April 15, 2022 · 03:31

Abbreviations

We all see them, we all use them and we all think we use the same ones. Yet when we take a look at ‘Games as a Service (GaaS) Market to See Huge Growth by 2028 | Netflix, Microsoft, Sony’ (at https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/games-as-a-service-gaas-market-to-see-huge-growth-by-2028-netflix-microsoft-sony) we see a decent story and it all seems to fit, yet when we see the list “The study includes market share analysis and profiles of players such as Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT, Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, Activision Blizzard, Sega, Electronic Arts & Ubisoft” with the optional ‘attached sample PDF’ did you think you were getting the goods, or did you think you were catered to with “If you are a Games as a Service (GaaS) manufacturer” and at every turn you are seeing the mention of ‘digital journal’. So what gives? Well in the first instance this Games as a Service ploy is that, a ploy (for now) and it sets the largest upheave long before 2028. The largest settings will come to blow in 2024/2025. And the entire station of market share sets a longer approach. You see, there is still no way to see where Netflix is going at present. Their ‘stated’ indications are nice, but when you also hear sounds like “Research firm Ampere isn’t convinced that subscription services like Game Pass are taking over gaming.” We need to realise we are hearing merely one voice, and I get it, but it is the setting of what some call ‘dog eat dog’ that matters. Microsoft, Ubisoft, Netflix and EA will head for a fight, a fight for population and subscribers. Some have advantages, some have potential overzealous fans and some have merely hope. The issue is that these players will fight EACH OTHER for market share. And yes some of the mentioned players are all Microsoft, but that does not make Microsoft the larger player, it makes for a splintered one and in the end they all fight for ones self. Sony and Tencent have their own worries. They are both a lot stronger, but there is a station that polarisation will happen by 2025 and these two will have the numbers and the share. The second issue is not merely the setting here.

Consider the following names Games as a Service, Games as a System, Software as a Service, Systems as a Service, and all this before we consider Function as a Service (FaaS), Container as a Service (CaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) and it is more than some ‘hyped’ and quick mention of names towards a category. The larger stage becomes when the players start mixing the terms to get the audience to ‘flip’ in space to be part of such a community. It sounds nice, but it is not, it merely makes the water muddy. Tencent and Sony are not part of this because they have a setup, they have the setup, the hardware and the population, more important they are not in each others way. You see Ubisoft is on its way out, that much has been visible for almost two years. When Ubisoft did not deliver on quality they were going for their GamePass approach and they are coming up short, now that they are all over Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and the consoles they are merely running a steeplechase of patch after patch and they are coming up short per game and per system and it is taking it toll. To get ahead of the game they need near flawless games. Three at the least and they need them before 2023 and that is not in the cards, so they are merely one bad release away from death. EA has its own following and it is a decent following, but their games have issues, larger issues, not deadly ones, but serious ones. The problems for EA is to manage service levels to a higher standard and they seem to come up short (for now), their largest issue is clear communication and to FOCUS on games, one at a time to make them all better, more stable and less ‘issue prone’ that part is hard but doable. If their board does not fold under pressure from the other dogs they could be in a good place by 2024. By that time EA and Microsoft will be contemplating what to do with Ubisoft, because it is too far behind. At that same time Tencent and Sony will have the advantage and neither will have a clue where Nintendo will be, because if Games as a Service becomes a thing, Nintendo will be the quiet one gathering population with a strong system. Microsoft might want to trivialise them away but the rest will not. They lack the larger station that Sony and Tencent has, but Nintendo is creeping up on them and this article has no mention of Nintendo, do they? Yet by 2025 Nintendo will be a powerhouse and Netflix is nowhere near ready to take on the large three players. Microsoft is about buying whatever is out there, but from the 90’s onwards that approach has been devastating on all who attempted it. Yes, it makes for headlines but it lacks results and that is what we have been seeing for a little too long with Microsoft. It cannot maintain its posture in the current setting and when it starts its GamePass as collateral for population, we are more than likely get to see the downturn of it all and it does reflect my position of ‘dog eat dog’.

And these are the players vying for the attention of the gamers, all whilst they cannot decide who is the better provider or what gamers actually want and there too the big three (Sony, Tencent and Nintendo) will have the advantage. The problem I see is that a lot of this will be decided long before 2028 and in all this Amazon is not mentioned either. They too have a stake and could become on of the big four leaving Microsoft in fifth place at best and that is if everything goes their way, which so far has not be the case. And whilst most of them are hiding behind abbreviations the big four (Tencent, Sony, Nintendo and Amazon) will grow its population and cater to the one element that was central in all this, the gamer, not the process.

That is my issue with this article, that was my issue with some of the players. They stopped catering to the GAMER and started to cater to the image of SELF. I will let you make up your mind. There is time, this does not need to polarise in any one brain for at least a year. The largest game in all this are the players and the game they play, not the games they produce that too is an advantage the big three have over the other players at present. 

