Now, when it comes to values, even if there's a lot of similar schemes in use in various locations and casinos, there's no actual true universal standard. For example, New Jersey regulations say that mustard yellow chips are $20,000 while regulations in Illinois say mustard yellow is $0.50. In Las Vegas, they seem to use only one type of yellow and it's for $1,000. (Unlike in New Jersey and Illinois, however, these colors are not mandated by Nevada law, which is more concerned about size and reed. The colors are more about tradition, it seems.) But Casino Monaco is in, well, Monaco. I haven't been able to find information on whether or not Monaco regulates the color specifications of their chips or what the colors traditionally mean in Monte Carlo, in part because there's a cheap set of chips called "Monte Carlo" out there you can buy for your home games. (If you know of any color schemes used in Monaco, I'd love to hear about it!) So, I'll use the Vegas scheme. NOW, there's a snag in that I've seen some sources (of dubious reliability) say that blue is $1 and others (also of dubious reliability) say blue is $10. I'm going with $10 just because it feels better to me out of the two options and because a New Jersey blue is definitely $10. I also assume that the prop designer simply took an average of the first hits after Googling "casino chip colors", which tends to insist $10 is blue. So, that gives us the following:
Purple: $500
Blue: $10
Mustard yellow: $1,000
Green: $25
That'll give us:
Purple: 4 x $500 = $2,000
Blue: 27 x $10 = $270
Mustard yellow: 93 x $1,000 = $93,000
Green: 26 x $25 = $650
Total: $95,920 EDIT: Clarified why $10 for blue feels better to assume for me. Also, strandomring suggested in the comments that maybe the blue is meant to be $100, which is typically represented by black but might be indicated here by the dark blue. That gives us $2,700 in blue chips instead, bringing the total up to $98,350.
I've playing the game for a while now and I don't know if super casino chips are worth holding on to or not. the prizes look really good and I haven't seen a super casino event I don't even know if they exist. I have 50 chips at the moment what should i do?
Numismatist question: what protects casino chips from counterfeiting? Coins have all sorts of special "wear" points that make counterfeiting difficult, yet are only worth cents. Chips are worth large amounts, yet look relatively simple in their creation. What am I missing?
In the Mojave Desert just off Interstate 15 on the way to Las Vegas, workers are digging for dirt that may be worth far more than a casino full of chips
Why I'll never stop buying GME, and why you probably should
When I turned 18, there was a casino about 2 hours away on a reservation that I could get into. We'd get paid on Friday night, head to the gas station near us that would cash a paycheck, pile into my crappy little Ford, then make the drive. We'd get there a little before midnight and everyone had their own game. The second time we went, one of my friends was hypnotized by the craps table. There were 16 players standing around this sea of green, and every minute or so, you could hear them screaming at the top of their lungs like they just won a million dollars. On the way home that night, I taught him everything I learned from books I'd read about the different bets. "Smart" bets where the house edge was only 1.4%, all the way down to the risky ones where the house edge was over 10% (meaning that for every $100 wagered, you should expect to lose $10). The next time we went, we hung around the table, trying to figure out the right way to bet. It seemed a little complicated, so we tried other games. At the end of the night, I had the last $10 and he asked if he could borrow it to go place a bet. I handed it over, then went to the bathroom in preparation for the ride home. When I finally found him again, he had a stack of chips in front of him. He had been gone for about 5 minutes and already turned $10 into a few hundred. Well, if you can turn 10 into 100, you can turn 100 into 1,000 just as easily. We left empty handed that night, but I'll never forget the rush. I loved blackjack. I learned how to play at an early age from my uncle, who would always cheat and take my money. He'd say "I just taught you a very valuable lesson." He actually taught me two: 1) if you play against a casino, you may have a good night and win thousands of dollars, but if you keep going back, you'll eventually have nothing left. 2) My uncle was a scumbag who continually cheated and took my money, then told the family I was a poor sport and they couldn't understand why I hated doing anything with him. One of my earliest memories at the casino was running $100 at the blackjack table into $3000, which is more than I made in a month of bussing tables. I went home, paid my rent and blew the rest on useless things I can't even remember. What does any of this have to do with $GME? Well I'm still chasing the same high as I was when I was 18. I don't go to the casino anymore, but I've got something even better on my computer. I bought $2k worth of weeklies on Jan 25. Before everything crashed, they were worth over $100k, more than enough to fix most of the problems I've caused in my life. BUT, I was still standing around that craps table. The roller had just made his 30th point in a row, $GME was on fire and couldn't possibly roll a 7! I put my 2k back in my pocket and shoved the rest on the pass line. A few minutes later, the croupier inevitably yells "7 out!" and just like that, I'm back to nothing. Now I do what every moron around the table does. You reach back into your pocket, pull out the 2k and make a deal with your maker. "Just let it happen one more time. I won't be greedy THIS time and I'll stop when I hit 50k." I stop looking at the smart bets and start eyeing the center of the table, where hard ways are paying 10:1. Yeah, that'll be how I get back to 50k. A couple of those in a row and I can put a down payment on a house. 5 minutes later, I'm on my way out to the car and I feel like I've been punched in the gut. Again. Every one of you in this subreddit is another person sitting at the casino. Everyone has their game. The people holding $GME stonks right now? You're playing baccarat. If you've never heard of it, it's what James Bond plays in the old movies. It's about the most boring thing you can do. Two hands are dealt and you're betting on which one wins before anything happens. There's no actual skill and it's the same thing as betting heads or tails, while losing 1% of your bet every time. The people who cashed out and picked something else like $AMC or $BB? Those are the slot players. You had a big hit and now you're going to switch machines because the other ones are "due". You're looking for the exact same magic, thinking there was something smart in your play, when it was really just dumb luck in timing. The people saying "If Daddy Elon or Cowboy Cuban gets in, we can trigger a squeeze!" You're the guy who spent too much money in the first 20 minutes of the trip and now you're begging everyone else for a loan. Tldr: Nothing is happening with $GME. Stop saying "tomorrow is the day." Billionaires are not coming to bail you out. If institutional investors come in, they're waiting for this constant downhill slide to end at where the stock belongs, probably around $20. You can't trigger shit by holding. The HFs will outlast you. Edit: Screenshots from the worst 40 minutes of my financial life https://imgur.com/a/MlTRJmx Edit 2: JFC, some of you are takin WSB way too seriously. You should not be using reddit for DD. Also, this is not financial advice. Don't take financial advice from someone who tells you stories about chasing highs at casinos. Edit 3: This is WSB, my dudes. I'm glad most of you were entertained by my story. For the few of you who got that worked up by a random stranger on the internet telling you that he's a degenerate, you may actually have a problem. https://www.ncpgambling.org/help-treatment/
I’d love to have a Fallout game set somewhere like in NCR territory, where NCR paper dollars are the actual currency and caps are simply a bygone alternative.
I’m one of the few people out there I guess who just doesn’t like how Caps are supposedly used as currency. In a universe like Fallout, where most items worth a damn are valued at least in the double digits or more, I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to have to count out individual caps. It’s like if the only currency we used in the United States was the 1 dollar bill, and we had no 5, 10, 25, 100, etc. Can you imagine? You go to buy a TV or something and they’re like “That’ll be 500 dollars” so you break out 500 one dollar bills? And force them to count it all out and make sure it’s not actually 478 dollars? In Fallout New Vegas, because of the political climate in Nevada, NCR dollars are treated like monopoly money and their only use is to trade them in for chips at casinos. But if you want my opinion, I think caps are the real monopoly money in Fallout. I can see the idea that caps as a currency is backed by the fact that bottle caps are no longer in production and there’s a limited number of them and so on, but I think as the post-war civilizations of Fallout continue on into the 2200s and maybe even into the 2300s we should see the bottle cap begin to be left behind, superseded by gold-backed paper dollars. Caps in a theoretical Fallout 5 should simply become little more than cute trinkets of a bygone age, as America rebuilds and returns to a more traditional, more effective, and far more valuable currency. Currency exchange stations should be a common sight in the frontier states of the NCR territories, as travelers from the East bring with them their outdated notions of wealth and economics. But that’s just me. I know caps have become iconic but honestly I’ve gotten a little bit tired of them, and the concept of every wastelander having to lug around giant unorganized sacks of caps that all have the same individual value (especially if they’re wealthy, like how the player character usually is by the end of a playthrough. Imagine toting around a sack full of 20 thousand bottle caps!) is something that slightly takes me out of the immersion that I want to feel in this post-apocalypse (or maybe more accurately, post-post-apocalypse) setting.
$SNE, MASSIVE DOUBLE DICK INSIDE. Poised to moon long-term (Computer vision boom, EV boom, autonomous driving tech, gaming boom, music streaming boom, cross-media IP, vertically integrated anime streaming monopoly, online medical services boom, shift to mirrorless cameras)
Listen up retards. Do you happen to feel regret because you always think “ohhh if I yoloed my savings on TSLA/AMD/NVDA 🚀 leaps years ago I could be rich by now!!!” Well if you didn't know already, it doesn’t really matter what happened in the past. Hindsight will always be 20/20. You shouldn’t be harsh on yourself on your past self that your past self wasn’t retarded enough to yolo their savings into AMD/TSLA/.... Your past self doesn’t have the same knowledge that your current self has. It’s fine. If you judged those stocks with the best DD you could do at the time and didn’t think they were worth it, then you did a good job. If you always think about what you could/should have done in the past, then you don't have the right attitude to play the stock market casino imho. The single most important thing is to be able to look ahead. There are always plenty of opportunities around. There are thousands of rockets that are still on earth right now. Some may depart this year, others will stay a little longer on earth. The true strength lies in being able to identify those rockets with the knowledge you have right now. And if you still miss most rockets that will take-off this year that's fine, maybe you'll learn, get better and you'll do better next year. Now, what if I told you there’s a big rocket that’s parked right right here on earth and it has decent chance for take-off this year? Maybe it won't quite reach the moon this year yet, but hey leaving the exosphere should already be a cool milestone. It has rock-solid fundamentals and will see lots of growth in the following years/decade. It’s a company that has the fundamental technology to power all the computer vision tech, which is bound to boom this decade. The company we’re talking about is of course Sony, and it is extremely undervalued right now. Its P/E is only 14. They have a P/S of 1.65, a PEG of 0.92 (< 2 is already somewhat exceptional for a company/conglomerate of Sony’s size, under 1 is a steal) Much lower than all of its same-sector peers. This indicates significant undervaluation. Next up Sony has a P/CF 13.2, ROE of 20% (S&P 500 average is 14% which would already be considered pretty good. 20% ROE is excellent), PEGY of 0.89, P/B of 2.65 and finally Sony has $41.6B in cash on hand. This makes Sony one of the cheapest tech/entertainment/EV/semiconductor growth stocks you will find on the market. (ROE of 20% + PEGY of 0.89 + PEG of 0.92 means this company is a growth stock based on the numbers alone, but we’ll dig into the actual company and overall outlook in a moment) I challenge all retards to find a company with similar benchmarks in one of the mentioned sectors, seriously. Quite frankly doing this DD honestly blew my mind. I kept looking everywhere for reasons why the company could be so undervalued and why they may struggle in the future. Very important to look at all the challenges the company faces to make sure I’m not just doing confirmation bias DD. But all I could find was the opposite. After several weeks and months of working on this DD, I can only conclude that it is overall a very solid company for a bargain price. The new CEO is taking the company in a great direction imho and I'm begin to think he could be Sony's Satya Nadella. So if you want some easy tendies, maybe consider $SNE while it is still cheap, I’d say. For the autists out there who care about analyst ratings, SONY ($SNE) currently has 18 BUY ratings, 2 OVERWEIGHT, 4 HOLD and 0 SELL. (= analyst consensus is a STRONG BUY). Very little analysts cover this stock compared to other entertainment/tech companies, so this adds to my assertion that the stock is very much under the radar. Which means you have time to get in before it gets noticed by the larger investing world and before it starts to get a more fair valuation (P/E of around 30 would be more fair for this company I think, but still cheaper than many same sector peers). But, anyway the few analysts who do happen to cover this company are basically all saying it’s an instant-buy at its current price. Most boomer investors still think big Japanese tech companies are dinosaurs that have long been surpassed by China, South Korea and Apple etc ages ago. Young boomers may think Sony = PlayStation and that it's it. But the truth is that PlayStation, while very important (about 24% of Sony's total revenue last year), is a part of a larger story. Lots of investors in general associate Sony with the passé Japanese electronics companies from the 80’s and the 90’s. Just like a lot people may think BlackBerry is a struggling phone company. While Sony may not be the powerhouse in consumer electronics it was in the 80’s and the 90’s, in a lot of ways they are more relevant than ever before. Despite being a well-known brand and being known as the company behind PlayStation, for some reason its stock still seems to be under the radar among both retail and institutional investors. And boy, are they mind-blowingly undervalued. Even if a big part of its business would collapse tomorrow, they would still be slightly undervalued. And I am about to tell you why. (& btw compared to Japanese tech/entertainment stocks $SNE is still super cheap (Canon, Nikon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Square Enix, Capcom, Nintendo, Fujitsu all have P/E ratios ranging from 18 to 77 and none of them have the combination of global clout, fundamentals & growth prospects that Sony has)) 2021 Sony as a corparation is not the fucking Sony from 2005-2015’s, just like BlackBerry in 2021 is not the fucking Blackberry from 2012. Just like Garmin in 2021 is not Garmin from 2011. Just like AMD in 2021 is not AMD from 2012. No, in 2021, Sony is the global leader in imaging technology and people do not fucking realize it. Sony has 50% marketshare in the CMOS image sensor market. There’s a very good chance the smartphone in your pocket has Sony image sensors (unless it’s a Samsung phone). Sony image sensors are powering a big part of today's vision/camera technology. And they will power even more of tomorrow's computer vision tech. In 2021, Sony is a behemoth in video games, music, anime, movies and TV show production. Sony is present in every segment of entertainment. Sony’s entertainment branches have been doing great business over the past 5 years, especially music and PlayStation. Additionally, Sony Pictures has completely turned around. In 2021, Sony is the world’s biggest music publisher (and second biggest music company overall). Music streaming has been a boon for Sony Music and will continue to be. In 2021, Sony is among the biggest mobile gaming companies in the world (yes, you read that right). And it’s mainly thanks to one game (Fate/Grand Order) that nets them over $1B revenue each year. One of the biggest mobile gaming companies + arguably biggest gaming brand in the world (PlayStation). In 2021, Sony is an EV company. They surprised the world when they revealed their “Vision-S” at CES 2020. At the reception was fantastic. It is seriously one of the best looking EV’s. They already sell sensors to Toyota. Sony will most like sell the Vision-S's tech to other car manufacturers (sensors for driving assistence / autonomous driving, LiDAR tech, infotainment system). 