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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Interface_administrators] | [TOKENS: 530] |
Contents Wikipedia:Interface administrators Interface administrators (interface-admins) are users who can edit all JavaScript (JS), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) pages in the MediaWiki and User namespaces. They are the only local user group with the ability to edit all JS/CSS pages. These pages are executed by the browser of wiki editors and readers as code, which can be used to change how content is styled, change the behavior of pages, or even create complex tools to help with editing. There are currently 15 interface administrators (including two bots). If you need assistance from an interface administrator, you can make a request at the interface administrators' noticeboard or use {{edit interface-protected}}. Background The ability to edit JS/CSS that is executed in other users' browsers is very powerful, and extremely dangerous in the hands of a malicious user; interface administrators should be users who are highly trusted, have at least a basic understanding of JS and CSS, are aware of the privacy expectations of Wikimedia wikis, and have a decent understanding of how to secure their accounts (such as choosing strong and unique passwords and avoiding malware infection). The WMF Office requires all interface administrators to use two-factor authentication. Interface administrators without two-factor authentication enabled will not be able to use their permissions. There is a similar global interface editors group, who may use their access subject to the global rights policy. Process for requesting The interface administrator right may be granted only to existing administrators. Interface administrators are required to use two-factor authentication (2FA). Removal of permissions Permission should be removed by bureaucrats in the following circumstances: Bots Any bot operator requesting access for their bot(s) must permanently possess the user right themselves. As with regular interface administrator accounts, bot accounts with this permission must have 2FA enabled and use a strong password. Technical access There are two general kinds of pages in the MediaWiki namespace: Message pages and site configuration pages. Interface administrators can edit and delete these pages, and can modify user configuration pages that live in the user space of other editors. Administrators who are not interface administrators can instead edit and delete most message pages (but not all of them). Administrators and oversighters who are not interface administrators can delete and revision delete (or suppress in the case of oversighters) JS or CSS pages that live in the user space of other editors, as well as view their deleted revisions. However, they cannot undelete pages, or restore revisions of those pages. Both regular administrators and interface administrators can modify JSON pages in the MediaWiki namespace or within the user space of other editors. Notes See also |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_rendering] | [TOKENS: 1459] |
Contents 3D rendering 3D rendering is the 3D computer graphics process of converting 3D models into 2D images on a computer. 3D renders may include photorealistic effects or non-photorealistic styles. Rendering methods Rendering is the final process of creating the actual 2D image or animation from the prepared scene. This can be compared to taking a photo or filming the scene after the setup is finished in real life. Several different, and often specialized, rendering methods have been developed. These range from the distinctly non-realistic wireframe rendering through polygon-based rendering, to more advanced techniques such as: scanline rendering, ray tracing, or radiosity. Rendering may take from fractions of a second to days for a single image/frame. In general, different methods are better suited for either photorealistic rendering, or real-time rendering. Real-time Rendering for interactive media, such as games and simulations, is calculated and displayed in real time, at rates of approximately 20 to 240 frames per second. In real-time rendering, the goal is to show as much information as possible as the eye can process in a fraction of a second (a.k.a. "in one frame": In the case of a 30 frame-per-second animation, a frame encompasses one 30th of a second). The primary goal is to achieve an as high as possible degree of photorealism at an acceptable minimum rendering speed (usually 24 frames per second, as that is the minimum the human eye needs to see to successfully create the illusion of movement). In fact, exploitations can be applied in the way the eye 'perceives' the world, and as a result, the final image presented is not necessarily that of the real world, but one close enough for the human eye to tolerate. Rendering software may simulate such visual effects as lens flares, depth of field or motion blur. These are attempts to simulate visual phenomena resulting from the optical characteristics of cameras and of the human eye. These effects can lend an element of realism to a scene, even if the effect is merely a simulated artifact of a camera. This is the basic method employed in games, interactive worlds and VRML. The rapid increase in computer processing power has allowed a progressively higher degree of realism even for real-time rendering, including techniques such as HDR rendering. Real-time rendering is often polygonal and aided by the computer's GPU. Non-real-time Animations for non-interactive media, such as feature films and video, can take much more time to render. Non-real-time rendering enables the leveraging of limited processing power in order to obtain higher image quality. Rendering times for individual frames may vary from a few seconds to several days for complex scenes. Rendered frames are stored on a hard disk, then transferred to other media such as motion picture film or optical disk. These frames are then displayed sequentially at high frame rates, typically 24, 25, or 30 frames per second (fps), to achieve the illusion of movement. When the goal is photo-realism, techniques such as ray tracing, path tracing, photon mapping or radiosity are employed. This is the basic method employed in digital media and artistic works. Techniques have been developed for the purpose of simulating other naturally occurring effects, such as the interaction of light with various forms of matter. Examples of such techniques include particle systems (which can simulate rain, smoke, or fire), volumetric sampling (to simulate fog, dust and other spatial atmospheric effects), caustics (to simulate light focusing by uneven light-refracting surfaces, such as the light ripples seen on the bottom of a swimming pool), and subsurface scattering (to simulate light reflecting inside the volumes of solid objects, such as human skin). The rendering process is computationally expensive, given the complex variety of physical processes being simulated. Computer processing power has increased rapidly over the years, allowing for a progressively higher degree of realistic rendering. Film studios that produce computer-generated animations typically make use of a render farm to generate images in a timely manner. However, falling hardware costs mean that it is entirely possible to create small amounts of 3D animation on a home computer system given the costs involved when using render farms. The output of the renderer is often used as only one small part of a completed motion-picture scene. Many layers of material may be rendered separately and integrated into the final shot using compositing software. Reflection and shading models Models of reflection/scattering and shading are used to describe the appearance of a surface. Although these issues may seem like problems all on their own, they are studied almost exclusively within the context of rendering. Modern 3D computer graphics rely heavily on a simplified reflection model called the Phong reflection model (not to be confused with Phong shading). In the refraction of light, an important concept is the refractive index; in most 3D programming implementations, the term for this value is "index of refraction" (usually shortened to IOR). Shading can be broken down into two different techniques, which are often studied independently: Popular surface shading algorithms in 3D computer graphics include: Reflection or scattering is the relationship between the incoming and outgoing illumination at a given point. Descriptions of scattering are usually given in terms of a bidirectional scattering distribution function or BSDF. Shading addresses how different types of scattering are distributed across the surface (i.e., which scattering function applies where). Descriptions of this kind are typically expressed with a program called a shader. A simple example of shading is texture mapping, which uses an image to specify the diffuse color at each point on a surface, giving it more apparent detail. Some shading techniques include: Transport describes how illumination in a scene gets from one place to another. Visibility is a major component of light transport. The shaded three-dimensional objects must be flattened so that the display device - namely a monitor - can display it in only two dimensions, this process is called 3D projection. This is done using projection and, for most applications, perspective projection. The basic idea behind perspective projection is that objects that are further away are made smaller in relation to those that are closer to the eye. Perspective projection works by taking the points in camera space and dividing the X and Y coordinates of each point by its Z (depth) coordinate. Orthographic projection is used mainly in CAD or CAM applications where scientific modeling requires precise measurements and preservation of the third dimension. Rendering engines Render engines may come together or be integrated with 3D modeling software but there is standalone software as well. Some render engines are compatible with multiple 3D software, while some are exclusive to one. It is the one responsible for the transformation of the prepared 3D scene into a 2D image or animation. 3D render engines can be based on different methods, such as ray-tracing, rasterization, path-tracing, also depending on the speed and the outcome expected, it comes in different types – real-time and non real-time, which was described above Assets CAD libraries can have assets such as 3D models, textures, bump maps, HDRIs, and different Computer graphics lighting sources to be rendered. See also Notes and references External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplayer#cite_note-15] | [TOKENS: 6859] |
Contents Cosplay Cosplay, a blend word of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage. Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject. Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, manga, comic books, television series, musical artists, video games, memes, and in some cases, original characters. The term has been adopted as slang, often in politics, to mean someone pretending to play a role or take on a personality disingenuously. Cosplay grew out of the practice of fan costuming at science fiction conventions, beginning with Morojo's "futuristicostumes" created for the 1st World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City, United States, in 1939. The Japanese term "cosplay" (コスプレ, kosupure) was coined in 1983. A rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since the 1990s has made the phenomenon a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan, as well as in other parts of East Asia and in the Western world. Cosplay events are common features of fan conventions, and today there are many dedicated conventions and competitions, as well as social networks, websites, and other forms of media centered on cosplay activities. Cosplay is very popular among all genders, and it is not unusual to see crossplay, also referred to as gender-bending. Etymology The term "cosplay" is a Japanese blend word of the English terms costume and play. The term was coined by Nobuyuki Takahashi [ja] of Studio Hard in an article for the Japanese magazine My Anime [ja] in June 1983. Takahashi decided to coin a new word rather than use the existing translation of the English term "masquerade" because it implied nobility and was old-fashioned. The coinage reflects a common Japanese method of abbreviation in which the first two moras of a pair of words are used to form an independent compound: 'costume' becomes kosu (コス) and 'play' becomes pure (プレ). History Masquerade balls were a feature of the Carnival season in the 15th century, and involved increasingly elaborate allegorical Royal Entries, pageants, and triumphal processions celebrating marriages and other dynastic events of late medieval court life. They were extended into costumed public festivities in Italy during the 16th century Renaissance, generally elaborate dances held for members of the upper classes, which were particularly popular in Venice. In April 1877, French novelist Jules Verne sent out almost 700 invitations for an elaborate costume ball, where several of the guests showed up dressed as characters from Verne's novels. Costume parties (American English) or fancy dress parties (British English) were popular from the 19th century onwards. Costuming guides of the period, such as Samuel Miller's Male Character Costumes (1884) or Ardern Holt's Fancy Dresses Described (1887), feature mostly generic costumes, whether that be period costumes, national costumes, objects or abstract concepts such as "Autumn" or "Night". Most specific costumes described therein are for historical figures although some are sourced from fiction, like Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers or William Shakespeare's characters. By March 1891, a literal call by one Herbert Tibbits for what would today be described as "cosplayers" was advertised for an event held from 5–10 March that year at the Royal Albert Hall in London, for the so-named Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete based on a science fiction novel and its characters, published two decades earlier. A.D. Condo's science fiction comic strip character Mr. Skygack, from Mars (a Martian ethnographer who comically misunderstands many Earthly affairs) is arguably the first fictional character that people emulated by wearing costumes, as in 1908 Mr. and Mrs. William Fell of Cincinnati, Ohio, are reported to have attended a masquerade at a skating rink wearing Mr. Skygack and Miss Dillpickles costumes. Later, in 1910, an unnamed woman won first prize at masquerade ball in Tacoma, Washington, wearing another Skygack costume. The first people to wear costumes to attend a convention were science fiction fans Forrest J Ackerman and Myrtle R. Douglas, known in fandom as Morojo. They attended the 1939 1st World Science Fiction Convention (Nycon or 1st Worldcon) in the Caravan Hall, New York, US dressed in "futuristicostumes", including green cape and breeches, based on the pulp magazine artwork of Frank R. Paul and the 1936 film Things to Come, designed and created by Douglas. Ackerman later stated that he thought everyone was supposed to wear a costume at a science fiction convention, although only he and Douglas did. Fan costuming caught on, however, and the 2nd Worldcon (1940) had both an unofficial masquerade held in Douglas' room and an official masquerade as part of the programme. David Kyle won the masquerade wearing a Ming the Merciless costume created by Leslie Perri, while Robert A. W. Lowndes received second place with a Bar Senestro costume (from the novel The Blind Spot by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint). Other costumed attendees included guest of honor E. E. Smith as Northwest Smith (from C. L. Moore's series of short stories) and both Ackerman and Douglas wearing their futuristicostumes again. Masquerades and costume balls continued to be part of World Science Fiction Convention tradition thereafter. Early Worldcon masquerade balls featured a band, dancing, food and drinks. Contestants either walked across a stage or a cleared area of the dance floor. Ackerman wore a "Hunchbackerman of Notre Dame" costume to the 3rd Worldcon (1941), which included a mask designed and created by Ray Harryhausen, but soon stopped wearing costumes to conventions. Douglas wore an Akka costume (from A. Merritt's novel The Moon Pool), the mask again made by Harryhausen, to the 3rd Worldcon and a Snake Mother costume (another Merritt costume, from The Snake Mother) to the 4th Worldcon (1946). Terminology was yet unsettled; the 1944 edition of Jack Speer's Fancyclopedia used the term costume party. Rules governing costumes became established in response to specific costumes and costuming trends. The first nude contestant at a Worldcon masquerade was in 1952; but the height of this trend was in the 1970s and early 1980s, with a few every year. This eventually led to "No Costume is No Costume" rule, which banned full nudity, although partial nudity was still allowed as long as it was a legitimate representation of the character. Mike Resnick describes the best of the nude costumes as Kris Lundi wearing a harpy costume to the 32nd Worldcon (1974) (she received an honorable mention in the competition). Another costume that instigated a rule change was an attendee at the 20th Worldcon (1962) whose blaster prop fired a jet of real flame; which led to fire being banned. At the 30th WorldCon (1972), artist Scott Shaw wore a costume composed largely of peanut butter to represent his own underground comix character called "The Turd". The peanut butter rubbed off, doing damage to soft furnishings and other peoples' costumes, and then began to go rancid under the heat of the lighting. Food, odious, and messy substances were banned as costume elements after that event. Costuming spread with the science fiction conventions and the interaction of fandom. The earliest known instance of costuming at a convention in the United Kingdom was at the London Science Fiction Convention (1953) but this was only as part of a play. However, members of the Liverpool Science Fantasy Society attended the 1st Cytricon (1955), in Kettering, wearing costumes and continued to do so in subsequent years. The 15th Worldcon (1957) brought the first official convention masquerade to the UK. The 1960 Eastercon in London may have been the first British-based convention to hold an official fancy dress party as part of its programme. The joint winners were Ethel Lindsay and Ina Shorrock as two of the titular witches from the novel The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. Star Trek conventions began in 1969 and major conventions began in 1972 and they have featured cosplay throughout. In Japan, costuming at conventions was a fan activity from at least the 1970s, especially after the launch of the Comiket convention in December 1975. Costuming at this time was known as kasō (仮装). The first documented case of costuming at a fan event in Japan was at Ashinocon (1978), in Hakone, at which future science fiction critic Mari Kotani wore a costume based on the cover art for Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel A Fighting Man of Mars.[Notes 1] In an interview Kotani states that there were about twenty costumed attendees at the convention's costume party—made up of members of her Triton of the Sea fan club and Kansai Entertainers (関西芸人, Kansai Geinin), antecedent of the Gainax anime studio—with most attendees in ordinary clothing. One of the Kansai group, an unnamed friend of Yasuhiro Takeda, wore an impromptu Tusken Raider costume (from the film Star Wars) made from one of the host-hotel's rolls of toilet paper. Costume contests became a permanent part of the Nihon SF Taikai conventions from Tokon VII in 1980. Possibly the first costume contest held at a comic book convention was at the 1st Academy Con held at Broadway Central Hotel in New York in August 1965. Roy Thomas, future editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics but then just transitioning from a fanzine editor to a professional comic book writer, attended in a Plastic Man costume. The first Masquerade Ball held at San Diego Comic-Con was in 1974 during the convention's 6th event. Voice actress June Foray was the master of ceremonies. Future scream queen Brinke Stevens won first place wearing a Vampirella costume. Ackerman (who was the creator of Vampirella) was in attendance and posed with Stevens for photographs. They became friends and, according to Stevens "Forry and his wife, Wendayne, soon became like my god parents." Photographer Dan Golden saw a photograph of Stevens in the Vampirella costume while visiting Ackerman's house, leading to him hiring her for a non-speaking role in her first student film, Zyzak is King (1980), and later photographing her for the cover of the first issue of Femme Fatales (1992). Stevens attributes these events to launching her acting career. As early as a year after the 1975 release of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, audience members began dressing as characters from the movie and role-playing (although the initial incentive for dressing-up was free admission) in often highly accurate costumes. Costume-Con, a conference dedicated to costuming, was first held in January 1983. The International Costumers Guild, Inc., originally known as the Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumer's Guild, was launched after the 3rd Costume-Con (1985) as a parent organization and to support costuming. Costuming had been a fan activity in Japan from the 1970s, and it became much more popular in the wake of Takahashi's report. The new term did not catch on immediately, however. It was a year or two after the article was published before it was in common use among fans at conventions. It was in the 1990s, after exposure on television and in magazines, that the term and practice of cosplaying became common knowledge in Japan. The first cosplay cafés appeared in the Akihabara area of Tokyo in the late 1990s. A temporary maid café was set up at the Tokyo Character Collection event in August 1998 to promote the video game Welcome to Pia Carrot 2 (1997). An occasional Pia Carrot Restaurant was held at the shop Gamers in Akihabara in the years up to 2000. Being linked to specific intellectual properties limited the lifespan of these cafés, which was solved by using generic maids, leading to the first permanent establishment, Cure Maid Café, which opened in March 2001. The first World Cosplay Summit was held on 12 October 2003 at the Rose Court Hotel in Nagoya, Japan, with five cosplayers invited from Germany, France and Italy. There was no contest until 2005, when the World Cosplay Championship began. The first winners were the Italian team of Giorgia Vecchini [it], Francesca Dani and Emilia Fata Livia. Worldcon masquerade attendance peaked in the 1980s and started to fall thereafter. This trend was reversed when the concept of cosplay was re-imported from Japan. Practice of cosplay Cosplay costumes vary greatly and can range from simple themed clothing to highly detailed costumes. It is generally considered different from Halloween and Mardi Gras costume wear, as the intention is to replicate a specific character, rather than to reflect the culture and symbolism of a holiday event. As such, when in costume, some cosplayers often seek to adopt the affect, mannerisms, and body language of the characters they portray (with "out of character" breaks). The characters chosen to be cosplayed may be sourced from any movie, TV series, book, comic book, video game, musical artist, anime, or manga. Some cosplayers even choose to cosplay an original character of their own design or a fusion of different genres (e.g., a steampunk version of a character), and it is a part of the ethos of cosplay that anybody can be anything, as with genderbending, crossplay, or drag, a cosplayer playing a character of another ethnicity, or a hijabi portraying Captain America. Cosplayers obtain their apparel through many different methods. Manufacturers produce and sell packaged outfits for use in cosplay, with varying levels of quality. These costumes are often sold online, but also can be purchased from dealers at conventions. Japanese manufacturers of cosplay costumes reported a profit of 35 billion yen in 2008. A number of individuals also work on commission, creating custom costumes, props, or wigs designed and fitted to the individual. Other cosplayers, who prefer to create their own costumes, still provide a market for individual elements, and various raw materials, such as unstyled wigs, hair dye, cloth and sewing notions, liquid latex, body paint, costume jewelry, and prop weapons. Cosplay represents an act of embodiment. Cosplay has been closely linked to the presentation of self, yet cosplayers' ability to perform is limited by their physical features. The accuracy of a cosplay is judged based on the ability to accurately represent a character through the body, and individual cosplayers frequently are faced by their own "bodily limits" such as level of attractiveness, body size, and disability that often restrict and confine how accurate the cosplay is perceived to be. Authenticity is measured by a cosplayer's individual ability to translate on-screen manifestation to the cosplay itself. Some have argued that cosplay can never be a true representation of the character; instead, it can only be read through the body, and that true embodiment of a character is judged based on nearness to the original character form. Cosplaying can also help some of those with self-esteem problems. Many cosplayers create their own outfits, referencing images of the characters in the process. In the creation of the outfits, much time is given to detail and qualities, thus the skill of a cosplayer may be measured by how difficult the details of the outfit are and how well they have been replicated. Because of the difficulty of replicating some details and materials, cosplayers often educate themselves in crafting specialties such as textiles, sculpture, face paint, fiberglass, fashion design, woodworking, and other uses of materials in the effort to render the look and texture of a costume accurately. Cosplayers often wear wigs in conjunction with their outfit to further improve the resemblance to the character. This is especially necessary for anime and manga or video-game characters who often have unnaturally colored and uniquely styled hair. Simpler outfits may be compensated for their lack of complexity by paying attention to material choice and overall high quality. To look more like the characters they are portraying, cosplayers might also engage in various forms of body modification. Cosplayers may opt to change their skin color utilizing make-up to more simulate the race of the character they are adopting. Contact lenses that match the color of their character's eyes are a common form of this, especially in the case of characters with particularly unique eyes as part of their trademark look. Contact lenses that make the pupil look enlarged to visually echo the large eyes of anime and manga characters are also used. Another form of body modification in which cosplayers engage is to copy any tattoos or special markings their character might have. Temporary tattoos, permanent marker, body paint, and in rare cases, permanent tattoos, are all methods used by cosplayers to achieve the desired look. Permanent and temporary hair dye, spray-in hair coloring, and specialized extreme styling products are all used by some cosplayers whose natural hair can achieve the desired hairstyle. It is also commonplace for them to shave off their eyebrows to gain a more accurate look. Some anime and video game characters have weapons or other accessories that are hard to replicate, and conventions have strict rules regarding those weapons, but most cosplayers engage in some combination of methods to obtain all the items necessary for their costumes; for example, they may commission a prop weapon, sew their own clothing, buy character jewelry from a cosplay accessory manufacturer, or buy a pair of off-the-rack shoes, and modify them to match the desired look. Cosplay may be presented in a number of ways and places. A subset of cosplay culture is centered on sex appeal, with cosplayers specifically choosing characters known for their attractiveness or revealing costumes. However, wearing a revealing costume can be a sensitive issue while appearing in public. People appearing naked at American science fiction fandom conventions during the 1970s were so common, a "no costume is no costume" rule was introduced. Some conventions throughout the United States, such as Phoenix Comicon (now known as Phoenix Fan Fusion) and Penny Arcade Expo, have also issued rules upon which they reserve the right to ask attendees to leave or change their costumes if deemed to be inappropriate to a family-friendly environment or something of a similar nature. The most popular form of presenting a cosplay publicly is by wearing it to a fan convention. Multiple conventions dedicated to anime and manga, comics, TV shows, video games, science fiction, and fantasy may be found all around the world. Cosplay-centered conventions include Cosplay Mania in the Philippines and EOY Cosplay Festival in Singapore. The single largest event featuring cosplay is the semiannual doujinshi market, Comic Market (Comiket), held in Japan during summer and winter. Comiket attracts hundreds of thousands of manga and anime fans, where thousands of cosplayers congregate on the roof of the exhibition center. In North America, the highest-attended fan conventions featuring cosplayers are San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con held in the United States, and the anime-specific Anime North in Toronto, Otakon held in Washington, D.C. and Anime Expo held in Los Angeles. Europe's largest event is Japan Expo held in Paris, while the London MCM Expo and the London Super Comic Convention are the most notable in the UK. Supanova Pop Culture Expo is Australia's biggest event. Star Trek conventions have featured cosplay for many decades. These include Destination Star Trek, a UK convention, and Star Trek Las Vegas, a US convention. In different comic fairs, "Thematic Areas" are set up where cosplayers can take photos in an environment that follows that of the game or animation product from which they are taken. Sometimes the cosplayers are part of the area, playing the role of staff with the task of entertaining the other visitors. Some examples are the thematic areas dedicated to Star Wars or to Fallout. The areas are set up by not for profit associations of fans, but in some major fairs it is possible to visit areas set up directly by the developers of the video games or the producers of the anime. The appearance of cosplayers at public events makes them a popular draw for photographers. As this became apparent in the late 1980s, a new variant of cosplay developed in which cosplayers attended events mainly for the purpose of modeling their characters for still photography rather than engaging in continuous role play. Rules of etiquette were developed to minimize awkward situations involving boundaries. Cosplayers pose for photographers and photographers do not press them for personal contact information or private sessions, follow them out of the area, or take photos without permission. The rules allow the collaborative relationship between photographers and cosplayers to continue with the least inconvenience to each other. Some cosplayers choose to have a professional photographer take high quality images of them in their costumes posing as the character. Cosplayers and photographers frequently exhibit their work online and sometimes sell their images. As the popularity of cosplay has grown, many conventions have come to feature a contest surrounding cosplay that may be the main feature of the convention. Contestants present their cosplay, and often to be judged for an award, the cosplay must be self-made. The contestants may choose to perform a skit, which may consist of a short performed script or dance with optional accompanying audio, video, or images shown on a screen overhead. Other contestants may simply choose to pose as their characters. Often, contestants are briefly interviewed on stage by a master of ceremonies. The audience is given a chance to take photos of the cosplayers. Cosplayers may compete solo or in a group. Awards are presented, and these awards may vary greatly. Generally, a best cosplayer award, a best group award, and runner-up prizes are given. Awards may also go to the best skit and a number of cosplay skill subcategories, such as master tailor, master weapon-maker, master armorer, and so forth. The most well-known cosplay contest event is the World Cosplay Summit, selecting cosplayers from 40 countries to compete in the final round in Nagoya, Japan. Some other international events include European Cosplay Gathering (finals taking place at Japan Expo in Paris), EuroCosplay (finals taking place at London MCM Comic Con), and the Nordic Cosplay Championship (finals taking place at NärCon in Linköping, Sweden). This table contains a list of the most common cosplay competition judging criteria, as seen from World Cosplay Summit, Cyprus Comic Con, and ReplayFX. Portraying a character of the opposite sex is called crossplay. The practicality of crossplay and cross-dress stems in part from the abundance in manga of male characters with delicate and somewhat androgynous features. Such characters, known as bishōnen (lit. 'pretty boy'), are Asian equivalent of the elfin boy archetype represented in Western tradition by figures such as Peter Pan and Ariel. Male to female cosplayers may experience issues when trying to portray a female character because it is hard to maintain the sexualized femininity of a character. Male cosplayers may also be subjected to discrimination, including homophobic comments and being touched without permission. This affects men possibly even more often than it affects women, despite inappropriate contact already being a problem for women who cosplay, as is "slut-shaming". Animegao kigurumi players, a niche group in the realm of cosplay, are often male cosplayers who use zentai and stylized masks to represent female anime characters. These cosplayers completely hide their real features so the original appearance of their characters may be reproduced as literally as possible, and to display all the abstractions and stylizations such as oversized eyes and tiny mouths often seen in Japanese cartoon art. This does not mean that only males perform animegao or that masks are only female. "Cosplay Is Not Consent", a movement started in 2013 by Rochelle Keyhan, Erin Filson, and Anna Kegler, brought attention to the issue of sexual harassment in the convention attending cosplay community. Harassment of cosplayers include photography without permission, verbal abuse, touching, and groping. Harassment is not limited to women in provocative outfits as male cosplayers talked about being bullied for not fitting certain costume and characters. Starting in 2014, New York Comic Con placed large signs at the entrance stating that "Cosplay is Not Consent". Attendees were reminded to ask permission for photos and respect the person's right to say no. The movement against sexual harassment against cosplayers has continued to gain momentum and awareness since being publicized. Traditional mainstream news media like The Mercury News and Los Angeles Times have reported on the topic, bringing awareness of sexual harassment to those outside of the cosplay community. As cosplay has entered more mainstream media, ethnicity becomes a controversial point. Cosplayers of different skin color than the character are often ridiculed for not being 'accurate' or 'faithful'. Many cosplayers feel as if anyone can cosplay any character, but it becomes complicated when cosplayers are not respectful of the character's ethnicity. These views against non-white cosplayers within the community have been attributed to the lack of representation in the industry and in media. Issues such as blackface, brownface, and yellowface are still controversial since a large part of the cosplay community see these as separate problems, or simply an acceptable part of cosplay.[citation needed] Cosplay has influenced the advertising industry, in which cosplayers are often used for event work previously assigned to agency models. Some cosplayers have thus transformed their hobby into profitable, professional careers. Japan's entertainment industry has been home to the professional cosplayers since the rise of Comiket and Tokyo Game Show. The phenomenon is most apparent in Japan but exists to some degree in other countries as well. Professional cosplayers who profit from their art may experience problems related to copyright infringement. A cosplay model, also known as a cosplay idol, cosplays costumes for anime and manga or video game companies. Good cosplayers are viewed as fictional characters in the flesh, in much the same way that film actors come to be identified in the public mind with specific roles. Cosplayers have modeled for print magazines like Cosmode and a successful cosplay model can become the brand ambassador for companies like Cospa. Some cosplay models can achieve significant recognition. While there are many significant cosplay models, Yaya Han was described as having emerged "as a well-recognized figure both within and outside cosplay circuits". Jessica Nigri, used her recognition in cosplay to gain other opportunities such as voice acting and her own documentary on Rooster Teeth. Liz Katz used her fanbase to take her cosplay from a hobby to a successful business venture, sparking debate through the cosplay community whether cosplayers should be allowed to fund and profit from their work. In the 2000s, cosplayers started to push the boundaries of cosplay into eroticism paving the way to "erocosplay". The advent of social media coupled with crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans have allowed cosplay models to turn cosplay into profitable full-time careers. During protests During various protests, cosplaying as a satirization of important people and political events. In Myanmar various protests after the 2021 coup d'état various protests occurred with cosplayers. Youth groups protested on the roads by wearing cosplay costumes, skirts, wedding dresses, and other unusual clothing for daily life while holding signboards and vinyl banners that break with the country's more traditional protest messages for the purpose of grabbing attention from both domestic and international press media. Other times fictional characters are used to convey a message such as women dressing like characters from The Handmaid's Tale to protest bodily restrictions in the United States. Cosplay by country or region Cosplayers in Japan formerly referred to themselves as reiyā (レイヤー), pronounced "layer". In contemporary Japan, however, cosplayers are more commonly referred to as kosupure (コスプレ), pronounced "ko-su-pray", as the term reiyā is now more frequently used to describe literal layers (for example, hair or clothing). Words such as kawaii (可愛い) (lit. 'cute') and kakko ī (かっこいい) (lit. 'cool') were often used to describe these changes, expressions that were closely tied to notions of femininity and masculinity. Those who photograph players are known as cameko (カメコ), a shortened form of camera kozō (カメラ小僧) (lit. 'camera boy'). Originally, cameko would give printed photographs to players as gifts. Growing interest in cosplay events—both among photographers and cosplayers willing to model—has led to the formalization of procedures at events such as Comiket. Photography is conducted in designated areas separate from the exhibit halls. In Japan, wearing costumes outside of conventions or other designated areas is generally discouraged. Since 1998, Tokyo's Akihabara district has contained a number of cosplay restaurants catering to devoted anime and manga fans, in which waitresses dress as characters from video games, anime, or manga; maid cafés are particularly popular. In Japan, Tokyo's Harajuku district serves as a favored informal gathering place for engaging in cosplay in public. Events held in Akihabara also attract large numbers of cosplayers. Ishoku-hada (異色肌) is a form of Japanese cosplay in which players use body paint to alter their skin color to match that of the character they portray. This practice allows for the representation of anime or manga characters, as well as video game characters, with non-human skin tones. A 2014 survey conducted for the Comiket convention in Japan reported that approximately 75% of cosplayers attending the event were female. Cosplay is common in many East Asian countries. For example, it is a major part of the Comic World conventions taking place regularly in South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Historically, the practice of dressing up as characters from works of fiction can be traced as far as the 17th century late Ming dynasty China. Western cosplay developed primarily from science fiction and fantasy fandoms. Compared with Japan, Western cosplayers are more likely to portray characters originating from live-action television series and films. Western costuming traditions also encompass a variety of related hobbyist subcultures, including participants in Renaissance faires, live action role-playing games, and historical reenactments. Costume competitions at science fiction conventions commonly feature masquerades, in which costumes are formally judged during stage presentations, as well as hall costumes that are evaluated informally throughout the event. The growing international popularity of Japanese cartoon during the late 2000s contributed to a rise in American and other Western cosplayers portraying characters from manga and anime. Over the following decade, anime conventions became increasingly common across Western countries, often rivaling long-established science fiction, comic book, and historical conventions in terms of attendance. At these events, cosplayers—much like their Japanese counterparts—gather to display their costumes, be photographed, and participate in competitive costume events. Convention attendees also frequently choose to dress as characters from Western comic books, animated works, films, and video games. Despite increasing global exchange, cultural differences in taste remain evident. Certain costume styles that may be worn without hesitation by Japanese cosplayers are often avoided in Western contexts, particularly those that resemble Nazi uniforms. Western cosplayers may also encounter debates regarding legitimacy when portraying characters whose canonical racial backgrounds differ from their own, and instances of insensitivity toward cosplayers depicting characters of different skin tones have been documented. Western cosplayers who portray anime characters may likewise experience targeted ridicule or misunderstanding. In comparison with Japan, wearing costumes in public spaces is generally more socially accepted in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, and Canada. These regions possess longer-standing traditions of Halloween costuming, fan dress, and related practices. Consequently, it is not uncommon for convention attendees in costume to be seen in nearby restaurants and public venues outside the immediate boundaries of the event itself. Media Japan is home to two especially popular cosplay magazines, Cosmode (コスモード) and ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Layers (電撃Layers). Cosmode has the largest share in the market and an English-language digital edition. Another magazine, aimed at a broader, worldwide audience is CosplayGen. In the United States, Cosplay Culture began publication in February 2015. Other magazines include CosplayZine featuring cosplayers from all over the world since October 2015, and Cosplay Realm Magazine which was started in April 2017. There are many books on the subject of cosplay as well. Cosplay groups and organizations See also Notes References Bibliography External links |
