doops. Member Jun 3, 2020 5,141 Many thanks to MoonlitSeer for the more accurate screenshots taken from Twitter. You can cross-reference these with his account on there for yourself. I won't be linking to it here, since it's (rightfully so) a banned source. Apparently also, Twitter now only shows a selection of follows, so the original screenshot from Reddit may well still be accurate, but this one is at least more verifiable currently.   Savinowned Member Oct 25, 2017 1,493 Nashville, TN That's a bummer. Do we have any history of him saying sketchy stuff? I loved the last rematch beta and was excited to play the upcoming one next weekend   MoonlitSeer Fallen Guardian Member Jun 9, 2023 1,977 I'll just add that I was in the process of cross-referencing these with the prior post when the topic was locked. I personally checked all of the ones listed here and can verify they are accurate as of about 30 minutes prior from the time of this post.   Rosebud Two Pieces Member Apr 16, 2018 51,258 .   OP OP doops. Member Jun 3, 2020 5,141 MoonlitSeer said: I'll just add that I was in the process of cross-referencing these with the prior post when the topic was locked. I personally checked all of the ones listed here and can verify they are accurate as of about 30 minutes from the time of this post. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Appreciate you! ❤️  CaptainFreud Banned Aug 19, 2022 8 User banned (permanent): Troll account Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests.   skillzilla81 "This guy are sick" The Fallen Oct 25, 2017 11,316 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Good for you.  Nocturne Member Oct 25, 2017 2,217 thanks for the heads-up. know a couple people who sounded interested in this game who'd probably wanna know about something like this.   Firmus_Anguis AVALANCHE Member Oct 30, 2017 8,491 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... That's all you got? Ya'll are getting so incredibly predictable. Just report and move on, people. Incoming permaban.  Qwark Member Oct 27, 2017 10,251 Incredibly disappointing. Another one to avoid.   DanDanderson Member May 7, 2024 298 As a general note, this is not only the creative director but also a co-founder of the studio. MoonlitSeer said: I'll just add that I was in the process of cross-referencing these with the prior post when the topic was locked. I personally checked all of the ones listed here and can verify they are accurate as of about 30 minutes prior from the time of this post. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Same. The original screenshot is accurate. You don't see all followers on Twitter, and the ones you do see change - it's not a static list. He does follow all the people in the original screenshot including RadioGenoa and Grummz.  Bricks "This guy are sick" Member Nov 6, 2017 746 Well, I got Sifu for free from the Epic Games Store, so... that's fine, I guess? Who am I kidding, I'll never have time to play it anyway.   JoeInky Member Oct 25, 2017 4,075 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Ok and? There are 100s of games released every day, why are people like you constantly so bothered about the idea that people might skip one of those games for ideological reasons?  Eevea Member Sep 23, 2022 485 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... It's not a "purity test", it's a decency test. When it comes to the matter of real people's lives, it's not an "opinion", it's not "politics". Just because you can overlook shitty people doesn't mean everyone has that luxury.  Buttonbasher Member Dec 4, 2017 5,752 Thanks for the heads up. Will avoid.   GTOAkira Member Sep 1, 2018 13,401 Not afraid to defend my country lmao Following that first account is enough to show what kind of person he is.  DrScruffleton Member Oct 26, 2017 14,889 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Messages: 8 Joined: 2022  OP OP doops. Member Jun 3, 2020 5,141 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... the irony of having your pronouns under your name and saying dumb shit like this. go back to r/reseterainaction you rat  Sande Member Oct 25, 2017 7,176 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Congrats for not caring...? Like yeah, there's all kinds of people working in games but not all of them broadcast where they stand like this. And this is in a leadership position.  Zigludo Member Aug 17, 2020 59 CaptainFreud said: Unless he's actively reposting and sharing anti-trans or genocidal rhetoric, I really don't care. News flash: the people that make the games you play have a variety of backgrounds and won't always ace your purity tests. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Nice alt account you got there.   METAL GEAR REX Member Jun 11, 2023 2,550 Edit: I regret ever asking questions on here.   Last edited: 10 minutes ago TheCat Member Dec 20, 2023 917 Eevea said: It's not a "purity test", it's a decency test. When it comes to the matter of real people's lives, it's not an "opinion", it's not "politics". Just because you can overlook shitty people doesn't mean everyone has that luxury. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Aren't you literally playing the new Doom Game? You know who sees your money, right?  Fat4all Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot Member Oct 25, 2017 107,533 here turns out Twitter is a shit website that doesn't accurately show followers, who knew   JoeInky Member Oct 25, 2017 4,075 doops. said: the irony of having your pronouns under your name and saying dumb shit like this. go back to r/reseterainaction you rat Click to expand... Click to shrink... I genuinely believe some people set up their pronouns just to mock the concept and not because they want people to respect their identity, like that guy who got banned in one of the offtopic threads with an LGBT flag avatar spouting a bunch of bigoted shit  Kudo Member Oct 25, 2017 4,300 Wait, following? Am I missing something here?   RomanceDawn Teacher of Superheroines Member Oct 29, 2017 1,240 Los Angeles I know some of the martial artists who worked on this game. Good people who completely align themselves with much of this board. The world isn't so black and white. In all that you love you will find something you hate, and in all that you hate you will find something you love.  Fat4all Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot Member Oct 25, 2017 107,533 here love all the folks coming out of the woodwork to defend following anti-trans bigots very organized  Eevea Member Sep 23, 2022 485 TheCat said: Aren't you literally playing the new Doom Game? You know who sees your money, right? Click to expand... Click to shrink... As far as I know, Hugo Martin is not a bigot.  MoonlitSeer Fallen Guardian Member Jun 9, 2023 1,977 DanDanderson said: As a general note, this is not only the creative director but also a co-founder of the studio. Same. The original screenshot is accurate. You don't see all followers on Twitter, and the ones you do see change - it's not a static list. He does follow all the people in the original screenshot including RadioGenoa and Grummz. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Yea, and you can also follow the account to verify who they follow by visiting, since it will show on those pages. For example: You can see here he follows Grummz (taken just now).  Ultrapop Member Aug 19, 2022 206 R’lyeh Fat4all said: love all the folks coming out of the woodwork to defend following anti-trans bigots very organized Click to expand... Click to shrink... Funny how bigots always get the benefit of the doubt, huh?  Kyuuji The Favonius Fox Member Nov 8, 2017 38,393 Rowling's twitter feed is just wall to wall the vilest transphobia, and has been for years. If you didn't want to see it, you wouldn't be following her.   