December 14, 2022 · 10:42

The stressed mind

We all have that at times, and I am no different. Stress gets to me like anyone else and it hinders my creativity, which is mostly why I hate it. Now this story started yesterday with ‘Scuttle the ship’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/12/13/scuttle-the-ship/) where I offered an opponent to Epic Games and now it is time to give you the goods. This IP is one with a difference. It is a freebee fr anyone who EXCLUSIVELY creates games for the Amazon Luna, no one else. Not even Sony. It is time to bring the pain to Epic Games and even as this might not be enough, it could be a decent start and the maker could end up with millions in royalty. 

The stage
The stage is one that required thought. You can have your randomness of events and that is fine. But to create a setting that entices players you need something more. As such I created stages of war, where the stage could be NPC driven, or it could be multiplayer driven. Than that drive needs to set the stage of weapons, but here I wanted to take a different turn. So I went back to the stage. And my mind came up with several stages. These stages are part of a lager whole, not unlike the multiplayer levels in ME3 (which was a huge inspiration) so there is space to manouver, but there is also limitation to how far you can move. This was the first instance and it gave me the following options. 

Battle of Rorke’s Drift, 1879 (Zulu, 1964)
Battle of the Somme, 1917
Ludendorff Bridge attack, 1945 (The Bridge at Remagen, 1969)
First Battle of Seoul, 1950
Battle of Ia Drang, 1965

These are merely starting points, but with 5 scenarios the game could start. In battle of Rorke’s drift we are in that same farm that we saw in the movie. There we need to survive for an amount of time and kill well over a certain amount of numbers. It is imperative that it is more accurate. It is the start and it starts in different ways.

You see, when the numbers are achieved portals open, and they take you to a new event, the problem here is that the event is random, moreover when you play with your friends they are likely to end up in different areas and there is a reason for that (explanation later). You see we see the event a one whole and that is true, but I am splitting it up the stage where we fight and the weapons we fight with. 

The weapons
In Rorke’s Drift that would have been the Martini-Henry. And the game will benefit with historically accurate weapons. That is the weapon everyone will get in the game and when they get the Lee–Metford and after that the Pattern 1913 Enfield. Yet that gun will not become the gun you carry in Rorke’s drift. It will unlock that weapon for the Battle of the Somme. They also have the .303in Short Magazine Lee Enfield (SMLE) but you get the idea. Through loot boxes (which you earn through gameplay) the Martini-Henry is upgraded to MK2, MK3 and MK4 making it more efficient every time, so the score will be higher and the kill count will go up. The stage is however that you get an upgrade card and it is YOU that decides which weapon to upgrade. Thee are cosmetic upgrades (uniforms) and there are support upgrades (health boosts and support boosts). Support upgrades are for one battle only, cosmetic and weapons upgrades are permanent. And as we go from these wars we can add more and more stages to the game. As you get into different stages and unlock more boxes you will learn that there is a weapon card which is NEVER for the current stage, but goes randomly to a stage and if you get there you see the unlocked weapon, there is the grand platinum (a 50% more expensive box) which is the only box that offers weapons for the CURRENT stage as well as another stage. The rest is the same, but at times having a better weapon in that stage is important and these boxes are earned by getting the scores in the game. Money has no value here (the dead never miss their coins). 

A new stage and one that could optionally lessen the Epic Game impact. If the developer gets the idea, they will be Abe to get more out of the game, especially when the stages double over time and the stage where the weapon is much more integral and more historically accurate is a stage we have almost never ever seen, making this a fun exercise. There are a few more ideas related to this, but I think some developers have to prove their worth first. Thee is only so much we can hand out for free, they have to show that they are vested in a solution first. 

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December 13, 2022 · 23:32

Will you never learn?

