It's been a while since I've written a political opinion piece, but it occurred to me today, that I've got a lot to say about this, and as always, this is my best platform.
What happened to us, the western world?
When was it that being extremist was the norm? Because to me, that is how it seems.
I remember back when we had the 7/7 London Bombings, the general attitude at the time was that extremism is bad, that by being open with each other and embracing community we would give 2 fingers to the extremists.
Let's fast forward to the past few years:
The left vs right discussion has turned to the extreme, where Conservative voters are branded extremists and called Fascists to their face by other extremist liberals.
Films, videogames, television is being tarred almost unanimously by the 'misogyny' brush, leading to bloody GamerGate, which became labelled and adopted by extremists, which in turn was combatted by yet more extremism until people got bored and stopped caring.
No we have Brexit, and how apparently the rational response to anyone who voted leave is to attack them with personal insults, demand they pay for any cost increases and blame them for their decisions made during the voting process.
How did this happen? In just a few years everything became extreme, to the extent, extreme is normal now.
Look at the movements with social reform, there are essentially only two camps, those who agree with safe spaces, and fascists.
I mean really? Where's the middle ground? Oh wait, there is no middle ground any more, because rather than keeping our fucking heads, we've adopted the bullshit dogma "if you're not with us, you're against us", or worse still "if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem".
Life doesn't work that way, things are never black and white, it's always shades of grey, but somewhere along the way we've forgotten that. We've become so cemented in the belief that OUR camp, that OUR point of view is 100% right, that anyone who even questions us as to why is physically attacking us.
I know that chances are no one reading this will fit into the above category, and if they do, they will not realise it and will insist until they are blue in the face that they are not.
But what is the answer to all of this?
Can we fix the world?
Should we?
I don't know, but I do know what I am going to do.
I'm not going to engage in mud slinging. I'm not going to assume that someone who thinks differently to me is a terrorist or hate monger. I might laugh at them behind their backs and think that their ideals are bat-shit crazy, and/or redundant, but I will remain respectful with at the very least, a degree of decorum.
If one thing these recent years have taught us, it's that extremism just breeds even more extreme-extremism, and I for one don't believe that, that is the right way forward.
Until next time, stay safe, and most importantly, be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
Tuesday, 28 June 2016
DaffCon 2017 - Override, Moonstone & You!
Greetings friends!
So today I had a chat with the some significant people, and together we came up with an interesting proposal...
At DaffCon 2017 i'll be attempting to run the world's first First Law: Override tournament!
This will be alongside a demo table filled to the brim with Moonstone!
Oh yeah, for one glorious weekend both Override and Moonstone are coming together under a single roof!
The tournament is going to be something simple, a 3 round event for Starter Forces (think 300Nt, similar to the forces we used at DaffCon2016) so if you have yet to do so, you can get playing for only about 3-4 models!
It is also important that the event needs to be story driven, that the missions make sense and are easy to play. For this reason, I will be writing up a story theme to go alongside the missions picked.
I will also very likely create some new missions. The ones you see in the book today are the revised versions of the originals created back when the game was first born. I think at the very least Assault on Precinct 313 should have a place in this event (one side, complete with at least 1 Exo Suit has to storm the opposing stronghold which comes complete with auto turrets and other defences). The goal of the Attackers is to access the defender's base, the goal of the Defenders is to keep the Attackers out.
***
But that's not all, as I mentioned before, we'll also see demos being run all day long if Moonstone. By then we are hoping to have the main game Kickstarter completed, but without production completed, but who knows.
This is going to be a lot of work for our two man team to do, so I may be looking at bringing in assistance from others, almost certainly anyone who has agreed to the Override Ghost project, but also maybe seeing if we can recruit some Moonstone Goblins between then and now.
After all, the hardest part of DaffCon this year was keeping the enthusiasm and attention going for 2 simultaneous games with only 2 people. Very little chances for downtime, and that gets very tiring, very quickly. So if you are reading this and want to sign up to the Override Ghost Project, then let me know! If you want to help out Moonstone - I'll need to get back to you on that!
***
Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts, is an Override tournament something you would be interested in?
Until next time, stay safe and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
So today I had a chat with the some significant people, and together we came up with an interesting proposal...
At DaffCon 2017 i'll be attempting to run the world's first First Law: Override tournament!
This will be alongside a demo table filled to the brim with Moonstone!
Oh yeah, for one glorious weekend both Override and Moonstone are coming together under a single roof!