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April 14, 2022 · 02:51

Directions

We all do this, we take a direction, we choose a heading and most of us do it for emotional and sentimental reasons. I am no different. Yes, I still enjoy every moment in Horizons: Forbidden West. I hope I will enjoy Hogwarts Legacy well over half that much (more is always good). I try to have a realistic mind and the movie of Hogwarts Legacy blew me away, as it did most of us. Yet, some of us also hope for other IP to be made into games. Some go nuts for Marvel or DC games. Some of us love the Lego games. Yet I wonder what is possible if someone takes a gander and grabs a series like the Magicians, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica into a game. Hogwarts and the writings of JK Rowling shows that there is massive appeal in the arcane. As such the writings of Lev Grossman could make for one hell of a game. Babylon 5 always had its own following and 5 seasons as well as a few movies opens the doors to a larger game. And there is a benefit to a space station. The same could be said for the Galactica, but I wonder what happens when we try to set a much larger station by opening the gameplay on a dozen worlds. A game that covers Icarus, Picon, Caprica, Gemenon, Tauron, Leonis, Virgon, Libran, Scorpia, Sagittaron, Aerilon, Aquaria and Canceron. A game that is too big for consoles, but not for streamers. All options that are forsaken, overlooked or just too big to contemplate. That last reason is a decent one. It is one hell of a challenge to get one world done right, to get 12 done good would be folly and I recognise that. A state of gaming we sometimes overlook. Just like the hungry man whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. In the latter case we waste some money on food we never had and that is OK, when you make a game and you make THAT much of an oversight bankruptcies start, so the game needs to be played careful and cautious. I get that, but if we always play it safe a game like The Darkness on Xbox360 would never have been a reality. A game that scored 82% (better than some Ubisoft games). There are other games with that setting and they were good games. Some would state not great games and I could go along with that. There are other games that scored not as much and were great games to play. So I am at time cautious on looking too hard at some rating. A game is what captures us, and for different people it is a different game. It was different with the approach for 50,000,000 consoles, which is weirdly enough based on small numbers, because it has never been done before. And if one program can lead there, what else are designers not looking at? I made the mistake of listening to the wrong people when I had my idea for Facebook 4 years before Facebook. Now, my version was not as slick, not as good looking and limiting, but I was ahead by 4 years. I will never do that again. I will go my own way and for now I have 5G IP in directions no one considered, optionally with extensions in several directions. A lot of them based on seeing the plans of Neom (Saudi Arabia). I came up with the IP for streaming consoles in a direction NO ONE considered. And it is ready for development. And the game is not even close to over. Only a few days ago it gave pressure to another IP, an IP no one seems to be considering and I reckon it could amount to billions, but it will not be overnight. A simple thought brought it to the top and in that same light I want to be positive on the IP of a TV series, a mini series and a movie, but they are not the real moneymakers, they are there for my ego (I think). And that is for some the rub. They are all about the profit, optionally the Adobe solutions that will bring Microsoft to their knees, but I believe that the small gains of TV ideas are no less than the other much larger amounts. The creator believes in his creations, not the value it represents. It is a path the creator walks and he (or she) hopes to see all the sideways that are connected to it, or the hope that new sideways are opened because of one IP. I believe that this happened in one case, but not in all cases. And there are other considerations. In my case Ego is one situation. I considered the evolution of the Amazon Luna, giving it all kinds of side uses, for the mere reason that Sony left them on the side and I want to be there to pick it up before Microsoft does. I want to make sure that they are seen as copycats, a former titan that is now merely a follower, not a leader, no matter what their marketing department advertises, but you saw that, did you not? ‘The most powerful console in the world’ is a considered statement of fact, but the fact that it was surpassed by the weakest console of them all is regularly overlooked. A stage that we ignore because some want us to overlook it and through that we overlook a lot more. But I do not mind, as I am alone on a path gives light to other options and it take one (not Microsoft) to take that jump and see their portfolio of revenue grow and when that does, the rest will sell itself. And when that happens my ego will be happy and shouting with glee showing all what Microsoft left in the dust and that was before the previous article where I saw more parts and places that Microsoft left lying on the floor, all ready for Adobe to pick up and make a move on what should now be considered a mediocre solution no one needs anymore and as people seek deep within ones self, they will understand that ‘They are the only advanced solution’ is no longer good enough and when that changes Microsoft loses the field on a 4th tier. They lost gaming to Nintendo and Sony, they never achieved anything in Tablets (Apple), they are a browsers joke (Google) and they will lose even more to Meta and they are about to be surpassed in streaming consoles by Amazon who also surpassed them on Cloud computing (Amazon AWS) and that is when their office solution passes over to Adobe, they will be the loser of the decade and I cannot wait to see those articles make headlines way too late. Microsoft took a direction to a cull de sac in a place no one wants to be all whilst others copied their failings. 

And I am so close to the victory I dreamt of, I can almost taste it, whether I get my IP sold or not, I will be around to see Microsoft fall to such a degree that the media can no longer ignore what has been in front of them for years. And when the people catch on the mess will be complete. 

