Sure, there are plenty of posts from people who applied to a job and got an offer 30 seconds later. Good for them. But if you're on this sub, you're probably running into more difficulty. I did. Job hunting these days is inherently pretty hard, but there are plenty of things I did wrong during my job hunt that could have saved me time and trouble. I'm a 35 year old in product marketing in the bay area, so this advice may or may not apply to you.
Most of this advice is not new, you may have seen it elsewhere. Well, HEED MY WORDS! You should take that advice.
Here are my don'ts of job hunting:
e: Here's the real #1 piece of advice because someone brought it up in the comments: Don't Not Have A Network. The main reason I had such a hard time was I moved to a new city where I didn't have a professional relationship with ANYONE. I think if you're applying without a friend on the inside, it reduces your odds by 80-90%, based on random factoids we've all seen that say 80% of jobs are never posted publicly.
I went to networking events and coffee meetups and blah blah blah, but COVID put a stop to that before I could make much progress. The biggest piece of advice (by far) is just to have a friend who can get you a job. But if you're reading this, you would have done that already if you could have.
Don't try to get by without doing the standard "best practice" stuff.
I spent a while thinking I could get away without making a customized resume for different jobs. I also thought I would probably have the right keywords naturally, and that I didn't have to worry about that either. WRONG. I wasted many weeks submitting poorly optimized resumes and getting few interviews.
What you should do is have at least one version of your resume customized for each job title you're applying to. That means if you're applying for Sr. Widget Fiddler and Director of Widget Fiddling, you need 2 versions.
Keyword optimize each resume version by copy-pasting 50+ job descriptions for that job's title into a tool like Voyant Tools, which will spit out all the most common words and phrases. Find the most frequent ones that seem important and relevant, and work them into your resume, even if it seems weird to refer to yourself as a "team player" or "entrepreneurial".
Don't be bad at interviewing, not even a little bit bad.
Being a good interviewee is a skill. Most of us aren't born with that skill, and most of us are rusty when it comes time to look for a job. I knew I wasn't great at interviewing, but I really didn't want to go through awkward practice interviews with friends, so I told myself people would understand why I was all nervous, and realize I was still super talented and experienced despite my 'rough edges'. WRONG. I blew it on a lot of interviews before admitting that I had to practice, a lot. I did a bunch of practice interviews, got feedback, and I even talked to an interview coach. The latter was expensive, but I think the dose of outside perspective really helped. YMMV.
I practiced enough that I started getting to final rounds instead of washing out in the first couple rounds. It made a huge difference. Practice.
Don't wing it during the interview.
For 'behavioral' questions (i.e. "tell me about a time when..." questions) everyone says you need to have multiple answers memorized for every major category of question. Ugh! So much work. Greatest weakness. Success story. Failure story. Conflict story. Collaboration story. YAWN. I thought I could come up with good answers on the spot. It's "supposed to be a conversation", right? WRONG. I blew it on a couple interviews before realizing I was coming across as both unprepared AND inexperienced.
Sit down and work out your bullet points for every answer, BEFORE you land an interview. Pain in the butt? Yes. But not as big a pain as getting an interview, blowing it, then ending up doing the work anyway.
Don't apply to old job listings.
If it's still up, they're still hiring, right? WRONG. I have found that job listings are good for about as long as fresh bread. You mostly want to apply the day they're posted, 2-3 days is OK, 5 days is pushing it, beyond that, it's literal trash. I started out applying to anything relevant that was less than a month old, and my app-to-interview yield was around 1%. Started applying to new listings exclusively, and my yield went to more like 3%. YMMV.
Don't apply to listings that aren't on the employer's own site.
It's become disturbingly common for 3rd-party sites to steal and re-post job listings they have nothing to do with. You click on a link on LinkedIn or Indeed, and you end up on Neuvoo or some random BS. Don't submit any of your info on those sites. Very often the jobs are expired already, but these 3rd-party scammers are still re-posting them to steal your info. Even if they're not expired, there's no reason to think they actually send your application to the employer.
If you land somewhere unexpected, go to the employer's actual careers section on their site and find the listing yourself. Otherwise you're just giving your info to someone to sell, and the employer probably never sees it. Please report these listings as you go.
Don't be too picky with job titles.
Unless your resume precisely "fits the profile" employers are looking for, you're going to have to apply a lot. I had to apply a lot. At first, I was exclusively applying to one title, because although I didn't "fit the profile" I didn't want to compromise. I ended up getting a really solid job with a different title, after I loosened my criteria JUST a tad.
Have a serious talk with yourself about how many months you're willing to apply before broadening your search, and don't talk yourself out of good jobs because they have the "wrong" title.
Don't be too loose with companies you apply to.
At a couple points in the process, I ended up with interviews at companies that I seriously didn't want to work for. I was playing the numbers game and I would apply to anything with the right title, even if I hadn't heard of the company. I figured if I got an interview, I would worry about the company later.
Difficulty: If you are on unemployment, this can lead to a sticky situation - if you turn down an offer, you legally can't collect unemployment anymore in many places. It's also pretty hard to justify to yourself turning down ANY interview if you actually need the money.
Have a loose idea of who the company is before applying, to avoid those awkward moments.
Don't stop applying until the ink is dry on your offer letter.
My advice is to apply to every suitable listing as soon as it's posted, which could be as many as 10-30 per day depending on your field and geography. If things are going well, you'll also have interviews going on during any given week, which also put heavy demands on your mental energy and prep time.
It is tempting to stop applying for jobs if you are doing multiple interviews and they seem to be going well. You need the time, and one of them has to work out, right? WRONG. It happened to me multiple times - I'd get further along in an interview process, I'd be focusing on prep, and I'd let my application routine slip. Bad idea. If your application pipeline runs dry, it can be another 2-6 weeks before the interviews start flowing again. ABA - always be applying.
Don't get your hopes up. (maybe the most important tip.)
Your mental resilience to rejection and your self-regard are finite resources. They are resources you need to conserve to maintain your overall mental health and good job-hunting habits. Job hunting can burn through these resources like Joe Exotic through a bag of meth. Don't be like me and get emotionally invested in any given job before you get an offer. Don't start picking out all the stuff you're going to buy with the new salary. Don't start thinking of what doors are going to open up for you with this step in your career. Don't mentally pick out outfits for your new commute. Just don't.
I consider myself a mentally tough person, so I should be able to handle the repeated rejection, right? WRONG. If you allow yourself to start caring about a job before you GET the job, you WILL be crushed to bits. Maybe not the first time, but after the 5th, or the 10th, it becomes hard to take.
To some of the newer job hunters I've seen on this sub: Caring about a job from the day you APPLY? Sheer lunacy. You shouldn't even remember where you applied by the time you go to bed that day.
Keep in mind: It's a numbers game. It's not personal. You WILL get the right job eventually, if you keep going. You have to maintain faith in yourself, but hold no hope for any particular job.
In emotional terms, treat it less like a poker game, (where any hand can be a big deal) more like a slot machine (where you care zero until you finally win). No matter how tough you think you are, take care to maintain your mental state, especially during COVID where so many aspects of life are also wearing down our mental health.
Don't be afraid to be a try-hard.
The role I finally got was based largely on a "take home project" used to demonstrate my working style. It was paid, also really long, the minimum suggested time was 10 hours. Usually I put 70% effort into trial projects, because I don't want to bust my ass for a throwaway, and I don't want to look desperate. My thinking is "Well, we're all professionals, so as long as I mention a few of the right things, they'll know we're on the same level, right?" WRONG.
On this one, I decided to go HAM on the project. All or nothing. I ended up putting over 20 hours into it, (the max time they suggested was 20) and came up with a total overkill amount of material, it was probably 20 pages worth, if not more. To give some idea, I spent like 4 hours just doing addressable market sizing, which everyone including me acknowledges is fairly pointless.
Part of the project was also to see how we communicate about our work - they put me on their company slack, so I logged onto it pretty much every day to update them on my progress. It was firmly in try-hard weirdo territory. But it worked!
So I guess my lesson from this is, if you're going to bother with these projects, be the one who turns in the blue ribbon material.
NB: Be aware of "free work" scams where they try to get you to do the actual job without hiring you for the job. If it's pertinent to the actual job and it's more than an hour or two of work, it should be paid. Unpaid trial projects that don't relate to the actual business are OK, but you'll have to decide for yourself how much time you're willing to put in for free.
Don't assume ***anything*** until it's final.
In 3 instances, I got much further than I expected in a hiring process, and in one I was blindsided by a rejection where I thought I was a shoo-in. #1, they interviewed me for the role (up to the final round) even though the job called for an actual engineer and I have zero engineering experience.
In #2, I blew an interview and got rejected. I knew exactly how I blew it, I got the yips and did poorly. So I sent an email reply explaining what I SHOULD have said, and that I really believed in the company's mission, and that I realize I was a poor interviewee, but I was working on it - they actually gave me another shot and I made it to the final round.
In the last unexpected twist story, they actually scheduled a final interview, then CANCELLED IT. I have been rejected for about a million jobs, but I've never been cancelled on. They said that instead of an interview, they would just review my trial project. I couldn't imagine cancelling an interview with someone you intend to hire, so I assumed this 'review' was just a consolation prize and the job was going to someone else. On the day the cancelled interview was meant to take place, they offered me the job. Huh???? Later that day I rode to heck on a flying pig and bought a snowcone there. But I also got a job.
On the other side of things, I was told directly I was the top candidate for a role, the only one who was really qualified, but because of COVID they were putting the role on hold. OK cool, I figured I was a shoo-in once they actually hired for it. Well, they re-listed the job about 45 days later. They didn't reach out to me. I messaged them. They told me I wasn't even going to get a phone screen for it. WTF? They lied to my face for no reason whatsoever? Yep. They did.
The lesson: Do not assume anything! ANYTHING!

In the late 1980s and early 1990s when I was a young teen growing up in far North Austin, it was a popular custom for many boys in the neighborhood to assemble at the local Stop-N-Go after school on a regular basis for some Grand Champion level tournaments in Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. The collective insistence of our mothers and fathers to get out of the house, get some exercise, and refrain from playing NES or Sega on the television only led us to seek out more video games at the convenience store down the road. Much allowance and lunch money was spent as well as hours that should have been devoted to homework among the 8 or 9 regular boys in attendance, often challenging each other to 'Best of 5' matches. I myself played Dhalsim and SubZero, and not very well, so I rarely ever made it to the 5th match. The store workers frequently kicked us out for the day only to have us return when they weren't working the counter anymore if not the next day.
There is something about that which has been lost in the present day. While people can today download the latest games on Steam or PSN or in the app store on your smartphone, you can't just find arcade games in stores and restaurants like you used to be able to. And so the fun of a spontaneous 8 or 10 person multiplayer video game tournament has been confined to places like bars, pool halls, Pinballz or Dave&Busters.
But in truth it was that ubiquity of arcade video games, how you could find them in any old 7-11 or Laundromat, which is what killed the original arcades of the early 1980s before the Great Crash of 1983 when home video game consoles started to catch up to what you saw in the arcade.
I was born in the mid 1970s so I missed out on Pong. I was kindergarten age when the Golden Age of Arcade Games took place in the early 1980s. There used to be a place called Skateworld on Anderson Mill Road that was primarily for roller skating but had a respectable arcade in its own right. It was there that I honed my skills on the original Tron, Pac Man, Galaga, Pole Position, Defender, and so many others. In the 1980s I remember visiting all the same mall arcades as others in my age group. There was Aladdin's Castle in Barton Creek Mall, The Gold Mine in Highland, and another Gold Mine in Northcross which was eventually renamed Tilt. Westgate Mall also had an arcade but being a north austin kid I never went there until later in the mid 1990s. There were also places like Malibu Grand Prix and Showbiz Pizza and Chuck-E-Cheeze, all of which had fairly large arcades for kids which were the secondary attraction.
If you're of a certain age you will remember Einsteins and LeFun on the Drag. They were there for a few decades going back way before the Slacker era. Lesser known is that the UT Student Union basement used to have an arcade that was comparable to either or both of those places. Back in the pre-9/11 days it was much easier to sneak in if you even vaguely looked like you could be a UT student.
But there was another place I was too young to have experienced called Smitty's up further north on 183 at Lake Creek in the early 1980s. I never got to go there but I always heard about it from older kids at the time. It was supposed to have been two stories of wall to wall games with a small snack bar. I guess at the time it served a mostly older teen crowd from Westwood High School and for that reason younger kids my age weren't having birthday parties there. It wasn't around very long, just a few years during the Golden Age of Arcades.
It is with almost-forgotten early arcades like that in mind that I wanted to share with y'all some examples of places from The Golden Age of the Video Arcade in Austin using some old Statesman articles I've found. Maybe someone of a certain age on here will remember them. I was curious what they were like, having missed out by being slightly too young to have experienced most of them first hand. I also wanted to see the original reaction to them in the press. I had a feeling there was some pushback from school/parent/civic groups on these facilities showing up in neighborhood strip malls or next to schools, and I was right to suspect. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First let's list off some places of interest. Be sure to speak up if you remember going to any of these, even if it was just for some other kid's birthday party. Unfortunately some of the only mentions about a place are reports of a crime being committed there, such as our first few examples.
Forgotten Arcade #1
Fun House/Play Time Arcade - 2820 Guadalupe
June 15, 1975

ARCADE ENTHUSIASM
A gang fight involving 20 30 people erupted early Saturday morning in front of an arcade on Guadalupe Street. The owner of the Fun House Arcade at 282J Guadalupe told police pool cues, lug wrenches, fists and a shotgun were displayed during the flurry. Police are unsure what started the fisticuffs, but one witness at the scene said it pitted Chicanos against Anglos. During the fight the owner of the arcade said a green car stopped at the side of the arcade and witnesses reported the barrel of a shotgun sticking out. The crowd wisely scattered and only a 23-year-old man was left lying on the ground. He told police he doesn't know what happened.

