Tag Archives: Ready Player One

Setting any stage 

I have been thinking of where to put my cerebral hardware. I am not one of those FIFA world cup fans and I get that some are, so whilst the world is looking at where their balls are, I am bound towards the IP I create over the last few days. You see, the other option is to look towards Presidents Trump’s stupidity and I have seen quit enough of that. So whilst he is pissing of what little allies he has, the story about Italian PM Giorgia Meloni is going in completely wrong with the Italian people. So another ally lost to the rough sea of accountability. I understand the setting If I was ‘to beg’ Saudi Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud for a selfie, but even then, the chances are that he might allow for this selfie because it might be another fan. So consider that the Italian PM does not even have that for President Trump, he wasted a massive amount of publicity on what would be his setting whilst it was rejected by the global community right off the bat. So whilst I am watching these Riddikulus (pronounced ri-di-KULL-lis) events, I am casting my boggart banishing charm (just in case these creatures can inhabit the internet). Because at present the truth is a lot weirder than fiction can be and that just now opened up a lore setting for the new gam  had not considered before. 

So as I prefer the design of new IP over the idiotic stage of political non-reality reality. I am drawing a new setting of the nano tech. There is still several stages to work out, but the setting is that I ‘find’ a nano tech station, merely one and from here we see that the balancing act becomes amount versus strength, the introduction gives us that part, a ‘tutoring’ setting of the base station.

The nanotech requires energy, so breeding into a lot is not a good idea, because it decreases over time to back to the beginning of one. So you need a balancing act. The station needs enlarging and it requires additions to power cores, drone management and memory. You get the first two in stage one, the basic station, but over time you will find options to enlarge this. The power cores gives you additional power to create more drones, the memory will enhance their memory management and capturing data and share that data towards all the drones you have and the drone management will hand you more powerful drones. So whilst I still like the Paradroid setting, the first stage gets you the ability to to capture Janitorial, Servant and messenger drones. But beyond that you need more powerful drones. 

The setting enables that when you get the number of drones. By enlarging the chipset, the memory is enlarged, the and by getting the power cores enlarged you will manage more drones. And there needs to be a balancing act, you can go ‘the other way’ but you will find that many low level drones do not give you the added umpf you require, but I want the game to enable you because a gamed which allows you to fail will also allow you to enjoy the benefits of evolving your own game. 

So whilst I was seeking out the drone settings, I came across a stage where a few of the achievements came up. The first was the Inspiration achievement, shots of found games (like Paradroid, Hacker and a few others that shows where the ideas originated. I think that it is good that we recognise where our thoughts came from, optionally also the views on a CBM64 and an Atari 800 to recognise where our games all originated. Then I got (because of the lore stage) the idea to the achievement ‘Anorak the All-Knowing’ which gives you the lore settings and you need to find 25 backstories (there will be a lot more) but finding them all might not be possible. 

So whilst I was wondering on how this happened. The republican party helped out with that setting, as Measles is going rampant in the United States (with the CDC has reported over 2,100 confirmed cases and 30 active outbreaks across more than 40 jurisdictions), so what happens when this goes really bad? And whilst you are in a ‘safe’ space, resources are dwindling down and you find the first nanotechnology station. So whilst we advance to more drones and the core 4 (which will allow for autonomous data capturing) when it crossed with memory 3, which allows all data to be auto collected, because the game other whiles becomes too dreary. The drones will upgrade to views where all doors and ports that are open come green-lit. This enabled another path, places with drone ports can only allow Janitorial, Servant and messenger drones. The next ‘phase’ requires Maintenance, Crew and Sentinel drones to use the front door, so will all other drinks, but they are the next stage is for Battle, Security and Command drones but they are deeper into the setting of government and official places. So whilst we have something going, there is the larger need for a game to be repayable and when you get the override of a Command done, you find the option to get to another city or base and it opens up several other options. So from a simple building (like the northeast Bronx, Co-op City, Bronx is the largest housing cooperative in the world Co-op City, the world’s largest housing cooperative in the Bronx. And this is a great start, because it is not some flashy setting, it allows for a whole’s lot of original lore and the I what we are after, so when we get to this setting, for those who love the game, the Command drone could open up a stage that opens up the New Century Global Center (Chengdu), where we get a a staggering 1.76 million square meters. That’s just for starters, the idea to get a government building like the Pentagon mapped out is nice, but too flashy. To get some level of a conspiracy theory in place, we need to look at other places, like (for example) the Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna, Austria. Stretching over 1,100 meters long, this historical social housing project was built in the late 1920s and originally housed more than 5,000 residents. There is always the chance that it houses a few survivors and gives us the larger setting for more exploration and optionally a larger stage to get a surviver setting in place. The last few things are top of mind thinking, but lets face it, we have seen enough conspiracy yanks to last us a lifetime, so we look in the direction of Europe as one example, optionally the idea of mapping out the Line (NEOM) is a nice setting and it might not have ben completed at present, or in the story, but a location that big, allows for a lot of directions to get us in. And my mind is still forever voyaging into gaming solutions (a nice pun even if I say so myself) and I am not done yet, but with the other two parts (see over the last week) the game comes across nicely and considering that Microsoft hasn’t produced a original IP game for quite some time, my work is standing out nicely. So you all have a great day and who knows we get another Trump story like to one NPR gave us 15 hours ago ‘Italy’s Meloni, once Trump’s closest ally in Europe, says he made up a story about her’, I cannot vouch either way, because I was not there, but the crumbles are all on the floor, time for me to call for a 123 disposal droid and get rid of the crumbles. It’s only nice that someone cleans the stage we all fin ourselves in and call for the 629 sentinel droid to get rid of irregularities. N’est-ce pas?

