Really dumb

Just a few days ago, there was a beta for Star Wars Battlefront 2 (the new version). Shockingly, it came to light that the game's entire progression is based on loot boxes. In other words, all progress in the game is down to random luck, and in order to mitigate that luck, you can buy more boxes for real money.

This is a tactic mostly used in so called freemium games, games that are free to play but urge you to use their micro-transactions to earn them money. Some are decent about this, others are scummy beyond belief, making you grind for days for everything unless you give in and pay.

Much have been said about the freemium market, but to see it so blatantly in a full price AAA game is disgusting. This comes on top of the Middle Earth: Shadow of War controversy, where it came to light that the multiplayer part of the game is heavily affected by loot boxes. Popular racing title Forza has added them as well in their seventh installment. Everywhere you turn, you find full priced games pumping out more and more micro-transactions and pay-to-win mechanics.

Publishers openly call their customers “Whales” and brag about not tightening the financial screws completely, “Because the whales might actually notice”. Games are becoming increasingly chopped up before the point of sale. We have Basic, Silver, Gold and Collectors editions costing ever more and more. Add on season passes for DLC that's not just unannounced, they're not even planned and you have an unbelievably hostile environment for the customer.

The natural question that follows is, why? To maximize profits, pure and simple. Some AAA games have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars, and the publishers want their money back with a hefty profit on top. This is of course standard business practice, nothing sinister there, but then the question becomes, why make games that are so expensive? Now the answer is not so obvious anymore. My best answer is that the businesspeople that make the decisions aren't gamers and they certainly aren't game developers. In their minds, if you invest a lot of money, you get even more money back. Fair enough I suppose, but games aren't just a product, they are an interactive form of art, and you can't make good art by throwing money at it.

When you spend this much on a game, you can't take creative risks anymore. This is why publishers love their flagship games so much. They can be pretty certain that gamers will buy the yearly installment no matter how repetitive they get, making it a safe investment. This brings us to today's actual point. Yes, it's not just me ranting at the AAA publishers, no matter how much they deserve it.

Just recently, a game called Cuphead got released. It's a side-scroller, jumper shooter. The soundtrack is 30's jazz and the animation is 30's cartoons. It's absolutely amazing to behold. There is nothing like it on the market. It is genuinely new! Disclaimer: it is also insanely difficult, so make sure it's for you before you buy it.

The kicker is that the development team, StudioMDHR, consists of two brothers. Another guy made the music. That's it. 2-3 guys, and the game has sold more than a million copies.

The hit, Stardew Valley, has sold more than a million copies, and it was made by one guy. The Five Nights at Freddy's franchise is made by one guy, and has made around $30 million. Ever heard of Minecraft? Developer Notch started alone, before hiring on some help. The when it became popular Microsoft bought out Minecraft for $2.5 Billion.

See where I'm going here? Instead of making bland, boring games year after year, the publishers with all the money could do a lot of smaller varied games. Games that people would talk about for years and even decades. Who is going to talk about Call of Duty X three years later? No one. Even better, the AAA publisher could stop using poverty as an excuse to cram gambling elements and RNG loot boxes in the games. Wouldn't that be fun? I think so.

Of course the AAA boys don't just make garbage, I know that. I'm just getting so tired of this behavior. They can keep their flagship games, but the world needs new games as well. The best part is that smaller games are cheaper to make and require less people. This has been proven. Some AAA title have 600-700 people working on them. That is way too much especially when some teams are in different cities or even separate continents. Communication and vision of clarity becomes impossible at that point.

Alright, I could go on, and I might at some point, but I think that's enough for today. Until next time, have a great week!

What a weird job.

With everything that's going on in the world, it's sometimes easy to get a bit depressed. But I find it curiously comforting that the world has always been weird and screwed up. Maybe it's a sense of permanency or the fact that things aren't getting worse. Some things get better, others worse, but overall the world keeps turning, the same as it ever was.

Today we're going to take a look at some of the really odd things people have done to themselves and to others throughout the years.

