#loads of people pre ordered the game when the article came out

[ven10]

hello :D! i'm curious that with the quagmires being your favorite characters, do you have headcanons for them, pre and/or post canon?

Hiya! :) I have SO MANY hcs about them so thanks for asking!!!! :D

Pre-canon relationship dynamic:

Quigley was closer to Isadora than to Duncan before the fire although he still was really close to Duncan too. I mainly think this bc in ‘The Slippery Slope’ Quigley mentioned Isadora on her own a few times, even quoting a couplet she wrote, whereas he only mentioned Duncan when talking about both of his siblings.

In order of most to least mischievous growing up I feel like it’d go Quigley, then Isadora and lastly Duncan.

Games/How the triplets would play when they were young:

Duncan: Would grab any random object of *aproximately* the right size (could be one of his mother’s shoes or it could be a spatula) and pretend it was a microphone. He’d follow people around “reporting” (more so narrating,really) what they were doing. This would REALLY annoy Isadora bc the worst thing when having writer’s block would be to have someone right beside you describing how you “stare blankly at a page in anguish. No inspiration detected for at least another treacherous week”.

Quigley: Strikes me as the kind of guy to climb trees, regardless of age tbh. He just has the vibe.

He would build forts at EVERY opportunity. Duncan once challenged him to build one in every room of the mansion and he almost did, with the exception of his parents’ office which was always locked.

He’d also draw loads. His drawing of a cave in TSS was described as an “elegant rendering” so I imagine he started doing art young. He’d get too passionate with a box of crayons and end up snapping most of them though. For his sixth birthday he’s gifted one of those pencils with multiple colours in the led and somehow angles it so that all the purple is used up first.

Isadora: She’d write plays for her+her siblings to perform for their parents+their parents’ friends that had surprisingly dark plot lines, especially for a 7 year old. Oh, and all the lines would rhyme, of course. She’d get annoyed when people read the script and asked if it was all one long song rather that the masterpiece of poetry she intended it to be perceived as.

Quigley would really enjoy acting in her plays+pour his heart and soul into the performance. Duncan would get really excited about it and do great when practicing with just the three of them but when it came to the actual performance he’d get shy+back out meaning Quigley or Isadora have to fill in for his role.

🎃 Halloween:

For Halloween one year, Isadora thought it’d be an amazing idea to dress up as Evelyn the conjoined twin bc she loved the song ‘Evelyn Evelyn’ based on her but Quigley found their story too depressing and Duncan didn’t like that it meant one of the triplets would get left out. Quigley suggests ‘Alvin and the chipmunks’ as a group costume earning instant “no”s from his siblings. They end up dressing in individual costumes based off historical figures (A poet, an investigative journalist and an explorer) but create their own story involving time-travel that connects the 3 characters.

Isadora loves Halloween as she is a goth(headcannon) so it really goes with her vibe. Quigley takes information about monsters/spooky creatures like vampires or werewolves and uses it to decide on which part of the world would be best for them to inhabit. Duncan then uses Quigley’s theories to research newspaper articles from the area, searching for any sign of the creatures.

Style/Fashion sense 🌟🧥

Duncan 📰:

Comfy green jumpers/sweaters or sweater-vests, white short-sleeved dress shirts and dress trousers/pants. (Pre-canon)

Comfy green polo-neck jumpers and (usually brown) corduroy pants/trousers and either dark green or white high top shoes. (Post-canon) Occasionally wears neatly applied eyeliner. The slight change in style is bc Duncan doesn’t want to wear clothes that feel so similar to a school uniform after spending so much time with those as his only clothes at Prufrock. He’ll occasionally wear hoodies but not if he’s to be seen in public.

Owns a few T-shirts with Dorothy Parker quotes which he cherishes and wears daily, even if they can’t be seen under the jumper/sweater. One quote he’d have is: “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”

Isadora+Quigley once bought him a quirky reporter’s hat with a feather in it as a joke but Duncan ended up adoring it; convincing himself it gave him an extra boost of inspiration when writing articles. 🪶

Has a Polaroid camera looped round his neck 📸

Quigley 🗺:

Initially, he struck me as a rucksack guy but I was reading over TSS yesterday and discovered he canonically uses a totebag, “I was putting an atlas in a totebag I found”-Quigley Quagmire (‘The Slippery Slope’ Chapter 8, page 148) so technically that’s a canon not a headcanon but oh well 🙃

Wears clothes more so for practicality than for style, although if he has a choice he’ll get things in dark purple.

He’d wear cargo pants bc of all the pockets; this would inspire Isadora to write a poem titled ‘Two and a half’ about a scientist who was trying to clone someone twice but messed up, resulting in one of the copies (Quigley) having no legs.

He would also wear a jacket with tonnes of pockets bc it’s practical for the explorer’s life he leads plus it looks cool. Although, it looks a little less cool when he stitches on a hood with fabric that doesn’t even match.

He drew maps on a couple of T-shirts and wears those, unfortunately he has to redraw them every time they get washed.

Wears exclusively boots bc of their grip+durability, one boot would have purple laces and the boot on the other foot would have black laces bc the original lace got stuck in a thorn bush so he stole borrowed one of Isadora’s.

As for accessories; a compass on string looped round his neck, clips shoved in at random to keep hair from falling in his face as he climbs, a hat/beanie with pins on it

Also: Frayed fingerless gloves!!! I saw this in one of Quill’s art pieces of Quigley and like the idea immensely ( @lemonysnicket ) :))

Always has the most RANDOM items in his pockets; will reach in looking for a packet of gum and come out with binoculars.

Isadora 📜:

Goth.Goth.Emo.Goth.

Wears almost exclusively black: Black boots or high top converse (with doodles on the white toe bit in sharpie),

Wore black nail polish pre-canon. At Prufrock she improvises using black markers+pens on her nails. She once tried the same trick for mimicking eyeliner…it did not turn out well and Duncan brings it up at the WORST times.

Wears winged black eyeliner, smudged under the eyes.

Likes long swishy skirts (midi skirts). They’re sometimes a bit impractical but if she’s just spending the day writing poetry it’s fine. Otherwise she likes cuffed shorts with leggings underneath.

Violet once bought fishnet gloves bc she liked how they looked but gave them to Isa after they kept getting caught in her inventions. Isadora loves them even more bc they’re from Violet.

Has a really cool leather jacket but doesn’t wear it much bc she secretly worries that she isn’t cool enough for the jacket.

Has a T-shirt with all of Sappho’s poems printed out really small and arranged into a picture of Sappho herself. Quigley owns a similar one but his contains the bee-movie script.

Cooking abilities ranked🍳:

1: Quigley 🗺- he’s the best bc he had to cook for himself while “dead”. Granted, he did just eat canned peaches, toasted marshmallows, almonds and carrots but he had to find his own food anyway so that’s a start.

2: Isadora 📜- Her meals at Prufrock were cooked for her but it’s possible she had to cook for Duncan and herself at previous guardians. This task would fall on her as Duncan used to be afraid of stoves for a while after the fire

‘ “For a long time,” Duncan admitted, “I was afraid of any kind of fire. I didn’t even like to look at stoves.”’ -The Austere Academy, Chapter 3, page 47.

3: Duncan 📰- For the reason above and also bc he seems like the kind of guy who would mess up simple dishes by trying to apply extra information, “I read in a news article once about a famous chef who’d put mozzarella in porridge for extra flavour, let’s try that!” (Made-up quote)

Choice of stationary 🖊

Isadora: Fountain pen ✒️ bc it makes her poetry look fancy

Duncan: Biro bc it doesn’t smudge easily and he needs to writes down a lot of info quickly for his journalism 🖊

Quigley: Coloured biros bc they make maps easily decipherable+they don’t smudge easily which is useful for accuracy

In a modern AU Quigley has a 6 hour screen time average and it is ENTIRELY Google maps. Duncan listens to podcasts. Isadora’s Pinterest is made up completely of quotes.

Books/Literature 📚:

Apart from atlases, Quigley reads fantasy books with maps. He would adore books in the Grishaverse bc of this, especially obsessing over the canal system of Ketterdam which can be seen in detail in a map in ‘Crooked Kingdom’ by Leigh Bardugo. 📚 🧙‍♀️ However, with the Grisha triology (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm + Ruin and Rising) he would be disappointed by how little the cartographer/ex-cartographer protagonist mentions maps.

Duncan would enjoy the ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ series due to the strategic, organised layout alongside Pip-the protagonist- ‘s note-taking skills. As Duncan aspires to be an investigative journalist he’d be enthralled by the investigations that are central in these books. He would annotate the books as he reads them; filling them with his own theories as well as highlighting important information.

The poem ‘Long Distance II’ by Tony Harrison doesn’t consist of rhyming couplets but I think Isadora would find its portrayal of grief powerful regardless of whether it’s in her preferred poetic format. Especially as it’s about the loss of family members.

Quigley would create his own fantasy map using tea-stained paper with rice spilled on it, drawing around the rice to get the outline of a country. He’d be really strategic about the details he draws though; having mountains before rivers so the water runs off of them etc. 🗺

Favourite Colours 🎨:

Isadora: Pitch black 🖤

Duncan: Dark green 💚

Quigley: Dark purple💜

(Bc of their notebooks 📓)

Thanks for the ask!! :) <3

I wasn’t sure what to include so I wrote quite a bit, this was me restraining myself tho. I think about the Quagmire triplets a LOT :). This is only the tip of the iceberg ;)! :) I also have kind of detailed hcs about injuries the triplets would have after the eagle fight if u want to hear about that.

Please send more asks if you like! You can be as specific as you like, especially if it’s about the Quagmires! :D

#asoue #thanksfortheask:) #a series of unfortunate events #quagmire triplets #duncan quagmire #quigley quagmire #isadora quagmire #headcanon #hcs #pre canon #asoue post canon #i love these guys #in depth #pls ask me more about them :)) if u would like to :D #soue #series of unfortunate events #quagmires #quagmire triplet #quagmire triplets hcs #Isadora Quagmire hcs #Duncan Quagmire hcs #Quigley Quagmire hcs #asoue hcs

[foster-the-world]

Fair Play?

I’ve realized I’m unhappy with how family duties are currently split up. Pre-covid I think we were pretty equitable. I’m more of a planner then my husband which means I ended up with more of the mental load - like many women do. However, he also carried a lot. I knew if he was responsible for something it would get done. 

Somewhere along the way the last 1.5 years I think we’ve lost some of that. It could be because I lost my job while at the same time he’s job went crazy. He’s up working past midnight too many nights to count. However, it doesn’t really explain/justify it because I’ve been in school full-time. I completed 36 hours in 11 months. They were intense courses like Anatomy, pathology and pharmacology. I did not have the time to take on extra duties. While I’m not currently making money it is all for our families future. I purposefully chose a career that would be financially viable as soon as I graduated. 

My normally unflappable husband also got a little lost during Covid. He’s not one to be bothered by anything but he started making mistakes on things he normally does without thinking. For example, be forgot to pay a credit card bill which causes a cascade of issues. He wasn’t doing his fair share (at all!) when baby boy came along. He dropped the ball on various tasks. He did nothing for my 40th Birthday - after I had planned two different weekends with his friends for his 40th. It was partially because I had wanted a big trip which we obviously couldn’t do during Covid. I had told him I would prefer to wait until a big trip was safe. But I assumed he would have something small for me to open on my Birthday. Nope. The night before he walked the kids to the grocery store on our corner. They picked out a carrot cake (which I don’t even really like) and a bag of licorice. Which was cute as a gift from a four year old. Not cute as the only thing my husband picked out.  Especially considering how much thought I had put into his Birthday. I was sad, didn’t hide it and he felt terrible. I would have been happy if he ordered me a book from Amazon. I didn’t need him to spend a lot of money. The fact that he clearly didn’t think about me until the night before hurt my feelings. This is something he would have NEVER done pre-covid. He’s normally very thoughtful. He’s not into big romantic gestures (which is just fine with me. I’m a very practical person) but he takes care of the people he loves. It was especially annoying because I had been picking up his slack in other areas. Something I can handle if he was being proactive about getting out of a rut or discussing where he was at mentally and why. He was doing neither of those things.

His dropping the ball on his normal day-to-day family tasks also made me more aware of other things that I’ve always taken care of. It made me resentful. Which I don’t want to be. Resentful me is not good for any of us because I can be a real bitch. Our relationship has always been really strong and I want to keep it that way. 

Anyway, all of this to say we have some things to work on. He’s going to go to a therapist to figure out whats going on with him. Which I’m thankful for. 

I’ve read so many articles about the mental load problem but have never seen any solutions. A little further research bought me to the book “Fair Play” which provides a system for splitting up duties. There are cards for each household/family task and whoever holds the card is in charge of conceive, plan and execute the full task. The other person is not supposed to have to think about it at all. I’m not convinced its going to solve all of our problems but its a starting point. I think its good we are talking about it. Good that we will start being more clear about who is responsible for what. As the women who wrote the book said if you don’t make a clear plan the women by default will do a lot more. I was/am a little annoyed I’m the one who has to acknowledge the problem, research solutions, read the book, bring the topic to my husband but if it helps us get to a more equitable workload it will be worth it. 

I also will commend my husband because he is always willing to admit when he’s made a mistake and happy to work on solutions. He knows he’s been off his game he just doesn’t know what’s causing the issue. When I last brought this up it was specifically about him not helping with baby boy - when he was about three months old. He admitted he wasn’t bonding as much as he had with our girls. He started spending more time with him and is now obsessed. He’s a very lovable little guy. He’s 100% over his initial reluctance and is as good with him as he is with the girls. The only holiday we’ve had since my Birthday was Mother’s Day and he was very thoughtful.

He’s also not one of those guys who thinks he shouldn’t have to do 50%. He won’t try to claim any extra credit for currently earning all of the money. He knows school is hard and that’s it’s important for our families future and for myself.  

Fingers crossed. 

[emisonme]

PR time line.............

Some can't seem to understand, how Shmila could have helped Camila get out of the PR with the con man. Let's explore the time line and maybe you'll have a better understanding of where I'm coming from.

Camila's debut album, had an original release date, of September 2017. She would have signed a PR contract with Ew, probably late August. These PR contracts are usually for a period of time, but the start and end dates, are flexible, because of the release dates of the Artists music being flexible.

Camila probably found out, sometime in late August, that her release date was being pushed, to November. That's why she followed the con man on SM, in October. They were preparing to unleash the PR, after the release of her album, in probably early December. Just in time for the holidays.

But, her album got pushed, yet again. The new date was January 12, 2018. She does the Elvis Duran radio show, on January 11. That is the first time we hear her or anyone else, utter that fuckers name.

