Tag Archives: EA

February 3, 2024 · 22:47

What are sports to you?

A question I have been pondering. It started a week or so as the Swift hatred entered my Twitter account. I have no idea why there was so much hatred. She is gorgeous, she is a singer and from one photo I saw she has the muscle tone of an olympic athlete. So, what is not to like or love about that youthful young sprout? But this is about sports and for this we need to go back to early 2003. I got my Xbox with a new mobile subscription. I wasn’t looking for it, I had my PS2 and I was happy. I had nothing against the Xbox, gaming is gaming. And on a nice summer 5 friends and me making a team of 6 decided to have a little American Football match. With the EA game that as possible, so on Saturday we started the elimination game each a 15 minute game (I believe) and I ended up 4th. I lost the last game against the Steelers and the steelers went to the podium to get 3rd. The final that was to be played Sunday (we were all tired) was set to noon (a Gary Cooper reason). And the final match a two times 30 minutes game was set between packers and raiders and the raiders won. It was perhaps one of the nicest weekends that year. There were snacks, there were suds, there was cake in-between and we were all having a great time. Even now 20 years later I still remember that weekend. Gaming and sports. I was playing the 49ers for the most nerdy, dorky reasons of all. I saw one of their cheerleader calendars that year and San Francisco seemed like a cool city. 

Does there need to be another reason? I like my hockey, my NHL games. So as the 49ers are due towards the Super Bowl these thoughts came flooding back to me. 

And as I was looking at the news I see how Taylor Swift could make the flight back from Japan with the words ‘You need to calm down: Taylor Swift can fly from Tokyo to Super Bowl in time, says Japan embassy’ (source: The Guardian) is the world mad? First if she can’t make it, she can watch it on TV. She has a jet with TV. She is a multi billion dollar business woman and she has her brand, just like Travis Kelce has his job and his job is on the line that day. He might not be the quarterback, but this is the game of a lifetime and he is just as important as the other players. This is one match when being a team matters. Prima Donna’s never make it to the finish line. They need their team and this is the grand slam of finals in sports. 

I doubt I’ll see it, I am not a football fan and I am not sure if it makes the Australian TV. I will keep an eye on the Google Scores. And it all matters, as I see “Big name advertisers from Netflix to Google paid as much as $7 million for a 30-second spot during the game, seeking to capture the attention of the roughly 100 million viewers who tune in each year.” Everyone wants to cash in, everyone wants to see part of that 100,000,000 audience. I get it, but it is about the sports (and perhaps the halftime show)

But what does it mean to you? You see EA has its franchise, but when did they go out to make it about a friends sphere? Not what THEY believe it to be, but what you believe it to be. You see, I never got to safe that game (and now It doesn’t matter as I do not have an Xbox), but the option to set that match in PDF, or perhaps the game created a social media page. When was that done? We underestimate the connection of sports and play and the franchise holders underestimate it even more. In a global view it matters to people in Pakistan and India to keep scores of their achievements in cricket and I reckon in other games too. 

Saudi Arabia and the UAE are not far behind them. These 4 make up for a 2 billion population, not all are into sports, but it ends up being a lot more than the population of America. These franchise holders have been catering to the wrong cluster as far as I can tell. Now that sports are going to be a much larger presentation all over the Middle East these people need to consider changing gears and they need to do this before their next games come out. Whomever does it will have options to really become a larger player in sports. But it all reflects back to ‘What do sports mean to you?’ It is not the easiest question. Even kids misalign their views because of what they feel of any sport. But ask any Pakistani Kid and for the most their will answer that Cricket is their life. And Cricket (on PS5) heard that call. Yet we also get The user score for NHL 24 on Metacritic has the game received as “generally unfavourable”. Not a good thing. And it gets worse for them. The Middle East has no representation as far as I can tell and in the upcoming years it will matter. It might not be NHL, the Emirates Ice Hockey League (EHL) is starting to get noticed and that implies fans and youthful players. I believe that gaming can head it off giving the young players something to care for. And in all this sport is caring and caring is sports. You might think I am wrong and that is fine, but consider the numbers. How many people play the Cricket game per nation? I never found these statistics and now they matter. You see there is a shift and it is turning towards the Middle East. Not for American Football and not for the Super Bowl, but this even shows how much sports have been in decline in the west. Soccer players will disagree and I hand that to them, it is all about Europe there. Yet there is a shift there too. We are catering to the wrong crowds and these franchises better wake up soon because that is how rifts start. That is optionally how new and better franchises are created. By the way, in 2003 I could set my entire game towards a SF49 interface. Later it was dropped. Why? Consider the thought behind that change and wonder how there is not a shift amongst gamers. The NHL games never gave me that option, other then my home stadium and a collection of players and outfits. But the interface was generic. Why not appeal to their fans? Why can’t actual scores not be added to the game tweaking statistics? All ideas that have been floating around for at least a decade, but we aren’t seeing any of it in the NFL, NHL or NBA games. Why is that? What are games to you and what are game to them? When you consider that these franchises are merely interested in money, where does that leave you? I let you ponder that and you all as you enter the last week before the Super Bowl. Sports are more than one game, but this is their moment, their aim for the throne of footballs. We can merely sit by and watch it on TV (or if you are rich and lucky) watch it in person. 

