#the reading comprehension today isn’t stellar

[captain-kit-adventuress]

I like that there’s nuance being introduced to this, so I’m going to bring some more for everyone to enjoy.

Climate change is definitely about warming, to be sure. But it’s not the only thing that’s going on. One of the ongoing challenges is that US weather event reporting hasn’t really been widely standardised except in the last 70 years or so, maybe a bit longer depending on where you live. That doesn’t mean anything before that isn’t reliable—weather nerds like meteorologists (professional or not) have been collecting great data for centuries—but it doesn’t always mean it’s covered in the same way we would today or that the same emphasis would be given to the same events. Sometimes it’s a tech issue, too, where we just didn’t have the equipment or the techniques to record the data in the first place.

A feature of global warming that doesn’t get mentioned nearly enough is that the planet isn’t just getting warmer, it’s that the climate is becoming more extreme. So, climate change is causing obvious seasonal changes in a lot of places, but it’s both that the hots are getting hotter and the colds are getting colder. Snow events that used to be steady and small might now be dumping feet at a time and then melting right away, only to repeat itself a few times a season. Billion-dollar weather events that used to be rare are becoming suspiciously common.

The person who pointed out about Australia isn’t wrong, either. The rest of the world is super impacted by climate change, but not in exactly the same ways as in the US. Most of the rest of the world is getting noticeably warmer and having more extreme weather events become quite common, at a much faster rate than in the US and sometimes without the social and physical infrastructure to support it—though I would argue that’s actually the same in the US, but on a different scale.

This year (2023) might seem especially potent in the US because of a weather phenomenon called El Niño, which is exacerbating already-warm conditions and making them warmer.

There’s also the idea of how long the timeline of climate change really is. When did it actually ‘start?’ I don’t think we can exclude the idea that style of industrialisation specific to the global northwest might have been some sort of mini kick in the pants, and as that style was adopted elsewhere, it spread those changes wider. Though there is no doubt that the US in particular has been a shameless catalyst of climate change via corporate industrial practice, corporate actors in other nations around the world have certainly done their part to make it worse.

I live in an area which regularly sees a lot of snow pretty evenly spread throughout the winter, and it is absolutely not normal for us to have a span of 60-degree days in December. I know there are plenty of years with outliers, that’s just how statistics works. What’s most concerning to me is that when we’re breaking those records, it’s not decades apart anymore, or even one or twice in the same decade; feedback loops in weather patterns are pretty common. Instead, it’s becoming a long run of consecutive years. What the data appears to suggest, in both my home state and across the US, is not so much that outliers exist but that they’re closing the gap between common and and less common. Our outliers, on the other hand, are becoming more extreme. Where I live, the chance of even a single 80-degree day in November should be as close to zero as is possible barring freak events, and yet, the last few years have had just that, or temps close to it, and this year had a span of them.

All it really means to have been in keeping within normal weather averages is that maybe the climate isn’t changing quite as fast in that particular locality. This is demonstrably not true in most of the world, as pretty much any climatologist will tell you. Moreover, if we are talking local, most of what climate scientists have predicted both for my state and my region has come to pass, and my region was predicted to change one of the most since 2013, I believe—I unfortunately can’t remember precisely when I read that particular set of articles.

I don’t think it’s simply nostalgia for something specific in a carol or depiction of the holiday season. And quite frankly, while I’m a big fan of accurately representing the world as it is, I’m not certain a little more alarmism isn’t warranted if it ushers in more change. Good things are happening. But we need even greater participation, both in the US and around the globe, and I’m not seeing nearly enough resources being put toward cooperative efforts to rein in this very manmade acceleration we’re seeing.

That said, I understand why you said what you did, Marzi, and you’re right, it can feel completely overwhelming. It is an overwhelming thing to consider. I’m not trying to ‘dunk’ on you or invalidate anything you said. But I also don’t want people to downplay what’s happening, either. Outliers in weather are a lot more common than people realise, for sure. It’s more that the outliers are changing in nature, too, and I think I can pretty safely say that we both agree it’s important to recognise everyone’s feelings.

It’s okay to take a breather from this stuff if anyone needs to, absolutely. It’s so hard to reckon with and stay even a little optimistic for the future, and there are reasons to be optimistic! But as I said, I like nuance, and this is my very, very, very long-winded way of showing that.

Christmas as a cultural icon is starting to get really dystopian in a climate sense, december has historically been a time of year in which there would be snow in a significant portion of europe and north america, and the fact that its not even icy this time of year and all the christmas songs and decorations reference a time of year that will likely never exist in the same way again in my life time is so strange.

[digitalgrowth1]

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Also Read: Top Reasons to List Your Software on Zumvu Software Directory in 2024 | Zumvu Software Directory

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[teashoptiramisu]

Todosibs (and other BNHA) rec list

I started another BNHA fic reclist and it got long so I'm putting it here as I tend to.... on my ATLA sideblog. Don't worry about the logic of this too much, haha. Anyways, a lot of these are pretty well known, but maybe some are new to you! I'm also giving pitches for why I like them geared towards specific requests, and I'll list the original request at the bottom of the post so if you guys have further recs that meet these requirements let me know!

Not all who wander are lost -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/17950646 -- 27k words, complete -- Has probably been rec’d here before, and I was re-reading it today as a treat, I still love it a lot! All four Todoroki siblings run away together after Rei burns Shouto. I love the characterization, and how the author draws on their own experience as a foreigner working in Japan, and how they did their research on missing child cases and child homelessness in Japan (it doesn't go hugely in depth but I appreciate the authors' notes discussing this, even if it's, well, incredibly tragic. There’s more light hearted cultural notes as well!)

make this feel like home -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/21852745 -- 27k words, complete -- we already rec'd this to you but adding it here for completion. A character-focused Todosibs fic with EXCELLENT portrayal of sibling relationships. I re-read this one A LOT.

Dragon Head, Snake Tail -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/17195510 -- 61k words, incomplete -- Another Todosib favorite that deals with canon and also an AU in which Rei got a divorce and everyone mostly grew up away from Endeavor. I love how the sibling relationships are depicted, but I also love how the author is a huge kanji nerd who fully lean's into Horikoshi's love for punny names and the long authors notes explaining how they came up with every new name in the fic. It's occasionally bittersweet but mostly a fun & humorous fic.

Twin Swap -- https://archiveofourown.org/series/1867879 -- 55k words, on hiatus with 2 complete arcs -- do you want Todosibs AND great villain characterization? (well mostly Fuyumi & Touya, but Natsuo is there for a bit too). Anyways the fic is mostly pretty lighthearted in tone, but it's also not afraid to hit hard in the characterization department, and I really love how this author wrote all of the League members. I re-read this one a lot.

No Such Thing As a Hopeless Case -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/16806328 -- 14k words, hiatus (and right on a cliffhanger too!) -- All Might accidentally kinda adopts the league of villains? Again, great LOV characterization, and I think you'll like how it explores the societal factors and personal tragedies that lead them to and keep them at the margins of society. also, some really terrible puns, which are my favorite thing

could i but teach the hundreth part -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/12558048 -- 5k words, complete -- a post-canon outsider-POV fic of Class 1-A visiting and taking care of a retried All Might. It’s just short and sweet.

Missing Everything -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/30128547 -- 52k words, in progress -- AU where Izuku doesn't learn of All Might's secret during the slime attack, but manages to befriend him through his civilian identity. Recommending this for the really interesting (to me at least) characterization of All Might and examination of his flaws and the toll of his career, and recently it's gotten into some interesting exploration of the details of the Hero System with the beach clean up.

Q.A.B. -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665101 -- 18k words, complete (w/ a sequel just starting out!) -- a really excellent social media fic in which Izuku stays quirkless and doesn't go to UA but does gain a following online for his quirk analysis and hero blogging. Also features great characterization of Todoroki, Kaminari, and some of the Vigilantes crew.

Yesterday Upon the Stair -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/8337607 -- 460k words, complete. You're probably aware of this fic since it's the highest hit count in the fandom, but I really think it fits your requirement and writing and character work! I know some other people who think the writing and character work are mediocre though, which I'm baffled by... but YMMV? The beginning is weaker and my absolute FAVORITE part is the Nighteye arc, which is the last 20% of the fic, but I would say it really starts to hit its stride by chapter 9~10? If you aren't enjoying it by then it's probably fair to expect it won't catch your interest later.

I can't believe no one has written any "self insert as Bakugo" fanfics... - https://archiveofourown.org/works/17662220 -- 70k words, infrequent updates -- I like this one for taking a weird as hell premise and REALLY rolling with it. It's somehow pretty similar to a lot of more positive takes on Bakugo's relationship with the Midoriyas while also being very much it's own thing. The author is NOT "far out of high school" though -- it's hilariously clear from the SI's reactions to certain quirks that the writer started this while taking lower division universtiy physics (and personally I love that). Also appreciate SI!Bakugo's war with Nedzu to get proper counseling and mental health support for class 1-a after all the shit they've been through.

It's Over, Isn't It (it's only yet begun) -- https://archiveofourown.org/series/1269638 -- 66k words, abandoned series with several complete stories -- AU where All Might dies rescuing Tenko from AfO but other than that it's a heartwarming fix-it! Same author as YUTS, very positive portrayal of Nighteye, excellent character writing for many other characters.

Subject: A Comprehensive Report -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/16037609 -- 83k words, infrequent updates -- another very popular fandom staple, but hey it's really good! A social media fic with quirkless Izuku interning with Nighteye as an analyst. Has some very interesting exploration of the legalities of Hero Society and how the status quo developed.

For Fools and Utopias -- https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547254 -- 89k words, updates regularly -- okay grace is the one who rec’d this fic to ME but to anyone stumbling across this reclist on tumblr, THIS FIC IS A MUST READ. Absolutely the BEST, more thought out and gutting portrayal of the flaws of the hero system, and how the different characters struggle with it. This fic GOT to me, hard, I’m still thinking about it a lot. Takes place roughly a decade post-canon, in an AU where Izuku never met All Might or went to UA, and nothing got fixed (yet! they’re trying!!). Features absoulely STELLAR characterization of Midoriya, Shinsou, Todoroki, his sibblings, Ragdoll, and more!!

Here’s the original request:

any of the following in any combination: - really good writing - sophisticated character work - engagements with the ethics of the hero system - some kind of actually nuanced take on the Todoroki family - anything obviously written by people who are long out of high school (sorry for being old) - adults todobaku - good looks at the villains because guess what I continue to be weak for villain stories - basically anything that's Really Good - I like grey areas 

(to clarify, I, teashoptiramisu, am not the originator of this request but I’m also interesting in reading more fic exploring these ideas, so if you have any more fic that you think meet it feel free to drop the link(s) in a reblog or send me an ask!)

[magpiefngrl]

You didn't fail. Please don't let people with subpar reading comprehension skills affect your belief in yourself as a writer. Unfortunately, I think this happens more often the more nuanced a fic writer becomes in their characterization. Ironically, I would bet money it means you did succeed with all the right readers and that some people a) don't understand what you did or how you did it because they're just not reading on that level and b) they're coming in with preconceived notions of how these characters 'should' be written. And when/if they're not written to those specifications, they're going to get butthurt. You are a stellar writer, and I'm angry that someone who doesn't get you is being given the power to sway your opinion about yourself. They don't deserve it. (Also, I had someone comment that I'd turned Harry into a simp for a death eater once. People are going to take us wrong sometimes. Doesn't mean they're right or we're bad writers.) You're brilliant at what you do. You're absolutely brilliant. All my love, bb.

ah lqt, I can't thank you enough for this ask. It means a lot. ❤️

I know you're right. Rationally, I agree with you. Not in the sense that I'm sitting at my desk thinking of what a nuanced author I am lol, but in the sense that when I wrote the scene (that seems to be the problem), I had my reasons for it, I had thought of character motivations, and I felt that this is the right course to take.

