Category Archives: Gaming

March 25, 2022 · 03:34

First the weird

Yes, it was something that happened on Wednesday night. It was (apparently) important and it involved Batman. It was a dream, mot likely about IP, but I cannot state whether it is based on the comic books, I do not think it was the Arkham games series. I also do not think it was the movies, but beyond that it is blank, I just cannot remember it and if I do not write it down quickly, it becomes lost. So now I have to wait for the REM stage to kick in again. Beyond all that, there is new IP. A new setting, a digital setting that comes to mind on some of the MB games, in the first it is Hotel and now we have a new stage, Yes, we can ‘just’ copy the board game, but that is such a waste of time, unless it is a mode you can unlock. A board that becomes bigger as more players come to it. The nearly same setting, but now we add a library of hotels. So the original game had the Boomerang, Fujiyama, Royal, Le Grand, Safari, Taj Mahal, Waikiki, and the President. But the fun part is that digitally we can add, we can replace keeping the game new and fresh. So we can get hotels based on famous hotels in Dubai, Las Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, London and so many other places. As we add multiplayer options where the player can select from a pool of online players, friends and game fans, this game could get a lot more attention, and history has shown that there was an interest in this game. I still haven’t given up on the notion of collectible keys (used on the Amazon Luna) to unlock elements in games that other games provide for. And Hotel could be no different. Other games unlock additional hotels and this game could unlock other elements in other games. A stage that pushes novelty and pushes the desire to play, to find and to embrace any game that streaming offers. 

I mentioned the keys before and it could be one of several enhancements that could push the Amazon Luna (beside the 50M extra consoles option). You see, the need for gaming is different on streamers, yes there is a like minded setting with other consoles, but the plus value is not merely some subscription, it is the part where the subscription leads to additional sides, it keeps the gamer invigorated. And in sandbox games there is plenty to see, but in other games after you played it once or twice you think you have seen it all, unless you add to the game, unless the game keeps on developing. There is only so many times the bulk will play Monopoly. Yet if we can localise Monopoly and unlock local editions the interest in such a game evolves from medium term to long term enjoyment. And there several MB games could find themselves in a larger stage. In earlier writings I evolved the game Stratego to a much larger online stage. Yet what happens when we do this to the game Tank Battle? What happens when we evolve the game Clue to a version based on the CCG the X files? All games with multiple options, all games with an evolved nature that offers long term appeal. And as stated on multiple times, some of the original CBM-64 games could get a whole new era of gaming enthusiasts if they put their mind to it. 

All settings that some ignored, some were forgotten and many were overlooked, or perhaps the game designers never considered the early years of gaming. Just like some of us seemingly forgot  about some of the TV shows from the 60’s and 70’s, several of them bubbling with new life if the right director comes along. The acquired IP from the old days could be the cheapest and that offers a whole new stage. Some of the makers are all about looking at the new, but to find. Truly new series with no connections to the past is so utterly rare that it is almost folly to join those crusaders, all chasing windmills. Which is still weird because the fields are covered with fix them uppers and some of them have solid housing frames. 

The fact that some are racing to remaster decent PS4 games for PS5, and they are merely looking behind them, in the rear distance there are true gems waiting to be rediscovered and I hope Amazon does so, Google too, but then they decided not to develop games, so they need to rely on the indie developers and some will be looking towards the CBM-64, Atari ST and Amiga games. As I see some development notes pass by, I can see that they are and they will have decent chances to pick up an interesting amount of coins. 

 

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March 23, 2022 · 08:39

The gamer is afoot

To be honest, I only saw this in the morning. It is a day old and the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/mar/21/saudi-arabia-expands-its-sportswashing-ambitions-to-the-world-of-gaming) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia expands its sportswashing ambitions to the world of gaming’. This is a fortunate roll for me, the $400M-$600M (low estimation) of new IP (which is not on my blog) was initially available for Google (Stadia), and more available to Amazon (Luna) is now also an option for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The third player in this hand has a few interesting benefits, not that Amazon would not prosper, but it opens a new stage and it also brings the Google Stadia into this fold. You see the article gives us “The kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund – a $500bn entity chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – announced a new gaming company in January 2022 with the intention of staking its claim in the booming industry.” Now consider a stage that this same setting gives you another arm that will allow for well over $400,000,000 which is set aside from the other avenues, but to a larger degree will offer a new income prospect and that is not something anyone would pass up, well Microsoft will have to pass up, because it is not on offer for them (so there). 

