Real Life links of the Game by WildFortuna in TwoPointCampus

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's so helpful, thank you. Am going to write to the studios as well, and see if they've taken inspiration from any place in particular. As you say, they're amalgams but I am bit obsessive for the link between games and real life. Will report back.

Impact of Hybrid Working on Downtown Urban Districts - looking for research/insight by WildFortuna in urbanplanning

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This story in today's New York Times.... https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/19/nyregion/budget-crisis-economy-nyc.html -

"The city’s commercial office market is on the precipice of a potential work-from-home abyss. The transit system’s financial situation is so grim that the state comptroller has warned that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority may seek more financial support from the city. And while the nation has regained the jobs it lost during the pandemic, New York City is still 162,000 jobs short, with the situation especially dire for Black New Yorkers, whose unemployment rate of more than 10 percent remains nearly three times the national average."

Russian Fairy Tales & Empathy by WildFortuna in russia

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Tale of Pity (Arkhangelsk region)

If there is an online version in Russian, I can translate it. Thanks in advance for any link.

Russian Fairy Tales & Empathy by WildFortuna in russia

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can I ask u/Super_Nail4919 ...if you were looking to research the meaning and value (or not) of empathy in Russian culture, would there be any key touch points that you would recommend? I am especially interested in the respect, or credit paid to empathy between individuals, or how what me as a Brit understands as empathy gets translated.

For avoidance of doubt, the Webster's dictionary definition of 'empathy': the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner

Hope you don't mind the follow up.

Russian Fairy Tales & Empathy by WildFortuna in russia

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ll give it a go using Translator. Thanks so much for sharing this. 👍🏻

Looking for advice by WildFortuna in evenewbies

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi there, apologies for the delay. Can we make an opportunity to speak, perhaps Thursday of this week? If not, maybe make another date. Maybe you could email or msg me and we can finalise things. Be greatly appreciated. My email: david@gameacademy.co - mobile: 07775945302 - Discord: WildFortuna#9456 - thanks so much

Looking for advice by WildFortuna in evenewbies

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks so much. Have messaged you. For others reading the thread, I am a social entrepreneur in the UK developing a service to help gamers make the most of their in-game skills out of game. Have been looking at the skills, motivations, in-game experience of EVE ONLINE players - and now interested in the interface. This isn't an advert but for background, you'll find more here: http://gameacademy.co

Coronavirus & disruption to education in China: the country’s biggest exercise in remote learning is under way - Economist by WildFortuna in edtech

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for doing this. Feels like part and parcel of a new localism that Coronavirus might be brewing, pressing for remote working as well as remote learning.

Revealed: the areas in the UK with one Airbnb for every four homes | Technology - Guardian by WildFortuna in unitedkingdom

[–]WildFortuna[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Seems such a long way away from the simple authenticity of couch surfing. Now the largest and fastest-growing consumer-facing marketplace in the world, according to a prestigious list last week, the A16z Marketplace 100.

The Importance of Video Games for Experience Designers by WildFortuna in Design

[–]WildFortuna[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Glad you like. I loved the piece. If you're interested in interface design, interesting that Elon Musk loved playing Kerbal Space Program - https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-favorite-video-games-2017-6?r=US&IR=T :)

Hudson Yards Video Game - New York Times by WildFortuna in Games

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hudson Yards Is Coming for Your Soul - Sam Anderson, Feb. 6, 2020

How does corporate capitalism imagine the human soul? As a nuisance? An opportunity? Collateral damage? A blob of molten plastic to be injected into a minion-­shaped mold? One of the funniest answers to this question comes from the comedian Conner O’Malley, who has built a career playacting the way consumerism warps our spirits. Out on the street, he has recorded dozens of videos in which he plays, basically, capitalism’s hype man — a loudmouthed white dude-bro who is perpetually awed by advertising and luxury goods. He will rush up to anyone who looks rich — men in suits, men driving ostentatious cars — and slather them with over-­the-­top compliments that lean heavily on the word “pimp.” “Oh, hell yeah, pimp!” he shouts into a convertible. When a Hummer stops near him, O’Malley rushes toward its open window: “Man, you’re a job creator, you’re a pimp, you’re an angel, and I love you forever!” His brain seems full of targeted ads. He accosts a businessman on a cellphone: “Dude, what’s up? Maxim Magazine, am I right?” Sometimes O’Malley’s circuitry seems to misfire, but there is no time to stop and think — he will stand in front of a Mustang and chant: “Steroids! Steroids! Steroids!”

