Category Archives: Gaming

September 16, 2021 · 18:50

As the shoe drops

Yes, there is a lot of anger in Bethesda land. As we take notice of “We have tried to be as clear as possible, not a timed exclusive, this is simply where the game is being made.” Starfield is a Microsoft exclusive and the fans are angry. I get it, I am not angry, it was a brilliant move by Microsoft, it is why I placed all kinds of IP on the public domain (here in my blog) for Sony and Amazon (Luna) so that their independent developers can make a totally new RPG game and the IP is free for them, it is my way to giving Microsoft the bird. These developers are not out of pocket for $8,500,000,000. And they deserve it (I hope). 

So whilst we take notice of “Hines went on to point out that Bethesda fans on PlayStation consoles might not be shut out entirely from playing future titles from the studio”, we do understand that the PS5 is outselling the Xbox 2:1 and it will take some time before cloud gaming is expected to become congestion free, and that is providing that you have a true unlimited account, as some give us the stage of Xcloud on about 3GB per hour, so someone with a new 200GB account will run out of data in about 65 hours, that is likely less then 2 weeks for average gamers and 1 week for what some call the true gamers. After that it will be $30 per hour to game. And that is if it all goes correctly, I feel certain that congestion will hit soon enough. You see some sources give me “Optus now offers unlimited data across its range of postpaid mobile plans. As with Telstra, if you go over your data allowance, you’ll be capped to speeds of 1.5Mbps.” so if it is unlimited, how can you go over your data allowance? And consider that capped data does not allow gaming, not at 1.5Mbps. So we are (for now) locked to our consoles and PC’s. Is it a wonder that Amazon gives you Ubisoft+ at $1? The end is nowhere near here and it is a lot worse in places where you are rural, especially the US, Canada, France, Germany and several others. And in that light we need to see Bethesda. And they do give clarity with “Certainly, there are going to be things that you’re not going to be able to play [on PlayStation]” that is why Microsoft paid billions. They had a bad setting an inferior system and they got the people addicted to certain games across. Even though it is not a given, I feel certain that the new none online Elder Scrolls is most likely going to be a Microsoft exclusive. It makes no sense to get angry, they paid billions and the people on Sony will have to make a choice and I helped them by handing the independent developers on Sony and Amazon IP for free. I will try to add a few more titles and it is up to the developers to create them, but at least I handed them an alternative and I did mention a few more titles for consideration to remaster. 

So whilst some people will get needlessly angry over “I want to be careful. I know it’s a question people care a lot about. It’s also a tricky one for us to answer because, frankly, it can get sensationalised on the internet”, I see it as a BS answer. It is not tricky to answer, it is the result of a $8.5 billion takeover, there was never any tricky setting. The only tricky setting was Deathloop as it was already a PS5 exclusive. At present PS5 is looking at 25 exclusive titles (until mid 2022) and that is not including a few titles that have no clear release date. In addition, the PS5 has crossed the 10,000,000 units sold line whilst Microsoft is nowhere near that, and as we see in some sources “the Xbox team has made it a policy in recent years to not disclose exact hardware sales numbers”, which makes sense when you are the number three console trailing PS5 AND Nintendo  Switch. So the Bethesda move was the only one that made sense for them and they had to pay a massive amount for it (because Bethesda is worth it), and yes, there will be a group of people who will switch as they are dedicated as well as bug nuts for the Bethesda games and that is fine, it is what Microsoft paid for, as such I handed my creativity to Indie developers so that they can make a new RPG on PS5 and Amazon Luna. Will it happen? I cannot tell, I do not know, but at least I did not resort to anger, I merely gave others the chance to take a slice of the RPG cake on two platforms. Perhaps that is not the right sentiment, I offered IP so that they could consider going there. And if I find my IP on these two systems I can raise my glass and give Microsoft the bird. 

No matter how many how many games Bethesda will make Xbox Exclusive (the right Microsoft paid for) it will hurt them to lose out of millions of gamers who will stick with Sony and that is the stage that they overlooked. When Sony gets a new RPG that is Sony exclusive and it does catch on (one hopes) Bethesda will lose out on a lot more and Microsoft will taste the sour grapes that come with a $8.5 billion investment, it was as I state before a brilliant move, and in this day and age as we are in lockdowns, I will add as much Gaming IP for Sony and Amazon developers (for free) and let that be the lesson Microsoft gets to learn the hard way.

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September 15, 2021 · 16:46

Speculative design

Many do this at times. We look at something and we think ‘What if we move part N to location X?’ It is a perfectly valid idea and it keeps a brain active and in creative mode, which tends to be good for several reasons. So I was busy thinking things out, in one it is the side of pushing another IP towards public domain, it is too soon, but not by much. So the mind started to wander. The first part was the new trojan that the NSO group is suspected off (see previous story), the second was a line in the West Wing (which I am watching again during the lockdown plus curfew. There we hear about a pen designed for NASA that works upside down, one mentions that Russia solved it by using a pencil. You might not think it, but it is actually an important part. So as these elements rolled in my mind, I wondered on adding a setting (just to piss off the Iranians) in a stage to get two for the price of one, they do use Russian hardware. As such I thought that we need a few clever boffins and as such the people should call on the NSA (No Such Agency). What if we find a way to introduce a hippocampus to the hardware? A hippocampus is a trojan that is submerged (in this case) into the firing solutions. You see at some point a target needs to be setup and that moment the link becomes a weak link. You see not all systems have additional redundant systems and I am willing to bet that Iran has the latest hardware, but not every internal system is up to the latest standard. Implying that we can add something. So what if these missiles would then automatically start to be set to point X plus 1-10 miles? A submerged trojan horse might pull that off. There are a few questions that require me to have a lot more firing system knowledge. Yet when we consider the elements rocket-firing solution-guidance, we might see that the firing solution will be the easiest transgression and these systems do require to get to a base. A solution  that will hit EVERY firing system by infecting all the systems and the infection stays where it is until it fires and then it becomes a nice 4th July showtime. And there is a nice secondary part, the person firing is the one hitting ones self. Passive aggression in full view. 

