You're trapped in the last video game you played for one 24 hour period. You get to keep everything from the video game when you come back, but you can't just stay still in place the entire time. What's your plan to survive/make the most money?
Things Coco has done Newcomers should know (and some Hololive History)
She made Asacoco, a satirical morning news stream with the purpose of cheering up people going to work/school in the morning. She used to do this everydayevery weekday three times a week covering Hololive and herself. This started immediately after debut and was a huge success, garnering around 20K-70K live viewers every stream despite it happening at 6AM JST and Coco needing 8hrs of preparation every time. With other Holo girls frequently being featured in news, commercials and segments, it was an effective means of advertising their channels and helped foster Hololive's tight knit image. Here's non-Hololiver's perspective of it.
She lightened the severity of the girls' 'mistakes' by using them as news material. A famous example is Watame's early poor internet connection that was so bad, she once disconnected over 60 times on one stream. It came to the point that Coco presenting an image of Watame holding a placard with a number was all she needed to tell how many times she's disconnected and didn't need to elaborate more. Here's Coco roasting lamb | Here's Watame's famous FULL apology video.
She was responsible for the infamous Ark Addiction that spread all through Hololive(and Nijisanji). She even paid for Hololive's Ark Server, despite not earning anything during that time. Why was she not earning anything? Because back then, the girls had to be active for a whole month before their monetization could be enabled. Needless to say, Tatsunokos collectively busted their wallets on Coco's first monetized stream, otherwise known as the most insane SC train I've ever seen. It's so long, it went literally unbroken for 14 minutes and 55 seconds straight.
You know how sometimes, when the girls go to the toilet and people start throwing blue SCs to signify flushing? For reasons unknown, her fans/Tatsunokos are responsible for that. Here's PPT and Marine's funny reaction to it.
Proposed and fought for the idea of using Streamlabs during a time when many Hololive members were being demonitized. Many speculate it was because they were too sexy but this is questionable due to PPT's inclusion. She did daily updates on the matter and management considered but later disregarded the idea, worried about how YT would react to losing money, and instead gave some of them costumes with their cleavages covered instead. Here's a Streamlabs CM feat. PPT, Aki Rose, Choco, Mel, Haato, Coco and Noel.
Because of the issue above, non-JP youtubers, made videos and tweets spreading awareness about it and were able to earn a response from Youtube. Most of the girls got their monetizations back and Coco bridged the language barrier, acknowledging their part in helping Hololive. Here's an Asacoco clip of what he has to say after this.
Despite the possible backlash and the trouble she would get from management, Coco spread awareness and defended Projekt Melody when she was receiving hate messages for topping an adult site despite being just 'a moving picture'. Melody responded with a thank you video to her afterwards. Unfortunately, it is doubtful we would ever see these two collab since management has forbid Coco from mentioning her ever again. Here's the unsubbed video of it.
With PPT's poor t-shirt sales (the light blue, lamely designed, over expensive rag), Coco made a meme out of it and made it a must have merch for PPT fans. To further market the thing, Coco released a rag shirt of her own and announced a t-shirt selling competition with PPT. iirc Coco lost lmao. Here's them talking about their expensive rags.
Comforted Aqua after that Smash Bros and Ark issue by playing with her in The Raft. This stream revolved around the hardships of being a streamer and is probably the most important stream here. Here's an incredible SUBBED video of the whole stream!
Proposed Holohouse, a home where any of the girls can live or drop by whenever they want, providing irl support. Why is this needed? Because some live alone and want company, some live with their family who might make too much noise and reveal NG information about the streamers, some live with thin walls and had to go to separate places just to stream, some live in the countryside where there's poor internet connection and is far away from the office, making 3D streams and off collabs difficult etc.
You would think her plans of purchasing land and building a house is a meme but she's actually drawn floorplans and asked a foreman about costings for this. She's shared these details on stream but I couldn't find any of the clips anymore. For now, we have Holohouse Lite, a building near the office which houses Coco, PPT and Suisei(and her sister, Anemachi). Rushia moved nearby but I'm unsure if she's in the same building. Others have expressed interest in moving too. Since it is near the office, it now sometimes serve as a place where the girls can stayover or make a pitstop after idol training. There's a LOT of clips about this... discriminations against house hunting Youtubers,their house rules,the successful announcement,irl off collab stories etc.
Popularized memes and reddit as a way for JP girls to interact with us because it's easier to understand pictures than learning a whole new language. With Coco inviting the others to Reddit Meme Review, it also generates new memes for the guests and generates more exposure for them.
Lastly, something yall probably already know, she's the one to propose a Hololive branch dedicated for English speakers. During ID Gen1's debut announcement, she also announced a new idol for HoloUSA. As further proof of her involvement, she's made this CM for HoloEN's audition and is the center idol in twitter's campaigns.
TLDR. Coco's not only a vulgar, meme-y, yakuza dragon. Coco's also a hard working, compassionate idol who deserves every bit of sub, SC, respect, love and more. We love you, Coco! We will support you always. Edit: She was one of the first to reach out to overseas viewers not just through culture but also through adding subtitles in her videos. One of the earliest, if not the first, is this video of when YT suspended her from streaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2di61BNqMek&list=PLw58RgSzDmjr7hbo0zrfaQ027uMc6WHfO&index=83 The reason for her suspension is unclear but this is the start of what Marine calls the Kiryuu Coco Line, the limit of what the girls can do before YT bonks them in the head. Also, she's got a 9000 dollar bed, only because it was the amount of money the viewers sent upon hearing her using a futon. This helped her sleep deprivation of which was so terrible she had to take sleeping pills before bed. Here's her reacting to herself after taking some and playing games: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcW75aH5WXE On her 3D debut, she sang an English version of Shiny Smily Story she translated herself. On a side note, on the first Asacoco, she was gutsy enough to point out the misspelled ‘Smily’ on the song name. She originally applied as a part of management but upon learning that she has experience in regards to being a vtuber, they recommended that she apply as talent. It was amazing timing since auditions for 4th gen was on going during that time. She lived independently after highschool, and finished university... TWICE... AS A WORKING STUDENT. She loves studying: https://youtu.be/XxTDQtWKC2c Thank you, u/fyrespyrit for helping me format!
BB -- Blackberry AWS -- Amazon Web Services IVY -- Intelligent Vehicles Yo. I don't actually know if this stands for anything QNX -- Quick-Unix perhaps? It's a Unix-like embedded microkernel RTOS (real-time operating system) EOY -- end of year PT -- price target SP -- stock price EV -- electric vehicle SoC -- System on a Chip IoT -- Internet of Things TL;DR: Blackberry ($BB) is almost daily announcing new partnerships and new clients for their software, including new deals with companies that are just now or just this year launching autonomous vehicles that run on QNX software. The big kahuna of all these deals is BB's recent partnership with Amazon to go 50/50 into BB's software IVY, a scalable cloud-connected software platform designed for intelligent vehicle data gathering and data sharing. With Amazon's Jeff Bezos stepping down, and Andy Jassy filling his shoes, who was the CEO of AWS, BB will have some very firm support behind Amazon's new CEO. BB and Amazon are having a webinar Feb. 23rd about their partnership and IVY, which should be a strong catalyst moving forward. IVY beta earnings are projected to begin impacting BB's Q3 or Q4 earnings beginning in November this year, with IVY fully being integrated around the 2023 timeframe. Through a lot of reading and analysis, I believe BB has a four-tiered business model dating back as far as 2013 when BB's CEO John Chen was hired to begin the massive BB turnaround process. Tier 1 was development of QNX and IVY, lasting from 2013 to today and onward, however, Tier 2 overlaps Tier 1. Tier 2 was customer acquisition, primarily distributing their secure software in QNX, SecuSuite, Spark, and AtHoc. They secured 37 automakers during this time, including 9 of the top 10 automakers, over 106 governments from around the world, including all of G7 governments and 18 of G20 governments, as well as 77% of Fortune 100 companies, including partnerships with Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Sony, XPENG, XPEV, NVIDIA, Intel, Qualcomm, Baidu, IBM, LG, Samsung, and others. Well if they have such an incredible market share, why are they so undervalued? The answer is that QNX was not the end-all-be-all product. It was the base that the rest would be built on. Particularly IVY, which is the real money-maker. Tier 3 is IVY beta, and Tier 4 is IVY distribution and subscription revenue streams. So why is IVY the big deal and not QNX? They are both big deals, but QNX was never designed to be the money-maker. They are charging a one-time fee per vehicle use. There is a bigger goal here, to secure their clients as their customers for the bigger product in IVY. They also need QNX is to be a secure system in order for IVY to be trustworthy and reliable. And it certainly is secure. QNX has ISO26262 certification, as well as US government clearance, NSA clearance, and CIA clearance. The US government uses QNX and Blackberry products. Just let that sink in. That should tell you something about its security. Anyways, IVY will be used in autonomous vehicle level 4 and level 5 communication (note that QNX is level 5 certified... it has a business moat just in its security level and clearance), as well as EV and gas vehicle data collecting and AI-powered data synthesis. See below for more details on IVY. Wrapping up this TL;DR, BB is going to do well this year as IVY unfolds, but will do even better in the next 2-5 years. I have a PT of 25 by EOY and a PT of 80 by 2023 EOY, and a PT of 160+ by 2025 EOY TL;DR: TL;DR: BB go up, but go slow for now because IVY revenue not here yet, but big fast later. Make big monies, BB is the future tech that Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc will be building upon in the EV and IoT market
FAQs:
1) Why is Blackberry stock price going down? A: A few possible reasons. One, as of today the whole market is down. BB is connected to overall market swings as most companies are. Two, there may be some market manipulation by bearish financial institutions as there are a lot of calls expiring on 2/19. I would expect that BB SP to be volatile between $11 and $14 between now and then, and to move upwards after 2/19 and especially after 2/23 (Amazon + BB webinar). Three, there are bearish investors who still think BB is a phone company and don't understand the underworkings of BB's business strategy, their software, their patents, or their partners. Their revenue has been affected by coronavirus and has not been particularly phenomenal so far this year. 2) Should I invest now or later? A: First off, I'm not a financial advisor, these are just my opinions. Invest at your own risk. In my opinion, BB will see a large SP growth by EOY, anywhere from 50% to 150% growth by EOY. While revenue will likely not increase much this year, the partnership with Amazon and news regarding IVY will likely create new floors for their SP much higher than the current SP right now, at around the $12 SP 3) What's stopping competitors from building a similar product and hurting BB's business? A: There's a lot of reasons why BB has a huge moat right now. One, notice the partners that BB has with QNX. They've got all the big boys working them, aside from Apple and Tesla. Seeing as SpaceX runs on QNX, and seeing that Apple was trying to make a deal with Hyundai that did not go through, I think it is still possible that either Tesla or Apple or both companies could also make a deal with BB to use QNX as their OS system. BB worked to develop their QNX embedded microkernel OS for the last eight years or so. Anyone trying to step into the game now is far too late. Apple has the best chance of all companies, as it has its own OS and Apple knows security very well, but this still requires an entirely new system in order to work in the EV sector. Also, Apple announced recently that they would be developing their own EV, although they did not give much details beyond that statement. The likelihood that they are both working on the hardware and software side of this thing is slim given the large number of difficulties that come with certification as it relates to the cybersecurity software space. Regardless, I would suspect that either Apple or Tesla is the most likely to be competitors in this space, but neither company has successfully completed a certified OS system, particularly for the emerging sector of autonomous EVs. Tesla is currently building a Linux-based system that is having a lot of difficulty in passing certifications such as ISO26262, a struggle that has been ongoing for years now. They may achieve a product that passes these safety regulations and certifications, but the question remains whether this will be in time as the EV and autonomous market picks up speed, and whether competing companies would even be interested in using their product. In fact, any car company is unlikely to develop their own OS software because none of their competitors would be likely to use it. BB is the perfect business to license since it is not competing in the hardware sector for the EV market. This argument can also be used for Apple if they are also building an EV. 4) Why is BB's revenue so low if they have so many customers and partners? A: QNX has been licensed so far as a one-time purchase, per vehicle or IoT using their software. IVY will be a subscription-based software that also includes a one-time purchase. Thus, BB's revenue streams are somewhat unimpressive currently, but they are playing the long game. If my hypothesis is correct, it is John Chen's goal to lay low as software is developed and customer relationships are built. It's the same with the book market. It's the sequel that makes all the money, not the first book. QNX is just the first book of a series looking to hook in its customers with low costs before hitting 'em with the strong follow up in IVY. Additionally, in order to build a competitive business moat, it was to their advantage to not forewarn any competitors of their involvement and plans. Consider John Chen's work as a CEO in his last business Sybase. Chen worked as the CEO of Sybase for 10 years. For the first 7 years, the SP remained at around $10 a share. Three years later, the SP was at $100 a share. I suspect he is implementing a similar model with Blackberry. Chen joined Blackberry in 2013. BB stock actually dropped for most of the last 7 years, resting at a stock price of around $5. Now BB is at $12 a share. I would not be surprised if BB reaches $50 two years from now.