40 sensors in the Sony Vision-S Considering the overwhelmingly good reception of the Vision-S so far, I suspect the Vision-S could be another catalyst that will put Sony as a company on the radar of investors and consumers. We've seen insane investment hype for anything even remotely related to EV over the past year. We've seen a company that barely had a few EV design concepts (oh wait, they had a gravity-powered truck though) even get a $30B market cap at some point lmao. But somehow a profitable company ($SNE) that has an EV that you can actually drive, doesn't even have a fair valuation? In 2020’s Sony’s brand value is at their highest point since 12 years. In 2021, it is projected to be a its highest point since 2001 assuming same growth as average yearly growth from 2015 to 2020. Keep in mind brand valuation is a bit bullshitty as there’s no standardization to compare brands from different sectors, let alone non-consumer-facing brands with consumer-facing brands. But one thing we can note is that Sony both as B2C brand and as a B2B company is on a big upwards trend. https://interbrand.com/best-global-brands/sony/ https://careers.uw.edu/blog/2020/03/17/these-are-the-10-biggest-video-game-companies-in-north-america-shared-article-from-zippia/ In 2021, Sony is an entertainment behemoth. They have grown their entertainment branches by a huge amount over the past 5 to 10 years (they made some big acquisitions in the music space especially and they’re now also all-in in anime). I don’t think people realize how big Sony is as an entertainment company. I dug up the numbers and as of Q3 2020, PlayStation is the second biggest video game company in the world (Tencent is #1) in revenue (I suspect Sony might dethrone Tencent after Sony’s FY Q3 2020 is released). But Sony already comes very close to Tencent especially if you add Fate/Grand Order (which is under Sony Music and not under PlayStation) under PlayStation. There’s no single other company that has this unique combination of a dominant/important position in all entertainment segments. (video games + music + movies + TV series + anime + TV networks). I guess Tencent maybe? In 2021, Sony has amazing momentum in the camera space. If you’re familiar with the enthusiast photography space, you should know this. Basically, the market is slowly shifting from SLR to mirrorless cameras. This is because mirrorless cameras tend to smallelighter, have faster AF, better low light performance, better battery life and better video performance. Sony is the company that has been specializing in the development for mirrorless cameras for over a decade while Canon’s bread and butter has always been SLR cameras. Sony is in the lead when it comes to mirrorless cameras and that’s where the market is shifting towards. Because the advantages of mirrorless have become more and more apparent and Sony’s cameras have become technically superior, Sony has gained quite a bit of market share over Canon and Nikon in the last few years. In 2019, Sony overtook Nikon as the #2 camera manufacturer. Sony is in an upwards trend here. (they have the ambition to become the world’s #1 camera brand) Sony also has very good marketing for their cameras. (Sony has a lot of YouTubers / influencers / brand ambassadors for their cameras despite being a smaller brand than Canon) (just search on YouTube and/or Google “switching to Sony from Canon” just to give you an idea that they do have amazing brand momentum in the camera space. You won’t get as many hits for the opposite) A huge portion of Sony’s profit comes from image sensors in addition to music and video games. This is in addition to their highly profitable financial holdings division & their more moderately profitable electronics division. Sony’s electronics division, unlike other Japanese brands, has shown great resilience against the very strong competition from China & South Korea. They have been able to maintain their position in the audio space and as of 2020 are still the global market leader in high-end TV’s (a position they have been holding for decades) and it seems they will continue to be able to maintain that. But seriously this company is dirt-cheap compared to any of its peers in any segment and there’s various huge growth prospects for Sony:
CMOS image sensors & Sony’s overall imaging prowess will boom due to increased demand from automotive sector, security & surveillance industry, manufacturing industry, medical sector and finally from the aerospace & defence industry. On the longer term, image sensors will continue to boom due to increased demand for computer vision & AI + robotics. And for consumer electronics demand will remain very high obviously.
Sony is aiming for 60% market share in the CMOS image sensor market by 2026. Biggest threat here is Samsung here who have recently started to aggressively invest in image sensors and are challenging Sony. Sony has technological lead + higher production capacity (and Sony will soon open a new plant in Nagasaki), so Sony should be able to hold off Samsung.
The iPhone 12 Pro has 3 cameras + a lidar sensor. Apple now buys 3 image sensors (from Sony) + LiDAR sensor (from Sony) per iPhone 12 Pro they manufacture. Remember the iPhone X and iPhone XS? That one had “only” 2 rear cameras (with image sensos from Sony of course). Basically, Sony will be selling exponentially more image sensors as more smartphones get equipped with more and more cameras.
Now think about how many image sensors Sony can sell to Apple if the iPhone 13 will have 5 cameras + LiDAR sensor (I mean the number of cameras on smartphones certainly won’t decrease)
Gaming (PS5 hype, PSN game sales are booming, add-on content is booming, PS+ subscribers count is booming and finally PSNow & first-party games sales are trending upwards as well). Very consistent year-on-year profit & revenue growth here. They have a history of beating earnings expectations here. The number of PS+ subscribers went from 4M to 48M in just 6-7 years. Investors love to hype up recurring revenue and subscription services such as Disney+ and Netflix. Let’s apply the same logic to PS+? PS+ already has more subscribers than HBO Max in the USA.
PlayStation (video games in general) has not even scratched the fucking surface. Most people who play video games now are millennials and kids. Do you think those millennials will stop playing video games when they grow older? No, of course not. Boomers today also still watch movies and TV. Those millennials have kids and those kids are now also playing video games. The kids of those kids will also play video games etc. Basically the total addressable audience for video games will by HUGE by the end of the decade (and the decades after that) because video games will have penetrated all age ranges of the population. Gaming is the fastest growing segment of the whole entertainment business. By a large margin. PlayStation is obviously in a great position here as you can guess from the PS5 hype, but more importantly imho, the growth of PS+ subscribers (currently a bit under 50 million) and PSN users (>100 million MAU) over the past 5 years shows that PlayStation is primed to profit from the audience growth.
On top of that you have huge video game growth in the China where Sony & PlayStation is already much better established than Xbox (but still super small compared to mobile games and PC gaming in China). Within the console market, Xbox only competes with PlayStation in North America. In the rest of the world, PlayStation has an enormous lead over Xbox. Xbox is simply a lesser known and lesser desirable brand in the rest of the world
Anime streaming (basically they have a monopoly already + vertical integration, it might still be somewhat niche right now, but it will be big within 5 years. Acquiring Crunchyroll was a very good move)
Music streaming (no, they don’t have a music streaming service, but as music streaming grows, Sony Music also gets a piece of the growing pie through licensing/royalties, and they also still have a little 2.8% stake in Spotify)
Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are currently battling it out in the streaming wars. When there’s a war you have little chances of winning, you shouldn’t be the one waging the war. You should be the one selling the ammo. Basically Sony Pictures (tv shows + movies) is in that position. Sony Pictures can negotiate good prices for their content because Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T are thirsty for content and they all want their own exclusive content. Sony Pictures does not need to prop up their own streaming service just like Sony Music doesn’t need their own music streaming service when they can just license out their content and turn a profit. There will always be demand for TV & movies content, so Sony Pictures is well positioned is as an independent content provider. And while Apple, Amazon, Netflix, AT&T and Disney are battling it out on the forefront, Sony is quietly building their anime empire in the background. Genius business move from Sony here, seriously. They now have anime production & distribution.
Netflix has 200M subscribers and they currently have a 250M market cap. Think about what Sony will have in 5 years? >30M Crunchyroll subscribers (assuming all anime will be consolidated into Crunhyroll) & >100M PS+ & PSNow subscribers? Anime and gaming is growing faster than movies and TV shows. (9% CAGR for anime, 12% CAGR for gaming vs. 5% CAGR for the whole movies & TV show entertainment segment which includes PVOD, SVOD, box office, TV etc etc). And gaming as a whole is MUCH bigger than SVOD streaming. Netflix gets 99% of their revenue & profit through subscriptions. For the whole Sony Group Corporation, their subscription services (games + anime) it’s currently only 4.5% of their total revenue. And somehow Sony currently has a meagre $128B market cap?
PlayStation alone is bigger than Netflix in terms of operating profit. PlayStation has a MUCH higher profit margin than Netflix. For Q3 2020 Netflix posted $790M operating profit and PlayStation posted $988M operating profit. Revenue was was $6.44B for Netflix vs. $4.77B for PlayStation. (and btw Sony’s mobile gaming revenue (~$1B / year) is under Sony Music, it is not even in those PlayStation numbers!!!)
Think about it. PlayStation alone posts bigger operating profit than Netflix (yes revenue is bit smaller, but it’s the operating profit that matters most). And gaming is growing faster than movies. And PlayStation is about 24% of Sony’s total revenue. And yet Netflix has a market cap that is equal to the double of Sony's market cap? Basically If you apply Netflix’ valuation to PlayStation then PlayStation alone should have a bigger market cap than Netflix' market cap.
Sony Vision-S & autonomous driving tech (selling sensors + infotainment system to other car manufacturers). Sony surprised everyone when they revealed their Sony Vision-S electric vehicle last year at CES 2020 (in-house design and made in cooperation with Magna Steyr). And it’s currently being tested on public roads. Over the past year we have seen absurdly big investment hype into anything even remotely related to EV’s (including a few questionable companies). We’ve even seen an EV company with a gravity-powered truck get a $30B market cap in June last year. Meanwhile Sony, out of nowhere, revealed what is arguably (subjectively) one of the best looking EV’s. It got very positive reception at CES 2020. An EV that you can actually drive. But somehow their stock is still dirt-cheap based on their current fundamentals alone? Yet some companies that had pretty much nothing but some EV design concepts got insane valuations purely due to hype?
LTE chips for IoT & Industry 4.0 (Altair Semiconductors)
Cross-media IP (The Last of Us show on HBO, Uncharted movie etc). Huge unrealized potential synergy here (it’s about to change). We have seen that it can turn out super well when you look at The Witcher, Sonic the Hedgehog and Detective Pikachu. When The Witcher released on Netflix, sales of The Witcher 3 significantly increased again. Imagine the same thing, but with Sony IP’s. Sony Pictures is currently working on 7 video game IP based TV shows and 3 movies. We know The Last of Us tv series is currently in production for HBO. And then the Uncharted is currently in post-production and scheduled to be released in July this year currently. If Uncharted turns out to be successful, it will mark a big, new milestone for Sony as an entertainment company imho.
Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan subsidiary for anime production, distribution & mobile games) had a fantastic year in 2020. (more on this later) There is a lot of room for mobile games growth with Aniplex. Thanks to Aniplex, Sony might beat their earnings forecast.
Drones. DJI just got put on Entity List in USA and Sony started developing drones for prosumer / professional a few years ago. Big opportunity for Sony here to take a bit from DJI’s dominance. It only makes sense for Sony to enter the drone market targeting the professional & prosumer video market, considering Sony’s established position in the professional audio/video/photography space
Currently Sony also has several ventures & investments in AI & robotics
Over the past decade, Sony has also carefully expanded into medical equipment tech & biotechnology. Worth noting that Sony also has an important 33% stake in M3 inc (a medical services through-the-internet company with a market cap of $65.5B) (= just their stake in M3 Inc is worth $22B alone, remember Sony, with their large, diversified revenue streams & assets only has a market cap of $128B?)
Sony Pictures has a great upcoming movie slate (MCU Spider-Man, Uncharted, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Venom 2, Morbius, Spider-Verse sequel, Hotel Transylvania 4, Peter Rabbit 2, Vivo, The Nightingale). They will profit from the theatre reopening and covid recovery. They may even become more favourable among movie theatre chains because they won’t release their movies on the same day on streaming services like Warner (and yeah movie theatres are here to stay, at least for a while imho)
All the above comes on top of established, mature markets (Financial Holdings & Electronic Products)
Oh yeah, btw though TV’s are a cyclical and mature market and are not that important for Sony Group Corporation’s bottomline*, Sony TV’s will continue to do well for the following successive years: o 2020: continued pandemic boost
2020-2021: PS5 / Xbox Series X/S
2021 Summer Olympics (tv sales ALWAYS spike during the olympics) (& the effect is more pronounced for high-end TV’s, = good for Sony because Sony’s market share is concentrated in the high-end range (they are market leader in the high-end range)
2022 FIFA world cup (exact same thing as for the olympics)
You could say it’s already priced in, but the stock is already ridiculously undervalued so idk…
You would think this company somehow has a bad outlook, but that could not be further from the true, let me explain and go over some of the different divisions and explain why they will moon: Sony Entertainment While Netflix, Disney, AT&T, Amazon, and Apple are waging the great streaming war, Sony has been quietly building its anime streaming empire over the past years.
