Harry Potter to get the Pokémon GO treatment If you're not keen on augmented reality, Harry Potter, kids whose lives seem to be lived through mobile devices, or all of the above: brace yourself. The Register offers that advice because Niantic, the company behind 2016's augmented reality smash Pokémon GO, has announced that next year it'll unleash a new game titled “Harry …
At 30 something, I found them to be pretty poor (whilst appreciating that, as an adult, I wasn't really the target audience). Now that I'm approaching 40, I get to endure the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry as he works his way through each overwrought ending and exposition dump, whilst I drive the family on days out.
southern bastard ... As part of my "Uncle" duties, I have volunteered to read any and all books that my nieces and nephews read, and to talk with them about it should they wish (as I did with my daughter half a generation earlier). This is mainly as an encouragement to get them to read more. It seems to have worked.
They all started in on the "Potter" books. Most managed to make it through the first two before becoming bored and moving on. One managed to make it about halfway through the third before granting me freedom from tedium. So yes, I've read some of them. Enough to know that the author is mediocre at best, and quite tedious to boot. In my opinion. And (apparently) the opinion of my nieces and nephews.
I hope it's done a lot better than Pokémon Go. I was really disappointed by the gameplay. When the most interesting part of the game is the grinding to find more Pokémons, you know something went wrong.
It's a pity when you consider that their first game Ingress had way more interesting mechanics, whether for playing solo or in a team.
"It's a pity when you consider that their first game Ingress had way more interesting mechanics, whether for playing solo or in a team."
As I understand it, Ingress was much more of a "go to cool/weird/difficult place and do stuff" game, with the urban explorer types being big fans, whereas PoGo was aimed at a very different crowd. There's also a pretty clear domination of a particular school for PoGo, which seemed pretty obvious to me. Red is pick your strongest, yellow is go for your instinct, blue is pick the best one for the situation. People who only grind out their min/max mons prtty much are guaranteed to be blue.
Almost every "OMG teh dangerz!" post about PoGo locations where all pretty reasonable (IMHO) Ingress locations. The swimming platform in Oriental Parade, Wellington is apparently fine for people to swim out to, had been a regular spot for people doing Ingress (via kayak), but was a terribly unsafe place for PoGo because the player base are idiots.
I suspect the HP game will be much the same. Everyone either gryf or slyth, idiots ignoring real life dangers etc....
I'll stick to my hufflepuff incantations - Spliffus Ignitius!
I seriously doubt many folks who play this kind of game will ever see a place like the top of Malham Cove, alas. Might be able to get 'em to fall into Malham Beck, though.
What's the name of that pub in Malham? Lovely country pub, full of local farmers, newish (1860s?) but felt older. Old Peculiar, a local cider, and a couple of Yorkshire bitters on draught. I haven't been there since 1985ish ... it's probably been bought out by some chain and redone completely generic by now, unfortunately.
Next year's game can be Jesus GO. Exorcise demons to accumulate faith points that you can use to heal your allies or excommunicate your competitors. Go to a church on a Sunday to earn an indulgence. Self flagellate for preemptive absolution or interdict on a school or business. Collect holy water and trade it for indulgences. Bless and forgive your way up the ranks until you are a cardinal who can elect a pope. The Pope gets to issue bulls and sell coronations to new emperors of Rome.
Christianity has a rich mythology and mining it will be so controversial that the game will be advertised for months on every news channel.
"Christianity has a rich borrowed mythology" ftfy
It <e>is</e> a rich and creative riffing off of multiple earlier sources (mostly Mithras, with extra S&M).
Thankfully it got in before copyright existed, otherwise Disney would be on their tales for multiple IP theft.
Not convinced the whole working as a team to defeat powerful monsters is a great idea: If key achievements in game require multiple users to achieve then it will not be attractive to players who prefer to play solo.
Whats this mania for making games social?
Some people like (many, not all as some are heavily multi-player) games in the same way they like reading, precisely because it can be done alone with no interaction with others and a high degree of focus. e.g. for many on the autistic spectrum then games with minimal "real world" interaction with others are often preferred
"Whats this mania for making games social?"
I've a great idea for a game with strong social elements that will help sharpen both team building, management skills and elements of the security profession.
object is to build up an 'empire' of real world contacts and dispatch them on various locations on 'errands'.
There is a strong likelihood of good virtual and real-world currency usage.
It's called 'Pimp'.
Just like poke-mon, only the phrase 'upside your head' gets used more.
A friend once explained some apparently irregular plural endings of nouns in English as:
"um" ending from Latin word becomes "a" - as in "forum - fora"
"us" ending from Latin word becomes "i" - as in "terminus - termini"
"us" ending from Greek word becomes "uses" - as in "octopus - octopuses"
"eau" ending from French becomes "eaux" - as in "tableau - tableaux"
Hebrew adds "im" - as in "kibbutz - kibbutzim"
The plural of "hippopotamus" can be a Latin style "hippopotami" - if you ignore that Latin appropriated it from Greek.
American English sometimes adds an "s" - where British English does not. A possible example is "aircraft".
For all the positives of Pokemon Go (outdoor fun, meeting new people, common interest/common cause draw, game title nostalgia etc), I feel a game developed by people with a sense-of-duty/mission-to-achieve the level of standards that Nintendo had set with its software would have stood PoGo in better stead..
The application is HUGE, highly power inefficient, very buggy and the objectives change like the weather - it doesn't 'feel' Nintendo despite being heavily associated with Nintendo..
I don't know what HP fans expect from their game but I hope they get more from it than PoGo fans got..
Here's to JK Rowling's next billion hey :)
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