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The Journals of Doc Surge is the personal blog of Chris Billows. This blog’s purpose is to explore ideas and concepts through the discipline of writing as an exercise to further personal understanding.

Check out more about me, some of my thoughts on Games and Hockey.

Sep 03

The Ascenturian Contemplation Game

September 03, 2022 by Chris Billows in Political Ponderings, Republic of Bloggers 0 comments tags: Human Condition, Political Opinion, Virtuous Discourse
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-serial The Ascenturian Saga at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments. Dear Chris, Thank you for the writings on what is means to be a Ascenturian. How inspiring and fun! I consider it a pinnacle of your blog’s Roleplaying Game concept. You called on others to roleplay the engaging on ideas and the Ascenturian saga invites others to contemplate and roleplay a future that we will never experience. A serious yet fun game that I am joining through this reply to you. In your series you identify six principles that you consider vital for the human species to survive into the future. In keeping with the roleplaying game theme, these six principles can be likened to RPG character traits which need to be levelled up to advance the game. Below are your ASCENT principles: The Principle of Assembly: Assemble a plurality of reciprocal collectives of any viable kind. The Principle of Sustainability: Reject accelerating technology for perfectible techniques. The Principle of Commonisation: Create commons that are open to aid in the subsistence of all. The Principle of Elevation: Secure solidarity by eliminating poverty. The Principle of Normalisation: Achieve neutral population growth without […]
May 07

New Energy, Names, and Websites

May 07, 2022 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Business Development, Change of Mind, Games Analysis, Personal Resolve
Since I’ve gotten over my scarcity hurdle, I’ve found an increase in creativity for me. This new energy has lead me to refocus on new core interests by closing down projects and renaming others. Below is my announcement of changes: Billows Enterprise – My root website that acts as a starting point for my business offerings. Used to be called Promaginy (08/2004 to 12/2016) and then Billows Cyber Holdings (2017 to 2019). The recent name change reflects a shift to include coaching and consulting as an offering in the future. Billows Cyber Enterprises – My business offerings of web apps and web sites that will replace Cybersidline.com. Also to be closed down will be Fandomnaut.com and EpicStartPage as I refocus to take aspects of those sites for a new web app. Those web sites never worked as well as I wanted and its time to mothball them and move on. Chris Billows Video Games – It slowly dawned on me that that doing things I am passionate about even a little each day gives me increased energy and this applies to my game development offering. I also decided to not get ahead of myself by trying to create a studio. […]
Apr 16

Play Accords

April 16, 2022 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Game Philosophy, Games Analysis, Playstates
Play Motifs (used to be Playstates) has been a series of blog posts attempting to map play and video games but it never touched on the whole cycle of game development, release, and player adoption. So I have created a new concept called Play Accords to capture this. Play Accords got its genesis through two earlier blogs I wrote: Layered DissonanceĀ and Immersion Accords. Those two blogs teased out some ideas that were interesting and as I thought about, could be combined to create a model that captured the game dev cycle. The Play Accords consists of five steps as follows: Inspiration – These are the genres, Play Motifs, mechanics, and more that capture the imagination of developers. Developers – These are the people who a drawn to respond to what inspires them. They take that inspiration and engineer it to fit into a brand new video game. This new video game in turn attracts players. Players – These are the people who play the developer’s video game. They are diverse and include fans, fandoms, critics, scholars, and theorists. Players represent the critical ingredient to the video game reaching its most complete state for when a video game is put in […]
Mar 19

Video Game Delivery

March 19, 2022 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Games Analysis
Video Games have been around since 1962 and I got thinking about the myriad ways they’ve been delivered to players. The list below is a comprehensive collection based on my research and is shared as a repository that others may find interesting. There are three broad categories of delivery: location, format, and style. — Delivery via location (physical to digital): University Labs Coin up / Arcades Retail / Consumer purchase (computers and consoles) BBS / Dial-in Service Shareware/Freeware mail-order Online / Digital download — Delivery Format (physical to digital): Server repository (computers) Cabinet (arcade) Printed code that you input (computers) Cartridge (consoles) Diskettes/CD/DVD (consoles, computers) Digital download (consoles, computers, smart-phones) — Delivery Style (continuation & content): Session-limited Save games Save codes Save points Persistence / MMO Demo/Full version Episodic Downloaded Content In-App Purchase
Feb 22

Defining Indie GameDev

February 22, 2022 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 0 comments tags: Playstates, Summarizing a Business Organization
With my intention to being doing coding and game development, I got thinking about the definition of being an Indie Game Developer. Indies are distinct from AAA & AA level game developers which are enterprises that do game development so to develop profits for its shareholders. They are value creation machines, driven by passion to create great gaming experiences for the marketplace. Indies also are driven by passion but they approach it differently. I think of them being the single ‘A’ level game developers, with the ‘A’ meaning Amateur. Yet as the game development industry has expanded, so should the definition of what an Indie is. So I believe that ‘A’ level game developers should three sub-categories: A-I, A-II, and A-III. Basically the more money and resources available determines the level. A-I is an Independent effort, A-II is 2-10 people working together, and A-III is 11+ people working together. All of these A level game developers start off unpaid but as they build their product they may carry-on unfunded, self-funded, family-funded, or crowd-funded depending on the scale of the game.   AAA The largest sized game developers in the industry employing 100s to 1000s Ā  Ā  AA The medium sized […]
Feb 13

Game Development Skill Update & Focus

February 13, 2022 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings 1 comments tags: Awareness / Understanding, Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
It has been just over four months since I made a resolution to start learning how to code. I slowly began to introduce myself to coding concepts using Chris DeLeonā€™s course ā€˜Code Your First Gameā€™. I am really enjoying coding! I can see its appeal and how it forces you to get to know how your own mind works. Errors and mistakes are a reflection of perception errors 99.9% of the time. I’m making a concerted effort to stay open and not get frustrated when things do not work. The course had me build some very basic arcade games and culminated in a limited, simple puzzle demo demonstrating the first steps of Heropath. I am really pleased how having a project to work on has given me a focus that I did not have previously. I am now able to take the research and theorizing I’ve been doing and apply it to the roots and definitions of Heropath.   Now is the time to adopt a game development engine. I’ve done some research and listened to the feedback of some of my Twitter follows and I’ve come to a decision about which engine to work with. What I’m looking for […]
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