Our focus this week is a content creator from Mixer who loves raiding in Destiny. Despite the name, she is not a “Bro,” but at the same time she possesses all of the positive qualities you might find in one of your “bros.” She likes chilling with her community and taking down bosses.

Please meet BroFish.

Welcome to your Community Focus, tell us a bit about who are you and what do you do for a living?

BroFish: My name is BroFish and I am a full-time content creator on Mixer.

What got you into gaming?

BroFish: When I was six I moved to a new town, and the first friend I met had Pokémon Yellow on the Gameboy Color. I would go over to her house every day after school and play Pokémon. I’ve been playing games ever since.

Playing games is one thing, streaming them is on another level. What first got you into streaming?

BroFish I first learned what livestreaming was when Prison of Elders was revealed in May of 2015. I saw ProfessorBroman laughing and having the time of his life, and I wanted to know more about streaming. After spending months watching streams, I decided to put myself out there and stream so I could meet more people who played Destiny.

I started on Twitch four years ago doing raid carries here and there, but I had yet to find my home. This is where Mixer came in. I switched to Mixer in March of 2018, after hearing good things from friends who had switched to the platform. I felt incredibly welcomed by everyone and the community was so strong. Being able to interact with your chat with zero delay made a huge leap for community interaction, which always comes first to me. I knew within the first week that I had found my new home, and I knew I wanted to build the Destiny directory on Mixer. I’m proud of how the directory has developed in the past two years and I can’t wait to see where it goes in the future.

That POE stream was a great one. Let’s talk memories, what’s a moment in Destiny history that is still with you today?

BroFish: There was a point during Age of Triumph where I was asked while streaming to do a raid with a number of leading community members in the Destiny directory. This sticks out for me because it was the first time I felt that I truly had a larger place in the Destiny directory and it made me want to strive to grow myself and my brand so that I could in time lead and inspire others to chase their dreams as well.

Despite me accidentally muting myself on Discord for half of the raid, I still have lasting friendships that came out of that Wrath of the Machine raid. The Destiny Community is strong, and it saved me when I was going through a lot of pain and hurt. I’ll always be grateful to Bungie for creating this world and to the Guardians I get the privilege of sharing this world with.

Tell me more about yourself – hobbies outside of streaming, random stuff that you enjoy doing other than videogames even.

BroFish: I played volleyball for seven years in school, even receiving medals at the national championships. I played basically every sport my school had to offer. I also enjoy drawing and doing puzzles or anything which challenges my brain. I also shamelessly watch “Judge Judy” and “Jeopardy” in my spare time.

Everyone loves Jeopardy right? What was your first console game/PC game? How did your gaming habits evolve from Pokémon?

BroFish: From Pokémon I started playing other JRPGs. My first console game that I fell in love with was Final Fantasy X. From there on I played a lot of other RPGs like Assassin’s Creed and Zelda as well. Then, six years ago, I picked up Destiny for the first time and played it for 12 hours straight, and I was hooked on looter shooters from then on.

What class do you call home? What’s your favorite build in Destiny when it comes to subclass/weapons.

BroFish: I started playing Destiny 1 as a Hunter, but once I tried Warlock I completely fell in love with slap fights and floofing around. I love dunking on people with Nova Bombs, or channeling my inner tickle fingers with Stormcaller.

My favorite build usually consists of some sort of hand cannon/sniper or scout rifle/sniper build. I fell in love with Randy’s Throwing Knife the second I used it, and I was a huge user of Vision of Confluence and Fatebringer in D1. My favorite armor piece by far was the Nothing Manacles and I miss them so, but I do enjoy running Crown of Tempests with Stormtrance.

Where can people find you online?

We want to think BroFish for taking the time to share her story and give us a chance to learn more about her and her channel. Make sure you give her a visit at the links above and drop in on one of her streams to say hi.

Zynga today published its Q1 earnings results, reporting both record-setting revenues and a larger-than-predicted loss for the first three months of 2020.

