Tag: crushing
A literal child and her robot dad are crushing some of Honkai: Star Rail’s toughest fights
‘Birth’ is the macabre indie game quietly crushing the convention circuit
Madison Karrh’s booth at Summer Game Fest 2022 was on the far right side of the demo area, hugging a wall at the front of the small industrial space in downtown Los Angeles. Her game, Birth, was one of the first projects you’d see after grabbing a swag bag, but it was easy to overlook in a sea of neon pixels and mainstream names like Street Fighter, Cuphead and Sonic. Birth is a thoughtful game of bones, puzzles, loneliness and decay, rendered in earth tones and captivating, hand-drawn vignettes. In a Day of the Devs cluster at Summer Game Fest, the Birth booth was a bubble of respite from the fast action showcased on surrounding screens.
“Showing Birth at conventions feels like putting my whole, raw, beating heart on a table in front of a bunch of strangers and asking if it is enough for them,” Karrh told me a few months after Summer Game Fest.
Birth is, essentially, a game about death. It’s an introspective experience with an entire city block to explore and small surprises in every scene, and it invites people to play with their deepest insecurities. Physics and logic puzzles are hidden in cafes, apartments and bookstores, each one welcoming players to engage with thoughts of mortality and loneliness. Build your own companion out of scattered bones and organs, peel back bandages to remove foreign objects from human limbs, interact with skeleton creatures, let your mind wander while organizing eyeballs, poke at all manner of decaying animal carcasses.
Nothing about Birth is harsh; from color palette to gameplay, this is an experience built for slow afternoons and sleepless nights. Even in the middle of a busy game convention, it’s a soothing way to play with terrifying topics.
“As humans, we know that we will die,” Karrh said. “Yet there is so much joy and art and love that gets created regardless of this looming fact. Maybe even because of it. I think about the limitations of mortality every day, and I want my portrayal of death and decay and loneliness to be as soft and gentle and genuine as possible.”
Half a year after Summer Game Fest, I still can’t get Birth off my mind. The themes are heavy, but the game is not, and this balance is a testament to Karrh’s eye for design and visual appeal. When it comes out on February 17th, Birth will be her third release on Steam, and her largest project to date.
“Day-to-day loneliness can be an embarrassing thing to admit to feeling,” Karrh said. “I hope the tender art style and the silly physics of the game make it feel more like having a contemplative, clumsy conversation with a friend.”
After Summer Game Fest, Karrh took Birth to Cologne, Germany, for Gamescom, the largest video game convention of the year. There, it was one of 130 games in the Indie Arena, sandwiched between sprawling adventures, city builders, sci-fi combat and metal music. Thousands of people streamed past her booth, some stopping to play for a few minutes and others lingering for an hour. Karrh never rushed players through their time with Birth, even though it meant fewer people ultimately got their hands on it.
“I was just so honored and smitten with the fact that people chose to spend so much of their time with my game in a sea of other delicious games,” Karrh said. “Birth doesn’t appeal to everyone, of course – I think the minimal, dark art style of my booth filtered out the humans who wouldn’t be interested. It is a slow, intimate game and I didn’t want anyone to feel rushed. People waited in line, people brought their friends back to show it to them. It felt like everyone was giving me a big giant hug.”
After Gamescom, Birth made its way to San Francisco for the Day of the Devs showcase in November. This was its fourth convention appearance of the year, adding a trip to London for WASD in April. Birth is a small game that’s been on a worldwide tour, and in the process it’s plucked Karrh out of her own isolated game-development hole. Even after Birth comes out – and even though it’s a single-player game that’ll likely be consumed by people sitting alone in dark rooms – this game represents true human connection for Karrh.
“I have lived most of my twenties in tiny studio apartments surrounded by other tiny studio apartments full of strangers,” she said. “As a solo game dev, I spend a lot of time sitting alone at my desk. It took me a very long time to accept that if I wanted to create as many games as I could, that I would need to spend a huge chunk of my life alone. I used to worry that I was wasting my life making games, and that I should be running around the city and kissing humans and falling in love. Fortunately, I have grown out of this insecurity and I think I have connected on a deep level with humans through making games.”
In the end, Birth is designed to be played solo, but it’s a game about the most universal shared experiences that humans have. In this sense, it’s impossible to truly play Birth alone.
“Loneliness is, oddly enough, a shared feeling,” Karrh said.
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UFC 281: Brit Molly McCann has win streak shattered by Erin Blanchfield thanks to bone crushing kimura at MSG
MOLLY MCCANN’s surge up the flyweight division came to a screeching halt at Madison Square Garden.
