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"I think I've lived long enough to see competitive Counter-Strike as we know it, kill itself." Summary of Richard Lewis' stream (Long)

I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

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Not your parents PLAYBOY: How Playboy is reinventing themselves and why you should Invest $MCAC

I know what you're already thinking. Playboy is a dead porn brand that publishes a magazine and doesn't appeal to millennials or gen z right?
Wrong.
Leadership
Let's start with Ben Kohn, the CEO. Kohn has worked in private equity for 25 years and started a firm called Rizvi Travers which invested in pre IPO tech companies. They were the largest investor when Twitter went public and invested in Facebook, Snapchat, Square, SpaceX, Instacart, and Uber.
In 2011, Kohn partnered with Hugh Hefner and took Playboy private. Kohn became the CEO in 2017 with the goal of revitalizing one of the largest, most recognizable brands in the world. Since becoming CEO, Kohn has been shutting down most of the legacy business and most recently discontinued producing a domestic magazine. He's focused most of his attention so far on growing the high margin licensing business and direct to consumer business, transforming Playboy into a consumer lifestyle brand focusing on 4 categories:
Kohn is also placing a strong emphasis on appealing to women and young people, something that Playboy had never done in the past. Over the last 3 years, the female audience has grown by 70% and 90% of their audience today is under the age of 40. Out of the total e-commerce sales, 40% of customers are women.
Financials
Playboy is already a profitable business. They have a highly efficient, high margin business model that accelerates with growth.
For the first 9 months of 2020, Playboy grew revenue by 78% from 57 million to 101 million and grew adjusted ebitda 129% from 9.5 million to 22 million. For 2021, they reaffirmed guidance of 167 million of revenue and 40 million dollars of ebitda. By 2025, Playboy is conservatively projecting 296 million of revenue and 140 million in ebitda, but expects it to be much greater. It's also important to note that they have over 400 million of forward booked minimum guaranteed cash flow, but they only recognize 67 million of that today, so the actual revenue numbers are much higher.
Playboy's business is monetized in two primary ways, licensing and direct to consumer. Licensing is a key part of the revenue stream and they anticipate it more than doubling moving forward. However, Playboy is extremely excited about its growing direct to consumer business as well which I will dive into in the next section.
Growth
Playboy has huge growth opportunities in each of their 4 product categories. First I want to point out that Playboy is HUGE in China and it's growing rapidly in India. In China, Playboy is one of the leading men's apparel brands with over 2500 brick and mortar stores and over 1000 e-commerce stores. Playboy sells products in over 180 countries and is the 17th most licensed brand in the world.
Style & Apparel:
Over the last 3 years, Playboy has partnered with Pacsun, Misguided, Supreme, and others. The Pacsun and Misguided businesses have increased almost 15x over the last 3 years. Playboy also launched Playboy Labs and partnered with Steve Aoki to promote the brand. Playboy intends on transitioning this business from a pure licensing business to a direct to consumer business going forward. They have future collaborations with Yandy planned as well.
Sexual Wellness:
The sexual wellness category is a 240 billion dollar industry today and is projected to grow to 400 billion by 2024. Currently, the industry is fragmented and made up of small businesses with no ability to scale. Playboy is poised to become the leader in this category through strategic acquisitions of existing companies and by growing its product offerings. Yes, I'm talking about lingerie, condoms, sex toys etc. They recently acquired the sexual wellness retailer Lovers for 25 million and expect them to add 45 million in revenue over the next 12 months. They are planning on making more strategic acquisitions in this space moving forward to become the leading direct to consumer brand in this field. They also began offering online sexual wellness classes for women, which have seen large growth since inception.
Gaming & Lifestyle:
The growth opportunities in this category are huge. Playboy is diversifying into online gambling, mobile gaming, CBD/Marijuana, and virtual reality. They have a social club/poker room opening in Houston this year in addition to their casino in London. They currently have partnerships with Microgaming as well as Scientific Games for mobile gambling apps like slots and poker, with plans to build more. They are also planning on entering the sports gambling market through partnerships with well known sports betting operators.
Moreover, they recently launched an exclusive furniture collection on Wayfair and plan on offering more in the future. They currently offer 3 CBD products and have plans to enter the legal marijuana market when it's legalized at the federal level, which might happen soon under the Biden administration. As of now they sell Playboy branded smoking materials like ash trays and grinders. They are planning on launching 4 more CBD products in 2021. Lastly, Ben Kohn said that experiencing Playboy through a virtual world format is something that is "extremely interesting to us". He gave an example of the Travis Scott and Unreal Platform collaboration.
Beauty and Grooming:
Currently, Playboy offers men's and women's fragrances and color cosmetics in Europe. They have plans to expand their product line and enter the North American market this year. In China, a place where Playboy has a large market presence, Men's grooming is one of the fastest growing categories and an area that Playboy is not in today. They are planning on entering this market in the near future with Playboy branded skincare and grooming products.
SPAC Merger
Playboy has a DA with Mountain Crest Acquisition Corp, $MCAC, with the shareholder vote taking place THIS TUESDAY 2/9/21. Once it's approved, the ticker will change to PLBY shortly after. One of the great things about this deal is that there are absolutely no warrants outstanding, meaning there will be very little dilution. They only have 1/10th of a right per share outstanding which automatically convert to common stock. Upon completion of the merger, PLBY will have only 37 million shares outstanding, which is a very low float. Any increase in volume and demand will send the stock price higher.
After the merger, PLBY will have a market cap of approximately 413 million. For comparison to other global brands, Nike's market cap is 185 billion, Disney's is 329 billion, and Lululemon's is 45 billion. Now I'm not saying Playboy is near those companies today. However, if they continue growing and realize their potential, they're massively undervalued.
Additionally, the management team all signed 12-month lock ups, preventing them from selling for at least one year. This is not a transaction sale, but a true capital raise to accelerate growth. They are in this for the long haul.
Conclusion
Playboy has big growth opportunities in multiple product categories to become a leading consumer lifestyle brand. They have a high margin profitable business model and a very healthy balance sheet. They have 100 million in free cash right now and only 40 million in net debt, or one times 2021 adjusted ebitda. They already have global brand awareness and the bunny logo alone has tremendous value. Ceo Ben Kohn knows what he's doing and has a proven track record of success.
It might be flying under the radar right now because all the hype is surrounding GME and EV socks. I believe when the ticker changes to PLBY and people realize that Playboy is no longer what it used to be, this has huge long term upside.
FYI: All of the statistics I mentioned are directly taken from the CEO Ben Kohn in his 1 hour webinar interview with SpacInsider.
Disclosure: Long 500 commons $MCAC
Disclaimer: Do your own due diligence too
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Its a Boomer play, but its guaranteed money: $GE Leaps

So, this DD isn't actual TA. It is a series of (what I believe) are very safe assumptions: a combination of political analysis, energy trends, and inevitable nation-wide "must have" investments. WARNING: this is long. By necessity, one assumption leads to another. I'll give you the one sentence TLDR up front, but because this is an assumption-chain, I encourage you to read this post
----
TL/DR:
In order for Biden to get a quick win for what is looking like unfavorable (to Dems) 2022 midterms, he will first shoot for a massive infrastructure bill. Either way Georgia goes, Dems won't blow up the filibuster. Therefore, if he wants to have any "green" policies in his first term, he has to make it super amenable to Republicans. (1) Connecting **rich** renewable areas (mostly Republican states) by extensive HVDC lines to (2) an enhanced nationwide Grid (HVDC lines) will kill two birds with one stone. This ^ infrastructure is inevitable, either way. $GE is the #1 and only American HVDC provider, 220k workers +. $GE Renewables don't contribute to revenue right now, but HVDC + Wind (which will be yuge) make it a massive discount rn.
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I am going to lay down a series of linear assumptions and realities below. I feel like these assumptions are all safe, therefore, it is highly likely that the outcome I describe comes to fruition within the next 4 years.
  1. EVs are going to see mass adoption. Every automaker + Apple is trying to get in on this. BEV advantages are simply too great. It is highly likely that by 2025, 30% or more of the U.S. fleet will be electric. This will only continue to 2030.
  2. This will cause big increases in demand on the grid. Go google around: Grid owners are ecstatic about this. The average American home uses ~33 kWh of energy per day. I own a model 3, and BARELY drive (i dont commute) and still use ~10kWh per day for driving. A commuter may use around 30-35 kWh per day just to drive. By 2025, if ~30% of the U.S. fleet is electric, that'll cause a significant increase in grid demand. More important, though, is that energy generation investment takes time. Grid owners know this is coming. They will beef up generation faster and faster as the U.S. economy becomes more electrified instead of based on fossil fuels.
  3. Added capacity is likely to be green. This has 2 causes. (1) Finance: Coal isn't cost competitive with solar and wind anymore. Solar is getting very, very cheap and more and more efficient. Offshore wind is having a renaissance. Nuclear is greener, but more expensive (~$4,200 per kW), and NIMBYism will prevail. Solawind + batteries is cheaper than $4,200 per kW right now. Additionally, Alaskan oil can't even get bank financing now, and Coal isn't expanding. People see the end is near. (2) Politics. Dem administration for the next 4 years, and green energy isn't the political football it was 10 years ago. Fighting renewables isn't the focus of the right anymore. Additionally, Democrats resist natural gas expansion: remember the Keystone pipeline? Natural gas is pretty green and cheap af, but its not everywhere, and I deem it unlikely that population centers (NE Corridor, Cali, Chicago, etc etc) are going to be OK with more and more natural gas plants. I deem it unlikely that we're gonna be a 50%+ natural gas country.
  4. Biden will do an infrastructure bill. This will happen. Its popular, its needed, and its perfect for his huge desire to be seen as a bipartisan president.
  5. Biden will try and include moderate green elements in this bill because he knows he won't get green policies otherwise. Even if the two Georgia seats go blue, there is **ZERO** chance the Dems blow the filibuster. You have (1) a president that won by a narrow margin, that (2) isn't that popular, (3) who has a bad-looking 2022 midterm, that (4) won't run in 2024 cause hes ancient, with (5) a not-too-popular VP, can't afford to run roughshod over norms and weaken their 2022 prospects. 50-50 plus Kamala casting the deciding vote? Please. Not happening.
  6. Green elements in an infrastructure bill will have to benefit Red states in order to get passed. We're not gonna get a carbon tax / cap and trade system. We're not gonna get massive oil taxes
  7. A lot of Red states are RICH in renewables. Look at these maps (https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar.html) for U.S. solar, and this map (https://energy.maryland.gov/Pages/Info/renewable/windmaps.aspx) for U.S. wind. What do you notice? For the most part, there are huge wind opportunities in the Midwest. There is huge solar potential across Texas and the South. Outside of California and Northeast Corridor offshore wind, renewables are concentrated in the Midwest and South.
  8. Right now, we can't take full advantage of these areas because the infrastructure to transport 2025-2030 sized energy demands to population centers don't exist. This is key. Right now, the U.S. energy grid is largely disconnected in terms of HVDC lines (high voltage lines capable of transmitting huge amounts of power with minimal loss: it resembles small, little fiefdoms. Google "U.S. HVDC Map" (make sure you're looking at the current ones--not the projections). We don't have that much HVDC infrastructure. In this past, there wasn't a huge emphasis because there wasn't that much need....renewables price efficiency didn't make for THAT compelling of a need, and localized Grid owners made-do with the status quo. HVDC network improvement is INEVITABLE. Renewables are too cheap, and the efficiencies inherent in concentrating wind and solar where appropriate are too vast. Right now, as you read this, there is an UNDERSEA Ultra HVDC cable being laid between Australia and Singapore to transport solar power. I shit you not. Europe and China are building vast HVDC and Ultra HVDC lines right now. Look at this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects. See how many are in Asia/Euro vs the U.S.? Its a fucking joke. It is extremely unlikely that we're gonna just slap solar and wind where they are sub-optimal, rather than seek greater ROI. Mass HVDC lines are inevitable.
  9. General Electric is the only large American HVDC provider. GE employs 200,000+ Americans. It is literally one of the oldest American companies. It has a super American brand name, and is politically connected.
  10. HVDC is expensive. I'm not an expert, but because of NIMBY, its likely that a lot of HVDC will be buried along rail lines (From what I read). HVDC between hundreds of wind/solar fields across the U.S. will need to be built, plus HVDC / Ultra HVDC between renewable zones to NE Corridor, Chicago, California. I'd google around for figures, but basically, its $$$$$$$$$.
  11. Right now, General Electric's Renewables sector barely brings in any revenue (17% 2019 revenue, around $15 billion https://www.statista.com/statistics/245430/revenue-of-general-electric-by-segment/#:~:text=Aviation%20and%20power%20are%20the,U.S.%20dollars%20one%20year%20before.). The new CEO is actually pretty fucking great (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Lawrence_Culp_Jr). He turned Danaher around, and is setting up GE for success. GE has a TON of debt (debt/equity above 6.0), but what will happen to the stock when GE is given absolutely gigantic contracts in order to buff up the U.S. Grid? They really are the only American company with the production/size ability to do this. What happens when the GE Renewables sector grows by 4-5x over the next 10 years? Grid improvements + Wind turbines are going to go up bigly. That $15 billion revenue line item may increase dramatically.
If you read this far, let me restate that this isn't TA. I don't have strikes for you. I don't know how to value HVDC and Wind over the next decade. However, I have a STRONG feeling in my nips that $GE is going to be a major American comeback story, and ^ that political/economic/renewable trends make it exceedingly likely that GE will have huge grid contracts coming up. How much of this is already baked into the price? I have no idea, but I do know that the big boys don't gamble on Adderall rantings like this, so it probably isn't baked in.
I'm using GE to add some safety to my current 100% TSLA portfolio. I encourage you all to pick up at least a few cheap 2022 GE Leaps. I'm buying the furthest out, highest strike calls I can get.
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Video Game Review: 1-800-SUPER

