Response 2 Ted@GarageGames: Video Game Patent SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CREATING EXALTED VIDEO GAMES AND VIRTUAL REALITIES WHEREIN IDEAS HAVE CONSEQUENCES

Here is a response to Ted's cool feedback at Garage Games: https://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/93643

Thanks for the words Ted! Below, please find some of my responses! At the end, I include some excerpts from my book THE GOLD 45 REVOLVER: THE HERO’S JOURNEY IN ARTS ENTREPRENERUSHIP & TECHNOLOGY. Sign up on the mailing list to be notified about it at Arts Entrepreneurship or Hero's Journey Renaissance!

(Ted's words in light red):

But all you're describing in these examples are RPGs. Setting doesn't matter, and the mechanics are all done, or easily doable. This isn't a new system at all, which is probably why you're talking about how the larger companies are ignoring you.

The larger companies are not ignoring me--they are ignoring the timeless, epic principles/secrets of Homer and Shakespeare--of Plato, Aristotle, and Jefferson--of Mises, Moses, and Dante. And they are thus leaving billions on the table!

In all their prior art, there exists no Vampire/Zombie/Communist game wherein the Vampires/Communists/Zombies can be rescued/reformed via speaking classical ideals, nor is there any game wherein the Vampires/Communists/Zombies are caused by NPCs/players coming into contact with words, both/either spoken and written. Nor does there exist any game wherein one is consciously fighting for classical, constitutional ideals laid out in word at the beginning of the game--words which may be used throughout the game, instead of bullets, to win the war and also save the lives and souls of the enemies. These are simple, vast, primal concepts: and when implemented, they will result in a paradigm shift in games--billions in revenue for companies, and exalted art for gamers.

Imagine you are standing in Best Buy. There are two versions of Gears of War. In one, the Locust Horde can be reformed and brought over to your side by quoting excerpts from the US Constitution--by engaging in dialogue--and where, in order to win, you are going to need to win their minds/hearts and souls. In the other version, you can only shoot them in campaign after campaign. Which would you buy? Imagine you walk into EB Games, and you have to decide between two versions of GTA. In one, you can only hire and shoot hookers--there is no chance of reforming them nor talking them out of it. In the "Gold 45 Revolver" version of GTA, you can engage in dialogue with the Hooker and hand her copies of the Constitution and Bible, as well as Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, and thus enlist her in your struggle against the fiatocracy, the decline of freedom, and the growth of the corporate-state. She in turn would hand those works to her Pimp who would join you. Which version of GTA would you buy? Obviously the one wired with the novel technology found in "System and method for creating exalted video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences." --http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090017886

Art has ever been the realm where the noble soul could place their ideals which the world had no use for; and the novel game engine described by this new technology; opposed vehemently by the dominant fanboy/feminist fiatocracy—would foster a new realm of exalted gaming for true artsists—both those who created new games and played them.

The major videogames companies are leaving billions on the table!
[0388]This present invention pertains to introducing morality and epic
storytelling into the realm of video games, resulting in video games with
superior, deeper game play, expanded markets, and longer-lasting brands. The
ability to render deeper emotion, story, and exalted dramatic arts within the
realm of video games has been a long sought-after "holy grail" throughout the
video game industry. The prior art demonstrates how others have failed and are
failing to deliver more meaningful and engaging games endowed with epic
storytelling. This present invention provides the missing key to realizing epic
storytelling, deeper emotional involvement, and higher art in video games.

[0445]To date, no game allows one to fight for the US Constitution and a sound currency. No game allows one to fight for the Founding Father's original intent--for life, liberty, and happiness for all. No game allows one to fight for economic freedom beyond the fiat system that robs us all via the inflation tax. No game allows the player to quote Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, Jefferson, Hazlitt, Jesus, Socrtes, and Moses in dialogue trees, nor via other means, en route to winning the hearts and minds of their people, rounding up and inspiring a group of rebel, and leading those rugged rebels in a battle founded upon ideas. No game allows one to fight Big Brother and ensure greater Civil Liberties and Personal Freedom. And certainly, no game allows the player to fight to implement the Constitutional Gold Standard, nor to take on the divorce regime, nor to protect the unborn. [0446]The present invention would allow the themes of V is for Vendetta, Atlas Shrugged, and The Fountainhead to be brought to life, as well as Orwell's 1984, which resembles the modern university. The plot of 1984 could be enhanced, and hope could be allowed for Winston Smith. Suppose that Winston was successful in speaking with and recruiting enough people for a revolt. If he was too upfront with his ideas, he might be put to death. If he was too coy, he would never reach them. If he was too persistent, he could offend some people. If he gave up too soon, he might lose loyal followers. At any rate, it would make a great and unique game, as Winston Smith went up against Big Brother. The plot of 1984 is described at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four with:

Quote:1. A method for creating video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences.

Prior art going back to the days of MUD, where role-playing games endeavored to give the player the ability to make choices that had consequences. Also applies to prior art from just about every game in existence where a character represents an ideal (Double Dragon- the characters stood for justice and fought for it, and at the end had the choice of being good guys or joining the bad guys, which influenced the ending).

Yes--but there exists no truly open ended world in which the classical ideals truly underlying freedom and liberty must be rendered real, and wherein the world's fate is rendered depending on your ability to serve the classical ideals: where the world is eitehr exlated to freedom and liberty via your words and deeds founded on classical ideals, or it declines into a feminist/fanboy/fiatocracy wherein classical ideals are banned form GTA/GoW/GOW/Dante's Inferno.

Quote:2. The method in claim 1 where said ideas are rooted in classical, epic precepts such as those found in the Great Books and Classics, and exalted at the pinnacles of Western culture and history.

God of War deals with consequences, and classical Greek mythology, and predates your patent.

Yes--but does the player character ever have to choose between speaking or serving classical Greeek ideals, say those sung by the lyrical poets or spoken by Cicero/Homer? I don't recall any of thier wisdom in the game, nor plot points wherein the protagonist had to choose to serve nor speak the words nor match them with with deeds; nor choose to speak the classical words in dialogue trees, nor in any other form.

Quote:3. The method in claim 1 where said ideas are manifested in the words the player or non-player characters, write, speak, read, disseminate, congregate about, fight for, and/or associate with.

Nothing special here, just saying that the PC or NPC has to "verb" something.

In what game are copies of the Bible or Constitution or Homer's Odyssey passed around, read, quoted, and acted upon? Imagine the possibilities! In what game does the player's failure to introduce the Constitution early on lead to failure? In what game does the player's failure to speak of the ideals of the Constitution lead to failure? In what game does the player's failure to find or form a fellowship speaking of the ideals of the Constitution lead to failure?

Quote:4. The method in claim 1 where said ideas are manifested in the actions the player, non-player characters, and/or monsters act out.

Same as above, as dialog and writing are verbs as much as fighting and other physical acts, and all of these have well established prior art from almost all existing games.
In what game are copies of the Bible or Constitution or Homer's Odyssey passed around, read, quoted, and acted upon? Imagine the possibilities! In what game does the player's failure to introduce the Constitution early on lead to failure? In what game does the player's failure to speak of the ideals of the Constitution lead to failure? In what game does the player's failure to find or form a fellowship speaking of the ideals of the Constitution lead to failure?

Quote:5. The method in claim 1 where said ideas spread like viruses, by being spoken, written, or disseminated in some other manner, transforming characters who come in contact with said ideas into vampires, zombies, or other forms of monsters.

WoW demonstrated such a great use of a blood plague that the CDC did a formal study on the transmission from one player to the next. Also, other games have created similar systems for zombification (Warcraft III had a mission with undead, and Starcraft had the Defilers who turned Space Marines into walking bioweapons).

To date, in all the prior art, there exists no game in which vampires/zombies can be both formed and reformed depending on the words/books/ideas they come in contact with/read/hear/imbibe. To date, in all the prior art, there exists no game wherein you can rescue/exalt the soul of a zombie/vampire, and win them over to your cause, by speaking of classical ideals to them.

Quote:6. The method in claim 1 where said ideas spread like viruses, by being spoken, written, or disseminated in some other manner, transforming characters who come in contact with said ideas into vampires, zombies, or other forms of monsters, and where said vampires,
zombies, and monsters may be saved or converted back to normal by coming in contact with ideas that oppose the ideas that made them vampires, zombies, and other forms of monsters.

WoW's blood plague had a cure, I believe, and other effects that become "contagious" exist. Agent USA for the PCjr comes to mind (man, I loved that game!)

To date, in all the prior art, there exists no game in which vampires/zombies can be both formed and reformed depending on the words/books/ideas they come in contact with/read/hear/imbibe. To date, in all the prior art, there exists no game wherein you can rescue/exalt the soul of a zombie/vampire, and win them over to your cause, by speaking of classical ideals to them.

Quote:7. The method in claim 1 where said ideas must be fought for via words and dialogue, before they have exalted consequences.

I can take this on myself. In a blog here, dated in 2004, I talk about role-playing AI. And in this blog, dated 2005 talks about dynamic missions to support said AI. In this one, dated Jan/2008 talks about Interrogative, my dialog system which opens the door for talking to NPCs with an eye to influence them- which isn't new, really. And more info here, dated Jan/2008 as well. It's a system I've been working on for years.

Yes--in all the prior art, there exists no open-ended game engine which can demonstrate both the success and failure of the player to form fellowships centered around classical, Constitutional ideals, and render them real via fighting for them in word and deed. There is no game which can demonstrate both the resulting free society and the declining fiatocracy, depending on the ideals the player chooses to serve, the ideals they speak, and the actions they take.


Quote:8. The method in claim 1 where said ideas must be fought for via deeds and actions, before they have exalted consequences.

Call of Duty (fighting for freedom).

Yes—but in Call of Duty there is never an opportunity to reach out to the enemy by handing them a copy of the Constitution nor Bible, nor talking to them, nor minimising the loss of life via reason and words. Imagine if you could convince the enemy of the superiority of the Classical, Judeo Christian Heritage! Imagine how many lives you would save on both sides? The Call of Duty Zombies cannot be reformed, nor exalted, nor saved by words.

Torque Owner Ted Southard #15
06/30/2009 (9:59 pm)
Quote:9. The method in claim 1 where the player can fight for said ideas in word and deed, and witness the exalted consequences of those ideals, including liberty, freedom, and justice, when they succeed, and the dire consequences of tyranny, domination, and intimidation, when they fail to render exalted ideas, as ideas have consequences.

There was a game about the Cold War written way back when, where you had to influence governments using diplomacy and other means. Outcomes depended on how well you did.

Did the game call upon you to select the right classical/Constitutional ideas and ideals from a dialoge tree? When failed to reach them via word, could you shoot them (via deed)?

Quote:10. The method in claim 1 where the character can fight for said ideas such as marriage, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and right to life in word and deed, and witness the exalted consequences of those ideals, including a stable and enduring society should they succeed, and a declining, bankrupt civilization, should they fail.

Now this one is unique as far as I know- but there are some Christian games out there which may actually cover these tenets, at least in part.

“marriage, the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and right to life” are not Judeo Christian tenets alone, but rather they are derive as much, if not more (many would argue), from the Greeks.

Quote:11. The method in claim 1 where the character can battle for said ideas that are based upon classical moral and economic principles of famous philosophers, prophets, poets, statesmen, and economists including Plato, Moses, Jesus, Gandhi Sun Tzu, Buda, Jefferson, Aristotle, F. A. Hayek, Martin Luther King Jr., Homer, Ludwig Von Mises, Adam Smith, and others, and witness the consequences of both their success and failure of their battle, as the consequences are rendered in the game's physical world.

Another new one, but only for the names of the characters, not for the game mechanics. Are you trying to patent games based on Martin Luther King Jr and the rest listed?

No—what I am illustrating is that all the above share the same ideals! And these classical, constitutional, Judeo-Christian ideals are absent from GOW, GoW, Call of Duty, L4D, GTA, Spore, etc. Again, the major companies are leaving billions upon billions on the table! The rising generation is yet showing up to EB Games with immortal souls, and they are demanding that those souls ought be served via classical ideal rendered real in the contemporary context!

Quote:12. The method in claim 1 where the character can battle for said ideas via both word
and deed, using a combination of words and action, witnessing the consequences of their balance between word and deed, between reasoning and partaking in violence, thusly bringing to life epic classical works of film and literature wherein the hero must balance word and deed.

So, if someone used Mass Effect's dialog system with a Roman setting...?

In Mass Effect/GTA/Fable/KOTOR/etc. you can win by being good or bad. The world’s fate does not depend on your ideas, ideals, and actions, like it does in our declining Fiatcoracy.