(rant below)

The preconceived ideas that people bring with them is the main reason for these comments imo. I know Lettered has mentioned in at least a couple of posts that they've been getting comments re: Harry and Draco characterisations that don't match what they've written and they had to accept that these comments were what the reader brought with them rather than what was in the text. I whole-heartedly agreed with Lettered's posts, bc I've seen a marked difference in what people comment about in the past 4 years. Harry, these days, seems to be frequently seen by readers as either an idiot and a himbo, or a jerk. Both things drive me up the wall. It's one thing to joke about oblivious Harry once or twice, or to experiment with dark or mean Harry (and tag it as such, meaning the author is aware it's an unusual approach), another to see people accepting it as the standard characterisation. I never used to get insulting comments about Harry's behaviour 3-4 years ago. Never. And no one ever calls Draco a jerk or an idiot even when I try to write him as a bit of a git. I'm honestly going to start writing unredeemed Draco out of spite. When I receive the comments I receive about Harry now, I'm usually able to ignore them and say "this is what the reader brings to the story and it tells me more about them than about my writing."

But it's made me hate my inbox. It's made me receive an AO3 comment notif and think "oh god what now". 95% of the comments are lovely but for some reason the 5% has tainted the rest. I've had a lot of upheavals in the past 12 months in both real life and fandom and have had less support than normal. So when a third person says the same thing abut Harry regarding the same scene, I can't help but think "if I was a better writer, I'd have managed to convey what I wanted to convey" -- which is such a rational-appearing thought that I can't seem to shake it. I can't help but think that I fucked up, that I messed up some details and failed to convey what I needed the reader to think, and everyone else was too polite to comment on it.

It's such an insidious thought, isn't it? It appears to make so much sense. A better writer wouldn't have made people think X, right? That's what upset me about today's comment, when it isn't hateful or anything. It managed to slip through and hit me right in the most insecure part, and I can't seem to make that voice shut up.

Everyone (and you!) has been lovely though. It's a testament to how full of compassion fandom communities are. I am heart-warmed by the outpouring of love and support by the community and I've had a few good cries already.

Thanks again bb ❤️❤️

[typhlonectes]

A new 3D map of the Milky Way flaunts our galaxy’s warped shape

Using data from an especially bright population of stars, astronomers have reconstructed the Milky Way’s peaks and valleys like never before.

The galaxy we live in is totally bent out of shape.

At least, that’s what the latest three-dimensional map of the Milky Way has to say. By pinpointing the locations of more than 2,400 pulsing stars—including some from the outermost edges of our galaxy—scientists have charted out a stellar atlas that might give us one of the most comprehensive portraits of the Milky Way to date.

Their findings, published today in the journal Science, reveal that the spiral galaxy we Earthlings call home isn’t the flat, featureless pancake we often make it out to be. Instead, it seems to be warped into a wave that recalls a beach towel being shaken free of sand...

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/milky-way-3d-map-cepheids/

[theonceoverthinker]

OUAT 3X08 - Think Lovely Thoughts

We’re nearing the end of the arc and it’s just utter PANdemonium!

Shut up, Rumple! That was funny!

Anyway, to find out why, venture below the cut!

Press Release

Pan leads Henry to a secret cave, where he has convinced the boy that he alone can save magic and Neverland itself. But a showdown between good and evil is about to go down as Emma, Mary Margaret, David, Regina, Mr. Gold and Hook find themselves directly on a path to Pan in an effort to save Henry. Meanwhile, back in the Fairy Tale Land that was, young Rumplestiltskin is given a magical item that could help him make a fresh start with his father – who has been anything but a good dad.

Main Thoughts - Characters/Stories/Themes and Their Effectiveness

Past

This flashback may have one of OUAT’s most mature messages: Sometimes, family can be bad and they need to be cut away from you. There’s no hope of reconciliation and not even a removed heart to blame for it all. Sometimes, they’re just garbage people and trying to keep them in your life will only hurt you.

Malcolm’s abandonemt is one of the most malicious abandonments ever shown on the show. Like, had it not been for Gothel, it would probably be number 1. Malcolm sneers as he tells Rumple he’s the only thing holding him back and then just throws him to the metaphorical wolves. It’s the meanest kind of break up and making it familial just makes it so much sadder.

Present

Our present segment is kind of like “Into the Deep.” Like that episode, its character work is expressed not through more open-and-shut story, but through character interactions in the midst of plot progression. For a series like OUAT, I think these episodes are important because there’s always so much going on and this style keeps up the momentum of the season and of the two I’ve seen, I’ve liked them both!

It’s fantastic seeing everyone come together, flaws and and anger and all. We haven’t reached the “look how far we’ve come moment” yet, but the payoff is starting to emerge. We see bits of hope of reconciliation between Rumple and Neal, Neal forcing Rumple to do right by David, Neal and Killian working together better...yeah, there’s a lot of Neal, and I like that! Neal’s becoming a real favorite of mine and I’m really sad we’re gonna lose him soon.

But honestly, Pan is the true star of this episode again. What makes Pan such a good villain is how well he exploits tropes. He knows what buttons to press to make heroes do what he wants them to. “All heroes are tested.” He knew Henry would go tip over to his side with a line like that. Because Henry loves these tropes so well, Pan has been able to play him like a fiddle and that bit of manipulation is terrifying and fascinating.

Insights - Stream of Consciousness

-”Follow the lead, gents.” Not even being subtle (And I use subtle loosely), are we? XD

-”You’d be better off without him [Rumple’s Papa].” Fuck yeah, he would be!

-Wow, watching this again shows me just how much “The Black Fairy’s” flashback fucked us over. Like, here, Malcolm doesn’t outright detest Rumple, there are just a million things he’d rather do than take care of Rumple. In “The Black Fairy’s” flashback, well, he outright hates Rumple from the second he learns of Fiona’s fate.

-Pan’s influence and manipulation, not over just Henry, but all of the Lost Boys, is incredible!

-I fucking love the Spinsters. They are such sweet old ladies! They offer to teach Rumple and they’re so friendly! Rumple, stay with them forever. Tell Malcolm to fuck off!

-”Names always make things better.” FUCK. YOU.

-”I didn’t think I had any talent.” Damn! That is so sad! Baby Rumple went through a good chunk of his childhood without any real positive reinforcement. Like, I want to say what that does to a person, but we already know and...DAMNN.

-”Your father will always be your burden, Rumplestiltskin.” Honey, you don’t know the half of it.

-OMG! Malcolm did the Rumple laugh! I love this show!

-”But you trust me. Don’t you son?” “I want to.” Holy shit. That line could’ve come JUST AS EASILY out of Rumple and Bae’s mouths.

-Rumple’s family is so freakin’ ass-y with fathers and sons! Gideon, either don’t have kids or have those Belle genes kick themselves into high gear!

-”You suddenly interesting in what I have to say? Thought I wasn’t to be trusted.” Rumple, shut up. Your karma evaporated for a damn good reason! Don’t act hoity toity!

-”No deals, no favors, understand?” YESS KING! This is what I’m talking about with Neal. He’s not giving Rumple a fucking INCH and why should he? I said this before and I’ll say it again. Neal’s death had nothing to do with Emma but EVERYTHING to do with Rumple because Rumple would never be allowed to be sleazy again had Neal stayed alive.

-*Rumple grabs Killian’s sword right from his waist* *Jenna grins like a fucking idiot*

-”Thanks mate.” *A bro nod is exchanged* *Jenna grins harder*

-”You did that for me?” Let’s talk about this line. This fucking line! Neal never had anyone try to save him like this as a kid and now he learns that the Darling family was even more amazing than he ever thought! I love this show!

-”You told her I was dead?” NOT NOW, RUMPLE!

-”It was easier than telling the truth -- my own father abandoned me.” *Jenna cries like a little bitch*

-*Malcom falls* KARMA, BITCH!

-God, Malcolm is creepy as fuck as he remembers Neverland. He looks like he belongs in an asylum.

-”Well apparently, that’s the only thanks I need these days.” *sighs* You don’t get it now, Rumple, but you will in about four seasons.

-”You promise not to be long?” More like, “You promise not to BELONG?”

-“Because you don’t belong.” Holy crap! I wasn’t wrong!

-”Are you okay?” Neal, Emma just did a fucking back flip! You tell me!

-Blocking the moon out to get rid of shadows? Emma, you are a fucking genius! <3

-Is it any coincidence that I’m fucking humming “Brandy” while watching this episode? Damn, Guardians 2 hit me.

-”Oh, it’s for the best, Rumple.” Part of me isn’t sure if that’s the best bedside manner or not. On one hand, Fuck Malcolm with a rusty nail-covered bat. On the other hand, he’s an emotionally distraught child.

-”Pleasure to see you too, Baelfire.” Pan is such a little shit!

Arcs - How Are These Storylines Progressing?

The Mission to Save Henry - “We’re all going back. Together.” I love how everyone is together for the crescendo of the arc’s “climax” (Or one of like, three of them)! As I said before, it really delivers on the payoff promised at the end of Season 2 and the beginning of Season 3.

Emma Accepting Your Parents - “Maybe it’s just you rubbing off on me, but I refuse to believe that.” Until that line was said, to be honest, I was torn between being cynical of Emma for her rigid thoughts on family and her inability to understand the nuance of the situation and prideful in the character development she showed by fighting for her family. But once that line was said, I was on the latter side HARD! Also, this follows Emma’s line of thinking throughout the rest of the episode! She really wants to keep her parents!

Regina’s Redemption - Another small, yet big sign of Regina’s redemption is Regina apologizing for insinuating that Emma shouldn’t have rescued Neal right to Rumple’s face. Good job!!!

Killian’s Redemption - If my arch enemy called me a “cowardly pirate,” I wouldn’t smile. I’d gut him. I’m gonna give Killian points for being better than me in that regard!

Rumple’s Redemption - Rumple’s redemption is handled so well here! He’s still an asshole, almost charging David for the Dreamshade cure, but he’s really cooperating with the group because he knows he’s the center of a lot of bad blood. He’s trying to earn their trust because he knows Henry’s life means more than him being the top dog. And seeing him overcome his internal issues with Pan only to still lose hurts so much as a result!

Favorite Dynamic

The Nevengers and Rumple. Oh My Stars! The group teamup against Rumple was dramatic in the best way EVER. Just...everyone slowly making these points against Rumple as he weakly tries to throw a case for himself together was dramatic, tense, and incredible. All of Rumple’s bad karma comes to a head at the worst possible time and it is GLORIOUS! And the tense peace they reach is just as great! All of that distrust still remains, threatening to shake things up going forward. ”You life so much as a finger to perform magic, you’re gonna spend eternity in this box.” YESSS, Neal! And eventually, Rumple’s honorable decisions are recognized by Emma, Neal, and Regina!

Writer

David Goodman and Robert Hull are today’s writers and after their stellar start this season with “Nasty Habits,” I had high hopes for them. And they did a fantastic job here! Everything comes together very naturally, the dialogue is super en pointe, and the pacing for the packed story is just amazing!

Rating

Golden Apple. What an awesome episode. It’s a great rush seeing the final pieces come together for the grand Neverland rescue, seeing everyone work together as a team and sniping at each other while cooperating, and getting a great and comprehensive flashback at the same time! Also, everyone feels really intelligent and earnest to who they are and want to be, making this episode feel more real. It’s honestly such a great time watching it!

-----

Thank you for reading and sorry again for the smaller review. I got caught up by my backlog after coming home from the con and losing two of my review days, so it looks like you’ll probably be getting four reviews next week. Still, I promise I’ll make something a lot better for next time to redeem myself! In the meantime, I really appreciate your patience with me! <3

Also, thanks as always to the fine folks at @watchingfairytales for putting this project together!

