Unwashed Dreams

I was bulk mailed this by a friend but it arrived after I'd sent her a recent photo of myself and I was joking about how photogenic she is (true) as opposed to me being uncomfortable and therefore unattractive in photos (not really true). It seems like a tenuous link to The Four Agreements, but I believe it's important for us to stop believing our own petty lies and false claims. I want to employ these ideas in my inner dialog more often:

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD

Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean.
Avoid using the word to speak against yourself
or to gossip about others. Use the power of your
word in the direction of truth and love.

DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY

Nothing others do is because of you. What
others say and do is a projection of their own reality,
their own dream. When you are immune to the
opinions of others, you won’t be the victim of
needless suffering.

DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS

Find the courage to ask questions and to express
what you really want. Communicate with others
as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings,
sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement,
you can completely transform your life.

ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST

Your best is going to change from moment to moment;
It will be different when you are healthy as opposed
to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best,
and you will avoid self-judgement, self-abuse, and regret.

For a video that gives more of a taste, try:

It's amazing what Google Desktop will discover for you. I was looking up the word "peasant" for a new client who wants some consulting on building a potential blog called EatPeasant.com and instead of finding my mail that I sent to her a month ago (and Outlook apparently "ate"), I found notes on a game idea I had back in 1999.

I obviously had a lot of time on my hands, but this game idea was part of the genesis that drove me to develop virtual world technology. So I had a great time reading some of my early ambitions for the platform and the game. We've all still got a few years of work ahead before we can claim to achieve this:

Why are movies STILL beating games?

Slaughter games are great for adrenalin-soaking action,
but not much more. Why?
Games that have non-linear, but fixed story events are just bad films. Why?
Every Hollywood film focuses on character development. Why?

Good games get you excited. Good films involve your emotions. Why not both?

Why not a game with deeper emotional link to the creatures in the world, with an intuitive interface that just lets the gamer play?

Wouldn’t it be good if a game could achieve what a really good popular swords and sorcery book series does, stretching over three huge books and maybe a thousand years of history, with many twists and turns and enough excitement and emotional involvement to keep you awake all night tonight and all of next week as well… Only to discover that there is a new series about to be released by the author…

What would a game like this need? Well, an intuitive interface and intelligent creatures for basic starters.

Intuitive interface? Does that mean something?
Yes…

You click on a cavalry unit to select it. Then you click on an enemy peasant in amongst a gang of about ten enemy peasants angrily clutching pitchforks. Your cavalry unit charges double speed at the peasants. They turn and flee from the charge, but the unit overtakes them and skewers anyone of the peasants with the lance, then starts hacking at the fleeing rabble with a sword, calling on them to surrender, until they fall to the ground begging to be spared. Your unit rounds them up in a group and captures six peasants, killing one who tries to escape with a shot from a crossbow. Only two manage to escape, the rest drop their pitchforks. The cavalry unit begins leading the disarmed peasants back to your base to be sold as slaves. You have sent orders that troops are to capture prisoners whenever possible as your cities could do with the slaves and your army could do with the gold.
But now your unit sees over the hill more trained enemies are approaching. Your cavalry unit will soon be outnumbered…
…You deselect the cavalry unit and lasso a group of archers to select them and then click on a nearby river. They walk up to the river and dive in and allow the fast currents to carry them quickly down river. At the nearest point to your cavalry unit, you click on the other side of the river and they swim over to the river bank as best as they can and get out. Then with them still selected, you put your cursor over your cavalry unit, who’s horse has been slain and he is now on the ground, fighting for survival nearby: a green guard circle appears around the cavalry unit. You click. Your archers come running, firing arrows at the enemies attacking your struggling unit, and for the moment ignoring the unarmed and fleeing peasants. Two enemy horsemen fall dead. Now the cavalry unit grabs one of the free horses, mounts, and manages to escape. The cavalry unit rides around to act as vanguard for the archers, because in the default gamer profile, auto-formation is switched on…

At the same time, in a small window showing another area:

…You deselect the archers and select a mixed group of your units in this window. Next, you lasso a large area of land, then release the mouse button. The units set off to patrol this area, moving in groups of four, given that this area is of medium danger, and performing random identity checks on civilian units passing through this zone. A fight breaks out during a check. Four of your units have uncovered an enemy soldier disguised as a merchant. The enemy soldier now attacks them ferociously. All nearby troops run to help…

Do you get the intuitive bit?? Good. And the story never stops. After all, we want a player to be immersed in the world.

