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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 4 years

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Michael After Midnight: C.H.U.D. & Us

Do you like horror? Do you feel for the plight of homeless people? Do you despise Ronald Reagan and everything he represents? Well congratulations! You have a functioning heart and mind! But you also might be in to the B-movie cult classic that is C.H.U.D. This is a film that has at least partially wormed its way into the cultural consciousness as the titular monsters have become something of a go-to descriptor for any sort of sewer-dweller as well as an insult used to describe alt-righters and other nasty bastards (it works too since alt-right people do often look like they crawled out of a sewer). Unless you’re a cult film aficionado though, you may not have actually sat down and watched this film, which is a shame, as it definitely has quite a bit to offer.

But you know who almost certainly HAS watched this film? Beloved filmmaker, comedian, and actor Jordan Peele! And I know this because his second feature film Us is pretty much a semi-remake of C.H.U.D. No, I’m not joking. I would never fuck around about something as serious as trashy B-movies and Jordan Peele films. This is serious business right here. These movies are pretty similar thematically and even slightly plot-wise, but at the same time their different approaches really help set them apart and make each film great in their own right.

The big thing with C.H.U.D. is its function as a criticism towards the Reagan-era treatment of the homeless and the mentally ill. Homeless people are portrayed very sympathetically, with them going missing being what really kicks things off… or it would be, if anyone in power gave a damn. No, the people in power only start caring when people they start caring about go missing. Things go from bad to worse when it’s revealed that the C.H.U.D.s are not only mutated homeless people, but that the United States government is complicit in their transformation, having decided to dump toxic waste into the sewers. Aside from giving Jason Takes Manhattan’s ending some level of plausibility, this is a pretty brutal showcase of how society treats the less fortunate, and especially how the government treats them. As far as B-movies go, this one has the most instantly believable problem causing the monsters.

And it is similar with Us. The film has a much broader application than Peele’s previous film Get Out, which is pretty blatantly about left-wing condescending racism. But the way the Tethered function, their nature as failed experiments left behind by the government to rot, and their desire to simply be given all that they had been denied because the powers that be deemed them less worthy is not just stellar thematically, it is the sort of message that in this day and age is needed more than ever. Reagan is long dead and burning in Hell, but the evil he perpetuated still stands.

The big reveal at the end – which I WILL refrain from spoiling – changes the entire perspective of the film and showcases the Tethered as not just victims, but people who if given half a chance could easily excel in the upper world. But they were denied this chance, shunned as mindless monsters, and then are we to vilify them when they rise up to take what they deserve? Both of these films certainly show their “monsters” as vicious and violent, but ultimately they are merely scared, terrified beings lashing out at those who have oppressed and hurt them, intentionally or otherwise.

Both films certainly do show the oppressed commit monstrous actions, but it never really stops sympathizing with them, instead (rightfully) demonizing the government and the people who constantly put them in those positions of oppression. C.H.U.D. certainly is more cathartic, featuring the major government antagonist being not only shot but blown up, but it also tends to feel a tad more exploitative, what with literal homeless people being mutated, though I must stress the movie doesn’t demonize the homeless and paints them as sympathetic victims of a cruel, unfeeling government who just decides to kill ‘em all to cover up their own fuckup. This is one of the single most realistic depictions of government ever put on film, and for that C.H.U.D. deserves some praise. Us certainly paints a more sympathetic picture for its “monsters,” beginning with the story Red tells her captive audience, and while the reveal of their true nature is a bit more sloppily executed than the reveal of C.H.U.D. it still manages to bear down with the full weight of its allegorical impact with late-game revelations.

Another interesting thing with C.H.U.D.: the monsters don’t even appear all that much. When they do, they look absolutely fantastic; the suits are stunning achievements of practical effects, though the scene where one stretches its neck out is a bit dubious. But for the most part, even at the film’s climax, the C.H.U.D.s are mostly absent, with a “less is more” approach being used in regards to them. I don’t recall there ever really being more than four or so onscreen at once, and there’s no massive invasion of monsters. Honestly, it helps keep the film from feeling like a bloated spectacle, and the fact the film slowly builds up to the monsters appearing after a brief appearance in the start really helps them feel more memorable and iconic than other forgotten throwaway monsters of the 80s, while at the same time letting the mystery, atmosphere, and grimy New York backdrop congeal and allowing the message of the film to just ooze over and permeate you.

Us, on the other hand, keeps the Tethered front and center starting at the second act, but in this case this is a good thing; the Tethered have a lot more personality, seeing as they are essentially fully human, where the C.H.U.D.s are mutated humans whose last vestiges of humanity were washed away by the waste the government hid beneath the streets. Lupita Nyong’o in particular is masterful as Red, and is incredibly skilled to be able to pull off playing two roles who frequently share the screen and who are essentially copies of each other while still managing to make them distinct and different. Tim Heidecker and Winston Duke too really do a grand job as their Tethered counterparts, in Heidecker’s case probably more than his regular person character (not to say he’s bad, but seeing Heidecker selling a creepy killer is a lot more impressive than seeing him play a douchebag husband).

Out of the two, I think it goes without saying that Us is the better film. It has all around better acting, it has the most incredible foreshadowing I have ever seen with every little thing foreshadowed getting a satisfying payoff, it has a great soundtrack, it has some moderately enjoyable humor, it’s paced very well… but here’s the thing: C.H.U.D.s big reveal of the true nature of its monsters is a bit better executed. A lot of people get hung up on how Us overexplains the origin of its monsters, and while it certainly doesn’t bother me because the Tethered are still an effective allegorical implement regardless of their in-universe origin, I can’t help but feel the reveal that the government mutating homeless people into cannibalistic sewer monsters and then just… not giving a shit about it was just a bit better executed. However, I feel like watching C.H.U.D. actually helps improve the big reveal at Us by token of being so similar that the latter’s twist becomes far easier to swallow.

Both of these movies are great for what they’re going for. Jordan Peele’s Us is a fantastic horror film that uses the genre as a way to showcase the effect privilege has on those without it, whether you intend it to or not; C.H.U.D. is a classic B-movie that, while perhaps still a bit exploitative, is ultimately incredibly sympathetic to the plight of the homeless as well as extremely critical of the government that would put them in such danger. Both films are fantastic in their own right, and I highly recommend both to any horror fans, especially those who love some sweet, sweet allegory alongside their brutal murders.

Both of these films are some of my favorites for really pushing the boundaries of what a horror film can do, story-wise. I think C.H.U.D. is a bit more ambitious in some ways, being a pretty direct attack on the Reagan-era government, as well as being relatively sympathetic to lower class people in a time when that wasn’t really the norm. For its time, it really is an impressive work, while Us, while certainly delivering a message that has strong impact, is a bit more open to interpretation and honestly lacking a bit of the gut punch that Peele’s Get Out had in terms of conveying and delivering said message. Still, I think Us is just better for refining what C.H.U.D. was trying to do and delivering it in a more polished form with better actors, a better budget, and just overall more intelligence and visual flair… which is not to say C.H.U.D. was lacking either, as it paints an incredibly dark and grimy picture of New York that I absolutely love, it’s just that it’s hard to deny that Peele is just a better filmmaker than the director of C.H.U.D. and really knew what he was doing. But again: both fantastic films in their own right, and both definitely worth watching.

#Michael After Midnight #Review #Movie review #C.H.U.D.#Chud #B-movie #horror movie #horror #monster movie #social commentary #Jordan Peele #us

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lovetheplayers · 6 years

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CALL IT WHAT YOU WANT: TAYLOR SWIFT’S INDIANAPOLIS PERFORMANCE WAS LUCAS OIL STADIUM’S BIGGEST AND BEST YET

Since replacing the RCA Dome in 2008, Indianapolis’ Lucas Oil Stadium has hosted a number of great concerts since breaking ground. While Kenny Chesney held an informal monopoly on concerts for the venue’s first eight years, One Direction and U2 have also delivered memorable shows at Lucas Oil for their Indiana fans. Concerts at the stadium are rare and reserved for the biggest names in music.

Saturday night was no exception to this trend as Taylor Swift delivered arguably the best concert in the stadium’s decade-long history. As part of her critically acclaimed Reputation Tour, the 10-time Grammy winner not only broke domestic records with her new tour but now also holds the attendance record for Indy’s downtown stadium, with her thirteenth ever performance in the city (13 of course being Swift’s lucky number).

Numbers don’t lie either, because Saturday night’s performance was deserving of the massive number of fans who passed through the turnstiles to watch music’s biggest pop-star perform. From the tour’s grand set design to the delicately organized set list, you can call it what you want but the performance was beyond comparable.

And if Taylor Swift wasn’t already a big enough name to fill the concert’s marquee, Swift brought along Charli XCX and MTV’s VMA Artist of the Year, Camila Cabello, along for the ride.

Up first for the night, as fans began to fill the $720 million dollar stadium and find their seats, English singer/songwriter Charli XCX put on a 7-song performance to reward fans for showing up on-time. The set was short but sweet, as practically every song the 26-year-old singer performed was a hit. Opening up with 2014’s ‘Boom Clap’ (from the movie “The Fault In Our Stars”), hits like ‘I Love It’, ‘Break The Rules’ and ‘Fancy’ kept the crowd moving.

Up next to the stage was an artist who will be headlining stadiums of her own in no time. Despite years of experience from her time with Fifth Harmony, the newly solo Camila Cabello has hit the ground running after announcing her departure from the pop group, which has since announced an indefinite hiatus in pursuit of solo careers.

In just about a year’s time, Cabello delivered the song of the summer with her breakout single ‘Havanna’, released her self-titled debut album and recently took home MTV’s Video Music Awards for Video and Artist of the Year. While pop stars typically grind for years before experiencing massive success, Cabello’s notoriety with Fifth Harmony and addictive tracks have helped her grow at an unprecedented speed.

The sky’s the limit for the ‘Never Be The Same’ singer and Saturday night was evidence of just that. Performing the majority of tracks from her 2018 debut, Cabello’s vocals and talented displays of dancing are what stood out the most, all making for an A-list pop-star.

While tracks like ‘Never Be The Same’ and ‘Havana’ (which opened and closed her set) of course had the crowd singing along, B-sides like ‘She Loves Control’ and ‘Inside Out’ were personal favorites. As an opener, her current show is perhaps better suited for a smaller stage, but Camila still delivered a great performance and is more than capable of entertaining huge live audiences.

Following Cabello’s performance, crew finished setting the stage for the night’s headliner and promotional videos displayed for fans to pass time and speed up the lulls between sets. Although these were just small touches on the tour, the videos put Taylor’s personality and her relationship with her fans on display.

You could feel the anticipation of fans heighten as Taylor Swift was set to deliver her biggest performance in Indianapolis yet. It wasn’t long ago when Swift sold out the Bankers Life Fieldhouse, just a half a mile northeast of Saturday’s concert, and fast forward three years later, Taylor Swift is still the biggest artist in the world, yet performing for an audience over three times the size of her sold-out Indy crowd in 2015. Where you’d expect diminishing returns, Swift continues to find ways to grow exponentially.

Then as Joan Jett’s 1981 track ‘Bad Reputation’ played throughout the stadium and set the theme for Swift’s performance, soundbites from reporters then supplemented a montage displayed on the stage’s giant 100+ foot screen. Comments like “she holds too many grudges” and “I felt like she was a little angry” serve as the fuel to the fire seconds before Swift steps on stage, keeping the singer motivated throughout her 53-date world tour.

