November 8, 2020 · 21:03

Reality helps out gaming

Yup, it happen, it is a little rare, but not unusual. So as I was setting the stage of a post apocalyptic game in Sweden, I was a little stuck. Yet reality was there to help me out. Yup, the Local SE newspaper gives us (at https://www.thelocal.se/20171101/why-sweden-is-home-to-65000-fallout-shelters) ‘Why Sweden is home to 65,000 fallout shelters’, we assuming that this is partially true, because 65,000 is a bit much, but it is something to work with, and as such we now have shelters, a lot of them, so the game is still in concept stage, but with that many shelters, the idea is starting and in this, Norway is helping out, they apparently have the Sentralanlegget (read: Central Facility). As such we now have a start and I am not one to be the minor, so I am setting the map stage from Alesund (Norway), to Sundsvall (Sweden) and the map is everything south of there, so it is a huge map. Instead of travelling everywhere, the stage would be that you get to chose the top of person you are and from the you wake up in a place (somewhere), and that age is the beginning. I have a few twists in mind, but it will include seeking strawberries on Gotland (the Swedish readers will get this). 

I will not give away the whole enchilada, because the gamer needs a surprise or two, but I want to set the stage where permadeath will make the game a lot more challenging (yet not essential), in addition to that with Oslo, Goteburg, Malmo and Stockholm in play, we have a lot more to see and to do. Yet it all started with one shelter and as we have no idea where we are, the sage is set for RPG, mystery and a whole dose of challenges. 

Wow, that took mot of the day to think this through, but I was hindered by the fact that Fallout is a really good product and I wanted to avoid the overlap, it cannot be completely avoided, but it can be minimised to the least and that is how I went to work. 

In this, the stage was about setting a new game based on a foundation that we have seen dozens time over from the C64 up to the current generation of consoles. 

So the news in the Local dot se was really a nice find, they give us “The country is home to around 65,000 bunkers, fit to host seven million people in the event of war, and an official report has now advised the government to start building more, following a 15-year pause”, implying that every bunker is for around 100 people, that is something we can work with. If the bunker is too big, it might not be operable with one person, with 100 that is still a risk, but a lot less likely. With that starting point, the stage is set for a story, because as I said before ‘the story is everything’, and in that resetting stage we see a larger need to find, to travel and to achieve. 

And the timing is right, some sources are confirming the fears I had regarding AC Valhalla, I will not give them here, because I would merely be repeating their reviews (read: rants). I have not seen it, and mot of the evidence has (as I suspect) been based on previous (pre gold edition) alpha’s and beta’s. So I will wait and take another look in 32 hours when the game becomes available. I know a person who is getting the game and I am not willing to spend a nickel on it (at present), I can wait for Black Friday and get it at 25%-50% of retail value. The other thing is that I am still playing Watchdogs: Legion. Now, that game has a few issues, but it is definitely a step up from one and needs you to engage in more sneak than number two demanded. It can be a good thing depending on your view on what hackers do. Yet there is little to no question, Watchdogs is a decent hit (it is better than a lot of other Ubisoft titles), even as Eurogamer gives us ‘Watch Dogs Legion review – a bleak and buggy retread of Ubisoft’s formula’, I particularly liked “Legion is too terrifyingly real, and just a tad too grim. I doubt the very real climate in the UK is helping much – which clearly isn’t Ubisoft’s fault – but I usually play games to escape the ills of Westminster, not to be smacked over the head by them. I appreciate that terrorist attacks and food banks and too many homeless people add a frosty layer of authenticity to this fictional vision of the capital, and I know this isn’t Ubisoft’s fault, either, but good grief, it’s depressing to recognise so many signs of a fictional dystopia from your local real-life news reports”, perhaps after the American President events it is a little too real, but that too adds to the positive, the hackers and their need to act. The ‘frosty layer of authenticity’ is as I see it positive, not negative. It is about hackers for a reason. Yes the game has issues, but nothing that will break the bank or glitch into reset. In some cases a better description (read: rant) might have been the solution, but such is life. 

Overall, after playing for a while, I do not disagree with “it will eventually grow stale as missions rarely deviate from this template”, yet as a hacker I signed up for the, did I not? Not to get shot in the face when a hacker should have far too little firearms experience against Albion special forces. So the article (at https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-11-03-watch-dogs-legion-review-a-bleak-and-buggy-retread-of-ubisofts-formula) is good, yet I feel that there is a setting that is partially overlooked. Yet I do understand and like the words Vikki Blake give us “Watch Dogs Legion is dark and unpleasant in more ways than one, and it doesn’t matter how many protagonists a game boasts if you’re unable to care about a single one of them”, it is an eye of the beholder view, agree or disagree, it is up to you. That part matters, because Ubisoft got a small reprieve, if AC Valhalla is near perfect they get a shot to survive, if not they might end up being part of Microsoft too. Microsoft is unlikely to pass up on 23 houses with fps experience, especially if they can get it for 5 cents on the dollar and lets face it, they spend most cash on Bethesda anyway. 

So here I aim handing out free Sony exclusive materials because that is the guy I am (when pissed off an absolute nightmare), and I did have some fun designing a way to sink the Iranian fleet (we all need hobbies). As such setting my fingers into a post apocalyptic games was also essential, you see it was an actual snow globe that gave me the idea on how to meltdown Bushehr 1 (a still untested concept), and that side might actually help me to design a few missions for the Swedish post-apocalyptic game which I aptly renamed ‘glödande godis’, and we all need candy, whether we glow in the dark or not. Ah well, such is life.

