by Chris Billowsin Political Ponderings, Republic of Bloggers0 commentstags: Corruption of Democracy, Political Opinion
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-letter Considering Politics at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments. Dear Chris, I’m writing this blog-letter to one of your really old articles – Considering Politics you posted way back in 2006! I stumbled on that article a few years ago, bookmarked it, forgot about it, then re-read it, and started drafting a response about three years ago. Some fascinating ideas are worth coming back to, especially these kind of idea starters that prompt us to look at things from a new perspective. I love your idea of meta signals/temperaments that cut across political movements. Your analysis makes sense and is possibly one of a few factors that driver voter participation and attitude towards politics. I also think that there may be an overarching factor that affects all of those signals/temperaments. I have a theory that voter disinterest, increased amount of non-voters, and general disdain towards politicians and politics is because Western Liberal Democracy does such a good job of creating comfort and disinterest. Let’s call it Too Comfortable To Care. We have systematically created more and more […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Political Ponderings0 commentstags: Personal Resolve
2020 has been a revealing and challenging year. COVID-19 and the reaction of governments, main-stream media, the pharmaceutical industry, and the majority populations have revealed how conditioned humans are. Its been a disaster and our reaction has been massively incompetent. I totally disagree with the those who say that COVID-19 is a conspiracy to control people. First of all, to execute such a conspiracy is to believe that governments and its shadow influences planned things far in advance. I find that laughable as the vast majority of government and business elites are not that smart or competent to execute such an elaborate plan. Secondly, control of people is already a foregone conclusion. Society is tightly regulated and this is accepted by most people (including myself). I don’t believe that our freedoms have are not been fundamentally threatened as of yet. Sacrificing freedoms to not see people over Christmas and New Years was repulsive but I understand governments would use such a ham-fisted tactic and that 90% of people would comply. Governments the world over do not know what they’re doing as they are beholden to the medical and scientific elites that are myopic to their fields and have no clue […]
by Chris Billowsin Playstates Theory, Republic of Bloggers0 commentstags: Change of Mind, Games Analysis, Playstates
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-serial on Game Dissonance at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments. Dear Chris, First of all, thank you for your kind reference to me. It gives me joy to know that my enthusiasm for your work has helped you. Your work to me has been invaluable as it helped evolve my understand of philosophy and video games. We have been able to create a digital pen-pal relationship that honours the Republic of Bloggers. Thank you for doing what you do. Now onto my response. As you have consistently stated, stories exist in more than books and films and prove this by successfully operating a consultancy that offers narrative design showing how stories can be told via video games. These stories sometimes are not knitted well to game-play and your article explained how dissonance occurs in those situations. This made me think further on the ideas that I’ve been teasing through a few recent posts that video games do not need to be Art or Literature to be meaningful. Video games are their own medium and thus need […]
by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: The Crossover Zone
After some further research, I’ve come up with a third set of Crossovers. The other two sets were posted here and are known as: 1. Formal (or Direct) Crossover When a character, celebrity, icon formally lands in another medium. 2. Analogue (or Parallel) Crossover When a character or icon is mimicked in another medium. These two kinds of Crossovers don’t capture the aspect of time, be it the past, the future, or archetypal and I decided that this would constitute its own collection of Crossovers. So I’m pleased to present the Scenario Crossover: 3. Scenario (or Temporal) Crossover The media property or its creators engage formally or directly, allowing characters in a media or medium or milieu to meet each other. There are five Formal Crossover sub-categories: Type A – Past versions of self Type B – Future version of self Type C – Shadow-versions of self Type D – Anima/Animus versions of self Type E – Archetype versions of self What follows is some examples of this using comic book heroes where Crossovers standard fare. Type A – Past versions of self Marvel 1602 was a series that had the Marvel comic universe being transported back to […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller0 commentstags: Business Development, Self Analysis
This post is a bit of history, a bit of product promotion, and a bit of diary. I am pleased to announce that over on my main game development website, that I have released CreateOrConquer.com Version 1.5. Now a Version 1.5 is not usually something to write an entire blog post about, but this time it is. Why? Because it took me a decade to get from Version 1.0 to 1.5 which is an absurdly long time to do so little. How did this happen? I’m not a coder. I don’t have the time to take on coding as a sideline. I work full time in a health care career, have a family, and like to tinker around with lots of different things. I am not the kind of person with a singular laser focus. I typically will have five plus books on the go at one time, plus numerous projects. I spread myself around intellectually and interest wise. To be competent at coding there needs to be dedicated attention and I hope to one day apply myself at it, but currently it is not possible. I acquired CreateOrConquer.com back in 2010. Though it was in development from 2006 to […]
by Chris Billowsin Playstates Theory0 commentstags: Components of Human Nature, Game Philosophy, Playstates
“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” You might have heard this proverb or some variation on it. We know that play is important and in many ways we live to play. Play takes many different forms and I captured these through my theory on Playstates. Getting back to the proverb, we are told that play is something that needs to complement work. If you work all of the time and have no play in your life then you are considered to be dull or living a sub-optimal life. Play adds delight to life. Yet play is not the only activity that is meant to complement work. Some academics and professions have defined distinctions as we see in the following table: The Park and Recreation Professional’s Handbook defines Leisure as an overarching umbrella that has three aspects: Time, Activity, and State of Mind. All three are Leisure since you are doing things you want to do and have no obligation to do. Leisure is perceived true free time and manifests in things like vacation, retirement, holidays, and being totally free to pursue whatever activities that you want to. Recreation is defined as a Leisure activity that possesses socially […]
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