Well, there are two things, the first is that I got a workable idea to a final twist in ‘Exhaurire vitam’ the mini series that predominantly plays in New Orleans. There are a few scenes in other places, but the bulk is there. There are a few more issues that I uncovered in ‘How to assassinate a politician’, as such I have it close to ready, a movie and a mini series. Then there was the series ‘Kenos Diastima’, I have been tossing and turning on that and I feel that leaving it (for now) with an open ending at season three is the best way to go. Then I got another idea, this one was initially for ‘Exhaurire vitam’, yet the new series (the one I talked about a few times), has more traction with it and it opens up a nice can of worms. You see, the gods are all over all places, so there much have been some dependency. So what happens when one of them is in debt, or better stated, what happens when the debt was opened to a new source? That was the setting I contemplated on the subway. As such the main character would be open to all kinds of other things. That was the setting my mind worked on. And as I contemplated what could be possible when Bastet is thrown in the mix, the equation changed and that has long repercussions, not bad ones, but unforeseen ones and that tends to be good, because the unforeseen brings more than a surprise or a plot twist, it gives the story a new direction and I am all about that. But in part I have no idea why the images are coming to me so rapidly and so directly, that is the part that has me confused. It is like your brain playing some year at Hogwarts and you create the setting, but you never created the stage. In this example we all know it is J.K. Rowling. But the stage I create is new, has never ben contemplated, or written about. I have no idea where it all is coming from, so for now I follow the thoughts and create more stories and optionally more scripts. And I have no idea where it all goes. Even as I seek the implementation of Saudi TV in the movie, I wonder where it will end. So whilst I get that “Bryan Fogel says Netflix, Amazon and others wouldn’t buy ‘The Dissident’ because they were scared of angering Saudi Arabia” my story does EXACTLY the opposite and as such might be loved there, what I do not get is why not more are considering that step. In the end, good business is where you find it and basically I found it. 3 TV series, one movie, a game, console settings and the evolution to another 50 million consoles and beyond that I reengineered several Ubisoft games and created several 5G IP. Not bad for one person in less than 5 years. So if you are wondering what stops others doing the same, I have no idea. But I do believe that they are all looking in the wrong direction and I feel that more and more of that is proven. But the confusion stays. What if this is all between my ears? I do not believe that this is so, but if you cannot look at it from opposition from a distance than it means you have gone bonkers, have gone round the bend. Oh, and I also designed a weapon to get rid of the Iranian navy, so there (and that part is already online). But the confusion stays. I have no idea what is driving this all. Perhaps a last knee jerk action by the brain before it stops? Your guess is as good as mine, I am honestly clueless.
Tag Archives: Ubisoft
Residual seeking
Yes, what is it? Well it connects to the game I am designing. You see, Any RPG has its sides and it needs to change, it needs to be a lot less Bethesda (their games are not bad), yet I seek originality and this all connects to ‘The stage of commerce’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/02/25/the-stage-of-commerce/) where I give a lot more and in previous articles (seek and thee shall find) where I give more of all this. Yet there is a side I forgot about. You see, we all expect coin, we all expect funds. But what happens when money had no value in a place where they have no lemonade caps? Well, we will have to make a gander towards older times. In this we need to set steady steps towards other parts, but what if the few gold coins we find have more value by making it into something else? Gold and silver have their uses, especially in the arcane, but when do we see that in gaming? That is the 10th (might be 14th) altering thing that other RPG games are not giving you. So what happens when the chest holds a broken sword? Pieces of chain and two coins? There is a need for nearly anything, you just need to adjust your view and lets be honest, what was the last RPG game you played where it was not about gold, credits, or caps? Any place can grow on commerce, but the driving force of commerce is not always gold based. Many places had other means, even in ancient roman times, the soldiers were paid in salt. Salt was more valuable than coins in some places and a return to that opens a whole new set of gaming parameters. Then we have the fact that the broken sword can be remade as a knife, or could be melted into iron and iron (if enough is obtained) gets you a plough, which means more land and more food for a town. All settings to adjust the view of the gamer and to be honest, I cannot find one game offering this alternative view.