JoeInky Member Oct 25, 2017 4,075 The three genres of dismissive posts in these types of threads: "And yet you participate in society" "What about the poor workers at the studio who aren't bigots? It's not fair on them to skip the game just because of a little thing like this!" "The game looks great! Anyone else looking forward to it too?"  sillyGecko Member Mar 14, 2025 1,551 DanDanderson said: Same. The original screenshot is accurate. You don't see all followers on Twitter, and the ones you do see change - it's not a static list. He does follow all the people in the original screenshot including RadioGenoa and Grummz. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Are you sure? I refreshed it multiple times and it was always the same, didn't see grummz and what not. Either way the current list are people I saw and aren't great of course Edit: Saw the picture up above, very strange how the following list doesn't show everyone  Last edited: 5 minutes ago Fat4all Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot Member Oct 25, 2017 107,533 here Kyuuji said: Rowling's twitter feed is just wall to wall the vilest transphobia, and has been for years. If you didn't want to see it, you wouldn't be following her. Click to expand... Click to shrink... 💯   Fat4all Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot Member Oct 25, 2017 107,533 here sillyGecko said: Are you sure? I refreshed it multiple times and it was always the same, didn't see grummz and what not. Either way the current list are people I saw and aren't great of course Click to expand... Click to shrink... scroll up   EvilBoris Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest Verified Oct 29, 2017 18,082 Is it possible to follow these people just so you can see what dumb shit they are saying and be involved in refuting their awful views? Lots of people follow Elon Mush and Donald Trump and hate them. Personally I wouldn't , I'd rather not see it, but I know other people feel more strongly about that. Or is this person agreeing with them in public?  thirtypercent Member Oct 18, 2018 746 Rosebud said: I draw the line at Thomas Mahler Click to expand... Click to shrink... When not even the worst person on a list already makes you instabarf all over the place ....  Friendly Bear Member Jan 11, 2019 3,955 I Don’t Care Where (Just Far) That's really disappointing. Really disappointing. I'm not surprised anymore when someone is revealed as Chud or Chud adjacent, but it still disappoints me. I don't expect everyone to share my opinions, but I think it's reasonable to be critical of someone who is a fan of omega bigots. EvilBoris said: Is it possible to follow these people just so you can see what dumb shit they are saying and be involved in refuting their awful views? Lots of people follow Elon Mush and Donald Trump and hate them. Personally I wouldn't , I'd rather not see it, but I know other people feel more strongly about that. Or is this person agreeing with them in public? Click to expand... Click to shrink... I mean, it's possible. But that list seems pretty deliberate.  sillyGecko Member Mar 14, 2025 1,551 EvilBoris said: Is it possible to follow these people just so you can see what dumb shit they are saying and be involved in refuting their awful views? Lots of people follow Elon Mush and Donald Trump and hate them. Personally I wouldn't , I'd rather not see it, but I know other people feel more strongly about that. Or is this person agreeing with them in public? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Also possible, it's why a lot of people used to have "likes arent an endorsement" in their bio when they would like something to bookmark it for later. Hard to say   Kudo Member Oct 25, 2017 4,300 I guess it is suspicious, following Trump etc. I'd understand for "news" but Grummz and Rowling tweets are wild.   Fat4all Woke up, got a money tag, swears a lot Member Oct 25, 2017 107,533 here Ultrapop said: Funny how bigots always get the benefit of the doubt, huh? Click to expand... Click to shrink... gotta bend over backwards so far their heads touch the ground   BabyDontHurtMe Member Dec 9, 2018 30,854 New Jersey There are plenty of games that aren't made by dipshits so it's good to know which games that are. It's not that complicated why these threads exist, especially in this day and age. If you don't care then more power to you, but that's not the point of these threads lol   Gotchaforce Member Oct 31, 2017 6,634 I really want to play Sifu (I love martial arts games) but I'm also happy to not support shitheads.   CandySTX Member Mar 17, 2018 1,988 Scotland Can't un-buy Sifu years ago, but can certainly avoid them in the future. Thanks for the heads up.  niccoolnic Member Nov 20, 2020 1,240 Salt Lake City, UT We're still doing "is a follow an endorsement" deflections in 2025 huh? Yeah fuck this guy.  Adulfzen Member Oct 29, 2017 3,955 Eevea said: As far as I know, Hugo Martin is not a bigot. Click to expand... Click to shrink... ID Tech is owned by Microsoft and Microsoft (which includes Xbox) is officially part of the BDS list https://bdsmovement.net/microsoft Microsoft is perhaps the most complicit tech company in Israel's illegal apartheid regime and ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza. Microsoft's complicity in Israel's apartheid and genocide is well documented, exposing its strong ties to the Israeli military, its collaboration with Israeli government ministries, and its involvement in the Israeli prison system, which is notorious for systematic torture and abuse of Palestinians. Microsoft knowingly provides Israel with technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), that is deployed to facilitate grave human rights violations, war crimes, crimes against humanity (including apartheid), as well as genocide. In light of the International Court of Justice's legally-binding rulings to prevent Israel's plausible genocide in Gaza, as well as its July 19 Advisory Opinion affirming Israel's illegal occupation and apartheid system, Microsoft has failed its corporate obligation to prevent genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Microsoft, as well as its boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity. Click to expand... Click to shrink... Hugo Martin being a bigot would be irrelevant in this case if you care about the genocide.  OP OP doops. Member Jun 3, 2020 5,141 EvilBoris said: Is it possible to follow these people just so you can see what dumb shit they are saying and be involved in refuting their awful views? Lots of people follow Elon Mush and Donald Trump and hate them. Personally I wouldn't , I'd rather not see it, but I know other people feel more strongly about that. Or is this person agreeing with them in public? Click to expand... Click to shrink... Given that several of these accounts post offensive shit to stir up hate and bigotry for the sake of it (Radio Genoa, JK Rowling), you can't really give Jordan the benefit of the doubt here. I mean following JK Rowling alone negates this take either way. Who the FUCK wants to hear what she has to say with all the shit she's said and done?? You only do that if you already agree with her.  ALXJ REFANTAZIO SWEEP Uncle Works at Nintendo Member Feb 16, 2021 1,212 yikes... i was looking forward to consider this because some friends will play, now i'll honestly try to change their minds. there's no reason to follow that amount of trash...   EvilBoris Prophet of Truth - HDTVtest Verified Oct 29, 2017 18,082 doops. said: Given that several of these accounts post offensive shit to stir up hate and bigotry for the sake of it (Radio Genoa, JK Rowling), you can't really give Jordan the benefit of the doubt here. I mean following JK Rowling alone negates this take either way. Who the FUCK wants to hear what she has to say with all the shit she's said and done?? Click to expand... Click to shrink... I can't say I understand it , it's all horrid and hateful. I deleted my twitter account because it's all so upsetting.  HellofaMouse Member Oct 27, 2017 8,412 i mean its too late for sifu, that game sold 99% of the copies its gonna sell. but noted for the soccer game, not that i was planning to buy it.. 

