win.

Which I think brings me to the other potentially unfair part of red's strat that I've seen be brought up which is that it isn't fair for streamers in European timezones/streamers who play earlier. Which is a fair criticism, but honestly I haven't personally been able to think of a way for the admins to balance the contracts around that without either: A) completely changing how contracts work, or B) unfairly punishing later streamers.

I think it's complicated, and I feel like the main thing that's gonna result from today isn't going to be them banning turning in tasks late but instead banning logging out right in front of the global NPCs. Knowing the admins, they'll probably figure out something I hadn't thought of and make the whole thing more fair for everyone.

Competition and lore wise, tomorrow is gonna be really interesting as well. A small alliance might be blooming between red and green and that might have massive ramifications going forward. That and I think (???????) that players might be getting their eggs tomorrow (?????). I know they described a period in which they had to keep them alive and the actual event ends on the 10th so I'm guessing they're arriving tomorrow. If they are, that shit is going to be crazy.

(Side note: It was also a delight to see teams casually hanging out more together today. As much as I enjoy the competition, I missed them all just chilling)

Overall, congrats blue on the win! Cheesy as fuck and they knew it but it was absolutely deserved! They worked their asses off! And green put up a hell of a fight! I hope they get their chance to win as well tomorrow!

[iwadori]

Haikyu boys when they make you insecure PT 1 (Kenma,Kuroo)

Part 1 Part 2  Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6.

Word Count:3k 

genre: angst, fluff

masterlist

Kenma:

You and Kenma have been in a long distance relationship for a while.

Both of you stream, Kenma doing it seriously for his job and you just playing it for fun,

Sometimes you stream together of course but because of your difference in audiences and games you don’t do it all the time

“Bye guys! Hope you enjoyed todays stream” You wave off to the camera and shut off your PC taking a few sips of water.

Kenma: Hey.. nice stream today Y/N are you going to watch mine?

Y/N: Of course I will 

Kenma: Ok talk to you later

Y/N: okayy <3

Kenma is what inspired you to stream, he also taught you all the ins and outs of streaming making sure you were set and ready. Your gaming style was very relaxed and friendly as you obviously weren’t streaming as a career just for fun and to make friends with your online viewers. The games you played were usually: minecraft, COD, Sims 4, Roblox, Animal crossing and *Insert your favourite game here* the way I literally named all the games I play 

You wait for Kenmas stream to start, kind of excited as you’ve always loved seeing your boyfriend in his ‘element’ when it comes to playing to games. As your boyfriends stream starts you see he’s already chosen what game he is playing today which is to your surprise Call of duty, since that was the game you were playing earlier.

As he gets into the stream you are entertained, as always since Kenma was being his usual self laughing at his own deadpan jokes and interacting with his viewers. He is currently waiting for his capture the flag game to start so as he waits he decides to read some comments in the chat.

You’re used to the usual ‘Kenma where is Y/N I miss your usual streams together’ or ‘kenma please RAIL me’ which always makes you laugh. You were also used to the common hate comments Kenma and You both got on your streams but you were definitely not ready for this..

@ Ihatewomanandiamadick : Hey Kenma did you see your girls stream today she is so dog shit at COD lmaoooo jhdfkjdrhdrr

“Well hello ihatewomenandiamadick” started Kenma “but yes I did see Y/N stream and obviously she is not the best at games and I would definitely NOT ask her to team with me for any serious gaming competitions ... but she’s fun to watch I guess” as he finished speaking about you his game loaded up so he focused his attention on that the words he just spoke going to the back of his mind as they end up at the forefront of yours.

You obviously knew you were no match for Kenma’s gaming expertise but you didn’t expect him to publicly agree with a hate comment let alone add more of his imput on you. Did he really think that about you? ‘She’s fun to watch I guess’ did he not even enjoy your streams that much?

You wanted to distract yourself, and you definitely couldn’t do that watching him so you close off of his stream and get in your bed deciding to watch your favourite show. 

Waking up at 6pm after your sad nap, you see that Kenma has left some messages to you,

Kenma: hey did you watch my stream?

Kenma: do you want to facetime later and play some minecraft..?

Kenma: y/n r u ok??

Y/N: oh hey cnt play minecraft w you rn not really in the mood..

Kenma: oh ok..

Time passed since then a month to be exact and you basically dropped off of the face of the earth, you weren’t in the mood to do anything let alone game and stream, which was a constant reminder of your boyfriend (something you didn’t want at the time.) 

You felt embarrassed over all the things he said about you and all the things you now think he thinks about you and the way you play. Maybe he thinks even worse things about you, beyond just how you game? What if he doesn’t even genuinely like you...or he has someone else...it does make sense, you do both live miles and miles away from eachother AND he’s a big streamer you see the amount of girls in his comments.

You shake your head to erase your protruding thoughts coming in your mind, but it doesn’t really help. You and Kenma haven’t spoken much over this month he tried to constantly reach out to you at first but you assume he got bored over your constant, repetitive dry texts. So you were almost content with you and Kenma not even being in a relationship anymore.

However on Kenma’s side, he was beyond worried about you. Since you haven’t been streaming or barely responded to his texts he thought something happened to you, but he didn’t want to be seen as ‘overstepping boundaries’ if there was nothing wrong at all with you and you simply were just ‘not in the mood.’ 

So here he is, in Kuroo’s apartment trying to get him to help him out on finding out what is wrong with you.

“So kenma can you remember what happened the day when Y/N went ‘ghost’“ asked Kuroo in a mock detective voice

“Y/N didn’t go ‘ghost’ Kuro, and take this seriously” said Kenma “I’m worried bout her”

“Okay fine, but for real what’s the last thing you remember before she started acting all weird.” 

“Umm I think it was around a month ago I did my saturday stream and I think she was on it but she didn’t leave her usual nice comments throughout”

“Ohh that was the stream when you sai-” Kuroo said before pausing his words as the memory of what Kenma said about you on his stream came in his mind, as even Kuroo thought it was a tad bit harsh for Kenma to say all those things “I think I know why Y/N has been so distant kiddo”

“What why?” Asked Kenma

Kuroo pulls out his phone and brings up the clip off what Kenma said and Kenma’s face cringes ‘did he really say all those things about you’ he thinks. 

“Shit.. I didn’t know I said all of that” he said quietly “how do I make it up to her?”

“There’s only one thing you can really do Kenma” said kuroo

You are woken up out of your sleep by a knock on the door. Getting out your bed like a zombie, you trudge to your front door only surprised by what you see. There in his 5′6 glory stood your ‘boyfriend’ Kenma with a controller and a kitten teddy in his hand. You were very tempted to shut the door in his face and get back to your dreamless sleep but you waited on him to speak.

“Hi Y/N” he said quietly “wanna play some minecraft...?”

“Why so you can ridicule me on how shit I am?” You ask bitterly ready to shut the door on him

“No! No not all” he said stopping you from shutting the door entering your place “Y/N i’m really sorry on what I said, I wasn’t thinking AT ALL... I love watching your streams and I think you’re great at playing games...I was just being a dick,”

You take a deep breath before tears pool in your eyes “what you said really hurt me kenma..” you say “ I know people say shitty things on the internet all the time... it’s the internet. But I wasn’t expecting you to agree with the hater and say even more shitty things on top of that.. I don’t think I want to even stream anymore”

Upon hearing that, Kenma’s mouth parts open with shock ‘you dont want to stream anymore’ were his comments that bad? Now he feel even worse as he should and is now more determined to make things right. 

He impulsively drags your arm into your game room, catching your surprise ‘what is he up too?’ you think. He stops for a second seeing your usual pristine gaming set up, collected up with dust. 

“What are you do-” you start 

“Just wait!” He says, as he rushes away turning on all your stuff and logging onto his twitch account as he sees the views go up he starts to speak

 “Hi guys, its me kodzuken and today I’m here on stream with my beautiful girlfriend and today I want to say..” he turns to you “Y/N im so sorry for the horrible things I said to you that day... I was just being a dick and I’m sorry I really am.”

You look at the chat and you see some confusion and some people recalling his words from last month. “It’s fine Kenma, I forgive you” you say giving him a hug”

“Okay Y/N, so what do you say... wanna beat my ass at bed wars?” He says with a smirk 

“When have I ever loss?” you return his smirk

Of course you did beat his ass as bed wars for rounds on rounds never losing proving yourself to actually be a good gamer girl. You enjoyed your time with Kenma, forgetting what he said before about you and moving on. 

Eventually, you guys moved in together and streamed together all the time and yes you still do play for fun but you’ve gotten way better at COD (some may say better then Kenma) but who is better didn’t matter to any of you, as long as you got to play together that’s all you both cared about.

Kuroo:

Kuroo and you have been together since you were in your first year of high school 

You met as friends first when you got him to tutor you in chemistry ( a subject you still aren’t that good at.)

Now you have your upcoming entrance exams for university in a month so your school has you doing mock exams in preparation for them.

20%

You look down at your chemistry paper that your teacher just handed you. 20%. You’re surprised, very surprised since out of all your subjects (that you go 90+% on) you studied on the chemistry test the hardest ensuring Testurou, that you didn’t need his help at all. But I guess it turns out, you did.

This failing mock grade put a blunder on your day, you didn’t interact with anyone and didn’t want to see your boyfriend so you skipped your usual routine of meeting him on the rooftop and went to the library instead ‘might aswell start early on your studying’ you thought.

As you were going over your chemistry topics, you hear an ‘ahem’ next to you and you turn your head only to find your boyfriend and his friends next to you. Kuroo with his usual goofy smile on his face. 

“Hey kitten where were you at lunch?” he asked 

“Needed to go to the library, Chemistry is kicking my ass” you mumbled 

“Oya” he said as he noticed your chemistry test laying under your textbook “20%, well damn Y/N I knew you were stupid, but I didn’t know you were that stupid” he laughed doing his stupid usual hyena-like laugh.

Ouch well that hurt. You slightly flinched at his words, “Really your name, you didn’t know the molecular formula for ethanol, that’s first year work” he said continuing to laugh “I’m pretty sure that’s one of the first things I tutored you on when we first met” 

His overbearing laughter was not good for you, you were already having a bad day and yes you do know your not that good at chemistry but you didn’t need your chemistry-enthusiast boyfriend to make fun of you for failing. Kenma and Yaku stood there awkwardly obviously aware of how bad Kuroo is making you feel but they didn’t really know how to stop his friend in the moment.Whilst he’s still dying of laughter you decide to pack up your stuff and leave the library.

You managed to get your Chemistry tutor to let you retake your mock paper in a week so that means, extra hard studying with no distractions you definitely can’t fail again. Since studying on your own was definitely not a good option, and you couldn’t go to Kuroo (especially after he ridiculed you) you decided to ask the second smartest person you know to tutor you.

Y/N: Hey Yaku! Can I ask you a favour?

Yaku: Hi Y/N what do you need??

Y/N: I have my chemistry retake next week, and as you know from your loud-loud friend I failed my recent test so can you tutor me?? 

Y/N: Pleaseeee

Yaku: Ok Y/N why can’t you ask Kuroo you know that he’d be more than happy to help

Y/N: Yakuu pleasee just help me out 

So there you was, nearly a week done with your study sessions with Yaku and you’re feeling way more confident than before. 

“Y/N what is the functional group of a Carboxylic Acid” Yaku asked

“umm... COO?” 

“Great! that’s correct Y/N” he praises i dont actually know if it’s correct or not

You then hear a knock at Yaku’s front door and hear his mum let the person in, Kuroo then enters Yaku’s bedroom with shock plastered on his face surprised to see you here.

“Y/N...hey?” he says confused “what are you doing here?”

“Oh Mori-chan is just helping me with chemistry for my retake tommorow” you say nochalantly internally smiling at the twinge in Kuroo’s face at the purposeful use of Yaku’s first name.

“So why didn’t you ask me to help you know I’m a chemistry whiz” he asks

“Maybe I’m too stupid to be taught under your tutelage” you mumble “since I seem to forget whatever you teach me, even when it’s 3 years ago... but ok”

“Y/N I-” he starts 

“Oh save it Kuroo, I have studying to do” you say cutting him off

“But I-” he tries

“So Mori-chan COOH is the function group of ethyl ethonate right?” you ask ignoring your boyfriend who is now at a lost for words

“ummm yeah it is” says yaku who is clearly feeling heavily awkward at the tension in his bedroom.

Kuroo leaves and you and yaku finish off the studying for the night, you did feel a little bad for being a bit mean to Kuroo but it’s karma for him being a dick to you. 

You wake up the next day ready for your exam which was first thing in the morning, before you hand in your phone you see a message from Kuroo,

Kuroo: I know you’re still mad at me, but I think you’re going to do so well on this test. You’re not stupid at all, you’re really smart and I love you < 3 

Kuroo: Good luck Y/N

You don’t respond to the message but smile at the sincerity of it and thankful for the boost of confidence it gave you before you start your exam.

Finishing the exam with a smile, you were confident you did well as everything you and Yaku went over was on the paper and you’re almost certain you atleast got more than 75%. You have to wait an hour before your teacher can give you your results, so in the meantime you might aswell reconcile with Kuroo.

When you exit the classroom, standing there was Kuroo who seemed to have been waiting for you for the whole duration of the exam.

“So how was it?” Kuroo asked, apprenhensive as he assumed you would just ignore him like you did at Yaku’s house.

“It was fine, I think it went alright..” you say

“Kuroo”

“Y/N”

You say simultaneously, he pauses for a second to let you speak “I’m sorry I was being so stand offish when we were at Yaku’s I just wanted you to see I could do it on my own, and when you called me stupid I really took that to heart since you and I both know that Chemistry wasn’t ever my best subject” 

“I’m sorry too, I didn’t mean to make you feel bad, and since it was only a practice test I didn’t think you’d take it to heart but I am sorry I know you aren’t stupid.”

Before you got to say anything else, your Chemistry teacher exited the room with your chemistry paper in hand. Kuroo grabbed your hand anticipating your nerves and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Miss L/N” said your teacher “Well done on your chemistry test” he turned your test around to sure a perfect 100%. Both you and Kuroo gasped, you were elated to say the least you wanted to jump up and down in excitement but a PERFECT 100%.

“I’d also like to add that you have now got the top chemistry score in the school beating the previous title holder Kuroo Testurou” said your teacher, this made Kuroo open his mouth even wider in surprise nearly making you giggle at his response. 

Your teacher took his leave, leaving you and Kuroo in the hallway “ I guess i’m the chemistry whizz now “ you say wiggling your eyebrows just as Kuroo did to you before at Yaku’s this made him chuckle as he came to put his arm around you.

“Y/N don’t get ahead of yourself now, you may have won this battle but I will win the war” he said smiling

In the final exam, you continue your winning streak also getting a near 100% and still beating Kuroo which didn’t matter to either of you, now you’re just like him cracking chemistry puns and jokes all the time which none of your friends appreciated but atleast Kuroo found them SODIUM funny.

AN: Please kill me for the last line of Kuroos, I didn’t really like Kuroo’s since it was a bit self indulgent with my hate for chemistry but what do you guys think?

[cherrytsukkis]

streaming minecraft with the first years

- word count: 1.4k

- characters: hinata, kageyama, tsukishima, yamaguchi, yachi

- a/n: i made half of this on mobile and half on my laptop so,,, also i got way too immersed in this bc all i do is play minecraft (even tho i suck) anyways, enjoy this mess!! also ty to ppl on the rircus rerver for helping me with minecraft usernames!!

tsukishima made a server for y'all after you bribed him (also some of his viewers begged him to)

kageyama and hinata teamed up and killed tsukishima, not even a minute in

and you were just there like “:o chat yall seeing this shit”

yall spawned in near a birch flower forest biome thingy and you and yachi bolted over there

you asked yachi to be your minecraft gf and she accepted

as soon as she said yes, kageyama and hinata killed tsukki again lmao

you and yachi moved to a different voice call bc hinata kept screaming about how tsukki was after him now

you guys began planning on having a cute little cottage core home together

you go mining while yachi makes a farm + gathers animals

yachi screamed of joy when she found a chicken family

she also screamed when she happened to find a pink sheep

you guys are just talking about random stuff and were just vibing for the rest of the stream

the next time you stream on the server, you see that yams made a cute little spawn place and yams took you on an adventure to go see his home in the snowy mountains

tsukki logged on and you and yams proceeded to go try to find his home despite tsukki tell you to fuck off

for some reason, he starts giving you guys clues on where he’s at

you’re all like “omg friendship 🥰″

but in reality, someone donated like 50 bucks for him to kill you and he’s taking this opportunity to lure you guys

 it turns night really fast and then a group of zombies gang up on you

you end up dying like four times before you baby rage and give up 

you leave the voice chat and go back to being a wee farmer waiting for your lover, yachi, to log on

instead of yachi, you get hinata </3

hinata logs on and he immediately calls you

“hinata-”

“y/n!!! do you wanna go to the nether with me!!”