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April 13, 2022 · 19:55

Inclination of letters

We tend to act in certain ways. I am no exception (as you are about to find out). Yet, before we have a go at the BBC and another go at the ICIJ, lets take another look at how Microsoft has FAILED its audience. Now, this is not out in the open and I do not really reveal what has happened, but I am making a jab at it as it will set fortunes to Adobe and this is for their eyes only. So, there I was watching several presentations in the last 24 hours (from several sources) and something occurred to me, it was the third time when I heard something. My mind started to race and suddenly I wondered why Microsoft had left all this in the open, unsolved, unattended for a DECADE. It was so out in the open that I was wondering what on earth they were doing. Yes, their 365 solution is all about making sure their customers pay, and that I fine, but to leave gaps in their office solution out in the open for over a decade, how stupid is that. Yet, no fears. Adobe will fill up that hole nicely with their adjusted suite of programs which will start a new age in corporate needs and Microsoft will be looked at with the look of ‘How could you have been this stupid to such a degree?’ Yet I will not care, I will be giggling in a corner. Watching the wannabe’s seek jobs and seek solutions. 

So now we get to the main event. It is the BBC article ‘Hidden wealth of one of Putin’s ‘inner circle’ revealed’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61028866). There is so much wrong here, I almost do not know where to start, so the beginning it is. 

We see from the start “They reveal how a Swiss tattoo artist was falsely named as owner of a company that transferred over $300m (£230m) to firms linked to Suleiman Kerimov. They also show how $700m of transactions – and the secret ownership of luxury properties – went undetected. The investigation exposes failures of the banking system and the obstacles impeding Western sanctions.” It sounds nice, it really does. But lets take a closer look, shall we? 

“Transactions worth $700m linked to Suleiman Kerimov and his closest business associates were reported as suspicious by banks between 2010 and 2015” So was anything done? Were ACTUAL crimes committed? ‘Suspicious’ is merely a word that shows no side towards legality. Then we get “Swiss accountant Alexander Studhalter posed as owner of properties actually owned by Mr Kerimov” So were laws broken? Was anything illegal done? The BBC shows itself to be as big a loser as the ICIJ shown it is. And when we get “Mr Kerimov was the secret owner of properties on the French Riviera and in London, including the most expensive terraced property ever sold in the UK” we see again the small setting ‘If he was a real secret owner, how did they find out?’ But the larger stage is whether LAWS were broken. The BBC does not really inform us of this, do they? They merely illuminate how useless journalists have become. Who is Suleiman Kerimov? I actually do not care. He is not part of my life, I never expect that to happen. But the BBC, the player claiming to be so trustworthy, where are they? Where is the list of broken laws? Where is the EVIDENCE showing us that laws were broken in Switzerland, the UK, and France? We can grasp at the Oligarch foundation all we want, but if we are a nation of laws we need to be shown the laws that were optionally (and allegedly) transgressed upon. So when we are finally given “Experts say Western countries have a lot of work to do because, for years, they have taken a lax approach to the fight against dirty money and failed to hold banks to account.” We see a clear path to something I have been stating for DECADES. Internationally tax laws need to be overhauled and politicians were lax, politicians were all about inaction and now we see the BS tap turned open all whilst we are not given the real deal. What laws were transgressed upon? I reckon that the answer will be none. I cannot tell because I am not a lawyer, I am not a tax lawyer and I am not an attorney. I have my Master of Intellectual property and when (or if) Amazon (or Google) buys my IP, my ship will arrive and I can retire nicely. Yet in this I have questions and the BBC answers none of them, so when we are finally given “In 2020, Swiru Holding accepted its involvement in evading the tax and was fined €1.4m and made to pay another €10.3m to settle the case. Mr Kerimov’s lawyer put out a statement saying that the French courts had “officially dismissed the allegations made by the former Nice Prosecutor against Suleiman Kerimov of having carried out money-laundering operations.”” We basically see a fine less then €12,000,000 for avoiding a taxable amount of €127,000,000 so as it seems crime pays and that is the part we do get to see. So when we are given how $700m of transactions were seemingly ‘undetected’ were laws broken? We are shown the transgression of 20% which was dealt with, but we have no information on the large amount and whether laws were broken. How come? We are given “The transaction was just one in a series of wire transfers carried out from 2010 to 2015 totalling $700m reported to US authorities as suspicious”, yet there is a large gap between ‘suspicious’ and ‘criminal’ and neither the ICIJ or the BBC give us anything on that, merely the alleged indignation. So is the BBC as useless as the ICIJ is showing itself to be? That is my question and I feel that this is not on James Oliver, Nassos Stylianou or Steve Swann. I believe that it is Francesca Mary Unsworth, chief editor of BBC News that needs to come forward and do some explaining on what should be seen as reporting and what should be seen as trivial filtering of news. 

I will let you decide what is what, but I reckon that the entire ICIJ mess needs a long hard look by a few people in all kinds of business walks.

