Category Archives: IT

December 23, 2022 · 23:11

Unions

The thought took me by surprise. I had been playing Minecraft that day and the dream took me in a different direction, the merging of games. Now in the case of Minecraft this might merely be a DLC, or added to the game, but the stage opens up new directions in gaming.

To give you the rundown, I need to take you on a small trip. In my days of the Atari ST, the game ‘The Sentinel’ was released and I was happy, a remake was made in the late 90’s and it was awesome on PC, the music was fantastic and the game left an even deeper impression. The game is about a sentinel, it cleans the world, it rotates and nothing will survive in its gaze. It seems simple, but the 3D landscape is tricky and there are 1000 levels (if I remember correctly). So to win you need to get to the highest point and devour the Sentinel. The game is simple, but addictive and the PC edition even more so. But what happens when we take the Sentinel and make it massive, it cannot be devoured. Yet if you can get close to it, you could ‘attack’ it and get glowing bricks from it. The glowing bricks give the player powers. Blue will drop never ending water when active, red drops lava and so on. Yellow becomes a sun beacon. The Sentinel however changes the landscape it sees, and as such destroys your house, reduces it to rubble (with all the stuff still there. A rare event that changes the speed of the game and creates chaos. But that is merely one side, so what happens when we have BOTH games? We have thought of it and it does not always apply, but what happens when we have games from the same maker? For example AC Origin and AC Valhalla? They have implemented the cosmetic parts in later games, but what if we can push it both ways and more than just cosmetic? So Horizon Zero Dawn AND Horizon forbidden West? The games can be played separately, but what if we could unite these games? Add even more terrain? That is (optionally) the power of streaming games, streaming games will make this possible. 

It is a continuation of an idea I had in the past (and wrote about it). The original EA CBM64 game ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ now with a Bioshock look. Fully 3D, yet that is merely the start. For the Amazon Luna, the idea came for Luna keys, gold and silver. So when you play the game you could find a chess set, when found the option opens up to unlock THAT chess set in the game chess. It makes for a new setting of long term gaming. In addition, the idea came that could open up other games and other makeover of games. Like the game Clue, Harry Potter themes (if that was open to offer) and so on. In that same stage Assassins Creed 2 could offer a renaissance Italian chess set and so on. Not every game will offer this, but with every iteration that does we add value to gaming, we add interest in people who like to play chess to play other games. When you play the new version of ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ a game like monopoly would suddenly get an additional playable token (the Hindenburg) and it is that interaction that gamers will become hungry for and they will play more, enjoy more and experiment more. The power of streaming games is not unlocked for the simple reason that the game owners are merely looking to ‘copy’ their game on a new platform, to get more names, more players but no one is looking in creating better players, more fun and more joy. It is seemingly past them.

It is a stage that needs to be looked at now, because the new makers of systems are looking in that direction and there is no price for second place. As I see it The Tencent Streaming solution is merely a year away. The current owners squandered billions, lost the middle east and now Tencent is about to offer new options, new terrains and they will offer it to millions more. So how much of the playfield will Amazon surrender? Google left the gaming sphere and Microsoft remains useless (which they will spin in a direction like blaming Sony), but the truth is that these three players left well over 6 billion a year on the field and that field is now increasing and is slowly moving towards Tencent. Yes another fine mess they left the gamers.  The only player, who had their own niche is Apple and I have no idea what they are up to, they play their cards close to their chest. But they could be the new winner in the 11th hour. I cannot tell, too much speculation on that direction.

But the union of games is a natural concept in streaming games and look at how many offered that stage, the simple answer is none. And when Tencent does offer it, they basically become winner by default. It was so easy to actually listen to gamers (something Microsoft has never done). Sony and Nintendo were not streaming solutions and they have THEIR market. The others (Apple excepted) did this to themselves. Consider what you read here and consider what you see in gaming and then see how natural the ideas actually are.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 20, 2022 · 23:26

The murky river

The mind can get murky and this case it is me. I do not believe it is the case, but I must be willing to consider that THIS time around, I could be wrong. It all started when CNBC (at https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/19/meta-could-face-11point8-billion-fine-as-eu-charges-it-with-antitrust-breach.html) gave me ‘Meta could face $11.8 billion fine as EU charges tech giant with breaching antitrust rules’, now to be clear, even for the legally trained mind (mine) anti-trust cases are a nightmare from start to finish. So here goes! 

