Embattled Blizzard Entertainment is trying to improve its image by hiring the company’s first Vice President of Culture. A former Walt Disney employee named Jessica Martinez will fill the VP position.
So, what will Martinez be tasked with inside the walls of Blizzard Entertainment? According to an Inside Blizzard post, the new hire will be instrumental in “growing and implementing our culture strategy, ensuring alignment across all teams and functions, and revamping learning and talent development programs.”
Further along in Blizzard’s statement, we learned more about Martinez’s qualifications. Her previous position included 14 years with the Wald Disney COmpany as Chief of Staff and advisory positions to the Chief Security Officer and Chief Technology & Digital Officer for Disney Parks and Resorts. Her duties in those roles were not clear, but Blizzard did say, “Jessica was best known for creating a values-driven culture that connected global teams and celebrated diversity.”
The entertainment industry is possibly the only one that I know of that focuses so much on the immutable qualities of employees. Considering Activision/Billzard is currently in a lot of hot water with a wrongful death suit and various sexual harassment claims, creating a “more diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace culture where people at every level can learn, grow, and bring their most creative selves to their work” is the least of the company’s worries.
When I hear about positions being created strictly to focus on diversity and equity, I wonder what the company will cut to fulfill some arbitrary goal. What does Blizzard consider diverse enough or equitable? If a team consisted of ten people from various European countries and cultures, would they be seen as just “white” and disbanded? What are the prerequisites of diversity? Is this all performative to impress forces outside of the office?
Maybe my background in technology makes me wonder how these things are quantified, verified, and acted upon. What do you think? Let us know in the comments section below.
[Source: Blizzard]
Blizzard To Improve Diversity and Inclusion By Hiring First “VP Of Culture”
Mass Effect’s Sovereign Statues Brings The Reapers Into Your Home
Fifteen years ago, gamers were introduced to the world of Mass Effect and the ancient devastating force known as The Reapers. Phew, I’m feeling a bit old now. These were the classic days of Bioware when story and characters mattered more than DLC and EA’s greed. So what better way to celebrate the golden days of Bioware than by picking up a $299.99 replica of Mass Effect’s Sovereign?
The gargantuan Reaper craft known as Sovereign was our first taste of the Reaper threat in the Mass Effect trilogy. Just one Reaper managed almost to decimate millions of lives in one battle nearly. Just imagine what an entire armada of these things could do! Now you can bring that kind of evil home with you!
Sovereign can be pre-ordered now from Dark Horse Direct for $299.99. The statue stands 14″ tall and is made by Gentle Giant Studios, a company known for producing a lot of Star Wars merchandise. Only 1,000 of these statues are going to be made.
Dark Horse Direct
Reaper Sovereign has landed on Eden Prime after 50,000 years and is reigning down planet-shattering destruction. This spectacular replica is made of polyresin and crafted by the masters at Gentle Giant Studios. At 14-inches tall on an 11-inch diameter base, this statue will have you re-experiencing this iconic moment from Mass Effect. A limited-edition of just 1000 units, be sure you are prepared for the oncoming invasion!
Here are the details:
- Edition Size: 1000
- Expected to Ship to Customers: November 2022 – January 2023
- Materials: Polyresin
- Sculptor, Prototyping, and Paint: Gentle Giant Studios
- Ordering Limitations: 2 Per Customer
- Product Packaging Size: 16” (406.4mm) x 13” (330.2mm) x 13” (330.2mm)
- Product + Packaging Dimensional Weight: 9lbs
Let us know what you think about this Mass Effect statue in the comments section below.
[Source: Dark Horse Direct]
Alucard and Richter Headline This Massive ‘Symphony of the Night’ Statue
Konami’s Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was the first Castlevania game I ever finished. Something about the sheer size of the map and all loadout possibilities intrigued me. The game’s popularity has managed to keep it from fading into obscurity. The game is even available on mobile now.
Figurama Collectors also think SotN is popular enough to warrant a massive 1/6th scale statue featuring Alucard and Richter Belmont. The 36″ tall statue makes the most of its size by squeezing in tons of callbacks to Symphony of the Night. There are enemies, familiars, weapons, Dracula’s throne, and the inverted castle. This massive work of art will run you $1,285. This is a pretty fair price for the size compared to other giant statues we’ve covered in the past.