So even as reality can help out a gamer, we need a fair amount of indiscriminate imagination to get it all to work and lets face it, at present only the Japanese know what life in a post-apocalyptic setting has been (small reference to August 6 1945).

So whilst we will get to know what is the truth around AC Valhalla in a little over a day, the stage of finding an alternative to fallout will take a little longer than that.

In the mean time we will sit back, relax and enjoy the Trump show (as he is getting fired), for me it means that we can enjoy a more global version of the news in 1-2 days and that has been sorely lacking at present.

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November 7, 2020 · 23:25

A cloud-less future

Yup, it happens, it is not intentional and it will happen to us all. This started for me as I was listening to my iPod, I am enjoying a band called The Sweet, a British band I really liked in the 70’s. So listening to their greatest hits was something I had not done for a long time, yet for some reasons somewhere between Ballroom Blitz and Blockbuster cogs started to turn, it was that time of the day again as I was setting my creative cap on, you see, I had the idea for the MD net drive in the early 90’s when I saw one of the first Mini Disc drives. Consider that this small disk had the option to store an entire CD, in a time that a Bernoulli drive with a disc 20 times that size could only story up to 90 MB. I talked to Sony about it, but they waved the idea away, it would never catch on. Little did they realise just how long they ended up to be. Yet these idea’s are giving me the thought of a new generation of devices. 

Consider the iPad, iPod, Mobile phone, they all have items that you use all over, they all have a setting that is almost transparent, perhaps even trans parent. Now consider that we might rely on the cloud in some cases, but that cloud will soon become less and less reliable. Even now, the last week I have had all kinds of congestion issues with YouTube, friends in the UK have had other data related items, nothing major, there was no loss, but there was also no clear connection, things went bump into the night (and next morning).

Now consider how small an NVME SSD drive is now, a 1 TB drive fit into my hand, so what happens when we look at the KingstonSSD drive that is a mere 42 mm large? They will get smaller, but for now it is small enough, and 240GB is small enough to be an ejectable drive tht can go from device to device. Your music inserted in whatever device you need it to be. Yes, the cloud does this too, but how long until the cloud costs more than you bargained for? What happens when the congestion increases, net neutrality is off the beaten track through Service Level Agreements that you either sign up for (for a fee) or lose? 

Now is the time to have alternatives, if only to avoid the lack of 5G in France and Germany or perhaps the fact that 5G in the US is only 13% of the speed of 5G in Saudi Arabia, you think it will not hit you at some point? You’re dreaming, the question is will it affect you, for the most there is little doubt, it will not hinder you, but there is every chance that it will aggravate you, when the 3rd or 4th song stagnates, freezes or just stops, your mood is gone. This is what happened to you with CD’s and it will hit you again. Yet the setting is not so bad, we can void it all at the beginning of the station. What if these factors would never hit you? 

There is no doubt that there will be an option to have a NVME port. Perhaps a MNVME (Mobile NVME) port, even now we see the Orico GV100 512GB NVMe Portable External SSD, which is the size of a USB stick, it is 3.78 inch long, but almost 1/3 is for the key holder, so that thing can already be smaller, and it is $179, in consideration a 2TB drive for the PS4 is $97, so there is room to manoeuvre and when these drives become popular, prices go down. 

Yet the foundation is that we need all kinds of devices, that all link to one drive, a drive we have on us. Soon it will have crypto parts, biometrics data and we keep it on us, a validation for all kinds of matters. We have no option but to move in this direction, several factors will push us, some good, some required and some because it is just a form of laziness. Consider that the drive has the 2 Netflix movies you downloaded last night, so you can enjoy whatever you binge on the train to work? It is destined to happen, and some of the companies are most likely already looking into this, I predict ted in 2012 (after seeing a stack of patents by Samsung and Apple) that the stage of mobile devices was changing. The hardwire became more transparent and nondescript (fitting multiple directions), it was the software that was pushing a direction, yet in all this the data (your music, your movies, your games) remains open to direction and I reckon that the setting of mobile name will deal with that direction, some will be generic, some will be branded. It is the generic part that has the highest stage of usage, because people do not believe in one direction, they embrace the freedom of choice, there are plenty who all really on Apple, but Apple will take care of that part, it is portable and mobile data that will set in the third wave. Why?

Because the people think that others will take care of it, just like they did when Google created search (and they latched on for a free ride) and now they are all crying like little bitches: “boo hoo hoo, Google is so nasty”, to them I tell, go cry me a river, you get ahead of the curve or you stop being part of the process and when the data part is very soon coming up for debate, it is those who allow for larger portability that will get the podium, not some Azure service agent, giving you some version of “Get Started With Free Credit To Try Any Combination Of Azure Services. Build Your Next Idea”, yes but it is still set to the Azure Frame (Apple and Amazon having their standards), it is those who allow for a larger frame of open choice, they will win, because data requires open stages (a copy me, I want to travel) idea, whilst others have one system, one cloud and when you get conflicts these salespeople stop talking when you get to the part that is not inherently theirs, it makes them no money. 

It is there where we see a the stage where a billion people will want to move and as some business types will sell their children for a slice of that cake, what do you think your value will be when you are the one holding that cake? And all that I even before governments get clued in on what data they are missing out of. 

There will always be need of a cloud, there are however more and more moments when the cloud is overrated and more of a hindrance, that is where mobile data will become a key player in the hardware that people will buy. It will be a consumers market where the buyer decide where they want to go, not the seller telling the buyer where they need to go, that is the frame in 3-5 years.

