Vizio has announced its 2016 line of SmartCast M-Series displays for home theater fans are now shipping. The entire M-Series range features Ultra HD resolution, high dynamic range, and a fancy 6-inch tablet remote control. That remote control runs the Android operating system and has the Vizio SmartCast app integrated. The Vizio SmartCast app has integrated Google Cast making it … Continue reading
Music fans probably recognize the name will.i.am, he is more than a musician these days with his own i.am technology company. i.am has launched a new set of premium earphones called the i.am+ EPs that aim to be different in a market that is packed with mostly sports solutions. The hallmark of the design for the EPs is a shape … Continue reading
To date and last we checked, Sony had managed to sell 40 million PlayStation 4 units. Analysts are expecting that by 2019, Sony will be able to sell as many as 69 million units but it turns out that Sony is more optimistic about their sales. According to the company’s recently released financials, they think that by April 2017, they will be able to ship as many as 60 million PS4 consoles.
Of course we don’t have to tell you that shipped and sold are two very different things. Shipped would simply mean that these consoles are going out to retailers who will then sell them to gamers. Sold would mean the actual units sold. However shipment is sometimes based on demand, so for Sony to think that in the next year there will be a demand for 20 million units of PS4s is rather optimistic.
That being said, there are rumors that Sony is preparing a PS4 Neo which is basically an upgraded version of the PS4 console. There is also the PlayStation VR, so combine both of that and we’re probably looking at a lot of renewed interest, or new interest from gamers who might have otherwise passed on buying a PS4.
It remains to be seen if Sony will be successful and correct in their estimates, but what say you? Could we see 60 million PS4s shipped by April 2017?
Sony Thinks They Can Ship 60 Million PS4s By April 2017 , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Torrent apps are a dime a dozen on PCs and Macs, but consoles? As it turns out, the Xbox One will be getting its very own torrent app in the form of the Torrex Pro. Torrex Pro is a torrent app that is available on Windows 10 devices, so it is somewhat established and it will be interesting to see what Xbox gamers will be able to do with it.
The developers of the app recently revealed that they are working to help lay the groundwork for the Universal Windows App. The app will feature a built-in media player which means that you can download videos and watch it in the app without leaving it, although given that apart from downloading games and approved videos/files, access to the Xbox One’s hard drive isn’t something that Microsoft allows gamers.
What this means is that it is unclear as to what the benefits are to downloading and owning a torrent app on your Xbox since using it will probably be different from using it on the PC. Not to mention the copyright issues and piracy issues where it could be seen as Microsoft semi-facilitating piracy by allowing a torrent app on the Xbox One.
In any case we guess we’ll find out more about the app and the extent of its capabilities on the Xbox One following the Anniversary Update for Windows 10, but in the meantime anyone have any ideas?
Xbox One To Get Its Own Torrent App , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
We’re not sure if it is Samsung or just this year in general, but lately we have been seeing a fair number of buy-one-get-one (BOGO) offers for Samsung devices offered by carriers and retailers. Now according to a recent leak, it seems that we can soon add another Samsung handset to the list in the form of the Galaxy S7 Active.
You might be thinking how is this possible since the handset hasn’t been released yet? You would be right, although as it stands the Galaxy S7 Active is probably one of the worst kept secrets in tech right now along with the iPhone 7, thanks to numerous leaks and rumors about its specs and features.
That being said, the latest leak has suggested that at the launch of the handset, AT&T will be offering a BOGO deal right out of the door. From what we can tell, customers will be required to add a new line to their AT&T account in order to qualify for this deal. It is unclear as to how much the phone will cost, but the fine print says that the deal is only valid until the 30th of June.
Last we checked, the Galaxy S7 Active was due for a launch of the 10th of June. Its specs appear to be similar to the regular Galaxy S7, except that it will pack a larger 4,000mAh battery and also protective features like drop, water, and dust resistance.
Samsung Galaxy S7 Active Could Be Getting A BOGO Deal At AT&T , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Why the violin?
Marina Fragoulis isn’t quite sure why she chose it. She was 10, and all she knew was that, for no particular reason, she didn’t want to play the saxophone.
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Marina’s from Crete.
