You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games hereAs if the bottom of the barrel couldnt get any crustier, an actual Fortnite x Skibidi Toilet crossover has been leaked. Following recent leaks of a Spongebob crossover, giving Nickelodeons pacifist sponge an AK, the bane of the modern internet is close to making its debut crossover. To put it in perspective, even Borderlands 4 is avoiding this one. Fortnite x Skibidi Toilet crossoverRevealed by prominent Fortnite leaker SpushFNBR, the Fortnite x Skibidi Toilet leak is sadly real. Releasing in the popular battle royale game on December 18. 2024, the popular YouTube series thats somehow allowed to exist in a multimedia format whilst using actual Half-Life 2 assets will have numerous accessories available.The pice de rsistance of this rancid crossover is the Plungerman skin, the protagonist of the Skibidi Toilet Zombie Universe. (Are we being real right now or is this made up?) Costing 1,500 V-Bucks, the skin will also give players access to the Skibidi Backpack and be available as a LEGO Fortnite character.If you havent been saving your lunch money on the hopes of a Fortnite x Skibidi Toilet crossover and you cant afford the Plungerman skin, the backpack can be purchased on its lonesome for just 600 V-Bucks. Someone out there would call that a steal.Of course, the crossover comes with a Pickaxe skin for fans to use and, you guessed it, its Plungermans iconic plunger which, we imagine, he uses to fight the Half-Life 2 citizen head trapped inside the Half-Life 2 toilet.For those who need to get the whole Fortnite x Skibidi Toilet ordeal, the bundle will cost 2,800 V-Bucks in total. You can get full games for that money or, like, a Game Pass month, or even just a nice meal. You can literally get anything, save it up for the love of all that is holy.Anyway, for more Fortnite coverage, read about how you can find the OG Bush in Fortnite OG mode. Isnt that exciting? If you want something different. You can also read about how Epic Games has revived one of the rarest Fortnite cosmetics. Ooo, shiny.FortnitePlatform(s):Android, iOS, macOS, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/XGenre(s):Action, Massively Multiplayer, Shooter9VideoGamerSubscribe to our newsletters!By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.Share

The interior mount I had hoped for wasnt an option with my shallow windows, so we selected an outside mount waterfall shade. It was important to me to preserve visibility of my millwork as much as possible, which the design team was sensitive toand I think the solution we landed on worked well. I also knew I wanted some texture and transparency, which nudged me toward The Shade Stores wood weaves. My preferred material was on backorder until January, so I went for my second choice of unlined Somerset Teak. Its a little tidier than the more rustic option Id had my eye on, but I still love the look.How did the installation process work? (Was it hard? Did you do it yourself?)The shades shipped directly to my house a few days ahead of the installation date in a single box. A technician (arranged for by The Shade Store) handled all of the assembly and mountingso my involvement in the installation was mercifully minimal. The entire process took less than half an hour, and, in white-glove fashion, he also took all of the packaging with him. Order to installation takes around a month.Photo: Lila AllenPhoto: Lila AllenWhat type of hardware did you choose, if any?The hardware on this set of shades is concealed, outside of the continuous-loop chain thats mounted to the side of the window.What room did you put them in and why?I recently moved into a new house, so all of my windows need shades. My living room is where I spend the most time, though, so getting a chic set there was a priority. Knowing that Id have a custom, professional installation made it all the more appealing to test out The Shade Storethe last thing I wanted to do was screw up the rooms beautiful original millwork.How do you feel about the shades now that theyre installed? (Are you happy with them? Are they serving the purpose youd intended them to?)They are still brand new to me, but I love them! Im happy we were able to come up with a solution that worked for my difficult windowsand the shades are a perfect fit. So far the continuous-loop chain isnt snagging, and the shades are remaining level. Because of the transparency, you can see a central lifting thread through the middle of the shadebut its subtle and doesnt bother me. If I needed another set of custom shades and it was in my budget, Id order from The Shade Store again. (Based on the emails Ive been getting since I started this process, they do offer seasonal discountsso factor that into your planning.)