Next, with echoes of past criticism filling the entire stadium, Swift was ready for a performance unlike any other that Indianapolis has seen. Fittingly, the video boards parted to the side and Swift then emerged to her Reputation single ‘….Ready For It?’, to which her Indiana fans emphatically answered “Yes”.

The concert’s opening moments are indicative of most of the night, as Taylor and her dancers move across the entire stage and it’s two catwalks while entertaining choreography and hit records keep fans on their feet. And while Swift checks all the boxes when it comes to the main components of a great stadium show, many smaller aspects of the tour serve as the cherry on top. Whether it’s the bracelets (which fans will remember from the 1989 World Tour) that light up the night or the Reputation Newspaper confetti that falls from the sky, the tour’s attention to detail is great.

With this go big or go home mentality, it’s no surprise that it takes nearly 100 semi trucks to move the tour from city to city, enough rigs to cause a traffic jam of their own. After a strong start, with tracks new (‘Gorgeous’, ‘I Did Something Bad’) and old (‘Love Story’, ‘You Belong With Me’), the first big surprises for fans came during ‘Look What You Made Me Do’. During the bridge, as Taylor sings “I don’t trust nobody and nobody trusts me”, a giant king cobra rises to a height of 40 feet. With snakes serving as an informal mascot for Reputation Era Taylor, the Swifties in the audiences certainly loved massive prop.

A second “guest” (if you will) for the song came at the end of the bridge as the phone rang and actress Tiffany Haddish appeared on the video screen to sit in for Taylor for the tracks’ infamous line: “sorry the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why? Cause, she’s dead!”

Although the concert gets off to a great start from the very beginning, and ‘I Did Something Bad’ (her second track of the night) is a personal favorite among all the performances, the night’s momentum reaches a whole new level from ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ and beyond.

With strong tracks like ‘End Game’ and ‘King of My Heart’ following ‘LWYMMD’, Swift makes her first departure from the main stage via a floating platform while performing her current single, ‘Delicate’. As the track finishes, Taylor’s next stop is one of two B-stages. And it’s almost insulting to label them as such because although the stages dwarf in comparison to the main stage (her largest stage yet), they are both comparable to the size of her main stage on the 1989 Tour.

Despite selling out the biggest stadiums in the world, Swift covers as much real estate as she can in the venues, turning a huge production into an intimate show. There is literally no bad seat in the house for this one.

If you were closest to the stage-right B-stage though, you were in luck as this act of the concert is the best for many reasons. The first reason is that Swift kicks thing off with her mega-single ‘Shake It Off’ and she doesn’t do it alone either, as Camila Cabello and Charli XCX stick around to join in on the fun.

Next, Swift strips things down for an unforgettable acoustic portion of her set. Performing her Reputation track ‘Dancing With Our Hands Tied’ and her 2008 song ‘Forever & Always’ (a song performed special on the tour for her Indy fans), Swift slows things down and shares some special moments with the crowd.

After a few great performances, Swift then makes her way to the second of two B-stages for another huge single, ‘Blank Space’, as well as Reputation’s most risque record, ‘Dress’.

After her time at the B-stages, Swift floats on back to the main stage with a perfect mash-up of two tracks you would have never thought meshed so wonderfully, with 2016’s ‘Bad Blood’ and 2006 ‘Should’ve Said No’, a country record from Taylor’s self-titled debut. Although a decade and different genres separate these two tracks, it’s as if they were written and recorded as a pair.

With the final stretch of her set nearing, Swift kept her fans engaged with more songs from her newest album, including ‘Getaway Car’, ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Call It What You Want’.

Then, to cap off an already memorable night, T-Swift ends the performance with two especially strong performances, one old and one new, but both showcasing her tough, confident and sometimes unforgiving frame of mind. The first being ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’ and the second being ‘This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things’. Fireworks filled the Indianapolis skyline for the set’s finale and smiles spread across the Lucas Oil Stadium. There was no need to beat traffic that night, because enjoying every last second of the night far outweighed getting home as fast as possible. In fact, we’re sure the ushers had trouble herding fans out the door, as Swifties grabbed their final selfies to remember the record setting night.

It’s almost to impossible to imagine how Taylor Swift could grow after her beloved 1989 World Tour invaded Indianapolis a few years ago, and yet Swift managed to exceed even the highest of expectations.

We’re not sure how Swift can top herself with her next world tour, but we certainly know better than to doubt her.

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#rep tour #indiana #indiana reviews

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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How NFL Blitz Became the Best Arcade Football Game Ever Made

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Football is violent and fast. Brutal injuries are inherent to the action when 300-pound bodies slam into one another like cars at a demolition derby. In the late 1990s, no video game simulated that feeling more than the most anti-sim football game ever made: NFL Blitz.

Unfortunately, the world may never see a game like Blitz again. To be sure, football video games are as popular as ever—or at least EA Sports’ Madden franchise is, since it’s the only football sim officially licensed by the NFL. Spiritual successors to the Blitz brand of arcade-style football have come along here and there, with EA’s former NFL Street franchise and the 2017 reinvention of Mutant Football League by Digital Dreams Entertainment the most noteworthy. Even 2K Games plan to return with an NFL-licensed non-sim in the near future, and Madden NFL 21 has a new backyard-football mode called The Yard. But the marriage between the NFL and such over-the-top gridiron action as the original Blitz titles from Midway Games may have been unique to its time.

Two decades ago, arcade cabinets were still a lucrative proposition. Thanks to the arrival of Midway’s iconic NBA Jam in 1993, sports games in particular could be major money makers. NBA Jam raked in $1 billion in quarters during its first year. That’s billion with a ‘B,’ and it’s a figure even the game’s iconic announcer, Tim Kitzrow, still has trouble wrapping his head around.

“I happened to see an article that was posted on the bulletin board in the cafeteria. It said ‘NBA Jam breaks all records. Makes $1 billion in revenue this year,’” Kitzrow tells Den of Geek. “I just, I laughed and thought it was one of the guys with a sense of humor in the office who had typed that up as kind of a joke. I still can’t believe it. No one could believe a billion dollars [in] a year.”

Mark Turmell, creative director of NBA Jam, says that he and his team certainly enjoyed the fruits of their labor after the game’s success. With a team that included lead artist and game designer Sal DiVita, Turmell noted they were all “pretty young” and bought cars and “did silly things,” but that there was little room to rest on their laurels before working on the next game. With a steady stream of hits like the Mortal Kombat and Jam games, “we kind of kept our nose to the grindstone.”

Indeed, Midway Games enjoyed a golden age in the ‘90s. However, up until the team took up the project that would become NFL Blitz, their games existed in only two dimensions. But the gaming landscape was changing. Three-dimensional arcade games were nothing new by 1997, when Blitz released, and they were proliferating the market at a rapid pace. That was especially true of the home console market, with both the Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 becoming the dominant players in that space.

The opportunity to work in 3D was new and exciting for Turmell, who noted the “hardware that could actually put enough stuff on the screen to get away with 3D, the horsepower” had arrived.

“If you look at the NFL Blitz models, the players, it’s only a few hundred polygons,” he added. “Kind of rectangular arms, biceps and more of a square-ish head and so forth. There was not a lot of resolution or detail, but it was still, the hardware was strong enough to run at 60 frames a second, which is just a necessity on really any game.”

Leaning into the Action

With the hardware and programming capabilities in place, that allowed the lifelong Detroit Lions fan the chance to create a Midway-style game for his favorite sport. That meant making some big changes to the gridiron game, most notably cutting the number of men on the field for each team from 11 to seven. The number of players wasn’t just chosen at random.

“We knew we wanted to focus on offense, so with the quarterback, a couple of wide receivers, a running back, that burned four characters there,” Turmell said, “and to have only one guy as a lineman or two, you really needed three for somebody to hike the ball and be at the line there. Three linemen was the thing that eventually dictated doing seven-on-seven.”

To juice the speed of games and keep things moving at arcades, quarter length was dropped to two minutes, and time ticked down at an accelerated rate — start to finish, a game of Blitz lasts about 12 minutes. Teams would need to advance 30 yards for a first down, a huge jump from the standard 10 yards. Extra points were (usually) automatic with the press of a button.

Oh, and no penalties. No pass interference. No holding. You want to tackle the receiver before the ball comes his way? Totally legal. As were Hulk Hogan-style leg drops after play was whistled dead. All of the motion capture for these moves was done by DiVita, a veteran of mo-cap who portrayed several Mortal Kombat characters, such as Nightwolf and Cyrax.

“It was kind of a new era, and because of the success of [NBA Jam] and the NBA connection, then the NFL was just a total natural to essentially try to do the same thing. Catch on fire, break the rules, a subset of the rules, multiple behind the line of scrimmage passes, those kind of little rule changes we did.”

As with NBA Jam, Midway brought back Kitzrow, a midwestern comedian and Second City alum, to lend his voice to the on-field action. Unlike with the two-on-two hoops classic, NFL Blitz was the first game he had worked on in which he contributed to the writing. Improved technology also meant the ability to include more speech than in NBA Jam. Rather than one- or two-word sound bytes, Kitzrow could mix more comedy in. Among his favorites: “He just ripped his head off! No, it was just his helmet. Darn it.”

“Tim’s amazing,” Turmell says. “His energy, his ad lib ability. He just totally nailed it on Jam, and then nailed it on Blitz, as well. He was the only guy we called.”

When the time was right, Midway initiated talks with the NFL to get the official go-ahead. They built a demo, telling the NFL that they were aiming for a “quicker-hitting [game], not a deep simulation,” according to Turmell.

“They were of course familiar with the consumer games of that era, and Madden football, where it was more of an 11-on-11, the simulation, the stats,” Turmell said. “We were trying to lean into the action, the arcade, the fast-paced gameplay, that I think the NFL felt like, ‘Okay, that can actually open up a larger fan base.’”

“Too Violent”

Thus, development of NFL Blitz began, largely without interaction between the league and the development team. As was common for the time with arcade cabinets, Midway was already testing the game for profitability at select arcades, and with about a week before final sign off, the NFL rolled into Midway’s headquarters in Chicago to see what Blitz looked like.

It didn’t go well.

“We played the game for them. We showed them the game, and they said, ‘Can you excuse us for a moment?’” Turmell said. “We left them in an office alone. About 15 minutes later, they came out, and they said, ‘We have to wash our hands of this product, and we’re going to give you your money back, and we can’t go forward with this product. It’s just too violent.’”

When Turmell asked what elements of the game crossed the line, the league reps indicated a few animations in particular, which would trigger during the small window after plays were whistled dead and players could pile on with elbow drops and other over-the-top hits.

“I had one where you could pick the player up by the face mask and shake him,” Turmell said. “I had a kick where you could actually kick the player when he was down, and then I had a tackle that was more of, like, a piledriver. You’d kind of grab the guy from behind, jump up in the air, and flip him backwards, so his head hits into the ground.”

Den of Geek reached out to the NFL to hear its side of the story but the league did not respond to questions regarding NFL Blitz in time for publication.

