Virtual Surreality
I'm a photographer from the sun, the moon is in the perfect light
Today on the Duckstack we will again rail against virtual reality and video games, mostly for the benefit of readers who are not gamers. I have also decided to quit my job and write substack full time. This will not improve publication quality. I throw myself with full faith in God into the hands of my beloved paid subscribers to sustain me.
I made the mistake of talking to God after staying up too late, and while I’m grateful for all the things he shared with me I couldn’t help praying “but Father, it is 2 o’clock in the morning” prompting him to talk for another ten minutes out of spite. We repeated this cycle multiple times. Out of spite.
We’ve had our share of trials recently and a lot of hospital bills, among other things, life has been raining on us for a good while now and yet God has been very forcefully making clear that he still cares, and will take care of us. We’ve really been quite richly blessed. I was praying which sorted out my feelings about this. At first, I prayed that God would help me to pay him back (out of a sense of honor), but I realized (he pointed out) that that’s impossible1 and not something he would even care for anyway2. Now instead pray that God will help me to use what he has blessed me with, that I can make him proud.
HISTORY
Fall came by, and it brought its friends: skeletons, gravestones, pumpkins (the benevolent kind), and ghosts. The little one runs around the house wanting to be a “tiny ghost, with tiny wings!” for Halloween. Then, Fall got its friends and murdered our garden, it is so over.
The little one found the bathtub and has claimed it as his own, carrying it everywhere he goes. He cuddles it for hours. It gets in the way but I would never deprive him of this
VISION PROBLEMS
Video games are dead and we have killed them.
Virtual Reality has always gotten the people going over how exciting the possibilities are. It has always been seen as the aspirational ideal, portrayed like in ready player one3 or sword art online4 or heir apparent5 or the epic/saga/edda series6, or any of the other at least ten million minimum examples I could mention which aren’t prominent enough for anybody to know about but they keep getting produced and consumed by someone out there anyway. But. The prospect remains cool! This is Star Trek level stuff!
Humans have planted the first major flag in the final frontier of video games with the Oculatory Quest 2 which is a totally self contained VR system that doesn’t require you to wire up a whole room like you did with the HTC Vive or the other VR systems. Plus, with a $300 price tag the oculator is more than competitive with other modern gaming consoles. So here we are, crossing the threshold to the most immersive gaming experience imaginable, and the games are… awful. They’re terrible. Most of them are pre-alpha levels of refinement (beta ready means its “ready to try out on more people than just your roomates), but most aren’t even games, the app store is filled with I kid you not “productivity” apps. The games have no vision behind them, and are by and large less creative than just building a straight board game simulator. Apparently every game studio and their dog is playing with the technology and the second they build a working tech demo where you can move cans around in Virtual Reality or whatever they have been like “perfect lets sell this for thirty dollars minimum.”
There are some good games7, rare exceptions. Most of these lean really hard into extreme gimmick or horror or both. You can’t search for any game on the app store without running into zombie games, which I do not partake, but honestly I bet they’re mostly one dimensional jump scares as well.
I’m reminded of when World of Warcraft first came out, pioneering the MMORPG genre, where you’d pick a class, take quests, grind8 monsters and then you’d go raid bosses with your friends and stuff and it was very popular. It instantly spawned millions of clones, and to this day new MMORPGs come out daily that follow the exact same formula and that’s basically all they are, there’s nothing different or clever about any of them, as if they think MMORPG players wake up and are like “I really want a game where I can do quests and kill the same monster for hours and sometimes fight bosses”, these games are marketed this way, as if these are actually a selling point. VR games in nearly any genre are the exact same way. “look, I did it I followed the formula, but in Virtual Reality!”
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Here’s another example: The mobile gaming environment is its own unique flavor of sewer, it is filled with what is called “idle games” which are games that you watch play themselves. It is hard to underestimate how many mobile games are like this- even the games which purport some degree of real gameplay have “auto play” functions, where, since you have to beat the same for example chess opponent 50 times to get bishop fragments to unlock the golden bishop9 or whatever the game gives you the option to just start the match and then have the computer play for you. This is all to compensate for how incredibly dull these games are to play, unless you’re at max power already. So then the games just sell you max power for real money. This lets them make money without having to build a game10.
All video games have become, quite literally, Potemkin Villages11.
Scripture Readings
When it revelates, it pours!
Unto some is given the gift of speaking, with their tongues12
Laman, be like these rocks. Lemuel, be like these rocks. Peter, from now on your name is rocks.
Affirmations
The Duckstack is pleased to today bring you a selection of daily affirmations which you can practice in front of the mirror, which will help you to better overcome the obstacles in your life.
I, am invincible
I, can bend sheet metal with my mind
My computer mouse, is just as good as a regular mouse, and loves me.
I, can eat twice my bodyweight in sugar with no side effects
I, can see the internet.
I, will not drown in lava tomorrow.
I, will remember the Alamo.
I, am practicing my daily affirmations.
I, do not own a cell phone.
I, have corrosive acid instead of blood.
I, will treat myself to feeling good for the next one minute and forty six seconds (and 544 ms), and then I will feel bad for the next two minutes approximately, and then I will do whatever I want.
I, am repeating these affirmations of my own volition.
I, am top cod:m xpr-50 ranked sniper NA n00bs
John, has a long mustache.
John Has A Long Mustache
Mosiah 2:21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.
If you serve someone in a way they don’t want you’re serving yourself which is good but actually doing what someone wants is usually better (as long as it isn’t wicked)
A movie ostensibly based on a book that’s like a video games history thriller mystery or something set in an immersive superVR world, in practice the movie was just western otaku bait.
an anime about people getting stuck in a video game, like all animes.
a book about getting stuck in a video game, like all books.
a book series about a society founded on video games, video game currency is real currency, except bad people own the video game, and also the video game is sentient.
Blaston, Pistol whip, gravity sketch, super hot are some I have liked. But the complaints stand: Despite playability, all of these are unrefined or low on content. Also virtual virtual reality was fun.
killing monsters over and over again, for pennies basically. Or sometimes you have a .000000% chance of them dropping a really rare thing, which you need 50 of, for a quest
The Golden Bishop is required to progress in chess
A really cool example is a game I looked at recently, where you need like 10,000 experience to level up and get 10 experience per game, with a cap of 100 experience per day (which you can pay real money to reset) and as you level up you unlock new weapons, which you then have to pay real money to use ($60), which you have to collect duplicates of the weapon to level up, which you then have to pay real money to level the weapon up ($10), and people who are willing to do this become powerful enough to win their next 10 matches, after which they are placed in the next level bracket against people who have the next weapon and they have to repeat it all to get competitive again. And then they have events to help you advance and gain in-game currency, with quests like I kid you not “spend money in game”. The realism, I’m telling you. Multilevel marketers look almost tame.
A fake city built from cardboard designed to look realistic to give travelers the appearance of prosperity.
yuck!