Justin Carter, Contributing EditorJanuary 6, 20252 Min ReadImage via 2K.At a GlanceAfter less than two years, 2K has killed the servers for the 2023 iteration of its wrestling sim franchise.As of today, the servers for WWE 2K23 are no more. Publisher 2K has shut down online functionality for the wrestling title, which means players can no longer access online game modes, including matches and community creations.Players who purchased the game can still play it offline, which is common for titles that lose their online functionality. Its in-game virtual currency and storefront were previously taken down last November ahead of the servers being sunset.In recent years, 2K pulled online functions for prior games in the popular wrestling series, or just fully delisted them. With 2K23 now among those ranks, last year's WWE 2K24 is the only entry in the franchise with its servers still active.Players are pushing back against games going offlineCompanies like 2K are beginning to face more pushback from players after sunsetting support for online games. One of the more infamous stories was the shutdown for Ubisoft's first The Crew game, which originally released in 2014.The subsequent backlash to the developer announcing a plan to keep its sequels, The Crew 2 and The Crew Motorfest, alive through separate offline modes. Despite that, a pair of players filed a lawsuit in November against Ubisoft for the first Crew's shutdown.Elsewhere, European players launched a "Stop Killing Games" movement that calls for developers to make their games fully offline from the start instead of via post-launch patch. Meanwhile, a California bill recently went into effect requiring sellers of digital items to stop using terms like "purchase" or "buy" in transactions, and must instead disclose people are buying licenses to digital items.Major publishers like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are required to comply with this bill, which is part of a larger effort by the state to protect consumers and curb false advertising.But unlike the Undertaker, WWE 2K23 will not be returning from the dead.About the AuthorJustin CarterContributing Editor, GameDeveloper.comA Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.See more from Justin CarterDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

Justin Carter, Contributing EditorJanuary 6, 20252 Min ReadImage via Meta.At a GlanceThe Quest Pro's retirement comes months after the launch of Meta's cheaper Quest 3S headset.Three months after Meta started phasing out its Quest Pro headset, the company has officially stopped selling the mixed realitydevice.UploadVR noticed that the Meta Quest Pro's store page now says it's "no longer available." Last October, Meta said it would continue to sell the Pro, Quest 2, and 128 GB Quest 3 until the end of 2024 or when stock ran out. The Quest 2's page has a similar heading of being "no longer available."Game Developer also observed the 128 GB Quest 3 headsets is unavailable through Meta's store. The listing does not indicate if it was permanently discontinued or not.The Quest Pro launched in October 2022 at $1,500. Unlike the company's other headsets, this one was made for more business and professional settings, and several features were geared toward collaborating during virtual meetings.At the time of its announcement, company CEO Mark Zuckerberg called mixed reality "the next major step to VR." He said it would "power some of the most interesting experiences you can have in VR," and help the company achieve its metaverse dreams.Last year, the company's metaverse division consistently lost money, according to its earnings during the financial year. Its Reality Labs division has publicly struggled for some time now, and those struggles led to the closure of VR developer Ready at Dawn.Before putting the Pro and the two numbered Quest headsets to bed, Meta tried lowering their prices to make them more enticing to prospective buyers.The VR game industry faced economic headwinds everywhere in 2024, which led to studio layoffs and closures across the globe. Meanwhile, new devices like the PlayStation VR2 didn't take off.Meta is still selling three mixed reality headsets: the 512 GB version of the Quest 3, and 128 GB and 256 GB versions of the Quest 3S.Read more about:[Company] MetaAbout the AuthorJustin CarterContributing Editor, GameDeveloper.comA Kansas City, MO native, Justin Carter has written for numerous sites including IGN, Polygon, and SyFy Wire. In addition to Game Developer, his writing can be found at io9 over on Gizmodo. Don't ask him about how much gum he's had, because the answer will be more than he's willing to admit.See more from Justin CarterDaily news, dev blogs, and stories from Game Developer straight to your inboxStay UpdatedYou May Also Like

