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Will eSport Grow To One Half Billion Dollar Market This Year?
According to Newzoo's 2016 Global eSports Market Report, this year is expected to be a "pivotal" one for the eSports sector. The firm said that last year's tally for worldwide eSports revenues came to $325 million, and this year the full eSports economy should grow 43 percent to $463 million; Newzoo said this correlates with an audience of 131 million eSports enthusiasts and another 125 million "occasional viewers who tune in mainly for the big international events." Overall, Newzoo's report states that global and local eSports markets should jointly generate $1.1 billion in 2019.
Looking a bit deeper, Newzoo found that investment into and advertising associated with eSports continue to grow at a rapid clip. "This year has been dominated by the amount of investors getting involved in eSports. An increasing amount of traditional media companies have become aware of the value of the eSports sphere and have launched their first eSports initiatives. With these parties getting involved, there will be an increased focus on content and media rights. All major publishers have increased their investment into the space, realizing that convergence of video, live events and the game itself are providing consumers the cross-screen entertainment they desire from their favorite franchises," Newzoo commented.
Online advertising in particular is the fastest growing revenue segment within eSports, jumping up 99.6 percent on a global scale compared to 2014. North America is expected to lead the charge worldwide.
"In 2016, North America will strengthen its lead in terms of revenues with an anticipated $175 million generated through merchandise, event tickets, sponsorships, online advertising and media rights. A significant part of these revenues flows back to the game publisher, but across all publishers, more money is invested into the eSports economy than is directly recouped by their eSports activities," said Newzoo's eSports Analyst, Pieter van den Heuvel.
"China and Korea together will represent 23 percent of global esports revenues, totalling $106 million in 2016. Audience-wise, the situation is different, with Asia contributing 44 percent of global eSports enthusiasts. Growth in this region is, for a large part, fuelled by an explosive uptake in Southeast Asia."
While eSports is certainly on a good path for growth, game companies would be wise to not get too caught up by the hype. The average annual revenue per eSports enthusiast was $2.83 in 2015 and is expected to grow to $3.53 this year, Newzoo said, but that's still a factor four lower than a mainstream sport such as basketball, which generates revenues of $15 per fan per year.
Peter Warman, CEO at Newzoo added, "The initial buzz will settle down and the way forward on several key factors, such as regulations, content rights and involvement of traditional media, will become more clear. The collapse of MLG was a reminder that this market still has a long road to maturity and we need to be realistic about the opportunities it provides. In that respect, it is in nobody's interest that current market estimates differ so strongly. Luckily, when zooming in on the highest market estimates of more than $700 million, the difference is explainable by an in-depth look. This estimate only differs in the revenues generated in Asia (Korea in particular), and by taking betting revenues into account. At Newzoo, we believe betting on eSports should not be mixed into direct eSports revenues as the money does not flow into the eSports economy. Similarly, sports betting is not reported in sports market reports."
Is Capcom Finally Getting Into eSports?
On February 16, Street Fighter V will launch on PlayStation 4 and PC. It will not be launching to Xbox One thanks to an exclusivity deal signed with Sony. And as Capcom director of brand marketing and eSports Matt Dahlgren told GamesIndustry.biz recently, there are a few reasons for that.
Dahlgren called the deal "the largest strategic partnership that fighting games have ever seen," and said it addressed several problems the publisher has had surrounding its fighting games for years.
"Basically every SKU of a game we released had its own segmented community," he said. "No one was really able to play together and online leaderboards were always segmented, so it was very difficult to find out who would be the best online and compare everybody across the board."
Street Fighter V should alleviate that problem as it's only on two platforms, and gamers on each will be able to play with those on the other. Dahlgren said it will also help salt away problems that stemmed from differences between platforms. For example, the Xbox 360 version of Street Fighter IV had less input lag than the PS3 version. That fraction of a second difference between button press and action on-screen might have been unnoticeable to most casual players, but it was felt by high-level players who know the game down to the last frame of animation.
"There were varying degrees of input lag, so when those players ended up playing each other, it wasn't necessarily on an equal playing field," Dahlgren said. "This time around, by standardizing the platform and making everyone play together, there will be a tournament standard and everyone is on an equal playing field."
Finally, Dahlgren said the deal with Sony will help take Street Fighter to the next level when it comes to eSports. In some ways, it's a wonder it's not there already.
"I think fighting games are one of the purest forms of 1v1 competition," Dahlgren said. "A lot of the other eSports games out there are team-based, and while there's an appeal to those, there's something about having a single champion and having that 1v1 showdown that's just inherently easy for people to understand."
Street Fighter has a competitive gaming legacy longer than League of Legends or DOTA, but isn't mentioned in the same breath as those hits on the eSports scene. In some ways, that legacy might have stymied the franchise's growth in eSports.
"A lot of our community was really built by the fans themselves," Dahlgren said. "Our tournament scene was built by grassroots tournament organizers, really without the help of Capcom throughout the years. And I would say a lot of those fans have been somewhat defensive [about expanding the game's appeal to new audiences]. It hasn't been as inclusive as it could have been. With that said, I do definitely feel a shift in our community. There's always been a talking point with our hardcore fans as to whether or not Street Fighter is an eSport, and what eSports could do for the scene. Could it potentially hurt it? There's been all this controversy behind it."
Even Capcom has shifted stances on how to handle Street Fighter as an eSport.
"In the past, we were actually against partnering up with any sort of corporations or companies out there that were treating eSports more like a business," Dahlgren said. "And that has to do out of respect for some of our long-term tournament organizers… Our fear was that if we go out and partner up with companies concerned more about making a profit off the scene instead of the values that drive the community, then it could end up stomping out all these tournament organizers who are very passionate and have done so much for our franchise."
"In the past, we were actually against partnering up with any sort of corporations or companies out there that were treating eSports more like a business."
So instead of teaming with the MLGs or ESLs of the world, Capcom teamed with Twitch and formed its own Pro Tour in 2014. Local tournament organizers handle the logistics of the shows and retain the rights to their brands, while Capcom provides marketing support and helps with production values.
"I can't say Capcom wouldn't partner up with some of the other, more established eSports leagues out there," Dahlgren said. "I do think there's a way to make both of them exist, but our priority in the beginning was paying homage to our hardcore fans that helped build the scene, protecting them and allowing them to still have the entrepreneurial spirit to grow their own events. That comes first, before partnering with larger organizations."
Just as Capcom's stance toward tournaments has changed to better suit Street Fighter's growth as an eSport, so too has the business model behind the game. The company has clearly looked at the success of many free-to-play eSports favorites and incorporated elements of them (except the whole "free-to-play" thing) into Street Fighter V. Previously, Capcom would release a core Street Fighter game, followed by annual or bi-annual updates with a handful of new fighters and balancing tweaks. Street Fighter V will have no such "Super" versions, with all new content and tweaks made to the game on a rolling basis.
"We are treating the game now more as a platform and a service, and are going to be continually adding new content post-launch," Dahlgren said. "This is the first time we're actually having our own in-game economy and in-game currency. So the more you play the game online, you're going to generate fight money, and then you can use that fight money to earn DLC content post-launch free of charge, which is a first in our franchise. So essentially we're looking at an approach that takes the best of both worlds. It's not too far away from what our players really expect from a SF game, yet we get some of the benefits of continually releasing content post-launch and giving fans more of what they want to increase engagement long-term."
Even if it's not quite free-to-play, Street Fighter V may at least be cheaper to play. Dahlgren said that pricey arcade stick peripherals are not as essential for dedicated players as they might have seemed in the past.
"Since Street Fighter comes from an arcade heritage, a lot of people have this general belief that arcade sticks are the premier way of playing," Dahlgren said. "I think now that the platform choice has moved more towards consoles, pad play has definitely become much more prevalent. I would believe that at launch you're probably going to have more pad players than you actually have stick players. And in the competitive scene, we've seen the rise of a lot of very impressive pad players, which has pretty much shown that Street Fighter is a game that's not necessarily dictated by the controller you play with; it's the strategies and tactics you employ. And both of them are essentially on equal playing ground."
Epic Looks Into AMD Issues
Epic Games said it is investigating issue with Unreal Engine 4 and AMD CPUs.
The problem appears in Squad which is the first big, publicly available game using Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4. The game was just stuck up on Steam so complaints about the AMD have been somewhat vocal.
The engine appears to create a poor performance on AMD CPUs due to an audio component of the engine. The issue has been reported before but no one took it that seriously. In fact some of theissues here seem to be a communication problem between Squad and Epic.
Squad developer Offworld Industries told Tweaktown that there was little it could do about this besides wait for Epic to fix it and release the fix in an engine patch.
However Epic's senior marketing manager Dana Cowley said she didn't even know about the problem until she was contacted by the media.
She said he was getting on the blower with the Squad team to investigate, and see how it could help.
