In my sci-fi setting Blood of Sol, I have a group of counter culture called the Interstellar Anarchists Movement, they don’t have a strict hierarchy of government but more of a society and way of life. They move around human space by wake riding (thanks Arryn don’t know where that came from), their small shuttles hide behind larger ships jump envelopes and use the larger ships energy to propel their sub light shuttles through warp space.
IAM have a delegation to the united nations, and constantly try to get their “Nation” ratified as a sovereign state, however this is always difficult as they are merely a society of vagrants and drifters and have no borders, laws, money, economy etc.
This raises some questions, how do you deal with a state that has no bounds and simply drifts along from place to place, how do you tax it, control it use it. I find myself sometimes wondering why I'm in Australia, why not anywhere else why do I need a national identity when I spend so much time on the internet.
Most of the members of IAM are located in habitats orbiting Mars, Jupiter, Earth or on mining colonies that have depleted all their resources. A few of them are remnants from the collapse of the first colonization bubble when the bubble burst it left them stranded all over the solar system. When the UN returned it had been 20 years since the collapse and corporate wars, they simply assumed that the colonies now belonged to the people living there. This has lead to a huge influx of "crime" during times when the Anarchists colonies are having problems, anarchists simply take what they need believing that they can do a favor for it later.
The anarchists provide a vehicle for subversive types, criminals crazies and wackos, they also provide a fantastic comedic potential for crazies, conspiracy theorists and nut jobs.
In my next short story, Sovereign for You, happy IAM, Wendy Miller is tasked by the UN to asses the current case for the IAM sovereignty proposal in the story she meets with several anarchists who want the UN to name the movement as a sovereign nation.
In the previous posts I described the Collective as a free market, when asked I thought about how the free market would be affected by morals. So with enough monitoring and transparency, I postulated that this would happen in the setting.
Moral Market, how to sell to those who are so jaded about every product that they literally live like hermits.
The Collective is a truly free market. The level of transparency is such that not just mere components but the raw materials and video footage of manufacture is displayed for all to see. This means that overtime the level of moral production reached substantial levels where produces such as cars, hamburgers, toilet paper etc were produced with a measurable impact level, zero impact is the goal where products are so clean that they literally make people feel good about buying them.
The moral choice has become a market force that drives everyone towards that goal. I think that is only possible with laws in place, and those that break them are committing a crime worse that murder, information violations is the term used for company s that lie about their products. The first instance is a fine and the second all assets are seized by the state and the assets of the directors are liquidated to pay for the class action that follows.
Showing posts with label setting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label setting. Show all posts
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Vehicles in the setting, lots of choice or little
I was working on vehicles for the game, and the fictional setting, and I started thinking about how many choices people have for the same thing. I thought in the dark future the there is large amounts of manufacturing, and some commodities are sold purely on brand perception because the item is simply designed to the point of perfection. So you don't get a Golf GT you get a Martian Mirage GT3 manufactured by the Jupiter Car company. Your buying much more than a car with a name, your buying an identity.
Marketers always talk about a special sauce or value proposition, but is there? We see that there is a lot of consolidation in the spaces that stop making profit because they cannot grow, cars, air travel etc. No one is making money in cars, because they can only proposition the customer by giving more for less.
If we have a look at vehicles now, it seems there is a lot of consumer choice. People not only focus on the function but brand perception, social perception, price etc. I don't think there is more than 5 choices of car. And if you think there is more, your naive and you believe the spin.
In the real world we are already genericising the car, check these two cars out.
An example
http://city.honda.com.au/ Honda City, whats this brand saying? Well you are a city living person with an Ipod or Iphone, and you want a car that's not too large nice for the environment/cheap to run and cheap own.
An example
http://www.renault.com.au/renault-cars/Clio-RS197/ Clio, this car is basically the same thing. Why by a Renault? well its the brand not the vehicle. The Honda city is better, and the Renault has a bigger price tag. You buy it to say your sophisticated, this small one is cheaper than the other Renault's.
Why can't this just be called, slightly expensive car that's red and gives good fuel economy (apart from the bad name) call it the Jupiter CarCompany City model?
In a future setting, how important are all these things? In the world of Star Trek there are credits people don't fuel multi-national companies. People must be happier, they get what ever they want from a replicator etc. I don't know if we can evolve to this state, if the technology was available would it be commercialized? Well if it was expensive to make, no way! too much money is at stake.
In my setting, we have a high population of humans that never leave their planets. This culture is really the bulk of the setting normal lower middle class people who work for some company doing X task for the almighty dollar. I think its easier to write stories where you can draw on all the flaws of human society than to write stories where you can't like Star Trek.
I like my humans flawed, jealous, belligerent, racist and thoroughly greedy because I can have them screw each other over for X number of reasons.
