We have this at times, we go back in time to remember the party we were at, the party we gave. There is a reason for it. It can be sentiment, lust, desire, achievement there are hundreds of reasons why a party remains in memory forever. A party is for most the easiest to see, and there is a second reason. It is a setting where the crowd remembers you, the crowd was part of it, you either distinguished yourself, or you were distinguished by others. It is the crowd that is an essential element in all this. It is part of the multiplayer appeal, or at least that is what I believe is the case. I play single for myself, for my own needs, for my need for joy. I am not a racer of routes, not a shortcut maker of cleverness. I walked through Oblivion and Skyrim for hours, enjoying the perfection that Bethesda created. I see solution after solution that is all about feigned perfection. It is about showing a crowd how perfect you are, but is that a truth? A reality? To present ones self as clever is not a presentation, it is deception. That is the side that I going wrong in too many games. Whilst I focussed on giving the gamer a good time, others are setting the dressing to pretend the gamer is much better than he or she actually is. I have been brooding on this, you see it is the game Elden Ring that brings the real gamers to the surface. I am a real gamer, but I was never that great in action games, I learned that the hard way in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. I still have these games. They are beautiful, but for me not something I can hope to conquer. I feel no shame, I have my own speciality and I have achieved plenty of game completions over the 40 years I have truly enjoyed gaming. From the VIC20, the CBM64, the Atari ST, the CBM Amiga, N64, CD32, SEGA Megadrive, Playstation, Xbox, SEGA Dreamcast, the PS2, Gamecube, Xbox 360, Wii, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and the PS5. I have seen and enjoyed gaming to the largest extent, but when the Xbox360 came things changed. This is not the fault of Microsoft, in this they are innocent. There was a push for achievements and to get them any way possible and I was the same. I wanted (for the most) all the achievements, I was not an online gamer, so I missed out on several achievements. I think it is what ‘saved’ me and even the Sony group has that issue. You are not a gamer until you get the platinum achievement. There is something wrong with that notion. It is like a new dimension of workforce adhering to the Wall Street stage of ‘Greed is good’, it is not, it really is not. I think the stage of Nintendo Switch to do away with achievements was wise, a lot more wise than most of us realise. Ask yourself the question, are you driven by achievements or to have fun? Do you enjoy walking in the world you play in? These questions have been bugging me for some time now. The Bethesda games brought it to the surface and to some degree the Ubisoft games too. Guerrilla pushed it into overdrive with the Horizon games. It matters, it really does because the wrong setting here could break streaming games. In the games I designed for streaming I think about rewards, not achievements. The Luna keys were part of that. Silver keys to the game you get them in and gold keys to unlock something in 5 games that you have at that point. Rewards are more satisfying, rewards are a token of achievement, a point where we all will get, but not having it on every profile matters. It stops the wannabe’s, it heralds those who are and it gives to those who attempt and overcome. We want to be the gamer that has it all, but why? You see there is so much to gain from replayability, there is so much to get when some options are only there for the arcane, for the shadow dancers, for the brawlers and it is possible we will not become all of those to the degree of perfection, but the inner feeling of what we get done is overwhelming and I believe that achievements undermine that. Now, this is nothing against Microsoft (I slapped them often enough), Microsoft brought achievements and it is a great idea, but game makers and others seem to have subverted the concept, that is how I see it and it took me a while to see the Nintendo Switch step as the great step it was. Yet I understand that achievements are important to some, so how to embrace the idea and make it better? The keys are part of an optional solution, but only in part. So to look at the party of what was is also a way to see the side of what might be. I have no idea if I will solve it, it might be up to someone else to do that, but it needs to be done. We need to go back to the old days to when gaming was pure it was about the gamer getting to places, not others judging the gamer on how he got there, how fast and in what way. We lost something there and we need to find it again. The streaming stage will push gaming further, but it will also push weaknesses and corruption of the gaming mind further. Gaming is about checks and balances and we seemingly ignored the balancing act. I have done that as well and now my mind is making up the consideration and the tally of balances missed. How it will fare? I cannot tell at present.
Tag Archives: Sony
9 options were lining up
Wow! I got some feedback from yesterday, mostly from people who want a free ride and had no idea what they were watching. The sudoku part is a handlebar, an optional shortcut to a much larger stage that was a puzzle and I turned it into an almost simple exercise. But for the Microsoft minded (the non thinkers) lets go over it.