I just got across an article from December 5th. It was given to us by the BBC with the headline ‘I had £8,000 stolen but Revolut won’t refund it’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-63796738). When we google Revolut we get all the bells and whistles. No hidden fees, ATM withdrawals in 120 currencies and transfers in 29 currencies directly from the app and it sounds amazing. The fact that most people will never see these countries is beside the point. But what is not beside the point is “as of December 2022 they did not have a UK banking licence” and “it does not reimburse victims of authorised push payment fraud.” And now for the stupid people in the back. A financial institution is not a bank, in this day and age if you are not with a bank, anything goes wrong it is on YOUR dime. It costs you! So when we get back to the BBC article we see “The fraudster said her bank account was under attack, and persuaded her to download some software that allowed him to take control of her computer.” Which is never a good idea to say the least and these fraud attacks tend to go on, and until we get clearance to execute fraudsters you are on your own and not being with a bank you will have nothing to protect you for these events. Financial Institutions wash their hands and come with some kind sounding answer that boils down to ‘Not our problem’ and that is what you face. So when we get that Revolut is an e-money company that offers digital banking services, we see the words, but the important part that they are not a bank is missing. And my idea of using targeted killing against these fraud people (not the fintechies) is not without merit. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-63736573) gives us ‘Police text 70,000 victims in UK’s biggest anti-fraud operation’, which means that we could keep well over 70,000 people safe by killing these economic terrorists. Yes, they are not merely criminals and we do not care about their age. Just like they did not care about the financial situation they put their victims in. There comes a time when any action is better than the level of inaction we see here. In addition people need to know that places like Revolut is not a bank, they applied a year ago, but they are not at present and the call for reduced fee’s does not hold water, not when you end up with a loss of £8,000, but that is something you see after the fact. 

To be honest, there is another side. There is more and more indications that banks are seemingly not bringing home the bacon in regards to their customers. We saw that in the Guardian when the people were told in June 2022 “UK’s largest banks are no longer “too big to fail” and could foot the bill for their own failures, the Bank of England has said” it does not help people much, but it needs to be clear that you need your savings in a bank, because no matter what you have some protection, with e-money companies, financial institutions and other FINTECH options you have little to no protection, or you are in danger of having no protection and a banking license is pure protection for the bank and its customers. And my so called over reaction? Consider that in this economy a new criminal is born every minute, all hoping for that score. When you start executing the offenders and making sure EVERYONE knows, the wannabe’s might seek other avenues of income, not all of them legal, but avenues that keep them alive. And with 70,000 victims in the balance, I have little problems blowing off a head or two, three, four, five. You get the drill.

We want to be the ones finding a peaceful (non terminal) solution. But the police is losing this war too fast, there are too many victims and the parents do not get to cry that their son (or daughter) was such a good person, not with 70,000 people in the mix and one losing £8,000, and there is clear evidence that this was not the biggest gain. There comes a time when we need to acknowledge that the floodgates are bringing in too much trash and do not worry about where to leave them, Exmoor National Park could shelter well over 1000 cadavers, so there is space to grow.

Worried yet? 
You should be there is too much happening and nowhere near enough being achieved and I am not blaming the Police, they are fighting this war with both hands on their backs and it is time to alter the game a little, enough for some of these criminals to get worried. And the price is decent, 70,000 victims is not nothing, even as we see “as many as 200,000 people in the UK may have been victims of the scam” and to tamper your anger, we are also given “Fraudsters paid between £150 and £5,000 a month in bitcoin to use the iSpoof service, contacting, at times, 20 people a minute. Those behind the service are allegedly earning £3.2m and living “lavish” lifestyles” as such I believe they had their life, time to end it and capture these funds. Whose with me?

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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. 

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December 12, 2022 · 22:21

Mashed faith

That is the setting I am in. To be clear, I do not think I am in a good place right now. There is the abundance of islamophobia. There is the abundance of far right whiners, there is JustStopOil and the list goes on. To be honest I am a little at a loss on how to solve it. There is a creative idea that is forming but it is extreme to say the least. 

The first drops
In the first stage we take a look at far right person Rasmus Paludan. He is stirring hatred on many levels, the Swedish police is trying to stop him, but it is not working. He is item one. Item two id Dutch anti-islam movement Pegida, they too have made claims of burning a Quran. To stop these first drops of inciting much more anti Islamic violence I call on ALL the Arabic nations to reduce oil shipments to the EU by 500K barrels a day (250K for each and whilst these people are still alive). When the EU has to deal with the reduced oil shipments they might finally do something. And for any far right anti Islamic activity an additional 250K barrels a day are taken from the stockpile and where they go is up to these nations, to China is most likely as they require (and have requested) more oil. 

Is it fair?
No, and that is not what matters. You see this world is becoming a powder keg and we either harshly reduce the danger, or we control how it implodes, minimising casualties. These governments have had years to do something about it and they keep on screwing things up, so lets give them in incentive. This is one way and there are others, but I need to make sure that the people start seeing where the real power is and it is not in the US and not in the EU, not anymore. So we need to make sure that the implosion is directed and directing it to the far right makes perfect sense in this case. 