Sony recently acquired Crunchyroll for $1.175B (it is a great deal for Sony imho and will immediately be more valuable under Sony. Considering the growing appetite for anime I honestly do not even understand why AT&T sold it, they could have integrated it with their other streaming service (HBO Max) but ok)
With Crunchyroll Sony now has the following anime empire:
Aniplex (anime production & distribution, subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan) F
Funimation
Manga Entertainment UK (production, licensing, and distribution, UK)
Wakanam (licensing and distribution in Europe)
AnimeLab (licensing and distribution in Australia & New Zealand)
Crunchyroll (3 million paying subcribers, 90 million registered users and 50 million social media followers)
* Why anime matters: Anime growth “The global size is expected to reach USD 36.26 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 8.8% over the forecast period, according to a study conducted by Grand View Research, Inc. Growing popularity and sales of Japanese anime content across the globe apart from Japan is driving the growth” (tl;dr anime 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀, Sony is all in on anime and they have pretty much no competition) Anime is the fastest growing subsegment of movies/video entertainment worldwide.
Sony also has a partnership with Bilibili for anime distribution in China:
Bilibili already partnered with Sony Music Entertainment Japan to bring Aniplex’s hugely successful Aniplex’s Fate/Grand Order mobile game in China.
Sony acquired a 5% stake in Bilibili for $400M in March 2020 (that 5% stake is now already worth $2.33B at Bilibili’s current share price ($BILI) and imho $BILI still has lots of upside potential considering it is the de facto video creation/sharing/viewing à la YouTube/Twitch for GenZ in China)
Sony Music (mobile games) generated $400M revenue from its mobile games in Q2 FY2020, published through Aniplex (Sony Music Entertainment Japan, “SMEJ”) subsidiary
They are the publisher of Fate/Grand Order, one of the most profitable mobile video games of the past 5 years (has generated $4B in revenue (!!) by the end of 2019 and is still as popular as ever). Fate/Grand order is the 7th most profitable mobile game in revenue worldwide as of 2020 (!)
Aniplex launched Disney: Twisted Wonderland in March this year. In Q3, it was the #10 most downloaded mobile game in Japan. (Aniplex now has two top ten games in Japan)
Fate/Grand Order was the #2 most tweeted game in 2020 and #3 was Disney: Twisted Wonderland. You can see that Aniplex has two hugely successful mobile games. (we are talking close to $1B of revenue a year here). It is the #2 game in Japan by total revenue from Q1 2016 to Q3 2020 and the #9 game in worldwide revenue from Q1 2020 to Q3 2020.
SMEJ earns about > $1B from mobile games in revenue from mobile games and there is still a lot of future growth potential here considering Japan’s mobile game market grew a whopping 32% yoy from Q3 2019 to Q3 2020.
Aniplex recently co-distrubuted the movie Demon Slayer: Mugen Train in Japan in October 2020. It became the highest grossing film of all time in Japan with a total gross box office revenue of $380M. In the middle of a pandemic. It still needs to release in South Korea, China and USA where it will most likely do great as well.
Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE) (Game & Netwerk Services business unit):
We all know 2020 was a huge year for video games with the stay-at-home pandemic boost. The whole video game sector brought in $180B of revenue in 2020, a whopping 20% increase yoy.
But 2020 will not be just a one-off temporary exceptional year for video games. The video game market has a CAGR of 13% which means it will be worth $291B in 2027. Video games is by far the segment with the highest growth rate in the whole entertainment industry.
PlayStation obviously has a huge piece of this pie and over the past years has seen consistent yoy revenue and profit growth. Think about it, for every FIFA/Call of Duty/Assassin’s Creed sold on PS4/PS5, Sony gets a 30% cut. There have been sold a billion PS4 games so far.
5 years ago 20 to 30% of PS4 games were purchased digitally. Flashforward to 2020 and it’s 60-75% and the digital ratio looks set to still increase a bit. This means higher profit margin for game publishers and for Sony at the expense of retailers
SIE has seen huge success in its first-party games over the past 5 years. Spider-Man, God of War, Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Last of Us Part 2, Uncharted 4, Ghost of Tsushima, Days Gone, Ratchet & Clank have all been huge successes. This is really big and represents a big change compared to the previous generations where Sony never really hit it big as a games publisher even though most of their games were considered quality games.
SIE is now not only a powerful platform holdeprovider, but also a very successful games publisher with popular IP’s (Uncharted, God of War, The Last of Us, Horizon, Ghost of Tsushima, Ratchet & Clank). This is an enormous asset, because firstly it increases the chances of success for cross-media opportunities (Sony Pictures can make TV shows and movies out of it to expand the popularity of those IP’s even more). And secondly, it is an obvious selling point for PS5. The more popular and bigger their exclusive content, the more they can draw people to their platform/service. This should increases PS5 total marketshare over its competitor.
The hype for God of War: Ragnarok will be absolutely through the roof. Hype for Horizon: Forbidden West is also very good already (10 million yt views, 273K likes which is very good). Gran Turismo 7 and Ratchet & Clank will also do very well in 2021. (I suspect that GoW oand Horizon might be delayed to 2022)
PS5 reception has been extremely good. Demand is through the roof as well all know. The only problem is that they cannot quite capitalize on the demand due to lack of supply, but overall, it is a very good thing that demand is very high, and that reception has been very positive. The challenge will primarily supply and production-related for the following 6 months and to be able to maintain brand momentum. Hopefully, they won’t push disappointed/inpatient customers to competitors.
Considering there’s backwards compatibility from PS4 to PS5, users will want all their PSN content to transition with them as well, so I expect them to lose very little marketshare to Xbox. Also, I do not know if Americans realize it, but Xbox is not nearly as big as PlayStation in the rest of the world as it is in the USA. PlayStation just has global brand power that Xbox just doesn’t have, so Xbox isn’t much of threat at all I’d say. Where I live, in Belgium, In Europe everyone is talking about the PS5, nobody really seems to care about Xbox Series S/X that much. Comparing PlayStation to Xbox in terms of mindshare is like comparing Apple to Motorola (not meant to be a diss to Motorola, I have a Motorola phone myself, just saying that Xbox has significantly less mindshare / brand power in Europe).
SIE is likely working on PSVR 2, this could be big.
Sony has a small stake in Epic Games (1.4%) and they have a good business relationship with them, so this might also make them open to release first-party games on Epic Games Store after exclusivity period on PS5.
Remember the Travis Scott concert in Fortnite? I believe that was one of the reasons why Sony invested in Epic Games. It serves as an example how music can sometimes converge with video games, and this can play to Sony’s strengths.
PlayStation also has way superior presence in Asia compared to Xbox. Have been expanding into China as well. Another great opportunity for revenue growth.
PS+ subscribers grew from 5.7 million by the end of 2013 to 46 million by October 30th, 2020. This is an average growth rate of 28% over the past 5 years. Considering most of the growth was early on, it will slow down, but I predict that they will have about 70 million PS+ subscribers by the end of 2023. This is huge and represents a stable, recurring source of income. Investors who keep hyping Netflix/Disney+ will love this, but it seems they have yet to discover $SNE.
There is a reason why Amazon, Google, Nvidia have been aggressively investing in video games & games streaming. They know the business is huge and is about to get even bigger. But considering the established, loyal PlayStation userbase, the established global brand of PlayStation and the exclusive games, PlayStation should be able to easily standoff competition from Amazon, Google and Nvidia (GeForce Now) in the next few years. So far, Amazon’s venture into game development, publishing & streaming has completely failed. Stadia and GeForceNow seem to have a bit more success, but still relatively niche. Therefore, I think PlayStation is well-positioned to remain one of the leaders in the industry for the following decade.
I'll get to the other divisions later, I figured this is a good first step. But so far the tl;dr Image sensors: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 IoT/Industry 4.0 chipsets: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 PS5/PSN/PS+: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Online medical services (M3 inc.): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Anime: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Fate/Grand Order: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Demon Slayer: Mugen Train 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Sony Music / music streaming (the performance of Sony Music’s in Sony’s business is seriously understated. The numbers speak for themselves): 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Sony Electronics 🚀 Sony Financial Holdings (very stable & profitable business, even managed to grow slightly during pandemic when most insurance companies performed more poorly): 🚀🚀🚀 Still have to cover Sony Pictures, but their upcoming movie slate looks pretty good honestly (Spider-Man sequel, Venom: Let There Be Darkness, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Uncharted, Morbius, Hotel Transylvania 4 so that's worth one rocket as well imho 🚀 tl;dr of tl;dr: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor. I am an idiot that's trying to understand why $SNE stock is so cheap. Positions: SNE 105C 21st January 22
Don't expect this to be a daily thing, I put daily, but I really meant news of the day. Also, not financial advice.
Quick major news
Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO in 21Q3.
$GOOG EPS at $22,30 with revenues at $56,90B.
$AMZN EPS at $14,09 with revenues at $125,6B
Silver went down 8%, Gamestop went down 60%, AMC went down 41,2%. Short ladder quadra-witching attack?
Pfizer estimates that its anti-covid vaccine will generate 15 billion dollars in revenue in the year 2021.
The banking sector is going up a lot thanks to rising U.S. government bond yields.
What to look for tomorrow
ECB Monetary Policy Statement
Major Earnings report : Paypal, Qualcomm and Ebay
My thoughts
New retail money and its consequences on the overall market This whole squeezy thing made a lot of new people aware of the stock market. Most made money. I therefore predict that there's going to be a lot of new money in the market. That leads to 2 things :
The market as a whole will go up
The market will have much more volatility the more unemployed people there is (the more quarantined people there is also).
The first point is rather obvious in my opinion but the second one needs a little bit of explaining. It's based on the Boredom Markets Hypothesis from Matt Levine. For short : people are bored, people want fun, people see the stock market as a fun casino, people trade. Add to those 2 points the fact that retail investors actually beat index funds during the first quarantine in 2020. This is a recipe for success for the overall market :
Retail investors are bored and trade fun stocks.
Retail investors actually made money.
They get their jobs back and they no longer have time to follow the market.
They put their money, earnings and salary into boring ETFs or blue chips stocks.
I've said basically this on this post about my 100k yolo. A little update on this : I really bought at the peak and after those great first days of the week, I barely broke even. So that sucks! Also, I might change for SPY calls as I think s&p500 will have a similar growth as Nasdaq but the SPY calls are giving better returns than Nasdaq calls for the same % change of the underlying. Apple vs Facebook So, hum... Facebook, with 96% of its users using the mobile app, decided to declare war against the biggest smartphone manufacturer? That's going to go well... To be fair, they don't have that much choice when the big smartphone manufacturer decides to make it very transparent what data you have access to and how much data you collect. So, as more young people realize the extend of the data collected by Facebook, and since they're not really big fans of the app anyway, they will most probably stop using it for other more fun social medias. If they can't attract new young people, that's the death of Facebook app's growth. Add to that more and more controversies on the whole Whatsapp-Facebook merge, more and more people more aware of alternative apps, and probably some regulations coming in this year or 2022, this is not great for Facebook at all. But for Apple? How is Apple going down? Let's take the insane worst-case scenario for apple that Facebook stops support for Iphones. You think people will stop using Iphones just to have a social media that they've been using just as an addictive habit? And for ther other apps in the Apple Store profiting of data collecting, I'm sure they know how lucrative the Apple market is as those customers that spend the most amount of money on phones will most likely spend the most amount of money on other things. Paid apps will do well. Ads there will do extremely well. They just need to be less shady about how they collect their data. And if you stop support for your Apple app just because Apple shows how you collect your users' data, this will not be very good PR for you my guy. So yes, Facebook is in a lot of trouble and seems to be slowly going downhill but it's not a new trend. Apple is just the one hurting them the most at the moment. So my long-term thesis (2 or 3 years) is that Facebook will be hurt by this with a maximum upside of a stock price being flat and apple is going to do really great in the coming years. Bye!
Ranking games to do + how long it took to do. 170$ in 2 weeks
Proof: https://imgur.com/a/lFRzQTe Best one to do: War Thunder Time it took: 2 hours Reward: 700 Download & install and play 1 game... was fun too. 2nd best one to do: 21 Blitz Reward: 1200 Time it took: 2 hours Just win 25 games... doesn't require any money. Somewhat fun to do. Best Casino game: PopSlots Time it took: 2 days Reward: 2500 Was the easiest one to do. Just sit on Fire & Lightning and collect every single one you can here: https://www.myvegasadvisor.com/mobile/pop-slots-free-chips/ If you're lucky you'll get it done in a few hours. If unlucky, a few days. Second best casino game: Club Vegas Slots Time it took me: 2 days Reward: 3500 Machines don't matter as it's random, go to there facebook for free coins. Third/Fourth best casino game: Huuuuge + Billionaires(they're the same thing) Reward: 4500 each(currently 5500 each I got screwed) Billionaires took - 6 days Huuuuge took - 1 day(got lucky) On Billionaires I did it through only slots which is why it took so long. DO NOT DO THAT. GO THROUGH ROULETTE AS SOON AS YOU CAN. Billionaires I managed to snag a 2b jackpot then just did roulette the whole way then still had 1b+ so I just did 140-150 through slots(ran out of money reaaaall quick) YOU NEED TO WIN 20-22b TO HIT LEVEL 150 ON BOTH. WORST ONE IMAGINABLE: Star Slots Reward: 4000(I had it for 3000 but luckily it went up as I was doing it) Time it took: 7 days with ONE lucky break of winning 1b and machine going even for a few bil. It was 6 days of torture to even hit level 60. These slots are super rigged. Same company as Huuuuge + Billionaires but worse slot machines and nowhere near as many players. You also don't get nearly as many free stuff from your clubs, etc. YOU NEED TO HIT 11-13B TO HIT LEVEL 100. Overall, it took me 2 weeks(not really I paused a few days in between on some) of leaving my phone spinning on these things to get a new graphics card... whatever, worth.