Story
No matter what the story is, there are plenty of elements that can be generated. It’s like creating 180 unique chapters and you only need 9 of them, basically you might create 81 at launch time and get the others created whilst the program is running. Yet getting the 180 (or so) done beforehand makes lighter work afterwards. You see, any story is set to chapters, each chapter is set to paragraphs. So why this many? In case you want a never ending start of quests, you need the ammunition.
No matter how clever you are, there is always another way and I merely presented one. In the previous image you saw the stage of what story to run, it HAS to start with ‘1’, so whether you take the row or the column, you will have one of each. In my example the blue one is less appealing as the second number is an ‘8’, so it will be a lot less in line. The green one (a coincidence, I swear) gives us 1,4,5,7,2,6,8,9,3 so there is more line and per location you will get one part of the story (via interactions) and the story will shape for the player. So after the third world the player will have parts 1,4 and 5. This is one of the effects of anachronism and linearity is utterly pointless in that setting. And as we realise that we have 150 chapters, we merely randomise the chapters, we sort them and select the 9 highest (or lowest) and as such you would have to play the game 20 times to see EVERY story at the earliest.
Items
This is a different setting. Let’s state that all the items are the numbers (another use of the SAME numbers). So all the items for world 1 are all the ones in play, but not every world needs to have 9 items. And you might want to focus on what numbers are in play, but remember, each number is only used once, so the Sudoku method HELPS us to shape what we want, but it is not a solution for everything, and every sudoku is different.
We have Items, people, the story, the location puzzles and the whole comes to a point when we unite them. A new version and a unique version of a game that started in 1988, and with the Forgotten city we are optionally breathing it new life. The Sudoku part is just a handlebar to create a station of almost never ending originality. Especially when you realise that there are “6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 possible solvable Sudoku grids”. I used a simple way to create in simplicity what too many will try to complicate. Not a bad hour, was it?
And this can be done on the streamers, it can be done on a PS5. I reckon that this is also possible on the Nintendo Switch. All this and all done in the limit of a TV show. Can life get any simpler? Well yes, but that is up to Adobe (for a price) and I think I have a nice idea for them to really screw up the margins of profit for Microsoft (because that is how I roll). And now it is time for a healthy meal (chicken rolls).
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.
Increasingly Pretentious
Yes, that happens, and that is how some see others. The first group does that out of envy, they do not understand what they are confronted with and as such they ridicule it. Their belief is that their biggest asset is between their legs and the fact that their wives/partners disagree is lost on them, hence the adultery rates. The second group is different. They know they are looking at something new, but they cannot concur the percentages, or the revenue from these innovations. That group is more interesting. They can add to my ideas, they can add to my considerations, their objections are food for the soul and food for the evolution of IP. To ignore that group is beyond stupid, it is worse than pretentious, it is dangerous. The second group might not be right, but they come with their own wagons of experience and as such they should be listened to. Listening does not mean adhering. Listening does not mean (but could mean) changing the IP. A person that sets its IP blindly into concrete will loose a lot more than the IP.
And that is where I find myself, three bundles of IP, one bundle holding media IP and I added to that last night, or better stated. I am still adding to this. There are a few items I discussed two days ago, but last night a new part started to be added to this. The problem is that I am all sixes and sevens (the other numbers are to be added later) whether this is a new game, or a new movie. It could go either way and there the fault comes into play, or so I think. You see they used to have very different stages and were not interchangeable and that is about to take another turn. The question becomes do you d one, the other or both? And there lies the setting. This is perhaps the first game that cannot be set to consoles. The solution becomes too large. It is also a setting where game IP and movie IP becomes close to indistinguishable. No matter how we want to twist and turn, how much some want to maximise money be keeping them apart. The streaming solutions are done with that greed driven stage, and there is every chance that this puts the Netflix solution a little ahead of the others, in this Amazon can fight back and keep its niche and overlap with Netflix, but it is anyones guess how the Google Stadia will take it. Not technologically, they are on par, but with games and movies the other two will have an advantage, no doubt about that. So what is the new IP?