In recent times, the AD100 French Mexican architect Hugo Toro has taken the approach of an auteur, working on a carte blanche basis to realize his commissioned projects down to the last exacting detail. For the Park Hyatt Paris-Vendmes new crown jewel, restaurant Pur, home to Michelin-starred chef Jean-Franois Rouquette, Toro conceived everything, even the napkin rings and the staff uniforms. Currently, he is putting the final touches on La Minerva hotel in Rome, the Orient Expresss five-star accommodation just steps from the Pantheon, which will be a complete embodiment of his architectural vision.For his latest residential project on Pariss Left Bank, a 1911 mansion comprising more than 10,000 square feet spread across six floors, the clientsa French familywere happy to hand him the reins with just one stipulation: They wanted a fish tank. Thats a first, the 35-year-old admits of the two-and-a-half-ton aquarium he had installed into a wall in the ground-floor family room, adding with a smile, I left it up to them to choose the fish.Designer Hugo Toro in the dining room.The project is Toros largest (completed) private home to date. These are very rare buildings, he says of the history and scale of the site, which features six bedrooms, six bathrooms, a pool, a rooftop terrace, and a garden.When he first visited in February 2022, the house had sat empty for 15 years and was in disrepair. Water damage and mold marked the ornate, gilded plasterwork, and paintin a fusty Empire redwas peeling off the walls. They wanted me to bridge the gap between the past and today: to respect the building but create a new stratification of style and time references, he says of the brief, which was to unearth some of the buildings original charmthe Art Nouveau curves of the window frames and a more muted palette they found when they scraped at the wallsand create something more distinct.

Speech police Trump FCC chair wants to revoke broadcast licensesthe 1st Amendment might stop him Brendan Carr backs Trump's war against media, but revoking licenses won't be easy. Jon Brodkin Dec 17, 2024 7:00 am | 95 President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell President-elect Donald Trump speaks to Brendan Carr, his intended pick for Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, as he attends a SpaceX Starship rocket launch on November 19, 2024 in Brownsville, Texas. Credit: Getty Images | Brandon Bell Story textSizeSmallStandardLargeWidth *StandardWideLinksStandardOrange* Subscribers only Learn morePresident-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, wants the FCC to crack down on news broadcasters that he perceives as being unfair to Trump or Republicans in general.Carr's stated goals would appear to mark a major shift in the FCC's approach to broadcasters. Carr's predecessors, including outgoing Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai, who served in the first Trump administration, both rejected Trump's calls to punish news networks for alleged bias.Carr has instead embraced Trump's view that broadcasters should be punished for supposed anti-conservative bias. Carr has threatened to revoke licenses by wielding the FCC's authority to ensure that broadcast stations using public airwaves operate in the public interest, despite previous chairs saying the First Amendment prevents the FCC from revoking licenses based on content.Revoking licenses or blocking license renewals is difficult legally, experts told Ars. But Carr could use his power as FCC chair to pressure broadcasters and force them to undergo costly legal proceedings, even if he never succeeds in taking a license away from a broadcast station."Look, the law is very clear," Carr told CNBC on December 6. "The Communications Act says you have to operate in the public interest. And if you don't, yes, one of the consequences is potentially losing your license. And of course, that's on the table. I mean, look, broadcast licenses are not sacred cows."Carr fights Trumps battlesCarr has said his FCC will take a close look at a complaint regarding a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris before the election. Trump criticized the editing of the interview and said that "CBS should lose its license."In an interview with Fox News, Carr said there is "a news distortion complaint at the FCC still, having to do with CBS, and CBS has a transaction before the FCC." He was referring to a pending deal involving Skydance and Paramount, which owns and operates 28 local broadcast TV stations of the CBS Television Network."I'm pretty confident that news distortion complaint over the CBS 60 Minutes transcript is something that is likely to arise in the context of the FCC's review of that transaction," Carr said.Carr also alleged that NBC putting Harris on Saturday Night Live before the election was "a clear and blatant effort to evade the FCC's Equal Time rule," even though NBC gave Trump two free 60-second messages in order to comply with that rule. In Carr's CNBC interview on December 6, he raised the specter of imposing new rules for broadcasters and taking action against NBC over the Saturday Night Live episode."I don't want to be the speech police," Carr told CNBC. "But there is something that's different about broadcasters than, say, podcasters, where you have to operate in the public interest. So right now, all I'm saying is maybe we should start a rulemaking to take a look at what that means. There's other issues as well. Look, there's a news distortion complaint that's still hanging out there involving CBS, with NBC and SNL, we had some issues potentially with the Equal Time provision. I just think we need to sort of reinvigorate the FCC's approach to these issues, as