I’ve drifted away from my inner elf lately, which is partly why I’m roleplaying in LotRO – to regain my elf-sense for my game writing. It’s hard to feel spiritual and connected when mired in material bother.
This week I moved to a new and different part of the valley, closer to the mountains and hiking. It’s a rich city, but I’m not rich. My car is a 19 year-old bird-pooped scrap heap next to the shining BMWs and Lexuses.
There is earthiness here, but also excessive riches. The women at the Sprouts grocery are all thin, fit, and beautiful, except the girls working the registers. It’s like Rivendell, but they employ chubby human grunts.
I even saw a “former playboy bunny” license plate. The plate looked legitimate, like the blonde driving the Mercedes, not a cheap thing from a corner in Las Vegas.
I’m not comfortable with the fusion of hipness with rich. Tolkien elves have an entire package, an Arcadian ideal of nature, beauty, wealth, and arts. That’s a big reason why Landroval (LotRO server) chat hates them.
It’s the nature of rich people to want it all I guess, like the golf courses. This city has four golf courses for 77,000 people. According to Tolkien, golf was invented by hobbits. I assume Tolkien’s hobbits are just another angle on a white, well-to-do world.
I’m not sure whether I like rich people or ghetto people more as human beings, but the rich people won’t kill me or steal from me, and their drugs don’t stink so much.
Gaming Stocks
Thursday night Activision-Blizzard soared 9% on better-than-expected earnings. Of course, I had taken profit at the peak a few weeks ago, but I only missed out on about a dollar per share.
I waited until the midday pullback yesterday (Friday, May 6) and pushed half back in. It was perfect timing, and by the close ATVI was back up almost 9%, and I was up $50.
I also pushed half back into NVidia at the same inflection point, which was also good timing, since they announced new and amazing video cards today.
So my one-day cushions might hold, but since I tend to do the opposite of the right thing, the stock market will likely crash again soon, and nothing escapes that. The main takeaway from selling Blizzard (again) is that I can’t have an uncomfortable, stressful amount of money in an investment.
I can’t hold it, and that makes it a trade. So I need to distinguish between investments and trades, and budget appropriately. This is easy to say when the bleeding is minimal.
Sony was a trade, and accordingly I was all-in up front, and sold immediately when the stock went the wrong way. That was correct, and I’m still watching Sony in a fairly linear decline, wondering if I should try again on a trend reversal.
I think E3 will be big for Sony. Wall Street thinks video games don’t mean that much, i.e. video game revenue is around 20% of total.
The overall market does look like it’s going off a cliff, and that’s the problem. It’s too obvious. Everyone is quoting the “sell in May” advice. Everyone has turned quickly and intensely bearish suddenly, which is actually a bullish signal.
The analysts on CNBC also discussed the issue of short-selling yesterday. The recent bull surge hurt the shorts badly, and they are now too fearful to sell short again. This is also bullish.
The problem remains the Fed and raising interest rates. I personally think Yellen is holding off until after the election, to avoid giving the Republicans any ammunition. Even if not, especially after today’s weaker job numbers, a June rate increase is pretty much off the table.
Video Game Project
I’m going with the literary Seelie and Unseelie Courts in my video game, not Tolkienesque elves. I’m facing a major hurdle right now in terms of effort and time investment, which is creating actual gameplay.
I’ve decided to do a Dungeon-Master style narrator.
I’m not sure if I can manipulate my voice low enough to sound like an old tree, and recruitment of voice overs from friends, family members, or online indie dev sites is exhausting to try to organize. My script needs to be perfect first, anyway.
Kitty Kitty Boom Boom 
May 13th, 2016 at 12:35 pm
Bilbo and Frodo were obviously white, well to do. Sam was Frodo’s white, loyal servant. Pippen and Merry were the heirs-apparent of the top of the hobbity heap (by the time they inherited their positions, Sam was building a similar position to be inherited). Tolkien himself was commissioned an officer in WWI (typically a death sentence for junior officers), so at least English society saw him as distinctly socially above the working class.
I should get back into golf. If only to play with my father. I’d hate to have to pay for a cart as well as for golf, though. Golf carts are an abomination and no true Scotsman* should be seen in one. I also live on the East coast and can’t see water as a limited resource (at least here).
“Former Playboy Bunny” I suppose there must be more than a few women in their sixties who were bunnies in the 1970s (they existed in the 80s, but only in a few midwest areas). Well, I guess it might remind her of her youth, but I can’t see “former hooters girl” being advertised a couple decades from now (presumably an equally hostile environment)
“New and amazing cards today”. Except that “today” was a Friday and they were announced at 6:00pm PDT. Nothing good is ever announced on Friday after CoB (for the whole country). I’ve read a few parsings of the steady walkback of “twice as fast as the old card” but only in VR rendering to both eyes. And only using their special rendering methods. And only on carefully selected benchmarks…
I suppose I should log into LOTRO and move my characters to existing servers. But it doesn’t take that many bizarre rantings about “the only way to play” on single player games to know how nice it is not to have to put up with that (to a degree, uniform play has its place in MMOs). That and the LOTRO playstyle “click. click. click. click.” doesn’t really do all that much for me.
* not really Scotish. But I have golf in my blood and am quite cheap.
May 13th, 2016 at 8:00 pm
Yes, that seemed like strange timing by Nvidia to make a business announcement, almost Turbine-esque. On the other hand, their stock was up 15% today, so I guess it worked for them. AMD also seems questionably benchmarky, so I guess it’s par for the course. I play LotRO all with a keyboard, at least until I get to an auction house or need something on a popup panel. Clicking skills for a Warden would be insane. You’re not Scottish? You fooled me with the abominable golf carts. Agree. Grown men athletes riding around dapper in carts. Not very manly. Thanks for the comment, wumpus. Have a good weekend, or a wump-end, or whatever you’re up to! ~ J
May 15th, 2016 at 5:24 pm
Do you have many posts regarding your game development antics?
Have you though about creating a WP page called Game Development and then tagging your posts for that category, cheers.