That was the setting I was in yesterday. I love linked technologies. My first real interaction was connecting my Gameboy Advance to my Gamecube and in a game, the game boy was the map to the game I was playing on the Gameboy. This was neat (dorky but accurate). In the past I wrote about parts of this, but in a slightly different setting. In this case I am in the process of remastering IP (making it new or optionally innovative IP). The stage is that a game (or games) use a connection to something like ChatGPT to create case files based on writing styles like Chandler, Le Carre (an essential writer in my view), Desmond Bagley and Alistair McLean. That setting as the case file is merely a short story will not impede on the original writers.
So why does this matter? You see, games tend to have the EXACT SAME narrative. This is not on the games, but evolution is where you could create it. You see, even as Restoration has some alterations towards the narrative, this game requires a different approach to be a bigger hit. You see, the group of people who are gamers and are also bookworms (or enthusiast readers) is rather large. Another cluster that Amazon, Google and Microsoft missed. As such Amazon with the Luna and Kindle will have an advantage. That is until Tencent Technologies creates such a setting, or partners with Alibaba or Amazon to do the same thing. You see, what happens when a game you love creates (through ChatGPT, or an alike) create a case-file (read: narrative) that you can read and send to your friends, or place on your profile so that others can read these narratives. That makes the ChatGPT essential. Thousands of case files, similar but not exact copies. That create new waves, new interactions and new fans. All options that the larger three missed (a few times over). Now we get the narrative to a remaster all missed.
You see, streaming games need to evolve and bring more to the game. They will never replace the Nintendo or the Sony consoles, but they will be a brother to the other two and that is where the larger gains can be made and that is where I am looking and the larger three are all missing the boat. Well, Google dumped the Stadia, so they aren’t even in the game anymore. But the larger setting with Kindle can create a double whammy, especially when you consider how small some margins are, that sets up all kinds of new connections and create new evolutions in gaming and I am all about evolving gaming, as I get better or more inclusive games, me, myself, I and all other gamers win and winning is the marker we all accept.
All innovative directions the big three either ignored, rejected or never saw and it is not about the Kindle. You could set this to a PDF. The setting is that you add to any profile to make the profile more, not more advertising, but more profile we all win and that is the second tier of creating waves. Let the game push all sides of gaming, not merely the game, or the narrative. As I personally see it another side ignored by the two remaining players (Amazon and Tencent Technologies). Now to be fair Tencent is new to this, but they are more and more in a position to take up a massive chunk of gaming marketshare and if they do it well, it is fine by me. I as a gamer win (other gamers too) and that is what I am after. More and better games, not Microsoft or Ubisoft iterations, but more and better games.
So whilst we see iteration after iteration, gamers hunger for more and that time is already now. So, lets see what time and innovation will be brought to gamers and readers alike.
That is the setting I have been looking at for the last few days. What was the number one BUSINESS solution on social media has become a populist self promoting machine of garbage. Yes, a treasure to some is garbage to others.
Small Issue See here the small issue. Aqualand Australia, it is more than just a method of presentation.
We can all agree that presentation would be part of LinkedIn and I have zero issues with that. Yet the link goes to a place lacking all kinds of information and you MIGHT get more, if you only hand over your details and e-mail. A simple email grab, not unlike cybercriminals out for some phishing spots. I don’t mind them being bad at informing you, but the email grab? I have an issue with that. It is the lowest least acceptable form of sales technique done by people who lack sales skills. You see, if they were proper sales people, they would have included a PDF (example) with ALL the information. If the information is good, the real people would be in contact, they would be making the next move. Yet in Australia housing is expensive and I personally suspect that the lack of information is to ensure that these salespeople get every dime out of you that they can get. Not merely the price of the house, but the maximum drain they can get. Now, I accept that I might be wrong on a few things and it could have been resolved by giving us all the goods and the real deal, but we aren’t getting that are we?
Big Issue This is becoming an actual nuisance. LinkedIn members are getting more and more hassled with fake polls.
Consider “Is your job hunt in the Intelligence Community becoming more challenging and what specific challenges are you encountering?” Is this an actual Yes/No question? And I am seeing several a day. Some will actually try to connect to whomever answered the question, because the author can see how YOU voted. It is a sales technique that is not clever, it is not innovative. It is (as I personally see it) merely stupid and with groups becoming public, this issue will merely grow.
The larger issue is that LinkedIn was an established professional network, by changing the rules and through that increase traffic, they are now becoming their own words enemy. Consider that players like Xing (German version) is starting to get into a position where they could poach plenty of LinkedIn members by doing nothing and by preventing that these actions will be allowed. Less than half a dozen little actions that could diminish LinkedIn with their 950 million members in more than 200 countries could make them lose close to 10% annually. LinkedIn will be a larger network for some time, but the foundations are shifting. Players like Xing, Jobcase, Hired and Hirect are nowhere near that size, but people might decide to take up a second network and when that network is giving them what they need, LinkedIn will lose a lot more than they thought of. I personally see this that their need to increase traffic for all kinds of reasons is starting to have a more negative impact.