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November 7, 2020 · 01:49

The new setting

I had a partial start on Bethesda’s Elder scrolls, but not one for their Fallout series. You see, you do have the right to sell your IP to a third party (Bethesda to Microsoft) and set the agenda of forcing a million dedicated players into the arms of what I personally see as a disreputable solution for gaming, but I am entitled to create IP free for Sony exclusive solutions that offers the people an alternative. The idea that I am handing out free dedicated IP for Sony developers was probably not in consideration for Microsoft (who paid $8,500,000,000 for Bethesda software), yet the idea of me handing out free lollies was not on their mind either, and PS5 directed IP even less so. 

As such here I am watching Jason Bourne on Netflix whilst my brains is considering a larger stage for a radiated world to survive in. Yes, I can’t just be like any other normal guy enjoying porn, no my mind has to create puzzles and RPG settings, life can never be simple, can it?

Whilst I was starting all that, there was a larger (read: additional) stage I wanted to create. A longer stage. An idea to interact the PS5 with both (read: either) Android or iOS device, creating mini games that give an additional stages to the game. It can all be done on the PS5, but I considered that some games are interesting if an element gets added (for free), so here I am considering my old NBC knowledge the decontamination parts that were not really in the Bethesda games. Yet that part could be a stage in the game, finding the plans, creating the solution and managing it. Even if it is part of the game itself, management parts of that game can be set to automatic (after the elements are set), but if we create management apps, giving the player an added 30% return on doing so, we create interest, the need to participate. 

The game needs an enticing environment, yet we have seen so many games in the US, What if the stage is not there, but the setting is Stockholm? It is relatively close to a lot of places and what if we use that setting to create a haven, not like in other games, but one that requires fresh water, fresh meat and of course a red wire collecting images of the Swedish bikini teams between 1975 and 2175, fair is fair, and if you play a girl, you get to find the collector cards of Swedish fireman and park rangers (fair is fair). We just know (read: assumption) how you ladies want to see images of Alexander Skarsgård and Peter Haber, fair is fair after all. Yet we need more than simple alternatives for snow globes or pip-boys, but the setting is one that needs adjusting. We need more than a race from item to item and that is not by creating places to are to, but by creating a narrative that goes beyond what w expect, that shows the larger stage of the repercussions of radiation, not by taking pieces away from the adventure, but by adding to it, by creating an additional awareness, one the previous games only hinted at. I am not blaming the games, they were and till are fine games, but I want to create something new, not by creating a copy, a copy is second rate, yet if we skate on the fringe, if we add to the narrative we et something new and that is the are for the gamer, that is the race for those who love to play games, to get more, not to merely get more of the same. The difference is distinct and gamers know this, I know this, so we get create more as we create something new, something that differs and is different. 

That is the challenge, that is the perspective we require, one we have not faced before. It is how I got to think out the Palyar prerogative playing in Amsterdam, that is how I got the previous answer to a new IP, holding an answer to Bethesda and the Elder Scrolls and over the setting of Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, which I came up with in the past. A setting to Watchdogs IV and a few more ideas, all new IP, all in advanced concept stages.

Life tends to be about new settings, for the most it is about adapting to them, for some it is about creating them.

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November 6, 2020 · 16:54

The second treasure

Has it happened to you? You are sitting there, in a chair (or sofa) and you suddenly get hit with realisation, this is what happened to me in the last 4-6 hours. You see, when I created some of my 5G IP, it was not in a stage of need, it was a response to the stage of Neom City, a KSA undertaking that is founded on a new city bathing in new tech and high tech. I foresaw hat consumers needed and off course I looked at. Global stage, a 5G stage where we see 440,000,000 small businesses on a global scale handing over what the buyer needs. I altered part of this to set for a much higher cyber security need (sorry to seem mysterious, but the IP has not been sold yet). This all started before Covid, so even if Covid was never a consideration, my solution would still work and would work with increased positivity. It was however today that I stopped to think about certain repercussions. 

Walk the walk
We all talk the talk (anyway most of us do), we even walk the talk, but who walks the walk? Let me explain, when you walk (the actual exercise using legs), you often do it without thinking about it, you go from one place to another, you walk to get the groceries, to get the lunch, to get wherever you need to be. And overall you forget the foundation of matter, where you walk and how you walk, it is an automated process. For me too, but when you stop and think that process through, you might see a few choices that you do not normally think about. That is a process I found myself in with my IP, I found a second treasure chest, one I never bargained for, one I never considered, but it is there and now that I realise what my IP brings, it is a much larger stage.