“no ❤️″

you hang up but then he calls you again

“i’ll give you a two pigs, i know you and yachi are looking for some”

thirty minutes later, hinata has gotten you lost in a soul sand biome

only plus from this trip is that you got a lot of glowstone

you ended up having to call kageyama and ask him to come save you bc yams was mining god knows where and tsukishima would never help you bc he’s a bully <3

kageyama was calling both of you dumbasses in the vc

hinata bc hinata is hinata and you for following hinata blindly

then he got lost somewhere else in the nether <3

and now the three of you were fighting as you ran away from ghasts and skele bois

“it’s the short height for me”

“it’s the abandonment issues for me”

“it’s the need to one up each other in every situation because y’all insecure for me”

this whole time your chats were telling yall to just look at coords so you could find each other but you guys are illiterate </3

yachi finally logged on and joined your call and she saved yall bc she was watching your stream this whole time and was like wtf

the vc was SILENT as yachi led y’all to the nether portal

you muted yourself in shame and starting thanking recent subs and just the chat in general

everyone in chat: ugh we stan a dumb queen 🤩

another time you go on the server, hinata has accidentally started a war against tsukishima and so like every five minutes you would see smth like “tinysun was blown up by moonshima” or “moonshima was shot by tinysun using schlong” (yes hinata is that guy)

speaking of names

yall clown kageyama every five seconds bc he made his ign ‘Setter_soul_x’ (bc his streamer name was taken </3)

he gets pissed off a lot and leaves the server bc everytime you guys start a fight, someone will be like “okay Setter_soul_x”

yachi has “yacchan” meanwhile yams had “yamagucci” and you can can decide whether you have a clapped ign or not

now to just talk about general stuff

i feel like yams and tsukki would be those bitches who make exp farms and shit

like one day you’ll log on and you’ll ask them where they’re at and they’ll be like “oh we’re making an enderman farm in the end” or “we just finished a villager breeder” or some shit like that

yachi would stick to farming and being a cottagecore gay and you would be the one to do most of the mining and shit

sometimes she’d follow you when you go to fight someone or just bother them

hinata made a giant netherrack meatball at spawn and inside of it is just pure hell

everytime someone tries to go in it, they get blown up by a creeper or smth bc its so fucking dark in there bc the dumbass forgot to put some type of light source in there

kageyama’s house is just a cube-shaped hole he mined somewhere and everytime he wants more space he’ll just expand the cube

you and tsukki end up teaming up together at one point and made a railroad to everyone’s homes and to different biomes

when everyone fought the wither, tsukki, yamaguchi, and hinata did most of the work you and kageyama were far away watching like “damn thats crazy” (yachi wasnt streaming at the time and just told you guys she didnt care if you did it without her)

when it was time for the ender dragon, it was a whole different story

tsukishima and yamaguchi were hella prepared and were calmly going around destroying the end crystals while you, hinata and kageyama were just trying to get away from all the angry endermen

yachi was just placing water down and making cobblestone huts y’all could hide under

once tsukki and yams finished destroying the end crystals, you joined them in shooting down the ender dragon

kags and hinata were still fighting endermen 

like all you’d see is “ __ was slained by Enderman” messages as you listened to tsukki and yams talk to each other calmly

yachi said she wasnt fighting no dragon bc fuck that shit

one y’all did kill the dragon, hinata tried to claim the dragon egg and tsukishima yelled at him for like ten minutes bc hinata didnt do shit

and while tsukki fought with hinata and kageyama, you and yachi followed yamaguchi into an end gateway

you found an end city but then you fell outta the world </3 dont ask how, you just did

you decided to log off and that was that

another time you logged on, tsukki invited you to go with him to a woodland mansion bc he got a map

you thought he was being fishy but you went anyways bc content

everything was going well, you guys traveled there together, found a desert temple along the way, you tamed a cat, tsukki talked about conspiracy theories with you

but then you got to the mansion and you lost him

you were like tsukki where tf you’d go and he would tell you a place and you would go and he wasnt there

you were about to cry bc so many mobs were after you and u just boxed yourself into a little dirt hut in the corner and you kept yelling at tsukki in vc

he muted himself bc he was laughing his ass off at your pain heart been broke so many times

he finally came to get you bc apparently he already moved upstairs and just as you calmed down, tsukki betrayed you

you walked in front of him in fear of mobs hitting you from behind but tsukki ended up hitting you with a sword to death </3

you immediately logged off and then cried to your stream about fake friends for like ten minutes while listening to the inside out soundtrack

your chat convinced you to log back on and hesitantly joined the vc again and tsukishima apologized while trying to hold back laughter and told you that he put your stuff in your chest and you were like 🥺🥺🥺

overall the server is very chaotic but kinda nice bc family bonding ❤️ and even tho tsukki is a dick he along, with yams, help you and yachi out sometimes so your cottagecore aesthetic thrived

UNEDITED.

tag list: @kaoyuuuuu​ @macaronnv < it wont let me tag you :((

[foxydivaxx]

Goddess Awakening Chapter 4

"SO YOU HAVE BEEN BUSY REPORTING ME TO EVERYONE ELSE ABI?!!"

Feyi just shakes her head at her mother. The Badmus sisters , minus Yewande who currently lives in London, were all seated at a table alongside Dr Rotimi and Mrs Badmus.

"Mummy calm down now." Ireti the third born in the family pleads with their mother.

"How can I calm down when this stupid sister of yours keeps on disgracing our family name?!!"

Before Dr Rotimi could say a word, Feyi just gets up and slams both her hands on the table,startling everyone. She then throws her now signature icy glare at her mother.

"Who are you calling a disgrace mother?" she says in the most calmest way possible. However if one pays close attention to the actual tone of her voice, one can feel the venom that was threatening to spill out of her mouth.

Mrs Badmus immediately keeps her mouth shut. Satisfied, Feyi sits back down and continues to glare at her family.

"Now Feyi and I have discussed and she decided to take a mandatory mental evaluation test in order to get a proper diagnosis so as to figure out what exactly it is that is wrong with her. The test shall take place on Wednesday at LASUTH."

He stares at her siblings who all exchange worried looks. "Now I advise that you all try not to stress your sister out. She has been through enough hell. Give her breathing space and stop treating her like a child." He says the final bit with a sideways glance at his sister who simply rolls her eyes and looks away.

Sade goes into her room and comes back holding Feyi's laptop. "There you go kiddo." she says, handing it over to her sister. "Thank you." Sade and Ireti both chuckle and pat their little sister on the head, an action that earns a massive pout from Feyi.

The second born of the family Ebun is not amused by this outcome. She had always been suspicious of Feyi and believes that their mother is right about her. That girl needs proper guidance.

Later that evening, Feyi plays a couple ranked matches. Compared to before, the climb to the top gets harder because she has the terrible misfortune of being paired up with bad teammates.

Case in point, her current match that gave her the worst jungler ever. Like the guy kept on pinging non-stop and always fed the enemy toplaner and jungler by being stupid enough to stay in one place; close to the croc.

It got so irritating that Feyi immediately muted both the guy's pings and chat.

Ebun watches her from afar and decides to go see what exactly is going on.

She comes closer to her sister and sees her playing Valkyrie.

"Really? Games Feyi? What about all the job hunting huh?"

Feyi then gets killed in-game, her fourth death so far,  which causes the girl to shoot her now signature icy glare at her older sister, something that makes the older woman to cower in fear due to how scary Feyi is when she does that.

"S-Stop that Feyi!! You are so creepy when you do that!!"

The younger lady rolls her eyes and returns to her game.

Ebun quickly walks off muttering, "She is just like her father."

Despite a rough start, Feyi manages to turn the tide of the battle around and destroys the enemy team by using a combination of her ult and a couple auto attacks with the usual EWQ combo on their main carry, who is the enemy midlaner before killing the fed toplaner and ADC.

That alone forces them to quickly surrender, scoring a massive victory for her team and promoting her to Silver 1.

She ends up being the most honoured member of the team after the game.

"Well that was fun."

Meanwhile at another side of Lagos, Ilupeju to be precise,  a 30 year old man with clean shaven hair growls in rage and bangs his fist against his table.

Just now his team got defeated by that worthless EbonyKnight.

"Oh I shall find out who you are and crush you because how dare you demote me like that!!"

News about EbonyKnight begins to spread as well.

"Who is this EbonyKnight?"

"Ah she is that good!!"

"Hmmm....you no sure say she b one of dose Koreans were get secret account for oda servers?"

"Chai!! She finish Adebite pikin for dere!!"

The major Nigerian E-Sports teams soon get word on this promising rookie.

"Interesting." says Alex, the Captain of Team Whiz as he watches the trending gameplay footage of EbonyKnight.

"Omo!! See how dat babe flog Chris Adebite!!" Yomi, the toplanet of the team exclaims.

"Their jungler afked mid-game and yet, the girl somehow carried the team." says IK, the ADC.

Alex nods. "Let us keep an eye out on this girl. Who knows what other crazy things she is capable of?"

Weeks pass and Feyi had already graduated from a low elo player to a Diamond 1 ranked player.

Her fame begins to spread as well as most of the African players begin to take note of this incredible player with potential.

"Who the hell is that chick?!" Egypt's top Valkyrie player Omar asks.

"Whoever she is, I doubt she is some rookie." says Aisha, another Egyptian player.

"Or maybe she is one of those lucky rookies." Omar replies.

Chris is in his office, still trying to get over that disgraceful defeat.Besides being the new CEO of Adebite ventures, he is also a famous streamer with over 10 million subscribers.

Well at least he used to have 10 million subscribers until EbonyKnight showed up and kept on kicking his ass in every match they are in that is.

Just then, his secretary Doris walks into the room. "Boss, Chiks came back with this. It is the results of his hacking job to decipher Ebony's true identity."

She hands the files to Chris who goes through the files. Once he sees who it is, he smirks. "What a small world."

He then proceeds to send a message to Ebony via the client messanger.

Feyi logs into the client and finds a message from her opponent from a previous match; MrIncredible.

Feyi sighs and then clicks on the messagre which says:

Hello Ebony. Oh should I say Feyi Badmus?

Feyi raises an eyebrow and then types in  a reply:

What do you want and how did you figure out who I am?

Chris chuckles. She certainly isn't the brightest individual.

I have my sources. Anyways, I want us to have a special rematch. Except it will be just two of us. No teams. Next week Wednesday 1pm sharp at Hard Rock Cafe.

Feyi sighs. She has no choice.

Fine. I accept.

Chris' evil smirk broadens. "Good girl."

[shirlleycoyle]

‘Urgent Pizza’: The Untold Story of the Largest Hack in Twitch’s History

At the end of the day on a Friday in October 2014, just a few months after Amazon paid nearly $1 billion for the video game streaming website Twitch, an engineer stumbled upon what at the time was the platform’s first ever hack while doing tech support for a colleague who worked remotely.

"Oh fuck," the former Twitch engineer recalled saying. "But I remember thinking that there was so much 'I told you so' here."

The engineer, who asked to remain anonymous to speak about confidential details of the incident, said he found logs that showed the hackers had gained access to his colleague's account. The hackers had left clear traces of their intrusion, he said.

"This attack definitely had the characteristic of a minimally skilled adversary," he told Motherboard.

The full story of the 2014 hack against Twitch has never been reported before, and is based on interviews with seven former Twitch employees who were working there when the breach happened, and when the company later investigated the hack and dealt with its fallout. Motherboard granted sources anonymity because they are bound by non-disclosure agreements that forbid them from discussing details of their work at the time.

The discovery of the suspicious logs kicked off an intense investigation that pulled nearly all Twitch employees on deck. One former employee said they worked 20 hours a day for two months, another said he worked "three weeks straight." Other employees said they worked long hours for weeks on end; some who lived far from the office slept in hotel rooms booked by the company. At the time, Twitch had few, if any, dedicated cybersecurity engineers, so developers and engineers from other teams were pulled into the effort, working together in meeting rooms with glass windows covered, frantically trying to figure out just how bad the hack was, according to five former Twitch employees who were at the company at the time.

The hack was so bad that Twitch essentially had to rebuild much of its code infrastructure because the company eventually decided to assume most of its servers were compromised. They figured it would be easier to just label them "dirty," and slowly migrate them to new servers, according to three former employees who saw and worked with these servers.

“The hackers had such wide access before they were detected, we basically had to rebuild everything from scratch”

Remnants of that hack still exist today, and can be found in Twitch source code stolen and dumped on the internet by hackers last week in another major data breach that exposed the revenues of streamers on the platform as well as internal source code. Twitch has changed significantly since 2014, but former employees say that the earlier hack had knock-on effects that can still be seen today.

Outside of the company, Twitch did not disclose details of the breach, nor its extent.

Twitch's users would only find out about the breach six months after its discovery, on March 23, 2015, when the company published a short blog post that explained "there may have been unauthorized access to some Twitch user account information," but did not let on nearly how damaging the hack was to Twitch internally.

Inside the company, the 2014 incident would later be codenamed "Urgent Pizza," and became something of a running joke; Twitch leadership eventually printed t-shirts with this name on it. (The company also decided that all future incidents would have food-themed codenames, and wrote a random codename generator for that purpose, according to one source and code leaked in the 2021 incident).

"The event was called 'urgent pizza' because management had everyone do ridiculous amounts of overtime and ordered pizzas as incentive lol," a former Twitch employee told Motherboard. "People who participated got t-shirts and 'joke' about having PTSD from the long hours and lack of understanding of the scope of the hack which necessitated the company-wide rebuild."

The random food name generator Twitch developers wrote after the 2015 hack. This code was leaked as part of the 2021 incident. (Image: Motherboard)

Traces of the 2014 hack and the company's response were exposed in some of the data leaked in the recent incident, like artifacts from the past, etched in source code. Some files leaked last week contain strings like "remove pizza script," "a pizza thing," "indicate that the server is ‘urgent-pizza clean,’" "move pizza to securelogin," and "dirty_status = True."

The hack came as a surprise, even though the company had not invested in keeping itself secure, according to another former employee.

"Security efforts kept getting cancelled or deprioritized with the argument that 'everyone loves Twitch; no one wants to hack us,'" they added.

Do you work at Twitch? Do you have more information about the recent breach and leak? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, OTR chat at lorenzofb@jabber.ccc.de, or email lorenzo@motherboard.tv.

When Twitch finally disclosed the hack in March of 2015, security engineers at Twitch and Amazon, who had come to help with the incident response, concluded that the hack had started at least eight months before the discovery in October of 2014, though they had no idea if the hackers had actually broken in even earlier than that, according to the former employee.

"That was long enough for them to learn entirely how our whole system worked and the attacks they launched demonstrated that knowledge," the former employee said.

"The hackers had such wide access before they were detected, we basically had to rebuild everything from scratch," the former employee added. "Some of the response involved rewriting the login process because the hackers had figured out how to send a copy of every single user's password to their servers. They also gained access to all of our source code and all of our databases."

Two other former employees confirmed the extent of the data breach.

This screenshot shows the code that was written to prevent future potential hackers from easily stealing users' passwords. (Image: Motherboard)

But many Twitch employees never fully figured out just how deep the hackers had burrowed into the company's network, and it's unclear to them whether the company ever fully understood the full scale of the attack.

For months after the discovery and public announcement, several servers and services were internally labeled as "dirty," as a way to tell all developers and engineers to be careful when interacting with them, and to make sure they'd get cleaned up eventually. This meant that they were still live and in use, but engineers had put restrictions on them in the event that they were still compromised, according to three former employees.

"The plan apparently was just to rebuild the entire infra[structure] from known-good code and deprecate the old 'dirty' environment. We still, years later, had a split between 'dirty' services (servers or other things that were running when the hack took place) and 'clean' services, which were fired up after," one of the former employees said. "We celebrated office-wide the day we took down the last dirty service!"

"Twitch wasn't aware of what [the hackers] had access to, or how long they had access," one of the former employees, who joined a couple of years after the hack, told Motherboard. "Which is how we ended up with the dirty hosts: they were hosts that were probably fine, but they couldn't definitively say one way or the other."

"You'd think that would be a teachable moment but it was either something that newer (non-security) people largely didn't know about, and older employees kind of giggled about," he said.

The sources who spoke to Motherboard shared details of the 2014 hack to illustrate Twitch's approach to security at the time, and how it's evolved since then. The damage Twitch suffered in the hack years ago, compared to damage from the new incident, could show whether the company has learned its lessons from 2014 and put better protections in place.

"This [2014] incident was a very worst-case-scenario attack that was entirely preventable. But leadership's desire to avoid considering the security problem was the root cause," one of the former employees said. "And this more recent incident demonstrates that they didn't learn anything from the incident in 2014."

Twitch did not respond to a series of questions about the 2014 hack, and the more recent incident.

Last week, an anonymous poster on the online forum 4Chan published what they called "part one" of a series of Twitch leaks.

"Their community is also a disgusting toxic cesspool, so to foster more disruption and competition in the online video streaming space, we have completely pwned them, and in part one, are releasing the source code from almost 6,000 internal Git repositories," the anonymous 4Chan user wrote in the post that has since been deleted.

The leak consisted of hundreds of gigabytes of internal Twitch source code and financial data of streamers. This leak is certainly embarrassing for Twitch, and also extremely damaging to streamers.

"It's definitely troubling, to say the least," well-known streamer Amouranth told Motherboard. "As a streamer, Twitch is actively serving as your employer, and you want to believe that you can trust them to have security measures in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

Twitch has yet to disclose details of the data breach, as it's still investigating. In a blog post, the company said that "some data was exposed to the internet due to an error in a Twitch server configuration change that was subsequently accessed by a malicious third party."

“In the earlier days of Twitch the security team had a presence, but they seemed to be stretched to the limit”

When the former Twitch employees who spoke to Motherboard found out about the leak, some were surprised, and others weren't.

"When I heard this, I really wondered how they could be so sloppy, especially with Amazon as parent," one of them said.

Other former employees, however, said that the damage of this new data breach appears to be less severe than the 2014 hack. And that it's likely thanks to Twitch taking security more seriously since then.

"In the earlier days of Twitch the security team had a presence, but they seemed to be stretched to the limit. Twitch had a bad habit of adding tons of new employees to build new products without growing the teams around them, like security," one source said. "I think they knew they needed to start taking it seriously under the eye of Amazon. It definitely got better over time. Tighter access controls, more security scrutiny over the internal tools used, things like that."

Another echoed this sentiment.

"Things were much better by the time I left though, I think even though this is a much bigger hack in terms of impact on the technical side of the business, the security posture of the company is probably matured enough to make remediation a much more gentle process," they said. "It’s still pretty embarrassing, but the theories I’ve seen so far on what the means of access was make the blast radius a lot smaller. Because despite it meaning some serious audits of the security of pretty much all of Twitch’s code, it shouldn’t need to be a company-wide-overtime-for-months kind of situation."

But in the end, Twitch is now investigating another data breach, six years after the worst hack of its history.

"The security team really did everything they could," a former employee said. "So it's frustrating to see it come to this."

Matthew Gault contributed reporting.