The number one question becomes how wrong could I be? I could always be wrong, but the populist approach seldom has a positive outcome. It is only those seeking (and lacking) attention seek the populist method and as I personally see it, those lacking sales skills (marketing too) need all kinds of attention, some valid, some questionable. Yet this is merely my point of view.
As such, LinkedIn need to reassess what they are doing and what they allow to be ‘collected’ A mere change in certain paths might solve part of the problem for LinkedIn for now.
LTG or Long Term Gaming was today’s topic. It was a tweet that brought me to this point. It wasn’t entirely that tweet. When I created the foundation of Restoration replayability was the setting I focussed on.
As such the image made me giggle but then I considered the impact of what could be and that is going to be all the rage in streaming games, or GaaS as some techno dudes set their cap.
You see, would it not be an idea to have a blend of iPhone 14 and iPhone 15 when you play that game in 2024? And I am not merely talking cosmetic. You see in a game like Watchdogs 2, the phones could have additional power and optionally additional protection. Sneaking into a parking lot (one of the WD2 missions) could make it a lot more challenging. That setting is overlooked. It is not the fault of the creators, this setting was never an option in gaming. But now it is possible. For example in Ghost Recon: Breakpoint, some of the elite guards could in 2024 be sporting Body armour by manufacturer XTEK. You see, games never had the additional parameters, but the new streaming consoles will be different, gaming will be taken to a whole new level making it essential that games are upgraded, as will be the need for more and better equipment. Before you start going on ‘that’s too hard’ consider that we see now what was never an option in the Commodore Amiga or the Atari ST. Games and systems evolve and now we get a setting where one system (a streaming system) will add new dimensions of gaming. I will not part with my PS5, I love it too much, but having a streaming system next to it will become more and more commonplace. Now these evolutions are not a given. Assassins Creed Mirage will not be impacted, it plays 1200 years ago. But there are plenty of games where if COULD apply. Newer speedboats, new model cars, new model nearly everything and there is a larger setting.
On February 13th 2022 I wrote “Just like the stage of combining deeper machine learning to a lens (or google glasses), a camera lens that offer direct translations, and the fun part is we can select if that is pushed through to film, or merely seen by us, now consider filming in Japan with machine learning and deeper machine learning auto translating ANY sign it sees” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/13/looky-looky/) in the article ‘Looky Looky’ Now we see advertisements by Google iPhone doing that very thing. Another example where my creativity trumped a big tech company, in this case Google. Gaming was about pushing boundaries and it could do so again, not at the behest of Microsoft when they finish some new piece of software, but ahead of that software. People like Sid Meier danced on the edge of the CBM64 with Pirates in 1987. He did what even Commodore did not consider possible and he was not alone. We need to push art back to that stage and streaming systems are the most logical choice here. A setting where long term gaming could evolve and for the streamers (Amazon and Tencent Technologies) that stage needs to be explored sooner rather than later. When gamers see that they get a new dimension in gameplay. They will come and tip their toes in the water. Gamers always do and that is why Sony was scared of the SEGA Dreamcast.
Soul Calibur was something that no one had, not even Sony. SEGA pushed the envelope and of course Xbox360, PS3 and PS4 had their own innovative successes. Now it is time for a new level of innovation and it is my believe that streamers could be holding that trump card. How players like Ubisoft will go about it? This is anyones guess, but I reckon that a player like Guerrilla Software and Santa Monica Studio are looking into that chapter right now, because the first one in will get the larger slice of pizza, that has always been a given and it is one of the reasons I oppose Microsoft invasion of the safe space that we gamers had. It was not about making gaming for everyone, it was pure and simple greed and greed will diminish a game EVERY TIME. There is no exception to that rule, which is why I am making a lot of my thoughts public domain. I hope to inspire and spark independent game makers. Yes, I had a dollar sign on my head as well (a person needs to eat and pay rent) but a lot is already PD here, so I will never see a penny of that myself.
So, whilst I am ‘evangelising’ Long Term Gaming, the setting in a GaaS (Gaming as a Service) is not new and it will exist and it should exist. Game Pass was a brilliant idea. It was Microsoft’s decision to not include several games until 2024, but there could be a legal reason (I do not know).
What matters is that I just had an additional idea that no game is sporting at present, that is not on those games. They were limited by hardware. With streamers it is a lot less limiting on deployment and physical copies. It is a different animal where we get a new stage, a new kind of food and a new kind of animal, but not one we have ever seen before and that makes it exciting.
Enjoy the weekend. Down here Saturday is a mere 1827 seconds away.
