Tag Archives: gaming

September 13, 2024 · 05:31

As the walls start to crumble

Yes, this is a little speculative, but the story is not. I just learned of the BBC story that they released 4 hours ago, 17 hours after I wrote the previous story. The BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cq82852kkz8o) is giving us ‘Microsoft lays off more gaming staff in new cuts’ with the subtext “It laid off 1,900 staff in January and, in May, closed four studios bought before its purchase of Call of Duty maker Activision-Blizzard”, as well as “He said the decision to cut more jobs – about 3% of its gaming staff – was made “as part of aligning our post-acquisition team structure” and organising the business “for long-term success””. The ‘he’ in this story is Phil Spencer, and that long-term success? As I personally see it Microsoft will implode within the next 30 month, so that long term is relatively short (as I see it). And as for the layoffs being towards post-acquisition team structure. That might be the intention, yet the issue remains that the interest alone on a $69,000,000,000 purchase should be no less then 4.5 billion dollars and the gaming stage brought Microsoft (according to several sources) no more than 2 billion dollars. As such Microsoft is coming up short around 50% of the interest alone and that is before we factor in what more is needed to take care of the principle. And as Microsoft is dealing with all kind of fines and several angry people suing for what they think they are due, the numbers will not come up nice, more like tainted and covered in blood covered red. We then get “Xbox boss Mr Spencer told gaming website IGN he was expected to run a “sustainable” gaming business and show growth during a June interview”, so what does this Spencer person think what ‘sustainable’ means? In my book it means able to be maintained at a certain level, and how does that work when you lay off over 2000 people? Support? Managers? One gives relief to hardship and buggy environment to the customers (something that Microsoft is intimate familiar with) and the managers are often the creative part of the company and they have had the ears of their staff. Now these fired people could optionally use my freebees and create these games on NON-Microsoft systems. Giving Microsoft even more hardship. A game that makes perfect sense in the business mind of Microsoft, but gaming is mostly art and that is a setting that they seem to misunderstand. I like it when the unworthy give me resources and tools that can be used against them. Karma tends to be a bitch. The quote we see is “In its latest finance report Microsoft said its gaming revenues had increased, mostly due to its ownership of Activision-Blizzard, which also produces World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch” what we do not see are the issues that Diablo 4 still has (on whatever system). It might have been the big cash cow (over $666M in the first 5 days) but what did it cost to develop Diablo 4? It took 6 years, that is nearly all we know about it and Microsoft is really happy to hide a lot of numbers and merely focus on the good stories which is to be expected, but as we now see that thousands have been cast out, there is every chance that these people could become their worst competitor and not in a good way. Another setting is seen (at https://www.inverse.com/gaming/xbox-enotria-delay-microsoft-ps5) where inverse tells us ‘Enotria Is Just the Latest Game to Hit A Mysterious Snag With Its Xbox Launch’ with the byline “Something’s amiss at Microsoft”, I think that it is a lot more. How is it possible that Phil Spencer can smilingly visit the board of directors as we are given things like “it was canceling the Xbox release of HAAK. According to the developer, it spent over 14 months attempting to register the game for release on Xbox, when it estimated it needed only about two weeks of porting work. However, bugs in Microsoft’s Partner Center and Support site prevented it from applying”, as such I wonder, when a we see registration issues and bugs. What is Microsoft doing, or better asked, not doing? 14 months? There seems to be an increasing issue with transparency and in gaming it is damaging, as such what is Microsoft doing? I see it as a setting where the walls come crumbling, but what if I am wrong? What if Microsoft has a more insidious plan? I have no idea what it is and I have no clue what they are doing but there is a setting where Microsoft is all about all games online and in the cloud. So what happens when gamers are all controlled from a singular place? I have no idea what is going on, it was a mere speculation, but the increasing amount of issues (including bugs all over the place) does not fill me with comfort. Consider this and wonder why they were willing to pay 69 billion, all whilst there is a lack of revenue. There is more going on and I think it is becoming more and more imperative to create games on OTHER systems and bleed Microsoft dry. The other part is that the (speculated) intentional lack of clarity in regards to the numbers we see reports of 160% year on year growth, but with gaming it is merely based on the next game and so far quality has been lacking. The failures that Redfall brought, the lack of issues in Starfield is one side, the lacking sales of the Xbox is the other part. When you see the list of issues we must understand that there are plenty of intelligent people at Microsoft, so what is this about? We can wait to find out, or we can create a wave of excellent games and give the gamers an option to select the Amazon Luna, the Sony PS5 (PS4 too), the Nintendo Switch or the Tencent Handheld as their new home. At this point China becomes a contender in the gaming industry. That should be a hard sell to the US government, would it not be? As such I set the gaming IP I designed as Freebee to non-Microsoft systems. I might not know what Microsoft is up to, but I do know that they are greed/revenue driven, and as such I know what would hurt them and should Kingdom Holding accept my offer the hardship of Microsoft merely increases. A nice way to end my career, by partially saving the gaming world (a bit presumptuous perhaps). Microsoft should never have done what they did, they wanted to become absolute ruler and that didn’t sit well with me, a such I created IP and stories for game developers. The one rule was, ‘not for Microsoft systems’. Making the ideas public domain made the most sense to me. Or as Frank Herbert wrote in 1965 ‘He who destroys a thing, controls a thing’ as such I went to work. Now I believe that the BBC is merely handing me a partial confirmation (as I see it) that I was right all along. When the staff leaves it becomes a problem. 