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With their work in jeopardy, Turmell regrouped with Midway Games chief executive officer Neil Nicastro. Turmell came up with a new plan: to remove the “offending animations” and test the game on location.

“If it still earns the money that it was earning already on [the] test, then we will know that it’s not about the violence,” Turmell told the league reps.

The plan worked. The NFL agreed to the proposal, and NFL Blitz earned the same revenue during the test as it had before the animations were excised. After cabinets were released in the fall of 1997, it became another smash arcade hit for Midway. Turmell estimates the game raked in about $650 million in its first year, very impressive for a two-player game which cost 50 cents per quarter of play, per person. That placed it around the top three of games at the time, he said.

Blitzing Consoles

With a mountain of quarters in their pockets, Midway Games successfully ported NFL Blitz to both Sony and Nintendo consoles in September 1998, as well as PC the following month. According to NPD Group’s TRSTS Video Game Service, which tracks total units sold as reported by major retailers, Blitz was the top new N64 game and the No. 3 new game on PS1 for September.

The tagline in ads for the console launch summed up NFL Blitz pretty accurately: “No refs. No rules. No mercy.” Commercials visually drove home the over-the-top violent hits the game allowed. In perhaps the most infamous 30-second TV spot, then-Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart works on his throws alongside a coach. Within seconds, we see that Stewart is targeting members of the marching band whose music can be heard in the background of the workout. The ad inspired outrage from music educators.

Turmell, who says he loved the ad, pointed out that the league gave the okay to run the spot. But, after the negative response, the ad was removed from the airwaves. Fortunately, like so many old commercials, it still lives on YouTube:

As far as the game itself, NFL Blitz was a faithful port of the arcade hit, especially on the N64. On the Nintendo console, all the fun of playing a quick and irreverent game of football at the arcade came home. The graphics were virtually identical, unlike what the visually-inferior 32-bit PlayStation could produce. And the game’s most fascinating feature could only be found on N64: an easy-to-use Play Editor which allowed players to create custom alignments. These plays could even be brought to the arcade on an N64 Controller Pak to be used on the sequel, NFL Blitz 99, plugged directly into the cabinet. Cutting edge stuff for the late ’90s, to be sure.

In what may come as a surprise from the creator of the revered NBA Jam, Turmell actually points to the arcade’s Blitz 99, released in fall 1998, as “the favorite game that I’ve developed, and it’s because of the tuning on the plays, the interesting things that can happen.”

“There’s a running push that we introduced with that game, and the original NFL Blitz, when you would do a push, you would stop and do it from a stationary position,” Turmell explains. “Blitz 99 did this running push, just the tuning on the dives, the entertainment value of the tackles, the variety of a tipped pass, a doinked pass, a fumble that goes up in the air, people diving for it. Dancing as they’re running down the last 20 years to the end zone, somebody comes up from behind. You could play that game today and it holds up, and you would say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen that happen before,’ or you’d find moments to scream, and it’s competitive, it’s tight. It was quite a tuning fest. We really tuned it well, because we’d just play it nonstop.”

By this point, the NFL had really gotten squeamish about the game’s violence, particularly the late hits. The league told Turmell that Midway could still put out Blitz 99, but late hits had to go. Hoping to preserve what he referred to as “a cornerstone of the product,” Turmell got the NFL on board with a workaround.

“I said, ‘What if we did a secret code that gave the player a one second window to do a late hit?’ Just like what happens for real in the NFL. Players have that fractional moment where they do a dive, they do a tackle, where they’re a little bit late. They might get penalized for it, maybe not,” Turmell recalled. “And so they said, ‘Okay, if you put it in a secret code, then you can continue for that very small window of time.’”

The late hits code was simple to input: Just one press of the jump button and up on the control stick during pre-game loading activated the feature.

“The game basically continued to allow late hits, and we put a little message up that said, ‘Late hits activated,’” Turmell said. “I think the NFL was not happy that their concern over late hits didn’t really change.”

“Strategic Mistakes”

NFL Blitz 2000 Gold Edition became the final arcade release, the third consecutive year with a new cabinet. Turmell referred to the annual release schedule as “part of our strategic mistakes.” It was not an unexpected result, but Midway aimed to counteract it with its other sports titles.

“We knew it would be an issue, and we tried to start with our different sports titles to alternate years, go fresh, NBA Showtime, and go to the MLB Slugfest, do the baseball game. We had a soccer game called RedCard Soccer that we were working on. We wanted to have a portfolio of what we called over-the-top sports games that we could alternate. That’s tough to do, as well, developing so many products, consumer marketplaces changing, coin-op is drying up.”

But Blitz soldiered on, with yearly releases neither raved about nor widely panned by players and critics. NFL Blitz 20-02 and Blitz 20-03 saw the series jump to the PlayStation 2, Xbox, and GameCube console generation, leaving the dying arcade market behind.

Eventually, pressure from the ironically violence-averse NFL prompted major changes to NFL Blitz. A year after Blitz 20-03, Midway released NFL Blitz Pro in October 2003, which abandoned the series’ trademark arcade-style play for an 11-on-11 football semi-sim setup. By this point, Turmell had shifted away from the franchise and was working on the streetball-styled NBA Ballers.

“The NFL started to threaten not renewing the license, and so we kind of backpedaled and said, ‘We’re going to compete on the sim front and start to push into that direction,’” Turmell says. “It was going to take, no doubt, a number of years to get robust, but it was kind of the first foray into trying to come up with a product, a series that you could actually continually develop like you continually develop the NFL Madden-style product.”

In January 2005, the NFL gave Electronic Arts the exclusive rights to use the official teams and players anyway, leaving Blitz without NFL support altogether after already selling its over-the-top gridiron soul. Now, Midway was free to do as it pleased with the gameplay and leaned heavily into violence and the darker side of the sport with Blitz: The League.

Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor, whose career and post-football life has been rife with controversy and trouble with the law, lent his likeness and voice to the game, which released in October 2005 and became the first football game to be rated Mature by the ESRB. Driven by a salacious campaign mode that included gambling, drugs, and prostitutes, the unlicensed football game was still received about as well as the most recent arcade-style NFL Blitz games. A sequel, Blitz: The League II, followed three years later for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to a more mixed reception.

Behind the scenes, however, Midway Games was crumbling at the foundation. Turmell points to the 2003 appointment of David Zucker as president and CEO, replacing Nicastro, as a turning point. He identified game partnerships with Snoop Dogg and Shaquille O’Neal under Zucker’s watch as costly errors.

“It was pretty clear, once they started making these big financial mistakes, that we had the wrong guy in charge,” Turmell says.

In February 2009, Midway Games filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, ending the run of one of the most notable game development houses of the ’90s.

Back on the Field

With the remains of Midway scattered to various major games publishers, it was EA who acquired the rights to all of the sports games, including NBA Jam and NFL Blitz. Turmell was offered the chance to join EA Sports in Orlando to relaunch the Jam and Blitz franchises.

“The fact that [the games’ rights] were available and Midway was going through bankruptcy, it probably just made sense, from EA’s standpoint, to gather up those properties, anyway,” Turmell said, “but I think that me being involved was good icing on the cake.”

Turmell described his role with the 2010 edition of NBA Jam as more of a consultant for the EA Vancouver team. With NFL Blitz, he was more hands-on in its development as creative director. Looking back on his time working on the game, he marvels at the well-oiled EA machine that produced the game.

“EA is amazing,” Turmell said. “They are very disciplined, because these sports games do come out on a 12-month cycle, so they’re very production-oriented, very organized. The engineers and the artists know exactly what they have to do in each sprint, in each period of time to launch the product.”

But Turmell’s time with EA was short, as he accepted his current role as the creative director at mobile game developer Zynga. In fact, he left less than two months before Blitz released in January 2012. Reiterating that he “loved EA,” Turmell said the decision was fueled by seeing “where the business was going” with regard to mobile gaming.

“It was a tough decision for me because that’s not the type of guy I am, to leave a project,” Turmell said.

Unfortunately, Turmell said that those final few weeks, when he was no longer around to oversee development, yielded critical changes to NFL Blitz. He says the NFL reviewed the game and eliminated late hits, “so they removed content.” It left him feeling “a little disappointed” in the finished product.

“I wasn’t there for whatever ugliness happened with that, but the game wasn’t the same,” Turmell says.

Kitzrow, who had been brought back by EA Sports to do both Jam and Blitz, could hardly contain his disgust with the handling of the Blitz rebirth, especially with regard to the league’s stance on late hits.

“Unfortunately, the NFL was right in our face about all the late hits, the violence, the concussions,” explains Kitzrow, who shared commentary duties on the EA Sports Blitz with longtime friend and fellow comedian Brian Haley. “Like, dude, this is a cartoon. This is a video game. It’s not really happening. But they didn’t want that kind of extracurricular activity. So it took [out] a lot of the stuff that we grew up playing, having so much fun with the late hits and the craziness, the over-the-top sense of humor. That’s what made it NFL Blitz. It was so watered down that, as much as I wrote a lot of dialogue and a lot of stuff, the speech was very sparse in it. I think it sounded kind of repetitive. As far as I’m concerned, it didn’t really live up to the Blitz title.”

A representative of EA could not be reached for comment.

Legacy

Kitzrow had been given the impression that EA intended to release a new version of NFL Blitz the next year as well. However, despite favorable reviews and tight controls that had been adopted from the Madden engine, the PS3 and Xbox 360 digital release of the game remains the last of the franchise, more than eight years ago. It’s still available for purchase on both consoles’ digital storefronts, with disgraced former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice still representing the game as its cover athlete.

The closest successor to NFL Blitz is 2017’s Mutant Football League from developer Digital Dreams, for which Kitzrow lent his voice. The actor raves about MFL, but he’s pessimistic that EA Sports will revisit Blitz or Jam again in the future. Turmell, although no longer involved with the franchise or the company who owns the rights to it, often hears rumors of a revival and hopes to see it rise again one day. He even believes a great Blitz game can be made without the late hits, a feature which the NFL likely will never greenlight again.

Although Turmell believes that NFL Blitz had a harder time developing the same personal connection that people have with his more renowned NBA Jam series, he knows it holds a special place in the hearts and minds of gamers who flocked to arcades or brought it home for their N64s in the late ’90s.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

“I think Blitz … for the people playing in that two- or three- or four-year window, would remember it fondly, had great, competitive sessions with their brother or their buddies. I get a lot of people saying, ‘When I was in college, that’s all we did. We spent so much money on that and got into so many fights.’ You get those kinds of stories. It’s just a smaller crowd.” Still, Turmell adds, “It sure was a hell of a lot of fun to play.”

The post How NFL Blitz Became the Best Arcade Football Game Ever Made appeared first on Den of Geek.

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blackfreethinkers · 4 years

Link

by JOELLE GAMBLE

The dramatic effects of deindustrialization, automation,  globalization, and the growing disparities of wealth and income—including by race and region—are undermining political norms in much of the West.

Activists and academics alike have linked these trends to the neoliberal ideology that has guided policy-making over the past several decades. This ideology has resulted in pushing the widespread deregulation of key industries, attempting to solve most social and economic problems through market competition, and privatizing public functions like the operation of prisons and institutions of higher education. Neoliberal ideas were considered such common sense during the 1980s and ’90s that they were simply never acknowledged as an ideology. Now, even economists at the International Monetary Fund are willing to poke holes in the ideology of neoliberalism. Jonathan Ostry, Prakash Loungani, and Davide Furceri wrote in 2016: “The costs in terms of increased inequality are prominent. Such costs epitomize the trade-off between the growth and equity effects of some aspects of the neoliberal agenda.”