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April 12, 2022 · 23:42

Like a whisper

My mind took me back to the first dream (that I described in ‘Elements of whatever’ yesterday). It was the setting and the setting was incomplete. I saw the two lanes, like esplanades going over the length of the town, parallel, but the road furthest away from the gorge was higher. Both streets had an abundance of tavern like cafe’s. There were all kinds of small shops in between, some selling books, some sold knick knacks and they were always next to a tavern. Filled with people talking, chatting and various kinds of idle conversations. The tables had coffee, they had some kind of wine, but much sweeter like grape juice. Fruity. People were having snacks, mostly breadsticks, some peppered. And I saw a boy run calling for its mother. At first I thought it as me, but my mother died decades ago. The road went on and swivelled towards houses, dozens of houses. Some look like log cabins, most looked like old fashioned French stone houses. Like they were build in the 18th century. The view was magnificent, like an image of Chicken Itza, but no ruins in the background. No roads and no noise. That was the missing part, the part of the noise that is at present EVERYWHERE. It took me a long time to figure it out. The zeppelins are not merely methods of moving, they are the only ones who can move there. Like Asia and South America. The people (the wealthy ones) had enough of the pollution, the seas washing the land away and the people hindering them. I wonder if this is part of Keno Diastima? It is possible, but I cannot tell at present. The land in some places will truly gain value. Land that is now seen as worthless, but it has something high priced land does not. It has CLEAN AIR, and it lacks people. Gated communities that cannot be reached by anything else than a zeppelin. Planes cannot land there, ships cannot get close and car cannot reach these places. The ultimate gated community. Places where there is no fear of war as it I away from everything the greed driven desire, certain players have removed themselves from the game and they are living out there lives surrounded by the things they care for. A book, a drink and a conversation with like minded people.

So what is this a part of? 

I am not certain yet, but if I am correct, these places will come up like mushrooms. Gated places protected and absent of what some would call the Riff-raff. Crime is dealt with directly and with deadly force, these people paid for protection and anyone stupid enough to try their luck will find themselves dealt with like the pirates of old.

It is a larger setting and it is a setting that is highly speculative, not real, optionally the setting of a story, but consider the places. Warm places where heating is not needed. Enough light to fuel solar banks and the zeppelins bring provisions and people. A new iteration of cogs, isolated from all the other worries. Some villages in tropical places and some in places where people enjoy the snow, absent of a lot of people. Can you honestly say that in a place with 8,000,000,000 that they all enjoy each others company? 

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April 12, 2022 · 05:30

Elements of whatever

Another dream, but this time it I different. I had part of this dream before. It did not make sense then and it does not now. Now is even more confusing. The stage is two fold. First the now, because I fear it will leave my mind quickly. I am not sure if it is for. Story, a script, a game or just isolation. I am at the transfer of Dutch KLM. The KLM desk is for a different plane, much larger. There is a PX store. I show a regimental image. I want that shield. I mention that a friend was there. The PX store shows me some wannabe self centred piece of crap. He states to me that the commander of that battalion was a traitor and as such he refuses to give me the shield. OK, I respond, I will talk to the press and ask for clarifications. The man signals another. That man tells me to come with him, with his hand menacing in the jacket. I was holding orange peels from an Orange I just ate. I squeeze them and the peels spray. I merely say ‘Biological!’ And I am gunned down. 

The event is trivial. I suddenly remember the boarding area, almost like a rocket launch from another dream. I pretended to be diplomatic staff. The plane seemed weirdly large. I have been on 747-400, this seemed a lot larger. In the previous flight it was from somewhere in Asia to South America. This I do not know. But the plane stuck. The boarding area stuck. The story seems to matter, there seems to be levels of arrogance, levels of over the top elevation in the boarding areas and it was all linked to Dutch KLM planes. Even now I am starting to remember other elements of the previous dream. The walls were like glass when I looked at them with glasses. They were from some metal. The plane was almost like a Hindenburg on steroids. The plane was like a small town. Like the shop area on a passenger liner. Rooms with chairs, two wide, by the windows, overlooking where we flew. In the Asian part it was overlooking beautiful green forests, mountains and a lot of oceans. It all seemed so peaceful. There are remembrance moments of ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ a who dunnit game based on a zeppelin. I wrote about that in ‘Shadows are Us’ (and a few other places), in this setting I wrote about a change to gaming (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/05/31/shadows-are-us/) which I wrote about n May 2021. This is not entirely the same. My mind is wondering if a return to the days of the zeppelin is too wrong a concept. The idea was abandoned during the marshmallow clambake of May 6, 1937, when the Hindenburg burned down. But that was in the era of Hydrogen, later we got Helium, but the need for speed overshadowed everything. Now, in a stage when we can ALWAYS be connected, we can work everywhere. Is speed really essential? We can all understand that we need presence in places at times. But how we get there is another matter. With the era of 3d printing, light weight shops and a more essential setting of what matters during flights, Consider the image below and the way the materials were made. 

newspaper clipping (date unknown) Diagram of Hindenburg living quarters.