The two are actually intertwined, as Zynga says it ended up taking a $104 million loss (GAAP) for the quarter despite bringing in $404 million in revenues and $425 million in bookings because it had to compensate some 2018 acquisitions for ongoing outstanding performance.

“Our acquisitions of Small Giant Games and Gram Games continue to perform ahead of our expectations, resulting in a $120 million contingent consideration expense versus our guidance of $25 million,” reads an excerpt of today’s earnings report. ” This was the primary driver of the difference in our net loss of $104 million versus our guidance of a net loss of $26 million.”

Zynga acquired Small Giant Games (Empires & Puzzles) and Gram Games (Merge Dragons!) in 2018 for roughly $560 million and $250 million, respectively, and each deal included stipulations for Zynga to pay out more money over three years based on undisclosed performance metrics.

Looking ahead, Zynga predicts a loss for the current quarter, forecasting a $60 million loss on the $400 million in revenues it expects to earn.

The company has also revised its expectations for the full year in light of its big loss this quarter, noting that it now expects to lose $245 million on $1.6 billion in revenues during 2020; Zynga chalks up $200 million of that predicted $245 million loss to “contingent consideration expense” for acquisitions that are continuing to perform well, noting that ” should our recent acquisitions continue to perform ahead of expectations, we may see a further increase in the cumulative contingent consideration expense.”

The company also confirmed that all Zynga employees are now working from home in the face of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and that business will continue to be conducted remotely for the foreseeable future.

Epic Games’ Fortnite has officially surpassed 350 million registered players across all platforms, a milestone that comes as the company is doubling down on the experience-focused elements of its game world with recent additions like the combat-free Party Royale mode and last month’s in-game Travis Scott concert.

That concert pulled in 27.7 million unique participants across a single weekend, and Epic Games notes in this most recent update on Twitter than the entire month of April saw over 3.2 billion hours of play time.

While Fortnite launched as a premium, survival game back in the summer of 2017, the free-to-play battle royale mode launched later that year quickly became the game’s big hook and what attracted millions to the title. While the battle royale game’s momentum has slowed since those early days, this most recent milestone means around 150 million more players have signed up to play in just the last year and a half alone.

Businesses of all sizes are experiencing exceptional disruption and change as they grapple with strategies to stabilize and return to growth. In this new environment, human ingenuity, innovation and adaptability will be critically important.

As a result of COVID-19, businesses’ digital transformation is accelerating more rapidly than ever before. As Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, recently observed during our earnings announcement, “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

However, as people move to distributed working and companies move essential workloads to the cloud, what isn’t instantly apparent is the growing role artificial intelligence (AI) is playing at the heart of digital transformation. For some organizations, its use had already accelerated. Others are looking at bringing forward the benefits AI can deliver.

AI is helping us discover, learn, ideate and make decisions. It’s making business operations more efficient, enhancing product and service development, and enabling new customer experiences. In industries like health care, it’s helping improve patient outcomes and save lives.

Before the pandemic, most of our customers were addressing a similar challenge: How do they ensure their people have the right skills and mindset to thrive in a world where AI is driving real business impact?

To learn more, Microsoft carried out a major international research project* focusing on AI and skills, and discovered the most successful organizations are as focused on developing the skills of their people as they are with deploying new AI-powered technology.

The business environment has changed significantly over the past few months, but the insights we gathered from our research, and the roadmap they provide, still hold true.

The core finding: “In this new environment, companies will need ingenuity to help restart their businesses,” says Azeem Azhar, AI industry expert and founder of the Exponential View. “In the context of new rules for engaging with customers, partners and stakeholders, innovative and adaptable organizations will do better. This research identifies that AI-leading firms are better positioned because they are investing more in a wide range of skills and are more focused on how new technology can augment their workers.”