We know that neoliberalism has now provoked populist responses on the left and the right. But are either of them sufficient to end its rule?

The left needs to stop playing defense. This means enacting policies like universal health care, free college, and ending the private-prison industry.

Left populism, if organized, could end the neoliberal order: As espoused by leaders like Pramila Jayapal and Keith Ellison, left populism demands public control as well as redistribution; it is pro-regulation, pro-state, and anti-privatization. These values are inherently at odds with the small-government, anti-regulatory tenets of neoliberalism. If an aggressive left-populist agenda is successfully implemented, neoliberalism would be defeated. The barrier to implementation is the left’s inability to be consistent and organized.

Populism on both the left and right has proved difficult to organize and suffers from a lack of leadership. On the left, the struggle for organization has been playing out in the Democratic Party’s leadership fights. Politicians and activists are attempting to close the ideological gap between the party’s base and its leaders. Without enough trust to allow leaders to set and execute a well-resourced strategy—to say nothing of the resources themselves—the left faces huge obstacles to actually implementing an agenda that spells the end of neoliberal dominance, despite having an ideology that could usher in a post-neoliberal world.

Left populism can technically end neoliberalism. But can right-wing populism?

One should hope that right-wing populism doesn’t become organized enough to end the neoliberal order. Public control is not a cogent ideology on the right. That leaves room for privatization—a main pillar of neoliberalism—to continue to grow. Only if right-wing nationalism turns into radical authoritarian nationalism (read: fascism) will its relationship with corporate power turn into an end to the neoliberal order. In the United States, this would mean: 1) the delegitimization of Congress and the judicial branch, 2) the increased criminalization of activists and political opponents, and 3) the nationalization of major industries.

Right-wing nationalism seems to be crafted to win electoral victories at the intersection of protectionist and xenophobic sentiments. Its current manifestation, designed to win over rural nativist voters, appears to be at odds with the pro-free-trade policies of neoliberalism. However, the lines between far-right nationalism and the mainstream right are blurring, especially when it comes to privatization and the role of government. In the United States, Trump’s agenda looks more like crony capitalism than a consistent turn from neoliberal norms. His administration seems either unwilling or incapable of taking a heavy-handed approach to industry.

As with many of his business ventures, we’ve already seen Trump-style nationalism fail in his nascent administration. The White House caved to elite Republican interests with the attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act and with Trump’s decision to stack high-level economic-policy roles with members of the financial elite. Trump’s proclaimed nationalist ideology seems to be a rhetorical device rather than a consistent governing principle. It’s possible that the same might be true for other right-wing nationalists. France’s Marine Le Pen has cozied up, though admittedly inconsistently, to business interests; she has also toned down her rhetoric, especially on immigration, over the years in order to win centrist voters. Meanwhile, Dutch nationalist Geert Wilders notably lost to a more mainstream candidate in March’s general elections. Yet the radical right is more organized in Europe than in the United States. We may not see the same level of compromise and incompetence as in the Trump administration. Moves toward moderation may only be anomalous and strategic rather than a sign of a failing movement.

So what does all of this mean for the future of neoliberalism, particularly in the American context? I believe there are two futures in which neoliberalism’s end is possible. In the first, the left decides to stop playing defense and organizes with the resources needed to build sustained power, breaking down the policies that perpetuate American neoliberalism. This means enacting policies like universal health care and free college, and ousting the private-prison industry from the justice system. In the second future, a set of political leaders who have been emboldened by Trump’s campaign strategy gain office through mostly republican means. They could concentrate power in the executive in an organized manner, nationalize industries, and criminalize communities who don’t support their jingoistic vision. We should hope for the first future, as unlikely as it seems in this political moment. We’ve already seen the second in 20th-century Europe and Latin America. We cannot live that context again.

PAUL MASONTake the State

I wrote in Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future that if we  didn’t ditch neoliberalism, globalization would fall apart—but I had no idea that it would happen so quickly. In hindsight, the problem is that you can put an economy on life support, but not an ideology.

After the 2008 financial crisis, quantitative easing and state support for banks kept the patient alive. As the Bank of England governor Mark Carney said last year at the G20 summit in Shanghai, central banks have even more ammunition to draw on should they need it—for example, the extreme option of “helicopter money,” in which they credit every bank account with, say, $20,000. So they can stave off complete stagnation for a long time. But patchwork measures cannot kick-start a new era of dynamism for capitalism, much less faith in its goodness.

The human brain demands coherence—and a certain amount of optimism. The neoliberal story became incoherent the moment the state had to take dramatic steps to support a failing financial market. The form of recovery stimulated by quantitative easing boosted the asset wealth of the rich but not the income of the average worker—and rising costs for health care, education, and pension provision across the developed world meant that many people experienced the “recovery” as a household recession.

The one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism.

So they began looking for answers, and the right had an easy one: Ditch globalization, free trade, and relatively free migration rules, as well as acceptance of the undocumented migrants who keep the economy working. That’s how we get to Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders, Viktor Orbán, the Law and Justice party in Poland, and UKIP in Britain. Each of them has promised to make their country “great again”—by diverting growth toward it and migrants and refugees away.

For 30 years, neoliberalism taught national elites that they were better off collaborating in the creation of a positive-sum game: Everybody wins, ultimately, even if your factory moves to China. That was the rationale.

Economic nationalism is logical if you believe that stagnation will last a long time, creating a zero-sum or even a negative-sum game. But the projects of economic nationalism will fail. This is not because economic nationalism has always been a losing strategy: Adolf Hitler practically abolished German unemployment within five years, and Franklin Roosevelt triggered a spectacular recovery and reindustrialization with the New Deal. But these were programs of another era, in which business models were primarily national and monopolies operated in the sphere of one big nation and its colonies; where the state was heavily enmeshed in the national economy; and where global trade was puny and economic migration low compared to now.

To try a repeat of autarky in the 21st century will trigger dislocation on a large scale. Some countries will win: It’s even feasible that, although led by an imbecile, the United States could win. However, “winning” in this context means bankrupting other countries. Given the complexity and fragility of the globalized system, the cities of the losing nations would resemble New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

In the long term, for the left, the transition to a system beyond capitalism must be based on the possibility of a low-work, high-abundance society. This is the essence of the postcapitalism project that I proposed: automate work, replace wages with a basic income and heavy state provision of services, and enforce competition among the rent-seeking monopolies in order to force the price of their goods so low that people can survive scarce and precarious work.

As Manuel Castells’s research group in Barcelona has found, as the market staggers, more and more people actually begin to adopt nonmarket survival tactics, mechanisms, and institutions like informal lending, co-ops, time banks, and alternative currencies. And that’s the basis for an economic counterpower to big capital and high finance.

But in the short term, a whole generation of the left that reveled in aimlessness and horizontality needs to split the difference between that and effective, organized politics. Call it “diagonality,” if you want: Without ceasing to care about the 100 small causes that have animated us in the past, the one big cause that needs to animate us in the future is a systemic project of transition beyond capitalism. For now, that project has to be pursued at the level of big cities, regions, states, and alliances of states—that is, at scale.

The hardest thing for the old left to accept will be that this means using the existing, oppressive, imperfect state while simultaneously trying to democratize it. Street protests, mass resistance, strikes, and the occupation of squares are great ways to assemble the forces. But the arc of the story from 2011 to 2015—Occupy, the Indignados, and the Arab Spring—shows that we have to do more than simply create a counterpower: We need to take power and diffuse it at the same time.

BRYCE COVERTThe Crisis of Care

American parents are being crushed between  trying to care for their families and working enough hours to survive financially. This problem plagues parents of both genders, up and down the income scale, and it is upending the way Americans view the capitalist system. This crisis of care is fostering solidarity among the millions of Americans who share this challenge, as well as support for solutions that will end the reign of neoliberalism.

Among low-income Americans, especially people of color, both parents have often worked outside the home to make ends meet. Nonetheless, the ideal has been, until very recently, a stay-at-home mother and a father working for pay outside the home. World War II undermined this idyll, pushing women into factories as men went to fight abroad. The gauzy 1950s dream of single-earner families masked the reality that women continued to pour into the workforce.

Today, women make up about half of the paid labor force in the United States, including more than 70 percent of women with children. This means that in about half of married heterosexual couples, both the husband and wife work. This has given women far more access to the public sphere and, with it, greater status and equality both inside and outside the home.

But it’s also meant a crunch for families. There is no longer a designated parent to stay home with the kids or care for aging relatives, and the workplace isn’t designed to help with that predicament. Instead, work is devouring people’s lives.

You can see this problem in the rising number of Americans who worry about their work/life balance. About half of parents of both genders say they struggle to reconcile these competing demands. Fathers are particularly freaked out: More than 45 percent feel they don’t spend enough time with their children, compared with less than a quarter of mothers (probably because more women reduce their paid work to care for children). As the baby-boomer generation ages, a growing elderly population threatens to trap even more working people in the predicament of caring for aging parents, raising young kids, and trying to make a living.

The result has been that more and more people are being forced to reckon with the fact that capitalism’s unquenchable thirst for labor makes a balanced life impossible. This, in turn, is fostering a greater sense of solidarity among them as workers struggling against the demands of corporate bosses. This growing crisis has already led to some policy-making. The expansion of overtime coverage by the Obama administration means that workers will either be better compensated for putting in long hours or have their schedules pared back to a more humane 40-hour work week (though it remains to be seen what will happen to the overtime expansion under President Trump). Legislation guaranteeing paid time off has swept city and state governments. These are policies that challenge the idea that we should give everything of ourselves to our jobs.

The crisis of care has also revived the notion that the public should deal with these shared problems collectively. While other developed countries have spent money to create government-funded solutions for child care over the past half-century, Americans have insisted child care remain a private crisis that each family has to solve alone. The United States provides all children age 6 to 18 with a public education, but for children under the age of 6, it offers basically nothing. Head Start is available to some low-income parents, and a smattering of places have started experimenting with universal preschool for children ages 3 and 4. Outside of that, parents are left to a pitiful private system that often doesn’t even offer them enough slots, let alone quality affordable care.

Americans have increasingly come to recognize that this situation is ridiculous and are throwing their support behind a government solution. Huge majorities support spending more money on early-childhood programs. American parents haven’t yet gone on strike against capitalism’s endless demands on their time or the government’s failure to provide public support. But the crisis is reaching a boiling point, and it’s transforming our relationship to America’s neoliberal system.

WILLIAM DARITY JR.A Revolution of Managers

Marx’s classic law of motion for bourgeois  society—the tendency of the rate of profit to fall—was the foundation for his prediction that capitalism would die under the stress of its own contradictions. But even Marx’s left-wing sympathizers, who see the dominant presence of corporate capital in all aspects of their lives, have argued that Marx’s prediction was wrong. It has become virtually a reflex to assert that modern societies all fall under the sway of “global capitalism,” and that a binary operates with two great social classes standing in fundamental opposition to each other: capital and labor.

