Monthly Archives: November 2023

Published 11:45 am Thursday, November 30, 2023

DOWAGIAC One area foundation turned a part of Dowagiac pink Wednesday in support of providing life-saving care to women in Cass County.

The tree, donated and wrapped with more than 1,500 pink lights by Jon Mitchell, illuminated the night sky as members of the foundation, hospital staff and the community joined together in celebration. The tree was blessed by Amanda Hassle of the Myers-Henry & Hassle Real Estate Team and with the push of a button, she made the pink lights appear.

Retired Lee administrator and cancer survivor Sue McCormick was this years featured speaker. McCormick was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ in 2013 and with Invasive ductal carcinoma just three months ago. She credited her family, her community and her team of nurses for helping her overcome the disease. Her nurses were able to surprise her by making a trip to the tree lighting ceremony.

My nurses were phenomenal, she said. I will never forget and always be grateful to Lynn and Monica. I remember they pulled at the end of the office and told me to put my big girl panties on and move forward to complete my treatment. So, they gave me a pair of big girl panties.

McCormick, who had held onto that gift ever since, brought it to the ceremony and hoisted them up for all to see and was met with laughter and a round of applause for her achievement.

So far, the foundation is moving toward its $25,000 goal for the Tree of Love Campaign. The campaign provides free mammography services for uninsured or low-income women and men living in Cass County. According to Ascension, one in eight women will develop breast cancer and one in five cant afford a mammogram. To date, Ascension Borgess-Lee has provided more than 300 free screening services.

The foundation will continue to raise funds until the end of the year.

In addition, the foundation is also promoting the Helping Our Patients in Emergencies Fund, which provides patient needs including prescription medications, medical equipment (e.g., walker, commode chair, oxygen), gas or transportation for follow-up appointments, food, electricity and more.

McCormick encouraged men and women to get mammograms and to donate to the campaign.

I implore all of you to get your mammograms, not just occasionally but annually because cancer grows very fast, she said. Please talk to your family members and your friends, spread the word. Use me as an example. Because of my mammograms, the cancer was detected in the early stages both times They saved my life. Through our tree of Love campaign, we are hoping to reach out to those who are underinsured or uninsured to enable them to obtain mammograms and possibly save their lives women and men.

To make a donation or learn more about the Ascension Borgess-Lee Foundation, call (269) 783-3026.

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Ascension Borgess Lee Foundation hosts annual Tree of Love ... - Leader Publications

From Staff Reports

Ascension St. John has joined Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahomas Medicare Advantage networks.

The new agreement, which adds Medicare Advantage PPOSM and Medicare Advantage HMOSM, starts on Dec. 1, 2023, and will service Medicare members in Tulsa, Creek, Rogers, Osage, Wagoner, Okmulgee and Muskogee counties.

Providing the most comprehensive access to care in Oklahoma is the foundation of what we do and we are excited to deepen this partnership with Ascension, BCBSOK President Stephania Grober said. Our new agreement means our Medicare members now have expanded access to care in more than 55 counties in Oklahoma.

BCBSOKs Medicare Advantage plans have broad network access, prescription drug coverage and supplemental benefits including dental, vision and hearing. The Medicare Annual Enrollment Period is happening now and closes on Dec. 7, 2023, for Jan. 1, 2024, coverage.

Facilities included in the agreement are: Ascension St. John Owasso along with Ascension St. John Hospital in Tulsa, Ascension St. John Broken Arrow, Ascension St. John Jane Phillips Bartlesville, Ascension St. John Nowata and Ascension St. John Sapulpa.

Ascension Medical Group also participates in these networks: Blue TraditionalSM, Blue Choice PPOSM, Blue Preferred PPOSM, Blue Advantage PPOSM, BlueLincs HMOSM and Native BlueSM.

Our continued partnership with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma brings security for the thousands of Oklahomans who trust Ascension St. John with their well-being, Ascension St. John Senior Vice President and Oklahoma Ministry Market Executive Bo Beaudry said.

For questions about coverage and in-network providers, visit bcbsok.com.

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Ascension St. John joins Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Okla.'s ... - Tulsa World

Special to The Message

Habitat for Humanity of Evansville has announced that Ascension St. Vincent has committed to donating $40,000 per year, beginning immediately, to help build a Habitat home in coordination with Catholics for Habitat, which will fund the remaining portion of the home.