I went hard on buying and selling *something that gets my post auto-modded if I spell it out* back in the day, and got fucked really bad on tax day, and couldn’t quite wrap my head around the why, but did the right thing and wrote a large check to Uncle Sam, because Wesley Snipes and Lauren Hill (among others) will tell you not to fuck with the government when they want their cut. right? I honestly have moved on since then, and didn’t really understand 100% of how it all broke down, and plus that was a long time ago, so let’s start with a clean slate scenario:
Let’s say I earn 1000 giving hand-jobs near the dumpster behind Wendy's, and put it in my brokerage acct.
At this point, I have earned 1000.
I buy Stonk ABC, and the value doubles. I sell one week later, and now have $2000. I take that money out and hold it in my hand, rub it on my face, put it in my pants, etc.
This year, I have earned $2000. So far, so good.
Now I take the 2,000, put it BACK in my brokerage, and yolo that 2,000 into Stonk DEF. It moons, and I now have 10,000 in my brokerage. I withdraw that money, hold it in my hand, and rub it on my wife's BF’s pecs as he hits wifey from behind.
At this point I have made… what? Is it 10,000? Or is it 12,000? I earned 2,000 earlier (and rubbed it on my face, put it in my pants), then put it BACK INTO the brokerage, and then pulled it out again as (a new?) 10,000. Does that 10,000 add to the 2,000 I made earlier, or is the IRS aware that the 2,000 went back in and only 8,000 NEW money came back out? This is honestly where I think I got fucked a few years back. TurboTax was telling me my earnings were way higher than any total I ever had available to throw on my floor and roll around in, and I wasn’t sure if it was like “you made 2000, then (like a fucking idiot) you put it back in the casino and bought 2,000 worth of chips (which we think is stupid, but hey, you do you), then one week later left the casino with a new 10,000 that we never saw before”. I think since I was moving money out of FailBase and into WellsFucko, they added up all the extractions, without taking the “take profits, buy dip, sell peak, take profits, buy next dip, sell next peak” into consideration. Yes I ended up above where I started, but MINUS the parts that went back in, that number was way smaller that what they saw. All they saw was “Sell, Sell, Sell, those all add up to $fuckyou,payme.00”, essentially ignoring the “and then I buy back in”. Now I use an actual brokerage, and see there are unrealized gains, etc, but it’s taking the Buy and Sell portions into effect, and saying “you’re UP this portion overall”. Am I retarded? It seems pretty straightforward, but last time I did this I kinda got fucked. Thank you for your help. Stonks only go up. Obligatory rockets: 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀
[OC] The Best MLS Player from Each Country That's Fielded One: Part 1 (UEFA)
Throughout its first 25 years, Major League Soccer has seen players from all different corners of the globe, each with their own career story. Whether it be a guy like Tim Melia or Chris Wondolowski who were scrappy guys that came out of nowhere to be stars in this league, or world famous names such as Zlatan, Beckham, and Henry, the league's history of big names is as diverse as they come. Let's take a look at the best player from each country around the globe. This will be based on national team allegiance. Today, we'll be leading with Europe! Please note that this is my opinion, and in some cases the decisions were tough; I'll be sure to add in honorable mentions where I can, or add notes. Albania: Shkëlzen Gashi ( COL 2016-18) Short list to pick from here, as Gashi's only competition is Jahmir Hyka and Hamdi Salihi. Gashi gets the nod, if nothing else, for his huge 2016 season, where he scored 10 regular season goals (one of which was that year's Goal of the Year) as the Rapids damn near won the Shield. The madlad then went and one-upped that with his absurd equalizer in the playoffs against the Galaxy. His last two years weren't as fruitful, but man, when he was on he could pull something out of nowhere. Armenia: Yura Movsisyan ( KC 2006-07, RSL 2007-09 & 2016-18, CHI 2018) Four choices here, although in the end it's Movsisyan winning out over Harut Karapetyan, who played a couple seasons in the 90s for the Galaxy, San Jose, and Tampa Bay. The fourth pick in a strong 2006 MLS SuperDraft out of Pasadena City College, Movsisyan is mostly associated with RSL, who acquired him in a 2007 trade. With the Claret and Cobalt, he would tally 15 goals in 53 regular season appearances, and in 2009 he'd hoist the club's first MLS Cup. That'd be his last game with RSL until 2016 after some time in Europe with Randers, Krasnodar, and Spartak Moscow (even sharing the Russian PL Golden Boot in 2012/13 with Wanderson). He'd put up a similar clip of 16 in 57 before being waived and finishing his MLS career with four scoreless games with Chicago. Austria: Daniel Royer ( NYRB 2016-pres.) The choice here was largely Royer vs. Andreas Ivanschitz, who was a regular starter for Seattle's first MLS Cup, but I can't say no to a man with over 100 MLS matches played and three straight 10-goal seasons. In all comps, the former Austria Vienna man is just two goals behind Thierry Henry for third on the Red Bulls' all time goal scoring list. Belarus: Sasha Gotsmanov ( COL 2005) Gotsmanov qualifies by default as the only Belarusian player in MLS history. The Minsk native (and son of former Soviet and Belarusian international Sergei Gotsmanov) played one (1) single game for Colorado in October 2005, against RSL. Belgium: Laurent Ciman ( MTL 2015-17, LAFC 2018, TFC 2019-pres.) Shouts to Roland Lamah, who had his moments in Dallas, and Jelle van Damme, who played a season and a half for the Galaxy, but Ciman is the obvious choice. While he's fallen off a cliff as he's gotten older, he's a three-time All-Star and won Defender of the Year in his first MLS season; in his second, he played for Belgium at Euro 2016. At 35, he's lost a step and probably should only be used in emergencies, but at his best he was an elite MLS center back that could also be deployed at right back. Bosnia & Herzegovina: Haris Medunjanin ( PHI 2017-19, CIN 2020-pres.) The first one where I'm not totally confident in my pick, as Baggio Hušidić made this tricky (and as a Union fan I'm afraid of bias). But at his best, Haris is an assist machine (30 in four MLS seasons so far), and a threat on set pieces; the madlad even scored an Olimpico this year. His left foot is probably the best the Union have ever had. While his commitment to defense was nonexistent, give him the ball and he could spray a pass anywhere. Bulgaria: Hristo Stoichkov ( CHI 2000-02, DC 2003) One of three former Ballon d'Or winners to play in MLS (the others being Lothar Matthaus and Kaka, although "playing" is generous for the former), Stoichkov spent the last four seasons of his career in MLS, scoring 22 goals in 72 regular season matches for Chicago and DC. In his first season, a 9 goal in 18 match outing for the Fire, he also won the US Open Cup, scoring the opening goal of the final, a 2-1 win over Miami. (The winning goal, by the way, was scored by our old friend Owen Goal.) Croatia: Damir Kreilach ( RSL 2018-pres.) Mr. Miyagi's favorite MLS player for his crane kick equalizer in the playoffs, the former Rijeka and Union Berlin man has proven to be an excellent utility piece and core part of RSL throughout his time there, scoring 26 goals and chipping in 14 assists in 86 regular season matches and playing all over the damn place (naturally a central midfielder, he's probably still RSL's best forward). At 31, he still has a lot to give. MLS has seen a huge influx of Croats lately, though; before Kreilach's 2018 signing there had only been four Croatian players in MLS history, two of whom barely played. Currently, there are five on active rosters. Czechia: Luboš Kubík ( CHI 1998-2001, DAL 2001) Czech players have had a good hit rate in MLS. In his lone MLS season, Bořek Dočkal led the league in assists, and Zdeněk Ondrášek was a very solid piece for Dallas, albeit one whose MLS time was brief. But no. We have to go with Kubik. The sweeper was Best XI twice, in 1998 and 1999, and won Defender of the Year in 1998 helping Chicago to a MLS Cup-Open Cup double. He'd win another Open Cup two years later, before being traded to Dallas in 2001 and retiring due to injury. So many lethal counterattacks started on the foot of this man, and he is rightfully seen as one of the greatest defenders the league has ever seen. Denmark: Jimmy Nielsen ( KC 2010-13) I debated going WAYYYYYYY off the board here and throwing out Miklos Molnar. His time in MLS was brief, just the 2000 season before he retired, but the man was the best attacking piece on a Cup winner. He could have balled out if he didn't retire early. But nah. We're going with Casino Jimmy, one of the keys towards Kansas City's early 2010s turnaround. A two time All-Star, Nielsen was Goalkeeper of the Year in 2012, a year that also saw him win the Open Cup with the Wiz (on penalties, because KC and penalties, name a more iconic duo at this point). In 2013, he capped off his career by winning MLS Cup, again on penalties, while playing with broken ribs. England: Bradley Wright-Phillips ( 2013-2019, LAFC 2020) This league, man. The list of English players to have represented in MLS is a long one, full of iconic names. Ashley Cole. David Beckham. Frank Lampard. Steven Gerrard. Jermain Defoe. Wayne Rooney. Hell, even Bradley's brother Shaun. But nope. Many of those guys are the butt of many MLS jokes. BWP, on the other hand, is one of the greatest goal scorers the league has ever seen, with two Golden Boots to his name and well over a century of league goals. He was a part of 3 Shield winning teams, and made CONCACAF's Best XI in 2018. And it all started with a quiet trial in 2013 after Charlton dumped him. This. League. And This. Man. Even as a fan of Philly who doesn't care much for the Red Bulls, I respect this dude and everything he's done. I hope he gets another year after winning Comeback Player of the Year this year. Estonia: Joel Lindpere ( NYRB 2010-12, CHI 2013) The only other option here was Erik Sorga, who could dethrone Lindpere as he came to MLS at a very young age. But it's unlikely, as Lindpere was quietly very solid for the Red Bulls during his time. The Tallinn native was a two-time All-Star, and in 2010 he was named the Red Bulls' team MVP. Finland: Alex Ring ( NYC 2017-2020, AUS pres.) T O P I C A L There's a few fairly talented Finns in MLS right now that could make this interesting (I really like Robin Lod's game, and Lassi Lappelainen would be excellent for Montreal if he'd stop getting hurt). Ring however has proven his worth across 4 seasons, including time as NYC's captain. Over 10,000 MLS minutes, mostly for good teams, as a defensive anchor, he will be a fantastic tone-setter for the new Austin team. France: Thierry Henry ( NYRB 2010-14) Oh man, as an Ireland fan I wanted to give this to literally anyone else. I am still bitter, dammit. His best competition is probably Aurelien Collin, who has a closetful of trophies (including a Best XI and MLS Cup MVP). But no...it's Henry. When a big name comes to MLS, what people want to see is someone who treats the league with respect. Henry did that. Not only was he dominant on the pitch, a three-time Best XI nomination, he also respected the history of the club he played for and gave 100%, even though he was getting up there in the years. He's a Red Bulls and MLS legend...as much as I curse that godforsaken hand Georgia: Valeri "Vako" Qazaishvili ( SJ 2017-20) It looks like the San Jose chapter of Vako's career is done and dusted. While the former Vitesse man struggled for consistency, he did put up 26 goals and 13 assists across four MLS seasons for the Quakes, including 10 while being coached by Mikael Stahre, which should probably get him and Wondo some sort of award. We'll see what's next for him, if he leaves MLS or goes back to Europe. His only competition was Quakes teammate Guram Kashia. Germany: Bastian Schweinsteiger ( CHI 2017-19) I'm...actually not sure about this one. I actually changed this while writing, as I very nearly chose Julian Gressel; the former Rookie of the Year has two 10-assist seasons under his belt, and Kai Wagner has also been one of the league's better fullbacks for Philadelphia; Schweinsteiger was solid enough for Chicago in his advanced age for some very frustrating teams (and even moved positions to center back!)