Tag Archives: Tencent

As the gaming sense enters

That was the setting I faced yesterday. I ‘suddenly’ had an idea for gaming IP. This setting was for Sony, Nintendo and the streamers Amazon and Tencent. The idea is to separate the parts of a game. The story, the stage and the character. It can to me as I was watching Battle of the 5 armies and that gave me an idea. The Lord of the rings gave me the settings of Osgiliath, Minas Tirith, Helm’s Deep, Lake Town, Dale, Mines of Moria but also Acre, Antioch, Jerusalem, Plassey, Buxar but also more ‘modern’ wars like the the war in Leiden and Rotterdam these are mere stages, but the characters are the ones you define from some of the lord of the Rings characters (based on, not characters as is). During the movie my mind went into the setting what an one man do? So you could be stealth based like a ranger (or elf) a close quarter knight like templar or saracen, German or Dutch resistance. The idea is that these settings are separate, even though they can net er ‘bleed’ into other areas. So, the first character is YOUR choice. LOTR, Crusades or WW2 and you select warrior or ranger and that is your first setting, when you get to a higher level (3 or 5) you get the option to get to an exit and ave your upgraded character. At which point time you get the other character in one of the other levels (or your first choice was an LOTR character you will be able to select the Crusader/Saracen or German/Dutch resistance) and you will ALWAYS get the other type, so if you selected stealth based in the first instance you will be forced to select the warrior in the other timeframe, but you get to select the timeframe. 

It force a more open setting and after that you get to select the next iteration. Whilst the safe will give you more health, a passive attribute and more weapon abilities. The control are slightly based on For Honor. It was not my choice, but it was a whole lot better then what we had before, but the sticks are for the left and right arms, and this will enable more agility for left handed players, whilst  the adaptive trigger is the action for that arm and movement are done via the buttons (triangle, Square, Circle and cross) and their Nintendo equivalents. It will through over the world of the button masher and beyond that I haven’t worked out all the knacks that this brings but I reckon that the left directions are for abilities/tools and the shoulder buttons will have another function.

So as we set these worlds there are more settings to come, but the variable worlds gave me the idea to have some kind of story which only opens up after you enter the second world the it will become enabled and that I got from:

It seems that this might open up other settings too, and whilst you are trying to find things in the worlds you are visiting, it might give a clue towards your goals. You see, the goals that are always tied to your mini-map are merely traverse points whilst the setting becomes the joy of where you are (an RPG quirk I guess). But that setting will be another level of acceptance and whilst this game could start small (merely three maps) a startup company could add the other maps over time (like three maps per month) And the setting of the character you ‘envision’ yourself as might be another setting entirely. I have some ideas about the story but I will not put them here now. And as I set out the game possibilities in under two days I feel pretty proud of myself. It beats having to read the BS the media gives us on what President Trump is up to now and whilst I do not agree with the setting that Secretary general Mark Rutte is giving the world and he might just be ‘appeasing’ president Trump, but as far as I can tell, NATO is pretty much ready for whatever non nuclear solution Russia is pushing down their throats, but that might be merely the delusion I am seeing. Still when I see the Danish parliament howling with laughter on what President Trump was sending them, I feel pretty much correct on my sentiments. It is also the first time a foreign government is howling with laughter on what any president of the United States is offering them, so it is not merely me who is seeing him as a joke.

Still, the creation of new gaming IP is more value by me and as such I got to this and setting this game in a 4K setting makes it ready for Sony, Nintendo (Switch 2) and streaming solutions. The idea I had with the 4 ‘time frames’ Tolkien, Crusades, British India and WW2 is important to the story of the game, but not essential. Optional a 5th setting which gives us Khartoum and Battle of Rorke’s Drift, Falkland Islands, Invasion of Darfur and at least two more are needed but that is a matter of a later day. Consider that these settings could be played almost anytime (when all regions are unlocked) it feeds the gaming need when people can play the battle of Dale or Osgiliath after they watch the movie. It is a strange presence all gamers have and I reckon that this approach might be the next setting in gaming because when the characters are ironed out, including a WW2 character with the wars in Iraq or Yemen would be relatively easy as the architecture would allow additional maps. A game that feeds the next war in the setting of gaming is one that has not been considered before (as far as I can tell) and it allows for a stronger presence on these platforms, all whilst whomever does it for the Switch 2 might gain 10 million fans overnight, but that is a worry for the maker not for me.

Have a great day as I am relaxing now with some ice water as it is 28 degrees now and 31 degrees in my living room.

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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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Counterpart of the equation