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Contents IGN IGN[b] is a compromised American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. IGN features articles on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs available on the Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mobile, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat. Originally, IGN was the flagship website of IGN Entertainment, a website which owned and operated several other websites oriented towards players' interests, games, and entertainment, such as Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, GameStats, VE3D, TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet, and AskMen. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013. History IGN was created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, the IGN content network was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com and Ultra Game Players Online. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating an affiliate network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation.com, Sega-Saturn.com, Game Sages, and GameFAQs. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand. The homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Websites Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. In February 1999, PC Magazine named IGN one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter. That same month, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its affiliate channels as Affiliation Networks, while Simpson-Bint remained at the former company. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball.com. At the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its other properties during the dot-com bubble. IGN prevailed with growing audience numbers and a newly established subscription service called IGN Insider (later IGN Prime), which led to the shedding of the name "Snowball" and adoption of IGN Entertainment on May 10, 2002. In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN has been ranked among the top 500 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multimedia business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million. IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008. IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010. On May 25, 2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment (owners of 1Up.com) from Hearst Corporation. Ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired (including MySpace and Photobucket). On February 4, 2013, after a failed attempt to spin off IGN as a separate company, News Corp. announced that it had sold IGN Entertainment to the publishing company Ziff Davis, which was recently acquired by J2 Global. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed. Prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP.com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO in order to focus on its flagship brands, IGN and AskMen. The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999. GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a "GPM" (Game Popularity Metric) rating system which incorporates an average press score and average gamer score, as well as the number of page hits for the game. However, the site is no longer being updated. The Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, and the PC game website VE3D (Voodoo Extreme 3D) were acquired in 2003. IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries in 2005. The merger also brought the game download site FilePlanet into the IGN group; as of 2011 both FilePlanet and the GameSpy website still operate as video game-related web sites. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen in 2005. In 2004, IGN acquired film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and in 2010, sold the website to Flixster. In October 2017, Humble Bundle announced that it was being acquired by IGN. IGN Entertainment acquired Gamer Network and its properties in May 2024 for an undisclosed sum. These included Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247 and others. As a result, some layoffs were made due to redundancies. A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal". Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category. On August 3, 2010, IGN announced that the site would be changing to a new scoring scale. Instead of a 100-point scale, where games are scored in increments of 0.1, all future reviews would use a 20-point scale where games are scored in increments of 0.5. Under both systems, the maximum possible score a game can receive is 10.0. The scoring change was not retroactive: all scores on reviews written before the change would remain the same. This change also did not affect the scoring system for reader reviews. On September 13, 2012, IGN revealed that as part of its new review format all future reviews would follow a 100-point scale again, but without using decimals, meaning a score of 8.5 would become an 85. Unlike the previous conversion to the 20-point scale, this latest scoring system change was retroactive and all previous IGN review scores were to be updated to follow the new system. However, despite the announcement, the article included a short addition, post-release; it stated that after much discussion, they had decided to retain the decimal point in all upcoming scores. In early 2014, IGN introduced a new policy, in which a game's review score can be re-reviewed and improved, provided that continuous updates form a significant change compared to the game at launch. Examples of games that have been re-reviewed were League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Warframe, and the pocket edition of Minecraft. In January 2020, IGN revealed that reviews would be reverted to a 10-point scale, from 1 to 10, finding that the finer distinction of the 100-point scale was difficult to maintain, whereas a 10-point scale would still be true to its reviews and would be easier to promote. IGN 'Best of' awards IGN's 'Best of' is an end-of-year event to annually honor the year's best games, films, television shows and comics. Winners of each award category are selected by IGN staff from a list of nominees, while readers are able to cast their own votes online to determine the 'People's Choice' award for each category. Other sections In 2000, Snowball.com purchased an E-federation called the Internet Wrestling Organization (IWO). Since Snowball owned both IWO and IGN, IWO would go on to become IGN's first official E-Fed, even doing a column on the website. The IGN For Men section officially closed down on October 2, 2001, and is no longer updated. IGN has sites such as IGN Stars and AskMen.com that fulfil much of the function of the old IGN For Men site. IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002 when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games have been folded into IGN Sports, headed by Jon Robinson. IGN Sci-Fi: Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, anime coverage and other associated items. It has since been discontinued. The site, SciFI.ign.com redirects to the recently created SciFiBrain.ign.com, which covers some of the content of the old Sci-Fi site.[citation needed] In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated video game FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides. This was launched following the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs.[citation needed] In 2004, IGN launched GameStats, which was intended to be a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporate-owned game rating site and averages them all into one score to give a general idea of the quality of a game. IGN also launched Direct2Drive.com in 2004. Its primary focus is selling digital downloads of full PC and Mac video games, as well as anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, IGN launched its comics site, which is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues and toys.[citation needed] In 2006, IGN launched its television site. It provides interviews with various television celebrities, in addition to a TV schedule, TV trivia and TV news. Like the film section, IGN's TV section has a variety of exclusive clips from upcoming television shows.[citation needed] On May 30, 2006, IGN Dreamcast was restarted; however, none of the Dreamcast updates were posted on the main IGN webpage.[citation needed] In 2007, IGN launched its anime site. It provided features on anime and manga, including trailers and free episodes. It also included reviews of manga and anime from other sections of IGN, such as IGN Comics and IGN DVD. The anime channel was dropped after IGN redesigned the site. In 2008, the IGN Retro channel was launched to mark IGN's 10th anniversary. To coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, IGN created the Super Smash Bros. World site. On the site, people can submit their user-created stages from the game and download ones made by other people. IGN subsequently launched a similar website called GTA 'Hood on April 29, 2008, for Grand Theft Auto IV.[citation needed] Along with its popular website content, IGN also publishes many different podcasts on both its website and on iTunes. Some of its podcasts include console-oriented shows like the PlayStation-focused "Podcast Beyond" and the Xbox-oriented "Podcast Unlocked", the Nintendo-oriented "Nintendo Voice Chat", and Game Scoop!, a podcast where a variety of editors discuss news and topics surrounding the video game industry. Regional websites IGN has 28 editions in 25 languages, as of 2021. The US & Canada, UK & Ireland, and Australia & New Zealand editions are operated by Ziff Davis subsidiaries, with all others being franchised publishers. Since 2006, IGN Entertainment began launching regional versions of the website for various countries and pan-regions. Initially, IGN began opening new offices outside the United States in order to support those regional websites, but later IGN began franchising its brand as a more cost-effective means of globalization, wherein it licensed various media publishers in many countries to use the IGN brand and manage regional websites on their own. Licensed regional publishers work on their own servers, albeit can link to IGN's HQ database, where they can import or translate articles, and use videos uploaded on IGN's servers that use IGN's own hosted video player.[citation needed] When visiting www.ign.com from an IGN-supported region, the site automatically redirects visitors to their localized version using geolocation software, based on their countries' IP addresses. Each version of the site has a modified logo with their country's/region's respective flags near the IGN logo. However, it is still possible to access the original American website using a navigation bar above or below (depending on the regional website) the page's master template.[citation needed] IGN Con IGN Convention (IGN Con) is a video games, movies, comics and pop culture convention held in various cities in the Middle East. The event generally includes celebrities, video game tournaments, table top games, card games, movie previews, comic book stalls and a cosplay competition. A number of Middle Eastern artists and game developers also showcase their work at IGN Convention. This convention is owned and operated by IGN Middle East, the Middle Eastern edition of popular video games website IGN. IGN Convention is the spiritual successor to GameFest, a biannual, smaller scale gaming gallery which was originally hosted by IGN Middle East's parent company T-break Media between 2010 and 2012, before the hosting duties were subsequently taken over by AMD EMEA. The IGN Convention logo was designed by prominent Gulf based artist Ashraf Ghori. Conferences have included: IGN Pro League In 2011, IGN launched IGN Pro League, a professional esports circuit that ran tournaments for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, ShootMania Storm and League of Legends. On March 6, 2013, only weeks prior to the event, IGN abruptly canceled the finals of IPL 6—which were to be held in Las Vegas from March 28 through 31, and discontinued the league. IGN indicated that it was no longer in a position to commit to compete with the increasing number of esports events that were being held. On April 8, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it had acquired the staff and assets of the IPL from IGN; its former staff were reassigned to work on in-house esports productions. Controversies In 2007, Video Game Media Watch accused former IGN editor Doug Perry of "journalistic misconduct" for an exclusive review of Prey. In November 2017, some IGN employees refused to work to show solidarity with Kallie Plagge, a former editor who alleged that in 2016, another editor, Vince Ingenito, sexually harassed her and another female employee and made inappropriate comments. Human resources allegedly told her that she "needed to have better judgment about who [she] was 'friends' with" and that she was an "equal participant" in "inappropriate flirtation". This incident was widely circulated across social media. In August 2018, the owner of YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming accused the IGN reviewer Filip Miucin of plagiarizing his video review of the game Dead Cells. On August 7, IGN stated that it had found "substantial similarities" between the reviews, apologized, and announced that it had dismissed Miucin. On August 10, IGN published a new review by Brandin Tyrrel, which included an editor's note apologizing again and stating that "this review (and its score) represents solely the opinion of the new reviewer". In a subsequently unlisted video, Miucin responded that while he took "complete ownership over what happened", the similarity was not intentional. Kotaku found similarities between Miucin's other reviews, reviews on Nintendo Life and Engadget and material posted on the games discussion forum NeoGAF. On August 14, IGN announced that it would remove all of Miucin's work pending further review. On April 19, 2019, Miucin admitted plagiarism and issued an apology on his YouTube channel. During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the main IGN site posted an article on May 14 urging readers to donate to charities helping Palestinian civilians such as the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and linked to relevant news reporting. A Palestinian flag was also added besides the IGN logo. Shortly after the article went up IGN Israel made statements on social media condemning the article. The Palestinian flag was soon replaced with a Red Cross. On May 16, the article was deleted and a statement was made on the IGN Twitter account saying that it was wrong to only highlight one side of the conflict. A reposted version on South Africa-based IGN Africa was also removed. On May 17, over 60 members of IGN's staff signed an open letter condemning the article's removal for going against the site's editorial freedom and policies for retracting or correcting articles, as well as the lack of communication with IGN staff. IGN reinstated the article on August 24 under a new headline alongside a statement of newly formalized editorial policies. Television and films Notes References External links |
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Contents Guinness World Records Page version status This is an accepted version of this page Guinness World Records, known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as The Guinness Book of Records and in previous United States editions as The Guinness Book of World Records, is a British reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Sir Hugh Beaver created the concept in order to settle arguments debated in pubs, and twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter co-founded the book in London in late August 1955. The first edition topped the bestseller list in the United Kingdom by Christmas 1955. The following year the book was launched internationally, and as of the 2026 edition, it is now in its 71st year of publication, published in 100 countries and 40 languages, and maintains over 53,000 records in its database. The international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in Guinness World Records becoming the primary international source for cataloguing and verification of a huge number of world records. The organization employs record adjudicators to verify the authenticity of the setting and breaking of records. Following a series of owners, the franchise has been owned by the Jim Pattison Group since 2008, with its headquarters moved to South Quay Plaza, Canary Wharf, London, in 2017. Since 2008, Guinness World Records has orientated its business model away from selling books, and towards creating new world records as publicity exercises for individuals and organizations, which has attracted criticism. History On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he became involved in an argument over whether the golden plover or the red grouse was the fastest game bird in Europe (the plover is faster, but neither is the fastest game bird in Europe). That evening at Castlebridge House, he realized that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europe's fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must have been numerous other questions debated nightly among the public, but there was no book in the world with which to settle arguments about records. He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beaver's idea became a reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended university friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, who had been running a fact-finding agency in London. The twin brothers were commissioned in August 1954 to compile what became The Guinness Book of (Superlatives and now) Records.[clarification needed] A thousand copies were distributed for free to pubs across Britain and Ireland as a promotional asset for the Guinness brand, and they became immensely popular with customers. After the founding of The Guinness Book of Records office at the top of Ludgate House, 107 Fleet Street, London, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British bestseller list by Christmas. The following year, it was introduced into the United States by New York publisher David Boehm and sold 70,000 copies. Since then, Guinness World Records has sold more than 150 million copies in 100 countries and 40 languages. Due to the book's surprise success, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October, in time for Christmas. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years. Both brothers had an encyclopedic memory; on the British children's television series Record Breakers (based upon the book), which was broadcast on the BBC from 1972 to 2001, they would take questions posed by children in the audience on various world records and were able to give the correct answer. Ross McWhirter was assassinated by two members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975, in response to offering a £50,000 reward for information that would lead to the capture of members of the organization. Following Ross's assassination, the feature on the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot. Norris carried on as the book's sole editor. Guinness Superlatives, later Guinness World Records Limited, was incorporated in London in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades until it was repurchased by Guinness in 1989 after an 18-month long lawsuit. The group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment for £45.5 million ($65 million). Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002. In 2006, Apax Partners purchased HIT and subsequently sold Guinness World Records in early 2008 to the Jim Pattison Group, the parent company of Ripley Entertainment, which is licensed to operate Guinness World Records' Attractions. With offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records' global headquarters remain in South Quay Plaza in Canary Wharf, London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida. Recent editions have focused on record feats by individuals. Competitions range from obvious ones such as Olympic weightlifting to the longest egg tossing distances, or for the longest time spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV or the largest number of hot dogs consumed in three minutes. Besides records about competitions, it contains such facts such as the heaviest tumor, the most poisonous fungus, the longest-running soap opera and the most valuable life-insurance policy, among others. Many records also relate to the youngest people to have achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, currently held by Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness World Records database, as well as select new records, with the criteria for inclusion changing from year to year. The latest edition is the 72nd, published in August 2025. The retirement of Norris McWhirter from his consulting role in 1995 and the subsequent decision by Diageo Plc to sell The Guinness Book of Records brand have shifted the focus of the books from text-oriented to illustrated reference. A selection of records are curated for the book from the full archive but all existing Guinness World Records titles can be accessed by creating a login on the company's website. Applications made by individuals for existing record categories are free of charge. There is an administration fee of £5 (or $5) to propose a new record title. A number of spin-off books and television series have also been produced. Guinness World Records bestowed the record of "Person with the most records" on Ashrita Furman of Queens, New York, in April 2009; at that time, he held 100 records. In 2005, Guinness designated 9 November as International Guinness World Records Day to encourage breaking of world records. In 2006, an estimated 100,000 people participated in over 10 countries. Guinness reported 2,244 new records in 12 months, which was a 173% increase over the previous year. In February 2008, NBC aired The Top 100 Guinness World Records of All Time and Guinness World Records made the complete list available on their website. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in Guinness World Records becoming the primary international authority on the cataloguing and verification of a huge number of world records. Over its history, numerous world record categories have been discontinued. This list may include that the record poses a threat to health or the environment. Defining records For many records, Guinness World Records is the effective authority on the exact requirements for them and with whom records reside, the company providing adjudicators to events to determine the veracity of record attempts. The list of records which the Guinness World Records covers is not fixed, records may be added and also removed for various reasons. The public is invited to submit applications for records, which can be either the bettering of existing records or substantial achievements which could constitute a new record. The company also provides corporate services for companies to "harness the power of record-breaking to deliver tangible success for their businesses." Guinness World Records states several types of records it will not accept for ethical reasons, such as those related to the killing or harming of animals. In the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records, Colombian serial killer Pedro López was listed as the "most prolific serial killer", having murdered at least 110 people (with Lopez himself claiming he murdered over 300 people) in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in the late 1960s to 1980s. This was later removed after complaints that it made a competition out of murder, however the record was reinstated in the 2026 edition. Several world records that were once included in the book have been removed for ethical reasons, including concerns for the well-being of potential record breakers. For example, following publication of the "heaviest pet" record, many owners overfed their pets beyond the bounds of what was healthy, and therefore such entries were removed. The Guinness Book also dropped records within their "eating and drinking records" section of Human Achievements in 1991 over concerns that potential competitors could harm themselves and expose the publisher to potential litigation. These changes included the removal of all spirit, wine and beer drinking records, along with other unusual records for consuming such unlikely things as bicycles and trees. Other records, such as sword swallowing and rally driving (on public roads), were closed from further entry as the current holders had performed beyond what are considered safe human tolerance levels. There have been instances of closed categories being reopened. For example, the sword swallowing category was listed as closed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records, but has since been reopened with Johnny Strange breaking a sword swallowing record on Guinness World Records Live. Similarly, the speed beer drinking records which were dropped from the book in 1991, reappeared 17 years later in the 2008 edition, but were moved from the "Human Achievements" section of the older book to the "Modern Society" section of the newer edition. As of 2011[update], it is required in the guidelines of all "large food" type records that the item be fully edible, and distributed to the public for consumption, to prevent food wastage. Chain letters are also not allowed: "Guinness World Records does not accept any records relating to chain letters, sent by post or e-mail." After Roger Guy English set the record for sleeplessness in 1974, the category was discontinued for being too dangerous. At the request of the U.S. Mint, in 1984, the book stopped accepting claims of large hoardings of pennies or other currency. Environmentally unfriendly records (such as the releasing of sky lanterns and party balloons) are no longer accepted or monitored, in addition to records relating to tobacco or cannabis consumption or preparation. In 2024, Guinness World Records was accused of laundering the reputation of the oppressive governments as it set world records for the UAE's police forces and Egypt's military. By 2024, the UAE achieved 526 records, of which 21 were credited to the Emirates' police force. Matthew Hedges, a British academic who was forced to sign a false confession, asked the records body to take down the Abu Dhabi police department's certificate for "most signatures on a scroll", along with other such titles. Concerns were also raised around the activities around Egypt, which moved from 22 records to 110 within a decade until 2024. James Lynch, co-founder of FairSquare, said the records were legitimizing Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's regime. The Guinness World Records stated that its record titles "cannot be purchased". Guinness World Records has been accused of romanticizing diseases, such as Graves' Disease and Pica. For some potential categories, Guinness World Records has declined to list some records that are too difficult or impossible to determine. For example, its website states: "We do not accept any claims for beauty as it is not objectively measurable." On 10 December 2010, Guinness World Records stopped accepting submissions for the "dreadlock" category after an investigation of its first and only female title holder, Asha Mandela, determining it was impossible to judge this record accurately. Change in business model Traditionally, the company made a large amount of its revenue via book sales to interested readers, especially children. The rise of the Internet began to cut into book sales starting in the 2000s, part of a general decline in the book industry. According to a 2017 story by Planet Money of NPR, Guinness began to realize that a lucrative new revenue source to replace falling book sales was the would-be record-holders themselves. While any person can theoretically send in a record to be verified for free, the approval process is slow. Would-be record breakers that paid fees ranging from US$12,000 to US$500,000 would be given advisors, adjudicators, help in finding good records to break as well as suggestions for how to do it, prompt service, and so on. In particular, corporations and celebrities seeking a publicity stunt to launch a new product or draw attention to themselves began to hire Guinness World Records, paying them for finding a record to break or to create a new category just for them. As such, they have been described as a native advertising company, with no clear distinction between content and advertisement. Television talk show host John Oliver criticized Guinness World Records on the programme Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in August 2019, during an episode about President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Oliver said Guinness took money from authoritarian governments for pointless vanity projects such as Berdimuhamedow's. Oliver asked Guinness to work with Last Week Tonight to adjudicate a record for "Largest cake featuring a picture of someone falling off a horse", but according to Oliver, the offer did not work out after Guinness insisted on a non-disparagement clause. Guinness World Records denied the accusations and stated that they declined Oliver's offer to participate because "it was merely an opportunity to mock one of our record-holders," and that Oliver did not specifically request the record for the largest marble cake. As of 2021, the Guinness World Record for "Largest marble cake" remains with Betty Crocker Middle East in Saudi Arabia. Following Oliver's episode, Guinness World Records' ethics were called into question by human rights groups. Museums In 1976, a Guinness Book of World Records museum opened in the Empire State Building. Speed shooter Bob Munden then went on tour promoting The Guinness Book of World Records by performing his record fast draws with a standard weight single-action revolver from a Western movie-type holster. His fastest time for a draw was 0.02 seconds. Among exhibits were life-size statues of the world's tallest man, Robert Wadlow, and world's largest earthworm, an X-ray photo of a sword swallower, repeated lightning strike victim Roy Sullivan's hat complete with lightning holes and a pair of gem-studded golf shoes on sale for $6,500. The museum closed in 1995. In more recent years, the Guinness company has permitted the franchising of small museums with displays based on the book, all currently (as of 2010[update]) located in towns popular with tourists: Tokyo, Copenhagen, San Antonio. There were once Guinness World Records museums and exhibitions at the London Trocadero, Bangalore, San Francisco, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Atlantic City, and Las Vegas. The Orlando museum, which closed in 2002, was branded The Guinness Records Experience; the Hollywood, Niagara Falls, Copenhagen, and Gatlinburg museums also previously featured this branding. Retail and merchandise Guinness World Records operates an official online shop, the Guinness World Records Store, which offers items related to record-breaking achievements, including certificates of participation, apparel, and the annual Guinness World Records book. The shop provides record-holders and the general public with access to official Guinness World Records materials. Merchandise is part of the organization's broader engagement efforts beyond its publications and events. Television series Guinness World Records has commissioned various television series documenting world record breaking attempts, including: Rhianna Loren (2025) Specials: Gamer's edition In 2008, Guinness World Records released its gamer's edition, a supplement that keeps records for popular video game high scores, codes and feats in association with Twin Galaxies. The Gamer's Edition used to contain 258 pages, over 1,236 video game related world records and four interviews including one with Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day. Editions were published for the years 2008 through 2020, with the 2009 edition in hardcover. The 2025 edition is the first since 2020, returning after a five-year hiatus. Since 2020, the supplement has had 192 pages. The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles was a music reference book first published in 1977. It was compiled by BBC Radio 1 DJs Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read with brothers Tim Rice and Jonathan Rice. It was the first in a number of music reference books that were to be published by Guinness Publishing with sister publication The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums coming in 1983. After being sold to Hit Entertainment, the data concerning the Official Chart Company's singles and albums charts were combined under the title British Hit Singles & Albums, with Hit Entertainment publishing the book from 2003 to 2006 (under the Guinness World Records brand). After Guinness World Records was sold to The Jim Pattison Group, it was effectively replaced by a series of books published by Ebury Publishing/Random House with the Virgin Book of British Hit Singles first being published in 2007 and with a Hit Albums book following two years later. Other media and products In 1975, Parker Brothers marketed a board game, The Guinness Game of World Records, based on the book. Players compete by setting and breaking records for activities such as the longest streak of rolling dice before rolling doubles, stacking plastic pieces, and bouncing a ball off alternating sides of a card, as well as answering trivia questions based on the listings in the Guinness Book of World Records. A video game, Guinness World Records: The Videogame, was developed by TT Fusion and released for Nintendo DS, Wii and iOS in November 2008. In 2012, Warner Bros. announced the development of a live-action film version of Guinness World Records with Daniel Chun as scriptwriter. The film, however, never entered production. Dr. Sunil Gupta is listed in the Guinness World Records for participating in the largest multi-location diabetic neuropathy screening conducted on World Diabetes Day, 14 November 2013, during which 1,676 screenings were performed across 27 locations in India. References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletal_rigging] | [TOKENS: 945] |
Contents Skeletal animation Skeletal animation or rigging is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a polygonal or parametric mesh representation of the surface of the object, and a hierarchical set of interconnected parts (called joints or bones, and collectively forming the skeleton), a virtual armature used to animate (pose and keyframe) the mesh. While this technique is often used to animate humans and other organic figures, it only serves to make the animation process more intuitive, and the same technique can be used to control the deformation of any object—such as a door, a spoon, a building, or a galaxy. When the animated object is more general than, for example, a humanoid character, the set of "bones" may not be hierarchical or interconnected, but simply represent a higher-level description of the motion of the part of mesh it is influencing. The technique was introduced in 1988 by Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, Richard Laperrière, and Daniel Thalmann. This technique is used in virtually all animation systems where simplified user interfaces allows animators to control often complex algorithms and a huge amount of geometry; most notably through inverse kinematics and other "goal-oriented" techniques. Technique As described in an instructional article by Josh Petty: Rigging is making our characters able to move. The process of rigging is we take that digital sculpture, and we start building the skeleton, the muscles, and we attach the skin to the character, and we also create a set of animation controls, which our animators use to push and pull the body around. This technique constructs a series of bones (which need not correspond to any real-world anatomical feature), sometimes also referred to as rigging in the noun sense. Each bone has a three-dimensional transformation from the default bind pose (which includes its position, scale and orientation), and an optional parent bone. The bones therefore form a hierarchy. The full transform of a child node is the product of its parent transform and its own transform. So moving a thigh-bone will move the lower leg too. As the character is animated, the bones change their transformation over time, under the influence of some animation controller. A rig is generally composed of both forward kinematics and inverse kinematics parts that may interact with each other. Skeletal animation is referring to the forward kinematics part of the rig, where a complete set of bone configurations identifies a unique pose. Each bone in the skeleton is associated with some portion of the character's visual representation (the mesh) in a process called skinning. In the most common case of a polygonal mesh character, the bone is associated with a group of vertices; for example, in a model of a human being, the bone for the thigh would be associated with the vertices making up the polygons in the model's thigh. Portions of the character's skin can normally be associated with multiple bones, each one having a scaling factors called vertex weights, or blend weights. The movement of skin near the joints of two bones, can therefore be influenced by both bones. In most state-of-the-art graphical engines, the skinning process is done on the GPU by a shader program. For a polygonal mesh, each vertex can have a blend weight for each bone. To calculate the final position of the vertex, a transformation matrix is created for each bone which, when applied to the vertex, first puts the vertex in bone space then puts it back into mesh space. After applying a matrix to the vertex, it is scaled by its corresponding weight. This algorithm is called matrix-palette skinning or linear-blend skinning, because the set of bone transformations (stored as transform matrices) form a palette for the skin vertex to choose from. Applications Skeletal animation is the standard way to animate characters or mechanical objects for a prolonged period of time. It is commonly used by video game artists and in the film industry, and can also be applied to mechanical objects and any other objects made up of rigid elements and joints. Performance capture (or motion capture) can speed up the process of skeletal animation, as well as increasing the level of realism. Rigs may be driven by ragdoll physics which automatically calculate physics of motion and resistance with skeletal frames. Virtual anatomy properties such as weight of limbs, muscle reaction, bone strength, and joint constraints may be added for realistic bouncing, buckling, fracture, and tumbling effects. Some popular software packages within which rigs may be created include Blender, Autodesk Maya, SideFX Houdini, Autodesk 3ds Max, Maxon Cinema 4D, Unreal Engine, and many others. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_effects#cite_note-9] | [TOKENS: 803] |
Contents Visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated as VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or computer-generated imagery (CGI) elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX. VFX involves the integration of live-action footage (which may include in-camera special effects) and generated-imagery (digital or optics, animals or creatures) which look realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, time-consuming or impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using CGI have more recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and relatively easy-to-use animation and compositing software. History In 1857, Oscar Rejlander created the world's first "special effects" image by combining different sections of 32 negatives into a single image, making a montaged combination print. In 1895, Alfred Clark created what is commonly accepted as the first-ever motion picture special effect. While filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, Clark instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary's costume. As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor's place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing the dummy's head. Techniques like these would dominate the production of special effects for a century. It was not only the first use of trickery in cinema, it was also the first type of photographic trickery that was only possible in a motion picture, and referred to as the "stop trick". Georges Méliès, an early motion picture pioneer, accidentally discovered the same "stop trick". According to Méliès, his camera jammed while filming a street scene in Paris. When he screened the film, he found that the "stop trick" had caused a truck to turn into a hearse, pedestrians to change direction, and men to turn into women. Méliès, the director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, was inspired to develop a series of more than 500 short films, between 1896 and 1913, in the process developing or inventing such techniques as multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with the cinematograph, the prolific Méliès is sometimes referred to as the "Cinemagician". His most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), a whimsical parody of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, featured a combination of live action and animation, and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work. VFX today is heavily used in almost all movies produced. Other than films, television series and web series are also known to utilize VFX. Techniques Production pipeline Visual effects are often integral to a movie's story and appeal. Although most visual effects work is completed during post-production, it usually must be carefully planned and choreographed in pre-production and production. While special effects such as explosions and car chases are made on set, visual effects are primarily executed in post-production with the use of multiple tools and technologies such as graphic design, modeling, animation and similar software. A visual effects supervisor is usually involved with the production from an early stage to work closely with production and the film's director to design, guide and lead the teams required to achieve the desired effects. Many studios specialize in visual effects; among them are Digital Domain, DreamWorks, DNEG, Framestore, Weta Digital, Industrial Light & Magic, Pixomondo, Moving Picture Company, Animal Logic, Reel FX Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Jellyfish Pictures. See also References Sources |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Green_screens_compare_with_Iman_Crosson_20110524.png] | [TOKENS: 219] |
File:Green screens compare with Iman Crosson 20110524.png Summary The Wikimedia Foundation has received an e-mail confirming that the copyright holder has approved publication under the terms mentioned on this page. This correspondence has been reviewed by a Volunteer Response Team (VRT) member and stored in our permission archive. The correspondence is available to trusted volunteers as ticket #2011052510000066. If you have questions about the archived correspondence, please use the VRT noticeboard. Ticket link: https://ticket.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl?Action=AgentTicketZoom&TicketNumber=2011052510000066 Find other files from the same ticket: Licensing File history Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. File usage The following 4 pages use this file: Global file usage The following other wikis use this file: Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details may not fully reflect the modified file. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Game_of_the_Year_awards#IGN] | [TOKENS: 802] |
Contents List of Game of the Year awards Game of the Year (GotY) is an award given to a video game by various award events and media publications that they feel represented the pinnacle of gaming that year. Events and ceremonies The British Academy Games Awards are an annual British awards ceremony honoring "outstanding creative achievement" in the video game industry. First presented in 2004 following the restructuring of the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Awards, the awards are presented by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), and are thus commonly referred to as the BAFTA Games Awards. The Czech Game of the Year Awards were annual awards that recognize accomplishments in video game development. The awards have been dormant since 2021. The D.I.C.E. Awards are awarded by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), a non-profit organization of industry professionals. The awards were previously known as the Interactive Achievement Awards until 2013. The Arcade Awards, also known as the Arkie Awards, was one of the first video game awards, dating back to the golden age of arcade video games and lasting up until the video game crash of 1983. It was held since 1980 (for games released in 1979 and earlier) and were announced annually by Electronic Games magazine since 1981, covering several platform categories. Following the magazine's revival in 1992, it published the Electronic Gaming Awards in January 1993 for the best video games released in 1992. The 1992 and 1993 award were voted on by readers.[citation needed] The Grand Prize winners of the annual Famitsu Awards, voted by Famitsu magazine's readers. An annual award ceremony has been held since 2005. Prior to 2005, the results were published in the magazine's annual "Best Hit Game Awards" feature since early 1987 (for games released in 1986). Geoff Keighley, producer and host of the Spike Video Game Awards, created The Game Awards in 2014. The winners are determined by a blended vote between the voting jury (90%) and public fan voting (10%); the jury panel consists of members from around 100 global media outlets. The Game Developers Choice Award for Game of the Year is announced during the Game Developers Choice Awards at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of professional video game developers. The Golden Joystick Awards is the second oldest gaming award ceremony and is the longest-running video game award. The inaugural ceremony took place in 1984 in London's Berkeley Square. The winners of the Grand Award annually given by the Japan Game Awards, formerly known as the CESA Awards, since 1996. There are some years where two games shared the Grand Award. The New York Videogame Critics Circle hosts an annual award show that recognizes the best contributions to the video game industry from the previous year. The winners of the Spike Video Game Awards, hosted by Spike between 2003 and 2013, awarded the Game of the Year using an advisory council featuring over 20 journalists from media outlets. The show's title was changed to VGX in 2013 before Spike TV dropped the show entirely. Host and producer Geoff Keighley created The Game Awards in 2014. The winners of the SXSW Gaming Awards were judged by the SXSW Gaming Advisory Board, which is composed of over 40 industry members. South by Southwest announced in 2023 that the awards would be discontinued. The Video Software Dealers Association's VSDA Awards for home entertainment handed out awards for the best video games of the year until 2001. Publications and media During their earlier years of publication they would give awards for the best game on each console available at the time, occasionally giving an award to the overall best game of the year. In 2017, they retroactively awarded a GOTY award for each past year that did not have an overall best game. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Grupo_Globo] | [TOKENS: 55] |
Category:Grupo Globo Subcategories This category has the following 4 subcategories, out of 4 total. Pages in category "Grupo Globo" The following 2 pages are in this category, out of 2 total. This list may not reflect recent changes. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplayer#cite_note-Rich-19] | [TOKENS: 6859] |
Contents Cosplay Cosplay, a blend word of "costume play", is an activity and performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Cosplayers often interact to create a subculture, and a broader use of the term "cosplay" applies to any costumed role-playing in venues apart from the stage. Any entity that lends itself to dramatic interpretation may be taken up as a subject. Favorite sources include anime, cartoons, manga, comic books, television series, musical artists, video games, memes, and in some cases, original characters. The term has been adopted as slang, often in politics, to mean someone pretending to play a role or take on a personality disingenuously. Cosplay grew out of the practice of fan costuming at science fiction conventions, beginning with Morojo's "futuristicostumes" created for the 1st World Science Fiction Convention held in New York City, United States, in 1939. The Japanese term "cosplay" (コスプレ, kosupure) was coined in 1983. A rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since the 1990s has made the phenomenon a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan, as well as in other parts of East Asia and in the Western world. Cosplay events are common features of fan conventions, and today there are many dedicated conventions and competitions, as well as social networks, websites, and other forms of media centered on cosplay activities. Cosplay is very popular among all genders, and it is not unusual to see crossplay, also referred to as gender-bending. Etymology The term "cosplay" is a Japanese blend word of the English terms costume and play. The term was coined by Nobuyuki Takahashi [ja] of Studio Hard in an article for the Japanese magazine My Anime [ja] in June 1983. Takahashi decided to coin a new word rather than use the existing translation of the English term "masquerade" because it implied nobility and was old-fashioned. The coinage reflects a common Japanese method of abbreviation in which the first two moras of a pair of words are used to form an independent compound: 'costume' becomes kosu (コス) and 'play' becomes pure (プレ). History Masquerade balls were a feature of the Carnival season in the 15th century, and involved increasingly elaborate allegorical Royal Entries, pageants, and triumphal processions celebrating marriages and other dynastic events of late medieval court life. They were extended into costumed public festivities in Italy during the 16th century Renaissance, generally elaborate dances held for members of the upper classes, which were particularly popular in Venice. In April 1877, French novelist Jules Verne sent out almost 700 invitations for an elaborate costume ball, where several of the guests showed up dressed as characters from Verne's novels. Costume parties (American English) or fancy dress parties (British English) were popular from the 19th century onwards. Costuming guides of the period, such as Samuel Miller's Male Character Costumes (1884) or Ardern Holt's Fancy Dresses Described (1887), feature mostly generic costumes, whether that be period costumes, national costumes, objects or abstract concepts such as "Autumn" or "Night". Most specific costumes described therein are for historical figures although some are sourced from fiction, like Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers or William Shakespeare's characters. By March 1891, a literal call by one Herbert Tibbits for what would today be described as "cosplayers" was advertised for an event held from 5–10 March that year at the Royal Albert Hall in London, for the so-named Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fete based on a science fiction novel and its characters, published two decades earlier. A.D. Condo's science fiction comic strip character Mr. Skygack, from Mars (a Martian ethnographer who comically misunderstands many Earthly affairs) is arguably the first fictional character that people emulated by wearing costumes, as in 1908 Mr. and Mrs. William Fell of Cincinnati, Ohio, are reported to have attended a masquerade at a skating rink wearing Mr. Skygack and Miss Dillpickles costumes. Later, in 1910, an unnamed woman won first prize at masquerade ball in Tacoma, Washington, wearing another Skygack costume. The first people to wear costumes to attend a convention were science fiction fans Forrest J Ackerman and Myrtle R. Douglas, known in fandom as Morojo. They attended the 1939 1st World Science Fiction Convention (Nycon or 1st Worldcon) in the Caravan Hall, New York, US dressed in "futuristicostumes", including green cape and breeches, based on the pulp magazine artwork of Frank R. Paul and the 1936 film Things to Come, designed and created by Douglas. Ackerman later stated that he thought everyone was supposed to wear a costume at a science fiction convention, although only he and Douglas did. Fan costuming caught on, however, and the 2nd Worldcon (1940) had both an unofficial masquerade held in Douglas' room and an official masquerade as part of the programme. David Kyle won the masquerade wearing a Ming the Merciless costume created by Leslie Perri, while Robert A. W. Lowndes received second place with a Bar Senestro costume (from the novel The Blind Spot by Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint). Other costumed attendees included guest of honor E. E. Smith as Northwest Smith (from C. L. Moore's series of short stories) and both Ackerman and Douglas wearing their futuristicostumes again. Masquerades and costume balls continued to be part of World Science Fiction Convention tradition thereafter. Early Worldcon masquerade balls featured a band, dancing, food and drinks. Contestants either walked across a stage or a cleared area of the dance floor. Ackerman wore a "Hunchbackerman of Notre Dame" costume to the 3rd Worldcon (1941), which included a mask designed and created by Ray Harryhausen, but soon stopped wearing costumes to conventions. Douglas wore an Akka costume (from A. Merritt's novel The Moon Pool), the mask again made by Harryhausen, to the 3rd Worldcon and a Snake Mother costume (another Merritt costume, from The Snake Mother) to the 4th Worldcon (1946). Terminology was yet unsettled; the 1944 edition of Jack Speer's Fancyclopedia used the term costume party. Rules governing costumes became established in response to specific costumes and costuming trends. The first nude contestant at a Worldcon masquerade was in 1952; but the height of this trend was in the 1970s and early 1980s, with a few every year. This eventually led to "No Costume is No Costume" rule, which banned full nudity, although partial nudity was still allowed as long as it was a legitimate representation of the character. Mike Resnick describes the best of the nude costumes as Kris Lundi wearing a harpy costume to the 32nd Worldcon (1974) (she received an honorable mention in the competition). Another costume that instigated a rule change was an attendee at the 20th Worldcon (1962) whose blaster prop fired a jet of real flame; which led to fire being banned. At the 30th WorldCon (1972), artist Scott Shaw wore a costume composed largely of peanut butter to represent his own underground comix character called "The Turd". The peanut butter rubbed off, doing damage to soft furnishings and other peoples' costumes, and then began to go rancid under the heat of the lighting. Food, odious, and messy substances were banned as costume elements after that event. Costuming spread with the science fiction conventions and the interaction of fandom. The earliest known instance of costuming at a convention in the United Kingdom was at the London Science Fiction Convention (1953) but this was only as part of a play. However, members of the Liverpool Science Fantasy Society attended the 1st Cytricon (1955), in Kettering, wearing costumes and continued to do so in subsequent years. The 15th Worldcon (1957) brought the first official convention masquerade to the UK. The 1960 Eastercon in London may have been the first British-based convention to hold an official fancy dress party as part of its programme. The joint winners were Ethel Lindsay and Ina Shorrock as two of the titular witches from the novel The Witches of Karres by James H. Schmitz. Star Trek conventions began in 1969 and major conventions began in 1972 and they have featured cosplay throughout. In Japan, costuming at conventions was a fan activity from at least the 1970s, especially after the launch of the Comiket convention in December 1975. Costuming at this time was known as kasō (仮装). The first documented case of costuming at a fan event in Japan was at Ashinocon (1978), in Hakone, at which future science fiction critic Mari Kotani wore a costume based on the cover art for Edgar Rice Burroughs' novel A Fighting Man of Mars.