Season 3 Total (76/220)

Writer’s Scores: Adam and Eddy (19/60) Kalinda Vazquez (17/40) Andrew Chambliss (17/50) Jane Espenson (10/30) David Goodman (20/40) Robert Hull (20/40) Christine Boylan (10/20) Daniel Thomsen (10/30)

Operation Rewatch Archives

[michaelandy101-blog]

10 Important 2021 SEO Trends You Need to Know

New Post has been published on http://tiptopreview.com/10-important-2021-seo-trends-you-need-to-know/

10 Important 2021 SEO Trends You Need to Know

It’s time to take our annual look at what’s ahead for SEO professionals in 2021.

If you want the TLDR, here it is via Lily Ray, SEO Director, Path Interactive:

“Above all, a great SEO strategy should start by putting yourself in the user’s shoes and asking yourself if the content is truly valuable, the brand is trustworthy, and the website is easy to use (especially on mobile).”

So true!

But there’s much more to dig into when we’re talking SEO in 2021.

So what SEO strategies and tactics will work and help you dominate in the SERPs and earn more revenue in 2021?

This is the question we ask every year here at Search Engine Journal.

This year, I asked 42 of today’s top SEO professionals for their thoughts.

Here are the top 10 trends you need to know in 2021, according to the experts.

Want all the SEO trends now? Download our new ebook: SEO Trends 2021.

Trend #1: Focus on User + Search Intent

In 2021, it’s time to focus user and search intent.

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For real.

While this is hardly a new trend or concept, every year it’s important to refocus because searcher intent and behavior is changing all the time. Especially after the year that was 2020 when so much rapidly changed.

“At the core, Google (and other search engines) is a place to go when people want to answer a question or to learn more about something,” said Jenn Mathews, SEO Manager, GitHub. “When we understand the nature of why people search and help them with content that provides the answers they are looking for then our business benefits from it.”

So what does this mean for your SEO efforts in 2021?

According to Britney Muller, SEO Consultant & Data Science Student, Britney Muller LLC, it means SEO pros will need to transition away from traditional best practices that will hold less value as the algorithms get stronger (e.g., trying to write meta descriptions for every single page) and focus more on better understanding what’s happening within the SERPs/searcher intent.

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“Google houses the world’s information and they know what the majority of people searching ‘x’ seek,” Muller said. “Paying closer attention to search results will give SEO pros a leg up in creating competitive content in the way that searchers desire to consume it.”

And many other of our SEO experts agree with Muller. This includes Andrew Dennis, Content Marketing Specialist, Page One Power.

“Google is already showing you which results it thinks serve users’ intent, use this data for your own strategy,” Dennis said. “For me, SERP analysis will be an important practice not just in 2021, but moving forward as search intents change and Google continues to become more sophisticated to keep up.”

It’s clear to Marie Haynes, CEO, Marie Haynes Consulting Inc., that if you want to win at SEO in 2021, you’ll need to do a stellar job of providing information to users.

“Google will get even better at recognizing when a searcher is looking for expert advice and will rank those posts above articles written by content writers who are lacking E-A-T,” Haynes said. “The SEO pros who will be successful in 2021 will be those who can truly understand how to meet a searchers’ needs.”

How?

Here’s advice from Adam Riemer, President at Adam Riemer Marketing:

“Brands are going to need to forget about themselves and cater to their visitors.

This includes:

Copy that addresses the visitor’s needs and concerns and not copy that talks about your products, your company, or why your product is good.

A quick website that renders and stabilizes fast.

Not making people work to find your content or to spend money with you. No forced pop-ups, registrations, etc.”

With Google focusing more on satisfying user intent, Steven van Vessum, VP of Community, ContentKing, said it’s more important than ever to focus on learning what a user is looking for.

“In terms of the actual answer – but also their preferred content type (e.g., video, podcasts, or PDF),” van Vessum said. “Because figuring out queries’ user intent by hand is very time-consuming, keyword research tools that let us quickly do this at scale will overtake those that do not.”

Alexander Kesler, CEO, INFUSEmedia, offers some additional advice on understanding the search intent of your ideal buyer and driving meaningful revenue for your organization.

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“Analyze the search data and on-site journey of any organically acquired leads – not just the search terms that they used to find your content, but also on-site search and highlighted keywords for all pages that they visited,” Kesler said. “Aggregate that data and map it to a content journey.”

Trend #2: Customer Analytics, Retention & Lifetime Value

SEO used to be (mostly) about driving traffic. But SEO has evolved into much more.

As Miracle Inameti-Archibong, Head of SEO, Erudite, noted, in 2021 you will be pushed more and more to make the traffic you have to work harder in order to close the gaps in revenue and demonstrate ROI.

So, in 2021, data on behavioral analytics will become the hottest commodity.

“With Google evolving faster and faster to give instant satisfaction, taking responsibility beyond visits, as well as marrying up UX, conversion, and revenue have become even more important,” Inameti-Archibong said. “Keyword volume will take a back seat and it will be more behavioral analytics – what your customer is doing, how they are doing it, and how we can get them to do more of it quicker – and reverse engineering that to the content you produce.”

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John McAlpin, SEO Director, Cardinal Digital Marketing, agreed. He pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us that keyword research isn’t always helpful when the world is in constant flux.

“In order to differentiate ourselves, we’ll see SEO pros dialing back keyword research and elevate first-party user research,” McAlpin said. “ This research unlocks hidden opportunities with service offerings and content ideas that keyword research may not tell us.”

With fewer dollars to go around, businesses will need to focus far more on customer retention and increasing customer lifetime value (LTV) than ever before, said Stephan Bajaio, Chief Evangelist and Co-Founder, Conductor.

“Your post-acquisition content must answer the questions, concerns, and needs your customers are expressing in search and you need to show up for those terms. If not, you will risk others influencing them away from your brand,” Bajaio said. “It will be about understanding your customer best and providing them with valuable content, or risk losing them to someone who understands them better… introduced to them by their trusted friend Google.”

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Izzi Smith, Technical SEO Analyst, Ryte, expanded on this idea. She encourages companies to provide stronger customer and self-support services online.

“First of all, establish a process with sales and support staff to ensure that you are aware of important and incoming questions or requests that can be resolved with help articles,” Smith said.

“Dig into your Google Search Console keyword data with common question modifiers to find relevant, existing topics that should be catered to. Make sure these are answered concisely and factually and published to a related FAQ topic page,” she added.

Bottom line, according to Smith: “Help centers and FAQ sections should be created with UX at the very forefront, and should not be a single, unmaneuverable page of questions.”

One of the keys to attracting and retaining customers comes down to a single word: value.

That’s why Julia McCoy, CEO, Express Writers / Educator, Content Hacker, said you should make value a heavy focus in 2021.

And a big part of that comes from your content.

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“it’s easier than ever to lose grasp on the real reason we retain the trust and attention of our audience: by giving them value,” McCoy said. “We retain interest and build trust with our readers when our content is the most comprehensive, practical, and useful piece they’ve interacted with when searching Google. That kind of content requires focus, time, commitment, investment, to create.”

Trend #3: Brand SERP Optimization, Knowledge Graphs & Entities

In 2021, tracking brand SERPs and knowledge panels will become the norm, according to Jason Barnard, The Brand SERP Guy, Kalicube.pro.

“In 2021, the reality that entity-based search starts with Google’s confident understanding of who you are, what you offer, and what audience you serve will gain enormous traction,” Barnard said. “Savvy marketers will truly get to grips with looking at their brand as an entity and start to work in earnest on Google’s understanding of the ‘who you are’ part of that trio by creating or improving their presence in the Knowledge Graph.

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In fact, Nik Ranger, SEO Specialist, thinks we may start to see personalized knowledge graphs starting in 2021.

“Google has access to so much information about you, your search history, emails, social media, and other types of user information that they have the ability and means to scale personalized knowledge graphs,” Ranger said. “Qualifying the relationships between the legitimacy of author credentials to content, in addition to the way Google perceives value from content, will be ever more important.”

What does this all mean for SEO In 2021?

It means optimizing your brand’s entire digital presence (e.g., your YouTube channel, images) and how Google features them, said Patrick Reinhart, VP for Digital Strategies, Conductor.

“These days it’s not just about your website, it’s about all of your owned properties and how they interact with one another on the SERP,” Reinhart said. “If they all come together through various snippets, does it tell a good story about your brand?”

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John Shehata, VP, Global Audience Development Strategy, Condé Nast / Founder, NewzDash.com, goes further, adding that SEO pros must understand the complex concepts behind topics (entities, subtopics) and natural language processing (NLP) and how entities play a role in Google rankings.

“Forget about TF*IDF, keyword frequency, and start focusing on entities, topics and start utilizing Google Natural Language (and/or other similar SEO tools that provide NLP analysis),” Shehata said.

“Search engines are getting smarter by the day and they have a good understanding of queries to an extent beyond keywords used in such queries,” Shehata added. “Don’t get me wrong, good keyword research is still needed but it comes secondary to understanding the topics/entities related to the query and the intent behind the query.”

One place where there are no keywords at play is Google Discover.

So the only way to optimize for Google Discover visibility is by establishing your entity in the knowledge graph and honing how it is connected within the topic layer, according to Jes Scholz, International Digital Director, Ringier,

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“The first step every SEO pro should take is to track their brand’s result score in the knowledge graph API,” Scholz said. “Then, work on activities outside of having great content to drive their presence in the knowledge graph.

Some of those activities to focus on in 2021, Scholz said, will include:

Ensuring a complete and correct organization markup.

Establishing a presence in relevant knowledge bases such as Wikidata.

Claiming your knowledge panel to use the posts by Google feature.

For physical businesses, setting up your Google My Business profile.

Trend #4: Core Web Vitals & Page Experience Optimization

With Google introducing Core Web Vitals as a ranking factor in 2021, page experience metrics can no longer be ignored, according to Areej AbuAli, SEO Manager, Zoopla.

“Websites and businesses need to prioritize for them to ensure they don’t fall behind their competitors,” AbuAli said. “Make the most out of insights provided via tools such as Lighthouse and Crux API. Everything from page speed, mobile-friendliness, rendering, image optimization, and security protocols need to be optimized for.”

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In addition, Rachel Costello, Technical SEO Consultant, Builtvisible, said we should be looking at how a page makes a user feel, not just whether the page is accessible and comprehensible to a search engine crawler.

“This will involve us taking a user-centric approach with our optimization efforts, including a keen focus on:

How quickly and smoothly pages load.

How soon pages become responsive to user interactions.

How easy a website is to use and navigate on mobile devices.

The safety and security of a site’s connection as users are browsing through it.

“Incorporating page experience into your SEO workflow will not only help to future-proof your website’s performance and rankings ahead of the upcoming algorithm update, but it can also help to improve UX and conversions now,” Costello said.

You also need to make sure that Google can access the best content on your site from everywhere – and make sure your site has a measurably better user interface than your competitors, noted Jess Peck, Senior Analytics Consultant, CVS.

“Measure, test, and use machine learning to look at your content – this will give you a huge leg up,” Peck said. “Google’s focus on Core Web Vitals shows that they’re starting to measure how annoying sites can be, so give your users a pleasant experience and Google will do the same for you.”

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Trend #5: All SEO Is Mobile SEO

Ensuring your content/website performs well from a mobile perspective should also continue to be a focal point as this is where the majority of searches are being conducted, said Jeff Riddall, VP Product and Customer Success, Mintent.

“What type of experience do your users have when accessing your content and trying to find answers on their mobile devices?” he said.

That’s why Brock Murray, Co-founder, seoplus+, said a big SEO focus in 2021 must be mobile device user experience (UX)

“The best thing you can do when it comes to mobile UX is to think about the user first,” Murray said. “Simplicity in your design is the key. Also, be sure to personalize the website content and elements based on your user.”

