Tag Archives: gaming

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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May 18, 2022 · 18:54

Residual seeking

Yes, what is it? Well it connects to the game I am designing. You see, Any RPG has its sides and it needs to change, it needs to be a lot less Bethesda (their games are not bad), yet I seek originality and this all connects to ‘The stage of commerce’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/25/the-stage-of-commerce/) where I give a lot more and in previous articles (seek and thee shall find) where I give more of all this. Yet there is a side I forgot about. You see, we all expect coin, we all expect funds. But what happens when money had no value in a place where they have no lemonade caps? Well, we will have to make a gander towards older times. In this we need to set steady steps towards other parts, but what if the few gold coins we find have more value by making it into something else? Gold and silver have their uses, especially in the arcane, but when do we see that in gaming? That is the 10th (might be 14th) altering thing that other RPG games are not giving you. So what happens when the chest holds a broken sword? Pieces of chain and two coins? There is a need for nearly anything, you just need to adjust your view and lets be honest, what was the last RPG game you played where it was not about gold, credits, or caps? Any place can grow on commerce, but the driving force of commerce is not always gold based. Many places had other means, even in ancient roman times, the soldiers were paid in salt. Salt was more valuable than coins in some places and a return to that opens a whole new set of gaming parameters. Then we have the fact that the broken sword can be remade as a knife, or could be melted into iron and iron (if enough is obtained) gets you a plough, which means more land and more food for a town. All settings to adjust the view of the gamer and to be honest, I cannot find one game offering this alternative view. 

As I wrote in that previous article “because of the random factors the rainbow tables are dynamic and that creates a whole new environment. One where the game can live without you and you become a contributor, not the driving force of anything.” This is important as your play style changes, the dynamic setting remains to some degree and that can push you in other directions. A stage where you optionally have an island that is an evolving stage as we start the island at 18,040 km2 (Halmahera), but there is nothing stopping us to upgrade the island down the track to 138,794 km2 (Java), there is something awfully satisfying to that. It evolves playing and makes it about the game you play, not WHERE you are. And lets be honest, if you could play a game again a year later and that place is 600% larger? Not go from one island to the other, but end up in a similar island a lot bigger and in that setting when you play the generations, what more can you find? It might not be needed as 18,040 km2 is huge, but the option opens a new frontier for RPG gaming and that is what we want, new frontiers and in that only streaming systems would be able to do this, and as I stated very recently, the streamers differentiate themselves or they will become trivialised. There is nothing interesting in playing the same Ubisoft game on these two systems. Yet what happens when AC Brotherhood suddenly has Spain and France added to the game? It becomes a different game, you as a gamer would have to make choices, because you could never see it all. You see, replayability becomes infinitely more important for streaming systems, and as such to prepare the next level of RPG games for such a setting is becoming more and more important. It was one of the truths I realised when I designed Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration. Evolution is where gaming is and the current makers are too much about selling the same cookie to all the other systems, all whilst some can only store cookies, the others are capable of storing a whole apple pie. And when you can have the apple pie, are you really looking out the window for the next cookie dealer? Fair enough if you are hoping for Shannon Elizabeth in a girl scout outfit, but what are the chances? 

Consider how far the Stadia and Luna can take you and then look at the failures of Ubisoft, what are you waiting for? Now, in their case I will make an exception for AC Origin and some might like to play the others again, I get that, but do you really want a Ferrari to get your groceries, or do you want to see what is 2365 km of your current location? How will you get there? You might never see it all, and that is fine too. A game that still has more to offer is a game you will play for a much longer time and there is also the rub. Ubisoft and others have made us completionists, yet how much of your own nation have you ACTUALLY seen? Are you really that driven in gaming, or can you see that the story is bigger than you. Can you see that beyond the main story, beyond all the quests there is just more and we will never see it all? That is perhaps the only real flaw that Bethesda has in its games and we all fell for it. In previous systems it was a natural flow of what a system could hold and we get that, but the newest consoles (PS5) and streamers have broken that limit, so we need to use the new settings to offer more gaming, different gaming and we need to throw repetition out of the window. That is merely my view on the matter, and it starts by creating a new mould, one based on historic parts, but still offers more than we have gamed before. It is possible, it is out there. Grab it and make it yours.