“The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said that it found Meta breached EU antitrust rules by distorting competition in the markets for online classified ads. The Commission took issue with Meta’s pairing of the Facebook Marketplace service, which lets users list items for sale, with its personal social network, Facebook.” My issues is ‘Are you f’ing nuts?’ Facebook is a free service, it makes income by selling ads, what is wrong with that? With the added “Furthermore, we are concerned that Meta imposed unfair trading conditions, allowing it to use of data on competing online classified ad services”, now lets be clear, I do not have the highest regard for Danes to begin with, but two things will happen if this fine becomes a reality. In the first I will demand that Coca Cola will it its premises be forced to sell Pepsi Cola on that same term, Pepsi Cola will have to sell Coca Cola on their turf, as such Coca Cola might win, but this is about the form. In the second she would need to get her chest into gear and make sure that EVERY Danish supermarket has Danish AND Swedish mineral water. The EU would not act when Microsoft destroyed Netscape, now that it has no place to go, it starts to cry to the EU, but this is not merely Microsoft. This is the EU trying to find ways to spice their pockets. I will make it my mission in life to evangelise the need to anti trust cases all over Denmark and the EU. All with a slightly personal nature. 

It might not have acted in the case of Google and Meta, but that leaves them with an additional avenue which knocks on the door of Amazon (yet again). Anti-trust is a complex setting, it is also a setting that is based on stages that are decades old. So when we consider “EU Antitrust policy is developed from Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU). Article 101 prohibits anti-competitive agreements between two or more independent market operators.” And I wonder how far this goes. Yet it was Yahoo! Finance that gave me a handle. It is “Our preliminary concern is that Meta ties its dominant social network Facebook to its online classified ad services called Facebook Marketplace. This means that users of Facebook automatically have access to Facebook Marketplace, whether they want it or not.”

In the first, Facebook gives a free service because they sell advertisement, that is still a factor. The second part is that if you seek Google, you can find several other advertisers. Yes they have a disadvantage because THEY HAVE NO CASH and Meta has billions. Still there are issues, but the largest one is that I want to see who gave the complaint. It is time to see what kind of wanker the EU works for. Facebook (now Meta) created a system, they offer it for free as they sell ads, this was in play for over a decade. In the same thing that Google Ads was the place for those who wanted to specify where they were. They were the visionaries, the leeching rest (like Microsoft and their Bing) missed the train because they thought they were clever. They were not. Now, I am not the greatest ally of Facebook, but fair is fair, they brought a system no one saw coming. And now they are screaming ‘foul play’ because the viagra managers forgot that whilst they were having their fun, others create new borders (like TikTok), or as a comedian would say ‘Content Homo Erectus got eaten before injecting its DNA’, for me it is a split case. This system is open to interpretation, it is open to outdated laws and inadequate CEO’s, COO’s and more of that trash. My Evidence? I placed in Public Domain IP worth over 20 billion a year. And when my first 5G device is released (encrypted) on 4chan the game changes even more.

It shows the wannabe’s how far they were off target, and my happy moment? Google and Amazon were both in the dark for part one, how much more they are missing? I have no idea and I do not care, at the end of my life I will end with the last laugh, because they cannot overcome public domain. 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 13, 2022 · 11:31