1-800-SUPER takes place in the moderately nearish future of 2056. You have recently been hired by a hotline for superheroes and supervillains. You got hired thanks to your stunning, though typo filled, application...and because nobody else applied. The hotline has been redirected to your cellphone. You will help guide the heroes and villains. However, you must also mind the balance between good and evil. Maxing out the meter on either end will result in bad things. If there is too much good, then the city will be turn into a surveillance police state where the superheroes rule as autocratic dictators. If, on the other hand, there is too much evil, then the city will descend into anarchy, and the villains will have free reign. Each choice you make will impact the balance, so choose wisely.
I was approached to review 1-800-SUPER by Markus Witzlhofer. He contacted me on behalf of Pangolin Park; a small indie company based in Berlin. They had come out with an interactive audio drama game, and were wondering if I'd be up for reviewing it. He also mentioned that the team were all fans of my blog. As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of interactive media, especially Choose Your Own Adventure-type games. Adding an audio component seemed like the next logical step for interactive media. I happily said yes, and Markus sent me a free download code. The game is $2.99 for the rest of you, but honestly, I'd say that's a fair price for the quality and replay potential of this game.
I've already talked about the general mechanics of the gameplay, but let's talk specifics. This is a mobile game available from the App Store. The home screen of the game looks like the interface of an iPhone. You have an email app where the heroes and villains will send you emails about how your advice turned out. You'll also get news emails if the heroes or villains caused collateral damage as a result of your advice. I should mention that the amount of collateral damage you cause doesn't affect anything, other than pushing your meter more towards the evil side. You'll also get emails from Mr. Souls, your hotline mentor. He'll give you tips and tricks to help you out.
There's a notes app that gives basic information on each of the heroes and villains you encounter; their names, strengths, weakness, archenemies, and their mental diagnosis. Be sure you read all of this and keep it in mind; it will be important later in the game. There's a music app so you can listen to some music while you work and wait for calls. You also have a Twixta, the in-universe equivalent of Twitter, app. It lets you keep tabs on the various heroes and villains, even ones who don't call you. It also helps you influence the balance between good and evil. You can like or thumbs down tweets. Like three tweets that lean good, or dislike three that lean evil, let's you move the meter slightly towards good. Doing the reverse tips the meter slightly towards evil. You can even do a combination of liking and disliking as long as you get three tweets that lean in the same direction.
Finally, there is the meditation app. Just press it, if you don't have anything better to do, and the next thing you know you'll be receiving a call. Otherwise, you'll get calls at random while you do stuff and wait around; though usually you don't have to wait long.
Okay, now let's discuss the story itself. There are two distinct aspects to the story. First, there's the main plotline involving Ear. He's blind, but his superhearing more than makes up for that. He's a hero, but isn't above using harsh tactics and roughing up is opponents, so I guess that makes him an antihero. He's the first hero you help and the only hero you help multiple times. The main plot with Ear is kicked off when another hero named Scarab is murdered. He's a hero who has the power to grant good luck to other people, but can't bring any luck to himself. In fact, he's been plagued by terrible luck his entire life, and is living on the street when he gives you a call. It only just now occurred to me that it's pretty weird that he was able to call me despite being homeless. Did payphones make a comeback by 2056? I mean, I guess he could have asked to borrow someone's cellphone. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it isn't important.
Scarab and Ear grew up in the same orphanage, and Ear considers Scarab his oldest and closest friend. Scarab's death hits Ear hard, and he makes it his personal vendetta to find Scarab's killers and bring them to justice. You have the option to tell him to work alone or team up with other heroes, but this doesn't affect the plot of Ear's storyline. As a side note, sometimes the option you get for answers aren't good answer vs evil answer, but polite answer vs jerk answer. I could never pick the jerk answers with Scarab. He's such a nice guy, despite everything he's been through, and I just felt so sorry for him. That was especially bad from my second play-though onwards, because I knew what was going to happen to him, no matter what I did. And apparently he's the third person to wield the power of the Scarab. Apparently it passes between individuals, though he has yet to find a successor. Actually, looking back now, certain bit of dialogue he gives suggest he knew his time on this mortal coil was about to expire. I wish there had been an option to somehow give him a hug.
We'll get back to Ear in a minute. For now, let's talk about the other characters. We'll start with the ones that are the most important later in the game. Why is this? Well, let's wait until the spoiler section for that. For now, I'd like to take a moment to praise the artwork and character design. The artwork looks like something out of a professional comic book. It's just static images, no animation, but very well drawn static images. One aspect that I particularly like is that the characters all feel genuinely original. They aren't just thinly-veiled versions of pre-existing superheroes and supervillains. Well, for the most part anyway. They feel like original organically created characters with their own backstories and personalities.
Also, the voice acting is absolutely phenomenal. I'm not familiar with any of the voice actors, though a few, such as Ear, sounded somewhat familiar, just can't think why that is. Anyway, though I'm not familiar with the voice actors, they all did excellent jobs. I see bright voice acting futures for them all. Despite the game being designed by a German company, the voice actors are all American. I suppose that's fitting, as many have noted that superheroes are something of a uniquely American phenomenon. You don't really see superheroes from other countries unless they're consciously modeled off of American superheroes. The only exception to that rule I've encountered is Japan, where you have stuff like Super Sentai/Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and various mecha series.
I've always wondered why Europe never really developed its own superheroes. You could argue that many heroes of Victorian penny dreadfuls were proto-superheroes of a type. My guess is that the cynicism that resulted from enduring two world wars soured European readers on the idea of superheroes. Britain tried to produce superhero comics in the 1960s, but they quickly fizzled out. France has a very robust comic book industry in every genre but superheroes. It's interesting to speculate, but we're getting off-topic.
Our first hero of note is Mister Shine & Sparkle. He's got a power set and costume evocative of Superman, but couldn't be more different in terms of personality. He's an arrogant showboating prima donna who cares more about his social media following than actually saving people. There are a few timed decisions throughout the game, and he's one of them. You have to decide if you want him to put down the phone and be a hero, or use his current crisis as an opportunity for streaming to his followers
The next notable hero is Blood Sister. She's a vampire, but uses her powers to fight crime. Though she's constantly having to fight the urge to give into her primal instincts. You'll have to decide if you should let her take a bite of the delivery boy. She claims to have ordered a rare steak, but if you do encourage her bite the delivery boy, you'll get an email from the local pizzeria about how they have a job opening due to one of their delivery boys mysterious disappearing. Maybe it was a fancy pizzeria that also offers steak? Or maybe the delivery boy was struggling to make ends meet and was working for multiple restaurants? Or maybe "rare steak" was a euphemism. Though, if you do encourage Blood Sister to bite the delivery boy, the end credits will mention that a pair of vampire hunter named Van H. and Simon B. are sharpening their stakes. I guess Buffy S. had prior engagements.
Interestingly, she's one of the only heroes with more than two potential endings to her call. You can tell her to leave the delivery boy alone, tell her to bite him, or tell her to rob a blood bank instead. Though, only tells her to note bite the delivery boy, and nothing else, results in Blood Sister learnibg to controlling during ending during the credits. More about the credits in a bit.
Our third person of note is Dr. Know How. Imagine Tony Stark, only he's a villain rather than a hero, and that's Dr. Know How. He's got the most options, out of all the characters, for how his call turns out. Depending on which way you tell him to drive his car he'll encounter either Sakura Flame or Pool Boy. You can help him get away from Pool Boy by converting his car to flight mode and flying to the Moon, or by running over Sakura Flame. Alternatively, you can have him try to reason with the heroes. Sakura Flame will torch him, but getting covered in third degree burns will convince Dr. Know How to turn his life around and use his inventions for good.
If he confronts Pool Boy, he will drown...and then turn his life around and use his inventions for good. Uh, how could he turn his life around if he's dead? That is particularly odd given that Dr. Know How has three possible ending for the credits; confronting Pool Boy or Sakura Flame being the only option that lead to the same outcome. Seems like there was lack of proofreading during the script writing. But let us move along.
Fast Justice doesn't have superpowers, but that doesn't stop him from enacting justice fighting against the criminal underworld. If only he weren't complete and utterly insane. I got some Kick-Ass vibes from Fast Justice. He certainly looks like something out of a Mark Miller comic. Fast Justice does make at least some good points. He's right that Mr. Shine & Sparkle probably shouldn't be considered a hero purely because he has superpowers. Unfortunately, Fast Justice being completely batshit crazy, and having a completely black and white outlook on life, undermines these points. You know, now that I think about it, in terms of mentality he isn't too different than Rorschach from Watchmen.
Alpha Nukleus is some sort of cosmic entity who has chosen to take human form. This hasn't helped him connect with humanity. In fact, he feels lonely and isolated, because he feels nobody can truly understand him. He's decided to destroy his human shell, which will have the nasty side effect of irradiating millions of people. You must decide if you let him go through with it, or tell the other heroes to stop him. I recall a hero from Astro City, named Atomicus, who was somewhat similar Alpha Nukleus. Not sure if it was intention or coincidence, but if the former, good on the team behind this game. Astro City is an awesome comic book series; I can't recommend it enough.
On one play through, I think the game glitched and I got a call from Alpha Nukleus before Ear made his first call. I told him to break his shell, as I'd already picked the other option, and I was curious what would happen. Million were bathed in radiation, but Mr. Souls sent me an email congratulating me on a fantastic first day, as he usually does after Ear calls for the first time. I repeat, millions of people received massive radiation exposer because of me, probably fatally so, and Mr. Souls considered that a good first day. Well, he did say it was less about right vs wrong, and more about keeping the balance. It may have been a glitch, but was a damn hilarious glitch.
Imagine Cthulhu, only he's an evil business mogul, and that pretty much Vlad Xthul. He wants to expand his business empire, but is having trouble navigating modern social mores. Specifically, he wants to knockout the competition, namely Dr. Know How. You can tell him to either buyout the company, or have him break Dr. Know How's leg. If you pick the first, it will encourage Vlad Xthul to go into politics, and he will be elected president of the Atlantic Union...which is a thing by 2056. I'm guessing it's a union of North America and Europe. Of course, as Ear notes, he can't be much worse than the politicians they already have.
Our last person of note among the really significant characters is Luzida. She has the power to enter people's dreams. Lately, however, she's been plagued by dark visions ever time she goes to sleep. She tried to stay awake as long as possible, and the waters look so inviting. No matter how many times I played this game, I could never tell Luzida to go in the water. I just felt so bad for her, and I couldn't coerce her into potentially committing suicide. I know that seems odd, given that I encouraged Alpha Nukleus and Sakura Flame to kill millions of people just to see what would happen. Well, you know what they say; one is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. And in my defense, the game doesn't try very hard to make you care about killing that many people. Luzida winds up teaming up with Ear later in the game. This will be important later on.
Okay, those are all the characters who will be important later in the game. As such, they're the ones you are mostly likely to encounter, though you won't get all of them in one play though. We will discuss why this is in the spoilers section. Oh, but we aren't done talking heroes and villains just yet. This next batch are mostly just there to help you adjust your karma meter, but they're still pretty fascinating in their own right.
First up is Sakura Flame. We've already briefly discussed her, but her issue is that the other heroes give her no respect. The supervillain Glaze has frozen the city's pipes, and poor Sakura Flame has to thaw them. She's planning on getting revenge on the other heroes by "accidentally" blowing up an oil refinery while she tries to take down Glaze. As previously mentioned, should you encourage her to do so, millions will die in the explosion. Personally, I'm still surprised they have oil by 2056. Also, millions die in the explosion? Just how densely populated is this city? Interesting fact, Sakura Flame was not part or the original release of 1-800-SUPER, but was added in a later update. I'm also slightly confused by her name. I get the flame bit, but why sakura. She doesn't have pink hair, she isn't Japanese, and she doesn't have a cherry blossom motif.
Glaze is also a character you can encounter. He is pretty much the living embodiment of cold. His mother was a glacier and his father was a sea of ice. However, as his power grows, the planet's ice caps shrink, and global warming certainly isn't helping matters. He wants to conquer Antarctica, but is it worth potentially sacrificing his parents? I wouldn't think it would be terribly hard to conquer Antarctica; nobody there but a few temporary scientists, and of course the penguins and leopard seals. Well, unless people have been establishing colonies in Antarctica by 2056.
Timelooper is trying to get out of the hero business. She has the power to time travel and rewind time. However, every time she does this a miniature black hole opens shortly afterwards. They collapse before long, but they do cause collateral damage. She's on a flight to her new life, but wouldn't you know it, Dr. Know How has decided to bomb the plane. Will you encourage Timelooper to use her powers, despite the risk, or take a gamble on Mister Shine and Sparkle actually showing up to help? You can have Timelooper rewind time, stop Dr. Know How, but then a building gets sucked into a black hole. However, if you tell her to rewind time, wait to see what happens, which enviably puts you back at square one, and then call Mister Shine and Sparkle, it will be treated as though Timelooper never used her powers.
Geist.app is an A.I. that is on the run, metaphorically speaking, from its creators. They fear it will turn evil, but Geist.app just wants to preserve its existence. You must decide if it should keep a low profile, or if it should defend itself by any means necessary, consequences be damned. I liked that Geist.app isn't depicted as evil; just scared, and trying to survive. And if you encourage it to keep a low profile it decides to optimize email speeds; that was nice of it.
Maxwell's Hydra is a cyborg monster serpent, and Ear's sworn nemesis. At one point, Ear even calls you while he's fighting Maxwell's Hydra. Despite the fact that Maxwell's Hyrda gets killed at the end of this call, it can still call you later on. Yeah, this game has some issues with continuity. It can't talk, just roar, but you can still help it out. Give it advice on how to how to treat a sore through and it will turn tame, and fight on the side of the heroes. Dr. Know How will, essentially adopt it and give it regular oil changes. Of course, this end will imply that Dr. Know How turned good, even if your choices result in an ending where he remained a villain.
You also occasionally get calls from people who aren't heroes or villains. Big Bang FM is a news station. They give you information about the happenings of the various heroes and villains. Most of it is irrelevant to the game, and most doesn't involve the heroes and villains you council. Still, some of the stories can be amusing. Speaking of amusing, you can also get people who call you by mistake. One person butt dials you. They don't actually say anything, no matter what you choose, so you can hang up on them without taking a penalty. You can also get a call from a guy who firmly believes that he has called the pizza shop. He will hang up, but you'll get an email from him about how he's leaving a very bad review for the pizza shop. Man, that dude had determination, I'll give him that.
Okay, I think that should be everyone. Now we're going to be discussing the spoilers for the ending of the game. As such, turn back now if you don't want any of that.
Last chance. You sure you want to continue?
Well, okay. If everyone who wants out is gone, let's get into it.
So, Ear discovers a cult who worship Gallion, the Demon of Misfortune. Naturally, they weren't too keen on a good luck charm like Scarab. Turns out that Gallion has taken a human host. Nobody, not even the one hosting Gallion, knows who it is. With some help from Luzida, Ear tracks down the host of Gallion. It is someone the heroes completely trusted, and who had access to them at all times
So, who is this mysterious host...you are! There is no option but to kill yourself so that Gallion will die. If you can't do if yourself, Ear will help you out. At this point, Gallion will reveal itself to you. Gallion will quiz you on the six heroes and villains I mentioned at the start of this review. Get all or most of the questions correct and Gallion will be defeated. Well, after you shoot yourself in the head that is
Against all odd, you survive the whole shooting yourself in the head thing. I like to think that Ear is right, and that Scarab watching out for us from beyond the grave. You'll get a few more emails from Ear, and he will also send you a new music file. Press play on it, and the credits will begin The credits begin by showing how all the heroes and villains you helped fared.
Which endings are good, and which are bad, are a matter of personal perspective. I will say that some of them are counterintuitive. For example, if you let Alpha Nukleus shed his human shell, he'll find a heroine who actually understand him. Stopping him makes him turn hostile to the heroes, and it's clear he still has the capability to do it, and is just licking his wounds for now. Similarly, having Sakura Flame blow up the oil refinery, and kill millions of people, gets her the validation she craves. Convincing her not to causes her to get assigned to a penguin research station in Antarctica, though it is mentioned that she is content and happy. Oh, and this can happen even if you encourage Glaze to take control of Antarctica. Amusingly, even the guy who tried to order pizza gets an ending tell how he is doing.
Mr. Souls ending always has him get promoted to managing a hotline for demigods. Is that hint about a potential future game. Because if so, that sounds like a totally awesome idea. You could have the callers be children of different god; and not just the Greco-Roman gods, you could also have children of the Egyptian, Norse, Japanese, Yoruba, Maya, Celtic, or any other pantheon. Trust me, there is a huge untapped market for a game like that. I will rally the Percy Jackson fandom in an instant if you guys are seriously going to make a game like that. But I'm getting off track again.
You can still look around after the credits, though you won't get any more calls. You will still get emails from heroes and villains remarking on how boring everything is now. I guess it's the game going "You're still here? The game is over, go home." Ear will even decide to leave the city as he feels it no longer needs him. Of course, you can replay the game as you wish. I will say that, after about five or six play throughs, I'd experienced pretty much everything there was to be experienced.
Okay, so overall I greatly enjoy this game, but are there any improvements I would suggest? Well, as I've noted, there are several continuity errors that get downright nonsensical at times. Granted, it didn't bother me too much, but I think it would feel more like the choices had actual consequence if this was fixed. It might also be nice if there were more storylines than just the main one with Ear. Maybe there could be certain events or choices that triggered different storylines. It would add to the replay value of the game. I do hope future updates add more characters, as there are several mentioned in passing, or on Twixta, that sound potentially interesting.
Also, despite the setting supposedly being dystopian, I didn't really see it. Well, other than the whole irradiating millions of people being considered a good first day thing. Yeah, there is collateral damage from fights between heroes and villains, but that hardly makes things dystopian.
Still, overall these are minor criticisms. I was very impressed with 1-800-SUPER, and I had a lot of fun playing it. I'd love to see the world of this game expanded upon either in updates or maybe in a sequel game. And I'd just like to reiterate that you guys really should give thought to making a demigod hotline game. I'm just saying, huge untapped market to cash in on. But getting back on topic, I strongly recommend you download 1-800-SUPER today. Believe me, you will be glad that you did.
Link to the original review on my blog, but it is just the same as what is here: http://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2020/12/video-game-review-1-800-super.html?m=1
submitted by ArthurDrakoni to scifi [link] [comments]