There are options opening when we see “The Savvy Gaming Group went on to purchase ESL Gaming – one of the largest independent eSport entities in the world – from Sweden-based Modern Times Group in an all-cash transaction of $1.05bn. It also purchased FACEIT, one of the biggest tournament organisers in eSports, for $500m, and later merged the two entities to form the ESL FACEIT Group.” Yet this all sets a new premise, one that I (and many others had not considered). This implies that Saudi Arabia will also set the stage that 4 clusters with up to 450,000,000 million gamers come towards the new light and there my IP will flourish, it will because I took into consideration a factor that all other gaming entities had overlooked and now my idea makes a whole lot of new sense (it was already making sense) but now more so and it is theirs for $50,000,000 post taxation (with a few additional items). So I will let you ponder how interesting a $50M investment is if you would end up with well over $400M. That is a mere 12.5% investment (expected less than that), good odds I say. 

So when we take notice of “Saudi launched a new billion-dollar initiative to transform the kingdom into a leading digital entertainment hub. The initiative, aptly named Ignite, is expected to fund the development of new games, as well as infrastructure for gaming studios and arenas. The kingdom also revealed plans to establish a big budget games studio in Neom, the proposed futuristic $500bn mega city in the Saudi desert. The studio, which is expected to produce and distribute games by a major publisher, would be the first of its kind in the Middle East.” Makes it all come full circle, a setting that we all overlooked and my IP is something they might be overlooking and a stage where you get three clusters representing well over $400M is not something one does callously. 

And at this point some will say “you are blowing your own horn”, my response would be, yes, so what? No one was looking there, Amazon could have bought it, Google decided not to go there and Microsoft is not worthy, and now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia becomes a whole new dimension in a setting I never considered them in. In the end, it does not matter who gets me my $50,000,000 (post taxation). It is not greed, it is a mere retirement umbrella allowing me to have a kick ass vacation until I become that player that pushes up the daisies. A larger stage that was out in the open for well over a decade, and no one bothered to look there. I did and now (I hope) that my setting allows me for some platinum class R&R, can you blame me? All this is also reinforced by “Gaming consumption in the kingdom is projected to reach $6.8bn by 2030, according to the Boston Consulting Group, an entity that has worked closely with the Saudi crown prince to enhance his image.” And a stage where a prediction gets them a chunk of that money (over 5.8%) in the beginning stage is not something that should be cast aside. It will go higher, I just cannot say how high, because this has never be done before and I am not one to blow my own trumpet in an unrealistic fashion, what I have I can support (to the buyer), I reckon that the Boston Consulting Group could make that number a lot higher and support that setting, but that is an educated guess (aka presumption). And lets face it, if you got 10% of what you state will be the pot in 2030, is offered to you in 2022, would you pass up that setting? I will let you decide.

 

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March 21, 2022 · 23:20

5 houses in London

Yes, it is a setting we have all wanted in Monopoly, to own the rich side of the game, to feel a winner. I remember in my youthful young driven rat-race age. Running to that side of the game as fast as possible and buy all the real estate in sight. This view altered over time like we all alter the view on how we play the game. Oh, and on the bright side, I just came up with a new game for the Google Stadia, how screwed up is this?  But this is not about a game, this is about reality. Consider the game, consider the locations and consider the impact we face on a daily basis.

In that stage, how about the BBC article ‘Grenfell tragedy: Government is failing to act on inquiry report, says London mayor’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60816108) where we are told “The mayor of London says the government has “failed to complete” any of the 12 recommendations directed at them during phase 1 of the Grenfell Tower inquiry.” So here is the question. How much power do the Real estate tycoons have over the British government? 