We begin with Micah Grimes, a coach for The Covenant School's girls basketball team. He was fired from his position because he led his team to a 100-0 victory in 2009. Being a private Christian school, the board found the victory to be “not Christlike”, and demanded an apology from Grimes. He however refused to apologize for doing his job well, and was let go.

A woman, I don't know where or exactly when, was fired for typing all her emails in BOLD LETTERS, and in red. She sued for wrongful termination and won.

A woman how was fired and didn't win her wrongful termination suit was Melissa Nelson. She was a dental assistant with ten years experience, and apparently really good at her job. The kicker? Her boss found her too sexy to resist and his wife urged him to fire Nelson. She was amongst other things accused of wearing clothes that were too enticing, even though she always wore regulation scrubs to work. Weirdos...

Speaking of weirdos and jobs, sometimes it's the job itself that is weird. Like the Shanghai Commission for the Management of Language Use. No, they are not the thought police, their job is to eradicate so called Chinglish. China has had problems with very incorrectly translated signs from Chinese to English. Examples include “Cash Recycling Machines” (ATM's), “Anus Hospital” (proctologist) and “Fatso size” (Big portions).

Another interesting job, if you can get it is to be a Yeoman Warder of the Tower of London. They are all ex-military officers and their jobs are to guard and guide people around the Tower. The absolutely coolest Yeoman job has to be the Ravenmaster. He is responsibility is to care for the six ravens who must always be in residence at the Tower.

Besides Ravenmaster, the UK also has has the Office of The Swan Warden and the Office of The Swan Marker. Their job in a nutshell is to mark, oversee and give medical aid to the swans of Great Britain. The swan is endangered and most countries have offices that look after them. In the UK all swans are the property of the Queen, so we know it's serious business.

Finally, in the US, you can work for The Mutilated Currency Division. It's a part of the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Their job is to replace damaged bills as long as you send in more than half of the note in question. The exception to this is if it's obvious that the rest of the bill is destroyed. They do this at no cost to you, but it's worth pointing out that they only handle paper money. Damaged coins are sent to the US Mint.

That's it folks. Until next time, have a wonderful, normal week!

Oh yeah, it's Monday

Just a short one today, as I had to go see a lady in white about a tooth and I'm a bit upside down.

So, in lieu of actual content, I have something as wonderfully silly as BattleBots for you!

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ixB9k6aijw&feature=youtu.be&t=10m20s




So until next week, avoid killer robots!

Metrics

Pop quiz: What does the United States of America, Myanmar (Burma) and Liberia have in common?

The answer is they are the only countries left that officially use the old Imperial system of measurement. The rest of the world have quite happily embraced the Metric system. It must be pointed out that the U.K still uses Imperial in their daily lives, although they are Metric on paper at least. They also still, for some reason, like to use Stone as a measurement of weight. A stone is 6.35 kilograms or 14 pounds.

The Metric system was developed in France at the end of the 18^th century and quickly spread across the world due to its logical nature. Everything slots neatly together no matter what you need. 1 liter of water weighs 1 kilogram and occupies 1 cubic decimeter of space. Nice and easy. It even works well with the Centigrade system of measuring temperature.

Fun fact: Celsius originally wanted the scale to mean that water froze at 100 degrees and boiled at 0. It was flipped upside down after his death by either Carl von Linné (the guy who created the naming system for all animals and plants) or by the French scientist Jean-Pierre Christin. Wikipedia unhelpfully claims that both did it. Maybe it was a cooperative effort. After all, it could have been a large thermometer...

Anyway, the U.S very nearly did adopt the Metric system back in the day. We go back to the time just after the American Revolution. George Washington was president, and future president and founding father Thomas Jefferson was Secretary of State, and in charge of the details.

In 1793, French aristocrat and botanist Joseph Dombey set sail from Paris to Philadelphia carrying with him a rod that was precisely one meter in length and a copper bar that was one kilogram. Jefferson was known to be a fan of decimals and in need of an official system of measurement. It may seem strange to us now, but the newly created nation was in shambles. States and even cities printed their own money, they very nearly had a civil war and no one listened to the new government or indeed paid their taxes. Some people liked things to be like they always were, while others wanted nothing to do with the old British way of life.

