FT : Battle royale games keep players fighting to the death

Battle royale games keep players fighting to the death
Danganronpa, Fortnite and Call of Duty challenge you to be the last one standing

It’s Makoto Naegi’s first day at the elite Hope’s Peak Academy and he’s a little nervous. As players embark on this first game of the Danganronpa series, just reissued alongside its sequels for Nintendo Switch, they learn that Hope’s Peak is not what it seems. The eager students are soon imprisoned in a sadistic game conducted by a nefarious teddy bear. Their only chance of escape is to kill another student and successfully frame a classmate for the crime. The story explores a chilling psychological question: what circumstances can push a good person to murder?

If this set-up sounds familiar, it should. Danganronpa is an example of a “battle royale”, a genre in which a group of people are placed in a closed environment and forced to compete to the death with only a sole survivor allowed to escape. Over the past decade, this conceit has become one of the most popular and lucrative trends in culture, powering the meteoric success of screen hits such as The Hunger Games and Squid Game alongside video games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone.

The 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale gave the genre its name. In this modern horror classic, a group of 42 high-schoolers are placed on an island and told they must fight until only one remains. The movie proved controversial on release for its extreme brutality, yet beneath the viscera was a thoughtful fable that explored how trust becomes a scarce yet vital resource when your life is on the line and everyone has a motive to kill you.

The film inspired imitators in manga and anime, and the idea went mainstream with The Hunger Games, in which teens compete in a deathmatch. This year, Netflix’s Squid Game, the platform’s most popular series to date, gave the genre an interesting twist by creating a death game which debt-ravaged contestants take part in to win money. The battle royale framework functions as a flexible vehicle for metaphor, whether it’s the critique of capitalism in Squid Game or the literal life-and-death struggle of high school drama in Danganronpa. All these stories interrogate meritocracy, considering how young people are forced to compete in a world where the decks are stacked against them and there are never enough rewards to go around.

In the world of gaming, the first titles to imitate Battle Royale, such as the visual novels Danganronpa and Zero Escape, explored similar themes, but the big successes today are shooters with no such intellectual pretensions. Here a group of players are dropped from a plane across a large map and must scavenge weapons and fight until only one remains. These have become the dominant form in online gaming.

The first examples were mods for Minecraft and zombie survival game DayZ, before the latter was rebuilt as a standalone game, 2017’s PUBG: Battlegrounds, which became the genre’s first breakout success. Shortly afterwards, Epic Games retooled its little-played survival game Fortnite to include a battle royale mode and it became a global phenomenon. While many battles royale sprung up in their wake, few attained the same enduring popularity. Those that did offered twists on the formula: Fortnite allows players to build protective structures; 2019’s Apex Legends focuses on teamwork; and 2020’s Call of Duty: Warzone has the “gulag”, where slain players can re-enter the fray if they triumph in a one-on-one deathmatch.

If these enormously popular shooters do not engage with the themes that make battles royale so attractive in TV and film, why do players flock to them? The reason is a narrative tension that is inherent to the concept. Competition starts slowly as players look for weapons and often avoid combat while they are still vulnerable. Participants get picked off and the stakes rise as the field of play shrinks, forcing them into a tight space where conflict becomes inevitable. The number of variables, from the huge quantity of competitors to the randomly dispersed equipment, make for unpredictable gameplay.

The genre has also proved versatile. A number of non-violent games have offered eccentric takes on the battle royale, ranging from the candy-coloured obstacle course Fall Guys to Tetris 99, where 99 players stack blocks in a last-man-standing competition. Today there is truly a battle royale for every player, and last week I finally found one for me — new release Babble Royale, a spin on Scrabble in which players parachute letter tiles on to a board and compete to be the last speller standing.

FT : Lira slide pushes young Turks to virtual working overseas

Lira slide pushes young Turks to virtual working overseas
Local businesses complain of ‘brain drain’ as programmers take jobs with international companies

About two years ago, as the Turkish lira was continuing on its long downward slide, Batikan Erdogan created a graph that made him reassess his career choices.

Seeing that his earnings in the previous five years were flat in dollar terms, he decided he needed to earn in foreign currency. But, rather than join the many people he knew who had left the country in recent years to work abroad, he found a job working from Turkey for a start-up based in Seattle.

“I didn’t want to leave my family, my friends, just to move to a different country for work purposes,” he said, adding that the purchasing power of his dollar-denominated salary was also greater in Istanbul. “Earning in dollars and spending in liras is more appealing to me compared to living in Berlin and spending in euros.” 