Consider the stage of a game, almost any game. Now consider that this game has a cutscene. Now consider that the cutscene is not a cutscene, but a playable part of the game and as we go through the game, we can alter from ‘game play’ to cut scenes at the mere push of a button, anywhere in the game. Not only does it change the game, it changes the nature of gaming and weirdly enough, the one with the largest advantage here is Ubisoft. Yes, I have hit them more often than anyone else, but they also have had their moments and in this, the way they did their AC and Watchdogs games, they might just have the playing field here. This is an evolution that is waiting to happen. The nature of gaming evolves or we go under replaying the past again and again. Weirdly enough it were the Dutch that started this thought. You see the two Horizon games have something in common. They are utterly unique, the world they created had never been done before. With the additional thoughts I had on the Citadel as well as Mass Effect 4 and 5 game more and more of this IP to the forefront of my mind. Yet I am placing it here. Why? Because an innovation like this cannot be maintained by one person, no ones greed should allow for this and making it public domain in this blog opens the doors for all kinds of players to recede the waters of the old and create the waves of tomorrow. I would love that Sony and their PS5 would be on front of it all, but in the end this will most likely be a new frontier, one played by the streamers in the leading roles. A first setting where computers and consoles can no longer keep up. We are reaching the age of the streamers and again there are three players (four if you consider Microsoft). This is not something that happens in a day, this will take the technology and IP of all players. And it is here where Ubisoft has the field advantage.
So is this a set of Increasingly Pretentious idea’s? Is this innovation for a new day after tomorrow? Time will tell, but there is no holding back, I am not ridding this for a pretty penny, there is too much at stake, I merely hope that Netflix takes up the baton and take this future to heart and become one of the top three consoles (I am happy to see Microsoft in an eternal 4th position).
The largest systems will come at a larger stage and this step is essential for a few other sides that evolve from this. Evolution is essential, especially in gaming. In the 90’s technology evolved because gaming kept pushing. We need to return to those days and push the next two decades ahead, not when some business graduate tells you it is more effective that way. It reduces you to the iteration stage and the bosses of tomorrow are the ones pushing innovation. Should you doubt me, consider Horizon Zero Dawn with over 20,000,000 copies sold, a feat that its successor has not equalled because there are not enough PS5’s available, but they will get there, slamming pretty much every other game for the numbers. That is the impact of innovation in gaming and streaming will have its own innovation and that will require a national 5G, but more important we need to start now, if they start when the national 5G is out, it will be too late for those beginning then. Those who did prepare will become the rulers of gaming stream land.
That is how I see it and there is every chance that I am wrong, yet the stage of innovation needs to be adhered to and respected. The dangerous setting of gaming that it is up to business people (those less likely to comprehend games) is folly to say the least. So will this lead to a new commodore 64, or another colecovision (1982)? I can make whatever claim I like, but that will not mean it is correct and I feel being correct is more important than anyones ego, even my own.
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?
Filed under Gaming
Abbreviations
We all see them, we all use them and we all think we use the same ones. Yet when we take a look at ‘Games as a Service (GaaS) Market to See Huge Growth by 2028 | Netflix, Microsoft, Sony’ (at https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/games-as-a-service-gaas-market-to-see-huge-growth-by-2028-netflix-microsoft-sony) we see a decent story and it all seems to fit, yet when we see the list “The study includes market share analysis and profiles of players such as Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT, Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, Activision Blizzard, Sega, Electronic Arts & Ubisoft” with the optional ‘attached sample PDF’ did you think you were getting the goods, or did you think you were catered to with “If you are a Games as a Service (GaaS) manufacturer” and at every turn you are seeing the mention of ‘digital journal’. So what gives? Well in the first instance this Games as a Service ploy is that, a ploy (for now) and it sets the largest upheave long before 2028. The largest settings will come to blow in 2024/2025. And the entire station of market share sets a longer approach. You see, there is still no way to see where Netflix is going at present. Their ‘stated’ indications are nice, but when you also hear sounds like “Research firm Ampere isn’t convinced that subscription services like Game Pass are taking over gaming.” We need to realise we are hearing merely one voice, and I get it, but it is the setting of what some call ‘dog eat dog’ that matters. Microsoft, Ubisoft, Netflix and EA will head for a fight, a fight for population and subscribers. Some have advantages, some have potential overzealous fans and some have merely hope. The issue is that these players will fight EACH OTHER for market share. And yes some of the mentioned players are all Microsoft, but that does not make Microsoft the larger player, it makes for a splintered one and in the end they all fight for ones self. Sony and Tencent have their own worries. They are both a lot stronger, but there is a station that polarisation will happen by 2025 and these two will have the numbers and the share. The second issue is not merely the setting here.