Have a great day all, I feel happy and creative this day, almost time for a nice plate of pasta, Giorgia Meloni put me up to that. (In truth pasta was planned, so I might just blame her for this too)

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A sense of self

That is at times the setting and we accept that, but have we ever truly set that in gaming? There are examples. There is The Talisman by Peter Straub (Stephen King too), there are numerous other examples and I even wrote that setting in a previous blog, a basic setting that is. So consider an altered example. The image below

Shows 13 areas, the middle gives us the start. Now consider the setting that the start region is WatchDogs 3 Legion, it gives access to 4 other regions, they are in the background. Now one of these regions is AC 2 (AC Brotherhood) and that gives access to Areas 1,2,4 or 2,3,6 or 4,7,8 or 6,8,9 and so on. The object is to create a giant puzzle and the setting is to give each regions it own set of rules. So whilst I am looking at the series Caprica, we can see how the alternate reality gives a more docile or less docile setting whilst ‘throwing’ concepts like gravity, time, behaviour and classifications of people and of positions are thrown into the mix to be altered in each region. As I see it, the goal is to set a more distorted sense of self. That is the one side that gaming never explored. But the stage where we all throw it into the wind remains seemingly untouched, all whilst devices like the Meta Quest 3 could open that up to a much larger extent. We tend to reflect on what WE are, but not on how we manipulate ourselves. We play RPG, Minecraft all whilst Ernest Cline in Ready Player One opened a larger stage as early as 2011, now that we have much better technology, no one seems to be heading that way. It is not about the VR setting, it is how we see ourselves that is not addressed in gaming to any real setting. (OK, the real is debatable). And that setting is overlooked time after time again and as I see it, there has been 15 years of technology and no one thought of that approach to give the gamer the ride of their lives? When we consider a cross mix of technologies, the setting to hand the setting over a larger place is also overlooked. You see with the Meta Quest 3 there is the setting of streaming consoles and an ability to set both gaming realities in some kind of overlap would help. I reckon that the last time that this was done to ‘some’ extend was the game System Shock, but actually to set these linked technologies to real technological puzzles is missing. That same setting is partially seen in a game named Portal (Rob Swigart, 1986) and it seems that no one ever. Considered the next step in what makers like that would have seen impossible in their time, but now this option is ready to be explored. I actually placed a story here somewhere where I addressed that setting (too tired to find it now as it is 100F at the moment) So whilst we all go for the ‘cosmetic’ in today’s gaming, the larger setting is to take a leap and make some changes actual and yes there is a drawback to program to the Meta Quest 3, but I already handed several setting where the device would be an actual asset and it sets the setting to much more intensity when we alter that perception, and I for one think that the visor with a streaming solution like Amazon Luna or the TGP (Tencent Gaming Platform) Box. I reckon whomever get in first will get the larger following and I recon that It also pays (for me at least) to let this evolve with the console setting I saw over the last three years. I reckon that there are 50 million consumers just for starters who will embrace this and that would be merely phase one. In the later phase I have no idea where it will end but 100-150 million consoles in not out of the realm of possibilities and after that I get hesitant. I would love to be the one guy who get this to 200 million plus, but I am hesitant to get overly ‘confident’ I am certain it will work, but to see the one solution that Google and Amazon can’t see makes my confidence shaky to say the least. At least I got to imagine another Gaming IP even if it is based on other settings, but that is merely cosmetic in some form. Whoever designs the new IP will have a strong sense of achievement and here I reckon that Ubisoft has the inner track and after they just sacked dozens of people all over the world, they might be thinking on what to do next. Well, they need to not look further at present.

