Tag Archives: Amazon Luna

July 14, 2023 · 00:00

About the other thing

That is not how it started. It started with a dream, a slightly unsettling dream and at first I had no idea what it was about and where it would lead me, but there I was on the edge of whatever I was on and then I woke up. The dream had nestled in my subconscious and that is when I realised the larger image my mind was trying to tell me. Not unlike a game like Mirror’s edge, this one had optional potential. It would not be for normal consoles, it would be for a streaming solution like the Amazon Luna or its Tencent equivalent. But more about that later. Perhaps I will mail them directly and see what they can make of it. Yet as I was having these thoughts, the BBC gave us a story (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66185545) where we see ‘Ukraine war: Russian general fired after criticising army leaders’ in that story we are given “Maj Gen Popov said he raised questions about high casualty rate and lack of artillery support” this would be merely one case, yet in the past (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/02/27/on-the-subject-of-failure/) on February 27th I showed just how massively the supplies of the Russian army were failing and that is the second part of the failure of Russian bear. Now we get to the third part which we are getting from the UK Express. The story (at https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1789517/vladimir-putin-russian-army-casualties-ukraine-war) gives us ‘Putin humiliated as Russia ‘almost certainly struggling’ with medical provision crisis’ which is part number three. As such we get to the image below

There we see a generic army setup. This is not my invention, this setup goes back to the napoleonic age. And in this General Popov raises a few interesting questions. What was the goal of the Russian Kremlin? Reduce its population at any cost? The need for generals to create a safe haven is now being made in doubt from what the BBC reports, as the quote is “A top Russian general says he has been removed from his post in Ukraine after telling military chiefs the truth about the dire situation on the front line”, we are given the final part, Logistics is seemingly failing to an equally disastrous degree. That is a massive failure, for any army to fail on these four counts will diminish any army, no matter how large it is and the losses are starting to add to serious losses for the Russian army.

A disastrous set of elements are in play and not being a high military person, I have no idea how this plays out. I am not even willing to speculate on would or could happen. Yet there is an overbearing thought. As I believe that General Popov is optionally correct, how could his superiors and the Kremlin be that wrong? People a lot more intelligent than me are in control of Armies, the Russian army is no exception, as such I wonder what on earth is going on. Was my dream part of that? I doubt that, it was a lot different from reality as is the command structure that the Russians are employing and if that fails, what else is failing behind that Iron curtain and with me realising this, I reckon that China and the Middle East are already on that channel. As such I need not worry about BRICS and what Russia is trying to do, they are at present experts in making themselves irrelevant. That is how I see it and I might be wrong, but when you realise that 4 parts of an entire army is failing, is there any other conclusion you could make?

Enjoy the day.

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July 4, 2023 · 02:00

Small victory

This article is a little weird (little being the operative word). You see, I got here via several paths, all walked at nearly the same time. The first started with me going through Skyrim for the 4th time, now on PS5. I bought the anniversary expansion as it was on special and a game that pleased me for over 11 years deserves a small infusion of funds. I am still in the same setting and this time around I found all 7 black books. This is a first in the 4 play-throughs. I got them all on my own and the feeling of pleasure to see a new level was almost overwhelming (I did say almost). This got me to think of a few things running parts in my IP. You see the IP I was creating for non-Microsoft systems had a few issues, but the idea of having a long term game is enticing. As such I created a set of events that makes a replay more entertaining and more addictive for the RPG player. Yet that was as far as I got and my mind was replaying old issues in programming. Like the setting of [SET mission to Class=1 and Gender=2 or Evolution=4] this gives us that not all see a mission and the mission is limited to gender and class in the first or the evolution is set to 4 (it makes sense a lot later and not today). This gives us that some missions are optionally never played. These are side missions. So as we replay a game we see missions that we never saw in the first play-through. Why? Well we can give it all, or give the player a nice ride a few times over and I believe in long term gaming. I have no time for people who play games with the solution page to their left (or right for that matter). These are simple track gamers and there are enough games for these people. 

Sidestep
Now I make a sidestep. This is important for the whole story. This sidestep is what the Australian Financial Review gives subscribers on China. As such we will jump over it. Yet one quote there is “China’s hostility to the west has come at a very substantial economic price” this statement is flawed and faulty. It is the west with its slamming Huawei that is at the center of a lot. All the accusations and the US and EU have NEVER given clear evidence of their accusations. I get the UK stance that no infrastructure should be in foreign hands. That makes sense, but handing it over to the US is no different. We get more on the Russian setting towards Ukraine and I cannot completely disagree, Russia is a losing stage and that will have larger repercussions down the track. I reckon that BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will exploit the setting as long as they can and then optionally dump Russia, they might not have a choice and with Saudi Arabia and the UAE bolstering their group the stage of ‘at a very substantial price’ is shown to be faulty. The collaboration at present between Saudi Arabia and China will bring oil and revenue to China. Saudi Arabia is in the process of ordering military hardware from China which will cost the West billions upon billions and it all goes to China. This is not new, this has been two years in the making and I gave warning of this as early as 2019 I believe. The article has a lot more claims, but they are empty. When I see “are privately more sympathetic to the US and its allies” reads like a joke and a bad one at that. The stage is that the population (read: consumers) is on the side of China via India. The wealth from the Middle East is pouring into China and is giving construction jobs to China for building all over Saudi Arabia with a several of them adding up to almost a trillion dollars. So where is the substantial economic price? At the next stage China has 5G Telecommunications via Huawei all over the Middle East and it is about to border Europe directly. Leaving the Mediterranean open to Saudi telecom hands soon enough. 