As I wrote in that previous article “because of the random factors the rainbow tables are dynamic and that creates a whole new environment. One where the game can live without you and you become a contributor, not the driving force of anything.” This is important as your play style changes, the dynamic setting remains to some degree and that can push you in other directions. A stage where you optionally have an island that is an evolving stage as we start the island at 18,040 km2 (Halmahera), but there is nothing stopping us to upgrade the island down the track to 138,794 km2 (Java), there is something awfully satisfying to that. It evolves playing and makes it about the game you play, not WHERE you are. And lets be honest, if you could play a game again a year later and that place is 600% larger? Not go from one island to the other, but end up in a similar island a lot bigger and in that setting when you play the generations, what more can you find? It might not be needed as 18,040 km2 is huge, but the option opens a new frontier for RPG gaming and that is what we want, new frontiers and in that only streaming systems would be able to do this, and as I stated very recently, the streamers differentiate themselves or they will become trivialised. There is nothing interesting in playing the same Ubisoft game on these two systems. Yet what happens when AC Brotherhood suddenly has Spain and France added to the game? It becomes a different game, you as a gamer would have to make choices, because you could never see it all. You see, replayability becomes infinitely more important for streaming systems, and as such to prepare the next level of RPG games for such a setting is becoming more and more important. It was one of the truths I realised when I designed Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration. Evolution is where gaming is and the current makers are too much about selling the same cookie to all the other systems, all whilst some can only store cookies, the others are capable of storing a whole apple pie. And when you can have the apple pie, are you really looking out the window for the next cookie dealer? Fair enough if you are hoping for Shannon Elizabeth in a girl scout outfit, but what are the chances?
Consider how far the Stadia and Luna can take you and then look at the failures of Ubisoft, what are you waiting for? Now, in their case I will make an exception for AC Origin and some might like to play the others again, I get that, but do you really want a Ferrari to get your groceries, or do you want to see what is 2365 km of your current location? How will you get there? You might never see it all, and that is fine too. A game that still has more to offer is a game you will play for a much longer time and there is also the rub. Ubisoft and others have made us completionists, yet how much of your own nation have you ACTUALLY seen? Are you really that driven in gaming, or can you see that the story is bigger than you. Can you see that beyond the main story, beyond all the quests there is just more and we will never see it all? That is perhaps the only real flaw that Bethesda has in its games and we all fell for it. In previous systems it was a natural flow of what a system could hold and we get that, but the newest consoles (PS5) and streamers have broken that limit, so we need to use the new settings to offer more gaming, different gaming and we need to throw repetition out of the window. That is merely my view on the matter, and it starts by creating a new mould, one based on historic parts, but still offers more than we have gamed before. It is possible, it is out there. Grab it and make it yours.
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.
Trust, who you gonna trust?
Trust is something that is always out there. Some give it, some give it a little too freely. This is not to be confused with loose women, they merely do not care who to trust, they want a good time and 99.9963% of the hetero sexual men out there agree with me (and loose women too).
Yet, in gaming trust is a dangerous thing. To see this we need to take a gander. In the first to the setting of Microtransactions. I am not against Microtransactions, it is merely an addition to the game and it is not free. Some are $5, some are $50 (and some a hell of a lot more). I believe that a fool (or a dedicated fan) will spend what they can afford and sometimes a little more. It is hard to keep the dedicated fans and the fools apart, but that is a very subjective view.
Some wanted to go out and get the $5 for swords in Assassins Creed on day one, because these people start the game with a 5/5/5 sword (if you played the game, it will make sense). To the credit of Ubisoft, they CLEARLY stated that this is an item that could be earned in the game, and it was. Just not in act1, scene 1 of the game. There are a few other settings too, but Ubisoft clearly stated that with any item bought, that if it was obtainable in the game, they would let us know. Well done Ubisoft (I kicked them often enough, the good sides should be shown too).
I never accepted the loot-box stage. You see, for it to be gambling you need to lose it all, without anything to show for it. And tell me have you ever opened a loot-box and got the following ultra rare card?
No, you did not. So loot-boxes are not gambling. Neither are microtransactions, and it needs saying. Stop complaining. Buy it, do not buy it, just stop bitching about it. Now, some games are clearly upfront about it. The Hogwarts Legacy makers have stated that the game will not have any microtransactions. A good choice! There are others who are not that ‘elevated’ I have heard and seen some news on Gran Turismo 7 and there is some mess out there on microtransactions. I am not judging at present as I know too little, today is not about it, but it is linked.