March 3, 1976

ARCADE ROBBED
A former employee of Play Time Arcade, 2820 Guadalupe, was charged Tuesday in connection with the Tuesday afternoon robbery of his former business. Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of Ronnie Magee, 22, of 1009 Aggie Lane, Apt. 306. Arcade attendant Sam Garner said he had played pool with the suspect an hour before the robbery. He told police the man had been fired from the business two weeks earlier. Police said a man walked in the arcade about 2:45 p m. with a blue steel pistol and took $180. Magee is charged with first degree aggravated robbery. Bond was set on the charge at $15,000.

First it was called Fun House and then renamed Play Time a year later. I'm not sure what kind of arcade games beyond Pong and maybe Asteroids they could have had at this place. The peak of the Pinball craze was supposed to be around 1979, so they might have had a few pinball machines as well. A quick search of youtube will show you a few examples of 1976 video games like Death Race. The location is next to Ken's Donuts where PokeBowl is today where the old Baskin Robbins location was for many years.
Forgotten Arcade #2
Green Goth - 1121 Springdale Road
May 15, 1984

A 23-year-old man pleaded guilty Monday to a January 1983 murder in East Austin and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Jim Crowell Jr. of Austin admitted shooting 17-year-old Anthony Rodriguez in the chest with a shotgun after the two argued outside the Green Goth, a games arcade at 1121 Springdale Road, on Jan. 23, 1983. Crowell had argued with Rodriguez and a friend of Rodriguez at the arcade, police said. Crowell then went to his house, got a shotgun and returned to the arcade, witnesses said. When the two friends left the arcade, Rodriguez was shot Several weeks ago Crowell had reached a plea bargain with prosecutors for an eight-year prison term, but District Judge Bob Perkins would not accept the sentence, saying it was shorter than sentences in similar cases. After further plea bargaining, Crowell accepted the 15-year prison sentence.

I can't find anything else on Green Goth except reports about this incident with a murder there. There is at least one other report from 1983 around the time of Crowell's arrest that also refer to it as an arcade but reports the manager said the argument started over a game of pool. It's possible this place might have been more known for pool.
Forgotten Arcades #3 & #4
Games, Etc. - 1302 S. First St
Muther's Arcade - 2532 Guadalupe St
August 23, 1983

Losing the magic touch - Video Arcades have trouble winning the money game
It was going to be so easy for Lawrence Villegas, a video game junkie who thought he could make a fast buck by opening up an arcade where kids could plunk down an endless supply of quarters to play Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Asteroids. Villegas got together with a few friends, purchased about 30 video games and opened Games, Etc. at 1302 S. First St in 1980. .,--.... For a while, things, went great Kids waited in line to spend their money to drive race cars, slay dragons and save the universe.
AT THE BEGINNING of 1982, however, the bottom fell out, and Villegas' revenues fell from $400 a week to $25. Today, Games, Etc. is vacant Villegas, 30, who is now working for his parents at Tony's Tortilla Factory, hasn't decided what he'll do with the building. "I was hooked on Asteroids, and I opened the business to get other people hooked, too," Villegas said. "But people started getting bored, and it wasn't worth keeping the place open. In the end, I sold some machines for so little it made me sick."
VILLEGAS ISNT the only video game operator to experience hard times, video game manufacturers and distributors 'It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100 .
Pac-Man's a lost cause. Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Ronnie Roark says. In the past year, business has dropped 25 percent to 65 percent throughout the country, they say. Most predict business will get even worse before the market stabilizes. Video game manufacturers and operators say there are several reasons for the sharp and rapid decline: Many video games can now be played at home on television, so there's no reason to go to an arcade. The novelty of video games has worn off. It has been more than a decade since the first ones hit the market The decline can be traced directly to oversaturation or the market arcade owners say. The number of games in Austin has quadrupled since 1981, and it's not uncommon to see them in coin-operated laundries, convenience stores and restaurants.
WITH SO MANY games to choose from, local operators say, Austinites be came bored. Arcades still take in thousands of dollars each week, but managers and owners say most of the money is going to a select group of newer games, while dozens of others sit idle.
"After awhile, they all seem the same," said Dan Moyed, 22, as he relaxed at Muther's Arcade at 2532 Guadalupe St "You get to know what the game is going to do before it does. You can play without even thinking about it" Arcade owners say that that, in a nutshell, is why the market is stagnating.
IN THE PAST 18 months, Ronnie Roark, owner of the Back Room at 2015 E. Riverside Drive, said his video business has dropped 65 to 75 percent Roark, . who supplied about 160 video games to several Austin bars and arcades, said the instant success of the games is what led to their demise. "The technology is not keeping up with people's demand for change," said Roark, who bought his first video game in 1972. "The average game is popular for two or three months. We're sending back games that are less than five months old."
Roark said the market began dropping in March 1982 and has been declining steadily ever since. "The drop started before University of Texas students left for the summer in 1982," Roark said. "We expected a 25 percent drop in business, and we got that, and more. It's never really picked up since then. - "It used to be fairly common to get $300 a week from a machine. Now we rarely get more than $100. 1 was shocked when I looked over my books and saw how much things had dropped."
TO COMBAT THE slump, Roark said, he and some arcade owners last year cut the price of playing. Even that didn't help, he said. Old favorites, such as Pac-Man, which once took in hundreds of dollars each week, he said, now make less than $3 each. "Pac-Man's a lost cause," he said. "Six months ago, you could resell a Pac-Man machine for $1,600. Now, you're lucky to get $950 if you can find a buyer." Hardest hit by the slump are the owners of the machines, who pay $3,500 to $5,000 for new products and split the proceeds with the businesses that house them.
SALEM JOSEPH, owner of Austin Amusement and Vending Co., said his business is off 40 percent in the past year. Worse yet, some of his customers began returning their machines, and he's having a hard time putting them back in service. "Two years ago, a machine would generate enough money to pay for itself in six months,' said Joseph, who supplies about 250 games to arcades. "Now that same machine takes 18 months to pay for itself." As a result, Joseph said, he'll buy fewer than 15 new machines this year, down from the 30 to 50 he used to buy. And about 50 machines are sitting idle in his warehouse.
"I get calls every day from people who want to sell me their machines," Joseph said. "But I can't buy them. The manufacturers won't buy them from me." ARCADE OWNERS and game manufacturers hope the advent of laser disc video games will buoy the market Don Osborne, vice president of marketing for Atari, one of the largest manufacturers of video games, said he expects laser disc games to bring a 25 percent increase in revenues next year. The new games are programmed to give players choices that may affect the outcome of the game, Os borne said. "Like the record and movie industries, the video game industry is dependent on products that stimulate the imagination," Osborne said "One of the reasons we're in a valley is that we weren't coming up with those kinds of products."
THE FIRST of the laser dis games, Dragonslayer and Star Wan hit the market about two months ago. Noel Kerns, assistant manager of The Gold Mine Arcade in Northcross Mall, says the new games are responsible for a $l,000-a-week increase in revenues. Still, Kerns said, the Gold Mine' total sales are down 20 percent iron last summer. However, he remain optimistic about the future of the video game industry. "Where else can you come out of the rain and drive a Formula One race car or save the universe?" hi asked.
Others aren't so optimistic. Roark predicted the slump will force half of all operators out of business and will last two more years. "Right now, we've got a great sup ply and almost no demand," Roark said. "That's going to have to change before things get- significantly better."

Well there is a lot to take from that long article, among other things, that the author confused "Dragonslayer" with "Dragon's Lair". I lol'd.
Anyone who has been to Emo's East, formerly known as The Back Room, knows they have arcade games and pool, but it's mostly closed when there isn't a show. That shouldn't count as an arcade, even though the former owner Ronnie Roark was apparently one of the top suppliers of cabinet games to the area during the Golden Era. Any pool hall probably had a few arcade games at the time, too, but that's not the same as being an arcade.
We also learn from the same article of two forgotten arcades: Muthers at 2522 Guadalupe where today there is a Mediterranean food restaurant, and another called Games, Etc. at 1302 S.First that today is the site of an El Mercado restaurant. But the article is mostly about showing us how bad the effects were from the crash at the end of the Golden Era. It was very hard for the early arcades to survive with increasing competition from home game consoles and personal computers, and the proliferation of the games into stores and restaurants.
Forgotten Arcades #5 #6 & #7
Computer Madness - 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Electronic Encounters - 1701 W Ben White Blvd (Southwood Mall)
The Outer Limits Amusements Center - 1409 W. Oltorf
March 4, 1982

'Quartermania' stalks South Austin
School officials, parents worried about effects of video games
A fear Is haunting the video game business. "We call it 'quartermania.' That's fear of running out of quarters," said Steve Stackable, co-owner of Computer Madness, a video game and foosball arcade at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd. The "quartermania" fear extends to South Austin households and schools, as well. There it's a fear of students running out of lunch money and classes to play the games. Local school officials and Austin police are monitoring the craze. They're concerned that computer hotspots could become undesirable "hangouts" for students, or that truancy could increase because students (high-school age and younger) will skip school to defend their galaxies against The Tempest.
So far police fears have not been substantiated. Department spokesmen say that although more than half the burglaries in the city are committed by juveniles during the daytime, they know of no connection between the break-ins and kids trying to feed their video habit But school and parental worries about misspent time and money continue. The public outcry in September 1980 against proposals to put electronic game arcades near two South Austin schools helped persuade city officials to reject the applications. One proposed location was near Barton Hills Elementary School. The other was South Ridge Plaza at William Cannon Drive and South First Street across from Bedlchek Junior High School.
Bedichek principal B.G. Henry said he spoke against the arcade because "of the potential attraction it had for our kids. I personally feel kids are so drawn to these things, that It might encourage them to leave the school building and play hookey. Those things have so much compulsion, kids are drawn to them like a magnet Kids can get addicted to them and throw away money, maybe their lunch money. I'm not against the video games. They may be beneficial with eye-hand coordination or even with mathematics, but when you mix the video games during school hours and near school buildings, you might be asking for problems you don't need."
A contingent from nearby Pleasant Hill Elementary School joined Bedichek in the fight back in 1980, although principal Kay Beyer said she received her first formal call about the games last Week from a mother complaining that her child was spending lunch money on them. Beyer added that no truancy problems have been related to video game-playing at a nearby 7-11 store. Allen Poehl, amusement game coordinator for Austin's 7-11 stores, said company policy rules out any game-playing by school-age youth during school hours. Fulmore Junior High principal Bill Armentrout said he is working closely with operators of a nearby 7-1 1 store to make sure their policy is enforced.
The convenience store itself, and not necessarily the video games, is a drawing card for older students and drop-outs, Armentrout said. Porter Junior High principal Marjorie Ball said that while video games aren't a big cause of truancy, "the money (spent on the games) is a big factor." Ball said she has made arrangements with nearby businesses to call the school it students are playing the games during school hours. "My concern is that kids are basically unsupervised, especially at the 24-hour grocery stores. That's a late hour for kids to be out. I would like to see them (games) unplugged at 10 p.m.," adds Joslin Elementary principal Wayne Rider.
Several proprietors of video game hot-spots say they sympathize with the concerns of parents and school officials. No one under 18 is admitted without a parent to Chuck E. Cheese's Pizza Time Theatre at 4211 S. Lamar. That rule, says night manager David Dunagan, "keeps it from being a high school hangout. This is a family place." Jerry Zollar, owner of J.J. Subs in West Wood Shopping Center on Bee Cave Road, rewards the A's on the report cards of Eanes school district students with free video games. "It's kind of a community thing we do in a different way. I've heard from both teachers and parents . . . they thought this was a good idea," said Zollar.
Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall last year was renovated into a brightly lit arcade. "We're trying to get away from the dark, barroom-type place. We want this to be a place for family entertainment We won't let kids stay here during school hours without a written note from their parents, and we're pretty strict about that," said manager Kelly Roberts. Joyce Houston, who manages The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf St. along with her husband, said, "I wouldn't let my children go into some of the arcades I've visited. I'm a concerned parent, too. We wanted a place where the whole family could come and enjoy themselves."

