Think globally, rebuild locally

Think globally, rebuild locally

Building construction accounts for a huge chunk of greenhouse gas emissions: About 36 percent of carbon dioxide emissions and 40 percent of energy consumption in Europe, for instance. That’s why the European Union has developed regulations about the reuse of building materials.

Some cities are adding more material reuse into construction already. Amsterdam, for example, is attempting to slash its raw material use by half by 2030. The Netherlands as a whole aims for a “circular economy” of completely reused materials by 2050.

But the best way to organize the reuse of construction waste is still being determined. For one thing: Where should reusable building materials be stored before they are reused? A newly published study focusing on Amsterdam finds the optimal material reuse system for construction has many local storage “hubs” that keep materials within a few miles of where they will be needed.

“Our findings provide a starting point for policymakers in Amsterdam to strategize land use effectively,” says Tanya Tsui, a postdoc at MIT and a co-author of the new paper. “By identifying key locations repeatedly favored across various hub scenarios, we underscore the importance of prioritizing these areas for future circular economy endeavors in Amsterdam.”

The study adds to an emerging research area that connects climate change and urban planning.

“The issue is where you put material in between demolition and new construction,” says Fábio Duarte, a principal researcher at MIT’s Senseable City Lab and a co-author of the new paper. “It will have huge impacts in terms of transportation. So you have to define the best sites. Should there be only one? Should we hold materials across a wide number of sites? Or is there an optimal number, even if it changes over time? This is what we examined in the paper.”

The paper, “Spatial optimization of circular timber hubs,” is published in NPJ Nature Urban Sustainability. The authors are Tsui, who is a postdoc at the MIT Senseable Amsterdam Lab in the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS); Titus Venverloo, a research fellow at MIT Senseable Amsterdam Lab and AMS; Tom Benson, a researcher at the Senseable City Lab; and Duarte, who is also a lecturer in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the MIT Center for Real Estate.

Numerous experts have previously studied at what scale the “circular economy” of reused materials might best operate. Some have suggested that very local circuits of materials recycling make the most sense; others have proposed that building-materials recycling will work best at a regional scale, with a radius of distribution covering 30 or more miles. Some analyses contend that global-scale reuse will be necessary to an extent.

The current study adds to this examination of the best geographic scale for using construction materials again. Currently the storage hubs that do exist for such reused materials are chosen by individual companies, but those locations might not be optimal either economically or environmentally. 

To conduct the study, the researchers essentially conducted a series of simulations of the Amsterdam metropolitan area, focused exclusively on timber reuse. The simulations examined how the system would work if anywhere from one to 135 timber storage hubs existed in greater Amsterdam. The modeling accounted for numerous variables, such as emissions reductions, logistical factors, and even how changing supply-and-demand scenarios would affect the viability of the reusehubs.

Ultimately, the research found that Amsterdam’s optimal system would have 29 timber hubs, each serving a radius of about 2 miles. That setup generated 95 percent of the maximum reduction in CO2 emissions, while retaining logistical and economic benefits.

That results also lands firmly on the side of having more localized networks for keeping construction materials in use.

“If we have demolition happening in certain sites, then we can project where the best spots around the city are to have these circular economy hubs, as we call them,” Duarte says. “It’s not only one big hub — or one hub per construction site.”

The study seeks to identify not only the optimal number of storage sites, but to identify where those sites might be.

“[We hope] our research sparks discussions regarding the location and scale of circular hubs,” Tsui says. “While much attention has been given to governance aspects of the circular economy in cities, our study demonstrates the potential of utilizing location data on materials to inform decisions in urban planning.”

The simulations also illuminated the dynamics of materials reuse. In scenarios where Amsterdam had from two to 20 timber recycling hubs, the costs involved lowered as the number of hubs increased — because having more hubs reduces transportation costs. But when the number of hubs went about 40, the system as a whole became more expensive — because each timber depot was not storing enough material to justify the land use.

As such, the results may be of interest to climate policymakers, urban planners, and business interests getting involved in implementing the circular economy in the construction industry.

“Ultimately,” Tsui says, “we envision our research catalyzing meaningful discussions and guiding policymakers toward more informed decisions in advancing the circular economy agenda in urban contexts.”

The research was supported, in part, by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program.

Shadi Rostami, SVP of Engineering at Amplitude – Interview Series

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The Rise of Mixture-of-Experts for Efficient Large Language Models

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Understanding the impacts of mining on local environments and communities

Hydrosocial displacement refers to the idea that resolving water conflict in one area can shift the conflict to a different area. The concept was coined by Scott Odell, a visiting researcher in MIT’s Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI). As part of ESI’s Program on Mining and the Circular Economy, Odell researches the impacts of extractive industries on local environments and communities, especially in Latin America. He discovered that hydrosocial displacements are often in regions where the mining industry is vying for use of precious water sources that are already stressed due to climate change.

Odell is working with John Fernández, ESI director and professor in the Department of Architecture, on a project that is examining the converging impacts of climate change, mining, and agriculture in Chile. The work is funded by a seed grant from MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS). Specifically, the project seeks to answer how the expansion of seawater desalination by the mining industry is affecting local populations, and how climate change and mining affect Andean glaciers and the agricultural communities dependent upon them.

By working with communities in mining areas, Odell and Fernández are gaining a sense of the burden that mining minerals needed for the clean energy transition is placing on local populations, and the types of conflicts that arise when water sources become polluted or scarce. This work is of particular importance considering over 100 countries pledged a commitment to the clean energy transition at the recent United Nations climate change conference, known as COP28.