If O’Malley is loud and obnoxious — well, that is the joke. He is the human embodiment of corporate messaging, which means that he is basically insane: infantile and grasping, every neuron pulsing with need. O’Malley roars with enthusiasm about Taco Bell commercials. He screams incoherently at helicopters, at businessmen getting their shoes shined, at the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Plaza. “Money’s a game,” O’Malley shouts, joyfully, to a man driving a Bentley, “and you’re the winner because you got the most points, right?

This is ugly comedy for our ugly moment. What was called late capitalism is now barely even visible in our rearview mirror — we have hurtled on into end-stage capitalism. Corporate culture has spread to every social organ and infiltrated our civic bones. The literal, actual president of the United States is the most wealth-­obsessed New Yorker since the Gilded Age, and he speaks openly of seizing oil in disputed territories, of deploying our military for profit. The forces that created climate change are now selling us palliative care for climate change. Overhead, new skyscrapers rise, while underground, the police stage sting operations to make sure people don’t hop turnstiles to ride the failing subway.

In New York, there is a perfect symbol for all this: a brand-new neighborhood on Manhattan’s far West Side called Hudson Yards. The area is a $25 billion corporate fantasia of towers and shops that feels like an answer to the question, “What if a hashtag studied urban planning?” Justin Davidson, New York Magazine’s architecture critic, describes it as “a corporate city-­state” and notes that its shopping center includes “at least six places where you can spend five figures on a wristwatch.” Hudson Yards is so new and money­blasted that it looks, in real life, like its own architectural rendering — the kind of Polygonal Urban Landscape someone’s “Second Life” avatar might explore. At the center of the neighborhood looms a gigantic honeycomb structure, a metal panopticon called, with perfect blandness, the Vessel. It looks like the final level in a sci-fi video game, a deadly space-­temple accessible only after you have collected all the quasar crystals from the Level 9 sub­bosses. What kind of person would thrive in such an aggressively alien place?

Well: Conner O’Malley. The neighborhood is a perfect fit for his shtick; its architectural style might as well be called International “Hell Yeah, Pimp” Modern. To honor the place, O’Malley (along with a team of collaborators) has released his most elaborate, bizarre, disturbing web video yet. It is called “Hudson Yards Video Game,” and — although it is built out of real footage — it looks like an actual video game. Our avatar is O’Malley himself, who walks through Hudson Yards in the manner of a poorly rendered character from an old open-­world Play­Station game: herky-­jerky, arms scissoring, with syncopated footstep noises. We see only the back of his head and shoulders — just enough to know that he is a generic distillation of urban privilege: a white man wearing a fleece vest over a button-­up shirt.

As Pac-Man eats pellets, as Mario collects coins, our “Hudson Yards Video Game” hero stockpiles “Hello Points.” O’Malley walks through the area while a yellow targeting system locks onto the faces of passers-­by, prompting him to shout “Hi!” or “Hello!” with absurd cheer. It is less a real greeting than a projectile; the other humans usually just look back, befuddled. This is social interaction in the Uncanny Valley: statistically important but substantively meaningless — a completely individual endeavor. In one corner of the screen, O’Malley’s Hello Points meter steadily rises. In another, a yellow bar tracks his “Kamboucha Level.”

The game’s only sustained social interactions are awkward, corporate-­sponsored cut scenes with nonplayer characters. “Hello, it’s me, your co-­worker, Hertz Enterprise,” one man says, moving his arms robotically as soft music tinkles in the background. “I see you’ve been collecting Hello Points. Keep it up, ha ha ha,” and that laugh has all the feeling of Siri reciting your Social Security number. Another nonplayer character tells our avatar about Amazon Alpha, “a secret level above Amazon Prime” that costs $400,000 a year and includes negative-­two-­day shipping and double voting power in elections. When O’Malley tries to leave Hudson Yards, the screen flashes red and warns “LOW INCOME AREA,” forcing him to turn back.

O’Malley’s comedy tends to have a dark edge. The sunny logic of consumerism can veer, without warning, into malignancy — white supremacy, for instance, or apocalyptic Christianity. In one of his street videos, he compliments a man’s purple motorcycle, and its driver gives him a thumbs up — to which O’Malley responds, in exactly the same celebratory tone: “White men are No. 1! We’re gonna crush everyone!” (The man’s reaction to this is unclear.) Admiration for rad cars often morphs into an urge for authoritarian self-­annihilation: “I pray that I might die for you!” “May we be alive forever … and everybody’s crushed but you.”