We are now in a dangerous stage. You see the Catholic churches have shown to be too unreliable. There is corruption, sexual abuse against minors and we saw less than a month ago that this was known all the way to the top of the Vatican a decade ago. There is now a much larger stage to massively separate church from state and it becomes massively important to reduce christian powers all over these governments. And whilst they still enjoy too many benefits of their transgressions we ned to do something. Like in politics is is about alliances and now the atheists and Muslim populations make one massive alliance, outranking christians by a lot. We can sit back and do nothing or set the stage how it really is. Not to the loudmouthed abusers, but to the people who are truly in power and it is not Strasbourg and it is not Washington DC. No matter how we slice and dice it we are running out of time to act, if there is one clear signal than that has been the signal that JustStopOil has been sounding and we see that the people have had enough in London, Munich and Paris. And we better do something clear before this all explodes, because that danger is getting bigger by the day. 

Are there better actions? I feel certain that there are, yet I do not see them and the governments are not acting as they should, as such my method comes to the top, not because it is better, but though a lack of real alternatives. Time is no longer our friend, that time has passed.

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December 12, 2022 · 10:44

Dopey and Grumpy, still dwarves

That is the setting and it is a strange setting, but it relates to ‘When it rains we call the kettle black’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/12/11/when-it-rains-we-call-the-kettle-black/) which I wrote two days ago. Yet I did not know there was more, and just now I come across ‘Saudi Arabia demanded defense firms set up in country by 2024. So far, most seem unmoved’ (at https://breakingdefense.com/2022/12/saudi-arabia-demanded-defense-firms-set-up-in-country-by-2024-so-far-most-seem-unmoved/), to be honest, I had heard some stuff in that direction, but I was unaware of how deep it went, and now I see “as long as it is related to the government contracts, they will have to have their regional headquarters here”, with the added “analysts said that the biggest players appear confident they can find workarounds — including the use of local partnerships and subsidiaries, as they’ve done in other countries — to keep the market open” and there the stupid factor comes into play. You see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has had enough of fake allies, fake commitments and now China is ready to make commitments and as the KSA is moving towards the 2030 mark of 50% in country defence and China is willing to play nice, the US is set to lose a whole lot of revenue. So there is your workaround, greedy and stupid working in cahoots like Grumpy and Dopey, both sides of a currency that has no meaning where they are, it is the sales prospects that counts and they are giving it all to China. You can only be the biggest player if you sell and there were markers for sale events and now there is a clear understanding in strategic papers no less that China is moving into sales column A. So when we think through what Breaking Defense gave us on December 8th, the US better realise that the age of pretending to do something and doing something else as a workaround is ending and it is ending really quickly. So when we see the larger players like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman, Leonardo, Thales, and General Dynamics. What happens when the representative $27,000,000,000 goes to China? Twenty Seven Billion no longer to the US, the dollar will take another dive and more importantly, the design of their stealth planes required some Saudi Funds, when they go to the Chengdu J-20, the impact will be seen all over the US, EU and NATO. I made mention of these dangers as early as September 2021. The fact that some American Fat Cats were playing stupid with a customer paying billions is a little new, but there is no surpassing the union of stupid and ego, it makes for a nice package, one that China could be enjoying a lot more than they figured on. And there is a chance that the strategic union between Saudi Arabia and China will go that far. Not only will the US lose their Middle East stage, they will in that same action lose whatever benefits they had in Egypt as well. And just to remind you on a speculative side. If China buys in this deal 2 million barrels a day from the American stack, the US is in deep manure. It does make the grass grow in Texas, but that is pretty much all it does. 

As such the last week has given us all kinds of revelations via several media sources. But the larger news is that State secretary Pompeo gives us ‘Xi’s visit to Saudi Arabia a result of “bad American policy”’ and the bad news merely stacks. Yes Saudi Arabia is not squandering the connections with the US, their words and they are right. The US themselves are squandering it to China by playing chicken with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to appease their ego’s, and that is what is clearly in place and will shown over the next 13 months. You see, there will not be any 11th hour changes, if these regional HQ’s are not in place by December 2023 China will end up with a massive chunk of Saudi defence spending. China is happy with it, will the US be? I doubt it, but they catered to ego, so there you have it. It does not matter who Dopey and Grumpy are, in the end they were merely dwarves and as I see it, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is willing to make a large change and it will cost the US, it will cost them so much. I wonder how they will spin this loss, because at present that is exactly what it will become. A loss to their ally list, a loss to their economy and a loss of income. All handed to China for the mere satisfaction of ego. Government handed partnerships to players like Microsoft, Sony, Samsung and a few other players for the cumulative sum of a mere 1% of that, did you think the Saudi Government wasn’t keeping tabs? Silly bunnies!