Congress has envisioned."We emailed Carr with questions about his specific plans for challenging broadcasters' licenses and whether he still believes that NBC attempted to evade the Equal Time rule, but we did not receive a response.Carrs tough taskThe Carr FCC and Trump administration "can hassle the living daylights out of broadcasters or other media outlets in annoying ways," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who is senior counselor for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society and previously led the nonprofit Media Access Project, a public interest telecommunications law firm. At the FCC, "you can harass, you can kind of single some broadcasters out, and you can hold up some of their applications," Schwartzman said in a phone interview with Ars.But that doesn't mean Carr can put broadcasters out of business. "They're not going to revoke licenses. It's just legally just not doable. He can't change the precedents and the statute on that," Schwartzman said.Schwartzman explained in a recent memo that "under the Communications Act, revocation of a license, which means taking it away in the middle of a license term, is essentially impossible. The legal standard is so high that the only time that the FCC tries to revoke a license is when a station (typically a mom-and-pop AM) goes dark." Schwartzman wrote the memo in response to Trump's demand that the FCC punish CBS.The FCC doesn't license TV networks such as CBS, NBC, or ABC, but the FCC could punish individual stations owned by those companies. The FCC's licensing authority is over broadcast stations, many of which are owned and operated by a big network. Other stations are affiliated with the networks but have different ownership.Although revoking a license in the middle of a license term is effectively impossible, the FCC can go after a license when it's up for renewal, Schwartzman said. But Carr will have to go through most of the next four years without any opportunity to challenge a broadcast TV license renewal. According to the FCC's list of renewal dates, there are no TV station licenses up for renewal until 2028.That won't give Carr enough time to reject a renewal and win in court, Schwartzman said. "A license renewal litigation that would take years can't even begin until Trump is out of office," he told Ars.Light years away from previous Republican chairCarr would face a high legal standard even if there were licenses up for renewal in 2025. Schwartzman's memo said that "the First Amendment bars denial of renewal based on program content, and certainly not based on the political views expressed.... The only way that a broadcaster could theoretically get into trouble on renewal would be a character problem based on being found to have lied to the government or conviction of major felonies."A license renewal isn't the FCC's only avenue for challenging broadcasters. As noted earlier in this article, Carr has discussed investigating bias allegations during proceedings on license transfers that happen in connection with mergers and acquisitions. Carr can "hold up a transfer" when a company tries to sell broadcast stations and "hassle people that way," Schwartzman told Ars.It's clear from his public statements that Carr sees the FCC's responsibility over broadcasters much differently than Pai, Trump's first FCC chair. Pai, a Republican who teamed up with Carr on deregulating the broadband industry and many other conservative priorities, rejected the idea of revoking broadcast licenses in 2017 despite Trump's complaints about news networks. Pai said that the FCC "under my leadership will stand for the First Amendment" and that "the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast."More recently, Rosenworcel rejected Trump's call to revoke licenses from CBS. "As Ive said before, the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy," she said in October this year. "The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.On this topic, Carr's views are "light-years" away from Pai's, Schwartzman said. But Schwartzman also sees several of Carr's statements as being toothless. While Carr repeatedly points to the public interest standard for broadcasters, Schwartzman noted that the FCC must apply the public interest standard to all matters."All he's saying is, 'I'm going to enforce the statute as it's existed since 1934.' It's meaningless, and it's therefore easy for him to say," Schwartzman said.Carr was wrong about NBC violating the Equal Time Rule by putting Harris on Saturday Night Live, Schwartzman said. To comply with the rule, NBC only had to honor a request from Trump for "equal opportunities," he said. This is a routine process that broadcasters have known how to handle for a long time, he said."The burden is on the opposing candidate to ask for it. Having a candidate on... is not only not a violation, it's actually encouraged because broadcasters are supposed to stimulate discussion of issues and ideas," he said. Carr's main purpose in making his Saturday Night Live complaint, in Schwartzman's opinion, was "to fulminate. It's just grandstanding. He was running for chair."Conservative group urges limits on FCCJeffrey Westling, a lawyer who is the director of technology and innovation policy at the conservative American Action Forum, is concerned about the FCC acting on Trump's calls to punish networks. After Trump called for ABC licenses to be revoked because of its handling of a debate, Westling wrote that "it is indeed possible for the federal government to revoke a broadcast license, even in response to what is essentially a political offense."Westling urged Congress to "limit or revoke the FCC's authority to impose content-based restrictions on