Subscribe to our new cybersecurity podcast, CYBER. Subscribe to our new Twitch channel.

‘Urgent Pizza’: The Untold Story of the Largest Hack in Twitch’s History syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[green-eyeddragonfanfiction]

Bah, HumBuck! Plan A

 Summary: You’re the newest Avenger. Realizing that Bucky plans to spend Christmas alone, you enlist the help of Wanda, your best friend, and Steve, Bucky’s best friend and your mentor. You’re determined to make his Christmas amazing. Pairing: Bucky x Female!Powered!Reader Word Count: ~2,242 Warnings: blood (just a bit), language, fluff A/N: This is for Sam’s Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree Writing Challenge. My prompt was #16, “’This was a terrible plan.’ ‘This was your plan.’” @lovelynemesis I definitely listened to the Pentatonix Yule Log playlist while writing this. Nonstop. On repeat. So good. It just makes me so happy. *gifs not mine*

Masterlist // Plan B (Next Chapter)

It was the morning of December 24th in upstate New York and the inside of the Avengers base had been decked out from top to bottom in ostentatious decorations. Sparkling trees decorated every level, accompanied by garlands, dazzling banners and streamers, and bafflingly intricate and expensive-looking wreaths.

The outside of the base was covered in a thick, fluffy layer of snow; a beautiful winter wonderland, indeed. By the time everyone had cleared out of the base for Christmas, it was only you, Steve, Wanda, Vision, and Bucky who remained.

Both you and Bucky were relatively recent additions to the team; he’d gotten back from Wakanda a year ago, Hydra-free, and you’d been recruited only shortly thereafter.

You didn’t like to toot your own horn too much, but your power -being able to create and control fire and heat- was pretty badass. However, just like fire itself, your powers were temperamental and hard to control. As such, you were assigned a mentor and weren’t put on active duty yet.

They chose Steve for you, which had taken you by surprise. Surely someone like Thor, Wanda, or Vision would have been a better choice? But it had been decided you’d benefit from Cap’s patient guidance and that his level-headed demeanor might even wear off on you a bit. To your superiors’ credit, it had been working so far. You were more likely to think before you acted now and your powers seemed to fight you less as of late. Still, no missions yet.

You were flipping idly through TV channels in the common room, steaming mug of tea clutched in your hand, when Wanda plopped down next to you. The smile on her face was one you knew well; it was full of the promise for fun.

“I know that look, Wanda. What’s going on?” you asked curiously, smirk dancing on your lips as you looked at your best friend.

“Wanda wishes to have a movie marathon with the two of us,” came Vision’s voice from behind the couch. You jerked your head back in surprise, craning to get a look at the red android. He was staring at you, blue eyes trained unwaveringly on your face.

“Vision, stop lurking and come sit down next to your girlfriend,” you ordered good-naturedly, pointing deliberately at the spot on the other side of Wanda from you. He acquiesced, face thoughtful as he considered your words.

Wanda’s cheeks were tinged pink at your statement and she reached for Vision’s hand once he’d sat down. Their fingers laced together and you smiled. They were so cute together; they’d only recently started dating officially. “Steve and Bucky are invited too, of course!” Wanda said hurriedly.

“I don’t think that’s happening,” said yet another intruder on your lovely Christmas Eve morning.

The three of you turned to look at Steve, who looked troubled.

“What do you mean, Cap’n?” you asked playfully, leaning your head onto the back of the sofa so you could stare at him more easily, brows raised in question.

“Bucky’s holed up in his room and won’t come out; Says he wants to spend Christmas alone,” Steve said as he walked over to the couch and sunk down next to you, anxiety radiating off of him in waves.

“No one wants to spend Christmas alone,” Wanda said disbelievingly.

“Data does suggest that most people prefer to spend this time of year with ones closest emotionally to them. This trend is especially prevalent-”

“Viz,” you said tersely, giving him a chastising look.

He stopped mid sentence, looking from you to Wanda, who was giving him a similar look.

“It is as Wanda says. No one wishes to spend Christmas alone,” he said, bowing his head slightly to her in acknowledgement and apology.

“I know that, but I can’t force him to come spend time with us,” Steve said, running a hand over his face in exasperation.

“Well, technically-” you began, finger held up in objection.

“No, (Y/N). Don’t go there,” Steve said, giving you a hard look.

“I wouldn’t actually force him! I’m just saying we technically could!” you said, motioning vaguely at the four of you, especially Wanda and Vision.

Steve groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“Okay, yeah, that’s the last resort. Got it,” you said, resting your chin on your hand while you thought of a better plan.

“No, that’s not-” he groaned. “Why are you like this?” Steve asked despairingly, looking at you as though you alone caused all of his problems. To be fair, you definitely caused at least half of them.

...

Maybe two-thirds.

“I’ve got it!” you said loudly and suddenly enough for both Steve and Wanda to jump in surprise. “Steve! What did you and Bucky do for Christmas in the 40′s?” you asked, turning your excited attention on him.

Steve had been looking at you apprehensively, but his face softened a bit at your question. “After my ma died I spent Christmas at his place. Christmas wasn’t as… grand as it is nowadays,” he said, grimacing slightly. You knew he resented the increasingly-corporate holiday that Christmas had become. “It was a quiet Christmas Eve dinner together with his family and then camping out in his room for the night. His parents were nice enough to get me a gift for Christmas every year and we’d open presents in the living room, then have a nice breakfast together,” Steve said, thoughts 80 years away.

You could imagine that; A young Bucky, who had just hit puberty and was beginning to fill out, and a still-scraggly asthmatic Steve sitting together at the dining room table, the Barnes family treating Steve like a second son. You could see the wide-eyed boys excitedly opening their presents and Bucky’s younger sister, Rebecca (who you’d seen in a few pictures), playing with her new doll.

“I have an idea!” you said excitedly, slightly manic grin lining your features.

A chorus of Oh no’s rang out in the room and you frowned at all of them.

“You have a choice. Either you help me, or you leave me unsupervised to do whatever I want,” you said, turning your sickly sweet smile on each of them.

Steve gulped, eyes widening in horror. Even Wanda looked a bit alarmed; she knew how much trouble you could get yourself into.

Vision seemed to be thinking. “If we leave her unsupervised for twenty-four hours in her current state of mind, the likelihood of the base being burned down before sunrise tomorrow is 91.64%,” he stated.

“Can’t we just lock her up?” Steve asked.

You looked at him, shocked, hand over your chest, betrayal clear on your face.

“At present, Mister Stark’s fireproofing cannot hold out against the highest temperature at which Miss (Y/L/N) can burn. She could escape if she so wished,” Vision said solemnly.

“Can you knock her out for a few hours?” Steve asked, turning to Wanda.

You gasped at Steve, legitimately offended now.

Wanda snorted. “I can, yes, but I won’t. Christmas is her favorite holiday and I won’t be the one to take that away from her. Besides, I wouldn’t use my powers on my best friend, anyway,” she said, shrugging.

You beamed at her, holding your fist out for a fist bump, which she gave enthusiastically, both of you making explosion noises and wiggling your fingers as you pulled your hands away.

Steve sighed, recognizing defeat.

“Alright, what’s this plan?” he asked, sounding less than thrilled at the thought of whatever you were about to say.

You grinned widely, standing up from the couch, and turned to face the three of them, placing your hands firmly on your hips.

“Well, to start-!”

Your plan ended up being a bunch of mini plans rolled into one. You figured that at least one of the things on your list would make him happy.

You knocked on Bucky’s door, practically bouncing up and down on the balls of your feet.

His grumpy voice could be heard through the door a half second later. “Go away, Steve. I already told you-”

“It’s me, Bucky!” you said, cutting across what was likely a well-rehearsed speech.

There was a pause where you could hear him shuffling behind the door before it opened a half second later.

It was only open a few inches but you could see Bucky studying you warily.

“Is Steve out there?” he asked, glancing as far down the hallway as he could in either direction.

“Nope! Just me,” you said, voice downright chipper.

At that, Bucky opened the door the rest of the way. His room was bathed in darkness, making you frown for a second before you plastered a smile back on your face.

“So I know it might not be your thing, but I wanted to make Christmas cookies. It’s a little last minute, I know, but the urge was just overwhelming all of a sudden. I’ve never made cookies before so I was hoping you might help me out, even if it’s just as an extra set of hands because I know I’ll probably end up messing them up or something and I really wanted to have a nice treat for-”

Bucky held up a hand, effectively cutting off your rambling.

You gulped, suddenly nervous. You wouldn’t admit it to anybody, but you had a huge crush on Bucky. You had a feeling Wanda knew, but she hadn’t said anything yet. Although you were prone to rambling, it always seemed worse when you were around Bucky.

He crossed his arms as he studied you and you put on the most doe-eyed, hopeful expression you could muster.

He stared at you for a full ten seconds before he spoke again. “Fine,” he said grumpily before unceremoniously slamming the door in your face.

You stared at the door, confused. It sounded like he’d agreed, but... why did he close his door in your face? Maybe his words had been a ruse to appease you? Confuse you into shutting up? If that was the case, it was working. When he didn’t immediately reappear, you started pacing in front of his door, trying to think of a new plan of attack. You could always-

“What are you doing?” he asked from his doorway, eyeing you with confusion.

You yelped, jumping at the sound of his voice. You hadn’t heard the door open or seen him standing there.

Stupid super-spy-assassin sneaking skills.

You looked him up and down and realized what he’d been doing: getting changed. He wore a cozy-looking maroon sweater and a pair of thick black sweat pants. You had to stop yourself from giggling at the thick pair of dark grey toe socks on his feet.

“Waiting for you,” you said, beaming up at him. “Ready to make some cookies?” you asked jovially, jerking your thumb over your shoulder in the direction of the kitchen.

He shrugged noncommittally and avoided your gaze.

“I’ll take that as a yes!” you said excitedly as you grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the kitchen where Steve, Vision, and Wanda were gathering ingredients from the expansive pantry.

The five of you were chatting idly at the dining room table, cleaning up the giant mess that had been the cookie-making party. The kitchen was big enough that you’d been able to put all of your creations in at once, meaning you’d have plenty of time to decorate them.

“What’s that smell?” Bucky asked, sniffing the air, a look of concern on his face.

You sniffed the air, too, and your face fell in horror. “Oh no,” you muttered, dropping the dough-caked bowl and spoons you’d been carrying as you ran to the kitchen. They clattered to the floor, utensils and bits of cookie dough flying every direction.

The ovens were belching out smoke and you hurriedly shut them off, muttering a string of expletives under your breath. The others peeked in cautiously (probably in the fear that you were setting everything on fire, judging from the apprehension on their faces).

You yanked the trays out of the oven without bothering to put on oven mitts (the heat didn’t effect you and they just got in the way, anyway) and placed them on the kitchen counter before slamming the oven doors shut again. You stared down at the trays in wide-eyed despair.

The cookies all of you had just made were blackened and barely recognizable from the fun Christmas-themed shapes they’d been when you’d put them in the ovens.

“What temperature did you set the ovens to?” Wanda asked cautiously, moving to stand next to you with her shirt over her nose.

“I thought I set it to 350, but-”

“The ovens were set to 530 on broil, Miss Maximoff,” FRIDAY helpfully supplied.

You groaned and buried your face in your hands. “I’m so sorry. I just pressed the buttons and didn’t bother double checking-”

“It’s alright, (Y/N). Accidents happen,” Steve said, smiling kindly at you.

“We have time! We can make another batch-”

“It will take a few hours to clean the ovens of the smokey smell. Using them before this process is over is not recommended,” FRIDAY informed you.

You groaned as you sank to the floor in defeat. Wanda picked through the cookies carefully, looking for any that might be worth saving, but seemed to deem them all ultimately unsalvageable and dumped them into the trash one tray after the other.

Hell, this hadn’t worked. Which meant it was time for Plan B.

Dangnabit, let’s try Plan B! (Next Chapter)

This series is finished, but if you want to be tagged in my other fics, check out  this post! Sorry, but responses to this post asking to be tagged will be ignored, so send me an ask or like one of the taglist posts!

☕ Buy Me a Coffee! ☕

[perfectirishgifts]

Building A Leading ESports Organization. An Exclusive Interview With Adrian Montgomery, CEO Of Enthusiast Gaming

New Post has been published on https://perfectirishgifts.com/building-a-leading-esports-organization-an-exclusive-interview-with-adrian-montgomery-ceo-of-enthusiast-gaming/

Building A Leading ESports Organization. An Exclusive Interview With Adrian Montgomery, CEO Of Enthusiast Gaming

I recently had the privilege to sit down (well share a Zoom call!) with Adrian Montgomery, Chief Executive Officer of Enthusiast Gaming. It is not often as a writer you get direct, unfiltered access to the CEO of one – if not the – leading company in its space, let alone for it to be in my favorite sector – eSports!

For those still unfamiliar with Enthusiast Gaming (as I realize not all of you are quite there on eSports yet! Time to get on-board now though, huh?), the company’s aim is to “build the world’s largest platform of communities for gamers and eSports fans”.

It is already the largest gaming network in North America and the UK with 100 gaming related websites, 1,000 YouTube channels, 7 professional eSports teams and over 30 virtual and in-person gaming events globally such as EGLX, (eglx.com) and the largest mobile gaming event in Europe, Pocket Gamer Connects. The platform reaches over 300 million gamers each month, generating an average of 4 billion views of content each month.

Enthusiast Gaming EGLX

Enthusiast Gaming also has approximately 500 gaming influencers, reaching over 500 million subscribers on Twitch and YouTube. Enthusiast Gaming’s eSports division, Luminosity Gaming, has over 70 million loyal fans and followers, and is a leading global eSports franchise that consists of 7 professional eSports team, including the Vancouver Titans Overwatch team and the Seattle-based Call of Duty team. Yes, wow.

Enthusiast Gaming Vancouver Titans

Before joining Enthusiast Gaming, Adrian was a senior officer and director of several companies in media, sports and entertainment, finance and industrial services — most recently serving as president and CEO of Aquilini Sports and Entertainment, one of Canada’s premier sports and entertainment organizations.  Adrian’s personal passion for eSports clearly jumped off the screen as we got talking about how he became involved in eSports one fateful day when he had a very different type of rental inquiry for their 20,000 seat arena.

“I had just read an article about eSports, and one of my guys phoned me and said “You know how you were interested in eSports? Well, these guys are coming in – do you want to come on the site tour?”. Well, it turned out we had this opportunity to host the biggest eSports event in the world – the DOTA 2 International run by Valve – that was coming out of Seattle for the first time.  I came down and met these three guys, who were acting as if they were in charge of FIFA or the SuperBowl or something! “Take that down, move that, block that off, our crew needs this…”. I was getting a little frustrated and keen to try to put them in their place, saying ‘Hey, so what exactly is the prize purse for this little rinky-dink tournament right? “$33 million dollars (USD)”. Oh my god! So, I went back at the end of the site tour and said, alright, there is clearly something here!”

Despite several doubters among traditional hirers of the venue and concerns on the complexity of the set-up and all its incredible visual effects, the event went ahead. The entire building sold out in one hour for six straight days, the city of Vancouver became overrun with cosplay wearing, DOTA 2 fans and Adrian’s team could not get into their offices as fans lined up were around the block to get in.  So how did the DOTA 2 team achieve this? A complex, multi-layered, omni channel marketing campaign?

“It is almost impossible to sell out a 20,000 seat arena for six days. So I asked the organizers, “I’ve got to know – what is the marketing plan here? They said, “look dude, we’ve got it covered,” to which I replied with, “look, I might be fired tomorrow so you’ve got to give me something.” To my surprise, they said “Ok, you want to know the plan, ok, here is the plan. First we are going to send out a Tweet…” and I said “Ok.. and?” and they responded with – “That’s it, that’s our marketing plan.”

This moment saw the company’s 87-year-old multi-billionaire owner task Adrian with getting into this brave new world of eSports.

“What did you do? And whatever you did, we need to get all of the way into this industry.” A month later they bought an Overwatch team, then Luminosity Gaming and the rest is history”

Enthusiast Gaming Event

Fast forward to today, in asking what now sets Enthusiast Gaming apart, without hesitation Adrian cites the company’s singular focus on its fans.

“We feel no-one is as obsessively focused on the fan experience as we are. The thing that makes us so different to anyone else in the space is that we are not trying to dominate a vertical; we are not trying to just be an eSports organization, a collection of websites, or a tournament organizer – we want to build value right across the fan experience. If you are a super-keen EPIC Games’ Fortnite player who has logged-off, the beauty of this gaming phenomenon is that you are not then ‘done’ – you go to Twitch where – obviously! – we want you watching our Fortnite streamers Muselk and Fresh, when you go to YouTube, we want you to go to the biggest Fortnite YouTube channel in the world – our channel, BCC Gaming, if you want to see what EPIC Gaming is up to next, we want you to then come to one of our events and see their booth up-close. It is all highly integrated – and hopefully a lot of fun also!”

While it is clear Enthusiast Gaming connects with its fans in a very genuine way and has built meaningful relationships, you would be forgiven for thinking there is a significant marketing machine behind this growth – and a bit like how Adrian was surprised about the DOTA 2 event, you may also be surprised to learn they’ve done it in a purely organic, authentic way.

“The thing that blows people away – and is routed in our content and approach – is when I tell them we don’t spend a single cent in acquiring or keeping that traffic coming back. They won’t believe it. Building a world-class business routed in user-generated content is definitely a very hard thing to do – and when you succeed it is a very hard thing to explain! There is a lot of art as to how it’s curated, how its presented, but when you can do it well, the sky is the limit for you in terms of possibilities.”

For all of its growth, gamers can still be seen to be misunderstood as a community. Of the 300 million active base the company has, many falls into the cliched ‘hard to reach’ segments – of Millennials, GenZ & Gen-A, and that are so attractive to brands.