There is a work around being suggested on the blogs which might help. If you navigate to C:UsersAppDataLocalSquadSavedConfigWindowsNoEditor, back up the Engine.ini file then open it with Notepad, find the [Audio] section, change MaxChannels from 128 to 96, 64, or 32, and save.
EA Goes Competitive Gaming
Electronic Arts is the latest publisher to add a dedicated eSports group to its business, as CEO Andrew Wilson today announced the formation of the EA Competitive Gaming Division.
"As the latest step in our journey to put our players first, this group will enable global eSports competitions in our biggest franchises including FIFA, Madden NFL, Battlefield and more," Wilson said, adding, "EA's CGD will seek to build a best-in-class program to centralize our efforts with new events, as well as the infrastructure to bring you the world's preeminent EA competitive experiences."
Wilson said the CGD will foster competition and community around EA's games, creating official tournaments and live broadcasts to entertain millions.
Leading up the new CGD will be Peter Moore, who will step down from his role as chief operating officer of EA at the end of the fiscal year to assume a new role as executive vice president and chief competition officer. Moore is well acquainted with EA's key competitive gaming franchises like FIFA and Madden; prior to assuming his current role in 2011, Moore spent almost four years as president of EA Sports. An EA representative said the company has not yet announced a successor to Moore in the COO position, with details on those plans to come in the weeks and months ahead.
Moore seems excited to lead a burgeoning field for EA. "As a longtime champion of competitive gaming, bringing this to life at EA is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me," he said in a tweet. He also told IGN that this is something that EA has been thinking about for some time.
"We're already very engaged with our development teams around the world to make sure our games have got modes that lend themselves very well to competitive gaming, built-in from the get-go. Not as something that's put in as an add-on mode or a last-minute afterthought," he explained.
"Prior to the formation of this division, conversations have been had, not just within the last few weeks but in the last couple years, about how we've got games that are coming to market in FY17, FY18, and FY19, and making darn sure that if you're in a genre that lends itself to competitive gaming, you better have those modes built in."
Wilson also named Todd Sitrin as the division's senior vice president and general manager. Sitrin started with the company 14 years ago, leading product marketing at EA Tiburon for projects like Madden NFL and NASCAR Racing. Over the next decade, he worked his way up to senior vice president of marketing for all EA Sports, and has spent the last few years overseeing global marketing and product marketing for EA as a whole.
EA is by no means the only traditional publisher to identify an opportunity in the eSports market. In October, Activision Blizzard established its own eSports division. Unlike EA, Activision Blizzard looked outside its own walls for leadership of the group, tapping former ESPN CEO Steve Bornstein and MLG co-founder Mike Sepso to handle the new division.
Microsoft Teams Up With Law Enforcement To Take On Dorkbot
Microsoft announced that it has worked with law enforcement agencies in several regions to disrupt a four-year-old botnet called Dorkbot, which has infected one million computers worldwide.
The Dorkbot malware aims to steal login credentials from services such as Gmail, Facebook, PayPal, Steam, eBay, Twitter and Netflix.
It was first spotted around April 2011. Users typically get infected by browsing to websites that automatically exploit vulnerable software using exploit kits and through spam. It also has a worm functionality and can spread itself through through social media and instant messaging programs or removable media drives.
Microsoft didn't provide much detail on how Dorkbot's infrastructure was disrupted. The company has undertaken several such actions over the last few years in cooperation with law enforcement.
Coordinated actions to take botnet servers offline have an immediate impact, but the benefits can be short-lived. Cybercriminals often set up new hosting and command-and-control infrastructure and begin rebuilding the botnet by infecting new computers.
Microsoft said it worked with security vendor ESET, the Computer Emergency Response Team Polska, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, the Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, Europol, the FBI, Interpol, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Cybercriminals have sold a kit that allows other bad actors to build botnets using Dorkbot. The kit, called NgrBot, is sold in underground online forums, Microsoft wrote in a blog post.
Is The Steam OS Really Good?
Benchmarks for Valve's Steam machines are out and it does not look like the Linux powered OS is stacking up well against Windows.
According to Ars Technica the SteamOS gaming comes with a significant performance hit on a number of benchmarks.
The OS was put through Geekbench 3 which has a Linux version. The magazine used some mid-to-late-2014 releases that had SteamOS ports suitable for tests including Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor and Metro: Last Light Redux.
Both were intensive 3D games with built-in benchmarking tools and a variety of quality sliders to play with (including six handy presets in Shadow of Mordor's case).
On SteamOS both games had a sizable frame rate hit. We are talking about 21- to 58-percent fewer frames per second, depending on the graphical settings. On our hardware running Shadow of Mordor at Ultra settings and HD resolution, the OS change alone was the difference between a playable 34.5 fps average on Windows and a 14.6 fps mess on SteamOS.
You would think that Valve's own games wouldn't have this problem, but Portal, Team Fortress 2, and DOTA 2 all took massive frame rate dips on SteamOS compared to their Windows counterparts.
Left 4 Dead 2 showed comparable performance between the two operating systems but nothing like what Steam thought it would have a couple of years ago.
Did Japanese Game Development Leave With Kojima
Hideo Kojima has left the building. The New Yorker has confirmed that the famous game creator's last day at Konami has come and gone, with a farewell party attended by colleagues from within and without the country – but not, notably, by Konami's top brass. Only a couple of months after his latest game, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, clocked up the most commercially successful opening day's sales of any media product in 2015, Kojima has left a studio facing shutdown – its extraordinary technology effectively abandoned, its talent scattered, seemingly unwanted, by a company whose abusive and aggressive treatment of its staff has now entered the annals of industry legend.
It's not exaggerating to say that an era came to a close as Kojima walked out the door of the studio that bore his name for the last time. For all of Konami's the-lady-doth-protest-too-much claims that it's not abandoning the console market, actions matter far more than PR-moderated words, and shutting down your most famous studio, severing ties with your most successful creator in the process, is an action that shouts from the rooftops. Still, there's some truth to Konami's statements; it's unlikely to abandon the console versions of Winning Eleven / Pro Evolution Soccer, or of Power Pro Baseball, any time soon, though more and more of the firm's focus will be on the mobile incarnations of those franchises. The big, expensive, risky and crowd-pleasing AAA titles, though? Those are dead in the water. Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill (whose reincarnation, with acclaimed horror director Guillermo del Toro teaming up with Kojima at the helm, is a casualty of this change of focus), Suikoden, Castlevania, Contra… Any AAA title in those franchises from now on will almost certainly be the result of a licensing deal, not a Konami game.
One can criticise the company endlessly for how this transition has been handled; Konami has shown nigh-on endless disrespect and contempt for its creative staff and, Kojima himself aside, for talented, loyal workers who have stuck by the firm for years if not decades. It richly deserves every brickbat it's getting for how unprofessionally and unpleasantly it's dealt with the present situation. It's much, much harder to criticise the company for the broader strokes of the decisions being made. Mobile games based on F2P models are enormous in Japan, not just with casual players but with the core audience that used to consume console games. The transition to the "mid-core" that mobile companies talk about in western territories is a reality in Japan, and has been for years; impressively deep, complex and involved games boast startling player numbers and vastly higher revenue-per-user figures than most western mobile games could even dream of. Konami, like a lot of other companies, probably expects that western markets will follow the same path, and sees a focus on Japan's mobile space today as a reasonable long-term strategy that will position it well for tomorrow's mobile space in the west.
Mobile is the right business to be in if you're a major publisher in Japan right now. It's where the audience has gone, it's where the revenues are coming from, and almost all of the cost of a mobile hit is marketing, not development. Look at this from a business perspective; if you want to develop a game on the scale of Metal Gear Solid V, you have to sink tens of millions of dollars (the oft-cited figure for MGSV is $80 million) into it before it's even ready to be promoted and sold to consumers. That's an enormous, terrifying risk profile; while the studio next door is working on mobile games that cost a fraction of that money to get ready for launch, with the bulk of the spend being in marketing and post-launch development, which can be stemmed rapidly if the game is underperforming badly. Sure, mobile games are risky as all hell and nobody really knows what the parameters for success and failure are just yet, but with the time and money taken to make a Metal Gear Solid, you can throw ten, twenty or thirty mobile games at the wall and see which one sticks. The logic is compelling, whether you like the outcome or not.
Here's what nobody, honestly, wants to hear – that logic isn't just compelling for Konami. Other Japanese publishers are perhaps being more circumspect about their transitions, but don't kid yourself; those transitions are happening, and Konami will not be the last of the famous old publishers to excuse itself and slip away from the console market entirely. When Square Enix surveys the tortured, vastly expensive and time-consuming development process of its still-unfinished white elephant Final Fantasy XV, and then looks at the startling success it's enjoyed with games like Final Fantasy Record Keeper or Heavenstrike Rivals on mobile, what thoughts do you think run through the heads of its executives and managers? Do you think Sega hasn't noticed that its classic franchises are mostly critically eviscerated when they turn up as AAA console releases, but perform very solidly as mobile titles? Has Namco Bandai, a firm increasingly tightly focused on delivering tie-in videogames for Bandai's media franchises, not noticed the disparity between costs and earnings on its console games as against its mobile titles? And haven't all of these, and others besides, looked across from their TGS stands to see the gigantic, expensive, airship-adorned stands of games like mobile RPG GranBlue Fantasy and thought, "we're in the wrong line of work"?