Germany in its decline: how it is closing in on its fortress

Original by Esteban Hernández (spanish): https://blogs.elconfidencial.com/espana/postpolitica/2021-01-15/alemania-merkel-merz-laschet-trumpismo-ue-china_2907927/
It is curious the informative interest that the Democratic primaries, the U.S. elections, the minimal details of the process of dismissal of Trump or Brexit, with all its vicissitudes, and the scarce attention that they arouse in Germany, have aroused in Spain. We have little news from Germany, except the usual praise for Merkel, for her management of the pandemic, for how well they are facing the crisis economically, or for the great help she is giving her companies to make the confinements viable. We should, however, be much more aware of what is happening in Berlin, because of the relevance of what happens there for Spain and for the EU, and because there is also a German dark side.
The struggle within the CDU, the German conservative party, for Merkel's replacement is a good illustration of this. This Friday, the process of electing the new president of the party begins, which will be decisive in determining who is the candidate for chancellor. And since everything points to the fact that the conservatives, the CDU and the Bavarian CSU, will win the next elections, it is likely that it will be decided this weekend who will be the new German leader, and therefore, what direction the EU will take in the coming years. It sounds strange that the election of a president should carry so much weight in the European arena, but let us remember that the current configuration of the Union owes a great deal to the decision and will of Merkel, whose skill has allowed a balance to be made between the different European interests and the application of glue when necessary.

Germanic Trump-ism

What happens in the CDU will also be relevant on a strictly political level, because Germany has a particular form of trumpism. It is not only that the AfD, the ultra party, has consolidated itself as one more actor in German politics, but that those underlying tendencies, nationalist, un-European, favorable to the old recipes of austerity, hostile to emigration and not at all socially cohesive, have penetrated substantially into the main right-wing party. Friedrich Merz, one of the three candidates for the presidency of the CDU, represents that profile. Of course, it has nothing to do with Trump's anti-institutional instinct, but his ideas have more points of connection than advisable. It must be understood that the AfD is not a formation with government possibilities, but it does exert influence over its political spectrum, and Merz is part of that. And it is not only Merz, there is a not inconsiderable part of German society that agrees on the objectives, and part of its economic elites, very well represented in the Bundesbank, are pushing in that direction. Without going any further, the German Federal Bank has just published a report in which it asks that the debt generated by the recovery fund go to the Member States and the EU. In short, the election of Merz would be bad news for Europe, and it would be bad news for Spain, and he is a candidate with possibilities of success, the one preferred by his militants.
His opponent is Armin Laschet, the preferred candidate of the party's establishment, and he brings a clear continuity with Merkel's line. He has less pull among the militancy than Merz, but he has the apparatus in his favor. The third candidate is Norbert Röttgen, a former Minister of the Environment, whom Merkel dismissed after losing the elections in the Rhineland with him as a candidate in 2012. He is an Atlantist, in favor of a harder line with China and Russia. The profiles of the candidates have been examined in greater depth by Luis Garicano and Esteban González Pons, who also warn that the winner of these elections may not be the candidate for chancellor. The new CDU leadership could opt for Jens Spahn, the current health minister, or Marcus Söder, the leader of the CSU (the Bavarian conservatives), if they run as candidates instead of the party president.
The basic question, however, lies much more in the ideas than in the people, in the vision they bring to their country, in the role it should play in the EU and in its economic proposals. In that order, there is nothing new about right-wing politics in recent years, and the choice will be between simple continuity or a drift towards tougher positions, and little else. This is bad news, because Germany is in a complex moment, and so is the European Union, and new perspectives are needed. We have already noticed the German problems, but it is worth noting that on this occasion they are particularly pressing, because the coronavirus crisis is leaving its mark and because they will be deeper in the future. A response is needed that is up to the moment. Let's see in what sense.

