I have had my Oculus Quest 2 for about a year now. It has given me countless joy and taken up much of my time.
I bought the headset for gaming, which was my primary use in the beginning. And I enjoyed it for the most part.
It was a brand new gaming experience, especially for shooters and flight simulators. The reloading, aiming, firing and movement was just so much more realistic and immersive.
However, the graphics were mostly bad, compared to PC versions. The gaming content was no match either. Worst of all, motion sickness always kicked in after some time.
Therefore, once I started using the headset for movies, it quickly became the preferred option for me.
It could simulate the cinema so well, just with complete control on what to play, screen size, cinema theme, pause, backward/forward etc etc.
However, I have never given up on VR gaming completely. I would take up the headset and start playing from time to time.
I did sweat and feel tired, which was the excuse I gave myself for getting the headset in the first place.
The problem was that I always felt more tired than I should be, e.g. comparing with similar amount of pure physical activities. Sometimes, I felt that affected my energy level.
So I have decided to put a stop to VR gaming for now.
My alternative would then be flat-screen gaming. It would be hard for me to go back to the shooters after VR, but strategy games should do.
And it is not only gaming that might do this to us.
In Chinese Kongfu movies/novels, it is far too common that the character falls into a cave or a lake and then discovers some superb marshal arts manual or weapons. And then he emerges as the best Kufu master, takes his revenge, gets the perfect girl and rules the world.
Here, the marshal arts manual and the weapons are the “Cheats”.
In western super hero movies/comics, people get their super power from accidents. For example, Spiderman gets it from a spider bite and Hulk from a failed experiment. And then they rely on that super power to save humanity.
Here, the accidents, the bite or radiation, are the “Cheats”.
These very very attractive “Cheats” are shortcuts that do not really exist in reality.
They might seem to exist, but they do not.
Once we fall into the habit of relying on “Cheats”, that is the beginning of the bitter end.
Gradually, we convince ourselves to believe in more and more “cheats” and waste time and money on them, without any sustainable results.
A good example is my investment journey.
I changed my approach from Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) into broad indexes to buying individual stocks, just because my wife’s return surprised me.
And then I started speculating.
All this while, I never really sat down to research a sector or company.
Even by luck, I had very good returns in the first few months, I was not able to pocket it.
And now I am sitting at huge losses.
In comparison, to select the DCA approach to kick start my investment journey, I spent months in researching and only after that, I made the decision based on my style and sound logic.
And even if it did not bring me stellar returns, I was seldom in the Red Zone.
The misconception of reality will translate into tangible losses.
3.Another opportunity knocks but I am not sure about it
I am still a bit scared by the offer retraction.
That makes unsure about this one.
My life now is not super, but ok. Actually, I can make myself feel satisfied with it.
With this opportunity, better perspectives, growth and money will be available to me, and at the same time, I will be exposed to the risk of another offer retraction.
It is most likely a no-brainer for most people. For me, I need to think and evaluate hard.
Well, only the main storyline and only reached one of the endings…There are still tons of side quests left, even though I have completed so many.
I did not count, but I must have thrown in more than 100 hours easily.
Such a good way to kill time!
Overall, it is a great game and CDPR is still releasing patches and DLCs to make it better.
Better here really means closer to what they had promised before the release.
I probably wont play the 1.3 patch any time soon. I will try something different for now.
Maybe when patch 1.7 is out, I will replay it as a female character with a female voice.
Apparently, that affects the gameplay significantly.
I tried so hard to romance Judy…
As a man, the game forbids me to do it…
From Internet
One thing I would like to share with you here is that this is my first time ever to have watched the complete Credits of a game after completing it.
As far as I can recall, the last time I watched the Credits of a game was when I completed Call of Duty 2 for the first time.
There was an animation immediately after the game was completed, to draw players’ attention.
It was easy for players to just watch it. It was fun also.
But once I saw the “text” coming out, I immediately pressed “ESC”.
Cyberpunk was different.
It shows the “text” and on the side, a small window appears that plays the video messages your friends in Night City send to you.
I have to say I felt quite personal and “warm”.
And it flows extremely well with the storyline, where, in my ending, the player leaves Night City and lives “freely” for whatever time he has left.
That was more than enough to draw me in.
But the messages only last a short while, after which the Credits go on for a much longer duration.
And a “Fast Forward” option is provided.
Such a nice touch!
I understand the names etc mean a lot to the developers, but for players to spend like half an hour to go through it would be hard.
From Internet
As I went down the list, the first thing I noticed was that so many people were involved in making the game.
The efforts and costs put in developing this still buggy game must be tremendous.
A quick google search showed USD 313 Million development cost for the game and that was until end of 2020. They have released a few patches in 2021 too. So the cost can only be significantly higher.
And the game retails for ~SGD 50. You can get cheaper on Lazada.
Such an affordable price is only possible due to scale and almost zero marginal cost.
From Internet
Scale is key and that means user base, which is a fraction of world population.
And apparently, decreasing birth rate is a big problem now.
It has been a big problem in most developed countries, Singapore included.
It is now also a big problem for developing countries, like China.
China has been worrying about the opposite for so many years with the “Birth Control” policy. The fine put my family in debt for most of my childhood.
Now they are completely turning the tide. Making babies for Money is a real possibility.