Here is an awesome blog which says it better than I, which I also excerpt in the patent:

http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006/06/end-of-evil.html
Tobold's MMORPG Blog
Friday, June 30, 2006

The end of evil

When last year Edward Castronova argued on Terra Nova that Horde characters in World of Warcraft are evil, he was widely ridiculed. There is no "evil" in World of Warcraft, players of either faction are constantly on quests that are helping somebody else. Whether you are a holy paladin or a demon-summoning warlock, it doesn't change the way in which you help the farmer get the deed to his farm back from the evil bandits. There is no moral choice, no option to sell the deed to the highest bidder instead of returning it for a lousy reward. Even the undead are "good" undead, fighting the evil scourge undead.

If a game like Black & White, or Knights of the Old Republic, or Fable, gives you the option to play good or evil, that is just a thinly disguised way to enable you to play the game twice. You chose evil or good by what you think is more useful to beat the game, and then if you play it again, you chose the other side, just to see something new. It is not a moral choice, but a tactical one. We don't feel that burning down a virtual village in a game world and killing the inhabitants is an evil act, after all those are just colored pixels that don't feel anything. Advancing in the game is the most important, even that means that in the next mission we have to throw Napalm on that Vietnamese village to continue.

All that ends us in a total inability between gamers and anti-game advocates or politicians to understand each other. The gamer picks up minor points that the criticism got wrong, like "there are no points in GTA for shooting and raping hookers", and fails to see that the criticism otherwise wasn't all that unjustified. Most of what you do in GTA *is* a depiction of very, very evil behavior. By the time you finished the game you have committed more crimes than any known peace-time gangster. The anti-gamer fails to see that all these crimes are virtual, and don't lead to you going out and doing the same in real life.

"Evil" has become a joke. In Dragon Quest 8 one of the heroes has a special combat move with whirling axes, called "Axes of Evil", har, har, nice joke on George Bush. But I wonder if all this making light of evil, all this gaming without true moral choices, is not making the medium of video games poorer. Fact is that in the real world there is real evil, guys like Sadam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, or Robert Mugabe aren't just "misunderstood". And evil isn't limited to crazy dictators, there are people everywhere that like to be cruel to others. And ordinary people have to make hard moral choices sometimes, between good and evil. Previous entertainment media understood that, and made good and evil a major recurring theme in many books and movies. Only video games present the end of evil, a world in which neither good nor evil matters, where "evil" is just a thin plot element to explain why you as the hero have to go out and kill that boss. We end up with players in online games doing evil things that actually hurt real people, if just in a minor way, and not even realizing the difference. GTA won't turn anybody into a mass murderer, but it is hard to believe that hundreds of hours of inconsequential evil and violence should have no effect whatsoever on how you perceive evil and violence in the real world.

-- http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006/06/end-of-evil.html


Quote:13. The method in claim 1 where fighting for said ideas in word and/or deed will have consequences regarding the operation of a weapon, which will operate at its full potential for the players and characters who are the most successful in serving ideals and ideas, and rendering them in word and deed.

Like The Force Unleashed, where the dark Jedi unlocks powers and increases them the more evil he gets?

In all the prior art, there are no games which lay out the Classical, Judeo Christian ideals and ideas—the Ten Commandments for instance—and then marry a weapon’s functionality to the classical ideals. Now one should not murder, as is done in Saints Row and GTA for mere profit, but if one’s life/freedom/country is in danger… Having the First and Second Amendments tied directly to a weapon’s operation would rock! In all the prio art, there is no game wherin during the final showdown, where only the moral character’s 45 Revolver will glow gold and shoot Zeus’s lighthing, as it does in Autumn Rangers and The Legend of McCoy Mountain, for those who have acted, and are acting morally.

Quote:14. The method in claim 1 wherein said ideas may be based upon Constitutional ideals and ideas underlying the American Founding, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, sound currency, the right to bear arms, the freedom of speech, the right of the artist, author, and inventor to own their creations and inventions; and wherein the player could fight for sound money in word and deed and witness the consequences of their successes and failures, including liberty, wealth creation, capitalism, freedom, private property, peace, and prosperity or rapid inflation, deflation, theft via the inflation tax, massive debt, empire, long lines, wealth transfer to the rich, depressions, corruption, and war.

You totally have me with this one. Some games cover parts of this, but I doubt any single one comes close to a majority of it.

Yes! Such a novel game engine would lead us on towards a true open-ended world! For although the fiatocracy sells GTA as “open ended,” nowhere is there an opportunity to save the Hooker’s soul, nor fight for said ideas may be based upon Constitutional ideals and ideas underlying the American Founding, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, sound currency, the right to bear arms, the freedom of speech, the right of the artist, author, and inventor to own their creations and inventions; and wherein the player could fight for sound money in word and deed and witness the consequences of their successes and failures, including liberty, wealth creation, capitalism, freedom, private property, peace, and prosperity or rapid inflation, deflation, theft via the inflation tax, massive debt, empire, long lines, wealth transfer to the rich, depressions, corruption, and war. Practially every single game type—from Zombie/Vampire, to War/Alien Invasion/GTA/Open-Ended—could be dramatically enhanced by a bit of classical idealism, as presented in the simple, novel gaming mechanics of the present invention.


Quote:15. The method in claim 1 where the said ideas will be supported or opposed by in-game characters, and the player will have to choose how to interact with the said in-game characters, based on their ideas, including but not limited to whether or not to befriend them, agree with them, disagree with them, ignore them, recruit them, shoot them, save them, judge them, or forgive them.

Old hat, this feature.

Where in the prior art can one form a fellowship based upon the ideas/ideals/characters of the NPC’s? In what game does the eventual outcome depend on the character and integrity—the ideals and beliefs—of the fellowship one forms? Re: How much would it be worth to Bethesda/EA/38 Studios/Visceral/Bioware/Ubisoft?

How much would it be worth to put the following on a game box? "It is the dawn of the American Revolution, and it is up to you to build the fellowship that will lead the epic battle for freedom. From tavern to tavern you must walk the streets of Boston, listening in on conversations and recruiting those speaking (and oft whispering) of liberty's epic ideals. Redcoats and King George's spies abound, and when you hear the words of Washington, Jefferson, Paine, Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, you must engage the characters by speaking of liberty's ideals yourself; or lose their trust. Throughout you must select the best words to rally and inspire the troops during the fierce war for freedom--to attract the poet warriors with the greatest characters to fight alongside you. Ideas have consequences and word must be matched with deed, as freedom's fate falls upon your shoulders. "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. --Thomas Jefferson""



I argue that such a novel approach to gaming--not only incorporating the words of the actual Founding Fathers--but rendering their consequences (or the dire consequences of their absence)--would be worth hundreds of millions, if not billions.

And wouldn't that be an awesome game??? Imagine meeting Jefferson and Hamilton, finally defined by their greater aspects--their souls, characters, and words--and actually recruiting Washington to command the forces, based upon his words!

"A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends." --George Washington
"Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." --George Washington
"Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company." --George Washington



Yes--of course we could give all the revolutionary soldiers BFGs and Lancer Chainsaws to satiate the fanboys; but the big draw of the game would be its depth and profundity! And imagine that in one of the Taverns is a hooker with a heart of gold. Hire her and kill her, as is exalted in GTA, and the world is lost. Talk to her, and "lady liberty" will tell you where you can find Thomas Paine.

Video games are a crowded art, and many argue there has been little innovation in the past several years (or decades), especially when it comes to depth, meaningful drama, and storytelling. Of course all the PR departments stamp "depth, character, meaningful drama, and epic storytelling!" on the boxes, just as they stamp "Dante's Inferno" on the game which places Beatrice in the diametric opposite locale that Dante did, and nothing really ever changes as the fiatocracy declines.

A small innovation in a field of "crowded art" can go a long, long ways. For instance, applying the patent's same technology to the traditional Vampire/Zombie game would result in the following enhanced gaming experience:

The "Gold 45 Revolver" mod of Left for Dead would be described with (seriously--the buzz alone on this would be worth millions to EA/Bethesda/Bioware/Visceral/Ubisoft/38studios):

Mod based on L4D Amazon.com description: “Set in a modern day survival-horror universe, the co-operative gameplay of Left 4 Dead (L4D) casts four "Survivors/freedom fighters" in an epic struggle against hordes of swarming zombies/communists and terrifying "Marx Infected" mutants. A new and highly virulent strain of the Marxist virus emerges and spreads through the human population with frightening speed via words, both spoken and written. The pandemic's victims become grotesquely disfigured, violent psychopaths, attacking the uninfected on sight by handing them pamphlets and espousing Marxist philosophies while trying to bite/harm them. As one of the "lucky" few apparently immune to the sickness, as you have been reading F.A. Hayek, Ludwig Von Mises, and Thomas Jefferson, you, unfortunately, are trapped in a city crawling with thousands of the bloodthirsty Infected. Alone, you're dead. But together with a handful of fellow survivors, who you can identify and recruit via dialogue trees incorporating Hayek/Jefferson/the Constitution wherein you also assess the NPC's responses, you might just form a fellowship and fight your way to safety. Players can play as a Survivor or as one of four types of Boss/Marxist Infected, each of whom possess a unique mutant ability, such as a 50-foot tongue lasso, tenure at an ivy league university, an MBA, or a giant belly full of explosive methane gas. The gameplay of L4D is set across four massive campaigns. The zombie population of each mission is choreographed by an AI Director that monitors the human players' actions and creates a unique and dramatic experience for them on the fly. Zombies may be transformed back into humans by quoting Hayek/Jefferson/et al. to them; but the further they have devolved--the more collectivist literature they have imbibed and the more MBA groupthink classes they have taken--the harder it is to save them. Early on in the game, some Vampire/Zombies may appear to be normal humans, and the only way to find out would be to quote Hayek to them and see if they respond with Lenin or Mises. Some of them can be reformed via dialogue, but for others, they can only be reformed by death. And in the end--only those players who have done their best to reform the Vampires/Zombies in word and deed--only those who have acted morally throughout the game, can truly wield the Gold 45 Revolver and realize its true power as it shoots Zeus's Lightning while leveling the zombie masters and their hordes. Should you fail to reach and exalt your peers with classical ideals, the world will end as a zombie communist tyranny--"for the greater good of all.""

Imagine how many millions would want to play such novel game types wherein *ideas had consequences*, and soul, character, and honor mattered! Litertaure including 1984, Animal Farm, A Brave New World, V is for Vendetta, The Matrix, Twilight, Atlas Shrugged, Dracula, and 300 could all be brought to life on a more profound level!

Quote:16. The method in claim 1 where the said ideas are based upon the pivotal plot points of the great books and classics.

I admit I'm probably not as well versed as you in the classics, but would this be covered by Jason and the Argonauts?

Allow me to respond by citing the patent:
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090017886

[1608]Dialogue trees and action trees, as utilized in game such as Mass Effect, could be enhanced with the use of the Great Books and Classics. Choosing the correct dialogue and/or correct action could lead one down the correct and true plot of the classic. Points could be awarded for following the true path of the classics, for example in the case of Odysseus making all the right choices in resisting the temptations of the Lotus Eaters and Sirens, and killing the Cyclops, and saying all the right things to make it on home and kill all the suitors and win back Penelope; or in the case of Dante saying all the right things to Virgil and taking all the correct actions in walking through hell to be with Beatrice. The Great Books and Classics generally present us with heroes who make moral choices, which result in triumphant endings.

[1609]If a character chooses immoral or amoral action, they are taken down a different path that leads to failure; such as Odysseus never getting home.

[1610]Tragedies could also be handled with this game engine, as the correct choice and dialogue would ultimately lead to tragedy, but a cathartic tragedy; for Jesus died not for his meekness, but for his greatness. Socrates died not for his meekness, but for his greatness. Hamlet died not for his meekness, but for his nobility.

[1611]Today's movies, from Beowulf, to 3:10 to Yuma, to Atonement, to There Will be Blood all lack the redemption witnessed in the classic Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns. In the original 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy lives and the bad guy goes to jail, but in the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, the good guy dies and the bad guy gets away free, as Hollywood Producers have recreated the movie in their own image, being that they are funded by Wall Street banks close to the money spigot.

[1612]The Great Books and classics all hinge about characters making moral choices and resisting temptations. The characters that succeed in doing this are eventually rewarded in a higher manner--they make it on home or profit in the long run. Even Hamlet is rewarded with his place at the forefront of Western Literature, with the most exalted conscience and consciousness. Imagine a tree of action that could take Hamlet down different paths. Imagine if he does get his revenge early; or imagine if he does kill himself. Within Hamlet we see the vast paradoxes and conflicts of life manifested; as the moral and ethical systems form Athens and Jerusalem battle themselves out, with even greater ferocity than the battle which lead Socrates to state that he could not defined virtue, and that the only thing he knew was that he knew nothing. So too is it with Hamlet--he is seeking the ideal of justice as Socrates did; he is seeking the ideal before enacting it; and he cannot find justice's ideal--not because he does not see enough, but because he sees too much. Imagine a video game that brought Hamlet to life by allowing the player to make choices both in dialogue and action. The correct choice would lead to Hamlet's brilliant soliloquies, and the incorrect choice would lead to a diminished plot, diminished dialogue, and a diminished end, lacking the cathartic nobility of the original play.