Now we can have twice the strength at only half the weight making a zeppelin much more effective. The top of the zeppelin could have large solar cell panels fuelling batteries and the propellors pushing the zeppelin forward. Did anyone reconsider what a Zeppelin could achieve, especially with todays abilities? Even now Titanium is heavier than aluminium, yet you need a lot less Titanium to get the same strength as Aluminium. The stage is all over and the need for a reduced carbon print (or was that a bacon foot print) is out there. So why do we not look at the old ides and how we can offer a renewed idea for getting to places. It is just an idea and it was in parts fuelled by a game as well as its optional newly launched version on Amazon Luna, but I am genuinely surprised that no one has taken up the baton, why is that? I am no airplane designer, so why is this path abandoned? 

There might be reasons that mediocre me had not considered, I am willing to accept that, but the dream was weird and it came twice around. Even now the first dream comes back in waves even as the second one faded away. 

So is Helium a solution, or merely an element of whatever and no one gives a fig? I honestly do not know, but I do really like the idea of a steampunk version of the Zinderneuf, I really do.

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April 11, 2022 · 20:27

It started with Z

Yes, it all started with ‘ZZZZZ’, it was weird in a few ways. I kept on dreaming the same dream, I kept on looking at the same stage, an empty stage. Then there were a few people, but that stage changed, it changed again and again and returned to the initial stage with the same people. It is all I can say on that. The dream faded within minutes andI can remember that it had something to do with a Zombie apocalypse, not really my favourite subject. I remember a few games in that series. All relying on advertisements and microtransactions. That is not stated in any negative way. I am not against microtransactions, especially in a free game. But the mind started to wander. I had this thought before. I made reference to this in ‘As fiction becomes real’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/18/as-fiction-becomes-real/) which I wrote last October 18th. It was a decent idea and it could have a future. Especially if the stream systems grow up and grow smart fast. You see, it is not an issue if we have microtransactions. But the replayability is low to non-existent. I addressed a few sides there and opted for a few possibilities that allows for a larger stage of replayability. Yet, I also remember the stage of ‘preparation’ that we see in Bethesda games by loading a person with specific S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills or elder scrolls abilities. So what happens when that is not possible? What if we set the stage to a random person? Optionally a random gender as well? Would the game suddenly be ‘unplayable’ or will the gamer rise to the occasion? It cannot be the gender. Lara Croft, Aloy, and many others preceded this game. So gender is not the issue. What if we add to the challenge? What if there was some kind of zombie shelter? Some kind of bunker and we drench that stage in realism? Lets not forget that the challenge is to survive. How far would you get? The problem is that there needs to be mode’s, simple modes (where you can select all), hard mode where you can select little and insane mode where you have no choices, what the system gives you that is what you have to work with. There are some games like that, yet the larger games that ALL rely on microtransactions do not seem to have this, it is not their forte, and that is where the streamers (Google Stadia and Amazon Luna) could play a much bigger role. Yet there is an element missing, it is the educational side. Yes, going to was Playstation style is nice (not realistic but nice) and there we need to see what we can teach. You think that survival is fin, that is until you learn that food in finite, it needs time. And that is another setting. You might feel safe with an army around you, but they too need food and when food becomes scarce you will learn the hard way that you have yet to see a version of dog eats dog that you were not ready for. 

The problem, or the challenge becomes how to make it interesting without it being a steeple chase, or some floor is lava approach towards survival. Do not expect ll the answers here. I do not have all of them, but I can see the start of too many RPG games being too much alike and the play-through of most Bethesda games are too alike, we did that ourselves. It was not the fault of Bethesda. But what happens when you do not get that choice? What happens when the game is set to San Francisco, but that is all you know. You could start in Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, Tenderloin, or Glen Park. There is no chance that the same solution applies to all, there is merely the simple approach of common sense and to set a stage of survival and when we have this in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York or Chicago the game changes by a lot and that is the intent. You see, we look wrongly to these games. What if the map is separate from the game? We could use most of these maps in a dozen games. We merely need to think to a much larger stage. We need to walk away from one game and walk towards several games that have a map added to the entire stage. Consider that dozens of games are places in Los Angeles. So what happens when they all use the same map? Not some small time map, but the ACTUAL map of Los Angeles. Lets face it, for the most that place remained the same. So what happens when we add to that stage by adding cities and a game could be played in ANY of the cities? Consider Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Chicago? Consider that we can select the city for the next Call of Duty, Splinter cell, Terminator or Predator? There is no problem, it requires different programming, different triggers and the hardware and abilities are already there. Many are staring at Ubisoft+, but that is 10 years old programming. We need to adjust our sights to the programming of 2024. This is not the fault of Ubisoft, but the fact that they are seemingly not on top of this is odd, almost weird. Consider the Division, Splinter Cell, and Watchdogs. Is it not strange that they are not ahead of the rest? So why invest in 10 years old programming? Do not get me wrong. They brought us the tales of Ezio, they brought great games, yet with the exception of Watchdogs: Legion, it ended in 2017 with AC Origin. And it is time to break the mould and come with something totally new. I set several games in my blog and made them freeware for anyone making games for Amazon Luna, Google Stadia and Sony Playstation. It is time to give the streamers the substance that will drive the people to these solutions. And it should have been done a year ago. And this was not rocket science and as I give the impulse here, and as I gave the setting in 2021, is it not weird that no one picked up on that? (Guerrilla and Avalanche have a decent excuse) We see repetition of the same, drenched in microtransactions. And do you think that streaming people will accept microtransactions? 