Today, we are proud to announce that Jeff Ma has joined Microsoft as General Manager of Microsoft for Startups supporting our global efforts around the world. If you have ever seen the hit movie 21, you already know part of his story. Based on their mastery of mathematics and probability, Jeff and his fellow MIT friends were able to win millions in Las Vegas through their ingenious approach to card-counting which inspired the film. Since then Jeff has launched four successful companies including CircleLending (sold to Virgin) Citizen Sports (sold to Yahoo) and tenXer (sold to Twitter.)

Beyond his work as a founder, Ma is a best-selling author and speaker who has applied his deep understanding of analytics to help professional sports teams like the San Francisco 49ers and the Portland Trail Blazers and media powerhouses like ESPN and Major League Baseball Advanced Media make better decisions using data.

We had the chance to catch up with Jeff and ask him a few questions.

Can you tell us what led you to Microsoft for Startups?

As a four-time founder myself, I understand and have deep empathy for the startup journey and what founders need to build a successful business. The prospect of working with startups with the incredible backdrop of Microsoft was extremely exciting.

Before I was even approached about the position, I was speaking with a friend about Microsoft’s resurgence in the past few years. We discussed how under Satya’s leadership the company’s culture has evolved in a meaningful way. By culture, I mean the cumulative effect of what people within the company do and more importantly how they do it. When I began to meet with people within the company, I was struck by their commitment to diversity and inclusion. The level of investment in supporting traditionally underrepresented communities was something that really resonated with me on a personal level.

What exactly does the Head of Microsoft for Startups do in role?

My responsibility will be to lead our Microsoft for Startups efforts in the 140 countries it services around the world. I’ll also work closely across the company to ensure that startups have pathways to learn about and leverage the best that Microsoft has to offer.

Is there a specific area that you’re passionate in supporting?

Earlier this year, Microsoft for Startups partnered with PitchBook and All Raise to launch a report that looked at the latest data and trends for gender diversity in the VC ecosystem. Analyzing 2019 data, the report delved into current investment trends across the US, looking at how valuations, investment sizes, time to exit and other measures differ by gender, as well as the impact women have as investors on the entrepreneurial gender gap. I’m looking forward to exploring how we can improve the equation for female founders in a substantive way.

What will be at the top of your list of action items?

From a technology standpoint, we currently offer startups up to $120k of Azure cloud credits as well as access to powerful tools like GitHub Enterprise and Visual Studio – I’ll be looking at ways we can expand that portfolio. On the business side, we offer a streamlined path for startups to sell alongside Microsoft. In the past year alone startups in the program are on track to secure over a $1BN dollars in sales opportunities. Particularly in today’s environment, I will be working with the team to make it dead simple for startups to connect their innovative solutions with Fortune 1000 companies.

The release date for the upcoming bubble gum brawler Ninjala has been postponed by a month. Yes, just a week after the beta test – which experienced some technical issues, GungHo Online Entertainment’s official Twitter account for the game has now announced it’ll be arriving on 25th June instead of 28th May.

The delay is tied to the spread of coronavirus, although the developer did not go into any detail beyond this. It’s not the first thing to be impacted by the global pandemic – with many gaming conventions being called off, and various other titles such as The Outer Worlds being delayed.

Believe it or not, but Ninjala was first revealed at Nintendo’s E3 Direct in 2018. When it does finally arrive on the Switch eShop, it’ll be a free download for all users. Will you trying it out on release? What did you think of the beta? Share your thoughts below.

This is a small trick I learned the hard way. When working through the massive amounts of emails, I often wondered: how to get only the unread ones in Gmail that are also in the primary tab?

Queries like these happen quite frequently when working with Gmail. As it turns out, there’s a simple solution:

Simply type the following command in your search bar:

in: category:primary is:unread

For coders, this is an easily understandable filter operation. We want to retrieve all emails from your inbox (in:) that are also in your primary tab (category:primary) and that are also unread (is:unread).

As it turns out, Gmail comes with powerful filtering options even way beyond what you’ve seen here. Here are all the search and filtering operators in Gmail (screenshot from this source):

Simply bookmark this page and come back if you run into the next Gmail search issue.