So is my view realistic? I do not know, I do not care. I merely try to design a way to stop players like Iran and I will use any way possible. All whilst politicians make claims to do something and after spending truckloads on funds on long exclusive trips that tends to include a few 5 star hotels, I on the other hand, sitting on my sofa came up with ideas that had no cost, merely a few dimes of electricity. One works in whatever way the brain gets to be (more) creative. It was the same path I followed when I designed a way to push a  meltdown in the Iranian nuclear plants. OK, I also engineered two additional valve ideas and when I file for these I might get a few additional dollars as well. I do know that these solutions are pure concept, there is no guarantee it will work. But it keeps my brain busy and if it doesn’t work, it might make for a nice additional part to some TV series or movie. The creative brain can come up with a dozen ideas, just be ready that it ends up where it was not expected to go. You might find that funny and it is, but when you consider how books, games and movies got an infusion of brilliance. You merely have to consider how they got to be. Games like Ultima 3 became inspirations to a lot more RPG games (made by other makers). The EA game ShadowCaster was by way too many overlooked, yet when you see “the 49th best computer game of all time, calling it “an admirable attempt to show that RPGs don’t have to be boring””, so why was this game not remastered and redesigned for consoles and streamings? In that same light we can review all kinds of neglected hardware and see just how creative we could get with it. Everyone is so busy in making things not work that they overlook the option to make it hurt the activator and not the target. Perhaps we need to instil the need for people who work for no such agency to get better acquainted with gaming. You might not realise it but games have been on the fringe of hardware for at least 3 decades, optionally even longer and even as some ‘embrace’ that nowadays games are more advanced, people forget that the CBM-64 and Atari ST allowed for games that were often not possible, yet the game makers found a way around their limitations. Consider a game like Impossible mission (Epyx) and the fact that this game can still be enjoyed on an 8 bit system by any number of gamers today, and they got that done on a system with a mere 38KB, it can equal a game that requires an 8GB system, so there!

There are of course a few more ideas, but it is about the concept of working with limits. I ned not explain this to programmers, but some of them will grab an Azure SDK and start from there. We forget that that same company gave us the Microsoft Assembler. Azure solutions start at 765 kilo bits, whilst assembly gives us one of the smallest useful programs for a mere 4 bytes. It is not merely what solution is used, it is about what limitations can be used to our advantage and as a snow-globe gave me the idea to meltdown a reactor, an assembly program used to overcome some security on an EA game (8 bytes) might be the path to set the firing point of the Qiam-1 to the destination point as firing point + 10000 if the destination is measured in metres. At times we forget that having more space does not work, it requires limitations to give us the creativity we required to get it done.

Just my 2 bytes on the matter.

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September 11, 2021 · 03:53

Missing hardware

This train had been on route for a while, and there are a few reasons for that. In the first my mind took the easy road, but as I pondered the stage again and again, my mind was trying to view another road, even if I remained unaware, I try to not look into the back of my mind. It is a messy place and covered with corpses. We all revere the idea’s we complete, but the others not that much, in this I am just like anyone else. There is no excuse, like a good IT person, I can be as lazy as the next person. 

The new hardware (of course a free idea for Sony and independent Sony Playstation and Amazon Luna makers is set in two parts (I’ll get to them soon enough). The thoughts came more clear as I was finishing the last Harry Potter movie. In the back was also an idea that Peter Molyneux had in Black and White, the gesture system. But it is one of the few times that it was employed. Harry I Potter games are a natural thought and Someone made it a harry potter game as well (Book of Spells), I never played it, but the wand was ugly as hell, It was a mere sign of the times. 

Now consider the image below, a wand we can buy and they are there for nearly any Harry Potter character, now consider that in the next batch onwards it was two small compartments, each for a cylinder that is no more then 3mm thick and 11-17mm long. One at the tip and one at the handle with two small metal points that connect to the inside, so that it can be charged without opening your wand all the time. 

Now consider that the first part is like the observer, like what the Nintendo Wii had, but not in one part, in two parts. One goes to the middle of the upper or lower side of the TV, the other to the middle part of the left or right side of the TV, two parts so that the scan will be much more accurate (even thought the Wii was pretty accurate), the second one, the locators are in this case in the wand, or perhaps a steering wheel, a sword, a bow and arrow and we can go on from there. 

Locator

These locators can be ordered per 2 and are relatively cheap. Yet what is more interesting is that a gamer can now get ‘almost authentic’ wands of choice, the gamer gets to choose and as we see the market bounce back, we see a much larger stage, because who wouldn’t want something almost geeky alike whatever they love? The steering wheel of Steve McQueen (GTA V), The sword of Viggo Mortensen’s Anduril (Lord of the Rings), you name it we tend to get overly enthusiastic on some movie and some special item, the Lord of the rings gets to hundreds of millions, Harry Potter Merchandise is well over 20 billion and that is a mere two movies. What happens when we add the Fast and Furious steering wheel that Dominic Toretto uses? And there is an upside, you can go as expensive, or keep it as cheap as possible, the steering wheel would merely need to two small hidden compartments with the two small connectors for charging. The generic locators would do the work with the scanners on the other side, and as the group of games expands over more devices, the gamers can consider buying two more locators, I reckon that a gamer will end up with 3-5 locator sets, they’ll start with one and buy another one when they get the two games they always wanted. After that they will exchange the locators to their new device of their game of choice, yet a steering wheel can optionally be used in nearly all racing games. The sword in plenty of games and as we see this grow we see a more complete engagement in gaming, something all game designers hope for and by setting the premise of a steer or anything to be as cheap or as realistic as possible will open new markets as well. Yes for the younger players that thing that case with the Book of Spells will suffice, but when that 9 year old turns 15-16, they want something more alike and those wands are anything between $9 and $90, it will be open to the gamer to decide what they spend on, we merely need to add the hardware to allow for that and as their choice of gaming adjusts, the locators can be moved from one to the other. 

