Over the past few years, I’ve developed a peaceful little routine to make up for time spent cooped up inside working on sunny days: after I’ve closed my laptop for the day, I throw my sneakers on, open Pikmin Bloom on my phone, and go for a long walk to clear my head and plant virtual flowers with the 'min.
Pikmin Bloom was released for Android and iOS in 2021 by Pokémon Go developer Niantic and Nintendo as another “go outside and touch grass” app, and I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since then. Only recently, when the app announced some special events for its 2.5-year anniversary, did it occur to me how long I’ve actually stuck with it. There isn’t all that much to Pikmin Bloom, but that’s part of the charm — it’s more of a walking buddy than a full-on game. You accumulate Pikmin, feed them nectar so they’ll grow flowers from their heads, then pick the petals and use those to “plant flowers” when you go on walks (don’t think too hard about the science of that, it’s Pikmin).
Unlike Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom doesn’t require a lot of your attention while you’re walking around, which really appealed to me as someone who likes to stay fully aware of their surroundings while out and about. That, and the promise of being accompanied wherever I go by a horde of quietly singing Pikmin; I just love those weird little guys.
I typically get everything set up before I leave for a walk, making sure I have plenty of petals ready to plant. Then I hit the ‘Start’ button and mostly leave the app alone until I take a break or am done with my walk, checking in only here and there to see if I’ve passed anything of interest. You can send your Pikmin on expeditions to pick up fruit or destroy mushrooms that’ll pop up on your map, but you don’t need to be actively walking to do this, as they’ll be recorded on a list you can revisit later. Once I’m back home, I love seeing how many flowers I planted versus how many steps I took (I still haven’t figured out the ratio), and delegating different missions for my Pikmin to tackle.
There are frequent events that serve as motivation for reaching certain step count goals or planting a particular number of flowers, including some with community involvement. And, there's the prospect of collecting themed Pikmin who wear special decor outfits. Pikmin Bloom is currently teasing some upcoming Cheese Decor Pikmin for next month, and I’m going to work extra hard to try and get them. While the app does have the potential to lure players into in-app purchases, they’re by no means necessary to get the full experience. I’ve managed to make it this far without spending any money at all.
Pikmin Bloom has an AR component similar to Pokémon Go’s, so you can photograph your Pikmin in the real world, but this feature can be pretty glitchy. What’s better than that, in my opinion, are the postcards your Pikmin will sometimes bring back from their travels — they’ve been known to photobomb landmarks in these pictures on occasion. If you have friends in the app, you can send postcards to them too. Pikmin Bloom also has a built-in lifelog, where you can choose a picture from your walk and jot down any notes and feelings from your day. It’s a nice thing to look back on once you’ve racked up a lot of adventures.
I’ve tried out plenty of apps over the years that attempt to gamify physical activity, but I almost always lose interest in them pretty quickly. For all its simplicity, Pikmin Bloom adds just the right amount of reward to a walk without distracting from the actual activity. Plus, there are Pikmin.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/pikmin-bloom-has-been-helping-me-meet-my-outdoor-walking-goals-for-years-000025214.html?src=rss
Russell T. Davies admits his writing eschews narrative formalism in favor of things that just feel right. Two decades ago, his critics pointed to his use of deus ex machina endings as a stick to beat his reputation with. But we’re in a different era now, where vibes matter just as much as logic — both inside the show’s new more fantastic skew, and in the real world. “73 Yards” is the vibiest episode of new Doctor Who so far, but I even found it easy to sit back and enjoy what it was doing.
Doctor Who is a complicated show to make, and some series have started production on Day 1 a week or more behind schedule. To combat this, the show started making “-lite” episodes that didn’t need the leads to be as involved. There are “Doctor-lite” episodes like “Love and Monsters” and “Blink,” and even “companion-lite” episodes like “Midnight.” This production process enables the star, or stars, to be off shooting Episode A while a guest cast takes the spotlight for the bulk of Episode B.