The next morning, she does GMA. They schedule Con to appear on the same show. Why? To give us a PUBLIC reason for them meeting and the ensuing "relationship".

Three days later, Camila does Beats 1, with Zane Lowe. That's when we got the "maybe" when asked if she had a special someone in her life. Also, the whole, "I can't say your name without smiling" bullshit.

Then on February 9. 2018, we got the E-News exclusive Mexico beach photo-shoot. That's the day the actual PR began. They had signed the actual contract, MONTHS before, but because the album kept getting pushed, so did the start date for the PR.

That being said, I'm almost certain, they only signed a 1 year contract. I'll explain. We got their one year of public bullshit, but it really got laid on thick towards the end. If you notice, they did the same thing with Lauren and Tyrone. (It stayed pretty much SM until closer to the end, when they started doing red carpets and showing up to Industry events together.)

They did the "family" holiday thing, with both families, in December and January. Then on February 1, we got the pap pics of them leaving the movies, where Camila looks upset, and Con looks pissed. We also get turfers and "fans" taking to SM saying they had been arguing and Camila had been crying. That was the start of the "trouble in paradise" narrative.

The 10th was the Grammy's. After that, they both left for Dubai, and Camila's performance at Red Fest. They spent a few days hobnobbing around the Arabian Desert, taking lots of pics. Supposedly all happy. Then on February 25, Camila took his ass to that Vanity Fair shin-dig. That was their supposed public coming out, together. Camila had zero desire to be there with that fucker, and it showed.

Then, we got Camila's birthday post, on March 3. The things she learned when she was 21. A very interesting post, indeed. Number three, on that list, was talking about how complicated life and relationships are. How the right opportunity comes at the wrong time, and having to do something hard and uncomfortable, to be happy. (yeah, like PR)

Then she talks about how falling in love is the best thing ever. That leads us to number 8. There she says, life is to short, to hang with people you don't like, be in relationships with people that don't make you happy, or do things you hate. (yeah, like PR with an asshole)

Then MFP was released on March 25. In a song, with a video dedicated to people in relationships, Camila tells the world, she dedicated MFP to her favorite person, her little sister. (that's so sweet...but also very telling)

Why are those two things important? Because I firmly believe, the "split" announcement, and the official end to her PR, was supposed to happen in March.

So, what happened? Just like there is no official start date in a PR contract, there isn't an official end date, either. It's just a suggested time frame, of 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, etc. There are no hard dates built in, because in the Music Industry, everything is about timing.

Here's how I think it was supposed to go down. I think the announcement was supposed to come, just before the release of MFP. That would have explained the dedication to her sister, and would have given that song more promo.

But probably more importantly, It would have been perfect timing for FYA, if things had played out the way they were supposed to play out. She recorded that song with Mark, back in January. I think FYA was the song Mark was planning to release, with the pre-order link, which was on April 12. It would have been the best song to release with the link, and a public "split" would have been perfect timing for the release with the pre-order link. It would have gotten a shit load of media attention.

Instead, Epic got pissed, because Camila wasn't doing what they wanted her to do. It wasn't a damn song with Canada, Camila didn't want to do. She's game to collab with Canada, and just about anyone else who wants to collab with her. It was a PR relationship with him, they wanted her to agree to, but she didn't want to do.

When are some of you going to open your eyes and realize that. Her and Canada are real life friends. She'd probably agree to release a collab a year with him, if that's what he wanted. It's just music. A PR relationship, on the other hand, is a completely different story.

Epic, Island, and maybe Andrew, didn't JUST want a song. They wanted that song, to come with the bullshit we are getting now. Camila agreed to the song, but not the PR. So, what did Epic do? They delayed the official "split" with the dickhead.

Camila bought her house in April. They delayed the announcement of the purchase, until May 13, and had his name inserted into the damn article. Making it sound like she was going to be sharing her house with his ass. Did he ever step foot in her house?

Camila went to Italy in early May. They made it look like he went with her. He may have been there, but he didn't go "with" Camila. He was there to promote one of his books. She was there to get away from all the bullshit. They did have her walk through the airport with him, when they arrived back to LA, on May 12. The 13th, we got the article about the house. May 14, was the last pics we got of the two together.

On May 20, Camila posted one of the saddest pics, I've seen. You could tell, she was anything but happy. That's the day they want us to believe Ewmila "broke up". So, what could have happened between their supposed happy romantic trip to Italy, and the 20th? Absolutely nothing...with Ewmila. They were nothing to each other. Camila just wanted that motherfucker out of her life.

On May 24, we got the post saying, "the calm before the storm, with the 6 tornado emoji's. 4 days, after that very sad looking pic, she warned us this shitshow was coming.

On May 27, we got the pics of Camila and Canada eating outside, and the first media hits, asking "are they dating". Publicist planted that shit. May 30, FYA was released. June 8, Camila went to perform on stage with Alejandro Sanz, with no con artist in sight. June 18, she went to have her little chat at Cannes. She posted a pic, with the caption, "looks put together on the outside, but a mess on the inside". (or something close to it) That's also the day we got the first teasers of Senorita. The song and video was released on the 21st. Nothing but PR bullshit after that.

That's the time line, of how all this shit went down. That sad emotional pic, on the 20th, was a genuine sadness. She was an emotional mess, and NOT because of a "break-up". I think, that is the day, she gave in to the pressure, and made the decision to do the PR with Canada.

She wanted out of that PR shitshow with dickhead. The Label could have kept it going, as long as the dickhead agreed to keep it going, and why wouldn't he. It was getting him the attention he wanted. He didn't give a shit, it was causing her anxiety and emotional distress. (Matthew Hussey is a NARCISSISTIC PRICK, that's all about himself. The Label didn't give a shit, either. They just wanted their artist to do what they wanted her to do. IN MY OPINION!!!)

It really doesn't take that long to record and master a single. By the time they were seen eating together, on the 27th, they had probably already recorded the song, and were discussing the visuals for the video. They filmed it the first week of June or so.

I'm pretty sure, in my thoughts, that Camila only agreed to do this shit, if it was the song of her choice, the video visuals of her choice, and her team doing it. The song she chose, was HER song, Señorita. It wasn't difficult to figure out who that song was about. That's why Epic wouldn't allow her to release it, on her own. But, in a duet with Canada, they were fine with it.

This was all decided on, and done very quickly. That's how they were able to keep it a "secret". From agreement to roll out, it was all done in a months time.

So yeah, that's how I came to my conclusion, that Canada actually "helped" her get out of her PR shitshow with the Con man. How it was her song that was chosen. Her Label was pressuring her, to do this PR stunt with Canada, since 2018. Island and Epic, both wanted it. The song was just the pathway to get the PR started.

Camila is getting shit on, for something BOTH sides were pressuring and down right manipulating/coercing her to do. SHE DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT!!! Canada didn't really want to do it, either. But he's so damn scared of getting publicly outed, and it ruining his career, that he was willing to do anything to keep that from happening.

The only BAD GUYS, in all this shit, is Epic, Island, Andrew, and Roger. THEY are the ones so hell bent on keeping their clients "straight", and making a shit load of money off them, while they are being locked in their glass closet.

Roger should have put his foot down, and told Epic to make the public announcement, of the "split" back in May. Hell, he should have "leaked" the shit himself, on the 20th, when Camila posted that pic, if nothing else. That's why I place blame on him, for the way Camila is being portrayed by others.

The Sun, had the information for a while. They were told to sit on that information, until Epic was ready for the public announcement to be made. That's why the report started with, "I can reveal ...". Not, "this just in", or "Sources have confirmed", but "I can reveal".

The definition of reveal, for those who aren't sure...reveal: make (previously unknown or secret information) known to others....Yep, they sat on the info, until they were told to "reveal" it.

Agree or not, believe or not, that's my take on all this shit. This is how my mind connected all the fucked up dots.

[timeagainreviews]

The Edge of Acceptable

Hello friends! Previously I said I would try and post an article between then and my "Doctor Who: The Edge of Time," review. This was mostly due to my not knowing how long it would take me to finish playing the game. Well, intrepid reader, it appears I overestimated the game's length, as I have beaten it and I have many things to say. Before we begin, however, I would like to state that this review will be full of spoilers, so if you plan on playing "The Edge of Time," for yourself, you may want to hold off reading this. There, you've been warned. Let the spoilers commence!

The game begins in a laundrette somewhere in a dark corner of London. After some strange anomalies, a television kicks on, and the Doctor, played by Jodie Whittaker can be seen on screen. Speaking directly to you, she tells you that you're the only person that can help her. Suddenly a shift in the lights (and possibly time) occurs and the laundrette is filled with a black sludge reminiscent of the purple gunk from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild." Peering from the individual dryers along the wall are black sludge monsters with murky red eyes that stick to you. If you get close to them, they lunge and crack the glass.

After explaining to you that the universe is like a hard drive and that people and moments are like individual files, the Doctor informs you that someone has installed a sort of computer virus. Lost on the edge of time, she is unable to help you, but using a bit of her Doctory magic, she's going to help you help her, and by extension- save the universe. It's no small order, but you're raring to go!

It's during this point, however, that I did find myself slightly frustrated with the game design. As the Doctor begins speaking to you, she's oftentimes drowned out by the music, making it hard to hear what she's saying. When I went to the options menu, I was surprised to see that no option to lower the music volume was available. There was however a subtitles option, which I opted out of due to my feeling that seeing subtitles somewhat sullied the immersion. The next bit of frustration came from the following scene in the back office of the laundrette.

Another big source of frustration was the controls. While in the office, you're made to find the code to a safe, and then enter the code into its keypad. As excited as I was to be playing a new Doctor Who game, I almost rage quit due to the sheer difficulty of entering a simple four-digit code. Now, it's worth mentioning that at this point, I was still using my Playstation controller. After switching to the Playstation Move controllers, my experience improved exponentially. However, even with these Move controllers, performing minute actions felt a lot like trying to unwrap a lemon sherbet while wearing a pair of woolly mittens.

You learn a little bit about the late owner of the laundrette. He used to be a janitor at Coal Hill School, and he's now a pile of ash on a chair. The books strewn about the office show he was a man interested in strange phenomena dealing with time and space. The Doctor, using a bit of Time Lord magic, has stashed her sonic screwdriver away in the safe. After fishing it out, I took great glee pointing it at literally anything I could. Sadly, the sonic has very little actual interactivity with the surrounding world other than pre-scripted actions like opening doors that carry the story to the next stage.

Once outside, you get your first glimpse at a Dalek saucer, floating above the sky like something from the Dalek Invasion of Earth. It's a great little callback, and the alley conjures images of Totter's Lane. After building a signal booster with junk from the alley, you call the TARDIS to your location, where it materialises like the beautiful Ghost Monument we all love. Now, I'm not too proud to admit it, but as I walked into the TARDIS for the first time, I got a little misty-eyed. It really does feel like you're walking aboard the greatest ship in the universe. The people at Maze Theory did a fantastic job rendering the Thirteenth Doctor's TARDIS interior. And yes, the console does dispense custard creams. Trying to make my boyfriend laugh, I held the biscuit to my mouth and was pleasantly surprised when my virtual character actually ate it!

This joy was short-lived, however, because I was once again at the mercy of needing to perform exacting tasks with rather sloppy controls. What should have been a joy (piloting the TARDIS), was instead another rage quit moment. Really though, this is more of a problem native to virtual reality. You're only ever as good as your tools, and Move Controllers aren't hands. Controls are one of the game's biggest flaws, really. For instance- there is no duck or crouch function. Meaning that despite all of the wonderful little Easter eggs peppered throughout the game, the second you drop one on the floor, it's gone forever.

After being recruited by the Doctor, you're treated to a title sequence in full 3-D glory. Let me tell you, the time vortex has never looked cooler. I was like David Bowman entering the Star Gate. Moments like these are when the VR really shines. Afterwards, the first place you land is sort of a head-scratcher. You arrive on what looks like a planet, where you're being stalked by a creepy race of aliens known as Hydrorks. I was slightly sad that you never have to actually worry about them. They're mainly there to scurry about in the shadows. Despite the warnings of a woman you're speaking to over a holo-pad, they don't ever actually attack you. You can stop right in front of them and shine your torch at them and walk away unscathed.

If you recall from my Doctor Who and Video Games article, I complained that one of the biggest issues Doctor Who games have is puzzles. This chapter of the game has the most egregious of the puzzles and had me worried that it was about to devolve once more into a series of irritating puzzles, but they lessen as the game progresses, much to its benefit. I would like to mention though, that the game does take accessibility into consideration. Puzzles involving colours also incorporate shapes for those that are colour blind. You can also switch between hands with your sonic screwdriver, a fact that I, as a left-handed person, wish I would have discovered far earlier in the game.

After getting to the lift, you discover the planet you're on is a sort of space ship. The effect of leaving what seems like the outdoors only to find a giant window overlooking alien planets was like something David Lynch would do. I was reminded of episode three from "Twin Peaks the Return," when Dale Cooper exits a room in a building surrounded by a vast purple sea, only to find himself climbing out of a boxy spaceship surrounded by a network of stars. This kind of otherworldly experience is yet again another strength of VR. After a series of puzzles involving lasers, you meet Emer, the ship's computer that forgot it was a computer. Remember how I mentioned David Bowman earlier? Well, the "2001: A Space Odyssey," vibes don't stop there, as Emer's interface looks a lot like HAL 9000. It's a great little homage.

Before leaving the ship, you save Emer onto the sonic screwdriver and find yourself a time crystal. The time crystals are artefacts the Doctor needs you to collect to save the universe. It's a little vague in that "It's a video game, so just go get the thing," kind of manner. But it's a video game, so I'm not even bothered by it. After arriving back on the TARDIS, the Doctor uploads Emer into your brain. Emer's job is to help you along with little hints here and there. I was a little disappointed because the only reason I can imagine they did this is because they only had Jodie Whittaker for six hours on the day she recorded her dialogue. Having the Doctor speak to you like her closest friend is a rapturous bit of nerd joy, so replacing her for a bit is regrettable. But Emer is a likeable character so you don't really mind. The only time Emer really gets under your skin is when she's dropping hints repetitively. You may know exactly how to solve a puzzle, but the mechanics aren't as spelled out. Having her tell you what you already know, over and over again begins to grate on you.

