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vroenis · 4 years

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Lost Legacy Exemplifies Naughty Dog’s Cultural Crisis

There’s a discussion about Ocean’s 8 that positions its existence around whether or not it's necessary as a counterpoint to the Ocean’s reboot - the Ocean’s Cinematic Universe - if you will (what a world we live in) - that it was only made as a gender flip of the reboot that spawned two sequels, three films in total cast almost entirely with men.

My perspective is that as much as I generally enjoyed the Ocean’s reboots for what they were, Ocean’s Eleven should have been a cast entirely with women in the first place.

The heroes we both need and deserve.

Massive spoilers for the original 1960 Lewis Milestone version and the Steven Soderbergh one in 2001 of Ocean’s Eleven - Soderbergh’s flip is of-course that they get to keep the money at the end so that they have to potentially give it back in the sequel he knew he’d be able to make, whereas I doubt Milestone knew he’d ever get a sequel back in the early 60′s so the rub for film-making back then is to burn the money at the end. Nevertheless even for the early 2000′s, the boldest of moves would have been to cast it with women, not to be progressive but also to be progressive, tho that’s still an absurd thought that to cast women is progressive - but to be smart. Ocean’s 8 is a fantastic film, deftly written, paced, acted, shot and edited. Would the world have responded to it in like-kind? I know how *I* would have responded to it, I think you can answer for yourself how societal cultures may have responded at any point from 2001 thru to now. In any case, I have Ocean’s 8 on blu-ray. I love it.

A reader asked me whether I’d played Uncharted: The Lost Legacy after kindly reading through my bludgeoning of Uncharted 4, and seeing as they were patient enough to endure that blood-letting, I felt I owed them and probably Naughty Dog the time of day to give Uncharted-And-A-Half a chance, and I’m really glad I did. Fair warning, there’s a lot I didn’t like about Lost Legacy, and there’s going to be some more pain - a lot of pain. I don’t think any of my tumblr audience is quite on the rest of my socials, but anyone who’s connected to me anywhere else on the Wire was subject to my frustrations as I played thru the game on Saturday, including the blurred image of my Google Keep notes I took while playing the game in preparation for this journal. I keep notes now.

Nevertheless, I can say that on the assumption that the Uncharted series is wrapped, or at least in the narrative arc with these characters as we know them, that Lost Legacy is easily without question my favourite Uncharted game by far.

On that assumption that Uncharted is more or less done, now’s as good a time as any to take a top-down look at the franchise as a whole. I know I already did a fair bit of that in the last piece, but some broader thoughts on what the series does and says have solidified while playing Lost Legacy, and I’ll discuss them as a lead-in to my thoughts on the game.

Again - this is going to be riddled with spoilers for Uncharted: The Lost Legacy and most likely the entire Uncharted series, so if you’ve not played them and are interested in doing so, or don’t want to see them heavily critiqued, please stop here.

The first game was released in 2007 and was apparently in development for roughly three years. What was happening up to and around 2004 to 2007? September 11 had happened in 2001, the world was at war in the Middle East in Afghanistan and second invasion of Iraq had begun in 2003, Hurricane Katrina happened in 2005 - the same year the IRA ended armed conflict in Northern Ireland, 2005 saw the outbreak of H5N1 Avian Flu - topical right now. There are so many more, I can’t list them all here - lots of momentous events that in some way or another highlight community awareness in some way - that’s probably a bit of an obtuse statement but hopefully it’ll string together in a sec. What struck me and a bunch of my friends odd about the first, then the second and then somehow every Uncharted game since, is that Naughty Dog seem to choose an ethnicity for their antagonists and scratch the surface of “what if this element of their cultural violence is bad”, but then leave it so shallow that it remains a caricature and comes off as casually and carelessly racist. The first game frames the theme around Nazis, but the actual enemies are anything but. Yes, they’re intended to be mercenaries, but they’re hardly nondescript, they’re absolutely of very specific ethnicity.

From the second game onward, Naughty Dog seem to want to make use of real world settings and do some nuanced research on actual sociopolitical conflict and I always feel uneasy about how its presented. Lost Legacy begins much the same way and I worried about the tone going in. An active war-zone in India as gravitas to your setting that is then almost completely abandoned until the very end? This is my problem with how the writers treat setting in Uncharted. They use very real conflicts that have real-world consequences for people in which actual lives are lost to inject gravity into their narrative and then quickly discard it for the sake of shenanigans once the wise-cracking starts when the tone shifts gear and the characters themselves take centre-stage in the foreground.

Here’s the thing.

The character’s are enough. I *love* these characters. Their story is fantastic. Nadine’s and Chloe’s story was the best and most cohesive of the entire series. Also it only took me roughly six hours to play thru and I only feel like half of that was wasted! That’s still probably being too generous but I’m grasping for positives, here. Still - I don’t know why the senior production team has never had confidence in the core of their product which is the charm of their characters and the play dynamic - Uncharted is primarily about *seeing* and *doing* - for the most part, unfortunately, separately.

The dialogue between Chloe and Nadine is extremely interesting, it is absolutely the best thing in the game, yet it keeps getting interrupted by stupid gameplay beats due to poor timing of rolling up on level locations. Uncharted 4 was supposed to have locations hidden around levels where you could engage in dialogue between characters but I barely found them - why hide such interesting content in your game?? It’s completely absurd. Then the only few I did find were between Elena and Nathan altho I really don’t think those were meant to be hidden, and they were so poorly written and I hated them so much, I didn’t care to discover any more. Again - no disrespect at all to Nolan North and Troy Baker whom I absolutely adore and respect, but I didn’t find anything engaging or interesting *at all* about the brother narrative. I didn’t care one bit what that nonsense was about. What about Sully? Where’s Sully’s story?? I’m just so - so glad we got a story for Chloe, and that at least Nadine got some great screen time too as a part of it and that it all presented so well.

Before I continue to praise what went well, there are a few things I can’t let pass. While the driving has thankfully improved and controls quite well now, the exclusion of a minimap or GPS HUD element is interesting. I’m fairly certain it’s intentional as to not detract from the game’s clean, cinematic look, to not break immersion, but this just generates a horrific breakdown in actual player experience for me. Without any navigational assists, I constantly got lost and stopped every 20 meters to check the map, frequently driving into dead-ends, off cliffs and past where I wanted or needed to go. The game isn’t a 30 hour open-world experience with distinct and varied landmarks the player will familiarise themselves with and learn to navigate by, for the most part the level is fairly homogeneous in object geometry.

Some of the puzzles take far too long to mechanically execute, in particular the smashy-slashy statue block jumpy stupid whatever it’s called one and the sliding shadow motif. It doesn’t matter that neither actually takes too long once you know the solution, it’s that they feel long and then are actually over-long and also not interesting to mechanically execute. This is due mostly to clunky character animation and animation smoothing, and part of Naughty Dog’s overall obsession with being cinematic which is something I’ll return to towards the end of this piece, something which has been a strength but will ultimately be to their detriment. While cinematic visuals might be a benefit for traversal, it’s something that absolutely does not suit puzzle-solving. In the example of the statue-block puzzle, the hard reset each time the player is hit means laboriously jogging all the way back to the beginning and starting again - it’s just poor puzzle design having to begin again from a full reset. There’s no satisfaction in having to remember the whole thing and while I didn’t look up the solution online, I’m willing to bet many people will have just dialled up a clip on YouTube and copied it without figuring it out themselves. This is a failure of connecting what’s satisfying about moving in your game and what’s satisfying about solving puzzles, something Crystal Dynamics understood far better in the Tomb Raider reboots, in particular the second outing (Rise of) with their much more environment-centric puzzling.

The sliding shadow puzzle just simply takes way too long to jog around the space, then clip onto the hot-zone for each lever, wait for the animation to lift it, wait for the animation for the pieces to slide, rinse, repeat. Once you know what you have to do, it’s overly frustrating actually having to do it.

It brings me to a weird quirk of design where the puzzle designers perhaps don’t understand something that the environmental designers do. Maybe they didn’t get the same little notes in the Slack channel, or Trello board or Teams pin or whatever. Uncharted level-design has almost no back-tracking, less in each successive game, and it’s almost entirely absent from Lost Legacy - you’d have to look closely to realise you’re navigating the same area you came in thru and almost always moving over it in a different way that’s been modified - now it’s flooded, now there’s a bridge, now you’re swinging or leaping or climbing where you weren’t etc. I feel like this is the Hidetaka Miyazaki Souls/Borne effect of level design in which environments are designed to be both realistic and practical.

Great! Good for the level designers. Did the puzzle designers not get that note? Maybe they did. I need to stop thinking that every poor optimisation is a symptom of ignorance - that’s bad form on my part. What’s more likely is it’s a symptom of either bad leadership, poor tool implementation, lack of time or too narrow or strict an observation of representative vision - by which I mean - they can’t change the way the characters move or animate just for puzzles, because it has to be consistent with the cinematic representation of the game as a whole - and that sucks lemons. It means the overall play experience suffers for the sake of the overall cinematic experience except executing a puzzle isn’t cinematic unless it’s expansive...

Like the positive example I’ll give of the light reflector room. Shoplifted from Uncharted 2′s giant knife that has Nathan climb all over a giant knife, Lost Legacy’s light reflector room has slightly less climbing but is a much larger space, more impressive and a much better example of good puzzling in Uncharted. It’s not difficult to solve but again (I think again?) I’ll argue that you don’t come to Uncharted for difficult puzzles - you don’t come to Tomb Raider for difficult puzzles, either.

The puzzles in these games should be mostly environmental because they feel good solving them, and solving them should be more about the doing - the playing - and the playing should be moving - running, jumping, climbing etc.

