Tag Archives: Crusades

September 26, 2024 · 17:47

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is a real thing, it is not the version we see in Star Trek. Xenophobia quite literally translates to ‘foreign fear’. The fear of foreign issues. The media exploits it for any flames it can create, as fear invites flames, flames create ‘clicks’ and clicks translate to advertisement money. It is the simplest way for media to use people to generate revenue for them. Yet I saw the other f this exploited fear in another way last night. I was about to write an article to something related to this, as such that story gets pushed back and now I focus on this as it is related to the bigger picture. 

The first trigger were the Crusade memes we have seen this year (there were a few). Now I like the age of Crusades to some degree, but we were deceived to a much larger degree. The crusades were mostly the nobles pillaging the Arabian lands and it was done with the blessing of Pope Urban II. The treaty of Claremont (1094) gave rise to this and many people (often in states of near starving) rallied to the sound of the the call to free the land of Christ, which was largely ludicrous as that was Jerusalem and that was debatable Jewish/Saracen (Muslim). So here came the crusades and that was a massive slaughter around Accra, Jerusalem and a few other places. Yes, there are a few inaccuracies here, but the sentiment is decently sound. An interesting telling is seen in the movie Kingdom of Heaven by Ridley Scott. The western world had a decent technological advantage, but they could not stop the Arabian nations to unite in their anger to the west. Between 1092 and 1291 approximately 1.7 million people died. These people died by warfare, disease, starvation, and murder by banditry. In the current Russian losses against the Ukrainian defenders there were merely 647,800 losses, so the losses were then 300% larger. So what do you think will happen now that the Arabian lands have an economic advantage and the west no longer have a technological advantage? Did the Karen’s of this world consider that small setting in ‘their’ crusades?

And when you consider that stage, we get to the article that ‘set’ me off. It was the Daily Mail (at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/boxing/article-13889805/Anthony-Joshua-Daniel-Dubois-selling-national-soul-Saudi-PR-silence-criticism-SIMON-JORDAN.html) where we see ‘SIMON JORDAN: We must stop selling our sporting soul to the Saudis, I don’t like the sense that everything in this country is there solely to be bought’ It is a weird sense. You see, the owners of whatever is there to be sold, because they want money and the Saudi’s (and other nations) have it. The byline “I found it a tad perplexing to sit in our own Wembley stadium on Saturday night and listen to the national anthem of Saudi Arabia” which is nice, because on September 23 1932 the country Saudi Arabia was established. The Saudi’s are proud of this and they should be allowed to be proud. So I went over to YouTube and I found the Saudi National anthem. It was beautiful. Now, I was lucky because I cannot speak Arabic to any degree. I cannot even order a Shawarma if my life depended on it (as I die of starvation), as such YouTube was the answer as the movie had the song and the texts both in Arabic and English. 

Hasten!
To glory and supremacy,
Exalt the Creator of heavens!
And raise the green flag
Carrying the written light of aegis;
Repeat: “Allahu Akbar!”
O my country!
My country,
As pride of Muslims live on!
Long live the King
For the flag
And the land!

It reveres their country, their faith, their king and their flag. What is wrong about that? Because it isn’t revering the Union Jack? The owners (the governing body of English football, the Football Association) decided to honour the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on their national day. I see nothing wrong with that. So how did he come to “I don’t like the sense that everything in this country is there solely to be bought”? Shouldn’t his first though be “I don’t like the sense that everything in this country is there solely to be sold” In that the question refers to their inner ‘christian’ being, get cash now before it is too late. And in this America is already ahead of them, making all kinds of ‘unions’ before the wells of wealth run dry. And when we get “Though I consider myself a capitalist, I find it a little bit distasteful that we seem so willing to give away our national soul for the right price” and there is the larger story. The idea that the people would hand over ‘their national soul’, they sold their soul for a price and the buyer was willing to buy. I don’t see this part anywhere. We then get “I turned up to our most iconic sporting arena in the country, recognisable around the globe and the seat of our national game, to watch two British heavyweights Daniel Dubois and Anthony Joshua, and it felt like downtown Riyadh.” And I wonder (apart from the fact that Riyadh is prettier and a lot cleaner than London). Wembley Stadium is, as far as I can tell, still owned by the Football Association, so what gives? Was it merely a sign of respect to play the Saudi National anthem on their national day? I don’t know what the driving force was to playing that song, but I am willing to see that it as a sign of respect to the Saudi involvement on their national day. But what do I know. What is interesting is that the Daily Mail gives us “A British journalist has claimed he was barred from Saturday’s showpiece fight between Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois at Wembley after labelling the event an ‘unashamed sportwashing exercise’.” Was this the case? I do not know as too many media is about creating flames. Perhaps that journalist could not afford the ticket and whomever he ‘represented’ had another journalist assigned to the event. I do not know, but I wonder what the facts are. The Daily Mail is a decent expert in creating flames and this time around they let Simon Jordan create the flames. 