Kojima isn't the first significant Japanese developer to walk out of a publisher that no longer wants his kind of game – but he's the most significant thus far, and he's certainly not going to be the last. The change that's sweeping through the Japanese industry now is accelerating as traditional game companies react to the emergence of upstarts grabbing huge slices of market share; DeNA and Gree were only the first wave, followed now by the likes of GungHo, CyGames, Mixi and Colopl. If you're an executive at a Japanese publisher right now, you probably feel like your company is already behind the curve. You've studied plenty of cases in business school in which dominant companies who appeared unassailable ended up disappearing entirely as newcomers took the lion's share of an emerging market whose importance wasn't recognised by the old firms until it was too late. You go home every evening (probably around midnight – it's a Japanese company, after all) and eat your microwave dinner in front of TV shows whose ad breaks are packed with expensive commercials for mobile games from companies that hadn't even appeared on your radar until a year or two ago, and none from the companies you'd always considered the "key players" in the industry. You're more than a little bit scared, and you really, really want your company to be up to speed in mobile, like, yesterday – even if that means bulldozing what you're doing on console in the process.
This is not entirely a bleak picture for fans of console-style games. Japanese mobile games really are pushing more and more towards mid-core and even hardcore experiences which, though the monetisation model may be a little uncomfortable, are very satisfying for most gamers; the evolution of those kinds of games in the coming years will be interesting to watch. Still, it will be a very long time before there's a mobile Metal Gear Solid or a mobile Silent Hill; some experiences just don't make sense in the context of mobile gaming, and there is a great deal of justification to the fears of gamers that this kind of game is threatened by the transition we're seeing right now.
I would offer up two potential silver linings. The first is that not all companies are in a position to break away from console (and PC) development quite as dramatically as Konami has done. Sega, for example, is tied to those markets not least by its significant (and very successful) investments in overseas development studios, many of which have come about under the auspices of the firm's overseas offices. Square Enix is in a similar position due to its ownership of the old Eidos studios and franchises, along with other western properties. Besides, despite the seemingly permanent state of crisis surrounding Final Fantasy XV, the firm likely recognises that the Final Fantasy franchise requires occasional major, high-profile console releases to keep it relevant, even if much of its profit is found in nostalgic retreads of past glories. Capcom, meanwhile, is deeply wedded to console development – it's a much smaller company than the others and perhaps more content to stick to what it knows and does well, even if console ends up as a (large) niche market. (Having said that, if a mobile version of Monster Hunter springs to the top of the App Store charts, all bets are probably off.)
"Hideo Kojima left Konami because he wants to make a style of game that doesn't fit on mobile F2P – and that's, in the long run, probably a good thing"
The other silver lining is perhaps more substantial and less like cold comfort. Hideo Kojima left Konami because he wants to make a style of game that doesn't fit on mobile F2P – and that's, in the long run, probably a good thing. He joins a slow but steady exodus of talent from major Japanese studios over the past five years or more. The kind of games which people like Kojima – deeply involved with and influenced by literature, film and critical theory – want to make don't fit with publishers terribly well any more, but that doesn't mean those people have to stop making those games. It just means they have to find a new place to make them and a new way to fund them. Kojima's non-compete with Konami supposedly ends in a few months and then I suspect we'll hear more about what he plans; but plenty of former star developers from publishers' internal studios have ended up creating their own independent studios and funding themselves either through publisher deals or, more recently, through crowdfunding. Konami's never likely to make another game like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, but that doesn't stop Koji Igarashi from putting Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Kickstarter. Sega knocked Shenmue on the head, but a combination of Sony and Kickstarter has sent Yu Suzuki back to work on the franchise. Keiji Inafune also combined crowdfunding money with publisher funding for Mighty No. 9. Perhaps the most famous and successful of all breakaways from the traditional publishing world, though, is of a very different kind; Platinum Games, which has worked with many of the world's top publishers in recent years while retaining its independence, is largely made up of veterans of Capcom's internal studios.
Whichever of those avenues Kojima ends up following – the project-funding style approach of combining crowdfunding and publisher investment, or the Platinum Games approach of founding a studio and working for multiple publishers – there is no question of him walking away from making the kind of games he loves. Not every developer has his sway, of course, and many will probably end up working on mobile titles regardless of personal preference – but the creation of Japanese-style console and PC games isn't about to end just because publishers are falling over themselves to transition to mobile. As long as the creators want to make this kind of game, and enough consumers are willing to pay for them (or even to fund their development), there's a market and its demands will be filled. The words "A Hideo Kojima Game" will never appear on the front of a Konami title again; but they'll appear somewhere, and that's what's truly important in the final analysis.
Can eSports Become A Billion Dollar Industry?
Over the last few years, competitive gaming has made huge strides, building a massive fanbase, supporting the rise of entire genres of games and attracting vast prize pots for the discipline's very best. Almost across the board, the phenomenon has also seen its revenues gaining, as new sponsors come on board, including some major household names. Sustaining the rapidity of the growth of eSports is going to be key to its long term success, maintaining momentum and pushing it ever further into the public consciousness.
In order to do that, according to Newzoo, eSports need to learn some lessons from their more traditional athletic counterparts. Right now, the research firm puts a pin in eSports revenues of $2.40 per enthusiast per year, a number which is expected to bring the total revenue for the industry to $275 million for 2015 – a 43 per cent increase on last year. By 2018, the firm expects that per user number to almost double, reaching $4.63.
That's a decent number, representing very rapid growth, but it pales in comparison to Newzoo's estimates on the average earning per fan for a sport like Basketball, which represents a $14 per fan revenue – rising to $19 where only the major league NBA is a factor. To catch up to numbers like this is going to take some time, but Newzoo's research has listed five factors it considers vital to achieving that aim.
Right now, MOBAs are undeniably the king of the eSports scene, and one of the biggest genres in gaming. The king of MOBAs, League of Legends, is the highest earning game in the world, whilst others like Valve's DOTA 2 are also represent huge audiences and revenues, including the prestigious annual International tournament. Shooters are also still big business here, with Activision Blizzard recently announcing the formation of a new Call of Duty League.
Nonetheless, MOBAs are still the mainstay and if you don't like them, you're not going to get too deeply into competitive gaming as a fan. Although their popularity with the athletes is going to make them a difficult genre to shift, Newzoo says that broadening the slate is a key factor to growth.
Geographic reach
The major tournaments bring players, and audiences, from all over the world, but it's often only the very top tier of players who can find themselves a foothold in regular competition. Major territories like the US, South Korea and Europe have some local structure, but again League of Legends stands almost alone in its provision of local infrastructure. By expanding a network of regular leagues and competitions to more countries, eSports stands a much better chance of building a grassroots movement and capturing more fans.
Already a problem very much on the radar of official bodies and players around the world, the introduction of regulation is always a tough transition for any industry. However, when you're putting up millions of dollars in prize money, you can't have any grey areas around doping, match fixing and player behaviour at events. These young players are frequently thrust into a very rapid acceleration of lifestyle, fame and responsibility – a heady mixture which can prove to be a damaging influence on many. Just like in other sports, stars need protecting and nurturing – and the competitions careful monitoring – in order for growth to occur without scandal and harm to its stars.
Media rights
Dishing out the rights to broadcast, promote and profit from eSports is a complex issue. Whilst games like football are worldwide concerns, with media rights a hotly contested and constantly shifting field, nobody owns the games themselves. With eSports, every single aspect of the games being played is a trademark in itself, with its owners understandably keen to protect them. However, with fan promotion such a key part of the sport's growth, and services like Twitch a massive factor in organic promotion, governing the rights of distribution is only going to become a murkier and more complex business as time goes on. With major TV networks, well used to exclusivity, now starting to show an interest, expect this to become a hot topic.
Conflict between new and old media
That clash of worlds, between the fresh and agile formats of digital user-sourced broadcasting and the old network model is also going to be source of many of its own problems. One or the other, or even both, is going to have to adapt fast for there to be a convivial agreement which betters the industry as a whole. There's currently considerable pushback from established media against the idea of eSports becoming accepted as a mainstream activity, fuelled in no small part by their audiences themselves, so a lo of attitudes need to change. Add to that the links between these media giants and many of the world's richest advertisers and you can start to see the problem.
Is Metal Gear Solid V Going To Be A Hit?
If Hideo Kojima really is on the outs at Konami, he's at least going out with a bang. The embargo for Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain coverage hit last night, and the first batch of reviews are glowing.
IGN's Vince Ingenito gave the game a 10 out of 10, lavishing praise on the way it adapted the series' stealth-action formula to an open-world environment.