Suppose, however, that Marx was correct in his expectation that capitalism, like other social modes of production before it, will wind down gradually, but wrong in his expectation that it would be succeeded by a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” a civilization without class stratification. Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is actually reaching its conclusion—but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class. Suppose, instead, that we consider the existence of a third great social class vying with the other two for social dominance: what was seen in the work of such disparate thinkers as James Burnham, Alvin Gouldner, Barbara Ehrenreich, and John Ehrenreich as the managerial class.

Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is reaching its conclusion—but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class.

The managerial class comprises the intelligentsia and intellectuals, artists and artisans, as well as state bureaucrats—a credentialed or portfolio-rich cultural aristocracy. While the human agents of global capital are the corporate magnates, and the working class is the productive labor—labor that is directly utilized to generate profit—the managerial class engages comprehensively in a social-management function. The rise of the managerial class is the rise to dominance of unproductive labor—labor that can be socially valuable but is not a direct source of profit.

A surplus population under capitalism has a purpose: It exists as a reserve army of the unemployed, which can be mobilized rapidly in periods of economic expansion and as a source of downward pressure on the demands for compensation and safe work conditions made by the employed. Therefore, capital has little incentive to eliminate this surplus population. In contrast, the managerial class will view those identified as surplus people as truly superfluous. The social managers consider population generally as an object of control, reduction, and demographic administration, and whoever is assigned to the “surplus” category bears the weight of the arbitrary.

To the extent that identification of the surplus population is racialized, particular groups will be targets for social warehousing and extermination. The disproportionate overincarceration of black people in the United States—a form of social warehousing—is a direct expression of the managerial class’s preferences regarding who should be deemed of low necessity. The exterminative impulse is evident in the comparative devaluation of black lives that prompted resistance efforts like the Black Lives Matter movement. The potential for black superfluity in the managerial age is evident in prescient works like Sidney Willhelm’s Who Needs the Negro? (1970) and Samuel Yette’s The Choice (1971), both published almost 50 years ago.

The assault on “big” and invasive government constitutes an attack on the managerial class by both capital and the working class. Despite endorsing military spending, receiving lucrative government contracts, and enjoying the benefits of publicly provided infrastructure like roads, highways, and railways, corporate capital calls for small government. This is a strategic route to slashing social-welfare expenditures, with the goal of reducing the wage standard and eliminating all regulations on corporate predations. Despite benefiting from social-welfare expenditures, the working class gravitates to a new brand of populism that blends anticorporatism with anti-elitism (and anti-intellectualism), xenophobia, and a demand for a smaller and less intrusive state. Since “big” government constitutes the avenue for independent action on the part of the managerial class, an offensive of this type directly undermines the “new” class’s base of power.

Calls for smaller government are a strategic route to slashing social-welfare expenditures, wage standards, and regulations on corporate predation.

But the managerial class also possesses another attribute that is both a strength and a weakness. Unlike capital and labor, whose agendas are driven to a large degree by the struggle over the character of a society structured for the pursuit of profit, the managerial class has no anchor for its ideological stance. In fact, it’s a social class that is wholly fluid ideologically. Some of its members align fully with the corporate establishment; indeed, the corporate magnates—especially investment bankers—look much the same as members of the managerial class in terms of educational credentials, cultural interests, and style. Other social managers take a more centrist posture harking back to their origins in the “middle class,” while still others position themselves as allies of the working class. And there are many variations on these themes.

Depending on where the ideological weight centers most heavily, the managerial class can take many directions. During the wars in southern Africa against Portuguese rule, Amílcar Cabral once observed that for the anticolonial revolution to succeed, “the petty bourgeoisie” would need to commit suicide as a social class, ceasing their efforts to pursue their particular interests and positioning themselves fully at the service of the working class. One might anticipate that the global managerial class will one day be confronted with the choice of committing suicide, in Cabral’s sense, as a class. But the question is: If such a step is taken, will they place themselves fully at the service of labor… or capital?

There is no single solution to economic  inequality and insecurity in America, but there’s one that could go further than any other. It’s a universal base income, as distinct from a universal basic income.

A universal base income of a few hundred dollars a month is not the same as a universal basic income of, say, $1,000 a month. The latter, at least in some places, is enough to survive on; the former decidedly is not. And while the latter is the dream of many, it is far too expensive—and threatening to America’s work ethic—to be enacted anytime soon. If a universal basic income ever happens here, it will be because it was preceded for many years by a universal base income, gradually nudged upward like Social Security and the minimum wage. So let’s take a look at that.

A universal base income is both a springboard and a cushion for every participant in our fast-changing market economy—like giving everyone $200 for passing “Go” in a game of Monopoly. It supplements, but does not replace, labor income (which for the last 30 years has stagnated or declined), and it does so without judgment or stigma. It is grounded on the principle that, in a prosperous albeit volatile and increasingly unequal economy, everyone has a right to some cash flow they can count on.

In practical terms, a universal base income would be simple to administer. Eligible recipients (anyone with a valid Social Security number, which can include legal immigrants) would receive an equal amount of money every month, wired to their bank accounts or debit cards. The system would look and feel like Social Security, or a monthly version of the dividends that all Alaskans receive. People who don’t need the extra income would be enabled by a check-off option to donate it to any IRS-approved charity.

A universal base income, I should note, has nothing to do with automation, robots, or artificial intelligence. It has a lot to do with enhancing every American’s security, reducing their stress, and giving our poor and middle classes a leg to stand on—the very opposite of what our economy does now.

A universal base income would have other benefits as well. It is an answer—perhaps the answer—to long-term economic stagnation, a trickle-up form of Keynesianism that would stimulate our economy through increased household spending. Moreover, if funded by fees on unproductive activities like pollution and speculation, it would help solve two other deep problems of 21st-century capitalism: climate change and financial instability. And it wouldn’t need to replace or reduce spending on current programs that benefit the poor, a regressive trade-off that conservatives favor but most progressives oppose.

There are six large demographic groups (with some overlap) that could form the core of a movement for a universal base income: millennials (the first generation of Americans destined to earn less than their parents), low-wage and on-demand workers (the so-called precariat), women (who still earn less than men and aren’t paid at all for much of the work they do), African Americans (who suffer from past and present injustices), retired and near-retired workers (who can’t live on Social Security alone), and poor people of all colors. Environmentalists might also link arms with the cause if one of the revenue sources is a tax on pollution. It will, of course, be no simple feat to persuade these diverse groups that what they can’t achieve separately they may be able to achieve together. But it has happened before, and, in the post-Sanders era, it could happen again.

In the political realm, a universal base income would bring our nation together by affirming that we are all in the same economic boat. It would unite our desperate poor and our anxious middle class, young and old, women and men, white people and people of color. It would make millions of Americans less stressed, healthier, and perhaps even happier. And it could make many of us proud to be American.

Fourscore and two years ago, Franklin Roosevelt’s Committee on Economic Security produced the classic report that led to passage of the first Social Security Act. The report itself went beyond security for the aged. It proclaimed: “The one almost all-embracing measure of security is an assured income. A program of economic security, as we vision it, must have as its primary aim the assurance of an adequate income to each human being in childhood, youth, middle age, or old age—in sickness or in health.”

The committee added that, for reasons of political expediency, it was proposing only an assured income for the elderly, but it hoped that the rest of its vision would be implemented in the not-too-distant future. Much of it has been, but not all. A lifelong base income, along with health insurance for all, are the next pieces.

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ateamforumsfanworks · 4 years

Text

Lancer 103 - The Art of Basic Breaking (Part I)

11-22-2016, 01:43 AM Originally posted by Forum User: LaconicLeaf Last updated: 10-15-2017, 05:02 PM

(Credit: Match-i for this drawing of my character)

__________________________________________________ Table of Contents __________________________________________________ I. Introduction II. Build Suggestion (Pre-7th Slot) III. Build Suggestion (Post-7th Slot) IV. Monsters, Example Monster Sets, and Comparisons V. Lancer Skills (Pre-5th Ring) VI. Lancer Skills (Post-5th Ring) VII. Basic Abilities VIII. Lancer Procs IX. Gameplay (PvE) - aka "How to Break the Basic Attack's Potential Open" X. Weapon Proc and Skill Build Suggestion (PvE) XI. Weapon Proc and Skill Build Suggestion (PvP) XII. Apollo Set Blessing - yes or no? XIII. Event Quests Walkthrough XIV. "This is how you DON'T play Lancers" XVI. Credits XVII. DPS Scaling Data for Lancer Attacks

Previous Guide Archives

Lancer Guide 2.0 (by Vostera) Lancer 101 (by Cobalt)

__________________________________________________ I. Introduction __________________________________________________

Lancers were once extremely overpowered during the pre-4th Ring days.

Forget about

That's right.

Believe it or not, even as a 190 AP (200 with passives) attack, Knight's Blitz once landed swift 2HKOs against the majority of the opposition, while Archers and Mages often got OHKOed. Nearly everyone built Lancers for pure offense, getting as high of an ATK stat as possible with maxed Weapon and Monster slots. The guild crystal didn't give any multipliers to a member's HP, thus KB had barely any counterplay. You could try using Guard, but Lancers can use Savage Sting to bait it, wait it out, and then slam you with KB. With the sheer firepower Lancers had, and how easy and brainless their playstyle seemed, it’s no wonder they were given the moniker, “Cancer Lancer.” When 4th Ring was announced, it was hyped that Lancers would be overpowered, all thanks to Dragon Crush, which has 190 AP and hits 3 targets. Furthermore, KB got its AP increased from 190 to 210 (220 with passives), and people were panicking that Lancers would be God Tier again (they actually were, but everyone switched to Soldier/Mage/Archer due to FoTM status). But as time passed on, Dragon Crush was actually a bad AoE skill, as its animation speed was slow, and Mage's Meteor Rain, a similar AoE but deals multihits like Meteor Strike, was much faster, on the same speed tier as KB and Basic Attack.