Understanding the impacts of mining on local environments and communities

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J-WAFS Community Spotlight on Scott Odell

Water, humanity’s lifeblood

At the March 2023 United Nations (U.N.) Water Conference in New York, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres warned “water is in deep trouble. We are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use and evaporating it through global heating.” A quarter of the world’s population already faces “extremely high water stress,” according to the World Resources Institute. In an effort to raise awareness of major water-related issues and inspire action for innovative solutions, the U.N. created World Water Day, observed every year on March 22. This year’s theme is “Water for Peace,” underscoring the fact that even though water is a basic human right and intrinsic to every aspect of life, it is increasingly fought over as supplies dwindle due to problems including drought, overuse, or mismanagement.  

The “Water for Peace” theme is exemplified in Fernández and Odell’s J-WAFS project, where findings are intended to inform policies to reduce social and environmental harms inflicted on mining communities and their limited water sources.

“Despite broad academic engagement with mining and climate change separately, there has been a lack of analysis of the societal implications of the interactions between mining and climate change,” says Odell. “This project is helping to fill the knowledge gap. Results will be summarized in Spanish and English and distributed to interested and relevant parties in Chile, ensuring that the results can be of benefit to those most impacted by these challenges,” he adds.

The effects of mining for the clean energy transition

Global climate change is understood to be the most pressing environmental issue facing humanity today. Mitigating climate change requires reducing carbon emissions by transitioning away from conventional energy derived from burning fossil fuels, to more sustainable energy sources like solar and wind power. Because copper is an excellent conductor of electricity, it will be a crucial element in the clean energy transition, in which more solar panels, wind turbines, and electric vehicles will be manufactured. “We are going to see a major increase in demand for copper due to the clean energy transition,” says Odell.

In 2021, Chile produced 26 percent of the world’s copper, more than twice as much as any other country, Odell explains. Much of Chile’s mining is concentrated in and around the Atacama Desert — the world’s driest desert. Unfortunately, mining requires large amounts of water for a variety of processes, including controlling dust at the extraction site, cooling machinery, and processing and transporting ore.

Chile is also one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural products. Farmland is typically situated in the valleys downstream of several mines in the high Andes region, meaning mines get first access to water. This can lead to water conflict between mining operations and agricultural communities. Compounding the problem of mining for greener energy materials to combat climate change, are the very effects of climate change. According to the Chilean government, the country has suffered 13 years of the worst drought in history. While this is detrimental to the mining industry, it is also concerning for those working in agriculture, including the Indigenous Atacameño communities that live closest to the Escondida mine, the largest copper mine in the world. “There was never a lot of water to go around, even before the mine,” Odell says. The addition of Escondida stresses an already strained water system, leaving Atacameño farmers and individuals vulnerable to severe water insecurity.

What’s more, waste from mining, known as tailings, includes minerals and chemicals that can contaminate water in nearby communities if not properly handled and stored. Odell says the secure storage of tailings is a high priority in earthquake-prone Chile. “If an earthquake were to hit and damage a tailings dam, it could mean toxic materials flowing downstream and destroying farms and communities,” he says.

Chile’s treasured glaciers are another piece of the mining, climate change, and agricultural puzzle. Caroline White-Nockleby, a PhD candidate in MIT’s Program in Science, Technology, and Society, is working with Odell and Fernández on the J-WAFS project and leading the research specifically on glaciers. “These may not be the picturesque bright blue glaciers that you might think of, but they are, nonetheless, an important source of water downstream,” says White-Nockleby. She goes on to explain that there are a few different ways that mines can impact glaciers.

In some cases, mining companies have proposed to move or even destroy glaciers to get at the ore beneath. Other impacts include dust from mining that falls on glaciers. White-Nockleby says, “this makes the glaciers a darker color, so, instead of reflecting the sun’s rays away, [the glacier] may absorb the heat and melt faster.” This shows that even when not directly intervening with glaciers, mining activities can cause glacial decline, adding to the threat glaciers already face due to climate change. She also notes that “glaciers are an important water storage facility,” describing how, on an annual cycle, glaciers freeze and melt, allowing runoff that downstream agricultural communities can utilize. If glaciers suddenly melt too quickly, flooding of downstream communities can occur.

Desalination offers a possible, but imperfect, solution

Chile’s extensive coastline makes it uniquely positioned to utilize desalination — the removal of salts from seawater — to address water insecurity. Odell says that “over the last decade or so, there’s been billions of dollars of investments in desalination in Chile.”

As part of his dissertation work at Clark University, Odell found broad optimism in Chile for solving water issues in the mining industry through desalination. Not only was the mining industry committed to building desalination plants, there was also political support, and support from some community members in highland communities near the mines. Yet, despite the optimism and investment, desalinated water was not replacing the use of continental water. He concluded that “desalination can’t solve water conflict if it doesn’t reduce demand for continental water supplies.”

However, after publishing those results, Odell learned that new estimates at the national level showed that desalination operations had begun to replace the use of continental water after 2018. In two case studies that he currently focuses on — the Escondida and Los Pelambres copper mines — the mining companies have expanded their desalination objectives in order to reduce extraction from key continental sources. This seems to be due to a variety of factors. For one thing, in 2022, Chile’s water code was reformed to prioritize human water consumption and environmental protection of water during scarcity and in the allocation of future rights. It also shortened the granting of water rights from “in perpetuity” to 30 years. Under this new code, it is possible that the mining industry may have expanded its desalination efforts because it viewed continental water resources as less secure, Odell surmises.