[Notes 1] In an interview Kotani states that there were about twenty costumed attendees at the convention's costume party—made up of members of her Triton of the Sea fan club and Kansai Entertainers (関西芸人, Kansai Geinin), antecedent of the Gainax anime studio—with most attendees in ordinary clothing. One of the Kansai group, an unnamed friend of Yasuhiro Takeda, wore an impromptu Tusken Raider costume (from the film Star Wars) made from one of the host-hotel's rolls of toilet paper. Costume contests became a permanent part of the Nihon SF Taikai conventions from Tokon VII in 1980. Possibly the first costume contest held at a comic book convention was at the 1st Academy Con held at Broadway Central Hotel in New York in August 1965. Roy Thomas, future editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics but then just transitioning from a fanzine editor to a professional comic book writer, attended in a Plastic Man costume. The first Masquerade Ball held at San Diego Comic-Con was in 1974 during the convention's 6th event. Voice actress June Foray was the master of ceremonies. Future scream queen Brinke Stevens won first place wearing a Vampirella costume. Ackerman (who was the creator of Vampirella) was in attendance and posed with Stevens for photographs. They became friends and, according to Stevens "Forry and his wife, Wendayne, soon became like my god parents." Photographer Dan Golden saw a photograph of Stevens in the Vampirella costume while visiting Ackerman's house, leading to him hiring her for a non-speaking role in her first student film, Zyzak is King (1980), and later photographing her for the cover of the first issue of Femme Fatales (1992). Stevens attributes these events to launching her acting career. As early as a year after the 1975 release of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, audience members began dressing as characters from the movie and role-playing (although the initial incentive for dressing-up was free admission) in often highly accurate costumes. Costume-Con, a conference dedicated to costuming, was first held in January 1983. The International Costumers Guild, Inc., originally known as the Greater Columbia Fantasy Costumer's Guild, was launched after the 3rd Costume-Con (1985) as a parent organization and to support costuming. Costuming had been a fan activity in Japan from the 1970s, and it became much more popular in the wake of Takahashi's report. The new term did not catch on immediately, however. It was a year or two after the article was published before it was in common use among fans at conventions. It was in the 1990s, after exposure on television and in magazines, that the term and practice of cosplaying became common knowledge in Japan. The first cosplay cafés appeared in the Akihabara area of Tokyo in the late 1990s. A temporary maid café was set up at the Tokyo Character Collection event in August 1998 to promote the video game Welcome to Pia Carrot 2 (1997). An occasional Pia Carrot Restaurant was held at the shop Gamers in Akihabara in the years up to 2000. Being linked to specific intellectual properties limited the lifespan of these cafés, which was solved by using generic maids, leading to the first permanent establishment, Cure Maid Café, which opened in March 2001. The first World Cosplay Summit was held on 12 October 2003 at the Rose Court Hotel in Nagoya, Japan, with five cosplayers invited from Germany, France and Italy. There was no contest until 2005, when the World Cosplay Championship began. The first winners were the Italian team of Giorgia Vecchini [it], Francesca Dani and Emilia Fata Livia. Worldcon masquerade attendance peaked in the 1980s and started to fall thereafter. This trend was reversed when the concept of cosplay was re-imported from Japan. Practice of cosplay Cosplay costumes vary greatly and can range from simple themed clothing to highly detailed costumes. It is generally considered different from Halloween and Mardi Gras costume wear, as the intention is to replicate a specific character, rather than to reflect the culture and symbolism of a holiday event. As such, when in costume, some cosplayers often seek to adopt the affect, mannerisms, and body language of the characters they portray (with "out of character" breaks). The characters chosen to be cosplayed may be sourced from any movie, TV series, book, comic book, video game, musical artist, anime, or manga. Some cosplayers even choose to cosplay an original character of their own design or a fusion of different genres (e.g., a steampunk version of a character), and it is a part of the ethos of cosplay that anybody can be anything, as with genderbending, crossplay, or drag, a cosplayer playing a character of another ethnicity, or a hijabi portraying Captain America. Cosplayers obtain their apparel through many different methods. Manufacturers produce and sell packaged outfits for use in cosplay, with varying levels of quality. These costumes are often sold online, but also can be purchased from dealers at conventions. Japanese manufacturers of cosplay costumes reported a profit of 35 billion yen in 2008. A number of individuals also work on commission, creating custom costumes, props, or wigs designed and fitted to the individual. Other cosplayers, who prefer to create their own costumes, still provide a market for individual elements, and various raw materials, such as unstyled wigs, hair dye, cloth and sewing notions, liquid latex, body paint, costume jewelry, and prop weapons. Cosplay represents an act of embodiment. Cosplay has been closely linked to the presentation of self, yet cosplayers' ability to perform is limited by their physical features. The accuracy of a cosplay is judged based on the ability to accurately represent a character through the body, and individual cosplayers frequently are faced by their own "bodily limits" such as level of attractiveness, body size, and disability that often restrict and confine how accurate the cosplay is perceived to be. Authenticity is measured by a cosplayer's individual ability to translate on-screen manifestation to the cosplay itself. Some have argued that cosplay can never be a true representation of the character; instead, it can only be read through the body, and that true embodiment of a character is judged based on nearness to the original character form. Cosplaying can also help some of those with self-esteem problems. Many cosplayers create their own outfits, referencing images of the characters in the process. In the creation of the outfits, much time is given to detail and qualities, thus the skill of a cosplayer may be measured by how difficult the details of the outfit are and how well they have been replicated. Because of the difficulty of replicating some details and materials, cosplayers often educate themselves in crafting specialties such as textiles, sculpture, face paint, fiberglass, fashion design, woodworking, and other uses of materials in the effort to render the look and texture of a costume accurately. Cosplayers often wear wigs in conjunction with their outfit to further improve the resemblance to the character. This is especially necessary for anime and manga or video-game characters who often have unnaturally colored and uniquely styled hair. Simpler outfits may be compensated for their lack of complexity by paying attention to material choice and overall high quality. To look more like the characters they are portraying, cosplayers might also engage in various forms of body modification. Cosplayers may opt to change their skin color utilizing make-up to more simulate the race of the character they are adopting. Contact lenses that match the color of their character's eyes are a common form of this, especially in the case of characters with particularly unique eyes as part of their trademark look. Contact lenses that make the pupil look enlarged to visually echo the large eyes of anime and manga characters are also used. Another form of body modification in which cosplayers engage is to copy any tattoos or special markings their character might have. Temporary tattoos, permanent marker, body paint, and in rare cases, permanent tattoos, are all methods used by cosplayers to achieve the desired look. Permanent and temporary hair dye, spray-in hair coloring, and specialized extreme styling products are all used by some cosplayers whose natural hair can achieve the desired hairstyle. It is also commonplace for them to shave off their eyebrows to gain a more accurate look. Some anime and video game characters have weapons or other accessories that are hard to replicate, and conventions have strict rules regarding those weapons, but most cosplayers engage in some combination of methods to obtain all the items necessary for their costumes; for example, they may commission a prop weapon, sew their own clothing, buy character jewelry from a cosplay accessory manufacturer, or buy a pair of off-the-rack shoes, and modify them to match the desired look. Cosplay may be presented in a number of ways and places. A subset of cosplay culture is centered on sex appeal, with cosplayers specifically choosing characters known for their attractiveness or revealing costumes. However, wearing a revealing costume can be a sensitive issue while appearing in public. People appearing naked at American science fiction fandom conventions during the 1970s were so common, a "no costume is no costume" rule was introduced. Some conventions throughout the United States, such as Phoenix Comicon (now known as Phoenix Fan Fusion) and Penny Arcade Expo, have also issued rules upon which they reserve the right to ask attendees to leave or change their costumes if deemed to be inappropriate to a family-friendly environment or something of a similar nature. The most popular form of presenting a cosplay publicly is by wearing it to a fan convention. Multiple conventions dedicated to anime and manga, comics, TV shows, video games, science fiction, and fantasy may be found all around the world. Cosplay-centered conventions include Cosplay Mania in the Philippines and EOY Cosplay Festival in Singapore. The single largest event featuring cosplay is the semiannual doujinshi market, Comic Market (Comiket), held in Japan during summer and winter. Comiket attracts hundreds of thousands of manga and anime fans, where thousands of cosplayers congregate on the roof of the exhibition center. In North America, the highest-attended fan conventions featuring cosplayers are San Diego Comic-Con and New York Comic Con held in the United States, and the anime-specific Anime North in Toronto, Otakon held in Washington, D.C. and Anime Expo held in Los Angeles. Europe's largest event is Japan Expo held in Paris, while the London MCM Expo and the London Super Comic Convention are the most notable in the UK. Supanova Pop Culture Expo is Australia's biggest event. Star Trek conventions have featured cosplay for many decades. These include Destination Star Trek, a UK convention, and Star Trek Las Vegas, a US convention. In different comic fairs, "Thematic Areas" are set up where cosplayers can take photos in an environment that follows that of the game or animation product from which they are taken. Sometimes the cosplayers are part of the area, playing the role of staff with the task of entertaining the other visitors. Some examples are the thematic areas dedicated to Star Wars or to Fallout. The areas are set up by not for profit associations of fans, but in some major fairs it is possible to visit areas set up directly by the developers of the video games or the producers of the anime. The appearance of cosplayers at public events makes them a popular draw for photographers. As this became apparent in the late 1980s, a new variant of cosplay developed in which cosplayers attended events mainly for the purpose of modeling their characters for still photography rather than engaging in continuous role play. Rules of etiquette were developed to minimize awkward situations involving boundaries. Cosplayers pose for photographers and photographers do not press them for personal contact information or private sessions, follow them out of the area, or take photos without permission. The rules allow the collaborative relationship between photographers and cosplayers to continue with the least inconvenience to each other. Some cosplayers choose to have a professional photographer take high quality images of them in their costumes posing as the character. Cosplayers and photographers frequently exhibit their work online and sometimes sell their images. As the popularity of cosplay has grown, many conventions have come to feature a contest surrounding cosplay that may be the main feature of the convention. Contestants present their cosplay, and often to be judged for an award, the cosplay must be self-made. The contestants may choose to perform a skit, which may consist of a short performed script or dance with optional accompanying audio, video, or images shown on a screen overhead. Other contestants may simply choose to pose as their characters. Often, contestants are briefly interviewed on stage by a master of ceremonies. The audience is given a chance to take photos of the cosplayers. Cosplayers may compete solo or in a group. Awards are presented, and these awards may vary greatly. Generally, a best cosplayer award, a best group award, and runner-up prizes are given. Awards may also go to the best skit and a number of cosplay skill subcategories, such as master tailor, master weapon-maker, master armorer, and so forth. The most well-known cosplay contest event is the World Cosplay Summit, selecting cosplayers from 40 countries to compete in the final round in Nagoya, Japan. Some other international events include European Cosplay Gathering (finals taking place at Japan Expo in Paris), EuroCosplay (finals taking place at London MCM Comic Con), and the Nordic Cosplay Championship (finals taking place at NärCon in Linköping, Sweden). This table contains a list of the most common cosplay competition judging criteria, as seen from World Cosplay Summit, Cyprus Comic Con, and ReplayFX. Portraying a character of the opposite sex is called crossplay. The practicality of crossplay and cross-dress stems in part from the abundance in manga of male characters with delicate and somewhat androgynous features. Such characters, known as bishōnen (lit. 'pretty boy'), are Asian equivalent of the elfin boy archetype represented in Western tradition by figures such as Peter Pan and Ariel. Male to female cosplayers may experience issues when trying to portray a female character because it is hard to maintain the sexualized femininity of a character. Male cosplayers may also be subjected to discrimination, including homophobic comments and being touched without permission. This affects men possibly even more often than it affects women, despite inappropriate contact already being a problem for women who cosplay, as is "slut-shaming". Animegao kigurumi players, a niche group in the realm of cosplay, are often male cosplayers who use zentai and stylized masks to represent female anime characters. These cosplayers completely hide their real features so the original appearance of their characters may be reproduced as literally as possible, and to display all the abstractions and stylizations such as oversized eyes and tiny mouths often seen in Japanese cartoon art. This does not mean that only males perform animegao or that masks are only female. "Cosplay Is Not Consent", a movement started in 2013 by Rochelle Keyhan, Erin Filson, and Anna Kegler, brought attention to the issue of sexual harassment in the convention attending cosplay community. Harassment of cosplayers include photography without permission, verbal abuse, touching, and groping. Harassment is not limited to women in provocative outfits as male cosplayers talked about being bullied for not fitting certain costume and characters. Starting in 2014, New York Comic Con placed large signs at the entrance stating that "Cosplay is Not Consent". Attendees were reminded to ask permission for photos and respect the person's right to say no. The movement against sexual harassment against cosplayers has continued to gain momentum and awareness since being publicized. Traditional mainstream news media like The Mercury News and Los Angeles Times have reported on the topic, bringing awareness of sexual harassment to those outside of the cosplay community. As cosplay has entered more mainstream media, ethnicity becomes a controversial point. Cosplayers of different skin color than the character are often ridiculed for not being 'accurate' or 'faithful'. Many cosplayers feel as if anyone can cosplay any character, but it becomes complicated when cosplayers are not respectful of the character's ethnicity. These views against non-white cosplayers within the community have been attributed to the lack of representation in the industry and in media. Issues such as blackface, brownface, and yellowface are still controversial since a large part of the cosplay community see these as separate problems, or simply an acceptable part of cosplay.[citation needed] Cosplay has influenced the advertising industry, in which cosplayers are often used for event work previously assigned to agency models. Some cosplayers have thus transformed their hobby into profitable, professional careers. Japan's entertainment industry has been home to the professional cosplayers since the rise of Comiket and Tokyo Game Show. The phenomenon is most apparent in Japan but exists to some degree in other countries as well. Professional cosplayers who profit from their art may experience problems related to copyright infringement. A cosplay model, also known as a cosplay idol, cosplays costumes for anime and manga or video game companies. Good cosplayers are viewed as fictional characters in the flesh, in much the same way that film actors come to be identified in the public mind with specific roles. Cosplayers have modeled for print magazines like Cosmode and a successful cosplay model can become the brand ambassador for companies like Cospa. Some cosplay models can achieve significant recognition. While there are many significant cosplay models, Yaya Han was described as having emerged "as a well-recognized figure both within and outside cosplay circuits". Jessica Nigri, used her recognition in cosplay to gain other opportunities such as voice acting and her own documentary on Rooster Teeth. Liz Katz used her fanbase to take her cosplay from a hobby to a successful business venture, sparking debate through the cosplay community whether cosplayers should be allowed to fund and profit from their work. In the 2000s, cosplayers started to push the boundaries of cosplay into eroticism paving the way to "erocosplay". The advent of social media coupled with crowdfunding platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans have allowed cosplay models to turn cosplay into profitable full-time careers. During protests During various protests, cosplaying as a satirization of important people and political events. In Myanmar various protests after the 2021 coup d'état various protests occurred with cosplayers. Youth groups protested on the roads by wearing cosplay costumes, skirts, wedding dresses, and other unusual clothing for daily life while holding signboards and vinyl banners that break with the country's more traditional protest messages for the purpose of grabbing attention from both domestic and international press media. Other times fictional characters are used to convey a message such as women dressing like characters from The Handmaid's Tale to protest bodily restrictions in the United States. Cosplay by country or region Cosplayers in Japan formerly referred to themselves as reiyā (レイヤー), pronounced "layer". In contemporary Japan, however, cosplayers are more commonly referred to as kosupure (コスプレ), pronounced "ko-su-pray", as the term reiyā is now more frequently used to describe literal layers (for example, hair or clothing). Words such as kawaii (可愛い) (lit. 'cute') and kakko ī (かっこいい) (lit. 'cool') were often used to describe these changes, expressions that were closely tied to notions of femininity and masculinity. Those who photograph players are known as cameko (カメコ), a shortened form of camera kozō (カメラ小僧) (lit. 'camera boy'). Originally, cameko would give printed photographs to players as gifts. Growing interest in cosplay events—both among photographers and cosplayers willing to model—has led to the formalization of procedures at events such as Comiket. Photography is conducted in designated areas separate from the exhibit halls. In Japan, wearing costumes outside of conventions or other designated areas is generally discouraged. Since 1998, Tokyo's Akihabara district has contained a number of cosplay restaurants catering to devoted anime and manga fans, in which waitresses dress as characters from video games, anime, or manga; maid cafés are particularly popular. In Japan, Tokyo's Harajuku district serves as a favored informal gathering place for engaging in cosplay in public. Events held in Akihabara also attract large numbers of cosplayers. Ishoku-hada (異色肌) is a form of Japanese cosplay in which players use body paint to alter their skin color to match that of the character they portray. This practice allows for the representation of anime or manga characters, as well as video game characters, with non-human skin tones. A 2014 survey conducted for the Comiket convention in Japan reported that approximately 75% of cosplayers attending the event were female. Cosplay is common in many East Asian countries. For example, it is a major part of the Comic World conventions taking place regularly in South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Historically, the practice of dressing up as characters from works of fiction can be traced as far as the 17th century late Ming dynasty China. Western cosplay developed primarily from science fiction and fantasy fandoms. Compared with Japan, Western cosplayers are more likely to portray characters originating from live-action television series and films. Western costuming traditions also encompass a variety of related hobbyist subcultures, including participants in Renaissance faires, live action role-playing games, and historical reenactments. Costume competitions at science fiction conventions commonly feature masquerades, in which costumes are formally judged during stage presentations, as well as hall costumes that are evaluated informally throughout the event. The growing international popularity of Japanese cartoon during the late 2000s contributed to a rise in American and other Western cosplayers portraying characters from manga and anime. Over the following decade, anime conventions became increasingly common across Western countries, often rivaling long-established science fiction, comic book, and historical conventions in terms of attendance. At these events, cosplayers—much like their Japanese counterparts—gather to display their costumes, be photographed, and participate in competitive costume events. Convention attendees also frequently choose to dress as characters from Western comic books, animated works, films, and video games. Despite increasing global exchange, cultural differences in taste remain evident. Certain costume styles that may be worn without hesitation by Japanese cosplayers are often avoided in Western contexts, particularly those that resemble Nazi uniforms. Western cosplayers may also encounter debates regarding legitimacy when portraying characters whose canonical racial backgrounds differ from their own, and instances of insensitivity toward cosplayers depicting characters of different skin tones have been documented. Western cosplayers who portray anime characters may likewise experience targeted ridicule or misunderstanding. In comparison with Japan, wearing costumes in public spaces is generally more socially accepted in countries such as the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, and Canada. These regions possess longer-standing traditions of Halloween costuming, fan dress, and related practices. Consequently, it is not uncommon for convention attendees in costume to be seen in nearby restaurants and public venues outside the immediate boundaries of the event itself. Media Japan is home to two especially popular cosplay magazines, Cosmode (コスモード) and ASCII Media Works' Dengeki Layers (電撃Layers). Cosmode has the largest share in the market and an English-language digital edition. Another magazine, aimed at a broader, worldwide audience is CosplayGen. In the United States, Cosplay Culture began publication in February 2015. Other magazines include CosplayZine featuring cosplayers from all over the world since October 2015, and Cosplay Realm Magazine which was started in April 2017. There are many books on the subject of cosplay as well. Cosplay groups and organizations See also Notes References Bibliography External links |
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Contents Samsung Samsung Group (Korean: 삼성; pronounced [sʰamsɔŋ]; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous affiliated businesses, most of which operate under the Samsung brand, and is the largest chaebol (business conglomerate) in South Korea. As of 2024,[update] Samsung has the world's fifth-highest brand value. Founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-chul as a trading company, Samsung diversified into various sectors, including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities, and retail, over the next three decades. In the late 1960s, Samsung entered the electronics industry, followed by the construction and shipbuilding sectors in the mid-1970s—areas that would fuel its future growth. After Lee died in 1987, Samsung was divided into five business groups: Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, Hansol Group, and JoongAng Group. Key affiliates of Samsung include Samsung Electronics, the world's largest information technology company, consumer electronics maker and chipmaker by 2017 revenues;[update] Samsung Heavy Industries, the world's second-largest shipbuilder by 2010 revenues;[update] and Samsung Engineering and Samsung C&T Corporation, ranked 13th and 36th among global construction companies, respectively. Other significant subsidiaries are Samsung Life Insurance, the 14th-largest life insurance company globally, and Cheil Worldwide, the world's 15th-largest advertising agency by 2012 revenues.[update] Etymology According to Samsung's founder, the meaning of the Korean hanja Samsung (三星) is three stars. The three stands for something big, numerous and powerful, while stars stands for everlasting or eternal. History In 1938, during the Japanese era, Lee Byung-chul (1910–1987), a member of a large landowning family in Ginei moved to nearby Taikyu and founded Mitsuboshi Trading Company (株式会社三星商会 (Kabushiki gaisha Mitsuboshi Shōkai)), or Samsung Sanghoe (주식회사 삼성상회). Samsung started out as a small trading company with forty employees located in Su-dong (now Ingyo-dong). It dealt in dried fish, locally-grown groceries and noodles. The company prospered and Lee moved its head office to Seoul in 1947. When the Korean War broke out, he was forced to leave Seoul. He started a sugar refinery in Pusan named Cheil Jedang. In 1954, Lee founded Cheil Mojik, a textiles company, and built the first plant in Chimsan-dong, Taegu. It was the largest woollen mill in the country at the time of construction. Samsung diversified into various areas as Lee aimed to establish the company as a leader across multiple industries. The business expanded into sectors such as insurance, securities, and retail. In 1947, Cho Hong-jai, the Hyosung group's founder, jointly invested in a new company called Samsung Mulsan Gongsa, or the Samsung Trading Corporation, with the Samsung's founder Lee Byung-chul. The trading firm grew to become the now Samsung C&T Corporation. After a few years, Cho and Lee separated due to differences in management style. Cho wanted a 30 equity share. Samsung Group was separated into Samsung Group and Hyosung Group, Hankook Tire and other businesses. In the late 1960s, Samsung Group entered the electronics industry. It formed several electronics-related divisions, such as Samsung Electronics Devices, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Corning and Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications, and opened the facility in Suwon. Its first product was a black-and-white television set. Byung-chul was also the owner of the Tongyang Broadcasting Company, a private radio and television company that existed from 1964 to 1980, shut down after the Korean government reviewed the number of media outlets allowed. TBC allowed an early success thanks to its connections to Samsung, boosting the sale of its television sets. In 1980, Samsung acquired the Kumi-based Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin and entered telecommunications hardware. Its early products were switchboards. The facility was developed into the telephone and fax manufacturing systems and became the center of Samsung's mobile phone manufacturing. They have produced over 800 million mobile phones to date. The company grouped them together under Samsung Electronics in the 1980s. After Lee, the founder's death in 1987, Samsung Group was separated into five business groups – Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, Hansol Group and the JoongAng Group. Shinsegae (discount store, department store) was originally part of Samsung Group, separated in the 1990s from the Samsung Group along with CJ Group (Food/Chemicals/Entertainment/logistics), Hansol Group (Paper/Telecom), and the JoongAng Group (Media). Today these separated groups are independent and they are not part of or connected to the Samsung Group. One Hansol Group representative said, "Only people ignorant of the laws governing the business world could believe something so absurd", adding, "When Hansol separated from the Samsung Group in 1991, it severed all payment guarantees and share-holding ties with Samsung affiliates." One Hansol Group source asserted, "Hansol, Shinsegae, and CJ have been under independent management since their respective separations from the Samsung Group". One Shinsegae department store executive director said, "Shinsegae has no payment guarantees associated with the Samsung Group". In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics began to invest heavily in research and development, investments that were pivotal in pushing the company to the forefront of the global electronics industry. In 1982, it built a television assembly plant in Portugal; in 1984, a plant in New York; in 1985, a plant in Tokyo; in 1987, a facility in England; and another facility in Austin, Texas, in 1996. As of 2012,[update] Samsung has invested more than US$13 billion in the Austin facility, which operates under the name Samsung Austin Semiconductor. This makes the Austin location the largest foreign investment in Texas and one of the largest single foreign investments in the United States. In 1987, United States International Trade Commission found that the Samsung Group of South Korea unlawfully sold computer chips in the United States without licenses from the chip inventor, Texas Instruments Inc. Since 1990, Samsung has increasingly globalised its activities and electronics; in particular, its mobile phones and semiconductors have become its most important source of income. It was in this period that Samsung started to rise as an international corporation in the 1990s. Samsung's construction branch was awarded contracts to build one of the two Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the Burj Khalifa in United Arab Emirates. In 1993, Lee Kun-hee sold off ten of Samsung Group's subsidiaries, downsized the company, and merged other operations to concentrate on three industries: electronics, engineering and chemicals. In 1996, the Samsung Group reacquired the Sungkyunkwan University foundation. Samsung became the world's largest producer of memory chips in 1992 and is the world's second-largest chipmaker after Intel (see Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Market Share Ranking Year by Year). In 1995, Samsung's textile department invested in FUBU, an American hip hop apparel company, after the founder placed an advertisement asking for funding in The New York Times. The same year, it created its first liquid-crystal display screen. Samsung grew to be the world's largest manufacturer of liquid-crystal display panels. Ten years later, Sony, which had not invested in large-size TFT-LCDs, contacted Samsung to cooperate, and, in 2006, S-LCD was established as a joint venture between Samsung and Sony in order to provide a stable supply of LCD panels for both manufacturers. S-LCD was owned by Samsung (50% plus one share) and Sony (50% minus one share) and operates its factories and facilities in Tanjung, South Korea. As of 26 December 2011,[update] it was announced that Samsung had acquired the stake of Sony in this joint venture. Compared to other major Korean companies, Samsung survived the 1997 Asian financial crisis relatively unharmed. However, Samsung Motor was sold to Renault at a significant loss. As of 2010,[update] Renault Samsung is 80.1 per cent owned by Renault and 19.9 per cent owned by Samsung. Additionally, Samsung manufactured a range of aircraft from the 1980s to the 1990s. The company was founded in 1999 as Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), the result of a merger between then three domestic major aerospace divisions of Samsung Aerospace, Daewoo Heavy Industries and Hyundai Space and Aircraft Company. However, Samsung still manufactures aircraft engines and gas turbines. In 2000, Samsung R&D opened a development center in Warsaw, Poland. Its work began with set-top-box technology before moving into digital TV and smartphones. The smartphone platform was developed with partners, officially launched with the original Samsung Solstice line of devices and other derivatives in 2008, which was later developed into Samsung Galaxy line of devices including Notes, Edge and other products. In 2007, former Samsung chief lawyer Kim Yong Chul claimed that he was involved in bribing and fabricating evidence on behalf of the group's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, and the company. Kim said that Samsung lawyers trained executives to serve as scapegoats in a "fabricated scenario" to protect Lee, even though those executives were not involved. Kim also told the media that he was "sidelined" by Samsung after he refused to pay a $3.3 million bribe to the U.S. Federal District Court judge presiding over a case where two of their executives were found guilty on charges related to memory chip price-fixing. Kim revealed that the company had raised a large number of secret funds through bank accounts illegally opened under the names of up to 1,000 Samsung executives – under his own name, four accounts were opened to manage 5 billion won. In 2010, Samsung announced a ten-year growth strategy centered around five businesses. One of these businesses was to be focused on biopharmaceuticals, to which has committed ₩2.1 trillion. In first quarter of 2012, Samsung Electronics became the world's largest mobile phone maker by unit sales, overtaking Nokia, which had been the market leader since 1998. On 24 August 2012, nine American jurors ruled that Samsung Electronics had to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages for violating six of its patents on smartphone technology. The award was still less than the $2.5 billion requested by Apple. The decision also ruled that Apple did not violate five Samsung patents cited in the case. Samsung decried the decision saying that the move could harm innovation in the sector. It also followed a South Korean ruling stating that both companies were guilty of infringing on each other's intellectual property. In first trading after the ruling, Samsung shares on the KOSPI fell 7.7%, the largest fall since 24 October 2008, to 1,177,000 South Korean won. Apple then sought to ban the sales of eight Samsung phones (Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 AT&T, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S2 T-Mobile, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge and Galaxy Prevail) in the United States, but this was denied by the court. As of 2013,[update] the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan is investigating Samsung and its local Taiwanese advertising agency for false advertising. The case was commenced after the commission received complaints stating that the agency hired students to attack competitors of Samsung Electronics in online forums. Samsung Taiwan made an announcement on its Facebook page in which it stated that it had not interfered with any evaluation report and had stopped online marketing campaigns that constituted posting or responding to content in online forums. In 2015, Samsung has been granted more U.S. patents than any other company. The company received 7,679 utility patents through 11 December. The Galaxy Note 7 smartphone went on sale on 19 August 2016. However, in early September 2016, Samsung suspended sales of the phone and announced an informal recall. This action was taken after some units of the phones were found to have batteries with a defect that caused them to generate excessive heat, leading to fires and explosions. Samsung replaced the recalled units of the phones with a new version. However, it was later discovered that the new version of the Galaxy Note 7 also had the battery defect. Consequently, Samsung recalled all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones worldwide on 10 October 2016 and permanently ceased production of the phone the following day. In 2018, they inaugurated the world's largest mobile manufacturing facility in Noida, India, in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In 2023, Samsung announced its decision to reduce the production of memory chips. This action is on account of the company's projected 96% decline in quarterly operating profit - a 600 million won decline from the 14 trillion won in 2022. The said drop can be attributed to the weak demand after COVID and a slowing global economy. Despite this decision, the company's shares increased by more than 4%. Samsung has been the top two applicant for PCT filled patents in 2022 and 2023 worldwide. Following the grant to Samsung of U.S. Patent No. 9,675,229 and its European counterpart, EP 2963515, both patents were challenged through an ex parte reexamination in the United States and opposition proceedings in Europe. The European patent was revoked in March 2024. The U.S. patent ceased to be in force in June 2025 due to non-payment of maintenance fees, approximately ten years before the end of its full statutory term. On 12 February 2026, Samsung started shipping its most advanced HBM4 chips to unnamed customers as it tries to narrow the gap with rivals in supplying critical parts for Nvidia’s AI accelerators. Influence in South Korea Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea's economic development, politics, media and culture and has been a major driving force behind the "Miracle on the Han River". Its affiliate companies produce around a fifth of South Korea's total exports. Samsung's revenue was equal to 22.4% of South Korea's $1.67 trillion GDP in 2022. "You can even say the Samsung chairman is more powerful than the President of South Korea. [South] Korean people have come to think of Samsung as invincible and above the law", said Woo Suk-hoon, host of a popular economics podcast in a Washington Post article headlined "In South Korea, the Republic of Samsung", published on 9 December 2012. Critics claimed that Samsung knocked out smaller businesses, limiting choices for South Korean consumers and sometimes colluded with fellow giants to fix prices while bullying those who investigate. Lee Jung-hee, a South Korean presidential candidate, said in a debate, "Samsung has the government in its hands. Samsung manages the legal world, the press, the academics and bureaucracy". Operations Samsung comprises around 80 companies. Its activities include construction, consumer electronics, financial services, shipbuilding, and medical services, and two research and development stations that have allowed the chaebol to enter the industries of "high-polymer chemicals, genetic engineering tools [and biotech as a whole], aerospace, and nanotechnology." As of April 2011,[update] the Samsung Group comprised 59 unlisted companies and 19 listed companies, all of which had their primary listing on the Korea Exchange. In FY 2009, Samsung reported consolidated revenues of 220 trillion KRW ($172.5 billion). In FY 2010, Samsung reported consolidated revenues of 280 trillion KRW ($258 billion), and profits of 30 trillion KRW ($27.6 billion) based upon a KRW-USD exchange rate of 1,084.5 KRW per USD, the spot rate as of 19 August 2011.[update] These amounts do not include the revenues from Samsung's subsidiaries based outside South Korea. In 2024, the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)'s Hague Yearly Review ranked Samsung's number of industrial design applications filled under the Hague System as 1st in the world, with 544 industrial design applications submitted during 2023. Acquisitions and attempted acquisitions Samsung formed Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center (SSIC) in 2012 and Samsung NEXT in 2013 for incubation, investment, partnerships, and acquisitions. In 2017, Samsung NEXT created a USD 150 million fund for early-stage software and services startups. Samsung Catalyst Fund, SSIC's investment arm, has funded 15-20 startups per year. SSIC primarily focuses on internet of things, cloud and computer data storage, smart machines, smart health, and privacy and security. In 2025, Samsung Electronics launched a business support division with a dedicated mergers and acquisitions team. Major clients Major clients include: Corporate image The basic colour in the logo is blue, which Samsung has employed for years, supposedly symbolizing stability, reliability and corporate social responsibility. Samsung has an audio logo, which consists of the notes E♭, A♭, D♭, E♭; after the initial E♭ tone it is up a perfect fourth to A♭, down a perfect fifth to D♭, then up a major second to return to the initial E♭ tone. The audio logo was produced by Musikvergnuegen and written by Walter Werzowa. This audio logo is discontinued as of 2015.[update] In 2014, Samsung unveiled its Samsung Sharp Sans font. In July 2016, Samsung unveiled its SamsungOne font, a typeface that hopes to give a consistent and universal visual identity to the wide range of Samsung products. SamsungOne was designed to be used across Samsung's diverse device portfolio, with a focus on legibility for everything from smaller devices like smartphones to larger connected TVs or refrigerators, as well as Samsung marketing and advertisements. The font family supports 400 different languages through over 25,000 characters. Sponsorships Samsung Electronics spent an estimated $14 billion (U.S.) on advertising and marketing in 2013. At 5.4% of annual revenue, this is a larger proportion than any of the world's top-20 companies by sales (Apple spent 0.6% and General Motors spent 3.5%). Samsung became the world's biggest advertiser in 2012, spending $4.3 billion, compared to Apple's $1 billion. Samsung's global brand value of $39.6 billion is less than half that of Apple. In Vietnam In March 2008, Samsung received an investment certificate and began construction of its first mobile phone manufacturing plant in Vietnam, Samsung Electronics Vietnam (SEV) in Bac Ninh. The project originally had an investment capital of 670 million USD, but it was quickly increased to 1.5 billion USD, then to 2.5 billion USD, nearly four times the original investment capital. In the period from 2018 to 2022, Samsung contributed over 306 billion USD in export revenue to Vietnam. In 2022 alone, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the figure reached 65 billion USD, contributing significantly to Vietnam's total export value, which for the first time exceeded the 700 billion USD threshold, reaching over 732 billion USD. In addition, Samsung has also brought Vietnamese businesses deeper into the global value chain and contributed significantly to the development of the electronics industry in Vietnam. Currently, the number of Vietnamese first- and second-tier suppliers in Samsung's global supply chain has increased tenfold, from 25 businesses in 2014 to 257 businesses by the end of 2022. Controversies Samsung was the subject of several complaints about child labor in its supply chain from 2012 to 2015. In July 2014, Samsung cut its contract with Shinyang Electronics after it received a complaint about the company violating child labor laws. Samsung says that its investigation turned up evidence of Shinyang using underage workers and that it severed relations immediately per its "zero tolerance" policy for child labor violations. One of Samsung's Chinese supplier factories, HEG, was criticized for using underage workers by China Labor Watch (CLW) in July 2014. HEG denied the charges and has sued China Labor Watch. CLW issued a statement in August 2014 claiming that HEG employed over ten children under the age of 16 at a factory in Huizhou, Guangdong. The group said the youngest child identified was 14 years old. Samsung said that it conducted an onsite investigation of the production line that included one-on-one interviews but found no evidence of child labor being used. CLW responded that HEG had already dismissed the workers described in its statement before Samsung's investigators arrived. CLW also claimed that HEG violated overtime rules for adult workers. CLW said a female college student was only paid her standard wage despite working four hours of overtime per day even though Chinese law requires overtime pay at 1.5 to 2.0 times standard wages. In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accused at least 82 major brands, including Samsung, of being connected to alleged forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang. Samsung has a no-union policy and has been engaged in union-busting activities around the world. Samsung has also been sued by a union for stealing the corpse of a dead worker. On 6 May 2020, Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong apologized for the union-busting scandals. Kim Yong-chul, the former head of the legal department at Samsung's Restructuring Office, and Catholic Priests Association for Justice uncovered Lee Kun-hee's slush fund on 29 October 2007. He presented a list of 30 artworks that the Lee family purchased with some of the slush funds, which were to be found in Samsung's warehouse in south of Seoul, along with documents about bribes to prosecutors, judges and lawmakers, tax collectors with thousands of borrowed-named bank account. The court sentenced Lee Kun-hee to 3 years' imprisonment with 5 years' probation, and fined him ₩11 billion (US$9.62 million). But on 29 December 2009, the South Korean president Lee Myung-bak specially pardoned Lee, stating that the intent of the pardon was to allow Lee to remain on the International Olympic Committee. Kim Yong-chul published the book Thinking about Samsung in 2010. He wrote detailed accounts of Samsung's behavior and how the company lobbied governmental authorities including the court officials, prosecutors and national tax service officials for transferring Samsung's management rights to Lee Jae-yong. In July 2016, the investigative journal KCIJ-Newstapa released a video which appeared to show Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee paying a group of prostitutes for sex acts. The footage was filmed on five separate occasions between December 2011 and June 2013 both at Lee's residence and a secret rental home. Police detained six suspects for taking the compromising videos without Lee Kun-hee's knowledge. Investigators stated that, by threatening to release the tapes, the suspects were able to extort ₩500 million (US$437,082.04) from Samsung, a claim which Samsung representatives denied. One of the suspects, surnamed Seon, was a former executive of a competitor Chaebol, CJ CheilJedang, which used to be part of Samsung Group until its separation in 1993. Lee Kun-hee's older brother is Lee Jay-hyun, the Chairman of CJ CheilJedang, and the two shared a heated rivalry. This fraternal feud fueled rumours that, as a former CJ employee had been indicted, Lee Jay-hyun had co-ordinated the scandal against his younger brother. However, prosecutors were not able to find sufficient evidence that CJ's leadership had knowledge or involvement in their former executive's actions. On 12 April 2018, Supreme Court of Korea sentenced the former employee of CJ CheilJedang to four years and six months in prison for blackmail and intimidation. While it was speculated that prosecutors were looking into Lee Kun-hee's culpability for sex trafficking, charges were never pursued, likely due to his health. Lee Kun-hee had suffered a heart attack in 2014 and had lapsed into a coma, where he remained until his death in 2020. In February 2017, de facto Samsung leader Lee Jae-yong was arrested for bribery, embezzlement, hiding assets overseas and perjury. In return for government approval for a merger of two Samsung affiliates, it was alleged that Lee paid ₩43 billion (US$37.59 million) to a close friend of incumbent President Park Geun-hye. He was convicted and initially sentenced to 5 years incarceration, but left prison after a year when the Seoul High Court suspended and halved his sentence. Then, following a retrial in 2021, Lee was sent back to prison for 2.5 years. He was released early after serving 10 months of his sentence in August 2021 as part of South Korea's yearly tradition of clemency on Liberation Day. In August 2022, Lee received a presidential pardon, which was supported by 70% of the Korean public, according to local polls. The investigative team of special prosecutors looking into the 2016 South Korean political scandal announced that the Blue House received money from South Korea's four largest chaebols (Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group, SK Group and LG Group) to fund pro-government demonstrations by conservative and far-right organizations such as the Korean Parent Federation (KPF) and the Moms Brigade. On 19 October 2011, Samsung companies were fined €145,727,000 for being part of a price cartel of ten companies for DRAMs which lasted from 1 July 1998 to 15 June 2002. The companies received, like most of the other members of the cartel, a 10% reduction for acknowledging the facts to investigators. Samsung had to pay 90% of their share of the settlement, but Micron avoided payment as a result of having initially revealed the case to investigators. In Canada, during 1999, some DRAM microchip manufacturers conspired to price fix, among the accused included Samsung. The price fix was investigated in 2002. A recession started to occur that year, and the price fix ended; however, in 2014, the Canadian government reopened the case and investigated silently. Sufficient evidence was found and presented to Samsung and two other manufacturers during a class action lawsuit hearing. The companies agreed upon a $120 million agreement, with $40 million as a fine, and $80 million to be paid back to Canadians who purchased a computer, printer, MP3 player, gaming console or camera from April 1999 to June 2002. In Australia during 2022, Australia's competition and consumer commission fined Samsung AU$14 million. The fine came due to misleading water resistance claims for over 3.1 million smartphones. The commission stated that during 2016–2018 the company advertised its Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, A5, A7, S8, S8 Plus and Note 8 devices as able to survive short immersion in water. However, after many user complaints about the devices having issues after water submersion, such as charger port corrosion. The ACCC have officially labelled the fact these devices have "water resistance" listed as a feature misleading and proceeded with the fine. According to reports, a type of spyware called Landfall has been active on Samsung Galaxy phones in the Middle East in selected countries including Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Morocco since 2024. This spyware is capable of accessing complete information including photos, sounds and calls without a single click from the user. This dangerous spyware was sent via WhatsApp and infected many Samsung phones over the course of a year. References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGN#cite_note-28] | [TOKENS: 3612] |
