It looks like I’m pretty good with plants.
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Author: harold
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Reflection on content
Netflix proves the point for MS buying Acti-Blizz; if you don’t own fantastic content, you won’t last.
Netflix knew this and has been cranking up production for years now. But nothing has come close to movies or TV shows that were developed for YEARS. It’s not just about production money and 4K cameras. Now Netflix is raising their prices and losing shows they don’t own. Netflix is feeling the heat in 2022.
Disney knew this. Just their Pixar catalog alone is able to convince me to pay for their subscription service. HBO knows this too and that’s why they don’t want people to binge their stuff. They want people to respect that content, rightfully so.
You need genuine, good, not-specifically-designed-to-chart content for your platforms. Period.
Microsoft knows this too and I would even argue that the reason they dropped the mobile market is to go after juicy content —from Minecraft to Zenimax— while not getting sued for monopoly. Owning content over controlling hardware >>>>
It’s all about who has rich, tasty, prone to spin-off IPs. Nintendo knows this too.
Interestingly, it’s always been like that. The thing is creating those premium IPs is still random, costly sorcery so, it’s easier to buy them.
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Algorithmized TV production
They have algorithmized TV production.
They collect shit-ton of data on everything of the users, and track eyeballs (not literally, I think)- what are people watching, what are people binging, etc.
They are forming clusters of users based on demographic, purchase power, etc, and mapping those clusters to features in content.
And if a certain overall kind or discreet feature is worth the amount of eyeball it is attracting, a designed, soulless series gets created with those features, or two.
This is what modern, app-TV feels to me. No art, no quality. Just content tailor-made and factory produced to match the taste of favored demographics with purchase power. And they not only want to match. They want to maximize.
They want the maximum amount of people to watch something, not small amounts of people finding their niche.
I cannot tolerate this kind of content, and I am unsubscribed to all services except Amazon Prime for free delivery of goods.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some good TV. I would consider Bosch to be quality TV, and Ozark is okay-ish. The Expanse, too.
But I am done with conveyor-belt driven app-TV.
I feel that too. That’s how Don’t Look Up felt like. Not bad, but not “real” either. So weird.
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Snap-ped
Teenagers and early 20s folks are often on Snap these days.
I’m wondering about the cultural impact of a service based on ephemerality, once those people realize that their youth will be a hollow memory with nothing to show.
Especially when they compare themselves to previous generations who have most of their digital memories saved.
Y’all will have 5,000 questionable selfies and 240fps footage of random shit on icloud to remember when you were young. And that will be it.
We will talk a lot more about that in ten years, once they reach 30.
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177 km/h (110 mph)
I had been in the family for a year by then, I believe. We were busy building the family house every weekend, which included trips to the French Lowe’s or Home Depot. Dad drove a Ford Fiesta hatchback because who cares about driving people around? We’re moving weight (concrete mix bags), bro!
So weird to look at now. Another life, another dimension, I don’t know.
Summer. On a sunny Sunday morning on the freeway, we were on our way to get some lumber or something. Maybe I was a little bored, though really happy to be sitting in the passenger seat instead of laying down in the back. Dad decided to do something.
“So, I’m thinking about pushing the car, to see how fast it can go, don’t tell your mom”
My face probably lit up at the idea of not only doing something risky and illegal, but doing it without anyone else knowing about it. Plus, I really wanted to see what’s like to drive really fast. I imagine I just said “ok!”
It was on the A4 freeway, which where we were about to get our “speed demon” scream, was the largest freeway in France: four lanes both ways. He also chose the part where it goes a little bit downhill.
“Is your seatbelt tight? Here we go!”
He jumped on the left lane and started to push his foot on the gas. I remember feeling so giddy.
130 km/h (80 mph) is the max authorized on freeways, but we used to rarely go that fast in general. 110 km/h was the usual freeway speed. And we were about to pass it!
115…120…130…145… Now we’re passing everyone. 150.
“I still have a bit of room under the pedal, but not much!” Dad is yelling now because the noise inside the car is pretty loud. That freeway at that time is a lot like a lot of US freeways: no asphalt, just rough concrete. He floors it.