Scuttle the ship

A thought occurred to me a moment ago. You see, we are so in a stage of what to do next, what to do in reaction and it came to me. We already have all the ammunition we need. You see to show players like Epic Games on how it is done, by actually doing hat WAS done and redoing it in a few ways. To take commercial sails away is by offering an alternative and here the Streamers (Amazon Luna) can set a new stage. Because it is not a free service we can ensure that loot boxes become free. Take a page from the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer mode. That part was the best multiplayer experience that I have ever seen, the best experience that I ever faced and the free loot boxes were part of that. OK, not completely ‘free’, it required effort. Yet effort is what a player brings to the stage. Consider any game, any shooter. Now add battle stages to it that are based on parts of the game. Now set a stage of 4 players versus a clever NPC part and slug it out. In the end, the ones standing get the credits and these credits go towards a loot box. In ME3 I had to play 2-4 games to get enough points for a Platinum box, and these rewards were awesome. All elements that we have now. Weapons, armour, support item, cosmetic items and with enough of that you can get a whole generation of people to the new game. Lets be clear, I do not hate Epic (I do think they were overly stupid) but we need to do something about the loot boxes and this is one way to counter them. Have a game where you can earn them without EVER spending a penny. And it will not be an easy fight, but the start is that you can get people to another solution where they do not pay and that is the start of more. Once the stage changes Epic either alters their approach or they become obsolete (that will take some time). But a player like Amazon has the option to make change happen. And this is not the new idea, I feel certain that Tencent is doing similar stuff, but their plan is brilliant (and insidious), they play the long game because they can afford to, the cherry on top of the cake is too rewarding for them and we need to see a counter move whilst we still have options. There is no talking with Epic Games, they are too far gone into the rabbit den of greed, but we can counter with new games, with altered games all with the same setup, Loot boxes for those showing effort. When effort becomes the currency the other solutions start to fade every so slightly before fading entirely. This is not a short solution and it will not come quickly, but it is a solution that has merit, because gamers are all about the showing of effort and gaining achievement that way. It is merely an idea, but I think it could work and when we start the stage of crossover loot boxes, the games will change the premise even further. Just a thought! Now Amazon needs to consider what games they will set to this stage and the first chip from the armour of greed that Epic games wields becomes a reality. 

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 8, 2022 · 23:30

Shortcut gaming ends

Yes, this is actually a setting that was a while in the making. To be honest, I had no idea what I saw in my dreams. Things did not make sense to me at that point, but the afternoon changed things for me. You see, streaming consoles are the solution to shortcut gaming like we see on the tablets and mobiles. A shortcut to funny money and advertisement dollars. Consider the games you played last week, how many had an advertisement every 90 seconds? Every level? Streaming ends that, you see streaming is paid for, and as such like console gaming no advertisements. The larger issue with streaming solutions that they can hold much larger gaming needs, gaming needs that is not solved in a few hours. Games to bring achievement, real achievement and real joy. Like in the old days. Games like Railroad tycoon, Theme hospital, Theme park. Games that we can play a long time and show off as what we created. That was in the back of my mind, but I ignored it. It all starts with the image below

A simple grid, but one with a difference. You can create a maze, an intricate path but every point is significant. It can connect to a path below and there are in total three levels. And it is not one grid, there are four. Green, Red, Blue and Purple, each a different area. And it does not start easy, it does not start at all. Places like the Efteling (Netherlands), Phantasialand (Germany) and so many others, they all needed time and that is what you will need. You draw the plans, you make the place and perhaps a little basic at the beginning. Yet the game allows for so much more. Graphic files to be uploaded to your solution, the personalisation of a theme world like Anton Pieck did for the Efteling. This is not a simple game and it is not a short game. This brings fulfilment and it takes time, but that is the challenge. Not to make some short term gaming experience, but one that lasts a long time. My mind saw it, but the brain never communicated it to me (in a way I understood). The pursuit of shortcut gaming needs to end and lets be clear, this game is not for everyone. And the nice part with streaming games, you can try them all. And when you have 4 of these sot of games, you end up with 4 times the populations than these short cut game makers have. Perhaps Idle games is the only one with a real population, but that is because they have 20 variations on the same theme, and after an hour they all feel the same and unrewarding. A game like Dungeon Master (FTL games 1988) broke the mould and became the forefather for 3d gaming everywhere. Why? They did not offer a shortcut and in those days 40,000 games sold was a big thing, because it was. We need to change the way we see gaming, not how we see games (that I an art issue). You see the BI manager that push short term gaming are at the end of their feed, they end up pushing and nagging some mobile game, and with every streamer that enter a household the lifecycle of these games end. And whilst we create a new fantasy theme park with mazes, rooms and challenges, some will take the option to create in something like Adobe illustrator a new kind of door, and export it to their game, and soon that place will take on a new life. A personalised life where we create the new challenge and let the NPC’s wander around. A machine learning battleground where it is about the art, not the shortcut. Yes, we can add the usual gimmicks, but the ability to truly personalise a game is coming because streaming makes that possible. A cauldron in the making and Google tapped out of that equation, now it becomes the gaming field of Amazon (and that other wannabe) before Tencent drops in. 