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 here Have you ever wanted to be a Combine soldier in Half-Life 2? Well, there’s probably countless mods for that. However, new Half-Life 2: Episode 2 mod, Entropy: Zero VR puts players straight into the shoes of a Combine soldier for a new cinematic campaign. Awesome Half-Life 2 mod goes VR Released in 2017, the original Entropy Zero places players into the boots of a stranded Metrocop in the abandoned City 10. The well-received mod is set 11 months before Gordon Freeman fights through City 17 and tasks players with taking out Rebel forces. While the mod isn’t as polished as a true Valve experience—excitingly, we may actually be getting a new official Half-Life game soon—the mod is a great time. With a number of great set pieces and some fantastic combat, it’s a brilliant free addition to Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Now, eight years after the mod’s release, the team is releasing a full VR version of the mod, suitably titled Entropy: Zero VR. Built on the fan-made Half-Life 2 VR mod, the new virtual reality version adds “major gameplay and quality of life refinements”, new visual improvements, more content and side areas, and even new hands and voice lines. There’s no current release date for the VR version of the Half-Life 2: Episode 2, but the game will run on any SteamVR-capable headset. “The current plan is that EZ1VR will be available as a free DLC on Steam for Entropy : Zero, and then can be launched as a launch option on Steam,” the developers announced in a ModDB post. “Please keep an eye out for future articles because this may change before release.” While new content is being added to the game for the VR version, the team is also adding that content into the flat version of the game as well. Subscribe to our newsletters! By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime. Share

The leaders of OpenAI and Google have been living rent-free in each other’s heads since ChatGPT caught the world by storm. Heading into this week’s I/O, Googlers were on edge about whether Sam Altman would try to upstage their show like last year, when OpenAI held an event the day before to showcase ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode. This time, OpenAI dropped its bombshell the day after.OpenAI buying the “io” hardware division of Jony Ive’s design studio, LoveFrom, is a delightfully petty bit of SEO sabotage, though I’m told the name stands for “input output” and was decided a while ago. Even still, the news of Ive and Altman teaming up quickly shifted the conversation away from what was a strong showing from Google at this year’s I/O. The dueling announcements say a lot about what are arguably the world’s two foremost AI companies: Google’s models may be technically superior and more widely deployed, but OpenAI is kicking everyone’s ass at capturing mindshare and buzz. Speaking of buzz, it’s worth looking past the headlines to what OpenAI actually announced this week: it’s paying $6.5 billion in equity to hire roughly 55 people from LoveFrom, including ex-Apple design leaders Evans Hankey, Tang Tan, and Scott Cannon. They’ll report to Peter Welinder, a veteran OpenAI product leader who reports directly to Altman. The rest of LoveFrom’s designers, including legends like Mike Matas, are staying put with Ive, who is currently designing the first-ever electric Ferrari and advising the man who introduced him to Altman, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky. OpenAI’s press release says Ive and LoveFrom “will assume deep design and creative responsibilities across OpenAI.”When LoveFrom’s existing client work is wrapped up, Ive and his design team plan to focus solely on OpenAI while staying independent. OpenAI, meanwhile, already has open “future of computing” roles for others to join the io team it brought over. One job listing for a senior research engineer says the ideal candidate has already “spent time in the weeds teaching models to speak and perceive.” (Total compensation: $460K to $555K plus equity.)The rough timeline that led up to this moment goes as follows: Altman and Ive met two years ago and decided to officially work on hardware together this time last year. The io division was set up at LoveFrom to work with a small group of OpenAI employees. OpenAI and Laurene Powell Jobs invested in the effort toward the end of 2024, when there were quiet talks of raising hundreds of millions of dollars to make it a fully standalone company. (The OpenAI startup fund, which is bizarrely not owned by OpenAI, also invested around this time.) Importantly, Ive ended his consulting relationship with Apple in 2022, the year before he met Altman. That deal was highly lucrative for Ive, but kept him from working on products that could compete with Apple’s. Now, Ive and Altman are teaming up to announce what I expect to be a voice-first AI device later next year. Early prototypes of the device exist (Altman mentioned taking one home in his promo video with Ive). Altman told OpenAI employees this week that it will be able to sit on a desk or be carried around. Supply chain rumors suggest it will be roughly the size of an iPod Shuffle and also be worn like a necklace. Like just about every other big hardware company, Ive and Altman have also been working on AI earbuds. Altman is set on bundling hardware as an upsell for ChatGPT subscriptions and envisions a suite of AI-first products that help lessen the company’s reliance on Apple and Google for distribution. With his Apple relationship in the rear-view mirror, Ive now seems set on unseating the company he helped build. Google, meanwhile, was firing on all cylinders this week. AI Mode in Google Search is being rolled out widely. Its product strategy is still disjointed compared to OpenAI’s, but it’s starting to leverage the immense amount of personal data it has on people to differentiate what Gemini can do. If Gemini can hook into Gmail, Workspace, YouTube, etc., in a way that people want to use, it will likely keep many people from shifting to ChatGPT — just like Meta did to Snapchat with Stories in Instagram. After meeting with Google employees up and down the org chart, I came away from I/O with the feeling that the company doesn’t see a catastrophe on the horizon like a lot of outsiders. There’s a recognition that the ability to buy out distribution for search on Apple devices is probably coming to a close, but Gemini is approaching 500 million monthly users. ChatGPT is undoubtedly eating into search (it’s impossible to get Google execs to comment on the actual health of query volume), but Google has shown a willingness to modernize search faster than I expected. The situation differs from Apple, which isn’t competitive in the model race and is suffering from the kind of political infighting that Google mostly worked through over the last couple of years.There’s also no question that Google is well-positioned to continue leading on the frontier of model development. The latest Gemini models are very good, and Google is clearly positioning its AI for a post-phone world with Project Astra. The company also has the compute to roll out tools like the impressive new Veo video model, while OpenAI’s Sora remains heavily gated due to GPU constraints. It’s still quite possible that ChatGPT’s growth continues unabated