Well you can see which way the tone of all these articles is going. There were some crimes committed at some arcades but all of them tended to have a negative reputation for various reasons. Parents and teachers were very skeptical of the arcades being in the neighborhoods to the point of petitioning the City Government to restrict them. Three arcades are mentioned besides Chuck-E-Cheese. Electronic Encounters in Southwood Mall, The Outer Limits amusements center at 1409 W. Oltorf, and Computer Madness, a "video game and foosball arcade" at 2414 S. Lamar Blvd.
Forgotten Arcade #8
Smitty's Galaxy of Games - Lake Creek Parkway
February 25, 1982

Arcades fighting negative image
Video games have swept across America, and Williamson and Travis counties have not been immune. In a two-part series, Neighbor examines the effects the coin-operated machines have had on suburban and small-town life.
Cities have outlawed them, religious leaders have denounced them and distraught mothers have lost countless children to their voracious appetites. And still they march on, stronger and more numerous than before. A new disease? Maybe. A wave of invading aliens from outer space? On occasion. A new type of addiction? Certainly. The culprit? Video games. Although the electronic game explosion has been mushrooming throughout the nation's urban areas for the past few years, its rippling effects have just recently been felt in the suburban fringes of North Austin and Williamson County.
In the past year, at least seven arcades armed with dozens of neon quarter-snatchers have sprung up to lure teens with thundering noises and thousands of flashing seek-and-destroy commands. Critics say arcades are dens of iniquity where children fall prey to the evils of gambling. But arcade owners say something entirely different. "Everybody fights them (arcades), they think they are a haven for drug addicts. It's just not true," said Larry Grant of Austin, who opened Eagle's Nest Fun and Games on North Austin Avenue in Georgetown last September. "These kids are great" Grant said the gameroom "gives teenagers a place to come. Some only play the games and some only talk.
In Georgetown, if you're from the high school, this is it." He said he's had very few disturbances, and asks "undesirables" to leave. "We've had a couple of rowdies. That's why I don't have any pool tables they tend to attract that type of crowd," Grant said.
Providing a place for teens to congregate was also the reason behind Ron and Carol Smith's decision to open Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway at the entrance to Anderson Mill. "We have three teenage sons, and as soon as the oldest could drive, it became immediately apparent that there was no place to go around here," said Ron, an IBM employee who lives in Spicewood at Balcones. "This prompted us to want to open something." The business, which opened in August, has been a huge success with both parents and youngsters. "Hundreds of parents have come to check out our establishment before allowing their children to come, and what they see is a clean, safe environment managed by adults and parents," Ron said. "We've developed an outstanding rapport with the community." Video arcades "have a reputation that we have to fight," said Carol.
Kathy McCoy of Georgetown, who last October opened Krazy Korner on Willis Street in Leander, agrees. "We've got a real good group of kids," she said. "There's no violence, no nothing. Parents can always find their kids at Krazy Korner."
While all the arcade owners contacted reported that business is healthy, if not necessarily lucrative, it's not as easy for video entrepreneurs to turn a profit as one might imagine. A sizeable investment is required. Ron Smith paid between $2,800 and $5,000 for each of the 30 electronic diversions at his gameroom.
Grant said his average video game grosses about $50 a week, and his "absolute worst" game, Armor Attack, only $20 a week. The top machines (Defender and Pac-Man) can suck in an easy $125 a week. That's a lot of quarters, 500 to be exact but the Eagle's Nest and Krazy Korner pass half of them on to Neelley Vending Company of Austin which rents them their machines. "At 25 cents a shot, it takes an awful lot of people to pay the bills," said Tom Hatfield, district manager for Neelley.
He added that an owner's personality and the arcade's location can make or break the venture. The game parlor must be run "by an understanding person, someone with patience," Hatfield said. "They cannot be too demanding on the kids, yet they can't let them run all over them." And they must be located in a spot "with lots of foot traffic," such as a shopping center or near a good restaurant, he said. "And being close to a school really helps." "Video games are going to be here permanently, but we're going to see some operations not going because of the competition," which includes machines in virtually every convenience store and supermarket, Hatfield said.

This article talks about three arcades. One in Georgetown called Eagles Nest, another in Leander called Krazy Korner, and a third called Smitty's Galaxy of Games on Lake Creek Parkway "on the fringes of North Austin". This is the one I remember the older kids talking about when I was a little kid. There was once a movie theater across the street from the Westwood High School football stadium and behind that was Smitty's. Today I think the building was bulldozed long ago and the space is part of the expanded onramp to 183 today. Eventually another unrelated arcade was built next to the theater that became Alamo Lakeline. It was another site of some unrecorded epic Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat tournaments in the 90s.
But the article written before the end of the Golden Era tell us much about the pushback I was talking about earlier. Early arcades were seen as "dirty" places in some circles, and the owners of the arcades in Williamson County had to stress how "clean" their establishments were. This other article from a couple of weeks later tells of how area school officials weren't worried about video games and tells us more arcades in Round Rock and Cedar Park. Apparently the end of the golden age lasted a bit longer than usual in this area.
At some point in the next few years the bubble burst, and places like Smitty's were gone by the late 80s. But the distributors quoted earlier were right that arcade games weren't going completely away. In the mid 1980s LeFun opened up next in the Scientology building at 2200 Guadalupe on the drag. Down a few doors past what used be a coffee shop and a CVS was Einsteins Arcade. Both of those survived into the 21st century. I remember the last time I was at Einsteins I got my ass beat in Tekken by a kid half my age. heheh
That's all for today. There were no Bonus Pics in the UT archive of arcades (other than the classical architectural definition). I wanted to pass on some Bonus newspaper articles (remember to click and zoom in with the buttons on the right to read) about Austin arcades anyway but first a small story.
I mentioned earlier the secret of the UT Student Union. I have no idea what it looks like now but in the 90s there was a sizable arcade in with the bowling alley in the basement. Back in 1994 when I used to sneak in, they featured this bizarre early attempt at virtual reality games. I found an old Michael Barnes Statesman article about it dated February 11, 1994. Some highlights:

Hundreds of students and curiosity-seekers lined up at the University of Texas Union to play three to five minutes of Dactyl Nightmare, Flying Aces or V-Tol, three-dimensional games from Kramer Entertainment. Nasty weather delayed the unloading of four huge trunks containing the machines, which resemble low pulpits. Still, players waited intently for a chance to shoot down a fighter jet, operate a tilt-wing Harrier or tangle with a pterodactyl. Today, tickets will go on sale in the Texas Union lobby at 11:30 a.m. for playing slots between noon and 6 p.m.
Players, fitted with full helmets, throttles and power packs, stood on shiny gray and yellow platforms surrounded by a circular guard rail. Seen behind the helmet's goggles were computer simulated landscapes, not unlike the most sophisticated video games, with controls and enemies viewed in deep space. "You're on a platform waiting to fight a human figure," said Jeff Vaughn, 19, of Dactyl Nightmare. "A pterodactyl swoops down and tries to pick you up. You have to fight it off. You are in the space and can see your own body and all around you. But if you try to walk, you have to use that joy stick to get around."
"I let the pterodactyl carry me away so I could look down and scan the board," said Tom Bowen of the same game. "That was the way I found out where the other player was." "Yeah, it's cool just to stand there and not do anything," Vaughn said. The mostly young, mostly male crowd included the usual gaming fanatics, looking haggard and tense behind glasses and beards. A smattering of women and children also pressed forward in a line that snaked past the lobby and into the Union's retail shops.
"I don't know why more women don't play. Maybe because the games are so violent," said Jennifer Webb, 24, a psychology major whose poor eyesight kept her from becoming a fighter pilot in real life. "If the Air Force won't take me, virtual reality will." "They use stereo optics moving at something like 60 frames a second," said computer science major Alex Aquila, 19. "The images are still pretty blocky. But once you play it, you'll want to play it again and again." With such demand for virtual reality, some gamesters wondered why an Austin video arcade has not invested in at least one machine.

The gameplay looked like this.
Bonus Article #1 - "Video fans play for own reasons" (Malibu Grand Prix) - March 11, 1982
Bonus Article #2 - "Pac-Man Cartridge Piques Interest" - April 13, 1982
Bonus Article #3 - "Video Games Fail Consumer" - January 29, 1984
Bonus Article #4 - "Nintendoholics/Modems Unite" - January 25, 1989
Bonus Article #5 and pt 2 "Two girls missing for a night found at arcade" (truly dedicated young gamers) - August 7, 2003

With GameHive’s latest Dev Update asking for the community’s thoughts, I thought I would share my perspective as somebody who has been managing top raiding clans since raids were released. I am, after all, an important member of the community.
Ultimately my issue with what has happened to this game is that it has gone from a casual, idle tapping incremental game to a time-sink that feels like a job to keep up with. So, here are some suggestions (mostly regarding raids) that I think would make the game more fun and feel less like work.
Section A: Raid QOL Improvements Please
People at cap have nothing to do at cap, so we raid. The raids have desperately needed some quality-of-life improvements, but somehow a lot of the raiding systems remain unchanged since the introduction of 3.0. Here are some things that I think should be addressed and would create a better raiding environment.

1. Help us raid efficiently by building a method in which to prevent "wasted" damage. 3rd party tools are an absolute requirement here, and they shouldn't be. Why on earth is it possible for 2 people to submit hits that both kill a titan just because when they started the attack it wasn't dead yet? The responsibility of preventing this wasted damage should lie on the game dev's shoulders, not the clan leadership or some discord bot.
   
2. Why is there still no easy way to see exactly how much HP/Armor a titan part has remaining? The 'toggle health bars' button should display the total HP/Armor remaining for that part NUMERICALLY within the health bars.
   
3. Tracking our members' missed hits should be easier. GH recently added the “max” number of raid attacks on the clan roster, but it’s not helpful. When implementing it, they just multiplied the number of attacks per cycle by the number of cycles currently in the raid and put that number next to everybody's name. If a member missed 2 hits in the first cycle, their attacks should read 2/6 when the 2nd cycle begins, not 2/8. Now I have to have a separate discord channel to write down missed hits every cycle. More "work" they've put onto clan leadership.
   
4. Create a new clan tab showing all the attacks/decks submitted to the raid in real time. There are already plenty of buttons within the clan tab, what's one more? I don't care for my clanmates' privacy when it comes to submitting raid attacks. This is a clan raid, if you're submitting an attack that I deem stupid or irresponsible, I want to know about it. If somebody doesn't like it, they can find a clan that doesn't care as much.
   
5. Clan chat needs to update more frequently. Restarting the game or sending a message yourself to refresh the chat is a dumb work-around.
   

Section B: Selfishness Tops Charts
Being selfish in clan raids is promoted by punishing people who do the clan’s dirty work, like hitting the debuffed parts of a titan. There are a couple things I’d like to see changed to negate the instinct to be selfish, which ultimately results in raids “stalling” at certain stages.

1. Raid debuffs: If the titan's armor is debuffed, the people who hit the armor are punished, and the people who selfishly wait for others to take the penalty are rewarded. In this case, the easiest solution is probably to just increase the amount of armor the titan has by a similar amount it's being penalized by. That way everybody's damage numbers remain unchanged and only the titan's ratios are adjusted. This prevents the raid stalling out when all that remains are debuffed titan parts.
   
2. Clean-up/transitions: We have to have somebody sacrifice their damage nearly every cycle for the sake of cleaning titans up (clearing the small remainders of HP left on various titan parts that aren't big enough to focus an entire attack on). We currently have 29 total raid cards, and most of them don't fit into the current meta. One of these cards could assist in the "clean up" process so raids don't stall out while waiting for somebody sacrifice their damage. Maybe this card could buff damage for each part you kill during the attack. I wouldn't want this card to be tuned in such a way that people are fighting over who gets to clean up, rather just punish people less for doing it.
   

Section C: The Thief of Time
Every major update of this game seems to put more demands on my time.

1. Raids: Insanity Void has again changed the way top clans raid to maximize their output. With every overpowered deck created, we lose flexibility at which times we can make our attacks. EVERY raid cycle from now on is looking out for when VM and IV are at their optimal states and sending out the alerts to my clanmates (more clan management handled by a 3rd party tool! Yay!). Gone is the dream of having 12-hour windows to perform all my raid attacks. I need to baby this app if I want to utilize my cards efficiently.
   
2. Events: Capping daily prestiges at 99 and then forcing the entire community to compete against each other for top 10th percentile is a far cry from what events originally were. It's obnoxious to feel obligated to put 15-20 prestiges a day into this game on top of the other demands if we want to keep our badge. I'm not even sure how to un-fuck this since badges give you permanent damage now.
   
3. Abyssal Tournaments: Another 24-hour window where if you want to win, say goodbye to your free time. Lower the length of these so they aren't just a battle of attrition. People who still compete in regular tournaments now have 3 DAYS of tournaments every week out of 7. It's too much. Also, remove the ability the spend diamonds on these tournaments. It breeds toxicity.
   
4. Solo raids: I'm not sure who this ended up being targeted towards. High-end players march through these and it's just a weekly chore to get dust that offers no challenge. Low-end players can't make it to the end, which just happens to be where all the rewards are. The leaderboard is representative of who has spent the most money on dust, and actively punishes you for looking at the various bonuses/decks of each portal. If you want a leaderboard that isn't a joke, then don't start the timer until you begin your attacks and normalize all the raid levels and card levels for everybody.
   

Section D: Buying and Spending Dust

1. The dust shop: This can just go away now, right? I'm not understanding the point of time-gating buying our cards when dust is prohibitively expensive. If somebody is going to buy their way to max level cards, why not let them? There are already players who have level 50 cards at this point. Getting people with FOMO to spend their dust is shitty and there are already a million reasons to open the app, checking the dust shop every 6 hours doesn’t matter when they check their raid ten times a day. If getting rid of the dust shop entirely is out of the question, the number of dust shop slots is already tied to the players raid level. Why not increase it to 9 then 12 slots as people increase their raid level?
   
2. Buying dust: Capped players have nothing to spend their diamonds on besides dust. And for 2 weeks 3-4 times a year, you give people like me DOUBLE the value of their diamonds during dust promotions. This means I'm saving my diamonds for 3-4 months at a time. Earning currency and waiting 4 months to spend it feels shitty. Make 3000 dust the default value in a titan chest and let the promotions be used for other things like crafting shards.
   