Production of the new series began while star Ncuti Gatwa was still finishing the last of his work on Netflix’s Sex Education. So while he appears in the opening and closing moments of "73 Yards", he’s otherwise absent as the Doctor has been erased from history. It gives us the chance to see what a modern companion would do if left stranded in uncertain territory without her alien ally. The episode takes hard turns from folk and rural horror to kitchen-sink drama before becoming a light homage to Taxi Driver. Suffice to say, this is another episode you wouldn’t watch with small kids.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
The TARDIS lands on a cliff edge in Wales, with the Doctor pointing out it’s another liminal space where magic is allowed to creep in. He even mentions the war between the “land and the sea,” name-checking a rumored spin-off fans discovered after scouring production documents. The Doctor talks about how great a country Wales is, except for Roger ap Gwillam, a Welsh politician who, two decades hence, will lead the UK to the brink of nuclear armageddon. He then steps into a fairy ring, disturbing its web, and disappears while Ruby reads the paper notes tied to it. The notes mention a Mad Jack, a scary figure that sounds like a villain from folklore.
Suddenly, Ruby is alone on the cliff but can now see the blurry figure of an old woman waving her arms at her in the distance. Ruby tries to approach her but the figure remains the same distance away (the titular 73 yards) no matter where she goes. Believing the Doctor has ghosted her, she tries to solve the quandary of this figure on her own. Ruby approaches a hiker (Susan Twist) and tries to work out where she’s seen her before (every episode thus far), but can’t quite put her finger on it. She asks the hiker if she’d be willing to speak to the old woman who is following her, but when the hitchhiker gets there, whatever she says is so horrifying that she sprints away from the scene in terror.
Ruby heads to a pub in the nearby town where the locals mock her — mistaking her hesitancy for condescension. She asks one of the patrons to go speak to the woman and, when he does, the same thing happens. Ruby gets home and asks her mum to try, this time holding a phone so Ruby can hear what she’s saying. But the phone call is disrupted and her mum is similarly horrified by what she hears — locking Ruby out of her home soon after. Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT are next to offer aid, right up until they encounter the woman, when they all abandon her.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
All the time, the old woman remains 73 yards away from wherever Ruby is, unnoticed by everyone else unless Ruby directs their attention to her. She can’t photograph the woman's face — it's blurry — and can’t get close enough to hear her ominous warning. In fact, even to the end of the episode, there’s a lot of unknowns that are never resolved.
Ruby’s strangely resilient, and once she’s gotten beyond the abandonment, she looks to build a new life for herself. She treats her stalker as a friend, wishing her well as we cycle through a montage of the next chapter of Ruby’s life. She gets a job, moves into her own flat and goes through a series of breakups as she gently ages past 30, and then 40. Then, on the TV, she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, who even mentions Mad Jack, and remembers both the Doctor’s warning and the messages in the fairy ring. It takes Ruby no time at all to be sure that her purpose in life is to save the world, and to avert Gwillam’s nuclear catastrophe.
She signs up to Gwillam’s fascist political party as a volunteer and eventually reaches a position where she’s close to the top. Gwillam’s rise is quick and it’s not long before he’s promising to secede from NATO and put his itchy trigger finger on the UK’s nuclear arsenal, ready to wage war on the rest of the world. Gwillam’s inauguration will take place at Cardiff City Stadium, while Ruby follows the politician along, lurking in the crowd.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
Ruby then starts to approach Gwillam, walking across the off-limits pitch at the stadium, and you expect her to pull out a weapon. But instead, she whips out her phone and starts measuring the distance between her and Roger until she reaches 73 yards. When she does, she gestures to the villain to notice the woman, and when he notices her, he hears the horrifying thing she says. The shock is enough to send Gwillam racing out of the stadium, resigning from the role of Prime Minister and preventing nuclear armageddon.
But while Ruby hoped that would be the end of it, the figure remains with her for the rest of her life. It’s only on her deathbed she realizes she can project herself back in time to act as a warning for the Doctor to not step in the fairy ring. She does so, preventing the accident in the first place and paradoxically nullifying the entire time stream in the process. History carries on its merry way and all is well… for now. But given the risks of paradoxes in Doctor Who, and the general sense that history is unraveling, it might not augur too well for what’s going to happen in the future.
Bad Wolf / BBC Studios
“73 Yards” is an exercise in putting your character in a hostile world and seeing what they’ll do to deal with it. It’s an episode that, when written down, doesn’t feel like a lot happens, because so much of its runtime is an exploration of Ruby as a character. Doctor Who thrives when the companion role is occupied by someone who wants to grab a fistful of narrative for themselves. And Ruby Sunday seems almost too perfect in her ability to draw out the logic from what she’s experienced and work within it.