Oh and as this becomes a new reality, China gets a real chance to pick up hundreds of people with a good grasp of gaming. That is merely my point of view and I could be wrong. 

Have a great day, the day before the weekend. 

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August 15, 2024 · 00:20

By any other name

This started some time ago and today things started to mesh up in my mind and it got started with the movie Gods of Egypt, I watched it again this evening. The setting is not one could debate the reality of things (as one could consider), but there is the crux. What is real? 

You see, this is the question that I have often asked myself and this week a few things happened that calls an old idea into power.

You see, Ubisoft did most of the work and AC Origins set it in motion. When you get the addition on the game, you also got a tour you had to complete, visiting a brewery that makes beer and a few other places, places that were in the game and now Ubisoft added a tour to show the players how far they had taken the game. It was brilliant and some will find it boring. Yet it could be taken further and in part based on their own IP.

You see, what else could be done?

There are two settings here. The Egyptian side gives the people the option of polytheism, the believe of multiple gods. The game could take you on a trip as a diverse amount of people in Egypt and take you on a trip of worshiping the gods like the Egyptians used to do this. We could limit the player to be in Memphis, Alexandria, Letopolis and a few others. The second site is the Roman side, with a Roman farm, the ability to learn Latin, set this part to Latin and as we are thrown into the deep end we learn a language and there is a market, more importantly as Ubisoft already created the IP, it would be a simple alteration to the game to engage in languages (Egyptian and Latin) and here you are no hero, you could be a roman legionnaire, a scribe, a farmer or a slave. We saw the impact of it in all kinds of TV series, but that is the story told us. So what would it be to live it? And that is only the beginning. At some point Ubisoft will create a Unreal Engine 5 transfer making it as lively as possible and there we could use these programs to educate. And Ubisoft has the IP to make larger changes to programs like AC Mirage and add Arabic to the fold. 

Now some people might think that this seems boring and yes. It is not a slice and dice game, but it is IP that exists and could get a double function. You see as people ‘return’ to learning the classical languages they will also increase several other languages Spanish, Italian all have a grounding from Latin and in this day and age, we need more to keep us busy. There is only so many time that you can chase a Pokemon, or kill the masses in a race car. To give people something more will soon be the only way. The people and the gamers want more. I have nothing against Elden Ring or games of that nature, but how long can you play these games? And here Ubisoft clearly has the upper hand. They created such treasures from the old days. The renaissance, Egypt, Native America, Victorian London, Paris and a few other places. They have the materials, so why not employ the powers to use them for education? For me and many others Egypt have held sway on us and there we get two settings. In the first the Egyptians and in the second degree the romans. The second one could be set to the area of Pissa Oros Citadel. Where you have to complete several ‘tasks’ whilst you optionally do it all in latin (an optional advanced setting). And now (either as Egyptian or Roman) you do it without any assassin skills. 

Will it be successful? I believe it will and with the IP already made by Ubisoft, there would be a case to see it happen. 

Am I right? I don’t know, but the idea to learn ancient Greek, Latin or Egyptian is immensely appealing and I know there are more who find it appealing. There is whole group on Twitter (still refusing to call it X) with the notion to lean Latin, with a few thousand members. 