As such when I see “So far this year such investments in China are running a little more than $1 billion whereas two years ago it was nearly $50 billion” I tend to howl with laughter. You see, projects like The Line, Neom Bay, Oxagon, Trojena, and Sindalah represent well over $500 billion and China is about to get large chunks of that. Not sure how much, because I am not an insider, but I am certain that it will surpass $150 billion. Then there is the multi billion dollar military contracts and the refinery at the Chinese border, which is worth billions and more in infrastructure. So what economic loss? China is running on all engines and they are seemingly killing it. A world without the US and without the EU and these two players are making it happen. This is the price of arrogance and I have been clear over the last 5 years that this was about to happen, but the ego centrical politicians all stated that they knew better. We are about to learn the impact of stupidity on nearly every level.


As such I have a few issues with the AFR article. It is a good article, but a flawed one. One that boasts American supremacy, the little issue is that they no longer have the field. You see one source gives me “US National Debt Spiked by $851 billion in One Month, to $32.3 Trillion” now, I am not stating that this is true, but if this is true, then the US is already merely in a holding pattern until the next debt ceiling political setting and wth that BRICS (with Saudi Arabia and the UAE) will become a winner and the new global power. At that point China, India and Saudi Arabia will be better off shedding Russia. It has become too big a political and economical danger to them. And it is merely an egg timer away.

Back to the game
This is when my mind took me back to the game and a ‘new’ game. You see all these things were in my brain contemplating when I consider a different approach to the use of active and passive abilities in gaming. It played in my mind when I was remastering a Microprose game with similar settings, but now with a different approach. I call it Agent Gamer. This would be exclusive to Amazon Luna and whomever buys my IP. You see we have all seen passive powers in games like Mass Effect, Diablo 3 and more games. But they all have a similar approach to the use of passive powers. I am uprooting that and taking a different view. A game with active elements and passive elements. But you can spike these passive elements in different ways. In addition to adding several additions to the game, we can also rack certain abilities. It is like colour mingling. 

Consider the wheel. We have three basic colours (Blue, Yellow and Red). When we increase these skills we also influence the adjacent colours. Blue will influence Green and Purple, Yellow will influence Orange and Green and Red will influence Orange and Purple. It is simple setting where you make one 10% more effective (or easier), yet in the same setting increase the effectiveness of the other two by 5%. And this can be done in a multitude of ways, but the game is called ‘Agent Gamer’ and as such I will not reveal too much here. You see, to make Microsoft collapse by 2026 requires me to set the field to make the others more powerful (hence the Amazon Luna). Sony and Nintendo are on track to make their own wins (diminishing Microsoft in the process) Adobe and Apple are on other tracks and Google is no longer a contender in gaming (they have other fields). Overall the arrogance of Microsoft is about to bite them hard. Azure is doing not as good as some sources reveal. We see the Microsoft spin engines turning and we are given ‘We Think Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) Can Manage Its Debt With Ease’ but I think they are in a bad state and it is getting worse. Still I have more than a year to watch them collapse, I merely want the timeline to be as correct as possible and as such if I can help their opposition being stronger and better I will do so. Gaming is only one side of it, but they interfered with my gaming pleasure and according to Zeus (Hades too), I can hold a grudge like nothing they have ever seen and I am happy to prove these two correct. In the end the largest stage could be coming from Saudi Arabia, especially as they are eager to feed their Esport settings and 50 million new members will go a long way towards that goal. Amazon had their chance and now it is up to the other eligible parties, which includes Tencent Technologies. 

Enjoy Monday and for those still overcoming Canada Day last weekend, have a second coffee before you start any work.

