RefBan

Referral Banners

Monday, April 30, 2012

Top Stories from the last 24 hours


Hi David,

These are the top stories from The Next Web over the last 24 hours.

The Next Web

P.S. Want to be the first of your friends and followers to spread our breaking news stories? Now you can, with Spread.us.






Exclusive: Warner Bros. Picks Up 'Rascal Racoon' for 'Harold & Kumar' Director


© 2011 The Hollywood Reporter, All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

Dick Clark Productions Prevails in Golden Globes Trial


© 2011 The Hollywood Reporter, All rights reserved. Terms of Use | Privacy Policy

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your Mind

April 30th, 2012Top Story

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your Mind

By Adam Dachis

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindWe all have that one friend or family member who's a constant drain on our energy. You want to keep that person in your life (or have to), but you could do without the huge amounts of stress. While you can't change who someone is, you can do a lot to remove the dysfunction from the situation. Whether you've got one or many high-maintenance people in your life, here's how to handle them.

I've dealt with a handful of what most of us call high-maintenance people in my life, some of which I've handled better than others. It's always a delicate situation and everybody's a little different. That said, like in any situation, certain approaches can work significantly better than others. To figure out which approaches work best for handling the high-maintenance crowd, I enlisted the help of relationship and family therapist Roger S. Gil. Here's what I learned about managing those often stressful high-maintenance relationships.

Set Clear Boundaries (Because They Will Be Crossed)

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindWhen I'd first started work as a freelance designer, I wanted to do a great job. Clients would take advantage of this, often coercing me into doing more work than we'd agreed upon. An early mentor told me one important thing: the first thing you need to do is set clear expectations and put them in writing. If a client asks for something you didn't agree to, you can always refer back to that list when you need to say no. Sure, a personal relationship isn't a series of business transactions, but stressful situations with high-maintenance loved ones aren't terribly different. If a friend or family member is continuously crossing a line, you need to ensure they know where that line is. Roger suggests the following:

Whether it's letting that person know that you're not comfortable talking about a particular subject or giving them rules about when it's appropriate to call you (e.g. "don't call me unless you're bleeding"), you need to let this person know where your limits are. When they cross them, let them know in a respectful manner. Don't let them bully you, but don't be a jerk either.

This can be an uncomfortable conversation, especially if you bring it up out of nowhere. If you do that, it may seem as if you're on the offensive. Because this is an ongoing relationship and not one formed from a business contract, you have the option of waiting until a problem arises. When it does, use that moment to tell your high-maintenance person what is or isn't okay. Let them know the terms of your relationship, and refer back to them politely anytime they breach those terms. Setting boundaries is important, but it's also crucial that you are consistent. If you're not, and you let this person break the rules you've set out, they'll learn that the rules don't matter. That will only make things worse.

Nurture the Relationship On Your Terms

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindHigh-maintenance people live in a world that revolves around them, so the only schedule that matters is their own. They'll often forget about, or even ignore, the times you're busy because they find their time to be more important. High-maintenance people won't necessarily think this way consciously, but rather over-estimate the importance of their current issue. That results in phone calls and subsequent requests that sound dire but really aren't all that important. To avoid this problem, Roger suggests only making an effort to help when you have the time:

If the person is the type to try to get your attention more than you would like, only make yourself available on your terms. For example, if they insist on calling you non-stop while you're on your honeymoon then don't pick up. Wait until you get back and reach out to them (although they'll likely be upset because you weren't available when they wanted you). One trick that's helpful is to return someone's call when you have a limited amount of time. For example, "Hey I'm sorry I missed your call but I have 10 minutes before I have to head out to work and I wanted to see how you're doing." This trick also works when calling back someone who's a hardcore talker.

This is difficult because you have a lingering "what if" in the back of your head, making you wonder if something bad is actually happening. You're simply a victim of a boy who cried wolf situation, causing you to worry about the possible guilt of ignoring a truly important problem. What you have to remember is that it is not your fault that a high-maintenance person cannot prioritize their issues and let you know when they truly do need your help. By putting your time first, you put them in a situation where they either have to find someone else who will devote the immense amount of time they desire or they will learn to only ask for help when they truly need it. Either way, you don't have to spend too much time concerning yourself with their constant—and often trivial—issues.