Disaggregated systems are a new type of architecture designed to meet the high resource demands of modern applications like social networking, search, and in-memory databases. The systems intend to overcome the physical restrictions of the traditional servers by pooling and managing resources like memory and CPUs among multiple machines. Flexibility, better utilization of resources, and cost-effectiveness make this approach suitable for scalable cloud infrastructure, but this distributed design introduces significant challenges. Non-uniform memory access (NUMA) and remote resource access create latency and performance issues, which are hard to optimize. Contention for shared resources, memory locality problems, and scalability limits further complicate the use of disaggregated systems, leading to unpredictable application performance and resource management difficulties.Currently, the resource contention in memory hierarchies and locality optimizations through UMA and NUMA-aware techniques in modern systems face major drawbacks. UMA does not consider the impact of remote memory and, thus, cannot be effective on large-scale architectures. However, NUMA-based techniques are aimed at small settings or simulations instead of the real world. As single-core performance stagnated, multicore systems became standard, introducing programming and scaling challenges. Technologies such as NumaConnect unify resources with shared memory and cache coherency but depend highly on workload characteristics. Application classification schemes, such as animal classes, simplify the categorization of workloads but lack adaptability, failing to address variability in resource sensitivity.To address challenges posed by complex NUMA topologies on application performance, researchers from Umea University, Sweden, proposed a NUMA-aware resource mapping algorithm for virtualized environments on disaggregated systems. Researchers conducted detailed research to explore resource contention in shared environments. Researchers analyzed cache contention, memory hierarchy latency differences, and NUMA distances, all influencing performance.The NUMA-aware algorithm optimized resource allocation by pinning virtual cores and migrating memory, thereby reducing memory slicing across nodes and minimizing application interference. Applications were categorized (e.g., Sheep, Rabbit, Devil) and carefully placed based on compatibility matrices to minimize contention. The response time, clock rate, and power usage were tracked in real-time along with IPC and MPI to enable the necessary changes in resource allocation. Evaluations performed on a disaggregated sixnode system demonstrated that significant improvements in application performance could be realized with memory-intensive workloads compared to default schedulers.Researchers conducted experiments with various VM types, small, medium, large, and huge running workloads like Neo4j, Sockshop, SPECjvm2008, and Stream, to simulate real-world applications. The shared memory algorithm optimized virtual-to-physical resource mapping, reduced the NUMA distance and resource contention, and ensured affinity between cores and memory. It differed from the default Linux scheduler, where the core mappings are random, and performance is variable. The algorithm provided stable mappings and minimized interference.Results showed significant performance improvements with the shared memory algorithm variants (SM-IPC and SM-MPI), achieving up to 241x enhancement in cases like Derby and Neo4j. While the vanilla scheduler exhibited unpredictable performance with standard deviation ratios above 0.4, the shared memory algorithms maintained consistent performance with ratios below 0.04. In addition, VM size affected the performance of the vanilla scheduler but had little effect on the shared memory algorithms, which reflected their efficiency in resource allocation across diverse environments.In conclusion, the algorithm proposed by researchers enables resource composition from disaggregated servers, resulting in up to a 50x improvement in application performance compared to the default Linux scheduler. Results proved that the algorithm increases resource efficiency, application co-location, and user capacity. This method can act as a baseline for future advancements in resource mapping and performance optimization in NUMA disaggregated systems.Check out the Paper. All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,dont forget to follow us onTwitter and join ourTelegram Channel andLinkedIn Group. Dont Forget to join our60k+ ML SubReddit. Divyesh Vitthal Jawkhede+ postsDivyesh is a consulting intern at Marktechpost. He is pursuing a BTech in Agricultural and Food Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. He is a Data Science and Machine learning enthusiast who wants to integrate these leading technologies into the agricultural domain and solve challenges. [ FREE AI Webinar] Join this webinar to gain actionable insights into boosting LLM model performance and accuracy while safeguarding data privacy. (Promoted)

Boxes, Violins and Contours Conclude the Exploratory Data Analysis Process. 0 like January 6, 2025Share this postAuthor(s): Chandra Prakash Bathula Originally published on Towards AI. This member-only story is on us. Upgrade to access all of Medium.Photo by Stefany Andrade on UnsplashDealing with Box Plots, Violin Plots and Contour Plots reveals a lot about Data before Machine Learning Modeling,Welcome back to the wrap up article for the prerequisites of ML modeling.Now, we can continue with the rest of the concepts in this article. Previously in the series we have discussed about Plotting in the first article, Densities and Deviation in the next one.Lets start with the alternatives of mean,For mean we have the Median, which is simply the middle value in the array.print(np.median(iris_setosa["petal_length"]))#Median with an outlierprint(np.median(np.append(iris_setosa["petal_length"],50)));print(np.median(iris_virginica["petal_length"]))print(np.median(iris_versicolor["petal_length"]))The Median for Setosa is 1.5; with the outlier, it is still the same at 1.5. But this is not the case with the mean; there is a significant difference. For Versicolor, Virginica, we have 5.55 and 4.35, which are closer to their means.Intuitively, these medians are very similar to their mean or central tendency, but it has the nice property that one or a few points do not significantly affect the value.Lets say we have seven observations. X = {1.1,1.2,1,1.2,1.6,2.1,1.8}; let them be any observations like Sepal Length or Petal Length.The Median can be computed as the following:Step 1: Read the full blog for free on Medium.Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming asponsor. Published via Towards AITowards AI - Medium Share this post