Inspired by Ayami Kojima’s vision of the character, Alucard manifests from a trail of mist, wielding a holy rosary in one hand and his blade in the other as he cuts down the undead enemies lurking the library’s halls. A vampire bat soars from Alucard’s billowing cloak while a wolf’s head adorns the base behind him, representing the dhampir’s animal transformations. Beneath Alucard’s levitating form, Richter Belmont cracks the famed whip, Vampire Killer, against a skull-headed Spellbook and Lesser Demon. The golden, gothic splendor of the library’s furnishings feature layers of intricate paintwork and authentic, gilded details. Hiding in the wreckage of the battlefield, countless relics surround the crimson-carpeted stairway—a vial of Holy Water, ornate candelabras, over two dozen ancient volumes, a discarded blade, and a ceremonial Stone Mask. Cast in shadow, the silhouette of the statue invokes a similar shape to Dracula’s Castle, with Alucard’s upheld sword, the bat’s wing, and the monster’s arms serving as allusions of its towers and spires.
The only thing this statue is missing is the Succubus. Sure, it would have made the whole thing more adult than it should be; I love that character design. But who doesn’t want a big busty succubus in the mix? Come on!
What do you think about the Alucard and Richter Belmont statue? Let us know in the comments section below.
[Source: Figurama Collectors]
Frontier Customers Were “Ripped Off” According to the FTC
The Federal Trade Commission is not mincing words about how Frontier treated those who subscribed to the company’s internet service. Apparently, people who lived in areas that only had access to the provider’s DSL service were misled into believing just how fast the service would be.
According to Ars Technica, the FTC took Frontier to court in 2021, ending in a settlement. However, this lawsuit only applied to citizens in California. Following the lawsuit, which includes Frontier paying $8.5 million, plus $250k for Californias legal fees and restitution to customers, the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection Director Samuel Levine had the following to say:
“Frontier lied about its speeds and ripped off customers by charging high-speed prices for slow service. Today’s proposed order requires Frontier to back up its high-speed claims. It also arms customers lured in by Frontier’s lies with free, easy options for dropping their slow service.”
Aside from the financial penalties, the FTC is forcing Frontier to back up its claims regarding service speeds. Additionally, Frontier must be upfront with the speeds DSL customers should expect, and customers will no longer be required to pay a fee for canceling service.
An upside to the settlement is that Frontier must agree to install, within four years, fiber infrastructure to service 60,000 customers. However, I wouldn’t keep my hopes up because Frontier left a bankruptcy filing promising 350k new fiber drops by 2026.
Although I’m not familiar with Frontier’s DLS service, I was a very brief customer of theirs when the company took over Verizon’s fiber service. By brief, I mean less than two weeks. During the first day of Frontier running the service, there was a significant outage which lasted two days. Upon service being restored, internet speeds were drastically slower, coming in at about 35% of the advertised speed. This lasted for another week when I canceled my account. Frontier expected me to pay $200 for exiting my contract early. Yeah, I didn’t do that, and Frontier didn’t push the issue.
Do you have any experience with Frontier? Let us know in the comments section below.
[Source: Ars Technica]
[Source: Ars Technica]
‘Rifftrax: The Game’ Lets You Riff With The MST3K Crew!
Are you ready to add your own commentary to some of the entertainment industry’s worst movies? Then it’s time for Rifftrax! It’s a party game that lets you and up to six others turn terrible films into comedy gold!
Rifftrax: The Game works similarly to how You Don’t Know Jack does now. Rather than everyone playing on one console with several controllers, players join using their smartphones or other internet-connected devices. Players can either create their own riffs or select pre-recorded ones from the Rifftrax team.
- Featuring over 250 movie clips from the RiffTrax library including fan favorites such as Rollergator, Attack of the Supermonsters, Plan 9 From Outer Space, and more!
- Featuring two exciting ways to play! Write your own riff and watch your comedy genius come to life via text-to-speech. Or leave it to the pros and choose from over 2,000 expertly crafted riffs from the RiffTrax team.
- Play head-to-head with up to 6 players using any internet connected device as controller. An additional 12 audience members can also play along.
- Support for remote games, cross play, and voice chat.
- Twitch integrations that can get your whole chat in the action with Twitch Chat voting, additional moderation, privacy, and content tools.
- Launch price of $9.99 across platforms!
If you’ve not checked out Rifftrax before, you should. If you’re a fan of the Mike Nelson days of MST3K or disappointed by the recent reboot, I say this. Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom), and Bill Corbett (Crow) riff on everything from old MST3K throwback films to newer fare. Of course, plenty of educational films get roasted, too.
My favorite Rifftrax video is Santa And The Ice Cream Bunny. However, the team’s riff on the Star Wars Holiday Special is pretty good, too.
What do you think about Rifftrax as a party game? Let us know in the comments section below.