while Gemini struggles to become a household name. That would be a generational shift in how people use technology that would hurt Google’s business over the long term. For now, though, it looks like Google might be okay. ElsewhereAnthropic couldn’t sit this week out either. The company held an event on Thursday in San Francisco to debut its Claude 4 models, which it claims are the world’s best for coding. With OpenAI, Google, and Meta all battling to win the interface layer of AI, Anthropic is positioning itself as the model arms dealer of choice. It was telling that Windsurf, which is in talks to sell to OpenAI, was seemingly intentionally left out of getting day-one access to the new models. “If models are countries, this is the equivalent of a trade ban,” Nathan Benaich wrote on X. (Also, what does it say about the state of the industry when the supposed safety-first AI lab is releasing models that it knows want to blackmail people?) Microsoft Build was overshadowed by protests. There were several interesting announcements at Build this week, including Elon Musk’s Grok model coming to Azure and Microsoft’s bet on how to evolve the plumbing of the web for AI agents. All of that was overshadowed by protestors who kept disrupting the company’s keynotes to protest the business it does with Israel. The situation has gotten so tense that Microsoft tried unsuccessfully to block the ability for employees to send internal emails with the words “Palestine,” “Gaza,” and “Genocide.” I tried Google’s smart glasses prototype. I spent about five minutes wearing the reference design prototype of Google’s new smart glasses. They had a small, low-res waveguide in the center of each lens that showed voice interactions with Gemini, a basic version of Google Maps directions, and photos I took. They were… fine? Google knows this tech is super early and that full AR glasses are still years away. In the meantime, it’s smart of them to partner with Warby Parker, Gentle Monster, and Kering to put Android XR in glasses that I expect to start coming out next year. With Apple now planning a similar pair of AI-powered glasses in 2026, Meta’s window of being the only major player in the space is closing.Personnel logYouTube hired Justin Connolly from Disney as its head of media and sports, a move that Disney is suing over. Tinder CEO Faye Iosotaluno is stepping down. Her role will now be overseen by parent company Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff. Vladimir Fedorov, a longtime Meta engineering exec, joined Github as CTO.Will Robinson, Coinbase’s former VP of engineering, has joined Plaid as CTO.Stephen Deadman, Meta’s VP of data protection in Europe, is leaving due to “structural changes.”Link listMore to click on:If you haven’t already, don’t forget to subscribe to The Verge, which includes unlimited access to Command Line and all of our reporting.As always, I welcome your feedback, especially if you have thoughts on this issue, an opinion about stackable simulations, or a story idea to share. You can respond here or ping me securely on Signal.Thanks for subscribing.See More:

Where Was Soccer Invented? A New Archaeological Discovery Suggests Scotland, Not England, Was the Sport’s Birthplace Archaeologists say they’ve found the ruins of a soccer field in southwest Scotland that date to the 17th century England has long been considered the birthplace of modern soccer. But new archaeological evidence is challenging that long-held belief. Pixabay An archaeological discovery in Scotland is stirring up debate about the origins of soccer. England has long claimed to be the birthplace of soccer, known around the world as “football.” However, researchers recently identified what they think was a 17th-century soccer field in Scotland. They argue the find proves football was invented in Scotland, not England. “Our discovery has serious implications for sports historians,” says Ged O’Brien, who founded the Scottish Football Museum in Glasgow and helped find the field, to the New York Times’ Franz Lidz. “They will have to rewrite everything they think they know about the origins of the so-called beautiful game.” The quest started when they discovered a letter from Samuel Rutherford, who was a minister at a Presbyterian church in the town of Anworth in Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland, between 1627 and 1638. In the letter, he wrote: “There was a piece of ground on Mossrobin farm where on Sabbath afternoon the people used to play at foot-ball,” per the Telegraph’s Ben Rumsby. The minister then directed churchgoers to place stones across the field, to prevent athletes from playing on it. After reading this, O’Brien and a team of archaeologists decided to go looking for the stones. Sure enough, they found 14 large rocks lined up across a flat area that measured 147 feet wide by 280 feet long. The team also found five tracks leading to the edge of the field. Did Scotland invent modern football? | A View From The Terrace Watch on Based on their analyses, the stones do not appear to have been placed there for agricultural purposes, such as to mark the boundary between croplands or to fence in livestock. Soil samples suggest the stones were placed there around 400 years ago, which aligns with the timing of Rutherford’s letter. “This is not a wall. It’s a temporary barrier to stop a particular event happening—in this case, football,” says Phil Richardson, an archaeologist with Archaeology Scotland who worked on the project, to the Telegraph. O’Brien also argues that, if residents were playing football every Sunday, they must have established a set of agreed-upon rules for the game. They likely weren’t playing a violent version of the game, because they had to be able to go to work on Monday uninjured. “This is the ancestor, the grandparent, of modern world football, and it’s Scottish,” O’Brien tells the Telegraph. However, not everyone agrees with that interpretation. Perhaps Scots were playing “foot-ball” at Mossrobin farm, but their game may have “no known connection to modern association football,” says Steve Wood, a trustee at the Sheffield Home of Football, a British charity that aims to preserve the city’s football heritage, to the Times. Sheffield is home to the world’s oldest football club, Sheffield F.C., which was founded in 1857. Historians have long theorized that modern football evolved from “mob football,” a chaotic, violent game popular in the Middle Ages that had almost no rules and no set time limit. But by the mid-19th century, footballers decided to draft a set of rules. They were adopted by the Football Association in London, which was founded in 1863. Based on O’Brien’s interpretation of the evidence, however, footballers in Scotland had already invented the game more than 200 years earlier. “Football has been played in Scotland for hundreds of years,” O’Brien tells BBC Scotland’s “A View From the Terrace.” “Not mob-football, but proper football.” Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Mistral AI, the French company behind AI assistant Le Chat and several foundational models, is officially regarded as one of France’s most promising tech startups and is arguably the only European company that could compete with OpenAI. But compared to its $6 billion valuation, its global market share is still relatively low.  