Catholics for Habitat includes representatives from several Evansville-area Catholic parishes who come together to raise money and build a Habitat home each year. With the help of Ascension St. Vincent, they will now be able to fund a second home that will be jointly sponsored by the two groups.

The first home as part of the new partnership is already underway in the Tepe Park neighborhood, and volunteers from both sides have been actively helping to build the home alongside the Habitat Core Crew and the future homeowner, Abigail B.

To date, Catholics for Habitat has completed 17 homes in the Evansville area, representing $1 million in support for Habitat and its homeowners.

Alex Chang, President of Ascension St. Vincents Southern Region, said, "As the region's leader in Catholic healthcare, we are proud to support the work of Habitat for Humanity of Evansville and Catholics for Habitat. The Ascension St. Vincent mission drives us to serve others, with special attention to the poor and vulnerable. Safe housing is key to maintaining one's health. Working alongside organizations like Habitat for Humanity is one way we strive to live our mission and support the health and safety of our community."

Future homeowner Abigail is extremely grateful to Habitat for Humanity of Evansville and Ascension St. Vincent for this opportunity, saying, Without them, none of this would have been possible. I couldnt have done this on my own, and I cant say thank you enough to everyone.

Abigails home will be completed by early spring in 2024.

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Ascension St. Vincent takes active role with Habitat for Humanity ... - Catholic Diocese of Evansville

Recognizing a lack of diversity in their clinical trials and research, St. Louis-based Ascension set out to improve in this area, and has made strides that have recently received recognition. This "mission-aligned" work has been a focus for Fredrick Masoudi, MD, chief science officer at the health system, who began his role in 2021.

Dr. Masoudi told Becker's he's specifically been involved in developing a national structure to help enable research across Ascension, which includes improving the representativeness of populations that are enrolled in clinical trials.

"Ascension's mission is to care for the poor and vulnerable," he said. "This work is entirely aligned with our long-standing mission."

The work began by measuring how the health system was doing in this area. Ascension adopted an enterprisewide clinical trials management system, which provided information about populations that were enrolling in clinical trials across the organization.

"I was happy to see that as we've aggregated those data, that the populations we enroll in clinical trials with respect to race and ethnicity very closely mirror the population for which we care for, which is a good place to start," said Dr. Masoudi.

One example he cited was a clinical trial that supported colleagues within Ascension DePaul Services of New Orleans. The trial occurred at a clinic that serves a predominantly ethnic minority population and centered around a cognitive behavioral therapy app to improve diabetes control.

"They knocked it out of the park in enrolling individuals at DePaul," Dr. Masoudi said. "They have a very motivated and capable team. They have long worked in the community and have built trust there, which is a key component to engaging individuals in trials. As a result, the population enrolled in the clinical trial was completely transformed with respect to race and ethnicity."

Also, in Tulsa, Okla., the Ascension St. John Clinical Research Institute recently won the inaugural Global Site Excellence in Diversity Award from the Society for Clinical Research Sites for its work to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in clinical trials. The award, sponsored by Syneos Health, was given after the institute established a program called Bridging Diversity Together. The program began in 2019, and program efforts and partnerships, including with the Eastern Oklahoma National Black Nurse Association committee and Indian Health Care Resource Center, resulted in a 9.2% increase in enrollment of American Indian individuals; a 6.6% enrollment increase of Black individuals; and a 2.6% enrollment increase of Asian individuals.

"This is occurring in an evolving landscape where the FDA is increasingly interested in the diversity of clinical trial participants," Dr. Masoudi said. "This is an opportunity for us to work with sponsors in this respect and improve the generalizability of the results of trials. Because of Ascension's footprint and the populations we serve, we can be leaders in this respect."

Ascension, which operates care sites in 19 states and the District of Columbia, has no plans to lose focus on making strides in this area. Dr. Masoudi said the hope is that the health system can be working with sponsors of clinical trials to develop more innovative and meaningful approaches to enhancing enrollment in trials among different populations. He said Ascension is also working closely with its chief community impact officer, Stacy Garrett-Ray, MD, on these efforts.

Still, he acknowledged that many pieces play a role in the fundamental components of lack of representativeness, such as logistical barriers and needing to find the time during working hours to make an appointment.

"We can work with sponsors to develop and support approaches that address logistical barriers to participation," said Dr. Masoudi. "We can also contribute to trial design with the objective of minimizing the burden to participants."