Just a thought to get through the day, it’s Thursday here now.

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July 6, 2024 · 00:00

The name of the game

Last night I had an idea (I’ve had many). The inspiration was a game called Midwinter. It was designed by Mike Singleton and released in 1989. He was the first to revolutionise gaming, tactical gaming. When games (for the most) all focussed on one part, he made it an open challenge and it played on the Commodore Amiga. You could do almost anything, walk to a place, drive a truck to a base, swim to a base. You name it, you could do it. We stepped a little away from that. There is a foundation to do it, but not open enough. I thought of throwing fuel on the fire and make it more challenging. To do this I turned to the war on Arrakis. It is (for the most part) really open. Consider where you and your skills decide on the abilities your troops and the enemy troops have. In the first part of the game you are an Harkonen officer. A starter, a milk mouth. You start as a soldier and you are part of the managing forces from Harkonen. So you start as a land trooper. Consider the last two Dune movies (which should be part of the design). You attack and subdue Fremen. You oversee the miners, you fight the fremen, you fly the ornithopters and you get to do this over and over again. The game is set up in time slices. As you do better and better the dials of the Harkonen are set higher and higher. When all the slices are done, when all the tasks are done, the Harkonen are set. If you score well enough you get medals awarded to you by an officer or even the Baron. The challenge is to defeat your own achievements. 

Screenshot

And the setting is that as a Caladeen (the home world of Paul Atreides) you will have to do really good to defeat the forces you enabled. The second scenario is two fold, you have to create an alliance with the Fremen (or you cannot get to stage three). You get small stages in the beginning then larger stages and the challenge is to beat yourself. The system is set by what you achieve. In stage two the Harkonen might be seen as NPC’s. Their powers are set to values you achieved in stage one. In stage three you reset YOUR values, but they are supported by the Caladeen and their presence becomes available by what you achieved in stage two. 

This is all I have for now, but the idea is that this has not been done before. Also the setting is supposed to be smooth. You can walk in the imperial palace (stage 2) and then walk up to an ornithopter and fly off, but you get to deal with Harkonen troops and Harkonen saboteurs and depending on how well you did, they become more than a nuisance. Unlike Dune: Awakening it is 

not multiplayer, that is an important difference. Here you create the levels of your opponent. 

The setting does not need to styled by Dune. But that was the setting I had. You could do this as a re-write of the game Knights of the sky where you get to start in the German airforce and after that can choose French or British airforces. Knights of the sky was not high defined graphics. But now you can to this in Unreal Engine 5 on a PS5 and get the whole battlefield on your computer. The setting of gaming like this is almost the same. You get to set the power of the opposing forces (NPC’s) with THEIR quirkiness but with the fighting powers of you. Go look at the history of gaming. It has not been done before. Old games setting the taste of the new game. But with a larger defining edge. As I see it, it will give a larger timeline because as you get into Stage three of the first game, you might want to redo stage one and make the game harder to beat. A game that you can replay over and over again, because as you upgrade the scores of one opponent, your challenge will be greater. How are those spice truffles?

Perhaps over time I will write more, consider that you have to train a mentat (Piter de Vries/Thufir Hawat), a troop trainer (Glossu Rabban/Gurney Halleck) and so on. There is more thinking to do, because the need for training Piter de Vries or Thufir Hawat sets a taste to the game, but we do not see them in the movies to that degree. So how to go about it? It could be that the palace has a strategic room and as you do troop management, it sets the properties on how you are directed playing the game, so as these two are added later in the game, the troops will be according to what you decided on in the strategic room. I do not have all the answers yet, but as you can see, so far the gaming industry has done nothing of a kind and they had decades to get their ideas straight. 

Well that is enough for today, Saturday starts in 4 minutes.

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June 9, 2024 · 23:17

Revisiting an idea

I had an idea on a direction in RPG gaming earlier (in 2021), I kept it in my mind and left it aside. The latest patch by Hogwarts Legacy pushed the thought to the forefront of my mind again.