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December 11, 2022 · 20:33

Gaming Oscars, a chalice of achievement

I was looking for a simple list, but none of them gave it, a simple lit with the game and the amount of awards. None supplied it as far as I could tell and it is weird because the Oscars have done this for decades. The simple stage is that Elden Ring (not my choice) got the Game of the Year win. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that Elden Ring earned it, it really did, it is merely not my game. That does not make me angry, if anything it implies that gaming is bigger than me. The two games I had in that in that direction is the God of War: Ragnarok with Horizon Forbidden West as a second choice. 

So when we see GoW, we see that they won Narrative, Music, Audio design, Performance, Innovation, Action/Adventure, 6 wins in total. My second game Horizon Forbidden West didn’t get any, the competition was too fierce and too good. Elden Ring took home Game of the Year, Best game direction, Best Art direction, Best RPG, a total of 4 wins. Gran Turismo got a win too and a few others 11 wins for Sony, whilst Microsoft has 4 (Elden Ring is on both systems). 7 wins for Sony exclusives. It is a chalice of achievements and it was never in doubt. The exclusives are the system protectors and the system evangelists (if gaming was a religion). 

There we have the larger stage, the larger issue that Microsoft is spinning out of view. When it was all good, they were happy to announce it, now not so much. Even sales numbers are a combination of system S and system X. I reckon the numbers are basically that bad and they are getting worse. No amount of software house acquisition will fix that and the fact that Microsoft is spinning the numbers and hiding them is telling me more, in gaming Microsoft is done for. Not completely, they are the number one ruler in flight simulators and they earned that part, they truly do. Yet life is more than straight forward games. It is about the art and HFW and GoW clearly showed that, in 2023 Hogwarts legacy will show again that love of a subject and dedication to that love will make Hogwarts Legacy shine on any platform it appears on. I personally predict that Hogwarts Legacy will up the mark for achievements in a game by a fair bit. Yes, I saw “a Twitter user wrote: “Hogwarts Legacy got a VERY tepid reaction at The Game Awards… and also did not win.”” Yet that concern was not there for Bayonetta 3, was it? I missed out most of the Rowling debate, in the first because I do not care, in the second that people have personal views and they are entitled to them. If it offends you then crawl under your bed please. She wrote a series of books that captured the heart of two generations, in addition it inspired the creation of Hogwarts Legacy. We see all these people cluster around perfection whilst they have no idea what perfection looks like, perfection to them is anyone who agrees with them and that is the important part of the stage. Gaming is not that. This is why my view on Elden Ring matters. It is not my game, but I saw how amazing it looks and it was a clear competitor to the GOTY and they won, there is no negative thinking by me. Gaming is too big! I have shared my displeasure with Microsoft on many occasions, yet the Flight Simulator was a clear win and they won other items too and they will win more over time (until Microsoft is speculatively no more). You see the wins are not Sony, or Microsoft. These wins are made by dedicated people at Sony and Microsoft. Which Sony seemingly has more of at present. I like the reference to the Gaming Oscar’s, but there is a hidden flaw. A decade ago when Microsoft and Sony were on par, the games were better, now that is seemingly no longer the case. Microsoft games are too often makers like Ubisoft who are everywhere. Yet, we cannot discount Microsoft yet. With Fable, Starfield, The outer worlds 2 and an allegedly new Forza, there is every chance that Microsoft will win big in 2023. I like that idea, because it means that Sony will have to go full throttle in 2023 and 2024. When these two fight, the gamer wins and that is how I like it, gamers winning. So the chalice of achievement might be with Sony in 2022, but there is no assurance that they will get 2023 as well. It makes for great gaming years for all gamers, which is what I particularly like.

