Some thoughts on art, maybe gaming

The world has massively changed from what it used to be.  Expression art and the human experience are much more on display now than ever.  As an artist growing up in the 80’s and 90’s coming of age for me, me and my friends went searching for where to distribute our expression and had travail after travail to get something out there.  We learned of the slow process of writing, picture making whatever form and shared it among ourselves and a few others.  The internet was in its infancy and I had little idea how big it would become.  Harnessing this power has become a goal for me, to express, find purchase and an audience.

The big label distributors of arts and art works of whatever type were big and lumbersome and slow.  Now everything is super fast and the opportunities numerous and overwhelmingly plentiful.  Is a place that now exists that everything finds interest and expression and can be consumed.  I would rather people only consume to come out happier or challenged or some other goal.  I do not want to consume just to be consuming.  I want more than what I had access to back then.  The world has massively changed and the world is also going to be going through even more changes on an exponential level that may see the rise of AI as a powerful tool of well-being.

What would an art AI look like?  Would start with mechanical rote lines being rearranged whether words or visual assets.  Then moving further in progression to things that mean something more than the awkward creations so far.  What are the essential elements that create art?  And can it be programmed into an AI?

Casual games vs RPGs

There’s casual games vs rpg’s and casual games are the toss offs with deep internal play of a player’s mind.  Much like poker the skills and game play in casual goes deep off surface simplicity.  Casual games are simple but at another level they are deep.  rpg’s make no such bones and are an outright blizzard of progression bars.  You know where you’re at by game bars in rpgs.   Casual games are not like that.  Sure they have progressions but no real recognition you’ve reached another level than you are scoring more points and tic off a whole level complete.  The background mental in a casual game is complex and deep but the play itself remains the same and simple.  The rpg goes on mobs, mob challenges and story challenges.  Sure there are story lines but ultimately they involve a mob.  d&d online did a good job of mixing mostly rpg with some puzzle elements.  The d&d online puzzles are super simple compared to casual games.

Casual games puzzles take the form of complex patterns from the gameplay order of playflow.  The order of playflow in a casual game, comes and goes quick. you’ll know within seconds if the pattern of click/tap you picked was the right one.  In rpgs the flow is just as fast but more simple, arm up, beat mob, done, next.  The complexity of rpgs comes from stories told by encountering the mobs there and story obstacles.  The complexity of rpg’s is also in choice and acquisition of equipment to take on ever greater levels of the rpg.  Different forms of progression of casual and rpg, but very different ways of getting to the complex part of the game.

Now World of Warcraft went and simplified something that was already simple.  They turned rpg into casual.  Now Im not sure what they’ve been up to over at Blizzard lately other than Overwatch.  Overwatch’s competitive play idea is interesting as it would allow for more pro gamers.  The fantasy first person shooter impression I have of Overwatch so far holds some interest for rpg’ers from the fantasy setting.  For the non-twitch players rpg’s remain enjoyable and challenging.  But to make money at them requires some effort as Entropia Universe is about the only place traditional rpg’ers can make a buck that comes back out of the game.

Entropia Universe gets into a casual games and rpg games complexity with the idea of eco, and the many, many formulas, equations, and complexity of deep gameplay.

I see maybe that the meta-aspects of these games is where the appeal is.  That a beginning player can dive in, play and get somewhere to be entertained.  Then the deeper into the play a player gets new complexities emerge and a player can play and be entertained by those aspects.  By having a game that reacts to meta-concepts and can be played outright while the meta gives the game much of its popularity and entertainment value.  Similar to how the same words mean different things to different people and even in the same person’s line of thought a word can change meaning. So it is that the same game with the same game play means different things to different people and even within the same person’s mind from play session to play session.

my perspective being begin

What I love doing? Is it gaming and games? I think so
and books, comparison/contrast, backwards/forwards, up/down, here/there, truth/lies
and where does it all go? meta/non-meta, losing myself, finding myself.  I keep busy being born with new things/old things and dying the same.
Always looking, seeking, in motion with something somewhere, ahead.