A new stage where some will chose the cheap plastic sword and some will go for the Weta Workshop originals (or is that near originals?) It is up to you to choose, but we need the hardware makers to consider that there are parts of any choice that rely on the decision of the gamer. That is how the market rolls and we need to adhere to that because if gaming cannot lead the way the other markets are pretty screwed from the word go. That is a clear sign we have seen over the last 20 years.

Is it an option? I believe so, I believe that the markets are ready to show us that they can offer something new, is it enough? Time will tell.

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September 6, 2021 · 21:20

Presented choices

There is a flow in two directions, it is in most of us, it is stronger in the people who actively engage in critical thinking. It is often mistaken as ‘the devil’s advocate in us’ and I have made the same mistake. This is a dangerous place to be, not precisely dangerous, but hazardous. You see, we want to give ourselves time to mull things over and often that is good, nowadays with COVID, vaccines, lockdowns and other things happening at the same time it is hazardous. You see the media is no help, they are in it to create click bitches and stir flames, which gets them digital advertisement funds and traction. When you mull things over too many people are in a stage of making up their minds whilst the media is trying to cross them over to a field that benefits THEM and not the reader. Unless you are able to reject ALL media at a moments notice, that place you are in to mull things over goes from hazardous to dangerous and that is when things fall apart. The doubters get pushed into a place where they are slightly too uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to forcefully take a stand.

This matters as gaming is in a similar place, or better stated the gamer is in an RPG game and is left to mull things over in doubt on what to do. There is a correlation of inaction towards too much signals as well as no signals at all. The brain seems to find the stage of non-signals too unnatural. And that is the stage any new RPG will find themselves in.

In the past it was not an issue for the mere reason that technology was not ready, now that it is too many gamers expect there virtual life to signal them in a similar way and even as technology is there, the game makers are not. 

It is not a setting of what to do to make it fit, it becomes a stage of adjusting the gamer to the ‘new life’. I was reminded of that in the last two days as I was rewatching the Harry Potter series. In the third film we are given the choice between what is easy and what is right, which fits the storyline of Harry and his gang (plus owl). Gaming and real life tend to not have that question, yet I see a larger wave go towards ‘What is easy or what is pointless’ and that is not the bill, but it is a concept of the two choices seemingly given. The mind loves a choice, even a fictive (or virtual) one and that gets us in hot water. 

So whilst we await the Hogwarts Legacy game, we wonder what is in it. We tend to compare to the RPG games that were truly fantastic and there we see Skyrim and Witcher 3 being the larger stage. So will Hogwarts have the Harry Potter CCG as an element? It is extremely doubtful, but there is an internal need to get a new RPG with some Witcher 3 Gwent game. We would want to be able to have our own house decorated in OUR style of choice (Skyrim) and the list goes on. This pushes the needs towards pointless, yet where is the setting on what the line from gaming to pointless becomes and that line differs per gamer and that low range and high range of that line is a gap no smaller than the Gran Canyon and that makes for an awkward programming stage. The opposite side leads to easy and grinding which could spell an early death for any future RPG game, so where to go? Fable 2 had an awesome solution towards vocations (Forge, Bartender, gambling) but the stage becomes how to remain unique, have elements like mini games and larger ownerships without breaking the IP and that is not an easy task. Even Skyrim with its levels of grinding is so close to perfect that people still desire this game 10 years later. I myself had the game on PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One and optionally (hopefully) in 9 weeks and 3 days I will have the PS5 edition, optionally a little later as I face all kinds of budgets, but the message behind this is strong, a good game lasts a very long time and that is where the game makers need to be. I believe that the best option is set towards a trilogy solution. We can play, we can alter and we can circumvent. Alter is adding a CCG or mini game option. Instead of looting the same place with consistent time, we can have the CCG to make is smarter, the mini game to make us richer and a combination for investments. It takes the mind of grinding. The CCG element could give us cunning, intelligence and the cards we win could lead to unique items like clothing that are rewarding depending on the class we play. We could get rare items that we need to make special potions (like the golden cauldron in Harry Potter CCG), and the list goes on. In Fallout New Vegas we were given the useless Snow globes that is until we met a person who paid dearly for it. There are the Vault-boy bobbleheads in Fallout, so what can we do to create the part that adds value to the game?  That depends on the game maker, but the objective would soon become a race to avoid the pointless borderline. 

The second borderline is less visible. Metal Gear Solid got there and it was not their intent because the last game was magnificent to behold, yet they got there, the game had gotten too big and soon in the game you felt like you were in a stage where it felt pointless (it was not) the game was too big for its own design and even if you consider revamping the stages, at some point (ACT 3) you started to wonder what it was for. I got there a few times and I loved the game, so we need to design carefully and become weary of what signals we give the player, too many and the gamer seeks the easy route, that same route gets trodden on when there are no signals, so there needs to be enough signals to make it worth your effort.

I believe that we are due for more time based stories and the best way is to let the conversations with NPC’s progress that, but there too too many of those and the game gets to be regarded as pointless. So how to go about the presented choices? One option is to limit NPC’s to optionally give quests in a set of two parameters. The first is the day of the week and the second is a correlation of conversations with other people in town. It gets so that each town has optionally 2-3 side quests a day, so beside the main quests and storyline quests you can score new quests each day in one place, to throttle the over-quest danger we limit the chances we get to the pointless border. By having enough signals we also limit the dangers of people heading for the easy line and on top of that, if we create a random partition that directs all the quests to a day at the beginning of the game there is a chance that two players end up having very different experiences making all players more and more curious on what more is there and how to find it. 

