A downloadable racing game teaches us how to be financially responsible.

A downloadable racing game teaches us how to be financially responsible.

 

  A simple racing game made for smart phones and tablets, Beach Buggy Blitz, is game that has multiple objectives. Just like real life. It is a multiple choice test. The main objective in the game is to drive as long as you can, as far as you can, while collecting as much money as you can, all before you run out of time.

  The objectives and upgrades in Beach Buggy Blitz cost money. But you don’t earn money unless you play the game. You want to play the game to earn money, just so you can buy more upgrades so you can play the game longer. This game doesn’t even put you in first place, there are other racers, but they only get in the way. You have checkpoints you need to reach in order to get more game time, distance, and money.

What does this have to do with fiscally fit gamers?

   Just like in real life, it seems like we need to get as far as we can with as much money as we can. Usually just to survive in a day to day basis. We get to choose what we spend our money on. Do you buy a TV that’s a couple inches bigger? Or do you use that money for investing? Owning a company? The choice is yours. One of these choices helps us get farther and makes us more money.

   In the game I could spend money on buying a new driver, but the racers aren’t better or worse than any other. They just look different. We don’t gain anything from a new driver. There are trophies you can earn but it doesn’t give us more time or money….

 You could spend that money on buying a coin bubble upgrade so that when you run into it you can make more money. This helps you collect as much money as you can.

 Maybe you could buy a checkpoint upgrade so you don’t run out of time as fast. This helps you get as far as you can before time runs out. If you buy another check point upgrade it gives you coins for every second you have on the clock. This helps you make as much money as you can.

  You can spend money on a shield that breaks things, like palm trees, that are in your way. Without the shield you hit a tree and it slows you down forcing you to loose time. This helps you get as far as you can. If you spend money to upgrade the shield again, it gives you coins from everything you break. This helps you get as much money as you can.

 

  You can spend money upgrading your car so it goes faster and doesn’t slow down as much when you run into things. This helps you get as far as you can.

 So the real object of the game is to make money in order to buy things that make you more money.

  Is that the real object of someone who is responsible with money?  

   Let’s overthink this; if you have a job and pay to get training, or pay for school in order to become better at that job, you make more money doing that job. If you own a business, all your profit usually goes back into the business in order to make more profit. If you own a house that you rent out, you put your profit into updating and remodeling the house in order to raise the rent and therefore make more profit. If you have an investment and it makes money, that money is added to the investment in order to make more money.

  According to Beach Buggy Blitz, the object of life is to get as far as you can with as much money as you can. It doesn’t mean we have to become rich and powerful though, it is simply telling us that we are in a social system that requires us to have money in order to survive.  The game is telling us to get as far as we can, with whatever goal or objective we choose.

  So if you buy a coin bubble upgrade in the game in order to get more coins, isn’t that just a metaphor for upgrading anything in real life you can make money off of?

 

  In Beach Buggy Blitz, you need to play more and more games in order to save up money so you can buy the upgrade you want.  In real life you need to save up money to get the house you want, or get the college funding you want.

  The game doesn’t let you get a loan and go into debt, it forces you to save up every coin you have until you have enough to buy what you want. The fact that there is no debt in the game, or any video game that I can think of, tells us that debt is bad. If you have to go into debt, make sure that loan goes toward a real life upgrade that will help you save time and make more money.

   What about saving time? We have to do all this before time runs out!? Sounds like the real life system we are stuck in. We only get about 80 – 100 years, right? How do we get more time in real life?

   Stay active.

   Stay healthy.

   Don’t let your fear stop you from taking action. When fear gets in the way, and stops you from doing what you want to do, it’s just like running into a palm tree on the beach, slowing you down, wasting your time.

   What do we do with the time that we have? Besides playing video games of course, we should put that time to good use. Learn something new. Use your time to train yourself to become better at something you love to do. The better you are, the higher chance is that make money off of it. The farther you get in the game, the more coins are available to you.

 

  Real life is hard. We are in reality that forces us to work in order to survive. Since we have to work, why shouldn’t we find work that we actually want to do? (Like writing articles about playing video games…)

It’s a vicious circle we are trapped in. A circle I learned from a video game that is free to play.

  Or maybe the real goal of playing Beach Buggy Blitz, and living, is simply to get an adrenaline rush before we have to get back to work.

4 Things Hollywood Needs to do in order to Make Better Movies

#1 Hire and keep talented writers

      It makes me angry how many movies have bad storylines. There is no reason for any movie to be made without a good story. There are so many good writers on this planet that I don’t understand why so many bad movies are made. Great writers come from everywhere! Movies, comic books, novels, TV series, anime, and even video games have better storylines than Transformers. Someone had to write all those. A good writer should not be hard to find!

     Think of how much better Transformers would be if there was a writer actually adding good, relatable, traits to those characters. Sure the movie made money and people saw it, but nobody really cared did they? How much more money could they have made if there were a few real characters along with all the mindless action and special effects.  Transformers (or even worse, Battleship) could have lasted a lot longer than the opening weekend if it had a real story to tell.