As part of the J-WAFS project, Odell has found that recent reactions have been mixed when it comes to the rapid increase in the use of desalination. He spent over two months doing fieldwork in Chile by conducting interviews with members of government, industry, and civil society at the Escondida, Los Pelambres, and Andina mining sites, as well as in Chile’s capital city, Santiago. He has spoken to local and national government officials, leaders of fishing unions, representatives of mining and desalination companies, and farmers. He observed that in the communities where the new desalination plants are being built, there have been concerns from community members as to whether they will get access to the desalinated water, or if it will belong solely to the mines.

Interviews at the Escondida and Los Pelambres sites, in which desalination operations are already in place or under construction, indicate acceptance of the presence of desalination plants combined with apprehension about unknown long-term environmental impacts. At a third mining site, Andina, there have been active protests against a desalination project that would supply water to a neighboring mine, Los Bronces. In that community, there has been a blockade of the desalination operation by the fishing federation. “They were blockading that operation for three months because of concerns over what the desalination plant would do to their fishing grounds,” Odell says. And this is where the idea of hydrosocial displacement comes into the picture, he explains. Even though desalination operations are easing tensions with highland agricultural communities, new issues are arising for the communities on the coast. “We can’t just look to desalination to solve our problems if it’s going to create problems somewhere else” Odell advises.

Within the process of hydrosocial displacement, interacting geographical, technical, economic, and political factors constrain the range of responses to address the water conflict. For example, communities that have more political and financial power tend to be better equipped to solve water conflict than less powerful communities. In addition, hydrosocial concerns usually follow the flow of water downstream, from the highlands to coastal regions. Odell says that this raises the need to look at water from a broader perspective.

“We tend to address water concerns one by one and that can, in practice, end up being kind of like whack-a-mole,” says Odell. “When we think of the broader hydrological system, water is very much linked, and we need to look across the watershed. We can’t just be looking at the specific community affected now, but who else is affected downstream, and will be affected in the long term. If we do solve a water issue by moving it somewhere else, like moving a tailings dam somewhere else, or building a desalination plant, resources are needed in the receiving community to respond to that,” suggests Odell.

The company building the desalination plant and the fishing federation ultimately reached an agreement and the desalination operation will be moving forward. But Odell notes, “the protest highlights concern about the impacts of the operation on local livelihoods and environments within the much larger context of industrial pollution in the area.”

The power of communities

The protest by the fishing federation is one example of communities coming together to have their voices heard. Recent proposals by mining companies that would affect glaciers and other water sources used by agriculture communities have led to other protests that resulted in new agreements to protect local water supplies and the withdrawal of some of the mining proposals.

Odell observes that communities have also gone to the courts to raise their concerns. The Atacameño communities, for example, have drawn attention to over-extraction of water resources by the Escondida mine. “Community members are also pursuing education in these topics so that there’s not such a power imbalance between mining companies and local communities,” Odell remarks. This demonstrates the power local communities can have to protect continental water resources.

The political and social landscape of Chile may also be changing in favor of local communities. Beginning with what is now referred to as the Estallido Social (social outburst) over inequality in 2019, Chile has undergone social upheaval that resulted in voters calling for a new constitution. Gabriel Boric, a progressive candidate, whose top priorities include social and environmental issues, was elected president during this period. These trends have brought major attention to issues of economic inequality, environmental harms of mining, and environmental justice, which is putting pressure on the mining industry to make a case for its operations in the country, and to justify the environmental costs of mining.

What happens after the mine dries up?

From his fieldwork interviews, Odell has learned that the development of mines within communities can offer benefits. Mining companies typically invest directly in communities through employment, road construction, and sometimes even by building or investing in schools, stadiums, or health clinics. Indirectly, mines can have spillover effects in the economy since miners might support local restaurants, hotels, or stores. But what happens when the mine closes? As one community member Odell interviewed stated: “When the mine is gone, what are we going to have left besides a big hole in the ground?”

Odell suggests that a multi-pronged approach should be taken to address the future state of water and mining. First, he says we need to have broader conversations about the nature of our consumption and production at domestic and global scales. “Mining is driven indirectly by our consumption of energy and directly by our consumption of everything from our buildings to devices to cars,” Odell states. “We should be looking for ways to moderate our consumption and consume smarter through both policy and practice so that we don’t solve climate change while creating new environmental harms through mining.”

One of the main ways we can do this is by advancing the circular economy by recycling metals already in the system, or even in landfills, to help build our new clean energy infrastructure. Even so, the clean energy transition will still require mining, but according to Odell, that mining can be done better. “Mining companies and government need to do a better job of consulting with communities. We need solid plans and financing for mine closures in place from the beginning of mining operations, so that when the mine dries up, there’s the money needed to secure tailings dams and protect the communities who will be there forever,” Odell concludes.

Overall, it will take an engaged society — from the mining industry to government officials to individuals — to think critically about the role we each play in our quest for a more sustainable planet, and what that might mean for the most vulnerable populations among us.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 And Rise Of The Ronin Reviews | GI Show

Dragon’s Dogma 2 And Rise Of The Ronin Reviews | GI Show

On this week’s episode of The Game Informer Show, we’re joined by special guest Imran Khan to unpack his review of Rise of the Ronin. Friend of the show Jesse Vitelli also drops by to break down his Dragon’s Dogma 2 review. Kyle Hilliard shares his final thoughts on Princess Peach Showtime and gives his hands-on thoughts on the upcoming Hyper Light Breaker. We then round out the discussion with Imran sharing some of the coolest indie games he saw from Day of the Devs and giving our thoughts on our reader-voted Game Gauntlet to decide the greatest game of all time.

Video Version Coming Soon!