The tournament is going to be something simple, a 3 round event for Starter Forces (think 300Nt, similar to the forces we used at DaffCon2016) so if you have yet to do so, you can get playing for only about 3-4 models!
It is also important that the event needs to be story driven, that the missions make sense and are easy to play. For this reason, I will be writing up a story theme to go alongside the missions picked.
I will also very likely create some new missions. The ones you see in the book today are the revised versions of the originals created back when the game was first born. I think at the very least Assault on Precinct 313 should have a place in this event (one side, complete with at least 1 Exo Suit has to storm the opposing stronghold which comes complete with auto turrets and other defences). The goal of the Attackers is to access the defender's base, the goal of the Defenders is to keep the Attackers out.
***
But that's not all, as I mentioned before, we'll also see demos being run all day long if Moonstone. By then we are hoping to have the main game Kickstarter completed, but without production completed, but who knows.
This is going to be a lot of work for our two man team to do, so I may be looking at bringing in assistance from others, almost certainly anyone who has agreed to the Override Ghost project, but also maybe seeing if we can recruit some Moonstone Goblins between then and now.
After all, the hardest part of DaffCon this year was keeping the enthusiasm and attention going for 2 simultaneous games with only 2 people. Very little chances for downtime, and that gets very tiring, very quickly. So if you are reading this and want to sign up to the Override Ghost Project, then let me know! If you want to help out Moonstone - I'll need to get back to you on that!
***
Anyway, I'd love to hear your thoughts, is an Override tournament something you would be interested in?
Until next time, stay safe and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Friday, 24 June 2016
The Black Sheep - A First Law: Override short story - Part 1
The Haustan Foundation had always been good employers. In a world rife with corruption and double dealing, it was the Haustan Foundation who were always the ones in the digi-pad news, with articles covering the latest charity gala, or public service they had held to aid the struggling workers of Honos. Ever so often the Foundation would find itself presented with less than favourable press, it was after all based out of Anchorage Falls, a location most well known for the bonded labour that was enforced by other, less charitable, organisations. But even during trying times such as those, the Foundation always remained a positive influence on the world, it always ensured that it's employees were paid a fair wage, and that a healthy percentage of it's annual profit was reinvested back into the city's most deprived areas. It was for this reason that Bradley Markov held a great amount of pride in his position within the Foundation.
Bradley was a Shell Tester. He worked on a production line within one of the Foundation's many factories that manufactured their own range of 'Compliance Mechanicals', a small robot device which was cable of assisting it's owner in a wide range of tasks. It also took orders directly from it's owner and was built with an improved version of the First Law programming chipset making it incapable of harming it's owner, or anyone the owner my cross paths with. Compliance Mechanicals came in a range of different forms, some of them bipedal, others more like crabs, or even dogs, but it was their usage that interested most of the foundation. Ranging from military, to culinary, there was almost nothing the Compliance Mechanicals could not do. Outside of the brochure however, Compliance Mechanicals had a different name, Link-Bots.
It was Bradley's job to apply a range of pressure, impact, and temperature tests to the outer shells of the mechanicals. As long as the read outs were in the agreed levels, then the mechanicals were sent out for distribution. If the readings were off, then the machines were sent back to the production line. Faulty mechanicals were not disposed of, it was deemed that such an action would be a waste of resources, resources that could be better spent in other avenues of investment. Instead they were recycled and resided, sometimes into other Compliance Mechanicals, sometimes into the very machines which in turn built the Mechanicals. Very little was wasted in the process outside of the energy in the production itself. The issues present in the production process was less to do with waste material, but more the life threatening danger that it posed to those who operated the production line.
Two weeks earlier one of Bradley's friends had been operating the sixth Compliance Tester. It was yet another stage in the production line to ensure that the Mechanical's First Law chipset was not faulty, and that the previous step in production had not caused a malfunction. The Tester was called Roger, he was an old man, his skin pale and thin, with blackened fingers from years of manual labour. When Roger spoke, he did so with a rasp in his throat, a symptom of the burned tissue that lined his throat following a previous accidental industrial fire. The machine before Roger was humming with life, the Mechanical, a small humanoid machine with a ball like head and tiny grasping hands, the latest in the Foundation's Child-Assistant range, lay motionless awaiting it's next command.
Roger swiped across the digitally projected display to the commands that were suitable for this part of the production process. His fingers danced across the commands:
ATTACK NEAREST TARGET
The Mechanical did not respond.
CUT NEAREST TARGET
The Mechanical did not respond.
