Euler's Identity Transpositioned
A cowboy can't leave a dot hiding anything besides him.
Merrygoround has an optimal speed for fun, retention, and boarding? Or is it choose 2?
Valve can easily be toppled within their own ecosystem. What is so difficult about doing it for developers? Developers cannot do math properly, and are lead astray by defunct marketing teams. To defeat a company like Valve, you need a stabilized drip and vision for it. There is no "scaling", this is not even a mathematical concept to "scale", it is a person reacting to an inadequacy of a vision. What really is happening when a development team "scales" their creation, is they're not long picking 2 of 3 but now aiming for the middle; they think they can have it all.
Even with Valve taking a cut, if you maintain a baseline you win against them. People think they're clever trying to sell their games outside Steam, they're not accounting for having a baseline that will generate a persistent revenue. Volatility can be avoided, you can have a development team and they can have job security. Security is paramount for making high quality art, because high quality art is thought about into existence; and pushed out of existence with worrysome thoughts. By taking your baseline and using it to secure rather than to extract, you protect the baseline.
It is a metaphorical pathing of software that takes place over time, where bugs are viewed with endearment and as a form of culture. A game can literally become patched with elements such as charm; charm literally fixes problems. This is why you cannot fix a charming bug easily; to some it is no longer a bug. Your baseline if it is secure and filled with love, it actually begins to heal and fix itself in many ways. The community pitches in, charm sets in, memories are made, and the baseline becomes fortified again but now with culture. A development team can become stabalized for years to come by not trying to grow more grass, but to water the grass it has.
Valve makes billions, and spends billions. Think about how useless a billion dollar idea is for a company like Valve, it likely would just cost them a billion extra to add the idea. Every billion Valve extracts from the ecosystem does not in any way protect their baseline. It could all just vanish -- and it likely will. Without proper reinvestment of the money into the ecosystem, the baseline has no security.
www.Steamcharts.com is fluid dynamics, for the system operates closed. Every new game technically shares the existing pool, it does not bring in more water. Every new entry into Steam is an exestential threat to Valve, even at 30% margins for Valve. It's not a money battle, it's a fight for rentention. Everyone can make money, not everyone can retain a base.
How you play your base is where you begin to make money. This is where Valve naturally has to be even more closed walled, which is why Origin was born to begin with. You can easily enter into Valve's
Rough work in progress
[everything is a triangle]
[The right to dethrone]
I have identified the current issues in Valve's ecosystem.
- Attraction to low floating point value, which is artificially scarce. Produces Stockholm syndrome.
- Occlusion of truth in odds, there is no transparency as to your odds unless successfully legislated by your government.
- Value of items are based on artificial scarcity above artistry.
- Participation in the system is closed, Valve is a walled garden
- Potential for addiction
- Potential for commitment without reward
- A risk too complex for all family members to understand. A father spending money on his family will get a wildly different result than another father. The system does not contain any equity for those who make tangible commitments.
- Value brought in is not adequately reinvested into the product in the correct areas. Profits do not have an earmark to maintain the system.
- This system is gambling. Gambling is against religious faiths, countries laws, and traditional family values.
- System builds entropy over time and adds weight to product
- No personal agency, level designers, skin makers, everything submitted receives no protections.
Valve's gambling ecosystem inside Counter-Strike 2 can be interpreted as a failure through the physical abstraction of mathematics, primarily using Euler's formula. Euler's formula being abstracted to mean that there is a maximum extraction rate from all derived growth. Euler's formula is a way of finding the maximum compound interest in a given system — or in a metaphorical sense it is a way of understanding how much you can harvest while maximizing your compounding growth rate.
My argument is predicated on my belief that Valve's ecosystem is misunderstood by Valve themselves; they seek to derive value from the wrong source. Valve has made several attempts in the last 10 years to try and sell a game, however the community has only ever shown tangible interest in creating their own games. Valve is competing against the mod community rather than synergizing with it. [map foisting]
If I pose the question, 'how can Valve derive as much value as possible from their own labour output?' it would be a pointless answer. The answer is — that's currently how they operate. They only derive value from their own output.
e^(i*pi) + 1 = 0
I interpret this to mean philosophically that it is possible to take Euler's formula, for market forces and interest to combine (i), they will go through 4 phases together, and return to exactly where they started. The massive clue in this formula is that the engineering dilemma can be neutralized, essentially meaning we can arrest the perpetual cycle of cultural amnesia and wrongful discarding.
We can through interpretation of:
and
i ^ 4=1
What this equation means to me is that we can go through growth fazes while remaining synchronized. A quintessential problem in video games is the shifting perception of value due to the shifting level of understanding. Why do people not value NES games the same anymore? Because it is lost in understanding that 8bit is where you begin designing any video game, even a 3D one. 8bit is not a limitation, it is a discovered condition that is the progenitor of the reductive creative process.