I saw something this morning that made me giggle. The Sydney Morning Herald (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/trump-sues-america-s-biggest-bank-and-its-billionaire-ceo-20260123-p5nwep.html) gives us ‘‘Blacklist’: Trump sues America’s biggest bank and its billionaire CEO’ where we see “President Donald Trump sued JPMorgan Chase & Co. and its billionaire chief executive officer, Jamie Dimon, for at least $US5 billion ($7.3 billion) over allegations that the lender stopped offering him and his businesses banking services for political reasons.” Like a toddler crying that mommy isn’t giving him a popsicle. I personally believe that there is another reason, but that is not how President Trump flies. No, his ego isn’t ready for that yet. Although should the EU collectively dump the US treasury bonds they have he will cry different tune. I was aware of the danger for over 12 years, but David Kelly at JP Morgan gave us (around January 9th) that the USA is going slowly broke and the tantrums that President Trump has been handing out all over the place doesn’t help. Tourism down, Commerce down, services basically gone and that list goes on. So as I see it, what was ‘defined’ as “going broke slowly” might not be so slow anymore. And now we suddenly see that “the lender stopped offering him and his businesses banking services”, I have my doubts. You see, when a customer comes in one bank and that bank states you aren’t welcome anymore that person should state “I’ll take my business across the street”, the fact that President Trump isn’t doing that shows a much larger play that he is preparing for. You see, when the American economy implodes he needs to have all his fish on land. First there was the BBC, then The New York Times and Penguin Random House and that list goes on, as such there is more than a ‘theme’ going on President Trump sees what is coming and he wants to sleep in utter luxury but as I see it, whatever he has in America would become cannon fodder overnight. And for me it is optionally great. When certain players see what Microsoft, Amazon, Google and a few others left lying on the floor. The optional come in (I personally hope Tencent will be among them) as such (as I personally see it) the station of utter BS given to us all by the American administration where I particularly like the quote given to us by Scott Bessent “the U.S. is unconcerned by Treasury sell-off over Greenland and calls Denmark ‘irrelevant’” and the was for $100 million, but the EU has over $2.8 Trillion and that will require a very different response, but as I see it, no one is ‘handling’ President Trump, to the chance of Europe dumping whatever bonds they have is becoming considerable. Then there is the offshoot that Japan will dump the $1.2 trillion bonds they have and vice versa. Should Japan dump whatever bonds they have as the setting for Japan is seemingly more dire than they ever faced, Europe is sure to follow. So as I see it, the American Administration is roughly in a tough spot. As I see it, President Trump pushed for the visibility that JP Morgan Chase is gaining partially due to the underlying setting of David Kelly. What a tangled web we weave ourselves, innit?

So the first question I have for myself is “Could I be wrong?” The answer is yes, definitely. But ask yourself, why does President Trump go for the suing procedure when he could have taken his business across the street of Wall Street towards Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Evercore, Lazard, Jefferies Group, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas. With that many banks with service in the offering, why take the ‘suing’ route? Political ‘discord’ has existed in financial institutions for decades. As such my path makes a lot of sense (is it enough?). And as it was JP Morgan who alerted us to the ‘broke’ setting the path of suing makes also sense. It comes across as “I warned you not to illuminate our desperate standing” even though I already saw this setting come to the United States in 2013 and the path of Venezuela and Greenland merely sugarcoated the desperate setting the United States is under. For that matter, when this is brought to light be decent journalists the rest of the financial media is pretty much done for. I saw as a non-economist what these overpaid people did not? It will be less then a month when others start screaming the names of the involved stake holders. As such it will be quite the parade and the United States? I reckon that as their infrastructure will implode, it will face a full scale civil war like the Netherlands faced it in the hundred year war (it was part about poverty, hunger and the plague, it went from 1337 until 1453) it wasn’t a complete staged war, but several battles in a short term and it was the daily setting for close to 5 generations. That is what the United States is looking towards and with the weapons we have now, it will be a lot shorter, but the deaths will be on an increasing scale. And as I see it, President Trump sees what is coming, and with the friends he has, he needs to be certain he gets the amount of money so that he can outlast three generations and there is not much place for him outside of America, so he needs to be certain that he gets what he believes he is worth, the best he could hope for in Russia (pretty much his one ally) is a two bedroom flat somewhere in the MKAD (Moscow Ring Road) is pretty much all he can get and as such he needs another option. Perhaps he will go the way of Escape from New York, where the entire island of Manhattan becomes his personal prison, population 3. It isn’t realistic, but any person can dream can’t they?

So whatever the real reason that gave JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon got them their ‘blacklisting’, I have questions and I have doubts. Suing is just so over the top. What would happen if I sue Telstra in Australia as they didn’t want me as a business customer? No matter how valid their reasons were, Australia has Optus, Vodafone, NBN, Aussie Broadband, Superloop, Dodo, Exetel, Swoop, AGL, Origin and that list goes on for a while. The entire America settings feels wrong. And that is merely my view on the matter.

Have a great day today, it’s Friday (yay).

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Opportunity lost

That is the setting and not everyone agrees with me on this. Gaming has been accelerated like the  armistice race. Some people in gaming having no real gaming life and merely a setting in business intelligence are chasing the wrong niche in gaming. Gaming is so much more. And they are missing it. Yet the Arabic setting I considered might take it more seriously (and then there is Tencent) You see, gaming is seen in all walks and sizes and When you consider boardgames, that never left our minds. I got into boardgames at a very early age in the Netherlands. It was called “Mens erger je niet” in England it was called Ludo and based on the iIndian game Pachisi. 

And now it is almost forgotten, Facebook on a blue Monday set a few of these games on their servers, but overall, they didn’t last long. But take that setting and put it on a streaming console with options for single player (against the CPU), or even multiplayer with a setting for up to 4 players. Settings where you invite family, friends or even strangers. And this is merely one of many settings. Then there is the notion that some of these games have IP protection. It could optionally be averted if not digital settings exist, but when we go deeper, we see that there are dozens of these games that have no real ownership. So why did no one take up the baton to ‘revolutionize’ these games? Then there are dozen of MB games that could take a similar track and lets face it, the system that has the numbers of games has an advantage. So why did no one connect the dots?