You think I am kidding, consider monopoly, how much actions would be enabled if the 72 cadavers were on green side of the board and not the brown side of the board? Have you considered that? So when we see “The LFB was criticised in the report for its failure to revoke the “stay put” advice – in which residents were told to remain in their individual homes as the fire raged through the 24-storey tower block.” Is that really true? Consider the movie we saw (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QM4RJE81fh4) how would a revoke ‘stay put’ would have been any solution? And in that movie, do not just watch, listen to the response of ACTUAL fireman. The sequential movie (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSYUp8j8P1Q) from the FIRST FIRE-CAR on the spot. When you see the two movies my feelings become clear. How screwed up was this investigation? The issue of “The LFB was criticised” becomes a joke. How is it possible that THIS government has not acted on at least the first 15 points making them MANDATORY. Do the real estate tycoons have THAT much power in London? We see the media jump on the ‘stay put’ order whilst the big deal is that the ENTIRE building was on fire, these fireman hd never seen anything like that and in my initial article (23rd June 2017) called ‘Under cover questions’ where I show the PDF’s on the goods where we see that the solution was good for cladding up to 30ft. So what gives and when I add “The external cladding material on this building did not prevent the spread of the fire as required by the Building Code of Australia,” said MFB chief officer Peter Rau“ an issue that was shown 3 years prior to Grenfell, how much of a chihuahua is the British government to the London real estate tycoons? We can argue whether the ‘stay put’ order was the right one to use in high rises, but the news is all about how wrong it was instead of how wrong it was to install cladding like the one in Grenfell, but we do not really get to see that, do we? 

So when we see “I am extremely concerned the government has failed to complete a single recommendation from the first phase of the inquiry”, yes for some the 72 cadavers are a mere balancing act, is it not? And in this the statement “the government is failing the Grenfell community” is wrong. The government has already failed them by not implementing any of the recommendations. We see criticism on the LFB, all whilst they were given a stacked deck, stacked towards the tycoons bleeding London dry. When you see and hear London fire people state ‘I have never seen anything like that’ you know things are out of control and the response from people on the first car arriving gives additional fuel to the matter and we get it things can be weird, things can be scary. Yet what do we do when the setting becomes weird and scary for the firefighters? The BBC article should unleash a wave of anger towards an inactive flaccid government, it should unleash a wave of anger towards these tycoons and it would be nice to see a list of these people in EVERY newspaper. The article raises a lot of questions and before the critical people have a go at the firemen, have a go at what I found and what questions I had in 2017, I found plenty on a laptop, so why did this investigations not find any and why were no recommendations acted on?

I leave it to you and if you live in London you might want to hurry before you become on of the cadavers the real estate tycoons do not care about.

 

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March 17, 2022 · 19:59

Pushing cogs

Yes, for me that was the setting. In the previous articles (several) I set the boundaries for a new RPG game, freeware for all Amazon Luna and Sony developers (just to piss off Microsoft). And if we are going to take a chunk of the marketshare of Bethesda, we need to offer more and we need to offer different. In this I set the player as merely one of many people. Making sure that the world does not revolve around him (or her). So the towns need an economy, It needs a stage to grow and it needs to be in a trend that causes the need for replayability. I always believed in replayability. It is lovely that we all have a house in EVERY town, but reality is not like that. So even if we are going into that stage, I needed to set a larger premise towards WHAT the stage was. The tavern sets productivity in villages and towns. So does the Blacksmith and so does the general store, bookshop, butcher and grocer. Yet in this we see internal economy, the parts that feed the town (Butcher, baker, grocer, tavern) there are the shops that feed an external economy (Blacksmith) and there are the shops that feed both (herbalist, general store) and there is the luxury shop (bookshop). So as these shops are doing better, they could upgrade, they could grow the town. The external shops call in adventurers and more money into a town. And if a town grows to lets state 3 stars, the infrastructure upgrades (lights, guards) This cannot be merely tables that ‘satisfy’ the needs of the game. Each town gets his stage of cogs, one gear feeding another and that need is there. You cannot get a dynamic town in place merely letting the adventurer set the speed of growth. There also needs a risk setting. For example if you fed the tavern too much, and it gets to 5 stars, whilst the town is a 3 star place, the tavern gets sold, and you get to start anew there. Luxury shops (bookshop, tailor) are there when the town reaches its 4th star. This upgrade the overall look of the town, wealthier people come into town and that calls more adventurers and more charlatan’s. To set this all in cogs is nearly impossible, but such an attempt is required to create a dynamic playing world. Consider Bethesda’s Oblivion (2006), we see Chorrel, Cheydenhal, Bravil and Skingrad. They all stay the same, but what happens when you set the game where we see Chorrel doing better and Cheydenhal recedes towards another Bravil? To set such a gaming stage was not possible in 2006, but now with streaming servers and the PS5, that setting becomes achievable. And when you return to a town after weeks, it might look very different. And that is what we are trying to aim for, because the $200,000,000,000 gaming revenue (expected 2023 numbers) does not go to those doing the same again and again. It goes to the people who offers what others do not, or cannot. I do hope that Horizons: Forbidden West showed you that much (as did Elden ring). To give the world a new a really new creation will be rewarding beyond expectations. So here you go and you are welcome. Oh and none of this links to my optional additional stage of selling 50,000,000 Amazon Luna consoles, so there is that too (it sucks to be Microsoft in 2022).