[Source: Rifftrax YouTube Channel]
[Source: Rifftrax]
Anime and Manga That Highlight Motherhood
Mother’s Day is upon us and it’s time to honor the ones who brought us into the world. Although that should be done regardless of the time of year. Maybe you would like to watch something with your mom? Or perhaps find an anime to watch that centers around motherhood. Moms in animes and manga tend to be the supporting character, a tragic death character, or just not part of the story for one reason or another. But then there are the ones that play a more prominent role. Here is a list of animes and manga that involve mothers who are living.
Wolf Children
The first one is on just about every list that involves anime mothers. And for good reason! Wolf Children highlights life as a mother to two children after losing the wolf man she loves, and her childrens father. Directed by Mamoru Hosoda (Belle).
A Silent Voice
Although motherhood is not the main theme of the movie, it does highlight the struggles single parenthood can create. Both main characters have mothers who do their best to support their children, even if it may not always be the best decisions made. For further backstory on the mothers, you will get more from the manga.
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Maquia is a 2018 movie that starts with people of Iorph who live far away from the land of men. They can live for centuries, maintaining their youthful appearances. One day they are invaded by the Mezerte army on a dragon fleet, who seek the blood that give Iorph’s their long lasting life. Iorph orphan Maquia manages to escape, leaving her to be all alone and far from home and all those she knew, in the strange land of men. Just as she begins to give up hope, she hears the cries of an orphaned baby. From then on, she strives to raise him as her own to the best that she can. What will happen as he grows up, but she never ages? Is the blood differences worth the pain a love can bring?
With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child
If you would rather read, With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child manga might be worth looking into. There is no tragic death or divorce or single parenthood. Both parents exist together, raising two children. Created between 2000-2009, with 15 volumes and 92 chapters, With the Light is about Azumas’ newborn son, Hikaru, which means “light”, because he was born during the sunrise. All is well until one day, during a play date, Azuma notices her son is slightly different from the other children. This is a heartwarming and bittersweet tale of a young mother who tries her best to learn and grow with understanding of her son’s autism and the trials the family goes through as he grows up. There is also a live action 11-episode Japanese series that came out in 2004.
Do any of these interest you? Do you think Mom would like any of them? Let us know!
And Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there!
Facebook / Meta Freezes Hiring, Cost Cutting Measures On The Way
Meta’s stock value declined by almost half, and the company is now putting a freeze on hiring. Revenue growth is not what Facebook’s executives expected, and the company just opened a weird physical Meta store in California. This sounds like the start of an infection that may end the former social media powerhouse.
This week a memo was released outlining Meta’s obstacles and the company’s plans to steer the ship out of the storm. Business Insider published the Meta memo in its entirety. Unfortunately, it’s not looking too good for the social media giant. The company’s CFO, David Wehner, broke the concerns down fairly well, but still managed to cloud things with Corpo-speak:
“… as we look towards the second half, we’re going to adjust those targets in a couple of ways:
- Reducing our hiring targets for 2022. This means hiring fewer people than we initially forecast. We’re still working out what this means for each org, but this will affect almost every team in the company. We’re entering into the H2 planning cycle, and this will be an opportunity to reprioritize work to make sure we’re all focused on the most important things and the top priorities for the company. Your org leaders will follow up with more information over the coming days and weeks, but today we’re announcing some changes on the Engineering side — look out for a post in Engineering FYI for details.
- Reviewing headcount allocation to make sure it’s aligned to our top company priorities given our modified hiring targets. This will help us resource the projects that we’re prioritizing for the rest of the year. You’ll learn more about this from your functional and org leads over the next couple of weeks.”
Recently, Facebook was rebranded to Meta and this new label was also passed along to the Oculus, turning the VR headset into the oddly named ‘Meta Quest 2.’ It all sounds like a bad parody you’d find in a GTA game. The new name and shiny logo didn’t help the company’s fortunes as financial growth failed to meet expectations. When that happens, cuts are not far behind.
How, exactly, this will affect the Oculus, I mean Meta Quest 2, is not immediately clear. The Metaverse has yet to find its foothold in the mainstream, and other companies have already announced that they’re creating their own virtual spaces. So will there be room for Facebook when the company gets back on its feet?
It’s no secret that Facebook has been shrinking in importance, much like MySpace before it. Aside from buying and selling items via the Facebook marketplace, the allure of using the platform as part of the social media network is not there. From personal experience, dumping money into advertising on Facebook yields little in return as far as clicks are concerned.
[Source: Bloomberg]
[Source: Business Insider]
[Source: Business Insider]
JND Studios’ 1/3 Scale Batman Is Brooding and Expensive
The Batman is now available to stream on HBO Max, and the merchandise is still being pushed pretty hard. For those collectors out there looking for some premium pieces of BatMerch, JND Studios and the Big Bad Toy Store have something just for them.