"Right from the moment you're told to get on your horse and explore the Afghan countryside, Phantom Pain feels intimidating, almost overwhelming in terms of the freedom its open world affords and the number of concepts it expects you to grasp," Ingenito said. "It's almost too much, especially given the relative linearity of previous Metal Gears. But what initially appeared to be an overly dense tangle of features to fiddle with instead unraveled into a well-integrated set of meaningful gameplay systems that provided me with a wealth of interesting decisions to make."
Vince Ingenito
Whether players choose to sneak their way to victory or go in guns blazing, The Phantom Pain affords them a number of avenues to do so. The game's day/night cycle and changing weather systems can make certain strategies viable (or not) at any given time. At the same time, a private army management meta-game lets players raid battlefields for resources and new recruits, which can then be put to use researching new technologies or using their skills to open up a variety of other strategic alternatives.
However, a perfect score doesn't mean a perfect game, and Ingenito does identify at least one weak point in the game.
It's a somewhat surprising criticism of the game, given Metal Gear Solid 4′s penchant for frequent and extended cutscenes larding the action with exposition and plot twists. While The Phantom Pain shows flashes of that approach (Ingenito noted the "spectacular" opening sequence), it ultimately produces a narrative he found "rushed and unsatisfying."
Obviously, that failing was not enough to tarnish an otherwise fantastic game in Ingenito's eyes.
"There have certainly been sandbox action games that have given me a bigger world to roam, or more little icons to chase on my minimap, but none have pushed me to plan, adapt, and improvise the way this one does," he said. "Metal Gear Solid 5: The Phantom Pain doesn't just respect my intelligence as a player, it expects it of me, putting it in a league that few others occupy."
GameSpot's Peter Brown likewise gave the game a 10 and praised its adaptable approach to missions, but enjoyed the story considerably more than his counterpart at IGN.
Peter Brown
"After dozens of hours sneaking in the dirt, choking out enemies in silence, and bantering with madmen who wish to cleanse the world, The Phantom Pain delivers an impactful finale befitting the journey that preceded it," Brown said. "It punches you in the gut and tears open your heart. The high-caliber cutscenes, filled with breathtaking shots and rousing speeches, tease you along the way. Your fight in the vast, beautiful, and dangerous open world gives you a sense of purpose. The story is dished out in morsels, so you'll have to work for the full meal, but it's hard to call it 'work' when controlling Big Boss feels so good, with so many possibilities at your fingertips."
Brown said prior knowledge of the series isn't a prerequisite to enjoying The Phantom Pain, but added that "Fans of the series will find their diligence rewarded in ways that newcomers can't begin to imagine." They'll also, in his estimation, be enjoying the pinnacle of the franchise.
"There has never been a game in the series with such depth to its gameplay, or so much volume in content," Brown said. "The best elements from the past games are here, and the new open-world gameplay adds more to love on top. When it comes to storytelling, there has never been a Metal Gear game that's so consistent in tone, daring in subject matter, and so captivating in presentation. The Phantom Pain may be a contender for one of the best action games ever made, but is undoubtedly the best Metal Gear game there is."
Matt Wales
Eurogamer hasn't published its full review yet, but Matt Wales weighed in with his impressions to date. Like Brown and Ingenito, Wales underscored the narrative approach as a major departure for the series.
"Beyond an outlandish, action-packed opening sequence… The Phantom Pain is a remarkably economical affair, telling its tale of '80s cold war subterfuge through snatches of radio dialogue (courtesy of Ocelot), and the occasional return to Mother Base between missions," Wales said. "It's fascinating to see such restraint from Kojima, a man well known for his self-indulgence and excess, especially considering that The Phantom Pain is likely his Metal Gear swan song."
On the gameplay side, Wales said The Phantom Pain "isn't exactly a radical reinvention of the stealth genre," but acknowledged the increased freedom players are given to accomplish the familiar assortment of objectives.
"Metal Gear Solid 5′s open world might not be vast, varied or stuffed full of things to do, but it's a place of constant movement," Wales said. "Night falls, day breaks, sandstorms sweep in, patrols come and go – and this organic sense of life means that missions are never predictable (no matter how often you play them) with tactical possibilities arising all the time. It's a game of planning and reacting in a world that refuses to stand still, making every minute matter and every success feel earned."
"The gameplay, storytelling, and protagonists in Metal Gear may shift with each new installment, but Kojima's ability to surprise and enthrall gamers remains unchanged."
Joe Juba
He also applauded the way The Phantom Pain managed to adopt an open-world design without the genre's standard glut of padding.
"[E]verything you do feels meaningful and consequential," Wales said. "Guard posts and roaming patrols aren't simply there for colour as you traverse the world: one careless move into hostile territory and every single enemy on the map will know you're coming, with more search parties and increased security radically altering the way a mission unfolds. And while other games tout choice and consequence as a headline feature, the Phantom Pain just gets on with it. Even the smallest action can have unexpected consequences – some significant and others barely perceptible."
Game Informer's Joe Juba gave the game a 9.25, currently one of the lowest scores the game has received on Metacritic (where it has a 95 average based on 15 critic reviews). Like some of the above reviewers, Juba was a bit disappointed at The Phantom Pain's approach to storytelling, but noted that having the narrative take a step in to the background puts the focus on the game's strongest point, its open-ended gameplay.
"A series can't survive this long without evolving, and The Phantom Pain is a testament to the importance of taking risks," Juba said. "An open world, a customizable base, a variable mission structure – these are not traditional aspects of Metal Gear, but they are what makes The Phantom Pain such an exceptional game. The gameplay, storytelling, and protagonists in Metal Gear may shift with each new installment, but Kojima's ability to surprise and enthrall gamers remains unchanged."
Sony Finally On Solid Ground Thanks To The PS4
The PlayStation business has had another phenomenal quarter in the first four months of 2015, selling three million PS4 units and turning in an operating income of $160 million from revenues of $2.365 billion. There are now 25.3 million PlayStation 4 units in the hands of players worldwide – a number achieved in less than two full years.
The console continues to be the company's fastest seller – outpacing the PS2, which took two years and eight months to reach the 20 million mark. Furthermore, thanks to dropping production costs for PS4 hardware, a 12 per cent increase in sales from the same quarter last year translated to a massive 350 per cent rise in operating income.
A strengthening dollar again hurt Sony's bottom line, having an estimated impact of 15.6 billion Yen on the revenue total of 288.6 billion Yen, but this was massively outweighed by the increase in sales and the efficiency gains of Sony's operation. On the strength of the results, Sony has added another 20 billion Yen in operating income to the sector's full year forecast.
The sales rate of PS4 shows a healthily steady growth in player base, returning to a gradual upswing after a huge blip in Q3, 2014. Sony has upgraded it full year forecast from 16 million units to 16.5 as a result – a figure which would show a substantial increase on 2014′s 14.8 million total. By Sony's own reckoning, the end of Q1 2016 will see nigh on 40 million of the consoles in homes. Vita sales once again went unmentioned in the report, whilst the gradual decline of PS3 continued.
Hardware wasn't the only success story. Network, ("Network includes network services relating to game, video, and music content provided by Sony Network Entertainment Inc.") mad almost as much in revenues, netting around 105.8 billion Yen compared to Hardware's 129.5 billion. The Other category (Other includes packaged software and peripheral devices) brought in 30.6 billion.
Overall, the corporation turned a healthy profit, banking $676 million in net from sales of nearly $15 billion. Whilst the PlayStation business is very healthy indeed, it's far from Sony's only, or even biggest, success story: Devices, Imaging, Financial Services and Music all continue to return a higher operating income.
Does Steam Have A Security Issue?
A security problem with the Steam gaming on-demand system means that players and their personal details are at risk.
It is possible that one day we will report on which companies made it through the night without being hacked or without exposing their users.
For now, though, the opposite is the norm and today we are reporting about a problem with gaming system Steam that, you guessed it, has dangled the personal details of punters within the reach of ne'er-do-wells.
The news is not coming out of Steam, or parent Valve, directly, but it is running rampant across social networks and the gaming community. The problem, according to reports and videos, was a bad one and made the overtaking of user accounts rather a simple job.
No badass end-of-level boss to beat here, just a stage in the authentication process. A video posted online demonstrates the efforts required, while some reports – with access to Steam's PR hot air machine – say that the problem is fixed.
A statement released to gaming almanac Kotaku finds the firm in apologetic clean-up mode.
Steam told the paper that some users would have their passwords reset, those being the ones who might have seen their log-in changed under suspicious circumstances, and that in general users should already be protected from the risks at hand.
"To protect users, we are resetting passwords on accounts with suspicious password changes during that period or may have otherwise been affected," the firm said.
"Relevant users will receive an email with a new password. Once that email is received, it is recommended that users log-in to their account via the Steam client and set a new password.
"Please note that, while an account password was potentially modified during this period, the password itself was not revealed. Also, if Steam Guard was enabled, the account was protected from unauthorized log-ins even if the password was modified."
The firm added its apologies to the community.