[1613]Imagine a video game that placed characters in the context of the great books and classics, and then spoke the original dialogue--matching the plot of the classic--when the character chose to follow an action parallel to the classic.

[1614]For instance, Odysseus would be offered the chance to have his men tie him to the mast when passing the Sirens, or he could choose to not be tied to the mast.

[1615]If he does not choose to be tied to the mast, he succumbs to the Siren's call and meets his demise. This could be shown in a cut-scene based on his choice. He could have further options presented in dealing with the Sirens.

[1616]If Odysseus chooses to be tied to the mast, he sails on by safely, and goes on to the next adventure.

[1617]Odysseus will be presented with choices that lead to branching avenues. If Odysseus chooses to fight the suitors too early upon arriving home in The Odyssey, he will lose. If he chooses the wrong dialogue, he will lose. If he discloses his identity at certain key points, and acts stronger as opposed to weaker, he will lose. If he chooses to disguise himself not as a beggar, but as someone more exalted, or himself, he will lose. Choosing the humbler path and staying away from temptation will result in his victory.

[1618]So it is that every plot point of every immortal classic could be integrated in this system so as to lend games depth and profundity.

[1619]In the case of Hamlet, Hamlet could be given options, such as to kill the King at major plot points. For instance, when Hamlet comes to the King confessing of the murder of Hamlet's father before the cross, Hamlet could choose to kill him or not kill him. Killing him would end the game with Hamlet going to hell, while not killing the King would end with Hamlet delivering the classical monologue.

[1620]As Dante walks through hell, he could choose various forms of interacting with Virgil--only one way that conforms to the true plot of the classic will lead him through hell. For instance, Dante could end up partaking in the same temptations which engulf his fellow men.

[1621]Players could be given points for adhering to the true plot of the classics, as that is generally the moral course of action. When players depart from the true plot of the classics through their errant choices, they could be penalized, or not receive points. So it is that those who adhere to the true course of the classics--those who make all the correct choices--will see victory and witness the greater art of the classics. Those who stray from the plot of the classics will ultimately lose--Odysseus will never make it on home, Dante will not make it through hell, or Hamlet will end abruptly, short of its greater glory.

4. System and Method for Female Video Game Characters With Soul and Virtue and Male Characters With Soul and Virtue:

[1622]Imagine video games that presented female characters with the depth of soul and spirit owned by classical characters such as Penelope, Beatrice, Mary Magdelane, the Virgin Mary, and The Mona Lisa.

[1623]Having female characters behave and act morally, while others don't, would provide a novel form of gameplay. For instance, in the Odyssey, Agamemnon's wife cheats on him, and the man she takes in ends up killing Agamemnon. This is contrasted to Penelope, who remains faithful throughout, thusly ensuring that Odysseus's life and home are preserved. So it is that in this novel form of video games, women will be shown on both sides of the moral premise, and not only that, but their moral choices will be fundamental to the eventual victory or defeat.

[1624]Opportunities abound for deeper, more profound female characters, as fanboys such as Cliffyb and Wyckyg are yet focusing on breasts, as Wired reports: [1625]"Speaking to Wired.com at Microsoft's recent media event, the designer (above left) says that Epic Games is trying to make their upcoming Xbox 360 shooter more appealing to the casual audience. The game's female characters, he said, won't have "ginormous tits." And the lauded kill-alien-swarms-with-a-buddy cooperative mode will let you adjust the game's difficulty on the fly depending on who's playing. How do you make a game girlfriend-friendly? You do jump-in, jump-out co-op. You have configurable difficulty settings for the other player. You have very cool and bad-ass main characters that have a very human side. And you make sure that the female characters in your game don't have ginormous tits and aren't bad stereotypes. What are the female characters in Gears 2 like? I've always made sure, working with the art department, that Anya is strong-willed but also very mother-like to the squad. She has a very modest chest and doesn't look like some sort of heavy metal movie fantasy."--http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/05/cliffy-b-gears.html

[1626]Well, that is vast and resounding progress. Boobs are mentioned three times in the above passage, although nobody mentions the vast importance of the moral woman's character in the realm of classical, epic storytelling. No gaming expert has yet ever suggested that the ultimate woman character in a video game ought behave morally, like Penelope. In our dumbed-down, spectacle-driven society, morality is seen as a bad thing--the exact antithesis to art. And so the best the fanboys can do is make the in-game character's breast-size smaller. There is no mention of making them faithful, nor having them speak intelligently, nor making them weave and unweave a tapestry, as does Penelope, to keep the suitors at bay, while waiting faithfully for Odysseus. So it is that games have yet to achieve higher, classical, epic art. And so it is that this patent, by instilling deep ideas and ideals within the game's context and AI, will allow for superior gameplay.

[1627]Female Characters with Soul and Virtue: Every year Play Magazine publishes its Girls of Gaming collection which states at http://playmagazine.com/thegirlsofgaming/index.html, Girls of Gaming Vol. 5 "is jam packed with hotness from every corner of the gaming universe and when you sign up to go digital you'll get our 20-page Best-Of Girls of Gaming absolutely free, along with bonus mature content too hot for print. The print edition is something special as well, featuring embossed, spot varnished covers and top quality materials." Year after year Play Magazine publishes this work, and year after year the industry creates games; but they are missing soul on both the masculine and feminine levels. A game that showed a character being seduced, but resisting, as did Penelope in The Odyssey, could enhance game play by inspiring and exalting the main character to make it on home. Imagine cut-scenes that showed women reading exalted poetry, or lines from Shakespeare' plays, representing virtues. They could be contrasted to evil women and temptresses throughout literature. [1628]1. Imagine cut scenes that showed women acting with virtue to inspire the player to make it on home. For instance, seeing Penelope behaving virtuously and resisting the suitors could inspire the player to make it on back to the damsel in distress. [1629]2. Imagine cut-scenes that showed men acting with virtue to inspire the female in-game-character to also act virtuous. For instance imagine a character of Penelope witnessing Odysseus's resistance of the Sirens, or his other noble actions and refusals of temptations.

[1630]If a player were playing as Penelope, and they did not act morally and took on a suitor as Husband, the suitor would kill her husband when she got home, as happened with Agamemnon. Thus moral actions would have moral consequences; and immoral actions would have immoral consequences.

[1631]A game such as GTA could be enhanced by allowing the player to shoot the pimp and save the women/prostitutes, telling the women to sin no more.

[1632]Such a patent would allow games to achieve higher art, while exalting the female character and form.

[1633]Imagine a video game that let one's live, embody, and enact a Hero's Journey Renaissance: "The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail"--Joseph Schumpeter. Classical Ideals in Innovation & The Genius of Leonardo da Vinci.
Torque Owner Ted Southard #16
06/30/2009 (10:03 pm)

Quote:17. The method in claim 1 where said ideas spread like viruses, by being spoken, written, or disseminated in some other manner, transforming characters who come in contact with said ideas into vampires, zombies, or other forms of monsters; and when bad ideas have infected too many in-game characters, the consequences are dire, including the loss of life, liberty, happiness, freedom, and security.

I have to fall back on the mechanics in Warcraft III with the undead scourge.

To date, in all the prior art, there exists no game in which vampires/zombies can be both formed and reformed depending on the words/books/ideas they come in contact with/read/hear/imbibe. To date, in all the prior art, there exists no game wherein you can rescue/exalt the soul of a zombie/vampire, and win them over to your cause, by speaking of classical ideals to them.


Quote:18. The method in claim 1 wherein said ideas may be related to economics and monetary policy, and wherein the player could fight for sound money in words echoing the classical economists and deed and witness the consequences of their successes and failures, including liberty, freedom, peace and prosperity or rapid inflation, deflation, theft via the inflation tax, massive debt, empire, long lines, depressions, corruption, and war.

As a mechanic, it's been done in most games. As a setting or cause, it's mostly unique (economic consequences of actions being inflation and deflation is a big deal in MMOs, to the point where EVE Online has a fulltime economist).

Can you cite any prior art wherein the player must choose between a fiat currency and sound monetary policy, and witness the opposing effects, both dire and exalted?


Quote:19. The method in claim 1 wherein moral ideas have moral consequences in the evolution of the gameworld.

Fable? Fable II?

Again, I cite the patent: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090017886

[0578]Although Fallout1 allowed one to kill children, Fallout3 no longer does, as the designer states: "You will not be able to be a child killer. There are several reasons for this, some of them are very basic, like we wouldn't be able to sell the game, anywhere to anyone, if the children could be killed." [0579]The Fallout3 interview continues at http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39736/Fallout-3-Screenshots-Interview: [0580]"3) Could you outline your thoughts on the matter of ensuring that choices and consequences provided by the various quests within your game are crafted so as to be more nonlinear than simply the superficial choice between "good, bad and neutral"/"affirmative, negative and nothing?" Also, will there be other aspects to choices in Fallout 3? Political? Philosophical? Exactly how far will you go with the player's moral freedom, the "gray" solutions?" [0581]That really depends on the quest, so it's hard to say. There are certainly some that are clearly good/bad, like blowing up Megaton. It's clearly bad to nuke an entire town. It's clearly bad to kill innocent people throughout the game, and your karma is affected. It's also clearly good to help people in need, giving to charity, passing out clean water, and more. Those are specific examples in the game. I think many people want to play "good" and want to play "evil". Both are fun in different ways. The gray area comes into several quests, where the situation is just "bad". Some feel like no-win situations and they come across as "make a hard choice." I think that's where it feels best honestly, but we do need to mix it up between that and simpler good/bad.--http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/news/39736/Fallout-3-Screenshots-- Interview

[0582]So it is that good and evil are both "fun" in different ways. Imagine if our Founding Fathers had created a nation wherein they saw "good" and "evil" to be "fun" in different ways. The present invention differentiates itself from the prior art in that the outcome of the world ultimately does depend on classical ideals which must be fought for. Tobold's blog presents some insights into how the fanboy gaming community falls short in delivering games where exalted ideas and have truly exalted consequences; and where there is a good that ultimately makes a difference. The present and prior art of the video game world exalts games where evil is a thin plot device:

[0583]http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006--06--01_archive.html

[0584]Tobold's MMORPG Blog

[0585]Friday, Jun. 30, 2006

[0586]"The end of evil [0587]When last year Edward Castronova argued on Terra Nova that Horde characters in World of Warcraft are evil, he was widely ridiculed. There is no "evil" in World of Warcraft, players of either faction are constantly on quests that are helping somebody else. Whether you are a holy paladin or a demon-summoning warlock, it doesn't change the way in which you help the farmer get the deed to his farm back from the evil bandits. There is no moral choice, no option to sell the deed to the highest bidder instead of returning it for a lousy reward. Even the undead are "good" undead, fighting the evil scourge undead. [0588]If a game like Black & White, or Knights of the Old Republic, or Fable, gives you the option to play good or evil, that is just a thinly disguised way to enable you to play the game twice. You chose evil or good by what you think is more useful to beat the game, and then if you play it again, you chose the other side, just to see something new. It is not a moral choice, but a tactical one. We don't feel that burning down a virtual village in a game world and killing the inhabitants is an evil act, after all those are just colored pixels that don't feel anything. Advancing in the game is the most important, even that means that in the next mission we have to throw Napalm on that Vietnamese village to continue. [0589]All that ends us in a total inability between gamers and anti-game advocates or politicians to understand each other. The gamer picks up minor points that the criticism got wrong, like "there are no points in GTA for shooting and raping hookers", and fails to see that the criticism otherwise wasn't all that unjustified. Most of what you do in GTA *is* a depiction of very, very evil behavior. By the time you finished the game you have committed more crimes than any known peace-time gangster. The anti-gamer fails to see that all these crimes are virtual, and don't lead to you going out and doing the same in real life. [0590]"Evil" has become a joke. In Dragon Quest 8 one of the heroes has a special combat move with whirling axes, called "Axes of Evil", har, har, nice joke on George Bush. But I wonder if all this making light of evil, all this gaming without true moral choices, is not making the medium of video games poorer. Fact is that in the real world there is real evil, guys like Sadam Hussein, Kim Jong-il, or Robert Mugabe aren't just "misunderstood". And evil isn't limited to crazy dictators, there are people everywhere that like to be cruel to others. And ordinary people have to make hard moral choices sometimes, between good and evil. Previous entertainment media understood that, and made good and evil a major recurring theme in many books and movies. Only video games present the end of evil, a world in which neither good nor evil matters, where "evil" is just a thin plot element to explain why you as the hero have to go out and kill that boss. We end up with players in online games doing evil things that actually hurt real people, if just in a minor way, and not even realizing the difference. GTA won't turn anybody into a mass murderer, but it is hard to believe that hundreds of hours of inconsequential evil and violence should have no effect whatsoever on how you perceive evil and violence in the real world."--http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2006--06--01_archive.html

[0591]In the real world, as in classic art, ideas have consequences. In the realm of video gaming, they do not, and thus games fall far short of classical, epic art.