You see, to consider that we need to take a look at Reuters. I wrote about this setting in a different way, but they cover what I wrote. So (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-gaming-collide-high-risk-play-to-earn-economies-2022-04-08/) we see ‘Crypto and gaming collide in high-risk ‘play-to-earn’ economies’ and there we see “The 28-year-old from Bangkok was playing Axie Infinity, one of a new breed of blockchain-based online games, dubbed “play-to-earn”, which blend entertainment with financial speculation. These games can make for lucrative businesses amid the hype around NFTs and virtual worlds, attracting millions of players plus billions of dollars from investors who see the games as a way to introduce more people to cryptocurrency.” This is nice, such a sweet way to set the stage to playing youngsters (age 28) and the lucrative stage of investors. But when you take a gander to what I wrote on March 15th in ‘When is a slot machine not one?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/15/when-is-a-slot-machine-not-one/) where I set the premise “The bottom of the slot machine fitted a credit card, some kind of crypto card. The slot machine also fitted USB-C sticks. The slot machine was a laundromat for crypto currency. And let’s face it, in todays world, who raises an eye on seeing a slot machine? I think my ‘associates’ had stolen a decent amount of crypto currency, which they laundered through the slot machines.” A stage where the slot machine becomes a cryptocurrency laundromat and the nice part is that it is also a slot machine and when the padlock is removed, it is merely a slot machine. The padlock was the second key of the chain to launder. You did figure that out, do you not? And even as I created some optional billion dollar IP (for Amazon) there is a much larger stage, because the current stage requires the oligarchs to launder whatever they can and there are solutions, some are not out in the open, but give it time. That need will surely come and my option is one that comes with the gamble option, launder the money or take a chance in gaining up to 75% in cryptocurrency by gambling. It will get the eyes of too many soon enough.
My idea is clean, but some will subvert it, like some subverted the clean Mass Effect loot-boxes whilst they tried to fill their pockets. How long until someone figures out the 5G part that is NOT out in the open, until someone figures out its secondary stage? And all this is before the Hybrid era, the era that Meta will open up for EVERYONE. I wonder who will try to fill their pockets and how many will try to figure out something I put here months ago. I have time, I can wait, two of the events are now on 4Chan, so whomever breaks the codes has a clear path to a lot of revenue. I’d rather leave it out in the open for free than give it to some idiot at Microsoft. And if Google and Amazon do not want it? Then freeware it becomes. The person who is willing to destroy a thing, controls that thing. Ron Hubbard wrote that in the 70’s, the greed driven never understood it, for them it was always a stage for compromise and negotiation. Lets all have some of it. Not me, I would rather see them squirm as a vagrant in agony than give in to the weak minded iterative spreadsheet users of this century. Let them return to the dust they came from.
So who you gonna trust? Trust and believe in yourself and only that. It is the stage that leaves wannabe friends outside. True friends will accept that and that is the difference.
P.S. I just finished my 2301st article, cool!
The package and….
That was the setting I faced when watching GameRant giving us ‘Amazon Luna: How Many Games Are Included?’ (At https://gamerant.com/amazon-luna-games-how-many/), basically for $10 a month you get access to 134 games. Consider that I buy less than a dozen games a year, that is a decent deal and lets not forget that the Amazon Luna just started. I had to giggle intensely when I saw the Ubisoft+ option for $17.99. There we see three titles I can get for $10 (all three), Odyssey can be bought for about $15, Valhalla is $39, and that list goes on (like the Division 2 for $15), so as such, not that great a deal. Games priced down as they were old news and glitchy to boot. But the start (for non Ubisoft games) is there. I set out in previous articles at least half a dozen additional titles and Amazon has optional additional paths to walk with the Luna. It might seem like a small stage, but it is the beginning to surpass the Google Stadia, it also sets the stage to close the gap to whatever Microsoft has and surpass that.