Contents IGN IGN[b] is a compromised American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. IGN features articles on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs available on the Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mobile, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat. Originally, IGN was the flagship website of IGN Entertainment, a website which owned and operated several other websites oriented towards players' interests, games, and entertainment, such as Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, GameStats, VE3D, TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet, and AskMen. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013. History IGN was created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, the IGN content network was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com and Ultra Game Players Online. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating an affiliate network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation.com, Sega-Saturn.com, Game Sages, and GameFAQs. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand. The homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Websites Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. In February 1999, PC Magazine named IGN one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter. That same month, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its affiliate channels as Affiliation Networks, while Simpson-Bint remained at the former company. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball.com. At the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its other properties during the dot-com bubble. IGN prevailed with growing audience numbers and a newly established subscription service called IGN Insider (later IGN Prime), which led to the shedding of the name "Snowball" and adoption of IGN Entertainment on May 10, 2002. In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN has been ranked among the top 500 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multimedia business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million. IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008. IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010. On May 25, 2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment (owners of 1Up.com) from Hearst Corporation. Ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired (including MySpace and Photobucket). On February 4, 2013, after a failed attempt to spin off IGN as a separate company, News Corp. announced that it had sold IGN Entertainment to the publishing company Ziff Davis, which was recently acquired by J2 Global. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed. Prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP.com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO in order to focus on its flagship brands, IGN and AskMen. The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999. GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a "GPM" (Game Popularity Metric) rating system which incorporates an average press score and average gamer score, as well as the number of page hits for the game. However, the site is no longer being updated. The Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, and the PC game website VE3D (Voodoo Extreme 3D) were acquired in 2003. IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries in 2005. The merger also brought the game download site FilePlanet into the IGN group; as of 2011 both FilePlanet and the GameSpy website still operate as video game-related web sites. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen in 2005. In 2004, IGN acquired film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and in 2010, sold the website to Flixster. In October 2017, Humble Bundle announced that it was being acquired by IGN. IGN Entertainment acquired Gamer Network and its properties in May 2024 for an undisclosed sum. These included Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247 and others. As a result, some layoffs were made due to redundancies. A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal". Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category. On August 3, 2010, IGN announced that the site would be changing to a new scoring scale. Instead of a 100-point scale, where games are scored in increments of 0.1, all future reviews would use a 20-point scale where games are scored in increments of 0.5. Under both systems, the maximum possible score a game can receive is 10.0. The scoring change was not retroactive: all scores on reviews written before the change would remain the same. This change also did not affect the scoring system for reader reviews. On September 13, 2012, IGN revealed that as part of its new review format all future reviews would follow a 100-point scale again, but without using decimals, meaning a score of 8.5 would become an 85. Unlike the previous conversion to the 20-point scale, this latest scoring system change was retroactive and all previous IGN review scores were to be updated to follow the new system. However, despite the announcement, the article included a short addition, post-release; it stated that after much discussion, they had decided to retain the decimal point in all upcoming scores. In early 2014, IGN introduced a new policy, in which a game's review score can be re-reviewed and improved, provided that continuous updates form a significant change compared to the game at launch. Examples of games that have been re-reviewed were League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Warframe, and the pocket edition of Minecraft. In January 2020, IGN revealed that reviews would be reverted to a 10-point scale, from 1 to 10, finding that the finer distinction of the 100-point scale was difficult to maintain, whereas a 10-point scale would still be true to its reviews and would be easier to promote. IGN 'Best of' awards IGN's 'Best of' is an end-of-year event to annually honor the year's best games, films, television shows and comics. Winners of each award category are selected by IGN staff from a list of nominees, while readers are able to cast their own votes online to determine the 'People's Choice' award for each category. Other sections In 2000, Snowball.com purchased an E-federation called the Internet Wrestling Organization (IWO). Since Snowball owned both IWO and IGN, IWO would go on to become IGN's first official E-Fed, even doing a column on the website. The IGN For Men section officially closed down on October 2, 2001, and is no longer updated. IGN has sites such as IGN Stars and AskMen.com that fulfil much of the function of the old IGN For Men site. IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002 when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games have been folded into IGN Sports, headed by Jon Robinson. IGN Sci-Fi: Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, anime coverage and other associated items. It has since been discontinued. The site, SciFI.ign.com redirects to the recently created SciFiBrain.ign.com, which covers some of the content of the old Sci-Fi site.[citation needed] In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated video game FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides. This was launched following the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs.[citation needed] In 2004, IGN launched GameStats, which was intended to be a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporate-owned game rating site and averages them all into one score to give a general idea of the quality of a game. IGN also launched Direct2Drive.com in 2004. Its primary focus is selling digital downloads of full PC and Mac video games, as well as anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, IGN launched its comics site, which is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues and toys.[citation needed] In 2006, IGN launched its television site. It provides interviews with various television celebrities, in addition to a TV schedule, TV trivia and TV news. Like the film section, IGN's TV section has a variety of exclusive clips from upcoming television shows.[citation needed] On May 30, 2006, IGN Dreamcast was restarted; however, none of the Dreamcast updates were posted on the main IGN webpage.[citation needed] In 2007, IGN launched its anime site. It provided features on anime and manga, including trailers and free episodes. It also included reviews of manga and anime from other sections of IGN, such as IGN Comics and IGN DVD. The anime channel was dropped after IGN redesigned the site. In 2008, the IGN Retro channel was launched to mark IGN's 10th anniversary. To coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, IGN created the Super Smash Bros. World site. On the site, people can submit their user-created stages from the game and download ones made by other people. IGN subsequently launched a similar website called GTA 'Hood on April 29, 2008, for Grand Theft Auto IV.[citation needed] Along with its popular website content, IGN also publishes many different podcasts on both its website and on iTunes. Some of its podcasts include console-oriented shows like the PlayStation-focused "Podcast Beyond" and the Xbox-oriented "Podcast Unlocked", the Nintendo-oriented "Nintendo Voice Chat", and Game Scoop!, a podcast where a variety of editors discuss news and topics surrounding the video game industry. Regional websites IGN has 28 editions in 25 languages, as of 2021. The US & Canada, UK & Ireland, and Australia & New Zealand editions are operated by Ziff Davis subsidiaries, with all others being franchised publishers. Since 2006, IGN Entertainment began launching regional versions of the website for various countries and pan-regions. Initially, IGN began opening new offices outside the United States in order to support those regional websites, but later IGN began franchising its brand as a more cost-effective means of globalization, wherein it licensed various media publishers in many countries to use the IGN brand and manage regional websites on their own. Licensed regional publishers work on their own servers, albeit can link to IGN's HQ database, where they can import or translate articles, and use videos uploaded on IGN's servers that use IGN's own hosted video player.[citation needed] When visiting www.ign.com from an IGN-supported region, the site automatically redirects visitors to their localized version using geolocation software, based on their countries' IP addresses. Each version of the site has a modified logo with their country's/region's respective flags near the IGN logo. However, it is still possible to access the original American website using a navigation bar above or below (depending on the regional website) the page's master template.[citation needed] IGN Con IGN Convention (IGN Con) is a video games, movies, comics and pop culture convention held in various cities in the Middle East. The event generally includes celebrities, video game tournaments, table top games, card games, movie previews, comic book stalls and a cosplay competition. A number of Middle Eastern artists and game developers also showcase their work at IGN Convention. This convention is owned and operated by IGN Middle East, the Middle Eastern edition of popular video games website IGN. IGN Convention is the spiritual successor to GameFest, a biannual, smaller scale gaming gallery which was originally hosted by IGN Middle East's parent company T-break Media between 2010 and 2012, before the hosting duties were subsequently taken over by AMD EMEA. The IGN Convention logo was designed by prominent Gulf based artist Ashraf Ghori. Conferences have included: IGN Pro League In 2011, IGN launched IGN Pro League, a professional esports circuit that ran tournaments for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, ShootMania Storm and League of Legends. On March 6, 2013, only weeks prior to the event, IGN abruptly canceled the finals of IPL 6—which were to be held in Las Vegas from March 28 through 31, and discontinued the league. IGN indicated that it was no longer in a position to commit to compete with the increasing number of esports events that were being held. On April 8, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it had acquired the staff and assets of the IPL from IGN; its former staff were reassigned to work on in-house esports productions. Controversies In 2007, Video Game Media Watch accused former IGN editor Doug Perry of "journalistic misconduct" for an exclusive review of Prey. In November 2017, some IGN employees refused to work to show solidarity with Kallie Plagge, a former editor who alleged that in 2016, another editor, Vince Ingenito, sexually harassed her and another female employee and made inappropriate comments. Human resources allegedly told her that she "needed to have better judgment about who [she] was 'friends' with" and that she was an "equal participant" in "inappropriate flirtation". This incident was widely circulated across social media. In August 2018, the owner of YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming accused the IGN reviewer Filip Miucin of plagiarizing his video review of the game Dead Cells. On August 7, IGN stated that it had found "substantial similarities" between the reviews, apologized, and announced that it had dismissed Miucin. On August 10, IGN published a new review by Brandin Tyrrel, which included an editor's note apologizing again and stating that "this review (and its score) represents solely the opinion of the new reviewer". In a subsequently unlisted video, Miucin responded that while he took "complete ownership over what happened", the similarity was not intentional. Kotaku found similarities between Miucin's other reviews, reviews on Nintendo Life and Engadget and material posted on the games discussion forum NeoGAF. On August 14, IGN announced that it would remove all of Miucin's work pending further review. On April 19, 2019, Miucin admitted plagiarism and issued an apology on his YouTube channel. During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the main IGN site posted an article on May 14 urging readers to donate to charities helping Palestinian civilians such as the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and linked to relevant news reporting. A Palestinian flag was also added besides the IGN logo. Shortly after the article went up IGN Israel made statements on social media condemning the article. The Palestinian flag was soon replaced with a Red Cross. On May 16, the article was deleted and a statement was made on the IGN Twitter account saying that it was wrong to only highlight one side of the conflict. A reposted version on South Africa-based IGN Africa was also removed. On May 17, over 60 members of IGN's staff signed an open letter condemning the article's removal for going against the site's editorial freedom and policies for retracting or correcting articles, as well as the lack of communication with IGN staff. IGN reinstated the article on August 24 under a new headline alongside a statement of newly formalized editorial policies. Television and films Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:CT] | [TOKENS: 2359] |
Contents Wikipedia:Contentious topics A special set of rules applies to certain topic areas, which are referred to as contentious topics (abbreviated CT). These are specially designated topics that have attracted more persistent disruptive editing than the rest of the project and have been designated as contentious topics by the Arbitration Committee.[a] Not all topics that are controversial have been designated as contentious topics – this procedure applies only to those topics designated by the Arbitration Committee (list). When editing a contentious topic, Wikipedia's norms and policies are more strictly enforced and Wikipedia administrators have additional authority to reduce disruption to the project. Editing a contentious topic Within contentious topics, you must edit carefully and constructively, refrain from disrupting the encyclopedia, and: You should err on the side of caution if you are unsure whether making a particular edit is consistent with these expectations. Within contentious topics, administrators have the ability to set editor restrictions (restrictions on editing by particular editors) and page restrictions (special rules on how particular pages can be edited). Some of these abilities may be exercised by a single administrator, while others require a consensus of administrators. All editor and page restrictions may be appealed. Contentious topic restrictions Administrators are authorized to impose contentious topic restrictions in contentious topic areas. Those contentious topic restrictions take the form of editor restrictions and page restrictions. Editor restrictions prohibit a specific editor from making edits described in the restriction and may be imposed on editors who do not follow the expectations listed in § Editing a contentious topic in a contentious topic. Page restrictions prohibit all editors on a particular page from making edits described in the restriction and may be imposed to minimize disruption in a contentious topic. Unless otherwise specified, contentious topics are broadly construed; this contentious topics procedure applies to all pages broadly related to a topic, as well as parts of other pages that are related to the topic.[b] Single administrators may only impose restrictions in the standard set of contentious topic restrictions. A rough consensus of administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard ("AE") may impose any restriction from the standard set and any other reasonable measures that are necessary and proportionate for the smooth running of the project. The following editor restrictions constitute the standard set of editor restrictions which may be imposed by a single uninvolved administrator: The following page restrictions constitute the standard set of page restrictions which may be imposed by a single uninvolved administrator: Administrators may warn editors for conduct that falls short of the expectations in a contentious topic. Administrators may choose to log warnings in the arbitration enforcement log. Warnings that are logged in the arbitration enforcement log may be appealed like other editor restrictions. An editor may be warned even if the editor was not previously aware that their editing occurred in a contentious topic. Contentious topic restrictions may be imposed for any fixed length of time, or for an indefinite period. However, one year after being imposed (or last renewed, if applicable), contentious topic restrictions which were imposed by a single administrator may be amended or revoked without going through the appeals and amendments process in the same way as an ordinary administrator action. Additionally, sitewide blocks become ordinary administrator actions one year after imposition, whether or not imposed by a consensus of administrators at AE. An administrator who imposes an editor restriction must provide a notice on the restricted editor's talk page specifying the reason for the restriction and informing the restricted editor of the appeal process. An administrator who imposes a page restriction (other than page protection) must add an editnotice to restricted pages using the standard template ({{Contentious topics/page restriction editnotice}} or a derived topic-specific template), and should generally add a notice to the talk page of restricted pages. If an uninvolved administrator (including the original enforcing administrator) decides that a page restriction is still necessary after one year, the administrator may renew the restriction by re-imposing it under this procedure and noting the CTOP invoked in the protection reason. The administrator renewing a page restriction then becomes the enforcing administrator. Page protections must clearly note in the protection reason that the protection action is an arbitration enforcement action and link to the applicable contentious topic page (e.g., WP:CT/BLP), which will cause the action to be automatically logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/Protections. This does not apply to page restrictions imposed by consensus at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. Contentious topic restrictions, excepting page protections, must be recorded in the arbitration enforcement log by the administrator who takes the action.[f] Page protections must clearly note in the protection reason that the protection action is an arbitration enforcement action and link to the applicable contentious topic page (e.g., WP:CT/BLP), which will cause the action to be automatically logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/Protections. Administrators who renew, change, or revoke a contentious topic restriction must append a note recording the amendment to the original log entry. Administrators should clearly and unambiguously label their actions as contentious topic restrictions (such as in the block summary, page protection summary, edit summary, or talk page message announcing the action, whichever is appropriate).[g] Editors must comply with contentious topic restrictions. Editors who disagree with a contentious topic restriction may appeal it, but the restriction remains in effect until it is revoked or modified by an administrator. Edits that breach an editor or page restriction may be reverted.[h] Editors who breach an editor or page restriction may be blocked or subjected to further editor restrictions. However, breaches of a page restriction may result in a block or editor restriction only if: Appeals and amendments All contentious topic restrictions (and logged warnings) may be appealed. Only the restricted editor may appeal an editor restriction. Any editor may appeal a page restriction. The appeal process has three possible stages. An editor appealing a restriction may: Appeals submitted at AE or AN must be submitted using the applicable template. A rough consensus of administrators at AE or editors at AN may specify a period of up to one year during which no appeals (other than an appeal to ARCA) may be submitted. An administrator may only modify or revoke a contentious topic restriction if a formal appeal is successful or if one of the following exceptions applies: A formal appeal is successful only if one of the following agrees with revoking or changing the contentious topic restriction: Any administrator who revokes or changes a contentious topic restriction out of process (i.e. without the above conditions being met) may, at the discretion of the Arbitration Committee, be desysopped. Uninvolved administrators at the arbitration enforcement noticeboard ("AE") and uninvolved editors at the administrators' noticeboard ("AN") should revoke or modify a contentious topic restriction on appeal if: Arbitrators hearing an appeal at a request for amendment ("ARCA") will generally overturn a contentious topic restriction only if: Procedural summary Awareness of contentious topics When an editor first begins making edits within any contentious topic, anyone may alert the editor of the contentious topic designation using the {{Contentious topics/alert/first}} template. Only the officially designated templates should be used for an editor's first contentious topic alert, and these templates may not be placed using a bot or other form of automated editing without the prior approval of the Arbitration Committee. 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Uninvolved administrators are asked to ensure that enforcement cases are not disrupted, and may remove statements or restrict or block editors to address inappropriate conduct. Contentious topics may be designated either as part of the final decision of an arbitration case or by Arbitration Committee motion. When it becomes apparent that a particular contentious topic designation is no longer necessary, the Committee may rescind it. Any editor may request that the Committee review a contentious topic designation by submitting a request for amendment ("ARCA"). Unless the Committee specifies otherwise, after rescinding a designation, all restrictions previously-issued under that designation remain in force and continue to be governed by the contentious topics procedure. Any restrictions imposed under the prior discretionary sanctions procedure to date remain in force. 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Contents Guinness World Records Page version status This is an accepted version of this page Guinness World Records, known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as The Guinness Book of Records and in previous United States editions as The Guinness Book of World Records, is a British reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Sir Hugh Beaver created the concept in order to settle arguments debated in pubs, and twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter co-founded the book in London in late August 1955. The first edition topped the bestseller list in the United Kingdom by Christmas 1955. The following year the book was launched internationally, and as of the 2026 edition, it is now in its 71st year of publication, published in 100 countries and 40 languages, and maintains over 53,000 records in its database. The international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in Guinness World Records becoming the primary international source for cataloguing and verification of a huge number of world records. The organization employs record adjudicators to verify the authenticity of the setting and breaking of records. Following a series of owners, the franchise has been owned by the Jim Pattison Group since 2008, with its headquarters moved to South Quay Plaza, Canary Wharf, London, in 2017. Since 2008, Guinness World Records has orientated its business model away from selling books, and towards creating new world records as publicity exercises for individuals and organizations, which has attracted criticism. History On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he became involved in an argument over whether the golden plover or the red grouse was the fastest game bird in Europe (the plover is faster, but neither is the fastest game bird in Europe). That evening at Castlebridge House, he realized that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europe's fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must have been numerous other questions debated nightly among the public, but there was no book in the world with which to settle arguments about records. He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beaver's idea became a reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended university friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, who had been running a fact-finding agency in London. The twin brothers were commissioned in August 1954 to compile what became The Guinness Book of (Superlatives and now) Records.[clarification needed] A thousand copies were distributed for free to pubs across Britain and Ireland as a promotional asset for the Guinness brand, and they became immensely popular with customers. After the founding of The Guinness Book of Records office at the top of Ludgate House, 107 Fleet Street, London, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British bestseller list by Christmas. The following year, it was introduced into the United States by New York publisher David Boehm and sold 70,000 copies. Since then, Guinness World Records has sold more than 150 million copies in 100 countries and 40 languages. Due to the book's surprise success, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October, in time for Christmas. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years. Both brothers had an encyclopedic memory; on the British children's television series Record Breakers (based upon the book), which was broadcast on the BBC from 1972 to 2001, they would take questions posed by children in the audience on various world records and were able to give the correct answer. Ross McWhirter was assassinated by two members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975, in response to offering a £50,000 reward for information that would lead to the capture of members of the organization. Following Ross's assassination, the feature on the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot. Norris carried on as the book's sole editor. Guinness Superlatives, later Guinness World Records Limited, was incorporated in London in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades until it was repurchased by Guinness in 1989 after an 18-month long lawsuit. The group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment for £45.5 million ($65 million). Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002. In 2006, Apax Partners purchased HIT and subsequently sold Guinness World Records in early 2008 to the Jim Pattison Group, the parent company of Ripley Entertainment, which is licensed to operate Guinness World Records' Attractions. With offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records' global headquarters remain in South Quay Plaza in Canary Wharf, London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida. Recent editions have focused on record feats by individuals. Competitions range from obvious ones such as Olympic weightlifting to the longest egg tossing distances, or for the longest time spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV or the largest number of hot dogs consumed in three minutes. Besides records about competitions, it contains such facts such as the heaviest tumor, the most poisonous fungus, the longest-running soap opera and the most valuable life-insurance policy, among others. Many records also relate to the youngest people to have achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, currently held by Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness World Records database, as well as select new records, with the criteria for inclusion changing from year to year. The latest edition is the 72nd, published in August 2025. The retirement of Norris McWhirter from his consulting role in 1995 and the subsequent decision by Diageo Plc to sell The Guinness Book of Records brand have shifted the focus of the books from text-oriented to illustrated reference. A selection of records are curated for the book from the full archive but all existing Guinness World Records titles can be accessed by creating a login on the company's website. Applications made by individuals for existing record categories are free of charge. There is an administration fee of £5 (or $5) to propose a new record title. A number of spin-off books and television series have also been produced. Guinness World Records bestowed the record of "Person with the most records" on Ashrita Furman of Queens, New York, in April 2009; at that time, he held 100 records. In 2005, Guinness designated 9 November as International Guinness World Records Day to encourage breaking of world records. In 2006, an estimated 100,000 people participated in over 10 countries. Guinness reported 2,244 new records in 12 months, which was a 173% increase over the previous year. In February 2008, NBC aired The Top 100 Guinness World Records of All Time and Guinness World Records made the complete list available on their website. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in Guinness World Records becoming the primary international authority on the cataloguing and verification of a huge number of world records. Over its history, numerous world record categories have been discontinued. This list may include that the record poses a threat to health or the environment. Defining records For many records, Guinness World Records is the effective authority on the exact requirements for them and with whom records reside, the company providing adjudicators to events to determine the veracity of record attempts. The list of records which the Guinness World Records covers is not fixed, records may be added and also removed for various reasons. The public is invited to submit applications for records, which can be either the bettering of existing records or substantial achievements which could constitute a new record. The company also provides corporate services for companies to "harness the power of record-breaking to deliver tangible success for their businesses." Guinness World Records states several types of records it will not accept for ethical reasons, such as those related to the killing or harming of animals. In the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records, Colombian serial killer Pedro López was listed as the "most prolific serial killer", having murdered at least 110 people (with Lopez himself claiming he murdered over 300 people) in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in the late 1960s to 1980s. This was later removed after complaints that it made a competition out of murder, however the record was reinstated in the 2026 edition. Several world records that were once included in the book have been removed for ethical reasons, including concerns for the well-being of potential record breakers. For example, following publication of the "heaviest pet" record, many owners overfed their pets beyond the bounds of what was healthy, and therefore such entries were removed. The Guinness Book also dropped records within their "eating and drinking records" section of Human Achievements in 1991 over concerns that potential competitors could harm themselves and expose the publisher to potential litigation. These changes included the removal of all spirit, wine and beer drinking records, along with other unusual records for consuming such unlikely things as bicycles and trees. Other records, such as sword swallowing and rally driving (on public roads), were closed from further entry as the current holders had performed beyond what are considered safe human tolerance levels. There have been instances of closed categories being reopened. For example, the sword swallowing category was listed as closed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records, but has since been reopened with Johnny Strange breaking a sword swallowing record on Guinness World Records Live. Similarly, the speed beer drinking records which were dropped from the book in 1991, reappeared 17 years later in the 2008 edition, but were moved from the "Human Achievements" section of the older book to the "Modern Society" section of the newer edition. As of 2011[update], it is required in the guidelines of all "large food" type records that the item be fully edible, and distributed to the public for consumption, to prevent food wastage. Chain letters are also not allowed: "Guinness World Records does not accept any records relating to chain letters, sent by post or e-mail." After Roger Guy English set the record for sleeplessness in 1974, the category was discontinued for being too dangerous. At the request of the U.S. Mint, in 1984, the book stopped accepting claims of large hoardings of pennies or other currency. Environmentally unfriendly records (such as the releasing of sky lanterns and party balloons) are no longer accepted or monitored, in addition to records relating to tobacco or cannabis consumption or preparation. In 2024, Guinness World Records was accused of laundering the reputation of the oppressive governments as it set world records for the UAE's police forces and Egypt's military. By 2024, the UAE achieved 526 records, of which 21 were credited to the Emirates' police force. Matthew Hedges, a British academic who was forced to sign a false confession, asked the records body to take down the Abu Dhabi police department's certificate for "most signatures on a scroll", along with other such titles. Concerns were also raised around the activities around Egypt, which moved from 22 records to 110 within a decade until 2024. James Lynch, co-founder of FairSquare, said the records were legitimizing Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's regime. The Guinness World Records stated that its record titles "cannot be purchased". Guinness World Records has been accused of romanticizing diseases, such as Graves' Disease and Pica. For some potential categories, Guinness World Records has declined to list some records that are too difficult or impossible to determine. For example, its website states: "We do not accept any claims for beauty as it is not objectively measurable." On 10 December 2010, Guinness World Records stopped accepting submissions for the "dreadlock" category after an investigation of its first and only female title holder, Asha Mandela, determining it was impossible to judge this record accurately. Change in business model Traditionally, the company made a large amount of its revenue via book sales to interested readers, especially children. The rise of the Internet began to cut into book sales starting in the 2000s, part of a general decline in the book industry. According to a 2017 story by Planet Money of NPR, Guinness began to realize that a lucrative new revenue source to replace falling book sales was the would-be record-holders themselves. While any person can theoretically send in a record to be verified for free, the approval process is slow. Would-be record breakers that paid fees ranging from US$12,000 to US$500,000 would be given advisors, adjudicators, help in finding good records to break as well as suggestions for how to do it, prompt service, and so on. In particular, corporations and celebrities seeking a publicity stunt to launch a new product or draw attention to themselves began to hire Guinness World Records, paying them for finding a record to break or to create a new category just for them. As such, they have been described as a native advertising company, with no clear distinction between content and advertisement. Television talk show host John Oliver criticized Guinness World Records on the programme Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in August 2019, during an episode about President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Oliver said Guinness took money from authoritarian governments for pointless vanity projects such as Berdimuhamedow's. Oliver asked Guinness to work with Last Week Tonight to adjudicate a record for "Largest cake featuring a picture of someone falling off a horse", but according to Oliver, the offer did not work out after Guinness insisted on a non-disparagement clause. Guinness World Records denied the accusations and stated that they declined Oliver's offer to participate because "it was merely an opportunity to mock one of our record-holders," and that Oliver did not specifically request the record for the largest marble cake. As of 2021, the Guinness World Record for "Largest marble cake" remains with Betty Crocker Middle East in Saudi Arabia. Following Oliver's episode, Guinness World Records' ethics were called into question by human rights groups. Museums In 1976, a Guinness Book of World Records museum opened in the Empire State Building. Speed shooter Bob Munden then went on tour promoting The Guinness Book of World Records by performing his record fast draws with a standard weight single-action revolver from a Western movie-type holster. His fastest time for a draw was 0.02 seconds. Among exhibits were life-size statues of the world's tallest man, Robert Wadlow, and world's largest earthworm, an X-ray photo of a sword swallower, repeated lightning strike victim Roy Sullivan's hat complete with lightning holes and a pair of gem-studded golf shoes on sale for $6,500. The museum closed in 1995. In more recent years, the Guinness company has permitted the franchising of small museums with displays based on the book, all currently (as of 2010[update]) located in towns popular with tourists: Tokyo, Copenhagen, San Antonio. There were once Guinness World Records museums and exhibitions at the London Trocadero, Bangalore, San Francisco, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Atlantic City, and Las Vegas. The Orlando museum, which closed in 2002, was branded The Guinness Records Experience; the Hollywood, Niagara Falls, Copenhagen, and Gatlinburg museums also previously featured this branding. Retail and merchandise Guinness World Records operates an official online shop, the Guinness World Records Store, which offers items related to record-breaking achievements, including certificates of participation, apparel, and the annual Guinness World Records book. The shop provides record-holders and the general public with access to official Guinness World Records materials. Merchandise is part of the organization's broader engagement efforts beyond its publications and events. Television series Guinness World Records has commissioned various television series documenting world record breaking attempts, including: Rhianna Loren (2025) Specials: Gamer's edition In 2008, Guinness World Records released its gamer's edition, a supplement that keeps records for popular video game high scores, codes and feats in association with Twin Galaxies. The Gamer's Edition used to contain 258 pages, over 1,236 video game related world records and four interviews including one with Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day. Editions were published for the years 2008 through 2020, with the 2009 edition in hardcover. The 2025 edition is the first since 2020, returning after a five-year hiatus. Since 2020, the supplement has had 192 pages. The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles was a music reference book first published in 1977. It was compiled by BBC Radio 1 DJs Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read with brothers Tim Rice and Jonathan Rice. It was the first in a number of music reference books that were to be published by Guinness Publishing with sister publication The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums coming in 1983. After being sold to Hit Entertainment, the data concerning the Official Chart Company's singles and albums charts were combined under the title British Hit Singles & Albums, with Hit Entertainment publishing the book from 2003 to 2006 (under the Guinness World Records brand). After Guinness World Records was sold to The Jim Pattison Group, it was effectively replaced by a series of books published by Ebury Publishing/Random House with the Virgin Book of British Hit Singles first being published in 2007 and with a Hit Albums book following two years later. Other media and products In 1975, Parker Brothers marketed a board game, The Guinness Game of World Records, based on the book. Players compete by setting and breaking records for activities such as the longest streak of rolling dice before rolling doubles, stacking plastic pieces, and bouncing a ball off alternating sides of a card, as well as answering trivia questions based on the listings in the Guinness Book of World Records. A video game, Guinness World Records: The Videogame, was developed by TT Fusion and released for Nintendo DS, Wii and iOS in November 2008. In 2012, Warner Bros. announced the development of a live-action film version of Guinness World Records with Daniel Chun as scriptwriter. The film, however, never entered production. Dr. Sunil Gupta is listed in the Guinness World Records for participating in the largest multi-location diabetic neuropathy screening conducted on World Diabetes Day, 14 November 2013, during which 1,676 screenings were performed across 27 locations in India. References |
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Contents Michel Lotito Michel Lotito (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl lɔtito]; 16 June 1950 – 17 April 2006) was a French entertainer famous for deliberate consumption of indigestible objects. He came to be known as Monsieur Mangetout (lit. 'Mister Eats-All'). His digestive system allowed him to consume up to 900 g (2.0 lb) of metal per day. He started eating this unusual diet at age 16.[verification needed] Career Michel Lotito began eating unusual material at 16 years of age,[verification needed] and he performed publicly beginning in 1966, around the age of 16. He had an eating disorder known as pica, a psychological disorder characterised by an appetite for substances that are largely non-nutritive. Doctors determined that Lotito also had a thick lining in his stomach and intestines which allowed his consumption of sharp metal without suffering injury. Lotito also had digestive juices that were unusually powerful, meaning that he could digest the unusual materials. Soft foods, such as bananas, gave him heartburn, specifically when he had metal in his stomach.[clarification needed] Lotito's performance involved the consumption of metal, glass, rubber and other materials. He disassembled, cut up, and consumed items such as bicycles, shopping carts, televisions, beds and a Cessna 150, among other items. It took him roughly 2 years, from 1978 to 1980, to eat the Cessna 150.[a][citation needed] Lotito claimed not to suffer ill effects from his consumption of substances typically considered poisonous. When performing, he ingested approximately 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of material daily, preceding it with mineral oil and drinking considerable quantities of water during the meal. It is estimated that between 1959 and 1997, Lotito "had eaten nearly nine tons of metal."[clarification needed] Lotito's method for eating all of this metal was to break it into small pieces before attempting to eat it. He then drank mineral oil and continued to drink water while swallowing the metal bits. This allowed him to swallow the metal without damaging his throat. Lotito did not have any digestive problems as a result of his unusual diet. Awards Lotito holds the record for the "strangest diet" in the Guinness Book of Records. He was awarded a plaque, made of brass, by the publishers to commemorate his abilities. He ate his award. Death Lotito died of natural causes at age 55 on 17 April 2006, in Grenoble. List of unusual items allegedly consumed At least:[citation needed] In popular culture See also Notes References |
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Contents Visual effects Visual effects (sometimes abbreviated as VFX) is the process by which imagery is created or manipulated outside the context of a live-action shot in filmmaking and video production. The integration of live-action footage and other live-action footage or computer-generated imagery (CGI) elements to create realistic imagery is called VFX. VFX involves the integration of live-action footage (which may include in-camera special effects) and generated-imagery (digital or optics, animals or creatures) which look realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, time-consuming or impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using CGI have more recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and relatively easy-to-use animation and compositing software. History In 1857, Oscar Rejlander created the world's first "special effects" image by combining different sections of 32 negatives into a single image, making a montaged combination print. In 1895, Alfred Clark created what is commonly accepted as the first-ever motion picture special effect. While filming a reenactment of the beheading of Mary, Queen of Scots, Clark instructed an actor to step up to the block in Mary's costume. As the executioner brought the axe above his head, Clark stopped the camera, had all the actors freeze, and had the person playing Mary step off the set. He placed a Mary dummy in the actor's place, restarted filming, and allowed the executioner to bring the axe down, severing the dummy's head. Techniques like these would dominate the production of special effects for a century. It was not only the first use of trickery in cinema, it was also the first type of photographic trickery that was only possible in a motion picture, and referred to as the "stop trick". Georges Méliès, an early motion picture pioneer, accidentally discovered the same "stop trick". According to Méliès, his camera jammed while filming a street scene in Paris. When he screened the film, he found that the "stop trick" had caused a truck to turn into a hearse, pedestrians to change direction, and men to turn into women. Méliès, the director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin, was inspired to develop a series of more than 500 short films, between 1896 and 1913, in the process developing or inventing such techniques as multiple exposures, time-lapse photography, dissolves, and hand-painted color. Because of his ability to seemingly manipulate and transform reality with the cinematograph, the prolific Méliès is sometimes referred to as the "Cinemagician". His most famous film, Le Voyage dans la lune (1902), a whimsical parody of Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon, featured a combination of live action and animation, and also incorporated extensive miniature and matte painting work. VFX today is heavily used in almost all movies produced. Other than films, television series and web series are also known to utilize VFX. Techniques Production pipeline Visual effects are often integral to a movie's story and appeal. Although most visual effects work is completed during post-production, it usually must be carefully planned and choreographed in pre-production and production. While special effects such as explosions and car chases are made on set, visual effects are primarily executed in post-production with the use of multiple tools and technologies such as graphic design, modeling, animation and similar software. A visual effects supervisor is usually involved with the production from an early stage to work closely with production and the film's director to design, guide and lead the teams required to achieve the desired effects. Many studios specialize in visual effects; among them are Digital Domain, DreamWorks, DNEG, Framestore, Weta Digital, Industrial Light & Magic, Pixomondo, Moving Picture Company, Animal Logic, Reel FX Animation, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Jellyfish Pictures. See also References Sources |