But there are many more reasons all SEO is now mobile SEO, as explained by Shelly Fagin, SEO Director and Founder, Highly Searched, Inc.

“Google will essentially be ignoring your desktop site. Your mobile site will determine your rankings,” Fagin said.

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So if you’ve been focusing on meeting the bare minimum requirements to be considered mobile-first, 2021 is the year to shift your focus to improving that experience for your users.

“Don’t just settle with getting passing scores and consider it a job well done,” Fagin said. “It’s time to closely review your pages and make sure they are intuitive for your users, are easy to navigate, and you aren’t hiding valuable content and images on mobile devices.

“It’s OK to have a different experience between desktop and mobile, but It’s important to know that Google will no longer be ranking your desktop and mobile experiences differently,” she added. “If you still have a separate mobile site, now might be the time to reconsider migrating to a mobile responsive site instead.”

Trend #6: Assess, Adopt & Execute

In 2021, prepared to work harder than ever before to assess, adopt, and execute, according to Motoko Hunt, President & International Search Marketing Consultant, AJPR.

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While the basic skills and knowledge are still important, your brain needs to be flexible to adapt to the rapid changes.

“Thinking outside the box will be more important than ever. The business opportunities are still out there. If it’s not where you normally look, you just need to find where they went,” Hunt said.

It will also be important to be proactive in 2021, said Corey Morris, Chief Strategy Officer, Voltage.

“Maybe this is more of a theme or mindset than a trend – but seeing it as a recognized need and something many are arriving at makes it a trend for me,” Morris said. “Now is the time to get organized, build a plan, develop a process, and get ahead.”

A shift to more strategic SEO will be critical to stay relevant and stay top of mind for consumers’ attention in 2021, said Andy Betts, Search and Digital Advisor & Consultant. He recommends pivoting your approach from a singular focus on just consumer behavior to a dual process that involves understanding the market in which these consumers operate first.

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“Take a more strategic and blended approach to understand what’s happening in the market, where demand has shifted historically, and where it is changing in real-time,” Betts said. “Take a consultative approach to understand how economic, sociological, and psychological factors impact search demand and then look at understanding consumer behavior and intent at a granular level. Utilize all tools, platforms, and sources of business intelligence at your disposal.”

Trend #7: More Automation

If we look back at the increasing number of SEO tasks that we are able to automate in 2020 (structured data generation, quality content, etc.), the possibilities for 2021 will be mind-bending, said Hamlet Batista, CEO, RankSense

“Expect the quality and quantity of the AI-generated content to increase dramatically. It will definitely create a bigger challenge for search engines to keep spam out of the index,” Batista said. “Human-in-the-loop automation to make sure the value is high for search users will be the main focus to avoid penalties and remain competitive.”

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Jesse McDonald, Global SEO Strategist | Optimization Lead, IBM, believes one of the biggest trends in SEO for 2021, especially within in-house roles, is the continued focus on creating more scalable solutions for optimization utilizing automation.

“Over the last couple of years, more and more of the industry-leading tools that many SEO practitioners use in their day-to-day work have been releasing automated functionalities to roll out site changes. It’s almost like adding another member of the execution portion of the team,” McDonald said.

“The implications of this are particularly interesting for in-house roles because it can help implement low-hanging fruit elements without having to justify the importance of the change to move to the top of the sprint schedule,” he added. “Thus, freeing up the SEO to focus on additional strategic elements for improving site performance.”

Trend #8: SERP Layout & Functionality Changes

Dave Davies, Duke of URL, Beanstalk Internet Marketing, expects to see a big change to the entire way content is viewed and laid out on websites change – thanks to Google Passage Ranking.

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“Why have a page on a general topic, and sub-pages on specifics, when you can have one long page for it all and know that Google will drive the user where they need to go? Isn’t that the best of both worlds? And they’re doing similar in video.

Cindy Krum, CEO & Founder, MobileMoxie, has been talking about this – what she refers to as Fraggle optimization – for a good while now. And she said doing things to help Google identify and rank passages will be a big new SEO trend in 2021.

“Fraggles (or passages) are important because they really improve Google’s ability to find and lift exactly the information that users are looking for,” Krum said. “Strong page and schema structure help with Fraggle/passage optimization, but it will likely also be important to have text that is easy for natural language processing to evaluate and has a high readability score.”

Trend #9: Long-Form Content

Ron Lieback, CEO/Founder, ContentMender, said one trend to help you outrank your competitors will be consistently publishing longer-form content that appeals to Google’s E-A-T guidelines, as well as emotion.

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“Throughout 2020, I consistently witnessed blogs over 2,000 words dramatically outperform blogs of 1,000 words or less,” Lieback said. “Expect this long-form content trend to continue in 2021, and as more and more websites follow this trend, the length will get larger – maybe even toward that 2,500-3,000 mark for a blog to rank well over others.”

Trend #10: SEO Scalability

2021 should be your year to build scalability into your SEO if you’re going to get ahead of your competition, according to Mark Traphagen, Vice President of Product Marketing and Training, seoClarity.

How?

Traphagen shared these three tips:

List all the tasks, processes, and workflows you do on a regular basis. Determine which steps in those could be automated or better handled by use of a tool.

Set up an alert system that monitors significant changes to things like rankings of your important keywords, flip-flopping URLs ranking for the same keyword (URL cannibalization), page content changes, URL changes, etc.

Establish SoPs (Standard Operating Procedures) for any regular tasks you can’t automate so your team isn’t wasting time reinventing how to do them each time they need to be performed.

Get More SEO Trends & Insights for 2021

This only scratches the surface of what you’ll find in our new ebook, SEO Trends 2021.

Ready for all of the trends?

Click here to download SEO Trends 2021.

You’ll get more uncensored and unfiltered insights and tips straight from these SEO experts on how to succeed at SEO in 2021:

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Areej AbuAli

Stephan Bajaio

Jason Barnard

Hamlet Batista

Andy Betts

Jackie Chu

Rachel Costello

Dave Davies

Andrew Dennis

Shelly Fagin

Upasna Gautam

Marie Haynes

Adam Heitzman

Motoko Hunt

Miracle Inameti-Archibong

Alexander Kesler

Jeremy Knauff

Cindy Krum

Ron Lieback

Jenn Mathews

John McAlpin

Julia McCoy

Jesse McDonald

Corey Morris

Britney Muller

Brock Murray

Jess Peck

Chuck Price

Nik Ranger

Lily Ray

Patrick Reinhart

Jeff Riddall

Adam Riemer

Alexis Sanders

Jes Scholz

John Shehata

Cyrus Shepard

Izzi Smith

Aleyda Solis

Mark Traphagen

Steven van Vessum

Mindy Weinstein

Plus, from our sponsors:

Image Credits

Featured Image: Paolo Bobita

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[nomanaliseo]

The Crucial Role A Web Design Company Plays in Today’s World

Web Design Company : Imagine scrolling through your social media feed and you encounter a product that you’ve been combing the web for. One click and therefore the page redirects you to the official website of the brand-an entire new catalogue of comparable products unfolding ahead of you. Somewhere between checking out your favourite products or services, you add another traffic to the business owner’s kitty; That’s exactly how the digital world works lately. Whenever a customer raises an eyebrow on discovering your brand online, you add a successful milestone to your digital marketing books. But the whole gamut of digital marketing isn’t as effortless because it seems from the surface. Social media advertisements or topping the program chart is simply the tip of the iceberg and zip would are possible without a web platform by Web Design Company of your own navigating your digital presence on the planet Wide Web. So, if you’ve found yourself wondering where investing during a proficient Web Design Company is worth your while or not- this text are going to be an ideal read for you.

The Digital Scenario

Now before we dive right into the critical role a Web Design Company plays- allow us to break down the digital business scenario for you. Every brand, be it big or small has now made it to the digital screen and why not? the chance to flourish as a business and thrive as a business owner is endless because of the potent technological advancements that have brought internet and therefore the people closer together. Shifting from the paper-people to the digital approach was the simplest thing that happened to entrepreneurs round the globe. But where does it all start? If you’re watching a business offline, you’ll be brooding about storefronts and standees, but what happens when you’ve taken your digital business online? allow us to welcome you to the planet of website development.

The Stepping Stone to Digital Success

If your business has gone digital within the recent years, you’ll be watching skyrocketing sales, a thriving brand and a veteran network of target audiences- but so as to realize all that- you’d need a digital platform- a ‘website’ by Web Design Company as we call it. Now allow us to mention standing call at the ocean of competitors and creating a stellar digital image that drives customer traffic to your website.

To turn a striving business into a thriving business, you would like your consumer’s undying dedication and support, something that your website presence or persona features a lot to try to with. Does one remember that just one occasion you visited an internet site by Web Design Company that made your jaws drop? You kept scrolling up and down seeping within the brand’s spectacular representation of itself! That’s the type of head-turning opportunity businesses today strive for. This brings us to why the term ‘website designing’ is completely crucial to drive digital presence today!

Designs That Captivate

Walking into a digital platform the primary thing that strikes you is that the layout, the convenience of usage, the bold brand colors peeping from the corners- a medley of captivating content blending into exemplary design- giving the digital brand an abstract outlook. That’s what we term as ‘website designing’- the art of merging creativity and science together. A recent study conducted said almost 85% of individuals are automatically interested in graphics enhanced backdrops with pictures and videos helping them understand the concept far better than simple words etched on a bland background- such is that the impact of website designing. Now would you let such an important task be mismanaged by designing amateurs? allow us to tell you 5 reasons why investing some time and trust during a proficient website designing company can assist you garner a way stable digital presence.

Uplifting brand image- We are all striving to make a singular impact and your brand goals aren’t distant from it. Knowledgeable Web Design Company features a comprehensive knowledge of what to incorporate and what not. These technicalities blending in with creativity is strictly what your brand needs immediately to uplift its digital position.

Creating memorable first impressions- First impressions persist with you for the longest time and if you’re a budding brand looking to line a stellar impact on your consumers, now is actually crucial for you. You’d want consumers flocking to your website to possess a gala time and professional Web Design Company can make it happen.

Aiding in your digital dominance- during this cat and mouse race with competitors sprouting in and around you each passing day, striving for digital dominance is one among the foremost potent ways to urge noticed within the crowd. With a proficient Web Design Company by your side, you’ll boost your brand’s digital presence with designs and layouts that conform to the industry-best marketing trends.

Enhancing consumer experience- Customer is king and ensuring audiences flocking to your website are greeted with utmost convenience is one among the best ways of consumer attraction that there ever is. After all, a cheerful audience features a larger chance of converting to a possible customer.

Keeping you before trends- we’ve mentioned this before and that we can’t stress enough on this. One among the key trends within the designing industry is to make unique designs that’ll not just compel but captivate your customers and your competitors too. By doing so, you’ll establish a concrete market footprint for yourself.

A Professional By Your Side– If you’ve been studying the business trends of today, by now you want to have found out how important a Web Design Company is. Now if you’ve got big plans about your business and it’s digital impact on your audience, Netleaf Software, a Web Design Company in Gurgaon, India could have the answers you’re trying to find. From best-in-class infrastructure to thorough industry-bred professionals personally manning your digital presence- we assure you, your online business are going to be within the best hands.

[thegamecollection]

SUPER SMASH BROS. ULTIMATE - REVIEW ROUNDUP

Ever since it’s release, I haven’t been able to put Super Smash Bros. Ultimate down.  Being new to the series, I don’t think I’m personally ready to step into the ring with all of those from the N64 arena yet but I’ve been loving the World of Light mode as it has so many different challenges to take on.

Here’s what the critics have been saying on this great new title from Nintendo.

IGN - 9.4/10

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate lives up to its name, offering the most comprehensive game in the series to date. It has an absurd amount to play, fight, and unlock – though that can be to its detriment at times. While the World of Light adventure mode isn’t reason alone to get Smash Bros., it’s still a consistently amusing and shockingly large campaign, and a worthy compliment to Ultimate’s incredible multiplayer core.