Enthusiast Gaming Event

“They are the world’s most lucrative demographic because they have a lot of purchasing power. They don’t have their money sucked away by these things called children and mortgages. If you are a company, you are no doubt trying to get them into your world at a very early point in their buying lifecycle. What people don’t really understand is that with any traditional sports would kill for the demographics of an eSports fan – they are a little bit older than you think – typically being in their 20’s; they have more disposable income than other traditional sports fan but then, they are elusive – they just don’t consume content the way I did in 20 years ago!”

Enthusiast Gaming is already partnering with the likes of Gillette, Proctor and Gamble, GoDaddy, and Pizza Hut. However, Adrian was clear that other brands need to realize that gaming is not a hobby for many millions – billions of people.

“eSports is more than a hobby for gamers – it’s a way of life. It’s their identity, it’s their social network, and it’s their method of expression. eSports and gaming is going to continue to skyrocket, and people are realizing how pervasive it is in people’s lives. What I’ve seen change this year – and I can tell you which is one of the most exciting things for our industry today – is that most marketing directors now know if you need to communicate with young people, you simply must have a video game strategy. eSports has made quantum leaps during the recent pandemic.”

With the likes of GenZ’s being highly influenced by the people they follow on social media, it just so happens that their heroes– and some the biggest stars on social media – are gamers. Enthusiast Gaming sponsors some the biggest athletes, recently signing one of the biggest content creators on Twitch – xQc – who has a community of 100,000 concurrent viewers every night. The company is also focused on developing the next generation of talent. Recently creating the “Rising Stars” competition, Enthusiast Gaming sought to leverage its incredible platform to create a “star-making factory” and find and develop the next gaming superstars of tomorrow.

“We are trying to create ‘The Voice’, we’re trying to create ‘American Idol’ for gamers. We recently had a five-week competition with all entries judged by stars on our roster like xQc, Muselk, Anomaly, and Fresh sit on as judges. We recently concluded the competition at the 2020 Enthusiast Gaming Live Experience (ELGX), where BabyCappah took the title and a $100,000 USD sponsorship with Luminosity Gaming. We are creating something of a Simon Cowell fuelled concept here…and I think we are going to be very successful with it!”  

BabyCappah will actually become a fully-fledged member of the Luminosity Gaming roster. In true entrepreneurial style the company had originally beta-tested the concept with a smaller version called ‘So You Think You Can Stream’.

“The incredible gamer who won is actually quadriplegic – RockyNoHands – we made the decision instantly to sign him to Luminosity Gaming.  We are so proud to be associated with him. He is an incredible example of how we can hopefully convince people with disabilities to engage more with eSports with him as a leading ambassador – it is very exciting to see the impact eSports can have.”

We all hear the eye-popping statistics about how big the gaming industry is. From Activision, to Tencent, to EA to biggest companies on the planet – Amazon, Facebook and Google – vying to be THE broadcast platform for the content is clear that there is still so much growth in eSports. This is true for Enthusiast Gaming which has also recently completed others acquisitions, and with the company planning to list on NASDAQ, and launching a free Ad-Supported Streaming TV Channel – BCC Gaming – with Samsung TV Plus. So – what’s next?

“What is next is for us to sell our content – using elements such as subscription. We believe we can take a userbase and turn it into a marketplace. Why can’t we have an App Store? Can we connect these communities and people together and make a social media network of our own even – that is all ahead of us. I always tell my team, while we are building a company called Enthusiast Gaming, we are also helping to build an industry – and the rules are being written as we speak. The plane is getting configured in flight and there are people like us, like FaZe Clan, and all of the other publishers collectively building something incredible. To have people like you helping get the word out and for taking us seriously really means a lot and it is very exciting times ahead.”

It is clear from talking to Adrian that there is an incredible opportunity for brands to engage through eSports provided they are happy to mirror Enthusiast Gaming’s authentic approach. As a CEO, Adrian is a leader driving everyone forward in an open, honest and authentic way and clearly runs a very collegiate, interactive and respectful organization that every company can learn from. It is clear Enthusiast Gaming will be a major part of eSports’ continued growth and I’ll be watching with great interest.

From Media in Perfectirishgifts

[sheminecrafts]

The 9 biggest questions about Google’s Stadia game streaming service

Google’s Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But the game streaming services faces serious challenges if it wants to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, or even plain old PCs and smartphones.

Here are our nine biggest questions about what the service will be and how it’ll work.

1. What’s the game selection like?

We saw Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (a lot) and Doom: Eternal, and a few other things running on Stadia, but otherwise Google’s presentation was pretty light on details as far as what games exactly we can expect to see on there.

It’s not an easy question to answer, since this isn’t just a question of “all PC games,” or “all games from these 6 publishers.” Stadia requires a game be ported, or partly recoded to fit its new environment — in this case a Linux-powered PC. That’s not unusual, but it isn’t trivial either.

Porting is just part of the job for a major studio like Ubisoft, which regularly publishes on multiple platforms simultaneously, but for a smaller developer or a more specialized game, it’s not so straightforward. Jade Raymond will be in charge of both first-party games just for Stadia as well as developer relations; she said that the team will be “working with external developers to bring all of the bleeding edge Google technology you have seen today available to partner studios big and small.”

What that tells me is that every game that comes to Stadia will require special attention. That’s not a good sign for selection, but it does suggest that anything available on it will run well.

Google scores a custom AMD GPU to power its Stadia cloud gaming hardware

2. What will it cost?

Perhaps the topic Google avoided the most was what the heck the business model is for this whole thing.

Do you pay a subscription fee? Is it part of YouTube or maybe YouTube Red? Do they make money off sales of games after someone plays the instant demo? Is it free for an hour a day? Will it show ads every 15 minutes? Will publishers foot the bill as part of their normal marketing budget? No one knows!

It’s a difficult play because the most obvious way to monetize also limits the product’s exposure. Asking people to subscribe adds a lot of friction to a platform where the entire idea is to get you playing within 5 seconds.

Putting ads in is an easy way to let people jump in and have it be monetized a small amount. You could even advertise the game itself and offer a one-time 10 percent off coupon or something. Then mention that YouTube Red subscribers don’t see ads at all.

Sounds reasonable, but Google didn’t mention anything like this at all. We’ll probably hear more later this year closer to launch, but it’s hard to judge the value of the service when we have no idea what it will cost.

3. What about iOS devices?

Google and Apple are bitter rivals in a lot of ways, but it’s hard to get around the fact that iPhone owners tend to be the most lucrative mobile customers. Yet there were none in the live demo and no availability mentioned for iOS.

Depending on its business model, Google may have locked itself out of the App Store. Apple doesn’t let you essentially run a store within its store (as we have seen in cases like Amazon and Epic) and if that’s part of the Stadia offering, it’s not going to fly.

An app that just lets you play might be a possibility, but since none was mentioned, it’s possible Google is using Stadia as a platform exclusive to draw people to Pixel devices. That kind of puts a limit on the pitch that you can play on devices you already have.

4. What about games you already own?

A big draw of game streaming is to buy a game once and play it anywhere. Sometimes you want to play the big awesome story parts on your 60-inch TV in surround sound, but do a little inventory and quest management on your laptop at the cafe. That’s what systems like Steam Link offer.

Epic Games is taking on Steam with its own digital game store, which includes higher take-home revenue rates for developers.

But Google didn’t mention how its ownership system will work, or whether there would be a way to play games you already own on the service. This is a big consideration for many gamers.

It was mentioned that there would be cross platform play and perhaps even the ability to bring saves to other platforms, but how that would work was left to the imagination. Frankly I’m skeptical.

Letting people show they own a game and giving them access to it is a recipe for scamming and trouble, but not supporting it is missing out on a huge application for the service. Google’s caught between a rock and a hard place here.

5. Can you really convert viewers to players?

This is a bit more of an abstract question, but it comes from the basic idea that people specifically come to YouTube and Twitch to watch games, not play them. Mobile viewership is huge because streams are a great way to kill time on a train or bus ride, or during a break at school. These viewers often don’t want to play at those times, and couldn’t if they did want to!

So the question is, are there really enough people watching gaming content on YouTube who will actually actively switch to playing just like that?

Photo: Maskot / Getty Images

To be fair, the idea of a game trailer that lets you play what you just saw five seconds later is brilliant. I’m 100 percent on board there. But people don’t watch dozens of hours of game trailers a week — they watch famous streamers play Fortnite and PUBG and do speedruns of Dark Souls and Super Mario Bros 1. These audiences are much harder to change into players.

The potential of joining a game with a streamer, or affecting them somehow, or picking up at the spot they left off, to try fighting a boss on your own or seeing how their character controls, is a good one, but making that happen goes far, far beyond the streaming infrastructure Google has created here. It involves rewriting the rules on how games are developed and published. We saw attempts at this from Beam, later acquired by Microsoft, but it never really bloomed.

Streaming is a low-commitment, passive form of entertainment, which is kind of why it’s so popular. Turning that into an active, involved form of entertainment is far from straightforward.

6. How’s the image quality?

Games these days have mind-blowing graphics. I sure had a lot of bad things to say about Anthem, but when it came to looks that game was a showstopper. And part of what made it great were the tiny details in textures and subtle gradations of light that are only just recently possible with advances in shaders, volumetric fog, and so on. Will those details really come through in a stream?

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong. I know a 1080p stream looks decent. But the simple fact is that high-efficiency HD video compression reduces detail in a noticeable way. You just can’t perfectly recreate an image if you have to send it 60 times per second with only a few milliseconds to compress and decompress it. It’s how image compression works.

For some people this won’t be a big deal. They really might not care about the loss of some visual fidelity — the convenience factor may outweigh it by a ton. But there are others for whom it may be distracting, those who have invested in a powerful gaming console or PC that gives them better detail at higher framerates than Stadia can possibly offer.

It’s not apples to apples but Google has to consider these things, especially when the difference is noticeable enough that game developers and publishers start to note that a game is “best experienced locally” or something like that.

7. Will people really game on the go?

I don’t question whether people play games on mobile. That’s one of the biggest businesses in the world. But I’m not sure that people want to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on their iPa… I mean, Pixel Slate. Let alone their smartphone.

Games on phones and tablets are frequently time-killers driven by addictive short-duration game sessions. Even the bigger, more console-like games on mobile usually aim for shorter play sessions. That may be changing in some ways for sure but it’s a consideration, and AAA console games really just aren’t designed for 5-10 minute gaming sessions.

Add to that that you have to carry around what looks like a fairly bulky controller and this becomes less of an option for things like planes, cafes, subway rides, and so on. Even if you did bring it, could you be sure you’ll get the 10 or 20 Mbps you’ll need to get that 60FPS video rate? And don’t say 5G. If anyone says 5G again after the last couple months I’m going to lose it.

Naturally the counterpoint here is Nintendo’s fabulously successful and portable Switch. But the Switch plays both sides, providing a console-like experience on the go that makes sense because of its frictionless game state saving and offline operation. Stadia doesn’t seem to offer anything like that. In some ways it could be more compelling, but it’s a hard sell right now.

Google’s new Stadia game controller has a few tricks up its sleeves

8. How will multiplayer work?

Obviously multiplayer gaming is huge right now and likely will be forever, so the Stadia will for sure support multiplayer one way or another. But multiplayer is also really complicated.

It used to be that someone just picked up the second controller and played Luigi. Now you have friend codes, accounts, user IDs, automatic matchmaking, all kinds of junk. If I want to play The Division 2 with a friend via Stadia, how does that work? Can I use my existing account? How do I log in? Are there IP issues and will the whole rigmarole of the game running in some big server farm set off cheat detectors or send me a security warning email? What if two people want to play a game locally?

Many of the biggest gaming properties in the world are multiplayer focused, and without a very, very clear line on this it’s going to turn a lot of people off. The platform might be great for it — but they have some convincing to do.

9. Stadia?

Branding is hard. Launching a product that aims to reach millions and giving it a name that not only represents it well but isn’t already taken is hard. But that said… Stadia?

I guess the idea is that each player is kind of in a stadium of their own… or that they’re in a stadium where Ninja is playing, and then they can go down to join? Certainly Stadia is more distinctive than stadium and less copyright-fraught than Colosseum or the like. Arena is probably out too.

If only Google already owned something that indicated gaming but was simple, memorable, and fit with its existing “Google ___” set of consumer-focused apps, brands, and services.

Oh well!

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2W4pca6 via IFTTT

[topdiyhub]

Google’s Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But the game streaming services faces serious challenges if it wants to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, or even plain old PCs and smartphones.

Here are our nine biggest questions about what the service will be and how it’ll work.

1. What’s the game selection like?

We saw Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (a lot) and Doom: Eternal, and a few other things running on Stadia, but otherwise Google’s presentation was pretty light on details as far as what games exactly we can expect to see on there.

It’s not an easy question to answer, since this isn’t just a question of “all PC games,” or “all games from these 6 publishers.” Stadia requires a game be ported, or partly recoded to fit its new environment — in this case a Linux-powered PC. That’s not unusual, but it isn’t trivial either.

Porting is just part of the job for a major studio like Ubisoft, which regularly publishes on multiple platforms simultaneously, but for a smaller developer or a more specialized game, it’s not so straightforward. Jade Raymond will be in charge of both first-party games just for Stadia as well as developer relations; she said that the team will be “working with external developers to bring all of the bleeding edge Google technology you have seen today available to partner studios big and small.”

What that tells me is that every game that comes to Stadia will require special attention. That’s not a good sign for selection, but it does suggest that anything available on it will run well.

Google scores a custom AMD GPU to power its Stadia cloud gaming hardware

2. What will it cost?

Perhaps the topic Google avoided the most was what the heck the business model is for this whole thing.

Do you pay a subscription fee? Is it part of YouTube or maybe YouTube Red? Do they make money off sales of games after someone plays the instant demo? Is it free for an hour a day? Will it show ads every 15 minutes? Will publishers foot the bill as part of their normal marketing budget? No one knows!

It’s a difficult play because the most obvious way to monetize also limits the product’s exposure. Asking people to subscribe adds a lot of friction to a platform where the entire idea is to get you playing within 5 seconds.

Putting ads in is an easy way to let people jump in and have it be monetized a small amount. You could even advertise the game itself and offer a one-time 10 percent off coupon or something. Then mention that YouTube Red subscribers don’t see ads at all.

Sounds reasonable, but Google didn’t mention anything like this at all. We’ll probably hear more later this year closer to launch, but it’s hard to judge the value of the service when we have no idea what it will cost.

3. What about iOS devices?

Google and Apple are bitter rivals in a lot of ways, but it’s hard to get around the fact that iPhone owners tend to be the most lucrative mobile customers. Yet there were none in the live demo and no availability mentioned for iOS.

Depending on its business model, Google may have locked itself out of the App Store. Apple doesn’t let you essentially run a store within its store (as we have seen in cases like Amazon and Epic) and if that’s part of the Stadia offering, it’s not going to fly.

An app that just lets you play might be a possibility, but since none was mentioned, it’s possible Google is using Stadia as a platform exclusive to draw people to Pixel devices. That kind of puts a limit on the pitch that you can play on devices you already have.

4. What about games you already own?

A big draw of game streaming is to buy a game once and play it anywhere. Sometimes you want to play the big awesome story parts on your 60-inch TV in surround sound, but do a little inventory and quest management on your laptop at the cafe. That’s what systems like Steam Link offer.

Epic Games is taking on Steam with its own digital game store, which includes higher take-home revenue rates for developers.

But Google didn’t mention how its ownership system will work, or whether there would be a way to play games you already own on the service. This is a big consideration for many gamers.

It was mentioned that there would be cross platform play and perhaps even the ability to bring saves to other platforms, but how that would work was left to the imagination. Frankly I’m skeptical.

Letting people show they own a game and giving them access to it is a recipe for scamming and trouble, but not supporting it is missing out on a huge application for the service. Google’s caught between a rock and a hard place here.

5. Can you really convert viewers to players?

This is a bit more of an abstract question, but it comes from the basic idea that people specifically come to YouTube and Twitch to watch games, not play them. Mobile viewership is huge because streams are a great way to kill time on a train or bus ride, or during a break at school. These viewers often don’t want to play at those times, and couldn’t if they did want to!

So the question is, are there really enough people watching gaming content on YouTube who will actually actively switch to playing just like that?

Photo: Maskot / Getty Images

To be fair, the idea of a game trailer that lets you play what you just saw five seconds later is brilliant. I’m 100 percent on board there. But people don’t watch dozens of hours of game trailers a week — they watch famous streamers play Fortnite and PUBG and do speedruns of Dark Souls and Super Mario Bros 1. These audiences are much harder to change into players.

The potential of joining a game with a streamer, or affecting them somehow, or picking up at the spot they left off, to try fighting a boss on your own or seeing how their character controls, is a good one, but making that happen goes far, far beyond the streaming infrastructure Google has created here. It involves rewriting the rules on how games are developed and published. We saw attempts at this from Beam, later acquired by Microsoft, but it never really bloomed.

Streaming is a low-commitment, passive form of entertainment, which is kind of why it’s so popular. Turning that into an active, involved form of entertainment is far from straightforward.

6. How’s the image quality?

Games these days have mind-blowing graphics. I sure had a lot of bad things to say about Anthem, but when it came to looks that game was a showstopper. And part of what made it great were the tiny details in textures and subtle gradations of light that are only just recently possible with advances in shaders, volumetric fog, and so on. Will those details really come through in a stream?

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong. I know a 1080p stream looks decent. But the simple fact is that high-efficiency HD video compression reduces detail in a noticeable way. You just can’t perfectly recreate an image if you have to send it 60 times per second with only a few milliseconds to compress and decompress it. It’s how image compression works.

For some people this won’t be a big deal. They really might not care about the loss of some visual fidelity — the convenience factor may outweigh it by a ton. But there are others for whom it may be distracting, those who have invested in a powerful gaming console or PC that gives them better detail at higher framerates than Stadia can possibly offer.

It’s not apples to apples but Google has to consider these things, especially when the difference is noticeable enough that game developers and publishers start to note that a game is “best experienced locally” or something like that.

7. Will people really game on the go?

I don’t question whether people play games on mobile. That’s one of the biggest businesses in the world. But I’m not sure that people want to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on their iPa… I mean, Pixel Slate. Let alone their smartphone.

