Issue : Games : Genial

Rebel Inc: Escalation is a game about priorities.

All this fuss is over Morey? Daryl Morey? The guy that runs Clutch Gaming? Who cares if some nerd posts some shit about support for the... OMG DARYL MOREY OWNS PART OF THE HUSTON ROCKETS?!? Oh, that's cool.

Anyway, leave it to a nerd to sink the NBA in China. But I also gotta say Hong Kong is going way too hard on LeBron. Lemme just read what he said because it can't be that... Oh, LeBron... Baby, what is you doin?

Ok, so Maybe Morey's tweet resulted in the Chinese Basketball Association dropping the Rockets. Maybe it resulted in China Central Television dropping preseason games, and NBA related events being dropped left and right from Beijing to Shanghai. Lotta heat for a Tweet.

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere-our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Wise words, LeBron. But maybe this time you should have just shut the fuck up. Or backed the homie up. Either or.

Not that Hong Kong isn't fucking up either. Last time I checked Kapernick still don't have a job and the cops have moved on from shooting us in the street to shooting us in our own homes. Any help from the international community for us? Nah? But hard times hit and Hong Kong is legit marching down the street with American flags screaming "Save our souls" and singing Le Mis tunes to impress our oppressors.

Black man says a dumb opinion and they out there burning effigies of black men like we started the bar fight. No, "Wow, that was a shitty thing to say but we stand with African Americans in their struggle and we hope they stand with us in ours." It's just easier to burn us and suck our oppressor's dicks instead of making it a teachable moment for a guy out there trying his best, I guess. I'm not mad tho.

Anyway, good luck with that, and slime me if you want to, but here is the hard truth Hong Kong, you ain't the only ones who got it bad out here. The black community loves Lebron, he is us, we are him.  To you, he is just some sports star.

When you put a picture of a crying black man over your faces during your demonstration, it's a disrespectful, bad look, and we are looking. Not that you care.

Double Anyway, shouts to info. rip TB rip Tc rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish, get out there and do great things. We believe in you. Also jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Genialis

Issue : Games : Belfry

Facebook is the Walmart of the internet. 

I love everything that it is, everything that has happened to it, everything that will happen. IRC morphed into Geocities, which morphed into Six Degrees, which morphed into MySpace, which morphed into Facebook, which morphed into a multiverse of voyeuristic bliss. 

A landscape of VSCO girls, single mothers teaching their babies how to smoke pot, mass murders, your relatives' opinions, or MIT lectures. All a scroll away.    

I'm worried about Facebook though. Mark Zuckerburg has been having conservatives over to his house to talk about how to not break up the monopoly that is Facebook. Not Facebook the site, mind you, Facebook the company, that owns Instagram, Whatsapp, and a bunch of other companies that all do pretty much the same thing.

People are reacting to the news that the CEO of a social media company hangs out with conservatives like it is some kind of surprise. Most internet CEO's are either libertarian-leaning (I'm talking Mike Jacksons smooth criminal leaning) or dildo in the butt-conservative. Did we not all know this? Oh, people must have thought because of all that "the internet is the new frontier of freedom" stuff that it must be a total democrat hug-fest. No.

It's literally the same people from Berkshire-Hathaway cept they might have a full sleeve, play Civilization, and listen to Portishead. But Portishead is dope, so I get it. 

Also, apparently poor people didn't get the memo that rich and powerful people network with rich and powerful people. This mixer, that radio show, the green room of that late-night talk show host, the club. It's just another job.   

I won't go as far as to say they like each other, even though they say it. I think what broke niggas get tripped up on is that rich and influential people will often support causes and then cavort with people who create the problems. This is called networking. 

Please stop hoping your heroes are gonna go off-script. Looking at you, HK. 

Shouts to info. rip TB rip TC rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Bats 

Issue : Games : Exoteric

I get it now.

Fortnite is an easy game to dismiss, but a hard game to define. For my money, I wouldn't define it as a game. It is a service through and through. If you think games should be, you know, games, and not a service, like rides at a theme park that changes according to the season or how many people decide to ride, then, well, that's cool.

Most games shouldn't. Movies don't get modified after release, they make another movie. Cars don't get updated, they get recalled. Why should games be any different?

Watching the fallout from the latest Fortnite Event has me disarmed. Games are different. People don't go into the movie theatre every day to watch the same film. People don't enter the market for a new car every four weeks. Those industries created a pipeline for their product in line with customer engagement habits.