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December 11, 2022 · 00:00

When it rains we call the kettle black

Yup an amalgamation of expressions and in this case it is a little more applicable than expected. You see a mere 11 hours ago I wrote in ‘Ruler of law goes metric’ “should the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia want it and limit the shipments of Crude Oil by an additional mere 1 million barrels a day, the US will explode in a stage of anarchy” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/12/10/ruler-of-law-goes-metric/) and 7 hours ago we get from the ABC ‘China promises to buy more Middle East oil, urges Arab leaders to replace the dollar with yuan’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-10/china-xi-promises-to-buy-more-mideast-oil/101757852), it isn’t a victory when the nightmare scenario starts, but this is what the US was facing all along. Several world leaders learned the hard way what happens when you start wars on multiple fronts. People like Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler and Wilhelm 2 all learned that lesson the hard way. Now that the US has a stage with Russia, it had to play nice with Chine to some extent, but it was already too late. Huawei was fresh in China’s memory and the US did NEVER EVER produce clear reports of the dangers that Huawei was. They got tools to make similar claims and none of them produced evidence. Now China sees a way to get back at the US. You see, if China buys 2 million barrels a day the American goose will be cooked within 2 months in the middle of winter no less. This is part of the horrific result of giving Wall Street free rein and now there is no second stage, no escape. The US had clear options a year ago, now not that much and the few they have they are squandering on the wrong priorities. And it is a mere 42 minutes ago when China and Saudi Arabia signed a strategic deal, which now implies that Huawei would get free rein on technology adaption for the Line, that straight building that goes through Saudi Arabia and optionally a lot more in Neom. Did you really think I was out of my mind when I was willing to sell my 5G to Saudi Arabia? This is happening a year earlier than expected, but no one saw the Ukrainian war happen and even less saw it excelarate the way it did in the end. Now China has the option to make the impressions in Saudi Arabia and optionally soon in Egypt as well. I saw this coming and no one believed me, but there is a lot more to Neom than most see, because the US media kept on belittling it and now as the truth comes out we see knee jerk reactions and large claims of miscommunications, and that is not all, if the Yuan will be accepted as currency, the Yuan will get a tour of the Middle East and Africa giving a slam against the power of the Dollar. Now, that does not mean that the dollar ends, but there will be an impact and the dollar will take a hit. All this to a larger effect because certain people relied on ego and not on facts or true innovation. Feel free to read the article (at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20221210-saudi-arabia-and-huawei-sign-strategic-deal/) with the added quote “The Saudi Press Agency (SPA) also reported that Chinese and Saudi companies had signed 34 investment agreements in clean energy, information technology, cloud computing services, transportation, construction and other sectors. The agency did not issue figures for the deals but confirmed earlier that the two countries would sign initial agreements worth $30 billion.” It seems to be a simple claim that might not go anywhere, yet the adaptation for net zero carbon data centre’s in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and optionally two additional places are now supporting that my initial IP had a lot more power in Saudi Arabia than even I suspected and this also elevates the options that the Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) has in several places. What was an optional annual revenue of $763 million could start with an 800% growth and leading to well over twice that amount in less than 5 years. Should these data centres become reality than there is a clear case that these centres will be bought by European players, they would not have a choice in the matter and the US claim of danger to national security will not go anywhere, they played that card already. So when it rains, it pours as well as the interaction of the pot calling the kettle black. Two players that were ready and the others were not. 

It is in the end merely that simple.

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December 10, 2022 · 11:33

Ruler of law goes metric

Yes, we all have settings that are part of us, for the most the rule of law is accepted by nearly all. But when do we realise that it is not that simple? There is the notion that this rule of law has an Imperial and a metric setting and that is the core of what we face today. I got my view from the Canadian CBC (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-khashoggi-lawsuit-dismissed-1.6676798). There we get ‘U.S. judge dismisses lawsuit against Saudi prince over Khashoggi killing’, s0 at what point does the US set the stage for events that took place in an alleged Saudi environment in Turkey no less? Lets look at the simple facts, Jamal Khashoggi is as far as I can tell a Saudi dissident, not an American citizen and I do not care what was planned. It never got to be. This person has gotten more ‘alleged’ assistance in a month than most American citizens have seen in a decade. Then we are given “U.S. District Judge John Bates suggested he was reluctant to throw out the lawsuit but had no choice given the Biden administration’s decision.” And I will get back to this in a moment. We are also given “Khashoggi was killed and dismembered in October 2018 by Saudi agents in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul” which is the supporting lie. You see, his body was never found, there is absolutely no evidence that he was dismembered, or killed. For all we know he is spending the rest of his days with his new mistress of 19 years old in a luxurious hotel on Bora Bora. It is equally speculative, is it therefor more wrong?