Some thoughts on gaming today

For instance i see a lot of best selling gaming as focused on combat which is fine

The games not focused on combat are the social games of social media which are an endless pit of app time wasters.  They are on the level of minesweeper and tic tac toe

Then there are word games which my wife is into atm.  The word games take gaming tic tac toe and move it up a notch.

From where I am now there are games that fit my mood, temperament and challenge level at the time.

For complexity the game is Entropia.  For light play time fillers, the word games and Facebook games engage me.  Engaging content without being sold something is the lure of many RPGs.  Facebook games, and app games on phones cannot say that.  Most of the app games are riddled with ads.  I guess that’s fine if you’re an app developer, publisher, distributor.  Does all gaming need to have ads and sales to make them viable?  Creating a game with no intention of making money could be a tact to take.  What does that game look like?  I see Go, checkers, and chess as original no money to be made games.  Though each can be adapted to make money that was not the original intent.  A game free of ads and free of being sold would be a huge task to undertake.  Children engage and create such games throughout their youth.  They have no consideration of money but of fun.

I see ads as necessary to keep many games developed and emerging.  Many more games are no longer stand alone fun.  Someone is trying to make a buck off them and collect some revenue somehow someway.

Can that be the impetus behind every game?  I see many games as works of artistic expression.  Money gets layered in either as an afterthought or original intent.  As long as a game gets made for me, it’s all good.

The free trade server of Norrath, in Everquest II, from the description it seems more geared for subscribers and to please them,  The people who actually pay money to play.  Being able to trade almost all items is cool.  That is a big deal because whenever there are more opportunities open up to trade the ingame economies get better and that adds to fun.  People like looting and trading multitudes of items.

Now then the idea may be to combine extensive trading with app games.  A game geared to nothing but trading.  Farmville did a good job of being casual with trade elements.  What if there were a way to create trade and nothing but trade?  Groups of resources acquired through the game, then traded among players.

As for consideration of how to go about creating games the idea occurred to me to use bitcoin as the game’s base currency.  Because bitcoin is such an odd form of transfer, a game based around it would need certain parameters established and brought into the game.  Such a game would be subject to the price changes of bitcoin.  As it takes considerable effort to turn bitcoin into dollars it seems such a game should have no problems keeping the money in the game’s ecosystem.

Further bitcoin allows that if the money’s not there, its not there.  No stack overflow errors and hyperinflation.  I believe such a game would be subject to hyperinflation if there were a hole in the game logic.  However it could be wrangled so that doesnt happen.  Such a game would need to be air-tight on how it doles out loot, stars, rewards of one sort or another and the transfer between players of the bitcoin loot.  Could Facebook or other social media be tied in to bitcoin rewards and trade?

This also brings me to are there games on Instagram?  A way to layer in picture games seems the first obvious path to take.  Then also with the picture game of Instagram layer in some bitcoin.  Doling out rewards in bitcoin still seems a problem because who decides how much and where the money goes when?

I think for a developer to risk whatever they are going to risk and cap how much money can be doled out is one restrictive parameter to keep the game in check.  After each try does promising bitcoin for successfully navigating a game mean there is a liability to pay?  It seems that to promise bitcoin does not create any liability.  The promisee just wouldnt pay.  So that then creates a trust issue for a game and whether that developer will pay up or abscond with the money.  The developer who jets with the money of course is going to lose customers and have no one playing the game.  The developer who pays up fairly and regularly would have a successful game.  I dont think it would take much to create such a game based with current technologies.  Then further that such a game can cap how much bitcoin is paid and how much trading goes on within that ecosystem.