Consider the following names Games as a Service, Games as a System, Software as a Service, Systems as a Service, and all this before we consider Function as a Service (FaaS), Container as a Service (CaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) and it is more than some ‘hyped’ and quick mention of names towards a category. The larger stage becomes when the players start mixing the terms to get the audience to ‘flip’ in space to be part of such a community. It sounds nice, but it is not, it merely makes the water muddy. Tencent and Sony are not part of this because they have a setup, they have the setup, the hardware and the population, more important they are not in each others way. You see Ubisoft is on its way out, that much has been visible for almost two years. When Ubisoft did not deliver on quality they were going for their GamePass approach and they are coming up short, now that they are all over Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and the consoles they are merely running a steeplechase of patch after patch and they are coming up short per game and per system and it is taking it toll. To get ahead of the game they need near flawless games. Three at the least and they need them before 2023 and that is not in the cards, so they are merely one bad release away from death. EA has its own following and it is a decent following, but their games have issues, larger issues, not deadly ones, but serious ones. The problems for EA is to manage service levels to a higher standard and they seem to come up short (for now), their largest issue is clear communication and to FOCUS on games, one at a time to make them all better, more stable and less ‘issue prone’ that part is hard but doable. If their board does not fold under pressure from the other dogs they could be in a good place by 2024. By that time EA and Microsoft will be contemplating what to do with Ubisoft, because it is too far behind. At that same time Tencent and Sony will have the advantage and neither will have a clue where Nintendo will be, because if Games as a Service becomes a thing, Nintendo will be the quiet one gathering population with a strong system. Microsoft might want to trivialise them away but the rest will not. They lack the larger station that Sony and Tencent has, but Nintendo is creeping up on them and this article has no mention of Nintendo, do they? Yet by 2025 Nintendo will be a powerhouse and Netflix is nowhere near ready to take on the large three players. Microsoft is about buying whatever is out there, but from the 90’s onwards that approach has been devastating on all who attempted it. Yes, it makes for headlines but it lacks results and that is what we have been seeing for a little too long with Microsoft. It cannot maintain its posture in the current setting and when it starts its GamePass as collateral for population, we are more than likely get to see the downturn of it all and it does reflect my position of ‘dog eat dog’.
And these are the players vying for the attention of the gamers, all whilst they cannot decide who is the better provider or what gamers actually want and there too the big three (Sony, Tencent and Nintendo) will have the advantage. The problem I see is that a lot of this will be decided long before 2028 and in all this Amazon is not mentioned either. They too have a stake and could become on of the big four leaving Microsoft in fifth place at best and that is if everything goes their way, which so far has not be the case. And whilst most of them are hiding behind abbreviations the big four (Tencent, Sony, Nintendo and Amazon) will grow its population and cater to the one element that was central in all this, the gamer, not the process.
That is my issue with this article, that was my issue with some of the players. They stopped catering to the GAMER and started to cater to the image of SELF. I will let you make up your mind. There is time, this does not need to polarise in any one brain for at least a year. The largest game in all this are the players and the game they play, not the games they produce that too is an advantage the big three have over the other players at present.