Choose Your Battles Wisely

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindHigh-maintenance people don't like to be wrong. Because they consider their time of the utmost importance, it shouldn't come as a surprise that their opinions are highly regarded as well. When you disagree with them, chances are they'll just fight back until you give up or just become upset with you. When you pick a battle with this kind of person, Roger suggests you should save the occasion for when their actions are causing you harm:

It may not be worth having an argument with a pushy/demanding/drama-filled person if you're talking about how they call you at 1:00 AM to talk about their date. (They're probably too self-absorbed to care.) However, if the person decides to borrow your GPS without asking when you have a trip coming up, then you might want to speak up (because they're causing you possible harm). You should really know what you're willing to put up with and what you insist on calling them out on.

It's important to pick only the battles you need to win. If you don't, you're just going to end up exhausting yourself.

Plan for a Little "Crazy"

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindLife is capricious. It breeds interruptions and imperfections regularly. You can rarely count on things going to plan, but you can plan for potential problems and handle them well. High-maintenance friends and family members make up part of the force that brings the unexpected into your life. While you don't always know what they're going to do, Roger believes you can plan for it:

We all know that one person who's likely say something inappropriate at the wrong time. Or maybe we have a cousin who likes to drop by unannounced and expect us to open the door for them in the middle of dinner. While it sounds like we're enabling bad behavior, we may have to tolerate a certain level of "craziness" in order to keep this person in our lives. Just remember to set boundaries and prioritize your time first when putting up with their behavior.

In fact, these unexpected moments can often be good opportunities to help set those boundaries. Every time something bad happens, you have an opportunity to turn your problems into progress. It can be hard work, but it's better than enduring the issue for nothing but grief.

Give Yourself a Break

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindHigh-maintenance people often cause high amounts of stress. If they didn't, you probably wouldn't be reading this. Like with any stressful situation, it's important to remember to extract yourself from it from time to time so you have a break. There are plenty of ways to do this, and Roger offers up a number of great options:

If the person in question is someone you'll see on a regular basis, then give yourself ways to decompress from the stress they cause. Talk to a supportive person who doesn't mind hearing your complaints (like a therapist…yes, shameless plug). Go for a run. Meditate. Write about your frustrations in that fancy Moleskine you just bought yourself. Practice your preferred form of spirituality. Doing something healthy to unwind will make putting up with the person easier.

With high-maintenance people, it can be easy to forget that you're the priority in your own life. When things get too stressful, remember to put yourself first.

Get Help

How to Handle Your High Maintenance Friends and Family Without Losing Your MindIt's unlikely that you're the only resource your high-maintenance friend or family member has in their life. Chances are you know one or two of the other people that they also go to for their frequent emotional needs. Don't let the burden sit solely on you. Roger suggests tag-teaming this person's many requests with someone else:

If you have someone else in your life who has to put up with the person in question (e.g. coworker, sibling, spouse, etc.) then it may help to "take turns" with this person so the other can get a rest. Similar to the "tag team" approach new parents should take with newborns, "tag teaming" the person may lighten the load on the both of you while keeping that person in your lives.

You have your own problems to deal with. Putting someone else's issues entirely on your back isn't healthy. Asking someone for help will not only lighten the load, but give you a friend to talk to about all the ridiculous things you both have to deal with.


A big thanks goes out to Roger S. Gil, M.A.M.F.T. for his integral contributions to this post. Be sure to check out his podcast and follow him on Twitter for advice on personal relationships and more.

Photos by Graffiti, Laschon Maximilian (Shutterstock), Janaka Dharmasena (Shutterstock), Scarleth White, and Photo by Dmitriy Shironosov..

Number of comments

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer

April 30th, 2012Top Story

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer

By Mark Serrels | Kotaku AU

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer I'm sitting in a cinema; the lights come up. The God of War: Ascension presentation is over. Amidst a hum of whispers and seat shuffles, there is a call for questions. Reluctantly I raise my hand. I'm handed a microphone.

"Maybe I'm jet-lagged," I begin, "but I'm a little bit confused…"

No-one blames me. This isn't what I was expecting from God of War: Ascension. Not even close.

Not-Quite-Kratos

The demo begins with a close up — a face, not quite Kratos, but recognisable as such. The camera zooms out dramatically; a Cyclops blasts through concrete.