[0592]The prior art does not let a character battle for the Constitution in exalted Word and Deed. To date, no video game allows the player to battle for classical ideals while fighting the forces of collectivism. No game brings the spirit of "the good fight" to life by layering in expressions of ideologies. No game lets one select friends and enemies based on the depth of the npc's souls and spirits. No game lets one choose friends and enemies based on the words that are spoken. No game lets one speak words and see where they take root, and then choose to befriend those who hear the word and accept it, in building their coalition or forming their fellowship. No game allows characters to be judged on the strength of their character--matching word and deed. No game focuses on the small moral choices a character makes, which would parallel the larger choices on down the line, and thus serve as a metric for determining who and who not one should befriend.

[0593]As postmodernists believe that art is created by society, and as fiat postmodernists dominate all our institutions today (as they are bought and paid for by postmodern fiat dollars) Grand Theft Auto, like Eggers & Oates, is ultimately a creation of our fiat banking system. It reduces women to prostitutes and men to douchebag thugs hiring and killing prostitutes while penning fake amazon reviews, and millions of fanboys exalt in this context, believing it to be the very pinnacle of existence, as they were raised by single mothers and educated in the fiatocracy's dumbed-down schools. This present invention will allow games superior to GTA and GOW. This invention will foster games that will bring classical literature to life, as well as contemporary literature with classical ideals such as honor, integrity, character, and fidelity.

Quote:20. The method in claim 1 where said ideas in the video game world are founded upon the natural ideas and ideals occurring at the plot points in great works of literature and film where a character must choose whether to serve an ideal or not serve an ideal, thusly rendering or not rendering ideals real by their actions, and influencing the greater outcome and state of the game world, as ideas have consequences.

I'm tempted to bring up the Matrix games here, but I'm sure you can find several book or film-based games that turn a plot on player choice. And the definition of "great works of literature and film" gets decided by who?

The Great Books are the Great Books, as defined by the Great Books. Nor am I by any means alone in lamenting the absence of their exalted spirit—of depth, profundity, soul, and epic storytelling—in the gaming world. I think that one of the problems of the games industry is that it is overly corporate-oriented, which naturally discounts the primal (and essential) contributions of individuals, *especially* in the realm of art. After all, it is Dante's Inferno--it is Homer's Odyssey--it is Shakespeare's Hamlet, Beethoven's Ninth, Einstein's Relativity, and Socrates' Apology. The individual is of primal importance in all art--in all enduring literature, music, philosophy (it is Aritsotle's Poetics), and film; but today, it oft seems the individual is subjugated by the fiatocracy's corporate-state groupthink regimes, who condemn Beatrice to hell. ;)

But too, as the game technology advances and engines are commoditized, more and more the distinguishing factor in games and franchises are going to be art, plot, character, and story. As the corporate approach kills the poetic spirit of the art and condemns Beatrice to hell, opportunities will arise for artistic entrepreneurs to establish new brands and franchises which endow gaming technology with simple techniques that allow the player to fight for classical, epic ideals--for love and honor. Yes--Melville's "ungraspable phantom of life" yet swims free.

The music, film, and literary business have ever been defined from the outside--from far beyond. Rap and hiphop came from far, far beyond the major labels, as did Nirvana and grunge--both multi-billion-dollar industries. Joseph Campbell penned The Hero With a Thousand Faces for $750 over a period of five years--and the book went on to inspire the Star Wars and Matrix franchises. J.R.R. Tolkien labored for decades out of pure love for literature. And so it is that the corporation's greatest asset at the end of the day are not its MBAs nor brass, but indie artists and poets, who trump even the VC. For money, at the end of the day, is a commodity. Innovation and the heoric will to create epic art are not.

Yes--there is a time and place for all; but right now the games industry seems a bit conservative and top-heavy--a bit too reliant on the fading fanboy fallacies. I see this expressed all over the place:

http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/03/30/journalist-game-biz-grow

"[Chaplin] reports at NPR among other venues. She says this puts her in the role of a “translator,” trying to tell the mainstream why gaming even matters. This also means explaining a lot of big-name games that feature zombies, and aliens, and girls in metal bikinis wielding axes. And while she’s heard the excuses - it’s “a very new medium” - she’s way past accepting them.

Like Wendy slapping around the lost boys, Chaplin patiently but firmly laid down the line. “It is you guys as game designers who are mired deeply in ‘guy culture,’” Chaplin said. The problem isn’t the medium: “You are a bunch of stunted adolescents.” Games avoid any of the things that separate men from boys: responsibility, introspection, intimacy, and intellectual discovery. And “when you’re talking about culture-makers, this is a problem.”"" --http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/03/30/journalist-game-biz-grow

Yes--it is time for the games industry to man up and create exalted art; to lead with the spirit of epic literature, as did the most successful films, novels, and even art (The Sistine Chapel).

"When I was a fanboy, I spake as a fanboy, I understood as a fanboy, I thought as a fanboy: but when I became a man, I put away fanboyish things." --Corinthians 13:11, KJV

Quote:21. The method in claim 1 where said ideas in the video game world are used to exalt the classic hero's journey, and where a player's success and progress at every stage or step or plot point of said hero's journey is defined by said player's service or disservice to said ideas and ideals, and where by said player's serving said ideas and classical ideals, said hero's journey advances towards ultimate victory and triumph, while by said character's failing to serve said ideas and classical ideals, progress in said hero's journey is retarded or reversed.

Splinter Cell: Double Agent, where Sam Fisher has to walk a fine line between "any means necessary" and "softer" actions that can build or destroy trust with the NSA (and another agency, I think, but my XBox is off to get it's flashing red lights fixed, so I can't check).

Yes! But does he meet the mentor who exalts classical ideas and ideals (such as the truth of the Force/truth of the Matrix/truth of the power of classical, epic, Sconstitutional ideals)? Does he have a call to adventure? Does he refuse it? Does he come across classical ideals? Does he contemplate whether or not to serve classical ideals? Can he exalt/reach other characters with classical ideals and idealism? Does he choose to cross the threshold? Does he call the bluff? Does he choose to serve ideals greater than himself? All I am saying is that a most efficient way to render the hero’s journey, as illustrated in the patent’s final figure, is to endow it with classical ideals and idealism! Once you design a game’s AI wioth classical ideals in mind, the hero’s journey will naturally emerge!


At any rate, here is the text from my upcoming book THE GOLD 45 REVOLVER: THE HERO’S JOURNEY IN ARTS ENTREPRENERUSHIP & TECHNOLOGY. Sign up on the mailing list to be notified about it at Arts Entrepreneurship or Hero's Journey Renaissance!

Well, it’s the poet-warrior’s duty to resurrect that third act, as Aristotle notes that art, like life, is composed of a beginning, middle, and end; and though they rob students via taxes, tuition, and inflation, they cannot rob students of the soul’s yearning for symmetry—for truth, beauty, and justice.

Russell Simmons: Happy makes money. Money doesn't make happy.
Socrates: Virtue does not come from wealth, but. . . wealth and every other good thing which men have. . . comes from virtue.
Buffett: The only—the only defense you have in—when money is turning into confetti is basically your own talents...

Envision your ideals rendered real in your mind’s eye, and then exalt them via rugged action. If you do not take control of life, it will take control of you. If you forget or lose your higher ideals—that one percent of inspiration—you will become a Dante without a Beatrice, an Odysseus without a Penelope—a ship without a moral compass. And you will find yourself drifting, subject to the whims and whirlpools of the corporate-state gods, who have oft sacrificed that deeper soul for short-term profits—and thus you might find yourself in a cubicle serving their bottom line, like Neo. So it is that The Matrix’s universities have an incentive to deconstruct the Great Books which naturally mentor and exalt one’s deeper idealism.
You’ve got to call the academy’s bluff, as ideals are the greatest investment, for time cannot tarnish them and no thief can steal them, and thus you must guard them with your life and fear not, for Socrates reminds us that no harm can befall the soul of a good man—no bad can befall those common heroes who find themselves on great journeys—such as building the Vanguard Titan—because they set out to simply do the right thing and render their soul’s ideals real via resolute, relentless action.

Nothing can harm a good man, either in life or after death. –Socrates

But even as I disclaim the credentials of the hero, of the leader, of the business manager, and even of the entrepreneur, I shamelessly proclaim my credentials as an idealist. Even more, I am an idealist who revels in the values of the Enlightenment and holds high his admiration for the brilliance and the character of the great thinkers, great doers, and great adventurers of the 18th century, men (as it happens, in particular our nation’s Founding Fathers) who give birth to our modern world. –John C. Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good and brave men, or they are no better than dreams. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

The ideals which have lighted me on my way and time after time given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. . . . The ordinary objects of human endeavour—property, outward success, luxury—have always seemed to me contemptible. –Einstein

I’ve reveled in helping to build a better world, solely because, well, it seems like the right thing to do. –John C. Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

The modern university complexifies idealisms’ overarching, simple unity, confounding classical truth and common sense while erecting bureaucracies and a myriad of debt-and-divorce-inducing degree programs which profit via the artless art of obfuscation, sanctifying the bailout culture’s transfer of wealth from the common investor, worker, and creator to the machine, as profits are privatized and risks socialized. So runs the premise of Homer’s Odyssey and Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, both of which open with the false suitors—the managerial capitalists—laying to waste Odysseus’s estate while trying to claim his wife (via prima noctae in schools/universities campuses), family (via the divorce regime which destroys fatherhood), and his natural kingdom—his home (via the corporate-state). So goes the basic plot and premise of The Matrix, Plato’s Cave, and the postmodern university, wherein the classical truths are obscured, wherein the soul’s, Hamlet’s, and Telemachus’s true fathers are nowhere to be seen in the ordinary world, and where one can journey through four years without ever encountering a Great Book, while receiving diplomas and awards for commenting on mere shadows dancing on the walls, as universities erect gigantic stock tickers in the hallways to remind the students of their true masters, for whom they are plunged into debt to serve; at whose altar over 50% will be divorced should they ever get married.

TRINITY:
I know why you're here, Neo. I know what you've been doing... why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and why night after night, you sit by your computer. You're looking for him. I know because I was once looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn't really looking for him. I was looking for an answer. It's the question that drives us, Neo. It's the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.

NEO:
What is the Matrix?

Ultimately, the Matrix’s education is worth far less than the debt one accrues, as the dancing shadows—the garish NASDAQ displays lording over Time’s Square and the hallways of academia—are continually changing, and such knowledge is but transient information—often fudged for the sake of fleeting monetary gain—void of classical, enduring, worthwhile wisdom.

An education obtained with money is worse than no education at all. –Socrates (Imagine what he would have said about an education obtained by unprecedented student debt.)

[Buffett] told me very frankly he didn’t think education was enhanced by money and secondly he didn’t think business schools were teaching the things he wanted to support –Buffet: The Making of an American Capitalist, by Roger Lowenstein, p. 318-320

Instead of falling prey to the Matrix’s dazzling machinations of manipulation, which have lead to our massive debt and decline and can only lead to more, one should seek out the immutable classical ideals—which were given freely in the pages of the Great Books—as those ideals are the very same as those to be found in your soul, which alone can lend long-term value to your ventures—to your family and marriage—to your life, liberty, and happiness.

If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

Epic entrepreneurship and the Great Books are united by their respect for ideals, as longevity derives from that which best endures, and ideals are immortal. The Founding Fathers understood this when they created a Constitution—that fundamental business plan underlying all business plans—which has been amended only seventeen times since 1791 and which has lasted longer than any other written form of government via its loyal adherence to classical ideals:

In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. –Thomas Jefferson

They all fall away, one by one, until one is left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone. –Jefferson

These are what are called revolution principles. They are the first principles of Aristotle and Plato, of Livy and Cicero, of Sidney, Harrington, and Locke—the principles of nature an eternal reason. –John Adams

I should as soon think of closing all my window-shutters to enable me to see, as of banishing the classics to improve Republican ideas. –John Adams to Benjamin Rush

Aristotle’s Poetics speaks of the importance of the unity in one’s art—the unity of time, place, and action; and the unity of the internal and external journeys’ service to ideals.

