Gabe's been buying comics through Comixology and reading them on his fancy pants color Kindle thing, and I started messing with it because now I want to catch up on shit, but he's essentially grabbing digital versions of trades and I am looking for a buffet. The Comixology subscription thing felt like a pain in the ass to use; I tried the trial and shut it down the next day. Because most of what I want to catch up on is DC shit I tried our their buffet and glutted myself on Absolutes, both Batman and Wonder Woman, and chewed up Woman of Tomorrow which was an absolute blast. Now I see why he wanted to draw all this crazy crap, and today's offering is the dark fruit of this obsession. Monday's will be also! And then I think he will go to his rest because he's going crazy on these and probably developed an RSI.
Microsoft confuses me so much. At some point, most clearly affirmed in the transition window from the 360 to Xbox One X, there was some idea about owning the living room or some shit. They cooked this idea up right about the time the living room was full of people all watching their own content on phones. It is a doom unique to Microsoft, whose Bismarck-like turning radius creates significant challenges that only very dedicated weirdos have managed to overcome.
They are now the biggest publisher of entertainment software in the world. Maybe. I didn't look it up. I think they pig-wrestle Tencent in terms of sector income, but in terms of what they actually own Microsoft rests atop a profound and singular agglomeration of cultural treasure - a sunken, borderline Atlantean library of works. In my mind, it looks like the Tower of Barbs from the first Let It Die game. History heaped upon history, waste and grief. It's the sort of thing they need to be funding expeditions into, dangerous expeditions.
It's very hard to get people to believe in things. They made people believe in Xbox, that there was such a thing, when the entire project seemed like utter madness almost from its inception. The addition of a network port on the default hardware, the democratization of the LAN party and then Internet gaming itself, its agility in the face of entrenched opposition, it's just an impossible tale. The brand even survived the Red Ring of Death! Then they started saying everything was an Xbox, and we already know what Syndrome says about that. Game Pass has been the platform for a while. And now we're hearing about a mobile Xbox, a realm that Steam proved out years ago, to the extent that it's a genuine category.
But they aren't going to make Windows cool and they aren't gonna own the living room because Teevees have apps and partner hardware that uses their OS runs worse than SteamOS. They need to have the team look up "mog" on Urban Dictionary. They have to accept that certain portions of their old plan are gangrenous and must be excised. Their real money is in cloud and subscriptions - but, I repeat myself. Let me help.
Because that's the case, throw all your fantasies about Windows platform lock-in into the furnace. It's not even clear what that would mean, and it's your pride fucking with you, or maybe just your boss. Literally - literally - draft on all this open source work and get all the benefits. Don't waste anymore time making some castrati version of your OS that can run on your new handheld. The world is very different, now. Your only advantage is your scale, and your handheld will be better because you can place nutballs orders for custom silicon. It's not gonna be better because it has Shitty Windows. The Internet is the operating system, now. You can look at your balance sheet and know this. Don't fight it at all. Embrace and extend. Remember? You don't have to do the third one, anymore. Just content yourself with victory. Make a great product just as a change of pace, earn affection, and see how it goes.
In theatre, there is something called a Dramaturg. In my experience, at the scale of theatre I'm conversant in, the role is quite rare - but sometimes, sometimes. A Dramaturg is a kind of scholar/advisor/editor of Theatre itself, whose knowledge of works, their context, and the form allows them to discern and helpfully express connections. I suspect they would also be quite good at Connections. But if we're going to live in a world where this level of concentration is allowed to exist, a level of concentration not seen outside of feudal history, we need disciplines that are capable of exploring and parsing it. You should do it because you'll make more money knowing the taxonomy of what you actually have, the storied lineage of your developers, and how to meaningfully apply this Aladdin's Cave.
You're the ones who purchased the medium; you're a museum now, too. They need to get some real weirdos over there - super annoying weirdos who won't shut up about important shit like conservation. I understand that the idea they might make good decisions when they could just continue to make bad decisions is very crazy. I am crazy. I mean, gaze ye upon my works. But I'm just casting spells, here, as I often do. You never know what strange and lumbering creatures might hear.
(CW)TB out.
