#so refreshing to see everyones pixel babies

[primdaisy]

[wndanats]

Lights Dim While We're Dancing

pairing: wanda maximoff x natasha romanoff x famous!reader

warnings: 18+!!! top!wanda, top!natasha, tiny bit of praise, soft with smut at the end, minors dni!

w/c: 2244

summary: based on this request! sorry it took so long, however this is my longest work yet so hopefully that makes up for the wait

masterlist

a/n i have barely proof read this so i'm sorry for any mistakes :)) i'll go through and delete any i find!

“Hey Nat, come see this” Wanda calls, eyes fixed on the phone screen in front of her. She’d been scrolling through twitter for the past five minutes, giggling to herself when she’d stumbled across a certain corner of the internet. 

“You found more?” Natasha asked, a look of amusement creeping onto her face as she leans over the back of the couch where her girlfriend is sitting. Wanda nods, holding up her phone.

“Has everyone seen these new pictures of Y/N. I need her to rail me so bad.” She reads, her voice completely deadpan causing Wanda to let out another laugh.

“Yeah right. Like she could rail anybody.” Natasha continues, dodging a smack that Wanda had aimed at her. 

“You’ve gotta give her credit Tasha, these pictures are hot” 

“I’m not saying she doesn’t look hot, I’m saying I’ve seen her in bed.” Natasha says with a smirk. 

“You’re terrible” Wanda scoffs, curiosity getting the better of her as she continues to scroll down her feed.

“Hey, I’m not the one publicly tweeting about how much I want our girlfriend to rail me” She shrugs. 

Wanda stops scrolling and her face harderns as she reads another tweet that had captured her attention.

“Hey Y/N are you single?” She reads, sarcasm dripping from her voice “No she is not.” 

Wanda uses one finger to stab at the screen a couple of times. 

“Don’t reply to it!” Nat scorns, attempting and failing to snatch the phone out of Wanda’s hand.

“I’m not replying!” Wanda whines “I’m reporting it.”

“You can’t- You can’t just report her fans because they think she’s hot” Natasha bites back a laugh.

Wanda clearly just missed you, since you’d had to leave them for a couple of weeks to tour with your band, however she could not shake off the jealousy she felt upon discovering your online fanbase. Wanda had trouble sharing. You were theirs.

Although Natasha found your fans wildly entertaining, she couldn’t pretend like all these tweets and posts weren’t getting to her too. She hadn’t felt particularly possessive over the thirst tweets - she knew how fiercely loyal you were. Instead they made her long for you even more. 

The girls were your biggest fans, and had it not been for their missions, they’d have been right beside you on your tour. 

All the pictures and videos were a reminder of what they were missing. They wanted you back and home and back into their arms.

They’d never admit this to you but they’d spent an embarrassing amount of time watching videos of you perform together. Only last week Wanda had given Natasha a very informative lesson on what a fancam was. Every spare minute between missions Wanda had been glued to her phone. If she wasn’t texting you sweet little messages of how proud they were, she would be creeping on your fan tweets and refreshing youtube for new concert videos. 

“You wanna call her?” Nat asked, noticing the subtle switch in her girlfriend's demeanour.

“You don’t think she’ll be busy?”

“If she’s busy she’ll call us back later.”

Wanda hesitates for a couple of moments before switching to the facetime app. Still standing, Natasha leans her elbows on the back of the couch, adjusting herself so her face can be seen on the call.

It only takes three rings for you to pick up, your pixelated face on the screen causing your girlfriend’s to light up. 

“Hi baby!” Wanda says, her face breaking out into a grin. “Where are you?” 

“You caught me at the perfect time, I’ve literally just come offstage” you respond, an equally enthusiastic smile taking over your own features.

Even with the buzz of people in the background, it’s apparent that your voice has become slightly raspy from singing. You always worked hard, but since the tour was nearing a close you’d found yourself pushing even harder, savouring every moment. Both women practically melted at the sound of you. When you were home, you’d usually find yourself losing your voice due to other reasons. It was almost always their doing.

“You look incredible Y/N” Wanda responds, completely mesmerised by how perfectly intact your makeup had remained, despite having just performed for hours. “Tasha certainly thinks so, you should hear how loud her thoughts are right n-“

Wanda is quickly cut off by a soft fist landing on her shoulder. 

“Ignore her, she’s being dirty.” Nat cuts in. “You look beautiful Y/N, we really miss you.”

Your face softens and Natasha quickly regrets her previous words. She wanted you to enjoy your time, not pine over them the way they had for you. 

“I miss you most” you say, having similar thoughts yourself. It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t be there and the last thing you wanted was for them to feel guilty. “I’ll be home soon, I promise.”

“You’d better be. Wanda’s gonna start coming after your fans if you don’t.”

You laugh, slightly confused while Wanda shoots daggers at Natasha.

“My fans? Have I done something?” you ask, concerned.

“Just the army of people asking you to rail them online” Wanda says with a pout. You refrain from telling her how adorable she looks when she’s sulking. 

“Army”  Natasha mocks “It was one tweet.”

“I can’t help it if I'm so irresistible!” you bite back with a laugh, enjoying how easy it was to wind Wanda up. You knew she’d get you back for it soon enough, and to be honest you were looking forward to it. 

One of your bandmates calls your name and begins to shout some words that your girlfriends can’t make out from over the phone. You groan, returning back to your phone with an apologetic look. 

“I’m in high demand today.” You attempt to joke. The pair smile, trying to hide their disappointment. They knew the call was about to get cut short, but they didn’t complain. Seeing your happy little face had drastically improved both of their days and they’d have felt selfish trying to hold your attention for any longer.

“I’ll call you back tonight, promise. I love you both so much.” 

“I love you more honey, talk to you later.” Wanda says with a wave. Natasha blows you a kiss and you throw in a couple more ‘love you’s’ before disconnecting the call. 

Following the brief facetime with your girlfriends, you struggle to pay any attention to the voices in front of you. Your bandmates discuss a technical mishap from tonight’s show and you nod along, slightly frustrated that the smallest inconvenience had interrupted your precious time with the girls. 

The second that things seem to be wrapping up, you excuse yourself to head back to your hotel room, mind plagued with thoughts of the two women. 

As you flop down on your bed, your heart begins to thump while you play the video call over and over in your head. You only had another week and a half until you’d see them again, but it was a week and a half too long. 

You tried to ignore the heat rising inside of you as you pictured the look on Wanda’s face when she’d spoken about your fans. The hint of jealousy had made her look absolutely hungry for you. You made a mental note to rile her up even more next time you spoke, knowing she’d make you pay for it when you finally returned home. 

You slept easily that night, and the next show went smoother than the last. Your energy had felt particularly good the next day, and you were practically vibrating as you came off the stage. 

You hurried past the crew, keen to get somewhere quiet so you could facetime your girls again. They’d texted you that morning to say they’d been given the weekend off work, and you were more than keen to make the most out of that time.

Eventually, you burst into your dressing room, the phone already dialling before you’d got the chance to sit down.

They didn’t answer. 

After calling Wanda twice, you switched to Natasha’s phone. It was usually easiest to get hold of Wanda, you never usually had to resort to calling Nat. 

You frowned, a little irritated that you’d rushed past everybody with the intent of speaking to them, and neither of the girls had bothered to pick up. 

You tried Natasha once more, groaning loudly when somebody knocked on your door. 

“I’m busy!” you shouted, your tone coming out a lot sharper than you’d intended. You sighed when you realised you’d probably scared the shit out of some poor runner. 

The door opened anyway, and you sat up in your chair, ready to apologise for your rudeness.

“Too busy for us?” a familiar voice responded, and you leapt to your feet as the door cracked open. 

You were in their arms before they had a chance to shut the door, practically jumping at them the second you had registered their presence. 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” You almost shrieked as Wanda took your face in her hands. 

“I missed my baby too much” she responded, peppering kisses over your face. You giggled, the mix of shock and excitement causing your heart to pulsate.

Natasha’s arms snaked around you from behind, squeezing you close to her despite the fact that Wanda’s hold on you wasn’t going to be broken anytime soon. 

You melted into your girlfriends, tears threatening to spill. You had missed them unbearable amounts, and had to stop yourself from begging them to come and visit you the past few weeks. Everything you had wanted was right here in your arms and you were ecstatic.  

“Did you really get the weekend off?” you asked, turning to face Natasha. 

“With a little force” she whispered, lifting your chin so that her lips met your own, which you accepted happily.

You noticed Wanda’s hands begin to wander as you were pressed against Natasha and you jumped at the feeling. It had been weeks since you’d been touched like this. 

“In my dressing room?” You hissed. 

Wanda just chuckled. 

“You kept us waiting” She responded innocently.

“I don’t think I-“ You were silenced by Wanda’s mouth once again reclaiming you, biting down slightly on your bottom lip. 

“She’s been a fucking nightmare” Natasha whispers in your ear, sending a tingle down your spine. You don’t have time to collect yourself as

you feel your back collide with the wall, Nat’s grip gentle yet firm on your shoulders. 

You allow yourself to go limp, eager to comply as Wanda started to undress you. Your body was beyond tired from the constant stop start of performances you’d been giving and you almost cried in relief when Wanda’s mouth latched onto your clit. After spending so long apart, none of you had the patience to wait any longer. You jerked your body towards her, but Wanda forcefully pressed one hand against your hips, holding you somewhat still as she brought her fingers up to your entrance. 

The sensation caused your knees to weaken, and you wrapped your arms around Natasha to steady yourself, her lips connecting firmly to your neck.

 Although she initially hid it better, she’d been left equally as hungry as Wanda. 

“Fuck” you gasped, as she bit down on your pulse point, soothing it immediately with her tongue. You shuddered hard, knowing she’d have left a mark that’d be a bitch to cover, but you didn’t care enough to stop her. 

Your body turned to jelly beneath them, your soft moans growing loudly as Natasha reached under your shirt, goosebumps forming as her nails grazed the skin of your chest, eventually toying with your hardened nipples. 

From below you, Wanda could feel your legs tremble, she pushed her slender fingers deeper inside of you, relaxing the grip on your hips and allowing you to buck against her. You were very quickly approaching your climax, and you’d have been embarrassed if you weren’t so touch starved.

“You’re doing so well baby, you can come for us” She mumbled, barely moving her mouth away from your core as she spoke. You rode her fingers desperately, chasing the friction you’d been craving. She sucked down on your clit with a harder pressure, not slowing down her movements as you came undone.

You whined loudly, feeling overly sensitive from your recent high. You remained limp against the wall, steadying your breathing while Wanda removed her fingers, her tongue still slowly circling your clit, leaving you jolting slightly under her touch. Natasha placed softer kisses across your face, watching you in adoration. She had missed this so much. 

Eventually Wanda freed you from her grasp and stood to face you, smoothing down your hair as you smiled softly, your mind still in a haze. 

“Poor baby” she whispered “You look so tired.”

You nodded, blushing furiously while you struggled to find words. 

Natasha pulled away from you, her eyes still dark. 

“I hope you’re not too tired though, I still haven’t had my turn” Her voice was barely a whisper, sending a surge straight back to your lower stomach. 

You let Natasha pick you up and carry you over to the dressing room couch. As she placed you down on your back you reached up for her, noticing how she kissed you so much more gentle this time. You knew you’d never be able to leave them for this long again.

[heartbreakgrill]

Best Years; Calum Hood.

description: in which you join the listening party and things get weepy. (no warnings.)

a/n: hiiii! idk if anyone’s even gonna read this, but i hope you enjoy! i kinda wanna expand on the relationship centered here in this imagine, so look out or request for it!

You tugged the heavy comforter over your legs, propping a pillow on top and your laptop on the structure. A nudge at your left arm gained your attention and you watched as Duke moved it out of the away. He curled up into your side, panting happily.

You ruffled the tips of his ears with a tired smile. “You ready, Uke?” He gave an affectionate lick to your hand, gravely and wet. You scrunched you the middle of your nose in response.

With a few taps on your laptop, Instagram was brought up. You refreshed the page once the Eastern time zone matched up with your own. It wasn’t too late that you had to stay up for the album release, thankfully.

Calum’s adorable face popped up on your screen whenever you clicked on the 5sos Instagram icon. His eyes grew when he noticed your comment, a small red heart for his endeavors.

“Hey, everyone!” You could hear his voice echo down the hallway, as well as through your phone. Your wiggled your legs in excitement, readier than ever to hear the rest of this album.