There are more things to do, but this is enough for today, today was to address the dangers of the pointless borderline and that borderline is a lot more dangerous than you think. 

If you do not head that line you could prematurely kill your own game in month one, an eerie setting that no game maker would ever want to face. More importantly, it also shows how we are treated by the media in todays events and that tends to reverberate in us too. So when we escape towards games we really need to get that signal stopped as soon as possible, it is perhaps the one danger any RPG faces, we tend to push ourselves into our RPG games the way we were before we started that game, emotional baggage and all, we cannot really hope to stop ourselves, but we can demand that whatever RPG game we play takes that feeling away within the first 10 minutes of gaming. I reckon it is part of the success of Skyrim.

Have a great day!

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August 31, 2021 · 14:53

Behind door number two

I have been wondering about many things, about the next idea, the next creation, the next wave of innovators and with the Epic games court case, a lot are not realising that it will change online stores. My worry is that fr a lot of people things will change and not for the better. This is not on Goole, it is not on Apple. You see I have never ever seen a change for the better when greed was the operative and even as we saw South Korea make changes, we see a wave of actions and it only gets the stage for the greed driven to get a better position, the rest are lost to the waves of THEIR needs. It is a personal view and it might not be a correct one, but in my personal feelings it is. You see, the benefits that the starters enjoyed will soon fall way, greed did that. Not the choice of Google, not the choice of Apple but decisions thrust upon them by politicians that have almost no clue, they ‘rely’ on advising friends who have their own agenda. And when we see on one hand “maker of the video game Fortnite, charges that Apple has transformed its App Store into an illegal monopoly”, all whilst the other hand gives us “Saints Row reboot will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC” it seems a little hypocrite, does it not? And in all this, the media is ignoring the elements that the starting developers are enjoying, the massive costs that they all avoid, because Apple andGoogle do not charge them for the ACTUAL cost that a business faces, and that danger is now more and more likely to be bestowed on the consumers. The customers that others rely on will have another face. They will have their Google Pixel 4A 128GB 6GB, or Apple iPhone 11 Pro, 64GB. Yet in the new stage where we are in danger of buying an infected app, or perhaps an app with backdoors (from other stores), the people will shy away from stores and they will soon thereafter demand protection from either Apple or Google. A stage where frivolous apps are a thing of the past. So the image that I made looking like an NHL player (which were fun applications) are less and less likely to come. No one will get us some populous app that will allow us to pass some time, we will be at the mercy of Candy Krush or some match 3 game, they will be making money, the rest will casually fall away, all thanks to the greed of some (more mainly one). 

So what next?
Well, I do not know, I am not all knowing. But I feel that whilst there is time, we need to get creative. And as ideas pass by more and more, I wonder what will work. Yes, it is nice to have ideas, it is nice to be creative, yet will it appeal to others, will a decent sized group like it? Yes there is a larger group of match three games, a group of people liking Magic the Gathering and that is nice. Yet there is more, or at least there should be. The creators gave us CCG games like Dune, Harry Potter, Illuminati, and many more. Mobiles and tablets are a medium to blow new life into these forgotten games. Yet that is merely remastering, there are the classics like Dungeon Keeper, Gauntlet and so many more that can make the journey too, but the main event will be the new games, not merely newer versions. A totally new game that none have seen. Not some Fallout Shelter 2, but a game no one has seen before. It could be some Battlestar Galactica game where you are human or Cylon, it could be anything that never made it to the gaming industry before. It could be from a book (Animal Farm, George Orwell), it could be from a movie (the Shining, Kubrick) and there are many more options. I do not have them all, that is where you creators come in. It is like the card you see here. I never thought of making an app that allows you to create a sport card style image of you, as far as I know, none of the teams had something like that (unless it is NBA).

That is the beauty of things, it took a simple guy (or girl) with no money in their pocket to make this app, they merely thought it was cool to have something like this and it got them to the next level and when the setting changes due to the greed of some, their creating days will be limited to their own system and that is a sad day. When that happens we will have our mobile for merely LinkedIn, some will also have Facebook, Twitter and some news apps. Mobiles with 95% of its abilities unused because we can no longer trust anything that is not from the Apple of Google store. That is where I truly believe we are heading, and short sighted political players made it happen. 

Door number 2
Yes that is the door we are looking at, but it is a different door for every one of us, it might be a front door, a maple door, an oak door, it could look like the door to your kitchen. The door is where YOU want to go through and for some it is a door that leads to the tool we need, the education app we want (like learning a language), the door to the kitchen where we find recipes, the door to our den where we see the app for our movies, our books, our music or our stamp collection. It will be hindered by the limitations of the designer (not unlike the Xing app). But over time it will be designed so that it fits our needs better and better. It could be wizard like streaming, it could be more open designed so that we can ease into the app in the way we feel comfortable. The setting changes per person, there is a large stage where most feel OK, but the margins are where the profit of the app designer resides. It does not matter whether it is a game, or a utility.
So how do we get to OUR door number 2?

That is a good question but it depends on where we are and what we desire (and I am not talking about money). Any good app is set to a desire, whether it is a CCG, a puzzle, or even drawing. There are so many options, yet the Apple store had a large collection of copies of the same idea, it is like a group of programmers finished a new lesson in programming, saw a few tricks and it resulted in a dozen apps. This is not an accusation, or  some blame game. It is how programmers evolve, how we become smarter and it leads to an idea where desire pushes innovation resulting into something we always dreamt of making. 