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March 12, 2022 · 19:13

How many nails to a coffin?

It is a decently serious question, because I do not know. You see, I have given you the lowdown on Microsoft in a few ways a few days ago in ‘Microsoft, for cold laundry’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/09/microsoft-for-cold-laundry/), as well as ‘What we hope for’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/07/what-we-hope-for/) two days before that. I gave the lines, I gave the settings and now we see ‘Xbox Series X Is the Most Complained-About Gaming Console in the World’ (at https://www.cbr.com/xbox-series-x-worlds-most-complained-console/). 

Now I do have some questions here. You see, I do believe in evidence and the setting of ‘Most Complained-About Gaming Console’ requires evidence and Microsoft does not hand out evidence, they hide everything, even sales figures to show just how bad they are doing. We are given “The top three slots went to Xbox Series X (12.5%), Xbox One (12.1%), and Xbox Series S (9.8%). PlayStation 4 came in last, with only 0.5% of tweets about the system expressing any dissatisfaction.” Do not get me wrong, as a Sony fan I love this, but in fairness evidence is essential and numbers unsupported by hard evidence are not the reliable numbers we would want. And I am proven right with “Electronic Hub theorises that much of the ire directed at the Series X”. It was the word ‘theorises’. You see hard evidence allows for the circumvention of ‘theorises’ and it would give us a line like “Well over 70% of the complaints have a link to Controllers and headsets.” Yet we were not given that. We were given what you see in the link and even as it is a nice read, I remain partial to actual evidence which the article does not really give us. The second bit of information is that percentages are nice, but based on what ’N’? How many responses were given, how many were tallied and perhaps the region might be nice too. 

Then we start seeing more tweets like “I feel scammed having no games to play”, well that is not entirely true. The Xbox has released games, but they might not be games that this gamer likes and that gamer is now optionally envious of all the Switch and PS5 games. True, this COULD be the case but there is a hidden snag in all this. Microsoft is letting things get out of hand on several levels and that is in gaming alone. The complaints is their service division, the games is development and there are a few more areas where Microsoft is dropping the ball. Do you think I was kidding that I never want my IP in the hands of Microsoft? Google took another direction, so I am hoping that Amazon picks up the setting. Well, that is if they want to sell well over 50,000,000 additional consoles in 3-4 areas. I have had my concerns with Microsoft and IP, and I am not their to solve their shortcomings for them. Anyway, the bill fits Amazon a lot better with all the connected options anyway. 

But this is not about me, it is about Microsoft. And they are not doing good. If this view, this evidence lacking view is added to my views and educated guesses, it seems that ‘the most powerful console in the world’ (their words, not mine) will be gracing the number 4 spot soon enough, and a hell of a lot sooner if I have anything to do with it. If Amazon makes a deal with Google, Microsoft would end up dead last and my small dream of handing Microsoft their wooden spoon would become a reality. Yet this is also a rather large warning. You see, Sony was better when it was being chased by Microsoft and that now falls away. I am not saying that it is the end, but I fear that the PS6 might not be as great a leap as the PS5 was over the PS4. And I like high end gaming, so I am happy on one side and a little grumpy on the other side. No matter how good Nintendo and Amazon become, they are not the parties to actually chase Sony and push it to new heights. On the other hand, to see my views become nearing 90% correct is good for the ego, it really is. 