Meatball locked horns with the highly-rated Erin Blanchfield early on Sunday morning on the prelims of a stacked UFC 281 at MSG in New York.
Molly McCann locked horns with Erin Blanchfield on the UFC 281 prelims[/caption]
The Liverpudlian looked to stretch her octagon win streak to four at MSG but was quickly taken down[/caption]
Blanchfield’s grappling was too much for McCann, who she put in a mounted crucifix[/caption]
A dogged and determined McCann was forced to submit to a crushing kimura in the first round[/caption]
The Liverpudlian entered the bout in the form of her octagon career following spectacular stoppage victories over Luana Carolina and Hannah Goldy.
But she was stopped in her tracks by surging 125lb prospect Blanchfield – who made it four wins on the bounce with a submission victory courtesy of a nasty kimura.
An elated Blanchfield said of silencing the pro-McCann crowd: “It felt really good [ to shut it down].
“And I think that was worth 50k.”
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There was no glove touch to kick off the eagerly-anticipated flyweight showdown.
McCann put the pressure on early and looked to land her powerful straight right hand.
It didn’t take long for Blanchfield to shoot for a takedown, which she got thanks to a beautiful level change after perfectly timing a right hand from McCann.
The American moved into side control and began dropping short strikes as she looked to advance her position.
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Advance position she did as she trapped the Liverpudlian’s arms in a mounted crucifix.
Crushing blow after crushing blow began to rain down from Blanchfield, although the ref showed no interest in stopping the contest.
McCann tried her best to buck the top-heavy Blanchfield off but had little success.
Erin Blanchfield celebrates her biggest win inside the octagon[/caption]
Blanchfield soon opted to change tack, spotting an opening for a kimura atte,pt
McCann bravely, and perhaps dangerously, refused to tap to the bone-snapping submission.
But she was forced to a few moments later when Blanchfield stepped over and put even more crushing pressure on her arm.
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Blanchfield, 23, said of the finish: “I was definitely surprised he [the referee] didn’t stop it I was throwing so many punches.
“She was still moving, but she wasn’t fully there. But I think it could’ve been stopped earlier.”
Parents in ‘murder-suicide’ that left 6 kids dead faced crushing debts and illness
Telegram CEO Accuses Apple of Destroying Dreams and Crushing Entrepreneurs
Writing on his Telegram channel, Pavel Durov said that Apple had informed the messaging platform that it would not be able to allow content creators to use third-party payment methods for sales. Telegram users can donate to content creators and access special content using a third-party payment method and not Apple’s in-app purchasing system.
Durov said Apple is not “happy with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying a 30% tax” and that Telegram has no choice but to disable paid posts and channels on its iOS app. “This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly abuses its market dominance at the expense of millions of users who are trying to monetize their own content,” Durov continued.
Durov accused Apple of destroying dreams and crushing entrepreneurs with its App Store tax, which requires a 15% or 30% commission to Apple for most in-app purchases. Durov called upon regulators in the EU, India, and around the world to “start taking action.” Durov’s full message can be found below.
Some content creators started using third-party payment bots to sell access to individual posts in their Telegram channels. This way, content creators could receive close to 100% of whatever their subscribers paid, which was great.
Unfortunately, we received word from Apple that they were not happy with content creators monetizing their efforts without paying a 30% tax to Apple. Since Apple has complete control over its ecosystem, we had no alternative but to disable such paid posts on iOS devices.
This is just another example of how a trillion-dollar monopoly abuses its market dominance at the expense of millions of users who are trying to monetize their own content. I hope that the regulators in the EU, India, and elsewhere start taking action before Apple destroys more dreams and crushes more entrepreneurs with a tax that is higher than any government-levied VAT.
In the meantime, we at Telegram shall work to offer creators powerful and easy-to-use tools to monetize their content – outside of Apple’s restrictive ecosystem.
This is not the first time Durov has spoken out against Apple. In August the CEO lashed out at Apple against its “obscure” App Store rules.
This article, “Telegram CEO Accuses Apple of Destroying Dreams and Crushing Entrepreneurs” first appeared on MacRumors.com
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Should I buy Netflix stock that’s up 15% after crushing earnings estimates?
Netflix stock soared after the company reported strong subscriber numbers. But why does our author think the market is missing something important?
The post Should I buy Netflix stock that’s up 15% after crushing earnings estimates? appeared first on The Motley Fool UK.