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May 25, 2023 · 11:49

The balancing scales

This story comes from two different directions, not too different, but there is no real link between the two (it will make sense, I promise). I (and millions with me) saw the Sony Showcase 2023. To be honest, I was a little disappointed. I do not think that this is on Sony, it is on me and to illustrate that, I will have to make a few sidesteps. In the first, you all know how I loathe Microsoft, they did this themselves (and their customer care with them) but we need to acknowledge and accept that Sony is now better because of Microsoft not in spite off. Sony grew to new heights as they were at each others throats. As they were battling for supremacy the gamers in both camps got a much better console and we all rejoiced. The issue (as I personally see it) is that the same needs to happen to games, driving games and gaming to new heights.  This is one and for me the most important reason to hope that Starfield, a Microsoft exclusive will become a 90%+ game. It will up the ante for Sony (and optionally Amazon Luna too). The show started with Fairgame$ a multi gamer experience which (even if it was not) smelled a lot like Ubisoft, all smooth, all overwhelming, but the real deal? We will have to wait and see. Helldivers 2 was very Starship Troopers, Phantom Blade 0 looked like an upgraded Sekiro and Towers of Aghasba had a Zelda feel to it. The games were nice, they were very turbo. They had their good moments too, or at least moments I lived for and I am not stating that all games need to be set to me, but when you saw that Telescope looking like the telescope from Alien (more futuristic), what did you think? Then we get some foam game that was clearly based upon Nintendo Splatoon, a turbo edition. This happens and I am happy for the PS5 people who get to have a go at this game, but all this is iteration and gaming, real good gaming gets offered innovation, we need that to evolve gaming and that is one of the reasons why I hope that Starfield is the game every gamers waits for. I had my moments, I loved Spiderman 2, I saw the new parts and they looked good, they really do, but is it innovation? I feel uncertain, there were more games. I can’t wait to get my hands on Alan Wake 2, it seems to be a winner, but seems is the operative word, it is gameplay we need and we saw little of that (apart from Spiderman 2). Yet the story behind this is that we need actual innovation in gaming on every console and this time around Microsoft seemingly gets to have first dibs on that, but we will know for sure in September. 

This links to the second part of it. I am replaying AC Origins and now I got to the curse of the pharaoh which is graphically a new height. Yet here my mind wandered, I had played it before and I cherished it. I took a sidestep to Valerian and Laureline (in Dutch: Ravian), I grew up with that comic as well with the Trigan Empire and things started to blend, started to mingle. So what if this game is not an assassins game and you cannot climb, hide or anything. Almost like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, but now with a much larger stealth part, no killing. The idea floated in my mind when I saw the Star Trek Voyager episode Displaced in season 3. So what happens when we get to the two worlds Aaru and Aten. So when we get there we know nothing, we get to live lives, we get to walk around and we get to missions, but not in the usual ways. We need to be part of, or hear conversations to open this story and both worlds will have a dozen story lines. No Sekmet scorpions or Cobra’s. You think it is boring, but this is not a game for everyone, it is one where the story is everything and Ubisoft has shown that it can create good stories.  

This interacts when we doe in one world, we wake up in the other and vice vera, so you need to die at times (it is a hassle, but so is life). As such we get to learn that this is a prison and we need to learn why we are prisoners (a little The Status Civilization by Robert Sheckley where we get to see versions of stagnation and conformity) and for this the ancient civilisations were great. Life was simple and the mind is much easier observed and classified when it does the simple things. Yet how to set this in gaming? Ubisoft had its device, but what happens when the world is the device? What happens when the wold is not part of the mind, but the mind has to adhere to that world? No matter how complex we are, the mind controls is and as such we are shown new iterations and that could lead to innovations. But in this the story is everything.

We can speculate and ejaculate all over innovation, yet unless we are holding it in our hands (sorry, no pun intended) we have no idea what innovation looks like, the mind will not fill in the blanks, our wills do and that is why Google and Amazon missed out (at least twice already) So how do we get about to find the next innovator in gaming? Well we can dump all the BI people stating they have no clue and rely on the artsy people to dream the new game. Perhaps one with tech savvy skills, because art only gets us so far, tech does the rest, not Business Intelligence. 

This is my view and there will be people telling me I am wrong here. I will let you decide. For now, I want the new iteration of System Shock. Mainly because how the initial game made me feel, just like Mass Effect 1 ten years later. I miss that feeling to some degree, which I personally believe is the reason that some remaster are great reminders.

Enjoy the day.

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May 17, 2023 · 14:32

The BS advertiser

Yup that was what links this. A game called something like the last outpost, it is a zombie apocalypse game and some moron in a beanie tells us that this is what the game looks like, all whilst the game looks nothing like this. The game is a linear game with massive limitations, a game trying to tell a story, all whilst the gamer wants what the advertisement shows and so far I have only seen three games do this and not drown us in advertisements regarding more BS games. This is how Apple and Android are getting rich whilst sleeping. The funny money paradox.

So here I was suddenly asleep and I see a weird setting, the roof of a building is like a bar, the proprietor is a serious shady character of seemingly Scottish origins. When I go down a floor I see some makeshift hospital, the weather was foul, so I did not see a whole much and there was a massive absence of electricity. The only thing I saw was a tag giving me FLIT. 