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March 11, 2022 · 09:11

Foreplay or forplay?

Yup, we all go there at some point. My ex once wanted me to watch a movie on foreplay so that she could get a better night of sex and I did not mind. To be honest, once I skipped the boring bits at the start the movie they gave me a few excellent ideas as well. In gaming this situation exists as well. But in gaming what is foreplay? Some state that it is the intro of the game. That tends to differ per game. In Horizon Zero Dawn it could be the part where Eloy is a little girl (when she finds  the focus) in TombRaider it was the mansion level, in Oblivion it is the escape from prison and many games have their own way of staging the introduction. And now the joke I started with starts making sense. Weirdly enough it was not a direct stage that assaulted my senses. I had been contemplating and considering additional parts to my 5G devices when it hit me. I was so ‘obsessed’ to hand more functionality to the customers that it hit me. There needs to be a larger stage of introducing more to the customer, educating them as it were. Just like the video, we need more extensive foreplay. You see the age of dumping a device in the lap of customers, whether they are consumers or retailers. That stage is gone and too many rely on word of mouth, the internet and other means for people to figure it out. Consider the TV below.

It drains your account by $11,500 dollars and I had to use this example as I am a huge Sony fan. But consider the fact that the startup guide is two pages and the reference guide is 8 pages, which also gives us “For more information on troubleshooting, refer to the Help Guide”, which is a button on the remote. Now there is nothing really wrong with that, but if someone courts me for that amount, it better comes with breakfast and a final blowjob after a night of super great sex. 

Devices have been pushed as almost literally a push and seek on the internet stage. Now for a $49 Google ChromeCast that makes sense. But for a $499 Bose bluetooth speaker? Not even a manual that explains what one port on the speaker does? That is a failure and gaming tends to go in that direction as well. A stage where too much is auto assumed. To be honest, Ubisoft and Bethesda actually has a decent grasp on that especially in their latest games. There are more than a few games out there that fails its consumers. There are quotes like ‘The internet is full of help’, or the demeaning “Your friends do not seem to have that same problem” And when Meta is fully deployed especially when hybrid comes to life there will be all kinds of hiatus. Now there is nothing wrong with setting up the internet to help out, but ask yourself “How many supplier set up a decent amount of white papers to help you out?” The answer will scare you. They all skipped the boring bits of the foreplay video and went straight for ‘orgasmic revenue’. And here is the stage where I found the interesting part of forplay (not a typo) “Foreplay is the fun, flirty, arousing goings on right before actually having sex. It’s an act that sexually excites a person. In forplay some people use icing, chocolate sauce, whatever..” And this applies here too. In hardware the ‘chocolate sauce’ are the accessories you can buy, or DLC’s in gaming (a ‘for play’ joke). The extra yummy parts are not in the real game, they come later (that has been Ubisoft as well). It worries me because it implies that the consumer is not the person who buys the game, but the person who buys the game and all the other bits and that is disappointing. It is disappointing in gaming, it is disappointing in hardware, software and concepts. It is like companies are too much abut the sales pipeline in some fire and forget setting, and no one (or too few) people care what happens to their customers afterwards and it offends me. I was in Customer service since 1992 and it was for a long time a great stage yet in too many places it became about cost reduction and cutting corners whilst the consumers where not properly taken care off too often and for too long. There are exceptions the most striking one is either Norton or Adobe customer service versus Microsoft customer service, or try dialling your internet provider. Try setting a care line there (a line that show they actually care for you), the results might scare you and that is where I found myself. Educating the customer on the boring bits of 5G, as well the boring bits of added 5G because that field is MASSIVE and I am hopefully a player in that stage in the not so far distant future, so it matters to me to get that part right too. And for the size of what I am talking about, see below

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March 7, 2022 · 22:39

The educational track

What if education got a helping hand? We seemingly play games, we seemingly read books, we seemingly learn. What if we unite this? And here we have a setting to the larger stage and I will admit that Ubisoft has the baton. They got it when they aded the Discovery tour to AC Origin. And when we weren’t in a rush to get the achievements we would have learned a decent deal of life in Egypt. The embalmers, the beer makers and so on. I stated it before, Ubisoft screwed up [plenty, but not that game. That one they got right and credit should be given where credit is due. 