TL;DR: Running a competitive clan, playing tournaments, and participating in events is insanely time-consuming. GameHive should change some of the current systems to make less demands on our time, or at the very least give us some small quality-of-life changes to make things just a little easier on us.

Hey everyone. I've incorporated the feedback from Pixonic (August 2020, October 2020, December 2020, and January 2021). My goal is to try to get Pixonic to respond directly to this thread periodically (3-4 times a year). This will be linked to the weekly suggestions thread by the auto-moderator. Be sure to use the "Pixonic Suggestion" flair so I can easily sort through all the suggestions!
Ideas & Feature Requests
This thread is a place where you can discuss your ideas for the game or request features you would like to see in coming versions of the game.
This sub appreciates any contributions you can make to existing ideas, but we suggest you do not post your idea before reviewing previous Pixonic ideas / suggestions threads. It is highly likely another Commander already submitted the same idea!
Please be aware that posting a ruled out idea may result in your thread being removed altogether and posting an idea already suggested might result in your thread being closed with a reference back to this thread.
A few tips to submitting an idea or suggestion:
Title: Choose a good title - be very specific. Instead of naming your thread "suggestion", "idea", try something like "Hawks are Over Powered." This will help other users find and contribute to your thread, and drive more discussion around the topic.
Point: Use clear, concise points or explanations, concept art or screenshots where applicable. General, unspecific, high-level ideas are great, but the Pixonic team can't do much without the proper information!
"I think Hawks are way too powerful in the game because of their high firepower. Players running multiple Hawks make the game frustrating and boring for me."
Suggestion: Give constructive and helpful suggestions that are realistic. Why will the idea work?
"Decrease the Hawks firepower so it only impacts Titans and does not cut through bots' defenses. This will allow other bots to effectively counter Hawks and bring better balane to the game."
For all, keep in mind Pixonic is a business. I realize many of us have little experience in owning a gaming company, but try to consider how Pixonic would make a profit or be successful in the business model when giving a suggestion. Pixonic wants players spending money AND playing a lot--so how does your suggestion support that?
Threads will be removed if it includes profanity and / or insults. Comments like "make everything for free" or "XXX (i.e. Matchmaking, the game, targeting, etc.) sucks--solution: make the game better, or un-nerf everything" will just be deleted. This also isn't the place to report bugs or to rant.
Given the nature of the game the developers and producers cannot always say what is coming in the next version or what is being worked on. Also, please don't expect a response to every thread or idea. The best ideas will be discussed frequently by the Community and will surface to the top in that manner (or through up/down votes). Do not spam your thread or ideas just because no one is responding!

• Response (December 2020)
• Response (January 2021)

Frequently Requested Ideas
Below are ideas submitted by users for Pixonic to consider. It does not imply they are being worked on. Please do a search before starting new feature requests, especially if they are listed below.
These ideas and suggestions are either acknowledged and are being worked on, or have been ruled out by the dev team for the time being. Posting these ideas may result in your thread being removed without notice.
Frequently Requested:

• Battle Modes
  • Titan skirmish (Status: in Dec 2020 Max, WR Producer stated: " We agree that it would be a lot of fun. We'll try to introduce Titan Skirmishes next year, but it won't be a priority – there's so much to do.")
  • Additions to custom matches (Status: in Dec 2020 Max, WR Producer stated: "The general idea of Custom Matches is not to provide an additional game mode, but to give you a playground where you can test your builds to understand if they are suitable for real combat. In Max's opinion, current functionality of Custom Matches fits just well in this concept." Detailed comments in original post)
  • Beacon hold time should be considered for HP (Status: in Dec 2020 Max, WR Producer stated: " We already have some ideas on how to expand the honor reward list (e.g. rewarding players for applying Suppression or Lock-down effects). The idea with beacon hold time sounds like a nice addition to our plans. ")
  • Faction vs. Faction skirmish
• Boosters
  • Pause booster timer while waiting for match (Status: in August 2020 the Pixonic producer stated they agreed with this concept and were looking into it; in Dec 2020 Max, the WR Producer stated: "We had plans for a complete rework of Boosters. Unfortunately, we had to cut those plans off to release Drones and prepare for Remastered. We believe we'll have time to work on Boosters in 2021.")
  • Faster reload times (Status: in Dec 2020 Max, WR Producer stated: "Thing is, there is a technical tie between reload animation and reload time. It's one of those legacy mechanics that've been haunting the game for years already. Until we refactor the entire block, it's impossible for us to change the reload speed on most of the weapons. But in general idea is good, though we see it as a Passive Module rather than a Booster.")
• Bots
  • Raijin increased resistance instead of damage
  • Add 3 Passive modules to each bot
  • Allow energy shields to recharge at all times
  • Nuclear Fission Snipers
  • Egyptian Themed Bots
  • Medusa
  • Arbiter Shield Concept
  • Overhead view (like Nightingale) for Invader and Mercury)
  • Altitude control of flying bots
• Community Features
  • Allow friends in-game or via other platforms (i.e. Discord) (Status: in Dec 2020, Max WR Producer stated: " We call it "Platform Merge iteration 2" and it's on the list for 2021."; in January 2021 Max WR Producer stated: "For technical reasons, we don't want to add integrations with other platforms as far as the friends system is concerned. In fact, we'd also like to get rid if the existing integration and make all friends features completely native to the game. There will be a rework of the friends system this year. Stay tuned!"; In Jan 2021 Pix stated ability to invite friends direclty is coming soon)
  • Pixonic sponsored WR Tournament (Status: Oct 2020 Pix CM said it was coming; in Dec 2020 Max WR Producer stated: "We have a couple of competitive features prepared for the next year. We'll tell you more in our New Year videos."; In Jan 2021 Pix stated tournaments will be introduced into each season)
  • Clan Wars
  • Cross-Platform (Status: In Dec 2020, Max WR Producer stated: "This is basically a cross-platform account, like PixAccount. The idea has been around for a couple of years already. It should be implemented on the scale of the whole company, not only War Robots project, of course. But yes, it's something we definitely want to have in the future.")
  • Incorporate lore into rewards or abilities, etc. (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "It's a great idea and it might work! *Promises to talk to the game design department about it*")
  • Story / campaign mode
• Drones (Status: October 2020 Pixonic CM announced Drones were being overhauled)
  • Remove random chip / slot generator
  • Preset hangar to save time in battle
• Hangars
  • Allow useage of bots across hangars in battles (or same bot for multiple hangars)
  • Hangar presets
  • Upgrade / build multiple bots or weapons at a time (possibly benefit of having multiple hangars)
  • Limit number of sambe bots you cna use in active hangar
  • Allow us to see other players' drone hangars (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: " Yes, one day. We have some improvement plans for Drones, including UI. Hopefully, our UI team will find a way to show more info on drones in hangar.")
  • Allow 7 bots per hangar but only use 5 (like Drones)
• In-Game Communication / Clan Management
  • Improved chat and in-game features
  • Active/Live “Online Status” examples: colored icons, on/off indicator, etc.
  • Current League Icon next to all clan members
  • Indicate last online date
  • Clan voice chat
  • Global Chat
  • Report button for players violating the game's ToS or hacking, etc. (Status: according to the Pixonic producer in Aug 2020, a report button is supposed be included in a future release--no further details were given; confirmed by Pix CM in Oct 2020)
• Maps
  • List maps in Alphabetical order in pull down menu (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "With only 13 maps in the game, it isn't difficult to find what you are looking for. However, if it can be done fast, we will try to squeeze it into the production plan.")
  • New map concepts
• Matchmaking / Leagues (Status: This is how the MM works; they constantly do minor tweaks; this is my response on death squads)
  • Modified league points
  • Add additional league (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR producer stated: "We are considering this idea right now, but rather a new league between Masters and Champions."; In Jan 2021 Pix stated a rework to Legendary leagues is coming soon)
• Performance / Technical Features
  • Targeting system rework / improvement (Status: Targeting seems to be part of the base code and allows other features in the game to operate, such as stealth, meaning there are multiple dependencies. Pixonic did minor tweaks to targeting to address shooting Ao Mings in the air from the ground and vice versa, but according to Pixonic CM in Oct 2020 a major rework will not be considered until after Pixonic migrates to new servers in 2021; In Jan 2021 Pix stated improvement to targeting system will be worked with expected release in Aug 2021).
  • Lag (Status: According to Pixonic the 6.4 update should address lag along with server overhaul)
  • Limit character length and types of characters in user names (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR producer stated: "Yes, we'll need to do that sooner or later.")
  • Font size for iPhone users
  • Drones menu rework
  • Purchase confirmation button
  • Add commas to numerical figures
  • Allow weapons and modules to be viewed together at the same time for each bot
  • Allow custom search-organization for hangars and inventory
• Pilots
  • Reduce the gold cost
  • Reduce the randomness of skills
  • Titan pilots
  • Universal pilot skills
  • Legendary Pilots for Fujin and Raijin
  • Legendary Pilots for all Bots
• Rewards / Events / Operations / Chests
  • Remove 2,500 components from Tier 1 prizes in Events
  • More gold-based deal offers
  • Overdrive weekend that reduces or eliminates costs for component conversion in WS
  • Daily Log In Rewards
  • Choose type of crate progression (Status: In jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "The league chests need a rework, that's for sure. We have some plans for an overhaul or even an alternative feature in 2021.")
  • Honor based gold system
  • Pt-Gold-Silver Forge system
  • Announce odds of winning prizes from chests, events, etc.
• Titans
  • New Titan Oasis
  • New Titan Odin
  • Nodens should be able to see stealthed allied bots for healing
  • Add Nodens heal targeting button
  • Make Titans available in custom games
  • Motherboards (like microchips for bots)
  • Additional abilities
• Weapons / Equipment
  • Corrosion Rockets
  • Aegis shield purchase (like Ancile)
  • Antimatter Rail Gun
  • Weapons Inventory Page
  • DoT Shotguns
  • Reload Accelerator Module

​
Ruled Out (for now):

• Reload button (Status: Been requested numerous times over the years. Pixonic had a reload button in a test server in ~2016 but removed it without explanation and has not indicated it will be implemented at all in the future).
• Donating (or trading) any resources to (with) other players or accounts (Status: a type of resource donation system used to be in the game but it was abused by players who created multiple accounts and clan-hopped to exploit it. It does not look like any trading system will be implemented in the future).
• Stats (Status: In Dec 2020 Max, WR Producer stated: "We agree that there are players who love in-depth statistics. However, War Robots is a "midcore" game and we predict that the feature will not be popular enough among our players.")
  • Legends League stats (bots / weapons)
  • Stats of each bot at the end of the battle
  • Specific bot in your hangar stats for last 50 games
  • Advanced stats tab
• E-Sports, community leagues, official API ecosystem (Status: in Dec 2020, Max WR Producer stated: " Nope. That would require too much work and resources.")
• Battle Pass for Operations (points / currency rewards) (Status: in January 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "We are fine with how Operations work in War Robots right now.")
• Allow training hangars to test out bots before buying them (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "It's a nice idea in general and we had it on the roadmap for 2021. However, after the final evaluation, the feature's business value/effort proportion proved to be too unfavorable to include it into the plan. You can still test out some of the new content using Hangar X.")
• Allow factions to add boosts / skills / features to bots and hangars (Status: in Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "It's a very interesting concept, yet as War Robots meta is not built around the lore, it will lead to power players choosing factions that suit the current meta, while the lore factor will be neglected. So the faction power bonus is unlikely to appear in the game. However, we will work on including more lore-based features in War Robots and our other games.")
• New MM formula (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "First of all, big thanks to the author of the original post. You did a great job with the calculations and data! *applause*. The concept of the Hangar Power matchmaking is great. It provides those sought after equal matches in most of the cases... on one condition — all players play fair. Right at the point when someone decides to abuse the system, it all falls apart. We struggled with it really bad before we introduced Leagues. (Yes, tankers are also a problem, but we can at least spot them and suspend or ban their accounts.). Your idea with the high-tier robots contributing more to the HPS is a good one. And still, it doesn't provide a guaranteed solution to the problem. Between Tier 1 (Destrier) and Tier 4 (Ao Jun) there is also Tier 2 and Tier 3. That's where it gets painfully difficult to balance the system so that high-level players aren't able to disintegrate mid-levels with just one bot. We had some attempts at a similar algorithm with the Design and Analytics teams in 2019. During several months of tests we couldn't come up with a solid version, that we ourselves wouldn't be able to abuse as players.")
• Synchronize platform releases (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "It's not possible due to our internal releasing procedures.")
• Give Pt or Gold for selling Titans / Bots / Weapons that used Pt or gold to purchase them (Status: In Jan 2021, Max WR Producer stated: "No. With the current economy of the game, the availability of resources directly affects the availability of the content. At this point, we don't want to make the powerful content more available.")