Much as you can draw narrative and thematic parallels between the new series and Davies’ original tenure, this episode pulls from “Turn Left.” Both tell the story of what happens to a companion when the Doctor is withdrawn from the narrative and what they do to fix that wrong. And it’s no surprise both suggest that the UK, without the intervention of the Doctor, is only a few days away from tipping over into fascism.
Ruby’s humanity shines, even to the point where she’s trying to treat her tormentor with care. She refuses to fly, or travel by boat, lest she endanger the life of the apparition that’s following her, despite how much damage it causes to her life. And when she sees Roger ap Gwillam on the TV, she’s certain that her destiny is to prevent the nuclear armageddon the Doctor warned her about. This is another useful thread — the idea that Ruby has an instinctive grasp of the genre she exists in — much as she did in “Space Babies.”
As for the ending, it’s probably best we talk about those “vibes,” or the sort of slightly skewed associations in the show’s logic. Ruby, at the end of her life, realizes that she’s able to travel, or project herself somehow, through time to avert the Doctor’s fall. There’s nothing in the episode that points to it, no hint that the ghostly figure is Ruby, or if this is tied to the snow or anything else. But perhaps, the trick to an episode like this is simply to let yourself relax and enjoy seeing the character evolve, rather than anything more.
Susan Twist Corner
Obviously, Susan Twist plays the hiker that Ruby first encounters after the Doctor disappears and, for the first time, Ruby notices the familiarity. In the materials that Disney sends along that Susan Twist’s character is named the “mystery woman.”
And on the subject of twists, you’ll recall at the end of “Church on Ruby Road” that, in the post-credits, Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) breaks the fourth wall. The annoying neighbor character, who lives next to Ruby’s mum’s flat, turns to the camera and asks if we’ve “Never seen a TARDIS before?” (Given her surprise at seeing it earlier in the episode, it’s clear her history may have been changed during the course of the show.) When Ruby heads back to her mum’s house, Anita Dobson’s Mrs Flood is back sitting on her step with her deckchair out. Interestingly, when she notices the ghostly figure — and Ruby and her Mum’s attempts to deal with it, she declares that it’s “nothing to do with me” and goes inside. Which, again, feels like a hint that Mrs Flood and the mystery woman are separate
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/doctor-who-73-yards-review-dont-stand-so-close-to-me-000018703.html?src=rss
YouTube Music for Android is finally releasing a long-awaited tool that lets people hum a song to search for it, in addition to singing the tune or playing the melody on an instrument, according to reporting by 9to5Google. The software has been in the testing phase since March.
All you have to do is tap the magnifying glass in the top-right corner and look for the waveform icon next to the microphone icon. Tap the waveform icon and start humming or singing. A fullscreen results page should quickly bring up the cover art, song name, artist, album, release year and other important data about the song. The software builds upon the Pixel’s Now Playing feature, which uses AI to “match the sound to the original recording.”
The tool comes in a server-side update with version 7.02 of YouTube Music for Android. There doesn’t look to be any availability information for the iOS release, though it’s most likely headed our way in the near future.
You don't need to be @KidCudi to use Hum to Search. Hum a song into your Google app, and we'll identify it for you. Test it with your favorite songs, or use it to figure out the song that's been stuck in your head and find your new favorite. 🎶 pic.twitter.com/MluVNesTpE
This type of feature isn’t exactly new, even if it’s new to YouTube Music. Google Search rolled out a similar tool back in 2020 and the regular YouTube app began offering something like this last year. Online music streaming platform Deezer also has a “hum to search” tool, released back in 2022.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/you-can-now-hum-to-find-a-song-on-youtube-music-for-android-190037510.html?src=rss
Challengers, the tennis movie starring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor, is not the first movie you'd think of for visual effects. But the film uses them to a surprising extent: One shot in particular, a 24-second volley between two of the protagonists from the perspective of the ball, used extensive digital and practical effects, as VFX supervisor Brian Drewes explained on X.