And Ubisoft (others too) have been sitting on top of a whole range of IP that they could redistribute in a ‘plus setting’. The stage is decently easy. We have the person we play, we unite the maps of AC Origins and AC Odyssey and we go to town. Remove the wild animals, remove the enemies and so on. Then we add the tracks and works of 

Homer, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato, Hesiod, Democritus, Socrates, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Herodotus and many more (well over 300 more). When set in a time line we learn and we now have an educational program. This can be done for Greece and Italy (aka Roman empire). The finny part was that I would have expected that Ubisoft had picked up on this, especially after the discovery tour. And let be honest, it is a much more interesting way of learning. See it as missions, from person to person, take a gander from where they were born to where they stopped living (or until the big works are illuminated). We see all thee boring books (not all mind you), but to use games to educate has not been explored enough and weirdly enough Ubisoft has an inside track here the renaissance  (AC 2, Brotherhood), US independence war (AC 3), And there is plenty more to tip on and with streaming systems seeking a larger hold, having the games with optional educational side will be a growing thing and lets be clear the expected $200,000,000,000 that the analysts state that gaming represents might go longer for Ubisoft if they find the larger application and I reckon that AC Origins (with Odyssey) might show to be a larger cash cow that could help them stretch time, time they basically no longer have. I would grasp at all options to stretch what is there. And they are not alone, but they are as far as I can tell the most visible one. 

We need to realise that not all games have an educational option, but those who do could have a larger stage to fill and a larger appeal (especially to parents). And don’t knock the idea. To get kids (11-16) interested in classical education topics is hard enough, getting them to walk the timeline of Homer and write a paper in it (with screenshots) might be the new setting no one in education considered before. It might not be their fault, but I reckon it is the foot in the door Ubisoft desperately needs at present. 

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March 7, 2022 · 14:05

What we hope for

IP is a tricky thing, it is usually where we hope the people will be when it is ready, some are continuation of ideas and some are a wishful thinking approach to what might be, or become.