GameStop Acquires ThinkGeek
Last week it was reported how Geeknet Inc. was in the process of being bought out by retailer Hot Topic for $16 a share or $37 million in cash.
However we have just discovered that deal was squashed because Thinkgeek got a better deal from Gamestop.
GameStop offered $20 per share and Hot Topic wanted away. GameStop's $20 per share deal also includes $37 million in cash and comes out to a total valuation of $140 million.
Geeknet must pay Hot Topic a three percent "break-up fee," which GameStop has agreed to reimburse.
What this will mean is that ThinkGeek customers can pick up ThinkGeek merchandise in GameStop stores.
The press release also mentions the potential of offering GameStop PowerUp Rewards members "exclusive, unique and cutting edge merchandise related to their favorite entertainment."
The deal should be concluded by the end of GameStop's second financial quarter of 2015, which will happen in August.
Does The PS4 Have a Weak First Party Fall Line-up?
At Sony's 2015 Investor Relations Day today, Sony Computer Entertainment president and global CEO Andrew House detailed the company's strategy for the coming year, including how it will address some shortcomings.
House began his presentation on a positive note, talking up PlayStation 4 as "the fastest selling hardware platform in our history," showing better-than expected growth and pushing PlayStation Plus subscriptions to twice what they were in fiscal year 2013. He said the company has a competitive advantage for the moment, and laid out three ways it hopes to maintain that. In addition to next year's launch of the Project Morpheus virtual reality headset and continued cost reduction efforts, House said the company needs quality software.
"We are working very hard to continue very strong support from third-party pubs and devs," House said. "Our first-party lineup is a little sparse this year, so I think this places even greater emphasis on getting good third-party support."
That doesn't necessarily mean exclusive third-party support. To date, House said Sony has been primarily trying to get multiplatform developers to simply take advantage of features the PS4 has over the competition, like SharePlay, or maybe include extra content in the PS4 version or give players early access to add-on content. Third-party exclusives are still an option, just not a frequently used one.
"I will admit that these are, in the current publishing landscape, few and far between, but we were able to announce a full exclusive around a franchise like Street Fighter so that Street Fighter 5 is a complete exclusive for PlayStation 4," House said, adding, "Although given publishing dynamics and development costs, those are increasingly difficult to secure."
House also talked about the decline in Sony's other platforms. As much as the PS4′s growth has exceeded expectations, so too has the PlayStation 3′s decline. House said the system's price simply isn't as competitive in the market as the PlayStation 2 and PSone were after their successors launched, and added that the shift toward more connected console experiences has also made less capable offerings less attractive.
House also cast a dim view of the company's handheld business. While he noted that the Vita platform remains "strong and vibrant" in Asia and Japan, his outlook for the current fiscal year included declines in the US and Europe. Additionally, he referred to the PlayStation Vita and its microconsole counterpart the PlayStation TV as "legacy platforms" when discussing a write-off of hardware components for the two.
"I would characterize 2015 as the beginning of a harvest period for the PlayStation 4 platform," House said. "The beginning of a harvest period. That being said, we are also undertaking to invest in the future, and 2015 will also be a year of investment."
That investment will be focused on a few areas. There's the Morpheus, of course, as well as continued spend on original PlayStation entertainment content like the TV show Powers (which was recently greenlit for a second season). On top of that, House said Sony would be investing in the expansion of its PlayStation Vue television streaming platform and a continued re-architecture of its PlayStation Network with an eye toward increasing stability and reducing maintenance downtime.
Is the PS4 Open To Pirating
Hackers from Brazil have managed to discover a new exploit for the PS4 which enables them to bypass the DRM on any software and games.
A couple of weeks ago, a number of electronic stores in Brazil had been advertising the means to copy and run a series of ripped retail games on the console.
At the time little was known about the hack back then, but information gradually began to trickle out from customers and make its way around the web. Please see below for commentary from Lancope.
Gavin Reid, VP of threat intelligence, Lancope said that Sony was playing an arms race against groups that benefit from the abilities to copy and share games.
The hack originates from a Russian website and has been pushed into the public by Brasilian retailers. The hack isn't necessarily a jailbreak for the PS4, nor is it really a homebrew technique.
What they did was use a retail PS4, with several games installed on it, with it's entire game database and operating system (including NAN/BIOS). This was then dumped onto a hacked PS4 via Raspberry Pi.
The entire process costs about $100 to $150 to install 10 games and $15 per additional game.
"Open source groups like Homebrew with more altruistic motivations of extending the functionality of the console alongside groups selling modified consoles specifically to play copied games and of course the resell of the games themselves at fraction of the actuals costs. This has happened historically with all of the major consoles. It would be highly unlikely not to continue with the PS4," he said.
Is Valve's Steam Machine A Flop?
There's not a lot to argue with the consensus view that Valve had the biggest and most exciting announcement of GDC this year, in the form of the Vive VR headset it's producing with hardware partner HTC. It may not be the ultimate "winner" of the battle between VR technologies, but it's done more than most to push the whole field forwards – and it clearly sparked the imaginations of both developers and media in San Francisco earlier this month. Few of those who attended GDC seem particularly keen to talk about anything other than Vive.
From Valve's perspective, that might be just as well – the incredibly strong buzz around Vive meant that it eclipsed Valve's other hardware-related announcement at GDC, the unveiling of new details of the Steam Machines initiative. Ordinarily, it might be an annoying (albeit very high-quality) problem to have one of your announcements completely dampen enthusiasm for the other; in this instance, it's probably welcome, because what trickled out of GDC regarding Steam Machines is making this look like a very stunted, unloved and disappointing project indeed.
To recap briefly; Steam Machines is Valve's attempt to create a range of attractive, small-form-factor PC hardware from top manufacturers carrying Valve's seal of approval (hence being called "Steam Machines" and quite distinctly not "PCs"), running Valve's own gaming-friendly flavour of the Linux OS, set up to connect to your living room TV and controlled with Valve's custom joypad device. From a consumer standpoint, they're Steam consoles; a way to access the enormous library of Steam content (at least the Linux-friendly parts of it) through a device that's easy to buy, set up and control, and designed from the ground up for the living room.
That's a really great idea, but one which requires careful execution. Most of all, if it's going to work, it needs a fairly careful degree of control; Valve isn't building the machines itself, but since it's putting its seal of approval on them (allowing them to use the Steam trademark and promoting them through the Steam service), it ought to have the power to enforce various standards related to specification and performance, ensuring that buyers of Steam Machines get a clear, simple, transparent way to understand the calibre of machine they're purchasing and the gaming performance they can expect as a result.
Since the announcement of the Steam Machines initiative, various ways of implementing this have been imagined; perhaps a numeric score assigned to each Machine allowing buyers to easily understand the price to performance ratio on offer? Perhaps a few distinct "levels" of Steam Machine, with some wiggle room for manufacturers to distinguish themselves, but essentially giving buyers a "Good – Better – Best" set of options that can be followed easily? Any such rating system could be tied in to the Steam store itself, so you could easily cross-reference and find out which system is most appropriate for the kind of games you actually want to play.
In the final analysis, it would appear that Valve's decision on the myriad possibilities available to it in this regard is the worst possible cop-out, from a consumer standpoint; the company's decided to do absolutely none of them. The Steam Machines page launched on the Steam website during GDC lists 15 manufacturers building the boxes; many of those manufacturers are offering three models or more at different price and performance levels. There is absolutely no way to compare or even understand performance across the different Steam Machines on offer, short of cross-referencing the graphics cards, processors, memory types and capacities and drive types and capacities used in each one – and if you've got the up-to-date technical knowledge to accurately balance those specifications across a few dozen different machines and figure out which one is the best, then you're quite blatantly going to be the sort of person who saves money by buying the components separately and wouldn't buy a Steam Machine in a lifetime.
"Valve seems to have copped out entirely from the idea of using its new systems to make the process of buying a gaming PC easier or more welcoming for consumers"
In short, unless there's a pretty big rabbit that's going to be pulled out of a hat between now and the launch of the first Steam Machines in the autumn, Valve seems to have copped out entirely from the idea of using its new systems to make the process of buying a gaming PC easier or more welcoming for consumers – and in the process, appears to have removed pretty much the entire raison d'etre of Steam Machines. The opportunity for the PC market to be grown significantly by becoming more "console-like" isn't to do with shoving PC components into smaller boxes; that's been happening for years, occasionally with pretty impressive results. Nor is it necessarily about reducing the price, which has also been happening for some years (and which was never going to happen with Steam Machines anyway, as Valve is of no mind to step in and become a loss-leading platform holder).
Rather, it's about lowering the bar to entry, which remains dizzyingly high for PC gaming – not financially, but in knowledge terms. A combination of relatively high-end technical knowledge and of deliberate and cynical marketing-led obfuscation of technical terminology and product numbering has meant that the actual process of figuring out what you need to buy in order to play the games you want at a degree of quality that's acceptable is no mean feat for an outsider wanting to engage (or re-engage) with PC games; it's in this area, the simplicity and confidence of buying a system that you know will play all the games marketed for it, that consoles have an enormous advantage over the daunting task of becoming a PC gamer.