The 28″ tall statue of the Dark Knight features swappable heads, removing the cowl if you choose. Like many high-end statues we cover here, the price typically means quality construction. The skin is made of silicone, the eyes of glass, and the hair is rooted. I’m not sure who is clamoring for Robert Pattinson’s greasy hair look from The Batman, but it’s your money.
How much? Between $2,499 and $2,999.99 depending on the retailer. Yup.
JND Studios is very proud of our 8th project, Batman and Bruce Wayne from the film, The Batman. With a newly developed silicone painting method, we will be able to add even more details to the face of our statues IN PRODUCTION that will bring our characters to life in the true sense of words, hyperreal movie statue. So please support JND Studios, as we make your collection STAND APART.
- Measurements: 28” x 12” x 12” including the base (71 cm x 30 cm x 30 cm)One (1) main body
- One (1) main body
- Two (1) silicone heads, including glass eyes and rooted hair
- One (1) uniquely designed base
I’m not going to lie. I forgot that I watched The Batman on HBO Max two weeks ago. Nothing about the film stuck out to me, and I had to be reminded that Catwoman was supposedly in the movie. Unfortunately, aside from some great setpieces, this film commits the greatest sin a Batman movie could commit: being totally unmemorable.
Even Batman Begins stands out because it was a radical departure from WB’s previous entries. Snyder’s Batman, though bland, was a savage brawler with a great suit that homaged The Dark Knight Returns. Robby Pattinson’s Batman? No clue what he was going for. Sigh. Let’s hope the inevitable sequels improve things.
What do you think of The Batman and this pricy collectible? Let us know in the comments section below.
[Source: JND Studios]
[Source: Big Bad Toy Store]
Three Pirate Streaming Services To Be Banned In US By Every ISP
The federal government has ensured that three overseas pirating streaming services can no longer operate in the United States. The rulings came down on April 26th and ordered that all US-serving IPSs must “block access to the Website and any domain address known today … or to be used in the future by the Defendants … by any technological means available on the ISPs’ systems.”
This action, which we found out about over at Ars Technica, was directed towards three specific sites:
- Israel.tv
- Israeli-tv.com
- Sdarot.tv
The owners of these domains raised no defense because no one showed up in court to battle the plaintiff’s claims. This is not surprising since the defendants were only named as “Doe.” The real identity of the people responsible for the pirate streaming websites may never be discovered.
United King Film Distribution Ltd brought about the lawsuit that put this order into action by filing three separate lawsuits. The total number of ISPs that must follow the ruling came to 96. If someone were to attempt to go to one of the above-listed sites, he/she would be met with the following message:
While this is undoubtedly a win for UKF, there are so many other avenues people can go about obtaining these films and everything that comes out of Hollywood. So is this much of a win, or will it encourage the pirates to explore other distribution channels?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
[Source: Ars Technica]
[Source: Court Listener]
[Source: Court Listener]
[Source: Court Listener]
Roku’s Weird Al Biopic Trailer Looks A Little … ‘Weird’
Yes, it’s a real thing. The teaser trailer for the Weird Al biopic starring Harry Potter‘s Daniel Radcliffe is here. We spotted the video over at Variety, and it’s a little weird. While Al Yankovic’s music and videos are usually unusual, the thought of Radcliffe playing the California-based parody songwriter/signer is even stranger.
Based on the teaser, this biopic isn’t going to take itself seriously. This should be expected since Yankovic co-wrote the film along with its director Eric Appel. Appel’s previous directing duties included the TV shows Die Hart and Son of Zorn.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story is an original movie produced by Funny Or Die for the Roku Channel. While there isn’t currently a release date, the biopic is expected to premiere this Fall.
If you’ve already watched the 1985 mockumentary The Complete Al, you may know everything you need to know about the musician and his origins. Unfortunately, the casting of Daniel Radcliffe as Al is a headscratcher. The actor’s voice does not resemble Al’s distinctive tone at all. But that may all be part of the plan.
The oddities in the casting don’t end there. The Office’s Rainn Wilson will play legendary radio DJ Dr. Demento, who helped boost Al into stardom. Evan Rachel Wood will be portraying 80’s Madonna (the only good Madonna). That’ll be interesting.
I expect the biopic to be the spiritual successor to UHF, to be honest. There will probably be many gags and hyperbole surrounding actual events in Yankovic’s early career. Will Michael Jackson appear in some sort of overblown or stylized manner? If we were to assume based on the trailer’s tone, then yes.
What do you think of the former boy wizard playing the iconic Weird Al? Let us know in the comments section below.
[Source: Variety]
[Source: Roku]