Both the giant knife and the reflector room are a joy to execute because they’re fantastically realised - large cavernous environments that aren’t annoying to navigate, that give you time to appreciate both the scale of the spaces and the details the designers and artists have put into them. Lost Legacy’s is more impressive because you do a lot more puzzling and spend much more time in its vastly larger space, culminating in combat that usually I would be ho-hum about, but I guess exhibits more animation and destruction tech which while scripted, is still impressive nonetheless given how extremely difficult it is to have interactivity still occurring.

I have a few things I want to mention before I begin to wrap up, given it’s going to be a very long wrap - I’d say I’m taking cues from Joseph Anderson but I’ve always been this verbose.

The medallion puzzles were excellent, in part perhaps because they felt like the closest thing to the Tomb Raider reboots’ challenge tombs. Some of them were silly and lazily implemented, the worst offender being you just had to shoot mans and get the medallion from the lock-box that the mans had put it in (pfft), but the best ones were integrated into the environment such that you may well have walked past or thru areas that were puzzles before you knew what they were. This brings up one of the most interesting things I’ve been turning over for quite some time now. Ben Croshaw aka Yahtzee aka Zero Punctuation may have first mentioned “chest high walls” in his first Gears of War video, but it may well have been an Uncharted game. I don’t remember but he will have thrown in mentions of all the generic cover-shooters as a catch-all for how the environments immediately telegraph that Combat™ will happen. It’s a particularly astute remark and speaks volumes of video game design - developers always seem to have very specific design language to separate traversal, combat and puzzling. While I clearly don’t care for combat most days, and yes - I do acknowledge there are some practical concerns for combat that can’t be avoided, I always envisaged design that blurred the lines between puzzle and environment so that you never quite knew what was and wasn’t a puzzle. Everything should be the puzzle. In some senses, Cyan’s old Myst games were a bit like this but in a very rudimentary and crude way - sure, they’re quite old now, but even those had very clear not puzzle areas. It’s a complex and subtle subject, but something of a study of games like Fireproof Games’ The Room would be in order. Understandably smaller scale, but the thinking behind it is definitely adjacent.

Final notes - the young Indian girl in the prologue has amazing animations that you’ll miss entirely unless you swing the camera yourself. A whole team of people or a single animator has spent hours on those animations - that a director or team leader hasn’t forced the player to see and appreciate them is a disservice.

Every section where you have to do something under pressure like run from mans shooting at you or dash through a lengthy section of crumbling cave network etc. is a horrible play experience of not knowing where to go. They’re trying to inject excitement by applying pressure but there’s no clear guidance and no dependence on player skill, so you end in bizarre fail-states due to going in completely the wrong direction that glitches cameras or scene time-outs resulting in check-points and the whole thing just doesn’t scan as a cinematic experience. I hate hate hate them - you’re subject to the same musical swell that’s supposed to be like a movie only to fail again and it comes off as b-grade and pathetic. Every game has had this problem and it is just straight bad design.

Three? Four? Games in a row, Naughty Dog have recycled;

being pursued on foot by an armoured vehicle crashing through level geometry while you have to run and occasionally shoot/fight mans,

driving down a shanty-town on a hill pursued by an armoured vehicle - perhaps the same one as previous scene

a big chase scene of lots of vehicles jumping from vehicle to vehicle shooting and/or punching mans that may or may not include...

a train combat sequence where you start at the back of the train and work your way to the front of it shooting mans as you go

This lacks creativity at this point. I think duplicating these once each - so you do them twice total across the franchise is fine, but they hit the same beats in the same way - exactly - every time they appear. It just strikes me as Naughty Dog just not knowing what else to do. At one point, I think it was in Uncharted 4, when driving down the shanty-town on the hill, I literally had a brain-fart not knowing which game I was playing because I swear we did it in 2 and 3. Did we do it in 3?? Look, I don’t know. But it’s getting old. At least we didn’t do it in Lost Legacy, but we did the train and I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough of doing the same things in the same way. It could have been a train but it should have been in a way that just wasn’t just another Uncharted train. It hasn’t worn thin, it’s worn out.

Overall, the games look great... but playing them feels like they’re stuck in PS2 and early PS3 era philosophies, like Naughty Dog haven’t evolved and don’t realise that people’s brains function much quicker and can process more, or that the media we consume, the games we play function at a higher level and we can digest more, we’re capable of processing higher functions. I’ve been playing Ubisoft’s The Division 2 and enjoying it more the more I play, much to my surprise. I understand the intent behind the gameplay is extremely different to the single-player experience of Uncharted, however there are some parallels in what it achieves animation wise;

The Division is also a cover shooter but of-course as a multiplayer, open-world live-service game, its intent is to telegraph to the player that the entire environment is a permanent play-space in which to always be playing. It utilises an information-rich GUI that is an always-on system with button icons telling the player what button to press over what surfaces to snap to, vault over, climb up, run to (and snap to cover), open and loot, interact with etc. I don’t know if these can be turned off but I like them on. It’s a pretty amazing feat that almost every environmental object has been mapped as a snap-to-cover and/or climbable object. For this reason, the character movement in Division is pretty quick and snappy, however it still manages to have a decent degree of natural human kinetics in the character rigging which is amazing. This means if you move-off from standing still, there’s a slight delay as your “weight” shifts, same if you change direction. When I say “snap” to cover, it’s not actually instantaneous, your character makes a movement and takes time to do so, yet it’s still not sluggish. Somehow the developers have worked at fine-tuning a balance between not-instant, but not too slow.

This is something that even in Lost Legacy, I feel Naughty Dog simply can’t do. The animations are decent during play - they’re outstanding during cutscenes (we’re getting there), but character models have a really awkward relationship with the environment. They clip awkwardly with ladders and buttons and wheels - with puzzles and levers - getting the grappling hook to prompt is again better than Uncharted 4 but still not ideal. I had far fewer glitch-outs than 4 too, which was a significant improvement, but I still had to animate back and forth a few times to get into hot-zones appropriately and with character kinetics not quite right, it wasn’t exactly easy.

And again to be fair, this stuff is suuuuuper difficult. I don’t mean to talk about this stuff like it’s cooking instant ramen. It’s so freaking tough. Rigging and mapping interactive character models has to be one of the most stupendously difficult things a developer has to do - making it work with all that scripting, getting it to play nice with all those assets and lines and lines of coding for the full experience. I have so much respect for game developers and what an astronomical task it is. So when I say I prefer one development team’s product over another’s, I don’t mean to say that the other team is absolute garbage - there are so many things that might contribute to that final product and we have no idea what’s been going on at Naughty Dog. If the team leaders and producers say they’re happy or even if they don’t, and the decision is made to ship, there’s nothing more they can say or do.

If there was one thing I absolutely loved about this game, it was the two main characters and the story that was told about them. I can excuse the main text as the catalyst that brought them together - even to the point that it’s a story about Chloe ultimately deciding what’s important to her. My issue with this comes full circle with the setting being in a real world conflict. There’s a bit of white savour complex in there in that Asav might be the narrative’s antagonist, but he at least is local. It’s not clear exactly what Chloe’s ethnicity is and I’m not here to judge what her stakes are in it because clearly her character has a sense of home and place in India, but she certainly also has a complex sense of being an outsider. So the point is not to judge, but the game also is unclear on its positioning other than she’s the heroic vehicle of deliverance. See what I mean about theme? This is what I mean by you could have just as easily written almost an identical story about Nadine and Chloe, with very similar interactions, tension, redemption and resolve - even with an antagonist, conflict and a happy ending, but either treated real sociopolitical issues with better care or not set your game in them at all. I’m all for setting games in the real world, but if you’re going to do it, do it right. I’m not the person to ask.

I need to be careful not to direct that criticism at the base-level developers nor at Claudia Black who is the manifestation of Chloe’s voice because she does an amazing job of bringing her to life. The casting of Laura Bailey voicing a black South African Nadine was much more awkward given Nadine’s ethnicity wasn’t decided when she was cast - again that’s on Naughty Dog’s leadership, but I won’t knock Laura Bailey for it. It’s easy to say she should have resigned, perhaps she should have, that’s an economical question only Laura can answer and I’m sure it’s not an easy one. Suffice to say, VO work isn’t lucrative.

What a side-track.

I don’t think I ever cared about Nathan. I think I always cared about Elena, and not because WAIFU and also not because WHITE KNIGHT or whatever other bullshit reasons stupid alphagamerz will spit from their frontheads. Elena’s just more interesting, probably because Nathan is written like a design document and Elena’s written like a human being. Naughty Dog want to create a game about adventuring with lush expansive environments, shooty mcshooting and light puzzling. They want it to be cinematic and unrivalled in its quality and they have the smarts to build the tech around it, with Sony’s help. Backed by Sony money, they take VO seriously and do a great job at creating that cinematic experience, coupled with some above-par for video games narrative writing. The problem this introduces for me is Nathan’s raison d'être has to justify everything - action, tension, stupidity...

Nathan Drake really is the design document.

I feel like he’s just the unfortunate side-effect of being central to the game, and it’s typical of my character to just not dig the focus of things and get into subtexts a whole lot more. Often I get into things in the periphery, things adjacent - I don’t love or hate Shakespeare or for that matter Baz Luhrmann but Romeo + Juliet ‘96 is an amazing film and not at all because of the eponymous Romeo and Juliet and again, not for Leonardo di Caprio (spit!) or for Claire Danes (she can stay) but the absolutely divine cast of supporting characters (John Leguizamo will live in my heart forever oh baby).