Then we get the life long titles like Snake and Ladders and Clue (1943) so what stops these game makers from using a small team of programmers to bring forth one game a month, within two years there would be an abundance of these games. Kids playing with their parents, or even grandparents. Playing each other and so on. What baffles me is that these Business Intelligence people never figured that out, not in the last 4-5 years and when you take a longer look at this path you will agree that it is not a path that should be overlooked. Yes, we all love our times in the Wastelands when we play Horizon Zero Dawn or its sequel, but there are times when you and perhaps others might fancy a game of Snakes and ladders and a streaming system will easily do that. So why is it overlooked? Why are these dozens upon dozen of games ignored? Is it a mere IP thing? Doesn’t the programmer seem cool enough? Streaming systems have different metrics and they all seen to go over the amount of data passed, what it fails to look at is the joy it will bring, because joy is the true metric of a game and its gamers. 

We are all looking towards the new strides, but as I said more than once, when did you look behind you to see where the new course in front of you could be plotted. Have a great day today, Vancouver joined us in the present day as it is 4 am there now and I am 55 minutes away from Tuesday.

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Moments that came before and again

There is nothing much under the sun. My mind has been crossing into the language training setting and the setting that goes deeper has been ‘designed’, there is still the need to get Ubisoft on board, but there is a new setting, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia bought EA and whilst it allows their population to get deeper into gaming. The setting is more than gaming, it sets two other IP’s directly in combination with this setting and considering that the Meta Quest Pro could be connected to this all, the setting would add more to what Saudi Arabia is achieving. The other setting is that it doesn’t need the Meta Quest Pro and that is the controlling situation giving a larger population and a larger consumer base to this all. 

As I said before:
AC Brotherhood – Italian and Latin
AC Syndicate – Classic English
AC Unity – French
AC Shadows – Japanese – Portugese
WD Legion – Modern English
AC Mirage – Arabic

The stages are different, but the ‘game play’ tends to be the same. You start in the smallest cabin (like in the game), but you are not an assassin, you play one of the NPC’s For example in Harbiyah where you start in one of the dwellings. As you go around the area and play ‘games’ like speaking names, counting and around a dozen other games. When you succeed and complete (and surpass the minimum score) you get a reward in Dirham, which allows you to upgrade outfits, spend money in shops and it allows you to do things. So as you continue in the game and complete assignments you get to an ‘exam point’ and when completed you get promoted to Abbasiyah with a better apartment, more lessons, more challenges and more linguistic skills. From there you get to Karkh and from there to the Round city. There you get to listen to Arabic poetry and read it. This setting applies to all languages. As the origin of Latin was promoted through Familia Romana originally published 200AD. That book could be translated to any language and as the IP rights have passed already (after 1800 years) but that setting could be seen in every language and those books could be translated to al other languages. Books on telling time, books on travel issues and we could go on. The setting that this setting could be translated to nearly all covered languages and that gives the wielder a lot of options. As I see it, the maps need to be ‘cleaned’, and the use of the NPC’s need to be altered, but as I see it, these games are already 85% done for the new functions as I see it, the speaking part (microphone and interpretation) is part of the biggest setting and when done once, the other parts will be easy. A simple setting that Ubisoft left on the floor, but now with the settings that Saudi Arabia opened up, there is more to be gotten and for the people who want a little more luxury, there is the Meta Quest Pro (Apple vision pro optional) and that setting would allow 35 million Saudi’s to get multiple linguistic skills and others to learn Arabic. A setting that I painted before, but as it evolves in my mind, the mini games came and the thought of how it could be applied to any language. Counting, days of the week, family, time telling, tally games, personal introduction games, giving a speech and as a lot of this is possible through Deeper Machine Learning, it is a setting that is already out there. I am also thinking that some of the customer service agents could suffice to do some of these parts. Now take in consideration that this could be replicated to nearly all countries, the setting for Amazon and Saudi Arabia reaches the top. So, why write this here? The simple reason is that this IP is owned by Ubisoft and as others get the idea to throw this into new directions, I might stand to prosper somewhat here as well. And taking in stride the fact that Ubisoft overlooked that part of their equation and the fact that I showed the same flaw in both Google and Amazon will give others the idea that they are talking to the wrong people. Just my sense of humor in action. 

And there is another setting as I see it, the ramification in combination with the purchase of EA gives them a few more options, something that people like Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal seemingly overlooked. They are ‘all’ about profound concerns, yet they never saw the opportunities that were given to Saudi Arabia and they overlooked those as well, because as I see it EA would have never taken the step to give it away to others *(but that is seemingly just me)

So as we take the setting that there is a new Console and gaming rule, right next to Sony and Nintendo the setting will uproot the gaming community and that is a community that gets another billion gamers soon enough, no Microsoft required (I just had to say that). Within two years the Saudi Console (which could be a Tencent Console) will achieve what Microsoft had not ever achieved. They would equal the Xbox 360 being the best-selling at over 84 million units within two years and Microsoft was at it for over 20 years. As I see it, in the previous setting there was a chance to get 200 million consoles, with this altered state, there is no telling how many consoles this setting could sell. And as Saudi Arabia has the near first option for 1.8 billion Muslims, they would all be interested in learning languages making my solution a 4th foot to the setting and the 3rd pillar setting would become a lot sturdier and more appealing to a lot of people. A setting the greats might never have considered, but their focus (Sony and Nintendo) was achieved by focussing on their areas and now that another focus is added the consoles will take a new turn to new consumers and as I see it META might be the initial bigger winner here. 