It was then that I woke up. Something rustled, but the setting wasn’t clear. Then I remembered that I thought in this direction before. For the same reason why I always loved Fallout Shelter (the BS game is relying on a huge Fallout vault door to get his visibility) and the other game I always loved were Dungeon Keeper one and two. Dungeon Keeper One came from Molyneux’s better days and two came from one. And that gave me the initial idea, but I thought too small.  Then my mind remembered that the US has four places named Italy. One in Florida, one in South Carolina, one in New York and one in Texas. So this was about Italy, FL. So what if we set the stage not t houses, but to buildings. Just like in Dungeon Keeper they all need a source of food (Kitchen) and a place to sleep (Hospital), but unlike in dungeon keeper, we cannot make rooms bigger, we need to work with the rooms we have. A hospital will have destined sleeping places, but a mall will not, we might find a smaller place with beds, making us rustle for more beds in the building. But in we need to make it safer (traps) and we need to defend (guard posts) and as we start a game we will have these two places (sleep and food) to build, but they open up to other rooms (alway in similar ways), but it is up to you how you fill in the location and stay alive. And as the game progresses there are more adversaries and more nights to survive. But you have most of the day to set up your traps. The downside is that food is an essential thing and as you have smaller or larger kitchens you have more dishes and more food. In the one pot kitchen you either have more recipes (which you need to find, together with resources), and as you have a larger kitchen you have more pots, as such people have choices (and 5% more energy), the one pot kitchen will leave you with 5% less every night, unless you have two days with different recipes. A large pot will also give you 50 food (like soup), but a stew will only give you 35 food. Yet the kitchen calls in people (who are all hungry), and here is where the game evolves. Some are guards and they defend the building. The engineer creates traps, like trapdoors that can only close for safe passage (or not) when there is a guard present. You need a plumber for heat and an electricians for power. So you need to protect these two as they are more rare to get and as the game progresses in the first level we get waitresses, tinkerers (creates weapons), scroungers (finding resources for weapons and traps) and so on. 

Yes, it feels a lot like a revamped Dungeon Keeper, but if we set aside a little brainpower, it can be enough different to create a new wave of gamers. Consider that this game is 24 (or 26) years old and there are literally tens of thousands still thinking of this game. There is a reason that this was a 90% plus game. Good games last a long time and in this age of instant and temporary satisfaction, we see people hurdling their idea towards the funny money paradox to get income, but they all forget that a good game needs only itself and there we have a setting where the new games could outlast a few items, although with the imminent collapse of the US (debt ceiling driven) it could alter right quick. This was why I was seeking the middle east solution for some of my IP. Better be wealthy in Dubai than bankrupt in New York and some might see that future soon enough. But the setting of gaming was always my number one. And in this case there is an entire culture of unexplored gaming options (and the billion consumers attached to it). 

This was only to wake you up and feel free to use this idea on Sony, Nintendo and Amazon Luna only. I do have standards and Microsoft has none, as such they are not a consideration. So whilst you wonder on why I was driven to move against that BS advertiser? He proclaims in his beanie that this game is how you see it and it is not, more importantly I saw a direction he is bragging about within an hour. Within in hour I surpassed his feeble attempt to surpass what he thinks we see towards what we could be seeing. 

Enjoy the day.

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May 15, 2023 · 17:03

Innovation in action

That is where we are, this happens and I end up being surprised, to a degree I had not expected. To see the full part of this, I need to take you back to 2022, where I wrote about a new version of racing game, a way to use Google Maps to create global race tracks. Some disagreed that this could ever work, but today I got the surprise of my life. 

I got to see innovation in action. The idea I had brought to light. Now, let’s be clear. This version has a different setting, but the same approach and I feel certain that Ollie Tyler has never heard of me, as such it is ALL him. This is how innovation works and that is why Microsoft will never amount to anything but through hype creation and spin. I personally hope that Ollie runs to Nintendo who has over 122 million Nintendo Switch units sold. At $2 per game that could end up being a massive amount of money for Ollie, he would be set for life. In addition he could offer it to Amazon Luna as they lack racing games. The part I love is that innovation will flourish with the people who embrace it, who at times use engineering to create art. As such I say Well done Ollie, well done.

So my day is ending on a high. I might not end up with anything, but this is one of several IP settings that come to light. Now that this is clearly in the open, it is time to talk to talk to Tencent Technologies, Mohamed Alabbar, Emaar Properties and Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. You see, when several IP parts connect these people will end up with billions (I will get a slice of that cake), but in the end these are solutions that Google and Amazon left lying on the floor all whilst they were all about contracting economies. And my side? Several IP sides that I wrote about a long tome before these IP parts became a reality. I am not a programmer, but I have vision and I see the vision evolve all around me and that is good, especially when Microsoft is not invited to the table. Let them hunger for scraps, it is all they deserve in light of their gaming wannabe perspectives. 

Enjoy your day.

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May 10, 2023 · 02:35

New IP on the fly

I got here a few hours ago. The setting starts with a rerun of Heroes season 1. I hadn’t seen it for a while, as such rewatching it was a good idea. Whilst watching it a few cogs started to turn. And for clarity this is all free for Sony and Amazon Luna developers (lets screw over Microsoft one more time). You see, in the beginning of the PS4 there was Infamous Second Son. 

I gave that good leaning towards average. Now, this needs explanation. The first is the start of the game which is amazing, the story is from beginning to end really good and Seattle was a great idea. The graphics were good leaning towards great, so why the score? There were a few issues. 

In the first the game is massively linear, you don’t realise it, but it takes steam out of a game that could have been great. In the second the linearity is numbing after a while. The third is the second part here you acquire the neon power is so powerful that you will rely on it until the end of the game. It was an awesome power, but the linearity of the game will allow you to maximise that power from the start. The side missions (the red and blue tasks) are in one area and it is the same repetition on every island. They didn’t take 3 (or 6) tasks on every area, no one per area. And the last part is the concrete power is never explored, it is merely there and when you get it, you have enough points to maximise it right of the bat and you never get to explore with that power new options in the city. It all makes or a bland end result. To add insult to injury, I did the Expert version in one go, something I normally never get to do, making it too easy overall. 