With the recent (ish) announcement of a physical edition of Final Fantasy IX coming to the Nintendo Switch, I thought it might be interesting to have a discussion about potential future Square-Enix projects that might yet appear on the system. The ‘pick up and play’ nature of the Switch makes it very compatible with JRPGs, and Square-Enix already has a pretty sizable collection of its games on Switch. It seems likely that there are more to come, but what and when is an open question.
I’m going to start this off by listing a number of potential projects, and my sense of how likely or unlikely they are to materialize. Curious to read all of your lists as well. I’ll say up front that some of the games I’ll be talking about I know like the back of my hand, and others I know only by reputation. Hopefully, we can all fill in each other’s knowledge gaps. Thanks for stopping by! :)
Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: This is the game I always have my fingers crossed for whenever Nintendo announces new additions to the NES/SNES Online apps, but unfortunately, we haven’t seen it yet. I still think it more likely than not that Seven Stars will eventually be available this way—it was included with the SNES Classic system, after all—but the longer it’s absent, the more I wonder if there’s some sort of legal/financial dispute standing in its way. (This was Square and Nintendo’s last major collaboration before their bitter mid-90s split).
Would Seven Stars instead be released as a standalone download for purchase on the Eshop? Given how beloved this game is by its fanbase, (myself included) I tend to think it would turn a profit. I suppose it could be given a slight visual touch-up and add things like higher difficulty settings, bonus dungeons, a boss rush, additional superbosses, access to all minigames from the main menu, etc. A similar approach to how Final Fantasies I-VI have been re-released since the GBA era.
There was a rumor I read fairly recently that a direct sequel to this game was under consideration, as a collaboration between Square-Enix and Nintendo. I am extremely skeptical of this, however, since Seven Stars has a nicely contained little story, with few if any loose threads to be tied up, save for perhaps exploring how Mallow adjusts to his newfound role as Prince of Nimbus Land. Certainly wouldn’t object to a sequel, though, as Seven Stars still contains my favorite overall incarnation of the Mario world.
Chrono TriggeCross: A ’Chrono Collection,’ which would include Trigger, Cross, and perhaps even Radical Dreamers as a bonus, seems logical, if not necessarily inevitable. This series may never have reached the commercial heights of Final Fantasy, but Chrono Trigger is among those very rare games where it’s hard to find even a word of negative criticism, a reputation I think still draws people in. (That was the effect it had on a young me in the early 2000s; I missed it the first time around on SNES, but as soon as I heard about Final Fantasy Chronicles for PlayStation, which included both Final Fantasy IV and Chrono Trigger, it was an instant pre-order). Chrono Trigger has since shown up on the Nintendo DS and mobile devices.
Chrono Cross, on the other hand, is more divisive, with passionate admirers and detractors. This might explain why Square-Enix has yet to bring it to mobile devices, despite the availability of Trigger on these platforms. The fact that an enhanced version of Final Fantasy IX is available on mobile devices suggests that technical considerations are not the reason for Chrono Cross’s absence. (And of course, none of this would be a barrier of entry with the much more powerful Switch).
All this leads me to speculate that Square-Enix is holding off on releasing Trigger or Cross for modern platforms at this point because they are planning a ’Chrono Collection’ at some point down the line. I can’t help but picture a very attractive physical edition, perhaps featuring a black and gold case with the familiar clock design, and a companion booklet containing artwork and development history for the series. (Trigger’s development history is particularly interesting).
The visual novel Radical Dreamers, which could be described as something of a rough draft for a key early episode in the story of Cross, is non-essential, but would still be a nice little bonus—a window into the creative process. Including the excellent soundtracks for both Chrono games (ala Super Mario 3D All-Stars) would be an even bigger draw.
Of course, this is all just speculation on my part. Outside of Chrono Trigger being made available on Steam and mobile devices in recent years, this series has not shown signs of life in quite some time.
Secret of Evermore and Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Grouping these two together because they are both lesser-regarded Square SNES titles that might still be interesting additions to the SNES Online app. The likes of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy IV, and Final Fantasy VI are unlikely to pop up there, both because they have a proven ability to sell individually, on multiple platforms over the years, and because the initial SNES releases of these games are no longer the optimal versions available. (Especially true in the case of Final Fantasy IV). The popular Secret of Mana is also unlikely, given that Square-Enix has already released a remake, as part of an ongoing project of remaking the Mana series games for modern platforms.
So why these two? Well, with little if any demand for either to get the modern treatment, bringing them to SNES Online isn’t likely to step on the toes of any future remake/re-release projects. While neither are great games, both are semi-interesting ‘relics.’ Evermore a Secret of Mana clone with a different aesthetic; Mystic Quest designed as a beginner-level RPG for audiences outside of Japan. Not the sort of games many would go out of their way to find and play, but if made available on the SNES Online app, I suspect that many would happily give them a spin. Little if anything to gain, but nothing to lose either.
For the record, I don’t see either as a likely inclusion to SNES Online, which has slowed down considerably in terms of adding new games to its roster. But aside from possibly Seven Stars, these are the only SNES-era Square games I can picture them giving Switch owners more or less for free.
Final Fantasy Tactics/War of the Lions: Quite possibly my favorite video game of all time, I’m both disappointed and a bit surprised that it has yet to appear on Switch. Tactics debuted on the original PlayStation; the enhanced War of the Lions version, featuring an updated translation, beautifully animated and voice-acted cutscenes, and a respectable amount of bonus content, made its first appearance on PSP, and was later adapted for mobile devices. The mobile versions operated with touch controls, and the Switch in handheld mode has touchscreen support built in. Theoretically, at least, War of the Lions would translate well onto Switch, but perhaps there are more potential technical complications than I realize. Alternately, Square-Enix might have made the calculation that those who love Tactics already have it on iOS/Android, and would be less likely to ‘double-dip’ and buy a Switch version.
I really hope this isn’t the case, though, since I’d love to have it on Switch. This is another game where I think Square-Enix could make some extra money by releasing a physical version that includes artwork, maps, the soundtrack, etc. A full visual remake, with the production values of the gameplay graphics matching that of the cutscenes, would be even better, but I don’t think that’s very likely.
The Final Fantasy VII ‘Expanded Universe:’ The original Final Fantasy VII is available on Switch, but what is probably the most famous and popular entry in the series has branched out in multiple directions since its debut in 1997. Most recently, of course, was the Final Fantasy VII Remake for PS4. Whether a downgraded version of that game could possibly be adapted for Switch, I honestly don’t know, but even if it technically could, I wouldn’t particularly like its chances. Reason being that Final Fantasy VII Remake is, from a narrative standpoint, incomplete, since it doesn’t cover the range of the original’s story. (Not even close). In theory, this necessitates at least one more entry, and probably two or more. With the ‘original’ being a late PS4 title, that means that its follow-up(s) will likely debut on PS5, which the Switch will be much further behind from a technical standpoint. Would Square-Enix want only one part of a two- or three-part story workable on Switch? If they thought it would sell well enough, perhaps. But I think it’s more likely that if anything from the FF7 Remake series ever makes it onto a Nintendo system, the Switch’s hypothetical successor is more likely to see it than the current model.
Remake is not the only video game expansion of the FF7 universe, of course. If any of the others are to make it to Switch, I think Crisis Core is much more likely than either Before Crisis or Dirge of Cerberus. Wouldn’t rule out the possibility of any of them, but Crisis Core was originally designed for a handheld: the PSP. Zack Fair’s story was and remains compelling to fans, despite anyone who played through Final Fantasy VII knowing full well how it ends. The popularity of Vincent Valentine was not enough to save Dirge of Cerberus from some pretty harsh criticism.
Working against all of these? Well, Remake throws the continuity of the original and its spinoffs into question. It’s possible that Square-Enix might be planning to scrub the existing canon clean as part of this ongoing project.
Vagrant Story: I’ll admit, this is pure wishful thinking on my part; I’m under no illusions that this is even remotely likely. Still, it’s behind only Tactics/War of the Lions on my own Square-Enix Switch wishlist. (Switchlist?) What’s not to like about a dark Renaissance detective story? (The block stacking/rearrangement puzzles required to progress through dungeons can be a bit tedious, but nothing awful).
Star Ocean Games: With First Departure—a enhanced PSP remake of the first Star Ocean game—already on Switch, I think it’s a virtual certainty that Second Evolution—the PSP counterpart to Second Story—will eventually make the leap over as well. (Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t already). The Switch prospects of post-Second Story/Evolution games are iffier, but with the second installment often regarded as the highlight of the entire series, it is a very strong candidate to pop up on the Eshop.
Kingdom Hearts Games: The first games on this list I know only by reputation. My understanding is that they have done very well in terms of both sales and critical reception, and even that feels like an understatement. The recent announcement of a Kingdom Hearts rhythm-based spinoff for Switch seemed to spark disappointment in these parts that nothing from the main series was coming. This suggests that there is a potential market for mainline Kingdom Hearts on Switch; I’d certainly be willing to give them a shot.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Games: I can’t help but wonder if the original Final Fantasy Tactics Advance was hurt at all by Fire Emblem making its debut appearance outside of Japan around the same time, to positive press and public reception. The success of Fire Emblem on GBA likely overshadowed Tactics Advance a bit. Still, there are other reasons why this game tends to be held in lower overall regard than the original Final Fantasy Tactics. While the first has the air of a Shakespearean epic, the central conceit of Advance is that a group of kids, presumably from the ‘real world,’ get sucked into a fantasy world, and the main story goal is their trying to somehow get back home. Some saw this as a major step backwards from the original, while others praised the writers for thinking outside the box. Also controversial was the ‘Judge’ system, where every battle would start with the announcement that certain abilities could not be used. Some saw this as a fun challenge that kept players on their toes; others found it irritating and contrived. I know less about the DS sequel, Grimoire of the Rift.
If we ever see anything from the Final Fantasy Tactics sub-series on Switch, War of the Lions seems far more likely than any of the Advance titles. If a hypothetical War of the Lions Switch version was to sell well enough, however, perhaps Square-Enix would release one or both of the Advance games in the hopes of piggy-backing off its success.
Final Fantasy XIII Games: Doable? Probably. Worth it for Square-Enix financially, given the mixed reputation of these games? Tougher call.
Final Fantasy XV: Another recent Final Fantasy I know quite little about. I know that the downgraded ’Pocket Edition, which I first became aware of via the iOS App Store, is also available on the Switch Eshop. This perhaps suggests that Final Fantasy XV in its original form would be difficult to adapt to Switch. Difficult, however, does not necessarily mean impossible, so I would be surprised, but not shocked, if Final Fantasy XV was eventually brought to Switch.
Threads of Fate & Brave Fencer Musashi: Grouping these two because they are both mid/late PS1-era games that have virtually no chance of re-emerging on Switch. Still, both are cute, family-friendly action RPGs that would be right at home on the system.
Xenogears: Another PS1-era longshot...noticing a pattern here? Legal difficulties aside, I could see Xenogears potentially doing well on the Nintendo Eshop, riding the coattails of the popular Xenoblade games. (Which I definitely need to get around to trying one of these days; my understanding is that although there are no direct narrative links between them, Xenogears, and the Xenosaga games, they are considered to be ‘spiritually’ connected).
I last played Xenogears myself about two or three years back, and my experience then left me with the sense that the game might be a bit more ‘digestible’ on a handheld-hybrid like the Switch than its home console origins. Engaging, thought-provoking story; complex, well-written characters; a wonderful soundtrack. No one can take these things away from Xenogears. That being said, Xenogears often employs long (winded) cutscenes and dialogue sections to tell its excellent story, has a pretty high rate of random encounters throughout its large-scale dungeons and overworld areas, and requires frequent micromanagement and shopping to upgrade ‘Gears’ (combat robots) so the player remains competitive in battle.
In other words, an average Xenogears play session can leave the player with the sense that they have accomplished relatively little compared to the amount of time they just invested in it. Because of that, I often found myself feeling ‘burned out’ by the game, engaging though it was.
While a Switch version of the game could not be expected to totally resolve those issues, it could alleviate them, both by its ‘pick up and play’ nature and by increasing opportunities to save progress outside of the designated save points and world map of the original. (As was the standard of the time). Ideally, one would be able to save during a lengthy cutscene, so they would be able to take a break from the story without being forced to later watch (and process) the entire thing from the beginning.
Dissidia Games: Admittedly, I don’t know much about these games other than the very basics: they are a fighting game spinoff of the Final Fantasy series. On paper, though...doesn’t that sound like something that would sell like hotcakes on Switch? Dissidia may not be at the top of my personal wishlist, but outside of Kingdom Hearts, it is perhaps the most puzzling Square-Enix exclusion.
Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings: A definite longshot, but there are two factors that could theoretically, at least, work in its favor: a) its ties to Final Fantasy XII, which is on Switch via The Zodiac Age; and b) the fact that, unlike XII itself, Revenant Wings was originally released on a Nintendo platform: the DS.
Working against it? Radio silence. I admittedly have never played this one myself, but the fact that so few people seem to talk about it suggests that it didn’t make much of an impact one way or the other. It would have been a cool bonus—as an unlockable or DLC—to include with Zodiac Age, but no such luck, and Revenant Wings seems to be more or less forgotten. I quite like XII, though, so if Revenant Wings did come to Switch, I’d be inclined to give it a shot.
Front Mission Series: A not especially famous, but long-running, somewhat prolific Square-Enix series, with entries spanning from the SNES to the PS4. File this one under surprised but not shocked if something from the Front Mission series eventually lands on Switch.
Parasite Eve Games: The last PS1-era longshots, I promise! (And the second-to-last entry overall...Hallelujah!) Right down there with Threads of Fate and Brave Fencer Musashi in the ‘never gonna happen’ column. I totally missed out on the original and its sequel during their initial run, which I kind of regret now, since many of their basic elements—a more gritty/realistic tone; a female detective as the protagonist—sound really cool on paper. The sort of thing I glanced over as a child/adolescent, but would be right up my alley these days.
Final Fantasy I-VI: If you’re still here, thank you very much! This will be the last section of my list today...but also the longest. I decided to group the first six mainline Final Fantasies together here not because I think each is of equal importance—far from it—but more to highlight the curious fact that, despite the fairly widespread availability of these games on multiple platforms over the course of many years, the earliest Final Fantasy game up and running on the Nintendo Switch at the time of this writing is VII. So, what gives? Thinking back to the Tactics/War of the Lions section, this could be a matter of Square-Enix calculating that, with the first six Final Fantasies already available on mobile devices, there would be little incentive for Switch-owning fans to ‘double-dip.’
I’m not sure if that theory holds up as well here, however, since we are talking about six individual games of varying importance, as opposed to one.
Final Fantasies I & II have often been bundled together, in the case of both Final Fantasy Origins for the PS1 and Dawn of Souls for the GBA. If we ever do see a Switch re-release of these games, my guess is that we would get another two-pack, if for no other reason than a bundle is probably the best means of selling the ambitious yet deeply flawed Final Fantasy II. My first experience with both games was via Dawn of Souls, but one thing I didn’t realize until some time later was that, at least in the case of Final Fantasy I, the adaptation was quite different from the original experience. The Dawn of Souls version had a traditional MP system for spells—each spell used x-amount of MP, which could be recovered via certain items and by resting at town inns and tents/cottages on the world map. The original release, on the other hand, featured limited spell charges, which could apparently only be recovered by resting in towns, forcing the player to be much more strategic/conservative with magic use. Thinking back to the high encounter rate and maze-like dungeons, my first thought was: ’My God, that sounds like an absolute nightmare!’ For others, though, it could be a fun challenge, so it might be nice for future re-releases of Final Fantasy I to include both magic systems.
I’m not sure to what extent, if any, Square-Enix might be influenced by Nintendo’s recent decision to re-release the first NES/Famicom Fire Emblem game on Switch, with no apparent changes aside from it being available in languages other than the original Japanese, but I suppose this could theoretically compel them to release the first three NES/Famicom Final Fantasy games with the original NES/Famicom graphics, at least as an optional setting. (Hopefully not completely replacing the ‘prettied up’ versions). That being said, I wouldn’t want any downgraded graphics settings to strip a future Final Fantasy I re-release of the fun superboss cameos, including but not limited to the dragon Shinryu and the eccentric swordsman Gilgamesh.
A quick aside about Final Fantasy II, since we’re here. There are very few games I’ve ever wanted to like more, and I think it deserves credit for thinking outside the box with its leveling system, and for having a story more on the human folly/political intrigue side than the straight ‘good versus evil’ side. Unfortunately, though, it falls a bit flat in both areas. The game does have its bright spots, including a pretty strong supporting cast—Princess Hilda and Minwu the OG White Mage are standouts—and one of my favorite music tracks in the series: the Wild Rose Rebellion theme.
Onward to Final Fantasy III, which is probably best known for its more complex/sophisticated take on the ‘Job System’ introduced in Final Fantasy I, and for how long it took (sixteen years!) for the game to first release outside of Japan. The last of the NES/Famicom Final Fantasies, my understanding is that, after the largely failed experiment that was II, the next game in the series was intended as a return to form—going back to the concepts of the original and expanding on them. A similar approach, one could argue, to both Super Mario Bros. 3 and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. With the SNES/Super Famicom set to release within the same timeframe, however, and Square’s plans to bring the ambitious Final Fantasy IV to that new platform, it was ultimately decided that releasing III outside of Japan would be unwise. Fast-forward to 2006, and the Nintendo DS would see a full remake of Final Fantasy III, complete with both 3D graphics and an expanded story—where the four playable characters were nameless avatars in the original, the remake gave them established names and backstories. (This version was also later adapted for mobile devices). The sheer novelty of this ‘lost’ Final Fantasy game finally showing its face outside of Japan, and of a Nintendo system finally being able to boast having a 3D Final Fantasy of its own, led to the game getting some decent attention early on, but long-term, it doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact. Perhaps in large part because it’s difficult to think of anything Final Fantasy III did that Final Fantasy V didn’t do as good or better.
And on that note, I’m going to skip ahead briefly to Final Fantasy V. (IV will get its time, don’t worry). Like the odd-numbered Final Fantasies before it, V is remembered more for its gameplay—an even more sophisticated Job System than that of III—than its story or characters. This is the most common criticism of the game, and while I think there’s something to it, it should also be noted that Final Fantasy V had the misfortune of being sandwiched between the epic, story-driven IV and VI, so it had some stiff competition in that area. There’s still a pretty good story to be had here; a likable, if not super-memorable cast; and a handful of interesting plot points and twists.
One interesting aspect of Final Fantasy V is that, in terms of gameplay, it is almost a mirror image of IV. Where IV is very linear and allows virtually no opportunities to customize characters, or even choose which party members to go with at any given time, V encourages frequent mixing and matching of classes and secondary skills to adapt to the current situation. One might go in expecting, consciously or unconsciously, the obvious male lead to function best in a Knight/Swordsman class, and the obvious female lead to be most effective as a mage. In truth, however, anyone can be anything. All characters have access to the same Job classes, but their visual design in each class varies to reflect their personality. Take the Monk/Martial Artist class, for instance—where both male characters go shirtless when assigned to this job, the more ‘girly’ of the two female characters dons a bright red athletic dress, while her more ‘tomboyish’ counterpart instead chooses a plain white robe/karate uniform. Given the relative obscurity of Final Fantasy V, it’s difficult to picture Square-Enix investing many resources into a future remake project, but it would be cool to see a modern take on all these character designs.
As for why I skipped right from III to V? Well, despite the fact that these two games, as far as I know, have never been bundled together, I think they would make pretty logical ‘running mates’ in the future, given that both are centered around a version of the Job system. (Maybe they could call it ’Final Fantasy Labor Collection’).
Now let’s tackle what is arguably the heaviest hitter of this group: Final Fantasy IV. Of the pre-VII Final Fantasy games, IV is probably the one that has gotten the most love from Square-Enix, which one could argue is a mixed blessing. While the original release is almost universally well-regarded, its direct, seventeen years after-the-fact sequel, The After Years, is often considered among the weakest titles to fly under the Final Fantasy banner. It has its good points, and I think there would a pretty engaging story here if they had just trimmed the proverbial fat and made >!Kain Highwind the undisputed main character.After Years is kneecapped by its original format of downloadable ‘episodes’ that were released gradually, and these chapters are by no means created equal. (Some are interesting, but others are a miserable slog).
Final Fantasy IV would eventually appear on both the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS, but the competing handhelds were not to receive the exact same product. The DS version featured the 3D visual style of Final Fantasy III DS, while the PSP’s Complete Collection employed a more traditional 2D art style with redrawn sprites and locations. Complete Collection, unlike FFF 4 DS, also contained both After Years and the aptly-titled mid-quel Interlude.
If Final Fantasy IV ever does make its way over to Switch, Complete Collection seems like the better overall value, but my guess is that the DS/mobile device 3D version is a bit more likely. It might be worth noting that, despite After Years debuting with a 2D style, it was re-released for mobile devices with a 3D ‘makeover’ back in 2013. This move also suggests that Square-Enix would sell the original IV and its sequel separately on the Eshop if they ever do bring them to Switch.
And now, the biggie: Final Fantasy VI. The most recent mainline entry to debut on a Nintendo system, and simultaneously one of the most beloved by fans and most neglected by its parent company. To this day, the definitive version of Final Fantasy VI is the enhanced GBA port, from all the way back in 2006. (Advance takes that crown in my book solely because, unlike other re-releases that contained the same bonus content, it included a run button from the beginning, in place of always needing to have one party member’s Relic slot taken up by the ‘Sprint Shoes’ if you wanted to get anywhere fast).
The sad reality of Final Fantasy VI is that, more than probably any other entry in this series, it is hindered by its graphical limitations. Not because it uses a 2D sprite-based presentation, to be sure—both Chrono Trigger and the first two Suikoden games managed to convey a large-scale world with a similar art style—but I think the best illustration of this shortcoming is to compare the the city of Vector in VI to Midgar in the original Final Fantasy VII. Neither locale would win any beauty contests these days, but even the rather primitive 3D visuals in VII were enough to convey that this was a massive, massive city. The Imperial capital, on the other hand? Not so much. Save for some slightly larger, plain-looking buildings, a lack of flowers and trees, and what looked to be pieces of industrial equipment in an area just beyond the line of apartments and stores, there wasn’t a whole lot to distinguish it visually from the average town a player visited.
Beyond the basic set pieces, though, there are a multitude of scenes in Final Fantasy VI that absolutely demand a greater visual spectacle than what the SNES/Famicom could achieve at the time. Especially the whole Floating Continent sequence of events. (Can you imagine?) As I admitted earlier, I don’t know much about the Dissidia games, but one thing I have seen of them are the amazing 3D models of VI’s Kefka and Terra. To have all those elaborate character designs given a modern (ish) touch, whether they used 3D models or 2D sprites, would be a thing of beauty.
Do I think a modern remake of Final Fantasy VI being developed for the Switch is likely? Sadly...no. But I can’t ignore how poetic such a thing would be. Considering that the first the world saw of the eventual Final Fantasy VII project was an N64 tech demo showing 3D models of Terra, Locke, and Shadow in battle, this would really bring things full-circle.
Again, if you made it this far...frankly, I’m surprised I made it this far! Five thousand-plus words, more than a month of fiddling with this ‘script,’ and I’m sure there’s still plenty I missed and got wrong. Still, it feels good to finally wrap this up, and if nothing else, I hope it will be a semi-enjoyable read. Curious to hear your thoughts, and many thanks!