Michael soon joined the live, yelling way too loud for Dukes little ears. You jokingly covered them with your hands but he rolled around to lick your palms. You laughed, but retracted to wipe your hands on your sweatshirt.

When you looked back to the live, it was all kinds of bad quality. Pixels littered the screen and Calum was frozen. You screen shotted his hilarious facial expression, but when your phone returned to the live from the flash of light, the live was over.

You heard Calum’s footsteps nearing the room and the door slowly turned into the room. “Hey, love.”

“Baby, what happened?” You moved your laptop off your legs and began to stand.

“The WiFi’s screwing up. I got a notification that there’s too many people on. God knows why it sucks so much.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, that’s my fault. I was watching,” you stood and reached for him. “I’ll stay off and just listen through the door.”

He tugged you in by the waist, lips meeting your cheek when your hands touched his chest. “Come sit in the living room with me.”

“I don’t wanna intrude-“

“Darling, I helped write songs with you in mind. You’re like the core of the album, how could you intrude?” Calum raised his eyebrows at you.

A blush tickled your cheeks and ears. His thumb rubbed its trail, eyes admiring the color. “Cmon, pretty girl.”

He intertwined your fingers, leading you through to the living room. Duke followed, hot on your trail. Calum got the live up and running right away, plopping himself down onto the floor in front of the camera.

“Sorry, everyone. My internet is screwed up. Shall we start in right away with Best Years? Pick up where Ash left off,” Calum began to stand to set up the vinyl, but you beat him to it.

You placed the needle in the middle of the edge of the vinyl, and somehow you were correct with where Best Years would begin. Calum leaned out of frame to blow your a kiss. You grinned and took a seat on the couch across from him.

Best Years began, adorning your ears for the first time ever. You had refused to listen to it prior to the album release. You knew it was written for you, Sierra, Crystal, KayKay. For you, by the man you loved. You wanted to hear it with him.

You bit down on your lip, clasping your necklace in your palm. A ‘C’ for your boy, hanging off a silver chain. You focused intently on the music, eyes boring into the rug below you. Calum watched to see you reaction. He’d never been vocal about the things in the songs even though you’d been together for nearly two years now. Technically, a year and six months, considering there was a break between.

That break had ended just nine months prior, and while you released each other’s grooves and love, he hadn’t had a chance to give his vulnerable feelings up.

The first words described their situation, giving you a million reasons to walk away, making you feel hesitant because of the person he let himself become. The person who lost you for six months.

When the first chorus ended, you met his eyes with tear-filled ones, chest exhaling with a quiet sob. He disregarded the live and stood to embrace you. You met him on your feet, holding tightly to his shoulders.

Before they knew it, they were swaying, dancing with nose pressed to cheek and tears steaming freely. No one except for those close to you knew you were even together again, so the fans had no idea Calum was in love. But they’d probably figure it out, considering a grin and sliding glass tears framed his face when he sat back down.

There was, also, that spot of lip gloss slipped across his bottom pout.

[mtvchallengeblogarchive]

Puck's MTV Cribs Episode

Did you see Puck’s episode of Cribs? Well, remember last week when I broke my dumb tooth out of my mouth?  I was on my way to Puck’s house for this Cribs event.  When Puck calls, my phone rings with Big Poppa.  He called me a couple days before and was like, “Melissa, you gotta come down and wear bike shorts and just be. Be black.  I’d love to have you here.  We’re having a party.”  I didn’t commit to going because I am just flaky like that when it comes to driving to the valley to be on a TV show I have no business being on, but I told him that I was so excited for him and that if Coral came with me, I’d totally go.  He called Coral as well and she was going to wear a dashiki and maybe bust some poetry.  It would have been hysterical, but I broke my tooth and that took precedence over everything. We called Puck and we told him that I had a dental emergency and that we weren’t going to make it.  Puck was so sad about my tooth, but also upset that we couldn’t make it.  We really wanted to visit with Betty and play with Bogart.  When Betty found out about the tooth, she was so adorable.  She called and told me all about her fake tooth.  She told me I could go over there and she would take care of me and I could have whatever I wanted.  And she was saying all of this while she was sick as a dog. There’s a sickness going around here.  I have a terrible sickness today.  I think I have food poisoning.  My head is spinning, my hands are clammy, my migraines are kicking in overdrive and I just feel weak.  I didn’t even make it to the bathroom to throw up, that’s how bad it is. TMI. I have been Lysol-ing the place all day.  And that fresh linen smell is making me even sicker.  I need to get over it now because I have to get on airplane to Ohio tomorrow.  I have never had to use those barf bags and I really don’t want to start.   Anyway, we drove over to Puck’s house after my tooth was fixed.  He said that the cameras were leaving and I was happy about that because the anesthesia hadn’t worn off and my face was puffy, but also my right nostril would flare uncontrollably and it was highly embarrassing.  We got to see all the good stuff that MTV didn’t even show you and we got to hear all about it.  Have you ever listened to Puck give details?   He’ll give them to you all the livelong day.  I showed him the before picture of my tooth and Puck, the notorious P.U.C.K. extended his arms and said, “I have to give you a hug.  That’s terrible.”  He wished that I had showed up with my bad tooth, but that would never happen.  I wanted that tooth fixed immediately.  He then offered me some Korbel that he and his homies were drinking from the bottles all day during the filming.  Yes, he answered the door with a clown nose on and gun in his hand.  That’s Puck’s real house.  I’m surprised some key items weren’t pixelized in the background. They have a Hello Kitty TV.  Puck and Betty both love Hello Kitty.  Puck has Hello Kitty stickers!  I have to hook them up with one of my beloved items.  I am not quite ready to part with my Hello Kitty rice cooker, but it would be so cute for them to have.   Puck actually went to the party supply store and bought that Welcome MTV Cribs banner!  And a cake, and candles and he had refreshments for everyone.  It was the most adorable thing I’d ever seen.  That picture they closed up on with Puck holding a cigarette and some cotton candy?   Colin took that picture of him, blew it up, framed it and gave it to him as a gift.  It was just weird to see shit that I’ve seen from people I know on TV. I told Puck that Cribs is what started the whole Osbournes thing.   People don’t watch the Osbournes because they genuinely love the “characters.”  I mean, yeah they relate to the whole dysfunctional functional family thing, but really they want to see how weird rich people live.  And I think seeing weird middle class people who are totally insane would be better.  Can you imagine seeing a day in Puck’s life?  Driving around in his Gucci Cadillac?  Playing with his 27 baby dogs?  Watching him play patty cake with his son?  I’d watch that shit every week.  Not to mention, RW people stop by to see Puck all the time.  Syrus was just chilling in the background, and that shit really happens over there.  The RW girls love Bogart and Betty.  We’ve gone over there before and holed up in the baby’s room with Betty talking about real things like relationships and traveling and manicures.  It’s an entire network slash cult of people who really like Puck and want to kick it for an hour or so.  Small doses, small doses, man. They serve beverages and even barbecue when people come over.  Puck will call you up and say, “Man, I just got 87 pounds of fresh meat for only $5.  You have to come over!”  Puck needs a show.  He needs a show.  Why no one has capitalized on this person, I don’t know.  But if the Osbournes, people who shop and eat and talk shit all day can have a show, Puck can have a show.  That fool has jail art in his garage.  He has a Madonna record collection and Bogart listens to Madonna in his room while he plays.  He has ancient guns that don’t work in his desk drawer.  He sends his friends that live up the street postcards to say hi.  That fool has a puppy that didn't make it (stillborn or something) in a   mayonnaise jar of Formaldehyde on his desk.  Why doesn't he bury it, you say?  He loves him, he says.  Gross, but to each his own. Museum shit is crazy. You ever heard of that man that stole that lady from her grave and elbalmed her with perfumes and shit?  Autopsy on HBO has some sick ass stories.  Anyway, all the while, his wife is totally mellow and spends entire days kissing Bogart, a baby that rarely cries and goes to anybody.  I’d watch it.  Maybe we should start a petition.  Puck totally needs $20 million too.  He’d never get nearly that much, but still.   Oh totally off topic, but I have to mention it.  Was that Emily telling Rachel to wrap it up when she was giving her “this game is ugly” speech on BOTS last week?  If so, that’s the rudest thing I have ever seen.  I mean, yeah, it sucks to stand there and watch somebody cry, but if you’re the reason, at least act like you’re listening.  And why is Christina always the one making commentary about me?  First she said I was a Rotten Tone Setter, now she says I’m 80 pounds (I’ll take a quote from Erykah Badu when it comes to people talking about my weight: Keep in mind that I’m an artist, and I’m sensitive about my shit). I talked to her for a total of 47 minutes while we were in Jamaica.  It was civil and pleasant, and I told her hair was ridiculously amazing.  These shows are crazy.  I don’t know why it’s surprising, but to see people just talking shit about you is weird. It’d be one thing if it was commentary that was about the game or a situation that went down, but it wasn’t.  I guess that’s the whole point of the show though.  And my time will come.  I know for a fact that I said a stank thing or two about one of the ladies on the show.  But that shit was actually funny, in my opinion.  Am I saying you can talk shit if it’s funny?  Not really, but it makes it a ton better if it’s laughable and obvious i.e. Ellen’s cheering makes me want to stub my pinky toe on a coffee table corner.  Oh I forgot, they don’t show us saying funny things or having fun.  Oh yes, that’s why I am not on the show ever.  Fine, keep my ass out of it.

Feb 20 2003

[rpgmgames]

October’s Featured Game: Konstandin

DEVELOPER(S): Team Galanx ENGINE: RPGMaker VX Ace   GENRE: Horror, Exploration, Romance, Mystery, Drama SUMMARY: One year has passed since the 26 year old Rinor Avdiu and his wife Aulona moved to a village called Buroja. The couple tends to live a relatively happy marital life, though the village seems to have an old eerie legend in which Rinor is unconsciously taking part in. The legend of a cursed knight, called Konstandin. The story revolves around Rinor who tries to find the meaning behind it, while he faces deep mental and horrific challenges.

Download the demo here!

Introduce yourself!  *Hello, we are a small indie gamedev team named Galanx.The project we are working on is called Konstandin, a storydriven rpgmaker game of the horror, mystery, exploration genre. It's taking a while, but everyone grows at their own pace and we're not giving in to the pressure of time. :)

What is your project about? What inspired you to create your game initially? *Team Galanx: So, Nouin and Alma who are core members of Team Galanx are also siblings. They both always had creative fuel boiling inside and were generally passionate about drawing, gaming, well thought out stories. One day, Nouin discovered an engine called Rpgmaker VX Ace and saw all the possibilities it offered to make an enjoyable game.

They had to buy it. So that's what happened.

One evening, they were brainstorming while enjoying a traditional Albanian dish together... then it hit them! Albanian. Traditional. Their native folklore was so rich, yet very few people knew about it. Why not use this as an opportunity to tell the world an amazing story, inspired directly from their roots?

A story they might have never heard of, but which possibly all could relate to.

And so, it was decided. Their main inspiration would be: "Besa e Konstandinit"

But of course, telling the original story wouldn't leave any room for curiosity. So Nouin and Alma had the idea of creating a modern setting where other characters would be included. This way the players could enjoy two sides, that'd be connected through the legend of Konstandin. One filled with first world problems and one where you'll have to face real problems.

How long have you been working on your project? *Team Galanx: We've been working on it for 4 years, but not consistently.

Did any other games or media influence aspects of your project? *Team Galanx: Plenty of them. But it's not like we can pin down one exact source. It might've been a historical albanian documentary, a novel, a horror game, the howling of the wind, nature, people, memories of the war, the news on TV, native fables etc.

Have you come across any challenges during development? How have you overcome or worked around them?   *Team Galanx: There were various challenges and there still are, but as long as you take the time to work it out and not let yourself drown in self pity then it'll get better. There's no easy way if you decide to work on a big project.

Each member will have a schedule, personal affairs to tend to, or simply not have motivation, so at times the project will fall flat. The key is to communicate and brainstorm to flesh things out and come up with new refreshing ideas until you feel that what you're working on, is worth sharing with the world.

Much like how everybody likes to show their babies around. Basically, make the project your baby and nurture it, then any challenge or hardship will seem minor.

Have any aspects of your project changed over time? How does your current project differ from your initial concept? *Team Galanx: Our core idea is still there, but the entire game has gotten a revamp. Maps, art, dialogue, events, flow of time, voice actors have changed. The sound quality is great and new puzzles/riddles have been added, some unnecessary parts have been removed etc. The storytelling and transitions in general are smoother.