So have fun and watch out for that wicket this day.

 

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August 28, 2023 · 13:49

The speculated danger

Yes, that is where I am. Whatever I am about to give you, there is a decent amount of speculation involved, as such there is every chance that there are issues that aren’t covered and people with that kind of knowledge aren’t speaking out at present. Not to debunk my speculations and not to enforce it. I believe that the filtered media we are getting is now likely the more danger we face. This all started last night when I saw ‘UAE records hottest day of the year as temperature crosses 50 degree mark’ (at https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2023/08/27/Temperature-crosses-50-degree-mark-again-as-UAE-records-hottest-day-of-the-summer). Here we see “The rising heat in the UAE crossed the scorching 50 degrees Celsius threshold on Saturday, marking this summer’s highest temperature. According to the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), the mercury touched 50.8 degree Celsius in Abu Dhabi’s Owtaid in Al Dhafra region at 2:45 p.m.” We see all kinds of heat messages, but for a place like the United Arab Emirates to give that to the readers is a little new to me and that place is warm on any usual day. This started me to mull several things over and it also made me think back to the 60’s (when I was young and innocent. Yes, I was innocent once). That year is forever marked in my brain. Not because of the year as I am not certain what year it was. Yet I remember that it was -20 Celsius. The coldest I could ever remember. In addition to the ice flowers on my window, something I had never seen before there was something else. The streets were iced. Now we had ice in the winter, I grew up in a city named Rotterdam. But this was different, the streets were covered in ice. I could literally skate to school which had never happened before and I do not recall that it happened since. This is what I would call a temperature outlier. These things happen and there is nothing strange about it. Now consider this heat in the UAE. In addition consider (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/10/the-part-we-seem-to-forget/) the stage I reported in ‘The part we seem to forget’ where I quoted “Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather” (source: the Guardian) You can forget about the decennia part, I personally believe we are there now. To get that stage we need to add three elements. 

  1. “Researchers say deforestation has caused the Amazon to absorb less than half as much carbon dioxide as it did twenty years ago.” With the added “In the last fifty years, Brazil’s Amazon has lost about a fifth of its forest cover—almost 300,000 square miles. This includes at least 5,110 square miles lost in 2021”
  2. “From 2001 to 2022, Indonesia lost 29.4 Mha of tree cover, equivalent to a 18% decrease in tree cover since 2000, and 21.1 Gt of CO₂e emissions” which gives us Indonesia. 
  3. “Beginning in March 2023, and with increased intensity starting in June, Canada has been affected by an ongoing, record-setting series of wildfires. All 13 provinces and territories have been affected” with a total of 13,999,922 ha displacing well over 250,000 people. With Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/23/mapping-the-scale-of-canadas-record-wildfires) giving us “Canada is battling more than 1,000 active fires, and nearly two-thirds of them are out of control”

This is where the speculation starts. We have decimated our forests and the ability to regain the oxygen. Now, this is not going anywhere soon, our atmosphere has a curtain of well over 5 miles of oxygen, so we aren’t running out. But we now have a markable point where we use more oxygen than nature can correct for. The three largest places with forests are down by too much and there are side effects. The smoke of the Canadian fires, that go all through to the US will have a secondary impact

People wear protective masks as the Roosevelt Island Tram crosses the East River while haze and smoke from the Canadian wildfires shroud the Manhattan skyline in the Queens Borough New York City, June 7, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The sun will warm us less and you might think that is a good thing, but you would be wrong and that is why I made mention of the outlier in the 60’s. I personally believe that we are about to face the harshest winters ever and it will not be one year. This will start a trend that will be a 3-7 year stretch, not all at once, but we will face at least 2 harsh winters over the next 5 years with a few more after that. Even if the forests in Canada are replanted using Team Trees with Mark Rober, it will take close to a decade to see that impact and the forest fires will return next year too. Less likely to the same scale, but forest fires are a normal setting in Canada, the three elements combined is different and new.