Forbes adds to that the free games you can claim (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/03/30/here-are-the-amazon-prime-gaming-free-games-for-april-2022/) and there are a few beauties there. Of course, we all remember Oblivion, but there are plenty of people who never played it. This is important. We look at the games out there and think it is ‘old’ news, but I have been in gaming since 1984, so I have pretty much seen it all. Those who are just starting do not need to get bogged down by the faltering Ubisoft philosophy. There is a whole range of games out there that are forgotten, its IP abandoned, yet it does not need to be and there is a nice side to it, they are able to bring a whole range of joy to players, mainly ingle player ones, but that does not need to be the case. There is one problem, where does Amazon want to be? It matters, because there is a setting in the subscription where we see “Retro, Family and Luna+”, there is wisdom in focussing on one element at a time. You see Nintendo is an established family brand, so there is a danger there. I am not stating that they should abandon it, I am stating that Amazon needs to play to its strengths. Luna+ with 134 games is a strength and adding a dozen of so titles in 2022 will add to strength. Yes, there is Microsoft boasting its game pass (for $15.95/month) making it 50% more expensive and as you see in many places, it is trying to fight Sony with its $119.99 annually (or $12 a month), and if that is not enough we also are given ‘Microsoft is moving ahead with an Xbox Game Pass Family Plan’, yes the king of spin is all about the message, but the rumblings are all over the place and it does not bring peace of mind. Microsoft is already moving to a new stack of attacks (Nintendo) all whilst Nintendo is feeling comfortable and perky. They have proven themselves a dozen times over, so Microsoft is not an issue for them. Sony is doing great, even as Microsoft is not releasing sales numbers, and they make claims that they are focussing on the Game pass, I wonder where they are playing that on, especially as they are ‘losing’ to Sony in a near 2.5:1 setting. Then we see that the younger players are smashing it on the Nintendo Switch At present they are at 91,000,000 Switch consoles sold. This implies that there is a chance that they are close to neck on neck with Sony and the Nintendo-Microsoft sales are (by some) estimated to be 10:1, a horrifying defeat for Microsoft. And that is the player you trust for a game pass? Lets be clear, the game pass is a really good deal, but it needs to be said that it cannot be the deciding factor for buying that console. Not when Sony and Nintendo are that far ahead of Microsoft. Yes, we saw the great news on how Microsoft is pouring billions into gaming, but the numbers do not add up, this is about data collection and a game pass and always online offer a great data collector stage.
As such Microsoft is already clearly in a mere 3rd position, and now we see Amazon Luna slowly growing. I reckon that by December 2024 Microsoft is a mere 4th position player and that is before any deal between Amazon and Google is considered, at that point Microsoft will be a distant 5th, hoping to be counted among the gamers, but that group has had enough of the spin they were presented.
Luna is about to become a contender and they have a setting and option to become a top three console and that opens up doors, doors for games and doors for a larger Luna station usage as long a they play to their strengths. As I see it, as long as they play an open game with their consumers they have the option to go a very long way, showing Microsoft yet again that spin is nice for internal messaging, but the gamers are catching on and Ubisoft was never part of any of these solutions.
Enraged two (or too)?
Yes, the previous stage that I gave to you in ‘Rage’ is not done yet. It was more than just a ramble, there was a lot of truth in there, but it was not about the setting, it was about the stage. You see, we have seen movies in that direction. Dutch, Swedish, American, and other nations have given us a movie in that direction, but NONE of them have ever considered a game in that direction. This all started when my mind took a dive into the games I played on the Gamecube and I suddenly remembered ‘Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s requiem’ and my mind took a wander. It dove straight of the deep end. The PS2 gave the people Bully, the Gamecube the game I just mentioned. But none of them gave the people a game about rage, about the insanity of rage.
Consider a game, that plays in a large city, not unlike the cities we see in Watchdogs, but here it is not about being special, it is quite the opposite. You are confronted with rage, a buildup of rage and in the beginning you can make the character play games, play sports and take frustration out in the boxing ring, but it does not work completely and as you are surrounded by elements, the rage buildup is more distinct, more profound. We can focus on the AI of an NPC, but it needs to be more, we need psychological elements to set the game in a direction. I have no illusions, most platforms will not go for this, but PC’s and streamers might. This has never been done before and I like games that were never done before, I like the originality and the effect it will have. Consider that political opposition that it will bring. Blaming games towards violence, whilst their own political ploys are exactly why this is happening. A game that gets the talking going on the ludicrous setting we face in every day life and the consideration that the people are never given. So what happens when you need to blow off steam and you cannot ever be seen doing this? In nations where CCTV is drowning the population (London), in places where social events are the tone setters to injustice (San Francisco/Los Angeles) and that is before we see the impact of population pressure (New York) and you, as a frustrated person needs to keep your sanity or be confined to less nice places where the insanity of rage is total. A game like that has never been made and perhaps it is time to make such a game. Perhaps it is time to introduce the people and the larger audience of the true settings that a lot of people face and the impact it tends to have on the frustration levels of people. I can guarantee you that it will not be a nice game, it will never be a game that gets the larger population across, but it can become a niche for a few million gamers, and that represents millions in revenue and the people are eager to play games, especially games that have never been made before.