Introducing Deepseek Artifacts 0 like January 6, 2025Share this postAuthor(s): Thomas Reid Originally published on Towards AI. Easily create, run, and share React/Tailwind applications with this new AI coding assistantThis member-only story is on us. Upgrade to access all of Medium.Everyone and their granny is talking about the latest open-source LLM model from the folks over at Deepseek, called Deepseek V3.As I write this story, Deepseek V3 is currently sitting in seventh place on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard and is currently the top open-source LLM there.With this as background, naturally, it wasnt long before someone decided to create an AI software development tool that would use the new Deepseek LLM.That tool is called Deepseek Artifacts and is available using the link at the end of this article.Image by AI (Dalle-3)In a nutshell, its an online tool that takes in a prompt provided by the user and creates a React and Tailwind web application based on what the user requests in their prompt. Once the initial app has been created, the source code is available to view, and a preview is available to test.From here, you can manually edit the source code if desired, and any changes you make will result in the preview being immediately updated, too.Its also possible to open the app in a VSCODE-like sandbox environment where you can edit the source or download the project as Read the full blog for free on Medium.Join thousands of data leaders on the AI newsletter. Join over 80,000 subscribers and keep up to date with the latest developments in AI. From research to projects and ideas. If you are building an AI startup, an AI-related product, or a service, we invite you to consider becoming asponsor. Published via Towards AITowards AI - Medium Share this post

Forget Year of Luigi. 2025 is the Year of Eevee. At least, according to The Pokmon Center, the official merch arm of The Pokmon Company.This was announced today via the official Pokmon website, which christened the year by announcing an array of Eevee-themed merchandise such as plush toys and Eeveelution statuettes.Notably, the "Year of Eevee" thus far appears only to impact The Pokmon Center, the official merchandise store for Pokmon. So it's entirely possible this is purely a marketing thing to sell more Eevee plush, and won't impact anything else.2025 is the Year of Eevee according to The Pokmon Center. Image credit: The Pokmon Company.But it's also possible this celebration ends up extending to other parts of Pokmon. For instance, we know for a fact that a new Pokmon game is planned for later this year: Pokmon Legends: Z-A. We don't have a ton of information about the game so far, apart from its setting (Lumiose City) and its placement in the "Pokmon Legends" series alongside Pokmon Legends: Arceus. A Year of Eevee could portend exciting things for Z-A... dare I predict, a new Eeveelution? There hasn't been one of those since Sylveon was added in Pokmon X and Y (where Lumiose City was introduced) over a decade ago. We're long overdue for a new variation. Unfortunately, we probably can't expect an entirely Eevee-focused game. We've already basically had one of those in Pokmon Let's Go! Pikachu and Eevee.And it's worth noting that the Eevee theming has already invaded the Pokmon TCG via the recent Prismatic Evolution expansion. The new expansion, which releases next week, centers around Terastal Pokmon like in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, but notably includes some absolutely gorgeous Eeveelution cards and even features a Terastal on the cover. Every Eeveelution is included in the set in multiple forms, including an Umbreon that some are predicting will be very, very coveted by collectors.A new Umbreon ex card is already being listed online for absurd amounts of money for a single card.Beyond that, I'm really hoping this means we'll see some exciting Eevee-themed updates to other games. Pokmon's been juggling quite a few ongoing games lately, including Pokmon Sleep, Pokmon Unite, Pokmon Masters EX, and of course Pokmon Go. Between all of those, surely there will be room for some interesting Eevee-themed updates over the next year to tie into the merch plays. We'll have to see how far The Pokmon Company chooses to take things while we eagerly away for more news about Pokmon Legends Z-A. Don't forget, Pokmon Day is on February 27!Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Typically over the holidays, thousands of people will look in their stockings or under the tree to find brand new Nintendo games waiting for them. But this year, a number of Nintendo Switch fans are claiming they unwrapped a far less pleasant surprise on Christmas morning: instead of a Switch cartridge in their game box, some are claiming they found a single googly eye staring at them.Over the holidays, a number of posts popped up across Reddit and Twitter/X from individuals claiming their seemingly sealed, brand new Nintendo Switch cases contained a googly eye and a black piece of plastic instead of the actual game cartridge. Why a googly eye? The running theory is that the googly eye will rattle if you shake the Switch box, similar to how the box rattles with an actual game inside. And the black plastic around the side fools individuals trying to look through the cracks on the top or bottom to see if the outline of a game is visible without unwrapping it. Without these items, someone might be tipped off that a game has been stolen from the package, but this method ensures that no one notices the crime until they open the case.It's unclear at the moment how or why this is happening, on what scale, or at what point in the distribution process. Games reportedly impacted included Luigi's Mansion 2 HD, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Mario Party Jamboree, Echoes of Wisdom, and others. The reports also seem to go back several months, though there's been a higher influx of them recently likely due to more games being purchased over the holiday. And all of them seem to include a googly eye and the same black piece of plastic, though at least one person is claiming to have only gotten the plastic, no eye included.IGN reached out to several individuals claiming they had received googly eyes instead of games over the last year and a half, but no one we spoke to had taken a video of them unwrapping the shrink wrap and discovering the eye, as they (understandably) didn't know they were unwrapping a googly eye to begin with. As long as all these reports remain unconfirmed, it's always possible this is just some sort of viral prank. Still, through our conversations with the individuals claiming they were impacted, all seemed to be legitimate accounts. A few had return receipts or were able to direct me to specific Walmart, Best Buy, and Target store locations where googly eyes had been acquired, all located in the western United States. One person said they purchased their googly eye game online. Timeline-wise, googly eye claims went back as far as June 2023, though most took place in the last six months. In an effort to confirm these reports, I tried to reach specific stores where googly eyes were allegedly found. One of the Reddit posters claimed in private messages with me that they had returned their googly eye box to a specific Walmart store, so I gave them a call. I was unable to get anyone to answer the phone at the store for over an hour despite calling various different departments. When I finally reached someone in a completely unrelated department, they transferred me to Loss Prevention, who upon hearing what I was calling about offered to have me speak to a higher manager, before hanging up the phone entirely. Multiple calls back to the same departments did not glean any further responses. I tried a second Walmart location identified by posters, where I eventually reached an employee in electronics who had never heard of this happening. However, the incident taking place at their store allegedly happened months ago, and would have been handled by returns and not electronics, so their lack of awareness wasn't much of a debunking.PlayIGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!IGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!To start:...try asking a question that can be answered with a "Yes" or "No".000/250A very similar scenario unfolded when I tried to reach a specific Target location where someone claimed to have successfully returned a googly eye game. Repeated calls to relevant departments went unanswered, until I finally reached someone in an unrelated department who transferred me to Guest Services. Guest Services then directed me to Target's corporate media line, which I have already contacted and did not receive a response from. All told, I spent about three hours on a Friday afternoon calling various big box stores, but learned absolutely nothing about googly eyes.With the direct route failing, I reached out to Nintendo for comment, but did not hear back in time for publication. I also reached out to Best Buy corporate for comment on this story, but similarly did not hear back in time for publication.Walmart corporate PR did get back to me on Friday, but the PR representative I spoke to seemed baffled. They told me over the phone that the company had not heard anything about this, and we spent the better part of the afternoon going back and forth over email trying to investigate. The representative said they'd look into some specific stores where googly eyes had been reported over the weekend and return to me with a statement by first-thing Monday, but IGN did not receive any further response to our inquiry by our deadline. We'll update if that changes.The takeaway from all this, then, is just a PSA that your recently-purchased Nintendo Switch cartridge may or may not contain a game, or a googly eye. It's unclear if this is a real problem affecting many people, a real problem affecting a very small number of people caught up in a supply chain that has poor communication and no way to confirm these things, or a joke problem invented by the internet. Fortunately though, if it is indeed a real problem, it sounds like most stores are exchanging googly eyes for games if you find yourself the victim of this weird but admittedly quite frustrating switcheroo. Hopefully they manage to catch this Googly Eye Bandit, if they're indeed real, and save future Christmases from disaster.Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.

