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Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

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Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#31

Post by schainks »

brenainn wrote: post #4

I'll provide some background for people that aren't familiar with the game. It's an online vehicular combat game where you pilot tanks, planes, helicopters and warships. The vehicles range from pre-WW2 to modern. The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc. For older, actually real vehicles, that information is more easily available. For modern, classified vehicle…

Wow what a honeypot. Bet every government military loves this game to reverse engineer equipment.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#32

Post by raziel2701 »

brenainn wrote: post #4

I'll provide some background for people that aren't familiar with the game. It's an online vehicular combat game where you pilot tanks, planes, helicopters and warships. The vehicles range from pre-WW2 to modern. The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc. For older, actually real vehicles, that information is more easily available. For modern, classified vehicle…

Wow so this is the "if you want a good answer from the internet post a wrong answer first" but escalated by a ton!!

That's incredible!

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#33

Post by galangalalgol »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #10
bdndndndbve wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the answer is ads. "Long-form" content has more opportunities to insert ads or sponsored content. There's not a lot of money to be made being quick and to the point. People's viewing habits have also changed in response, rather than having the algorithm bounce them around they'd rather half-pay-attention to a 3 hour video. But I think the trend of ever-growing video lengths was spawned by a desire for mor…

The market bifurcated. Short form content became Snapchat and tiktoks and YouTube shorts. There were never any significant competitors to YouTube for long form content because of how expensive streaming it is, so all of that content remained on the one platform with an audience and decent payouts.

I only go to youtube when I want to learn something that is hard to explain with pictures. Usually that is diy stuff for me, but I can see it being something like a dance move or a boss fight in a game, those things take longer than a minute to explain but never take more than 15 unless it is padded.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#34

Post by cgriswald »

4ad wrote: post #21
nomius10 wrote: post #3

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction. Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

It's exactly backwards, YouTube favours short videos and frequent uploads. People doing long videos do it purely out of passion. The claim that most videos nowadays are hitting the one hour mark is trivially false.

I simply can't believe there isn't some incentive for longer videos. It may be that YouTube only cares about total watch time and doesn't care if a creator pushes lots of short ones or a few long ones, as long as viewers keep viewing. I see so many videos like this:

Tie Shoes Like a Pro "If you're watching this video you probably want to know the secrets to good shoe tying. We'll show you how in this video. It's surprisingly easy, so don't go anywhere. But first, have you ever wondered why we tie our shoes? The first shoes weren't actually tied but were just soles that people nailed to their feet. Haha, actually this didn't hurt at all because... ...and then in 1890 Eritrea was founded, but you don't care about that! Haha! You're here to learn how to tie shoes! Don't worry, we'll get to that too! Anyway, also in 1890 all the leather factories in France burned down and so they couldn't spare leather for shoe buckles, so they began using bits of string..."

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#35

Post by chowells »

nomius10 wrote: post #3

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction. Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

You should try watching the video instead of complaining about it's length. It turns out that it actually takes a bit of time to cover the history of Russia and Germany sufficiently well to explain the situation. Yes, those turn out to be relevant to answering the question.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#36

Post by phreack »

nomius10 wrote: post #3

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction. Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

They used to pay by the view, now they pay by the minute. I think it's that simple.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#37

Post by robotnikman »

brenainn wrote: post #4

I'll provide some background for people that aren't familiar with the game. It's an online vehicular combat game where you pilot tanks, planes, helicopters and warships. The vehicles range from pre-WW2 to modern. The game aims for realistic vehicle specifications, like armour thickness, penetration values etc. For older, actually real vehicles, that information is more easily available. For modern, classified vehicle…

Going to hijack the top comment to provide my own observations as a player

As a War Thunder player myself, here is some insights off the top of my head I can provide from the player base point of view, and as someone who has also submitted documentation to the devs to fix historical inaccuracies of some vehicles in the game...

-Players can submit bug reports for vehicles, reporting incorrect characteristics, missing features etc.