Yes, this happens. Even to me and Microsoft apparently figured part out, part I had hoped to include in the sale of my IP, IP which might now be made public domain. I refuse to let Microsoft walk away with it all. You see, I made the second (or third mention) in ‘Ring around the currency’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/12/25/ring-around-the-currency/) on Christmas day 2022, almost a year ago. I had seen how gaming went and I made some calculations. Between 1985 and 1999 the systems Atari 800, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga had a little over 10,000 games. I reckoned that if you took the list sorted by rating and you take the top 10% you end up with 1,000 games. Now we get that some still have IP protection. I reckoned that if we set that marker to 50% (really high) we still end up with 500 games, a lot more than Amazon or Google had. The others are fair game, no IP protection and these games could easily be transformed for cloud gaming. Going from 64KB to 1MB-15MB is still a good gig and these games were really fun and addictive. A system with 500 games (merely one of three pillars). That is what the seemingly bright people at Amazon missed and I was laughing most of the year, knowing that my giggles were temporary at best. It was one part that ensured 50,000,000 consoles and alas Kingdom Holding (with Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud) were not taking the bait for billions in revenue. Neither was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who was driven to eSports. But I thought ahead of the pack. You see eSports people get there by training and the younger they are the better they become and these games set up my and the next generation, so the new generation could do worse than train on these games. Still that was not my focus, it was a focus on fun. The fun I had through decades of joyful gaming. Not hopping like a kangaroo in FPS games. I also saw the option to reengineer some games (like Defender of the Crown) to be a little more realistic and more Arabic driven, a combination of that game with a focus of the 1st Crusades. Show the current generation what Islamic life in 1095-1291 achieved. And that was not all, many games were up for grabs, rejected and forgotten. As such the creation of a large coffer of games would propel any console and that was the setting I set out to do, but it was only one of three pillars. I tend to make the other two pillars public domain soon enough especially as my retirement in Toronto is now no longer a reality.
There were several other games that required remastering in the new setting. There was Knight Games on the CBM64, and setting this with a Saracen style might appeal to a lot of Arabic gamers. The nice part was that I had played most of those games and I would be able to recall plenty of details and plenty of gaming sides, even improve on some of them. A setting that was never considered in those days.
All this came to the surface when I saw ‘Phil Spencer Teases the Revival of Older Microsoft Franchises’. It came with ““With Game Pass, we have the ability to maybe pick a couple of franchises every year and almost do a ‘revisited’,” Spencer explained. Although he clarified that it was not an official branding term, he expressed the potential to recognise the significance of these games in gaming history and make them available through Game Pass.”
Yes, that was the setting that gave me pause to think. Spencer does not think in small settings and as I make this now public domain others will come and see what they can have. You see Microsoft has committed 69 billion, as such making sure that all these games get multiple contenders all vying for a piece of the pie makes the slice for Microsoft smaller and that is not the only thing they will face. So all who read this, if you develop games, see what old games you could purchase, get the IP for or register the new gaming IP. It will be the first disappointment for Microsoft. They will have to share the pie with many others. The other side is that these people could get a slice of the game through the new Tencent Technology handheld. Another mess they never banked on. I had hoped to keep ahead of the curve, but it seems that this is no longer an option. The only thing left is to make these steps as expensive as possible for Microsoft. They invested to get a mile, so if I can make the setting so that they merely get a furlong it will be a good day for me, or at least a better day than it was this morning. So here you see it, this is what Amazon and Google missed. Well, it was one of three parts they missed and I wonder if someone over there will wake up at some point.
Enjoy the day, I will enter Friday being decently grumpy today.
We have all heard this one. The setting that people doing exactly the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different outcome. A patent clerk named Alfred came up with it according to a fair amount of people, but here you would be wrong. It originated somewhere around 1980 apparently by Narcotics Anonymous. The US government has taken this setting of insanity to heart as we can see.
Not the first but we get at some point that the US government was stopping Android towards China, Huawei especially. The consequence was that Huawei created HarmonyOS. They are now at 4.0.0.121 which is available in 77 languages, so not just in China. It might not have the following that makes it a threat to Google and it likely won’t be for years to come. But the stage has been created. To give some kind of relativity “Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei Consumer Business Group claimed that HarmonyOS had reached 300 million smartphones and other smart devices, including 200 million devices in the ecosystem and 100 million third-party consumer products from industry partners.” The setting that it is now in 300,000,000 smartphones and smart devices implies that those machines are NOT using Google’s Android. Nice example of stupidity US government.
So here is the prequel, now we get to the main event dished to us by the BBC. Here (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67141987) we are given ‘Beijing unhappy at latest wave of US restrictions’. The setting sounds one way, but when you get to “The measures target chipmaking tools as well as advanced chips, including two from market leader Nvidia. The move is being seen as an attempt to close loopholes that became apparent after an initial wave of chip controls last October. America said the measures were designed to prevent China from receiving cutting-edge technologies that it could use to strengthen its military, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI).” So stupidity continues in a few ways. You see AI does not yet exist and the one player most likely to push that into completion is IBM. And for the statement “prevent China from receiving cutting-edge technologies” is pretty much a joke. China already has cutting-edge technologies. Huawei is more advanced then anything the west has and we see that in action all over the Middle East. The second part is that Nvidia is a market leader, but it became one through business based cutting corners. This is not negativity, what they did was sound, clear and business based. But there is a downside for the US (yet again), like HarmonyOS, China can create its own chips. Granted that it will not be as powerful as Nvidia but it will work. And there is a second tier to all this now.