You'll get to see the differences yourself. Time is a great teacher. :)

What was your team like at the beginning? How did people join the team? If you don't have a team, do you wish you had one or do you prefer working alone? *Team Galanx: It's all Nouin's and Alma's fault. Had the basics. Started working. Crafted a few minutes of wonky gameplay and cheesy dialogues.

After their wave of pride and excitement passed, the siblings discovered that the game looked generic as hell, so both had enough and said: Our story is too valuable to be interpreted so weakly. Everything will be custom made!

Amen to that.

With help from the internet they found the third member of Galanx's core team, composer and sound supervisor Frank.

But the greed and zeal for perfection didn't stop there either, so they went hunting for pixel artists and voice actors. Several changes and two demos later, here we are as Team Galanx. Working on a game with custom made graphics, soundtracks, songs, sprites, animated cutscenes and full voice acting. :)

What was the best part of developing the game? *Team Galanx: Seeing everything come together and work even better than what we had initially planned. That satisfaction can't be compared to anything else.

Do you find yourself playing other RPG Maker games to see what you can do with the engine, or do you prefer to do your own thing? *Team Galanx: If we play any, it's mostly for fun. It feels like, if you start analyzing other games you will never be fully immersed in their story nor will you be satisfied with your own project and that'd be a shame on both sides.

We'd rather work on Konstandin with what we already have in mind. :)

Which character in your game do you relate to the most and why? (Alternatively: Who is your favorite character and why?) *Team Galanx: Konstandin and Mona. The reasons contain spoilers, so we'll just say that these two are interesting in their own way.

Looking back now, is there anything that regret/wish you had done differently? *Team Galanx: Some things, yes. But since Konstandin hasn't been finished yet, we have the benefit of going over those regrets/ wishes and working on them.

Once you finish your project, do you plan to explore game's universe and characters further in subsequent projects, or leave it as-is? *Team Galanx: We'd leave it, because it wouldn't make sense to pry further onto Konstandin's universe if Konstandin's issue has been resolved. When we successfully launch our final product, we'd like to focus on another exciting project we have in the backburner.

What do you look most forward to upon/after release? *Team Galanx: The feeling of having made something that others are taking their time to play and hopefully enjoy. Fan reactions, yes. Let's plays. Constructive criticism. Having something to be proud of. Fan art. The end of an era and the start of something new etc.

Is there something you're afraid of concerning the development or the release of your game?  *Team Galanx: Our fears can be summed up to: People not liking our game, bugs, equipment malfunction and the sudden death of a team member. Otherwise all is well.

Question from last month's featured dev (Somnimouse): What kind of stories do you appreciate most in RPG Maker games? For example, do you like ones based off real-life experiences, fantasy elements, or morals? *Team Galanx: A combination of all these would be perfect. A real life story told in a fantasy setting that has a great message to top it off? Sign us up!

Do you have any advice for upcoming devs? *Team Galanx: You make a game to share thousands of creative and morbid ideas that might be floating around in your head all day long. A game is your cake, but everybody can have a piece of it. Some people might throw up from it, others might want more. Wanting more, means they want to experience a piece of your imagination, so let that drive you. If you had no motivation to continue your game and were waiting for a sign, this is it. Go bake that cake.

We mods would like to thank Team Galanx for agreeing to our interview! We believe that featuring the developer and their creative process is just as important as featuring the final product. Hopefully this Q&A segment has been an entertaining and insightful experience for everyone involved! 

Remember to check out Konstandin if you haven’t already! See you next month! 

- Mods Gold & Platinum 

[dowagerintraining]

Asking For Help

Hello everyone

I have posted this on facebook, but I am hoping that some of the people on Tumblr, even though we have never met, might have a little sympathy for my story, and may be willing to help me out. If you can’t, or don’t want to, I don’t blame you. After all, for all that I write #Banna fanfic and share silly memes and cat pictures, I am just a random bunch of pixels on the internet to most of you. Some of you know me from Tumblr, a handful of you know me in real life, and many of you known me from fanfiction.net, where I write under the same username. Some of you don’t know me at all. I am at my wits end right now. And frankly willing to try anything. Anything at all. So here’s the story. My husband and I have been trying to move to New Zealand for the past two years. I have an interview for a job there tomorrow, to start at the end of January. It might all be about to come together. And in those few moments, it all might be about to fall apart financially. I don’t know how to make this work any more, for him, for me, and for our beloved fur babies, our beautiful cats. I need to ask for help, and so this is what I’m doing. Here is the link to the GoFundMe that I have set up. But if you want the details, you can also access them under the cut.

https://www.gofundme.com/help-the-halls-get-to-new-zealand

I’m not truly believing that I am doing this. But I guess that nobody who starts a ‘GoFundMe’ ever imagines themselves in this position. It’s 1 o’clock in the morning and I can’t sleep, and can’t get my brain to switch off and wind down because I can’t see a way through this right now. So hello everyone. I am asking for your help. Many of you may already be aware that we, my husband Spike and I, have been investigating moving to New Zealand. We’ve been pursuing this for many reasons. We’ve been looking into this for two years now and this is absolutely the right thing for us to do, to secure our future prosperity, to guarantee our own going health and well-being and to give us the life that we need in order to be healthy and happy people.

 And I need to ask for your help towards making this happen.

 This is not a honeymoon. It’s not a wild dream holiday, trekking through beautiful middle earth wilderness. It is not the trip of a lifetime. It is a solid, well researched and absolutely necessary change to our lives.

 1) we need a clean break from the UK, to leave our old lives behind and build a future. We both have so much baggage and we know that this is our best hope to make a firm and final break and get on with building our lives. My husband Spike has worked hard to overcome a rocky start in life. Those of you who know us personally know that he has fought a brave battle against mental health problems, and with support and encouragement he can defeat this and life a healthy and wonderful life. However, living here in the UK is like living in a personal haunted house, full of many of the worst memories and fears, and we need to move away in order for him to gain his emotional and mental freedom.

 2) the brexit process and changes to FE funding means that funding for my job (English and Maths in adult education) may not be so plentiful or readily available as it has been before and I need to make sure I can work in a career to support my family. I have already had to change jobs every 1-2 years as companies can lose funding and go bust, or hand back contracts, with very little notice. Job stability does not exist in my sector, and after 7+ years of this, I am exhausted and not sure how much more I can take.

 3) the education system in NZ is an excellent match for me. I didn’t choose NZ because LOTR was pretty, I chose it because I read their national curriculum and fell in love. I realised I had been teaching on the wrong side of the world. This isn’t speculation, I know this. I have already completed my NZ teaching course. I excelled at it. My professor told me that so far in my career I had been ‘a fish in the wrong ocean’ and I needed to ‘get out to NZ and start working there as soon as possible.’ I had a brilliant experience working at a NZ high school, far better than any other place/sector I have worked in while in the UK. I passed my course with flying colours, scoring ‘Highly Developed’ in two categories of criteria and ‘Well Developed’ in the third. This is where I am supposed to be.

 4) NZ is an excellent match for us. A better work life balance, good future prospects, a healthcare system that works for our needs, and education system that works for my career.

 Many of you knew this already, but it never hurts to write it down. And now I am going to ask for your help.

 So why are you asking for help now? What’s changed?

 Well, in short, I’m starting to get offered interviews for positions in New Zealand, and suddenly the clock is ticking awfully loudly.

 I have one coming up tomorrow, and the chances of me being offered the job are looking EXTREMELY promising. There are another three schools who have asked for my references and been in touch about potential interviews. After two long years of trying, these people want me to go and work for them. The schools are looking for someone to start in late January 2018.

 All of the hard work so far has paid off, and it has been a long two year slog. This stuff is long and complicated and costs so far have included:

 1)   Applying for passports for both of us (£145)

2)   Applying for two different police certificates (approx. £100)

3)    Assessing all of my qualifications to have them accepted by New Zealand’s Education Council (£370)

4)   Enrolling on and completing the TERP (Teacher Education Refresher Programme). This included fees of £2000, Flights to NZ of £1200, living expenses for the month, including £400 rent, £400 food and £200 travel costs. I also had to cover our rent at home and Spike’s living costs for the month, which were the same again. All in all, completing the TERP has cost me more than £5500.

5)   Applying for my registration as a teacher with the education council. (£150)

 Due to the strict rules on exporting animals, we’ve had to start planning for Boomer and Athena to come with us months in advance. This has included Rabies vaccinations (£100) and blood tests to confirm the success of the vaccinations (£220).

 This process, so far, has cost over £6000, and we are barely half way there.

 Talk about what the support will mean to you

 Sitting down tonight, knowing that I have an interview tomorrow, I am suddenly faced with the true facts of how much money we need to find in the next three months and I don’t know where we’re going to get it.

 We had hoped that we were going to get some help financially relocating. But this support is not available to non-Kiwis.

 I had been pursuing a legal case against an irresponsible lender, but after six months I have still not heard whether my case is going to be fully investigated, and even if it is, the outcome could take months more. One by one our avenues of income are closing off, and just as things are looking likely, my hopes for ways to pay for them are looking close to non-existent.

 I am already working as hard as I can. I work full time, in a demanding job. I run my own tutoring business, offering private maths and English tuition. I have, at the moment, 13 clients on top of my full time job. I teach, on average, two people per day for intensive 1-to-1 support, on top of working full time, and three people have sessions with me each day on weekends, sometimes for two hours each. I don’t have days off unless someone cancels an appointment. I used all of my paid annual leave to go to New Zealand and work full time for my placement. On top of that, I took on a third job this year marking 720 GCSE examination scripts over the summer. At peak season, I worked from 7am until 10pm Monday to Friday, and 9am to 10pm Saturday and 9am to 6pm on Sunday. I felt guilty for taking Sunday night off, but I needed some time in the week to do my university coursework.

 I wish that was an exaggeration. It is not.

 I cannot physically squeeze any more pennies out of my time. Everything I have that is worth something, that I can physically bear to part with, has been sold. The car will be sold to cover the remaining finance owing on it before we go. We are in rented accommodation. Our furniture and fittings are second hand and falling apart, but will have to make the trip with us. We don’t have any more assets that can be liquidised.

 Your support will mean that we can do this, that I can stop working myself into a state for hours at a time, unable to sleep in the small hours of the morning, on a hair trigger temper every time someone reminds me what all this is going to cost, frightened that this dream, this chance of a healthy and happy life, is going to slip through our hands and leave us stranded because I cannot make the numbers add up.

 Describe who will benefit

 In short … we will. Me, my husband Spike, and our two beloved cats.

 Not only will this make our dream come true, it will:

 ·        Offer my husband a genuine chance to overcome his past and secure his health for the future

 ·        Keep our family together, preventing us from having to surrender the cats to a lifetime of rescue centre care. Athena is a three legged cat with complex future needs, Boomer is a black cat, and they are a bonded pair. Their chances of being adopted are statistically extremely low. And even leaving that aside, they are our family, and we cannot leave them behind. They belong with us.

 ·        Allow me to make the move with my physical and mental health intact without driving myself down and through exhaustion and a possible physical breakdown, before arriving and going straight into the equivalent of an NQT year.

 Detail what the funds will be used for

 At present, this is the breakdown of what we need.

 As soon as possible, we need to get our immigration medicals done. These are likely to be complicated and referred to New Zealand for second opinion, as Spike has both physical (diabetes) and mental (PTSD) health issues. I also have physical (asthma) and mental (anxiety) health histories which will need to be referred. The longer this takes, the tighter the deadlines get, and we are now up against a ticking clock.

They cost up to £400 each and can only be done by a specified list of consultants, in a limited number of locations. We need to raise £800 for this as soon as possible

 Assuming that I can get an essential skills VISA, this will cost me approximately £200 to apply for. This also needs to be started the day I get a job offer, or as soon as possible after that.

 We have received a quote for how much it will cost for us to take Boomer and Athena to New Zealand. The quote is £1700, via one of the very few companies who work with New Zealand’s department for dealing with importing live animals. On top of that, they both need to be in quarantine in Auckland, which needs to be booked and paid for before they can be booked on a flight out. We are looking at costs of up to £2000 to take our furry family members with us, not including going back to Auckland to collect them and transport them to wherever we end up.

 Then there’s our own stuff. This is going to have to be (in the case of our outdoor gear) professionally cleaned (to meet rules on contamination prevention regarding organic matter), packed and shipped, and then transported by road to wherever we end up. Including insurance, cleaning and the packing/shipping/delivery, this is going to cost in the region of £2000.