-In order to do so, players must research and compile documentation supporting their cases, from at least 2 primary sources. This means those devoted to such a report can spend hours or even days gathering material for their sources, sometimes going as far as digging through the historical archives of companies or countries for information

---

Here's where problems start to arise:

-The bug reports are overseen by a few volunteers who review the bug reports and decide what gets sent to the developers and what does not, who have a track record of arbitrarily choosing what gets passed to the developers for fixing, and what does not. So even a well made bug report with more than enough documents and source materials can be denied, and all the efforts of the reporter are in vain.

-Even if a bug report gets passed to the developers, there is no timeline on when the missing features or inaccuracies of a vehicle will be fixed, and no communication from the developers whatsoever. It may be one month until its fixed, it may be 5 years, it may be never.

-The most heated discussion and reports revolve around modern day vehicles, where source materials may still be classified, or is available but marked as export restricted. The developers are very inconsistent when it comes to which bug fixes the accept or refuse when it comes to modern vehicles. For example, there were multiple reports of the Abrams and Challenger tanks armor being weaker in game than they should be, these reports were declined by the developers despite the multitude of sources. And yet on another occasion, a player submitted a report on the T-90 missing it's spall liners, and they were added by developers with the only source provided being a youtube video.

-The developers recently changed the bug reporting system so that once a bug report is submitted, only the bug report reviewers and the author of the bug report can see the documentation submitted; the lack of transparency leads to lack of trust, some believing some reports which get submitted may be approved and implemented based the personal biases and views of the developers or bug report reviewers

---

So basically you have a playerbase of passionate players who like history and military vehicles, who go out of their way to perform the jobs of a historian to provide the correct information to the developers to correct historical inaccuracies in a game, only for their efforts to be disregarded due to arbitrary decision making of the developers or bug report reviewers, even if the compiled reports follow all guidelines.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#38

Post by singron »

bdndndndbve wrote: post #6
nomius10 wrote: post #3

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction. Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

Pretty sure the answer is ads. "Long-form" content has more opportunities to insert ads or sponsored content. There's not a lot of money to be made being quick and to the point. People's viewing habits have also changed in response, rather than having the algorithm bounce them around they'd rather half-pay-attention to a 3 hour video. But I think the trend of ever-growing video lengths was spawned by a desire for mor…

Youtube used to add mid-roll ads to videos that were at least 10 minutes, so your video would basically make twice as much if you stretched it that long. I think the threshold is 8 minutes nowadays.

Short form is hard to monetize (if you are Google 8 years ago) since you need to split ad revenue and attribution among the several videos you watch between ads. This goes against a ton of prior trends in the ad industry where last touch attribution is still king and ad fraud is hard to combat. If course tiktok did it late with creator rewards.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#39

Post by RockRobotRock »

phreack wrote: post #36
nomius10 wrote: post #3

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction. Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

They used to pay by the view, now they pay by the minute. I think it's that simple.

People also use YouTube in different ways than they used to. Leaving it on in the background while they do something else.

I’m sure YouTube’s algorithm is good at detecting which videos perform well even when you’re only listening to it.

Re: Why do War Thunder players leak classified information? [video]

#40

Post by RockRobotRock »

vunderba wrote: post #23
nomius10 wrote: post #3

I remember a time when crossing the 10 minute mark was really stretching it on YouTube. Nowadays most videos hit the 1 hour mark... I'm not sure if this is what the market demands, or this is just Google nudging creators in this direction. Fortunately people still make short videos, like this (relevant) one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WWbpBxLCI

I'm guessing you're either missing or deliberately excluding the HUGE push by Youtube for "Youtube Shorts". Personally, I vastly prefer long (20+ minute) videos. However short videos are good for quick DIY / tutorials when I'm unable to find a written equivalent.

I don’t think the rise of shorts is mutually exclusive with longer videos being pushed on the platform, as well.

Many people leave YouTube on in the background, but it doesn’t make sense to do that with TikTok style clips

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