Simple Short Essays

1st post:

Smite is an online videogame that employs what the industry calls a "free-to-play" business model when it comes to earning a profit. Under such a model, the game itself is free for any and all users to play without purchase, instead generating revenue through small, optional transactions that charge for largely cosmetic customizations and conveniences. Because of this, new content must be created and added to Smite on a constant basis, making the game a long-term project. As such, risk management techniques are critical for Hi-Rez Studios—the company responsible for Smite—to keep their project a success.

                Risk control plays a large factor in determining the type of content that Hi-Rez Studios decides to produce for Smite. As a multiplayer arena-based combat style of game, Smite offers a variety of characters for players to control and fight as. The hook in Smite's case is that all of its characters are based off of various Gods from a wide selection of world religions. Zeus from Greek mythology, Odin from Norse mythology, and Kukulkan from Mayan mythology are just a few of the 63 options available (Billars,2015). However, deities of Hindu origins are also included, which has proven problematic in the past. Unlike the other religions, Hinduism still has a large global following, and as Smite's popularity has grown, religious leaders grew unsettled with Gods such as Kali, Agni, and Vamana appearing in this videogame (Leboeuf, 2012).

                The Universal Society of Hinduism president asked for Hi-Rez Studios to remove these three Gods from their game due to the offensive nature some interpret their inclusion as. Though Hi-Rez Studios eventually altered Kali's artwork to be less offensive, they refused to outright remove these three Gods and have instead continued to add additional Gods and Goddesses based off of Hindu figures into their game (Leboeuf, 2012). It's important to note, though, that proper risk management techniques are being utilized to prevent future issues from arising. Hi-Rez continues to reduce risk by ensuring that their new characters they add to their game are as respectful and un-offensive as possible, even if it means changing existing designs. In turn, risk is avoided by their selection of future characters in general—since the incident with the Society of Hindusim, very few new Gods have been Hindu based when compared to other pantheons. Finally, a certain amount of risk is forced to be accepted for the project under the idea that religion is a culturally sensitive subject for one to base their game upon.

                Unknowns for this project include how far a character or religious subject can push the line before offending enough people to cause problems, and how far the line needs to be pushed in order to make a profit with their business model. Unknown unknowns might include a sudden and unpredictable fall in popularity for this market-genre of video gaming or even a large-scale earthquake that destroys Hi-Rez Studio's office and game servers. Regardless, proper risk management can either negate or minimize the damage that can result from these scenarios and keep Smite in a favorable and profitable position.

References

Billars, P. (2015, January 16). Interview with SMITE's Executive Producer Chris Larson. Retrieved April 3,                 2015, from http://2p.com/23236792_1/Interview-with-Hi-Rez-Executive-Producer-Chris-Larson-         by-Billars.htm

Leboeuf, S. (2012, July 26). Smite Dev Removes "Offensive" Goddess From Website. Retrieved April 3, 2015, from http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/118740-Smite-Dev-Removes-  Offensive-Goddess-From-Website

2d post:

The project that I chose to share with the team is a project that I have completed last year for the company that I currently work for. This project was based on the deductions and earnings codes setup in the company. First, I complete a review of the payroll department strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and the outcome was identifying a lack of tax expertise in the group. The company had just completed HRIS implementation that was too successful. During my review of the payroll system tax setup against all the earnings and deductions codes. The review identified certain earnings and deductions that were not being taxed appropriately during the implementation. I proposed to fix all the codes by resetting them up to be taxed according to the guidelines provided by the tax agencies. This issue place the company at risk with these agencies.

The tax discrepancies in this audit and implementation was over $2 million for just the earnings codes excluding the benefit codes. I proposed for the company to leave the severance related codes as is for the rest of the year; even though, these codes were the largest impact but fixing them would have been a larger risk on the employer, because they could not charge the employees for these taxes that were not withheld by the company throughout the year, which was out of their control. I suggested to implement the taxes for this code in 2014 instead of 2013, as of 01/01/2014 the taxes were implemented, which will keep the employer out of the risks of paying over $2 million on behalf of the employees, instead the employees will have to face these charges during their tax returns. I also made the same recommendation for other earning codes that were going to place the employer at another risk, which would have cost them about $500k to the IRS. This code was implemented at the beginning of 2014 as well.

I suggested to correct the other codes that could not wait for 2013, since they were going to impact the W2s for the year and would have cost the company over $3 million dollar in penalty and interest, and could have impacted the company by being out of compliance with the IRS and other agencies. Again, I have made these estimates by using the speculations of tax rates assigned for each type of earnings, the penalty and interest cost assigned for each issue by the IRS and other agencies, but there is always unknown cost that we can only estimate, and estimation is not real cost they might be higher or lower. As we learn from our text book this week, risk has uncertainty or condition, and if it occurs there is always a cost attached to it, and it could be positive or negative (Larson & F., 2014).

References

Larson, E. W., & F., G. C. (2014). Project Managemennt (Sith Edition ed.). New York, New York , USA: McGraw Hill Education