...but man, I don't know. Germany is weird. For a country with such a great footballing tradition, the pickings are fairly slim. Arne Friedrich had one good year for Chicago before injuries claimed his career. Lottar Matthaus was as committed to this league as Schalke are to winning football matches. Stefan Aigner was stifled by Anthony Hudson going galaxy brain. Torsten Frings...existed. I dunno. Greece: Alexandros Tabakis ( ATL 2017) The only Greek in MLS history...and our second one game wonder. Atlanta's FOURTH string keeper in 2017, he managed to sneak into a game against Minnesota with Brad Guzan on international duty, Alec Kann injured, and Kyle Reynish sent off during the match. Atlanta lost 3-2. He's now in USL. Hungary: Nemanja Nikolić ( CHI 2017-19) Dániel Sallói and Krisztián Németh had their moments, but the winner is Nikolić, who came to MLS from the Ekstraklasa and immediately won the Golden Boot. His totals diminished in the three seasons he spent with Chicago, but 51 goals in 96 appearances isn't too shabby at all - it's second in Fire history behind Ante Razov. Iceland - Guðmundur Þórarinsson ( NYC 2020-pres.) Not much choice, 3 guys, all of whom were mostly bench guys. I almost went with Kristinn Steindorsson here on the merits of "he didn't have a penalty saved by Rodrigo Schlegel." Israel: Gadi Kinda ( SKC 2020-pres.) It was either him or Dedi Ben Dayan, really. And I nearly went with the former Colorado left back, but nah, Kinda is very much the superior player. The midfielder born in Ethiopia, Kinda shone brightly in his first season in KC, with 6 goals and 4 assists in his debut season. He'll be a DP next season. Italy: Sebastian Giovinco ( TOR 2015-18) A signing that changed an entire club. Before Giovinco, the Reds were a laughingstock. He came in, won a Golden Boot and MVP right away, led the league in assists, made Best XI three years in a row, led them to their first playoff game, their first MLS Cup final, their first MLS Cup win, and a historic treble. And they damn near won CCL too. The Atomic Ant was must-see from Day 1. It's not just because of him that Toronto is now one of MLS's elite...but he was a huge part of changing that culture. 83 goals in 142 games in all comps. And he dished out his fair share of assists too, with a telepathic partnership with Jozy. Latvia: Raivis Hščanovičs ( TOR 2010) Not much to write about here. 14 games for a bad Reds team. Gets in by default with no other Latvian MLS players. Liechtenstein: Nicholas Hasler ( TOR 2017-18, CHI 2018-19, SKC 2019) Another one by default. 66 games as a utilityman. Won MLS Cup and the Shield, though. Lithuania: Vytautas Andriuškevičius ( POR 2016-18, DC 2018) Only other choice was Edgaras Jankauskas, a forward who played 14 games for the Revs. Vytas played 37 for Portland and zero for DC. Luxembourg: Maxime Chanot ( NYC 2016-pres.) Another one by default but this one's an actually really solid player that finished fourth in Defender of the Year voting in 2019. We take those. Malta: Etienne Barbera ( VAN 2012) 2 games in 2012. Only Maltese player in MLS. Montenegro: Branko Bošković ( DC 2010-12) Pretty much every other Montenegrin player played less than 20 games in MLS. Bošković played 43 before returning to Europe for family reasons. 7 assists in his final season though, which is technically something. Netherlands: Johan Kappelhof ( CHI 2016-pres.) Much like Germany, bright footballing tradition, very shaky MLS history. Which is weird because the Eredivisie exports a lot of guys to MLS. Also, I'm excluding Kelvin Leerdam, as he is probably changing his international allegiance to Suriname. So I'm going with 2017 All-Star Kappelhof, who I think is still fairly solid. But really the choices aren't great. Dave van den Burgh? Roland Alberg scored a hat trick once I guess? Danny Koevermans was decent but injured all the time? Maybe it's a hot take. It probably is. North Macedonia: Oka Nikolov ( PHI 2013) Never actually played, only in a friendly. Watch this space though as North Macedonia is apparently courting LAFC's Danny Musovski. Northern Ireland: Johnny Steele ( RSL 2012, NYRB 2013-14) Another case of shaky opposition, it was either Steele or Steve Morrow, who played 41 games for Dallas in the aughts. Steele played regularly for a Shield winner, the 2013 Red Bulls. Easy peasy. Norway: Vadim Demidov Ola Kamara ( CLB 2016-17, LAG 2018, DC 2019-pres.) Adama Diomande is the main competition here. Kamara's first stint in MLS was a smashing success, scoring 48 goals in 90 regular season matches for Columbus and the Galaxy (he was traded for Gyasi Zardes before 2018). A brief foray to China followed, and while he's back in MLS with DC he hasn't quite been the same. Still a good player on his day, maybe just the Bennyball effect. Poland: Piotr Nowak ( CHI 1998-2002) When I think of early Chicago, Nowak and the earlier-mentioned Kubik are the first two names that come to mind. Kubik held down the back while Nowak was the chief creator in the midfield. Three-time best XI, three-time All-Star, and MLS Cup MVP. ...can I drink my water now? Portugal: José Gonçalves ( NE 2013-16) Gonçalves fell off a cliff in his latter years, but in his first MLS season he won Defender of the Year and in his second he was a key part of a team that made the MLS Cup final and damn near won the thing. Runner up here is Nani who is probably closing in. EDIT: I also forgot to mention Pedro Santos, thanks to the Crew fans who pointed that one out. I still think Gonçalves pips him for his 2013 if nothing else, but Santos is probably closer than Nani. Republic of Ireland: Robbie Keane ( LAG 2011-16) A LOT closer than you think; Time Person of the CenturyJuventus legend Ronnie O'Brien was two-time best XI himself. But nonono. This is Robbie freaking Keane. When we see these big name Euro guys interested in MLS, this is the man we want them to be. Hypercompetitive and holding guys accountable on and off the pitch, and scoring for fun. 83 goals in 125 MLS regular season appearances. Best XI four times. 2014 MVP. MLS Cup MVP in 2014. A closetful of team awards including 3 MLS Cups. This man was a baller, and frankly his departure was the beginning of the Galaxy decline into irrelevance, but that's a story for another time. Romania: Alexandru Mitriță ( NYC 2019-pres.?) Question mark because he's on loan and I have no idea if it'll be permanent, but he was punted out by the Pigeons just as he was really starting to break out. He scored 12 goals in his debut season last year but filled in nicely this year while Maxi Moralez was injured. EDIT: NYC fans have informed me he wasn't punted out, but was loaned out to be closer to his pregnant wife. My apologies. Honorable mention: Alex Zotincă, who played for the Wizards and Chivas USA in the aughts. Brave man. Russia: Igor Simutenkov ( KC 2002-04) Not a lot to pick from here either. 49 games, 12 goals for this forward from Moscow, who now serves as an assistant coach at Zenit. Scotland: John Spencer ( COL, 2001-04) Give Johnny Russell another few years and he'll pass Spencer, but for now I'm leaning the latter. Spencer as a coach was frustrating as hell, but as a player he was Best XI twice and an MVP finalist once. Dude could score goals despite battling injuries in his time in MLS. Just don't let him sign Kris Boyd. Then you lose to Cal FC. No one wants that. Serbia: Aleksandar Katai ( 2018-19, 2020) FROM A SPORTING PERSPECTIVE. And mostly due to a weak pool. Runner up was probably someone like Miloš Kocić. 18 goals in 62 games for Chicago before getting yeeted back to Serbia for Bad People Reasons Slovakia: Albert Rusnák ( RSL 2017-pres.) He has tenure on Ján Greguš, who's the closest competitor, but Rusnák is also good. He followed up a 14-assist debut season (4th in the league) with back to back 10 goal seasons before struggling this year with injury. Slovenia: Robert Berić ( CHI 2020-pres.) Once he got acclimated to MLS, the goals came, and Chicago has its successor to Nikolić up top. He finished with 12 goals in his debut season, tied for second in the league with Ruidiaz and Zardes. Also, from what I saw early on, seems like he's a dark-arts type of guy that gets in your head. That's fun. Spain: David Villa ( NYC 2015-18) I really didn't want to put him here due to recent allegations, and the fact that Pozuelo has already matched his MVP and two Best XI performances.... 77 goals in 117 games though, that's tough to pass on. Sweden: Zlatan Ibrahimović ( LAG 2018-19) It's Zlatan. He pretty much dragged a sorry LA organization to something resembling competitiveness. What the hell did you expect? (Anton Tinnerholm made this hard, though) EDIT: Forgot Gustav Svensson as well in my honorable mentions. Switzerland: Stefan Frei ( TOR 2009-13, SEA 2014-pres.) Pretty self-explanatory, one of the most accomplished keepers in MLS history and with a closetful of hardware. And all it took Seattle to get him was a late first round pick that pinged around so much that it was eventually traded for a coach. Turkey: Sercan Güvenışık ( SJ 2012) 5 games that year. No one else has flown the Turkish flag in MLS. Ukraine: Dema Kovalenko ( CHI 1999-2002, DC 2002-05, NYRB 2006-08, RSL 2008, LAG 2008-10) I'm afraid he'd break my legs if I didn't. One of the most physical and downright dirty players the league has ever seen. Made nearly 300 appearances though, and has one each of the 3 major US trophies (MLS Cup, USOC, Shield), all with a different team. Wales: Andy Dorman ( NE 2004-07, 2013-15) Dorman was a key part of that real good Revs team from the mid-aughts, and just beats out Carl Robinson. He made 112 appearances in his first stint, and played in 3 MLS Cup finals, though they famously lost all three. The Revs brought him back in 2013 after some time in Scotland and England, and was playing semipro in the area as recently as 2018.
If you are holding GME to make money, you are in this end game for the wrong reason. Making money is a super perk but you hold until 1) you’re dead. 2) the company goes bust or 3) the stock hits a SUBSTANTIAL amount that is in your favour. Then, at that point you sell some off and then buy back some more. Why? Because you believe in the company you are investing in. Because fuck the cheaters. Fuck the system. Fuck the slimy pricks that have more than a person EVER needs and only wants more and doesn’t care who they fuck over to get more. Fuck the people who have the ability to fix poverty and homelessness with an 8th of their quarterly earnings and do nothing but try and bankrupt people. Fuck the big companies that destroy the little guy. If you play SHARES like a casino then the reality of it is you’re playing with stock chips the house will always win. Every now and then a few people get super lucky. Never spend more than you can afford to lose. If being one of the lucky ones is THAT important to you, you shouldn’t be playing with stocks. These hedge fund naked shorting slimeballs will never lose the same way the little guys do because they can afford to work the system. It’s what they do. It’s how they got disgustingly rich. It’s how they get disgustingly richer. You OWN shares because you support the business. An investor is supposed to be supportive in who they invest in. Not intentionally bankrupt them. That’s just plain evil and some day those evil fuckers will get their due karma because all that money is not worth anything to them when they’re dead. At least more people are paying closer attention to the scamfuckery going on and hopefully things will change one day. Edit: All that being said.... I am the proud owner of 3 little shares at 262.26, 140, and 90.50. I don’t have a lot of money to play stocks with but I wanted to be part of the rebellion who are holding for the same reasons I am. You can bet that when I can afford to spend some extra coinage I will buy up what I can. Why? Because I like GameStop. One dinky share may not fix the corrupt side things, but it supports the business.
Robinhood can be a gambling platform, but it's not and removing it or regulating it will exacerbate the divide between the wealthy and the rest of the U.S.
Hi everyone, Lately I've been reading and watching on the news about Robinhood and I just wanted to give my two cents as somebody who actually researches Gambling disorder in the United States. My goal in this post is to hopefully encourage people on WSB to become politically active in preventing the regulations or removal of certain aspects that Robinhood allows on its investing platform. First, let me define some terms from the Gambling disorder field:
Gambling- placing something of value on a random outcome in order to achieve a desired result or profit (this last part is added by me as I think it gives a better explanation of why an individual gambles in the first place);
Gambling disorder: A psychological disorder where an individual is unable to control their gambling to the point that they are experiencing consequences from the behavior. The behavior also has to occur without the presence of Mania, other biological co-morbidity, or under the influence of a psychoactive substance.