Trust is a factor, as well, given the long history of mistrust among individuals who are racial and ethnic minorities around clinical research.

"Addressing these issues of mistrust and developing stronger bonds within the community is a really important piece to it, as well. It's something that we look forward to working with Dr. Garrett-Ray around," Dr. Masoudi said.

Representation among researchers could also play a role in clinical trial participation. A recent retrospective study from researchers at Boston Medical Center found that patients could be more willing to participate in clinical studies when the research staff is of the same race or ethnicity.

"DePaul is a good example of how a clinician who is known and trusted in the community and a research coordinator who looks like the individuals in that community contributes to participation," Dr. Masoudi said. "We recognize that trust is an issue we need to tackle head on, given that mistrust in research is entirely understandable given the history of research in underserved communities."

He also said Ascension will also remain focused on integrating research within clinical care, meaning working with clinicians and addressing the priorities that are most pressing for their patients and for them. The health system also remains focused on the importance of research in building robust programs and advancing the mission of the organization.

"There are increasing incentives to enhance the diversity of the populations that are engaged in research," he added. "More importantly, it's the right thing to do, and in our case, it is mission-aligned."

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Ascension's science chief on the mission-driven work to increase ... - Becker's Hospital Review

INDIANAPOLIS It affects millions of Americans.

Sleep apnea can make people feel tired, run down and even run the risk of falling asleep at the wheel.

Sleep apnea can feel like youve pulled an all-nighter every morning you wake up.

You just feel run down all the time, tired," Ascension St. Vincent Hospital Dr. Tod Huntley said. What happens is the muscles in the throat, tongue relax too much during sleep and fall back and block off the airway. When this happens, the brain isnt getting enough oxygen and the body goes into a fight or flight mode.

According to the National Institute of Health, 26 percent of U.S adults between the ages of 30-70 have sleep apnea.

Most of them dont even know it. About 80 percent arent diagnosed yet," Huntley said.

Sleep apnea can lead to type 2 diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart attack and premature death.

Patient Deborah Kelly was having more than 40 breathing episodes an hour. Her brain was becoming hypoxic, shed have hours-long headaches and brain fog.

I love my brain," Kelly said. "And I dont wanna lose it."

It wasnt until she started receiving treatment at Ascension St. Vincent Center for Ear Nose Throat and Allergy that things turned around.

Thats when my life changed," she said.

Kelly received Inspire Sleep Apnea Treatment.

The surgical procedure involves a small pace-maker-like device being implanted in the muscles over the chest.

This provides gentle pulses to the tongue that pulls it forward and tightens it, to open up the airway during sleep." Dr. Huntley said.

For Kelly, its given her the strength to be physically active, help folks suffering from dementia, and even take her hot, red ride for a spin.

Not all patients qualify for surgically implanted nerve-stimulator devices like Inspire. Here are the requirements:

If you think you may have sleep apnea, Huntley recommends talking to your primary care physician, being aware of your symptoms and if you share a bed with someone, discuss if your sleeping habits are bothering them.

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Ascension St. Vincent sleep apnea patient 'inspired' after life-saving ... - WRTV Indianapolis

Published 9:06 am Thursday, November 30, 2023

By Carey Reeder | Managing Editor

Ascension St. Vincents Chilton Hospital once again received positive feedback from this round of Hospital Consumer Assessment for Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) scores.

The hospital uses the consumer experience, or patient satisfaction, scores as an indicator of the patients experience when they are under their care.

There are varying types of surveys that are done based on the service, Shanon Hamilton, Administrator at Ascension St. Vincents Chilton Hospital, said. For example, we get surveyed for outpatient patient satisfaction, outpatient surgery patient satisfaction, emergency department patient satisfaction and inpatient patient satisfaction. Each one of those surveys is important for us to be able to understand how our associates are caring for the patients, and their perception the patients have about the service they experienced here.

Hamilton said the goal of the hospital is to also exceed the patients expectations, but with that takes a lot of effort and specific follow up so the staff can understand the areas they are excelling in, and ones they can improve in. He added that the leadership and management teams at the hospital have found areas in the past where they are both excelling and need improvement through previous surveys. From there, the teams can relay to the associates on ways to improve, or for a job well done.

The overall morale between management and the associates at the hospital is high, and that is a reflection upon the amount of time the management team has been with the hospital.