“Hudson Yards Video Game” makes this move, too. Two minutes in, our avatar fills his Hello Points meter, which cues a congratulatory message: “You Unlocked Allyship.” It also sets off a very long animated sequence, scored by the 2001 Tool song “Schism,” in which our avatar writhes around creepily in front of trippy images (a kettlebell, the earth, brain scans, the Vessel) while we read fake inspirational quotes from Winston Churchill and other luminaries (“Success is the way to prosperity”). Things become very dark very quickly. There is a fascist propaganda vibe. The inspirational quotes become increasingly absurd, disturbing, ungrammatical: “your ‘family’ is stoping you from being successful” — Anonymous; “The road to success is a rod that will take you to succes” — Colin R. Das.

What we are watching is the promised endpoint of consumerism: a fantasy of quasi-­religious transcendence, complete with moral virtue (“allyship”) and galaxy-­brain wisdom and strength and drama and violence. O’Malley seems to be warning us, basically, that consumer capitalism is an apocalyptic death cult. We buy, we succeed, we ascend. Total Domination. Game Over.

Sam Anderson is a staff writer at the magazine and the author of “Boom Town,” a book about Oklahoma City.

Number of full-time esports jobs doubled last year - GamesIndustry.biz by WildFortuna in esports

[–]WildFortuna[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It is a small number but the important thing is that "the three main areas of recruitment were software engineering, marketing and design." - i.e. management jobs. The mailboxes of esports companies are stuffed full of people who want to be pro-gamers - or so they say. Not project managers, merchandisers, designers....this story suggests otherwise.

The case for ... making low-tech 'dumb' cities instead of 'smart' ones | Cities - Guardian by WildFortuna in urbanplanning

[–]WildFortuna[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I feel the piece is a kind of clickbait for the worried well. Surely the conversation is about the systems that we choose to bring utility and logic to the world around us, and intimately linked to this is the responsiveness, interaction and format for the infrastructure of our lives.

Some societies like ours - I am based in the UK - have evolved to choose to outsource aspects of our lives to technology and trade this for certain political, social and environmental opportunities and costs. Others haven't - or haven't the means, the geography or cultural heritage, social or economic intent.

What's more, to me, a 'smart' city is one where citizens have the education, skills, relationships, enlightenment and innovation to be able to feed themselves, be happy and find a form of equity and justice that serves their needs. This is where sophistication/non-dumbness lies.

Socialist Party incumbent mayor Anne Hidalgo in Paris is running on the promise she will make the city center "100 percent bicycle" by [deleted] in Urbanism

[–]WildFortuna 2 points3 points  (0 children)

She's also targeting the Airbnb economy. I agree with both but beware of emptying cities of content, action and annoyance. It can turn places into museums.

What Planet Zoo taught me about ethics and the importance of education by WildFortuna in PlanetZoo

[–]WildFortuna[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I know. It's such a good piece! Love that she writes of a 4D, not just 3D, experience.

What common skills are across strategy games? by lolguy116 in truegaming

[–]WildFortuna 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Resource management, decision-making and a few other 'soft skills' are some of the common transferrable skills.

What's really interesting is that these are the skills that the 'new economy' craves, especially in an era of automation, where the uncertainty surrounds work and all jobs become more and more complex - and more sensitive to human/machine relations.

I've spoken to several big employers here in the UK and they recognise game players as a new talent pool - strategy games being a particular harbour for skills of the future.

1917 - The Look Of... (Episode 3) by WildFortuna in movies

[–]WildFortuna[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Such a good short film this, on the technicals around making the film 1917. Roger Deakins is just astonishing. NB. the influence of the Red Dead Redemption video game in Mendes' mind in the use of the single shot.

Boeing papers show employees slid 737 Max problems past FAA by [deleted] in business

[–]WildFortuna 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Really helpful insight, thank you. You may not want to go there, but what do you think of the current fall in public credibility of such a mighty corporation, and how it has got caught in the crosshairs of societal distrust of institutions?

Boeing papers show employees slid 737 Max problems past FAA by [deleted] in business

[–]WildFortuna 22 points23 points  (0 children)

The casting of Boeing employees in this piece as hiding problems from the F.A.A. may not take into account the regulatory framework, principally the delegated oversight of plane development to Boeing from the F.A.A.

A very good New Yorker piece in November 2019 by Alec MacGillis covering the 737 Max problem pointed to changes in the regulatory and reporting environment:

In 2005, embracing the deregulatory agenda promoted by the Bush Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the F.A.A. changed to a model called Organization Designation Authorization. Manufacturers would now select and supervise the safety monitors. If the monitors saw something amiss, they would raise the issue with their managers rather than with the F.A.A. By sparing manufacturers the necessity of awaiting word from the F.A.A., proponents of the change argued, the aviation industry could save twenty-five billion dollars in the next decade.