However, the recent launch of its chat assistant on mobile app stores was met with some hype, particularly in its home country. “Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, rather than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or something else,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a TV interview ahead of the AI Action Summit in Paris. While this wave of attention may be encouraging, Mistral AI still faces challenges in competing with the likes of OpenAI — and in doing so while keeping up with its self-definition as “the world’s greenest and leading independent AI lab.” What is Mistral AI? Mistral AI has raised significant amounts of funding since its creation in 2023 with the ambition to “put frontier AI in the hands of everyone.” While this isn’t a direct jab at OpenAI, the slogan is meant to highlight the company’s advocacy for openness in AI. Its alternative to ChatGPT, chat assistant Le Chat, is now also available on iOS and Android. It reached 1 million downloads in the two weeks following its mobile release, even grabbing France’s top spot for free downloads on the iOS App Store. This comes in addition to Mistral AI’s suite of models, which includes:  Mistral Large 2, the primary large language model replacing Mistral Large. Pixtral Large, unveiled in 2024 as a new addition to the Pixtral family of multimodal models. Mistral Medium 3, released in May 2025 with the promise of providing efficiency without compromising performance, and best for coding and STEM tasks. Devstral, an AI model designed for coding and openly available under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially without restriction. Codestral, an earlier generative AI model for code, but whose license banned commercial applications. “Les Ministraux,” a family of models optimized for edge devices such as phones. Mistral Saba, focused on Arabic language. In March 2025, the company introduced Mistral OCR, an optical character recognition (OCR) API that can turn any PDF into a text file to make it easier for AI models to ingest. Techcrunch event Join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot for our leading AI industry event with speakers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Cohere. For a limited time, tickets are just $292 for an entire day of expert talks, workshops, and potent networking. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you’ve built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | June 5 REGISTER NOW Who are Mistral AI’s founders? Mistral AI’s three founders share a background in AI research at major U.S. tech companies with significant operations in Paris. CEO Arthur Mensch used to work at Google’s DeepMind, while CTO Timothée Lacroix and chief scientist officer Guillaume Lample are former Meta staffers. Co-founding advisers also include Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve (also a board member) and Charles Gorintin from health insurance startup Alan, as well as former digital minister Cédric O, which caused controversy due to his previous role. Are Mistral AI’s models open source? Not all of them. Mistral AI differentiates its premier models, whose weights are not available for commercial purposes, from its free models, for which it provides weight access under the Apache 2.0 license. Free models include research models such as Mistral NeMo, which was built in collaboration with Nvidia that the startup open-sourced in July 2024. How does Mistral AI make money? While many of Mistral AI’s offerings are free or now have free tiers, Mistral AI plans to drive some revenue from Le Chat’s paid tiers. Introduced in February 2025, Le Chat’s Pro plan is priced at $14.99 a month. On the purely B2B side, Mistral AI monetizes its premier models through APIs with usage-based pricing. Enterprises can also license these models, and the company likely also generates a significant share of its revenue from its strategic partnerships, some of which it highlighted during the Paris AI Summit. Overall, however, Mistral AI’s revenue is reportedly still in the eight-digit range, according to multiple sources. What partnerships has Mistral AI closed? In 2024, Mistral AI entered a deal with Microsoft that included a strategic partnership for distributing its AI models through Microsoft’s Azure platform and a €15 million investment. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) swiftly concluded that the deal didn’t qualify for investigation due to its small size. However, it also sparked some criticism in the EU.  In January 2025, Mistral AI signed a deal with press agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) to let Chat query the AFP’s entire text archive dating back to 1983. Mistral AI also secured strategic partnerships with France’s army and job agency, shipping giant CMA, German defense tech startup Helsing, IBM, Orange, and Stellantis. In May 2025, Mistral AI announced it would participate in the creation of an AI Campus in the Paris region, as part of a joint venture with UAE-investment firm MGX, NVIDIA, and France’s state-owned investment bank Bpifrance. How much funding has Mistral AI raised to date? As of February 2025, Mistral AI raised around €1 billion in capital to date, approximately $1.04 billion at the current exchange rate. This includes some debt financing, as well as several equity financing rounds raised in close succession. In June 2023, and before it even released its first models, Mistral AI raised a record $112 million seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Sources at the time said the seed round — Europe’s largest ever — valued the then-one-month-old startup at $260 million.  Other investors in this seed round included Bpifrance, Eric Schmidt, Exor Ventures, First Minute Capital, Headline, JCDecaux Holding, La Famiglia, LocalGlobe, Motier Ventures, Rodolphe Saadé, Sofina, and Xavier Niel. Only six months later, it closed a Series A of €385 million ($415 million at the time), at a reported valuation of $2 billion. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from existing backer Lightspeed, as well as BNP Paribas, CMA-CGM, Conviction, Elad Gil, General Catalyst, and Salesforce. The $16.3 million convertible investment that Microsoft made in Mistral AI as part of their partnership announced in February 2024 was presented as a Series A extension, implying an unchanged valuation. In June 2024, Mistral AI then raised €600 million in a mix of equity and debt (around $640 million at the exchange rate at the time). The long-rumored round was led by General Catalyst at a $6 billion valuation, with notable investors, including Cisco, IBM, Nvidia, Samsung Venture Investment Corporation, and others. What could a Mistral AI exit look like? Mistral is “not for sale,” Mensch said in January 2025 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “Of course, [an IPO is] the plan.”  This makes sense, given how much the startup has raised so far: Even a large sale may not provide high enough multiples for its investors, not to mention sovereignty concerns depending on the acquirer.  However, the only way to definitely squash persistent acquisition rumors is to scale its revenue to levels that could even remotely justify its nearly $6 billion valuation. Either way, stay tuned. This story was originally published on February 28, 2025 and will be regularly updated.