This nagged me when I was watching Heroes, the cogs starting to turn and this is what I came up with.

Infamous: Teams
Let the title not confuse you, it is a one player game, but I decided to take a twist in another direction, fuelling replay option again and again. In this version you control 6 people, but one at a time. We can set powers later and we could take a grasp at powers later, this is about the idea. You play one at the time and you only get to select the gender of the first character. There are three man and three women. The first one you select gender, but the system will assign one of the three to you in the first part. You learn the skill and you enhance the skill, but here is the kicker. There are a dozen places where you enter a place, or enter a location and you see on the screen something happen that involves a super powered being/mutant and that is the moment you switch to that next person. There is one setting, if you start with one gender, the next person will be the other gender (story related) and that drives us to to settings. The stories are separate but to some degree created by the system, as such we could play new games for a while and the story is unlikely the same story. The second is good and evil. You get a choice to once select that in the first character. The good will hug, or connect the heads, evil will push their fingers into the skull of the other and syphon the power killing the person. My version of Petrelli versus Sylar. It is then that the game changes. You create a sort of copy of THEIR powers whilst it also enhances YOUR powers. The good will deprive the powers leaving the person a normal, whilst the evil part kills the other making you more wanted. In case of the good there is a second setting, there is not always a choice, as such in one case a car (or elevator) pushes them together, on another case she gives him a passionate hug pushing her powers into him and so on and the nice part is that we can design a dozen ways and you will get different events per game. Linearity and expected thresholds are now avoided, something most games do not have. The idea is that as a team both get more powerful, as such there is no gain immediately grabbing the power of the other one. If we relate this to Second son, we would enhance smoke with video, not merely have two powers. In the beginning smoke will become faster and more powerful, yet after the merge with video, there would a static smoke and EMP smoke, but now in a setting with 6 new powers and that is when the mix becomes interesting. When power one becomes a second tier, the third power will be different again. Now you have a whole new range of issues and it will affect how you play the game. The video power allowed for invisibility, but in the game you seldom used it. I want to change that and with these 6 new powers It is the challenge to find a balance of stealth and full on clobbering (sorry thing). I have not decided on a location, but I feel driven to make it Amsterdam (I made at least one other game Amsterdam too). Because Amsterdam has its canals, there is a water element through the city (freeze, fish take your pick). 

With the power mix above I show how it works to some degree, the second adds green (blue and yellow) but the third is orange making brown (orange and green). This gives a new setting, you see the third influences the second and adds power, but in that random setting the game when a new game is played could play out a lot different. Especially when we add mental or passive powers. No game (as far as I can tell) has ever done this before. And whilst Amsterdam had my first preference, the location is not set in stone, I merely wanted a place that was not used before giving the international players a new place to explore.

The story of Second Son was pretty good, but we will need a new story, we actually need 6 new stories and that is the rub too, one of the 6 is the main character, but the others have their stories and they mix. A new challenge not seen before to this degree. And this is the 4th game I put online, whilst Microsoft spending billions currently has nothing to show for it, actually they do. According to Forbes, Redfall is in the top 15 worst reviewed games. So how many billions did they spend on that company? Evil laughter starts now and I will put more ideas here, good times for Amazon Luna and Sony, not that much for Microsoft, but that is how the cookie crumbles. 

Enjoy the day.

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May 5, 2023 · 00:09

The missed off-ramp

We all have that, we are focussed on one path, one one goal and as such we miss what is in the corner of our eyes. This is not new and no one is impervious, not even me. I was so focussed on my IP and for decent reasons that I forgot to look at what else is possible. In this the Amazon Luna has additional options. The idea that it could be used for all kinds of education wasn’t lost on many, but did they consider the larger field here? 

So in comes a treasure of the past. In 1990 Sid Meier released Railroad Tycoon and it would spread to nearly every home computer on the planet. It was informative and at times educational. Yet the setting could be altered. Yes we can remaster that game and perhaps that is a good consideration. Yet the larger station is not a new version but a totally new game. So what when we do this involving shipping, not merely as a game, but as an educational tool. A setting that starts in the 12th century and from there the ‘student’ gets to create a ship, start an economy and over time we grow from one ship to a fleet, from local boats (educating us on shipping and fishing)  to cargo vessels. The players will get introduced to ports and port costs, profits, margins and in a way that sets a diary towards economics and history, the ships will give people understanding on engineering even mathematics (something keeps that thing afloat). When the game is merely a vessel of distributing knowledge and education the premise of a system changes and that offers a larger tribunal towards educating new and young minds. If ‘the shipping world’ is merely a step, what more can be done? I saw games on the workings of a law firm, too much game, but the idea had options for growth and that is where the educational off ramp becomes stronger. Yes, parents are all up in arms against children playing FIFA and Fortnite, but what happens when educational games get a much stronger appeal? What happens when the next generation gets a new infusion on mathematics, economy, history, engineering and even sciences? This is merely one game, so what happens when the next generation gets an additional education in culture and languages as well. We need to look at the Middle East and Asia where these solutions will find eager minds. India has well over a billion people and when we consider Indonesia, Pakistan and India, the solution would come close to 2 billion minds that is one hell of cluster to consider and my IP was nowhere near that large but it adds to the setting and those two stages are off ramps that neither Amazon nor Google considered seriously. Google even dropped their Stadia, even though it had options, but they never saw it and now there is merely Amazon, with Tencent following closely, for Amazon too close even. All due to missed off ramps these two giants left billions on the floor and now Tencent Technologies is almost in range to pick it up themselves. We all miss opportunities, but Google and Amazon left the opportunity on the floor for close to two years. Do you think that Tencent technologies will make that mistake? 