Blackberry Clients and Partners Automakers: Honda, Audi, Jeep, Mitsubishi, Ford, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Bentley, Lamboghini, Byton, Mini (cooper), Toyota, Subaru, Fiat Chrysler, Mazda, Nio, BMW, Porsche, Lexus, Kia, Land-Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Buick, Jaguar, Visteon, Skoda, Chevrolet, Nissan, Acura, Continental, General Motors, Baidu, Motional Other: Denso, Aptiv, Bosch, Panasonic, Harman, Bugatti, LG, Vodafone, Bell, Carahsoft, CACI, Telus, iSec, KPMG, Tableau, Qlik Major: Amazon, Google, Sony, XPENG, XPEV, Li Auto, NVIDIA, Canoo, Microsoft, Intel, Verizon, Qualcomm, IBM, LG, Samsung Major Investors: PRIMECAP, Hamblin Watsa, Ontario Teachers’ Pension, Vanguard, Harris Associates, ETF Managers Group, Wells Capital, Arrowstreet Capital, Kahn Brothers Advisors, Norges Bank Investment Governments: Albania, Andorra, Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belarus, Belgium, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Congo, Croatia, Czech Republic, DR Congo, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hong Kong, Hungary, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Kuwait, Latvia, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macau, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mali, Malta, Marthinique, Mauritania, Mauritus, Mayotte, Mexico, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Réunion, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Martin, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Turkey, USA, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Vatican City, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe
Blackberry Current Revenues:
BlackBerry Revenues: How Does BlackBerry Make Money? -- Trefis This display the biggest bearish argument to BB. Until IVY begins producing new revenue streams, BB is likely to not exponentially increase revenue streams, but only sustain moderate YoY growth
Blackberry Analysis Regarding Infotainment and Google and Ford Deal:
see "Blackberry (BB) Stock News Analysis | What I need to say..." by Financial Live by LEYA on the forbidden video website The media recently picked out a story that left out a lot of pertinent information, making it seems that BB lost Ford as a client. This is not true. QNX is designed to be a SoC. This means that other operating systems, such as Linux or Android, can be easily added to QNX. It is in fact encouraged. The Ford and Google deal was simply announcing the Ford would be using Android as their infotainment system. I believe that BB was never intended to try and be the predominant entity for all software systems in EVs or IoTs, but the backbone that connects all together, and to protect all components in a secure system. Autonomous EVs and even regular EVs in general would not be possible without a secure system protecting the product, as is true with IoTs. This is also why things like US Fighter Jets run on... you guess it, QNX. Ford is still using QNX. It is simply also now using Android that is running on top of QNX more commentary on this: Analyzing Blackberry Bear Argument - Case No. 1: Ford Deal
Image This is an interesting one to be sure. Facebook was being evil, like the do, and were caught using a number of BB patents. They settled in February, and the day that the settlement was finalized, John Chen (BB CEO) tweeted reminding everyone that BB is used on the ISS https://twitter.com/JohnChen/status/1358853064153784321?s=20 Well, the connection and speculation here is that Blackberry is going to the moon, and that the settlement is rather significant. Someone else also dug out some information in Facebook's most recent 10-K, specifically a portion for a 'non-cancelable contractual commitment' of an amount of $7500 million dollars. That's 7.5 billion btw. We don't know how big the settlement is, but it is worth noting that BB's entire market cap is 7.5B. I highly doubt that a settlement would reach such lofty numbers, but it could be possible that FB settled for some initial amount of $1B or so, as well as $1B in reoccurring payments over several years. We won't know until March 15th actually, so stay tuned.
Blackberry New Partnerships
Within the last few weeks, Blackberry has announced a stronger partnership with Baidu (China's Google), as well as their involvement with Baidu choosing to use QNX for their autonomous vehicles that will be hitting the road, as early as this year and next. BB has also announced their involvement with Motional, a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv, which will use QNX for their autonomous vehicles. Motional will be partnering with Lyft to use autonomous vehicles to begin serving customers and will be deploying their vehicles in 2023. It was also announced that QNX will be working with AOSP (Android Open Source Project), as well as announcing yesterday that QNX Hypervisor 2.2 is now released, which is what allows Android and Linux to run on top of QNX. A sum-up of all the recent news on $BB
Rumor: Blackberry Buyout? Here's why that's not happening:
Just read this post. It's quite revealing: Great Day for BB despite stick dipping. TL;DR: Amazon could have easily bought BB. Why didn't they? Well, all the big players are interested in this EV and IoT emerging sector. This is the new wave of technology that will dominate the market. First we had the dot.com boom, then the cell-phone and smart-phone market, and now we have the autonomous EV and IoT market. If Amazon were to buy BB, they would have to submit a tender offer. This would be a red flag to all the big players that Amazon were trying to buy up the best security out there. It would be a bidding war that could result in a double-digit multi-billion dollar buyout. It was much more to their advantage to create a secret alliance with BB and establish a 50/50 partnership, whose contract includes exclusivity for their use of IVY. Ouch! That's gotta hurt. This is where the importance of QNX lies. BB will be able to pull the rug out from any company that chooses to use something other than IVY. No IVY, no QNX, no EV. It will be a package deal where IVY is the big money maker. All other companies will have to build from the ground up or be forced to license QNX and make their money off of other sectors, such as the infotainment sector, as Google has already begun to do with the Ford deal. When this deal happened, the other big boys wet their pants realizing they needed to get into this space, and fast. Microsoft partnered with Cruise/GM. Apple tried to partner with Hyundai, who was so flattered, they may have initially said yes or indicated so, before realizing that they were already partnered with BB, so it was a no-go. Not sure if that is fact or fiction, but it is an interesting proposal.
Blackberry IVY + AWS Partnership:
Alright, so what's the deal with IVY? Why is it going to be so profitable? Why is IVY the real money-maker, while QNX has been used as the customer-acquisition software tool? Check out this picture: Image For one, IVY is designed for real-time communication between EVs or other IoTs. Autonomous driving level 5 requires vehicles to communicate with one another. This is where IVY comes in. IVY connects the different software components of an EV (which presumably are running on QNX), as well as harvesting data on those systems. The data used can be distributed for a wide-variety of uses, including, but not limited to, automakers and suppliers, app developers, consumer services, smart cities, EV charging providers, insurance companies, and vehicle maintenance providers. All of these different sectors will be willing to pay subscriptions for these data services, as well as the automakers and IoT makers who will also be willing to pay subscriptions for IVY. For instance, IVY can help share information between vehicles that will allow for a car detecting ice roads in one area so that other cars using IVY can take a different route. This results in less crashes, which helps the automakers. Insurance companies can use data from all these different data points as well, allowing them an inside-view of their clients. The list of what is possible here is inexhaustible. As for price points, the subscription models for multiple outside companies wanting to use the data will be create huge revenue streams for BB. With Amazon as a 50/50 partner, and with their resources and strategic management, BB will be poised to be the foundation in security and data sharing for the entire EV, and somewhat of the IoT market (the IoT market has more competitors for sure) see "Is BlackBerry Stock Undervalued?" by Wealthy Mindset on the forbidden video website see "Roadmap to $180 a share (BlackBerry Stock)" by Wealthy Mindset on the forbidden video website
Revenue, revenue, revenue...
Blackberry is poised to be an industry leader in EV, government, and IoT security and data sharing with products such as QNX, IVY, Spark, and their other software products. Stock price will likely stay somewhat stunted until IVY revenue begins picking up. It is possible that more announcements and marketing related to IVY will make this growth more rapid. In my opinion, either way BB over the next 5 years will 10x. The question is whether you want to get in now at $12 / share or two years from now at $40 a share or something similar, assuming that either way this stock is going to push for that 100B market cap (it's currently at 7B). There will be bearish analysts that will continue to say that Blackberry is a worthless company until those IVY revenue streams begin to come in. It is also possible that a realistic competitor may emerge within the next three years, such as Tesla or Apple. But if Apple is seeking to create its own EV product, then both companies will have a hard time finding any way to license their software to any other company. It remains possible that Apple and/or Tesla may strikes deals with BB as well in order to be able to produce autonomous vehicles and get a bite of that market share
Really, no competitors?
Well it's called a business moat for a reason. As we have recently seen, QNX is working with AOSP, and so clearly, they are not to be worried about. Tesla is not a true competitor as their OS product is not certified yet, and has demonstrated difficulty in doing so, and additionally, other automakers will not want to benefit their competitors by using their product. A third-party non-auto-maker will be much more desirable. Other companies such as VxWorks, have a lot of to prove both in security and certifications, as well as producing an OS product that is compatible with an emerging autonomous level 5 EV market. QNX's embedded microkernel RTOS is very much unique in this regard. This type of system allows for real-time processing and power distribution, while protecting the system from attacks. In an embedded microkernel system, if one part of the system is attacked, the whole system will not shut down, in layman's terms. This is essential for the security of any high-risk product that is built upon an underlying software that controls that different components of the system.
Conclusion:
All eyes are turned towards Blackberry right now. People want to know what this deal with Amazon will look like, how it will work, what they will focus on, (will Amazon also use this system for a fleet of delivery drones? hmmm), what the revenue streams will look like, what are their projections, what markets and sectors are they targeting, what are their future goals, what will Amazon be doing on their end, etc, etc. The Amazon + BB webinar may answer some of those questions, or maybe they won't. Time will tell (Feb. 23rd, specifically -- here's a link to sign up and watch: Next-Gen Vehicle Architectures Unlock Unprecedented Opportunities for Automakers). Also look out for that FB settlement numbers on March 15th, and Q4 earnings March 31st. I don't expect Q4 earnings to be particularly interesting unless they include the FB settlement numbers. Could those numbers instead be put into Q1 earnings for 2021? Possibly. Initially IVY beta is expected to begin being released late this year. I will also be looking forward to see how Apple and Tesla respond in the coming months. Ultimately, BB is a long-term play, but is poised to dominate this emerging industry with the partnerships and security focused software they have secretly been building. Now if only the could do something about their logo, some rebranding would be nice... This is not financial advice, just my own opinions. I am not a financial advisor nor a professional. I own 14k shares in Blackberry, as well as options (10x 8/17/21 20c BB). Do your own DD and fact check me as well
The community doesn’t understand game development - A very long post from a game designer
I’ve been playing Destiny for quite some time and I’ve enjoyed the community around it a lot, but the one thing that frustrates me the most about Destiny is how little the community actually knows about game development. It’s driving me crazy, so I wrote this whole thing down. I’m a game designeproducer myself, I’ve never worked on a project as massive as Destiny (not many people ever do), but I have worked on several gaming projects, some of them big in large companies, some of them small gaming apps. I know enough to explain the basics here, but I’m definitely not the ultimate authority on videogames and I’m not representing Bungie whatsoever, everything here is only from my experience. My goal here is to give you some useful info and calm my mind about this. The Destiny community is incredibly vocal, especially this sub, which is generally a good thing, but the lack of understanding really damages not only the enjoyment of the community members but also the game itself IMO. I’ll explain some of the basics I think any hardcore fan should know here with an example and then I’ll outline some specific problems. How Games Are Made A videogame pipeline can be simplified into this flow: Demand from the top/the market -> top management decision -> design and prototyping -> development and feedbacks -> in house testing -> public testing -> marketing and publishing -> data collecting and analysis -> feedback implementation. It’s a circle that applies to everything from the big picture like the main campaign, to the smallest details like colors of shaders or proofreading of even the smallest posts. Every decision made in this system, even the tiniest ones, has to be debated, supported by data and expertise, approved in multiple places based on the priority, and checked multiple times after it’s implemented. Game developers, especially in a powerhouse like Bungie, are very skilled, talented, experienced, and passionate people who always do their best to navigate that flow to satisfy the demands with a quality product delivered on time. I can’t stress this enough, developers (including QA testers, designers, artists, marketing, publishing, the whole team) are pretty much always incredibly hard-working people with a love for video games, because otherwise, they would never stay in this scummy business. They’re underpaid, overworked, and most likely overqualified for what they have to do. Some of them know almost everything there is to know about their field and they’re always improving as well. Because video games, especially gargantuan living games with real-time action combat like Destiny, are insanely complicated, you need sometimes hundreds of experts to put them together. The pipeline needs to be perfectly planned, flexible so you can adapt to problems, and also easy enough to implement so you can deliver the product on time. All of these factors result in a tight-rope walk that never ends. Now it’s time for an example. Let’s say during Season of the Worthy you get an assignment to create a catalyst for Thorn that would make it more popular in PVE, but doesn’t make it overpowered in PVP. Seems simple enough, right? There are dozens of posts about this topic on this subreddit, how hard can it be. The answer is, very, very hard. You start working on your designs. You analyze all other exotic catalysts and hand cannon perks in the game - how they were made, their philosophy, psychological effects, and how they influence gameplay, you discuss everything in your team. When you create your first version, your design lead tells your whole team that hand cannons are getting a range buff and Thorn is now a 140 RPM and you have to adjust your design. After that, your priorities get shifted to helping with Beyond Light and the DSC weapons so it’s finished on time, so you put Thorn on hold. You don’t want to waste time though, so you give the art team an assignment to create the catalyst icon. After two months of work on Beyond Light, you come back to Thorn, but now you basically have to start over because the future meta has changed so much. You create new designs and this time they’re approved by management, so you move onto prototyping. Developers are way too busy debugging and QA testing Beyond Light, so they have no time for Thorn and that task gets put into their To-Do list. You have no choice but to move onto your other tasks and start working on weapons for seasons 13 and 14. When development starts finally working on Thorn, they find an exploit in your design that would allow it to two tap in PVP, you have to rework it again and hope they’ll have time to implement it this time. They don’t and the Thorn catalyst now officially misses its deadline and is pushed from Beyond Light. The marketing team doesn’t hear about it though, so they publish the icon you had made four months ago, leaking the catalyst coming out. This is of course your fault, but these things happen during all the chaos and there was almost nothing you could have done. When you finally push this task through and it’s checked and approved dozens of times in different places (weapon design team, design lead, writing, sandbox team, development, QA, studio director, etc.) you have to make sure it’s published correctly in the right build, it has all necessary descriptions and marketing texts done and translated into all languages and the community managers know about it so they can get ready to collect data. This single task took you a year to complete even when you did your best to do it fast and well and I left out about 90% of problems you would normally encounter. THIS is game development. Community Attitude and Feedback Now we get to why the uninformed community hurts the game so much. This sub would only see Thorn getting a catalyst and it would immediately be flooded with posts like “The catalyst sucks in PVE, buff pls”, “Bungo doesn’t care, the catalyst sucks for Warlocks” and a few “Why catalyst for Thorn, but not for Skyburner’s Oath”, completely missing the point of the catalyst and adding nothing to the discussion. Bungie devs are way more informed, skilled, and experienced than us, the community. The only feedback they are interested in from us is quantitative - basically what we like and what we don’t like about the game. Any posts giving them ideas, elaborate reworks, or straight up negative outrage will accomplish nothing, because they already know everything about the game and discuss it daily in way more detail than we could ever imagine. The only qualitative feedback they should collect and measure is from content creators and the top 1% of the player base because those people actually know some aspects of the game Bungie doesn’t. I know it may sound like the hated “Bungo only listens to sweats and Youtubers”, but that’s kinda the point, they should be listening. It doesn’t mean that our voices are ignored or not listened to. I would bet all of my money that all forums are constantly monitored and analyzed. The truth is, however, that the only valid opinion we can give that Bungie should consider is what aspects of the game we like, and what aspects we don’t. Anything beyond that we already tell them through data they collect from our play sessions. As I wrote above, any change within this massive game is complicated and could take months or years to be implemented, so being upset we don’t have everything now is just useless. Bungie is hard at work to make good stuff, we should respect them more and not bring out the pitchforks every time a season slows down a bit and we can’t play for four hours a day every day for the whole year. There will always be problems in a live game and they are doing a fantastic job, I can’t even imagine how much work must go into it. So before you post about something in the future, take a moment to think about the process and figure out what exactly you can provide to the devs with your feedback, because otherwise, you’re fanning the flames on something that probably isn’t actually burning. It’s just taking its time as it should. With all of the above said, it isn't the community's fault that we're not informed. The fault lies entirely with Bungie not educating people enough and this problem could be avoided. Reasons Why Things Suck I’ll close by giving my two cents on why the game isn’t perfect and never will be, just so you know where the community's frustrations should go.
