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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.

Feb 08

My Self-Organizing Breakthrough

February 08, 2020 by Chris Billows in Business Beller 0 comments tags: Business Development, Human Condition, Tools
I’m blessed and burdened with an active and creative imagination. I regularly have new exciting thoughts penetrating into my concentration becoming a distraction from the task I’m on. The burden I experience is how to handle these thoughts. I can’t stop them from arriving and I dismissing them undermines my creativity. I’ve learned that these thoughts are important and have provided solutions to longstanding problems. I needed a method to store these thoughts so that they’re shown respect but don’t seriously interrupt my flow of concentration. I took to writing them down in paper journals and eventually moved on to writing them in emails sent to myself. It was not long before this method became quite cumbersome and limited in usefulness. Writing down thoughts in a linear note-taking method makes it hugely difficult to retrieve the information. Even using an electronic record in email or a word-processing document, there is no efficient method to find thoughts. Transferring these thoughts to a task-management tool was another new process. Thoughts written down in a string of entries does not lend itself to prioritization or sorting. When I came across an online Kaban system I was intrigued about what it could offer but […]
Jan 10

Tales of Strange Cyberworlds Episode #1

January 10, 2020 by Chris Billows in Hobby Heedings 0 comments tags: 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 […]
Dec 15

Playstates Theory Definition – Version 2.0 (Dec/19)

December 15, 2019 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Game Philosophy, Games Analysis, Playstates
I’ve updated and enhanced my Playstates Definition below. My plan is to continue to develop this theory and eventually establish a website dedicated to demonstrating how the theory works. Playstates is a theory that explains how different types of play coexist, combine together, and are recursive. The different types of play are each defined by a singular core trait that acts as a both a distinguishing and complementing characteristic. At present there are five different kinds or states of play.   Toygrounds Sign-Plays Puzzles Games Sports   Each of the five Playstates can be defined as “The Play of …” which represents the core characteristic of that Playstate. These are as follows:   Sign-Plays – The Play of Meaning. Signals  – signs that require constant encoding and decoding and interpretation Symbols – signs that are more static and require subtle interpretation Role-Plays – using our behavior to communicate and experience meaning   Toygrounds – The Play of Exploration. Toys – objects that are played with freely and with transient rules Playgrounds – spaces that are played with freely and with transient rules   Puzzles – The Play of Matching. Symbols – letters or numbers as basis for matches Shapes – […]
Dec 15

Playstates Theory Update

December 15, 2019 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Game Philosophy, Games Analysis, Playstates
I recently finished reading Brian Upton’s book Aesthetics of Play and I found it containing many insights into Games Design which also can be applied into our understanding about theory of Play.  Of particular interest for me was his description about the emotional state of anticipation being a form of mental play. This anticipatory plan he then applies to our interaction with media like books, film, theater, and music. Our delight in anticipating what will happen next in these linear medias is still an active form of play according to Upton and I can’t help but agree with him. This prompted me to consider updating my Playstates theory since I first wrote about it in May 2017 and established its first version in April 2018. When I wrote these posts I considered Play to be an overtly interactive activity. It was Upton’s explanation about how the media of books, theater, movies, and music are fundamentally practices of Play. While they don’t overtly possess agency and interactivity, Upton is brilliant in illustrating that it is the anticipation of what will happen next is where the Play takes place. This can happen in a chess match when you wait your turn to […]
Sep 28

Resetting Priorities

September 28, 2019 by Chris Billows in Business Beller, Hobby Heedings, Jets Flight Control, Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Blogging, Change of Mind
This past summer has been a time of review in relation to this blog and my ventures (billo.ws/cyber.holdings). I’ve followed enough game developers on Twitter to witness the carnage in the industry and have decided that I am not going to put any effort for the next year or two on new game projects. My plan is to re-launch CreateOrConquer.com, do some promotion to its mailing list, do exploration of viability for Urbaniacs.com, and casually work on design ideas for Heropath.com. I still love the industry as a fan and advocate, but there simply is no way to justify any serious time investment. There is almost no Return on Investment in Video Games as a game developer. The Video Games industry has become just like the other creative industries with the barrier to entry becoming so low that anybody and everybody is doing game development. This is an abundance of riches and comes with its own downside which is that it is extremely difficult to compete. My focus will shift to website properties which can be developed to attract an audience. I have a couple of projects that I will be turning my attention to, one is related to Sports […]
Oct 30

Playstates in the Visual Arts

October 30, 2018 by Chris Billows in Playstates Theory 0 comments tags: Game Philosophy
I am beginning to recognize Playstates not only being a sorting system for play, it has also become a lens by which to discern different cultural activities. After seeing the Playstates in Books I now see that Playstates can even be applied to the world of Visual Art. Marshall McLuhan said that the medium (the singular of media) is the message. His insight was revolutionary at the time, and I believe I found a new demonstration of this insight. It occurred when I apply the Playstates model as a lens to evaluate how we interact with media, and in this post’s focus, showing how the five different Playstates are found in the medium of visual art. Below I have listed examples of all five and this has forced me to rethink my stated position that books are inherently passive. It is quite possible that there is a continuum of activeness to passivity found in all media. I will need to take some time to explore that further! Let’s explore examples of Playstates in the Visual Arts: Toygrounds or the Play of Exploration –  Museums with their artifacts to admire and Galleries with their pieces to purchase. Role-Plays or the Play […]
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