by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings, Mental Mischief, Playstates Theory0 commentstags: Components of Human Nature, Comprehensive Analysis, Defining Life
I’ve made a resolution to start learning how to code. I’m only a few hours into it and must say it is enjoyable. There is something magical about making things work on the screen based on your code. Learning how to code is definately a skill that will take time to develop. I’d never say that I have a natural talent to code though I find some of the concepts fascinating which creates enthusiasm and drive to learn more. This got me thinking about where talent is different from skill and where skill relates to art and engineering. With me being the kind of person who loves working with conceptual models, I’ve create a speculative Talent-to-Culture model to illustrate how skills, talent, art, and culture all are related: Talent derives from natural ability or drive, and Talent may lead to skill, and Skill requires tool usage, and Tool usage comes from engineering, and Engineering comes from knowledge or science, and Knowledge comes from concepts, and Concepts comes from culture, and Culture comes from society This model can be inverted, but because I’m focusing on skill development for myself, I started at the skill (top) end of the model. […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Blogging, Business Development
Happy New Year for 2022! Here is a quick review about what I’ve been up to for the past year and where I’m headed in 2022. As I’ve already impelemented in 2021: Promaginy is now my vintage web game website. Cybersideline added a couple of projects with Fandomnaut and Yertunes. Gamenigma was originally going to be my new coding project but then I was able to figure out a way to incorporate lots of my ideas into Heropath. In fact, I experienced a huge synthesis of ideas back in October 2021 which was really exciting and fun. Heropath will be the cumulation of ideas found in Playstates, Tales of Strange Cyberworlds, my passion for crossovers, and many other things. After writing and thinking for many years, a path forward has revealed itself! This is exciting for me because I’ll be moving away from writing and attempt to travel this new pathway through coding. While I will still be updating this blog infrequently, most of my writing on play and games will be moving over to the Heropath’s blog. I’ll be linking to that blog as patterns emerge. So you can expect infrequent coding updates via Heropath and other web projects. […]
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings1 commentstags: Business Development, Change of Mind, Personal Resolve, Self Analysis
I’m a conceptual thinker and because of such I can get caught up into ideas and concepts and believe that understanding something is the same thing as doing something. Such ignorance is typical of thinking types. So I’ve made a resolution to start taking up coding to 1) fix/build my own websites, 2) build my own video games I’ve avoided developing these skills because I’ve always felt I didn’t have the time, but I’ve matured enough in my self-awareness that I need to stop with the self-limiting thinking – the scarcity mentality that plagues so many of us – and just be open to possibilities. The self-limiting thinking that I don’t have enough time to fit it all in is poisonous to getting started. I’m now okay if I don’t finish or accomplish anything since I am going to approach this skill learning with a beginner mind and just enjoy the journey. I’m going to track my skill development, not put any pressure on myself to learn a certain amount of skill by an arbitrary date, and try to find the way of combining intention with spontaneity. Starting today I am going to make a resolution to practice this. Today […]
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 Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: The Crossover Zone
I’ve been long fascinated with how media properties and their creators interact with each other. The idea that a media property can be seen to possess a kind of meta-consciousness that interacts with other medias is something captures my imagination. This kind of activity is typically named a Crossover and is pretty common practice in the superhero comic medium, but has become more common in all entertainment media. Crossovers are imaginative play and are fun. As I thought about what Crossovers mean, I defined Crossovers to be where two or more media properties engage directly or in parallel with each other. But as I dug deeper I gleaned there are actually different kinds of Crossovers. They are as follows: 1. Formal (or Direct) Crossover The media property or its creators engage formally or directly, allowing characters in a media or medium or milieu meet each other. There are four Formal Crossover sub-categories: Type A – Celebrity Pollination (i.e. celebrities are fans of other medias) Type B – Trans-Media (i.e. toys become a cartoon) Type C – Character Salad (i.e. characters proper interact) Type D – Character Mashup (i.e. characters take on another character’s properties) 2. Analogue (or Parallel) Crossover The […]
by Chris Billowsin Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: Pulp Roleplay, Tales of Strange Cyberworlds
Welcome to my new serial Tales of Strange Cyberworlds, a future set of posts that explores strangeness in Video Games. Being an avid Video Game fan, I have always been interested in both Video Game history and how some games stood out to me. It could be a technical achievement, innovative genre, or something different that triggered my interest. Tales of Strange Cyberworlds is about Video Games that have captured my imagination written in a pulp fiction narrative, a kind of historic-adventure Fanfiction. The avatar I’ll be role-playing for this narrative is Doc Surge a fictional adventurer similar to Doc Savage, who has developed the Strangervision Computer as a way to to catalog and interact with various Cyberworlds (Video Game platforms) and their sub-worlds (the Video Games themselves). Those Cyberworlds that grab the attention of the Strangervision are a glorious collection of Video Games that contain game state transmigration (game events that carry over within and between games), genre mashups, meta-textual treatments, player-less win states, and flipped perspectives. You won’t find games that contain hard-core twitch difficulty or genre-typical themes. Tales of Strange Cyberworlds is not intended to be a history of Video Games but it does use […]
Recent Comments