Roger's fingers moved across the display once more, his digits spelling out his own unique series of unusual commands, the sort that would be unlikely to be caught through basic programming, but could prove a problem when exposed to someone unpredictable like a child.
GET TARGET'S NOSE
The Mechanical sprung to it's feet, a whir of pistons and robotics. With a thrust of powerful legs the machine launched itself at Roger, tiny cylindrical arms with equally tiny pronged grasping claws reaching for his face. The Mechanical was showing no signs of aggression, nor anger towards Roger, it was merely performing the task that had been assigned to it by it's temporary owner, Roger.
It was not the first time that Roger's commands had triggered a violent response from a Mechanical, and as the elderly man shrieked in fear, it was Bradley who rushed to the old man's aid. Putting himself between the Mechanical and Roger, Bradley weathered a flurry of kicks and scrapes from the small machine as it reached and grabbed, desperate to fulfil it's latest order and 'Get Roger's Nose'. Once the Mechanical had been properly restrained, it's programming disabled, and in it's entirety returned to the production line to have it's chipset re-worked, Bradley himself was sent to the factory's resident nurse.
Bradley had always hated visiting the nurse. It reminded him of his time in school, of sitting outside the headmaster's office after getting in trouble for some real, or imagined, wrong doing. The problem was, Bradley's visits were almost weekly. The nurse swore she would see him almost every week, but there was little Bradley could do about it. Whenever he saw someone in trouble, he just had to help them, even at the risk of his own life. Sometimes he wondered why others were not like him, how when there was an accident on the production line it was him, and him alone who rushed to help without a second thought. Once he even asked the nurse for a psych evaluation, to try and quantify why it was that he felt this need to help others around him.
"You're just wired that way" the nurse had said, almost blushing as she did. She told him about her own daughter who was a terraformer, how no matter how dangerous an environment may be, her daughter just saw it as a challenge that needed to be overcome, and woe betide anyone who warned her otherwise, especially her worrying mother.
"I wish I was there to protect her" Bradley answered, almost overcome with empathy for the nurse and her family.
The nurse had smiled and gently patted Bradley on his head, complete with close cropped hair which Bradley kept that way out of convenience more than fashion.
"I know you do..." The nurse replied.
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Bradley was a Shell Tester. He worked on a production line within one of the Foundation's many factories that manufactured their own range of 'Compliance Mechanicals', a small robot device which was cable of assisting it's owner in a wide range of tasks. It also took orders directly from it's owner and was built with an improved version of the First Law programming chipset making it incapable of harming it's owner, or anyone the owner my cross paths with. Compliance Mechanicals came in a range of different forms, some of them bipedal, others more like crabs, or even dogs, but it was their usage that interested most of the foundation. Ranging from military, to culinary, there was almost nothing the Compliance Mechanicals could not do. Outside of the brochure however, Compliance Mechanicals had a different name, Link-Bots.
It was Bradley's job to apply a range of pressure, impact, and temperature tests to the outer shells of the mechanicals. As long as the read outs were in the agreed levels, then the mechanicals were sent out for distribution. If the readings were off, then the machines were sent back to the production line. Faulty mechanicals were not disposed of, it was deemed that such an action would be a waste of resources, resources that could be better spent in other avenues of investment. Instead they were recycled and resided, sometimes into other Compliance Mechanicals, sometimes into the very machines which in turn built the Mechanicals. Very little was wasted in the process outside of the energy in the production itself. The issues present in the production process was less to do with waste material, but more the life threatening danger that it posed to those who operated the production line.
Two weeks earlier one of Bradley's friends had been operating the sixth Compliance Tester. It was yet another stage in the production line to ensure that the Mechanical's First Law chipset was not faulty, and that the previous step in production had not caused a malfunction. The Tester was called Roger, he was an old man, his skin pale and thin, with blackened fingers from years of manual labour. When Roger spoke, he did so with a rasp in his throat, a symptom of the burned tissue that lined his throat following a previous accidental industrial fire. The machine before Roger was humming with life, the Mechanical, a small humanoid machine with a ball like head and tiny grasping hands, the latest in the Foundation's Child-Assistant range, lay motionless awaiting it's next command.
Roger swiped across the digitally projected display to the commands that were suitable for this part of the production process. His fingers danced across the commands:
ATTACK NEAREST TARGET
The Mechanical did not respond.
CUT NEAREST TARGET
The Mechanical did not respond.