For example the PNY NVIDIA RTX 6000 Ada Generation Graphics Card is next level shit, we can all agree that this is the case and for $15,790 it is all yours. Yet, who could afford that? Now China gets to be in the place to create a competitor that can only do 90% of what this card could do, but for $3,500. The bulk of people who cannot afford the Nvidia card will jump at the Chinese option and then what? This is not some speculation, it is a given certainty. The US is throttling whatever they can and alternatives become a reality. First HarmonyOS, then we see that Saudi Arabia has the fastest 5G by leaps (over 700% faster than 5G in the USA) and that list merely becomes bigger, all whilst they set the stage for others to take over marketshare. Have they forgotten the harsh lesson they saw in 1985-1995? They blocked Russia from getting PC’s and other hardware and as a result Toshiba became a world player with an annual revenue surpassing ¥158.94 billion (2021). Marketshare lost to Compaq, HP, Dell, and so on. So, what will the US do when China stops exports to the USA? Cry?
America thinks it is a global player, but that is no longer the case and their 325 million people includes well over 50% who cannot afford any of it. That gives China the option to expand into Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The two richest nations (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) are now in a stage where they give more and more expansion options to China. I like the comparison that the West Wing gave us “America designed a pen that works in outer space, it costed them millions. Russia? They used a pencil” That stage is returning to us again and again. China will create new processors and through that new cloud systems and notebooks. In the meantime as people need to get cheaper stuff will end up with Chinese hardware. Europe has roughly 750,000,000 people, twice the population of America. Africa has a population of 1,215,000,000 people and the Middle East has around 370,000,000 people. All now getting a small nudge towards China. So, what will America do when it defaults at the same time that the people of the world moves towards Huawei, Harmony and whatever comes next?
So whilst we are given “The Biden administration has denied it was trying to hurt China economically, but Beijing’s foreign ministry branded the move “forced de-coupling for political purposes”.” We need to consider that this is a final act of desperation and the news that Chinese stock is down 1.2%, consider what happens to the stock of Microsoft, Google and Samsung when HarmonyOS is releasing 5.0 which is likely a year away. When the CEO of Huawei tells the world that their HarmonyOS is now in well over 500 million devices, that is the point that big-tech starts getting nervous and when Tencent technologies is told to end its partnership with Microsoft we will see the first sparks of a race that had only one outcome, all due to ego driven political posturing. I know that this will be an event as I have several pieces of IP that none of the other players have and I should not have this advantage. I got it by looking at what was possible, not what greed demanded I would do and that would result in some losing 3%-5% marketshare and that was why I initially went to the Saudi government. They can afford to buy it, the American firms will hide behind “Trust us, we’ll do right by you” but they will not deliver, they merely want freebees and now at the end of the margins that sloppy setting will cost them their house.
Could I be wrong? That is the first question I ask myself and I ask it all the time. To critically look at your own settings is how you can find flaws and I did find a few but consider that HarmonyOS did not exist before 2019. Consider that there was only Google and Apple and now one in 20 houses have Huawei and optionally HarmonyOS to some degree. It might be slow now, but in 2-3 years that amount will have doubled. Apple and Google are still safe and still firm, but this third player was never a blip before and now they are more than a blip. I personally believe that their grow markets are the Middle East and Asia. I reckon that India is the first setting. We were given “We are open to doing business with any company anywhere as long as they are investing and conducting their business lawfully and are in compliance with the Indian laws,” A statement by Deputy Minister for Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar, as such India is now open for business. Huawei is re-entering Pakistan with smartphone solutions no later than early 2024. That opens up the corridor between China and Egypt and when Egypt comes across, which it already did in January as we saw “Telecom Egypt, the country’s first integrated telecom operator, in cooperation with Huawei Technologies” sets the stage that Huawei is now at the front door of Europe. The moment that Ericsson fails to remain on par, which it isn’t at present the flood gates into Europe open up and all this could have been prevented by focussing on innovation, which the telecom providers failed at all over Europe and in the USA. So that is the consequence that a lack of innovation brings and still the same old greed driven play is being pushed by America and as they financially buckle more and more, the game will get a different continuation.
This is not the first mention of this, I made several publications going back 2-3 years into this field and now that the stage is at the edge of readiness we see some mention of “it could use to strengthen its military” I merely laugh. The bulk of American politicians want to stop supporting Ukraine against Russia. If they are not ready for that setting they will not like what military encounters with China will look like. China doesn’t need to fight, it can just wait until America collapses and as things go that moment is coming closer and closer. The nanny state looks good on paper, but when you have too many children and only one nanny chaos is an absolute certainty, ask any mother. They can tell you just how bad things can get.
As I personally see it the US-China chip war is a paper tiger. It might sound nice now but it is staged on a setting that nothing changes and that is never a reality. Change is the number one part in evolution and innovation. In 2022, the total number of invention patents filed in China reached 4.21 million, of which 3.28 million were held by inventors from mainland China, do you really think that all innovation comes from America? Lets not forget that Nvidia only had an additional $60 million in revenue over the last year and that is one number that greed driven Wall Street does not like. There is no telling what happens when China get its own systems running and that is a certainty, no government will rely on foreign technology. Not in the west and not in the east. Yet that marker seems a lot more clear in the east, but feel free to refuse my view on that matter. That would be fair enough.
What will happen next? That is anyones guess, I stated clearly what is out in the open and what I expect to happen next. Make up your own mind and always check what you are given, no matter what or who the source is.
