Small World

Singapore is tiny
Oh yeah, our country is so small. Well it's not even a speck on the world map, but hey we're still surviving somehow. About today, I had an interview today with guess who? HBO asia. Yeah, but why the heck would they be hiring? Well I applied for a temp job, haha. But it's interesting, I get to read movie reviews and make witty one-liners. It's a pity they only need a temp for two to three months. I guess it's the nature of the job, they don't expect someone to work their ass off, correcting the mistakes of others. But hey, It's an opportunity I couldn't let up.

Career Love
Oh yeah I do have a plan for my career, I am really interested in media. Well for now, I'm interested in any kind of media. Be it, print, internet, TV or even radio. I'm up for anything and anything at all. Oh yeah did I mention my interviewer was from my Alma Mater? He's ex-josephian, oh yeah! From the old campus too! He doesn't look that old though, perhaps he just kept himself in mint condition. Hopefully I get the job, because seriously speaking, it'd help tons if I had more experience than just "Khabal" and "EA Games" if I really wanted to break into my desired industry.

Desired
Industry, what industry you say? Well I'm sure I'd do well in games and stuff, but my true love is writing. Well yeah, writing is kinda huge. You can literally write about anything under the sun. But that's why I love it, my interests in games only come because games cover almost anything under the sun. While games are sort of interactive, what could be more interactive than writing? Like right now I'm enjoying every moment of writing this blog. Heh, you'd never guess it but yeah I'm enjoying myself while I dump my thoughts and dreams here.

Dumping Grounds
Oh yeah! The dumping grounds is right here. You get to receive all the good in with the bad. With a great many things happening around me, what better thing to do than to "write" it all down? Words serve as memories, some may say pictures may do that as well. But you can't tell a story with a picture alone. You can show ten thousand people one picture and you can get back ten thousand different interpretations. But with a well written story, you portray just one interpretation of it. So as you can see, it's so much clearer when people are on more common ground.

Movies vs Novels
Why is it that movies never quite turn out to be as entertaining as the novels we read. Well, not all novels are good, that I'd have to admit. But seriously speaking, good novels almost never translate into good movies. What's lacking? For one thing, the movies are usually only two to three hours long. A good book can engage a person from anywhere between one day to a full month or more for some slower individuals. Thus the biggest difference is the pace of the story. Sure the pace of the story looks set upon the author, but there's a big difference between a pace in a movie and a pace in a book.

Novels
A novel's biggest advantage of pace is that the reader can set it. Anyone reading a novel can experience what I call "dual pacing" You can get carried away by the story's pace BUT at a comfortable reading pace. So your feeling the thrill of the story at your mind's comfortable input zone. It's something only one other media has achieved. What is that you ask? Well it's actually RPG video games. Well one perfect example is the Final Fantasy VII game OR Metal Gear Solid series. They both put you into a "Role" of the hero of the story. And the story plays out more or less in a linear fashion. Sure they may have "side-quests" or "alternate" endings. One thing they cannot change is the Linear progression from place to place. Thus a novel of sorts is born.

Games vs Novels
So which is more engaging? Personally, I'd say books are more engaging. Games are limited, books have open ended chapters. Games has not reached a level of immersion that a book has over me. If I read a good book, I can be engrossed totally into it, to the point the world seems to have changed along with the book. But a game has never put me into that level of immersion yet. That is a good thing, because if a guy can't discern what's real and not real if he's in a game. You'd have the replay of "The Matrix". And that's just going to cause so many problems.

Movies vs Novels vs Games
So what do movies have that novels and games lack? An actual portrayal of the protagonist's emotions. Sure the words would describe in heavy detail all the emotions and the expressions and all. But a picture tells a thousand words, they cannot match watching a grown man crying over a heavy loss. In a split second, more meaning is conveyed over the poetry of motion than an entire catalogue of words. That's why movies and books constantly exist and never replace one another. But the heavy debates come onto games.

Games?
Yeah games. The immersion level of games are getting more and more intense. Some military organizations around the world have been using video simluations to train their troops. I just call it a legitimate way to play games to train yourself. There are many genre of games, thus I consider it a media all on its own. You cannot begin to imagine the sheer vastness of the possibilities of tapping into this media. If you wanted to target young children with a tendency to be trigger happy, why not advertise on a game like Half-Life 2 or even Halo 3? Infact you cannot phantom the immense impact your brand will have on the kids.

Advertising on GAMES?!
Yeah I'm talking about the future. When games officially become accepted socially as a form of media, you'd see that what I'm talking about now is going to be so true. Why can I say this? Let's just say I've had a little help from "someone above". Yeah, so how is this world of games advertising going to be like? I'm thinking that the big game companies are going to drastically earn more profit. Think ten to twenty times more profit than what they are earning now. And it's all due to the fact that their production cost of their games are going to be heavily cut down by advertising dollars.

Crazy Profits!
Yeah imagine if advertisers paid game companies to insert their brand with an image suitable to their branding into a popular game? It would be crazy. First thing, it'd not only be exposing their brand constantly to their target audience. But it'd also have a positive impact on their branding because their audience are going to be enjoying themselves on the games and when they run past a billboard in the game with the brand name, they'd go "hey I think I've seen this brand in real life!" And Viola, you have instant brand recognition and if the advertisement was placed strategically, it can only boost sales.

Brand Sabotage
Oh yeah there's also counter strategy I'm sure companies going to employ in this new market. It's called brand sabotage. What the rivial company can do is ask the games company to put their rival's brand into the game. Just a playful example would be Sony Enterprise's rival wanted them to look bad. So they ask the game developer of let's say, a FPS game called Urban Combat to make Sony the game's evil mastermind's organization. They can write a disclaimer that all names therein are used ficticiously and not meant to have any relation to actual events. BUT less than one in ten people actually read the disclaimer. Thus you have a beauty of a sabotage weapon.

Silliness
Oh yeah you may just go ah that's just silly! But games are never truly just games. Take sports for an instance, it's just a game. But look at the seriousness that it's being conducted? Oh a guy cheats in a video game and he wins the competition. You might think that's nothing. But a guy cheats in a sporting arena and wins the competition. You're going to send him to jail. But hey, look at it in essence. Sports is only a game, or so we say. It goes much deeper than that. Video games aren't just a game to many, and it's time that people start realizing that fact. Infact, when the game "Counter-strike" was at it's peak of it's popularity here in Singapore. One guy actually stabbed another person in a L.A.N. Shop because he was "stabbed" in the game. It's not silly, you've seen football fans kill each other over the game we call "football". You're going to see people dying because of the video game revolution.

Brutality
It's going to be savage and brutal. The players of this new genre of media are slowly becoming icons in their own right. I foresee a future where nerds, geeks would be transformed into the world's superstars that would even be more popular than music stars, soccer players or even movie stars. This brutal game that ravages the minds is only going to get bloodier and in it's aftermath. A whole new outlook on games will rapidly develop to accomodate the sheer speed of the changes gaming will no doubt bring to us. Alauz Out.

Idiots of today, Geniuses of tomorrow