155…160… I want to see 200!! I know it’s impossible –I already know at that time that only sports cars can go that fast– but it seems so close. The needle moves slower now. 165… 170…
We reach 177 km/h (110 mph). The car is vibrating heavily. We stay at that speed for a few minutes. It’s thrilling, the engine is roaring. It’s also not really as exciting as I thought it would be! We’re passing other vehicles faster. But it’s Sunday and we are not late for anything.
Dad slows down. We exit and go back home, silently. We never did that ever again with any of the next family cars.
It was cool enough that I remember it to this day, though.
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MS Blizz
Dang.
For the people in the back who don’t read about the history of video games, and who don’t understand why Bobby Kotick is still there, here’s a hint (and more here):
“How could the business press not love him? He turned a $440,000 investment into a $4.5 billion company in 25 years.”
And just sold it for $70 billion. Activision filed for bankruptcy in 1991 with Bobby at the top. Of COURSE business people love that man. He’s been excellent at his job.
Now yes, I know. But when we’re talking about money and that amount, you already know that characters and toxic culture don’t matter then. Look at Apple.
Anyway, on the Microsoft side, wow. They’re not joking around and it makes sense: the only way for game subscriptions to work is to have so many lucrative IPs that whatever happens, —a game being a complete financial bust— nothing can really go down. It’s simply too big.
I think by buying Blizzard they just achieved that. That Game Pass thing just became ultra attractive to many.
But even bigger is the fact that they own eyeballs, metaverse-ready kids: from Minecraft to Spyro to Call of Duty to Doom and Halo, with a plethora of indie games on the side and Candy Crush with mom? All for one subscription? For any device?
No one will leave that MS Metaverse. It’s too good of a deal.
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You know what
Maybe we have too much entertainment.
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SFII Audio
Great article on Street Fighter II’s low level audio.
Trivia: How does Street Fighter accelerates playback speed when a round situation becomes critical (contestant low health). It doesn’t. These are hard-coded separate music tracks.
My whole life I thought SFII audio engine being “MIDI”-based meant that they could simply increase the tempo/accelerate playback for the low health part.
*pikachu face*
On the other hand, it totally makes sense: tons of stuff are hard-coded in games. Tons.
The bottom line in game development is always, if you can make it a dumb asset instead of using precious CPU cycles to do your thing, please fucking do so.
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De_Dust II
The light grey is where you operate; green, where you spawn, red, what you aim/protect.
THIS MAP RIGHT HERE SIR
It’s called Dust II. It’s one of the most amazing piece of architecture in games. Designed by David Johnston, released in 2001, it basically never changed.
That’s ridiculous.
To make one of the most perfectly balanced video game map ever made, played by millions, recording billions of hours on it, still one of the favorite of professional players???? And he ACED it on the first try???? And he made it for FREE????
dlfkjgldfksjgldfkjgsdfigozj I can’t.
2000s internet culture was giving left and right.
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Violence
I asked this 9 year old, short braids-wearing little sister who happened to have watched Squid game while I had not yet:
“Did you like it?”
She answered, looking into the void, kind of distressed, “NO! I didn’t like it, it’s too violent.”
Now that I’ve watched it, I get why she answered like that.
Ultra-violence or violence aesthetic really started in the 90s. Entertainment could be gore or gross before, but the explosion of violence, the normalization of sadism and most brutal aspects of humanity really happened in 90s entertainment.
And then it was just kind of normal. Which means that younger generations grew up on the new ultraviolent normal. Which might have created the mid 2000s Emo culture, as a reaction to constant brutality in entertainment.
Squid game, where people get killed failing at school games, was last fall’s worldwide icon. Ultra-violence is basic pop culture now. Thanks to our collective brains being destroyed by police brutality videos, thousands of headshots in more and more realistic games, school shootings, World Star, 4Chan and so forth, for 20 years, we just take it all in. We’re used to it. Almost a million dead from COVID in the US? LMFAOOO
I want to reverse that, in a way. The hunting and preying culture needs to stop. I so want to see people fancying love and laughs. That shit is brutally awesome. I’m sure this young girl would agree. Ultra-violence is part of the world but it’s not like it’s super cool or that we need more of it…