"A prequel," I think to myself, "this is what Kratos must have looked like before…"

'Not-quite-Kratos' begins attacking the Cyclops, all slashes and stabs. But then another character, who looks a little less like Kratos, but still a little bit like Kratos, joins in on the Cyclops beat down. Seconds later 'not-quite-Kratos' and 'a-little-bit-like-Kratos' have spilled the Cyclops intestines (and various other internal organs) all over this level's nice clean floor and subsequently moved on. Together.

"A non-playable team-mate?" I ask myself. "Or maybe God of War co-op?"

I really have no earthly idea what's going on here.

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer The battlefield increases in scale. A barrage of new 'not-quite-Kratos's' enter the scene. Slashing, parrying, clefting one another in twain. One particularly vivid kill involves one 'not-quite-Kratos' slashing another 'not-quite-Kratos' right through the shoulder blade. In God of War the phrase 'tearing one another limb from limb' is always meant literally.

In the background, a titan-esque Cyclops. Absolutely massive. He's tied down with chains and struggles against them as the carnage unfolds. The combat is God of War-esque, but it feels less precise — far more loose. Hits don't appear to register as easily, enemies don't follow the traditional routes — they don't head directly towards the waiting blades of 'not-quite-Kratos', they judder and jerk, they parry. In short — they act like human players.

"Wait a minute," I think, the idea suddenly dawning. "Is this multiplayer?"

Slowly it starts to click. Piece by piece. It appears as though there are two teams of four, battling it out for control, attempting to hold various areas of a sprawling multiplayer map. Both sets of teams continue to skirmish as I compute.

One gains the upper hand, and eventually a massive, God-sized spear is hurtled towards the ground. 'Not-quite-Kratos' grasps at it. He leads his team to the gargantuan Cyclops where they, in the most grotesque manner possible, liberate the monster from his single, solitary eyeball.

This is God of War: Ascension's new multiplayer component. And I'm still a little bit confused.

Favour of the Gods

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer "What did you think," asks Whitney Wade, Senior Producer.

I answer honestly.

"Well, I was really, really confused, and maybe that was deliberate — maybe you guys wanted us to feel confused," I say. "Then I sort of tried to piece it all together, and that was quite fun, the process of trying to understand the demo as it went along."

She laughs.

"Ah, you were the one that asked that question!"

After watching the demo, featuring 'not-quite-Kratos' and 'a-little-bit-like-Kratos', we were funnelled towards Jason McDonald, a Lead Combat Designer tasked with helping us digest what we just saw. The afore-mentioned demo was presented completely without context — hence the confusion. It was his job to clarify things.

"So yeah, what you just watched was multiplayer," he begins.

"Basically we showed a team component where two people killed the small Cyclops. Then we pulled back and tried to show that there's a bigger fight happening on a bigger scale with a bigger Cyclops."

The game we just watched was a four versus four affair — essentially God of War's interpretation of 'territories'. Each team had to hold two separate positions, and hold said positions for a specific amount of time before earning 'the favour of the gods', and the right to use the Spear sent from the heavens to slaughter the massive Cyclops.

Suddenly I begin to feel a little less confused.

The Titan Blueprint

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer "We've actually talked about multiplayer internally for quite some time," claims Whitney, "even before this iteration of God of War.

"I think when we were thinking about what is the next God of War going to be, our focus was definitely on single player, but when those talks evolved we asked, 'what's going to be our 'Titan' moment in Ascension?' A 'Titan moment' being a huge technical, artistic and creative endeavour. The timing just felt right to try multiplayer, so we just went into gear."

Multiplayer may not seem like a challenge on the same scale as the Titans from God of War 3. Multiplayer has been done before, even in franchises known primarily for single player. But God of War: Ascension is attempting to push towards the unknown in a sense — there may be a blueprint for multiplayer in the first person shooter realm, but multiplayer in an action game like God of War is uncharted territory.

"It's a huge challenge for us," admits Whitney. "But we've always tried to face our challenges head on.

"We had the same attitude when we initially started talked about the Titan – everyone was just like, 'man, this is going to be crazy.' And then we just go ahead and do it!

And that's essentially what the team at Santa Monica did — went about the task of 'inventing' a multiplayer God of War.