All because someone had an idea that the rest overlooked. So have a great day and I am taking two days of to let a few more ideas sink in and I need to focus on that (for now). So have fun and consider the thoughts you considered not good ideas, because some might be and some are ideas that others didn’t think of. Have fun exploring your hidden niches of your brain where the other ideas are.

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Order through the chaos of others

That is likely the setting we see today. I used the word ‘likely’ with some reservation as the implied parties are all kissing up to what they call ‘the ring of the orange entity’ and I am kind in the usage of the world entity (the other words were way to crass). Yet (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2616094/business-economy) we see ‘Tencent Cloud accelerates Saudi expansion with new data region, AI services’ a setting that should be scorched in your minds for the simple reason that others are ‘hyping’ their so called AI setting and they don’t like other news that is not in their favor. We are given “Chinese technology giant Tencent is accelerating its cloud and AI push into Saudi Arabia, positioning the Kingdom as its primary hub for the Middle East under Vision 2030. On the sidelines of the Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Summit 2025 in Shenzhen, senior executives told Arab News that the company is finalizing the launch of its first Middle East cloud region in Riyadh, part of a $150 million investment announced earlier this year.” Where they are addressing the second pillar of my three pillar solution and it is happening in Saudi Arabia. It is not merely that setting, they have bigger plans and these plans are seemingly underway. You see, in part we are given that side (at https://www.app.com.pk/photos-section/federal-minister-shaza-fatima-khawajas-meeting-with-saudi-telecom-company-stc-officials/#google_vignette) where we see ‘Federal Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja’s meeting with Saudi Telecom Company (STC) officials’ There we see

and we get the gist of that meeting. Saudi Arabia is setting the borders way outside their national parameters and it makes sense as it gives them access to 251 million people, over 7 times the Saudi population. As I see it they now merely need Egypt (other efforts are already underway there) and Indonesia to make it a grand slam. And that gives them an almost certain setting to get 100 million subscribers to the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) group with expansion into Middle East and Asia. That is why Huawei and Tencent are playing it close to the vest as the expression goes. There is a chance they call it playing it close to the Kandura, or perhaps close to the Bisht. And as I see it, Saudi Arabia is only one step to dwarf the other 5G and telecom systems and that is where the Tencent Data centers come in. And as I see it, Tencent merely needs to connect two more places. Abu Dhabi and Riyadh and connect them to Hong Kong, Singapore, Seoul, Tokyo, Bangkok, Silicon Valley, Virginia, Frankfurt, São Paulo, Jakarta and they will become the biggest connected data centre on the planet. So, don’t believe the sludge that Microsoft is trying to sell you, as I see it, they no longer matter as per 01-Jan-2027. Oracle will connect to it all, as will Snowflake, AWS and whatever Europe has to offer, but as I see it, the Dutch relied on Microsoft, so that will be valued as laughter for money. And when that setting is set via a Chinese wall to whatever runs in China, America losses yet another battle that they set of presented bragging and other fiascos. And that writing was already done as I wrote ‘Evolutions towards the third cog’ on February 2nd 2024 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/02/02/evolutions-towards-the-third-cog/) and at that point I truly believed that the UAE was picking up that option, but as it seems Saudi Arabia was a little more hungry for that revenue and now it seems that they might get it all. So the original latin expression “when two dogs fight for a bone, the third runs away with it” seems to apply here. And as CNBC gave us almost two weeks ago ‘OpenAI’s first data center in $500 billion Stargate project is open in Texas, with sites coming in New Mexico and Ohio’ where we see “OpenAI and Oracle are betting big on America’s AI future, bringing online the flagship site of the $500 billion Stargate program, a sweeping infrastructure push to secure the compute needed to power the future of artificial intelligence.

The debut site in Abilene, Texas, about 180 miles west of Dallas, is up and running, filled with Oracle Cloud infrastructure and racks of Nvidia chips. The data center, which is being leased by Oracle, is one of the most notable physical landmarks to emerge from an unprecedented boom in demand for infrastructure to power AI. Over $2 trillion in AI infrastructure has been planned around the world, according to an HSBC estimate this week.” We might need to adjust out views. It is true that OpenAI and Oracle are betting big, but they are set to the finders who are relying on a global impact and as I see it, when Tencent is connecting its data centers, over 20% of the planet will be somewhere else. So, do you think that the American people (340 million) will feed that massive engine? Consider that Europe is already fighting over where they want to be, those 450 million souls will not all traverse that setting and China with the expected 1.4 billion and the Saudi setting of over a billion (1.8 billion at present) gets Tencent the 3.2 billion, almost half the planet and that is merely the setting of Tencent and the STC. So how do you see that $500 billion go when you realise that some ‘proclaim’ that the AI facts come for over 40% from reddit (presumed speculation).

I reckon that someone will reinvestigate the ‘verification’ process in deeper detail (something I have been saying for over a year) and as such as the data is useless, so is whatever AI is sprung from that. The old Garbage in, Garbage out setting which some might have learned in the 80’s.

