by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Hobby Heedings0 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Blogging, Business Development
I am wishing everyone a Happy New Year for 2024. May the new year bring you peace, good health, and good fortune. There is not much to report as far as my projects are concerned but I continue to plug away at them and do find myself inspired for periods of time. . . In summary: . As I’ve said previous New Year Days, I am thankful for the privilege to pursue these projects and wish that everyone could have the same opportunity.
by Chris Billowsin Business Beller, Mental Mischief1 commentstags: Awareness / Understanding, Blogging, Business Development
2023 is a new year of contrasts for me. While I am feeling positive about my own personal life, I am also very disturbed by the war in Ukraine, the oppression and murder of people in Iran and China. The general state of geopolitics is very concerning and I believe we are heading towards years of cold and hot conflict between the West and the illiberal order. This make me thankful for my good fortune and also sensitive to those less fortunate. Looking back at 2022, I updated my passion project at Heropath by releasing a couple of small incremental demos. I also refocused my attention by closing down some projects and by doing so have made some progress on some ideas that have been percolating with me for decades. I will be slowing down my posts to Journals of Doc Surge to every 3-4 months as I get busy with those projects. Which brings me to some news of what I’ve been working on the past few months and will continue to work on in 2023. These two projects, about Music and Sport respectively. are related in an obvious and a personal way for me, Both are forms of […]
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 Heedings, Jets Flight Control, Playstates Theory0 commentstags: 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 […]
by Chris Billowsin Mental Mischief, Republic of Bloggers0 commentstags: Blogging, Human Condition, Virtuous Discourse
An open letter to Chris Bateman responding to his blog-letterĀ Top Ten Cybergs at Only A Game as part of the Republic of Bloggers. Feel welcome to provide your own input via the Comments! Dear Chris, What an great concept. It makes so much sense to link human networks with its inherent technology. The term Cyberg emphasizes the linked aspect of humanity, technology, and networks. It got me thinking about some additional Cyberg applications that were not included in your list, but I’m not sure where would these fit in your hierarchy of top Cybergs. I think that a few of them may warrant some attention. 1) Literacy Literacy is a tool and technology to symbol understanding. I think it might be the very first connection system, being one of the fundamental pillars that supports civilization. While this technology is not cyber based it is definitely a network that communicates ideas and thoughts. 2) Toys Toys, like Literacy appears to be older than any of the other cybergs as it is so fundamental to human and animal development. While it is not aĀ network, I think the the fact that it is shared cross-species, it is as if […]
by Chris Billowsin Playstates Theory, Political Ponderings, Republic of Bloggers2 commentstags: Blogging, Human Condition, Political Opinion, Virtuous Discourse
Brian Green wrote on his Psychochild blog an interesting post about how MMO games are a means to understanding Socialism. First of all, its an interesting post to just think about games in terms of political economics. Second of all, I think Brian makes a typical mistake of associating positive qualities with something he favors, known as the Halo Effect. Games as Socialism… Iāve run into an interesting situation with some people in FFXIV. Many times people have needed items which I have gladly been able to provide (or acquire easily), but people feel bad taking the items from me. They insist on paying for the items somehow, or they want to trade. One friend said she felt bad always asking me for stuff, even if I offer on a regular basis. I wanted to take a look at this, and look at why it really didnāt bother me to offer these items or services to others. Why Iām a big-hearted socialist in MMOs. Okay, I used āthe scary S-wordā in the title. Intentionally. š Since many Americans have a terrible understanding of what socialism is, let me give a basic definition here. This delves into some economic theory, […]
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