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May 17, 2022 · 20:17

Set Streaming Solution

Yes there are a few ways of doing this, but can we tell that anyone is right and the other one is wrong? That is actually a serious question, to go further, it is a lot more serious than anyone realises at present. You see Google and Amazon are taking different roads. 

Google
In February 2022 Will Nelson reported ‘Google Stadia focus reportedly shifted to licensing the streaming tech’ and of course there are interested parties there. And we were given “After launching in late 2019 the Google game streaming platform was met with some criticism regarding the quality of its streams, latency, and connection issues. After a slow roll out of major titles and news that the internal Stadia development studios would be shut down, all was looking lost for the game streaming platform.” This makes sense, but it is not a given, in addition we saw news that gamers had access to 50 games, whilst some sources claim that there are 200 games at present. The last one does not make sense to me. It does technically. There are all kinds of resource issues with streaming games and for the most they could be temporary, or merely in play until a full width of gamers is seen, it is better to open the tap a little further later on than finding out that the basement is now a swimming pool. All this makes sense to me, yet the gamers tend to lack patience. If you doubt that, ask Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) and CD Project Red (Cyberpunk 2077), they’ll tell you a few stories. But Google seems to go a path. 

Amazon
Amazon has another path, a more traditional gaming path with a reported number of games that surpass 80, a 60% limit above Google. For gamers this matters, and we need to realise that even as Amazon has a few other options to differentiate itself from Google, the question is will they? Then there is the number of games and kids will see two systems that can do pretty much the same, one has 50 games the other one 80. Which one do you think they chose? So yes Amazon has an advantage for now, but they have by their traditional approach a second one.

See the image, a gamer has to go from A to C, we assume that they will go via B, but Google shows us that they can get there via D as well. Now we get the tricky part. By focussing on licensing Google decided a path, in this we would assume that Amazon is more likely to be the success and I feel that this is correct. And here is where we need to realise that Amazon being a success, does not mean, or imply that the Google path will be a failure. Both can succeed and here we see the larger stage. Some designers will adhere to becoming a licensed technology owner, to set a larger path for THEIR game. This could be good, but for every version of Doom, we also see versions of Apex and Destiny, we see Battlefield 2042 and that list goes on a little longer, so how many failures will the Google Stadia house until it drowns the brand? I honestly do not know, but if you know gamers, you know what a fickle lot of hormones they can be and that is before we consider the new player Netflix, or whatever Tencent launches (I do not believe for one second that business decisions was a reason to stop), and with $200,000,000,000 on the line, Tencent remains a factor (for now). 

And all that whilst I gave articles where we see that the Amazon Luna has a lot more options and that is not including the 50,000,000 console solution (I gave hints in earlier articles). In all this I will see Netflix as an optional new player and I have written off Microsoft, they lost too much and they lost credibility with the gamers, it will take them years to overcome that and at that point Amazon will be the most likely new top 3 player in games town. Google is not disregarded, but with the path they chose, they are less likely to succeed, and that success will depend on the first half dozen AAA titles, if they remain absent, Google will no longer be a gamer or a player, but that cannot be decided now, it will take until December 2023 until we see that finalisation. There is a side in me wanting to tell others that Google is on the wrong path, but that is incorrect, the larger stage is that none of the others have decided to tae the path A,D,C, and that does not make it wrong. Even as I show it with a square, there is no clear information on the paths taken and whether one path is equal, longer, or shorter. Time will decide that and in that we will need to wait, but in case of marketing hypes, I will side with Amazon. Not because they are better, these two systems are a lot more on par than either is willing to admit to (that is how I personally see it), I saw several enhancements to the system that both can do, but with a licensing path Google is less likely to go there, then there are a few other paths and without development Google will also not go there. So Amazon has an advantage, will they take it? I cannot tell, I doubt anyone can tell for sure. But as I calculated it around 2 years ago, that market is close to $600,000,000 at nominal and that is a mere 0.3%, but with such numbers, do you know anyone ignoring such optional revenue? Especially when the system out now could run that solution? It is a mere thought that drives the solution, I wonder what is required to hold such greed to account.