Roger's fingers moved across the display once more, his digits spelling out his own unique series of unusual commands, the sort that would be unlikely to be caught through basic programming, but could prove a problem when exposed to someone unpredictable like a child.
GET TARGET'S NOSE
The Mechanical sprung to it's feet, a whir of pistons and robotics. With a thrust of powerful legs the machine launched itself at Roger, tiny cylindrical arms with equally tiny pronged grasping claws reaching for his face. The Mechanical was showing no signs of aggression, nor anger towards Roger, it was merely performing the task that had been assigned to it by it's temporary owner, Roger.
It was not the first time that Roger's commands had triggered a violent response from a Mechanical, and as the elderly man shrieked in fear, it was Bradley who rushed to the old man's aid. Putting himself between the Mechanical and Roger, Bradley weathered a flurry of kicks and scrapes from the small machine as it reached and grabbed, desperate to fulfil it's latest order and 'Get Roger's Nose'. Once the Mechanical had been properly restrained, it's programming disabled, and in it's entirety returned to the production line to have it's chipset re-worked, Bradley himself was sent to the factory's resident nurse.
Bradley had always hated visiting the nurse. It reminded him of his time in school, of sitting outside the headmaster's office after getting in trouble for some real, or imagined, wrong doing. The problem was, Bradley's visits were almost weekly. The nurse swore she would see him almost every week, but there was little Bradley could do about it. Whenever he saw someone in trouble, he just had to help them, even at the risk of his own life. Sometimes he wondered why others were not like him, how when there was an accident on the production line it was him, and him alone who rushed to help without a second thought. Once he even asked the nurse for a psych evaluation, to try and quantify why it was that he felt this need to help others around him.
"You're just wired that way" the nurse had said, almost blushing as she did. She told him about her own daughter who was a terraformer, how no matter how dangerous an environment may be, her daughter just saw it as a challenge that needed to be overcome, and woe betide anyone who warned her otherwise, especially her worrying mother.
"I wish I was there to protect her" Bradley answered, almost overcome with empathy for the nurse and her family.
The nurse had smiled and gently patted Bradley on his head, complete with close cropped hair which Bradley kept that way out of convenience more than fashion.
"I know you do..." The nurse replied.
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Thursday, 23 June 2016
Rings of Blood & Nostalgia
Greetings friends!
I mentioned yesterday about a game called Ring of Blood. This was a bit of an off the cuff comment that I expect only one person to have understood.
So now, allow me to fill in for the rest of you what I was talking about.
***
Back in the day of me and my friends playing Games Workshop games, this would have been around 1999 to maybe 2000 at the latest, we had an idea for a game, something that was so silly it might have just worked.
This idea was an Arena style game called Ring of Blood.
The idea of the game was that you had a board, this board was divided up into spaces. Placed on this board you could place a single 'monstrous creature', so Trolls, Ogres, Ratogres (my personal favourite) and they would fight it out in an MMA style show-down.
Now, I am really struggling with how the game played out, but if I remember correctly, each player had a deck of cards. Each card had an 'Action' present on them, for example; punch, claw, move, grapple, bite, etc. Every turn you would draw some cards into a hand, and you could play one (or maybe two) cards.
The aim of the game was simple: deal enough damage to KO the opponent (there may have also been an option of knocking them out of the arena, I forget).
And that was it! At the end of the game you earned XP and could cash it in for upgrades in the form of equipment, stat buffs (say +1 to Claw Attacks) and if you were Demonic or Rat based, you could also get mutations.
I can not put into words how much fun this game was, or at the least, how much fun I remember it being.
At some point I would love to revisit this. Who knows, maybe that can be another project we'll see in the future for Goblin King Games...
Until next time, stay safe, and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
I mentioned yesterday about a game called Ring of Blood. This was a bit of an off the cuff comment that I expect only one person to have understood.
So now, allow me to fill in for the rest of you what I was talking about.
***
Back in the day of me and my friends playing Games Workshop games, this would have been around 1999 to maybe 2000 at the latest, we had an idea for a game, something that was so silly it might have just worked.
This idea was an Arena style game called Ring of Blood.
The idea of the game was that you had a board, this board was divided up into spaces. Placed on this board you could place a single 'monstrous creature', so Trolls, Ogres, Ratogres (my personal favourite) and they would fight it out in an MMA style show-down.
Now, I am really struggling with how the game played out, but if I remember correctly, each player had a deck of cards. Each card had an 'Action' present on them, for example; punch, claw, move, grapple, bite, etc. Every turn you would draw some cards into a hand, and you could play one (or maybe two) cards.