Lacking any guarantee of performance or simple way of understanding what sort of system you're buying, the Steam Machines as they stand don't do anything to make that process easier. Personally, I ought to be slap bang in the middle of the market for a Steam Machine; I'm a lapsed PC gamer with a decent disposable income who is really keen to engage with some of the games coming out in the coming year (especially some of the Kickstarted titles which hark back to RPGs I used to absolutely adore), but I'm totally out of touch with what the various specifications and numbers mean. A Steam Machine that I could buy with the confidence that it would play the games I want at decent quality would be a really easy purchase to justify; yet after an hour flicking over and back between the Steam Machines page launched during GDC and various tech websites (most of which assume a baseline of knowledge which, in my case, is a good seven or eight years out of date), I am no closer to understanding which machine I would need or what kind of price point is likely to be right for me. Balls to it; browser window full of tabs looking at tech spec mumbo-jumbo closed, PS4 booted up. Sale lost.
This would be merely a disappointment – a missed opportunity to lower the fence and let a lot more people enjoy PC gaming – were it not for the extra frisson of difficulty posed by none other than Valve's more successful GDC announcement, the Vive VR headset. You see, one of the things that's coming across really clearly from all the VR technology arriving on the market is that frame-rate – silky-smooth frame-rate, at least 60FPS and preferably more if the tech can manage it – is utterly vital to the VR experience, making the difference between a nauseating, headache-inducing mess and a Holodeck wet dream. Suddenly, the question of PC specifications has become even more important than before, because PCs incapable of delivering content of sufficient quality simply won't work for VR. One of the appealing things about a Steam Machine ought to be the guarantee that I'll be able to plug in a Vive headset and enjoy Valve's VR, if not this year then at some point down the line; yet lacking any kind of certification that says "yes, this machine is going to be A-OK for VR experiences for now", the risk of an expensive screw-up in the choice of machine to buy seems greater than ever before.
I may be giving Steam Machines a hard time unfairly; it may be that Valve is actually going to slap the manufacturers into line and impose a clear, transparent way of measuring and certifying performance on the devices, giving consumers confidence in their purchases and lowering the bar to entry to PC gaming. I hope so; this is something that only Valve is in a position to accomplish and that is more important than ever with VR on the horizon and approaching fast. The lack of any such system in the details announced thus far is bitterly disappointing, though. Without it, Steam Machines are nothing more than a handful of small form-factor PCs running a slightly off-kilter OS; of no interest to hobbyists, inaccessible to anyone else, and completely lacking a compelling reason to exist.


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-ACT Score 21.6
-16 Advance Placement Classes
-10 Honors Classes
-State Officers in FFA & FCCLA & TSA
-Over 15 Clubs
-Vocational School Opportunities
-Over 60 Dual Credit Opportunities
-Over 75% of Staff Hold Master's Degrees
-Pathway to Careers/Cooperative Work Release
-Strong ETE & CTE Program
-Spanish and Chinese Language Courses
-Band & Choir
-Dance & Drama
-Small Group Intervention
-Graduation Rate 92.1% (Ranks 13th in KY)
-Over $3 Million
-22 Highly Competitive Athletic Teams
-15 KHSAA District Championships
-19 KHSAA Regional Championships
-4 KHSAA State Championships
-2 KHSAA Final Four Appearance in Softball
Seniors will be walking the stage on Saturday, May 28 at 7:30.
If your family needs support with heat, food, access to health services, school supplies, clothing, or another resource, please let us know using the link below.
This form can also be found under the "Student Services" drop down menu from the home page on our website.
Our online Math ESS program has been expanded to include all students grades 6-12. Students in 6th or 7th grade are required to turn in a parent permission form before accessing the Google Hangout for math assistance. A link for Math ESS information can be found under the "Student Services" drop down on the school website. Teachers will continue to be available from 7:30-9:30 pm Sunday-Thursday. If your child is struggling with math, don't hesitate to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity!
To view a step by step sheet on how to get math help via Google Hangouts, click here.

subset: commoncrawl


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Fair ~
High: 71°F ~ Low: 59°F
Friday, May 6, 2016
schmutzhaken, or in my world, a broom left outside in one position too long.Posted Monday, December 13, 2010, at 12:14 PM
A bent broom. No, two bent brooms.
Have you ever left a broom laying against the wall for too long? We have two of them and did not pay anywhere near what I bet this one costs.
Ever heard the saying about making an omelet out of broken eggs? Now it is called engineering.
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By the way, if you want to watch the suspenseful and exciting video on this, go to http://schmutzhaken.com/
-- Posted by stevemills on Mon, Dec 13, 2010, at 12:16 PM
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Steve Mills and his wife have one daughter and live on a farm outside of Bell Buckle. They previously owned two coffee/ice cream shops, currently operate an internet sales company and teach classes, but his primary job involves the paper industry worldwide. Hobbies and interests lie in gardening, photography, recorded music and of course, their pets.
Hot topicsNow that the side fights are just about over, the heavyweight round is about to begin.
(12 ~ 8:59 AM, May 6)
Changing from meat to veggies, almost.
What's that weed in my garden? Weed? Really!
Just too cute to not post
My candidate did not win, placed but not a win by any means.


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Illinois Issues: Panhandling Laws Face Renewed Legal Challenges
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More Layoffs At Western Illinois University
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Champaign Central High School On Preservation Group's Endangered Building List
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'Gothic Romance' Opens 18th Ebertfest
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Specify the age of each child at the time of travel.
If you are booking a trip for a child under 16 years of age, traveling alone, without an Adult, we suggest you to call us at - 1-888-808-4123 as certain airlines have restrictions on such travelers. [X] Close
I just spoke with Ashton regarding booking to Orlando, Fl. and he was by far the most helpful, pleasant, and delightful representative that I have ever dealt with. I am so grateful that I made the call ...Read More
Copenhagen is the capital city of Denmark. With a population of over a million, it is also the most populous city in the country. It is a major regional center of culture, science, business and media. But that doesn't mean it is second to any city when it comes to fun. The city's nightlife is one to be envied, with the most exciting range of bars and lounges. Take one of the flights to Copenhagen, and see the liveliest city unfurl before your eyes.
The best way to use what you saved on your cheap flights to Copenhagen is by going to 1105. Named after its postal code, this is a gloriously paired down cocktail bar with a subtle and sophisticated décor. Its soft lighting and gentle grey walls are unrivaled in their serenity. The drinks served here are sublime. The gin and cardamom concoction prepared here is one of the quality cocktails of the bar. You can listen to a smooth mix of Motown and some amazing jazz. The place has DJs as well, playing on weekends.
Another great place for you to cash your cheap plane tickets is Al Mercante. This happening Italian restaurant-bar specializes in Venetian dishes such as Tagliatta alla Veneziana (fillet marinated in a balsamic) but offers up to 30 brands of Grappa as well. You will be drawn to its exotic Venetian masks and Italian artifacts that adorn its walls and floors. The place has a super stylish long-wood bar counter behind which the skilled staff mixes up a diverse range of classic cocktails including Gin Fizzes and Brandy Sidecars.
Another fascinating place to visit in the city is Bar 7. It has so much going for it that it can be overwhelming. Its stylish décor will take no time to woo you. Based on an apartment, this bar has different areas laid out for different groups. It has a rustic lived-in feel and a while here can end up feeling like a sophisticated house party. The bar area is made of gleaming black wood, and serves exquisite cocktails, like the imaginatively named 'Danish Strawberries'. Waste no time in looking for good airline deals and visit this fabulous place.
If you are in for some late night lounging, Barbarellah is a great place for you to make the most of your cheap tickets to Copenhagen. It has predictably sleek interiors with cool, eclectic furnishings and a welcoming aura about it. If you are a fan of Danish décor, you will definitely be taken by the lounge's stylish seating arrangements.
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He was addressing at the Centenary Youth Festival of Islamia College, Peshawar on Sunday.
The Chairman, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Imran Khan also addressed the function while Vice Chancellor of Islamia College University, Muhammad Ajmal Khan in his address of welcome highlighted the history, achievements and activities of the college and university and lauded the provincial government's efforts for making his release from Talban captivity possible and also other endeavours for progress of the College.
The Speaker Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly, Asad Qaiser, Provincial Ministers, Muhammad Atif, Shah Farman, Imtiaz Shahid Qureshi, Advisor to Chief Minister, Ishtiaq Urmar, Special Assistant to the CM for Information and Higher Education Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani, MPAs, the president of Islamia College Senior Alumni and former Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai, Alumni and faculty of the College and large number of students attended the gathering held as concluding function of the centenary celebrations of Islamia College.
At the outset of his brief speech the Chief Minister condemned the terrorist attack in Parachinar which took 16 precious lives of innocent citizens and more than 50 were injured.