The biggest reason that influences everything - Bungie is a company owned by a group of shareholders that will always force the studio to grow and provide more profit. With every extra dollar, the value of the company grows and the board of directors gets richer and because of the super predatory capitalism we live in now, Bungie has to justify every single decision with a monetary value. It's not the fault of the devs, they don't make much money themselves.
The game is massive and always online. I’m pretty confident that no other studio would be able to support Destiny for so long without the game completely crashing down. Technology always evolves and it’s almost impossible to keep a living game up to date, so some parts of the front end of the game will always suck because Bungie has to upkeep the back end we will never get to see.
The project has been going on for a decade, which leads to people wanting to naturally move on. Replacing team members on a living game is very difficult, which leads to problems and delays.
The community is not educated about the game enough, which is why I ended up writing this. The continuous cycle of negative outrage that comes from a lack of understanding damages the game because the devs are forced to deal with it without disclosing information. If people knew more, they could help Bungie, but no company that wants to make big profits will ever open up its communication because it would show just how many decisions are influenced by the search for profit.
That’s it, sorry for the length of this essay. I hope you learned something and let me know if you’d be interested in more stuff like this (takes on sunsetting, sandbox, etc.). I would like to give people more info so they don’t waste their precious time on stuff completely outside of their control and maybe educate people about the industry. I love the game and I hope you’ll appreciate it a bit more now. Edit 1: This post is not meant as a defense for the faults of the game or an excuse for bad decisions, it's meant as a resource to give you perspective and information. If you believe the game is not as good as it was promised to be or disagree with some design choices made, you are of course entitled to your own opinion, and there are quite a few things I myself absolutely hate in Destiny. I can't answer questions related to design on Destiny with confidence, because I don't work for Bungie and I won't speculate much on why certain decisions were made. I can give you my opinion on stuff like sunsetting based on my experience in another post, but ultimately it's only speculation with little benefit. All I will say is that there is always more stuff we don't know about the game than we do know and design should be judged in context. When it comes to questions related to Bungie's scummy tactics when it comes to monetization and bad communication, I agree with you, as I said above. Money is the biggest factor of why Destiny suffers and the best way for us to do anything about that is to stop buying it. I know it's a cliche statement, but it's true. And lastly, for the comments saying stuff like "shut up, Bungie sucks and you know it", please read what I said again and think about it. The devs most likely love the game just as much as you once did, if not much more. Edit 2: I'll add one thing that keeps popping up. It's clear that Destiny is a product developed for profit, so if your outlook is "I don't want to know about development, I'm just an unhappy consumer that didn't like this product", I agree as would most likely everybody that it's absolutely a valid stance, but that's not what my post was about. If that's how you see any product, you should tell the producer why you didn't like it if you care enough to do so and move on. The post is meant to inform people who don't want to move on from Destiny, especially those who continuously engage with the product from a place of understanding even if they don't have it, which wastes their time and does nothing for the product. If you don't like this game or any other game, it's absolutely OK and you should move on from playing it, complaining about things you don't want to understand won't help you achieve what you want and only makes the game worse. As I said above, the best way to show your disagreements is not to support the company and if you don't like Destiny, please stop playing it and take care of yourself. Your time is valuable, don't give it away to someone you don't agree with. Edit 3 This will be the last edit on this post. I appreciate all the awards and great discussions happening below, but holy cow did this get a lot of vitriol. I expected a lot of negativity, but it still surprised me. It's partially my fault for trying to talk about so much with not enough room so I'm sure I made a few mistakes. I'll reply to a few things that I want to make clear and then leave this alone, it's way too long anyway. If you see any malicious intent, attacks, arrogance, or "Bungie shilling" between the lines, I put none there, at least not on purpose. My goal was to inform, as I said right at the start, so if you see any other agenda, it's not there and my writing either wasn't clear enough, or you're looking for something that I didn't write. Take the post for what it is, a stranger on the internet telling you something you may not know from their experience. If you disagree with me, downvote the post and explain why, no need to insult anyone, you're once again wasting your precious time. I didn't mention management as a problem on Destiny, because I don't know enough about it. Leadership is very often a problem on any collaborative projects but calling someone out without the necessary data is exactly what I warned about in my post, so I won't comment on it, but feel free to disagree with me. Maybe you know more about the subject than I do and I'll be happy to read your reply. I never put myself up as an ultimate authority on the subject, all of this is just basics I thought hardcore fans should know and I communicated that. This post was already very long and I didn't have time, nor did I want to describe theory in detail, so insulting me over not explaining how scrum works in a post meant for people with no experience is not necessary. If you want to argue about production methodologies, my reasoning on examples given, and how healthy management looks like with me please feel free to message me and I'm sure we'll have a cool conversation, I'd love to hear about your experience from working in gaming. And that's it, I hope you got something out of this. Have a great day and see you around.
GME end financial culture: how this meme is becoming a serious thing
It is the first time that the financial market is being used against the same monsters who bet on the failures of companies and enjoy manipulating the markets and impoverishing investors. At least, it is the first time it is happening in front of my eyes and I can actively be part of it. What is happening has become very serious, but it is experienced with that romanticism and irony that is not often seen in the world of the stock market. The thing that no one mentions, however, is the incredible contribution that the GME affair is making to global financial culture. Not only are the videos of youtubers explaining what's going on increasing exponentially, but the incredible thing is that even influencers and youtubers completely outside the stock and financial game are talking about it. The consequence of this is that a lot of people are getting informed, they are trying to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what are the rules and mechanisms that are permitting this situation. This wave of information is spreading at lightning speed financial concepts that have always remained obscure to most people. In short, ordinary people are opening their eyes. Financial education, albeit minimal, is beginning to be part of the cultural baggage of young and old alike. And this will have huge consequences in the future. This meme, and the whole GME situation, is opening the eyes to the world. I could compare it to the boost that the first trips to the moon gave to space engineering, or the boost to Karate gyms after the success of the movie Karate Kid, or the boost to medical culture that the pandemic that's hitting us is giving. This, gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, is the major event that is revolutionizing economic culture from the ground up. And each one of you is a part of it. And each one of you will be able, one day, to proudly say "f**k money, that time we were the protagonists". Be honest: who else would have had such an opportunity to use money as a tool against the powerful market manipulators without GME? This is why what is happening is not a meme anymore. The world will be different afterwards. tl;dr The GME Affair is changing the world's financial culture forever. No more financial ignorance, no more "under the mattress" investments. No more underhanded economic power plays. Edit: I am not native English speaker, and in my country "gentlemen" is an ironic way to say "my dears" without any gender reference. My apologies, I fixed it!
To be clear, I'd still wholly recommend this version of 3D World even without Bowser's Fury. The tweaks are small overall, and Bowser's Fury isn't going to sate the most hardcore of Mario fans looking for a brand new game, but the package as a whole is magical. If you were one of the many who missed out on this Wii U classic, fix that.
You can play a lot of 3D Mario games on your Switch. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is just as good as any of them. It contains makes the Wii U game feel better than you remember, and the bonus campaign makes the package one of the best ports Nintendo has brought to the Switch.
Despite multiplayer now being online, it still feels superfluous, but otherwise Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury might just be one of those fabled "perfect" games.
Super Mario 3D World remains one of the better linear Mario games, and anyone playing it for the first time is in for an absolute treat. Add to that the curious bonus adventure that is Bowser's Fury and you've got a package that provides great value for money. It isn't without its flaws, but most of these (online multiplayer, repetitive missions in Bowser's Fury) relate to the new additions; the main game itself remains as pure and perfect as it was seven years ago. Had it just been Super Mario 3D World on its own, we'd be thoroughly recommending it anyway; Bowser's Fury is just the cherry on top.
Bowser’s Fury is a short experience – it’ll take a competent player a couple of hours to see all it has to offer, and a few hours more to drive it all the way to 100% completion – but it’s completely worthwhile. It has some great surprises, which is why I talk about it in such generalized terms. Bowser’s Fury would’ve made a great download-only, budget-price stand-alone – so as a bonus included with an already excellent game, its value can’t really be overstated.
This is one of the best platforms in history, and its expansion is by no means a minor content, since at some times it shines with more personality than the original title. In short, an indispensable pack has played the video game on Wii U or not, and one of the most essential works of your Nintendo Switch.
Although Super Mario 3D World is only an implementation for Nintendo Switch, it has not lost any of its charm and ingenuity. The loving optimization for the benefit of the gaming experience, as well as the bonus adventure Bowser's Fury, are convincing across the board and promise fun for up to four players. Even some questionable level designs can hardly tarnish the overall picture.
Super Mario Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is a package that offers two different ways to experience one of the best 3D Mario adventure, making it ideal for the franchise’s 35th anniversary celebration. There is no doubt that the game is a two-way diversion, able to preserve elements of the past and paint majestic novelties around it, as Bowser Jr. does with his paintbrush in the new and fascinating Bowser’s Fury.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is an explosive pack. 3D World returns with an improved pace, while retaining the stellar gameplay that characterized it when it first launched, and of course being still as hilarious as it was back then. Bowser's Fury takes the lesson a step further, creating a small and dense open world that will put you to the test with a sense of urgency unlike any other Super Mario game. The result, needless to say, is pure, unadulterated joy.
This package combines tried-and-true gameplay and level design with unique concepts (plus an all-new game) to earn its place among the elite games in the franchise
It´s not one, but two great platformers for Nintendo Switch. One of the greatest Wii U games (with improvement such as online multiplayer and photo mode) and a new Mario 3D game, not as big and ambitious as previous games, but equally fun and full of surprises.
Super Mario 3D World is an excellent game so if you still haven't played it or simply want it on Switch, this will make a wonderful addition to your gaming library. Oh, and you also get a fantastic bonus game with Bowser's Fury so how could you go wrong?
Super Mario 3D World shows why Mario is an ageless franchise, with the seven-year-old game providing fresh fun and a delightful experience. Bowser's Fury is the exact opposite, showing just how exciting and experimental the series can be.
Super Mario 3D is a great game to play solo or with friends and shows off some of Nintendo's best level design yet, while Bowser's Fury is an inventive take on the Mario formula that's more generous with its content than it ought to be. Both games make for a fantastic bundle and should be checked out by fans and non-fans alike.
Overall, this is a fantastic collection of Super Mario games. From the focused and demanding Super Mario 3D World to the more experimental, though still very well executed, open world take for Bowser’s Fury. Both games have a lot to offer and will keep you very busy unlocking their innermost secrets.
Bowser's Fury is much more than just a bonus . Despite it is relatively short, it still feels like a fully fleshed Mario jump and run. Packed with the great main game including the long missed online co-op mode Super Mario 3D World + Bowers's Fury is a must have for every Switch user.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury for Nintendo Switch effectively handles two important tasks: introducing new players to the classic game that came from the Wii U, as well as pleasing hungry fans with new great content. Definitely a must-play for all Super Mario fans!
Thans to its many clever tweaks, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury give the player many reasons to enjoy a great 3D platformer, now a little bit faster, and with friends around the globe online. Let's not forget Bowser's Fury, a tiny open world adventure which rightfully mixes gameplays from the Wii U and Switch episodes, and delivers a strong experience with a twist.
Quirky, creative, and constant good fun, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury blends Mario gameplay old and new with great success, creating a title that feels worthy of his 35th birthday celebrations.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury offers much more than your regular Switch port with a brand new adventure that packs between 5 and 8 hours of great new original content. I loved my time spent in this new open world of Bowser's Fury and going through 3D World a second time sure was a blast. Hopefully, this new package gives the game the second life that it truly deserves.
Simple and immediate, beautiful to see and fun even in multiplayer, Super Mario 3D World is the "what if" of the history of Super Mario. But with obvious limitations compared to Super Mario Odyssey and the other chapters in 3D. Bowser's Fury tries to beat new paths, without avoiding a few slips.
One of the best modern Super Mario titles is made that little bit better and accompanied by a brand-new game that bends the formula in new and exciting ways.
If you've never played 3D World before or haven't touched it since the Wii U days, this is well worth the price of admission. Prospects get a little tougher if you're not interested in going through 3D World, because while Bowser's Fury is amazing, it's still approximately less than 10 hours of gameplay even if you do everything. But no matter what: Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury might be one of the strongest Mario games available on Switch. The base game is fun and varied, while Bowser's Fury offers a distinctive, inventive, and superb open-world 3D Mario experience.
Super Mario 3D World is an incredible and underplayed Wii U adventure that's now available on Switch. But Bowser’s Fury steals the show with its exciting and fresh take on a 3D Mario game.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is a fantastic package that showcases what makes Nintendo games so special. Super Mario 3D World is just as good as when it released, and Bower's Fury is a surprisingly good standalone adventure that paves the way for the future of Mario.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is a delightful double act. Super Mario 3D World holds up well, and offers a unique multiplayer experience that works particularly well on Switch. Its opening worlds are designed to cater for that varied audience, while the second half injects some much needed difficulty and is best played solo. Bowser’s Fury is experimental in nature, and offers something completely different with a fully open world housing plenty of Shines to collect at a rapid pace. While neither quite reaches the dizzying heights of Super Mario Galaxy or Odyssey, it is a double dose of Mario doing things differently, and a fitting finale to Super Mario’s 35th anniversary.