She and the wind instrument were almost paired because Marina had taken an aptitude test at school and scored so high that her teachers recommended she embrace the brash brass.
Marina might well have followed their advice because she was new not only to the school but also to the state and the United States.
It was a transfer by the U.S. Navy that brought her Greek parents to Virginia Beach, Virginia, from Chania, the second largest city on the isle of Crete.
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Her music lessons started when she came to America.
At any rate, music seemed like a good pursuit for Marina because it put her on a more level playing field: Unlike her schoolmates, she didn’t know English, but nobody in her class knew how to read music.
“Music is a form of expression,” says Marina, a tall woman with long, golden hair. “It’s about releasing your emotions, but most of the time, it’s hard, disciplined work, and I like that. Sitting down and playing scales and etudes is like perfecting your ABCs.”
Marina is content to practice two to four hours every morning; her afternoons and evenings are devoted to her nearly 5-year-old son, Marko, her husband, Evangelos Viglis, her music students and performances.
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Her husband’s the guitar player.
It wasn’t always this way. After she graduated from the Mannes School of Music in Manhattan, she supplemented her income with an array of freelance jobs, eventually taking a full-time position as the music teacher at P.S. 125 in Harlem.
“Being a teacher didn’t give me time to be a musician,” she says. “I was unfulfilled just teaching, and I had to give up many gigs.”
After five years, she quit to rebuild her freelance schedule.
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Marina practices in the morning.
“I don’t want to know where I am every Monday morning,” she says. “With freelance, I get to see different people all the time. It’s a very social job.”
In her case, it’s also a very eclectic one. In addition to performing in a variety of venues including Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall, Marina is the principal second violinist and occasional concertmaster of the Astoria Symphony Orchestra.
She also is the founder of Dorian Baroque, a chamber orchestra that plays music from the late 1500s to the 1850s on period instruments following period playing protocol.
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Marina is a teacher and performer.
This is not as straightforward — or esoteric — as it sounds.
The violin, for instance, may look the same to the novice’s eye, but it has changed a lot in 500 years. The bridge and bow are different, and the chin rest is a 19th-century addition. The modern sound, produced by strings of steel instead of gut, is louder.
“We don’t dress in period costumes or do re-enactments,” she says. “Instead, we put ourselves in the sound world of the composer.”
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
She’s the founder of Dorian Baroque.
The Baroque sound, to our ears opulent, exuberant, dissonant and ornately grand, is free-ranging.
“With classical music, you have to play it exactly as it is written,” Marina says. “But with Baroque music, you get to embellish and improvise.”
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
She’s a longtime player in the Astoria Symphony Orchestra.
And that’s what she really relishes.
As she’s talking, Marko walks into the living room. Recently, he’s shown an interest in Byzantine chant music.
Soon, he’ll be taking violin lessons, but not from his mother. Marina’s students are older.
Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Music, she says, is all about rules and discipline.
When Marina is not in the classroom or on stage, she’s usually in the kitchen.
“I love the technical aspect of cooking,” she says. “I love the rules, and it, like my music, allows me to work through problems.”
When she puts her violin back in its case, she reaches for a cup of coffee.
Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com; @nancyruhling on Twitter; nruhling on Instagram. Copyright 2016 by Nancy A. Ruhling
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Nearly 6,000 members of the U.S. military self-identify as Muslim, according to the Pentagon. Their next commander-in-chief could be a man who has called for a blanket ban on all people of their faith from entering the U.S.
Here, in his own words, is the story of how one immigrant — who happens to be Muslim — joined the U.S. Army, fought overseas, became a citizen, won a Bronze Star, and is now worried about the possibility of raising his children in a country where Donald Trump is president.
Hanif Sangi and his wife Kanwal live in Elliott City, Maryland, with their three children. Sangi works for the federal government as an engineer.
I came to the United States in 1999 from Pakistan and my first thought was, “How can I serve this great country?” In 2000, as many migrants to this country have done, I joined the United States military. I served in the U.S Army’s 1st Cavalry Division and in the Army’s elite Special Forces.
When I was deployed into harm’s way and my family remained stateside, I was diligent to honor the flag and American values, to preserve our way of life and our constitutional freedoms. America’s enemies were my enemies, and still are.