As a result, Glass Lancer builds started falling out of favor with higher level caps and crystal caps, the latter finally increasing the HP of guild members in combat. Thus, KB no longer landed 2HKOs, and while this was going on, the original Lancer guide author, Cobalt, ranted about stuff like Amaterasu coming out before Apollo, and "Why Lancers are the weakest class in the game,” on what was arguably the "Lancer Hate Era" (or the "Dark Age of Lancers," kinda like the "Dark Age of Sonic"). Threads suggesting to buff Lancers, and all kinds of random crap, with Lancers being underpowered and everything, were also being thrown about all over the forums. This was the time when Lancers were surrounded with crappy publicity, being kicked out of Event Quest parties for being "useless," and even kicked out of guilds to make room for Soldiers, Mages, or even Archers. But the dark days of 4th Ring have long passed. There were a few uncharted techniques and merits about Lancers which other players, like , were discovering even in 4th Ring, like the sheer single-blow damage of Knight's Blitz being able to pulverize the raw defenses of Soldiers and Clerics, and Break Thrust's proc-bypassing capabilities doing extremely well against defensive walls in PvP. Plus, Reo also shared the "Attack Stance Basic Attack Strategy," which greatly improved the efficiency of Lancers in PvE; use Stings to Break, then Basic Attack to DPS. This was a fighting style Reo never got a chance to use since he used a Cleric/Soldier cost distribution with a few weapons; this actually started my love for the Basic Attack as a timed and true attack skill. In hindsight, Lancers were probably the best class during the pre-5th Ring meta, but not for reasons you'd expect. They can bore through Soldier Frontlines with Break Thrust and Knight's Blitz, with the former ignoring procs (can decimate Clerics), and the latter having sheer firepower that DEF scaling cannot overcome (Mage and Archer attacks were easily tankable with enough raw defenses). Against Meteor Rain Mage Frontlines, if the Lancers used Guard, and a more tanky build, they can withstand their attacks while also being able to instantly burst down each target one at a time. Their Anti-Class, Archers, were non-existent in the Frontline because Soldiers can instantly cleave them with Dual Sword, and Archers can't do much to them back. Eventually, 5th Ring is another time where Lancers are at a strong point. They gain skills which take advantage of Break and turn it into an AP boost, which drastically improves the damage they can dish out. While the AS+Basic strategy is still viable, the new 5th Ring skills yielded a new playstyle for Lancers that is more accessible. This ring also brought about buffs for Double Sting, turn it from a useless cost dump, Heart-proc reliant skill to a Swiss Army Knife with good all-around utility and DPS, while greatly improving Lancer's PvP game with stronger skills like Severe Sting and Cross Assault. Even Break Thrust got some love, with a lower cooldown and added Break bonus to make it usable with Cross Assault to some extent. The 5th Ring release also expressed a "What Could Have Been" dichotomy: Dragon Crush got not only its cooldown timer halved, but also a buffed animation speed too. If that AoE HAD its Basic Attack/KB/Meteor Rain-tier animation speed, we would've had a completely different meta entirely in 4th Ring. Lancers would've been able to decimate Mage Frontlines with coordinated Dragon Crushes, and it would've still been Lancer meta like it was during 3rd Ring. Unlike Meteor Rain, the high base AP of Dragon Crush would've been able to pulverize Soldiers and Clerics; no amount of DEF can reliably reduce the damage Dragon Crush could do. While I may not be the highest GS Lancer, only about 210k as of the time this guide was published, but now 350k and counting, or the highest ATK Lancer, sitting around 75k - 80k (again, when the guide was published); now lingering around 120-135k, at least I understand the game mechanics quite well, and can carry PvE runs with reliable Break uptime, so for those of you out there... I hope you’ll at least learn something new about Lancers after reading this guide.

Why SHOULD You Be A Lancer? (Pros)

+ Fastest attacks in the game

+ Second highest HP in the game, and the gap between a Lancer's HP and Soldier's HP is shorter than between an Archer's HP and a Cleric's/Mage's HP

+ High damage in each and every hit of their attacks, which makes raw DEF investment less effective, and deals great damage even while proc less

+ Adding to the above point, even Soldiers and Clerics take a sizable chunk of damage from Lancer attacks like Cross Assault. Since the latter has the same Max HP as a Mage, and Lancers can flat-out ignore their procs with Break Thrust, they can be considered the "Unofficial Anti-Cleric Class"

+ Absolutely dangerous after a Unison; since everyone freezes while a Unison clash completes, Lancers have the speed advantage. They can outright choose who to kill, since their attacks come out so quickly, if the enemy Clerics use Aid on the wrong player, they may as well kiss one of their teammates goodbye.

+ Anti-Class to Mages, a (former) common frontliner with their AoEs, and the AP damage mitigation further makes Lancers the best class to use against them; any Mage trying to drop rocks on your head will have to be extremely lucky with procs to even lay as much as a scratch on you; even Star Burst, which can potentially one-shot other classes, has a hard time killing you too

+ 5th Ring and ToJ skills are a massive boost to DPS, and allows Lancers to finally take advantage of Break for higher damage

+Negative Pressure can catch people off guard when least expected, can even win Colo games too; a metagame-defining skill that can turn Unison Battles in your favor, or even deny uni by erasing 2 Cheers' worth of meter

+ Can ignore shields and defense procs with Break Thrust (with a few exceptions)

+ Best class to inflict Break with

+ Flexible combo potential with skills, even if said skills don't explicitly have a combo effect with one another (like using Break Thrust with Cross Assault)

+ Break carries teams in quests with Unison upkeep and Defense Penetration, allows for earlier buff Unis, and carries United Offense and other boss content; can even allow people who died in Colo Round 2 without full Uni to have a chance to Uni in Round 3

+ The offensive class who is least likely to die from random monster reflect skills thanks to how Basic Attack doesn’t deal enough damage for a 50% reflect to bounce off lethal damage through Wards (and their animation speeds let them hit confirm BEFORE reflects apply)

+ Best user of the Basic Attack, which scales extremely well with just about every buff in the game due to its low cost and cooldown (you could even use it to humiliate others just by showing off how powerful the default attack is)

+ Thus, Basic Ability replacements are optional, and are more suited for PvP because the Basic Attack is just THAT good by default (although Deadly Blow admittedly comes VERY close to beating Basic Attack)

+ Extremely effective against Soldier Frontlines, as Cross Assault hits harder than Mage's Blood Oath despite Anti-Class, doesn't risk getting Reflect proc-killed, and has high HP to withstand multiple Rage Slashes; Negative Pressure can be a pain to them too, especially when coupled with Dissonance

+ 4th Ring skills (Break Thrust, Double Sting) are still viable in the current meta for their unique properties, unlike the other classes

+ Strong damage floor (All Rings)

Why Should You NOT Be A Lancer? (Cons)

- Low damage ceiling (Pre-5th Ring) when using non-Basic Attack skills

- Useful monsters by stats are generally limited to Fire, Water, and Haste elements; only two of these elements are useful for GvG unis. Farmable utility monster choices are poor (has to use Amaterasu or other off-element monsters for utilities).

- Even with high damage in single blows, Mages and Archers will still outdamage you (though 5th Ring made Lancers actually out-DPS Mages to some extent, or become rather equal to them)

- Apollo Set actually "nerfs" your Break rate due to the Proc Priority System mechanics, makes you more squishy due to sacrificing Main Slots

- Break Thrust has low base power, reliant on procs to deal real damage in PvP

- Null Damage effects (Unisons, Charisma, Null Physical Damage) and Guard still stuff Break Thrust

- Long cooldown times for certain skills; Smash moves from Soldiers out-DPS the Sting moves (until 5th Ring/ToJ)

- While I used to list "Secret XXLs being relevant today" as a "Pro," I'm gonna move them to the Cons because the new ToJ skills have high Break Bonus to the point where it's not really necessary to carry Savage Sting and Double Sting anymore. (Although Secret XXL does work out great if Double Sting is your only attack in PvP for your guild strategy, because Mastery-tier AP and proc rate is amazing)

- “Four Moveslot Syndrome” - Want Attack Stance? Take off EE or Mass Refresh/Balancing. Want Cross Assault? Take off Attack Stance. Want Negative Pressure? Cheer, Guard, or a second attack must go. (and so on)

- Basic Attack replacement weapons take off a high-DPS skill. As mentioned before, they're more suited for PvP, where burst damage is favored with Cleric heals being common. (Only Deadly Blow comes extremely close as a true upgrade)

- Due to having high raw ATK, a “Confused Attack” can potentially OHKO a Lancer or another player if they try using a buff/support skill while Confused (so please, think twice before deciding to EE out of boredom after you finish a quest while confused, or trying to Yolo Refresh)

- The buffs to Cleric's Aid skills for faster casting times actually make them the fastest skills in the game. They go so fast that they will land before a Lancer attack connects.

- Certain Event Quests (Wind Mobius, Eva Collab 1.0) have "Low HP, Low DEF, High Break Tolerance" mobs, which make Break builds less practical

- Death Pierce is useless, and a waste of a 5th Ring attack skill space.

- Anti-Class disadvantage to the current “OP Class” in the game -- Archers. Better hope you’re stacked with Magic Reflection or Magic Damage Down procs, so their Deadly Arabesque won’t OHKO...

Miscellaneous Issues

(4th Ring Issues)

- At one point, Lancers had a history of being stigmatized by others, being the bearer of several misconceptions, such as being called the "worst class," "why be a Lancer when you can play a Mage or Archer and do tons more damage," "if you're building tanky, be a Soldier instead," and what have you. (Thankfully, the vitriol has worn off, although Soldiers are arguably currently at the position where 4th Ring Lancers used to be)

- Many people think Lancers are THE "Damage Dealer class" given the class description, and complained about it on the forums due the description given by the game, using it as a crutch to prove their points (which was true... on like the Lv. 80 cap!)

- Even then, there's still some people who insist in Lancers being intended to be built Glass Cannon as an optimal build; this ill-advised build leaves Lancers with sub-30k MDEF, making them die to even proc less Meteor Rains.

Otherwise... Some player-related cons (it's the PLAYER'S problem, not the class):

- Class Passives encourage equipping Armor and Helm type gear to maximize your GS. However, this leaves you with low MDEF, and a small amount of Anti-Magic procs. (Unless they were all Reflection/Damage Down XLs, but that’s a different story)

- Players bringing the wrong abilities, like Thrusts, Dragon Assault, Dragon Crush, Death Pierce, or CURE (4-digit heals FTL), into Event Quests or Mobius

- In addition to the above point, Lancers who don't bring Attack Stance and just spam Sting, Savage Sting, and Knight's Blitz whenever they're off cooldown (the past equivalent of Severe Sting, Cross Assault, and Death Pierce) are guaranteed to keep asking for Haste at the beginning of a quest; these Lancers also tend to Break the wrong target too, and never use the Basic Attack

- Basic Attack is extremely under appreciated, and some players asked for more replacements for it (like replacing it for Cheer or Guard) when it's already OP as is

- Some players still tend to use Cross Assault incorrectly, oblivious to the fact that it has an AP Bonus damage effect while hitting Broken targets

- Lancers who don't take advantage of Break for their 5th Ring skills, or abuse AP Modifiers with the Basic Attack, will end up being out-DPSed by Soldiers

- While Lancers are least vulnerable to Reflect attacks, there’s still some players who Cross Assault or Knight’s Blitz head-first into a 50% Reflect target, and dying like a Mage or Archer that way

- Noobs thinking it's a great idea to use DRAGON ASSAULT, the absolute WORST move in the game *death glare*

- Complaints about Lancers being useless because they can’t SELF-HEAL unlike the others (by far the absolute MOST common complaint about Lancers)

- 5th Ring Sub Quest is SOLO Only! It’s difficult to beat this quest as a Lancer alone without dying. Thus, I highly recommend building a Cleric as a secondary class to make this Sub Quest a lot easier. Trust me, it pays off in cutting the amount of gems you would spend on reviving if you tried brute forcing your way through otherwise. (Though thankfully, stacking Water defense will help tank these mobs; this Sub Quest came before Elemental Defense was a thing)

Part II >>>

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junker-town · 4 years

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Jedrick Wills Jr. is a 1st-round OL, but he comes with a risk

Jedrick Wills Jr. is one of the top OT prospects in the 2020 NFL Draft.

Retired defensive end Stephen White explains why there’s a lot to like about Alabama’s Jedrick Wills Jr. — and one reason to be concerned.

Jedrick Wills Jr. was a supremely talented right tackle for Alabama this past season. I want to be clear on that point first thing. But while I was blown away by some of what I saw on his tape, I still came away having a few concerns about him as an NFL prospect.