Near-perfect platforming, gorgeous visuals and a joy-filled soundtrack make Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury one of the best Mario titles of all time, and an essential purchase for all Switch owners.
Ultimately, Super Mario 3D World, in this package, is the best that game has ever been, with the increased speed and ease of multiplayer access making it far more enticing than ever before. Bowser’s Fury, meanwhile, is essentially the Super Mario Odyssey DLC that never was. It feels like Odyssey’s level and game design sensibilities, but placed in the Super Mario 3D World game engine, with all of the power-ups and quirks that game has to make something truly unique. Putting both of these games in one package is the best decision that Nintendo has made in a long while, as Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is one of the best Mario offerings available on Nintendo Switch, which is lofty praise given the existence of Super Mario Maker 2. Now it just needs the option to play again, but as Luigi.
I can't really recommend Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury enough. Whether you've played the original game before or not, the addition of online multiplayer is a big win, while Bowser's Fury is a testament to just how pure a Mario game can be while still feeling fresh and exciting. Put simply; this is an essential game for Mario fans.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is both a welcome return for a platforming classic and a novel expansion of what made the game so special back on the Wii U. There's a solid chance that millions of players missed out on its excellence back in 2013, so now is the perfect time to take it for a spin.
The real star of the show, however, was Bowser’s Fury, which innovates on the foundations laid by previous 3D titles, to provide some of the most enjoyable, open-world platforming I’ve had the pleasure of playing. This is a must-buy for Switch owners and Mario fans alike and is sure to tide you over the next couple of months.
As the title itself indicates, Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury proves to be more than just the re-proposal in Nintendo Switch sauce of an exclusive Wii U not particularly lucky: the idea of inserting for once a completely new extra is very appreciable, and you find the ideas inside Bowser's Fury are not lacking at all. While the difference in tone and gameplay between the two games is quite right, the overall superiority of Super Mario 3D World over the new adventure is also evident, which ends up being an appendix or little more. The effect is that of a very solid pairing, which once again celebrates the undisputed supremacy of the Great N in the platforming field.
Super Mario 3D World has aged quite well. It is still a very enjoyable adventure, updated in its rhythm and different enough from Super Mario Odyssey for those who came to Switch without going through Wii U to discover it. The big surprise is Bowser's Fury, which transcends the concept of simple DLC and adds mechanics and novelties of epic dimensions.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is an excellent case for why Nintendo should be porting more Wii U games to the Switch. With its improved presentation and the convenience of the Switch, this is definitely the optimal way to play Super Mario 3D World, even without much in the way of new features. Bowser’s Fury is also an excellent open-world Mario mini-adventure, which is probably worth the price of admission on its own. Admittedly, the multiplayer features some camera issues, particularly in Bowser’s Fury. However, that should not stop Mario fans of all ages from checking out Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury, especially if they missed out on this much loved platformer the first time around.
Super Mario 3D World may not have had much added to it aside from an online function that is limited to only saving progress for the host, but it didn't necessarily need much else. Nintendo successfully found a way to evolve the 2D classics without going open world, and the result is one of the most consistently fresh and enjoyable games around, which, despite lacking the challenge of the NES games, has something for just about everyone. The bonus Bowser's Fury solo adventure is an absolute delight with a brilliant core idea that adds a crazy tension to Mario platforming, but it is hard to present a case for purchasing this pack just to play it. Whilst full of great content, it is too short-lived to feel worth the asking price, and really needs a standalone purchase option. When taking both games into account for those that have not played the original Wii U title, though, this is a cracking bundle of Mario goodness that encapsulates what everyone knows and still loves about the moustachioed hero after an enduring thirty-five years.
Bowser's Fury offers some great new ideas and is much more than a simple DLC. It's a great Mario game in its own right, with enough to entice those who played 3D World before with a wholly new and compelling experience, as well as offering one of the most epic showdowns in Nintendo history. Bowser's Fury is a great take on 3D Mario and finally makes Bowser the menacing villain he deserves to be. The game's only flaw is that it left me wishing there was more of it.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury is the Wii U port that Switch owners have been waiting for. Besides the inclusion of online multiplayer, 3D World is the same good game that players already experienced on the Wii U, and fans of the series who missed it the first time around will enjoy its hybridization of 2D and 3D Mario gameplay. But the highlight of the package is Bowser's Fury, a scaled-down but surprisingly robust mini 3D Mario game that actually takes some chances.
Glyph brings together the simplest form of platforms and puzzles in one package. It is an entertaining experience that shines for its simplicity. Although it falls short in scope, it fulfills the most important thing: is fun to play.
Even with the Bowser’s Fury miss, the content is worth it. If you want one of the best and most versatile multiplayer experiences to date for the Nintendo Switch, online or offline, go with Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury.
I don’t think Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury annoys me as much as it did on the Wii U, since the Switch already has the best Mario ever made on it; and I do think there is fun to be had with these games, even though I find them to be fairly frustrating. I would still recommend them if you enjoyed the originals, or maybe wanted to play them with younger gamers. Even though I might not go back to it very often, I don’t regret the time spent with it.
Bowser’s Fury works just fine as an added bonus packaged with an under-appreciated platforming gem from the Wii U era. If you’ve never played 3D World before, this is a great chance to catch up on a fresh take on 3D Mario design. If you’re mainly interested in Bowser’s Fury, though, maybe wait until the strong ideas get expanded into a full, standalone game.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury might include the same game that was on the Wii U but it's also a title that needs to be experienced by everyone who owns a Nintendo Switch.
Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury is essentially the same game on Switch that some of you may have experienced on Wii U. While there’s no denying that the new hardware can’t keep up with the game’s ambitions at times, this bundle is at its core another fantastic Mario experience.
A friend of mine just sent this over to me. He's a noob and I'm a noob but in the true spirit of karma whoring for fake internet points I wanted to share and they said it's my funeral. Note we are both total retards, noobs and have no skin in the game cuz we too poor and can only afford plain popcorn, but we desperately want to see WSB succeed and Power to the Players! Do not take this as financial advice or god have mercy on your soul. Uh guys… so we may see a crash that makes Enron look like a joke. There could be more than a short going on here, and more than firms pulling capital from other companies to cover. I don’t mean to go all conspiracy theory on you, but hear me out.... I think everything is going so off-the-rails not because of the short, but because Vanguard, Fidelity and BlackRock have sold more stock than exists. This is illegal (duh) but it has happened lots of times in the past. In fact, we didn't have real laws against it until 2008. We may see some bizarre moves if WSB doesn't sell, because some people need to hide some crimes. No joke. Here's why I think this may be the case: ---------- The Background ---------- Read this first to understand how naked shorts work: https://www.sec.gov/about/offices/ocie/options-trading-risk-alert.pdf Basically, to short a stock, you must “borrow” the stock from another account, usually something like a margin account. This is something that typically the clearing house does on behest of the fund doing the shorting. Most people don’t even know when their shares are being borrowed by a hedge fund for the purposes of shorting. A “naked short” is when you short a stock, but don’t confirm that the stock you are borrowing actually exists. This can happen when a clearing house either purposefully or inadvertently (ahem, sure) lends the same stock more than once. This basically clones the stock, just like an item cloning glitch in a video game. There are now two copies of the same stock in existence being actively traded… at least temporarily. Hold that thought. Naked shorts can be devastating to the company being shorted, as not only do they lose liquidity because of the short, the cloned stocks serve to dilute the value of the real stocks being held by artificially increasing the number of stocks being traded. Especially for small companies doing initial investment rounds, this practically guarantees bankruptcy: the diluted value limits the amount of capital they can raise, as the company never sees the cash from the cloned stock. Now, after the 2008 crash the SEC in theory made this illegal. Obviously, this practice kills companies if the short succeeds or destroys markets if the short doesn’t succeed. Either way, someone gets hurt. HOWEVER, there’s a catch: Because hedge funds and clearing houses are permitted to operate behind closed doors, the SEC can only detect a naked short when a “failure to deliver” occurs. When someone calls the short, either because of a buy or because someone withdraws the right to loan their shares, the person shorting then has 3 days to deliver. If they can’t deliver the share (because it doesn’t exist) within 3 days, then this gets reported as a “failure to deliver”. Now, the SEC may look past a few of these because floats do happen, but too many and the SEC is obligated to open an investigation. But of course, that never happens. The clearinghouse only has to report the net deliveries, not the actual transactions. This means that as long as there is someone buying on the day the failure-to-deliver would occur, the clearinghouse can roll the transaction forward… basically just like floating a check. The non-existent cloned stock is bought with the new buy, and the sell of real shares that should have covered that buy is left open but doesn’t need to be fulfilled for three more days. The clock resets. This is sort of like somebody-I-know used to do by floating checks back and forth between two different bank accounts: keeping the money in the air for several weeks until payday by continually writing checks to cover checks. Super unethical, but does work. But, this can’t be continued indefinitely. There are SEC rules that make it tough to do this for longer than 21 days. IANAL, I don’t know every loophole, but that’s my understanding. This is why after 2008 it became so important for the hedge fund to bankrupt the target company. If the company goes bankrupt, then the shares cease to be and the books never resolve. Even some kinds of restructuring can keep the books from resolving. It’s still possible to cover this without bankrupting the company if you can get enough people to sell, but it’s easier to crash the company and just make it all go away while pocketing cash from more shares than were ever real. ---------- The WSB Play ---------- Ok, now read this: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4370860-gamestop-short-squeeze This was basically the original WSB plan back from October. Don't worry about the plan... we know what's going on here already. Melvin Capital shorted by 140% which is more than the float. Gamestop had enough cash to cover debt so it seemed unlikely they would fail unless the hedge funds forced it to. Squeeze looks obvious when you lay it out that way. BUT, there is one chart here that is super important when folks were trying to figure this out: look at the chart for institutional ownership! https://i.imgur.com/Jh5AI8V.png The top three names on that chart are Vanguard, Blackrock and Fidelity. As is suggested by the author, there is a strong likelihood that the top holders already loaned out all their shares to Melvin Capital. The shares had to come from somewhere, and this is the only place they could have come. This is why some people thought this was a good move. Not just because there was a short, but because they could see that all the shares had already been “borrowed” which would force the hedge fund to buy at any price. There were simply no more shares available to option for any other kind of fuckery. ---------- The Expected Response ---------- Okay, so WSB made their move. And predictably Robinhood and a bunch of trading platforms cut the ability to buy GME. Seems obvious enough as a strategy to stem the bleeding, regardless of whether it is coming from Robinhood or, as they claim, the brokerage above them limiting trades for reasons. Whatever. Either way, this is an obvious response. Likewise, there have been numerous pushes from the hedge funds to either convince WSB the positions are closed, or to convince them to change their position from GME to Silver. Despite what the news is reporting, no one in WSB appears to be buying silver. Maybe someone is, but it ain’t them. I did a site-wide search for silver, then pulled the post history for all the accounts that made the posts--of which there are shockingly few compared to what the news media is implying. The only accounts promoting this appear to be mostly bots: they became reddit premium within the last week, or they are necro accounts that have no posts for two or three years until suddenly dozens of silver related posts in the last few days. Conversely, there are been numerous long standing accounts warning others that these silver posts are bots. None of this is unexpected. Bots and media manipulation have been par for the course for political bullshit for the last few years. Boots on the ground, I have literally no idea where the news media is getting this story other than a change in silver pricing. I am not seeing any such discussion in related communities, and certainly none that pre-dates the news stories! To be fair and avoid conspiracy: I don’t hang out on twitter. There are retail traders outside of Reddit, and perhaps the media is clumping multiple groups together and mistaking Twitter for Reddit. Wouldn’t be the first time. Even on 4chan /b/ is not /pol/ and so on. People make that mistake all the time, so the misrepresentation may be entirely unintentional. I know the internet is a weird weird place and not everyone gets how it works. The last expected response is the fact that many of the hedge funds bought new short positions, especially assuming that most of Reddit would sell on Friday. (Which they did not) There are additional short positions held that expect WSB to fold within the next week. This coincides with the news reports expecting people to try to collect their profits. Of course, many people don't intend to do that. They aren't worried about the profits they want to see hedge funds go down. But all this movement leads to an obvious question: If there are no shares available to borrow, then what are they borrowing against for the short?? ---------- Clearing Houses are Sus ---------- Okay, soooo…. We expect Wall Street to prevent buying GME, which they have; and to unleash bots to change sentiment, which they have; and to promote news stories to try to change the situation, which they have. BUT, with all of this, there are two retail trading platforms that are still allowing GME trades: Vanguard and Fidelity. There is also one firm that started buying GameStop themselves five days ago: BlackRock. Sound like a familiar list?????? These are the firms that held the shares that the hedge funds were borrowing against to short. Now, if all the funds are trying to stop the bleeding, WHY would these firms still allow trading when no one else is… much less start buying themselves? Unless…. The shares DON’T EXIST. You can’t float a check between two accounts without writing another check. Someone needs to buy the shares in order to push the failure-to-deliver of the non-existent cloned stock into the future, otherwise the gig is up and the SEC finds out. If Vanguard and Fidelity become the only source for Redditors to buy from, then they can keep moving the doomsday clock forward. BlackRock can do the same thing by buying the stock themselves. Not as good a position, but not a lot of other choice if they need the books to read clean. Ok, someone with more experience than me can surely explain this better as there are some gotchas, but that's the basic gist. More proof those shares don’t exist? This academic paper from last year gives a clue: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3673531 Even if you own shares, you can’t vote in a shareholder’s meeting if your shares have been loaned out. Less than half of GameStop shareholders were eligible to vote by April of last year, with even fewer by August! There were so many shares borrowed SIX MONTHS AGO that it was affecting GameStop’s ability to hold a quorum among shareholders. Now the paper was only concerned about how short selling was affecting company’s ability to administer. The idea that these were naked shorts never came up AFAIK. But knowing what we do now, this seems increasingly likely. Also, for good measure beyond academia, this was in the news from last year: https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-investing-giants-gave-away-voting-power-ahead-of-a-shareholder-fight-11591793863 If you look at the volume that WSB has bought since then, and the amount held in options, and the amount of shares that have been borrowed against in the last week or two as hedge funds have placed a second set of shorts… well… it sure looks like there are way more shares on the market THAN EXIST. Of course, without having the records from the clearing houses, AFAIK there's no way to know for sure. Only the SEC can do that. I don’t mean the bet WSB played… that Marvin had 140% of the FLOAT. I mean that Vanguard, Fidelity and BlackRock have sold more than the TOTAL SHARES that EXIST. That's a completely different problem and it's punishable by jail time. Not a joke. It's basically counterfeiting stock shares, although that's not the terminology used. If this is true, who knows how many other times they’ve done this. Or maybe it's not true, and they just really like the stock??? If BlackRock started buying five days ago, and the longest they can likely do this is 21 days, then the doomsday clock doesn’t run out until at least February 17th. If Wall Street can get WSB to sell before then, then they won’t get caught and won’t go to jail. But if they don’t…. well, this will make Enron look like chump change. If enough people hold until the end of February, and this is truly the situation, then there is a chance that major parts of Wall Street are going to IMPLODE. ---------- The Conclusion ---------- Apes need diamond hands until the end of February in order to get the SEC involved, most likely somewhere between Feb 17th - 19th. Whether or not this will happen is anybody's guess, but if it does all heck may break loose! Wall Street will probably do everything in their power to prevent that. There are too many top players involved. Crazy moves are likely because stock brokers are smooshy and jail is uncomfortable. This may effect the market. (Duh) Bloomberg may be correct, but not at all for the reasons stated. But, that said, I wouldn't panic if it does. I think it will be fine in the long run, but that's a whole other set of reasoning for another day. Standard Disclaimer: This is not financial or legal advice. I am a retard and I have no idea what I am talking about. This is entirely speculation. :) Edit: here is the link to my second attempt to post to WSB, maybe a mod can reverse the removal? The post still shows listed on my end: https://www.reddit.com/wallstreetbets/comments/la9ms9/follow_the_crumbs_gme_exposed_the_meta/ Edit 2: Ok so don't ask me for stock advice. I don't know stocks and neither does my friend. We both think holding is the right move but beyond that we don't know and could even be wrong about that. And furthermore I don't want this to come off like we're accusing these companies of nefarious deeds. We don't know what is going on. The data is sus. The activities are sus. Google is your friend and the post tries to list sources for the research. Do your own research though! For ducks sake this is a rando post on UserSub. I'm happy to see the love but this is a one shot research dump by someone who knows nothing about this topic. Edit 3: u/traveljg has commented that Blackrock is on the record for selling not buying but I don't know enough about any of this to challenge the idea one way or another and my friend is off on some other crusade at this point so he's worthless for questions. This is why it is SUPER important that you do your own research and not take advice from a rando. Edit 4: I'm not responding to chat requests. If you have comments make them on the post. What is wrong with you retards?