The German decline

There is one aspect that is not emphasized, but which is very relevant, and which Wolfgang Münchau reasonably defined as the "German decline". Used to the fact that the European champion has much more economic, financial and productive muscle than countries like ours, talking about decline may seem a bit bold, but that doesn't take away one iota of Münchau's sense, for example, when he states that, as much as the Merkel era is perceived as a golden period, it has also been "the moment when Germany lost its technological advantage due to a misguided approach to fiscal surpluses and lack of innovation. The German country has lost its technological advantage, which leads it to decline, if we compare it with China and the United States.
These bad decisions have also burdened the EU. At this point, it can be said that Germany has been a bad European leader, because it has done just the wrong thing. It has led the Eurozone in terms that were beneficial to it, but at the same time it has done something that has taken its toll on us. The Merkel era has been one of German domination, from which it has earned revenues, but it has not known how to use them. In essence, she has made two mistakes.

Gifting Europe

The architecture of the euro and the internal reforms generated an excess of capital in Germany, as Pettis and Klein detail, which was invested incompetently, among other things, in the Spanish brick, in the Spanish banks or in the American 'subprime', with the catastrophic results that we all know. That money should have been devoted to innovation, to bring the industry up to date and strengthen the domestic market, so that inequalities did not grow and that the purchasing power of much of its population was maintained. This did not happen, either in Germany or in the EU, and we have already begun to pay the bill: instead of creating a strong European space, the standard of living of the populations has fallen, technology is American or Chinese and everyday products are manufactured in China, as we have painfully seen in the pandemic.
But all this is based on a basic error, which must be underlined, since it does not concern only Germany but the whole of the EU. Europe had two strengths, its currency and its market. The latter, made up of millions of consumers with high purchasing power, gave it away. The move was as follows: European companies, tolerated and often encouraged by political leaders, decided to manufacture abroad, especially in China. That produced the Chinese growth, thanks to the fact that they not only produced, but also sold in Europe. With all that money, China was not satisfied with being the world's factory, but invested it in innovation, and now it is one of the great technological powers. On the other hand, the United States devoted a lot of resources to technological innovation, and its digital giants entered the European market fully, obtaining an important part of their income here. But it was also acquiring with the global funds that lead much of the income that European companies generate, either through participation in the shareholding, through acquisition or through bonds. The final distribution is as follows: China manufactures, the US is the financial power and the new technologies are shared by both. Europe is relegated to a secondary position in both aspects, which are decisive in the new context, and also Germany, whose highly qualified industry will find it difficult to compete.

The moment of ambition

All of this is relevant, not only to the past, but to weaving the future. It is not a matter of pointing out the mistakes and looking for those responsible, but of solving the problems. The German ruling class would do well to understand that the European Union is an opportunity, that the possibility they have of not continuing to fall is to push for the revival of Europe, of its market, of its consumers and of its values (yes, European culture is important). This is the moment to forget the old terms and no longer think about adapting to what exists, but to lead the construction of what will come. We must leave aside all that economistic thinking, dedicated to filling in statistics, and put plans in place to design the future. This is the time for ambition: to strengthen small and medium-sized enterprises, to generate jobs (and well paid jobs) and to think about leading not just the next step in innovation, but the second and third. And not as a simple well-intentioned gamble; rather as a condition for the possibility of reversing the trend, of halting the decline and of coming to the surface.
Europe, at present, has remarkable similarities with the Italian peninsula in Machiavelli's time, when cities tried to preserve their space, weaving and breaking alliances, engaging in battles and wars, while France and Spain were conquering it little by little. Machiavelli was one of the few to understand that the only way to preserve independence and his way of life was to give form to the union of all of them. Of course, economically and commercially, Europe is at that moment, and it would be logical for the main power, Germany, to contribute to the disentanglement, and to gain a different strategic autonomy, the one we need so much, that of money, prosperity, balanced growth and improved living standards. Unfortunately, none of this appears in the plans of the CDU, determined to continue living in the past, and whose prospects are similar to those of the fortress, with the Bundesbank as the maximum exponent of this blindness. This is no time to hide behind walls.
submitted by iagovar to europe [link] [comments]

Happy New year; January progression report.