      Harold and Kumar’s Christmas did it right. It was supposedly a mindless comedy about stoners who go on wacky adventures. Sounds like something just as dumb as Transformers right? Wrong. There were a lot of jokes and some bad humor, sure, that’s what the audience wanted. But it was so much more than that. Harold and Kumar were real characters we could relate to, real people who had problems and motivations and had to deal with their real life situations. I cared more about what Harold and Kumar went through than anyone from the all Transformers films.

     A good writer can create bad jokes, stupid situations, mindless action, and still have good characters who go through all that. Unlike Transformers, Harold and Kumars’ Christmas is a perfect example of mixing lame comedy and good characters to make a fun movie.

#2 Good Publicity

   Watching previews for Wreck-it-Ralph the audience knew immediately that the movie was going to be good. The previews showed us who the characters were, their motivations, and what kind of journey Ralph was going to go on. We knew what to expect and we wanted to go on that journey with those characters. The audience was relating to Ralph even before the movie was released. Wreck-it-Ralph did not disappoint.

    Compare that to the previews and trailers of Battleship. They were so bad I didn’t even want to see the movie. The previews for Battleship were played and overplayed so often that I didn’t even want to see the preview anymore. Their ads made it obvious that the movie had no storyline, no characters, and proved that they just wanted to make the same money that Transformers already had. They make it look like a movie about killing red shirts with special effects stolen from Transformers. Making a copy of a film that made lots of money is always a bad way to go. Even worse, they wasted way too much money on marketing the film. They could have spent that money on a good writer!

    Learn from Wreck-It-Ralph. They had characters that nobody had seen before, from games that nobody had played before. The audience still related to those new characters, new games, and new situations.

Wreck-it-Ralph proved that you could still make something new and the audience will buy into that world.

It worked because the characters were relatable, and the previews showed the audience who those characters were and what they were going to go through.

   If a preview doesn’t show the audience what the movie is about or who the movie is about, no one is going to see it. Don’t spend millions of dollars to play a preview everywhere if the preview doesn’t show us what to expect.

#3 Get the audience to care.

    The entire plot of the Hunger Games movie was hinged on Katniss volunteering for the games so her sister, Prim, didn’t have to be forced to participate.

    There was not a single thing in the movie that showed me why Katniss loved her little sister, Prim. Or why Katniss would risk her life to save her. They didn’t show the audience who Prim was, and why she was important to Katniss. The film didn’t give us an emotional core from any of the characters. If you didn’t read the Hunger Games books, and knew the characters beforehand, you would never know who these characters were.

    The Hunger Games film didn’t give us any of the character that we loved so much in the books. It just felt like the actors were going through the motions, like robots who were programmed by the Cliff notes based off the book. All the characters in the movie were reduced to stereotypes. Haymicth became the explainer, Effie became the mindless government puppet, Katniss was reduced to just a strong woman, Peeta was the guy with a crush, and Gale became just the best friend. There was no emotional core for any of those characters in the movie.

    I didn’t connect or relate to any character in that movie. I really wanted to care because I loved the books. I loved Katniss and what she went through, and I was disappointed that the movie didn’t show us any of that. I didn’t see any of the emotional turmoil that Katniss went through.

    Are you seeing a theme here? If you can create a good character that the audience can relate to, you have a lot better chance of success.

    The only reason the Hunger Games movie made money was because it already had an audience that loved the books. It was a world we were familiar with and it was easy to escape into it. If there wasn’t a popular book that the Hunger Games movie was based on, it would have failed.

    

#4 If the filmmakers care, then the audience will care.

  If the producers and crew don’t care about what they are making, then you will get crap like Battleship, and the Last Airbender.

    M. Night Shamalan, director of The Last Aribender, took characters from the cartoon, ripped out their souls and anything else resembling human and replaced them with carbon copies of sock puppet actors. It’s a really sad day when characters from a cartoon TV series are more human and lovable than their wooden replacements in the film. The audience knew right away that there were no characters or anything to connect to in the film so they just stopped thinking about it. Same horrible thing happened to Eragon, and John Carter of Mars, Great books, but lame movie replacements.

    Avatar the Last Airbender, animated show, worked so well because the creators and writers actually cared about what they were making! They loved those characters, they loved the world they created and it was obvious how much work they put into it. That work pays off. Fans loved that cartoon. The series was loved so much they made a  sequel, The Legend of Korra. The audience can tell if the writing or directing work is half-assed. Viewers are not as stupid as a filmmaker would like to think.

     Make sure the story is as good as it can be. Spend money on getting the right writers and directors. Spend money only on the special effects that are needed for the story to progress or for a character to learn and grow.

    Character, plot, and story arcs are vital.

    Don’t spend millions of dollars to play a preview everywhere if the preview doesn’t show the audience what to expect.

    Don’t make something you think other people will like. It will never be as good as a movie you would actually want to see, or a movie you care about because there is a better chance that if you like it, other people will too.