Narrative world of Dark Souls 1

The original Dark Souls released in late 2011 is probably my all time favorite game. I first bought it for Xbox 360 and spent probably around 10 hours just being clueless of what's going on and where to go. I ended up not finishing it on console due to it releasing on PC and when I had to start fresh, the game became much easier due to roughly knowing how stat allocations etc work.

What makes Dark Souls 1 special is the way the world is build. The moment you start up the game, there is a path for you to follow. Or not.

The game doesn't hold your hand at all. It gives certain hints of where to go next but the player always has an option of going to a completely different route. One good example of this is the option of starting the game with Master Key that lets you completely bypass the first quarter of the game and run directly to area that would normally take dozens of hours to reach for regular player.

About 50 hours in I found a secret area. It was hidden inside a tree trunk in the swamp that was below the starting zone. When I first saw the roots of that tree I just went residing in a massive underground lake it hit me -- Those roots, the trunk, that massive tree that grows in the middle of the first zone and covers the area with its leaves -- They are all connected to each other. That opened my eyes on how beautifully the whole world was put together and how everything that I see in the game is connected.

The beautiful world aside, Dark Souls 1 manages to create a very uneasy feeling for some of their areas. Some of the places are so terrifying that it feels almost better option to just start a new game rather than having to enter them.

Each one of the areas manages to tell a very memorable story. There doesn't have to be anyone force feeding the lore down your throat when you play if the world is built in a way where the player can get immersed.

WoW Hardcore raiding - PvE esports in the future?

WoW recently got their new expansion "Battle for Azeroth" and it has been very popular in Twitch (live streaming site). Last week the first Mythic difficulty raid Uldir opened. This is something that most common players spend months clearing but the top 0.1% will most likely clear in a week or so.

Now, this is nothing new, Blizzard has kept the same Raid formula since beginning of WoW and it works fine. What has changed now is the top guilds streaming their progress through this content that is impossible for most of the playerbase.

I was watching Method (arguably the best guild in the game) and their progress through Uldir. They had multiple people from raid team streaming their point of view with their leader having around 60 000 people constantly watching the stream. When they managed to kill the last boss his viewer count peaked at around 200 000 people that is insane amount for a single streamer. Usually numbers like this are seen only on some top Esports tournaments like CS:GO, Fortnite or LoL.

What is even more insane is the amount of money he made during this 8 days of progress raid. From Twitch "subscribers" alone he made almost 40 000€ and on top of that the ad revenue and sponsorship deals most likely put this number somewhere in 6 digits.

This is very interesting to see since almost everyone has claimed the "Player versus Environment" content not viable for streaming due to the nature of scripted encounters. The raiding scene has been really isolated with the guilds doing everything in their power to even prevent others from seeing what players are playing in the current raid team.

I'm not sure if this is a one-time thing due to them streaming the progress live for first time but I hope it isn't. PvE as a viable option for content creation would make a lot of people happy and maybe the developers will start creating more games outside of the regular "just go kill other players" themes.

EU is pushing new internet copyright directives

Yesterday European Parliament voted for a new directive that aims to make websites responsible for copyrighted material posted on them.

This directive is targeted at websites that use this kind of content for their main source of visitors and create profits out of it. This includes sites like 9gag, Reddit, Facebook and various other image hosting sites.

If the law passes in January, these kind of "for profit" websites will have to start implementing Content ID systems to filter out material that is copyrighted.

The public opinion of this law is negative, most likely due to misinformation and people seeing this as a way to limit "freedom of speech". Large media groups, publishers and content creators in the other hand see this as a good change.

In my opinion this is a very good change. At the moment big websites are creating massive amounts of revenue and basically giving nothing for the people who create the material. If the law passes it will force the sites to start curating what kind of content is posted on them and give new opportunities for online content creators to earn their living. Implementing Content ID systems should also make it easier for content creators to track down stolen work and either gain a share of the revenue or take them down.

Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market - Wikipedia

EU approves controversial internet copyright law, including ‘link tax’ and ‘upload filter’ - Reddit

My media consumption habits

Media consumption is something that has in recent years become exponentially more popular and with that the amount and quality of content available for normal consumers has increased dramatically.

I think one of the biggest reason for this is the ease of access via cellphones and evolution of search algorithms. It's so easy to fill all the "idle" time by flipping open Reddit to check the most popular topics without ever needing to read the long source materials.

Similar way YouTube offers endless amounts of new videos for practically anything. Every time I sit down on computer I have an endless playlist of music playing on background.

I have noticed that my habits have turned from investing time into reading to finding the most popular opinion of certain thing and going to next one. Spending more than 3 minutes on a topic would mean that reading through hundreds of articles would take the whole day so filtering the most interesting stuff is necessary. I also feel that the articles themselves are becoming more and more clickbaity for revenue so being able to just skip them is very useful.

Introducing: Me!

6 years after finishing High School (with long Mathematics and Physics) I find myself on Media & Arts side of TAMK. Probably last place that I could have imagined when I started High School.

The future is bright, so many good choices to pick from. Most likely I'll end up somewhere in Game development field but I'm not locking out any other options either.