What next? Well, we would need a central character you would want to care about. Powerful, but vulnerable. Mortal, yet with godlike abilities. A central figure to the whole plot. Actually an interesting character, who must develop. Maybe even a mirror for your own personality..

It is all about finding the Dreamer within
You are suffering from a sleeping problem. You have not been sleeping for many days. You are sent to a radical new institute for sleep disorders, called The Academy of Dreaming. They take you for walks and teach you a few things about “Letting go” and “relaxing”. Then you are asked to find your dreaming body. You must fall asleep first. You get down on the ground, try to relax, mouse movements keep you awake and one eye reopens, but then you really relax and sleep starts to come, but now they talk to you to not disappear completely, to let go of the body. The dream body floats out of the sleeping body. They tie dream ropes around you. They are now looking like strange creatures, but all calm and helping. Making sure you don’t fly too far or fall. They encourage you to fly a bit, then they tell you to enter the dream within the dream and learn more about reality. They say to find out about the dream is to let go of reality.

Real world
A world in which individuals are self-seeking.
These units are not cannon-fodder. They want to breath air as long as possible and may flee when you say “fight!”

Small independent farming provinces grow and start to build defences or seek allies. Taverns are built along popular trade roads. Trade increases. Populations grow. People move to the cities.

If you become a ruler of a clan or a city or a kingdom, then your role doesn’t become desperate button clicking to tell everyone what to do. It is to initiate new ideas, set guidelines for growth in place and to adjust due to circumstance, so this leaves you more free to do what you want to do, such as take hands on control of battles or plan your ultimate city fortification or such.

But you begin more humbly, as one who is in our world and not yet anymore special than the rest of us.

A real world does not have “Fog of War”. Sight is limited to line of sight. Radars do not see ground troops. In this game you have a mini-globe, which reports the information of unit positions and enemies that are seen by your units on it. This is controlled by the line of sight of you and your units.

A real world doesn’t get broken into distinct missions unless that is how you wish to view it. And even if you play with the world with missions, you do not basically always start by building a new base of operations in enemy territory and then beat that local enemy. Cities support new forts and cities with troops and money and do all they can to make them succeed. And war is global. You only have so much strength and you can only defend so much territory. The enemy can focus all strength on one area and will certainly win. But this is the great opportunity for the great generals to race forward, break enemy supply lines, destroy enemy cities and prepare an ambush for a fast returning enemy army that is moving most likely in disarray, with faster troops moving far ahead of slower, more powerful firepower. Global. Real time. Continuous.

Thanks to Google desktop for rediscovering that for me. I hope one day to achieve a game that I as a 13 year old would have been totally immersed in.

cheers,
Bruce

I am not a gadget freak. I don’t like technology for its own sake. I think less is more and silence is better than noise, and yet I love technology that helps me. I personally love meeting people and I can be forgetful of people’s names and where we’ve previously met. In 10 years I want to own a pair of sunglasses that has an inner display that lets me look around in a crowd and it points out people who I’ve met before. What technology does it use? Bluetooth, GPS and..? Who cares about the underlying tech. I want this so badly because I want to feel like I belong in a village of my own choosing, where I find it easy to connect with people of my own interests just by walking around enjoying the serendipitous meetings in any city. These future sunglasses will show me a person’s name and previous conversation notes if I’ve met them before and I’ll control the display of my sunglasses with a small palm device that is also a 3D gesture mouse similar to the Nintendo Wii. This “mouse” will allow me to discreetly find out more about the people I meet such as what information I’ve collected about our shared interests as I walk up to them and start chatting with them. I don’t know what you think about the usefulness of these sunglasses in your life, but I want them as soon as possible.

I’m prepared to be patient, but in the meantime I’m interested in working with others to create interactive 3D platforms that enable all kinds of interactive user experiences via the web. I also hope it encourages the creation of amazing devices like my future pair of sunglasses.

My newest venture is VastPark (www.VastPark.com). My team and I have worked hard to ensure that the VastPark platform is well suited to a future of loosely connected devices that enable users to share local experiences. I look forward to developing the platform with others in the venture capital, technology, web, game and social communities. And as soon as I get those sunglasses, I can’t wait to meet you in the street and, more amazingly, remember your name.