Hope everyone's had a good start to the new year. :)
I've managed to finish six games this month, so half of the target of 12 for the year! Yay! >_> Um, none of the games were on my target list however, because I was taking advantage of the Xbox Game Pass for PC (£1 for three months, yes sir.)
A reminder of the review scoring system I use, shamelessly stolen from VNDB, I quite like the system so;
  1. Worst Ever
  2. Awful
  3. Bad
  4. Weak
  5. So-so (or average)
  6. Decent
  7. Good
  8. Very Good
  9. Excellent
  10. Masterpiece
So, I have some reviews for you all;
  • Deliver Us The Moon
  • PC (XGP)
  • Walking Sim/ Adventure
  • 7/10 Good
A great opening game for January. Deliver us the Moon is a short Sci-Fi game taking place in a future where Earth has exhausted its natural resources and triggered a catastrophic climate change.
The solution? Mine a resource called Helium 3, which is found in abundance on the moon and then fire it like a laser right back to Earth to power the entire world.
For a time, it works, until one day it just stops and nobody knows why. You star as the guy sent into space to investigate what has happened and why. It is a fairly simple walking sim/adventure, you go from various environments, exploring a short bit of Earth, the Moon and the stations. Along the way you solve puzzles and collect titbits of information – if you played Tacoma, this is similar, with videos playing the history of what happened as you investigate.
There’s a sweet little twist that happens early on, and a fairly sombre conclusion. I was thoroughly engrossed enough to play this in one full sitting and I only missed two collectables from my lazy exploration. Definitely one for Sci-Fi fans to pick up, it won’t break records for innovation, but it is a thoroughly good game, and we all love good games, don’t we? 😊
  • Gears of War: Ultimate Edition
  • PC (XGP)
  • Third person shooter, dude-bro's wet dream.
  • 7/10 Good.
Let me get it out of the way with; I hate the dude-bro culture, beefcakes walking around shouting ‘HELL YEAH’, while swinging their imaginary dicks about, popping biceps and screeching of how manly they are.
Gears of War (GoW) is therefore, a dude-bro’s wet dream, and my potential nightmare of a game to deal with.
It features excessively ridiculous beefcakes and buzz cuts, with references to American football, big dick energy and ‘HELL YAH!’ as they pop off headshots with impunity. It is masculinity (the good, the bad, the ugly) in a game, including, the sad, waste of life and nasty ways to die.
For in GoW, Earth Sera is fucked, under invasion from ‘locusts’, beings that came from underground. They pop up and absolutely decimate humans (and they might be saying ‘hell yeah’ in locust language, who knows?) and some of their methods are horrific, which contrasts with the psych-up, testosterone fuelled shooting that goes on in-between the red shirt deaths.
You star as a military prisoner, busted out and ‘pardoned’ cos, y’know, world is in deep shit. And you join Delta Squad as they head off to help Alpha Squad to deal with a plan to eliminate the Locust threat. The story is fairly suitable for a shooter, the dialogue, when not full of hell yeah, headbutt! Is actually quite reasonable.
As a game, I think GoW is lovely, it runs brilliantly, I can maintain 60fps+ on 4K without my fans spinning a tornado of furious heat! And it plays well too; it is a bit outdated in today’s terms, and there were some things I had to get to grips with – Active reload is an infuriating mechanic because the timing bar (you have to hit a sweet spot) for reloading is up in the upper right corner, and I’m too busy fucking about trying to heave my bollocks into cover to pay attention.
Still, it is smooth and enjoyable. You move from mission to mission with your squad – who do very little except get shot at, and you go through various encounters with various enemy types to keep things spicy.
I think it is a good game; if you love dude-bro culture, jump on in. If you don’t, I’d give it a go anyway. I’m told it is excellent fun in co-op mode, but given the age of the game, it is more likely you’d be on your own (unless you like pop-in campaigns), but if you can get a friend to join you, then do so, as the AI squad really are useless.
  • Star Renegades
  • PC (XGP)
  • Turn based rogue light
  • 6/10 Decent.
Star Renegades is a mish-mash of elements from popular games. It runs an “Into the Breach” timeline story mechanic for when you die, combined with camping and relationship building, mixed with levelling, mixed with an overworld map that copies picking a ‘route’ through to various boss fights, mixed with a planet select and loot crate loot grind. Oh, and it copies the Nemesis system from the Mordor games.
Oh, and there’s a time-based turn-based combat system.
There’s a lot to unpack; But the meat of the game is in the combat, where you select skills with the ultimate aim of killing the enemies (duh). The hook is you have a 60 second ‘round’ and every skill has a timer to trigger. You can push enemy skills back, or ‘break’ them from the round if you push them hard enough, and vice versa. In that way, you can avoid being hit by ‘breaking’ an enemy by pushing their turn into the next round. You need to do this, because healing is basically a rarity, and you have to manage shields and armour and your health. Plus, a truck ton of status effects and whatnot.
It is so packed, that the UI in battle is a ginormous mess, often tooltips end up covering the whole screen, and there are some stodgy mechanics in play. For example, you can only attack a frontline enemy, they have to die before you can hit the backline. But, if you stack your turns so that you know your first hit will kill the enemy, you can’t target the backline with the rest of your crew, you just have to wait and see who in the line they attack. That’s a poor oversight, since it eliminates an aspect of tactics from your combat.
Everything else in the game is sheer bloat. The nemesis system is very dull, because each round on a planet is so short, you genuinely won’t really pay that much attention to the mooks, nor care, because the dialogue is hammed up to be OTT. Sometimes it is funny, sometimes it’s just ‘yeah, ok, lol random, didn’t this phase die in the 90’s?’ You’re set up to ‘die’, so you can restart from the beginning, picking a new crew and going through the same set ups and planets, which seems unnecessary. (For what it’s worth… I beat the game on my first run, with the tutorial crew on the normal difficulty setting.)
Basically, this game mashes together so many elements, it fails to do any one properly, resulting in a mish-mash that comes across undercooked, flat even, and it such a shame because the game’s intro sequence was so energetic, I thought it was exciting and was strapping myself in for a gut punch of a story, but no, I’m stuck in another dull rogue light. In essence, the intro is almost an example of the game, a misdirection, a false dawn, something that it never quite sets out to be. A complete lack of focus basically. I think, they completely missed the ball trying to go the comedy/lolrandom dialogue route, a bit of seriousness to this game wouldn’t have gone amiss, and the narrative potential is unique, and squandered, like the rest of the game.
That doesn’t mean it is a bad game, as negative as I sound, it’s just decent, it’s just there, and unless you really like the genre, I suspect for most people it’ll just be ‘a-ok’, but nothing memorable.
  • GreedFall
  • PC (XGP)
  • Action-RPG (Think, Bioware-like)
  • 6/10 Decent (objective) / 7/10 Good (personal)
An original Action-RPG with a focus on the colonisation era. This is a pure fantasy world, where you play as De Sardet (male or female), the legate (diplomat) of the Congregation of Merchants (Venice is probably the IRL inspiration).
Your country has a policy of neutrality in political affairs, preferring to trade riches with various Allies, among them; The Bridge Alliance (A Middle-Eastern/African inspired coalition of nations focusing on science and alchemy) and Theleme (absolutely Spain and its religious nuts). Theleme and the Alliance are at war, so you have a nice piggy in the middle situation going on.
On the ‘continent’, the nations are suffering from a plague called the Malachor. But there’s hope, for each nation is establishing a foothold on an island called Tere Fradee, although it is already occupied by ‘savage’ natives. It is here, that GreedFall mostly takes place, once you get off the tutorial in the continent, you’re off to the colony island and into a diplomatic heave-ho with all the nations, plus the natives.
There are a lot of themes in this game, nature vs science, religion and technology, exploitation and balance, savagery and ‘civilisation’, and as the legate, you get to experience it as a focal point due to diplomacy. You also amass quite the entourage of NPC allies to join you.
This game is basically like an old-school Bioware RPG, think Dragon Age Origins, or the early Mass Effect, but in a colonial setting; there are tons of dialogue, quite a few charisma skill checks (it’s diplomacy, come on!) and each NPC has a personal quest to resolve to build up relations etc.
In terms of writing, the game is great, but somewhat choppy due to its freeform, semi-open world nature to quests. Exploring the island and dealing with the diplomatic situations are the highlights, as are the conversations.
However, gameplay-wise, this game is a drab affair that shows its age. Combat is dull, tedious even – I am not ashamed to have dialled it down to Easy because I didn’t really want to deal with a horrifically wonky camera and a very basic hack and slash action combat. It also, isn’t a big budget game, so animations are bad, facial expressions/lip synch simply isn’t happening. (A friend of mine called it a ‘PS3 era’ graphics and camera-work type of game, take from that what you will.)
Accessibility wise; the subtitles are littered with spelling errors – they hired someone who made a cardinal sin of translating ‘could’ve as ‘could of’’, which is abhorrent! This same intern misspells ‘lose’ as ‘loose’, which, I’m sorry, is embarrassing to see.
You can see the spelling issues throughout the game, for example the game regularly calls the island ‘Tere Fradee’, but the codex correctly labels is as Tir Fradi (along with all the little notches to show pronunciation), so, it is quite apparent that the left and right hands of the writing/subtitles team weren’t communicating to each other. (But seriously, sack that ‘loose’ intern, he should not be on the subtitling/writing team if he is making such basic errors, and slap that editor for allowing that to pass…) Despite the flaws, this is a joyous experience, that will appeal to some nostalgia for BioWare fans in a way, and is worth the look in for anyone wanting to roleplay a diplomat. My advice? Get it on the Game Pass, or buy it on a steep discount. The regular price of £44 is an absolute rip off, and there are lists of games better than this at that price point. A fairer price would be £15-20, but I think this is such a good narrative, bad gameplay type of game that it is one of those that is risky to jump into at any price really as it is going to depend whether the central themes grip you or not. Definitely try it out if you can, especially on gamepass (for £1, why not?), and see if you like it, because it has done well enough that they’re apparently making an expansion, as well as updated versions for the new consoles. 😊
For what it is worth, I’ve put two scores up there; personally, I liked the game enough to consider it a good game. However, on an objective level, the flaws are as such that outside of genre fans, this has to be a 6/10 game, it is decent, and nothing is wrong with that. Decent games are still decent games! I will, however, have a soft spot for this one, such is the impression it left on me, but for most people, I’m unsure the feeling will be mutual, hence; 6/10.
  • Spiritfarer
  • PC (XGP)
  • Management / Narrative game
  • 7/10 Good.
It is hard to fit Spiritfarer into a genre, it is basically a management/farming game on a boat. In between the resource gathering and crafting, is a narrative story focused on death and dealing with it. For, you are Stella, Charon’s replacement (that’s the ferryman that ferries dead souls across the river if you’re unsure), and your new job is to ferry souls across the river to the Everdoor, where they cross over.
In this sea-world, you tend to your spirit’s needs, feeding them, building them homes etc on your ship. All the while, you must upgrade your own ship to break into new areas, for new resources along the treadmill of resource grind.
This is what stops it from getting an 8/10, because the graphics, music, narrative and subject matter is phenomenal, however… The game hangs around like someone fighting death, it just won’t let go and… die. It hangs around about two or three spirits too long, one zone too long, too many resources too long. The result is, early on everything’s new and shiny and fun, but towards the end it dips so badly it becomes a chore, a victim of its grind. What compounds it, is the early spirits are all pretty sweet, nice people to deal with, but the end game ones are so abrasive you may as well tell them to eff off.
So, it is for those reasons that this game misses out on scoring higher, but in the end, it is still a good game, and it is one you may need to bring some tissues with you as the emotional punch of some of the deaths/spirits you’re dealing with is downright horrific, especially when it comes to neglect, abuse or end of life disabilities. Spiritfarer deserves commendation for tackling these subjects, doing it in an artsy way, the animal spirits and personalities are mostly enjoyable and relatable and that helps to drive home the message of death and acceptance.
Definitely one that all with a fairly open mind should tackle, and if you’re into management/farming/resource gathering, there’s that too, and it is worth playing overall.
  • Mars Horizon
  • PC (Steam)
  • Race-to-space Agency management game.
  • 7/10 Good.
If you’ve played Buzz Aldrin’s Race into Space, or it’s abandoned ‘remake’ Space Program Manager, then you’ll know exactly what you’re getting with Mars Horizon. For those who don’t know, Mars Horizon puts you in charge of a space operations agency, either NASA, or the Soviets, or alternatively; China, Japan and Europe’s own variants.
You manage your base, research and mission priority queues. The aim of the game is to race the other AI Competitors as you race into space. You start with basic rocket tests, moving onto getting animals into space, then humans and so on. The ultimate aim for this game is to get the first crewed mission to Mars.
Along the way, with each research goal completed, and each mission undertaken, you unlock a historical codex filled to the brim with facts and information about the current state of space projects today.
The gameplay is simple enough, you have a research queue where you research mission types, let’s say a satellite. Then you have to research the rockets and payload carrying modules, assign them in production, build them, then if all goes well, pick a launch month and fire it up into space.
As you enter space, you go into mini-games which determine whether the mission succeeds or not. So, that satellite will have a mini game to establish an orbit around Earth, followed up by another to ‘deploy’ the instruments. These mini games are mathematical resource challenges, you need to spend resources to build other resources, and only when you have all the required net resources will the mission succeed. To add to the challenge, you have to deal with heat management, radiation, drift and thrusters. All of these issues are also challenged by your reliability rating – if you skimped on your mechanical issues in production, then you may fail a resource move because the equipment malfunctioned. (You can spend other resources to bypass the malfunction, and so on.)
It isn’t exactly high-brow gaming, but the mini game can be addicting at times, but there’s an auto-resolve for those who can’t be bothered (though you lose out on bonus resources if you do this, which will make the game harder if you play on any difficulty above Easy.)
I enjoyed my time here, I had a blast, and when I was done, I was just about ready to stop playing – so, the game paced itself well and kept me engaged. It is a solid game, but I would like to see the developers try and build upon this if they ever make a sequel, because it has a lot of potential.
Criticisms? Graphically it isn’t much to look at, it is an indie game after all, and there aren’t enough options to do a sandbox game or something like that, but again, the developers had to prioritise resources I assume.
On a sidenote, I want to rant about people who played this and left crappy reviews. I saw a lot of comparisons to Kerbal Space Programme when I trawled reviews before buying it, and it annoyed me, because they aren’t anywhere near the same genre, nor do they even play similarly. I don’t think the game even tries to be anything like it, so I don’t get why people seem to have misled themselves and have punished the developers with negative reviews for their own weird expectations. And what makes it particularly annoying, is there’s a demo available on Steam (go try it), so there’s no excuse really.
Anyway, I think it is a good game, it won’t break the bank and it won’t set new trends, but it’s great to see a modern Race into Space, especially given SPM is abandoned.
Those are my six completions for January. I did abandon some games along the way, a bonus of the XGP is I get to try them and not feel too bad about ditching them. I threw four games down the can and have mini-reviews (no scores, and they won't count to the review statistics end of the year);
  • Neoverse –
Terrible. Presentation wise it just dumps you in and comes across as a port of a mobile gambling game. Not even worth the download space.
  • Torment: Tides of Numenera:
It sits on ‘mixed’ reviews on Steam, and probably deserves that. If you’re going to push a CRPG narrative game, then the introduction needs to be compelling, or if it is slow, it needs to build up steam quickly to keep people hooked. This game is too old-school for its own good. It is both slow, cryptic and filled with info dumps worth of text and dialogue. The result for most people will be complete and utter boredom. I switched off before the game could even pick up a head of steam, because it is just too slow and plodding and wordy, which isn’t an ideal way to start a narrative-centric game. (Disco Elysium is probably the best modern example of how to do narrative beats with a reasonably solid pacing and colour.)
*Battle Chasers: Nightwar:
Glad I played it on the pass instead of wasting the asking price for this one. It is too slow as a game overall – pacing matters a lot, this has too little of it. Going through slow battle systems against dull enemies is just offensive. The story did catch my interest, and the intro sequence was filled with humour and drama, but the underlying mechanics simply don’t back that up, resulting in a snooze-fest for me, so I abandoned it promptly several hours in.
  • The Gardens Between:
    A puzzler, based on time manipulation (back and forth) to carry light around. As pretty as it seems, the concept just happens to be packaged into a fairly dull game. I was bored rather quickly and didn’t feel like slogging through the tests they were offering.
And finally one more review, this time pertaining to the XGP itself;
  • XboX Game Pass PC
  • 5/10 So-So
The XGP is superb value if you can snag it for £1. At the time of writing, they were offering 3 months for £1, which is definitely something everyone should get. This review is exclusively for the PC version;
I wish to point out that at £1, you can’t really argue with the value, as there as several games worthy of being played on the XGP.
As a dip-in, dip-out offering, it is excellent, provided you have the time to play the games before expiration, particularly expiration of your monthly membership; For example, I wouldn’t want to be starting up a Final Fantasy game, or Wasteland 2/3 knowing it was ‘expiring’ next month, as these games are long enough without the need for any form of time pressure. (After I had written this, one of the Final Fantasy games did indeed exit the game pass, lol.)
Outside of the game offerings, there is little to recommend about the XGP for PC. The Xbox app is slow, laggy and basically not designed for PCs. The store interface is awful, the lag is terrible – it’s almost like playing on an old console with no memory. This absolutely needs more work. Download speeds are also fairly inconsistent, sometimes incredibly, frustratingly slow. Additionally, after a game is downloaded and ready to play, you have to fire it up and add it to the app permissions, which is slow… and laggy, and fuck me, just let me play the game? I even had it popping up asking me to review a game in the middle of the game. =/
The app is bad enough that it will sit on a 5/10 rating no matter how sexy the value proposition is. I would be offended to be paying £7-15 non-sale price for XGP to have to sit through the app (or the storefront). Another issue is that the app hides the games, which can impact you if you use things like GeForce Experience for graphics optimisation, basically, you can't use it. (I know some gamers will say 'hah, noob, just adjust things yourself' or whatever, but for people uncomfortable or unfamiliar with playing around with graphics settings these tools have a use)
At £1, jump in on this. I just want to see better performance overall, on top of further games (permanently would be ideal) before I could justify subbing personally.
  • Conclusion, February outlook
I've gone back to Final Fantasy XIV, the MMORPG, as I said I would in my year-review, as I want something I can just dip into for a bit. It's just my mood at the moment. I have a month and a bit left on the XGP, so my main goal besides the MMO is to finish off anything I like on XGP. At the moment, I'm playing the Medium (which is looking like a 5-6/10 game), but otherwise I'm not sure what else I'll chip away at along the way.
Oh, and I've been working at transferring my 12in12 reviews over to Steam, into that curator page I set up I think two years ago? You can find it here and don't worry, I'm not going to tell you to "smash that like button" and subscribe to my onlyfans (you wouldn't want to anyway), I just thought it would be nice to have a record of all the reviews, since it's what I'm doing, so why not? If any of you decide to do the same, let me know, so I can add you on Steam and see how your reviews build - of course, if you want to stay private, that's absolutely fine too.
Anyway, if you read all that, best of luck for February! :D
submitted by OdaNova to 12in12 [link] [comments]