Do we not owe it to ourselves to create the best gaming environment we could ever have? We can look at the games that were and remaster them, or see them as the groundbreaking tools they were and see if we can do that one more time and truly create something new?

I believe that the second one will create more followers. Don’t get me wrong, to see the Witcher 3, a 2007 game getting renewed in 2022 for PS5 is awesome. It could be seen as evidence just how groundbreaking that game was that it can till inspire gamers right next to Horizon Forbidden West (2022), 15 years and Witcher 3 can till hold grounds, that is amazing gaming. That shows you what a 90%+ game is capable of and that is what too many game makers have forgotten. 

I believe and I hope that the next generation games will push maximisation on streamers because that I where we are heading. Do not get me wrong, I will never leave my PS5, but there can be more and the Amazon Luna is in a much better position to prove that at present. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 6, 2022 · 16:06

The other white paper

Yes, there are always white papers, but which one is true? You see, they are all true, they are all a point of view. Yet the truth from a point of view is relative, that has always been the case. This is why we have peer criticism for academic papers. Yet that is not the case for the media, they are all fighting to remain around with some feigned form of value. This has been the case for over a decade and now the BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63869013) ‘Meta threatens to remove US news content if new law passes’, you see the truth of the matter is that the people no longer need the news, the news is no longer if value. It started when the media starting soliciting (aka whoring) for digital dollars. Flamed bring revenue, actual news not so much. The events surrounding Elon Musk, the abstinence around Jack Dorsey and a dozen other cases made it so. The newspapers are irrelevant and they know it, so in a last gesture to remain not completely irrelevant they rely on laws to force funds from social media. Even as the shared instances from places like the Australian link to paywalls, they are all about ‘lost revenue’ And the Australian is not alone, loads of American newspapers and media (like Forbes) do EXACTLY the same thing. They will tell you the scoop AFTER you pay, so how is that lost revenue? Not all papers are like that, but many are and now we get “It would give publishers and broadcasters greater powers to collectively bargain with social media companies for a larger share of ad revenue”, I believe this is to be a false setting and Meta gives it to you in the form of “Meta claims their platform, in fact, provides increased traffic to struggling news outlets.” They are correct. Consider the truth, it I simple, how many times did you go to the news site? How many times was this because THEY shared news on social media? This has been the case for a decade and now that Meta is taking off the gloves, we see how irrelevant the media has become. In the last year alone I highlighted close to a dozen cases of incompetency and a lack of information vetting by the media, so why should they get paid for shortcomings? It is almost like the decapitated chicken.  It’s running around, but it is already dead, the rest of its body did not figure it out yet. Is it fair? Does it matter? No, the media had the option to evolve, it merely decided that is was cheaper and more profitable to hang onto someone else’s coattails. It did not work out well for them and now they cry foul, almost like the yellow pages. Their era died and they just never adjusted in time and I am adding to the pain as my 5G seemingly goes to China. Setting a new stage in several ways and taking advertisement power away from all and leave it where it should have been all along, with the advertising people. With the locations of advertising and that is the lesson that they never picked up on, and it is not their fault. A place like Google missed it too and I mentioned it at least twice this year. 

A stage that is moving away from them faster and faster and if Meta makes the move it is threatening to a lot of players in the media world will be done for. Such is life, Media Erectus is getting eaten before passing on its whinges. So do not focus on the whinge, consider the place technology had for almost 2 decades and see where the media is not, and they have not been where they needed to be for almost a decade and now that they are about to become irrelevant they cry laws. Bu the way these same people never championed law changes to the environment, law changes to taxation and they simply went for the emotional targets, it had more expected digital dollars, so where are these dollars now? 

And when we see “Media companies argue that Meta generates huge sums of money from news articles shared on the platform.” So where is THAT evidence? Meta generates advertisement towards people through free accounts, and this gets me to (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2H8wx1aBiQ) the congress statement April 2018 where the answer is ‘We run ads’ a setting that was in place for well over a decade. The news was never an element and as such the media better be quick with presenting ACTUAL evidence in that case.