You see what we now need is a smarter NPC. An NPC that reacts to you, to some extent we are already there. Some games do that, but to a limited degree. So consider two elements Honour and Dishonour. Every NPC will get a value and to the degree it has its own value, an outfit will get a new rating. In this example The Azkaban will carry Dishonour +5 and Honour -8 there is not linear setting and that will set a new stage. Poachers will see you optionally as an enemy, Ashwinders will see you as a ally (to keep track of the example). To the other games this applies to and the larger setting is that your choice of outfit isn’t just to stop cold, shield from heat, and to stop buoyancy, but it will also present you to them. Consider the Crusades. All those people in metal armour, it had an impact. I had been playing with this idea for some time. Why clothing is merely cometic, it can be so much more. Like weapons, there is a strategic side and we never used it to that degree in RPG games. 

As I see it, the new RPG will need this, as well as an upgraded economy setting. We have all the elements and now that we have powerful PC’s and a powerful PS5 the hardware will be able to deal with this. The question becomes, who will incorporate this setting first? I reckon that any RPG game lagging by 2026 will have lost interest by gamers pretty quickly. 

We need to push gaming forward and this is one direction we can add to the equation. 

Almost Monday now.

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March 1, 2024 · 23:53

The dream connecting

This started yesterday, I was contemplating yesterdays article. I thought there was no connection, now I am not certain. I have been through a lot, my sternum was cut in half, my heart got a new valve and that was the start of a few issues. One if them is NSW housing stating that turning down an apartment on reasons of heart failure is not enough a reason, even the setting that I am in ICU did not sway them. So as such I have 2 weeks to get the papers in order. My life sucks!

So the dream was weird. It was like in some tropical French place. He was handing out food to all who wanted it. He was in relaxed clothing handing out palm leaves with fish and a side order of rice to all who wanted it. I also joined the queue and I took a leave from him. He said ‘hello’ and ‘welcome. Drinks are on the tables’ I said thank you mr Bowie and I started to turn whilst he continued ‘Mr Bowie is my dad, I am David’ Sorry David, I said and took a step towards the patio with benches and coolers with ice-water and drinks. I took something that looked like lemon based and I was surprised, it was lemon based with rum, sweet and delicious. It went nicely with the fish. The fish was lovely as was the rice. 

Whilst eating I was watching the people. They seem overly happy to be in this place. Some of the women were flirty and talking with him, but they kept their distance. His wife was still alive as such she would not be here. So why was I there?

It bothered me, I was still alive. So why was I allowed a look?

Then it came to me you see the EA list is set by the shakers and makers. Those who made the ranks at EA didn’t want that list to change, but the next iteration of gamers think differently, they see different sides and Streaming games will give them that and Apple and Android with their games advertisings will suddenly see a new rankings evolve. That is where Luna and its Tencent opposite can set new strides. It will be at some coin, but there is a chance that it will ruin the day that Apple and Google saw no further then there bankroll. I was stating that this will set a change of 50 million gamers, it could be more a whole lotta more and that is what is at stake. 50 or 100 million gamers who have had enough of advertisement. My line cancels out on 225 million gamers in stage two. If that proves to be correct it would create a streamer player list at the top, followed by Sony and then Nintendo. The question who could it be? A player who set the mark will win 

(as long as it isn’t Microsoft) the nice side is that streaming is new, really new and it will not hinder Nintendo or Sony, they have their own niches. This will be a new niche. A new order of gaming, where the happy moments are counted, not the achievements. And face it, can some of the older games even consider achievements?

So this side and the previous article give a more structural soundness. I just didn’t see it that way yesterday. But now I know more, there is always more. 

Enjoy the end of this week

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March 1, 2024 · 10:17

Just to mention a few issues.

To see this part I need to take you on a trip. First all the way back to September 2020 when I initially wrote ‘Software as a salad’ then to June 2021 when I wrote ‘Clouds for a chance for gaming’ now consider that I know gaming, I have been involved with gaming since 1985. So a few hours ago this image passes me by

So I went on this quest for over three years getting people to get ready to use what was to be added to what is. The situation is pretty simple. Between 1985 and 1999 the industry released over 10,000 games for Atari 600, Atari 800, Atari ST, CBM64, and CBM Amiga. The idea was to take the top 10% which is a little over 1000 games and make them ready for streaming. Now this does not happen over night. Games will need revamping, access to new graphics and music. 