The greater the Valve ecosystem can empower creators, the end result would be a greater empowered Valve.
Valve is a company that is held in reverence, and reverence is an exploitable mechanic. A false association can beguile a community into trying a game. ie: Alyx
Valve solves physics problems. HL3 should be based around the recognition of the engineering dilemma, and an adjustment to our way our life through the lens of calculus. Our way forward is by receiving positive feedback from the love we put into the system. We can create an economy from our art, and we can all hold agency and benefit from it. The reverence we hold for Valve is like a glue that will hold should the company ever choose to become vulnerable. Releasing source code is an example of becoming vulnerable.
In order to begin to be able to visualize the answer, we will first illuminate what artificial scarcity will be replaced with — discipline.
The system is powered by crates and keys. The key is what makes the system gambling. If we remove the key, what is the result? The value of the crate it then derived through human discipline. If any person can open a crate with zero friction, than they most impose their own friction for the crate to not be opened. As the total number of unopened crates dwindles, the value is increased for those who exercised discipline.
The system is further enhanced with transparency. If Valve made the crates free to open — and they also revealed what has been harvested and what remains to be harvested, a storm system can be generated. Huge amounts of friction in the air will generate lightning bolts the travel down and become grounded into items, increasing their value in to the stratosphere. An items value is now based on discipline, fear, love, generosity, and conservation. The previous system was a value artificially derived through scarcity; or that is to say a random number generator.
We also reduce transparency in certain areas in order to enhance surprise. By only revealing what has been found, and by creating mystery of what is yet to be discovered, the question of whether or not to open your crate becomes an interesting one. You could discover for everyone first what is available in the crate, and reap a reward for it. Or you could wait, and reap a reward for it. Both instances reward you potentially.
Value is now derived from the crate, and not the crate + the key.
Where else can we derive value? Maps. If Counter-Strike came with a quarterly subscription, imagine if you could pay it, and earn money from your maps. You don't need to become an all-star to profit, if a handful of people enjoy your map and donate to you, it can have a profound effect. It should become normalized what mapping is, it is street laden with shops. Support the shops or the disappear. Create a system of competition that is not about capturing Valve's attention, but just your own. If you enjoy your own map, it is statistically very likely that other people do as well. If your map is designed to be enjoyed by Valve, it is possible that nobody will ever care to see it.
A new case drop is not just an event now, it is enhanced to become a play with the world as the stage. The result of a new crate being dropped will be profound with this system.
genius is playing with blocks. Genius is making a container to puts the blocks in that contains a shape for each block. Genius is when you discover that all blocks fit into 1 shape. This causes the user to discover topology. Genius is realizing this can be done, and not "fixing" it at the engineering level because even though unintentional it is profoundly useful.
The engineering dilemma is 'fixing' the 'problem' that doesn't exist. By labeling a feature as unintentional, the engineer applies value to himself because he can remove it. The engineering dilemma is theft for the ego.
Another way I've discovered to conceptualize Euler's formula as a spatial concept, is the traditional predicament of being given 3 choices and having a limitation of only being able to select 2. The Engineering Dilemma is striving for the middle. There is a language type that emerges when this pathological mindset becomes entrenched and a leading force in a group.
The following are examples of striving for the middle in game design
- Making a game 'more' accessible. You must clearly define the problem you're trying to fix.
- Making a game 'more' spectator friendly. This was pathologized at the advent of Counter-Strike Source, when it had become a dominant soliloquy that Counter-Strike Source had earned the right to dethrone Counter-Strike 1.6 based on their perception that the game was more spectator friendly. [The right to dethrone]
- Applying reduction design to an established paradigm. Reduction is the beginning phase of a game's development, an engineer who attempts this after the fact would have to carefully approach each removal of a 'feature' and measure the cultural impact. Removing even the most innocuous functions of a game can disable an existing meta that players enjoy. A games features no matter how small all must be treated the same as any 'stable code base'. Common practices of good programming need be applied for the preservation of a game's culture when adjusting the code base after the fact of establishment of paradigm.
- Labeling something as a problem that is not perceived as a problem to others. Walling in Counter-Strike.
- Removing an unintentional functionality of the game on the justification alone it is unintentional. ie: crouch peeking. Many aspects of a game's culture are erased by ignorant but well meaning engineers.
- Establishing nonsensical nomenclature. Every abbreviation appended after the word Counter-Strike is blasphemy. Counter-Strike should forever remain a current patch number. Counter-Strike 1.6 was a brilliant name, it meant something to everyone. It meant people fundamentally knew what the adjustments and predilections of 1.0 to 1.6 meant. We should return this name naming convention and development style. A game's development can harness the collective genius of the community if it provides conditions for meaningful and contextualized conversations to take place. It is understood why there is a full leap forward of 0.1, or a 0.001 addition to the patch number. When a big number changes, it represents history changing in a major way. We were essentially communicating functionally in a petroglyphic way like an ancient civilization. Counter-Strike 1.7 is Counter-Strike: Source. The world rejected Counter-Strike 1.7 wholesomely. We are arrested in development since, and it is masked through a false naming convention. Naturally, we are are the numerical version we decide, not Valve. Valve should not be able to force the number forward if we reject it.