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May 4, 2023 · 01:30

Indecisive and on the fence

I was on the fence for part of the day. You see, I saw (by chance) a review of a game names Redfall and it was bad, like burning down your house whilst making French fries is a good day, it was THAT bad. Initially I ignored it, because haters will be haters. I hate Microsoft, but I go by evidence, not merely my gut feeling or my emotions. So a little later I got to be curious, you see the game was supposed to be released a day ago and I dumped my Xbox One and it is an exclusive, so I couldn’t tell. As such I looked a few reviews and they were all reviews of a really bad game. It now nagged at me and Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/05/03/redfalls-failure-is-microsofts-failure/) completed the cycle. There we see ‘Redfall’s Failure Is Microsoft’s Failure’ with “Redfall reviews are in, and they are terrible. What could have and should have been another hit from Arkane, maker of the excellent Dishonored, Prey and Deathloop, is instead what may be the worst AAA release in recent memory” and it does not end there. We also get “two hours in, I understand the poor reviews and do not understand the handful of good ones. This is a deeply, strangely bad game, so much so that I truly don’t understand how it was released at all in this state” and that is the start of a collapsing firm forced to focus outside of their comfort zone and the fun part (for me) is that it was acquired by Microsoft for billions. So we are on track to make that wannabe company collapse by December 2026. I added my IP for developers exclusively for Sony and Amazon could help, but the larger stage is that Microsoft is more and more becoming its own worst enemy. Yet, I do not rely on that alone. Handing some of my IP to Tencent Technologies will help. Sony is making them sweat but I cannot rely on Amazon with its Luna, as such Tencent technologies is required to make streaming technologies a failure for Microsoft too. So whilst we mull “we are left with now-goofy-sounding tweets from Phil Spencer announcing last year’s delay, saying that they will release these “great games when they are ready.” Redfall was not ready. And given what’s here, I’m not sure it ever was going to be.” I personally feel they were not, but they did something else, something worse. It was tactically sounds, it really was, but they upset the gaming community. They took away the little freedom gamers had and now we are all driven to make Microsoft fail, whether it is via Amazon, or we will engage with new players like Tencent Technology and add to the spice of Sony, but Microsoft will pay and now it becomes even better, they now have a massive failure for a mere $7,000,000,000 not a bad deal (well for Phil Spencer it is) and that is not the end of the bad news. As Tencent accepts my idea they will create an almost overnight growth towards a $5 billion a year market and they will surpass the Microsoft setting with 50 million subscriptions in the first phase, how far it will go, I honestly cannot tell, but when the dust settles we will enter 2026 with Microsoft dead last in the console war and in the streaming war and that was merely the beginning. They lost the tablets war already, they will lose ‘their’ edge war and ChapGPT will not aid them, a loser on nearly every front. That is what happens when you piss of gamers. To be honest I never had any inkling of interest in doing what I do now, but Microsoft made me in their own warped way and Bethesda because of it will lose too. They will soon have contenders in fields they were never contested before and this failure (Redfall) will hurt them more than they realise.

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April 27, 2023 · 23:41

Slapping a giant

Yup, that’s me, but not in the way that we saw in comic books. This is real. I set up the setting for Microsoft to lose out a few times. And with Amazon staying asleep at the wheel, the option is now with Tencent technologies in one direction, but there are a few more directions to consider. So now it is time to take care of Bethesda, or hat was Bethesda, it is now Microsoft. I saw the claims that it might come to PS5, it might not, yet the reality is that this is stalling technique. It is not the first time that Microsoft did this. They made similar settings in the 90’s. As such some developers out there will have the option to grow in amazing ways. You see, it is time to create two new games. The first is already on my blog. Search for “lawlordtobe + RPG” and you will get most of it immediately. There is one condition, the simple fact that the game will be made for PS5 and Amazon Luna only, optionally later on Tencent, but that is still some time away. You see Microsoft paid 23 billion for Bethesda, as such making them bleed is a nice present for messing with gamers. 

The RPG game
A lot of it is already on this blog, yet I considered a few more items. One setting is that you could get a lot more out of a new era. Between 1568 and 1748 the Dutch had over a dozen wars which involved Spain, Germany, Portugal, England, Sweden and Austria. It would also involve the Golden age of the Netherlands. People like Rembrandt would show the world what the Dutch were capable of. 