Goosebumps: The Vanishing streams on Disney+ beginning Friday, January 10.R.L. Stine is not a character on Goosebumps, the latest hit TV series based on his hit book series. While co-creator Rob Letterman previously cast a bug-eyed Jack Black as Stine in the first of the Goosebumps movies, he arranged only a vocal cameo for the kid-lit author in the first season of the Disney+ adaptation of the same wildly successful source material. All the same, there is a certain sly meta dimension to the new small-screen Goosebumps, now entering its second season. In following both modern kids and their fortysomething parents, in splitting the action between present day and the 1990s (a.k.a. the decade when Stine began churning out his pre-teen paperbacks at a monthly clip), the series winks at its own attempts to court multiple demographics, to appeal to the young and the nostalgic alike.Of course, a lot has changed over the past 30 years, including in the world of adolescent programming. While Goosebumps continues in season 2 to make intergenerational tension a focus, the real tension of the show is between one eras definition of YA anthology and anothers. Once again, the creators have crammed the square peg of Stines preteen paperback yarns his one-off, quick-read campfire tales of small-town spookiness into the round hole of a serialized teen soap opera. It remains an imperfect fit.Goosebumps: The Vanishing GallerySeason 1 ended in what seemed like a cliffhanger but appears to have turned out to be a classic, inconclusive Stine twist instead: No, we wont be picking up with the plucky young heroes of Port Lawrence High, or seeing how they manage to once more vanquish the authors most popular villain, the malevolent marionette Slappy the Dummy. Season 2, subtitled The Vanishing, tells a new story in a new locale, following a group of Brooklyn teens as they become tangled in a missing-person investigation involving an abandoned research facility. All the same, the dual-decade formula of this Goosebumps incarnation remains intact, as the kids uncover the events that have haunted their parents since 1994, when a classmate went missing during a trespassing incident.In present day, the vanished boys younger brother has become a botanist and single father played by David Schwimmer, who fills the veritable cast chaperone role occupied by Justin Long in season 1. (Talk about a lateral move in the matter of dweeby grown-up star power!) Dont go in the basement, this not-quite-mad scientist repeatedly warns his twin offspring one a type-A overachiever (YouTube star Jayden Bartels), the other a shiftless underachiever (Sam McCarthy) when they come to stay with him for the summer in Gravesend. Though hes technically a little old to portray a guy who was a teenager in 1994 (the year Friends premiered!), Schwimmer has some fun with the character: He summons the dorkiness that delivered him to primetime fame, and then like Long before him puts a more sinister spin on this seemingly harmless authority figure.Around the sitcom veteran, Goosebumps assembles another Scooby Gang of wholesome high-schoolers, including the misunderstood bad girl (Francesca Noel) who Bartels debate champ ends up romancing, and the congenial delivery driver (Elijah M. Cooper) the others hit up for rides. The kids are all right maybe too much so. Even the requisite love triangle reaches an amicable impasse, as if the showrunners were afraid to make anyone unlikable for long. After surviving a brief transformation into a plant-like monster, the most ornery and hostile of the young characters awakes all nice and enlightened, which makes you wonder about the therapeutic benefits of a stint as a pod person.No one has quite enough personality a problem that extends to the show itself, which remains a polished and sometimes generic streaming melodrama. Has Goosebumps itself been bodysnatched? While Stine focused mainly on middle-school-aged kids (they were proxies for his target readership), this new TV version smooths out older teenage life for the presumed audience of sheltered Disney+ viewers. Rarely has Brooklyn looked so nondescript, so suburban. And though the show has secured directors as varied as Gillian Robespierre (Obvious Child) and Oz Rodriguez (Vampires vs. the Bronx), theres little recognizing their specific contributions. (Only Eduardo Sanchez, one of the filmmakers behind The Blair Witch Project, puts his mark on the material mainly because his episode contains long stretches of faux home-video footage.)What we said about Goosebumps season 1After a faithful '90s anthology series and a less-faithful pair of Jack Black movies, Goosebumps returns to the screen in the form of a teen soap that pulls some of the supernatural mumbo jumbo of R.L. Stine's bestselling kid-lit series into the story of high-schoolers haunted by a vengeful Gen X ghost. The performances are endearing (especially Justin Longs), and there's some fun in how creators Rob Letterman and Nicholas Stoller repurpose the various haunted masks and cursed cameras. But Stine's work isn't the most natural fit for a Stranger Things-style streaming melodrama; the adolescent fun of the books gets a little lost in translation. A.A. DowdRead the complete Goosebumps season 1 review.Goosebumps comes alive most when it resembles, well, Goosebumps. Between scenes of chaste romance, the kids narrowly escape various Roger Corman-grade monsters lifted, loosely, from Stines Scholastic pageturners: a seeping blob, some hungry flora, a training-wheels Christine that blares System of a Downs Chop Suey! while its zigzagging madly down city streets. Theres a surprising amount of gore around the edges of the series, as when Schwimmer digs a hungry bulb out of his arm or turns to reveal a nasty ocular surprise. This stuff is very much in the spirit of the books, which left young readers emboldened by their own courage to keep reading, and feeling like they were getting something past Mom and Dad.But the monsters that are Stines bread and butter have become almost secondary to the shows equation. Theyre basically accents on its aspirations to a tamer Riverdale or Stranger Things a few Halloween thrills wedged between its stock teen drama and the kind of overarching mythology thats frequently mistaken for a foolproof shortcut to bingeability. If you liked the first season of the show, theres no reason to think you wont like the second: Despite the all new cast and story, its more of the same. But regardless of your generation or your familiarity with Stines massive library of colorful titles and covers, you deserve more goosebumps than this Goosebumps provides.