 Then, there are our flights. Current prices are looking at around £700 per one way ticket, and we are going to need two. This will enable us to fly economy to New Zealand, to one of the major airports, from Heathrow. For this, we need to budget approx. £1500 (which will include insurance for us both for the journey). We won’t be flying business or better – that would more than double the cost.

 Finally, there’s the small matter of what we do when we get there. We need somewhere to live. You KNOW how expensive it is moving to a new house in this country. It’s the same abroad. You need agency fees, 2 weeks rent in advance and four weeks bond. Assuming we can get a place that is comparable in cost to where we currently live, we need to find £800 to pay up front, in advance, to secure somewhere for us to live, before our stuff arrives and before we go to collect our furry family members from quarantine. Our options are already reduced, as not everywhere allows pets, and we have effectively ruled ourselves out of shared accommodation with that clause. And so beggers might not be able to be choosers. We will have to take what we can get and not haggle.

  This does not even cover some of the costs we will need to address once there. Such as getting a car, travelling from the airport to wherever we end up, finding a hotel room to sleep in when we land after a 30+ hour journey. I am hopeful that we can raise funds to cover that. We should be able to get (some of) the deposit back on the flat. I will have my final salary from my employer, and I should be entitled to some redundancy pay, but it won’t be much due to the caps introduced in 2017 and the fact that I am under 40. I am still pursuing the legal case, but the time frame on that has turned to jelly.

 I am not giving up. I will keep working all of the hours that every God sends me. I will keep tutoring. I will keep scraping and saving. I will take the resit marking this winter if it is offered to me. But I am living in fear right now that this will not be enough.

 Explain how soon you need the funds

 I am currently interviewing for jobs to start in 2018 at the end of January. Ideally, we need to be in New Zealand by around the 20th of January. The cats can’t actually leave the country before that point, so they might have to follow us later, which is an additional headache to consider.

 The thing is, everything needs to be done before then. Our medicals need to be done as soon as humanly possible. See above for reasons why.

 Once that’s done, the VISA needs to be applied for, and they can take up to three months, so that also needs to be started the day I get a job offer.

 The longer we wait, the more expensive and complicated things will become. We need to pay a 25% deposit for the cats’ international transfer 6-8 weeks before we leave, so by early December.

 We need to contact a removal company for an accurate storage quote and pay a deposit to secure their services.

 The longer we wait for the flights, the more expensive they will get. January is summer time in New Zealand, the flights are in peak season over there, as are all the accommodation options and internal transport options (car hire, bus, train, etc) to get us from the airport to wherever we end up staying.

 In short we need to raise this money now. As soon as possible. Otherwise, the whole thing is potentially going to fall through.

  Share how grateful you will be for help

  I have absolutely no right to ask for any of this. I can’t promise that there is anything in it for any of you, beyond knowing that you have helped us to achieve this dream. Should you ever make it out to NZ and turn up on our doorstep, our welcome and hospitality is open to you. But that was already the case.

 I’m really struggling for words to write this without sounding like a hackneyed X Factor contestant. This is our biggest shot at being happy and living a health life, rather than just surviving. This has been our every waking, breathing and speaking moment for the last two years. It will be until we get there. This will change our lives. And not in the sun-shiny Hollywood sense, but by giving us a shot at the future we want and need so dearly.

 I have set the total for this to cover what we need to get out there. But in all honesty, if it raises anything at all, I will cry with gratitude, because it will mean that people are willing to help us and we don’t have to carry this on our own.

[topicprinter]

I originally intended to write this as a response to this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/av4eqe/how_should_i_be_spending_my_time/And thought.7FM. Bro? What can YOU do for your Country? You've taken so much. It's time to give!This is it. I'm tossing this advice out into the wild and I'm using everyone's favorite, polarizing topic - religion!I'll show you in less than 2 minutes how anyone can find their ideal audience on Facebook even if (and especially if) you don't already have a FB page full of people that like you, AKA "An audience". Don't worry. You don't need it. You only need to know an interest. Any interest will do. As long as you know this interest relates to your audience, you good bruh.Ready? Let's do this, homies!First rule of Facebook Club? You need to be using Audience Insights in Facebook Business Manager if you really want to discover your ideal demographic.With this lovely tool you have access to aggregate stats on billions of people and how they relate to what they do on Facebook. We're not talking intimate details, or anything with personal info, but we are talking about Age/Sex/Location, Interests & Devices.Basically, all I need to know to get started!Speaking of, let's go! Just don't forget to actually be logged into FB because...well...um...that's kind of a requirement.On the initial popup click the box that says Everyone on Facebook, unless you already have a massive audience on a FB page you control. Which, if that's the case. Go away you're no fun.On the left-hand sidebar, under the Interests section type in Christian Music and hit enter.You want a nice, big audience to start with. You can use whatever you want, but this is a good interest to target when targeting Christians because if there's one thing I know about religious peeps, they love their music...and also the bible, so you can go ahead and target that instead if you like, I'm choosing to go the music route because it's more commercial in intent than the bible is.On the main page you'll see it refresh under the default Demographics tab and load up with pretty bar charts. Yay!Right away I know that 65% are female. I'm not even gonna mess with targeting males if I want to maximize my ROI. I might split test that 36% just to see, but my hopes will be low because the data tells me so.52% of all people that like Christian Music are married. Done. I'd throw in the 29% that are single as well into a different ad set and test that, too. They just aren't married yet, ya know?Now, skip on over to the Page Likes tab near the top of the main page. This is where the gold is, and no, I'm not willing to go in order and I'll omit any that I've seen multiple times in other unrelated searches (they can't all like Mint Julep Boutique!)Faith Family AmericaCountry MusicDuck Commander (Phil Robertson)Paula DeenCMTand on and on. The lower down on the list, the less relevant as a whole it is.These are the pages that are most liked as an aggregate, and now, you don't just have to target Christian Music, you can target married females that like country music, or CMT or Paula Deen, .etc.Just so we're clear here, we're gathering these demographics to target later in our ad campaigns. So don't just look at them and say "wow, cool, so that's who they are and where they hang out!" - you have to actually use them in your ad targeting.Now let's go to the Location tab.Well, well. What do you know? The great state of Texas is home to BBQ, High School Football & a good percentage of our core audience!Cities like Dallas & San Antonio stand out as heavy hitters in this report. Do I trust it? Meh. It's a good baseline to work with. We can start there.I'm not saying ignore other cities, just make a special attempt to focus here or even regionally.NOTE: Up to you if you want to make Texas specific ads or not, that's your call. (it would be more relevant and would lead to higher CTR in most cases. The tradeoff is that they're more labor intensive to create)I wouldn't say treat Location with a grain of salt, however, I will say that it's best not to ignore certain locations just because they're not on this list. Maybe NYC isn't home to a bunch of country music fans, but does that mean there aren't millions of Christians? Probably not. Just because the results skew South doesn't mean you should ignore the other directions on the compass.OK. Let's go to the final tab, Activity.As you can probably guess, the world is mobile. They went mobile years ago and never looked back. So, don't be surprised that 64% of your entire audience is mobile!NOTE: If you don't have a mobile-responsive website and funnel that's on you. You've been warned.Now, let's check those device splits!Ah, yes. Nearly 50/50 iOS & Android. Figures.Well, here's a little tip from your boy 7FM. You need to split-test both of those OS's, because they don't perform the same and they never will.I see dramatically different results when targeting one OS over another and it really varies from product to product. I've found that free products, free signups, free anything will get that Android crowd going. If it requires paying for something, iOS typically wins out.Without going into crazy conspiracy theories, Android devices are cheaper. People who own Android devices (as an aggregate) have less money. I'm not talking about feature devices like Galaxy's, Note's and Pixels. I'm talking mass-market Android phones that you impulse buy for your entire family at Walmart.Android users get a lot of apps for free and as a whole, typically don't have the purchasing power, nor intent of iOS users. iOS users have a 2x higher AOV than Android users, and it's technically closer to 3x.Wait...I just said phones. What about tablets? "Lord, please tell me he didn't forget about the almighty tablet!" you say.Ahhhh, man I don't want to give too much away here but PAID PLATFORM Tablet users in almost every case are dead money. Your gameshow network loving grandmother uses it to play Scrabble online and mass-click ads that get in her way.Test it, try it, absolutely never take my word for it; but, just know I told you so ;)There you have it. You've found your demographic like a boss and all you had to do was know one interest that your desired demographic might have.Quick Tip: When you're done with this try it again for a different interest and see if you can cross match. You want to find the overlapping results to know you really hit it.

[sempiternalsandpitturtle]

How to use data to define your social media audience

Data. If you’re not sick of that word yet, then you’re not reading enough about marketing. Good data drives good campaigns and that goes double for marketing on social media.

So in this blog post we’d like to look specifically at how you can define your social media audience using data. Because knowing about who you’re speaking to is crucial. It allows you to engage with them better, grow your following, and (most importantly) better leverage your relationship to advance your business goals. As Maria Raybould at SEMrush puts it: “your content needs to be relevant for your existing (and not what-you-thought-it-would-be) audience.”

In this post:

How to define your social media personas.

Tools for analysing your social media audience.

How to grow your social media following.

Tips for leveraging your social audience.

Let’s get cracking then.

Wait, we’re talking about user personas right?

Absolutely. That’s something we should get straight from the start: the best thing you can do with what you learn about your social media audience is build user personas – aka customer or buyer personas. By defining your audience and recording that info in handy documents – complete with a name, mock profile picture and demographic info – you’re capturing highly useful IP. Persona docs will keep everyone involved in your campaigns on track and thinking about the right people in the right ways.

There are dozens of methods for building personas – you’ve likely done it yourself before – so we’ll keep our advice on creating social media persona docs brief. Basically, besides all the usual demographic details, we think you should work out:

What problems your personas have that you can solve.

What questions they have that you can answer.

How much they know about your company and its products or services.

What they’re looking for from your social media profile.

What platforms they use.

What action you want them to take, especially if this varies between your different personas.

View this post on Instagram

Trymyfab user personas finally created, designed, framed and ready to be hung in the office!! . . . . #entrepreneurlife #hustle #entrepreneur #hustlehard #curlygirl #naturalista #naturalhair #workworkwork #womenintech #womeninbusiness #blackgirlmagic #businesswomen #inspiration #teamnatural #userpersonas #uxdesign #customerdevelopment

A post shared by Christy Oyedeji (@gochristyo) on Sep 28, 2018 at 2:17pm PDT

How do you gather data for social media personas?

Your first port of call should be the native analytics provided by the social media platforms you use. LinkedIn, Pinterest, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram – they all offer highly useful insights of different kinds. We won’t go into details here – the internet is crammed with posts explaining exactly how to use each one (largely just for SEO purposes, IMHO) and frankly the world doesn’t need another post like that. Sensible people like yourself will get what they need by exploring the tools without any particular guidance, so the more relevant issue is knowing what to look for.

Your aim should be winkling out any trends, spikes or anomalies in the numbers. Some of these will be demographic, while others might be around a particular kind of problem or interest.

Example: You run a recipe website and notice that your Facebook audience has a lot of 18-24 year old followers, plus another demographic spike in the 55-64 age range. This probably represents two separate personas each with a different relevance to your business. One might be all about easy smoothie recipes delivered over mobile, for instance, while the other wants dinner party suggestions on their desktop. Meanwhile you notice that you also have lots of followers who like a page about Coeliacs disease. This user group is unlikely to cluster around a particular age range, but are all engaging with you for a very specific kind of content (namely, gluten-free recipes).

All of the these data-defined groups are a great starting point for personas. Create a file for “Coeliac Sally”, “Millennial Max” and “Baby-boomer Beth” and see if further research bears out your instinct that they each represent a distinct user type with specific needs.