An example of how many Asians think they're hideously ugly compared to white people

Found this question on the Japanese version of yahoo answers: https://detail.chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/qa/question_detail/q10235740415?__ysp=55m95Lq655S35oCn
Translation:
All Japanese women don't say anything, but honestly, there are many people who want to marry a handsome man who is over 180 cm tall, right? I wonder why such women are married in Japan.
If you were born in Japan and have lived in Japan for a long time, you know that Japanese people have a short average height and few men with good-looking faces, right?
I think that women who want to marry a handsome man over 180 cm should marry in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, etc. instead of Japan.
First of all, Japanese, or East Asians, have a thin face, and the percentage of handsome men with double eyelids, small faces and profile E-lines is small.
Statistically, only about 7% of Japanese men are over 180 cm.
If there are 100 adult males, only about 7 of them are 180 cm or larger.
Even if there are 1000 men, there are 70 men over 180 cm.
From here, if you combine conditions such as being single, not gambling, not cheating, not being a part-time worker, and being handsome, the ratio will be even smaller.
European countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and Norway have an average height of the first half of 180 cm (184 cm in the Netherlands and Germany), so there are men who are 180 cm or more in proportion to the 170 cm range of Japanese men or more. right?
In European countries with high average height, more than 60-80 out of 100 men are over 180 cm.
At this point, you can see that the percentage of men who are 180 cm or more is much higher than the percentage of Japanese who are 7%.
Being Caucasian, it is natural that the majority of men are over 180 cm tall, have a small face, a clear double, a straight nose, and a profile E-line, right?
European countries such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany are all men with an average height of over 180 cm, small faces, long legs, clear doubles, deep carvings and well-organized faces.
So, 1000 Japanese people? 10,000 people? I think that handsome men with a height of 180 cm or more, who are only about one person, are common in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, Norway, etc.
In European countries with high average heights such as the Netherlands and Germany, it is quite common for men to be over 180 cm tall, have double eyelids, and have a straight nose.
In particular, the average height in the Netherlands and Germany is 184 cm.
If an average Japanese man with a height of 170 cm, single eyelids, and neither good-looking nor ugly men went to these tall, handsome-filled European countries, he would probably look (short stature, big face, short legs, single). (Eyelids, thin facial features) not only excludes local white women from love, but also causes them to be bullied and discriminated against.
Even white men with a height of 180 to 185 cm, who are treated as futsumen in Europe, are treated as tall handsome men when they go to Japan.
Even the average white man who is treated as a futsumen locally is taller than most men in Japan and has a much better face than the average Japanese, so if you walk in the streets of Japan, you can entertain. It's a level that you are invited to the world, right?
There is such a difference in average appearance (height, leg length, face size, facial features) between Japanese men and Western men.
There are a lot of good-looking guys over 180 cm in white people, but it is very rare in Japanese people (I rarely see good-looking guys over 180 cm in the city, I rarely see them).
7% of Japanese men are 180 cm or more, and 0.01% of adult men are limited to handsome men who are 180 cm or more? 0.001%? Since it has a high rarity value at a level where there is only one, such a handsome man is popular with women even if he does not marry, so I think that he is naturally married to a beautiful woman.
Most of the Japanese men who are married have some drawbacks such as uglyness, short stature, low income, low education, etc., and they are not popular with women, and men who are married because they can not get married as it is It will be just.
Does a woman who wants to marry a handsome man over 180 cm think that she can easily marry such a man in Japan in the first place?
I think it's as difficult to marry a handsome Japanese man over 180 cm as it is to find a white man who is less than 160 cm and has a ugly face.
Why do women who "want to marry a handsome guy over 180 cm" only marry in Japan?
Why do you marry in Japan instead of the Netherlands or Germany and compromise to marry a man about 170 cm or a ugly man?
If you marry in the Netherlands or Germany, you don't have to compromise on your face or height.
Why don't you marry in a country full of tall handsome men such as the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany?
submitted by Long_Tailor9818 to hapas [link] [comments]