That allows us to know each other very well, and we know how to support each other, Hamilton said. I do think that the continuity of the leadership team helps, but we have such great associates that work at Ascension St. Vincents Chilton. When we are looking for people to bring onto our team, we really try to make sure they fit what we are looking for here from a customer service and experience standpoint. We want people that not only provide great care, but do it with the right spirit and attitude.

The team that continuously tracks the HCAHPS score for the hospital reported in October that Ascension St. Vincents Chilton was the top-rated hospital out of the 140 Ascension hospitals for inpatient patient satisfaction.

The hospital is also continuing to be the highest rated hospital on Google in the state of Alabama with a 4.7 rating. Hamilton believes the rating is important because of how many people use google to search for things. He said he has seen patients come in and say they found services at St. Vincents Chilton that had a high rating through Google, and that is why they want to have their care done there.

It is our pleasure to serve this community, and because it is our pleasure in doing so, we want to do it to a level that exceeds our consumers expectations, Hamilton said. We know we are not going to get it right all of the time, and we will apologize when we do not, and we will try to do it better next time.

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Positive HCAHPS scores again for St. Vincent's Chilton - The ... - Clanton Advertiser

The Athletic has live coverage of the Dallas Cowboys vs. Seattle Seahawks on Thursday Night Football

Micah Parsons thought it was over. When Trevon Diggs was lost for the season before Week 3, the internal competition for Defensive Player of the Year looked like a done deal.

To see him go out, Parsons said, Im like, I lost Tre, I got this in the bag.

What Parsons, the self-proclaimed lion, didnt see was the dark horse behind him who would burst onto the national scene by making it a habit to gallop into the end zone.

DaRon Bland has not only been in the picture this season but hes also been the focus. Bland, who is a soft-spoken man of few words, exudes about as much humility as one will find from an elite player at his position.

(Teammates) know I dont like to talk too much, Bland said. They laugh at me when they see me on the camera.

Bland has been an elite cornerback. You can start by looking at the obvious part of his game that has rightfully stolen all the headlines. He leads the NFL with seven interceptions. Hes coming off a performance in which he intercepted a pass for a third consecutive game, returned it for a touchdown for the second consecutive game and set the NFL record for pick sixes in a season.

Believe it or not, thats only scratching the surface of Blands greatness.

Quarterbacks are posting a 36.9 passer rating when targeting Bland. As Sam Monson of Pro Football Focus put it, passes that have gone in Blands direction have yielded a passer rating three points worse than just throwing the ball at the ground 59 times instead. Blands 91.2 PFF grade is the highest coverage grade for cornerbacks through Week 12.

You cant go out there chasing plays, or youre not going to make plays, Bland said. When you try to chase plays, sometimes those plays dont happen, and then those other plays happen and you got the big plays on you and they end up scoring.

This is what separates Bland from the impressive season the guy he replaced (Diggs) had in 2021. You might recall, Diggs had 11 interceptions that season but was a lightning rod on social media because there was constant discourse about how much he was getting burned in coverage which was accurate. Diggs was at the top of the list of yards allowed by a cornerback and targeted for his lack of eagerness to tackle and get involved in the run defense.

Bland is the complete package. Hes not one to make business decisions in the run game. He displays a level of physicality that isnt common among cover corners, and hes solid in coverage, too. Thats not to say Bland is flawless. As recently as the last game, Washington Commanders quarterback Sam Howell had some success on a drive in the first half going at Bland. Even then, Bland was always in decent position and later cashed in with a big play in coverage in the second half.

Blands greatness is indisputable, but talking about his ascension in the context of Parsons bet with Diggs before the season about Defensive Player of the Year is a different conversation.

I hear it, people saying I should be in (the conversation), Bland said. If it happens, it happens.

According to BetMGM, Bland has the fourth-best odds to win Defensive Player of the Year. Thats a long way from Blands being designated as the third cornerback on the Dallas Cowboys depth chart up until the third week of the season.

Circumstances helped Blands climb into the upper echelon of the conversation. Having the star on ones helmet never hurts in organically generating eyeballs. Bland also started off fast with a pick six in the season opener in New York, had a big two-interception, one-touchdown game in the middle against the New England Patriots and is on a hot streak entering the home stretch of the regular season. Bland set the pick-six record on Thanksgiving in what was one of the most-watched regular-season games in NFL history.

