[Today’s run: 3.2 miles]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve played a few video games in my day. They usually follow a pattern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They have to start you off with some easy stuff so you can learn the commands\/moves and how to move forward. They don’t want to scare you away too early. Sometimes they will have different levels of difficulty so you can do the game on “easy” and later make it harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So you get started off and you accumulate things. It may be treasure or companions or abilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you go through, if it is a fighting game you have to take on some low level enemies. If it is a puzzle game you have to do some easier puzzles. After a few of those you will have something more difficult. They call that a Boss. You have to defeat the Boss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then you go on to the next level where there are more minions\/puzzles and at the end of that level another Boss. And you progress like that until you eventually have lots of skills and magic armor and +1 swords and all of that. You get harder to kill and the enemies get effectively easier… but there may be more of them or some other trick which still means it is difficult. Maybe they get harder to kill as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some games you can get so good that really no enemy can defeat you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then they have the last puzzle or enemy and you end the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That is a heroic story line but it isn’t like real life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the game of Life you start out completely helpless. You have circumstances which are more or less beneficial. You do have a series of puzzles and difficulties, maybe enemies, and you do get better for a long time. But then you start to lose your abilities. You can’t move as fast, your sword fighting deteriorates. You forget your magic spells. You can’t carry as much treasure. And eventually you are back to the beginning where you rely on others to keep you safe and alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The key to this kind of game is to build up loyalty over a long time span, particularly among those who are younger (all your same-age questing partners will be in the same boat as you). You may have to develop them, bring them up, give them your treasure for tools and training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don’t know if there are any video games like that. It would be handy to help people develop an overarching strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was talking to my partner in the cotton field last week. We were talking about how someone would monetize a roomba-like autonomous mower, how they would turn that into a business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My idea was to have a two prong income strategy. First would be just the service of mowing. Second would be mounting a go-pro on the auto-mower and upload videos of mowing from the mower’s point of view. You could post that on YouTube and people would watch it. I tried to remind him about the mowing-man screen saver they used to have. People would watch this animated guy on a mower go back and forth on their computer screen. My partner was a younger guy, I think that was before his time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn’t mention the flying toasters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[Today’s run: 3.2 miles] I’ve played a few video games in my day. They usually follow a pattern. They have to start you off with some easy stuff so you can learn the commands\/moves and how to move forward. They don’t want to scare you away too early. Sometimes they will have different levels of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-other-thoughts","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8502"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8510,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8502\/revisions\/8510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w0ep.us\/OM\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}