Now consider one of the most hated games Manhunt. A game that sold 1,700,000 copies. It represents well over 51,000,000 and consider that this game required an infusion of less than 15 million, so well over twice that amount was made and when did anyone turn down the option of making 300%+ of their investment? Now, there would be a risk, a game like this always has risk, but when you add elements, when you entice towards something never done before and you appeal to the teenage mind. It makes for an interesting setting and an optional side of revenue that many never considered. A stage I merely show here, so that the indie developers can get to work. Close to half a dozen IP gaming ideas in these blogs and it seems that it will take some time for people to catch on. There is a reason I played the cards in the way I did. My views have been increasingly correct and that should be enough, but it is not merely about what others make, it is a way to show that the age of big brands is ending. We look at Microsoft and Ubisoft, but it is not only them, that list is increasing and the larger players are losing track of where they were, of what they could do and that is one part of the stage that allows the indie developers to take hold and claim their slice of a $200,000,000,000 pie and whilst they grow, those who relied on created hype and spin end up with less, the world of gaming needs progress, actual progress, not what some claim is progress. That is the setting we see. Why do you think that people are going nuts over Elder Ring, Horizons Forbidden West and soon Hogwarts legacy. The gamer recognises a work of love. Some makers think that they can tell others what they should love, but when did that work out that way? Perhaps in 1985 when there were less than 20 games per year. Now that stage differs and we keep on getting more of the same. Even now a game less than 6 months old being sold for $39, a stage now essential to these brands because they could not deliver quality and this is as good as they can get it, so how will we see the next batch of games, the next batch of true original gaming? Sometimes we cannot rely on vanilla games, we need to go dark for someone to see the light and give us a next version of something totally new. Something they have never seen before and that is what Nintendo has done on the N64, Gamecube, Wii, and Switch. So to follow in the footsteps of the original makers they need to rely on thought and creativity, not to rely on the spin of the most powerful console in the world. It got defeated by the weakest console of them all (Nintendo Switch), so creativity is essential and perhaps taking it for a ride on a really dark road is not the worst idea to have. It all depends on the willingness to take a chance.
Chaos on the brain
Yup that was me alright this morning. It started actually pretty good, I was enjoying some tea (yes I drink that every now and then), I was enjoying being in my bonnet and behold, a thought passed me by. It was a mix of Queen, a thought of Ted (the teddy) and things started to click. You see, when I grew up (a really long time ago) I got my hands on some Flash Gordon comics and the mix started to rattle.
I loved it, it was just different. So I was a fan before Queen, Sam J. Jones and Melody Anderson decided to have a go at Max von Sydow. I loved the music, the movie all because the comic woke something up. Even nowadays, I miss the comics, I can still enjoy the Queen album (they truly outdid themselves) and the movie was for a 1980 movie quite enjoyable. But something was missing. You see, now we have the streamers and they could transform the original comics into something dark, gritty and closer resembling the comics. Who? I have no idea, but Amazon, Hulu and Netflix should seriously consider it. No matter who wins, if they can make it truly dark and more resembling the comics, they could have a large win on their hands, merely my point of view. Nothing more. So whilst that process started chaos came knocking on my display. It was Hogwarts Legacy (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AZmuZNu5LA) and it blew me away. Not by a little either. Even now as I am still enjoying Horizon: Forbidden West, I cannot stop thinking of what Avalanche Software has set in motion. What I saw was unique and flawless. I plays a century before the Hogwarts we know and it works out that way. Yes, we recognise parts, we see things and creatures from all kind of places, but there is so much new to be seen, so much art in nearly every screen that I believe that on view alone, it will drive millions of Harry Potter fans insane with the need to get this game. Yes, I heard about the critique, I cannot say how I feel as I avoided (intentionally or not) most of the information as it was too far from release date. So whatever goblin issue there was the clip I pasted was my first introduction to the game and it looks utterly stunning. So even as some will say, I saw that. I avoided the 2018 leaks, I see no need to get hung up on something 4 years before release, and I still believe that. I saw some teasers that were released, and now some real stuff and this game could optionally set a new bar for many game developers. First Guerrilla, now Avalanche and Ubisoft cannot release anything to that level of gaming as I personally see it. Can you not see that Ubisoft is about to become a ‘has been’, like Microsoft (just a thought). So why the link?