GME Gains. Started with $4,500 in November, >1.5 mil in February.
https://imgur.com/a/RDa86Np Started in November with $4,500 that I cash advanced from my credit card and saved by paying my rent with that card for 2 months. I initially bought 75% shares and 25% calls and just pressed buttons on my phone a few times here and then for the next couple months. I didn't want to post this until GME wounds started healing for others. I did, however, go down with the ship in my Fidelity where I lost about 25k on shares. Nothing I did was smart, I got lucky. DON'T FUCKING GAMBLE WITH MONEY YOU CAN'T AFFORD TO LOSE. THERE WAS 1 SPOT IN 10 MILLION WHERE THAT SHIT ACTUALLY WORKS AND I ALREADY TOOK IT. Please don't test your luck because you will lose your shirt and your wife will go stay with her boyfriend permanently. Otherwise, keep those Wendie's Tendies flowing you fucking retards. Edit 1: Getting a lot of PM's asking for money. Bitch, I'd love to help everybody and will be making sizeable donation to charities and bringing video games to kids for Christmas. However, I don't just have cash everywhere. I actually adjusted my quality of life DOWNWARDS. Also, if you wanna PM me to ask where to learn about options, you better have some experience in business, logistics, trucking or brokering freight, so you can return the favor. I need help with something so tit for tat. Edit 2: Got a lot of people messaging me asking about what shall not be named i.e. rule 4. If you are interested in that, you can go through my post history. Edit 3: Can't I get a flair or something for being an absolute retard? Edit 4: Yes people, this was my FIRST play in the stock market, I'm not a guru that could do this again. The first's one's always free or at least it was in my case! I am lucky, not skilled. Edit 5: The week of the gamma squeeze, I was up to 90k. I pulled out 46k which was more than 10 times my initial investment. Had I not done that, I would not have had the balls to make this play. My best advice, SET YOURSELF UP FOR AN OPPORTUNITY THAT YOU CAN PLAY RISKY LIKE THIS AND IF IT DOESN'T WORK, YOU ARE STILL BETTER OFF THEN YOU WERE WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED!!! Edit 6: Volatility. How did I not wanna die with such large fluctuations? Well sometimes I did, that's what the liquor was for. Otherwise, as you can probably tell, I was born in the bytecorn space but way out of even the top 25 or 100 corns. I'm talking microcap that would put even the worst copperstonks to shame. This volatility pales in comparison and I became comfortable there, sometimes even happy. Learn to hold onto your pants trading the most volatile asset known to man, and options will be a walk in the park. Also, I learned a ton about greed and chasing gains in the pop of 2017. Lessons to be learned can be found everywhere, it's up to you to determine how much you wanna pay to learn those lessons.
Scopely, you are losing touch with your playerbase
EDIT: thank you all for all the great feedback in here, the upvotes and awards, this blew up way more than I anticipated. Some of the feedback was that it was not focusing on what to do about the problems, and that I agree on. So I have made a new, and very long post on what I think can be done (losing_touch_extended_version_now_with_ideas_for), the ideas are not perfect, not by far. But I hope they can spark a discussion that can help the game become better. I started playing a bit after release, currently 1024 days logged. I have been buying most new characters when they came out. So an above average spender. But this is the first time I have actually started to think that the game is losing touch with the players. Lets look at the resent problems. RTA changes in 5.1.0: Now if someone quits out/never loads in you have to wait for the timer to run out. So that is 160 seconds where you just sit and wait. So you have decided to punish the players you set out to help. At the same time someone can go in with a 150k team, and get matched up against a 400k+ team. If they quit out they have to wait for the match to be over to even try to get a matchup that might make them progress. Now think if the person they quit on lost connection. Then they both have to wait for the whole match to time out. This could take up to 7 minutes. How does this even go live. It would have taken around 10 minutes to test and see that it doesn't work as intended. Doom Raid You just made a LIMITED time raid that is for less than 1% of your playerbase. We are seeing top 20 alliances, clearing 7.5 with ease every day, and they are not able to progress past the first few nodes. The prizes are even worse, you have to at least make the juice worth the squeeze. Getting half a G15 orb for 100% is so tone-deaf that I don't even understand how you had a meeting and agreed that that seemed fair for the effort the players had to put into even getting there. Skillitary/new teams videos You sold a team, where you showed they beat the Emma Marauders with ease. But we all know that that is not something they do with ease. I understand that you don't wanna overtune new characters, it makes sense. It's always better to buff than to nerf. But you have to be quick about it, and address the issue. If you don't you will lose the trust of from the players. You cannot put out a video where they slaughter Marauders, and then have them be this mediocre. The amount of jokes made about the new Shadowland character video in my alliance chat was incredible. Literally zero people believe that they will counter any of the matchups you showed. It's ok to miss the mark on release, but then at least commit to fix it after. Time spent in game You stated that you wanted to bring down the screen time. But I have never spent as much "dumb" screen time as I do now. Blitz sim was on paper a good start, but then you just replaced it with RTA. And now a lot of people play the game with a 2 hour timer on their phone. That is just not healthy. Back to back events that require you to blitz every 2 hours are not quality time. It's ok to make them from time to time, but the last 2 months has been so draining. Red stars You are now making content that requires 6+ red stars on characters, but you have gated it behind "surprise mechanics". If you don't get luck and get at least 4rs+ on a new character, that character is almost rendered useless. Yesterday I used 35 normal orbs, 5 elite 4s and 3 elite 5s. And I got 3 reds on Bishop. And when we look at the new changes to Jubilee unlock, you are telling me that anything under 4rs is useless. The red star system is just one huge failure for the players, but I guess you make so much money off it that the people in charge will never make changes to it. Availability of new characters Every patch you bring out 3-4 new characters, but you only make 1 maybe 2 older ones farmable in some way. And way too often you chose to make them farmable in the war store. Even the people who spend are sitting around with characters that are useless at 4 stars cause they can't take them up in any way. I don't have a problem with the prices on new characters really. But that they aren't made farmable in some way within a decent time is killing it for me, and most people I talk to. Its not fun to see some of your favorite heroes or villians just sit on the bench doing nothing for months General Scopely, you have forgotten that this is a game. You are taking advantage of people who like being in the alliances they are in. And you are taking advantage of sunken cost fallacy. People keep saying that that its not the developers fault and they just do as they are told. But they are allowed to say no, to question the decisions that are made and try to make this a game that is both profitable AND fun. Right now its only the one, and without the fun, the profit will also start to decay. So Scopely, you are losing players like never before. But it's not cause people don't like the game, it's because of the decisions you keep making that are alienating the playerbase. Lets not kid ourselves, if it wasn't for the Marvel IP, not 10% of us would even be playing the game in its current state. With that said, the game is still very fixable, but you at least have to meet us half way. Right now you are just making terrible decisions each and every patch. I still have hopes that Scopely can turn it around, cause if they don't at least start addressing the issues, then we will see a steady decline, especially when people start going back to work when the pandemic goes on retreat. But the focus on only milking people for money has got to stop, its very possible to make great money and make a good game
MVIS: Shiny Laser Go Pew ⚡ No But Seriously They Are Gonna Take Over The LiDAR Industry
So, the day has come, and MicroVision's market cap is finally big enough so that you won't get banned for mentioning it on WSB. But what is it? Why have they seen an 800%+ increase in three months? Where are they headed? Allow me to explain. About Them MicroVision, Inc. (MVIS) makes futuristic-as-fuck laser technology that's used in self driving cars and augmented reality headsets. This already sets them apart from a major competitors like Velodyne (VLDR), which focuses solely on LiDAR for self driving cars. Sumit Sharma, the CEO, was head of operations at Google's Project GLASS and has worked to map hardware development at Motorola, also worked at Jawbone. Source Why have they been increasing 800% in three months while similar companies in the same sector see a fraction of that gain? Because their tech is much more advanced than the competition, and they were (are) criminally undervalued. The reason they're so undervalued is because the first thing hedge funds see when they research a potential investment is the balance sheet, and on paper MVIS looks like shit. (Low assets, high liabilities) Even I saw the movement back in December, did some research, and was like "Wtf is this? I need to get puts" But once you do research into their product, who their customers are, and the future of the industry that they are involved in, you see that MicroVision is a turnaround story similar to that of Plug Power; both are 90's futuristic companies that people got way too excited about in 2000, have struggled to make it to 2020, but now are about to finally have their heyday. And they got a $13 million equity facility (loan) in December that greatly improved their balance sheet, making them appeal to institutions, and bringing Vanguard and Blackrock to invest in MVIS days later. I actually had a hedge fund manager tell me that MVIS was doomed to run out of cash in Q1 2020, but if they secured funds then they would have a lot of potential. I go over that in the comments. MVIS (left) vs PLUG (right) 1990's until present Anyways, what is this "much more advanced" technology? I'll just let this chart do the talking: The MicroVision Consumer LIDAR being compared here isn't even their model designed for self-driving cars, that will be coming in April. The resolution it can take as input/second, the points per second, is key when it comes to how clearly the LiDAR sensor can see, how accurately it can identify what it is seeing, and how quickly it can react. That chart is from 2 years ago and still the best resolution Velodyne can provide today is only 4,800,000 pps in their most advanced model, the "Alpha Prime"
3D Lidar Data Points Generated 2- Single Return Mode: ~ 2,400,000 points per second- Dual Return Mode: ~ 4,800,000 points per second.
VLDR has not publicly announced a price for their Alpha Prime yet, but historically their top of the line devices cost $75,000. I have seen unsourced numbers of the Alpha Prime costing $100,000. That was last year, will probably be brought down to be more reasonable for automakers to purchase. They did announce a $500 model called the Velarray H800 in November, but the only thing they said about its pps resolution is that its "outstanding"... lol. As for Luminar (LAZR), they will launch the new model "Iris" in 2022, which will cost about $1,000: (the same price as MicroVision's device to be revealed in April). It will also only operate at 10Hz. This is similar to playing a racing game at 10FPS. If you know anything about video games, you know that this is unplayable.
Iris will cost less than $1,000 per unit for production vehicles seeking serious autonomy, and for $500 you can get a more limited version for more limited purposes like driver assistance, or ADAS. Luminar says Iris is 'slated to launch commercially on production vehicles beginning in 2022,' but that doesn't mean necessarily that it's shipping to customers right now. The company is negotiating more than a billion dollars in contracts at present, a representative told me, and 2022 would be the earliest that vehicles with Iris could be made available.