The live plates were shot with an Arri Alexa LF on a 30-foot technocrane during a period of five hours with stunt doubles, according to Drewes. 23 individual shots were stitched together to create the final sequence.
Love it or hate it, you have to admit, it’s a new way to see tennis!
I oversaw all VFX on Challengers and thanks to great direction from Luca and amazing artists @ZeroVFX it’s unlike any sports movie ever made!
"Highly detailed LiDAR and photogrammetry scans of the tennis court environment were captured to help create the final models. 100+ actors and background extras were also photoscanned to populate the stands of our CG environment," according to Drewes.
After that, CG was used to smooth camera motion and correct time of day changes. The stunt doubles' faces were then replaced "with a combination of full CG heads and additional photography," Drewes added.
So why do all that? The sequence appears designed to convey the speed, chaos and passion in the sport, matching the movie's overall themes. It's also just an interesting way to show would otherwise be a routine tennis match.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/challengers-vfx-artists-show-how-they-did-that-tennis-ball-pov-scene-120523596.html?src=rss
Meta and Google are offering Hollywood studios millions of dollars with the hope of striking licensing deals that could improve their models for AI-generated video, according to a new report in Bloomberg. The companies have reportedly offered “tens of millions of dollars,” though it’s unclear what will come from the talks.
According to the report, Netflix and Disney “aren’t willing to license their content” but have “expressed interest in other types of collaborations.” Warner Brothers Discovery has reportedly indicated “a willingness to license some of its programs.”
A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment. Google didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The companies, it seems, are hoping such deals would help advance their video generation tools. Google recently showed off a text-to-video model, called Veo, and tapped Donald Glover to promote its capabilities. Meta is also researching AI-generated video.
There’s been something of an arms race among AI firms to forge licensing deals with media companies. OpenAI and NewsCorp announced a multi-year deal to bring news content to ChatGPT earlier this week. Meta is also considering paying publishers to access “news, photo and video content” to train its AI models, Business Insiderreported.
But, as Bloomberg points out, Hollywood studios may have some reservations about such deals. Though AI-editing tools may be appealing, there has been widespread concern in the entertainment industry about how AI companies might use their creative work. That tension burst into full view this week when Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of copying her voice for its “Sky” assistant in ChatGPT after she declined to partner with the company herself. OpenAI has denied claims that it tried to mimic her voice, though the company has yet to explain that one Sam Altman tweet.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/meta-and-google-want-to-make-ai-deals-with-hollywood-studios-220033138.html?src=rss
The Justice Department and 30 state and district attorneys general are attempting to break up Ticketmaster owner Live Nation. They claim in an antitrust suit filed in the Southern District of New York that the company has created an unlawful monopoly over the live entertainment industry. The suit argues that Live Nation has harmed fans, promoters and artists as its dominance has led to imposing higher ticket prices while stifling innovation and competition.
Live Nation owns and/or operates many venues and festivals. It also sells tickets to concerts and festivals, and manages many of the artists who play at them.
“We allege that Live Nation relies on unlawful, anticompetitive conduct to exercise its monopolistic control over the live events industry in the United States at the cost of fans, artists, smaller promoters and venue operators,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The result is that fans pay more in fees, artists have fewer opportunities to play concerts, smaller promoters get squeezed out and venues have fewer real choices for ticketing services. It is time to break up Live Nation-Ticketmaster.”
The DOJ claims that Live Nation established a dominant position by pushing artists to use its services and threatening possible competitors in the live music promotion space. The company is also accused of locking venues into long, exclusive contracts that prevent them from using alternative (and perhaps less expensive) ticketing platforms. The Justice Department says Live Nation handles about 60 percent of concert promotions at major venues in the US, as well as approximately 80 percent of primary ticketing at major concert venues.
According to the lawsuit, Live Nation sought to lock out competitors and protect its so-called "flywheel" model. The DOJ describes this as a "self-reinforcing business model that captures fees and revenue from concert fans and sponsorship, uses that revenue to lock up artists to exclusive promotion deals, and then uses its powerful cache of live content to sign venues into long term exclusive ticketing deals, thereby starting the cycle all over again."
A merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster got the green light from the DOJ in 2010, but the deal was subject to some conditions. After the Justice Department found in 2019 that Live Nation violated a condition that banned it from threatening venues that chose to use a Ticketmaster competitor, the agency extended the consent decree by five years to 2025.