Consider a real original game, Command and Conquer (1995), Westwood had an idea and it set in motion a game unlike anything gaming had seen, there were sequels, there was Dune 2, Dune 2000, Warcraft 1,2,3 and it resulted in shaping Microsoft Age of Empires 1, 2, 3 and 4. Even now we see apps relying on that idea. A good idea goes forward and there are designers out there mulling over their idea, but now with the Epic Case the stage changes and it will dim these designers, or leave them at the mercy of greed driven and I do not see the Apple Stores or Google Stores as such. We must find a way to oppose that danger, as I personally see it it will stop innovation as well as the next best idea, an idea that a new, optionally a young programmer has out there. We need to protect that idea, it starts economies and waves of  new inventions. Gaming is the most likely path, but not the only path. Do not look at me regarding the path, it is up to the creators, it is up to them to create that path. We merely need to set the stage allowing them to create, we owe it to the $1800 mobile, laptop, PC or tablet we bought. Don’t you agree?

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August 26, 2021 · 05:03

Blame Canada

Yup, the award nominated song from South Park, the title will forever reverberate in my mind, and in this case Canada was on my mind for a week. The reason? I will get to that, but first we will need to take you through some essential comparisons. In the first Canada is almost the size of the USA, it is a little smaller, but not much. The second part is that it has 10% of the population that the USA has. So nature rules in Canada on a few fronts, including the small fact that most Canadian women are a lot more beautiful than the American ones (A.J. Cook, Laura Vandevoort, Alison Pill, Ana Golja, Annie Clark, Nanci Chambers, Erica Cerra and hundreds more) have graced the screens large and small and they are a fine example of the Canadian women. Yet, this is not about the women it is about nature. You see, we see apps and games on hunting and survival, yet it is always set to a set of parameters, so what if we take that away? What if we create a map from satellites, real and decently accurate map sizing 1000 by 500 Km stretching from British Colombia to Saskatchewan? In this map you get dumped and from there on it will be about TRUE survival. There will be settings like starter, amateur and pro and those three rings will determine hunger, thirst, hypothermia and hostile nature. The program would set all the elements are faithful as possible, giving the people a real taste of survival without harming ones self. The amateur gets a few lives, but the rest is hardcore, one life and that is it. So how long could you survive in a game where everything matters. You see, it dawned on me that it started a little further back when I heard someone claim in a games shop that survival is simple, you merely have to understand what the game needs. That started the entire progress and as I learned more about Canada, I saw the options that they could give a gamer. More interestingly that same map could be used to spawn stories and cultural history on the First Nation, the stories of a collection of ghost towns, the call of the wild and hunting lessons, a game that gives people a decently real taste of that life without killing the animals, or (more importantly) getting killed by them. 

So why did I mention the women?
You can go into the wild just on your own, or for a reason, one reason is that your family (one of the actresses fictively being your wife) has gone down in Canada and a rough location is know. You are dropped off by chopper and with a radio and a backpack of goods, so can you find her? Can you safe them all (if the program allows for that)? A setting where survival is taken on a hype and to be honest there is no place like Canada to test it, it is one of the most rugged places on earth (if we ignore Russia). A stage that could be larger, because if you remember yesterday, the map is merely one side and we can fill it or better stated overlay it with other games. And if it takes a lifetime to explore a map that size, consider what gaming challenges could be added to that map, or perhaps better stated the challenges that a game has and it uses the same map. 

Does it matter?
Not really, but gaming can only evolve when you push the boundaries and we cannot rely on the consoles or streamers to push, they are for the most in a holding pattern until 5G grows up and that will take another 2 years, just as I foresaw and it gives another side. China can do pretty much exactly the same, they have similar settings and they have the space, but they also have 1.4 billion people and a lot more roads. In all this I have always believed that coming first gives you an edge and with IP on mobiles and other sources growing that space for options is diminishing, as such Canada only has a real advantage whilst China does not go that way, will they? I have no idea, yet so far none of the other players have taken their map to such a degree and that opens options as well as opportunities. 

As we see what we have, we need to look at where we could go, not where we should go. This is because nearly everyone does that and as such we get a dozen flavours of the same ice-cream. But at some point someone will figure out that borders need to be crossed and when they do it when 5G does become a solid reality they will be late for well over a year. So why Canada? There are two reasons, they have the space, they have a lot of the knowledge and they have a dozen local software developers, so they are almost ready to get started. They merely need the information from NRCAN to get the map data (and it helps to smile politely at the lost boys of the CSIS). When the map is done they have the largest component for several games, all set to multiple systems. 

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August 25, 2021 · 06:18

Both options

This started last week, as we are in lockdown and curfew I decided to play Watchdogs: Legion again. I like the game and more importantly I will try to get all the missing achievements. I had to reinstall the game, which is fine and this led me to find a new bug, which irritates me and off course the announced DLC with Assassins Creed, which hit me two days after the reinstallation, so I was overall happy. The 25GB addition has been added just now (I did not look at it yet), but at some point I started to think about protagonists and antagonists. Gaming is full of it and that took me towards Infamous, which was a really nice game (the first two), the third was graphically good and the start is nothing short of brilliant, but it then simmers down into a linear steeplechase which you can do twice to get the good and the bad parts. It is that reminder that got me thinking on the path we play, not the part, but the path. It is often to much to ones side, all good or all bad. So what happens if we take a new character and take a page from the books of Tartarus? On a few occasion (and a few sources) we see that Hades had children Macaria, Melinoë, Plutus, Zagreus, and Erinyes. Then we get to a very different chapter, that is the chapter of Nikolaos. Nikolaos was mortal, which seemed odd as he is the child of Macaria and Ares. So that character could set in motion the idea of change. Consider that death is what nearly all people fear most, a child of the rules of the underworld and the god of war could be able to change the gameplay. So if we take a page out of the Infamous page. One does not need to be all good and all bad, both sides gives us abilities and to draw n that you can also punish in much more defined ways. Consider the setting where an exploitative CEO is take (alive) to the underworld to be tortured for all time by their victims, and the better the punishment, the more relieve of the torturer, moreover, that damage to the soul becomes energy that you need and you can harness. 