In this post I will address a few arguments at Robinhood. The first is regarding the "gambling" nature of investment that Robinhood purportedly encourages. The second is that the average investor needs to be "protected" because they lack the information and knowledge to participate on the app. When I first downloaded Robinhood, I was skeptical at first and proceeded to uninstall and reinstall it multiple times before I deposited $350 to invest in stock. The app provided me a "scratch-off" with my first deposit that rewarded me with my first stock (some medical company). That was the only time that event occurred. If we look at my prior definition of gambling, technically that is not a form of gambling. I placed nothing of value on this random outcome. If the actual act of investing in stock is gambling this leads to an interesting analogy regarding trading platforms, not just Robinhood. Stocks are the game (roulette, blackjack, craps), Robinhood and trading platforms are the dealers (giving information on the rules of the game and how much it costs to place a bet), and the liberal market is the casino. In this analogy everybody is in the Casino, and if you don't play the game you stand to lose regardless as your money loses value to inflation. Even worse, if the casino folds the people that didn't cash out or were fully invested in the casino never collapsing (The Great Depression, the recession of 2008 the coronavirus recession) can stand to lose everything even if they didn't participate (regular person that was laid off) or were placing safe bets (ETF's Blue chip stocks etc). The Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth, William Galvin, is addressing the wrong issue by suing Robinhood. What should be addressed is the reasons that people even participate in Robinhood or in any trading platform. The average individual doesn't understand the market and the United States does not address this ignorance by providing information on how to properly invest for retirement or provide a welfare structure that protects against poverty as individuals become unable to participate fully in the economy due to injury, developmental disability, age, discrimination or lack of access to the "free" market. To claim that people on Robinhood "gamble" for excitement or risk is reductive. People invest their money on Robinhood for the potential accumulate life changing "tendies" that will protect them from the eventuality that they will be unable to participate in the economy and the government will not insulate them from the fiscal impact an individual will (not if) have to deal with in regards rising medical cost for their healthcare and any other services they would require in order to lead a normal life. If William Galvin is actually concerned about the "gamefying" of investment, he should focus on regulating Wall Street and the Banking sector, because last time I checked investors on Robinhood invest with their own money, not the money of other people. The argument that the average investor isn't informed also leads to more issues that I guarantee the government doesn't want to address or even ask because it would require an expansion of the welfare state and higher taxes on companies and individuals. If the average American is too dumb to invest using Robinhood that what is the solution? The U.S. government has always fought any sort of government guaranteed income or services to insulate an individual against against insolvency from the free market as can be seen by the desire to privatize almost all forms of government programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps and Medicaid. This has already occurred with certain programs at the federal level such as HUD which doesn't do anything to help people get affordable housing and the drastic reduction in funding for colleges and universities especially after boomers were done getting their degrees for essentially free. So lets examine what the average person has to understand in the American economy,
they have to be able to plan and invest for their retirement,
understand loans (including all the fine print such as interest) to pay for college, and purchasing of necessary items for certain areas such as housing or a car;
Navigate a Byzantine like medical industry that can easily bankrupt the average American even with insurance;
So the average American is suppose to navigate all of the aforementioned areas with little to no government assistance. But Robinhood should be regulated, makes sense. Let's not even talk about that most Americans read at about an 8th grade level and have a tough time understanding that a quarter pounder is less than a one third hamburger... "Why the third pound hamburger failed: One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald’s Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W’s burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it. Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald’s. The “4” in “¼,” larger than the “3” in “⅓,” led them astray. --Elizabeth Green, NYT Magazine, on losing money by overestimating the American Public Intelligence." The REAL QUESTION is what responsibility does the government have to insulate the average American from an economy that by its very nature is predatory, especially when the argument set forth by William Galvinson is that the public doesn't understand how to invest on Robinhood. Especially since the government has told the public from day one to take care of themselves as they get older through investing instead of expecting the government to provide assistance. By removing or regulating Robinhood, the fungibility of the average American's dollar will drop in value because they are prevented from another avenue of wealth accumulation, which research shows (at least for those in poverty) they turn to gambling as a means of wealth accumulation because even though the return on a gamble is less it is technically even since their dollar is also worth less. I think I may have gone on a rant, sorry. TL; DR, Please buy me some tendies William Galvin, because I like to be wined and dined before I GET FUCKED! Robinhood isn't gambling. Robinhood just provides a service to investing on Wall Street, the actual gambling is our devotion to supply side economics which is the original, STONKS ONLY GO UP 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 Also, if we are going to start regulating Robinhood because of the actions of a minority (WSB) then we should start regulating other industries that are WAY more predatory and impact a larger amount of the U.S. such as, payday loans, guns, pharma industry, surprise medical bills from emergency rooms, childcare, prison industry, bail industry etc. I bet you the cost to the U.S. economy from those industries is way more than anything Robinhood has done. Positions: SAVE at 18.45 67 shares; and TQQQ 5 shares at 174.71
Listen I love Ben to death, and I 100% believe we can win the chip this year with the roster constructed as is. His playmaking and all world defense are not to be taken lightly. He is an absolute freight train in transition and has shown glimpses of taking over games when he wants to. However, Harden and Embiid on the same team are simply unstoppable. I mean these are two guys who can go absolutely nuclear whenever they choose. Embiid changes the entire dynamic of the game as soon as he steps in, and harden has a similar gravity to him. Both can get 40+ on any given night and having both on the floor is honestly akin to shaq and kobe in many ways. I understand all the concerns about harden off the court. People say he’s not a winner and has a bad attitude which all has some warrant to it. But let’s not forget they were up 3-2 on the KD Warriors and if Chris Paul (the rockets second best player) doesn’t get hurt and they don’t miss 27 straight, harden beats the most talented roster of all time and most likely wins the finals as well. The strip club stuff honestly does not concern me that much. I could care less what harden does off the court as long as he hoops on the court. Michael Jordan (not to compare the two) had similar criticisms early in his career about his late night casino escapades. As long as harden is producing, and it doesn’t affect the locker room (which I doubt it does, who cares what anyone is doing as long as you’re winning) there isn’t really a problem with harden. And this team would win, A LOT. I think Harden being traded reinvigorates him to be the best version of himself, especially to prove his critics wrong. And the sixers were at the top of his list. In my opinion, we offer Ben, Matisse (or somebody of comparable worth) and a first or a few seconds for Harden. If that doesn’t work then we walk. Maxey and Shake are too damn valuable both contract wise and talent/potential for the future and like I said earlier, I don’t think we NEED harden to win now. I also hate to see Ben go. But Harden and Embiid on the same team would probably be the closest thing talent wise we will see to Shaq and Kobe in a while. With that being said, Go sixers and TTP. (And for those who’d be laughing at a Ben and Matisse offer, go find another team that’d be willing to deal an all star for Harden. That’s the best offer they’re going to get player wise)
Robinhood is shorting the DOGE market I know what a short is. This isn’t a literal one, but it’s the closest thing I can think of to describing what’s happening. Forget I called it a short and just read the damn post. Mods at dogecoin deleted my first post. This is the truth about what happens to your money when you buy cryptos on robinhood. Robinhood is inflating the hype to get everyone to give them money for their pump and dump scheme on the crypto market. They have no obligation to buy doge and they probably won’t either. Spread the word. Please share the post if you feel this message is worth spreading. If you don’t like reading, skip to the stickied comment. And if you read this, say “damn he’s right” then don’t do anything, you’re part of the problem. This Information doesn’t spread itself. Help me help the community and we’ll all be better for it. ————————————————— RobinHood has no obligation to buy DOGE for you.
RobinHood moves your money to another company after you make an order to buy the crypto. After that, it disappears. You are only left with a CREDIT from them (not an actual coin, so there’s no proof they purchased it for you) saying you can come back and exchange the credit for money. They are not purchasing DOGE on your behalf. They are letting you throw money at them, and you are not affecting the price with your purchases on RobinHood. They never mention once that they have an obligation to purchase the coins for you on an exchange and hold them. If they bought doge, they’d lose money once everyone pulls out because they’d have to sell the coins faster than the people are selling on their platform. BUY DOGE ON A REAL COIN EXCHANGE THAT ALLOWS YOU TO TRANSFER OUT THE COIN INTO A 3RD PARTY WALLET. DOGE ONLY GROWS IF YOU HAVE THE COINS IN A WALLET, NOT HELD IN AN EXCHANGE ACCOUNT sources are Robinhood crypto user agreement. **1. Robinhood Crypto Service (f) "authorization to clearing broker" -" I understand that when I elect to purchase Cryptocurrencies on the Robinhood Platform, I am authorizing and instructing Robinhood Financial to instruct Robinhood Securities, LLC (the "Clearing Broker") to accept such instruction to transfer the funds required for the transaction from my RHC Account to an account in the name of RHC (the “Entity Account”). I acknowledge that legal title to any such transferred funds will pass to RHC to effectuate settlement and that the Clearing Broker does not have the ability to monitor or recall the funds after such funds have been transferred to the external bank account." **4. Orders (d) "title and ownership" -outlines how the crypto is only owned by you in the form of a credit. You're sort of purchasing chips at a casino.
TL;DR: robin hood is taking your money, shifting it to another company that has no obligation to purchase the thing you wanted, and robin hood gives you an iou. ROBINHOOD IS NOT PURCHASING DOGE ON YOUR BEHALF AND IS PROBABLY DOING EVERYTHING THEY CAN TO KEEP THE PRICE DOWN.
Remember this above all else. If they sell you the coin, but you can’t use it on a different website, you don’t own the coin and your purchase had no effect on the price. You probably helped them lower the price of DOGE without even realizing it My prediction is that doge will have a small rally after Monday (volatile day) then Tuesday is shaky if not complete plummet. but never explode like expected. All the other cryptos will slowly grow over the weekend into the week (from robinhood pumping) then all the cryptos will crash near the end of the week. If you buy the coins on a different platform and transfer it to your wallet, then the prices will move up and STAY up. That’s how we win this.
Simple Lore comparison of both the NCR's and Legion's currency
NCR 5 dollar bill is only worth 2 caps Legion silver Denarius is worth 4 caps That's 2 more of the base value of what the NCR 5 dollar bill can afford. Now lets check the highest. NCR 100 dollar bill is only worth 40 caps. Legion gold Aureus is worth 100 caps. That's 60 more of the base value of what the NCR 100 dollar bill can afford. Unlike Legion currency however, the NCR has a third denomination of a 20 dollar bill which is worth 8 caps. Still, the ceilings of both of their highest currencies available to the markets edges in favor of the Legion over the NCR dollar with the Aureus having a higher purchasing power in regards to commercial activity. sources; [By 2281, the NCR dollar is valued at about 40% of a water-backed cap[6] and only 10% of a silver Legion Denarius.](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/NCR_dollars) [Legion currency](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Legion_Denarius) [NCR currency](https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/NCR_dollars) Dialogue points from merchant or merchant adjunct entities to substantiate probable currency values decided by the Wasteland market; >Dale Barton: "Hell, I don't even need to travel with guards most of the time in Legion territory. All the bandits are dead or run off." >Dale Barton: "Between having to hire protection and getting slapped with taxes, it's more profitable to stick to Arizona and New Mexico." >Rose Sharon of Cassidy: "Some caravans deal with the Legion now because the security. If towns could get the same protection? A lot more tempting than you'd think. Bunch of people would be willing to side with the Legion to not have to worry about Fiends and Boomers and Powder Ganger attacks." >The Courier: "You don't get paid in Caps?" >Chomp Lewis: "Nope. The NCR's been trying to switch over to using paper money, like in the Pre-War days. Trouble is that the exchange rates ain't exactly fair.For example, a hundred bucks in NCR money is valued at roughly half that in caps around here. Seems like a rotten deal for us, but work is work." >The Courier: "What can you tell me about New Vegas?" >Chomp Lewis: "I've been there once, and I don't recommend it. It's just a way to burn through amonth's pay in five minutes*. I've seen a lot of folks come through here thinking they'll have the easy life once they get there. It never happens."* From one of the developers: >J.E Sawyer: "And this is discussed in-game: BoS raided NCR's gold reserves until NCR could no longer generate gold coinage nor back their paper money. They abandoned the gold standard and established fiat currency, which is why its value is inflated over both caps and (especially) Legion coinage. (...) People in eastern NCR and the Mojave Wasteland lost faith in the NCR government's a) ability to back the listed value of paper money and b) stability overall. If you're living in Bakersfield, staring at a piece of paper that says "redeemable for value in gold" and you have no faith in the government's ability or willingness to do that -- or if you see that the government has changed the currency to say that it is not able to be exchanged for a backed good -- you may very well listen to the strong consortium of local merchants offering to exchange that paper note for currency backed by water." The Tops Vegas Casino exchange rates for in-house playing Chips; Note: With a double check, all the Casino cashiers in Vegas have the same exchange dialogue, barring the type of greeting they give depending on the chosen locale. That means the exchange rates for all Vegas Casinos are standardized and consistent. NCR 2 chips for 5$ NCR 8 chips for 20$ NCR 40 chips for 40$ NCR Legion 4 chips for 1 Legion Denarius 20 chips for 5 Legion Denarii 40 chips for 10 Legion Denarii 80 chips for 20 Legion Denarii 100 chips for 1 Legion Aureus or 25 Legion Denarii Source: Geck dialogue files, vDialogueCasinoCashier; Topics EDIT: To even nip this in the butt further, some comments here say that Precious Commodities don't have intrinsic value. If that is the case in regards to the NCR being discussed here, why by the time of FO2 was the lowest denominator of their currency, 1$ dollar, was in Gold Coins? $1 NCR - The Fallout Wiki (fandom.com) The NCR never or had any contingencies to shore-up their currency to a fiat one at all if the most basic unit of their internal monetary exchange was Gold Coins. If that were the case they would've had pure paper money to begin with without these Coins being in circulation in Fallout 2; with all Gold being in their reserve purely being for backing only, but this isn't the case as we observe. With the absence of their most basic unit of exchange being gone and the 5$ paper note being demoted to the new basic unit of their currency, that's a huge amount of unaccounted inflation off the bat; inflation they could've never prepared for since they valued Gold enough as a natural unit of exchange at such a base level to be circulated. They didn't expect the BoS to hit them that hard or anyone to do so with their perceived control of their core territory; nevermind the facts that its very unstable and unlucrative to deal in with raiders they can't hunt down with lack of dedicated manpower and poll taxes. Precious vs Fiat currencies have staunch differences that can't be reconciled in the context of the Fallout universe and a general post-apocalypse. Precious Commodities are backed by simple human consensus of its natural properties being of worth and desirable for a monetary unit of exchange. These can be traded and exchanged easily with a readily agreed upon value along with Caps because they are accepted by almost every post-war Tribal group, Wasteland settlement, independent Traders, and most other polities across America. Its supply is also naturally in nature, not manufactured artificially with Fiat money note printing. (In the Fallout series, we see some form of international travel is still somewhat possible with characters such as Alistar Tenpenny and in Fallout 4 with multiple characters from other continents. Take Gold from the US and bring it to the British Isles, it will still have ready value no matter what. Take simple Fiat bank notes of a faction in the US to say, the Fallout version of West Africa. It would absolutely have no value because the issuer of that tender back in North America literally has no economic influence to back its money in this region miles away; there is no Demand or recognition for it. Conversely with Gold taken from North America and traveling to Fallout West Africa, it has tradeable value no matter what because Gold is a natural unit of exchange from its recognized natural value by humans.) Fiat currency is only as strong as a nation-state can legitimize and maintain it. The only Fiat currency at the time of New Vegas taking place is NCR currency, which is doing badly from the aforementioned factors of the top of this post. The NCR IS a nation of some sort, but it isn't in the league of pre-war society statehoodship. It doesn't have the financial instruments or development of robust monetary institutions to handle Fiat when they've have been on a Gold economy all this time and the value of the NCR dollar has plummeted due to lack of Demand with its sudden absence. The only reason why the NCR dollar had high worthiness was due to the inherent value of Gold they had on reserve in a post-apocalyptic society that has an extremely high assessment of value it. With the Gold-backed era of the NCR (supported in FO2 with Gold Coins directly in circulation and being exchanged), Caps were practically worthless in the NCR territory as comments here note. Now with Gold out of the equation as we can observe with direct evidence, the highest focal point of NCR currency isn't even worth 40% of Cap currency by the end of the NCR-BoS war. Double Edit: The whole reason why the resource wars in the Fallout universe happened because the main natural mineral resource, Oil, was almost all depleted entirely- in an international society where almost all the pre-war Nations were Oil based economies. Without Oil we see in numerous cases in Fallout in the post-war landscape with products with exorbitant prices due to rampart inflation with money that had no value. [This](https://www.reddit.com/Fallout/comments/3x9cqj/how_inflated_was_the_prewar_economy_some_of_the/cy348gl?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) comment here from 4 years ago from the main Fallout subreddit goes into the context of the universe. In the very intro of the first Fallout game, we see on the TV in the ruined building that is still running- a common non-luxury car is worth 200,000 dollars. Regular Gas in pre-war Fallout America was 1450.99$ Premium Gas was 8500.99$ To note, America was only one of the nations still with a minutiae of Oil left, but here are the prices. Source: [Gas Prices](latest (293×291) (nocookie.net)) The Mechanical Pony toy seen in Fallout 3 costs 16,000$.