- Allow communities to splitter in defiance of your changes
How is this Euler's formula abstracted and applied here? There is such a thing in calculus called the degenerate triangle. It is not a false diagram, it is a false perspective. One can believe they're looking at a triangle, however from the correct perspective the shape is degenerate. When a development team aims for the middle through pathological and forceful means, it is because they're seeing a triangle that isn't real. A degenerate triangle isn't just a phenomena of mathematics; it represents the blind spot of life — that only way to check your blind spot is to translate in 3D space.
Development teams know they can be ousted for being off-course, so they position themselves to avoid accountability. They do not want you to see the degenerate triangle for what it is, so you're presented with a misleading game trailer — enter the game and now you can see it. A team can use closed testing and other esoteric practices to embellish qualities of the game that are not real from all angles. Their highest goal is not quality, but to prevent you from being able to assess quality.
Shop with revolving goods
Bowling with a different ball each time
cylinder shape with two conical ends, you never know when you are going to fly out, the risk is great to venter out. You are losing energy when inside the conical structure and risk failure. This is not sustainable and must be corrected.
World of Warcraft as an example.
Imagine the cylinder from left to right is the timeline of when video games were first created until the present day. The conical structures at each end represent an abstracted bankruptcy, which can manifest in many ways; apathy, depletion of funds, unawareness, or replacement. A game can fail for any number of reasons; a game's measurement of success is always tied to time as a vector. Games like World of Warcraft are able to span the time scale, and where WoW sits in Euler's identity inside the diagram presently is to the far left inside the conical structure. To help visualize, when WoW launched in 2004, the game was pushed into the far right of the conical structure, as the system became destabilized due to demand not being met. Today the game is objectively faltering because apathy is growing, so the game's economy is visualized as going down the tubes on the left side.
The distinction between left and right failures are positive and negative energies. To fail on the left is to fail because of negative energy. To fail on the right is to fail from your own overwhelming success.
Left side failures: Bad reviews, angry community, insufficient resources, controversy, censorship, inflation of economy, inflation of player abilities, nullification of player effect and commitments, great resets.
Right side failures: Failure to scale, failure to maintain constitution, over exploitation of economy, interjecting ideology, changing your identity, changing your focus, developing on rails and being unable to react, insufficient custom support, zero day exploits rampant and unrepaired.
The most important aspect of visualization is rotation, because with rotation comes momentum. If you visualize WoW launching in 2004 and spinning around inside the diagram, you will know that when the game launched demand was too high and there was technical issues, so the game entered inter the right side of the conical structure. The WoW team however began to stabilize the ecosystem, and began moving towards center of the cylinder. This is where things are both very ideal, but also very wrong. Ideally you want to be inside the middle of the cylinder, it presents the maximum output of a community and a subscription service. Being in the center of the cylinder is Euler's identity, being outside the middle you express with Euler's formula.
The WoW development team and all associated forces did not take into account momentum from the rotational forces of an economy. The overwhelming success in 2004 was an elastic force, by the time Cataclysm was launched, their calculations began to become wrong. The deep truth is that between 2004 and 2011, fundamental changes were made to the ecosystem, and their effects were not measured — they couldn't be. It was an illusion for the WoW dev team to measure from their current position in time, for the rotational forces inside the economy are capable of pushing past flawed ideas for a duration. There was so much momentum inside the system, that even though Cataclysm was a radically different experience, its effects on the player base were too soon to tell, because the data gets mixed with the elastic effect of players returning from their 2004 momentum. Even if hypothetically every player deeply rejected Cataclysm, the game still would have appeared as a success numerically if perceived as a quarter or year of time.
When a company has a product, the economy of the product entering into the conical structure begins to speed up. It is wild growth or a downward spiral of death. Being in a conical structure is not sustainable, you will be sent back to the position from where you entered the conical structure, or be pulled into the deficit where there is no ability to leave unless you obey physical laws and make your product less complicated; something must be lost in order to return from the deficit end of the conical structure.
How does a company measure if the system is always moving? The measurement needs to be vectorized, the speed of the growth is not indicative of the health of the system. Retention is the leading aspect, the longer a player is retained, the more momentum is saved into the system. When this player leaves for years and comes back, they return with the same energy. A development team thus must only seek to growth at a rate at which their players need to break in order to maintain a healthy economy. When more players are joining the ecosystem than breaking from it, the game will appear to be buzzing. When the system is running smoothly and firing on all cylinders, it can be felt and becomes synonymous with our memories.