That is merely scratching the surface, if you are ready to become a deity you must appease both mum and dad and you know dad, dad is never easily pleased.

From there the gameplay deepens (not alters) as a person of two dimensions, you have to keep track and satisfy the needs in both, even as the underworld is your domain, it still adheres to rules of power, it always has, you merely need to brush up on your historic writings to realise that. And t consider this now makes sense in a few ways. As streaming systems become the larger front, it will be important to write to a much larger audience on a larger stage. More important, if you consider that Watchdogs, one mere addition is taking 25GB, what will the next stage imply? That is not on or against Ubisoft, they are giving you a free DLC, yet consider that 4-5 games do that, now consider that most of you are alone and in rural places that much bandwidth is the end of your free monthly usage, that implies that you are now due for a much larger invoice ($10 per 1GB), as such we need to rethink how we do things, how we distribute games and how we tailor to these needs. Streamers are not in that stage yet, it needs time. You see one source gives us “According to Luna, the standard option might use up to 10GB per hour.” This implies that many will hit the maximum bandwidth after 30 hours of play, that is less than a week, as such there needs to be a larger evolution of streaming games and it will keep consoles around much longer.

So did I change topic?
No, they are linked, to evolve RPG gaming is essential, to get the technology up to speed to allow for that is a massive second. And in this we get the new setting and Ubisoft showed us the way (yes, they do get things right at times). Cross-play is seen as one thing, a game that is played on many different systems, but cross-play can also mean that one environment houses multiple games. As Watchdogs London gives rise to Watchdogs and Assassins Creed we see a new environment evolve, just like we had thick clients and thin clients in client server environments. The stage where we create one environment, but over time it will house several games and here we see a new stage, one where streamers become thin streamers. Yes it will not be today (or tomorrow) but when your streaming system is added to your PS5, or Microsoft contraption we now choke streaming bandwidth to a fifth or less. More importantly there will be an option for independent developers to create near perfect versions on Manhattan, London, San Francisco, Washington, Paris, Amsterdam, Stockholm and we can add to that. Now consider that a game like Assassins Creed or Watchdogs is no longer defined by WHERE they play, but by what you do there and now we see the consequence of changing the roles of protagonist and antagonist, optionally joining them. 

Consider that you are the next Watchdogs and even as a lot of the mission seem similar, the fact that they are not in the same place alters it, the buildings might still exist, but the buildings will be different. It will require an evolution of programming and also the evolution of gaming data, to set a stage to such a large domain will take a massive evolution, but we gamers are worth it and in a stage where gaming revenue is likely to top $175 billion in 2022, the players with the most evolution will decide the game play and that is where developers need to find themselves, a larger stage where the IP is not set to a location, but it is optionally set to ANY digitised location. A stage no game developer ever considered before, but that time is changing a lot sooner than you think, no matter how fast 5G will be, if there is a data plan there is a limit, as such they need to find ways to circumvent these limits, it will create a whole new level of loyal customers and the rural players (which is still 40% of all gamers) is too large a group to ignore. To emphasise towards an exploitative business model will backfire, of that I am absolutely certain. 

So what about Nikolaos?
Well that is still in the works of the brain, but consider that he can develop his powers and please mummy and daddy at the same time on a much larger scale, can set the premise towards punishment and relief to people in many ways, we can see a new stage of networks (Watchdogs), streets (location) and souls (people) and now take the previous givens and consider that these are linked. We can address people via networks and via locations, the locations gives access to people and networks and people can find networks and locations. The option of taking over anyone in Watchdogs: Legion was a lot more brilliant than we think in that regard and in the next era that could go a long way. 

So as children of Hades, the Erinyes (furies) could come to people in dreams. The quote “the Erinyes, that under earth take vengeance on men, whosoever hath sworn a false oath”, now consider that marketing is often about ‘deceptive conduct’, if that is a false oath they should be scared shitless on getting a visit from the Erinyes. As such so should any CEO, CFO, and optionally any COO as well. Now consider Plutus, this one is the odd duck found in Greek and Christian settings, in Canto VII from Inferno by Dante Alighieri we see “Plutus is a demon of wealth who guards the fourth circle of Hell, “The Hoarders and the Wasters”. Dante likely included Plutus to symbolise the evil of hoarding wealth”, we now have a whole lot of new materials to work with and that is merely the beginning stage. 

We can look at limiting all we can, but when you consider that there is still a larger cost to streaming and that is one part people want to avoid, evolution of gaming becomes central. We get it, we can stream via our consoles and that is fine, but the data-man (your data provider) will exact revenge for usage (via a monthly fee) and overdrawn is a costly experience, so we need to evolve one to get the other and there are ways of doing that. I merely wonder if the makers ever considered to taking a very large leap to the right (where the creative part of the brain tends to house itself). I hinted at a few other things, but left them unspoken. It is for you to consider them and see where it can take gaming. I can’t do everything myself. 