Some will have seen the Netflix movie How it Ends and we aren’t facing that, but the nuclear winter that follows such fires are not entirely impossible, I would go on stating that they are becoming more and more likely. The media will trivialise this and state that I am a doom sayer, yet they have never given us the real deal in this and they are unlikely to do so now. I am not saying this will happen, but I feel certain that we are heading to really harsh winters and the first one will hit us before January 2025 which is expected to cripple the UK and Europe to a larger degree. Canada and the nordic nations will not be crippled to such a degree, but they too will feel the bite of the winter that comes. In the meantime with the winter hitting us and the heat being a larger problem extreme weather is coming our way and it is coming now, not in a decade. 

So consider what I told you, fell free to check the numbers you can and be certain that you take note of the trivialisation you see in the media and take note of the media that trivialised it. They are no longer to be trusted ever. They are filtering the information to keep you asleep, especially in a time when you should have been awake a lot more. It is not the one thing, there is no one thing, it is the combination of a whole range of issues and it is not the private jet setting, that is utter bullshit. What they are all happy to ‘ignore’ or forget is what I mentioned in ‘A COP26 truth’ a setting we see (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/13/a-cop26-truth/) two elements stand out. “over the last 15 years 15,000,000 additional flights were added. That amounts to 41,000 flights a day, every single day. So how much CO2 do these flights create?” The Guardian was all about private jets and made no mention of this element. Do you really think that these flights were essential? Then there was “We are that close to suffocating. On the other side, we have seen clear reports that 50% of the damage comes from 147 plants, the media ignored it, I wrote about it and placed the documents of UNEP and the EEA for you to read, they had graphics too.” How interesting was it that the Guardian and its environmental pages did not mention that report. Two elements and you were kept in the dark and now these elements start to form a biased opinion (from me) but feel free to come up with better settings and this has been going on since 2021. So with all the space they had they ignored the European Environmental Agency? 

It is my personal speculated believe that these elements are part of a greater impact and the Canadian fires with the deforestation elements are adding up to a new picture. I might be so brazen to suggest that the 8 billion people this year onwards (for some time) will be using more oxygen than the planet can renew, this has a larger impact now, the winters and summers will both be harsh, more harsh then anyone can remember. I would leave it to the media, but I don’t thin they can be trusted any longer. In fact there are trust issues on all sides and so there should be, but those who give us the news aren’t (it is now filtered information). Am I right? Am I wrong?

I honestly do not know, but this is my speculated opinion. I might be going from numbers, but it remains speculation. 

So breath and get through the day, the weekend is behind you the next one might be coming in 5 days. Enjoy.

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May 6, 2023 · 19:59

Having the ball

Yes, sometimes we have the balls, sometimes a little less so. Yet in the BBC court we see two players (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65244351) one is FIFA the other one is EA. So whilst we got on April 24th ‘Fifa no more? EA Sports rebrands its biggest game’. Yes it has been 2 weeks, but I do not particularly care about FIFA, so I left it alone. Yet this afternoon a few thoughts fell through. They came up in the first hour I noticed it, actually they came up about 5 minutes after the announcement that EA was going to drop FIFA. There was a plan for them, I had no doubt about that and 2 weeks ago we got the gist. “the developer behind one of the most successful franchises in gaming history, moves on to its new football game, EA Sports FC.” Just like Fortnite having its spasms, EA has a plan to avoid FIFA costs and I reckon that they wanna keep all 5 billion of that revenue. And we get “Mr Jackson emphasised that more than 19,000 footballers, 700 teams and 30 leagues will still be represented in the game, despite the split from football’s governing body.” Yet the larger impact is one some are not realising. How are these all represented? The IP of football shirts are partially set things like “the FIFA online store for officially licensed national team kits” are in many places, as such EA has issues. They are ‘focussed’ on “EA has also unveiled its FC Futures programme, which it says will support grassroots football projects across the world” which I personally see as ‘the party line’, but FIFA has its claws in its field, so the player is in for a surprise or two. Now, this is not necessarily bad, but the history of the loot-box is fresh, they need a new approach and I have no idea how they will go about that part. Also FIFA was way too big with 700 teams, so what gives there? 

And then we saw the game in a dangerous setting “The new Fifa game, Fifa 25, 26, 27 and so on, will always be the best e-game for any girl or boy”, and as this becomes an E-game, parents better realise that this comes at a cost. I reckon EA will play it softly and slowly change their grip from silk glove into a vice. Five billion is nothing to be sneered at and no matter how slow it happens, it will happen. We will see all the excuses, all the ‘mis communications’ but no that FIFA is cut off, EA will play a very different game. Some will be thrown by “everything you know and love from the modern FIFA games, including Ultimate Team, Career Mode, Pro Clubs, and VOLTA. You can expect the same attention to detail and number of official licenses, too.” In this I am not certain, but I need to see evidence before making that call and EA is playing this close to the chest at present.