That is the larger stage, the media is losing more and more reliability as they more and more depend on ‘clicks’ from flames. We do not know what to believe and the article does not help. For one, an no point do we see who the owner of Wembley Stadium is, as far as I know it is still owned by the Football Association. The article does not bear that out, not even once. Weird isn’t it. Oh and before you start a crusade, remember that wars are won by those who are better informed and as such you would get a massive beating from whomever represents the new Saracens. Something to think about.

Have a lovely day.

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January 21, 2024 · 23:49

Lines of presentation

That is what it at times amounts to. A line of presentation, although in gaming it is called storylines and narration. You see, I have been pondering a few things. We cannot ignore a game like Skyrim and the weaknesses it has. I am not attacking Skyrim. It was released on 11.11.11 and two generations later, it still feels and plays awesome. There have been so many additions and now we need something new. The problem is that we need something really new, not just another version and that got me thinking. To see this we need to take a little historical journey. According to ‘history’ the one of the very first Spymaster was Akashi Motojiro (1904). I personally doubt this for the simple reason that the art of war was written 500BC, implying the Chinese did nothing with chapter 13 for over 2 millennia and that is as far fetched as it will ever get. Sun Tzu gave us the following categories of spies:

  • Local spies
  • Inward spies
  • Converted spies
  • Doomed spies, and 
  • Surviving spies.

But no one (at present has incorporated that in an RPG game. Until now it wasn’t really possible to add this. As such the side quest could be to evolve a spy network. The narration would be upgraded and when you consider the settings of balance, you could teach espionage to one and assassination to the other, the operative part is balance, a sort of detente in RPG gaming. Still the player would get benefit of both. Now consider the implications. Not merely the quests for each type of spy, the setting of learning the scrolls of espionage Ould be added and you would gain another side to the game. Bethesda relies on the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild. It is something that others need to avoid, but the beginning could be an eye catcher to any gamer. Now consider that a similar stage could be applied to the Hashashim, who were the dread of crusaders in the 11th century, they were the foundation assassins. There is of course the Ninja from Japan, all options to consider in a new RPG game, to set yourself apart rom the others, and as (according to some sources) the next Elder Scrolls is 2 years away, the early bird that chases the new frontiers can care themselves out a very nice slice of that pie. 

Narration
That is merely the gameplay, but the larger stage becomes the storyline, the narration if you like and that is the golden threat of any solid RPG game. There are more sides and I wrote about those lines on May 30th 2022 when I wrote ‘Creating economic sides’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/05/30/creating-economic-sides/). You see, the stories are one, but there needs to be the creation of a balanced economy or the game becomes weak. You see poverty around you, all whilst you have hundreds of thousands of credits. And it is not direct, it is the indirect influence that drives the game forward and these storylines could have a similar approach. Consider 3 locations. One has espionage, one has assassination and one has commerce. They all have their own advantages, but to some degree drawbacks too. You might benefit from all, but only to some degree and it only goes as far as the good will you create. Making choices does that in one direction and takes them away in another direction. It creates a form of balance and makes the game very much replayable, because one impact hits a region different from another. Sides too often overlooked. We might remember Fable where one area was in poverty, or in good standing depending on the actions you took, yet we can take that in a much larger and different directions as well. Until now it was not explored (no negativity implied), however the new streaming systems as well as the new consoles allow for a much stronger and larger play system, larger scenarios and larger areas. And we might think that this is the solution, however without a more verbose storyline and much more profound narration that is not going to be an option that survives. Only two months ago we were given “Starfield’s lacklustre exploration and lack of depth, with players feeling that the game becomes dull and tedious.” I never played the game, so I do not know. But I can understand how this came about and it evangelises my idea of bolder and better narration and story lines. No matter who does it, they need to get ready for a much larger storyline in all kind of directions. The linear storyline is pretty much at an end, but that is my point of view. 