Awareness
In market research there is something called awareness. For brands awareness is close to everything and they know it, they are always in a place to increase awareness and I have always been aware of that, yet as I do not work for them, I didn’t really care, they have staff for that and that staff has several ways to increase their brand awareness, and they are armed with a compelling list of reasons why they should do so, where they should do that and when they should do that. It is the way the world works. Yet I am now in a field where it is not merely about awareness, I have entered a stage where we see a sort of aggregation of awareness and curiosity. What is when, when is that and optionally why it is. This got me to ‘The curiosity and exploration inventory-II: Development, factor structure, and psychometrics’ (at Journal of Research in Personality 43 (2009) 987–998). Here we stake notice of “refine the measurement of trait curiosity with an improved version of the Curiosity and Exploration Inventory (CEI; [Kashdan, T. B., Rose, P., & Fincham, F. D. (2004)”. I was somewhat aware even as the paper is 11 years old, but then I remembered something that the paper held “Many new scales have been published, but few have been subjected to close psychometric scrutiny. The present research centred on the development of a brief, reliable, and valid measure of curiosity, improving upon an earlier version of the CEI. The data offers early evidence for the scale’s latent structure and evidence for convergent and discriminant validity”, it is the ‘a brief, reliable, and valid measure of curiosity’ that stuck, you see it is that what kills the cat and I remain (sincerely) a cat person, so I took notice. It dawned on me that my IP cannot distinguish between awareness and curiosity, but are they not scales of grey? They are both fruit, so if someone used my IP to get the data on a new Maserati, the person cannot afford one (neither can I), but is it curiosity or creating awareness on the new model? That is out in the open, so there is a second treasure chest and optionally the chest in that chest containing a diamond in the rough? (sorry Disney), I leave that up to you to consider but the stage is a lot larger, is it not? If the path we walk on gives us pause to consider where we walk, we optionally consider the soul of our shoe and how it can pass that terrain more easily. It might not make sense, but consider if you are in London, the streets will not make you pause, but Hyde Park will and that is where we find ourselves, on the edge of a park, where we see an optional  new cluster of consumers, the curious ones and we get a stab at the stage that they occupy.

And those who respond with “curiosity bears a resemblance to several other psychological constructs, all of which are concerned with the way people regulate and direct their attention in the presence of novel or valued environmental stimuli. Although these terms have been used somewhat interchangeably, this unfortunate tendency has obscured the fact that the essential qualities of curiosity con- note a high degree of receptivity and willingness to engage with novel stimuli”, in this day and age ‘novel stimuli’ is the bread and butter of hype creation and that pushes the borders of curiosity, yet they are in the stage of trying to maximise that part (plus 10%), in my case the stage of that is there and now we need to see if the data can give us the curious, the aware and make them the buyers or at least clearly separate the two groups towards the active consumer if you will and that stage is not merely set on a whim, the better the data is, the better the results will be and that I what these brands are also pursuing, I merely noticed that I had more data to offer these brand polyglots and offer a new kind of shovel to parse through the data in that regard.

That is the stage I found myself in, I just found a new chest and I am hoping for the good of it and an optionally small chest holding a diamond, now I merely need to attach it to the IP I already have and I am increasing the application of my IP by a decent amount. 

Sometimes life throws you a bone, sometimes a chest, whether it holds renumeration or manure is not yet clear, but I hope for the best.

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November 5, 2020 · 22:28

Rule of thumb

It started with me wondering what else I could do. I have been involved with gaming since 1984, I started testing and reviewing games in 1986, so I have been around for a while. I met the giants in gaming. Sid Meier, Richard Garriott, Peter Molyneux and a few others. They and the games they made formed the views I have on gaming, there are of course more others too. 

My normal job was in technical support and teaching, as such I had a firm grasp on technology. I learned to teach, teach software and technology and as such, my life was a decently happy one. 

Still, I wonder what else is possible, you see only the delusional ones think they can do everything. I agree that any person can do anything and if they are given, committed and enthusiastic, they become good at it. I believe that to be true for everyone, no matter gender, race, religion or age. 

It kind of intertwines with the elections in the US, after 4 years we see a shift and now I wonder if anyone in the media has the balls to set an image of Donald Trump tomorrow on page one, with the text “You’re fired!”, providing Joe Biden gets the 270 he needs. I wonder when that stage will be reached, and if it will be reached. They all claim that Biden will win, yet there is a decent. Chance that Pennsylvania will remain in camp Trump, with 89% counted and 20 votes, the advantage of 2.6% there is no given that Biden will win and even if he does, the difference is too small, so a recount is inevitable. In Arizona the roles are reversed, yet here only 11 votes are up for grabs, giving us the optional score of 254 for Biden and 234 for Trump, it is a setting weirdly close and like the old series the West Wing, two states might set the end and at this point President Trump has the lead. Those three sites are Georgia and North Carolin with 16 and 15 votes. I am careful not to set the stage of what might be, I am Republican minded, but I am definitely no President Trump fan. So as I take notice of ‘‘Stop the count!’: Angry Trump supporters amass at counting centres’, I wonder just how stupid Trump fans are to call for an end to democracy. A vote is a vote and they should all be counted, that is how democracy works. And this is where the brain started to twist. Whenever we are in any RPG, it is about our actions, it is about what WE decide should happen. It matters not what the RPG is, that is how the game is set.

But what happens when we change that, what happens when we sign up for a game with a political stage? What happens when our actions becomes pro or counter RPG government? You see, when I initially designed the idea of Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration (before they gave their soul to Microsoft), I had not considered it, yet in MEA 1+2 and optionally Citadel: Incursion (I had to give it. Name), that stage becomes a larger issue. Politics is at the fibre of any stage and we ignored it in RPG to a larger extent mainly because of system limitations. The new systems will have computing power in abundance, so it becomes less of a hindrance and setting that stage to a proper foundation, especially in a game like Mass Effect Andromeda is has an influence, because as we unlock more and more pods to wake up, the political stage on a station like the nexus will also alter, it sets a larger stage, a larger application of what we need to do. Even as the stage is not always on what we need to achieve, the general direction will alter and so fr no game took this into account (as the systems weren’t powerful enough). 