My name is Hanif Sangi, and I am an American, an immigrant, a Muslim, a U.S Army veteran who served in combat, and a recipient of the Bronze Star for heroism.
Pakistan is a different society. You need to know somebody to get a job. There’s a lot of corruption going on. When I graduated from the prestigious Mehran University of Engineering and Technology in Jamshoro, I had a very hard time finding a job. And I was poor. My father was poor. We didn’t know anybody and we had no money. I decided I needed to go. I needed to leave this country.
We didn’t have cell phones or Internet then, but I was looking at a newspaper and it said that the U.S. green card lottery was the best option.
So I was just having tea together with college friends one day, and I received big packet in mail from the national visa center in D.C. I had never received such a big package before, so I knew it was something that should be exciting. It had a green letter inside.
I started screaming! It said, “Congratulations! You have been randomly selected for the visa lottery” out of millions of people. That was a big big deal for me. I still have that copy in my file, the original envelope and everything.
Coming to the U.S. was the best decision I ever made.
I had never gone anywhere outside of Pakistan. It was my first time here. I arrived in New York and had a connecting flight to LA. Of course it was a new land, a new country, a new language. I’d never had any interaction with Americans except for the visa interview at the embassy. It was a moment of excitement, coming to the land of opportunity. I was very happy, very excited to be here.
There were many opportunities here from Pakistani businessmen offering me the chance to be a manager at one of their stores — but money wasn’t my priority. I needed to serve this country in any capacity I could. I needed to learn the language and integrate into society. That was my first priority. I went online to the army website.
In the army, was given time to go to Friday prayers in boot camp. I was given a meal in the middle of the night and exempted from physical fitness training during Ramadan when I was fasting. I never thought that would happen in the army. I have been blessed, yes.
I was trusted in the military. That’s not gonna happen anywhere in world, I believe. I had a Pakistani passport but I was responsible for all the weapons in my unit. To be Pakistani and have someone trust you with this kind of thing, I believe no other country will trust you or give you the opportunity.
I was at Fort Hood in Texas on Sept. 11. We had morning formation every morning. We were driving to that, as part of duty, and listening to the radio. Then throughout the day, everyone was in shock. We were watching TV all day, looking at these horrible pictures all day.
Because of my cultural knowledge, I reached out to the special forces and offered my services.
I was a regional expert for South Asia. I trained special forces about the culture, about the religion, about the language in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I worked at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. I assisted the Pakistani military. I served in Afghanistan with the United States Army’s Special Operations Command, completed two short tours. I was involved in multiple operations where we faced the enemy.
I’m not allowed to go into all the details of why I received the Bronze Star for heroism. It was for a special ops detail, a supporting task force, and part of the global war on terrorism team. It was a combat role.
I got my citizenship in 2003 while in the military. A judge held the ceremony in court in San Antonio, Texas. That was a great moment, a very exciting moment. That was the biggest reward for my family. I was looking to sponsor my parents for a green card so they could come and see me and my family. I couldn’t do that as a green card holder, but I could as a U.S. citizen.
I was invited by the White House to President Barack Obama’s first visit to a mosque this February. It was great. We wanted to hear from him. He specifically told everyone, “You are American and Muslim.” Saying that on national media and global media — that the Islamic State and Muslims are not the same — was a big moment for us.
My parents now come here often. They stay with us, and stay with the kids while we’re at work. When you have Trump telling people, “We will block all Muslims from entering the U.S.,” it would mean I cannot see my dad, I cannot see my mom, even though I served in the military, fought in wars, have a Bronze Star, and now work for the federal government. But I would be unable to meet with my parents because they are Muslim?
We can’t turn on Fox News or our kids will freak out. My son Aariz asked me, “Daddy, Trump just won Florida. He’s getting closer to winning the nomination and chances are increasing for him to be president. He’ll build a wall and kick us out. What are we gonna do?” I really had no words to reply to him. He may be right. I tell him, “Nothing is going to happen to you.”
We go to the local halal market for groceries and spices and other things. A few weeks ago, somebody vandalized the halal market in Columbia, Maryland, ran a truck into the door at night. So my kids not only hear about Trump, but they also see this kind of thing.