I believe that the next large RPG game needs to set new boundaries and set an entirely new way to narrate a game, more of the same will not get far in 2024 (or 2025 for that matter).

Enjoy Sunday.

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October 20, 2023 · 00:32

The gig is partially up

Yes, this happens. Even to me and Microsoft apparently figured part out, part I had hoped to include in the sale of my IP, IP which might now be made public domain. I refuse to let Microsoft walk away with it all. You see, I made the second (or third mention) in ‘Ring around the currency’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/12/25/ring-around-the-currency/) on Christmas day 2022, almost a year ago. I had seen how gaming went and I made some calculations. Between 1985 and 1999 the systems Atari 800, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga had a little over 10,000 games. I reckoned that if you took the list sorted by rating and you take the top 10% you end up with 1,000 games. Now we get that some still have IP protection. I reckoned that if we set that marker to 50% (really high) we still end up with 500 games, a lot more than Amazon or Google had. The others are fair game, no IP protection and these games could easily be transformed for cloud gaming. Going from 64KB to 1MB-15MB is still a good gig and these games were really fun and addictive. A system with 500 games (merely one of three pillars). That is what the seemingly bright people at Amazon missed and I was laughing most of the year, knowing that my giggles were temporary at best. It was one part that ensured 50,000,000 consoles and alas Kingdom Holding (with Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud) were not taking the bait for billions in revenue. Neither was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who was driven to eSports. But I thought ahead of the pack. You see eSports people get there by training and the younger they are the better they become and these games set up my and the next generation, so the new generation could do worse than train on these games. Still that was not my focus, it was a focus on fun. The fun I had through decades of joyful gaming. Not hopping like a kangaroo in FPS games. I also saw the option to reengineer some games (like Defender of the Crown) to be a little more realistic and more Arabic driven, a combination of that game with a focus of the 1st Crusades. Show the current generation what Islamic life in 1095-1291 achieved. And that was not all, many games were up for grabs, rejected and forgotten. As such the creation of a large coffer of games would propel any console and that was the setting I set out to do, but it was only one of three pillars. I tend to make the other two pillars public domain soon enough especially as my retirement in Toronto is now no longer a reality. 

There were several other games that required remastering in the new setting. There was Knight Games on the CBM64, and setting this with a Saracen style might appeal to a lot of Arabic gamers. The nice part was that I had played most of those games and I would be able to recall plenty of details and plenty of gaming sides, even improve on some of them. A setting that was never considered in those days. 

All this came to the surface when I saw ‘Phil Spencer Teases the Revival of Older Microsoft Franchises’. It came with ““With Game Pass, we have the ability to maybe pick a couple of franchises every year and almost do a ‘revisited’,” Spencer explained. Although he clarified that it was not an official branding term, he expressed the potential to recognise the significance of these games in gaming history and make them available through Game Pass.”

Yes, that was the setting that gave me pause to think. Spencer does not think in small settings and as I make this now public domain others will come and see what they can have. You see Microsoft has committed 69 billion, as such making sure that all these games get multiple contenders all vying for a piece of the pie makes the slice for Microsoft smaller and that is not the only thing they will face. So all who read this, if you develop games, see what old games you could purchase, get the IP for or register the new gaming IP. It will be the first disappointment for Microsoft. They will have to share the pie with many others. The other side is that these people could get a slice of the game through the new Tencent Technology handheld. Another mess they never banked on. I had hoped to keep ahead of the curve, but it seems that this is no longer an option. The only thing left is to make these steps as expensive as possible for Microsoft. They invested to get a mile, so if I can make the setting so that they merely get a furlong it will be a good day for me, or at least a better day than it was this morning. So here you see it, this is what Amazon and Google missed. Well, it was one of three parts they missed and I wonder if someone over there will wake up at some point. 