I understand this part. You cannot sell if people are never going to go into that direction. It is wishful thinking that they will get there. In all this, I am no different. I expect the world to evolve (or become extinct) towards the 5G stage that Neom city stages it to be. It might merely be Neom at first, but it will throw the bough of marketing into a different heading and my IP will be ready when they do. It was not rocket science. It was always going to change. There was no other way and no matter how many marketeers catch up, or try to turn the dial to THEIR advantage. It was always going to happen and the marketeers that were not ready for the shift, they merely seize to be. The market was always going to reroute because scammers, spammers and criminals stopped the current direction, 5G is enabling them more and more and we see this Wild West corral approach to ‘cyber safety’, doing whatever they can, the reality is that there will be no real relief until 2025, and that sets the stage even more to my advantage (yay me). Yet it is not about me, or my IP. It is about the stage that I set in motion. I am merely in the right place as will a few others. I foresaw a massive crash of Microsoft. Spin only get you so far, but they are so driven to Azure, Spin and ‘their’ great innovations, all whilst iteration is the best they can get. It opens up a drive in a few directions. As I personally see it Microsoft is about to lose the gaming platform to Sony, Nintendo and Amazon. They are losing more and more tablet grounds to Apple and Adobe could set the sails to take a huge chunk out of the Office market. All that and a global Azure outage. The last one might be really bad luck, but to go out globally is rattling the cages of too many and there lies the rub. GaaS and SaaS are setting a larger stage, a stage where people look to what they can TRUST, and there is my open IP connecting to a lot of it. (Yay me). Instead of looking for spin, looking for hype, the offices of GaaS and SaaS required updating and stabilising. So in this Microsoft is in a bad place. Even as we were given 3 weeks ago “Microsoft is in talks to acquire cybersecurity research and incident response company Mandiant, according to people familiar with the discussions, a deal that would bolster efforts to protect customers from hacks and breaches”, you see, it is not merely “bolster efforts to protect customers”, it is about preventing and protecting the customers you have and as we are seeing several Microsoft issues and close to none from the Amazon, IBM and Google area, Microsoft could lose this side as well making them a loser three times over, but no fear. They paid $68.7 billion for Blizzard and it will not be enough. Me (and my sense of humour) attacked that deal by handing out IP and gaming ideas as freeware for Sony and Amazon developers. It is my ‘subtle’ way of telling Microsoft to wake the fuck up. And that is merely the beginning. When my IP comes through to certain parties Amazon and Google will cut Microsoft game revenue in slices, not all mind you, but well over 30% and that is before I show them a new direction they ignored for a decade and they will lose acquiring more. I reckon that it is in the air where the SaaS will go, but IBM, Amazon and Google have equal chances. OK, Google has a better chance. But as I wrote earlier, not reality but a dream, I saw adobe evolve and take a massive chunk out of the Microsoft office population and that would hurt the most. And the Office issues in the last two years were not the greatest for Microsoft, so that field could open up and some are on the Apple trail, some prefer the Google trail and yet it is not enough, a player with the proven track record of Adobe in SaaS could overtake and shoot Microsoft to rubble. It sounds violent, but that is the SaaS field. And Microsoft has had too many issues in too many places at the same time and trying to hide behind Mandiant might not be enough this time around. I admit that I could be wrong, but I can wait to be proven right and those believing the Microsoft spin will end up with a larger mess than they are ready for, but that was the choice they made. With gaming and 5G IP I will hopefully be in a place to step in and at some point either Google or Amazon will have to reconsider the station of selling 50,000,000 consoles to a population that could be a lot more, could open a lot more and that bill fits Amazon better then Google, but Google needs to make choices at some point, with the SaaS and GaaS in such a volatile setting Google might not have a choice and losing more ground to Amazon is not in their best interest. 

Yes, it is all based on what we (read: I) hope for, but it also sets the choices we see now, the choices that some reporting channels ‘trivialise’ and that some ‘minimise’. The consumer at some point catches on and as such Microsoft is in a not so good place on several channels where they boast good times. Reality does not give them that pleasure and it will take more from them soon enough.

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February 28, 2022 · 20:34

The new IP, the old stage

Yes, that is the station I found myself in this morning. It was not completely new to me, I did write about it in the past (too tired to find the exact article as I have written in excess of 2250 articles at present), but the stage is a little different now. Consider war (see the TV for specifics), we know it and it is now closer to many homes than it was months ago. But we nearly always played an EA or Ubisoft version with respawning NPC soldiers. What if the setting is staged finite and no spawning all over the place? What if the stage is London, Munich, Amsterdam or Paris? A stage where you get inserted into a random location and your war-zone is a 10 block radius from there. Google Maps has nearly every detail, so do other mapping solutions. And you could be defending, escorting local civilians and giving aid. You get no choice until you get to a certain rank. How long would YOU last? It is time to teach the gaming soldiers a little realism. And when you face that you think different on Call of Duty Beachhead with high realism. That is nothing! I think some people are catching on what it is like, somehow they take more notice on events in the Ukraine than they ever did in Yemen or Syria. I like games that have NEVER be done before. A lot of my IP is set to stages never done before and that is where we optionally see a side of gaming that is totally new and innovative. Others were there before you with other games (several examples in this year alone) and I believe that this is the way to go, whether it is a console or streaming system, innovation beats iteration EVERY. Time. 

