Profile of SturmtigerCobra

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As Geoff tells it, "I’m interested in drawing and poking fun at what living in Vancouver is like. The frustrations around affordability, the weather, things like that.

Vancouver is well-known as a pricey place to call home, and now a new report has determined the hourly wage a person needs to make to afford an average two-bedroom rental apartment in the city.

According to the report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), that wage is $35.43 an hour.
Put another way, a person making minimum wage in the city would have to work 112 hours a week to afford a two-bedroom apartment – or 84 hours a week for an average one-bedroom.

Jump back to quoted post16 Dec 2019, 20:21 PMSmartie

Business interests and care for the community are 2 sides of the same medal. A smart management cares about the community because happy customers will spend more money in the long term.

COH2.ORG: How do you feel about the (largely negative) way players have reacted to the day 1 DLC?
Quinn Duffy: At first I was a little bummed out, but then I realize in this internet day and age that what people say (‘I hate DLC and I hate Relic’) and what they do (buy DLC) is really at odds. https://www.coh2.org/news/4977/quinn-duffy-post-launch-interview

In FY19, more than 45 million unique players engaged in FIFA 19 and FIFA 18 on console and PC.

During Activision Blizzard investor call today, the company revealed that they are continuing to make staggering amounts of money from microtransactions from their entire library of games.

They stated that they earned $800 million in the last three months from in-game items across their franchises.

Activision also stated that their new “initiatives” that they are implementing in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 has lead to stronger engagement from the community, and that they have seen a higher microtransaction revenues from Black Ops 4 than Call of Duty: WWII.
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The core gaming communities that have interacted with the company for years have started to hate on them to new levels because of the lack of care for their feedback. Activision executives continue to show that the community feedback for their games, especially Call of Duty, is going on deaf ears.

Black Ops 4 has one of the worst MTX systems the franchise has ever seen, but according to Activision, it’s a model that is being ’embraced’ which is very worrisome as we look towards Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. The company continues to embrace the RNG system with game changing items locked by supply drops even as lawmakers around the world are looking to ban such models going forward.

It's almost like Activision doesn't care about the long term viability of Blizzard as a company but is mostly concerned with doing the video game equivalent of asset stripping where IPs are exhausted by releasing high margin mobile games that alienate the core fan base and slowly lead to the demise of the company and its brands.

The problem is that Activision has a very shortsighted view of things. They're obsessed with quarter on quarter growth and making sure everything the company does shows a direct profit. But competent business involves thinking past the current quarter to ten years down the line. Blizzard has been a staggeringly successful independent company but has been making bad decision after bad decision since it was acquired by Activision. It doesn't take Nostradamus to project what will become of Blizzard in five years.
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Part of the problem is that claims such as Activisions that RTS games are unprofitable are not based on solid evidence, nor are they unchangeable, natural facts. The reality is that StarCraft I and II have made a ton of money for Blizzard, so not continuing the series because RTS are unprofitable is just stupid.

Capitalists are not necessarily rational or intelligent. Many of them are not particularly knowledge about the industry they are in. As a result, they end up taking a lot of received wisdom on-board and just mimicking other big companies rather than seriously thinking through a long-term growth strategy. Activision has been on the yearly sequels until an IP stops being profitable train for a long time, and I suspect that's what they'll try to do with Overwatch (Blizzard's most marketable franchise).
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Except there's a reason that publishers have systematically been killing game studios for decades now: the research they do is inherently conservative in it's outlook. The focus is on genres with consistent sales over and above doing something more risky that has the potential to be way more profitable.

Consider where innovation and smash hits have come from in the last decade. A lot of them have come from Indie studios. Minecraft has been insanely profitable, PUBG has created a genre of imitators while making tons of money, etc. AAA game publishing has been stagnant and slowly eroding itself through running IP after IP into the ground with annualized releases that are more or less identical to what they were before.

This isn't because there are necessarily a bunch of morons at the top but because they have systemically short sighted incentives (namely, quarterly profit reports). The long term trajectory of this strategy, the one Activision appears to be pursuing with Blizzard, is a long term loss of profitability and probably the closure of the studio.

AI: The entire multiplayer back end, in all the definitive editions, is all from Relic from Age IV. We’ve taken the entire technology stack of multiplayer, its security, anti-cheat, and all that, and put it all into the old Age games. So technology from the future is now helping the older games be more stable and have people all over the world be able to connect with play

Jump back to quoted post18 Nov 2019, 14:08 PMSturmtigerCobra

1. A guy played at top 500 level while a girl talks on comms pretending it was her playing.
2. Some viewers felt her comms didn't really match with the gameplay so they assumed it wasn't her playing.
3. Everyone called these viewers sexist for saying she wasn't playing.
4. Everyone finds out she wasn't actually playing.
5. No one apologies for calling these viewers sexist.

Shaped the first classified National Military Strategy since the end of the Cold War.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-china-dr-rob-spalding-brig-gen-usaf-ret-/
As a young Air Force officer living in Shanghai from 2002 to 2004, I experienced China and the Chinese people firsthand. I attended Tongji University’s MBA program and traveled the seemingly endless miles of the country. The Chinese have a hard-working, tough ability – to吃苦 chi ku (literally eat bitter) – yet still maintain a happy positive outlook. It was infectious and convinced me that China had a bright future. The pull of the people combined with endless possibilities in Shanghai was irresistible. China had just joined the World Trade Organization. Shanghai was growing. New construction sprouted furiously, expanding across the river from the old, familiar Shanghai Skyline. Workers from the countryside, dressed in suit jackets and minimal safety gear, scaled the bamboo scaffolding along the buildings. Opportunity was everywhere. I told my wife that as soon as I could, I wanted to retire from the Air Force and return to this thriving place. My neighbors worked for the Fortune 100 companies building factories in the Shanghai Special Economic Zone. Listening to them, I was convinced that my language skills and appreciation of the culture and history would serve me well when I was ready to seek a career in my potential second home.
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The next time someone says something about China, politely ask them which one they are referring to. Is it the people, the country or the regime? They are distinct, even though the CCP would like to convince you they are not.