The 31-year-old, who now works remotely for another US start-up, is part of a virtual brain drain in Turkey’s tech and computing sectors that has been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic and compounded by Turkey’s economic woes. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a life-long opponent of high interest rates, ordered the central bank to repeatedly lower the cost of borrowing despite soaring inflation.

As global companies and their employees have adapted to the pandemic, remote working has offered exciting opportunities for outward-looking young people — but is causing problems for Turkish businesses.

Gizem Oztok Altinsac, chief economist at the Turkish business association Tusiad, said that the corporate world was “very unhappy” about it. “It’s good for young people who have huge unemployment in our country, but it’s very bad for the real sector, which needs qualified young people and cannot pay their salaries.”

The phenomenon is part of a broader global trend as the pandemic has encouraged companies, especially those in the tech sector, to look beyond their immediate surroundings for new hires.

“Covid has completely changed the way engineering teams are constructed,” said Vivek Ravisankar, of the Silicon Valley-based hiring platform HackerRank. “Companies have had a taste of what it means to get talent from more than a 15-mile radius and they’re not going back.”

That has profound consequences for the salaries that businesses must offer. While remuneration in the past tended to be highly variable according to location, Ravisankar said that regional and global differences in pay were beginning to narrow. “I wouldn’t be surprised, the way it’s going, if [in future] there are quite close salary ranges across the world,” he said.

Opposition parties say that Turkey has already suffered an exodus of talent over the past 10 years as the country has become more authoritarian under the leadership of Erdogan, as well as suffering political and economic turmoil.

In a survey of young people aged 18-29 last year by the polling agency MAK and Yeditepe University, 64 per cent of respondents said they would like to leave Turkey to permanently live abroad. A majority cited the desire for a “better future” as their motivation.

The Turkish lira has lost more than 80 per cent of its value against the dollar since the start of 2015, eroding the purchasing power of those earning in the local currency.

Gonul Kamali, president of the Turkish Software Industrialists Association (YASAD), which represents the software sector, said that an international company might pay €5,000 or €6,000 a month to hire an eastern European software engineer — or €2,500 for a Turkish one. That compares with an average salary of about TL15,000 (around €1,180) a month for a developer with four to nine years’ experience working at a Turkish company. “It’s [a] hugely cost-effective situation for the international companies,” she said.

“Software developers are winning at the end of the day, so I’m proud,” added Kamali. “But Turkish companies are suffering.”

Business executives and industry representatives said Turkey’s biggest and most exciting start-ups — such as the delivery service Getir and the ecommerce platform Trendyol — are still able to hire and retain top talent. But others, including some of Turkey’s old industrial giants, have had a much harder time recruiting people with the skills that they need.

Turkey’s former finance minister, Berat Albayrak, launched an initiative last year aimed at encouraging 1m young people to take up coding by offering free online courses.

Mustafa Ergen, a vice-president of the opposition Deva party, said that such initiatives were welcome but argued that a much broader overhaul was needed to expand education in schools and universities and to support the country’s growing tech sector.

Ergen, who also teaches entrepreneurship and has his own start-up, said that Turkey’s youthful demographics meant there was huge potential to train an army of young computer programmers and web developers. But he warned: “We should have done this 10 years ago. Every year we fail to take action, the window of opportunity is closing since our population is ageing.”

Turkey’s soaring inflation means that Erdogan, the tech worker, insists that he is not “getting rich” despite his foreign currency salary. “I am keeping my purchasing power at the same level.”

There are downsides to working from home, such as struggling to switch off at times. But he is happy at his company, a New York-based productivity start-up called KosmoTime, where he has worked since May as a product manager. As well as an attractive salary, it offers benefits such as trips to visit colleagues around the world.

Thanks to his job, Erdogan and his fiancée hope to move from their apartment in the heart of Istanbul to the outskirts of the city so that they can have a garden for their dog, Maya. He struggles to imagine returning to work for a Turkish company. KosmoTime “earned my loyalty”, he said.

FT : Sewage spills highlight decades of under-investment at England’s water comp

Sewage spills highlight decades of under-investment at England’s water companies
Providers under pressure to clean up their act but are instead cutting spending and raising bills

The torrent of sewage that poured into Tommy Stadlen’s west London home left his pregnant wife waist high in a sea of grey-brown liquid, dead rats washing into his neighbour’s flat — and a strong conviction that the water bills he had paid for 15 years had not quite delivered the quality of service expected.

The immediate cause of the flooding, which closed roads, underground stations and shops in the British capital in July, was a fierce downpour that delivered a month’s rain in 90 minutes.

But while extreme weather, rising population density and unconstrained building contributed to the toxic flooding, it was also the result of decades of under-investment in the nation’s water infrastructure.

