Tag Archives: Indie developers

Escape

It happens, it wasn’t me, it was an idea I had and I forgot to make a note of it, and now it escaped me. It gave me a few settings towards old dreams I had. I had an idea towards a 2D game, but the people are part of that game. It had to be done over water, the water shaped the levels and the water is the buffer to stop you from breaking bones when you fall. There are a lot of missing parts and it might make a movie, because there were too many missing parts, but the idea was there. These thoughts matter, it gave me an edge over several IP’s I created and it also gave me the military IPs I gave to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. These IPs were (as I personally considered) were options to consider in all of that (and I lack a credit card with billions) so I found simpler settings that took care of Iranian assets without spending billions and as such I thought it would be great to hand these ideas to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, free of charge and the setting that someone took care of Iran without bleeding either the UAE or Saudi Arabia for personal profit. At times enemies of life need to be dealt with and that is merely how I roll. So as I went over this some of the thoughts came back. It would definitely be for a movie, but the settings are still hazy. A few ideas are too outlandish because of the settings. But they also paved the way for a few new ideas. You see, I’ve been rewatching movies and it left me with ideas. The idea was based on a British idea it was called ‘Some mothers do ‘ave ’em’ it had Michael Crawford in it, who would get a larger global following with Condorman (which had a part filmed in Monaco) but these thoughts became the food for other ideas. You see, we are all ‘smitten’ with DC and Marvel (I have nothing against either) but in all this movies like Condorman and True Lies were a breath of fresh air. I still think that True Lies would have made an excellent coin flip from the James Bond series and I thought it would make decent new franchise. 

But the ideas I had and some I wrote in other blogs might set not a new movie or TV series, but a new game and one with a difference. So an RPG that is not build around a story hero, but around your real person. A setting where you can imagine what you would like, but now the story reflects around the person you are. And considering that we had Altar Ego in 1986 (Activision) consider that this was done on a mere 64KB, we have a lot more now and consider that you can play the introduction as you like, or you can hand it the truth and let the introduction shape the game. As far as I know, this has never been done before. So the introduction does two things. Teach you the game and it figures you out. I reckon you need a few psychologists for that, but that shouldn’t be a problem. And it goes form both genders, so it isn’t some macho game and in this we see the story line evolve. And here the reference of Condorman and True lies holds up. It is shaped through your interaction with the game. And this RPG game might be a little apocalyptic but I would want it to be close to what we are now. And this connects to ‘Some mothers do ‘ave ‘em’ because Frank Spencer had a vivid imagination and that gets you into these RPG scenarios, but fueled to your psyche. There is still a story line to consider and the game requires one, but the setting is that you have where you get through several stories, so that the game is fueling the game for you is as I see it totally new, but there will be ‘issues’ and I haven’t worked them all out yet, but as I see it, it is not a game that is on my list of working out. So I will hand this to whomever gets the idea to work and that is how indie gaming is prolonged and as there is now an active hatred towards Sony and the disclose settings it is referring to ‘PlayStation fans are fed up with Sony’ with “PlayStation fans are fed up with Sony’s cold communication, lack of disc support, and poor handling of online services and fan events.” And it is my feeling that this is false. It feels more like Microsoft sycophants having a go at Sony. I believe that this is a mistake because no-one is considering rural gamers and they are left in the cold, millions of them but the entire discloses setting is not until January 2028, so we have plenty of time for Sony to reconsider its setting and as I will have a few more games by then, I have plenty and when the need comes high, I still have my Switch and that one is not going without physical media any day soon. So I feel that there is enough time for Sony to correct itself, I have an alternative direction and I can leave enough games to indie developers, so that the only direction for Microsoft and its well deserved wooden spoon is still on the table of happenstances. We all have our weapons and mine is creativity and there is plenty of that weapon systems, games, storylines, scripts for movie and TV. As such I can share whatever I feel like and that is the setting Microsoft overlooked. They are so used to buy whatever they like, that they forgot to fuel creativity and that is now their weak point. So whilst we see the opinion of some as “Xbox is struggling in the traditional console market due to an over-reliance on the Game Pass subscription model, poor hardware sales compared to competitors, and a strategic pivot toward releasing first-party games on rival platforms” and I reckoned that if I flood the market with ideas for indie developers, they will face a setting that others get for free for what they had to pay in excess of $100 billion (Activision/Bethesda), and considering that this anchor is weighting them down and costing them over $5 billion a year. I have room for creativity to hand the indie developers a few nuggets that they can exploit for all the gamers. And the pay off is brilliant, they can copy my work, but as I promoted it online, they cannot lock down any IP based on my work, so they either go into freeware or others can gain, because I am not stopping the indie developers because they are doing fine. As such I have created a new wall of creativity that is bringing down Microsoft. I feel fine doing that. And if they want to buy my IP? Well I am a business man at heart and I have given plenty to the others and Microsoft can buy all my IP for $6,000,000,000 post taxation (we all have retirement dreams). And all these settings are a mere figment of creativity. And lets face it the script of a simple person taking a ride where big tech pays billions (our version of the $6,000,000 man) as I see it, Lee Majors would be proud and was that not every boys dream between 1973 and 1978? I merely increased it by factor 1000 as 6 million doesn’t go far and even one of my IP gets them 6 billion annual and that place has a truckload of IP. 

That’s how I roll, whatever others did to me, I am now getting back close to a million fold. In the end creativity is important, but it all comes down to the numbers and I am talking generically, not dollars (I do like a fat bank account, but it will never define me, I hate greed). 