I was honestly a little surprised this morning when I saw the news pass by. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67137773) gives us ‘Twitter glitch allows CIA informant channel to be hijacked’. To be honest, I have no idea why they would take this road, but part of me gets it. Perhaps in the stream of all those messages, a few messages might never be noticed. The best way to hide a needly is to drop it in a haystack. Yet the article gives us “But Kevin McSheehan was able to redirect potential CIA contacts to his own Telegram channel” giving us a very different setting to the next course of a meal they cannot afford. So when we are given “At some point after 27 September, the CIA had added to its X profile page a link – https://t.me/securelycontactingcia – to its Telegram channel containing information about contacting the organisation on the dark net and through other secretive means”, most of us will overlook the very setting that we see here and it took me hours to trip over myself and take a walk on the previous street to reconsider this. So when we are given “a flaw in how X displays some links meant the full web address had been truncated to https://t.me/securelycont – an unused Telegram username” the danger becomes a lot more visible. And my first thought was that a civilian named McSheehan saw this and the NSA did not? How come the NSA missed this? I think that checking its own intelligence systems is a number one is stopping foreign powers to succeed there and that was either not done, or the failing is a lot bigger then just Twitter. So even as the article ends with “The CIA did not reply to a BBC News request for comment – but within an hour of the request, the mistake had been corrected” we should see the beginning not the end of something. So, it was a set of bungles that starts with the CIA IT department, that goes straight into the NSA servers, Defence Cyber command and optionally the FBI cyber routines as well. You see, the origin I grasp at is “Installation of your defences against enemy retaliation” and it is not new, It goes back to Julius Caesar around 52BC (yes, more then two millennia ago). If I remember it correctly he wrote about it in Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Make sure your defences are secure before you lash out is a more up to date setting and here American intelligence seemingly failed.
Now, we get it mistakes will be made, that happens. But for the IT department of several intelligence departments to miss it and for a civilian in Maine to pick it up is a bit drastic an error and that needs to be said. This is not some Common Cyber Sense setting, this is a simple mistake, one that any joker could make, I get that. My issue is that the larger collection of intelligence departments missed it too and now we have a new clambake.
Yes, the CIA can spin this however they want, but the quote “within an hour of the request, the mistake had been corrected” implies that they had not seen this and optionally have made marked targets of whomever has linked their allegiance to the CIA. That is not a good thing and it is a setting where (according to Sun Tzu) dead spies are created. Yet they are now no longer in service of America, but they are optionally in service of the enemies of the USA and I cannot recall a setting where that ever was a good thing. You see, there was a stage that resembles this. In 942 the Germans instigated Englandspiel. A setting where “the Abwehr (German military intelligence) from 1942 to 1944 during World War II. German forces captured Allied resistance agents operating in the Netherlands and used the agents’ codes to dupe the United Kingdom’s clandestine organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), into continuing to infiltrate agents, weapons, and supplies into the Netherlands. The Germans captured nearly all the agents and weapons sent by the United Kingdom” For two years the Germans had the upper hand, for two years the SOE got the short end of that stick and this might not be the same, but there is a setting where this could end up being the same and I cannot see that being a good thing for anyone (except the enemies of America). Now, I will not speculate on the possible damage and I cannot speculate on the danger optional new informants face or the value of their intelligence. Yet at this point I think that America needs to take a hard look at the setting that they played debutante too. I get it, it is not clear water, with any intelligence operation it never is. Yet having a long conversation with the other cyber units is not the worst idea to have. You see, there is a chance someone copied the CIA idea and did EXACTLY the same thing somewhere else. As such how much danger is the intelligence apparatus in? Come to think of it, if Palantir systems monitor certain server actions, how did they miss it too? This is not an accusation, it is not up to Palantir to patrol the CIA, but these systems are used to monitor social media and no one picked up on this?
Just a thought to have on the middle of this week.
We all have this, we all have moments when we combine things that are separate, we all do this. At times it amounts to making a balance, a balance of issues. I have had that today. Today I am disgusted beyond believe. It is because of the most disgusting shit Australia has ever known, Peter Dutton.
In his case there is no right, there is no honourable, he is just pure shit. A pure shit with his “If you don’t know, vote no”, with that in mind, the Australians crossed and deceived the aboriginals yet another time. The larger issue started to form in my mind.
The second issue is Microsoft. They have been cleared to buy Activision and Blizzard. Now, I have remained on the fence. It is a dubious, yet not illegal business practice and Microsoft has too many media people trying to grab a few coins in their corner. You see, we get the spin from the media (spin, not lies) that they now own:
– Crash Bandicoot (2020) – Spyro the Dragon (2008) – Guitar Hero (2015) – Hexen (1995) – King’s Quest (1998) – Space Quest (1995) – Quest for Glory (1998) – Tenchu (2006) – Pitfall (1982) – Tony Hawk Pro Skater (2020) – Zork (1991)
And a whole range more. The problem is that this is spin. It is true, that much fits, but the total value of all that IP does not surpass 1 billion (if even that much).