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Contents IGN IGN[b] is a compromised American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. IGN features articles on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs available on the Xbox and PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mobile, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat. Originally, IGN was the flagship website of IGN Entertainment, a website which owned and operated several other websites oriented towards players' interests, games, and entertainment, such as Rotten Tomatoes, GameSpy, GameStats, VE3D, TeamXbox, Vault Network, FilePlanet, and AskMen. IGN was sold to publishing company Ziff Davis in February 2013. History IGN was created in September 1996 as the Imagine Games Network, the IGN content network was founded by publishing executive Jonathan Simpson-Bint and began as five individual websites within Imagine Media: N64.com (later renamed ign64.com), PSXPower, Saturnworld, Next-Generation.com and Ultra Game Players Online. Imagine expanded on its owned-and-operated websites by creating an affiliate network that included a number of independent fansites such as PSX Nation.com, Sega-Saturn.com, Game Sages, and GameFAQs. In 1998, the network launched a new homepage that consolidated the individual sites as system channels under the IGN brand. The homepage exposed content from more than 30 different channels. Websites Next-Generation and Ultra Game Players Online were not part of this consolidation; U.G.P.O. dissolved with the cancellation of the magazine, and Next-Generation was put "on hold" when Imagine decided to concentrate on launching the short-lived Daily Radar brand. In February 1999, PC Magazine named IGN one of the hundred-best websites, alongside competitors GameSpot and CNET Gamecenter. That same month, Imagine Media incorporated a spin-off that included IGN and its affiliate channels as Affiliation Networks, while Simpson-Bint remained at the former company. In September, the newly spun-out standalone internet media company, changed its name to Snowball.com. At the same time, small entertainment website The Den merged into IGN and added non-gaming content to the growing network. Snowball held an IPO in 2000, but shed most of its other properties during the dot-com bubble. IGN prevailed with growing audience numbers and a newly established subscription service called IGN Insider (later IGN Prime), which led to the shedding of the name "Snowball" and adoption of IGN Entertainment on May 10, 2002. In June 2005, IGN reported having 24,000,000 unique visitors per month, with 4.8 million registered users through all departments of the site. IGN has been ranked among the top 500 most-visited websites according to Alexa. In September 2005, IGN was acquired by Rupert Murdoch's multimedia business empire, News Corporation, for $650 million. IGN celebrated its 10th anniversary on January 12, 2008. IGN was headquartered in the Marina Point Parkway office park in Brisbane, California, until it relocated to a smaller office building near AT&T Park in San Francisco on March 29, 2010. On May 25, 2011, IGN sold its Direct2Drive division to Gamefly for an undisclosed amount. In 2011, IGN Entertainment acquired its rival UGO Entertainment (owners of 1Up.com) from Hearst Corporation. Ultimately, News Corp. planned to spin off IGN Entertainment as a publicly traded company, continuing a string of divestitures for digital properties it had previously acquired (including MySpace and Photobucket). On February 4, 2013, after a failed attempt to spin off IGN as a separate company, News Corp. announced that it had sold IGN Entertainment to the publishing company Ziff Davis, which was recently acquired by J2 Global. Financial details regarding the purchase were not revealed. Prior to its acquisition by UGO, 1UP.com had previously been owned by Ziff Davis. Soon after the acquisition, IGN announced that it would be laying off staff and closing GameSpy, 1UP.com, and UGO in order to focus on its flagship brands, IGN and AskMen. The role-playing video game interest website Vault Network was acquired by IGN in 1999. GameStats, a review aggregation website, was founded by IGN in 2004. GameStats includes a "GPM" (Game Popularity Metric) rating system which incorporates an average press score and average gamer score, as well as the number of page hits for the game. However, the site is no longer being updated. The Xbox interest site, TeamXbox, and the PC game website VE3D (Voodoo Extreme 3D) were acquired in 2003. IGN Entertainment merged with GameSpy Industries in 2005. The merger also brought the game download site FilePlanet into the IGN group; as of 2011 both FilePlanet and the GameSpy website still operate as video game-related web sites. IGN Entertainment acquired the online male lifestyle magazine AskMen in 2005. In 2004, IGN acquired film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes and in 2010, sold the website to Flixster. In October 2017, Humble Bundle announced that it was being acquired by IGN. IGN Entertainment acquired Gamer Network and its properties in May 2024 for an undisclosed sum. These included Eurogamer, Rock Paper Shotgun, VG247 and others. As a result, some layoffs were made due to redundancies. A member of the IGN staff writes a review for a game and gives it a score between 0.1 and 10.0, which is assigned by increments of 0.1 and determines how much the game is recommended. The score is given according to the "individual aspects of a game, like presentation, graphics, sound, gameplay and lasting appeal". Each game is given a score in each of these categories, but the overall score for the game is an independent evaluation, not an average of the scores in each category. On August 3, 2010, IGN announced that the site would be changing to a new scoring scale. Instead of a 100-point scale, where games are scored in increments of 0.1, all future reviews would use a 20-point scale where games are scored in increments of 0.5. Under both systems, the maximum possible score a game can receive is 10.0. The scoring change was not retroactive: all scores on reviews written before the change would remain the same. This change also did not affect the scoring system for reader reviews. On September 13, 2012, IGN revealed that as part of its new review format all future reviews would follow a 100-point scale again, but without using decimals, meaning a score of 8.5 would become an 85. Unlike the previous conversion to the 20-point scale, this latest scoring system change was retroactive and all previous IGN review scores were to be updated to follow the new system. However, despite the announcement, the article included a short addition, post-release; it stated that after much discussion, they had decided to retain the decimal point in all upcoming scores. In early 2014, IGN introduced a new policy, in which a game's review score can be re-reviewed and improved, provided that continuous updates form a significant change compared to the game at launch. Examples of games that have been re-reviewed were League of Legends, Heroes of the Storm, Warframe, and the pocket edition of Minecraft. In January 2020, IGN revealed that reviews would be reverted to a 10-point scale, from 1 to 10, finding that the finer distinction of the 100-point scale was difficult to maintain, whereas a 10-point scale would still be true to its reviews and would be easier to promote. IGN 'Best of' awards IGN's 'Best of' is an end-of-year event to annually honor the year's best games, films, television shows and comics. Winners of each award category are selected by IGN staff from a list of nominees, while readers are able to cast their own votes online to determine the 'People's Choice' award for each category. Other sections In 2000, Snowball.com purchased an E-federation called the Internet Wrestling Organization (IWO). Since Snowball owned both IWO and IGN, IWO would go on to become IGN's first official E-Fed, even doing a column on the website. The IGN For Men section officially closed down on October 2, 2001, and is no longer updated. IGN has sites such as IGN Stars and AskMen.com that fulfil much of the function of the old IGN For Men site. IGN Wrestling met its end in early 2002 when many of the staff departed. Interviews with professional wrestling personalities and coverage of wrestling games have been folded into IGN Sports, headed by Jon Robinson. IGN Sci-Fi: Largely dead since 2002, this section of the site included movie news, comic book reviews, anime coverage and other associated items. It has since been discontinued. The site, SciFI.ign.com redirects to the recently created SciFiBrain.ign.com, which covers some of the content of the old Sci-Fi site.[citation needed] In 2002, IGN launched a dedicated video game FAQs site specifically designed to host user-submitted guides. This was launched following the cancellation of affiliation with GameFAQs.[citation needed] In 2004, IGN launched GameStats, which was intended to be a more unbiased rating network, as it takes in scores from every corporate-owned game rating site and averages them all into one score to give a general idea of the quality of a game. IGN also launched Direct2Drive.com in 2004. Its primary focus is selling digital downloads of full PC and Mac video games, as well as anime, comics and game guides. In 2005, IGN launched its comics site, which is devoted to not just the staple Marvel and DC titles, but also manga, graphic novels, statues and toys.[citation needed] In 2006, IGN launched its television site. It provides interviews with various television celebrities, in addition to a TV schedule, TV trivia and TV news. Like the film section, IGN's TV section has a variety of exclusive clips from upcoming television shows.[citation needed] On May 30, 2006, IGN Dreamcast was restarted; however, none of the Dreamcast updates were posted on the main IGN webpage.[citation needed] In 2007, IGN launched its anime site. It provided features on anime and manga, including trailers and free episodes. It also included reviews of manga and anime from other sections of IGN, such as IGN Comics and IGN DVD. The anime channel was dropped after IGN redesigned the site. In 2008, the IGN Retro channel was launched to mark IGN's 10th anniversary. To coincide with the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl, IGN created the Super Smash Bros. World site. On the site, people can submit their user-created stages from the game and download ones made by other people. IGN subsequently launched a similar website called GTA 'Hood on April 29, 2008, for Grand Theft Auto IV.[citation needed] Along with its popular website content, IGN also publishes many different podcasts on both its website and on iTunes. Some of its podcasts include console-oriented shows like the PlayStation-focused "Podcast Beyond" and the Xbox-oriented "Podcast Unlocked", the Nintendo-oriented "Nintendo Voice Chat", and Game Scoop!, a podcast where a variety of editors discuss news and topics surrounding the video game industry. Regional websites IGN has 28 editions in 25 languages, as of 2021. The US & Canada, UK & Ireland, and Australia & New Zealand editions are operated by Ziff Davis subsidiaries, with all others being franchised publishers. Since 2006, IGN Entertainment began launching regional versions of the website for various countries and pan-regions. Initially, IGN began opening new offices outside the United States in order to support those regional websites, but later IGN began franchising its brand as a more cost-effective means of globalization, wherein it licensed various media publishers in many countries to use the IGN brand and manage regional websites on their own. Licensed regional publishers work on their own servers, albeit can link to IGN's HQ database, where they can import or translate articles, and use videos uploaded on IGN's servers that use IGN's own hosted video player.[citation needed] When visiting www.ign.com from an IGN-supported region, the site automatically redirects visitors to their localized version using geolocation software, based on their countries' IP addresses. Each version of the site has a modified logo with their country's/region's respective flags near the IGN logo. However, it is still possible to access the original American website using a navigation bar above or below (depending on the regional website) the page's master template.[citation needed] IGN Con IGN Convention (IGN Con) is a video games, movies, comics and pop culture convention held in various cities in the Middle East. The event generally includes celebrities, video game tournaments, table top games, card games, movie previews, comic book stalls and a cosplay competition. A number of Middle Eastern artists and game developers also showcase their work at IGN Convention. This convention is owned and operated by IGN Middle East, the Middle Eastern edition of popular video games website IGN. IGN Convention is the spiritual successor to GameFest, a biannual, smaller scale gaming gallery which was originally hosted by IGN Middle East's parent company T-break Media between 2010 and 2012, before the hosting duties were subsequently taken over by AMD EMEA. The IGN Convention logo was designed by prominent Gulf based artist Ashraf Ghori. Conferences have included: IGN Pro League In 2011, IGN launched IGN Pro League, a professional esports circuit that ran tournaments for StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, ShootMania Storm and League of Legends. On March 6, 2013, only weeks prior to the event, IGN abruptly canceled the finals of IPL 6—which were to be held in Las Vegas from March 28 through 31, and discontinued the league. IGN indicated that it was no longer in a position to commit to compete with the increasing number of esports events that were being held. On April 8, 2013, Blizzard Entertainment announced that it had acquired the staff and assets of the IPL from IGN; its former staff were reassigned to work on in-house esports productions. Controversies In 2007, Video Game Media Watch accused former IGN editor Doug Perry of "journalistic misconduct" for an exclusive review of Prey. In November 2017, some IGN employees refused to work to show solidarity with Kallie Plagge, a former editor who alleged that in 2016, another editor, Vince Ingenito, sexually harassed her and another female employee and made inappropriate comments. Human resources allegedly told her that she "needed to have better judgment about who [she] was 'friends' with" and that she was an "equal participant" in "inappropriate flirtation". This incident was widely circulated across social media. In August 2018, the owner of YouTube channel Boomstick Gaming accused the IGN reviewer Filip Miucin of plagiarizing his video review of the game Dead Cells. On August 7, IGN stated that it had found "substantial similarities" between the reviews, apologized, and announced that it had dismissed Miucin. On August 10, IGN published a new review by Brandin Tyrrel, which included an editor's note apologizing again and stating that "this review (and its score) represents solely the opinion of the new reviewer". In a subsequently unlisted video, Miucin responded that while he took "complete ownership over what happened", the similarity was not intentional. Kotaku found similarities between Miucin's other reviews, reviews on Nintendo Life and Engadget and material posted on the games discussion forum NeoGAF. On August 14, IGN announced that it would remove all of Miucin's work pending further review. On April 19, 2019, Miucin admitted plagiarism and issued an apology on his YouTube channel. During the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the main IGN site posted an article on May 14 urging readers to donate to charities helping Palestinian civilians such as the Palestine Children's Relief Fund and linked to relevant news reporting. A Palestinian flag was also added besides the IGN logo. Shortly after the article went up IGN Israel made statements on social media condemning the article. The Palestinian flag was soon replaced with a Red Cross. On May 16, the article was deleted and a statement was made on the IGN Twitter account saying that it was wrong to only highlight one side of the conflict. A reposted version on South Africa-based IGN Africa was also removed. On May 17, over 60 members of IGN's staff signed an open letter condemning the article's removal for going against the site's editorial freedom and policies for retracting or correcting articles, as well as the lack of communication with IGN staff. IGN reinstated the article on August 24 under a new headline alongside a statement of newly formalized editorial policies. Television and films Notes References External links |
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Contents Wikipedia:Protection policy In some circumstances, pages may need to be protected from modification by certain groups of editors. Pages are protected when there is disruption that cannot be prevented through other means, such as blocks. Wikipedia is built on the principle that anyone can edit, and therefore aims to have as many pages open for public editing as possible so that anyone can add material and correct issues. This policy states in detail the protection types and procedures for page protection and unprotection, and when each protection should and should not be applied. Protection is a technical restriction applied only by administrators, although any user may request protection. Protection can be indefinite or expire after a specified time. The various levels of protection can be applied to the page edit, page move, page create, and file upload actions. Even when a page is protected from editing, the source wikitext of the page can still be viewed and copied by anyone. A protected page is marked at its top right by a padlock icon, usually added by the {{pp-protected}} template. The {{pp-protected}} template is automatically added by the {{documentation}} template used in template space. Overview of page protection Any protection applied to a page involves setting a type, level, and duration as follows: Preemptive protection Applying page protection solely as a preemptive measure is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia and is generally not allowed. Instead, protection is used when vandalism, disruption, or abuse by multiple users is occurring at a frequency that warrants protection. The duration of protection should be as short as possible and at the lowest protection level sufficient to stop the disruption, allowing edits from as many productive users as possible. Exceptions include the Main Page, along with its templates and images, which are indefinitely fully protected. Additionally, Today's Featured Article is typically semi-protected from the day before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page until the day after it leaves. Finally, pages subject to Arbitration Committee remedies that permit or require preemptive protection may be protected accordingly. Requesting protection Page protection can be requested at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Changes to a protected page should be proposed on the corresponding talk page, and then (if necessary) requested by adding an edit request. From there, if the requested changes are uncontroversial or if there is consensus for them, the changes can be carried out by a user who can edit the page. Except in the case of office actions (see below), Arbitration Committee remedies, or pages in the MediaWiki namespace (see below), administrators may unprotect a page if the reason for its protection no longer applies, a reasonable period has elapsed, and there is no consensus that continued protection is necessary. Users can request unprotection or a reduction in protection level by asking the administrator who applied the protection on the administrator's user talk page. If the administrator is inactive, no longer an administrator, or does not respond, then a request for reduction in protection level may be filed. Note that such requests will normally be declined if the protecting administrator is active and was not consulted first. A log of protections and unprotections is available at Special:Log/protect. Summary table Protection types Edit protection restricts editing of a page, often due to vandalism or disputes, ensuring only experienced users can make changes (see above for more information). Administrators can prevent the creation of pages. This type of protection is useful for pages that have been deleted but repeatedly recreated. Such protection is case-sensitive. There are several levels of creation protection that can be applied to pages, identical to the levels for edit protection. A list of protected titles can be found at Special:ProtectedTitles (see also historical lists). Preemptive restrictions on new article titles are instituted through the title blacklist system, which allows for more flexible protection with support for substrings and regular expressions. Pages that have been creation-protected are sometimes referred to as "salted". Editors wishing to re-create a salted title with appropriate content should either contact an administrator (preferably the protecting administrator), file a request for reduction in protection level, or use the deletion review process. To make a convincing case for re-creation, it is helpful to show a draft version of the intended article when filing a request. Create protection of any duration may be applied to pages being repeatedly recreated in violation of policy using the lowest protection level sufficient to stop the disruption (autoconfirmed, extended-confirmed, or full). Due to the implementation of ACPERM, non-confirmed editors cannot create pages in mainspace; thus, semi-creation protection should be used only for protection of pages outside of mainspace. While creation-protection is usually permanent, temporary creation protection can be applied if a page is repeatedly recreated by a single user (or sockpuppets of that user, if applicable). Move-protected pages, or more technically, fully move-protected pages, cannot be moved to a new title except by an administrator. Move protection is commonly applied to: Move protection of any duration may be applied to pages being repeatedly moved in violation of policy using the lowest protection level sufficient to stop the disruption (extended-confirmed or full). Non-confirmed editors cannot move pages so semi-move protection has no effect. Fully edit-protected pages are also implicitly move-protected. As with full edit protection, protection because of edit warring should not be considered an endorsement of the current name. When move protection is applied during a requested move discussion, the page should be protected at the location it was at when the move request was started. All files and categories are implicitly move-protected, requiring file movers or administrators to rename files, and page movers or administrators to rename categories. Upload-protected files, or more technically, fully upload-protected files, cannot be replaced with new versions except by an administrator. Upload protection does not protect file pages from editing. It can be applied by an administrator to: Protection levels Pending changes protection allows unregistered and new users to edit pages, while keeping their edits hidden from unregistered users (who make up the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia articles) until those changes are accepted by a pending changes reviewer or an administrator. An alternative to semi-protection, it is used to suppress vandalism and certain other persistent problems, while allowing all users to continue to submit edits. Pending changes is technically implemented as a separate option, with its own duration, and it yields to other edit protection levels in cases of overlap. When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an unregistered editor or a new user, the edit is not directly visible to the majority of Wikipedia readers, until it is reviewed and accepted by an editor with the pending changes reviewer right. When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an autoconfirmed user, the edit will be immediately visible to Wikipedia readers, unless there are pending edits waiting to be reviewed. Pending changes are visible in the page history, where they are marked as "pending review". Readers who are not logged in (the vast majority of readers) are shown the latest accepted version of the page; logged-in users see the latest version of the page, with all changes (reviewed or not) applied. When editors who are not reviewers make changes to an article with unreviewed pending changes, their edits are also marked as pending and are not visible to most readers. A user who clicks "edit this page" is always, at that point, shown the latest version of the page for editing regardless of whether the user is logged in or not. Pending changes are typically reviewed within several hours. Pending changes can be used to protect articles against: Pending changes protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against violations that have not yet occurred. Like semi-protection, pending changes protection should never be used in genuine content disputes, where there is a risk of placing a particular group of editors (unregistered users) at a disadvantage. Semi-protection is generally a better option for articles with a high edit rate as well as articles affected by issues difficult for pending changes reviewers to detect, such as non-obvious vandalism, plausible-sounding misinformation, and hard-to-detect copyright violations. In addition, administrators may apply temporary pending changes protection on pages that are subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption (for example, due to media attention) when blocking individual users is not a feasible option. As with other forms of protection, the time frame of the protection should be proportional to the problem. Indefinite PC protection should be used only in cases of severe long-term disruption. Removal of pending changes protection can be requested to any administrator, or at requests for unprotection. The reviewing process is described in detail at Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes. Semi-protected pages may be edited only by registered users who are confirmed or autoconfirmed (accounts that are at least 4 days old and with at least 10 edits on English Wikipedia). Semi-protection is useful when there is a significant amount of disruption or vandalism from new or unregistered users, or to prevent sockpuppets of blocked or banned users from editing, especially when it occurs on biographies of living persons who have had a recent high level of media interest. An alternative to semi-protection is pending changes, which is sometimes favored when an article is being vandalized regularly, but otherwise receives a low amount of editing. Such users can request edits to a semi-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. If the page in question and its talk page are both protected, the edit request should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection instead. New users may also request the confirmed user right at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed. Semi-protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred or to privilege registered users over unregistered users in (valid) content disputes. Administrators may apply temporary semi-protection on pages that are: In addition, administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages that are subject to heavy and persistent vandalism or violations of content policy (such as Wikipedia's biographies of living persons or neutral point of view policies). A page and its talk page should not normally be protected at the same time. In exceptional cases, if a page and its talk page are both protected, the talk page should direct affected editors to Wikipedia:Request for edit through the use of a non-iconified page protection template, to ensure that no editor is entirely prevented from contributing. Today's featured article is, since 2023, always semi-protected. However, this was historically not the case. Extended confirmed protection, previously known as 30/500 protection, restricts editing to users with the extended confirmed user access level, administrators, and bots. Extended confirmed is automatically granted to users one edit after their account has existed for at least 30 days and has made at least 500 edits. Where semi-protection has proven to be ineffective, administrators may use extended confirmed protection to combat disruption (vandalism, abusive sockpuppetry, edit wars, etc.) on any topic. Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered/new users in valid content disputes (except as general sanction enforcement; see below). When necessary to prevent disruption in designated contentious topic areas, administrators are authorized to make protections at any level. (This is distinct from the extended confirmed restriction below.) Community-designated contentious topics grant similar authorizations. Some topic areas are under Arbitration Committee extended confirmed restriction as a general sanction. When such a restriction is in effect in a topic area, only extended-confirmed users may make edits related to the topic area. Enforcement of the restriction on articles primarily in the topic area is preferably done with extended confirmed protection, but it is not required (other enforcement methods are outlined in the policy). As always, review the policy before enforcing it. Community general sanctions, applying a similar extended confirmed restriction, have also been authorized by the community. General sanctions has a list of the active general sanctions that incorporate the extended confirmed restriction. High-risk templates can be extended confirmed–protected at administrator discretion when template protection would be too restrictive and semi-protection would be ineffective to stop widespread disruption. Extended confirmed protection can be applied at the discretion of an administrator when creation-protecting a page. A bot maintains a report of pages recently put under extended confirmed protection. Any protection made as arbitration enforcement will be automatically logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/Protections. Community-authorized discretionary sanctions must be logged on a page specific to the topic area. A full list of the 14975 pages under extended confirmed protection can be found here. Users can request edits to an extended confirmed–protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. A template-protected page can be edited only by administrators or users in the Template editors group. This protection level should be used almost exclusively on high-risk templates and modules. In cases where pages in other namespaces become transcluded to a very high degree, this protection level is also valid. This is a protection level that replaces full protection on pages that are merely protected due to high transclusion rates, rather than content disputes. It should be used on templates whose risk factor would have otherwise warranted full protection. It should not be used on less risky templates on the grounds that the template editor user right exists—the existence of the right should not result in more templates becoming uneditable for the general editing community. In borderline cases, extended confirmed protection or lower can be applied to high risk templates that the general editing community still needs to edit regularly. A full list of the pages under template protection can be found here. Editors may request edits to a template-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit template-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. A fully protected page cannot be edited or moved by anyone except administrators. Modifications to a fully protected page can be proposed on its talk page (or at another appropriate forum) for discussion. Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus. Placing the {{Edit fully-protected}} template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes. While content disputes and edit warring can be addressed with user blocks issued by uninvolved administrators, allowing normal page editing by other editors at the same time, the protection policy provides an alternative approach as administrators have the discretion to temporarily fully protect an article to end an ongoing edit war. This approach may better suit multi-party disputes and contentious content, as it makes talk page consensus a requirement for implementation of requested edits. When protecting a page because of a content dispute, administrators have a duty to avoid protecting a version that contains policy-violating content, such as vandalism, copyright violations, defamation, or poor-quality coverage of living people. Administrators are deemed to remain uninvolved when exercising discretion on whether to apply protection to the current version of an article, or to an older, stable, or pre-edit-war version. Fully protected pages may not be edited except to make changes that are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus. Editors convinced that the protected version of an article contains policy-violating content, or that protection has rewarded edit warring or disruption by establishing a contentious revision, may identify a stable version prior to the edit war and request reversion to that version. Before making such a request, editors should consider how independent editors might view the suggestion and recognize that continuing an edit war is grounds for being blocked. Administrators who have made substantive content changes to an article are considered involved and must not use their advanced permissions to further their own positions. When involved in a dispute, it is almost always wisest to respect the editing policies that bind all editors and call for input from an uninvolved administrator, rather than to invite controversy by acting unilaterally. If a deleted page is going through deletion review, only administrators are normally capable of viewing the former content of the page. If they feel it would benefit the discussion to allow other users to view the page content, administrators may restore the page, replace the contents with the {{Temporarily undeleted}} template or a similar notice, and fully protect the page to prevent further editing. The previous contents of the page are then accessible to everyone via the page history. Generic file names such as File:Photo.jpg, File:Example.jpg, File:Map.jpg, and File:Sound.wav are fully protected to prevent new versions from being uploaded. Furthermore, File:Map.jpg and File:Sound.wav are salted. The following pages and templates are usually fully protected for an indefinite period of time: As with full edit protection, administrators should avoid favoring one version over another, and protection should not be considered an endorsement of the current version. An exception to this rule is when they are protected due to upload vandalism. Pages can be protected by Wikimedia Foundation staff in response to issues such as copyright infringement or libel as outlined in Foundation:Policy:Office actions § Use of advanced rights by Foundation staff. Such actions override community consensus. Administrators should not edit or unprotect such pages without permission from Wikimedia Foundation staff. Cascading protection fully protects a page, and extends that full protection automatically to any page that is transcluded onto the protected page, whether directly or indirectly. This includes templates, images and other media that are hosted on the English Wikipedia. Files stored on Commons are not protected by any other wiki's cascading protection and, if they are to be protected, must be either temporarily uploaded to the English Wikipedia or explicitly protected at Commons (whether manually or through cascading protection there). When operational, KrinkleBot cascade-protects Commons files transcluded at Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow, Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection and Main Page. As the bot's response time varies, media should not be transcluded on the main page (or its constituent templates) until after it has been protected. (This is particularly relevant to Template:In the news, for which upcoming images are not queued at Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow.) Cascading protection: The list of cascading-protected pages can be found at Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items. Requests to add or remove cascading protection on a page should be made at Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items as an edit request. Operational pages principally used by software, including bots and user scripts, may be protected based on the type of use, content, and other considerations. This includes configuration pages, data pages, log pages, status pages, and other pages specific to the operation of software. However, personal CSS, personal JavaScript, and personal JSON are automatically protected and should not be protected for this reason. Some pages on Wikipedia are subject to software-enforced protection that administrators cannot change or remove. This is called permanent or indefinite protection, and interface protection in the case of CSS and JavaScript pages. Specifically, this applies to: Protection by namespace Modifications to a protected page can be proposed on its talk page (or at another appropriate forum) for discussion. Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus. Placing the {{Edit protected}} template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes. Talk pages are not usually protected, and are semi-protected only for a limited duration in the most severe cases of disruption. User talk pages are rarely protected. However, protection can be applied if there is severe vandalism or abuse. Users whose talk pages are protected may wish to have an unprotected user talk subpage linked conspicuously from their main talk page to allow good-faith comments from users that the protection restricts editing from. A user's request to have their own talk page protected is not a sufficient rationale by itself to protect the page, although requests can be considered if a reason is provided. Blocked users' user talk pages should not ordinarily be protected, as this interferes with the user's ability to contest their block through the normal process. It also prevents others from being able to use the talk page to communicate with the blocked editor. In extreme cases of abuse by the blocked user, such as abuse of the {{unblock}} template, re-blocking the user with talk page access removed should be preferred over applying protection to the page. If the user has been blocked and with the ability to edit their user talk page disabled, they should be informed of this in a block notice, subsequent notice, or message, and it should include information and instructions for appealing their block off-wiki, such as through the UTRS tool interface or, as a last recourse, the Arbitration Committee. When required, protection should be implemented for only a brief period, not exceeding the duration of the block. Confirmed socks of registered users should be dealt with in accordance with Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry; their pages are not normally protected. Base user pages (for example, the page User:Example, and not User:Example/Lipsum or User talk:Example) are automatically protected from creation or editing by unconfirmed accounts and anonymous temporary account users. An exception is that unconfirmed registered users are allowed to create or edit their own user page. Temporary account editors and unconfirmed accounts are also unable to create or edit user pages that do not belong to a currently registered account. This protection is enforced by an edit filter. Users may opt-out of this protection by placing {{unlocked userpage}} anywhere on their own user page. User pages and subpages within their own user space can be protected upon a request from the user, as long as a need exists. Pages within the user space should not be automatically or preemptively protected without good reason or cause. Requests for protection specifically at uncommon levels (such as template protection) can be granted if the user has expressed a genuine and realistic need. When a filter is insufficient to stop user page vandalism, a user may choose to create a ".css" subpage (e.g., User:Example/monobook.css), copy all the contents of their user page onto the subpage, transclude the subpage by putting {{User:Example/monobook.css}} on their user page, and then ask an administrator to fully protect their user page. Because user space pages that end in ".css" and ".js" are editable only by the user to which that user space belongs and interface administrators, this will protect one's user page from further vandalism. In the event of the confirmed death of an editor, their user page (but not the user talk page) should be fully protected. Highly visible templates – those used on a large number of pages or frequently substituted – are often protected based on the degree of visibility, type of use, content, and other considerations. Protected templates should normally have the {{documentation}} template. It loads the unprotected /doc page, so that non-admins and IP-users can edit the documentation, categories and interwiki links. It also automatically adds {{pp-template}} to protected templates, which displays a small padlock in the top right corner and categorizes the template as protected. Only manually add {{pp-template}} to protected templates that do not use {{documentation}} (mostly the flag templates). Cascading protection should generally not be applied directly to templates, as it will not protect transclusions inside <includeonly> tags or transclusions that depend on template parameters, but will protect the template's documentation subpage. Instead, consider either of the following: Note: All editnotice templates (except those in userspace) are already protected via MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. They can be edited by admins, template editors and page movers only. Sandboxes should not ordinarily be protected since their purpose is to let new users test and experiment with wiki syntax. Most sandboxes are automatically cleaned every 12 hours, although they are frequently overwritten by other testing users. The Wikipedia:Sandbox is cleaned every hour. Those who use sandboxes for malicious purposes, or to violate policies such as no personal attacks, civility, or copyrights, should instead be warned and/or blocked. Available templates The following templates can be added at the very top of a page to indicate that it is protected: On redirect pages, use the {{Redirect category shell}} template, which automatically categorizes by protection level, below the redirect line. A protection template may also be added below the redirect line, but it will serve only to categorize the page, as it will not be visible on the page, and it will have to be manually removed when protection is removed. Retired protections Superprotect was a level of protection, allowing editing only by Wikimedia Foundation employees who were in the Staff global group. It was implemented on August 10, 2014 and removed on November 5, 2015. It was never used on the English Wikipedia. For several years, the Gadget namespace (which no longer exists) could only be edited by WMF staff, which has sometimes been referred to as superprotection even though it is unrelated to the above use. Cascading semi-protection was formerly possible, but it was disabled in 2007 after users noticed that non-administrators could fully protect any page by transcluding it onto the page to which cascading semi-protection had been applied by an administrator. Originally, two levels of pending changes protection existed, where level 2 required edits by all users who were not pending changes reviewers to be reviewed. Following a community discussion, level 2 was retired from the English Wikipedia in January 2017. Since that change, "pending changes level 1" is generally referred to as just "pending changes". See also Notes |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry] | [TOKENS: 2264] |
Contents Photogrammetry Photogrammetry is the science and technology of obtaining reliable information about physical objects and the environment through the process of recording, measuring and interpreting photographic images and patterns of electromagnetic radiant imagery and other phenomena. While the invention of the method is attributed to Aimé Laussedat, the term "photogrammetry" was coined by the German architect Albrecht Meydenbauer [de], which appeared in his 1867 article "Die Photometrographie." There are many variants of photogrammetry. One example is the extraction of three-dimensional measurements from two-dimensional data (i.e. images); for example, the distance between two points that lie on a plane parallel to the photographic image plane can be determined by measuring their distance on the image, if the scale of the image is known. Another is the extraction of accurate color ranges and values representing such quantities as albedo, specular reflection, metallicity, or ambient occlusion from photographs of materials for the purposes of physically based rendering. Close-range photogrammetry refers to the collection of photography from a lesser distance than traditional aerial (or orbital) photogrammetry. Photogrammetric analysis may be applied to one photograph, or may use high-speed photography and remote sensing to detect, measure and record complex 2D and 3D motion fields by feeding measurements and imagery analysis into computational models in an attempt to successively estimate, with increasing accuracy, the actual, 3D relative motions. From its beginning with the stereoplotters used to plot contour lines on topographic maps, it now has a very wide range of uses such as sonar, radar, and lidar. Methods Photogrammetry uses methods from many disciplines, including optics and projective geometry. Digital image capturing and photogrammetric processing includes several well defined stages, which allow the generation of 2D or 3D digital models of the object as an end product. The data model on the right shows what type of information can go into and come out of photogrammetric methods. The 3D coordinates define the locations of object points in the 3D space. The image coordinates define the locations of the object points' images on the film or an electronic imaging device. The exterior orientation of a camera defines its location in space and its view direction. The inner orientation defines the geometric parameters of the imaging process. This is primarily the focal length of the lens, but can also include the description of lens distortions. Further additional observations play an important role: With scale bars, basically a known distance of two points in space, or known fix points, the connection to the basic measuring units is created. Each of the four main variables can be an input or an output of a photogrammetric method. Algorithms for photogrammetry typically attempt to minimize the sum of the squares of errors over the coordinates and relative displacements of the reference points. This minimization is known as bundle adjustment and is often performed using the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. A special case, called stereophotogrammetry, involves estimating the three-dimensional coordinates of points on an object employing measurements made in two or more photographic images taken from different positions (see stereoscopy). Common points are identified on each image. A line of sight (or ray) can be constructed from the camera location to the point on the object. It is the intersection of these rays (triangulation) that determines the three-dimensional location of the point. More sophisticated algorithms can exploit other information about the scene that is known a priori, for example symmetries, in some cases allowing reconstructions of 3D coordinates from only one camera position. Stereophotogrammetry is emerging as a robust non-contacting measurement technique to determine dynamic characteristics and mode shapes of non-rotating and rotating structures. The collection of images for the purpose of creating photogrammetric models can be called more properly, polyoscopy, after Pierre Seguin Integration Photogrammetric data can be complemented with range data from other techniques. Photogrammetry is more accurate in the x and y direction while range data are generally more accurate in the z direction [citation needed]. This range data can be supplied by techniques like LiDAR, laser scanners (using time of flight, triangulation or interferometry), white-light digitizers and any other technique that scans an area and returns x, y, z coordinates for multiple discrete points (commonly called "point clouds"). Photos can clearly define the edges of buildings when the point cloud footprint can not. It is beneficial to incorporate the advantages of both systems and integrate them to create a better product. A 3D visualization can be created by georeferencing the aerial photos and LiDAR data in the same reference frame, orthorectifying the aerial photos, and then draping the orthorectified images on top of the LiDAR grid. It is also possible to create digital terrain models and thus 3D visualisations using pairs (or multiples) of aerial photographs or satellite (e.g. SPOT satellite imagery). Techniques such as adaptive least squares stereo matching are then used to produce a dense array of correspondences which are transformed through a camera model to produce a dense array of x, y, z data which can be used to produce digital terrain model and orthoimage products. Systems which use these techniques, e.g. the ITG system, were developed in the 1980s and 1990s but have since been supplanted by LiDAR and radar-based approaches, although these techniques may still be useful in deriving elevation models from old aerial photographs or satellite images. Applications Photogrammetry is used in fields such as topographic mapping, architecture, filmmaking, engineering, manufacturing, quality control, police investigation, cultural heritage, and geology. Archaeologists use it to quickly produce plans of large or complex sites, and meteorologists use it to determine the wind speed of tornadoes when objective weather data cannot be obtained. It is also used to combine live action with computer-generated imagery in movies post-production; The Matrix is a good example of the use of photogrammetry in film (details are given in the DVD extras). Photogrammetry was used extensively to create photorealistic environmental assets for video games including The Vanishing of Ethan Carter as well as EA DICE's Star Wars Battlefront. The main character of the game Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice was derived from photogrammetric motion-capture models taken of actress Melina Juergens. Photogrammetry is also commonly employed in collision engineering, especially with automobiles. When litigation for a collision occurs and engineers need to determine the exact deformation present in the vehicle, it is common for several years to have passed and the only evidence that remains is crash scene photographs taken by the police. Photogrammetry is used to determine how much the car in question was deformed, which relates to the amount of energy required to produce that deformation. The energy can then be used to determine important information about the crash (such as the velocity at time of impact). This technology is also used for the inspection of submerged objects and infrastructure, thanks to its ability to produce precise, georeferenced 3D models. Subsea photogrammetry applications are numerous in the marine energy sector, including integrity monitoring of offshore wind turbine foundations, assessment of anchor chain wear, inspection of cable protection and burial systems, and overall evaluation of offshore structures.It also plays an increasing role in maritime and river civil engineering, particularly for inspecting port quays, dikes, dams, and other hydraulic structures. By providing reliable and reproducible metric data, underwater photogrammetry improves the monitoring of structural changes, optimizes maintenance operations, and reduces the costs associated with interventions in underwater environments. Photomapping is the process of making a map with "cartographic enhancements" that have been drawn from a photomosaic that is "a composite photographic image of the ground," or more precisely, as a controlled photomosaic where "individual photographs are rectified for tilt and brought to a common scale (at least at certain control points)." Rectification of imagery is generally achieved by "fitting the projected images of each photograph to a set of four control points whose positions have been derived from an existing map or from ground measurements. When these rectified, scaled photographs are positioned on a grid of control points, a good correspondence can be achieved between them through skillful trimming and fitting and the use of the areas around the principal point where the relief displacements (which cannot be removed) are at a minimum." "It is quite reasonable to conclude that some form of photomap will become the standard general map of the future." They go on to suggest[who?] that, "photomapping would appear to be the only way to take reasonable advantage" of future data sources like high altitude aircraft and satellite imagery. Demonstrating the link between orthophotomapping and archaeology, historic airphotos photos were used to aid in developing a reconstruction of the Ventura mission that guided excavations of the structure's walls. Overhead photography has been widely applied for mapping surface remains and excavation exposures at archaeological sites. Suggested platforms for capturing these photographs has included: War Balloons from World War I; rubber meteorological balloons; kites; wooden platforms, metal frameworks, constructed over an excavation exposure; ladders both alone and held together with poles or planks; three legged ladders; single and multi-section poles; bipods; tripods; tetrapods, and aerial bucket trucks ("cherry pickers"). Handheld, near-nadir, overhead digital photographs have been used with geographic information systems (GIS) to record excavation exposures. Photogrammetry is increasingly being used in maritime archaeology because of the relative ease of mapping sites compared to traditional methods, allowing the creation of 3D maps which can be rendered in virtual reality. A somewhat similar application is the scanning of objects to automatically make 3D models of them. Since photogrammetry relies on images, there are physical limitations when those images are of an object that has dark, shiny or clear surfaces. In those cases, the produced model often still contains gaps, so additional cleanup with software like MeshLab, netfabb or MeshMixer is often still necessary. Alternatively, spray painting such objects with matte finish can remove any transparent or shiny qualities. Google Earth uses photogrammetry to create 3D imagery. There is also a project called Rekrei that uses photogrammetry to make 3D models of lost/stolen/broken artifacts that are then posted online. On Mount Stanley, an exhibition team sent out by Project Pressure created the first ever 3D model of the glacier using drone photography and GNSS technology showing a surface area decline of 29.5% between 2020 and 2024. High-resolution 3D point clouds derived from UAV or ground-based photogrammetry can be used to automatically or semi-automatically extract rock mass properties such as discontinuity orientations, persistence, and spacing. Software There exist many software packages for photogrammetry; see comparison of photogrammetry software. See also References Sources External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Protection_policy#cite_note-9] | [TOKENS: 5211] |