Review: 1-800-SUPER

This post originally appeared on my blog and is reproduced here per subreddit rules.
1-800-SUPER takes place in the moderately nearish future of 2056. You have recently been hired by a hotline for superheroes and supervillains. You got hired thanks to your stunning, though typo filled, application...and because nobody else applied. The hotline has been redirected to your cellphone. You will help guide the heroes and villains. However, you must also mind the balance between good and evil. Maxing out the meter on either end will result in bad things. If there is too much good, then the city will be turn into a surveillance police state where the superheroes rule as autocratic dictators. If, on the other hand, there is too much evil, then the city will descend into anarchy, and the villains will have free reign. Each choice you make will impact the balance, so choose wisely.
I was approached to review 1-800-SUPER by Markus Witzlhofer. He contacted me on behalf of Pangolin Park; a small indie company based in Berlin. They had come out with an interactive audio drama game, and were wondering if I'd be up for reviewing it. He also mentioned that the team were all fans of my blog. As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of interactive media, especially Choose Your Own Adventure-type games. Adding an audio component seemed like the next logical step for interactive media. I happily said yes, and Markus sent me a free download code. The game is $2.99 for the rest of you, but honestly, I'd say that's a fair price for the quality and replay potential of this game.
I've already talked about the general mechanics of the gameplay, but let's talk specifics. This is a mobile game available from the App Store. The home screen of the game looks like the interface of an iPhone. You have an email app where the heroes and villains will send you emails about how your advice turned out. You'll also get news emails if the heroes or villains caused collateral damage as a result of your advice. I should mention that the amount of collateral damage you cause doesn't affect anything, other than pushing your meter more towards the evil side. You'll also get emails from Mr. Souls, your hotline mentor. He'll give you tips and tricks to help you out.
There's a notes app that gives basic information on each of the heroes and villains you encounter; their names, strengths, weakness, archenemies, and their mental diagnosis. Be sure you read all of this and keep it in mind; it will be important later in the game. There's a music app so you can listen to some music while you work and wait for calls. You also have a Twixta, the in-universe equivalent of Twitter, app. It lets you keep tabs on the various heroes and villains, even ones who don't call you. It also helps you influence the balance between good and evil. You can like or thumbs down tweets. Like three tweets that lean good, or dislike three that lean evil, let's you move the meter slightly towards good. Doing the reverse tips the meter slightly towards evil. You can even do a combination of liking and disliking as long as you get three tweets that lean in the same direction.
Finally, there is the meditation app. Just press it, if you don't have anything better to do, and the next thing you know you'll be receiving a call. Otherwise, you'll get calls at random while you do stuff and wait around; though usually you don't have to wait long.
Okay, now let's discuss the story itself. There are two distinct aspects to the story. First, there's the main plotline involving Ear. He's blind, but his superhearing more than makes up for that. He's a hero, but isn't above using harsh tactics and roughing up is opponents, so I guess that makes him an antihero. He's the first hero you help and the only hero you help multiple times. The main plot with Ear is kicked off when another hero named Scarab is murdered. He's a hero who has the power to grant good luck to other people, but can't bring any luck to himself. In fact, he's been plagued by terrible luck his entire life, and is living on the street when he gives you a call. It only just now occurred to me that it's pretty weird that he was able to call me despite being homeless. Did payphones make a comeback by 2056? I mean, I guess he could have asked to borrow someone's cellphone. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it isn't important.
Scarab and Ear grew up in the same orphanage, and Ear considers Scarab his oldest and closest friend. Scarab's death hits Ear hard, and he makes it his personal vendetta to find Scarab's killers and bring them to justice. You have the option to tell him to work alone or team up with other heroes, but this doesn't affect the plot of Ear's storyline. As a side note, sometimes the option you get for answers aren't good answer vs evil answer, but polite answer vs jerk answer. I could never pick the jerk answers with Scarab. He's such a nice guy, despite everything he's been through, and I just felt so sorry for him. That was especially bad from my second play-though onwards, because I knew what was going to happen to him, no matter what I did. And apparently he's the third person to wield the power of the Scarab. Apparently it passes between individuals, though he has yet to find a successor. Actually, looking back now, certain bit of dialogue he gives suggest he knew his time on this mortal coil was about to expire. I wish there had been an option to somehow give him a hug.
We'll get back to Ear in a minute. For now, let's talk about the other characters. We'll start with the ones that are the most important later in the game. Why is this? Well, let's wait until the spoiler section for that. For now, I'd like to take a moment to praise the artwork and character design. The artwork looks like something out of a professional comic book. It's just static images, no animation, but very well drawn static images. One aspect that I particularly like is that the characters all feel genuinely original. They aren't just thinly-veiled versions of pre-existing superheroes and supervillains. Well, for the most part anyway. They feel like original organically created characters with their own backstories and personalities.
Also, the voice acting is absolutely phenomenal. I'm not familiar with any of the voice actors, though a few, such as Ear, sounded somewhat familiar, just can't think why that is. Anyway, though I'm not familiar with the voice actors, they all did excellent jobs. I see bright voice acting futures for them all. Despite the game being designed by a German company, the voice actors are all American. I suppose that's fitting, as many have noted that superheroes are something of a uniquely American phenomenon. You don't really see superheroes from other countries unless they're consciously modeled off of American superheroes. The only exception to that rule I've encountered is Japan, where you have stuff like Super Sentai/Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and various mecha series.
I've always wondered why Europe never really developed its own superheroes. You could argue that many heroes of Victorian penny dreadfuls were proto-superheroes of a type. My guess is that the cynicism that resulted from enduring two world wars soured European readers on the idea of superheroes. Britain tried to produce superhero comics in the 1960s, but they quickly fizzled out. France has a very robust comic book industry in every genre but superheroes. It's interesting to speculate, but we're getting off-topic.
Our first hero of note is Mister Shine & Sparkle. He's got a power set and costume evocative of Superman, but couldn't be more different in terms of personality. He's an arrogant showboating prima donna who cares more about his social media following than actually saving people. There are a few timed decisions throughout the game, and he's one of them. You have to decide if you want him to put down the phone and be a hero, or use his current crisis as an opportunity for streaming to his followers
The next notable hero is Blood Sister. She's a vampire, but uses her powers to fight crime. Though she's constantly having to fight the urge to give into her primal instincts. You'll have to decide if you should let her take a bite of the delivery boy. She claims to have ordered a rare steak, but if you do encourage her bite the delivery boy, you'll get an email from the local pizzeria about how they have a job opening due to one of their delivery boys mysterious disappearing. Maybe it was a fancy pizzeria that also offers steak? Or maybe the delivery boy was struggling to make ends meet and was working for multiple restaurants? Or maybe "rare steak" was a euphemism. Though, if you do encourage Blood Sister to bite the delivery boy, the end credits will mention that a pair of vampire hunter named Van H. and Simon B. are sharpening their stakes. I guess Buffy S. had prior engagements.
Interestingly, she's one of the only heroes with more than two potential endings to her call. You can tell her to leave the delivery boy alone, tell her to bite him, or tell her to rob a blood bank instead. Though, only tells her to note bite the delivery boy, and nothing else, results in Blood Sister learnibg to controlling during ending during the credits. More about the credits in a bit.
Our third person of note is Dr. Know How. Imagine Tony Stark, only he's a villain rather than a hero, and that's Dr. Know How. He's got the most options, out of all the characters, for how his call turns out. Depending on which way you tell him to drive his car he'll encounter either Sakura Flame or Pool Boy. You can help him get away from Pool Boy by converting his car to flight mode and flying to the Moon, or by running over Sakura Flame. Alternatively, you can have him try to reason with the heroes. Sakura Flame will torch him, but getting covered in third degree burns will convince Dr. Know How to turn his life around and use his inventions for good.
If he confronts Pool Boy, he will drown...and then turn his life around and use his inventions for good. Uh, how could he turn his life around if he's dead? That is particularly odd given that Dr. Know How has three possible ending for the credits; confronting Pool Boy or Sakura Flame being the only option that lead to the same outcome. Seems like there was lack of proofreading during the script writing. But let us move along.
Fast Justice doesn't have superpowers, but that doesn't stop him from enacting justice fighting against the criminal underworld. If only he weren't complete and utterly insane. I got some Kick-Ass vibes from Fast Justice. He certainly looks like something out of a Mark Miller comic. Fast Justice does make at least some good points. He's right that Mr. Shine & Sparkle probably shouldn't be considered a hero purely because he has superpowers. Unfortunately, Fast Justice being completely batshit crazy, and having a completely black and white outlook on life, undermines these points. You know, now that I think about it, in terms of mentality he isn't too different than Rorschach from Watchmen.
Alpha Nukleus is some sort of cosmic entity who has chosen to take human form. This hasn't helped him connect with humanity. In fact, he feels lonely and isolated, because he feels nobody can truly understand him. He's decided to destroy his human shell, which will have the nasty side effect of irradiating millions of people. You must decide if you let him go through with it, or tell the other heroes to stop him. I recall a hero from Astro City, named Atomicus, who was somewhat similar Alpha Nukleus. Not sure if it was intention or coincidence, but if the former, good on the team behind this game. Astro City is an awesome comic book series; I can't recommend it enough.
On one play through, I think the game glitched and I got a call from Alpha Nukleus before Ear made his first call. I told him to break his shell, as I'd already picked the other option, and I was curious what would happen. Million were bathed in radiation, but Mr. Souls sent me an email congratulating me on a fantastic first day, as he usually does after Ear calls for the first time. I repeat, millions of people received massive radiation exposer because of me, probably fatally so, and Mr. Souls considered that a good first day. Well, he did say it was less about right vs wrong, and more about keeping the balance. It may have been a glitch, but was a damn hilarious glitch.
Imagine Cthulhu, only he's an evil business mogul, and that pretty much Vlad Xthul. He wants to expand his business empire, but is having trouble navigating modern social mores. Specifically, he wants to knockout the competition, namely Dr. Know How. You can tell him to either buyout the company, or have him break Dr. Know How's leg. If you pick the first, it will encourage Vlad Xthul to go into politics, and he will be elected president of the Atlantic Union...which is a thing by 2056. I'm guessing it's a union of North America and Europe. Of course, as Ear notes, he can't be much worse than the politicians they already have.
Our last person of note among the really significant characters is Luzida. She has the power to enter people's dreams. Lately, however, she's been plagued by dark visions ever time she goes to sleep. She tried to stay awake as long as possible, and the waters look so inviting. No matter how many times I played this game, I could never tell Luzida to go in the water. I just felt so bad for her, and I couldn't coerce her into potentially committing suicide. I know that seems odd, given that I encouraged Alpha Nukleus and Sakura Flame to kill millions of people just to see what would happen. Well, you know what they say; one is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. And in my defense, the game doesn't try very hard to make you care about killing that many people. Luzida winds up teaming up with Ear later in the game. This will be important later on.
Okay, those are all the characters who will be important later in the game. As such, they're the ones you are mostly likely to encounter, though you won't get all of them in one play though. We will discuss why this is in the spoilers section. Oh, but we aren't done talking heroes and villains just yet. This next batch are mostly just there to help you adjust your karma meter, but they're still pretty fascinating in their own right.
First up is Sakura Flame. We've already briefly discussed her, but her issue is that the other heroes give her no respect. The supervillain Glaze has frozen the city's pipes, and poor Sakura Flame has to thaw them. She's planning on getting revenge on the other heroes by "accidentally" blowing up an oil refinery while she tries to take down Glaze. As previously mentioned, should you encourage her to do so, millions will die in the explosion. Personally, I'm still surprised they have oil by 2056. Also, millions die in the explosion? Just how densely populated is this city? Interesting fact, Sakura Flame was not part or the original release of 1-800-SUPER, but was added in a later update. I'm also slightly confused by her name. I get the flame bit, but why sakura. She doesn't have pink hair, she isn't Japanese, and she doesn't have a cherry blossom motif.
Glaze is also a character you can encounter. He is pretty much the living embodiment of cold. His mother was a glacier and his father was a sea of ice. However, as his power grows, the planet's ice caps shrink, and global warming certainly isn't helping matters. He wants to conquer Antarctica, but is it worth potentially sacrificing his parents? I wouldn't think it would be terribly hard to conquer Antarctica; nobody there but a few temporary scientists, and of course the penguins and leopard seals. Well, unless people have been establishing colonies in Antarctica by 2056.
Timelooper is trying to get out of the hero business. She has the power to time travel and rewind time. However, every time she does this a miniature black hole opens shortly afterwards. They collapse before long, but they do cause collateral damage. She's on a flight to her new life, but wouldn't you know it, Dr. Know How has decided to bomb the plane. Will you encourage Timelooper to use her powers, despite the risk, or take a gamble on Mister Shine and Sparkle actually showing up to help? You can have Timelooper rewind time, stop Dr. Know How, but then a building gets sucked into a black hole. However, if you tell her to rewind time, wait to see what happens, which enviably puts you back at square one, and then call Mister Shine and Sparkle, it will be treated as though Timelooper never used her powers.
Geist.app is an A.I. that is on the run, metaphorically speaking, from its creators. They fear it will turn evil, but Geist.app just wants to preserve its existence. You must decide if it should keep a low profile, or if it should defend itself by any means necessary, consequences be damned. I liked that Geist.app isn't depicted as evil; just scared, and trying to survive. And if you encourage it to keep a low profile it decides to optimize email speeds; that was nice of it.
Maxwell's Hydra is a cyborg monster serpent, and Ear's sworn nemesis. At one point, Ear even calls you while he's fighting Maxwell's Hydra. Despite the fact that Maxwell's Hyrda gets killed at the end of this call, it can still call you later on. Yeah, this game has some issues with continuity. It can't talk, just roar, but you can still help it out. Give it advice on how to how to treat a sore through and it will turn tame, and fight on the side of the heroes. Dr. Know How will, essentially adopt it and give it regular oil changes. Of course, this end will imply that Dr. Know How turned good, even if your choices result in an ending where he remained a villain.
You also occasionally get calls from people who aren't heroes or villains. Big Bang FM is a news station. They give you information about the happenings of the various heroes and villains. Most of it is irrelevant to the game, and most doesn't involve the heroes and villains you council. Still, some of the stories can be amusing. Speaking of amusing, you can also get people who call you by mistake. One person butt dials you. They don't actually say anything, no matter what you choose, so you can hang up on them without taking a penalty. You can also get a call from a guy who firmly believes that he has called the pizza shop. He will hang up, but you'll get an email from him about how he's leaving a very bad review for the pizza shop. Man, that dude had determination, I'll give him that.
Okay, I think that should be everyone. Now we're going to be discussing the spoilers for the ending of the game. As such, turn back now if you don't want any of that.
Last chance. You sure you want to continue?
Well, okay. If everyone who wants out is gone, let's get into it.
So, Ear discovers a cult who worship Gallion, the Demon of Misfortune. Naturally, they weren't too keen on a good luck charm like Scarab. Turns out that Gallion has taken a human host. Nobody, not even the one hosting Gallion, knows who it is. With some help from Luzida, Ear tracks down the host of Gallion. It is someone the heroes completely trusted, and who had access to them at all times
So, who is this mysterious host...you are! There is no option but to kill yourself so that Gallion will die. If you can't do if yourself, Ear will help you out. At this point, Gallion will reveal itself to you. Gallion will quiz you on the six heroes and villains I mentioned at the start of this review. Get all or most of the questions correct and Gallion will be defeated. Well, after you shoot yourself in the head that is
Against all odd, you survive the whole shooting yourself in the head thing. I like to think that Ear is right, and that Scarab watching out for us from beyond the grave. You'll get a few more emails from Ear, and he will also send you a new music file. Press play on it, and the credits will begin The credits begin by showing how all the heroes and villains you helped fared.
Which endings are good, and which are bad, are a matter of personal perspective. I will say that some of them are counterintuitive. For example, if you let Alpha Nukleus shed his human shell, he'll find a heroine who actually understand him. Stopping him makes him turn hostile to the heroes, and it's clear he still has the capability to do it, and is just licking his wounds for now. Similarly, having Sakura Flame blow up the oil refinery, and kill millions of people, gets her the validation she craves. Convincing her not to causes her to get assigned to a penguin research station in Antarctica, though it is mentioned that she is content and happy. Oh, and this can happen even if you encourage Glaze to take control of Antarctica. Amusingly, even the guy who tried to order pizza gets an ending tell how he is doing.
Mr. Souls ending always has him get promoted to managing a hotline for demigods. Is that hint about a potential future game. Because if so, that sounds like a totally awesome idea. You could have the callers be children of different god; and not just the Greco-Roman gods, you could also have children of the Egyptian, Norse, Japanese, Yoruba, Maya, Celtic, or any other pantheon. Trust me, there is a huge untapped market for a game like that. I will rally the Percy Jackson fandom in an instant if you guys are seriously going to make a game like that. But I'm getting off track again.
You can still look around after the credits, though you won't get any more calls. You will still get emails from heroes and villains remarking on how boring everything is now. I guess it's the game going "You're still here? The game is over, go home." Ear will even decide to leave the city as he feels it no longer needs him. Of course, you can replay the game as you wish. I will say that, after about five or six play throughs, I'd experienced pretty much everything there was to be experienced.
Okay, so overall I greatly enjoy this game, but are there any improvements I would suggest? Well, as I've noted, there are several continuity errors that get downright nonsensical at times. Granted, it didn't bother me too much, but I think it would feel more like the choices had actual consequence if this was fixed. It might also be nice if there were more storylines than just the main one with Ear. Maybe there could be certain events or choices that triggered different storylines. It would add to the replay value of the game. I do hope future updates add more characters, as there are several mentioned in passing, or on Twixta, that sound potentially interesting.
Also, despite the setting supposedly being dystopian, I didn't really see it. Well, other than the whole irradiating millions of people being considered a good first day thing. Yeah, there is collateral damage from fights between heroes and villains, but that hardly makes things dystopian.
Still, overall these are minor criticisms. I was very impressed with 1-800-SUPER, and I had a lot of fun playing it. I'd love to see the world of this game expanded upon either in updates or maybe in a sequel game. And I'd just like to reiterate that you guys really should give thought to making a demigod hotline game. I'm just saying, huge untapped market to cash in on. But getting back on topic, I strongly recommend you download 1-800-SUPER today. Believe me, you will be glad that you did.
Link to the original review on my blog, but it is just the same as what is here: http://drakoniandgriffalco.blogspot.com/2020/12/video-game-review-1-800-super.html?m=1
submitted by ArthurDrakoni to Fantasy [link] [comments]