broadcast television," specifically through the FCC rule on broadcast news distortion.Proving distortion is difficult, with requires elements including "deliberate intent to distort the news" and "extrinsic evidence to the broadcast itself, such as that a reporter had received a bribe or that the report was instructed by management to distort the news," Westling wrote. The distortion also must be "initiated by the management of the station" and involve "a significant event.""While these standards are fairly stringent, the FCC must investigate complaints when a station seeks to renew its license, adding risk and uncertainty even if the station never truly violated the policy," Westling wrote.When contacted by Ars, Westling pointed out that the high standard for proving news distortion "only matter[s] if the administration's goal is to revoke a broadcaster's license. As much as I personally disagree with the rule, the courts have made clear that if a complaint has asserted the necessary elements, the Commission must thoroughly review it when considering a license transfer or renewal."The FCC "review is costly, and adds uncertainty for the broadcaster that quite literally relies on the license to operate," Westling said. "As a result, it is possible that even a threat from the president could influence how a broadcaster chooses to air the news, knowing that news distortion review could be in its future."Westling also said it's possible "that the FCC's use of the news distortion rule to deny a transfer or renewal of a license could be approved by the courts. The actual bounds of the rule are not well tested, and theoretically, a sympathetic court could be favorable to more loose enforcement of the rule."Carr, who described how he would run the FCC in a chapter for the conservative Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, also wants the agency to crack down on social media websites for alleged anti-conservative bias. He has said he wants to "smash" a "censorship cartel" that he claims includes social media platforms, government officials, advertising and marketing agencies, and fact-checkers.Other factors might stop Carrs blusterWhen it comes to broadcasting, Schwartzman said there are several reasons to think Carr's statements are mostly bluster that won't result in major consequences for TV stations.Broadcasters have a lot of political power that's wielded through the National Association of Broadcasters and relationships with members of Congress. Broadcasting, despite being less influential than it used to be, "is still among the most powerful industries in Congress and in the country... there is not a member of Congress alive who doesn't know the general manager of every TV station in their district," Schwartzman said.The FCC taking action against left-leaning broadcasters could lead to similar actions against conservative broadcasters during future administrations. Schwartzman questioned whether Carr actually wants "to set a precedent that's going to put Fox in jeopardy the next time there's a Democrat in the FCC."Another factor that could constrain Carr is how recent Supreme Court rulings limit the power of federal agencies. The FCC's other Republican member, Nathan Simington, has vowed to vote against any fine imposed by the commission until its legal powers are clear."Under new and controlling Supreme Court precedent, the Commission's authority to assess monetary forfeitures as it traditionally has done is unclear," Simington said in August. "Until the Commission formally determines the bounds of its enforcement authority under this new precedent, I am obligated to dissent from any decision purporting to impose a monetary forfeiture. I call on the Commission to open a Notice of Inquiry to determine the new constitutional contours of Commission enforcement authority."The Supreme Court's June 2024 ruling in Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy held that "when the SEC seeks civil penalties against a defendant for securities fraud, the Seventh Amendment entitles the defendant to a jury trial." This ruling could impact the ability of other agencies to issue fines.Besides all of those reasons, Schwartzman offered another potential problem for Carr's plansthe incoming chair's post-FCC employment prospects, particularly if Carr wants to go back to practicing law. Before becoming an FCC commissioner, Carr was the agency's general counsel."He's not going to have a career as a communications lawyer in private practice after he's on the FCC if he starts saying that broadcasters don't have First Amendment rights," Schwartzman said.Jon BrodkinSenior IT ReporterJon BrodkinSenior IT Reporter Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry. 95 Comments

TechnologyFBI warns Americans to keep their text messages secure: What to know The FBI and other agencies are encouraging people to use end-to-end encryption, citing what they say is a sustained hacking operation linked to China. In this 2021 photo, a smartphone's screen shows messaging apps including WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram. Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images hide captiontoggle caption Damien Meyer/AFP via Getty Images It's not often that aSnopes fact check. But the agency's urgent message this month to Americans, often summarized as "stop texting," surprised many consumers. The warning from the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) highlighted vulnerabilities in text messaging systems that millions of Americans use every day. The U.S. believes hackers affiliated with China's government, dubbed Salt Typhoon, are waging a "broad and significant cyber-espionage campaign" to infiltrate commercial telecoms and steal users' data and in isolated cases, to record phone calls, a senior FBI official who spoke to reporters on condition of anonymity said during a Dec. 3 briefing call. The new guidance may have surprised consumers but not security experts. "People have been talking about things like this for years in the computer security community," Jason Hong, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, told NPR. "You should not rely on these kinds of unencrypted communications because of this exact reason: There could be snoopers in lots of infrastructure." So what should you do to keep your messages private? "Encryption is your friend" for texts and phone calls, Jeff Greene, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said on the briefing call. "Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible, if not really hard, for them to detect it. So our advice is to try to avoid using plain text." In full end-to-end encryption, tech companies make a message decipherable only by its sender and receiver not by anyone else, including the company. It has been the default on WhatsApp, for instance, since 2016. Along with a promise of greater security, it makes companies "warrant-proof" from surveillance efforts. The good news for people who use Apple phones is that iMessage and FaceTime are also already end-to-end encrypted, says Hong. For Android phones, encryption is available in Google Messages if the senders and recipients all have the feature turned on. But messages sent between iPhones and Android phones are less secure. The simplest way to ensure your messages are safe from snooping is to use an end-to-end encrypted app like Signal or WhatsApp, says Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). With these apps, "your communications are end-to-end encrypted every single time," she says. Galperin highlights another danger: A hacker who has managed to get your ID and password for a website can monitor your text messages to intercept a one-time passcode that's used in two-factor authentication (2FA). "This is a really serious security risk," Galperin says. She recommends getting 2FA messages through an app like Google Authenticator or Authy or by using a physical security key to verify access. The FBI and CISA also advise users to set their phones to update operating systems automatically. "Most compromises of systems do not involve taking advantage of vulnerabilities that no one else knows about," Galperin says, adding that "often, the maker of the product has in fact figured out what the vulnerability is, fixed it and pushed out a patch in the form of a security update." How at risk are you? You should be aware of your own "threat model" a core concept in computer security. Hong says it boils down to three questions: What are you trying to protect? How important is it to you? And what steps do you need to take to protect it? If the most valuable items on your phone are family photos, he says, you probably shouldn't worry about foreign hackers targeting you. But what if you occasionally text about national or corporate secrets or politically sensitive data? "If you are in business, if you are a journalist, if you are somebody in contact with democracy protesters in Hong Kong or Shenzhen or Tibet, then you might want to assume that your phone calls and text messages are not safe from the Chinese government," Galperin of the EFF says. Bad actors such as cybercriminals might have different objectives, Hong says, "but if you just do a few relatively simple things, you can actually protect yourself from the vast majority of those kinds of threats." What are the hackers doing? The FBI and CISA raised the alarm two months after The Wall Street Journal reported that hackers linked to the Chinese government have broken into systems that enable U.S. law enforcement agencies to conduct electronic surveillance operations under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). "These are for legitimate wiretaps that have been authorized by the courts," Hong says. But in hackers' hands, he says, the tools could potentially be used "to surveil communications and metadata for lots of people. And it seems like the [hackers'] focus is primarily Washington, D.C." The FBI says that the attack was far broader than the CALEA system and that the hackers are still accessing telecom networks. The U.S. has been working since late spring to determine the extent of their activities. This month, the Biden administration said at least eight telecommunications infrastructure companies in the U.S., and possibly more, had been broken into by Chinese hackers. The hackers stole a large amount of metadata, the FBI and CISA said. In far fewer cases, they said, the actual content of calls and texts was targeted. As agencies work to oust the hackers, the FBI called for Americans to embrace tight encryption an about-face, Galperin says, after years of insisting that law enforcement agencies need a "back door" to access communications. The agencies also want companies to bolster their security practices and work with the government to make their networks harder to compromise. "The adversaries we face are tenacious and sophisticated, and working together is the best way to ensure eviction," the senior FBI official said during the news briefing. As for the risk to everyday consumers, security experts like Hong and Galperin say that with vast amounts of information traveling between our phones, they want to see people get more help in protecting themselves. "I think it's really incumbent on software developers and these companies to have much better privacy and security by default," Hong says. "That way you don't need a Ph.D. to really understand all the options and to be secure."