Contents Wikipedia:Protection policy In some circumstances, pages may need to be protected from modification by certain groups of editors. Pages are protected when there is disruption that cannot be prevented through other means, such as blocks. Wikipedia is built on the principle that anyone can edit, and therefore aims to have as many pages open for public editing as possible so that anyone can add material and correct issues. This policy states in detail the protection types and procedures for page protection and unprotection, and when each protection should and should not be applied. Protection is a technical restriction applied only by administrators, although any user may request protection. Protection can be indefinite or expire after a specified time. The various levels of protection can be applied to the page edit, page move, page create, and file upload actions. Even when a page is protected from editing, the source wikitext of the page can still be viewed and copied by anyone. A protected page is marked at its top right by a padlock icon, usually added by the {{pp-protected}} template. The {{pp-protected}} template is automatically added by the {{documentation}} template used in template space. Overview of page protection Any protection applied to a page involves setting a type, level, and duration as follows: Preemptive protection Applying page protection solely as a preemptive measure is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia and is generally not allowed. Instead, protection is used when vandalism, disruption, or abuse by multiple users is occurring at a frequency that warrants protection. The duration of protection should be as short as possible and at the lowest protection level sufficient to stop the disruption, allowing edits from as many productive users as possible. Exceptions include the Main Page, along with its templates and images, which are indefinitely fully protected. Additionally, Today's Featured Article is typically semi-protected from the day before its scheduled appearance on the Main Page until the day after it leaves. Finally, pages subject to Arbitration Committee remedies that permit or require preemptive protection may be protected accordingly. Requesting protection Page protection can be requested at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. Changes to a protected page should be proposed on the corresponding talk page, and then (if necessary) requested by adding an edit request. From there, if the requested changes are uncontroversial or if there is consensus for them, the changes can be carried out by a user who can edit the page. Except in the case of office actions (see below), Arbitration Committee remedies, or pages in the MediaWiki namespace (see below), administrators may unprotect a page if the reason for its protection no longer applies, a reasonable period has elapsed, and there is no consensus that continued protection is necessary. Users can request unprotection or a reduction in protection level by asking the administrator who applied the protection on the administrator's user talk page. If the administrator is inactive, no longer an administrator, or does not respond, then a request for reduction in protection level may be filed. Note that such requests will normally be declined if the protecting administrator is active and was not consulted first. A log of protections and unprotections is available at Special:Log/protect. Summary table Protection types Edit protection restricts editing of a page, often due to vandalism or disputes, ensuring only experienced users can make changes (see above for more information). Administrators can prevent the creation of pages. This type of protection is useful for pages that have been deleted but repeatedly recreated. Such protection is case-sensitive. There are several levels of creation protection that can be applied to pages, identical to the levels for edit protection. A list of protected titles can be found at Special:ProtectedTitles (see also historical lists). Preemptive restrictions on new article titles are instituted through the title blacklist system, which allows for more flexible protection with support for substrings and regular expressions. Pages that have been creation-protected are sometimes referred to as "salted". Editors wishing to re-create a salted title with appropriate content should either contact an administrator (preferably the protecting administrator), file a request for reduction in protection level, or use the deletion review process. To make a convincing case for re-creation, it is helpful to show a draft version of the intended article when filing a request. Create protection of any duration may be applied to pages being repeatedly recreated in violation of policy using the lowest protection level sufficient to stop the disruption (autoconfirmed, extended-confirmed, or full). Due to the implementation of ACPERM, non-confirmed editors cannot create pages in mainspace; thus, semi-creation protection should be used only for protection of pages outside of mainspace. While creation-protection is usually permanent, temporary creation protection can be applied if a page is repeatedly recreated by a single user (or sockpuppets of that user, if applicable). Move-protected pages, or more technically, fully move-protected pages, cannot be moved to a new title except by an administrator. Move protection is commonly applied to: Move protection of any duration may be applied to pages being repeatedly moved in violation of policy using the lowest protection level sufficient to stop the disruption (extended-confirmed or full). Non-confirmed editors cannot move pages so semi-move protection has no effect. Fully edit-protected pages are also implicitly move-protected. As with full edit protection, protection because of edit warring should not be considered an endorsement of the current name. When move protection is applied during a requested move discussion, the page should be protected at the location it was at when the move request was started. All files and categories are implicitly move-protected, requiring file movers or administrators to rename files, and page movers or administrators to rename categories. Upload-protected files, or more technically, fully upload-protected files, cannot be replaced with new versions except by an administrator. Upload protection does not protect file pages from editing. It can be applied by an administrator to: Protection levels Pending changes protection allows unregistered and new users to edit pages, while keeping their edits hidden from unregistered users (who make up the vast majority of visitors to Wikipedia articles) until those changes are accepted by a pending changes reviewer or an administrator. An alternative to semi-protection, it is used to suppress vandalism and certain other persistent problems, while allowing all users to continue to submit edits. Pending changes is technically implemented as a separate option, with its own duration, and it yields to other edit protection levels in cases of overlap. When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an unregistered editor or a new user, the edit is not directly visible to the majority of Wikipedia readers, until it is reviewed and accepted by an editor with the pending changes reviewer right. When a page under pending changes protection is edited by an autoconfirmed user, the edit will be immediately visible to Wikipedia readers, unless there are pending edits waiting to be reviewed. Pending changes are visible in the page history, where they are marked as "pending review". Readers who are not logged in (the vast majority of readers) are shown the latest accepted version of the page; logged-in users see the latest version of the page, with all changes (reviewed or not) applied. When editors who are not reviewers make changes to an article with unreviewed pending changes, their edits are also marked as pending and are not visible to most readers. A user who clicks "edit this page" is always, at that point, shown the latest version of the page for editing regardless of whether the user is logged in or not. Pending changes are typically reviewed within several hours. Pending changes can be used to protect articles against: Pending changes protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against violations that have not yet occurred. Like semi-protection, pending changes protection should never be used in genuine content disputes, where there is a risk of placing a particular group of editors (unregistered users) at a disadvantage. Semi-protection is generally a better option for articles with a high edit rate as well as articles affected by issues difficult for pending changes reviewers to detect, such as non-obvious vandalism, plausible-sounding misinformation, and hard-to-detect copyright violations. In addition, administrators may apply temporary pending changes protection on pages that are subject to significant but temporary vandalism or disruption (for example, due to media attention) when blocking individual users is not a feasible option. As with other forms of protection, the time frame of the protection should be proportional to the problem. Indefinite PC protection should be used only in cases of severe long-term disruption. Removal of pending changes protection can be requested to any administrator, or at requests for unprotection. The reviewing process is described in detail at Wikipedia:Reviewing pending changes. Semi-protected pages may be edited only by registered users who are confirmed or autoconfirmed (accounts that are at least 4 days old and with at least 10 edits on English Wikipedia). Semi-protection is useful when there is a significant amount of disruption or vandalism from new or unregistered users, or to prevent sockpuppets of blocked or banned users from editing, especially when it occurs on biographies of living persons who have had a recent high level of media interest. An alternative to semi-protection is pending changes, which is sometimes favored when an article is being vandalized regularly, but otherwise receives a low amount of editing. Such users can request edits to a semi-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit semi-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. If the page in question and its talk page are both protected, the edit request should be made at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection instead. New users may also request the confirmed user right at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Confirmed. Semi-protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against vandalism that has not yet occurred or to privilege registered users over unregistered users in (valid) content disputes. Administrators may apply temporary semi-protection on pages that are: In addition, administrators may apply indefinite semi-protection to pages that are subject to heavy and persistent vandalism or violations of content policy (such as Wikipedia's biographies of living persons or neutral point of view policies). A page and its talk page should not normally be protected at the same time. In exceptional cases, if a page and its talk page are both protected, the talk page should direct affected editors to Wikipedia:Request for edit through the use of a non-iconified page protection template, to ensure that no editor is entirely prevented from contributing. Today's featured article is, since 2023, always semi-protected. However, this was historically not the case. Extended confirmed protection, previously known as 30/500 protection, restricts editing to users with the extended confirmed user access level, administrators, and bots. Extended confirmed is automatically granted to users one edit after their account has existed for at least 30 days and has made at least 500 edits. Where semi-protection has proven to be ineffective, administrators may use extended confirmed protection to combat disruption (vandalism, abusive sockpuppetry, edit wars, etc.) on any topic. Extended confirmed protection should not be used as a preemptive measure against disruption that has not yet occurred, nor should it be used to privilege extended confirmed users over unregistered/new users in valid content disputes (except as general sanction enforcement; see below). When necessary to prevent disruption in designated contentious topic areas, administrators are authorized to make protections at any level. (This is distinct from the extended confirmed restriction below.) Community-designated contentious topics grant similar authorizations. Some topic areas are under Arbitration Committee extended confirmed restriction as a general sanction. When such a restriction is in effect in a topic area, only extended-confirmed users may make edits related to the topic area. Enforcement of the restriction on articles primarily in the topic area is preferably done with extended confirmed protection, but it is not required (other enforcement methods are outlined in the policy). As always, review the policy before enforcing it. Community general sanctions, applying a similar extended confirmed restriction, have also been authorized by the community. General sanctions has a list of the active general sanctions that incorporate the extended confirmed restriction. High-risk templates can be extended confirmed–protected at administrator discretion when template protection would be too restrictive and semi-protection would be ineffective to stop widespread disruption. Extended confirmed protection can be applied at the discretion of an administrator when creation-protecting a page. A bot maintains a report of pages recently put under extended confirmed protection. Any protection made as arbitration enforcement will be automatically logged at Wikipedia:Arbitration enforcement log/Protections. Community-authorized discretionary sanctions must be logged on a page specific to the topic area. A full list of the 14975 pages under extended confirmed protection can be found here. Users can request edits to an extended confirmed–protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit extended-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. A template-protected page can be edited only by administrators or users in the Template editors group. This protection level should be used almost exclusively on high-risk templates and modules. In cases where pages in other namespaces become transcluded to a very high degree, this protection level is also valid. This is a protection level that replaces full protection on pages that are merely protected due to high transclusion rates, rather than content disputes. It should be used on templates whose risk factor would have otherwise warranted full protection. It should not be used on less risky templates on the grounds that the template editor user right exists—the existence of the right should not result in more templates becoming uneditable for the general editing community. In borderline cases, extended confirmed protection or lower can be applied to high risk templates that the general editing community still needs to edit regularly. A full list of the pages under template protection can be found here. Editors may request edits to a template-protected page by proposing them on its talk page, using the {{Edit template-protected}} template if necessary to gain attention. A fully protected page cannot be edited or moved by anyone except administrators. Modifications to a fully protected page can be proposed on its talk page (or at another appropriate forum) for discussion. Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus. Placing the {{Edit fully-protected}} template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes. While content disputes and edit warring can be addressed with user blocks issued by uninvolved administrators, allowing normal page editing by other editors at the same time, the protection policy provides an alternative approach as administrators have the discretion to temporarily fully protect an article to end an ongoing edit war. This approach may better suit multi-party disputes and contentious content, as it makes talk page consensus a requirement for implementation of requested edits. When protecting a page because of a content dispute, administrators have a duty to avoid protecting a version that contains policy-violating content, such as vandalism, copyright violations, defamation, or poor-quality coverage of living people. Administrators are deemed to remain uninvolved when exercising discretion on whether to apply protection to the current version of an article, or to an older, stable, or pre-edit-war version. Fully protected pages may not be edited except to make changes that are uncontroversial or for which there is clear consensus. Editors convinced that the protected version of an article contains policy-violating content, or that protection has rewarded edit warring or disruption by establishing a contentious revision, may identify a stable version prior to the edit war and request reversion to that version. Before making such a request, editors should consider how independent editors might view the suggestion and recognize that continuing an edit war is grounds for being blocked. Administrators who have made substantive content changes to an article are considered involved and must not use their advanced permissions to further their own positions. When involved in a dispute, it is almost always wisest to respect the editing policies that bind all editors and call for input from an uninvolved administrator, rather than to invite controversy by acting unilaterally. If a deleted page is going through deletion review, only administrators are normally capable of viewing the former content of the page. If they feel it would benefit the discussion to allow other users to view the page content, administrators may restore the page, replace the contents with the {{Temporarily undeleted}} template or a similar notice, and fully protect the page to prevent further editing. The previous contents of the page are then accessible to everyone via the page history. Generic file names such as File:Photo.jpg, File:Example.jpg, File:Map.jpg, and File:Sound.wav are fully protected to prevent new versions from being uploaded. Furthermore, File:Map.jpg and File:Sound.wav are salted. The following pages and templates are usually fully protected for an indefinite period of time: As with full edit protection, administrators should avoid favoring one version over another, and protection should not be considered an endorsement of the current version. An exception to this rule is when they are protected due to upload vandalism. Pages can be protected by Wikimedia Foundation staff in response to issues such as copyright infringement or libel as outlined in Foundation:Policy:Office actions § Use of advanced rights by Foundation staff. Such actions override community consensus. Administrators should not edit or unprotect such pages without permission from Wikimedia Foundation staff. Cascading protection fully protects a page, and extends that full protection automatically to any page that is transcluded onto the protected page, whether directly or indirectly. This includes templates, images and other media that are hosted on the English Wikipedia. Files stored on Commons are not protected by any other wiki's cascading protection and, if they are to be protected, must be either temporarily uploaded to the English Wikipedia or explicitly protected at Commons (whether manually or through cascading protection there). When operational, KrinkleBot cascade-protects Commons files transcluded at Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow, Wikipedia:Main Page/Commons media protection and Main Page. As the bot's response time varies, media should not be transcluded on the main page (or its constituent templates) until after it has been protected. (This is particularly relevant to Template:In the news, for which upcoming images are not queued at Wikipedia:Main Page/Tomorrow.) Cascading protection: The list of cascading-protected pages can be found at Wikipedia:Cascade-protected items. Requests to add or remove cascading protection on a page should be made at Wikipedia talk:Cascade-protected items as an edit request. Operational pages principally used by software, including bots and user scripts, may be protected based on the type of use, content, and other considerations. This includes configuration pages, data pages, log pages, status pages, and other pages specific to the operation of software. However, personal CSS, personal JavaScript, and personal JSON are automatically protected and should not be protected for this reason. Some pages on Wikipedia are subject to software-enforced protection that administrators cannot change or remove. This is called permanent or indefinite protection, and interface protection in the case of CSS and JavaScript pages. Specifically, this applies to: Protection by namespace Modifications to a protected page can be proposed on its talk page (or at another appropriate forum) for discussion. Administrators can make changes to the protected article reflecting consensus. Placing the {{Edit protected}} template on the talk page will draw the attention of administrators for implementing uncontroversial changes. Talk pages are not usually protected, and are semi-protected only for a limited duration in the most severe cases of disruption. User talk pages are rarely protected. However, protection can be applied if there is severe vandalism or abuse. Users whose talk pages are protected may wish to have an unprotected user talk subpage linked conspicuously from their main talk page to allow good-faith comments from users that the protection restricts editing from. A user's request to have their own talk page protected is not a sufficient rationale by itself to protect the page, although requests can be considered if a reason is provided. Blocked users' user talk pages should not ordinarily be protected, as this interferes with the user's ability to contest their block through the normal process. It also prevents others from being able to use the talk page to communicate with the blocked editor. In extreme cases of abuse by the blocked user, such as abuse of the {{unblock}} template, re-blocking the user with talk page access removed should be preferred over applying protection to the page. If the user has been blocked and with the ability to edit their user talk page disabled, they should be informed of this in a block notice, subsequent notice, or message, and it should include information and instructions for appealing their block off-wiki, such as through the UTRS tool interface or, as a last recourse, the Arbitration Committee. When required, protection should be implemented for only a brief period, not exceeding the duration of the block. Confirmed socks of registered users should be dealt with in accordance with Wikipedia:Sockpuppetry; their pages are not normally protected. Base user pages (for example, the page User:Example, and not User:Example/Lipsum or User talk:Example) are automatically protected from creation or editing by unconfirmed accounts and anonymous temporary account users. An exception is that unconfirmed registered users are allowed to create or edit their own user page. Temporary account editors and unconfirmed accounts are also unable to create or edit user pages that do not belong to a currently registered account. This protection is enforced by an edit filter. Users may opt-out of this protection by placing {{unlocked userpage}} anywhere on their own user page. User pages and subpages within their own user space can be protected upon a request from the user, as long as a need exists. Pages within the user space should not be automatically or preemptively protected without good reason or cause. Requests for protection specifically at uncommon levels (such as template protection) can be granted if the user has expressed a genuine and realistic need. When a filter is insufficient to stop user page vandalism, a user may choose to create a ".css" subpage (e.g., User:Example/monobook.css), copy all the contents of their user page onto the subpage, transclude the subpage by putting {{User:Example/monobook.css}} on their user page, and then ask an administrator to fully protect their user page. Because user space pages that end in ".css" and ".js" are editable only by the user to which that user space belongs and interface administrators, this will protect one's user page from further vandalism. In the event of the confirmed death of an editor, their user page (but not the user talk page) should be fully protected. Highly visible templates – those used on a large number of pages or frequently substituted – are often protected based on the degree of visibility, type of use, content, and other considerations. Protected templates should normally have the {{documentation}} template. It loads the unprotected /doc page, so that non-admins and IP-users can edit the documentation, categories and interwiki links. It also automatically adds {{pp-template}} to protected templates, which displays a small padlock in the top right corner and categorizes the template as protected. Only manually add {{pp-template}} to protected templates that do not use {{documentation}} (mostly the flag templates). Cascading protection should generally not be applied directly to templates, as it will not protect transclusions inside <includeonly> tags or transclusions that depend on template parameters, but will protect the template's documentation subpage. Instead, consider either of the following: Note: All editnotice templates (except those in userspace) are already protected via MediaWiki:Titleblacklist. They can be edited by admins, template editors and page movers only. 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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_picture] | [TOKENS: 9881] |
Contents Film A film, movie, or motion picture[a] is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, emotions, or atmosphere through the use of moving images that are generally, since the 1930s, synchronized with sound and sometimes using other sensory stimuli. Films are produced by recording actual people and objects with cameras or by creating them using animation techniques and special effects. They comprise a series of individual frames, but when these images are shown rapidly in succession, the illusion of motion is given to the viewer. Flickering between frames is not seen due to an effect known as persistence of vision, whereby the eye retains a visual image for a fraction of a second after the source has been removed. Also of relevance is what causes the perception of motion: a psychological effect identified as beta movement. Films are considered by many to be an important art form; films entertain, educate, enlighten and inspire audiences. The visual elements of cinema need no translation, giving the motion picture a universal power of communication. Any film can become a worldwide attraction, especially with the addition of dubbing or subtitles that translate the dialogue. Films are also artifacts created by specific cultures, which reflect those cultures, and, in turn, affect them. History The art of film has drawn on several earlier traditions in fields such as oral storytelling, literature, theatre and visual arts. Forms of art and entertainment that had already featured moving or projected images such as shadowgraphy, camera obscura, shadow puppetry and magic lantern. The stroboscopic animation principle was introduced in 1833 with the stroboscopic disc (better known as the phénakisticope) and later applied in the zoetrope (since 1866), the flip book (since 1868), and the praxinoscope (since 1877), before it became the basic principle for cinematography.[citation needed] Experiments with early phénakisticope-based animation projectors were made at least as early as 1843 and publicly screened in 1847. Jules Duboscq marketed phénakisticope projection systems in France from c. 1853 until the 1890s.[citation needed] Photography was introduced in 1839, but initially photographic emulsions needed such long exposures that the recording of moving subjects seemed impossible. At least as early as 1844, photographic series of subjects posed in different positions were created to either suggest a motion sequence or document a range of different viewing angles. The advent of stereoscopic photography, with early experiments in the 1840s and commercial success since the early 1850s, raised interest in completing the photographic medium with the addition of means to capture color and motion. In 1849, Joseph Plateau published about the idea to combine his invention of the phénakisticope with the stereoscope, as suggested to him by stereoscope inventor Charles Wheatstone, and to use photographs of plaster sculptures in different positions to be animated in the combined device. In 1852, Jules Duboscq patented such an instrument as the "Stéréoscope-fantascope, ou Bïoscope", but he only marketed it very briefly, without success. One Bïoscope disc with stereoscopic photographs of a machine is in the Plateau collection of Ghent University, but no instruments or other discs have yet been found.[citation needed] By the late 1850s, the first examples of instantaneous photography came about and provided hope that motion photography would soon be possible, but it took a few decades before it was successfully combined with a method to record series of sequential images in real-time. In 1878, Eadweard Muybridge eventually managed to take a series of photographs of a running horse with a battery of cameras in a line along the track and published the results as The Horse in Motion on cabinet cards. Muybridge, as well as Étienne-Jules Marey, Ottomar Anschütz and many others, would create many more chronophotography studies. Muybridge had the contours of dozens of his chronophotographic series traced onto glass discs and projected them with his zoopraxiscope in his lectures from 1880 to 1895.[citation needed] Anschütz made his first instantaneous photographs in 1881. He developed a portable camera that allowed shutter speeds as short as 1/1000 of a second in 1882. The quality of his pictures was generally regarded as much higher than that of the chronophotography works of Muybridge and Étienne-Jules Marey. In 1886, Anschütz developed the Electrotachyscope, an early device that displayed short motion picture loops with 24 glass plate photographs on a 1.5 meter wide rotating wheel that was hand-cranked to a speed of circa 30 frames per second. Different versions were shown at many international exhibitions, fairs, conventions, and arcades from 1887 until at least 1894. Starting in 1891, some 152 examples of a coin-operated peep-box Electrotachyscope model were manufactured by Siemens & Halske in Berlin and sold internationally. Nearly 34,000 people paid to see it at the Berlin Exhibition Park in the summer of 1892. Others saw it in London or at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. On 25 November 1894, Anschütz introduced a Electrotachyscope projector with a 6x8 meter screening in Berlin. Between 22 February and 30 March 1895, a total of circa 7,000 paying customers came to view a 1.5-hour show of some 40 scenes at a 300-seat hall in the old Reichstag building in Berlin. Émile Reynaud already mentioned the possibility of projecting images of the Praxinoscope in his 1877 patent application. He presented a praxinoscope projection device at the Société française de photographie on 4 June 1880, but did not market his praxinoscope a projection before 1882. He then further developed the device into the Théâtre Optique which could project longer sequences with separate backgrounds, patented in 1888. He created several movies for the machine by painting images on hundreds of gelatin plates that were mounted into cardboard frames and attached to a cloth band. From 28 October 1892 to March 1900 Reynaud gave over 12,800 shows to a total of over 500,000 visitors at the Musée Grévin in Paris.[citation needed] By the end of the 1880s, the introduction of lengths of celluloid photographic film and the invention of motion picture cameras, which could photograph a rapid sequence of images using only one lens, allowed action to be captured and stored on a single compact reel of film.[citation needed] Movies were initially shown publicly to one person at a time through "peep show" devices such as the Electrotachyscope, Kinetoscope and the Mutoscope. Not much later, exhibitors managed to project films on large screens for theatre audiences.[citation needed] The first public screenings of films at which admission was charged were made in 1895 by the American Woodville Latham and his sons (using films produced by their Eidoloscope company), by the Skladanowsky brothers, and by French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumière, best known for L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1896), with ten of their own productions. Private screenings had preceded these by several months, with Latham's slightly predating the others'.[citation needed] The earliest films were simply one static shot that showed an event or action with no editing or other cinematic techniques. Typical films showed employees leaving a factory gate, people walking in the street, and the view from the front of a trolley as it traveled a city's Main Street. According to legend, when a film showed a locomotive at high speed approaching the audience, the audience panicked and ran from the theater. Around the turn of the 20th century, films started stringing several scenes together to tell a story. (The filmmakers who first put several shots or scenes discovered that, when one shot follows another, that act establishes a relationship between the content in the separate shots in the minds of the viewer. It is this relationship that makes all film storytelling possible. In a simple example, if a person is shown looking out a window, whatever the next shot shows, it will be regarded as the view the person was seeing.) Each scene was a single stationary shot with the action occurring before it. The scenes were later broken up into multiple shots photographed from different distances and angles.[citation needed] Other techniques such as camera movement were developed as effective ways to tell a story with film. Until sound film became commercially practical in the late 1920s, motion pictures were a purely visual art, but these innovative silent films had gained a hold on the public imagination. Rather than leave audiences with only the noise of the projector as an accompaniment, theater owners hired a pianist or organist or, in large urban theaters, a full orchestra to play music that fit the mood of the film at any given moment. By the early 1920s, most films came with a prepared list of sheet music to be used for this purpose, and complete film scores were composed for major productions.[citation needed] The rise of European cinema was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, while the film industry in the United States flourished with the rise of Hollywood, typified most prominently by the innovative work of D. W. Griffith in The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). However, in the 1920s, European filmmakers such as Eisenstein, F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, in many ways inspired by the meteoric wartime progress of film through Griffith, along with the contributions of Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and others, quickly caught up with American film-making and continued to further advance the medium.[citation needed] In the 1920s, the development of electronic sound recording technologies made it practical to incorporate a soundtrack of speech, music and sound effects synchronized with the action on the screen.[citation needed] The resulting sound films were initially distinguished from the usual silent "moving pictures" or "movies" by calling them "talking pictures" or "talkies." The revolution they wrought was swift. By 1930, silent film was practically extinct in the US and already being referred to as "the old medium."[citation needed] The evolution of sound in cinema began with the idea of combining moving images with existing phonograph sound technology. Early sound-film systems, such as Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope and the Vitaphone used by Warner Bros., laid the groundwork for synchronized sound in film. The Vitaphone system, produced alongside Bell Telephone Company and Western Electric, faced initial resistance due to expensive equipping costs, but sound in cinema gained acceptance with movies like Don Juan (1926) and The Jazz Singer (1927). American film studios, while Europe standardized on Tobis-Klangfilm and Tri-Ergon systems. This new technology allowed for greater fluidity in film, giving rise to more complex and epic movies like King Kong (1933). As the television threat emerged in the 1940s and 1950s, the film industry needed to innovate to attract audiences. In terms of sound technology, this meant the development of surround sound and more sophisticated audio systems, such as Cinerama's seven-channel system. However, these advances required a large number of personnel to operate the equipment and maintain the sound experience in theaters. In 1966, Dolby Laboratories introduced the Dolby A noise reduction system, which became a standard in the recording industry and eliminated the hissing sound associated with earlier standardization efforts. Dolby Stereo, a revolutionary surround sound system, followed and allowed cinema designers to take acoustics into consideration when designing theaters. This innovation enabled audiences in smaller venues to enjoy comparable audio experiences to those in larger city theaters. Today, the future of sound in film remains uncertain, with potential influences from artificial intelligence, remastered audio, and personal viewing experiences shaping its development. However, it is clear that the evolution of sound in cinema has been marked by continuous innovation and a desire to create more immersive and engaging experiences for audiences.[citation needed] A significant technological advancement in film was the introduction of "natural color," where color was captured directly from nature through photography, as opposed to being manually added to black-and-white prints using techniques like hand-coloring or stencil-coloring. Early color processes often produced colors that appeared far from "natural". Unlike the rapid transition from silent films to sound films, color's replacement of black-and-white happened more gradually. The crucial innovation was the three-strip version of the Technicolor process, first used in animated cartoons in 1932. The process was later applied to live-action short films, specific sequences in feature films, and finally, for an entire feature film, Becky Sharp, in 1935. Although the process was expensive, the positive public response, as evidenced by increased box office revenue, generally justified the additional cost. Consequently, the number of films made in color gradually increased year after year. One of the first mainstream films to use color was The Wizard of Oz (1939). In the early 1950s, black-and-white television started receiving criticism with many believing that television failed to reach the lofty intellectual and cultural expectations that accompanied its introduction. In an attempt to lure audiences back into theaters, bigger screens were installed, widescreen processes, polarized 3D projection, and stereophonic sound were introduced, and more films were made in color, which soon became the rule rather than the exception. Some important mainstream Hollywood films were still being made in black-and-white as late as the mid-1960s, but they marked the end of an era. Color television receivers had been available in the US since the mid-1950s, but at first, they were very expensive and few broadcasts were in color. During the 1960s, prices gradually came down, color broadcasts became common, and sales boomed. The overwhelming public verdict in favor of color was clear. After the final flurry of black-and-white films had been released in mid-decade, all Hollywood studio productions were filmed in color, with the usual exceptions made only at the insistence of "star" filmmakers such as Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese and Alfred Hitchcock with his film Psycho (1960). The decades following the decline of the studio system in the 1960s saw changes in the production and style of film. Various New Wave movements (including the French New Wave, New German Cinema wave, Indian New Wave, Japanese New Wave, New Hollywood, and Egyptian New Wave) and the rise of film-school-educated independent filmmakers contributed to the changes the medium experienced in the latter half of the 20th century.[citation needed] Digital technology has been the driving force for change throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. Digital 3D projection largely replaced earlier problem-prone 3D film systems and that became briefly popular in the early 2010s with films like Avatar (2009). Large-screen cinemas systems using 35mm and 70mm film were developed in the late 2010s, with companies like the IMAX corporation. Film theory "Film theory" seeks to develop concise and systematic concepts that apply to the study of film as art. The concept of film as an art-form began in 1911 with Ricciotto Canudo's manifest The Birth of the Sixth Art. The Moscow Film School, the oldest film school in the world, was founded in 1919, in order to teach about and research film theory. Formalist film theory, led by Rudolf Arnheim, Béla Balázs, and Siegfried Kracauer, emphasized how film differed from reality and thus could be considered a valid fine art. André Bazin reacted against this theory by arguing that film's artistic essence lay in its ability to mechanically reproduce reality, not in its differences from reality, and this gave rise to realist theory. More recent analysis spurred by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalysis and Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics among other things has given rise to psychoanalytic film theory, structuralist film theory, feminist film theory, and others. On the other hand, critics from the analytical philosophy tradition, influenced by Wittgenstein, try to clarify misconceptions used in theoretical studies and produce analysis of a film's vocabulary and its link to a form of life.[citation needed] Film is considered to have its own language.[citation needed] James Monaco wrote a classic text on film theory, titled "How to Read a Film," that addresses this. Director Ingmar Bergman famously said, "Andrei Tarkovsky for me is the greatest director, the one who invented a new language, true to the nature of film, as it captures life as a reflection, life as a dream." An example of the language is a sequence of back and forth images of one speaking actor's left profile, followed by another speaking actor's right profile, then a repetition of this, which is a language understood by the audience to indicate a conversation.[citation needed] This describes another theory of film, the 180-degree rule, as a visual story-telling device with an ability to place a viewer in a context of being psychologically present through the use of visual composition and editing.[citation needed] The "Hollywood style" includes this narrative theory, due to the overwhelming practice of the rule by movie studios based in Hollywood, California, during film's classical era. Another example of cinematic language is having a shot that zooms in on the forehead of an actor with an expression of silent reflection that cuts to a shot of a younger actor who vaguely resembles the first actor, indicating that the first person is remembering a past self, an edit of compositions that causes a time transition.[citation needed] Montage is a film editing technique in which separate pieces of film are selected, edited, and assembled to create a new section or sequence within a film. This technique can be used to convey a narrative or to create an emotional or intellectual effect by juxtaposing different shots, often for the purpose of condensing time, space, or information. Montage can involve flashbacks, parallel action, or the interplay of various visual elements to enhance the storytelling or create symbolic meaning. The concept of montage emerged in the 1920s, with pioneering Soviet filmmakers such as Sergei Eisenstein and Lev Kuleshov developing the theory of montage. Eisenstein's film Battleship Potemkin (1925) is a prime example of the innovative use of montage, where he employed complex juxtapositions of images to create a visceral impact on the audience. As the art of montage evolved, filmmakers began incorporating musical and visual counterpoint to create a more dynamic and engaging experience for the viewer. The development of scene construction through mise-en-scène, editing, and special effects led to more sophisticated techniques that can be compared to those utilized in opera and ballet. The French New Wave movement of the late 1950s and 1960s also embraced the montage technique, with filmmakers such as Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut using montage to create distinctive and innovative films. This approach continues to be influential in contemporary cinema, with directors employing montage to create memorable sequences in their films. In contemporary cinema, montage continues to play an essential role in shaping narratives and creating emotional resonance. Filmmakers have adapted the traditional montage technique to suit the evolving aesthetics and storytelling styles of modern cinema. As the medium of film continues to evolve, montage remains an integral aspect of visual storytelling, with filmmakers finding new and innovative ways to employ this powerful technique.[citation needed] Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films. In general, these works can be divided into two categories: academic criticism by film scholars and journalistic film criticism that appears regularly in newspapers and other media. Film critics working for newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media mainly review new releases. Normally they only see any given film once and have only a day or two to formulate their opinions. Despite this, critics have an important impact on the audience response and attendance at films, especially those of certain genres. Mass marketed action, horror, and comedy films tend not to be greatly affected by a critic's overall judgment of a film. The plot summary and description of a film and the assessment of the director's and screenwriters' work that makes up the majority of most film reviews can still have an important impact on whether people decide to see a film. For prestige films such as most dramas and art films, the influence of reviews is important. Poor reviews from leading critics at major papers and magazines will often reduce audience interest and attendance.