Games on phones and tablets are frequently time-killers driven by addictive short-duration game sessions. Even the bigger, more console-like games on mobile usually aim for shorter play sessions. That may be changing in some ways for sure but it’s a consideration, and AAA console games really just aren’t designed for 5-10 minute gaming sessions.

Add to that that you have to carry around what looks like a fairly bulky controller and this becomes less of an option for things like planes, cafes, subway rides, and so on. Even if you did bring it, could you be sure you’ll get the 10 or 20 Mbps you’ll need to get that 60FPS video rate? And don’t say 5G. If anyone says 5G again after the last couple months I’m going to lose it.

Naturally the counterpoint here is Nintendo’s fabulously successful and portable Switch. But the Switch plays both sides, providing a console-like experience on the go that makes sense because of its frictionless game state saving and offline operation. Stadia doesn’t seem to offer anything like that. In some ways it could be more compelling, but it’s a hard sell right now.

Google’s new Stadia game controller has a few tricks up its sleeves

8. How will multiplayer work?

Obviously multiplayer gaming is huge right now and likely will be forever, so the Stadia will for sure support multiplayer one way or another. But multiplayer is also really complicated.

It used to be that someone just picked up the second controller and played Luigi. Now you have friend codes, accounts, user IDs, automatic matchmaking, all kinds of junk. If I want to play The Division 2 with a friend via Stadia, how does that work? Can I use my existing account? How do I log in? Are there IP issues and will the whole rigmarole of the game running in some big server farm set off cheat detectors or send me a security warning email? What if two people want to play a game locally?

Many of the biggest gaming properties in the world are multiplayer focused, and without a very, very clear line on this it’s going to turn a lot of people off. The platform might be great for it — but they have some convincing to do.

9. Stadia?

Branding is hard. Launching a product that aims to reach millions and giving it a name that not only represents it well but isn’t already taken is hard. But that said… Stadia?

I guess the idea is that each player is kind of in a stadium of their own… or that they’re in a stadium where Ninja is playing, and then they can go down to join? Certainly Stadia is more distinctive than stadium and less copyright-fraught than Colosseum or the like. Arena is probably out too.

If only Google already owned something that indicated gaming but was simple, memorable, and fit with its existing “Google ___” set of consumer-focused apps, brands, and services.

Oh well!

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[phantom-le6]

Episode Reviews - Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 6 (1 of 6)

To close out the May portion of reviews for Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, here’s the first round from the show’s sixth season.

Episode 1: Time’s Arrow (Part 2)

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The away team from part 1 (Picard, Riker, Dr Crusher, La Forge and Troi) is in 1893 San Francisco, investigating that era’s cholera outbreak. They determine that the alien shapeshifters are taking advantage of the epidemic to mask their draining of life-force from 19th century humans. While investigating at a hospital, they encounter two shapeshifters. When confronted, the aliens escape, which alerts Data to their location and reunites him with the team. They use Data's device to follow the aliens to the same cavern near San Francisco. They are followed by Guinan and Clemens, the latter having begun to pursue Data and Guinan in an effort to prove they are up to no good.

 The aliens' cane-like device is used to open a time portal back to future Devidia II. In a struggle over the device, Data's head is detached from his body and left in 1893. The away team follows one alien into the future, bringing Data's body and the cane device. Clemens follows the others into the future, while Picard remains in 1893, tending to an injured Guinan. Picard learns from the remaining shapeshifter that 19th century Earth would be in jeopardy if the aliens' habitat in the 24th century is attacked, due to amplifying the time shift effect. Picard uses an iron filing to place a binary message in Data's static memory, to warn his crew in the future.

 In the 24th century, La Forge reattaches Data's 500-year-old head onto his body. Once conscious, Data discovers Picard's message and they engineer a solution. They determine that using photon torpedoes in phase with the alien habitat will negate the dangerous time shift amplification. Riker decides to rescue Picard. After studying the portal-opening device, it is determined that only one person would be able to travel the 19th century to exchange places with Picard. Clemens notes he should be the one to go, and Riker allows him to return to his native time. Clemens meets Picard in the 1893 cavern, having initially landed in another part of San Francisco. Picard thanks him for agreeing to take care of Guinan's injuries and settle their 19th century affairs, and he laments not having the opportunity to know Clemens. The author replies that his personality is written into his books. Picard returns to the future, and is transported to safety as the Enterprise fires the time-phased torpedoes, which destroy the alien habitat.

Review:

While part 2 of this season-bridging two-part episode is good and helps to fully resolve all the questions left over from part 1, there’s still not much by way of character development or issue exploration. For the most part, it’s still a plot-driven mystery that is very much Trek in name only.  The closest we get to any issue exploration is Clemens making a lot of biased suppositions about the world of Trek based on how humanity behaves in his own era, only to realise that humanity has actually cleaned up its act by the time of the TNG era.  The issue here is the tendency we still have to judge by our own experience, and thus not be truly open-minded.  Because Clemens wrote a story where a man of his era travelled back to the time of King Arthur and ruined the past with present-day technology, he assumes all time-travellers would have the same agenda, and doesn’t consider for one moment the idea that Picard’s crew might have a more benign purpose in the past.

 However, there’s too much plot getting in the way of that exploration, and we also see Trek taking a whole different attitude to how time travel works.  ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise’ in season 3 seemed to go with the same model of time-travel as Back to the Future, positing that anything going into the past or coming from it alters history and thus reality.  This time, we get the immutable history/pre-destined time-travel model also used in Disney’s Gargoyles, wherein time -travel has to happen in order to enable future events to occur, and so nothing done in the past can affect the present.  Frankly, such inconsistency within Trek time-travel is what has often put me off time-travel as a whole.  The concept is hard enough to get one’s head around without changing the rules from episode to episode just to fit a random story.  Time travel is either reality-altering, reality-branching or pre-destined as part of an immutable history, and any sci-fi franchise needs to pick one model and adhere to it with dogmatic rigidity in order to maintain consistency and thus be truly brilliant.  Chopping and changing between models like a total flake just pisses me off, to be completely blunt.  For me, this episode only racks up 6 out of 10.

Episode 2: Realm of Fear

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise comes to the assistance of the USS Yosemite, a science vessel from which several crewmen disappeared in a transporter accident. The Enterprise is unable to transport crew members directly to the Yosemite due to interference from a nearby plasma streamer. Lt. Reginald Barclay suggests linking the transporter systems of both ships, which allows them to transport one by one to the Yosemite but requires a lengthy dematerialization/materialization process. Barclay, assigned as part of the team, hesitates to transport and instead walks away.

 Barclay discusses the matter with Counsellor Troi, who teaches him Betazoid meditation techniques to help calm himself. Transporter Chief Miles O'Brien provides Barclay with advice on dealing with his fears, relating his own fear of spiders. Barclay is safely transported to the Yosemite, where he helps the crew investigate. On his return trip, Barclay believes he sees wormlike creatures in the matter stream that attempt to approach him and touch his arm, but he materializes on the Enterprise without harm. He decides that he is suffering from transporter psychosis, a rare affliction. His paranoia forces Troi to declare him unfit for duty. Barclay asks O'Brien to review the transporter logs, and O'Brien agrees there was a strange surge during Barclay's transport. Barclay asks O'Brien to transport him again, recreating the surge, and Barclay again sees the creatures in the matter stream.

 Barclay calls a meeting with the senior staff and explains his observations. Captain Picard orders a thorough review of the transport systems and those that have used it recently. Barclay's arm is found to contain residual ionisation, and further examination reveals microbes from the plasma streamer that were not detected by the biofilter inside Barclay. To remove the microbes, Barclay is put through the transport again, holding him in the matter stream for a longer duration to allow the biofilters to work. While in the stream, Barclay sees one of the creatures approach him and at the last moment reaches out to grab it to his body. When he materializes one of the missing Yosemite crew materializes alongside him. Barclay quickly explains that the remaining worm creatures in the matter stream are the missing crew members, who are then quickly rescued. The Enterprise crew determine that an explosion near the Yosemite during the transport caused the people to become trapped. Later, Barclay and O'Brien meet at Ten-Forward to discuss the nature of fear, and O'Brien shows a visibly frightened Barclay his pet spider Christina.

Review:

There’s not much to say about this episode really. It’s a Barclay episode, which makes it a nice change of pace, and the idea that he has a fear of the transporters is a good, albeit unoriginal, metaphor for those of us who may fear certain types of transport.  In fact, La Forge’s line at one point about transporter being the safest way to travel in the 24th century is akin to what many people claim about flying by airplane.  In essence, Barclay is that person who will always jump to believe that accidents and mishaps are the norm even when they only happen every now and then, just like people with a fear of flying will gravitate to the reports of airplane crashes and totally ignore the more frequent yet unreported successful flights that occur.  However, the thing is we had Dr Polaski playing the transporter phobia riff back in season 2, and Dr McCoy used to have the same issue back on the original series, so the episode lacks originality.

 Also, the episode ignores continuity when La Forge claims to Barclay nothing weird has happened to him during transport. Dude, only a few episodes ago, you and Ro Laren got cloaked and phased beaming back to the Enterprise from a Romulan ship; that’s pretty bloody weird.  TNG really doesn’t do well for consistency going into this season.  I also initially thought O’Brien being in the episode was a gaff in this area, as I know the Deep Space Nine spin-off began about the same time as season 6 of TNG started.  However, a quick check of Wikipedia and Memory Alpha shows O’Brien transfers from Picard’s command to Sisko’s almost half-way through TNG’s sixth season.  Anyway, for me ‘Realm of Fear’ only racks up 6 out of 10.

Episode 3: Man of the People

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The Enterprise comes to the aid of the Federation transport Dorian, under attack by two ships, saving its crew and passenger, Lumerian ambassador Ramid Ves Alkar. Starfleet orders the Enterprise to transport Alkar the rest of the way to the Rekag/Seroni system, where he is to mediate negotiations between the two factions. Alkar is accompanied by an old woman named Sev Maylor whom he identifies as his mother. Counsellor Troi and Alkar quickly form a friendship, but this causes Maylor to become bitterly hostile towards Troi. Soon, Maylor succumbs to an unknown condition and dies; Alkar appears unmoved by the loss but still requests a funeral ceremony along with Troi, having them touch "funeral stones" as part of the process. Dr Crusher requests to autopsy the body due to high levels of neurotransmitter residue, but Alkar denies it, asserting it would violate Lumerian custom.

 As the Enterprise continues, Troi makes sexual advances towards Alkar, who refuses her. She then attempts to seduce members of the crew, putting her relationship with Commander Riker at odds. Troi also shows signs of rapid aging. When they arrive at Seronia, Troi becomes even angrier when she discovers Alkar working with Liva, another female in Alkar's delegation that had already arrived on the planet. After Alkar refuses to let Troi come with him to the planet, Troi attempts to attack him with a knife, but is stopped and brought to Sick Bay.

 The visibly aged Troi shows similarly high levels of neurotransmitter residue as Dr Crusher found in Maylor's body, and with this new evidence, Picard allows her to perform the autopsy on Maylor. Dr Crusher finds that the body is that of a thirty-year-old woman, and Maylor had no genetic relation with Alkar. Picard confronts Alkar on the planet about this finding. Alkar reveals to Picard that he has the ability to channel his negative emotions into another person, a "receptacle", which allows him to be clear-minded and level-headed as a negotiator. Alkar is aware this causes accelerated aging and death of the receptacles within a few years, and had not foreseen Troi's rapid symptoms when he chose her as his next receptacle.

 With Alkar showing no remorse for his actions, Picard and Dr Crusher devise a means to rescue Troi. Dr Crusher will kill Troi to break the link with Alkar and then revive her once he tries to transfer his link to someone else. Once Troi is ‘killed’, Alkar returns to the ship to acknowledge her death, and then seeks out Liva, looking to make her the next receptacle. Just as Alkar starts the process, Dr. Crusher revives Troi and purges the neurotransmitter residue from her system; this has an immediate impact on Alkar as he tries to finish the channelling ritual. Picard has Liva beamed out of Alkar's quarters, leaving the man alone to suffer from years of repressed emotions as they feedback on him from Tori. He ages quickly and dies. Troi is able to make a full recovery, gaining her former youthful appearance and her original personality.

Review:

Apparently in 2017, Screenrant ranked this episode as the 9th thematically darkest episode of all Trek, believing it was an attempt to explore rape at a time when shows weren’t allowed to explore the subject.  However, that’s not what the episode is at all, and Screenrant clearly hasn’t done their research.  First of all, TNG did the episode ‘Violations’ last season which was a direct attempt at exploring rape through the allegory of psychic invasion, so I fail to see why you’d need this episode to do the same thing again when Trek generally wasn’t in the habit of doing multiple episodes on the same issue (the re-hashing of transporter phobia in the previous episode notwithstanding).

 Second, the name of the transport ship the Enterprise saves is a clue to what this episode is really about; it’s TNG doing an homage to The Picture of Dorian Grey, and that’s it.  It’s not about rape, it’s about someone wanting something or someone else to take on everything they see as unwanted.  The only difference is that rather than having an inanimate object like a portrait being the receptacle for things like aging and injury, we see Troi turned into a receptacle for the guest character’s unwanted emotion, which seems to cause a rapid aging effect both to maintain an effective homage to Dorian Grey and to try and sell the idea that some emotions are inherently negative.

 The latter aspect is a big put-off for me because I don’t say any emotion in and of itself as negative.  Emotions are guides to whether or not things in our lives are going ok; fear alerts us to dangers in those lives and keeps us safe, anger warns us of injustice and unfairness and gives us the drive to correct societal imbalance.  The Disney and Pixar film Inside Out shows us the dangers inherent in suppressing any emotion we mistakenly and foolishly perceive as negative.  Emotions are neither good nor bad; only how we deal with them in each circumstance can be subject to such distinctions.

 Even worse, the whole thing rapidly becomes a ‘character acting weird for weirdness’ sake’ episode around the middle.  The opening set-up and everything after Troi gets sedated in sick bay is good, but the middle part is just totally cringe-worthy.  For me, this episode is only worth 4 out of 10.

Episode 4: Relics

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

The starship Enterprise, responding to a distress call, discovers a nearby Dyson sphere. They trace the distress call to the USS Jenolan, a Federation transport ship that has been missing for 75 years, which they find crashed on the sphere's outer shell. Commander Riker, Chief Engineer La Forge, and Lieutenant Worf transport to the Jenolan while the Enterprise investigates the sphere. La Forge discovers that the Jenolan's transporter has been jerry-rigged to sustain two life signals within its pattern buffer indefinitely, though one has degraded too far to be recovered. La Forge reverses the process and restores the remaining signal, which turns out to be former Starfleet officer Captain Montgomery Scott.

 Back aboard the Enterprise, Scott explains that he was only a passenger aboard the Jenolan en route to a retirement colony, but when the ship was caught in the Dyson sphere's gravity field, only he and one other officer survived the crash, and Scott had rigged the transporter to try to keep them "alive" until a rescue vessel could arrive. After being cleared by Dr Crusher, Scott is eager to see the ship's modern technology, but quickly finds that his old knowledge has long been surpassed and his efforts to help are instead getting in the way of normal operations. Ordered to leave Engineering by La Forge, Scott heads to Ten Forward, and is dismayed to learn that real alcohol is no longer served on Starfleet ships (having been replaced by 'synthehol', which Scott refuses to drink). Lt. Commander Data offers him a potent unknown green beverage from Guinan's private stock, which he takes to one of the Enterprise's holodecks to recreate the bridge of the original Kirk-era Enterprise. Captain Picard joins Scott to offer encouragement after hearing of his difficulties in adjusting to the 24th century, to which Scott declares himself a relic of the past. Picard reveals that the green drink is Aldebaran whiskey that he provided to Guinan, and the two share the bottle.

 The next day, at Picard's suggestion, La Forge enlists Scott's help in recovering survey data from the Jenolan's systems, utilizing his knowledge of period Starfleet technology. Meanwhile, the Enterprise discovers a hatch on the side of the Dyson sphere, but when they try to communicate with the systems, the ship is pulled into the Dyson sphere by automated controls, temporarily disabling their systems. Though they are able to recover control before the ship collides with the star inside the sphere, they find the star is unstable and emitting large amounts of radiation which will be lethal to the crew, and surmise that the sphere was long abandoned by its creators due to this. The Enterprise quickly realizes the only exit from the interior of the sphere is the port they used but cannot figure out how to open it from their side.

 When La Forge tries to make contact with the Enterprise, he discovers it missing, and works with Scott to make the Jenolan flight-worthy. They discover the same hatch the Enterprise found and surmise the Enterprise is trapped inside. La Forge and Scott manage to open the hatch without being pulled in and then wedge the Jenolan in the open hatch, using its shields to keep it open while the Enterprise escapes, rescuing the two engineers from the Jenolan just before destroying it with photon torpedoes.

 As the Enterprise returns to its mission, the crew of the ship give Scott a shuttlecraft "on extended loan" to either continue to his retirement or to explore the galaxy. Scott thanks the crew and reminds La Forge to make the most of his time as the Chief Engineer of the Enterprise before he departs.

Review:

While original series Trek isn’t my personal cup of tea solely because I find it difficult to appreciate most films and TV shows made prior to the mid-1980’s, I nevertheless respect for enabling the Trek shows of Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager that I do enjoy, along with the reboot films headlined by Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto.  As such, it’s always fun and special to see those moments when these later shows allowed some cross-over with the originals.  As wise as it was initially to have TNG try to be its own thing and not call on the original, it was something the show had to out-grow, and after ‘Sarek’ and ‘Unification’ helped to break down the original rule, this episode totally wipes out the remnants of it.