Read the full review here

GameSpot - 9/10

Ultimate is a comprehensive, considered, and charming package that refines and builds on an already strong and enduring fighting system.

Read the full review here

Eurogamer - Essential

A chaos of details and features come together for one of the Switch's most generous - and exhilarating - games. 

Read the full review here

GamesRadar - 9/10

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate takes characters we’ve played for decades and remasters them into a robust, fantastically enjoyable package.

Read the full review here

The Escapist - 10/10

In an age where instant gratification is an essential feature in nearly all art, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate might seem almost miserly in its slow drip and patient reveals of its staggering depth. After more than 20 hours with the game, I’d still only unlocked two-thirds of the main cast and explored half of the World of Light’s map. Rather than feel irritated or cheated by its patience, I instead found Ultimate a luxurious experience, every bit as meditative in practice as its fights were bombastic. This is a game to be enjoyed over time, to be savored with a refreshed palate after you’ve spent some time away.

Read the full review here

That completes our roundup and, as you’d expect, Nintendo have once again given a stellar showing of one of their flagship titles.

Personally, I’d never given Smash Bros. much time in the past as I couldn’t really get engaged in them but this has had me hooked right away!

Get it today at The Game Collection

[perpetually-jungshook]

EOPQ16 i think o/c is too caught up in her annoyance with... jingleshit lol... to even fathom he might like her. I lowkey screamed when jimin and jk started you know. !!!!!! For some reason i was not expecting that. Also i laughed the most at the sewer water episode with yoongi and the pants situation at the end LOL. Thank you for the amazinggg and entertaining update even tho you said you weren't even near ready before. Best way to end my week. Can i hugz you. Also have a good weekend!

[Y’all this is a really important Goldilocks 07 ask]

HELLO HELLO!!! 💖

Jingleshit. My favorite name for him. Being honest, Goldilocks wasn’t even something I was going to post at first 😂 it was my way to vent my frustration (I had written everything in 01, 02, and half of 03 before posting the first part). So yes... some strange, inside joke references will naturally appear :’)

But to address some of the other stuff, I’m going to copy and paste a conversation I had with @echo-writes​ (namely because the Jikook confusion seems to be a prevalent issue)

It’s a little long, so keep your pants on 😉😂 man I’m just so full of bad jokes/references today

“Oh ok. So. About that. The thing is, a lot of Goldilocks comes from the fact that there are pretty much... well let's just say a few stories going on at the same time. Like, the happenings in it don't revolve around the narrator 100% of the time. 

For instance, Jikook or the sub plot with Yoongi. 

While a lot of stories take an omnipotent approach where the narrator is privy to all sorts of information that hammers out into no loose ends, is that anything like real life? Not that I'm saying Goldilocks is ANYTHING like it either XD because that's preposterous. 

But I do think that it's a lot more organic than most stories. So MAYBE the narrator will find out later (like in 08 *cough*) what happened that [lead to Jikook] making out on the couch, but I'm not planning on conveniently placing her in settings/conversations to fill in context, yknow? 

(and I'll also subtly point at their first movie night with Jungkook- where he was comforting Jimin and later, during the second one, when he had his arm around him)”

^I hope that clears things up a little bit!! 😄 I know it’s weird... but there are a lot of things that I hide in my stories. Like, little easter eggs. They don’t really impact the plot too much, but they make a better, more rewarding, more comprehensive story if you find them 😉 hint: Yoongi isn’t just there for show

Anyway! I’m really, REALLY glad you liked it! Thank you for taking the time to read and send this to me. It made me smile (and laugh).

AND OF COURSE YOU CAN HUG ME. Provided... I’m still a little sick so you might want to wash your hands afterward 😂 Hope you have a stellar weekend too, honey-bun.

Much love ~🐰 xx

[e350tb]

Nazi Germany: A Study in Incompetence

Recently, as part of the continuing train-wreck-crashing-into-the-Titanic-causing-both-to-fly-into-the-sky-and-hit-the-Hindenburg, Marvel has put out a ‘shocking twist’ that claims that the Nazis really won WWII and the Allies changed it with the cosmic cube because otherwise they would have had no hope or something. There are many things wrong with this premise (like ‘why in the hell did you think this was a good idea?’ and ‘why do you still think this isn’t political?’), but the main problem is that Nazi Germany was so fundamentally militarily incompetent that any idea of them winning the Second World War is utterly laughable.

For most of this, I’m largely going to be covering the period of 1940-41, when the Nazis are generally regarded as having the most military success. It’s when people think of when people think of ‘scary panzers cutting through helpless incompetent allies’, so it seems a good basis.

Case I: Blitzkrieg

On the 10th of May 1940, Germany invaded the Low Countries without declaration of war, beginning a military operation that would lead them to Paris in six weeks. Sounds impressive, right? Indeed, the impression you’d get from the History Channel and the memoirs of German officers would indicate a ruthlessly effective German Army doing everything right, crushing the Allies with sheer German professionalism and engineering.

It is, of course, utter crap.

Let’s start with the superior German engineering idea. Here was the primary tank of the German Blitzkrieg:

This was an excellent tank for its time - it had a good gun, it was fast, it was reasonably well-armoured, it had a radio and it could be produced in the numbers required to arm an armoured division. Quality German engineering, right?

It’s Czech.

You see, when the Germans rolled into the Sudetenland in 1938, they captured the Skoda plant in Plzeň. (So much for just wanting to ‘unite Germanic peoples’.)  With Skoda, they captured hundreds of these tanks - 150 of these ‘LT vz. 38s’ and 244 smaller ‘LT vz. 35s’. They continued production at these tanks at Skoda, and had about 2000 all-up by the end of production. These were the heart of the panzer divisions - most of the German vehicles were the Panzer I and II tanks, which were armed with powerful and devastating machine guns. (Okay, the Panzer II had a 20mm cannon, but that still isn’t exactly a stellar anti-tank weapon).

In fact, the best tank in the world in 1940 wasn’t German or Czech - it was French. The Somua S35, pictured below, was well-armoured and well-armed, with it’s only major weakness being a one-man turret (which meant the commander also had to load the gun) and the lack of a radio. They could well have decisively defeated the panzers, had they not been issued piecemeal to infantry formations. There was also the British Matilda II, which was slower than continental drift but better armoured them some fortresses - again, these were largely shackled to the infantry.

Indeed, the British and French actually did have quality equipment and training - as good as and in many cases better than the Germans. Their main problem was leadership.

France still suffered from the scars of the First World War, where it is not hyperbolic to say they lost an entire generation. The idea of another prolonged war on that scale horrified the French leadership to an extent that’s hard to understand today. Additionally, the entire French warplan was hinged on the Maginot Line, to the point where nobody considered what they’d do if it was bypassed. When the Germans went around it through the Ardennes and the Low Countries, the entire French High Command did one of three things; a) cry, b) blame everybody except them or c) begin preparing to surrender. Their main general was eighty years old and lived in a chateau outside France with no telephone or radio, so quick command decisions didn’t happen. To top it all off, several generals and politicians basically welcomed the Germans as an excuse to get rid of the socialist (and even simply democratic) elements in French society. In short, the French Army was good, but it was let down (in some cases, almost betrayed) by it’s leaders. (And as a little aside, if it weren’t for the French Army, the evacuation of Dunkirk probably wouldn’t have gone ahead - they were the rearguard.)

As for the Low Countries, the Dutch had been neutral for a hundred years and the Belgian Army was tiny and had no tanks. Gee whiz, defeating them was surely a great martial feat, wasn’t it?

So the Blitzkrieg was less German supermen rolling up France and more a bully kicking smaller countries in the teeth while French generals defeated their own army.

Also, they stopped the Germany Army outside Dunkirk in the middle of the evacuation of the British Army because Goring wanted to do it with just the Luftwaffe. The British got away.

Case II: Der Seelowe

After defeating France, Germany suddenly encountered a problem they hadn’t anticipated - the English Channel. If one is going to war with Britain, that’s probably one of the major things to consider.

Britain was pretty much alone at this point and it had left most of it’s heavy military equipment in France, but it did have two major tricks up it’s sleeve: the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. Also the Home Guard, I guess.

Undeterred by Britain’s finest ships, planes and elderly men, Hitler ordered the creation of a plan to invade Britain as soon as possible - Operation Sealion. This has achieved mythical status among stupid people on the internet - ‘if he had just launched Sealion! Britain would have been doomed!’ (They then try to pretend they aren’t salivating at the idea of a Nazi victory). In actually, Operation Sealion was so catastrophically stupid that not even the Nazis were dumb enough to actually try it.

Their first problem was defeating the RAF. While much is made of ‘how close the RAF was to defeat’, in actuality, British fighter production in late 1940 actually outpaced losses in the Battle of Britain - and as far as money was concerned, the American President Roosevelt was happy to lend Britain whatever money was needed to keep it up. Meanwhile, German fighters only had the fuel to remain above Britain for twenty minutes.

At sea, Germany had absolutely no chance of defeating the Royal Navy in a fair fight. While the Bismarck has achieved a legendary reputation, we should remember that it sailed once, sunk one ship (which was pretty much obsolete) and then was systematically hunted down and roflstomped comprehensively - and that’s the best performance of the German surface fleet. So the idea was basically to slip in while the Navy was looking the other idea, then presumably hope they could defeat the British before they needed little things like resupply of food and ammunition.

As for how they’d cross the rough waters of the open ocean between France and Britain?

River barges.

River barges.

River barges.

In another world, we’d be reading about how the vaunted German Army boarded their tiny barges and immediately got swamped in the Channel, and how the waterlogged remains of the SS were quietly mopped up by some old blokes with pikes. I kind of want to read that history.

Case III: Barbarossa

With Sealion cancelled, as much due to Hitler’s attention span as it was due to it’s impracticality, Germany began its plans for the Main Event - the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Let’s get the big misconceptions out of the way here - Barbarossa was not ‘a defence of Europe against communism’. The idea of Germany ‘defending the fatherland’ a thousand miles into Russian territory is insane. The German invasion of the Soviet Union was a race war - Hitler defined it as such, it was executed as such. German commanders willingly cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen and the SS in the extermination of Jews and communists in the Ukraine and Belarus. There was nothing noble or honorable about the German Army in the western USSR. I really cannot emphasize this enough.

But we’re talking about incompetence, not deliberate warcrimes, so here’s the run of the situation.

The Red Army was crushed in the early stages of Barbarossa, this can’t be denied. Almost the entire pre-war army in the western USSR was dead (not captured, not wounded, dead) by December 1941. The main person responsible for this isn’t Hitler or any of his generals - it’s Stalin.

In the late 1930s, in a fit of paranoia, Stalin orchestrated the Great Purge in an attempt to solidify his power. Tens of thousands of people - the so-called Old Bolsheviks, military commanders, party officials, ambassadors and basically everybody these people had associated with or so much as made eye contact with - were brutally tortured and executed (including, eventually, the guy in charge of the Purges). This was followed by a second purge after the Red Army’s poor performance in the war against Finland in 1940 (during which a general was shot for the crime of losing ‘seven battlefield kitchens’.) This meant that by the time the Germans invaded, the professional heart of the Red Army had been ripped out, replaced with cowed and terrified yes-men who were not competent in army command.

Training of troops was poor too, with more focus being put on political reliability than surviving on the battlefield. As a result, despite desperate resistance and some local successes, the Red Army was shattered like glass.

Again, not exactly an impressive feat, given the circumstances.