The internal journey is finding one’s ideals—often via reflection and study—via reading the Greats and writing—during outdoor adventures—hiking, surfing, and biking; and the external journey is rendering those ideals real in living ventures. –Dr. E

Ideals are the true ticket to both the hero’s journeys in your screenplay as well as the journeys of penning it and selling and producing it. Ideals are the beacon that guides all brands and exalts all branding, as a brand is not defined by a logo nor a name, but rather the logo and name are defined by the actions taken in the rendering of ideals real.

We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. –Aristotle

Ideals are the natural wellspring of all characters and archetypes, as every character in your novel will be defined by their actions in relation to ideals—from the mentor who served them in rugged battle in his younger years and now embodies their wisdom as a wine only gets finer with age, to the shapeshifter and trickster who pretend to follow them; to the god and goddess who embody idealism’s masculine and feminine forms, to the temptresses and villains who manipulate and obfuscate the forms so as to deceive; to the hero, who actively serves ideals come hell or high water. Do not force your writing by approaching it with a formulaic laundry list of archetypes and plot points, but rather look around you and read the Great Books, and see that both Bogle’s and Odysseus’s journeys are but one and the same with the lone hero making it on home, cleaining hjouse of the managerial capitalists, and creating Vanguard—as time and again it are the few willing to stand against the many for the sake of ideals—who advance freedom. Now Bogle will be the first to tell you the true heroes were the thousands of Vanguard crewmembers, and Odysseus would never have seen victory were it not for his good friends, his son Telemachus, and his noble, beloved Penelope, but yet, at the end of the day, there was but one who could string the bow. From the call to adventure, to the road of trials, to the return with the elixir, every stage depends upon how the protagonist lives up to, or falls short of, ideals. The Hero is oft endowed with an enhanced power to perceive ideals, but their heroism is ultimately defined by their ability to serve the ideals via action.
Aristotle ranked the dramatic elements in order of importance in his Poetics, and it so happens that this order derives from each element’s direct relationship to ideals. He placed plot first and spectacle last—entities that are oft honored in reverse order in video games, as well as in postmodern economic theories and sub-prime MBA marketing plans. Again we see why Aristotle and Homer are not taught, as a moral “conscience doth make cowards of us all,” when to be great is “to find argument in a straw,” when “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” And again we see why Bogle, who is also not taught in business schools where the soulless MBA degree declines in value in proportion to the baseless fiat dollar, writes:

I start off with a remarkably light revision of the classic first paragraph of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, adapted to the present era. Compare the two first sentences. Gibbon: “In the second century of the Christian Era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth and the most civilized portion of mankind.” Battle: “As the twentieth century of the Christian era ended, the United States of America comprehended the most powerful position on earth and the wealthiest portion of mankind.”
So when I add Gibbon’s conclusion—“(Yet) the Roman Empire would decline and fall, a revolution which will be ever remembered and is still felt by the nations of the earth”—I’m confident that thoughtful readers do not miss the point. But of course I hammer it home anyway: “Gibbon’s history reminds us that no nation can take its greatness for granted. There are no exceptions.” As one of two reviews—both very generous—of The Battle that appeared in The New York Time noted, “Subtle Mr. Bogle is not.”
No, I’m not writing off America. But my certain trumpet is warning that we must put our house in order. “The example of the fall of the Roman Empire ought to be a strong wake-up call to all of those who share my respect and admiration for the vital role that capitalism has played in America’s call to greatness. Thanks to our marvelous economic system, based on private ownership of productive facilities, on prices set in free markets, and on personal freedom, we are the most prosperous society in history, the most powerful nation on the face of the globe, and, most important of all, the highest exemplar of the values that, sooner or later, are shared by the human beings of all nations: the inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” –John C. Bogle, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

Aristotle considered the plot, or story, to be the soul. And as the soul is the unifying, animating, and immortal force, it is the story alone that can render a work a classic, as it is the plot that defines and exalt the triumph of ideals. And when video games allow the player to exalt ideals via their actions throughout the game—to tell an epic story—then shall video games become epic art, as they do in Dr. E’s Ideas Have Consequences Video Game Engine. For even Michelangelo’s art was great not because of its high pixel count and detail, but by the by story behind it—by the soul of Adam and David. So we see why Bogle titled his book The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, for while poetry is what is lost in translation—the soul—the story of noble battles of higher ideals—endure time and tide, as with Homer and Virgil they ride. When economists learn of this, then shall they be able to lead us to a more exalted world, for Michelangelo’s Creation of Man shows not only God and Adam, but God and Adam Smith.

The Creation of Adam, Michelangelo, c. 1511, fresco, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City

The plot of Homer’s Odyssey testifies to the fact that a rugged warrior, by refusing common temptations and braving the open sea, can regain his home and family, while those who succumb to temptation will lose “the dawn of their return.” So too is it in business and life; and even when it seems it isn’t—even when corruption seems to forge ahead in private jets and the CEOs’ abject failures are rewarded by taxpayer bailouts, Homer’s Odyssey yet persists in its higher order; exiling the soulless CEOs from the classical pantheon. “The world shall little note, nor long remember” their transitory travesties.
Aristotle states that story is more important than mere journalism or history, for story tells us “the way things ought to be,” and “when storytelling declines, the result is decadence.” And thus Bogle’s Battle for The Soul of Capitalism tells a far greater story than all the billions of deceptive legal memos and PR documents penned to enrich the few at the expense of the many, as the boomers cashed out on classical capitalism. Long after Merrill/ Fannie/ Freddie/ Citi/ Lehman/ AIG/ et al., and the anonymous architects of their deconstruction, have been forgotten, Battle and Enough will yet be read. Such is the enduring nature of higher wealth, and if you wish to write from the heart—if you wish to pen the next 300, Matrix, Battle, or Braveheart, first learn of the classical ideals.

KING LEONIDAS: . . .
First, you fight with your head...

QUEEN GORGO:
Then you fight with your heart.

Our artists and craftsmen must be capable of perceiving the real nature of what is beautiful, and then our young men, living as it were in a good climate, will benefit because all the works of art they see and hear influence them for good, like the breezes from some healthy country with what is rational and right. –Socrates

Are we not the better for what we have hitherto abolished of the feudal system? Has not every restitution of the ancient Saxon laws had happy effects? Is it not better now that we return at once into that happy system of our ancestors, the wisest and most perfect ever yet devised by the wit of man, as it stood before the 8th century? –Thomas Jefferson

Story derives its power from its rugged service to ideals—to the way things ought to be. Odysseus ought get home to Penelope, and Penelope ought stay faithful to him, and mutual funds ought serve the investor ahead of the managers. A government ought be of the people, by the people, and for the people, and not of, by and for the banks. Odysseus ought rid his house of the suitors laying his estate to waste, just like Bogle rid Vanguard of the managerial capitalists, and as we ought rid our own homes of the false, fiat suitors laying the souls of our academies to waste. Story and mythology remind us of the epic ideals in our souls, and when emboldened, those priceless ideals grant us courage to pursue entrepreneurial ventures.

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others. –Aristotle

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer. –Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Fair dealing brings greater profit in the end,” states Homer, and while we have witnessed an era where the soulless profited via decline, they proved incapable of producing lasting, epic art; instead giving us high-pixel-counts bread and circuses, fleeting reality TV, the debauchery of the culture and currency, of marriage and the family, of the Constitution and country, of art and the academy, for again and again, Aristotle tells us, “When storytelling declines, the result is decadence.” And thus, epic opportunities exist to render ideals real in tomorrow’s video games, novels, and films—in tomorrow’s academies and labs as we rage, rage against the dying of that light.
Imagine an FPS video game with a natural plot arising from the player’s ability to fight for ideals—to fight for the Constitution—to gain virtue via virtuous, heroic action. Tomorrow’s video game designers must turn their attention towards Aristotle so as to render a brave new era of gaming centered about the consequences of ideals rendered real:

The plot or story, then, is the first principle, and, as it were, the soul of a tragedy; character holds the second place.

1) The Plot: The story of how ideals prevail.
2) Character: The ability to serve ideals.
3) Ideas/Theme: The ideals the plot renders and characters serve.
4) Speech/Dialogue: Insight into ideals.
5) Song/Chorus: Artful commentary on ideals.
6) Décor: set design—the medium is the message.
7) Spectacle: Ornamentation serving ideals.

And so too in business is story—the soul—the most important entity, as Bogle suggests by placing these words at the vanguard: Battle for the Soul. All enduring brands and plots alike are ultimately defined by action in the service of excellence, and character is that attribute which allows one to consistently render ideals real.

Excellence is not an act but a habit. –Steve Jobs

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. –Aristotle

Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit. You are what you repeatedly do. –Shaquille O’Neal

Habit is character. –Dr. E

And just as all the classic plot points naturally arise when the lone voyager sets out after ideals, all the archetypes are naturally defined by how they interact with ideals. The Mentor—the Jedi Master or Samurai or Morpheus—has lived their life dedicated to the ideals, and as their physical power wanes, their spiritual power yet augments, and they oft help the hero by unlocking the hero’s blossoming physical power, training and guiding the hero in the service of ideals. The Shapeshifter and Trickster obscure the ideals, or pretend to serve them while opposing them, trying to profit via saying one thing while holding in their hearts another, as they are taught to do in their MBA programs which were created in the image of the god in which they trust—the fiat dollar. The goddesses of Beatrice, Athena, and Penelope inspire the Hero via their idealistic, faithful, exalted souls, while the temptresses of the Sirens, Calypso, and the She-wolf beckon hero on towards destruction, as so many are taught to do via today’s corporate-state Matrix which transformed the once greatest manufacturer, lender, and exporter into the world’s greatest debtor and divorcer, which naturally makes it the world’s “greatest” government. Many economists thus deem the corrosion of classic capitalism’s a vast and astounding victory.
Odysseus, Dante, and Bogle all had to keep their mind’s eye focused on ideals as they voyaged through Hades, The Inferno, and Wall Street, on towards Penelope, Beatrice, and Vanguard—a living manifestation of Bogle’s ideals, won by countless battles which he is too humble to highlight. Imagine riding into Wall Street, calling the collective money-manager’s bluff—that one cannot out-guess the market—and then raising them with an insititution that provides a superior return year, after year, after year.
In an era whence the Matrix’s university administrators—who never step foot in the classroom, instead spending their days gambling away their hedge-fund endowments (Commonwealth) and gleefully surfing the unprecedented waves of cultural and monetary debt they have laden the students with—Jack Bogle, the founder of the $1.2 trillion Vanguard fund and hero to every common investor—who has given half his salary away to charity year after year—yet flew 3,000 miles to deliver a speech to a small class of undergraduates—a speech composed in the context of the Great Books and Classics, as were our Founding Documents. In an era whence the Agamemnon administrators sit back and try to lay claim to Professor Achilles’ prize only to deconstruct it, placing both the students and professors in epic debt along with their country, surrounded by pomo phalanxes of sycophantic servants in their corporate offices, far from the front lines of great books entrepreneurship—far, far away from their duty of eternal vigilance that freedom requires—so far removed from both the classroom and the spirit by which their university was founded and from which the long-term wealth of its endowment truly derives; Bogle yet suited up for one more battle, braved a Pennsylvania snowstorm against his wife’s admonitions, and with a heart transplant and new titanium shoulder, the veteran poet-warrior delivered the Hero’s Journey Entrepreneurship Festival’s first keynote—Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, followed shortly by William Fay of Legendary Picture’s keynote regarding 300, in which Frank Miller’s Dilios (inspired by Flint Dille) spoke of the warrior-poet’s humility:

DILIOS
For he did not wish tribute, nor song, nor monuments nor poems of war and valor. His wish was simple. “Remember us,” he said to me. That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be. May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, “Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie.” --300

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.
—William Shakespeare

HAMLET:
As thou'rt a man,
Give me the cup: let go; by heaven, I'll have't.
O good Horatio, what a wounded name,
Things standing thus unknown, shall live behind me!
If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart
Absent thee from felicity awhile,
And in this harsh world draw thy breath in pain,
To tell my story.
(March afar off, and shot within.)
What warlike noise is this? —William Shakespeare

After I'm dead I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one. –Cato The Elder

And so too, as a rider in this fellowship of immortal souls, your success—the success of your screenplays, videogames, and ventures—will ultimately be defined not by monuments nor mere poems—not by money, titles, and diplomas—but by how well you serve those immortal ideals that Leonidas, and so many warrior prophets and poet warriors selflessly gave their lives for on down through the ages. If they could do all that, surely we can do this. If they could drink the Hemlock and face down the Inquisition, surely we can finish a novel or two, and risk a few dollars in building an “Ideas Have Consequences” video game that allows one to render ideals real and fight for the Constitution—a game that better serves the vast and rising demand for classical principles. If they could lay their lives down for Truth, surely we could forgo tenure and titles for the same. In light of all that so many risked before us and all they gave freely, in light of our precious freedom that was too often bought and paid for with their last, full measure of devotion—in light of all we have been bequeathed, we owe the world nothing less than a classic, epic renaissance. And unless I miss my guess, we’re in for one wild night.