Colin Farrells portrayal of Oz Cobb a.k.a. The Penguin in Matt Reeves The Batman universe is quite distinct. Farrell is nearly unrecognizable in this role, a plethora of prosthetics transforming him from a suave actor into the weaselly mobster we love to hate. Farrell has done such an impeccable job of embodying this character and bringing him to life in The Penguin, that the actor recently took home a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series for his role in the show. But hes not the first Batman villain to win this prestigious award.Unsurprisingly, Heath Ledger was the first actor to win a Golden Globe for playing a Batman villain. Though the actor won the award posthumously after his tragic death, his turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolans The Dark Knight is still lauded as one of, if not the best portrayal of this character to this day. More recently, Joaquin Phoenix also took home a Golden Globe for his portrayal of the Joker in Todd Phillips Joker. Both Phoenix and Ledger would go on to win Academy Awards as well, something that Farrell wont be eligible for due to The Penguin being a TV series.When asked about his award and what it was like to join Ledger and Phoenix as the best of Batmans villains, Farrell was honored above all else. Speaking at a press conference after his big win, Farrell said I mean you mentioned two actors who are, I think, for my money, two of the most extraordinary, talented, gifted, and just brilliant artists in film that Ive ever had the fortune to observe and be affected by, you know.What Heath did in Chris Nolans Dark Knight was extraordinary and will live on for future generations, he continued. To have your name thrown into it, just uttered in the same sentence as those performances and stuff, honestly, its lovely.But even though he appreciates the comparisons, Farrell doesnt necessarily consider himself a member of that winners circle. I dont feel like Im part of that pantheon, he said. I wont be going home tonight going, Im part of that pantheon.' Farrell may not see himself as part of this legendary group, but that doesnt mean his win is any less extraordinary.Farrell is the third actor to win a Golden Globe for playing a Batman villain. Cristin Milioti was also nominated this year for her performance as Sofia Falcone in The Penguin, though she unfortunately didnt win. However her nomination and Farrells win further prove that Batmans Rogues Gallery is full of some incredible characters.Superhero projects are still a long way away from sweeping awards shows, and yet if we look across the board, Batman villains have come the closest. These wins may all be for different projects in different superhero universes, but no other hero has come close to having this many of their villains (and their actors) win such a prestigious award. Batmans villains have inspired a plethora of performances over the decades, from zany to compelling to downright terrifying, so its nice to see at least a few of these actors get the industry recognition they deserve.

Its a new era for World Wrestling Entertainment, as Monday Night Raw has left the world of cable TV to jump exclusively to Netflix. Initially a replacement for WWFs Prime Time Wrestling (at the time a roundtable discussion sprinkled with house show matches) made in response to the gradual death of NBCs Saturday Nights Main Event, Raw redefined the company and became its flagship show. For over 30 years, over 1,500 episodes, and a phone book of in-ring talent, a whole lot has gone down and many shoulders have been counted to the mat.In-between Yokozuna vs. Koko B. Ware and Lyra Valkyria vs. IYO SKY, there have been countless wrestling matches on Raw. Here are 10 that truly stick out as the very best ever in terms of in-ring quality and general importance in the grand scheme of things. Before you ask, no, none of these matches include The Great Khali. I know, Im just as surprised as you are.Mr. Perfect vs. Ric Flair (1/25/93)It only took the third episode of Raw for a great match to happen. Built out of the companys sudden loss of The Ultimate Warrior, WWF used an episode of Prime Time Wrestling to build up a feud between Mr. Perfect and Ric Flair. Perfects realization that Ric Flair and Bobby Heenan were keeping him under their thumb made for possibly the best face turn in wrestling history. Their hatred reached a level where there wasnt enough room in the company for the both of them. Hence, a match where the loser would have to leave the promotion. With Perfect refreshing his in-ring career and Flair being a recent WWF Champion, the winner didnt seem so obvious.It helped that in his brief WWF run, Flair didnt do too many major singles matches on TV or even PPV. Having him go out with one of these, against someone on Perfects level no less, felt like a real treat and way bigger than something wed expect to see from WWF Superstars or WWF Wrestling Challenge. With Flair out the door so early into this new show, it really felt like big changes were happening. Though funny enough, because this episode was taped in advance, Flair still wrestled a handful of matches for the company before leaving, including a Royal Rumble match that was shown live the night before this aired. It gets a little confusing.Bret Hart vs. 1-2-3 Kid (7/11/94)Bret Hart and The 1-2-3 Kid are two names who really helped define Raw in its early days. The Kids jump from nameless jobber to popular midcard act really established how unpredictable the show could get, while Bret Harts time as WWF Champion really changed the game. No longer was