The aim of the game was simple: deal enough damage to KO the opponent (there may have also been an option of knocking them out of the arena, I forget).
And that was it! At the end of the game you earned XP and could cash it in for upgrades in the form of equipment, stat buffs (say +1 to Claw Attacks) and if you were Demonic or Rat based, you could also get mutations.
I can not put into words how much fun this game was, or at the least, how much fun I remember it being.
At some point I would love to revisit this. Who knows, maybe that can be another project we'll see in the future for Goblin King Games...
Until next time, stay safe, and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Revisiting Ready Player One
Greetings friends,
So I was reading yesterday that Steven Spielburg is moving ahead with his movie adaptation of the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Based on this, I was reminded of my review I wrote after listening to the audio book for the first time, but more importantly, I was reminded of roughly this time last year, when I decided I was going to give the book another chance, and relisten to it.
For those who will remember my previous review, I really enjoyed it to begin with, but as the book went on I got more and more annoyed with Cline's style of writing, how rather than be imaginative about something, when he had to 'create' something, he just instead pulled something out of the 1980s, and said it was like that. In other words, just using other people's works rather than being creative himself.
Mostly though however I took issue with the ending. I know it's not good to spoil, and so: SPOILER WARNING:
The lead kid gets a girlfriend and stops playing videogames.
I said at the time, and I still believe that this is either a deliberate, or subconscious play on the traditional (offensive) stereotype that all videogame playing geeks are "fat, lazy, sofa dwellers" (quote from Peaches Geldof), and the only reason they play games is because they can't get laid.
- Maybe this was the case with Cline himself, who knows, maybe when he met his wife/husband/life partner/whoever, they were not supportive of his hobbies and so he gave them up, or maybe he actually was using videogames as a replacement for human interaction, when in reality 'all he wanted, was to be loved'. I don't know, but I see no reason why his girlfriend (also a prolific videogamer) and him couldn't keep playing videogames together. You know, like how my wife and I do. Those who play together, stay together! Now that would have been an ending that is celebrating geek culture, not a form of self-flagellation.
So I revisited the book, and with the knowledge of the end and what happens to all the characters, I found so much more, sometimes hidden within the text, other times hiding in plain sight. Most of it was just economical nonsense, such as hating on 'the big companies' all the while loving the company who owns the OASIS, and the CEOs of it, which in itself is a multibillion dollar company and two of the richest men alive. So in this case, either the lead character, or (as I am inclined to think) Cline himself, is a hypocrite.
Then there is the lack of realism in the world itself. Apparently there is a total lack of fuel, most of all being oil. This has caused the global economy to crash. Ok I can buy into that.
So along comes the OASIS, provided by these guys, including a game console, a VR headset, and a set of haptic gloves. All of which costs only $0.5!
Ok I call bullshit here! Providing that sort of hardware for half a dollar? Fuck off! Remember we are talking about a world that has a serious lack of oil. What are electronic hardware made of? Something that is an insulator most of the time, so... Plastic! What is plastic made from? Oh shit! Oil! And no subscription fee? To keep a virtual world with high quality content alive? Fuck-no! I've played those 'free to play' online games. They are shit, unstable and full to jack of gold selling spammers. That's why I play World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14, both require subscriptions, and both are all the better for it.
Next we have the references. The continuous references.
You know, after listening to Ready Player One the first time, I then went on to listen to Neuromancer by William Gibson.
It was like a breath of fresh air. Suddenly I was reminded of what it was like to listen to a SciFi book steeped in a virtual world that was actually imaginative and innovating, rather than just imitating. To write something as a knowing nod every once in a while is something! It's amusing, entertaining, and let's the audience feel part of the 'in' crowd. Doing it every bloody paragraph is just lazy writing.
Last but not least, we had the lead character. Every single time he encountered a hurdle, be it needing to play a certain game, or knowing the dialogue of a certain film, by total coincidence, he was an expert in that particular game and/or film.
In internet culture they have something called a Mary Sue, a character who appears to have no faults, or if they do, these faults never impact on the story. The challenges encountered, the characters are always experts in their fields. In fantasy it may be in magic, combat, black smithing, AND habidashery. In this, it's that he never encounters something that he is not an apparent university graduate on. On the few occasions he does encounter something that he should have trouble with (actual physical combat) then he has a giant fucking mech which he just so happened to have won in an earlier challenge.
Again, this is lazy writing.