And we do take notice of “Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice said in a November court filing that the Biden administration had determined that Prince Mohammed, “as the sitting head of a foreign government, enjoys head of state immunity from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts as a result of that office.”” It is the stage that was always going to happen, there was no evidence of any kind, mere speculation and Daily Mail categorised forms of speculated innuendo that never goes anywhere. Lets be clear, I cannot prove the innocence of certain people, but I cannot prove their guilt either and a person is innocent until proven guilty. That is the law and there is no metrical version of that, it is imperial, it is black letter law and that is what the law is. The media wants you to forget this so that they can cater to the digital dollar a little longer. And you are the tool they are using for that. In the mean time Jeff Bezos (via Andy Jassy) denied himself an annual 6 billion and change going up to close to $30 billion in full deployment mode. This is the damage Amazon did to themselves and it is fine by my book, although a little less nice as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia decided not to buy it either. My loss and I get that. But below all this is a stage where the US is in a lot more problem. You see, they desperately need the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia assist them with cheap oil and I have stated this before. Why would they do that? The US has proven themselves to be a fleeting and unreliable ally to say the least. Do not take my word for that, look at the victims in Yemen and Syria and ask yourself, what did the US achieve? Close to nothing and now that they are at the abyss, the hangman’s rope has a very uncomfortable feeling. And as I see it, should the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia want it and limit the shipments of Crude Oil by an additional mere 1 million barrels a day, the US will explode in a stage of anarchy, just before Christmas and that realisation is at stake. The US overplayed its hand for at least two years and now we see that anarchy could become the turnstile of events. So do not think this is something that President Biden started. This is the stage 4 previous administrations colluded under (sort of) and yes, former president Trump might be the only one trying to turn it around but it would have been too little and optionally too late too. The previous congresses made sure of that. They were all too ego driven to see that impact grow and grow. And before you consider the immense state of “Khashoggi had criticised the crown prince’s policies in Washington Post columns. He had travelled to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain papers he needed to marry Cengiz, a Turkish citizen.” You see the US had the option to make him a citizen from 2017 onwards but they chose not to do that (optionally it was in the hands of Khashoggi). So for over a year there was a stage where he had the option to make a change, optionally the US intelligence office could have prevented it if there was a voice, but there wasn’t one. This implies (to me) that there was no real warning, no real danger which now sheds a light on a lot of issues and it does not look good for the US. Hiding behind some metric version of the law was never going to work well and I have highlighted close to half a dozen issues from the beginning and the fictional book of Blood and Oil merely worked for my case. When you see all these articles, all these media evidence and it comes with words like ‘alleged’ and ‘could have’, how wrong do you think I am? 

It is sad watching governments trying to cater to ego and to the clear need of a commodity that their non-allies have, it is a pathetic view and it is not getting better any day soon.

I will let you investigate that, just be sure you rely on the sources you can rely on.

 

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December 9, 2022 · 22:04

Slapping Fortnite

Yup, it happens and I have with some expectation of entertainment slapped them in the past myself. But this is different and I am not in agreement. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63911176) gives us ‘Children stopped sleeping and eating to play Fortnite – lawsuit’, as I personally see it, a debatable article and the BBC knows this, because there is no journo name here. You see, there are a few elements missing and anyone with half a bran knows this. When we see “One of the children cited in the lawsuit played over 7,700 hours of the game in less than two years. The legal action claims the game was deliberately developed to be “highly addictive”.” The first question I have is “How do you program a game to be additive?” It is a serious question. Every game designer would like to know. The second question is that the equation gives us that this child had to play over 10 hours EVERY day to get past that point for two years. So where were the parents? You want to hand this to Epic and not hand any responsibility to the parents? And the one element they all ignore (even the lame journalist) is the fact that peer pressure is a real thing and that is set in stone. More importantly, the parents have to shield these kids from peer pressure. I see nothing of that here either. 

Now I am all for slapping greed driven Epic Games, but lets do that for the right reasons, and lets give some responsibility to the parents in this equation. And the clear stage of “their children would forgo sleeping, eating and showering because they were hooked on the game.” Hands a portion of that blame and the issues surrounding them to the parents, where are the parents in this equation? Anyone with half a brain will miss them too.

Lets be clear, I am not claiming Epic is innocent, but I believe that there are a massive amount of questions and as such Epic is entitled to some support and I am happy to give it, even as I mostly dislike Epic Games with a passion. But I do believe that fair is fair and we need to start with that in mind. I reckon that the legal team and its fearless leader (CLO of Epic Games) will take a serious look at both the parents and peer pressure, two elements that are clearly in the top-line of the equation and the BBC made sure it never got mentioned. I will leave it to you to wonder why.

Enjoy the day wherever you are. 

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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. 

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