We're all familiar with the Hotline Miami's, Hollow Knight's, and Celeste's of the world. These are some of the indie games that hit the big time. Of course, for every one of these games, there's 100 other indie games that have been glossed over, relegated to a spot in a digital store few people will ever find themselves in. I wanted to bring attention to some of these lesser known indie games. I'm going to order them according to Metacritic Critic Ratings. Some of the games at the bottom have pretty low critic ratings. I personally disagree with the low scores of these games, but it's only fair that you hear from more than just me. Keep in mind that games with only one or two User Ratings on Metacritic will not show the score. A game needs at least three User Ratings on Metacritic before the score will be shown. This is not the case for Critic Reviews. Price will contain the U.S. PlayStation Store link to the game. 1. Hayfever
Description: Hayfever is a precision platformer that revolves around a mailman propelling himself using a number of different allergens that act as power-ups. A lot of the platforming is aerial and typically has you catching allergens mid-air to perform maneuvers in quick succession. It's not an easy game by any means, but it has oddly relaxing music to accompany the rather intense platforming. There are also letters to collect in each level to steepen the challenge and some secrets to discover too. It takes an hour or so to get used to the aerial platforming, and this is one of the few 2D platformers played better with the analog stick rather than the D-Pad. But letters that seemed unattainable to me at the beginning of the game became much simpler by the end, as I had mastered the controls and physics of the game. I don't expect everyone to love this game, but I have to agree with the one other guy who played it that gave it a 9/10. After putting 25+ hours into it, I am still eager to replay it soon.
Completion Time: ~8 Hours
Extra Content: It'll take another 8 hours or so to collect all the letters and probably about 6 hours or so to beat the Hard World, which features an additional 28 remixed levels. There are also secrets to uncover, but they don't net any in game progress and only work towards your trophy completion. Finding these secrets will probably vary more in time because they are hidden, but expect them to take a few hours to find. Just to clarify, letters are an expanded test of your platforming skills and are all in clear view of the screen, while secrets are a test of your observation skills and take a little more digging to find. The platinum trophy is a fair and rewarding challenge that took me about 25-30 hours to get.
Description: Valfaris is one of the best run & gun games I've ever played. You play as Prince Therion who returns to his home planet of Valfaris on a quest to kill his father. It's themed around a fictional planet and has a gross alien vibe coupled with heavy metal music. The music doesn't override the other audio in the game, and it does a nice job of upping the ante when you're fighting a boss – of which there are many. You're equipped with a primary gun, a more powerful mana-based gun, a sword, and a shield that can block with mana or parry. There are a number of weapons to acquire throughout the game, and the guns in particular do a great job of feeling different. You’re able to upgrade your weapons with Blood Metals. Some Blood Metals are found in plain sight, others are rewarded for defeating a tough enemy, and some are given for going off the beaten path. These upgrades typically just up the firepower but will sometimes introduce a secondary move to your weapon. There are checkpoints every two minutes or so, and most bosses will have a checkpoint just before them (only the weaker bosses come after a gauntlet of enemies). The game is a little hard at points, but overall it strikes a nice balance of feeling accomplished for overcoming the challenges without getting overly frustrating.
Completion Time: ~8 Hours
Extra Content: There are a few secrets to find throughout the game that are off the beaten path, though I was able to find 2/3 of them on my first playthrough. I found all but one weapon as well. The replayability comes from New Game+, which allows you to take all your upgraded weapons into a harder version of the game. Since the weapons all function a bit differently, this can be lots of fun. Getting the platinum trophy is somewhat difficult.
Description: The premise of the game is a fusion of side scrollers and oldschool fixed screens that teleport you to the opposite side of the screen when you pass through one side - think Pac-Man, arcade Mario Bros., or Balloon Fight. You will find obstacles in your path that are impenetrable in a typical side scroller, but can be overcome by holding a button to turn the screen into a fixed screen that allows you to pass through one side and out through the other end. This is a totally unique take on a puzzle platformer I haven't seen before, and all five worlds bring something new to the table. For example, World 2 will flip you upside down when you pass through a screen, allowing new types of challenges as a result. There's more emphasis on the puzzle elements than the platforming.
Completion Time: ~2 Hours
Extra Content: There is a New Game+, but from what I could tell from the beginning it wasn't a whole lot different. Still, there's a trophy for completing New Game+ and some other fun trophies. Unfortunately, like many early generation indie games, this one has no platinum trophy.
Description: This game revolves around using two square characters who fling themselves from one end of the room to the other to reach an exit. You must position yourself in such a way that you use each character's body to get around the level. Each world introduces a new mechanic to keep things fresh. The whole game is played only using the two analog sticks (the d-pad and face buttons work, but the two analog sticks are best, in my opinion). It can also be played in local co-op, however with how often you have to fling yourself around, coordinating the correct movements to the other player would be exhausting, and it is easier to experiment yourself.
Completion Time: ~3.5 Hours
Extra Content: There's really no extra content, but $4 for what's almost a 4 hour game isn't bad. There is an easy platinum trophy however.
Description: This is actually a sequel to the Steam exclusive Horizon Shift, which sports a different aesthetic and isn’t quite as good from what I’ve read. Horizon Shift ’81 mimics the look of a fixed screen shoot ‘em up from the early 1980s but comes with a few twists of its own. Your ship is positioned in the middle of the screen on a horizontal line rather than the bottom, and you have to flip between sides to deal with enemies coming from both the top and the bottom. The line can be broken in different places – leaving a gap where you can fall to your death – by asteroids and certain projectiles. This is where the expanded moveset comes into play: you can jump between gaps and also over enemies who attach themselves to the line. Enemies on the line can also be taken out with a horizontal shield bash that regenerates after a few seconds. There is a boss after every five stages, some of which will actually bring the line down to the bottom of the screen, while others retain it in the middle. Horizon Shift ’81 has a number of customizable settings that change everything from the aesthetics, to the difficulty, to the checkpoint/lives system, to the speed of the game, and more. The two main modes are a choice between three lives with a checkpoint before and after every boss, or a checkpoint at the beginning of every level but only one life.
Completion Time: ~3.5 Hours (Normal Mode on Arcade Style)
Extra Content: There are a number of ways to customize your future playthroughs, and there’s an unlockable boss rush mode after finishing the game. The few trophies are relatively easy to obtain. There is no platinum trophy for this game.
Description: Daggerhood's main hook is the use of its sword teleportation mechanic. You throw your sword with a button, and you press the same button again to teleport to where the sword is. While this is a mechanic that has been seen in some Metroidvanias, I haven't seen a tight, linear 2D platformer make use of this mechanic before. Each level has a number of collectibles and some small side sections as well, but for the most part the path to the finish is clear - it's just the execution that's the tricky part. Add in teleportation portals to make things even trickier.
Completion Time: ~2.5 Hours
Extra Content: As this is a Ratalaika Games published game, the platinum trophy only takes about 1-1.5 hours to achieve. You can get it well before you even finish the game, which is a shame because the game had all the makings for a fun platinum trophy. There are tons of collectibles in each level, and each level records your time. So there is a lot here to extend to the playtime.
Description: Usually with Metroidvanias, I expect a long, difficult game that's difficult to navigate. Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight is a counter to those ideas while still maintaining the exploratory nature of the sub-genre. The plot is pretty simple and doesn't feature a ton of story, but there are a few NPCs you talk to throughout your quest. The combat is also fairly simple, but the boss fights you engage in are all great. Without much weapon customization, it's stripped to the basics of dodging enemy attacks while trying to get a hit in. It makes for a game that's easy to get into and instantly start enjoying. All of the areas are visually appealing, some more than others, and each of them lasts shorter than you'd expect. The game is only around 3-5 hours, but it feels like you've played so much more in that time. Some games only really start to take off by the time this game finishes.
Completion Time: ~4 Hours
Extra Content: Getting 100% map completion should only take an hour or two of cleanup. I did miss an optional boss on my first playthrough. There are also items to discover, and the trophies give fun challenges to extend the life of the game. Unfortunately there is no platinum trophy for this game. One cool thing I liked was that beating a boss without getting hit at all gives you a useful item. It also features New Game+, allowing you to carry over most of your items, making the game more difficult, and changing up enemy placement.
Description: Ultra Hat Dimension follows Bea through a series of rooms in a palace on a quest to undo the magical spell that has made the mythical Spluff creatures want to attack one another. There is a little bit of backstory via one sentence thoughts from Bea in between levels, but nothing major here. The gameplay revolves equipping four different types of hats and using them to evade or push Spluffs around to retrieve the key and reach the door. Each Spluff dons one of four different hats which effects their behavior towards other Spluffs and you. You will be punched one tile back by every Spluff unless you’re wearing the same hat as the Spluff. Spluffs interact with one another differently depending on what hat they’re wearing in a rock, paper, scissors kind of way – they may punch a Spluff back one space, get into a scuffle that allows you to get close to them without wearing a hat, or they may temporarily disable them in a way that allows you to access the space the Spluff consumes within eight moves. There are undo and reset buttons included that allow you to quickly rewind mistakes. There are some clever puzzles accompanied by catchy tunes and a charming pixel art aesthetic. The difficulty is about average.
Completion Time: ~3 Hours
Extra Content: Since this is published by Ratalaika Games, getting the platinum trophy can be obtained after only clearing 2/3 of the levels. There are a few custom maps on the PC version of the game but no additional content on consoles.
Description: Remothered: Tormented Fathers feels very old school in its design philosophy - no weapons outside a few self defense items and distraction items. You go back and forth in the mansion and have to learn the layout and where things are to proceed. You have to manually select the key item from your inventory to use on triggers (but a key icon is still shown to guide you a little). The sounds in this game do a great job of evoking tension, and I appreciate that the stalkers don’t seem to teleport, so if you can get away from them, you’ve earned your freedom for awhile. This is the first game in a loosely connected trilogy, with the second one due later this year.
Completion Time: ~6 Hours
Extra Content: There are some collectibles you can go back for, but not a whole beyond that. Unfortunately there is no platinum trophy for this game, and you'll probably get most of the trophies - if not all, except the collectibles one - on your first playthrough.
Description: Reverie is a mix between Zelda’s gameplay, Earthbound’s aesthetic and humor, and a New Zealand folktale – the legend of Maui and the Giant Fish. Instead of the more traditional sword and shield style fantasy, Reverie instead opts for items and tools a modern boy is more likely to find in his possession, like a cricket bat, a yoyo, and a nerf gun. Similarly, the first dungeon is grandpa’s basement, where you’ll square off against a giant hedgehog and a tumble dryer. That said, the game does get more fantastical with the last two locations, particularly the last one. It’s a relatively easy game overall, though the fourth and especially fifth dungeon offer up a moderate challenge. The indie scene has produced a lot of Zelda-like games in recent years, but this is the only one I know of that isn’t your standard medieval fantasy.
Completion Time: ~5 Hours
Extra Content: There are feathers to collect, mini games to play, and a combat focused bonus dungeon to beat. That said, a lot of this stuff is easy to stumble upon in the main quest, so you’re probably looking at about two or three hours’ worth of content after beating the game to complete everything and get the platinum trophy.
Description: Inertial Drift's distinguishing characteristic is its employment of the right analog stick for drifting. This takes a little getting used to, but it feels great once you get the hang of it, creating some exhilarating moments when perfecting corner turns. The game has 10 unique tracks + 10 reversed tracks, 16 vehicles, and four separate story arcs. Each story arc is only a couple of hours long and features a different protagonist with a different vehicle. Since you’ll be racing on the same track a few times, there are a few gameplay variations that differ from just reaching the finish line at the end, such as racking up a certain number of points that are acquired through longer drift times and other means. There's quite a bit of dialogue between races, and in the races themselves characters will frequently dish out positive commentary on your performance in the form of text in the top left hand corner of the screen. The game's aesthetics are a fusion of anime and synthwave. I've heard many fans liken the game to the manga Initial D, though I'm unfamiliar with that series myself.
Completion Time: ~3 Hours (for 1/4 Story Arcs)
Extra Content: There are a number of different modes including a Story Mode, Challenge Mode, Grand Prix Mode, Arcade Mode, two player Split-Screen, and Online, as well as a Tutorial. Completion of challenges in Challenge Mode allows you to unlock new vehicles for the other non-Story Modes. Grand Prix Mode allows you to race using different characters/vehicles through a connected set of challenges, while Arcade Mode is for one-off races. I wouldn't recommend this game for online play as the user-base is pretty small (hence it being overlooked) and you're unlikely to find a match. Getting the platinum trophy is fairly difficult.