A lengthy post has been make comparing Luminar's resolutions with MicroVision's, which was not easy to calculate because Luminar said their resolution was "300dpi/spdeg", a statistic that is incomprehensible for shareholders because its not the common specification of millions (3D) points per second. Here's the math, I sum it all up at the bottom:
Luminar's Hydra claims resolution of "up to 200 points per square degree" and a FOV of 120° x 30° (degrees). (and 300 points for Iris, the one coming in 2022.) However, the vertical FOV can be configured from 1° to 30° , which likely explains the use of "up to" in the resolution numbers. Generally, as FOV expands, resolution shrinks, assuming a constant pixel stream. This is why Alex Kipman made such a big deal about MSFT maintaining resolution in Hololens 2(YT links aren't allowed apparently) while expanding FOV because it required more pixels to do so. Specifically, regarding Luminar, is 200 points per square degree available when FOV is at the maximum 120° x 30°? Or is it available only at a lesser FOV such as, for example, 120° x 5°? The use of "up to" suggests the latter. Even assuming 200 points per square degree at 120° x 30° is available, which is not conceded given the stated "up to", that would yield a total resolution of 720,000 points. MVIS claims capacity in excess of 20M points per second. At a resolution of 720,000 points, Luminar would require a frame rate of 27.7 Hz to equal 20M points per second. Luminar's specs do not suggest that its technology is capable of such a high frame rate at this resolution. This is not surprising given it does not use MEMS micromirrors but something more "mechanical" including, as per a recent patent, spindles and a drive belt (1) At video time 19:56, Luminar compares the specs of its Iris product to industry requirements. The graphic reveals that Luminar's 2022 production lidar, Iris, will support resolution of 300 points per square degree at 10 Hz. Assuming that resolution applies to the entire FOV of 120 x 30 degrees and not just a portion of the FOV, that would imply a points per second value of 120 x 30 x 300 x 10 Hz = 10.8M points per second. If the 300 points/ sq. deg applies only to a smaller FOV, the points per second figure would be proportionally smaller. Microvision claims 20M points per second for its current MEMS lidar. The company also advises that its technology is capable of more than 20M points/sec.
TLDR: The best case scenario for Luminar is that their 2022 model will have 10.8 million pps, but in reality its probably much lower than that because of FOV configurations, careful wording by press releases, and Hz limitations. Additional Interesting insight on Luminar and their tech lagging behind is in the comments, this post is long enough already. Again the MicroVision Consumer LIDAR (specifications) being used for comparison here isn't even their model designed for self-driving cars. Their device specialized for cars, the "1st gen Long Range LiDAR (LRL) Sensor", will be coming in April.
We expect our 1st generation LRL Sensor to have range of at least 250 meters and the highest resolution at range of any lidar with 340 vertical lines up to 250 meters, 568 vertical lines up to 120 meters and 944 vertical lines up to 60 meters. This equatesto 520 points per square degree.
(For those who read the math on LAZR, notice he doesn't say up to) It testing is successful, the 1st Generation LRL Sensor will be able to calculate velocity of objects relative to itself, and be able to be used in Level 3 and Level 4 self-driving applications
Our LRL Sensor will also output velocity of moving objects relative to an ego vehicle across our dynamic field of view in real-time 30 Hz sensor output. This sensor would accelerate development of Level 3 (L3) autonomous safety and Level 4 (L4) autonomous driving features that are important to potential customers and interested parties.
What is Level 3 and Level 4 autonomous driving? https://preview.redd.it/n4c8831l9dh61.png?width=848&format=png&auto=webp&s=0652984c72da3159b53a4fc4058c9d9e33cc6b05 Level 1 is feet off, level 2 is hands off, level 3 is eyes off, level 4 is mind off, and level 5 is full passenger (you can sit in the back). So basically, they have that 2045 technology today, while everyone else is trying to play catch-up. How is it so advanced? It all lies in the high resolution of the laser sensors.
I've seen MVIS's LiDAR in action at a shareholder meeting. It can recognize people. This has been described on MicroVision's conference calls, and has been described with significant additional safety and convenience features. This could identify individual people Can distinguish between pets and people (or YOUR pet and the neighbors pet) Can distinguish between normal behaviors and strange things that could be of concern Could save face-scans of intruders and allow intruders to be identified later Source
LiDAR is the only sensor that gives you resolution at range: the ability to get very fine and very accurate detection of objects in space.
that's why Teslas use radar systems in addition to their cameras, still not good enough to prevent fatalities on the road using Tesla's "full self-driving" software. Also, cameras struggle with light glare, weather, and 3D imaging, while LiDAR fixes all those issues. The main advantage of cameras are their resolution, and MicroVision is bridging the gap. So, will testing be successful?
We expect the capability of our LRL Sensor to meet or exceed OEM requirements, based on technology we have scaled multiple times over the last decade, as being a very strong strategic advantage. (Same source)
This product has been getting fine tuned for years and I am personally confident that they will be able to outperform in their testing. Demonstration(YT links aren't allowed apparently) of their consumer LiDAR product from 2018 (make sure your quality is all the way up). Growing Industry The self-driving cars market is expected to reach 220.44 billion dollars by 2025. This includes taxi, civil, public transport, heavy duty trucks, ride shares, and ride hail (UBER - 72 B mkt cap) applications. Traffic Accidents in the US aloneCost 871 Billion A Year, even just yesterday there was an insane pileup on the I-35W highway in Texas that killed 6, injured 36, and damaged 133 vehicles. Not only self-driven cars need LiDAR. In a few years, as soon as MicroVision's 1st Gen LRL is available, LiDAR systems will certainly become mandatory for (still) human-controlled cars to avoid collisions. This tech could become as revolutionary and successful as airbags. Airbags are a 37.3 billion dollar industry. If only 10% of the cars produced annually contain four Microvision LRL systems, this will result in a volume of 364 million units in ten years. (9.1 million cars * 4 modules * 10 years) And this is a conservative calculation, both a higher market share, more cars produced, and more modules per car are conceivable. At least 4 LRL devices will be necessary to establish a \"circle of safety.\" Augmented Reality The Hololens 2 is an example of a Virtual Reality Device (VRD) manufactured by Microsoft that uses MicroVision MEMS Laser Scanning display modules inside. NASA & Lockeed Martin using Hololens (Video)(YT links aren't allowed apparently)
'When a technician puts on the Hololens, they instantly see the work instruction, instead of having to go through stacks of rectangular data, whether its paper or another form of a screen'... 'We see a reduction in cost, increases in quality'... 'What we've found is we can take an 8 hour activity and reduce it down to 45 minutes'... 'We haven't had a single error that's been documented'...
This new GPS system comes equipped with an augmented reality heads-up-display (HUD) that attaches directly to your sun visor. This laser-projected GPS micro-display, developed in collaboration with MicroVision, makes it appear that your route directions show directly on top of the road, letting you keep your eyes on the road at the same time.
Cook was asked about what he expects to be the biggest tech developments in the next five to 10 years. Cook’s response made it clear that he sees augmented reality as the future, calling it the “next big thing.”
While attending a trauma call in the early stages of the pandemic, Mr Kinross noticed that 29 people were working in close proximity. He realized the established way of working would have to change dramatically.
The technician is then linked with a Mercedes-Benz specialist working remotely who can see what the tech sees and communicate in real-time -- manipulating the holographic information with annotations, highlighting areas of focus, pointing at things in the real world and presenting documents and service manuals.
In the next few years, business verticals will be possible in the markets for smart glasses (Video)(YT links aren't allowed apparently) and projections with touchless input(YT links aren't allowed apparently) and gesture control. For example, an eyewear company could develop the smallest and lightest smart glasses device on the market using the chip in that smart glasses video.
In the MicroVision Augmented Reality video, for example, we share a potential module design using our existing MEMS technology platform that could offer the lightest, smallest in volume, low power module with up to 40 degrees field of view packaged into eye wear that resembles frames currently accepted in the market. I believe one could see how our module in the design example would be compelling for a mass-market product.Source
Patents MicroVision has 484 patents granted and pending. This was enough to get them on the Ocean Tomo 300 Patent Value Index. What is that you ask?
The Ocean Tomo 300® Patent Value Index includes the top value companies of the broad- market Ocean Tomo 300® Patent Index, as determined by the price-to-book ratio, and is diversified across market capitalization. It is the industry’s first value index based on the value of intellectual property and represents a portfolio of 60 companies with the highest innovation ratio (i.e., patent maintenance value relative to book value). Source
This index also outperforms the Russel 1000 and the S&P 500. Their intellectual property includes in-house developed custom MEMS, custom optics, proprietary digital and analog silicon chips, embedded real-time firmware and software, manufacturing processes, custom automation and strategic partnerships that allow them to operate in a sleek model. MicroVision patents and products therefore serve many future markets:
Whoever has the MicroVision technology may be able to eliminate the competition or demand license fees from them. Or the other way around: Whoever does not buy the technology can be excluded from markets. Therefore, bidding competition may arise to gain access to the market. Whoever has the best LiDAR system for cars will also be able to supply other components and software to car manufacturers. The car manufacturer who has the best LiDAR system has a big advantage over the competition. All Notable Competition: Velodyne LiDAR, Luminar, Sense Photonics, Robosense, Valeo, SureStar MicroVision: founded in 1993 Velodyne Lidar VLDR: founded in 1983, but as a subwoofer company 😂 and only got into LiDAR in 2005 LAZR: founded in 2012 Non-Public: Valeo: Founded in 1998 Robosense: Founded in 2014 SureStar: Founded in 2005 Basically, MVIS is all these other companies' daddy. They have been working on LiDAR for almost 30 years and it shows, just imagine what they will be able to develop in a few years with more funding. https://preview.redd.it/eh5csdcz9dh61.png?width=1600&format=png&auto=webp&s=068fe6f5508e693ace5c6c56d4d2a5d9294836fb Insider Activity MicroVision is very transparent with its inner workings of the company, you can easily reach out to them on their website under "Investors." One of many conferences held with Vice President David Westgor, investor relations manager Dave Allen, and investors of MVIS revealed:
As to the employee incentive plan, Steve Holt made the point that in his 7 years of experience (I think it was) with MVIS, NO EMPLOYEE had actually ever cashed out in the money options.
Case in point, on December 1s, 2020, the day after she joined the team, Judith Curran was paid with 3 million dollars worth of $3 calls expiring in 2022, and she has not cashed out. On Yahoo it reports that the last insider sale was in 2014. Institutional Investments For reasons stated earlier, institutions have been late to the game on this one, but now are starting to get on the rocket ship before it takes off. MVIS is now the largest holding in the S&P Kensho Moonshots Index, (KMOONP), which is literally an ETF of stocks that are going go the moon 🌙 . Blackrock purchased 2.44 million shares on December 31, 2020. Vanguard purchased 6.61 million shares on the same day. Recent Events MVIS's stagnation really started to break on December 1st 2020, with MVIS when former Ford Executive Judith Curran was added to MVIS's board of directors.
Curran is an accomplished senior automotive executive with over 30 years of experience in vehicle program, engineering and technology leadership. Curran has a strong record of leading innovation at Ford Motor Company where she served in a number of executive positions including Director of Technology Strategy, where she developed the cross-vehicle global strategy for key new technologies including assisted driving, infotainment, new electrical architectures, and connectivity.
Doesn't take a genius to figure out they were about to ride the EV wave, and were appointing the right people to be poised to do so. Eight days later on December 8th 2020, the US Congress approved approximately $700M for the roll-out of IVAS in 2021. 7 days after that on December 15th, MVIS broke $4 for the first time in nine years. December 29, 2020: MicroVision Announces $13 Million At-the-Market Equity Facility (this is huge for improving balance sheet and attracting hedge funds/institutional ownership)
So far, our team remains on track to complete our Long Range Lidar sensor sample in April 2021. We believe this financing will further solidify our balance sheet as we remain committed to pursuing strategic alternatives and establishing value for our shareholders,” said Sumit Sharma, MicroVision Chief Executive Officer. “We expect a stronger balance sheet will provide the Company with runway through 2021 and into the first quarter of 2022 to enable us to continue development of our lidar sensor while pursuing strategic alternatives,” said Steve Holt, MicroVision Chief Financial Officer.
December 31: Vanguard adds 6.6 million shares, Blackrock adds adds 2.4. January 20, 2021: Apple CEO Tim Cook says Augmented Reality is the "Next Big Thing." Feb 2, 2021 YooToob stock analyst Deadnsyde covers(YT links aren't allowed apparently) MVIS, causing the beginning of a large breakout past $8. Feb 4: MicroVision granted patent (WSB bot is blocking source from being posted- thinks it contains a ticker), essentially lidar on a chip, this patent in particular is huge. (solid state lidar) Feb 10: Cramer mentions MVIS, says LIDAR is one of three battlegrounds for EV competition. Feb 10 after hours: MVIS announces Progress on Automotive Long Range LiDAR, saying “We expect MicroVision’s Long Range Lidar Sensor, (LRL Sensor) which has been in development for over two years, to meet or exceed requirements established by OEMs for autonomous safety and autonomous driving features,” said Sumit Sharma, Chief Executive Officer of MicroVision. Feb 11: Volkswagen and Microsoft team up on automated driving (potential for MVIS to get involved). Talent at MicroVision Sumit Sharma became the CEO in February of 2020, he is a mechanical engineer that has been with MVIS for five years after having been the head of operations at Google Project Glass, and working for Motorola and Jawbone. Dr. Mark Spitzer is on the board of directors having previously worked at Google X, Darpa, Kopin and having founded Myvu and Photonic Glass. Judy Curran joined the board this year after spending 30 years at Ford, where she was the Director of Technical Strategy. She is also the Head of Global Automotive Strategy for Ansys, a simulation software company that works with ADAS systems. Technical analysis Resistance at 46.75, 123. 39, and 204. 23, could turn to supports. Moving Average Analysis: On February 28, 2020, Market Cap of PLUG was 1.32B, on this date the 120 day MA touches the 8y moving average. 11 months later, PLUG has a market cap of 33.79B, an increase of 2459%. On September 3, 2020, Market Cap of MVIS was 0.21B, on this date 120 day MA touches the 8y moving average. 5 months later, MVIS has a market cap of 2.77B an increase of 1219%. 6 months forward price target: $34.348B Conclusion/Valuation/TLDR LAZR is currently valued at 12.22B VLDR at 3.92B MVIS at 2.77B MicroVision offers a quantitatively much higher performance product than both of its competitor companies. Because of their lack of focus on augmented reality technologies, competitors are not likely to have a future in the markets of smart glasses, healthcare, engineering, military equipment, GPS safety, entertainment, and interactive projectors. They are involved in an industry that is currently at an inflection point, due to grow massively in the near future. Their high number of extremely advanced patents will bring in significant revenue for the company in the coming years. I have never seen a company with such low insider selling, that the last case of a sale was in 2014. Institutional investors are piling in as MicroVision's balance sheet improves and they near the April LRL sensor test date, which has a high likelihood of being a success. I think this stock should currently be valued at 20 Billion dollars, taking all of this into account, and expect it to rise drastically over the next few years. This is not financial advice, I am not a financial advisor, do your own research before believing some retard on the internet. Positions: 300 shares, $19 call 5/21, $20 call 3/19, $31 call 2/19(FD), $28 call 2/19, $24 call 2/19.