And here is the kicker, as far as I can tell, at present there is no confirmed news on whether EA will follow the free-to-play route with EA Sports FC or not. This matters, because an E-sport that is not free to play could easily start at $5 a week, that is almost $25 a month making the game a lot more expensive whist after month 2 EA will be raking in the money. If it is free to play, the player will need to rely on premium packs at $7 each, so how does that math work out for you? 700 teams, 19000 players. How many packs will that be? Perhaps the player has one free team (depending on where they are) the rest not so much. And this is a problem, but also this view is speculative. EA is keeping its hand closed, so until they reveal we really do not know. 

The larger stage is ‘avoided being seen’ with “We do see ourselves as the world’s game. And as a result, we need to meet players and fans, where they are. This is a great embodiment of our commitment to football in general.” You see, I did (and still do) see loot-boxes as non-gambling. Yet FIFA was in a stage of exploitation and now that they cannot ‘hide’ behind the FIFA brand they have a much larger issue, because like most companies, they are hesitant to give away the 5 billion in revenue, even though they keep most of it now, they aren’t Amazon or Google (who wasted billions) EA has a bottom line, it has revenue depending shareholders, so if this goes south there will be a culling in EA management. 

Yet until the ACTUAL announcements come (not all the speculations we see everywhere) we will have to wait and as the game is expected to come in late September, I expect that the whole enchilada will be revealed no later than July, so roughly 8 weeks away, but that too is speculation from my side.

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December 23, 2022 · 23:11

Unions

The thought took me by surprise. I had been playing Minecraft that day and the dream took me in a different direction, the merging of games. Now in the case of Minecraft this might merely be a DLC, or added to the game, but the stage opens up new directions in gaming.

To give you the rundown, I need to take you on a small trip. In my days of the Atari ST, the game ‘The Sentinel’ was released and I was happy, a remake was made in the late 90’s and it was awesome on PC, the music was fantastic and the game left an even deeper impression. The game is about a sentinel, it cleans the world, it rotates and nothing will survive in its gaze. It seems simple, but the 3D landscape is tricky and there are 1000 levels (if I remember correctly). So to win you need to get to the highest point and devour the Sentinel. The game is simple, but addictive and the PC edition even more so. But what happens when we take the Sentinel and make it massive, it cannot be devoured. Yet if you can get close to it, you could ‘attack’ it and get glowing bricks from it. The glowing bricks give the player powers. Blue will drop never ending water when active, red drops lava and so on. Yellow becomes a sun beacon. The Sentinel however changes the landscape it sees, and as such destroys your house, reduces it to rubble (with all the stuff still there. A rare event that changes the speed of the game and creates chaos. But that is merely one side, so what happens when we have BOTH games? We have thought of it and it does not always apply, but what happens when we have games from the same maker? For example AC Origin and AC Valhalla? They have implemented the cosmetic parts in later games, but what if we can push it both ways and more than just cosmetic? So Horizon Zero Dawn AND Horizon forbidden West? The games can be played separately, but what if we could unite these games? Add even more terrain? That is (optionally) the power of streaming games, streaming games will make this possible. 

It is a continuation of an idea I had in the past (and wrote about it). The original EA CBM64 game ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ now with a Bioshock look. Fully 3D, yet that is merely the start. For the Amazon Luna, the idea came for Luna keys, gold and silver. So when you play the game you could find a chess set, when found the option opens up to unlock THAT chess set in the game chess. It makes for a new setting of long term gaming. In addition, the idea came that could open up other games and other makeover of games. Like the game Clue, Harry Potter themes (if that was open to offer) and so on. In that same stage Assassins Creed 2 could offer a renaissance Italian chess set and so on. Not every game will offer this, but with every iteration that does we add value to gaming, we add interest in people who like to play chess to play other games. When you play the new version of ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ a game like monopoly would suddenly get an additional playable token (the Hindenburg) and it is that interaction that gamers will become hungry for and they will play more, enjoy more and experiment more. The power of streaming games is not unlocked for the simple reason that the game owners are merely looking to ‘copy’ their game on a new platform, to get more names, more players but no one is looking in creating better players, more fun and more joy. It is seemingly past them.

It is a stage that needs to be looked at now, because the new makers of systems are looking in that direction and there is no price for second place. As I see it The Tencent Streaming solution is merely a year away. The current owners squandered billions, lost the middle east and now Tencent is about to offer new options, new terrains and they will offer it to millions more. So how much of the playfield will Amazon surrender? Google left the gaming sphere and Microsoft remains useless (which they will spin in a direction like blaming Sony), but the truth is that these three players left well over 6 billion a year on the field and that field is now increasing and is slowly moving towards Tencent. Yes another fine mess they left the gamers.  The only player, who had their own niche is Apple and I have no idea what they are up to, they play their cards close to their chest. But they could be the new winner in the 11th hour. I cannot tell, too much speculation on that direction.