That Nathan makes stupid decisions is already something that turns me off. That he makes poor decisions because... he’s an orphan? Because... he was bullied? Because... his brother left him? This is why he’s not transparent with his wife? Actually, he’s quite realistic. Except the people like him I’ve known in my life aren’t heroes - they’re pathetic or unreliable or abusive or dangerous. Elena is an adult. She’s not perfect either and that’s also great because neither am I. As a side character she has the conceit of being more nuanced, but as the contra to Nathan, she’s also mature versus his childishness. OOOOAAAAH EVERYONE LOVES A LOVEABLE MANBABY OOAAAH COMEON LIVE A LITTLE EVERYONE’S GOT A LITTLE CHILD STILL IN THEM SOMEWHERE yea fine, I get it, like I’ve said before, yes - he embodies the recklessness and playfulness in us, but that’s a confusing position for a game that frequently tries to ground itself in real world conflict to be taking. You’re reducing him to that but injecting complex and nuanced characters like Elena and now eventually both Chloe and Nadine? I’m telling you now - any male that doesn’t know when it’s appropriate to grow-up, when the time to set aside the playfulness and be TRUTHFUL AND TRANSPARENT WITH HIS PARTNER is a dangerous person and FUCK THAT NOISE. Nathan, as much as I do absolutely - make no mistake - adore Nolan North’s voicing - ends up being another Homer Simpson - as long as you laugh at his stupidity, you’ll excuse it, and you’ll excuse the hurt that’s done by it, and that shit doesn’t fly with me. His redemption was not earned. I say again - Elena should throw him into the sea.

Nadine ends up being a fantastic character, even if she’s given less narrative time, she’s a great example of her behaviour telling more story in contrast to Chloe getting to reveal her past and it’s nice to see them play off one another. I feel Nadine and Chloe as characters hit great story beats in ways Nathan didn’t get to with pretty much any of the other characters in four games - not Sully, not Elena, not his brother, not even Chloe - all told, we never actually get any back-story on Nathan and Chloe and I think we’re better off for it because I don’t care.

Having a quick squiz around tumblr reveals the obvious and rampant shipping of Nadine and Chloe and I couldn’t be happier. I think Naughty Dog knew what they were doing. There were so many moments. Those moments were for us. I think they were subtle enough that the fragile manbabies would have missed them but there’s no fooling us. Some of the babyboiz would have been seething thru their mouthbreething hairmouths and I’m sure probably took to the internet but that’s OK, they can remain unfucked incels for the rest of their lives or worse, serviced by whatever unwashed creatures want to dare fondle them in the dark. The elephant ride and that whole conversation was almost enough for me to forgive the absolute disaster that was Uncharted 4. It was given enough time to breathe, it was absolutely beautiful, and just when you thought they were going to terminate it and apologise for making things too awks, it concludes just perfectly and you get a phone picture that doesn’t have Nadine in frame, yet her presence in that picture is definite, pervasive and emotional. Again, some people may have completely missed it and maybe it chalks up to life experience, but as completely contrived as an artefact of complete fiction as that whole sequence might be, it was one of the most wonderfully tender moments ever created in a video game and I wonder if it makes the whole affair worth it.

In the Uncharted 4 piece, I threw in a few barbs about the most meaningful interactions, and in Lost Legacy, what I really loved was Chloe taking photos of things she thinks are beautiful and interesting on her phone, and feeding the elephant - these were the most meaningful interactions in the game. I love that the photos on the phone didn’t serve any gameplay utility at all, they were there because her character wanted to document her travels, because she thought what she was seeing was cool, and any time in the game, you could pull out your phone and look at what you’d seen. It was such a good and important decision to have the very first picture to be the Indian girl in the market, as that rather than the local conflict, does more to ground you and Chloe as a character in the setting. The game never forces you to look at it as a reminder, but you know it’s there.

I did steal these from the internet, sorry - so if they’re yours, let me know and I’ll be happy to take them down - this one in particular, seeing as it’s a photomode capture. I should have taken my own but I don’t do photomode caps on my first play-thru and there’s no-way I’m replaying this ever again.

It took five games for Naughty Dog to finally get some decent character writing, but a part of me still feels they couldn’t have existed without all the dross of the other games. There’s this immense amount of back-story and labour both the developers and the players had to slog thru to get to this point, and I feel as tho we get here and there’s just too little to show for it. I still really enjoyed the story that was told, the sense of character I felt, but a lot of that was contingent on the Uncharted universe in situ. Lost Legacy feels like a combining of all of Naughty Dog’s narrative motifs - the earnest redemption, the moment of tenderness and connection centred around peaceful animals - it’s a greatest hits of Naughty Dog in the best way possible because each narrative beat hits perfectly. I’m glad I played it with two characters who endeared themselves so much to me, that I truly cared about.

I’ve spend a lot of time praising the strengths of writing for at least Lost Legacy, but for each thing I’ve enjoyed about at least these two characters, there have been so many things I’ve been critical of. I feel like in order to get to the tiniest bit of enjoyment, I had to suffer thru so much. Honestly I don’t know if it really was worth it. It’s hard to know given that who I am now and where my tastes are and have developed as a consequence of my experiences, and I definitely would not replay any of those games again - so where does that leave me? I can’t go back and play The Last Of Us and I absolutely won’t play the second game, I just can’t do Naughty Dog games now, I don’t have it in me.

Naughty Dog have spent the better part of two decades developing tech for visual fidelity specifically for the Playstation hardware platforms (PS3 and 4). They’ve also been doing it by overworking their staff, many of which have left out of frustration or necessity. The problem they face is that as industry tools in general improve, there will no gap between games developed by Naughty Dog and any other contemporary studio from a visual perspective. Make no mistake - the Uncharted games are absolutely chock-full of objects, geometry and animation - somehow miraculously so on the Playstation platform in comparison to other games with the exception of other first-party and exclusive games receiving similar support from Sony such as Guerilla Games’ Horizon Zero Dawn and Sucker Punch’s forthcoming Ghost of Tsushima. There are probably other similar examples for the previous generation on PS3.

Yes, there’s a certain style of game Naughty Dog create as far as narrative goes but because it’s becoming more cinematic, that style is judged more and more by cinematic standards and at best it’s barely semi-professional aside from the outstanding voice work. There are few striking visual motifs that set Naughty Dog games apart from a design perspective, and the gameplay and mechanical constructions that once distinguished them at least a little from others are ever diminishing at increasing rates - more-so as their work practices make the level of quality they set out to achieve ever more unsustainable.

Lost Legacy encapsulates a lot of what I feel about video games as a whole at the moment - as an industry and as a culture. It’s a snapshot of a culture that’s achieving wonderful, beautiful things that are in ways huge - immense, yet somehow can feel so small in comparison to some of the challenges it faces. It’s an industry and culture experiencing a period of great upheaval, where after years upon years of malpractice, terrible things somehow still endure. It’s a space where sometimes it feels like a battle to find the tiniest shred of beauty buried in the dirt and ash, and there doesn’t seem to be an end to the frustration that working thru it brings about while grass-roots labourers continue to be burned.

Like many things in life, both at my age and at the level I guess a person gets to at the exposure rate of a thing, I’ve cut back a great deal on my engagement time with video games, so I’m a lot less patient with the functions and mechanisms of a game. There’s a labour element of video games that I feel developers might think is somehow necessary and there’s a component of that which is true, just not quite in the way they think it is, and it takes a unique frame of thinking to break out of traditional design to understand it. Again I’m not saying there’s anything special about how I understand games - there’s nothing at all original in my thoughts - I’ve shoplifted them wholesale from a hundred other people back from when I used to read Gamasutra and even now when I read designers and the people I follow and talk to on Twitter etc. There’s also absolutely nothing wrong with traditions and the people that enjoy them - just because they’re not my thing any more doesn’t mean they’re bad. It just means I’ve moved to something else and I shouldn’t engage with them.

That, I think, is what I’m waiting for. Kentucky Route Zero, Howling Dogs, Dear Esther, Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture, a whole bunch of others - these are the games I feel are pushing past the boundaries of tradition. Then the moments Uncharted takes itself out of its traditions - Nadine and Chloe’s elephant ride, Chloe’s phone pictures, Elena and Nathan’s house tours especially as Cassie - that’s when I think now you’re running! Run with it! Look, I’m still playing The Division - I’m still moving and shooting and enjoying it.

But we can do so much more. Many developers are doing more. We as an audience need to play more All of us together need to do and play more.

(The epilogue is me figuring I talk a lot of shit about AAA games and nary a word about KRZ, Howling Dogs, Dear Esther and the rest and I get it, but oooooo howdy is it really difficult for me to talk pragmatically about games I actually love)

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bloggertutor · 4 years

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Before you see the list of methods, firstly you should know about how it works. According to me, there is a flow Audience >Trust > Marketing or some time it's like Solution > Showcase > Audiences > Marketing but the common thing in both is the audience so If you can have an audience which indirectly means you can have a lot of money. All you need is to convert that random audience in the trusted audience and to do that you need to provide some catchy things in which your audience is interested in.

There is a phrase in Hindi "Paisa to road pe gira hai, uthane ka tareeka chahiye" which means "A lot of money is on the road, you need a proper method to grab it up".

So finally Let's talk about all possible ways of Earning Money Online

1. Blogging

Yeah, I know many of you are familiar with this word blogging but for those who do not know, let me explain it.

Blogging is a discussion or providing information & tools or reviewing product and services etc. The most interesting thing about blogging is, you are fully independent to write on any topic in anyways you want. You just have to care about your audience.

So to start blogging you need a blog website and a particular niche (a theme or topic). I know many of you are now thinking "Since I don't know how to make a website, I can't use blogging to earn money online", then you are wrong. You don't need to be a professional website developer to create a blog you just need to know about some third-party services which will help you to create your blog website and start blogging. The main two are

WordPress (Recommended) [Learn More]

Blogger by Google [Learn More]

Ok, So what's next when our website is ready?