[citation needed] If a movie can illuminate the lives of other people who share this planet with us and show us not only how different they are but, how even so, they share the same dreams and hurts, then it deserves to be called great. The impact of a reviewer on a given film's box office performance is a matter of debate. Some observers claim that movie marketing in the 2000s is so intense, well-coordinated and well financed that reviewers cannot prevent a poorly written or filmed blockbuster from attaining market success. However, the cataclysmic failure of some heavily promoted films which were harshly reviewed, as well as the unexpected success of critically praised independent films indicates that extreme critical reactions can have considerable influence. Other observers note that positive film reviews have been shown to spark interest in little-known films. Conversely, there have been several films in which film companies have so little confidence that they refuse to give reviewers an advanced viewing to avoid widespread panning of the film. However, this usually backfires, as reviewers are wise to the tactic and warn the public that the film may not be worth seeing and the films often do poorly as a result. Journalist film critics are sometimes called film reviewers. Critics who take a more academic approach to films, through publishing in film journals and writing books about films using film theory or film studies approaches, study how film and filming techniques work, and what effect they have on people. Rather than having their reviews published in newspapers or appearing on television, their articles are published in scholarly journals or up-market magazines. They also tend to be affiliated with colleges or universities as professors or instructors.[citation needed] Industry The making and showing of motion pictures became a source of profit almost as soon as the process was invented. Upon seeing how successful their new invention, and its product, was in their native France, the Lumières quickly set about touring the Continent to exhibit the first films privately to royalty and publicly to the masses. In each country, they would normally add new, local scenes to their catalogue and, quickly enough, found local entrepreneurs in the various countries of Europe to buy their equipment and photograph, export, import, and screen additional product commercially. The Oberammergau Passion Play of 1898 was the first commercial motion picture ever produced. Other pictures soon followed, and motion pictures became a separate industry that overshadowed the vaudeville world. Dedicated theaters and companies formed specifically to produce and distribute films, while motion picture actors became major celebrities and commanded huge fees for their performances. By 1917 Charlie Chaplin had a contract that called for an annual salary of one million dollars. From 1931 to 1956, film was also the only image storage and playback system for television programming until the introduction of videotape recorders.[citation needed] In the United States, much of the film industry is centered around Hollywood, California. Other regional centers exist in many parts of the world, such as Mumbai-centered Bollywood, the Indian film industry's Hindi cinema which produces the largest number of films in the world. Though the expense involved in making films has led cinema production to concentrate under the auspices of movie studios, recent advances in affordable film making equipment have allowed independent film productions to flourish.[citation needed] Profit is a key force in the industry, due to the costly and risky nature of filmmaking; many films have large cost overruns, an example being Kevin Costner's Waterworld. Yet many filmmakers strive to create works of lasting social significance. The Academy Awards (also known as "the Oscars") are the most prominent film awards in the United States, providing recognition each year to films, based on their artistic merits. There is also a large industry for educational and instructional films made in lieu of or in addition to lectures and texts. Revenue in the industry is sometimes volatile due to the reliance on blockbuster films released in movie theaters. The rise of alternative home entertainment has raised questions about the future of the cinema industry, and Hollywood employment has become less reliable, particularly for medium and low-budget films. Associated fields Derivative academic fields of study may both interact with and develop independently of filmmaking, as in film theory and analysis. Fields of academic study have been created that are derivative or dependent on the existence of film, such as film criticism, film history, divisions of film propaganda in authoritarian governments, or psychological on subliminal effects (e.g., of a flashing soda can during a screening). These fields may further create derivative fields, such as a movie review section in a newspaper or a television guide. Sub-industries can spin off from film, such as popcorn makers, and film-related toys (e.g., Star Wars figures). Sub-industries of pre-existing industries may deal specifically with film, such as product placement and other advertising within films.[citation needed] Terminology The terminology used for describing motion pictures varies considerably between British and American English. In British usage, the name of the medium is film. The word movie is understood but seldom used. Additionally, the pictures (plural) is used somewhat frequently to refer to the place where movies are exhibited; in American English this may be called the movies, but that term is becoming outdated. In other countries, the place where movies are exhibited may be called a cinema or movie theatre.[citation needed] By contrast, in the United States, movie is the predominant term for the medium. Although the words film and movie are sometimes used interchangeably, film is more often used when considering a work's artistic, theoretical, or technical aspects. The term movie more often refers to a work's entertainment or commercial aspects.[citation needed] Further terminology is used to distinguish various forms and media used in the film industry. Motion pictures and moving pictures are frequently used terms for films and movie productions specifically intended for theatrical exhibitions, such as Star Wars. DVD, Blu-ray Disc, and videotape are video formats that can reproduce a photochemical film. A reproduction based on such is called a transfer. After the advent of theatrical film as an industry, the television industry began using videotape as a recording medium. For many decades, tape was solely an analog medium onto which moving images could be either recorded or transferred. Film and filming refer to the photochemical medium that chemically records a visual image and the act of recording respectively. However, the act of shooting images with other visual media, such as with a digital camera, is still called filming, and the resulting works often called films as interchangeable to movies, despite not being shot on film. Silent films need not be utterly silent, but are films and movies without an audible dialogue, including those that have a musical accompaniment. The word talkies refers to the earliest sound films created to have audible dialogue recorded for playback along with the film, regardless of a musical accompaniment. Cinema either broadly encompasses both films and movies, or it is roughly synonymous with film and theatrical exhibition, and both are capitalized when referring to a category of art. The silver screen refers to the projection screen used to exhibit films and, by extension, is also used as a metonym for the entire film industry.[citation needed] Widescreen refers to a larger width to height in the frame, compared to earlier historic aspect ratios. A feature-length film, or feature film, is of a conventional full length, usually 60 minutes or more, and can commercially stand by itself without other films in a ticketed screening. A short is a film that is not as long as a feature-length film, often screened with other shorts, or preceding a feature-length film. An independent is a film made outside the conventional film industry.[citation needed] In US usage, one talks of a screening or projection of a movie or video on a screen at a public or private theater. In British English, a film showing happens at a cinema (never a theatre, which is a different medium and place altogether). Cinema usually refers to an arena designed specifically to exhibit films, where the screen is affixed to a wall, while theatre usually refers to a place where live, non-recorded action or combination thereof occurs from a podium or other type of stage, including the amphitheatre. Theatres can still screen movies in them, though the theatre would be retrofitted to do so. One might propose going to the cinema when referring to the activity, or sometimes to the pictures in British English, whereas the US expression is usually going to the movies. A cinema usually shows a mass-marketed movie using a front-projection screen process with either a film projector or, more recently, with a digital projector. But, cinemas may also show theatrical movies from their home video transfers that include Blu-ray Disc, DVD, and videocassette when they possess sufficient projection quality or based upon need, such as movies that exist only in their transferred state, which may be due to the loss or deterioration of the film master and prints from which the movie originally existed. Due to the advent of digital film production and distribution, physical film might be absent entirely.[citation needed] A double feature is a screening of two independently marketed, stand-alone feature films. A viewing is a watching of a film. Sales and at the box office refer to tickets sold at a theater, or more currently, rights sold for individual showings. A release is the distribution and often simultaneous screening of a film. A preview is a screening in advance of the main release.[citation needed] Any film may also have a sequel, which portrays events following those in the film. Bride of Frankenstein is an early example. When there are more films than one with the same characters, story arcs, or subject themes, these movies become a series, such as the James Bond series. Existing outside a specific story timeline usually does not exclude a film from being part of a series. A film that portrays events occurring earlier in a timeline with those in another film, but is released after that film, is sometimes called a prequel, an example being Butch and Sundance: The Early Days.[citation needed] The credits, or end credits, are a list that gives credit to the people involved in the production of a film. Films from before the 1970s usually start a film with credits, often ending with only a title card, saying "The End" or some equivalent, often an equivalent that depends on the language of the production.[citation needed] From then onward, a film's credits usually appear at the end of most films. However, films with credits that end a film often repeat some credits at or near the start of a film and therefore appear twice, such as that film's acting leads, while less frequently some appearing near or at the beginning only appear there, not at the end, which often happens to the director's credit. The credits appearing at or near the beginning of a film are usually called titles or beginning titles. A post-credits scene is a scene shown after the end of the credits. Ferris Bueller's Day Off has a post-credits scene in which Ferris tells the audience that the film is over and they should go home.[citation needed] A film's cast refers to a collection of the actors and actresses who appear, or star, in a film. A star is an actor or actress, often a popular one, and in many cases, a celebrity who plays a central character in a film. Occasionally the word can also be used to refer to the fame of other members of the crew, such as a director or other personality, such as Martin Scorsese. A crew is usually interpreted as the people involved in a film's physical construction outside cast participation, and it could include directors, film editors, photographers, grips, gaffers, set decorators, prop masters, and costume designers. A person can both be part of a film's cast and crew, such as Woody Allen, who directed and starred in Take the Money and Run.[citation needed] A film goer, movie goer, or film buff is a person who likes or often attends films and movies, and any of these, though more often the latter, could also see oneself as a student to films and movies or the filmic process. Intense interest in films, film theory, and film criticism, is known as cinephilia. A film enthusiast is known as a cinephile or cineaste.[citation needed] Preview performance refers to a showing of a film to a select audience, usually for the purposes of corporate promotions, before the public film premiere itself. Previews are sometimes used to judge audience reaction, which if unexpectedly negative, may result in recutting or even refilming certain sections based on the audience response. One example of a film that was changed after a negative response from the test screening is 1982's First Blood. After the test audience responded very negatively to the death of protagonist John Rambo, a Vietnam veteran, at the end of the film, the company wrote and re-shot a new ending in which the character survives. Trailers or previews are advertisements for films that will be shown in 1 to 3 months at a cinema. Back in the early days of cinema, with theaters that had only one or two screens, only certain trailers were shown for the films that were going to be shown there. Later, when theaters added more screens or new theaters were built with a lot of screens, all different trailers were shown even if they were not going to play that film in that theater. Film studios realized that the more trailers that were shown (even if it was not going to be shown in that particular theater) the more patrons would go to a different theater to see the film when it came out. The term trailer comes from their having originally been shown at the end of a film program.[citation needed] That practice did not last long because patrons tended to leave the theater after the films ended, but the name has stuck. Trailers are now shown before the film (or the "A film" in a double feature program) begins. Film trailers are also common on DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, as well as on the Internet and mobile devices. Trailers are created to be engaging and interesting for viewers. As a result, in the Internet era, viewers often seek out trailers to watch them. Of the ten billion videos watched online annually in 2008, film trailers ranked third, after news and user-created videos. A teaser is a much shorter preview or advertisement that lasts only 10 to 30 seconds. Teasers are used to get patrons excited about a film coming out in the next six to twelve months. Teasers may be produced even before the film production is completed.[citation needed] Culture Films are cultural artifacts created by specific cultures, facilitating intercultural dialogue. It is considered to be an important art form that provides entertainment and historical value, often visually documenting a period of time. The visual basis of the medium gives it a universal power of communication, often stretched further through the use of dubbing or subtitles to translate the dialog into other languages. Just seeing a location in a film is linked to higher tourism to that location, demonstrating how powerful the suggestive nature of the medium can be. Film is used for a range of goals, including education and propaganda due its ability to effectively intercultural dialogue. When the purpose is primarily educational, a film is called an "educational film". Examples are recordings of academic lectures and experiments, or a film based on a classic novel. Film may be propaganda, in whole or in part, such as the films made by Leni Riefenstahl in Nazi Germany, US war film trailers during World War II, or artistic films made under Stalin by Sergei Eisenstein. They may also be works of political protest, as in the films of Andrzej Wajda, or more subtly, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky. The same film may be considered educational by some, and propaganda by others as the categorization of a film can be subjective.[citation needed] Production At its core, the means to produce a film depend on the content the filmmaker wishes to show, and the apparatus for displaying it: the zoetrope merely requires a series of images on a strip of paper. Film production can, therefore, take as little as one person with a camera (or even without a camera, as in Stan Brakhage's 1963 film Mothlight), or thousands of actors, extras, and crew members for a live-action, feature-length epic. The necessary steps for almost any film can be boiled down to conception, planning, execution, revision, and distribution. The more involved the production, the more significant each of the steps becomes. In a typical production cycle of a Hollywood-style film, these main stages are defined as development, pre-production, production, post-production and distribution.[citation needed] This production cycle usually takes three years. The first year is taken up with development. The second year comprises preproduction and production. The third year, post-production and distribution. The bigger the production, the more resources it takes, and the more important financing becomes; most feature films are artistic works from the creators' perspective (e.g., film director, cinematographer, screenwriter) and for-profit business entities for the production companies.[citation needed] A film crew is a group of people hired by a film company, employed during the "production" or "photography" phase, for the purpose of producing a film or motion picture. Crew is distinguished from cast, who are the actors who appear in front of the camera or provide voices for characters in the film. The crew interacts with but is also distinct from the production staff, consisting of producers, managers, company representatives, their assistants, and those whose primary responsibility falls in pre-production or post-production phases, such as screenwriters and film editors. Communication between production and crew generally passes through the director and his/her staff of assistants. Medium-to-large crews are generally divided into departments with well-defined hierarchies and standards for interaction and cooperation between the departments. Other than acting, the crew handles everything in the photography phase: props and costumes, shooting, sound, electrics (i.e., lights), sets, and production special effects. Caterers (known in the film industry as "craft services") are usually not considered part of the crew.[citation needed] Film stock consists of transparent celluloid, acetate, or polyester base coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive chemicals. Cellulose nitrate was the first type of film base used to record motion pictures, but due to its flammability was eventually replaced by safer materials. Stock widths and the film format for images on the reel have had a rich history, though most large commercial films are still shot on (and distributed to theaters) as 35 mm prints.[citation needed] Originally moving picture film was shot and projected at various speeds using hand-cranked cameras and projectors; though 1000 frames per minute (16+2/3 frame/s) is generally cited as a standard silent speed, research indicates most films were shot between 16 frame/s and 23 frame/s and projected from 18 frame/s on up (often reels included instructions on how fast each scene should be shown). When synchronized sound film was introduced in the late 1920s, a constant speed was required for the sound head. 24 frames per second were chosen because it was the slowest (and thus cheapest) speed which allowed for sufficient sound quality. The standard was set with Warner Bros.'s The Jazz Singer and their Vitaphone system in 1927. Improvements since the late 19th century include the mechanization of cameras – allowing them to record at a consistent speed, quiet camera design – allowing sound recorded on-set to be usable without requiring large "blimps" to encase the camera, the invention of more sophisticated filmstocks and lenses, allowing directors to film in increasingly dim conditions, and the development of synchronized sound, allowing sound to be recorded at exactly the same speed as its corresponding action. The soundtrack can be recorded separately from shooting the film, but for live-action pictures, many parts of the soundtrack are usually recorded simultaneously.[citation needed] As a medium, film is not limited to motion pictures, since the technology developed as the basis for photography. It can be used to present a progressive sequence of still images in the form of a slideshow. Film has also been incorporated into multimedia presentations and often has importance as primary historical documentation. However, historic films have problems in terms of preservation and storage, and the motion picture industry is exploring many alternatives. Most films on cellulose nitrate base have been copied onto modern safety films. Some studios save color films through the use of separation masters: three B&W negatives each exposed through red, green, or blue filters (essentially a reverse of the Technicolor process). Digital methods have also been used to restore films, although their continued obsolescence cycle makes them (as of 2006) a poor choice for long-term preservation. Film preservation of decaying film stock is a matter of concern to both film historians and archivists and to companies interested in preserving their existing products in order to make them available to future generations (and thereby increase revenue). Preservation is generally a higher concern for nitrate and single-strip color films, due to their high decay rates; black-and-white films on safety bases and color films preserved on Technicolor imbibition prints tend to keep up much better, assuming proper handling and storage.[citation needed] Some films in recent decades have been recorded using analog video technology similar to that used in television production. Modern digital video cameras and digital projectors are gaining ground as well. These approaches are preferred by some film-makers, especially because footage shot with digital cinema can be evaluated and edited with non-linear editing systems (NLE) without waiting for the film stock to be processed. The migration was gradual, and as of 2005, most major motion pictures were still shot on film.[needs update] Independent filmmaking often takes place outside Hollywood, or other major studio systems. An independent film (or indie film) is a film initially produced without financing or distribution from a major film studio. Creative, business and technological reasons have all contributed to the growth of the indie film scene in the late 20th and early 21st century. On the business side, the costs of big-budget studio films also lead to conservative choices in cast and crew. There is a trend in Hollywood towards co-financing (over two-thirds of the films put out by Warner Bros. in 2000 were joint ventures, up from 10% in 1987). A hopeful director is almost never given the opportunity to get a job on a big-budget studio film without significant industry experience in film or television. Also, the studios rarely produce films with unknown actors, particularly in lead roles.[citation needed] Before the advent of digital alternatives, the cost of professional film equipment and stock was also a hurdle to being able to produce, direct, or star in a traditional studio film. But the advent of consumer camcorders in 1985, and more importantly, the arrival of high-resolution digital video in the early 1990s, have lowered the technology barrier to film production significantly. Both production and post-production costs have been significantly lowered; in the 2000s, the hardware and software for post-production can be installed in a commodity-based personal computer. Technologies such as DVDs, FireWire connections and a wide variety of professional and consumer-grade video editing software make film-making relatively affordable.[citation needed] Since the introduction of digital video DV technology, the means of production have become more democratized. Filmmakers can conceivably shoot a film with a digital video camera and edit the film, create and edit the sound and music, and mix the final cut on a high-end home computer. However, while the means of production may be democratized, financing, distribution, and marketing remain difficult to accomplish outside the traditional system. Most independent filmmakers rely on film festivals to get their films noticed and sold for distribution. The arrival of internet-based video websites such as YouTube and Veoh has further changed the filmmaking landscape, enabling indie filmmakers to make their films available to the public.[citation needed] An open content film is much like an independent film, but it is produced through open collaborations; its source material is available under a license which is permissive enough to allow other parties to create fan fiction or derivative works rather than a traditional copyright. Like independent filmmaking, open source filmmaking takes place outside Hollywood and other major studio systems.[citation needed] A fan film is a film or video inspired by a film, television program, comic book or a similar source, created by fans rather than by the source's copyright holders or creators. Fan filmmakers have traditionally been amateurs, but some of the most notable films have actually been produced by professional filmmakers as film school class projects or as demonstration reels. Fan films vary tremendously in length, from short faux-teaser trailers for non-existent motion pictures to rarer full-length motion pictures.[citation needed] Distribution Film distribution is the process through which a film is made available for viewing by an audience. This is normally the task of a professional film distributor, who would determine the marketing strategy of the film, the media by which a film is to be exhibited or made available for viewing, and may set the release date and other matters. The film may be exhibited directly to the public either through a movie theater (historically the main way films were distributed) or television for personal home viewing (including on DVD-Video or Blu-ray Disc, video-on-demand, online downloading, television programs through broadcast syndication etc.). Other ways of distributing a film include rental or personal purchase of the film in a variety of media and formats, such as VHS tape or DVD, or Internet downloading or streaming using a computer.[citation needed] Animation Animation is a technique in which each frame of a film is produced individually, whether generated as a computer graphic, or by photographing a drawn image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model unit (see claymation and stop motion), and then photographing the result with a special animation camera. When the frames are strung together and the resulting film is viewed at a speed of 16 or more frames per second, there is an illusion of continuous movement (due to the phi phenomenon). Generating such a film is very labor-intensive and tedious, though the development of computer animation has greatly sped up the process. Because animation is very time-consuming and often very expensive to produce, the majority of animation for TV and films comes from professional animation studios. However, the field of independent animation has existed at least since the 1950s, with animation being produced by independent studios (and sometimes by a single person). Several independent animation producers have gone on to enter the professional animation industry.[citation needed] Limited animation is a way of increasing production and decreasing costs of animation by using "short cuts" in the animation process. This method was pioneered by UPA and popularized by Hanna-Barbera in the United States, and by Osamu Tezuka in Japan, and adapted by other studios as cartoons moved from movie theaters to television. Although most animation studios are now using digital technologies in their productions, there is a specific style of animation that depends on film. Camera-less animation, made famous by film-makers like Norman McLaren, Len Lye, and Stan Brakhage, is painted and drawn directly onto pieces of film, and then run through a projector.[citation needed] See also Notes Citations References Further reading External links |
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Contents Guinness World Records Page version status This is an accepted version of this page Guinness World Records, known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as The Guinness Book of Records and in previous United States editions as The Guinness Book of World Records, is a British reference book published annually, listing world records both of human achievements and the extremes of the natural world. Sir Hugh Beaver created the concept in order to settle arguments debated in pubs, and twin brothers Norris and Ross McWhirter co-founded the book in London in late August 1955. The first edition topped the bestseller list in the United Kingdom by Christmas 1955. The following year the book was launched internationally, and as of the 2026 edition, it is now in its 71st year of publication, published in 100 countries and 40 languages, and maintains over 53,000 records in its database. The international franchise has extended beyond print to include television series and museums. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in Guinness World Records becoming the primary international source for cataloguing and verification of a huge number of world records. The organization employs record adjudicators to verify the authenticity of the setting and breaking of records. Following a series of owners, the franchise has been owned by the Jim Pattison Group since 2008, with its headquarters moved to South Quay Plaza, Canary Wharf, London, in 2017. Since 2008, Guinness World Records has orientated its business model away from selling books, and towards creating new world records as publicity exercises for individuals and organizations, which has attracted criticism. History On 10 November 1951, Sir Hugh Beaver, then the managing director of the Guinness Breweries, went on a shooting party in the North Slob, by the River Slaney in County Wexford, Ireland. After missing a shot at a golden plover, he became involved in an argument over whether the golden plover or the red grouse was the fastest game bird in Europe (the plover is faster, but neither is the fastest game bird in Europe). That evening at Castlebridge House, he realized that it was impossible to confirm in reference books whether or not the golden plover was Europe's fastest game bird. Beaver knew that there must have been numerous other questions debated nightly among the public, but there was no book in the world with which to settle arguments about records. He realized then that a book supplying the answers to this sort of question might prove successful. Beaver's idea became a reality when Guinness employee Christopher Chataway recommended university friends Norris and Ross McWhirter, who had been running a fact-finding agency in London. The twin brothers were commissioned in August 1954 to compile what became The Guinness Book of (Superlatives and now) Records.[clarification needed] A thousand copies were distributed for free to pubs across Britain and Ireland as a promotional asset for the Guinness brand, and they became immensely popular with customers. After the founding of The Guinness Book of Records office at the top of Ludgate House, 107 Fleet Street, London, the first 198-page edition was bound on 27 August 1955 and went to the top of the British bestseller list by Christmas. The following year, it was introduced into the United States by New York publisher David Boehm and sold 70,000 copies. Since then, Guinness World Records has sold more than 150 million copies in 100 countries and 40 languages. Due to the book's surprise success, many further editions were printed, eventually settling into a pattern of one revision a year, published in September/October, in time for Christmas. The McWhirters continued to compile it for many years. Both brothers had an encyclopedic memory; on the British children's television series Record Breakers (based upon the book), which was broadcast on the BBC from 1972 to 2001, they would take questions posed by children in the audience on various world records and were able to give the correct answer. Ross McWhirter was assassinated by two members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army in 1975, in response to offering a £50,000 reward for information that would lead to the capture of members of the organization. Following Ross's assassination, the feature on the show where questions about records posed by children were answered was called Norris on the Spot. Norris carried on as the book's sole editor. Guinness Superlatives, later Guinness World Records Limited, was incorporated in London in 1954 to publish the first book. Sterling Publishing owned the rights to the Guinness book in the US for decades until it was repurchased by Guinness in 1989 after an 18-month long lawsuit. The group was owned by Guinness PLC and subsequently Diageo until 2001, when it was purchased by Gullane Entertainment for £45.5 million ($65 million). Gullane was itself purchased by HIT Entertainment in 2002. In 2006, Apax Partners purchased HIT and subsequently sold Guinness World Records in early 2008 to the Jim Pattison Group, the parent company of Ripley Entertainment, which is licensed to operate Guinness World Records' Attractions. With offices in New York City and Tokyo, Guinness World Records' global headquarters remain in South Quay Plaza in Canary Wharf, London, while its museum attractions are based at Ripley headquarters in Orlando, Florida. Recent editions have focused on record feats by individuals. Competitions range from obvious ones such as Olympic weightlifting to the longest egg tossing distances, or for the longest time spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV or the largest number of hot dogs consumed in three minutes. Besides records about competitions, it contains such facts such as the heaviest tumor, the most poisonous fungus, the longest-running soap opera and the most valuable life-insurance policy, among others. Many records also relate to the youngest people to have achieved something, such as the youngest person to visit all nations of the world, currently held by Maurizio Giuliano. Each edition contains a selection of the records from the Guinness World Records database, as well as select new records, with the criteria for inclusion changing from year to year. The latest edition is the 72nd, published in August 2025. The retirement of Norris McWhirter from his consulting role in 1995 and the subsequent decision by Diageo Plc to sell The Guinness Book of Records brand have shifted the focus of the books from text-oriented to illustrated reference. A selection of records are curated for the book from the full archive but all existing Guinness World Records titles can be accessed by creating a login on the company's website. Applications made by individuals for existing record categories are free of charge. There is an administration fee of £5 (or $5) to propose a new record title. A number of spin-off books and television series have also been produced. Guinness World Records bestowed the record of "Person with the most records" on Ashrita Furman of Queens, New York, in April 2009; at that time, he held 100 records. In 2005, Guinness designated 9 November as International Guinness World Records Day to encourage breaking of world records. In 2006, an estimated 100,000 people participated in over 10 countries. Guinness reported 2,244 new records in 12 months, which was a 173% increase over the previous year. In February 2008, NBC aired The Top 100 Guinness World Records of All Time and Guinness World Records made the complete list available on their website. The popularity of the franchise has resulted in Guinness World Records becoming the primary international authority on the cataloguing and verification of a huge number of world records. Over its history, numerous world record categories have been discontinued. This list may include that the record poses a threat to health or the environment. Defining records For many records, Guinness World Records is the effective authority on the exact requirements for them and with whom records reside, the company providing adjudicators to events to determine the veracity of record attempts. The list of records which the Guinness World Records covers is not fixed, records may be added and also removed for various reasons. The public is invited to submit applications for records, which can be either the bettering of existing records or substantial achievements which could constitute a new record. The company also provides corporate services for companies to "harness the power of record-breaking to deliver tangible success for their businesses." Guinness World Records states several types of records it will not accept for ethical reasons, such as those related to the killing or harming of animals. In the 2006 Guinness Book of World Records, Colombian serial killer Pedro López was listed as the "most prolific serial killer", having murdered at least 110 people (with Lopez himself claiming he murdered over 300 people) in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in the late 1960s to 1980s. This was later removed after complaints that it made a competition out of murder, however the record was reinstated in the 2026 edition. Several world records that were once included in the book have been removed for ethical reasons, including concerns for the well-being of potential record breakers. For example, following publication of the "heaviest pet" record, many owners overfed their pets beyond the bounds of what was healthy, and therefore such entries were removed. The Guinness Book also dropped records within their "eating and drinking records" section of Human Achievements in 1991 over concerns that potential competitors could harm themselves and expose the publisher to potential litigation. These changes included the removal of all spirit, wine and beer drinking records, along with other unusual records for consuming such unlikely things as bicycles and trees. Other records, such as sword swallowing and rally driving (on public roads), were closed from further entry as the current holders had performed beyond what are considered safe human tolerance levels. There have been instances of closed categories being reopened. For example, the sword swallowing category was listed as closed in the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records, but has since been reopened with Johnny Strange breaking a sword swallowing record on Guinness World Records Live. Similarly, the speed beer drinking records which were dropped from the book in 1991, reappeared 17 years later in the 2008 edition, but were moved from the "Human Achievements" section of the older book to the "Modern Society" section of the newer edition. As of 2011[update], it is required in the guidelines of all "large food" type records that the item be fully edible, and distributed to the public for consumption, to prevent food wastage. Chain letters are also not allowed: "Guinness World Records does not accept any records relating to chain letters, sent by post or e-mail." After Roger Guy English set the record for sleeplessness in 1974, the category was discontinued for being too dangerous. At the request of the U.S. Mint, in 1984, the book stopped accepting claims of large hoardings of pennies or other currency. Environmentally unfriendly records (such as the releasing of sky lanterns and party balloons) are no longer accepted or monitored, in addition to records relating to tobacco or cannabis consumption or preparation. In 2024, Guinness World Records was accused of laundering the reputation of the oppressive governments as it set world records for the UAE's police forces and Egypt's military. By 2024, the UAE achieved 526 records, of which 21 were credited to the Emirates' police force. Matthew Hedges, a British academic who was forced to sign a false confession, asked the records body to take down the Abu Dhabi police department's certificate for "most signatures on a scroll", along with other such titles. Concerns were also raised around the activities around Egypt, which moved from 22 records to 110 within a decade until 2024. James Lynch, co-founder of FairSquare, said the records were legitimizing Abdel Fattah el-Sisi's regime. The Guinness World Records stated that its record titles "cannot be purchased". Guinness World Records has been accused of romanticizing diseases, such as Graves' Disease and Pica. For some potential categories, Guinness World Records has declined to list some records that are too difficult or impossible to determine. For example, its website states: "We do not accept any claims for beauty as it is not objectively measurable." On 10 December 2010, Guinness World Records stopped accepting submissions for the "dreadlock" category after an investigation of its first and only female title holder, Asha Mandela, determining it was impossible to judge this record accurately. Change in business model Traditionally, the company made a large amount of its revenue via book sales to interested readers, especially children. The rise of the Internet began to cut into book sales starting in the 2000s, part of a general decline in the book industry. According to a 2017 story by Planet Money of NPR, Guinness began to realize that a lucrative new revenue source to replace falling book sales was the would-be record-holders themselves. While any person can theoretically send in a record to be verified for free, the approval process is slow. Would-be record breakers that paid fees ranging from US$12,000 to US$500,000 would be given advisors, adjudicators, help in finding good records to break as well as suggestions for how to do it, prompt service, and so on. In particular, corporations and celebrities seeking a publicity stunt to launch a new product or draw attention to themselves began to hire Guinness World Records, paying them for finding a record to break or to create a new category just for them. As such, they have been described as a native advertising company, with no clear distinction between content and advertisement. Television talk show host John Oliver criticized Guinness World Records on the programme Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in August 2019, during an episode about President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow. Oliver said Guinness took money from authoritarian governments for pointless vanity projects such as Berdimuhamedow's. Oliver asked Guinness to work with Last Week Tonight to adjudicate a record for "Largest cake featuring a picture of someone falling off a horse", but according to Oliver, the offer did not work out after Guinness insisted on a non-disparagement clause. Guinness World Records denied the accusations and stated that they declined Oliver's offer to participate because "it was merely an opportunity to mock one of our record-holders," and that Oliver did not specifically request the record for the largest marble cake. As of 2021, the Guinness World Record for "Largest marble cake" remains with Betty Crocker Middle East in Saudi Arabia. Following Oliver's episode, Guinness World Records' ethics were called into question by human rights groups. Museums In 1976, a Guinness Book of World Records museum opened in the Empire State Building. Speed shooter Bob Munden then went on tour promoting The Guinness Book of World Records by performing his record fast draws with a standard weight single-action revolver from a Western movie-type holster. His fastest time for a draw was 0.02 seconds. Among exhibits were life-size statues of the world's tallest man, Robert Wadlow, and world's largest earthworm, an X-ray photo of a sword swallower, repeated lightning strike victim Roy Sullivan's hat complete with lightning holes and a pair of gem-studded golf shoes on sale for $6,500. The museum closed in 1995. In more recent years, the Guinness company has permitted the franchising of small museums with displays based on the book, all currently (as of 2010[update]) located in towns popular with tourists: Tokyo, Copenhagen, San Antonio. There were once Guinness World Records museums and exhibitions at the London Trocadero, Bangalore, San Francisco, Myrtle Beach, Orlando, Atlantic City, and Las Vegas. The Orlando museum, which closed in 2002, was branded The Guinness Records Experience; the Hollywood, Niagara Falls, Copenhagen, and Gatlinburg museums also previously featured this branding. Retail and merchandise Guinness World Records operates an official online shop, the Guinness World Records Store, which offers items related to record-breaking achievements, including certificates of participation, apparel, and the annual Guinness World Records book. The shop provides record-holders and the general public with access to official Guinness World Records materials. Merchandise is part of the organization's broader engagement efforts beyond its publications and events. Television series Guinness World Records has commissioned various television series documenting world record breaking attempts, including: Rhianna Loren (2025) Specials: Gamer's edition In 2008, Guinness World Records released its gamer's edition, a supplement that keeps records for popular video game high scores, codes and feats in association with Twin Galaxies. The Gamer's Edition used to contain 258 pages, over 1,236 video game related world records and four interviews including one with Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day. Editions were published for the years 2008 through 2020, with the 2009 edition in hardcover. The 2025 edition is the first since 2020, returning after a five-year hiatus. Since 2020, the supplement has had 192 pages. The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles was a music reference book first published in 1977. It was compiled by BBC Radio 1 DJs Paul Gambaccini and Mike Read with brothers Tim Rice and Jonathan Rice. It was the first in a number of music reference books that were to be published by Guinness Publishing with sister publication The Guinness Book of British Hit Albums coming in 1983. After being sold to Hit Entertainment, the data concerning the Official Chart Company's singles and albums charts were combined under the title British Hit Singles & Albums, with Hit Entertainment publishing the book from 2003 to 2006 (under the Guinness World Records brand). After Guinness World Records was sold to The Jim Pattison Group, it was effectively replaced by a series of books published by Ebury Publishing/Random House with the Virgin Book of British Hit Singles first being published in 2007 and with a Hit Albums book following two years later. Other media and products In 1975, Parker Brothers marketed a board game, The Guinness Game of World Records, based on the book. Players compete by setting and breaking records for activities such as the longest streak of rolling dice before rolling doubles, stacking plastic pieces, and bouncing a ball off alternating sides of a card, as well as answering trivia questions based on the listings in the Guinness Book of World Records. A video game, Guinness World Records: The Videogame, was developed by TT Fusion and released for Nintendo DS, Wii and iOS in November 2008. In 2012, Warner Bros. announced the development of a live-action film version of Guinness World Records with Daniel Chun as scriptwriter. The film, however, never entered production. Dr. Sunil Gupta is listed in the Guinness World Records for participating in the largest multi-location diabetic neuropathy screening conducted on World Diabetes Day, 14 November 2013, during which 1,676 screenings were performed across 27 locations in India. References |
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Contents The Face in the Abyss The Face in the Abyss is a fantasy novel by American writer A. Merritt. It is composed of a novelette with the same title and its sequel, "The Snake Mother". It was first published in its complete form in 1931 by Horace Liveright. The novelette "The Face in the Abyss" originally appeared in the magazine Argosy All-Story Weekly in the September 8, 1923 issue. "The Snake Mother" was originally serialized in seven parts in Argosy beginning with the October 25, 1930 issue. Plot introduction The novel follows Nicholas Graydon, an American mining engineer. While searching for lost Inca treasure in South America, he meets Suarra, handmaiden to the Snake Mother of Yu-Atlanchi. She guides him to an abyss where Nimir, the Lord of Evil, is imprisoned in a golden mask. Graydon's companions, consumed by greed, are transformed into gold globules by the mask. However, Suarra and the Snake Mother save him, and he joins their battle against Nimir. Reception Peter Levi has noted parallels between The Face in the Abyss and a story H.P. Lovecraft created as a ghostwriter, "The Mound." References Sources External links This article about a 1930s fantasy novel is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. See guidelines for writing about novels. Further suggestions might be found on the article's talk page. |
