The people behind Skullgirls are trying to find funds to add a new character to the fighting game’s line-up. The total cost? $150,000. Here’s the breakdown:

• It costs $48,000 to hire the people who code the character.
• Another $4,000 for voice recording.
• $20,000 for quality testing.
• $30,000 for the animation contracting.

Find out the rest of the costs here.

Source: Kotaku

Learning that a book made it to the top of a best-seller’s list is an instant endorsement of its quality, insight, and content. Or so you’d think writes Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg:

• Individuals can use marketing companies that buy the book soon after it’s launched to drive it to the top of the charts.
• After reaching the top of the list sales usually dive as the demand was artificially produced. In one example more books were returned than sold one week after a book’s chart topping debut.
• Those who use the service have to pay about $55,000 for the books that the marketing company buys, as well as an additional $30,000 for the company’s service – which ensures that the books are bought in a way that don’t raise suspicion.
• Business books are especially likely to fall prey to this tactic since it takes a relatively small number of sales – 3,000 in a week – to top the business genre list.
• Other authors use tricks such as asking people to purchase their book in lieu of speaking fees to drive up sales.
• For the authors being able to put ‘best-selling author’ on their resume leads to instant fame and lucrative consulting engagements.

Read more about the practice, other tricks in the arsenal, and what those who produce top-seller lists are doing to crack down on the practice over here.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Via: The Verge

Both Democrats and Republicans agree that low growth rates in the United States are a concern. They’re wrong writes Scott Winship:

• As a country becomes wealthier it becomes harder to maintain high growth rates, because the initial base that is growing has become larger.
• Rather than growth rates what we should actually think about is the absolute economic gain that we see each year.
• For example from 1959-1969 the economy grew at 3% a year, leading to an absolute (inflation adjusted) increase in income of $600 per person. From 2000-2007 the economy grew at 1.4% – less than half the rate – but led to income gains of $650 per person. From this perspective then America’s economic growth is doing just fine.
• Moreover there are intangible gains we now have that aren’t measured by GDP. We have air conditioning, air travel, and smartphones – once considered absolute luxuries now available to the common man.
• The focus on growth also takes away focus from the problems of income inequality within the United States.

The full article is a lot longer and goes into much more detail. You can find it here.

Source: The Breakthrough

Via: Marginal Revolution

The Oscars will be happening tonight and on the face of it it’s an impartial, unbiased ceremony that hands out awards based on quality and nothing else. Delve a little deeper, writes Rebecca Thomas, and just like any of the movies that will win Best Picture tonight, there are other layers to this story:

• Around awards season giant billboards go up with the name of a movie and the words “for your consideration” underneath in an attempt to convince those who determine the Oscar winners to vote for that film.
• Other aspects of the publicity campaign include parties, Q&A sessions, special gifts and much more.
• These publicity campaigns can cost up to $500,000.
• This is also why most Academy Award contenders are released late into the year. This way producers can combine the advertising for theater audiences and the Oscar voters into one bigger and cheaper marketing effort.

Read more about the types of ads that go up and more over here.

Source: BBC

Joshua E. Keating believes that if you look closely you can see a Foreign Policy agenda within Hollywood:

• Some Hollywood movies such as The Avengers seem to glorify the American military and suggest that it’s the only thing that could save us from something like an alien invasion.
• Others such as Avatar are more critical about how America conducts its foreign policy.
• They are, however, almost all united in suggesting that the world outside of the United States is a horrible place. Black Hawk Down, Hotel Rwanda, The Last King of Scotland…even Argo are all examples of films set in countries outside the US that show a terrifying world.
• There are signs that this is changing, perhaps because of the increasing importance of the international box office. The Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire both suggest that India, at least, is getting a voice in Hollywood.

Read more about what different films show us about the world, the problem of implicit racism, and Zero Dark Thirty’s chances at The Oscars over here.

Source: Foreign Policy

Alexis Madrigal wrote last year that we have the history of the web wrong:

• Most people think that first there was internet. Then a decade or so later there was the rise of social sites such as Facebook or Twitter and we could suddenly share links we found.
• Yet this isn’t really accurate. People have always, and continue to share links through email and instant messages. This is just as social as what we traditionally consider to be social media.
• The reason why this type of social sharing doesn’t get much attention is because it’s impossible to track. Site owners know when an individual visits their website from Facebook. They don’t know when an individual finds a link to them through their email. Madrigal calls this force “Dark Social”.
• Even in the present Dark Social continues to dominate “social” media. 69% of referrals to websites come from dark social versus about 20% from Facebook and 6% from Twitter.