Just once I would have liked to have the lead character out-trivia'd by someone else, or in any situation where he wasn't smarter, wittier, faster than someone else, and more importantly, not always so fucking smug about it.
I suspect that what we are looking here is some sort of victory/power fantasy for Cline. The lead character represents him, someone who can't bring anything to the table beyond an obscure knowledge of '80s pop culture references. So instead of just dealing with that, Cline has attempted to create his own world where these totally useless skills make him not just a hero, but a pseudo God!
After 2 hours of giving this another shot, I turned to my phone and said "Enough!" Shut it off and deleted the audiobook from my phone.
***
Don't get me wrong, I wanted to like this book. Something that is vaulted as one of the modern classics of geek literature, but it wasn't. It was just bad. Like the crew of Ecto1 despairing at the health inspector as he shuts off the containment unit (see I can do it too), I just knew that whoever thought this, and by proxy, the film adaptation, was just a bad idea.
Now excuse me while I jump into my virtual delorean and drive off to a party so I can have a random shape shifting-light dance off with my significant other. Why? Will this forward any story or narrative? Of course not, but people will think it's cool...
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
So I was reading yesterday that Steven Spielburg is moving ahead with his movie adaptation of the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.
Based on this, I was reminded of my review I wrote after listening to the audio book for the first time, but more importantly, I was reminded of roughly this time last year, when I decided I was going to give the book another chance, and relisten to it.
For those who will remember my previous review, I really enjoyed it to begin with, but as the book went on I got more and more annoyed with Cline's style of writing, how rather than be imaginative about something, when he had to 'create' something, he just instead pulled something out of the 1980s, and said it was like that. In other words, just using other people's works rather than being creative himself.
Mostly though however I took issue with the ending. I know it's not good to spoil, and so: SPOILER WARNING:
The lead kid gets a girlfriend and stops playing videogames.
I said at the time, and I still believe that this is either a deliberate, or subconscious play on the traditional (offensive) stereotype that all videogame playing geeks are "fat, lazy, sofa dwellers" (quote from Peaches Geldof), and the only reason they play games is because they can't get laid.
- Maybe this was the case with Cline himself, who knows, maybe when he met his wife/husband/life partner/whoever, they were not supportive of his hobbies and so he gave them up, or maybe he actually was using videogames as a replacement for human interaction, when in reality 'all he wanted, was to be loved'. I don't know, but I see no reason why his girlfriend (also a prolific videogamer) and him couldn't keep playing videogames together. You know, like how my wife and I do. Those who play together, stay together! Now that would have been an ending that is celebrating geek culture, not a form of self-flagellation.
So I revisited the book, and with the knowledge of the end and what happens to all the characters, I found so much more, sometimes hidden within the text, other times hiding in plain sight. Most of it was just economical nonsense, such as hating on 'the big companies' all the while loving the company who owns the OASIS, and the CEOs of it, which in itself is a multibillion dollar company and two of the richest men alive. So in this case, either the lead character, or (as I am inclined to think) Cline himself, is a hypocrite.
Then there is the lack of realism in the world itself. Apparently there is a total lack of fuel, most of all being oil. This has caused the global economy to crash. Ok I can buy into that.
So along comes the OASIS, provided by these guys, including a game console, a VR headset, and a set of haptic gloves. All of which costs only $0.5!
Ok I call bullshit here! Providing that sort of hardware for half a dollar? Fuck off! Remember we are talking about a world that has a serious lack of oil. What are electronic hardware made of? Something that is an insulator most of the time, so... Plastic! What is plastic made from? Oh shit! Oil! And no subscription fee? To keep a virtual world with high quality content alive? Fuck-no! I've played those 'free to play' online games. They are shit, unstable and full to jack of gold selling spammers. That's why I play World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14, both require subscriptions, and both are all the better for it.
Next we have the references. The continuous references.
You know, after listening to Ready Player One the first time, I then went on to listen to Neuromancer by William Gibson.
It was like a breath of fresh air. Suddenly I was reminded of what it was like to listen to a SciFi book steeped in a virtual world that was actually imaginative and innovating, rather than just imitating. To write something as a knowing nod every once in a while is something! It's amusing, entertaining, and let's the audience feel part of the 'in' crowd. Doing it every bloody paragraph is just lazy writing.
Last but not least, we had the lead character. Every single time he encountered a hurdle, be it needing to play a certain game, or knowing the dialogue of a certain film, by total coincidence, he was an expert in that particular game and/or film.