View this post on Instagram

#glutenfreechallenge #20yearchallenge The first time I ate gluten-free bread, after my Coeliac Disease diagnosis, I thought I would never enjoy the taste of bread again. The only gluten-free “bread” available was rice cake. Can you imagine eating a cheese and ham sandwich with this “bread”? Yes, twenty years ago a #coeliac did not have too many options. It is amazing how the #glutenfree market has increased, giving many more gluten-free products to choose from. Twenty years ago, gluten-free foods were only sold in local bakeries, natural channels and speciality food shops. The products are now marketed and sold in mainstream retail stores. Restaurants have refreshed their menus to attract gluten-free customers; food manufacturers have created new products and retailers have increased shelve space, dedicated to gluten-free products. But we need to continue the progression, continue the education and awareness. I think we seemed to have mastered breads, cakes, pastas and pizzas. All very yummy, in their own right, but there is more staple foods and niche categories that need our gluten-free presence and better nutritional quality. So, hear my cry (or just read my words). Let’s make 2019 the year where we can end the confusion between coeliac and shellac. Yes friends, true story! A waiter thought I was asking to get my nails done in a pizza establishment. Let’s make 2019 the year we can go into any major supermarket and find gluten-free products that is not just limited to bread and little cake treats. And lastly, let’s make 2019 the year where asking for a gluten-free option is not seen as, being fussy or being on some new Hollywood diet and is respected as a serious, life treating, auto-immune disease.

A post shared by Maika Jiménez Blanco (@maikaenmicoche) on Feb 11, 2019 at 1:07pm PST

A side note about Twitter…

Having said that there’s no real need to explain the details of each of the different analytics tools, it is worth briefly pointing out the impressiveness of Twitter’s offering. By enabling Audience Insights you can get very granular detail on the particularities of your following – and even compare them against pre-made personas that Twitter pulls from its own data.

For example it turns out my personal Twitter is 60 per cent women from Auckland who like dogs and science, and they engage with book content 65 per cent more than the average millennial. That’s the kind of insight that’s immeasurably helpful in crafting content (maybe a review of a science-y book about dogs would be a good post?) so it’s just a shame that Twitter use in Australia and New Zealand is so modest.

Get data insights from your ad platforms

Another source of data on your social audience that you shouldn’t overlook are the various social advertising platforms. These each provide insights into how your campaigns performed – and the information can be valuable in different ways. So for example if you use Facebook Pages Manager, and navigate to Insights and then People, you’ll get good demographic data on the people who currently follow you. But if you run an ad campaign, then check the results in Facebook Ads Manager, you’ll get insights on how people who don’t follow you interact with your content.

Similarly, if you’ve targeted an ad at a particular audience, then you’ll start to get deep insights from the results. Thinking back to our recipe website example, if you targeted ads at the “Coeliac Sallys” you might learn that they don’t engage with special offers on Facebook, but they do like to read about gluten-free product reviews. Make sure you capture that kind of information in your persona files.

Use 3rd party tools to analyse social media audiences

By giving access to their APIs social media platforms let third party companies crunch their data and repackage it into products for marketers. This has given rise to what’s known as ‘social listening’ or ‘social monitoring’, which often involves specialist tools. The best of these can combine data from multiple platforms and schedule your posts over different accounts while also allowing you to monitor the social media activity of your competitors, spot the most successful hashtags, and see who is likely to be paying for amplification and who is going it organic.

Tools that are worth checking out include:

RivalIQ, which also creates handy live benchmarking for different industries. So for instance you can see that the airline sector posts to social on average 14.6 times per week across all channels, compared to the environmental sector which averages 83.5 posts per week!

SEMrush, which will also break down the most successful content by type, be it video, photo or link.

SocialBakers, which claims to be an AI-powered tool that will create social persona for you – and can find the influencers that your personas engage with.

SproutSocial, another all-in-one tool. Its pricing starts at $100 per month.

HootSuite, which boasts access to 35 social media platforms, and an ecosystem of more than 250 partner apps.

BuzzSumo, another best-in-breed tool. We love the simple interface that lets you plug in any URL, domain name or topic to instantly see what content gets shared, how much, where, and by whom.

How to reach new audiences using social media data

With your social media personas created you’ll now be in a far better position to create content over time that resonates with both your current audience and those you’re yet to reach. But we ought to also mention the possibility of reaching whole new audiences en masse using remarketing tags and/or lookalike audiences.

In marketing parlance pixels are pieces of code – also known as remarketing tags – that track people who have visited your site so that they can be targeted later, on a different platform. So in our recipe website example, if you had the (free) Facebook Pixel installed on your site, you could create a custom audience of every person with a Facebook account who had visited, say, the Smoothies section of your site. You would then be able to serve an ad to exactly those people, which would be much more likely to get high conversion – especially if the creative was informed by what you know about this type of person from your social personas.

More intriguingly, if that custom audience has enough people in it to extract meaningful data, Facebook can also create a lookalike audience of the same kind of people – people who haven’t visited your site, but are a match for those who have. Armed with this kind of data-designed custom lookalike audience you have the potential to reach a huge number of the right kind of people for your business.

from http://bit.ly/2GmzPkT

[danielstolz]

Danny’s Best Games of 2018

Here we go again. 2018 was a very transformative year for me, taking new turns, exploring new areas, and finding the new me. It was a year full of beautiful human-constructed chaos, which left everyone of us wanting to escape the real world. And we all know that the best possible way of escape is: dru... Eh, I mean video games!

2018 was a weird year for gaming. It seemed like everyone was sleeping and secretly working on something big while releasing just filler-titles. AAA-games were either non-existent or more of the same action-openworld shtick we’ve seen a hundred times. I was rather disappointed by the big players this year.

But the Indie scene flourished. It’s like someone opened the floodgates and all the creative small gems suddenly started rushing in. I’ve played around 20 games this year and I still have 30 games left that I want to check out, mainly indies of course. So as always: If your favorite game isn’t on the list, probably I didn’t play it, or I played it and it just sucks. As easy as that. Here we go:

10. Bad North

The RTS. A long forgotten genre that seemed to be dead for the last few years. It used to be one of the biggest genres back in the days and then suddenly publishers decided that Its just a niche-thing. But it’s slowly being resurrected by MOBAs and bite-sized strategy games like Bad North. This little Gem is polished to perfection. Bad North is a randomly generated RTS in which you try to defend tiny but gorgeous islands from incoming boats of enemies. The beauty of this game comes in its simplicity. There’s only 3 types of units and the only thing you have to do is positions them accordingly. Sounds simple, but it gets nerve-wrecking really fast, especially when you only have 2 units left and 5 boats are approaching. Bad North gives you a few tools and you need to improvise strategies on the spot often having to compromise. Tightly designed and visually striking, Bad North is the finest indie-RTS I’ve played.

9. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Smash Bros used to be a fun party game where you could beat your friends up, but over the years it turned into something much bigger. Not only is Smash celebrating the history and legacy of Nintendo, it also celebrates the entire medium itself. It shows us the best of videogames, having a blast with your friends, or honing your skills online for the next big tournament. Everybody can enjoy this game and when creator Masahiro Sakurai said “Everyone is here!” not only did he mean the characters from franchises across the entire medium, he also meant people from all different kinds of backgrounds. This is a game where a professional veteran can have a great time with someone who never even held a controller in his hand. The best Smash to this date where “Ultimate” isn’t just a marketing term, but an understatement.  

8. Artifact

Artifact is 2 of my favorite things combined: Dota and digital card games. When they first announced it I was skeptical. It seemed like Valve wanted to simply jump on the Hearthstone hypetrain to grab some additional cash. Then I heard that Richard Garfield was going to design it and I was sure that this is going to be something special: and it truly is. Not only is Artifact juiced out the max it’s also one of the best designed card games I’ve played in recent memory. Every decision you make is crucial, and the randomized board and item pool keeps you on your toes even when you seem to have the upper hand. I’ve never felt like I’ve had worse cards than my opponent, which Hearthstone made me feel constantly. Let’s talk about the controversy surrounding Artifact: its cost. You need to pay 20 bucks to play the game which will give a few starter decks and 120 random cards. Additional cards cost you extra. This sounds crazy, but I think this business model helps the game stay competitive, while just being the regular business models for every other non digital card game. People aren’t used anymore to pay for stuff. But hey: they just miss out on the best cardgame of the year.

7. Minit

In an age where games need to be 100+ hours long and have to have a billion dialogue options and a massive storyline with thousands of quests, it’s refreshing to see a game that just oozes simplicity, charm and only takes you a few hours to complete. Minit is that wonderfully delightful game. Every playsession takes you exactly 1min before a curse kills you. Minit takes this little concept and blows it up into a full game, filled with incredibly clever interactions that play with the medium and make up for a wonderful time. Like the old man who takes forever to tell his story... far longer than a minute. Minit not only makes you think, but it makes you think in ways not explored by previous titles. It’s refreshing, lovely and a beautiful contrast to the current trends in gaming.

6. Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

This is just a Kickstarter bonus game for another Bloodstained coming out in 2019, and it was one of the best games I’ve played this year. Somehow whenever developers take an old NES game-concept and make a modern reimagining of it, it never disappoints. This time it’s Castlevania and it’s the best Castlevania ever made. I’m not kidding, this hidden gem is better than Castlevania 4 and Symphony of the Night. The levels are tightly designed, the difficulty is just right, the game has multiple paths for different playthroughs, the bosses are incredible, the visuals are stunningly beautiful, the sound is crisp, the music is catchy and all that while just being a sideproject for a bigger game.  This is a classic Castlevania like it come out back in the 80s and nails everything right on the head. You can play this through in just one sitting and you won’t be disappointed. Sometimes the only thing you need is a blast from the past.

5. Dead Cells

This action-roguelike finally came out this year and it devoured me. Dead Cells is a loot based 2D-dungeon-crawler that picks you up the beginning and won’t let you go till the end. The gameplay is hypnotizing, running, rolling, fighting your way through hordes of enemies, collecting gear and trying to get closer and closer to the end. A journey filled with failure, triumph and the occasional rage-quit. And after a few hours you realize that you didn’t look at the time and wasted your whole afternoon. Dead Cells captures you with this unbelievable sense of flow, which you can’t escape. Everything feels natural and you really start losing yourself in the combat trying the be faster every run, trying to get an even more ridiculous combo. Dead Cells is a game of flow, a game of mastery, a beautiful exercise for your fingers. And after all those hours you realize that none of it was time wasted.

4. The Messenger

While Bloodstained:Curse of the Moon brought back classic Castlevania, The Messenger seems to reimagine classic Ninja Gaiden. Or does it? The Messenger hides itself under the skin of the recent trend of revivals and throws a curveball at the player. Or should I say a barrage of curveballs, The Messenger is a Metagame a cleverly selfaware exercise in how often you can break the rules, twist the plot, and change the whole game itself. I think this is the game that breaks the 4th wall more often than anything else I’ve ever seen You could even say that there is no 4th wall. The Messenger is all that and in addition it’s a wonderful Ninja Gaiden game. The gameplay is smooth and the Metagame aspects of it make you lose yourself in a game that doesn’t really want to be a game. Sometimes it just wants to be clever, or funny, or it just wants to screw you over and throw another new thing at you that breaks all the rules all over again. I don’t wanna give away too much because this is something you need to experience on your own. What a whacky, weird and gorgeous experience.

3. Yakuza 6

Over 6 games and this is the long awaited and dreaded finale. Yakuza 6 is an example of how to end a show with the most over the top way. I said show because essentially that’s what Yakuza is. The great thing about this show however is that you get to play it, and that you probably will get off track while doing so. I spent hours showing off my skills at the mahjongg parlor, after beating a street gang that tried to harass a girl and his boyfriend, afterwards I flirted with a bunch of hostesses, created a clan and then got dragged in a big Yakuza conspiracy while trying to defend my baby from being murdered. I didn’t make that up. That just happened. Yakuza 6 turns it down a notch, however, there are less playable characters, less minigames, less plot-twists, less of everything to be honest, all this in order to serve the main story which is the star of this show. One character means more focus and more finesse. While Yakuza 0 was all about the twists, Yakuza 6 offers a thrilling, heart gripping story that resolves the whole narrative in such an epic and iconic way that It’s hard to stop playing. Yakuza 6 is a masterclass in building up tension and never letting it go. You’ll get sidetracked but you don’t want to get sidetracked, you wanna know how the story continues and trust me you have to know.

2. Celeste  

Celeste is a game about depression, a game about atmosphere, and a game of mastery and finally overcoming your own personal problems. Most games tell a story and then there’s gameplay. Celeste tells a story through its gameplay. It’s an example of how to use the medium as a compelling and unique way to tell a story. Not only does Celeste tell a story through its mechanics, but it also invokes an unforgetable atmosphere through the beautiful pixel aesthetic and the ear melting music by Lena Raine. All if this is accompanied by the best designed levels I’ve seen this year, pushing the boundaries of clever level design. Celeste is challenging, but that’s what it wants to be. Showing you how hard it is to deal with personal drama. It certainly helped me a lot and shows how videogames can be much more than entertainment. Celeste is a game I won’t forget.