In a statement, Live Nation rejected the assertion that it held a monopoly. "The defining feature of a monopolist is monopoly profits derived from monopoly pricing," it said. "Live Nation in no way fits the profile. Service charges on Ticketmaster are no higher than elsewhere, and frequently lower."
The company argued that breaking it up wouldn't lead to lower ticket prices or service fees. It claims that concert promoters and ticketing companies don't control ticket prices, which have been driven higher by increased production costs and the growing popularity of artists. Live Nation also states that Ticketmaster "retains only a modest portion" of service fees and that its market share has decreased in recent years.
Other parts of the government have put Live Nation and Ticketmaster in their sightlines. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that would force Ticketmaster and other ticketing companies to show the total price of tickets to buyers up front. There's a separate bill in the Senate that seeks to make ticket pricing more transparent too. Along similar lines, the Federal Trade Commission, has proposed a rule to ban junk fees that companies including Ticketmaster add to the total price at checkout. For their part, Live Nation and Ticketmaster said last year that they'd start showing customers the total price of tickets at the jump.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ticketmaster-owner-sued-by-doj-and-30-attorneys-general-over-alleged-monopoly-160153725.html?src=rss
Starliner, the Boeing-made vehicle intended to carry the next generation of astronauts, has had its launch scrubbed once again. NASA called off the maiden crewed launch after a number of key engineering faults were discovered, and has declined to announce a new test date. Until then, the two personnel expected to soar into the heavens will just have to standby and hope that engineers are able to address the flaws with the Boeing-made craft.
Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI of using a soundlike when she wouldn’t lend her voice to one of its products. Now, the company has fired back, claiming that its courting of the actress took place long after the “Sky” voice had been cast, and that nothing sinister went down here. Even though OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted “her” as a reference to the character ScarJo played in the movie of the same name.
Disney+ has greenlit a standalone show for Marvel’s Vision, as reported by Variety. Paul Bettany will return to portray everyone’s favorite android/synthezoid and reporting indicates that the story will pick up after the events of WandaVision. We have a long time to wait, however, as it won’t air on the streaming platform until 2026.
This tracks with Disney CEO Bob Iger’s recent announcement that it would start being much more picky when it comes to Marvel content. The current plan is to reduce the number of shows from four per year to two.
As for Vision, it’s not being helmed by Jacqueline Schaeffer, who created WandaVision. Showrunning duties fall to Terry Matalas. He created the criminally underrated 12 Monkeys TV show and acted as showrunner for the final season of Star Trek: Picard, which was miles better than those early seasons. Schaeffer was working on an earlier version of the concept before moving to the forthcoming spinoff Agatha All Along.
While the presence of Matalas may be good news for Marvel fans, it’s bad news for Star Trek fans. Ever since the breakout success of Picard’s final season, fans have been pushing Paramount to greenlight a show they have been calling “Star Trek Legacy” with Matalas at the helm. This would be a continuation that follows the events of Picard season three, spotlighting Star Trek: Voyager’s Seven of Nine and other returning characters from the 1990s era of the franchise. Now that Matalas has been snatched up by Marvel, this is unlikely to happen. Between that and the recent cancellation of Star Trek: Lower Decks, it looks like 90s Trek is just about over and done with.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/theres-a-new-vision-show-coming-to-disney-with-paul-bettany-185730521.html?src=rss
This story contains discussions of sexual violence.
Multiple scenes from INDIKA are seared into my brain. A palm-sized person crawls out of a nun’s mouth and runs down her arm, frenzied, in the middle of a Catholic ritual. A man is suspended in the air, his torso impaled on a strip of curling rebar, while a guitarist gently encourages him to die. Dozens of bus-sized fish dangle on rotating spits above a blazing silo. The mangled head of a feral dog flops repeatedly against the gears of a mill, neck limp and tongue lolling. The sudden glimpse of a demon: gray skin, too many arms and joints bent the wrong way, bug-like and hulking. When I move, it moves.