So have a great day and as I am melting like the wicked with of the witch of the west in this heat, I will take the slow lazy setting to avoid heat getting to me.

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The successful and the less so

What makes success? We have always wondered that question, what makes ‘me’ a success? At times it is the drive that you have within yourself. Sometimes it is propagated through the outside factors like marketing and media. At times there is no control, it is imaging towards third parties and they make sure that you are the popular choice to make. I have been to the movies 3 times in the last two months. One I paid for, the other two was a free double pass that I converted into two tickets. So let’s take a look at the three movies. The first was Black Panther, it was awesome to watch, I was curious because it is one of the Marvel comics I never saw. I played him on Marvel: Ultimate Alliance on the Xbox 360, which was basically a comic book revamp of the legendary game Gauntlet, now with the option to evolve certain powers. Black Panther was unlocked by finding his 5 statues. So I knew that little on Black Panther and I was curious to see him in action (beside the scenes in Captain America: Civil War). It was an awesome movie and it was no surprise to see the movie become the 9th most successful movie on the planet reeling in well over a billion dollars. It is still grossing cash, so there is a chance for the movie to get to 8th place before the end of May (I reckon in 2-3 weeks). The movie has so far made $1,323,739,011. So with a budget of $200,000,000, it made well over a billion, it is making some serious real cash.

The second movie in this is Ready Player One, an absolute diamond by Steven Spielberg. It blew me away! I grew up in the world we see (partially) depicted, so every second I saw more and more references towards gaming, movies and even books. Some were clear references to other games (like JRPG) and some Manga characters I knew existed, but never watched the cartoon, so there were question marks for me in that regard. The movie had that approach that the movie Paul had (a Simon Pegg gem), part of the fun is seeing the references and I am certain that is what I will be doing for days after the Blue Ray and 4K edition is released. So here we have the legendary Steven Spielberg, who was born 36 weeks after the British government nationalised and took control of the Bank of England, after 252 years. It was in 1975 when he completed Jaws, the man became a revered god of cinema. His movies were a direct expectation of awesome film watching and his stature grew even more with the movie Close Encounters of the third kind, the movie that followed Jaws. The list would not stop for decades and he went all out in Ready Player One and it was awesome! He started the Jurassic Park, Jaws and the Indiana Jones franchise; he was involved as a producer/executive producer in so many other successes. So when I went to see Ready Player One (RP1), I expected to see a good movie and I was blown away, it was that perfect. Yet financially it merely made a little over half a billion. It surprised me that it had not caught on to such a degree. As we look at the $523,175,886 it made, we also need to realise that it merely made 25% from domestic US viewing, making it an interesting setting. The entire US culture of gaming and movies is a lot more appealing on the international field. When we consider that the production budget was $150,000,000, we see that the Domestic side does not make it a ‘success’, the international sales did that and it should be seen as a success as well.

Now, as per yesterday I saw the Avengers: Infinity War (my second free ticket), and again I was blown away, watching that movie was ‘perfection’. It was like watching a real life comic book with all the massive fights and superpowers in action. The Stan Lee medium of the now! For a second I was worried that so many super heroes and villains would clutter the screen, but it did not. Like watching a mix of goofy, cool and mental explode all at the same time worked, it made it a symphony of sorts. It gave the width of the Secret Wars (or Infinity Wars) comic books with the action of a level of heroes we have never seen before. It was overwhelming and absolutely amazing, with the mandatory extra scene at the very end that will make the people in the know (when it comes to comic books) go: ‘Are you fucking kidding me?‘ and that is how it felt, part one is a mega spectacle that is merely the introduction to the second part which will now expected to be even more overwhelming than the first part was. I have not felt that was since I had to wait for the second Lord of the rings movie (being a Tolkien fan for decades). Blown away three times in a row!