1. Into the Breach

This game... is a designers wet dream. If you’d asked me if there’s a perfectly designed game, then my answer would be Into the Breach. We started off the list with bite sized strategy and we’ll end with that. Into the Breach is a randomly generated turn-based-puzzlegame, which shines with perfection. What makes it special is that this game has perfect information, meaning that the player knows everything. Every move in Into the Breach has to be perfect and if you make a mistake you cannot blame the game, because you knew everything. You just need to make the right decisions and that is incredibly difficult. Into the Breach may not look like much, but it’s the most tightly designed I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t boast with flashy visuals or a gripping story, Into the Breach knows exactly what it is, and it’s nothing more. A minimalistic yet perfect game that can entertain for hours on end. This is the new golden standard when it comes to gamedesign.

[davidrsmithlove]

Mr. Zuckerberg... Tear Down That Algorithm

Every time that Facebook changes their news feed (and the algorithm that feeds it), Facebook changes.

Some of those changes are for the good. Some of them make Facebook (somewhat) unusable for many users. Their most recent shift in the news feed was a big one. In what seems like the right play for the online social network, they wanted to throttle back on content from publishers and brands in the organic feed and amp up content from friends and family. With that, they also want to amplify the content from friends and family that is experiencing the most social interaction (the clarity of what this means is not finite. It could be likes and share, it could be comments and interactions between connections). We don't know the exact secret sauce here, and by the sounds of things, it's unclear what, exactly, Facebook means by these definitions as well. That's not be cynical of the social media platform, that is based on how Adam Mosseri, Facebook's head of News Feed, describes the past, current and possible future state of the news feed at the Code Media event that is currently underway.

This is an important watch: Facebook's head of news partnerships & head of News Feed live from Code Media.

What does Facebook really want? Does it want advertising dollars? Does it want our personal data and interactions? Does it want to connect the world because of altruistic beliefs? Let's cut through the parlance and PR spin: Facebook is a business. Facebook provides its services for free to consumers. The consumer's data is the product (or, you are the product). The advertising (and enterprise solutions) is how Facebook makes it money. There's nothing wrong with this business model, so long as everyone engaged in it is clear in what the intentions are and that consent is given.

It is the consent that makes things difficult.

Sure, everything is laid out in the terms of service on Facebook. Sure, nobody should engage in Facebook without reading and understanding the terms of service. Sure, Facebook should not be held accountable if people don't read (or understand) their terms of service. Still, it's also easy to argue the other side of this: Consumers are not that media and technology literate. Consumers are very unclear what kind of data is being stored, used and sold to the highest bidder. Consumers are not great with the "fine print." And, ultimately, it's a free service... so whatevs, right?

What do you really think of the new news feed. Is it good from a user perspective? Is it good from a brand perspective?

Personally, I am spending more time than ever on Facebook. If we're connected, you might think the opposite. The bulk of my time on Facebook is currently being spent in private groups. This is not me thumbing my nose to public posts. This is not me trying to sound self-important. I have been fortunate to find several tribes that speak directly to my area of interest (from professional speaking and non-fiction writing to podcasting, marketing agency leadership and middle-aged people discussing eighties rock). I've never derived as much value from Facebook as I have in the past five years. With that, the current changes to the news feed have choked it down into a place where it feels like I am only seeing a handful of posts from a handful of people, and the content tends to not refresh but repeat itself through the week. In short, the new algorithm has made Facebook's news feed very bland and boring. 

How can Facebook find the right balance?

I would pay for a better Facebook. Would you? Chris Brogan posted this on Facebook (oh, the irony) just the other day: "I would pay Facebook $5/month to ALWAYS have 'most recent' and ALWAYS have 'turn off notifications'." Chris is not alone. I'm sure that there are, literally, millions of people who would pay for the same services. I've written and spoken about this new business model opportunity for a long time. In fact, I would push Chris' sentiment much further with this statement...

Mr. Zuckerberg... tear down that algorithm! 

Personally, I would pay Netflix-like monthly fees (let's call it $10 - $20 per month) to have a pure and untouched access to my news feed (and, take it easy on the infomercial-like advertising, while I'm paying for it). This means that whoever (friend, family, brand) that I have "liked" or "followed" should be shown to me in the order that it has been posted... no matter what they post. Open up the entire feed, kill the algorithm and let it flow, baby! 

Why pay for the firehose?

Whether it's an issue of fake news or throttling content in attempts to create a better user experience, Facebook is working under the supposition that we - the consumers - have no idea what's good for us. While that may be true for a segment of the population, there probably is another (larger) segment that understands the implications of "like"-ing and following a person or a brand. Give the user the power to mute, unfriend, unfollow or delete the content that they're no longer interested in. What makes this most interesting, is that none of this requires any kind of algorithm. It probably requires them to simply remove the algorithm.

Instead of trying to make the algorithm smarter, why not just empower your users to be smarter?

Tags: adam mosseri advertising advertising agency algorithm analytics brand brand experience branding business blog business model chris brogan code media consumer data content content marketing data digital marketing digital marketing agency digital marketing blog disruption facebook infomercial innovation j walter thompson jwt leadership mark zuckerberg marketing marketing agency marketing blog media media literacy media platform mirum mirum agency mirum agency blog mirum blog mirum canada mirum in canada mitch joel mitchjoel netflix news feed newsfeed online social network podcast podcasting pr professional speaking public relations publisher publishing recode six pixels of separation social interaction social media platform technology user experience wpp

[chestofstories]

New Possibilities for Gender: the World of “A Fairy Out of Her Tale”

The series of posts about the world of “A Fairy Out of Her Tale” continues with full steam as we approach our launch date. Thank you for reading this far.

It’s time to reward your attention and patience with a long-awaited post on gender and gender relations in Nessa’s world.

But first, if you would like to refresh your memory about the previous posts of the series, you can find them here:

Celebrating Christmas: A Fairy Out of Her Tale (introducing the plot) Nessa, a Fairy Out of Her Tale (introducing the main character) This Fairy Has Friends – Other Main Characters from”A Fairy Out of Her Tale”(introducing Nessa’s friends)

The idea to make a world like this has been in my mind for a while, so I’m really excited about finally committing it to paper (or pixels?). I wanted to explore what my ideal world would be like in terms of people’s relationship to gender identity, gender roles, and its expectations. Being a trans person, it was easy to make a list of things I’m not happy with in the here and now: assigning gender to babies at birth, linking specific activities and attitudes to a certain gender, and policing/restricting/attacking/killing anyone who deviates from those. In thinking about how to solve these issues, I came up with the building blocks of my new world:

Nobody gets a gender assigned to them from birth: babies are referred to in gender neutral terms until they develop their identities. Names are either given as a temporary practical way to call a newborn (which can then be kept or completely changed depending on the choice of the child in question) or bestowed upon someone as part of a larger ceremony/festivity marking the import life stage of becoming old enough to be aware of yourself.

Gender is not linked to any particular body part: although most races are the same as humans in terms that those born with uterus usually develop breasts and those with testicles don’t (intersex variations exist here too, and some races don’t work like that as a whole), nobody ever thinks of linking uterus with femininity and testicles with masculinity. The only role body parts play in someone’s life is what function they’ll perform if they ever have babies.

Speaking of babies, the language around family works on a different logic to ours. This is something I found particularly fun to think about, but I understand other trans people might not be so comfortable with it, or even disagree with me. Since body parts are only relevant in terms of sex and reproduction, the words “mother” and “father” would also only relate to one’s “role” in the baby-making shenanigans, and never to their gender. This means everyone with a uterus becomes a mother, and everyone with testicles becomes a father. A mother can be male, female, or non-binary, and so can the father. For example, whenever Nessa happens to have her own children (she wants them some day), she’s going to be their father. And Kris, if he ever gets the dubious pleasure of getting pregnant, will be a mother.

This was done in part to keep the language somewhat simple and familiar – different races with different body functions and gender systems need something familiar to anchor them to our reality – and because I really wanted to stretch our understanding of gender and its relations to bodies. In our world, I would never be comfortable being called someone’s “mother” because of the word’s association with all things feminine and our assumptions about what mothers should be like. But if we were free of all those associations, if “mother” was basically a word for “person who generated a human being inside their own body”, how would I feel about it? Would I ever go as far as taking those bits out? Would I bother with physical transition at all if society believed me when I said I was a guy no matter what my body looked like?

And speaking of transitioning, people are free to do whatever they want with their bodies. At least as far as their technology allows. You’re a woman, but you want a beard? You’re a guy who really likes to jiggle your boobs around? If you were not born with the body parts that allow you to do that, nobody will question your wishes to acquire them. Our bodies, our rules!

These are the most important aspects of gender identity and exploration that will feature in “A Fairy Out of Her Tale”. Hopefully it made for an interesting read.

What would your ideal world be like in terms of gender? How would people treat your identity? And what would you do differently if you lived in such a world?

Tomorrow, we take a look at two of the six races that populate Nessa’s world: the giants/dwarves (they’re two halves of one “race”) and shape-shifters. See you then!

[ynsespoir]

Ginger Peach Detox Smoothie

Start your morning off right with this delicious Ginger Peach Detox Smoothie that is sweet, creamy and super refreshing!  A special thanks to Born Sweet Zing™Organic Stevia Sweetener – Zero Calories for sponsoring this post!

I don’t know about you, but I just love smoothies!  They are one of my favorite morning pick-me-ups that I literally look forward to drinking on my way to work each day because they just taste so refreshing.  The only problem is, who has time to do all that chopping, blending and cleaning up when you’re trying to run out the door??  Yeah no one.

Having only a few minutes in the morning to prep a healthy breakfast sure can be a recipe for disaster so that’s why I love making frozen smoothie packs!   I mean you all know how much I LOVE my weekly meal prep and truth be told I like to plan out my smoothies for the week the same way!  Simply distribute servings of your fruit, veggies and leafy greens into plastic baggies, seal them up and place them in your freezer.  Then when you’re ready to make your smoothie, all you have to do is pour the contents of one freezer pack into your blender, add your liquid and blend!  Super quick, super easy and little to no mess to clean up after.  Basically you can make a whole month’s worth of smoothies in less than an hour and Born Sweet Zing™Organic Stevia Sweetener – Zero Calories makes it even easier to sweeten on the go!

This Ginger Peach Detox Smoothie is one of my favorites too because the flavors are so delicious and it also means that I’m getting my greens first thing in the morning!  To make this smoothie I simply combined frozen peaches, half a banana, a handful of spinach, about a tablespoon of fresh ginger, Greek yogurt mixed all together with a little coconut water and sweetened with Born Sweet Zing™ Organic Stevia Sweetener.  Now if that doesn’t make you excited to get up in the mornings then I don’t know what does!

Born Sweet Zing is a certified organic, zero-calorie sweetener that is made from stevia leaves and has a delicious, clean taste!  I really love using this as a sweetener because not only does it easily dissolve when added to beverages, but the single-serving packets are perfect to grab on-the-go or keep in my purse whenever I need them.  Born Sweet Zing can be sprinkled in your morning coffee or tea, mixed in with overnight oats or cereal and, as you can see here, taste great in smoothies!

I mean just one packet of Born Sweet Zing is equal in sweetness two teaspoons of sugar so a little sure goes a long way!

Now one of the reasons I love making these smoothie packs is not only the convenience of them, but how versatile they are too.  You can easily switch up your favorite fruit combinations and liquid choices to whatever your preference may be.  Sometimes I’ll use an avocado in place of a banana for extra creaminess or almond milk instead of coconut water.  Mixing things up every now and then prevents you from getting tired of the same old smoothie each day and challenges you to try new things!

Another little secret that I like to do is also freeze the yogurt ahead of time which is another great time saver.  I just distribute the yogurt into regular ice cube trays, freeze them and then add the cubes to each smoothie pack.  They blend perfectly with the rest of the ingredients and this saves you from having to run out to the store every time you want to make a smoothie, but may not have all the ingredients on hand!

Now how easy is that?!

You can also write on each bag how much liquid to add just to make things even easier.  I typically like to add one cup of liquid per smoothie bag and there are so many different variations you can try such as almond milk, coconut water, orange juice, and even kombucha!  For this recipe I used coconut water just because it’s my favorite and tastes so refreshing, but you could also use regular water or even just ice.  Then I just add a little bit of Greek yogurt for some extra creamy goodness along with one packet of Born Sweet Zing!