Enjoy the day, I will enter Friday being decently grumpy today.

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March 26, 2022 · 18:45

Chaos on the brain

Yup that was me alright this morning. It started actually pretty good, I was enjoying some tea (yes I drink that every now and then), I was enjoying being in my bonnet and behold, a thought passed me by. It was a mix of Queen, a thought of Ted (the teddy) and things started to click. You see, when I grew up (a really long time ago) I got my hands on some Flash Gordon comics and the mix started to rattle. 

I loved it, it was just different. So I was a fan before Queen, Sam J. Jones and Melody Anderson decided to have a go at Max von Sydow. I loved the music, the movie all because the comic woke something up. Even nowadays, I miss the comics, I can still enjoy the Queen album (they truly outdid themselves) and the movie was for a 1980 movie quite enjoyable. But something was missing. You see, now we have the streamers and they could transform the original comics into something dark, gritty and closer resembling the comics. Who? I have no idea, but Amazon, Hulu and Netflix should seriously consider it. No matter who wins, if they can make it truly dark and more resembling the comics, they could have a large win on their hands, merely my point of view. Nothing more. So whilst that process started chaos came knocking on my display. It was Hogwarts Legacy (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AZmuZNu5LA) and it blew me away. Not by a little either. Even now as I am still enjoying Horizon: Forbidden West, I cannot stop thinking of what Avalanche Software has set in motion. What I saw was unique and flawless.  I plays a century before the Hogwarts we know and it works out that way. Yes, we recognise parts, we see things and creatures from all kind of places, but there is so much new to be seen, so much art in nearly every screen that I believe that on view alone, it will drive millions of Harry Potter fans insane with the need to get this game. Yes, I heard about the critique, I cannot say how I feel as I avoided (intentionally or not) most of the information as it was too far from release date. So whatever goblin issue there was the clip I pasted was my first introduction to the game and it looks utterly stunning. So even as some will say, I saw that. I avoided the 2018 leaks, I see no need to get hung up on something 4 years before release, and I still believe that. I saw some teasers that were released, and now some real stuff and this game could optionally set a new bar for many game developers. First Guerrilla, now Avalanche and Ubisoft cannot release anything to that level of gaming as I personally see it. Can you not see that Ubisoft is about to become a ‘has been’, like Microsoft (just a thought). So why the link?

I believe that any new IP, could be linked. Could transgress from comic to both games and series and here the path for Amazon becomes a lot more clear, but there is nothing stopping Netflix to seek an alliance with a real hungry and futuristic software house to unite and create both using one design and art team. There really is no need to reinvent the wheel and nowadays these wheels are a lot closer alike and a lot closer together than was the case in the past. 

In this fantasy and science fiction seem to be more easily adapted to both stages than others, but that is merely a personal view. And in this, what happens when you consider what games like Horizons: Forbidden West and optionally Hogwarts Legacy allows for. So what happens when the world of Flash Gordon become a much larger RPG styled game than ever before? It goes further than this. Consider Hansel and Gretel. Not the fairy tale, but the movie that gave us a bad ass Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Now consider the environment. Take Southern Germany, a map that maps Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in the 11th century. And the Black Forest is only a small part of Baden-Württemberg. Now consider what you need to do to become a famous witch hunter. And optionally the golden Emma Watson statue if you kill more witches than anyone else (no need to avoid humour, is there?) And consider the era, the first Crusades are in full swing, so there is an abundance of criminals and charlatans, there are corrupt officials and in that stage you will need to put your stamp. And it does not come easy. In the movie they had the weapons, but in this game you will not get far without the help and alliance of a really nice blacksmith and they only work for coins. We are so gung-ho about the kill-shot that we forgot that before we get to do that kill-shot a lot more needs to happen. Would it work? I honestly do not know, but in this day and age, the larger entertainer and the larger holder of a unique piece of IP has a much better chance than all others. Guerrilla showed that and believe it or not, I believe (from what I saw) that Hogwarts Legacy is on that same track. Avalanche did something really good and I cannot wait to find out. And if I had to choose? I honestly do not know. I would look forward to all three games and it has been a while since more than one game was on my list. At present HFW is just so fulfilling, it is almost scary. 