I will let you decide for yourself.

 

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April 11, 2022 · 01:04

Can a chihuahua win?

It is what I stated before, Iran will poison the well and that is exactly what I am seeing now (well 5 hours ago). Reuters gives us ‘Iran wants U.S. to show goodwill by lifting some sanctions prior to nuclear deal’ (at https://www.reuters.com/world/china/irans-foreign-minister-says-biden-should-lift-some-sanctions-prior-nuclear-deal-2022-04-10/), yes, Iran always wants something up front, even though they lack credibility. So when we are given “On multiple occasions, we have told Americans they should bring forward one or two practical points prior to any agreement, for example by releasing some of Iran’s assets withheld in foreign banks,” Amirabdollahian added.” We know that we are being played, so what happens after? Just one little added thing, just one more altered state? They didn’t state it as part of the deal, no, they want it upfront. There is logic to that, but when you have no credibility you really do not have a chance. The question now is this game going to be decided by chihuahua’s in Washington DC who will come with the ‘excuse’ that it was for the good of the deal? And when Iran adds an item, or just one small addition, and at that point we see that the US has become the loser Iran expects the US to be. 

So what will happen? To be honest, I am not in the know so I can only speculate. And all this whilst we got a day before ‘Iran sanctions 24 US officials over ‘terrorism’ and rights abuses’ (source: Reuters) and that is the setting. It is not a prelude to any nuclear deal. It is a pissing match and Iran is hungry for any win it can get, at the expense of anything and that is the same nation we all give time and time again for it to complete its nuclear challenges. So when that happens. What will the US do? Impose sanctions? And now, should you wonder what Saudi Arabia and the state of Israel will do. I reckon that Saudi Arabia will rely on what military hardware China can deliver. Israel will not have that advantage, but the larger station is that the world is about to learn the hard way what inaction does to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. And when we see that evolve the hard way, we get to see what is left of the US and it’s inactivity. So feel free to oppose and reject my notion. It is fair to do so, as a lot of this is linked to speculation, but as events unfold, as events go ‘my’ way. Remember that this was about time, about stalling and I personally feel that Iran has been given enough stall time. 

Just my $0.02 on the matter.

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April 10, 2022 · 18:05

The ruse is on

I got the news, just like all of you. The news (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/09/rise-of-tiktok-why-facebook-is-worried-booming-social-app) gives us ‘The rise of TikTok: why Facebook is worried about the booming social app’. As I wrote in a previous article. Yes, Facebook might SEEM worried, but only until Meta fully launches. When that happens Meta is off to a multi billion per week start. Yes, TikTok does have the approaching edge and yes, they have a jump on places like YouTube that is the true nature of Innovation and TikTok was a true innovator. Google and Meta are seeing it is not some iterator and they are heading for deeper and larger revenues. I have an issue with “The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival.” There is a stage where this is true. I do not believe the Guardian is lying to you, it is setting. Stage of presumption and they are drawing out cause and effect. It is the “when both are predicted to take” that is interesting. You see this was ALWAYS going to happen. Google could never hold all the cards and take all the revenue, it is the nature of the beast. Then we are given “The company is winning the battle for the “sweet spot” of social media users, those in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic where Facebook is seeing its biggest declines, with parent company Meta trying to stem the exodus by attracting them to stablemate Instagram” a nice ploy, but the numbers are there, they are out in a much larger stage, yes Facebook is worried because the time line is shifting, they do not have the comfortable lead that they once had, but that does not matter. When Meta launches the advantage FOR Meta will be close to indescribable and until Hybrid launches (see another of my articles) they have the field, the whole field and nothing but the field. Absent of TikTok, absent of Google and absent of Microsoft. 

Meta has two other advantages, but I keep them for now, lets see how informative journo’s really are. I set the stage in one of my articles and I will pull them in when the news comes with some ‘exclusive’ months after my  article. The ruse is larger, the ruse is setting a stage of claiming worry, whilst there are a few really clever people out there (the US boy-scout department of digital information, aka NSA), they can clearly see what is out there and I reckon they merely see a temporary advantage for Chinese owned TikTok, it is what comes after that will change the board by a lot and there Meta will have years of advantage. YouTube will remain, they will lose some grounds, but when you have an app that was bought for in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and it will still be making $23.6bn in 2024, not a bad setting for Google. So the Ruse might be that TikTok is also making $23.6bn in 2024, but you would be wrong. When Meta does deploy the stage changes. From a Football field to an olympic aqua stadium and only Meta can swim, the rest will need time to learn to swim, to learn the streams of the aqua stadium and where the audience is at. All things Meta will know beforehand, all advantages that will keep them swimming for years, with well over $23.6bn uncontended until deep into 2027. That is the actual stage and even as the headline seems nice, yet it will be an inaccurate one. When Meta launches it will be the new thing, the new innovation and it will take a larger group of people years just to get their heads around what Meta deployed. That is the true setting and even as we expect a full deployment in 2023, we do not truly know until Meta sends out the invitations. So the ruse is nice, but that is all it was, merely ‘nice’

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April 9, 2022 · 22:22

Trust, who you gonna trust?