Yes, they exist, the people that play poker with playmoney only. It’s just for entertainment and nothing bad can happen, but this also leads to an environment where the players don’t respect your raises and are just calling everything. Unless you play the 2-3 highest stakes/tables.
So it’s your turn to adapt and exploit the fish. For beginners it’s great to learn about the structure and „how it works“, but it has nothing to do with real cash games. Every 2/4 cent real money table plays more serious poker than the 90% of the WSOP Playtika players. I will explain where you find the 10%. That beeing said it’s a fun experience to get into the game but if you ever plan on playing for real cash and are a beginner, avoid this.
I am at 18 Billion chips now and would like to share some tipps and tricks on how to build a bankroll and „where“ and „how“ to play the WSOP „cashgames“.
1.) Learn to fold. Seriously. I got a pre-flop fold percentage of ~48 % and yes, that is super tight for WSOP App games. Whenever I check the profiles I usually find 10 % (lol) to 35% pre-flop fold statistics so the „Game“ for most players is less poker mathematics but watching flop action. Keep that in mind and expolit this.
2.) Hence my next advice, be patient. Act like are a glitch on the table that calls or raises accidentally. Wait for good hands . But don’t play like a robot that only plays KK and AA on the button. Calling with TJ or 89 as suited connectors out of position is not a bad idea because sometimes even the other players register that you are only in action with strong hands. Someone that folded 30 turns and only played his blinds and even folded SB here and there is suspicious when raising. Not every table has 9 clueless donks.
3.) Raise once in a while. Only calling Leads to the usual flop action where 7 of 10 players are still in the pot and you will be wrecked in the river so often. Forcing the loose players to pot size bets makes some of them hesitate and fold their 59 preflop that might catch the 9 and 9 on the Turn and River.
4.) Players that hit the flop even with the lowest pair won’t fold, and thats were you get your playmoney profit long term. Most of them refuse to surrender and even call pot size bets on the turn and river even if they are beat.
5.) The WSOP Playtika App always suggest you play the maximum possible buyin tables and ignores bankroll management. That is your responsibility.
I usually only play with 10-15% of my Bankroll, but I play with Auto Rebuy (that only will be an issue because playmoney has variance, too, and your well played all in flush might eventually lose on the river) and Auto Top Off. That means I always play with the maximum buyin/BB on that table to get paid when I hit the nuts and face another player that fuels a big pot.
It’s the worst feeling to win less because you could not maximize the pot bets.
6.) You remember the 10 % I mentioned that „somehow“ play more serious Poker? They exist, but you only find them in the last third of the High Stakes tables.
The Playmoney WSOP tables are structured like this with Stakes and Buy In Ranges:

• 5K/10K - 50K/1.25M
  
• 10K/20K - 500K/2.5M
  
• 25K/50K - 1.25M/6.25M
  
• 50K/100k - 2.5M/12.5M
  
• 100K/200K - 5M/25M
  
• 300K/600K - 15M/75M
  
• 600K/1.2M - 30M/150M
  
• 1.25M/2.5M - 62.5M/312.5M
  
• 3M/6M - 150M/750M
  
• 6M/12M - 300M/1.5B
  
• 12.5M/25M - 600M/3B
  
• 30M/60M - 1.5B/7.5B
  

Once you play at the 6M+ stakes tables you will face a different type of players: Many have levels of 200 and 300 and more which means they grinded fast and/or well. They play this game at least more than „casually“ and more focused and act slightly tighter. The pre flop percentage usually is above 40% so there are less limpers and calling stations. Be careful if you find 50% pre flop folders and <5% post flop raisers. They will have strong hands once they start betting and raising.
The most „serious“ playmoney poker gamers are in the last 2 tables, because the 3B table is an equivalent of ~ 90 Euro/Dollars and you won’t find casuals here that throw away real money. Players of the highest playmoney limits actually follow fundamental poker strategy and respect your behavior and raises. You will find players there with way better reads and you won’t find casual limpers that play for the action.
So the good news is, you CAN have a somewhat serious full ring poker action at the WSOP playmoney community. The bad news is you have to grind through the donk festivals of the first 8-9 limits and tables. It’s frustrating sometimes but be patient, fold often and make the calling stations pay with your sets.
Some additional thoughts: - ignore the Momentum - ignore the Slot Machine - a big friendlist is nice for many free chips here and there - ignore the obnoxious Piggy Bank
That’s it. Any other WSOP playmoney poker entertainment folks here?