Please help me, I've figured out the situation and can't post it on WSB
[I know I said final edit, but I made a final final edit below, and preserved the original post at the bottom. I'm disorganized, sue me.] 2nd-to-FINAL EDIT: Toning down the Rhetoric. We need real data, can this be mathed out? I like that guys idea of a shareholder meeting. GET THESE FUCKS IN JAIL. TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. ALLEGATION: SECURITIES FRAUD, NAKED SHORTING COLLUSION BETWEEN MELVIN AND CITADEL Let's roleplay, retards. I'll play the billionaire fuckhead who wants to bankrupt Gamestop, because I think it'll be a fun story to jerk off to. I hatch a brilliant little plan to short them to death. Here's my plan. I collude with the company who invested in me, who processes my transactions, to make the world think I have 5 Million GME. This happens. I don't know how, but keep going with me. So now, all I have to do, is NEVER let one of these specific 5 million GME shares out of my account, or the jig is up. They'd be caught as a FAIL TO DELIVER if someone ever got their hands on one. So how do I never sell one of these? Shorting! But no no guys... not just regular shorting. We... we would short. EVERY. TRANSACTION. EVEN THE ONES THAT LOSE US MONEY. It's more important and valuable to me to pay for a clean share off the market to boomerang back, than it is to release one of my POISON SHARES into the market and get found out. Luckily, I know a clearinghouse that sits in front of all my transactions, and can help with this little bit of intercepting magic. So, we do this for a while. Hey, wait, a big order came in, there wasn't enough float in the pool to boomerang clean shares, oh shit, we let a couple go. Well, let's wait and see what happens. < INSERT LINK HERE TO THE FAIL-TO-DELIVERS ON GME SECURITY OVER TIME > https://i.redd.it/1wpfodbyb6f61.png Oh, shit. Things are warming up. People think Gamestop might really come back. If there's a lot of trading, they might've found out about my 5 million FAKE POISON shares, when the clearinghouse comes to deduct it from my account. Oh, shit. It happened. A lot. Look at those fail to delivers. They're everywhere on $GME, and only on GME. The jig is up. I don't want to get caught, so I hit my "omfg algorithm" button, that will liquidate and put any asset in my entire portfolio in front of those buy orders for GME. I know, the redditors are idiots, so I'll HEDGE THIS POSITION with another profitable meme position.... like AMC. They decided "FUCK IT" eventually, and traded in their FAKE SHARES for REAL MONEY at some point during this, and those are FOUND OUT WITH FAIL TO DELIVERS. THEY ARE SLIDING ALL THEIR ILL GOTTEN GME GAINS INTO OTHER STOCKS, PROBABLY THRU OTHER BROKERS, SO THEY CAN BERNIE MADOFF THIS BITCH AND RUN AWAY WITH ALL THE MONEY. THOSE ARE FAKE SHARES, "CREATED" BY CITADEL AS IF MELVIN OWNED THEM, AND ALWAYS FRONTED (SEE: LAUNDERED) CLEAN SHARES WHENEVER TRANSACTIONS WOULD HAVE COME IN FOR THEM. AND THERES WAY MORE THAN 5 MILLION ANDITS NOT JUSTMIGHT NOT JUST BE GAMESTOP. [Edited, im retarded] Final final Edit/addendum [lol i know, i'm unorganized, shutup] 2/5/21 3:51pm EST: I am still here, I am still convinced, and I am still advocating. I however will not be posting here anymore. I am preserving it via an internet archive screenshot, and logging off for good. The amount of ACTIVE disinformation is a data point. Look at the seemingly unrelated geopolitical panic boilling over among the rich and well connected specifically. Look at the people who have been victimized by this behavior in the past, finding their courage to speak up. Most of all, look at the data. Keep your head in the math and data. Create mathematical models of your own to represent the forces that YOU KNOW are in play, and come to your own conclusions. I spent the past 2 days kind of sweating a lot, and freaking out. Am I gonna die? They gonna put a hit out me? Am I in danger? NO. These are lazy fucking idiots. These guys' wives boyfreinds don't even wash their own fucking car. You don't have anything to fear. Their crimes are in the open, in daylight, with data. They committed them so nakedly, so lazily, so sloppily.... The data PROVING this has been in the open for what, like weeks? months? Think of the MILLION other securities they could have done this to instead of pushing that gamestop threshhold over 100%. These are just LAZY ENTITLED FUCKING CUNTS. They are willing to risk SYSTEMIC FINANCIAL SYSTEM COLLAPSE because they got too lazy to fucking copy paste their strategy on a new thing. And you know what I am? I am lazy too. And we're all sitting at home, being lazy, and we're gonna take your ILLEGALLY GOTTEN LAZY GAINS and put them to true good use. Cool, right? ================================================================================================== REDDITORS YOU MUST REALIZE, THAT THIS ALL CHANGED THURSDAY. A DYING RAT DOES NOT LAY DOWN TO DIE, AND THE DEATHBLOW WAS NOT DEALT THURSDAY. ================================================================================================== They are now actively ponzi scheming. You can again, see it in the trends. Its hydraulic flow of capital, across securities, to protect their one, poisoned, fake stance. This is MASSIVELY ILLEGAL to cover with borrowed. I didnt know what the fuck a ponzi scheme even WAS until I started trying to find a way to explain my stupid fucking waterfall analogy. Do you know why % held by institutions was above 100% for way too fucking explainably long? Those were the fake shares that citadel and melvin colluded to make. Melvin as a short seller, wouldnt look suspicious if the "institutional % held" by them was high. Do you know why % of float went down, that wierd S3 data anomaly? They started selling. Their. Fake. Shares. Do you know why we see lots of fail to delivers occurring? Those are those fake shares showing up in the drains. It's been a ponzi scheme all along. Just, it was being held WITHIN the single GME security. But, on thursday, they got caught. The financial world was either sleeping on it, or in on it, and wasnt prepared for them to get caught. Either way really doesn't matter right now, as the result was: RAISE THE MARGINS. LET THEM DIE. ...... oh also we mightve just fucked a bunch of smaller brokers.... like, a lot of them, by essentially making them have to have 10x more operating capital than they do..... well.... whatever, everyone sees the writing on the wall. If they believe, they'll raise some more capital. Please correlate this with the actual facts surrounding robinhood, 212, etc halt of trading. They DID fuck up too with their reaction, I am not excusing them. But look at the actual events. So they were caught. Nothing to do now, but to sell their fake shares. They've been doubling down on shorts this whole time since probably $20, all the while leaking faked shares into the pool. We all hold fake shares. There's no way of knowing anymore. The well is poisoned. We need to force a shareholder vote now, to get a tally. We need to force the SEC to do their goddamn jobs and fast, go freeze these criminals assets COMPLETELY, NOT THE GME SECURITY ALONE, because they are GETTING AWAY WITH IT via a naked ponzi scheme. The bomb is no longer contained within GME. They detonated their bomb on thursday, when they got CAUGHT, and decided that its jail no matter what, so they clicked the algorithm named "PONZI SCHEME" and fucking started making calls to drum up disinfo. Do you understand the criminal motive, of a 100% defeated foe (fake shares revealed), to do another criminal self preserving move (ponzi)? Up until Thursday they were using legal mechanisms to push back from being found out. When they got caught, they switched to illegal ponzi mechanisms. I'm a fucking ape and I can understand this criminal motive. When the ponzi algorithm runs out, you are left with a stock GME that has a market cap representing $0 of melvins dollars, and a market cap of whatever other securities they are funneling their money into, representing $all of melvins dollars. Do you notice how, if melvin also held some sort of position in those other companies, melvin still has his dollars? And do you notice how there are exactly $0 of melvins money to squeeze out of GME when the correction actually occurs? P O N Z I THEY WILL WIN, unless the REGULATORS COME AND DO THEIR GODDAMN JOB. And remember, the villians here have already released the poison into the well. It's gonna be very very very VERY hard to unpoison this shit. Do the regulators just say that, hey, that amount of lead in your drinking water is fine now? Let's see whose side they are really on. I've forwarded it to a diverse range of tiplines and media outlets. I am not enough. One retards voice will never be heard. Apes strong together. APES STRONG TOGETHER. Only the light of day will reveal all these SQUIRMING, MISINFORMING, MONSTERS hiding in our system. The data is there. Only those who DO NOT WANT TO SEE IT, are not seeing it. They are the paper handed bitches, who are barking as loud as they can BECAUSE THEIR JAW IS MADE OF STYROFOAM AND FAKE SHARES. You and I are all 2am_spaghetti, because 2am_spaghetti is just some fucking nerd who knows how to game systems (IN VIDEO GAMES) and can see some fucking patterns in this system. These monsters are game theorying real life, and they just lost. But rather than pay the cost, they are literally trying to hit reset by doing a manuever that has historically nuked the entire system, counting that the lay person doesn't know enough. Because it worked in '08. And who knows how many other times. Make your own judgement, apes. Original post below. please help me, I'm resorting to just sending people reddit DMs, I am 110% certain of this, you can call me the time traveler Their stoploss algorithm is modeled after HYDRAULICS across their whole portfolio. The squeeze has a pressure relief valve, and this is it. https://imgur.com/MHmpwVe Edit: maybe a better explanation? :: https://imgur.com/gallery/5t9QgEc Imagine using your car jack while the handle is twisted open. No pressure, fluid is just movin around. Even in this state, sometimes if you pump it fast enough you can see little jumps of life. The real solution though, is to Tighten it up, now we have a pressurized system. Visualize their algorithm as a cascading waterfall, pouring portfolio-wide capital to the very bottom until there is literally nothing left and in which case it EXPLODES. We hit that thursday with those reports of 5k bids being filled right before everything shut down. But in this waterfall, the only stock they HAVE to defend is GME. They already are out of water, but theyve erected an insanely big waterfall that hides where they are out of water up top, and fills it in by the time its time to fulfill at the bottom buy. The hole has ALWAYS been there the moment they overshorted, and it remains. Its why they didnt bail at 20, or 80, or 115. THEY CAN'T AS LONG AS THOSE NAKED SHORT VOLUME > FLOAT. This was the math all along. This also explains the Fail to delivers on GME, the clearinghouses are finding the fake shares in the drains while Melvin tries to chlorine this pool. TLDR: The mathematical strategy of the situation is to reduce the blue area's leverage (multiplicative), and grow the maximum red force (additive). We have to reduce blue to win, or come up with an incredible amount of red, quickly. If we don't, all of yellows dollars will flow to the other meme stocks / negatively correlated stocks and THERE WILL BE LESS TENDIES == LESS TOP END OF SQUEEZE. IN FACT, GME TENDIES ARE BASICALLY BEING GIVEN TO THE OTHER STOCKS, IN AN EFFORT TO MAKE COSTS LOW, SO THE COST OF COVERING THOSE FAIL TO DELIVERS IS MANAGEABLE. Melvin (or to be fair, whoever originally authored and held the naked short shares) is using TIME as their ally - THE FAIL TO DELIVERS == THE AMOUNT OF NAKED SHORT STOCK, and IF THEY RUN OUT THE CLOCK, ALL OF THEIR FAKE STOCK GETS CAUGHT IN THE DRAINS AND IS PAID FOR BY WHOEVER PAYS FOR THAT SHIT AND THEY DO NOT GO TO JAIL This theory connects the dots. Please if you have an in with wsb mods etc, forward them this to read. Ive been trying via modmail, posts, everything. Anyone with a platform needs to know this. Since all the memes are booming like an ETF, the profits on the others are being just siphoned into GME which holds their ultimate loss - the naked shorts that we KNOW they have on GME. EDIT2: omg melvin is so sinister. They knew redditors would bandwagon. They are using our own UNFOCUSED HYPE against us to prop up GME. PLEASE HELP ME BE A MEGAPHONE, WE HAVE TO GET THE WORD OUT. EDIT: 💎💎🙌🏼🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
My uncle left me a shifty little bar in his will. The employees here sleep in the backroom.