I expect that Infinity War will bring the profits in on a scale almost never seen before; it should have no issues surpassing Black Panther, upping the ante by a lot. The question is why does it matter? I never cared for how much a movie made, it was good enough that it made a real profit and since when is half a billion not a real profit? More important, both RP1 and Infinity war are extreme examples of excellence, entertainment and awesomeness. So why are we watching the numbers? I never cared for that in the past. I actually started watching that around the Dark Night. For some reason the passing of Heath Ledger, the most amazing Joker ever, made me wish that the Dark night would surpass the billion dollar mark and it did in the end, yet I am not getting any of those coins, so why would I care beside that it was a financial success? You see, why is it about the cash? For a part we know that when it is a success it will give us optionally a sequel, or optionally we will see those actors again, and whilst we know that there will be more marvel movies, Steven Spielberg is all about new and different. So why does it matter, because we know it does, we have seemingly become that Americanised. It is no longer about the art, it is about the return on investment, we set ourselves in that light, we are set upon KPI’s that demand we become a return on investment. When did we lose the need to be that awesome technical support agent, and moved into merely to become the most profitable one? Because being the most profitable one is not a scale of excellence, it is merely the rubber stamp that we are allowed in our workplace the next quarter. It is merely a sliding scale of monetary excellence. So even as we see that Avengers: Infinity War will be heading towards an easy $2 billion, optionally surpassing the present number 3, the 2015 movie Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force Awakens, who made $2,058,662,225 globally, should it not be about being the best and most awesome movie ever made? Because the RP1 results do not support that, even as it was as awesome as a movie could be, it was not heralded as such. Now we can blame that none of us are nerds, you merely have to see the 2.2 billion gamers many of them online, who could all identify the Planet doom scene, splattered with millions of avatars, groups all looking like the Master Sergeant of HALO, to see that we will identify. We will identify many characters and we should realise that they have references to the creative excellence of Atari Interactive, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Bethesda Softworks LLC, Blizzard Entertainment, Capcom , CBS Television Studios, Disney Enterprises, Electronic Arts, Gearbox Software, Hasbro, The Jim Henson Company, Kodansha, Konami Digital Entertainment, Mattel, Microsoft Corporation, Mifune Productions, Mojang AB, Nickelodeon & Viacom Media Networks, Paramount Pictures, Rare Ltd., Sanrio Company, SEGA Holdings Co., Sesame Workshop, Sony Pictures Entertainment and Columbia Pictures, Square Enix Holdings Co., Legend Pictures, Tatsunoko Production, Toho Company Limited, The Topps Company, Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Valve Corporation and Wizards of the Coast. This is merely a grasp because there was so much more to see, so many more avatars and characters. A list this large and if you played anything even more than an hour, it is likely to be in the movie. A movie that is a three decade reference to gaming, gamers, movies and the buffs they have. The movie is sheer excellence and I wished everyone had watched it, merely because there is something in there for us to identify with, a mere moment when we were introduced to a moment of awesome, delight and/or amazement. So as we realise that the revenue does not reflect that, I started to wonder why that is.

One source told me that gamers do not care, but with 2.2 billion gamers and a fair amount deep into multi-player gaming, I am not able to accept that. I think we do care, we care a lot, we aren’t all into movies, so there is that, but I think that it has something to do with the marketing. Digg (at http://digg.com/2018/spielberg-carls-jr-ready-player-one-feud) gave their view and even as I have not been confronted with it, I am uncertain how it should be perceived. Yet, they are not the only source. Screen rant (at https://screenrant.com/ready-player-one-movie-trailer-marketing-wrong/) gives us “Warner Bros. Have Been Marketing Ready Player One All Wrong”, which shows it all a little better with “all set to a rousing cover of the classic song from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “Pure Imagination.” It is, in no uncertain terms, a great trailer. Why hasn’t the marketing been like this so far?“, so did marketing create a $400 million plus shortfall? If that is so, I should have been in marketing and take 10% of the optionally delivered $400 million (it would solve a few problems for myself as well). with “Proof of this lies in the second trailer, which, while a significant improvement over the first, lacks the impact it could have had because of the damage done by the initial teaser“, that would be cruel and revealing all at the same time, so the excellence of Steven Spielberg got undone by the marketeers they trusted? That would be a new level of Cruel and it required some extra life option to reset that. It does add up as the trailers of Marvel have been utter perfection in many ways and all of us expecting and seeing Stan Lee, the generalissimo himself in a cameo moment is always good for a laugh and a check-mark to make when watching any Marvel movie. There is no denying this and the fact that the one expected line missing in the first movie is still hopefully made in the second movie. The moment that Iron Man (Robert Downey JR) and/or Dr Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) state (optionally in unison) “No shit, Sherlock!” will certainly give cheers from the audience, that same audience when everyone in the cinema literally cheered when Thor entered the battle scene. People care that much, they are that connected to the movie, and as such I believe that people would be that connected to Ready Player One on near similar levels.

So ask yourself, when does the lack of revenue set the stage for ‘less successful’, it should not, but it does and that is literally a crying shame because Ready Player One is every bit a result of excellence as Black Panther is and Infinity War will prove itself to be. So I believe it should also be financially as successful (just go with it). I accept that my expectation is warped, but should it be? Art and excellence are their own platform, setting this scale to a metric dollar scale is dangerous, I accept that because true excellence is not set in $ signs, it is set in amazement, a currency of its own and we do not always get that currency depicted, it gets depicted less and less which is a shame, because we optionally deny ourselves access to truly great achievements.

That would be a much larger defeat than merely being seen as ‘less successful’.

 

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