“This is the richest borough, in one of the world’s wealthiest countries and yet it lacks a functioning sewage system,” Stadlen, a technology entrepreneur, told a packed Kensington town hall attended by Thames Water and many other frustrated local residents in September.

While public anger towards water companies has been bubbling for years, it has erupted in the past few months, as unknown quantities of raw sewage and storm water have repeatedly been poured into Britain’s rivers and seas, increasing pressure on the government and regulators to act.

The industry is now facing its biggest wave of protests since it was privatised more than 30 years ago, as campaigners, from the Windrush Against Sewage group in Oxfordshire to Ilkley Clean River in Yorkshire, try to force action from companies and policymakers.

Their efforts have gained support and publicity from celebrities including Feargal Sharkey, whose Twitter campaign helped secure a vote in parliament for action against sewage pollution, and Bob Geldof, who has urged people near his home in a town on the Kent coast to stop paying their water bills.

The biggest focus for campaigners has been storm overflows — the 15,000 pipes that discharge sewage into rivers and seas when it rains.

Despite the unpalatable consequences for swimmers and wildlife, a certain amount of this dumping is allowed under Environment Agency rules. But until recently most pipes were not monitored and water companies were responsible for reporting their own breaches. The environmental watchdog has launched an investigation into whether companies have been exceeding legal limits.

The new Environment Act requires water and sewage companies to reduce overflows, but there is no set timetable or quantifiable targets. The government is required to publish a new plan to reduce overflows by September 2022.

But if the pressure for change is there, the cash is not. This month, industry regulator, Ofwat, warned that at least two providers — Southern Water and Yorkshire Water — were in such poor financial health in March that there were concerns over their ability to deliver environmental improvements. Yorkshire Water said its “financial structures are robust and resilient.” Southern has since been taken over by the Australian infrastructure manager Macquarie.


Investment fell as dividends flowed
The privatisation of England and Wales’ regional water suppliers 30 years ago came with a promise that investors would deliver much needed upgrades to the nations’ sagging water network.

Although there was an initial rise in spending, as some companies sought to meet European water quality directives, research by the Financial Times showed that total capital expenditure by the 10 biggest water and sewage monopolies had declined by 15 per cent since the 1990s — from £5.7bn to £4.8bn a year.

One exception is Thames Water, which has increased expenditure, although not by enough to stop leaks and burst pipes.

Over the same time the companies — which were sold off with no debt and handed £1.5bn — have borrowed £53bn, the equivalent of around £2,000 per household. Much of that has been used not for new investment but to pay £72bn in dividends.

“The purpose of private water companies has indeed been to profit-maximise,” said Dieter Helm, a utilities expert at Oxford university.


Ageing pipes soak up investment
The concern now is that with high debts to service and ageing infrastructure to maintain, water companies have little financial headroom to improve their Victorian era pipes, even though customers’ bills have risen by almost a third since 1991.

One water industry executive said companies were spending more on “maintaining deteriorating assets than replacing them.” He pointed to the use of water jets to deal with blockages as an example. “These are a poor substitute for improving the wastewater network, and will hasten pipe deterioration,” he said.

Olivia Jensen, a lead scientist at the National University of Singapore, said that in Singapore the government department responsible has an active management plan including leak detection systems. “This is very different from England, where the emphasis has been on squeezing more out of the existing system rather than building a system that will function well in the future,” she said.

Ofwat, which sets limits on how much water companies can raise from bills to invest, said overall expenditure including maintenance had increased by 42 per cent, from £3.9bn to £5.6bn per year since the 1990s. It said some spending, such as on sustainable drainage systems, would not have been included in the overall capital expenditure figures.

There has also been some improvement in transparency around sewage spills, with new electronic monitoring devices being fixed to pipes. Water companies will be required to publish storm overflows within an hour of them happening, which does not reduce pollution but at least helps to protect public health by providing warnings.


But this still does not solve the problem of how to pay for infrastructure upgrades to cut sewage outflows.

A recent government commissioned report estimated the cost of eliminating storm overflows at between £350bn and £600bn — an unrealistic sum for the companies to pay that could add up to almost £1,000 to customers’ annual bills.

Even more minor improvements — such as reducing spills in “sensitive catchments” by three quarters — would likely cost at least £18bn, the report said.

However many companies believe they will be able to make substantial improvements for less.

Southern Water, which received a £1bn emergency equity injection from Macquarie in August, a month after the company was hit with a record £90m fine for dumping billions of litres of raw sewage into rivers and seas, has pledged to halve pollution incidents by 2024 compared with 2019, while ensuring bills do not rise by more than inflation.