Trust is something that is always out there. Some give it, some give it a little too freely. This is not to be confused with loose women, they merely do not care who to trust, they want a good time and 99.9963% of the hetero sexual men out there agree with me (and loose women too). 

Yet, in gaming trust is a dangerous thing. To see this we need to take a gander. In the first to the setting of Microtransactions. I am not against Microtransactions, it is merely an addition to the game and it is not free. Some are $5, some are $50 (and some a hell of a lot more). I believe that a fool (or a dedicated fan) will spend what they can afford and sometimes a little more. It is hard to keep the dedicated fans and the fools apart, but that is a very subjective view. 

Some wanted to go out and get the $5 for swords in Assassins Creed on day one, because these people start the game with a 5/5/5 sword (if you played the game, it will make sense). To the credit of Ubisoft, they CLEARLY stated that this is an item that could be earned in the game, and it was. Just not in act1, scene 1 of the game. There are a few other settings too, but Ubisoft clearly stated that with any item bought, that if it was obtainable in the game, they would let us know. Well done Ubisoft (I kicked them often enough, the good sides should be shown too).

I never accepted the loot-box stage. You see, for it to be gambling you need to lose it all, without anything to show for it. And tell me have you ever opened a loot-box and got the following ultra rare card?

No, you did not. So loot-boxes are not gambling. Neither are microtransactions, and it needs saying. Stop complaining. Buy it, do not buy it, just stop bitching about it. Now, some games are clearly upfront about it. The Hogwarts Legacy makers have stated that the game will not have any microtransactions. A good choice! There are others who are not that ‘elevated’ I have heard and seen some news on Gran Turismo 7 and there is some mess out there on microtransactions. I am not judging at present as I know too little, today is not about it, but it is linked. 

You see, to consider that we need to take a look at Reuters. I wrote about this setting in a different way, but they cover what I wrote. So (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-gaming-collide-high-risk-play-to-earn-economies-2022-04-08/) we see ‘Crypto and gaming collide in high-risk ‘play-to-earn’ economies’ and there we see “The 28-year-old from Bangkok was playing Axie Infinity, one of a new breed of blockchain-based online games, dubbed “play-to-earn”, which blend entertainment with financial speculation. These games can make for lucrative businesses amid the hype around NFTs and virtual worlds, attracting millions of players plus billions of dollars from investors who see the games as a way to introduce more people to cryptocurrency.” This is nice, such a sweet way to set the stage to playing youngsters (age 28) and the lucrative stage of investors. But when you take a gander to what I wrote on March 15th in ‘When is a slot machine not one?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/15/when-is-a-slot-machine-not-one/) where I set the premise “The bottom of the slot machine fitted a credit card, some kind of crypto card. The slot machine also fitted USB-C sticks. The slot machine was a laundromat for crypto currency. And let’s face it, in todays world, who raises an eye on seeing a slot machine? I think my ‘associates’ had stolen a decent amount of crypto currency, which they laundered through the slot machines.” A stage where the slot machine becomes a cryptocurrency laundromat and the nice part is that it is also a slot machine and when the padlock is removed, it is merely a slot machine. The padlock was the second key of the chain to launder. You did figure that out, do you not? And even as I created some optional billion dollar IP (for Amazon) there is a much larger stage, because the current stage requires the oligarchs to launder whatever they can and there are solutions, some are not out in the open, but give it time. That need will surely come and my option is one that comes with the gamble option, launder the money or take a chance in gaining up to 75% in cryptocurrency by gambling. It will get the eyes of too many soon enough. 

My idea is clean, but some will subvert it, like some subverted the clean Mass Effect loot-boxes whilst they tried to fill their pockets. How long until someone figures out the 5G part that is NOT out in the open, until someone figures out its secondary stage? And all this is before the Hybrid era, the era that Meta will open up for EVERYONE. I wonder who will try to fill their pockets and how many will try to figure out something I put here months ago. I have time, I can wait, two of the events are now on 4Chan, so whomever breaks the codes has a clear path to a lot of revenue. I’d rather leave it out in the open for free than give it to some idiot at Microsoft. And if Google and Amazon do not want it? Then freeware it becomes. The person who is willing to destroy a thing, controls that thing. Ron Hubbard wrote that in the 70’s, the greed driven never understood it, for them it was always a  stage for compromise and negotiation. Lets all have some of it. Not me, I would rather see them squirm as a vagrant in agony than give in to the weak minded iterative spreadsheet users of this century. Let them return to the dust they came from.