Before I get into any negatives, I want to highlight Wills’ strong points, because there are plenty.

On his best plays, the guy was a damn monster who looked like one of the best offensive linemen I have ever evaluated.

On some running plays, the 6’4, 320-pound juggernaut looked every bit as powerful as Jawaan Taylor was on tape. On some passing plays, Wills’ pass set was every bit as technically sound as Ronnie Stanley’s a few years ago when he came out. Some of his downfield blocks were every bit as ridiculous as the ones Greg Robinson made in college back in 2013.

As a matter of fact, if Wills were just a little more consistent, I wouldn’t have had any problems making a Quenton Nelson comparison with him. Not that they are the same type of player, but they were both good enough to dominate right off the bat in the NFL. Even now, I would still say Wills has a similar type of versatility; I would be comfortable with him coming in and playing either tackle or guard position right away. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if he could play center, too.

If he can find that next level of consistency, you’re talking about Wills as a potential All-Pro type of player.

What Wills does well: Run and pass block

As a run blocker, Wills was an assassin on the second level. He would bump the hell out of the first guy at the line of scrimmage initially; then, when he scooped up to linebacker depth, that was your ass, Mr. Postman!

I swear, Wills would treat them dudes like he had heard they were talking bad about his mama!

But it wasn’t just the intensity of those blocks that impressed me. Wills showed good technique and athleticism. He stayed under control until he was within striking distance, then took his shot with almost perfect timing.

That’s at least partially why I feel like he could move inside to guard. In the NFL, Wills’ short-area quickness becomes a huge asset. He moves more like a defensive lineman (sorry, not sorry) and with his kind of power and explosion out of his hips, I think he could be pretty damn dominant at guard.

Not that I think his new team would have to do that.

Usually, I associate bumping a guy inside with him struggling as a pass protector, but with Wills, I think he could play either position about equally as well. It’s actually a compliment rather than a diss.

Gone are the days when most good teams would consider drafting a road-grading right tackle who can’t pass block in the first round. When we say it’s a passing league, that means more than just the quarterback and skill positions. If you can’t protect your quarterback for 45-55 (maybe even 60) passing plays in this era, you won’t last very long.

With Wills, I don’t really have those concerns. His athleticism jumped off the screen, but he didn’t try to rely solely on that when trying to keep pass rushers off his quarterback. His kick step was fluent, consistent, and at just the right angle backward, which allowed him to be patient.

He was also frequently able to keep his shoulders square to the line, while bailing out fast enough to turn and force speed rushers deeper than the quarterback at just the right moment.

Waiting like that takes nerves of steel, because if you wait a hair too long, or you don’t make solid contact with the pass rusher, your quarterback ends up on his ass. But Wills literally didn’t give up a pressure on a single speed rush in the four games I watched.

What Wills does well: Switch up his timing

Wills’ punch is NFL ready and a major reason why it’s so hard to get around him. Not only does he have a good sense of timing on when to shoot his hands, he’s also explosive enough to shove guys well off track as they try to run around the edge.

However, where he gets next level is Wills already knows how to switch up his timing on when he shoots them.

I can tell you as an old pass rusher who was coached by one of the best defensive line coaches in NFL history, there is nothing we love more than for a guy to throw their punch on a count that we can pick up on. When someone switches it up like Wills, it can throw your whole pass rush plan off — not only for that play, for the rest of the game as well.

I actually saw Wills jump set a dude one play, then keep his hands back until the very last second on the next.

You know how frustrating that can be when a pass rusher is trying to target a tackle’s hands? There are starting NFL tackles now that don’t switch it up with their punch as well as I saw Wills do it on tape.

Mind you, these were all Power 5 conference players he was shutting down around the corner. While there will be a jump in competition for him once he plays against NFL edge rushers, it won’t be a huge one. He’s ready to roll right away for whomever takes him, wherever they put him.

Where Wills can improve: Effort

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let me express my concerns. Well, it’s kind of two concerns in one.

Wills didn’t get beat often in those four games, but he did give up four pressures, as well as losing on three other plays that could’ve resulted in pressures if not for his teammates’ efforts. I already told you that I didn’t see him lose a speed rush, so that means all of his losses came on inside moves.

Two of the seven losses were on spin moves by the pass rusher.

So what gives?

After watching his tape a few more times, it was clear the issue wasn’t spin moves or technique. The problem started to look like one rooted in lack of effort on those plays.

From everything you’ve read up to this point, it should be obvious that Wills’ tape overall showed him to be more than talented enough to be a top-16 pick in this draft. However, if there’s one thing that makes me skeptical of an NFL prospect, it’s a lack of effort. To the extent that being a “bust” is even a real thing, I would be willing to bet that, aside from injury, nothing derails a player’s career more than a lack of effort. Or should I say a lack of appropriate effort.

And this is where it gets tricky.

For players selected in the first round, it’s almost a given that they have a lot of talent before they ever put on an NFL uniform. It is also safe to assume they’ve been dominant for most of the time they’ve played the game. They are usually guys who can ball out even when they weren’t going quite their hardest.

But I don’t know if y’all are ready for that conversation.

Here’s what it boils down to for me. On several of the plays where he was beaten inside, Wills obviously relaxed at some point during the play. There were also a few plays I saw where he was blocking one guy pretty well, but then after a while he would start looking around behind him, as if trying to see if the ball had been thrown or something.

At the same time, after thinking it through, the reason why those plays stuck out so much to me is because they were anomalies. On probably 97 percent of the plays I watched, Wills’ effort was appropriate, if not always outstanding.

So the question I would have if I were in a position of picking him in first round (especially in the top 16) is: did his motor really run hot and cold sometimes? Or was it just a matter of, for lack of a better term, him being “bored” playing against dudes who he had an easy time of blocking? The answer to that question is what I’d be seeking when I talked to his coaches, some of his teammates, and Wills himself.

If I heard it was the former, I would probably pass if I were drafting that high. Yes, I know how hard it is to find a good offensive tackle these days, but it might be worse to draft the wrong one high and be stuck with him for at least a few years. Your starting quarterback definitely ain’t gonna be happy about it, I can promise you that much.

But if it’s the latter, as I suspect it is, I would give him a pass with the understanding that those days are over. I don’t really think anybody will have to tell him that once he gets to the league and starts taking on NFL talent. You get caught slipping on one play and your season might be over in a flash with your quarterback going down.

But, if he can get his motor to run just a tad bit more consistently, you’re talking about a guy who could be a game changer up front for any team.

Wills’ NFL future: Immediate starter

Wills is talented enough to be in the NFL for a long time at multiple positions. I don’t see him actually getting out of the top of the first round, regardless. And just to reiterate, I lean a lot more toward boredom being the answer to those lapses. So if that is actually the case, then why not take him early?

Wills has the skillset, size, and technique to be at least a quality starter from day one. His 5.05-second 40-yard dash and 34.5-inch vertical at the combine just confirmed what’s already on the tape. With someone like that, I’d be willing to bet that years from now, the general managers who pass on him will end up being the ones getting second-guessed rather whomever turns his name in on draft day. I predict the number of GMs who pass on him will not be very high when it’s all said and done, however.

Be sure to check out my other scouting reports on Chase Young, Jerry Jeudy, and Derrick Brown.

For the purposes of this breakdown, I watched Wills play against South Carolina, LSU, Auburn, and Michigan (Citrus Bowl).

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reportfruit8-blog · 5 years

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How has three-point shooting changed the game?

One of the most famous, or perhaps infamous, comments from an NBA player in a league that often features the most outrageous observations was Chicagoan Antoine Walker's unique declaration of independence almost 20 years ago responding to why he shot so many three pointers. Walker said he did so because there were no fours.

These days in the NBA what seemed outrageous then, especially Walker's propensity for exceptionally long shots in transition accompanied with success by a full body shimmy, has become haute couture as personified by the Golden State Warriors' Stephen Curry. Curry's shooting and swaggering has become one of the the league's most popular attractions.

Which actually explains Zach LaVine and his attempt at victory against the San Antonio Spurs Monday night. The Bulls lost 108-107 when LaVine's isolation-run-down-the-clock three missed and Ryan Arcidiacono's desperate attempt after a steal came up short. LaVine's shot selection was much questioned, but it's perhaps personified the NBA more than its critics.

Why it has is probably is a complex and varied combination of AAU prep training, video game lifestyles, NBA rules changes and the desire of most major sports leagues to enhance offense in this era of short attention spans. Walker was joking. The NBA isn't anymore.

The Bulls should continue to get a personal education this week as they play in Milwaukee Wednesday to begin a four-game road trip and Saturday in Houston. The Bucks are one of the biggest stories of the new season at second in the East, essentially the same players with a new coach and a new offensive philosophy of the three.

The Bucks average more than 40 three point attempts per game, the only team doing so other than the Houston Rockets, whom the Bulls visit Saturday.

There were plenty of reasons why LaVine likely attempted that shot, waving off a screen to avoid the double team, surrounded by several players not generally accustomed to taking or making late game shots, running down the clock to go for a rare win, anticipating a crowd at the basket and deciding as the team's leading scorer it was his responsibility. Not unlike James Harden at just about the same time Monday night on the way to 54 points with a bunch of those tightly contested long threes late in the game. True, Harden's team lost also, but who was he throwing it to? P.J. Tucker? Clint Capella?

Remember when the maxim was you went for the tie at home and the win on the road. Monday trailing by two points in the last seconds, Dwyane Wade passed on a wide open elbow two pointer to pass back to Josh Richardson for a three. That missed. No one seemed too upset. Dwyane knows fashion. And, hey, Jimmy Butler won that game in Philadelphia Sunday with as unlikely a long, step back wing three. Remember, the 76ers also were down one when Jimmy faded back to take that extra long and more difficult three. And Jimmy draws as many fouls as anyone in the NBA.

The difference? His went in.

And remember when everyone kept condemning LeBron James for not taking that last shot, driving and passing instead? Isn't that the best player's job?

Michael Jordan, of course, took a lot of those shots, and most were fearless attacks at the basket. Get to the free throw line. Make the defense commit. Perhaps a better chance for an offensive rebound with a miss. Make it an easier shot. All reasonable ideas.

It's just not the way the NBA game is played anymore as much as many of us, including Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, don't like it.

It so happened before Monday's game, Popovich was asked about the curiosity of his Spurs team, a team historically known for its defense, giving up more points than it was scoring. When in his long tenure had that occurred? Never, Popovich as quick to recall. He said he doubted his team could guard me. Nevertheless, I decided not to ask for a jersey.

"Now you look at a stat sheet after a game and the first thing you look at is the threes. If you made threes and the other team didn't, you win. You don't even look at the rebounds or the turnovers or how much transition D was involved. You don't even care. That's how much an impact the three-point shot has and it's evidenced by how everybody plays." Gregg Popovich

Not having Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, obviously, had something to do with that. Though with now a .500 team that only has a chance to make the playoffs, Popovich also acknowledged the inevitable evolution of the game that seems to be chasing out the strategies of he and many of his contemporaries.

He hates it, by the way, in case you were wondering.

"The inside game is kaputski," Popovich explained without helping with the spelling.

"You've got to have downhill players, you've got to have people that can penetrate and kick, you've got to have people who can switch, you've got to have big guys who can play little guys," he said.