And the cities in China are “fighting” for the young generation, by rolling out all sorts of policies, from houses to “Hukou” to subsidies.
It is not exaggerating to say that the power of a nation or a city ultimately resides in its population.
From Internet
And declining and aging population could give rise to many problems.
Retail costs for games might be a relatively minor one.
Just imagine when we are all old, there is only a very limited supply of care-taking workers.
The services will become so expensive that majority of old people wont be able to afford it.
And any of our existing plans for retirement, the money we save, the property we keep, the insurance we buy, could prove a joke.
From Internet
Woooo….
Not sure how a gaming episode turns into the hopeless reflection of retirement lives…
But there is no need to feel so pessimistic.
I believe problems will solve themselves.
Maybe we will detach from our bodies and live in cyber space.
If you think this is a post advocating for healthy corporate culture, you are in for a treat! A relaxing one.
While my work continues allows me some free time and my portfolio continues burning, I continue spending a lot of time in gaming.
This time around, I really enjoyed Gujian 3, an ARPG based on ancient Chinese legends.
Just to be clear, while this game can pretty much represent the highest level of Chinese made single player games in 2018 when the game was release, it is still not quite on par with the 3A games out there in many aspects.
What struck me, however, is the “familiar” feeling brought by the background setting of the game.
From Internet
The story is based on ancient Chinese legends.
As someone with Chinese education and background, I have no problem understanding the concepts and the famous characters.
The settings are so familiar that the story progression feels so smooth.
As a result, the story becomes attractive to a point that I start digging for more details about the story.
Less than two hours into the game, I could not helping searching the “Journal” for more details about “Soul Nourishing Ground” (“养魂地”).
This is absolutely the first time that I have taken the initiative to search for the “Journal” of a game. Typically, I just ignore them entirely as they do not affect the game play.
From Internet
As the game progresses, I start to see even more familiar things.
In the private space where a “Home” is built, I even see the cooktop that is still being used in my hometown, not exactly the same but the similarity is unconcealable.
Not to mention the weapons, armor and fighting mechanisms. They mimic closely what is described in the KungFu novels and movies.
From Internet
These “familiar” feelings just make me feel more connected to the game and the characters in the game.
I have to say cultural similarity is another source of satisfaction.
From Internet
Culture does matter to a person’s identify.
We get the exposure while growing up and the culture ends up engraving into our head.
Therefore, it is almost impossible to take another culture as native.
In other words, we cannot choose.
If life is an RPG, our birth place and early experiences largely determine where our primary playground will be.
We can try to build another character in another place and culture, but it is destined to be in the “Brutal” difficulty.
First, we have to unplug ourselves from the environment we grow up in and plug ourselves into the new system. This means we have to endure and adapt without the support of family and friends.
That is exactly why first generation of migrants almost always have tough lives.
Second, most likely we will end up outside of the mainstream.
America is an exception. The migrants dominated the natives with superior war skills and cold blood. But can you imagine a president of Asia origin in the next decade?
From Internet
But that does not mean we cannot have a good life, depending how we define “good”.
From the perspective of Materialists, it is entirely possible.
Even some slaves enjoyed their lives.
And during the financial crisis, slaves did have better lives thanks to their masters, while the workers in the north could not find jobs and starve and freeze to death.
It also depends on what era we live in. In flourishing times, dogs live better than man.
Hope everyone had a good long weekend and a nice break.
I did a lot of gaming.
Well, if you have decided to “Lie Down Flat”, you got to do something to pass the time.
And I realized a change of perspective could matter a lot.
From Internet
1.The “Little Mule” was too bright
In “Cyberpunk 2077”, I immediately liked the “Little Mule” when I saw it. So I paid the hefty price to get it, only to find that it was not drivable.
When I got into the car, it became so bright that I could not see anything, apart from the strong light.
Clearly, this was one of the bugs that the game had not fixed yet.
After some attempts to fix it or just endure it, I was forced to switch to third person view.
Then, to my total surprise, I realized that was how it should should been.
2.A change of perspective changes a lot
I have always been a first-person view guy.
I am crazy about it to a point that I would consciously avoid third-person view games, no matter how good they are, like Gears of War, GTA (before V) etc.
But after the “forced change”, I really liked it.
You can have a comparison on below two screenshot.
From internet
First person view is great.
It is beautiful and sets players in the driver’s seat, which is in a way what the game is about, bringing virtual experience to players in a way that is as “real” as possible.
But it does come with restricted view and limits the ability for players to drive very fast without missing the turn, which is also “real” by the way.
From Internet
However, with the third-person view, the driving immediately becomes much more enjoyable.
Players have much more situational awareness while driving.
And they can enjoy the view.
Most importantly, it gives the feeling of “Freedom” and “hot blood”.
Players can completely ignore the “GPS” and drive freely in the desert, flying over the mountains and across the terrain.
What‘s more, the sound is more exciting too. Players can hear the sound of tires grinding the sands, instead of just the “Mmmmm…” in the cockpit.
Overall, I think third-person view is just better for players to experience the speed, control and excitement of driving.
At least, I do not think I will ever go back to first-person view for driving.
From Internet
In the end
We should not limit ourselves.
Life is about experiences.
Keep an open mind and try different perspectives.
Then we are almost guaranteed of a more fulfilled life.