This changes what gaming provides, yes we like to make decisions in our RPG and that does not change, but there is the greater good and the larger picture to consider, it becomes even more interesting if that picture is not available to the player, the story could take a few interesting twists along the way. To illustrate that, we can look at a TV-series called Babylon 5. When we were in season 1, we see the Narn, Centauri, Minbari, Humans, Vorlon and others. Yet the Narn and Centauri are arch enemies, so working for one makes the other off limits and that is a mere extreme example. If we decide to act alone, we might side with one group and optionally piss off another, it is the nature of the game and gaming will become less black and white and more grey tones. It is also a lot harder to program. For example it is not like in the old The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you could only buy certain houses when certain fame levels are reached.   Yet what happens when fame and infamy are more fluidic? What happens when missions are only offered to the infamous (or famous) and above certain ranks? It will not change the game, but it will colour the stage to some degree, that same stage will be influenced when we colour a governmental stage, like the US, Blue, Red and Green. We see a larger stage where working for the ‘other’ party is allowed, but at that stage, we gain infamy a well as political points. See it as a new complexity level in RPG gaming. There is no doubt in my mind that this is where we are heading, mainly because it os now possible to do just that, and as we see the need for games with a larger value to replay a game, the setting of another level of complexity is pretty much a guarantee. We might want to lean back and reach back to the original D&D rules of thumb rulings, but I reckon that console gaming has surpassed it a few times over. Even as Ubisoft stated in a game ‘Cull the herd’, that stage is one we seemingly walked away from. We do not oppose the eradication of the horde (it’s an Orc thing), but it also leaves us open to eradication as well. And as such we need to set the stage to a larger frame, because that is what we do.

Extremes are nice to colour the stage, but it is the blending of values that give a larger appreciation of any story, there is plenty of evidence out there and as I see it, there is a much larger stage to fill it up, how it is done is up to the gaming visionaries.

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November 5, 2020 · 02:19

The edge of IP

Yup, another bout of insomnia, another idea in the IP range. I state this casually and carefully, because even if the stage is altered, there might be a setting where it in not entirely my IP. In the first I came up with a new Mass Effect Andromeda, I wrote about it previously and to make the story fit, the game would contain a remastered and rewritten part one (the bad version we saw in 2017), a lot would be used, but the game would be different, even if the planets are not. That was only part one, the stage of part two is in three parts, the Nexus, the missing ships and 5 additional planets. Also we would revisit the planets that were cleaned up with a lot of additional materials. Yet my mind kept on racing. It was the Prothean Vigil VI who gives us “They used the conduit to gain access, but the conduit is only a prototype. The portal only links in one direction, so they were trapped on the station. I do not know what became of them there, it is unlikely they found any food or water, they suffered a slow grim death”, the game is 13 years old, and I have lashed out to Microsoft on a number of occasions, but this one, this one they got right, and the second game was even better the the first one, optionally one of the best RPG games EVER produced. 

So what happens when a group of people makes it to the Citadel, about 2 millennia after the reapers. The station cold dark and we get to see the restart of the station, the keepers are setting the parameters for races to come, yet what happens when teams Humans, Salarians, Drell, Turians, and Protheans make it to the Citadel? Not the original station as shown in the game, but the station in its complete complexity. Each race starts in the original building that was meant for them, as they could dock there, but after that, it becomes a chase, a challenge, of puzzles and wit to survive, to create the stations energy settings, the interactions that are required and not to mention as you play one race, all the others become NPC’s, with the option of a previous completed race to use your achievement as a template to equal. Something like that has as far as I can see never been done before and to that extent wasn’t even possible until the PS5 (and its Microsoft equivalent) were released. Not to mention there is every chance that the Google Stadia might keep up, so that is three, all whilst it would be possible to link a friend and set his milestones as one for one of the NPC’s. 

You might wonder why that and not a new station, a new environment. Yes, that is true, but to create all the races and all the settings takes a lot more and these races have been clearly established, also there is a danger that we might inadvertently copy parts of another Citadel station (System Shock), as such I wanted to get head of the curve (as I am not getting any sleep)

It would still be a large undertaking, The idea was bugging me when I was redesigning MEA and MEA2 in one package, the setting of the size of the station was never that clearly represented, also the cryogenic unlocks made little sense, there was too little pro and con options. A setting where we see the plusses on one sided and we weigh that, all whilst the minus side was largely ignored. So as I went out to create a new version in my mind, I kept on looking at the larger stage, the larger needs and it kept on kicking me back to Citadel station, especially the parts we saw in ME1 and ME2, I thought it was time to kick it in another direction and this is what I came up with in a mere 2-3 hours. 

Consider the screenshot, it is part of the citadel, 5 arms, one arm holding dozens upon dozens of skyscrapers, each building (or at least several of them) explorable, yet there is also the danger of that needle and haystack expression, there needs to be a clear directive on what is required, what are we seeking for, and not all are in the same arm, so paths are needed, airlocks, and larger cargo spaces so we can travel between the arms, yet the keepers (now under clear Reaper control) must also be avoided and changes need to be done whilst they are not looking. All whilst ever building is getting cleaned and sanitised by worker drones. 

It becomes a much larger setting and it might be one that the explorers under us (Dora too) might like to get a handle on. And let’s not forget, there are 5 teams, optionally some with advanced knowledge. All this and the Andromeda challenge too? What a luxury! I would love to make it a Sony exclusive, but Microsoft already has the beat on the IP, so if there is exclusivity, it might be Xbox (something I really would not like).

Well, it is 2:14 now, I have no idea what I will come up with next, but I got roughly 4 hours until the sun comes up and I forgot my Maui Jim glasses. 