So whilst some might see that Stargate LLC is going to crash at some point, I would consider never ever investing in MGX Fund Management Limited which is owned by the UAE and I reckon (speculatively) that their $100,000,000,000 is going to go the way of the Dodo pretty quick. Of course if they have invested in Oracle, they will get the technology out of it and that can be redeployed in other ways, so that investment isn’t lost. But you need to know the contracts to define that step (I have no idea what the contracts stipulate). So is this certain? No, it is not. A lot of it is presumption and that is bigger than speculation, but it remains a guess. The larger part is that the STC, Saudi Arabia and Tencent are on course to make a nice killing (as the investment jargon goes). A setting that was set to productivity and gains through achievement. As I see it these two parties STC (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Tencent (Chinese government) are basically on track to become the larger players in this setting ever seen. 

Have a great day and remember, you don’t need AI to order a coffee from the nice barista in your coffee corner. 

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The Magoo’s of media

That is the setting and as I saw an article pass by, I also saw the setting on how it affects my idea. You see, the conversation starts with ‘What Saudi Arabia’s role in the Electronic Arts buyout tells us about image, power and ‘game-washing’’ (at https://theconversation.com/what-saudi-arabias-role-in-the-electronic-arts-buyout-tells-us-about-image-power-and-game-washing-266359), you see, as I see it the ‘critics’ are always looking at tomorrows and at yesterdays news and as such they give us “The global video game industry is worth more than the film and music industries combined. But why would these buyers specifically want to buy EA, an entity that has won The Worst Company in America award twice?” And as I see it, they deserved that ‘title’ but there is an offset to all that. In my setting I saw that the world had enjoyed the Atari 800, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga and in that timeframe 1985-1999 over 10,000 games were produced and when you take to top 10% you end up with 1000 games. I wrote about that a few years ago and now consider how many of that top 10% is Electronic Arts? A whole heap and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia owns it all now. There is a reason that they paid $55,000,000,000 and they get the winning numbers. Now consider how many of them can be transferred with upgraded graphics and sounds to a new streaming system like Tencent (Amazon seemingly didn’t want to play) and they are about to set that system in over 50 million houses (in past one) and that is one of the three pillars dealt with. The others have no IP protection and can be altered to a minimum setting to be valid IP. That is what the conversation is seemingly not considering. And they are painting it with “Video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA), one of the biggest video game companies in the world behind games such as The Sims and Battlefield, has been sold to a consortium of buyers for US$55 billion (about A$83 billion). It is potentially the largest-ever buyout funded by private equity firms. Not AI, nor mining or banking, but video games.” And that is the ballpark, it isn’t about AI where everyone is acing to proclaim that they have the winning combination (I reckon only to disappoint their ‘customers’) but the three pronged  solution that is out to give the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the winning setting is about to align the Islamic world in a new world never seen before and everyone is looking around for what should have been on their visors. And I warned them even before I wrote ‘The second confirmation’ which I did on November 5th 2023 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/11/05/the-second-confirmation/) I said so at least a dozen times that Google and Amazon were that much asleep leaving billions on the floor (no one cares about Microsoft) and now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is getting that setting done. Alas, I might not get anything (I tried to sell the idea to the Kingdom Holdings), but my small giggle is to show Amazon and Google how they deserted billions in revenue, so any ‘sales person’ who tells me that I am seeing it wrong, I get to show them, how they openly left billions on the floor and someone will pick it up at some point and it seems that this moment is now. 

So whilst we are given “The consortium will purchase all of the publicly traded company’s shares, making it private. But while the consortium and EA’s shareholders will likely be celebrating – each share was valued at US$210, representing a 25% premium – it’s not all good news.

PIF acquiring EA raises concerns about possible “game-washing”, and less than ideal future business practices.” By The Conversation we see a different part. It isn’t game-washing. It is a proper developed gaming option that the world left behind because it isn’t AI. So when AI gets the umpteenth class action on how AI wasn’t and as those engineers were seemingly held to account, Saudi Arabia has another setting of making up to 15-20 billion a years and that is what others left on the floor (it is only about 6 billion in phase one). So whilst those people come with complain and cry about the setting of micro transactions. The setting of “Micro transactions are small amounts of money paid to access, or potentially access, in-game items or currency. Over time, they can add up to a lot of money, and have even been linked to the creation of problem gambling behaviors. Unsurprisingly, they are not popular among players.” They could have just ben cast aside and added as freeware. It is all revenue of the kingdom and greed is frowned upon in Islamic nations. As such they can be cast aside and just for reference. There were hundreds of thousands of fans looking forward to a revamped Dungeon Keeper and cast aside when micro transactions were introduced. Now this setting (without micro transactions) could be released gaining that solutions hundred of thousands of fans. And that is merely one example of many. 

So whilst the Conversation and others are on the ‘laundry’ list, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is simply setting a new platform for over 800,000,000 customers and set a new setting towards the Islamic world, optionally slicing the options for Facebook and others (like Google) to gain advertisement revenue, because when you get access to 20% of the planetary population, you can hand them what they want to do, not what your advertisers want you to do. You see, in Saudi Arabia “The CITC in conjunction with the General Authority for Media Regulation (GAMR), requires advertisers to submit campaigns and media to this regulatory body for approval before broadcasting, digital or offline display. In order to avoid rejected campaigns, marketers must be familiar with the key Islamic guidelines governing advertising content, including religious restrictions on alcohol, pork, gender portrayal, modesty, and symbols.” And that gets American and European advertisers into problems and that is how they are shut out. There is another body managing this, but I forgot the details. What happens is that there is a place where the setting is islamic and I had the additional setting of what I call ‘Tomes of information’ and through that Saudi Arabia gets visibility through and from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt and Indonesia. Setting the advertisement losses close to a billion viewers. That is what Saudi Arabia now gained. 