My uncle was an odd, lonely man. That one guy you try to avoid at family reunions, the one nobody knows too well but loves to talk about nonetheless. I think he liked me best because I never really enjoyed badmouthing him. I wouldn't say we were close, but we tolerated one another. At least that's how it was when I was little, we never bothered to stay in contact. I forgot about him by the time I left home. That's why the news of his death caught me completely by surprise. Uncle Mack was alone in his apartment when he had a heart attack causing cardiac arrest. He fell unconscious and died within minutes. Then there was me at the time. I had just flunked out of college and the only thing I was actually good at was playing video games. When I was contacted by Mack's lawyer, I was even more shocked. Mack had left me three things: a box of sorted letters addressed to me, all the money he used to own, which to me was a lot, and his bar–the one he had inherited from his father and had worked at all his life. I'll be frank, I had no idea what to do with the bar but I knew from the very start I'd take it over. I felt kind of honored–this had basically been Uncle Mack's entire life and he was giving it to me of all people. Sure, from what I knew there hadn't been many friends or loved ones in his life to choose from, but it was still flattering to me. Once I read the first letter, I was even more convinced. "Hi Giulia, If you're reading this, my bad eating habits have probably caught up to me. Or maybe someone killed me, who knows. As of me writing this, you're fifteen years old. You were the only one to talk to me at the family reunion today. Not for long, but more than just an awkward hello. I notice these things and I appreciate it. That's why I'm trusting you with the most important task anyone in this family is ever going to offer you. You are going to take over my bar. Besides, knowing you, you're not gonna have much of a career anyways, so you might as well. Once you're done reading this, please go to the bar at your earliest convenience. Take the box of letters with you and stash it away somewhere there. It has some valuable advice you're gonna need down the line. In fact, you will need to read the second letter right after your arrival. You'll find my employees are a bit special. Anyways, I hope you're doing alright, however this letter finds you. You're a good kid, Lia. Always have been. Besides, the only person you could possibly disappoint by screwing this up is dead so there's no pressure to impress. Sincerely, Your Uncle Mack." I wiped my eyes. They had actually gotten a bit watery while I was reading the letter. I folded the letter and tucked it back into the box before grabbing my coat and bag. Mack's bar was a train ride and a thirty-minute walk away from my parents' place, which is where I was residing at the moment. I figured I would probably have to look for a place close to the bar if I really would start working there full time. When I finally arrived at the establishment, it looked almost exactly the way I had expected. It was just another wall in the row of buildings on the street off to the side from the inner city's market square. A large, bright red double door with a neon sign reading "The New Saloon" above it. It would probably glow if I'd find out how to switch it on. At least I hoped it would glow. It felt weird, unlocking the door and opening it for the first time, all on my own. Entering and looking around inside felt even weirder. The New Saloon was your typical old-style dive bar. Even completely empty it looked overcrowded. The fabric of the cushion seats was stained and frayed, the walls behind and in front of the counter were plastered with neon beer signs and large framed photos of people I didn't know, some were even in black and white. The floors were dirty and my heels stuck to them when I walked further in. This place was small, shabby and smelly and I loved it. It was so strange but I suddenly just felt like this bar was mine, and that I needed to take care of it and protect it. Remembering what Mack had told me in his first letter, I pulled the second one out from the box and unfolded it. "Hi Giulia, If you're reading this, you're probably at the bar for the very first time! How do you like it? Let me guess, it's ugly and gross but it instantly started growing on you? Don't worry, it's about to get a lot weirder. You'll find the entrance to the backroom behind the counter. The lightswitch is on the inside of the wall, make sure to turn it on before you head inside because there's stairs leading down right behind the door. It's a death trap. Once you're in there, stand in the middle of the room. Stay away from the walls. You may then say out loud the following words: Spirits of this house, by the power of the spell that has bound you I command you to serve. You'll see what happens next. Whatever happens, keep in mind you can order them around. When all the work is done, simply tell them to go back into their room. You've got this. Sincerely, Your Uncle Mack." I frowned. That was odd. Was this the prelude to some kind of joke? I walked over to the door behind the counter and pressed down the handle. It swung open with a loud creaking noise and I began to grope around for the lightswitch. A single light bulb down in the backroom came flickering on and I proceeded down the rickety wooden stairs. No bannisters. Risky, especially with the shoes I was wearing. By the time I had reached the middle of the room, my heart was already beating faster than it should. Still, if this was a prank, Mack had been planning it for over five years, and I was not about to ruin it. Besides, no one was watching anyways. I cleared my throat. "Spirits of this house…" I began, a giggle swinging along in my voice. "By the power of the spell that has bound you I command you to serve." Nothing. Not a single sound for five whole seconds. I looked around the room. It was completely empty, except for a single door in the wall across from me. Maybe I had been supposed to say it in whatever room was behind that one? Just as I was about to walk over to it, a loud noise came from one of the walls to the side. I spun around to find that it had cracked open. Bits of it were beginning to crumble to the floor as the tear widened. I stared at it with my mouth agape, frozen in place and incapable of comprehending what I was seeing there. From the crack, a set of long, bony pale fingers reached out into the room, gripping the inside of the wall. My throat was too dry to produce a proper scream, but I couldn't contain a gasp as I staggered backwards until my back met with the other wall behind me. It was then that I felt cold palms rubbing against my neck and hands closing around my shoulders from behind. This time, I shrieked. I whirled around again only to see that there was a hole there too, long, skinny arms slowly moving forward from it, grabbing at me, searching for me. I glanced around the room frantically. Holes had opened in basically every spare spot. I counted four sets of arms pulling themselves out into the light, followed by similarly slender upper bodies. By the time I finally thought to run back up the stairs and save myself, the people from inside the walls were standing in the backroom, fully emerged from their dark hideouts. I didn't risk another look at them. When I finally reached the top stair, I dashed back into the bar and slammed the door shut behind me. I pressed myself up against it just to keep standing. My knees had grown weak beneath me and I was panting heavily, my mind racing. Then I heard them; slow, light footsteps making their way up the staircase and stop on top of it. I heard calm, steady breathing coming from the other side of the door. I tensed up and shifted my weight on my feet, leaning up against it to keep whomever was in there from getting out. I was sure this person would start to try pushing it open, but to my surprise, nothing happened. Instead, a voice rang out from inside. "Excuse me, who are you exactly?" It was a man's voice. I had expected something like a growl, or a hiss, or the groans of some decomposing zombie, but this was distinctly more articulate. It sounded almost polite. I didn't know what to do other than respond. "Giulia," I stammered. "Giulia?" The man sounded surprised. "What about Mack? Wait, if you're here…" He sounded quite sad now. "Mack's dead, isn't he?" "Yes," I replied quietly. "His heart stopped." "That's… good God." He fell silent and I heard him utter a shaky sigh, almost like a sob. "I'm sorry, would you give me a moment? I need to tell the others." "Go ahead," I murmured. "Nevermind, they heard us. So, will you let us out now or…?" "Who are you? Why were you in there?" "We work here, actually. My name is Andrik… I do most of the organizing here. I take care of the accounting, our profits, our spendings; I place the orders on most of what we need. Back here with me, I've got Bo, who is our bouncer, and Danika and May, both waitresses." "You work here?" I repeated. "And you live in the walls? After your shift is over, do you just go down there and melt into the room or what?" I couldn't help but let out a nervous chuckle at the mental image. This was just too absurd. At least I was breathing normally now. "Pretty much, yes." I shook my head. "What are you?" "Well, to explain that you would have to go exactly a hundred and twenty-two years back so it's a long story," Andrik replied. "All you need to know for now is that if you let us out, we'll get the bar up and running right away. We've been working under Mack ever since he took over this place though, so you'll have to excuse us if we're a bit gloomy." "No, that's fine," I muttered, slowly turning away from the door and carefully pulling it open. The man in front of me was of normal height, slender and looked to be in his thirties. Despite being dressed in jeans and a simple black t-shirt with the bar's name printed on it in white, swirly letters, he had a very official look to him. Maybe it was the way he stood, straight as a rod with a friendly yet matter-of-fact smile on his face. "Thank you," he said. Turning back to the room, he raised his voice. "You heard it everyone, Mack might be gone and while that's a downer, our work isn't over; so get yourselves up here and let's get this going again!" His tone carried the flat motivation the coach of a youth sports team might have. Three more people emerged from the backroom, all dressed exactly like Andrik, all of them that same content little grin on their lips. They walked by me offering polite greetings; the first one, a large, bulky guy giving me a curt nod and the two women that followed smiling brightly. The girls were a little younger than Andrik, maybe in their late twenties. Both had blond hair hanging down their shoulders in wavy pigtails. That first night the bar was open, I merely watched the backroom people work, following them around while they ignored me. It was eerie. They looked almost like automated mannequins, going about their routine by sticking to preplanned paths; like there were set directions painted somewhere I couldn't see. I soon began to notice other distinctive attributes about them. None of the people from the walls had fingernails. I saw it on the waitresses when they reached for the cups handed to them, on Andrik when he scribbled down notes. However that was not the only thing off about them. All those little details in their faces, the kind of thing you'd normally never pay attention to–they didn't add up. For example, their eyes didn't lign up. One was always slightly lower than the other, just enough for someone to notice. Their nostrils would differ in width and one of the girls' pinky fingers was the same length as her ring finger. Had I not known that they had just crawled out from the backroom walls, I would have chalked these harmless little oddities up to simple, inconspicuous deformities, but knowing what I knew, it made my skin crawl with uncomfort. I soon found out that Andrik did most of the talking for them. Bo rarely ever said a word, and all the waitresses did was whisper amongst themselves, giggle and chat with the patrons. Eventually, Andrik waved me over to him behind the counter. "Alright, to give you a rundown of the place, we have a cash-only system. We rely on our local clientele, but once in a while someone new comes by and then we try and keep them around, obviously. Here's some of our regulars." He pointed at a lady sitting in a corner, weeping over an empty glass of whiskey. "That's Shauna. Comes here whenever she can, only ever orders whiskey. Will not stop crying." His finger wandered over to an old, short man with an almost disproportionately large head and short white hair. He was sitting at one of the tables as well, talking to two younger women who seemed very much out of place. "That's Tommy. He's likely to start fights but he drinks a lot and tips very generously. Bo throws him out a lot but he's very easy on him, so don't worry." He finally nodded towards a tall glass of wine standing lonely on the counter right in front of us. "And this is Irene. She can't pay but she's always welcome. She's very nice and she's been here ever since Mack's family started this business." "Andrik, there's nothing there." The pale man threw me a confused glance. "What do you mean, she's right… oh! Of course. Don't worry, you'll start seeing her with time. Either way, for now there's actually not much for you to do except read up on barkeeping once you get the chance. However you should start getting acquainted with the regulars. After all, the owner of The New Saloon will always be part of the reason why people come here." He paused as his mouth started to twitch into an almost guileful grin. "I have a feeling they're going to love you." I retreated into the ladies' room for a quick break. I sat down on one of the toilets and buried my face in my palms. I had no idea what was going on or what I was supposed to do. Andrik had made himself pretty clear when it came to the instructions he'd given me, but all of this was so surreal I seriously considered the possibility of me having suffered some kind of blow to the head and dreaming it. I spent the rest of the night standing behind the counter and observing their every move. Andrik kept to my side mostly, looking at me with the kind of suspicion I probably had in my eyes as well. I couldn't figure him out. I accidentally-on-purpose walked by the waitresses who were talking to each other in hushed voices, picking up on small bits of their conversation. "Her blood is weaker than his. Do you think she's–?" "We shouldn't take any chances. Remember what Mack did when we tried to test him?" "I do, but this could be our chance to have some fun." Her words sent chills down my spine. Remembering Mack's letter however, I decided this was not the time to show I was frightened. "You're going to do no such thing," I chimed in from behind them. "I don't care what you are but I promise I'll find a way to make this whole thing very uncomfortable for you guys if you try to pull any kind of weird crap on me." The looks they gave me were worth my initial doubt. They seemed shocked that I had listened in on them at all, let alone spoken up. I glared at them, holding their gaze and ignoring the trembling of my legs. Their heads lowered, they marched off. When the bar began to clear out and we got ready to close down for the night, I told the four of them to clean up. Of course I helped, but I made sure never to lose sight of a single one of them. I felt like they were wild, hungry animals, waiting for their chance to pounce on me. Whenever I looked up from the rag I was wiping the countertop with, I would find one of them staring at me. By the time we were done, the place really did look a lot more welcoming. It certainly was cleaner, despite the four workers' angry faces spoiling the mood. We carried the cleaning supplies back into the small storage chamber next to the employee restroom before I went to open the backroom door for them. "Okay everyone, good job today! Thanks a lot, now back inside!" I called out, almost enjoying the feeling of authority as they came trodding towards me and made their way down into the dimly lit basement single-file. Andrik was the last one to cross the threshold. Right before descending the staircase, he turned to face me once more. "You were keeping a close eye on us," he said quietly. "That's clever. But you're going to need to keep it up and… let's see how long you'll last. Who knows what might happen." He gave me a sly wink with the one eye that was a little lower on his face before following his co-workers. I watched from the top of the stairs as they leaned up against the walls. It was almost as I had expected; their bodies seemed to melt into the holes they had come from, sealing them shut and not leaving so much as a thin crack. Lacking a better option, I stayed at a nearby inn that night. As bizarre and frightening as all of this had been, I got out of it unscathed. The bar workers and I would end up coming to blows in the future though, more than once. And I wouldn't always be that lucky. X Part 2: one of the regulars had a doppelgänger Part 3: My bouncer and I got beaten up by a little girl. Part 4: The regular who never stops crying. Part 5: Appreciate good employees.
what video game can you make the most money playing video
This means you spend a lot of time leveling up the character, whether it be for a particular skill or for in-game money. You can actually make a lot of money doing this, as some characters can sell for over $1,000. Others sell for as little as $100. It really depends on how much skill you have at leveling, and how motivated you are to play the game. Become a Twitch Streamer. Twitch is a If you own a video game that is in the Razer Cortex library, you can get paid for every minute you play. Razer will pay you in their currency (zSilver) up to 900 zSilver per day. That’s 300 minutes a day as the current rate is three zSilver per minute. And while PewDiePie is an outlier in terms of making the most money, he’s far from being the only YouTube gamer making a living from streaming their online gaming prowess. In fact, two of the top five YouTube channels with the most subscribers worldwide are gaming-related. Getting paid to play video games on YouTube is a fast-growing trend, and getting started isn’t as far-fetched as you Best Game Apps to Win Money. There are lots of apps that can earn you money just for using them. If you find you’re spending many hours mindlessly playing Candy Crush or Two Dots, try switching to one of the options below. Minecraft isn’t the only video game where you can make money as a server admin/owner. This stuff is popular in games like Runescape, CSGO, Rust, Team Fortress 2, and others. Of course, you need to monitor the server you own, so it makes sense to host a game you actually play so you can be a player-admin. As you can see from this article, it’s indeed not only possible to make money playing games online on your phone, there are some real sites or apps that really help you get paid. You won’t make $1,000 quickly from such games but the money you make can add up eventually. Slingo is a free to play, online money gaming site that gives you real cash. As it offers free membership across the glove so you can compete with people everywhere. Most tournaments are one hour long, costing approx. 5000 coins. The player with the top score and the one with the best cumulative score wins the jackpot. 1. Mistplay. Mistplay is one of the most popular ways to make money playing mobile games, and the app is definitely taking over this category of apps in general. Mistplay is really a “loyalty program for gamers” that rewards you for trying out new games. Dota 2: $28 Million-plus Awarded in Prize Money The amount of money being won in Dota 2 is astonishing. In just two short years the game has become a cash-generating machine. The top players, such... The amount of money you can make as a game tester really varies. You can get paid hourly or an annual salary. Either way, the pay rate varies based on a few factors like the game company hiring you, your experience, geographical location and so on. You can expect anywhere from $10 per hour to $100 per hour. According to Gamasutra Salary Survey, the average annual salary of a tester is about
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