Arcane: League of Legends is an adult animated streaming television series set in the League of Legends universe. It was created by Christian Linke and Alex Yee for Netflix and was announced at the League of Legends 10th anniversary celebration. French animation studio Fortiche produced the series under the supervision of Riot Games.Discover the making of this iconic animated series and a collection of matte paintings, backgrounds, and character designs by Geoffroy Thoorens Oliver Ryan, Robin Lhebrard, Atnajoy, Pierre Debras, Tomas Osang Muir, Martin Bailly, Charlotte ONeill, Edouard Cellura, Ladislas Gueros, Faustine Dumontier, Fanny Marguerie, Oliver Mootoo, Willis Franois, Cline Lorthiois, Alos Desoubries-Binet, Bruno Couchinho, Candice Theuillon, Kevin le Moigne, Victor Maury, Simon Goeneutte-Lefevre, Gilles Roman, Cline Giglio, Christophe Oliver, Charles Lee, Arnaud-Loris Baudry, Ivan Pozdnyakov. Season Two Concept Art CollectionArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtArcane Season 2 Concept ArtSeason One Concept Art CollectionThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of ArcaneThe Art Of Arcane Making Of

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Rising Starr"There's a lot packed into this update emotionally" warframe 1999's Ben Starr speaks on bringing some humanity to Arthur"I was fully naked the entire time, bathed in goo, a la Get Your Own Back"Image credit: VG247 / Digital Extremes Article by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on Dec. 17, 2024 Warframe 1999 is here at last and players are having a blast exploring the past, zooming around on motorbikes, and thirsting over Viktor. However, it's also probably one of the most stacked updates in terms of popular voice acting talent. Warframe has always been solid in the VO department, but with Ben Starr, Alpha Takahashi, Amelia Tyler, and Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge the bar has been lifted to a whole other level.So, with this in mind, I wanted to sit down and chat to one of these voice actors about what it was like stepping into the wacky world of Warframe in what is likely its most ambitious update yet. For this, Mr Starr was willing to spare five minutes to talk about bringing Arthur to life, if he had any inspirations for the performance, and the finer points of adding a voice of humanity to a warframe of all things.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. Starr: "I was fully naked the entire time, bathed in goo, a la Get Your Own Back. Sorry, no. I would say the cool thing about this character is you get two very different sides to them. You get the wisened officer who barks orders, and then because of the romance system you get the really intimate tender moments if you want to choose that. For me, it was never about doing a 90s voice, because what is a '90's voice'? I'm not really doing a particular 90s archetype, it's more just like, here's an officer who has lived a life. Make him care about stuff, the stuff that's in front of him. The battlefield, your character (if you choose it), the Hex group. The immediate circumstances that are around him.""I'm a huge fan of the 90s, they're some of my most formative years, so to get to play in that sandbox is really neat. They - the devs - do all the work to make it sound like the 90s. I just make him sound human."VG247: How are you able to play in the 90s sandbox if the character doesn't have a "90s voice"? If you aren't doing a 90s voice, what are the differences between a performance on a character like Arthur and a modern day character?Starr: "When it comes to performance? No. Because if you're trying to affect something, it's not going to be particularly interesting. I think the most interesting thing for us is that we've taken these characters. No, almost these archetypes! Excalibur, I play Excalibur which is the iconic Warframe character. How do you take that frame, and explore what makes them tick like a human? How do you take those aspects and show that battle between their humanity and the inhumane part of themselves.""It just happens that the backdrop is the 90s, the soundtrack is the 90s, but that's not anything I can affect. This character is literally battling for their own survival, and for his humanity at the same time. How do those two things work together, how do they clash against each other, and how do they combine to make a compelling story."VG247: As the player proceeds through the update they can choose to get closer to Arthur. How do you as a voice actor shift from those harder, officer moments to the more intimate moments? How does your performance change?Starr: "It's just like, walls up walls down. Instead of it being having the walls come