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November 4, 2020 · 21:03

Pointless versus useless

Yup, consider that part and consider just how useless government oversight really is. To show this we get to the articles about three weeks ago, I noticed them, because I had the aggravated issue with deceptive conduct in advertisement for a while. Several sources give us ‘Ban for annoying puzzle ads which don’t represent the actual game’ (or a version thereof), with the sub-line “The Advertising Standards Authority has banned ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes”. I have nothing against the game, but any match three game is rigged from the start, it is a clever way to get you to try and perhaps you will make a small purchase, and then she are caught in the addictive need, some just quit. I am ahead of the curve and I steer clear of all these match three games. Yet, The people behind these games (not just these two, others too), made an actual brilliant advertisement jab at the games giving us a DIFFERENT game where you have to select a solution, as such we see “Paid-for Facebook posts advertising games with puzzles – but which did not represent the vast majority of actual gameplay – have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)”, this is what got to me too and when I saw the news, I was happy. So what happened today? Gardenscapes advertisement (the bad one) now shows up in Fallout Shelter in the iOS version, as such it seems to be bloody pointless. Perhaps it is the price for $8.5 billion, perhaps it is the price of joining Microsoft, yet these so called banned advertisements are back, or they never left. Sometimes vacation does not end, it merely changes location.

This gets me to the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/8593c8b5-5a98-4002-ac5a-68b59fbb6463) which was given to us in May with the headline ‘Russian brothers behind ‘Gardenscapes’ emerge as lockdown winners’, and we also get “Two Russian brothers living in London have emerged among the big winners of the lockdown, with their mobile games Gardenscapes and Homescapes making $200m from in-app purchases in April alone”, which sets the station that when you are rich, the ASA might not do anything, OK that is just speculation, but the stage is clear, and nothing seems to be happening. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, 200 million in a lifetime is nothing to be sneered and they are making that each month, I merely wonder if the deceptive advertising was essential to make that much money. 

So here we see the stage of pointless (having little or no sense) versus useless (not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the desired outcome). You might think it is the same, but it is not. The difference was seen in my Pencak Silat classes when I was a young lad (when I was 63.8% smaller roughly). Defensive systems (like Judo) are pointless, you are under attack, only countering doesn’t get the job done, there are pure attack based styles which are useless, if you are under attack, one needs defence, so the best martial art is one that decently covers attack and defence. Yes, we have seen all those movies on how great defence is, yet those grandmaster have been at it a decade or two and that tends to be far away from those starting some form of martial art. It now gives rise to the same setting with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), they can go after Facebook all they like, yet when the advertiser moves to advertise via Bethesda games (Fallout Shelter) how useful was the jab at Facebook?

And when the advertising server moves to the USA, or perhaps Canada, or Saudi Arabia, how will that affect the verdict? It seems to me that the leading man, Guy Parker who has been chief executive of the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) since June 2009; living of £120,000 a year might be able to keep up his income and fruitless actions, yet I merely wonder at present what he achieves, do you not feel the same way? When I see advertisement (the deceptive kind) move from place to place, I wonder why we need a man making well over $250,000 a year, it seems a pointless action and a useless way to spend that much money. Feel free to disagree, but there is a massive digital failure in that regard and I reckon I am not the only one thinking that. 

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November 3, 2020 · 23:31

A streaming war

Yup, this is about to come to larger blows, you see, there is Netflix (of course), Apple, Amazon Prime, Canal Plus/Foxtel and Disney Plus. There are a few more, but in many cases HBO is added to the film channels of Foxtel, and so on. Yet these players never took a serious look at the treasure of the east, Japan particularly. Yes they all look at the manga, yet there is a lot more. The Zatoichi series, which was followed by an amazing movie with Takeshi Kitano. There are a lot more, and even as there are some really good movies around that are done in
Japan (Earthquake bird with Alicia Vikander), Japan has a lot of original non manga material to offer. In the horror section there is the Audition and Oldboy, the second one is also seen as a remade English version, but it is nowhere near as good as the original, perhaps it was the atmosphere. There is of course the setting of Ju-On and that video that kills within 7 days, but those are the visible ones that made the press. A lot of people got interested in Japan as a provider of entertainment after Kill Bill part 1, that is fair enough, we all have our moments. For me it was the 1980 TV-series Shōgun with Richard Chamberlain, based on the novel by James Clavell with the same name. A series where we see giants like Toshiro Mifune, Yoko Shimada, Frankie Sakai, and Hideo Takamatsu (and many more). Not just that, even the Middle-Earth trusted Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) was already amazing 40 years ago. I reckon it might be time for a remake, if only the 1980 version was not so darn perfect. Yet there is more in Japan than just remakes. To see that we merely have to look at the Playstation 4 and the almost perfect Ghost of Tsushima. Until the game was there, I know nothing of this place and the setting it had. And I know I am not alone. We might want to travel back to 2006 when Clint Eastwood release the second part, Letters from Iwo Jima. As Flags of our fathers showed us the American side, Clint took a gander and showed us the other side as well. What we ended up with is a near complete view of a war no-one really wanted, but we were all forced to fight it, because there was no other way. 