Choose a niche (i.e. Topic)Yes, It's necessary to do research before starting a blog website because there is so much competition in every field. So choose a less competitive topic in which you have enough knowledge. Then you have to write a high-quality engaging blog post that impresses your audience and Google.

"What, why to impress google?" Fine, the answer is, so that google can do a favour to your website and rank it on its first page. Because, when your website will rank on the first page only then you can get an organic and real audience and I have mentioned earlier that you need an audience to earn money. Then you need some content marketing services that will pay you for your audiences, and there are many like that. You can use Affiliate Network on your blog to monetize it.

Ok but just tell me one thing,

How much I can Earn Money Online by Blogging?

There is no limit. Seriously I am not joking, you can earn as much as you want but you need to be a perfect player of this particular field in which SEO plays a very important role. For early beginners, it can be from $150-$750 depends on you and how much you improved yourself in blogging from beginning.

And this was the first answer for your Question "How to earn Money Online?"

Learn More About Blogging

Create Your Own Blog

2. Affiliate Marketing

The second and very popular method to earn money online is Affiliate Marketing.

Affiliate marketing is exactly same as blogging where mostly you need a website (Not every time) and write a review of products or introduce products or just make a tutorial on them or anything else you can do to bring that product in your topic. Then you need an audience for your review or tutorial or post, but here you don't need an advertiser for your audience, you need an affiliate program that matches your blog niche so that when someone buys product or services after reading your review, you can get the commission.

Is that's enough for affiliate marketing?

Of course not, Affiliate Marketing have different ways, and the first is mentioned above that you can use an affiliate network to monetize your blog. Now another very famous way to promote affiliate is Email Marketing.

Ok Wait, What is this Email Marketing thing?

In Email Marketing, you send email to people have interest in a product whose affiliate program you have joined already If they purchase a product from your affiliate link you will get paid some commission depending on affiliate's commission rate.

Learn More about Email Marketing

The third way is introducing affiliate products in some type of courses and tutorials. According to many research(not by me :)), this is the most effective and converting way of affiliate marketing because there is a need to buy a product, I mean if your learner needs to learn, he has to buy that product anyhow to proceed further.

Ok... I can't explain all ways because there are so many ways to earn money online using an affiliate network.

How much I can Earn Money Online by Affiliate Marketing?

Again there is no limit of earning money online from affiliate marketing it's all depends on your patience & passion of doing work. Beginners can earn up to $500-1500 Monthly.

Learn More

Create Your Affiliate Website

3. Drop Shipping

The very new and easy way to earn money online is by Drop Shipping.

Let me first introduce you to Drop Shipping.

In Drop Shipping, you will purchase a product at low cost and sell it at a high cost to anyone who needs it. Yeah, I know this is so simple but wait you need to have two most important skills before starting drop shipping. The first thing is you should have a website and in this case, it's not optional. Then second you need to have advertising skills on some popular platform like Facebook, Google, Twitter etc.

What are advertising skills?

Actually, most social media platform offers a service in which you can advertise your product or services on their platform by paying some small amount to them. Like Facebook have Facebook Ads, Google has Google Ads or Adward, Twitter has Twitter Ads etc.

So when you have these things you are ready to go, I mean you can start you Drop shipping business online.

How to start Drop Shipping?

The first step is to create an e-commerce website.

Then choose an online store that delivers product across the world like Ali Express or Alibaba.

Select a product from these stores and Copy Paste to your website.

Advertise on any network to the proper audience and get sales.

Then order that product with your customer address.

Learn More

Create Your Drop shipping Store

4. Social Media Marketing

As you all know Social Media is a very engaging and active platform of this time, and Now I will tell you that you can earn decent money from social media too.

Yeah, Just tell me how..

Wait..wait.., It's not so simple that you can earn by just posting your good looking profile pictures to social media. But it also not too hard. The rule of the audience is still applicable, i.e You should have a large amount of fan following which will act as your audience. And after you have an audience, there are many ways of earning.

Working as Influencer for companies or brand and promoting their product and services on your social media account.

Using Affiliate Network and promoting their product and services.

Promoting your own blog, online store, product, services etc.

Learn More

Grow on Social Media

5. Freelancing

Freelancing is probably not the newest but a good way to earn money online if you have good skills in any field. There are many networks like fiver, Upwork, Freelancer etc. that provide work if you have skills.

What if I don't have skills?

If you don't have skills you can learn from the internet for free. There are platforms like YouTube, Udemy etc. where you can find many skill courses to improve your skills or to learn more new skills. After Learning you can register to any of Freelancing network to get work.

Ok but, How much I can Earn Money Online by Freelancing?

. Actually its depend on your skills but many good freelancer are earning $500 daily.

Learn More

Sharp Your Skills

6. YouTube

This is also a very popular and easy way of earning money online. In YouTube, there are three ways of earning money. The first and very used way is by using Adsense and the second one is by using promotion and the third is using affiliate programs. All you need to do here is just upload a video with an eye-catching thumbnail so that if anyone sees your thumbnail he just click on it and that's all.

If you are using affiliates and promotion then try to give quality content to your audience so that they can trust you and your affiliate conversion can increase.

7. E-commerce

The traditional way of shopping is no more applicable in metro cities, everyone wants to purchase their product at their doorstep. And taking the profit of this thing you can earn money online by creating your online shop or store and sell product or services theirs in a more affordable and efficient way.

E-commerce field is raising too fast and the reason for that vis people are becoming lazier and lazier, so all you need to do is, take the profit of this thing and scale your business.

8. Online Teaching

Teaching is now a profession of earning for many teachers, but the problem is they can teach only a few hundred students. So let me Introduce you a more efficient and profitable way of earning money online using your teaching skills. Actually, there are many coaching centres are using the same thing but for individual teachers, they think this is hard to manage but the actual answer is it's easier than your classroom.

Yes, I am not joking, Seriously it's more easy, efficient and profitable than your classroom.

Tell me How?

All you need is a smartphone for camera and editing (DSLR and Laptop if available), A blackboard or whiteboard or green board, few lights and a cheap collar mic.

Just Record your video lectures (or you can go live with your students using YouTube), edit if requires, then encrypt (secure) it using any video encryption tool so that only user with a licence can watch your lectures, and sell it online on your website or App.

There are many companies that provide Custom Teaching App and Websites. So you can go for them if needed.

9. Digital Marketing

Digital Marketing is not a single thing, it is a bulk of all the method you use to earn money online like email marketing, sales funnel, advertising online etc.

I have mentioned Digital Marketing here because traditional marketing is no more effective for selling your product and services. If you want to earn good money from your business you should remove your banners and holdings from the roadside and place it online on various platform and believe me this will increase your sales and conversion.

10. Launching Software as a Service (SAAS)

This is a very professional way of earning money online and need a good amount of money investment.

Let me first introduce, What is actually Software as a Service?

Software as a Service or SaaS is a service depending upon your idea like if you want a website to count live subscribers of a YouTube channel and user have to buy your plans to use it then your website will be a SaaS. Similarly, there are many SaaS companies that provide different type of services to their user.

What is Required to make a SaaS?

The first and most important thing that really matters for a SaaS to be successful is having a great working Idea. If you have a solid idea and you believe that your service is unique or customer will love to buy your service then you are ready to go for the second step is searching for an investor because SaaS is not only a website it is a full custom platform which needs good money and time to develop.

Now the third step is to make a flow chart of your idea i.e. service and search for a good developer or a company and heir them for your work after telling them about your project. Then you are ready to serve your customer after your SaaS website is ready.

Conclusion

After discussing all these methods to earn money online, I want you to choose your favorite one in which you feel passionate of doing it. I mostly prefer blogging and affiliate marketing for earning money online since it is not tough and Creative.

If you liked any part of article please share it with your friends.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Can we earn enough money online?

Yes, In this 21st century of digital world you can of course earn a decent amount of money online. Even there are people having a 6 figure income only through online earning

How to earn money online?

There are many ways to earn money online but some popular ways are Blogging, Affiliate Marketing, Drop shipping, YouTube etc. to know more click here

What is Blogging?

Blogging is a new way of expressing your ideas, reviews and discussions etc. online on a website so that whoever searches a query related to that blog he can find it's answer.

Can we Earn Money From a Blog Website?

Of course, even many people are making thousand of dollars from their single blog.

How to create a blog?

You do not need to be a professional website designer to create a blog website. You can use WordPress or Blogger by Google

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is a method to earn money online. In Affiliate Marketing you have to promote a product and if someone buys from your link you will get commission.

How much we can earn from Affiliate marketing ?

There is no restriction on earning from Affiliate marketing, you can earn as much as you can.

What is Drop Shipping?

Drop Shipping is a method to earn money online by selling third party product indirectly.

Read More https://bloggertutor.com/how-to-earn-money-online/?feed_id=494&_unique_id=5f09505707bce #blogging #affiliate_marketing #drop_shipping

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holliehock · 7 years

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What’s Wrong With Split.

James McAvoy's new film Split brings to the spotlight Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), better known here in the UK as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Kevin Wendell Crumb isn't your average case of Jekyll and Hyde, he doesn't just have two personalities fighting inside of him... he has twenty-four. When I saw that this film was going to be directed by M. Night Shyamalan, the same man who directed the first horror film I ever saw, The Sixth Sense, I new that this was going to be good.