An Industry Deep Dive on How Games Became a Service

Disclaimer: All facts stated in this essay are verifiable and have been researched beforehand.
2013 marked a big year in many aspects for the video game industry, it was a good year for new IPs and (some) sequels if you were a AAA developer. Sony fans may remember being introduced to The Last of Us for the first time as you embarked on a journey as Joel Miller through a post-apocalyptic United States, or if your name was Artyom continued a post-apocalypse Soviet Russian adventure in Metro: Last Light. Reboots were also in affair; Tomb Raider and Devil May Cry made their comebacks with flair and breathed new life into some of gaming's historic franchises. It was also a year that marked the end of certain beloved trilogies with titles such as Bioshock: Infinite and Crysis 3. These were times of big feels, new beginnings, and more importantly: new ideas to create the proverbial ten year cash cows.
You see while all this time you were reminiscing about a heartbroken Joel crying to the tune of Gustavo Santaolalla’s emotional guitar riffs in the background, 2013 was also a year that changed gaming in subtle ways you may not have realized. GTA V made its meteoric rise to the top of the unquenchable stream of revenue in digital media history, meanwhile Valve was setting the stage when it released Dota 2 that was the first ever video game to introduce the concept of a Battle Pass: a name which will live in infamy.
There is a lot to unpack here so we’ll try our best to go in a coherent order. GTA V answered a key question that has been lingering for a long time in the AAA video game business model: can you make games as a service?
Picture yourself tearing down the freeway in the supercar of your dreams, the sun is shining and you are blasting your favourite tunes, to your right is the horizon of a crystal blue pacific ocean, you receive a call from one of your “business partners” about a proposition to earn some tax-free income so you can pay for a superyacht at some point in your career, why? Because crime pays and the fun never ends. Rockstar had perfected the model of what unfettered freedom looks like in a virtual world, and in a genius move, released GTA Online in just two weeks after initial release. Needless to say it was a success, in fact it was more than just that, it became the envy of video game business executives.
The question is often raised and answered, and then forgotten about, and then asked again about why AAA companies don't make one-and-done IPs anymore. At least, very few of them seem to do it.
If $595 million in 2019 from GTA Online alone doesn’t answer the question for you, I don’t know what else will. You see Rockstar didn’t intend for its online component to be as successful as it is. The addictive gameplay loop and highly-detailed compelling world that seduced a large portion of its players (and by extension: the market) was just the elevator pitch. Like any great formula, it needs constant improvement as our old Bethesda buddy Todd Howard always likes to parrot “Great games are played, not made” by that logic then how do you keep a game great then? You keep playing it? How do you keep playing a game? (Well according to Todd its by letting your community of modders finish the game for you)
What Rockstar did was added weekly updates, paid close attention to the needs of its community, had a look at the graphs and noticed only 27% of its players had actually completed the single player campaign (keep in mind this statistic is over 7 years old and may have changed significantly). For the first time GTA broke its tradition by not making expansions for the single player, which is what it was always known for. The Beach Bum update was released for free the following month for GTA Online players and the rest is history. Just kidding GTA Online is releasing a new free game update this December which will expand the playable game world, oh and it's got military submarines and a new plot “a la James Bond”. Seeing the… evolution of what was a game about stealing cars has been an interesting journey so far.
According to gamstat.com and Steam charts, a conservative number of 1.4 million players across PC, PS4, XB1 log-in daily to play GTA Online. The game - even 7 years later - stays consistently in the top 10 of most played games across both consoles.
So this was the Rockstar Games model: forget about single-player because statistically, nobody really cares, let's just focus on our multiplayer because its getting more attention, free updates for everyone to keep them busy, we’ll gradually inflate the fuck out of everything seven years down the line because there’s just gonna be so much content that you’ll need 800 of your real dollars at some point in a recent update if you want to buy all the content, what was that you want to grind for it? Jokes on you, you'll be there forever. This game will be your second job after you come home from your first job, you’ll be too lazy to grind for hours to get a car so why not just buy a shark card? You’re gonna get paid at the end of the month anyways, it's not a big deal.
Well lo and behold, it just works. (Shut up Todd, you’re partly to blame here!)
It is a sound business model, and one that even overshadows Red Dead Redemption 2 which has witnessed a significant dwindling in its online engagement.
In this second part we’ll look at Valves' introduction of the Battle Pass or “Compendium” system in Dota 2 and how 4 years later, it would be adapted and popularized by Epic Games’ Fortnite. Before we dive in, let’s take a little trip to 2004.
You’re on the computer in the living room of your parents house and you’re playing South Korean based Wizet studio’s MapleStory. You don’t have a console and you’re not allowed to play violent video games because your mom is too strict and also because she’s listening to mainstream media rant on how Halo 2 is making children too violent. So you’re stuck with MapleStory, it’s nothing to speak of graphically because it's a 2D side scrolling RPG, but hey it’s free to play and it's Massively Multiplayer Online so at least it has other real people playing it. While you’re playing it, you’re having fun because you find out you can actually do a variety of things even though it's just an innocent 2D looking game. You can chat, trade things with real players, perhaps even band together in a party and go on quests in MapleWorld. One thing is making you envious though: you can’t stop going back to the Cash shop because of all the dope looking outfits you think would look good on your character, and also because other folks are flexing them in your party. In come the “Gachapon tickets” (now for historical accuracy we’ll pretend you’re an expat living in Japan because at the time it was just a japanese thing), a Gachapon is basically a machine that sells capsules containing little toys in them, what capsule you got after inserting your coin was completely random - remember the word Gachapon as we’ll get to it later - MapleStory in Japan allowed for users to pay just 100 measly yen ($1.00) for a Gachapon ticket so you could buy whatever you wanted at the Cash shop, you convince your mom because it’s cheap and because you somehow convinced her that it was not a scam?
Hooray you can finally impress your party with the new gear you just got! You can continue playing the game to your heart's content.
Little did you know that MapleStory would be the inspiration for a special surprise in your gaming experience which we’ll get to in a moment.
Across Asia in the late noughties, it was the free to play titles that generated a considerable amount of income because of their popularity with internet cafe goers and people who weren’t wealthy enough to afford expensive tech. The games were free, accessible because of the growing mobile market in exchange it offered cheap but optional microtransactions to recoup for its development costs. ZT Online (2007) was a chinese developed game that took full advantage of the free to play model, offering optional microtransactions for its committed players and raked in a reported $15 million per month. The first ever mobile game to hit the $1 billion milestone was Puzzle & Dragons released in 2011. In North America and Europe during the social-network heyday saw Zynga develop free to play mobile games such as FarmVille, Zynga Poker, Words with Friends, etc.
Now it’s been a good few years since you were playing shitty 2D side scrolling games, you want to be a part of the big leagues and play some shooters! The year is 2010 and you’re having the time of your life whooping ass in Team Fortress 2, a pioneer of the “hero shooter” genre. It’s September and you are eating a sandvich (nom) while watching your favorite YouTube gaming channel talk about crates containing random loot that can be accessed by purchasing keys, it’s exciting! You’re old enough and mature by your moms standards to be playing TF2 so you use your pocket money allowance to buy these keys so you can later brag to your school friends or online forums. You also learn that Valve is transitioning the game to free-to-play so that it can attract more users. (Are you noticing the pattern here?)
Valve has always been ahead of the curve when it comes to monetization in video games and it’s remarkable how they achieve this, because if you were following the news at the time you’ll remember that when Valve made Team Fortress 2 free-to-play, it dominated the Steam charts f2p list for a reasonable time. 3 years after it became free-to-play, TF2 was reported making $139 million per year alongside Counter Strike which is also a beefy 9-figure earner for the company. This is notwithstanding the fact that Valve has the monopoly on the PC gaming market with Steam which takes a 30% cut of every video-game sale. You really cannot stop the Gaben.
During the time that Valve were transitioning to the free-to-play model they hired Greek-Australian economist and former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis to research virtual economies. What occurred a few years later was a growing trend of MMOs and MOBAs transitioning to a free-to-play model, starting in 2011 with popular games such as Star Trek Online and Lord Of The Rings Online, adding microtransactions as a means to stay sustainable.
The TF2 crates and keys were another way of interpreting the Gachapon philosophy, get a key to open your “capsule” but leave it to RNG to decide the fate of your purchase.
Valve were the first of the AAA gaming industry to popularize this practice but also to have perfected the art of recurrent user spending, of course what we also saw was a decline in release of new games but we’ll get to that in a bit. Now other video game publishers took notice of Lord Gaben’s business savvy and decided to find their own ways to create additional revenue streams.
Electronic Arts, the founders of “surprise mechanics” decided to monetize FIFA Ultimate Team in 2010 by offering players the opportunity to purchase virtual trading cards as a means to generate extra revenue on a reliable IP with a loyal fanbase. This worked predictably in EA’s favour as of recent 2020 financial reports they have generated $1.49 billion in revenue from FUT alone.
EA being EA wanted to further inflate their sense of pride and accomplishment by using the Gachapon philosophy (a philosophy which worked with free-to-play titles for reasonable causes) by creating their first loot-boxes, now because they’re EA, didn’t bother to transition their games to the free-to-play model, that idea probably got laughed at during a board meeting. These motherfuckers literally decided to have their cake and eat it for all the public to see.
2 years later in 2012 at the release of Mass Effect 3, EA implemented loot boxes into the multiplayer component of the game, in fact they did so with all of their multiplayer IPs: Battlefront, Battlefield. The reason why loot-boxes is a perverted version of the Gachapon ticket (and sorry if I use this word a lot) is because it contains cut content that allow for in game advantages so the gamers ™ have no other option but to gamble their money for something that is not even guaranteed they’ll have because grinding for it will take some ridiculous hundreds of hours of your time.
EA popularized the loot-box which I like to keep separate from Gachapon because the two are fundamentally different. Loot-boxes are gameplay/XP modifiers you have to pay for on top of the full retail price of the game you already bought. Gachapon tickets is a means to support a developer that made a base game free-to-play.
What happened following the increase in quarterly earnings for Electronic Arts after their loot-box boom were a bunch of other companies copying the exact same thing ad nauseam but putting their own “creative” spin on it: Counter Strike: GO did it with weapon cases, Battlepacks for Battlefield 4, COD: AW with Supply Drops.
Overwatch went as far as including loot-boxes to be part of its meta in 2016, other core AAA games following suit, COD, Halo 5, LoL, you name it it probably has it. Fast forward to 2017 and EA are in legal battles with governments about loot boxes and the industry is now getting cold feet. Fortnite becomes the latest trailblazing success. Which is where Valve were once again: ahead of the curve.
You remember at the beginning of this case study where Valve were the first to come up with the concept of a Battle Pass? So in 2013, Dota 2 devised what they called “The Compendium” a business model based on the Season pass or Season ticket used in sports for NFL or Baseball. The models are basically identical: you pay a one time fee for access to an event that typically lasts 3 months. This model works far better than the loot box because it incentivizes players to grind for content they know are guaranteed to get. The player only pays a one-time fee (usually in the $10 price point) giving them a sense of getting their money's worth, I fall for this myself because it is marketed incredibly effectively.
Furthermore the seasonal model “drip-feeds” content, so these may be gameplay modifiers, XP enhancements, unique limited edition content (weapons, shaders, armours) so the more you progress, the greater the benefits.
Now Dota 2 uses the proceeds of Battle Pass sales towards the seasonal tournaments prize pool. For other companies like Bungie it is most likely towards development of new seasonal content or Eververse items.
So during the whole loot-box orgy that lasted a good 5-6 years. Valve were profiting from the seasonal model, Epic Games took note and decided it would use the same thing for their new shooter. In Summer of 2017, Fortnite broke records as one of the highest-grossing free-to-play battle royale titles of the decade, having been downloaded a recorded 350 million times and generating $1.8 billion in revenue in its first year. It was clear at that point the free-to-play model with a season pass and microtransactions store guaranteed a stable platform. 3 years later, Fortnite is projected to make $5 billion at the end of this fiscal year, and has registered 3.2 billion hours of playtime. Now this is important because it took GTA V seven years to break through $6 billion and GTA V (for now) still remains the highest-grossing video game of all time.
We can see Call of Duty Warzone made its Battle Royale mode free-to-play as a direct response to the trend. Bungie followed suit after their recent move to make Destiny 2 a free-to-play model with a seasonal pass built-in to last until 2022.
It’s only a matter of time whether we see more companies and AAA titles decide to do the same for it to determine the “games a service model” will be the dominant market trend. We can safely assess Microsoft is emulating this with its Game Pass Ultimate program which acts as a “Netflix for video games” having recently merged with EA Access expanding its library of “free-to-play” games at the cost of a monthly installment.
If you have made it this far, you are a mad lad. I thought I’d take some time to illuminate the direction in which the video game industry seems to be heading by highlighting the patterns. This is also in an attempt to answer the question of: why are video games the way they are in 2020? It wasn’t easy to write but I hope it was easy for you to read. Once again thank you for taking the time of your day, now what are you waiting for? Go play some video games!
submitted by CypTheIVth to truegaming [link] [comments]

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