Yet as we see the roll call of movies in Japan, we see the western view of it and some of it is really good, there is the Forest with Natalie Dorner who is pretty amazing (for those who merely know here from her ways to excite Henry VIII, or be the sweet dear in GoT), this is the movie to watch her in). We need to acknowledge that a movie about Japanese in Japan can only be made by the Japanese. We do not deny that Lost in Translation is a gem, yet who knows of 100 Yen Love, and before you think that this is mere love movie, think again, in this particular case it is Billion dollar baby on steroids. A slob turning her life around and it is that underdog fight that for some reason is a lot better when it is done in Japan. There is another example, The Ramen Girl, underestimated and a little shallow, but it shows us a side of Japan we rarely see, their strife for excellence, a spiritual side perhaps, perhaps not. But there is a multitude of sides to Japan we always seem to ignore. The technologists look at Japan, because what we see there now will hit our borders in about 5 years. Yet in all that, we seem to forget that Japan has a soul and even if we do not understand it, some wall parts are shown in their movies and TV-series. With the world wanting more and wanting something different, there is every chance that Japanese entertainment goods will b e fought over by the streaming giants. And if these parts do not convince you, take a look at Gokusen (2002) and I can tell you right now, the plot twist that hits you at the end of season one, is one you we’re never ready for. 

You could say: Only in Japan!

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November 2, 2020 · 22:56

Institutionalised Positioning

Yes, we can take IP in several directions. For me it started yesterday at 17:15 when I got home with my new iPad, after 6 months, minus one week, my iPad finally arrived. So happy happy joy joy. Yet the story is not that simple. I was able to get mot of the apps from my iPad 1st generation onto my iPad Air 4th generation, in a few cases I bought the program again (the $5 will not kill me I assume). And for the most, these programs held up for a long time, so I am happy. 

Yet there the issue started. You see, there was a problem with one program, the program no longer existed. It was a data vault, this data vault kept projects in directories, and they were all hidden. When I needed it I could open one of the folders and I was ready for the presentation. This was the first hurdle. There were all kinds of programs, I must have liked at a few dozen of them, all with cloud backup, all with options to hide all these secret pictures, WTF do I care? I needed a specific application and the 2-3 dozen are all copies of one another, all copies of an idea they all had at the same time. With the exception of two, a massive waste (in my specific case). I got one of them working first with two projects, that was the one I got. Some will think that I am all about the fuss, all about paranoia. So consider January 2020, Forbes gives us ‘Microsoft Security Shocker As 250 Million Customer Records Exposed Online’, with the two additional quotes “Paul Bischoff, a privacy advocate and editor at Comparitech, has revealed how an investigation by the Comparitech security research team uncovered no less than five servers containing the same set of 250 million records”, as well as “the researchers say that many contained plain text data including customer email addresses, IP addresses, geographical locations, descriptions of the customer service and support claims and cases, Microsoft support agent emails, case numbers and resolutions”, as this point, do you think that I am trueing any cloud with my IP? Do you think that I will give any reliability to any firm handing control of their cloud to the NSA? The IP wi worth a pretty penny and there is no way in hell that I trust anyone with that. Especially when you consider “A new report from the National Security Agency (NSA) titled “Mitigating Cloud Vulnerabilities” identifies what the agency considers the top cloud security issue plaguing organisations: misconfigured privacy settings” (source: unconfirmed), so according to the source, not only is it a cloud solution, but the makers cannot properly administer this, so the NSA is needed? I have question marks, but more so in the direction of Microsoft who had been shoving this solution down our throats like it was the second coming. It reminds me, there was a comedian who had this story: “I apparently had a rare disease, but my older brother knew the cure, just eat a handful of sand, thank god for older brothers”, I think you can relate this to both Azure and Microsoft, can you? So as my trust is close to zero Kelvin, I have my IP in a secure location, and I have an encrypted version that I can access via Webmail and then into the Vault. It takes a few steps, but the chance it gets hacked is less than 2%, this in light of Business Insider giving us “Seventy percent of companies using cloud computing vendors get hacked or leak data, Sophos found”, so I am rather picky on how and where my data goes. The fact that almost NONE of the data vaults took that precaution, r allows for it is the larger stage that needs addressing. Apple gave me 4 confrontations in that regard, and let’s be clear, this is not the fault of Apple. Their app store has limits and abilities and as such we are confronted with the larger evil, and evil Apple did not create, the developers are optionally also unaware of the stage that they are on, but the stage we do see is that things need to change, a new IP, one that has the foundations of a 30 year old program called DBMS/Copy, with the foundations of something that resembles ODBC. A setting where WE decide what the source is, where the source is and how we get it to the point of destination, if the cloud can no longer be trusted, we need that solution fast and we need it to be clearly controlled and set in a station where the user is allowed to make the decisions. Now, let be clear, this is not for all, this is not a solution we all need to consider, but enough need to consider it, for one, all those with bankable IP. 

So when we are in a stage where we have 25-50 passwords, and the setting is now that we can’t rely on these passwords because the rainbow tables of today are more and more efficient, in some cases we added simplicity to the working of these tables, as such, in a stage where we enter 5G, where dat travels 10-25 times faster, a rainbow table becomes a lot more dangerous to a much larger group of people and when you see the alleged Microsoft Blunders, we have a lot more to fear. And let be clear, Microsoft might be the clearest example, I for one am unwilling to believe that they are the only one, especially when you see the Sophos numbers. 

In all this, the institutionalised positioning is that there is no issue, there are no glitches and there is no lack of safety. I will let you decide whether I am right, or whether I am wrong, type is enough out there to form your own opinion, yet when you do and you get it wrong, do not come crying. Consider that IP can only be sold once (if it is done right), do you really want to take a chance on something that could be your life’s work and sets you up for retirement? I will let you decide, because that is your right.