As as I see it, it is not about image, power or ‘game-washing’. It is a business decision that gets to unite the islamic world in more ways then one and alas, I seemingly am missing out, but I get to hold it over the heads of Amazon and Google for nearly all time. What a lovely feeling. 

Have a great day this Saturday (Vancouver is joining us in 30 minutes) and consider what running in a rat-race is not giving you. I merely looked in a different direction and saw billions. What can you see when you put your mind to it (and optionally clean your glasses)?

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Setting to lull

That is not a setting I usually entertain, but the stage is now that I am. In the first the alcoholic across the hall decided to play his music 50 dB over the allowed limit and the land lord does nothing. He is the guy who casually mentioned that he went to school with the Beatle (he does not have a Liverpool accent) and he filmed President Putin topless on a horse. He is that kind of useless. 

In the meantime I could bash the idiots brain in, but then I go to prison and I am hoping that some of my irons will result in revenue making this place a massive part of me immediate past. So I need to suck it up, which in this setting of ageism is not easy. I am still working on two other scripts, but my lack of Final Draft exposure makes it a little hard. Redesigning blog articles into script parts is not a clear cut as it should be. I might redo part in pages and then import it into Final Draft, but that is for another day. As I was looking into these scripts (I have currently 4 scripts), one has been submitted to Channels in Saudi Arabia and the UAE as this script would appeal to an Islamic population. I might want to learn the setting of Indonesia, but I reckon that these two will also show my work to the audiences in Indonesia, Bangladesh and Egypt. That is the first. The second one is Vitam Exhauriens which played in part in New Orleans and in part all over the world. Then there is Keno Diastimas which is in an undisclosed location under water. And that has a few lovely twists. That one is an open-ended three seasons part with the open ending (I thought it was better that way and a wink in the direction of Terry Gilliam A director I have admired for a long time. The fourth one is the one that is ‘now’ in season three and is called Engonos. That one is in part in London, in part in Greece and in part in Turkey (so these parts need to be found in one locations), but that is not my problem, my ‘challenge’ is the story and these three are on my plate. I have progression in both Vitam Exhauriens and Keno Diastimas, but they have different ‘challenges’ the second one is pretty complete, but I am still uncertain about some of the elements, to make it fit better as a story and as a TV show, but that is my challenge.

The second setting is about making some issues work (not the scripts). As I see the world going to hell in a hand basket, I can merely look at what happens and see how it unfolds. There is nothing I can do about it. As Reuters is giving us ‘US unemployment rate near 4-year high as labor market hits stall speed’ as well as ‘Wall Street Week ahead inflation data looms for markets’ and that happens whilst we also get Goldman Sachs as Reuters gives us ‘Goldman takes $1 billion stake in T. Rowe to tap retirement money’ and there we get “Big financial firms such as Goldman, BlackRock and Morgan Stanley are making a big push into alternative assets, an area dominated by private equity firms, to capitalize on their growth potential and attract new clients.” And that has to go at the cost of retirement money? I am not an economist and I do not claim to be one, but there is something ‘shoddy’ (in my mind) that a bank would invest a billion dollars. It usually is to get more in return. So how does this help retirees? I made mention that the BIGFIN and government would shake the retirement tree at some point. Is this the beginning?

I do not know, but it makes me uneasy. You see, if this is happening in America now, then soon enough (I have no idea when) it will happen to the United Kingdom, Australia and Europe as well. When? That is anyones guess and I reckon that the American setting is dire enough to do this now, but it takes a lot more knowledge to confirm or scuttle the setting we see here. The Financial Times is hanging the question whether the America economy is already in recession and the should know, so it seems like the economists at large are playing musical chairs. All that whilst the Economist comes with ‘What if the AI Stockmarket blows up?’ With the byline that “We find that the potential cost has risen alarmingly high” I could have told them that over a year ago and the entire builder.ai with the setting of Microsoft pumping it up to a billion dollars wasn’t a nearly dead giveaway? 

It is now as we approach Q4 that the ‘high’ costs are ‘suddenly’ getting the forefront news. And this happens in a time when America is getting hit with negative news after negative news. I saw most parts of this coming, but now we seemingly get it all in one quarter and I reckon that is the moment the larger companies start shedding more and more jobs whilst hiding behind the nonexistent AI wall. Yup, that will give several people a bloody nose to begin with and when the media wakes up from all this screaming “What’s this, how could this happen?” You know you’ve been had because they (the media) merely care about their digital dollars. So whilst we get all this, The Financial Times also gives us ‘Peter Mandelson warns US and UK must unite to halt Chinese tech supremacy’, I could not read the article as I am not a member, but here is a thought. How about becoming an actual ‘innovative’ force. Not claiming that you are, but becoming one. I am hoping that Peter Mandelson refers to the British Ambassador to the United States. You see, China is at least a furlong ahead of the rest and when we see a race that is merely 5 furlongs you are already losing that race. If the race is 12 furlongs you are less likely to become winner, at best you can hope to come a contender and I have shown that Amazon and Google dropped the ball a few times leaving billions on the floor. Al claiming that they had the AI field in hand. But there is no AI field, not yet and that realisation gives the setting. I basically handed the open victory to Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud as well as Tencent. Whether they would grab that open ball for the win is anyone’s guess, but that is where we stand. So whilst we see all kinds of places shedding thousands of people, I cannot vouch for Google doing that. There is talks that thousands were shed, but it is specific (and I do not know all the details), so whilst we see that these people are shed, we see ‘their’ reasons for shedding sales people and being replaced by AI agents. That is out in the open. I am not judging as DML is a setting that can be applied to advertising. So how that goes will be in the corridors of awaiting judgment.