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May 11, 2022 · 04:38

Changing the setting

To get to here, some need to read up. In the first there is ‘Recap to the intro’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/25/recap-to-the-intro/) which was written on September 25th. There was another story, but you will stumble upon it. You see my mind was remembering both Oblivion and Skyrim. So what happens when the unique items are not in the same place? What happens when we add a new layer of non-predictability? What happens when some treasures are part of the story of a book? So when we add a level of books named ‘First editions’ what else can we find? More importantly, these books are not in the same place. They are either in ‘important’ (read: expensive) houses, treasured items of a book store and in some book cases. More important what happens when these 20 or so books are scattered over the locations with EVERY new game? More important, what happens when two gamers get a different first game. Consider all the news that will stage the media, will stage the personal social media. Titles like ‘The bookshop at X had book titled Y’ will stage the larger stage. Because an RPG is about adventure and learning new things. And that is staged on what we experience, but help pages do not teach, it makes sheep out of gamers. So changing on how a unique weapon is gained becomes a test again. More importantly when every generation in the RPG has minimum achievements, the game changes by a fair bit. And that is what we need, new game changers, new games and more RPG, preferably RPG we had not seen before. In all this the storyteller becomes more important and the game becomes more engaging. 

But that is only one side of the story. You see, the larger station of to prevent predictability. It is hard, especially for me as I tend to take a shine to symmetry. So how do we change that?

We can alter the bad guys we face, not merely one ‘boss’ at the end, but a mix of simple and veterans throughout the location with a boss at the end, but what is the end? In a cave it might be the end, in a tower it might be on the highest point and in some cases, it could be in the beginning. Then there is the faded response we saw in other games to stealth players. I can guarantee you that when a body is found, or when too many people are missing, the rest will not relax and that was missing in too many stealth games. And you can hide the corpses, but in the end if you are in a house with 9 others and when you only see 2, you will get nervous. This is seen in two ways. In the first many NPC’s have a limit to where they can go, or how far they can go. In the second NPC’s are often limited to a level, but what happens to tactics when that changes? What happens when the NPC’s are there to make you fail? What happens when the guards are there to murder you? Tactics need to change. There comes a time when stealth does not always holds the candle, and neither does brazen bashing. Most games do not adjust for that, why not? OK, perhaps in the age of PS3 and Xbox360 there was a need to adjust to limitations, we all get that, but now, in the age of PS5 the stage has changed, the RPG games however do not seem to have this trait, and change is valuable, especially in RPG games. But how to go about it?

Well, in my universe, the first thing is to remove all limitations, to remove breaks and barriers. There will always a need to have some in play, but the larger reason for having them is removed by the coming of streaming systems and the PS5. This also sets the need of a safety zone. Most towns were safety zones, but in the wilderness it becomes important to have a safe place too. In the old days, the riffraff and animals were kept at bay with a fire, but not always and there we get a new setting. The ambush play. When have you faced an ambush in either Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, or Fallout 4? That is merely one of the changes that the new RPG games need to introduce. In the old days (1050-1850) there would be bands of brigands on the roads, travelling to ambush and these games did not really have these groups did they? A larger station of gaming that was missing and should not remain missing. With new hardware we need to change the setting of gaming. In my case RPG gaming because that is my passion and it would be the passion of any storyteller, but it is not the only stage where things need to change. I created the premise of half a dozen games, and the game makers went on the same track again and again. So let the smaller people hide behind ‘Microsoft Seemingly Confirms Ubisoft+ Will Soon Be Part of Xbox Game Pass’, to replay what was and doing that again and again is a waste of good gaming time, to set a new boundary is what keeps the players engaged. So whilst we see settings like ‘Skull & Bones Leaks In A Big Way’, the larger consideration is that this game was rebooted and delayed again and again, all whilst it took me a week to set the foundations of half a dozen games, all new, all having edges never seen before. And as you saw in the blogs, one totally new RPG set to a station no game has ever done. Do tell me how far behind Ubisoft and Microsoft are. Streaming old titles seems nice, but without a strong presentation of actual new games, the Microsoft streamer is nothing more than a history lesson and at $18 a month, Disney+ is a lot cheaper and more entertaining. You did figure that out, did you not?