So, first: the positives. James McAvoy is one of my favourite actors, and he does not disappoint in this film. He has meticulously thought about his portrayal of each personality, from voice to posture. Hedwig is a fantastic source of comic relief "etc.", and Barry a well-developed, interesting character to glue the others together. His attention to detail was emphasised by the clever combination of visual and audio to create a claustrophobic, uncomfortable atmosphere. The film didn't use cheap tactics to frighten the audience, using only one jump-scare, and virtually no gore, yet still having half of the cinema covering their mouths in horror and me shaking at points. The three young actresses, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson, and Jessica Sula were gripping in their roles, complementing McAvoy so that every member of the audience forgot they were in a cinema, and truly believed what they were seeing onscreen.

Warning. The below contains spoilers, if you do not want to know how the film ends, please do not continue reading.

This film has received some criticism for being problematic, due to the fact it portrays people with personality disorders as dangerous and impulsive. Dr Simone Reinders suggests that 'movies such as Split can be extremely damaging', and that films such as these lead to an increase in the stigma around such mental illnesses. Whilst I agree with this outlook, I don't think it's as dangerous as Reinders suggests. To make Crumb into a murderer is a trope. His personalities such as 'The Beast' follow the same path as Mr Hyde, hurting those around him, despite Dr Jekyll's (Jane's) attempts to control his actions. Ultimately, using such an old, over-used motif means that most of the audience will understand that this is just fiction, that these people - in reality - are not dangerous.

Organisations such as Mind and Time To Change are working hard to alleviate the stigma around mental health problems in society. Currently, we are caught in a difficult cycle with regards to mental illnesses. The attitudes surrounding issues such as depression, anxiety, and more complex disorders (such as MPD), cannot be changed without sufferers speaking out more. However, by them speaking out, there is now a belief that these sorts of problems are fashionable. This means that the severity of these conditions, and their impacts upon our day-to-day lives, is undermined. However, its films such as Split which encourage these attitudes, and cause problematic thinking in vulnerable people, as they see mental illnesses glorified on the big screen.

Now I'm going to shift the focus away from Crumb, and introduce you to Casey Cooke. Cooke is played by twenty-year-old actress, Anya Taylor-Joy.

Taylor-Joy is given a difficult role. Her character is closed and detached. She is the centre of gossip at school, and generally an outcast. It is obvious from the opening of the film that she is going to become a central character because of the raging "misunderstood" vibe she gives off. Quickly, we begin to see that she is the most resourceful and intelligent of the three girls who are abducted, but also that she has trauma in her history. The series of flashbacks tell the audience before they have any evidence that something in this girl's childhood made her like this. But it isn't revealed until very late in the film that she was molested as a child, leading to her rebellious and detached nature, as well as some pretty serious self-harm.

And this is my problem with Split. We see a young, vulnerable woman, effectively stripped down to her underwear, revealing a mess of old scars over her stomach and shoulders. And this is what saves her. The Beast says "the broken are evolved", suggesting that to self-harm, suffer with a personality disorder, or be a victim of abuse augments you as a person. It makes you more "pure", and makes you superior to your peers. Yes, I understand very well that this film is a metaphor for how these people are fighters and survivors, but I also see that it's situations like these that young people are seeing and getting their unhealthy behaviours from. It demonstrates to vulnerable people that to be like this is desirable, and gives you an armour against suffering.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIpGKumxiGg&w=560&h=315]

On top of this, is the psychiatrist, Karen Fletcher (Betty Buckley). An older woman who has devoted her life to DID sufferers, such as Crumb. However, it is her belief that has fuelled Crumb's disorder, and allowed it to become this dangerous. But Split had an opportunity with Fletcher to provide a resolution. Instead, they make her powerless, and show her being overpowered by the darkest parts of Crumb's mind.

This is not the sort of message we should be sending out.

Therapists are fundamental in the recovery process of any individual with a mental illness; and the media is one of our key resources in informing the public. By finding the root of the problem (if there is one), and dealing with it head-on, the individual begins to understand why they are feeling and acting the way they are, and can start to alter any problematic behaviour. Without therapists, people with mental illnesses would not have the tools necessary to make positive progress, therefore it is important to represent this in the media, and as the powerful service that it is. Not a useless endeavour, like in this film.

I loved Split. I loved the casting choices, the plot, and the characters. It's the first film that has truly scared me since I was about twelve. It was gripping, and poignant, and dark. I'd love to see more films like this; however, I also see how fragile these topics are, and know that, no matter how much I enjoyed this film, the subject should have been handled differently. And that's what's wrong with Split.

I watched Split at Sonar Film, the in-house cinema at Southampton Solent University. To check out what's on, go to: http://www.sonarfilm.co.uk/now-showing/

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koopatzi · 5 years

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Is Cosmopolitan SEO Copywriting So Important In order to Marketing and sales communications?

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Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the procedure of improving the amount plus quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural", which may mean either natural or algorithmic, search results. Plagiarizing in school has been frown upon as well because for good reason. Passing a persons work off as you have is unethical and unoriginal. Individuals visit different blogs to collect varying perspectives not to consider the same identical content under the different name. In addition this particular will only hurt your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION efforts by being penalized with regard to duplicate content. A few companies are suffering from SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION video tutorials. These may reply some of your questions yet you'll never complete current, huge picture. Also, you're typically depending on one approach to the particular topic. What if you desire multiple perspectives within the best method to use a given method? You most likely won't discover it here.

three or more. When carrying out SEO with regard to your site you must end up being targeting a specific segment associated with the market. This blog9t SEO technique is known as niche marketing. It will become essential for you to certainly know because this will create the likelihood of purchases a lot higher than if you attempted to target just anyone. A person want to focus on the folks that will probably buy through you. It just seems such as a lot of wasted power if you do not have got focus. Once the keywords are already established for each page it can very important the translation should be carried out with SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION in mind. This means that will a certain keyword must show up in certain places on the particular web page without being stated too often that could end result in penalization by search motors (key word stuffing). Some recommend that the keyword should show up in the title, description, planning ones, body twice and the particular alt tags. This is within no way a protocol since one also has to create note of that search motors are constantly changing their methods and search criteria. The look of the keyword in particular areas can often lead in order to very cumbersome translations however making a seamless translation that says well with the keyword within position is a skill within itself and the reason the lot of translation services businesses that handle SEO can pay for to charge that little little bit extra for SEO translation. Firstly, the keywords should be established in the converted language. This is a essential part of the project plus depends quite definitely on the spending budget of the company. Being like a new and pioneering industry most companies have to delegate their SEO needs and this tends to be very costly. One must bear in thoughts that a lot of crucial words have been invested in greatly and the bottom line is definitely the fact that if a person don't have the budget with regard to a significant linking campaign with regard to a competitive keyword there will be absolutely no point in heading for that keyword. Most great SEO consultants will advise the client as to the key phrases they could achieve within their particular budget with the hope that this client can find a specific niche market within their market. The earnings or competitiveness of certain key phrases can be judged by particular barometers. Today that you're creating valuable articles, ensure that it's discoverable upon Google. Possess a robust SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategy so that you function in top search results. Furthermore, obtain a Google Business Record Blog9T for your hotel, and create maintain NAP (Name, Address, plus Phone number) consistency across systems like Yelp, Yahoo, Foursquare, plus TripAdvisor. Firstly, the key phrases must be established within the particular translated language. This is the critical section of the project and is dependent very much for the budget associated with the company. 25 year-old Fibrous Plasterer Adney from Maple, has lots of pursuits which include kid advocate, top seo trends in 2018 and camping. Loves to see new towns and spots like Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn. Being this type of brand-new and pioneering field typically have got to outsource their SEO requirements and it tends to end up being very expensive. One must keep in mind that a great deal of key words have currently been committed to heavily plus the bottom line is that will minus the budget for the significant linking campaign for the competitive keyword there is simply no point in going for that will keyword. Most good SEO experts will advise a client because to the keywords they may achieve within their budget along with the hope that the customer can find a niche inside their market. The profitability or even competitiveness of certain keywords may be judged by certain barometers.

Liebe Grüßefüralle Android App Developer! Google offers recently released important announcements regarding app development policies. And almost everything these statements should be produced from the following year onwards; So 2018 and 2019. Therefore, read the news, to stay abreast of the development procedure. And yes, all of these types of major changes are unlikely in order to increase the robustness of application security and enhance the functionality of mobile applications. The popular SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION conferences will permit you in order to make that crucial step intended for taking your search engine optimisation services to a brand brand-new level. You must make certain that you do work very hard and update yourself regarding the particular current market trends by getting several discussions with the users in the meeting. You can also learn more about exactly how to impress your clients plus please them with your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies and plans. As the Internet proceeds to dramatically increase in the particular number of users and web sites, companies face more competition daily. In order to keep your own website Blog9T Youtube competitive and its rank as high as possible, you should execute what is known since Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plus continually perform e-Marketing Services in order to keep your website fresh plus in the attention of your own target audience. Of course, you have in order to begin from creating a WORLD WIDE WEB. Nowadays it is a must. It assists, because your company is heading to be visible for the particular world. Webpage since it is definitely, is not enough. Thing regarding SEO (Search engine optimization) plus become visible in search motors. Also good idea is trading in marketing online (FaceBook, Tweets and so forth ). This will promote you company upon the Internet. It is very normal, that people are looking for services or products presently there. I can risk and state that this it a very first place they starting looking. Right after that these are asking friends. Therefore being visible on the Web is very important for each company nowadays.