So who you gonna trust? Trust and believe in yourself and only that. It is the stage that leaves wannabe friends outside. True friends will accept that and that is the difference.

P.S. I just finished my 2301st article, cool!

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April 9, 2022 · 01:43

Struggle

We all struggle, I am no different, but my struggle is not with the having of stuff, not with the acquisition. It is with creation. I create I keep on creating, yet I see not the reason why I do things. It is not to show me how more advanced I am, how much more perfect or better I am. I create games, stories, movies, TV series and software. Yet, I cannot see why I am doing it. A lot is here in this blog, I have no need for some of it but in the back of my mind, it seems to be about more, and I have no idea what the links are. I am in the dark about WHY I am creating stuff. Is it about old tech? The printable display is there, but I have no idea why I came up with it. The Giggle water (two days ago) is mere fun, to see any liquid infused with nitrous oxide that releases the gas from the liquid on consuming it is fun, but I do not see why my mind is going that way. I see the stage why I went for the 5G, I am a technologist after-all, the new stage of marketing makes sense. Preparing myself for a wave that is inbound and that makes sense. Yet all around it are iterations of innovations and they are linked somehow, but I cannot yet see why they are there. And my mind is screaming to know the why, at times it is deafening.

Is it some delusional part to show Ubisoft I am better than any of them? It seems stupid, Guerrilla Software and Avalanche Software are doing that just fine and I am nowhere near that good. I am for the most a storyteller. Is it part of any story I was creating? Keno Diastima is doing fine for now. The large lines of three seasons are done, the smaller stories of season one are coming along and the large jumps that make for Season 2, and Season 3 are basically done. The end of season 3 remains and open end to the story. I feel it is a better end than milking the idea. The shock stage is what needs to be. That is how I feel it needs to be. Then there is the mini series Residuam Vitam, It is still developing. Some of the storylines are set, are shaped, the involvement of others are coming and so far I left Anubis out of the equation, I need his involvement to be near stellar, but there are gaps in what I know of Anubis from History and from theology. There is a stage from Hades that is now shaping, yet there is  form of duality that I want to explore, but it needs to be defined and I am wondering how to go about it. The part of Meng Po is almost done, but I feel that it needs her personal drive there. There needs to be something that pushes her. I want it to reflect on Lady Meng Jiang, there is the part we see with “Lady Meng Jiang heard nothing after his departure, so she set out to bring him winter clothes. Unfortunately, by the time she reached the Great Wall, her husband had already died. Hearing the bad news, she wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed, revealing his bones.” It is a nice fitting part, a nice piece of a puzzle making an image, but I feel that the image I see is a little different. You see she kept on pouring soup like it was a solution, it was the path to someplace. A set of the mind, a set of pieces of a puzzle, but not the ones any story give me (the parts out in the open), it is possible that Chinese writings give me more, but I do not know Chinese. There is a place that those who give service embrace, but I always felt that Meng Po was doing it to keep ahead of something, to go towards someone and I believe that her path was not set to one person, it was more but I cannot answer it by ‘weaving’ my own tale. Like the story of a game shapes the way we think, the way we perceive and the way we react. Like the technology that opens what we can see and what we could get. These parts seem to be connected somehow. This is not the problem. I feel that I am missing a larger piece of a puzzle, but it is not an image. It is like the puzzle is not an image but a film reel, or there is a 3rd dimension component I cannot see at present. Is it an innovation that is yet to come? Perhaps that is what the mind struggles with? Like a stonemason who has his block of marble. He knows that three more pieces need to be removed, but he cannot see the three pieces. That is how it feels, but there is still another part, it is not as simple as three pieces, and that is where I struggle. It is like there is something just out of view, I see shimmers of what I am supposed to see, but that is as good as it gets. And there I struggle still.

We all do at times, it is what we want to achieve, it is why we want to achieve and for the creators it is not bout the money, it is about the creation, it is ego. I fought ego my entire life, I never accepted it within myself, but I have ego, we all do, the delusional ones think that they are above it, but they are not. In this I personally believe that Vladimir Putin is the latest folly of ego, it slapped him down and he remains in ‘hiding’. In his mind a two bit place like the Ukraine cannot stop the Russian bear and the fact that they did is scaring him, his own ego defeated him and it is more about defeat than anything else. If my ego is to be about success and not failure I need to push myself past ego, my struggle for me is real, I get that and that struggle is more than a fight, overcoming it will open doors to ideas. And that is where I find myself. What idea did my brain work out that I as a person cannot see yet? That is the struggle for me and you face your own struggles, we all do. It is how we go about our struggles, that sets the definition of success or defeat. I do not mind losing, but to be defeated by my own brain is weird. It is not sabotaging me, it is teaching me to look in other directions. I just have no idea in what direction I am supposed to look, lets face it, do you?

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