it Hulk Hogan only defending the belt for special events or house shows. Now it was The Hitman being a fighting champion and taking on everyone from the likes of Skinner to Papa Shango.Putting the honorable champion against the ultimate underdog was a masterclass in great wrestling. The two had fantastic chemistry to begin with, but then that was seemingly dashed with an early pinfall where The Kid had his foot on the rope and the ref didnt see it. Rather than move on, Bret insisted on restarting the match and things kicked into gear. The Kid surprised Bret again and again with some slick moves and nearfalls, causing Bret to get noticeably frustrated. By the time it came to an end, you could see Randy Savage getting up to give it a standing ovation.Mankind vs. The Rock (1/4/99)It was the night when WCW shot itself in the foot so badly that they never recovered. Shortly after they ended Goldbergs undefeated streak and championship run, they did a bait-and-switch main event on Nitro that had Hollywood Hogan become the new champ while reprising the New World Order and pissing off practically everyone. Meanwhile, as Raw was taped that night, WCW commentator Tony Schiavone infamously told fans not to change the channel by spoiling that Mankind was set to win the WWF Championship off The Rock. Many viewers heard this warning and responded, Dont threaten me with a good time!Mankind winning the world title was merely a detour towards a Steve Austin vs. Rock main event at WrestleMania XV, but it was still a huge deal. Mick Foley was beloved by the fans and the locker room, so seeing his hard work pay off in such a way felt beyond cathartic. Arguably the greatest fan reaction in all wrestling is when D-Generation X are brawling with Vinces Corporation goons, only for the glass shattering sound from Steve Austins theme song to kick in out of nowhere. Schiavone joked about how that would put butts in seats, and he wasnt wrong. Everyone in that arena excitedly stood up for that one.The Rock, Cactus Jack, Rikishi, and Too Cool vs. Triple H, X-Pac, and The Radicalz (2/7/00)People talk up what a disaster WCWs freefall was in 2000, and for good reason, but on the other side of the coin, WWF was absolutely thriving. Not only were they bringing in some of the best WCW castoffs they could ask for, but they were hitting on all cylinders, even with Steve Austins lengthy absence due to injury. There was no better showcase of this than this 10-man tag that closed out this Raw on the road to No Way Out. Just dont expect WWE to promote its existence, considering it was won by Chris Benoit.The rivalry between Triple H and Cactus Jack expanded into their various allies gathering for this big tag match, giving us a big chunk of the roster from Nintendo 64s No Mercy in action. The match isnt a long one, but it doesnt let up. Everyone gets to have their moment in the sun while the crowd remains electric throughout. The ending is a mere formality, as the brawling continues after the bell. The only thing that can put the carnage to bed? The surprise appearance of Kane to help the faces clear the ring. The Attitude Era wasnt always as fantastic as people try to remember it, but times like this really show why the promotion was so unstoppable at the time.Undertaker vs. Jeff Hardy (7/1/02)In the early 2000s, The Undertaker dropped the undead gimmick to be a big, mean biker guy, and it wasnt his best work. It got worse when he turned heel, as he just felt like a worse copy of Steve Austin who would stop selling two seconds after taking any kind of damage. He was still a few years away from really hitting his stride as the maestro of the big time match, and it didnt help that he won the Undisputed Championship in a terrible match against an over-the-hill Hulk Hogan. That said, when he faced Jeff Hardy in his one and only ladder match, things really clicked.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!As part of an aborted attempt to split up the Hardy Boyz, Undertaker terrorized Team Xtreme for the sake of being a bully. He put his title on the line against Jeff Hardy, who was always on the cusp of being a singles star. The two played off of each other extremely well with enough hope in there to almost make you think Jeff was going to pull it off. It even gave us an all-timer Jim Ross call of, Climb that ladder, kid! Make yourself famous! while the camera work really did a great job of hiding Undertakers presence before his fateful comeback. Hardy looked tough in defeat, to the point that Undertaker gave him props, steering himself towards a much-needed face turn.John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels (4/23/07)There were plenty of reasons to hate the never-ending stretch of John Cena on top. The frustration of seeing all the eggs in one basket, the burying of talent, the way someone could point out that he was in the wrong and hed deflect it by saying nice speech, the way commentators would obnoxiously cheer him above all else, and so on. That said, when push came to shove, the guy could go. Look no further than his matches with Shawn Michaels, a guy who the fans really wanted to win the title off of Cena, even though Michaels was adamant about not wanting the real-life pressures that came with it.After Cena retained the WWE Championship against Michaels at WrestleMania 23, a four-way was set up for Backlash featuring Cena, Michaels, Randy Orton, and Edge. The go-home episode of Raw was meant to have a Cena vs. Michaels non-title rematch, as well as Orton vs. Edge, but they ran into a snag. Orton was punished for some unprofessional