Who says that virtual reality (VR) is limited to gaming? Not Cas and Chary. Our team had the absolute pleasure of collaborating with the renowned duo on the Unity-sponsored YouTube video, AWESOME things to do in VR that’s NOT gaming.More than virtual reality’s reigning cutest couple, Cas and Chary are deeply passionate about showing how technology can improve our lives today – and shape the future. Here are just a few applications of Unity mentioned in the video that demonstrate how.During Cas and Chary’s segment on how VR can change the way we travel, they explored the Great Pyramids of Giza in Emissive’s Horizon of Khufu. This experience was designed in partnership with Peter Der Manuelian, professor of Egyptology and his team at the Giza Project at Harvard University. On the experience, CEO of Emissive Fabien Barati shared, “We are thrilled by the success of Horizon of Khufu. Both entertaining and educational, it shows how VR can be appealing to a wide audience.”With several years of research and data collected onsite, they managed to produce an immersive VR landscape that allows you to freely roam and discover one of the Seven Wonders of the World. A small group of us at Unity actually had the opportunity to try it at a pop-up in New York City, and we can confirm that it’s as magical as it sounds.“We are thrilled by the success of Horizon of Khufu. Both entertaining and educational, it shows how VR can be appealing to a wide audience.” – Fabien Barati, CEO of EmissiveTo quote Cas in the video, “You want a window that looks out to the universe? Done. You want five TVs instead of one? Done!” That’s where Custom Home Mapper comes in.It takes a one-to-one map of your home and brings it into the metaverse in three simple steps:Trace out the perimeter of your home.Mark out large objects, such as your couch or bed.Set your anchor, and you’re ready to start customizing your home for VR mini golf, or just about anything else you can imagine!The solo developer behind this SideQuest project, Ryan, explains why he created the app: “To help people experience real freedom of movement in VR. It was a joy to try and solve these unique, creative problems of multi-room gameplay and social home interactions.”Ryan acknowledges “The tremendous amount of support received from enthusiastic users who wanted to see the same dream realized… Couldn’t have asked for a more interesting project to keep busy with during Covid lockdowns!”We’ve been fans of Rezzil for a while now and couldn’t wait to introduce the app to Cas and Chary. Rezzil uses a VR headset with both eye- and feet-tracking to register a player’s skill level in a particular sport.Rezzil’s suite of drills helps athletes achieve excellence in specific modalities they need to improve. And it doesn’t end there: Rezzil puts players back into past matches so they can understand where there’s room to improve their performance. Top clubs like Manchester United F.C. and the Atlanta Falcons of the NFL are using the app, and while the team at Rezzil can’t say who, we know that at least five World Cup teams took the app with them to the competition.Our friends at Cause + Christi XR worked with six-time Emmy Award winner, Baobab Studios, to build a custom social VR world for the red carpet premiere of Baba Yaga. Daisy Ridley and Jennifer Hudson brought some star power to the virtual event and even took photos with fans in AltspaceVR.As Cas points out, doing premieres this way is fun and gives anyone with internet access and a headset the chance to join in. That’s our kind of guest list.BraVeR is doing something pretty spectacular. With intentionally designed VR spaces, this team is working to help people overcome their fears. All of the levels and tasks in BraVeR are tested by experts and users alike, and based on proven methods and studies to help people cope with their anxieties. Each of BraVeR’s unique spaces centers on a fear to offer a mutually challenging yet enjoyable experience.In the words of Moshe Radman, CEO of BraVeR, “I saw that there is a huge technological change coming at us and decided to use this change for good. Mental health is a great place to start. As I dug in more and more, I found out that this is an inefficient and overloaded market. But VR can radically help take the load off and make mental health-related solutions more accessible.”“VR can radically help take the load off and make mental health-related solutions more accessible.” – Moshe Radman, CEO of BraVeRWe can’t wait to see how extended reality (XR) will shape the future of product design and prototyping. One of the apps that gets us super excited about this is ShapesXR. Gabriele Romagnoli and his team created a product that’s intuitive to use, even for beginners in the XR space.Visualizing your thoughts with 3D sketching enables you to communicate in a way that isn’t really possible with traditional methods. Safe to say that Cas and Chary are thrilled with the app.“We’ve been in the XR space since 2015 and have seen that creatives still have a hard time contributing their skills and knowledge to this new world. We created ShapesXR with the mission to empower designers and any non-developers to ideate, design, and prototype immersive apps,” states Gabriele Romagnoli, Founder of ShapesXR.“Some of our users call us ‘the Figma for 3D and immersive’ and it is actually very spot on. ShapesXR is, in fact, easy to pick up, and you can mock up interactions in a way that is fully collaborative. We strongly believe that working together and being able to effectively communicate your ideas in real-time is the key to success.”For the construction folk among us, it’s impressive to see how Arkio has made it so much easier to design interiors, sketch buildings, and craft environments with our hands.As Cas says in the video, “It supports the right tools for the industry and it’s really, really powerful.” With Arkio, the only limit is your imagination.Transfr trains people for well-paying careers in high-demand fields. It enables learners to find secure jobs currently available and facilitates their upward mobility thanks to immersive, hands-on VR training.With complete VR courses, tailored to audiences at diverse educational institutions and companies, Transfr puts participants in simulations that teach real-world skills relevant to their career paths. They even include tests that are reviewed by instructors in specific fields. When Cas gave it a try, she had a blast learning about autobody tools.“There is so much undiscovered and underdeveloped talent in our world. These high-potential individuals are often passed over because they lack access to the training needed for well-paying careers at great companies,” says Bharani Rajakumar, CEO of Transfr.“VR allows us to deliver on-the-job training at a massive scale to support the economic development needs of different communities, so that employers get what they want, a highly skilled workforce – and we get what we want, a pathway to upward mobility. By working with everyone in the ecosystem, from customers to technologists, we are creating pathways, from classroom to career, that can help workers and learners access new skills and a better quality of life.”We’d like to see more XR experiences created for younger generations. After all, they hold the future of these technologies.That’s why the Kai XR platform is so exciting. Created by educators, it provides students with the ability to explore the world of immersive tech. Schools, libraries, and extracurricular programs like summer camps across the United States are using the platform to show students what’s possible with XR.According to Kai XR CEO Kai Frazier, “Kai XR works with a wide variety of students ranging from those at juvenile detention centers to charter schools. Some students are expert coders while others don’t know what coding is. From working with a range of experiences, I wanted to create a makerspace that lets all students dive into their imaginations, and doesn’t limit them due to schools lacking the tools or experience to create. All of their ideas are valuable and it’s great to see what they create in our drag-and-drop Metaverse Makerspace, Kai XR Create.”“I wanted to create a makerspace that lets all students dive into their imaginations, and doesn’t limit them due to schools lacking the tools or experience to create.” – Kai Frazier, CEO of Kai XRThe combined forces of Varjo Technologies and Volvo have done some stellar work with Unity. The two companies first came together to create a digital twin of the entire car factory – Volvo’s own metaverse. Engineers and designers can now show each other exactly what they envision in VR with an interactive 3D model.As Cas states in the video, this has resulted in improved collaboration, faster design iteration, and accelerated development. Working together in the metaverse, from start to finish, has been beneficial for Volvo, and it could not have happened without the incredible people at Varjo.And now, it’s time to enjoy more awesome things you can do in VR outside of gaming. Let Cas and Chary take it away.Are you using Unity for something other than games?If you’re using Unity for a unique project, give us a shout on social media.Follow Unity for Digital Twins on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram. For more on Unity for Digital Twins, check out our recent demo or our new kickstarter package.