GO DEEPER

'Another dimension': Cowboys' DaRon Bland quiet, dominant and the NFL's pick-6 king

A cornerbacks winning the award is incredibly rare, although the most recent cornerbacks to win it have interesting Cowboys ties.

Cowboys cornerback Stephon Gilmore won the award in 2019 as a member of the Patriots. Before him, Charles Woodson won it in 2009 with the Green Bay Packers, where Mike McCarthy was coach. Before Woodson, longtime Cowboys cornerback Deion Sanders won the award in 1994 with the San Francisco 49ers.

If Bland can maintain his level of dominance, its hard to rule out anything, but right now, it still seems unlikely for him to take home the honors. Bland (+1,400) has the fourth-best odds, which is in its own tier above the fifth-best odds of Nick Bosa (+4,000). However, its also a full tier down from the top three: Myles Garrett (+150), Parsons (+175) and T.J. Watt (+250).

To be clear, thats not to say Blands success has been lucky, but there is an element of dependency involved. Given how visible his prowess has become, one would assume quarterbacks will either be a lot more careful throwing at him, particularly throwing late on out routes as has so often been the case this season, or will just stop going at him altogether. Hell still be a huge asset to the Cowboys defense, but his greatness wont be as overt as it is now.

For Garrett, Parsons and Watt, there are the hurdles of dealing with double-teams and extra bodies, but elite players at those positions still have control of their output. Sometimes its moving around along the defensive front, sometimes its stunts and creativity of the scheme, and most times, its sheer physical dominance. Either way, theres only so much an offense can do to consistently eliminate that players direct impact on the game.

GO DEEPER

The undeniable truths about the 8-3 Dallas Cowboys

(Defensive line coach Aden Durde) always brings this up, hes like, You got to remember youre Micah fing Parsons this s is going to happen, Parsons said about teams holding him in trying to slow him down. I was like, you right. Hes like You got to keep going, f all the other stuff. Stuff like that, Im just like, Yeah, youre right. I just got to keep going. Thats kind of why Ive been getting these late-game sacks and just trying to survive in here and things like that, and Im going to keep hunting.

If Parsons keeps hunting, hes the player on the Cowboys defense who has the best chance to win Defensive Player of the Year. Parsons is tied for sixth in the NFL with 11 1/2 sacks but only two back of Watt and Danielle Hunter for the league lead. He also has 71 pressures, 47 hurries and a 34 percent pass-rush win rate. The final month of the season will offer plenty of opportunity for him to close the gap and make a louder case for himself over Watt and Garrett.

As for Bland, his goals for attaining hardware are unchanged, no matter what happens in the DPOY race.

Now, just trying to keep going, try to go all the way for the team, Bland said. Try to get a Super Bowl. I was always more into the team goals than anything. All of the individual goals will come with it.

(Photo: Kevin Sabitus / Getty Images)

The Football 100, the definitive ranking of the NFLs best 100 players of all time, is on sale now. Order it here.

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Where does DaRon Blands rapid ascension put him in Defensive Player of the Year discourse? - The Athletic

Summary

Silent Hill is a beloved franchise. Many of the games in its early catalog are considered the peak of the psychological horror genre, Silent Hill 2 being a masterpiece of storytelling and atmosphere. Even the weaker entries into the franchise have some who adore and defend them. So the excitement that the fandom felt at the promise of a new entry after eleven years of waiting was palpable. There was a lot of anticipation for Silent Hill: Ascension as the days got closer to its release, only for many of those hopes to end up completely dashed in the wave of its release.

Gaming spaces have had a contentious relationship with many of the larger gaming companies in the last few years. Much of it related to things like poor out-of-the-box quality and the ever-hated microtransactions. Silent Hill: Ascension has come to have the reputation of reproducing the feeling of being in a pachinko parlor without any of the actual excitement that can come with it. The fact that this style of game was even released is ultimately a bad sign for the future of gaming if large studios can assume that they can get away with making "games" like this going forward for beloved and innovative franchises.

The Best Underrated Horror Title While You Wait On the Silent Hill 2 Remake

Part of understanding why the reaction to Silent Hill: Ascension has been so vitriolic is understanding that it is only just barely a game. It is a mix of a streamable series and a "choose your own adventure" game at its core. The audience (i.e., the players) is able to vote at certain points to influence the course of the story. The story itself follows six different characters in very different places, all connected by cultish deaths and mysteries. The game references the first three games in the series often and without any real subtlety involved specifically in the psychological elements. The game is set to release its episodes over time to goad audiences back to the app to observe it.