Follow us on social media: Marcus Stewart (@MarcusStewart7), Kyle Hilliard (@KyleMHilliard), Charles Harte (@chuckduck365), Imran Khan (@imranzomg), and Jesse Vitelli (@jessevitelli). 

The Game Informer Show is a weekly gaming podcast covering the latest video game news, industry topics, exclusive reveals, and reviews. Join host Alex Van Aken every Thursday to chat about your favorite games – past and present – with Game Informer staff, developers, and special guests from around the industry. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

The Game Informer Show – Podcast Timestamps:

00:00:00 – Intro
00:09:22 – Rise of the Ronin
00:29:54 – Hyper Light Breaker
00:39:09 – Day of the Devs
00:54:53 – Dragon’s Dogma 2
01:27:34 – Princess Peach Showtime
01:39:59 – Greatest Game Of All Time Gauntlet
02:12:38 – The Lunch Break: Like A Dance Break but with Lunch (Working Title)
02:15:27 – Pushmo and Dillon’s Rolling Western?

Larian CEO Says The Studio Is Done With Baldur’s Gate 3 To Focus On Something New

Larian CEO Says The Studio Is Done With Baldur’s Gate 3 To Focus On Something New

Baldur’s Gate 3 was one of 2023’s most successful and critically acclaimed games, with many hailing it as one of the best role-playing games ever made. However, if you were hoping for the game to get an expansion or a sequel, that won’t be the case – at least not from its developer, Larian Studios. 

As reported by PC Gamer, Larian CEO Swen Vincke stated during an address at GDC today that the studio is finished with Baldur’s Gate 3. That means it won’t be getting any expansions nor will it be making a Baldur’s Gate 4. “We are a company of big ideas. We are not a company that’s made to create DLCs or expansions,” Vincke said. “We tried that actually, a few times. It failed every single time. It’s not our thing. Life is too short. Our ambitions are very large.”

Not only that, but the studio is moving on from Dungeons & Dragons in general, with Vincke saying that “it’s going to be up to Wizards of the Coast because it’s their IP, to find somebody to take over the torch.”

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While Vincke says Larian is proud of what it accomplished, the studio wants to focus on a brand-new project. There’s no telling what Larian may tackle next; given that it made Baldur’s Gate 3 and the Divinity series, it’s hard to imagine the studio not making another RPG of some sort. We’ll have to wait and see. 

Baldur’s Gate 3 was released last August following a lengthy early access period to rave reviews, including several Game of the Year wins. While it’s disappointing that we won’t see any meaningful story updates for the title, we’re excited to see what Larian has in store next. 

As for other Dungeons & Dragons games that will pick up the torch, there’s a few big titles on the horizon. Chief among them is Starbreeze’s in-development D&D cooperative multiplayer game and Gameloft’s D&D survival sim. 

You can read our review of Baldur’s Gate 3 here. The game is also nominated for 10 BAFTA Awards next month, and you can read the full list of nominees here. 

[Source: PC Gamer]

Balatro Was Almost Called Joker Poker And Other Details From Its Creator | Afterwords

It’s been one month since Balatro, the poker-inspired deckbuilding roguelite, was released, and it has taken the gaming world by storm. In that short timeframe it has earned rave reviews (including a 9.5 out of 10 from us), positioned itself as a Game of the Year contender, and sold 1 million copies. To the delight of many, a mobile version was recently announced to be in the works. 

For some players, Balatro seemingly came out of nowhere and its sole developer, LocalThunk, is just as mysterious. The highly private creator doesn’t share his real name, but I was able to speak with him about his game development history, his philosophy for making games, how he came up with the idea for Balatro, and his reaction to its positive reception. Perhaps most importantly, LocalThunk also tells me the strangest pronunciations he’s heard for the game. 

Game Informer: What drew you to wanting to create games as a hobby, and how long have you been making games?

LocalThunk: Well, when I was in university, I was taking this mechanical engineering course. And I was watching a lot of videos from YouTube of people playing video games, and I always wanted to make a video game. So that’s kind of when it started. I was still in engineering school, and in my spare time, I’d start making simulations more than video games and some little games. And I made a kind of a Risk-type game… and I got really, really into the actual process of making games and simulations. So I ended up dropping out of engineering, and I went into a computer science program because of that. And basically, the entire time I was in that program, when I’d get home from school, I would just make games and keep coding, and it’s something I held on to after I left school. I just always did that.

The main thing with it, though, is I never really shared it with an audience. Either it was mostly just for me, or I would share it with a couple of friends and family that I knew who would appreciate these things as a way to share that part. So yeah, I’ve been making games for probably almost 10 years, I guess. But this is the first time I’ve made anything public at all.

How did the idea for Balatro come to be? What was special about this concept that made you want to share it with the public?

Well, the concept came from – it’s a game called Big Two. It’s a Cantonese game. If you’ve ever played a game called Presidents or Cheat or Janitor or A**hole, it’s the same type of game where you have a hand of cards, and you select some of the cards and play them down. So it’s actually based on a game like that. It’s not based on poker. And I used to play this game, Big Two, all the time with my friends when I was in high school and growing up. I wanted to make an online version of that game to play with them during the pandemic.

And so I started making the bare bones fundamental engine. And when I was doing that, I was watching YouTube videos about Luck Be A Landlord at the time. And I really liked a lot of the design elements of that game. And I thought, you know, I could transition this into a game like that, where you’re facing off against the score requirement almost and you’re not facing enemies, per se. And I just liked a lot about the core design aspects of that game. So I kind of combined those ideas. And after a while, it ended up being one of the more polished things I’d ever worked on so I thought it’d be kind of fun to put it on Steam.