In my opinion, people are fairly easy to manipulate even when they know they are being manipulated. There is a chord in every person that resonates with the idea of belonging and branding and marketing is focused on resonating chords of people to associate themselves subconsciously with a brand.
In our world, we see immense levels of brand loyalty Coke, Nike, Pepsi etc. In the game setting we see brands which have been created, Berkley Genomics is the medical Juggernaut that most people have membership cards with to get anything from a detox, to a complete genetic alteration. Their logo is a white circle with a BG in the middle, this brand is all about security after all its medical you want your body to be safe while they put you under.
Virgin Aeronautics is the company that runs all the space stations and many of the inter system services. Their brand is always about quality, quality in the sense of you get what you paid for. They choose red and blue very standard retail colors.
Cars, I haven't come up with a ground and air car brand yet but I think, as I have to create all the standard vehicles I was wondering if we are going to see shortly in the real world a consolidation of the cars like we have in other areas which are not making much profit (airlines etc).
So ill have Jupiter Car company City car that's red but this may be badged the Martian Mirage GT3 (they even don't know what GT means anymore in my setting, its been used to sell cars for so long its now bereft of meaning)
Marketers always talk about a special sauce or value proposition, but is there? We see that there is a lot of consolidation in the spaces that stop making profit because they cannot grow, cars, air travel etc. No one is making money in cars, because they can only proposition the customer by giving more for less.
If we have a look at vehicles now, it seems there is a lot of consumer choice. People not only focus on the function but brand perception, social perception, price etc. I don't think there is more than 5 choices of car. And if you think there is more, your naive and you believe the spin.
In the real world we are already genericising the car, check these two cars out.
An example
http://city.honda.com.au/ Honda City, whats this brand saying? Well you are a city living person with an Ipod or Iphone, and you want a car that's not too large nice for the environment/cheap to run and cheap own.
An example
http://www.renault.com.au/renault-cars/Clio-RS197/ Clio, this car is basically the same thing. Why by a Renault? well its the brand not the vehicle. The Honda city is better, and the Renault has a bigger price tag. You buy it to say your sophisticated, this small one is cheaper than the other Renault's.
Why can't this just be called, slightly expensive car that's red and gives good fuel economy (apart from the bad name) call it the Jupiter CarCompany City model?
In a future setting, how important are all these things? In the world of Star Trek there are credits people don't fuel multi-national companies. People must be happier, they get what ever they want from a replicator etc. I don't know if we can evolve to this state, if the technology was available would it be commercialized? Well if it was expensive to make, no way! too much money is at stake.
In my setting, we have a high population of humans that never leave their planets. This culture is really the bulk of the setting normal lower middle class people who work for some company doing X task for the almighty dollar. I think its easier to write stories where you can draw on all the flaws of human society than to write stories where you can't like Star Trek.
I like my humans flawed, jealous, belligerent, racist and thoroughly greedy because I can have them screw each other over for X number of reasons.
In my opinion, people are fairly easy to manipulate even when they know they are being manipulated. There is a chord in every person that resonates with the idea of belonging and branding and marketing is focused on resonating chords of people to associate themselves subconsciously with a brand.
In our world, we see immense levels of brand loyalty Coke, Nike, Pepsi etc. In the game setting we see brands which have been created, Berkley Genomics is the medical Juggernaut that most people have membership cards with to get anything from a detox, to a complete genetic alteration. Their logo is a white circle with a BG in the middle, this brand is all about security after all its medical you want your body to be safe while they put you under.
Virgin Aeronautics is the company that runs all the space stations and many of the inter system services. Their brand is always about quality, quality in the sense of you get what you paid for. They choose red and blue very standard retail colors.
Cars, I haven't come up with a ground and air car brand yet but I think, as I have to create all the standard vehicles I was wondering if we are going to see shortly in the real world a consolidation of the cars like we have in other areas which are not making much profit (airlines etc).
So ill have Jupiter Car company City car that's red but this may be badged the Martian Mirage GT3 (they even don't know what GT means anymore in my setting, its been used to sell cars for so long its now bereft of meaning)
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Game update Questions?
Well,
This is a short blog update, space game has been edited some more. I'm writing a few short stories to add some flav. What types of sci-fi stories work best for gamers, do gamers prefer the personal stories of people moving through a gray, Dystopian society where they struggle and against all odds sometimes come out on top; E.G: Anarchistic stories about the struggle against big companies and big government.
Or do game players prefer a space opera which is more epic on scale with ships and particle cannons, black hole bombs and wide spread panic. Or do players like a focus on the ideas that make the setting work, the meta physics of a sci-fi setting sometimes lead to stories of their own.
You decide!