This has been a synopsis of my current thoughts on gaming today.

some daily thoughts on gaming and game topics

well did more editing on fantasy built book
looking to layer in a non-player characters motivations and actions
looking to flesh out the 4th level, that needs work
may be tomorrow or later todays task as the editing occupied 8 minutes, crud, felt like i did a lot more than that.  yesterday editing the first 200 pages took an hour.
breezed through the remaining half, tidied up
saw what to add, took a few things out
treasures are accounted for, no problem for each level too, didnt know i had done that but i did so no more worrying about treasures monetary value.  Treasures entertainment value is where the fun is.  As players accumulate treasures they cannot accumulate in real life there is some nod to greed and fear and where a player is at in their real life.  In a tabletop RPG setting there are usually only a few people to interact with.  The nature of MMO’s permit much more use for treasure as treasure becomes the yardstick to measure what an avatar can do in interaction with thousands and 10’s of thousands of other players.
unless i want to add magic items which i am usually hesitant to do as they add way overpowered powers to players who then solve all their problems with a magic item which i guess is what its for but somethings missing when you can pull out
your mighty weapon of problem solving and get through an encounter off the hook easy.
need better descriptions of the humanoids as real people, evil, but real
do work on pulp story
added in took away maybe 500-600 words out of dungeon document so to further that then
and the pulp story what shape is that in, havent even looked, what would happen there?
more travails, piled on, described as?
im thinking for travails is the typical lists of modern life then exaggerated and turned into myth, hammered into shape
by rereads and what the mind thinks is logical but in real life, its not going to make sense. A lot of what happens is random and set by perception, not reality.  There are some problems here, some problems there but set by what we want and scarcity of resources to get the things.
I’ve been thinking some about how prices set everything and provide the means by which all resources are used.  For gaming it means competing games and the money to play them.  With many free games the competition is fierce.  Ad revenue and item shops are the prime ways to make money with free games.  I am trying to think of a new way to bring tabletop feel to computerized games.  And to have an MMO feel to a gaming environment.  To create gaming environments.  I see the creation process as a bunch of lists, then pulling from those lists to make something interesting.

Encounters:
How detailed the encounters get is up to players and gamemaster.  Most people just don’t want the huge mass of details that are an adventuring tabletop game.  To reach a wider audience the game should be tried simplified and streamlined.  With one roll to set what happens more people would want to play.  As they have fun with the simplified versions of common tabletop games i think more people would play.  Hmm, adapt fantasy tabletop to facebook style games.

 

 

 

State of Gaming, new directions

that rpg games have become too coarse and gross-out and the worst sort of pulp silliness
They have devolved into battle and gore fests of who can outpower who
while much action is needed the state of rpg video gaming is too conflict oriented
and gross-out, most base, basic, and appealing far too often to the shocking, disturbing, and most visually underwhelming overwhelm.
there is little room for real role playing, that left the barn a long time ago to implement real role playing would be a challenge.
time to join the human race gamers
with the cold war dynamic gone there are no longer nation states but corporate and super empowered individuals
a few groups make efforts but the Supermarkets are defining all of us.
what are some of things said about pulp stories of the 20’s to 50’s?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/jan/01/science-fiction-fantasy-look-ahead-diverse-2016

The pulp writers birthed horror, crime stories, and film noir. Of course they did 😛

exactly the kind of fantasy to lure back readers, like myself, who want great writing and great storytelling, not an endless parade of fight sequences.

that is where gaming is at. books are easier to change direction on but games can be taken in that direction too
what does a game look like with no combat? but still recognizable as traditional fantasy and science fiction?
and the many creative ways to solve problems without combat?
perhaps it is such the physics of worlds are no problem, interacting in that world becomes a problem
as far as physical battles go games and game engines are great.
i think in the interaction of avatars and obstacles that are not physical that the problem occurs.
One solution is to implement psychological models. Take your favorite psychologist and layer the game world’s residents with the mental makeups that determine avatars fates.
Breaking the physical rules of a game should be allowed as well as breaking the psychological rules.
what do the psychological rules of a game look like?
beyond mere puzzles though there should be puzzles present.
and dinky puzzles either, psychological puzzles and not just one psychologist or group of psychologists but the interplay of the psychologies and the game world. similar to the real world but far away from it.
in helping people realize their dreams and wants and needs in a game setting.
i think the game would pass from the realm of pulp gaming to serious gaming but in a much more light hearted way.
Cause what we have is pulp gaming, gaming noir. must be other words for it.
film noir as defined by oxford dictionaries
A style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace.
describes rpg and first person shooter games today perfectly.