I read an interview with a PC Gamer, where you said that you’re not really a poker player and that you’re not particularly a fan of it. If that’s the case, how did you decide to incorporate poker into this concept? The idea of taking something you’re not really into but recognizing it could work for this formula is really interesting.

I’m a little bit of an outsider in terms of indie games. I didn’t really play a lot of indie games. I know a lot of the theming with indie games is one of the things that always kind of put me off with it. It’s very fantasy-heavy. The theming was always a barrier to entry for me.

When I was making this game, I thought, playing cards: what’s something that’s thematically tied to playing cards that has a lot of identity, iconography, imagery people are familiar with that they can lean on to get into the game instead of having to learn about so that they can get into the game? And I thought Poker is the perfect thing because it has all these interesting visuals, sounds, terminology people are generally familiar with. More than most other card games do, it kind of has this aura about it as a card game, more so than like a Solitaire would or Cribbage or something. So, I leaned really heavily on the theming because I knew the theming was such a strong part of Poker, even if the mechanics I don’t really care for with Poker. I don’t really play it. I know how it works, I have played it before, but it’s not really a game I enjoy. 

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Do you think Balatro would have worked like with any other card game that uses real cards? Is there a card game you do enjoy that could have also fit?

“Work” is the operative word. It depends what your definition there is. I think mechanically, it would be identical if it was dice and like a Yahtzee-type game because it’s essentially the same thing; you’re picking playing card hands from that. I could have based it off of Big Two, the original game that it was supposed to be based off of, but people don’t know that game. So it’s just another hurdle to even get into playing the game. Mechanically, yeah, there’s really no reason why it needs to be Poker. I could replace the word “blind” with “enemy” and “chips” with “points” and it would be functionally identical. 

I’m in the same boat as you in that I am not a poker player. I don’t know how to play poker, but Balatro helped me memorize poker hands for the first time. As you’re designing Balatro, was it more important to you that Poker players get into this game or more for people like me who don’t care about Poker?

Well, the intention was never to make a game for Poker players. I think I was expecting people that weren’t familiar with Poker to be able to interface with it. I think honestly when I hear people that really are into Poker play this game, I do hear quite often they say like, ‘Oh, it’s actually nothing like poker’, right? The skills that you have as a Poker player, like all the depth of the skill set that you develop, is so different from just knowing which hands are in Poker. It’s more like playing your opponents and how you raise. I don’t know Poker very well either, but I do know that it’s looked at as almost like Chess where there’s such deep strategy to that game, and none of that’s apparent in Balatro. So no, it wasn’t designed for Poker players. I can see how they would like it, though, if they just enjoy video games or like Solitaire. I don’t think they would be more inclined to enjoy it than like you or me.

Are you a big fan of deck builders? Did you ever try to make any before as one of your smaller, private projects or is Balatro your first stab at doing a deck builder?

This is the first deck builder I’ve ever played. I watched some videos about Luck Be A Landlord so I understood mechanically how that game works. But I’d never seen Slay the Spire or, I don’t know, what other games [were] in the genre at the time. Since I made Balatro, I have played a couple of these games. And I think it’s a really good thing that I never played any of these games before I made Balatro because… they’re so well designed. The designs would have infiltrated my own design processes, and it would have kind of overshadowed maybe some of the original things. It would have saved me a lot of heartache and mistakes, but I think it would have narrowed the design space unintentionally.

Balatro Was Almost Called Joker Poker And Other Details From Its Creator | Afterwords

When did you feel you were on to something with Balatro? It’s maybe the best deck builder I’ve ever played, and it feels like it was made by someone who has played a lot of deck builders. 

The main goal that I had, my rubric, number one at the top, is I want a game that I enjoy playing. And I hit that mark, I think it was the week before launch day, that I finally [felt] like, ‘Okay, I want to sit down and play this game in my spare time.’ So besides that, I can’t simulate what other people are going to think about the game. I had no idea if it would be successful or a flop or whatever. So, yeah, I just know, personally, that I started enjoying it about about then. 

Do you find yourself enjoying Balatro more and playing it more often now that you’re sort of on the other side of the launch?

I do play it a little bit. But honestly, I really enjoy making games a lot more than I do playing them. It’s hard for me to judge just because it’s the only thing I’ve thought about for like two years, as well. So it’s very difficult for me to be a critic and say, ‘Am I actually enjoying it?’ The reasons why I’m not playing it, is it because I don’t want to play it, or is it because I’m just sick of working on it and thinking about it all the time? I don’t know. I still do enjoy it, but there’s a lot of other emotions and thoughts going at the same time too, so it’s really hard to judge.

How does it feel to have created something that’s garnered such an overwhelmingly positive reception?

I mean, it’s cool. It wasn’t something I was expecting. And again, I think the thing I’m most excited about is that I was able to do it in the first place [and] stick to this process for such a long time. And it was so much work. But sticking to that process and believing it’s going to work out. So I’m most excited about that, and I’m most excited that I ended up making this thing that I wanted to make. And it’s really nice that people also seem to really love it too.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing Balatro?

Taking it public 100% was the biggest challenge. You know, I’ve made games for so long, and I have also had another game that I’ve worked on for about two years, maybe two and a half years, and I never told anyone about that game. And all I think about is just how fun it was for literally the entire time I was working on it. No pressure, I could do whatever I wanted with it at whatever timeframe I wanted. And as soon as I went public with this game, I wasn’t expecting there to be chatter all the time and pressure to do things, and if there’s a bug you need to fix it, and criticism. Because none of that stuff really is why I wanted to make the game in the first place. I just love making games. All that stuff seemed almost like a means to an end if I wanted to have this game on Steam. So since it went public, I think dealing with that side of it has been the biggest challenge in the entire development cycle.