Still we see a massive change happening and I am (fiercely) hoping that people like Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud see the wisdom that I bring (it would make my retirement a decent certainty). But that too is out in the open. I do know that if my retirement depends on the American setting that I end up working until the day I die in hunger. Not a setting I relish mind you.

So I end up in a waiting pattern for now. Have a great day. My Monday is off to a rocky start.

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About the fish

Yes, it is a little weird, but that is the setting I faced today. In the dream I saw several metal masks of Sam Fisher. At first they looked like cheap pewter toys. But when I tried one, it didn’t fit, it was a mask for a child no more. I was a mask in two parts. The face and the mask and when you place it in an aquarium, the face and mask combination makes it partially float. It was the setting you do not see that makes it eerie. You see, you place the blood worms in the face and when the head gets submerged the bloodwork’s are gradually released into the aquarium. The fish start attacking the face of Sam fire, but after a minute you see what is going on and that is the setting of the mask. This made me think. What if that is the next marketing setting? Not about Sam Fisher, but the setting that marketing needs to embrace that marketing toys need to have a larger release setting. One that is kept in the house. Like the deadman chest in Pirates of the Caribbean? In Japan fish are big (not just on the diner table). You see According to Vastu principles, an aquarium is considered to be a powerful tool for enhancing positive energy and promoting harmony and prosperity in the home. The Vastu principles are about blanching the elements (air, water, fire and earth) as such the aquarium is in principle an item that gets the focal point in a home. And some marketeers are seeing that as a place to market their goods. It doesn’t get into the house, but if it get there it is almost guarantee to hold that focal point for some time and that reverberates in gaming too. Consider that this place will get a nice ticket and then is placed in the homestead for months at a time. That is what marketing should be embracing, not the idea to get to EVERY homestead, but where you get to go, hold that attention point for a lot longer than anyone else.

That same principle could be applied to the aforementioned head as a feeding point for fish.

Now, that does not make this the best idea, but considering that more people have something a lot smaller, the idea puts a smelling on the face of any marketeer that wants to see long term visibility. It could be anything, from a simple marble looking Oracle logo, to a submerged GTAVI car, completely broken. Marketing has plenty of options, what I wonder was that so many ignore the millions of aquariums in the homestead. A place where you place something one and then just accept the view it gives. Seems like a lost opportunity for the right marketeer. 

I want to write more about what Google got handed to them, but I wanted to explore a few more avenues on that setting. It is not as cost and dry as it is and for Justice to play this hand is a little about what comes next and I am curious as to how Justice will thwart the equations of Google data by Tencent and Huawei, because there is a story there. Especially as China is flogging of excess data centre computing power. I reckon that this will have some correlations over time. Jut like the aquarium space that was ignored by most. I am certain that China never overlooked that part of the equation. Did the Justice department make a boo-boo?

Have a great day

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Burning Bridges

This is the setting that Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/07/05/how-can-we-trust-anything-xbox-says-now/) gave me. You see Microsoft (always happy to get slapped around) gets the crooked eye from Forbes. The article ‘How Can We Trust Anything Xbox Says Now?’ late last night (might have been early this morning) and whilst I am always in the mood to slap Microsoft around, I do have an issue with fairness. As far as I feel it, I have decently slapped them silly on more than one occasion. Yet I have a few issues with this article. They aren’t lying, merely focussing on the wrong side of the dice. The dice states ‘six’, but we could assume the setting that ‘one’ fell, because that is what is below ‘six’ I a not telling you that six is the wrong number. But we tend to see the side of the dice that is up. Yet in early life I learned that randomization is an exact science (I couldn’t resist saying this), you see, the internet is full of dice games. And that is where the problem lies. You see a dice, you think a dice, but in automation, there are no dice. It is a random generator (overly simplified stated STATE(RANDOM(1,6)) and that is what you think happens, but if the result depends on settings and we get STATE(RANDOM(WhatWeSayLow, WhatMightBeHigh)) the numbers get fixed and that is what happens in gaming. This is not a gaming setting as Forbes gives us “After the launch of Hi-Fi Rush, Aaron Greenberg, VP of Xbox Games marketing, said: “Hi‑Fi RUSH was a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations. We couldn’t be happier with what the team at Tango Gameworks delivered with this surprise release.” The studio, Tango Gameworks, was shut down a year later, and was only saved by a third-party purchase.” You see, there are a few issues with this. The first is that it comes from marketing, a member drenched in wishful thinking (by order of his superior) and ‘advocates’ that setting. Then there is the setting of what happened in that year? Was the market wrong (undecided is a better term) and that gives us two settings that is merely the start. The setting had a future, because a third party scooped in. Then we get “During its FTC trial, Microsoft presented a diagram attempting to prove that it would keep Call of Duty multi-platform, a key point of doubt. The idea was that existing huge franchises like that would stay multi-platform. Some current IPs that Microsoft has bought would be released on other platforms on a case-by-case basis. Then there would be a classification of games, original IPs like Starfield and Avowed, that would stay exclusive to Xbox. While that’s true for those two games so far, this concept has now joined a statement from Phil Spencer: “I do not see sort of red lines in our portfolio that say ‘thou must not.’”” This setting is a little different. We should see a larger setting. Like, Microsoft never expected that its system would become the joke it has become. I merely raise the setting of 3 Sony’s (or 5 Nintendo Switch) to every Xbox series X, and it is about to get worse for Microsoft (Amazon and Tencent will be joining us soon and in bigger numbers). The market didn’t set the premise that some set their sights on. And the spin isn’t what it used to be. It seems to be the setting of the boy who cried console a little too often. And as I see it, the massive mistakes made aren’t small ones. Only last week were we given “Fable 4 will be released in 2026. An Xbox Game Studios update confirmed the game needed “more time,” pushing it back from its original 2025 launch window.” As such this game is now up to 18 months away. And the world is changing and Microsoft needs every penny it can get. You do remember that they bought $100 billion in IP and the return on investment doesn’t seem to be coming (at present). Now consider the setting that EA, Ubisoft and Bethesda all have shifted timelines and the larger IP deliverers now need a year more and that has got to hurt the Microsoft stage. It doesn’t matter what Game pass does. When the games aren’t coming you get the setting of a courtesan that forgot that it was the maids night out and all her laundry is still out to dry. That might seem like weekend lost, but Microsoft is looking to a lull of 52 weekends in a row. In the meantime Nintendo and Sony are making headway in games and the Microsoft gamers are feeling the pinch. A thought for Microsoft is to offer its population the series Halo and Fallout as free downloads, which might lessen the pressure (a simple but not essentially effective deal) as I see it, these two could lessen the pressure by an expected 16%-20% (up to two months) and it could be spread to one episode a week 8 for fallout and 17 for HALO, it wasn’t difficult, but it is a first thought. It might result in additional sales. Perhaps someone already mentioned it to Phileas Foggy Spencer, he can adjust even more red lines. 