Then simply blend everything together in your blender and your smoothie is ready to go!  Easy, refreshing and great to make in the mornings before running out the door to work.  Plus with all this gorgeous weather we’ve been having it’s the perfect time to start prepping those freezer packs!

If you like to workout in the mornings like I do then feel free to add a scoop of your favorite protein powder to this as well.  Smoothies make great post-workout drinks and not only do they taste super satisfying, but they really help your muscles recover.  So the next time you take that morning spin class or have a good sweat sesh during a solid HIIT workout, remember to refuel your body with a delicious smoothie!

Hope you guys enjoy this ginger peach detox smoothie as much as I did and remember to tag me on Instagram and use the hashtag #eatyourselfskinnyrecipe if you end up making it!

If you haven’t tried Born Sweet Zing yet then I really urge you to give this sweetener a try!  Each carton contains either 40-count or 80-count (depending on the size box you buy) of convenient single-serving packets and you can easily get your own FREE sample right here!

Born Sweet Zing is also hosting a GIVEAWAY right now and you can enter for a chance to win your own box of Born Sweet Zing™ Organic Stevia Sweetener – Zero Calories product along with a packet caddy carrier for sweetening on-the-go!  Everyone that enters also receives a free sample so what do you have to lose?!

Ginger Peach Detox Smoothie

  Print

Serves: 2 Servings

Ingredients

1 cup baby spinach leaves, packed

2 cups frozen peaches

½ ripe banana

1 Tbsp grated ginger

¼ cup plain Greek yogurt

1 packet Born Sweet Zing Organic Stevia Sweetener™

1 cup coconut water (or liquid of choice)

Ice (optional)

Instructions

Add all ingredients to your blender and puree until smooth. Pour into two glasses, serve and enjoy!

Nutritional Information

Serving Size: ½ of recipe • Calories: 123 • Fat: 0.4 g • Saturated Fat: 0.2 g • Carbs: 26.7 g • Fiber: 4.4 g • Protein: 5.5 g • Sugar: 16.6 g • WW Points+: 3 • Smart Points: 5

3.5.3218

For even more sweetness and delicious recipes, check out Born Sweet Zing on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram!

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Born Sweet™ Zing Organic Stevia Sweetener. The opinions and text are all mine.

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[symbianosgames]

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

Hi! My name is Coray Seifert, I’m the Director of Production here at Experiment 7. I’ve been working on VR games in various capacities for the past 4 years, first with Impeller Studios, then with Autodesk’s AR/VR Interactive Group, but most meaningfully with the fine folks here at Experiment 7. Over that time, I’ve made a number of horrific mistakes that haunt my dreams to this day. I’d like to share some of them with you!

If the beer is virtual, are the calories real?

Below you’ll find 7 lessons I learned working on VR strategy games at Experiment 7. I wanted to put this list together so others who are just getting into VR development can avoid some of the same challenges.

Why spend the time to share key learnings with potential competition? The bottom line for our corner of the industry is that the more teams there are making great VR games, the more consumers we’ll see adopting VR platforms, and the better the market will be for all of us. Just like how Tesla shares their best practices with their competition to help drive their industry forward, we hope that creating a marketplace of shared ideas will help the VR game creation space move forward as well.

In traditional game development, we have experiences, best practices, and cautionary tales that effectively guide our efforts. Platform migrations have happened in the past and we’ve tweaked our best practices accordingly. What works on PC might not work on console due to input differences, processing power or consumer expectations, so we modify our approach slightly to adapt for the new medium. 

VR, on the other hand, is a complete paradigm shift. Not only do our best practices need to be refreshed, but some of the core tenants of what we believe about game development need to be unlearned. Moving the player’s first person camera may make them sick. 2D planes for VFX can be invalidated due to stereoscopic rendering. UI and UX design has to be completely rethought from the ground up. This is a complete phase shift from the old way of doing things. 

That's no UI object...

I find myself annoyed by long-form lists where you have to scroll forever to see if the pillars of the article are worth investing your time in, so here are the 7 lessons, in brief:

Double down on engineering – More tech needs, less asset budget. Trade artists for engineers.

Make sure someone on your team has shipped something in VR – Ideally your tech lead.

Don’t skimp on preproduction – Prototype aggressively, define hardware/QA/pipelines first.

Respect the minspec – Pick your platforms, identify your minspec, and stick to it.

Realism is important, but comfort is king – Use realistic proportions, but framerate/comfort is priority.

Start small – Maintain vision, but start with a fraction of what you’re eventually trying to build.

Expect the unexpected – Prepare for rapidly evolving hardware, dev tools and marketplace.

If you just came for the pillars, I hope they’re helpful in your adventures. If you’re here for context, let’s dive into the details!

Let’s start at the beginning.

When you’re building your team for your VR project, you’ll want to staff heavier on the engineering side than you would for a traditional game project. Further, it's optimal to populate your team with a greater percentage of experienced developers than normal. 

While more engineers doesn’t perfectly equate to increased velocity, the simple fact is that every problem you face will require new solutions, a risk that can be meaningfully mitigated with people power. Even if you’re using a proven commercial game engine, everything from feature development to optimization takes a long time on VR and involves a significant learning curve. These are new knots to untangle and for the most part, very few people across the industry have meaningful experience in VR.

Here’s how I would recommend adjusting your engineering team size: 

>10 total headcount: 3x

11-50 total headcount: 2x

50+ total headcount: 1.5x

If you’re working with a fixed budget on your game, this may mean scaling down your art headcount, which isn’t great in and of itself. One mitigating factor is that stereoscopic rendering means you're basically rendering everything twice. A game of comparable scope simply has fewer pixels it can push through the renderer.

Accordingly, the content requirements for VR are lower than other platforms. If you think back to past generations of console games and the scope of art created for those games – both in terms of the raw asset density and in terms of the amount of polish per asset – you can get a good sense of where VR is in its current (2017) iteration. 

In an ideal world, I recommend a small VR art team laden with senior artists who enjoy new technology challenges and plenty of technical artists who are passionate about the medium.

The good news on this front is that great engineers are frequently drawn to new technology problems, just as great artists can be drawn to new mediums of expression.  You can harness that excitement to bring fantastic people into your organization.

It’s one thing to read about the technical limitations of VR or talk to someone who has shipped a game in VR, but don’t talk yourself into thinking you can make it without significant input from someone who released a commercial product on the platform. You need someone who has directly worked on solving the unique problems of the medium. It can be a freelancer, consultant, or advisor, but ideally that person is someone who is a core member of your team. 

The best case is if this person works in the engineering vertical of your company, even more so if your VR expert is the head of your engineering team. This allows that person to translate those experiences working on the platform directly through their team, providing that intrinsic, internalized knowledge of VR-specific challenges to everyone working on the technology that drives your game.

Experiment 7 is lucky in that our Technical Director, Mario Grimani, has been working in VR since the days of duct tape and bailing wire. One of our engineers worked on open source VR solutions. I worked on some of the very early (and very rough around the eyeballs) VR prototypes internally at Autodesk. Those experiences – often in figuring out what doesn’t work on the platform – have been crucial to the success of our team, even more profoundly than in traditional game platform transitions, because of the transformative nature of VR.

Baby steps from the Autodesk days...

New tech is exciting and none more so than VR. Which is why it’s vitally important that you take the time during preproduction to plan, prototype and test. Don’t get too excited and run straight into the teeth of your project! 

Stick to your phase gate plan. Build and iterate through your concept, look & feel, and early prototype in preproduction (which will take longer than you expect, especially for your first project). Getting a new asset pipeline for VR set up is no small task - do it early. If you wait until the production phase to finalize your content and feature workflow, you’ll spend your production cycle firefighting and redoing key systems, rather than delivering great features and content.

Make sure that you’re aggressively prototyping at every phase, even with proven mechanics. We made the decision to go with a relatively low-scope chess game for our first title, so we could easily integrate a Chess engine and use Unity store assets to test the concept of table games in VR early. That process, as rudimentary as it was, revealed tons of issues and opportunities in our core design and in our technology expectations. Issues that would have been hugely problematic (or significant missed opportunities) if we had left them to the end of the project.

"Okay, so imagine you've got a table...and it's magic..." - Geoff, probably

Finally, during preproduction, budget more time than you think for infrastructure. You can’t just buy a few machines and desks and be off to the races. Depending on the platforms you’re targeting, the various combinations of hardware and software can take significant time to track down, given the wide range of headsets currently in use (with new ones coming online every quarter). QA infrastructure can be especially difficult to get going on new VR projects given the specific physical device requirements at the scale of a full QA team.

In VR, more than any platform, framerate is more important than fidelity. 

As you may or may not know, framerate in VR has an outsized impact on the overall experience. High framerates (90+ fps) lead to a smooth experience, while lower framerates can lead to a profound sense of discomfort and render your application unusable to a significant portion of your audience. 

No matter how aggressively you scope for memory and processing power, content has a tendency to come in over budget – make sure your asset budget has lots of buffer room; more than you think you need. Things will get broken by new platforms that are dynamic and constantly evolving – make sure you’re accounting for this so that when something does break, it doesn’t completely nuke your game. Users will do horrible, horrible things to their hardware – make sure to account for your end users installing tons of CPU and memory-hogging applications on the target platform. 

If you’re multi-platform, set goals based on your lowest possible performing platforms…and stick to them! This is a non-trivial task, as it requires business, technology, and creative buy-in. Push this to the top of the priority list. 

Realistic proportions, movement, and physical relationships are critical to creating a VR experience that makes use of presence. Content that is out of scale with the world around it risks appearing "spooky" and unsettling, leading to subtle but meaningful feelings of cognitive dissonance in your users. Unrealistic or unfamiliar gravity, viscosity, or friction can have the same effect.

Door frames, windows, tables, chairs and other common real-world physical objects in game space are especially susceptible to this phenomenon. For games grounded in reality, there is a pretty simple solution. Measure things and stick to those sizes. This constraint can certainly be a limiting factor, but can also be a creative challenge that leads to dynamic and innovative solutions to problems both complex and mundane.

Preproduction proportions testing

During preproduction, try starting with realistic proportions and aggressively test with white-rooms to avoid having to rework assets down the road. Working from a regimented, realistic base of assets goes a long way towards making the user comfortable in your environment.

All that said, the one guiding principle for VR – especially in these relatively early days of mass market consumer VR – is that comfort is king. It’s imperative to ensure your experience is palatable to your target audience. 

If you’re making a card game for a wide audience, make sure that your framerate is extremely high, your contrast is relatively low, and you’re never accelerating or moving the character outside of motion-tracked head and body movements. If you’re making a hardcore flight simulator with 6 degrees of freedom and non-stop flak explosions, you have a different bar to hit, but core tenants (always high framerates, try to never move the player’s camera unless they’re controlling it, use slower acceleration where appropriate, etc.) are always good to keep top of mind.

Be cognizant that with every increment you push your experience past your target comfort point, you’re losing and alienating another large cohort of users, potentially damaging your reputation and your brand.

Find a spark and build from that. There are so many unknowns in VR – especially right at this moment in time – that it requires an entirely new pipeline, process, and technology outlook to bring anything to market, let alone something of notable scope. 

This is VR. You should dream big. However, the best advice I could give at this moment in time is to create a small chunk of that dream with your first VR release. Get that product to the market – to any market – and get into preproduction on your second title with everything you’ve learned. Use that experience to help your team execute more efficiently and at a vastly higher level than the first go round.

This is one thing we nailed at E7. We started off with a relatively small game in Magic Table Chess, moved on to something marginally bigger for our second game, with exponentially larger projects on the horizon. Each step along the way has enabled us to work faster, focus more on experiences than infrastructure, and push our quality bar higher and higher.

Starting to come together...

This is the agile mantra, but especially so for new, rapidly evolving platforms like VR. It might sound cliché, but the pain is real. These are incredibly dynamic software and hardware products that are constantly evolving in meaningful ways. Platform updates right before VC meetings, cables getting imperceptibly loose and taking someone offline for hours, system background processes triggering and running the game at one frame every other second are all real possibilities that many of you will encounter. 

While there’s little you can do to truly mitigate for these challenges, knowing that something along the way will conspire to foul up your perfectly-planned software project can help you reduce the impact of these issues when they do happen.  

In addition to unexpected critical fails, if you’re working with a commercial game engine or platform back end suite, plan to be rolling over to new versions far more frequently than on traditional platforms. The dynamic nature of these platforms means that new updates address critical issues and can introduce new version mismatches more frequently than stable technology platforms.