Pervez Khattak expressed his government's commitment for making all required financial resources available for education sectors.
He told that during the last 30 months of the present provincial government, establishment of 50 new colleges, mostly for women, one technical university, three general universities, two women universities and two medical colleges were initiated in the province.
The Chief Minister also announced one month salary bonus for the faculty and staff of Islamia College.


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A member of the Thayer community, Sarah Jo Prewitt, has been diagnosed with leukemia and will need a bone marrow transplant
A volunteer donor recruitment drive will be held for Prewitt June 22 at the Thayer Elementary School from noon to 7:30 p.m.
"There is no charge for this service. Anyone who meets the health guidelines ages 18 through 60 can join the registry and hopefully we will find a match for Sarah," a recruitment drive volunteer spokesperson said.
They said after a brief questionnaire is answered a tissue match is made by using cheek swabs. Many people who cannot donate blood still qualify as a bone marrow donor.
Prewitt is a 2004 graduate of Thayer High School. She is the 20-year old daughter of Jo Beth Prewitt and the late Gary Prewitt.
She has been attending the University of Missouri where she was a proud Tiger fan and has even served as a tour guide for the Mizzou campus. Prewitt was involved in many school activities while completing a degree in marketing.
She was also a very active student while attending school at Thayer and has worked on numerous community service projects including serving on many blood drives in high school and organizing the most recent one at her college.
A former fellow student with Prewitt said, "Sarah has always been compassionate and willing to help others. Now she needs our help."
To survive, many patients with leukemia need someone to donate healthy bone marrow or blood cells for their life-saving transplant. A transplant is possible only when the patient and donor have matching tissue types.
Prewitt was unable to find a match within her family. The community now has the opportunity to help her and other patients in need by attending the donor recruitment drive.
For more information call 417-280-1515 or 417-280-0069 or go to the national donor Web site at www.marrow.org.


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Iconic cover image of the movie "The Piano" has always inspired me to do a shoot with similar set up. With help from members we can make it happen, models wear Victorian era or wedding dresses . Please try to bring as many as antique props possible, such as old bicycle , cargo boxes umbrellas etc.
To make this meet more inclusive for models, I made few changes. If Victorian or wedding dress is not available any formal or elegant wear will do.
This is two part shoot: Piano shoot and Elegant Beach wear. Both will run simultaneously .
Emphasis is more on elegance, beach fashion wear. Yes I fully understand temptation to get in two piece bikini and jump into water is irresistible and to do that will be perfectly fine as well.
New photographers must provide id at shoot.
..Parents or legal guardians must accompany underage models at all the time during the shoot as non of the organizers are certified baby sitters. Exception to this rule: Models 16 years or older who are family friends of organizers or previously attended shoots must have model release form faxed over or emailed and a particular organizer assigned as caretaker during the shoot..
We will have make up artist(s) for this one as well , contribution for makeup material will stay at $20.00 from photographers Only. All money collected goes to makeup artist(s) evenly.
Here is Google link to some dress images and ideas for elegant beach wear.https://www.google.com/search?q=elegant+beach+wear&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=EwxZU5iYMtPQsQTV2YDQCA&sqi=2&ved=0CFUQ7Ak&biw=1920&bih=933
Yes somebody, I do not remember who told me that they had the dress in there possession & that it would be returned to her. If anybody know any information please let me or Manny know!! Thanks
0 · August 6, 2014
Lana! Can you please email me at [masked] please!?
0 · May 29, 2014
This was the first shoot I've attended for this group. It was great. Wonderful concept. Models, make-up, and wardrobe were very good, and the photographers worked well together. Please continue with the artistic concept shoots. They are hard to find. I know they are hard to do, but it is so appreciated. I personally want to say congrats and thanks to Manny and everyone involved. I'm looking forward to your next "crazy, wild, and borderline stupid idea...lol.
8 · May 27, 2014
The successful execution of this event is exactly where I like seeing the group headed, in other words, the Organizer doesn't need to be in control of and present at each and every event.
3 · May 26, 2014
Fantastically wonderful shoot everyone! I'm so glad we got to participate. Both my daughter and I really enjoyed this shoot! Looking forward to our next great event together!
1 · May 26, 2014
I am still cannot believe that we pulled off this complex difficult project with amazing success . My special thanks to Sybile, Marco, Grady and every body else who believed in me .Being a Memorial day week end degree of difficulty shot up 100% Thanks to all stunning elegant models and MUA and equally matched talented photographers who made this happen.
1 · May 26, 2014
The shoot turned out amazing! Thanks for all who came out especially helping with the piano & tents. I know all the pics will be beautiful!!
2 · May 26, 2014
Was this an issue?
0 · May 25, 2014
Kudos to everyone who made this happen, especially Manny. I resisted the temptation to be "Negative Nancy" before the event, but I had my concerns about unfriendly locals unable to appreciate creative people who I very much noticed both times I was there.
2 · May 25, 2014
This was super fun I'm so excited to see pictures:D
5 · May 25, 2014
Everyone was fantastic. El Jarfin Beach although a great location, they were not accommodating at all. Still, took some beautiful pictures. Thanks to the gorgeous models!!
3 · May 25, 2014
On my way, I should be there around 4!
0 · May 25, 2014
We don't need to bring a copy of the model release form do we?
0 · May 25, 2014
Can I get the address for make up? Thank you
0 · May 25, 2014
Sometime yesterday evening I got bumped to "going" status however I strained my hamstring yesterday while climbing stairs on the Battleship Texas shoot. I just got up to test my leg and I sure I'm not going to make it. I sure hate to cancel because this looks like great idea for a shoot. Have fun and I can't wait to see the images!
0 · May 25, 2014
I know a few years ago they started charging for entry to non El Lago residents. Does the $20 cover the entry fee as well or are we paying for that separately?
0 · May 23, 2014
My Big Big thanks to Sybile who helped me to pick up trailer from Home Depot , with her and her daughter, my son and my helper we were able to load up piano onto trailer and park it in garage . Events like these need group participation at higher lever, judging from response I got from almost 30 photographer is dismal. Certainly inclines me to make such future events on invite only basis.
1 · May 24, 2014
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The history and culture of Africans and African descendants around the world.
I learned of Nelson Mandela's passing while waiting for my delayed flight at Atlanta Airport. I thought how much his painful and extraordinary life had exposed the terrible danger that faced those who fought for the rights, the dignity and the freedom of people of African origin or descent. That despairing reality was made all the more vivid because I was coming back to New York after several days spent with Kathleen Cleaver, immersed in documents and photographs from the Black Power
"If we had said 'Negro power' nobody would get scared. Everybody would support it. If we said power for colored people, everybody would be for that, but it is the word 'black' that bothers people in this country, and that's their problem, not mine." —Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) at UC Berkeley, 1966
Stokely Carmichael by Lynn B. PadweBlack Rio Scene by Almir VeigaJames Brown released "I'm Black and I'm Proud" during the height of the Black Power Movement in the United States in 1968. Brown's in-your-face approach to racial pride resonated
Generals, commanders, admirals, prime ministers, and rulers, East Africans greatly distinguished themselves in India. They wrote a story unparalleled in the rest of the world — that of enslaved Africans attaining the pinnacle of military and political authority not only in a foreign country but also on another continent. Come discover their extraordinary story in a groundbreaking exhibition at the Schomburg Center — on view from February 1 to July 6 — and on March 21, join Dr. Faeeza Jasdanwalla, a descendant of the African dynasty of Janjira for a conversation on this
Angelic stranger, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) grants freedom to hapless Texas slave Django (Jamie Foxx). Schultz, a kindly German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, provides Django with employment, trusting friendship and his first handgun. Django is reborn as a slave-turned-bounty hunter, becoming a vengeful black American superman on a dangerous and deadly mission to free his lovely German-educated wife, Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington), from a Mississippi cotton plantation.
Django Unchained, directed by
Genealogical Ties That Bind.
African Burial Ground Map OverlayWe met at the Chambers Street IRT subway station — Lynn Jencks, descendant of an early Dutch family, and me, descendant of Lenape, Dutch and Africans. About 400 years ago, Dutch and enslaved Africans arrived into the ancient Algonquian wilderness that became New York City. Lynn, who lives in Illinois, had never been to the property owned by her ancestors and worked upon by slaves.
"Christopher guided me out of the subway and we emerged into the crisp clear December
Chat with a librarian now
Welcome to The Librarian is In, the New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next.