I want to ask Trump: Have you or your children ever done something to serve this country? Done something so our American people can sleep at night? Have you done anything? Have you gone overseas? Name one contribution that you’ve done except making money for yourself. Have you done anything for the American people you can be proud of? All they have done is gone after the money, and built the buildings. Has Mr. Trump put his life in danger to serve this country?
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
WASHINGTON — Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump doesn’t hesitate to use the word “rape” when talking about Mexican immigrants, the Chinese government or former President Bill Clinton — all of whom it helps him politically to condemn.
But in other cases — like when the person accused of sexual misconduct is a wealthy or powerful man who doesn’t happen to be married to Hillary Clinton — Trump is less enthusiastic about assigning blame. In fact, he’s been known to promote misleading and damaging ideas about victims, which fits into his larger pattern of misogyny.
On Monday, Trump released an attack ad featuring audio clips of Juanita Broaddrick, a woman who in 1999 accused Bill Clinton of rape. Trump used the word “rape” in an interview with Fox News last week to describe Broaddrick’s claims. He also tweeted last week that Clinton was “the WORST abuser of wom[e]n in U.S. political history.” (Bill Clinton attended Trump’s 2005 wedding to Melania Knauss, and Trump has praised the former president in the past, before Hillary Clinton became his biggest political opponent.)
In June 2015, Trump famously said that Mexico was sending “rapists” to the U.S. and proposed building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. He later tried to defend his comments by citing a Fusion story noting that 80 percent of Central American women and girls crossing into the United States are raped. When CNN’s Don Lemon pointed out that the story was about victims, Trump replied: “Well, somebody’s doing the raping, Don! I mean somebody’s doing it! Who’s doing the raping?”
In 1989, Trump helped lead the witch hunt against the so-called Central Park Five, a group of black and Hispanic teenagers in New York City who were wrongfully convicted of raping and assaulting a white female jogger that year. Before the boys had a trial, Trump reportedly paid $85,000 for newspaper ads calling to bring back the death penalty. He called out then-Mayor Ed Koch — whom Trump had recently battled over real estate — for wanting “hate and rancor removed from our hearts.” Trump wrote, “I want to hate these muggers and murderers.”
But there have been plenty of cases where Trump, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment for this article, didn’t advocate quite so forcefully for women.
In 2013, Trump tweeted a statistic about the high number of unreported sexual assaults in the military. He added, “What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?” — seemingly suggesting that when women are in the same place as men, it’s just inevitable that they’ll be assaulted. In another tweet, he claimed that “the Generals and top military brass never wanted a mixer but were forced to do it by very dumb politicians who wanted to be politically C!”
In 2011, when comedian Jon Stewart skewered GOP presidential hopeful Herman Cain over sexual harassment allegations, Trump jumped to Cain’s defense, calling Stewart’s segment “very very racist.”
And in 2014, Trump suggested that Bill Cosby, who has to date been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 50 women, needed to step up his public relations game.
“Well, I think it’s very sad and frankly I don’t think he’s handling it well,” Trump told E! News. “To have absolutely no comment, I think, he’s getting very bad advice from a PR standpoint, and he should do it differently.”
When asked in August 2015 whether he would like to see the Cosby investigations reopened, Trump dodged the question.
“I’ve never been a fan,” he told The Hollywood Reporter of Cosby. “I had one bad experience with him. I was on Letterman and he was following me on the show. He said, ‘Oh, I want to buy you a suit.’ It was nice, he bought me a suit. And then he was on [the “Today” show], and my name was mentioned, and he went absolutely crazy. And I said, ‘What the hell was that all about?'”
In 1992, Trump leaped to the defense of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who had been convicted of raping an 18-year-old Miss Black America contestant. In stark contrast to how he would later treat Juanita Broaddrick’s accusations against Clinton, Trump publicly cast doubt on Tyson’s victim. He remarked that year that the woman “knocked on [Tyson’s] door at 1 a.m. and was up and dancing at eight the next morning” — implying that there is a “right” way for rape victims to act, and this woman didn’t follow the rules.
While Tyson was awaiting sentencing for that conviction, Trump also argued that instead of serving time in prison, the boxer should be allowed to participate in an upcoming fight and donate proceeds to the teenager and other “rape and abuse” victims.