One of my favorite elements of the game is the Jokers for how much fun they are, how much they change the game, and just the sheer number of them. What’s the process behind designing a Joker suitable for Balatro?

I think they’re what people enjoy the most about the game. They’re also so fun to make. Just visually, there’s so many different directions you can take them. The process for making them is really fun because sometimes I’ll come up with an idea for an effect. And then I’ll brainstorm, and I’ll think, ‘Oh, that could work with this subject matter, that would be really fun.’ And then, more often, it’s the opposite. I’ll see something, and it’d be like, ‘Oh, that would make like a good-looking Joker’, and then I’ll have to come up with like an effect for it. So sometimes it starts from one end, sometimes it starts from the other. Sometimes, an effect will just be completely cut from the game.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I do have kind of bad reading retention. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I don’t enjoy a lot of strategy games like this. So I made a pact with this game that descriptions can’t be more than four lines and 20 words. That’s probably changed since I’ve released it, there’s probably some that are a little bit longer. But in general, I try and make it so that a Joker card needs to be really simple to understand for it to be in the game. That also really helped drive what Jokers do. They need to do things that are relatively simple, and that kind of breeds this elegant strategy by itself by doing that. So yeah, they were the most fun part of the game for me to make for sure.

I’m also an artist. I love drawing in my spare time … and this is the first time I really got into pixel art. So it was just another really fun, creative outlet in my game development journey that didn’t involve writing code. So there’s kind of like two different sides to it. And I do feel like I got to express myself a lot in that regard, as well.

What disqualifies a Joker from making the cut, and how many were left on the cutting room floor? 

A few ways. We had a very long beta/demo process for like seven months. So, I release a card, a Joker, and then it’s clear that it’s either just way too overpowered, or nobody takes it, or it’s too niche. There’s a litany of different problems it could have, and sometimes you can tweak it so the numbers are more in line with what it should be. But more often, if the effect just isn’t good, you just get rid of it. [I’ll] probably recycle the art into something else. That’s usually what I do because the art takes quite a bit of time. Less often, I will completely scrap art. There’s not very many examples of that happening. But every now and then, it does happen where I’ll have art in the game for many months, and then I’ll never love it, and I’ll just think, ‘I could probably do better than that,’ and then I’ll come up with something else. But that’s pretty rare. I think usually I try and keep the art. So those are the main ways that a Joker would get completely nixed from the game. But yeah, it has happened quite a bit.

I don’t know how often do you watch other players play the game, but are you surprised with some of the strategies and combinations of Jokers players have discovered that, in some instances, almost break the game? Do you get excited when you see that stuff, or do you look and think, ‘That’s way too overpowered, I should change that.’

I think I do think both things, actually. Because sometimes I do think something can be overpowered in a fun way. Something can be overpowered in a way that excludes the player from experiencing other fun in the game, which you don’t want. So if there’s something that’s really easy to do that, ‘Oh, I’ll just do this every time, and then I won’t feel the need to explore the design space of this game.’ Then ultimately, that’s the path of least resistance, and it’s not as fun as actually branching out and understanding the depth of the game. So, sometimes I do feel like that.

More often though, when I watch people that play that are really good, it makes me feel good that this game ended up being so emergent that when I watch, I’ll be like, ‘Oh, I never thought of that.’ It’s interesting how these strategies have emerged from the system that I created, and I didn’t really consider a lot of these strategies. So, I do enjoy watching players do that. And I do think that I’m not very good at playing my own game too. That probably plays into it.

Do you have a favorite Joker that you either love to play or was the most fun to illustrate? Is it the same card? 

It’s probably not the same card, no. My favorite art – I always like to shout out the banana Jokers in this game. The anecdote behind the Gros Michel banana, it went extinct, I think, in the ’50s and was replaced by the banana that we know now as the Cavendish banana. So there’s kind of some lore baked into the game where if you get the Gros Michel banana and it goes “extinct”, then you can get the Cavendish banana later on, and it’s less likely to go extinct. I really liked the whole design around that.

Visually, I really like the Pareidolia Joker is well. Pareidolia is a word for when you look at a cloud or a tree or something, you’ll see a face in it sometimes. That concept is called pareidolia, and it was really funny because I was able to recreate that idea by making playing cards on the Joker itself in the shape of a face, which itself is pareidolia. So, I really like the art for that card. That’s one of my favorite ones, as well. But I don’t know; I’ve got a soft spot for almost all the Jokers there. It’s like picking your favorite child almost.

You mentioned not being good at your own game. One of the cool things about this game also was the community that has sprouted up around seeds, and players posting their seeds and helping each other out. Have you ever played other players’ seeds? 

No, I never have. This is one of the biggest teaching moments I think I’ve had in this game. I barely even included a seed when I first went public with this game. I was using the seed as more of a saving tool so that you could save runs easier. And I decided to expose the seed itself as like, ‘Ah, I have this anyway. May as well show it.’ And players really, really got into the seeds, and I never understood it. So they would keep playing these seeded runs, and it just made me realize one of the core audiences for this game is a group that I don’t personally identify with, as the things that I enjoy about the game being different than what they enjoy. I really enjoy that they love the seeds so much and they’re able to share them, so I’ve tried to facilitate that as much as I could. But most of that has come from me actually talking to them and understanding what they enjoy about it, changing the seed algorithm so it more suits that idea. I’ve had to lean on them quite a lot for that. But I do really love that that’s happened. 