And as these systems are more powerful, we get a setting where we can launch a game like that (or kart) in our own streets, redefining gaming realism acceptance on a few levels. I remember seeing Red Dawn, the Chris Hemsworth edition (I saw both editions) and when we see one of the kids state “We are living Call of duty and it sucks”, I heard someone giggle behind me stating that this would be cool. Yes, the response of a wannabe soldier. I however was in the Middle East, I saw what Hamas did, I saw the bodies. That wakes you up real fast and perhaps a game is not the worst setting to educate people. It has been done before and perhaps it is time to unite these elements. I don’t know, is it wisdom or folly to go that way? I honestly do not. On one side I am merely creating new IP, but I want something deeper in gaming IP, and amazing story (Horizons Forbidden West) is one way to go, when it goes to stories the game Portal (by Rob Swigart) is another direction and that can be equally fulfilling. Still there is a call, not one of duty, but one of fulfilment. We all have it, we want to plant our flag, set our footprint and leave some kind of legacy. When you are a dedicated gamer, we all want to be a Sid Meier, a Peter Molyneux or a Richard Garriott. Not everyone are driven to release mutant camels and that is fair, but where we will be going (streaming systems) and what is possible is almost at the touch and I personally think it is important to push Microsoft out of this market before there way remains the only gaming-less option.  The problem is that it would have been easier if Google had taken up some form of game creation department and with the fact that gaming revenue is predicted to be $138,000,000,000 by 2023 is something that seems overwhelmingly attractive, but that is me and for now my idea to sell 50,000,000+ systems remain under lock and key (on a cloud location far far from home). But it is merely one direction and there are plenty of other directions, the revenue speculation opens those doors and even as a large chunk is set to microtransactions, the people are seemingly fed up with the EA and Ubisoft stage of microtransactions. I also gave a few other options (go look for them) and they are largely set to streaming systems. So is there an upside to THIS IP I now mentioned? No, it is merely another road one could wander, and it is here because I cannot wander them all and I am handing my ideas for free use to Amazon and Sony developers. It is a choice I made as Google decided not to create games. The old stage is seemingly fading, or at least I think it is fading, and what is around the corner is almost within reach and it will be bright and exciting, that is what I think, you might think different and rely on great franchises (like Gran Turismo) to set your beaker of desire. That is fair, gaming is what YOU want it to be, I merely want there to be alternatives for you to consider trying.

That’s how I roll.

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February 25, 2022 · 05:23

Relaunch or remaster?

It was 04:00 (local time) and I needed to seek out some address in London, the address did not matter, but the stage did. In the first there was Lancaster Gate station, it now holds a dearly departed sign, it is closed (apparently). For some reason seeing the map of the underground again made my mind wander. It went back to the days of the Commodore 64. I reviewed a rather fun game for the younger players. It was called ‘Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego’, it was fun because of two elements. Instead of dealing with copy protection, they merely wanted a word from a line in a page in a book, the book was however an Almanac with 900 pages.

I think I still have that book somewhere. It was fun because it had an educational side, it had an exploration side and it was fun to play. Now consider that a lot of this info is in apps, consider that the Switch could hold that info, so consider a game where the location you currently are (and offline containing the old mode) you can play a game that has at least two modes, it might not be that possible on the Switch, but both Android and iOS can contain all the elements needed. An enhanced stage with optional local added information that is added to the bookshelves of the app. We can look on any map in any location, so why not use that to a larger playing stage? Racing, wandering, sleuthing and a whole range more. The Almanac was essential in those days, but now we have equal options online and perhaps the makers have the rights to that almanac. Consider that in the old game we could go to 4 locations and from there to three buildings. Now we have the entire map, we can go anywhere, we can up the ante on several levels and even as we start with a number of locations, we can add and add as the game is released, making 200 locations, 5000 locations, making 3 buildings, 150 buildings. Making the dozen or so facts hundreds of facts. A playful app with educational sides and its educational sides could remain growing for a long time. We can add complexities with airlines, busses, ferries and subways. We can add photo’s as part of the investigation, we can do more with currencies and make credit cards a larger stage in the game (it was none in those days). All additional sides that give a much larger stage to the game and this game could resurface in a refurbished coat. In that case as it evolves into streaming systems we see a game that is for the younger players and when you count the games for younger gamers on a non-Nintendo system, how many do you find? 

Just a small idea before I am having my first coffee (05:23 now).

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