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Registration For ASICS LA Marathon Nears Capacity; Will Close At Noon Tomorrow
LOS ANGELES, March 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Due to a surge of runner interest in the 2013 ASICS LA Marathon, officials are closing registration for the March 17 race tomorrow at noon. "If you're planning to run, our recommendation is to get online and register now," said Nick Curl, Chief Operating Officer of LA MARATHON LLC. After registration closes, runners still interested in participating in the event are encouraged to contact the marathon's 81 official charities that still have a limited number of spots available. A listing of those charities is available at www.lamarathon.com."If you miss the deadline and still want to participate, please contact one of the marathon's official charities and run for them," said Curl. The early closure of registration is the result of growing runner enthusiasm for the Stadium to the Sea course, and greater interest in the race from runners throughout the country and world. "There's no question that the ASICS LA Marathon has terrific momentum, and we look forward to delivering a world class running experience for everyone on March 17 th," Curl said. ABOUT THE ASICS LA MARATHONWe inspire athletes and connect communities. With thousands of volunteers, tens of thousands of participants, and hundreds of thousands of spectators, the ASICS LA Marathon is one of the largest organized road races in the country. The Stadium to the Sea course, which starts at Dodger Stadium and finishes by the Santa Monica Pier, is considered one of the most scenic in the world. The race has been named Best Big City Race by Runner's World and Best Marathon in the West by Competitor Magazine. SOURCE ASICS LA Marathon
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Marcela Gandara Un Viaje Largo Ringtone
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Whole Foods Market® Do Something Reel Film Festival Goes Online
AUSTIN, Texas, March 21, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Whole Foods Market, America's healthiest grocery store, is taking its annual Do Something Reel Film Festival online this year. The film festival is an ongoing collection of provocative films about food and environmental issues that can be purchased online at www.dosomethingreel.com and streamed for a limited time. Beginning in April, Whole Foods Market will stream a different film each month with proceeds helping to fund the 2012 Whole Foods Market/AFI-Discovery Channel Silverdocs Festival filmmaker grants.The festival opens April 22, with a live screening of "The Apple Pushers," followed by a panel discussion with the film's writer and director, Mary Mazzio; executive producer, Laurie Tisch; and celebrity chef, food policy advocate and founder of Wholesome Wave, Michel Nischan. Debi Mazar, "Entourage" and Cooking Channel's "Extra Virgin" star, will host the discussion. The event will take place at Alamo Drafthouse's Slaughter Lane Theater in Whole Foods Market's hometown of Austin. Additionally, theaters in Boston, Detroit, Pittsburgh and San Francisco will host simultaneous screenings and will stream the panel discussion. The panel discussion will also be live streamed for free to online viewers. "The Apple Pushers" can be viewed online from April 22-30. "The Apple Pushers," narrated by Academy Award nominee Edward Norton, and underwritten by the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund, follows five immigrant street-cart vendors who are offering fruits and vegetables in New York neighborhoods where fresh produce isn't widely available. The vendors, who take part in a unique urban experiment called The NYC Green Cart Initiative, personify what it means to be an American entrepreneur, and their stories shed new light on the nation's food crisis and skyrocketing obesity rates. "The film chronicles first-generation immigrant micro-entrepreneurs who are infusing low income communities with fresh fruits and vegetables," said Mazzio. "Whole Foods Market's emphasis on providing access to healthy and nutritious foods makes them an ideal partner in helping us to expand the message of the film."
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Little Bandits
May. 25, 2015
Rating: -3
still no fix for the Stables? all required resources in my item list, but log shows 0/5...
May. 22, 2015
Rating: 0
stables show log 0/5 but I do have 6 log...
May. 13, 2015
Rating: 2
had 1 PVP win, won the next 3 each, but got 0 Badges for all 3 of those wins today
This should be fixed now. If you're still having issues, email us at firstname.lastname@example.com.
May. 11, 2015
Rating: 5
for me the amount of water which can be stored is too little. nobody can log in every 100minutes to spend it. Why not give a building that allows to store more water?
We're planning on making changes to the Water system in a future update.
Clicker Heroes
Aug. 24, 2014
Rating: 3
so this 5 Free Soul gift... how do I claim this?
You must have beaten zone level 100 at least once in any world.
Jan. 29, 2014
the badge is not awarded?
Battalion Commander 2
Jan. 11, 2014
2000m Survival: fully upgraded, used these perks: Armor, Fireproof Spray, Nano Bots, M.R.E. pack, Weapon: Missile Launcher, Skill: Air Support (forgot to take it out for Airstrike or even better Napalm Wave...
it is impossible that one of your soldiers dies if you keep away from the mortar/ airstrike blows... +to keep it up
Enola: Prelude
Jan. 09, 2013
Rating: 1
quite fun, but I didn't got the "create all weapons" ingame achievement despite I created all of those...
Epic War 5
Oct. 06, 2011
I'm missing the save possibility at all... Do you expect that I rush through the entire game without closing the game?
Magi: The Fallen World
Apr. 19, 2011
quite buggy... unless nice try
Oct. 22, 2010
same here. independent of the tree, using a power ability freezes the game...
Endless War 3
Apr. 21, 2010
Rating: 7
well not that bad, some of the weapons are still to imbalanced...
most missions are easy with freg-grens and the rocket launcher as primary therefore 4/5
Red Remover
Jul. 31, 2009
can u c somewhere, which level you've got finished par/ bonus? and can u c somewhere how many turns are allowed for par for the explicit level?
the game's tellin me, i've got 28 par and 29 finished. but i beat all levels on par (29 with 6 turns less than walkthrough-guide) it makes fun, but that's really frustrating...
GemCraft chapter 0
May. 16, 2009
did someone find out how to sacrifice a pure lime/yellow or orange lv6 gem into a "special damage" shrine?
Ultimate Tactics
May. 14, 2009
I just tried to use the Freeze spell. It didn't do any damage, but freezed the creature i inflicted for 2 turns. I tried with 3 different Fire Scorpions, one of them was freezed correctly, another one hit my archer after round 1 and the game freezes. seems to be a large bug with that spell.
i was on the: Venom Mission Mission in the second town, just forgot th correct name.
May. 13, 2009
well, i don't think inn's are too expansive. in fact two easy battles in the forest allow one rest in athelas. persisto is right. the game is a little slow. a little more information about the enemies (e.g. armor-level, magical resistances) would be quite nice. i hope that lateron any other attacks for Kronus are available. the last point i want to mention is, that the damage done to/by enemys is at level 6 extremly imbalanced. I haven't had any poison damage on my chars, but at that levels the snakes could be poisoned. The normal attack-damage of Kage is below the level of anacondas and super-beetles, but the MP's are not high enough to compete a whole level with spells. maybe some balance-changes would help here.
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Outcome of Subclinical Antibody-Mediated Rejection in Kidney Transplant Recipients with Preformed Donor-Specific Antibodies
Article first published online: 22 SEP 2009
DOI: 10.1111/j.1600-6143.2009.02813.x
© 2009 The Authors Journal compilation © 2009 The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons
American Journal of Transplantation
Volume 9, Issue 11, pages 2561–2570, November 2009
Additional Information
How to Cite
Loupy, A., Suberbielle-Boissel, C., Hill, G. S., Lefaucheur, C., Anglicheau, D., Zuber, J., Martinez, F., Thervet, E., Méjean, A., Charron, D., Duong van Huyen, J. P., Bruneval, P., Legendre, C. and Nochy, D. (2009), Outcome of Subclinical Antibody-Mediated Rejection in Kidney Transplant Recipients with Preformed Donor-Specific Antibodies. American Journal of Transplantation, 9: 2561–2570. doi: 10.1111/j.1600-6143.2009.02813.x
Publication History
- Issue published online: 15 OCT 2009
- Article first published online: 22 SEP 2009
- Received 16 February 2009, revised 01 July 2009 and accepted for publication 23 July 2009
- Abstract
- Article
- References
- Cited By
- HLA antibodies;
- humoral allograft rejection;
- rejection risk;
- renal allograft pathology
This study describes clinical relevance of subclinical antibody-mediated rejection (SAMR) in a cohort of 54 DSA-positive kidney transplant recipients receiving a deceased donor. In 3 months screening biopsies, 31.1% of patients met the criteria of SAMR. A total of 48.9% had an incomplete form of SAMR (g+/ptc+/C4d-negative) whereas 20% had no humoral lesions. Patients with SAMR at 3 months had at 1 year: a higher C4d score, ptc score, and arteriosclerosis score, higher rate of IFTA (100% vs. 33.3%, p < 0.01) and a higher rate of transplant glomerulopathy (43% vs. 0%, p = 0.02) compared to patients without 3-month SAMR. Patients with SAMR at 3 months exhibited at 1 year a higher class II MFImax-DSA and a lower mGFR compared to patients without SAMR (39.2 ± 13.9 vs. 61.9 ± 19.2 mL/min/1.73 m2 respectively, p < 0.01). The group of patients with C4d-negative SAMR at 3 months developed more ptc and IFTA lesions, and lower GFR at 1 year in comparison to biopsies without humoral lesions. SAMR is a frequent entity in KTR with preexisting DSAs and promotes subsequent GFR impairment and development of chronic AMR. C4d-negative SAMR patients displayed an intermediate course between the no-SAMR group and the C4d+ SAMR group. Screening biopsies may be useful to recognize patients more likely to develop SAMR.