“What has happened to him, the conviction, is already punitive,” Trump said, according to the Associated Press. “The victim has had the satisfaction of humbling him and being vindicated.”
As Mother Jones reported, Trump, who had advised Tyson in the past, stood to gain financially if the fight was hosted at one of his casinos.
A reporter asked Trump whether he would also encourage a victim to accept cash from a rapist if that victim was his sister.
“I think,” Trump replied, “every individual situation is different.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
NEW YORK — Mohamad Al-Bacha was shook. He stared blankly out over the capacity crowd of 1,500 in Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater, dropped his Xbox controller onto his lap, bent at the waist and buried his head in his hands.
Al-Bacha, a 17-year-old from Denmark, had cruised through the first two days of the FIFA Interactive World Cup — the video game equivalent of soccer’s biggest spectacle — without so much as conceding a goal.
But in the two-match final in late March, Al-Bacha’s impenetrable defense finally broke. Al-Bacha gave up two goals in the first match, settling for a disappointing 2-2 draw. Now, with just minutes remaining in the second match, his opponent, Sean Allen of England, had scored again to take a 3-1 lead, securing a 5-3 advantage between the two matches. All Al-Bacha could do was hang his head and rub his eyes as the crowd erupted around him.
“FIFA,” which EA Sports first launched in 1993 with an exclusive licensing agreement with soccer’s governing body, is an absurdly popular video game. It ranks among the 15 best-selling video games of all time, and is one of just a handful of titles to sell more than 100 million copies.
But over the past decade, many video games have changed from solitary or small-group activities to spectator activities known as e-sports — and “FIFA” hasn’t kept pace.
In 2014, more than 27 million people watched the world championship for “League of Legends,” the planet’s most popular video game. Professional gamers command endorsement deals and six-figure salaries. The top tournaments have million-dollar prizes. The e-sports industry is already worth half a billion dollars, and it could generate over a billion dollars in revenue by the end of the decade.
Broadcasters, sports teams, leagues and game manufacturers like EA are investing in events like the FIFA Interactive Cup because they want a piece of that billion-dollar business.
But almost no one watches “FIFA,” or any other e-sport based on a real-life sport.
Instead, the most popular e-sports are team-based games where people play as soldiers, superheroes or legendary beasts, not athletes. Why play as virtual Cristiano Ronaldo or Leo Messi when you can be a commando, a superhero or a mythical creature? To vault “FIFA” into the top tier of spectator e-sports, EA will have to convince people that watching someone play a video-game version of baseball, football or soccer is just as fun as the real thing — and that it’s as fun as watching superheroes fight, too.
That’s a tall order.
Alexi Lalas, the former U.S. Men’s National Team star who is now an analyst on Fox Sports’ international soccer coverage, watched the FIFA Interactive final from the back of the theater as part of the broadcast team streaming the event across the world. Lalas has played in two World Cups, including the 1994 event, which helped launch a new wave of soccer popularity in the United States. This was his first time at the virtual tournament.
“I am hyped,” Lalas said at the top of the broadcast. “I am going crazy. I cannot wait to see somebody crowned the best in the world. It doesn’t matter what it is, I love to see someone crowned the best in the world.”
Perhaps it was genuine sentiment. But there was at least a hint of salesmanship in the former soccer star’s voice too. In those earliest moments, as Lalas tried to dramatize the event and convince the audience it was a big deal, it sounded as though he still needed to persuade himself, too.
Afterward, Lalas — who’d peppered co-host Spencer FC, a popular gamer and “FIFA” YouTube personality, with questions about the tournament throughout the broadcast — admitted he hadn’t totally known what to expect.
“It was definitely…” he said, “different.”
Competitive gaming once consisted of “a bunch of kids playing video games” at parties in small hotel ballrooms, said Craig Levine, a longtime gamer who is now the chief executive of the American division of the Electronic Sports League.
Today, competitive gaming is one of the fastest growing “sports” in the world. In Seoul, for instance, e-sports are “more popular with teenagers than baseball,” ESPN The Magazine’s Mina Kimes wrote last year.