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oblivionspeakk · 6 years

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On Page SEO Strategies To Rank Higher In Search engines

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Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the procedure of improving the amount plus quality of traffic to a website from search engines via "natural", which may mean either natural or algorithmic, search results. Another way in order to do this is via social media marketing. This is more of the challenge because you will require to build a sizable using on multiple social media stations; however, it has huge marketing and advertising benefits well beyond just SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION. It is not clear exactly how much SEO juice you will certainly receive from social media marketing though. Search engines has been shifting its focus to Google+, and now actually that is in flux. We all left social media out associated with this SEO guide because all of us believe it stands by by itself and should not be utilized primarily being an SEO device. What does an SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Rock Star constitute? In Research Optimization, a Rock Star might be anyone who has not really only had success in obtaining their clients noticed however they will have also been so great at it they cause Research Engines to take notice plus perhaps change. Billions are currently online. These types of online users apparently spend the third of time online viewing videos. This positive response in order to video material keeps growing, along with video predicted to gain 80 percent of overall web traffic simply by 2019. A few companies are suffering from SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION video tutorials. These may remedy some of your questions yet you'll never complete current, huge picture. Also, you're typically depending on one approach to the particular topic. What if you would like multiple perspectives within the best method to use a given method? You most likely won't discover it here. The popular SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION conferences will permit you in order to make that crucial step intended for taking your search engine search engine optimization services to a brand fresh level. You must make certain that you do work very difficult and update yourself regarding the particular current market trends by getting several discussions with the people in the meeting. You can also learn more about just how to impress your clients plus please them with your SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION strategies and plans. A formal SEO coaching course helps you gain a good in depth knowledge of the particular entire process. In the basics associated with how search engines work plus exactly how they rank the particular websites to the advanced understanding of SEO tools and strategies, an exercise course will include the entire spectrum of Web marketing skills. 54 years old Valuer Kevin from Dolbeau, likes to spend some time fast, top seo trends in 2018 and netball. Feels travel an incredible experience after touring Historic Centre of Mexico City and Xochimilco. On both the occasions of the conference, there can be registrations and intriguing keynote sessions on the hot subjects of digital marketing domain. Several of the key topics are usually SEO, Content Marketing, Tips plus Tricks to Boost Sales along with digital platforms, a session upon branding, designing, etc. In some situations, you might be able in order to find videos or other mass media summarizing SEO conference sessions exactly where key ideas have been talked about. Again, the lack of framework could make hard for the novice to follow. Still, some really good ideas that you haven't believed of or come across might be provided so this may be worthwhile for continuing schooling. If you believe that SEO and online marketing and advertising can and will save your own company, you might be completely wrong within the beginning! Yes, these equipment can and will help a Blog9T person promote a business, but just if people trust you. Should you do not let the world know regarding yourself, if you do not earn you from least basic customers circle, a person won't be able to appreciate the benefits of online marketing and advertising. Even today everything begins through the good-old handshake. Electronic marketing extends beyond internet advertising to incorporate channels that perform not require the usage associated with the internet. Some digital marketing and advertising channels include websites, social press platforms, e-mail marketing, search motor optimization (SEO), blogging, podcasts, plus online advertising to name the few. Beyond technology gimmicks, companies should know their customers plus their core competencies. Digital advertising is not a silver topic. Digital marketing is a device for that savvy business professional.

Also known because web advertising, online marketing work can comprise an incredible array associated with specialties - Pay-per-click (PPC) careers, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) work, affiliate marketing jobs, sales work opportunities, account administrator jobs, web style and marketing. In marketing plus advertising, job opportunities are incredibly challenging in addition to actually varying so you need in order to be prepared and ready in order to adapt. As a rule, the particular aim in marketing is in order to reach the prospective audience plus extend growth from the business Blog9T. At the higher-ranking level, marketing and marketing jobs incorporate planning for the marketing and marketing campaign and is executed from the executive level. The secret associated with Brand Inc. 's success is usually based on strategic publicity experience across digital, print and interpersonal media to deliver results plus content driven by SEO observations Blog9T Youtube and google data analytics. When asked in order to point out concepts which are usually unique to the web, many people will develop two major ones: SEO and social press. Both have had a massive effect on how the internet is used and how companies promote, as well as existing, themselves online.

As the Internet proceeds to dramatically increase in the particular number of users and sites, companies face more competition daily. In order to keep your own website competitive and its position as high as possible, you need to execute what is known since Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plus continually perform e-Marketing Services in order to keep your website fresh plus in the attention of your own target audience.

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challengeartistsimple · 7 years

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Summer in The City 2017 – UK’s Largest YouTube Event (Details)

Known as UK’s largest YouTube and online video festival, Summer in the City is an enormous, three-day event that has been growing in size and popularity since its inception in 2009. It is ideal for just about anyone that shares a passion for the YouTube community.

For creators and industry professionals, SITC is a fantastic networking and learning opportunity, but it’s also a very fun experience for communities of fans and supporters to connect with their favourite stars. Essentially, anyone that’s a part of the YouTube community can expect to enjoy their time at Summer in the City with all that it has to offer!

Last year, the event took place at the ExCel London, and is booked to run there again this year. Opening day is Creator Day on Friday, August 4 and the event closes on Sunday, August 6. Tickets of many different kinds are available directly from the Summer in the City website (more information below).

What Can You Expect at Summer in the City 2017?

A post shared by Summer in the City (@sitc_event) on Jan 13, 2017 at 6:57am PST

So, what can you expect at one of the world’s largest gatherings for YouTube and online video enthusiasts? Here’s a few of the many great things going on at SITC 2017:

The Hall of Fun – Their expo hall is the big focal point of the event and it is where you’ll find various areas with scheduled programming and festivities that include a Gaming Stage, Lifestyle Zone and a Fashion and Beauty Stage. Many exhibitors will have engaging displays, including event sponsors. The Creator Village is here too and is where plenty of merchandising occurs for fans of creators. There’s also a Craft Fair, Fun Fair (yes, there’s actual rides!), Open Mic and even an “adult” care area for attendees to leave parents and partners for some time to relax.

Meet & Greets with Featured Creators – In addition to connecting with featured creators during the stage festivities and panels, attendees also have the chance to participate in YouTuber meet and greets. That being said, with their high demand and limited availability, SITC uses a ballot lottery system to select entering ticket holders at random, so that everyone has an equal opportunity. You can find more info here.

Packed with Entertainment – Performers from the world of YouTube, and beyond, will appear on the SitC main stage to light up all three days with live performances.

With live panels #SitC2017 is the prime opportunity to ask Q’s you’ve always wanted answered by people you watch! https://t.co/jNXRiO6YcL http://pic.twitter.com/xKbHHGSIk0

— Summer in the City (@SummerInTheCity) April 6, 2017

Insightful Discussion Panels – Because the event is all about learning more about the world of YouTube, the panels are one of the most attended activities. There are many different topic areas covered for anyone a part of the YouTube community, with 75+ being slated for the event. The schedule will be posted in advance of the event, but fans, creators, and industry professionals can all expect to find a ton of value.

SitC Awards – Last year, the event introduced an awards ceremony to recognize creators for their great work! Summer in the City 2017 will be bringing them back again this year, celebrating creators for a variety of different categories during the final day.

Event Details

Date(s): Aug 4th – 6th, 2017

Location: ExCel Exhibition Centre – London, UK

Tickets: £28 – £100

Passes begin at £28 for a single day entry, or £45 for weekend entry.

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Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media

With links to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage, the rightwing American computer scientist is at the heart of a multimillion-dollar propaganda network

Just over a week ago, Donald Trump gathered members of the worlds press before him and told them they were liars. The press, honestly, is out of control, he said. The public doesnt believe you any more. CNN was described as very fake news story after story is bad. The BBC was another beauty.

That night I did two things. First, I typed Trump in the search box of Twitter. My feed was reporting that he was crazy, a lunatic, a raving madman. But that wasnt how it was playing out elsewhere. The results produced a stream of Go Donald!!!!, and You show em!!! There were star-spangled banner emojis and thumbs-up emojis and clips of Trump laying into the FAKE news MSM liars!

Trump had spoken, and his audience had heard him. Then I did what Ive been doing for two and a half months now. I Googled mainstream media is And there it was. Googles autocomplete suggestions: mainstream media is dead, dying, fake news, fake, finished. Is it dead, I wonder? Has FAKE news won? Are we now the FAKE news? Is the mainstream media we, us, I dying?

I click Googles first suggested link. It leads to a website called CNSnews.com and an article: The Mainstream media are dead. Theyre dead, I learn, because they we, I cannot be trusted. How had it, an obscure site Id never heard of, dominated Googles search algorithm on the topic? In the About us tab, I learn CNSnews is owned by the Media Research Center, which a click later I learn is Americas media watchdog, an organisation that claims an unwavering commitment to neutralising leftwing bias in the news, media and popular culture.

Another couple of clicks and I discover that it receives a large bulk of its funding more than $10m in the past decade from a single source, the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer. If you follow US politics you may recognise the name. Robert Mercer is the money behind Donald Trump. But then, I will come to learn, Robert Mercer is the money behind an awful lot of things. He was Trumps single biggest donor. Mercer started backing Ted Cruz, but when he fell out of the presidential race he threw his money $13.5m of it behind the Trump campaign.

Its money hes made as a result of his career as a brilliant but reclusive computer scientist. He started his career at IBM, where he made what the Association for Computational Linguistics called revolutionary breakthroughs in language processing a science that went on to be key in developing todays AI and later became joint CEO of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.

One of its funds, Medallion, which manages only its employees money, is the most successful in the world generating $55bn so far. And since 2010, Mercer has donated $45m to different political campaigns all Republican and another $50m to non-profits all rightwing, ultra-conservative. This is a billionaire who is, as billionaires are wont, trying to reshape the world according to his personal beliefs.