But the union of games is a natural concept in streaming games and look at how many offered that stage, the simple answer is none. And when Tencent does offer it, they basically become winner by default. It was so easy to actually listen to gamers (something Microsoft has never done). Sony and Nintendo were not streaming solutions and they have THEIR market. The others (Apple excepted) did this to themselves. Consider what you read here and consider what you see in gaming and then see how natural the ideas actually are.

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December 13, 2022 · 11:31

Scuttle the ship

A thought occurred to me a moment ago. You see, we are so in a stage of what to do next, what to do in reaction and it came to me. We already have all the ammunition we need. You see to show players like Epic Games on how it is done, by actually doing hat WAS done and redoing it in a few ways. To take commercial sails away is by offering an alternative and here the Streamers (Amazon Luna) can set a new stage. Because it is not a free service we can ensure that loot boxes become free. Take a page from the Mass Effect 3 multiplayer mode. That part was the best multiplayer experience that I have ever seen, the best experience that I ever faced and the free loot boxes were part of that. OK, not completely ‘free’, it required effort. Yet effort is what a player brings to the stage. Consider any game, any shooter. Now add battle stages to it that are based on parts of the game. Now set a stage of 4 players versus a clever NPC part and slug it out. In the end, the ones standing get the credits and these credits go towards a loot box. In ME3 I had to play 2-4 games to get enough points for a Platinum box, and these rewards were awesome. All elements that we have now. Weapons, armour, support item, cosmetic items and with enough of that you can get a whole generation of people to the new game. Lets be clear, I do not hate Epic (I do think they were overly stupid) but we need to do something about the loot boxes and this is one way to counter them. Have a game where you can earn them without EVER spending a penny. And it will not be an easy fight, but the start is that you can get people to another solution where they do not pay and that is the start of more. Once the stage changes Epic either alters their approach or they become obsolete (that will take some time). But a player like Amazon has the option to make change happen. And this is not the new idea, I feel certain that Tencent is doing similar stuff, but their plan is brilliant (and insidious), they play the long game because they can afford to, the cherry on top of the cake is too rewarding for them and we need to see a counter move whilst we still have options. There is no talking with Epic Games, they are too far gone into the rabbit den of greed, but we can counter with new games, with altered games all with the same setup, Loot boxes for those showing effort. When effort becomes the currency the other solutions start to fade every so slightly before fading entirely. This is not a short solution and it will not come quickly, but it is a solution that has merit, because gamers are all about the showing of effort and gaining achievement that way. It is merely an idea, but I think it could work and when we start the stage of crossover loot boxes, the games will change the premise even further. Just a thought! Now Amazon needs to consider what games they will set to this stage and the first chip from the armour of greed that Epic games wields becomes a reality. 

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December 1, 2022 · 22:10

The games we desire

We desire games, we all do. In Star Trek we were once told “the more complex the mind, the more essential the need to play” (Star Trek, season 1, episode 15). I always embraced that. Gaming was my large escape and I have enjoyed it for decades. Yet the foundation of gaming changed after the Playstation 2 came (and all other systems). Gaming became big business, people with business degrees got involved and soon it went from art to business needs. Gaming suffered and it has suffered for quite some years now. Micro transactions is merely part of it. The larger stage was that art was taken out of the equation. This is why games like Elden Ring, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West are such successes. They embraced art and artsy sides to a much larger degree. This is the reason why places like Ubisoft went from great to below mediocre. There are the games that will always have appeal because of secondary reasons. Sport games being a clear first example.