While titles like “League of Legends,” an open-source and free online strategy game, have reached mass audiences in recent years, sports games never caught fire as competitive products, at least not professionally. That is in part because sports games focused their growth on Xbox and PlayStation — consoles that until the last decade had more limited online gaming capabilities than PCs.
Al-Bacha began playing “FIFA” in 2011, when he was a 12-year-old football fanatic. He turned his focus to gaming when he realized he probably didn’t have a future on the actual field.
“I was all right, but I was like, ‘I probably ain’t going to be nothing,’” Al-Bacha said. “I just loved football, and I wasn’t that good in real life, so I decided to play football on a virtual pitch.”
In the mid-2000s, the most popular sports titles began to develop advanced online modes, like “FIFA”‘s Ultimate Team function, that allowed players like Al-Bacha to play more competitive opponents than the friends he’d grown tired of beating.
FIFA and EA Sports launched the Interactive World Cup in 2004 as a bare-bones, eight-player tournament at the soccer organization’s headquarters in Zurich. It remained small in its early years, but its growth has accelerated: Thirty-two players qualified for this year’s grand finale in 2016, and for the first time in the tournament’s 12-year history, EA Sports signed a major broadcast partner, Fox Sports, to televise the semifinal and final matches.
But even before Fox’s cameras appeared on the final day of this year’s tournament, Michael Ribeiro, an American who made the semifinals at the 2008 tournament and lost in the quarterfinals this time around, noticed major changes from his first appearance in the final nearly a decade ago. The venues have improved, and so have the perks. Players are now treated to sightseeing tours around local attractions. In 2014, when the tournament was held in Rio de Janeiro, the finalists received tickets to watch a match in the actual World Cup. Prize money, too, has increased, albeit incrementally.
“I don’t think it’ll ever be as big [as other games],” Ribeiro said. “But it’s definitely growing. Comparing this to 2008? Not even close.”
In the last five years, “FIFA” has emerged as a major online gaming force — in 2013, gamers played more than 7.3 million online matches per day, according to EA Sports. By the next year, EA boasted that online gameplay had grown by 50 percent — “FIFA ’15” attracted 3.4 million online players on its first day of release.
That growth also spurred interest in the Interactive World Cup, which this year drew 2.3 million players to its worldwide qualifiers, in which players competed online for the 32 spots in the final — making it, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest e-sports competition in the world. In order to reach the final, Al-Bacha followed a similar path as national teams in the actual World Cup: He progressed through regional online qualifying stations to reach New York City, where he had to win his way out of a three-match group stage and a 16-player knockout phase.
With just 45 seconds of gameplay remaining, Al-Bacha won a free kick deep into Allen’s defensive territory. Instead of firing a shot on goal, he laid off a short pass to a wide-open attacker. A quick tap of the B button later, the ball was in the back of the net.
3-2.
The Apollo crowd, watching the action projected on a screen above the stage where Al-Bacha and Allen sat, roared to life. The typical sounds of soccer — the rising wave of anticipatory cheers when a player springs open in front of goal, the desperate gasps and groans when a shot hits the post or the keeper makes a diving save — had filled the theater all night. Now, the entire crowd was on edge. A match they’d thought was over, just moments before, wasn’t quite yet — and thanks to an advantage in tiebreaker rules, Al-Bacha needed just one more goal to steal the title from Allen.
“You could really feel the energy,” Al-Bacha later said. “I’ve never experienced something like that. When you sit and watch football games in Denmark, the crowd is so dead, but that was just insane at the Apollo.”
The crowd buzzed again as Al-Bacha pressed pause and pushed four attackers to the front of his formation, a last-ditch tactical change to try to rescue the final.
The event’s play-by-play announcers, standing only feet away from the competitors, reminded the audience that just 30 seconds remained.
Allen tapped the ball back into play, and pressed forward down the right wing toward Al-Bacha’s waiting defenders. The crowd gasped as Al-Bacha took the ball back and fired a pass deep into Allen’s defensive area — one final, desperate attack.
If sports titles don’t have the deep roots of the games that dominate e-sports now, they may have a major advantage when it comes to creating their own boom. If the teams, leagues, companies and organizations that make up the infrastructure of global sports come to view competitive e-sports as a supplement to their popularity, rather than as a threat, that could unlock a new level of success for their virtual counterparts.