The next place you visit is a very shabby looking Victorian London. You know right away that you've entered Weeping Angel territory. However, the classic Who fans will love the fact that part of this portion of the story incorporates Magnus Greel's time cabinet from "The Talons of Weng-Chiang!" I could tell the people at Maze Theory threw this in for the nerds out there. The Weeping Angels portion of this chapter is easily the creepiest moment in the game. There's a jump scare that had me jumping out of my skin. For full immersion, headphones are a requirement as the sound design is full of little creaks, groans, and stabs as the Angels make their way toward you. The incorporation of the cherubs (which you never see) and a baby pram only adds to the nightmare fuel.

This isn't to say that this sequence is without criticism. One of my chief complaints is that it's a very repetitive sequence. Once you do the first portion, you know exactly how to do the next portion. It then becomes a waiting game which is more tedious than tense. If they'd had varied up the gameplay in this section, I would have said it was the best part of the game. Instead, the Angels only play a minor part, and once you know how to beat them, their terror factor plummets. After a while, the worst part of getting caught by an Angel isn't the dying, it's the waiting for the level to reload. Even with my PS4 Pro, the loading times are egregious. Expect to spend a lot of time staring at the floating orange embers that are the loading screen. At least you can fiddle with the sonic screwdriver while you wait.

After receiving the next time crystal from Magnus Greel's time cabinet, it's time to move on to the next phase. The Doctor begins to tell you a little more about who is tearing apart reality- an entity known simply as The First... or the One. I honestly can't remember which, and the internet isn't much help. It's not a very memorable name, much like the title of the game itself. This "First One," is the very first form of consciousness in the universe that has awoken to find her creation of other forms of life is a disappointment to her. Our penchant for death and destruction has lead her to believe that the only course of action is to reboot the universe, hence the reality virus.

Our next stop is Metebelis...Four? I would be lying if I said I wasn't massively relieved to discover they weren't sending us to Metebelis III. That would have been cruel and unusual. When arriving at Metebelis IV, you're greeted with a gigantic temple structure. In VR, its size and design are really grand in scope. I was reminded of my visit to Durham Cathedral with its impressively high vaulted ceilings. After a quick time jump, you find yourself in a point in history where the Daleks have taken over the planet. I really enjoyed the music cues in this part, because you knew right away you were about to encounter Daleks. You can almost hear a digitised version of their voices in the score that really sets the tone.

This portion of the game was probably my favourite. A lot of it is sneaky stealth missions, which gradually increase in difficulty. The only problem with the stealth portion is you really need to bait the Daleks into following you at points. It goes against usual stealth mechanics which at this point are generally universal. When you accompany this with long load screens, and Emer repeatedly telling you what you already know, it gets to be a bit much. But getting to drive around as a Dalek later on in the level makes up for this in spades.

Much like the Weeping Angels portion of the game, the key to beating this section is patience. You can systematically work your way through the level by budgeting your time. If you take out drones and Daleks in the right order, it's a piece of cake. It becomes a memory game at that point. That being said, I still had a lot of fun. Dalek vision was especially cool. After tearing ass through various temples, you find yourself sort of outside of time. The reality virus has almost torn the universe apart but using memories of the places you've been, you're able to hold things together long enough to stop the First One. The Doctor congratulates you and tells you what a star you are. Emer is given human form for her efforts. The TARDIS drops you off back at the laundrette, seemingly to do it all over again, which leads to my biggest question about the game. Am I supposed to play it again, or was that just a meta-joke from the designers encouraging you to replay at your own leisure? Furthermore, is the Doctor not also now stuck in a time loop along with the player?

I've not done a second playthrough, so I can't rightly say if it adds more content to the game. I'm going to bet the answer is probably no. This is a shame because for a game that has been marketed for as long as it was, and had its release date pushed back almost two months, it's surprisingly sparse. At the very beginning in the Laundrette, the Doctor mentions both the Stenza and the Zygons, which made me expect to see at least one of them throughout the game. What turned the laundrette owner into a pile of soot? Hell, you don't even see the sludge monsters from the laundrette again. I expected them to be a far bigger problem than they were. The game is surprisingly devoid of other characters. Perhaps this is a symptom of VR, but disembodied voices, static Angels, skittering background aliens, and rail driving Daleks are the most interactivity you'll have with other characters.

Throughout its runtime, I couldn't shake the feeling that "The Edge of Time," was originally supposed to be a much bigger game. While I'm aware that most VR games are generally shorter in length, this feels truncated. Perhaps it was from budget issues or internal problems, I can't say. But is it twenty quid's worth of video game? I would say that maybe with DLC it would be, but as is, it feels incomplete. The ability to select chapters does increase replay value. I could see myself pulling up the Weeping Angels level for a group of friends. However, due to the lack of variety in said level, I don't see the novelty lasting long. If they were to release a couple extra levels that were more like survival horror where you were in a creepy mansion avoiding Angels, or maybe something with Cybermen or Zygons I could see the value increasing. I wouldn't want to pay more for these levels, mind.

Compare the price of this game to going to a movie with friends. These days £20 will buy you maybe two tickets to see a film. The game is basically a feature-length episode of Doctor Who. So if my boyfriend plays the game, and my wife and friends, then sure, it's paid for itself. But for people who might play this game alone, they may want to wait until the price drops a bit. I had a good time playing the game, myself, but I have to temper that response with the fact that I am a massive Whovian. Will it have the same appeal for casual fans of Doctor Who? That's really the big question, isn't it?

When the game was announced, my first reaction was to shake my head at the BBC's inability to make a proper Doctor Who game. As you may recall from my article on Doctor Who games, this stems from the fact that going with VR was pre-emptively cutting off a large portion of gamers. While there is a very real demand for Doctor Who video games, VR is still a niche market. Not everyone is going to buy VR just to play one game as I did. And even if they are, VR systems aren't cheap. I had to purchase mine on credit. The cost of admission is now much higher than the asking price of twenty pounds. That being said, the game manages to prove that Doctor Who video games can still try new things. The formula and gameplay are very close to what a lot of people have wanted for years. While I still don't feel like we've seen a truly great Doctor Who game, I had a lot of fun with this one.

#doctor who #the edge of time #video game #vr #virtual reality #dalek #daleks #weeping angels #thirteeth doctor #Jodie Whittaker #maze theory #playstation #psvr #bbc #tardis #Sonic Screwdriver #Time and Time Again #metebelis 3 #magnus greel #emer #doctor who video games

[zerohourseraphim]

          An Open Letter to Politicians and any concerned that video games add drastically to the number of incidents of gun violence and mass shootings.

          I watched a video from The Daily Show. In it, Trevor Noah responded to a tweet from Neil DeGrasse Tyson. The tweet came in the wake of a pair of mass shootings, drawing the ire of the collective internet. In the video, Trevor Noah pointed out that in all the events in which there are statistically more deaths than mass shootings, we as a society have many mitigating factors in an effort to ensure the health and safety of the populace. From medical errors, illness, car accidents, suicide and homicide, he went down the list of how we as a society try to stave off a mounting death toll.

          After the video, my mind turned to the blame that violence in video games was recieving once more. Is there a some valid history here? I think so. I have heard of times in which shooters used games and their engines to make mock ups of the grounds they aimed to terrorize and essentially practice their runs. I am also willing to admit that “you are what you eat”, and as such have to be mindful about what you consume. But in the vein of Trevor Noah’s segment, I began giving focused thought on what the gaming industry could do to police itself, more than lip service or pandering. To do something with the aim of quelling violence. After solid consideration there is only one thing that could be done: Rate games more harshly, namely rating more games as Adult Only rather than Mature.

          Back before the 90s, video games were seen solely as a medium of entertainment for children. The game series Mortal Kombat, still in its infancy, gained a lot of attention for bucking that trend and playing to an older audience. The gratuitous death animations and the over-the-top blood sprays on every hit gained the attention of the American government, leading to creation of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Ratings Board). Since then, all video games, and many other form of computer software and electronic media, have been subject to a division akin to movies and books. These are…

Everyone (E) Everyone 10+ (E10) Teen (T)- Geared towards ages 13 and up Mature (M)- 17 and up Adults only (AO)- 18 and up

          I am of the opinion that the rating system is not all that useful as it is not accurately utilized. For starters, I have always found it quirky how closely spaced the ages in the latter ratings are. Next, brick and mortar salesman were savvy gatekeepers when such was the only way to purchase games. The staff were, and still can, recognize if a T title is appropriate for younger audiences. Beyond that, in cases where an obvious child strolls up with a Mature game or one for Teens more on the Mature side, a parent is normally not too far away. They are likely to see their child as being “mature enough to handle it” and support the purchase. In this vein it has always been an adult, not the rating system, that has barred my access to a game. If you pull aside an adult gamer and ask them to assemble a collection of their most adult games and you will likely see that they are all rated as Mature. This rating is “as bad as it gets”. Thus I doubt you’ll see any Adult Only games. Why?

Cue my Social Cynic for the answer: Money.

          The video game industry generates billions of dollars worth of annual revenue. Amongst that is Grand Theft Auto Online, an extension to GTA V, which is the most lucrative entertainment property of all time. Not most valuable video game. Highest earning entertainment outlet in history. More than Avengers: Endgame or Avatar. More than Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, or any other popular book series.

I repeat: Grand Theft Auto Online is THE highest grossing entertainment property of all time. And, as it is ongoing, its revenue will only continue to grow.

          So how is this possible? The first answer on the board is microtransactions, which are gaining a number of articles from me and the internet abroad as it stands. But in relation to this article, availability. The difference between a Mature and Adults Only rating is where they are sold. With the former it is virtually everywhere, and it is virtually nowhere with the latter. In the pre-internet age, making a game Adults Only would have killed any chance of it turning a profit. And, while removing a title from retailers shelves may seem major even now, the people that want the game will purchase it online and get a download key or the like. If they want a physical disc instead, they can order it from the company, and will likely be given a key while they wait. In fact, an Adults Only rating would only serve as free publicity.

          I have seen games earn the Adults Only rating. I have watched as they were banned from sale in Wal-Marts, Gamestops, and many digital marketplaces. The fact that they were officially deemed heinous by the ESRB was not taken lightly. But any other game earning a lesser rating that does not gain national news attention for one reason or another? ‘Eh… must not be so bad’ echo the thoughts of most people. This acceptance assures that any game can be easily accessed by anyone. Even though I have gamed most of my life and view video games as a burgeoning artistic medium, there is a part of my brain that is conditioned to think of them as “just toys for kids”. And the games’ industry benefits from this social perception, both from myself, other gamers, and the world at large.

          To illustrate, there were children that I cared for that I allowed to play Saints Row IV, a game series much like GTA. It holds a rating of Mature. Why, if the content was not suitable for them, did I allow them to play it? Because I knew which part of the game they would play. I got their file to a free roaming sandbox portion, showed them how to access a garage for vehicles, change their load outs, and where to shop for clothes and even five years out that’s what they think Saint’s Row is. A fun game to dress up, drive around, and use super powers in. They never got into the story, character development, dialogue, and the bulk of what makes the game mature. They had similar play habits in similar, yet more kid-friendly, titles such as the Lego video games.

          But let us say that one finds my actions with the children appalling. That my supervision was not enough. That my foreknowledge of the the game itself and the playing behaviors of the children was negligent. That I was not a dutiful parental figure. And so we make our Grand Theft Auto, Fortnite, Call of Duty, and other questionably violent game series Adult Only. If your aim is to limit access to the games, it does nothing. It just means that sales of these games migrate from physical to online.

          If re-rating games would do no good, why not take other measures? Perhaps ban games like GTA from being brought to completion in the first place? On the one hand, the Video Game Lobby would push to counter these efforts. As I pointed out, it generates too much money to be written off. On the other, remember the digital marketplaces I mentioned? Even now independent creators make games and post them without ESRB sanctioning. Some companies and platform holders (e.g. Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony)are more exacting when it comes to quality control. Without an ESRB rating, these companies will not allow games to be sold on, through, and for their platform(s). And while the PC market has checks and balances, they are comparatively lax. Some of the most heinous “games” (a term I am using very loosely here) I have ever seen exist in the gutters of Steam. And much like society at large, they thrive in numerous pockets. You take down one and, not only will more just like it take its place, but the original game is likely to be taken down and uploaded again as something else. It’s a whack-a-mole that cannot be won unless you want to take drastic action.

          Now… do I want to see this happen? Do I want more games to be bumped up from Mature to Adults Only? I personally do not care. I am old enough to buy whatever games I wish. But you know what? As ineffectual as I think it would be, and as much evidence as I have seen showing that video games and shootings are unrelated on the whole, I would be willing to abide by a more stringent rating system.

          That said, my abdication comes with one single ongoing condition:

Blame whatever you want, but if you identify a problem, fix the problem.

          I’ve informed you what can be done about video games. If this is where you want to place the fault today… okay. Let’s make games with realistic and gruesomely violent conent harder to access for people who do not have enough external real life experience to contextualize what they are playing. (Ignoring for now how video games aided me in being able to contextualize so much of real life. A discussion for another time.) If, in the wake of another/the next shooter, you are going to point the finger at mental health? Vote for robust healthcare so people get the help they need. Enable that medications are affordable to help keep brain chemistry in check. Improve the quality of life of people so they aren’t driven to violent and deadly outbursts, or perhaps so much medical care to begin with. An ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure and all. Want to blame them being an outlier, racial supremacist and other radical ideologue? Then figure out what lawful measures there are to eliminate them wholly, from the fruit back down to the root. Don’t just denounce them and then tolerate them as they continue to spread hatred and foment terror. Peter denied Jesus Christ three times, but we still regard him as a faithful apostle. Don’t continue to pay lip service by pointing to a problem. Something has to be done at this point, and sooner than later.

As I was finishing up, Facebook reloaded and this was front and center.

          In answer to the question “Do video games increase the potential of violence/mass shooting?” thirty years worth of science and study says no. Additionally, counties that have a larger population of gamers than the United States do not suffer from widespread gun violence. We may not be able to prove the mental soundness of each individual shooter. And things like manifestos and social media profiles can be spoofed if you want to give all sides their due.

          All of these incidents have one common element beyond the shadow of a doubt. All of these killings were perpetrated by people with guns fine tuned to kill a multitude. Even with the current safeguards and measures we have in place, gun violence is still all too common. As what we are doing is not enough, more must be done. Referring back to Trevor Noah, we have to try something. If today it’s my turn with games, that is fine. If, after cutting at every other factor, gun-driven violence is still a problem will it then be time make compromises regarding firearms?

I am willing to Try, Do, and abide to something different in my life and industry to make the America safer.

Are you?

Is there any action that can be taken on video games to mitigate gun violence?           An Open Letter to Politicians and any concerned that video games add drastically to the number of incidents of gun violence and mass shootings.