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April 25, 2022 · 21:03

Gaming without frustration

This is where I found myself this weekend. After facing a game where I had to watch 50 advertisements to get it to go along (and deleted it immediately afterwards) my mind started to take a journey towards the good old days. The days of Dungeon Keeper (1 and 2), the days of good gaming (and a few other titles). You see the old games had a decent setup and Dungeon Keeper better than most. The game got massacred by idiots at EA, yet the concept is good enough to make it into a decent mobile game. 

Gates for Heroes
In the first we need to turn this upside down, so that former Bullfrog people do not go nuts.
In the first we need a chaos gate, a gate where the dastardly come forth. This gate can come forth in different places, but always next to a gem brasier the gem brasiers cannot be destroyed and cannot be approached to closely. To get the setting of ‘chase’ we need to have more than one stage. People (villagers), buildings and shops. Like the archaic Missile Command we need to keep the places safe. We have a map and in the beginning we do not know where the fiends come from. As I am a firm believer in randomisers, we never know where the enemy comes from. This creates a little stress. But we also have an upside. Every race has its hero’s and we get the first hero, but there too I want to stop predictability.

So lets make a little list

Dwarves – Baragor
Humans – Astolfo
Elves – Amakir
Orcs – Mobrukk
Wizards – Merlin
Lizards – Komodo
Gnomes – Aripine
Trolls – Archimonde
Satirs – Orthius
Centaurs – Alduris

Lets think in groups of three. The first level the gate might start in the dark, but there is a town, so choices need to be made. The hero is there and the first setting needs merely people (Dwarves, Humans, Elves). The hero is a lot stronger but needs support, so the first thin you need to do is create a dwelling, tactically placed. As the hero fights the opponents, he (or she) gets weaker and when too weak the hero fades (and regenerates), so the dwelling will release a basic dwarf, Human or Elf every few seconds. A lot weaker they are all needed to fight the opponents and the larger station is that they might be strong against some types, they are weaker against others. So the proper fight needs to be set. In addition when the hero is surrounded by its own kinds it regenerates, whilst the basic creatures are 10%-35% stronger. As we upgrade their dwelling, we can push from 10% towards 25%. And as we get to deeper levels we see new horrors and new challenges. With all that is out there, it took me seconds to come up with this idea and there is more to this. As we use a randomising of gender, of names, the game could delight for a long time. A wicked way to spend some time crushing the armies of darkness. And in the stage of three, we could randomise them too, so that every new level has a basic new face, and as the levels go on and the gates start in different places, the village will evolve differently. A game that has a renewing look every time you play a new game. How fun is that?

So many options and so little time. Ah well, lets see what I can come up with next. At present I am ahead with a dozen games, three TV projects, an optional movie, 4 pieces of 5G IP and a few other stages (a few to kick Microsoft in the teeth), we cannot ignore our civic duty can we?

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April 16, 2022 · 21:36

Economic arrogance of Achieving

This is a station I recently came to and it has nothing to do with the bravery of Ukraine, or the stupidity of Russia. Even though that setting might have touch-points the larger station is NOT war. The thoughts came from the Art of War by Sun Tsu. There we learn ““The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

Yet this quote was subverted by economists and wannabe economic strategists into smething like: ““The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” “If you know the final cost and profit, you need not fear the result of 100 investments” If you know the profit but do not know the cost, for every profitable endeavour achieved one will fail.” This is a side I feel is going on in business, but now also in mobile gaming. A stage where games work but only if you watch advertisements. I tried a game and even as it has repetitive sides, it also has campaign sides and those sides are limiting, but if you watch 37 advertisements you are on your way to get to 50% in a three day event. Consider that 37 advertisements. To game, to play a free game, but it is hindered, not by repetition (well that too), but to get anywhere you need to watch that many advertisements. Now you can limit yourself by BUYING ad free settings, by buying elements in EVERY campaign. And I am not against these settings, just the statin that to get anywhere in that game will require you to invest in advertisements. Now this is not against any rules, not against any law and the makers are not doing anything wrong. Now consider the advertisement. The advertisement in SOME cases will allow for you to play a level, or part of a level, but in many cases should you touch the mouse or the pointer, the install screen is called for. A side I call deceptive conduct, but that could just be me. What is seen is iteration after iteration of “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” and it is deceptive, there is always a cost, in this case at the expense of the game.