Directions
We all do this, we take a direction, we choose a heading and most of us do it for emotional and sentimental reasons. I am no different. Yes, I still enjoy every moment in Horizons: Forbidden West. I hope I will enjoy Hogwarts Legacy well over half that much (more is always good). I try to have a realistic mind and the movie of Hogwarts Legacy blew me away, as it did most of us. Yet, some of us also hope for other IP to be made into games. Some go nuts for Marvel or DC games. Some of us love the Lego games. Yet I wonder what is possible if someone takes a gander and grabs a series like the Magicians, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica into a game. Hogwarts and the writings of JK Rowling shows that there is massive appeal in the arcane. As such the writings of Lev Grossman could make for one hell of a game. Babylon 5 always had its own following and 5 seasons as well as a few movies opens the doors to a larger game. And there is a benefit to a space station. The same could be said for the Galactica, but I wonder what happens when we try to set a much larger station by opening the gameplay on a dozen worlds. A game that covers Icarus, Picon, Caprica, Gemenon, Tauron, Leonis, Virgon, Libran, Scorpia, Sagittaron, Aerilon, Aquaria and Canceron. A game that is too big for consoles, but not for streamers. All options that are forsaken, overlooked or just too big to contemplate. That last reason is a decent one. It is one hell of a challenge to get one world done right, to get 12 done good would be folly and I recognise that. A state of gaming we sometimes overlook. Just like the hungry man whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. In the latter case we waste some money on food we never had and that is OK, when you make a game and you make THAT much of an oversight bankruptcies start, so the game needs to be played careful and cautious. I get that, but if we always play it safe a game like The Darkness on Xbox360 would never have been a reality. A game that scored 82% (better than some Ubisoft games). There are other games with that setting and they were good games. Some would state not great games and I could go along with that. There are other games that scored not as much and were great games to play. So I am at time cautious on looking too hard at some rating. A game is what captures us, and for different people it is a different game. It was different with the approach for 50,000,000 consoles, which is weirdly enough based on small numbers, because it has never been done before. And if one program can lead there, what else are designers not looking at? I made the mistake of listening to the wrong people when I had my idea for Facebook 4 years before Facebook. Now, my version was not as slick, not as good looking and limiting, but I was ahead by 4 years. I will never do that again. I will go my own way and for now I have 5G IP in directions no one considered, optionally with extensions in several directions. A lot of them based on seeing the plans of Neom (Saudi Arabia). I came up with the IP for streaming consoles in a direction NO ONE considered. And it is ready for development. And the game is not even close to over. Only a few days ago it gave pressure to another IP, an IP no one seems to be considering and I reckon it could amount to billions, but it will not be overnight. A simple thought brought it to the top and in that same light I want to be positive on the IP of a TV series, a mini series and a movie, but they are not the real moneymakers, they are there for my ego (I think). And that is for some the rub. They are all about the profit, optionally the Adobe solutions that will bring Microsoft to their knees, but I believe that the small gains of TV ideas are no less than the other much larger amounts. The creator believes in his creations, not the value it represents. It is a path the creator walks and he (or she) hopes to see all the sideways that are connected to it, or the hope that new sideways are opened because of one IP. I believe that this happened in one case, but not in all cases. And there are other considerations. In my case Ego is one situation. I considered the evolution of the Amazon Luna, giving it all kinds of side uses, for the mere reason that Sony left them on the side and I want to be there to pick it up before Microsoft does. I want to make sure that they are seen as copycats, a former titan that is now merely a follower, not a leader, no matter what their marketing department advertises, but you saw that, did you not? ‘The most powerful console in the world’ is a considered statement of fact, but the fact that it was surpassed by the weakest console of them all is regularly overlooked. A stage that we ignore because some want us to overlook it and through that we overlook a lot more. But I do not mind, as I am alone on a path gives light to other options and it take one (not Microsoft) to take that jump and see their portfolio of revenue grow and when that does, the rest will sell itself. And when that happens my ego will be happy and shouting with glee showing all what Microsoft left in the dust and that was before the previous article where I saw more parts and places that Microsoft left lying on the floor, all ready for Adobe to pick up and make a move on what should now be considered a mediocre solution no one needs anymore and as people seek deep within ones self, they will understand that ‘They are the only advanced solution’ is no longer good enough and when that changes Microsoft loses the field on a 4th tier. They lost gaming to Nintendo and Sony, they never achieved anything in Tablets (Apple), they are a browsers joke (Google) and they will lose even more to Meta and they are about to be surpassed in streaming consoles by Amazon who also surpassed them on Cloud computing (Amazon AWS) and that is when their office solution passes over to Adobe, they will be the loser of the decade and I cannot wait to see those articles make headlines way too late. Microsoft took a direction to a cull de sac in a place no one wants to be all whilst others copied their failings.
And I am so close to the victory I dreamt of, I can almost taste it, whether I get my IP sold or not, I will be around to see Microsoft fall to such a degree that the media can no longer ignore what has been in front of them for years. And when the people catch on the mess will be complete.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 