So whilst Forbes is telling us no porkies, the article is missing a few items like time lines and as such the marketing impact. As Status Quo gave us in 1988 burning bridges is a state where actions that make it impossible to return to a previous state of a relationship. At least that was what I got out of it and it still largely applies. The consumer is a fickle beast and it adheres what tantalizes it and that is where the media tends to find its digital dollars. Cyberpunk got that slapped on its chest by adhering to the media in stead of telling everyone that the game will be ready when it is ready. Ubisoft got that with the first Watchdogs and the examples are legion (intended pun). What is on Microsoft that they didn’t have a stronger push for more games. Game pass is only good to a certain degree and when EA, Ubisoft and Bethesda lack releases, the console gets to be a pretty boring place. Microsoft is finding that out the harder way. And still the mismanagement issues do not stop (read: fuck ups) as we are also given “Now, in this latest story, reports have emerged that Phil Spencer “couldn’t stop playing” a new MMORPG codenamed Blackbird from ZeniMax’s Elder Scrolls Online team and was incredibly impressed with it. That was in March, and three months later, Blackbird was cancelled this past week.” In this the fuck up is plural. When he can’t stop playing a game it should be ready, as such when it gets cancelled three months later the question becomes “What on earth are you playing?” You see, when it is an MMORPG it needs to have systems in place and when something like that gets cancelled three months later it can’t have been any good (or so I personally think). 

And in addition we are given “In the same batch of cancellations, we had Everwild, where after a recent visit to Rare, Spencer said: “It’s nice to see the team with Everwild and the progress that they’re making,” Spencer said. “It has been [a while]. And we’ve been able to give those teams time in what they’re doing, which is good, and still have a portfolio like we have.” That was in February, and Everwild was also cancelled last week.” So what was Spencer doing? As such we have several failures and two cancelations and the other big boys are at least a year delayed. So, I see the setting that these people will optionally see their Xbox gathering dust for a year. Not the reason I buy a console. I have both the PS4 and PS5 and at least one of them is working on a daily basis. Even with the delays I see coming. As I personally see it Microsoft has had a bad decade and when you consider that the bad blood started with the Xbox One gathering momentum over the series S and series X there are a few things going wrong and Spencer would do well to nip this in its tracks (it is too late to nip it in the butt). I cannot see the setting of “whether Spencer is still the best choice to lead this ship”, I would need more reliable data to support that setting and lets face it, it is more than marketing. There is a failure on several levels and as Microsoft is seemingly losing more and more media friends their bad settings will merely continue at present.

So I see that the waves are against Microsoft, but the need to slap them shouldn’t overwhelm warning of ‘needless-slapping’ Microsoft. I don’t think I did that and in this day and age, your console is as much as you can get as the America administration are throwing entertainment in America in a messy situation, that being said, Microsoft is global so as I see it all countries (except Japan) can learn from this. As I see it, Microsoft needs to look at the bridge they burned and consider what can be fixed and what cannot. There is no guarantee that these bridges could be fixed, as their population are consumers, yet when they say “yeah sure okay”, your population is about to go somewhere else and that will be (as I personally see it) the end of Microsoft gaming. 

I might not be a Microsoft fan, but Microsoft pushed Sony to create the PS3 and PS4, when Xbox falls away, I will fear for the setting that PS6 could bring and I like the path PS3, PS4, and PS5 gaming got me. 

Have a great gaming day today

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