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August 22, 2021 · 19:14

Time slice or lemon tart

That is indeed the question, but the question is not that important at present. It all started with a weird dream. In this dream I was in Montreal (Canada), now let’s be clear. I have no connection to the city, and apart from the fact that they have a good hockey team, I know next to nothing on the place, I know it is in French speaking Canada, but that is all. So in this dream I saw someone, it might be a reflective me, it could be anyone. They saved a hawk, or falcon from their balcony. The animal was shivering and clearly afraid, the person put on an oven mitt and offered his hand. The bird jumped on the hand with the mitt and carefully the bird was taken in the house. He placed the bird on top of a chair and got the bird rare roast beef (it seemingly really liked the rare roast beef) and gave it a bowl of water mixed with a lot of sugar. The bird was no longer seemingly afraid, but it was nervous. The person was looking at the clouds and wondered. He then moved what was drinkable and eatable into the bathroom, the bathroom and this is important was one of the innermost rooms in the house, no windows and no direct outer wall. He also placed a chair and a small table (it was a large bathroom), moved the goods into the bathroom and walked around the house pushing the heaters up everywhere, yet not to the highest setting, setting 4 was used on knobs with a 6 setting, I think that mattered somehow. Then he carefully moved the bird, now aptly named Horus with the mitt again and took the chair as well. He then got into the kitchen, took several items and moved to the bathroom where he set the radiator to high. 

Then it started to happen, Montreal was hit with a cold snap, it was only October, or November, but the cold-snap happened and well over 50% of the people in Montreal froze to death. 

Now, none of this is a mystery. I saw the Day after tomorrow, I played AC Origins, so all the elements (all except Montreal) fell into place, no real mystery or divine intervention.

Then I remembered every time I played a new game of Minecraft. Did you play it? The first day is important, because you need to create a safe location before the sun goes down. That part is important because too many RPG games are a service where it is at your convenience. Whenever you get around to it, and Bethesda has used that setting since I started playing it in Oblivion, in that same setting Fallout 3 onwards has the same stage. Yet what happens when that is not an option? When a house is on fire, it does not help to hand the bucket to the owner of the burning house when you get to level 13. He (of she) needs it now, or really soon. This is a stage we forgot about, the time slice. There are two issues.

  1. Do you have the minimum skills to cater to a time driven need?
  2. Should such a stage be set and always be achievable?

These two setting are important, there are gain two stages we must contemplate. In the first we cannot always be there, that is a mere fact of life and programming around that element is often folly. The second is that if we have a proper RPG, we have houses (guilds), but what if your first guild is not a mage or a tinkerer? So early in the game you see a setting where you can only watch, be that famous Monday morning quarterback and watch others do the job. Then we get to the important part, we need to set these parts to some level of randomisation that instigated when you START the new game. Not when you get there. So we see the need to have 20-40 missions with a decent rewards, but we need to be partially lucky, so that the internet cheater miss out as well. That is setting a larger story, especially when success unlocks a larger side quest. And the second part in all this, it enables and fortifies the replay of a game. So in the dream we can see that Horus was the trigger, but what happens when you never noticed that bird? Would you be ready? Would you make it to any shelter? And most important, without resources you will go hungry, thirsty and optionally will continue with decreased stamina and health (a day without food makes a person weak, try it for yourself if you doubt me).

So is the approach of having time sliced missions a hit or a lemon? I cannot answer that, I think it could be great if you program this properly and it will take proper programming to get it done. Programmers could ask Anunnaki (god of fate), but there is a chance that you will not receive any help from that direction. It will be a challenge on several levels, but should you pull it off you will be the one adding a new dimension to RPG gaming, a dimension that has been lacking for close to a decade, before that systems were just not strong enough.

In this I merely remembered the settings I came up with in Mass Effect Andromeda 2, Base of the pillar. And yes, I will admit that I had some overlapping ideas that I had for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, but I think that a good foundation (as long a the story is completely different) is not a bad thing. I saw the massive mass driven mistake that Andromeda was and there was a setting to fix it and regain credibility, but in that setting ME Andromeda would pack the second game with the first game, and even as a lot was the same, it was added with an enormous amount of changes and different storytelling. One needs to be faithful to the original trilogy. 

Yet all these settings cannot be more of the same, there needs to be a level of evolution. Yes there are plenty of gamers that do not mind more of the same, but they will soon realise that they are stuck in the past and that is as I personally see it never a good thing. And is success a guarantee? No, it is not. I do not offer guarantees, I merely dabble in ideas that can make the next generation of gaming special and enticing.We all might come up with a Nintendo WiiU, and that is fine, but it is not that system, it resulted in the Nintendo Switch and the few who are able to make THAT leap will make it big and that ups the level of gaming for everyone, that I the setting that players like Amazon Luna and Google Stadia (they a little less) get to look t and there is the larger station of play, a setting we have not seen before, not a game that exists everywhere. This is not about exclusivity, but about a totally new level and dimension of play, I think too many are forgetting that we need to push that part and not enough of us are making that leap. 

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August 16, 2021 · 04:23

When death is taxable

Yup, we get to part three, it is not merely about the tory, which in personal view is pretty nice. It important to set a dynamic into place. We looked at the mortal one, we saw a little from the divine point of view, yet there is a third view, The opponents view. There is one side that is the strongest and it is ready to oppose both sides, but to do it well we need three parties.

To show this lets take a look at two images. In the first image we see three circles. The interactions are the points where the circles connect, the environments are the thee areas where the interactions take place.  Now this is not always a given, but for the breakthrough moments, when you do this, you are in an easy state to set the stage to seven locations and six points where the main characters interact. This setting is not a given, but it is a start, the better situation is with 4 circles, where we see 4 main parties, we get 10 interactions and 14 locations, yet that is for the masters, not for mere wannabe’s like you and me. So when we have set the stage of interactions we get set an initial stage towards a script. When this is done we can start considering the creation of a playbook. 

So what gives?
Well, when we create a setting where we need to chose whether to take the side of the divine or the mortals, the seek into self is powerful, the desire to be divine equally so, as such we need a third party, the opposing gods are one way to go, it also leaves us being the toil to the gods, just like any good greek tragedy is, and as Herodotus teaches us, Egyptian plays are no less. It gives us the power of the power players Hades and Anubis, yet in that light we get the questions that surrounds Baron Samedi and to a small degree his consort Maman Brigitte as well. This gets us to the opposition.