I believe that any new IP, could be linked. Could transgress from comic to both games and series and here the path for Amazon becomes a lot more clear, but there is nothing stopping Netflix to seek an alliance with a real hungry and futuristic software house to unite and create both using one design and art team. There really is no need to reinvent the wheel and nowadays these wheels are a lot closer alike and a lot closer together than was the case in the past.
In this fantasy and science fiction seem to be more easily adapted to both stages than others, but that is merely a personal view. And in this, what happens when you consider what games like Horizons: Forbidden West and optionally Hogwarts Legacy allows for. So what happens when the world of Flash Gordon become a much larger RPG styled game than ever before? It goes further than this. Consider Hansel and Gretel. Not the fairy tale, but the movie that gave us a bad ass Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Now consider the environment. Take Southern Germany, a map that maps Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria in the 11th century. And the Black Forest is only a small part of Baden-Württemberg. Now consider what you need to do to become a famous witch hunter. And optionally the golden Emma Watson statue if you kill more witches than anyone else (no need to avoid humour, is there?) And consider the era, the first Crusades are in full swing, so there is an abundance of criminals and charlatans, there are corrupt officials and in that stage you will need to put your stamp. And it does not come easy. In the movie they had the weapons, but in this game you will not get far without the help and alliance of a really nice blacksmith and they only work for coins. We are so gung-ho about the kill-shot that we forgot that before we get to do that kill-shot a lot more needs to happen. Would it work? I honestly do not know, but in this day and age, the larger entertainer and the larger holder of a unique piece of IP has a much better chance than all others. Guerrilla showed that and believe it or not, I believe (from what I saw) that Hogwarts Legacy is on that same track. Avalanche did something really good and I cannot wait to find out. And if I had to choose? I honestly do not know. I would look forward to all three games and it has been a while since more than one game was on my list. At present HFW is just so fulfilling, it is almost scary.
But that too is part of gaming, the anticipation and finding out that it was well warranted, Ubisoft used to be like that, but now it seems the new software makers are on that path whilst the old makers are exiting the stage on the left side.
Chaos is on my brain, but it comes from a weird mix of the old, the new and what might be, and in the stage of a place that now has more than 20,000 castles? I reckon that any witch would want one, so there is a reason to play this in southern Germany and there is no reason to think that the map is limited to merely there. In 5 years, no telling what systems are capable of in 2027/2028.
Foreplay or forplay?
Yup, we all go there at some point. My ex once wanted me to watch a movie on foreplay so that she could get a better night of sex and I did not mind. To be honest, once I skipped the boring bits at the start the movie they gave me a few excellent ideas as well. In gaming this situation exists as well. But in gaming what is foreplay? Some state that it is the intro of the game. That tends to differ per game. In Horizon Zero Dawn it could be the part where Eloy is a little girl (when she finds the focus) in TombRaider it was the mansion level, in Oblivion it is the escape from prison and many games have their own way of staging the introduction. And now the joke I started with starts making sense. Weirdly enough it was not a direct stage that assaulted my senses. I had been contemplating and considering additional parts to my 5G devices when it hit me. I was so ‘obsessed’ to hand more functionality to the customers that it hit me. There needs to be a larger stage of introducing more to the customer, educating them as it were. Just like the video, we need more extensive foreplay. You see the age of dumping a device in the lap of customers, whether they are consumers or retailers. That stage is gone and too many rely on word of mouth, the internet and other means for people to figure it out. Consider the TV below.
It drains your account by $11,500 dollars and I had to use this example as I am a huge Sony fan. But consider the fact that the startup guide is two pages and the reference guide is 8 pages, which also gives us “For more information on troubleshooting, refer to the Help Guide”, which is a button on the remote. Now there is nothing really wrong with that, but if someone courts me for that amount, it better comes with breakfast and a final blowjob after a night of super great sex.