It is the idiocy of “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost”, it is a fictive state of exploitation and nearly all the larger players are involved in that. Do you think that I would have so much IP? Some people at Google, Amazon and even Microsoft should be running circles around me, around people like Elon Musk. But they are all in that pretentious state where “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” is the solution to everything. It is not, it really is not. 

My stage of 5G comes from a state of rejecting the obvious and inverting the funnel and then looking the other way. The stage of gaming came from looking in a direction no one was willing to look towards and none of them adhere to the stage of “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” And that is where I found optional billions, one of them has question marks, but if done right could amount to a lot more than even I had in mind and it does depend on a stage, but that stage is being catered to. So when it all comes out, I can look at players like Microsoft and laugh out loud. Consider that the wealthiest corporations are Apple (1), Microsoft (2, for now), Google/Alphabet (4) and Amazon (5) and I am the one with the IP? Consider that they should be ahead of the curve, but they are not, because I am speculating that their economic advisors told them “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost”, and because of that Tesla has a mobile phone coming, a market that Microsoft pretty much lost to Google and Apple and now there is a third player. There am I with my 5G and gaming IP and a few more IP options, one directly opposing Sony and Fujitsu and it is based on technology of the 90’s. So how much did these companies lose by relying on “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost”, I merely go by the old statement “You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs”, a truth that has been out in the open for centuries. What else did these players overlook?

I will let you figure that out, I at least saw one additional failure, but no spoilers, it is up to you to see what they cannot see.

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March 27, 2022 · 23:05

Rings

We see them, we are confronted with them, we embrace them and we reject them. Yet weirdly enough, for the most we never ignore them. You see the circle is its beginning and end anywhere on the circle. We have accepted this long before we started to set our faith to wedding rings. Yet in the last few days I have been thinking through the ring process. It matter not why it was done, yet that it was done is still important to some degree. As I was considering the stages of pipelines (sales tracks), life cycles (marketing tracks) and circular service level agreements, I suddenly realised (to coin a phrase)  that games and gaming is not set to such a track. It makes sense, and at the same time it does not. A game is like a painting there are no cycles, there is no repetition and weirdly enough I suddenly found a painting that represents my thoughts. The image below is a ring, a cycle. (Unfortunately, I have no idea who made the painting)

But we see a third dimension and optionally a fourth dimension as well. That dimension cannot be seen, but we feel it is there. I reckon that Hogwarts Legacy unleashed a little more than I bargained for. I think it started when I saw the movie Arrival (2016) with Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams. The language shown in the movie started something in me. Not about aliens, that was clear for decades. Do you think that people really look like Dennis Rodman, for real? (LOL). No It is not about the people, it was about the language we were shown. So when you get that we take a sidestep. You might have heard of chainmail, but do you know how the rings are made? 

So as we see the rings, we take another gander towards that alien language, but now we take a sidestep, consider that every sentiment is in a ring, but more than merely sentiment and language, it become aa stage of digital markers as well, like a polyphonic approach to language and sentiment, vocal intonation. You see, we think of games, we think of NPC characters, but the need for NPC characters to become less singular dimensional becomes increasingly important and there lies the rub, you see we think of today’s emotion whilst relying on recording and programming stages that are decades old and something will have to give. 