When I see how irrelevant the media and Microsoft have become and I see them cry like little chihuahua’s all whilst they screw up options left right and centre, what the actual F*** (censored word) the world around them is doing protecting something this irrelevant is beyond me, it actually is.

We can debate things but look at the numbers. the Paris based World Association of Newspapers, which represents 18,000 newspapers gives us that there are a lot more. The world has 8,000,000,000 people, which implies that there is an average of 445,000 people per newspaper. When you start doing the math, you will see that the numbers o not add up. The newspapers that are still relevant are so as they have well over 2 million subscriptions. The Washington Post has 3 million, and The Wall Street Journal 2.4 million subscriptions. The Dutch Telegraaf had in 2001 807,000 subscriptions, in 2017 it was only 393,000. The larger national newspapers are losing ground and now we see the larger play. There are 195 countries in the world. So why are there 18,000 newspapers? They nearly all rely on Reuters, making at least 17,000 irrelevant already. But these are the numbers no one looks at, and they are all vying for advertisements. Look at ANY newspaper and look how many advertisements they have and how much they charge and you will see their actual loss. They are no longer a relevant advertisement group, digital media replaced them, they lost relevancy by allowing to become a family of 18,000 brothers and sisters and that is before you see the rest of the media relying on advertisement sales to qualify their existence. But no one looks at that side are they?

The other white paper that no one gets to see is the one no one in media wants to look at, it merely shows how irrelevant they have become.  

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Law, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

December 5, 2022 · 17:55

Remastering Classics

This all started this morning. I am not entirely sure how I got there, but it started with recalling an old St. Nicholas present. It was a book by Hector Malot called ‘Sans Famille’ (the original Dutch version) I think I was 12 or 13 when I got it (see cover below).

It suddenly dawned on me that the stage of reading books is falling away, we need to temper it, we need to alter the perception of people, but how to do this? Then I suddenly realised that Ubisoft has an inside track here. You see, we can do more with streaming systems, especially Amazon. Consider the game AC Origin, the first DLC adds a travel option, to go to certain parts of the game and do a walking tour. Embalming, beer brewing and several other parts were added. Now you might think it was trivial, but it was not. I had partially missed it, but these parts were all added to the game, the game was almost flawless and had several additional parts to the game we never realised before, Ubisoft with this game hd outdone themselves. Yet when you combine the ideas you get something more. First we take the environment of AC Unity (buggiest game ever) and we use the environment to set the story of Hector Malot in motion. It will be a little more than a walking tour, but as you complete the chapters, you get a whole book and optionally, you could unlock the book in your Kindle, Amazon would have a massive advantage here, and it would not be bad for Ubisoft either. AC Syndicate would allow for Oliver Twist (and a few other books), AC2 or Brotherhood could add several Italian works including those of Master Machiavelli. And it would not be part of the game, and the full game would not be included, merely the environment. Games and challenges to unlock books you can then read on your Kindle. These are mere top notions. The settings allow for so much more and it could gently push the gamers (especially the younger ones) to start reading more. We see environments as a set stage, but they do not need to be and in the streaming environment all elements are non connected and are merely that, elements to use in other ways. I wonder if Ubisoft and Amazon have considered that option at all. It is a side towards a direction I do not think anyone ever considered taking at present and the stage could grow from there.

What if books are for a system like this achievements? Consider Watchdogs: Legion. Consider that they add 3-4 relics which are in facts unlocked books when you complete the relics, in that case books on London, on London history, or some setting thereof. Interesting that thee two didn’t consider projects on the side to fatten the chest of users and their love for free stuff. Just a thought.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 3, 2022 · 22:23

A shortcut to viewing

Yes, I was here sitting on the sofa, considering what to write about, when suddenly my mind had an idea. It has them all the time, but this one seems like a moneymaker for the right programmer.

You see most of us have particular interests to see on Youtube. And we can go there again and again, or set up something to do that for us. As I is havening to be really lazy, option two works well for me.