When we look back to the days of Bullfrog, there was almost no game we did not desire, art was the driving force and it drove our needs deliciously and amazingly. Consider Populous, Flood, Populous 2, Magic Carpet (1 + 2), Dungeon Keeper and some (including me) still worship those times, those games. EA went and created some exploitation version of Dungeon Keeper. Yet they could repair the damage, and they are running out of time. They will need those who played the original to give rise to the next generation. They now require credibility. And it is not the weirdest idea. Six games that represents millions in revenue. Some can be re engineered, yet the larger setting will come from re engineering driving evolution of the game. This reminds me of another good Ubisoft game (they had a few). It was Conquest: Frontier Wars, the review gave it (for the most) 78%-88%. I would set it to around 85%, a game that makes the gamer want more. And there was another side, you could set up a battle game with two other Computer players and you had some options. What was important, you could spend hours in a new galaxy again and again, with two other races, each with intelligence settings. Now what if that concept is remade and also remade in games like a remastered Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper and Populous. Three games that were initially less than 1MB and could optionally keep gamers busy for years. That could spark a new wave of gamers and that is what the streaming services need, fresh blood and returning blood. And the need to play will draw them in. You still need decent games, and I just handed them 6 of them. Well, handing is a stretch, EA has the rights as far as I can tell, but consider that Yesterday I handed the option for 50 million gamers and consider that many games never get anything near that amount. I reckon that my solution with the additional games is a step into the direction of the number I predicted. That solution still needs the first phase, but without the second and third phase it will never grow to the degree required or is that desired? And there we have it, a stage we grow and a stage we create by looking backwards. The six games I mention are most likely IP protected, yet The Commodore Amiga had 2198 games, The Atari ST had a little over 1000 games, close to 10,000 games, If we rate from the highest and look at 10% we get to 219+100+1000 we end with 1319 games and that is if we merely look at the highest 10%. Now some will have protection, but not all will and there is the solution for streaming systems. Upgrade what was and get more people feeling the joy of gaming, not the challenge of some flawed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game. Even now we get ‘The final Assassin’s Creed Valhalla update has launched a week early’, the fact that it is for some systems 13GB does not lead to questions, the fact that the game was released on November 10th 2020 is a much larger issue. It is over 2 years old and still requiring patches. It is one of the reasons that streaming systems will win over time. But a system that has good games will endure a lot longer and the games from the old systems remain superior to many of the games released today, not all, but a lot of them. It sets the need for more play, and Streaming systems will deliver there. 

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October 30, 2022 · 10:53

That nagging feeling

It all started in 2021, July 12th to be exact. I was writing ‘New and reinforced’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/12/new-and-reinforced/) and another thought occurred to me. This had the options of an interesting stealth game. Consider the Citadel in Mass Effect, the time is when the Citadel becomes a hub (Mass Effect 3), the bodies are piling up and in that setting we have a stealth game. Consider an engineer, he is creating stealth armour for the Shepard and other spectres at that moment the attacks start. As he was working in a special R&D lab on the station, the humans decided to go off books and create a space in the citadel with no visibility at all. That is the start of the game. Visually it looks very much like the Mass Effect series, but here there are no firefights, a firefight is not something this engineer is equipped for and he is not much of a shot, a mere energy pistol that can deal with rodents and not much more. But stealth, that he can do and he is invisible to the camera’s and scanners, the armour works. 

The lab is below the human embassy it is slightly larger than a room with 5 bedrooms, 3 of them are work related one is a power hub. It is in that setting that he has to find food, make recordings and set up stealth camera’s. In a setting where husks are collecting bodies, where cleaning systems work 24:7, he needs to find places for the camera’s. He has to record what is going on. And unlike the first game, the Embassy section is completely mapped, every room, all views and every item. The player has to download logs, has to avoid and deactivate security systems, even though he seems invisible, he learns that the suit has issues and the points can be gotten to improve the suit, make stealth weapons and collect information. The game expands into other areas later in the game. Larger, not bigger, wider and more challenges. The idea for that setting was that EA could expand on the storylines on the citadel, expand on the races and expand on the locations. The second reason was that there is a lack of good stealth games. After Thief we only got Styx and Aragami, both excellent games. There are other games that have stealth elements, but games driven by stealth are rare on the market and as such this made sense. The idea to have a streaming stealth game was also rewarding in other ways. It would be a first and after the bummer that Andromeda was, taking it into a side street (not a replacement) might make the gamers, the obsessive Mass Effect gamers happy. And consider how large the citadel is, there is plenty of challenges to bring about, especially when you need to make a second and a third location. Consider the problems, or the challenge to create a new space under the noses of those who want to kill you and when we add a little science to it, it could be all kinds of fun. A game based on avoidance and trapping the other party. It could be a blockbuster for EA (they own the Mass Effect IP), just a thought. And consider how many games they released. It is not that they have shown a whole lot of creativity, have they?

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October 2, 2022 · 07:32

Just for fun

It is 07:14 and I just woke up. My mind came up with a nice idea which is now freely given to Electronic Arts. You see, I am a hockey fan, always have been. I do not care for the other games, but that does not mean that they couldn’t have it. In my dream there was a small altercation between the Shaq and me (nothing violent), I merely accused him of looking down on me, as I would. It then occurred to me that these sport games all have one oversight, a flaw if you like it. When was the last time you had a homie face off? A tournament in NHL, NFL, NBA, FIFA or another sport? A tournament that has a 4-12 player game. So the game gives a grid, you enter the names and you (or them) select which team they represent and you have an evening of friends opposing friends. The grid an be saved and exported and at the end of the evening/afternoon you have one trophy winner and the list of scores to show the victor who ruled that evening. 