But that too is part of gaming, the anticipation and finding out that it was well warranted, Ubisoft used to be like that, but now it seems the new software makers are on that path whilst the old makers are exiting the stage on the left side.

Chaos is on my brain, but it comes from a weird mix of the old, the new and what might be, and in the stage of a place that now has more than 20,000 castles? I reckon that any witch would want one, so there is a reason to play this in southern Germany and there is no reason to think that the map is limited to merely there. In 5 years, no telling what systems are capable of in 2027/2028.

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August 5, 2021 · 21:47

Anachronism

Yes, it sounds cool and for the most, if you are aware, it is cool. The ability to spot these elements are pretty out of this world. There was a group of people near Sardinia, it was 1212. If someone took a real good look, they might have noticed a boy, yet he was wearing a pair of jeans and a Timex. There was a witness, her name was Thea Beckman. Yet it does not end well, the bulk of these minors ended up with William of Posqueres and were shipped to Tunis to become slaves. They never ended anywhere near the Crusades. There is also the alleged setting of the Key of all intelligence. It is a British thing. The key is a tablet like device, it needs to be filled with encryption elements by GCHQ, MI5 and MI6. Only then will the wielder be able to unlock one special computer to add to it, it is its own system, never linking to anything, at the bottom of the sea, a system with more security than the crown jewels in the tower. But these elements are mere window dressing. Anachronism is a dangerous thing, it is an even weirder concept. 

To see this we need to consider Anachronism, it means “a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned”. Yet when you dig deeper there is positive anachronism and negative anachronism. An example of positive anachronism is not about time travel, it is when something resurfaces. Something like the Irish Crown Jewels, or the poems of the poet Sappho. They were lost in the past, yet there is no indication that they are permanently lost. Negative anachronism is different, it is the stage of elements found at crusades, the setting of Celestrium found in a lab, or perhaps the Hsin Yu, a Chinese steamer sunk in 1916 where 1,000 died. What is more interesting is that dives allegedly revealed that the steamer allegedly had a support system to fit a mortar, one that would not be seen until WW2, that would be (if enough evidence found) a case of Negative Anachronism. Yet in all these years there is only one game on the subject (to some sort of degree). It was Psygnosis who released Chronoquest in 1988. Yet in RPG’s it has never happened. I got this idea, where we need to see an RPG, just like any other. Yet in the game we find books, certain books that have a second side, like the the other side of a page, but it contains some form of a puzzle, not merely opening the ‘page’, it could involve breaking or ripping the page, it could be folding the page and removing a part and remove the item. The item could be anything, more likely an anachronism that alters all, almost like an SD card, but when this item is added in the right place, the anachronism adjusts time without paradox elements. Suddenly we see art is added, items are added and optionally devices are added. The NPC’s are unaware, but we see the difference and now we see the start of a much larger field of play. Consider that someone prevented Leila Denmark form living, removing her stops the bacterium Bordetella Pertussis from being invented from 1926 to 1953, the WW2 statistics take a drastic turn and it would hit US troops in Korea to an almost disastrous degree. Now a person like Leila Denmark is a massive impact, the inventor of the Asphalt cutter not as much, but the timelines still shift. Now consider an RPG where your game world is in danger, a lot more than you know and even as you are like the NPC’s unaware of some things, the stage you are in, you get to learn that things were removed and you get to repair some of it, or all of it. And this is where the game takes a turn. I wrote earlier “it contains some form of a puzzle, not merely opening the ‘page’, it could involve breaking or ripping the page, it could be folding the page and removing a part and remove the item”, so when you break the page open the wrong way, the information is warped. So instead of merely resetting the life of the maker of the Asphalt cutter, he remains alone, so what comes next is lessened and optionally someone else comes up with the goods and as such the economy of your land is changed. It is interesting that a concept as powerful as anachronism was never added to any RPG game. I wonder if someone will take up that slack in a decent way. 