Read full story: medium.com/verasity
On the 4th of February, we hosted an AMA with Verasity Founder R J Mark. Thank you to everyone who joined, we answered a lot of community questions in depth (39 in total!). If you missed it, below is the complete transcript. Exciting information in this, make sure to read it all. 👀
Hello Verasians. I am Bhav, the marketing manager at Verasity and I’m joined by R J Mark, the founder of Verasity. Thank you for joining us for this AMA! :smile:
Mark: Hello everyone.
We will be answering all of the pertinent questions that the community have sent in throughout the week. Once these questions have been answered, I will open up the chat so you can ask further (non-repetitive please) questions, the chat will then close once more for Mark to answer. The transcript of this AMA will then be posted on our Medium.
Let’s get straight into it!
Q1) There will be no deadline on the swap so there is no rush and no fear of losing your tokens. They can be swapped at any time. Is that right?
Absolutely right. There is no deadline on the swap For more details read:
VRA Token & PoV update
Q2) Regarding the ERC777 Token Swap, you don’t need to withdraw to VeraWallet on the day of swap? Can I do it later?
Correct, take your time, there is no rush. You can do it at any time. There is no deadline or end date for the swap. We are making this as seamless and easy as possible for everyone.
Seamless and easy. That’s the way forward ✅Q3) Will we see more movements from the Foundation wallet. What is this about? The Swap?
That is correct. In anticipation of the swap company wallets’ tokens are being swapped via VeraWallet. See the article about this:
VRA Token & PoV update
New Foundation wallets will be created to replace the old ones.
Q4) Any plans to keep staking beyond the 31/12/2021 deadline?
We have not made a decision yet but liquidity mining is very much in play and could replace staking after Dec 2021. We will announce mid-year.
Q5) All the tournaments are free to join. How does that help the company to generate revenue? Is there a place or example where users/players are actually using the VRA token to get a product/service?
_Great question!_The tournaments are free to join since we are focusing on adoption and scaling the number of users we have globally. Bringing as many people to the platform is our priority right now. As we expand and offer user-generated prize pools we will take a commission on the total jackpots as a revenue stream. In addition, other revenue flows will become available to us as we build our user base and launch our video player this Q1.
We will monetize our esports content through our video player within Esports Fight Club by serving ads from our ad partners:
Advertiser Partnership Update
Esports Fight Club will require players to use VRA to purchase subscriptions via several payment systems: VeraWallet, PayPal and Credit Cards (although some tournaments are free for promotional purposes). Winners receive VRA for winning tournaments. Soon players will also be rewarded VRA for watching ads. Verasity profits from the purchase of game credits, subscriptions, tournament prize pools and ads. This is an entire ecosystem all within Verasity.
See our revenue forecast here:
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
Adoption and scale are key to the success of Esports Fight Club. We’ve made a lot of progress on the platform and are confident we will continue to see further growth in terms of users and a ton more exposure to the platform, and our token $VRA.Talking about adoption and scale… the next question will answer that!~Q6) What is the current Marketing Strategy? How do we differ from other tournament websites?
After creating mass-scale events around the world, we are focusing on adoption and community this year. Spending $10,000 on a big one-time prize pool to attract 1000 teams sounds good in theory. But, after careful planning, forecasting and testing, the results show that the best way is to spread the tournaments out so we reach a larger number of audiences. This consistency and large reach will attract much more than just 1000 teams over a period of time. The best place to do this is by sponsoring streamers and influencers, who each have thousands or even hundreds of thousands of fans.
For the past week, for example, we’ve been running a Valorant Community Tournament with Esports Fight Club’s first partnered streamer, Mika Daime. The turnout has been massive! Qualifier 1 was filled up with the max slots so quickly, that we had to create a Qualifier 2 just to fit all the teams in.

1. Most streamers we aim to partner with can easily bring in 64 or 256 teams to a community tournament hosted by Esports Fight Club, for a fraction of the price
2. With the same budget as a big tournament, of the $10,000 we would have spent on a single tournament, we can obtain approximately 540% more users by repurposing that budget for the influencer and streamer tournaments.

For a full list of upcoming features such as the Marketplace and VoD section read our full Marketing and Adoption post:
Marketing, Adoption, Tournaments 2021 (Updated)
It’s key for people to understand what we aim to do with the tournaments in terms of marketing. We read a lot of comments about the “low prize pool” when we announced the Mika Daime tournament, hopefully the answer Mark provided sheds light on that!Everything we do at Verasity is calculated. 😊Do check this out if you wanted a full read on our Marketing and Adoption post for 2021. 👍🏼If you think you’re good at some of the games we have available on Esports Fight Club, join in! The partnered streamers we have will be hosting a lot of community tournaments, such as Mika Daime!Q7) How often shall the revenue estimates (status update) be updated and is there any new estimation?
We will update the community every six months on revenue forecasts. There are no updates from our last announcement which can be found here
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter with notifications turned on, so you can get all the updates as they come through!https://twitter.com/verasitytech
Q8) Have you changed your business model? Because at the beginning it was mainly about publishers.
Our fundamental model has not changed: Video publishers attract audiences to watch video content and ads. Users are rewarded for it, thereby increasing engagement and monetization.
This model has not changed. What has changed is the type of video publisher we are pursuing. Prior to COVID-19, we pursued traditional publishers. With COVID-19, we saw the opportunity to pursue gaming publishers and more specifically esports publishers. More importantly, we created our own tournament platform: esportsfightclub.com. This allows us to control our own environment, launch our own proprietary video player, own our video content, run ads on our player, and charge subscription fees as well as take tournament fees.
But actually publishers and content are publishers and content whether it’s gaming or news.
It’s great to see how Esports Fight Club will have it’s own video content up on the website so that users will be able to watch the content to earn $VRA by using our own video technology, then use the $VRA to join tournaments, or buy hardware from trusted partners 👀Exciting stuff!Q9) Where can I find info about the Founders token unlock schedule?
Tokenomics and Founders token unlock schedule can be found here:
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
Q10) Does VeraWallet speed handling withdraws scale up painlessly when user amounts boom? And shall there be enhancements to user experience if we for example have tens or hundreds of small reward withdraws daily?
We are adding automated withdrawals for small amounts to the roadmap but first have to complete the swap and add the security protocols. We won’t risk our users’ investments.
We simply don't want to risk our secure environment.
Q11) Are there any plans for compounding rewards for the VeraWallet staking?
No, absolutely not. The simple interest we are paying now is already high.
Q12) Bit confused about the VeraWallet staking rate after March. Can you clarify?
The staking reward rate is 0.1% per day (36.5% per annum) until 31 March 2021 when it becomes 0.07% daily (25.55% pa) until 31 December 2021.
Q13) When can I instant stake with BTC?
Good news, BTC is already available in VeraWallet for Instant Stake together with ETH, BNB and USDT.
Try Instant Buy and Stake out for yourself here:
VeraWallet - Official VRA Wallet
Instant Buy and Stake has been a really popular update to VeraWallet. Great to see the community loving it. 👍🏼Q14) With the recent developments on Cardano, and the ease in which ERC-20 tokens can migrate to this superior to Ehereum platform, are you considering following suit of great projects like Celsius to move VRA over to Cardano? I know we are still a bit hurt with Binance VRAB. I understand it is not an easy decision. Just interested in what you think about the future on Ethereum.
We gave this a lot of thought and investigation and as the community knows we have experience with token migrations :)
Please see our latest update on the VRA token swap to ERC777 and Proof of View:
VRA Token & PoV update
As to Cardano — the liquidity is really small compared to ETH alts. For example on Kucoin it’s volume is less than $2m per day. Even on OKEX it’s only $3m. 50% of Celsius’ volume is on Uniswap which is the majority of the liquidity and is not on any Tier 1 exchanges. Aside from the lack of features that we need for PoV, after our last experience, we are very reluctant to join with mainnets that are generally illiquid. Celsius’s solution is to provide the liquidity themselves through Uniswap which is limiting in our view. We believe sticking with Ethereum is the right way to go and the market seems to agree with this as well.
Q15) The new VOD platform, when is it going to be finished and in use?
We are working on it now and expect it to meet the roadmap target of Q1: see verasity.io for the roadmap.
Can’t wait for it to be released! 🚀> Yes, this is a huge milestone for us and opens us up to so many possibilities.Q16) Is liquidity mining still in play? Will this replace the staking rewards after December 2021?
Good question. Yes, liquidity mining is very much in play and could replace staking after Dec 2021. We have not made that decision yet but will announce as soon as we do.
Q17) Are there new partners/publishers in the trend of gaming for the ad stack?
Yes, FB, Google and others. Please see:
Advertiser Partnership Update
In total 17, many specializing in gaming.
I don’t think today there are many ad networks that are not into gaming. It's such a huge audience sitting at home during Covid.
Q18) Micro tournaments: could you arrange tournaments yourself, like a national tournament for example?
The Esports Fight Club platform is fully self-managed, so yes, you could set up large tournaments and be the admin and sponsor. We would definitely like to see this happen by our community members. This quarter, our admins and developers are focused on A/B testing different tournaments with multiple communities to see if we are missing any critical features demanded by gamers. An article will be coming next week about micro and partnered tournaments. We will explain how these increase platform adoption which benefits both influencers and Esports Fight Club.
If anyone does host some tournaments, message me! I’d be happy to join a few… dust off my skills. I heard Rob (Our Finance Director) was a bit of Counterstrike wizard in his day… 😂Q19) Why are the tokens bought via the instant buy taken from a pool which dilutes the total supply? This is like raising new capital for $VRA at every buy instead of us token holders getting a price increase.
These are not purchased from a pool. If you mean that Foundation tokens have been transferred to VeraWallet, see the article:
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
In the Total VRA Supply, line 9, this VRA is already taken into account as part of both total supply and circulating supply. It does not increase either. I think this is really clear.
Q20) Asking about the “Instant buy and stake feature”. If someone buys $VRA using this system, there is no transaction on the blockchain. You say you buy directly on exchanges but no proof.
Buy backs of VRA do not happen instantly and we don’t announce buy backs in advance to avoid speculation. We don’t share our VeraWallet addresses as we have stated before. We are not going to provide speculators with tools to make a margin on each purchase.
Q21) Do we stay on the Ethereum network?
Yes, see the article:
VRA Token & PoV update
We are swapping our current ERC20 tokens to ERC777 which is essentially an upgrade to a more modern and fuller feature set Ethereum token.
For anyone just joining the chat, make sure you read the article above! Tons of important and exciting information.Q22) From the Foundation wallet tokens have been unlocked in the last 50 days and added to the circulating supply. How is our token deflationary?
If you mean that Foundation tokens have been transferred to VeraWallet, see the article:
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
Foundation tokens are not locked and the article clearly states they are unlocked. In the Total VRA Supply, line 9, this VRA is already taken into account as part of both total supply and circulating supply. It does not increase either. We specifically provide for ALL Foundation tokens, allocated and unallocated, as part of the current circulating supply so this is NOT adding to the circulating supply.
Q23) Asking about adoption figures. You claim to have had 8M people looking at your gaming videos (mostly fakes views as the counter earned millions in hours).
The adoption figures were not fake or exaggerated, it is important to understand that this number is a combination of different metrics, all of which ensure one thing: People viewed our live tournament page. This number includes:

• Unique gaming viewers landing on our page to be able to find the stream in their native language (English, Korean, Hindi, Mandarin and Nepali)
• Social media followers and curious gamers who landed on our page after subscribing to our contests, looking for airdrops or just by following our different marketing campaigns. These account for the steady and regular growth of our landing page as we ran these campaigns all-around the globe and 24/7 at the end of the tournament. The livestream was embedded onto the homepage of the website, so everyone who visited our website was also able to watch the tournament
• Lastly, the contestants, productions and influencer’s traffic from sharing our streams was what mostly caused big traffic, especially during the play-off and later stages of the tournament.