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October 31, 2020 · 21:37

As jobs become available

Yup, there is always good news if we know where to look, even as we see a setting where over 50% of all coronavirus cases are in the USA, India and Brazil, we need to think hard of what numbers are not shown. Even as India has well over 3 times the population of the US, there is no way that the numbers add up, with the US having over 9 million cases and India barely passing 8 million, the stage is not completely seen. The population pressure and environment should give India a lot more than the US, so the stage is not clearly seen. I have less doubts (but some) with Brazil, there are over 5 million there and that number seems off (I am emphasising on seems), when we consider the 211 million people there, the pressures in Rio and Sao Paolo, the number seems low, more important, the mortality rate on Brazil merely seems high, in my personal view, either there are a lot more cases, or the mortality rate is skewed, optionally from connected complications. So as more people die, more jobs open up (one would hope). In this stage we could say that every silver lining is the foundation for a new dark cloud.

These numbers are important, especially as the EU goes into a new lockdown. There is the larger issue. We see Spain and France being at 1.2 and 1.3 million. Nothing wrong with that, but a similar setting of populations is seen in Germany with only 510K sick, these numbers do not add up, especially hen you consider that Germany has 83 million, France has 65 million and Spain has 46 million. The German numbers are as I see them off. This matters, because if the numbers are too surreal, the lockdown will merely be a pro forma exercise that does close to nothing in too many places. The problem is that I can see that these lockdowns are the best we can get until there is an actual vaccine, and there is not date on that. One source gives us “On Tuesday, front-runner Pfizer revealed in an earnings call that the first interim analysis in its Phase 3 clinical trial has not yet occurred. That means there hadn’t yet been enough Covid infections among the trial participants to take a first stab at analysing whether the people randomly assigned to receive vaccine were infected at a lower rate than people who were assigned to get a placebo injection”, so consider that phase three is not done and this needs to come and be confirmed before we have a setting where manufacturing can begin. And it is even earlier ‘the first interim analysis in its Phase 3 clinical trial has not yet occurred’, that implies that we get to a stage where any solution would not be here before January 2021, and that is if the second analyses of clinical trials those who precede towards ‘a vaccine is working’ is well over 8 weeks away, making the earliest stage of manufacturing would start on January 2nd, if a solution if found by coming Monday. Are you feeling frisky yet? And all this before the realisation starts that 2 billion doses will take more than a few days. I got (from Vaccine Europe) “On average, it takes between 12-36 months to manufacture a vaccine before it is ready for distribution” and on top of that Sanofi is one source stating that they can make 2.5 million doses a day. This gets us to the 2 billion shots, taking 800 days to make and that is if everything goes right the first time. So there will be a waiting list that is well over 2 years and that is WHEN a vaccine is a reality. Now consider it takes another 12 months before a vaccine is a reality, implying that Covid-19 will be around until January 2024 at the very least. At what stage will we learn that masks are a good idea, and I am happy to set the stage that lockdowns are some proof, but what proof remains the issue, do you still think those Swedes were nuts? 

And in this, consider the news that CNBC gave us in June ‘AstraZeneca is aiming to produce 2 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine — and it could be ready by September’, do you still think that I was crazy saying that the media is a much larger cause of all the fake news we get?

I am not stating that I know when there is a solution, I am not proclaiming that I have all the answers, yet the numbers are clear and they tell a few stories, and in all those stories we see that some of the reflections offered to us are incorrect, incomplete and dazzled with issues. On the upside, my 5G IP has benefits under Covid (and lockdowns) but they were not designed as such, it is merely an upside to it all. And when we look on, we might see the corporate needs, but they are merely in it to keep their heads above water, and I do not begrudge them that, but a lot of the actions are made on incomplete views and more incomplete data, that much is certain. 

I get it when some state that there is an overreaction, yet some setting (like face masks) are never a bad idea, it makes sense that some lockdown measures are essential, yet how will that ever work in Mumbai, which is 4% the size of Sydney, but has close to 300% of the population, and people under why I doubt the Indian numbers? They test 500 a day, even as they had until recently 100,000 new cases a day. That it’s why the numbers make no sense. And this is merely getting worse, as economic barriers collapse, the setting will continue to degrade. I believe that India is in a much worse state, but that does not absolve Europe (or the US), this will get worse and those governing will be seeing the inside of courts, defending the stage, the setting and their actions. The media (even those with ludicrous headlines) they all want their digital media coin, so they will rely on hardline after headline and it will be about creating flames, not information. That is how I see it and feel free to disagree.

And as November is a mere 2 hours away, consider the time line I gave. Then consider the headline that the Guardian relied on yesterday ‘‘It’s possible’: the race to approve a Covid vaccine by Christmas’, unless the vaccine is properly tested by Friday, that deadline cannot be kept. So when you see “Kate Bingham, who heads the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said the UK was in “a very good place”. But there are still hurdles to clear in the coming weeks” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/30/its-possible-the-race-to-approve-a-covid-vaccine-by-christmas), and when we see “It could be Oxford University, partnered with drug company AstraZeneca. It could be Moderna in the US. Or it could be Pfizer and the German company BioNTech. All three have either recruited the last of the tens of thousands of volunteers they need for the critical final trials or will shortly do so”, in this I merely wonder whose trumpet she is blowing. I am not blaming her or the three, they have a hard job, yet unrealistic time lines are hard on us and they are facilitating for those trying to manage bad news and that is not right, not in this case (well, most often not in any case).

So if you are hoping or relying on a vaccine, think again. The numbers do not add up, on several sides and the media is not asking questions, so I am.

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