down suddenly, we create these little cracks to peek through. I think there's got to be that tease, because it's just a carrot on a stick for the player to explore if they want that.""There are these characters the player can romance and get to know, and it's like how do we make Athur an appealing prospect whose story you want to learn more of. And each person's story is going to be as interesting as the last, be it Amir or Lettie or Eleanor. They're all very interesting stories, Arthur is just one of them. It's really cool in my own way to have this character where if you as the player put the hours in, here's this little treat for you! Here are some fun little easter eggs that are gonna make it worthwhile if you put the time in."VG247: Did you have any inspirations for this role, or did you pull from anything personal?Starr: "I'm not pulling from anything personal. I would say there was a note that Reb made, which said the initial tone was 'grinding gears into the dirt'. That's what she wanted for Arthur. So there's this real deep growl, but as you proceed further through Warframe 1999 it softens. If you choose to engage in that, you will see almost a need to be loved, and a need to find love in a loveless place. In a lot of action games you don't have an opportunity to do that, so it's really amazing. There's a lot packed into this update emotionally."Voice performances like Starr's (but not only Starr's, I'm especially in love with Alpha Takahashi's and Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge's presense depictions) adds a lot of heart to Warframe 1999. It's an important piece of the wider picture, a beautiful painting that has brought thousands upon thousands of players to the game to interact with the cast. It's absolutely worth checking out if you haven't already.

Music MattersDen of Wolves lead reveals the secret behind badass video game music, the "other mid tempo", and Metal Gear Rising's composer's involvementSimon Viklund sits down for a conversation on music, something here's clearly a fiend for.Image credit: 10 Chambers Article by Connor Makar Staff Writer Published on Dec. 17, 2024 Den of Wolves stood out to me during this year's packed Game Awards celebration for one major reason. The music. Yes, the concept of a new first person heist game from the developers of Payday 2 is enough to garner significant hype, but it's the pounding, relentless rhythms that snatched my attention. Inside the Peacock theatre, you could feel your chair shaking.As a fan of drum and bass myself, I was delighted to have a chance to sit down and chat to Simon Viklund about the approach to music in Den of Wolves. We had talked before, ahead of the game's initial reveal last year. But now that gameplay is out there, I wanted to dig deeper into this topic to find out the trick to making heist games exhilarating through music, and if there were any new details on Metal Gear Rising: Revengence composer Jamie Christopherson's involvement.To see this content please enable targeting cookies. So first, what exactly is the music style in Den of Wolves? It's not quite dubstep, not quite drum and bass. Thankfully, Viklund was willing to explain exactly where both tracks we've heard so far live in the musical landscape. This, of course, came with him miming the drums with his hands and a collection of mouth sounds.Viklund: "Both are 150BPM - last year's trailer and the TGA trailer. Last year's trailer is in half time, so it has more of a hip-hop feel to it. While this one has more of a techno thing. I'm just experimenting with different things. I call it the 'other mid-tempo'. The mid-tempo is like 100-110 BPM, the sort of music you have in Cyberpunk. 120-130 is where Dubstep is. With Den of Wolves, I'm at 150BPM, 160. It's this no-man's land - because you have to go above 170 to reach Drum and Bass. That's why I call it the other mid-tempo."Not all music will be like that, obviously. But I like exploring rhythmical, almost hypnotic things that just repeat, y'know? The music isn't very melodic really, it's just a grove you get into with this constant rhythmical thing."He mentions Cyberpunk, a game that many will draw comparisons to at least as far as the setting is concerned. That game had a boundary-pushing soundtrack. So did Den of Wolves' corporate dystopia provide a similar opportunity? The answer, in short, is yes. Viklund: "Yeah, absolutely. It's forcing me to try to make something [interesting]. I can't go super cutting-edge and avant garde - I'm not trying to think about what music would be like in 2097. It would be so out there that I guess people would struggle to feel the emotions you want them to feel when they play the game. It has to be rooted in what people