So the stage was set for the Metric system to take the newly minted United States by storm. Except an actual storm blew Dombey's ship way off course and right into the Caribbean. There he was captured by pirates who didn't have any sympathy for Dombey's important mission. Instead they tossed him in a cell and sold his belongings, and that is the last time anyone saw poor old Joseph.

Did piracy derail the metric system in the United States of America? Yes and no. Sure it seems that Dombey's sad story is real, but no one know if the young nation would have adopted the Metric system or not, no matter how efficient it is. Sometimes people are stubborn just to be difficult.

Anyway, that's enough for today. Until next time, have a great week!

Keep Calm and,

We've all had days that didn't go as they should have. Everyone has been annoyed or troubled by someone in their lives; bosses, acquaintances, neighbors etc.

Sometimes we all want to just scream in frustration but we stay calm, and like the poster says, carry on.

The following people didn't exactly do that.

Take Reginald Peterson from Jacksonville, Florida. He ordered a sandwich from Subway, and discovered to his horror that they forgot to add the sauce he ordered, so he called the police. Then he called 911 again to complain that it took too long for them to arrive. To fix his sauce problem.

It's not just “normal” people who call 911 to complain. In 2008, Joe McCain, younger brother of Senator John McCain called 911 to complain about the heavy traffic in his area. The dispatcher understandably lectured him about why we call 911, where upon Joe said F—K You, and hung up. The dispatcher left him a voice mail explaining that he could be charged for doing what he did, so of course he called back to complain about the message.

If calling the police on someone isn't enough, you can always sue them in court. Or at lest try to. An inmate in the Colorado Correctional Facility sued the NFL for $88 billion because his team didn't make the playoffs. Hint: he didn't get the money.

Todd Kirkpatrick figured it would be a good idea to rob a bank. Then the police showed up and Todd ended up somewhat shot. He then decided to file a lawsuit from prison against the city for $6.3 million because the other cops failed to stop their colleague from shooting him in the first place.

One day Allen Heckard got fed up with being told he looked just like Michael Jordan. So he sued the famous basketball player for looking too much like him. He also blamed Nike for aiding in causing him harm. He demanded $52 million.

In Canterbury, a local man called 999 (the UK version of 911) to report a strange light above his house. The dispatcher said they would look into it, but he called back two minutes later and said, “You won't believe it, it's the moon...”

Michigan police officer Edward Sanchez decided to keep some weed for himself during a drug raid. Then that night, he and his wife baked and ate some weed brownies. They must have been pretty strong, because that evening Edward called 911 to report that he was dead. Well he wasn't, but his career was. He was fired soon after.

Jane Mulcahy, a devout Catholic sued her own divorce lawyers for failing to make it clear to her that she was in fact getting a divorce.

When Anton Purisima got bitten by a dog, he sued not only the city on New York, but also the city transit service, Au Bon Pair store, and many more. The kicker? He demanded 2 Undecillion dollars in damages. That's not a made up number either, it's 340 trillion trillion trillions. In other words considerably more money than actually exists in the world.

There are many more stories like this. The woman who called the police because her husband refused to eat dinner, or he woman who called because her boyfriend refused to propose to her. We have the man who sued the Guinness book of world records for getting the record breaking number of lawsuits he filed, wrong. How about the guy who sued Fosters for not being brewed in Australia? It goes on and on, and I think the lesson here is this: take a deep breath and think twice before acting.

Anyway, until next time, have a wonderful, calm, police free week, and don't sue anyone else frivously.

Nothing ever changes

Once upon a time, a group of young film makers moved west. They chafed under the tyranny of The Motion Picture Patents Company, also called the Trust. It was founded by Tomas Edison, and controlled all film making on the East Coast, which was to say pretty much all of the film making.

They moved to Arizona, and finding it not to their liking, moved on until the tracks ran out, and they found themselves in Hollywood. And so the movie capitol of the world was founded, and nothing has really changed since then.