EA could even still add it as a patch in all these games and create traction in every game they have. I am merely surprised they never did this before (as far as I know). As such, Electronic Arts get cracking and give the people what they optionally desire. 

And with all the house tournaments with games like pool, ping pong and a few other games, I am surprised we never saw anything like this before, 2K never added it to their games either, as far as I can tell and is that not essential in group plays? I am merely surprised that it does not seem to be there yet.

Enjoy Sunday, my weekend ends in less than 24 hours, yours?

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August 16, 2022 · 18:59

The old debate

The BBC is hitting us with another version of a debate that has been going on for a while. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-61594815) gives us ‘Report blasts “manipulative” video game loot boxes’, first off, they are not lying to you, this is not misrepresentation. In this, I do not completely agree with the point of view of some. The article gives us “The contents of the virtual boxes are only revealed through either game play or by making a payment. While some contain useful tools or desirable extras which improve the experience, others are worthless.” These facts are true. There are two sides here. In the first, why allow for payment? It is the right of a person to buy something, we set ourselves up for that one. Yet in all this, the people who paid 12,000 euro for boxes. No one is debating the utter stupidity of these people. No one is debating that as an adult YOU are responsible for your actions. But the press was all about those poor poor junkies, weren’t they? The other issue is “others are worthless”, what makes the card worthless? It is a direct question. What makes a card worthless? In the NHL game, there are functional cards (stadiums and players), there are cosmetic cards (outfits) and there are support cards, so what makes a card worthless? Then we get “The report authors, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), say gamers are being “manipulated” into spending large sums of money on the chests.” I have an issue with that. Which games were they? How was there manipulation? The NHL game gave card packs on milestones, and there were a lot of milestones. In addition, you got three free packs a day, and if you connected to the game (logged in) often enough, you got enough markers (there is one in EVERY pack) to exchange those markers for an expanded pack, giving you 12 or even 20 cards. The packs also had a betting coin card. One per pack and these funds allowed you to bid for other cards. Within 3 months I had all the stadiums, all the NHL jerseys and hockey masks, as well as over 100 players. I NEVER spend a cent, this was all free. So please tell me “How was I manipulated into spending large sums of money?” There are always the stupid people who want it all on day one, is that the fault of the game maker? Is it THEIR responsibility for the stupidity of others? The next part of my disagreement is seen in “Critics say the boxes are a form of gambling because players cannot see what they have actually bought until after they have paid to open the contents”. In this it is important to see WHY I disagree. You see in CCG games like Magic, Star Trek, Star Wars, The lord of the rings and more we see that a pack has one rare (optionally one super rare), 2-3 uncommon cards and the rest are common. This is a set formula. So if a game set has 50 rare cards, you would be buying at the very least 50 packs. The optional rest is gotten through swapping with other players at events and at tournaments. It is NOT gambling because one element is missing. The element of gambling is that you lose everything, so until there is a pack where you get all blank cards stating “Thank You!”, it is NOT gambling. You always get a set equation, you always get something. It makes it not gambling. 

In this I oppose the setting of “Finn Myrstad, director of digital policy at the NCC, said: “The sale and presentation of loot boxes often involve exploiting consumers through predatory mechanisms, fostering addiction, targeting vulnerable consumer groups and more.”” Yet there is a sparkly of truth here too and I do not deny it. Players like Electronic Arts played the exploitative element too much in FIFA, it backfired. There is exploitation, especially when the complete pack contains 10,000 players. However I disagree with the ‘predatory mechanism’ part. There is a whole range of predators on YouTube with there ‘card reveal’ channel, there “Do this to get something for free” and that is never a good thing, but these groups did not separate the exploiters from the makers, did they? Lets be clear the makers are not freshly white innocent. Only the people from Mass Effect 3 who introduced these loot-boxes in their multi player element, they were phenomenal and massively innocent. Others used that stage to make big money. 

The article ends with “But the same year Fortnite-maker, Epic Games, decided to let players in its hit video game see what was inside its llama loot boxes before deciding whether to buy them.” And their case agains Apple gained traction. I believe that the Epic Games people are the lest innocent, and their setting will have long term repercussions, it is only a matter of time. The one element not seen was given to us by Android: Netrunner. They gave us a different setting making it fair all around, the expansions were all the same price and always had the same cards, so there was only one pack to buy (once a month). It allowed for a smoother and fair game stage. In addition, the CCG world has something called factory sets. They were slightly different (like a silver border) but that was the only difference. A factory set contained ALL the cards of a game. The game was instantly fully playable, but they do tend to come later. So EA had the option to release a factory set half way through the season, but they did not, did they? Is it on EA? That would be a fair question, and I do not know the answer, merely my feeling in this. Is there a larger exploitation? Yes, but not all of it is on the makers. YouTubers were all over their FIFA cards and the more bang the better their bucks and the numbers of their followers, but we do not see that here either.