Donald Trumps presidential campaigned received $13.5m from Robert Mercer. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images

Robert Mercer very rarely speaks in public and never to journalists, so to gauge his beliefs you have to look at where he channels his money: a series of yachts, all called Sea Owl; a $2.9m model train set; climate change denial (he funds a climate change denial thinktank, the Heartland Institute); and what is maybe the ultimate rich mans plaything the disruption of the mainstream media. In this he is helped by his close associate Steve Bannon, Trumps campaign manager and now chief strategist. The money he gives to the Media Research Center, with its mission of correcting liberal bias is just one of his media plays. There are other bigger, and even more deliberate strategies, and shining brightly, the star at the centre of the Mercer media galaxy, is Breitbart.

It was $10m of Mercers money that enabled Bannon to fund Breitbart a rightwing news site, set up with the express intention of being a Huffington Post for the right. It has launched the careers of Milo Yiannopoulos and his like, regularly hosts antisemitic and Islamophobic views, and is currently being boycotted by more than 1,000 brands after an activist campaign. It has been phenomenally successful: the 29th most popular site in America with 2bn page views a year. Its bigger than its inspiration, the Huffington Post, bigger, even, than PornHub. Its the biggest political site on Facebook. The biggest on Twitter.

Prominent rightwing journalist Andrew Breitbart, who founded the site but died in 2012, told Bannon that they had to take back the culture. And, arguably, they have, though American culture is only the start of it. In 2014, Bannon launched Breitbart London, telling the New York Times it was specifically timed ahead of the UKs forthcoming election. It was, he said, the latest front in our current cultural and political war. France and Germany are next.

But there was another reason why I recognised Robert Mercers name: because of his connection to Cambridge Analytica, a small data analytics company. He is reported to have a $10m stake in the company, which was spun out of a bigger British company called SCL Group. It specialises in election management strategies and messaging and information operations, refined over 25 years in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. In military circles this is known as psyops psychological operations. (Mass propaganda that works by acting on peoples emotions.)

Cambridge Analytica worked for the Trump campaign and, so Id read, the Leave campaign. When Mercer supported Cruz, Cambridge Analytica worked with Cruz. When Robert Mercer started supporting Trump, Cambridge Analytica came too. And where Mercers money is, Steve Bannon is usually close by: it was reported that until recently he had a seat on the board.

Last December, I wrote about Cambridge Analytica in a piece about how Googles search results on certain subjects were being dominated by rightwing and extremist sites. Jonathan Albright, a professor of communications at Elon University, North Carolina, who had mapped the news ecosystem and found millions of links between rightwing sites strangling the mainstream media, told me that trackers from sites like Breitbart could also be used by companies like Cambridge Analytica to follow people around the web and then, via Facebook, target them with ads.

On its website, Cambridge Analytica makes the astonishing boast that it has psychological profiles based on 5,000 separate pieces of data on 220 million American voters its USP is to use this data to understand peoples deepest emotions and then target them accordingly. The system, according to Albright, amounted to a propaganda machine.

A few weeks later, the Observer received a letter. Cambridge Analytica was not employed by the Leave campaign, it said. Cambridge Analytica is a US company based in the US. It hasnt worked in British politics.

Which is how, earlier this week, I ended up in a Pret a Manger near Westminster with Andy Wigmore, Leave.EUs affable communications director, looking at snapshots of Donald Trump on his phone. It was Wigmore who orchestrated Nigel Farages trip to Trump Tower the PR coup that saw him become the first foreign politician to meet the president elect.

Wigmore scrolls through the snaps on his phone. Thats the one I took, he says pointing at the now globally famous photo of Farage and Trump in front of his golden elevator door giving the thumbs-up sign. Wigmore was one of the bad boys of Brexit a term coined by Arron Banks, the Bristol-based businessman who was Leave.EUs co-founder.

Cambridge Analytica had worked for them, he said. It had taught them how to build profiles, how to target people and how to scoop up masses of data from peoples Facebook profiles. A video on YouTube shows one of Cambridge Analyticas and SCLs employees, Brittany Kaiser, sitting on the panel at Leave.EUs launch event.

Facebook was the key to the entire campaign, Wigmore explained. A Facebook like, he said, was their most potent weapon. Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.

Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps chief strategist, is an associate of Robert Mercer. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP

It sounds creepy, I say.

It is creepy! Its really creepy! Its why Im not on Facebook! I tried it on myself to see what information it had on me and I was like, Oh my God! Whats scary is that my kids had put things on Instagram and it picked that up. It knew where my kids went to school.

They hadnt employed Cambridge Analytica, he said. No money changed hands. They were happy to help.

Why?

Because Nigel is a good friend of the Mercers. And Robert Mercer introduced them to us. He said, Heres this company we think may be useful to you. What they were trying to do in the US and what we were trying to do had massive parallels. We shared a lot of information. Why wouldnt you? Behind Trumps campaign and Cambridge Analytica, he said, were the same people. Its the same family.

There were already a lot of questions swirling around Cambridge Analytica, and Andy Wigmore has opened up a whole lot more. Such as: are you supposed to declare services-in-kind as some sort of donation? The Electoral Commission says yes, if it was more than 7,500. And was it declared? The Electoral Commission says no. Does that mean a foreign billionaire had possibly influenced the referendum without that influence being apparent? Its certainly a question worth asking.

In the last month or so, articles in first the Swiss and the US press have asked exactly what Cambridge Analytica is doing with US voters data. In a statement to the Observer, the Information Commissioners Office said: Any business collecting and using personal data in the UK must do so fairly and lawfully. We will be contacting Cambridge Analytica and asking questions to find out how the company is operating in the UK and whether the law is being followed.

Cambridge Analytica said last Friday they are in touch with the ICO and are completely compliant with UK and EU data laws. It did not answer other questions the Observer put to it this week about how it built its psychometric model, which owes its origins to original research carried out by scientists at Cambridge Universitys Psychometric Centre, research based on a personality quiz on Facebook that went viral. More than 6 million people ended up doing it, producing an astonishing treasure trove of data.

These Facebook profiles especially peoples likes could be correlated across millions of others to produce uncannily accurate results. Michal Kosinski, the centres lead scientist, found that with knowledge of 150 likes, their model could predict someones personality better than their spouse. With 300, it understood you better than yourself. Computers see us in a more robust way than we see ourselves, says Kosinski.

But there are strict ethical regulations regarding what you can do with this data. Did SCL Group have access to the universitys model or data, I ask Professor Jonathan Rust, the centres director? Certainly not from us, he says. We have very strict rules around this.

A scientist, Aleksandr Kogan, from the centre was contracted to build a model for SCL, and says he collected his own data. Professor Rust says he doesnt know where Kogans data came from. The evidence was contrary. I reported it. An independent adjudicator was appointed by the university. But then Kogan said hed signed a non-disclosure agreement with SCL and he couldnt continue [answering questions].

Kogan disputes this and says SCL satisfied the universitys inquiries. But perhaps more than anyone, Professor Rust understands how the kind of information people freely give up to social media sites could be used.

Former Ukip leader Nigel Farage is a friend of the Mercers. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP/Getty Images

The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology, it can predict and potentially control human behaviour. Its what the scientologists try to do but much more powerful. Its how you brainwash someone. Its incredibly dangerous.

Its no exaggeration to say that minds can be changed. Behaviour can be predicted and controlled. I find it incredibly scary. I really do. Because nobody has really followed through on the possible consequences of all this. People dont know its happening to them. Their attitudes are being changed behind their backs.

Mercer invested in Cambridge Analytica, the Washington Post reported, driven in part by an assessment that the right was lacking sophisticated technology capabilities. But in many ways, its what Cambridge Analyticas parent company does that raises even more questions.

Emma Briant, a propaganda specialist at the University of Sheffield, wrote about SCL Group in her 2015 book, Propaganda and Counter-Terrorism: Strategies for Global Change. Cambridge Analytica has the technological tools to effect behavioural and psychological change, she said, but its SCL that strategises it. It has specialised, at the highest level for Nato, the MoD, the US state department and others in changing the behaviour of large groups. It models mass populations and then it changes their beliefs.

SCL was founded by someone called Nigel Oakes, who worked for Saatchi & Saatchi on Margaret Thatchers image, says Briant, and the company had been making money out of the propaganda side of the war on terrorism over a long period of time. There are different arms of SCL but its all about reach and the ability to shape the discourse. They are trying to amplify particular political narratives. And they are selective in who they go for: they are not doing this for the left.

In the course of the US election, Cambridge Analytica amassed a database, as it claims on its website, of almost the entire US voting population 220 million people and the Washington Post reported last week that SCL was increasing staffing at its Washington office and competing for lucrative new contracts with Trumps administration. It seems significant that a company involved in engineering a political outcome profits from what follows. Particularly if its the manipulation, and then resolution, of fear, says Briant.

Its the database, and what may happen to it, that particularly exercises Paul-Olivier Dehaye, a Swiss mathematician and data activist who has been investigating Cambridge Analytica and SCL for more than a year. How is it going to be used? he says. Is it going to be used to try and manipulate people around domestic policies? Or to ferment conflict between different communities? It is potentially very scary. People just dont understand the power of this data and how it can be used against them.

There are two things, potentially, going on simultaneously: the manipulation of information on a mass level, and the manipulation of information at a very individual level. Both based on the latest understandings in science about how people work, and enabled by technological platforms built to bring us together.

Are we living in a new era of propaganda, I ask Emma Briant? One we cant see, and that is working on us in ways we cant understand? Where we can only react, emotionally, to its messages? Definitely. The way that surveillance through technology is so pervasive, the collection and use of our data is so much more sophisticated. Its totally covert. And people dont realise what is going on.