Balatro had a bit of trouble with being pulled from some international storefronts for visually resembling a gambling game. How did you react to this news, and what’s your stance on gambling mechanics in games in general? 

Well, my stance is more that I don’t want to put gambling in my game. There’s no way that you can spend extra money in Balatro to do anything else. I think really the problem is that it looks like Poker, which itself isn’t technically a gambling game unless you actually spend money on it, right? I think that’s where the biggest hiccup is, but like, personally, I’m opposed to spending money on a booster pack to get some kind of reward in-game or microtransactions or anything like that. Ethically, I wouldn’t ever be comfortable putting that in my game. It did kind of sting a little bit when they assume that this game would be associated with those kinds of things when other games in this industry do that and I don’t think they’re punished in the same way.

Now you’ve released your first game publicly, how has this changed your perception of game design and what makes a fun game? What are the biggest lessons you’ve learned that you think you’ll apply to whatever you make next?

I’ve learned so much about game design, actually. You know, I’ve been in my bubble for the past year and a half before I went public with this game. You don’t see the things that people struggle with in your game, either core game mechanics that they don’t enjoy or quality of life things that they think should be there that aren’t. For example, tooltips. In the game, there were very few tooltips before because I knew what every Joker did or what every card does so I didn’t really need them. But then, as soon as I went public with it, it’s like, oh, yeah, why am I not displaying that information? So I think what I’ve learned is I want to involve beta testers early in the process to get that kind of feedback right away so I can kind of incorporate that into the core engine easier.

But now that I’ve gone through this, I do feel like I know a lot of these things, like some of the pitfalls to avoid just from experience, so I’m sure it would go smoother the next time I release a game just due to that. But you know, basically, from what I mentioned before, I’ve been exposed to so many more games and design ideas and best practices and whatnot. And that’s also probably going to change my next game for the negative a little bit, as well, because I won’t be as uninhibited about making mistakes, and I’ll be a little bit more rigid in terms of what kind of design space I’m willing to explore. I think there’s there’s a little bit of give and take there.

Do you already have the idea for whatever you want to do next in your head now?

I want to keep around Balatro for sure. I’m not really entertaining any big game ideas yet, but I do have some that I’ve thought about, yeah. 

How has this experience changed your willingness to release games publicly? Has it made you more eager to put more games out for the world to see, or do you think it’ll still be a little bit more case-by-case basis?

That’s interesting, actually. I don’t know. I feel like my next game, if it was public or not public, I don’t know if that would matter too much. I’ll tell you what I am really excited [about] for the next game that I work on, is telling absolutely nobody about it basically until I’m done making it. I’m excited to do that so that I can kind of just get back to really what I love about this which is just making the game. 

I’ve seen you say there’s no wrong way to pronounce Balatro, and I respect that. That said, what’s the weirdest way that you’ve heard people say the name of the game?

There’s two main camps. There’s the “Bal-a-tro” and the “Bah-Lah-tro”. But I do see the joke a lot of ‘Oh Balatro, is that that movie with the dog and Alaska?’   

Balto? 

So I do see Balto a lot. I do see “Bell-a-tro” [with] like ‘E.’ The lesson here is that the name itself is not very marketable [laughs].

I don’t know, I think it stands out. I don’t know any other Balatros out there.

Yeah, I did it because I really felt like it encapsulated the idea I wanted. It was previously called Joker Poker as a working title. But I think there’s an app on the App Store that had the same name. And I also thought it was a little silly compared to kind of the vibe I was going for in the game. I’m glad I changed it to Balatro. But yeah, people do struggle with it. And I do often hear in podcasts and stuff like ‘Yeah, I don’t know what they’re thinking with the name’, and I’m like, yeah, I get it.

Balatro has a surreal vibe. When I first started playing, part of me wondered if it was secretly a weird creepy pasta game or something. How did you settle on the psychedelic vibe? 

You know, that’s one I’ve seen a lot of people say that like, ‘Oh, it’s because of this.’ Like, it’s because it looks like a video poker machine, or because of Inscryption or something.

That’s what I thought it would be. Something like Inscrpytion. 

Yeah, and it’s a little more dumb than that. It’s because of the amount of iteration I went through with design. So one day, I just thought, ‘I think this game would look good with the CRT filter on it.’ I’ve never played a video poker machine in my life. Like, I don’t even really know what they look like. I just thought, ‘Hey, this would be kind of like a fun thing,’ and then I put it in. I just really love writing shaders, so it was just like a fun project to do while I was working on the game. And it was like, ‘Yeah, that totally looks good on this game so I’m going to keep it.’ The swirly background and the kind of gyrating cards, and I just felt like it was all cohesive. And so I kept adding things that were cohesive to that central idea, but it kind of just came up organically. It’s not like when I started, I was like, ‘I’m gonna make some cursed interdimensional poker machine that people are going to be stuck at.’ That’s not like why I did, it just evolved into that.

Since you’re an artist, would you say it’s reflective of your personal style?

Kind of, a little, yeah. I like drawing really intricate abstract flowy art, normally. I’ve done that for a very long time. So I do kind of feel like it’s the same vibe, – almost creepy. I do feel like it’s [a] similar motif for sure.

Balatro recently passed the 500,000 copies sold milestone (Editors Note: this was the figure at the time of the interview). Is there anything that you want to say to fans who have enjoyed the game?