Not to be outdone on the military mistake-making front, Hitler began to make catastrophic mistakes of his own. The first was to bring his allies. While this might seem like a good idea on paper, it was terrible in practice. The Italian Army, for example, was in terrible shape - they seemed to exist primarily to look good in parades before Mussolini. They had performed no major training exercises before entering the war in 1940, and it was actually noted that all forms of training, basic or otherwise, seemed to outright stop for the winter. Many Italian soldiers were sent to the front with weapons they had never even seen before, never mind been shown how to use. And incredibly, they were probably the best of Germany’s allies in Barbarossa (apart from the Finns). Their allies from Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria were even worse, largely due to budgetary concerns, the whims of tin-pot dictators and poor morale after joining Germany’s war.

Mistake two was failure of intelligence. In September 1941, the Germans  suddenly encountered the T-34 and KV-1 tanks, which were far better than anything they had. These were thoroughly modern tanks, and they took the Germans completely by surprise. Which is mind-boggling, considering they’d sent officers to watch them being tested in 1940. Apparently Germany just lost this information or something. Germany wouldn’t have a really effective counter to these tanks until early 1943. So much for the vaunted Panzerwaffe.

Mistake number three, perhaps the most famous, is Hitler’s brilliant decision not to bring cold-weather clothing to an invasion of a country known for it’s long and brutal winters. This has been well covered so I won’t talk much about it, except to say that it was incredibly stupid.

But mistake number four? The biggest mistake? Invading the USSR in the first place.

The Soviets had more men, more tanks, more planes. They had so much land that it would be utterly impossible for the Germans to occupy all of it, even if they conscripted every person in Europe. The Soviets had more factories. They had more supplies, funneled in every day of every week by constantly arriving convoys from America and Britain. But most importantly, they were fighting for their lives. While Stalin might kill them, Hitler very definitely would, and would follow that up by erasing every trace of them from the Earth. If Hitler couldn’t hope to get Britain to give up without threat of extermination, what possible hope did he have to do that to the Russians?

Oh, and then he declared war on America when he didn’t even have to. That wasn’t very smart either.

I could keep going. I could talk about the tank that had a propensity to spontaneously catch fire. Perhaps the fighter jet that had an ejector seat that would send the pilot half-a-meter into the air before he was suddenly and violently sucked into the jet intake positioned right behind the cockpit. I could talk about the time they decided it would be a good idea to launch an armoured offensive at the Americans in the middle of a dense forest in the middle of winter without any air cover. But ultimately, that would just be reenforcing the point.

Hitler was incomptent, and so was his army. It’s time we stopped looking at them as some kind of unstoppable army of bogeymen defeated only by dumb luck and numbers. They sucked. Their only victories were against small countries or armies that were badly led. They weren’t special, they weren’t elite. The only thing they excelled at was slaughtering unarmed civilians and prisoners.

Forget the Allies, they’re the ones who’d need a fucking cosmic cube. Except Hitler would probably use it to power a rocket or something, and then it would blow up.

[netleafinfosoft]

Web Design Company : Imagine scrolling through your social media feed and you encounter a product that you’ve been combing the web for. One click and therefore the page redirects you to the official website of the brand-an entire new catalogue of comparable products unfolding ahead of you. Somewhere between checking out your favourite products or services, you add another traffic to the business owner’s kitty; That’s exactly how the digital world works lately. Whenever a customer raises an eyebrow on discovering your brand online, you add a successful milestone to your digital marketing books. But the whole gamut of digital marketing isn’t as effortless because it seems from the surface. Social media advertisements or topping the program chart is simply the tip of the iceberg and zip would are possible without a web platform by Web Design Company of your own navigating your digital presence on the planet Wide Web. So, if you’ve found yourself wondering where investing during a proficient Web Design Company is worth your while or not- this text are going to be an ideal read for you.

The Digital Scenario

Now before we dive right into the critical role a Web Design Company plays- allow us to break down the digital business scenario for you. Every brand, be it big or small has now made it to the digital screen and why not? the chance to flourish as a business and thrive as a business owner is endless because of the potent technological advancements that have brought internet and therefore the people closer together. Shifting from the paper-people to the digital approach was the simplest thing that happened to entrepreneurs round the globe. But where does it all start? If you’re watching a business offline, you’ll be brooding about storefronts and standees, but what happens when you’ve taken your digital business online? allow us to welcome you to the planet of website development.

The Stepping Stone to Digital Success

If your business has gone digital within the recent years, you’ll be watching skyrocketing sales, a thriving brand and a veteran network of target audiences- but so as to realize all that- you’d need a digital platform- a ‘website’ by Web Design Company as we call it. Now allow us to mention standing call at the ocean of competitors and creating a stellar digital image that drives customer traffic to your website.

To turn a striving business into a thriving business, you would like your consumer’s undying dedication and support, something that your website presence or persona features a lot to try to with. Does one remember that just one occasion you visited an internet site by Web Design Company that made your jaws drop? You kept scrolling up and down seeping within the brand’s spectacular representation of itself! That’s the type of head-turning opportunity businesses today strive for. This brings us to why the term ‘website designing’ is completely crucial to drive digital presence today!

Designs That Captivate

Walking into a digital platform the primary thing that strikes you is that the layout, the convenience of usage, the bold brand colors peeping from the corners- a medley of captivating content blending into exemplary design- giving the digital brand an abstract outlook. That’s what we term as ‘website designing’- the art of merging creativity and science together. A recent study conducted said almost 85% of individuals are automatically interested in graphics enhanced backdrops with pictures and videos helping them understand the concept far better than simple words etched on a bland background- such is that the impact of website designing. Now would you let such an important task be mismanaged by designing amateurs? allow us to tell you 5 reasons why investing some time and trust during a proficient website designing company can assist you garner a way stable digital presence.

Uplifting brand image- We are all striving to make a singular impact and your brand goals aren’t distant from it. Knowledgeable Web Design Company features a comprehensive knowledge of what to incorporate and what not. These technicalities blending in with creativity is strictly what your brand needs immediately to uplift its digital position.

Creating memorable first impressions- First impressions persist with you for the longest time and if you’re a budding brand looking to line a stellar impact on your consumers, now is actually crucial for you. You’d want consumers flocking to your website to possess a gala time and professional Web Design Company can make it happen.

Aiding in your digital dominance- during this cat and mouse race with competitors sprouting in and around you each passing day, striving for digital dominance is one among the foremost potent ways to urge noticed within the crowd. With a proficient Web Design Company by your side, you’ll boost your brand’s digital presence with designs and layouts that conform to the industry-best marketing trends.

Enhancing consumer experience- Customer is king and ensuring audiences flocking to your website are greeted with utmost convenience is one among the best ways of consumer attraction that there ever is. After all, a cheerful audience features a larger chance of converting to a possible customer.

Keeping you before trends- we’ve mentioned this before and that we can’t stress enough on this. One among the key trends within the designing industry is to make unique designs that’ll not just compel but captivate your customers and your competitors too. By doing so, you’ll establish a concrete market footprint for yourself.

A Professional By Your Side– If you’ve been studying the business trends of today, by now you want to have found out how important a Web Design Company is. Now if you’ve got big plans about your business and it’s digital impact on your audience, Netleaf Software, a Web Design Company in Gurgaon, India could have the answers you’re trying to find. From best-in-class infrastructure to thorough industry-bred professionals personally manning your digital presence- we assure you, your online business are going to be within the best hands.

[ilinkdigital]

Why You Should Care About Improving Customer Experience?

Customer experience should always be an integral part of every business strategy. Especially now, in today’s climate of adjusting to COVID-19 restrictions, paired with a lack of direct contact with customers, a shift to online services has emerged and with it, the need to provide a stellar experience from beginning to end.  

Businesses making the transition to digital transformation is not a new one, but a shift in customer behavior to online models won’t be a temporary change. Lockdown or not, we are living in an era of digitalization, and customer experience management must be a prime concern.

Quick Question: What is customer experience?

Customer Experience (CX) defines every interaction a customer encounters with the brand during his or her buyer journey. From initially navigating the website, inquiring, purchasing and talking with customer service if necessary.  

Everything businesses do to make a customer’s journey hassle-free impacts customer’s perception about the brand. Great customer experience drives both loyalty and revenue in the long run.

Why Customer Experience is important?

Great customer experience is more important than ever before, in order to maintain a long lasting relationship with consumers, businesses must deliver the products and services they promise. Consumers own the decision to stay with a brand or to switch to any of many other options in the marketplace.  

With engagement across social media becoming more prevalent, buyers are increasingly making decisions based on recommendations from those in their network and reviews they read online. Focusing on consistent, meaningful customer experience builds loyalty and will contribute to additional customers long term.  

What is the ROI of focusing on CX?

The impact of customer experience varies across industries varies but prioritizing CX from a strategic, operational and technical perspective helps companies gain a competitive edge. For industries like insurance and retail, improving customer service at any level proves worthwhile. Quality customer experience in healthcare engages patients, improves care outcomes, and reduces operating costs.  

ROI might manifest within weeks or might even take as long as a year to manifest. Some examples of areas for potential ROI include :  

Growth in the revenue

Additional opportunities for cross-selling

Expenses are kept in check

Better optimization of the customer journey

How digital transformation is changing the customer experience.

Today, digital transformation is driving businesses to adapt to new market realities. This transformation isn’t driven by businesses but consumers themselves. Consumers look for ways to interact with the brand across more and more platforms, from social channels to voice assistants and expect fast responses and comprehensive services more than ever before. With your competition is just a click away, it’s important to understand how to provide meaningful customer service through technology in every interaction.

User-friendly and device-independent application/ website

Good UX means good CX. A website’s design is a major contributor to credibility. Therefore it’s important for a website to be user friendly, load quickly, be responsive across all screen sizes, and  the transition across devices should be functional and seamlessly. All links throughout any apps and website should work and navigation across the pages should be seamless.  

A poorly designed website can upset potential clients and prompt distrust. It affects the customer retention rate and can affect future business. Also if your site isn’t optimized for mobile, your SERP ranking can suffer. A good website is more than just appearance.

Personalized customer experience.

Great customer experience requires a customer-centric mindset. Today every customer wants to feel valued as a unique individual and are willing to share personal information like preferences and interests. In fact, customers are three times more likely to respond to the companies that:

Know them by their name.

Understand their buying history

Suggest and recommends product based on it

Companies should these insights to specify a target audience and design marketing campaigns accordingly. With a CRM system, it becomes easy to stay connected with the customers through welcome emails, sales follow-up, or a recent campaign based on their navigation history. This data helps to create highly targeted messages to provide a personalized experience.

Monitor and measure performance

Customer experience is a complex and wide concept so it’s important to break down the specific metrics and how to leverage technology to stay on top of it.  

Conversion Rate – Measure when your prospect completes an action such as sales or transaction and becomes a customer

Customer Churn Rate – How often you lose customers.

Net Promoter Score – Customer willingness to share your product.

Customer Effort Score –Effort it takes a customer to purchase your product  

Customer Satisfaction Score – Includes customer feedback

Measuring the above qualitative data will help to improve the positioning of your services and products. Doing so allows you to know what your customers want and when. Taking insights from your customer database helps you make predictive business decisions and develop a respective marketing budget. Tools like Googly Analytics and web analytic tools, customer surveys and feedback help monitor and measure performance.  

Chatbots and voice assistance

Today AI-enabled voice technology has found its way into almost all aspects of our lives. Many businesses rely on these voice assistant interactions to provide better customer experience. Alexa, Siri, IBM Watson are just the tip of the iceberg.

Bots can offer customer service at any hour on their preferred platform and handle multiple messages to focus on accelerating customer engagement. This avoids customer impatience and helps address behavioral cues to interpret the urgency of a question. Bots can analyze interactions and escalate if necessary.  

Break the barrier between customer channels

Customers today look for quick responses and technology has given them the power to demand this irrespective of time and place. Most customers expect a customer service response within an hour no matter whether on weekdays or weekends. This has put a weight on businesses to stay available.