My issue here comes from a setting in the Ezio collection. Ubisoft was great in those days and I just replayed these games learning that they are still massively good. But there are issues, nothing against Ubisoft on those titles. But the setting of Brotherhood gives the stage a much larger setting when you apply those graphics to Dutch settings and adjust it for the 17th and 18th century. When we consider that outfits were merely cosmetic, that could alter. You see someone in German garbs would be massively distrusted, but not in Germany. The same for the Spanish but not the French. Outfits matter and that gave me the idea to have tailors with several layers. Three levels of tailor and you could help these tailors out to gain a level. They could only gain ONE level, as such choices become important. Yet a level two tailor would not talk to you until you are dressed as a level 2 person (and live in that city, or have fame). The same for weapons and in some places you cannot walk with a sword, but you could have a dagger. All things that were assumed in Assassins Creed, but now the systems are powerful enough to deal with it (the Xbox 360 and PS3 could not). It allows for new kinds of stealth. Yet line of sight is important, but so is minimal distance and unless you are correctly attired you get all the attention that you never wanted. Also there was no ‘police’ or protection in every corner. There were a lot more in high society places but that was about it. Still the police was not the worst opponent. Cutthroats were that and now we have an entirely new kind of stealth. When we apply that to an RPG it becomes a challenge, no doubt about that. And when you apply this to cities in the Netherlands it matters. You see, the big places were Utrecht, Deventer, Zwolle, Kampen, Haarlem, Leiden, and Amsterdam. The Hague would not get its city rights until 1800. 

Yet this setting towards an RPG would create a new era of gaming. Like the other settings I mentioned you get to have the first two games with similar mechanics, merely a totally different side towards gaming. The Dutch side is often ignored because of its size, yet they had a war that lasted 80 years, in those days that spanned 5-6 generations, then Napoleon made a mess of things and that setting reflects into a nice setting to RPG gaming with optional stealth settings. 

As we start the game we get an choice of three

The initial option is Killer, Soldier and Thief. Each with strengths, but there are three more. You can grow in both sides, so the thief can also become a Brigand or a robber (they are not the same and as you can grow to lets say 5 degrees in the first choice, you can only grow 3 degrees in the second and third options. It allows for a lot more playability. But a good RPG game will have limitations. For example, the Thief will never be allowed in the Merchant guild, as such he cannot grow shops, but he can steal art and become really wealthy that way. The brigand has opportunity there as a smuggler, the robber does not. It is that interaction of styles that allows for the play style a person prefers, or they can really leave their comfort zone and do the opposite. The thief robber and brigand will have much better stealth options than the other styles, the soldier side will have better weapon skills and the killer will be equal if not better with some weapons and have better stealth than the soldier, but less resistance to attacks. That is merely one side. The Dutch had the golden age and as such they had all kinds of art and in those days it was very cheap (by our standards). As the Bethesda games have their own niche, the time to create a new niche becomes important. From a Bethesda point of view the time is right, no matter what they claim, they have time restrictions and Microsoft is making it harder for them and there is the option for the new developer and when you get it right with Sony, you get a new hardcore fan group with up to 32 million fans, no matter what some Microsoft driven guru states. This game was played before and you will have to stick to your guns. The options are clear. Are you a real developer or a wannabe? These ideas are free for exclusive Sony and Amazon Luna developers. 

I talked about one side and gave you another. Yer when you do the search I stated at the beginning you get a lot more and it all fits together in a few ways. When we connect the points you see so much more and you got it without investing time or money. As I stated before, lets collapse Microsoft before December 2026. Lets show Ubisoft that the claim of every year an Assassins Creed game is a BI setting and not an art setting. Is a game business intelligence of art? I see it as art with added mathematics (at times). Let’s teach some of them a lesson by yanking away their markets and in case of Microsoft, who just (apparently) lost their Blizzard/Activision deal. Lets show them that messing with gamers and yanking away gaming pleasure for $7,500,000,000 comes at a price, one they never counted on. The shareholders meeting of Microsoft could end up being massive fun in 2024/2025.

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April 1, 2023 · 18:54

Focal and blinders

We all face them at times, I am no different. The problem is when is what what. Let me be a little more clear, in my case Microsoft is an issue, as I personally see it, if they buy Blizzard, they will need $92,000,000 of profit a day just to break even with the purchase of 3 houses (Mojang, Bethesda and Blizzard), now this is not set correctly, they bought Mojang some time ago, as such the amount is a few million less, but it is not less by much. They already crashed Redfall PS5, which they are allowed to do. They are allowed to do whatever they need to with what they own. Yet, consider that the PS5 has well over 30,000,000 consoles in the field and they allegedly need $92 million a day, does the act make sense? So am I concentrating on a focal, or a blinder. Consider that a blinder lets you NOT see in a specific direction. We attribute all kinds of ‘evil’ towards Microsoft, are they blinders or are they seen as the result of a focal? That is actually a lot harder to answer than you think. When is one could also be the other.