In Conclusion Making games in VR is awesome. I frequently find myself losing myself in our games when I should be doing work, just because the experiences are still so profoundly magical. VR is a new and massively exciting frontier. A stereoscopic wild west.

It all comes together

However, like the American wild west of old, it’s full of danger and adventure. Being cognizant of the perils of the medium can’t help you to avoid these challenges altogether, but hopefully it can help mitigate the impact of them when you hit them.

I’d love to hear similar experiences folks have had working on early projects in VR. Horror stories are always great, or if you disagree with anything I’ve said here I’ll keep an oculus out for comments posted to this article.

Yes, I just ended this 2500-word VR article with an eyeball pun. 

This post originally appears on the Experiment 7 Blog.

Coray Seifert is the Director of Production for Experiment 7, a VR strategy game developer based in New York City and San Diego. For more than 15 years, Coray has developed games as a producer, game designer, and writer for organizations like Autodesk, THQ's Kaos Studios, and the US Department of Defense. A Lifetime Member of the International Game Developers Association, Coray was elected to the IGDA’s Board of directors in 2007 at the age of 27; the youngest board member in IGDA history.  

[symbianosgames]

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

Hi! My name is Coray Seifert, I’m the Director of Production here at Experiment 7. I’ve been working on VR games in various capacities for the past 4 years, first with Impeller Studios, then with Autodesk’s AR/VR Interactive Group, but most meaningfully with the fine folks here at Experiment 7. Over that time, I’ve made a number of horrific mistakes that haunt my dreams to this day. I’d like to share some of them with you!

If the beer is virtual, are the calories real?

Below you’ll find 7 lessons I learned working on VR strategy games at Experiment 7. I wanted to put this list together so others who are just getting into VR development can avoid some of the same challenges.

Why spend the time to share key learnings with potential competition? The bottom line for our corner of the industry is that the more teams there are making great VR games, the more consumers we’ll see adopting VR platforms, and the better the market will be for all of us. Just like how Tesla shares their best practices with their competition to help drive their industry forward, we hope that creating a marketplace of shared ideas will help the VR game creation space move forward as well.

In traditional game development, we have experiences, best practices, and cautionary tales that effectively guide our efforts. Platform migrations have happened in the past and we’ve tweaked our best practices accordingly. What works on PC might not work on console due to input differences, processing power or consumer expectations, so we modify our approach slightly to adapt for the new medium. 

VR, on the other hand, is a complete paradigm shift. Not only do our best practices need to be refreshed, but some of the core tenants of what we believe about game development need to be unlearned. Moving the player’s first person camera may make them sick. 2D planes for VFX can be invalidated due to stereoscopic rendering. UI and UX design has to be completely rethought from the ground up. This is a complete phase shift from the old way of doing things. 

That's no UI object...

I find myself annoyed by long-form lists where you have to scroll forever to see if the pillars of the article are worth investing your time in, so here are the 7 lessons, in brief:

Double down on engineering – More tech needs, less asset budget. Trade artists for engineers.

Make sure someone on your team has shipped something in VR – Ideally your tech lead.

Don’t skimp on preproduction – Prototype aggressively, define hardware/QA/pipelines first.

Respect the minspec – Pick your platforms, identify your minspec, and stick to it.

Realism is important, but comfort is king – Use realistic proportions, but framerate/comfort is priority.

Start small – Maintain vision, but start with a fraction of what you’re eventually trying to build.

Expect the unexpected – Prepare for rapidly evolving hardware, dev tools and marketplace.

If you just came for the pillars, I hope they’re helpful in your adventures. If you’re here for context, let’s dive into the details!

Let’s start at the beginning.

When you’re building your team for your VR project, you’ll want to staff heavier on the engineering side than you would for a traditional game project. Further, it's optimal to populate your team with a greater percentage of experienced developers than normal. 

While more engineers doesn’t perfectly equate to increased velocity, the simple fact is that every problem you face will require new solutions, a risk that can be meaningfully mitigated with people power. Even if you’re using a proven commercial game engine, everything from feature development to optimization takes a long time on VR and involves a significant learning curve. These are new knots to untangle and for the most part, very few people across the industry have meaningful experience in VR.

Here’s how I would recommend adjusting your engineering team size: 

>10 total headcount: 3x

11-50 total headcount: 2x

50+ total headcount: 1.5x

If you’re working with a fixed budget on your game, this may mean scaling down your art headcount, which isn’t great in and of itself. One mitigating factor is that stereoscopic rendering means you're basically rendering everything twice. A game of comparable scope simply has fewer pixels it can push through the renderer.

Accordingly, the content requirements for VR are lower than other platforms. If you think back to past generations of console games and the scope of art created for those games – both in terms of the raw asset density and in terms of the amount of polish per asset – you can get a good sense of where VR is in its current (2017) iteration. 

In an ideal world, I recommend a small VR art team laden with senior artists who enjoy new technology challenges and plenty of technical artists who are passionate about the medium.

The good news on this front is that great engineers are frequently drawn to new technology problems, just as great artists can be drawn to new mediums of expression.  You can harness that excitement to bring fantastic people into your organization.

It’s one thing to read about the technical limitations of VR or talk to someone who has shipped a game in VR, but don’t talk yourself into thinking you can make it without significant input from someone who released a commercial product on the platform. You need someone who has directly worked on solving the unique problems of the medium. It can be a freelancer, consultant, or advisor, but ideally that person is someone who is a core member of your team. 

The best case is if this person works in the engineering vertical of your company, even more so if your VR expert is the head of your engineering team. This allows that person to translate those experiences working on the platform directly through their team, providing that intrinsic, internalized knowledge of VR-specific challenges to everyone working on the technology that drives your game.

Experiment 7 is lucky in that our Technical Director, Mario Grimani, has been working in VR since the days of duct tape and bailing wire. One of our engineers worked on open source VR solutions. I worked on some of the very early (and very rough around the eyeballs) VR prototypes internally at Autodesk. Those experiences – often in figuring out what doesn’t work on the platform – have been crucial to the success of our team, even more profoundly than in traditional game platform transitions, because of the transformative nature of VR.

Baby steps from the Autodesk days...

New tech is exciting and none more so than VR. Which is why it’s vitally important that you take the time during preproduction to plan, prototype and test. Don’t get too excited and run straight into the teeth of your project! 

Stick to your phase gate plan. Build and iterate through your concept, look & feel, and early prototype in preproduction (which will take longer than you expect, especially for your first project). Getting a new asset pipeline for VR set up is no small task - do it early. If you wait until the production phase to finalize your content and feature workflow, you’ll spend your production cycle firefighting and redoing key systems, rather than delivering great features and content.

Make sure that you’re aggressively prototyping at every phase, even with proven mechanics. We made the decision to go with a relatively low-scope chess game for our first title, so we could easily integrate a Chess engine and use Unity store assets to test the concept of table games in VR early. That process, as rudimentary as it was, revealed tons of issues and opportunities in our core design and in our technology expectations. Issues that would have been hugely problematic (or significant missed opportunities) if we had left them to the end of the project.

"Okay, so imagine you've got a table...and it's magic..." - Geoff, probably

Finally, during preproduction, budget more time than you think for infrastructure. You can’t just buy a few machines and desks and be off to the races. Depending on the platforms you’re targeting, the various combinations of hardware and software can take significant time to track down, given the wide range of headsets currently in use (with new ones coming online every quarter). QA infrastructure can be especially difficult to get going on new VR projects given the specific physical device requirements at the scale of a full QA team.

In VR, more than any platform, framerate is more important than fidelity. 

As you may or may not know, framerate in VR has an outsized impact on the overall experience. High framerates (90+ fps) lead to a smooth experience, while lower framerates can lead to a profound sense of discomfort and render your application unusable to a significant portion of your audience. 

No matter how aggressively you scope for memory and processing power, content has a tendency to come in over budget – make sure your asset budget has lots of buffer room; more than you think you need. Things will get broken by new platforms that are dynamic and constantly evolving – make sure you’re accounting for this so that when something does break, it doesn’t completely nuke your game. Users will do horrible, horrible things to their hardware – make sure to account for your end users installing tons of CPU and memory-hogging applications on the target platform. 

If you’re multi-platform, set goals based on your lowest possible performing platforms…and stick to them! This is a non-trivial task, as it requires business, technology, and creative buy-in. Push this to the top of the priority list. 

Realistic proportions, movement, and physical relationships are critical to creating a VR experience that makes use of presence. Content that is out of scale with the world around it risks appearing "spooky" and unsettling, leading to subtle but meaningful feelings of cognitive dissonance in your users. Unrealistic or unfamiliar gravity, viscosity, or friction can have the same effect.

Door frames, windows, tables, chairs and other common real-world physical objects in game space are especially susceptible to this phenomenon. For games grounded in reality, there is a pretty simple solution. Measure things and stick to those sizes. This constraint can certainly be a limiting factor, but can also be a creative challenge that leads to dynamic and innovative solutions to problems both complex and mundane.

Preproduction proportions testing

During preproduction, try starting with realistic proportions and aggressively test with white-rooms to avoid having to rework assets down the road. Working from a regimented, realistic base of assets goes a long way towards making the user comfortable in your environment.

All that said, the one guiding principle for VR – especially in these relatively early days of mass market consumer VR – is that comfort is king. It’s imperative to ensure your experience is palatable to your target audience. 

If you’re making a card game for a wide audience, make sure that your framerate is extremely high, your contrast is relatively low, and you’re never accelerating or moving the character outside of motion-tracked head and body movements. If you’re making a hardcore flight simulator with 6 degrees of freedom and non-stop flak explosions, you have a different bar to hit, but core tenants (always high framerates, try to never move the player’s camera unless they’re controlling it, use slower acceleration where appropriate, etc.) are always good to keep top of mind.

Be cognizant that with every increment you push your experience past your target comfort point, you’re losing and alienating another large cohort of users, potentially damaging your reputation and your brand.

Find a spark and build from that. There are so many unknowns in VR – especially right at this moment in time – that it requires an entirely new pipeline, process, and technology outlook to bring anything to market, let alone something of notable scope. 

This is VR. You should dream big. However, the best advice I could give at this moment in time is to create a small chunk of that dream with your first VR release. Get that product to the market – to any market – and get into preproduction on your second title with everything you’ve learned. Use that experience to help your team execute more efficiently and at a vastly higher level than the first go round.

This is one thing we nailed at E7. We started off with a relatively small game in Magic Table Chess, moved on to something marginally bigger for our second game, with exponentially larger projects on the horizon. Each step along the way has enabled us to work faster, focus more on experiences than infrastructure, and push our quality bar higher and higher.

Starting to come together...

This is the agile mantra, but especially so for new, rapidly evolving platforms like VR. It might sound cliché, but the pain is real. These are incredibly dynamic software and hardware products that are constantly evolving in meaningful ways. Platform updates right before VC meetings, cables getting imperceptibly loose and taking someone offline for hours, system background processes triggering and running the game at one frame every other second are all real possibilities that many of you will encounter. 

While there’s little you can do to truly mitigate for these challenges, knowing that something along the way will conspire to foul up your perfectly-planned software project can help you reduce the impact of these issues when they do happen.  

In addition to unexpected critical fails, if you’re working with a commercial game engine or platform back end suite, plan to be rolling over to new versions far more frequently than on traditional platforms. The dynamic nature of these platforms means that new updates address critical issues and can introduce new version mismatches more frequently than stable technology platforms.

In Conclusion Making games in VR is awesome. I frequently find myself losing myself in our games when I should be doing work, just because the experiences are still so profoundly magical. VR is a new and massively exciting frontier. A stereoscopic wild west.

It all comes together

However, like the American wild west of old, it’s full of danger and adventure. Being cognizant of the perils of the medium can’t help you to avoid these challenges altogether, but hopefully it can help mitigate the impact of them when you hit them.

I’d love to hear similar experiences folks have had working on early projects in VR. Horror stories are always great, or if you disagree with anything I’ve said here I’ll keep an oculus out for comments posted to this article.

Yes, I just ended this 2500-word VR article with an eyeball pun. 

This post originally appears on the Experiment 7 Blog.

Coray Seifert is the Director of Production for Experiment 7, a VR strategy game developer based in New York City and San Diego. For more than 15 years, Coray has developed games as a producer, game designer, and writer for organizations like Autodesk, THQ's Kaos Studios, and the US Department of Defense. A Lifetime Member of the International Game Developers Association, Coray was elected to the IGDA’s Board of directors in 2007 at the age of 27; the youngest board member in IGDA history.