#JustSaying

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June 7, 2021 · 00:07

Faith by the hypocrite

I feel betrayed, I feel betrayed for the second time and in the second time the media seems to be aiding the hypocrites, so how does that feel? First we get the issue that the Catholic Church was directly in the know on sexual abuse of children, even as it was brought decades too late and we saw a whole range of versions of betrayal. At some point the Boston Globe brought the goods. In 2010 the Guardian gave us “Walter Robinson, then Spotlight editor, says the paper’s reporting “put the match to some very, very dry tinder”. That’s certainly true: within two years of the first of the Globe’s 800 articles on the scandal appearing in January 2002, Rezendes notes, Cardinal Law had resigned, 150 priests in Boston stood accused of sexual abuse, more than 500 victims had filed abuse claims, and church-goers’ donations to the archdiocese had slumped by 50%”, the movie Spotlight starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci, gave the issue out the the large audience and it mattered. It showed millions just how much of a failure the church actually is. Even now, we see that the media is keeping one journalist no one gives a fuck about alive (Jamal Khashoggi), we see the accusations against the Saudi Crown Prince, even though there is no evidence supporting it. No, even now that UN essay writer Agnes Callamard seemingly remains silent on the mass murder of 215 children. How useless can a person get? I wonder what that answer will yield.

In a stage of denial, of long term pondering by the Catholic Church, we now see the cadavers of 215 children and people are debating, they are not arresting, they are not debating with the people who were in charge of Kamloops Indian Residential School in the dock and/or in prison, we see voices on the news and it is smothered news, the Church apparently has power over the media as well, yet this is not some “The CIA thinks it is likely that this has happened”, we have corpses, we have clear evidence and this is not one, two or three. This is a collection of graves amounting to two hundred and fifteen DEAD children. So when we see “Thousands of children died in residential schools and their bodies rarely returned home. Many were buried in neglected graves” we need to get angry, the church is no longer a valid organisation, optionally it is one of selective discriminative terrorism.

And it should not be allowed any tax breaks from now on on a global setting. Consider the opposite, I come around wielding a Macuahuitl, I bash your son or daughter three times (really hard) and dump that cadaver in the sewer, if she is a true person of faith she will climb out unharmed and I will apologise, how about that?

If that is too direct, then you are the problem if the finding of 215 bodies is no reason to get really really angry. The people who brought you hits like “Put your weener in a teener”, “My Johnson is in John’s son”, or perhaps “The woody pecker for the young”, co-funded by the Catholic Church is at it again, now we merely find the bodies 215 and they are still searching, so that number is increasing, and this was not a state, not a country, not a continent. This was ONE school and there are no questions, or better stated there is a massive lack of questions on a global scale. How can we accept such hypocrisy? 

I find it easier and easier at present to renounce the church as it is a being of evil, a satan dressed like a sheep, whilst we know that it can never be a sheep, merely a demon in wolfs clothing. According to the Conversation, in the US, we have ‘Why it matters that 7 states still have bans on atheists holding office’, yes because atheists are a much larger risk than catholic sexual abusers or Catholic mass murderers, it makes total sense and this is not really on the US, it is a Canadian issue making it a much larger Commonwealth issue and as I have gone through 50+ headlines, not one of them gave me that someone was arrested for questioning, not one was arrested on suspicions, although the second one will take time, but in that time someone will make a new life in a place that does not have an extradition treaty with Canada, like for example Vatican City. No, we see all of them rehash the same story, but 215 children is a cause for 215 very different stories for EVERY newspaper in EVERY country, first of all in EVERY commonwealth nation, but that is seemingly not the case, why not? Whilst I found one article two days old with ‘UN human rights experts call on Canada to investigate residential school burial sites’, ONE article. Their Essay department made a lot more noise on the disappearance of a journalist no one cares about and there was NO evidence then, now we have at least 215 bodies, so why is the UN so quiet?  Did they get a call from a phone starting with +379? 