And even as it (for now) seems impossible and largely overplayed, do you really think that this is far fetched when the PS6 comes and whatever Microsoft (if they still exist) has? We need to be thinking not merely of the games that come out in 2022, we need to think about the games that need to be made with a release date of 2030. And should we come close to the station of some kind of true AI, what we now have does not even come close to what is required and using yesterdays solutions will not cut the butter. As such my mind went wondering on the sound of the voice. If we cannot tell what is truth now, what do you think will happen next year? The only way to beat this is to look at new and innovative ways to find a way to store and retrieve them. The blue painting help me realise that and even if that solution is for now out of reach, the idea that we limit ourselves today on what CAN be done will result in a tomorrow that never comes, but Microsoft will soon learn that lesson the hard way, 50% of that happening is merely 1-2 steps away at present. And suddenly some other parts come to mind, but that is for another day, but I can tell you that it involves a stick (for now).

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March 27, 2022 · 15:16

Skill to kill

Yes, very bright, is it not? But in the last few days I have been mulling over the RPG game I out here on my blog over the last few months and whilst playing Horizon: Forbidden West something stuck in my mind. 

You see something got stuck there and the skill tree is fine for THAT game, but for me, for the player it had drawbacks. It is not the game, it is within the game, and that is fine, but consider that  you play in such an open world. In that open world you tend to go in one direction. I tend to go the way of the sneaky archer. And that game limits what you as a sneak can do. This is not a weakness, it is not a flaw and they did NOTHING wrong. But the thought was in my head and stayed there.

So then we saw the smallest piece of Hogwarts Legacy and they gave us another path. In that path we are given:

Now, that is also a path we see, but my mind started blending the two elements. You see we get the stage of limitations, we get the stage of directions, but we often miss the blending of choices and there we ultimately see the stage where some are given the tendency to unlock EVERY skill. But that is not realistic, it is also counterproductive. So what if a game gets another edge. Consider that CCG games in the past had a limited version and a generic version. The limited version was black or silver, the factory set was gold (a factory set is a complete set of all cards bought at beginning). Now consider that we connect skills to a trait like the CCG game Illuminati did.

In that game we saw the head you ‘ruled’ in this example ‘Shangri La’ (see below), it can connect to any card, in this example we use a card named ‘Big Media’

As you can see it connects from a higher card on one side and connect to THREE sides to smaller skills. Now some have 0 connectors, some have one and a few will have two, but YOU decide the application of that skill. Now consider we go back to the first card, it is in the game not called ‘Shangri-La’, but ‘Covert’ and we have 2 of those cards in the beginning of the game ‘Covert’ and ‘Overt’, now we have archery which is (comparing to Big Media) not 4/4, but 2/3 It can connect to 2 stacks and enforce three connecting skills. In addition any card can be upgraded. The Big Media resistance will be its own power. So over time that number goes up (as you become a more skill-full archer), now consider that we end up with 4/5 stacks Covert, Overt, Social, Commerce, Faith and Govern. Six elements and you have either 4 or 5 stacks so something has to give and in the beginning you only have two stacks, so it will be about choices. How will you decide? 

And there is no better choice here, it will be about YOUR choice as you play the game. Now consider that as you get awarded cards through levelling or quests, you get new options and alternative options. For example the covert archer will level up having a larger chance of getting the scout card, the scout card can evolve into a mapping card, the edge and back of the card now represents a map, yes, we all forgot about the back of the card, but in a game, in a digital environment that side has options. And as the mapping option becomes available to select you see that mapping has benefits in the commerce side, especially if you gain art cards. There is still place for improvement (there always is) but when did you see a game that gave you CHOICES to evolve skills and adapt them in any way YOU could? I have been busting my mind and I saw no such options, not in ANY game and that is the power of versatility. It now becomes a side we never saw coming, but there is more.

What if I set that option aside like I did when I designed the Amazon Luna achievement keys? What if playing a game of chess allows you to gain the strategist card to apply to this game? It is just a thought but in that setting we get a stage that skill in one side enhances another? I do not think it is a great idea, but it could apply to cosmetic sides of the game. We could add a whole range of options. As we go forth we can also add cards, or evolve abilities with a black border (Covert only), white border (overt only) or gold border (commerce only), so kill shot would be covert only and if we evolve this over time the border becomes green, or brown and it an be applied to both covert or overt. And when we see this we can concentrate on higher end card, as they bolden all cards connected to them. In this there is one more stack, the homestead stack. As I state before we can influence to some degree, but if we add the homestead stack and we allow for levelling points to this stack the overall setting improves in town and that setting opens up a whole new range of options (and limitations). 

