22 November, 2009 at 12:06 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: bait and switch, echochamber, reddit, review
It struck me that reddit offers no return for posting links on it, unless your harmoginised with the mindset already there. It’s an echochamber – if you don’t think like them, you don’t get traffic – so people who don’t match their mindset either leave or start to conform to it. Thus it’s a bunch of people self confirming each other. Sure, perhaps it blocks out spammers. But it also blocks out challenging thought in the process.
My actual gripe is that this isn’t upfront. If they said they are a big ass echochamber from the start, well, okay, it’s their lives. But no, they seem accessable instead, which is pretty false, as either you conform to their mindset, or GTFO. A bait and switch. Reddit…into the bin!
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19 November, 2009 at 7:43 am (Politics)
Tags: $5 account fee, banks, colude, five bucks, overcharge
I was trying to post this over here I couldn’t tell if it wasn’t working or they weren’t accepting comments or if it was to be moderated. So I decided to vent it here atleast, right here, right now!
Once upon a time we could access our money anywhere without a five buck per month fee.
Perhaps I can start charging Aaron a five buck per month fee for breathing air “$5 a month to breathe air anywhere, at anytime? I don’t have a problem with that at all!”
And it’s not just that – this isn’t like buying chocolate buiscuits, ie something we can choose to do without. Exactly how many buisinesses pay out paypackets with actual money in them anymore?
The infrastructure were in forces us to have a bank account. Yet if the governement were to suddenly introduce a new five buck a month tax, there would be outrage! It’d be on every paper! But the banks – the guys we didn’t actually vote for – as much as if they are your government they have declared a new tax. Except you didn’t vote them in, so rather than a government that makes them your dictator.
The banks all coluded because they knew if they all did it, then they’d all make extra profit since where else can anyone go, aye? And damn, they all have to have a bank account, don’t they!? There is no opt out! There’s not even the capitalist protest option of taking your money elsewhere – cause everywhere else you could put your paycheck has a fee as well.
This slipped in years ago and is probably one of the biggest, invisible consumer rights issues out there. All because people invent the idea they are getting a service they otherwise wouldn’t, for this money. Dude, have you paid five bucks for your air this month? And did you even ask for this ’service’? Can I start charging you for services you didn’t ask for, or would you get upset?
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18 November, 2009 at 12:00 pm (Story Theory)
Tags: art, earning a living, making money, writers block
I was thinking just this very moment, whether it’s possible to get trapped in a mindset of making a group activity (and I think I might have posted about something like this before)
Take this for example – if you just made things to amuse yourself, like drawings, well, they amuse you and your productive, you make them. Now potentially at some point you might be able to take what you’ve made, or your own now developed and skilled capacity to make some money from that.
BUT if your trying to make a game and you take that to be something other people are to play and not just yourself (and how many game designers design just for their own play? Few, especially compared to the number of artists who draw for their own pleasure), well, then your stuck in terms of making some money!
Because all that time you’ve been striving to make this stuff accessable to other people already. Unlike the artist who has been producing many works and honing his skills, all the while having fun, you’ve been chasing after accessability to other people. Instead of holding back a product until an echange of some goods/money has occured,you’ve been chasing after plays and trying to give, give, give.
I dunno, I’m trying to grope at something where basically I need another person in order to forfil this creative activity – which, without such, the production of material and increase is tons slower than if I was doing a creative activity where I just need myself (like the drawing).
I think I haven’t been selfish enough. Recently I’ve been trying to get more monetized and of course that involves some more selfishness, and that made the idea of just making a game to fit my own desires come across my mind. And the contrast is deep! I can even, if only just, feel the entire feedback loop of creation and completion, and how it’d just be far more rewarding.
Eh, something I’m thinking about, anyway.
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17 November, 2009 at 1:31 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: potatoes
There’s something really satisfying about pulling 2kg of very fresh potatoes out of the ground. I looked it up on coles online and they are around $2 a kilo…$3 for the fancier ones. I like to rate these as fancier, because they are incredibly fresh, of course. Know what it’s like to find a $5 note on the ground? This is like finding $6 in the back yard 
Yeah, I know, I should really look at how long it took to grow them, and yeah, I didn’t write down when I put them in. It has taken awhile for that $6 to happen. But still, it’s encouraging!