In the future, government regulation of gaming will mandate that a company release a product that they can't touch for X number of years. The reason? Class action lawsuits. I know, "Tin foil hat time," but think about it. Currently, a company can release an admittedly unfinished game to the marketplace for a fee. They call it "Early Access."

You pay $20 to play a game that is not officially released. The developers can take as long as they want to tweak, or even completely rework the game while also getting free quality assurance feedback from actual customers that are literally paying money to do the work. The only reason early access exists is that no one told the platform or developers they are not allowed to do so.

We all know by now that the gaming community is a massive shitshow replete with toxic sociopaths committed to burning down the village to feel any kind of warmth. I hope that is a not a surprise to anyone.

Now, have you ever been home in the middle of the day and seen those skeevy lawyers who have practices committed to class action lawsuits against medicine that give people the clap, or an automotive company that made a product with defective seatbelts?

When these two forces realize how much money is in class action lawsuits against gaming companies releasing unfinished products... Listen... It's bad enough for indie developers as it is, but being sued for this business practice will be fatal to the whole scene. Most big companies will be ok, they have their own lawyers for that stuff.

So where does the government come in? Well, like most things the government gets involved in, they come in a decade too late to properly solve the problem. Also, instead of going at the predatory law industry facilitating the slow strangle of the gaming industry, the highest court to field the case will attack the victim and say, "Well, the problem is that you are indeed releasing products that ain't done, so... Don't do that no more. It's illegal now."

So there, problem solved. No "Early Access," no "DLC," No world events. Too expensive. And the band plays on.

Anyway, I say all this because it will be sad to see it go now that I see what Fortnite is doing in the big picture. They are making a kid's TV show that is also a game. Storylines, events, all the good stuff. They are giving it a good amount of pepper. I feel bad because I dismiss Fortnite as a bad game because I don't like it. I didn't realize I am the one that chose to recognize it as a game instead of acknowledging what it has always been, trying its best.

Shouts to info, rip Tb rip TC rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Quixotic 

Issue : Games : Triskaidekaphobia

Neo Cab is a game about the Gig Economy.

WeWork is a commercial real estate company that... Just a sec let me look it up real quick here because what I think they do can't be accurate... Oh shit yeah I was in the ballpark, they buy parts of a building, split the parts they purchased into sections, then rent those parts out to people who make artisanal pottery to sell on Etsy.

How is this business going under? It seems legit as long as they ain't trying to make money from it oooohhhhhh, ok. Then no.

This business has created the one thing every startup needs, more overhead. Fuck a business plan, fuck 4x funding, fuck working from home till you get on your feet. The one thing every person that strikes out on their own needs right away is a shared office so everyone can fail publicly and cry in the car on the way home. Trust me, I know.

Bonus points if the communal office company you are renting from is failing while you fail in the communal office that won't be there no more.

I'm not mad at the Neumann's for creating "The We Company." (That is legit what the org is called, that ain't a snap) They are hippies that couldn't imagine a world where people would not want to work in a communal environment.

How do I explain it? Imagine calling a restaurant to place a reservation and the call instantly begins a Facetime session. These are the type of people that you could never get to understand why anyone would be uncomfortable video-conferencing at any time, for any reason. I know, I know.

I'm mad at investors throwing money hand over fist at every donkey dick idea since 2010 with no idea as to how it was ever going to make a profit. People just kept saying "Office leasing. Duh!" and everyone was like, "Ok, but to who? And how does this scale?" People that want to open a Falafel place have a harder time justifying a small business loan to a bank than these valley people have to get a $47 billion dollar valuation for smoke and mirrors.

Anyway, WeWork was finna file for IPO but withdrew their S-1 cause they lost like $2 billion dollars under one of those uncomfortable couches they bought. I think Neumann got kicked out and they took back his Yacht. The struggle.

If only WeWork wasn't, you know, bad. It might have been good. It can still be good in the future. Maybe WeWork can buy a bunch of cars and partner with Lyft, so people can work in cars. Or buy a bunch of houses and partner with Airbnb so people can work in homes. Just thinkin' out loud.

Oh also shouts to info, rip TB rip TC rip Tall-T. Love is wise, hatred is foolish. Get out there and do great things, we believe in you. Also Jobs.

The Protoculture Mixtape : Issue : People : Caustic