Customers expect seamless service no matter what stage of the buying journey they are in, so leveraging technology helps increase communication and support this experience. This improves customer experience, ensures real-time responses for them, and ultimately increases revenue.

The Take-Away.

Digitalization in providing the customer experience can be quite complex to understand. If you are looking to get started with digital transformation, think of cloud solutions first, instead of onsite solutions.

It helps your business to meet customer demands at times and stay updated with the latest features. Data management and analytics help you to map out the perfect customer journey and single user-friendly customer experience.  

No matter the size of the organization, digitalization opens a new landscape to improve your relationship with the customers.  

Thinking of digital transformation for your business. Check out our services.

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25 years of Frontier Developments

The 25 year tale of Britain’s most ambitious indie.

If there’s one thing that Jonny Watts has learned during more than two decades at Frontier Developments, it’s that the act of making the games is just half of the equation. As chief creative officer and longtime stalwart of one of the UK’s most inventive and ambitious studios, Watts has been at the forefront of many its most famous titles – from classics like Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 and LostWinds, to its most recent successes: Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster and Jurassic World Evolution. But as he explains, the secret to Frontier’s success as a fully independent, self-publishing development house required the whole team to analyse, study and adapt to the changing industry in order to become the success it is today.

Based in the heart of leafy Cambridge, England, Frontier is one of the most eclectic video game studios in the development business, not just in the UK but the world over. Celebrating its momentous quarter century milestone this year, Frontier‘s games have featured everything from cute interactive animals to scientifically accurate black holes; death-defying theme park rides, to authentic recreations of prehistoric lizards. Now with around 30 fully fledged titles under its age-worn belt, this is a truly veteran studio, but one that exudes a passion and a verve that belies its age.

Perhaps more importantly, there’s an inherent intelligence to Frontier that comes across in its games. There‘s an artful comprehension for how interactive experiences need to make players feel; a mechanical understanding of the detail and depth required to create specific niche interest titles; and an operational rigour that allowed the studio to pinpoint how it wants to communicate with and sell to its players. This last bit, crucially, is what has made Frontier Developments such a shining case study for the many benefits of studio independence.

The rise to indie darling was never an overnight transition; in many ways, it was 25 years in the making.

Elite Dangerous, Frontier’s massively multiplayer space epic let’s players take control of their own starship. They can fight, explore and travel throughout an expansive cutthroat galaxy, consisting of more than 400 billion star systems.

The DNA of a startup For Watts himself, the game development dream begun back in 1987, when he would run home from school, leap up the stairs to his bedroom and get to work coding games on his own personal computer. Naturally, his mum didn’t approve of Watts’ creative flights of fancy, insisting there was no financial future in playing games. At the time, she was largely right, but little did she know that it wasn’t playing games that Watts ever dreamed of turning into a feasible profession – it was making them. “I got just as much enjoyment destructing how games worked, learning how to code, learning how to do art,” he says.

Watts did, despite his initial childhood dreams, follow his mum’s wise advice in the latter half of his education – at least through university, where he studied a zoology degree. He was still creating games while studying, though. It was something he could never escape from, and which sustained his creativity through his university career until he pivoted to study a masters in computer science. Back in those days, this was the main academic currency if you wanted to be a video game developer – there were far fewer routes into the industry then, so Watts capitalised on his opportunities where he could.

As an alumnus, he went almost directly to development, firstly at the fellow Cambridge studio, Sensible Software. “[They] were in the same location as where Frontier was founded,” he says, “they were just north of Cambridge and we were south of Cambridge. It’s a development hub, so we all knew about each other, and I’d known about David [Braben, Frontier’s legendary founder] from when I first got my Spectrum, playing Elite on it. Everyone at our age was influenced by that game but I was actually more influenced by another Braben game called Zarch. It was a polygon game but it had real-time particles, light source shading, real-time generated shadows. It was an absolute technical tour de force, so much so that it influenced me to do my masters in computer science, because I was just so interested in graphical programming.”

Little did Watts know that, only several years after he left university he would begin working with his development hero. He reminisces about the earliest days of the studio‘s history, when the studio was based out of a farm in the Cambridgeshire countryside with just ten staff to its name. “My first memory was going through the door – it was all open plan – and seeing David with a microphone doing chicken sounds for some of the proto sound effects in Dog’s Life,” he says, laughing. Braben’s chicken impression was just for the placeholders, but there’s no doubt it’s uncanny. “You saw a very human side to a very friendly company,” Watts continues. “It was very technologically advanced, but if something needed doing we’d all muck in.”

The expansion from ten staff to now over 400 has taken many years, but the studio still retains the DNA of that startup. Elite, co-developed by David Braben and Ian Bell, along with Zarch and Virus were created before Braben founded Frontier Developments. The studio was born out of a desire to make a wider range of games and to make them faster, rather than spend five or six years in a single development cycle. Establishing Frontier allowed Braben to hire like-minded individuals that brought ideas to the table, in order to create a collaborative space where, as Watts puts it, “the egos are left at the door”.

Fast forward 25 years and Watts is still sat just a short way from Braben’s desk at Frontier’s brand new office premises – a pristine multi-level labyrinth of glass and steel that houses the 400+ strong team, all of which are working on their own individual projects. From the talented group still developing updates and expansions for Elite Dangerous, to the developers that are still adding content and new ideas to Jurassic World Evolution. Frontier continues to update its existing games heavily with new ideas and content, but that’s not to say it isn’t busy at work on future unannounced projects that span far into the future. What‘s perhaps most impressive is that the team has retained the spark and soul that made it such a brilliant upstart back in the early nineties.

The highly acclaimed Planet Coaster gives players limitless freedom to build rides and scenery piece by piece, with advanced management simulation gameplay and a connected global village where everyone can share in the creativity of players around the world.

Fired up by new technologies It must’ve been an alien prospect to think about back in 1994, when Braben and his team were hard at work in their tiny studio on a Cambridgeshire farm. But the technological power of Elite and its resounding popularity paved the way for a studio that relied on powerful, advanced proprietary technology to create some of the most believable worlds in video games. “David is a man who, along with Ian Bell, built an entire galaxy on the comparably unpowered BBC Micro, before creating Zarch for the Acorn Archimedes,” Watts says. “It wasn’t a big gaming machine, at all, but it fascinated him because of how powerful it was and what he could do with it. He did similar with Darxide for the 32x, which wasn‘t really well-supported by third parties but he looked at the technology and thought ‘I bet I can do some really crazy stuff with the technology in here’ Sure enough, it‘s one of the most technically advanced games on 32x.”

You can trace this trend all the way through Frontier’s history – instances where the company just saw an exciting piece of new technology and got fired up about it, using the bleeding edge advancements in hardware to enhance the game experience. And not just doing it for visual‘s sake, but learning how to leverage the machines to make the experience even more visceral, real, believable and authentic. With time the games machines themselves have, of course, become more advanced, with storage space and memory reading capacity increasing to the point where games can render enormous 3D environments, improve graphical fidelity to resolutions like 4K, not to mention feature more voice work, deeper simulations and much more. Features like shadow technology all sound like obvious and even boring, unimpressive staples of modern games nowadays, but the team at Frontier has been one of those driving this technology forward for 25 years, always revolutionising and always innovating.

A galaxy like no other Elite Dangerous is perhaps the purest example of this, taking the core components established with the original Elite and using Frontier’s newly expanded, talented team to build a modern 1:1 recreation of the entire Milky Way galaxy. It is, at its very core, a natural evolution of the game created in 1984, its enormous scale and detail made technically possible by the many advancements that Frontier has made since then. At the heart of it is a team who bring untold levels of talent to the process.

“The guys who did the stellar forge – the way we calculate the galaxies from real scientific data – one has a PhD in astrophysics, and one did astronomy in university,” Watts says. “There’s maybe five people in the whole country, in the world, who could do that, who have the strange crossover between a degree in astrophysics and a degree in computer programming, an interest in video games, and an interest in Elite. And of course David has his Cambridge science degree. A lot of us have science backgrounds. We’re, at worst, amateur enthusiasts. At best we’re actually pretty clued up people who have an absolute passion for the subjects we work on. We’re still reading, researching, looking at articles, stimulated by it.”

Elite Dangerous is a wonderful melding of passion and intelligence, and one of the the largest video game worlds ever created. It boasts a scale unlike few others, but the magic of Frontier is that there is depth and detail to match the scale. Not only can you gawp at the macro features of the game; faster-than-light travelling across the galaxy, zipping close to distant stars, landing in space stations and rovering around the rugged, rocky surface of exoplanets; you can also invest hundreds if not thousands of hours into role-playing in an interconnected universe that rewards your intelligence. Players can communicate, trade and fight with one another; team up and explore distant star systems; invest and sell trading goods in an ever changing economic world; create clans that fight it out for territorial control of the many segments of this galactic world. There is politics, economics and real struggle in this universe. It’s not just huge – it’s believable. “It feels very real,” Watts says, “and when you’re in it you feel very vulnerable.”

Authenticity and real science The two other of Frontier’s most recent games – Planet Coaster and Jurassic World Evolution – follow similar trends, creating worlds that are believable despite being completely different to galaxy sized space role-playing games. Planet Coaster revels in a beautiful, charming and gentle aesthetic that welcomes you into its colourful simulations and lets you spend dozens of hours creating your dream theme parks. But hidden under the hood are complex codes and authentic simulations all based on the real life flow systems utilised in actual theme parks. Watts himself is an avid theme park enthusiast, regularly visiting parks across the UK and beyond to get his roller coaster thrills with his two daughters, and it’s an intense passion that clearly comes through in the finished games.

“My favourite theme park is – and this is really hard – Disneyland,” Watts says, explaining how the team had the chance to build a 1:1 recreation of the original Disneyland, in Anaheim, which happens to be the only theme park Walt Disney saw before his death. It was re-created for Disneyland Adventures and Frontier captured the sights and sounds of this original landmark down to the most minute of idiosyncrasies. “We were so committed to authenticity. When you feature a Disney princess from the 60s or 70s we had to use, where possible, the original stars. That kind of detail really did transport you into that magical world.”

“Disneyland is a strange place because once you go there, all your troubles just evaporate. I went there with my 18 and 20 year-old daughters and I‘m suddenly a dad again rather than the person giving them a lift back from the pub or something,” he says. “It‘s a wonderful place. And I really like the theming in parks. It transports me to another world. Again, it goes back full circle to another believable world.”

This hidden authenticity enforces the realism and believability of Planet Coaster, despite the otherwise cartoon looks. It’s an approach that allows Frontier’s game to further stand the test of time simply because the foundations themselves are built on real science. It’s not surface entertainment that relies entirely on the graphics or the characters, instead utilising the real world information that’s baked into the very code itself.

In Jurassic World Evolution players take charge of operations on the legendary islands of the Muertes archipelago and bring the wonder, majesty and danger of dinosaurs to life.

Dinosaurs and Kinect experiments As for Jurassic World Evolution, the real life science is less concrete simply because of the 65 million year old nature of the creatures in question, but it’s “unbelievably authentic to the films,” Watts says. “We’re using the original actors, the things that have been derived from the films and the books. There’s actually a bit of zoology in there; the genetics, going back to my zoology degree. We use science and reality and authenticity to make things believable. We have so much accuracy in our games, and everything we do we want to have this grounding. We had a guy called Dr Jack Horner, and he was a consultant paleontologist on the Jurassic films back in the day, actually working with Michael Crichton. We asked him to come over [to talk about the game] and I like to think he didn’t do it just because of the paycheque, but because he saw that we had a passion, and an intelligence, and a dedication to doing these things.”