"We started off building arenas, and then we started wondering what our wow moment would be," says Whitney. "Then we thought about the simpler stuff – player versus player, balancing, teams – do we want to have AI involved? It was like that, there wasn't really an initial conversation with a road map, we were finding our way as we went.

"We really thought about what was successful about God of War single-player: visceral gameplay, epic gameplay, making sure the player feels powerful and fun. We though about how we could transfer that into multiplayer.

"It was far from the traditional process you go through when you add multiplayer to, say, a first person shooter. It's a huge challenge."

The Multiplayer Challenge

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer 'Challenge'. It's a word the Santa Monica team use constantly, almost like a crutch. Multiplayer is a 'challenge'. The Titans were a 'challenge', designing levels is a 'challenge'. The word 'Ascension' seems to be tied into that — because a challenge isn't something you necessarily solve — it's something you rise to.

"The biggest challenge of moving into multiplayer is making the combat balanced," says Jason, and there's that word again — 'challenge'. "Kratos is a powerful guy, but we can't make everybody super powerful, because that would just be frustrating.

"The weapons are tuned a little differently – you might have noticed that the ranges were a little bit shorter, and we've done things to make sure you can actually fight with one another.

"We want people to understand what's going on. — if you get the upper hand you know why, if you're losing you know why. We want to make sure the attacks have defined ranges, and players recognise how to counter."

The class system being introduced to God of War: Ascension is part of that need to define multiplayer — to give it a purpose, to provide players with a template to work with. It's a familiar tactic, but perhaps a necessary one considering the circumstances.

"You'll be able to select from one of four gods – Zeus, Aries, Poseidon, Hades – and based on that selection will come abilities, explains Jason. "Some of them may be magical, some may be perks, some might be an item you can use. I don't want to give too many details, but there will be... ah, maybe I'll just stop right there!

"Think of it this way — various games will give you perks like, 'I'll do a little more damage than you'. Maybe something happens after I kill a bunch of guys. Those are examples of perks that you may have in Ascension.

"We want to make sure that all the classes complement each other. We want to make sure a well balanced team works better than an unbalanced team. A good example is basketball — If you had all centres... well, Shaq might have been good back in the day, but if you have five Shaqs you're still going to lose."

Fear of Failure

Our Titanic First Look At God Of War: Ascension's Multiplayer Bringing multiplayer to a well established franchise — particularly a series known primarily for focused single player experiences — is bound to elicit backlash from specific segments of the game's fanbase.

BioShock 2, Dead Space 2 — shoe-horned multiplayer is hardly a boon, and is seen by many as a drain on resources that could otherwise be spent on honing the established single player aspect.

This is an assumption Whitney Wade is well aware of.

"Absolutely we're worried about it," she says.

"I can remember working on God of War 1 the night before E3, when we were debuting the game for the first time. We were tuning the Medusa to the very last minute and we had no idea what people's reactions would be the next day. That's just how we operate! The fear of failure, the fear of rejection! That drives us to make sure we're hitting it. And we don't know if we're hitting it until it's out there."

But Whitney believes the experience with Santa Monica's ranks, and the team's extensive history with the God of War series, grants them a little more leeway. The team is far more comfortable taking risks as a result.

Still, there are no guarantees.

"I hope fans react favourably," begins Whitney. "We're proud of it otherwise we wouldn't be showing it to you today. We're trying to define action-adventure multiplayer and not only is that our goal, but we feel like we're hitting it.

"Along the way fans have always talked about the potential of multiplayer, some fans have also mentioned they don't want to dilute the single player experience. So we made the decision to move forward with multiplayer without diluting the single player experience."

The pressure of working on a fourth iteration of God of War is intense. Expectations are high, not just from the fans, but internally. It's that constant struggle to outdo previous efforts, to redefine production values — that's what motivates every single individual working at Santa Monica. Every God of War must have its Titan and it just so happens that, this time round, said 'Titan' revolves around an attempt to redefine multiplayer.

"We're definitely proud and ambitious people on this team," says Whitney, finally. "We want to be proud of what we do, and we want to make sure we can enjoy the thing that we've made.

"We want to make sure we're outdoing ourselves every time."

Mark Serrels is the EIC for Kotaku Australia. You can follow him on Twitter!
Republished from Kotaku Australia with permission.
Number of comments