Back at home in front of my PC, my skin prickles with goosebumps. INDIKA generates visceral reactions effortlessly and always with a tinge of surprise. It’s a (mostly) third-person narrative adventure set in an alternative 19th century Russia, and it stars an ostracized nun, Indika, who has the devil’s voice in her head. From this foundation, the game offers a flurry of whimsical absurdity and raw human suffering, and even as its visual and mechanical styles shift from scene to scene, everything comes together in a cohesive package. INDIKA is a masterful example of maturity in video games.
Odd Meter
The devil is Indika’s constant companion. As she travels from her convent to deliver a letter in another village, the voice in her head gleefully vocalizes her cruelest thoughts and points out the hypocrisies built into Catholicism, her chosen religion. The devil speaks like he’s narrating a children’s book, a Rumpelstiltskin glee dripping from every syllable as he tells Indika how weak, unloved and naive she is. Indika debates him and, at a few points, he splinters reality around her, opening deep cracks in the scenery, revealing new pathways and filling the world with a red glow. Players can hold down a button to pray, keeping his machinations at bay. To progress in these scenes, Indika has to shift between the devil’s reality and her own, inviting him in at specific moments to make use of his hellish platforms. Indika becomes more comfortable with the devil in her mind as the game progresses, and the “press X to pray” moments are just the first examples of their uneasy alliance.
As a piece of religious criticism, INDIKA plays all the hits. Its jokes about the manipulation, hypocrisy and rigid inhumanity of Catholicism are clear and sharp, though not particularly revelatory. The devil's laughing tone makes every line sound like a lullaby, and to my ears — an atheist who grew up Catholic and was extremely confused by the gaudy, culty exclusion being preached every Sunday — INDIKA is soul-soothing. The game never fully explains whether Indika is experiencing a psychotic break or is truly possessed by the devil in this world; everything exists in the gray area where both of these states meet. Psychosis or Satan, it’s all incredibly real to Indika.
INDIKA is underpinned by a delirious tension between levity and agony, and the developers at Odd Meter got the rhythm just right. Indika’s reality is a frozen hellscape filled with pain, betrayal and isolation, but it also has laugh-out-loud moments that feel more like a rom-com than a psychodrama about a sad nun. The game also slips into a lighter visual style as it delves into her past, mining memories out of pixelated platformers in sun-drenched environments. These contrast sharply against the 3D brutalism of the main scenes, and they’re incredibly engaging, offering smooth jumps with tricky timings.
Odd Meter
This is a game that requires an escape every now and then, and moments of reprieve are built into its progression, perfectly positioned to ease the anxiety as it reaches a fever pitch.
About a quarter of the way through the game, Indika encounters a blood-chilling scene: Through the crack of a doorway, she sees and hears a man attempting to rape a woman, scuffles and screams spilling into the hallway. Indika freezes, accidentally makes a noise, and then hides in a closet as the assaulter turns his attention toward the interruption. The devil taunts Indika — "Did you see the size of that thing?" and "Maybe you wanted to join them?" — as the man searches for her. The danger of the situation bursts through the screen, heavy and white-hot.
This is horror.
Minutes later, Indika is driving a steampunk motorcycle with a trailer full of corpses down a winding path, an unexpected friend perched on the bodies behind her, throwing out cheeky one-liners. Suddenly, it feels like the beginning of a buddy-cop movie. The shift in tone is a huge relief, and this balance of extremes is something that INDIKA does with incredible deftness, time and time again. The (first) sexual assault scene is quick and powerful, showing enough to drive home the depravity of the situation without becoming gratuitous. After I played through it, I took a deep breath, collected myself, and then dove back into the game, eager to uncover more of its commentary. The handling of this topic increased my trust in the developers’ artistic instincts and their ability to reveal the nature of true terror; it made me more invested in the rest of the game.
Odd Meter
Of all the memorable visuals in INDIKA, one remains particularly vibrant in my mind’s eye. Indika is kneeling in a prison cell and a guard enters alone, his intentions clear. He puts his hand on the back of Indika’s head and reality breaks like it often does in this game — but this time it’s softer, slower and all-encompassing. The screen becomes a red pool, and in the center, Indika and the devil float around each other like amoebae in a petri dish, quietly discussing the injustices of human existence. Indika dissociates while her body experiences violence, and the scene lingers on the red womb, providing space for players to absorb the situation from an artistic and philosophical distance. It’s authentic and powerful. It’s oddly calming.