So here is the idea in a simple graph (see below)

The mobile app for phone or tablet has the app. There we select the interest, optionally a location and a timeframe. We then select spawn and an icon is created. Clicking on that icon takes us to YouTube and filters exactly what we want to see. In example one I select cats or kittens, with a timeframe of last week, the second is Skiing, with the location of Whistler, BC and a timeframe of last month. You can make your own selection and each one comes with an icon of choice (some preselection is optional). And when you get on the train, bus or whatever. You merely select the icon and away you go. I also added a QR code that allows the person to hand the selection to be used in YouTube, or use it to spread the app. It seems so simple, but there is nothing out there that does this and I think that something like this might work on TikTok as well.

Just a small idea, use it if you can and feel free to cash in on it, a small donation to yours truly will always be appreciated. Well this is my Saturday evening suddenly a little more productive than I realised. So have a nice weekend and do not forget to smile at times.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 1, 2022 · 22:10

The games we desire

We desire games, we all do. In Star Trek we were once told “the more complex the mind, the more essential the need to play” (Star Trek, season 1, episode 15). I always embraced that. Gaming was my large escape and I have enjoyed it for decades. Yet the foundation of gaming changed after the Playstation 2 came (and all other systems). Gaming became big business, people with business degrees got involved and soon it went from art to business needs. Gaming suffered and it has suffered for quite some years now. Micro transactions is merely part of it. The larger stage was that art was taken out of the equation. This is why games like Elden Ring, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West are such successes. They embraced art and artsy sides to a much larger degree. This is the reason why places like Ubisoft went from great to below mediocre. There are the games that will always have appeal because of secondary reasons. Sport games being a clear first example.

When we look back to the days of Bullfrog, there was almost no game we did not desire, art was the driving force and it drove our needs deliciously and amazingly. Consider Populous, Flood, Populous 2, Magic Carpet (1 + 2), Dungeon Keeper and some (including me) still worship those times, those games. EA went and created some exploitation version of Dungeon Keeper. Yet they could repair the damage, and they are running out of time. They will need those who played the original to give rise to the next generation. They now require credibility. And it is not the weirdest idea. Six games that represents millions in revenue. Some can be re engineered, yet the larger setting will come from re engineering driving evolution of the game. This reminds me of another good Ubisoft game (they had a few). It was Conquest: Frontier Wars, the review gave it (for the most) 78%-88%. I would set it to around 85%, a game that makes the gamer want more. And there was another side, you could set up a battle game with two other Computer players and you had some options. What was important, you could spend hours in a new galaxy again and again, with two other races, each with intelligence settings. Now what if that concept is remade and also remade in games like a remastered Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper and Populous. Three games that were initially less than 1MB and could optionally keep gamers busy for years. That could spark a new wave of gamers and that is what the streaming services need, fresh blood and returning blood. And the need to play will draw them in. You still need decent games, and I just handed them 6 of them. Well, handing is a stretch, EA has the rights as far as I can tell, but consider that Yesterday I handed the option for 50 million gamers and consider that many games never get anything near that amount. I reckon that my solution with the additional games is a step into the direction of the number I predicted. That solution still needs the first phase, but without the second and third phase it will never grow to the degree required or is that desired? And there we have it, a stage we grow and a stage we create by looking backwards. The six games I mention are most likely IP protected, yet The Commodore Amiga had 2198 games, The Atari ST had a little over 1000 games, close to 10,000 games, If we rate from the highest and look at 10% we get to 219+100+1000 we end with 1319 games and that is if we merely look at the highest 10%. Now some will have protection, but not all will and there is the solution for streaming systems. Upgrade what was and get more people feeling the joy of gaming, not the challenge of some flawed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game. Even now we get ‘The final Assassin’s Creed Valhalla update has launched a week early’, the fact that it is for some systems 13GB does not lead to questions, the fact that the game was released on November 10th 2020 is a much larger issue. It is over 2 years old and still requiring patches. It is one of the reasons that streaming systems will win over time. But a system that has good games will endure a lot longer and the games from the old systems remain superior to many of the games released today, not all, but a lot of them. It sets the need for more play, and Streaming systems will deliver there. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 30, 2022 · 23:07

Girdle your loins

Yes, it is time to commit to a promise, yet to do this you need to understand a few things. This all started two years ago when I had an idea, we all have ideas. Yet in my case, the idea was nice, but not ready to be acted on. The basic stage was to lower islamophobia and I believe that educating people does that. In this case it was staged as a game. The idea was sound, but I am not a programmer and places like Google and Amazon tend to be away from their desk when the return on investment is not clear. 