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir
The characters in film noir movies are often motivated by greed, jealousy, or revenge. The characters in film noir movies are often private detectives or police officers who are investigating crimes committed by bad criminals and gang members
such as murder, gambling or prostitution. In film noir movies, there are often stories about robberies, heists, extortion of money (which is called “blackmail”), or murder.
so to balance the opposites of those motivations are needed.
for opposite of greed, benevolence, charitable, generous.
odd way to do this is treasure gathered from obstacles goes to hero’s home town and only awards experience once given away
another opposite is liberal but not in the can of worms political sense.
in the liberal sense as in liberal application of salt on french fries and mashed potatoes.
the liberal application of garlic in many world cuisines.
where the players have the traditional classes just played in different ways than hack n’slash.
Abstemious rewards would be odd.  players get rewarded for not doing things.
this would end up as a background sorta accumulating without real player action needed though it would have some noticeable effects once thresholds are reached. the granting of a power and/or item.
opposite of jealousy becomes calm, content, unworriered, confident, satisfied, trusting.
how that plays out as central to a game becomes in a fantasy setting, the accumulation of experiences
what mechanic allows experience rewards for creating those good attributes?
the orc party (deadly turtles) instead of guarding the kidnapped princess are convinced to give her back in exchange for one of their prisoners. a cold war nod but there. paying the orcs to return the princess is also an option. but no loots from killing the vicious and broke orcs. they get money in coins and gems but are ill able to hold onto the goods even when they get them. the treasures are gathered by their stalwart and horrific leaders who waste
and lose their ill gotten goods.
if the orcs can be convinced by offers and deliveries of food and shelters they return the princess.
though orcs are deeply evil they still need things.
the psychological models to use includes Maslow’s hierarchies and maybe some Freud and even some Jung.  BF  Skinner ought to make an appearance too.
What do orcs dream of? Can entire evil societies be reformed? what if orcs were turned back to good from the long
ago split when they were also elves.
Does it make sense to strike out all evils?
hmm, tough one as balance is needed but requires evil.
what does a good layered orcish society look like?
if the outer place of orcdom was infused or entranced with layers of good such as tainted calm, tainted content,
a generosity of orcish leaders and that much of their power lies in a tainted generosity but still generous.
then up to the players to create that. similar to the gradations of elemental planes where one crosses the other
fire to water having steam and vapor where orcs would have peace and plenty with might sure but tainted evils to each other
still tempered by magic and layers of good emotions. why not dwell in those fringes where forces meet and make them primary to story and gameplay.

ok, so thats a start of where i would like to take some things.
what is on the other side of this? i sure dont know but its going to be an awesome ride trying.

 

Semi-random streamed games

What does a streaming game look like?  What are some of costs and benefits of a streamed game design?  Less disk space I could see.  Less use of cpu resources.  Speed may suffer without preloaded graphics.  As the game is streamed though a phone a game becomes very viable for creating large environments that are merely streamed to a player as the player gets to the points in the game’s environment.   When the backend can take on effectively an unlimited size what kinds of games can be created?  Is there a use for all the environments that can be created?  With semi-random loot distributions, sure, something around every corner.

what to talk about gaming related

here i am out to find a gaming topic to talk about.  Comparing perhaps gaming revenues to music revenues.  For instance a game typically costs $1 to $60.  Then then the hours spent on the game are 20-40 hours and done.  A royalty based song for the same time period works out to 720 song listens.  At a penny a song listen then $7.20.  So a game costs more but is a thing to be completed not listened to.  Once a game is completed there is little incentive or inventory for a gamer to get more content.  Though yes there are 100’s of games available to consume a gamer’s attention there are 10000’s of songs to grab a consumer’s attention.  So the pricing seems to reflect that.
Now some cool tricks would be if gaming and music settled into a more even distribution of time and revenue.  Where the overall revenue would go up but the average per each goes down.  If there were a way to stream games and roll out content on an episodic basis the market would heat up and be a little more content/publisher/gamewriter driven.  Would the music model work in a gamewriter/publisher environment?