#Social Commentary #Video Games

[daleisgreat]

20 Years of Dreamcast: Thinking of Dreamcast’s Legacy for 20 Years!

Where were you for quadruple nine, AKA September 9, 1999? That was the marketing friendly launch date of the Sega Dreamcast in North America, which will make it 20 years old. Such a landmark anniversary inspired me to craft another gaming reflection piece here looking back on my memories with the Dreamcast over the years. If you missed my similar anniversary articles earlier this year for the Genesis and GameBoy please click here to get caught up.

The first thing that comes to mind all these years later of the Dreamcast is that it ended up the first system that released when I had a job and could afford it entirely on my own. I got my first part-time high school job mere days after turning 16 about a half year earlier in 1999 and was fine picking up the occasional new game for our family’s N64 during that timeframe. However, around August of 1999 the first issue of Official Dreamcast Magazine (ODM) hit newsstands and it really popped compared to other gaming magazines. It was the first oversized gaming magazine that I can recall and they crammed in tons of news, special editorial features, previews and reviews in every issue and not a millimeter of page-space seemed wasted. It also had a bright colorful art scheme consistent throughout most issues compared to its competitors and in hindsight it was the ideal color scheme due to the unorthodox lineup of eye-popping bright games like Jet Grind Radio, Space Channel 5, Sonic Adventure and Samba de Amigo to name a few. I will give props to YouTube channel Classic Gaming Quarterly for doing a excellent page-by-page revisiting of that awesome first issue several months ago which was the catalyst for me re-reading the first four issues earlier this year. Those issues hold up splendidly and if you run across scans of any I highly recommend giving them a look-see as they perfectly encapsulate everything that made the Dreamcast as fondly remembered as it is today. That special preview issue of the Dreamcast sold me on the system with its hype of being the first 128-bit system on the market and how Sega would change gaming with its new GD-ROM disc format, interactive VMU memory card and by introducing online play with its built-in 56k modem the following year. It also had thorough previews for nearly the whole launch lineup. If you recall my Genesis write-up, I was not much of a Sonic fan and that issue only had reviews for Sonic Adventure and House of the Dead 2. I had good memories of the first HotD light gun arcade game and that review got me amped up for the sequel. By the time I was done perusing that issue of ODM a few times over I was hell-bent on getting a Dreamcast and a copy of HotD2 at launch. 9-9-99 As the Dreamcast launch approached I was legitimately unaware of being able to pre-order games or it was officially a available service yet at our local Software Etc. in the mall. I inquired there frequently when they were opening on launch day it turned they were opening early that day an hour or two before I was supposed to be at school. I convinced my dad to give me a lift there and arrived there an hour early to secure getting a system. There was only one person ahead of us and I presumed getting a system at Software Etc. in 1999 would be comparable to lining up at any other department store and getting a new product on a first people at the front of the line basis. That turned out to be the case for Dreamcast (though I do remember them instituting pre-orders the next year for the heavily anticipated PS2 launch) and I was thrilled walking out of there as planned with a Dreamcast and HotD2!

Software Etc. did not get any VMUs however and thankfully my dad checked out other stores on his lunch breaks and was able to procure me one from KB Toys. Only other problem was there were no light gun peripherals available for the Dreamcast at launch. Sega did not release their own model in America due to the controversial Columbine shootings earlier in the year, and third party models were still two-to-three months out from being available. I could play HotD2 with a controller, but I refused to accept that as an option and for the first few weeks after the Dreamcast launch I was content on playing the included demo disc and checking out games like Sonic Adventure, Hydro Thunder, Soul Calibur and Power Stone over at a friend’s place. Finally after a few weeks of that I was fed up of waiting for the light gun to hit and I took a chance and picked up Sega’s NFL 2K since I was always into football games and still sticking with older pigskin games on the N64 and playing a ton of Madden NFL ’99 in near weekly sessions on another friend’s PSone. I was instantly blown away by NFL 2K’s revolutionary leap in graphics and gameplay at that point. It had bar-raising production quality with TV-caliber replays, camera angles and insanely impressive announcer commentary which made it feel like the first football game to come off as an actual telecast. I can still pinpoint my mom walking in on me playing and doing a double take and asking if NFL 2K was real or not. NFL 2K got a ton of play in single player and in local multiplayer against friends over the next year.

Sega released five star sports games within the first year of release with hits seen above like NFL 2K, NBA 2K, Virtua Tennis and Virtua Striker For the rest of 1999 I checked out every demo included with each issue of ODM and it lead to me checking out Sega’s other sports offerings and playing a ton of NBA 2K and even a fair amount of NHL 2K. Worms Armageddon ended up being a surprise hit with friends and I loved going nuts with its Banana Bombs and Holy Hand Grenades. For Christmas of 1999 I got NBA 2K and Toy Commander. I eventually came across a light gun too and played through HotD2 several times through with a friend. Toy Commander was another lost gem on the Dreamcast I spent hours with devouring its single player missions and the local vs. multiplayer deathmatch was also fun for its time. I loved using the pressure-sensitive triggers on the Dreamcast controller to shoot free throws in NBA 2K, and speaking of the controller I am surprised there seems to be a lot of widespread disdain for peripheral. Sure, it was a little bulky, but nothing compared to the original Xbox ‘Duke’ controller or the unique ergonomics of the N64 controller. I loved the thumb-stick and directional pad, and the rest of the button layout was nearly identical to a SNES controller. If I should be nitpicking about some of the Dreamcast’s features it would be about the side effects of the painfully low battery life of the VMU. For those unfamiliar, it was Sega’s innovative memory card that also had a mini black and white LCD screen that would display gameplay tips, stats and other options and also could be unplugged from the controller to play bonus mini-games included with supported games. Unfortunately the VMU had an infamously low battery life and within a few weeks the included watch batteries would drain and would result in a notoriously loud beep from the VMU when powering on the system to indicate it was time to replace them. Additionally, the Dreamcast also had a painfully loud hard drive whenever loading game data. After awhile however I got use to the grinding hard drives and perpetual beeps and passed it off as Dreamcast’s catchy marketing slogan ‘It’s Thinking.’ As the years passed and new owners complained about those noises it sort of became a hazing-esque right of passage to them first experiencing the platform. 2000

While I was putting together an outline for this piece I was surprised to find out how much of a bummer a first half of 2000 I had with the Dreamcast. Aside from still getting lots of long-term fun with the aforementioned sports titles, almost every new game I picked up was a letdown. I never played a Resident Evil game before, but friends and classmates loved it and I saw a ton of buzz for the upcoming exclusive Dreamcast title in the series, Code Veronica, in ODM so I got it for my birthday shortly after its release. I popped it in and was completely unprepared for its tank controls the early Resident Evil games were known for and I completely stumbled around like a buffoon and could not get past the first zombie. After several attempts I pleaded with my mom to take it back to the store and exchange it for something else. After that I tried renting games more often and was disappointed with World Series Baseball 2K1 and Sonic Shuffle. The former had excellent past entries on the Genesis and Saturn, but the first Dreamcast baseball game released without the ability to control the fielders and it felt like half the game was missing. I knew Sonic Suffle was developed by Hudson Soft who also made the first couple Mario Party games I played a ton of and was excited for the Dreamcast rendition of the party game, but was stunned it was plagued with countless loading times for every turn and mini-game that soured the experience. The last big disappointment of 2000 for the Dreamcast was WWF Royal Rumble. At the time it was going to be the first exclusive Dreamcast wrestling game and I was nonetheless psyched for it. I disregarded EGM’s low review scores for them not ‘getting’ the game and presumed I would have a fabulous time with it. I came to find out later on it was a port of an arcade game I did not see available anywhere which is why it surprised me with its low amount of wrestlers on the roster and modes of play available when stacked next to other titles. After plowing through all the single player content in an afternoon I was overwrought about how the game turned out. I did wind up getting some decent value out of Royal Rumble down the line with friends in multiplayer Rumble matches, but out of the gates as the sole Dreamcast exclusive wrestling game it felt like a Kirkpatrick-esque punch in the stomach.

After those four disappointments 2000 wound up getting redeemed for the Dreamcast with a flurry of much better titles. I enjoyed playing Soul Calibur over at my friend’s, but was not head over heels for it like many others. A fighting game I did feel that way for however I took a random chance on in the summer of 2000 with Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I instantly loved its unforgettable music, chaotic three-on-three tag battles and the accessible hyper combos that did not require master precision to pull off. The game was a regular in my rotation with friends and for a couple months we held routine tournaments in my first apartment with my roommate and neighbors. It lead me to playing a ton of another Capcom fighter that same summer in Power Stone 2, which was vastly improved over the original and felt like a 3D version of Smash Bros. with simultaneous four player battles and constantly evolving stages. Demolition Racer: No Exit was a surprise hit I put way more time than I should have into it. I love demolition-derby racer games, and No Exit had a ton of tracks, demolition derby events, thrashin’ metal soundtrack and many unlocks that kept me coming back to work my way through its extensive career mode for a good three-to-four years after release. It ended up as my surprise favorite driving game on the system which is absurd compared to other first-party driving hits that did not land on my radar until many years later like Daytona USA 2001, Sega Rally 2 and Metropolis Street Racer. The awesome port of the arcade hits Crazy Taxi and 18 Wheeler had faithful home Dreamcast ports, but I played a ton of both in the arcades and got my fill of them at home with a rental. I think it is safe to say I am not alone in Crazy Taxi turning me onto Offspring and being one of the few games to make product-placement seem cool with driving like a lunatic to escort passengers to get their KFC and Pizza Hut fix. I was so bummed out to see the later 360/PS3 re-release take out the product placement and replace the Offspring’s tall licensing price soundtrack with licensing fee-friendly indie bands.

The other surprise hit of 2000 was Virtua Tennis. I tried it on ODM’s demo disc and it wound up being surprisingly fun and easy to pick up and play. Jim Courier I now associate as being the man who dethroned Jimmy Connors in his last gasp at coming close to winning a major in the early 90s and being the only American character to play as in Sega’s game. The demo wound up being hit and created buzz online about it and a quick fervor spread about it being the cannot miss Dreamcast game of the summer. Virtua Tennis was impossible to find in stores so that caused me to create an account at ebgames.com and how Virtua Tennis was the first game I ordered online. After those two games saved the year for Dreamcast, the next installments of NFL 2K and NBA 2K released which I instantly purchased and played endless hours of with friends. The 2K1 versions of both games added franchise modes and online play finally debuting for the system. I played about several rounds of both sports games online and tried to master typing out ‘good play’ on the keyboard peripheral. The games played decently, but I could not help but notice semi-constant lag over the 56k modem so after several games I stuck with my routine local multiplayer with friends.

What was being advertised as the do not miss hit for the 2000 holiday season was Sega’s much anticipated open world adventure, Shenmue. ODM and websites put a ton of hype for Shenmue leading up to its release and how Sega was putting a huge budget into it and how it was the first part of a mammoth saga, but I was not initially feeling it and that style of game seemed a bit outside my wheelhouse at the time. Shortly after its release however, I saw a used copy marked down surprisingly low at a local rental store and decided to chance it. I was shocked by its quality of graphics and cinema cutscenes for the time and before I knew it I found myself getting immersed in the open-world and having the freedom to talk and interact with nearly any major or minor NPC and their own so-bad-its-good English voiceovers. I understand Shenmue is not for everybody and its unique controls resulted in a polarizing reception for the game, but I burned through that game within a couple of weeks and loved every minute of it. I revisited it last year when Sega released HD ports on the Xbox One and PS4 last year, and after getting used to the controls I instantly got wrapped up in it again.

Dreamcast had a ton of quality fighters in its brief lifespan. Some of my favorites pictured above are Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Power Stone 2 and Heavy Metal: GeoMatrix. There are several other quality fighters on the system too not pictured above such as the original MvC and Power Stone, Virtua Fighter 3TB, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Dead or Alive 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3 and Capcom vs. SNK. This console was heaven for fighting game fans! 1-31-2001 2001 kicked off strong for the Dreamcast with ports of PC FPS hits of Unreal Tournament and Quake III both launching around the same time with online play. ODM and websites hyped up 2001 for being a big year for Dreamcast games supporting online play. I tried out those pair of FPS games at a friend’s and had a blast with them and was looking forward to the rest of 2001 for the Dreamcast even though at the time the PS2 was out for a few months and had a lot of people’s attention. Unexpectedly, towards the end of January crazy rumors started popping up about the PS2 slaughtering Dreamcast in 2000 holiday sales so bad that Sega would be discontinuing support for the system early. I immediately dismissed the rumors as ludicrous as it seemed whacked for a publisher to stop supporting a system under a year and a half after release. Sure enough however on January 31, 2001 news broke with Sega stating they would only support the Dreamcast with games for the rest of 2001 and would transition into a third party publisher role in 2002 going forward.

I was devastated with the news as a huge Dreamcast fan and continued to be bummed throughout 2001 as many anticipated Dreamcast games like Half-Life, Rez, Castlevania Resurrection, Headhunter and Tribes got cancelled and/or switched over to becoming a PS2, Xbox and GCN release. Sega and a few loyal third parties like Capcom released a steady stream of games throughout 2001 and I did get a lot of enjoyment from some of them like the addicting arcade-driving sequel Crazy Taxi 2, a decent but forgettable arcade FPS title Outrigger and a few more light gun games like the excellent HotD2 follow-up from the same developers but in a secret agent setting called Confidential Mission, the peculiar Japanese horror themed light gun shooter Death Crimson OX and the delightful surprise remaster of the original Virtua Cop tucked inside Sega Smash Pack to tide me through 2001 for Dreamcast. Sega said they would be porting their next wave of sports games to other systems a few months after their initial Dreamcast release in 2001 so I held off on them that year. I was saving my last surge of Dreamcast fandom for what the gaming press was heralding as the swan song for the Dreamcast in Shenmue II. About a couple month before its American release however Sega stunned its fans by announcing they were cancelling the American version and making it an exclusive to the Xbox a year later with touched up graphics and adding in English voiceovers that were not originally going to make their return. The Shenmue fanboy in me was furious, but I found relief in ebgames.com capitalizing on the situation by offering the European version of Shenmue II that did not get cancelled for sale along with a boot-disc to get it to play on American systems. I spent the first several weeks of 2002 gleefully playing nothing but Shenmue II. I convinced myself it blew the original away due to jumping through extra hoops to acquire the sequel. The follow-up is a noticeably larger and longer experience and contains some noticeable gameplay improvements; upon currently replaying it on the previously mentioned HD bundle on Xbox One/PS4 I am going to have to go back to siding with the original being superior due to its more immersive setting and my love for driving forklifts. I hope to finish replaying the sequel in time for what is one of my most anticipated games ever in the long awaited third Shenmue game currently slated to be released this November a whopping 17 years after the original release of the second Dreamcast game.