In the mean time the idea grew and grew. In march of this year a few demo’s were released containing the Unreal engine 5 and that was a game changer, the aspect and the population for my solution changed, moreover the application evolved massively.

Datapoints

Data is important and at that point the equation changed and I had to elaborate on data. As the application of a solution changed, so does the data requested for the new approach. 

As such I had the following data points

Turkey 84 million
Egypt 102 million
Pakistan 220 million
Bangla Dash 64 million
Indonesia 273 million
Iraq 40 million
Saudi Arabia 35

Which represent 914 million of the 1.9 billion Muslims. The Muslim population represents between 20 and 25 percent of the global population. In addition Islamophobia is more outspoken now than it was during the Crusades and at that point we were trying to kill each other. 

It was becoming clear that Muslims need a safe space and both Google and Amazon were seemingly not interested. Even the Kingdom Holding Company was not responding to the offer. The offer was a solution that will get 50,000,000 subscriptions, which is actually the easy part. But I will get to that soon. You see close to 50% of these Muslims will never go on the Hajj or a pilgrimage, most cannot afford it, some will never get the lottery. That is not anyones fault, the numbers of Muslims living outside of Saudi Arabia are just too big. So they will never see the splendour of the Grand Mosque in Riyadh, they will never see the Mosque in Medina where the Prophet himself taught. And this is where the Unreal engine version 5 becomes a game changer. 

Part one

Part one is the Islamic part. The two mosques in detail via the Unreal engine 5. You see, this becomes now no longer some video game, but a setting where you walk through a video of these places, true to perfection and when the times are there, you can hear the sermons. These sermons are already digital, they merely require plugging in. Now well over a billion will be able to see the majestic and greatness of these places and over time more Mosques could be added. The people who could never visit these places will be able to see them in more detail than ever before. Yes, you can see them on Youtube, but they are video’s of a person seeing what that person wanted to see. This is a place equally true to life, but now at any given moment you can look around 360 degrees, see the ceilings and see the place you could not visit, optionally not ever. 

Part two

Part two is the gaming side. People love games, all people do. And now a site would exist where Muslims could play, optionally play together and not be harassed all the time. The games are actually the easy part. Everyone is looking forward and create something they hope everyone will like. But when you look behind you, you will see hundreds of games created between 1985 and 1998 on Atari 800, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Hundreds of games, many without any IP protection and yes, the graphics need upgrading, but in case of many games that is as much as is required, the rest tends to be simple as these games worked on 64Kb (512KB in the latter two cases). And that is before you start looking at adding Chess and Checkers games, board games and a whole lot more. It should be relatively easy to create 12-24 games a year. One alteration is an old game called Defender of the crown. In those days it was huge and awesome, but if you make it defender of the faith where the setting is not England, but Jerusalem, where the attacks are not a simple mouse click, but close to specific attack machines like they had in those days. Let the gamers see how hard it was in those days (see the movie Kingdom of Heaven for details). There are a few more of these alterations and you get a whole trove of games that will entice gamers from 12 to 81. And it might be possible to get twice as many games a year if you create 2-3 software houses. So many games forgotten could receive a second lease on life. After these exercises these software houses will be ready to create new and specific games for a Muslim population. 

Part three

Part three is the social media side. Not based on Facebook, but based on Google Plus or Cocoon. A closed system and it makes sense. Muslims have family, they have friends, friends from the mosque and they are not connected, some of these will be in all three. By setting these groups apart and taking out marketing we return to true social media and here others cannot harass you, if so those people get removed as this service comes at a price. There will be an option for Marketing, but. It can only offer it in certain places. It cannot splash everyones profile like Facebook does, it is the price of a free system. 

Part four

The last part is pricing. I envisioned a stage of $10 a month and $99 a year (two months free). That stage can easily get the controllers of this system 50 million subscriptions, I believe that 400 million subscriptions is possible, but initially not much higher and it would take two years to get there. I also believe that when the system has over 100 million people the price could be lowered from $10 a month to $7.50 a month or $75 a year. 

