Another Avenue Awaiting Us as Black People to Take it Over...!

Good EARLY MORNING from Philadelphia!

I've just finished more typing on the book and by default, expanding of the handbook for From Child to Man. I'm tired and my eyes don't care for this flat-screen LG. I bought the damn thing for the sole purpose of HELPING MY EYES but it hasn't helped at all. My eyes still turn red-as-fuck and ache after x-amount-of-hours. I'm gonna have to navigate this somehow and figure out which fuckin screen I can buy so I can keep what little GOOD EYESIGHT I have left!

So I finished another 5-pages for From Child to Man describing the cliff-encampments that the Ilvala have created to surround Lu City. Nothing gets more interesting than trying to CORRECTLY describe something like a cliff-encampment that was raised out of the ground and then quickly engineered and hollowed out by Ilvala. The easiest way to describe the Ilvala is that they are lamian in nature, which means they have beautiful upper-bodies of women and then lower bestial-bodies of animals. Just creating the animals of this world alone and then making sure that I describe them in a manner that makes the reader able to see it in their mind's-eye.
So I'm typing all of this up. A grand total of 5 pages for From Child to Man and then 4 for the From Child to Man Handbook! 168,000+ words for the actual book and I'm still nowhere near where I want to actually be it! I already talked with all of you on how the White-Standard for book publishing is set up, so with the word count I have I'm already past 415 pages in White-Standard book publishing. So with my eyes hurting, about to take some eye drops and call it a night. I saw this commercial for this mobile app game called;
Game of War: Fire Age

I said to myself? That game CAN'T BE THAT EXCITING as this commercial is trying to sell it, mind you? This mobile app game and Clash of Clans? These fuckin mobile app games are spending MILLIONS OF DOLLARS ON ADVERTISING! Yet my instincts keep telling me that the games aren't worth it at all.

My first thought is;
Who the hell is FINANCING all of this advertisement time?
And second?
Who created these mobile app games and why are people wasting their money on games that play nothing like their commercials.
So I got some answers and decided to post them from off of Kotaku a video game site that I generally trust. Again? My point with all of this is that we as Black People are missing out by not having our own companies involved in these industries creating jobs and games for us and the world at large.  

Kate Upton Is Shilling A Terrible Game

During last night's Super Bowl, millions watched as Kate Upton stepped out of a bathtub, donned battle armor and escaped a crumbling stronghold on horseback. The game she's advertising is nowhere near as exciting.

The game is Game of War: Fire Age from Machine Zone, and the reported $40 million advertising campaign featuring the world famous actress/model is the money-soaked evolution of the Evony ads that infested Facebook a few years back. The older ads featured attractive women attired less-than-modestly, beckoning the viewer to "Play Now, My Lord." The Upton ads are essentially the same thing, only in live-action, full-motion form with massive effects budgets.

Perhaps if Game of War: Fire Age were an action game we'd have gotten to see Upton riding through fantasy battlefields, whispering combat secrets into the ears of soldiers. But Game of War is a mobile free-to-play massively multiplayer online strategy game, so her appearance as the character Athena is limited to static tutorial screens, messages and the odd in-game gold sale splash.

The action depicted in the ad campaign, crafted by the marketing creatives at Untitled Worldwide, is only implied in Game of War. It's what players of the social strategy MMO might imagine as they navigate countless menus and wait out a seemingly unending series of timers.

It's the same dull free-to-play mobile take on strategy games like Civilization we've seen countless times before, first on Facebook and then on mobile as the social gaming platform of choice changed. Players build a fortress, cover it with tiny buildings that produce wood or metal or stone or soldiers. The gathered resources are used to upgrade the tiny buildings and gather soldiers for defense and conquest.

Players join alliances, which can work together to help reduce the ever-present timers. Combat involves watching your troops march across the map, some dust clouds covering up the random number crunching, and then watching your troops march home.

It's basically a complicated version of Clash of Clans, which also ran a (much more entertaining) Super Bowl ad last night. Game of War is a much deeper game, but that depth translates to confusing menus clashing with ads for its in-game gold bargains.

It's all a tedious mess, full of mechanics specifically aimed at speeding up progression for paying customers while frustrating the rest of the audience to the point of pulling out their wallets. Developer Machine Zone started off making text-based games, and despite the action depicted in the Upton ads, this isn't far removed from those basic beginnings.

So where's the appeal? What has kept Game of War: Fire Age consistently ranked as high as number two (right below Clash of Clans) in the iPhone's "Top Grossing" list since its 2013 iOS debut?

As with CoC, the answer lies somewhere between community and competition. The social aspect of these base building and battling games delivers a sensation akin to the feeling of importance and belonging that comes of being a member of a traditional MMORPG guild. Helping other players conquer obstacles—even if those obstacles are mostly timers—can be quite rewarding.

Combine that feeling with the fact that every time a player purchases real-money items and resources there are benefits got their entire Alliance, and suddenly it's not so hard to spend five dollars here or ten dollars there. Hell, I spent ten dollars playing the game for research—those sales splash pages are mighty enticing. Just ask the kid who racked up nearly $50,000 on his grandfather's credit card last year.

And who knows? Maybe all of that community spirit can carry your Alliance to the top of the leaderboards, making you King or Queen of the entire virtual world.

Game of War: Age of Fire is not a game for me. It's not a game for any traditional gamer—anyone that's experienced the glory of Civilization could never be contented with such a pale, money-hungry imitator, even with a massive global community behind it.

This is a game for the non-gaming masses, the millions of people out there who've never sat in front of their computer desperately trying to fend off a nuke-crazed Gandhi. The sort of people who, upon catching a flashy Super Bowl ad featuring a movie star or model or whatever CG nonsense Heroes Charge released, pick up their phones and play.

Let's hope they aren't expecting Kate-Upton-riding-away-from-a-collapsing-castle-in-slow-motion (possibly while eating a messy cheeseburger) levels of excitement. That would take a far better game than Game of War: Fire Age.