You tell me, but consider the fact that the internet had at some point well over 72,000,000 hits on Jamal Khashoggi, yet the word Kamloops gets you less than a third, 215 children found dead and that is the stage, it is staged as 215 children, in some B.C. School, the setting of changing the premise of the event is already underway, it will go slowly, but it is starting and we have well over 215 bodies, in Turkey we had nothing, mere speculation but for the UN and its essay writers that was enough, now it seemingly is not, because if it was the UN would be in every newspaper, just like with Jamal Khashoggi, but that is not the case is it? 

We are being told to have faith by the hypocrite, how does that work for you? The clergy called for the wealth of the Middle East in the treaty of Clermont (they called it something else) which was held from 18 to 28 November 1095. Now 926 year later we still haven’t learned that the clergy needs to be held to values in court or must be disbanded, openly by all christian nations. We owe that to ourselves and we we it to our own children and our neighbours children, for when it comes to children we are our neighbours keeper and shield. 

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September 17, 2020 · 07:31

Behold the truth on a console

It was a setting my mind went into when I was looking at the PS5 presentation at 06:00. It suddenly hit me, a new IP, one that has never been done before. So what if the game is not a game, what it is a story about the truth. A setting where we get to be different people, unlocking christian history. The early days, the treaty of Claremont, the Malleus Malificarus, the Ghibellines papers, the list is near endless and for the most, Christians are unaware on a lot of this. Let’s face it, when was the last time you got the truth served as a game (well, sort of a game anyway). Walking through the Vatican, unlocking art, unlocking the history of artists. A setting of papers, paintings and sculptures. In all this, did the Vatican Apostolic Archives ever considered that their in-house digitisation project would be a stage of informing the people? Even as they attempted to both make the documents more available to researchers, so why only researchers?  Why not inform us all? And in this way preserving ageing physical documents will be preserved all over the world. In this way we can serve up the history of religion in many ways, on many grounds and in a playful way. I remember (when I was young) getting late to a sermon. I asked the man sitting next to me ‘How long has he been speaking’, the answer was ‘about half an hour’, when I asked him what it was about, I got ‘He hasn’t told us yet’. 

You might laugh, but if we look at this neutrally, when was the last time we got the real goods on what happened? Who has ever liked at the treaty of Claremont? When we see “Pope Urban’s speech on November 27 included the call to arms that would result in the First Crusade, and eventually the capture of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. In this, Urban reacted to the request by Byzantine emperor Alexius I Comnenus who had sent envoys to the Council of Piacenza requesting military assistance against the Seljuk Turks”, I wonder how many people had any clue on what the crusades were about. It was about greed, not religion (well less about religion). The movie Kingdom of Heaven (by Ridley Scott) touches on it, but for those with a larger interest in RPG and not killing things (optionally not killing things) we could have an option. There is of course the option, that you unlock a character that can actually go into Jerusalem, it is an idea. I just got the idea less than an hour ago, so it is still evolving in my mind, even whilst I am writing this. If the Vatican wants to reach the youth of today, the 5 consoles embrace close to 638,000,000 people, as such, is it such a bad idea?

And it is not merely about the documents and the Vatican, if you are not French, there is a decent hand the you are not aware of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims, so why not? There are a whole range of churches and cathedral who have had a larger push in nations and I think the it is time to give the people the low down on these places. 

Is it a crazy idea? Yup, I will be the first one to admit that, is it a bad idea? There are 1.2 billion Catholics in the world, there are 638 million console gamers, there is a really good chance that these groups overlap. Skyrim is one of the most successful games ever made and it only has 20 million copies, when you see the other two numbers, does it make sense to take that walk? I believe it does and there is every chance that this game could make it on all of the 5 consoles, optionally PC and MAC too. 

So will we behold the truth or merely bash the ‘x’ button on Devil may Cry 5? Well the is up to you to decide, but consider Minecraft, everyone laughed initially, yet now there are well over 100 million people playing that game (most on PC), so whilst this idea is bouncing in my head, I will consider ordering my PS5 and I await a shop calling me back with the explanation what I have been waiting for my iPad since May, and it better come with more than a ‘there is a new model arriving in 2 weeks’.

Hasta Lasagna and Auf Wiener Schnitzel!

 

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