Speaking of imports, Shenmue II was the first game I ever imported, and the second game was another Dreamcast game in FirePro Wrestling D. I heard so much acclaim for the FirePro games in Japan about them being the ultimate 2D wrestling games. After tracking down a guide online I relentlessly jotted down detailed English translations of all the menus and discovered a game save that translated all the wrestler’s names and attires into their English counterparts. I wound up playing a ton of that classic entry in the series on the Dreamcast. I am constantly nagging myself to open up my copy of the latest entry, FirePro Wrestling World that recently hit PS4 last year. I regret not importing more Dreamcast titles in the later years because games kept regularly coming out for Sega’s last system in Japan for several more years. Eventually most of them made their way to America on other systems in the following years, but for those that took advantage they got a one-to-three year head start on gems like Ikaruga, Rez, Rent-a-Hero and Capcom vs. SNK 2. Post-2002 I also regret not making time to sink my teeth into the then-exclusive RPGs on Dreamcast. My former podcast co-host Chris picked most of them up so I was able to check them out at his place and play some of them on demo discs. Skies of Arcadia intrigued me with its sky pirates setting and I eventually picked up the GCN re-release. Ditto with the pair of Evolution RPGs that later were bundled together on the GCN. Grandia II I recall having a kind of more involved battle system that popped out to me and if I owned a Switch I would likely be acquiring the HD up-ports of the first two games that just released on there. I did enjoy demos of action RPGs Silver and Record of Lodoss War and finally tracked down both games last year and played about an hour of both way after the fact. The one I did put a lot of time into later on was Phantasy Star Online on the original Xbox. I loved being able to play that game in four player split-screen and I had a few friends over for several marathon sessions of its addicting action-RPG combat into the wee hours of the night.

The Dreamcast unofficially lived on for the next couple years well into the PS2/Xbox/GCN era with some of its key games that got cancelled and sequels getting re-released on those systems. Sega released their 2K sports line for a few years on all three systems before selling sports developer Visual Concepts and the 2K branding to Take-Two in 2005. The heavy duty competition from 2K Sports titles only helped fuel EA Sports to step up their efforts for better sports titles from both companies for the past 20 years. The Xbox got some heavy hitters in the form of Panzer Dragoon Orta, Shenmue II, Crazy Taxi 3, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Gun Valkyrie. The PS2 landed Rez, Headhunter, Half-Life, Tribes, Grandia II and Resident Evil: Code Veronica. The GameCube received the four player port of Phantasy Star Online well before the Xbox version and later an exclusive third chapter in addition to Evolution Worlds, Skies of Arcadia Legends, Ikaruga, Chaos Field and enhanced deluxe versions of both Sonic Adventure titles. Aside from Dreamcast living on with those games on the next wave of systems I still busted out my Dreamcast regularly for the next several years. It was my favorite way to play Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for many years and as mentioned above I kept revisiting titles like FirePro Wrestling D and Demolition Racer for quite a few years too. The homebrew/indie scene was alive and well for the Dreamcast and is still going to this day. Goat Store had a couple high-profile indie releases with Feet of Fury and Irides that I both acquired. The former is the only dance-pad game I know of for the system and while I do not own a dance-pad I did put some time into it with its support for the Dreamcast keyboard. Irides: Master of Blocks is a fun Lumines-inspired puzzler on the system. Since it is the 20th anniversary of the platform, I took a chance a few months ago and Kickstarted an upcoming driving game set to hit at the end of this year that peaked my interest in the form of Arcade Racing Legends. Here is hoping to its success! The End? When I think back to my own personal favorite moments and experiences with the Dreamcast there are a few things I will chalk up to its legacy. I consider it to be the first system to prove that online gaming was viable on consoles and paved the way for it to really take off a couple years later on the PS2 and Xbox. I will also remember it for its local multiplayer games being a big hit with my friends and I for its wide array of fighting and sports games for two players as well as many games taking advantage of the four controllers with quite a few party games and driving games especially supporting four players locally. I consider it the last hurrah for the arcade ports, as the late 90s were the final successfully years of arcades in America and Sega, Capcom, Midway and Konami took advantage of Dreamcast’s Naomi-based hardware making it developer-friendly to convert their arcade titles to the system. A majority of the games I listed above are arcade conversions.

These last two are big ones for me personally. First is how Sega stepped up big time with their blockbuster first party sports games on the Dreamcast and gave the impression of how they scared away competition from EA Sports releasing their games on the Dreamcast. Finally, I will remember the Dreamcast where Sega took chances with a plethora of new, unorthodox IP. It seemed every few months a new original Sega IP hit the system from successes and cult-hits like Jet Grind Radio, Samba de Amigo, Space Channel 5, Crazy Taxi, Skies of Arcadia and of course Shenmue to fascinating curiosities such as Floigan Bros., Alien Front Online and the bizzaro-Leonard Nimoy-narrated journey that is Seaman. Combine everything from these last two paragraphs and that is why I feel it is safe to say why I and likely many others revere the Dreamcast as much as we did for the years it was active in its all too short lifespan. I have rambled, ranted and raved for over 4,000 words now and want to thank you dear readers for sticking with me to the very end of this trip down memory lane. I apologize for the length of this piece, but I had to get it all out of my system. If somehow you want more Dreamcast love and want to keep this Dreamcast nostalgia train rolling I will link you to two prior pieces I did on the system. The first is a special 10th anniversary flashback on the Dreamcast where I breakdown 15 forgotten facts about the Dreamcast. I touched on a few of them here, but there are several more obscure factoids you can discover by clicking here. The other is my former co-hosts and I doing a special Dreamcast retrospective podcast on my old podcast you can listen to by clicking here. My Other Gaming Flashbacks GameBoy 30th Anniversary Genesis 30th Anniversary

BONUS OVERTIME: Random Dreamcast quick bits I neglected to include above!

Oh man, I wish I would have remembered to touch on a few more gems I dug on the Dreamcast. I forgot about the oddball arena-based fighters that were fun rentals back then like Spawn: In the Demon’s Hand and Heavy Metal: Geomatrix. There was also the crazy keyboard version of HotD2 that hit in 2001 called Typing of the Dead! It was a super fun way to master your home row skills while massacring zombies! Sega released a remaster of it on Steam a couple years ago so give it a look-see! I remember trying to hunt down the low-quantity released broadband adaptor for the Dreamcast in 2002 on eBay but sellers were marking them up in ‘Dreamcast Online Ready’ bundles for absurd amounts. 56k web browsing with the Dreamcast was admittedly a slog, but it worked and was a slick way to upload and download game saves and made me feel I was swindling William Shatner by not falling for his WebTV commercials from that timeframe. Hydro Thunder I played a bit at a friend’s and to this day even though it was a fun on its own merits arcade boat racer the thing I recall most fondly about it was the over-the-top announcer saying the game’s name on the title screen and exclaiming ‘Dam the Torpedoes!’ at specific moments. I wanted to get Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 so much for Dreamcast after hearing all the GOTY-caliber buzz and wanting to experience it with better graphics, but after spending weeks not finding it in stores around town I wound up settling on purchasing the PSone version even though I did not have that platform at the time and brought it over to my neighbor’s place for many throwdown sessions of Trick Attack multiplayer and HORSE. No regrets! There was something about Next Tetris: Online Edition that was off that did not get it to live up to the fun I was having in multiplayer over on the N64’s New Tetris and Tetrisphere. I wanted to like it, much like I did with launch title Trickstyle because of its futuristic extreme sports nature with a bunch of unique tricks and competitions to take in, but its un-intuitive controls left me getting my fix with solely the demo. Brighter days were ahead for Trickstyle’s developer, Criterion Games.

Apparently sim F1/Indy/Cart games were a hit on the Dreamcast for its brief lifespan with multiple entries from Sega and Ubisoft. Even the notorious LJN publishing label got resurrected after being dormant for several years with its retro F1 game, Spirit of Speed 1937. It is a good thing I never came around to them with the many other stellar driving games available. I remember loving the Ready 2 Rumble Boxing demo and thought that franchise would be around for years, but one quick sequel later and an out of nowhere Wii version years later and it has been AWOL ever since. EA’s Facebreaker seemed like a worthy spiritual successor, but that one came and went even faster. Even though EA did not release anything on the Dreamcast I still checked out a few other third party sports games from Acclaim, Midway and Konami and had great times with NFL Blitz 2000 and digging NBA Showtime and its brilliant use of the NBA on NBC theme song. Crap, I forgot to touch on the last pair of Sega’s polygonal arcade brawler ports that were good weekend rentals for their day in Dynamite Cop and Zombie’s Revenge, but I will forever be a Die Hard: Arcade man for life! I tried to give Sonic Adventure an honest shot, but lost interest quickly after being wowed by its opening stage and that damn whale flipping all over the place after Sonic in its 128-bit glory. I will not get into the details here, but if you are up for an ill-fated timing story, then look up the details on the cancellation on what was supposed to be one of the last Dreamcast games originally scheduled to release towards the end of 2001, Propeller Arena. Ok ok, now I am finally done and think I covered every nook and cranny of my Dreamcast experie….awwww shoot I forgot to tell you guys all about Sega Swirl! Wait, where are you going? Come back, come baaaaaack!

#videogames #Sega #dreamcast #soul caliber #shenmue #sonic adventure #nfl 2k #nba 2k #virtua tennis #demolition racer #resident evil #code veronica #toy commander #house of the dead #spirit of speed 1937 #dynamite cop #hydro thunder #marvel vs capcom #Royal Rumble #firepro wrestling #crazy taxi #jet grind radio

[pogueman]

The pizza-making robots that want to change the world

HBO’s comedy “Silicon Valley” makes fun of the way even boring startup tech companies adopt the same mission statement: “To make the world a better place.”

But serial entrepreneur and former Microsoft executive Alex Garden isn’t shy about stating his new company’s path to making the world a better place—through pizza. It’s not just any pizza, though. Zume pizzas are made by robots, and they’re cooked in pizza ovens inside delivery trucks.

Alex Garden (right) treats me to the finished product.

“One of the founding principles of this company is that every American has a right to a healthy meal they can afford,” he told me. “If you look at pizza, what is it? It’s high-quality bread, and high-quality organic vegetables, and meats and cheeses. All of these things are things that are good for you in moderation. And the number of calories really is a function of how much sugar is in the food. Zume Pizza is half the calories per slice, roughly half the cholesterol and half the fat, of any of the national leading chains.”

How? “The main reason is sugar,” says Garden, whose pizzas range in price from $10 for a cheese to $20 for a pineapple express.

“We don’t put any extra sugar in the sauce. We don’t put any extra sugar in the dough. And we let our dough age for 24 hours; during that process, the fermentation of the dough further reduces the sugar in it.”

He also has much to say about where he gets his ingredients—directly from the providers, without the warehouses and distribution channels that, say, Pizza Hut (YUM) or Domino’s (DPZ) employ. He uses software—predictive algorithms—to know what he’ll need when. He makes his sausage and tomato sauce in-house.

But that’s not the most headline-grabbing feature of Zume pizza, which was founded in 2015 and currently delivers in Mountain View, California, and surrounding areas. The biggest feature is the robots.

The robots

Inside the Zume kitchen, robots are displacing more human workers every passing month. These days, one robot presses out the dough into the familiar flattened circle; a second and third (Pepe and Giorgio) squirt tomato sauce or white sauce onto each pie; a fourth (Marta) spreads the sauce around (“perfectly, but not too perfectly,” Garden says). Humans apply the toppings, but then a fourth machine (Bruno) scoops up the pizza from the conveyor belt and delicately lays it into the baking oven; a fifth (Leonardo) chops it neatly into eight slices with a single, 200-pounds-of-force stroke.

Pepe squirts tomato sauce all day long.

Eventually, Garden and his cofounder Julia Collins intend to replace all of the humans in their pizza shop.

The robots are fun to watch—as long as you can avoid thinking, “This is what the end of human employment looks like.”

But Garden insists that replacing the people is also part of making the world a better place.

“The automation exists so that we can eliminate boring, repetitive jobs, and provide a more rewarding work environment for our employees,” he says. “And it exists so that we can buy higher quality ingredients. That’s the reason why we use it.”

For example, he says, “taking a pizza off of a production line and putting it into an 800-degree oven is actually not particularly rewarding, and it’s also quite dangerous. So we found a way to automate that work now that was previously done by a person.

“So what happens to the person? Well, good news. We’re a high-growth company. We have people who’ve moved from a role in the kitchen to other roles—to customer support or to finance. You come in and prove that you can work the Zume way, and we make a lifetime commitment to you in return.”

The math still didn’t work for me. “But today, 100 people work here,” I said. “If you didn’t have the robots, it would be 115.”

“That is true,” he replied, “but here’s the point you have to consider. If you took a national competitor that we compete against, what percentage of their workforce are making the absolute rock-bottom minimum wage for the place they work? $7 an hour, $7.50 an hour? Do they have benefits? Is it a safe job? What hours are they working?

“Every employee in this company makes a minimum of $15 an hour. Everyone gets full medical, dental, vision [insurance] for them and for their families. And everyone, when they hit their six-month mark, becomes a shareholder. So you can make an argument that the absolute number of employed people is the way to go; we don’t believe that.”

In half a second, this machine cuts the 14-inch pizza into 8 slices.

Inside the box

Garden and his team have obsessed over every aspect of the American pizza-delivery system—including the box. Zume’s pizza is excellent, but the box is a masterpiece. (“So you redesigned the box?” I asked him. His reply: “We didn’t redesign the box. We designed the box.”)

It’s made of compressed sugar cane (!), so it’s compostable, biodegradable, and collapsible—you can fold it up to fit your compost or trash can. Garden says that it also keeps the pizza warmer, keeps it dry, and prevents it from getting soggy, thanks to eight narrow channels below the pizza, like spokes. They conduct moisture down and away from the crust, pooling in a shallow well under the middle. “Your hands will be completely clean after you eat a Zume pizza, because there’s no grease or sogginess anywhere.”

(This I found hard to believe. But as my family discovered when we ate Zume pizza that night, it’s absolutely true: Our fingers were not greasy.)

The most thought-through pizza box in America.

The box’s lid slips under the lower box, which (a) creates a nice little stand and (b) doesn’t occupy your entire table with the ugly, greasy open lid, as a regular box does.

It even has shallow round depressions that match depressions in the top of the lid, so that stacked boxes sort of interlock. “With one hand, you can carry five pizzas and walk around, and there’s no hope of them falling over,” Garden points out.