The biggest problem is the voting system. Not all votes are created equal and players can pay for points or a season pass. These points go towards influencing the decisions in the game, so players who are willing to sink money into it have a disproportionate voice in the proceedings. This is where the major cracks settle in. There are free ways to earn points, of course, but in a game that relies on the votes of the community to proceed and change, the fastest way to accumulate these points is by buying them. There are other sequences that don't rely on this system, but they aren't robust enough or as impactful as they should be. This system makes it so that those who pay money are the ones who shape the story with more regularity than any of the players who don't think they need to buy a season pass for something that is basically a cut scene.

Microtransactions have always been a point of contention, especially when they can provide paths to victory or are gatekeeping some content that deserves to be in the vanilla version of the game. The release of Baldur's Gate III had many developers looking rather bad, especially Blizzard with Diablo IV, because no microtransactions exist and BG3 still did extremely well. Diablo IV, by comparison, was universally panned because of its constant redirection to the in-game store and the fact that it was nowhere near what the community actually wanted. For a franchise as classic as Silent Hill to fall to this specific pain point for gamers is something of a slap in the face. Despite the fact that it is barely a game, it fundamentally does not understand what made the franchise so good and beloved. The graphics are cheap-looking, even for a mobile game. The story is very on the nose with very little actual mystery beyond what is conjured up to keep players on the hook. The biggest sin is the fact that it is ultimately a pay-to-play game where money will always win the dayand this is where Silent Hill: Ascension conjures a foreboding sense of what could be to come for the wider gaming space.

Best Horror Movies About Alternate Dimensions And Parallel Universes

After Netflix canceled free password sharing, the collective streaming world had to see what would happen. The company would either lose customers and viewers as people walked away, or it would gain them and become more profitable. Rather than losing money, it made money and gained more customers. This has led other streaming services to consider getting rid of password sharing themselves and has effectively changed what this space will look like going forward, as more services see the potential to make money off of this idea. Several companies, like Disney+, have already announced their considerations. Silent Hill: Ascension could easily be seen as a testing ground for a similar theory and that theory paints an incredibly bleak future for gaming.

Microtransactions have been a pain point for gamers for quite some time. From Asura's Wrath having its true ending locked behind DLC to Mass Effect 3 having day one downloadable content for content that was pretty pivotal to the plot, the complaints have been there for an incredibly long time. Games that don't have in-game marketplaces have become rarer and rarer from triple-A gaming publishers and people are getting more fed up with the way the system works. Game studios will defend these choices as needing to prop up revenue and make more profits, but with game developers' salaries kept low and executive salaries kept high, the platitude rings hollow. Large gaming companies make a good amount of money on their games, but their promises to their shareholders require them to squeeze as much money out of a game as possible. These policies and decisions have led to games like Dead Space 3 and Diablo IV being scorned by the players who loved the earlier installments in their franchises.

What Silent Hill: Ascension proposes through its very existence is that gamers will take anything as long as they slap a beloved IP on it. People will spend money to have their voices heard, to play something that only barely counts as a game, because it falls into a franchise that they absolutely adore. It is a pretty dystopian thought. That the future of gaming won't try to innovate or create something new when people can be squeezed for every spare dime to play games like these. If this model is shown to be successful and profit-generating, it's only logical that gaming companies would try to continue with this specific trend in design. If the goal is not to create quality, but to act as a free money printer, as some of these games do, then this is the ideal design. Low effort, low cost with high profitability. It cannot be understated that games that are quality on day one with well-paid employees and a lack of predatory in-game markets are becoming more and more in the minority when it comes to triple-A game production. It's one thing for a game to be bad; it's wholly another thing for it to be an ill omen in and of itself.

Silent Hill was a franchise that truly changed the gaming landscape for horror games. Its innovation in storytelling and atmosphere rippled throughout gaming for multiple generations of consoles and gamers alike. At its best, Silent Hill: Ascension is a predatory insult to everything that the franchise was once known and praised for. At its worst, it is a herald of things to come in the unlikely event that its model is completely successful. Gamers deserve better. They deserve to be respected if nothing else, as the gaming industry has only grown in the last thirty years. For so long, developers have been working for small audiences, but most games now do better in their first weeks than most movies. Silent Hill: Ascension is a cash grab that doesn't even bother to dress up its intentions, and its success will only beget more of its kind of game.