I find it fascinating that the people and studios that founded Hollywood were independent filmmakers, young rebels that raged against the establishment and wanted to make something new. Today they are the establishment, unwilling to take risks and break new ground. Today's Hollywood are yesterday's Trust.

As an aside, we see the same exact pattern in the video game industry. What were once small passionate studios working on shoestring budgets out of garages and dilapidated offices, are today the EA's, Activision's and Ubisoft's of the world. AAA studios crewed by businessmen with no understanding of what makes a good game, only what makes profit at any cost. Gigantic marketing and media empires that care not about art, only about the bottom line. I guess that means that the video game industry has finally grown up.

Oh well, back to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The film industry grew rapidly and quickly became incredibly lucrative. In 1916, Alma Rubens starred in The Mystery of the Leaping Fish for which she was paid $3000 a week. That is $70,320 in today's money adjusted for inflation. Sounds familiar doesn't it? Then she became hooked on cocaine and died in 1931, her career in ruins. Fame it seems has always been a cruel mistress.

If we think studios are powerful today (and they are), it's nothing compared to how they were back in those days. Contracts had morality clauses that controlled the stars lives to an incredible degree. Get pregnant? Bad for business, get an abortion. Are you gay? Bad for business, marry a woman or get fired.

Not that the studios cared that their talent were gay or slept around. They cared that the public wouldn't find out. Apparently it was common knowledge who was gay in Hollywood, but the public never knew. Mass media was easier to control in those days.

Then we have the fixers and the cleaners. And make no mistake, they still exist. Their job was to keep everything squeaky clean on the surface.

Suppose someone overdoses at your party. What to do? Can't call the cops and admit illegal drug use at your house. Call the cleaners. They'll get rid of the body for you. Got some young thing pregnant and now she wants money? Call the fixers to fix the problem... You get the picture.

Everything we hear about the stars today, already happened a hundred years ago. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

That's all folks, until next time, have a calm and stress free week!

Allowed or not?

What's considered shocking and taboo changes as the times pass. This is nothing new, we've all heard how people fainted from fright when the original Dracula (with Bela Lugosi) was shown.

But sometimes, what's considered acceptable and what's not can be really weird. Let me give you a couple of examples:

Elvis Presley, the King of Rock 'n Roll, was censored from the waist down for a long time on TV, due to his wild pelvic gyrations. Jim Morrison (the Doors) and Mick Jagger (Rolling Stones) were both ordered to change lyrics before appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show. Today, these bands are considered culture.

Did you ever watch I Dream of Genie? Barbra Eden and Larry Hagman (J.R. From Dallas) had good chemistry and the show had quite a bit of sexual tension between them. If I remember correctly, the characters even got married at one point. So what?, I hear you ask.

Well the Genie was dressed in what would commonly be considered a harem outfit, only her pants were lined with silk on the inside so that you couldn't see her legs. Furthermore, the executives argued for hours about whether they could show her belly button on TV. In the end, they decided to cover it up, even though the show featured more than one scene on the beach with women in bikinis, including Barbra Eden herself... Way to earn that paycheck, guys.

During the 50's and the 60's, you could show a married couple in their bedroom, but never with a double bed. Sure, most couples sleep in a double, but to show one would be demonstrating that the couple was intimate with each other, and that wasn't allowed. Never mind that all these TV couples had TV kids...

The 50's sitcom, Leave it to Beaver was the first TV show in the U.S. and probably the world to show not only a bathroom, but a toilet. The plot called for a couple of boys to keep a turtle in the water tank of said toilet, and after many long discussions, the network allowed it, but only if they didn't film the seat and bowl.

Finally I want to mention Tweety Bird. Warner Bros. tiny yellow bird that always thought he saw a “puddytat”. Well, originally he was pink, like baby birds are. Then the censors thought he looked naked and demanded a color change. Because small birds with big heads wielding mallets are apparently sexual. Who would have thought? At least the character wasn't ruined by the change.

Well, that's all I wrote for this week. Until next time, have a wonderful week.