It is about data. Especially the data they can get when they focus on Call of Duty, Candy Crush, Diablo, and Overwatch. This was always about personal data and aggregated data. Minecraft with its 131 million players was the first step. The larger station is Candy Crush had 255 million users, Overwatch with its 23,544,632 monthly active users. Diablo was a let down for Microsoft with only 5 million monthly active users, Diablo 3 sold over 30 million copies and that is what Microsoft was hoping for. It is falling behind and like the losers they are they merely acquire to make up for the short fall. And now they have committed $69,000,000,000 to that cause. This also presents an unique option as I see it. As Microsoft committed to one side of the chess table, all of us, not just me have the ability to support its competitors (Amazon and Tencent Technologies) with our creativity allowing them to get the games to keep these two ahead of the game. This means that the pool of users all down for Microsoft and with that their data pool fails and they wasted sixty nine billion on that caper. I would have loved to have done this alone, but that is not my forte, it is too big for me alone. I am not alone in this. You see Microsoft still has Sony and Nintendo as competitors and they are stronger, optionally not strong enough, which is why we need the other streamers to have exclusive options. I do not think Netflix has what it takes and they will partner with Microsoft at the drop of a hat when Disney gets too close.
But there are options and it is high time that Microsoft learns the hard way of intruding on the safe space of gamers. Microsoft might have pushed for the other loser (Ubisoft) to connect for the cloud gaming, but it is most likely too little, too late for them. There is a decent chance that Microsoft acquires this under another hat, or push enough business that way to avoid Ubisoft from collapsing. AC Mirage was a step in the right direction, but I fear that it was not enough. I reckon (extremely speculative) that Microsoft will make a portal for game pass towards Sony and Nintendo, so that they can capture data from those gamers too. It keeps them in the race and a lot closer to the data vaults Google has and that is how their own weakness becomes exposed. I also speculate that ‘repairs’ on games on Sony and Nintendo will find delays and we will get the acceptable answer “our system first”. I cannot fault the approach, but there are too many larger issues here. As such the weakness was exposed and if I can create enough waves with IP for Tencent Technologies and Amazon, Microsoft will be in a decent amount of trouble. They never considered creative minds handing over idea’s in gaming to competitors, it stops their millstones rather effectively. They will spin this in any way they can, but when the tally is made, they will see less and less revenue from an investment that was folly to begin with.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick leaves with Chief Communications Officer at Activision Blizzard Lulu Cheng Meservey after testifying at the northern district of California during a trial as U.S. Federal Trade Commission seeks to stop Microsoft deal to buy Activision Blizzard, in Downtown San Francisco, California, U.S. June 28, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
And as I set forth the ideas in my mind, another thought occurs to me. I wonder if Microsoft ever considered that part of the equation. You see Reuters at some point gave us “Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in San Francisco pressed FTC lawyers on where their economist got the data to show the deal would harm consumers.” And I get it, it was all about a shooter, well I figured out another path and now it will matter a grea deal. But I will let you figure that out yourselves. It is optional that Microsoft never saw that small detail either and now that part could cost them a lot. I need to consider how I set that information free. Perhaps places like the Khaleej Times, the Arab News, Al Jazeera or some other source where Microsoft does not control the narrative. It is not a given, merely a thought and an option.
There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald and it angered me. The article (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/recruitment-labour-hire-companies-collapse-amid-worker-reluctance-to-swap-jobs-20231006-p5ea8q.html) gives us ‘Recruitment, labour hire companies collapse amid worker reluctance to swap jobs’ it is there that we are given “the slowing economy makes employers more reluctant to fork out money to external recruitment firms who are struggling to fill job vacancies with qualified candidates.” First of all, the recruitment firms in Australia are a joke. They never learned anything. They keep on playing the same games for resume collections and mass marketing job filling. Over the last 10 years I have had less than a dozen confirmation emails. We are talking in excess of 300 job applications and less then a dozen replied with something like ‘We have received your resume’ or even ‘We regret to inform you that you have not been selected’ Less then a dozen in over 300 applications. That is the recruitment firm setting, a setting that has less credibility than a cocaine pusher in Sydney’s drug capital called Kings Cross.
They are all about cutting corners and all about reducing costs, all whilst they lose more and more credibility. As such there is every chance that employers are more and more becoming self sufficient in this task. There are more and more corporations with talent pages and career pages.
And the stage of “recruitment agencies were struggling with more vacancies than they could find qualified candidates for” is laughable to say the least. Ageism is merely one factor, the other factor is that more and more recruitment agencies have staff members that seemingly have no clue what they are doing. In one event I met the same recruiter a week later by pure chance and he stated that he hadn’t had any time to read my resume. But there he was collecting more resume’s.
So why don’t we give the setting a twist towards the reality of the stage? Perhaps it should be ‘hire companies collapse due to staff competency and repeated outdated actions’, I think that this is a much more to the point reason. In addition we see all kinds of recruitment firms popping up. There is every chance that one person was good at what he or she did and started their own firm. Makes perfect sense to me, but now we have 8 instead of one firm and these 8 firms are not communicative at all, the previous version wasn’t either.