And yeah, I kind of sound like my monetized blog right now, talking the numbers. But I’m chuffed, and those are the terms that come to mind
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10 November, 2009 at 9:12 am (Story Theory)
Tags: boarderlands, make a story, story, video game
MMO crunch asks is borderlands a mmog, and in doing so asks if there is a story http://www.mmocrunch.com/2009/11/09/is-borderlands-a-mmog/
This is what I had to say in short:
In terms of story, I always look at gamers who expect to read a story in an interactive medium and think “Wha!?”. It’s an interactive medium – YOU make the story.
What I would grant is that these games, not at all right now, have any tools to record player actions and layout a story (or atleast a log of cool events). So it’s easy to forget the story you just made.
I wrote more on my other blog
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8 November, 2009 at 10:26 am (Philosophy)
Tags: Philosophy, prince of nothing, r scott bakker, scott bakker
There’s more than a few bits in the prince of nothing novels where he refers to something like men take the wreckage of what has become, then call it their own choice and declare that to be themselves.
I was idling through elfwood and saw this. One of the comments is ‘How did she die?’.
That’s the human mind – not asking why it grieves over a dead love to begin with, but asking how did she die. Just taking the wreckage of what has happened and going on from there, pursuing why she died, rather than pursuing why it was a concern at all that she died, to begin with. Your roots may as well determine your destination, but we ignore our emotional roots and simply act as extensions of them.
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7 November, 2009 at 9:29 pm (Uncategorized)
Tags: story gauntlet, video game
Calling it story gauntlet now, over at: http://philosophergamer.blogspot.com/2009/11/gauntlet10.html
The game I made for it now is a short adventure shoot ‘em up! I quite enjoy this one, rather than it being just a quick platformer mock up. Though there’s an easy difficulty cheat code, found at that link, if it’s a bit tough to beat!
Just viewing the other blog helps with page views, which grants a small amount of income simply from the ads being shown to visitors. And if you have any monetized blogs of your own now or in future you would like visits to, I’m really happy to return the favour
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4 November, 2009 at 7:29 pm (Philosophy, Story Theory)
From here
Specifically
I’ll give this one last shot and I’m done.
Do you think I’m wrong in detecting a ‘I’ll give this one last shot, because I’m absolutely certain I’m right on this…there is no room for doubt in my mind. I can not be wrong at all on this at all’
Even Richard Dawkins, who raves about Evolution, will actually provide you methods to disprove his beloved theory, like ‘Fossilized Rabbits in the Precambrian’ (I think that was the time period – it was definately a time period they shouldn’t show up in. Comments left will prompt me to find the reference).
I mean, I don’t think it means one more shot at understanding the details of any evidence against it, as the rest of the post is just trying to add more evidence for it, rather than asking questions or such.
Here’s a quote from me, which has probably been said in the past, but I have paralel developed it.
“The man who is absolutely certain is the man who does not care what happens if he is wrong”
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3 November, 2009 at 7:27 am (Story Theory)
Tags: agreement, consent, control, moral, roleplay
As a supplement to my thread here.
Looking at the D&D forums, they also have a little forum culture where they start granting themselves rights. Like ‘Oh, the GM can’t cheat’ and such. And they have a thread where they all agree with each other that that is the case. And ‘thus’ it’s the case for their group. Except it’s only the people on the forum who have agreed with that, not their group.
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2 November, 2009 at 4:01 pm (Story Theory)
Tags: design, gaming, play to turn the page, roleplay, video game, writers block, writing
Wow, writing for a ‘play to turn the page’ format is sooooooo easy! No wonder it’s so prevalent!
‘Play to turn the page’ means you play a game, but it means absolutely nothing to the story – you just play so as to bring up the next cut scene or text. It’s like playing a game simply to turn to the next page in a book – it’s pretend interactivity.
And it’s so easy to code for! I’ve been writing another game for use in the ‘effort’ revenue model, as I posted about before – and once you make it just to gather effort rather than having the action make some sort of story in itself (or atleast more story than ‘I shot all the space invaders’), it’s just so easy to slap together something!
Well, that’s good for getting over writers block. But man, it does repeat the million and one play to turn a page games already out there. Still, I’m doing it as part of a ‘effort’ revenue model and doing it is helping me practice my skills toward something that combines both play and a sense of story.
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