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(11/15/16 8:00pm)
Editor's note: Teacher's Pet is a Ball State Daily News series featuring university faculty/staff and their pets. If you have any suggestions as to who we should feature next, send an email to features@bsudailynews.com
(11/10/16 6:54pm)
In late September of 2013, Congress was trying to come to an agreement about the budget for the 2014 fiscal year. They couldn’t agree on funding for the Affordable Care Act—Republicans voting to defund it while Democrats resisted. By the end of September, they still hadn’t made a decision, so the spending plan couldn’t be solidified. Without that plan, the government can’t run, and so it came to a halt.
(11/10/16 8:00pm)
Editor's Note: Emma Rogers and Tyson Bird are senior journalism majors who write "Dinner for 2ish" for the Daily News. Their views do not necessarily agree with those of the paper.
(11/10/16 3:00pm)
In a world that has become increasingly more digital, one on-campus speaker pointed out some of the benefits technology and data can have on many students' futures.
(11/09/16 8:00pm)
As part of the English department's Marilyn K. Cory speaker series, contemporary African-American blues poet Tiffany Austin will speak at 7 p.m. Nov. 9 in the Art and Journalism Building Room 275.
(11/09/16 3:00pm)
Today's Birthday (11/09/16). Chart your course to realize a dream this year. Retrospection feeds invention. The funding is available, if you go for it. Shifting professional circumstances over springtime come before a romantic relationship blossoms. Household changes next autumn lead to a professional breakthrough. Grow what you love.
(11/08/16 8:00pm)
Editor's Note: Krista Sanford has worked for the Daily News
(11/08/16 5:00pm)
Regardless of how you are voting on Election Day, almost every college student would vote for more free food.
(11/05/16 3:44pm)
by Zach Sexton and Daley Wilhelm
“¿Quién es 'Sombra'?"
Who is Sombra?
Well, now we finally know. She’s a sassy hacker with a fabulous manicure and nerve enough to manipulate Reaper and to “boop” world leaders on the nose. She was finally announced yesterday at BlizzCon via a stunning cinematic short, after a not so stunning ARG that’s been confusing fans since July.
To preface, an alternate reality game (ARG) is an interactive experience that takes place in the “real world” for informational exploration of a fictional one. The users, the players or those who participate, are the center of the overall experience design. ARGs are meant to connect players on a more personal level to the world and story of a game. This also creates a new form of guerilla marketing that goes beyond teaser trailers.
The ARG of discovering the identity of the shadowy character known as Sombra seemed fitting, one of the only things players knew was that she was a hacker of sorts. So it followed that tracking her down would involve code breaking and familiarity with hexadecimal numbers. This however, follows a list of “boring premises” set out by Dan Hon, an award-winning storyteller and game designer, in his Ted Talk on ARGs.
This question as to Sombra’s identity had been posed to Overwatch fans at the very launch of the game. Blizzard’s Sombra ARG dragged on, and fans had turned from frustrated to apathetic. After leaked photos and the rumor that the character would be revealed at this weekend’s BlizzCon, the consensus is that ARG players were ready for this game to be over.
Initially, the Sombra ARG had a promising start this July, despite the name “Sombra” being revealed with the game’s launch. The mysterious Sombra was established as the focus of the ARG with the release of Ana. In the new hero video for Ana, a series of barcodes were shown, which when scanned, gave players a series of hexadecimal numbers. When those were converted into a QR code, players were treated to the message,
“Was that easy? Well, now that I have your attention, allow me to make things much more difficult.”
And so the game began, for those who knew what hexadecimal numbers were anyway.The game then immediately came to a grinding halt. With the release trailer for the Summer Games event, players were treated to a cipher text that has still yet to be solved. The ARG was indeed made “much more difficult” as Sombra teased.
The ARG did a good job at setting the theme and tone of the character the game was ultimately meant to reveal. However, as it went on, it left it’s humble and accessible beginnings and become borderline convoluted, yielding little results. The puzzles were nonstop and sometimes uninteresting and only led to yet more puzzles. ARGs usually have some sort of narrative or goal, but there wasn’t any existence of it in this experience. There was also no form of incentive for this ARG. Sombra would have been released if people did or did not participate.
For those who did participate, average players felt alienated. Average players cannot invest time or resources into decrypting hexcode day and night, as some purported “Game Detectives” did. Even those who had invested all their time were often found frustrated on places like Reddit because Blizzard kept changing the experience, involving more and more puzzles. It felt as if someone at Blizzard was trying to show off how clever they are, actively working to stump players rather than help them along. It felt as though the game was working against people, when it really should have been an experience of progression with them.
In the mechanics of the ARG, it involved a series of nonstop decoding and analyzing of datamosh screenshots, code, and script. Most ARGs use elements like these at some point, but this experience has been reliant on this mechanics for most of its tenure. It’s essentially just busy-work. The biggest issue was the constant design of having player’s wait for the next step. Countdowns are simply, boring, and not worth it.