Read Madrigal’s methodology, how this applies to The Atlantic, why Facebook isn’t really a trade of privacy for social and more over here.

Source: The Atlantic

Via: Quartz

During the Oscars this weekend Hollywood will be covered in gilt and glamour. Yet beneath the surface is an industry that is suffering writes The Economist.

• Profits from movies are decreasing while those from television are rising. This is best signified by the fact that Seth MacFarlane – a man who is known for the TV series Family Guy – will be hosting the Oscars this year.
• People are still watching as many movies as they used to. But they’re getting them in ways that generate lower profits such as through Netflix and other online video streaming services.
• Yet film costs are rising. Technology was expected to make films cheaper, but instead they have become more expensive as directors expect to be able to take their films through expensive post-production processes.
• The rise of social networks mean that when films get negative reviews, the news quickly spreads, and the movie bombs at the box office.
• Emerging markets are not the panacea that they have been for other industries. They pay less for their movie tickets, and rampant piracy means that there are no DVD sales to be had.
• To ensure that people make it to the theaters, studios have focused on films with in-built audiences such as sequels, or those based upon notable characters or books.
• They have also started to pay actors less, and hire first-time directors who demand less money.

Read more about what the movie studios are doing to keep profits up, some hard numbers behind the trends, and why Hollywood, of all industries, should be worried about having hit maturity as well as much more, over here.

Source: The Economist

Sony recently unveiled its next generation console and the event has drawn a fair amount of criticism for failing to show what the device will look like. Russell Brandom wrote that there’s something far more important that Sony was missing: women.

• Sony’s event lasted more than two hours and involved 20 different speakers. Not one of them was female.
• It’s not just Sony. There weren’t any women during the launch of the Wii U, HTC’s phones, or anything that Apple has ever released in recent times.
• The problem runs deep – only 11% of employees in the game industry are female.
• Yet women make up almost half of all gamers.
• The industry is continuing to alienate women by abusing those who play games online or releasing ads like this.
• If women were given a chance to truly shape the industry it’s likely that they would make new types of interesting and enjoyable games that the male dominated industry has yet to consider.
• There is some hope. Microsoft is expected to release the next version of its Xbox soon, and the Xbox development team has a high proportion of females.

Read more about the gender politics of games, some shocking examples of sexism in the industry, and why women don’t get the voice they deserve over here.

Source: The Verge

In an article that should encourage pacifists and discourage military hardliners Gideon Rachman writes that Europe’s military appears to increasingly follow the model suggested by a Danish politician: replace the armed forces with a recorded message saying “we surrender”. Highlights include:

• Due to the era of austerity European countries have cut their defense budgets by large percentages over the past half-decade.
• But this is just one part of a longer term trend. Britain’s army is scheduled to shrink to its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars and France has less than half the submarines it had in 1990.
• Yet Britain and France are still the big spenders. Most other European countries spend far less, and when they do, the money is usually spent on pensions or pay instead of military equipment.
• 75% of Belgian military spending is devoted to its troops. One analyst notes that the Belgian military is better thought of as “an unusually well-armed pension fund”.
• The US may yet prod them into spending more. America was reluctant to get involved in Libya – a war that Europeans led the charge for – and asked to be paid for American military services in Mali.
• But Europe may not. In an era where the threat of land invasion has fallen and recent wars have made clear that terrorism can’t be fought by a conventional military, military spending might not matter anyway.

Rachman’s article is full of fascinating and humorous sentences. It’s an easy read and you can find it here, where he also talks about his overall take on the situation, why Europe can no longer rely on the American military, and some threats that Europe could potentially face.

Source: Financial Times

Via: Marginal Revolution

Mason Levinson and Eben Novy-Williams looked at Lance Armstrong’s haul from a career of doping:

• Over his year career Lance Armstrong has made $218 million.
• Although if you’re hoping to go into the sports doping business, you should know that it’s not as lucrative as Armstrong’s case would suggest. No other individual caught for doping has made even close to that amount.
• Most of Armstrong’s money – $180 million – came from brand endorsements and the speaking circuit.
• But it wasn’t just Armstrong that benefitted from the doping. Through his Livestrong foundation he helped raise over $470 million for cancer research.

Read more about Armstrong’s rise and fall, how much Armstrong contributed to the Livestrong Foundation, and watch a video over here.

Source: Bloomberg