INDIKA stands out for these moments of sexual violence, each so delicately handled. The video game industry in particular is built on a foundation of physical violence — guns, war, blood and murder — but there aren’t many games that broach the subject of sexual abuse. This is largely for the best, as sexual violence is a topic that we’re still learning how to talk about on a cultural scale. It’s the ugliest side of humanity, the most uncomfortable to address, yet it’s pervasive. Sexual abuse is as worthy of compassionate discussion as gun violence, but for a multitude of societal and individual reasons, it’s much harder to look at directly.
Interactive media in particular can be a powerful vessel for immersion and revelatory storytelling. Sexual violence demands empathy if it’s going to be included in any piece of entertainment media, and this is particularly true in video games, where players are acting out the events, placing themselves in the character’s shoes, getting lost in their second-to-second actions. There’s high risk in telling a story about sexual abuse in a video game, and it’s not only about alienating or offending a portion of the audience. The risk lies in the potential to literally retraumatize players. Mishandling a topic like rape can be damaging and perpetuate harmful messages about power, autonomy and self-worth in the real world.
Odd Meter
The best outcome for creators who don’t know how to approach the topic is to leave it alone, and for the most part, video game developers have. The alternative — adding sexual violence to a game without understanding the cruelty of the act, using it for shock value or lazily turning it into a point of motivation for a separate character — will always be much more upsetting.
For example, Immortality. This is one of the few contemporary games that uses sexual violence as a plot point, and, to me, its lens feels lecherous rather than poignant. Immortality employs real-life actors and puts the abuse itself center-screen, using the guise of edgy commentary to let the camera linger on extended scenes of softly lit molestation, the woman’s body in greater focus than her pain. The sexual abuse in Immortality feels like voyeuristic fantasy.
INDIKA, on the other hand,centers the person receiving the violence and reveals the true horror of the act. INDIKA demonstrates how a video game can tell a strange and beautiful story that involves sexual abuse, and proves it can be done without overwhelming the narrative or flow. These scenes add layers of insight and emotional heft to Indika’s journey, revealing truths about her psyche and her world. It’s encouraging to see these themes explored so deftly in a piece of interactive art.
INDIKA is not solely about sexual violence. The bulk of the game is filled with puzzles, platforming and witty wordplay from the devil, and most of it plays out in engaging and ridiculous ways. Plenty of segments in INDIKA are downright jovial, with a warped sense of humor that reminds me of Alice in Wonderland (or, more appropriately, American McGee’s Alice). However, it doesn’t shy away from the dark realities of Indika’s world, where rape is as pervasive as gun violence, war and religious oppression. The assault scenes — presented alongside running themes of death, manipulation, isolation, shame, guilt and cruelty — solidify one of INDIKA’s core messages: With a world like this, how much worse can Hell really be?
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/indika-weaves-a-mature-tale-of-absurdity-hypocrisy-and-sexual-violence-182019378.html?src=rss
The most notable item here is the Ooni Fyra 12 wood pellet pizza oven, which is $245 as part of the sale. This is a discount of 30 percent, or $105. That’s a fantastic deal for one of our very favorite pizza ovens. As an aside, Amazon has price-matched this particular deal, if you don’t feel like filling out payment information on yet another website.
The Fyra 12 won our award for the best compact pizza oven, and for good reason. It’s just over 20 pounds and doesn’t take up that much space when compared to rival models. It runs on wood pellets instead of chunks, so there’s much less tending to the fire. This oven excels with high-heat bakes, up to 950 degrees, which can fully cook a pizza in around a minute. This should provide plenty of char, which is pretty much the best part.
The compact footprint does have one downside. You see that “12” in the name? This oven maxes out at 12-inch pizzas. However, it can crank them out in a minute, so that’s two minutes for two pizzas. Delivery services used to brag about getting a pizza to your home in 30 minutes or less, but you could have 30 pies down the ole’ gullet by then.
Ooni’s sitewide sale isn’t just for pizza ovens, though there are plenty of them available. You can also snatch up discounted accessories, like charcoal, pizza steels, aprons and even branded t-shirts. The savings continue until May 27.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/oonis-memorial-day-sale-discounts-pizza-ovens-by-up-to-30-percent-152248317.html?src=rss