brief notes on todays wanderings some gaming but mostly amazon and ebay products

create some 3d art,
code monkey around, get something made
need website rollout something besides two pages of info
but need money to make that go
the idea is there are these small scrappy suppliers getting stuff off aliexpress, trying it out
making bank but how much? how long do they last and is there any real money to be made?
like gaming is computers and computers are the lowest margin business there is 0.5% if your lucky
returns and exchanges just kill it
so may try another area
and get it through the amazon fba filters to get going
books and info products, kindle promoting
lot of books on it, may add mine to the stack once i have enough to pay an editor
i am expecting a few days turnaround to get the stuff done
i see the need of proofreaders to hammer out details from raw intial work
an editor to clarify and help structure the book
i keep hearing people pay up $200 to get the whole thing done
the editors i’ve contacted charge way more than that
the idea machine, i am there, there are huge avenues to explore

It is like there are things I should be doing so for now I will be doing them

like social media.  Facebook I have plunged on and Kindle I have plunged on.  There are books to be written and money to be made.  Getting from the idea point to the paid point seems to be my problem.  To get back to social media, I feel social media is an endless pit of spam from fellow facebookers.  The endless stream of banalities and irrelevant contrite messages got really old really fast for me.  It flows and flows garbage faster than someone can click.  Wrangling something useful out of facebook’s ecosystem seems a herculean task.  The chat system seems a high point of facebook as I have used that to satisfy social needs.  There are other things to join communities which I’ve done but then yet more endless spams in the communities newstream.  People’s heads I feel are stuck in ruts and going over the same data over and over.  Some of the newstreams are interesting and something useful can be pulled from it but it takes effort to pull something good out of the newstreams that doesn’t consume an inordinate amount of time.  Like a huge dance in a unlimited space warehouse.  Whatever you want to think about, do or be is on Facebook and the larger internet space.  The matter is connecting with people and getting something created.  That’s how I see it.

some notes on 3d art making and the illusion of motion

making base objects and then what kind of tweaking to do on them would be cool
like the low polygon figures for sale $15 on turbosquid
get one of those made
it is easy to get carried away on one of those figures cause even a small difference of extrude can
dramatically change how something looks, especially faces
body types are less dramatic after extrusions
but faces, faces have all kinds of ways to go from small changes and sysmmetries and asymmetries
then the face shows a noticeable difference in how someone looks at it
My tool of choice for now is blender so i use that.
i try to make base figures for whatever it is i am working on.
I can take the base figure, make mods, and come up with new things to look at or use somewhere.
what does this look like in the real world?
i am a noodler i guess when it comes to 3d art though i feel i could really take it in some direction that would be rewarding and fun.

In blender, the command, extrude region, did the trick for a circle extruded into something
was doing it point by point, so now i have a jagged cone
wow, is that fun to make a dramatic object, the camera rotation is where it is really fun
as the object shifts perspectives and becomes something in motion
the frame by frame nature of animation though does not bring out quickly enough the change in motion needed
to make an impact on the viewer
that may be where unity 3d comes in in creating motion of 3d objects
so i was able to get some interesting figures out of the play from a circle primitive
extrude region did the trick for a circle extruded into something
was doing it point by point, so now i have a jagged cone
wow, is that fun to make a dramatic object, the camera rotation is where it is really fun
as the object shifts perspectives and becomes something in motion
the frame by frame nature of animation though does not bring out quickly enough the change in motion needed
to make an impact on the viewer
that may be where unity 3d comes in in creating motion of 3d objects
set up the rules and let the objects move through a viewer’s field of vision
the object can even be static on the screen but because the user’s avatar and the user see the thing from different
perspectives the illusion of motion is there. That illusion of motion is what creates interest and can engage a viewer.

Ok, some difficulties sharing a blender file given wordpress’s allowed file media types.  Sure there is a workaround somewhere but for now it’s looks like rendered jpegs to share the creations.