As such I have been concentrating on my two IP projects. Project Graveyard and Project Cluster. Two very different software and hardware IP settings. They both fit the Amazon Luna and optionally whomever buys the Google Stadia, which is why Kingdom Holdings was on my radar. One will be a decent downfall for Microsoft the other no less, but also takes the steam out of Facebook, and as such Amazon was the logical path to take and not just merely logical, Amazon was about to get a whole new range of revenue because of it. Yet I try not to be smitten by either blinders or focal (no matter how much fun they are). As such I saw the appearance of Tencent on time and even as several players are willing to ignore Tencent, I cannot and I will not. Tencent has seemingly the ability to unite gamers. In addition it allows China to grow in one additional industry where Americans thought they would not exist and now Microsoft in particular will have a problem because of the required $92 million a day will become a nose grounded with an anchor around the neck of American economy. And there are plenty of nay sayer spinners on the internet. It is all Microsoft and they are all getting on top of things. So lets have a go at that list 

1. Microsoft would acquire Mandiant to solve their solarwinds issue
There was one news cycle and then suddenly it went dark, there was no more news. I raised it in ‘What we hope for’ on March 7th 2022 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/07/what-we-hope-for/). It became part of Google and it is a Google solution now. After that Microsoft and cyber solutions went a little dark on the matter.

2. Microsoft had a new Tablet to WOW the world. No, it didn’t never got close to the Apple iPad and it got even less close to the iPad Air, two devices that were more able and had a larger following and it still does. It still has a lot more to offer, but the spinners came with the ‘with the keyboard it was a more complete laptop’. No, it was not and it will never be that more. I saw people howling with agony as they saw failure after failure on their Surface. I still see some people trying to spin that thing. A $1650 solution trying to win over a $500 iPad, all whilst Apple has the more versatile device.

3. Microsoft has the cloud solution, Azure. Smell it, it smells nice. Which is laughingly the biggest loser of them all. In clarity, Azure is not bad, it lacks and it has no business in gaming. Azure is the Microsoft solution and after 3 years it is nowhere near ready to take on the AWS (Amazon Cloud solution). Last month someone wrote (not me) “Azure is more costly. Azure is the finest alternative for a robust Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider and even a Windows integration. If a company needs infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or a wide range of tools, AWS may be the ideal option”, so where are the SAAS and GAAS comparisons? And when I look, there is always a hidden issue where the people are promoting THEIR solution, no matter whether it involves AWS or Azure (Google is falling behind too much). At the moment the marketshare of AWS is a lot larger and in some reports it seems like Google cloud and IBM cloud are underreported. What matters is that this is another field where Microsoft is not ahead. 

4. The Microsoft gaming console is the most powerful in the world. It might be true, but the weakest console of them all (Nintendo Switch) surpassed the Microsoft sales numbers by a lot and did it in half the time Microsoft with their X/S console were in the field. Even now, these numbers of X and S series consoles are aggregated, the loss is that defining. They are way behind  the PS5 with their X series console, but it is the most powerful in the world. In addition the PS5 has a whole range of next generation titles that goes into the dozen and the Microsoft console is lacking there, even after two years it is still lacking in Next generation titles. 

I will ignore issues 5,6 and 7. 4 fields where Microsoft will need to do a lot better and for years they were not able to do so. So where is that $92 million a day profit coming from? I cannot see it, can you? And that was merely to claw back the investments on gaming alone. Amazon is hungry and they are driving their AWS (and optionally their Amazon Luna too) making the pain for Microsoft larger. Apple has a firm grip on their devices and even as we might not like Apple, their devices are solid and Microsoft has no chance of driving a wedge there. And as I see it, they already lost the console war. In that environment Microsoft is bleeding revenue all over the field, their books are red with blood and red ink. And for their security I have not seen an alternative for Mandiant (owned by Google). So where are they now? When will we see another Solarwinds? It is not a given, but they lack in cyber security, so I fail to see how they will stop the next wave. 

And now the battle field changes further, Tencent is about to arrive, I merely wonder if that was one of the reasons why the E3 was cancelled (I honestly do not know). If Tencent arrives, it arrives with more options and more settings than the Microsoft console field will allow for, no matter how that plays out, it makes the Blizzard $65,000,000,000 a massive anchor around the neck of Microsoft and it will hurt them, no matter what ideas they have. Tencent has been funding a lot of Unreal engine 5 stuff, as such they could wow the gaming community and if they are going the direction I am speculating on, it will hurt both Microsoft and Amazon to a larger degree, in this the pain to Apple remains unknown, or it might be minor. And that is all before some figure out that Project Cluster will enable a lot more than anyone considered, it was meant for that, to be ready for national 5G implementations. How many of them did that off the bat and how many (implying Microsoft) stated “We will get to that when it is ready”, it is the short term focal point of a quarter by quarter BI person. In this none of them have a real long term focal point and that is why Tencent is a danger to them all, they are focussing on 2025 and 2026 (the year Microsoft allegedly collapses).

So is Microsoft my blinder? Is it my focal, or did I see the stage for what it was one that offers great options for some and not that much for others. They limited their abilities by hanging an additional $65,000,000,000 anchor around their necks. I am calling it as I saw it. Perhaps I am wrong, you tell me. I gave you the numbers and the works, you can do your own research.

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