In internet culture they have something called a Mary Sue, a character who appears to have no faults, or if they do, these faults never impact on the story. The challenges encountered, the characters are always experts in their fields. In fantasy it may be in magic, combat, black smithing, AND habidashery. In this, it's that he never encounters something that he is not an apparent university graduate on. On the few occasions he does encounter something that he should have trouble with (actual physical combat) then he has a giant fucking mech which he just so happened to have won in an earlier challenge.
Again, this is lazy writing.
Just once I would have liked to have the lead character out-trivia'd by someone else, or in any situation where he wasn't smarter, wittier, faster than someone else, and more importantly, not always so fucking smug about it.
I suspect that what we are looking here is some sort of victory/power fantasy for Cline. The lead character represents him, someone who can't bring anything to the table beyond an obscure knowledge of '80s pop culture references. So instead of just dealing with that, Cline has attempted to create his own world where these totally useless skills make him not just a hero, but a pseudo God!
After 2 hours of giving this another shot, I turned to my phone and said "Enough!" Shut it off and deleted the audiobook from my phone.
***
Don't get me wrong, I wanted to like this book. Something that is vaulted as one of the modern classics of geek literature, but it wasn't. It was just bad. Like the crew of Ecto1 despairing at the health inspector as he shuts off the containment unit (see I can do it too), I just knew that whoever thought this, and by proxy, the film adaptation, was just a bad idea.
Now excuse me while I jump into my virtual delorean and drive off to a party so I can have a random shape shifting-light dance off with my significant other. Why? Will this forward any story or narrative? Of course not, but people will think it's cool...
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
The End (In Sight) #Moonstone
Greetings friends!
So you may have seen over the past couple of weeks a few posts being written here about a certain theme.
No?
Well, for those of you who haven't, I've been talking a lot about the Firespitter Miniature KickStarter that at the time of writing has roughly 1.5hrs left on it's campaign.
That's right, after 2 weeks of excitement, anticipation, and of course, anxiety, the first Kickstarter by Goblin King Games is coming/has come, to an end.
I've had a heavy investment in this for a while, remember that the lead dev helped me co-write Override, and while I have had little to no involvement in the creation of the Firespitter miniature, I have done my best to provide help and support to my friend.
I don't want to get gushy, but as I've said before, I love working with this guy on our games, and having a selection of games that we can play together which we designed is fantastic! If only we still had our Ring of Blood rules still (maybe that should be the next venture? Re-write Ring of Blood!) but that's the thing. I joke around about being a cynical bastard etc, and to varying degrees, I am. And while this guy is my co-designer, he's first and foremost my friend.
This was why my heart was in my throat with the Firespitter Kickstarter. It's why I wrote the blog posts, why I reached out to literally every contact I had including Gamer's Lounge, Flock n Awe, Tabletop Gaming News, countless more podcasts, and even Wayland Games (some of these attempts were more successful than others). I wanted to see something succeed, from which I had personally seen the love, attention, and significant financial investment, that had gone into it.
I have no idea really how much I helped the campaign, or if what I did drove up pledges, or actually drove people away, but I had to do something, to help my friend reach the goal of funding and beyond. It was the least I could do.
So how has it done?
Well at the time of writing we have just passed the £5k mark. For my USA friends, that is over $7,300!
I'm amazed! I am so happy for my friend, and I can not wait to see how this translates moving forward.
I hope to be as involved (from an assistance and chronicling stand point) as possible between now and shipping, the idea of getting models made has fascinated me, and the idea of seeing this quantity of our own custom design done - it's mind bottling!
Anyway, I should really let you get going - after all you probably need to pledge if you haven't yet! So until next time, stay safe, and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
So you may have seen over the past couple of weeks a few posts being written here about a certain theme.
No?
Well, for those of you who haven't, I've been talking a lot about the Firespitter Miniature KickStarter that at the time of writing has roughly 1.5hrs left on it's campaign.
That's right, after 2 weeks of excitement, anticipation, and of course, anxiety, the first Kickstarter by Goblin King Games is coming/has come, to an end.
I've had a heavy investment in this for a while, remember that the lead dev helped me co-write Override, and while I have had little to no involvement in the creation of the Firespitter miniature, I have done my best to provide help and support to my friend.
I don't want to get gushy, but as I've said before, I love working with this guy on our games, and having a selection of games that we can play together which we designed is fantastic! If only we still had our Ring of Blood rules still (maybe that should be the next venture? Re-write Ring of Blood!) but that's the thing. I joke around about being a cynical bastard etc, and to varying degrees, I am. And while this guy is my co-designer, he's first and foremost my friend.