Public mood and politics goes through cycles. You dont have to subscribe to any conspiracy theory, Briant says, to see that a mass change in public sentiment is happening. Or that some of the tools in action are straight out of the militarys or SCLs playbook.

But then theres increasing evidence that our public arenas the social media sites where we post our holiday snaps or make comments about the news are a new battlefield where international geopolitics is playing out in real time. Its a new age of propaganda. But whose? This week, Russia announced the formation of a new branch of the military: information warfare troops.

Sam Woolley of the Oxford Internet Institutes computational propaganda institute tells me that one third of all traffic on Twitter before the EU referendum was automated bots accounts that are programmed to look like people, to act like people, and to change the conversation, to make topics trend. And they were all for Leave. Before the US election, they were five-to-one in favour of Trump many of them Russian. Last week they have been in action in the Stoke byelection Russian bots, organised by who? attacking Paul Nuttall.

Politics is war, said Steve Bannon last year in the Wall Street Journal. And increasingly this looks to be true.

Theres nothing accidental about Trumps behaviour, Andy Wigmore tells me. That press conference. It was absolutely brilliant. I could see exactly what he was doing. Theres feedback going on constantly. Thats what you can do with artificial intelligence. You can measure ever reaction to every word. He has a word room, where you fix key words. We did it. So with immigration, there are actually key words within that subject matter which people are concerned about. So when you are going to make a speech, its all about how can you use these trending words.

Wigmore met with Trumps team right at the start of the Leave campaign. And they said the holy grail was artificial intelligence.

Who did?

Jared Kushner and Jason Miller.

Later, when Trump picked up Mercer and Cambridge Analytica, the game changed again. Its all about the emotions. This is the big difference with what we did. They call it bio-psycho-social profiling. It takes your physical, mental and lifestyle attributes and works out how people work, how they react emotionally.

Bio-psycho-social profiling, I read later, is one offensive in what is called cognitive warfare. Though there are many others: recoding the mass consciousness to turn patriotism into collaborationism, explains a Nato briefing document on countering Russian disinformation written by an SCL employee. Time-sensitive professional use of media to propagate narratives, says one US state department white paper. Of particular importance to psyop personnel may be publicly and commercially available data from social media platforms.

Yet another details the power of a cognitive casualty a moral shock that has a disabling effect on empathy and higher processes such as moral reasoning and critical thinking. Something like immigration, perhaps. Or fake news. Or as it has now become: FAKE news!!!!

How do you change the way a nation thinks? You could start by creating a mainstream media to replace the existing one with a site such as Breitbart. You could set up other websites that displace mainstream sources of news and information with your own definitions of concepts like liberal media bias, like CNSnews.com. And you could give the rump mainstream media, papers like the failing New York Times! what it wants: stories. Because the third prong of Mercer and Bannons media empire is the Government Accountability Institute.

Bannon co-founded it with $2m of Mercers money. Mercers daughter, Rebekah, was appointed to the board. Then they invested in expensive, long-term investigative journalism. The modern economics of the newsroom dont support big investigative reporting staffs, Bannon told Forbes magazine. You wouldnt get a Watergate, a Pentagon Papers today, because nobody can afford to let a reporter spend seven months on a story. We can. Were working as a support function.

Welcome to the future of journalism in the age of platform capitalism. News organisations have to do a better job of creating new financial models. But in the gaps in between, a determined plutocrat and a brilliant media strategist can, and have, found a way to mould journalism to their own ends.

In 2015, Steve Bannon described to Forbes how the GAI operated, employing a data scientist to trawl the dark web (in the article he boasts of having access to $1.3bn worth of supercomputers) to dig up the kind of source material Google cant find. One result has been a New York Times bestseller, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, written by GAIs president, Peter Schweizer and later turned into a film produced by Rebekah Mercer and Steve Bannon.

This, Bannon explained, is how you weaponise the narrative you want. With hard researched facts. With those, you can launch it straight on to the front page of the New York Times, as the story of Hillary Clintons cash did. Like Hillarys emails it turned the news agenda, and, most crucially, it diverted the attention of the news cycle. Another classic psyops approach. Strategic drowning of other messages.

This is a strategic, long-term and really quite brilliant play. In the 1990s, Bannon explained, conservative media couldnt take Bill Clinton down becausethey wound up talking to themselves in an echo chamber.

As, it turns out, the liberal media is now. We are scattered, separate, squabbling among ourselves and being picked off like targets in a shooting gallery. Increasingly, theres a sense that we are talking to ourselves. And whether its Mercers millions or other factors, Jonathan Albrights map of the news and information ecosystem shows how rightwing sites are dominating sites like YouTube and Google, bound tightly together by millions of links.

Is there a central intelligence to that, I ask Albright? There has to be. There has to be some type of coordination. You can see from looking at the map, from the architecture of the system, that this is not accidental. Its clearly being led by money and politics.

Theres been a lot of talk in the echo chamber about Bannon in the last few months, but its Mercer who provided the money to remake parts of the media landscape. And while Bannon understands the media, Mercer understands big data. He understands the structure of the internet. He knows how algorithms work.

Robert Mercer did not respond to a request for comment for this piece. NickPatterson, a British cryptographer, who worked at Renaissance Technologies in the 80s and is now a computational geneticist at MIT, described to me how he was the one who talent-spotted Mercer. There was an elite group working at IBM in the 1980s doing speech research, speech recognition, and when I joined Renaissance I judged that the mathematics we were trying to apply to financial markets were very similar.

Bannon scorns media in rare public appearance at CPAC

He describes Mercer as very, very conservative. He truly did not like the Clintons. He thought Bill Clinton was a criminal. And his basic politics, I think, was that hes a rightwing libertarian, he wants the government out of things.

He suspects that Mercer is bringing the brilliant computational skills he brought to finance to bear on another very different sphere. We make mathematical models of the financial markets which are probability models, and from those we try and make predictions. What I suspect Cambridge Analytica do is that they build probability models of how people vote. And then they look at what they can do to influence that.

Finding the edge is what quants do. They build quantitative models that automate the process of buying and selling shares and then they chase tiny gaps in knowledge to create huge wins. Renaissance Technologies was one of the first hedge funds to invest in AI. But what it does with it, how its been programmed to do it, is completely unknown. It is, Bloomberg reports, the blackest box in finance.

Johan Bollen, associate professor at Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing, tells me how he discovered one possible edge: hes done research that shows you can predict stock market moves from Twitter. You can measure public sentiment and then model it. Society is driven by emotions, which its always been difficult to measure, collectively. But there are now programmes that can read text and measure it and give us a window into those collective emotions.

The research caused a huge ripple among two different constituencies. We had a lot attention from hedge funds. They are looking for signals everywhere and this is a hugely interesting signal. My impression is hedge funds do have these algorithms that are scanning social feeds. The flash crashes weve had sudden huge drops in stock prices indicates these algorithms are being used at large scale. And they are engaged in something of an arms race.

The other people interested in Bollens work are those who want not only to measure public sentiment, but to change it. Bollens research shows how its possible. Could you reverse engineer the national, or even the global, mood? Model it, and then change it?

It does seem possible. And it does worry me. There are quite a few pieces of research that show if you repeat something often enough, people start involuntarily to believe it. And that could be leveraged, or weaponised for propaganda. We know there are thousands of automated bots out there that are trying to do just that.

THE war of the bots is one of the wilder and weirder aspects of the elections of 2016. At the Oxford Internet Institutes Unit for Computational Propaganda, its director, Phil Howard, and director of research, Sam Woolley, show me all the ways public opinion can be massaged and manipulated. But is there a smoking gun, I ask them, evidence of who is doing this? Theres not a smoking gun, says Howard. There are smoking machine guns. There are multiple pieces of evidence.

Look at this, he says and shows me how, before the US election, hundreds upon hundreds of websites were set up to blast out just a few links, articles that were all pro-Trump. This is being done by people who understand information structure, who are bulk buying domain names and then using automation to blast out a certain message. To make Trump look like hes a consensus.

And that requires money?

That requires organisation and money. And if you use enough of them, of bots and people, and cleverly link them together, you are whats legitimate. You are creating truth.

You can take an existing trending topic, such as fake news, and then weaponise it. You can turn it against the very media that uncovered it. Viewed in a certain light, fake news is a suicide bomb at the heart of our information system. Strapped to the live body of us the mainstream media.

One of the things that concerns Howard most is the hundreds of thousands of sleeper bots theyve found. Twitter accounts that have tweeted only once or twice and are now sitting quietly waiting for a trigger: some sort of crisis where they will rise up and come together to drown out all other sources of information.

Like zombies?

Like zombies.

Many of the techniques were refined in Russia, he says, and then exported everywhere else. You have these incredible propaganda tools developed in an authoritarian regime moving into a free market economy with a complete regulatory vacuum. What you get is a firestorm.

This is the world we enter every day, on our laptops and our smartphones. It has become a battleground where the ambitions of nation states and ideologues are being fought using us. We are the bounty: our social media feeds; our conversations; our hearts and minds. Our votes. Bots influence trending topics and trending topics have a powerful effect on algorithms, Woolley, explains, on Twitter, on Google, on Facebook. Know how to manipulate information structure and you can manipulate reality.

Were not quite in the alternative reality where the actual news has become FAKE news!!! But were almost there. Out on Twitter, the new transnational battleground for the future, someone I follow tweets a quote by Marshall McLuhan, the great information theorist of the 60s. World War III will be a guerrilla information war, it says. With no divisions between military and civilian participation.

By that definition were already there.

Additional reporting by Paul-Olivier Dehaye

Carole Cadwalladr will be hosting a discussion on technologys disruption of democracy at the bluedot festival, Jodrell Bank, Cheshire, 7-9 July