The BBC (as well as Tom Gerken) never lie to you, yet I have issues with the article as I have issues with the setting of it. The players HAVE a responsibility and some are pushing it on EA (and others) and the media aided them, which is not fair either. All this is merely my point of view, so feel free to disagree.

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May 27, 2022 · 01:53

IP intoxication

Yup, this just happened to me. I will try to be as clear as possible, yet I cannot say too much. It all started as I was contemplating new RPG IP, not entirely new, it was to be added to the RPG game that I have been giving visibility to on this blog. As I was considering parts in the economy to interact with the play world my thoughts skipped to Brendan Fraser. I was rethinking some parts of Encino Man (with Sean Astin aka Rudy), as well as The Mummy (with Rachel Weisz as Evelyn Carnahan). At some point the mint was drawing a line and even as additional IP came to mind, I ignored it as this would be Ubisoft territory. But the line became and as such my mind saw an interaction that has NEVER EVER been done in RPG gaming before. It would be optionally the stage for Sony, but it seems that streamers (Amazon Luna) had a much better grasp of the option. To get this added in a game would imply that the game would require module of machine learning and deeper learning. Now that is not so odd. A multitude of RPG games have some kind of NPC AI in play (to coin a phrase), but to add this to the character as a side setting has to my knowledge never been done before and the added options would give it more traction towards gamers. There are a few more sides, I discussed that in part in ‘Mummy and Daddy’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/03/19/mummy-and-daddy/), so well over a year ago (March 19th 2021). There I made mention of “it is basically, to some degree the end of the linear quest person, it is a stage never seen before and I believe that whomever makes that game to the degree we see will make that developer a nice future stage as a new larger development house, and as Micro$oft learns that they lost out again, perhaps they will take the word of gamers against that of business analyst claiming to be gamers.” Additional sides that connect and in this not only has it never been done before, it seems that whomever adds this to their RPG will have additional sides that Bethesda (the company that Microsoft paid $7,500,000,000 for) comes up short on. It feels intoxicating. To have several options in a game that none of the others ever did or contemplated. And now I see that there is more to it all. There is in part a side that touches towards IP Bundle 3 I have, something that could bring Amazon billions (but with a small amount of risk). Yet I never considered it as a side of a game, well to some degree. So as the mind is connecting idea to idea, evolve IP into IP+ and a multitude of IP’s I merely wonder why the others (Google and Amazon) are not on this page already. Google seems to driven to advertise its nest security, Amazon is doing whatever (clothing stores and trying to buy EA), but as I watch the news, and the deeper news that the news will not give us, I see an absence of true innovation in games. In a sense I wonder what is wrong with me, you see I have never been this ahead of any envelope before. 

I tried to explain it in the past. You see there is a side where gaming is, most games are in that ‘light’ circle and the bar is set to the edge. Now there is an area outside the gaming area and that is the area of what is possible, this is where innovation is. the really good games (like Horizon: Forbidden West) are in part there, and they are not alone. The real AAA games are in part there, they are coding there now because it is what will be possible tomorrow, the darker circle is what future games will see as ‘current technology’ that is how games have evolved and that has not changed. I went a step beyond that, I went where tomorrow games are currently not and I set out a slice of gaming heaven and decided to add this to the upcoming technology. There are two dangers. The first is that it has a danger of being delusional. The second is that not all technology can get there. The second one is simple. I see the streamers as a stepping stone to what will be possible in for example the PlayStation 6. A (for the lack of a better term) a hybrid streamer. A fat client client/server application in gaming. One that needs a real power player, but that is not possible UNTIL there is a national deployed 5G network. I believe Amazon Luna and Google Stadia need to get to that point, it is what is required in the evolution of gaming. So there are these two dangers, but is the first danger mine? I do not believe that to be as my mind can clearly see the parts required, but that is the hidden danger of a delusional mind. In my defence I have been involved in gaming since 1984 (connections to Mirrorsoft and Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Virgin Games at the time), so I have been around since the very beginning of games. My mind has seen a mountain of true innovator and innovations. As such I feel I am awake and on top of it. But the hidden trap is there and as such, one can never stop to question your own abilities to avoid falling into the first trap.

But for now I feel intoxicated, and not a drop of alcohol in me, innovation can be that overwhelming. This is why the previous article remains under construction. It has a lot to do with Texas, the ATF and the NRA. I wrote about that before as well and interesting enough the media seems to avoid that side to a much larger degree, with the one or two exceptions I mentioned in a previous article. I wonder why that is. Do you not?  Well time to sign off, snore like a sawmill and get ready for the new day which is already here.

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