The truck concept

But Alex Garden isn’t finished yet. He’s also reinvented the delivery truck.

Each one contains 28 or 56 individual pizza ovens. By consulting GPS, the truck fires up the oven when it’s four minutes away from your house, so that the pizza is coming out of the oven as the truck arrives.

The pizzas cook in their own little ovens–in the truck.

That cook-en-route system might sound like it was designed to give you freshly baked pizza, but it was actually Garden’s solution to a knotty governmental problem: It’s against the law for workers to cook food in a truck while it’s moving.

The solution, of course, was to automate the cooking while in motion. No person is involved, and so no laws are broken.

Laws also dictate, by the way, that a food truck must contain a three-compartment sink—for washing utensils, spatulas, and so on. Garden didn’t want to devote precious oven space to some sink apparatus. So he came up with a utensil-free truck. As the pizza finishes cooking, it ejects from its oven like a CD from its player, and goes directly into the Zume pizza box. “No one ever touches the food,” he says, and so there’s no need for a sink in the truck.

Predictive pizza

The part of Zume’s master plan that I found hardest to believe was that often, your pizza is on its truck before you even order it. Garden says that Zume’s AI software predicts what pizzas its customers will order, when, and pre-loads them onto the truck. How could he possibly know what his customers will order?

“Do you order pizza?” he asked me.

Yes, I told him.

“And how often would you say when you order pizza, you get the same thing you got last time?”

“Probably 95 percent of the time,” I admitted.

“Usually on the same day that week? Yeah. That makes you like most of the other people in the country. So if you think about that…Plus things like, when there’s a game you get more orders; when it’s hot out, you get fewer orders; you sell a lot more cheese pizza around 6:00 p.m. than you do at 9:00 p.m.; [you get spikes during] political debates; and another three or four dozen factors that we take into consideration when we’re predicting volume.

“Then we look at it neighborhood by neighborhood. Perhaps there’s a neighborhood that really likes Hawaiian pizza, there’s another neighborhood who really likes pepperoni pizza. So we have all of these signals and they give us the ability to predict about 95% of the time what people are going to order, before they do.”

And what if there’s a run on pineapple pizza on a weird day?

“We have what we called field reloading, which is giving the trucks more inventory in flight. It’s almost like air-to-air refueling in the Air Force.”

Zume vs the World

Zume just expanded from one location to two. Next year, all of California; then to the whole country; then the world.

That’s the plan, anyway.

Will Zume’s robots and lofty goals really make the world a better place?

Well, already they’re making the world a better pizza—and that’s a good start.

More from David Pogue:

Is through-the-air charging a hoax?

Electrify your existing bike in 2 minutes with these ingenious wheels

Marty Cooper, inventor of the cellphone: The next step is implantables 

The David Pogue Review: Windows 10 Creators Update

Now I get it: Bitcoin

David Pogue’s search for the world’s best air-travel app

The little-known iPhone feature that lets blind people see with their fingers

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s [email protected]. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email. 

#tech #_uuid:c588b8b8-9b70-3129-818f-1e52b3f94b3b #Pogue #David Pogue #_lmsid:a077000000BAh3wAAD #_revsp:yahoofinance.com #$DPZ #$YUM #_author:David Pogue

[wanderer706]

Behind the Screens Ch 8- Playwright

(Cam. Airl- Written Draft 2)

The paracetamol didn’t seem to be doing anything to help Layla’s headache. She had been lying on her bed for nearly twenty minutes now staring at the patterns of her ceiling, and had achieved nothing. She knew exactly why she had this thumping pain in her skull. A combination of her forgetting to drink any water today, and the stress brought on by her shouting match with a movie studio for script she was writing for them.

The script was an adaptation of a story entitled “The Final Race.” A sci-fi about the human race discovering that they are the last race in the universe. She had read the book herself before being assigned the project, and had really liked it. So, when she came to writing this screenplay she had tried to be as faithful to the book as she could. However, such dedication was lost upon the studio’s executive heads. They were worried about the film not bringing in enough of a crowd to make the film break even at the box office. Thus, came out the dreaded focus group analysts. They were concerned about certain elements being too extreme for audiences so suggested some “minor changes” as they put it. These changes, however, were not minor in the slightest, and Layla had gotten into several shouting matches with them over this.

First, they suggested that the child character Evie Malone shouldn’t die, and instead should live to say the films closing remark about how the human race was good. Two problems with that request. The first was keeping Evie Malone alive. Her death in the book was one of the most traumatising moments for both the reader, and the protagonist. In fact, it caused another character to give up, and commit suicide. Second, the closing remark about the human race being good missed the point of the ending completely. The ending of the book was quite a downer, and it fit the narrative perfectly. In her screenplay she thought she had captured this to the best of her ability. This statement about wanting the human race to be seen as good would come across as unbelievably forced. It made her think they didn’t care about the story at all.

Today she had received another order. The studio wanted a point where they could play some bland pop song that all the teenage girls were apparently in eating up. A song called “I Love You Baby” by a band called the Tweenage Boppers. This again had multiple problems. First that song was about love, and had several sly remarks that translated to I want to have sex with you baby. There was also no love interest in the original book, and again it would come across as tortured compared to the visuals. Second this would indicate they are aiming the film now at the teenage girl market. Sure, she thought, popular teenage girls love stories that end by reminding people of how they are an insignificant speck in the grand scheme of the universe.

She had pointed out these problems these problems to their faces, but they didn’t seem to care. They just filled her head with talk about how it had worked for other movies, and would thus work perfectly for this one. That logic was so backwards that she left that meeting telling asking if they had even written a story before. All the could muster was blank stare before they returned to the comfort zone of their focus group study.

Layla now dreaded them trying to contact her at home because she knew that it would be another bone headed idea that just wouldn’t work. Not to mention the fact that she only had two weeks left until pre-production began. By then they needed a decent script.

Layla took a deep breath, and got up from her bed. She thought about what would be the best way to calm down. She had heard some video games had helped with this type of stress. She had never tried playing one before, but then again you were never too old to do something like that.

She went to her computer, and logged onto it. There she saw that she had received an email from the studio. Fearing the worst, she opened it, and saw that it was from the studio demanding that they call her as soon as she saw that message.

Layla had of course turned her phone off, because she was in such a rage. Now though she figured that she had to hear what they had to say otherwise they might hand it off to somebody who was much more willing to play ball.

“Layla. We’ve got a few more requests that will make this the best script in the world.” The voice on the other end of the line said.

“That’s what you said about the last batch of changes, and I pointed out how that would ruin the script.” Layla said. It was best if they didn’t know how angry she was right now.

“These will be different I promise. Look we’ve further analysed our focus study, and we have two more changes that will work. First, you should ditch the space entity, and replace them with aliens who are pure evil.”

Thus, it began again. The enemy in The Final Race was a mysterious entity. The book never revealed where it came from or why it wanted to wipe out all life in the universe. That was what made it so terrifying, and matched the feel the book had of feeling helpless in the face of god like entity. Replacing it with a race of evil aliens turned it into another bloody film about clear cut good versus evil.

“The second thing that should change is they shouldn’t destroy earth in the end, like in your script. Instead we should defeat them in a heroic manner.”

So not only did they want to go ahead with good versus evil plot, but they wanted to continue that by having good win with no consequences. Even though the protagonist was an illegal scavenger who kills several innocent people at the beginning, so she didn’t get arrested.

“That wouldn’t work at all.” Layla said before telling them her reasons. It was while she in the middle of this that a thought crossed her mind. “Are you using “The Galactic Saviours” as a model for your statistics?”

The Galactic Saviours was the last film that the main stream audiences had latched onto. It was about a group of rugged, doll-like, heroes saving the earth from a group of aliens that may as well have been space Nazis. Layla thought the film was a bland piece of grey goo, but it turned in a massive profit that looked exceptionally good for the studio who made it. Ever since then multiple studios had tried to copy it, or at least try to crowbar in scenes to movies that didn’t need it. Layla was sick of it at this point. She believed that that movie only worked once, and it was best if she, and everybody else in the film industry, made no attempt to copy it.

“No.” The voice on the other end said. Failing to their obvious lying tone.

“You can’t keep copying that movie. All pieces of that pie are gone. Your best bet is to move on, and try something new.” Layla told them.

“But, what if it doesn’t make enough money?”

“Who gives a shit if it doesn’t makes bucket loads of money.”

“Excuse me!”

“The only audience cares about is if the movie is good. If it is then it doesn’t matter how much money it makes so long as it breaks even.”

“No! Audiences want something familiar not something new that makes them feel depressed.”

Layla slammed her fist down on her desk.

“God-damn it that’s not how it works. Answer me this. Would like the movie to be forgotten immediately or remembered for years to come?”

Silence on the other end of the line.

“We’ll continue this tomorrow. Right now, I’m tired. Goodbye” Layla said hanging up the phone.

Layla put the phone back on her desk, and let out a lengthy sigh. She wondered how much experience that trend studier actually had in writing stories. She figured it was not an awful lot. Their area expertise was numbers, and making them say exactly what they wanted. For Layla numbers like that had place in the business of storytelling, or anywhere in the arts for that matter. But, here they were, and it was making her life a living hell. Then again, she had enough experience to not be bullied or intimidated by people like that. The only people she let tear her work apart like that was critics, and that was because it was the only way she learnt how to hone her craft.

She quickly closed down the email box, and opened the news sight. She began to skim when suddenly a single thought entered her mind. She looked down at her wrists, and saw that her hands were starting to shake. She knew she didn’t need it, and it was only that part of her brain that was addicted that was demanding she do it. Her breath increased. Her mind became a blurry haze clouded by one single thought.

She opened her desk drawer, and there it was a small little packet of that familiar white powder. Now her mind was screaming at her, and finally she caved. She took two pinches of the powder out of the bag, and snorted them up her nose.

Her mind was clear again, but now she felt like garbage. It wasn’t something she wanted to be addicted to, but it was something she used frequently in her twenties as a way of showing rebellion against the system. However, once her mind matured she realised that she didn’t have anything to rebel against, but her mind was still addicted to cocaine. Her one shame in life that nobody should know about except for the man who gave her the stuff.

As her mind cleared she looked back at the screen. There were the usual articles about drama with the politicians, some famous person donated money to charity, and a cruise ship had been quarantined due to someone being on board with measles. She then saw a box that flashing, and trying to get her attention. “Police press conference on apartment killer live in 20 minutes” the message in the box was saying.

Layla stared at this box with intent. Like everyone else in the city she was both curious, and terrified about the killer. She was terrified because he hadn’t been caught, and had killed god knows how many people. She should be extra terrified because he exclusively hit apartment buildings much like the one she lived in, but Layla’s inner writer got in the way of that. It felt like something that she herself would possibly write about herself in a work. Except this wasn’t fiction it was real life. A fictional story playing out before her. The idea bizarrely excited her even though people were dying.

She removed that thought, and closed down the news tab. She then logged onto a game store, someone at work had set up for her once as a joke, and began to browse through their selection.

#chapter 8 #horror

[cynthiamwashington]

My Family’s Primal Living Achievements Empowered Me

It’s Friday, everyone! And that means another Primal Blueprint Real Life Story from a Mark’s Daily Apple reader. If you have your own success story and would like to share it with me and the Mark’s Daily Apple community please contact me here. I’ll continue to publish these each Friday as long as they keep coming in. Thank you for reading!

I’ve always had an interest in health. I entered college to become a nurse, but switched majors after marrying young and starting a family, ending up with a degree in education with an emphasis in health. My first love is my family, and it’s because of my responsibility for their well-being that healthy living continues to be a growing passion in my life.

In my twenties, breastfeeding babies and chasing toddlers kept me fit and thin, and I exercised when it fit my busy schedule. Low fat, high carb foods were the staples of our “healthy” diet, and I was just trying to figure out my way around the kitchen.

My cooking did evolve, and I continued to keep up with current health fads. But when my homeschooled sons hit elementary school and our grocery budget began to take a hit, I knew there had to be a better way to fill up their growing bellies. I devoted my time to research, and came to the conclusion that whole food was the way God intended us to eat.

Still mindful of the food pyramid, I began grinding wheat to make bread, and replaced all the “fake” foods in my home with homemade, healthier versions. I started a garden and slowly began sourcing raw milk for cream, yogurt and cheese, grass fed beef, pastured pork, chicken, and eggs. It worked. We were getting fuller, our budget was stretching, and I was developing a passion for cooking.

My thirties brought a little more freedom as my sons were getting older, so exercise became easier to fit into my homeschooling schedule. Though I was never overweight, my vanity would always have me desiring to be a bit leaner. I could never manage to drop those few extra aging pounds, despite my exercise habits. I rode my bike a hilly thirty miles a day (1.5 hours), six days a week. Though I experienced many benefits from biking, I was still unhappy with my body composition. Noting that runners tended to be thin—especially in their legs—I decided to reap this benefit and started spending more time with my husband by joining him in running. I routinely ran seven to eight miles a day, six days a week, always maintaining a chronic 7:15-7:30 pace.

I had been experiencing migraine headaches since the birth of my third son. I had a melanoma removed from my foot in my late thirties. Around the age of forty, I began to experience more negative changes in my body. I was gaining weight, always tired, and I was experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder. I just felt “off.” I didn’t have time for more exercise, and eating less would’ve been absurd. I was beginning to believe that I, too, would fall prey to being fat over forty, and all the other ailments of aging. I had never been on a diet in my life, and since we were eating whole foods, I didn’t see a need for change.

After attending a conference and listening to a health and fitness speaker, my husband gave up grains in an effort to lose the forty pounds he had gained, despite consistent exercise and my homemade cooking. He lost most of his weight and was feeling great. I was beginning to wonder if this might be part of my issues.

One night in March, while enjoying a meal with friends, someone suggested The Primal Blueprint, and it became, for me, one of those books that forever changes your life. Mark’s set of simple instructions was truth for my soul! It was the final piece of the health puzzle I had laboriously been working towards.

Within a week of implementing the tweaks to my diet, which included eliminating grains, eating more fat, and an overhaul of my exercise, I saw drastic improvements in my body composition and fitness level.

Now, I jog when I feel like it, but mostly take lots of walks with my husband, and sometimes with a weighted vest. I do weekly sprint sessions in my backyard, and a daily sprint to my mailbox and compost pile. I consistently lift heavy things—PEMs, haul firewood, or even a bit of “CrossFit” at home to mix it up a bit. I truly enjoy my exercise since it’s so easy to fit in anytime, anywhere.