It is just one side of a game that is not ready yet, but consider who else has this and more important, which RPG allows for this? 

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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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March 11, 2022 · 09:11

Foreplay or forplay?

Yup, we all go there at some point. My ex once wanted me to watch a movie on foreplay so that she could get a better night of sex and I did not mind. To be honest, once I skipped the boring bits at the start the movie they gave me a few excellent ideas as well. In gaming this situation exists as well. But in gaming what is foreplay? Some state that it is the intro of the game. That tends to differ per game. In Horizon Zero Dawn it could be the part where Eloy is a little girl (when she finds  the focus) in TombRaider it was the mansion level, in Oblivion it is the escape from prison and many games have their own way of staging the introduction. And now the joke I started with starts making sense. Weirdly enough it was not a direct stage that assaulted my senses. I had been contemplating and considering additional parts to my 5G devices when it hit me. I was so ‘obsessed’ to hand more functionality to the customers that it hit me. There needs to be a larger stage of introducing more to the customer, educating them as it were. Just like the video, we need more extensive foreplay. You see the age of dumping a device in the lap of customers, whether they are consumers or retailers. That stage is gone and too many rely on word of mouth, the internet and other means for people to figure it out. Consider the TV below.

It drains your account by $11,500 dollars and I had to use this example as I am a huge Sony fan. But consider the fact that the startup guide is two pages and the reference guide is 8 pages, which also gives us “For more information on troubleshooting, refer to the Help Guide”, which is a button on the remote. Now there is nothing really wrong with that, but if someone courts me for that amount, it better comes with breakfast and a final blowjob after a night of super great sex. 

Devices have been pushed as almost literally a push and seek on the internet stage. Now for a $49 Google ChromeCast that makes sense. But for a $499 Bose bluetooth speaker? Not even a manual that explains what one port on the speaker does? That is a failure and gaming tends to go in that direction as well. A stage where too much is auto assumed. To be honest, Ubisoft and Bethesda actually has a decent grasp on that especially in their latest games. There are more than a few games out there that fails its consumers. There are quotes like ‘The internet is full of help’, or the demeaning “Your friends do not seem to have that same problem” And when Meta is fully deployed especially when hybrid comes to life there will be all kinds of hiatus. Now there is nothing wrong with setting up the internet to help out, but ask yourself “How many supplier set up a decent amount of white papers to help you out?” The answer will scare you. They all skipped the boring bits of the foreplay video and went straight for ‘orgasmic revenue’. And here is the stage where I found the interesting part of forplay (not a typo) “Foreplay is the fun, flirty, arousing goings on right before actually having sex. It’s an act that sexually excites a person. In forplay some people use icing, chocolate sauce, whatever..” And this applies here too. In hardware the ‘chocolate sauce’ are the accessories you can buy, or DLC’s in gaming (a ‘for play’ joke). The extra yummy parts are not in the real game, they come later (that has been Ubisoft as well). It worries me because it implies that the consumer is not the person who buys the game, but the person who buys the game and all the other bits and that is disappointing. It is disappointing in gaming, it is disappointing in hardware, software and concepts. It is like companies are too much abut the sales pipeline in some fire and forget setting, and no one (or too few) people care what happens to their customers afterwards and it offends me. I was in Customer service since 1992 and it was for a long time a great stage yet in too many places it became about cost reduction and cutting corners whilst the consumers where not properly taken care off too often and for too long. There are exceptions the most striking one is either Norton or Adobe customer service versus Microsoft customer service, or try dialling your internet provider. Try setting a care line there (a line that show they actually care for you), the results might scare you and that is where I found myself. Educating the customer on the boring bits of 5G, as well the boring bits of added 5G because that field is MASSIVE and I am hopefully a player in that stage in the not so far distant future, so it matters to me to get that part right too. And for the size of what I am talking about, see below

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