 It’s cool to see the original Scotty get on board the new Enterprise and interact with his counter-part in La Forge, though it does show up how much Roddenberry’s rampant idealism seems to have sucked the fun out of being a chief engineer.  The spin-off shows, especially Deep Space Nine, would bring some of that back, but it’s clear that starship travel has reached a point where it’s a miracle if there’s every anything for someone like La Forge to do at all.  It’s no wonder Geordi doesn’t have Scotty’s outlook on engineering; where’s the charm in a starship that’s been made so well you can’t really apply the attitudes of old.  I bet no one would regard the Enterprise-D the way Scotty regards the original or Picard considers the Stargazer.

 The episode is a fun character piece and another nice little moment of the original series giving its blessing to the new show. However, it does have a couple of slight consistency errors, though one is only noticeable in hindsight.  The first is the Enterprise managing to teleport Geordi and Scotty back from the Jenolan despite the latter ship having its shields up.  This is a fairly blatant error that can perhaps only be excused if you consider the Jenolan was falling apart, and it was O’Brien doing the transporting.  As O’Brien has managed to beam through starship shields at least once before, back in the episode ‘The Wounded’ in season 4 of TNG, I think we can just about excuse this, though a little extra minute or two to show this would have been advisable.

 The second error is Scotty apparently thinking Kirk might still be alive, despite the fact the first TNG movie shows Kirk apparently being killed during its opening scene.  However, tie-in media like novels and one or two other inconsistencies in some of Scotty’s tales explain this.  However, I think either the film itself or this episode should have been a little more cautious about something like this.  Talk about writing yourself into a corner.  Still, this is a great episode, and I give 9 out of 10.

Episode 5: Schisms

Plot (as adapted from Wikipedia):

Several of the Enterprise crew members are having difficulty sleeping or have lost track of time, and find themselves having strange emotional responses to normal objects. The affected crew realize they have had common experiences and, with Counsellor Troi's help, use the holodeck to collectively reconstruct and refine their fragmented memories and impressions of the events. Their collaboration results in a device like an operating table in a dark room filled with mysterious noises. They come to the conclusion that they have all been to a similar place.

 Dr Crusher examines them, finding evidence of sedation as well as subtle changes to their bodies, such as a microscopic misalignment of the bones in Commander Riker's arm, indicating it has been severed and then reattached. They realize they are being abducted from the ship to be experimented on. When they wonder if this is happening to other crew members as well, they ask the ship's computer to list any missing members and find that two other crew members are currently missing. One soon reappears in his cabin, but dies shortly after he is found, his blood having been transformed into a liquid polymer.

 Chief Engineer La Forge and Lt. Commander Data also discover particle emissions in one of the cargo bays, creating an expanding subspace rift which threatens to breach the hull. They devise a method to counter the emissions and close the rift, but they need a way to trace the emissions to the source. Commander Riker volunteers, as he has been taken several nights in a row. Dr Crusher injects him with a stimulant intended to counteract the sedative his captors are using, and he carries a tracking device which can be detected from the Enterprise when he is taken. Riker is again taken that night and finds himself in a strange environment on an operating table, near the other missing crew member, surrounded by busy aliens.

 The rift continues to expand and Captain Picard orders La Forge to begin the attempt to close it. Riker pretends to be unconscious until the aliens are distracted by the rift which had begun to fluctuate. He frees himself, picks up the other crew member and jumps through the rift which had become large enough for them to pass through. They appear in the cargo bay moments before the rift is forced shut. The aliens manage to send a brief energy pulse through at the last second, which disappears through the Enterprise hull and into space. La Forge notes the attention of aliens was possibly drawn by a sensor modification he created, and they can probably prevent future incidents by advising other ships not to make the same modification. Picard wonders if the pulse is a probe sent by the aliens attempting to communicate with the Enterprise, but Riker noting their methods which resulted in the death of one of the crew, suspects their motives are less benign.

Review:

Because I generally can’t stand poetry unless it’s somehow well-applied in TV, Data’s poetry recital in the teaser is a really irritating to watch.  To my mind, most poetry is a load of useless blather that could easily be outdone by a proper song or some observational comedy, or even a prose story of some format. The kind of exceptions I make are along the lines of Chief O’Brien and Dr Bashir quoting ‘Charge of the light brigade’ in early season 6 of Deep Space Nine, or Director Vance reading ‘Give me away’ following the death of Emily Fornell in the latest season of NCIS. Data’s poetry, however, is just a tragic mis-step in his exploration of humanity, and I really wish they’d left this well enough alone.

 The rest of the episode, however, is better only in-so-far-as it is largely poetry-free.  However, the episode is also devoid of character development or issue exploration.  Instead, we get another plot-driven episode not all that long after the ‘Time’s Arrow’ two-parter, and this time it’s a riff on the pop culture version of alien abduction with the crew of Picard’s Enterprise as the abductees.  It’s an ok idea to mix things up, but so far this season has been largely devoid of anything that is true Trek, and has largely relied on fan loyalty and the Scotty guest-appearance to rake in attention. I really hope the subsequent rounds get this show back to what Trek should be about.  As it is, this episode gets just 5 out of 10 from me.

[neptunecreek]

Digital Security Advice for Journalists Covering the Protests Against Police Killings

This guide is an overview of digital security considerations specific to journalists covering protests. For EFF’s comprehensive guide to digital security, including advice for activists and protesters, visit ssd.eff.org. Legal advice in this post is specific to the United States.

As the international protests against police killings enter their third week, the public has been exposed to shocking videos of law enforcement wielding violence against not only demonstrators, but also the journalists who are tasked with documenting this historic moment.

EFF recently issued Surveillance Self-Defense tips for protesters who may find their digital rights under attack, either through mass surveillance of crowds or through the seizure of their devices. However, these tips don’t always reflect the reality of how journalists may need to do their jobs and the unique threats journalists face.

In this blog post, we attempt to address the digital security of news gatherers after speaking with reporters, photographers, and live streamers who are on the ground, risking everything to document these protests.

The Journalists’ Threat Model

When we talk about security planning or “threat modeling,” we mean assessing risk through a series of questions. What do you have that you need to protect? From what or whom do you need to protect it? What is the likelihood you will need to protect it? What are the consequences if you fail to protect it, and what are the trade-offs you’re willing to make in order to protect it?

With the threat model of a protester, we often pay special attention to the need to protect the anonymity and location of those who could face retaliation for exercising their rights to march and demonstrate or who may have their rights violated as police investigate the actions of others. This means that we often recommend protesters leave their devices at home, use a temporary device, or keep their devices in airplane mode.

A journalist, however, is generally more open about where they are and when, either through the credits on the photographs they publish or the bylines on the articles they write. And because many need to get out their stories rapidly or even in real time, going device-free or keeping devices in airplane mode may not be an acceptable option.

The journalist’s protest threat model is complex. First, they have to worry about the police. Law enforcement could seize their devices, which in turn could expose their sources and research in addition to their personal information, and could separate them from their work product for months. Journalists could also find that police may follow their digital footprint to investigate sources (as the Feds did when Sean Penn interviewed Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, despite Penn taking some security precautions). Journalists have also told us about experiences with thieves who use protests as cover, such as having laptops and other equipment stolen from their cars while they are in the field. Finally, journalists (especially photographers) also must remain aware that they may be confronted by protesters themselves, who may be trying to protect their images as part of their own threat models. (Again, it’s important to consider the likelihood of the threat: the Freedom of the Press Foundation’s research has found that the overwhelming number of attacks on journalists have been by police, not protesters.)

Each of these threats may require taking different steps to secure your data. And, the steps needed will depend, too, on the form of your news gathering and the tools that you rely on in the field, whether that is taking photographs, conducting interviews, or live streaming video. To protect yourself and your data, you will need you to think carefully about the kind of journalism you’re doing (say advocacy journalism vs. traditional daily news reporting), the situation you’re joining, and the particular risks that you may face.

There is only one piece of advice that we believe holds for all journalists: think ahead and be deliberate. Consider the threats and make a decision about the risks and trade-offs. In doing so, here are some steps to consider. Minimize your digital content at risk. Be prepared for the possibility that if you are arrested, police may confiscate your devices, and may keep them long after you are released to try to break into them. Minimize the amount of sensitive personal and professional information you carry in order to minimize the risk of exposure. If practicable, you may consider leaving personal devices at home and instead carrying a work or burner phone with minimal personal information on it. If that is not possible, consider minimizing the amount of sensitive information available by logging out of email, social media apps, and other apps containing data that you would not want the police or others to access.

Encrypt devices with a long passcode where possible. Police may try to break into your phone, and a long passcode is significantly more difficult to crack. Keep them and others out of your devices by protecting them with strong passcodes of 8-12 random characters that are easy for you to remember. Deactivate touch unlock and face ID on your devices. In the U.S., law currently provides stronger protection against police forcing you to enter a passcode than forcing you to biometrically unlock your device. Using a long passcode may be less convenient, but iOS and Android both allow you to take photos and video without unlocking your phone. See the “Take photos and videos without unlocking your device” section of our Attending a Protest SSD guide. End-to-end encrypted messaging. By using end-to-end encrypted messaging, such as Signal (available for iOS and Android), you are making it far more difficult for law enforcement to obtain and read your communications, be it between you and your sources, your editorial team, or your personal contacts. You will want to make sure everyone on your newsgathering team has the same app installed and has each other’s contact information in advance of the protest. You may also find it useful to have several different encrypted messaging systems installed, since protesters and other sources may be using other apps. Many of these apps, including Signal, provide an option to have messages disappear anywhere from ten seconds to a week after they are first read, which will protect your communications if the police or others breach your phone.

Press passes. Many journalists won’t enter a volatile situation like a protest without having visible credentials provided by their news organization, a journalism association, or the local government. A press pass certainly can be useful in establishing your identity as a journalist. However, to obtain a government or police-issued press pass, it’s important to recognize a large trade-off: you may need to provide personal information or submit to a background check. Hide your notifications. Consider turning off notifications, or, at minimum, restricting messaging apps from displaying the content of messages and message sender information. If your phone is seized or lost, you won’t have to worry about someone easily reading your private communications. Back up your data before the protest. If your device is lost, stolen, or confiscated by police, you will be glad to have a backup of your information stored in a safe place. Back up your data during the protest. If you are taking photos, video, or notes on a phone or other digital device during the protest, consider trying to back up your work in real time. This could include emailing important photos to yourself or setting up automated cloud storage while in the field. If your phone or camera is lost, stolen, or seized, you won’t lose your own coverage of what took place. But prepare for the possibility during the protest, the cell phone network may be oversaturated, unavailable, or slow. Assume digital cameras are not encrypted. Few digital cameras provide the ability to encrypt. It is safe to assume that photos and videos taken with a digital camera will be stored unencrypted, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Use multiple memory cards. Some cameras provide the capability to store your photos simultaneously on two cards. Taking advantage of this capability may be obvious to many photographers, who know that a memory card can fail just when you need it most. However, there is also a digital security element: by cycling through memory cards regularly, you are ensuring that you will not lose all of your photographs if your camera itself is seized or damaged. If you are detained by police, refuse to consent to a search of your devices. If police ask to see your phone, you have the right to refuse your consent and to refuse to give them your passcode. Note, however, that police may still seize it to try to break into and search it later.

For more resources on this issue, visit EFF’s Surveillance Self-Defense Guide, the Committee to Protect Journalists, and Freedom of the Press Foundation. Are you a journalist covering the protests? We would appreciate feedback and to hear about any other practices you’ve developed for protecting your digital privacy. Additionally, if you are in need of legal assistance in relation to your work reporting on the protests, we may be able to find you some help. Email us at info@eff.org.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2YpPBlE

[technicalsolutions88]

Google’s Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But the game streaming services faces serious challenges if it wants to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, or even plain old PCs and smartphones.

Here are our nine biggest questions about what the service will be and how it’ll work.

1. What’s the game selection like?

We saw Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (a lot) and Doom: Eternal, and a few other things running on Stadia, but otherwise Google’s presentation was pretty light on details as far as what games exactly we can expect to see on there.

It’s not an easy question to answer, since this isn’t just a question of “all PC games,” or “all games from these 6 publishers.” Stadia requires a game be ported, or partly recoded to fit its new environment — in this case a Linux-powered PC. That’s not unusual, but it isn’t trivial either.

Porting is just part of the job for a major studio like Ubisoft, which regularly publishes on multiple platforms simultaneously, but for a smaller developer or a more specialized game, it’s not so straightforward. Jade Raymond will be in charge of both first-party games just for Stadia as well as developer relations; she said that the team will be “working with external developers to bring all of the bleeding edge Google technology you have seen today available to partner studios big and small.”

What that tells me is that every game that comes to Stadia will require special attention. That’s not a good sign for selection, but it does suggest that anything available on it will run well.

Google scores a custom AMD GPU to power its Stadia cloud gaming hardware

2. What will it cost?

Perhaps the topic Google avoided the most was what the heck the business model is for this whole thing.

Do you pay a subscription fee? Is it part of YouTube or maybe YouTube Red? Do they make money off sales of games after someone plays the instant demo? Is it free for an hour a day? Will it show ads every 15 minutes? Will publishers foot the bill as part of their normal marketing budget? No one knows!

It’s a difficult play because the most obvious way to monetize also limits the product’s exposure. Asking people to subscribe adds a lot of friction to a platform where the entire idea is to get you playing within 5 seconds.

Putting ads in is an easy way to let people jump in and have it be monetized a small amount. You could even advertise the game itself and offer a one-time 10 percent off coupon or something. Then mention that YouTube Red subscribers don’t see ads at all.

Sounds reasonable, but Google didn’t mention anything like this at all. We’ll probably hear more later this year closer to launch, but it’s hard to judge the value of the service when we have no idea what it will cost.

3. What about iOS devices?

Google and Apple are bitter rivals in a lot of ways, but it’s hard to get around the fact that iPhone owners tend to be the most lucrative mobile customers. Yet there were none in the live demo and no availability mentioned for iOS.

Depending on its business model, Google may have locked itself out of the App Store. Apple doesn’t let you essentially run a store within its store (as we have seen in cases like Amazon and Epic) and if that’s part of the Stadia offering, it’s not going to fly.

An app that just lets you play might be a possibility, but since none was mentioned, it’s possible Google is using Stadia as a platform exclusive to draw people to Pixel devices. That kind of puts a limit on the pitch that you can play on devices you already have.

4. What about games you already own?

A big draw of game streaming is to buy a game once and play it anywhere. Sometimes you want to play the big awesome story parts on your 60-inch TV in surround sound, but do a little inventory and quest management on your laptop at the cafe. That’s what systems like Steam Link offer.

Epic Games is taking on Steam with its own digital game store, which includes higher take-home revenue rates for developers.

But Google didn’t mention how its ownership system will work, or whether there would be a way to play games you already own on the service. This is a big consideration for many gamers.

It was mentioned that there would be cross platform play and perhaps even the ability to bring saves to other platforms, but how that would work was left to the imagination. Frankly I’m skeptical.

Letting people show they own a game and giving them access to it is a recipe for scamming and trouble, but not supporting it is missing out on a huge application for the service. Google’s caught between a rock and a hard place here.

5. Can you really convert viewers to players?

This is a bit more of an abstract question, but it comes from the basic idea that people specifically come to YouTube and Twitch to watch games, not play them. Mobile viewership is huge because streams are a great way to kill time on a train or bus ride, or during a break at school. These viewers often don’t want to play at those times, and couldn’t if they did want to!

So the question is, are there really enough people watching gaming content on YouTube who will actually actively switch to playing just like that?

Photo: Maskot / Getty Images

To be fair, the idea of a game trailer that lets you play what you just saw five seconds later is brilliant. I’m 100 percent on board there. But people don’t watch dozens of hours of game trailers a week — they watch famous streamers play Fortnite and PUBG and do speedruns of Dark Souls and Super Mario Bros 1. These audiences are much harder to change into players.

The potential of joining a game with a streamer, or affecting them somehow, or picking up at the spot they left off, to try fighting a boss on your own or seeing how their character controls, is a good one, but making that happen goes far, far beyond the streaming infrastructure Google has created here. It involves rewriting the rules on how games are developed and published. We saw attempts at this from Beam, later acquired by Microsoft, but it never really bloomed.

Streaming is a low-commitment, passive form of entertainment, which is kind of why it’s so popular. Turning that into an active, involved form of entertainment is far from straightforward.

6. How’s the image quality?

Games these days have mind-blowing graphics. I sure had a lot of bad things to say about Anthem, but when it came to looks that game was a showstopper. And part of what made it great were the tiny details in textures and subtle gradations of light that are only just recently possible with advances in shaders, volumetric fog, and so on. Will those details really come through in a stream?

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong. I know a 1080p stream looks decent. But the simple fact is that high-efficiency HD video compression reduces detail in a noticeable way. You just can’t perfectly recreate an image if you have to send it 60 times per second with only a few milliseconds to compress and decompress it. It’s how image compression works.

For some people this won’t be a big deal. They really might not care about the loss of some visual fidelity — the convenience factor may outweigh it by a ton. But there are others for whom it may be distracting, those who have invested in a powerful gaming console or PC that gives them better detail at higher framerates than Stadia can possibly offer.

It’s not apples to apples but Google has to consider these things, especially when the difference is noticeable enough that game developers and publishers start to note that a game is “best experienced locally” or something like that.

7. Will people really game on the go?

I don’t question whether people play games on mobile. That’s one of the biggest businesses in the world. But I’m not sure that people want to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on their iPa… I mean, Pixel Slate. Let alone their smartphone.

Games on phones and tablets are frequently time-killers driven by addictive short-duration game sessions. Even the bigger, more console-like games on mobile usually aim for shorter play sessions. That may be changing in some ways for sure but it’s a consideration, and AAA console games really just aren’t designed for 5-10 minute gaming sessions.

Add to that that you have to carry around what looks like a fairly bulky controller and this becomes less of an option for things like planes, cafes, subway rides, and so on. Even if you did bring it, could you be sure you’ll get the 10 or 20 Mbps you’ll need to get that 60FPS video rate? And don’t say 5G. If anyone says 5G again after the last couple months I’m going to lose it.