Learning more about the importance of vitamin D for overall health and protection from cancers has freed me to enjoy the sunlight. Living in Nebraska means dark winters and minimal sunlight, so I supplement with vitamin D, and my SAD has improved tremendously.

My headaches are completely gone, and I’ve seen improvements in my skin, energy levels, and cravings. I can’t remember the last time I had to unbutton my pants after a meal! While I am perfectly content with my body composition, it’s funny; I hardly think about it anymore. My sons have experienced the benefits of reduced acne and mood swings, the need to “carb up” before or after ball games, and improved strength. I can’t even name a “family doctor” for any of us when asked—we just don’t need one.

Redeeming my time has been one of the greatest benefits of primal living. I’m learning to rest and play—as a type A “doer,” this is hard for me. We’ve been enjoying weekly backyard volleyball and Ultimate Frisbee games with our sons and friends, and I am spending time enjoying coffee on our front porch.

While Primal living is not a religion, it compliments my Christianity by allowing me to treat my body as a temple, nourishing it with the perfect menu God has given us to eat. It has taught me to carefully source and appreciate the food we eat, with no waste. It keeps my body “strong for my tasks” and it promotes Biblical values of community, rest, and play. It is a reminder that “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about being successful at a given ‘task,’ it’s that you have to give “IT” its due time. And it starts with a plan. Having a plan gives purpose, and purpose empowers. Over the years, it has been my mission to inspire other women to flourish in their own lives by taking responsibility for what God has placed right in front of them—their jobs, parenting, relationships, and even laundry. Health is no different. Primal living offers simple, effective, and efficient principles for sustainable health that anyone can implement, and I naturally began to spread this message with the same passion.

When The Primal Health Expert Certification became available, I immediately enrolled. My busy life homeschooling high school boys, their sports, and serving as a media/communications director for our church and basketball team took a lot of my energy, so I went through the coursework slowly, at my own pace. During that time the course was changed to the Primal Health Coach Institute Certification, an idea that I, at first, dismissed due to the busyness of my life.

But God had a different path for me, showing me those I could share my new wealth of information with: a group of moms implementing PEMs; a couple successfully completing the 21-Day Transformation; my son’s friend—eating and exercising with us, and losing 30 lbs to improve his basketball game; a dear friend with fibromyalgia; and my sister, who has PCOS and pre-diabetic symptoms.

Last year my youngest son graduated high school, and I graduated as a Primal Health Coach! It is the perfect time to start a new chapter in my life, so with the encouragement of my husband and sons, I opened my own coaching business, Primally Empowered. I followed the business model suggested by the PHCI program and built a website, registered on the Primal Health Coach Institute website, and implemented the forms and suggested coaching program. I began blogging, which is my least favorite part, but I’m finding a pattern of topic interests my clients prefer.

I’ve had the opportunity to coach over 10 people in the last year! I’ve been contacted via word of mouth, the PHCI website list, and just from talking with individuals I run into. I’m currently coaching a woman who intends to go on and become a Primal Health Coach.

I am finding my niche is people/couples in my age range who are realizing their weight and health are keeping them from the life they really want, and desire to live the rest of their lives well. It is so empowering and fulfilling to see people truly change their lives!

I’m not searching for a full time job, but I recently came across the opportunity to work for a functional medicine doctor who will be opening her own clinic and is swamped with ill patients. We will see where this journey takes me!

Though I discovered the Primal Blueprint only five years ago, my life has paralleled primal living in many ways. The Primal Health Coach Institute program has empowered me with the knowledge and the confidence to merge these two paths to help individuals address their health challenges by engaging them one-to-one as a personal coach.

– Monica Lambert

Monica’s listing in the Primal Health Coach Institute Directory

Website: primallyempowered.com

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Article source here:Marks’s Daily Apple

[grandperfectionface-blog]

The Best Gamings For Samsung Equipment Virtual Reality

First off, although most people think that automobile video games are just suggested for enjoyment, they in fact indicate a lot more than that. With the statement of Steel Equipment Survive, the initial new MG title because Kojima's unconstrained shooting, we've decided to have a look back at Every Metal Gear Game, Ranked Worst To Ideal. During a regular automobile convoy journey, Desperado Enterprises releases an attack with the purpose to beat diplomacy and maintain the nations at dispute. The Minecraft for Equipment Virtual Reality is the pocket version, enabling you to have fun with friends and use pocket version web servers. free steam game keys no survey download Dark Days may not be as viscerally terrifying as an additional video game showing up in the future this list, however it continues to be among the most emotionally unpleasant Equipment Virtual Reality video games to date. Revealing 1 to 12 of 12 Articles matching 'nintendo ready complimentary' in associated write-ups. 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The video games we have actually spoken about below are a few of the very best of the very best, however they're definitely not the only terrific games. We can find that it remained in the year1896 that the males Discus Toss came out to be a component of the modern Summer Olympic Games. Early computer games were programmed so that the player might drop in" or leave" of the game at any moment. Keep your video games, cards, minis, gadgets, gadgets and also various other equipment secure, available, as well as traveling ready with InIt Equipment bring cases, covers, bags, & a lot more. A NES classic brought to the Virtual Reality existing, Duck Hunter Virtual Reality is a first-person shooter with a distinction. There are plenty out there that sustain the latest generation Equipment Virtual Reality, too - including its bundled movement controller for even more immersive experiences. This can be a difficulty if a family members has very children, but there are typically numerous ways to earn modifications to games so that people of all ages could get pleasure from them. That's where this out of package multiplayer video game can be found in. Simply one member of the team puts on the Gear Virtual Reality headset, while the others are left in the real life sorting via reams of published instructions. Allow's face it, you probably bought this as a video gaming tool, so your initial stop will be video games you've come across from mobile or titles with environments and personalities you want to experience in VR. With so many exceptional games readily available on Gear Virtual Reality, it can be simply a little bit pesky to locate the ones you really want to play. It is just one of one of the most popular Alienware Alpha video games that combine the power of both activity as well as adventure in a solitary console. Grinding Gear has large prepare for the game this year, planning to release the full version of the video game in China later on this year, something Rogers states will huge yet likewise a little challenging. The video game selection is obtaining larger on a daily basis with great new immersive video games as well as experiences. Dancer, soldier, personal fitness instructor or Italian plumbing professional, you just never know exactly what you could become when you enter the realm of computer game. Sega quit supporting the Genesis with high quality video games in the late stages of its life cycle leading to the fatality of the console. This game and its next two follows up were developed by the exact same programmers as the similar Lotus collection of games released previously on the Commodore Amiga as well as Sega Huge Drive systems. At Some Point, Ground Zeroes was developed as being a prologue to the primary experience, a budget-priced teaser indicated to show off the FOX Engine and also develop buzz for the major game, Metal Gear Strong V: The Phantom Discomfort. As soon as you at first plug it in, it will right away download and install the needed programs and so on. You could download and install right from the gear or perhaps after you disconnect from the gear. It's cross-platform (Gear Virtual Reality, Oculus, HTC Vive) so it's an online hang around area that one-ups Oculus Social. The Gear Virtual Reality Edition is effectively the same as the mobile Pocket Version, providing survival as well as imaginative modes and a large portion of the core COMPUTER experience, just now you're involved in the blocky worlds. I simply obtained my Equipment and also this listing was ideal for me considering that I really did not recognize where to start. This CCP Gamings Virtual Reality game began life as Job Bane, which we played way back in very early 2015. Plus, if you pre-ordered either of Samsung's newest front runner phones, you ought to find yourself with a free Equipment Virtual Reality thanks to a generous launch offer from the business. What a wonderful idea the Virtual Reality Headset from Samsung is. Now it simply should created all phones, to make sure that our lower technological pals with Apple gadgets could appreciate it too. Console gamers have it a little much easier, considering that the Xbox 360 and also PlayStation 3 are far more mobile than their full-sized COMPUTER equivalents. The plot enlarges, obviously, exposing that the problem is simply one huge setup in Major No's war against Big Employer. It notes the very first game in the Top Gear auto racing video game franchise, as well as it is among the first racing games to be launched on the Super NES. Still, Portable Ops proved that the PSP was more than qualified when it involved delivering a fully-fledged Metal Gear experience.

[itbeatsbookmarks]

(Via: Hacker News)

(Disclaimer: I don't own a Tesla. I don't derive any benefits from Tesla referral sales. I don't own any Tesla stock, nor do I derive any income from Tesla's success or failure. I'm convinced the majority of online Tesla commenters are personally invested in [or shorting] $TSLA. I'm also convinced the majority of them are bots. I'm not sure which group annoys me more, the shorts or the whores. It's almost impossible to read anything about the Model 3 that isn't clickbait or doesn't omit information of value to the only people I care about: potential buyers.)

I just drove 2,860 miles cross-country in a Tesla Model 3, setting a new electric Cannonball Run record of 50 hours and 16 minutes. This wasn't a specially prepared press loaner or pre-production employee car; this was one of the first customer-owned cars delivered at the Fremont factory on December 27th, 2017. 

For those gambling on the 3's failure and Tesla's collapse, don't count on it. The Model 3 is delightful, odd, and brilliant—but there is one big, crackling bolt of a caveat.

The issue is not the build quality, nor is it the 15-inch touchscreen, which has absorbed almost all vehicle controls. Instead, it's the Autopilot user interface, which has gone from seamless to kludge overnight.

The good news: The majority of Autopilot UI issues are fixable with an over-the-air (OTA) software update.

The bad news? Until the Autopilot UI is updated, Tesla fans will bend like yogis to make excuses for it, and the $TSLA shorts will exploit it to deter new customers from what is otherwise a wondrous step forward for passenger cars. 

I love this car, but Tesla cannot solve the Autopilot UI problem fast enough.

Let's dive in.

Background

My co-driver was Model 3 owner Dan Zorrilla, a construction consultant and longtime Tesla Model S owner who was kind enough to give me unrestricted access to the car for four days.

Alex Roy

Daniel Zorrilla's Tesla delivery confirmation.

Price

See that $55,000 sticker price? Not quite the $35,000 Elon talked about, which is for a stripped, standard battery version that isn't yet out. That $55,000 is the price of a loaded, rear-wheel drive Model 3 with a larger battery that gets you 310 (EPA-rated) miles of range. 

Is it worth it? I think so. What's the electric alternative at any price? A Chevy Volt? A Bolt? A Nissan Leaf? Be serious.

If you want an premium electric car, Tesla is still the only game in town. Actually, if you want any electric car, unless you've got a charger at home or work where the vehicle can recharge undisturbed for hours, Tesla is the only choice. 

As for cross-shopping against internal combustion cars, it's pointless; you either buy Tesla's point of view regardless of cost, or you don't.

Range & Charging

Tesla claims the Model 3's 75kWh Long Range battery is good for 315 miles. The company also had an odd interaction with the EPA, which they asked to lower the official range rating, from 334 to 310 miles. With a 1,000-pound weight advantage over the S, I wouldn't be surprised if the Model 3 could be hypermiled to 350 or more. I wish knew what the absolute range figure is, but when you're driving cross country for time, it's unwise to drive the battery down to zero, or charge up to 100 percent.

Alex Roy

Investigating Supercharger availability prior to departure.

We stuck with Tesla's proprietary Supercharger network, without which the drive would have been 10-20 hours longer. Optimal charging speed generally occurs when the battery is below 50 percent capacity; above that, speed drops precipitously. Factor in temperatures below 20 degrees for most of the drive, and charging was further slowed. That's because Tesla slows down the charge rate when the cells are too cold "in order to maintain safety and maximum range."

I'll follow up on absolute range as soon as I get another Model 3 for testing.

Alex Roy

Still far cheaper than gas.

One new aspect of electric Cannonballing in a Model 3 was having to pay for charging. Model S and Model X vehicles delivered through December 31st of 2017 come with free Supercharging for the lifetime of the car. With the Model 3 you pay as you go. Our journey cross-country cost $100.95 in electricity. Cannonballing in my record-setting internal-combustion 2000 BMW M5 would have cost about $600 in fuel; it also would have been a little more than twenty hours quicker.

Tesla's Supercharger Network remains the best of breed, but charging speeds still have a ways to go in order to find parity with fossil fuel refilling.

You know what else has a way to go? Facilities at Superchargers, most of which are located near budget hotels and fast-food restaurants. Night-time charging is lonely, and bathroom visits in the winter mean a chilly walk, or ducking behind the transformers. 

Hey, here's a business opportunity: food delivery for Tesla owners at Supercharging stations.

Turo

Owner Daniel Zorrilla with his Model 3 at the Fremont Tesla Delivery Center.

Turo

Zorrilla's Model 3 before our cold weather testing. You're welcome, Elon.

Turo

Dat nose, though. Why so angry?

Exterior Design

The Model 3 is handsome, but not as sexy as the Model S. Who cares? It's a Tesla. Anyone who can't get past the slightly awkward nose is missing out on the most important car since the Ford Model T. Tesla is the first company to successfully define what its idea of our automotive future looks like, and you either buy Tesla's vision or you don't. Again, what's the alternative? It's not a Bolt, and everything else is years away.

Acceleration

In a straight line, the Model 3 is fine. It delivers a bit more than enough linear electric torque to satisfy, making it feel slightly faster than it is. Tesla claims 0-60MPH in 5.1 to 5.6 seconds. A 2018 BMW 3-series hybrid does it 5.9 seconds; a 340i sedan in 4.6.

In an automotive world where power is increasingly commodified, this is all pointless. No one cares. If you're buying a car based on 0-60 times, save up for a nice used 2015 Tesla Model S P90D with Ludicrous Mode. That'll do the deed in 2.6 seconds, smoking nearly every supercar ever made. If you haven't already placed a Model 3 order, 2015 P90D's will probably come off-lease before your Model 3 arrives.

Alex Roy

Model 3 owner Daniel Zorrilla, satisfied with Autopilot's performance. 

Handling

Excellent, but not necessarily fun—which is exactly what you'd expect from a 3,800 pound electric car with a very low center of gravity. It's certainly more fun than a loaded Model S, with an extra thousand pounds that negate its extra power.

Fit & Finish

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that Tesla has been suspiciously stingy with media access to the Model 3. The brief drives at last year's Hawthorne reveal demonstrated nothing other than the car exists; and that it looks pretty good in deliberately poor lighting. The first cars were delivered only to employees and those who appear to be friends of Elon—none of whom shared pictures of the interior or screen interface. Rumors suggested bad news for employees who let journalists into their cars. Jalopnik even put out a public plea for access Tesla wouldn't grant them.

Why the secrecy? The car is terrific.