It estimates the cost of replacing its total sewage network at a crippling £50bn — but will complete significant upgrades to its existing infrastructure, half of which was built before the 1970s, at a cost of £2bn.

The industry body, Water UK, said it was “pushing the government to encourage Ofwat to authorise schemes that meet . . . environment targets, including ending all ecological harm from overflows, ensuring resilient water supplies, and meeting our ambitious 2030 net zero target.”

But Ofwat said companies “need to focus on improving their performance before asking for more money from customers”. “Water companies have substantial money to invest, with a £50bn package agreed . . . for the next five years”.

Helm argued it was “implausible” that the regulator could allow companies to raise prices high enough to pay for the extent of the upgrades required during the next regulatory period, especially when customers are struggling with inflation and interest rate increases. He said wider reform of the regulatory system was needed. Others such as We Own It, a campaign group, are calling for renationalisation.

Back in Kensington, Stadlen has pledged to keep fighting on behalf of the flooded residents. “We will not allow incompetent bureaucrats and cost-cutting private companies to fail them,” he told the September meeting.

FT : Chinese social media users blast Elon Musk over near miss in space

Chinese social media users blast Elon Musk over near miss in space
Criticism comes after Beijing’s UN mission says SpaceX Starlink satellites nearly hit space station

Chinese social media users have attacked Elon Musk after satellites of SpaceX, his private rocket company, forced the country’s space station to manoeuvre out of the way to avoid collisions twice this year.

The country’s mission to the UN complained this month that the Chinese space station had to take “preventive collision avoidance control” measures in October and July to “ensure the safety and lives of in-orbit astronauts”.

China said the two satellites from SpaceX’s Starlink internet network were moving dangerously and alleged that one had an unpredictable “manoeuvre strategy”. Beijing did not say how close the spacecraft had come to a collision.

The latest criticism came months after a public relations crisis for Tesla in China, a crucial market Musk’s electric vehicle company, with sales in the country making up a fifth of the carmaker’s global total last year.

Car owners alleged braking issues with Tesla models, spurring one customer to climb on top of a vehicle wearing a T-shirt with the words “brake malfunction” at the Shanghai Auto Show in April in front of attendees and media.

Some Chinese military compounds in Beijing banned Tesla owners from parking their vehicles inside the gated areas where personnel live, alleging that the cars’ cameras posed a security risk. Musk denied the devices could be used for spying.

Musk’s Starlink has almost 1,900 satellites in orbit, with plans for as many as 12,000 to beam broadband down to earth.

“Tesla and SpaceX have the same problem, they can’t brake,” quipped one user on social media platform Weibo.

Another Chinese user called Starlink “the world’s biggest pile of space junk”. European industry experts have warned that the expanding Starlink project exacerbates the growing problem of space debris, with more than 100,000 commercial spacecraft projected to be in orbit by 2029.

Josef Aschbacher, director-general of the European Space Agency, told the Financial Times this month that the continent’s inaction has meant the entrepreneur was “making the rules” himself for the space economy.

Hu Xijin, a commentator for the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid, wrote on Twitter: “Could Mr Musk please explain why satellites launched by his Starlink program had two close encounters with China’s space station. They were not there to sell Tesla to Chinese taikonauts, were they?”

Other Chinese citizens called for Musk to be kicked out of China.

Starlink did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

FT : Companies raise record $12tn in blockbuster capital markets year

Companies raise record $12tn in blockbuster capital markets year
Plus, PwC UK warns negative views of auditing are hitting recruitment and Turkey’s tech brain drain

Companies raised a record $12.1tn in 2021 by selling stock, issuing debt and inking new loans, as a torrent of central bank stimulus and the rapid recovery from the pandemic propelled global markets.

With a few days left in the year, the cash haul is already up almost 17 per cent from 2020, itself a historic year, and almost a quarter above the take in 2019 before the coronavirus crisis, according to Financial Times calculations based on Refinitiv data.

The ferocious pace of fundraising underscores just how easy financial conditions are in many parts of the world, most notably the US, where more than $5tn was raised.

“It’s been a really blockbuster year,” said Chris Blum, a BNP Paribas banker who helps finance leveraged buyouts. “We anticipate it will continue into next year. Every year you kinda think markets will go down from this frantic pace but it will still be robust.”

Gargantuan sums have been raised as companies such as electric vehicle maker Rivian and South Korean ecommerce business Coupang went public.