Although it was difficult to collate all the viewer statistics we believe them to be accurate and fair.
To see the full statistics of Ultimate Warrior Showdown 1, read here:
Ultimate Warrior Showdown Tournament Round-Up and Adoption
Hope that clears up some FUD! 👍🏼Q24) Asking about partnerships. You say you have partnerships with
Stripe, Tencent Games, PayPal. The truth is any website can integrate these payment/connexion modules without partnership. You just need to read their website and implement it on your website.
Of course, you can add Stripe and PayPal to any website, but try adding them to a crypto-based website and see how far you get. There are no crypto products websites or related services (other than specific financial services) that are supported by Stripe and PayPal because they are not allowed. To obtain these payment services, you need to have special permission and follow a rigid protocol. And Stripe expressed interest in working with Esports Fight Club to reach out to video publishers with EFC to give us access to video publishers worldwide.
As to TencentGames, you need to get their specific permission for certain tournament events and follow their rules. We would be unable to use their logo and name in our marketing material without this. It’s not simply signing up for them. So yes we consider this a partnership because they plan on additional events with us which they now support.
Working with major brands including PUBGM, Tencent, Athena Gaming and Warmania gave us the clout to include major esport teams in our tournaments who will participate in future tournaments as well: FaZe Clan, Orange, T1, Elementrix, Nova, Onic and others. And now because of the history, Blizzard is prepared to provide licenses for all their major games.
We are also in discussion with peripheral manufacturers to support our marketplace launch later this year. As soon as agreements are reached, we will jointly announce sponsored product peripherals that will be rewarded in our tournaments.
Q25) Some things on your roadmap get pushed forward. Why did do you do this?
Our development team has been together doing projects for over ten years. This is normal in large scale development projects. For example, we decided after the large Esports Fight Club tournaments we put on that we needed to finalize and launch the Video sharing platform prior to some other features on the roadmap because without it we would not be able to take advantage of many opportunities including monetization opportunities of the exclusive VOD content that only we could re-publish and add ads to. This pushed certain product features into Q2. Another example is PoV. Initially we thought we would go with proprietary blockchain because there was no other solution that would allow us to support PoV. That changed with the release by Ethereum of ERC777. As a result PoV timeline targets changed so that it corresponds to the release of ERC777 as well as the ability to use it for the Video sharing platform. So in effect, the video-sharing platform came in _much earlier than expected_which pushed out other features/products to accommodate this change. Business decisions and external events impact on the roadmap and it would do Verasity and the community an injustice if we just blindly followed a roadmap that becomes slightly outdated every quarter and greatly outdated every year. It is this flexibility that allows Verasity to take advantage of new information and technologies in real-time. And to push out new products earlier in the roadmap such as the video-sharing platform.
Q26) Proof-of-View™️ so nice!
When will it be a Patented POV?
The average time for a patent to be granted is 3 years. We’ve just started our third year as a pending application so we hope it will be in 2021, however our patent lawyers have told us to expect further delays due to covid. Fortunately this won’t stop the release of Proof of View which can go ahead with ‘patent pending’ protection.
Update: The patent was granted a few minutes after the AMA ended!
— @verasitytech
Q27) Will there be an app for download on your phone soon? For Staking. Feeling a little insecure have it online on your website
Actually, our mweb and web applications are much more secure than a mobile app. Mobile apps are much easier to hack. Although we have not been hacked, some users have been hacked via their mobile phones but because we have a manual delay, we were able to stop the loss of tokens. The good news is that now with the swap to ERC777 we can disable any wallets that have stolen VRA and return the VRA to the original user. We do have mobile apps on the roadmap but won’t likely support staking because of the security issue and it is not a priority for us.
Q28) Not try to fud here, but would like to get an answer in AMA to suppress all fud in the future 😁
Financial status company. There have been coins sold for listing on an exchange (still to come?). Was this something that was not planned (like extra opportunity to get listed) or are funds becoming empty?
Current resources held by Verasity fund the project roadmap for the next 12 months. We forecast reaching profitability in 2021 which will finance the continuing runway thereafter. As you point out not all listing opportunities were included in the forecast and we stated that: “In the future, additional listings and expenses may require sales of VRA from the Foundation Reserve”. See the funding update here:
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
Q29) The VoD update is a little bit unclear for me. Maybe you can tell some more about it. To the looks of it, it is a mix between YouTube and twitch but with PoV to earn $VRA.
PoV on VODs is a key feature for us and for our large ad-stack network. While we are growing our partnerships with community tournaments and adding more games and influencers on EsportsFightClub: we want our reruns to be monetized, available at all times on our proprietary platform and browsing page. Think of it the way Twitch highlights previous streamer’s lives automatically but on a larger and customizable library for viewers to earn VRA and for Verasity to monetize via its ad stack.
And we own several terabytes of gaming and esports video content which will launch with the new video platform in Q1. This is actually massive, because on launch we will have a ton of video content to monetize!
Q30) You seem to have many products but I don’t understand how they work together?

• The Esports Fight Club platform — lots of features already available including global and tournament chats, user created tournaments, detailed tournament customization options
• Proprietary video player — in internal beta for launch Q1
• Proprietary ad stack — in internal beta for launch Q1
• Our own esports content — all the content rights from the tournaments and other gaming content owned by EFC &Verasity — this VOD will be monetized on launch of the video platform in Q1
• Our belief that we can drive large streaming numbers via esports tournaments
• Rewarded Video for these users to watch our content and ads on Esports Fight Club and not on YouTube or other platforms by utilizing VRA to engage and monetize
• A large number of ad networksthat include Google AdMob — Signed on
• Proof of View smart contract view verification (on-chain) — now a reality with the swap of ERC777 to fully build out PoV with all its features on the network.
• VeraWallet as a payment system (together with Stripe &PayPal) throughout the Verasity network.
• In Q1’2021, we will put many of these parts together to start scaling our own video player with our ad stack, producing ad revenues in addition to our other revenue streams.

Q31) What games does Esports Fight Club support now?
PUBG mobile, Free Fire, Counter-Strike GO, Valorant, PUBG and Ludo is about to be launched.
🚀🚀🚀 Great game selection, so far.Q32) Any near-future plans to expand your marketing?
At Verasity, we have a large marketing team that devotes itself behind the scenes to increase our awareness in the cryptocurrency community and reach as many people as possible.
Although we have community groups in more than 10 languages, our local group managers translate all the news, updates into their own languages and publish them in local forums and groups in real time. Thus, we significantly increase our chances of reaching communities that do not speak English. Verasity Spanish, Verasity Korea & Verasity India are already large groups and growing.
We will continue to use media sites, influencers, and all other advertising sources to spread our news in the future as in the past. Gamification marketing opportunities are very important to us as can be seen in LunarCrush.
In return for these efforts, we have gained a great community support that grew slowly but surely. Our marketing efforts will continue to scale. Our goal in this regard is to continue without stopping until every individual in the cryptocurrency community speaks about Verasity.
Our social media metrics have seen a consistent and phenomenal increase over the past year due to our marketing efforts, read here to find out more in detail:
Verasity Social and Adoption Metrics
For us the most important metrics to see how we are doing in socials is LunarCrush:
VRA - VERAsity Insights | LunarCRUSH
LunarCrush Altrank is the best stats measure of Alts social marketing success out of 2100 popular Alts. We tested many marketing ploys to rank highly. When something works, it’s clear in LunarCrush. Competitions like AltWars simply work. This is the meaning of crypto exposure when the Altrank increases in LunarCrush which measures all social volume, % change per 24 hours, and social score. Even with our volume which only ranks 550 out of 2100 Alts, our Social Volume pushes us in front of much bigger tokens such as OMG, DOT, LINK, CHSB and others. Clearly our marketing is working.
The community support has been phenomenal. It’s been great to see how supportive the Verasians have been. We wouldn’t be anywhere without you guys! So thank you from the team.Especially during the AltWars contest recently… we owned! 👍🏼 Power of the Verasians. 🤝Q33)Have you heard about gaming projects Exeedme and Crowns and how can you compare them to Verasity?
We did! Exeedme is an exciting project revolving around gamers personal skill and players betting against themselves (user-centric) that is just at its very inception. They are not competitors as our model (Community, content and tournament centered) has broader purpose and we dont and wont support betting because it will be rejected by many of our partners.
Crowns Token, from Seascape, is a DeFi economy blockchain made for developers building their own online games but who cannot/don’t want to focus on the technical transactional side. Although they are very promising for simple browser and other types of games, they are just not targeting the Esports market and offer, at best, support for upcoming indie-browser games studios.
We would not be able to partner with Exeedme because of betting restrictions but Crowns could be interesting if the games developed are popular with our viewers.
Q34) Are there any plans in the near future (next several months) to list on an exchange that allows full KYC trading for US citizens (e.g. Coinbase, Kraken, Gemini, Binance US, etc.)?
This is hard for us. The regulatory environment in the US is not friendly. Since we are not regulated in the US, the risk of listing on a US exchange and the SEC bringing a claim is quite high. At this time we are avoiding this. Lets see what happens with the new SEC Chair who is quite familiar with blockchain. Should he articulate straight forward rules that can be followed and which will not be changed every couple of months, we will consider it then.
Q35) What is:
1. Business structure
2. Marketing plan for next year
3. Customer acquisition costs
4. Execution plan on tech side to deliver
Business structure of Verasity:
Development team structure is flat with these functions:
Blockchain developers, Backend developers, highload & security developers, Full stack Developers, web/mobile frontend developers, mobile only devs, Testing & QA, Finance.
For more about the Verasity business model and forecast see:
Tokenomics , Forecast, News Update
Marketing plan for next year can be found here:
Marketing, Adoption, Tournaments 2021 (Updated)
Customer acquisition costs
We will provide CAC when we are profitable.
Execution plan
See the roadmap on verasity.io
And finally. the last question on the list…🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁Q36) Do you have an update on exchanges? The one that was hinted end of last year and more to come?
Very important issue for us and the community. We fully appreciate the necessity for additional volume and liquidity. After the last exchange hack and issues with OKEX, we were thrown off balance but had expected to list on a new exchange by now. Mistakenly we announced prematurely and then ran into the necessity of completing the VRA token swap before we list on a new exchange. Obviously, we want to now avoid having to swap tokens on a new exchange. So right after the majority of the current exchanges we are listed on complete the swap (this month), we will continue with our listing plans. We are well on the way with 2 exchanges but don’t think it’s prudent to provide more information until they announce the listing themselves. The expectation is still for at least one exchange in Q1. Please bear with us on this. We will get there.
Been a great AMA so far. Cleared up a lot of questions and hopefully made you all as excited for the future as we are. Tons of great new updates to Esports Fight Club coming this year and a prosperous year for Verasity is definitely ahead.Thank you Mark!Will be now opening the chat for the Verasians to ask some additional questions.Will be closing the chat shortly after and we can get some more answers out. The gates are opening! 😁
Additional questions
Q37) When the Verasity Game Jackpot price will be held again? We are waiting for so long.
New jackpots are coming onto the platform but for upcoming games like Ludo which will be announced later this month.
Q38) Is it possible to create something like a create your own tournament where I can play a 1vs1(or 2v2 5vs5) against another player(s) in any game anytime (like in 30 minutes) and where I can set for example a winning price of 100k VRA. and both players have to send 50k before the game to a smart contract and afterward it automatically gets sent to the winner?
Esports Fight Club allows users to create their own tournaments choosing from the available games list. We are constantly working on expanding the list of available games and are open for suggestions. The players deposit VRA to the Esports Fight Club account and use these funds to send money to the prize pool. It's quite simple to set up and you can do it for any amount and any number of players and as admin, you have complete control of the size of the pot, how it is shared in % for winners when to start, etc. Its a fully self managed platform that works now. Just go in and set it up today!
Q39) Hi Mark, regarding the plans for in-game advertising and in-game rewards this year, could you describe your vision on this? Is Verasity currently discussing this topic with certain game companies, and how exactly would it work in practice once achieved? Any details you can share with us would be highly appreciated!
The way we view in-game ads is our ability to provide our logo or some other image that would be part of the game interface, such as the floor or walls. This already exists and is popular. We are in discussions now with game developers to add Verasity/VRA. This is a high powered marketing tool that will get our name into many gamers’ faces. These are native images in effect. For advertisers that want to use native images inside our broadcasts or VOD, they get stitched into the ad server in parallel to the stream and we get paid for the ad inventory. In-game rewards are still in development but the vision is for users to be able to click on an object in the game and get rewarded for doing so, not dissimilar to clicking on an add and getting a higher CPM.
About Verasity.tv
REWARDS BASED PLATFORM FOR ESPORTS, GAMING AND VIDEO ENTERTAINMENT
Verasity provides proprietary technology uniquely rewarding gamers, viewers and publishers. Verasity is a crypto-based platform with the VRA token that aims to revolutionise the online advertising business. With its innovative Proof of View system, advertisers are able to guarantee their video ads are seen and not ignored thanks to smart contracts on the Ethereum chain, while viewers are able to earn VRA simply by watching the content they already consume. Verasity has a focus on gaming publishers and esports.

• The first platform to provide user-generated esports and prize pool tournaments supported by both Fiat &Digital Tokens.
• Video gaming content monetized by Verasity Ad Stackand Proof of View (PoV)
• Enables tokenized rewards(VRA) as well as loyalty schemes within the video player VeraWallet
• Supports over 2 million video publishers with our SDK products(overlay on video players) to increase engagement and revenues by 35%. See example publishersand videos here.

Verasity revenue streams include:
Game subscriptions, prize pool commissions and video ad revenues. Read about the tokenomics, forecast, buy back and burn here.
📖 Read our latest adoption metrics and one page overview
📈 Find where VRA (ticker) is trading onCoinMarketCap
VRA can be staked for 36.5% annual interest at https://verawallet.tv.
Follow Us:
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If you are a Game Developer or Video Publisher and want to grow your audience and revenue by 500% click thelinkto talk to the team
AMA with Verasity Founder, R J Mark was originally published in Verasity on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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