If we consider that Hel, Ereshkigal and Mot. We need to consider the history we do know, the history we suspect (through known literature) and there is a decent part of speculation, which is left to us because thousands of scrolls in the Library of Alexandria never made it past the fire. Yes, that does not prove anything, but the words of the old writers goes further than what we know and even now their insight astounds us, so we have a place to start. Nordic myths and stories gives us a lot about Hel, but it does not give us all and there is a second consideration. This comes to the surface when we consider Codex Wormianu (1400, Denmark) and Codex Trajectinus (1600, Netherlands). There is every. Chance that these papers had been overly Christianised, and that is a problem, but it is also a handle of resetting what is Hel and where it is, she becomes a much larger side to the story, the same could be said for Mot, yet there is a lot less on that front, giving us points to work with, but also a lot of freedom, so we need to see where the interactions in the old writings of these gods were. You see, no matter how we slice it, in the old writings we learn of written yet unspoken desires. When we consider that, the writings of some, that the gods were petty and power driven does not add up, but it becomes a different matter when the souls of the people become the currency, when devotion is the foundation of their power, it makes sense and then we see that the deities of death have an advantage, because when we die, secular or not, most suddenly become faithful, but faith through fear does not work, it never does. As such the consolidation of souls become a different view and that puts Baron Samedi in the middle of a lot and from his point of view, from a Haitian power base to global foundation is one hell of a leap and that shows us the three and the need for Hel and Mot to oppose it. In this Ereshkigal is a mere vessel, but a powerful one, almost forgotten, the perfect messenger between several parties and one with the overall strategic view, all players in a game where 7.8 billion souls is a powerful battery to bring back the gods, but not all will make it back, that is where the battle of opposing forces lay for the longer station. 

So whilst we consider the parts of these three groups, we need to consider what we would do if we introduce a fourth group, or more precisely, how we can shift balance over the three parties when a fourth party (optionally part of one of the two) pushes the balance in all kinds of directions. The viewer needs to be mesmerised, yes it is appealing to be the person on the axe of the seesaw, but that is too controlled, so like the image, the purple circle, a combination of red and blue now gives us two points to push the mortal coil and also push the other two parties, yet what is the real push and what is the feigned push, that becomes the question if the viewer has that approach, if not (which would be fair), is a much larger stage in creating a rollercoaster ride and that is where the story goes off (optionally the deep end). So when we look at these elements we see the third party deflating one and inflating the other to create a stage the viewer is wondering about and that entices them to watch more. So whilst we consider where the opposing group goes next, it will enable us to see the ‘altered’ view of both, so when the two players are exposed we wonder do we see what we want to see, or what we are allowed to see? And that is quite the ballgame. And this approach is not merely for specified projects, this setting works well on storylines for RPG games as well. Consider some of the RPG games you played, do you recognise the approach to some degree? It does not matter if you do not, but it still gives rise to the one part I always proclaimed ‘The story is everything’.

Have a great Monday!

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August 15, 2021 · 02:26

Mix and match

I was having a few thoughts on the matters that I have been writing on these last two days when a thought reappeared in me, I thought of it before, but now the idea was forming in a few ways. As my thoughts go it is best released in streaming games first. Others can and will have it too, but this is something that will take a few attempts to get right. You see, I love RPG games. Yet in all the years none of them EVER mixed the setting of Simulators with RPG’s, not that the RPG needs to become a simulator, but a setting where we train people around us. So in case you own a castle, you get to improve the ‘programming’ of the NPC. So as I see it, the approach is towards the use of deeper learning to ‘educate’ the guards. So you can imbue your bow and arrow skills on the guards on the high walls, you can imbue your weapon skills on the patrolling guards and so on. It has never been done and it could open up a lager playing field. Consider that we can train our troops, but the skills are also transferred to 75% of your skills, or the maximum they already have to all other NPC’s? So it is no longer merely about the level of the opponent, their skill level will up the game for all gameplay in an RPG, so why did no-one think of this? Perhaps they did, I do not know. Yet with the evolution of deeper learning (what some erroneously call AI) this is no longer a thought, there are several ways that NPC’s can evolve in any RPG and it gives us a much better game to look at, so why was this not yet done? I am not accusing anyone, merely asking. If I can come up with a TV series, a mini series, a movie and several games, I remain amazed how the others are empty of new ideas and they are merely hiding behind sequels. OK, not all, Guerrilla games is one of the few exceptions. We see remastered games (I am happy about some of them), we see sequels adapted for the next generation consoles, which is nice too. Yet real new IP remains largely absent, a circular movement surrounding 2 decades of gaming. I do not think it is all wrong, I myself opted to a few parties to remaster their old games, actually it was remaster and upgrade severely towards the new systems and there is a lot that is available out there. Yet how many real upgrades have some RPG’s received? Again, not an accusation, yet when you consider that we know Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. Now consider that I got the idea of empty holo-tapes that could be used to add to the story and the functionality of the character before Fallout 76 was released, which was almost 4 years ago. So am I the only one thinking out of the box to increase the level of games and gameplay? One would think that if you pay a group of people well over 7 billion, one would imagine that they would be far ahead of me, but that does not seem to be the case. 

Yet this is not about pointing fingers, or blaming people. It is merely an idea I was having to increase the value and power of a game. We are all gamers and some of our ideas are whacky, some are brilliant, some can bridge a massive gap between the game maker and the game player, we cannot blame the maker for not thinking of EVERY corridor, that’s where we come in. And this stage is more easily adapted in streaming, because streamers are in a stage where they have one environment to consider, the one that goes to ALL players, so they do have a few advantages and I reckon they need to home in on those advantages. There is no real benefit to have the same Ubisoft game on all four consoles, yet a streamer and a console? That could pan out the be a very different cattle of fish. 

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