There also seemed to be a lack of care for the eventual release of the character. Essentially, everyone already assumed that Sombra would have been released at BlizzCon, the culmination of decoding and analyzing. All the effort was essentially for nought. With most ARGs, there is a sense of the game being “never fully complete” and an immersion into a world that generates communities and even life-long friendships and relationships (Dan Hon while playing in arguably the best ARG experience The Beast met his wife).
Maybe it's outside changes and development of communities that have changed how ARGs are viewed. The anonymity of Reddit and other forums has created a lack of mutual respect within discussions with others and almost a lack of respect for their findings. Previous ARG experiences used communities within the game as a valuable resource that took time and effort to maintain, and the players really got to know one another and learn together through one experience.
In the end, the Sombra ARG left people clueless and without much satisfaction. Yes, the Internet received Sombra with excited and open arms yesterday, but the ARG never got a conclusive ending, or rather, a lingering one as a good ARG should. The whole experience lacked structure and accessibility, the Sombra ARG was heavily focused on self-credited “game detectives” to solve everything and let the common player just watch.
Overwatch fans seem to be happy for Sombra’s release, but maybe even happier for the end of the convoluted Sombra ARG.
(11/09/16 5:00pm)
What started as a way for one Muncie native to hang out with friends has become a career and a place to give back.
(11/07/16 7:24pm)
Editor's note: Muncie Origins is a Ball State Daily News series profiling various businesses that originated in Muncie.
(11/07/16 5:00pm)
An all-female cast and production team makes up the Cave Theatre’s latest show, “Top Girls.” Well, almost all females.
(11/04/16 7:00pm)
When most people think of art, they don't normally link it to computers, but a student display in the Atrium on Nov. 4 challenged that.
(11/04/16 2:00pm)
Vanessa 'The Lunch Lady' Trosper's journey and return after open heart surgery.
(11/04/16 2:00pm)
David Owsley returned to campus Nov. 3 to name the recital hall inside the David Owsley Museum of Art, which is now named after his grandparents, Frank C. and Elizabeth B. Ball.
(11/03/16 7:27pm)
Cornerstone Center for the Arts has been a community staple for 90 years.
(11/03/16 7:26pm)
University Theatre musical showcases the era of swing dance.
(11/03/16 7:00pm)
Editor's Note: Emma Rogers and Tyson Bird are senior journalism majors who write "Dinner for 2ish" for the Daily News. Their views do not necessarily agree with those of the paper.
(11/03/16 10:00am)
by Bradley Dean Jones
Dongles, dongles, dongles.
In the past two months Apple has been under fire for some of the “innovations” they have been making to their product line. With the iPhone 7 taking away the headphone jack and the latest controversy of the 2016 MacBook Pro keeping the headphone jack and removing the SD card slot, people have been criticizing every move this tech giant has made.
In a recent interview with The Independent, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller, spoke about these issues, shining a light on Apple’s thought process:
[The Macbook Pro no longer has an SD card slot] because of a couple of things. One, it’s a bit of a cumbersome slot. You’ve got this thing sticking halfway out. Then there are very fine and fast USB card readers, and then you can use CompactFlash as well as SD. So we could never really resolve this – we picked SD because more consumer cameras have SD but you can only pick one. So, that was a bit of a trade-off. And then more and more cameras are starting to build wireless transfer into the camera. That’s proving very useful. So we think there’s a path forward where you can use a physical adaptor if you want, or do wireless transfer.
Though the pains of dongles will be plentiful for some, Schiller points about the SD card/slot makes sense. Wireless transfer may not be as fast sometimes as a SD slot or a USB card reader adapter, but that is how they see photo transferring in the future. The issue of innovation in the camera industry also plays a part in this. Camera manufactures have added the SD card, micro/mini-USB ports and wireless capabilities to store and transfer photos they still have some room to improve. Through SD cards don't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, Apple hopes to help push the camera companies into innovating on their own.
As for when The Independent asked about whether there is an “[inconsistency] to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack [on the MacBook Pro] as it’s no longer on the latest iPhone” Schiller had this to say:
Not at all. These are pro machines. If it was just about headphones then it doesn’t need to be there, we believe that wireless is a great solution for headphones. But many users have setups with studio monitors, amps, and other pro audio gear that do not have wireless solutions and need the 3.5mm jack.
Again, solid point. As a “pro machine” it is not only about the headphones and taking it away would push away ‘pro users’ who depend on it, whereas the iPhone is not the device a "pro user" would use to create music or add audio gear or whatever they would need it for.
Whether this is an inconsistency, inconvenience or just a mistake, Apple makes it seem to not be an afterthought or a "sacrifice" for a slimmer or faster machine. Apple is innovating and trying to push forward with some risky moves. Removing the 3.5mm headphone jack will force the headphone manufacturers to make better wireless headphones. Innovation is what Apple has been saying they are doing for years but they are not only trying to innovate themselves, they are trying to give a friendly push for others to do the same.
So, as we wait for those innovations to come to fruition, wireless functionality and dongles seem like our best bet.
(11/03/16 4:00pm)
With an exotic animal show, henna tattoos, ice sculpting and musical performances, The Amazing Taste draws in more than 2,000 visitors each year and features an array of international cultural displays, performances and foods.