So whilst I am giving a lot more here that most can see, there is a hidden gem in this story too, the option is for you to find it, because I do like puzzles. So in all this have a great day and see what you can do fighting your own demons. And that takes me to one of the brilliant writings of Steven Moffat. In the episode Demons Run, he gives us at the end a poem:

The setting is simple, you figure out that is was about a demon run, but the quote is brilliant and when the term run is considered to have multiple meanings, and even the stage that it was about a good man going to war. So when you see Anorak the All-Knowing, don’t forget to say hi.

Have a great day today.

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Where is the egg timer?

There is an old saying that there is never an egg timer around when you need one. This being the usual response to a person shouting out: ‘watch this’, which is closely followed by moments of chaos. These things happens, they happen even more so when we act ‘ad-hoc’. Yet what should be the issue when we see ‘The 25 most anticipated video games of 2016‘ (at http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/30/video-games-2016-dishonored-2-uncharted-4-xcom-2) by Keith Stuart and Kate Gray, which was published on December 30th, whilst a mere 22 minutes ago, @gamespot presents: ‘Scalebound release date delayed to 2017‘ (at http://l.gamespot.com/1Z2AZVS), which was actually published yesterday. So when we see gamespot flaunt the title “Platinum Games says postponement was necessary to ‘deliver on our ambitious vision’”, now let’s face it, the timeline does not shift that much (2016 -> 2017) within 5 days. We could speculate that at the end of the year Keith Stuart and Co were casually careless at the end of the year, a speculation I myself reject because, even though I do not always agree with Keith, the man is a professional and he tends not to be careless in that regard. In the second, Platinum marketing might have tried to ride the waves of free publicity as much as possible, which is more likely than not the case, yet that would be a casually stupid path to take.

Perhaps there is the idea that instead of trying to feed (or create) hypes (especially in the gaming and movie world), the media at large needs to stop feeding us ‘junk’ (read: rehashed news) when a game is more than 20 weeks away. So, perhaps not mentioning any title that is more than 20 weeks away might not be the worst idea. It would stop hypes to a larger extent, it could result in a focus from the media towards the games of ‘now’ or ‘soon’, which offcourse would include a lot more independent developers. How much have we seen in the media, not on half-baked triple ‘A’ ‘publishers’, but on titles like Adrift, which comes from Three One Zero and will launch this quarter on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One? Is it not most anticipated, perhaps because the media ignored it?

It is my biggest issue with many gaming ‘pages’, especially in main stream media. Too many ignore interesting indie games that would be highly anticipated if more people were aware of it, yet many are pushed into the shadows as two ‘Big-Uns’ (EA and Ubisoft) get overly exposed on products well over a year away. I think that with the consumer in mind, these practices need to stop (or massively lessen). For example, it was only by accident that I stumbled upon Ghost of a Tale, an upcoming game for PC and XB1, I personally believe that this is not an anticipated game because the media seemed to have ignored it, but they kept on rehashing the same news on No Mans Sky again and again.

Which for a short time was understandable, but many kept on going when we heard the official news that the game was coming in June 2016, but as there were more speculations to be made, No Man’s Sky remained on the publications. The interesting part is that Ghost of a tale is a stealth game that would be very appealing to gamers that reside on the lower end of the Teenager scale (a rarity to say the least), what I saw reminded me of Don Bluth, specifically An American Tail and The Secret of NIMH. It came to life as a successful Indie go-go crowd-funding campaign and from what I saw it surpasses loads of games by ‘established’ software houses. How come not more information has seen the light through the media in regards to this title? You can see a lot more about the game at http://www.ghostofatale.com, they show the issues, the upgrades and more important just how amazing parts already look. The game got delayed from 2015 and it seems that 2016 could be the year of the mouse.

Just such a shame that the media at large does not take more time and space to see the wonderful world of the independent developer, with Technomancers on more than one platform and let’s not forget Kingdom Come by Warhorse Studios, it might initially not sound massively interesting as it seems to be released much later for Nextgen consoles, but the fact that the initial release includes both Linux and OS X should be massive as decent games for OS X tend to be really rare events. The fact that it is a Q2 release in 2016 makes it interesting to keep tabs on, as it would be released half a year earlier than games that are already receiving way to much exposure.

So as we look back on the egg timer, we must acknowledge two things, the first is that a sudden shift to another year is not the main reason, that’s just bad luck for some, but the fact that plenty of interesting games tend to not make the media (especially in their online editions) seems to be a lot less acceptable, especially when we see more and more lacking quality reviews. Yet these games all show that timing is still an issue to some degree, yet personally I find the shifting time lines a lot more acceptable from independent developers who try to get through with limited resources than the shifts we see in larger houses that are either close to or exceeding the billion dollar mark, there it is too often a failed form of managing expectations by not in the least of the culprits their own marketing departments; in addition, when I see what a mere independent mouse can show us graphically, I am happy that the group if independent developers is growing, because a mere dozen independent developers have shown me more to look forward to than several of the established branders of gaming. In all this I must point out that the Guardian article does give a fair bit of indie games attention, but they are one of few amongst way too many, which is a real shame.

For me, it is not about the 25 most anticipated games! I, like many others am a man on a budget. For me the important equations is, which games are released in the next 8-12 weeks, as my budget will allow me to purchase only one game, the hype creators seem to ignore that part, knowing that I have a few more options than many families with two working parents who are in possessions of often more than one playing growing young-ling, I would state that the media is ignoring a mainstream niche, one that should be rectified in 2016.

 

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