conduct behind the scenes, and was sent home, meaning Cena and Michaels were told to stretch their match out to nearly an hour. And the madmen did it, having an absolute killer exhibition that would be Cenas best match yet. Not bad for a last-minute change in plans.The whole rivalry between John Cena and CM Punk is full of awesome matches, but it all represents the desires of the fanbase vs. the stubbornness of Vince McMahon. While, yes, Cena was never going to budge as the man on top, it still meant a lot in terms of the kind of wrestler CM Punk represented. After years of WWEs love for bulky former football players over smaller indie wrestling darlings, guys like CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, and later AJ Styles were able to endure the wrath of a company that absolutely did not want them to succeed. That Punk was able to get a few high-profile wins over Cena, and even have a lengthy world title run, was a miracle, even if he was still never truly the companys headliner.When The Rock returned, it was only a matter of time before he entered the title picture and won the belt off Punk. Cena won that years Royal Rumble, meaning that WrestleMania main event was written in stone. Still, they dangled the possibility of an alternative to the viewers by having one last Cena vs. Punk match for the #1 contender spot. Knowing it was going to be their last go, the two left it all in the ring, creating a grand finale to their feud. They even made waves by throwing in a piledriver, which apparently got them in hot water backstage.The Shield vs. The Wyatt Family (3/3/14)There was a truly magical time when you could turn on just about any episode of Raw or SmackDown and be treated to a six-man tag featuring The Shield. It was a glorious time with every single one being the match of the night. Then one day, WWE pitted the two big heel trios against each other as Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, and Roman Reigns found themselves facing Bray Wyatt, Luke Harper, and Erick Rowan. Their first match was at Extreme Rules 2014, which was a true contender for the match of the year.And so, they did a handful of rematches. The first rematch didnt quite hit the heights of Extreme Rules, but damn was it a fantastic showcase. As their first match was ultimately decided by which team had stronger bonds and The Shield was starting to show cracks, the Raw match built on that by having Rollins lose his patience with his partners bickering and reluctantly abandon them mid-match. Rather than completely fall apart from this loss, The Shield rebounded stronger than ever, and proved it by beating the Wyatt crew on the inaugural episode of Main Event. Good times.Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte Flair (7/25/16)There was no greater uphill battle in WWE history than the womens division. Once a section of the show dedicated to sexual humiliation at worst or three-minute distractions at best, it took a long time for the promotion to finally treat its female talent with respect. Much of that came with NXT putting in the groundwork with acts like Paige and the Four Horsewomen. Even when those women came to the main roster, it took a lot of time and effort for them to overtake the likes of the Bella Twins and Eva Marie.Even though there were still so few who got that spotlight, these superstars really proved themselves when given the opportunity. This especially goes for the rivalry between Charlotte Flair and Sasha Banks, who kept trading the Raw Womens Championship back and forth. One of their best bouts was on this 2016 Raw (itself a kickass show overall), where Sasha was quickly able to use her Eddie Guerrero fangirl trickster skills to get Charlottes lackey Dana Brooke ejected from ringside. From there, the two kicked it up a notch with some excellent ringwork, earning the fans adoration, and ending with both a series of false-finishes, and Charlotte making the funniest angry face while incorrectly screaming that Sasha would never beat her.Gunther vs. Chad Gable (9/4/23)For years, WWE couldnt quite figure out how to transition up and coming stars from NXT to the main roster. NXT was Triple Hs dog and pony show, and Vince never seemed to pay much attention to it. That meant that when a successful NXT wrestler jumped to Raw or SmackDown, Vince made his own uninformed decisions on what they were about. To many, graduating from NXT was a career death sentence. Just look at Bearcat Keith Lee, EC3, or Ember Moon. Chad Gable felt like the second coming of Kurt Angle, but due to his height, he got shoved into a comedy loser gimmick where he was Shorty G. The nigh-unbeatable and highly protected Gunther was eliminated from a Survivor Series tag match with little fanfare because Vince just didnt get his deal. How can you build the future when so much of it was undermined by the whims of an old man who doesnt give a damn?As time went on and Triple H had more say on the main roster, this became less of an issue. Great wrestlers could be great wrestlers and not be punished out of spite and indifference. Gunther became the longest-reigning Intercontinental Champion, and it extended into a sweet trilogy that reestablished what Chad Gable was capable of. The hard-hitting Ring General took it to the best grappler in the company, and they absolutely rocked it. Some of the best chemistry that had people biting down on it so hard that upon Gunthers win, the first thing they showed was a little girl crying. And thats what this is all about, isnt it?What are your favorite Raw matches? Let us know in the comments!