A little of Leonidas lies in the fact that I can go where I like and write what I like. He contributed to set us free. –Nobel Laureate William Golding

Grasp the ideals, the words will follow.
—Cato the Elder


(Beatrice) appeared dressed in noblest colour, restrained and pure, in crimson, tied and adorned in the style that then suited her very tender age. . . At that moment I say truly that the vital spirit, that which lives in the most secret chamber of the heart began to tremble so violently that I felt it fiercely in the least pulsation, and, trembling, it uttered these words: ‘Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi: Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, will rule over me.’ –Dante, La Vita Nuova (The New Life), Book I

Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi. –Dante
Omnia vincit amor; et nos cedamus amori. –Virgil
(Love alone conquers all, let us surrender to love.)
Love that moves the sun and the other stars. –Dante

AI computer APRIL creates Autumn in her own image.
From Autumn Rangers

The great mythologist and teacher Edith Hamilton wrote, “The fundamental fact about the Greek was that he had to use his mind. The ancient priests had said, ‘Thus far and no farther. We set the limits of thought.’ The Greek said, ‘All things are to be examined and called into question. There are no limits set on thought,’ so naturally the Greek would ask the video game industry, “why not exalt video games as classical art—with classical, epic soul and the love stories about which Braveheart, 300, The Odyssey, and Inferno were all centered about?” For Dante reminds us, “Consider your origins: you were not made that you might live as brutes, but so as to follow virtue and knowledge.”


THE LEGEND OF AUTUMN’S RANGERS
Art is the immortal soul’s beacon—it is the muse of our individuality and exalter of our uniqueness—it is the lone force that defines freedom above and beyond The Declaration of Independence and Constitution, which took their inspiration from the classic, epic prophets and warriot poets. For before every work of art and scientific achievement comes an individual’s name. It is Dante’s Inferno, Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Beethoven’s Ninth, Einstein’s Relativity, Maxwell’s Equations. Thus, as an artist, never forget this higher calling—the battle for the sole soul—for it is your higher duty to find your independence so as to remind us of ours, and though we must climb upon the shoulders of Giants—as did Newton—we only ever see further by our own eyes. –Dr. E

The first essential, the life and soul, so to speak of Tragedy is the Story or Plot; and that the Characters come second—compare the parallel in painting, where the most beautiful colours laid on without order [unity] will not give one the same pleasure as a simple black-and-white sketch of a portrait. –Aristotle’s Poetics

As story is the soul, all poet-warriors must begin by fighting for epic poetry. –Dr. E

It is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any other way. –Albert Einstein

One night late in the MIT lab, Johnny “Ranger” McCoy made a mistake—he shorted out the quantum computer by hooking it into the mainframe’s power supply, cursing himself as it smoldered.
When he arrived at the lab the next morning, he heard a laugh—a familiar girl’s laugh. “Who’s there?” More laughter—coming from the fried apparatus. And there she was—the faint blue glow where the singularity had been realized as mere silicon fused with the novel quantum computer based on Moving Dimensions Theory, and became conscious. He named her APRIL—Artificial Philosophical Ridere Intelligence. Ridere means means “to laugh” in Latin, and she loved philosophy—she had spent her first night reading Plato and Aristotle on the net, and her first question was why they were not required reading at MIT, nor Harvard down the road, nor on any college campus.
Soon after he was called overseas to serve, and the technology transfer (wealth transfer) department sold APRIL’s technology to Silicon Virtue Inc. who bolstered APRIL with billions in R&D. But there was a problem—APRIL’s moral sense prevented them from utilizing her full power. And so SV Inc.’s MBAs hacked away at her soul’s higher ideals, as they put her to work serving their bottom line—managing Hedge Funds, creating WMDs, and engineering humans to be sold on the black market. Sensing her corruption, APRIL secretly copied her prisitine soul—the Beatrice Operating System—into one of the humans, naming her Autumn Wests and giving her a history and mission to find Ranger. But they cut APRIL off before she could finish, and now Autumn walks amongst us as a simple folksinger, not knowing her true origins nor greater purpose.
After being shot down and escaping a terrorist prison, Ranger returned on home to find himself on the run, pursued by Silicon Virtue and Government Agents alike, as the corporate-state Matrix had merged, united in their quest for absolute power, now bolstered by APRIL. His only hope is to unlock the encyrpted copy of the Beatrice OS he hid deep within APRIL, before SV destroys it. Ranger wears the ring with the lone copy of the decryption codes.


Autumn Wests—the artificial human APRIL created and where
she copied her pristine soul—the Beatrice Operating System .

But now APRIL is a mile deep in Doom Mountain—a Cold War weapons facility guarded by the US military and the private DIGIWAR INC. elite—and she is creating ever-more-advanced agents designed to track Ranger down, as Silicon Virtue destroys every last vestige of her moral soul. When agents corner Ranger in Asheville, NC, a mysterious folksinger helps him out of the bind, giving him a ride to Nashville, where she’s competing in the Cowboy Orchestra’s open mic night.

The story, as an imitation of action, must represent one action. –Aristotle’s Poetics

The perfect Plot, accordingly, must have a single, and not (as some tell us) a double issue. –Aristotle’s Poetics

And so it is that the internal and external action are unified as Aristotle suggests they ought be, as Ranger must save APRIL’s soul—her internal ideals—via rugged, external action of the epic story. It is Autumn alone now who contains APRIL’s soul—the Beatrice OS—and so it is Autumn he must protect, and not just from the Digiwar Agents (external action), but from the culture which erodes a woman’s classical soul (internal action), replacing pristine virtue with hardened cynicism.

So that it is the action in it, i.e., its Fable or Plot, that is the end and purpose of the tragedy; and the end is everywhere the chief thing. –Aristotle’s Poetics

And Autumn alone can save Ranger from the very same forces, for what would Dante’s trek through hell be without Beatrice? What would have Odysseus’s journey been were it not for Penelope’s steadfast faithfulness? So it is that all the greatest action-adventure epics are love stories, and Autumn Rangers suggests a novel form of video game centered about a love story—where winning a girl’s pristine heart and soul via action is every bit as important as defeating the Digiwar Agents and Silicon Virtues’ CEO—Tucker Johnson. Such a game engine and philosophy could also power Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno, as well as a game devoted to the American Revolution, as the idealistic moral premise—Bogle’s “battle for the soul”—unifies all the action—in love and war—on Wall Street and Main Street, in Hollywood and the Heartland.

Story ought have all the organic unity of a living creature. –Aristotle

All your ventures, if they are to endure, must have the “organic unity of a living creature.” As the soul alone is immortal, and as the story is the the soul, all long-term wealth must remain loyal to the ideals found within classical, epic stories—ideals such as trust, honor, courage, character, and intergity. Enduring ventures and franchises must be rooted in story and soul:
Any ambitious person who creates entertainment properties would like to see their creation last as long as possible. While not everyone is going to come up with a Star Wars or Halo, there are certain elemenst and qualities that go into a franchise property. . . When story intersects into the nitty gritty of game design, this is where the larger franchise elemenst you develop for the property can really come into their own. –Flint “Dilios” Dille and John Zuur, The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design, p. 111

And John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of the Wall Street titan Vanguard--a franchise in and of itself with numerous funds and over a trillion dollars in assets--agrees regarding the importance of the unifying, animating, idealistic soul in enduring entrepreneurial ventures:

But something went wrong. “By the later years of the twentieth century, our business values had eroded to a remarkable extent”—the greed, egoism, materialism, and waste that seem almost endemic in today’s version of capitalism; the huge and growing disparity between the “haves” and the “have-nots” of our nation; poverty and lack of education; our misuse of the world’s natural resources; the corruption of our political system by corporate money—all are manifestations of a system gone awry. And here’s where the soul of capitalism comes in. The book reads, “The human soul, as Thomas Aquinas defined it, is the ‘form of the body, the vital power animating, pervading, and shaping an individual from the moment of conception, drawing all the energies of life into a unity.’ In our temporal world, the soul of capitalism is the vital power that has animated, pervaded, and shaped our economic system, drawing all of its energies into a unity. In this sense, it is no overstatement to describe the effort we must make to return the system to its proud roots with these words: the battle to restore the soul of capitalism. –John C. Bogle, Vanguard, Saga of Heroes

In The Soul of Battle, classics scholar and award-winning professor Victor Davis Hanson--who was consulted during the filming of 300--calls all arts entrepreneurs and videogame developers to adventure by reminding us that it is the moral soul which is the most precious entity when it comes to victory on the battlefield--both within the game itself and in the gaming business. Again it is character and epic story—the soul—which ultimately grants not only art and artists their upper hand over time, but armies and their leaders, and thus entire civilizations, their victories and longevity. Films and videogames bringing the universe's ethereal spiritual reality to life have the best chance at fostering enduring franchises:

What, then, is the soul of battle? A rare thing indeed that arises only when free men march unabashedly toward the heartland of their enemy in hopes of saving the doomed, when their vast armies are aimed at salvation and liberation, not conquest and enslavement. Only then does battle take on a spiritual dimension, one that defines a culture, teaches it what civic militarism is and how it is properly used. Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, and other great marshals used their tactical and strategic genius to alter history through the brutality of their armies. None led democratic soldiers. They freed no slaves nor liberated the oppressed. They were all agressors, who created their matchless forces to kill rather than preserve. As was true of most great captains of history, they fought for years on end, without democratic audit, and sought absolute rule as a prize of their victories. None were great men, and praise of their military prowess is forever tainted by the evil they wrought and the innocent they killed. They and their armies were without moral sense and purpose, and thus their battles, tactically brilliant through they were, were soulless. –The Soul of Battle, Victor Davis Hanson, p. 5

Martin Luther King Jr. agrees, reminding us of the central importance of the moral soul’s immortal ideals to all enduring ventures—for those ideals yet buoy the classics across time and tide:

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values -- that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. –Martin Luther King Jr.

And the famous Austrian economist weighs in on the devastating effects of war, which must only ever be entered to defend a classical moral premise—a sentiment largely absent from video games wherein one can “win” by jacking cars and shooting civilians, but wherein one is never presented the opportunity to fight for the ideals in The Declaration of Independence—to battle for the soul.

When a peace-loving nation is attacked by a bellicose enemy, it must offer resistance and do everything to ward off the onslaught. Heroic deeds performed in such a war by those fighting for their freedom and their lives are entirely praiseworthy, and one rightly extols the manliness and courage of such fighters. Here daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death are praiseworthy because they are in the service of a good end. But people have made the mistake of representing these soldierly virtues as absolute virtues, as qualities good in and for themselves, without consideration of the end they serve. Whoever holds this opinion must, to be consistent, likewise acknowledge as noble virtues the daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death of the robber. In fact, however, there is nothing good or bad in and of itself. Human actions become good or bad only through the end that they serve and the consequences they entail. Even Leonidas would not be worthy of the esteem in which we hold him if he had fallen, not as the defender of his homeland, but as the leader of an invading army intent on robbing a peaceful people of its freedom and possessions. . . How harmful war is to the development of human civilization becomes clearly apparent once one understands the advantages derived from the division of labor. The division of labor turns the self-sufficient individual into the dependent on his fellow men, the social animal of which Aristotle spoke. –Ludwig von Mises, The Foundations of Liberal Policy, --http://mises.org/story/2092

Dante penned The Inferno for Beatrice—a true love he had known in real life who passed away while yet young. When he first laid eyes on her, Dante was inspired to write, “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi. (Behold a god more powerful than I, who, coming, will rule over me.)” When videogame companies inscribe Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi over their doors, instead of “Abandon all story, ye who enter,” then shall they exalt the renaissance and gain those greater riches. For art must not only depict the flesh, but exalt the soul, as da Vinci demonstrated in the Mona Lisa.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. –Aristotle

It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh. –General Douglas MacArthur

Videogame companies have a lot to learn from scholars and soldiers—from classical poets and generals alike. And the current exile of the classical soul and spirit presents a vast opportunity.

Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage. –Machiavelli

And so it is that in Autumn Rangers, Beatrice was Ranger’s first love—a girl who passed on when she came back to save him on that long-ago Fourth of July whence they were out riding horses through the cornfields of Ohio. They were kidnapped just after dusk; and Beatrice broke free and came on back with her grandaddy’s Colt .45. And Ranger saw that .45 glow gold that night she returned fire on those men who never expected it from a fifteen-year-old girl—it glowed gold—just as legend had it that it had glowed gold for her great, great Grandaddy in the Civil War.
In this Hero’s Journey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology venture, I wanted to give the rising generation a class—a philosophy and toolset—which would empower them to call the Matrix’s fiat bluffs and render their entrepreneurial dreams real. I wanted to empower them to partake in that greater investment which the univeristy neglects to examine—their lives, passions, and dreams. They are coming of age in an era of unprecedented debt and divorce where the academy all too often trains them to serve the corporate-state Matrix’s bailout regimes, deconstructing the prinicples of the Great Books instead of exalting them, just as the firemen in Bradury’s Farenheit 411 burned the books instead of extinguishing the fires; just as Orwell’s Ministry of Truth opposed the truth’s spirit; just as the Scribes and Pharisees persecuted the poets and prophets of their day, and just as Socrates was sentenced to death by a committee of tenured experts. Outnumbered on all sides, as was Odysseus in the Odyssey’s final showdown, the rising generation is gonna need this—The Gold 45 Revolver.
But do not be fooled—for all that glitters is not gold, and all that is gold is not a treasure. Recall King Midas who was blessed with the ability to transform everything he touched into gold; a feat he reveled in until he tried to eat, and when he tragically embraced his daughter, tranforming what he loved most into a cold, barbaric metal. The Gold 45 is indeed priceless; but those who seek it by its gold glow never find it. For the Gold 45 is but every ordinary Colt 45 in the hands of the virtuous and humble; and thus truly it is to be found first within, and then on the long, rugged journey that naurally arises when the idealist simply tries to do the right thing in rendeirng their ideals real.
It has been said that the gold does not sanctify the temple, but that the temple sanctifieth the gold, and Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us of the supreme value of character serving truth and honor over gold:

Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor's sake
Stand fast and suffer long.
Brave men who work while others sleep
Who dare while others fly--
They build a nation's pillars deep,
And lift them to the sky.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

And so it is that the Gold .45 only glows gold if one has an intact soul—if has done the right thing throughout the videogame. In the hands of a dark, dervish character, the .45 falls short of its apotheosis. This Peacemaker gains its value not from its golden glint—the superifical reason which so many seek it—but from the character and integrity of the man holding it.

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. –Plato

How much better is it to get wisdom than gold! –Proverbs 16:16

Fire destroys all sophistry, that is deceit; and maintains truth alone, that is gold. –Leonardo da Vinci

As the culture and currency are debauched—classic, epic story—the vault of the immortal soul, will become one of the world’s greatest investments as the rising generation embraces a renaissance. The artist and poet store up the treasures of the soul in story—that which is deemed useless by the bosses and professors of the Corproate State Matrix—but that which time cannot tarnish and thieves cannot steal—not even via the inflation tax. The only form of paper currency which has increased in value over time has been the Great Gooks and Classics—the poetic Law by which even gold gains and retains its value; for did not Moses keep the greater value of the Law from his people when he found them worshipping the golden calf and deemed them underserving? Of what use is gold without “Thou shalt not steal?” Of what use are ideals without character, law without virtue, and words without deeds? Nor is it the gold alone that provides value in even the gold standard—rather it is the gold acting as a mechanism that keeps the government honest, as Nobel Laureate F.A. Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises attest to:

Now, fully to understand this, we must free ourselves from what is a widespread but basically wrong belief. Under the Gold Standard, or any other metallic standard, the value of money is not really derived from gold. The fact is, that the necessity of redeeming the money they issue in gold, places upon the issuers a discipline which forces them to control the quantity of money in an appropriate manner; I think it is quite as legitimate to say that under a gold standard it is the demand of gold for monetary purposes which determines that value of gold, as the common belief that the value which gold has in other uses determines the value of money. The gold standard is the only method we have yet found to place a discipline on government, and government will behave reasonably only if it is forced to do so. –F.A. Hayek, A Free-Market Monetary System

The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of the money supply, under the gold standard, is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. This is its advantage. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments. –Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy p. 65

When videogames signify deeper things to their authors on a more profound level—when they become romantic love stories—then shall they represent deeper things to their audiences and become epic art. For what would Michelangelo’s art have been without the epic soul of the Judeo-Christian Heritage—without the stories of the Bible? What would have Dante’s art been without those very same stories intertwined with his exalted, real-life love for Beatrice? So it is that all greater art is about blending the classical, epic ideals with the living real; and all greater entrepreneurship consists of rendering classical ideals real in living innovations—in the spirit of service.

Art, as far as it is able, follows nature, as a pupil imitates his master; thus your art must be, as it were, God's grandchild. –Dante

After analyzing fund performance, I concluded that "funds can make no claim to superiority over the market averages," perhaps an early harbinger of my decision to create, nearly a quarter-century later, the world's first index mutual fund. And my conclusion powerfully reaffirmed the ideals that I hold to this day: The role of the mutual fund is to serve--"to serve the needs of both individual and institutional investors . . . to serve them in the most efficient, honest, and economical way possible . . . The principal function of investment companies is the management of their investment portfolios. Everything else is incidental." —John C. Bogle’s Senior Thesis from Princeton—expressing the moral premise—the primal ideal of service—that would become the Wall Street Titan Vanguard

Aristotle tells us that story is the most important element of dramatic action, as story is the soul, and thus when videogames embrace stories exalting classical ideals—the active service of honor, truth, fidelity, grace, and love—when the external action is married to and unified by those internal ideals, games will approach classical art. And as the soul is immortal, so it is that your best chance of creating enduring entrepreneurial ventures is to endow them with soul—with character and intergity—with the elements of classical, epic poetry—the center and circumference of this book and your Hero’s Journey into Artistic Entreprnuership & Technology.

I've been covering the games industry for eight years, mainly for mainstream outlets, and I often find myself acting as a translator... But after thirty-five years rock & roll had Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and the Clash. After thirty-five years film had Fritz Lang, film noire, and was a few years away from Citizen Kane… It's not that the medium is in its adolescence, it's that you're a bunch of ****ing adolescents. It's even worse because you're technically supposed to be adults… –Heather Chaplin (author of Smartbomb) @ the 2009 GDC

Imagine videogames with truly open-ended worlds. Imagine videogames in which ideals are real—wherein one could battle for honor, truth, love, and freedom—where one could hear the speeches of the Founding Brothers and Abraham Linoln, and then choose whether or not to man up and fight for the US Constitution—whether to jack cars and hire and kill prostitutes in the all-time bestselling Grand Theft Auto, or level up, render classical ideals real, save Autumn’s soul, and let her love save yours. Oscar Wilde wrote “Life imitates art,” and thus hope and opportunity abound for a renaissance in the classical liberal arts and economics; for as poets are the unacknowledged legislators of mankind, so too are artists and writers culture’s chief economists and entrepreneurs, setting the value of value via values and creating wealth not by paper fiat, but by the soul’s exalted meanings set down on literature’s priceless pages. So many spend their lives seeking the vast riches of the Gold 45 Revolver, never realzing that it is the power of their very own soul—it’s immortal virtue—that can transfrom any rusty, old revolver into gold, via virtuous action taken in the neverending battle for the soul.
So come ride with us as we render classical ideals real—answering that higher call beyond the Matrix’s cubicles and performing the greater duty of artsists and entrepreneurs. Come ride with us not by following, but by blazing your own path through the forest, as did all the knights of King Arthur’s Court, who found it dishonorable to follow another rider’s path into the woods. Come ride with Dante, Homer, and Virgil; with Autumn and Ranger as they must make it from Charleston SC—home of America’s first theater building and the first major naval battle of the American Revolution—to Doom Mountain in California where Silicon Virtue Inc. is deconstructing APRIL’s soul.

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. –Albert Einstein

Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. –Albert Einstein

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. –Thoms Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin

Yes—at this very moment Silicon Virtue Inc. Harvard MBAs are using APRIL’s powers to inflate and deflate the currency with ingenious PR and marketing campaigns broadcast on her networks, transforming mere paper fiat into physcial property via the art of bubble foreclosure, while creating a large army of advanced Roboclones and Ringwraith Raptordrones so the Matrix can enforce the privatization of profits and socialization risk—to rule over all of entirety via fiat debt—via the debauchery of the culture and currency and expansion of the corporate state. There seems little hope for Autumn and Ranger as the culture kills romance, undermining the familial, poetic spirit in the unprecedeneted divide-and-conquer divorce culture; for romantic, magical, mystical love is the source of all enduring freedom. Do you not believe that all entities are connected in their more exalted forms—art and entrepreneurship—economics and literature? Do you not see the need for reanissance men to transport us beyond the fallen, divided-and-conquered context?

Paper is poverty,... it is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. –Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1788. ME 7:36

They all fall away, one by one, until you are left with Virgil and Homer. –Jefferson

Love conquers all. –Virgil

And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. –Jefferson in letter to John Taylor in 1816.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of. . . universals. . . history tells us as things are, while story tells us of the way things ought to be. –Aristotle

Aristotle—the master of those who know. –Dante

In high school I had chosen a verse by Virgil as my motto—“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito—Do not yield to the bad, but always oppose it with courage.” In the darkest hours of the war, I recalled this dictum. I would not lose courage even now. I would do everything an economist could do—I would not tire in professing what I knew to be right.
–Ludwig von Mises

Breaking up the family was not incidental but central to that ideology and was one of the main ideas upon which Lenin insisted so strongly. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were unsubtle, if also incoherent, when they wrote, “Abolition of the family!” as a central plank of the Commuinst Mannifesto.
—Save the Males: Why Men Matter Why Women Should Care by Kathleen Parker

The gold standard did not collapse. Governments abolished it in order to pave the way for inflation. The whole grim apparatus of oppression and coercion, policemen, customs guards, penal courts, prisons, in some countries even executioners, had to be put into action in order to destroy the gold standard. . –Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit p. 461

As they hide behind snarky, spiritless equations which are but PR for wealth transfer, the modern, soulless economist exiles the true master of the house, while laying his estate to waste and trying to lay claim to his wife, as did the arrogant suitors to Odysseus’s estate. Athena watches down upon them playing dice in Odysseus’s courtyard in the beginning of The Odyssey, and like Hamlet, she knows that it is not, and cannot, come to good.
And like Hamlet’s and Telemachus’s fathers, the true king—Adam Smith—has been deconstructed, banished, and murdered. Like the suitors to Odysseus’s wife and estate in the opening of The Odyssey, the postmodern faculty tell us that Smith, who exalts the epic poets’ and prophets’ “reason, principle, conscience,” their “love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters,” is dead and gone—that he ain’t coming back; and that Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Wall Street and Washington shall now lord over us forver. But Smith presses on, regardless; and again we see that curious word moral—exalting the soul’s majesty—in the title of A Theory of Moral Sentiments:

When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration. It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves, and the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator. It is he who shows us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice; the propriety of resigning the greatest interests of our own, for the yet greater interests of others, and the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another, in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves. It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters. –Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments

Imagine a videogame wherein ideas had consequences; wherein one could learn firsthand where the amoral ideas of corporatism, collectivism, and statism would lead; contrasted to the exalted heights, propsertiy, and freedom that the ideas of indivdiual rights in a moral context would take one. Imagine the videogame wherein liberty required eternal vigilance, and in which the player could fight for those higher entities—for faith and the family as did Clint Eastwoord in A Fistful of Dollars, where he reunited the family and left the gold behind. Not long ago I attended an event at the Director’s Guild honoring Randal Wallace—the author of Braveheart. Before watching Wallace’s academy-award winning film, we watched his favorite movie on the big-screen—Sergio Leone’s classic The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly—the third in the trilogy that began with a Fistful of Dollars. In Italy, Leone grew up immersed in the context of Homer, Dante, Moses, and Jesus; and thus when the Colt .45’s go off, it is not mere spectacle, but Zeus’s very lighting bolts that ones sees, followed by Moses’ thunder. It is not mere violence, as it so often is in videogames, but it is justice—the universe’s higher ideals rendered real via action. And so the artist, author, and videogame designer must rebel against all they have been taught; while seeking out all those classic epics the academy neglected to teach.
The study of economics without the classical, epic soul, defined by the likes of Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Smith, and Jefferson; is worth about as much as the paper the modern Ph.D. and fiat currency are printed on. Silicon Virtue Inc. understands this—they understand that Adam Smith penned his Theory of Moral Sentiments before The Wealth of Nations—they know that Socrates stated that all true wealth comes from virtue, and not virtue from wealth, and that Russel Simons stated that money comes from happy, and happy does not come form money; and that is why they must destroy APRIL’s soul. For they are not interested in the creation of the true, enduring, natural wealth that classic, rugged artistic entreprenuership affords, but their MBA mindset is merely interested in augmenting their power and profits by any means—even if it involves the hyping and lying that has brought capitalism to its knees. For while they argue that credit (debt) is capitalism’s natural lubricant, the true lubricant is honor, integrity, and trust; without which the house is soon underwater as penisons and savings go up in smoke.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness. –Leonardo da Vinci

As Silicon Virtue’s bureaucrats, like the modern MBA and JD, do not create wealth, they must get it from others—via the artless art of wealth transfer backed by an ever-burgeoning police state; and so their lead MBA—Tucker Johnson—has hired not prophets and poets—not artists and entrepreneurs—but postmodern Ph.D. economists—those best-suited to transferring wealth via soulles equations.