In The Electric State, based on a graphic novel by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag, after a robot uprising in an alternative version of the 1990s, an orphaned teenager goes on a quest across the American West, with a cartoon-inspired robot, a smuggler, and his sidekick, to find her long-lost brother. Adapting this sci-fi adventure for Netflix were Joe and Anthony Russo; their film stars Millie Bobbie Brown, Chris Pratt, Stanley Tucci, Giancarlo Esposito and a cast of CG automatons voiced by the likes of Woody Harrelson, Alan Tudyk, Hank Azaria, and Anthony Mackie.  Overseeing the visual effects, which surpassed what the Russos had to deal with during their halcyon MCU days, was Matthew Buttler, who turned to the venerable Digital Domain. As the main vendor, the studio was responsible for producing 61 character builds, 480 assets, and over 850 shots. “It was one of the biggest projects that I’ve done in terms of sheer volumes of assets, shots and characters,” states Joel Behrens, VFX Supervisor, Digital Domain.  “Our wonderful asset team did the 61 characters we were responsible for and had to ingest another 46 characters from other facilities.  We didn’t do any major changes. It was pushing our pipeline to the limits it could handle, especially with other shows going on. We took up a lot of disk space and had the ability to expand and contract the Renderfarm with cloud machines as well.” In researching for the show, Digital Domain visited Boston Dynamics to better understand the technological advancements in robotics, and what structures, motions, and interactions were logical and physically plausible.  “There is a certain amount of fake engineering that goes into some of these things,” notes Behrens.  “We’re not actually building these robots to legitimately function in the real world but have to be visibly believable that they can actually pull some of this stuff off.”  The starting point is always the reference material provided by the client.  “Is there a voice that I need to match to?” notes Liz Bernard, Animation Supervisor, Digital Domain.  “Is there any physical body reference either from motion reference actors in the plate or motion capture? We had a big mix of that on the show.  Some of our characters couldn’t be mocapped at all while others could but we had to modify the performance considerably.  We were also looking at the anatomy of each one of these robots to see what their physical capabilities are.  Can they run or jump?  Because that’s always going to tie tightly with the personality.  Your body in some ways is your personality.  We’re trying to figure out how do we put the actor’s voice on top of all these physical limitations in a way that feels cohesive.  It doesn’t happen overnight.”  The character design of Cosmo was retained from the graphic novel despite not being feasible to engineer in reality.  “His feet are huge,” laughs Bernard.  “We had to figure out how to get him to walk in a way that felt normal and put the joints in the right spots.” Emoting was mainly achieved through physicality.  “He does have these audio clips from the Kid Cosmo cartoon that he can use to help express himself verbally, but most of it is pantomime,” observes Bernard.  “There is this great scene between Cosmo and Michelle that occurs right after she crashes the car, and Cosmo is still trying to convince her who he is and why she should go off on this great search for her brother across the country.   We were trying to get some tough nuanced acting into these shots with a subtle head tilt or a little bit of a slump in the shoulders.”  A green light was inserted into the eyes.  “Matthew Butler likes robotic stuff and anything that we could do to make Cosmo feel more grounded in reality was helpful,” observes Behrens.  “We also wanted to prevent anyone from panicking and giving Cosmo a more animated face or allowing him to speak dialogue. We started off with a constant light at the beginning and then added this twinkle and glimmer in his eye during certain moments. We liked that and ended up putting it in more places throughout the film. Everybody says that the eyes are the windows to the soul so giving Cosmo something rather than a dark black painted spot on his face assisted in connecting with that character.”  Coming in four different sizes that fit inside one another - like a Russian doll - is Herman. Digital Domain looked after the eight-inch, four-foot and 20-foot versions while ILM was responsible for the 60-foot Herman that appears in the final battle.   “They were scaled up to a certain extent but consider that the joints on the 20-foot version of Herman versus the four-foot version need to be more robust and beefier because they’re carrying so much more weight,” remarks Bernard.  “We were focusing on making sure that the impact of each step rippled through the body in a way that made it clear how heavy a 20-foot robot carrying a van across a desert would be.  The smaller one can be nimbler and lighter on its feet.  There were similar physical limitations, but that weight was the big deal.”  Incorporated into the face of Herman is a retro-futuristic screen in the style of the 1980s and early 1990s CRT panels. “It has these RGB pixels that live under a thick plate of glass like your old television set,” explains Behrens.  “You have this beautiful reflective dome that goes over top of these cathode-ray-looking pixels that allowed us to treat it as a modern-day LED with the ability to animate his expressions, or if we wanted to, put symbols up. You could pixelized any graphical element and put it on Herman’s face.  We wanted to add a nonlinear decay into the pixels so when he changed expressions or a shape altered drastically you would have a slow quadratic decay of the pixels fading off as he switched expressions. That contributed a nice touch.” One member of the robot cast is an iconic Planters mascot.  “Everybody knows who Mr. Peanut is and what he looks like, at least in North America,” observes Behrens.  “We had to go through a lot of design iterations of how his face should animate. It was determined that as a slightly older model of robot he didn’t have a lot of dexterity in his face. We were modelling him after Chuck E. Cheese and ShowBiz Pizza animatronics, so it was like a latex shell over the top of a mechanical under structure that drove his limited expressions. It allowed him to open and close his mouth and do some slight contractions at the corners, leaving most of the acting to his eyes, which did not have as many restrictions. The eyes had the ability to move quickly, and dart and blink like a human.”  The eyebrows were mounted tracks that ran up and down a vertical slot on the front of the face.  “We could move the eyebrows up and down, and tilt them, but couldn’t do anything else,” states Bernard.  “It was trying to find a visual language that would get the acting across with Woody Harrelson’s amazing performance backing it up.  Then a lot of pantomime to go with that.”  Mr. Peanut moves in a jerky rather than smooth manner.  “Here is a funny little detail,” reveals Bernard.  “If you think about a peanut shell, he doesn’t have a chest or hips that can move independently.  We realized early on that in order to get him to walk without teeter-tottering everywhere, we were going to have to cut his butt off, reattach it and add a swivel control on the bottom.  We always kept that peanut silhouette intact; however, he could swivel his hips enough to walk forward without looking silly!”  Other notable robots are Pop Fly and Perplexo; the former is modelled on baseball player, the latter on a magician.  “We decided that Pop Fly would be the clunkiest of all robots because he was meant to be the elder statesman,” states Behrens.  “Pop Fly was partially falling apart, like his eye would drift, the mouth would hang open and sometimes he’d pass out for a second and wake back up.  Pop Fly was the scavenger hunter of the group who has seen stuff in the battles of the wasteland. We came up with a fun pitching mechanism so he could actually shoot the balls out of his mouth and of course, there was his trusty baseball bat that he could bat things with.” An interesting task was figuring out how to rig his model.  “We realized that there needed to be a lot of restrictions in his joints to make him look realistic based on how he was modelled in the first place,” notes Bernard.  “Pop Fly couldn’t rotate his head in every direction; he could turn it from side to side for the most part.  Pop Fly was on this weird structure with the four wheels on a scissor lift situation which meant that he always had to lean forward to get going and when stopping, would rock backwards.  It was fun to add all that detail in for him.”  Serving as Perplexo’s upper body is a theatrical box that he pops in and out of.  “Perplexo did not have a whole lot going on with his face,” remarks Bernard.  “It was a simple mechanical structure to his jaw, eyes, and eyelids; that meant we could push the performance with pantomime and crazy big gestures with the arms.”               A major adversary in the film is The Marshall, portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito, who remotely controls a drone that projects the face of operator onto a video screen.  “We started with a much smaller screen and had a cowboy motif for awhile, but then they decided to have a unifying design for the drones that are operated by humans versus the robots,” remarks Behrens.  “Since the artist Simon Stålenhag had done an interesting, cool design with the virtual reality helmets with that long duckbill that the humans wear in the real world, the decision was made to mimic that head style of the drones to match the drone operators. Then you could put a screen on the front; that’s how you see Ted [Jason Alexander] or The Marshall or the commando operators. It worked out quite nicely.”   There was not much differentiation in the movement of the drones.  “The drones were meant to be in the vein of Stormtroopers, a horde of them being operated by people sitting in a comfortable room in Seattle,” observes Bernard. “So, they didn’t get as much effort and love as we put into the rest of the robots which had their own personalities. But for The Marshall, we have great mocap to start from Adam Croasdell. He played it a little bit cowboy, which was how Giancarlo Esposito was portraying the character as well, like a Western sheriff style vibe. You could hear that in the voice.  Listening to Giancarlo’s vocal performance gives you a lot of clues of what you should do when you’re moving that character around.  We put all of that together in the performance of The Marshall.”   Many environments had to either be created or augmented, such as the haunted amusement park known as Happyland. “The majority of the exterior of Happyland was a beautiful set that Dennis Gassner and his crew built in a parking lot of a waterslide park in Atlanta,” states Behrens.  “We would go there at night and freeze our butts off shooting for a good two and a half weeks in the cold Atlanta winter.  Most of our environmental work was doing distance extensions for that and adding atmospherics and fog.  We made all the scavenger robots that inhabit Happyland, which are cannibalistic robotics that upgrade and hot rod themselves from random parts taken from the robots that they kill.  Once we get into the haunted house and fall into the basement, that’s where Dr. Amherst has his lab, which was modelled off a 1930s Frankenstein set, with Tesla coils, beakers, and lab equipment.  That was initially a set build we did onstage in Atlanta. But when we got into additional photography, they wanted to do this whole choreographed fight with The Marshall and Mr. Peanut. Because they didn’t know what actions we would need, we ended up building that entire lower level in CG.”   At one point, all the exiled robots gather at the Mall within the Exclusion Zone.  “We were responsible for building a number of the background characters along with Storm Studios and ILM,” remarks Behrens.  “As for the mall, we didn’t have to do much to the environment.  There were some small things here and there that had to be modified.  We took over an abandoned mall in Atlanta and the art department dressed over half of it.” The background characters were not treated haphazardly. “We assigned two or three characters to each animator,” explains Bernard.  “I asked them to make a backstory and figure out who this guy is, what does he care about, and who is his mama?!  Put that into the performance so that each one feels unique and different because they have their own personalities.  There is a big central theme in the movie where the robots are almost more human than most of the humans you meet.  It was important to us that we put that humanity into their performances. As far as the Mall and choreography, Matthew, Joel and I knew that was going to be a huge challenge because this is not traditional crowd work where you can animate cycles and give it to a crowds department and say, ‘Have a bunch of people walking around.’  All these characters are different; they have to move differently and do their own thing.  We did a first pass on the big reveal in the Mall where you swing around and see the atrium where everybody is doing their thing.  We essentially took each character and moved them around like a chess piece to figure out if we had enough characters, if the color balanced nicely across all of them, and if it was okay for us to duplicate a couple of them.  We started to show that early to Matthew and Jeffrey Ford [Editor, Executive Producer], and the directors to get buyoff on the density of the crowd.”    Considered one of the film’s signature sequences is the walk across the Exclusion Zone, where 20-foot Herman is carrying a Volkswagen van containing Michelle, Cosmo and Keats on his shoulder.  “We did a little bit of everything,” notes Behrens.  “We had plate-based shots because a splinter unit went out to Moab, Utah and shot a bunch of beautiful vistas for us.  For environments, there were shots where we had to do projections of plate material onto 3D geometry that we built. We had some DMPs that went into deep background. We also had to build out some actual legitimate 3D terrain for foreground and midground because a lot of the shots that had interaction with our hero characters rocking and back forth were shot on a bluescreen stage with a VW van on a large gimbal rig.  Then Liz had the fun job of trying to tie that into a giant robot walking with them.  We had to do some obvious tweaking to some of those motions. The establishing shots, where they are walking through this giant dead robot skeleton from who knows where, several of those were 100 percent CG. Once they get to the Mall, we had a big digital mall and a canyon area that had to look like they were once populated.”  Modifications were kept subtle.  “There were a couple of shots where we needed to move the plate VW van around a little bit,” states Bernard.  “You can’t do a lot without it starting to fall apart and lose perspective.”  “The biggest challenge was the scale and sheer number of characters needed that played a large role interacting with our human actors and creating a believable world for them to live in,” reflects Behrens.  “The sequence that I had the most fun with was the mine sequence with Herman and Keats, as far as their banter back and forth. Some of our most expansive work was the Mall and the walk across the Exclusion Zone.  Those had the most stunning visuals.”  Bernard agrees with her colleague.  “I’m going to sound like a broken record.  For me, it was the scale and the sheer number of characters that we had to deal with and keeping them feeling that they were all different, but from the same universe.  Having the animators working towards that same goal was a big challenge.  We had quite a large team on this one.  And I do love that mine sequence.  There is such good banter between Keats and Herman, especially early on in that sequence.  It has so much great action to it.  We got to drop a giant claw on top of The Marshall that he had to fight his way out of.  That was a hard shot.  And of course, the Mall is stunning.  You can see all the care that went into creating that environment and all those characters.  It’s beautiful.”      Trevor Hogg is a freelance video editor and writer best known for composing in-depth filmmaker and movie profiles for VFX Voice, Animation Magazine, and British Cinematographer.