>>> TradeGate Pre-Market Indications

DAX:
  • No major movers
MDAX:
  • No major movers
SDAX:
  • S&T AG (SANT TH) +5.8%
    • S&T Rejects Claims of Viceroy Short Report, Seeks External Audit
  • LPKF (LPK TH) +3.5%
  • Deutsche Euroshop (DEQ TH) +1.7%
  • MorphoSys (MOR TH) +1.1%
  • Encavis (ECV TH) +0.5%
    • Encavis Buys Two Solar Parks in Denmark From European Energy

>>> What to look at today - 28th of December 2021

Asian stocks were mixed Tuesday as traders evaluated economic growth risks from the omicron virus outbreak and the latest regulatory tightening in China.
Equities rose in Japan but wavered in Hong Kong and China amid sweeping rules from Beijing for overseas share sales. A Covid outbreak driven by the delta strain in the western city of Xi’an festered, with new cases hitting a record.
The Hang Seng Tech Index slid as much as 1.6% amid holiday-thinned trading, approaching a record-low close from last week. U.S. and European futures fluctuated following the S&P 500’s 69th close at an all-time high this year. Shorter maturity U.S. Treasury yields rose, while those for longer-dated bonds were steady. The dollar was little changed and oil pushed higher.
Global shares are on course for a third year of double-digit returns, powered by the U.S. surge. The climb has overcome coronavirus waves and a shift by some key central banks toward tighter monetary policy to fight high inflation. Concerns remain that those variables could spur heightened volatility.
In China, the latest escalation in Beijing’s wider regulatory clampdown on private industry casts more doubt over the prospects for overseas initial public offerings, which had proceeded virtually unchecked for two decades.
Elsewhere, the People’s Bank of China -- which on the weekend vowed more economic support -- boosted a short-term liquidity injection. China Evergrande Group has two more dollar-bond coupon payments due Tuesday, interest that investors aren’t expecting will be paid after the property giant failed to do so on other debt.  
In cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin gave up a recent advance to slide below the $50,000 level.
US After Hours Summary: Quiet after hours, but CDC cutting isolation days is boosting airline stocks; VIPS -1.2% ticks down on lowered guidance

Nikkei +1.37% Hang Seng +0.23% CSI +0.76% Shanghai +0.39% Shenzen +0.81%

Eur$ 1.1326 CNH 6.3745 CNY 6.3695 JPY 114.87 GBP 1.3434 CHF 0.9174 RUB 73.4657 TRY 11.8407 WTI$ 75.76 +0.26% Gold 1,813.30 BTC 49,300 -3.10% ETC 3930 -3.10%

S&P -0.03% Nasdaq -0.02% EuroStoxx -0.16% Dax -0.13% SMI

Macro :
- Delta Says China Service Remains ‘Fluid’ As Plane Turns Back
- Oil Holds Near One-Month High on Signs Demand to Weather Omicron

Keep an eye on :
- AIR FP : Air Lease Adds to Blockbuster Airbus Deal With Five More Planes
- AT1 GY : Aroundtown to Extend Share Buyback Program Until June 2022
- BORR NO : Borr: Application Period for $30M Equity Offering Opens Today
- CLN SW : Clariant to Buy BASF’s U.S. Attapulgite Ops Unit for $60M Cash
- ECV GY : Encavis Buys Two Solar Parks in Denmark From European Energy
- EL FP : Italy Needs Industrial Champions: Del Vecchio to Corriere
- NOVOB DC : Novo CEO Says Growth More Important Than Profitability: Borsen
- ORSTED DC : Orsted Sees Potential for More Baltic Sea Wind Projects: Borsen
- RLF SW : Relief: Swiss Aviptadil Patent Procedure to Conclude Jan. 24
- TEF SM : Telefonica, Unions Agree on 3,000 Job Cuts, EU1.6B Cost: Cinco
- TIT IM : Italy Picks Telecom Italia, Leonardo, CDP Project for Cloud Hub

>>> US After Hours Summary: Quiet after hours, but CDC cutting isolation days is

After Hours Summary: Quiet after hours, but CDC cutting isolation days is boosting airline stocks; VIPS -1.2% ticks down on lowered guidance

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: None

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: JBLU +0.9% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), ALK +0.6% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), LUV +0.5% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), AAL +0.4% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), DAL +0.4% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), JETS +0.3% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), UAL +0.3% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), HA +0.2% (CDC lowers isolation period for positive COVID result), KKR +0.1% (increases available amount under its repurchase program to $500 mln)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: VIPS -1.2% (lowers Q4 revenue guidance)

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: RRD -1.6% (recently identified a systems intrusion), GWH -0.2% (files for 5 mln share offering; also files for 5 mln share offering by selling shareholder), ASPN -0.1% (terminates supply arrangement with BASF)