A setting that would give the Amazon Luna and/or Tencent holding a massive advantage. Consider that I gave this to the world, all whilst EA gives us a commercial buy three pay for two. A simple concoction where we see exploitation without return to gamers. How is that for progress? How is that a situation for forward mobility? This is just 5 games, so what about the other 995? And this is how you lose a console battle, by not engaging with the audience. By hiding behind what is known, what is secure. A setting that EA knows to well, and they are not alone. So consider ‘Murder on the zinderneuf’, so what happens when it is revamped, rebranded as ‘Zeppelin final flight’? Alike but not completely. When that happens the IP is open to be reused that is the part EA and others forgot about when it is alike but not a copy and there are hundreds of games that can be exploited that way. Software people they never learn. Why is that?

I wonder what it takes for them to consider the lesson that I have placed in front of them for over three years now.

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February 29, 2024 · 13:19

It’s a leap year

For some it is a beginning of more. I just been in hospital for a week getting chest chiselled in two and replaced parts of my heart. Yet today was about more. Dune the second chapter gets out today and one review was chiseled in stone. You see there were two ‘errors’ with this version. They were not of consequence. The first was the the reference to the emperors army planet. The second is a joke, but the harkonen fans will love it. Yet these two parts do not add up to scrutiny. The movie was raw and refined. The review I saw (whilst I was already stating that I would see it) the review stated ‘Villeneuve brings the action’ need we know more?

I saw in the first movie all the parts that the first two iterations oversaw, but it didn’t come into the equation. Perhaps the second movie will get some if the issues rolling. But the second movie will be on target with ‘Villeneuve brings the action’. That’s all I needed to see, the rest I will know soon enough. But this is a special day, a leap year day. I have considered a few things in the past on ‘How to assassinate a politician’ and recently a few rewrites on Engonos, things are working out for me.

To see these elements in place on several tracks. OK, it happened over a few days. Still the setting to see it all come to fruition on February 29th matters. It might not seem that big a leap, but to do it in a hospital bed and frame the setting in my brain all whilst surgeons are placing a valve there is to see it come to fruition is uncommon and it turns out that the first day of my live starts on a leap year. 

Think of it what you will, I will make my own reservations. I have wasted enough time waiting for some sob to call me. I now have defined amount of time left (well sort of) and we do not use the time that we have to ourselves, time matters and that gave me the idea that I will impart on Engonos. Soon more about gaming IP and set to stone what I saw coming well over a year ago.

Enjoy your day

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February 8, 2024 · 20:38

The indirect path

I talked about this before. At first to fit the larger station of Elder Scrolls: Restoration, but as they are part of Microsoft. It becomes no way Jose, so I instilled it in a new RPG called Generation. It was not some Bethesda clone, it was totally different and I put a lot on it on this blog (go find it if you care). So here I was pondering a few things. And as I was setting a few thoughts out which flows from the setting of cogs and balances in gaming (a previous story) I gave the indirectness a new side.

Consider that this game is too large to play in one lifetime, so we get a second and even a third generation and that is the start of a new corner of RPG IP. 

So lets take a look at the next generation, the daughter. The offspring gets the mean of the parents. As such it is ((30+20)/2), but with dexterity something else happens. It is still ((15+35)/2) plus 50% of the difference as the woman is stronger in this field. So the daughter gets additional Dexterity, Intelligence and Creativity. The son would have gotten additional numbers in the other field, neither get additional agility as they are both the same for the parents. So there is a balance and over time these traits go up. In other fields like mapmaking it is about creativity, art and leather skills (original maps were created on vellum), this also allows for new settings to use creativity. You can have a McGyver and that allows for weapons (basic weapons) to be created in the field. And until your creativity is up, you will see and collect rope and leather, but until your creativity is high enough, a sling will never be the result. This allows for other weapons and it helps to season other skills too. Scribe skills are there to infuse map making, allow you to recognise books of value and read lore. But in this the skills of the parent will to some degree transfer to the child, something never done before. So over three generations you will have created a much stronger character if you marry right. And here is the kicker. I believe in checks and balances. Getting a too strong character limits the play, but a partner that is not all out in those fields but is an awesome butcher or fisherman allows for food to be gotten easier, as well as get more value from the skinning of a fish or a deer (I love my Bambi burgers). 

The indirect path has never been optimised and it is a niche in gaming that is screaming to be explored. And when you combine the elements you get to see that none of the others have any of this in their games. Over half a dozen gaming IP added to a blog. I give Guerrilla software a pass as their series is all new IP, never seen before and the others? I will let you decide.