So that is why I was laughing out loud when we saw in ‘Repetition or Confirmation’ on November 13th 2022 “its Xbox Cloud Gaming program had attracted over 10 million players spread over 26 countries since opening its beta up a year prior.” My plan get me 50 million over 6 countries. My laughing out loud now makes sense, does it not? 

The plan takes on new life as a player like the Kingdom Holding Company could buy the Google Stadia from Google as they are dropping it, as long as it supports Unreal Engine 5. What starts at a nominal 5-6 billion could grow into a $40 billion system. Muslims are fed up with the harassment and American big-tech is not doing anything successful. As such I created a path towards safety. I offered it to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but they were not interested. So you tell me, am I delusional or did I see what no one else is seeing? 

And there is more, Amazon has distribution centres in three of these clusters, so adding a server park there would be relatively easy and with the 5G systems faltering having satellite locations is important, it sets the bottleneck to the local cluster. All simple constructions that Google and Amazon should have been ready for and they are not. 

As such I am making this now Public Domain and you can see how the big boys (Amazon and Google) were blind for the longest time, they are all contracting their workforce and when someone laces this system the others will ALL lose market share and this player will grow into a power player. So there!

What am I losing? Well, I was hoping for a Canadian Passport, a loaded debit card (or an envelope with cash for initial expenses) and $50 million post taxation in a Canadian bank and I would be able to retire. I had hoped for a second pay cycle of 5% of the revenue for 15 years, but that is no longer realistic. And I feel happier making it public domain than giving it to an idiot like Microsoft.

Good luck and good hunting!

6 Comments

Filed under Finance, IT, Politics, Religion, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

November 30, 2022 · 11:06

The Kay Pea equation

There is a setting I have skated on a few times. This is not the first time I raise it, but I feel strongly about certain options. A first was a puzzle I enjoyed. It came with a book. The story was a murder mystery, but there was no solution in the book. The added part was a jigsaw, the image would reveal the actual culprit. I had 6-8 of them and they were fun. But it was something someone (I do not remember who) made on the Commodore 64. They were Kinetic Puzzles. To explain that is simple. A jigsaw is the puzzle made from an image or photograph, I still enjoy jigsaws with some regularity. A Kinetic puzzle is not based on an image, but on a film clip, hence every puzzle piece is always showing you part of the clip and it makes for a somewhat ore challenging puzzle. The weird part is that this should have been on the eyelids of Netflix from the start. Movies are their bread and butter, what better that a puzzle that represents a clip from an upcoming movie? The solution tends to be the same, edges first, then you work your way in and when the image on EVERY piece is in motion, the challenge is soon felt and endured. Marketing through a game, it would be the cornerstone of Netflix and even as the puzzle part is not the hardest part, putting this all in a puzzle is still a challenge. But they did it on a Commodore 64 with a mere 38Kb of RAM. As such evolving towards 4K puzzles is not a leap of technology. And this came to my mind again as I was crossing the ‘i’ and dotting the ’t’ in the equation that is coming. Inversion is in part the name of any game and it helps when you are your own devils advocate. So when they consider this and add the simple Jigsaw part, Netflix will have a whole score of puzzles and the fans of movies will enjoy a game that reflects their passions. Streamers had this option from day one and some did not go in this direction for all kinds of reasons, but were some of the valid? They might think so and I am not debating that part, but what about the audience you are addressing? Did you think of them? Are they not your consumer core? 

Did you think that a Netflix customer might not like a puzzle regarding the Batman (who looks a lot like some famous Hufflepuff student), or any league of other heroes or villains? I wonder what these bosses were thinking when they pushed people out stating they needed super cool games, was a better question not ‘A game that could appeal to our core clients’ The KP or Jigsaw will not do it alone, but people will always return to something they enjoy, especially when they are fighting the hours, at that point they will revert so something simple like Chess, Checkers or Puzzles. And with an additional mode that is not seen anywhere, this might be an Initial solution all might fancy. Perhaps the idea of adding books to the jigsaw equation should have been on Amazon’s mind. There is not a soul who does not know what a Jigsaw is (aka puzzle) and they go back to 1760, a very long time before the house of Pong made its entry. Did anyone even consider to cater to puzzles to create awareness? Netflix has been in a prime position for the longest time and they never acted on it. They have the largest arsenal and they left it untouched, weird, is it not?

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,