This is a short blog update, space game has been edited some more. I'm writing a few short stories to add some flav. What types of sci-fi stories work best for gamers, do gamers prefer the personal stories of people moving through a gray, Dystopian society where they struggle and against all odds sometimes come out on top; E.G: Anarchistic stories about the struggle against big companies and big government.
Or do game players prefer a space opera which is more epic on scale with ships and particle cannons, black hole bombs and wide spread panic. Or do players like a focus on the ideas that make the setting work, the meta physics of a sci-fi setting sometimes lead to stories of their own.
You decide!
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Is it time for fiction to be fiction and life to be life...
This post is a little different... so if your offended don't read just kidding Fuk U.
Basically my friend Ad who works for a large games company that basically owns everything as far as pen an paper RPG's astutely pointed out that even if I were to publish this game and the related materials for free, the content of the setting is offensive to "Americans" however I have found humor in several political aspects of all countries, history, religion etc not strictly American.
I find that if your designing games and settings its best to have some themes and undertones through out the entire setting. My setting has themes of alienation, poverty, depression (we call them recessions now), corporate dominance, human failing, and religion. In the setting all religions are as real to the people as they are to people now, the texts are based on real events in the setting, that are known by the aliens, the demons are real, the exist and inhabit a different section of reality the religions are based on events or reinterpretation of events that occurred long ago. I used some of those ancient texts of the Bible, the Khabala, the Enuma Elesh, the Kybalion, the Qur'an along with the archaeological musings of Egyptology from all different eras. These texts have some great tales and are the basis for much of our literature, culture and world.
As far as countries I have made some jibes at Great Briton, France, The Middle East, China, Russia, South Africa, Nazi Germany, The Roman empire, etc all in what I thought were compelling story elements and I used them to tell stories like the "Votreckers" (thanks for the name Ad) who are South African and Australian colonists of the furthest reaches of space who stuck using 200 year old technology and have a very racist attitude to everything. Its not real its a setting, its funny! Now I know some people get offended, if they do don't read it but getting sued over jokes is not really very cool at all.
So to conclude, should I alter the setting to make it less offensive? Does anyone know any Christians or Jews that I can discuss my setting with so I don't get pwnd by some religious dudes?
PS, I'm still going to make fun of South Africa, New Zealand, America, China, Russia, India, Middle East, etc. Everyone else does.
Basically my friend Ad who works for a large games company that basically owns everything as far as pen an paper RPG's astutely pointed out that even if I were to publish this game and the related materials for free, the content of the setting is offensive to "Americans" however I have found humor in several political aspects of all countries, history, religion etc not strictly American.
I find that if your designing games and settings its best to have some themes and undertones through out the entire setting. My setting has themes of alienation, poverty, depression (we call them recessions now), corporate dominance, human failing, and religion. In the setting all religions are as real to the people as they are to people now, the texts are based on real events in the setting, that are known by the aliens, the demons are real, the exist and inhabit a different section of reality the religions are based on events or reinterpretation of events that occurred long ago. I used some of those ancient texts of the Bible, the Khabala, the Enuma Elesh, the Kybalion, the Qur'an along with the archaeological musings of Egyptology from all different eras. These texts have some great tales and are the basis for much of our literature, culture and world.
As far as countries I have made some jibes at Great Briton, France, The Middle East, China, Russia, South Africa, Nazi Germany, The Roman empire, etc all in what I thought were compelling story elements and I used them to tell stories like the "Votreckers" (thanks for the name Ad) who are South African and Australian colonists of the furthest reaches of space who stuck using 200 year old technology and have a very racist attitude to everything. Its not real its a setting, its funny! Now I know some people get offended, if they do don't read it but getting sued over jokes is not really very cool at all.
So to conclude, should I alter the setting to make it less offensive? Does anyone know any Christians or Jews that I can discuss my setting with so I don't get pwnd by some religious dudes?
PS, I'm still going to make fun of South Africa, New Zealand, America, China, Russia, India, Middle East, etc. Everyone else does.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Some Flavr
Ok,
This is a really short post, mostly because I'm extremely busy right now. So I have some flavour links to some pod casts I thought were pretty nice. I especially like Chrysalis and how lonesome a life without nerve gas.
http://escapepod.org/2007/01/16/ep-flash-nightshift-in-the-automart/
http://escapepod.org/2009/01/09/ep186-chrysalis/
http://escapepod.org/2007/01/25/ep090-how-lonesome-a-life/
This is a really short post, mostly because I'm extremely busy right now. So I have some flavour links to some pod casts I thought were pretty nice. I especially like Chrysalis and how lonesome a life without nerve gas.
http://escapepod.org/2007/01/16/ep-flash-nightshift-in-the-automart/
http://escapepod.org/2009/01/09/ep186-chrysalis/
http://escapepod.org/2007/01/25/ep090-how-lonesome-a-life/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