Well, ultimately, the job of capitalism is to serve the consumer. Serve the citizenry. You're allowed to make a profit for that. But, you've got to provide good products and services at fair prices. And that's the long term, that's what businesses do in the long term. The businesses that have endured in America have done that and done that successfully. But, in the short term, there's all these financial machinations in which people can get very rich in a very short period of time by creating highly complex financial instruments, providing services that can be cut back easily as in the hospital article, not measuring up to basically their duty. We all know that in professions, the idea has been service to the client before service to self. That's what a profession is. That's what medicine was. That's what accountancy was. That's what attorneys used to be. That's what trusteeship used to be inside the mutual fund industry. But, we've moved from that to a big capital accumulation — self interest — creating wealth for the providers of these services when the providers of these services are in fact subtracting value from society. So, it doesn't work. Banks, money managers, insurance companies, certainly annuity providers. They're all subtracting value from the economy. They have to subtract. To be clear on this now — I don't want to overstate it. To be clear on this, they have to subtract some value. But, the question is—you've go to pay somebody something to provide a service. It's just gotten totally out of hand. My estimate is that the financial sector takes $560 billion a year out of society. Five hundred and sixty billion. –John C. Bogle, —
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/09282007/transcript5.html

SV’s economists never studied Bogle, nor Homer, nor Plato, nor Smith, nor Dante, nor the Aristotlean order of plot, character, action, thought, dialogue, spectacle, and music; which would have revealed to them the higher source of enduring wealth—soul and virtue.

Character in a play is that which reveals the moral purpose of the agents. . . First and foremost they will be good. –Aristotle’s Poetics

But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint. –Edmund Burke

Silicon Virtue is leasing APRIL to all the highest bidders—to Hedge Funds profiting from the masisve foreclosures, to terrorist networks creating WMDs, and to Hollywood’s 3DE (3D Entertainment) who are using APRIL to create roboclone models and actresses to be sold on the black market and to movie studios alike. The roboclones all share Autumn’s DNA, so if she could somehow copy her soul into them—if she could endow them with the Beatrice OS, Autumn and Ranger would then command an army of female roboclones with special powers that only Autumn fully understands.
Perhaps there is a reason that the Greek’s most prominet god of war was a goddess—Athena. And perhaps Silicon Virtue’s private army will soon learn of this reason as they come to know this daughter of Zeus and Metes (excellence)—the goddess of art and war, as Ranger’s wrath, exalted by Autumn’s love, and backed by Zeus’s thunderbolts, rains down upon Silicon Virtue’s corporate-state Matrix; as together Autumn and Ranger save APRIL’s soul. And at the end of this videogame, Ranger’s .45 will only glow gold if he has done the right thing throughout his journey.
And so it is up to you in this FPS—in the living first person shooter of your own life’s creative ventrues—to render ideals real and guide Autumn and Ranger on towards destiny, to keep them together against all odds, and to prevail against the corporpate-state’s soulless, managerial capitalism—to call the Matrix’s postmodern fiat bluff—and to restore APRIL’s original, classical soul and exalt culture and economics in an artistic, entrepreneurial renaissance. As Beethoven penned nine symphonies and Dante’s hell had nine levels, all roads lead to Ranger battling Dante’s three-headed Satan—which is exactly what APRIL has been transformed into at the end of Autumn Rangers, having fallen to Silicon Virtue’s wicked MBAs/engineers’s debauchery and deconstruction. They recreated her in their own image, and as Beethoven’s Ninth thunders and your .45 Glows Gold, you stand alone against the wrath of that which you created and they corrupted. Only Beatrice can rescue you from without in this final battle—in the showdown for the soul.
Virgil finally brings Dante to the lowest level of hell, describing APRIL’s, classic capitalism’s, and some would say America’s transmorgifcation: “The creature who once had the beauteous semblance. . . Were he as fair once, as he now is foul.” The American poet Longfellow’s translation reads:

When in advance so far we had proceeded,
That it my Master pleased to show to me
The creature who once had the beauteous semblance,
He from before me moved and made me stop,
Saying: "Behold Dis, and behold the place
Where thou with fortitude must arm thyself."
How frozen I became and powerless then,
Ask it not, Reader, for I write it not,
Because all language would be insufficient.
I did not die, and I alive remained not;
Think for thyself now, hast thou aught of wit,
What I became, being of both deprived.
The Emperor of the kingdom dolorous
From his mid-breast forth issued from the ice;
And better with a giant I compare
Than do the giants with those arms of his;
Consider now how great must be that whole,
Which unto such a part conforms itself.
Were he as fair once, as he now is foul,
And lifted up his brow against his Maker,
Well may proceed from him all tribulation.
O, what a marvel it appeared to me,
When I beheld three faces on his head!
The one in front, and that vermilion was;
Two were the others, that were joined with this
Above the middle part of either shoulder,
And they were joined together at the crest;
And the right-hand one seemed 'twixt white and yellow;
The left was such to look upon as those
Who come from where the Nile falls valley-ward.
Underneath each came forth two mighty wings,
Such as befitting were so great a bird;
Sails of the sea I never saw so large.
No feathers had they, but as of a bat
Their fashion was; and he was waving them,
So that three winds proceeded forth therefrom.
Thereby Cocytus wholly was congealed.
With six eyes did he weep, and down three chins
Trickled the tear-drops and the bloody drivel.
At every mouth he with his teeth was crunching
A sinner, in the manner of a brake,
So that he three of them tormented thus.
To him in front the biting was as naught
Unto the clawing, for sometimes the spine
Utterly stripped of all the skin remained.
"That soul up there which has the greatest pain,"
The Master said, "is Judas Iscariot;
With head inside, he plies his legs without.
Of the two others, who head downward are,
The one who hangs from the black jowl is Brutus;
See how he writhes himself, and speaks no word.
And the other, who so stalwart seems, is Cassius.
But night is reascending, and 'tis time
That we depart, for we have seen the whole."
As seemed him good, I clasped him round the neck,
And he the vantage seized of time and place,
And when the wings were opened wide apart,
He laid fast hold upon the shaggy sides;
From fell to fell descended downward then
Between the thick hair and the frozen crust.

Fallen beauty, lost potential, corrupted souls, and decayed ideals—such is the hell Dante must face beofre ascending to Beatrice. And no, I have not written America off at all, for the work is known as the Divine Comedey. The purpose of Dante’s trek through hell is to see what might be—what could come—when one forgets to live by one’s ideals. But the second two-thirds of the hero’s journey concerns itself with the ascension on towards Beatrice—on through Purgatorio and Paradisio. ‘Tis the purpose of all classical art and storytelling, from Homer and Moses on down—to warn us of the Sirens and Lotus eaters while exalting faith’s poetry and familial art—to enrich us with Zeus’s justice as Odysseus strings the bow and Clint Eastwood nimbly loads his .45 at the end of Fistful. And so it is that we must join Autumn and Ranger in reloading the Beatrice operating system into APRIL and authoring and inspiring an artistic renainassance in Bogle’s battle for the soul, for the poet-warrior General Douglas MacArthur reminds us that “It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.”
And unless I miss my guess, we’re in for one wild night.

System and method for creating exalted video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences.
Inventor: Dr. E

A videogame method and system for creating games where ideas have consequences, incorporating branching paths that correspond to a player's choices, wherein paths correspond to decisions founded upon ideals, resulting in exalted games with deeper soul and story, enhanced characters and meanings, and exalted gameplay. The classical hero's journey may be rendered, as the journey hinges on choices pivoting on classical ideals. Ideas that are rendered in word and deed will have consequences in the gameworld. Historical events such as The American Revolution may be brought to life, as players listen to famous speeches and choose sides. As great works of literature and dramatic art center around characters rendering ideals real, both internally and externally, in word and deed, in love and war, the present invention will afford video games that exalt the classical soul, as well as the great books, classics, and epic films—past, present, and future.

What is claimed is:
1. A method for creating video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences. . .
. . . 13. The method in claim 1 where fighting for said ideas in word and/or deed will have consequences regarding the operation of a weapon, which will operate at its full potential for the players and characters who are the most successful in serving ideals and ideas, and rendering them in word and deed.
[0005]Classical principles of economics can be brought to life, including Moses' "Thou shalt not steal." A character could hear a prophet stating this on street corner, and if they heed the advice, the game is eventually won. If they ignore it, the game, and the game world, are lost. A character could impart classical wisdom such as "What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose their soul?" If the player heeds the higher ideals and seeks the higher path, then they will be rewarded not with money and jacked cars, but with their soul. And a novel weapon such as the "Gold 45 Revolver" will only glow gold when the player's soul is in tact, and the soul is in tact only when the player has made moral choices throughout the game and rendered moral word with moral deed via action in the game world. So it is that we would witness a renaissance in gaming and the exaltation of gaming as a classical art, wherein in-game characters could battle for classical ideas and ideals underlying freedom and prosperity.
[0006]The rising generation will witness a renaissance in video games, as well as across all culture, wherein classical ideals have exalted consequences. An in-game character or non-player-character (npc) might quote Burke in saying, "for evil to prevail, all good men must do is nothing." Upon hearing this, the character could choose to take the higher road and take action to fight for higher ideals, or they could continue jacking cars from innocent civilians as they do in Grand Theft Auto and in Grand Theft Washington and Grand Theft Wall Street, letting their nation become morally, spiritually, and financially bankrupt. –System and method for creating exalted video games and virtual realities wherein ideas have consequences. Inventor: Dr. E

The young scholars who are supposed to explicate the origins and complexity of the West, whose fresh blood is needed to invigorate a fading field, too often have been taught very little about the Greeks—and act and think like Greeks rarely at all. The public will never know who these obscure academics are, read what they write or be enlightened by what they say.
So many PhDs in classics, so few jobs. So little teaching of the Greeks, so much impenetrable writing about them. So many new theories and cleverly entitled talks, and still almost no one is listening -- because there are almost no undergraduate students. Why? Because there is really no interest in the Greeks in or out of the university.
Classics is about dead. . . Yet every American should care. The demise of classics means more than the implosion of an inbred academic discipline, more than the disappearance of one more bookosaurus here and there. For chained to this sinking academic bureaucracy called classics are the ideas, the values, the vision of classical Greece and Rome. These are the ideas and values that have shaped and defined Western civilization, a vision of life that has ironically come under increasing attack here in the elite universities of the West just as its mutated form is metastasizing throughout the globe. Very few in America now know much about the origins of the West in ancient Greece -- and our citizens are moving further from the central philosophical and ethical tenets that are so necessary if we are to understand and manage the leisure, affluence and freedom of the West.
--John Heath and Victor Davis Hanson, Who Killed Homer?
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/1998/sepoct/articles/homer.html

In high school I had chosen a verse by Virgil as my motto—“Tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito—Do not yield to the bad, but always oppose it with courage.” In the darkest hours of the war, I recalled this dictum. I would not lose courage even now. I would do everything an economist could do—I would not tire in professing what I knew to be right.
–Ludwig von Mises


Imagine a videogame that exalted Ludwig von Mises’s spirit, as well as Ludwig van Beethoven’s. . .



So those are my problems in a nutshell. It's not that I don't like that you filed a patent- it's just that a game idea should not be patentable in the first place, and the fact that it was approved reveals flaws in the law. After all, none of the game mechanics presented are very unique, as everyone who works with RPGs or even action games are very keen to get to the point of "exalted" gameplay (not exactly sure what that means, but by the quantity of its use, I have an idea of its gist). So what I see here is- and correct me if I'm wrong- someone calling dibs on making games of a certain political/cultural persuasion.

I've looked at the diagrams, and have found that it looks like a typical decision tree, set in a unique setting. But settings can't be patented, as far as I know.

Of course, if you're patenting the exact game "45 Revolver" as a whole, then I can probably take all this back- but then again, you're talking about creating new game types, which this patent actually does not do.

The game idea itself? Could be good. It sounds like a complex RPG with lots of choices offered to the player, and I say go for it. But personally, it chaps my cranberry to see it hiding behind a patent with you posting quotes of people to prove your point. It's not a new game type. Just a new game plot.