There are of course valid reasons and the SMH gives it to us via “A broader collapse in the construction industry, including high-profile businesses Porter Davis and Mahercorp, has reverberated through labour hire companies such as Duet Recruitment, ARI Recruitment, Collar Up Recruitment, GRB 365 Recruitment and PG Labour Services, who have called in administrators as their work dries up”. I reckon that in IT similar settings are happening. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and IBM are all shedding jobs. So there would be an impact. Yet the larger issue is that we see dozens of jobs every day in LinkedIn and those jobs are often pushed by recruiters, who keep on doing the same thing again and again and not communicating any of this. So when we see ‘worker reluctance to swap jobs’, the setting might be that these workers do not trust recruitment firms. All promising a calf with golden horns but in the end whatever they promise isn’t set in stone. Firms promising warm calling and inbound calls all whilst the result is that they are cold calling firms and people don’t like cold callers and whatever bonus is promised is a joke. Recruiters haven’t learned their lesson in over a decade and they continue in the trend of direct mail companies, all whilst that setting is decades old. You either evolve or you become irrelevant. It is that simple.
This started a few hours ago. I was in a conversation when a thought occurred. The idea would have merit, but I was amazed that no one has acted on this, not in years. The first culprit would be Ubisoft. They are so caught up in what they perceive to be innovation that actual innovation passes them by. They might be the biggest one, but they are not alone. In less then an hour I had the setting maturing in my brain. So lets take a look
This is the selfie system. A gamer can upload a selfie into the gaming portal, from there it goes to a server side processing module and from there it goes into the game. We have all these photo options. Yet, I reckon that millions of gamers would want to see themselves in Whiterun, standing in front of a dead Thunderjaw, standing in Gotham, being in Cyberpunk and some of these games would allow you to buy the postcard in the game (in Cyberpunk) and that postcard of you in the City Center could be ‘mailed’ to your game account, downloaded and you could put it on your social media. The funny thing is that this approach was an option 10 years ago. There are of course the funny flaky moments (an 21st century image of you in 9th century Bagdad), you name it, there are options.
The server-side processing module would be the IP of the gaming company and it could be applied to EVERY game they want to, and that one server-side module would be applied to EVERY game, so one module only and as the stage evolves that module just gets better and better. The portal might alter per game and per console, but there are already options with Sony, Nintendo likely too. PC had these options decades ago. The portal is the only one that might need adjusting for every game, as such every game will have a portal part, but that is actually the smallest part of all.
What baffles me is that no one has put this in place. Perhaps there are reasons and I reckon that there would be a need to set the legal premise that every uploader is legally responsible for WHAT they upload. Yet I do believe that this is a minor adjustment. It also corroborates with a thought I had years ago. To upload your image so that the character you play represents you. Wouldn’t it be great if you are the photo mode? I know that this cannot be done with every game, but a Nord in Solitude that looks like you? Skyrim has sold 60 million copies, that implies that well over 30% would want this. That is almost 20 million social media posts and those on multiple channels will show it everywhere. So why has no one considered and acted on this?
I refuse to believe that I am the first one, but the lack of actions on the other side (game developers) seem to imply that no one has seriously looked at that part of gaming. You see games can only exist as they cater to the gamer, that much has been a fact for decades. So what gives?
I will let you ponder that, for me Monday is only 14 hours away, enjoy the day you have.
This happens. There are solutions that are in place and that part was crowding my mind ever since I have learned that the main quests of AC Mirage are a mere 11 hours. Now in the 90’s I tested a program called Final Draft. As such it has always been on the back of my mind. Beside the fact that this program is one used by around 95% of all scriptwriters. I considered that this might also be a solution for gaming writers. Now, I have no idea what they are using at present. But I am aware that some are using a whole range of Microsoft products. There are several methods in place but when I saw “games abandon the dream of becoming narrative media and pursue the one they are already so good at: taking the tidy, ordinary world apart and putting it back together again in surprising, ghastly new ways” my mind went through all kinds of connections and it occurred to me that several players like Final Draft, Google Docs (with template), Apple pages and a few more have every chance of being the tool of choice for those writing a gaming narrative.
I think Final Draft has a clear advantage here as they have a stage for a narrative, a stage for locations and scenery and as such they can make a larger case for gaming. Narrative, cut scenes, in level dialogues and that goes in several directions. The largest stage is the addition of a database for objects, people, NPC and locations. Once that is in place I reckon that Final Draft is pretty well set up. The others have options, yet I wonder if they can clear the advantage that a maker like Final Draft has.
The setting that follows is that this goes well beyond RPG games. The list of games that have a narrative is growing each year and that setting merely grows with the platforms. As streamers get the upper hand, a much larger population will require the stages of GaaS scripting and that is before people realise that when the narrative can be copied and pasted into the game directly, the advantage will overtake whatever considerations game makers have.
This is seen on a few levels in several games. Any games that has a narrative (example: Skyrim) will require a much larger and much better solution. I reckon that Bethesda has its option in place, the larger station is not that others copy whatever Bethesda has, but that a provider can offer a larger station to many developers. In this Final Draft could have an additional meal ticket coming their way. The fact that it is very affordable makes it the possible chosen solution for game developers on a global stage. The fact that Final Draft is a mere $200 makes it a good choice for many developers. The question becomes will Final Draft evolve beyond Scripting for TV and movies and add the elements making it the solution for gaming as well.