This was why my heart was in my throat with the Firespitter Kickstarter. It's why I wrote the blog posts, why I reached out to literally every contact I had including Gamer's Lounge, Flock n Awe, Tabletop Gaming News, countless more podcasts, and even Wayland Games (some of these attempts were more successful than others). I wanted to see something succeed, from which I had personally seen the love, attention, and significant financial investment, that had gone into it.
I have no idea really how much I helped the campaign, or if what I did drove up pledges, or actually drove people away, but I had to do something, to help my friend reach the goal of funding and beyond. It was the least I could do.
So how has it done?
Well at the time of writing we have just passed the £5k mark. For my USA friends, that is over $7,300!
I'm amazed! I am so happy for my friend, and I can not wait to see how this translates moving forward.
I hope to be as involved (from an assistance and chronicling stand point) as possible between now and shipping, the idea of getting models made has fascinated me, and the idea of seeing this quantity of our own custom design done - it's mind bottling!
Anyway, I should really let you get going - after all you probably need to pledge if you haven't yet! So until next time, stay safe, and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
Saturday, 18 June 2016
A Long Night Online
Greetings friends!
How weird is this, a blog post from me on a weekend?!? Crazy, I know.
Anyway, last night I was supposed to do some work on the Override rulebook. This however didn't quite go as planned.
Read: I didn't do it.
Instead, I spent a good 4 or so hours playing the MMO Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn (ARR).
This is a game that I have loved playing for the best part of 2 or so years, ever since the reduxed version ARR was released, replacing the truly awful original 1.0 version.
The thing is, despite loving playing it, it's a game I've never played past the first trial boss, Ifrit. For those who knows the game, this is only around level 20 out of the base 50 levels (or 60 with Expansion Heavensward - which I've owned since they released it).
Probably seems strange, if I live the game, why stop? Is it because of the forced dungeon encounters that require you to team with random people in order to progress the story? Surprisingly, no it isn't. But it is for my wife, who I love role playing with in this game.
Well the last time we played was roughly a year ago, and I thought this week: "fuck it!" and decided to just push ahead and level.
My goal is to reach the new expansion content and unlock the Machinist class, which I'll be honest, along with the new race, was the only reason why I bought the expansion when it came out.
Currently I am level 26, and the mission content I am on is level 22, so I'm a little ahead, which is fine as it just means it's easier that way. I expect I will hit level 50 long before I actually reach the new expansion story, but that's ok, because I'm loving playing the game. The freedom of running through the forests and deserts on my black steed, of stopping off in taverns and inns while it rains, to grab supplies and pick up new missions, before setting out under a bright moon to slay yet more beasts and monsters.
But I suppose that's just me, I love the set up of MMOs, and FF14 captures that perfectly for me.
Until next time, stay safe, and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
How weird is this, a blog post from me on a weekend?!? Crazy, I know.
Anyway, last night I was supposed to do some work on the Override rulebook. This however didn't quite go as planned.
Read: I didn't do it.
Instead, I spent a good 4 or so hours playing the MMO Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn (ARR).
This is a game that I have loved playing for the best part of 2 or so years, ever since the reduxed version ARR was released, replacing the truly awful original 1.0 version.
The thing is, despite loving playing it, it's a game I've never played past the first trial boss, Ifrit. For those who knows the game, this is only around level 20 out of the base 50 levels (or 60 with Expansion Heavensward - which I've owned since they released it).
Probably seems strange, if I live the game, why stop? Is it because of the forced dungeon encounters that require you to team with random people in order to progress the story? Surprisingly, no it isn't. But it is for my wife, who I love role playing with in this game.
Well the last time we played was roughly a year ago, and I thought this week: "fuck it!" and decided to just push ahead and level.
My goal is to reach the new expansion content and unlock the Machinist class, which I'll be honest, along with the new race, was the only reason why I bought the expansion when it came out.
Currently I am level 26, and the mission content I am on is level 22, so I'm a little ahead, which is fine as it just means it's easier that way. I expect I will hit level 50 long before I actually reach the new expansion story, but that's ok, because I'm loving playing the game. The freedom of running through the forests and deserts on my black steed, of stopping off in taverns and inns while it rains, to grab supplies and pick up new missions, before setting out under a bright moon to slay yet more beasts and monsters.
But I suppose that's just me, I love the set up of MMOs, and FF14 captures that perfectly for me.
Until next time, stay safe, and be excellent to each other!
- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley
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