I've now driven three different Model 3s over six weeks. Two were owned by employees, plus the car Zorrilla and I lived in for just over 50 frigid hours. I would have published my thoughts sooner, but it was unclear whether the employees' cars (or even Zorrilla's car, being one of the first such vehicles delivered) were truly representative. Some have suggested the cars currently being delivered are handmade because the production line is incomplete—or perhaps doesn't even exist.

I still don't know. I also don't care. What I do know is that the infamous panel gaps sticklers obsess over are there, but I wouldn't have noticed them if I wasn't bombarded by Seeking Alpha articles suggesting these are indicative of deeper production flaws, none of which I found.

Alex Roy

Does this bother you? Zorrilla didn't seem to care.

The Model 3 we drove cross country ran perfectly save one exception: an airbag warning light came on three times in the first twenty minutes of our drive before going off and never coming back.

Alex Roy

The early airbag warning, which disappeared, never to return.

Tesla's reliability was an issue at one time, but Consumer Reports now rates the S above average, and predicts the Model 3 will be average. None of this appears to be an issue for the majority of owners who voted Tesla the number-one brand in America for owner satisfaction in 2016 and 2017, ahead of Porsche.

Here's what I found, somewhat to my surprise: Zero squeaks or rattles, even after 2,860 wretched miles of altitude changes, rain, sleet and snow.

My only complaint may or may not be a design flaw: sitting on either side of the car, cold air bled onto my legs from a gap somewhere around the front edge of the front door. This was mildly apparent with the heat on high, and very apparent on low, or off. (Of course, we were driving at high-speed through the coldest winter in recent memory.) Zorrilla didn't feel it as much as I did, but he was wearing three layers on his legs, whereas I only wore two until I bought a blanket halfway through our journey for $10.

I followed up with Tesla about the draft. They said they'd look into it.

Alex Roy

No worse than anything out of FCA. Probably better.

What about touch points? The Model 3 reduces these 90 percent by moving almost all the interior controls to a 15-inch touchscreen. All that remains are the window switches, turn signals, partial wiper controls, the horn, a pair of sliders on the steering wheel, and the overhead hazard switch and lights. We're not in Audi territory in terms of quality, but all were adequate and worked perfectly.

Hinges? Latches? Door handles? They still worked perfectly when we got to NYC. I'm not sure what that proves.

Alex Roy

The infamous Tesla Model 3 car(d) key

Keyless Entry

Instead of a key, Tesla provides two RFID-enabled credit card-sized card keys, and a phone app. The cards unlock the car when held up to the B-pillar—but not if the pillar is covered in salt and ice, apparently. The Tesla phone app can also unlock the car via Bluetooth.

I grew up on traditional keys. I like the ritualized tabletop chi-clink of a metal key and branded fob. I also appreciate the redundancy of the phone/card combination. If this is the future, so be it.

Don't lose those cards, though. Zorrilla told me replacements cost $100. Paying that for a plastic card may sound criminal, but consider that replacement keys for most modern luxury cars often cost far more.

Interior Comfort

Very good. As good as a comparably priced Audi? No, but the the seats were lovely even after 50 hours. I slept reclined in the passenger seat like a baby, without a single ache or pain.

Legroom was surprisingly good. I'm six feet tall, and it's possible for one six-footer to comfortably sit behind another. The high roofline offers more headroom than in an S, allowing one to wear cheap cowboy hats purchased almost anywhere along I-40, I-44, and I-70.

Storage

Interior storage is better than a Model S, with side door pockets and a nice little shelf below the touchscreen designed for two phones with integrated charging docks. The 3's frunk/trunk combo offer just half the storage of the S (15 cubic feet versus 30) but its rear seats also fold down, carrying on the convenience of being able to place a fully inflated twin mattress in the trunk.

Alex Roy

The infamous inflatable twin bed. Works in any Model 3 or S.

Sound System

Very good, and much better than expected. Most people think big bass, more speakers, more woofers, more modes, and more DSP is a good thing. WRONG. Don't be fooled. I own a hi-end audio dealership, so I know what I'm talking about when I tell you that clarity is everything. Electric cars have a much lower noise floor, which means everything sounds better, even at low volume. Elon Musk is allegedly an audiophile, and it shows. Unexpectedly low wind noise is a big help.

Interior Design

The Model 3 is a triumph of industrial design. Forget the naysayers. Ask anyone who isn't a car person, or especially women—a group too often excluded from the conversation, despite its size and disproportionate purchasing power, by an industry yet to have its Weinstein moment—for real perspective. Starting with a clean sheet, Tesla has out-Volvo'ed Volvo, delivering the purest interpretation of Scandinavian design in automotive history. I felt liberated from the tyranny of traditional car dashboards full of knobs and buttons.

I'm not saying I'm opposed to analog controls and traditional dashboards. Quite the opposite. What I am opposed to is overly complicated design in either direction. The best iteration is always the simplest, and traditional car manufacturers have largely blown it in their respective efforts to integrate digital with analog.

Alex Roy

Clean design? The most Scandinavian car interior of all time is American.

I love the size, design, and placement of the 15-inch touchscreen, which feels fixed to the dash by the steel hands of God. Mercedes-Benz engineers should be ashamed of themselves; the $200,000+ G-Wagon's puny display—a joke by comparison—has the structural integrity of overused Legos. It could be pulled off with one had. The Model 3's display seems like it would require a sledgehammer to be dislodged.

Navigation/GPS

Wonderful. In conjunction with Tesla's excellent voice control, it's a revelation. Other manufacturers should weep.

HVAC

I especially loved the HVAC system, which disposes with a century of movable plastic vents that inevitably break, or droop. The Model 3 elegantly substitutes a wide vent above the wooden trim that spans the entire length of the dashboard. The other vents are concealed. An elegant control interface is accessed via that big dashboard display.

It's too bad we kept the heat off for most of the drive, to save power.

Alex Roy

Drag the air icons around, and that's where the air goes. Love. It.

Why hasn't anyone done this before?

It's not all perfection, though, because the Model 3 takes Tesla's war for simplicity off the deep end.

The Bad News: Autopilot User Interface

A lot of people laughed when Tesla put that massive, 17-inch portrait display in the center of the Model S and X. Too big! Too distracting! What if it breaks? I felt the same way, until I drove an S cross country in 2015. Tens of thousands of Tesla miles later, I love it even more.

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The S/X iteration works because, once you get past the loss of most traditional buttons and switches, the user interface strikes just the right balance between analog and digital, and the division (and optional duplication) of information between the displays is terrific. The voice control is terrific. The speedo is dead center.

Most importantly, Autopilot is controlled by a single perfect stalk left of the steering wheel. In conjunction with what remains the only effective situational awareness display in the auto industry—large, clear and mounted dead-center in front of the driver���Autopilot defined state-of-the-art for semi-autonomous driving systems.

This is what the Autopilot control stalk looks like in the S/X:

Alex Roy

Move down once for radar cruise control, twice for Autopilot. Turn the knob to control distance to the vehicle ahead.

To paraphrase Antoine de Saint Exupery, this stalk system is perfect not because there's nothing left to add, but because there's nothing left to take away.

This is what the S Autopilot display looks like, right in front of the drivers face, all the time:

Alex Roy

Tesla Model S Autopilot Situational Awareness Display

The S/X Autopilot display helps the driver understand the system's confidence—what it sees, and what it doesn't—when engaged, which can lead to the driver voluntarily disengaging the system before the system disengages itself. Understanding Autopilot is the key to using it safely; the more information a user has about what the system sees, the easier it is to master. Mastering it is the key to using any semi-autonomous system in a way that feels pleasing.

Here's what it looks like in the cluster:

Alex Roy

A first-generation Model S Autopilot display.

People talk about driving EVs with one pedal, but once you've mastered Autopilot in a Model S or Model X, you can drive it almost all day, in good conditions, with no pedals, keeping the system safely engaged by adjusting its speed and follow distance with your left hand gently on the wheel, left fingers extended onto the stalk.

Here's the Model 3 interior:

Alex Roy

I can totally buy the notion that a transportation appliance doesn't need to display any information directly in front of the driver. Why should it, if "Full Self-Driving"—as Tesla refers to Level 4 Automation—is supposed to arrive during the life cycle of the just-released Model 3?

But the 3 isn't capable of Level 4 today, and no one knows when it will be, so it remains a human-driven car.

As a human-driven car, I could even buy into the idea that the speedometer could be moved to the top left corner of the central display. It's not ideal, but it is in the driver's line of sight.

But the 3 isn't just a human driven car. It comes with Autopilot, and for hundreds of thousands of customers, Autopilot will be their first exposure to what they believe is the world's best semi-autonomous system. Autopilot, along with Tesla's Supercharger Network and its EV powertrains, is key to Tesla's competitive advantage, which erodes a little bit daily.

Unfortunately, the Model 3's Autopilot implementation currently sucks.

The Model 3 was clearly designed for Level 4 at the expense of Autopilot, a problem that will only loom larger the longer it takes Tesla to get to full self-driving.

How long before rivals release semi-autonomous systems as good as or better than Autopilot? Cadillac SuperCruise is the only contender today, but that won't last.

Why is the Model 3's Autopilot such a step backward? Because semi-autonomous driving systems require human interaction. The more complex and capable a semi-autonomous system, the more critical the human-machine interface (HMI).

Check out the 3's Autopilot UI:

Alex Roy

Tesla Autopilot in the Model 3

The Autopilot software is all there, but that perfect UI in the Model S and X is gone.

The situational awareness display is the one thing that can’t be moved off-center without harming the driver’s optimization of Autopilot. And yet, there it is: off-center.

Half the controls previously on the left stalk are now on right stalk. Why? Because the other half are now on the touchscreen, a decision I can only attribute to cost-cutting.

The radar cruise follow distance controls? Now within a secondary menu on the touchscreen. 

Alex Roy

It may seem insignificant, but experienced Autopilot users will notice. I hated it. First-time users are unlikely to adjust this, or even notice they can adjust it. How unfortunate for them. This might be forgivable, as it doesn't harm Autopilot as much as diminish the apparently unintended benefits of the prior UI. The elegance of the old stalk appears not have been a function of Tesla's wisdom, but rather because they sourced it from Mercedes-Benz. The 3's stalk? I don't know where Tesla got it, but it's both cheaper in and less functional.

What isn't forgivable is THIS:

Alex Roy

The Model 3's insane Autopilot speed control positioning.

In the S/X, the radar cruise/Autopilot speed is controlled by tapping the the left-hand stalk up or down. It has detents allowing for one- or five-mph increments.

In the Model 3, the speed control is moved to the screen right below the speedometer. They're not even up/down. They're left/right. And they're limited to 1 mph increments. This sucks. It makes it far more difficult to optimize Autopilot. Instead of tapping the left stalk down all the way a couple of times to drop 10 or 20 mph within the system, one has to repeatedly stab at the 3's screen to achieve the same outcome. The other option is to tap the 3's right stalk up, or tap the brakes, to disengage Autopilot, then reengage it at the desired speed. A decidedly inelegant solution.

Another big problem? A clear transition warning system is essential for safe use of a semi-autonomous driving system, especially in any car that lacks an active driver monitoring system (DMS) like the one in Cadillac SuperCruise—a system Teslas lack.

Tesla's DMS uses both audible and visual alerts if the driver takes his hands off the wheel for too long. Fail to take control and the system will disengage. If it forcibly disengages three times, Autopilot won't reengage until the vehicle is stopped.

The good news? The Model 3 has the same audible alerts as the S/X, which are adequate. The really bad news? Visual alerts are moved to the top left corner of the 3's touchscreen, right on top of the speedometer. This is as close to the driver’s line of sight as Tesla can get given the 3's centrally-mounted display, but it isn't good enough. This marks the second item that cannot be moved to the center display without harming optimization of Autopilot.

Over the course of 50 hours I can't remember how many times I missed the first blue flashing alert, which isn't accompanied by an audible warning, only for Dan to hit me in the arm and say, "Put your hands on the wheel."

The S/X driver display is shrouded and clear; the 3's touchscreen can be hard to read when daytime reflections are an issue. There is no universe in which moving the transition warning system off-center is a good idea, unless its placement is mitigated by warnings that are MUCH bigger and louder than currently found in the Model 3.

The Model 3 treats all of these concerns as afterthoughts—to Autopilot users' peril.

The Good News: How Tesla Can Fix This

As I was writing this, Tesla released an OTA (over-the-air) software update for a problem I was going to spit fire about: the absence of automatic windshield wipers. Why was this necessary? Because Tesla moved the primary wiper controls to the touchscreen. Ugh.

Were this car from any other company, franchise dealer agreements preventing OTA updates would have forced owners back to a dealership. Thank god for OTA.

But Tesla needs to act immediately on the Autopilot issues, because the more Model 3's are delivered in its current iteration, the more people will experience the inferior version.

Maybe if Tesla had been a little less stingy with testing—or even, god forbid, pre-production media access—they might have ironed these issues out sooner.

Alex Roy

Safety idea: if Autopilot is on, make the situational awareness display bigger. 

Alex Roy

See those steering wheel controls? Those should be for Autopilot.

Here's what Tesla must do to solve the Model 3's Autopilot UI problems:

Move the cruise follow distance control to the left scroll button on the steering wheel;

Move the cruise speed control to the right scroll button of the steering wheel;

Double the size of the situational awareness display on the touchscreen;

Double the size of the hands-off warning on the touchscreen;

Make the first hands-off alert audible;

Double the volume of hands of warnings.

I loved the Tesla Model 3, a fantastic and unique milestone in the history of passenger cars. For those who want to own a piece of tomorrow, today, there is nothing else currently on the market. I would happily own one, if only I didn't live in New York City, and also the Autopilot UI was updated. I think it's a bargain even at $55,000, because it's far more than a car. It's a work of art, a concept car come to life, more revelatory than the Model S, and historically even more important.

Without a personal stake in Tesla's success or failure, I can only say that I am rooting for them to meet their production and quality goals. The industry benefits from competition. The better Tesla does, the sooner the shakeout of legacy manufacturers who abandoned true innovation long ago. Cars like the underrated Cadillac CT6 with SuperCruise are evidence that the old world is paying attention. The Porsche Mission-E is coming. Startups like Rimac, Nio and Lucid are pushing the envelope of EV performance and design even further than Tesla.

Love him or hate him, we have Elon to thank, because the Model 3 is evidence that our automotive future is brighter than ever.

Alex Roy is Editor-at-Large for The Drive, Host of The Autonocast, co-host of /DRIVE on NBC Sports and author of The Driver, has set numerous endurance driving records in Europe & the USA in the internal combustion, EV, 3-wheeler & Semi-Autonomous Classes, including the infamous Cannonball Run record. You can follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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