Devices have been pushed as almost literally a push and seek on the internet stage. Now for a $49 Google ChromeCast that makes sense. But for a $499 Bose bluetooth speaker? Not even a manual that explains what one port on the speaker does? That is a failure and gaming tends to go in that direction as well. A stage where too much is auto assumed. To be honest, Ubisoft and Bethesda actually has a decent grasp on that especially in their latest games. There are more than a few games out there that fails its consumers. There are quotes like ‘The internet is full of help’, or the demeaning “Your friends do not seem to have that same problem” And when Meta is fully deployed especially when hybrid comes to life there will be all kinds of hiatus. Now there is nothing wrong with setting up the internet to help out, but ask yourself “How many supplier set up a decent amount of white papers to help you out?” The answer will scare you. They all skipped the boring bits of the foreplay video and went straight for ‘orgasmic revenue’. And here is the stage where I found the interesting part of forplay (not a typo) “Foreplay is the fun, flirty, arousing goings on right before actually having sex. It’s an act that sexually excites a person. In forplay some people use icing, chocolate sauce, whatever..” And this applies here too. In hardware the ‘chocolate sauce’ are the accessories you can buy, or DLC’s in gaming (a ‘for play’ joke). The extra yummy parts are not in the real game, they come later (that has been Ubisoft as well). It worries me because it implies that the consumer is not the person who buys the game, but the person who buys the game and all the other bits and that is disappointing. It is disappointing in gaming, it is disappointing in hardware, software and concepts. It is like companies are too much abut the sales pipeline in some fire and forget setting, and no one (or too few) people care what happens to their customers afterwards and it offends me. I was in Customer service since 1992 and it was for a long time a great stage yet in too many places it became about cost reduction and cutting corners whilst the consumers where not properly taken care off too often and for too long. There are exceptions the most striking one is either Norton or Adobe customer service versus Microsoft customer service, or try dialling your internet provider. Try setting a care line there (a line that show they actually care for you), the results might scare you and that is where I found myself. Educating the customer on the boring bits of 5G, as well the boring bits of added 5G because that field is MASSIVE and I am hopefully a player in that stage in the not so far distant future, so it matters to me to get that part right too. And for the size of what I am talking about, see below
The educational track
What if education got a helping hand? We seemingly play games, we seemingly read books, we seemingly learn. What if we unite this? And here we have a setting to the larger stage and I will admit that Ubisoft has the baton. They got it when they aded the Discovery tour to AC Origin. And when we weren’t in a rush to get the achievements we would have learned a decent deal of life in Egypt. The embalmers, the beer makers and so on. I stated it before, Ubisoft screwed up [plenty, but not that game. That one they got right and credit should be given where credit is due.
And Ubisoft (others too) have been sitting on top of a whole range of IP that they could redistribute in a ‘plus setting’. The stage is decently easy. We have the person we play, we unite the maps of AC Origins and AC Odyssey and we go to town. Remove the wild animals, remove the enemies and so on. Then we add the tracks and works of
Homer, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Plato, Hesiod, Democritus, Socrates, Empedokles, Anaxagoras, Herodotus and many more (well over 300 more). When set in a time line we learn and we now have an educational program. This can be done for Greece and Italy (aka Roman empire). The finny part was that I would have expected that Ubisoft had picked up on this, especially after the discovery tour. And let be honest, it is a much more interesting way of learning. See it as missions, from person to person, take a gander from where they were born to where they stopped living (or until the big works are illuminated). We see all thee boring books (not all mind you), but to use games to educate has not been explored enough and weirdly enough Ubisoft has an inside track here the renaissance (AC 2, Brotherhood), US independence war (AC 3), And there is plenty more to tip on and with streaming systems seeking a larger hold, having the games with optional educational side will be a growing thing and lets be clear the expected $200,000,000,000 that the analysts state that gaming represents might go longer for Ubisoft if they find the larger application and I reckon that AC Origins (with Odyssey) might show to be a larger cash cow that could help them stretch time, time they basically no longer have. I would grasp at all options to stretch what is there. And they are not alone, but they are as far as I can tell the most visible one.
We need to realise that not all games have an educational option, but those who do could have a larger stage to fill and a larger appeal (especially to parents). And don’t knock the idea. To get kids (11-16) interested in classical education topics is hard enough, getting them to walk the timeline of Homer and write a paper in it (with screenshots) might be the new setting no one in education considered before. It might not be their fault, but I reckon it is the foot in the door Ubisoft desperately needs at present.
Filed under Gaming
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 