Naturally the counterpoint here is Nintendo’s fabulously successful and portable Switch. But the Switch plays both sides, providing a console-like experience on the go that makes sense because of its frictionless game state saving and offline operation. Stadia doesn’t seem to offer anything like that. In some ways it could be more compelling, but it’s a hard sell right now.

Google’s new Stadia game controller has a few tricks up its sleeves

8. How will multiplayer work?

Obviously multiplayer gaming is huge right now and likely will be forever, so the Stadia will for sure support multiplayer one way or another. But multiplayer is also really complicated.

It used to be that someone just picked up the second controller and played Luigi. Now you have friend codes, accounts, user IDs, automatic matchmaking, all kinds of junk. If I want to play The Division 2 with a friend via Stadia, how does that work? Can I use my existing account? How do I log in? Are there IP issues and will the whole rigmarole of the game running in some big server farm set off cheat detectors or send me a security warning email? What if two people want to play a game locally?

Many of the biggest gaming properties in the world are multiplayer focused, and without a very, very clear line on this it’s going to turn a lot of people off. The platform might be great for it — but they have some convincing to do.

9. Stadia?

Branding is hard. Launching a product that aims to reach millions and giving it a name that not only represents it well but isn’t already taken is hard. But that said… Stadia?

I guess the idea is that each player is kind of in a stadium of their own… or that they’re in a stadium where Ninja is playing, and then they can go down to join? Certainly Stadia is more distinctive than stadium and less copyright-fraught than Colosseum or the like. Arena is probably out too.

If only Google already owned something that indicated gaming but was simple, memorable, and fit with its existing “Google ___” set of consumer-focused apps, brands, and services.

Oh well!

from Mobile – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2W4pca6 ORIGINAL CONTENT FROM: https://techcrunch.com/

[toomanysinks]

The 9 biggest questions about Google’s Stadia game streaming service

Google’s Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But the game streaming services faces serious challenges if it wants to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, or even plain old PCs and smartphones.

Here are our nine biggest questions about what the service will be and how it’ll work.

1. What’s the game selection like?

We saw Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (a lot) and Doom: Eternal, and a few other things running on Stadia, but otherwise Google’s presentation was pretty light on details as far as what games exactly we can expect to see on there.

It’s not an easy question to answer, since this isn’t just a question of “all PC games,” or “all games from these 6 publishers.” Stadia requires a game be ported, or partly recoded to fit its new environment — in this case a Linux-powered PC. That’s not unusual, but it isn’t trivial either.

Porting is just part of the job for a major studio like Ubisoft, which regularly publishes on multiple platforms simultaneously, but for a smaller developer or a more specialized game, it’s not so straightforward. Jade Raymond will be in charge of both first-party games just for Stadia as well as developer relations; she said that the team will be “working with external developers to bring all of the bleeding edge Google technology you have seen today available to partner studios big and small.”

What that tells me is that every game that comes to Stadia will require special attention. That’s not a good sign for selection, but it does suggest that anything available on it will run well.

Google scores a custom AMD GPU to power its Stadia cloud gaming hardware

2. What will it cost?

Perhaps the topic Google avoided the most was what the heck the business model is for this whole thing.

Do you pay a subscription fee? Is it part of YouTube or maybe YouTube Red? Do they make money off sales of games after someone plays the instant demo? Is it free for an hour a day? Will it show ads every 15 minutes? Will publishers foot the bill as part of their normal marketing budget? No one knows!

It’s a difficult play because the most obvious way to monetize also limits the product’s exposure. Asking people to subscribe adds a lot of friction to a platform where the entire idea is to get you playing within 5 seconds.

Putting ads in is an easy way to let people jump in and have it be monetized a small amount. You could even advertise the game itself and offer a one-time 10 percent off coupon or something. Then mention that YouTube Red subscribers don’t see ads at all.

Sounds reasonable, but Google didn’t mention anything like this at all. We’ll probably hear more later this year closer to launch, but it’s hard to judge the value of the service when we have no idea what it will cost.

3. What about iOS devices?

Google and Apple are bitter rivals in a lot of ways, but it’s hard to get around the fact that iPhone owners tend to be the most lucrative mobile customers. Yet there were none in the live demo and no availability mentioned for iOS.

Depending on its business model, Google may have locked itself out of the App Store. Apple doesn’t let you essentially run a store within its store (as we have seen in cases like Amazon and Epic) and if that’s part of the Stadia offering, it’s not going to fly.

An app that just lets you play might be a possibility, but since none was mentioned, it’s possible Google is using Stadia as a platform exclusive to draw people to Pixel devices. That kind of puts a limit on the pitch that you can play on devices you already have.

4. What about games you already own?

A big draw of game streaming is to buy a game once and play it anywhere. Sometimes you want to play the big awesome story parts on your 60-inch TV in surround sound, but do a little inventory and quest management on your laptop at the cafe. That’s what systems like Steam Link offer.

Epic Games is taking on Steam with its own digital game store, which includes higher take-home revenue rates for developers.

But Google didn’t mention how its ownership system will work, or whether there would be a way to play games you already own on the service. This is a big consideration for many gamers.

It was mentioned that there would be cross platform play and perhaps even the ability to bring saves to other platforms, but how that would work was left to the imagination. Frankly I’m skeptical.

Letting people show they own a game and giving them access to it is a recipe for scamming and trouble, but not supporting it is missing out on a huge application for the service. Google’s caught between a rock and a hard place here.

5. Can you really convert viewers to players?

This is a bit more of an abstract question, but it comes from the basic idea that people specifically come to YouTube and Twitch to watch games, not play them. Mobile viewership is huge because streams are a great way to kill time on a train or bus ride, or during a break at school. These viewers often don’t want to play at those times, and couldn’t if they did want to!

So the question is, are there really enough people watching gaming content on YouTube who will actually actively switch to playing just like that?

Photo: Maskot / Getty Images

To be fair, the idea of a game trailer that lets you play what you just saw five seconds later is brilliant. I’m 100 percent on board there. But people don’t watch dozens of hours of game trailers a week — they watch famous streamers play Fortnite and PUBG and do speedruns of Dark Souls and Super Mario Bros 1. These audiences are much harder to change into players.

The potential of joining a game with a streamer, or affecting them somehow, or picking up at the spot they left off, to try fighting a boss on your own or seeing how their character controls, is a good one, but making that happen goes far, far beyond the streaming infrastructure Google has created here. It involves rewriting the rules on how games are developed and published. We saw attempts at this from Beam, later acquired by Microsoft, but it never really bloomed.

Streaming is a low-commitment, passive form of entertainment, which is kind of why it’s so popular. Turning that into an active, involved form of entertainment is far from straightforward.

6. How’s the image quality?

Games these days have mind-blowing graphics. I sure had a lot of bad things to say about Anthem, but when it came to looks that game was a showstopper. And part of what made it great were the tiny details in textures and subtle gradations of light that are only just recently possible with advances in shaders, volumetric fog, and so on. Will those details really come through in a stream?

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong. I know a 1080p stream looks decent. But the simple fact is that high-efficiency HD video compression reduces detail in a noticeable way. You just can’t perfectly recreate an image if you have to send it 60 times per second with only a few milliseconds to compress and decompress it. It’s how image compression works.

For some people this won’t be a big deal. They really might not care about the loss of some visual fidelity — the convenience factor may outweigh it by a ton. But there are others for whom it may be distracting, those who have invested in a powerful gaming console or PC that gives them better detail at higher framerates than Stadia can possibly offer.

It’s not apples to apples but Google has to consider these things, especially when the difference is noticeable enough that game developers and publishers start to note that a game is “best experienced locally” or something like that.

7. Will people really game on the go?

I don’t question whether people play games on mobile. That’s one of the biggest businesses in the world. But I’m not sure that people want to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on their iPa… I mean, Pixel Slate. Let alone their smartphone.

Games on phones and tablets are frequently time-killers driven by addictive short-duration game sessions. Even the bigger, more console-like games on mobile usually aim for shorter play sessions. That may be changing in some ways for sure but it’s a consideration, and AAA console games really just aren’t designed for 5-10 minute gaming sessions.

Add to that that you have to carry around what looks like a fairly bulky controller and this becomes less of an option for things like planes, cafes, subway rides, and so on. Even if you did bring it, could you be sure you’ll get the 10 or 20 Mbps you’ll need to get that 60FPS video rate? And don’t say 5G. If anyone says 5G again after the last couple months I’m going to lose it.

Naturally the counterpoint here is Nintendo’s fabulously successful and portable Switch. But the Switch plays both sides, providing a console-like experience on the go that makes sense because of its frictionless game state saving and offline operation. Stadia doesn’t seem to offer anything like that. In some ways it could be more compelling, but it’s a hard sell right now.

Google’s new Stadia game controller has a few tricks up its sleeves

8. How will multiplayer work?

Obviously multiplayer gaming is huge right now and likely will be forever, so the Stadia will for sure support multiplayer one way or another. But multiplayer is also really complicated.

It used to be that someone just picked up the second controller and played Luigi. Now you have friend codes, accounts, user IDs, automatic matchmaking, all kinds of junk. If I want to play The Division 2 with a friend via Stadia, how does that work? Can I use my existing account? How do I log in? Are there IP issues and will the whole rigmarole of the game running in some big server farm set off cheat detectors or send me a security warning email? What if two people want to play a game locally?

Many of the biggest gaming properties in the world are multiplayer focused, and without a very, very clear line on this it’s going to turn a lot of people off. The platform might be great for it — but they have some convincing to do.

9. Stadia?

Branding is hard. Launching a product that aims to reach millions and giving it a name that not only represents it well but isn’t already taken is hard. But that said… Stadia?

I guess the idea is that each player is kind of in a stadium of their own… or that they’re in a stadium where Ninja is playing, and then they can go down to join? Certainly Stadia is more distinctive than stadium and less copyright-fraught than Colosseum or the like. Arena is probably out too.

If only Google already owned something that indicated gaming but was simple, memorable, and fit with its existing “Google ___” set of consumer-focused apps, brands, and services.

Oh well!

source https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/19/the-9-biggest-questions-about-googles-stadia-game-streaming-service/

[fmservers]

The 9 biggest questions about Google’s Stadia game streaming service

Google’s Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But the game streaming services faces serious challenges if it wants to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, or even plain old PCs and smartphones.

Here are our nine biggest questions about what the service will be and how it’ll work.

1. What’s the game selection like?

We saw Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey (a lot) and Doom: Eternal, and a few other things running on Stadia, but otherwise Google’s presentation was pretty light on details as far as what games exactly we can expect to see on there.

It’s not an easy question to answer, since this isn’t just a question of “all PC games,” or “all games from these 6 publishers.” Stadia requires a game be ported, or partly recoded to fit its new environment — in this case a Linux-powered PC. That’s not unusual, but it isn’t trivial either.

Porting is just part of the job for a major studio like Ubisoft, which regularly publishes on multiple platforms simultaneously, but for a smaller developer or a more specialized game, it’s not so straightforward. Jade Raymond will be in charge of both first-party games just for Stadia as well as developer relations; she said that the team will be “working with external developers to bring all of the bleeding edge Google technology you have seen today available to partner studios big and small.”

What that tells me is that every game that comes to Stadia will require special attention. That’s not a good sign for selection, but it does suggest that anything available on it will run well.

Google scores a custom AMD GPU to power its Stadia cloud gaming hardware

2. What will it cost?

Perhaps the topic Google avoided the most was what the heck the business model is for this whole thing.

Do you pay a subscription fee? Is it part of YouTube or maybe YouTube Red? Do they make money off sales of games after someone plays the instant demo? Is it free for an hour a day? Will it show ads every 15 minutes? Will publishers foot the bill as part of their normal marketing budget? No one knows!

It’s a difficult play because the most obvious way to monetize also limits the product’s exposure. Asking people to subscribe adds a lot of friction to a platform where the entire idea is to get you playing within 5 seconds.

Putting ads in is an easy way to let people jump in and have it be monetized a small amount. You could even advertise the game itself and offer a one-time 10 percent off coupon or something. Then mention that YouTube Red subscribers don’t see ads at all.

Sounds reasonable, but Google didn’t mention anything like this at all. We’ll probably hear more later this year closer to launch, but it’s hard to judge the value of the service when we have no idea what it will cost.

3. What about iOS devices?

Google and Apple are bitter rivals in a lot of ways, but it’s hard to get around the fact that iPhone owners tend to be the most lucrative mobile customers. Yet there were none in the live demo and no availability mentioned for iOS.

Depending on its business model, Google may have locked itself out of the App Store. Apple doesn’t let you essentially run a store within its store (as we have seen in cases like Amazon and Epic) and if that’s part of the Stadia offering, it’s not going to fly.

An app that just lets you play might be a possibility, but since none was mentioned, it’s possible Google is using Stadia as a platform exclusive to draw people to Pixel devices. That kind of puts a limit on the pitch that you can play on devices you already have.

4. What about games you already own?

A big draw of game streaming is to buy a game once and play it anywhere. Sometimes you want to play the big awesome story parts on your 60-inch TV in surround sound, but do a little inventory and quest management on your laptop at the cafe. That’s what systems like Steam Link offer.

Epic Games is taking on Steam with its own digital game store, which includes higher take-home revenue rates for developers.

But Google didn’t mention how its ownership system will work, or whether there would be a way to play games you already own on the service. This is a big consideration for many gamers.

It was mentioned that there would be cross platform play and perhaps even the ability to bring saves to other platforms, but how that would work was left to the imagination. Frankly I’m skeptical.

Letting people show they own a game and giving them access to it is a recipe for scamming and trouble, but not supporting it is missing out on a huge application for the service. Google’s caught between a rock and a hard place here.

5. Can you really convert viewers to players?

This is a bit more of an abstract question, but it comes from the basic idea that people specifically come to YouTube and Twitch to watch games, not play them. Mobile viewership is huge because streams are a great way to kill time on a train or bus ride, or during a break at school. These viewers often don’t want to play at those times, and couldn’t if they did want to!

So the question is, are there really enough people watching gaming content on YouTube who will actually actively switch to playing just like that?

Photo: Maskot / Getty Images

To be fair, the idea of a game trailer that lets you play what you just saw five seconds later is brilliant. I’m 100 percent on board there. But people don’t watch dozens of hours of game trailers a week — they watch famous streamers play Fortnite and PUBG and do speedruns of Dark Souls and Super Mario Bros 1. These audiences are much harder to change into players.

The potential of joining a game with a streamer, or affecting them somehow, or picking up at the spot they left off, to try fighting a boss on your own or seeing how their character controls, is a good one, but making that happen goes far, far beyond the streaming infrastructure Google has created here. It involves rewriting the rules on how games are developed and published. We saw attempts at this from Beam, later acquired by Microsoft, but it never really bloomed.

Streaming is a low-commitment, passive form of entertainment, which is kind of why it’s so popular. Turning that into an active, involved form of entertainment is far from straightforward.

6. How’s the image quality?

Games these days have mind-blowing graphics. I sure had a lot of bad things to say about Anthem, but when it came to looks that game was a showstopper. And part of what made it great were the tiny details in textures and subtle gradations of light that are only just recently possible with advances in shaders, volumetric fog, and so on. Will those details really come through in a stream?

Damn.

Don’t get me wrong. I know a 1080p stream looks decent. But the simple fact is that high-efficiency HD video compression reduces detail in a noticeable way. You just can’t perfectly recreate an image if you have to send it 60 times per second with only a few milliseconds to compress and decompress it. It’s how image compression works.

For some people this won’t be a big deal. They really might not care about the loss of some visual fidelity — the convenience factor may outweigh it by a ton. But there are others for whom it may be distracting, those who have invested in a powerful gaming console or PC that gives them better detail at higher framerates than Stadia can possibly offer.

It’s not apples to apples but Google has to consider these things, especially when the difference is noticeable enough that game developers and publishers start to note that a game is “best experienced locally” or something like that.

7. Will people really game on the go?

I don’t question whether people play games on mobile. That’s one of the biggest businesses in the world. But I’m not sure that people want to play Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on their iPa… I mean, Pixel Slate. Let alone their smartphone.

Games on phones and tablets are frequently time-killers driven by addictive short-duration game sessions. Even the bigger, more console-like games on mobile usually aim for shorter play sessions. That may be changing in some ways for sure but it’s a consideration, and AAA console games really just aren’t designed for 5-10 minute gaming sessions.

Add to that that you have to carry around what looks like a fairly bulky controller and this becomes less of an option for things like planes, cafes, subway rides, and so on. Even if you did bring it, could you be sure you’ll get the 10 or 20 Mbps you’ll need to get that 60FPS video rate? And don’t say 5G. If anyone says 5G again after the last couple months I’m going to lose it.

Naturally the counterpoint here is Nintendo’s fabulously successful and portable Switch. But the Switch plays both sides, providing a console-like experience on the go that makes sense because of its frictionless game state saving and offline operation. Stadia doesn’t seem to offer anything like that. In some ways it could be more compelling, but it’s a hard sell right now.

Google’s new Stadia game controller has a few tricks up its sleeves

8. How will multiplayer work?

Obviously multiplayer gaming is huge right now and likely will be forever, so the Stadia will for sure support multiplayer one way or another. But multiplayer is also really complicated.

It used to be that someone just picked up the second controller and played Luigi. Now you have friend codes, accounts, user IDs, automatic matchmaking, all kinds of junk. If I want to play The Division 2 with a friend via Stadia, how does that work? Can I use my existing account? How do I log in? Are there IP issues and will the whole rigmarole of the game running in some big server farm set off cheat detectors or send me a security warning email? What if two people want to play a game locally?

Many of the biggest gaming properties in the world are multiplayer focused, and without a very, very clear line on this it’s going to turn a lot of people off. The platform might be great for it — but they have some convincing to do.

9. Stadia?

Branding is hard. Launching a product that aims to reach millions and giving it a name that not only represents it well but isn’t already taken is hard. But that said… Stadia?

I guess the idea is that each player is kind of in a stadium of their own… or that they’re in a stadium where Ninja is playing, and then they can go down to join? Certainly Stadia is more distinctive than stadium and less copyright-fraught than Colosseum or the like. Arena is probably out too.