And mostly you have to have players who can shoot the three.

He really doesn't with a team 28th in attempts. They shoot them pretty well, but with a core of LaMarcus Aldridge, DeMar DeRozan and Rudy Gay, they don't often try. Which accounts to being a .500 team.

Popovich, arguably the greatest coach of his era and one of the most celebrated in NBA history, admitted it's difficult to even defend these days the way the NBA has both emphasized three-point shooting while enforcing touch fouls and a lack of physical play on the perimeter. The league is averaging 110 points per game this season. In 2000-01, for example, the ball movement Kings led the league in scoring at 101.7 per game. Four teams averaged more than 100 points. Walker, by the way, attempted 603 threes to lead the NBA that season, almost 100 more than the second most. He was considered out of step. If he were a free agent today at 6-8 and a ball handler, he'd be the most sought after player in the league. Consider when Walker in the early 2000s was averaging more than 600 threes per season for about three seasons, the entire Bulls team was averaging about 900. Several teams barely averaged more per season than Walker alone. Everyone agreed you couldn't win that way. It would always be about defense.

"These days there's such an emphasis on the three because it's proven to be analytically correct," Popovich Monday offered with what appeared to be a sneer. "Now you look at a stat sheet after a game and the first thing you look at is the threes. If you made threes and the other team didn't, you win. You don't even look at the rebounds or the turnovers or how much transition D was involved. You don't even care. That's how much an impact the three-point shot has and it's evidenced by how everybody plays."

"I hate it, but I always have," Popovich said even as he's adjusted over the years. "I've hated the three for 20 years. That's why I make a joke all the time (and say) if we're going to make it a different game, let's have a four-point play. Because if everybody likes the three, they'll really like the four. People will jump out of their seats if you have a five-point play. It will be great. There's no basketball anymore, there's no beauty in it. It's pretty boring. But it is what it is and you need to work with it."

So we all need to understand Zach.

He's with the times; we're just behind. Like it or not, and many of us certainly do not. But I suspect most of us are not in that marketing demographic all the marketers like so much.

Source: https://www.nba.com/bulls/news/how-has-three-point-shooting-changed-game

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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marcoshassanlevy · 5 years

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Marcos Hassan

With the proliferation of the music festival economy, there’s hardly any need for fanfare when a festival reaches its 10-year anniversary. However, in the case of Mexico’s NRMAL, 10 years marks a milestone that few events of its scale are capable of. Considering that NRMAL’s story includes bands that made their debut in Mexico 40 years after their inception to collateral violence from the war on drugs, it’s a miracle NRMAL has reached this watershed moment, let alone established itself as one of the most beloved festivals in Latin America. To say it’s worth celebrating is an understatement.

NRMAL has become one of the most important festivals in Mexico, without attracting massive crowds or relying on excessive corporate branding. Over the course of its 10 editions, the festival has booked artists from across the globe, including alternative legends like Slowdive, Psychic TV, and Brujería, to early appearances of soon-to-be game-changers like Grimes, Twin Shadow, and Omar Souleyman. And of course, its Latin American and Latinx talent has included current favorites like Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, Las Robertas, Alex Anwandter, Dávila 666, Javiera Mena, Los Mundos, Meridian Brothers, Föllakzoid, and many others. NRMAL is also an effort to build bridges between different communities, forging transnational alliances within the musical community, especially in Latin America. It’s a festival for the music-obsessed and a gathering that feels more like an annual reunion of family and friends. Rather than paying attention to trends or unachievable economic growth, NRMAL has chosen to evolve along with its listeners.

“It’s still a small festival,” director Moni Saldaña says during an interview at NRMAL’s headquarters. “It’s been very difficult to keep this going so we’re really happy that we’re still doing it, that we’re still here and most importantly, that we’re still doing it our way. It’s the type of festival we want to do and we keep booking the types of bands we want, so it’s a great feeling.”

Festival NRMAL 2011. Courtesy of NRMAL

The festival organizers’ main priority has always been to host the event without compromising any major part of their eclectic, independent vision, and they manage to achieve this through some careful planning. Unlike most major fests, NRMAL comes to life thanks to a team of just five people. They have shut down most of their other enterprises – among them hosting smaller events, running venues, an agency, and a blog – to focus on the festival itself. As a result, NRMAL provides a more honest experience for fans, without making attendees feel like every inch of of the grounds is occupied by brand logos. “Nobody involved is a businessperson and that makes me happy,” Saldaña shares. “We don’t do it for the money, we do it because we’re music fans. Every time we have to make a decision we say, ‘if we were the audience, would we like this?’ I don’t think we’re the perfect festival or the ideal festival experience, but I believe we make a difference, we try to be honest with fans and artists. They know when something is bullshit. They feel close to us because we have been upfront about our mistakes and stuff.”

NRMAL also has a rare sense of transparency when it comes to the visibility of its staff. Moni regularly grants interviews leading up to the festival, and in past editions, the team has hosted keynotes and workshops about the independent music business through NODO, a platform founded by Alfonso Muriedas, who is one of the five members of the NRMAL team. Even founder Pablo Martínez, who has maintained some anonymity, granted an interview with The Creative Independent in 2017. Saldaña thinks this openness has benefited the festival. Her role as a director has made a difference as well, resulting in invitations to speak at roundtables and conferences supporting women’s empowerment initiatives.

Festival NRMAL 2013. Courtesy of NRMAL

“It’s not my intention to become the face of the festival,” says Saldaña. “But I’m aware of my position and I have something that maybe some people need to hear. When I was younger, I used to say shit like, ‘if I was a boy, maybe I could join a band’ and that’s how I grew up. Now, most men who run festivals have a right-hand woman who gets things done and kicks ass. Believe me, I know them. All of them. But there’s no visibility for these women. In this age, and especially in this country, it’s important to me as a woman to have that visibility. It’s important to let women know there’s another way.”

Well before conversations about the representation of marginalized artists at major festivals, NRMAL demonstrated a commitment to diversity, whether it was about sound, geography, or gender. Currently, NRMAL is the festival with the most women and non-binary performers in Mexico; 70 percent of these artists were featured in its 2019 edition. This eclecticism is inherent to the festival’s origins; organizers would initially invite bands to Monterrey from SXSW to play in Mexico. Ever since, it has remained a priority to book artists that otherwise would not be able to visit the country.

NRMAL began a few years before the first edition of the festival in 2010. Pablo Martínez and Lucas Cantú set out to build a local scene through shows and parties (Cantú has since left NRMAL, but Martínez remains the fest’s CEO). At the time, Moni Saldaña – a lifelong music fan who would drag her friends to shows from an early age – was a college student who was switching career paths and working part-time at a magazine. Having fallen in love with their events, she wrote an email to the NRMAL blog, offering to write concert reviews. When the first festival was coming together, Saldaña volunteered and ended up contributing to every aspect of the festival without any prior experience.”I almost flunked an exam because of NRMAL!” she says. After that, Martínez asked her to formally join the team.

Girl Ultra performing at NRMAL 2017. Courtesy of NRMAL

Prior to NRMAL, music festivals were not the most common live music experiences in Mexico. After the legendary Avandaro Festival in 1971, which resulted in significant government censorship, no major music festivals took place in the country until the first edition of Vive Latino in 1998. In the 2000s, heavily sponsored festivals featuring international acts like Manifest, Mx Beat, and Sonorama, as well as a Mexican version of the electronic Mutek festival, began yearly traditions before the bubble burst around 2009, when most of these were canceled for good. Only Mutek survived. Coinciding with the first NRMAL, OCESA – the world’s third biggest international promoter and entertainment agency – launched their own alternative music festival, Corona Capital, marking a new era of music festivals in the country.

Before NRMAL could really get off the ground, violence had already presented itself as a challenge. The week following the first edition, two students were killed by soldiers who mistook them for an armed group that had fired at them earlier on March 19. On August 29, 2011, members of the Zetas cartel stormed and set fire to the Royale casino in Monterrey. The war on drugs escalated violence in the city to unprecedented heights. In 2010, another festival, MtyMx, had most international acts canceling their appearances at the last minute due to security concerns. “All the local people were like ‘what the fuck is happening?’” remembers Saldaña.

However, the second edition of NRMAL continued as planned, with just Las Robertas, Thee Oh Sees, and Silje Nes making the trip abroad. “[That edition] was a statement about not letting the flame burn out. We couldn’t let the situation kill us so we said ‘fuck it’ and did the fest. We had some advantage because La Alianza Francesa [the festival venue] is located in San Pedro and allegedly was agreed to be off-limits by the local government and narcos.”

Thankfully, violence in Monterrey subsided in the following years, allowing NRMAL to march on. By 2013, NRMAL leveled up and booked more than 100 acts to perform between the main event and various showcases, something that Saldaña says nearly broke her. “On Sunday, I called Pablo crying, told him I was quitting, and he told me that everything was going to be okay, and that was that. From then on, we could do no wrong.”

Jesse Baez performing at NRMAL 2017. Courtesy of NRMAL

In 2014, to celebrate five tumultuous and successful years, NRMAL decided to throw two festivals, one in Monterrey and another in Mexico City, an ambitious endeavor that the team pulled off. However, the following edition came with the biggest change in their history: a permanent move to Mexico City. Struggling with adequate venues and elusive permits from the local government, the team found a more inviting environment in the nation’s capital, but that didn’t make it an easy choice. “We tried to keep the two festivals,” says Moni. “We wanted the best for NRMAL and it made sense to move to Mexico City. It was a tough decision because most of us are from Monterrey, but it was necessary to keep running the festival as best as we could.”

“NRMAL wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t born in Monterrey,” Saldaña continues. “We didn’t have access to many things; there was no scene. We built something we wanted to see, made a festival so we could see bands that we couldn’t otherwise. I’m not sure if it could have started anywhere else.”

For the 10th edition of NRMAL, a typically eclectic selection of artists – from Spiritualized to Canalón de Timbiquí to Death Grips to Michelle Blades & Los Machetes – took over the grounds of Deportivo Lomas Altas, in Mexico City. Judging by this year’s installment, one thing remains clear: the festival’s commitment to forging bonds within the musical communities of Latin America and the world, but especially within the Mexican scene. Crowds showed up early to witness local underground legends-in-the-making El Shirota and Vyctoria, and grew larger by the time Latin American dream pop messengers Rubio and Sexores took the stage. There has been a continuous boost in attendance, and the 2019 edition was no exception, without any of the troubles that come with crowded festivals. This is no coincidence; Saldaña tells us that their idea of expansion doesn’t mean attracting more people to the festival, but rather creating a more enjoyable experience for everyone involved. “It’s horizontal growth rather than vertical growth,” she says.

Next year, there will be another edition of NRMAL and with it, more chances of experiencing something otherworldly within the reaches of music fans all over. But for now, there’s the matter of celebrating 10 years of a day for every kind of music fan to enjoy as much as they can. As for the team behind this, it’s a source of happiness. “For me, it’s like, ‘fuck! Has it really been 10 years?’” says Saldaña. “I feel privileged. It’s a dream come true that I do this for a living, something I love so much.” When there’s so much passion for music gathered in one place, the product can only be something very special and memorable. As ubiquitous as festivals have become, it’s refreshing to find a true celebration of music.

Monday, March 4, 2019 at 1:30 PM EDT

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