Perhaps there are other solutions, yet I do not see them out in the open. There is seemingly no open advertising in this area and perhaps it is time to make that step. Streaming will soon become the place to be for gamers, not all gamers and not exclusively, but the step from a few million to hundred million gamers is as little as 2 years away, when that happens the providers either have a scripting tool of choice, or that market will suddenly face a wild west of providers. This is nice, but not great. Wild West solutions tend to be a solution with a weekly taste. Yes, there are solutions out there in gaming development, but as the stage changes, its narrative writers will come from all over the field and they have their own solution to increase productivity. The one appealing to those two parties will get the larger field all to themselves, whomever it will be.
Just a thought, consider it as you get through Saturday, for me Sunday is 14.2 minutes away. Have a great day.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 
X to the power of sneaky
I was honestly a little surprised this morning when I saw the news pass by. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67137773) gives us ‘Twitter glitch allows CIA informant channel to be hijacked’. To be honest, I have no idea why they would take this road, but part of me gets it. Perhaps in the stream of all those messages, a few messages might never be noticed. The best way to hide a needly is to drop it in a haystack. Yet the article gives us “But Kevin McSheehan was able to redirect potential CIA contacts to his own Telegram channel” giving us a very different setting to the next course of a meal they cannot afford. So when we are given “At some point after 27 September, the CIA had added to its X profile page a link – https://t.me/securelycontactingcia – to its Telegram channel containing information about contacting the organisation on the dark net and through other secretive means”, most of us will overlook the very setting that we see here and it took me hours to trip over myself and take a walk on the previous street to reconsider this. So when we are given “a flaw in how X displays some links meant the full web address had been truncated to https://t.me/securelycont – an unused Telegram username” the danger becomes a lot more visible. And my first thought was that a civilian named McSheehan saw this and the NSA did not? How come the NSA missed this? I think that checking its own intelligence systems is a number one is stopping foreign powers to succeed there and that was either not done, or the failing is a lot bigger then just Twitter. So even as the article ends with “The CIA did not reply to a BBC News request for comment – but within an hour of the request, the mistake had been corrected” we should see the beginning not the end of something. So, it was a set of bungles that starts with the CIA IT department, that goes straight into the NSA servers, Defence Cyber command and optionally the FBI cyber routines as well. You see, the origin I grasp at is “Installation of your defences against enemy retaliation” and it is not new, It goes back to Julius Caesar around 52BC (yes, more then two millennia ago). If I remember it correctly he wrote about it in Commentarii de Bello Gallico. Make sure your defences are secure before you lash out is a more up to date setting and here American intelligence seemingly failed.
Now, we get it mistakes will be made, that happens. But for the IT department of several intelligence departments to miss it and for a civilian in Maine to pick it up is a bit drastic an error and that needs to be said. This is not some Common Cyber Sense setting, this is a simple mistake, one that any joker could make, I get that. My issue is that the larger collection of intelligence departments missed it too and now we have a new clambake.
Yes, the CIA can spin this however they want, but the quote “within an hour of the request, the mistake had been corrected” implies that they had not seen this and optionally have made marked targets of whomever has linked their allegiance to the CIA. That is not a good thing and it is a setting where (according to Sun Tzu) dead spies are created. Yet they are now no longer in service of America, but they are optionally in service of the enemies of the USA and I cannot recall a setting where that ever was a good thing. You see, there was a stage that resembles this. In 942 the Germans instigated Englandspiel. A setting where “the Abwehr (German military intelligence) from 1942 to 1944 during World War II. German forces captured Allied resistance agents operating in the Netherlands and used the agents’ codes to dupe the United Kingdom’s clandestine organisation, the Special Operations Executive (SOE), into continuing to infiltrate agents, weapons, and supplies into the Netherlands. The Germans captured nearly all the agents and weapons sent by the United Kingdom” For two years the Germans had the upper hand, for two years the SOE got the short end of that stick and this might not be the same, but there is a setting where this could end up being the same and I cannot see that being a good thing for anyone (except the enemies of America). Now, I will not speculate on the possible damage and I cannot speculate on the danger optional new informants face or the value of their intelligence. Yet at this point I think that America needs to take a hard look at the setting that they played debutante too. I get it, it is not clear water, with any intelligence operation it never is. Yet having a long conversation with the other cyber units is not the worst idea to have. You see, there is a chance someone copied the CIA idea and did EXACTLY the same thing somewhere else. As such how much danger is the intelligence apparatus in? Come to think of it, if Palantir systems monitor certain server actions, how did they miss it too? This is not an accusation, it is not up to Palantir to patrol the CIA, but these systems are used to monitor social media and no one picked up on this?
Just a thought to have on the middle of this week.
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Tagged as Abwehr, BBC, CIA, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, Common Cyber Sense, DoD, Englandspiel, FBI, Julius Caesar, Kevin McSheehan, Maine, NSA, Palantir, SOE, Special Operations Executive, Sun Tzu, Twitter