If only Google already owned something that indicated gaming but was simple, memorable, and fit with its existing “Google ___” set of consumer-focused apps, brands, and services.

Oh well!

Via Devin Coldewey https://techcrunch.com

[lostsolsdestinyblog]

Destiny 2 is dead! Long live Destiny 2! A 6 months look at where the game has been, is and still needs to go (PvP)

March 7, 2018

With Destiny 2 now having been out for 6 months, I thought it would be a good time to give a view on the game at this point from a PvE and PvP perspective from my 500+ hours of play so far. Destiny 2 has had a lot of road bumps and obstacles to overcome since launch, but those issues have been very different between PvP and PvE and where overall I feel D2 released with a much stronger PvE component from what we saw in D1, PvP seemed to become almost an afterthought. That is really weird to say considering the effect that a single game mode like Trials dictated not only on D1 over 2 1/2 years, but the impact D1 PvP had on shaping D2 as a whole. From the moment it was announced, we knew that the decision to go to all 4v4 was a mistake. I'm not going to go into all of that because Bungie did end coming to realize this as well and 6v6 and Rumble are returning later this month. However there was a second change that D2 brought which for a long time I didn't think quite as harmful, but now think was probably the biggest mistake overall in D2's PvP philosophy and that was the decision to go with playlists. I have no facts or figures to back it up, but I'd still be willing to bet that maybe the biggest reason people stopped wanting to play Crucible is being forced to play random game modes they don't want to play. I can say for a fact it has made me say the hell with it and stop many times and as recently as 2 days ago. When I played D1 at launch, I played Control exclusively. It allowed me to learn the nuances of play and get better at the game in a static familiar environment and I spent hours and hours logged in playing solo, not for any drops or rewards, but because it's why I bought the game, to play an awesome Bungie shooter. Eventually I started playing a lot of Clash as well (particularly when it got added to Iron Banner) and in year 2 when I met my friends and started playing in Fireteams, we would play almost everything, but even then we played what the group wanted and once we started it was a set game mode to go game to game in. The closest we had was the classic playlists that were a random chance between 2 modes and that for me was a huge reason to not log in and play them even when wanting to play classic maps. The classic playlists were created to gate content and to give those players who didn't own the latest expansions content to still play, but incentive to upgrade as well. The irony is that many of the issues that D2 sought to correct in adopting the playlist format were actually the result of the thinking that gave us playlists to begin with. D1 released with what? Clash, Control, Rumble and Salvage I believe and once a month Iron Banner would roll around and draw people to its playlist. Players had that very limited choice of were to queue, but they did en masse and the game was a huge success and particularly for streamers and YouTubers who put out Crucible content. D1 always had battles with lag, but the biggest issues with play in year 1 was unbalanced matches. By the last IBs of HoW there were better odds of dropping into a match in-progress and losing than getting a fresh match and when you did get a fresh match, odds were 4-5 people would quit out before it ended. Matches would start, one team would get a 1 or 2 thousand point lead and that was it, exodus. The solution to this was to increase the influence of SBMM in year 2 to make matches more even and stop the unmitigated pub-stomps. It worked. Destiny 1 over the course of year 2 saw the most competitive matches I saw over its 3 years, but it also saw other factors which were shaping play and playability as well. The first was the introduction of Trials in HoW and the crazy degree to which it was given carte blanche to dictate balance for not only PvP as a whole, but the entire game was bent to the whims of Trials players. The effects of this were not subtle as we saw meta after meta and the developers nerfing not just weapons, but abilities, ammo and ammo consumption and even artifacts across the board to cater to the whims of those who felt everything should be even and "skill'' should dictate every encounter and not the weapons or abilities. What that failed to take into account is that it's impossible for skill to not factor into every encounter and all it ended up doing was taking away the ability for players to master different sets of skills and made everyone play with the same tools. Not surprisingly it was hated when adopted into D2 by the same player base who thought for sure it would let their ''skill'' shine only to find that others were better at D2's play and so suddenly everything being equal somehow didn't allow for skill to matter. Classic doublespeak and once more showed the lack of self accountability that led to them wanting neutered play to begin with. There was something else happening over the course of D1 that also had a huge negative effect on play though and that goes back to the creation of the classic playlists. While D1 started out with relatively spartan choices for play, that did not last as we saw not only Trials and elimination added to the game, but also Supremacy, Rift, Zone Control, Mayhem and private matches. While it can't be argued that those were positive additions as far as more fun things to do and play, they came with a cost and that was how much they fractured and lowered the player pools for any particular activity amongst them. Instead of everyone playing in 4 (5 if IB was active) possible playlists, suddenly everyone were spread out and the immediate effect was seen with the almost crippling effect lag started having on matches in all modes as the matchmaking system struggled to put together clean matches with the drastically lowered player pools. This had a secondary effect as well as we saw in year 3 the completely bogus and unfounded attack on SBMM as the root of all Destiny's PvP woes and ultimately its demise and the way that shaped D2 as well. SBMM was always a factor in matchmaking going back to launch in Sept 2014, but it was one of many in a complex algorithm that dictated how we were grouped that included not only connections, but regions as well. The attack on SBMM was once again driven by the sweat community who didn't want to always play close matches against evenly skilled opponents, but wanted to pub-stomp for views and subs. So the rallying cry of "why should we always have to play sweaty matches?'' was set forth and adopted by viewers and listeners and then transformed into SBMM is the reason for all the lag and every other ailment. Bungie capitulated and it didn't cure lag, it only brought back the uneven quit'fest that existed in year one. So now we have D2 and as a direct result of the how the game progressed over the course of D1 (and the problems inherent from those changes themselves) we not only ended up with 4v4, but playlists as well. The effect was immediate as we saw a huge backlash against Supremacy always popping up as the game mode when obviously players were hoping for something else. This sadly led to Supremacy being changed because Bungie saw the issue as Supremacy not being fun enough and so ''let's make it more like Clash'' instead of ''hmmm, maybe we should let players just play Clash if they want'' From the start our group was affected by the 4v4 switch as our group of 6 that would go raid and then PvP together suddenly had to split up after raids and it affected not only the raid groups, but friendships as well. But on a solo level, suddenly where if others were grouped and running together, it took away any desire to log in as a solo player when there was no option to play what I wanted and to get stuck playing things I hate to maybe get a game of something I liked at some point. I'm not a streamer but I would guess that this had a huge impact on players who streamed Crucible as well as they were no longer able to just stream modes they preferred and excelled at and were forced into the random hopper. A huge part of any type of competition is getting into a groove and a flow. When you play clash or control or doubles or anything consistently, you can't help but improve and learn and find where you play best within the confines of each games rules and flow of play. That all goes out the window when those rules and games change match to match. There was another aspect of the changes that came home to roost in the playlists as well with the creation of ''competitive and quickplay'' which could now be labeled ''no one plays and let's pub stomp'' I get where Bungie was going with it and what they were trying to do with the SBMM and CBMM splits, but once again, the skilled players don't really have any desire to test those skills in competitive playlists. They want to go in and smear people and what have we seen in D2? Quitting out on a scale not seen since D1 year 1. This has resulted in a future update to give penalties for dropping out, which okay, but honestly I see that as one more deterrent to people playing and not a solution that examines why players are quitting to begin with and trying to change that.

So I've written a lot about where we came from and the issues with the infrastructure the Crucible is played on and haven't yet spoken of the gameplay itself. I know there are a lot of opinions on play and I know a lot of those revolve around kill times and the kinetic/energy setup. I find it odd that there is so little acknowledgement willing to be given for how we got to D2's neutered play and honestly I've found it sickening to read and hear all the attacks on the gameplay and the developers from players who were extremely vocal in getting us here over the life of D1, but for all D2 has gotten wrong with the play itself, I think that it can also very easily become the best Destiny PvP experience we’ve ever seen. The weapon kill times are an issue for a lot of people and the big byproduct being the forced focus on team-shooting and heavy advantages for fireteams. I don’t think kill times are the issue that most do and I’ll explain why. In D2 1 v 1 encounters, there is actually a chance to have real battles on that micro level now and give/take of damage and maneuvering that lead to some epic personal encounters. It’s not the “I saw you first, pop pop pop I win’’ of D1, but it all goes out the window when one player is joined by a teammate. On the surface maybe lower kill times would help, but I honestly don’t think it would change very much because the real issue to me is that we don’t have the full arsenals of weapons and abilities to take into encounters because of the drastically slower cooldowns (for drastically nerfed abilities). We just had Crimson Doubles and to me it highlighted everything that is wrong with D2 on a gameplay level and what it needs to put it not only on par with what D1 could be, but to surpass it. In Doubles we has drastically increased ability cooldowns for our grenades, melee and support abilities. This instantly made 1 v 2 engagements not only survivable, but gave us the real ability to consistently come out on top because it opened up the ability to really use strategy, movement and terrain in ways that primary vs primary can’t come close to achieving. I know that in D1 a huge complaint by the end was that PvP had devolved to just ability spam and that is a big reason for D2’s horrid cooldowns, but even with the ability to spam grenades and support abilities (melee was still trash and needs to be a 2 hit kill), it didn’t dictate play like it did in D1. We actually played some D1 PvP last week and it was all Camping snipers, chucking grenades and players running around OHK Shoulder-Charging. Primaries seemed the afterthought they were by the end of D1. In Crimson Doubles, I had my grenades and abilities to use bring into engagements like I did in D1, but with the still reduced effectiveness of them on their own, weapons still very much played a factor and for me at least; it was the absolute best Destiny PvP I’ve played since HoW. Having the ability to dictate where multiple enemies are able to setup and attack through the use of a full suite of class abilities was game changing and I don’t think that abilities need to be that drastic, but if that play could be translated to the rest of the game, I think it’s a completely different game and to the devs I ask, why not? Why not allow us to have those full arsenals? Why not let us have other options beyond the kinetic/energy combo to take into each engagement? It’s fun, it’s dynamic and most importantly IT’S DESTINY. I know there are plans in the works to increase player movement speeds and to increase the chances of us getting hold of power ammo and while I don’t think these are bad decisions in and of themselves, I don’t think they address the core issue with what ails D2 and makes the play so team-shot oriented and bland overall. I love the weapon system. I love running Time Worn Spire as my primary and being able to run an AR, Scout or Hand Cannon as my secondary. I loved D1 Y1 and my fusion rifles back when they were D2 good in D1, but I can also see through the experience of all the different iterations of play that we’ve seen that Destiny 2 is really only a few changes away from being as good or better than D1 was at its best in HoW. In my opinion what Destiny 2 needs going forward for PvP is this: 1) We need to be able to play the modes we want when we want. To this end, Clash and Control should be set playlists every week and when it’s Iron Banner that can replace the regular playlist that week to not create multiple player pools for it. I believe Rumble should become a regular playlist as well if the player population dictates it. Supremacy, countdown and survival should be rotated as weekly competitive game modes with countdown and survival not appearing the same week they are the Trials game mode. Mayhem and Doubles should be special weekly playlists just like Iron Banner that are available maybe once a month. I would almost put them on rotations with IB with one happening every other week. If you include faction rallies in there, it could really be a solid line-up of activities to log in and play and if SRL ever returns… Destiny’s seasons could really be full and dynamic with weekly activities to log in and play. 2) Destiny needs to back to 6v6 play for all Clash, Control and Mayhem. I would keep 4v4 for the competitive modes to keep consistency with Trials and to that end Supremacy needs to be reverted to its release format. The changes destroyed the game type and just made it Clash 2.0. Want to see players quit a D2 game fast? Watch a full fireteam team-wipe their opponents to start a supremacy match once or twice in the new format and see how fast players drop when the score is 8-0 or 16-0 instead of 4-0 and 8-0. Kill confirm isn’t kill confirm if kills count. 3) Weapons do not need drastic adjustments to kill times but higher risk/reward weapons need to kill faster but again, be harder to use. With many High Impact weapons subclasses in D2 (particularly scouts) missing a shot is fatal. The reason ARs are so much more used than anything else is that when you give everything basically the same kill times, the advantage is going to go to ease of use and that’s that we’ve seen. There is no margin for error with the more skilled weapons and I know we have weapon tunings coming and while I’m excited for the exotic changes (they changed D1 hugely for the better when they happened there), I’m also apprehensive when I hear that Pulse Rifles are getting buffed because to me that is a reaction to usage and not to actual gameplay. Pulse Rifles don’t need to be buffed just like they didn’t need the 9% buff in 1.1.1 of D1. 540 RPM Pulse Rifles are arguably the best weapon subclass in the game at the moment and if they get buffed, I see us potentially going right back to D1 and its metas. 4) Grenades do not need to be buffed but they need drastically reduced cooldowns along with melee and support abilities. Again, I don’t think they need to be as fast as Doubles, but honestly if it were my call I would move them to that system right now and adjust it back from there rather than move them incrementally forward. This game needs fun right now and it needs to let us feel powerful right now and I’d err to the side of being too OP than the too conservative that we have now. Supers I think are actually okay although I think we need to spawn in with some super energy when joining in-progress matches. It’s not fair to not get one at all or to have no counter as you spawn in to everyone hitting you with theirs. 5) Get out of the habit entirely of trying to build a perfectly balanced game. Make weapons, abilities and supers all matter again. Let subclasses stand out again for their own strengths and weaknesses. If something isn’t what was intended, but it’s fun that’s a good thing. Players loving a weapon or play style is a good thing and not something to remove in the name of balance. Let Destiny be Destiny because at the end of the day, it’s still a hell of a good game, but we’ve seen what it can be and we know what it can become and it’s all right there. Thank you.

[valenka072vbucksgaming-blog]

I beg your pardon? Figures out Fortnite gold Stand for?

Yesterday Epic Games delivered the big 3.5 patch for its popular battle royale game Fortnite, but within hours users started having trouble logging in. Around 6 PM ET yesterday the servers went down for good, and later the team tweeted "We're bringing the servers offline for emergency maintenance. We apologize for this inconvenience. We currently have no ETA on when servers will be back up." The game's status page has been updated several times since then referring to a database problem, but there's still no word when it will be back up.

With the outage nearing half a day, anxious gamers worldwide have been itching to get back to the action, not to mention the many people who live stream for others. As of 3 AM ET, the Twitch category for Fortnite showed nearly 50,000 viewers, who were mostly watching archived replays or streamers just hanging out chatting. Record holding streamer Ninja logged out after averaging 80,000 viewers even during the outage.

So if you're still up, let us know how you're dealing with the down time. Are you heading back to PUBG, watching old archives or just finding something else to do entirely?

As part of Week 8’s challenges for Battle Pass holders, players will be tasked with finding and dancing on a number of disco floors hidden across Fortnite’s map. While it might sound simple, it can be pretty difficult if you’re unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the game’s vast map.

There aren’t actually that many Dance Floors across the map and they’re tucked away in locations that can be a real struggle to find. Thankfully they stay locked in one position, so it’s not like you’ll be rooting around for a randomised location. This also helps us, help you.

We’ve put together a guide down below that’ll take you through all the known Dance Floor locations across Fortnite’s map, along with a helpful video that’ll illustrate exactly where they are.

Fortnite: Battle Royale is the hottest game on the planet right now, partly because you can play it just about anywhere. Epic Games' wildly popular survival shooter is available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac and iOS (with Android coming soon), and even allows some of those platforms to play with one another.

The iOS version recently went public for iOS 11 users on iPhone SE, 6S, 7, 8, and X (as well as any plus versions) as well as iPad Mini 4, Air 2, the iPad 2017 and iPad Pro, so anyone with one of those devices can play on the go.

Battle royale game Fortnite is down, meaning millions of gamers are in need of an outlet. Many of them have elected to switch to Radical Heights, a similarly http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?action=click&contentCollection&region=TopBar&WT.nav=searchWidget&module=SearchSubmit&pgtype=Homepage#/computer colorful, free game, bringing unexpected attention to the company behind it.

Fortnite is currently one of, if not the most popular game on the planet. At last count (by Epic Games’ stats), the highest number of concurrent players in the game was 3.4 million, and 45 million players overall.

Epic Games officials last night announced they were taking Fortnite offline for emergency maintenance, and it was down for roughly 14 hours by my count.

Update: Fortnite developer Epic has postponed the start of Battle Royale's new limited-time mode, 50v50 v2, to next week. In a post on Reddit, the developer announced, "You may have seen information or even a video about the 50v50 v2 Limited Time Mode going live today. Due to the account service issues we've been experiencing, and in order to preserve your play experience this weekend, we will be delaying it to next week." This delay comes after Fortnite experienced a significant bout of downtime that lasted nearly a day. The original story follows.

A new limited-time mode is starting soon in Fortnite: Battle Royale. Following the release of the game's 3.5 update on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and mobile, Epic is planning to kick off the 50v50 v2 event, a modified version of the game's very first limited-time mode.

As its name suggests, 50v50 v2 pits two teams of 50 players against each other. In this mode, players will have full access to the island for 10 minutes before the storm begins closing in. Supply drops will also fall every two minutes in batches of three to six, but they will only land within the final storm circle.

In addition to that, Epic has adjusted the spawn rates of loot in 50v50 mode. The likelihood of floor loot spawning has been increased 15%, and farming resources has been increased by 75%. Supply drops also spawn double ammo along with an extra consumable, trap, and resource drop, while chests spawn double ammo and consumables.

Epic hasn't announced an exact end date for the 50v50 event, but limited-time modes are typically only available for about a week. As this event is a "large squad" mode, it won't track players' profile stats. However, players will still be able to complete all non-squad-based Daily and Weekly Challenges. You can read more about the mode in Epic's patch notes.

50v50 is set to begin shortly after the release of Fortnite's 3.5 update. That patch added another new item to Battle Royale: the Port-a-Fort, which can construct a huge fort in a few seconds. Along with that, the update makes an assortment of balance tweaks and bug fixes, in addition to introducing new cosmetic options in Fortnite's paid Save the World mode.