Why not? It's Only a Dollar....

Ramblings Post #314
First you click the button, and you go weee! That's how they get you. Like drugs. First hit is free. That's how they get you hooked on that...um, whatchacallit, Candy Crush. Before you know it you're Mafia Warring, Farmvilling or worse. That's when they got you. Before you know it you're giving up your Latte and muffin for a power-up or a shiny new tractor. Just stick with the drugs boy. Cheaper. Smarter! 

I've been writing quite a bit, a couple of pages a night (not much of it usable) and researching,  wasting more time on reddit than I'd care to admit in mixed company, and so this blog and my game play have dwindled and currently consists of monthly updates plus the free to play games in the Apple Store on my Ipad. Don't judge me. This desperation has pretty much convinced me that I really need to create one of these phone gaming apps because this right here is just ridiculous. I've downloaded and deleted more than a few, but I see what they're doing and I'm pretty sure that once I'm finished this project I can come up with something a few million folks will be willing to download...as long as it's free to start. That's the key.

I've written about the dangers of DLC in the past, but this is something different. Good DLC is like adding toppings to a burger, making an already good product better. Bad DLC is selling you the bun and charging you extra for the meat, making you pay extra for what should have come standard. This is DLC supreme. It's selling you that same burger by the bite, and calling it gourmet. It's reminiscent of the old double my pay scam I once read in a Richie Rich comic book. 

The few games I've taken the time to start all begin the same way. Some relatively crudely designed story to make the cartoon mechanics of the game make sense, and an incredibly easy first level. You feel so alive, like the conquering hero! This continues to the second or third level depending on how many levels there are. Or, if there are only six levels, like in the racing game I downloaded, then you just get the one. I mean, I was the king of the track the first season. Win after win, zoom, zoom, zoom. Then came season two. And suddenly it's like I'm racing against Ferrari in a little red wagon. And looking at the way the game is structured, it doesn't appear you can't even really grind you way through like you would in a regular console or PC game. So I figured, why not, it's just a buck, and opened the power up menu.

Whoa.

Okay, kids, let me say this, if you look through the power up menu of one of these "free games" and one of the items has a retail value over $40, you might want to think about just deleting that whole game. Because I've got a business degree and modicum of experience, and I'm fairly certain when I tell you that this seemingly ridiculously priced item for a casual game you play maybe ten minutes per day if you're bored, IS THE BARGAIN PRICE. A deal if you will, the discounted hook-up. This price actually SAVES you money. Because I'm also almost fairly certain that what the developer would prefer you do is take the $1 or less option. Because you'll do that without thinking about it. Repeatedly. And so eighty five 'why not, it's only a buck' mental justifications later, they've doubled their income.

For the record, I'm just gonna try to grind it out and see how that goes. It will certainly make the game last longer.

But that give someone a buck mindset, that is what the developer is aiming for. A six or seven hundred thousand curious downloads of something as brilliant as matching the shapes, and the average developer is in high cotton. And let's say a fifty percent bailout rate at the first level. Which translates to three hundred thousand on the first round. Then you figure each level up another ten percent out.... it just keeps adding up, dollar by dollar. If you get lucky and get a Candy Crush, with fifty MILLION or more players, you can get to a few hundred million in a snap. Just like the old Mars Candy Co, a billion dollars a nickel at a time.

I've often lamented as to certain business models and their effectiveness for getting people to part with their money, usually as deceptive or unethical constructions. This I envy. This I want in.    

All I need a theme.

Barkeep, I'm gonna need some five hour energy, a sketchpad and three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Brain food.  

Odd Quotes

“The saddest day of your life isn't when you decide to sell out. The saddest day of your life is when you decide to sell out and nobody wants to buy.”
~ Norman Spinrad

Social Media, no pickles, extra onion, with an egg, cut in half, Peruivan chocolate mayo....

Ramblings Post #313 

I just want to go someplace quiet, have a few drinks with some friends, tell some stale jokes and tell some lies about how good things used to be....without somebody pulling out their phone to check something. They're hanging out with us checking twitter to see if something better is happening. It has become tiresome. I once went to club and only ten of us were there. They had to kick us out at closing we were having such a good time. Sometimes you have to forget what's next, and do what's now. (in all fairness that was before cell phones, or else I would have been out!)

 

I have long enjoyed the basic format of the vast majority of social media that I do employ. I don't snap, spotifizzle, swipe or wheezle or whatever the new hot verb invention of the moment might be. My last Facebook post might have been last year. But, I do like them updates. Six asinine inspirational quotes? Yes please. Three pictures of your cousin I don't know? Of course. An article that you didn't read either? Gimme. One of the grand benefits of the basic look of Facebook -  of the reverse-chronological feed that has been the staple of how we get most of our social media - is that keeps me updated. I get the new stuff first, and then if I want to dig deeper I can. It's convenient. And now it seems to be headed the way of the pay phone and selling you a complete computer game. And I for one don't like it. 