FIFA, soccer’s international organizing body for which the game is named, has for years understood that there is an overlap between the game of soccer and its video game series, and that many, if not most, of its gamers are also soccer players and fans of professional clubs. The number of online “FIFA” contests spikes during halftime of major soccer matches — a stat FIFA has cited in recent years to trumpet the fact that the game’s players are also soccer fans. In the United States, the rising popularity of “FIFA” has translated into increased American interest in professional soccer.
Individual teams are now starting to look at “FIFA”’s popularity the same way.
In February, VfL Wolfsburg, a top club in Germany’s domestic soccer league, signed Englishman David Bytheway as its official “FIFA” gaming representative. Bytheway, one of the world’s top “FIFA” players, now competes in international tournaments while wearing the club’s lime-green and blue jersey.
Other teams are showing interest in e-sports — FC Schalke, another German club, recently announced plans to create a “League of Legends” team — and if more clubs follow Wolfsburg into the “FIFA” market, it could boost interest in the games while helping promote and financially sustain a crop of elite gamers, the way professional e-sports teams have done in other genres.
“It’s groundbreaking in the competitive gaming scene. All it takes is just for one more team to get involved, and then it’s a domino effect,” said Bytheway, who was in New York to provide livestream updates for online audiences. “The game is so relatable to football clubs, so it’s kind of strange it’s taken this long for something like this to happen.”
E-sports leagues and teams are watching the development of competitive sports gaming closely, too, said Levine, the Electronic Sports League America CEO. The rise of sports games like “FIFA” could open doors to an entirely new group of fans and players.
“Seeing the way different genres can broaden out the appeal of players to us is really interesting,” Levine said. “Maybe one of the big e-sports organizations… picks up a ‘FIFA’ player, and now you’re cross-pollinating a fan. You see they’re playing a ‘League of Legends’ match and you don’t know anything about the game, but you know you like their ‘FIFA’ player, so you get into it.”
The biggest development, however, may be EA Sports’ major new investment in e-sports. In the next few months, the company plans to launch its own competitive gaming division, and while it won’t be solely focused on sports games, “FIFA” and the “Madden NFL” series are expected to be a part of its early efforts, based on EA’s announcement of the new venture in December. In May, EA announced that it was launching another competitive tournament based around its “Ultimate Fighting Championship” game, with a grand finale to take place in Las Vegas this July.
Details of how much money EA has put into the e-sports market have been scarce since the December announcement, and the company would not comment for this story. But at the Interactive World Cup in March, FIFA marketing director Thierry Weil said his organization and EA have meetings planned for how to continue to grow “FIFA” and its marquee competitive tournament. “I’m convinced,” Weil said, “that today we have reached another stage of this game.”
Still, while top players in other games can earn millions, even the world’s best “FIFA” players barely scratch out enough to make a living.
Based on other companies’ investments, turning a title like “FIFA” into a major player in the competitive gaming world could cost as much as $10 million annually, said Peter Warman, the CEO of Newzoo, a European firm focused on market and data analysis of the gaming industry. It’s impossible to know whether EA will put that kind of weight behind “FIFA” or any other game, but Warman is “super-optimistic” about the company’s push into the e-sports world.
“That’s part of the success of any franchise,” Warman said. “Will they be one of the top five e-sports franchises globally with their sports? I doubt it. But I don’t think they should have that ambition. They should have the ambition to provide full-on entertainment for the fans of their franchises.”
A plunge into e-sports, Warman said, could have huge benefits for EA. In the old days of sports gaming, developers focused primarily on initial sales — that is, attracting an audience on the day of release. But gaming has changed and EA has evolved with it, building in features like “FIFA“‘s “Ultimate Team” that allow players to spend money to enhance their gaming experience on a day-to-day basis. That’s made “FIFA” and other titles more adaptable to the e-sports model, Warman said. While he wouldn’t put a number on the financial potential, a full-on investment in competitive gaming could allow EA to tap into new revenue streams: the sale of media rights to companies like Fox, new sponsorships, outside investments and more players.