recognise as action music now, that gives a sense of attitude or badass-ness. That's why I bring in hip-hop influences and trap music with the brass hits - I really like that sound. Combining that with the drum and bass rhythms is cool. It's got just enough of that cutting-edge feeling to it.This all is done in support of creating a soundtrack that is not only distinct, but achieves the most important role: making the player feel "f*ckin badass", as Viklund puts it. Viklund: "We want them to feel like, yes! Cool and dangerous. The music needs that street vibe to it. Even though we're not preaching and saying it's you against the corporations, it feels a little bit like you're looking out for yourself. Even though you're doing missions for corporations and CEOs, you might do a crime within the crime. Looking out for number one."But what about Jamie Christopherson! His presence on the Den of Wolves soundtrack was big news last year, especially for fans of his legendary work on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. According to Viklund, Christopherson has indeed composed music for the game, not that we've heard it. However, there's a real desire to continue the partnership to better play to Christopherson's strengths.Viklund: I'll be completely honest and say that I asked him to do some atmospheric music for the game, and he made some fantastic tracks. It was super useful to get the ball rolling, but it's not what he... The music was great, but it's not utilizing what he does best, why you should really turn to Jamie Christopherson. So I think we really need to go back to Jamie. We're still in contact, and he really wants to work more on the game - he loved helping out! But we need to use what he's known for. High energy music, like what he did for Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance.With no firm release date at all, aside from a very vague 202X window, we've little that points to when the rest of the soundtrack will be blasted directly into our ears. Thankfully, the track we heard in the recent gameplay trailer is on Spotify! So at the very least, we can pass the months / years with a taste of the other mid-tempo.

What happens when an archviz master meets a global audience of archviz professionals eager to elevate their craft? Breakthroughs, inspiration, and stunning visuals.Throughout 2024, Chaos hosted a transformative series of live, online classes attracting over 4300 registrations from eager archviz artists. Led by Nikos Nikolopoulos, the Founder and Creative Director of Creative Lighting, the Archviz Masterclass series offered participants a rare opportunity to learn from a seasoned trainer who has worked with some of the worlds most renowned architects, designers, and visualization studios.Over eight lessons, Nikos covered topics from creating emotional narratives and exterior lighting strategies to mastering color psychology and professional-level post-processing. Under his guidance, the attendees found their creativity ignited and were pushed to elevate their craft. "I loved witnessing the creative breakthroughs participants experienced as they combined storytelling with technical expertise," Nikos said. "It was inspiring to see how each individual brought their perspective to their projects, creating visuals that felt personal yet universally compelling.A collaborative and creative community in actionBecause each Masterclass session was live, this added a liveliness and collaborative atmosphere to the classes. Fellow participants even introduced Nikos to fresh ways to use Chaos products, such as experimenting with V-Ray and Coronas LightMix feature to enhance their storytelling or integrating Vantage to explore real-time adjustments. Seeing these tools reimagined through fresh perspectives highlighted the incredible flexibility of Chaos software and the participants' creativity," Nikos shared.A competitive grand finaleWith the Masterclass series drawing to a close, Nikos introduced a competition for participants to channel their new skills into a challenge inspired by film or TV characters. They developed mood boards exploring light, design, and color palettes, submitting two images that showcased distinct moods. "I looked for designs that transcended technical skill to tell a meaningful story," Nikos explained.Three entries stood out among the other submissions, and each received an annual license for a Chaos product for their hard work. "The winners excelled in their ability to evoke emotion, capture their fictional client's essence, and deliver visuals that were not just stunning but also deeply resonant and memorable."Read on to learn more about the three winning entries and why Nikos found their work outstanding.