Description: This is an action platformer that emulates arcade games from the latter half of the 1980s, but it is probably most reminiscent of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts. The creator, Locomalito, states that the soundtrack uses the true arcade sound of the YM2203 chip. The game is hard, but the checkpoints are never more than a minute or two apart, and the lives' system/continue system has no penalties outside of locking you out of trophies. This is a very boss dense game - in the ~4 hour run-time it takes to complete the game, you fight 19 bosses. The handful of weapons and items you pick up helps lend variety to the combat, and no two boss fights feel the same.
Completion Time: ~4 Hours
Extra Content: The game has two endings. Most players will get the bad ending the first time around and be locked out of the final stage (which is the longest stage in the game). You do have to play through the game again to get the good ending, but you'll likely do it in half the time. If you want to see all the major content on your first go around, I recommend looking up how to get the good ending before you play the game. As far as trophies are concerned, the platinum trophy is very difficult to obtain. If you like an extreme challenge, this one's for you.
Description: Pato Box follows an anthropomorphic duck boxer on an adventure through a stylistic noir comic book world. “Pato” is a Spanish word that translates to “Duck” in English (the game was developed by a Mexican studio). The boss fights are heavily inspired by Punch-Out’s gameplay, but there are levels outside of these fights to help differentiate it. Most of the levels can be selected in any order you choose and typically serve as a leadup to the boss fight. Bosses are usually introduced by a cutscene followed by some dialogue taunting Pato Box. The levels play entirely differently from the fights, but the themes of the level match those of the bosses. The levels will employ various elements of evasion, stealth, exploration, and a few time-based mini-games. The casino level, for example, will have you walk around the casino looking for chips and punching the slot machines to earn enough to pay entrance to the fight, while the food factory has you evading stompers, sawblades, and butcher knives as you work your way through the level. There are variety of things to find throughout the levels: tokens for decorations in Pato Box’s room, backstory on the boss of the level and the world, and tips on how to win the upcoming fight. The fights themselves lock Pato Box in the middle of the screen, allowing you to block, juke left or right, and perform a low or high jab to the left or right. The game foregoes a HUD in favor of a visual representation of your health via scars on your body, which I thought was a nice touch. While the levels and bosses play pretty differently from each other, they’re weaved together by a dark and intriguing story that follows Pato Box’s quest for retribution against an evil corporation.
Completion Time: ~7 Hours
Extra Content: There’s an Arcade Mode that lets you replay boss fights and some collectibles to find in the main campaign. The trophies are very difficult, and many ask you to beat a boss without taking a single hit.
Description: The Count Lucanor’s story is very fairy tale-esque – more like a classic fairy tale as it can be pretty dark and grotesque at times. On his 10th birthday, Hans chooses to leave his mother in a quest for wealth. After some walking and conversation with NPCs you find along the way, you stumble upon a large mansion and find that the count of this mansion is looking to pass his wealth onto an heir who can prove himself worthy – “worthy” in this case being the one who can figure out the count’s name. From here, you are tasked with adventuring through the mansion and solving environmental puzzles in a nonlinear way to acquire the letters that spell the count’s name. There is a survival horror element to the game, as you are unable to attack the enemies in the mansion and instead must crawl under tables and find other ways around them. You can place candles around the mansion to light it up to help you better evade enemies, but your usage is limited (though you can find more).
Completion Time: ~4 Hours
Extra Content: There are five different endings and some puzzles/rooms you don’t even have to do. This could double your playtime – maybe even more if you don’t use a guide. The platinum trophy requires every ending and a few other things but is pretty easy to get if you use a guide.
Description: The Bunker is an FMV point & click adventure, meaning it features real actors and environments just like a live action movie. Many of the actors involved have been in high profile movies/TV shows as well, including The Hobbit, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and Penny Dreadful. The game takes place in a fallout shelter and follows the last survivor as he tries to find a way outside following the death of his mother, after living 30+ years in the bunker. The gameplay has you solving puzzles and finding ways to proceed to the next area. The story is the focal point of the game though, and it frequently switches between the past and the present to tell its story. There’s a good juxtaposition between the lively past and the lonely present that makes you question how the protagonist ended up as the last survivor. There’s only one narrative choice to make in the game, and it comes at the very end. The game also works in handheld mode with touchscreen functionality if you'd prefer to play it that way.
Completion Time: ~2. Hour Completion Time*
Extra Content: You can replay the game and try to find all the collectibles. Most of them give more background on the story. You can trigger the ending you did not choose the first time around by simply reloading the last checkpoint, so there is no need to play through the whole game again to unlock it. Getting the platinum trophy is fairly easy.
Description: A Tale of Paper takes direct inspiration from Little Nightmares, sporting the same sideview camera angle and minimalist narrative. It’s a little less creepy and has the interesting twist of transforming into a variety of different origamis on the fly: from a little alien creature, to a frog, to a ball, to a paper airplane, etc., all with the push of a button. You’ll use a combination of different origami shapes to overcome the obstacles in the area, and you’ll be accompanied by some gorgeous sceneries in the process. The gameplay is pretty easy in both its platforming and puzzles, making it an easygoing, movie-esque kind of game. While the story is minimalist, it results in a satisfying conclusion, and it really feels like you’ve been through quite a journey even with the short runtime. The game evokes the feeling of being a tiny specimen in a larger-than-life world – Toy Story 2 is probably the most apt comparison I can make. Outside of Little Nightmares, I haven’t played another game quite like this.
Completion Time: ~1.5 Hours
Extra Content: I got seven of the eight origami collectibles in my first run-through. The trophies also only offer a few extra things to do, but I’d recommend reading the list of trophies before you play the game if you want to get the relatively easy platinum trophy.
Description: If you liked Detroit: Become Human or Until Dawn, Late Shift will be right up your alley. This game is a bit different from both those titles in that it's an FMV, with the gameplay solely consisting of the choices you make. You receive prompts at key moments in the story on what you want your character to do next, and this effects the outcome of the game. It plays more like Black Mirror's Bandersnatch, though this game came before it. The story follows an everyman who gets tangled up in London's criminal underground just as a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Completion Time: ~1.5 Hour Completion Time*
Extra Content: There are 180 choice points and 7 different endings. There is a platinum trophy, and I only got 4 out of 21 of the trophies on my first playthrough. There are a number of different routes to take with the game.
Description: SINNER: Sacrifice for Redemption is a Soulslike boss rush - there are no levels and only small area before each boss to practice your moves. There are eight bosses, the first seven allowing you to fight in any order, each representing the seven deadly sins. You are equipped with everything the game has to offer from the beginning (except for the New Game+ weapon they give you), and instead of becoming more powerful, you gradually lose things with each boss you defeat, hence the “sacrifice” in the title. It’s like a reverse RPG. Each boss has a different sacrifice associated to it – one may deplete your throwing items’ usage, while another will deplete your health and stamina. Picking the best order to fight them in adds a little strategic thinking to the game, as you may be more dependent on your large health and stamina bar more than your throwing items’ usage, for example. The game is fairly difficult, so your victories over each boss feel very gratifying when they do come.
Completion Time: ~5 Hours
Extra Content: There is New Game+ that offers you an additional weapon. The trophies task you with a few things you have to pull off in battles, and the platinum trophy is pretty easy to obtain.
Description: Verlet Swing’s aesthetic is as intriguing as its gameplay: you are tasked with grappling and swinging yourself across these vaporwave styled levels without hitting anything. The levels are all very short, but you’re likely to play many levels dozens of times before even finishing it… just to get a 1/4 rank. The ranking system is actually very cool, in that it encourages you to find alternative paths or sometimes just building up more momentum to get to the end faster. Most levels do seem to have a set path, but at the same time, with the proper grappling of the mechanics, you can forge your own, which is a game in itself.
Completion Time: ~7 Hours
Extra Content: There’s an in game challenge menu that mostly recycles a lot of the base game content – though there’s a particularly funny one that switches the perspective to third person to play as a knockoff Spiderman. You can also go back and try to get the best possible time for each level. Getting the platinum trophy is extremely hard and I believe is at 0.1% completion.
Description: Neon Drive is a challenging rhythm game with a synthwave aesthetic and appropriately matching music. The objective of the game is to evade the obstacles coming at you by transitioning between four lanes at the right moment using either two of the face buttons, D-Pad, or shoulder buttons. Personally I found the shoulder buttons worked best. The game will occasionally transform you into other vehicles that mix the gameplay up a bit - one notable example is when you turn into a plane and transition between eight lanes in a 360 degree orientation. There are only eight levels that are all about three minutes in length if you were to beat them with no deaths, with two checkpoints and two health points that regenerate between checkpoints. While this all sounds very generous, most of these levels will still take you dozens of tries, though the life reset is almost immediate so you can get back into the action right away.
Completion Time: ~3 Hours
Extra Content: There are two harder difficulties, an endurance mode that sees how long you can go without dying, a free run mode that allows you to play through the game without reset (only unlocked after beating each level), and online leaderboards. The trophies are very hard to get, and there is no platinum trophy.
Conclusion My top 5 on the list in order would be the following: (1.) Hayfever, (2.) Valfaris, (3.) Cursed Castilla: (Maldita Castilla EX), (4.) Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight, and (5.) Bleep Bloop. Have you played any of these games? What are some other overlooked single player indie games? If you’re looking for more indie games to play, see my post here:
Casino chips, which are usually made of composite chips, have a unique sound that is why they are costlier than the plastic chips. The design One of the most important factors which determine the value of the chips is the design itself. Looking to play the best casino games with your casino chips? While playing the best online casinos you could win a lot of chips into your casino bank account! Enjoy the thrills of the best online casinos in Australia, when you play for real money online in AUD or take some good advice on where to play pokies online.. All of the players from 'Down Under' should definitely have a look at best ... Other Individual Casino Chips. $5. $1. $25. Fractionals. $100. $2.50. $10. Go to next slide - Shop by Category. Shop by Location. See All - Shop by Location. Showing slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES} - Shop by Location. Go to previous slide - Shop by Location. Las Vegas. Reno. Cleveland. Jackson. Nekoosa. Are Casino Chips Worth Anything, casino sugar hill sugar hill, pa, portaventura roulette, aprilia sr slot. Gamble Responsibly BeGambleAware.org. Gamble Responsibly BeGambleAware.org. Read our full review. Wager-35x--Gamble Responsibly BeGambleAware.org. Casino review . Casino.org website is certified by: 100%-Visit casino €125. Claim a No ... Additionally, high value chips are specifically tracked by casinos, so you could only really attempt to counterfeit casino chips that are worth $25 or less. Casino Chips . Casinos usually have custom-designed chips with the monetary value and the name of the casino printed or engraved on the face. The chips may be multi-colored and stylized with patterns. The color-coding may follow the values noted above, or individual gambling areas or casinos may have their own unique color-coding systems. Non-Casino Chips. Reproductions. Go to next slide - Shop by Category. Best Selling. See All - Best Selling. Showing slide {CURRENT_SLIDE} of {TOTAL_SLIDES} - Best Selling. Go to previous slide - Best Selling. 500 Chips Poker Chip Set 2 Card Decks Dealer Chip 5 Dice W/aluminum Case. 5 out of 5 stars The chips must be activated to be cashable at the casino, and if a casino needs to replace its chips quickly (as happened in the MGM Grand robbery), the old chips can all be deactivated. Casinos don’t care about the $5 and $25 chips most players use. Casino chips are more than just gambling currency or a fun souvenir to bring back from Vegas. Many casino chips can be very valuable collectors’ items, and in 2010, one even sold on eBay for $26,290!While most casino chips won’t be that valuable, many chips can still sell for well above their initial price. One example of this is a 4:3:2:1 ratio for $1, $5, $10, and $25 chips. For 500 poker chips, totals of 200, 150, 100, and 50 chips in white, red, blue and green is the common practice. Casino Chips. Casinos tend to have their own custom-designed chips that have monetary value and the name of the casino printed either printed or engraved on the ...
Coin Tales: Mark Lighterman of Casino Chip & Gaming Token ...
#HACK#GTA5ONLINE#MONEYGLITCHIn this video I explore a new method of cheating at GTA Online using Cheat Engine..... 100% WorK.....This is the best meth... ПОЛУЧАЙ ФРИ СПИНЫ ПО ССЫЛКЕ!!! http://hottopnow.com/Bonus w casino free chips, нормальные онлайн казино, $1 casino ... GTA PATCHED EVERYTHING!!!!! How to collect Doubledown Casino Free Chips from Slotboosterhttps://slotbooster.org/doubledown-casino-promo-codes-free-chips-free-ddc-codeshare/ The most expensive casino chip ever sold was purchased on eBay for a whopping $30,000, a $1 chip from the Showboat Casino, which closed in 2001. The m,most e... How to do Top 10 Best Coin and Chip Tricks!! Subscribe Now for more How To’s, Pranks, Tricks, Social Experiments and Fun Videos: http://bit.ly/ucmagic and My... Fancy some high limit slots or free chip action at https://luckytigervip.comUse the bonus code: LUCKYSHAKE to claim a $45 free chip bonus to play on your cho... Tutorial for How to Get Unlimited Free Chips in Billionaire Casino 💥2nd Channel:👉https://youtube.com/channel/UCPJqy7J-N-J8c2kfGJm03zg🎧Become a Member Now! (Here's How)1.Click At The "JOIN" Button Below The SUBSCRIBE Butto... In this episode of Coin Tales from the Bourse Floor FUN Convention TV speaks with Mark Lighterman of the Casino Chip & Gaming Token Collectors Club about col...