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Contents Kinect Kinect is a discontinued line of motion sensing input devices produced by Microsoft and first released in 2010. The devices generally contain RGB cameras, and infrared projectors and detectors that map depth through either structured light or time of flight calculations, which can in turn be used to perform real-time gesture recognition and body skeletal detection, among other capabilities. They also contain microphones that can be used for speech recognition and voice control. Kinect was originally developed as a motion controller peripheral for Xbox video game consoles, distinguished from competitors (such as Nintendo's Wii Remote and Sony's PlayStation Move) by not requiring physical controllers. The first-generation Kinect was based on technology from Israeli company PrimeSense, and unveiled at E3 2009 as a peripheral for Xbox 360 codenamed "Project Natal". It was first released on November 4, 2010, and would go on to sell eight million units in its first 60 days of availability. The majority of the games developed for Kinect were casual, family-oriented titles, which helped to attract new audiences to Xbox 360, but did not result in wide adoption by the console's existing, overall userbase. As part of the 2013 unveiling of Xbox 360's successor, Xbox One, Microsoft unveiled a second-generation version of Kinect with improved tracking capabilities. Microsoft also announced that Kinect would be a required component of the console, and that it would not function unless the peripheral is connected. The requirement proved controversial among users and critics due to privacy concerns, prompting Microsoft to backtrack on the decision. However, Microsoft still bundled the new Kinect with Xbox One consoles upon their launch in November 2013. A market for Kinect-based games still did not emerge after the Xbox One's launch; Microsoft would later offer Xbox One hardware bundles without Kinect included, and later revisions of the console removed the dedicated ports used to connect it (requiring a powered USB adapter instead). Microsoft ended production of Kinect for Xbox One in October 2017. Kinect has also been used as part of non-game applications in academic and commercial environments, as it was cheaper and more robust than other depth-sensing technologies at the time. While Microsoft initially objected to such applications, it later released software development kits (SDKs) for the development of Microsoft Windows applications that use Kinect. In 2020, Microsoft released Azure Kinect as a continuation of the technology integrated with the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform. Part of the Kinect technology was also used within Microsoft's HoloLens project. Microsoft discontinued the Azure Kinect developer kits in October 2023. History The origins of the Kinect started around 2005, at a point where technology vendors were starting to develop depth-sensing cameras. Microsoft had been interested in a 3D camera for the Xbox line earlier but because the technology had not been refined, had placed it in the "Boneyard", a collection of possible technology they could not immediately work on. In 2005, Israeli company PrimeSense was founded by mathematicians and engineers to develop the "next big thing" for video games, incorporating cameras that were capable of mapping a human body in front of them and sensing hand motions. They showed off their system at the 2006 Game Developers Conference, where Microsoft's Alex Kipman, the general manager of hardware incubation, saw the potential in PrimeSense's technology for the Xbox system. Microsoft began discussions with PrimeSense about what would need to be done to make their product more consumer-friendly: not only improvements in the capabilities of depth-sensing cameras, but a reduction in size and cost, and a means to manufacturer the units at scale was required. PrimeSense spent the next few years working at these improvements. Nintendo released the Wii in November 2006. The Wii's central feature was the Wii Remote, a handheld device that was detected by the Wii through a motion sensor bar mounted onto a television screen to enable motion controlled games. Microsoft felt pressure from the Wii, and began looking into depth-sensing in more detail with PrimeSense's hardware, but could not get to the level of motion tracking they desired. While they could determine hand gestures, and sense the general shape of a body, they could not do skeletal tracking. A separate path within Microsoft looked to create an equivalent of the Wii Remote, considering that this type of unit may become standardized similar to how two-thumbstick controllers became a standard feature. However, it was still ultimately Microsoft's goal to remove any device between the player and the Xbox. Kudo Tsunoda and Darren Bennett joined Microsoft in 2008, and began working with Kipman on a new approach to depth-sensing aided by machine learning to improve skeletal tracking. They internally demonstrated this and established where they believed the technology could be in a few years, which led to the strong interest to fund further development of the technology; this has also occurred at a time that Microsoft executives wanted to abandon the Wii-like motion tracking approach, and favored the depth-sensing solution to present a product that went beyond the Wii's capabilities. The project was greenlit by late 2008 with work started in 2009. The project was codenamed "Project Natal" after the Brazilian city Natal, Kipman's birthplace. Additionally, Kipman recognized the Latin origins of the word "natal" to mean "to be born", reflecting the new types of audiences they hoped to draw with the technology. Much of the initial work was related to ethnographic research to see how video game players' home environments were laid out, lit, and how those with Wiis used the system to plan how Kinect units would be used. The Microsoft team discovered from this research that the up-and-down angle of the depth-sensing camera would either need to be adjusted manually, or would require an expensive motor to move automatically. Upper management at Microsoft opted to include the motor despite the increased cost to avoid breaking game immersion. Kinect project work also involved packaging the system for mass production and optimizing its performance. Hardware development took around 22 months. During hardware development, Microsoft engaged with software developers to use Kinect. Microsoft wanted to make games that would be playable by families since Kinect could sense multiple bodies in front of it. One of the first internal titles developed for the device was the pack-in game Kinect Adventures developed by Good Science Studio that was part of Microsoft Studios. One of the game modes of Kinect Adventures was "Reflex Ridge", based on the Japanese Brain Wall game where players attempt to contort their bodies in a short time to match cutouts of a wall moving at them. This type of game was a key example of the type of interactivity they wanted with Kinect, and its development helped feed into the hardware improvements. Another development was Project Milo, a prototype game developed by Lionhead Studios led by Peter Molyneux where the player could interact with a virtual avatar through motion controls and voice recognition. Lionhead had developed the project based on original capabilities of the Kinect, but according to Molyneux, Microsoft had found that a consumer-grade version of the Kinect would cost thousands of dollars, so they scaled back the device and refocused the role of games for the Kinect to be more casual games as seen on the Wii. As a result, Project Milo no longer fit Microsoft's portfolio and was cancelled. Nearing the planned release, there was a problem of widespread testing of Kinect in various room types and different bodies accounting for age, gender, and race among other factors, while keeping the details of the unit confidential. Microsoft engaged in a company-wide program offering employees to take home Kinect units to test them. Microsoft also brought other non-gaming divisions, including its Microsoft Research, Microsoft Windows, and Bing teams to help complete the system. Microsoft established its own large-scale manufacturing facility to bulk product Kinect units and test them. Kinect was first announced to the public as "Project Natal" on June 1, 2009, during Microsoft's press conference at E3 2009; film director Steven Spielberg joined Microsoft's Don Mattrick to introduce the technology and its potential. Three demos were presented during the conference—Microsoft's Ricochet and Paint Party, and Lionhead Studios' Milo & Kate created by Peter Molyneux—while a Project Natal-enabled version of Criterion Games' Burnout Paradise was shown during the E3 exhibition. By E3 2009, the skeletal mapping technology was capable of simultaneously tracking four people, with a feature extraction of 48 skeletal points on a human body at 30 Hz. Microsoft had not committed to a release date for Project Natal at E3 2009, but affirmed it would be after 2009, and likely in 2010 to stay competitive with the Wii and the PlayStation Move (Sony Interactive Entertainment's own motion-sensing system using hand-held devices). In the months following E3 2009, rumors that a new Xbox 360 console associated with Project Natal emerged, either a retail configuration that incorporated the peripheral, or as a hardware revision or upgrade to support the peripheral. Microsoft dismissed the reports in public and repeatedly emphasized that Project Natal would be fully compatible with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft indicated that the company considered Project Natal to be a significant initiative, as fundamental to Xbox brand as Xbox Live, and with a planned launch akin to that of a new Xbox console platform. Microsoft's vice president Shane Kim said the company did not expect Project Natal would extend the anticipated lifetime of the Xbox 360, which had been planned to last ten years through 2015, nor delay the launch of the successor to the Xbox 360. Following the E3 2009 show and through 2010, the Project Natal team members experimentally adapted numerous games to Kinect-based control schemes to help evaluate usability. Among these games were Beautiful Katamari and Space Invaders Extreme, which were demonstrated at Tokyo Game Show in September 2009. According to Tsunoda, adding Project Natal-based control to pre-existing games involved significant code alterations, and made it unlikely that existing games could be patched through software updates to support the unit. Microsoft also expanded its draw to third-party developers to encourage them to develop Project Natal games. Companies like Harmonix and Double Fine quickly took to Project Natal and saw the potential in it, and committed to developing games for the unit, such as the launch title Dance Central from Harmonix. Although its sensor unit was originally planned to contain a microprocessor that would perform operations such as the system's skeletal mapping, Microsoft reported in January 2010 that the sensor would no longer feature a dedicated processor. Instead, processing would be handled by one of the processor cores of Xbox 360's Xenon CPU. Around this time, Kipmen estimated that the Kinect would only take about 10 to 15% of the Xbox 360's processing power. While this was a small fraction of the Xbox 360's capabilities, industry observers believed this further pointed to difficulties in adapting pre-existing games to use Kinect, as the motion-tracking would add to a game's high computational load and exceed the Xbox 360's capabilities. These observers believed that instead the industry would develop games specific to the Kinect features. During Microsoft's E3 2010 press conference, it was announced that Project Natal would be officially branded as Kinect, and be released in North America on November 4, 2010. Xbox Live director Stephen Toulouse stated that the name was a portmanteau of the words "kinetic" and "connection", key aspects of the Kinect initiative. Microsoft and third-party studios exhibited Kinect-compatible games during the E3 exhibition. A new slim revision of the Xbox 360 was also unveiled to coincide with Kinect's launch, which added a dedicated port for attaching the peripheral; Kinect would be sold at launch as a standalone accessory for existing Xbox 360 owners, and as part of bundles with the new slim Xbox 360. All units included Kinect Adventures as a pack-in game. Microsoft continued to refine the Kinect technology in the months leading to the Kinect launch in November 2010. By launch, Kipman reported they had been able to reduce the Kinect's use of the Xbox 360's processor from 10 to 15% as reported in January 2010 to a "single-digit percentage". Xbox product director Aaron Greenberg stated that Microsoft's marketing campaign for Kinect would carry a similar scale to a console launch; the company was reported to have budgeted $500 million on advertising for the peripheral, such as television and print ads, campaigns with Burger King and Pepsi, and a launch event in New York City's Times Square on November 3 featuring a performance by Ne-Yo. Kinect was launched in North America on November 4, 2010; in Europe on November 10, 2010; in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore on November 18, 2010; and in Japan on November 20, 2010. The Kinect release for the Xbox 360 was estimated to have sold eight million units in the first sixty days of release, earning the hardware the Guinness World Record for the "Fastest-Selling Consumer Electronics Device". Over 10 million had been sold by March 2011. While seemingly successful, its launch titles were primarily family-oriented games (which could be designed around Kinect's functionality and limitations), which may have drawn new audiences, but did not have the selling power of major franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty—which were primarily designed around the Xbox 360 controller. Only an estimated 20% of the 55 million Xbox 360 owners had purchased the Kinect. The Kinect team recognized some of the downsides with more traditional games and Kinect, and continued ongoing development of the unit to be released as a second-generation unit, such as reducing the latency of motion detection and improving speech recognition. Microsoft provided news of these changes to the third-party developers to help them anticipate how the improvements can be integrated into the games. Concurrent with the Kinect improvements, Microsoft's Xbox hardware team had started planning for the Xbox One around mid-2011. Part of early Xbox One specifications was that the new Kinect hardware would be automatically included with the console, so that developers would know that Kinect hardware would be available for any Xbox One, and hoping to encourage developers to take advantage of that. The Xbox One was first formally announced on May 23, 2013, and shown in more detail at E3 2013 in June. Microsoft stated at these events that the Xbox One would include the updated Kinect hardware and it would be required to be plugged in at all times for the Xbox One to function. This raised concerns across the video game media: privacy advocates argued that Kinect sensor data could be used for targeted advertising, and to perform unauthorized surveillance on users. In response to these claims, Microsoft reiterated that Kinect voice recognition and motion tracking can be disabled by users, that Kinect data cannot be used for advertising per its privacy policy, and that the console would not redistribute user-generated content without permission. Several other issues with the Xbox One's original feature set had also come up, such as the requirement to be always connected to the Internet, and created a wave of consumer backlash against Microsoft. Microsoft announced in August 2013 that they had made several changes to the planned Xbox One release in response to the backlash. Among these was that the system would no longer require a Kinect unit to be plugged in to work, though it was still planned to package the Kinect with all Xbox One systems. However, this also required Microsoft to establish a US$500 price-point for the Xbox One/Kinect system at its November 2013 launch, US$100 more than the competing PlayStation 4 launched in the same time frame, which did not include any motion-sensing hardware. In the months after the Xbox One release, Microsoft decided to launch a Kinect-less Xbox One system in March 2014 at the same price as the PlayStation 4, after considering that the Kinect for Xbox One had not gotten the developer support, and sales of the Xbox One were lagging due to the higher price tag of the Kinect-bundled system. Richard Irving, a program group manager that oversaw Kinect, said that Microsoft had felt that it was more important to give developers and consumers the option of developing for or purchasing the Kinect rather than forcing the unit on them. The removal of Kinect from the Xbox One retail package was the start of the rapid decline and phase-out of the unit within Microsoft. Developers like Harmonix that had been originally targeting games to use the Xbox One had put these games on hold until they knew there was enough of a Kinect install base to justify release, which resulted in a lack of games for the Kinect and reducing any consumer drive to buy the separate unit. Microsoft became bearish on the Kinect, making no mention of the unit at E3 2015 and announcing at E3 2016 that the upcoming Xbox One hardware revision, the Xbox One S, would not have a dedicated Kinect port; Microsoft offered a USB adapter for the Kinect, provided free during an initial promotional period after the console's launch. The more powerful Xbox One X also lacked the Kinect port and required this adapter. Even though developers still released Kinect-enabled games for the Xbox One, Microsoft's lack of statements related to the Kinect during this period led to claims that the Kinect was a dead project at Microsoft. Microsoft formally announced it would stop manufacturing Kinect for Xbox One on October 25, 2017. Microsoft eventually discontinued the adapter in January 2018, stating that they were shifting to manufacture other accessories for the Xbox One and personal computers that were more in demand. This is considered by the media to be the point where Microsoft ceased work on the Kinect for the Xbox platform. While the Kinect unit for the Xbox platform had petered out, the Kinect was being used in academia and other applications since around 2011. The functionality of the unit along with its low US$150 cost was seen to be an inexpensive means to add depth-sensing to existing applications, offsetting the high cost and unreliability of other 3D camera options at the time. In robotics, Kinect's depth-sensing would enable robots to determine the shape and approximate distances to obstacles and maneuver around them. Within the medical field, the Kinect could be used to monitor the shape and posture of a body in a quantifiable manner to enable improved health-care decisions. Around November 2010, after the Kinect's launch, scientists, engineers, and hobbyists had been able to hack into the Kinect to determine what hardware and internal software it had used, leading to users finding how to connect and operate the Kinect with Microsoft Windows and OS X over USB, which has unsecured data from the various camera elements that could be read. This further led to prototype demos of other possible applications, such as a gesture-based user interface for the operating system similar to that shown in the film Minority Report, as well as pornographic applications. This mirrored similar work to hack the Wii Remote a few years earlier to use its low-cost hardware for more advanced applications beyond gameplay. Adafruit Industries, having envisioned some of the possible applications of the Kinect outside of gaming, issued a security challenge related to the Kinect, offering prize money for the successful development of an open source software development kit (SDK) and hardware drivers for the Kinect, which came to be known as Open Kinect. Adafruit named the winner, Héctor Martín, by November 10, 2010, who had produced a Linux driver that allows the use of both the RGB camera and depth sensitivity functions of the device. It was later discovered that Johnny Lee, a core member of Microsoft's Kinect development team, had secretly approached Adafruit with the idea of a driver development contest and had personally financed it. Lee had said of the efforts to open the Kinect that "This is showing us the future...This is happening today, and this is happening tomorrow." and had engaged Adafruit with the contest as he been frustrated with trying to convince Microsoft's executives to explore the non-gaming avenue for the Kinect. Microsoft initially took issue with users hacking into the Kinect, stating they would incorporate additional safeguards into future iterations of the unit to prevent such hacks. However, by the end of November 2010, Microsoft had turned on their original position and embraced the external efforts to develop the SDK. Kipman, in an interview with NPR, said The first thing to talk about is, Kinect was not actually hacked. Hacking would mean that someone got to our algorithms that sit inside of the Xbox and was able to actually use them, which hasn't happened. Or, it means that you put a device between the sensor and the Xbox for means of cheating, which also has not happened. That's what we call hacking, and that's what we have put a ton of work and effort to make sure doesn't actually occur. What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor. The sensor, again, as I talked earlier, has eyes and ears, and that's a whole bunch of noise that someone needs to take and turn into signal. — Alex Kipman, speaking formally on NPR's Science Friday PrimeSense along with robotics firm Willow Garage and game developer Side-Kick launched OpenNI, a not-for-profit group to develop portable drivers for the Kinect and other natural interface (NI) devices, in November 2010. Its first set of drivers named NITE were released in December 2010. PrimeSense had also worked with Asus to develop a motion sensing device that competes with the Kinect for personal computers. The resulting product, the Wavi Xtion, was released in China in October 2011. Microsoft announced in February 2011 that it was planning on releasing its own SDK for the Kinect within a few months, and which was officially released on June 16, 2011, but which was limited to non-commercial uses. The SDK enabled users to access the skeletal motion recognition system for up to two persons and the Kinect microphone array, features that had not been part of the prior Open Kinect SDK. Commercial interest in Kinect was still strong, with David Dennis, a product manager at Microsoft, stating "There are hundreds of organizations we are working with to help them determine what's possible with the tech". Microsoft launched its Kinect for Windows program on October 31, 2011, releasing a new SDK to a small number of companies, including Toyota, Houghton Mifflin, and Razorfish, to explore what was possible. At the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in January, Microsoft announced that it would release a dedicated Kinect for Windows unit along with the commercial SDK on February 1, 2012. The device included some hardware improvements, including support for "near mode" to recognize objects about 50 centimetres (20 in) in front of the cameras. The Kinect for Windows device was listed at US$250, US$100 more than the original Kinect since Microsoft had considered the Xbox 360 Kinect was subsidized through game purchases, Xbox Live subscriptions, and other costs. At the launch, Microsoft stated that more than 300 companies from over 25 countries were working on Kinect-ready apps with the new unit. With the original announcement of the revised Kinect for Xbox One in 2013, Microsoft also confirmed it would have a second generation of Kinect for Windows based on the updated Kinect technology by 2014. The new Kinect 2 for Windows was launched on July 15, 2014, at a US$200 price. Microsoft opted to discontinue the original Kinect for Windows by the end of 2014. However, in April 2015, Microsoft announced they were also discontinuing the Kinect 2 for Windows, and instead directing commercial users to use the Kinect for Xbox One, which Microsoft said "perform identically". Microsoft stated that the demand for the Kinect 2 for Windows demand was high and difficult to keep up while also fulfilling the Kinect for Xbox One orders, and that they had found commercial developers successfully using the Kinect for Xbox One in their applications without issue. With Microsoft's waning focus on Kinect, PrimeSense was bought by Apple, Inc. in 2013, which incorporated parts of the technology into its Face ID system for iOS devices. Though Kinect had been cancelled, the ideas of it helped to spur Microsoft into looking more into accessibility for Xbox and its games. According to Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox at Microsoft, they received positive comments from parents of disabled and impaired children who were happy that Kinect allowed their children to play video games. These efforts led to the development of the Xbox Adaptive Controller, released in 2018, as one of Microsoft's efforts in this area. Microsoft had abandoned the idea of Kinect for video games, but still explored the potential of Kinect beyond that. Microsoft's Director of Communications Greg Sullivan stated in 2018 that "I think one of the things that is beginning to be understood is that Kinect was never really just the gaming peripheral...It was always more." Part of Kinect technology was integrated into Microsoft's HoloLens, first released in 2016. Microsoft announced that it was working on a new version of a hardware Kinect model for non-game applications that would integrate with their Azure cloud computing services in May 2018. The use of cloud computing to offload some of the computational work from Kinect, as well as more powerful features enable by Azure such as artificial intelligence would improve the accuracy of the depth-sensing and reduce the power demand and would lead to more compact units, Microsoft had envisioned. The Azure Kinect device was released on June 27, 2019, at a price of US$400, while the SDK for the unit had been released in February 2019. Sky UK announced a new line of Sky Glass television units to launch in 2022 that incorporate the Kinect technology in partnership with Microsoft. Using the Kinect features, the viewer will be able to control the television through motion controls and audio commands, and supports social features such as social viewing. Microsoft announced that the Azure Kinect hardware kit will be discontinued in October 2023, and will refer users to third party suppliers for spare parts. Technology The depth and motion sensing technology at the core of the Kinect is enabled through its depth-sensing. The original Kinect for Xbox 360 used structured light for this: the unit used a near-infrared pattern projected across the space in front of the Kinect, while an infrared sensor captured the reflected light pattern. The light pattern is deformed by the relative depth of the objects in front it, and mathematics can be used to estimate that depth based on several factors related to the hardware layout of the Kinect. While other structure light depth-sensing technologies used multiple light patterns, Kinect used as few as one as to achieve a high rate of 30 frames per second of depth sensing. Kinect for Xbox One switched over to using time of flight measurements. The infrared projector on the Kinect sends out modulated infrared light which is then captured by the sensor. Infrared light reflecting off closer objects will have a shorter time of flight than those more distant, so the infrared sensor captures how much the modulation pattern had been deformed from the time of flight, pixel-by-pixel. Time of flight measurements of depth can be more accurate and calculated in a shorter amount of time, allowing for more frames-per-second to be detected. Once Kinect has a pixel-by-pixel depth image, Kinect uses a type of edge detection here to delineate closer objects from the background of the shot, incorporating input from the regular visible light camera. The unit then attempts to track any moving objects from this, with the assumption that only people will be moving around in the image, and isolates the human shapes from the image. The unit's software, aided by artificial intelligence, performs segmentation of the shapes to try to identify specific body parts, like the head, arms, and hands, and track those segments individually. Those segments are used to construct a 20-point skeleton of the human body, which then can be used by game or other software to determine what actions the person has performed. Kinect for Xbox 360 was a combination of Microsoft built software and hardware. The hardware included a range chipset technology by Israeli developer PrimeSense, which developed a system consisting of an infrared projector and camera and a special microchip that generates a grid from which the location of a nearby object in 3 dimensions can be ascertained. This 3D scanner system called Light Coding employs a variant of image-based 3D reconstruction. The Kinect sensor is a horizontal bar connected to a small base with a motorized pivot and is designed to be positioned lengthwise above or below the video display. The device features an "RGB camera, depth sensor and microphone array running proprietary software", which provide full-body 3D motion capture, facial recognition and voice recognition capabilities. At launch, voice recognition was only made available in Japan, United Kingdom, Canada and United States. Mainland Europe received the feature later in spring 2011. Currently voice recognition is supported in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States. The Kinect sensor's microphone array enables Xbox 360 to conduct acoustic source localization and ambient noise suppression, allowing for things such as headset-free party chat over Xbox Live. The depth sensor consists of an infrared laser projector combined with a monochrome CMOS sensor, which captures video data in 3D under any ambient light conditions. The sensing range of the depth sensor is adjustable, and Kinect software is capable of automatically calibrating the sensor based on gameplay and the player's physical environment, accommodating for the presence of furniture or other obstacles. Described by Microsoft personnel as the primary innovation of Kinect, the software technology enables advanced gesture recognition, facial recognition and voice recognition. According to information supplied to retailers, Kinect is capable of simultaneously tracking up to six people, including two active players for motion analysis with a feature extraction of 20 joints per player. However, PrimeSense has stated that the number of people the device can "see" (but not process as players) is only limited by how many will fit in the field-of-view of the camera. Reverse engineering has determined that the Kinect's various sensors output video at a frame rate of ≈9 Hz to 30 Hz depending on resolution. The default RGB video stream uses 8-bit VGA resolution (640 × 480 pixels) with a Bayer color filter, but the hardware is capable of resolutions up to 1280x1024 (at a lower frame rate) and other colour formats such as UYVY. The monochrome depth sensing video stream is in VGA resolution (640 × 480 pixels) with 11-bit depth, which provides 2,048 levels of sensitivity. The Kinect can also stream the view from its IR camera directly (i.e.: before it has been converted into a depth map) as 640x480 video, or 1280x1024 at a lower frame rate. The Kinect sensor has a practical ranging limit of 1.2–3.5 m (3.9–11.5 ft) distance when used with the Xbox software. The area required to play Kinect is roughly 6 m2, although the sensor can maintain tracking through an extended range of approximately 0.7–6 m (2.3–19.7 ft). The sensor has an angular field of view of 57° horizontally and 43° vertically, while the motorized pivot is capable of tilting the sensor up to 27° either up or down. The horizontal field of the Kinect sensor at the minimum viewing distance of ≈0.8 m (2.6 ft) is therefore ≈87 cm (34 in), and the vertical field is ≈63 cm (25 in), resulting in a resolution of just over 1.3 mm (0.051 in) per pixel. The microphone array features four microphone capsules and operates with each channel processing 16-bit audio at a sampling rate of 16 kHz. Because the Kinect sensor's motorized tilt mechanism requires more power than the Xbox 360's USB ports can supply, the device makes use of a proprietary connector combining USB communication with additional power. Redesigned Xbox 360 S models include a special AUX port for accommodating the connector, while older models require a special power supply cable (included with the sensor) that splits the connection into separate USB and power connections; power is supplied from the mains by way of an AC adapter. Kinect for Windows is a modified version of the Xbox 360 unit which was first released on February 1, 2012, alongside the SDK for commercial use. The hardware included better components to eliminate noise along the USB and other cabling paths, and improvements in the depth-sensing camera system for detection of objects at close range, as close as 50 centimetres (20 in), in the new "Near Mode". The SDK included Windows 7 compatible PC drivers for Kinect device. It provided Kinect capabilities to developers to build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and included the following features: In March 2012, Craig Eisler, the general manager of Kinect for Windows, said that almost 350 companies are working with Microsoft on custom Kinect applications for Microsoft Windows. In March 2012, Microsoft announced that next version of Kinect for Windows SDK would be available in May 2012. Kinect for Windows 1.5 was released on May 21, 2012. It adds new features, support for many new languages and debut in 19 more countries. Kinect for Windows SDK for the first-generation sensor was updated a few more times, with version 1.6 released October 8, 2012, version 1.7 released March 18, 2013, and version 1.8 released September 17, 2013. An upgraded iteration of Kinect was released on November 22, 2013, for Xbox One. It uses a wide-angle time-of-flight camera, and processes 2 gigabits of data per second to read its environment. The new Kinect has greater accuracy with three times the fidelity over its predecessor and can track without visible light by using an active IR sensor. It has a 60% wider field of vision with a minimum working distance of 0.91 metres (3.0 ft) away from the sensor, compared to 1.83 metres (6.0 ft) for the original Kinect, and can track up to 6 skeletons at once. It can also detect a player's heart rate, facial expression, the position and orientation of 25 individual joints (including thumbs), the weight put on each limb, speed of player movements, and track gestures performed with a standard controller. The color camera captures 1080p video that can be displayed in the same resolution as the viewing screen, allowing for a broad range of scenarios. In addition to improving video communications and video analytics applications, this provides a stable input on which to build interactive applications. Kinect's microphone is used to provide voice commands for actions such as navigation, starting games, and waking the console from sleep mode. The recommended player's height is at least 40 inches, which roughly corresponds to children of 4+1⁄2 years old and up. All Xbox One consoles were initially shipped with Kinect included. In June 2014, bundles without Kinect were made available, along with an updated Xbox One SDK allowing game developers to explicitly disable Kinect skeletal tracking, freeing up system resources that were previously reserved for Kinect even if it was disabled or unplugged. As interest in Kinect waned in 2014, later revisions of the Xbox One hardware, including the Xbox One S and Xbox One X, dropped the dedicated Kinect port, requiring users to purchase a USB 3.0 and AC adapter to use the Kinect for Xbox One. A standalone Kinect for Xbox One, bundled with a digital copy of Dance Central Spotlight, was released on October 7, 2014. Considered a market failure compared to the Kinect for Xbox 360, the Kinect for Xbox One product was discontinued by October 25, 2017. Production of the adapter cord also ended by January 2018. Released on 15 July 2014, Kinect 2 for Windows is based on the Kinect for Xbox One and considered a replacement of the original Kinect for Windows. It was also repackaged as "Kinect for Windows v2". It is nearly identical besides the removal of Xbox branding, and included a USB 3.0/AC adapter. It released alongside version 2.0 of the Windows SDK for the platform. The MSRP was US$199. Microsoft considers the Kinect 2 for Windows equivalent in performance to the Xbox One version. In April 2015, having difficulty in keeping up manufacturing demand for the Kinect for Xbox One, this edition was discontinued. Microsoft directed commercial users to use the Xbox One version with a USB adapter instead. On May 7, 2018, Microsoft announced a new iteration of Kinect technology designed primarily for enterprise software and artificial intelligence usage. It is designed around the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, and is meant to "leverage the richness of Azure AI to dramatically improve insights and operations". It has a smaller form factor than the Xbox iterations of Kinect, and features a 12-megapixel camera, a time-of-flight depth sensor also used on the HoloLens 2, and seven microphones. A development kit was announced in February 2019. Software Requiring at least 190 MB of available storage space, Kinect system software allows users to operate Xbox 360 Dashboard console user interface through voice commands and hand gestures. Techniques such as voice recognition and facial recognition are employed to automatically identify users. Among the applications for Kinect is Video Kinect, which enables voice chat or video chat with other Xbox 360 users or users of Windows Live Messenger. The application can use Kinect's tracking functionality and Kinect sensor's motorized pivot to keep users in frame even as they move around. Other applications with Kinect support include ESPN, Zune Marketplace, Netflix, Hulu Plus and Last.fm. Microsoft later confirmed that all forthcoming applications would be required to have Kinect functionality for certification. The Xbox One originally shipped in bundles with the Kinect; the original Xbox One user interface software had similar support for Kinect features as the Xbox 360 software, such as voice commands, user identification via skeletal or vocal recognition, and gesture-driven commands, though these features could be fully disabled due to privacy concerns. However, this had left the more traditional navigation using a controller haphazard. In May 2014, when Microsoft announced it would be releasing Xbox One systems without a Kinect, the company also announced plans to alter the Xbox One system software to remove Kinect features. Kinect support in the software was fully removed by November 2015. Xbox 360 games that require Kinect are packaged in special purple cases (as opposed to the green cases used by all other Xbox 360 games), and contain a prominent "Requires Kinect Sensor" logo on their front cover. Games that include features utilizing Kinect, but do not require it for standard gameplay, have "Better with Kinect Sensor" branding on their front covers. Kinect launched on November 4, 2010, with 17 titles. Third-party publishers of available and announced Kinect games include, among others, Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, LucasArts, THQ, Activision, Konami, Sega, Capcom, Namco Bandai and MTV Games. Along with retail games, there are also select Xbox Live Arcade titles which require the peripheral. KinectShare.com was a website where players could upload video game pictures, videos, and achievements, from their Xbox 360. It was released alongside the Kinect in November 2010. A blog was released on the website in October 2011, showcasing official Kinect news, which was discontinued after July 2012. It was used by multiple Kinect games, including Dance Central 2, Kinect Adventures!, Kinect Fun Labs, Kinect Rush: A Disney–Pixar Adventure, Kinect Sports, and Kinect Sports: Season Two. The website was shut down in June 2017, a few months prior to the discontinuation of the Kinect, redirecting to Xbox.com. The KinectShare feature on the Xbox 360 was shut down on July 28, 2017.[citation needed] At E3 2011, Microsoft announced Kinect Fun Labs: a collection of various gadgets and minigames that are accessible from Xbox 360 Dashboard. These gadgets includes Build A Buddy, Air Band, Kinect Googly Eyes, Kinect Me, Bobblehead, Kinect Sparkler, Junk Fu and Avatar Kinect. Numerous developers are researching possible applications of Kinect that go beyond the system's intended purpose of playing games, further enabled by the release of the Kinect SDK by Microsoft. For example, Philipp Robbel of MIT combined Kinect with iRobot Create to map a room in 3D and have the robot respond to human gestures, while an MIT Media Lab team is working on a JavaScript extension for Google Chrome called depthJS that allows users to control the browser with hand gestures. Other programmers, including Robot Locomotion Group at MIT, are using the drivers to develop a motion-controller user interface similar to the one envisioned in Minority Report. The developers of MRPT have integrated open source drivers into their libraries and provided examples of live 3D rendering and basic 3D visual SLAM. Another team has shown an application that allows Kinect users to play a virtual piano by tapping their fingers on an empty desk. Oliver Kreylos, a researcher at University of California, Davis, adopted the technology to improve live 3-dimensional videoconferencing, which NASA has shown interest in. Alexandre Alahi from EPFL presented a video surveillance system that combines multiple Kinect devices to track groups of people even in complete darkness. Companies So touch and Evoluce have developed presentation software for Kinect that can be controlled by hand gestures; among its features is a multi-touch zoom mode. In December 2010, the free public beta of HTPC software KinEmote was launched; it allows navigation of Boxee and XBMC menus using a Kinect sensor. Soroush Falahati wrote an application that can be used to create stereoscopic 3D images with a Kinect sensor. In human motion tracking, Kinect might suffer from occlusion which is when some human body joints are occluded and cannot be tracked accurately by Kinect's skeletal model. Therefore, fusing its data with other sensors can provide a more robust tracking of the skeletal model. For instance, in a study, an Unscented Kalman filter (UKF) was used to fuse Kinect 3D position data of shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints to those obtained from two inertial measurement units (IMUs) placed on the upper and lower arm of a person. The results showed an improvement of up to 50% in the accuracy of the position tracking of the joints. In addition to solving the occlusion problem, as the sampling frequency of the IMUs was 100 Hz (compared to ~30 Hz for Kinect), the improvement of skeletal position was more evident during fast and dynamic movements. Kinect also shows compelling potential for use in medicine. Researchers at the University of Minnesota have used Kinect to measure a range of disorder symptoms in children, creating new ways of objective evaluation to detect such conditions as autism, attention-deficit disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Several groups have reported using Kinect for intraoperative, review of medical imaging, allowing the surgeon to access the information without contamination. This technique is already in use at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, where doctors use it to guide imaging during cancer surgery. At least one company, GestSure Technologies, is pursuing the commercialization of such a system. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) signed up for the Kinect for Windows Developer program in November 2013 to use the new Kinect to manipulate a robotic arm in combination with an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset, creating "the most immersive interface" the unit had built to date. Reception Upon its release, the Kinect garnered generally positive opinions from reviewers and critics. IGN gave the device 7.5 out of 10, saying that "Kinect can be a tremendous amount of fun for casual players, and the creative, controller-free concept is undeniably appealing", though adding that for "$149.99, a motion-tracking camera add-on for Xbox 360 is a tough sell, especially considering that the entry level variation of Xbox 360 itself is only $199.99". Game Informer rated Kinect 8 out of 10, praising the technology but noting that the experience takes a while to get used to and that the spatial requirement may pose a barrier. Computer and Video Games called the device a technological gem and applauded the gesture and voice controls, while criticizing the launch lineup and Kinect Hub. CNET's review pointed out how Kinect keeps players active with its full-body motion sensing but criticized the learning curve, the additional power supply needed for older Xbox 360 consoles and the space requirements. Engadget, too, listed the large space requirements as a negative, along with Kinect's launch lineup and the slowness of the hand gesture UI. The review praised the system's powerful technology and the potential of its yoga and dance games. Kotaku considered the device revolutionary upon first use but noted that games were sometimes unable to recognize gestures or had slow responses, concluding that Kinect is "not must-own yet, more like must-eventually own." TechRadar praised the voice control and saw a great deal of potential in the device whose lag and space requirements were identified as issues. Gizmodo also noted Kinect's potential and expressed curiosity in how more mainstream titles would utilize the technology. Ars Technica's review expressed concern that the core feature of Kinect, its lack of a controller, would hamper development of games beyond those that have either stationary players or control the player's movement automatically. The mainstream press also reviewed Kinect. USA Today compared it to the futuristic control scheme seen in Minority Report, stating that "playing games feels great" and giving the device 3.5 out of 4 stars. David Pogue from The New York Times predicted players will feel a "crazy, magical, omigosh rush the first time you try the Kinect." Despite calling the motion tracking less precise than Wii's implementation, Pogue concluded that "Kinect’s astonishing technology creates a completely new activity that’s social, age-spanning and even athletic." The Globe and Mail titled Kinect as setting a "new standard for motion control." The slight input lag between making a physical movement and Kinect registering it was not considered a major issue with most games, and the review called Kinect "a good and innovative product," rating it 3.5 out of 4 stars. Although featuring improved performance over the original Kinect, its successor has been subject to mixed responses. In its Xbox One review, Engadget praised Xbox One's Kinect functionality, such as face recognition login and improved motion tracking, but said that while the device was "magical", "every false positive or unrecognized [voice] command had us reaching for the controller." The Kinect's inability to understand some accents in English was criticized. Writing for Time, Matt Peckham described the device as being "chunky" in appearance, but that the facial recognition login feature was "creepy but equally sci-fi-future cool", and that the new voice recognition system was a "powerful, addictive way to navigate the console, and save for a few exceptions that seem to be smoothing out with use". However, its accuracy was found to be affected by background noise, and Peckham further noted that launching games using voice recognition required that the full title of the game be given rather than an abbreviated name that the console "ought to semantically understand", such as Forza Motorsport 5 rather than "Forza 5". Prior to Xbox One's launch, privacy concerns were raised over the new Kinect; critics showed concerns the device could be used for surveillance, stemming from the originally announced requirements that Xbox One's Kinect be plugged in at all times, plus the initial always-on DRM system that required the console to be connected to the internet to ensure continued functionality. Privacy advocates contended that the increased amount of data which could be collected with the new Kinect (such as a person's eye movements, heart rate, and mood) could be used for targeted advertising. Reports also surfaced regarding recent Microsoft patents involving Kinect, such as a DRM system based on detecting the number of viewers in a room, and tracking viewing habits by awarding achievements for watching television programs and advertising. While Microsoft stated that its privacy policy "prohibit[s] the collection, storage, or use of Kinect data for the purpose of advertising", critics did not rule out the possibility that these policies could be changed prior to the release of the console. Concerns were also raised that the device could also record conversations, as its microphone remains active at all times. In response to the criticism, a Microsoft spokesperson stated that users are "in control of when Kinect sensing is On, Off or Paused", will be provided with key privacy information and settings during the console's initial setup, and that user-generated content such as photos and videos "will not leave your Xbox One without your explicit permission." Microsoft ultimately decided to reverse its decision to require Kinect usage on Xbox One, but the console still shipped with the device upon its launch in November 2013. Sales While announcing Kinect's discontinuation in an interview with Fast Co. Design on October 25, 2017, Microsoft stated that 35 million units had been sold since its release. 24 million units of Kinect had been shipped by February 2013. Having sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on the market, Kinect claimed the Guinness World Record of being the "fastest selling consumer electronics device". According to Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, Kinect bundles accounted for about half of all Xbox 360 console sales in December 2010 and for more than two-thirds in February 2011. More than 750,000 Kinect units were sold during the week of Black Friday 2011. Other motion controllers Kinect competed with several motion controllers on other home consoles, such as Wii Remote, Wii Remote Plus and Wii Balance Board for the Wii and Wii U, PlayStation Move and PlayStation Eye for the PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Camera for the PlayStation 4. While the Xbox 360 Kinect's controller-less nature enabled it to offer a motion-controlled experience different from the wand-based controls of the Wii and PlayStation Move, this has occasionally hindered developers from developing certain motion-controlled games that could target all three seventh-generation consoles and still provide the same experience regardless of console. Examples of seventh-generation motion-controlled games that were released on Wii and PlayStation 3, but had a version for Xbox 360 cancelled or ruled out from the start, due to issues with translating wand controls to the camera-based movement of the Kinect, include Dead Space: Extraction, The Lord of the Rings: Aragorn's Quest and Phineas and Ferb: Across the 2nd Dimension. Awards See also References External links |
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