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Silent Hill Ascension Could Be A Bad Sign For The Future Of Gaming - CBR - Comic Book Resources

People have found a new artist to listen to after a video of Stephen Sanchez singing Cigarette Daydreams by Cage the Elephant blew up on TikTok.

It was the first time that something that I had sang got a nice reaction, Stephen told SoundStrip during his Southeast Asia press conference.

Since he posted that cover, the American singer-songwriter said it motivated him to post some more. He shared that it was an interesting experience to have strangers on the internet praise his singing, his playing of the guitar, or just the song itself.

Riding on that wave, his second post was his first song, Lady By the Sea in 2020. It was even cooler to have written a song, and have people be excited about that, he added.

From there, he kept on releasing songs until his RIAA 3x Platinum Certified hit Until I Found You from his second EP became a viral hit on TikTok and peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100.

His breakout single is a brilliant foreshadowing of his full-length debut album Angel Face, which tells the story of the fictional Stephen Sanchez as The Troubadour Sanchez who finds fame based on his 1958 hit song Until I Found You.

A different universe

In this fictional world, Troubadour Stephen met a girl named Evangeline, also his track from his debut album, and had a tumultuous romance with her. Troubadour Sanchez was murdered in 1964, and almost 60 years later, his supposed first album Angel Face was unearthed.

Along with the album, Stephen has released cinematic music videos for Death Of The Troubadour and High, directed by Charlie Rees, giving a closer look at The Troubadours story by narrating the love triangle between him, Evangeline, and her former lover Hunter.

In the real world, Angel Face is a 13-track album released in September 2023. Heavily inspired by 50s and 60s love songs, the storytelling through lyrics coupled with crooner Stephens smooth and magnetic vocals along with dreamy jazz, blues and rock melodies, dominated the whole album.

He shared that his motivation to create the role of Troubadour Sanchez was his curiosity about what he would be like if he grew up in the 50s and 60s. If he was lined up against the icons at that time, how would he look like, he asked himself.

Stephen has also collaborated with Ben Schneider, the lead singer of the band Lord Huron, who he said working with was a dream come true since the band was his musical inspiration while growing up. They wrote together the songs No One Knows, Caught in a Blue, and Death of the Troubadour.

When they were writing No One Knows together in the studio, Stephen shared that Ben brought up a very important point: A love song thats only about how great it is all the time is not a real love song, its not the truth.

He added: We want to write it then as a duet that highlights both sides of the relationship and kind of say awful things that both of these people are doing to one another. And so, Stephen reached out to Laufey, an artist hes a fan of, and told her about the song and to sing this duet.

She came to the studio with a cello in hand and we recorded the song live. Exactly what you hear on the record is what we did, looking across from each other, recording the song, he said.

An old soul

The 21-year-old Stephen is an old soul, a lover of all things vintage like cars, style, hair, makeup, revolutionizing the future, music, and art, reflected in his music and fashion styles.

Oftentimes, he was compared to King of Rock and Roll Elvis Presley for his jet black slicked-back hair and 1950s crooner The Troubadour Sanchez persona.

He remarked: Getting compared to anybody like that is a very wonderful compliment, citing Elvis along with Sam Cooke and Frank Sinatra as his favorites.

I think its really amazing that anyone would compare me to someone with magnitude and talent, he said.

He also cited Harry Styles as his inspiration, but he shared: More than their moves, its their confidence that inspires me to explore my own moves, the way I want to dance on stage and express myself.

They have definitely inspired me, but it always turns into your own thing, he quipped.

Much like his fictional character as the troubadour, Stephen also rose to fame after the success of Until I Found You, amassing 1.6 billion streams on all versions on Spotify.

He was also invited by Sir Elton John to perform the track during his last-ever headlining show at Glastonbury and performed the song during Sofia Richie and Elliot Grainges wedding in France as well.

Stephen is currently touring the United States with Angel Face and revealed that as far as a sequel goes for his debut album, he said he has some things in mind for making an ascension story. For his sophomore album, he shared that he has some ideas but hes not sure yet what it will look like.

Fictional or not, fans will likely watch out for both versions of Stephen Sanchez in Angel Face.

Image credits: Caity Krone

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VIRAL-WORTHY | The 'ascension story' of Stephen Sanchez | Reine ... - BusinessMirror