Have a great day, my Friday starts in 200 minutes, in Vancouver it isn’t even 2am yet.

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January 27, 2024 · 14:30

The spindle web

That is a setting I pushed myself into. You see, as I was revamping the issues of RPG, I found another way to use the IP of Vint Cerf in a way no one considered before. I came up with this as early as June 10th 2023 in ‘How to ping a delusional mind’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/06/10/how-to-ping-a-delusional-mind/)

This game me a jolt to say the least, but the issue of grinding kept on banging in my mind. There is an upside and a downside. The upside is that grinding can get you some yummy equipment early in the game which gives you an edge, the downside is that too much of any game becomes an exercise and will no longer be an experience. That downside is actually a lot less fun, more detrimental to fun then anyone is willing to admit to. So The option is to have a different kind of seeding. It should prevent grinding (to some degree) and grinding will stop to some degree. 

The idea is that any party evolves, the evolution happens over a period of 3-5 days, but I will come to that later. The hoodlums could be brigands or any kind of foe. In the first stage they reappear in a place you have already visited. In stage two there will be an entourage as well as a ‘leader’ and he (or she) will be stronger, that leader will have an entourage so if the first stage is 5-7 people, they will add anything between 3-8 additional troops. Now a few days later we get to stage three. A boss is added (as well as a boss chest) and now we see a difference, all the previous people will gain strength and abilities, or skills. Now we have ourselves a clambake and an actual challenge. Over time (depending on how often you hit that place, the skills of these foes increase, the larger extent is that with the revamped IP of Vint Cerf this now becomes more than a simple exercise and over time these elements makes this game a challenge at every turn. Now the ‘respawn time’ is (as I see it) 3-5 days per level and that time depends on how close it is to a town and to a decent road. The closer to both the quicker the respawn time and when you hit that place again no matter how evolved the foes were, the counter goes back to zero. This implies that hitting places at stage one soon becomes a waste of time, chests are only respawned from stage 2 and a boss chest in stage 3. Even as some elements respawn with some level of randomness, skills and attributes are increased by 1 for every attempt. As such every foe gets one extra point in one element and skill after every attempt. It stops grinding. Consider that every time you try a place, the opposition, every member is either stronger, more stamina, more stealth or whatever they gained with every visit. Soon you are up against the deadliest of people, not a good choice to make. This setting requires that there are enough places to loot (beyond the story places). 

So we have an increasingly clever pool of opponents, we have revamped how they fight and where they fight and now I have found an option against grinding. Now I need to consider another option to loot and we are off to the races (I had one and wrote about it, but I am not completely convinced it was the best path to take). 

In all this there is a spindle web to consider. You see a story in any RPG is not enough, you need yarn to spin the story, and there is the irritating voices that Bethesda gave us. I am NOT having a go at them. In 2011 it was what it was, but now we can do more. You need a pool of gossip, gossip that might be true, it might not, it might even be a trap. No matter how we see it a different, a more 2025 approach is needed and I am still working on it. There are two parts, the first is what you hear, the second is that you don’t hear the same thing all the time and more important that it changes per game you play. As such you might hear much different things your neighbour hears. There I need to make sure that the idea cannot be replicated (so what your neighbour hears will not work for you). Gossip is a real conundrum, but could leave you with a clue or an advantage. You see Richard Garriott had a great idea in Ultima 3 (1985), the tip gets you a tip. So what happens when you tip the local innkeeper? The cleaning lady? So you need a system that can create 1000 gossip clues and they are linked to a location. Wherever the gossiper lives, or close to where that inn or gin-joint is. I believe that pre-seeding is the best way to go, with a flag to activate the story. It is another way to start side quests but it should not take centre seat, it needs to be some side option at best. In that setting the traps are also an idea to get people to a place where a much stronger force tends to be (happy birthday to you, silly death comes to you). Making the trap a real challenge to say the least. 

Still got work to do on all this, but I have made a decent inroad in gaming that others have never addd to their system. So yay me and it is time to enjoy Saturday, except in Vancouver where it is only Friday early evening. Enjoy the day wherever you are.

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January 21, 2024 · 23:49

Lines of presentation

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy Sunday.

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