You see, for me one of the underlying problems with social media in general is that you only see what you've specifically selected. For record I'm the kind of guy who while watching TV flips through the onscreen guide and occasionally ends up on a channel I didn't even know existed. And while social media is an opt-in sort of situation, the self selected isolation that this technology allows however, puts you in a kind of awareness bubble, with data you MIGHT find stimulating or mind expanding being filtered out because you didn't select it when you signed up. Because you didn't know it existed yet. It's why I flip channels and actually still surf the web and not just hit the round about of my favorite familiar sites. Avoiding this personal sequestration is also one of the reasons I've always tried to keep at least one conservative friend in my Facebook feed, if only to remind me that everyone doesn't think like me. Because while I do see the value in safe spaces, the problem comes when we start to want to live in this comfort zone as though the rest of the world doesn't exist. Or get upset when we find out the rest of the world isn't just like our own little slice of heaven. 

Which brings us "curated social media," the new eyeball sticking technique where all that behind the scenes monitoring of what you're looking at on whatever app you use means you'll get more of exactly that content. Facebook already does it, first by limiting my feed from all of my friends to just the few I've clicked to like their stuff. I like to think that more than 20 of my friends regularly have something to share. And the damn thing also makes me switch from Highlights (i.e., ads) to Most Recent every time I log in, which is annoying. You would think that with all the tracking they're doing, they should know I prefer Most Recent by now, ya think? And now Twitter has just changed over to it as well, and my feed time line jumps from 3m to 16hrs and back again as though I'm stuck in a revolving time machine. Even after I changed the settings. I am less inclined to use both because of these "sticky" features. 

My fear is that as my interests are tracked and analyzed, those things I will be fed by my personal media aggregators will become more and more limited, more and focused on bent on turning me into one those media zombies who look at their phone every two minutes. I will assume the algorithm will be setup to keep the final number of feed items from going all the way down to one, and that it will occasionally interject the new source just to keep it lively, but this whole process sounds sad. And dangerous. Because if you think we already live in little echo chambers now, and this will only make it worse.

 

We already aren't listening to one another, and constantly trying to turn each others positions into unreasonable evil. In a world where we've made the "compromise" a bad word, allowing us all to ensconce ourselves even deeper in our own social ghettos, fed only those stories things that reinforce our naturally myopic viewpoints and personal biases, one can't help but think maybe this isn't in our best interest.   

Odd Quotes

Real friends are worth their weight in gold.

Everyone has baggage. The people that care about you will stay to help you unpack.
~ The Internet

Prince. Damn, damn, damn.

I'm gonna need a minute. The world doesn't feel right.

We have gotten far too casual with the term iconic and legendary lately. We like someone this month or this year and we want to refer to them as though they've been a part of lives since we remember our lives being our lives. And it devalues those whose artistry helps us to meet ourselves and find the words we always meant to say but just couldn't find.

Prince Rogers Nelson really was an ICON. He really was LEGENDARY. In every sense of the words.

Even writing that in the past tense feels funny.

I never met the man, never got to see him in concert either, despite his last show being in Atlanta. Still he was and will be a part of the very fabric of my life. There are songs he wrote more than three decades ago I still know by heart, including the ad-libbed parts, and melodies that evoke memories and feelings that make me have to pause. True, there are parts of his incredibly deep catalog that were a little past where I wanted to go, but it just meant maybe I wasn't ready for it yet. Or maybe his talent was beyond my conception.

I don't remember the first time I heard Prince. I do remember having his very first album on cassette tape. The one where he played all the instruments on every song (or so legend has it). I liked Under the Cherry Moon as well as Purple Rain. I like way too many songs of his to have a favorite. So many of them spoke to me, sometimes when I wasn't even trying to listen.

Damn.   

Water Menu at Chez Work..

Ramblings Post #312
Some co-workers went to a spin class another co-worker teaches in the evenings. Things I learned : In a spin class your feet are locked into the stirrups. The seat is way tiny. There is an arm exercise component using weights. And the water is $5 a bottle. Oh, I didn't go, this is just what I heard from the survivors...er, people who decided sweating out their hair was a good time. The part they were most irritated by oddly, was not the hair, but the price of water. So, in the interest of making a few bucks, I created my own water menu for the office. No free samples.
 
Colorado North Artisan Water
(Fresh snow chilled water bottled by hand in bottles then hand remixed in other bottles)

Colorado South Snow Well Water
(Basically same as the other water, just filtered naturally through the rock and bucket lifted)

Colorado Further South Snow Artisan Spill Water
(The drippings from the South Snow Well Water, gathered and separated)

North Georgia Seasonal Water
(Water captured this season, fresh and stored in something that holds water)

North Georgia Unseasonal Water
(Water captured this season, aged for your pleasure, and served at room temperature for balance)

Special Unfiltered Mississippi Mud Black Water
(Contains Minerals, small amounts of detritus, and minerals)

Exfusion Water
(Water in a specially areated form that you can inhale)

Rain Water
(Funnel. Barrel. Untouched by human hands, from God to you. Through us. For a small-ish fee.)

Death Valley Spring Agua
(Hand bottled from a garden hose filtered source in Tucson and driven through Death Valley for flavor)

Coconut Juice Water
(Free range coconut. No coconuts were harmed in the making of this water. Coconut free.)

Double Diet Water
(All the water, half the calories, now with half of that! Now with less gluten.)

Water Water
(Like organic water, but now with even more water. No substitutions)

Educated Water
(Better than Smart Water- served with/at three “degrees”)

Tap Water
(Served in hand crafted –ish recycled bottles collected by urban indigenous nomads)

If you'd like to buy something, we'll need your social security number and address. Why? Well, we're gonna need to pull your credit. This stuff ain't cheap!