Frontier doesn’t just limit that adventurous and authentic approach to scientific accuracy to its software. Many of its hardware experiments have similar traits, including the Kinect experiments that it embarked on in the mid noughties with the Xbox 360, when the team was still partnered with publisher Microsoft. What makes this all fundamentally possible is Cobra, the studio’s own game engine, which it has been consistently and steadily updating for many years. Rich Newbold has been the Executive Producer at Frontier for a while now, joining over 10 years ago. “Cobra is constantly evolving and growing,” he says. “It has a dedicated code team working on improving it as well as us generating new technology for each game and merging that into it. On Kinectimals, we developed technology to improve our animation system to allow a more usable way to use state machines and logic on a character. This then got developed more and more with Kinect Disneyland Adventures and again with Zoo Tycoon, Planet Coaster and Jurassic World Evolution. The constant improvements to the render system for each release feeds back into Cobra and we then use that in the new projects. We‘re always looking to develop and re-use the core technologies across our projects. It’s a huge asset to have such a flexible engine in-house.”

The entire brief for Kinectimals was to create animals that look, sound and feel alive to the players. It was a challenge that Frontier relished as it had the chance to bring its creativity into even more physical environments, connecting cute animals on the screen with players in the real world. It hadn’t really been done before – at least not in such a mainstream way – and Frontier was the mastermind behind the code and tech that would give Kinectimals a real sense of life to the players.

“Even though [the animals] are beautifully cute, the AI behind them is super sophisticated,” Watts says. “There’s something like 500, 600, 700 animations on there, all reacting to make that animal feel alive.” The expertise the team built up animating the animals in A Dog’s Life proved beneficial for the work on Kinectimals. “I remember doing a Dog’s Life lecture at Bournemouth university,” Watts continues. “One of the students came up with a question – he said, ‘are those animals alive?’ A few seconds later I realised it was the first time he’d seen an animal on a computer game screen that was reacting in an organic, non-repetitive way. There’s a lot of attention to detail that stands the test of time.

“The thing I was most proud of was the subtle things that we did; the way you move your head, the way you move your body, the animal would react and position itself to you,” he continues. “If you didn‘t do anything, the animal would try and get your attention. It was always monitoring you. It was always trying to stimulate you to do something and that‘s what I was quite interesting in with Kinect – we can obviously do the clever stuff where you throw a ball [but] it’s what we can do behind the scenes which made those animals come alive. To be honest, it‘s what Kinect did the best; interpret what you could do behind the scenes. We also did something which I thought was really cool in Zoo Tycoon with Kinect. We wanted to do animal enrichment with chimpanzees. And what was really good is that you could move your face and move and blink and the chimpanzee would come up to the screen and mimic you. That‘s what they try doing in real life. What‘s even better is when it didn‘t quite work, you thought – and this is the illusion of game creation – that the chimpanzee was being a bit cheeky even though it might not have recognised it. That was really subtle. It was really interesting to see people properly interact with human natural movement with essentially what is an AI ability.”

With Kinectimals Frontier succeeded in creating virtual animals that felt, sounded and looked alive to players.

Military doctrine and a DIY approach The same too goes for VR, which the studio invested in heavily for Elite Dangerous. Again, earlier work stood the team in good stead – Frontier had already worked in secret on software for Microsoft’s Hololens. The goal was to create one of the most immersive virtual reality experiences available. In many ways it was the perfect fit – a beautiful, expansive world in which you remain stationary as a player, controlling a moving vehicle without having to move your own body. It dodges the usual problems associated with VR – namely, the gimmicky tacked-on movement controls that mean virtual reality shooters or sports games are nigh on impossible to get right. In Elite, you control your spaceship from the cockpit, but are treated to the immense scale and scope of a space game.

“If you launch in a Lakon ship – they‘re with the ones that have a glass bottom – you come out of the station and look down and you almost have a sense of vertigo,” Watts says. “When I‘ve really got the lights turned down, I almost feel like I‘m insignificant in the world and I‘m just trying to make my way. That was really cool.”

“The second thing from a combat point-of-view; in combat you have an amazing competitive advantage. That‘s why all the canopies are glass – because when you are in VR, if a spaceship goes over the top of your craft, you can move your head and look at them. This is military doctrine – in dogfighting, he who sees first wins and really the absolute premise is that we wanted to get dogfighting to be absolutely as visceral as possible and as accurate. What‘s really interesting is in space, if we were really being super accurate, in space you‘d be going so fast that dogfighting wouldn‘t [really work]. All the best space games mess around with speed to make it more akin to World War Two. There was quite a lot of research in combat, which facilitated the use of VR and that‘s why it‘s an amazing experience, because it‘s not just a mechanism to make you feel part of the world, it gives you a competitive advantage in a very large component of the game.”

Kickstarting Frontier’s success Frontier has always had a DIY approach to its development, typically finding and hiring the right people for the job – rollercoaster experts, astrophysicists and more. It’s created a studio that has a wonderful camaraderie that encourages collaboration, and which allows them to go all in on projects. However, it was the transition to being self-published and fully independent that allowed them to take those risks to the next level, making decisions based on what the studio as an entity wanted to embark on, and not being beholden to outside influences. Digital distribution was the catalyst that made all of that possible.

“In the old days, you release your cassette or your 3.5“ disk and never update it,” Watts says. “Maybe, just maybe, you‘d get another disk as a cover disk on a magazine to do a critical flaw but now we‘re distributing digitally and being independent, we can make decisions and keep telling more stories. It‘s fantastic.”

It’s generally regarded that Elite Dangerous was Frontier’s first real self-published game, but in fact it was LostWinds that paved the way for Frontier’s future. “The beautiful thing about Lost Winds is it‘s highly acclaimed, won awards, people really liked it,” Watts says. “It had a beautiful vibe but it was a game that we started and finished without any publisher involved. But publishers can be very helpful. When you make a game, I think there needs to be a little bit of antagonism like in The Beatles, you need someone to critique what you have done to make it better and not settle for second best. We had to fulfill both roles and be our own harshest critics.”

The happiness clearly inspired the team to push further towards full autonomy over their own destiny. Toward the end of 2012, the team unveiled the aforementioned Kickstarter program for Elite Dangerous, which was one of the most successful crowd-funding projects of the time. It propelled Frontier forward and gave them an answer to the question that Braben, Watts and the other senior team members had been asking themselves: is Elite still relevant? Does it still retain the popularity to be a big hit?

Fast-forward five or six years and it’s a model that Frontier adopts for all of its games. “It’s good from a profit point of view, but we also engage directly with players,” says Watts. “We know what they want and it’s an amazing partnership. One of the things that people say that when you self publish it’s so good because you can do what you want and haven’t got this external producer – when we had the Elite Dangerous kickstarter we had 20,000 external producers. They were our conscience. We had exactly the same goals, obviously different ways of getting to those goals, but they really stimulated us to do better. What was really good about it was that it was sort of a validation for our idea. It gave us such confidence to make the game that we all wanted.”

Elite Dangerous is continually evolving, adding new features, narrative and in-game content with each new season.

A clear vision for the future The transition itself was made possible by learning from their excellent working relationship with major publishers like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo. Frontier had always had a fantastic game-making ability from the beginning, but there’s a whole host of other things involved in releasing and selling a video game rather than just producing it on the creative side. Frontier learned a huge amount about maintaining quality, and all the nuances of how publishing works, from working with publishers in the decades prior. “We had such an amazing relationship that [publishers] were very open with us,” Watts says, “and we had insight into the other half of releasing a game. We spent thousands and thousands of hours understanding that and being exposed by these very gracious yet demanding publishers, and that really trained us.”

When the Elite Dangerous Kickstarter was launched, Frontier‘s publishing team was a team of no one. A few years later and that publishing team is over 35 people strong, complete with dedicated product managers, graphics artists, trailer editors, a dedicated community team and its own in-house PR and Marketing teams. The entire company approached publishing very seriously, and dedicated a lot of resources to making the publishing side of the business successful, ramping it up at such an incredible rate. Over the last 25 years the studio has gone from the Cambridgeshire farm, to a single space on the Science Park industrial park, to three individual offices on the Science Park, to its own space on the Science Park. It‘s remarkable.

“We‘re still really friendly with the people that we dealt with,” Watts says. “It‘s quite interesting that when we released Elite Dangerous on Xbox, it was like dealing with old friends again. Microsoft, Sony, whoever we work with knew that we were obviously super professional and hit our deadlines and our budgets, but our quality would always exceed. We exceeded it because we are so passionate about making games. In some way, it was never a development issue transitioning. Yes, we can develop games, but guess what: we can also sell them and we can communicate with our players, we can communicate with the world, we get our story out.”

“The relationships we have across every single component of what it takes to get a game out there has grown magnificently. We‘re a super professional company and I think we managed our transition so well on so many levels. Again, I just think that from where I am sitting, I think it‘s an absolute pleasure to be in the games industry. Between developers and publishers we all know how hard it is to make a game, we know how much passion we put into a game and we‘re all working together. It‘s just a really nice industry.”

As for the future, it looks very bright for Frontier. There’s still the passion and love for video games that existed 25 years ago, only now it’s distilled, straight from the makers themselves without any middle men. What you see is what you get, and it seeps into every aspect of the games – from development to PR and community events. “We still approach games in a very similar way,” Watts says, “and the passion that I put into Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 is 100 percent [the same level of] passion I put into Planet Coaster. We‘ve grown so much and over the last few years it‘s just this on-going process. Now we‘re relying on our own IP.”

The team are understandably tight-lipped on what’s next, not ready to reveal whatever creative, ingenious project they’re cooking up behind the scenes. No doubt it’ll be something packed with detail, and rich with a British soul. But Frontier is quick to reassure that there’s still an ongoing commitment to the many games they’ve already got out there in the world – Watts himself is still excited about all of them, and they fit exactly into the creatively unique, technologically challenging framework that they want to achieve at Frontier.

  The timeline of Frontier Developments

1994 David Braben had actually been making games since 1983, so he was almost a decade into his development career by the time he founded Frontier Developments. It was a monumental time, with Frontier’s first actual game being the CD32 port of Frontier: Elite II. Braben’s own older games – Zarch and the original Elite (created with Ian Bell) – are considered archival Frontier titles. While they weren’t made under the Frontier name, they influenced the studio’s output and are part of its DNA even today.

2004 It was ten years into Frontier’s life and the team had a huge success with Rollercoaster Tycoon 3. It was a much loved theme park simulation game, and one that sold well over 10 million copies worldwide, making it Frontier’s best-selling game to date. Thanks to the studio’s hard work, it was also a technologically bold game with graphical settings that stretched the most powerful graphics cards of the era. That meant that the game itself had a very long shelf life and didn’t begin looking dated until long after release.

2008 LostWinds acted as one of Frontier’s experimental games, letting the team dip its toes into the water and see how self-published games could be made and marketed. Originally released on the Nintendo Wii, the popularity of LostWinds saw it later ported to iOS and later to PC for a wider player base to experience. It isn’t the most well-known of Frontier’s 30 or so games, but it’s arguably one of the most important in its transition to a fully independent studio.

2014 While 2014 marked the official release of Elite Dangerous, the game’s story starts much earlier. In 2012 the studio embarked on a Kickstarter project to fund the game’s development. It was a resounding success, with players desperate to get a new, modern version of the much-loved space franchise. It also marked the real turning point in Frontier’s history, launching the studio onto the stock market and capitalising on the upticking trend of digital distribution to create a fully independent studio. It’s a model that’s made Frontier and several other studios like it a great success.

2018 Jurassic World Evolution saw the many lessons learned with the success of Elite Dangerous applied to a widespread release across multiple platforms. Whereas Elite Dangerous had a staggered launch across PS4, Xbox and PC, Jurassic World Evolution was released on all three at once. While the team worked with Universal on several parts of the project, it was developed and published by Frontier themselves. When it released last year it fast became the team’s best launch of all time, selling one million copies in just five weeks.

Wolfgang Fischer

The post 25 years of Frontier Developments appeared first on Making Games.

25 years of Frontier Developments published first on https://leolarsonblog.tumblr.com/

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