Games based on actual sports have a place in the e-sports market, Warman believes. But part of capturing new audiences, he and Levine both suggested, involves something that other e-sports and traditional sports alike have mastered: highlights. Sports are full of the types of moments — diving catches, wonder goals, posterizing dunks — that can be replayed and Vined over and over again. Games like “League of Legends,” too, have marketed themselves through replays of thrilling, out-of-nowhere kills and skill moves that can be looped repeatedly.
“Traditional sports games don’t have so many unique, explosive moments to share” on platforms like Twitch, a major e-sports streaming service, Warman said. “It’s all about creating moments in the game that are shareable.”
In the last moments of the Interactive World Cup final, Al-Bacha delivered one.
With no more than 15 seconds left in the match, Al-Bacha’s attacker sprinted past Allen’s defenders.
Al-Bacha had gutted opponents all week with counterattacks and incisive through-balls that carved up his opponents’ defense. So in retrospect, what seemed unbelievable when it happened in the fleeting moments of the final was almost inevitable. Al-Bacha pressed the yellow Y button at the top of his controller and slid a hard pass into the path of his attacker, who gathered it just off the penalty spot. The crowd gasped as Al-Bacha tapped the B button to shoot, then erupted when the shot sliced past Allen’s keeper into the back of the net.
Allen’s shoulders sagged. Al-Bacha sprinted toward the front of the stage and leaped into the waiting arms of half a dozen fans. Around the theater, emotions bounced from raucous excitement to stunned disbelief. Even an hour later, pockets of spectators stood around the lobby of the theater, unwilling to leave, still shaking their heads and chuckling at what they’d witnessed.
Al-Bacha’s fellow competitors bounced him up and down in their arms so many times that his glasses fell to the floor. He wasn’t sure what to think.
“I don’t think anything actually went through my mind,” Al-Bacha said. “I was like, ‘What the hell is going on? This is not realistic. What have I just done?’”
Lalas, the veteran of two World Cups, watched from Fox’s set in the back of the theater, his 7-year-old son clinging to his leg. On the way to the Apollo, his son had picked Al-Bacha to win the title. Over two decades ago, Lalas and his World Cup teammates had created the moments that helped a nation fall in love with his sport. He knew his son would never stop talking about the moment he’d just witnessed, either.
“Maybe there was somebody at home watching on Fox tonight that was a young kid, a 7-year-old kid,” Lalas said, gesturing down to his own son. “That game that he’s playing, he sees Mohamad up there in that iconic victory pose, and says, ‘Man, that is cool.’”
“How can you not be excited about something like that?”
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Abortion may be a key issue for evangelical Christian voters, but Samantha Bee says that wasn’t always the case.
On Monday night, the “Full Frontal” host went back in time to the late 1970s to explain how the issue was manufactured by power-hungry leaders of the religious right and then legitimized by the Republican Party.
“Last week, we took a look at the religious right, those coveted evangelical voters that conservatives spent decades pandering to only to be dumped just before November prom for a heretical billionaire bully who only says the word ‘God’ when he is ejaculating on a pile of money,” said Bee.
“Many people think the new religious right arose as a response to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision,” she added. “But that’s not true.”
Bee played a clip showing Dartmouth religion professor Randall Balmer revealing how leaders of the religious right held a conference call in 1979 to discuss which issues they should politicize. One member suggested abortion.
“Wait, were they founding a movement or deciding what toppings to get on their pizza?” asked Bee. “Now they just needed to tell the rest of us that abortion was bad.”
Bee then spoke to filmmaker Frank Schaeffer, the son of prominent Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer, who produced propaganda videos (such as the one below) to promote the pro-life movement.
It was to become “the single greatest regret of my life,” Schaeffer said.
“Most evangelical leaders didn’t want anything to do with [the issue of abortion]. They wanted to just preach Jesus,” said Schaeffer. “They thought politics was dirty. They didn’t want anything to do with it. We had to talk them into it.”
Schaeffer said the religious right’s anti-abortion agenda was legitimized with the help of Jack Kemp, who went onto become President George H. W. Bush’s housing secretary.
“(Kemp) brought in 50 senators and congressmen including Henry Hyde and Bob Dole and a bunch of other people and gave it respectability,” Schaeffer said. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Check it out in the clip above.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