I said that the thing I was most proud of is the fact that I’ve just even got to the finish line at all. But, you know, the fact that people love this game so much, and they’re so invested in its future and wanting to improve it and design ideas, they’ve kind of allowed me to turn this into a career. It’s a career that I really want to do forever. I’m grateful that they’ve been able to afford that opportunity for me and that they keep playing Balatro. Keep getting those high scores.

Modeling Extremely Large Images with xT

As computer vision researchers, we believe that every pixel can tell a story. However, there seems to be a writer’s block settling into the field when it comes to dealing with large images. Large images are no longer rare—the cameras we carry in our pockets and…

Lessons from Fukushima: Prepare for the unlikely

Lessons from Fukushima: Prepare for the unlikely

When a devastating earthquake and tsunami overwhelmed the protective systems at the Fukushima Dai’ichi nuclear power plant complex in Japan in March 2011, it triggered a sequence of events leading to one of the worst releases of radioactive materials in the world to date. Although nuclear energy is having a revival as a low-emissions energy source to mitigate climate change, the Fukushima accident is still cited as a reason for hesitancy in adopting it.

A new study synthesizes information from multidisciplinary sources to understand how the Fukushima Dai’ichi disaster unfolded, and points to the importance of mitigation measures and last lines of defense — even against accidents considered highly unlikely. These procedures have received relatively little attention, but they are critical in determining how severe the consequences of a reactor failure will be, the researchers say.

The researchers note that their synthesis is one of the few attempts to look at data across disciplinary boundaries, including: the physics and engineering of what took place within the plant’s systems, the plant operators’ actions throughout the emergency, actions by emergency responders, the meteorology of radionuclide releases and transport, and the environmental and health consequences documented since the event.

The study appears in the journal iScience, in an open-access paper by postdoc Ali Ayoub and Professor Haruko Wainwright at MIT, along with others in Switzerland, Japan, and New Mexico.

Since 2013, Wainwright has been leading the research to integrate all the radiation monitoring data in the Fukushima region into integrated maps. “I was staring at the contamination map for nearly 10 years, wondering what created the main plume extending in the northwest direction, but I could not find exact information,” Wainwright says. “Our study is unique because we started from the consequence, the contamination map, and tried to identify the key factors for the consequence. Other people study the Fukushima accident from the root cause, the tsunami.”

One thing they found was that while all the operating reactors, units 1, 2, and 3, suffered core meltdowns as a result of the failure of emergency cooling systems, units 1 and 3 — although they did experience hydrogen explosions — did not release as much radiation to the environment because their venting systems essentially worked to relieve pressure inside the containment vessels as intended. But the same system in unit 2 failed badly.

“People think that the hydrogen explosion or the core meltdown were the worst things, or the major driver of the radiological consequences of the accident,” Wainright says, “but our analysis found that’s not the case.” Much more significant in terms of the radiological release was the failure of the one venting mechanism.

“There is a pressure-release mechanism that goes through water where a lot of the radionuclides get filtered out,” she explains. That system was effective in units 1 and 3, filtering out more than 90 percent of the radioactive elements before the gas was vented. However, “in unit 2, that pressure release mechanism got stuck, and the operators could not manually open it.” A hydrogen explosion in unit 1 had damaged the pressure relief mechanism of unit 2. This led to a breach of the containment structure and direct, unfiltered venting to the atmosphere, which, according to the new study, was what produced the greatest amount of contamination from the whole weeks-long event.

Another factor was the timing of the attempt to vent the pressure buildup in the reactor. Guidelines at the time, and to this day in many reactors, specified that no venting should take place until the pressure inside the reactor containment vessel reached a specified threshold, with no regard to the wind directions at the time. In the case of Fukushima, an earlier venting could have dramatically reduced the impact: Much of the release happened when winds were blowing directly inland, but earlier the wind had been blowing offshore.

“That pressure-release mechanism has not been a major focus of the engineering community,” she says. While there is appropriate attention to measures that prevent a core meltdown in the first place, “this sort of last line of defense has not been the main focus and should get more attention.”

Wainwright says the study also underlines several successes in the management of the Fukushima accident. Many of the safety systems did work as they were designed. For example, even though the oldest reactor, unit 1, suffered the greatest internal damage, it released little radioactive material. Most people were able to evacuate from the 20-kilometer (12-mile) zone before the largest release happened. The mitigation measures were “somewhat successful,” Wainwright says. But there was tremendous confusion and anger during and after the accident because there were no preparations in place for such an event.

Much work has focused on ways to prevent the kind of accidents that happened at Fukushima — for example, in the U.S. reactor operators can deploy portable backup power supplies to maintain proper reactor cooling at any reactor site. But the ongoing situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex in Ukraine, where nuclear safety is challenged by acts of war, demonstrates that despite engineers’ and operators’ best efforts to prevent it, “the totally unexpected could still happen,” Wainwright says.

“The big-picture message is that we should have equal attention to both prevention and mitigation of accidents,” she says. “This is the essence of resilience, and it applies beyond nuclear power plants to all essential infrastructure of a functioning society, for example, the electric grid, the food and water supply, the transportation sector, etc.”

One thing the researchers recommend is that in designing evacuation protocols, planners should make more effort to learn from much more frequent disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. “We think getting more interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary knowledge from other kinds of disasters would be essential,” she says. Most of the emergency response strategies presently in place, she says, were designed in the 1980s and ’90s, and need to be modernized. “Consequences can be mitigated. A nuclear accident does not have to be a catastrophe, as is often portrayed in popular culture,” Wainright says.

The research team included Giovanni Sansavini at ETH Zurich in Switzerland; Randall Gauntt at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico; and Kimiaki Saito at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.